The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 69, July, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 69, July, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
But Mr. James is quite as much constructive as destructive. He shows not
only that there must be a philosophy of the Infinite, but that herein is
its high office and glory. Sense deals only with facts,--science deals
with relations, or groups phenomena; and when these usurp the place of
philosophy, they turn things exactly upside down, or mistake the centre
for the circumference. This is the glaring fault both of the German and
the Scotch metaphysicians, that they swamp philosophy in mere science; and
hence they grovel in the Finite, and muddle everything they touch even
there. Revelation, on the other hand, does unfold to us a true philosophy
of the Infinite. It shows how the Infinite is contained in the Finite, the
Absolute in the Relative, not spatially or by continuation, but by exact
correspondency, as the soul is contained in the body. Mr. James
demonstrates the supreme absurdity of the notion of noumenal existence, or
of any created existence which has life _in se_. God alone has life in
Himself. All things else are only forms and receptacles of life, sheerly
phenomenal, except so far forth as He is their substance. The notion of
Creation as something made out of nothing, having life afterwards _in se_,
and so holding an external relation to Deity, falsifies all the
theologies, and degrades them into mere natural religions." It is the
mother-fallacy," says Mr. James, "which breeds all these petty fallacies
in the popular understanding." Those familiar with Dr. Mansel's argument
will see that he has not the remotest conception of Creation, except as an
exploit of God in time and space, or of the Infinite, except as an
unbounded aggregation of finites. That God reposed alone through all the
past eternities, but roused some day and sent forth a shout, or six
successive shouts, and spoke things out of nothing into "noumenal"
existence, were absurd enough, to use Mr. James's nervous English, "to
nourish a standing army of Tom Paines into annual fatness." The utter
childishness of the theological quarrels over the first chapter of Genesis
is obvious enough, so long as both parties swamp the spirit in the letter,
or deny that the Finite can reveal the Infinite.
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