he Absolute Being indirectly,
and by the interposition of truth. Absolute truth is an attribute and a
manifestation of God. "Truth is incomprehensible without God, and God is
incomprehensible without truth. Truth is placed between human
intelligence, and the supreme intelligence as a kind of mediator."[68]
Incapable of contemplating God face to face, reason adores God in the
truth which represents and manifests Him.

[Footnote 67: Cousin, "True, Beautiful, and Good," p. 103.]

[Footnote 68: Id., ib., p. 99.]

Absolute truth is thus a revelation of God, made by God to the reason of
man, and as it is a light which illuminates every man, and is
perpetually perceived by all men, it is a universal and perpetual
revelation of God to man. The mind of man is "the offspring of God,"
and, as such, must have some resemblance to, and some correlation with
God. Now that which constitutes the image of God in man must be found in
the reason which is correlated with, and capable of perceiving the truth
which manifests God, just as the eye is correlated to the light which
manifests the external world. Absolute truth is, therefore, the sole
medium of bringing the human mind into communion with God; and human
reason, in becoming united to absolute truth, becomes united to God in
his manifestation in spirit and in truth. The supreme law, and highest
destination of man, is to become united to God by seeking a full
consciousness of, and loving and practising the Truth.[69]

[Footnote 69: Henry's Cousin, p. 511, 512.]

It will at once be obvious that the grand crucial questions by which
this philosophy of religion is to be tested are--

1st. _How will Cousin prove to us that human reason is in possession of
universal and necessary principles or absolute truths?_ and,

2d. _How are these principles shown to be absolute? how far do these
principles of reason possess absolute authority?_

The answer of Cousin to the first question is that we prove reason to be
in possession of universal and necessary principles by the analysis of
the contents of consciousness, that is, by psychological analysis. The
phenomena of consciousness, in their primitive condition, are
necessarily complex, concrete, and particular. All our primary ideas are
complex ideas, for the evident reason that all, or nearly all, our
faculties enter at once into exercise; their simultaneous action giving
us, at the same time, a certain number of ideas connected with each
o