ligence beyond his
observation, but, if he argue logically, he must positively
conclude that, as in man, so in the universe, the phenomena of
intelligence or design are only in their last analysis the products
of a brute necessity. Psychological Materialism, if carried out
fully and fairly to its conclusions, thus inevitably results in
theological Atheism; as it has been well expressed by Dr. Henry
More, _Nullus in microcosmo spiritus, nullus in macrocosmo Deus_. I
do not, of course, mean to assert that all materialists deny or
actually disbelieve a God. For, in very many cases, this would be
at once an unmerited compliment to their reasoning, and an
unmerited reproach to their faith."--_Lectures_, vol. i, p.
31.[L]

[L] This part of Hamilton's teaching is altogether
repudiated by a recent writer, who, strangely enough,
professes to be his disciple, while rejecting all that
is really characteristic of his philosophy. Mr. Herbert
Spencer, in his work on _First Principles_, endeavours
to press Sir W. Hamilton into the service of Pantheism
and Positivism together, by adopting the negative
portion only of his philosophy--in which, in common with
many other writers, he declares the absolute to be
inconceivable by the mere intellect,--and rejecting the
positive portions, in which he most emphatically
maintains that the belief in a personal God is
imperatively demanded by the facts of our moral and
emotional consciousness. Mr. Spencer regards religion as
nothing more than a consciousness of natural facts as
being in their ultimate genesis unaccountable--a theory
which is simply a combination of the positivist
doctrine, that we know only the relations of phenomena,
with the pantheist assumption of the name of God to
denote the substance or power which lies beyond
phenomena. No theory can be more opposed to the
philosophy of the conditioned than this. Sir W.
Hamilton's fundamental principle is, that consciousness
must be accepted entire, and that the moral and
religious feelings, which are the primary source of our
belief in a personal God, are in no way invalidated by
the merely negative inferences which have deluded men
into the assumption of an impersonal absolute; the
latter not being legitimate deduc