Dissertatio de mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis, which did itself precede and usher in the Kritik of Pure Reason in almost every one of these early writings, there is such mention of time and space as proves the great interest of Kant, from the very first, in their regard.

"It

As is only to be expected, Kant is seen in these writings to be for long in respect of time and space a follower of Leibnitz. In his Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte, for example, he holds that "there would be no space and no extension, if things had not a power to act out of themselves; for otherwise there would be no connection, while without connection there would be no order, and without order no space." He even goes on to say, is probable that the three dimensions of space derive from the law of the interaction of substances; and substances interact so that the force of their action is inversely as the square of their distances." And, eight or nine years later, we have the same doctrine, in his Nova dilucidatio principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicæ, as where he says: nexu substantiarum abolito, successio et tempus pariter facessunt (the connection of substances being withdrawn, succession and time are equally withdrawn). In his Monadologia physica, about the same time, he characterizes space as substantialitatis plane expers, as plainly devoid of substantiality, and as but the phaenomenon, the appearance or show, of "the external relation of the monads in union." What is remarkable, however, is that in 1768, writing his brief paper, Vom ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume, he, as it were, turns his back upon himself, and attempts to prove cogently, and with conviction, that space is an absolute reality and no mere Gedankending that is remarkable; but it is more remarkable still that, in 1770, only a further two years, we find the dissertation "concerning the form and principles of the sensible and intelligible world," in large part, written to prove space a mere subjective appendicle of sense as sense. This is Kant's last position relatively, and in the sequel he never varies from it. Still there are in the writings of the different dates, the vacillation on the part of Kant, and the contradiction in question. What concerns us, however, is the fact that Kant did decide in the end both space and time to be but forms of our own sensory within us, into which perceptively received, disposed, and arranged by aid of the categories and their schemata, the contributions of our special senses stood up and out at length, apart from us, as though an infinite universe around us and inhabited by us.

These, then, are great authorities; and there seems that even in space and time (on every supposition), which would call a halt to the conclusions of the sensationists. But, unfortunately, we cannot expect every one to be at home with the subtleties of metaphysic, or with what may appear the mere dreams of philosophy. One would like, so far as, in some respects, it seems hostile and obstructive to the interests of Natural Theology-one would like to approach science in that regard, on its own grounds, and to enter into it on its own terms. Suppose we leave aside all questions of a beginning, and equally all questions of an end. Suppose we take the world even as we see it, or rather even as astronomical science sees it at this very moment. Well-there is the sun by day; and there is the spectacle of the heavens by night. What does astronomy say of all that, not as it conceives it to have begun, and not as it conceives it to be predestinated

THE WORLD, BUT FOR EYE AND EAR.

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to end, but simply as it is. And as it is, it was seen in his prime by Anaxagoras, more than two thousand three hundred years ago. That is a long time in the life of man; but, in the life of the universe, it would seem, so far as difference is concerned, simply to drop out. The sun and the moon that we see now from the streets of Edinburgh, Anaxagoras saw then from the streets of Athens. Our Sirius was, for Anaxagoras, his Sirius too; and so it was with the Hyades and the Pleiades, and Castor and Pollux, and the Milky Way as well. What he saw led him, the only sober man among mere inebriates, according to Aristotle, to speak of an order and a beauty that could be due to intelligence only. Almost in our own days, the experience of Anaxagoras was precisely that of Kant. The starry heaven above him was one of the only two things that filled his soul with ever new and increasing wonder and veneration the more and the oftener he reflected. "In effect," he says again, "when our spirit is filled with such reflections, the aspect of the starry heavens on a clear night, awakens in us a joy which only noble souls are capable of feeling; in the universal calm of nature, and in the peace of sense, the hidden faculty of the immortal soul speaks to us indescribably, and breathes into us mysterious thoughts, which may be felt, but not possibly named." There, then, it is, that starry heaven -there-in infinite space above us, globe upon globe, in their own light and in the light of each other, all wheeling, wheeling in and out, and round and round, and through each other, in a tangle of motion that has still a law, not without explosions in this one and the other from within, doubtless, that would sound to us, did we hear them, louder, dreader, more awfully terrific than any thunder of the tropics, that would sound to us, did we hear them, veritably as the crack of doom-well, just to think it, all that is taking place, all that is going on, all these globes are whirling in a darkness blacker than the mouth of wolf, deeper than in the deepest pit that ever man has sunk, all that is going on, all that is taking place in a darkness absolute; and more, all that is going on, all that is taking place - for exploding globes even-in a silence absolute, in a silence dead, in a silence that never a whisper-never the faintest whisper, never the most momentary echo breaks! Is not that extraordinary? but it is no less true than extraordinary. Undulations there are, doubtless, that are light to us; but no undulation will give light to them, the globes. Vibrations there are, doubtless, where there is air, that are sound to us; but all vibrations are as the dead to them. It is in a cave, in a den, blacker than the blackest night, soundless and more silent than the void of voids, that all those intermingling motions of the globes go on-but for us, that is; but for an eye and an ear, and a soul behind them! That cannot be denied. The deepest astronomical philosopher, entranced in what he sees, entranced in what he fancies himself to hear, must confess that, but for himself and the few and feeble others that are like himself, all would be as dark as Erebus, all would be as silent as the grave. But as the hour now is, you will allow me to bring this home-you will allow me to point the lesson in a future lecture.

GIFFORD LECTURE THE FIFTH.

Astronomy, space, time, the νοῦς - Kant, Fichte, Schelling-Carlyle, the Sartor - Emerson - Plato-Aristotle-A beginning-The want of eye and ear again--Deafness and blindness togetherDesign restored - Thomson-Diogenes of Apollonia-SocratesMeteorology and practical action-Morality and ethicalityThe first teleological argument-Proofs of design-BaconSocrates finally.

We resume where we left off at our last meeting. The universal conclusions, we may say, of every writing on astronomical science which we may chance to take up now-a-days, in regard to the eventual entombment of the whole present system of things as a single cold corpse in a perpetual grave of space, under a perpetual pall of time -these conclusions brought us, at the close of our last lecture, to some consideration, firstly, of space and time themselves, and then, secondly, of the heavens above us, at once as, to astronomical observation, they presently are, and, historically, always have been. We have still to bring home what was said then; and here it may be perhaps well, indeed, not to expand, but just a little to open statements. The subject, certainly, has fairly come to us in connection with the assertion of the presence of νοῦς, intelligence, in the general system around us an assertion which such a science as this of Natural Theology, with peril of its very life, requires to make good; at the same time that, obviously, on the contrary supposition, with such an eternity of night and the grave before us as astronomy predicts, it would be just as well