A CRITIQUE ON THE HAMILTONIAN THEORYOF LIMITATION,
INCLUDING
SOME STRICTURES UPON THE THEORIES OF
REV. HENRY L. MANSEL AND MR.
HERBERT SPENCER
BY
JESSE H. JONES
"Give me to see, that I may know where to strike."
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR BY HURD AND HOUGHTON.
BOSTON: NICHOLS AND NOYES
1865.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by
Jesse H. Jones,in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York.
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY
H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.
Dedication.
TO MY FELLOW-STUDENTS AND FRIENDS OF ANDOVER THEOLOGICAL
SEMINARY WHO HAVE READ MANSEL AND REJECTED
HIS TEACHINGS,
This Little Treatise
IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BYTHE AUTHOR.
Contents
PREFACE.
KNOW THE TRUTH.
PART I.
PART II.
PART III.
REVIEW OF "LIMITS OF RELIGIOUS THOUGHT."
REVIEW OF MR. HERBERT SPENCER'S "FIRST PRINCIPLES."
"ULTIMATE RELIGIOUS IDEAS."
"ULTIMATE SCIENTIFIC IDEAS."
"THE RELATIVITY OF ALL KNOWLEDGE."
"THE RECONCILIATION."
CONCLUSION.
[v]
This book has been written simply in the interest ofTruth. It was because the doctrines of the HamiltonianSchool were believed to be dangerous errors, which this processof thought exposes, that it was undertaken.
Logically, and in the final analysis, there can be but twosystems of philosophical theology in the world. The onewill be Pantheism, or Atheism,—both of which containthe same essential principle, but viewed from different standpoints,—theother will be a pure Theism. In the schoolsof Brahma and Buddh, or in the schools of Christ, the truthis to be found. And this is so because every teacher is to beheld responsible for all which can be logically deduced fromhis system; and every erroneous result which can be sodeduced is decisive of the presence of an error in principlein the foundation; and all schemes of philosophy, by such atrial, are seen to be based on one of these two classes ofschools. Just here a quotation from Dr. Laurens Hickok's"Rational Psychology" will be in point:
"Except as we determine the absolute to be personalitywholly out of and beyond all the conditions and modes ofspace and time, we can by no possibility leave nature for thesupernatural. The clear-sighted and honest intellect, restingin this conclusion that the conditions of space and time[vi]cannot be transcended, will be Atheistic; while the deludedintellect, which has put the false play of the discursive understandingin its abstract speculations for t