A Sketch of Philosophy [pp. 126-132]

ETHE LADIES' REPOSITORY.
He says, in "Ethica," "God is a being
absolutely infinite; a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which
expresses his eternal and infinite essence.
I say absolutely infinite, not infinite suo
genere, for what is infinite suo genere only
has finite and not infinite attributes.
Whereas what is infinite absolutely contains in its own essence every thing by
which substance can be expressed, and
which involves no impossibility."
Coleridge heartily embraced Spinoza's
doctrine, but was anxious to guard it
from Pantheistic conclusions, and everywhere asserts divine intelligence and divine will against the necessitarian and
materialistic assumptions and vague, negative generalities of Spinoza. A late
writer says of Spinoza that "he, in common with all metaphysicians before him,
B6hme, perhaps, excepted, began at the
wrong end, commencing with God as an
object. Had he, though still dogmatizing objectively, begun at the natura naturans, he must have proceeded fier intelligentiam to the subjective, and, having
reached the other pole-idealism, or the
'I,' he would have reprogressed to the
equatorial point, or the identity of sub ject and object, and arrived finally at a
clear idea of God."
Schelling's school is speculative phi Iosophy, as opposed to the empiricism of
Locke, the skepticism of Hume, and the
critical school of Kant. Coleridge thought
both Fichte and Schelling erred when
they deviated from Kant, but he regarded
the former as a great logician, and the
latter as a greater man.
Viewing all the varied and complicated
systems of philosophy, each the life-work
and ambition of earth's greatest and noblest men, and yet the subject even still
of so much debate, confusion, and unrest, remembering all those gigantic efforts that oftenest resulted in signal failures, one involuntarily cries out with
Faust:
"Who hopes to find repose
Up from this mighty sea of error diving!
Man can not use what he already knows,
To use the unknown ever striving."
Yet success does come as the result of
patient investigation, thought, and toil.
Incalculable are the benefits derived
from science, and wonderful are its
achievements!
Philosophy and Christianity have this
in common,-l-both are searching after
truth. Both require a renunciation of
prejudices and conclusions formed without a previous examination. And yet
we grow up with such a load of beliefsbeliefs owing to the accident of birth and
country, from the education we receive
and the people we meet-that when we
would study into these vital questions,
lo! we see every thing through these already formed habits of thought, feeling,
and action, as through a prism, and vision is distorted.
To free ourselves of this medley of
true and false opinions, to clear away the
rubbish of second-hand notions, is the
first step toward truth. Freedom, sim plicity and teachableness are the requi sites for the student of God in nature
and in revelation. As truly of the former
as of the latter he has said: "Except ye
become as little children ye can not
enter." EMMA G. WILBER.
[August,
I32