10.—Nothing New.

"No absolutely new thing can be communicated" to the mind of man. "Existing ideas may be adopted and changed, but the germ of them existed." Well this, I think, is something new. Mr Stout has made a new discovery. He has outstripped Bain and the whole school of metaphysicians. "Existing ideas ray be changed!" Oh for the proof. It has always been acknowledged that the terms used to express certain ideas may be varied and employed to express other ideas, but that the idea itself can be changed has not before been known. Plato, whom Mr Stout considers such an eminent sage that he makes the following contrast—

"Moses' tardy lips, and Plato's mouth of gold."

Well, Plato regarded ideas as "stable, ever self-existent, substances; they alone being the actual," or what we might express in modern phraseology, "the true." To him, "all that was real in the manifestation was the idea." Hegel argues: "The idea is the absolute, and all actuality is only a realisation of the idea." But to our New Zealand philosopher ideas are mobile, and can be changed at will. This is absolutely new," hence his facts contradict his arguments. But, really, what does he mean by saying "the germ of existing ideas existed." What is the germ of an idea? It may be my lack of legal training, but certainly I only now learn that ideas germinate. It requires a little explanation. Mr Stout, again, is very mystical when endeavouring to show the impossibility of a revalation by Divine Inspiration. He argues that a revelation must be the communication of some new idea; that every new idea must have absolutely new words to express it; that man cannot understand absolutely new words, therefore he cannot ever have a divinely inspired revelation. The vocabulrry we have can only express our already known ideas, therefore we can never have any new ideas. Now let me ask one or two questions—Was it not an absolutely new revelation to Europeans when Columbus made known to them the existence of the Continent of America? Was it not an absolutely new truth to the world which Galilleo revealed, when he demonstrated, that the earth revolved round the sun? Were the laws of Kelper not a new revelation? Did Isaac Newton not make known what was never before a fact of man's intelligence? Docs the science of geology make known nothing previously absolutely unknown? Then how about our vocabulary? The fact is, we have such a flexible, and useful list of terms, page 28 simple and compound, that but little difficulty is felt in describing all the wondrous revelations which expand our knowledge. Again, Mr Stout says "if we know the meaning of the words" used in the communication of a revelation, that revelation cannot be absolutely new to us. Does he really mean by this that if I know all the words in the English language then the revelations of Euclid, which can be stated by those words, are not absolutely new to me, if then I for the first time am made acquainted with their existence? If not, then his argument was just so many idle words, and has no bearing whatever on the subject of inspiration. He further says, "Inspiration follows language, it does not precede it." It remains yet to be proved that language is not the effect of inspiration. It has not yet been demonstrated that it is a natural acquirement. It has developed and improved with use and necessity, but its origin is not yet in the sunlight on the development theory.