Chapter XIV

THE PROPÆDEUTIC OFFICE OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY.

"Philosophy, before the coming of the Lord, was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness, and it now proved useful for godliness, being in some part a preliminary discipline (προπαιδεία τις οὖσα) for those who reap the fruits of faith through demonstration. Perhaps we may say it was given to the Greeks with this special object; for philosophy was to the Greeks what the Law was to the Jews, 'a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ.'" --CLEMENS ALEXANDRINUS.

The Author of nature is also the Author of revelation. The Eternal Father of the Eternal Son, who is the grand medium of all God's direct communications to our race--the revealer of God, is also "the Father of the spirits of all flesh." That divine inbreathing which first constituted man "a living soul" --that "inspiration of the Almighty which giveth man understanding," and still "teacheth him knowledge," proceeds from the same Spirit as that which inspires the prophets and seers of the Old Testament Church, and the Apostles and teachers of the new. That "true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" shone on the mind of Anaxagoras, and Socrates, and Plato, as well as on the mind of Abraham and Rahab, Cornelius and the Syro-Phoenician woman, and, in a higher form, and with a clearer and richer effulgence, on the mind of Moses, Isaiah, Paul and John. It is not to be wondered at, then, if, in the teaching of Socrates and Plato, we should find a striking harmony of sentiment, and even form of expression, with some parts of the Christian revelation. No short-sighted jealousy ought to impugn the honesty of our judgment, if, in the speculations of Plato, we catch glimpses of a world of ideas not unlike that which Christianity discloses, and hear words not unfamiliar to those who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

If, then, there exists some correlation between Divine and human reason, and if the light which illuminates all minds in Christian and in heathen lands is the same "true light," though differing in degrees of brightness, it is most natural and reasonable to expect some connection and some correspondence between the discoveries of philosophy and the revelations of the Sacred Oracles.

Although Christianity is confessedly something which is above reason and nature--something communicated from above, and therefore in the fullest sense supernatural and superhuman, yet it must stand in relation to reason and nature, and to their historic development; otherwise it could not operate on man at all. "We have no knowledge of a dynamic influence, spiritual or natural, without a dynamic reaction." Matter can only be moved by forces, and according to laws, as it has properties which correlate it with these forces and laws. And mind can not be determined from without to any specific form of cognition, unless it have powers of apprehension and conception which are governed by uniform laws. If man is to be instructed by a verbal revelation, he must, at least, be capacitated for the reception of divine communication--must have a power of forming supersensuous conceptions, and there must be some original community of thought and idea between the mind that teaches and the mind that is taught. A revelation from an invisible God--a being "whom no man has ever seen or ever can see" with the eye of sense--would have no affinity for, and no power to affect and enlighten, a being who had no presentiment of an invisible Power to which he is in some way related. A revealed law promulgated from an unseen and utterly unknown Power would have no constraining authority, if man had no idea of right, no sense of duty, no feeling of obligation to a Supreme Being. If, therefore, religious instruction be not already preceded by an innate consciousness of God, and of obligation to God, as an operative predisposition, there would be nothing for revelation to act upon. Some relation between the reason which planned the universe, and which has expressed its thoughts in the numerical relations and archetypal forms which are displayed therein, and the reason of man, with its ideas of form and number, proportion and harmony, is necessarily supposed in the statement of Paul that "the invisible things of God from the creation are seen." Nature to us could be no symbol of the Divine Thought, if there were no correlation between the reason of man and the reason of God. All revelation, indeed, supposes some community of nature, some affinities of thought, some correlation of ideas, between the mind communicating spiritual knowledge, and the mind to which the communication is made. In approaching man, it must traverse ground already occupied by man; it must employ phrases already employed, and assume forms of thought already familiar to man. It must address itself to some ideas, sentiments, and feelings already possessed by man. If religion is the great end and destination of man, then the nature of man must be constituted for religion. Now religion, in its inmost nature, is a communion, a fellowship with God. But no creature can be brought into this communion "save one that is constitutionally related to God in terms that admit of correspondence." There must be intelligence offered to his intelligence, sentiment to his sentiment, reason to his reason, thought to his thought. There must be implanted in the human mind some fundamental ideas and determinations grounded upon this fact, that the real end and destination of man is for religion, so that when that higher sphere of life and action is presented to man, by an outward verbal revelation, there shall be a recognized harmony between the inner idea and determination, and the outer revelation. We can not doubt that such a relation between human nature and reason, and Christianity, exists. We see evidences of this in the perpetual strivings of humanity to attain to some fuller and clearer apprehension of that Supreme Power which is consciously near to human thought, and in the historic development of humanity towards those higher forms of thought and existence which demand a revelation in order to their completion. This original capacity, and this historical development, have unquestionably prepared the way for the reception of Christianity.

Christianity, then, must have some connection with the reason of man, and it must also have some relation to the progressive developments of human thought in the ages which preceded the advent of Christ. Christianity did not break suddenly upon the world as a new commencement altogether unconnected with the past, and wanting in all points of sympathy and contact with the then present. It proceeded along lines of thought which had been laid through ages of preparation; it clothed itself in forms of speech which had been moulded by centuries of education, and it appropriated to itself a moral and intellectual culture which had been effected by long periods of severest discipline. It was, in fact, the consummation of the whole moral and religious history of the world.

A revelation of new truths, presented in entirely new forms of thought and speech, would have defeated its own ends, and, practically, would have been no revelation at all. The divine light, in passing through such a medium, would have been darkened and obscured. The lens through which the heavenly rays are to be transmitted must first be prepared and polished. The intellectual eye itself must be gradually accustomed to the light. Hence it is that all revelation has been progressive, commencing, in the infancy of our race, with images and symbols addressed to sense, and advancing, with the education of the race, to abstract conceptions and spiritual ideas. The first communications to the patriarchs were always accompanied by some external, sensible appearance; they were often made through some preternatural personage in human form. Subsequently, as human thought becomes assimilated to the Divine idea, God uses man as his organ, and communicates divine knowledge as an internal and spiritual gift. The theistic conception of the earliest times was therefore more or less anthropomorphic, in the prophetic age it was unquestionably more spiritual. The education of Hebraic, Mosaic, and prophetic ages had gradually developed a purer theism, and prepared the Jewish mind for that sublime announcement of our Lord's--"God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship in spirit." For ages the Jews had worshipped in Samaria and Jerusalem, and the inevitable tendency of thought was to localize the divine presence; but the gradual withdrawment from these localities of all visible tokens of Jehovah's presence, prepared the way for the Saviour's explicit declaration that "neither in this mountain of Samaria, nor yet at Jerusalem, shall men worship the Father," to the exclusion of any other spot on earth; the real temple of the living God is now the heart of man. The Holiness of God was an idea too lofty for human thought to grasp at once. The light of God's ineffable purity was too bright and dazzling to burst at once on human eyes. Therefore it was gradually displayed. The election of a chosen seed in Abraham's race to a nearer approach to God than the rest of pagan humanity; the announcement of the Decalogue at Sinai amidst awe-inspiring wonders; the separation of a single tribe to the priestly office, who were dedicated to, and purified in an especial manner for the service of the tabernacle; the sanctification of the High-priest by sacrifice and lustration before he dared to enter "the holiest place"--the presence-chamber of Jehovah: and then the direct and explicit teaching of the prophets--were all advancing steps by which the Jewish mind was lifted up to the clearer apprehension of the holiness of God, the impurity of man, the distance of man from God, and the need of Mediation.

This work of preparation was not confined alone to Judaism. The divine plan of redemption comprehended all the race; its provisions are made in view of the wants of all the race; and we must therefore believe that the entire history of the race, previous to the coming of the Redeemer, was under a divine supervision, and directed towards the grand centre of our world's history. Greek philosophy and Grecian civilization must therefore have a place in the divine plan of history, and they must stand in an important relation to Christianity. He who "determined the time of each nation's existence, and fixed the geographical boundaries of their habitation in order that they may seek the Lord," can not have been unmindful of the Greek nation, and of its grandest age of philosophy. "The Father of the spirits of all flesh" could not be unconcerned in the moral and spiritual welfare of any of his children. He was as deeply interested in the Athenian as in the Hebrew. He is the God of the Gentile as well as the Jew. His tender mercies are over all his works. If the Hebrew race was selected to be the agent of his providence in one special field, and if the Jewish theocracy was one grand instrument of preparatory discipline, it was simply because, through these, God designed to bless all the nations of the earth. And surely no one will presume to say that a civilization and an intellectual culture which was second only to the Hebrew, and, in some of its aspects, even in advance of the Hebrew, was not determined and supervised by Divine Providence, and made subservient to the education and development of the whole race. The grand results of Hebrew civilization were appropriated and assimilated by Christianity, and remain to this day. And no one can deny that the same is true of Greek civilization. Through a kind of historic preparation the heathen world was made ready for Christ, as a soil is prepared to receive the seed, and some precious fruits of knowledge, of truth, and of righteousness, even, were largely matured, which have been reaped, and appropriated, and vitalized by the heaven-descended life of Christianity.

Its subserviency to this grand purpose is seen in the Greek tendency to trade and colonization. Their mental activity was accompanied by great physical freedom of movement. They displayed an inherent disposition to extensive emigration. "Without aiming at universal conquest, they developed (if we may use the word) a remarkable catholicity of character, and a singular power of adaptation to those whom they called Barbarians. In this respect they were strongly contrasted with the Egyptians, whose immemorial civilization was confined to the long valley which extended from the cataracts to the mouth of the Nile. The Hellenic tribes, on the other hand, though they despised the foreigners, were never unwilling to visit them and to cultivate their acquaintance. At the earliest period at which history enables us to discover them, we see them moving about in their ships on the shores and among the islands of their native seas; and, three or four centuries before the Christian era, Asia Minor, beyond which the Persians had not been permitted to advance, was bordered by a fringe of Greek colonies; and lower Italy, when the Roman Republic was just becoming conscious of its strength, had received the name of Greece itself. To all these places they carried their arts and literature, their philosophy, their mythology, and their amusements.... They were gradually taking the place of the Phœnicians in the empire of the Mediterranean. They were, indeed, less exclusively mercantile than those old discoverers. Their voyages were not so long. But their influence on general civilization was greater and more permanent. The earliest ideas of scientific navigation and geography are due to the Greeks. The later Greek travellers, Pausanias and Strabo, are our best sources of information on the topography of St. Paul's journeys.

"With this view of the Hellenic character before us, we are prepared to appreciate the vast results of Alexander's conquests. He took the meshes of the net of Greek civilization which were lying in disorder on the edge of the Asiatic shore, and spread them over all the countries he traversed in his wonderful campaigns. The East and the West were suddenly brought together. Separate tribes were united under a common government. New cities were built as the centres of political life. New lines of communication were opened as the channels of commercial activity. The new culture penetrated the mountain ranges of Pisidia and Lycaonia. The Tigris and Euphrates became Greek rivers. The language of Athens was heard among the Jewish colonies of Babylonia, and a Grecian Babylon was built by the conqueror in Egypt, and called by his name.

The spread of the Greek language was one of the most important services which the cities of Antioch and Alexandria rendered to Christianity. The Greek tongue is intimately connected with the whole system of Christian doctrine.

If, then, language is the creation of thought, the sensible vesture with which it clothes itself, and becomes, as it were, incarnate--if the perfection and efficiency of language depends on the maturity and clearness of thought, we conclude that the wonderful adequacy and fitness of the Greek language to be the vehicle of the Divine thought, the medium of the most perfect revelation of God to men, can only be explained on the assumption that the ages of philosophic thought which, in Greece, preceded the advent of Christianity, were under the immediate supervision of a providence, and, in some degree, illuminated by the Spirit of God.

The arrival of Paul at Athens, in the close of this brilliant period of Greek philosophy, now assumes an aspect of deeper interest and profounder significance. It was a grand climacteric in the life of humanity--an epoch in the moral and religious history of the world. It marked the consummation of a periodic dispensation, and it opened a new era in that wonderful progression through which an overruling Providence is carrying the human race. As the coming of the Son of God to Judea in the ripeness of events--"the fullness of time"--was the consummation of the Jewish dispensation, and the event for which the Jewish age had been a preparatory discipline, so the coming of a Christian teacher to Athens, in the person of "the Apostle of the Gentiles," was the terminus ad quem towards which all the phases in the past history of philosophic thought had looked, and for which they had prepared. Christianity was brought to Athens--brought into contact with Grecian philosophy at the moment of its exhaustion--at the moment when, after ages of unwearied effort, it had become conscious of its weakness, and its comparative failure, and had abandoned many questions in despair. Greek philosophy had therefore its place in the plan of Divine Providence. It had a mission to the world; that mission was now fulfilled. If it had laid any foundation in the Athenian mind on which the Christian system could plant its higher truths--if it had raised up into the clearer light of consciousness any of those ideas imbedded in the human reason which are germane to Christian truth--if it had revealed more fully the wants and instincts of the human heart, or if it had attained the least knowledge of eternal truth and immutable right, upon this Christianity placed its imprimatur. And at those points where human reason had been made conscious of its own inefficiency, and compelled to own its weakness and its failure, Christianity shed an effulgent and convincing light.

Some of the ablest Christian scholars and divines of modern times, as Cudworth, Neander, Trench, Pressensé, Merivale, Schaff, after the most careful and conscientious investigation, have come to this conclusion, that Greek philosophy fulfilled a preparatory mission for Christianity. The general conclusions they reached are forcibly presented in the words of Pressensé:

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Greek philosophy when viewed as a preparation to Christianity. Disinterested pursuit of truth is always a great and noble task. The imperishable want of the human mind to go back to first principles, suffices to prove that this principle is divine. We may abuse speculation; we may turn it into one of the most powerful dissolvents of moral truths; and the defenders of positive creeds, alarmed by the attitude too often assumed by speculation in the presence of religion, have condemned it as mischievous in itself, confounding in their unjust prejudice its use and its abuse. But, for all serious thinkers, philosophy is one of the highest titles of nobility that humanity possesses: and when we consider its mission previous to Christianity, we feel convinced that it had its place in the Divine plan. It was not religion in itself that philosophy, through its noblest representatives, combated, but polytheism. It dethroned the false gods. Adopting what was best in paganism, philosophy employed it as an instrument to destroy paganism, and thus clear the way for definite religion. Above all, it effectually contributed to purify the idea of Divinity, though this purification was but an approximation. If at times it caught glimpses of the highest spiritualism, yet it was unable to protect itself against the return and reaction of Oriental dualism. In spite of this imperfection, which in its way served the cause of Christianity by demonstrating the necessity of revelation, men like Socrates and Plato fulfilled amongst their people a really sublime mission.

They were to the heathen world the great prophets of the human conscience, which woke up at their call. And the awakening of the moral sense was at once the glory and ruin of philosophy; for conscience, once aroused, could only be satisfied by One greater than they, and must necessarily reject all systems which proved themselves insufficient to realize the moral idea they had evoked.

We shall now endeavor to trace this process of gradual preparation for Christianity in the Greek mind--

(i.) In the field of THEISTIC conceptions.

(ii.) In the department of ETHICAL ideas and principles.

(iii.) In the region of RELIGIOUS sentiment.

In the field of theistic conception the propædeutic office of Grecian philosophy is seen--

I. In the release of the popular mind from Polytheistic notion, and the purifying and spiritualizing of the Theistic idea.

The idea of a Supreme Power, a living Personality, energizing in nature, and presiding over the affairs of men, is not the product of philosophy. It is the immanent, spontaneous thought of humanity. It has, therefore, existed in all ages, and revealed itself in all minds, even when it has not been presented to the understanding as a definite conception, and expressed by human language in a logical form. It is the thought which instinctively arises in the opening reason of childhood, as the dim and shadowy consciousness of a living mind behind all the movement and change of the universe. Then comes the period of doubt, of anxious questioning, and independent inquiry. The youth seeks to account to himself for this peculiar sentiment. He turns his earnest gaze towards nature, and through this living vesture of the infinite he seeks to catch some glimpses of the living Soul. In some fact appreciable to sense, in some phenomenon he can see, or hear, or touch, he would fain grasp the cause and reason of all that is. But in this field of inquiry and by this method he finds only a "receding God," who falls back as he approaches, and is ever still beyond; and he sinks down in exhaustion and feebleness, the victim of doubt, perhaps despair. Still the sentiment of the Divine remains, a living force, in the centre of his moral being. He turns his scrutinizing gaze within, and by self-reflection seeks for some rational ground for his instinctive faith. There he finds some convictions he can not doubt, some ideas he can not call in question, some thoughts he is compelled to think, some necessary and universal principles which in their natural and logical development ally him to an unseen world, and correlate and bind him fast to an invisible, but real God. The more his mind is disciplined by abstract thought, the clearer do these necessary and universal principles become, and the purer and more spiritual his ideas of God. God is now for him the First Principle of all principles, the First Truth of all truths; the Eternal Reason, the Immutable Righteousness, the Supreme Good. The normal and healthy development of reason, the maturity of thought, conduct to the recognition of the true God.

And so it has been in the universal consciousness of our race as revealed in history. There was first a period of spontaneous and unreflective Theism, in which man felt the consciousness of God, but could not or did not attempt a rational explanation of his instinctive faith. He saw God in clouds and heard Him in the wind. His smile nourished the corn, and cheered the vine. The lightnings were the flashes of his vengeful ire, and the thunder was his angry voice. But the unity of God was feebly grasped, the rays of the Divinity seemed divided and scattered amidst the separate manifestations of power, and wisdom, and goodness, and retribution, which nature presented. Then plastic art, to aid and impress the imagination, created its symbols of these separate powers and principles, chiefly in human form, and gods were multiplied. But all this polytheism still rested on a dim monotheistic background, and all the gods were subordinated to Zeus--"the Father of gods and men." Humanity had still the sense of the dependence of all finite being on one great fountain-head of Intelligence and Power, and all the "generated gods" were the subjects and ministers of that One Supreme. This was the childhood of humanity so vividly represented in Homeric poetry.

The problem of existence still waits for and demands a solution. The heart of man, also, still cries out for the living God. The Socratic maxim, "know thyself," introverts the mental gaze, and self-reflection now becomes the method of philosophy. The Platonic analysis of thought reveals elements of knowledge which are not derived from the outer world. There are universal and necessary principles revealed in consciousness which, in their natural and logical development, transcend consciousness, and furnish the cognition of a world of Real Being, beyond the world of sense. There are absolute truths which bridge the chasm between the seen and the unseen, the fleeting and the permanent, the finite and the infinite, the temporal and the eternal. There are necessary laws of thought which are also found to be laws of things, and which correlate man to a living, personal, righteous Lord and Lawgiver. From absolute ideas Plato ascends to an absolute Being, the author of all finite existence. From absolute truths to an absolute Reason, the foundation and essence of all truth. From the principle of immutable right to an absolutely righteous Being. From the necessary idea of the good to a being of absolute Goodness--that is, to God. This is the maturity of humanity, the ripening manhood of our race which was attained in the Socratic age.

The inevitable tendency of this effort of speculative thought, spread over ages, and of the intellectual culture which necessarily resulted, was to undermine the old polytheistic religion, and to purify and elevate the theistic conception. The school of Elea rejected the gross anthropomorphism of the Homeric theology. Xenophanes, the founder of the school, was a believer in

And he repels with indignation the anthropomorphic representations of the Deity.

"But men foolishly think that gods are born as men are,

And have, too, a dress like their own, and their voice, and their figure:

But if oxen and lions had hands like ours, and fingers,

Then would horses like unto horses, and oxen to oxen,

Paint and fashion their god-forms, and give to them bodies

Empedocles also wages uncompromising war against all representations of the Deity in human form--

"For neither with head adjusted to limbs, like the human,

Nor yet with two branches down from the shoulders outstretching,

Neither with feet, nor swift-moving limbs,....

He is, wholly and perfectly, mind, ineffable, holy,

The preparatory office of Greek philosophy in the region of speculative thought is seen--

2. In the development of the Theistic argument in a logical form.--Every form of the theistic proof which is now employed by writers on natural theology to demonstrate the being of God was apprehended, and logically presented, by one or other of the ancient philosophers, excepting, perhaps, the "moral argument" drawn from the facts of conscience.

(I.) The ÆTIOLOGICAL proof, or the argument based upon the principle of causality, which may be presented in the following form:

All genesis or becoming supposes a permanent and uncaused Being, adequate to the production of all phenomena.

The sensible universe is a perpetual genesis, a succession of appearances: it is "always becoming, and never really is."

Therefore, it must have its cause and origin in a permanent and unoriginated Being, adequate to its production.

Therefore the ancient philosophers concluded justly, there must be something ἀγέννητον--something which was never generated, something αὐτοϕυής and αὐθυπόστατον--self-originated and self-existing, something ταὐτόν and αἰώνιον--immutable and eternal, the object of rational apperception--which is the real ground and efficient cause of all that appears.

(2.) The COSMOLOGICAL proof, or the argument based upon the principle of order, and thus presented:

Order, proportion, harmony, are the product and expression of Mind.

The created universe reveals order, proportion, and harmony.

Therefore, the created universe is the product of Mind.

The fundamental law of thought which underlies this mode of proof was clearly recognized by Pythagoras. All harmony and proportion and symmetry is the result of unity evolving itself in and pervading multiplicity. Mind or reason is unity and indivisibility; matter is diverse and multiple. Mind is the determinating principle; matter is indeterminate and indefinite. Confused matter receives form, and proportion, and order, and symmetry, by the action and interpenetration of the spiritual and indivisible element. In presence of facts of order, the human reason instinctively and necessarily affirms the presence and action of Mind.

"Pythagoras had long devoted his intellectual adoration to the lofty idea of Order. To his mind it seemed as the presiding genius of the serene and silent world. He had from his youth dwelt with delight upon the eternal relations of space and number, in which the very idea of proportion seems to find its first and immediate development, until at length it seemed as if the whole secret of the universe was hidden in these mysterious correspondences. The world, in all its departments, moral and material, is a living arithmetic in its development, a realized geometry in its repose; it is a 'cosmos' (for the word is Pythagorean), the expression of harmony, the manifestation to sense of everlasting order; and the science of numbers is the truest representation of its eternal laws." Therefore, argued Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, as the reason of man can perceive the relations of an eternal order in the proportions of extension and number, the laws of proportion, and symmetry, and harmony must inhere in a Divine reason, an intelligent soul, which moves and animates the universe. The harmonies of the world which address themselves to the human mind must be the product of a Divine mind. The world, in its real structure, must be the image and copy of that divine proportion which the mind of man adores. It is the sensible type of the Divinity, the outward and multiple development of the Eternal Unity, the Eternal One--that is, God.

(3.) The Teleological proof, or the argument based upon the principle of intentionality or Final Cause, and is presented in the following form:

The choice and adaptation of means to the accomplishment of special ends supposes an intelligent purpose, a Designing Mind.

In the universe we see such choice and adaptation of means to ends.

Therefore, the universe is the product of an intelligent, personal Cause.

(4.) The Ontological or Ideological proof, or the argument grounded on necessary and absolute ideas, which may be thrown into the following syllogism:

Every attribute or quality implies a subject, and absolute modes necessarily suppose an Absolute Being. Necessary and absolute truths or ideas are revealed in human reason as absolute modes.

Therefore universal, necessary, and absolute ideas are modes of the absolute subject--that is, God, the foundation and source of all truth.

This is the Platonic proof. Plato recognized the principle of substance (οὐσία--ὑποκείµενον), and therefore he proceeds in the "Timæus" to inquire for the real ground of all existence; and in the "Republic," for the real ground of all truth and certitude.

The order in which these several methods of proof were developed, will at once present itself to the mind of the reader as the natural order of thought. The first and most obvious aspect which nature presents to the opening mind is that of movement and change--a succession of phenomena suggesting the idea of power. Secondly, a closer attention reveals a resemblance of phenomena among themselves, a uniformity of nature--an order, proportion, and harmony pervading the cosmos, which suggest an identity and unity of power and of reason, pervading and controlling all things. Thirdly, a still closer inspection of nature reveals a wonderful adaptation of means to the fulfillment of special ends, of organs designed to fulfill specific functions, suggesting the idea of purpose, contrivance, and choice, and indicating that the power which moves and determines the universe is a personal, thinking, and voluntary agent. And fourthly, a profounder study of the nature of thought, an analysis of personal consciousness, reveals that there are necessary principles, ideas, and laws, which universally govern and determine thought to definite and immovable conceptions--as, for example, the principles of causality, of substance, of identity or unity, of order, of intentionality; and that it is only under these laws that we can conceive the universe. By the law of substance we are compelled to regard these ideas, which are not only laws of thought but also of things, as inherent in a subject, or Being, who made all things, and whose ideas are reflected in the reason of man. Thus from universal and necessary ideas we rise to the absolute Idea, from immutable principles to a First Principle of all principles, a First Thought of all thoughts--that is, to God. This is the history of the development of thought in the individual, and in the race--cause, order, design, idea, being, GOD.