The mud-philosophy of Locke, and Hume, and Mill, and Spencer dissolves spirit, because it dissolves the idea of a mind, an ego, or an external world. If the mind can know nothing but a succession of things in time, if nothing but a constant flow and flux of sensations; of course it cannot know itself, only as a sensation in the perpetual procession of sensations always passing by. But how is it possible for the mind to know a succession of things in time, and a procession of things in space, unless it is itself out of and apart from the succession and the procession. One sensation, say of the self, in a flow of sensations, could not know itself as a part of such a flow, without knowing itself as related to a before and an after in the process. To know even a procession of sensations, we must have a spirit that stands still and does not pass on with the procession. The spirit, then, must be out of time to know succession, and out of space to know procession, and self-conscious, so as to distinguish itself from the succession and the procession. The human spirit is something in the midst of time, yet passes not with the tides of time. It is to the succession of things ever passing through it, and to the procession of sensations ever passing before it, like some mighty Teneriffe with its peak of Teyde in the midst of the sea, pushing its proud head up 12,000 feet above the sea, and contrasting with its ever changing waves, the immutability of eternity. Man, as a spirit, is after God, the most universal of all facts. He is illimitable in more ways than space, remaining when all the events of time have passed, and with a nature dipping into the eternal spirit of God. The respect in which man is made in the image of God, is, that he is endowed with self-consciousness, and self-determination. Self-consciousness and self-determination are the universal forms of spiritual activity. Man, as a self-conscious and self-determining spirit, is not independent. He must find his true self beyond himself. He is dependent upon the absolute self-consciousness and self-determination of God. He is the child of God, and as there cannot be an absolute without a relative, he is the relativity of the absolute. God’s nature is the ground of man’s nature, and in God he is mirrored to himself. In God man lives and moves and has his being. In finding God, man finds himself. In the revelation of God is the revelation of man. God is a spirit and man is a spirit; but man, as a relative spirit, comes to himself in God, the absolute spirit; as the life-germ of the acorn comes to itself in the natural conditions of soil and sky which environ it. I.