is bound by his Bible, or Koran, not to trample under foot the smallest scrap of paper lying on the way, nor yet to pass it by with heedless step; but to lift it up with the hand of reverence, lest the name of Allah be haply inscribed upon its honourable tissue. And well might the Christian student of Nature devoutly wish his mind and heart to be so penetrated and quickened by this idea of the trinitarian constitution of every phenomenal unit in creation, that it should become impossible to gather a flower, to watch the lapsing of a river, to note the ebbing and the flowing of the tides, to gaze into the heavens, and far less to look into the unfathomable eye of an immortal brother, without perceiving the name of his true God written within and over them all. It is as if the wonder-working word of the Almighty Maker had come whispering everywhere through the hollow of immensity, on that unrecorded day in which He spoke the universe into existence, revealing to the opened ear of science the secret of the triune Spirit whence it leapt. Almost without a figure, the whole of Nature, and not the spiral nebula alone, is but one vast, many-winding, auroral, beautiful yet mysterious shell, brought hither in the beginning from the margent of the Divine Infinitude of Will: and, when the much-experienced heart of man will listen and believe,

'Pleased it remembers its august abode,

And murmurs as the ocean murmured there.'

But, to return from this digression, it is evident that the question stated at the beginning of this subdivision of the argument is resolvable into this other one: What is the antithesis of Me? What is the opposite, without which the idea of Me cannot subsist? What is that second term which, through the mediation of a third one, is essential to the unity of Me? The idea of Me is,

properly speaking, not an idea at all, but only the half of one; and the momentous question is, What is the other half? That half discovered, the medium of their unity will not be far to seek.

III. It is obvious that a possible definition of deformity is non-beauty; of multiplicity, non-unity; and so forth. Whatsoever is not beautiful is certainly deformed; whatsoever is not one is many; but that only on the implied or expressed condition that reference is had to these several ideas, those of beauty and unity namely. Non-beauty is, accordingly, by no means the philosophical definition of deformity except on such a condition; that is, except the speaker refer to the idea of beauty. This will be at once apparent in an instance or two. The number one is non-beauty, quite as distinctly as deformity is non-beauty, but One is not deformity. Justice is non-beauty also, but it is neither deformity nor one. Beauty is non-unity, but it is not multiplicity on that account; and so forth.

IV. Yet certain of the elaborators of the philosophy of Kant have evolved non-Me from Me. They say that the Ego involves the non-ego. In other words, they put it upon their disciples that self-consciousness implies the recognition of the universe. They inculcate that the ultimate analysis of the Me gives the individual Ego and the universal non-ego as its necessary factors. I know myself to be, and therefore also that which is not myself. In the very act or idea of saying I am myself, I differentiate myself from, I put myself over against, somewhat that is not myself. My universe is resolved by my very first act of individual life, namely, self-consciousness, into Me and non-me. Such, then, is this famous analysis in brief. The sophism which it contains is abundantly apparent after what has been said in the last subdivision

of the present argument. Non-me is no more the logical antithesis of Me than non-beauty is that of beauty, or than non-unity is that of unity.

V. What then is involved in Me? What is the antithesis, logical opposite, or polar community of Me? It is THOU. The idea of Me is grounded in being-anddoing, and its true antithesis must also be grounded in being-and-doing. It is not figure-me, nor measure-me, nor number-me. It is person-me. Its logical opposite must therefore consist in the idea of person-somewhat, or rather somewhom; just as number-one or measurefinite finds its antithesis in number-many or measureindefinite. The true and inalienable complement and consentaneous opposite of Me, then, is PERSON-THOU. It is Thou, and not he or she, because these not only have the superadded accident of sex, and are therefore not the pure antithesis of the sexless Me, but also because they are essentially Thous themselves. He or she is Thou, spoken of; Thou is he or she, spoken to. Philosophically speaking, there are only two persons in grammar.

VI. Lastly, and most gravely of all: Whatsoever has yet been advanced is predicable only of pure Me and Thou contemplated as ideas. But in that Me from which the argument arose, in the Me of a veritable man, there is more than Me in its purity. In the self-consciousness of thee, or me, or our neighbour, there is the consciousness of finitude, what else soever there may be. Finiteme is the actual object to be unfolded, and it involves the Infinite-thou. Man cannot be truly conscious of the finite-me without being simultaneously cognitive of the Infinite-thou. The Infinite-thou stands everywhere over against the finite-me for ever. THOU GOD

SEEST ME.

Such is an analysis of the genuine and unfallen selfconsciousness of man, and it seems to exhibit the rational ground or secret process of that sacred intuition, whereby he beholds Him whom no man hath seen or can see with the eye of sense or that of the finite understanding. Living so much in the world of sensations, and so exclusively familiar with conceptions generalised from the phenomena of that world, as we are necessitated to be by the particular phasis of historical development through which the race is now passing, we do not readily apprehend the reality of philosophical analyses of this sort. The very objects of such analyses are for the most part as unsubstantial as shadows before our eyes. Certain of the aboriginal and indestructible intuitions of humanity are darkened within us by reason of the excessive predominance of certain others, which are equally indestructible and aboriginal. It is by direct insight that we see, know, and believe in the external world; but we see it too palpably, we know it too sensuously, and we believe in it too exclusively. We suffer it to oppress us. It obtrudes itself upon our whole man, and it crushes everything within us but the organs whereby it seizes us. Its innumerable phenomena unite with a multitude of scientific conceptions deduced from them, first to inveigle and then to rule us. They are a genuine ochlocracy, and soon tyrannise over us. Hence we have almost forgotten God. The mob of Nature has dethroned and banished Him; say rather, they have banished us. We live away from Him, and remember little more than His antique and venerable name, the only thing that might have been forgotten without woe. But He is not far off: He is waiting to be gracious.

It must be believed, indeed, by every one who recog

nises the government of God, that it behoves mankind to pass through this characteristic stage of ongrowth. It is necessary for the individual also who belongs to the present epoch. He must wrestle a long night with this Briareus and his hundred hands, and refuse to let him go until he obtain his blessing. He must wholly learn all that matter and materialism can teach him. The man who does not go through this experience is by no means the son of his time. There are many who exemplify it without ever knowing they are doing so, and consequently without ever leaving it behind. These over-embodied spirits do truly and altogether belong to the present time.

But the individual man both may and often does outstrip the race, and that in all centuries. So soon as philosophical culture, a gracious disposition of nature, or the inspiration of heaven shall have shown one the secret of epochal development, and displayed the Ideal of Man, he will irresistibly aspire anew. He will unconsciously, if not with knowledge, disown his age the father of his mind, and his country the mother of his heart. He will strive towards the universal development of human nature within himself, putting forth every germinal bud of his soul to the solicitation of all the suns. He will belong to no nation and no time. He will be man, and yet he will likewise be himself. This is the genesis of the poet, the sage, the saint; a sacred processus e latente, which has never been more than approximated in the actual history of the Vatican. No Swedenborg or St. Paul, no Kant or Plato, no Shakspere or Homer has ever touched this glowing zenith of the soul.

But there is another way in which a number of people may be before their age, the natural or organic one.