NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

NOTE (A.) p. 10.

IT deserves to be remarked, as a circumstance which throws considerable light on the literary history of Scotland during the latter half of the eighteenth century, that, from time immemorial, a continued intercourse had been kept up between Scotland and the Continent. To all who were destined for the profession of law, an education either at a Dutch or French university was considered as almost essential. The case was nearly the same in the profession of physic; and, even among the Scottish clergy, I have conversed, in my youth, with some old men who had studied theology in Holland or in Germany. Of our smaller country gentlemen, resident on their own estates (an order of men which, from various causes, has now, alas! totally vanished), there was scarcely one who had not enjoyed the benefit of a university education; and very few of those who could afford the expence of foreign travel, who had not visited France and Italy. Lord Monboddo somewhere mentions, to the honour of his father, that he sold part of his estate to enable himself (his eldest son) to pursue his studies at the University of Groningen. The constant influx of information and of liberality from abroad, which was thus kept up in Scotland in consequence of the ancient habits and manners of the people, may help to account for the sudden burst of genius, which to a foreigner must seem to have sprung up in this country by a sort of enchantment, soon after the Rebellion of 1745. The great step then made was in the art of English composition. In the mathematical sciences, where the graces of writing have no place, Scotland, in proportion to the number of its inhabitants, was never, from the time of Neper, left behind by any country in Europe; nor ought it to be forgotten, that the philosophy of Newton was publicly taught by David Gregory at Edinburgh and by his brother James Gregory at St Andrews, before it was able to supplant the vortices of Descartes in that very university of which Newton was a member.¹

¹ For this we have the authority of Whiston, the immediate successor of Sir Isaac Newton in the Lucasian Professorship at Cambridge; and of Dr Reid, who was a nephew of the two Gregorys. "Mr Gregory had already caused several of his scholars to keep Acts, as we call them, upon several branches of the Newtonian Philosophy; while we at Cambridge, poor wretches, were ignominiously studying the fictitious hypotheses of the Cartesians." (Whiston's Memoirs of his own Life.)

"I have by me" (says Dr Reid) "a Thesis printed at Edinburgh, 1690, by James Gregory, who was at that time Professor of Philosophy at St Andrews, containing twenty-five positions; the first three relating to logic, and the abuse of it in the Aristotelian and Cartesian philosophy. The remaining twenty-two positions are a compend of Newton's Principia. This Thesis, as was the custom at that time in the Scottish Universities, was to be defended in a public disputation, by the candidates, previous to their taking their degree."—(Hutton's Mathematical Dictionary.—Supplement by Dr Reid to the article Gregory.)

The case was similar in every other liberal pursuit, where an ignorance of the delicacies of the English tongue was not an insuperable bar to distinction. Even in the study of eloquence, as far as it was attainable in their own vernacular idiom, some of the Scottish pleaders, about the era when the two kingdoms were united, seem ambitiously, and not altogether unsuccessfully, to have formed themselves upon models, which, in modern times, it has been commonly supposed to be more safe to admire than to imitate.¹ Of the progress made in this part of the island in Metaphysical and Ethical Studies, at a period long prior to that which is commonly considered as the commencement of our literary history, I shall afterwards have occasion to speak. At present, I shall only observe, that it was in the Scottish universities that the philosophy of Locke, as well as that of Newton, was first adopted as a branch of academical education.

EXTRACT of a letter from M. Allamand to Mr Gibbon. (See Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works.)

« Vous avez sans doute raison de dire que les propositions évidentes dont il s'agit, ne sont pas de simples idées, mais des jugemens. Mais ayez aussi la complaisance de reconnaître que M. Locke les alleguant en exemple d'idées qui passent pour innées, et qui ne le sont pas selon lui, s'il y a ici de la méprise, c'est lui qu'il faut relever la-dessus, et non pas moi, qui n'avois autre chose à faire qu'à refuter sa manière de raisonner contre l'innéité de ces idées ou jugemens là. D'ailleurs, Monsieur, vous remarquerez, s'il vous plait, que dans cette dispute il s'agit en effet, de savoir si certaines vérités évidentes et communes, et non pas seulement certaines idées simples, sont innées ou non. Ceux qui affirment, ne donnent guère pour exemple d'idées simples qui le soient, que celles de Dieu, de l'unité, et de l'existence; les autres exemples sont pris de propositions completes, que vous appelez jugemens.

« Mais, dites vous, y aura-t-il donc des jugemens innés? Le jugement est il autre chose qu'un acte de nos facultés intellectuelles dans la comparaison des idées? Le jugement sur les vérités évidentes, n'est il pas une simple vue de ces vérités là, un simple coup d'œil que l'esprit jette sur elles? J'accorde tout cela. Et de grace, qu'est ce qu'une idée? N'est ce pas vue, ou coup d'œil, si vous voulez? Ceux qui définissent l'idée autrement, ne s'éloignent-ils pas visiblement du sens et de l'intention du mot? Dire que les idées sont les espèces des choses imprimées dans l'esprit, comme l'image de l'objet sensible est tracée dans l'œil, n'est ce pas jargonner plutôt que définir? Or c'est la faute, qu'ont fait tous les metaphysiciens, et quoique M. Locke l'ait bien sentie, il a mieux aimé se facher contre eux, et tirer contre les girouettes de la place, que s'appliquer à démêler ce galimatias. Que n'a-t-il dit, non seulement il n'y a point d'idées innées dans le sens de ces Messieurs; mais il n'y a point d'idées du tout dans ce sens là; toute idée est un acte, une vue, un coup d'œil de l'esprit. Dès-lors demander s'il y a des idées innées, c'est demander s'il y a certaines vérités si évidentes et si communes que tout esprit non stupide puisse naturellement, sans culture et sans maître, sans discussion, sans raisonnement, les reconnaître d'un coup d'œil, et souvent même sans s'apercevoir qu'on jette ce coup d'œil. L'affirmative me paroît incontestable, et selon moi, la question est vuidée par là.

¹ See a splendid eulogium in the Latin language, by Sir George Mackenzie, on the most distinguished pleaders of his time at the Scottish bar. Every allowance being made for the flattering touches of a friendly hand, his portraits can scarcely be supposed not to have borne a strong and characteristical resemblance to the originals from which they were copied.

“Maintenant prenez garde, Monsieur, que cette manière d'entendre l'affaire, va au but des partisans des idées innées, tout comme la leur; et par la même contredit M. Locke dans le sien. Car pourquoi voudroit on qu'il y a eu des idées innées? C'est pour en opposer la certitude et l'évidence au doute universel des sceptiques, qui est ruiné d'un seul coup, s'il y a des vérités dont la vue soit nécessaire et naturelle à l'homme. Or vous sentez, Monsieur, que je puis leur dire cela dans ma façon d'expliquer la chose, tout aussi bien que les partisans ordinaires des idées innées dans la leur. Et voilà ce que semble incommoder un peu M. Locke, qui, sans se déclarer Pyrrhonien, laisse apercevoir un peu trop de foible pour le Pyrrhonisme, et a beaucoup contribué à le nourrir dans ce siècle. A force de vouloir marquer les bornes de nos connoissances, ce qui étoit fort nécessaire, il a quelquefois tout mis en bornes.”

“A DECISIVE proof of this is afforded by the allusions to Locke's doctrines in the dramatic pieces then in possession of the French stage,” &c.

In a comedy of Destouches (entitled La Fausse Agnes), which must have been written long before the period in question,¹ the heroine, a lively and accomplished girl, supposed to be just arrived from Paris at her father's house in Poitou, is introduced as first assuming the appearance of imbecility, in order to get rid of a disagreeable lover; and, afterwards, as pleading her own cause in a mock trial before an absurd old president and two provincial ladies, to convince them that she is in reality not out of her senses. In the course of her argument on this subject, she endeavours to astonish her judges by an ironical display of her philosophical knowledge; warning them of the extreme difficulty and nicety of the question upon which they were about to pronounce. “Vous voulez juger de moi! mais, pour juger sainement, il faut une grande étendue de connoissance; encore est il bien douteux qu'il y en ait de certaines. . . . . Avant donc que vous entrepreniez de prononcer sur mon sujet, je demande préalablement que vous examiniez avec moi nos connoissances en general, les degrés de ces connoissances, leur étendue, leur réalité; que nous convenions de ce que c'est que la vérité, et si la vérité se trouve effectivement. Après quoi nous traiterons des propositions universelles, des maximes, des propositions frivoles, et de la foiblesse, ou de la solidité de nos lumières. . . . . Quelque personnes tiennent pour vérité, que l'homme nait avec certains principes innés, certaines notions primitives, certains caractères qui sont comme gravés dans son esprit, dès le premier instant de son existence. Pour moi, j'ai longtemps examiné ce sentiment, et j'entreprends de le combattre, de le refuter, de l'aneantir, si vous avez la patience de m'écouter.” I have transcribed but a part of this curious pleading; but I presume more than enough to show, that every sentence, and almost every word of it, refers to Locke's doctrines. In the second and third sentences, the titles of the principal chapters in the fourth book of his Essay are exactly copied. It was impossible that such a scene should have produced the slightest comic effect, unless the book alluded to had been in very general circulation among the higher orders; I might perhaps add, in much

¹ This little piece was first published in 1757, three years after the author's death, which took place in 1754, in the seventy-fourth year of his age. But we are told by D'Alembert, that from the age of sixty, he had renounced, from sentiments of piety, all thoughts of writing for the stage. (Eloge de Destouches.) This carries the date of all his dramatic works, at least as far back as 1740. As for Destouches' own familiarity with the writings of Locke, it is easily accounted for by his residence in England from 1717 to 1723, where he remained, for some time after the departure of Cardinal Dubois, as Chargé d'Affaires. Voltaire did not visit England till 1727.

more general circulation than it ever obtained among that class of readers in England. At no period, certainly, since it was first published (such is the difference of national manners), could similar allusions have been made to it, or to any other work on so abstract a subject, with the slightest hope of success on the London stage. And yet D'Alembert pronounces La Fausse Agnes to be a piece, pleine de mouvement et de gaieté.

NOTE (D.) p. 18.

"DESCARTES asserted" (says a very zealous Lockist, M. de Voltaire), "that the soul, at its coming into the body, is informed with the whole series of metaphysical notions; knowing God, infinite space, possessing all abstract ideas; in a word, completely endued with the most sublime lights, which it unhappily forgets at its issuing from the womb.

"With regard to myself" (continues the same writer), "I am as little inclined as Locke could be, to fancy that, some weeks after I was conceived, I was a very learned soul; knowing at that time a thousand things which I forgot at my birth; and possessing, when in the womb (though to no manner of purpose), knowledge which I lost the instant I had occasion for it; and which I have never since been able to recover perfectly."—Letters Concerning the English Nation. Letter 18.

Whatever inferences may be deducible from some of Descartes's expressions, or from the comments on these expressions by some who assumed the title of Cartesians, I never can persuade myself, that the system of innate ideas, as conceived and adopted by him, was meant to give any sanction to the absurdities here treated by Voltaire with such just contempt. In no part of Descartes's works, as far as I have been able to discover, is the slightest ground given for this extraordinary account of his opinions. Nor was Descartes the first person who introduced this language. Long before the date of his works, it was in common use in England; and is to be found in a Poem of Sir John Davis, published four years before Descartes was born. (See Sect. XXVI. of The Immortality of the Soul.) The title of this section expressly asserts, That there are innate ideas in the soul.

In one of Descartes's letters, he enters into some explanations with respect to this part of his philosophy, which he complains had been very grossly misunderstood or misrepresented. To the following passage I have no doubt that Locke himself would have subscribed. It strikes myself as so very remarkable, that, in order to attract to it the attention of my readers, I shall submit it to their consideration in an English translation.

"When I said that the idea of God is innate in us, I never meant more than this, that Nature has endowed us with a faculty by which we may know God; but I have never either said or thought, that such ideas had an actual existence, or even that they were species distinct from the faculty of thinking. I will even go farther, and assert that nobody has kept at a greater distance than myself from all this trash of scholastic entities, insomuch that I could not help smiling when I read the numerous arguments which Regius has so industriously collected to show that infants have no actual knowledge of God while they remain in the womb. Although the idea of God is so imprinted on our minds, that every person has within himself the faculty of knowing him, it does not follow that there may not have been various individuals who have passed through life without ever making this idea a distinct object of apprehension; and, in truth, they who think they have an idea of a plurality of Gods, have no idea of God whatsoever." (Cartesii, Epist. Pars I. Epist. xcix.)

After reading this passage from Descartes, may I request of my readers to look back to the ex-

tracts in the beginning of this note, from Voltaire's letters? A remark of Montesquieu, occasioned by some strictures hazarded by this lively but very superficial philosopher on the Spirit of Laws, is more peculiarly applicable to him when he ventures to pronounce judgment on metaphysical writers: "Quant à Voltaire, il a trop d'esprit pour m'entendre; tous les livres qu'il lit, il les fait, après quoi il approuve ou critique ce qu'il a fait." (Lettre à M. l'Abbé de Guasco.) The remark is applicable to other critics as well as to Voltaire.

The prevailing misapprehensions with respect to this, and some other principles of the Cartesian metaphysics, can only be accounted for by supposing, that the opinions of Descartes have been more frequently judged of from the glosses of his followers, than from his own works. It seems to have never been sufficiently known to his adversaries, either in France or in England, that, after his philosophy had become fashionable in Holland, a number of Dutch divines, whose opinions differed very widely from his, found it convenient to shelter their own errors under his established name; and that some of them went so far as to avail themselves of his authority in propagating tenets directly opposite to his declared sentiments. Hence a distinction of the Cartesians into the genuine and the pseudo-Cartesians; and hence an inconsistency in their representations of the metaphysical ideas of their master, which can only be cleared up by a reference (seldom thought of) to his own very concise and perspicuous text. (Fabricii Bib. Gr. lib. iii. cap. vi. p. 183. Heinecc. El. Hist. Phil. § ex.)

Many of the objections commonly urged against the innate ideas of Descartes are much more applicable to the innate ideas of Leibnitz, whose language concerning them is infinitely more hypothetical and unphilosophical; and sometimes approaches nearly to the enthusiastic theology of Plato and of Cudworth. Nothing in the works of Descartes bears any resemblance, in point of extravagance, to what follows: "Pulcherrima multa sunt Platonis dogmata, . . . . . esse in divina mente mundum intelligibilem, quem ego quoque vocare soleo regionem idearum; objectum sapientiae esse τὰ ὄντα ὑπὸ, substantias nempe simplices, quæ a me monades appellantur, et semel existentes semper perstant, πρώτη ἰδέα τῆς ζωῆς, id est Deum et Animas, et harum potissimas mentes, producta a Deo simulacra divinitatis. . . . . Porro quævis mens, ut recte Plotinus, quandam in se mundum intelligibilem continet, ino mea sententia et hunc ipsum sensibilem sibi repræsentat. . . . . Sunt in nobis semina eorum, quæ discimus, ideæ nempe, et quæ inde nascuntur, æternæ veritates. . . . . Longe ergo præferendæ sunt Platonis notitiæ innatæ, quas reminiscentiæ nomine velavit, tabulæ rasæ Aristotelis et Lockii, aliorumque recentiorum, qui ἐκγονικῶς philosophantur." (Leib. Opera, Tom. II. p. 223.)

Wild and visionary, however, as the foregoing propositions are, if the names of Gassendi and of Hobbes had been substituted instead of those of Aristotle and of Locke, I should have been disposed to subscribe implicitly to the judgment pronounced in the concluding sentence. The metaphysics of Plato, along with a considerable alloy of poetical fiction, has at least the merit of containing a large admixture of important and of ennobling truth; while that of Gassendi and of Hobbes, beside its inconsistency with facts attested, every moment, by our own consciousness, tends directly to level the rational faculties of man with the instincts of the brutes.

In the Acta Eruditorum for the year 1684, Leibnitz observes, that "in the case of things which we have never thought of, the innate ideas in our minds may be compared to the figure of Hercules in a block of marble." This seems to me to prove, that the difference between him and Locke was rather in appearance than in reality; and that, although he called those ideas innate which Locke was at pains to trace to sensation or to reflection, he would have readily granted, that our first knowledge of their existence was coeval with the first impressions made on our senses by external objects. That this was also the opinion of Descartes is still more evident; notwithstanding the ludicrous point of view in which Voltaire has attempted to exhibit this part of his system.

MR LOCKE seems to have considered this use of the word reflection as peculiar to himself; but it is perfectly analogous to the κίνησις χυλίσαι of the Greek philosophers, and to various expressions which occur in the works of John Smith of Cambridge, and of Dr Cudworth. We find it in a Poem on the Immortality of the Soul, by Sir John Davis, Attorney-General to Queen Elizabeth, and probably it is to be met with in English publications of a still earlier date.

All things without which round about we see,
We seek to know, and have wherewith to do;
But that whereby we reason, live and be,
Within ourselves we strangers are thereto.

Is it because the mind is like the eye,
Thro' which it gathers knowledge by degrees;
Whose rays reflect not, but spread outwardly;
Not seeing itself, when other things it sees?

No, doubtless; for the mind can backward cast
Upon herself, her understanding light;
But she is so corrupt, and so defac'd,
As her own image doth herself affright.

As is the fable of the Lady fair,
Which for her lust was turn'd into a cow;
When thirsty, to a stream she did repair,
And saw herself transform'd, she wist not how:

At first she startles, then she stands amaz'd;
At last with terror she from hence doth fly,
And loathes the wat'ry glass wherein she gaz'd,
And shuns it still, altho' for thirst she die.

For even at first reflection she espies
Such strange chimeras, and such monsters there;
Such toys, such antics, and such vanities,
As she retires and shrinks for shame and fear.

I have quoted these verses, chiefly because I think it not improbable that they may have suggested to Gray the following very happy allusion in his fine Fragment De Principiis Cogitandi:

Qualis Hamadryadum quondam si forte sororum
Una, novos peragrans saltus, et devia rura
(Atque illam in viridi suadet procumbere ripa
Fontis pura quies, et opaci frigoris umbra);
Dum prona in latices speculi de margine pendet,
Mirata est subitam venienti occurrere Nympham
Mox eodem, quos ipsa, artus, eadem ora gerentem
Unâ inferre gradus, unâ succedere sylvæ
Aspicit alludens; seseque agnoscit in undis:
Sic sensu interno rerum simulacra suarum
Mens ciet, et proprios observat conscia vultus.

THE chief attacks made in England on Locke's Essay, during his own lifetime, were by Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester; John Norris,¹ Rector of Bemerton; Henry Lee, B. D.; and the Reverend Mr Lowde (author of a Discourse concerning the Nature of Man). Of these four writers, the first is the only one whose objections to Locke are now at all remembered in the learned world; and for this distinction, Stillingfleet is solely indebted (I speak of him here merely as a metaphysician, for in some other departments of study, his merits are universally admitted) to the particular notice which Locke has condescended to take of him, in the Notes incorporated with the later editions of his Essay. The only circumstance which renders these Notes worthy of preservation, is the record they furnish of Locke's forbearance and courtesy, in managing a controversy carried on, upon the other side, with so much captiousness and asperity. An Irish bishop, in a letter on this subject to Mr Molyneux, writes thus: "I read Mr Locke's letter to the Bishop of Worcester with great satisfaction, and am wholly of your opinion, that he has fairly laid the great bishop on his back, but it is with so much gentleness, as if he were afraid not only of hurting him, but even of spoiling or tumbling his clothes."

The work of Lee is entitled Anti-scepticism, or Notes upon each Chapter of Mr Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding, with an explanation of all the particulars of which he treats, and in the same order. By Henry Lee, B. D. formerly Fellow of Emanuel College in Cambridge, now Rector of Tichmarsh in Northamptonshire. London, 1702, in folio.

The strictures of this author, which are often acute and sometimes just, are marked throughout with a fairness and candour rarely to be met with in controversial writers. It will appear remarkable to modern critics that he lays particular stress upon the charms of Locke's style, among the other excellencies which had conspired to recommend his work to public favour. "The celebrated author of the Essay on Human Understanding has all the advantages desirable to recommend it to the inquisitive genius of this age; an avowed pretence to new methods of discovering truth and improving learning; an unusual coherence in the several parts of his scheme; a singular clearness in his reasonings; and above all, a natural elegance of style; an unaffected beauty in his expressions; a just proportion and tuneable cadence in all his periods." (See the Epistle Dedicatory.)

FOR the information of some of my readers, it may be proper to observe, that the word influx came to be employed to denote the action of body and soul on each other, in consequence of a prevailing theory which supposed that this action was carried on by something intermediate (whether material or immaterial was not positively decided) flowing from the one substance to the other. It is in this sense that the word is understood by Leibnitz, when he states as an insurmountable objection to the theory of influx, that "it is impossible to conceive either material particles or immaterial qualities to pass from body to mind, or from mind to body."

Instead of the term influx, that of influence came gradually to be substituted by our English

¹ Of this person, who was a most ingenious and original thinker, I shall have occasion afterwards to speak.

writers; but the two words were originally synonymous, and were used indiscriminately as late as the time of Sir Matthew Hale. (See his Primitive Origination of Mankind.)

In Johnson's Dictionary, the primitive and radical meaning assigned to the word influence (which he considers as of French extraction) is "the power of the celestial aspects operating upon terrestrial bodies and affairs;" and in the Encyclopædia of Chambers, it is defined to be "a quality supposed to flow from the bodies of the stars, either with their heat or light, to which astrologers vainly attribute all the events which happen on the earth." To this astrological use of the word Milton had plainly a reference in that fine expression of his L'Allegro,

"Store of ladies whose bright eyes
"Rain influence."¹

It is a circumstance worthy of notice, that a word thus originating in the dreams of astrologers and schoolmen, should now, in our language, be appropriated almost exclusively to politics. "Thus" (says Blackstone) "are the electors of one branch of the legislature secured from any undue influence from either of the other two, and from all external violence and compulsion; but the greatest danger is that in which themselves co-operate by the infamous practice of bribery and corruption." And again, "The crown has gradually and imperceptibly gained almost as much in influence as it has lost in prerogative."

In all these cases, there will be found at bottom one common idea, the existence of some secret and mysterious connection between two things, of which connection it is conceived to be impossible or unwise to trace what Bacon calls the latens processus.

NOTE (H.) p. 43.

AFTER these quotations from Locke, added to those which I have already produced from the same work, the reader may judge of the injustice done to him by Leibnitz, in the first sentence of his correspondence with Clarke.

"Il semble que la religion naturelle même s'affoiblit extrêmement. Plusieurs font les ames corporelles; d'autres font Dieu lui-même corporel.

"M. Locke et ses sectateurs, doutent au moins, si les ames ne sont matérielles, et naturellement perissables."

Dr Clarke, in his reply to this charge, admits that "some parts of Locke's writings may justly be suspected as intimating his doubts whether the soul be immaterial or no, but herein (he adds) he has been followed only by some Materialists, enemies to the mathematical principles of philosophy; and who approve little or nothing in Mr Locke's writings, but his errors."

To those who have studied with care the whole writings of Locke, the errors here alluded to will appear in a very venial light when compared with the general spirit of his philosophy. Nor can I forbear to remark farther on this occasion, that supposing Locke's doubts concerning the immateriality of the soul to have been as real as Clarke seems to have suspected, this very circumstance would only reflect the greater lustre on the soundness of his logical views concerning the proper method of studying the mind;—in the prosecution of which study, he has adhered much more systematically

¹ The explanation of the word Influence, given in the Dictionary of the French Academy, accords perfectly with the tenor of the above remarks. "Vertu qui, suivant les Astrologues, découle des Astres sur les corps sublunaires."

than either Descartes or Leibnitz, to the exercise of reflection, as the sole medium for ascertaining the internal phenomena; describing, at the same time, these phenomena in the simplest and most rigorous terms which our language affords, and avoiding, in a far greater degree than any of his predecessors, any attempt to explain them by analogies borrowed from the perceptions of the external senses.

I before observed, that Leibnitz greatly underrated Locke as a metaphysician. It is with regret I have now to mention, that Locke has by no means done justice to the splendid talents and matchless erudition of Leibnitz. In a letter to his friend Mr Molyneux, dated in 1697, he expresses himself thus: "I see you and I agree pretty well concerning Mr Leibnitz; and this sort of fiddling makes me hardly avoid thinking, that he is not that very great man as has been talked of him." And in another letter, written in the same year to the same correspondent, after referring to one of Leibnitz's Memoirs in the Acta Eruditorum (De primæ Philosophiæ Emendatione), he adds, "From whence I only draw this inference, that even great parts will not master any subject without great thinking, and that even the largest minds have but narrow swallows."

Let me add, that in my quotations from English writers, I adhere scrupulously to their own phraseology, in order to bring under the eye of my readers, specimens of English composition at different periods of our history. I must request their attention to this circumstance, as some expressions in the former part of this Dissertation, which have been censured as Scotticisms, occur in Extracts from authors who, in all probability, never visited this side of the Tweed.

NOTE (I.) p. 51.

AFTER studying, with all possible diligence, what Leibnitz has said of his monads in different parts of his works, I find myself quite incompetent to annex any precise idea to the word as he has employed it. I shall, therefore, aim at nothing more in this note, but to collect, into as small a compass as I can, some of his most intelligible attempts to explain its meaning.

"A substance is a thing capable of action. It is simple or compounded. A simple substance is that which has no parts. A compound substance is an aggregate of simple substances or of monads.

"Compounded substances, or bodies, are multitudes. Simple substances, lives, souls, spirits, are units.¹ Such simple substances must exist every where; for without simple substances there could be no compounded ones. All nature therefore is full of life." (Tom. II. p. 32.)

"Monads, having no parts, are neither extended, figured, nor divisible. They are the real atoms of nature, or, in other words, the elements of things." (Tom. II. p. 20.)

(It must not, however, be imagined, that the monads of Leibnitz have any resemblance to what are commonly called atoms by philosophers. On the contrary, he says expressly, that "monads are not atoms of matter, but atoms of substances;—real units, which are the first principles in the composition of things, and the last elements in the analysis of substances;—of which principles or elements, what we call bodies are only the phenomena."—(Tom. II. pp. 53. 325.)

In another passage we are told, that "a monad is not a material but a formal atom, it being impossible for a thing to be at once material, and possessed of a real unity and indivisibility. It is necessary, therefore" (says Leibnitz), "to revive the obsolete doctrine of substantial forms (the essence

¹ "Les substances simples, les vies, les âmes, les esprits, sont des unités."

of which consists in force), separating it, however, from the various abuses to which it is liable."—(Ibid. p. 50.)

"Every monad is a living mirror, representing the universe, according to its particular point of view, and subject to as regular laws as the universe itself."

"Every monad, with a particular body, makes a living substance."

"The knowledge of every soul (ame) extends to infinity, and to all things; but this knowledge is confused. As a person walking on the margin of the sea, and listening to its roar, hears the noise of each individual wave of which the whole noise is made up, but without being able to distinguish one sound from another, in like manner, our confused perceptions are the result of the impressions made upon us by the whole universe. The case (he adds) is the same with each monad."

"As for the reasonable soul or mind (l'esprit), there is something in it more than in the monads, or even than in those souls which are simple. It is not only a mirror of the universe of created things, but an image of the Deity. Such minds are capable of reflected acts, and of conceiving what is meant by the words I, substance, monad, soul, mind; in a word, of conceiving things and truths unconnected with matter; and it is this which renders us capable of science and of demonstrative reasoning."

"What becomes of these souls or forms, on the death of the animal? There is no alternative (replies Leibnitz) but to conclude, that not only the soul is preserved, but that the animal also with its organical machine continues to exist, although the destruction of its grosser parts has reduced it to a smallness as invisible to our eyes as it was before the moment of conception. Thus neither animals nor souls perish at death; nor is there such a thing as death, if that word be understood with rigorous and metaphysical accuracy. The soul never quits completely the body with which it is united, nor does it pass from one body into another with which it had no connection before; a metamorphosis takes place, but there is no metempsychosis."—(Tom. II. pp. 51, 52.)

On this part of the Leibnizian system, D'Alembert remarks, that it proves nothing more than that the author had perceived better than any of his predecessors, the impossibility of forming a distinct idea of the nature of matter; a subject, however (D'Alembert adds), on which the theory of the monads does not seem calculated to throw much light. I would rather say (without altogether denying the justness of D'Alembert's criticism), that this theory took its rise from the author's vain desire to explain the nature of forces; in consequence of which he suffers himself perpetually to be led astray from those sensible effects which are exclusively the proper objects of physics, into conjectures concerning their efficient causes, which are altogether placed beyond the reach of our research.

NOTE (K.) p. 55.

THE metaphysical argument advanced by the Leibnizians in proof of the law of continuity has never appeared to me to be satisfactory. "If a body at rest (it has been said) begins, per saltum, to move with any finite velocity, then this body must be at the same indivisible instant in two different states, that of rest and of motion, which is impossible."¹

¹ "Si toto tempore (says Father Boscovich, speaking of the Law of Continuity in the Collision of Bodies) ante contactum subsequens corporis superficies antecedens habuit 12 gradus velocitatis, et sequenti 9, saltu facto momentaneo ipso initio contactus; in

As this reasoning, though it relates to a physical fact, is itself wholly of a metaphysical nature; and as the inference deduced from it has been generalized into a LAW, supposed to extend to all the various branches of human knowledge, it is not altogether foreign to our present subject briefly to consider how far it is demonstratively conclusive, in this simplest of all its possible applications.

On the above argument, then, I would remark, 1. That the ideas both of rest and of motion, as well as the more general idea conveyed by the word state, all of them necessarily involve the idea of time or duration; and, consequently, a body cannot be said to be in a state either of rest or of motion, at an indivisible instant. Whether the body be supposed (as in the case of motion) to change its place from one instant to another; or to continue (as in that of rest) for an instant in the same place, the idea of some finite portion of time will, on the slightest reflection, be found to enter as an essential element into our conception of the physical fact.

2. Although it certainly would imply a contradiction to suppose a body to be in two different states at the same instant, there does not appear to be any inconsistency in asserting that an indivisible instant may form the limit between a state of rest and a state of motion. Suppose one half of this page to be painted white, and the other black, it might, I apprehend, be said with the most rigorous propriety, that the transition from the one colour to the other was made per saltum; nor do I think it would be regarded as a valid objection to this phraseology, to represent it as one of its implied consequences, that the mathematical line which forms their common limit, must at once be both black and white. It seems to me quite impossible to elude the force of this reasoning, without having recourse to the existence of something intermediate between rest and motion, which does not partake of the nature of either.

Is it conceivable that a body can exist in any state which does not fall under one or other of the two predicaments, rest or motion? If this question should be answered in the negative, will it not follow that the transition from one of these states to the other must, of necessity, be made per saltum, and must consequently violate the supposed law of continuity? Indeed, if such a law existed, how could a body at rest begin to move, or a body in motion come to a state of rest?

But farther, when it is said that "it is impossible for a body to have its state changed from motion to rest, or from rest to motion, without passing through all the intermediate degrees of velocity," what are we to understand by the intermediate degrees of velocity between rest and motion? Is not every velocity, how small soever, a finite velocity; and does it not differ as essentially from a state of rest, as the velocity of light?

It is observed by Mr Playfair (Second Dissertation, Part I. p. 70), that Galileo was the first who maintained the existence of the law of continuity, and who made use of it as a principle in his reasonings on the phenomena of motion. Mr Playfair, however, with his usual discrimination and correctness, ranks this among the mechanical discoveries of Galileo. Indeed, it does not appear that it was at all regarded by Galileo (as it avowedly was by Leibnitz) in the light of a metaphysical

ipso momento ea tempora dirimente debuisse habere et 12 et 9 simul, quod est absurdum. Duas enim velocitates simul habere corpus non potest."—Theoria Phil. Nat. &c.

Boscovich, however, it is to be observed, admits the existence of the Law of Continuity in the phenomena of Motion alone (§ 143), and rejects it altogether in things co-existent with each other (§ 142). In other cases, he says, Nature does not observe the Law of Continuity with mathematical accuracy, but only affects it; by which expression he seems to mean, that, where she is guilty of a salus, she aims at making it as moderate as possible. The expression is certainly deficient in metaphysical precision; but it is not unworthy of attention, inasmuch as it affords a proof, that Boscovich did not (with the Leibnitzians) conceive Nature, or the Author of Nature, as obeying an irresistible necessity in observing or not observing the Law of Continuity.

and necessary law, which could not by any possibility be violated in any of the phenomena of motion. It was probably first suggested to him by the diagram which he employed to demonstrate, or rather to illustrate, the uniformly accelerated motion of falling bodies;¹ and the numberless and beautiful exemplifications of the same law which occur in pure geometry, sufficiently account for the disposition which so many Mathematicians have shown to extend it to all those branches of physics which admit of a mathematical consideration.

My late illustrious friend, who, to his many other great and amiable qualities, added the most perfect fairness and candour in his inquiries after truth, has, in the posthumous fragment which has already appeared in this Supplement, expressed himself with considerably greater scepticism concerning the law of continuity, than in his Outlines of Natural Philosophy. In that work he pronounced the metaphysical argument, employed by Leibnitz to prove its necessity, "to be conclusive." (Sect. VI. § 99, b.) In the second part of his Dissertation (p. 34), he writes thus on the same subject:

"Leibnitz considered this principle as known a priori, because, if any saltus were to take place, that is, if any change were to happen without the intervention of time, the thing changed must be in two different conditions at the same individual instant, which is obviously impossible. Whether this reasoning be quite satisfactory or no, the conformity of the law to the facts generally observed cannot but entitle it to great authority in judging of the explanations and theories of natural phenomena."

The phrase, Law of Continuity, occurs repeatedly in the course of the correspondence between Leibnitz and John Bernoulli, and appears to have been first used by Leibnitz himself. The following passage contains some interesting particulars concerning the history of this law: "Lex Continuitatis, cum usque adeo sit rationi et naturæ consentanea, et usum habeat tam late patentem, mirum tamen est eam a nemine (quantum recorder) antea adhibitam fuisse. Mentionem ejus aliquam feceram olim in Novellis Reipublicæ Literariæ (Juillet, 1687, p. 744), occasione collatiunculæ cum Malebranchio, qui ideo meis considerationibus persuasus, suam de legibus motus in Inquisitione Veritatis expositam doctrinam postea mutavit; quod brevi libello edito testatus est, in quo ingenue occasionem mutationis exponit. Sed tamen paullo promptior, quam par erat, fuit in novis legibus constituendis in eodem libello, antequam mecum communicasset; nec tantum in veritatem, sed etiam in illam ipsam Legem Continuitatis, etsi minus aperte, denuo tamen impetit; quod nolui viro optimo obicere, ne videret ejus existimationi detrahere velle."—Epist. Leibnit. ad Joh. Bernoulli, 1697.

From one of John Bernoulli's letters to Leibnitz, it would appear that he had himself a conviction of the truth of this law, before he had any communication with Leibnitz upon the subject.

"Placet tuum criterium pro examinandis regulis motuum, quod legem continuitatis vocas; est enim per se evidens, et velut a natura nobis inditum, quod evanescente inæqualitate hypothesium, evanescere quoque debeant inæqualitates eventuum. Hinc multoties non satis mirari potui, qui

¹ Descartes seems, from his correspondence with Mersenne, to have been much puzzled with Galileo's reasonings concerning the descent of falling bodies; and in alluding to it, has, on different occasions, expressed himself with an indecision and inconsistency of which few instances occur in his works. (Vide Cartesii Epist. Pars II. Epist. xxxiv. xxxv. xxxvii. xxi.) His doubts on this point will appear less surprising, if compared with a passage in the article Mécanique in D'Alembert's Éléments de Philosophie. "Tous les philosophes paroissent convenir, que la vitesse avec laquelle les corps qui tombent commencent à se mouvoir est absolument nulle," &c. &c. (See his Mécanique, Tom. IV. p. 219, 220.)

fieri potuerit, ut tam incongruas, tam absonas, et tam manifeste inter se pugnantibus regulas, excepta sola prima, potuerit condere Cartesius, vir alias summi ingenii. Mihi videtur vel ab infante falsitatem illarum palpari posse, ea quod ubique saltus ille, naturæ adeo inimicus, manifeste nimis elucet." (Epist. Bernouilli ad Leib. 1696. Vide Leibnizii et Jo. Bernouilli Comm. Epist. 2 vols 4to, Lausannæ et Genæ, 1745.)

NOTE (L.) p. 56.

Mais il restoit encore la plus grande question, de ce que ces âmes ou ces formes deviennent par la mort de l'animal, ou par la destruction de l'individu de la substance organisé. Et c'est ce qui embarrasse le plus; d'autant qu'il paroît peu raisonnable que les âmes restent inutilement dans un chaos de matière confuse. Cela m'a fait juger enfin qu'il n'y avoit qu'un seul parti raisonnable à prendre; et c'est celui de la conservation non seulement de l'âme, mais encore de l'animal même, et de la machine organique; quoique la destruction des parties grossières l'ait réduit à une petitesse qui n'échappe pas moins à nos sens que celle où il étoit avant que de naître. (Leib. Op. Tom. II. p. 51.)

.... Des personnes fort exactes aux expériences se sont déjà aperçues de notre temps,¹ qu'on peut douter, si jamais un animal tout à fait nouveau est produit, et si les animaux tout en vie ne sont déjà en petit avant la conception dans les semences aussi bien que les plantes. Cette doctrine étant posée, il sera raisonnable de juger, que ce qui ne commence pas de vivre ne cesse pas de vivre non plus; et que la mort, comme la génération, n'est que la transformation du même animal qui est tantôt augmenté, et tantôt diminué. (Ibid. pp. 42, 43.)

.... Et puisq' ainsi il n'y a point de première naissance ni de génération entièrement nouvelle de l'animal, il s'ensuit qu'il n'y en aura point d'extinction finale, ni de mort entière prise à la rigueur métaphysique; et que, par conséquent, au lieu de la transmigration des âmes, il n'y a qu'une transformation d'un même animal, selon que les organes sont pliés différemment, et plus ou moins développés. (Ibid. p. 52.)

Quant à la Métempsycose, je crois que l'ordre ne l'admet point; il veut que tout soit explicable distinctement, et que rien ne se fasse par saut. Mais le passage de l'âme d'un corps dans l'autre seroit un saut étrange et inexplicable. Il se fait toujours dans l'animal ce qui se fait présentement: C'est que le corps est dans un changement continuel, comme un fleuve, et ce que nous appelons génération ou mort, n'est qu'un changement plus grand et plus prompt qu'à l'ordinaire, tel que seroit le saut ou la cataracte d'une rivière. Mais ces sauts ne sont pas absolus et tels que je desapprouve; comme seroit celui d'un corps qui iroit d'un lieu à un autre sans passer par le milieu. Et de tels sauts ne sont pas seulement défendus dans les mouvemens, mais encore dans tout ordre des choses ou des vérités.—The sentences which follow afford a proof of what I have elsewhere remarked, how much the mind of Leibnitz was misled, in the whole of this metaphysical theory, by habits of thinking formed in early life, amidst the hypothetical abstractions of pure geometry; a prejudice (or idol of the mathematical den) to which the most important errors of his philosophy might, without much difficulty, be traced.—“Or comme dans une ligne de géométrie il y a certains points distingués, qu'on appelle sommets, points d'inflexion, points de rebroussement, ou autrement; et comme il y en a des lignes qui en ont une infinité, c'est ainsi qu'il faut concevoir

¹ The experiments here referred to are the observations of Swammerdam, Malpighi, and Leuwenhoek.

dans la vie d'un animal ou d'une personne les tems d'un changement extraordinaire, qui ne laissent pas d'être dans la regle générale; de même que les points distingués dans la courbe se peuvent déterminer par sa nature générale ou son équation. On peut toujours dire d'un animal c'est tout comme ici, la différence n'est que du plus ou moins." (Tom. V. p. 18.)

NOTE (M.) p. 60.

THE praise which I have bestowed on this Memoir renders it necessary for me to take some notice of a very exceptionable proposition which is laid down in the first paragraph, as a fundamental maxim,—that "all proper names were at first Appellatives;" a proposition so completely at variance with the commonly received opinions among later philosophers, that it seems an object of some curiosity to inquire, how far it is entitled to plead in its favour the authority of Leibnitz. Since the writings of Condillac and of Smith, it has, so far as I know, been universally acknowledged, that, if there be any one truth in the Theoretical History of Language, which we are entitled to assume as an incontrovertible fact, it is the direct contrary of the above proposition. Indeed, to assert that all proper names were at first appellatives, would appear to be nearly an absurdity of the same kind as to maintain, that classes of objects existed before individual objects had been brought into being.

When Leibnitz, however, comes to explain his idea more fully, we find it to be something very different from what his words literally imply; and to amount only to the trite and indisputable observation, That, in simple and primitive languages, all proper names (such as the names of persons, mountains, places of residence, &c.) are descriptive or significant of certain prominent and characteristical features, distinguishing them from other objects of the same class;—a fact, of which a large proportion of the surnames still in use, all over Europe, as well as the names of mountains, villages, and rivers, when traced to their primitive roots, afford numerous and well known exemplifications.

Not that the proposition, even when thus explained, can be assumed as a general maxim. It holds, indeed, in many cases, as the Celtic and the Saxon languages abundantly testify in our own island; but it is true only under certain limitations, and it is perfectly consistent with the doctrine delivered on this subject by the greater part of philologists for the last fifty years.

In the history of language, nothing is more remarkable, than the aversion of men to coin words out of unmeaning and arbitrary sounds; and their eagerness to avail themselves of the stores already in their possession, in order to give utterance to their thoughts on the new topics which the gradual extension of their experience is continually bringing within the circle of their knowledge. Hence Metaphors, and other figures of speech; and hence the various changes which words undergo, in the way of amplification, diminution, composition, and the other transformations of elementary terms which fall under the notice of the etymologist. Were it not, indeed, for this strong and universal bias of our nature, the vocabulary of every language would, in process of time, become so extensive and unwieldy, as to render the acquisition of one's mother tongue a task of immense difficulty, and the acquisition of a dead or foreign tongue next to impossible. It is needless to observe, how immensely these tasks are facilitated by that etymological system which runs, more or less, through every language; and which everywhere proceeds on certain analogical principles, which it is the business of the practical grammarian to reduce to general rules, for the sake of those who wish to speak or to write it with correctness.

In attempting thus to trace backwards the steps of the mind towards the commencement of its progress, it is evident, that we must at last arrive at a set of elementary and primitive roots, of which no account can be given, but the arbitrary choice of those who first happened to employ them. It is to this first stage in the infancy of language, that Mr Smith's remarks obviously relate; whereas the proposition of Leibnitz, which gave occasion to this note, as obviously relates to its subsequent stages, when the language is beginning to assume somewhat of a regular form, by compositions and other modifications of the materials previously collected.

From these slight hints it may be inferred, 1st, That the proposition of Leibnitz, although it may seem, from the very inaccurate and equivocal terms in which it is expressed, to stand in direct opposition to the doctrine of Smith, was really meant by the author to state a fact totally unconnected with the question under Smith's consideration. 2dly, That even in the sense in which it was understood by the author, it fails entirely, when extended to that first stage in the infancy of language, to which the introductory paragraphs in Mr Smith's discourse are exclusively confined.

NOTE (N.) p. 62.

“JE viens de recevoir une lettre d'un Prince Regnant de l'Empire, ou S. A. me marque avoir vu deux fois ce printemps à la dernière foire de Leipzig et examiné avec soin, un chien qui parle. Ce chien a prononcé distinctement plus de trente mots, répondant même assez à propos à son maître: il a aussi prononcé tout l'alphabet excepté les lettres, m, n, x.” (Leib. Opera, Tom. V. p. 72.)

Thus far the fact rests upon the authority of the German prince alone. But from a passage in the History of the Academy of Sciences, for the year 1706, it appears that Leibnitz had himself seen and heard the dog. What follows is transcribed from a report of the Academy upon a letter from Leibnitz to the Abbé de St Pierre, giving the details of this extraordinary occurrence.

“Sans un garant tel que M. Leibnitz, témoin oculaire, nous n'aurions pas la hardiesse de rapporter, qu'après de Zeitz dans la Misnie, il y a un chien qui parle. C'est un chien de Paysan, d'une figure des plus communes, et de grandeur médiocre. Un jeune enfant lui entendit pousser quelques sons qu'il crut ressembler à des mots Allemands, et sur cela se mit en tête de lui apprendre à parler. Le maître, qui n'avoit rien de mieux à faire, n'y épargna pas le temps ni ses peines, et heureusement le disciple avoit des dispositions qu'il eût été difficile de trouver dans un autre. Enfin, au bout de quelques années, le chien scut prononcer environ une trentaine de mots: de ce nombre sont The, Caffé, Chocolat, Assemblée, mots Français, qui ont passé dans l'Allemand tels qu'ils sont. Il est à remarquer, que le chien avoit bien trois ans quand il fut mis à l'école. Il ne parle que par écho, c'est à dire, après que son maître a prononcé un mot; et il semble, qu'il ne répète que par force et malgré lui, quoiqu'on ne le maltraite pas. Encore une fois, M. Leibnitz l'a vu et entendu.”

(Exposé d'une lettre de M. Leibnitz à l'Abbé de St Pierre sur un chien qui parle.) “Cet exposé de la lettre de M. Leibnitz se trouve dans l'Histoire de l'Académie des Sciences, Année 1706. Ce sont les Auteurs de l'Histoire de l'Académie qui parlent.” (Leib. Opera, Vol. II. p. 180. P. II.)

May not all the circumstances of the above story be accounted for, by supposing the master of the dog to have possessed that peculiar species of imitative power which is called Ventriloquism? Mathews, I have no doubt, would find little difficulty in managing such a deception, so as to impose on the senses of any person who had never before witnessed any exhibition of the same kind.

WHEN I speak in favourable terms of the Philosophical Spirit, I hope none of my readers will confound it with the spirit of that false philosophy, which, by unhinging every rational principle of belief, seldom fails to unite in the same characters the extremes of scepticism and of credulity. It is a very remarkable fact, that the same period of the eighteenth century, and the same part of Europe which were most distinguished by the triumphs of Atheism and Materialism, were also distinguished by a greater number of visionaries and impostors than had ever appeared before, since the revival of letters. Nor were these follies confined to persons of little education. They extended to men of the highest rank, and to many individuals of distinguished talents. Of this the most satisfactory proofs might be produced; but I have room here only for one short quotation. It is from the pen of the Duc de Levis, and relates to the celebrated Mareschal de Richelieu, on whom Voltaire has lavished so much of his flattery. "Ce dont je suis positivement certain, c'est que cet homme spirituel (Le Mareschal de Richelieu) étoit superstitieux, et qu'il croyoit aux prédictions des astrologues et autres sottises de cet espèce. Je l'ai vu refusant à Versailles d'aller faire sa cour au fils aîné de Louis XVI. en disant sérieusement, qu'il savoit que cet enfant n'étoit point destiné au trône. Cette crédulité superstitieuse, générale pendant la ligue, étoit encore très commune sous la régence lorsque le Duc de Richelieu entra dans le monde; par la plus bizarre des inconséquences, elle s'allioit très bien avec la plus grande impiété, et la plupart des materialistes croyoient aux esprits; aujourd'hui, ce genre de folie est très rare; mais beaucoup de gens, qui se moquent des astrologues, croient à des prédictions d'une autre espèce." (Souvenirs et Portraits, par M. de Levis, à Paris, 1813.)

Some extraordinary facts of the same kind are mentioned in the Memoirs of the Marquis de Bouillé. According to him, Frederic the Great himself was not free from this sort of superstition.

THE following estimate of Leibnitz, considered in comparison with his most distinguished contemporaries, approaches, on the whole, very nearly to the truth; although some doubts may be entertained about the justness of the decision in the last clause of the sentence. "Leibnitz, aussi hardi que Descartes, aussi subtil que Bayle, peut-être moins profond que Newton, et moins sage que Locke, mais seul universel entre tous ces grand hommes, paroît avoir embrassé le domaine de la raison dans toute son étendue, et avoir contribué le plus à répandre cet esprit philosophique que fait aujourd'hui la gloire de notre siècle." (Bailly, Eloge de Leibnitz.)

I have mentioned in the text only a part of the learned labours of Leibnitz. It remains to be added, that he wrote also on various subjects connected with chemistry, medicine, botany, and natural history; on the philosophy and language of the Chinese; and on numberless other topics of subordinate importance. The philological discussions and etymological collections, which occupy so large a space among his works, would (even if he had produced nothing else) have been no inconsiderable memorials of the activity and industry of his mind.

Manifold and heterogeneous as these pursuits may at first appear, it is not difficult to trace the

thread by which his curiosity was led from one of them to another. I have already remarked a connection of the same sort between his different metaphysical and theological researches; and it may not be altogether uninteresting to extend the observation to some of the subjects enumerated in the foregoing paragraph.

The studies by which he first distinguished himself in the learned world (I pass over that of jurisprudence, ¹ which was imposed on him by the profession for which he was destined) were directed to the antiquities of his own country; and more particularly to those connected with the history of the House of Brunswick. With this view he ransacked, with an unexampled industry, the libraries, monasteries, and other archives, both of Germany and of Italy; employing in this ungrateful drudgery several of the best and most precious years of his life. Mortified, however, to find how narrow the limits are, within which the range of written records is confined, he struck out for himself and his successors a new and unexpected light, to guide them through the seemingly hopeless darkness of remote ages. This light was the study of etymology, and of the affinities of different tongues in their primitive roots;—a light at first faint and glimmering, but which, since his time, has continued to increase in brightness, and is likely to do so more and more as the world grows older. It is pleasing to see his curiosity on this subject expand, from the names of the towns and rivers and mountains in his neighbourhood, till it reached to China and other regions in the East; leading him, in the last result, to some general conclusions concerning the origin of the different tribes of our species, approximating very nearly to those which have been since drawn from a much more extensive range of data by Sir William Jones, and other philologists of the same school.

As an additional light for illustrating the antiquities of Germany, he had recourse to natural history; examining, with a scientific eye, the shells and other marine bodies everywhere to be found in Europe, and the impressions of plants and fishes (some of them unknown in this part of the world) which are distinctly legible, even by the unlettered observer, on many of our fossils. In entering upon this research, as well as on the former, he seems to have had a view to Germany alone; on the state of which (he tells us), prior to all historical documents, it was his purpose to prefix a discourse to his History of the House of Brunswick. But his imagination soon took a bolder flight, and gave birth to his Protogaea;—a dissertation which (to use his own words) had for its object “to ascertain the original face of the earth, and to collect the vestiges of its earliest history from the monuments which nature herself has left of her successive operations on its surface.” It is a work, which, wild and extravagant as it may now be regarded, is spoken of by Buffon with much respect; and is considered by Cuvier as the ground-work of Buffon’s own system on the same subject.

In the connection which I have now pointed out between the Historical, the Philological, and the Geological speculations of Leibnitz, Helvetius might have fancied that he saw a new exemplification of the law of continuity; but the true light in which it ought to be viewed, is as a faithful picture of a philosophical mind emancipating itself from the trammels of local and conventional details, and gradually rising from subject to subject, till it embraces in its survey those nobler inquiries which, sooner or later, will be equally interesting to every portion of the human race.²

¹ Bailly, in his Eloge on Leibnitz, speaks of him in terms of the most enthusiastic praise, as a philosophical jurist, and as a man fitted to become the legislator of the human race. To me, I must own, it appears, that there is no part of his writings in which he discovers less of his characteristic originality, than where he professes to treat of the law of nature. On these occasions, how inferior does he appear to Grotius, not to speak of Montesquieu and his disciples!

² In the above note, I have said nothing of Leibnitz’s project of a philosophical language, founded on an alphabet of Human

OF Locke's affectionate regard for Collins, notwithstanding the contrariety of their opinions on some questions of the highest moment, there exist many proofs in his letters, published by M. Des Maizeaux. In one of these, the following passage is remarkable. It is dated from Oates in Essex, 1703, about a year before Locke's death.

"You complain of a great many defects; and that very complaint is the highest recommendation I could desire to make me love and esteem you, and desire your friendship. And if I were now setting out in the world, I should think it my great happiness to have such a companion as you, who had a true relish for truth; would in earnest seek it with me; from whom I might receive it undisguised; and to whom I might communicate what I thought true freely. Believe it, my good friend, to love truth for truth's sake, is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues; and, if I mistake not, you have as much of it as ever I met with in any body. What, then, is there wanting to make you equal to the best; a friend for any one to be proud of?" . . . . . The whole of Locke's letters to Collins are highly interesting and curious; more particularly that which he desired to be delivered to him after his own death. From the general tenor of these letters, it may be inferred, that Collins had never let Locke fully into the secret of those pernicious opinions which he was afterwards at so much pains to disseminate.

IN addition to the account of Spinoza given in Bayle, some interesting particulars of his history may be learnt from a small volume, entitled, La Vie de B. de Spinoza, Tirée des écrits de ce Faméux Philosophe, et du témoignage de plusieurs personnes dignes de foi, qui l'ont connu particulièrement: par Jean Colerus, Ministre de l'Eglise Lutherienne de la Haye. 1706.¹ The book is evidently written by a man altogether unfit to appreciate the merits or demerits of Spinoza as an author; but it is not without some value to those who delight in the study of human character, as it supplies some chasms in the narrative of Bayle, and has every appearance of the most perfect impartiality and candour.

According to this account, Spinoza was a person of the most quiet and inoffensive manners; of singular temperance and moderation in his passions; contented and happy with an income which barely supplied him with the necessaries of life; and of too independent a spirit to accept of any

Thoughts, as he has nowhere given us any hint of the principles on which he intended to proceed in its formation, although he has frequently alluded to the practicability of such an invention in terms of extraordinary confidence. (For some remarks on these passages in his works, see Philosophy of the Human Mind, Vol. II. pp. 143, et seq.) In some of Leibnitz's expressions on this subject, there is a striking resemblance to those of Descartes in one of his letters. (See the preliminary discourse prefixed to the Abbé Emery's Pensées de Descartes, p. xiv. et seq.)

In the ingenious essay of Michaelis On the Influence of Opinions on Language, and of Language on Opinions (which obtained the prize from the Royal Society of Berlin in 1759), there are some very acute and judicious reflections on the impossibility of carrying into effect, with any advantage, such a project as these philosophers had in view. The author's argument on this point seems to me decisive, in the present state of human knowledge; but who can pretend to fix a limit to the possible attainments of our posterity!

¹ The life of Spinoza by Colerus, with some other curious pieces on the same subject, is reprinted in the complete edition of Spinoza's Works, published at Jena, in 1802.

addition to it, either from the favour of princes, or the liberality of his friends. In conformity to the law, and to the customs of his ancestors (which he adhered to, when he thought them not unreasonable, even when under the sentence of excommunication), he resolved to learn some mechanical trade; and fortunately selected that of grinding optical glasses, in which he acquired so much dexterity, that it furnished him with what he conceived to be a sufficient maintenance. He acquired also enough of the art of designing, to produce good portraits in chalk and china-ink, of some distinguished persons.

For the last five years of his life he lodged in the house of a respectable and religious family, who were tenderly attached to him, and from whom his biographer collected various interesting anecdotes. All of them are highly creditable to his private character, and more particularly show how courteous and amiable he must have been in his intercourse with his inferiors. In a bill presented for payment after his death, he is styled by Abraham Keveling, his barber-surgeon, Benedict Spinoza, of blessed memory; and the same compliment is paid to him by the tradesman who furnished gloves to the mourners at his funeral.

These particulars are the more deserving of notice, as they rest on the authority of a very zealous member of the Lutheran communion, and coincide exactly with the account given of Spinoza by the learned and candid Mosheim. "This man (says he) observed, in his conduct, the rules of wisdom and probity much better than many who profess themselves Christians; nor did he ever endeavour to pervert the sentiments or to corrupt the morals of those with whom he lived; or to inspire, in his discourse, a contempt of religion or virtue." . . . . . (Eccles. History, translated by Dr Maclaine, Vol. IV. p. 252.)

Among the various circumstances connected with Spinoza's domestic habits, Colerus mentions one very trifling singularity, which appears to me to throw a strong light on his general character, and to furnish some apology for his eccentricities as an author. The extreme feebleness of his constitution (for he was consumptive from the age of 20) having unfitted him for the enjoyment of convivial pleasures, he spent the greater part of the day in his chamber alone; but when fatigued with study, he would sometimes join the family-party below, and take a part in their conversation, however insignificant its subject might be. One of the amusements with which he was accustomed to unbend his mind, was that of entangling flies in a spider's web, or of setting spiders a-fighting with each other; on which occasions (it is added) he would observe their combats with so much interest, that it was not unusual for him to be seized with immoderate fits of laughter. Does not this slight trait indicate very decidedly a tendency to insanity; a supposition by no means incompatible (as will be readily admitted by all who have paid any attention to the phenomena of madness) with that logical acumen which is so conspicuous in some of his writings?

His irreligious principles he is supposed to have adopted, in the first instance, from his Latin preceptor Vander Ende, a physician and classical scholar of some eminence; but it is much more probable, that his chief school of atheism was the synagogue of Amsterdam; where, without any breach of charity, a large proportion of the more opulent class of the assembly may be reasonably presumed to belong to the ancient sect of Sadducees. (This is, I presume, the idea of Heineccius in the following passage: "Quamvis Spinoza Cartesii principia methodo mathematica demonstrata dederit; Pantheismum tamen ille non ex Cartesio didicit, sed domi habuit, quos sequeretur." In proof of this, he refers to a book entitled Spinozismus in Judaismo, by Waechterus.) The blasphemous curses pronounced upon him in the sentence of excommunication were not well calculated to recall him to the faith of his ancestors: and when combined with his early and hereditary

prejudices against Christianity, may go far to account for the indiscriminate war which he afterwards waged against priests of all denominations.

The ruling passion of Spinoza seems to have been the love of fame. "It is owned (says Bayle) that he had an extreme desire to immortalize his name, and would have sacrificed his life to that glory, though he should have been torn to pieces by the mob." (Art. Spinoza.)

NOTE (S.) p. 79.

In proof of the impossibility of Liberty, Collins argues thus:

"A second reason to prove man a necessary agent is, because all his actions have a beginning. For whatever has a beginning must have a cause; and every cause is a necessary cause.

"If anything can have a beginning, which has no cause, then nothing can produce something. And if nothing can produce something, then the world might have had a beginning without a cause; which is an absurdity not only charged on atheists, but is a real absurdity in itself. * * * * Liberty, therefore, or a power to act or not to act, to do this or another thing under the same causes, is an impossibility and Atheistical."¹

"And as Liberty stands, and can only be grounded on the absurd principles of Epicurean atheism; so the Epicurean atheists, who were the most popular and most numerous sect of the atheists of antiquity, were the great assertors of liberty; as, on the other side, the Stoics, who were the most popular and numerous sect among the religionaries of antiquity, were the great assertors of fate and necessity." (Collins, p. 54.)

As to the above reasoning of Collins, it cannot be expected that I should, in the compass of a Note, "bowl this matter to the bran." It is sufficient here to remark, that it derives all its plausibility from the unqualified terms in which the maxim (quod est varius) has frequently been stated. "In the idea of every change (says Dr Price, a zealous advocate for the freedom of the will) is included that of its being an effect." (Review, &c. p. 30, 3d Edition.) If this maxim be literally admitted without any explanation or restriction, it seems difficult to resist the conclusions of the Necessitarians. The proper statement of Price's maxim evidently is, that "in every change we perceive in inanimate matter, the idea of its being an effect is necessarily involved;" and that he himself understood it under this limitation appears clearly from the application he makes of it to the point in dispute. As to intelligent and active beings, to affirm that they possess the power of self-determination, seems to me to be little more than an identical proposition. Upon an accurate analysis of the meaning of words, it will be found that the idea of an efficient cause implies the idea of Mind; and, consequently, that it is absurd to ascribe the volitions of mind to the efficiency of causes foreign to itself. To do so must unavoidably involve us in the inconsistencies of Spinozism; by forcing us to conclude that everything is passive, and nothing active in the universe; and, consequently, that the idea of a First Cause involves an impossibility.—But upon these hints I must not enlarge at present; and shall, therefore, confine myself to what falls more immediately within the scope of this Discourse, Collins's Historical Statement with respect to the tenets of the Epicureans and the Stoics.

¹ To the same purpose Edwards attempts to show, that "the scheme of free-will (by affording an exception to that dictate of common sense which refers every event to a cause) would destroy the proof a posteriori for the being of God."

In confirmation of his assertion concerning the former, he refers to the following well known lines of Lucretius :

Denique si semper motus connectitur omnis,
&c. &c. (Lucret. Lib. 2. v. 251.)

On the obscurity of this passage, and the inconsistencies involved in it, much might be said ; but it is of more importance, on the present occasion, to remark its complete repugnance to the whole strain and spirit of the Epicurean Philosophy. This repugnance did not escape the notice of Cicero, who justly considers Epicurus as having contributed more to establish, by this puerile subterfuge, the authority of Fatalism, than if he had left the argument altogether untouched. "Nec vero quisquam magis confirmare mihi videtur non modo fatum, verum etiam necessitatem et vim omnium rerum, sustulisseque motus animi voluntarios, quam hic qui aliter obsistere fato fatetur se non potuisse nisi ad has commenticias declinationes confugisset." (Liber de Fato, cap. 20.)

On the noted expression of Lucretius (fatis avolsa voluntas) some acute remarks are made in a note on the French translation by M. de la Grange. They are not improbably from the pen of the Baron d'Holbach, who is said to have contributed many notes to this translation. Whoever the author was, he was evidently strongly struck with the inconsistency of this particular tenet with the general principles of the Epicurean System.

"On est surpris qu' Epicure fonde la liberté humaine sur la déclinaison des atomes. On demande si cette déclinaison est nécessaire, ou si elle est simplement accidentelle. Nécessaire, comment la liberté peut elle en être le résultat ? Accidentelle, par quoi est elle déterminée ? Mais on devrait bien plutôt être surpris, qu'il lui soit venu en idée de rendre l'homme libre dans un système qui suppose un enchainement nécessaire de causes et d'effets. C'étoit une recherche curieuse, que la raison qui a pu faire d'Epicure l'Apôtre de la Liberté." For the theory which follows on this point, I must refer to the work in question. (See Traduction Nouvelle de Lucrece, avec des Notes, par M. de la Grange, Vol. I. pp. 218, 219, 220, à Paris, 1768.)

But whatever may have been the doctrines of some of the ancient Atheists about man's free-agency, it will not be denied, that in the History of Modern Philosophy, the schemes of Atheism and of Necessity have been hitherto always connected together. Not that I would by any means be understood to say, that every Necessitarian must ipso facto be an Atheist, or even, that any presumption is afforded by a man's attachment to the former sect, of his having the slightest bias in favour of the latter ; but only that every modern Atheist I have heard of has been a Necessitarian. I cannot help adding, that the most consistent Necessitarians who have yet appeared, have been those who followed out their principles till they ended in Spinozism, a doctrine which differs from atheism more in words than in reality.

In what Collins says of the Stoics in the above quotation, he plainly proceeds on the supposition that all Fatalists are of course Necessitarians ;¹ and I agree with him in thinking, that this would be the case, if they reasoned logically. It is certain, however, that a great proportion of those who have belonged to the first sect have disclaimed all connection with the second. The Stoics themselves furnish one very remarkable instance. I do not know any author by whom the liberty of the will is stated in stronger and more explicit terms, than it is by Epictetus in the very first sentence of the Enchiridion. Indeed the Stoics seem, with their usual passion for exaggeration, to have carried their ideas about the freedom of the will to an unphilosophical extreme.

¹ Collins states this more strongly in what he says of the Pharisees. "The Pharisees, who were a religious sect, ascribed all things to fate or to God's appointment, and it was the first article of their creed, that Fate and God do all, and, consequently, they could not assert a true liberty when they asserted a liberty together with this fatality and necessity of all things." (Collins, p. 54.)

If the belief of man's free-agency has thus maintained its ground among professed Fatalists, it need not appear surprising, that it should have withstood the strong arguments against it, which the doctrine of the eternal decrees of God, and even that of the Divine prescience, appear at first sight to furnish. A remarkable instance of this occurs in St Augustine (distinguished in ecclesiastical history by the title of the Doctor of Grace), who has asserted the liberty of the will in terms as explicit as those in which he has announced the theological dogmas with which it is most difficult to reconcile it. Nay, he has gone so far as to acknowledge the essential importance of this belief, as a motive to virtuous conduct. "Quocirca nullo modo cogimur, aut retentâ præscientiâ Dei, tollere voluntatis arbitrium, aut retento voluntatis arbitrio, Deum, quod nefas est, negare præscium futurorum, sed utrumque amplectimur, utrumque fideliter et veraciter confitemur: illud, ut bene credamus; hoc ut bene vivamus."

Descartes has expressed himself on this point nearly to the same purpose with St Augustine. In one passage he asserts, in the most unqualified terms, that God is the cause of all the actions which depend on the Free-will of Man; and yet, that the Will is really free, he considers as a fact perfectly established by the evidence of consciousness. "Sed quemadmodum existentiae divinae cognitio non debet liberi nostri arbitrii certitudinem tollere, quia illud in nobismet ipsis experimur et sentimus; ita neque liberi nostri arbitrii cognitio existentiam Dei apud nos dubiam facere debet. Independentia enim illa quam experimur, atque in nobis persentiscimus, et quæ actionibus nostris laude vel vituperio dignis efficiendis sufficit, non pugnat cum dependentia alterius generis, secundum quam omnia Deo subiiciuntur." (Cartesii Epistolæ, Epist. VIII. IX. Pars i.) These letters form part of his correspondence with the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Frederick, King of Bohemia, and Elector Palatine.

We are told by Dr Priestley, in the very interesting Memoirs of his own Life, that he was educated in the strict principles of Calvinism; and yet it would appear, that while he remained a Calvinist, he entertained no doubt of his being a free-agent. "The doctrine of necessity (he also tells us) he first learned from Collins; ¹ and was established in the belief of it by Hartley's Observations on Man." (Ibid. p. 19.) He farther mentions in another work, that "he was not a ready convert to the doctrine of necessity, and that, like Dr Hartley himself, he gave up his liberty with great reluctance." (Preface to the Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated, 2d Edit. Birmingham, 1782, p. xxvii.)

These instances afford a proof, I do not say of the compatibility of man's free-agency with those schemes with which it seems most at variance, but of this compatibility in the opinion of some of the profoundest thinkers who have turned their attention to the argument. No conclusion, therefore, can be drawn against a man's belief in his own free-agency, from his embracing other metaphysical or theological tenets, with which it may appear to ourselves impossible to reconcile it.

As for the notion of liberty, for which Collins professes himself an advocate, it is precisely that of his predecessor Hobbes, who defines a free-agent to be, "he that can do if he will, and forbear if he will." (Hobbes's Works, p. 484, fol. ed.) The same definition has been adopted by Leibnitz, by Gravesande, by Edwards, by Bonnet, and by all our later necessitarians. It cannot be better ex-

¹ We are elsewhere informed by Priestley, that "it was in consequence of reading and studying the Inquiry of Collins, he was first convinced of the truth of the doctrine of Necessity, and was enabled to see the fallacy of most of the arguments in favour of Philosophical Liberty: though (he adds) I was much more confirmed in this principle by my acquaintance with Hartley's Theory of the Human Mind; a work to which I owe much more than I am able to express."—(Preface, 3c. 3c. p. xxvii.)

pressed than in the words of Gravesande: "Facultas faciendi quod libuerit, quæcunque fuerit voluntatis determinatio." (Introd. ad Philosoph. § 115.)

Dr Priestley ascribes this peculiar notion of free-will to Hobbes as its author;¹ but it is, in fact, of much older date even among modern metaphysicians; coinciding exactly with the doctrine of those scholastic divines who contended for the Liberty of Spontaneity, in opposition to the Liberty of Indifference. It is, however, to Hobbes that the partizans of this opinion are indebted for the happiest and most popular illustration of it that has yet been given. "I conceive (says he) liberty to be rightly defined, The absence of all the impediments to action that are not contained in the nature and intrinsic quality of the agent. As, for example, the water is said to descend freely, or to have liberty to descend by the channel of the river, because there is no impediment that way: but not across, because the banks are impediments. And though water cannot ascend, yet men never say, it wants the liberty to ascend, but the faculty or power, because the impediment is in the nature of the water, and intrinsic. So also we say, he that is tied wants the liberty to go, because the impediment is not in him, but in his hands; whereas we say not so of him who is sick or lame, because the impediment is in himself." (Treatise of Liberty and Necessity.)

According to Bonnet, "moral liberty is the power of the mind to obey without constraint the impulse of the motives which act upon it." This definition, which is obviously the same in substance with that of Hobbes, is thus very justly, as well as acutely, animadverted on by Cuvier. "N'admettant aucune action sans motif, comme dit-il, il n'y a aucun effet sans cause, Bonnet définit la liberté morale le pouvoir de l'âme de suivre sans contrainte les motifs dont elle éprouve l'impulsion; et résout ainsi les objections que l'on tire de la prévision de Dieu; mais peut-être aussi détournent-t-il l'idée qu'on se fait d'ordinaire de la liberté. Malgré ces opinions que touchent au Matérialisme et au Fatalisme, Bonnet fut très religieux." (Biographie Universelle, à Paris, 1812. Art. Bonnet.)

From this passage it appears, that the very ingenious writer was as completely aware as Clarke or Reid, of the unsoundness of the definition of moral liberty given by Hobbes and his followers; and that the ultimate tendency of the doctrine which limits the free-agency of man to (what has been called) the liberty of spontaneity, was the same, though in a more disguised form, with that of fatalism.

For a complete exposure of the futility of this definition of liberty, as the word is employed in the controversy about man's free-agency, I have only to refer to Clarke's remarks on Collins, and to Dr Reid's Essays on the Active Powers of Man. In this last work, the various meanings of this very ambiguous word are explained with great accuracy and clearness.

The only two opinions which, in the actual state of metaphysical science, ought to be stated in contrast, are that of Liberty (or free-will) on the one side, and that of Necessity on the other. As to the Liberty of Spontaneity (which expresses a fact altogether foreign to the point in question), I can conceive no motive for inventing such a phrase, but a desire in some writers to veil the scheme of necessity from their readers, under a language less revolting to the sentiments of mankind; and, in others, an anxiety to banish it as far as possible from their own thoughts, by substituting instead of the terms in which it is commonly expressed, a circumlocution which seems, on a superficial view, to concede something to the advocates for liberty.

¹ "The doctrine of philosophical necessity," says Priestley, "is in reality a modern thing, not older, I believe, than Mr Hobbes. Of the Calvinists, I believe Mr Jonathan Edwards to be the first." (Illustrations of Philosophical Necessity, p. 195.)

Supposing this statement to be correct, does not the very modern date of Hobbes's alleged discovery furnish a very strong presumption against it?

If this phrase (the Liberty of Spontaneity) should fall into disuse, the other phrase (the Liberty of Indifference),¹ which is commonly stated in opposition to it, would become completely useless; nor would there be occasion for qualifying with any epithet, the older, simpler, and much more intelligible word, Free-will.

The distinction between physical and moral necessity I conceive to be not less frivolous than those to which the foregoing animadversions relate. On this point I agree with Diderot, that the word necessity (as it ought to be understood in this dispute) admits but of one interpretation.

NOTE (T.) p. 79.

To the arguments of Collins, against man's free-agency, some of his successors have added, the inconsistency of this doctrine with the known effects of education (under which phrase they comprehend the moral effects of all the external circumstances in which men are involuntarily placed) in forming the characters of individuals.

The plausibility of this argument (on which much stress has been laid by Priestley and others) arises entirely from the mixture of truth which it involves; or, to express myself more correctly, from the evidence and importance of the fact on which it proceeds, when that fact is stated with due limitations.

That the influence of education, in this comprehensive sense of the word, was greatly underrated by our ancestors, is now universally acknowledged; and it is to Locke's writings, more than to any other single cause, that the change in public opinion on this head is to be ascribed. On various occasions, he has expressed himself very strongly with respect to the extent of this influence; and has more than once intimated his belief, that the great majority of men continue through life what early education had made them. In making use, however, of this strong language, his object (as is evident from the opinions which he has avowed in other parts of his works) was only to arrest the attention of his readers to the practical lessons he was anxious to inculcate; and not to state a metaphysical fact which was to be literally and rigorously interpreted in the controversy about liberty and necessity. The only sound and useful moral to be drawn from the spirit of his observations is, the duty of gratitude to Heaven for all the blessings, in respect of education and of external situation, which have fallen to our own lot; the impossibility of ascertaining the involuntary misfortunes by which the seeming demerits of others may have been in part occasioned, and in the same proportion diminished; and the consequent obligation upon ourselves, to think as charitably as possible of their conduct, under the most unfavourable appearances. The truth of all this I conceive to be implied in these words of Scripture, "To whom much is given, of him much will be required;" and, if possible, still more explicitly and impressively, in the Parable of the Talents.

Is not the use which has been made by Necessitarians of Locke's Treatise on Education, and other books of a similar tendency, only one instance more of that disposition, so common among metaphysical Sciologists, to appropriate to themselves the conclusions of their wiser and more sober predecessors, under the startling and imposing disguise of universal maxims, admitting neither of exception nor restriction? It is thus that Locke's judicious and refined remarks on the Association of Ideas have been exaggerated to such an extreme in the coarse caricatures of Hartley and of Priest-

¹ Both phrases are favourite expressions with Lord Kames in his discussions on this subject. See in particular the Appendix to his Essay on Liberty and Necessity, in the last Edition of his Essays on Morality and Natural Religion.

ley, as to bring, among cautious inquirers, some degree of discredit on one of the most important doctrines of modern philosophy. Or, to take another case still more in point; it is thus that Locke's reflections on the effects of education in modifying the intellectual faculties, and (where skilfully conducted) in supplying their original defects, have been distorted into the puerile paradox of Helvetius, that the mental capacities of the whole human race are the same at the moment of birth. It is sufficient for me here to throw out these hints, which will be found to apply equally to a large proportion of other theories started by modern metaphysicians.

Before I finish this note, I cannot refrain from remarking, with respect to the argument for Necessity drawn from the Divine prescience, that, if it be conclusive, it only affords an additional confirmation of what Clarke has said concerning the identity of the creed of the Necessitarians with that of the Spinozists. For, if God certainly foresees all the future volitions of his creatures, he must, for the same reason, foresee all his own future volitions; and if this knowledge infers a necessity of volition in the one case, how is it possible to avoid the same inference in the other?

NOTE (U.) p. 80.

A SIMILAR application of St Paul's comparison of the potter is to be found both in Hobbes and in Collins. Also, in a note annexed by Cowley to his ode entitled Destiny; an ode written (as we are informed by the author) "upon an extravagant supposition of two angels playing a game at chess; which, if they did, the spectators would have reason as much to believe that the pieces moved themselves, as we have for thinking the same of mankind, when we see them exercise so many and so different actions. It was of old said by Plautus, Dii nos quasi pilas homines habent. "We are but tennis-balls for the gods to play withal," which they strike away at last, and still call for new ones; and St Paul says, "We are but the clay in the hand of the potter."

For the comparison of the potter, alluded to by these different writers, see the epistle to the Romans, Chap. ix. verses 18, 19, 20, 21. Upon these verses the only comment which I have to offer is a remark of the Apostle Peter; that "In the epistles of our beloved brother Paul are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest unto their own destruction."

The same similitude of the potter makes a conspicuous figure in the writings of Hobbes, who has availed himself of this, as of many other insulated passages of Holy Writ, in support of principles which are now universally allowed to strike at the very root of religion and morality. The veneration of Cowley for Hobbes is well known, and is recorded by himself in the ode which immediately precedes that on Destiny. It cannot, however, be candidly supposed, that Cowley understood the whole drift of Hobbes' doctrines. The contrary, indeed, in the present instance, is obvious from the ode before us; for while Cowley supposed the angels to move, like chess-men, the inhabitants of this globe, Hobbes (along with Spinoza) plainly conceived that the angels themselves, and even that Being to which he impiously gave the name of God, were all of them moved, like knights and pawns, by the invisible hand of fate or necessity.

Were it not for the serious and pensive cast of Cowley's mind, and his solemn appeal to the authority of the apostle, in support of the doctrine of destiny, one would be tempted to consider the first stanzas of this ode in the light of a jeu d'esprit, introductory to the very characteristical and interesting picture of himself, with which the poem concludes.

“ Tout ce qui est doit être, par cela même que cela est. Voilà la seule bonne philosophie. Aussi longtemps que nous ne connaîtrons pas cet univers, comme on dit dans l'école, a priori, tout est nécessité. La liberté est un mot vide de sens, comme vous allez voir dans la lettre de M. Diderot.” (Lettre de Grimm au Duc de Saxe-Gotha.)

“ C'est ici mon cher, que je vais quitter le ton de prédicateur pour prendre, si je peux, celui de philosophie. Regardez-y de près, et vous verrez que le mot liberté est un mot vide de sens; qu'il n'y a point, et qu'il ne peut y avoir d'êtres libres; que nous ne sommes que ce qui convient à l'ordre général, à l'organisation, à l'éducation, et à la chaîne des évènements. Voilà ce qui dispose de nous invinciblement. On ne conçoit non plus qu'un être agisse sans motif, qu'un des bras d'une balance agisse sans l'action d'un poids, et le motif nous est toujours extérieur, étranger, attachés ou par une nature ou par une cause quelconque, qui n'est pas nous. Ce qui nous trompe, c'est la prodigieuse variété de nos actions, jointe à l'habitude que nous avons prise tout en naissant, de confondre le volontaire avec le libre. Nous avons tant loué, tant repris, nous l'avons été tant de fois, que c'est un préjugé bien vieux que celui de croire que nous et les autres voulons, agissons librement. Mais s'il n'y a point de liberté, il n'y a point d'action qui mérite la louange ou le blâme; il n'y a ni vice, ni vertu, rien dont il faille récompenser ou châtier. Qu'est ce qui distingue donc les hommes? La bienfaisance ou la malfaisance. Le malfaisant est un homme qu'il faut détruire en non punir; la bienfaisance est une bonne fortune, et non une vertu. Mais quoique l'homme bien ou malfaisant ne soit pas libre, l'homme n'en est pas moins un être qu'on modifie; c'est par cette raison qu'il faut détruire le malfaisant sur une place publique. De là les bons effets de l'exemple, des discours, de l'éducation, du plaisir, de la douleur, des grandeurs, de la misère, &c.; de là une sorte de philosophie pleine de commisération, qui attache fortement aux bons, qui n'irrite non plus contre le méchant, que contre un ouragan qui nous remplit les yeux de poussière. Il n'y a qu'une sorte de causes à proprement parler; ce sont les causes physiques. Il n'y a qu'une sorte de nécessité, c'est la même pour tous les êtres. Voilà ce qui me réconcilie avec le genre humain; c'est pour cette raison que je vous exhortais à la philanthropie. Adoptez ces principes si vous les trouvez bons, ou montrez-moi qu'ils sont mauvais. Si vous les adoptez, ils vous réconcilieront aussi avec les autres et avec vous-même; vous ne vous saurez ni bon ni mauvais gré d'être ce qui vous êtes. Ne rien reprocher aux autres, ne se repentir de rien; voilà les premiers pas vers la sagesse. Ce qui est hors de là est préjugé, fausse philosophie.” (Correspondance Littéraire, Philosophique, et Critique, adressée au Duc de Saxe-Gotha, par le Baron de Grimm et par Diderot. Première Partie, Tom. I. pp. 300, 304, 305, 306, Londres, 1814.)

SEE in Bayle the three articles Luther, Knox, and Buchanan. The following passage concerning Knox may serve as a specimen of the others. It is quoted by Bayle from the Cosmographie Universelle of Thevet, a writer who has long sunk into the contempt he merited, but whose zeal for legitimacy and the Catholic faith raised him to the dignity of almoner to Catherine de Medicis, and of historiographer to the King of France. I borrow the translation from the English Historical Dictionary.

“ During that time the Scots never left England in peace; it was when Henry VIII. played his

pranks with the chalices, relics, and other ornaments of the English churches; which tragedies and plays have been acted in our time in the kingdom of Scotland, by the exhortations of Noptz,¹ the first Scots minister of the bloody Gospel. This firebrand of sedition could not be content with barely following the steps of Luther, or of his master, Calvin, who had not long before delivered him from the gallies of the Prior of Capua, where he had been three years for his crimes, unlawful amours, and abominable fornications; for he used to lead a dissolute life, in shameful and odious places, and had been also found guilty of the parricide and murder committed on the body of the Archbishop of St Andrew's, by the contrivances of the Earl of Rophol, of James Lescle, John Lescle, their uncle, and William du Coy. This simonist, who had been a priest of our church, being fattened by the benefices he had enjoyed, sold them for ready money; and finding that he could not make his cause good, he gave himself up to the most terrible blasphemies. He persuaded also several devout wives and religious virgins to abandon themselves to wicked adulterers. Nor was this all. During two whole years, he never ceased to rouse the people, encouraging them to take up arms against the Queen, and to drive her out of the kingdom, which he said was elective, as it had been formerly in the time of heathenism..... The Lutherans have churches and oratories. Their ministers sing psalms, and say mass; and though it be different from ours, yet they add to it the Creed, and other prayers, as we do. And when their ministers officiate, they wear the cope, the chasuble, and the surplice, as ours do, being concerned for their salvation, and careful of what relates to the public worship. Whereas the Scots have lived these twelve years past without laws, without religion, without ceremonies, constantly refusing to own a King or a Queen, as so many brutes, suffering themselves to be imposed upon by the stories told them by this arch-hypocrite Noptz, a traitor to God and to his country, rather than to follow the pure Gospel, the councils, and the doctrine of so many holy doctors, both Greek and Latin, of the Catholic church."

If any of my readers be yet unacquainted with the real character and history of this distinguished person, it may amuse them to compare the above passage with the very able, authentic, and animated account of his life, lately published by the reverend and learned Dr McCrie.

NOTE (Z.) p. 100.

DR BLAIR (whose estimate of the distinguishing beauties and imperfections of Addison's style reflects honour on the justness and discernment of his taste) has allowed himself to be carried along much too easily, by the vulgar sneers at Addison's want of philosophical depth. In one of his lectures on rhetoric he has even gone so far as to accuse Addison of misapprehending, or, at least, of mistating Locke's doctrine concerning secondary qualities. But a comparison of Dr Blair's own statement with that which he censures, will not turn out to the advantage of the learned critic; and I willingly lay hold of this example, as the point at issue turns on one of the most refined questions of metaphysics. The words of Addison are these:—

"Things would make but a poor appearance to the eye, if we saw them only in their proper figures and motions. And what reason can we assign for their exciting in us many of those ideas which are different from any thing that exists in the object themselves (for such are light and colours), were it not to add supernumerary ornaments to the universe, and make it more agreeable to the imagination?"

¹ Thus Thevet (says Bayle) writes the name of Knox.

After quoting this sentence, Dr Blair proceeds thus:—

“Our author is now entering on a theory, which he is about to illustrate, if not with much philosophical accuracy, yet with great beauty of fancy and glow of expression. A strong instance of his want of accuracy appears in the manner in which he opens the subject. For what meaning is there in things exciting in us many of those ideas which are different from any thing that exists in the objects? No one, sure, ever imagined that our ideas exist in the objects. Ideas, it is agreed on all hands, can exist no where but in the mind. What Mr Locke’s philosophy teaches, and what our author should have said, is, exciting in us many ideas of qualities which are different from any thing that exists in the objects.”

Let us now attend to Locke’s theory as stated by himself:—

“From whence I think it is easy to draw this observation, That the ideas of primary qualities of bodies are resemblances of them, and their patterns do really exist in the bodies themselves, but the ideas produced in us by these secondary qualities have no resemblance of them at all. There is nothing like our ideas existing in the bodies themselves. They are in the bodies we denominate from them, only a power to produce these sensations in us. And what is sweet, blue, or warm in idea, is but the certain bulk, figure, and motion of the insensible parts in the bodies themselves, which we call so.”

The inaccuracy of Locke in conceiving that our ideas of primary qualities are resemblances of these qualities, and that the patterns of such ideas exist in the bodies themselves, has been fully exposed by Dr Reid. But the repetition of Locke’s inaccuracy (supposing Addison to have been really guilty of it) should not be charged upon him as a deviation from his master’s doctrine. To all, however, who understand the subject, it must appear evident, that Addison has, in this instance, improved greatly on Locke, by keeping out of view what is most exceptionable in his language, while he has retained all that is solid in his doctrine. For my own part, I do not see how Addison’s expressions could be altered to the better, except, perhaps, by substituting the words unlike to, instead of different from. But in this last phrase, Addison has been implicitly followed by Dr Blair, and certainly would not have been disavowed as an interpreter by Locke himself. Let me add, that Dr Blair’s proposed emendation (“exciting in us many ideas of qualities, which are different from any thing that exists in the objects”), if not wholly unintelligible, deviates much farther from Locke’s meaning than the correspondent clause in its original state. The additional words of qualities throw an obscurity over the whole proposition, which was before sufficiently precise and perspicuous.¹

My principal reason for offering these remarks in vindication of Addison’s account of secondary qualities was, to prepare the way for the sequel of the passage animadverted on by Dr Blair.

¹ Another passage, afterwards quoted by Dr Blair, might have satisfied him of the clearness and accuracy of Addison’s ideas on the subject.

“I have here supposed that my reader is acquainted with that great modern discovery, which is, at present, universally acknowledged by all the inquirers into natural philosophy; namely, that light and colours, as apprehended by the imagination, are only ideas in the mind, and not qualities that have any existence in matter. As this is a truth which has been proved incontestably by many modern philosophers, if the English reader would see the notion explained at large, he may find it in the eighth book of Mr Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding.”

I have already taken notice (Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Vol. I. Note P.) of the extraordinary precision of the above statement, arising from the clause printed in Italics. By a strange slip of memory I ascribed the merit of this very judicious qualification, not to Addison, but to Dr Akenside, who transcribed it from the Spectator.

The last quotation affords me also an opportunity of remarking the correctness of Addison’s information about the history of this doctrine, which most English writers have conceived to be an original speculation of Locke’s. From some of Addison’s expressions, it is more than probable, that he had derived his first knowledge of it from Malebranche.

"We are everywhere entertained with pleasing shows and apparitions. We discover imaginary glories in the heavens and in the earth, and see some of this visionary beauty poured out upon the whole creation. But what a rough unsightly sketch of nature should we be entertained with, did all her colouring disappear, and the several distinctions of light and shade vanish? ¹ In short, our souls are delightfully lost and bewildered in a pleasing delusion, and we walk about like the enchanted hero of a romance, who sees beautiful castles, woods, and meadows, and, at the same time, hears the warbling of birds and the purling of streams; but, upon the finishing of some secret spell, the fantastic scene breaks up, and the disconsolate knight finds himself on a barren heath, or in a solitary desert."

In this passage one is at a loss whether most to admire the author's depth and refinement of thought, or the singular felicity of fancy displayed in its illustration. The image of the enchanted hero is so unexpected, and, at the same time, so exquisitely appropriate, that it seems itself to have been conjured up by an enchanter's wand. Though introduced with the unpretending simplicity of a poetical simile, it has the effect of shedding the light of day on one of the darkest corners of metaphysics. Nor is the language in which it is conveyed unworthy of the attention of the critic; abounding throughout with those natural and happy graces, which appear artless and easy to all but to those who have attempted to copy them.

The praise which I have bestowed on Addison as a commentator on this part of Locke's Essay will not appear extravagant to those who may take the trouble to compare the conciseness and elegance of the foregoing extracts with the prolixity and homeliness of the author's text. (See Locke's Essay, Book II. chap. viii. §§ 17, 18.) It is sufficient to mention here, that his chief illustration is taken from "the effects of manna on the stomach and guts."

NOTE (AA.) p. 111.

For the following note I am indebted to my learned friend Sir William Hamilton, Professor of Universal History in the University of Edinburgh.

"The Clavis Universalis of Arthur Collier, though little known in England, has been translated into German. It is published in a work entitled "Sammlung, &c. &c. literally, "A Collection of the most distinguished authors who deny the existence of their own bodies, and of the whole material world,—containing the dialogues of Berkeley, between Hylas and Philonous, and Collier's Universal Key translated, with Illustrative Observations, and an Appendix, wherein the existence of Body is demonstrated, by John Christopher Eschenbach, Professor of Philosophy in Rostock." (Rostock, 1756, 8vo.) The remarks are numerous, and show much reading. The Appendix contains, 1. An exposition of the opinion of the Idealists, with its grounds and arguments. 2. A proof of the external existence of body. The argument on which he chiefly dwells to show the existence of matter is the same with that of Dr Reid, in so far as he says "a direct proof must not here be expected; in regard to the fundamental principles of human nature, this is seldom possible, or rather is absolutely impossible." He argues at length, that the Idealist has no better proof of the existence of his soul, than of the existence of his body; "when an Idealist says, I am a thinking being; of this I am certain from internal conviction;—I would ask from whence he derives this certainty, and why he ex-

¹ On the supposition made in this sentence, the face of Nature, instead of presenting a "rough unsightly sketch," would, it is evident, become wholly invisible. But I need scarcely say, this does not render Mr Addison's allusion less pertinent.

cludes from this conviction the possibility of deception. He has no other answer than this, I feel it. It is impossible that I can have any representation of self without the consciousness of being a thinking being. In the same manner, Eschenbach argues that the feeling applies to the existence of body, and that the ground of belief is equally strong and conclusive, in respect to the reality of the objective, as of the subjective, in perception."

NOTE (BB.) p. 132.

"And yet Diderot, in some of his lucid intervals, seems to have thought and felt very differently."

THE following passage (extracted from his Pensées Philosophiques) is pronounced by La Harpe to be not only one of the most eloquent which Diderot has written, but to be one of the best comments which is any where to be found on the Cartesian argument for the existence of God. It has certainly great merit in point of reasoning, but I cannot see with what propriety it can be considered as a comment upon the argument of Descartes; nor am I sure if, in point of eloquence, it be as well suited to the English as to the French taste.

"Convenez qu'il y auroit de la folie à refuser à vos semblables la faculté de penser. Sans doute, mais que s'ensuit-il de là? Il s'ensuit, que si l'univers, que dis-je l'univers, si l'aile d'un papillon m'offre des traces mille fois plus distinctes d'une intelligence que vous n'avez d'indices que votre semblable à la faculté de penser, il est mille fois plus fou de nier qu'il existe un Dieu, que de nier que votre semblable pense. Or, que cela soit ainsi, c'est à vos lumières, c'est à votre conscience que j'en appelle. Avez-vous jamais remarqué dans les raisonnemens, les actions, et la conduite de quelque homme que ce soit, plus d'intelligence, d'ordre, de sagacité, de conséquence, que dans le mécanisme d'un insecte? La divinité n'est elle pas aussi clairement empreinte dans l'œil d'un ciron, que la faculté de penser dans les écrits du grand Newton? Quoi! le monde formé prouverait moins d'intelligence, que le monde expliqué? Quelle assertion! l'intelligence d'un premier être ne m'est pas mieux démontrée par ses ouvrages, que la faculté de penser dans un philosophe par ses écrits? Songez donc que je ne vous objecte que l'aile d'un papillon, quand je pourrais vous écraser du poids de l'univers."

This, however, was certainly not the creed which Diderot professed in his more advanced years. The article, on the contrary, which immediately follows the foregoing quotation, there is every reason to think, expresses his real sentiments on the subject. I transcribe it at length, as it states clearly and explicitly the same argument which is indirectly hinted at in a late publication by a far more illustrious author.

"J'ouvre les cabiers d'un philosophie célèbre, et je lis. 'Athées, je vous accorde que le mouvement est essentiel à la matière; qu'en concluez-vous? que le monde résulte du jet fortuit d'atomes? J'aimerois autant que vous me disiez que l'Iliade d'Homère ou la Henriade de Voltaire est un résultat de jets fortuits de caractères?' Je me garderais bien de faire ce raisonnement à un athée. Cette comparaison lui donneroit beau jeu. Selon les lois de l'analyse des sorts, me diroit-il, je ne dois être surpris qu'une chose arrive, lorsqu'elle est possible, et que la difficulté de l'événement est compensée par la quantité des jets. Il y a tels nombre de coups dans lesquels je gagerois avec avantage d'amener cent mille six à la fois avec cent mille dez. Quelle que fût la somme finie de caractères avec laquelle on me proposeroit d'engendrer fortuitement l'Iliade, il y a telle somme finie de jets qui me rendroit la proposition avantageuse; mon avantage seroit même infinie, si la quantité de jets accordée étoit infini," &c. &c. (Pensées Philosophiques, par Diderot, XXI.)

My chief reason for considering this as the genuine exposition of Diderot's own creed is, that he omits no opportunity of suggesting the same train of thinking in his other works. It may be distinctly traced in the following passage of his Traité du Beau, the substance of which he has also introduced in the article BEAU of the Encyclopédie.

“Le beau n'est pas toujours l'ouvrage d'une cause intelligente; le mouvement établit souvent, soit dans un être considéré solitairement, soit entre plusieurs êtres comparés entr'eux, une multitude prodigieuse de rapports surprenans. Les cabinets d'histoire naturelle en offrent un grand nombre d'exemples. Les rapports sont alors des résultats de combinaisons fortuites, du moins par rapport à nous. La nature imite en se jouant, dans cent occasions, les productions d'art; et l'on pourroit demander, je ne dis pas si ce philosophe qui fut jeté par une tempête sur les bords d'une Ile inconnue, avoit raison de se crier, à la vue de quelques figures de géométrie; ‘Courage mes amis, voici des pas d'hommes!’ mais combien il faudroit remarquer de rapports dans un être, pour avoir une certitude complète qu'il est l'ouvrage d'un artiste¹ (en quelle occasion, un seul défaut de symétrie prouveroit plus que toute somme donnée de rapports); comment sont entr'eux le temps de l'action de la cause fortuite, et les rapports observés dans les effets produits; et si (à l'exception des œuvres du Tout-Puissant)² il y a des cas où le nombre des rapports ne puisse jamais être compensé par celui des jets.”

With respect to the passages here extracted from Diderot, it is worthy of observation, that if the atheistical argument from chances be conclusive in its application to that order of things which we behold, it is not less conclusive when applied to every other possible combination of atoms which imagination can conceive, and affords a mathematical proof, that the fables of Grecian mythology, the tales of the genii, and the dreams of the Rosicrucians, may, or rather must, all of them, be somewhere or other realized in the infinite extent of the universe; a proposition which, if true, would destroy every argument for or against any given system of opinions founded on the reasonableness or the unreasonableness of the tenets involved in it; and would, of consequence, lead to the subversion of the whole frame of the human understanding.³

¹ Is not this precisely the sophistical mode of questioning known among Logicians by the name of Sorites or Accrues? ‘Vitiosum sane (says Cicero) et captiosum genus.’ (Acad. Quest. Lib. IV. xvi.)

² To those who enter fully into the spirit of the foregoing reasoning, it is unnecessary to observe, that this parenthetical clause is nothing better than an ironical sotto. If the argument proves any thing it leads to this general conclusion, that the apparent order of the universe affords no evidence whatever of the existence of a designing cause.

³ The atheistical argument here quoted from Diderot is, at least, as old as the time of Epicurus.

Nam certè neque consilio primordia rerum
Ordine se quæque, atque sagaci mente locarunt;
Nec quos quæque darent motus pepigere profecti;
Sed quia multimodis, multis, mutata, per omne
Ex infinito vexantur percita plagis,
Omne genus motus, et cœtas experiundo,
Tandem deveniunt in taleis disposituras,
Quilibus hæc rebus consistit summa creata.

(Lucret. Lib. I. l. 1020.)

And still more explicitly in the following lines:

Nam cùm respicias immensi temporis omne
Præteritum spatium; tum motus materiat
Multimodi quàm sint; facili hoc adcredere possis,
Semina sæpe in eodem, ut nunc sunt, ordine posta.

(Ibid. Lib. III. l. 867.)

Mr Hume, in his Natural History of Religion (Sect. XI.), has drawn an inference from the internal evidence of the Heathen Mythology, in favour of the supposition, that it may not be altogether so fabulous as is commonly supposed. "The whole mythological system is so natural, that in the vast variety of planets and worlds contained in this universe, it seems more than probable, that somewhere or other it is really carried into execution." The argument of Diderot goes much farther, and leads to an extension of Mr Hume's conclusion to all conceivable systems, whether natural or not.

But further, since the human mind, and all the numberless displays of wisdom and of power which it has exhibited, are ultimately to be referred to a fortuitous concourse of atoms, why might not the Supreme Being, such as we are commonly taught to regard him, have been Himself (as well as the Gods of Epicurus)¹ the result of the continued operation of the same blind causes? or rather, must not such a Being have necessarily resulted from these causes operating from all eternity, through the immensity of space?—a conclusion, by the way, which, according to Diderot's own principles, would lead us to refer the era of his origin to a period indefinitely more remote than any given point of time which imagination can assign; or, in other words, to a period to which the epithet eternal may with perfect propriety be applied. The amount, therefore, of the whole matter is this, that the atheistical reasoning, as stated by Diderot, leaves the subject of natural, and, I may add, of revealed religion, precisely on the same footing as before, without invalidating, in the very smallest degree, the evidence for any one of the doctrines connected with either; nay more, superadding to this evidence, a mathematical demonstration of the possible truth of all those articles of belief which it was the object of Diderot to subvert from their foundation.

It might be easily shown, that these principles, if pushed to their legitimate consequences, instead of establishing the just authority of reason in our constitution, would lead to the most unlimited credulity on all subjects whatever; or (what is only another name for the same thing) to that state of mind, which, in the words of Mr Hume, "does not consider any one proposition as more certain, or even as more probable, than another."

The following curious and (in my opinion) instructive anecdote has a sufficient connection with the subject of this note, to justify me in subjoining it to the foregoing observations. I transcribe it from the Notes annexed to the Abbé de Lille's poem, entitled La Conversation. (A Paris, 1812.)

"Dans la société du Baron d'Holbach, Diderot proposa un jour de nommer un avocat de Dieu, et on choisit l'Abbé Galiani. Il s'assit et débuta ainsi :

"Un jour à Naples, un homme de la Basilicate prit devant nous, six dés dans un cornet, et paria d'amener rasle de six. Je dis cette chance étoit possible. Il l'amena sur le champ une seconde fois; je dis la même chose. Il remit les dés dans le cornet trois, quatre, cinq fois, et toujours rasle de six. Sangue di Bacco m'ecriai-je, les dés sont pipés; et ils l'étoient.

"Philosophes, quand je considere l'ordre toujours renaissant de la nature, ses lois immuables, ses révolutions toujours constantes dans une variété infinie; cette chance unique et conservatrice d'un univers tel que nous le voyons, qui revient sans cesse, malgré cent autres millions de chances de perturbation et de destruction possibles, je m'ecrie : certes la nature est pipée!"

The argument here stated strikes me as irresistible, nor ought it at all to weaken its effect, that it was spoken by the mouth of the Abbé Galiani. Of this extraordinary person I shall have occasion afterwards to speak as a political economist.

¹ Cic. de Nat. Deor. Lib. I. XXIV.

Whatever his own professed principles may have been, this theory of the loaded die appears evidently, from the repeated allusions to it in his familiar correspondence, to have produced a very deep impression on his mind. (See Correspondance inédite de l'Abbé Galiani, &c. Vol. I. pp. 18, 42, 141, 142, à Paris, 1818.)

As the old argument of the atomical atheists is plainly that on which the school of Diderot are still disposed to rest the strength of their cause, I shall make no apology for the length of this note. The sceptical suggestions on the same subject which occur in Mr Hume's Essay on the Idea of Necessary Connection, and which have given occasion to so much discussion in this country, do not seem to me to have ever produced any considerable impression on the French philosophers.

NOTE (CC.) p. 133.

AMONG the contemporaries of Diderot, the author of the Spirit of Laws is entitled to particular notice, for the respect with which he always speaks of natural religion. A remarkable instance of this occurs in a letter to Dr Warburton, occasioned by the publication of his View of Bolingbroke's Philosophy. The letter, it must be owned, savours somewhat of the political religionist; but how fortunate would it have been for France, if, during its late revolutionary governments, such sentiments as those here expressed by Montesquieu had been more generally prevalent among his countrymen! "Celui qui attaque la religion révélée n'attaque que la religion révélée; mais celui qui attaque la religion naturelle attaque toutes les religions du monde.... Il n'est pas impossible d'attaquer une religion révélée, parce qu'elle existe par des faits particuliers, et que les faits par leur nature peuvent être une matière de dispute; mais il n'en est pas de même de la religion naturelle; elle est tirée de la nature de l'homme, dont on ne peut pas disputer encore. J'ajoute à ceci, quel peut être le motif d'attaquer la religion révélée en Angleterre? On l'y a tellement purgé de tout préjugé destructeur qu'elle n'y peut faire de mal et qu'elle y peut faire, au contraire, une infinité de biens. Je sais, qu'un homme en Espagne ou en Portugal que l'on va brûler, ou qui craint d'être brûlé, parce qu'il ne croit point de certains articles dépendans ou non de la religion révélée, a un juste sujet de l'attaquer, parce qu'il peut avoir quelque espérance de pourvoir à sa défense naturelle: mais il n'en est pas de même en Angleterre, où tout homme qui attaque la religion révélée l'attaque sans intérêt, et où cet homme, quand il réussiroit, quand même il auroit raison dans le fond, ne feroit que détruire une infinité de biens pratiques, pour établir une vérité purement spéculative." (For the whole letter, see the 4to edit. of Montesquieu's Works. Paris, 1788. Tome V. p. 391. Also Warburton's Works by Hurd, Vol. VII. p. 553. London, 1758.)

In the foregoing passage, Montesquieu hints more explicitly than could well have been expected from a French magistrate, at a consideration which ought always to be taken into the account, in judging of the works of his countrymen, when they touch on the subject of religion; I mean, the corrupted and intolerant spirit of that system of faith which is immediately before their eyes. The eulogy bestowed on the church of England is particularly deserving of notice; and should serve as a caution to Protestant writers against making common cause with the defenders of the church of Rome.

With respect to Voltaire, who, amidst all his extravagancies and impieties, is well known to have declared open war against the principles maintained in the Système de la Nature, it is remarked by Madame de Staël, that two different epochs may be distinguished in his literary life; the one,

while his mind was warm from the philosophical lessons he had imbibed in England; the other, after it became infected with those extravagant principles which, soon after his death, brought a temporary reproach on the name of Philosophy. As the observation is extended by the very ingenious writer to the French nation in general, and draws a line between two classes of authors who are frequently confounded together in this country, I shall transcribe it in her own words.

“ Il me semble qu'on pourroit marquer dans le dix-huitième siècle, en France, deux époques parfaitement distinctes, celle dans laquelle l'influence de l'Angleterre s'est fait sentir, et celle où les esprits se sont précipités dans la destruction: Alors les lumières se sont changées en incendie, et la philosophie, magicienne irritée, a consumé le palais où elle avoit étalé ses prodiges.

“ En politique, Montesquieu appartient à la première époque, Raynal à la seconde; en religion, les écrits de Voltaire, qui avoit la tolérance pour but, sont inspirés par l'esprit de la première moitié du siècle; mais sa miserable et vaniteuse irrégion a flétri la seconde.” (De l'Allemagne, Tome III. pp. 37, 38.)

Nothing, in truth, can be more striking than the contrast between the spirit of Voltaire's early and of his later productions. From the former may be quoted some of the sublimest sentiments any where to be found, both of religion and of morality. In some of the latter, he appears irrecoverably sunk in the abyss of fatalism. Examples of both are so numerous, that one is at a loss in the selection. In making choice of the following, I am guided chiefly by the comparative shortness of the passages.

“ Consulte Zoroastre et Minos, et Solon,
Et le sage Socrate, et le grand Cicéron:
Ils ont adoré tous un maître, un juge, un père:
Ce système sublime à l'homme est nécessaire.
C'est le sacré lien de la société,
Le premier fondement de la sainte équité;
Le frein du scélérat, l'espérance du juste.
Si les cieux dépouillés de leur empreinte auguste
Pouvoient cesser jamais de le manifester,
Si Dieu n'existoit pas, il faudroit l'inventer.”¹

Nor is it only on this fundamental principle of religion that Voltaire, in his better days, delighted to enlarge. The existence of a natural law engraved on the human heart, and the liberty of the human will, are subjects which he has repeatedly enforced and adorned with all his philosophical and poetical powers. What can be more explicit, or more forcible, than the following exposition of the inconsistencies of fatalism?

“ Vois de la liberté cet ennemi mutin,
Aveugle partisan d'un aveugle destin;
Entends comme il consulte, approuve, ou délibère,
Entends de quel reproche il couvre un adversaire,
Vois comment d'un rival il cherche à se venger,
Comme il punit son fils, et le veut corriger.

¹ A thought approaching very nearly to this occurs in one of Tillotson's Sermons. “The being of God is so comfortable, so convenient, so necessary to the felicity of Mankind, that (as Tully admirably says), Dei immortales ad usum hominum fabricati pene videntur.—If God were not a necessary being of himself, he might almost be said to be made for the use and benefit of Man.” For some ingenious remarks on this quotation from Cicero, see Jortin's Tracts, Vol. I. p. 371.

Il le croyoit donc libre ?—Oui sans doute, et lui-même
Dément à chaque pas son funeste système.
Il mentoit à son cœur, en voulant expliquer
Ce dogme absurde à croire, absurde à pratiquer.
Il reconnoit en lui le sentiment qu'il brave,
Il agit comme libre et parle comme esclave."

This very system, however, which Voltaire has here so severely reprobated, he lived to avow as the creed of his more advanced years. The words, indeed, are put into the mouth of a fictitious personage; but it is plain, that the writer meant to be understood as speaking his own sentiments. "Je vois une chaîne immense, dont tout est chainon; elle embrasse, elle serre aujourd'hui la nature," &c. &c.

"Je suis donc ramené malgré moi à cette ancienne idée, que je vois être la base de tous les systèmes, dans laquelle tous les philosophes retombent après mille détours, et qui m'est démontré par toutes les actions des hommes, par les miennes, par tous les évènements que j'ai lus, que j'ai vus, et aux-quelles j'ai eu part; c'est le Fatalisme, c'est la Nécessité dont je vous ai déjà parlé." (Lettres de Memmius à Cicéron. See Œuvres de Voltaire, Mélanges, Tome IV. p. 358. 4to. Edit. Genève, 1771.)

Notwithstanding, however, this change in Voltaire's philosophical opinions, he continued to the last his zealous opposition to atheism.¹ But in what respects it is more pernicious than fatalism, it is not easy to discover.

A reflection of La Harpe's, occasioned by some strictures of Voltaire's upon Montesquieu, applies with equal force to the numberless inconsistencies which occur in his metaphysical speculations: "Les objets de méditation étoient trop étrangers à l'excessive vivacité de son esprit. Saisir fortement par l'imagination les objets qu'elle ne doit montrer que d'un côté, c'est ce qui est du Poète; les embrasser sous toutes les faces, c'est ce qui est du Philosophie, et Voltaire étoit trop exclusivement l'un pour être l'autre." (Cours de Littérat. Tome XV. pp. 46, 47.)

A late author² has very justly reprobated that spiritual deification of nature which has been long fashionable among the French; and which, according to his own account, is at present not unfashionable in Germany. It is proper, however, to observe, that this mode of speaking has been used by two very different classes of writers; by the one with an intention to keep as much as possible the Deity out of their view, while studying his works; by the other, as a convenient and well understood metaphor, by means of which the frequent and irreverent mention of the name of God is avoided in philosophical arguments. It was with this last view, undoubtedly, that it was so often employed by Newton, and other English philosophers of the same school. In general, when we find a writer speaking of the wise or of the benevolent intentions of nature, we should be slow in imputing to him any leaning towards atheism. Many of the finest instances of Final Causes, it is certain, which the eighteenth century has brought to light, have been first remarked by inquirers who seem to have been fond of this phraseology; and of these inquirers, it is possible that some would have been less forward in bearing testimony to the truth, had they been forced to avail themselves of the style of theologians. These speculations, therefore, concerning the intentions or designs of Nature, how reprehensible soever and even absurd in point of strict

¹ See the Dict. Philosophique, Art. Athéisme. See also the Strictures on the Système de la Nature in the Questions sur l'Encyclopédie; the very work from which the above quotation is taken.

² Frederick Schlegel. Lectures on the History of Literature. Vol. II. p. 169. (Edinburgh, 1818.)

logic the language may be in which they are expressed, may often be, nay, have often been, a step towards something higher and better; and, at any rate, are of a character totally different from the blind chance of the Epicureans, or the conflicting principles of the Manicheans.

NOTE (DD.) p. 153.

“ IN the attempt, indeed, which Kant has made to enumerate the general ideas which are not derived from experience, but arise out of the pure understanding, Kant may well lay claim to the praise of originality.” The object of this problem is thus stated by his friend, Mr Schulze, the author of the Synopsis formerly quoted. (The following translation is by Dr Willich, Elements, &c. p. 45.)

“ To investigate the whole store of original notions discoverable in our understanding, and which lie at the foundation of all our knowledge; and at the same time to authenticate their true descent, by showing that they are not derived from experience, but are pure productions of the understanding.

“ 1. The perceptions of objects contain, indeed, the matter of knowledge, but are in themselves blind and dead, and not knowledge; and our soul is merely passive in regard to them.

“ 2. If these perceptions are to furnish knowledge, the understanding must think of them, and this is possible only through notions (conceptions), which are the peculiar form of our understanding, in the same manner as space and time are the form of our sensitive faculty.

“ 3. These notions are active representations of our understanding-faculty; and as they regard immediately the perceptions of objects, they refer to the objects themselves only mediately.

“ 4. They lie in our understanding as pure notions a priori, at the foundation of all our knowledge. They are necessary forms, radical notions, categories (predicaments), of which all our knowledge of them must be compounded: And the table of them follows.

“ Quantity; unity, plurality, totality.

“ Quality; reality, negation, limitation.

“ Relation; substance, cause, reciprocation.

“ Modality; possibility, existence, necessity.

“ 5. Now, to think and to judge is the same thing; consequently, every notion contains a particular form of judgment concerning objects. There are four principal genera of judgments: They are derived from the above four possible functions of the understanding, each of which contains under it three species; namely, with respect to

“ Quantity, they are universal, particular, singular judgments:

“ Quality, they are affirmative, negative, infinite judgments.

“ Relation, they are categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive judgments.

“ Modality, they are problematical, assertory, apodictical judgments.”

These tables speak for themselves without any comment.

NOTE (EE.) p. 154.

KANT's notions of Time are contained in the following seven propositions: “ 1. Idea temporis non oritur sed supponitur a sensibus. 2. Iaca temporis est singularis, non generalis. Tempus enim

quodlibet non cogitatur, nisi tanquam pars unius ejusdem temporis immensi. 3. Idea itaque temporis est intuitus, et quoniam ante omnem sensationem concipitur, tanquam conditio respectuum in sensibilibus obviis, est intuitus, non sensualis, sed purus. 4. Tempus est quantum continuum et legum continui in mutationibus universi principium. 5. Tempus non est objectivum aliquid et reale, nec substantia, nec accidens, nec relatio, sed subjectiva conditio, per naturam mentis humanæ necessaria, quælibet sensibilia, certa lege sibi co-ordinandi, et intuitus purus. 6. Tempus est conceptus verissimus, et, per omnia possibilia sensuum objecta, in infinitum patens, intuitivæ repræsentationis conditio. 7. Tempus itaque est principium formale mundi sensibilis absolute primum."

With respect to Space, Kant states a series of similar propositions, ascribing to it very nearly the same metaphysical attributes as to Time, and running as far as possible a sort of parallel between them. "A. Conceptus spatii non abstrahitur a sensationibus externis. B. Conceptus spatii est singularis repræsentatio omnia in se comprehendens, non sub se continens notio abstracta et communis. C. Conceptus spatii itaque est intuitus purus; cum sit conceptus singularis; sensationibus non conflatus, sed omnis sensationis externæ forma fundamentalis. D. Spatium non est aliquid objectivi et realis, nec substantia, nec accidens, nec relatio; sed subjectivum et ideale, e natura mentis stabili lege proficiens, veluti schema, omnia omnino externe sensa sibi co-ordinandi. E. Quanam conceptus spatii, ut objectivi alicujus et realis entis vel affectionis, sit imaginarius, nihilo tamen secius respective ad sensibilia quæcunque, non solum est verissimus, sed et omnis veritatis in sensualitate externa fundamentum."

These propositions are extracted from a Dissertation written by Kant himself in the Latin language.¹ Their obscurity, therefore, cannot be ascribed to any misapprehension on the part of a translator. It was on this account that I thought it better to quote them in his own unaltered words, than to avail myself of the corresponding passage in Born's Latin version of the Critique of Pure Reason.

To each of Kant's propositions concerning Time and Space I shall subjoin a short comment, following the same order in which these propositions are arranged above.

1. That the idea of Time has no resemblance to any of our sensations, and that it is, therefore, not derived from sensation immediately and directly, has been very often observed; and, if nobody had ever observed it, the fact is so very obvious, that the enunciation of it could not entitle the author to the praise of much ingenuity. Whether "this idea be supposed in all our sensations," or (as Kant explains himself more clearly in his third proposition) "be conceived by the mind prior to all sensation," is a question which seems to me at least doubtful; nor do I think the opinion we form concerning it a matter of the smallest importance. One thing is certain, that this idea is an inseparable concomitant of every act of memory with respect to past events; and that, in whatever way it is acquired, we are irresistibly led to ascribe to the thing itself an existence independent of the will of any being whatever.

2. On the second proposition I have nothing to remark. The following is the most intelligible translation of it that I can give. "The idea of Time is singular, not general; for any particular length of Time can be conceived only as a part of one and the same immense whole."

3. From these premises (such as they are) Kant concludes, that the idea of Time is intuitive; and that this intuition, being prior to the exercise of the senses, is not empirical but pure. The

¹ De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis forma et principiis. Dissertatio pro loco professionis Log. et Metaph. Ordinarii rite sibi Vindicando; quam exigentibus statutis Academicis publice tuebatur IMMANUEL KANT.—Regiomonti, 1770.

conclusion here must necessarily partake of the uncertainty of the premises from which it is drawn but the meaning of the author does not seem to imply any very erroneous principle. It amounts, indeed, to little more than an explanation of some of his peculiar terms.

4. That Time is a continued quantity is indisputable. To the latter clause of the sentence I can annex no meaning but this, that time enters as an essential element into our conception of the law of continuity, in all its various applications to the changes that take place in Nature.

5. In this proposition Kant assumes the truth of that much contested, and, to me, incomprehensible doctrine, which denies the objective reality of time. He seems to consider it merely as a subjective condition, inseparably connected with the frame of the Human Mind, in consequence of which it arranges sensible phenomena, according to a certain law, in the order of succession.

6. What is meant by calling Time a true conception, I do not profess to understand; nor am I able to interpret the remainder of the sentence in any way but this, that we can find no limits to the range thus opened in our conceptions to the succession of sensible events.

7. The conclusion of the whole matter is, that Time is "absolutely the first formal principle of the sensible world." I can annex no meaning to this; but I have translated the original, word for word, and shall leave my readers to their own conjectures.

A. It appears from this, that, in the opinion of Kant, the idea of Space is connate with the mind, or, at least, that it is prior to any information received from the senses. But this doctrine seems to me not a little doubtful. Indeed, I rather lean to the common theory, which supposes our first ideas of Space or Extension to be formed by abstracting this attribute from the other qualities of matter. The idea of Space, however, in whatever manner formed, is manifestly accompanied with an irresistible conviction, that Space is necessarily existent, and that its annihilation is impossible; nay, it appears to me to be also accompanied with an irresistible conviction, that Space cannot possibly be extended in more than three dimensions. Call either of these propositions in question, and you open a door to universal scepticism.

B. I can extract no meaning from this, but the nugatory proposition, that our conception of Space leads us to consider it as the place in which all things are comprehended.

C. "The conception of Space, therefore, is a pure intuition." This follows as a necessary corollary (according to Kant's own definition) from Prop. A. What is to be understood by the clause which asserts, that Space is the fundamental form of every external sensation, it is not easy to conjecture. Does it imply merely that the conception of Space is necessarily involved in all our notions of things external? In this case, it only repeats over, in different and most inaccurate terms, the last clause of Prop. B. What can be more loose and illogical than the phrase external sensation?

D. That Space is neither a substance, nor an accident, nor a relation, may be safely granted; but does it follow from this that it is nothing objective, or, in other words, that it is a mere creature of the imagination? This, however, would seem to be the idea of Kant; and yet I cannot reconcile it with what he says in Prop. E., that the conception of Space is the foundation of all the truth we ascribe to our perceptions of external objects. (The author's own words are—omnis veritatis in sensualitate externa fundamentum!)¹

¹ Mr Nitch has remarked this difficulty, and has attempted to remove it. "The most essential objection (he observes) to Kant's system is, that it leads to scepticism; because it maintains, that the figures in which we see the external objects clothed are not in-

Upon the whole, it appears to me, that, among these various propositions, there are some which are quite unintelligible; that others assume, as first principles, doctrines which have been disputed by many of our most eminent philosophers; that others, again, seem to aim at involving plain and obvious truths in darkness and mystery; and that not one is expressed with the simplicity and precision which are the natural results of clear and accurate thinking. In considering time and space as the forms of all sensible phenomena, does Kant mean any thing more but this,—that we necessarily refer every sensible phenomenon to some point of space, or to some instant of time? If this was really his meaning, he has only repeated over, in obscurer language, the following propositions of Newton: "Ut ordo partium temporis est immutabilis, sic etiam ordo partium spatii. Moveantur hæc de locis suis, et movebuntur (at ita dicam) de seipsis. Nam tempora et spatia sunt sui ipsorum et rerum omnium quasi loca. In tempore, quoad ordinem successionis; in spatio, quoad ordinem situs locantur universa. De illorum essentia est ut sint loca: et loca primaria moveri absurdum est."

I have quoted this passage, not from any desire of displaying the superiority of Newton over Kant, but chiefly to show how very nearly the powers of the former sink to the same level with those of the latter, when directed to inquiries unfathomable by the human faculties. What abuse of words can be greater than to say, That neither the parts of time nor the parts of space can be moved from their places? In the Principia of Newton, however, this incidental discussion is but a spot on the sun. In the Critique of Pure Reason, it is a fair specimen of the rest of the work, and forms one of the chief pillars of the whole system, both metaphysical and moral.

NOTE (FF.) p. 155.

THE following quotation will account for the references which I have made to Mr Nitsch among the expounders of Kant's Philosophy. It will also serve to show that the Critique of Pure Reason has still some admirers in England, not less enthusiastic than those it had formerly in Germany.

"In submitting this fourth Treatise on the Philosophy of Kant to the reader" (says the author of these articles in the Encyclopædia Londinensis), "I cannot deny myself the satisfaction of publicly acknowledging the great assistance which I have derived in my literary pursuits, from my excellent and highly valued friend Mr Henry Richter. To him I am indebted for the clearness and perspicuity with which the thoughts of the immortal Kant have been conveyed to the public. Indeed, his comprehensive knowledge of the system, as well as his enthusiastic admiration of its general truth, render him a most able and desirable co-operator. Should, therefore, any good result to mankind from our joint labours in the display of this vast and profound system, he is justly entitled to his share of the praise. It is with sincere pleasure that I reflect upon that period, now

herent in those objects, and that consequently space is something within, and not without the mind." (pp. 144, 145.) "It may be farther objected (he adds), that, if there be no external space, there is also no external world. But this is concluding by far too much from these premises. If there be no external space, it will follow, that we are not authorized to assign extension to external things, but there will follow no more." (p. 149.) Mr Nitsch then proceeds to obviate these objections; but his reply is far from satisfactory, and is indeed not less applicable to the doctrine of Berkeley than to that of Kant. This point, however, I do not mean to argue here. The concessions which Nitsch has made are quite sufficient for my present purpose. They serve at least to satisfy my own mind, that I have not misrepresented Kant's meaning.

Was it not to avoid the palpable incongruity of this language that Kant was led to substitute the word forms instead of places; the former word not seeming to be so obviously inapplicable as the latter to time and space in common; or, to speak more correctly, being, from its extreme vagueness, equally unmeaning when applied to both?

two and twenty years ago, when we first studied together under the same master, Frederic Augustus Nitsch, who originally imported the seeds of TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY from its native country, to plant them in our soil; and though, as is usually the case, many of those seeds were scattered by the wind, I trust that a sufficient number have taken root to maintain the growth of this vigorous and flourishing plant, till the time shall come, when, by its general cultivation, England may be enabled to enrich other nations with the most perfect specimens of its produce. Professor Nitsch, who thus bestowed upon our country her first attainments in the department of Pure Science, has paid the debt of nature. I confess it is some reflection upon England, that she did not foster and protect this immediate disciple of the father of philosophy; but the necessities of this learned and illustrious man unfortunately compelled him to seek that subsistence elsewhere, which was withheld from him here. At Rostock, about the year 1813, this valuable member of society, and perfect master of the philosophy he undertook to teach, entered upon his immortal career as a reward for his earthly services. It is with the most heartfelt satisfaction that I add my mite of praise to his revered memory. But for him, I might ever have remained in the dark regions of sophistry and uncertainty."

NOTE (GG.) p. 164:

AMONG the secondary mischiefs resulting from the temporary popularity of Kant, none is more to be regretted than the influence of his works on the habits, both of thinking and of writing, of some very eminent men, who have since given to the world histories of philosophy. That of Tenneman in particular (a work said to possess great merit) would appear to have been vitiated by this unfortunate bias in the views of its author. A very competent judge has lately said of it, that "it affords, as far as it is completed, the most accurate, the most minute, and the most rational view we yet possess of the different systems of philosophy; but that the critical philosophy being chosen as the vantage ground from whence the survey of former systems is taken, the continual reference in Kant's own language to his peculiar doctrines, renders it frequently impossible for those who have not studied the dark works of this modern Heraclitus to understand the strictures of the historian on the systems even of Aristotle or Plato." (See the article BRUCKER in this Supplement.) We are told by the same writer, that "among the learned of Germany, Brucker has never enjoyed a very distinguished reputation." This I can very easily credit; but I am more inclined to interpret it to the disadvantage of the German taste, than to that of the historian. Brucker is indeed not distinguished by any extraordinary measure of depth or of acuteness; but in industry, fidelity, and sound judgment, he has few superiors; qualities of infinitely greater value in the undertaker of a historical work, than that passion for systematical refinement, which is so apt to betray the best-intentioned writers into false glosses on the opinions they record.

When the above passage was written, I had not seen the work of Buhle. I have since had an opportunity of looking into the French translation of it, published at Paris in 1816; and I must frankly acknowledge, that I have seldom met with a greater disappointment. The account there given of the Kantian system, to which I turned with peculiar eagerness, has, if possible, involved to my apprehension, in additional obscurity, that mysterious doctrine. From this, however, I did not feel myself entitled to form an estimate of the author's merits as a philosophical historian, till I had read some other articles of which I considered myself as better qualified to judge.

The following short extract will, without the aid of any comment, enable such of my readers as know anything of the literary history of Scotland, to form an opinion upon this point for themselves.

“ Reid n'attaqua les systèmes de ses prédécesseurs et notamment celui de Hume, que parce qu'il se croyait convaincu de leur défaut de fondement. Mais un autre antagoniste, non moins célèbre, du scepticisme de Hume, fut, en outre, guidé par la haine qu'il avoit vouée à son illustre compatriote, lequel lui répondit avec beaucoup d'aireur et d'animosité. James Beattie, professeur de morale à Edimbourg, puis ensuite, de logique et de morale à l'Université d'Aberdeen, obtint la préférence sur Hume lorsqu'il fut question de remplir la chaire vacante à Edimbourg. Cette circonstance devint sans doute la principale source de l'inimitié que les deux savans concurent l'un pour l'autre, et qui influa même sur le ton qu'ils employèrent dans les raisonnemens par lesquels ils se combattirent.” (Tome V. p. 235.)

To this quotation may I be pardoned for adding a few sentences relative to myself? “ L'ouvrage de Dugald Stewart, intitulé, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, est un syncrétisme des opinions de Hartley et de Reid. Stewart borne absolument la connoissance, tant de l'âme que des choses extérieures, à ce que le sens commun nous en apprend, et croit pouvoir ainsi mettre l'étude de la métaphysique à l'abri du reproche de rouler sur des choses qui dépassent la sphère de notre intelligence, ou qui sont tout-à-fait inutiles dans la pratique de la vie. . . . . Les chapitres suivans renferment le développement du principe de l'association des idées. Ils sont presqu'entièrement écrits d'après Hartley. Stewart fait dériver de ce principe toutes les facultés intellectuelles et pratiques de l'homme.” (Tom. V. pp. 330, 331.)

Of the discrimination displayed by Buhle in the classification of systems and of authors, the title prefixed to his 19th chapter may serve as a specimen: “ Philosophy of Condillac, of Helvetius, of Baron d'Holbach, of Robinet, of Bonnet, of Montesquieu, of Burlemaqui, of Vattel, and of Reid.”

But the radical defect of Buhle's work is, the almost total want of references to original authors. We are presented only with the general results of the author's reading, without any guide to assist us in confirming his conclusions when right, or in correcting them when wrong. This circumstance is of itself sufficient to annihilate the value of any historical composition.

Sismondi, in mentioning the history of modern literature by Bouterwek, takes occasion to pay a compliment (and, I have no doubt, a very deserved one) to German scholars in general; observing, that he has executed his task—“ avec une étendue d'érudition, et une loyauté dans la manière d'en faire profiter ses lecteurs, qui semblent propres aux savans Allemands.” (De la Litt. du Midi de l'Europe, Tom. I. p. 13, à Paris, 1813.) I regret that my ignorance of the German language has prevented me from profiting by a work of which Sismondi has expressed so favourable an opinion; and still more, that the only history of philosophy from the pen of a contemporary German scholar, which I have had access to consult, should form so remarkable an exception to Sismondi's observation.

The contents of the preceding note lay me under the necessity, in justice to myself, of taking some notice of the following remark on the first part of this Dissertation, by an anonymous critic. (See Quarterly Review, Vol. XVII. p. 42.)

“ In the plan which Mr Stewart has adopted, if he has not consulted his strength, he has at least consulted his ease; for, supposing a person to have the requisite talent and information, the task which our author has performed, is one which, with the historical abstracts of Buhle or Tenneman, cannot be supposed to have required any very laborious meditation.”

On the insinuation contained in the foregoing passage, I abstain from offering any comment. I have only to say, that it is now, for the first time (Summer of 1820), that I have seen the work of Buble; and that I have never yet had an opportunity of seeing that of Tenneman. From what I have found in the one, and from what I have heard of the other, I am strongly inclined to suspect, that when the anonymous critic wrote the above sentence, he was not less ignorant than myself of the works of these two historians. Nor can I refrain from adding (which I do with perfect confidence), that no person competent to judge on such a subject can read with attention this Historical Sketch, without perceiving that its merits and defects, whatever they may be, are at least all my own.

NOTE (HH.) p. 168.

Of the Scottish authors who turned their attention to metaphysical studies, prior to the Union of the two Kingdoms, I know of none so eminent as George Dalgarno of Aberdeen, author of two works, both of them strongly marked with sound philosophy, as well as with original genius. The one published at London, 1660, is entitled, "Ars signorum, vulgò character universalis et lingua philosophica, qua poterunt, homines diversissimorum idiomatum, spatio duarum septimanarum, omnia animi sui sensa (in rebus familiaribus) non minus intelligibiliter, sive scribendo, sive loquendo, mutuo communicare, quam linguis propriis vernaculis. Præterea, hinc etiam poterunt juvenes, philosophiæ principia, et veram logicæ præcinctin, citius et facilius multo imbibere, quam ex vulgaribus philosophorum scriptis." The other work of Dalgarno is entitled, "Didascolocophus, or the Deaf and Dumb Man's Tutor." Printed at Oxford, 1680. I have given some account of the former in the notes at the end of the first volume of the Philosophy of the Human Mind; and of the latter, in a Memoir, published in Vol. VII. of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. As they are now become extremely rare, and would together form a very small octavo volume, I cannot help thinking that a bookseller, who should reprint them, would be fully indemnified by the sale. The fate of Dalgarno will be hard, indeed, if, in addition to the unjust neglect he experienced from his contemporaries, the proofs he has left of his philosophical talents shall be suffered to sink into total oblivion.

Lord Stair's Physiologia Nova Experimentalis (published at Leyden in 1686) is also worthy of notice in the literary history of Scotland. Although it bears few marks of the eminent talents which distinguished the author, both as a lawyer and as a statesman, it discovers a very extensive acquaintance with the metaphysical as well as with the physical doctrines, which were chiefly in vogue at that period; more particularly with the leading doctrines of Gassendi, Descartes, and Malebranche. Many acute and some important strictures are made on the errors of all the three, and at the same time complete justice is done to their merits; the writer every where manifesting an independence of opinion and a spirit of free inquiry, very uncommon among the philosophers of the seventeenth century. The work is dedicated to the Royal Society of London, of the utility of which institution, in promoting experimental knowledge, he appears to have been fully aware.

The limits of a note will not permit me to enter into farther details concerning the state of philosophy in Scotland, during the interval between the Union of the Crowns and that of the Kingdoms. The circumstances of the country were indeed peculiarly unfavourable to it. But memorials still exist of a few individuals, sufficient to show, that the philosophical taste, which has so remarkably distinguished our countrymen during the eighteenth century, was in some measure an inheritance from their immediate predecessors. Leibnitz, I think, somewhere mentions the number of learned

Scotchmen by whom he was visited in the course of their travels. To one of them (Mr Burnet of Kemney) he has addressed a most interesting letter, dated in 1697, on the general state of learning and science in Europe; opening his mind on the various topics which he introduces, with a freedom and confidence highly honourable to the attainments and character of his correspondent. Dr Arbuthnot, who was born about the time of the Restoration, may serve as a fair specimen of the very liberal education which was then to be had in some of the Scottish Universities. The large share which he is allowed to have contributed to the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus abundantly attests the variety of his learning, and the just estimate he had formed of the philosophy of the schools; and in one or two passages, where he glances at the errors of his contemporaries, an attentive and intelligent reader will trace, amid all his pleasantry, a metaphysical depth and soundness which seem to belong to a later period.—Is there no Arbuthnot now, to chastise the follies of our craniologists?

NOTE (II.) p. 184.

THE letter which gives occasion to this note was written twenty years after the publication of the Treatise of Human Nature. As it relates, however, to the history of Mr Hume's studies previous to that publication, I consider this as the proper place for introducing it. The Dialogue to which the letter refers was plainly that which appeared after Mr Hume's death, under the title of Dialogues on Natural Religion.

"DEAR SIR,

Ninewells, March 19, 1751.

"You would perceive by the sample I have given you, that I make Cleanthes the hero of the dialogue. Whatever you can think of to strengthen that side of the argument will be most acceptable to me. Any propensity you imagine I have to the other side crept in upon me against my will; and it is not long ago that I burned an old manuscript book, wrote before I was twenty, which contained, page after page, the gradual progress of my thoughts on that head. It begun with an anxious search after arguments to confirm the common opinion; doubts stole in, dissipated, returned, were again dissipated, returned again, and it was a perpetual struggle of a restless imagination against inclination, perhaps against reason.

"I have often thought that the best way of composing a dialogue would be for two persons that are of different opinions about any question of importance, to write alternately the different parts of the discourse, and reply to each other. By this means that vulgar error would be avoided of putting nothing but nonsense into the mouth of the adversary; and, at the same time, a variety of character and genius being upheld, would make the whole look more natural and unaffected. Had it been my good fortune to live near you, I should have taken on me the character of Philo in the dialogue, which you'll own I could have supported naturally enough; and you would not have been averse to that of Cleanthes. I believe, too, we could both of us have kept our tempers very well; only you have not reached an absolute philosophical indifference on these points. What danger can ever come from ingenious reasoning and inquiry? The worst speculative sceptic ever I knew was a much better man than the best superstitious devotee and bigot. I must inform you, too, that this was the way of thinking of the ancients on this subject. If a man made profession of philosophy, whatever his sect was, they always expected to find more regularity in his life and manners than in those of the ignorant and illiterate. There is a remarkable pas-

sage of Appian to this purpose. That historian observes, that, notwithstanding the established prepossession in favour of learning, yet some philosophers who have been trusted with absolute power have very much abused it; and he instances in Critias, the most violent of the Thirty, and Aristion who governed Athens in the time of Sylla. But I find, upon inquiry, that Critias was a professed Atheist, and Aristion an Epicurean, which is little or nothing different; and yet Appian wonders at their corruption as much as if they had been Stoics or Platonists. A modern zealot would have thought that corruption unavoidable.

"I could wish that Cleanthes's argument could be so analyzed as to be rendered quite formal and regular. The propensity of the mind towards it, unless that propensity were as strong and universal as that to believe in our senses and experience, will still, I am afraid, be esteemed a suspicious foundation. 'Tis here I wish for your assistance. We must endeavour to prove that this propensity is somewhat different from our inclination to find our own figures in the clouds, our face in the moon, our passions and sentiments even in inanimate matter. Such an inclination may and ought to be controlled, and can never be a legitimate ground of assent.

"The instances I have chosen for Cleanthes are, I hope, tolerably happy; and the confusion in which I represent the sceptic seems natural. But, si quid novisti rectius, &c.

"You ask me, if the idea of cause and effect is nothing but vicinity? (you should have said constant vicinity or regular conjunction)—I would gladly know whence is that farther idea of causation against which you argue? The question is pertinent; but I hope I have answered it. We feel, after the constant conjunction, an easy transition from one idea to the other, or a connection in the imagination; and, as it is usual for us to transfer our own feelings to the objects on which they are dependant, we attach the internal sentiment to the external objects. If no single instances of cause and effect appear to have any connection, but only repeated similar ones, you will find yourself obliged to have recourse to this theory.

"I am sorry our correspondence should lead us into these abstract speculations. I have thought, and read, and composed very little on such questions of late. Morals, politics, and literature, have employed all my time; but still the other topics I must think more curious, important, entertaining, and useful, than any geometry that is deeper than Euclid. If, in order to answer the doubts started, new principles of philosophy must be laid, are not these doubts themselves very useful? Are they not preferable to blind and ignorant assent? I hope I can answer my own doubts: but, if I could not, is it to be wondered at? To give myself airs and speak magnificently; might I not observe that Columbus did not conquer empires and plant colonies?

"If I have not unravelled the knot so well in these last papers I sent you, as perhaps I did in the former, it has not, I assure you, proceeded from want of good will. But some subjects are easier than others; and sometimes one is happier in one's researches and inquiries than at other times. Still I have recourse to the si quid novisti rectius: not in order to pay you a compliment, but from a real philosophical doubt and curiosity."¹

An unfinished draught of the letter, to which the foregoing seems to have been the reply, has been preserved among Sir Gilbert Elliot's papers. This careless fragment is in his own handwriting, and exhibits an interesting specimen of the progress made in Scotland among the higher classes, seventy years ago, not only in sound philosophy, but in purity of English style.

¹ The original is in the possession of the Earl of Minto.

“DEAR SIR,

“Inclosed I return your papers, which, since my coming to town, I have again read over with the greatest care. The thoughts which this last perusal of them has suggested I shall set down, merely in compliance with your desire, for I pretend not to say anything new upon a question which has already been examined so often and so accurately. I must freely own to you, that to me it appears extremely doubtful, if the position which Cleanthes undertakes to maintain can be supported, at least in any satisfactory manner, upon the principles he establishes and the concessions he makes. If it be only from effects exactly similar that experience warrants us to infer a similar cause, then I am afraid it must be granted, that the works of Nature resemble not so nearly the productions of man as to support the conclusion which Cleanthes admits can be built only on that resemblance. The two instances he brings to illustrate his argument are indeed ingenious and elegant; the first, especially, which seemingly carries great weight along with it: the other, I mean that of the Vegetating Library, as it is of more difficult apprehension, so I think it is not easy for the mind either to retain or to apply it. But, if I mistake not, this strong objection strikes equally against them both. Cleanthes does no more than substitute two artificial instances in the place of natural ones: but if these bear no nearer a resemblance than natural ones to the effects which we have experienced to proceed from men, then nothing can justly be inferred from them; and if this resemblance be greater, then nothing farther ought to be inferred from them. In one respect, however, Cleanthes seems to limit his reasonings more than is necessary even upon his own principles. Admitting, for once, that experience is the only source of our knowledge, I cannot see how it follows, that, to enable us to infer a similar cause, the effects must not only be similar, but exactly and precisely so. Will not experience authorize me to conclude, that a machine or piece of mechanism was produced by human art, unless I have happened previously to see a machine or piece of mechanism exactly of the same sort? Point out, for instance, the contrivance and end of a watch to a peasant, who had never before seen anything more curious than the coarsest instruments of husbandry, will he not immediately conclude, that this watch is an effect produced by human art and design? And I would still farther ask, does a spade or a plough much more resemble a watch than a watch does an organized animal? The result of our whole experience, if experience indeed be the only principle, seems rather to amount to this: There are but two ways in which we have ever observed the different parcels of matter to be thrown together; either at random, or with design and purpose. By the first, we have never seen produced a regular complicated effect, corresponding to a certain end; by the second, we uniformly have. If, then, the works of nature, and the productions of man, resemble each other in this one general characteristic, will not even experience sufficiently warrant us to ascribe to both a similar though proportionable cause? If you answer, that abstracting from the experience we acquire in this world, order and adjustment of parts is no proof of design, my reply is, that no conclusions, drawn from the nature of so chimerical a being as man, considered abstracted from experience, can at all be listened to. The principles of the human mind are clearly so contrived as not to unfold themselves till the proper objects and proper opportunity and occasion be presented. There is no arguing upon the nature of man but by considering him as grown to maturity, placed in society, and become acquainted with surrounding objects. But if you should still farther urge, that, with regard to instances of which we have no experience, for ought we know, matter may contain the principles of order, arrangement, and the adjustment of final causes, I should only answer, that whoever can conceive this proposition to be true, has exactly the same idea of matter that I have of mind. I know not if I have reasoned justly upon Cleanthes's prin-

ciples, nor is it indeed very material. The purpose of my letter is barely to point out what to me appears the fair and philosophical method of proceeding in this inquiry. That this universe is the effect of an intelligent designing cause, is a principle which has been most universally received in all ages and in all nations; the proof uniformly appealed to is, the admirable order and adjustment of the works of nature. To proceed, then, experimentally and philosophically, the first question in point of order seems to be, what is the effect which the contemplation of the universe, and the several parts of it, produces upon a considering mind? This is a question of fact; a popular question, the discussion of which depends not upon refinements and subtlety, but merely upon impartiality and attention. I ask, then, what is the sentiment which prevails in one's mind, after having considered not only the more familiar objects that surround him, but also all the discoveries of Natural Philosophy and Natural History; after having considered not only the general economy of the universe, but also the most minute parts of it, and the amazing adjustment of means to ends with a precision unknown to human art, and in instances innumerable? Tell me (to use the words of Cleanthes), does not the idea of a Contriver flow in upon you with a force like that of sensation? Expressions how just! (yet in the mouth of Cleanthes you must allow me to doubt of their propriety.) Nor does this conviction only arise from the consideration of the inanimate parts of the creation, but still more strongly from the contemplation of the faculties of the understanding, the affections of the heart, and the various instincts discoverable both in men and brutes; all so properly adapted to the circumstances and situation both of the species and the individual. Yet this last observation, whatever may be in it, derives no force from experience. For who ever saw a mind produced? If we are desirous to push our experiments still farther, and inquire, whether the survey of the universe has regularly and uniformly led to the belief of an intelligent cause? Shall we not find, that, from the author of the book of Job to the preachers at Boyle's Lecture, the same language has been universally held? No writer, who has ever treated this subject, but has either applied himself to describe, in the most emphatical language, the beauty and order of the universe, or else to collect together and place in the most striking light, the many instances of contrivance and design which have been discovered by observation and experiment. And when they have done this, they seem to have imagined that their task was finished, and their demonstration complete; and indeed no wonder,—for it seems to me, that we are scarce more assured of our own existence, than that this well-ordered universe is the effect of an intelligent cause.

“This first question, then, which is indeed a question of fact, being thus settled upon observations which are obvious and unrefined, but not on that account the less satisfactory, it becomes the business of the philosopher to inquire, whether the conviction arising from these observations be founded on the conclusions of reason, the reports of experience, or the dictates of feeling, or possibly upon all these together; but if his principles shall not be laid so wide as to account for the fact already established upon prior evidence, we may, I think, safely conclude, that his principles are erroneous. Should a philosopher pretend to demonstrate to me, by a system of optics, that I can only discern an object when placed directly opposite to my eye, I should certainly answer, your system must be defective, for it is contradicted by matter of fact.” * * * * *

When this Dissertation was nearly ready for the press, the posthumous works of my late very learned, ingenious, and amiable friend, Dr Thomas Brown, were published. The contributions which the philosophy of the human mind owes to his talents and industry, belong exclusively to the literary history of the nineteenth century; and will, I doubt not, receive ample justice from the pens of some of his numerous pupils. On certain points on which we differed in opinion, more particularly on the philosophical merits of Lord Bacon and of Dr Reid, I should have been tempted to offer some additional explanations, if the circumstance of his recent and much lamented death had not imposed silence on me, upon all questions of controversy between us. The state of my health, besides, has been such during the winter, that I have found the task of correcting the press more than sufficient to furnish employment both to my mind and body; and, in fact, I have been forced to deny myself the satisfaction of reading Dr Brown's Lectures, till my own performance shall be in the hands of the public.

THE END.

When the Constitution was nearly ready for the press, the foundation work of the new party was
all organized, and unable to find Dr. Thomas Brown, very valuable. The Constitution of the
philosophy of the human mind was in the nature and necessity, becoming gradually as the
every faculty of the intellectuality; and with I believe and believe more from the
point of view of the numerous pupils. On certain points we differ in opinion, more
particularly on the philosophical basis of Latin Bacon and in Q. 1. I should have been inclined
to offer some additional explanations. If the circumstances of the present and future are
but not improved, it seems to me upon all questions of controversy, however. The state of my
health, besides, has long since cured the mind, that I have been the most interesting the most
above than sufficient to furnish opportunities for us not much and better. And in fact, I have been
forced to deny myself the assistance of reading Dr. Brown's Lectures, till we have been
still be in the hands of the pupils.

Supplement

TO THE

ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA.

H U N

HUNGARY, one of the kingdoms comprehended within the empire of Austria, and the constitution of which is, in some degree, sketched under that article, in the Second Volume of this Supplement.

It is wholly surrounded by other Austrian states, and bounded on the east by the district of the Seven Mountains, on the north-east by Galicia, on the north-west by Moravia, on the south-west by Illyria, on the west by Steyermark, and on the south by the military colonies. Its extent is variously estimated by different writers, some making it not more than 86,060 square English miles; whilst Lipsky, the latest geographer, calculates it at 88,940 miles. The whole kingdom lies between the latitude $44^\{\backslash circ\}\; 2\text{'}$, and $49^\{\backslash circ\}\; 46\text{'}\; 20\text{'}\text{'}$ north, and between longitude $16^\{\backslash circ\}\; 42\text{'}$ and $25^\{\backslash circ\}\; 16\text{'}$ east from London. The Austrian province of Hungary is more extensive than the kingdom of that name, and includes within it the principalities of the Seven Mountains, the military boundaries, and the lands of Dalmatia; but they are not regulated according to the constitution of the kingdom of Hungary, but governed directly by the cabinet of Vienna, with the intervention of the Governor-general of the province.

The kingdom of Hungary, properly so called, is divided into six circles, the names, extent, and population of which are as follows:

VOL. V. PART I.

The number of the people here given is that of the conscription lists of 1805, in which the nobility and clergy were not included. The former of those bodies amounted, according to a list twenty years before, to 13,728, and the latter to 162,495 males; so that, estimating the females of noble families at the same number, and that neither they nor the clergy had increased or diminished in the preceding twenty years, the whole population in 1805 must have been 8,105,950. In the period that has elapsed since the census was made, an increase must have taken place, as the country has not been the seat of war; and though many of its male population must have fallen in the wide spreading hostilities between Austria and France, the country has been exposed to no such calamitous visitations as tend greatly to check the increase of population. Blumenbach estimated the

^Hungary. number of inhabitants in 1817 to be 8,500,000; and Lichternstern, another statistical writer of great accuracy, coincides with his calculation. By the conscription lists of 1805, the numbers of the sexes appeared to be more nearly equal than is generally found to be the case. The males were 3,759,526, and the females 3,796,394.

^{Religion and Education.} The majority of the people are Catholics, but the other religious sects are established upon nearly a footing of equality, and have their independent ecclesiastical revenues and discipline. In 1805, the Catholics, including some of the Greek church, and the Armenians who had united with them, were 4,647,852. The Greek church, separate from the Catholics, were 1,161,138, the Calvinists, or Reformed, 1,002,490, the Lutherans 624,776, and the Jews 75,128. The Catholic hierarchy consists of three Archbishops, seventeen diocesan and nineteen titular Bishops; besides Abbots, Priors, and other dignified clergy. The Greek church has one Archbishop, seven Bishops, eighteen Deans, several Abbots, and near three thousand Parish Priests. The Reformed have, in four superintendencies, thirteen hundred ministers; and the Lutherans, in four superintendencies, four hundred and eighty pastors. The education of the people is carefully attended to, as far as regards elementary instruction. Each of the religious sects have their separate institutions for educating those of their confession. The Catholics control one University, five Academies, one Lyceum, two Philosophical Institutes, fifty-five Gymnasiums, six Grammar-schools, and nine schools for preparing teachers for the villages, whose number is two thousand six hundred and ninety, and employ three thousand five hundred teachers. The Greeks in union with the Catholics have three hundred and eighty schools, and the same number of teachers. The independent Greeks have two gymnasiums, and twelve hundred and thirty schools, with a master to each. The Reformed have three Colleges, six Gymnasiums, and sixteen hundred schools. The Lutherans have one Lyceum, one College, ten Gymnasiums, and six hundred and thirty schools, with a teacher to each. Thus, for about eight millions and a half of people, the number of institutions for the instruction of the young amount to upwards of six thousand six hundred, and the number of instructors to nearly eight thousand.

^{Classes of Inhabitants.} The inhabitants are divided into nobles, citizens, and peasants. The first class, though differing in titles and rank, have all equal privileges; the principal distinction betwixt them is, that, in the Assembly of the States, or Diet, the Magnates have personally a seat and vote; and the other nobles vote by their representatives. The higher clergy are considered as nobles, and enjoy like privileges. The nobility can alone possess free lands, or those enjoying the jus dominiale, and they are exempt from taxes, tithes, and the quartering of soldiers; but, on the other hand, they are bound to perform personal military service, when the pressure of circumstances compels the Diet to decree the levy en-masse, or, as it is called, the INSURRECTION.

The citizens, or burghers, are the inhabitants of those cities which own no superior lord but the mo-

narch. These have privileges similar to the nobility, by which they are exempted from the payment of taxes and tithes, and from the quarterings of the military; and their deputies have seats in the Diet. They are governed by their own magistrates, and manage their own local funds. They cannot, however, hold estates out of their cities, nor institute a suit against the nobles, in their individual names, but only in that of the corporation to which they belong. The peasants generally are slaves, but with a more or less mitigated degree of servitude; and some few, under the denomination of German, or other colonists, are free. The lot of the common peasants has, however, been of late years much improved. They are more protected against the power of their lords, by being allowed to acquire property, by being permitted to leave their estates to their heirs, and to become, if they can do so, burghers of the royal cities. Their condition is, however, still a severe one, as they bear almost all the burdens of the state, and are incapable of commencing suits in the courts against either the nobility or burghers.

^{Mountains and Face of the Country.} The northern and western sides of Hungary are remarkably mountainous. The Carpathian mountains form a semicircle, extending from the southeast portion of the kingdom till it meets the Danube on the western frontier. In the circle they describe, many projecting ranges extend themselves into the level land. On the western side, the Carinthian mountains cover a considerable portion of the kingdom. The highest points of the Carpathian mountains are the Lomnitzer Spitze, 8,545 feet above the level of the sea; the great Krywan, 8,218; the Caesmark, 8,194; and the Uinacke, 7,597. The loftiest of the Carinthian mass, though it can be scarcely said to be in Hungary, is the Terklou, which is elevated to 10,485 feet. To the eastward of this extend the Norischen and Rhetian Alps, the highest of whose summits within the Austrian dominions attains the height of 14,814 feet. The greatest extent of level land in Hungary is found to the eastward of the river Theisa, forming a rich plain of more than 20,000 square miles. Another level, called the Three Cornered Plain, is found to the eastward of the Danube, beginning near Presburg, whose base line extends 150 miles in length. The soil is as various as the elevation of the land; on the mountains it is dry and sterile; on the terraces that surround them, of moderate fertility, and of most luxurious richness on the plains, but mixed with considerable tracks nearly barren, where, for many miles, neither tree, stone, bush, or living creature, are to be seen, with sand-hills, varying their position with the violent storms that frequently occur.

^Cultivation. Hungary, however, is a country highly productive, yielding the largest proportion of the necessaries of life of any part of the ancient Austrian dominions, and furnishing, from its surplus, large quantities of corn, tobacco, fruit, wine, and cattle, to the neighbouring states. According to the account of Grellman, the extent of land is 39,329,000 jochs, which are nearly equal to an English acre. Of this land only 23,905,126 jochs are in cultivation; the remainder is composed of sandy deserts, lakes, morasses, and barren mountains. The productive lands

^Hungary. are thus divided: 4,897,218 arable, 638,767 gardens, 911,176 vineyards, 2,129,225 meadows, 5,536,000 pastures, 850,000 ponds, and 8,940,740 woods. The northern part of Hungary scarcely produces sufficient corn for its own consumption; but the south is the granary, not only for the northern part of the kingdom, but, after deficient harvests, for a great portion both of Germany and Italy. The corn consists of wheat, rye, barley, oats, peas, and in the most southern parts, of rice and maize. Next to the cultivation of corn, the growth of wine is the most considerable object of attention, and managed with the most care. The wines of Tokay have long been celebrated through Europe, and are of the first class of sweet wines; but the wines of Celenburg, of Rust, and of Ofen, are very highly valued, though but little known beyond the boundaries of the Austrian empire. The whole of the annual produce of wine is estimated by Blumenbach at 4,500,000 hogsheads, and valued at near ten millions Sterling. Notwithstanding the proportion of wood land, the eastern part of the kingdom is much distressed from the want of fuel; but the west furnishes much wood, both for firing and building, and considerable quantities of gall-nuts, turpentine, pitch, tar, and pot and pearl ashes, for the supply of the surrounding countries. The other productions of agriculture, which furnish commerce, are hemp, flax, and tobacco. This last article has been long and successfully cultivated; and that produced in the provinces of Tolna, of Fünfkirchen, and in the peninsula of Murakoz, is highly prized for its peculiarly aromatic flavour.

The breeding of cattle is an important branch of the rural economy of Hungary. The horses, though small, are active and hardy, but, in spite of the measures pursued by the government to improve the races, are still much inferior to those of most parts of the empire. They are generally set to work at too early a period, and their food is usually scanty and bad. They have, however, been somewhat improved of late years, by the institution of studs in different parts, whence stallions are gratuitously supplied. The whole number of horses does not exceed 480,000, of all kinds. The horned cattle are a race much valued in every part of the empire, though they receive but little attention. The extensive Steppes between Debretzen, Temeswar, Neusatz, and Pest, are the native homes of these beasts. Their number was 886,900 oxen, and 1,508,100 cows. These, by their sale to the surrounding countries, produce annually near L.500,000 Sterling. The numbers of the sheep are stated to be upwards of 8,000,000. There are prodigious flocks on the plains between the Danube and the Theisa, and on the elevated grounds of that district. The wool is coarse, and the owners estimate the cheese, milk, and flesh, more than the fleeces. In Western Hungary, on the other hand, the large flocks having been much improved of late years, by crosses with the Merino breeds, and with the sheep of Padua, yield fine wool, which, to the value of L.500,000, is exported. Swine are reared in abundance; and though, when cured, they form the principal animal food of the inhabitants, there are yearly from 200,000 to 250,000 of these animals exported. The feathered tribes

furnish a part of the annual wealth of the country. The greater part of the goose feathers, in which the Jews of Prague trade, come from Hungary; and the capital of the Austrian dominions is supplied from thence with that commodity. The rearing of silkworms has been of late much attended to, in some of the southern parts of Hungary, especially in the Banat. The mulberry trees are very flourishing, and great progress is expected in future, but the undertaking is yet in its infancy.

The southern part of Hungary is a country enriched by minerals of various kinds. About two-thirds of the mines belong to the crown, and are worked on account of the government, under an expensive system of administration, and with a profusion of royal officers. These are formed into four divisions, the principal seats of which are at Chemnitz, Schmoltz, Nagybanja, and Oravicza, and employ, in the various operations, about 45,000 workmen. The labourers, occupied in these mining operations, are generally emigrants from Moldavia and Wallachia. The whole produce of the mines, as well as the varying accounts of André and of Schwartner can be reconciled, average, in a series of years, as follow:

The manufactures of Hungary are yet in an infant state. The kingdom has been long accustomed to supply raw materials to the surrounding countries, and to draw from them their manufactured goods. The inhabitants are not disposed to labour in confined houses; and, till within the last twenty years, their principal occupation, exclusive of agriculture, was confined to making very coarse cloths, and various kinds of wood-ware, for furniture, musical instruments, and toys. The spinning of flax is a domestic manufacture carried on by the females of almost every peasant's family; the annual quantity produced is estimated at sixteen million of ells, or about ten million yards, the far greater part of which is consumed within the kingdom. The principal bleaching works are at Rosenau, where about 300,000 ells are annually whitened, all of the finer kind. There is much woollen cloth made in small manufactories scattered over the whole kingdom, which is of a coarse quality, and adapted for the use of the peasantry. Within the last thirty years more extensive factories have been established in Gacs, Illawa, Kaschau, Munkatsch, Lipersdorf, Mosztenie, and Presburg. These have been mostly founded by Germans, and the greater part of the operative people are of that nation. At these places the use of vari-

ous machinery has been introduced, and the cloth made in them, from the wool of a mixed breed of sheep, partly of the Merino, and partly of the Paduan races, is of fine quality and well finished. There are forty paper-mills in Hungary which produce printing and writing paper, all of a very wretched quality, except some from the mill belonging to the University, which is tolerably good. Silks and ribbons are made at Pest, Groswarden, and Presburg, but to a very small extent. The leather of Hungary is much valued through the whole Austrian territories, but the quantity of curried leather, prepared mostly at Presburg, is not equal to the consumption, and the hides of their cattle are sent to Germany, from whence they return in a state fit for use; the tanneries are numerous in Presburg, Fünfkirchen, Ratko, Zips, and Debreczyn. The iron produced by the native mines is manufactured into the various articles which the wants of the inhabitants require, at Zips, Abouigvar, Sarosch, Zemplin, Vorschod, and through the whole county of Gomorer. The best steel is made in Diosgyvor, and the vicinity of Neusol; and the swords and other weapons manufactured in the different hard-ware districts are esteemed to be of excellent quality, though of clumsy and grotesque forms. Glass is made (but scarcely any but green) in twenty-five glass-houses in different parts of the kingdom. The sugar refiners supply the domestic consumption. Snuff and tobacco are made almost exclusively from the plants raised on their own soil. The soap of Hungary, which is very good, is principally made from natron in Debreczyn, where there are seventy-eight manufactories of that article. Linseed-oil, oil of turpentine, cornspirits, cordials, especially Rosiglo, and a medicine for wounds, known through Germany by the name of the Hungarian Balsam, refined saltpetre, and pearl ashes, are the productions of the other manufactories.

Hungary is surrounded on every side by the other Austrian dominions. The states of that country are proud of their independence as a separate kingdom, and tenacious of their privileges, especially of their exemption from the taxes imposed by the Cabinet of Vienna. As the Emperor's government has no wish to embroil itself with the states by attempting internal taxation, it extracts a revenue by surrounding Hungary with customhouses, where tolls are collected on every commodity that enters into the kingdom, or passes from it into the hereditary states. The toll thus collected is one-thirtieth part of the commodity, or three and a third per cent. on the value of it. The very high rate of carriage arising from the bad state of the roads is, however, a greater impediment to the exchange of commodities than even this tax at the frontiers. The principal trade of Hungary, beyond the immediate boundaries, is with Poland and Silesia, which countries draw their wine from thence; and with the north of Italy, to which its surplus corn is transported. The port of Fiume is connected with Hungary by the only good roads the kingdom possesses, and may be considered as its haven for exportation and importation, and as alone bringing it into contact with distant countries. The central point of internal trade is Pest, where, at four

great fairs, the concourse of buyers and sellers is so great, that the prices settled by them, if they do not absolutely govern, in a great degree regulate those of the other parts of the kingdom. From the central city the commerce diverges in four great branches; 1st, Towards the German Austrian dominions by Raab, Presburg, Komorn, and Oedenburg, at each of which places considerable business is transacted; 2d, Toward Galicia, through Kaschau, Eperies, and Leutschau; 3d, To Sieberbirgen, Moldavia, and Wallachia, through Debreczyn, Ezegezin, and Temeswar; and, 4th, To the Turkish dominions beyond the Danube, through Neusatz and Semlin. At all these places considerable annual fairs or markets are held, which are resorted to by vast numbers of merchants, not only from Germany and Poland, but by the Turks, Armenians, Greeks, and even Tartars. Besides the marts at these cities, there are in Hungary sixteen hundred other places where annual fairs are held. The means of internal transit furnished by the rivers are a great assistance to commerce. The Danube is navigable for craft of two hundred tons burden, the Theisa for those of one hundred, and the other rivers, the Save, the Drave, the Waag, the Gran, the Unna, and the Kulpa, are all navigable for smaller vessels of various capabilities. Although the roads generally are miserably bad, yet some have been constructed for the purposes of trade, called Komercialstrasse, which, commencing at Pest in six different directions, cross the kingdom. Though not very good, or only so when compared with the other roads, they afford communications; but the want of bridges over the different rivers makes every removal of commodities both dilatory and troublesome. The paper money which Austria circulates through all her dominions, and which is greatly depreciated, when compared with the precious metals that are used as measures of value in all the other parts of Europe, makes any returns in the amount of exports and imports very indefinite, without going back to a period prior to any sensible depreciation. We have, therefore, extracted from various accounts the amount of the trade of Hungary for the year 1802. Since that time the apparent amount has been swelled in figures, but, as the paper has fallen in value, it has created an illusive increase without any correspondent one in intrinsic value. The fluctuations in the relative value of the paper money have been very great, so that, without knowing its precise relation to metallic money at the given periods, any accounts of the extent of the trade at those periods must be as uncertain as the then value of the currency.

The balance of commodities between Hungary and the other parts of the Austrian dominions is thus, 6,124,878 gulden, or about L. 600,000 in favour of the former.

The government of Hungary is a limited monarchy, hereditary in the house of Hapsburg at present; but, in case of the failure of all the branches of that family, the king, or rather dynasty, becomes elective by the assembled states or diet. The laws by which the constitution was founded, and by which it is maintained, are the Golden Bull of their king Andreas II., dated in 1222, the Magna Charta of the nobles, whose privileges are principally regarded; and these have been confirmed by the peace of Vienna in 1606, and of Lintz in 1647. By these two treaties also the free exercise of their religion is secured to the Protestant sectaries. All these interests were further confirmed by the diet of Presburg in 1687, and by the inauguration diploma of Leopold II. in 1790. These various charters and acts of the states have merely secured to the privileged orders their various ancient rights, but have left the peasantry, the great mass of the population, in the same state of subjection as before their promulgation.

The whole executive power is vested in the monarch. He is the source of all titles and offices, nominates to the higher ecclesiastical dignities and to the benches of justice. He makes war and peace, can call together and dissolve the diet, and draw forth the whole military population. He receives the incomes of all vacant ecclesiastical benefices, and is heir to the property of such noble families as become extinct. The direction of the universities and colleges belongs to the King, but to the higher offices in

them he can only appoint those who are of noble birth. The appeals to Rome on the affairs of the Catholic church can only be made through him, and the royal authority has been constantly exercised to contract the number and limit the causes of such applications. The King must be of the Catholic religion, and, at his inauguration, must swear to maintain the privileges and rights of the states; notwithstanding this oath, by various circumstances, many arising out of the late long wars, the power and influence of the Crown have been recently very much extended. Within six months after succeeding to the throne, the King must call together the states, and in their presence, in the open air, swear to maintain the privileges of the states, to leave the crown of St Stephen within the kingdom, and to allow the states to elect a King, upon failure of issue both male and female of the Emperor Charles VI. Joseph I. and Leopold I. During a minority, the Palatine is guardian of the King and kingdom; but the monarch is capable of assuming the exercise of power when he has completed his fourteenth year.

The States of Hungary (status et ordines) consist of, 1st, The Prelates, to which class belong the Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, and Priors of the Greek and Catholic Churches; 2d, The temporal Barons and Magnates, the High Bailiffs of the provinces, and the Counts and independent noble proprietors of estates; 3d, The Nobility, or Knights, who do not attend personally, but choose two deputies for each county (Komitat) or province; and, 4th, The Deputies from the royal cities. These members are said to be the representatives of Hungary, whilst the mass of the inhabitants, in their law described as misera plebs contribuens, have no connection with public affairs, except by paying taxes and furnishing recruits; from both which services the nobles and clergy are exempt. The purposes for which the States assemble are the coronation of the King,—the election of a Palatine,—the admission to or exclusion of nobles and cities from their rank,—the granting subsidies and imposing taxes, and the framing new laws, or rather giving the assent of the assembly to such laws as the King may enact. By the constitution, the States should be convened every five years, or whenever any pressing circumstances require their assembling. Of these circumstances the King must judge, as the States are only convened by his summons. They meet in two chambers, or, as they are denominated, tables. The Magnates' table is composed of the royal barons, the high hereditary officers of the kingdom, and the prelates, counts, and free landlords. The other chamber, called the States table, consists of the deputies of the Komitats, or the suppleans of the nobles, the representatives of the royal free cities, and the persons appointed by such Magnates as do not attend, who are called Ablegati absentium. Though the States meet but in two chambers, yet they vote in four distinct bodies, and the absolute majority of those present determine each question in that body. If the King and three of these bodies determine any point, it becomes a law; and the fourth body has no suspending power. The King appears personally, or by his commissioner, and claims his pre-

Hungary. rogatives, and the States demand a confirmation of their rights. At the Diet in 1792 were present 30 Bishops and other ecclesiastics, 178 Counts, 131 Hereditary Officers and Barons, 16 Law Officers, 30 Deputies of Chapters, 98 Representatives of Komitats, 115 Suppleans of absent Magnates, and 82 Deputies of Cities. The sitting of the Diet depends on the King, who has usually dismissed them as speedily as possible, out of regard to the general welfare of the people. During the meeting of the Diet, all the courts of justice are shut up, and the deputies of the free cities and of the Komitats are maintained at the time of the session at the expence of the people who send them, whilst the hereditary officers are kept by the Crown. From these regulations, it is not to be wondered at that no anxiety for the meeting of the Diet is manifested by any part of the kingdom. The King is well aware that no considerable sum beyond what is necessary for the expences of the local government, will be often granted by the Diet; and when it is granted, as the whole is squeezed from the hard earnings of the peasants, it is collected with difficulty, and produces great oppression. As each Komitat has its own provincial Diet, in which its affairs are discussed and regulated, and to which appeals from the courts of justice of the nobles (Herren Stuhls) can be made, there is less occasion for the assembling of the general Diet; and though, by the constitution, that body should meet every five years, yet, by a general acquiescence, its periodical convocation has been of late dispensed with. Whenever the Diet is convoked, the summons of the monarch states the purposes for which they are to meet, in the orders to these subordinate diets; and no other proposition is or can be produced at the assembly. The local diets thus have an opportunity of discussing the propositions that are to be made to the general assembly, of determining what part to take, and of instructing their deputies in what manner to vote. No project of a new law originates with any of the States; and the sittings, though they have been formerly very stormy, have been, of late, rather in compliance with ancient forms, and for purposes of display, than for any objects of great utility.

Great Officers. The principal officer of the kingdom is the Palatine, who is the representative of the King, president of the Diet, and of the Supreme Court of Justice, dispenser of pardons, and mediator between the Monarch and the States; his office continues but one year, but he may be re-appointed. Next to him is the Judge of the Supreme Court, who is the president of the other two, and fills the office of Palatine in the absence of that chief. The Ban of the Croats follows next in rank, but has no official duties unless at the coronation, when he carries the golden ball. The hereditary treasurer (Tavernicus) has a seat in the supreme council, and is Captain of the noble Hungarian Body Guards, who perform the palace duty.

Chancery Court. The administration is conducted by the Emperor through the means of the Hungarian Court of Chancery in Vienna, which is constituted of twenty-four state-councillors, viz. three ecclesiastics, eleven mag-

nates, and ten of knightly rank, all nominated by the monarch. This college exercises the superintendence over churches, schools, and charitable establishments, administers the funds of the universities and convents, and regulates the agriculture, the trade, and the feudal claims. This body has no original jurisdiction in matters of finance or of justice, but may be appealed to by the provincial diets, or the local courts of law.

The primary courts of law are under the control of the nobles, who appoint the judges and direct the procedure. The oppression in such courts towards those not noble has been long excessive, and, though somewhat mitigated since the reign of Maria Theresa, bears still the deep impression of the worst periods of the feudal government. The whole system of law seems calculated only to secure and perpetuate to the nobles the enormous power they possess. The nobles are exempt from all taxes and imposts of every kind; the only duty they owe to the state is that of personal service in war. If a person not noble assaults one who is so, the legal punishment is death, which is, however, now usually commuted into the forfeiture of all his property, with the privilege of reclaiming it whenever he shall have the means of paying for it a stipulated portion of the value. If a peasant is injured by a noble, to whose estate he is attached, he can have no redress, since he can only sue for it in the name and through the medium of the very person against whom he seeks it. The court in which his complaint is to be heard, not only consists of persons who are generally the dependants of the presumed offender, but moreover they can only be assembled at his summons. If a peasant is injured by any other noble, he cannot seek redress in his own person, but only through the intervention of him on whose estate he lives; and such is the contempt in which the peasantry are held, that even this privilege must very often be nugatory. The law of entail is another injurious privilege of the nobility, common, indeed, to all the feudal countries, which puts it out of their power to alienate the estates to the detriment of the successors. The effect of this is, that the possessions of the nobles are of enormous extent, embracing, often, whole Komitats; and they are held upon tenures which convert them into the nature of principalities. The kingdom, indeed, partakes more of the nature of a great military confederation of subordinate chiefs, under one hereditary leader, than of any other known form of government. As all the descendants of noble families are themselves noble, whilst property remains almost unalienable, the poverty into which individuals belonging to distant branches of these families fall is in proportion to their number. In Hungary, it is estimated that one person in twenty is of noble birth, all possessing the obnoxious privileges here noticed; many of them, though free from all taxes, sunk to a state of most abject poverty, and some of them filling the offices of peasants or servants. The inhabitants of the free cities are supposed to be about equal in numbers to the nobility, and the remainder of the people, according to these estimates, amounting to eighteen

Hungary. out of every twenty, can have no protection from the laws, nor any resource when injured or oppressed by their superiors. "The noble," says Dr Bright, "pays no tribute, and goes freely through the country, subject to neither tolls nor duties; but the peasant is subject to pay tribute, and although there may be some nominal restrictions to the services due from him to the government, it can safely be said, that there is no limit, in point of fact, to the services which he is compelled to perform. Whatever public work is to be executed,—not only when a road is to be prepared, but when new roads are to be made, or bridges built, the county meeting gives the order, and the peasant dares not refuse to execute it. All soldiers passing through the country are quartered exclusively upon the peasantry. They must provide them, without recompence, with bread, and furnish their horses with corn, and whenever called upon, by an order termed a forespan order, they must provide the person bringing it with horses and means of conveyance. Such an order is always employed by the officers of government; and whoever can in any way plead public business as the cause of his journey, takes care to provide himself with it. In all levies of soldiers, the whole falls upon the peasant, and the choice is left to the arbitrary discretion of the lord and his servants."

From the same intelligent traveller we learn, what, indeed, the observations of all ages has taught, that whilst the nobles are hospitable, high-spirited, well informed, and zealous to promote such institutions and projects as they think calculated to benefit their country, the peasantry are not only poor but idle, dissolute, and dishonest. Perhaps in no other country of Europe is highway robbery so frequent; and, as a remarkable trait in the character both of the noble and the peasant, we are told, that to every nobleman's house a prison is attached, in which are to be constantly found from ten to twenty miserable wretches, pinioned in a way which would not be tolerated in England towards the worst felons. The dungeons in which they are immured are far more dismal and wretched than any prison in London can exhibit. The extreme viciousness of the Hungarian peasantry seems to have extinguished all feeling in the breasts of the higher nobles for their degraded state; and instead of the wise policy, which, by ameliorating their condition, would improve their morals, they are left to endure those punishments which a different state of society would be likely to render unnecessary.

Finances. In speaking of the finances of the Hungarian government, a difficulty arises from the state of the currency. In the whole of the Austrian dominions, the currency is paper money issued by the monarch, which has gradually depreciated, and, by affecting the prices of all commodities, has rendered them variable, and extended those variations to the public revenue; hence the accounts of the national income, given by different writers, are excessively discordant. According to the best view we can take, the revenue, if reduced into metallic money, would amount to nearly L. 2,000,000 Sterling, the greater part of which is expended by the local diets of the several Komitats, and a very small portion is remitted to

Vienna. This revenue is derived from the following sources: 1. The royal domains; 2. The regalia, among which the most considerable are the salt mines and salt springs, and in which is included the coinage, the mines, the toleration tax on the Jews, the profits on posting, and the revenues of the vacant ecclesiastical benefices; 3. The land-tax levied on the peasants, which amounts to nearly L. 400,000 Sterling; and, 4. The profits arising from loans of money by the royal banks.

The military force raised by Hungary consists of twelve regiments of infantry of 3857 men each, and ten complete Hussar regiments of 1698 men each, making together 63,354 regulars, which are recruited from among the peasantry, and are much increased in time of war, when danger threatens the country, and what is termed the insurrection is called forth. In 1797, this irregular force was 18,000 cavalry and 35,000 infantry; in 1800, it was 11,000 horse and 26,000 foot; and, in 1809, 18,000 horse and 21,000 foot. From being tenacious of their privileges, and from the organization and the ranking of the different portions of this noble force, being partly under the control of the monarch, and partly under that of the diets, it has never been found very efficient when engaged in field operations.

The southern frontier on the boundary of the Turkish empire is planted with a military colony, who hold the lands they cultivate upon the terms of being always ready for active service when a war breaks out with that power. Though scattered on different small farms, they are all regimented, and have been drilled, so that they are capable of affording some defence against such undisciplined bodies as the Turks usually employ in their predatory irruptions.

Though Hungary has a national language, yet it is not generally spoken, nor supposed to be understood by more than one-third of the inhabitants. The only written language, until within a very late period, was the Latin, in which all their laws and public proceedings were promulgated; and it is still the most common medium of communication. It was not till the reign of Maria Theresa that any experiments were made to improve and polish the national language. When she formed her Hungarian guards, a number of young men of noble families were drawn to Vienna, where they had means of knowing the estimation in which the cultivation of learning was held in the more civilized parts of Europe, and were taught to feel the inferiority of their native country, in not possessing a national language and national literature. This stimulated them to exertions to remove the stigma, and gave birth to most of those writings of which the Hungarians boast. The cultivation of the vernacular tongue was further promoted by the attempt of the Emperor Joseph to introduce the German tongue into their public transactions; this roused the patriotic spirit of the Hungarians, and the effect of that spirit became visible in the extension and improvement of the native language. Since that period the study of this language has produced some good poets, who have generally dedicated their powers to the praises of their country, and to recording the merits of its most distin-