for uncertainty, and controversy, and doubt. All history is open more or less to the same difficulty; but still its general sense, and the force at least of its great leading epochs, are sufficiently clear. It is only the unphilosophical and uninquiring, who pronounce the record of the world's life in this form, a farrago of unmeaning, disconnected opinions and dreams. In proportion as any man can be engaged to direct his own attention to the subject, in the way of earnest thought, he will feel the deep unreasonableness of this presumption. The history of mind he will see to be something more than chaos, "without form and void." Alas for us indeed, if that were all the world here offered to our faith! Order in its outward material structure, only to make room for an interminable soul-chaos within!

It would go far at once to break the force of much of the prejudice that is entertained against philosophy, if only this idea of a historical development in the case of our world-life generally, as its necessary and proper form, were fairly familiar to our minds. We should then understand, that the very same life, in passing upwards through different stages, may be expected to show itself under different phases or aspects, without yet falling for this reason into any self-contradiction; and in this way we would be rescued from the narrow bigotry of measuring all past ages by our own, while at the same time we might be prepared to estimate intelligently the actual advantages of our position, in its advanced relation to the past. As the self-consciousness of the individual has different contents in childhood and riper age, and must necessarily migrate through a succession of forms in order that it may become complete; so we say of philosophy, which may be denominated the self-consciousness of the world as a whole, that it too can assert its proper reality only by living itself, from age to age, upwards into new and higher forms, till the process shall become complete in the full completion of humanity itself the glorious, all-harmonious millennium of creation. It does not follow, then, that a system of philosophy has been nugatory and null in its own time, because it has come to be exploded,

we say, and superseded by some fol

lowing system. We have no right to declare the wisdom of Plato and Aristotle vain, and just as little to deride the speculations of the medieval schoolmen as learned nonsense, merely because their authority has long since passed away. The Greek philosophy comprehended both truth and power for the use of the world, in its own time. It entered largely into the growth and education of the human spirit. And in this way it still continues to live also, in the organic progress of human thought. The acquisitions of the past in this form are not lost by the downfall of the systems in which they may have seemed originally to inhere; they are simply translated into the constitution of other systems, and so carried forward in the vast intellectual process to which these belong. In a deep sense we may say of all history, that it is thus a perpetual metempsychosis of the world's life, by which it is always new and yet always the same.

We may easily see, now, how little room there is for the fashionably vulgar imagination, that philosophy has little or nothing to do with the realities of actual life. There is indeed a latitude of meaning sometimes allowed to the term, especially in England and our own country, by which it is supposed to be saved from this reproach in part; though only in such a way as to fall more clearly under the power of it beyond the bounds of such exception. In the sense to which we refer, philosophy is taken to be a scientific insight simply into the nature and force of things empirically considered, as we find ourselves surrounded by them in the actual world. In this way we may have a philosophy of mind, by a sort of spiritual anatomical dissection, and then a philosophy of nature also as something altogether different; and however it may be with the first, it can easily be shown that this last is capable of being turned to many important practical uses. Witness only the wonders that are now wrought by steam, and the brilliant, though silent, action of the electro-magnetic telegraph. Philosophy in such shape means something, and has a value that can be made tangible to the world's common sense. It is the glory of our own age, too, in particular, that it is made to carry its salutary power into every nook and corner of our common material

existence. We have a philosophy of farming, a philosophy of manufactures, and a philosophy of trade. We make our shoes and bake our bread philosophically. We talk, with equal ease, of the philosophy of the heavens and the philosophy of a plum pudding. We can go still farther, and admit also the practical use of philosophy, as occupied with the laws of our own reason and will, in the same Baconian style-provided always the process be not pushed too far. The science of mind, as handled by Locke, may help us possibly to think correctly; while the science of ethics, as unfolded in the same way by Paley, may serve to assist us occasionally in distinguishing between right and wrong. But here the concession is required to stop. For philosophy, as the science of ideas, or as it is sometimes called, the science of the absolute, which is after all the only proper sense of the term, our common system of thinking is apt to entertain no respect whatever, in the general view now noticed. It is regarded as unprofitable metaphysics, of some service possibly for dialectic practice in the schools, but of no conceivable use besides in our ordinary mundane experience. For does it not in fact profess to go beyond the bounds of this experience; showing itself thus to be transcendental, as we say, and more fit to be referred to the visionary moon, than to this solid material earth we now inhabit? Is it not, by its own confession, the science of ideas and not the science of facts? It is in reference to such philosophy especially, that the question has been triumphantly asked: What has it done to improve the actual life of the world, from the days of Plato down to the present hour? Has it ever manufactured, not a steamboat, not so much as a pin only, in the service of the world's comfort? Has it descended at all into contact with the real wants of man? Has it added one luxury to his table, or coined a single dollar of new wealth for his pocket?

The whole force of this plausible representation, we say, is broken by the view we have now taken of the true nature of philosophy, and its necessary relation to the onward historical explication of the great mystery of humanity. The 'chief end of man," after all, in this world, is not to create railroads, and telegraphs, and

Man

great Lowell establishments, for his own comfort; to seize the reins of nature in a merely outward way, and force her chariot wheels to move subservient to his simply physical accommodation. All this is right, indeed, in its place, and we mean not to undervalue or condemn the march of improvement in such outward form. is appointed to be the tamer and subduer of nature, and it is reasonable and fit that this should be brought to serve him, with absolute and universal submission. It is the proper prerogative of Mind, its grand moral vocation, we may say, in the world, thus to assert and proclaim its supremacy over Matter; as it is the true glory of this last, again, to be ruled and filled by the self-conscious presence of the first. But this lordship, to be true and right, must be moral as well as physical, inward no less than outward; it must be the supremacy of man over nature as man, and not simply as the potent magician of science, at whose bidding the spirits of the vasty deep stand ready, in shape of steam, tempest and lightning, to execute his pleasure. The only true mastery over the world at last, is that by which man is brought at the same time to master himself, in the clear apprehension and spontaneous election of goodness and truth in their absolute form, This is something more than agricultural chemistry, or the rattling machinery of cotton factories and rolling mills. It is by the power of the spiritual at last, that the full sense of the world, whether as spirit or nature, is to be evolved, and the full triumph of humanity, as sung in the eighth psalm, carried out to its grand consummation. The chief end of man is, not to know and rule the world simply as it stands beyond his particular person, but to know and rule it in the form of reason and will, as the inmost constitution of his own life. As in the case of his person separately considered, the skillful use of his bodily organs for mere bodily ends is in itself no argument of either strength or freedom, but can become of account only as such active power may be itself comprehended in the higher activity of the soul, moving always in obedience to its own law; so here, also, it is nothing less than the same moral self-consciousness and self-government, that can impart either dignity or value to any dominion we may

be brought to exercise over external nature, by virtue of our mere intelligence under any other form. But now this inward supremacy of mind over matter, constituting thus the self-consciousness of the world itself through the medium of the human spirit, is something which lifts us at once into the sphere of philosophy. It is emphatically at last the power of the ideal as compared with the power of the actual, the ascendency of the absolute, (universal reason and universal will,) over the force of all that is simply empirical and particular.

Philosophy, we say then, is supremely practical. It takes hold of life, not indeed upon its immediate surface, but in the very foundations of the great deep of which it consists. Away with the heresy, dishonorable to man and God alike, that this world is ruled supremely by material forces, or simply sensuous interests of any kind. In the face of Heaven, we proclaim it false! Of all forms of power that enter into its constitution, there is none to compare with that which belongs to mind, in the form of the Idea. This is more than tempest, lightning and steam; more than whirlwind, cataract and fire; more than the noise of many waters, or the tumult of the people surging and roaring with passion. Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord, shall the great purposes of this world be ultimately carried. There is nothing under heaven so omnipotent among men, as the presence of an Idea, in its true conception, representing, as it does always in fact, the inmost and deepest consciousness of the world itself. Amid all the thundering noise that marks the progress of history, it is only here at last we communicate with its soul, and are made to understand the true motive power which actuates its wheels. Men may talk as they please about their mechanics, and politics, and tactics the world is governed, when all is done, by the power of Ideas; and the deepest thinkers, though far out of sight, it may be in the solitude of the closet, are still ever in the end, by divine right, the royal oligarchy, that preside over its affairs, and conduct them forward towards their proper end. No great revolution has ever yet occurred, that took not its birth first from the womb of an Idea. No

department of our life can be advanced towards perfection, save through the presence of the same force. And shall we say, then, that philosophy, the science of the Idea, whose very province it is to bring the world to a consciousness of its own life in this form, is not practical? Can we understand ourselves, or possess our own nature fully, in any respect, without its aid? No general activity, whether in the form of thought or will, can deserve to be regarded as at all complete, that is not controlled by the light of philosophy, if not directly, at least in an indirect and circuitous way.

Such being the case, we may not admit, of course, that philosophy is necessarily unfriendly to religion. We have seen already, that it has entered largely into the history of Christianity from the beginning; though efforts have been made from time to time, with more zeal than clear knowledge, to sunder the church entirely from its connection. All such efforts have proved to be of no account thus far, and will continue to be of no account always, just because philosophy is a necessary condition of our general human life; and to renounce the one in this absolute way, were to renounce the other also to the same extent. If Christianity be truly divine, and at the same time truly human, it must so adjust itself to the actual constitution of man in its previous form, or rather so take this up into its own constitution in the way of natural consummation, that nothing belonging to it of right shall be destroyed, but the whole on the contrary show itself, under a higher form, more perfect than before. No wrong to the Gospel can well be more egregious, than that by which its | power is limited and restrained to a part only of the general organism of the world's || life; while other spheres, clearly included in this from the beginning, are violently thrust out from the range of its action, as hopelessly profane, and incapable of sanetification. It is a libel on Christ, to say that his religion has nothing to do with politics, or the fine arts, or the sciences, or common social life. It must unite itself with all these, inwardly and profoundly, so as to transfigure them fully into its own image, before it shall have accomplished its mission in the world. For how else should it deserve to be acknowledged the

is something monstrous also in the same way, to affirm of Christianity, that it has nothing to do with philosophy. Is ignotrance then, after all, the mother of devotion; or must the inmost walks of consciousness be barred against the approach of religion, in order to preserve this sound and pure? Christianity claims to be the proper rightful magistracy of man's entire nature, the power to which all belongs, and by which all requires to be occupied and ruled. It must enter then into the thinking of the world, as well as into its willing and working; and it cannot actualize itself in full, except as it is brought to reign thus, with proper symmetrical development, throughout its whole life.

To say that Christianity should have no fellowship with philosophy, comes simply to this in the end, that the contents of faith are not formed to become ever the contents of knowledge; that religion is necessarily something blind in its own nature, incapable of being reflected in the consciousness of its subject under an intelligible form; that it is to be received and held, from first to last, in the way of mechanical outward tradition, on the ground, simply, of the foreign authority by which it comes authenticated to our confidence and trust. But is not religion the inmost life of our human being itself; and must not the precept, Know thyself, extend to it always as the necessary issue, in which alone the knowledge for which it calls can become complete ? Strange that any should hold it man's privilege and calling, by the indefeasible right of his intelligence itself, to penetrate the interior sense of the world around him in the way of knowledge, and yet count it little better than profane for him to think of penetrating the interior sense of his own nature, as unfolded to his consciousness in the Christian revelation. Is it not the prerogative of intellect, to be self-intelligent? and is it possible then for Christianity to be the absolute truth of humanity, the inmost substance of its very life, without including in itself, at the same time, a capacity at least for being made transparent to its own vision in this way? It lies in its very conception, that it should form thus, when complete, the self-consciousness of the world, in its deepest and most comprehensive sense.

This is not to make Christianity dependent on philosophy in any way, for its existence. No process of thinking, on the part of men, could ever originate or discover religion in this form; just as little as it might be supposed to originate or discover the constitution of the natural earth and heavens. Christ, and the new creation revealed through him, are not a thought simply, but a fact, such as philosophy has no power either to make or unmake. But this is only to say, that philosophy has no power to make or unmake the world's life in any view. The province of philosophy is not to create truth in any case, but only to make truth clear to itself in the reflected consciousness of its subject. It is truth itself in the form of self-knowledge; and in this view, there is no reason surely why Christianity should treat it as false and profane, but every reason on the contrary that it should be made welcome to the Christian sphere, as its rightful sanctuary and home.

But we are pointed to actual history in proof of its pernicious power in the view now noticed. It has been from the beginning, we are told, the fruitful mother of heresies and corruptions in the church. And has it not ever shown a sort of native affinity with atheism and infidelity? Has it not, more or less, openly proclaimed itself the enemy of Christ, from the days of Ammonius Saccas and Origen down to the days of Immanuel Kant, and from the epoch of the Critical Philosophy onward again, with rapid development, to the culmination of this modern movement in the pantheism of Hegel?

This only shows, we may reply, that philosophy is not of itself Christianity; and still further, that Christianity has not yet fully mastered the inward life of the world. But this is nothing more than we find abundantly made evident to us, in the manifestation of the world's life also under other forms. Art, science, government, all have exhibited, in the progress of Christian history thus far, a more or less unfriendly relation to the Christian consciousness, refusing to acknowledge and accept it as the only proper form of their own being. But what then? Shall we abjure all art, science and politics, for this reason, as necessarily unholy and profane? Or shall we say that their whole past histor

has been false and without value, as not springing directly from Christ? And why then should we entertain any such judgment in regard to philosophy, which at last is but the consciousness which enters into all these, and makes them to be what they are in fact? It comes simply to this, when all is done, that philosophy is not of itself Christianity, and that it must necessarily fall into an infidel position, if it assume to be in its own separate nature sufficient for the ultimate purposes of man's life, as comprehended in Christianity, and in Christianity alone. But although philosophy be not thus the actual power of the divine fact itself, it may be said to constitute, nevertheless, the interior fundamental form of the world's life, on which the power in question is required to make itself felt-the posture of humanity at any given time, in its relation to the great regenerative process by which it is thus to be transformed finally into the full image of God. In this view, philosophy is a great fact too -nothing more nor less, indeed, than the self-consciousness always of the world itself, at such stage of its historical development as it may have reached at the time; and as such a fact, it must be respected by Christianity, in order that this may at all take hold on the vast worldprocess to which it belongs, in a real way. That is, Christianity, to conquer fully the world's life, must become philosophical, by endeavoring continually to work itself into the consciousness of the world as it stands, for the purpose of thus helping it forward into a form that may be found fully commensurate at last with its own divine contents. The ultimate problem, of course, is the full reconciliation of the two powers here brought into view, in such way that neither shall be allowed to do violence to the other, but both come finally to harmonious union, as form and substance in the actualization of all that is comprehended in the idea of humanity. But it lies in this conception itself, that they should continually seek each other in the resolution also of this problem, and be more or less interwoven through all the process by which it is to be accomplished. Christianity must enter the mind of the world as it is, to secure any permanent power in its life. Philosophy, it deserves to be well remembered

and earnestly laid to heart, is the only medium by which the new creation in Christ Jesus can come into triumphant contact with the actual universal life of man, as it stands, in the form either of art, or science, or political organization. An unphilosophical Christianity may be sufficient to save a multitude of individual souls for heaven, but it can never conquer the world.

It

Admitting, too, that philosophy has its dangers for Christianity as well as for life generally, it must be kept in mind that the want of philosophy is always something more full of peril still. Religion cannot be made so practical as to stand in no relation whatever to intelligence and thought. must ever rest in a theory of some kind, that will be found to rule and condition its influence upon the world. If this theory be not philosophically sound, it will be philosophically unsound and false; and as a medium of communication with the world's life, it will to the same extent be a barrier to the proper power of the Gospel, as appointed for its salvation. We have, indeed, a widely extended school, if we may so use the term, who affect to hold Christianity (greatly differing at the same time, to be sure, about its true form) directly from Christ and the Bible, without the help of any theory whatever, as the medium of its apprehension. But it needs no very deep philosophy certainly-though the case itself shows that it calls for some-to perceive the utter vanity, nay, profound absurdity, of every such pretension. The greatest slaves of theory, commonly, are just those who profess to have none; only their theory includes in itself no life, but resolves itself at last into the power of blind, tyrannical, tradition. If we need to be cautioned against philosophy, we need still more perhaps at this time, at least here in America, to be cautioned against the tendency that seeks to bring all philosophy among us into discredit, and which would exclude its authority, only the more effectually to bind the yoke of its own ceremonialism upon our necks.

However it may be with the rest of the world, it is clear indeed that what is wanted among ourselves, to bring our life generally into right form, is not less philosophy than we have at present, but, if it were possible, a great deal more. There is a sad disproportion, in our general