Reason and Redemption [pp. 409-437]

1875.] REASON AND REDEMPTION. 437
and Positivism are so many disguised forms of Atheism. The
grand assumption which underlies them all, is that one which
Dr. McCosh has so justly styled "the ~p~roY`P~v6of" of the
romantic legendary whimsy of R~nan, viz., the intrinsic impossibility of the supernatural.* These false postulates removed,
and the argument for Christian Theism stands intact and impregnable. The philosophy of the Intuitions, or primordial
a' priori judgments, becomes the sheet anchor of apologetics;
and stark Pyrrhonism, the final upshot of modern infidelity.t
The surrender of Redemption is, therefore, the suicide of
Reason.
*S~e Butler's Ana1o~y, part ii, chap. ii.
t ibid, part ii, conclusion. See, too, Morell, p. 224, for a fine argument of Mackintosh against Hume Descartes's argument against the Pyrrhonist is beautifully
elucidated by Cousin in his Cours for 1828, p. 23. Compare Pens6es de 1)asca4
Paris, Didot, 1847, pp.`45, 146, 147. Cousin shows, incontestably, that there
is no stopping-place with Hume, in admitting the datum but denying the veracity of
consciousness. The Cartesian doctrine of the supremacy of consciousness is taken
for granted, even in the arguments that oppose it.
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