I may fitly close this reply by a counter-criticism. To the direct defence of a proposition, may be added the indirect defence which results from showing the untenability of an alternative proposition. This criticism on the doctrine of an Unknowable Existence manifested to us in phenomena, Mr. Martineau makes in the interests of the doctrine held by him, that this existence is, to a considerable degree, knowable. We are quite at one in holding that there is an indestructible consciousness of Power behind Appearance; but whereas I contend that this Power cannot be brought within the forms of thought, Mr. Martineau contends that there can be consistently ascribed certain attributes of personality—not, indeed, human characteristics so concrete as were ascribed in past times; but still, human characteristics of the more abstract and higher class. His general doctrine is this:—Regarding Matter as independently existing; regarding as also independently existing, those primary qualities of Body “which are inseparable from the very idea of Body, and may be evolved _a priori_ from the consideration of it as solid extension or extended solidity;” and saying that to this class “belong Triple Dimension, Divisibility, Incompressibility;” he goes on to assert that as these― “cannot absent themselves from Body, they have a reality coeval with it, and belong eternally to the material datum objective to God: and his mode of activity with regard to them must be similar to that which alone we can think of his directing upon the relations of Space, viz. not Volitional, to cause them, but Intellectual, to think them out. The Secondary Qualities, on the other hand, having no logical tie to the Primary, but being appended to them as contingent facts, cannot be referred to any deductive thought, but remain over as products of pure Inventive Reason and Determining Will. This sphere of cognition, _a posteriori_ to us,—where we cannot move a step alone but have submissively to wait upon experience, is precisely the realm of Divine originality: and we are most sequacious where He is most free. While on this Secondary field His Mind and ours are thus contrasted, they meet in resemblance again upon the Primary: for the evolutions of deductive Reason there is but one track possible to all intelligences; no {256} _merum arbitrium_ can interchange the false and true, or make more than one geometry, one scheme of pure Physics, for all worlds: and the Omnipotent Architect Himself, in realizing the Kosmical conception, in shaping the orbits out of immensity and determining seasons out of eternity, could but follow the laws of curvature, measure, and proportion.”—_Essays, Philosophical and Theological_, pp. 163–4.