"He who energises according to the intellect, and pays attention to that, and has in his best state, is likely to be most beloved by the gods; for if any regard is paid to human affairs by the gods, as it is thought there is, it is reasonable to suppose that they would take pleasure in what is the best and nearest allied to themselves; but this must be the intellect (Reason, Nous); and that they would be kind in return to those who love and honour this most, as persons who pay attention to their friends, and who act rightly and honorably." (Nic. Eth. X., ch. ix.)

The form of the finite is that of relation to others. The kind of thinking which always takes up a subject as correlate of another is the form of sense-perception. The senses are always addressed outwardly to the world before them-they cognise what is other to them. But the reason has attained to the cognition of the eternal form of the Absolute itself as revealed in the laws of its own thought. Reason therefore knows itself. Moreover the discursive thinking deepens as it comes to cognise in the general categories these eternal characteristics of eternal form.

The immortal passage in which Aristotle has described this is to be found in his Metaphysics. eleventh book, seventh chapter. I translate from the German paraphrase of this chapter by Hegel and include his running commentary on it.

"The thought thinks itself through participation (rangir) in thought; it is, however, thought through contact and thinking; so that the thought and that which is thought are the same." Thought, since it is the unmoved which moves [causes motion], has an object, which however passes into activity since its contents is also what is produced through thought and hence identical with the thinking activity. [The object of thought is first begotten in the activity of thinking, which is therefore a separation of the thought from itself as an object. Here in the thinking, therefore that which is moved and that which moves is the same; since the substance of that which is thought is the thinking activity, that which is thought is the absolute cause which, itself unmoved, is identical with the thought which is moved by it; the separation and the relation are one and the same. The chief moment of the Aristotelian philosophy is therefore this: that the energy of thinking and the object which is thought are one and the same ;] for that which apprehends what is thought and the essence, is thought. Its possession is one with its actfvity (¿vɛpy εi dé ëxov) [for it is a continuous energy] so that this "total of activity through which it thinks itself" "is more

divine than that which the thinking reason supposes to possess that attribute"-i. e. than the content of thought. Not that which is thought is the more excellent, but the energy of thinking itself; the activity of the apprehending produces that which is perceived [the total activity is more divine than one phase or moment of it, seized abstractly.] "Speculation (pia) is thus the most delightful and best. If God, now, is always in this, as we are at times," [in man this eternal thinking, which is God himself, occurs only as individual condition,] "then he is admirable; if still more, then more admirable. But he is thus, Life, too, is His; for the actuality [energy] of thought is life. He, however, is activity; the activity returning into itself is most excellent and eternal life. We say, therefore, that God is the eternal and the best living Being."

On this rock is built the final definition by which Europe and the western world distinguishes itself from the older world, the world of the Orient. God the Supreme Being is not a formless essence-an empty entity-a transcendent to all thought and to all reflection, because such a supreme being, has no existence or outward manifestation. But the true God is infinite form (infinite because self-related.) He is divine. Reason; and Reason is self-activity that perpetually reveals itself in distinctions and categories in creation and in human cognition. Man has the divine destiny to partake in the divine life-being endowed with Reason as the light of all his seeing -and capable by diligent application to purify his thinking and become familiar with those eternal thoughts of the Creator in and for themselves.

CONVERSATION.

DR. GEO. JONES.-It is always good to hear that God is the creator of the universe. That there must be thought, intelligence, behind everything else. All that we see is the product of mental action. There are different ways of getting at the first cause. Some arrive at it most naturally through the

reason.

PRES. A. E. TANNER.-The definition of sense-perception given by Dr. Harris is different from that given by McCosh, Porter and others. It is not generally understood to be so materialistic. To throw the matter into the concrete, I put my hand on the table and it feels hard. I pass my hand

around the table and I find that it is elliptical in shape. The hardness and the shape of the table are facts revealed. to me by sense-perception, as ordinarily defined. The hardness and ellipticity are in the table; the perception of the hardness and ellipticity is in me. We may perceive these phenomena without perceiving their ultimate causes. The tree from which the table was made was the materialisation of an idea originating in the mind of the Author of nature. The hardness of the wood was anticipated in that idea. Not so with the shape of the table. Man had an idea of the table and the elliptical shape was anticipated in that idea. In either case we see an idea materialised; one, the thought of God, the other, the thought of man. Sense-perception gives us the hardness and the shape, but the reason arrives at the ultimate cause of each, the one an Infinite cause, the other a finite cause that is: God and man respectively.

PROF. PATTISON.-It may be absurd for a man of my thinking and occupation to say anything of this matter, but I will say that I only think as my senses move me to think. My senses set me to thinking. It is difficult to conceive of any one thinking without senses, and therefore difficult to comprehend God-a being with no other attribute than an idea.

REV. H. E. BUTLER.-It is difficult for philosophers to legislate Matter out of existence. Matter to most will always seem to exist. There are two beliefs which are intuitive: first, that matter exists; and secondly, that it exists independently of ourselves.

MISS FULLER.-This subject may seem somewhat abstruse, but it is really not as foreign to our common thought as it sounds. Translated into the language of theology, self-activity is the freedom of the will; is it not? Can there be thought without will or desire? Does not the self-activity of thought hinge on the freedom of the will? Can we entertain. truth rather than falsehood without willing or wishing so to do? Yet in a sense, reason is first emancipated from the thraldom of sense, or appearances, in that we can think the truth before we are able to feel it, or will to do it and; by continuing to fill the mind. with the consciousness of it, we may finally become able to feel it is so, and strong enough to act on it. All things have motion or force; and if we do not set over against

this universal motion of things, the stronger motion of thought through reason, we will be borne along as on a tide, or overwhelmed. The force of fate, the rush of events, the impulses of desire and grief, and fear and hate-in other minds and in our own, as well as the steady encroachments of disease and death-all are to be offset continually by the superior and interior force of reason. The mind may revert on itself, and being a stronger motion, to bear, and not only to hold in check, but order all things, in a degree, after its own idea of life, have its own original thought about every thing.

DR. CROSS.-We have all a great admiration for Platô and Aristotle, because of their careful thought, their searching reason; because there is so much that is true in their teachings. It is surprising how much of the truth they arrived at. It reveals the tendency of the human mind to seek after the first great thought and the first great thinker. What Dr. Harris says of self-activity is clear; but how does it determine moral character?

MR. L. M. SAVAGE.-It makes a great difference in the understanding of a person what he means by certain terms. If I understand Dr. Harris, I think I have learned one thing of value. I have tried to conceive of thought separate from matter, but never succeeded till to-night. For so much help I am indebted to the essayist of the evening.

MR. WOLCOTT.--I am not at home in this field of thought. But I think the paper is too much after the manner of schoolmen. This is an old subject; are we to expect no improvement in the treatment of it? Some things have been cleared

The physical basis of mind is established as the foundation-element of the problem. The essayist starts out with the statement: "There are two points of view from which the human mind may contemplate the world. The first is a view of the world from the standpoint of sense-perception; the second the view from the standpoint of reason, or speculative insight." There I parted company with the writer, and have been thinking since that reason knows nothing except what it knows by the use of the senses. I do not like to see a man who has climbed to the standpoint of speculative insight kick the ladder from under him and talk as if he was born up there. I know of nothing more spiritual than the facts of sense. How,

without the exquisite fine mechanism of the human ear, could we have such a musical revelation as the Hallelujah chorus, of which indeed Handel said: "I thought I heard the heavens open and the great God himself speaking."

MRS. WOLCOTT.-If we see, hear, taste, smell, etc., with these bodily senses, how can we be immortal? Sight, hearing, etc., grow dim and dull; and when the soul has departed, though each organ be in perfect condition, the eye sees not, the ear hears not. These and all other organs are subject to decomposition and resolution into their primal elements with the rest of the mortal body. I must believe in some more essential existence that makes use of this body, or give up my faith in immortality.

THE PRESIDENT-I may indulge the utterance of some stray thoughts, but cannot attempt to pursue the theme of the paper in any worthy and pertinent consecutiveness. The distinction of the two points of view from which the human mind perceives and contemplates the world, namely: that of senseperception on the one hand, and that of intellectual insight on the other, is a most apt preliminary; and when well used it is talismanic in dissolving and obviating the materialistic impediment to the true vision and the true thought of the world.

The soul itself is an entelechial form. It is a complete universal. It comprehends within itself the end, the cause, and the effect. Hence it is all-knowing. knows nature, and it knows God.

It knows itself, and it

Its cognitive power is one. Its sense-perception, and its psychic perception, and its pneumatic or spiritual perception, by each and all of which its knowledges are universal, are the same perceiving and knowing power-perceiving and knowing from the respective stages of consciousness. The soul effects presence and contact with the phenomena of Nature, and with the forms of being, and with the manifestations of Deity; and its sentience of the presence and contact of each and all these natures and orders is what we call consciousness; and this consciousness is the necessary ground of its universal knowledges; for without this felt and perceived presence and contact with knowable subject there can be no knowledge of anything.