nd correlation of the
human intelligence to the Divine. "We have no knowledge of a dynamic
influence, spiritual or natural, without a dynamic reaction." Matter can
not be moved and controlled by forces and laws, unless it have
properties which correlate it with those forces and laws. And mind can
not be determined from without to any specific form of cognition, unless
it have active powers of apprehension and conception which are governed
by uniform laws. The "material" of thought may be supplied from without,
but the "form" is determined by the necessary laws of our inward being.
All our cognition of the external world is conditioned by the _a priori_
ideas of time and space, and all our thinking is governed by the
principles of causality and substance, and the law of "sufficient
reason." The mind itself supplies an element of knowledge in all our
cognitions. Man can not be taught the knowledge of God if he be not
naturally possessed of a presentiment, or an apperception of a God, as
the cause and reason of the universe. "If education be not already
preceded by an innate consciousness of God, as an operative
predisposition, there would be nothing for education and culture to act
upon."[92] A mere verbal revelation can not communicate the knowledge of
God, if man have not already the idea of a God in his mind. A name is a
mere empty sign, a meaningless symbol, without a mental image of the
object which it represents, or an innate perception, or an abstract
conception of the mind, of which the word is the sign. The mental image
or the abstract conception must, therefore, precede the name; cognition
must be anterior to, and give the meaning of language.[93] The child
knows a thing even before it can speak its name. And, universally, we
must know the _thing_ in itself, or image it by analogies and
resemblances to some other thing we do know, before the name can have
any meaning for us. As to purely rational ideas and abstract
conceptions,--as space, cause, the infinite, the perfect,--language can
never convey these to the mind, nor can the mind ever attain them by
experience if they are not an original, connate part of our mental
equipment and furniture. The mere verbal affirmation "there is a God"
made to one who has no idea of a God, would be meaningless and
unintelligible. What notion can a man form of "the First Cause" if the
principle of causality is not inherent in his mind? What conception can
he form of "the Infinit