BRITISH AND FOREIGN EVANGELICAL REVIEW. APRIL 1863. ART. I.-Dr Hickok's Philosophy.* Rational Psychology; or the Subjective Idea and Objective Law of All Intelligence. By LAURENS P. HICKOK, D.D., Union College. A new and revised edition. New York: Ivison, Phinney & Co. 1861. A System of Moral Science. By the same. Third edition. Same publishers. Empirical Psychology; or the Human Mind as given in Consciousness. By Third edition. Same Publishers. the same. Rational Cosmology; or the Eternal Principles and the Necessary Laws of the Universe. By the same. A new edition, with revisions and Notes. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1859. [THE object of the following article is to present a brief outline of Dr Hickok's philosophy. It has been prepared by one of his personal friends, who is a decided advocate of his system. To this its value, to the readers of this journal, is largely due. They must be glad to receive, from an able and accomplished writer, a view of this philosophy, which is not liable to the charge either of misapprehension or perversion. The article, therefore, is not to be regarded as presenting the estimate of the Princeton Review of Dr Hickok's system, but the light in which it is viewed by its adherents.] DR HICKOK, though profoundly acquainted with German speculations, and constantly resorting to terms which they have made common, differs vitally from every German thinker, both as respects the starting-point and the termination of his phi * This article is from the Princeton Review of last year.—ED. B. & F. E. R. VOL. XII.—NO. XLIV. P losophy. Though he is evidently in closer sympathy with Kant than with any other great leader of modern thought, yet the grand results of their thinking are diametrically opposite. It is the whole purpose of the "Rational Psychology" to establish what it is equally the aim of the "Critick of Pure Reason" to overthrow. With Kant, the being of a God, the freedom and immortality of the soul, and the substantial existence of an objective world, are all incapable of speculative proof. But we should not greatly err in saying, that the most noticeable feature in all Dr Hickok's thinking, is the confidence with which he affirms, and the persistence with which he maintains, the doctrine exactly opposite to this. If, aside from the simple presentation of his philosophical views, there is one aim which has evidently controlled him in what he has written, it is to attain a foundation upon which philosophical scepticism may be utterly overthrown. Each of his works is penetrated by the deep conviction of its author, that such a position can be reached, and that the method he has adopted is the certain way to secure it. This fact gives us the point of view from which his philosophy should be contemplated, in order to a comprehensive acquaintance with its scope and meaning. Scepticism, according to Dr Hickok, is the necessary result of every system of thought which confines the work of the intellect to its judgments and inferences. These are, indeed, operations properly within its sphere, but if it can do nothing more, he argues, no judgment can ever be affirmed beyond a contradiction, nor the ground of any inference be established beyond a doubt. If, e. g., the judgment: there is an external world, be denied by one who affirms that there is only a seeming phantasm, and that our belief in its reality is a dream, obviously the first judgment cannot escape this denial by a mere re-affirmation of itself, but only as it is grounded in another judgment, higher or more simple. Take then this higher judgment, e. g., there is an external world, because we are so made that we must believe it, and immediately we meet the sceptical inquiry, How do we know that we are not so made that we must believe a lie? To remove this doubt renders necessary a similar procedure as before. We may say, e. g., the wisdom and beneficence of the Creator could not allow our only modes of judgment to be necessarily deceptive, but this only opens the way to graver doubts, and more numerous questions; e g., How do we know that there is a Creator? and what evidence have we that he is wise and kind? The same is true with every possible judgment. It is liable, at once, to some kind of doubt, and the attempt to remove this, by means of some higher judgment, instead of eradicating the scepticism, only gives it a stronger hold in a deeper soil. That this scep ticism is inherent to all the processes of the merely judging or inferring intellect, Dr Hickok finds evidence alike in the nature of the process itself, and in its actual exhibitions in the history of thought. We may, undoubtedly, attempt to avoid this result, by affirming that we find ourselves in the possession of certain "common sense" convictions, back of which we cannot go, and upon which we may confidently rest our declarations, that there is a world, and there is a God. Moreover, the sceptic himself cannot doubt, that he also possesses these same convictions, or at least that they are the inalienable heritage of the great proportion of mankind. Why is not this enough? To this inquiry it might be a sufficient reply, that notwithstanding the force with which this testimony of "" common sense" is affirmed, neither the position of the sceptic has been materially changed, in consequence, nor his progress essentially checked. But, beyond this, the sceptic declares, that the deductions of his logic contradict these convictions of his common sense, and that he must, at least, doubt which of the two to believe. Still further, he presses the more momentous inquiry: Why should we believe these convictions of common sense, for how do we know that they may guide us infallibly? and to this, in the field which he occupies in common with his opponents, there is no satisfactory reply. It is, of course, easy to say, that this query is impertinent or absurd, or that it is impossible to answer it, because, we are so made, that we must believe these convictions—but the sceptic as easily replies that this refusal to answer only confirms his doubt, and that the reason assigned for the refusal, is only a begging of the very question in dispute. : It is to meet these difficulties, and to overthrow all scepticism in its last resort, that Dr Hickok has laboured, His first inquiry is: Whether there may not be some power in the intellect beyond its capacity for connecting things together, and deriving conclusions of one judgment from another? Have we any faculty by which we can see truth in a light so clear that we shall need nothing but its own shining to reveal its absolute ground and reason? Can the truth be made to stand out before us as self-affirmatory, and needing nothing but itself for its support? Having believed that the mountains sustain the heavens, and that Atlas sustains the mountains, may we know that the heavens sustain themselves and embrace the mountains? Dr Hickok answers these questions with an emphatic affirmative. In distinction from that faculty which can affirm one thing because of another, and which, in that it must stand something under every affirmation, is properly termed the understanding, he recognises, in the human intellect, a far loftier capacity, whose province is to behold the truth, by an immediate insight, and in its absolute and self-affirming ground. This higher faculty, in that it, through the visible symbol, can read the truth, invisible to any eye of the sense or the understanding, is fitly named the reason. This distinction between the reason and the understanding is fundamental in Dr Hickok's thinking, but we shall make the gravest mistake in supposing that it means no more with him than that distinction, in similar terms, which is so prominent in the Critical Philosophy, and whose fallacy, as there recognised, Sir William Hamilton, and Dr Hickok himself, have unanswerably exposed. With Kant, and with the, so called, German transcendental school, the reason is only a higher understanding. The two faculties differ only in name, not in reality. Both are essentially powers of judgment, which are so made that they attain their conclusions in a certain way, the one directed by what Kant calls the categories of the understanding, and the other by what he terms the ideas of the pure reason. Neither of these has the capacity to look around or through either itself or its objects. Neither can therefore lead to absolute knowledge. Nothing which the mind receives can be known except as modified by its necessary method of receiving it, and this is equally true of both the reason and the understanding. The understanding judges that all its objects must come under the forms of categories of quantity, quality, relation, and mode-and the reason also judges that all its objects must be regulated by the form or idea of the absolute; but that these forms exist out of and independent of the mind which contains them, cannot be affirmed. That there is any quantity or quality, objective and real, the understanding cannot prove, and that there is any absolute outside of the mind which conceives it, the reason cannot know. Hence the distinction between the two faculties disappears, and the Critical Philosophy, as propounded by Kant, becomes justly liable to all the scepticism which has attended its development in the later German schools. But it is a very different doctrine of the reason which Dr Hickok maintains. In his view, this is a faculty which differs as truly in kind, and not merely in variety or degree, from all others, as that which is truly spiritual in man differs from the animal part of his nature. Spirit is, purely and primarily, with him, self-consciousness-i. e., it belongs to the very being of spirit that it should know itself. In this selfknowledge, there is involved an activity determining itself, ar d thus a self-direction-i. e., spirit in knowing itself, has itself, and is thus, essentially, a person. Moreover, in this selfknowledge, and the self-determination which it implies, there are disclosed two points of view from which the agency of spirit may be contemplated, and in which this agency becomes revealed as two distinct faculties of spirit, which may be named, respectively, reason and will. Reason is spirit, so far as it is self-knowing; and will is spirit, so far as it is self-directing. Spirit comprehends the two, and is, essentially, an activity which knows and determines, i. e., directs itself. In this conception of spirit, the reason becomes an original and broad capacity for knowledge. In knowing itself, it knows what reason is, and can thus detect reason whenever it passes before its eye. In its self-knowledge it has a standard by which it can measure all things which can come within its apprehension, and determine whether they be reasonable or not. It can thus become the artistic critic, the philosopher, and the moral judge. All objects of beauty, truth, and goodness, become known to the reason, and give it joy and satisfaction only as they fit and fill those archetypal principles which are found within itself, and which it knows as it knows itself. It is the original function of the reason, according to Dr Hickok, to know not simply what is, but what must be. In knowing itself, it knows what is reasonable, and when this is clearly seen, its necessity is equally apparent. It is unreasonable, e. g., that the world should exist without an author; and thus in "the things that are made," we clearly see the "eternal power and Godhead" of their Maker to be a necessary truth. It is unreasonable that this array of appearances, which the senses reveal, should be without a substantial ground; and thus we see in every phenomenon that its substance, and in every event that its cause must necessarily be. These are necessary truths, i. e., not alone necessarily believed, but necessarily existent, because it would contradict reason were they otherwise. Moreover, in their necessity is also their universality. That the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, must be as true of all spaces as of any one space; and the same is as obvious of all truths which the reason affirms. Dr Hickok thus terms it the comprehending faculty. It comprehends itself and the other faculties of the soul. It comprehends the phenomena and events of nature in their substances and causes, and these in their Author. By its own immediate insight, it knows eternal principles and necessary truths. But can it know anything other than the barest abstractions? and can its knowledge of these exclude all possibility of cavil or scepticism? These are, of course, fundamental inquiries, for the adequacy of the reason to its assigned work, either in philosophy or in life, depends upon them. It will at once be supposed, and not incorrectly, that Dr Hickok affirms both these points. |