realities, from whom their laws and life are derived; while the eternal
things which subsist without growth, decay, or change, the only real,
only truly existing things, in short, are certain things which are not
seen; inappreciable by sense, or understanding, or imagination,
perceived only by the conscience and the reason. And that, again, the
problem of philosophy, the highest good for man, that for the sake of
which death were a gain, without which life is worthless, a drudgery, a
degradation, a failure, and a ruin, is to discover what those unseen
eternal things are, to know them, possess them, be in harmony with them,
and thereby alone to rise to any real and solid power, or safety, or
nobleness. It is a strange dream. But you will see that it is one
which does not bear much upon "points of controversy," any more than on
"Locke's philosophy;" nevertheless, when we find this same strange dream
arising, apparently without intercommunion of thought, among the old
Hindoos, among the Greeks, among the Jews; and lastly, when we see it
springing again in the Middle Age, in the mind of the almost forgotten
author of the "Deutsche Theologie," and so becoming the parent, not
merely of Luther's deepest belief, or of the German mystic schools of
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but of the great German
Philosophy itself as developed by Kant, and Fichte, and Schelling, and
Hegel, we must at least confess it to be a popular delusion, if nothing
better, vast enough and common enough to be worth a little patient
investigation, wheresoever we may find it stirring the human mind.

But I have hope, still, that I may find sympathy and comprehension among
some, at least, of my audience, as I proceed to examine the ancient
realist schools of Alexandria, on account of their knowledge of the
modern realist schools of Germany. For I cannot but see, that a
revulsion is taking place in the thoughts of our nation upon metaphysic
subjects, and that Scotland, as usual, is taking the lead therein. That