Hickok's Rational Cosmology [pp. 305-359]

8ickok's Rational Cosmology.
created existence" to be nature. Where then are we? Are
the free personality and the rational faculty in man uncreated?
Wlhat else does all this mean? If uncreated, are they simply
an effluence of the Uncreated One, consubstantial with Him?
If any clew to a different meaning can be shown, we shall be
thankful. We shall need a keener "insight of reason" than we
yet dare profess, to detect it. This "unmade" part of our
being, what is it? Is it, or can it be anything which God
made, when he created man in his own image? WIe do not
see how it differs from the "impersonal" reason of Cousin,
which can only be a one divine essence permeating humanity,
or from that of Coleridge which he pronounces "identical with
its own objects, God, the soul, immortality." The preroga tives which Dr. Hickok ascribes to the reason are commensurate
with its supreme dignity. "Reason," says he, "is not a fact;
a somewhat that has been made; but from its own necessity of
being, can be conceived no otherwise than a verity which fills
eternity and immensity." P. 85. No wonder then that "the
created facts being given, the reason may in them detect the
laws by which they are governed, and when the insight of
reason also determines that these very laws in the facts are
such as the eternal principles made necessary, we have then a
true and valid science of the universe, and may safely call the
result of our work a Rational Cosmology." (P. 256.) "This
immutable principle, which determines how the fact may, and,
if the fact be at all, how it must be, is given in pure thought
alone, and is no appearance in the sense." P. 18. "If the
creator must make and guide the universal cosmos after the
determination of immutable principles," &c. p. 56.
According to this, if God puts forth any creative act, he can
do so only in conformity with certain eternal laws, which necessitate the production of the results actually accomplished, and
no other. The only election left to the Creator respects the
degrees and times of the forth-putting of his creative energy,
but not the quality or manner of the working thereof. These
latter are determined by immutable necessary laws. It is the
province of reason to detect these laws, and their eternal necessity; how a creation must be if it be at all. Such insight and
nothing else is true science. Dr. Hickok then proceeds to
1859.]
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