'As Plotinus teaches us, "he who reflects upon himself reflects upon his own _original_," God has so copied forth himself into the whole life and energy of man's soul as that the character of the divinity may be most easily seen and read of all within themselves. And whenever we look upon our souls in a right manner we shall find a _Urim_ and a _Thummim_ there; and though the whole fabric of this visible universe be whispering out the notion of a Deity, yet we cannot understand it without _this interpreter within_.' FOOTNOTES: [11] The terms _à priori_ and _à posteriori_ are misleading. Arguments called _à priori_ are usually mixed, and involve elements strictly _à posteriori_: experiential facts are inlaid within them. And the proof _à posteriori_ ascends (if it ascends high enough) by the aid of _à priori_ principles. In its rise to the supersensible, it makes use of the noetic principle of the reason. [12] For other contributions we are indebted to the historians of philosophy (see especially Buhle) and of Christian doctrine, such as Neander and Hagenbach, and to one of the cleverest of French thinkers, Rémusat, who, in his 'Philosophie Religieuse,' has acutely criticised some of the developments of opinion since the rise of modern philosophy, and more especially some of the latest phenomena of British and Continental thought. [13] And a _possible_ explanation is of no use. It must be the _only possible_ one, or it has no theistic value. It merely brings the hypothesis of deity within the limits of the conceivable. [14] 'I would rather call it,' says John Smith in his 'Select Discourses,' (1660), alluding to this intuition, 'were I to speak precisely, I would rather call it ὁρμὴν πρὸς τὸν Θεὸν, than, with Plutarch, Θεοῦ νόησιν.' [15] There are sundry elements in every intuition on which we do not here enlarge, as they are necessary features rather than criteria, characteristics rather than tests. Two of them may be merely stated--1. Every intuition is ultimate, and carries its own evidence within itself: it cannot appeal to any higher witness beyond itself; and 2. The fact or facts which it proclaims, while irreducible by analysis, must be incapable of any other explanation. [16] Similarly with the action of the infinite and absolute _cause_. The creative energy of that cause is not inconsistent with its changelessness. To say so, is to introduce a quantitative notion into a sphere when quality is alone to be considered. A cause in action is the force which determines the changes which occur in time. But the _primum mobile_, the first cause, need not be itself changed by the forthputting of its causal power. [17] 'I take the notion of a cause,' said Dr. Thomas Reid, in a letter to Dr. Gregory, 'to be derived from the power I feel in myself to produce certain effects. _In this sense_ we say that the Deity is the cause of the universe.'--(Works, Hamilton's Edition, p. 77).