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Show Uncle Jack ' and lfofehlii By Orestes JL Uncle Jack, in the conversation last week, entered into a philosophical diagnosis of Nephew Dicks's definition of "progress,"- showing its absurdity. Dick returns to the question, assuming assum-ing that his uncle misunderstood his meaning. "I see, uncle, that you do not fully comprehend our philosophy. You must know that the procession that we speak of is logical, not chronological. It is not a progress ad extra, but a progress ad intra, to use the barbarous expression of the schoolmen, and takes place irrespective of space and time." "It, of course, must come to that at last, but without affording you any relief. re-lief. Your philosophers are divided on this point. Cousin and others, who wish to keep, or to have the appearance of keeping, some terms with the religious world, contend that God is being only in that he is substance, and substance only that he is cause, and cause only in that he actually causes something ad extra, since a cause that does not cause is a dead cause, and as good as no cause at all; hence that God can be conceived as real God only inasmuch as he produces or 'creates ad extra; therefore, that he is a necessary, not a free cause ,or free only a coactione, from external violence or compulsion, but not from intrinsic necessity which denies creation proper, substitutes emination for creation, and resolves itself it-self at last into sheer pantheism7. Hegel adopts rather the view you take, and supposes the whole process to take place, so to speak, within the bosom of universal being itself. Hence he recognized rec-ognized no creation, no procession ad extra, and, while asserting universal progress, remained a staunch conservative, conserva-tive, in which respect he is followed by the Heglians of the right. Others, however, not satisfied with this, regard re-gard the procession or the progression as ad extra, and as a real growth or actualization of being in space and time. These are the Hegelingens, or the Hegelians of the Left, as are the mass of the German radicals. These are real atheists, for they recognize as anterior to existences, either logically or chronologically, only possible being, which, regarded in itself, and not as the power or ability of the real, is a nullity. , "The Hegelians of the Right, with whom I am surprised to find you classing class-ing yourself, give us only an analysis of being, and really confine themselves to what you have rightly called a logical logi-cal procession, or a procession ad intra. The relation they recognize are all within, and their view somewhat analogous analo-gous to the three persons who are asserted as-serted in the Godhead without prejudice preju-dice to the unity of the divine essence. Their analysis of being gives them a trinity; pure being, das reine Sein, which is merely possible being; the ideal or idea; and real or actual existence ex-istence das Wesen. These three com-preherra com-preherra or constitute a perfect whole, complete, self-existing and self-sustaining. But these are all in the one whole, and do not break its essential unity or oneness. Hence, for them, there is no creation, no exterior manifestation, no external universe, and all turns in the bosom of nullity, and hence they assert the identity of thought and being, be-ing, and resolve the universe into a system of pure logic. "If you go with these, you must abandon all notion of progress. Cease to trouble your head about reforms, for the whole is and the whole i3 the whole, and can neither be more nor the less j so. If you go with the others, you will ! find yourself reduced to greater straits I than the Hebrews in Egypt, who were I compelled to make brick without straw. ' You must get the real from the possi- ble, and without any real to reduce the potential to the actual, that is, something some-thing from nothing; a more hopeless task than those celebrated philosophers of Laputa, who were engaged in attempting at-tempting to extract sunbeams from cucumbers." cu-cumbers." "I have no answer to a sneer." "I am glad, Dick, that you have the grace not to attempt to defend what your own good sense must tell you is indefensible." (To Be Continued.) |