AND OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

AND OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, HIGHER AT PHILADELPHIA.

FOUNDING FOUNDRER OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY

OF EDINBURGH.

TO THE

CONTAINING SOME CRITICAL REMARKS ON THE DISCOURSE PREFIXED TO
THE FRENCH ENCYCLOPÆDIE.

WHEN I ventured to undertake the task of contributing a Preliminary Dissertation to these Supplemental Volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica, my original intention was, after the example of D'Alembert, to have begun with a general survey of the various departments of human knowledge. The outline of such a survey, sketched by the comprehensive genius of Bacon, together with the corrections and improvements suggested by his illustrious disciple, would, I thought, have rendered it comparatively easy to adapt their intellectual map to the present advanced state of the sciences; while the unrivalled authority which their united work has long maintained in the republic of letters, would, I flattered myself, have softened those criticisms which might be expected to be incurred by any similar attempt of a more modern hand. On a closer examination, however, of their labours, I found myself under the necessity of abandoning this design. Doubts immediately occurred to me with respect to the justness of their logical views, and soon terminated in a conviction, that these views are radically and essentially erroneous. Instead, therefore, of endeavouring to give additional currency to speculations which I conceived to be fundamentally unsound, I resolved to avail myself of the present opportunity to point out their most important defects;—defects which, I am nevertheless very ready to acknowledge, it is much more easy to remark than to supply. The critical strictures which, in the course of this discussion, I shall have occasion to offer on my predecessors, will, at the same time,

account for my forbearing to substitute a new map of my own, instead of that to which the names of Bacon and D'Alembert have lent so great and so well-merited a celebrity; and may perhaps suggest a doubt, whether the period be yet arrived for hazarding again, with any reasonable prospect of success, a repetition of their bold experiment. For the length to which these strictures are likely to extend, the only apology I have to offer is the peculiar importance of the questions to which they relate, and the high authority of the writers whose opinions I presume to controvert.

Before entering on his main subject, D'Alembert is at pains to explain a distinction, which he represents as of considerable importance—between the Genealogy of the sciences, and the Encyclopedical arrangement of the objects of human knowledge.¹ "In examining the former," he observes, "our aim is, by remounting to the origin and genesis of our ideas, to trace the causes to which the sciences owe their birth; and to mark the characteristics by which they are distinguished from each other. In order to ascertain the latter, it is necessary to comprehend, in one general scheme, all the various departments of study; to arrange them into proper classes; and to point out their mutual relations and dependencies." Such a scheme is sometimes likened by D'Alembert to a map or chart of the intellectual world; sometimes to a Genealogical² or Encyclopedical Tree, indicating the manifold and complicated affinities of those studies, which, however apparently remote and unconnected, are all the common offspring of the human understanding. For executing successfully this chart or tree, a philosophical delineation of the natural progress of the mind may (according to him) furnish very useful lights; although he acknowledges that the results of the two undertakings cannot fail to differ widely in many instances,—the laws which regulate the generation of our ideas often interfering with that systematical order in the relative arrangement of scientific pursuits, which it is the purpose of the Encyclopedical Tree to exhibit.³

In treating of the first of these subjects, it cannot be denied that D'Alembert has displayed much ingenuity and invention; but the depth and solidity of his general train of thought may be questioned. On various occasions, he has evidently suffered himself to be misled by a spirit of false refinement; and on others, where probably he was fully aware of his inability to render the theoretical chain complete, he seems to have aimed at concealing from his readers the faulty links, by availing himself of those epigrammatic points, and other artifices of style, with which the genius of the French language enables a skilful writer to smooth and varnish over his most illogical transitions.

The most essential imperfections, however, of this historical sketch, may be fairly ascribed to a certain vagueness and indecision in the author's idea, with regard to the scope of his inquiries. What he has in general pointed at is to trace, from the theory of the Mind, and from the order followed by nature in the development of its powers, the successive steps by which the curiosity may be conceived to have been gradually conducted from one intellectual pursuit to another; but, in the execution of this design (which in itself is highly philosophical and interesting), he does not appear to have paid due attention to the essential difference between the history of the human species, and that of the civilized and inquisitive individual. The former was undoubtedly that which principally figured in his conceptions; and to which, I apprehend, he ought to have confined himself exclusively; whereas, in fact, he has so completely blended the two subjects together, that it is often impossible to say which of them was uppermost in his thoughts. The consequence is, that, instead of throwing upon either those strong and steady lights, which might have been expected from his powers, he has involved both in additional obscurity. This indistinctness is more peculiarly remarkable in the beginning of his Discourse, where he represents men in the earliest infancy of science, before they had time to take any precautions for securing the means of their subsistence, or of their safety,—as philosophising on their sensations,—on the existence of their own bodies,—and on that of the material world. His Discourse, accordingly, sets out with a series of Meditations, precisely analogous to those which form the introduction to the philosophy of Descartes; meditations which, in the order of time, have been uniformly posterior to the study of external nature; and which, even in such an age as the present, are confined to a comparatively small number of recluse metaphysicians.

and governments were established before politics were studied as a science. A remark somewhat similar is made by Celsus, concerning the history of medicine: "Non medicinam rationi esse posteriorem, sed post medicinam inventam, rationem esse quæsitam."

Of this sort of conjectural or theoretical history, the most unexceptionable specimens which have yet appeared, are indisputably the fragments in Mr Smith's posthumous work on the History of Astronomy, and on that of the Ancient Systems of Physics and Metaphysics. That, in the latter of these, he may have occasionally accommodated his details to his own peculiar opinions concerning the object of Philosophy, may perhaps, with some truth, be alleged; but he must at least be allowed the merit of completely avoiding the error by which D'Alembert was misled; and, even in those instances where he himself seems to wander a little from the right path, of furnishing his successors with a thread, leading by easy and almost insensible steps, from the first gross perceptions of sense, to the most abstract refinements of the Grecian schools. Nor is this the only praise to which these fragments are entitled. By seizing on the different points of view from whence the same object was contemplated by different sects, they often bestow a certain degree of unity and of interest on what before seemed calculated merely to bewilder and to confound; and render the apparent aberrations and caprices of the understanding, subservient to the study of its operations and laws.

To the foregoing strictures on D'Alembert's view of the origin of the sciences, it may be added, that this introductory part of his Discourse does not seem to have any immediate connection with the sequel. We are led, indeed, to expect, that it is to prepare the way for the study of the Encyclopedical Tree afterwards to be exhibited; but in this expectation we are completely disappointed;—no reference to it whatever being made by the author in the farther prosecution of his subject. It forms, accordingly, a portion of his Discourse altogether foreign to the general design; while, from the metaphysical obscurity which pervades it, the generality of readers are likely to receive an impression, either unfavourable to the perspicuity of the writer, or to their own powers of comprehension and of reasoning. It were to be wished, therefore, that, instead of occupying the first pages of the Encyclopédie, it had been reserved for a separate article in the body of that work. There it might have been read by the logical student, with no small interest and advantage; for, with all its imperfections, it bears numerous and precious marks of its author's hand.

In delineating his Encyclopedical Tree, D'Alembert has, in my opinion, been still more unsuccessful than in the speculations which have been hitherto under our review. His veneration for Bacon seems, on this occasion, to have prevented him from giving due scope to his own powerful and fertile genius, and has engaged him in the fruitless task of attempting, by means of arbitrary definitions, to draw a veil over incurable defects and blemishes. In this part of Bacon's logic, it must, at the same time, be owned, that there is something peculiarly captivating to the fancy; and, accordingly, it has united in its favour the suffrages

of almost all the succeeding authors who have treated of the same subject. It will be necessary for me, therefore, to explain fully the grounds of that censure, which, in opposition to so many illustrious names, I have presumed to bestow on it.

Of the leading ideas to which I more particularly object, the following statement is given by D'Alembert. I quote it in preference to the corresponding passage in Bacon, as it contains various explanatory clauses and glosses, for which we are indebted to the ingenuity of the commentator.

“ The objects about which our minds are occupied, are either spiritual or material, and the media employed for this purpose are our ideas, either directly received, or derived from reflection. The system of our direct knowledge consists entirely in the passive and mechanical accumulation of the particulars it comprehends; an accumulation which belongs exclusively to the province of Memory. Reflection is of two kinds, according as it is employed in reasoning on the objects of our direct ideas, or in studying them as models for imitation.

“ Thus, Memory, Reason, strictly so called, and Imagination, are the three modes in which the mind operates on the subjects of its thoughts. By Imagination, however, is here to be understood, not the faculty of conceiving or representing to ourselves what we have formerly perceived, a faculty which differs in nothing from the memory of these perceptions, and which, if it were not relieved by the invention of signs, would be in a state of continual exercise. The power which we denote by this name has a nobler province allotted to it, that of rendering imitation subservient to the creations of genius.

“ These three faculties suggest a corresponding division of human knowledge into three branches, 1. History, which derives its materials from Memory; 2. Philosophy, which is the product of Reason; and 3. Poetry (comprehending under this title all the Fine Arts), which is the offspring of Imagination.¹ If we place Reason before Imagination, it is because this order appears to us conformable to the natural progress of our intellectual operations.² The Imagination is a creative faculty, and the mind,

before it attempts to create, begins by reasoning upon what it sees and knows. Nor is this all. In the faculty of Imagination, both Reason and Memory are, to a certain extent, combined,—the mind never imagining or creating objects but such as are analogous to those whereof it has had previous experience. Where this analogy is wanting, the combinations are extravagant and displeasing; and consequently, in that agreeable imitation of nature, at which the fine arts aim in common, invention is necessarily subjected to the control of rules which it is the business of the philosopher to investigate.

“ In farther justification of this arrangement, it may be remarked, that Reason, in the course of its successive operations on the subjects of thought, by creating abstract and general ideas, remote from the perceptions of sense, leads to the exercise of Imagination as the last step of the process. Thus metaphysics and geometry are, of all the sciences belonging to Reason, those in which Imagination has the greatest share. I ask pardon for this observation from those men of taste, who, little aware of the near affinity of geometry to their own pursuits, and still less suspecting that the only intermediate step between them is formed by metaphysics, are disposed to employ their wit in depreciating its value. The truth is, that, to the geometer who invents, Imagination is not less essential than to the poet who creates. They operate, indeed, differently on their object, the former abstracting and analyzing, where the latter combines and adorns;—two processes of the mind, it must, at the same time, be confessed, which seem from experience to be so little congenial, that it may be doubted if the talents of a great geometer and of a great poet will ever be united in the same person. But whether these talents be, or be not mutually exclusive, certain it is, that they who possess the one, have no right to despise those who cultivate the other. Of all the great men of antiquity, Archimedes is perhaps he who is the best entitled to be placed by the side of Homer.”

D’Alembert afterwards proceeds to observe, that of these three general branches of the Encyclopedical Tree, a natural and convenient subdivision is afforded by the metaphysical distribution of things into Material and Spiritual. “ With these two classes of existences,” he observes farther, “ history and philosophy are equally conversant; but as for the Imagination, her imitations are entirely confined to the material world;—a circumstance,” he adds, “ which conspires with the other arguments above stated, in justifying Bacon for

avons suivi, dans le système Encyclopédique, l’ordre métaphysique des opérations de l’esprit, plutôt que l’ordre historique de ses progrès depuis la renaissance des lettres.”—(Disc. Prelim.) How far the motive here assigned for the change is valid, the reader will be enabled to judge from the sequel of the above quotation.

assigning to her the last place in his enumeration of our intellectual faculties.¹ Upon this subdivision he enlarges at some length, and with considerable ingenuity; but on the present occasion it would be quite superfluous to follow him any farther, as more than enough has been already quoted to enable my readers to judge, whether the objections which I am now to state to the foregoing extracts be as sound and decisive as I apprehend them to be.

Of these objections a very obvious one is suggested by a consideration, of which D'Alembert himself has taken notice,—that the three faculties to which he refers the whole operations of the understanding are perpetually blended together in their actual exercise, insomuch that there is scarcely a branch of human knowledge which does not, in a greater or less degree, furnish employment to them all. It may be said, indeed, that some pursuits exercise and invigorate particular faculties more than others; that the study of History, for example, although it may occasionally require the aid both of Reason and of Imagination, yet chiefly furnishes occupation to the Memory; and that this is sufficient to justify the logical division of our mental powers as the ground-work of a corresponding Encyclopedical classification.² This, however, will be found more specious than solid. In what respects is the faculty of Memory more essentially necessary to the student of history than to the philosopher or to the poet; and, on the other hand, of what value, in the circle of the sciences, would be a collection of historical details, accumulated without discrimination, without a scrupulous examination of evidence, or without any attempt to compare and to generalize? For the cultivation of that species of history, in particular, which alone deserves a place in the Encyclopedical Tree, it may be justly affirmed, that the rarest and most comprehensive combination of all our mental gifts is indispensably requisite.

Another, and a still more formidable objection to Bacon's classification, may be derived from the very imperfect and partial analysis of the mind which it assumes as its basis. Why were the powers of Abstraction and Generalization passed over in silence?—powers which, according as they are cultivated or neglected, constitute the most essential of all distinctions between the intellectual characters of individuals. A corresponding distinction, too, not less important, may be remarked among the objects of human study, according as our aim is to treasure up particular facts, or to establish general conclusions. Does not this distinction mark out, with greater precision, the limits which separate philosophy from mere historical narrative, than that which turns upon the different provinces of Reason and of Memory?

I shall only add one other criticism on this celebrated enumeration, and that is, its want of distinctness, in confounding together the Sciences and the Arts under the same general titles. Hence a variety of those capricious arrangements, which must immediately strike every reader who follows Bacon through his details; the reference, for instance, of the mechanical arts to the department of History; and consequently, according to his own analysis of the Mind, the ultimate reference of these arts to the faculty of Memory: while, at the same time, in his tripartite division of the whole field of human knowledge, the art of Poetry has one entire province allotted to itself.

These objections apply in common to Bacon and to D'Alembert. That which follows has a particular reference to a passage already cited from the latter, where, by some false refinements concerning the nature and functions of Imagination, he has rendered the classification of his predecessor incomparably more indistinct and illogical than it seemed to be before.

That all the creations, or new combinations of Imagination, imply the previous process of decomposition or analysis, is abundantly manifest; and, therefore, without departing from the common and popular use of language, it may undoubtedly be said, that the faculty of abstraction is not less essential to the Poet, than to the Geometer and the Metaphysician.¹ But this is not the doctrine of D'Alembert. On the contrary, he affirms, that

Metaphysics and Geometry are, of all the sciences connected with reason, those in which Imagination has the greatest share; an assertion which, it will not be disputed, has at first sight somewhat of the air of a paradox; and which, on closer examination, will, I apprehend, be found altogether inconsistent with fact. If indeed D'Alembert had, in this instance, used (as some writers have done) the word Imagination as synonymous with Invention, I should not have thought it worth while (at least so far as the geometer is concerned) to dispute his proposition. But that this was not the meaning annexed to it by the author, appears from a subsequent clause, where he tells us, that the most refined operations of reason, consisting in the creation of generals which do not fall under the cognizance of our senses, naturally lead to the exercise of imagination. His doctrine, therefore, goes to the identification of Imagination with Abstraction; two faculties so very different in the direction which they give to our thoughts, that (according to his own acknowledgement) the man who is habitually occupied in exerting the one, seldom fails to impair both his capacity and his relish for the exercise of the other.

This identification of two faculties, so strongly contrasted in their characteristical features, was least of all to be expected from a logician, who had previously limited the province of Imagination to the imitation of material objects; a limitation, it may be remarked in passing, which is neither sanctioned by common use, nor by just views of the philosophy of the Mind. Upon what ground can it be alleged, that Milton's portrait of Satan's intellectual and moral character was not the offspring of the same creative faculty which gave birth to his Garden of Eden? After such a definition, however, it is difficult to conceive, how so very acute a writer should have referred to Imagination the abstractions of the geometer and of the metaphysician; and still more, that he should have attempted to justify this reference, by observing, that these abstractions do not fall under the cognizance of the senses. My own opinion is, that, in the composition of the whole passage, he had a view to the unexpected parallel between Homer and Archimedes, with which he meant, at the close, to surprise his readers.

If the foregoing strictures be well-founded, it seems to follow, not only that the attempt of Bacon and of D'Alembert to classify the sciences and arts according to a logical division of our faculties, is altogether unsatisfactory; but that every future attempt of the same kind may be expected to be liable to similar objections. In studying, indeed, the Theory of the Mind, it is necessary to push our analysis as far as the nature of the subject admits of; and, wherever the thing is possible, to examine its constituent principles separately and apart from each other: but this consideration itself, when combined with what was before stated on the endless variety of forms in which they may be blended together in our various intel-

lectual pursuits, is sufficient to shew how ill adapted such an analysis must for ever remain to serve as the basis of an Encyclopedical distribution.¹

The circumstance to which this part of Bacon's philosophy is chiefly indebted for its popularity, is the specious simplicity and comprehensiveness of the distribution itself;—not the soundness of the logical views by which it was suggested. That all our intellectual pursuits may be referred to one or other of these three heads, History, Philosophy, and Poetry, may undoubtedly be said with considerable plausibility; the word History being understood to comprehend all our knowledge of particular facts and particular events; the word Philosophy, all the general conclusions or laws inferred from these particulars by induction; and the word Poetry, all the arts addressed to the imagination. Not that the enumeration, even with the help of this comment, can be considered as complete, for (to pass over entirely the other objections already stated) under which of these three heads shall we arrange the various branches of pure mathematics?

Are we therefore to conclude, that the magnificent design, conceived by Bacon, of enumerating, defining, and classifying the multifarious objects of human knowledge; (a design, on the successful accomplishment of which he himself believed that the advancement of the sciences essentially depended)—Are we to conclude, that this design was nothing more than the abortive offspring of a warm imagination, unsusceptible of any useful application to enlighten the mind, or to accelerate its progress? My own idea is widely different. The design was, in every respect, worthy of the sublime genius by which it was formed. Nor does it follow, because the execution was imperfect, that the attempt has been attended with no advantage. At the period when Bacon wrote, it was of much more consequence to exhibit to the learned a comprehensive sketch, than an accurate survey of the intellectual world;—such a sketch as, by pointing out to those whose views had been hitherto confined within the limits of particular regions, the relative positions and bearings of their respective districts, as parts of one great whole, might invite them all, for the common benefit, to a reciprocal exchange of their local riches. The societies or academies which, soon after,

springing up in different countries of Europe, for the avowed purpose of contributing to the general mass of information, by the collection of insulated facts, conjectures, and queries, afford sufficient proof, that the anticipations of Bacon were not, in this instance, altogether chimerical.

In examining the details of Bacon's survey, it is impossible not to be struck (more especially when we reflect on the state of learning two hundred years ago) with the minuteness of his information, as well as with the extent of his views; or to forbear admiring his sagacity in pointing out, to future adventurers, the unknown tracks still left to be explored by human curiosity. If his classifications be sometimes artificial and arbitrary, they have at least the merit of including, under one head or another, every particular of importance; and of exhibiting these particulars with a degree of method and of apparent connection, which, if it does not always satisfy the judgment, never fails to interest the fancy, and to lay hold of the memory. Nor must it be forgotten, to the glory of his genius, that what he failed to accomplish remains to this day a desideratum in science,—that the intellectual chart delineated by him is, with all its imperfections, the only one of which modern philosophy has yet to boast;—and that the united talents of D'Alembert and of Diderot, aided by all the lights of the eighteenth century, have been able to add but little to what Bacon performed.

After the foregoing observations, it will not be expected that an attempt is to be made, in the following Essay, to solve a problem which has so recently baffled the powers of these eminent writers; and which will probably long continue to exercise the ingenuity of our successors. How much remains to be previously done for the improvement of that part of Logic, whose province it is to fix the limits by which contiguous departments of study are defined and separated! And how many unsuspected affinities may be reasonably presumed to exist among sciences, which, to our circumscribed views, appear at present the most alien from each other! The abstract geometry of Appollonius and Archimedes was found, after an interval of two thousand years, to furnish a torch to the physical inquiries of Newton; while, in the further progress of knowledge, the Etymology of Languages has been happily employed to fill up the chasms of Ancient History; and the conclusions of Comparative Anatomy, to illustrate the Theory of the Earth. For my own part, even if the task were executed with the most complete success, I should be strongly inclined to think, that its appropriate place in an Encyclopædia would be as a branch of the article on Logic;—certainly not as an exordium to the Preliminary Discourse; the enlarged and refined views which it necessarily presupposes being peculiarly unsuitable to that part of the work which may be expected, in the first instance, to attract the curiosity of every reader. As, upon this point,

however, there may be some diversity of opinion, I have prevailed on the Editor to add to these introductory Essays a translation of D'Alembert's Discourse, and of Diderot's Prospectus. No English version of either has, as far as I know, been hitherto published; and the result of their joint ingenuity, exerted on Bacon's ground-work, must for ever fix no inconsiderable era in the history of learning.

Before concluding this preface, I shall subjoin a few slight strictures on a very concise and comprehensive division of the objects of Human Knowledge, proposed by Mr Locke, as the basis of a new classification of the sciences. Although I do not know that any attempt has ever been made to follow out in detail the general idea, yet the repeated approbation which has been lately bestowed on a division essentially the same, by several writers of the highest rank, renders it in some measure necessary, on the present occasion, to consider how far it is founded on just principles; more especially as it is completely at variance, not only with the language and arrangement adopted in these preliminary essays, but with the whole of that plan on which the original projectors, as well as the continuators, of the Encyclopædia Britannica, appear to have proceeded. These strictures will, at the same time, afford an additional proof of the difficulty, or rather of the impossibility, in the actual state of logical science, of solving this great problem, in a manner calculated to unite the general suffrages of philosophers.

"All that can fall," says Mr Locke, "within the compass of Human Understanding being either, first, The nature of things as they are in themselves, their relations, and their manner of operation; or, secondly, That which man himself ought to do, as a rational and voluntary agent, for the attainment of any end, especially happiness; or, thirdly, The ways and means whereby the knowledge of both the one and the other of these is attained and communicated: I think science may be divided properly into these three sorts:

"1. Φυσική, or Natural Philosophy. The end of this is bare speculative truth; and whatsoever can afford the mind of man any such falls under this branch, whether it be God himself, angels, spirits, bodies, or any of their affections, as number and figure, &c.

"2. Πρακτική, The skill of right applying our own powers and actions for the attainment of things good and useful. The most considerable under this head is Ethics, which is the seeking out those rules and measures of human actions which lead to happiness, and the means to practise them. The end of this is not bare speculation, but right, and a conduct suitable to it.¹

“ 3. Σημειωτική, or the doctrine of signs, the most usual whereof being words, it is aptly enough termed also Λογική, Logic. The business of this is to consider the nature of signs the mind makes use of for the understanding of things, or conveying its knowledge to others.

“ This seems to me,” continues Mr Locke, “ the first and most general, as well as natural, division of the objects of our understanding ; for a man can employ his thoughts about nothing but either the contemplation of things themselves, for the discovery of truth, or about the things in his own power, which are his own actions, for the attainment of his own ends ; or the signs the mind makes use of, both in one and the other, and the right ordering of them for its clearer information. All which three, viz. things as they are in themselves knowable ; actions as they depend on us, in order to happiness ; and the right use of signs, in order to knowledge ; being toto cælo different, they seemed to me to be the three great provinces of the intellectual world, wholly separate and distinct one from another.”¹

From the manner in which Mr Locke expresses himself in the above quotation, he appears evidently to have considered the division proposed in it as an original idea of his own ; and yet the truth is, that it coincides exactly with what was generally adopted by the philosophers of ancient Greece. “ The ancient Greek Philosophy,” says Mr Smith, “ was divided into three great branches, Physics, or Natural Philosophy ; Ethics, or Moral Philosophy ; and Logic. This general division,” he adds, “ seems perfectly agreeable to the nature of things.” Mr Smith afterwards observes, in strict conformity to Locke’s definitions, (of which, however, he seems to have had no recollection when he wrote this passage), “ That, as the human mind and the Deity, in whatever their essence may be supposed to consist, are parts of the great system of the universe, and parts, too, productive of the most important effects, whatever was taught in the ancient schools of Greece concerning their nature, made a part of the system of physics.”²

Dr Campbell, in his Philosophy of Rhetoric, has borrowed from the Grecian schools the same very extensive use of the words physics and physiology, which he employs as synonymous terms ; comprehending under this title “ not merely Natural History, Astronomy, Geography, Mechanics, Optics, Hydrostatics, Meteorology, Medicine, Chemistry, but also Natural Theology and Psychology, which,” he observes, “ have been, in his opinion, most unnaturally disjoined from Physiology by philosophers.” “ Spirit,” he adds, “ which here com-

prises only the Supreme Being and the human soul, is surely as much included under the notion of natural object as body is; and is knowable to the philosopher purely in the same way, by observation and experience.”¹

A similar train of thinking led the late celebrated M. Turgot to comprehend under the name of Physics, not only Natural Philosophy (as that phrase is understood by the Newtonians), but Metaphysics, Logic, and even History.²

Notwithstanding all this weight of authority, it is difficult to reconcile one's self to an arrangement which, while it classes with Astronomy, with Mechanics, with Optics, and with Hydrostatics, the strikingly contrasted studies of Natural Theology and of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, disunites from the two last the far more congenial sciences of Ethics and of Logic. The human mind, it is true, as well as the material world which surrounds it, forms a part of the great system of the Universe; but is it possible to conceive two parts of the same whole more completely dissimilar, or rather more diametrically opposite, in all their characteristical attributes? Is not the one the appropriate field and province of observation,—a power habitually awake to all the perceptions and impressions of the bodily organs? and does not the other fall exclusively under the cognizance of reflection,—an operation which inverts all the ordinary habits of the understanding,—abstracting the thoughts from every sensible object, and even striving to abstract them from every sensible image? What abuse of language can be greater, than to apply a common name to departments of knowledge which invite the curiosity in directions precisely contrary, and which tend to form intellectual talents, which, if not altogether incompatible, are certainly not often found united in the same individual? The word Physics, in particular, which, in our language, long and constant use has restricted to the phenomena of Matter, cannot fail to strike every ear as anomalously, and therefore illogically, applied, when extended to those of Thought and of Consciousness.

Nor let it be imagined that these observations assume any particular theory about the nature or essence of Mind. Whether we adopt, on this point, the language of the Material-

ists, or that of their opponents, it is a proposition equally certain and equally indisputable, that the phenomena of Mind and those of Matter, as far as they come under the cognizance of our faculties, appear to be more completely heterogeneous than any other classes of facts within the circle of our knowledge; and that the sources of our information concerning them are in every respect so radically different, that nothing is more carefully to be avoided, in the study of either, than an attempt to assimilate them, by means of analogical or metaphorical terms, applied to both in common. In those inquiries, above all, where we have occasion to consider Matter and Mind as conspiring to produce the same joint effects (in the constitution, for example, of our own compounded frame), it becomes more peculiarly necessary to keep constantly in view the distinct province of each, and to remember, that the business of philosophy is not to resolve the phenomena of the one into those of the other, but merely to ascertain the general laws which regulate their mutual connection. Matter and Mind, therefore, it should seem, are the two most general heads which ought to form the ground-work of an Encyclopedical classification of the sciences and arts. No branch of human knowledge, no work of human skill, can be mentioned, which does not obviously fall under the former head or the latter.

Agreeably to this twofold classification of the sciences and arts, it is proposed, in the following introductory Essays, to exhibit a rapid sketch of the progress made since the revival of letters: First, in those branches of knowledge which relate to Mind; and, secondly, in those which relate to Matter. D'Alembert, in his Preliminary Discourse, has boldly attempted to embrace both subjects in one magnificent design; and never, certainly, was there a single mind more equal to such an undertaking. The historical outline which he has there traced forms by far the most valuable portion of that performance, and will for ever remain a proud monument to the depth, to the comprehensiveness, and to the singular versatility of his genius. In the present state of science, however, it has been apprehended, that, by dividing so great a work among different hands, something might perhaps be gained, if not in point of reputation to the authors, at least in point of instruction to their readers. This division of labour was, indeed, in some measure, rendered necessary (independently of all other considerations), by the important accessions which mathematics and physics have received since D'Alembert's time;—by the innumerable improvements which the spirit of mercantile speculation, and the rivalry of commercial nations, have introduced into the mechanical arts;—and, above all, by the rapid succession of chemical discoveries which commences with the researches of Black and of Lavoisier. The part of this task which has fallen to my share is certainly, upon the whole, the least splendid in the results which it has to record; but I am not without hopes, that this disadvantage may be partly

compensated by its closer connection with (what ought to be the ultimate end of all our pursuits) the intellectual and moral improvement of the species.

I am, at the same time, well aware that, in proportion as this last consideration increases the importance, it adds to the difficulty of my undertaking. It is chiefly in judging of questions "coming home to their business and bosoms," that casual associations lead mankind astray; and of such associations how incalculable is the number arising from false systems of religion, oppressive forms of government, and absurd plans of education! The consequence is, that while the physical and mathematical discoveries of former ages present themselves to the hand of the historian, like masses of pure and native gold, the truths which we are here in quest of may be compared to iron, which, although at once the most necessary and the most widely diffused of all the metals, commonly requires a discriminating eye to detect its existence, and a tedious, as well as nice process, to extract it from the ore.

To the same circumstance it is owing, that improvements in Moral and in Political Science do not strike the imagination with nearly so great force as the discoveries of the Mathematician or of the Chemist. When an inveterate prejudice is destroyed by extirpating the casual associations on which it was grafted, how powerful is the new impulse given to the intellectual faculties of man! Yet how slow and silent the process by which the effect is accomplished! Were it not, indeed, for a certain class of learned authors, who, from time to time, heave the log into the deep, we should hardly believe that the reason of the species is progressive. In this respect, the religious and academical establishments in some parts of Europe are not without their use to the historian of the Human Mind. Immovably moored to the same station by the strength of their cables, and the weight of their anchors, they enable him to measure the rapidity of the current by which the rest of the world are borne along.

This, too, is remarkable in the history of our prejudices; that, as soon as the film falls from the intellectual eye, we are apt to lose all recollection of our former blindness. Like the fantastic and giant shapes which, in a thick fog, the imagination lends to a block of stone, or to the stump of a tree, they produce, while the illusion lasts, the same effect with truths and realities; but the moment the eye has caught the exact form and dimensions of its object, the spell is broken for ever; nor can any effort of thought again conjure up the spectres which have vanished.

As to the subdivisions of which the sciences of Matter and of Mind are susceptible, I have already said, that this is not the proper place for entering into any discussion concerning them. The passages above quoted from D'Alembert, from Locke, and from Smith, are sufficient to shew how little probability there is, in the actual state of Logical Science,

of uniting the opinions of the learned, in favour of any one scheme of partition. To prefix, therefore, such a scheme to a work which is professedly to be carried on by a set of unconnected writers, would be equally presumptuous and useless; and, on the most favourable supposition, could tend only to fetter, by means of dubious definitions, the subsequent freedom of thought and of expression. The example of the French Encyclopédie cannot be here justly alleged as a precedent. The preliminary pages by which it is introduced were written by the two persons who projected the whole plan, and who considered themselves as responsible, not only for their own admirable articles, but for the general conduct of the execution; whereas, on the present occasion, a porch was to be adapted to an irregular edifice, reared, at different periods, by different architects. It seemed, accordingly, most advisable to avoid, as much as possible, in these introductory Essays, all innovations in language, and, in describing the different arts and sciences, to follow scrupulously the prevailing and most intelligible phraseology. The task of defining them, with a greater degree of precision, properly devolves upon those to whose province it belongs, in the progress of the work, to unfold in detail their elementary principles.

The sciences to which I mean to confine my observations are Metaphysics, Ethics, and Political Philosophy; understanding, by Metaphysics, not the Ontology and Pneumatology of the schools, but the inductive Philosophy of the Human Mind; and limiting the phrase Political Philosophy almost exclusively to the modern science of Political Economy; or (to express myself in terms at once more comprehensive and more precise) to that branch of the theory of legislation which, according to Bacon's definition, aims to ascertain those "Leges legum, ex quibus informatio peti potest quid in singulis legibus bene aut perperam positum aut constitutum sit." The close affinity between these three departments of knowledge, and the easy transitions by which the curiosity is invited from the study of any one of them to that of the other two, will sufficiently appear from the following Historical Review.

... the theory of the origin of the soul in its relation to the physical world, and a statement of the various methods of inquiry which may be employed in its investigation. The author then proceeds to discuss the nature of the soul and its relation to the physical world, and to the various methods of inquiry which may be employed in its investigation. He concludes with a statement of the value of such an inquiry in the advancement of human knowledge.

... the nature of the soul and its relation to the physical world, and to the various methods of inquiry which may be employed in its investigation. He concludes with a statement of the value of such an inquiry in the advancement of human knowledge.

... the nature of the soul and its relation to the physical world, and to the various methods of inquiry which may be employed in its investigation. He concludes with a statement of the value of such an inquiry in the advancement of human knowledge.

IN the following Historical and Critical Sketches, it has been judged proper by the different writers, to confine their views entirely to the period which has elapsed since the revival of letters. To have extended their retrospects to the ancient world would have crowded too great a multiplicity of objects into the limited canvas on which they had to work. For my own part, I might perhaps, with still greater propriety, have confined myself exclusively to the two last centuries; as the Sciences of which I am to treat present but little matter for useful remark, prior to the time of Lord Bacon. I shall make no apology, however, for devoting, in the first place, a few pages to some observations of a more general nature; and to some scanty gleanings of literary detail, bearing more or less directly on my principal design.

On this occasion, as well as in the sequel of my Discourse, I shall avoid, as far as is consistent with distinctness and perspicuity, the minuteness of the mere bibliographer; and, instead of attempting to amuse my readers with a series of critical epigrams, or to dazzle them with a rapid succession of evanescent portraits, shall study to fix their attention on those great lights of the world by whom the torch of science has been successively seized and transmitted.¹ It is, in fact, such leading characters alone which furnish matter

for philosophical history. To enumerate the names and the labours of obscure or even secondary authors (whatever amusement it might afford to men of curious erudition), would contribute but little to illustrate the origin and filiation of consecutive systems, or the gradual development and progress of the human mind.

FROM THE REVIVAL OF LETTERS TO THE PUBLICATION OF BACON'S PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS.

THE long interval, commonly known by the name of the middle ages, which immediately preceded the revival of letters in the western part of Europe, forms the most melancholy blank which occurs, from the first dawn of recorded civilization, in the intellectual and moral history of the human race. In one point of view alone, the recollection of it is not altogether unpleasing, in as much as, by the proof it exhibits of the inseparable connection between ignorance and prejudice on the one hand, and vice, misery, and slavery, on the other, it affords, in conjunction with other causes, which will afterwards fall under our review, some security against any future recurrence of a similar calamity.

It would furnish a very interesting and instructive subject of speculation, to record and to illustrate (with the spirit, however, rather of a philosopher than of an antiquary), the various abortive efforts, which, during this protracted and seemingly hopeless period of a thousand years, were made by enlightened individuals, to impart to their contemporaries the fruits of their own acquirements. For in no one age from its commencement to its close, does the continuity of knowledge (if I may borrow an expression of Mr Harris), seem to have been entirely interrupted: "There was always a faint twilight, like that auspicious gleam which, in a summer's night, fills up the interval between the setting and the rising sun."¹ On the present occasion, I shall content myself with remarking the important effects produced by the numerous monastic establishments all over the Christian

through which the continuity of human life is maintained from age to age; and which are perpetually transferring from hand to hand the concerns and duties of this fleeting scene. Τῶν τῶντες ἢ ἐκτριφῶντες παῖδας, καθάπερ λαμπάδα τὸν βίον παραδίδοντες αὐλοῖς ἢ αὐλοῖς. (Plato, Leg. lib. vi.)

Et quasi curesores vita lampada tradunt. — Lucret.

world, in preserving, amidst the general wreck, the inestimable remains of Greek and Roman refinement; and in keeping alive, during so many centuries, those scattered sparks of truth and of science, which were afterwards to kindle into so bright a flame. I mention this particularly, because, in our zeal against the vices and corruptions of the Romish church, we are too apt to forget, how deeply we are indebted to its superstitious and apparently useless foundations, for the most precious advantages that we now enjoy.

The study of the Roman Law, which, from a variety of causes, natural as well as accidental, became, in the course of the twelfth century, an object of general pursuit, shot a strong and auspicious ray of intellectual light across the surrounding darkness. No study could then have been presented to the curiosity of men, more happily adapted to improve their taste, to enlarge their views, or to invigorate their reasoning powers; and although, in the first instance, prosecuted merely as the object of a weak and undistinguishing idolatry, it nevertheless conducted the student to the very confines of ethical as well as of political speculation; and served, in the meantime, as a substitute of no inconsiderable value for both these sciences. Accordingly we find that, while in its immediate effects it powerfully contributed, wherever it struck its roots, by ameliorating and systematizing the administration of justice, to accelerate the progress of order and of civilization, it afterwards furnished, in the farther career of human advancement, the parent stock on which were grafted the first rudiments of pure ethics and of liberal politics taught in modern times. I need scarcely add, that I allude to the systems of natural jurisprudence compiled by Grotius and his successors; systems which, for a hundred and fifty years, engrossed all the learned industry of the most enlightened part of Europe; and which, however unpromising in their first aspect, were destined, in the last result, to prepare the way for that never to be forgotten change in the literary taste of the eighteenth century, "which has everywhere turned the spirit of philosophical inquiry from frivolous or abstruse speculations, to the business and affairs of men."¹

The revival of letters may be considered as coëval with the fall of the Eastern empire, towards the close of the fifteenth century. In consequence of this event, a number of learned Greeks took refuge in Italy, where the taste for literature already introduced by Dante, Petrarch, and Boccacio, together with the liberal patronage of the illustrious House of Medicis, secured them a welcome reception. A knowledge of the Greek tongue

soon became fashionable; and the learned, encouraged by the rapid diffusion which the art of printing now gave to their labours, vied with each other in rendering the Greek authors accessible, by means of Latin translations, to a still wider circle of readers.

For a long time, indeed, after the era just mentioned, the progress of useful knowledge was extremely slow. The passion for logical disputation was succeeded by an unbounded admiration for the wisdom of antiquity; and in proportion as the pedantry of the schools disappeared in the universities, that of erudition and philology occupied its place.

Meanwhile, an important advantage was gained in the immense stock of materials which the ancient authors supplied to the reflections of speculative men; and which, although frequently accumulated with little discrimination or profit, were much more favourable to the development of taste and of genius than the unsubstantial subtleties of ontology or of dialectics. By such studies were formed Erasmus,¹ Ludovicus Vives,² Sir Thomas More,³ and many other accomplished scholars of a similar character, who, if they

do not rank in the same line with the daring reformers by whom the errors of the Catholic church were openly assailed, certainly exhibit a very striking contrast to the barbarous and unenlightened writers of the preceding age.

The Protestant Reformation, which followed immediately after, was itself one of the natural consequences of the revival of letters, and of the invention of printing. But although, in one point of view, only an effect, it is not, on the present occasion, less entitled to notice than the causes by which it was produced.

The renunciation, in a great part of Europe, of theological opinions so long consecrated by time, and the adoption of a creed more pure in its principles and more liberal in its spirit, could not fail to encourage, on all other subjects, a congenial freedom of inquiry. These circumstances operated still more directly and powerfully, by their influence in undermining the authority of Aristotle; an authority which for many years was scarcely inferior in the schools to that of the Scriptures; and which, in some Universities, was supported by statutes, requiring the teachers to promise upon oath, that, in their public lectures, they would follow no other guide.

Luther,¹ who was perfectly aware of the corruptions which the Romish church had contrived to connect with their veneration for the Stagirite,² not only threw off the yoke himself, but, in various parts of his writings, speaks of Aristotle with most unbecoming asperity and contempt.³ In one very remarkable passage, he asserts, that the study of Aristotle was wholly useless, not only in Theology, but in Natural Philosophy. "What does it contribute," he asks, "to the knowledge of things, to trifle and cavil in language conceived and prescribed by Aristotle, concerning matter, form, motion, and time?"⁴ The same

freedom of thought on topics not strictly theological, formed a prominent feature in the character of Calvin. A curious instance of it occurs in one of his letters, where he discusses an ethical question of no small moment in the science of political economy;—“How far it is consistent with morality to accept of interest for a pecuniary loan?” On this question, which, even in Protestant countries, continued, till a very recent period, to divide the opinions both of divines and lawyers, Calvin treats the authority of Aristotle and that of the church with equal disregard. To the former, he opposes a close and logical argument, not unworthy of Mr Bentham. To the latter he replies, by shewing, that the Mosaic law on this point was not a moral but a municipal prohibition; a prohibition not to be judged of from any particular text of Scripture, but upon the principles of natural equity.¹ The example of these two Fathers of the Reformation, would probably have been followed by consequences still greater and more immediate, if Melanchthon had not unfortunately given the sanction of his name to the doctrines of the Peripatetic school:² but still, among the Reformers in general, the credit of these doctrines gradually declined, and a spirit of research and of improvement prevailed.

The invention of printing, which took place very nearly at the same time with the fall of the Eastern Empire, besides adding greatly to the efficacy of the causes above-mentioned, must have been attended with very important effects of its own, on the progress of the human mind. For us who have been accustomed, from our infancy, to the use of books, it is not easy to form an adequate idea of the disadvantages which those laboured under, who had to acquire the whole of their knowledge through the medium of universities and schools;—blindly devoted as the generality of students must then have been to the peculiar opinions of the teacher, who first unfolded to their curiosity the treasures of literature and the wonders of science. Thus error was perpetuated; and, instead of yielding to time, acquired additional influence in each successive generation.³ In

ostendere, si otium esset. Habeo in manus commentarios in 1. Physicorum, quibus fabulam Aristæi denuo agere statui in meum istum Protea (Aristotelem). Pars crucis meæ vel maxima est, quod videre cogor fratrum optima ingenia, bonis studiis nata, in istis cæcis vitam agere, et operam perdere.” Ibid.

That Luther was deeply skilled in the scholastic philosophy we learn from very high authority, that of Melanchthon; who tells us farther, that he was a strenuous partisan of the sect of Nominalists, or, as they were then generally called, Terminists. Bruck. Tom. IV. pp. 93, 94, et seq.

modern times, this influence of names is, comparatively speaking, at an end. The object of a public teacher is no longer to inculcate a particular system of dogmas, but to prepare his pupils for exercising their own judgments; to exhibit to them an outline of the different sciences, and to suggest subjects for their future examination. The few attempts to establish schools and to found sects, have all (after perhaps a temporary success) proved abortive. Their effect, too, during their short continuance, has been perfectly the reverse of that of the schools of antiquity; for whereas these were instrumental, on many occasions, in establishing and diffusing error in the world, the founders of our modern sects, by mixing up important truths with their own peculiar tenets, and by disguising them under the garb of a technical phraseology, have fostered such prejudices against themselves, as have blinded the public mind to all the lights they were able to communicate. Of this remark a melancholy illustration occurs (as M. Turgot long ago predicted) in the case of the French Economists; and many examples of a similar import might be produced from the history of science in our country; more particularly from the history of the various medical and metaphysical schools which successively rose and fell during the last century.

With the circumstances already suggested, as conspiring to accelerate the progress of knowledge, another has co-operated very extensively and powerfully; the rise of the lower orders in the different countries of Europe,—in consequence partly of the enlargement of commerce, and partly of the efforts of the Sovereigns to reduce the overgrown power of the feudal aristocracy.

Without this emancipation of the lower orders, and the gradual diffusion of wealth by which it was accompanied, the advantages derived from the invention of printing would have been extremely limited. A certain degree of ease and independence is essentially requisite to inspire men with the desire of knowledge, and to afford the leisure necessary

acting the obvious inconveniences resulting from them, that Socrates introduced his peculiar method of questioning, with an air of sceptical diffidence, those whom he was anxious to instruct; so as to allow them, in forming their conclusions, the complete and unbiased exercise of their own reason. Such, at least, is the apology offered for the apparent indecision of the Academic school, by one of its wisest, as well as most eloquent adherents. "As for other sects," says Cicero, "who are bound in fetters, before they are able to form any judgment of what is right or true, and who have been led to yield themselves up, in their tender years, to the guidance of some friend, or to the captivating eloquence of the teacher whom they have first heard, they assume to themselves the right of pronouncing upon questions of which they are completely ignorant; adhering to whatever creed the wind of doctrine may have driven them, as if it were the only rock on which their safety depended." Cic. Lucullus, 3.

for acquiring it; and it is only by the encouragement which such a state of society presents to industry and ambition, that the selfish passions of the multitude can be interested in the intellectual improvement of their children. It is only, too, in such a state of society, that education and books are likely to increase the sum of human happiness; for while these advantages are confined to one privileged description of individuals, they but furnish them with an additional engine for debasing and misleading the minds of their inferiors. To all which it may be added, that it is chiefly by the shock and collision of different and opposite prejudices, that truths are gradually cleared from that admixture of error which they have so strong a tendency to acquire, wherever the course of public opinion is forcibly constrained and guided within certain artificial channels, marked out by the narrow views of human policy. The diffusion of knowledge, therefore, occasioned by the rise of the lower orders, would necessarily contribute to the improvement of useful science, not merely in proportion to the arithmetical number of cultivated minds now combined in the pursuit of truth, but in a proportion tending to accelerate that important effect with a far greater rapidity.

Nor ought we here to overlook the influence of the foregoing causes, in encouraging among authors the practice of addressing the multitude in their own vernacular tongues. The zeal of the Reformers first gave birth to this invaluable innovation; and imposed on their adversaries the necessity of employing, in their own defence, the same weapons.¹ From that moment the prejudice began to vanish which had so long confounded knowledge with erudition; and a revolution commenced in the republic of letters, analogous to what the invention of gunpowder produced in the art of war. "All the splendid distinctions of mankind," as the Champion and Flower of Chivalry indignantly exclaimed, "were thereby thrown down; and the naked shepherd levelled with the knight clad in steel."

To all these considerations may be added the gradual effects of time and experience in correcting the errors and prejudices which had misled philosophers during so long a succession of ages. To this cause, chiefly, must be ascribed the ardour with which we

find various ingenious men, soon after the period in question, employed in prosecuting experimental inquiries; a species of study to which nothing analogous occurs in the history of ancient science.¹ The boldest and most successful of this new school was the celebrated Paracelsus; born in 1493, and consequently only ten years younger than Luther. "It is impossible to doubt," says Le Clerc, in his History of Physic, "that he possessed an extensive knowledge of what is called the Materia Medica, and that he had employed much time in working on the animal, the vegetable, and the mineral substances of which it is composed. He seems, besides, to have tried an immense number of experiments in chemistry; but he has this great defect, that he studiously conceals or disguises the results of his long experience." The same author quotes from Paracelsus a remarkable expression, in which he calls the philosophy of Aristotle a wooden foundation. "He ought to have attempted," continues Le Clerc, "to have laid a better; but if he has not done it, he has at least, by discovering its weakness, invited his successors to look out for a firmer basis."²

Lord Bacon himself, while he censures the moral frailties of Paracelsus, and the blind empiricism of his followers, indirectly acknowledges the extent of his experimental information: "The ancient sophists may be said to have hid; but Paracelsus extinguished the light of nature. The sophists were only deserters of experience, but Paracelsus has betrayed it. At the same time, he is so far from understanding the right method of conducting experiments, or of recording their results, that he has added to the trouble and tediousness of experimenting. By wandering through the wilds of experience, his disciples sometimes stumble upon useful discoveries, not by reason, but by accident;—whence rashly proceeding to form theories, they carry the smoke and tarnish of their art along with them; and, like childish operators at the furnace, attempt to raise a structure of philosophy with a few experiments of distillation."

Two other circumstances, of a nature widely different from those hitherto enumerated, although, probably, in no small degree to be accounted for on the same principles, seconded, with an incalculable accession of power, the sudden impulse which the human mind had just received. The same century which the invention of printing, and the revival of letters have made for ever memorable, was also illustrated by the discovery of the New World, and of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope;—events which may be justly re-

garded as fixing a new era in the political and moral history of mankind; and which still continue to exert a growing influence over the general condition of our species. "It is an "era," as Raynal observes, "which gave rise to a revolution, not only in the commerce of nations, but in the manners, industry, and government of the world. At this period new connections were formed by the inhabitants of the most distant regions, for the supply of wants which they had never before experienced. The productions of climates situated under the equator, were consumed in countries bordering on the pole; the industry of the north was transplanted to the south; and the inhabitants of the west were clothed with the manufactures of the east; a general intercourse of opinions, laws and customs, diseases and remedies, virtues and vices, was established among men."

"Every thing," continues the same writer, "has changed, and must yet change more. But it is a question, whether the revolutions that are past, or those which must hereafter take place, have been, or can be, of any utility to the human race. Will they add to the tranquillity, to the enjoyments, and to the happiness of mankind? Can they improve our present state, or do they only change it?"

I have introduced this quotation, not with the design of attempting at present any reply to the very interesting question with which it concludes; but merely to convey some slight notion of the political and moral importance of the events in question. I cannot, however, forbear to remark, in addition to Raynal's eloquent and impressive summary, the inestimable treasure of new facts which these events have furnished for illustrating the versatile nature of man, and the history of civil society. In this respect (as Bacon has well observed) they have fully verified the Scripture prophecy, multi pertransibunt et augebitur scientia; or, in the still more emphatical words of our English version, "Many shall go to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased."¹ The same prediction may be applied to the gradual renewal (in proportion as modern governments became effectual in securing order and tranquillity) of that intercourse between the different states of Europe, which had, in a great measure, ceased during the anarchy and turbulence of the middle ages.

In consequence of these combined causes, aided by some others of secondary importance,²

the Genius of the human race seems, all at once, to have awakened with renovated and giant strength, from his long sleep. In less than a century from the invention of printing, and the fall of the Eastern empire, Copernicus discovered the true theory of the planetary motions, and a very few years afterwards, was succeeded by the three great precursors of Newton,—Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo.

The step made by Copernicus may be justly regarded as one of the proudest triumphs of human reason;—whether we consider the sagacity which enabled the author to obviate, to his own satisfaction, the many plausible objections which must have presented themselves against his conclusions, at a period when the theory of motion was so imperfectly understood; or the bold spirit of inquiry which encouraged him to exercise his private judgment, in opposition to the authority of Aristotle,—to the decrees of the church of Rome,—and to the universal belief of the learned, during a long succession of ages. He appears, indeed, to have well merited the encomium bestowed on him by Kepler, when he calls him “a man of vast genius, and, what is of still greater moment in these researches, a man of a free mind.”

The establishment of the Copernican system, beside the new field of study which it opened to Astronomers, must have had great effects on philosophy in all its branches, by inspir-

which, however, it is probable, contributed not a little to prepare the way for the modern revival of the Atomic or Corpuscular Philosophy, by Bacon, Gassendi, and Newton. That, on the mind of Bacon, the wonders disclosed by the microscope produced a strong impression in favour of the Epicurean physics, may be inferred from his own words. “Perspicillum (microscopicum) si vidisset Democritus, exsiluisset forte; et modum videndi Atomum (quem ille invisibilem omnino affirmavit) inventum fuisse putasset.” Nov. Org. Lib. ii. § 39.

We are told in the life of Galileo, that when the telescope was invented, some individuals carried to so great a length their devotion to Aristotle, that they positively refused to look through that instrument: so averse were they to open their eyes to any truths inconsistent with their favourite creed. (Vita del Galileo, Venezia, 1744.) It is amusing to find some other followers of the Stagirite, a very few years afterwards, when they found it impossible any longer to call in question the evidence of sense, asserting that it was from a passage in Aristotle (where he attempts to explain why stars become visible in the day-time when viewed from the bottom of a deep well) that the invention of the telescope was borrowed. The two facts, when combined together, exhibit a truly characteristical portrait of one of the most fatal weaknesses incident to humanity; and form a moral apologue, daily exemplified on subjects of still nearer and higher interest than the phenomena of the heavens.

In ascribing to accident the inventions of the telescope and of the microscope, I have expressed myself in conformity to common language; but it ought not to be overlooked, that an invention may be accidental with respect to the particular author, and yet may be the natural result of the circumstances of society at the period when it took place. As to the instruments in question, the combination of lenses employed in their structure is so simple, that it could scarcely escape the notice of all the experimenters and mechanicians of that busy and inquisitive age. A similar remark has been made by Condorcet concerning the invention of printing. “L'invention de l'Imprimerie a sans doute avancé le progrès de l'espèce humaine; mais cette invention étoit elle-même une suite de l'usage de la lecture répandu dans un grand nombre de pays.” Vie du Turgot.

ing those sanguine prospects of future improvement, which stimulate curiosity, and invigorate the inventive powers. It afforded to the common sense, even of the illiterate, a palpable and incontrovertible proof, that the ancients had not exhausted the stock of possible discoveries; and that, in matters of science, the creed of the Romish church was not infallible. In the conclusion of one of Kepler's works, we perceive the influence of these prospects on his mind. "Hæc et cetera hujusmodi latent in pandectis ævi sequentis, non antea discenda, quam librum hunc Deus arbiter seculorum recluserit mortalibus."

I have hitherto taken no notice of the effects of the revival of letters on Metaphysical, Moral, or Political science. The truth is, that little deserving of our attention occurs in any of these departments prior to the seventeenth century; and nothing which bears the most remote analogy to the rapid strides made, during the sixteenth, in mathematics, astronomy, and physics. The influence, indeed, of the Reformation on the practical doctrines of ethics appears to have been great and immediate. We may judge of this from a passage in Melanchthon, where he combats the pernicious and impious tenets of those theologians who maintained, that moral distinctions are created entirely by the arbitrary and revealed will of God. In opposition to this heresy he expresses himself in these memorable words:— "Wherefore our decision is this; that those precepts which learned men have committed to writing, transcribing them from the common reason and common feelings of human nature, are to be accounted as not less divine, than those contained in the tables given to Moses; and that it could not be the intention of our Maker to supersede, by a law graven upon stone, that which is written with his own finger on the table of the heart."²—This language was, undoubtedly, a most important step towards a just system of Moral Philosophy; but still, like the other steps of the reformers, it was only a return to common sense, and to the genuine spirit of Christianity, from the dogmas imposed on the credulity of mankind by an ambitious priesthood.³ Many years were yet to elapse, before any at-

tempts were to be made to trace, with analytical accuracy, the moral phenomena of human life to their first principles in the constitution and condition of man; or even to disentangle the plain and practical lessons of ethics from the speculative and controverted articles of theological systems.¹

that "it crept up afterward in the scholastic ages; Occam being among the first that maintained, that there is no act evil, but as it is prohibited by God, and which cannot be made good, if it be commanded by him. In this doctrine he was quickly followed by Petrus Aliacus, Andreas de Novo Castro, and others." See Treatise of Immutable Morality.

It is pleasing to remark, how very generally the heresy here ascribed to Occam is now reprobated by good men of all persuasions. The Catholics have even begun to recriminate on the Reformers as the first breachers of it; and it is to be regretted, that in some of the writings of the latter, too near approaches to it are to be found. The truth is (as Burnet long ago observed), that the effects of the reformation have not been confined to the reformed churches;—to which it may be added, that both Catholics and Protestants have, since that era, profited very largely by the general progress of the sciences and of human reason.

I quote the following sentence from a highly respectable Catholic writer on the law of nature and nations:—"Qui rationem exulare iubent a moralibus preceptis quæ in sacris literis traduntur, et in absurdam enormemque LUTHERI sententiam imprudentes incidunt (quam egregie et elegantissime refutavit Melchior Canus Loc. Theolog. Lib. ix. and x.) et ea docent, quæ si sectatores inveniant moralia omnia susque deque miscere, et revelationem ipsam inutilem omnino et inefficacem reddere possent." (Lampredi Florentini Juris Naturæ et Gentium Theoremata, Tom. II. p. 195. Pisis, 1782.) For the continuation of the passage, which would do credit to the most liberal protestant, I must refer to the original work. The zeal of Luther for the doctrine of the Nominalists had probably prepossessed him, in his early years, in favour of some of the theological tenets of Occam; and afterwards prevented him from testifying his disapprobation of them so explicitly and decidedly as Melanchthon and other reformers have done.

¹ "The theological system (says the learned and judicious Mosheim) that now prevails in the Lutheran academies, is not of the same tenor or spirit with that which was adopted in the infancy of the Reformation. The glorious defenders of religious liberty, to whom we owe the various blessings of the Reformation, could not, at once, behold the truth in all its lustre, and in all its extent; but, as usually happens to persons that have been long accustomed to the darkness of ignorance, their approaches towards knowledge were but slow, and their views of things but imperfect." (Maclaine's Transl. of Mosheim. London, 2d Ed. Vol. IV. p. 19.) He afterwards mentions one of Luther's early disciples, (Amsdorff,) "who was so far transported and infatuated by his excessive zeal for the supposed doctrine of his master, as to maintain, that good works are an impediment to salvation." Ibid. p. 39.

Mosheim, after remarking that "there are more excellent rules of conduct in the few practical productions of Luther and Melanchthon, than are to be found in the innumerable volumes of all the ancient casuists and moralists," candidly acknowledges, "that the notions of these great men concerning the important science of morality were far from being sufficiently accurate or extensive. Melanchthon himself, whose exquisite judgment rendered him peculiarly capable of reducing into a compendious system the elements of every science, never seems to have thought of treating morals in this manner; but has inserted, on the contrary, all his practical rules and instructions, under the theological articles that relate to the law, sin, free-will, faith, hope, and charity." Mosheim's Eccles. Hist. Vol. IV. pp. 23, 24.

The same author elsewhere observes, that "the progress of morality among the reformed was obstructed by the very same means that retarded its improvement among the Lutherans; and that it was left in a rude and imperfect state by Calvin and his associates. It was neglected amidst the tumult of controversy; and, while every pen was drawn to maintain certain systems of doctrine, few were employed in cultivating that master-science which has virtue, life, and manners for its objects." Ibid. pp. 120, 121.

A similar observation may be applied to the powerful appeals, in the early protestant writers, to the moral judgment and moral feelings of the human race, from those casuistical subtleties, with which the schoolmen and monks of the middle ages had studied to obscure the light of nature, and to stifle the voice of conscience. These subtleties were precisely analogous in their spirit to the pia et religiosa calliditas, afterwards adopted in the casuistry of the Jesuits, and so inimitably exposed by Pascal in the Provincial Letters. The arguments against them employed by the Reformers, cannot, in strict propriety, be considered as positive accessions to the stock of human knowledge; but what scientific discoveries can be compared to them in value!

From this period may be dated the decline² of that worst of all heresies of the Roman church, which, by opposing Revelation to Reason, endeavoured to extinguish the light of both; and the absurdity (so happily described by Locke) became every day more manifest, of attempting "to persuade men to put out their eyes, that they might the better receive the remote light of an invisible star by a telescope."

In the meantime, a powerful obstacle to the progress of practical morality and of sound policy, was superadded to those previously existing in Catholic countries, by the rapid growth and extensive influence of the Machiavellian school. The founder of this new sect (or to speak more correctly, the systematizer and apostle of its doctrines) was born as early as 1469, that is, about ten years before Luther; and, like that reformer, acquired, by the commanding superiority of his genius, an astonishing ascendancy (though of a very different nature) over the minds of his followers. No writer, certainly, either in ancient or in modern times, has ever united, in a more remarkable degree, a greater variety of the most dissimilar and seemingly the most discordant gifts and attainments;—a profound acquaint-

ance with all those arts of dissimulation and intrigue, which, in the petty cabinets of Italy, were then universally confounded with political wisdom;—an imagination familiarized to the cool contemplation of whatever is perfidious or atrocious in the history of conspirators and of tyrants;—combined with a graphical skill in holding up to laughter the comparatively harmless follies of ordinary life. His dramatic humour has been often compared to that of Moliere; but it resembles it rather in comic force, than in benevolent gaiety, or in chastened morality. Such as it is, however, it forms an extraordinary contrast to that strength of intellectual character, which, in one page, reminds us of the deep sense of Tacitus, and in the next, of the dark and infernal policy of Cæsar Borgia. To all this must be superadded a purity of taste, which has enabled him, as an historian, to rival the severe simplicity of the Grecian masters; and a sagacity in combining historical facts, which was afterwards to afford lights to the school of Montesquieu.

Eminent, however, as the talents of Machiavel unquestionably were, he cannot be numbered among the benefactors of mankind. In none of his writings, does he exhibit any marks of that lively sympathy with the fortunes of the human race, or of that warm zeal for the interests of truth and justice, without the guidance of which, the highest mental endowments, when applied to moral or to political researches, are in perpetual danger of mistaking their way. What is still more remarkable, he seems to have been altogether blind to the mighty changes in human affairs, which, in consequence of the recent invention of printing, were about to result from the progress of Reason and the diffusion of Knowledge. Through the whole of his Prince (the most noted as well as one of the latest of his publications) he proceeds on the supposition, that the sovereign has no other object in governing, but his own advantage; the very circumstance which, in the judgment of Aristotle, constitutes the essence of the worst species of tyranny.¹ He assumes also the possibility of retaining mankind in perpetual bondage by the old policy of the double doctrine; or, in other words, by enlightening the few, and hoodwinking the many;—a policy less or more practised by statesmen in all ages and countries; but which (wherever the freedom of the press is respected) cannot fail, by the insult it offers to the discernment of the multitude, to increase the insecurity of those who have the weakness to employ it. It has been contended, indeed, by some of Machiavel's apologists, that his real object in unfolding and systematising the mysteries of King-Craft, was to point out indirectly to the governed the

means by which the encroachments of their rulers might be most effectually resisted ; and, at the same time, to satirize, under the ironical mask of loyal and courtly admonition, the characteristical vices of princes.¹ But, although this hypothesis has been sanctioned by several distinguished names, and derives some verisimilitude from various incidents in the author's life, it will be found, on examination, quite untenable ; and accordingly it is now, I believe, very generally rejected. One thing is certain, that if such were actually Machiavel's views, they were much too refined for the capacity of his royal pupils. By many of these his book has been adopted as a manual for daily use ; but I have never heard of a single instance, in which it has been regarded by this class of students as a disguised panegyric upon liberty and virtue. The question concerning the motives of the author is surely of little moment, when experience has enabled us to pronounce so decidedly on the practical effects of his precepts.

"About the period of the Reformation," says Condorcet, "the principles of religious Machiavelism had become the only creed of princes, of ministers, and of pontiffs ; and the same opinions had contributed to corrupt philosophy. What code, indeed, of morals," he adds, "was to be expected from a system, of which one of the principles is,—that it is necessary to support the morality of the people by false pretences,—and that men of enlightened minds have a right to retain others in the chains from which they have themselves contrived to escape !?" The fact is perhaps stated in terms somewhat too unqualified ; but there are the best reasons for believing, that the exceptions were few, when compared with the general proposition.

The consequences of the prevalence of such a creed among the rulers of mankind were such as might be expected. "Infamous crimes, assassinations, and poisonings (says a French historian,) prevailed more than ever. They were thought to be the growth of Italy, where the rage and weakness of the opposite factions conspired to multiply them. Morality gradually disappeared, and with it all security in the intercourse of life. The first principles of duty were obliterated by the joint influence of atheism and of superstition."²

And here, may I be permitted to caution my readers against the common error of confounding the double doctrine of Machiavellian politicians, with the benevolent reverence for established opinions, manifested in the noted maxim of Fontenelle,—"that a wise man, even when his hand was full of truths, would often content himself with opening his little finger ?" Of the advocates for the former, it may be justly said, that "they love darkness

rather than light, because their deeds are evil;" well knowing (if I may borrow the words of Bacon), "that the open day-light doth not shew the masks and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately as candle-light." The philosopher, on the other hand, who is duly impressed with the latter, may be compared to the oculist, who, after removing the cataract of his patient, prepares the still irritable eye, by the glimmering dawn of a darkened apartment, for enjoying in safety the light of day.¹

Machiavel is well known to have been, at bottom, no friend to the priesthood; and his character has been stigmatized by many of the order with the most opprobrious epithets. It is nevertheless certain, that to his maxims the royal defenders of the catholic faith have been indebted for the spirit of that policy which they have uniformly opposed to the innovations of the Reformers. The Prince was a favourite book of the Emperor Charles V.; and was called the Bible of Catharine of Medicis. At the court of the latter, while Regent of France, those who approached her are said to have professed openly its most atrocious maxims; particularly that which recommends to sovereigns not to commit crimes by halves. The Italian cardinals, who are supposed to have been the secret instigators of the massacre of St Bartholomew, were bred in the same school.²

It is observed by Mr Hume, that "there is scarcely any maxim in the Prince, which subsequent experience has not entirely refuted." "Machiavel," says the same writer, "was certainly a great genius; but having confined his study to the furious and tyrannical governments of ancient times, or to the little disorderly principalities of Italy, his reasonings,

especially upon monarchical governments, have been found extremely defective. The errors of this politician proceeded, in a great measure, from his having lived in too early an age of the world, to be a good judge of political truth."¹

To these very judicious remarks, it may be added, that the bent of Machiavel's mind seems to have disposed him much more strongly to combine and to generalize his historical reading, than to remount to the first principles of political science, in the constitution of human nature, and in the immutable truths of morality. His conclusions, accordingly, ingenious and refined as they commonly are, amount to little more (with a few very splendid exceptions) than empirical results from the events of past ages. To the student of ancient history they may be often both interesting and instructive; but, to the modern politician, the most important lesson they afford is, the danger, in the present circumstances of the world, of trusting to such results, as maxims of universal application, or of permanent utility.

The progress of political philosophy, and along with it of morality and good order, in every part of Europe, since the period of which I am now speaking, forms so pleasing a comment on the profligate and short-sighted policy of Machiavel, that I cannot help pausing for a moment to remark the fact. In stating it, I shall avail myself of the words of the same profound writer, whose strictures on Machiavel's Prince I had already occasion to quote. "Though all kinds of government," says Mr Hume, "be improved in modern times, yet monarchical government seems to have made the greatest advances towards perfection. It may now be affirmed of civilized monarchies, what was formerly said of republics alone, that they are a government of laws, not of men. They are found susceptible of order, method, and constancy, to a surprising degree. Property is there secure, industry encouraged, the arts flourish, and the prince lives secure among his subjects, like a father among his children. There are, perhaps, and have been for two centuries, near two hundred absolute princes, great and small, in Europe; and allowing twenty years to each reign, we may suppose that there have been in the whole two thousand monarchs or tyrants, as the Greeks would have called them. Yet of these there has not been one, not even Philip II. of Spain, so bad as Tiberius, Caligula, Nero, or Domitian, who were four in twelve among the Roman emperors."²

For this very remarkable fact, it seems difficult to assign any cause equal to the effect, but the increased diffusion of knowledge (imperfect, alas! as this diffusion still is) by means of the Press; which, while it has raised, in free states, a growing bulwark against the oppression of rulers, in the light and spirit of the people, has, even under the most absolute governments,

had a powerful influence—by teaching princes to regard the wealth and prosperity and instruction of their subjects as the firmest basis of their grandeur—in directing their attention to objects of national and permanent utility. How encouraging the prospect thus opened of the future history of the world! And what a motive to animate the ambition of those, who, in the solitude of the closet, aspire to bequeath their contributions, how slender soever, to the progressive mass of human improvement and happiness!

In the bright constellation of scholars, historians, artists, and wits, who shed so strong a lustre on Italy during that splendid period of its history which commences with the revival of letters, it is surprising how few names occur, which it is possible to connect, by any palpable link, with the philosophical or political speculations of the present times. As an original and profound thinker, the genius of Machiavel completely eclipses that of all his contemporaries. Not that Italy was then destitute of writers who pretended to the character of philosophers; but as their attempts were, in general, limited to the exclusive illustration and defence of some one or other of the ancient systems for which they had conceived a predilection, they added but little of their own to the stock of useful knowledge; and are now remembered chiefly from the occasional recurrence of their names in the catalogues of the curious, or in works of philological erudition. The zeal of Cardinal Bessarion, and of Marsilius Ficinus, for the revival of the Platonic philosophy, was more peculiarly remarkable; and, at one time, produced so general an impression, as to alarm the followers of Aristotle for the tottering authority of their master. If we may credit Launoius, this great revolution was on the point of being actually accomplished, when Cardinal Bellarmine warned Pope Clement VIII. of the peculiar danger of shewing any favour to a philosopher whose opinions approached so nearly as those of Plato to the truths revealed in the Gospel. In what manner Bellarmine connected his conclusions with his premises, we are not informed. To those who are uninitiated in the mysteries of the conclave, his inference would certainly appear much less logical than that of the old Roman Pagans, who petitioned the Senate to condemn the works of Cicero to the flames, as they predisposed the minds of those who read them for embracing the Christian faith.

By a small band of bolder innovators, belonging to this golden age of Italian literature, the Aristotelian doctrines were more directly and powerfully assailed. Laurentius Valla, Marius Nizolius, and Franciscus Patricius,¹ have all of them transmitted their names to pos-

terity as philosophical reformers, and, in particular, as revolters against the authority of the Stagirite. Of the individuals just mentioned, Nizolius is the only one who seems entitled to maintain a permanent place in the annals of modern science. His principal work, entitled Antibarbarus,¹ is not only a bold invective against the prevailing ignorance and barbarism of the schools, but contains so able an argument against the then fashionable doctrine of the Realists concerning general ideas, that Leibnitz thought it worth while, a century afterwards, to republish it, with the addition of a long and valuable preface written by himself.

At the same period with Franciscus Patricius, flourished another learned Italian, Albericus Gentilis, whose writings seem to have attracted more notice in England and Germany than in his own country. His attachment to the reformed faith having driven him from Italy, he sought an asylum at Oxford, where he published, in 1588, a book de Jure Belli; and where he appears to have read lectures on Natural Jurisprudence, under the sanction of the University. His name has already sunk into almost total oblivion; and I should certainly not have mentioned it on the present occasion, were it not for his indisputable merits as the precursor of Grotius, in a department of study which, forty years afterwards, the celebrated treatise De Jure Belli et Pacis was to raise to so conspicuous a rank among the branches of academical education. The avowed aim of this new science, when combined with the anxiety of Gentilis to counteract the effect of Machiavel's Prince, by representing it as a warning to subjects rather than as a manual of instruction for their rulers, may be regarded as satisfactory evidence of the growing influence, even at that era, of better ethical principles than those commonly imputed to the Florentine Secretary.²

but from the account given of the author by Thuanus, he does not seem to have attracted that notice from his contemporaries, to which his learning and talents entitled him. (Thuan. Hist. Lib. cxix. xvii.) His Discussiones Peripateticæ, are mentioned by Brucker in the following terms: "Opus egregium, doctum, varium, luculentum, sed invidia odioque in Aristotelem plenum satis superque." (Hist. Phil. Tom. IV. p. 425.) The same very laborious and candid writer acknowledges the assistance he had derived from Patricius in his account of the Peripatetic philosophy.—"In qua tractatione fatemur egregiam enitere Patricii doctrinam, ingenii elegantiam prorsus admirabilem, et quod primo loco ponendum est, insolitam veteris philosophiæ cognitionem, cujus ope nos Peripateticæ disciplinæ historie multoties lucem attulisse, grati suis locis profesti sumus." Ibid. p. 426.

The only other Italian of whom I shall take notice at present, is Campanella ;¹ a philosopher now remembered chiefly in consequence of his eccentric character and eventful life, but of whom Leibnitz has spoken in terms of such high admiration, as to place him in the same line with Bacon. After looking into several of his works with some attention, I must confess, I am at a loss to conceive upon what grounds the eulogy of Leibnitz proceeds ; but as it is difficult to suppose, that the praise of this great man was, in any instance, the result of mere caprice, I shall put it in the power of my readers to judge for themselves, by subjoining a faithful translation of his words. I do this the more willingly, as the passage itself (whatever may be thought of the critical judgments pronounced in it), contains some general remarks on intellectual character, which are in every respect worthy of the author.

“Some men, in conducting operations where an attention to minutiae is requisite, discover a mind vigorous, subtile, and versatile, and seem to be equal to any undertaking how arduous soever. But when they are called upon to act on a greater scale, they hesitate and are lost in their own meditations ; distrustful of their judgment, and conscious of their incompetency to the scene in which they are placed : men, in a word, possessed of a genius rather acute than comprehensive. A similar difference may be traced among authors. What can be more acute than Descartes in Physics, or than Hobbes in Morals ! And yet, if the one be compared with Bacon, and the other with Campanella, the former writers seem to grovel upon the earth,—the latter to soar to the Heavens, by the vastness of their conceptions, their plans, and their enterprises, and to aim at objects beyond the reach of the human powers. The former, accordingly, are best fitted for delivering the first elements of knowledge, the latter for establishing conclusions of important and general application.”²

published at Pisa in 1782. “Hic primus jus aliquod Belli et esse et tradi posse excogitavit, et Belli et Pacis regulas explanavit primus, et fortasse in causa fuit cur Grotius opus suum conscribere aggredere tur ; dignus sane qui præ ceteris memoretur, Italice enim, in qua ortus erat, et unde Juris Romani disciplinam hauserat, gloriam auxit, effecitque ut quæ fuerat bonarum artium omnium restitutrix et alrix, eadem esset et prima Jurisprudentiæ Naturalis magistra.”

The annals of France, during this period, present very scanty materials for the History of Philosophy. The name of the Chancellor De l'Hopital, however, must not be passed over in silence. As an author, he does not rank high; nor does he seem to have at all valued himself on the careless effusions of his literary hours; but, as an upright and virtuous magistrate, he has left behind him a reputation unrivalled to this day.¹ His wise and indulgent principles on the subject of religious liberty, and the steadiness with which he adhered to them, under circumstances of extraordinary difficulty and danger, exhibit a splendid contrast to the cruel intolerance, which, a few years before, had disgraced the character of an illustrious Chancellor of England. The same philosophical and truly catholic spirit distinguished his friend, the President de Thou;² and gives the principal charm to the justly admired preface prefixed to his history. In tracing the progress of the human mind during the sixteenth century, such insulated and anomalous examples of the triumph of reason over superstition and bigotry, deserve attention, not less than what is due, in a history of the experimental arts, to Friar Bacon's early anticipation of gun-powder, and of the telescope.

Contemporary with these great men was Bodin (or Bodinus),³ an eminent French lawyer, who appears to have been one of the first that united a philosophical turn of thinking with an extensive knowledge of jurisprudence and of history. His learning is often ill digested, and his conclusions still oftener rash and unsound: yet it is but justice to him to acknowledge, that, in his views of the philosophy of law, he has approached very nearly to some leading ideas of Lord Bacon;⁴ while, in his refined combinations of historical facts, he has more than once struck into a train of speculation, bearing a strong resemblance to that afterwards pursued by Montesquieu.⁵ Of this resemblance, so remarkable an instance oc-

Hobbes. In his idea of a perfect commonwealth (to which he gives the name of Civitas Solis), the impurity of his imagination, and the unsoundness of his judgment, are equally conspicuous. He recommends, under certain regulations, a community of women; and, in every thing connected with procreation, lays great stress on the opinions of astrologers.

curs in his chapter on the moral effects of Climate, and on the attention due to this circumstance by the legislator, that it has repeatedly subjected the author of the Spirit of Laws (but in my opinion without any good reason) to the imputation of plagiarism.¹ A resemblance to Montesquieu, still more honourable to Bodinus, may be traced in their common attachment to religious as well as to civil liberty. To have caught, in the sixteenth century somewhat of the philosophical spirit of the eighteenth, reflects less credit on the force of his mind, than to have imbibed, in the midst of the theological controversies of his age, those lessons of mutual forbearance and charity, which a long and sad experience of the fatal effects of persecution has to this day so imperfectly taught to the most enlightened nations of Europe.

As a specimen of the liberal and moderate views of this philosophical politician, I shall quote two short passages from his Treatise De la République, which seem to me objects of considerable curiosity, when contrasted with the general spirit of the age in which they were written. The first relates to liberty of conscience, for which he was a strenuous and intrepid advocate, not only in his publications, but as a member of the Etats Généraux, assembled at Blois in 1576. "The mightier that a man is (says Bodin) the more justly and temperately he ought to behave himself towards all men, but especially towards his subjects. Wherefore the senate and people of Basil did wisely, who, having renounced the Bishop of Rome's religion, would not, upon the sudden, thrust the monks and nuns, with the other religious persons, out of their abbeys and monasteries, but only took order, that, as they died, they should die both for themselves and their successors, expressly forbidding any new to be chosen in their places, so that, by that means, their colleges might, by little and little, by the death of the fellows, be extinguished. Whereby it came to pass, that all the rest of the Carthusians, of their own accord, forsaking their cloisters, yet one of them all alone for a long time remained therein, quietly and without any disturbance, holding the right of his convent, being never enforced to change either his place, or habit, or old ceremonies, or religion before by him received. The like order was taken at Coire in the diet

who have studied the Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations; but it reflects no small credit on a lawyer of the sixteenth century to have subjected such questions to philosophical examination; and to have formed so just a conception, as Bodin appears evidently to have done, not only of the object, but of the importance of the modern science of political economy.

Thuanus speaks highly of Bodin's dissertations De re Monetaria, which I have never seen.—The same historian thus expresses himself with respect to the work De Republica: "Opus in quo ut omni scientiarum genere non tincti sed imbuti ingenii fidem fecit, sic nonnullis, qui recte judicant, non omnino ab ostentationis innato genti vitio vacuum se probavit. Hist. Lib. cxvii. ix."

of the Grisons; wherein it was decreed, that the ministers of the reformed religion should be maintained of the profits and revenues of the church, the religious men nevertheless still remaining in their cloisters and convents, to be by their death suppressed, they being now prohibited to choose any new instead of them which died. By which means, they which professed the new religion, and they who professed the old, were both provided for.”¹

The aim of the chapter from which I have extracted the foregoing passage, is to shew, that “it is a most dangerous thing, at one and the same time, to change the form, laws, and customs of a commonwealth.” The scope of the author’s reasonings may be judged of from the concluding paragraph.

“We ought then, in the government of a well ordered estate and commonwealth, to imitate and follow the great God of Nature, who in all things proceedeth easily, and by little and little; who of a little seed causeth to grow a tree for height and greatness, right admirable, and yet for all that insensibly; and still by means conjoining the extremities of nature, as by putting the spring between winter and summer, and autumn betwixt summer and winter, moderating the extremities of the terms and seasons, with the self-same wisdom which it useth in all other things also, and that in such sort, as that no violent force or course therein appeareth.”²

Notwithstanding these wise and enlightened maxims, it must be owned, on the other hand, that Bodin has indulged himself in various speculations, which would expose a writer of the present times to the imputation of insanity. One of the most extraordinary of these, is his elaborate argument to prove, that, in a well constituted state, the father should possess the right of life and death over his children;—a paradox which forms an unaccountable contrast to the general tone of humanity which characterizes his opinions. Of the extent of his credulity on the subject of witchcraft, and of the deep horror with which he regarded those who affected to be sceptical about the reality of that crime, he has left a lasting memorial in a learned and curious volume entitled Démonomanie; ¹ while the eccentricity of his religious tenets was such, as to incline the candid mind of Grotius to suspect him of a secret leaning to the Jewish faith. ²

In contemplating the characters of the eminent persons who appeared about this era, nothing is more interesting and instructive, than to remark the astonishing combination, in the same minds, of the highest intellectual endowments, with the most deplorable aberrations of the understanding; and even, in numberless instances, with the most childish superstitions of the multitude. Of this apparent inconsistency, Bodinus does not furnish a solitary example. The same remark may be extended, in a greater or less degree, to most of the other celebrated names hitherto mentioned. Melanchthon, as appears from his letters, was an interpreter of dreams, and a caster of nativities; ³ and Luther not only sanctioned, by his autho-

men. In 1606, the treatise of The Republic was done into English by Richard Knolles, who appears to have collated the French and Latin copies so carefully and judiciously, that his version is, in some respects, superior to either of the originals. It is from this version, accordingly, that I have transcribed the passages above quoted; trusting, that it will not be unacceptable to my readers, while looking back to the intellectual attainments of our forefathers, to have an opportunity, at the same time, of marking the progress which had been made in England, more than two centuries ago, in the arts of writing and of translation.

For Dr Johnson's opinion of Knolles's merits as an historian, and as an English writer, see the Rambler, No. 123.

rity, the popular fables about the sexual and prolific intercourse of Satan with the human race, but seems to have seriously believed that he had himself frequently seen the arch-enemy face to face, and held arguments with him on points of theology.¹ Nor was the study of the severer sciences, on all occasions, an effectual remedy against such illusions of the imagination. The sagacious Kepler was an astrologer and a visionary; and his friend Tycho Brahe, the Prince of Astronomers, kept an idiot in his service, to whose prophecies he listened as revelations from above.² During the long night of Gothic barbarism, the intellectual world had again become, like the primitive earth, "without form and void;" the light had already appeared; "and God had seen the light that it was good;" but the time was not yet come to "divide it from the darkness."³

In the midst of the disorders, both political and moral, of that unfortunate age, it is pleasing to observe the anticipations of brighter prospects, in the speculations of a few individuals. Bodinus himself is one of the number;⁴ and to his name may be added that of his country-

man and predecessor Budæus.¹ But, of all the writers of the sixteenth century, Ludovicus Vives seems to have had the liveliest and the most assured foresight of the new career on which the human mind was about to enter. The following passage from one of his works would have done no discredit to the Novum Organon: "The similitude which many have fancied between the superiority of the moderns to the ancients, and the elevation of a dwarf on the back of a giant, is altogether false and puerile. Neither were they giants, nor are we dwarfs, but all of us men of the same standard,—and we the taller of the two, by adding their height to our own: Provided always, that we do not yield to them in study, attention, vigilance, and love of truth; for, if these qualities be wanting, so far from mounting on the giant's shoulders, we throw away the advantages of our own just stature, by remaining prostrate on the ground."²

I pass over, without any particular notice, the names of some French logicians who flourished about this period, because, however celebrated among their contemporaries, they do not seem to form essential links in the History of Science. The bold and persevering spirit with which Ramus disputed, in the university of Paris, the authority of Aristotle, and the persecutions he incurred by this philosophical heresy, entitle him to an honourable distinction from the rest of his brethren. He was certainly a man of uncommon acuteness as well as eloquence, and placed in a very strong light some of the most vulnerable parts of the Aristotelian logic; without, however, exhibiting any marks of that deep sagacity which afterwards enabled Bacon, Descartes, and Locke, to strike at the very roots of the system. His copious and not inelegant style as a writer, recommended his innovations to those who were disgusted with the barbarism of the schools;³ while his avowed partiality for the reformed

faith (to which he fell a martyr in the massacre of Paris), procured many proselytes to his opinions in all the Protestant countries of Europe. In England his logic had the honour, in an age of comparative light and refinement, to find an expounder and methodiser in the author of Paradise Lost; and in some of our northern universities, where it was very early introduced, it maintained its ground till it was supplanted by the logic of Locke.

It has been justly said of Ramus, that, "although he had genius sufficient to shake the Aristotelian fabric, he was unable to substitute any thing more solid in its place:" but it ought not to be forgotten, that even this praise, scanty as it may now appear, involves a large tribute to his merits as a philosophical reformer. Before human reason was able to advance, it was necessary that it should first be released from the weight of its fetters.¹

It is observed, with great truth, by Condorcet, that, in the times of which we are now speaking, "the science of political economy did not exist. Princes estimated not the number of men, but of soldiers in the state;—finance was merely the art of plundering the people, without driving them to the desperation that might end in revolt;—and governments paid no other attention to commerce but that of loading it with taxes, of restricting it by privileges, or of disputing for its monopoly."

mus politioris literaturæ vir, ausus est Aristotelem acriter ubique et liberius incessere, universamque Peripateticam philosophiam exagitare. Ejus dialetica exiguo tempore fuit apud plurimos summo in pretio, maxime eloquentie studiosos, idque odio scholasticorum, quorum dictio et stylus ingrata fuerant auribus Ciceronianis." Logicæ Artis Compendium, Auctore R. Sanderson, Episc. Lincoln, pp. 250, 251. Edit. Decima. Oxon. The first edition was printed in 1618.

¹ Dr Barrow, in one of his mathematical lectures, speaks of Ramus in terms far too contemptuous. "Homo, ne quid gravius dicam, argutulus et dicaculus."—"Sane vix indignationi meæ tempero, quin illum accipiam pro suo merito, regeramque validius in ejus caput, quæ contra veteres jactat convicia." Had Barrow confined this censure to the weak and arrogant attacks made by Ramus upon Euclid (particularly upon Euclid's definition of Proportion), it would not have been more than Ramus deserved; but it is evident he meant to extend it also to the more powerful attacks of the same reformer upon the logic of Aristotle. Of these there are many which may be read with profit even in the present times. I select one passage as a specimen, recommending it strongly to the consideration of those logicians who have lately stood forward as advocates for Aristotle's abecedarian demonstrations of the syllogistic rules. "In Aristotelis arte, unius præcepti unicum exemplum est, ac sæpissime nullum: Sed unico et singulari exemplo non potest artifex effici; pluribus opus est et dissimilibus. Et quidem, ut Aristotelis exempla tantummodo non falsa sint, qualia tamen sunt? Omne b est a: omne c est b: ergo omne c est a. Exemplum Aristotelis est pueri à grammaticis et oratoribus venienti, et istam mutorum Mathematicorum linguam ignorantem, novum et durum: et in totis Analyticis istâ non Atticâ, non Ionicâ, non Doricâ, non Æolicâ, non communi, sed geometricâ linguâ usus est Aristoteles, odiosâ pueris, ignotâ populo, à communi sensu remotâ, à rhetoricæ usu et ab humanitatis usu alienissimâ." (P. Rami pro Philosophica Parisiensis Academiae Disciplina Oratio, 1550.) If these strictures should be thought too loose and declamatory, the reader may consult the fourth chapter (De Conversionibus) of the seventh book of Ramus's Dialectics, where the same charge is urged, in my opinion, with irresistible force of argument.

The internal disorders then agitating the whole of Christendom, were still less favourable to the growth of this science, considered as a branch of speculative study. Religious controversies everywhere divided the opinions of the multitude;—involving those collateral discussions concerning the liberty of conscience, and the relative claims of sovereigns and subjects, which, by threatening to resolve society into its first elements, present to restless and aspiring spirits the most inviting of all fields for enterprise and ambition. Amidst the shock of such discussions, the calm inquiries which meditate in silence the slow and gradual amelioration of the social order, were not likely to possess strong attractions, even to men of the most sanguine benevolence; and, accordingly, the political speculations of this period turn almost entirely on the comparative advantages and disadvantages of different forms of government; or on the still more alarming questions concerning the limits of allegiance and the right of resistance.

The dialogue of our illustrious countryman Buchanan, De Jure Regni apud Scotos, though occasionally disfigured by the keen and indignant temper of the writer, and by a predilection (pardonable in a scholar warm from the schools of ancient Greece and Rome) for forms of policy unsuitable to the circumstances of modern Europe, bears, nevertheless, in its general spirit, a closer resemblance to the political philosophy of the eighteenth century, than any composition which had previously appeared. The ethical paradoxes afterwards inculcated by Hobbes as the ground-work of his slavish theory of government, are anticipated and refuted; and a powerful argument is urged against that doctrine of Utility which has attracted so much notice in our times. The political reflections, too, incidentally introduced by the same author in his History of Scotland, bear marks of a mind worthy of a better age than fell to his lot. Of this kind are the remarks with which he closes his narrative of the wanton cruelties exercised in punishing the murderers of James the First. In reading them, one would almost imagine, that one is listening to the voice of Beccaria or of Montesquieu. "After this manner," says the historian, "was the cruel death of James still more cruelly avenged. For punishments so far exceeding the measure of humanity, have less effect in deterring the multitude from crimes, than in rousing them to greater efforts, both as actors and as sufferers. Nor do they tend so much to intimidate by their severity, as by their frequency to diminish the terrors of the spectators. The evil is more peculiarly great, when the mind of the criminal is hardened against the sense of pain; for in the judgment of the unthinking vulgar, a stubborn confidence generally obtains the praise of heroic constancy."

After the publication of this great work, the name of Scotland, so early distinguished

over Europe by the learning and by the fervid genius¹ of her sons, disappears for more than a century and a half from the History of Letters.—But from this subject, so pregnant with melancholy and humiliating recollections, our attention is forcibly drawn to a mighty and auspicious light which, in a more fortunate part of the island, was already beginning to rise on the philosophical world.²

FROM THE PUBLICATION OF BACON'S PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS, TILL THAT OF THE ESSAY ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING.

Progress of Philosophy in England during this period.

BACON.³

THE state of science towards the close of the sixteenth century, presented a field of observation singularly calculated to attract the curiosity, and to awaken the genius of Bacon; nor was it the least of his personal advantages, that, as the son of one of Queen Elizabeth's ministers, he had a ready access, wherever he went, to the most enlightened society in Europe. While yet only in the seventeenth year of his age, he was removed by his father from Cambridge to Paris, where it is not to be doubted, that the novelty of the literary scene must have largely contributed to cherish the natural liberality and independence of his

mind. Sir Joshua Reynolds has remarked, in one of his academical Discourses, that "every seminary of learning is surrounded with an atmosphere of floating knowledge, where every mind may imbibe somewhat congenial to its own original conceptions."¹ He might have added, with still greater truth, that it is an atmosphere, of which it is more peculiarly salutary for those who have been elsewhere reared to breathe the air. The remark is applicable to higher pursuits than were in the contemplation of this philosophical artist; and it suggests a hint of no inconsiderable value for the education of youth.

The merits of Bacon, as the father of Experimental Philosophy, are so universally acknowledged, that it would be superfluous to touch upon them here. The lights which he has struck out in various branches of the Philosophy of Mind, have been much less attended to; although the whole scope and tenor of his speculations shew, that to this study his genius was far more strongly and happily turned, than to that of the Material World. It was not, as some seem to have imagined, by sagacious anticipations of particular discoveries afterwards to be made in physics, that his writings have had so powerful an influence in accelerating the advancement of that science. In the extent and accuracy of his physical knowledge, he was far inferior to many of his predecessors; but he surpassed them all in his knowledge of the laws, the resources, and the limits of the human understanding. The sanguine expectations with which he looked forwards to the future, were founded solely on his confidence in the untried capacities of the mind; and on a conviction of the possibility of invigorating and guiding, by means of logical rules, those faculties which, in all our researches after truth, are the organs or instruments to be employed. "Such rules," as he himself has observed, "do in some sort equal men's wits, and leave no great advantage or pre-eminence to the perfect and excellent motions of the spirit. To draw a straight line, or to describe a circle, by aim of hand only, there must be a great difference between an unsteady and unpractised hand, and a steady and practised; but to do it by rule or compass it is much alike."

Nor is it merely as a logician that Bacon is entitled to notice on the present occasion. It would be difficult to name another writer prior to Locke, whose works are enriched with so many just observations on the intellectual phenomena. Among these, the most valuable relate to the laws of Memory, and of Imagination; the latter of which subjects he seems to have studied with peculiar care. In one short but beautiful paragraph concerning Poetry (under which title may be comprehended all the various creations of this faculty), he has exhausted every thing that philosophy and good sense have yet had to offer, on what has been since called the Beau Ideal; a topic, which has furnished occasion to so many

over-refinements among the French critics, and to so much extravagance and mysticism in the cloud-capt metaphysics of the new German school.¹ In considering imagination as connected with the nervous system, more particularly as connected with that species of sympathy to which medical writers have given the name of imitation, he has suggested some very important hints, which none of his successors have hitherto prosecuted; and has, at the same time, left an example of cautious inquiry, worthy to be studied by all who may attempt to investigate the laws regulating the union between Mind and Body.² His illustration of the different classes of prejudices incident to human nature, is, in point of practical utility, at least equal to any thing on that head to be found in Locke; of whom it is impossible to forbear remarking, as a circumstance not easily explicable, that he should have resumed this important discussion, without once mentioning the name of his great predecessor. The chief improvement made by Locke, in the farther prosecution of the argument, is the application of Hobbes's theory of association, to explain in what manner these prejudices are originally generated.

In Bacon's scattered hints on topics connected with the Philosophy of the Mind, strictly

so called, nothing is more remarkable than the precise and just ideas they display of the proper aim of this science. He had manifestly reflected much and successfully on the operations of his own understanding, and had studied with uncommon sagacity the intellectual characters of others. Of his reflections and observations on both subjects, he has recorded many important results; and has in general stated them without the slightest reference to any physiological theory concerning their causes, or to any analogical explanations founded on the caprices of metaphorical language. If, on some occasions, he assumes the existence of animal spirits, as the medium of communication between Soul and Body, it must be remembered, that this was then the universal belief of the learned; and that it was at a much later period not less confidently avowed by Locke. Nor ought it to be overlooked (I mention it to the credit of both authors), that in such instances the fact is commonly so stated, as to render it easy for the reader to detach it from the theory. As to the scholastic questions concerning the nature and essence of mind,—whether it be extended or unextended? whether it have any relation to space or to time? or whether (as was contended by others) it exist in every ubi, but in no place?—Bacon has uniformly passed them over with silent contempt; and has probably contributed not less effectually to bring them into general discredit, by this indirect intimation of his own opinion, than if he had descended to the ungrateful task of exposing their absurdity.¹

While Bacon, however, so cautiously avoids these unprofitable discussions about the nature of Mind, he decidedly states his conviction, that the faculties of Man differ not merely in degree, but in kind, from the instincts of the brutes. “I do not, therefore,” he observes on one occasion, “approve of that confused and promiscuous method in which philosophers are accustomed to treat of pneumatology; as if the human

Soul ranked above those of brutes, merely like the sun above the stars, or like gold above other metals."

Among the various topics started by Bacon for the consideration of future logicians, he did not overlook (what may be justly regarded, in a practical view, as the most interesting of all logical problems) the question concerning the mutual influence of Thought and of Language on each other. "Men believe," says he, "that their reason governs their words; but, it often happens, that words have power enough to re-act upon reason." This aphorism may be considered as the text of by far the most valuable part of Locke's Essay,—that which relates to the imperfections and abuse of words; but it was not till within the last twenty years, that its depth and importance were perceived in all their extent. I need scarcely say, that I allude to the excellent Memoirs of M. Prevost and of M. Degerando, on "Signs considered in their connection with the Intellectual Operations." The anticipations formed by Bacon, of that branch of modern logic which relates to Universal Grammar, do no less honour to his sagacity. "Grammar," he observes, "is of two kinds, the one literary, the other philosophical. The former has for its object to trace the analogies running through the structure of a particular tongue, so as to facilitate its acquisition to a foreigner, or to enable him to speak it with correctness and purity. The latter directs the attention, not to the analogies which words bear to words, but to the analogies which words bear to things;"¹ or, as he afterwards explains himself more clearly, "to language considered as the sensible portraiture or image of the mental processes." In farther illustration of these hints, he takes notice of the lights which the different genius of different languages reflect on the characters and habits of those by whom they were respectively spoken. "Thus," says he, "it is easy to perceive, that the Greeks were addicted to the culture of the arts, the Romans engrossed with the conduct of affairs; inasmuch, as the technical distinctions introduced in the progress of refinement require the aid of compounded words; while the real business of life stands in no need of so artificial a phraseology."² Ideas of this sort have, in the course of a very few years, already become common, and almost critical; but how different was the case two centuries ago!

With these sound and enlarged views concerning the Philosophy of the Mind, it will not appear surprising to those who have attended to the slow and irregular advances of human reason, that Bacon should occasionally blend incidental remarks, savouring of the ha-

bits of thinking prevalent in his time. A curious example of this occurs in the same chapter which contains his excellent definition or description of universal grammar. "This too," he observes, "is worthy of notice, that the ancient languages were full of declensions, of cases, of conjugations, of tenses, and of other similar inflections; while the modern, almost entirely destitute of these, indolently accomplish the same purpose by the help of prepositions, and of auxiliary verbs. Whence," he continues, "may be inferred (however we may flatter ourselves with the idea of our own superiority), that the human intellect was much more acute and subtle in ancient, than it now is in modern times."¹ How very unlike is this last reflection to the usual strain of Bacon's writings! It seems, indeed, much more congenial to the philosophy of Mr Harris and of Lord Monboddo; and it has accordingly been sanctioned with the approbation of both these learned authors. If my memory does not deceive me, it is the only passage in Bacon's works, which Lord Monboddo has anywhere condescended to quote.

These observations afford me a convenient opportunity for remarking the progress and diffusion of the philosophical spirit, since the beginning of the seventeenth century. In the short passage just cited from Bacon, there are involved no less than two capital errors, which are now almost universally ranked, by men of education, among the grossest prejudices of the multitude. The one, that the declensions and conjugations of the ancient languages, and the modern substitution in their place, of prepositions and auxiliary verbs, are, both of them, the deliberate and systematical contrivances of speculative grammarians; the other (still less analogous to Bacon's general style of reasoning), that the faculties of man have declined, as the world has grown older. Both of these errors may be now said to have disappeared entirely. The latter, more particularly, must, to the rising generation, seem so absurd, that it almost requires an apology to have mentioned it. That the capacities of the human mind have been in all ages the same; and that the diversity of phenomena exhibited by our species, is the result merely of the different circumstances in which men are placed, has been long received as an incontrovertible logical maxim; or rather, such is the influence of early instruction, that we are apt to regard it as one of the most obvious suggestions of common sense. And yet, till about the time of Montesquieu, it was by no means so generally recognized by the learned, as to have a sensible influence on the fashionable tone of thinking over Europe. The application of this fundamental and leading idea to the natural or theoretical history of society in all its vari-

ous aspects ;—to the history of languages, of the arts, of the sciences, of laws, of government, of manners, and of religion,—is the peculiar glory of the latter half of the eighteenth century ; and forms a characteristical feature in its philosophy, which even the imagination of Bacon was unable to foresee.

It would be endless to particularize the original suggestions thrown out by Bacon on topics connected with the science of Mind. The few passages of this sort already quoted, are produced merely as a specimen of the rest. They are by no means selected as the most important in his writings ; but, as they happened to be those which had left the strongest impression on my memory, I thought them as likely as any other, to invite the curiosity of my readers to a careful examination of the rich mine from which they are extracted.

The Ethical disquisitions of Bacon are almost entirely of a practical nature. Of the two theoretical questions so much agitated, in both parts of this Island, during the eighteenth century, concerning the principle and the object of moral approbation, he has said nothing ; but he has opened some new and interesting views with respect to the influence of custom and the formation of habits ;—a most important article of moral philosophy, on which he has enlarged more ably and more usefully than any writer since Aristotle.¹ Under the same head of Ethics may be mentioned the small volume to which he has given the title of Essays ; the best known and the most popular of all his works. It is also one of those where the superiority of his genius appears to the greatest advantage ; the novelty and depth of his reflections often receiving a strong relief from the triteness of his subject. It may be read from beginning to end in a few hours,—and yet, after the twentieth perusal, one seldom fails to remark in it something overlooked before. This, indeed, is a characteristic of all Bacon's writings, and is only to be accounted for by the inexhaustible aliment they furnish to our own thoughts, and the sympathetic activity they impart to our torpid faculties.

The suggestions of Bacon for the improvement of Political Philosophy, exhibit as strong a contrast to the narrow systems of contemporary statesmen, as the Inductive Logic to that of the Schools. How profound and comprehensive are the views opened in the following passages, when compared with the scope of the celebrated treatise De Jure Belli et Pacis ; a work which was first published about a year before Bacon's death, and which continued, for a hundred and fifty years afterwards, to be regarded in all the Protestant universities of Europe as an inexhaustible treasure of moral and jurisprudential wisdom !

“The ultimate object which legislators ought to have in view, and to which all their enactments and sanctions ought to be subservient, is, that the citizens may live happily. For this purpose, it is necessary that they should receive a religious and pious education; that they should be trained to good morals; that they should be secured from foreign enemies by proper military arrangements; that they should be guarded by an effectual police against seditions and private injuries; that they should be loyal to government, and obedient to magistrates; and finally, that they should abound in wealth, and in other national resources.” — “The science of such matters certainly belongs more particularly to the province of men who, by habits of public business, have been led to take a comprehensive survey of the social order; of the interests of the community at large; of the rules of natural equity; of the manners of nations; of the different forms of government; and who are thus prepared to reason concerning the wisdom of laws, both from considerations of justice and of policy. The great desideratum, accordingly, is, by investigating the principles of natural justice, and those of political expediency, to exhibit a theoretical model of legislation, which, while it serves as a standard for estimating the comparative excellence of municipal codes, may suggest hints for their correction and improvement, to such as have at heart the welfare of mankind.”²

How precise the notion was that Bacon had formed of a philosophical system of jurisprudence (with which as a standard the municipal laws of different nations might be compared), appears from a remarkable expression, in which he mentions it as the proper business of those who might attempt to carry his plan into execution, to investigate those “LEGES LEGUM, ex quibus informatio peti possit, quid in singulis legibus bene aut perperam positum aut constitutum sit.”³ I do not know if, in Bacon's prophetic anticipa-

tions of the future progress of physics, there be anything more characteristical, both of the grandeur and of the justness of his conceptions, than this short definition; more particularly, when we consider how widely Grotius, in a work professedly devoted to this very inquiry, was soon after to wander from the right path, in consequence of his vague and wavering idea of the aim of his researches.

The sagacity, however, displayed in these, and various other passages of a similar import, can by no means be duly appreciated, without attending, at the same time, to the cautious and temperate maxims so frequently inculcated by the author, on the subject of political innovation. "A stubborn retention of customs is a turbulent thing, not less than the introduction of new."—"Time is the greatest innovator; shall we then not imitate time, which innovates so silently as to mock the sense?" Nearly connected with these aphorisms, are the profound reflections in the first book De Augustis Scientiarum, on the necessity of accommodating every new institution to the character and circumstances of the people for whom it is intended; and on the peculiar danger which literary men run of overlooking this consideration, from the familiar acquaintance they acquire, in the course of their early studies, with the ideas and sentiments of the ancient classics.

The remark of Bacon on the systematical policy of Henry VII. was manifestly suggested by the same train of thinking. "His laws (whoso marks them well) were deep and not vulgar; not made on the spur of a particular occasion for the present, but out of providence for the future; to make the estate of his people still more and more happy, after the manner of the legislators in ancient and heroic times." How far this noble eulogy was merited, either by the legislators of antiquity, or by the modern Prince on whom Bacon has bestowed it, is a question of little moment. I quote it merely on account of the important philosophical distinction which it indirectly marks, between "deep and vulgar laws;" the former invariably aiming to accomplish their end, not by giving any sudden shock to the feelings and interests of the existing generation, but by allowing to natural causes time and opportunity to operate; and by removing those artificial ob-

in order to see more profoundly into the reason of such judgments and ruled cases, and thereby to make more use of them for the decision of other cases more doubtful; so that the uncertainty of law, which is the principal and most just challenge that is made to the laws of our nation at this time, will, by this new strength laid to the foundation, be somewhat the more settled and corrected." In this passage, no reference whatever is made to the Universal Justice spoken of in the aphorisms de Fontibus Juris; but merely to the leading and governing rules which give to a municipal system whatever it possesses of analogy and consistency. To these rules Bacon gives the title of leges legum; but the meaning of the phrase, on this occasion, differs from that in which he afterwards employed it, not less widely than the rules of Latin or of Greek syntax differ from the principles of universal grammar.

stacles which check the progressive tendencies of society. It is probable, that, on this occasion, Bacon had an eye more particularly to the memorable statute of alienation; to the effects of which (whatever were the motives of its author) the above description certainly applies in an eminent degree.

After all, however, it must be acknowledged, that it is rather in his general views and maxims, than in the details of his political theories, that Bacon's sagacity appears to advantage. His notions with respect to commercial policy seem to have been more peculiarly erroneous; originating in an overweening opinion of the efficacy of law, in matters where natural causes ought to be allowed a free operation. It is observed by Mr Hume, that the statutes of Henry VII. relating to the police of his kingdom, are generally contrived with more judgment than his commercial regulations. The same writer adds, that "the more simple ideas of order and equity are sufficient to guide a legislator in everything that regards the internal administration of justice; but that the principles of commerce are much more complicated, and require long experience and deep reflection to be well understood in any state. The real consequence is there often contrary to first appearances. No wonder, that, during the reign of Henry VII. these matters were frequently mistaken; and it may safely be affirmed, that, even in the age of Lord Bacon, very imperfect and erroneous ideas were formed on that subject."

The instances mentioned by Hume in confirmation of these general remarks, are peculiarly gratifying to those who have a pleasure in tracing the slow but certain progress of reason and liberality. "During the reign," says he, "of Henry VII. it was prohibited to export horses, as if that exportation did not encourage the breed, and make them more plentiful in the kingdom. Prices were also affixed to woollen cloths, to caps and hats, and the wages of labourers were regulated by law. It is EVIDENT, that these matters ought always to be left free, and be entrusted to the common course of business and commerce." — "For a like reason," the historian continues, "the law enacted against inclosures, and for the keeping up of farm-houses, scarcely deserves the praises bestowed on it by Lord Bacon. If husbandmen understand agriculture, and have a ready vent for their commodities, we need not dread a diminution of the people employed in the country. During a century and a half after this period, there was a frequent renewal of laws and edicts against depopulation; whence we may infer, that none of them were ever executed. The natural course of improvement at last provided a remedy."

These acute and decisive strictures on the impolicy of some laws highly applauded by Bacon, while they strongly illustrate the narrow and mistaken views in political economy entertained by the wisest statesmen and philosophers two centuries ago, afford, at the same

time, a proof of the general diffusion which has since taken place among the people of Great Britain, of juster and more enlightened opinions on this important branch of legislation. Wherever such doctrines find their way into the page of history, it may be safely inferred, that the public mind is not indisposed to give them a welcome reception.

The ideas of Bacon concerning the education of youth, were such as might be expected from a philosophical statesman. On the conduct of education in general, with a view to the development and improvement of the intellectual character, he has suggested various useful hints in different parts of his works; but what I wish chiefly to remark at present is, the paramount importance which he has attached to the education of the people,—comparing (as he has repeatedly done) the effects of early culture on the understanding and the heart, to the abundant harvest which rewards the diligent husbandman for the toils of the spring. To this analogy he seems to have been particularly anxious to attract the attention of his readers, by bestowing on education the title of the Georgics of the Mind; identifying, by a happy and impressive metaphor, the two proudest functions entrusted to the legislator,—the encouragement of agricultural industry, and the care of national instruction. In both instances, the legislator exerts a power which is literally productive or creative; compelling, in the one case, the unprofitable desert to pour forth its latent riches; and in the other, vivifying the dormant seeds of genius and virtue, and redeeming from the neglected wastes of human intellect, a new and unexpected accession to the common inheritance of mankind.

When from such speculations as these we descend to the treatise De Jure Belli et Pacis, the contrast is mortifying indeed. And yet, so much better suited were the talents and accomplishments of Grotius to the taste, not only of his contemporaries, but of their remote descendants, that, while the merits of Bacon failed, for a century and a half, to command the general admiration of Europe,¹ Grotius continued, even in our British universities, the acknowledged Oracle of Jurisprudence and of Ethics, till long after the death of Montesquieu. Nor was Bacon himself unapprised of the slow growth of his posthumous fame. No writer seems ever to have felt more deeply, that he properly belonged to a later and more enlightened age;—a sentiment which he has pathetically expressed in that clause

of his testament, where he "bequeaths his name to posterity, after some generations shall be past."¹

Unbounded, however, as the reputation of Grotius was on the Continent, even before his own death, it was not till many years after the publication of the treatise De Jure Belli et Pacis, that the science of natural jurisprudence became, in this Island, an object of much attention, even to the learned. In order, therefore, to give to the sequel of this section some degree of continuity, I shall reserve my observations on Grotius and his successors, till I shall have finished all that I think it necessary to mention further, with respect to the literature of our own country, prior to the appearance of Mr Locke's Essay.

The rapid advancement of intellectual cultivation in England, between the years 1588 and 1640 (a period of almost uninterrupted peace), has been remarked by Mr Fox. "The general improvement," he observes, "in all arts of civil life, and above all, the astonishing progress of literature, are the most striking among the general features of that period; and are in themselves causes sufficient to produce effects of the utmost importance. A country whose language was enriched by the works of Hooker, Raleigh, and Bacon, could not but experience a sensible change in its manners, and in its style of thinking; and even to speak the same language in which Spencer and Shakespeare had written, seemed a sufficient plea to rescue the Commons of England from the appellation of Brutes, with which Henry the Eighth had addressed them."—The remark is equally just and refined. It is by the mediation of an improving language, that the progress of the mind is chiefly continued from one generation to another; and that the acquirements of the enlightened few are insensibly imparted to the many. Whatever tends to diminish the ambiguities of speech, or to fix, with more logical precision, the import of general terms;—above all, whatever tends to embody, in popular forms of expression, the ideas and feelings of the wise and good, augments the natural powers of the human understanding, and enables the succeeding race to start from a higher ground than was occupied by their fathers. The remark applies with peculiar force to the study of the Mind itself; a study, where the chief source of error is the imperfection of words; and where every improvement on this great instrument of thought may be justly regarded in the light of a discovery.²

In the foregoing list of illustrious names, Mr Fox has, with much propriety, connected those of Bacon and Raleigh; two men, who, notwithstanding the diversity of their professional pursuits, and the strong contrast of their characters, exhibit, nevertheless, in their capacity of authors, some striking features of resemblance. Both of them owed to the force of their own minds, their emancipation from the fetters of the schools; both were eminently distinguished above their contemporaries, by the originality and enlargement of their philosophical views; and both divide, with the venerable Hooker, the glory of exemplifying to their yet unpolished countrymen, the richness, variety, and grace, which might be lent to the English idiom, by the hand of a master.¹

It is not improbable that Mr Fox might have included the name of Hobbes in the same enumeration, had he not been prevented by an aversion to his slavish principles of government, and by his general disrelish for metaphysical theories. As a writer, Hobbes unquestionably ranks high among the older English classics; and is so peculiarly distinguished by the simplicity and ease of his manner, that one would naturally have expected from Mr Fox's characteristical taste, that he would have relished his style still more than that of Bacon² or of Raleigh.—It is with the philosophical merits, however, of Hobbes, that we

strongly stated by Dr Johnson, in his introduction to the Harleian Miscellany. "It deserves to be remarked, because it is not generally known, that the treatises on husbandry and agriculture, which were published during the reign of King James, are so numerous, that it can scarcely be imagined by whom they were written, or to whom they were sold." Nothing can illustrate more strongly the effects of a pacific system of policy, in encouraging a general taste for reading, as well as an active spirit of national improvement. At all times, and in every country, the extensive sale of books on agriculture, may be regarded as one of the most pleasing symptoms of mental cultivation in the great body of a people.

¹ To prevent being misunderstood, it is necessary for me to add, that I do not speak of the general style of these old authors; but only of detached passages, which may be selected from all of them, as carnest or first fruits of a new and brighter era in English literature. It may be safely affirmed, that in their works, and in the prose compositions of Milton, are to be found some of the finest sentences of which our language has yet to boast. To propose them now as models for imitation, would be quite absurd. Dr Lowth certainly went much too far when he said, "That in correctness, propriety, and purity of English style, Hooker hath hardly been surpassed, or even equalled, by any of his successors." Preface to Lowth's English Grammar.

² According to Dr Burnet (no contemptible judge of style), Bacon was "the first that writ our language correctly." The same learned prelate pronounces Bacon to be "still our best author;" and this, at a time, when the works of Sprat, and many of the prose compositions of Cowley and of Dryden, were already in the hands of the public. It is difficult to conceive on what grounds Burnet proceeded, in hazarding so extraordinary an opinion. See the preface to Burnet's translation of More's Utopia.

It is still more difficult, on the other hand, to account for the following very bold decision of Mr Hume. I transcribe it from an essay first published in 1742; but the same passage is to be found in the last edition of his works, corrected by himself. "The first polite prose we have, was writ by a man (Dr Swift) who is

are alone concerned at present; and, in this point of view, what a space is filled in the subsequent history of our domestic literature, by his own works, and by those of his innumerable opponents! Little else, indeed, but the systems which he published, and the controversies which they provoked, occurs, during the interval between Bacon and Locke, to mark the progress of English Philosophy, either in the study of the Mind, or in the kindred researches of Ethical and Political Science.

Of the few and comparatively trifling exceptions to this remark, furnished by the metaphysical tracts of Glanville, of Henry More, and of John Smith, I must delay taking notice, till some account shall be given of the Cartesian philosophy; to which their most interesting discussions have a constant reference, either in the way of comment or refutation.

"The philosopher of Malmesbury," says Dr Warburton, "was the terror of the last age, as Tindall and Collins are of this. The press sweat with controversy; and every young churchman militant, would try his arms in thundering on Hobbes's steel cap."² Nor was the opposition to Hobbes confined to the clerical order, or to the controversialists of his own times. The most eminent moralists and politicians of the eighteenth century may be ranked in the number of his antagonists, and even at the present moment, scarcely does there appear a new publication on Ethics or Jurisprudence, where a refutation of Hobbsism is not to be found.

The period when Hobbes began his literary career, as well as the principal incidents of his life, were, in a singular degree, favourable to a mind like his; impatient of the yoke of authority, and ambitious to attract attention, if not by solid and useful discoveries, at least by an ingenious defence of paradoxical tenets. After a residence of five years at Oxford,

still alive. As to Sprat, Locke, and even Temple, they knew too little of the rules of art to be esteemed elegant writers. The prose of Bacon, Harrington, and Milton, is altogether stiff and pedantic; though their sense be excellent."

How insignificant are the petty grammatical improvements proposed by Swift, when compared with the inexhaustible riches imparted to the English tongue by the writers of the seventeenth century; and how inferior, in all the higher qualities and graces of style, are his prose compositions, to those of his immediate predecessors, Dryden, Pope, and Addison!

and a very extensive tour through France and Italy, he had the good fortune, upon his return to England, to be admitted into the intimacy and confidence of Lord Bacon; a circumstance which, we may presume, contributed not a little to encourage that bold spirit of inquiry, and that aversion to scholastic learning, which characterize his writings. Happy, if he had, at the same time, imbibed some portion of that love of truth and zeal for the advancement of knowledge, which seem to have been Bacon's ruling passions! But such was the obstinacy of his temper, and his overweening self-conceit, that, instead of co-operating with Bacon in the execution of his magnificent design, he resolved to rear, on a foundation exclusively his own, a complete structure both of Moral and Physical science; disdaining to avail himself even of the materials collected by his predecessors, and treating the experimentarian philosophers as objects only of contempt and ridicule!¹

In the political writings of Hobbes, we may perceive the influence also of other motives. From his earliest years, he seems to have been decidedly hostile to all the forms of popular government; and it is said to have been with the design of impressing his countrymen with a just sense of the disorders incident to democratical establishments, that he published, in 1618, an English translation of Thucydides. In these opinions he was more and more confirmed by the events he afterwards witnessed in England; the fatal consequences of which he early foresaw with so much alarm, that, in 1640, he withdrew from the approaching storm, to enjoy the society of his philosophical friends at Paris. It was here he wrote his book De Cive, a few copies of which were printed, and privately circulated in 1642. The same work was afterwards given to the public, with material corrections and improvements, in 1647, when the author's attachment to the royal cause being strengthened by his personal connection with the exiled King, he thought it incumbent on him to stand forth avowedly as an advocate for those principles which he had long professed. The great object of this performance was to strengthen the hands of sovereigns against the rising spirit of democracy, by arming them with the weapons of a new philosophy.

The fundamental doctrines inculcated in the political works of Hobbes are contained in the following propositions. I recapitulate them here, not on their own account, but to prepare the way for some remarks which I mean afterwards to offer on the coincidence between the principles of Hobbes and those of Locke. In their practical conclusions, indeed, with respect to the rights and duties of citizens, the two writers differ widely; but it is curious to observe how very nearly they set out from the same hypothetical assumptions.

All men are by nature equal ; and, prior to government, they had all an equal right to enjoy the good things of this world. Man, too, is (according to Hobbes) by nature a solitary and purely selfish animal ; the social union being entirely an interested league, suggested by prudential views of personal advantage. The necessary consequence is, that a state of nature must be a state of perpetual warfare, in which no individual has any other means of safety than his own strength or ingenuity ; and in which there is no room for regular industry, because no secure enjoyment of its fruits. In confirmation of this view of the origin of society, Hobbes appeals to facts falling daily within the circle of our own experience. " Does not a man (he asks) when taking a journey, arm himself, and seek to go well accompanied ? When going to sleep, does he not lock his doors ? Nay, even in his own house, does he not lock his chests ? Does he not there as much accuse mankind by his actions, as I do by my words ?"¹ An additional argument to the same purpose may, according to some later Hobbits, be derived from the instinctive aversion of infants for strangers ; and from the apprehension which (it is alleged) every person feels, when he hears the tread of an unknown foot in the dark.

For the sake of peace and security, it is necessary that each individual should surrender a part of his natural right, and be contented with such a share of liberty as he is willing to allow to others ; or, to use Hobbes's own language, " every man must divest himself of the right he has to all things by nature ; the right of all men to all things being in effect no better than if no man had a right to any thing."² In consequence of this transference of natural rights to an individual, or to a body of individuals, the multitude become one person, under the name of a State or Republic, by which person the common will and power are exercised for the common defence. The ruling power cannot be withdrawn from those to whom it has been committed ; nor can they be punished for misgovernment. The interpretation of the laws is to be sought, not from the comments of philosophers, but from the authority of the ruler ; otherwise society would every moment be in danger of resolving itself into the discordant elements of which it was at first composed. The will of the magistrate, therefore, is to be regarded as the ultimate standard of right and wrong, and his voice to be listened to by every citizen as the voice of conscience.

Not many years afterwards,³ Hobbes pushed the argument for the absolute power of princes still further, in a work to which he gave the name of Leviathan. Under

this appellation he means the body politic; insinuating, that man is an untameable beast of prey, and that government is the strong chain by which he is kept from mischief. The fundamental principles here maintained are the same as in the book De Cive; but as it inveighs more particularly against ecclesiastical tyranny, with the view of subjecting the consciences of men to the civil authority, it lost the author the favour of some powerful protectors he had hitherto enjoyed among the English divines who attended Charles II. in France; and he even found it convenient to quit that kingdom, and to return to England, where Cromwell (to whose government his political tenets were now as favourable as they were meant to be to the royal claims) suffered him to remain unmolested. The same circumstances operated to his disadvantage after the Restoration, and obliged the King, who always retained for him a very strong attachment, to confer his marks of favour on him with the utmost reserve and circumspection.¹

The details which I have entered into, with respect to the history of Hobbes's political writings, will be found, by those who may peruse them, to throw much light on the author's reasonings. Indeed, it is only by thus considering them in their connection with the circumstances of the times, and the fortunes of the writer, that a just notion can be formed of their spirit and tendency.

The ethical principles of Hobbes are so completely interwoven with his political system, that all which has been said of the one may be applied to the other. It is very remarkable, that Descartes should have thought so highly of the former, as to pronounce Hobbes to be "a much greater master of morality than of metaphysics;" a judgment which is of itself sufficient to mark the very low state of ethical science in France about the middle of the seventeenth century. Mr Addison, on the other hand, gives a decided preference (among all the books written by Hobbes) to his Treatise on Human Nature; and to his opinion on this point I most implicitly subscribe; including, however, in the same commendation, some of his other philosophical essays on similar topics. They are the only part of his works which it is possible now to read with any interest; and they everywhere evince in their author, even when he thinks most unsoundly himself, that power of setting his reader a-thinking, which is one of the most unequivocal marks of original genius. They have plainly been studied with the utmost care both by Locke and Hume. To the former they have suggested some of his most important observations on the Association of Ideas, as well as much of the sophistry displayed in the first book of his Essay, on the Origin of our Knowledge, and on the factitious nature of our moral principles; to the latter (among a variety of hints of less consequence),

his theory concerning the nature of those established connections among physical events, which it is the business of the natural philosopher to ascertain,¹ and the substance of his argument against the scholastic doctrine of general conceptions. It is from the works of Hobbes, too, that our later Necessitarians have borrowed the most formidable of those weapons with which they have combated the doctrine of moral liberty; and from the same source has been derived the leading idea which runs through the philological materialism of Mr Horne Tooke. It is probable, indeed, that this last author borrowed it, at second-hand, from a hint in Locke's Essay; but it is repeatedly stated by Hobbes, in the most explicit and confident terms. Of this idea, (than which, in point of fact, nothing can be imagined more puerile and unsound,) Mr Tooke's etymologies, when he applies them to the solution of metaphysical questions, are little more than an ingenious expansion, adapted and levelled to the comprehension of the multitude.

The speculations of Hobbes, however, concerning the theory of the understanding, do not seem to have been nearly so much attended to during his own life, as some of his other doctrines, which, having a more immediate reference to human affairs, were better adapted to the unsettled and revolutionary spirit of the times. It is by these doctrines, chiefly, that his name has since become so memorable in the annals of modern literature; and although they now derive their whole interest from the extraordinary combination they exhibit of acuteness and subtlety with a dead-palsy in the powers of taste and of moral sensibility, yet they will be found, on an attentive examination, to have had a far more extensive influence on the subsequent history both of political and of ethical science, than any other publication of the same period.

Cudworth² was one of the first who successfully combated this new philosophy. As Hobbes, in the frenzy of his political zeal, had been led to sacrifice wantonly all the prin-

ciples of religion and morality to the establishment of his conclusions, his works not only gave offence to the friends of liberty, but excited a general alarm among all sound moralists. His doctrine, in particular, that there is no natural distinction between Right and Wrong, and that these are dependent on the arbitrary will of the civil magistrate, was so obviously subversive of all the commonly received ideas concerning the moral constitution of human nature, that it became indispensably necessary, either to expose the sophistry of the attempt, or to admit, with Hobbes, that man is a beast of prey, incapable of being governed by any motives but fear, and the desire of self-preservation.

Between some of these tenets of the courtly Hobbists, and those inculcated by the Cromwellian Antinomians, there was a very extraordinary and unfortunate coincidence; the latter insisting, that, in expectation of Christ's second coming, "the obligations of morality and natural law were suspended; and that the elect, guided by an internal principle, more perfect and divine, were superior to the beggarly elements of justice and humanity."¹ It was the object of Cudworth to vindicate, against the assaults of both parties, the immutability of moral distinctions.

In the prosecution of his very able argument on this subject, Cudworth displays a rich store of enlightened and choice erudition, penetrated throughout with a peculiar vein of sobered and subdued Platonism, from whence some German systems, which have attracted no small notice in our own times, will be found, when stripped of their deep neological disguise, to have borrowed their most valuable materials.²

Another coincidence between the Hobbists and the Antinomians, may be remarked in

their common zeal for the scheme of necessity; which both of them stated in such a way as to be equally inconsistent with the moral agency of man, and with the moral attributes of God.¹ The strongest of all presumptions against this scheme is afforded by the other tenets with which it is almost universally combined; and accordingly, it was very shrewdly observed by Cudworth, that the licentious system which flourished in his time (under which title, I presume, he comprehended the immoral tenets of the fanatics, as well as of the Hobbits), "grew up from the doctrine of the fatal necessity of all actions and events, as from its proper root." The unsettled, and, at the same time, disputatious period during which Cudworth lived, afforded him peculiarly favourable opportunities of judging from experience, of the practical tendency of this metaphysical dogma; and the result of his observations deserves the serious attention of those who may be disposed to regard it in the light of a fair and harmless theme for the display of controversial subtilty. To argue, in this manner, against a speculative principle from its palpable effects, is not always so illogical as some authors have supposed. "You repeat to me incessantly," says Rousseau to one of his correspondents, "that truth can never be injurious to the world. I myself believe so as firmly as you do; and it is for this very reason I am satisfied that your proposition is false."²

But the principal importance of Cudworth, as an ethical writer, arises from the influence of his argument concerning the immutability of right and wrong on the various theories of

pliment, when I suppose, that, in the Critic of pure Reason, the leading idea is somewhat analogous to what is so much better expressed in the foregoing passage. To Kant it was probably suggested by the following very acute and decisive remark of Leibnitz on Locke's Essay: "Nempe, nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu, nisi ipse intellectus."

In justice to Aristotle, it may be here observed, that, although the general strain of his language is strictly conformable to the scholastic maxim just quoted, he does not seem to have altogether overlooked the important exception to it pointed out by Leibnitz. Indeed, this exception or limitation is very nearly a translation of Aristotle's words. Καὶ αὐτοὶ δὲ οὖν νοητοὶ ἴστιν, ὥσπερ τὰ γινώμενα ἐπὶ μὲν γὰρ τῶν αἰνὼν ὕλης, τὸ αὐτὸ ἐστὶ τὸ νοῦν καὶ τὸ νοούμενον. "And the mind itself is an object of knowledge, as well as other things which are intelligible. For, in immaterial beings, that which understands is the same with that which is understood." (De Anima, Lib. iii. cap. v.) I quote this very curious, and, I suspect, very little known sentence, in order to vindicate Aristotle against the misrepresentations of some of his present idolaters, who, in their anxiety to secure to him all the credit of Locke's doctrine concerning the Origin of our Ideas, have overlooked the occasional traces which occur in his works, of that higher and sounder philosophy in which he had been educated.

morals which appeared in the course of the eighteenth century. To this argument may, more particularly, be traced the origin of the celebrated question, Whether the principle of moral approbation is to be ultimately resolved into Reason, or into Sentiment?—a question, which has furnished the chief ground of difference between the systems of Cudworth and of Clarke, on the one hand; and those of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith, on the other. The remarks which I have to offer on this controversy must evidently be delayed, till the writings of these more modern authors shall fall under review.

The Intellectual System of Cudworth, embraces a field much wider than his treatise of Immutable Morality. The latter is particularly directed against the ethical doctrines of Hobbes, and of the Antinomians; but the former aspires to tear up by the roots all the principles, both physical and metaphysical, of the Epicurean philosophy. It is a work, certainly, which reflects much honour on the talents of the author, and still more on the boundless extent of his learning; but it is so ill suited to the taste of the present age, that, since the time of Mr Harris and Dr Price, I scarcely recollect the slightest reference to it in the writings of our British metaphysicians. Of its faults (beside the general disposition of the author to discuss questions placed altogether beyond the reach of our faculties), the most prominent is the wild hypothesis of a plastic nature; or, in other words, "of a vital and spiritual, but unintelligent and necessary agent, created by the Deity for the execution of his purposes." Notwithstanding, however, these, and many other abatement of its merits, the Intellectual System will for ever remain a precious mine of information to those whose curiosity may lead them to study the spirit of the ancient theories; and to it we may justly apply what Leibnitz has somewhere said, with far less reason, of the works of the schoolmen, "Scholasticos agnosco abundare ineptiis; sed aurum est in illo cæno."¹

Before dismissing the doctrines of Hobbes, it may be worth while to remark, that all his leading principles are traced by Cudworth to the remains of the ancient sceptics, by some of whom, as well as by Hobbes, they seem to have been adopted from a wish to flatter the uncontrolled passions of sovereigns. Not that I am disposed to call in question the originality of Hobbes; for it appears, from the testimony of all his friends, that he had much less pleasure in reading than in thinking. "If I had read," he was accustomed to say, "as much as some others, I should have been as ignorant as they are." But similar political circumstances invariably reproduce similar philosophical theories; and it is one of the numer-

ous disadvantages attending an inventive mind, not properly furnished with acquired information, to be continually liable to a waste of its powers on subjects previously exhausted.

The sudden tide of licentiousness, both in principles and in practice, which burst into this island at the moment of the Restoration, conspired with the paradoxes of Hobbes, and with the no less dangerous errors recently propagated among the people by their religious instructors, to turn the thoughts of sober and speculative men towards ethical disquisitions. The established clergy assumed a higher tone than before in their sermons; sometimes employing them in combating that Epicurean and Machiavellian philosophy which was then fashionable at court, and which may be always suspected to form the secret creed of the enemies of civil and religious liberty;—on other occasions, to overwhelm, with the united force of argument and learning, the extravagancies by which the ignorant enthusiasts of the preceding period had exposed Christianity itself to the scoffs of their libertine opponents. Among the divines who appeared at this era, it is impossible to pass over in silence the name of Barrow, whose theological works (adorned throughout by classical erudition, and by a vigorous, though unpolished eloquence), exhibit, in every page, marks of the same inventive genius which, in mathematics, has secured to him a rank second alone to that of Newton. As a writer, he is equally distinguished by the redundancy of his matter, and by the pregnant brevity of his expression; but what more peculiarly characterizes his manner, is a certain air of powerful and of conscious facility in the execution of whatever he undertakes. Whether the subject be mathematical, metaphysical, or theological, he seems always to bring to it a mind which feels itself superior to the occasion; and which, in contending with the greatest difficulties, “puts forth but half its strength.” He has somewhere spoken of his Lectiones Mathematicæ (which it may, in passing, be remarked, display metaphysical talents of the highest order), as extemporaneous effusions of his pen; and I have no doubt that the same epithet is still more literally applicable to his pulpit discourses. It is, indeed, only thus we can account for the variety and extent of his voluminous remains, when we recollect that the author died at the age of forty-six.¹

To the extreme rapidity with which Barrow committed his thoughts to writing, I am inclined to ascribe the hasty and not altogether consistent opinions which he has hazarded on

some important topics. I shall confine myself to a single example, which I select in preference to others, as it bears directly on the most interesting of all questions connected with the theory of morals. "If we scan," says he, "the particular nature, and search into the original causes of the several kinds of naughty dispositions in our souls, and of miscarriages in our lives, we shall find inordinate self-love to be a main ingredient, and a common source of them all; so that a divine of great name had some reason to affirm,—that original sin (or that innate distemper from which men generally become so very prone to evil, and averse to good), doth consist in self-love, disposing us to all kinds of irregularity and excess." In another passage, the same author expresses himself thus: "Reason dictateth and prescribeth to us, that we should have a sober regard to our true good and welfare; to our best interests and solid content; to that which (all things being rightly stated, considered and computed) will, in the final event, prove most beneficial and satisfactory to us: a self-love working in prosecution of such things, common sense cannot but allow and approve."

Of these two opposite and irreconcilable opinions, the latter is incomparably the least wide of the truth; and accordingly Mr Locke, and his innumerable followers, both in England and on the Continent, have maintained, that virtue and an enlightened self-love are one and the same. I shall afterwards find a more convenient opportunity for stating some objections to the latter doctrine, as well as to the former. I have quoted the two passages here, merely to shew the very little attention that had been paid, at the era in question, to ethical science, by one of the most learned and profound divines of his age. This is the more remarkable, as his works everywhere inculcate the purest lessons of practical morality, and evince a singular acuteness and justness of eye in the observation of human character. Whoever compares the views of Barrow, when he touches on the theory of morals, with those opened about fifty years afterwards by Dr Butler, in his Discourses on Human Nature, will be abundantly satisfied, that, in this science, as well as in others, the progress of the philosophical spirit during the intervening period was not inconsiderable.

The name of Wilkins, (although he too wrote with some reputation against the Epicureans of his day), is now remembered chiefly in consequence of his treatises concerning a universal language and a real character. Of these treatises, I shall hereafter have occa-

son), contents himself with saying, that "Some of his sermons were written four or five times over;"—mentioning, at the same time, a circumstance which may account for this fact, in perfect consistency with what I have stated above,—that "Barrow was very ready to lend his sermons as often as desired."

sion to take some notice, under a different article. With all the ingenuity displayed in them, they cannot be considered as accessions of much value to science; and the long period since elapsed, during which no attempt has been made to turn them to any practical use, affords of itself no slight presumption against the solidity of the project.

A few years before the death of Hobbes, Dr Cumberland (afterwards Bishop of Peterborough) published a book, entitled, De Legibus Naturæ, Disquisitio Philosophica; the principal aim of which was to confirm and illustrate, in opposition to Hobbes, the conclusions of Grotius, concerning Natural Law. The work is executed with ability, and discovers juster views of the object of moral science, than any modern system that had yet appeared; the author resting the strength of his argument, not, as Grotius had done, on an accumulation of authorities, but on the principles of the human frame, and the mutual relations of the human race. The circumstance, however, which chiefly entitles this publication to our notice is, that it seems to have been the earliest on the subject which attracted, in any considerable degree, the attention of English scholars. From this time, the writings of Grotius and of Puffendorff began to be generally studied, and soon after made their way into the Universities. In Scotland, the impression produced by them was more peculiarly remarkable. They were everywhere adopted as the best manuals of ethical and of political instruction that could be put into the hands of students; and gradually contributed to form that memorable school, from whence so many Philosophers and Philosophical Historians were afterwards to proceed.

From the writings of Hobbes to those of Locke, the transition is easy and obvious; but, before prosecuting farther the history of philosophy in England, it will be proper to turn our attention to its progress abroad, since the period at which this section commences.¹ In

the first place, however, I shall add a few miscellaneous remarks on some important events which occurred in this country during the lifetime of Hobbes, and of which his extraordinary longevity prevented me sooner from taking notice.

Among these events, that which is most immediately connected with our present subject, is the establishment of the Royal Society of London in 1662, which was followed a few years afterwards by that of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris. The professed object of both institutions was the improvement of Experimental Knowledge, and of the auxiliary science of Mathematics; but their influence on the general progress of human reason has been far greater than could possibly have been foreseen at the moment of their foundation. On the happy effects resulting from them in this respect, La Place has introduced some just reflections in his System of the World, which, as they discover more originality of thought than he commonly displays, when he ventures to step beyond the circumference of his own magic circle, I shall quote, in a literal translation of his words.

“The chief advantage of learned societies, is the philosophical spirit to which they may be expected to give birth, and which they cannot fail to diffuse over all the various pursuits of the nations among whom they are established. The insulated scholar may without dread abandon himself to the spirit of system; he hears the voice of contradiction only from afar. But in a learned society, the collision of systematic opinions soon terminates in their common destruction; while the desire of mutual conviction creates among the members a tacit compact, to admit nothing but the results of observation, or the conclusions of mathematical reasoning. Accordingly, experience has shewn, how much these establishments have contributed, since their origin, to the spread of true philosophy. By setting the example of submitting every thing to the examination of a severe logic, they have dissipated the prejudices which had too long reigned in the sciences; and which the strongest minds of the preceding centuries had not been able to resist. They have constantly opposed to empiricism a mass of knowledge, against which the errors adopted by the vulgar, with an enthusiasm which, in former times, would have perpetuated their empire, have spent their force in vain. In a word, it has been in their bosoms that those grand theories have been con-

principle, that the balance of power depends on that of property, that he ventured to pronounce it impossible ever to re-establish monarchy in England: But his book was scarcely published when the King was restored; and we see that monarchy has ever since subsisted on the same footing as before. So dangerous is it for a politician to venture to foretel the situation of public affairs a few years hence.” Ibid. Essay vii.

How much nearer the truth (even in the science of politics) is Bacon's cardinal principle, that knowledge is power!—a principle, which applies to Man not less in his corporate than in his individual capacity; and which may be safely trusted to as the most solid of all foundations for our reasonings concerning the future history of the world.

ceived, which, although far exalted by their generality above the reach of the multitude, are for this very reason entitled to special encouragement, from their innumerable applications to the phenomena of nature, and to the practice of the arts.”¹

In confirmation of these judicious remarks, it may be farther observed, that nothing could have been more happily imagined than the establishment of learned corporations for correcting those prejudices which (under the significant title of Idola Specus,) Bacon has described as incident to the retired student. While these idols of the den maintain their authority, the cultivation of the philosophical spirit is impossible; or rather, it is in a renunciation of this idolatry that the philosophical spirit essentially consists. It was accordingly in this great school of the learned world, that the characters of Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Locke were formed; the four individuals who have contributed the most to diffuse the philosophical spirit over Europe. The remark applies more peculiarly to Bacon, who first pointed out the inconveniences to be apprehended from a minute and mechanical subdivision of literary labour; and anticipated the advantages to be expected from the institution of learned academies, in enlarging the field of scientific curiosity, and the correspondent grasp of the emancipated mind. For accomplishing this object, what means so effectual as habits of daily intercourse with men whose pursuits are different from our own; and that expanded knowledge, both of man and of nature, of which such an intercourse must necessarily be productive!

Another event which operated still more forcibly and universally on the intellectual character of our countrymen, was the civil war which began in 1640, and which ultimately terminated in the usurpation of Cromwell. It is observed by Mr Hume, that “the prevalence of democratical principles, under the Commonwealth, engaged the country gentlemen to bind their sons apprentices to merchants; and that commerce has ever since been more honourable in England, than in any other European kingdom.”² “The higher and the lower ranks (as a later writer has remarked) were thus brought closer together, and all of them inspired with an activity and vigour that, in former ages, had no example.”³

To this combination of the pursuits of trade, with the advantages of a liberal education may be ascribed the great multitude of ingenious and enlightened speculations on commerce,

and on the other branches of national industry, which issued from the press, in the short interval between the Restoration and the Revolution; an interval during which the sudden and immense extension of the trade of England, and the corresponding rise of the commercial interest, must have presented a spectacle peculiarly calculated to awaken the curiosity of inquisitive observers. It is a very remarkable circumstance with respect to these economical researches, which now engage so much of the attention both of statesmen and of philosophers, that they are altogether of modern origin. "There is scarcely," says Mr Hume, "any ancient writer on politics who has made mention of trade; nor was it ever considered as an affair of state till the seventeenth century."¹—The work of the celebrated John de Witt, entitled, "The true interest and political maxims of the republic of Holland and West Friesland," is the earliest publication of any note, in which commerce is treated of as an object of national and political concern, in opposition to the partial interests of corporations and of monopolists.

Of the English publications to which I have just alluded, the greater part consists of anonymous pamphlets, now only to be met with in the collections of the curious. A few bear the names of eminent English merchants. I shall have occasion to refer to them more particularly afterwards, when I come to speak of the writings of Smith, Quesnay, and Turgot. At present, I shall only observe, that, in these fugitive and now neglected tracts, are to be found the first rudiments of that science of Political Economy which is justly considered as the boast of the present age; and which, although the aid of learning and philosophy was necessary to rear it to maturity, may be justly said to have had its cradle in the Royal Exchange of London.

Mr Locke was one of the first retired theorists (and this singular feature in his history has not been sufficiently attended to by his biographers), who condescended to treat of trade as an object of liberal study. Notwithstanding the manifold errors into which he fell in the course of his reasonings concerning it, it may be fairly questioned, if he has anywhere else given greater proofs, either of the vigour or of the originality of his genius. But the name of Locke reminds me, that it is now time to interrupt these national details; and to turn our attention to the progress of science on the Continent, since the times of Bodinus and of Campanella.

AT the head of the French writers who contributed, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, to turn the thoughts of their countrymen to subjects connected with the Philosophy of Mind, Montaigne may, I apprehend, be justly placed. Properly speaking, he belongs to a period somewhat earlier; but his tone of thinking and of writing classes him much more naturally with his successors, than with any French author who had appeared before him.¹

In assigning to Montaigne so distinguished a rank in the history of modern philosophy, I need scarcely say, that I leave entirely out of the account what constitutes (and justly constitutes) to the generality of readers the principal charm of his Essays; the good nature, humanity, and unaffected sensibility, which so irresistibly attach us to his character,—lending, it must be owned, but too often, a fascination to his talk, when he cannot be recommended as the safest of companions. Nor do I lay much stress on the inviting frankness and vivacity with which he unbosoms himself about all his domestic habits and concerns; and which render his book so expressive a portrait, not only of the author, but of the Gascon country-gentleman, two hundred years ago. I have in view chiefly the minuteness and good faith of his details concerning his own personal qualities, both intellectual and moral. The only study which seems ever to have engaged his attention was that of man; and for this he was singularly fitted, by a rare combination of that talent for observation which belongs to men of the world, with those habits of abstracted reflection, which men of the world have commonly so little disposition to cultivate. “I study myself,” says he, “more than any other subject. This is my metaphysic; this my natural philosophy.”² He has accordingly produced a work, unique in its kind; valuable, in an eminent degree, as an authentic record of many interesting facts relative to human nature; but more valuable by far, as holding up a mirror in which every individual, if he does not see his own image, will at least occasionally perceive so many traits of resemblance to it, as can scarcely fail to invite his curiosity to a more careful review of himself. In this respect, Montaigne’s writings may be regarded in the

light of what painters call studies; in other words, of those slight sketches which were originally designed for the improvement or amusement of the artist; but which, on that account, are the more likely to be useful in developing the germs of similar endowments in others.

Without a union of these two powers (reflection and observation), the study of Man can never be successfully prosecuted. It is only by retiring within ourselves that we can obtain a key to the characters of others; and it is only by observing and comparing the characters of others that we can thoroughly understand and appreciate our own.

After all, however, it may be fairly questioned, notwithstanding the scrupulous fidelity with which Montaigne has endeavoured to delineate his own portrait, if he has been always sufficiently aware of the secret folds and reduplications of the human heart. That he was by no means exempted from the common delusions of self-love and self-deceit, has been fully evinced in a very acute, though somewhat uncharitable, section of the Port-Royal logic; but this consideration, so far from diminishing the value of his Essays, is one of the most instructive lessons they afford to those who, after the example of the author, may undertake the salutary but humiliating task of self-examination.

As Montaigne's scientific knowledge was, according to his own account, "very vague and imperfect;"¹ and his book-learning rather sententious and gossiping, than comprehensive and systematical, it would be unreasonable to expect, in his philosophical arguments, much either of depth or of solidity.² The sentiments he hazards are to be regarded but as the impressions of the moment; consisting chiefly of the more obvious doubts and difficulties which, on all metaphysical and moral questions, are apt to present themselves to a speculative mind, when it first attempts to dig below the surface of common opinions. In reading Montaigne, accordingly, what chiefly strikes us, is not the novelty or the refinement of his ideas, but the liveliness and felicity with which we see embodied in words the previous wanderings of our own imaginations. It is probably owing to this circumstance, rather than to any direct plagiarism, that his Essays appear to contain the germs of so many of the paradoxical theories which, in later times, Helvetius and others have laboured to systematise and to support with the parade of metaphysical discussion. In the mind of Montaigne, the same paradoxes may be easily traced to those deceitful appearances which, in order to sti-

mulate our faculties to their best exertions, nature seems purposely to have thrown in our way, as stumbling-blocks in the pursuit of truth; and it is only to be regretted on such occasions, for the sake of his own happiness, that his genius and temper qualified and disposed him more to start the problem than to investigate the solution.

When Montaigne touches on religion, he is, in general, less pleasing than on other subjects. His constitutional temper, it is probable, predisposed him to scepticism; but this original bias could not fail to be mightily strengthened by the disputes, both religious and political, which, during his lifetime, convulsed Europe, and more particularly his own country. On a mind like his it may be safely presumed, that the writings of the reformers, and the instructions of Buchanan, were not altogether without effect; and hence, in all probability, the perpetual struggle, which he is at no pains to conceal, between the creed of his infancy, and the lights of his mature understanding. He speaks, indeed, of "reposing tranquilly on the pillow of doubt;" but this language is neither reconcilable with the general complexion of his works, nor with the most authentic accounts we have received of his dying moments. It is a maxim of his own, that, "in forming a judgment of a man's life, particular regard should be paid to his behaviour at the end of it;" to which he pathetically adds, "that the chief study of his own life was, that his latter end might be decent, calm, and silent." The fact is (if we may credit the testimony of his biographers), that, in his declining years, he exchanged his boasted pillow of doubt for the more powerful opiates prescribed by the infallible church; and that he expired in performing what his old preceptor Buchanan would not have scrupled to describe as an act of idolatry.¹

The scepticism of Montaigne seems to have been of a very peculiar cast, and to have had little in common with that either of Bayle or of Hume. The great aim of the two latter writers evidently was, by exposing the uncertainty of our reasonings whenever we pass the limit of sensible objects, to inspire their readers with a complete distrust of the human faculties on all moral and metaphysical topics. Montaigne, on the other hand, never thinks of forming a sect; but, yielding passively to the current of his reflections and feelings, argues, at different times, according to the varying state of his impressions and temper, on opposite sides of the same question. On all occasions, he preserves an air of the most perfect sincerity; and it was to this, I presume, much more than to the superiority of his reasoning powers, that Montesquieu alluded, when he said, "In the greater part of authors I see the writer; in Montaigne I see nothing but the thinker." The radical fault of his

understanding consisted in an incapacity of forming, on disputable points, those decided and fixed opinions which can alone impart either force or consistency to intellectual character. For remedying this weakness, the religious controversies, and the civil wars recently engendered by the Reformation, were but ill calculated. The minds of the most serious men, all over Christendom, must have been then unsettled in an extraordinary degree; and where any predisposition to scepticism existed, every external circumstance must have conspired to cherish and confirm it. Of the extent to which it was carried, about the same period, in England, some judgment may be formed from the following description of a Sceptic by a writer not many years posterior to Montaigne.

“ A sceptic in religion is one that hangs in the balance with all sorts of opinions; whereof not one but stirs him, and none sways him. A man guiltier of credulity than he is taken to be; for it is out of his belief of everything that he believes nothing. Each religion scares him from its contrary, none persuades him to itself. He would be wholly a Christian, but that he is something of an Atheist; and wholly an Atheist, but that he is partly a Christian; and a perfect Heretic, but that there are so many to distract him. He finds reason in all opinions, truth in none; indeed, the least reason perplexes him, and the best will not satisfy him. He finds doubts and scruples better than resolves them, and is always too hard for himself.”¹ If this portrait had been presented to Montaigne, I have little doubt that he would have had the candour to acknowledge, that he recognized in it some of the most prominent and characteristical features of his own mind.²

The most elaborate, and seemingly the most serious, of all Montaigne's essays, is his long and somewhat tedious Apology for Raimond de Sebonde, contained in the twelfth chapter of his second book. This author appears, from Montaigne's account, to have been a Spaniard, who professed physic at Thoulouse, towards the end of the fourteenth century; and who published a treatise, entitled Theologia Naturalis, which was put into the hands of Montaigne's father by a friend, as a useful antidote against the innovations with which Luther was then beginning to disturb the ancient faith. That, in this particular instance, the

book answered the intended purpose, may be presumed from the request of old Montaigne to his son, a few days before his death, to translate it into French from the Spanish original. His request was accordingly complied with; and the translation is referred to by Montaigne in the first edition of his Essays, printed at Bordeaux in 1580; but the execution of this filial duty seems to have produced on Montaigne's own mind very different effects from what his father had anticipated.¹

The principal aim of Sebonde's book, according to Montaigne, is to show that "Christians are in the wrong to make human reasoning the basis of their belief, since the object of it is only conceived by faith, and by a special inspiration of the divine grace." To this doctrine Montaigne professes to yield an implicit assent; and, under the shelter of it, contrives to give free vent to all the extravagancies of scepticism. The essential distinction between the reason of man, and the instincts of the lower animals, is at great length, and with no inconsiderable ingenuity, disputed; the powers of the human understanding, in all inquiries, whether physical or moral, are held up to ridicule; an universal Pyrrhonism is recommended; and we are again and again reminded, that "the senses are the beginning and the end of all our knowledge." Whoever has the patience to peruse this chapter with attention, will be surprised to find in it the rudiments of a great part of the licentious philosophy of the eighteenth century; nor can he fail to remark the address with which the author avails himself of the language afterwards adopted by Bayle, Helvetius, and Hume:—
"That, to be a philosophical sceptic, is the first step towards becoming a sound believing Christian."² It is a melancholy fact in ecclesiastical history, that this insidious maxim should have been sanctioned, in our times, by some theologians of no common pretensions to orthodoxy; who, in direct contradiction to the words of Scripture, have ventured to assert, that "he who comes to God must first believe that he is not." Is it necessary to remind these grave retailers of Bayle's sly and ironical sophistry, that every argument for Christianity, drawn from its internal evidence, tacitly recognizes the authority of human reason; and assumes, as the ultimate criteria of truth and of falsehood, of right and of wrong, certain fundamental articles of belief, discoverable by the light of Nature?³

Charron is well known as the chosen friend of Montaigne's latter years, and as the confidential depository of his philosophical sentiments. Endowed with talents far inferior in force and originality to those of his master, he possessed, nevertheless, a much sounder and more regulated judgment; and as his reputation, notwithstanding the liberality of some of his peculiar tenets, was high among the most respectable and conscientious divines of his own church, it is far from improbable, that Montaigne committed to him the guardianship of his posthumous fame, from motives similar to those which influenced Pope, in selecting Warburton as his literary executor. The discharge of this trust, however, seems to have done less good to Montaigne than harm to Charron; for, while the unlimited scepticism, and the indecent levities of the former, were viewed by the zealots of those days with a smile of tenderness and indulgence, the slighter heresies of the latter were marked with a severity the more rigorous and unrelenting, that, in points of essential importance, they deviated so very little from the standard of the Catholic faith. It is not easy to guess the motives of this inconsistency; but such we find from the fact to have been the temper of religious bigotry, or, to speak more correctly, of political religionism, in all ages of the world.¹

As an example of Charron's solicitude to provide an antidote against the more pernicious

self to his friend Bignon not unfavourably of Sebonde's intentions, although the terms in which he speaks of him are somewhat equivocal, and imply but little satisfaction with the execution of his design. "Non ignoras quantum excoluerint istam materiam (argumentum scil. pro Religione Christiana) philosophica subtilitate Raimundus Sebonde, dialogorum varietate Ludovicus Vives, maxima autem tum eruditione tum facundia vestras Philippus Mornæus." The authors of the Nouveau Dictionnaire Historique (Lyons, 1804) have entered much more completely into the spirit and drift of Sebonde's reasoning, when they observe, "Ce livre offre des singularités hardies, qui plurent dans le temps aux philosophes de ce siècle, et qui ne déplairoient pas à ceux du notre."

It is proper to add, that I am acquainted with Sebonde only through the medium of Montaigne's version, which does not lay claim to the merit of strict fidelity: the translator himself having acknowledged, that he had given to the Spanish philosopher "un accoutrement à la Française, et qu'il l'a dévêtu de son port farouche et maintien barbaresque, de manière qu'il a mes-hui assez de façon pour se présenter en toute bonne compagnie."

errors of his friend, I shall only mention his ingenious and philosophical attempt to reconcile, with the moral constitution of human nature, the apparent discordancy in the judgments of different nations concerning right and wrong. His argument on this point is in substance the very same with that so well urged by Beattie, in opposition to Locke's reasonings against the existence of innate practical principles. It is difficult to say, whether, in this instance, the coincidence between Montaigne and Locke, or that between Charron and Beattie, be the more remarkable.¹

Although Charron has affected to give to his work a systematical form, by dividing and subdividing it into books and chapters, it is in reality little more than an unconnected series of essays on various topics, more or less distantly related to the science of Ethics. On the powers of the understanding he has touched but slightly; nor has he imitated Montaigne, in anatomizing, for the edification of the world, the peculiarities of his own moral character. It has probably been owing to the desultory and popular style of composition common to both, that so little attention has been paid to either by those who have treated of the history of French philosophy. To Montaigne's merits, indeed, as a lively and amusing essayist, ample justice has been done; but his influence on the subsequent habits of thinking among his countrymen remains still to be illustrated. He has done more, perhaps, than any other author (I am inclined to think with the most honest intentions), to introduce into mens houses (if I may borrow an expression of Cicero) what is now called the new philosophy,—a philosophy certainly very different from that of Socrates. In the fashionable world, he has, for more than two centuries, maintained his place as the first of moralists; a circumstance easily accounted for, when we attend to the singular combination, exhibited in his writings, of a semblance of erudition, with what Malebranche happily calls his air du monde, and air cavalier.² As for the graver and less attractive Charron, his name would probably before now have sunk into oblivion, had it not been so closely associated, by the accidental events of his life, with the more celebrated name of Montaigne.³

The preceding remarks lead me, by a natural connection of ideas (to which I am here much more inclined to attend than to the order of dates), to another writer of the seventeenth century, whose influence over the literary and philosophical taste of France has been far greater than seems to be commonly imagined. I allude to the Duke of La Rochefoucauld, author of the Maxims and Moral Reflections.

Voltaire was, I believe, the first who ventured to assign to La Rochefoucauld the pre-eminent rank which belongs to him among the French classics. "One of the works," says he, "which contributed most to form the taste of the nation to a justness and precision of thought and expression, was the small collection of maxims by Francis Duke of La Rochefoucauld. Although there be little more than one idea in the book, that self-love is the spring of all our actions, yet this idea is presented in so great a variety of forms, as to be always amusing. When it first appeared, it was read with avidity; and it contributed, more than any other performance since the revival of letters, to improve the vivacity, correctness, and delicacy of French composition."

Another very eminent judge of literary merit (the late Dr Johnson) was accustomed to say of La Rochefoucauld's Maxims, that it was almost the only book written by a man of fashion, of which professed authors had reason to be jealous. Nor is this wonderful, when we consider the unwearied industry of the very accomplished writer, in giving to every part of it the highest and most finished polish which his exquisite taste could bestow. When he had committed a maxim to paper, he was in use to circulate it among his friends, that he might avail himself of their critical animadversions; and, if we may credit Segrais, altered some of them no less than thirty times, before venturing to submit them to the public eye.

That the tendency of these maxims is, upon the whole, unfavourable to morality, and that they always leave a disagreeable impression on the mind, must, I think, be granted. At the same time, it may be fairly questioned, if the motives of the author have in general been well understood, either by his admirers or his opponents. In affirming that self-love is the spring of all our actions, there is no good reason for supposing that he meant to deny the reality of moral distinctions as a philosophical truth;—a supposition quite inconsistent with his own fine and deep remark, that hypocrisy is itself an homage which vice renders to virtue. He states it merely as a fact, which, in the course of his experience as a man of

présente soit en usage d'ici à cinquante ans? il écoule tous les jours de nos mains, et depuis que je vis, s'est altéré de moitié. Nous disons qu'il est à cette heure parfait: Autant en dit du sien chaque siècle. C'est aux bons et utiles écrits de le clouer à eux, et ira sa fortune selon le crédit de notre état."

How completely have both the predictions in the last sentence been verified by the subsequent history of the French language!

the world, he had found very generally verified in the higher classes of society; and which he was induced to announce without any qualification or restriction, in order to give more force and poignancy to his satire. In adopting this mode of writing, he has unconsciously conformed himself, like many other French authors, who have since followed his example, to a suggestion which Aristotle has stated with admirable depth and acuteness in his Rhetoric. "Sentences or apophthegms lend much aid to eloquence. One reason of this is, that they flatter the pride of the hearers, who are delighted when the speaker, making use of general language, touches upon opinions which they had before known to be true in part. Thus, a person who had the misfortune to live in a bad neighbourhood, or to have worthless children, would easily assent to the speaker who should affirm, that nothing is more vexatious than to have any neighbours; nothing more irrational than to bring children into the world."¹ This observation of Aristotle, while it goes far to account for the imposing and dazzling effect of these rhetorical exaggerations, ought to guard us against the common and popular error of mistaking them for the serious and profound generalizations of science. As for La Rochefoucauld, we know, from the best authorities, that, in private life, he was a conspicuous example of all those moral qualities of which he seemed to deny the existence; and that he exhibited, in this respect, a striking contrast to the Cardinal de Retz, who has presumed to censure him for his want of faith in the reality of virtue.

In reading La Rochefoucauld, it should never be forgotten, that it was within the vortex of a court he enjoyed his chief opportunities of studying the world; and that the narrow and exclusive circle in which he moved was not likely to afford him the most favourable specimens of human nature in general. Of the Court of Lewis XIV. in particular, we are told by a very nice and reflecting observer (Madame de la Fayette), that "ambition and gallantry were the soul, actuating alike both men and women. So many contending interests, so many different cabals were constantly at work, and in all of these, women bore so important a part, that love was always mingled with business, and business with love. Nobody was tranquil or indifferent. Every one studied to advance himself by pleasing, serving, or ruining others. Idleness and languor were unknown, and nothing was thought of but intrigues or pleasures."

In the passage already quoted from Voltaire, he takes notice of the effect of La Rochefoucauld's maxims, in improving the style of French composition. We may add to this remark, that their effect has not been less sensible in vitiating the tone and character of French philosophy, by bringing into vogue those false and degrading representations of human nature and of human life, which have prevailed in that country, more or less, for a century past. Mr Addison, in one of the papers of the Tatler, expresses his indignation at this general bias among the French writers of his age. "It is impossible," he observes, "to read a passage in Plato or Tully, and a thousand other ancient moralists, without being a greater and better man for it. On the contrary, I could never read any of our modish French authors, or those of our own country, who are the imitators and admirers of that nation, without being, for some time, out of humour with myself, and at everything about me. Their business is to depreciate human nature, and to consider it under the worst appearances; they give mean interpretations, and base motives to the worthiest actions. In short, they endeavour to make no distinction between man and man, or between the species of man and that of the brutes."¹

It is very remarkable, that the censure here bestowed by Addison on the fashionable French wits of his time, should be so strictly applicable to Helvetius, and to many other of the most admired authors whom France has produced in our own day. It is still more remarkable to find the same depressing spirit shedding its malignant influence on French literature, as early as the time of La Rochefoucauld, and even of Montaigne; and to observe how very little has been done by the successors of these old writers, but to expand into grave philosophical systems their loose and lively paradoxes;—disguising and fortifying them by the aid of those logical principles, to which the name and authority of Locke have given so wide a circulation in Europe.

In tracing the origin of that false philosophy on which the excesses of the French revolutionists have entailed such merited disgrace, it is usual to remount no higher than to the profligate period of the Regency; but the seeds of its most exceptionable doctrines had been sown in that country at an earlier era, and were indebted for the luxuriance of their harvest, much more to the political and religious soil where they struck their roots, than to the skill or foresight of the individuals by whose hands they were scattered.

I have united the names of Montaigne and of La Rochefoucauld, because I consider their writings as rather addressed to the world at large, than to the small and select class of spe-

eulative students. Neither of them can be said to have enriched the stock of human knowledge by the addition of any one important general conclusion; but the maxims of both have operated very extensively and powerfully on the taste and principles of the higher orders all over Europe, and predisposed them to give a welcome reception to the same ideas, when afterwards reproduced with the imposing appendages of logical method, and of a technical phraseology. The foregoing reflections, therefore, are not so foreign as might at first be apprehended, to the subsequent history of ethical and of metaphysical speculation. It is time, however, now to turn our attention to a subject far more intimately connected with the general progress of human reason,—the philosophy of Descartes.

According to a late writer,¹ whose literary decisions (excepting where he touches on religion or politics) are justly entitled to the highest deference, Descartes has a better claim than any other individual, to be regarded as the father of that spirit of free inquiry, which, in modern Europe, has so remarkably displayed itself in all the various departments of knowledge. Of Bacon, he observes, "that though he possessed, in a most eminent degree, the genius of philosophy, he did not unite with it the genius of the sciences; and that the methods proposed by him for the investigation of truth, consisting entirely of precepts which he was unable to exemplify, had little or no effect in accelerating the rate of discovery." As for Galileo, he remarks, on the other hand, "that his exclusive taste for mathematical and physical researches, disqualified him for communicating to the general mind that impulse of which it stood in need."

"This honour," he adds, "was reserved for Descartes, who combined in himself the characteristical endowments of both his predecessors. If, in the physical sciences, his march be less sure than that of Galileo—if his logic be less cautious than that of Bacon—yet the very temerity of his errors was instrumental to the progress of the human race. He gave activity to minds which the circumspection of his rivals could not awake from their lethargy. He called upon men to throw off the yoke of authority, acknowledging no influence but what reason should avow: And his call was obeyed by a multitude of followers, encouraged by the boldness, and fascinated by the enthusiasm of their leader."

In these observations, the ingenious author has rashly generalized a conclusion deduced from the literary history of his own country. That the works of Bacon were but little read there till after the publication of D'Alembert's Preliminary Discourse, is, I believe,

an unquestionable fact ; ¹ not that it necessarily follows from this, that, even in France, no previous effect had been produced by the labours of Boyle, of Newton, and of the other English experimentalists, trained in Bacon's school. With respect to England, it is a fact not less certain, that at no period did the philosophy of Descartes produce such an impression on public opinion, either in Physics or in Ethics, as to give the slightest colour to the supposition, that it contributed, in the most distant degree, to the subsequent advances made by our countrymen in these sciences. In Logic and Metaphysics, indeed, the case was different. Here the writings of Descartes did much ; and if they had been studied with proper attention, they might have done much more. But of this part of their merits, Condorcet seems to have had no idea. His eulogy, therefore, is rather misplaced than excessive. He has extolled Descartes as the father of Experimental Physics : He would have been nearer the truth, if he had pointed him out as the father of the Experimental Philosophy of the Human Mind.

In bestowing this title on Descartes, I am far from being inclined to compare him, in the number or importance of the facts which he has remarked concerning our intellectual powers, to various other writers of an earlier date. I allude merely to his clear and precise conception of that operation of the understanding (distinguished afterwards in Locke's Essay by the name of Reflection), through the medium of which all our knowledge of Mind is exclusively to be obtained. Of the essential subservience of this power to every satisfactory conclusion that can be formed with respect to the mental phenomena, and of the futility of every theory which would attempt to explain them by metaphors borrowed from the material world, no other philosopher prior to Locke seems to have been fully aware ; and from the moment that these truths were recognized as logical principles in the study of mind, a new era commences in the history of that branch of science. It will be necessary, therefore, to allot to the illustration of this part of the Cartesian philosophy a larger space, than the limits of my undertaking will permit me to afford to the researches of some succeeding inquirers, who may, at first sight, appear more worthy of attention in the present times.

It has been repeatedly asserted by the Materialists of the last century, that Descartes was the first Metaphysician by whom the pure immateriality of the human soul was taught ; and that the ancient philosophers, as well as the schoolmen, went no farther than to con-

sider mind as the result of a material organization, in which the constituent elements approached to evanescence, in point of subtlety. Both of these propositions I conceive to be totally unfounded. That many of the schoolmen, and that the wisest of the ancient philosophers, when they described the mind as a spirit, or as a spark of celestial fire, employed these expressions, not with any intention to materialize its essence, but merely from want of more unexceptionable language, might be shewn with demonstrative evidence, if this were the proper place for entering into the discussion. But what is of more importance to be attended to, on the present occasion, is the effect of Descartes' writings in disentangling the logical principle above mentioned, from the scholastic question about the nature of mind, as contradistinguished from matter. It were indeed to be wished, that he had perceived still more clearly and steadily the essential importance of keeping this distinction constantly in view; but he had at least the merit of illustrating, by his own example, in a far greater degree than any of his predecessors, the possibility of studying the mental phenomena, without reference to any facts but those which rest on the evidence of consciousness. The metaphysical question about the nature of mind he seems to have considered as a problem, the solution of which was an easy corollary from these facts, if distinctly apprehended; but still as a problem, whereof it was possible that different views might be taken by those who agreed in opinion, as far as facts alone were concerned. Of this a very remarkable example has since occurred in the case of Mr Locke, who, although he has been at great pains to shew, that the power of reflection bears the same relation to the study of the mental phenomena, which the power of observation bears to the study of the material world, appears, nevertheless, to have been far less decided than Descartes with respect to the essential distinction between Mind and Matter; and has even gone so far as to hazard the unguarded proposition, that there is no absurdity in supposing the Deity to have superadded to the other qualities of matter the power of thinking. His scepticism, however, on this point, did not prevent his good sense from perceiving, with the most complete conviction, the indispensable necessity of abstracting from the analogy of matter, in studying the laws of our intellectual frame.

The question about the nature or essence of the soul, has been, in all ages, a favourite subject of discussion among Metaphysicians, from its supposed connection with the argument in proof of its immortality. In this light it has plainly been considered by both parties in the dispute; the one conceiving, that if Mind could be shewn to have no quality in common with Matter, its dissolution was physically impossible; the other, that if this assumption could be disproved, it would necessarily follow, that the whole man must perish at death. For the last of these opinions Dr Priestley and many other speculative theologians have of late very zealously contended; flattering themselves, no doubt, with the idea,

that they were thus preparing a triumph for their own peculiar schemes of Christianity. Neglecting, accordingly, all the presumptions for a future state, afforded by a comparison of the course of human affairs with the moral judgments and moral feelings of the human heart; and overlooking, with the same disdain, the presumptions arising from the narrow sphere of human knowledge, when compared with the indefinite improvement of which our intellectual powers seem to be susceptible; this acute but superficial writer attached himself exclusively to the old and hackneyed pneumatological argument; tacitly assuming as a principle, that the future prospects of man depend entirely on the determination of a physical problem, analogous to that which was then dividing chemists about the existence or non-existence of Phlogiston. In the actual state of science, these speculations might well have been spared. Where is the sober metaphysician to be found, who now speaks of the immortality of the soul as a logical consequence of its immateriality; instead of considering it as depending on the will of that Being by whom it was at first called into existence? And, on the other hand, is it not universally admitted by the best philosophers, that whatever hopes the light of nature encourages beyond the present scene, rest solely (like all our other anticipations of future events) on the general tenor and analogy of the laws by which we perceive the universe to be governed? The proper use of the argument concerning the immateriality of mind, is not to establish any positive conclusion as to its destiny hereafter; but to repel the reasonings alleged by materialists, as proofs that its annihilation must be the obvious and necessary effect of the dissolution of the body.¹

I thought it proper to state this consideration pretty fully, lest it should be supposed that the logical method recommended by Descartes for studying the phenomena of mind, has any necessary dependence on his metaphysical opinion concerning its being and properties, as a separate substance.² Between these two parts of his system, however, there is, if not a

demonstrative connection, at least a natural and manifest affinity; inasmuch as a steady adherence to his logical method (or, in other words, the habitual exercise of patient reflection), by accustoming us to break asunder the obstinate associations to which materialism is indebted for the early hold it is apt to take of the fancy, gradually and insensibly predisposes us in favour of his metaphysical conclusion. It is to be regretted, that, in stating this conclusion, his commentators should so frequently make use of the word spirituality; for which I do not recollect that his own works afford any authority. The proper expression is immateriality, conveying merely a negative idea; and, of consequence, implying nothing more than a rejection of that hypothesis concerning the nature of Mind, which the scheme of materialism so gratuitously, yet so dogmatically assumes.¹

The power of Reflection, it is well known, is the last of our intellectual faculties that unfolds itself; and, in by far the greater number of individuals, it never unfolds itself in any considerable degree. It is a fact equally certain, that, long before the period of life when this power begins to exercise its appropriate functions, the understanding is already preoccupied with a chaos of opinions, notions, impressions and associations, bearing on the most important objects of human inquiry; not to mention the innumerable sources of illusion and error connected with the use of a vernacular language, learned in infancy by rote, and identified with the first processes of thought and perception. The consequence is, that when Man begins to reflect, he finds himself (if I may borrow an allusion of M. Turgot's) lost in a labyrinth, into which he had been led blindfolded.² To the same purpose, it was long ago complained of by Bacon, "that no one has yet been found of so constant and severe a mind, as to have determined and tasked himself utterly to abolish theories and common notions, and to apply his intellect, altogether smoothed and even, to particulars anew. Accordingly, that human reason which we have, is a kind of medley and unsorted collection, from much trust and much accident, and the childish notions which we first drank in. Whereas, if one of ripe age and sound senses, and a mind thoroughly cleared, should apply himself freshly to experiment and particulars, of him were better things to be hoped."

What Bacon has here recommended, Descartes attempted to execute; and so exact is the coincidence of his views on this fundamental point with those of his predecessor, that it is

with difficulty I can persuade myself that he had never read Bacon's works.¹ In the prosecution of this undertaking, the first steps of Descartes are peculiarly interesting and instructive; and it is these alone which merit our attention at present. As for the details of his system, they are now curious only as exhibiting an amusing contrast to the extreme rigour of the principle from whence the author sets out; a contrast so very striking, as fully to justify the epigrammatic saying of D'Alembert, that "Descartes began with doubting of everything, and ended in believing that he had left nothing unexplained."

Among the various articles of common belief which Descartes proposed to subject to a severe scrutiny, he enumerates particularly, the conclusiveness of mathematical demonstration; the existence of God; the existence of the material world; and even the existence of his own body. The only thing that appeared to him certain and incontrovertible, was his own existence; by which he repeatedly reminds us, we are to understand merely the existence of his mind, abstracted from all consideration of the material organs connected with it. About every other proposition, he conceived, that doubts might reasonably be entertained; but to suppose the non-existence of that which thinks, at the very moment it is conscious of thinking, appeared to him a contradiction in terms. From this single postulatum, accordingly, he took his departure; resolved to admit nothing as a philosophical truth, which could not be deduced from it by a chain of logical reasoning.²

Having first satisfied himself of his own existence, his next step was to inquire, how far his perceptive and intellectual faculties were entitled to credit. For this purpose, he begins with offering a proof of the existence and attributes of God;—truths which he conceived to be necessarily involved in the idea he was able to form of a perfect, self-existent, and eternal being. His reasonings on this point it would be useless to state. It is sufficient to observe, that they led him to conclude, that God cannot possibly be supposed to deceive his creatures; and therefore, that the intimations of our senses, and the decisions of our reason, are to be trusted to with entire confidence, wherever they afford us clear and distinct ideas of their respective objects.³

As Descartes conceived the existence of God (next to the existence of his own mind) to be the most indisputable of all truths, and rested his confidence in the conclusions of human reason entirely on his faith in the divine veracity, it is not surprising that he should have rejected the argument from final causes, as superfluous and unsatisfactory. To have availed himself of its assistance, would not only have betrayed a want of confidence in what he professed to regard as much more certain than any mathematical theorem; but would obviously have exposed him to the charge of first appealing to the divine attributes in proof of the authority of his faculties; and afterwards, of appealing to these faculties, in proof of the existence of God.

It is wonderful, that it should have escaped the penetration of this most acute thinker, that a vicious circle of the same description is involved in every appeal to the intellectual powers, in proof of their own credibility; and that unless this credibility be assumed as unquestionable, the farther exercise of human reason is altogether nugatory. The evidence for the existence of God seems to have appeared to Descartes too irresistible and overwhelming, to be subjected to those logical canons which apply to all the other conclusions of the understanding.¹

go me esse rem incompletam, et ab alio dependentem, remque ad majora et meliora indefinite aspirantem, sed simul etiam intelligo illum, à quo pendeo, majora ista omnia non indefinite et potentia tantum, sed reipsa infinite in se habere, atque ita Deum esse; totaque vis argumenti in eo est, quod agnoscam fieri non posse ut existem talis naturæ qualis sum, nempe ideam Dei in me habens, nisi revera Deus etiam existeret, Deus, inquam, ille idem cujus idea in me est, hoc est habens omnes illas perfectiones quas ego non comprehendere sed quocunque modo attingere cogitatione possum, et nullis planè defectibus obnoxius. Ex his satis patet, illum fallacem esse non posse: omnem enim fraudem et deceptionem à defectu aliquo pendere lumine naturali manifestum est."

The above argument for the existence of God (very improperly called by some foreigners an argument a priori), was long considered by the most eminent men in Europe as quite demonstrative. For my own part, although I do not think that it is by any means so level to the apprehension of common inquirers, as the argument from the marks of design everywhere manifested in the universe, I am still less inclined to reject it as altogether unworthy of attention. It is far from being so metaphysically abstruse as the reasonings of Newton and Clarke, founded on our conceptions of space and of time; nor would it appear, perhaps, less logical and conclusive than that celebrated demonstration, if it were properly unfolded, and stated in more simple and popular terms. The two arguments, however, are, in no respect, exclusive of each other; and I have always thought, that, by combining them together, a proof of the point in question might be formed, more impressive and luminous than is to be obtained from either, when stated apart.

¹ How painful is it to recollect, that the philosopher who had represented his faith in the veracity of God, as the sole foundation of his confidence in the demonstrations of mathematics, was accused and persecuted by his contemporaries as an atheist; and that, too, in the same country (Holland), where, for more than half a century after his death, his doctrines were to be taught in all the universities with a blind idolatry! A zeal without knowledge, and the influence of those earthly passions, from which even protestant divines are not always exempted, may, it is to be hoped, go far to account for this

Extravagant and hopeless as these preliminary steps must now appear, they had nevertheless an obvious tendency to direct the attention of the author, in a singular degree, to the phenomena of thought; and to train him to those habits of abstraction from external objects, which, to the bulk of mankind, are next to impossible. In this way, he was led to perceive, with the evidence of consciousness, that the attributes of Mind were still more clearly and distinctly knowable than those of Matter; and that, in studying the former, so far from attempting to explain them by analogies borrowed from the latter, our chief aim ought to be, to banish as much as possible from the fancy every analogy, and even every analogical expression, which, by inviting the attention abroad, might divert it from its proper business at home. In one word, that the only right method of philosophising on this subject was comprised in the old stoical precept (understood in a sense somewhat different from that originally annexed to it) nec te quasisiveris extra. A just conception of this rule, and a steady adherence to its spirit, constitutes the ground-work of what is properly called the Experimental Philosophy of the Human Mind. It is thus that all our facts relating to Mind must be ascertained; and it is only upon facts thus attested by our own consciousness, that any just theory of Mind can be reared.

Agreeably to these views, Descartes, was, I think, the first who clearly saw, that our idea of Mind is not direct but relative;—relative to the various operations of which we are conscious. What am I? he asks, in his second Meditation: A thinking being,—that is, a being doubting, knowing, affirming, denying, consenting, refusing, susceptible of pleasure and of pain.¹ Of all these things I might have had complete experience, without any previous acquaintance with the qualities and laws of matter; and therefore it is impossible that the study of matter can avail me aught in the study of myself. This, accordingly, Descartes laid down as a first principle; that nothing comprehensible by the imagination can be at all subservient to the knowledge of Mind; and that the sensible images involved in all our common forms of speaking concerning its operations, are to be guarded against with the most anxious care, as tending to confound, in our apprehensions, two classes of phenomena, which it is of the last importance to distinguish accurately from each other.²

inconsistency and injustice, without adopting the uncharitable insinuation of D'Alembert: "Malgré toute la sagacité qu'il avoit employée pour prouver l'existence de Dieu, il fut accusé de la nier par des ministres, qui peut-être ne la croyoient pas."

To those who are familiarly acquainted with the writings of Locke, and of the very few among his successors who have thoroughly entered into the spirit of his philosophy, the foregoing observations may not appear to possess much either of originality or of importance; but when first given to the world, they formed the greatest step ever made in the science of Mind, by a single individual. What a contrast do they exhibit, not only to the discussions of the schoolmen, but to the analogical theories of Hobbes at the very same period! and how often have they been since lost sight of, notwithstanding the clearest speculative conviction of their truth and importance, by Locke himself, and by the greatest part of his professed followers! Had they been duly studied and understood by Mr Horne Tooke, they would have furnished him with a key for solving those etymological riddles, which, although mistaken by many of his contemporaries for profound philosophical discoveries, derive, in fact, the whole of their mystery, from the strong bias of shallow reasoners to relapse into the same scholastic errors, from which Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Reid, have so successfully laboured to emancipate the mind.

If anything can add to our admiration of a train of thought manifesting in its author so unexampled a triumph over the strongest prejudices of sense, it is the extraordinary circumstance of its having first occurred to a young man, who had spent the years commonly

sime percipiat. Ibid. A few sentences before, Descartes explains with precision in what sense Imagination is here to be understood. "Nihil aliud est imaginari quam rei corporee figuram seu imaginem contemplari."

The following extracts from a book published at Cambridge in 1660 (precisely ten years after the death of Descartes), while they furnish a useful comment on some of the above remarks, may serve to shew, how completely the spirit of the Cartesian philosophy of Mind had been seized, even then, by some of the members of that university.

"The souls of men exercising themselves first of all κινεσι πρὸς αὐτὴν, as the Greek philosopher expresseth himself, merely by a progressive kind of motion, spending themselves about bodily and material acts, and conversing only with sensible things; they are apt to acquire such deep stamps of material phantasms to themselves, that they cannot imagine their own Being to be any other than material and divisible, though of a fine ethereal nature. It is not possible for us well to know what our souls are, but only by their κινεσις κυκλικαι, their circular or reflex motions, and converse with themselves, which can only steal from them their own secrets." Smith's Select Discourses, p. 65, 66.

"If we reflect but upon our own souls, how manifestly do the notions of reason, freedom, perception, and the like, offer themselves to us, whereby we may know a thousand times more distinctly what our souls are than what our bodies are. For the former, we know by an immediate converse with ourselves, and a distinct sense of their operations; whereas all our knowledge of the body is little better than merely historical, which we gather up by scraps and piecemeal, from more doubtful and uncertain experiments which we make of them; but the notions which we have of a mind, i. e. something within us that thinks, apprehends, reasons, and discourses, are so clear and distinct from all those notions which we can fasten upon a body, that we can easily conceive that if all body-being in the world were destroyed, yet we might then as well subsist as now we do." Ibid. p. 98.

devoted to academical study, amid the dissipation and tumult of camps.¹ Nothing could make this conceivable, but the very liberal education which he had previously received under the Jesuits, at the college of La Fleche;² where, we are told, that while yet a boy, he was so distinguished by habits of deep meditation, that he went among his companions by the name of the Philosopher. Indeed, it is only at that early age, that such habits are to be cultivated with complete success.

The glory, however, of having pointed out to his successors the true method of studying the theory of Mind, is almost all that can be claimed by Descartes in logical and metaphysical science. Many important hints, indeed, may be gleaned from his works; but, on the whole, he has added very little to our knowledge of human nature. Nor will this appear surprising, when it is recollected, that he aspired to accomplish a similar revolution in all the various departments of physical knowledge;—not to mention the time and thought he must have employed in those mathematical researches, which, however lightly esteemed by himself, have been long regarded as the most solid basis of his fame.³

Among the principal articles of the Cartesian philosophy, which are now incorporated with our prevailing and most accredited doctrines, the following seem to me to be chiefly entitled to notice!

which express notions too simple to admit of analysis. Mr Locke claims this improvement as entirely his own; but the merit of it unquestionably belongs to Descartes, although it must be owned that he has not always sufficiently attended to it in his own researches.¹

2. His observations on the different classes of our prejudices;—particularly on the errors to which we are liable in consequence of a careless use of language as the instrument of thought. The greater part of these observations, if not the whole, had been previously hinted at by Bacon; but they are expressed by Descartes with greater precision and simplicity, and in a style better adapted to the taste of the present age.

3. The paramount and indisputable authority which, in all our reasonings concerning the human mind, he ascribes to the evidence of consciousness. Of this logical principle he has availed himself, with irresistible force, in refuting the scholastic sophisms against the liberty of human actions, drawn from the prescience of the Deity, and other considerations of a theological nature.

4. The most important, however, of all his improvements in metaphysics, is the distinction which he has so clearly and so strongly drawn between the primary and the secondary qualities of matter. This distinction was not unknown to some of the ancient schools of philosophy in Greece; but it was afterwards rejected by Aristotle, and by the schoolmen; and it was reserved for Descartes to place it in such a light, as (with the exception of a very few sceptical or rather paradoxical theorists) to unite the opinions of all succeeding inquirers. For this step, so apparently easy, but so momentous in its consequences, Descartes was not indebted to any long or difficult processes of reasoning; but to those habits of accurate and patient attention to the operations of his own mind, which, from his early years, it was the great business of his life to cultivate. It may be proper to add, that the epithets primary and secondary, now universally employed to mark the distinction in question, were first introduced by Locke; a circumstance which may have contributed to throw into the shade the merits of those inquirers who had previously struck into the same path.

As this last article of the Cartesian system has a close connection with several of the

most refined conclusions yet formed concerning the intellectual phenomena, I feel it due to the memory of the author, to pause for a few moments, in order to vindicate his claim to some leading ideas, commonly supposed by the present race of metaphysicians to be of much later origin. In doing so, I shall have an opportunity, at the same time, of introducing one or two remarks, which, I trust, will be useful in clearing up the obscurity, which is allowed by some of the ablest followers of Descartes and Locke, still to hang over this curious discussion.

I have elsewhere observed, that Descartes has been very generally charged by the writers of the last century, with a sophistical play upon words in his doctrine concerning the non-existence of secondary qualities; while, in fact, he was the first person by whom the fallacy of this scholastic paralogism was exposed to the world.¹ In proof of this, it might be sufficient to refer to his own statement, in the first part of the Principia; but, for a reason which will immediately appear, I think it more advisable, on this occasion, to borrow the words of one of his earliest and ablest commentators. "It is only (says Father Malebranche) since the time of Descartes, that to those confused and indeterminate questions, whether fire is hot, grass green, and sugar sweet, philosophers are in use to reply, by distinguishing the equivocal meaning of the words expressing sensible qualities. If by heat, cold, and savour, you understand such and such a disposition of parts, or some unknown motion of sensible qualities, then fire is hot, grass green, and sugar sweet. But if by heat and other qualities you understand what I feel by fire, what I see in grass, &c.

fire is not hot, nor grass green; for the heat I feel, and the colours I see, are only in the soul."¹ It is surprising how this, and other passages to the same purpose in Malebranche, should have escaped the notice of Dr Reid; for nothing more precise on the ambiguity in the names of secondary qualities is to be found in his own works. It is still more surprising that Buffier, who might be expected to have studied with care the speculations of his illustrious countrymen, should have directly charged, not only Descartes, but Malebranche, with maintaining a paradox, which they were at so much pains to banish from the schools of philosophy.²

The important observations of Descartes upon this subject, made their way into England very soon after his death. They are illustrated at considerable length, and with great ingenuity, by Glanville, in his Scepsis Scientifica, published about thirteen years before Malebranche's Search after Truth. So slow, however, is the progress of good sense, when it has to struggle against the prejudices of the learned, that, as lately as 1718, the paradox so clearly explained and refuted by Descartes, appears to have kept some footing in that university from which, about thirty years before, Mr Locke had been expelled. In a paper of the Guardian, giving an account of a visit paid by Jack Lizard to his mother and sisters, after a year and a half's residence at Oxford, the following precis is given of his logical attainments. "For the first week (it is said) Jack dealt wholly in paradoxes. It was a common jest with him to pinch one of his sister's lap-dogs, and afterwards prove he could not feel it. When the girls were sorting a set of knots, he would demonstrate to them that all the ribbons were of the same colour; or rather, says Jack, of no colour at all. My Lady Lizard herself, though she was not a little pleased with her son's improvements, was one day almost angry with him; for, having accidentally burnt her fingers as she was lighting the lamp for her tea-pot, in the midst of her anguish, Jack laid hold of the opportunity to instruct her, that there was no such thing as heat in the fire."

This miserable quibble about the non-existence of secondary qualities, never could have

attracted the notice of so many profound thinkers, had it not been for a peculiar difficulty connected with our notions of colour, of which I do not know any one English philosopher who seems to have been sufficiently aware. That this quality belongs to the same class with sounds, smells, tastes, heat and cold, is equally admitted by the partizans of Descartes and of Locke; and must, indeed, appear an indisputable fact to all who are capable of reflecting accurately on the subject. But still, between colour and the other qualities now mentioned, a very important distinction must be allowed to exist. In the case of smells, tastes, sounds, heat and cold, every person must immediately perceive, that his senses give him only a relative idea of the external quality; in other words, that they only convey to him the knowledge of the existence of certain properties or powers in external objects, which fit them to produce certain sensations in his mind; and accordingly, nobody ever hesitated a moment about the truth of this part of the Cartesian philosophy, in so far as these qualities alone are concerned. But, in the application of the same doctrine to colour, I have conversed with many, with whom I found it quite in vain to argue; and this, not from any defect in their reasoning powers, but from their incapacity to reflect steadily on the subjects of their consciousness; or rather, perhaps, from their incapacity to separate, as objects of the understanding, two things indissolubly combined by early and constant habit, as objects of the imagination. The silence of modern metaphysicians on this head is the more surprising, that D'Alembert long ago invited their attention to it as one of the most wonderful phenomena in the history of the human mind. "The bias we acquire," I quote his own words, "in consequence of habits contracted in infancy, to refer to a substance material and divisible, what really belongs to a substance spiritual and simple, is a thing well worthy of the attention of metaphysicians. Nothing," he adds, "is perhaps more extraordinary, in the operations of the mind, than to see it transport its sensations out of itself, and to spread them, as it were, over a substance to which they cannot possibly belong." It would be difficult to state the fact in question in terms more brief, precise, and perspicuous.

That the illusion, so well described in the above quotation, was not overlooked by Descartes and Malebranche, appears unquestionably, from their extreme solicitude to reconcile it with that implicit faith, which, from religious considerations, they conceived to be due to the testimony of those faculties with which our Maker has endowed us. Malebranche, in particular, is at pains to distinguish between the sensation, and the judgment combined with it. "The sensation never deceives us; it differs in no respect from what we conceive it to be. The judgment, too, is natural, or rather (says Malebranche), it is only a

sort of compounded sensation ;¹ but this judgment leads us into no error with respect to philosophical truth. The moment we exercise our reason, we see the fact in its true light, and can account completely for that illusive appearance which it presents to the imagination."

Not satisfied, however, with this solution of the difficulty, or rather perhaps apprehensive that it might not appear quite satisfactory to some others, he has called in to his assistance the doctrine of original sin ; asserting, that all the mistaken judgments which our constitution leads us to form concerning external objects and their qualities, are the consequences of the fall of our first parents ; since which adventure (as it is somewhat irreverently called by Dr Beattie), it requires the constant vigilance of reason to guard against the numberless tricks and impostures practised upon us by our external senses.² In another passage, Malebranche observes very beautifully (though not very consistently with his theological argument on the same point), that our senses being given us for the preservation of our bodies, it was requisite for our well-being, that we should judge as we do of sensible qualities. "In the case of the sensations of pain and of heat, it was much more advantageous that we should seem to feel them in those parts of the body which are immediately affected by them, than that we should associate them with the external objects by which they are occasioned ; because pain and heat, having the power to injure our members, it was necessary that we should be warned in what place to apply the remedy ; whereas colours not being likely, in ordinary cases, to hurt the eye, it would have been superfluous for us to know that they are painted on the retina. On the contrary, as they are only useful to us, from the information they convey with respect to things external, it was essential that we should be so formed as to attach them to the corresponding objects on which they depend."³

The two following remarks, which I shall state with all possible brevity, appear to me to go far towards a solution of the problem proposed by D'Alembert.

1. According to the new theory of vision, commonly (but, as I shall afterwards shew, not altogether justly) ascribed to Dr Berkeley, lineal distance from the eye is not an original perception of sight. In the meantime, from the first moment that the eye opens, the most intimate connection must necessarily be established between the notion of colour and those of visible extension and figure. At first, it is not improbable that all of them may be conceived to be merely modifications of the mind; but, however this may be, the manifest consequence is, that when a comparison between the senses of Sight and of Touch has taught us to refer to a distance the objects of the one, the indissolubly associated sensations of the other must of course accompany them, how far soever that distance may extend.¹

2. It is well known to be a general law of our constitution, when one thing is destined, either by nature or by convention, to be the sign of another, that the mind has a disposition to pass on, as rapidly as possible, to the thing signified, without dwelling on the sign as an object worthy of its attention. The most remarkable of all examples of this occurs in the acquired perceptions of sight, where our estimates of distance are frequently the result of an intellectual process, comparing a variety of different signs together, without a possibility on our part, the moment afterwards, of recalling one single step of the process to our recollection. Our inattention to the sensations of colour, considered as affections of the Mind, or as modifications of our own being, appears to me to be a fact of precisely the same description; for all these sensations were plainly intended by nature to perform the office of signs, indicating to us the figures and distances of things external. Of their essential importance in this point of view, an idea may be formed, by supposing for a moment the whole face of nature to exhibit only one uniform colour, without the slightest variety even of light and shade. Is it not self-evident that, on this supposition, the organ of sight would be entirely useless, inasmuch as it is by the varieties of colour alone that

of it, but by its relation to the known effect. And, therefore, both go together in the imagination, and are so closely united, that they are mistaken for one simple object of thought." Inquiry, chap. vi. sect. 4.

These two passages, seem quite inconsistent with each other. If in the perception of colour, the sensation and the quality "be so closely united as to be mistaken for one single object of thought," does it not obviously follow, that it is to this compounded notion the name of colour must, in general, be given? On the other hand, when it is said that the name of colour is never given to the sensation, but to the quality only, does not this imply, that every time the word is pronounced, the quality is separated from the sensation, even in the imaginations of the vulgar?

the outlines or visible figures of bodies are so defined, as to be distinguishable one from another? Nor could the eye, in this case, give us any information concerning diversities of distance; for all the various signs of it, enumerated by optical writers, presuppose the antecedent recognition of the bodies around us, as separate objects of perception. It is not therefore surprising, that signs so indispensably subservient to the exercise of our noblest sense, should cease, in early infancy, to attract notice as the subjects of our consciousness; and that afterwards they should present themselves to the imagination rather as qualities of Matter, than as attributes of Mind.¹

To this reference of the sensation of colour to the external object, I can think of nothing so analogous as the feelings we experience in surveying a library of books. We speak of the volumes piled up on its shelves, as treasures or magazines of the knowledge of past ages; and contemplate them with gratitude and reverence, as inexhaustible sources of instruction and delight to the mind. Even in looking at a page of print or of manuscript, we are apt to say, that the ideas we acquire are received by the sense of sight; and we are scarcely conscious of a metaphor, when we employ this language. On such occasions we seldom recollect, that nothing is perceived by the eye but a multitude of black strokes drawn upon white paper, and that it is our own acquired habits which communicate to these strokes the whole of that significancy whereby they are distinguished from the unmeaning scrawling of an infant or a changeling. The knowledge which we conceive to be preserved in books, like the fragrance of a rose, or the gilding of the clouds, depends, for its existence, on the relation between the object and the percipient mind; and the only difference between the two cases is, that in the one, this relation is the local and temporary effect of conventional habits; in the other, it is the universal and the unchangeable work of nature. The art of printing, it is to be hoped, will in future render the former relation, as well as the latter, coëval with our species; but, in the past history of mankind, it is impossible to say how

often it may have been dissolved. What vestiges can now be traced of those scientific attainments which, in early times, drew to Egypt, from every part of the civilized world, all those who were anxious to be initiated in the mysteries of philosophy? The symbols which still remain in that celebrated country, inscribed on eternal monuments, have long lost the correspondent minds which reflected upon them their own intellectual attributes. To us they are useless and silent, and serve only to attest the existence of arts, of which it is impossible to unriddle the nature and the objects.

_____
Variis nunc sculpta figuris
Marmora, truncata tamen visuntur mutaque nobis;
Signa repertorum tuimur, cecidere reperta.

What has now been remarked with respect to written characters, may be extended very nearly to oral language. When we listen to the discourse of a public speaker, eloquence and persuasion seem to issue from his lips; and we are little aware, that we ourselves infuse the soul into every word that he utters. The case is exactly the same when we enjoy the conversation of a friend. We ascribe the charm entirely to his voice and accents; but without our co-operation, its potency would vanish. How very small the comparative proportion is, which, in such cases, the words spoken contribute to the intellectual and moral effect, I have elsewhere endeavoured to show.

I have enlarged on this part of the Cartesian system, not certainly on account of its intrinsic value, as connected with the theory of our external perceptions (although even in this respect of the deepest interest to every philosophical inquirer), but because it affords the most palpable and striking example I know of, to illustrate the indissoluble associations established during the period of infancy, between the intellectual and the material worlds. It was plainly the intention of nature, that our thoughts should be habitually directed to things external; and accordingly, the bulk of mankind are not only indisposed to study the intellectual phenomena, but are incapable of that degree of reflection which is necessary for their examination. Hence it is, that when we begin to analyze our own internal constitution, we find the facts it presents to us so very intimately combined in our conceptions with the qualities of matter, that it is impossible for us to draw distinctly and steadily the line between them; and that, when Mind and Matter are concerned in the same result, the former is either entirely overlooked, or is regarded only as an accessory principle, dependent for its existence on the latter. To the same cause it is owing, that we find it so difficult (if it be at all practicable) to form an idea of any of our intellectual operations, abstracted from the images suggested by their metaphorical names. It was objected to Descartes by some of his contemporaries, that the impossibility of accomplishing the abstractions which he recom-

mended, furnished of itself a strong argument against the soundness of his doctrines.¹ The proper answer to this objection does not seem to have occurred to him; nor, so far as I know, to any of his successors;—that the abstractions of the understanding are totally different from the abstractions of the imagination; and that we may reason with most logical correctness about things considered apart, which it is impossible, even in thought, to conceive as separated from each other. His own speculations concerning the indissolubility of the union established in the mind between the sensations of colour and the primary qualities of extension and figure, might have furnished him, on this occasion, with a triumphant reply to his adversaries; not to mention that the variety of metaphors, equally fitted to denote the same intellectual powers and operations, might have been urged as a demonstrative proof, that none of these metaphors have any connection with the general laws to which it is the business of the philosopher to trace the mental phenomena.

When Descartes established it as a general principle, that nothing conceivable by the power of imagination, could throw any light on the operations of thought (a principle which I consider as exclusively his own), he laid the foundation-stone of the Experimental Philosophy of the Human Mind. That the same truth had been previously perceived more or less distinctly, by Bacon and others, appears probable from the general complexion of their speculations; but which of them has expressed it with equal precision, or laid it down as a fundamental maxim in their logic? It is for this reason, that I am disposed to date the origin of the true Philosophy of Mind from the Principia of Descartes rather than from the Organon of Bacon, or the Essay of Locke; without, however, meaning to compare the French author with our two countrymen, either as a contributor to our stock of facts relating to the intellectual phenomena, or as the author of any important conclusion concerning the general laws to which they may be referred. It is mortifying to reflect on the inconceivably small number of subsequent inquirers by whom the spirit of this cardinal maxim has been fully seized; and that, even in our own times, the old and inveterate prejudice to which it is opposed, should not only have been revived with success, but should have been very generally regarded as an original and profound discovery in metaphysical science. These circumstances must plead my apology for the space I have assigned to the Cartesian Metaphysics in the crowded historical picture which I am at present attempting to sketch. The fulness of illustration which I have bestowed on the works of the master, will enable me to pass over those of his disciples, and even of his antagonists, with a correspondent brevity.²

After having said so much of the singular merits of Descartes as the father of genuine metaphysics, it is incumbent on me to add, that his errors in this science were on a scale of proportionate magnitude. Of these the most prominent (for I must content myself with barely mentioning a few of essential importance) were his obstinate rejection of all speculations about final causes; ¹ his hypothesis concerning the lower animals, which he considered as mere machines; ² his doctrine of innate ideas, as understood and expounded by himself; ³ his noted paradox of placing the essence of mind in thinking, and of matter in extension; ⁴ and his new modification of the ideal theory of perception, adopted afterwards, with some very slight changes, by Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. ⁵ To some of these errors I shall have occasion to refer in the sequel of this Discourse. The foregoing slight enumeration is sufficient for my present purpose.

In what I have hitherto said of Descartes, I have taken no notice of his metaphysico-

portant applications. Might it not be employed, at least as an argumentum ad hominem against Mr Hume and others, who, admitting this part of the Cartesian system, seem nevertheless to have a secret leaning to the scheme of materialism? Mr Hume has somewhere spoken of that little agitation of the brain we call thought. If it be unphilosophical to confound our sensations of colour, of heat, and of cold, with such qualities of extension, figure, and solidity, is it not, if possible, still more so, to confound with these qualities the phenomena of thought, of volition, and of moral emotion?

¹ It is not unworthy of notice, that, in spite of his own logical rules, Descartes sometimes seems insensibly to adopt, on this subject, the common ideas and feelings of mankind. Several instances of this occur in his treatise on the Passions, where he offers various conjectures concerning the uses to which they are subservient. The following sentence is more peculiarly remarkable: "Mih persuadere nequeo, naturam indisse hominibus ullum affectum qui semper visiosus sit, nullumque usum bonum et laudabile habeat." Art. clxxv.

² This hypothesis never gained much ground in England; and yet a late writer of distinguished eminence in some branches of science, has plainly intimated that, in his opinion, the balance of probabilities inclined in its favour. "I omit mentioning other animals here," says Mr Kirwan in his Metaphysical Essays, "as it is at least doubtful whether they are not mere automatons." Met. Essays, p. 41. Lond. 1809.

³ I have added the clause in Italics, because, in Descartes' reasonings on this question, there is no considerable portion of most important truth, debased by a large and manifest alloy of error.

⁴ To this paradox may be traced many of the conclusions of the author, both on physical and on metaphysical subjects. One of the most characteristical features, indeed, of his genius, is the mathematical concatenation of his opinions, even on questions which, at first sight, seem the most remote from each other; a circumstance which, when combined with the extraordinary perspicuity of his style, completely accounts for the strong hold his philosophy took of every mind, thoroughly initiated, at an early period of life, in its principles and doctrines. In consequence of conceiving the essence of matter to consist in extension, he was necessarily obliged to maintain the doctrine of a universal plenum; upon which doctrine the theory of the vortices came to be grafted by a very short and easy process. The same idea forced him, at the very outset of his Metaphysical Meditations, to assert, much more dogmatically than his premises seem to warrant, the non-extension of Mind; and led him on many occasions to blend, very illogically, this comparatively disputable dogma, with the facts he has to state concerning the mental phenomena.

⁵ See Note N.

physiological theories relative to the connection between soul and body. Of these theories, however, groundless and puerile as they are, it is necessary for me, before I proceed farther, to say a few words, on account of their extensive and lasting influence on the subsequent history of the science of Mind, not only upon the Continent, but in our own Island.

The hypothesis of Descartes, which assigns to the soul for its principal seat the pineal gland or conarion, is known to every one who has perused the Alma of Prior. It is not, perhaps, equally known, that the circumstance which determined him to fix on this particular spot, was the very plausible consideration, that, among the different parts of the brain, this was the only one he could find, which, being single and central, was fitted for the habitation of a being, of which he conceived unity and indivisibility to be essential and obvious attributes.¹ In what manner the animal spirits, by their motions forwards and backwards in the nervous tubes, keep up the communication between this gland and the different parts of the body, so as to produce the phenomena of perception, memory, imagination, and muscular motion, he has attempted particularly to explain; describing the processes by which these various effects are accomplished, with as decisive a tone of authority, as if he had been demonstrating experimentally the circulation of the blood. How curious to meet with such speculations in the works of the same philosopher, who had so clearly perceived the necessity, in studying the laws of Mind, of abstracting entirely from the analogies of Matter; and who, at the outset of his inquiries, had carried his scepticism so far, as to require a proof even of the existence of his own body! To those, however, who reflect with attention on the method adopted by Descartes, this inconsistency will not appear so inexplicable as at first sight may be imagined; inasmuch as the same scepticism which led him to suspend his faith in his intellectual faculties till he had once proved to his satisfaction, from the necessary veracity of God, that these faculties were to be regarded as the divine oracles, prepared him, in all the subsequent steps of his progress, to listen to the suggestions of his own fallible judgment, with more than common credulity and confidence.

The ideas of Descartes, respecting the communication between soul and body, are now so universally rejected, that I should not have alluded to them here, had it not been for their manifest influence in producing, at the distance of a century, the rival hypothesis of Dr Hartley. The first traces of this hypothesis occur in some queries of Sir Isaac Newton, which he was probably induced to propose, less from the conviction of his own mind, than from a wish to turn the attention of philosophers to an examination of the correspondent part of the Cartesian system. Not that I would be understood to deny

that this great man seems, on more than one occasion, to have been so far misled by the example of his predecessor, as to indulge himself in speculating on questions altogether unsusceptible of solution. In the present instance, however, there cannot, I apprehend, be a doubt, that it was the application made by Descartes of the old theory of animal spirits, to explain the mental phenomena, which led Newton into that train of thinking which served as the ground-work of Hartley's Theory of Vibrations.¹

It would be useless to dwell longer on the reveries of a philosopher, much better known to the learned of the present age by the boldness of his exploded errors, than by the profound and important truths contained in his works. At the period when he appeared, it may perhaps be questioned, Whether the truths which he taught, or the errors into which

Here Matthew said,
Alma in verse, in prose the mind
By Aristotle's pen defin'd,
Throughout the body squat or tall,
Is, bona fide, all in all.
And yet, slap-dash, is all again
In every sinew, nerve, and vein;
Runs here and there like Hamlet's Ghost,
While everywhere she rules the roast.

This system, Richard, we are told,
The men of Oxford firmly hold;
The Cambridge wits, you know, deny
With ipse dixit to comply.
They say (for in good truth they speak,
With small respect of that old Greek)
That, putting all his words together,
'Tis three blue beans in one blue bladder.

Alma, they strenuously maintain,
Sits cock-horse on her throne the brain,
And from that seat of thought dispenses
Her sovereign pleasure to the senses, &c. &c.

The whole poem, from beginning to end, is one continued piece of ridicule upon the various hypotheses of physiologists concerning the nature of the communication between soul and body. The amusing contrast between the solemn absurdity of these disputes, and the light pleasantry of the excursions to which they lead the fancy of the poet, constitutes the principal charm of this performance; by far the most original and characteristic of all Prior's Works.

he fell, were most instructive to the world. The controversies provoked by the latter had certainly a more immediate and palpable effect in awakening a general spirit of free inquiry. To this consideration may be added an ingenious and not altogether unsound remark of D'Alembert, that "when absurd opinions are become inveterate, it is sometimes necessary to replace them by other errors, if nothing better can be done. Such (he continues) are the uncertainty and the vanity of the human mind, that it has always need of an opinion on which it may lean; it is a child to whom a play-thing must occasionally be presented in order to get out of its hands a mischievous weapon: the play-thing will soon be abandoned, when the light of reason begins to dawn."¹

Among the opponents of Descartes, Gassendi was one of the earliest, and by far the most formidable. No two philosophers were ever more strongly contrasted, both in point of talents and of temper; the former as far superior to the latter in originality of genius—in powers of concentrated attention to the phenomena of the internal world—in classical taste—in moral sensibility, and in all the rarer gifts of the mind; as he fell short of him in erudition—in industry as a book-maker—in the justness of his logical views, so far as the phenomena of the material universe are concerned—and, in general, in those literary qualities and attainments, of which the bulk of mankind either are, or think themselves best qualified to form an estimate. The reputation of Gassendi, accordingly, seems to have been at its height in his own lifetime; that of Descartes made but little progress, till a considerable time after his death.

The comparative justness of Gassendi's views in natural philosophy, may be partly, perhaps chiefly, ascribed to his diligent study of Bacon's works; which Descartes (if he ever read them), has nowhere alluded to in his writings. This extraordinary circumstance in the character of Descartes, is the more unaccountable, that not only Gassendi, but some of his other correspondents, repeatedly speak of Bacon in terms which one should think could scarcely have failed to induce him to satisfy his own mind whether their encomiums were well or ill founded. One of these, while he contents himself, from very obvious feelings of delicacy, with mentioning the Chancellor of England, as the person who, before the time of Descartes, had entertained the justest notions about the method of prosecuting physical inquiries, takes occasion, in the same letter, to present him, in the form of a friendly admonition from himself, with the following admirable summary of the instauratio magna. "To all this it must be added, that no architect, however skilful, can raise an edifice, unless he

be provided with proper materials. In like manner, your method, supposing it to be perfect, can never advance you a single step in the explanation of natural causes, unless you are in possession of the facts necessary for determining their effects. They who, without stirring from their libraries, attempt to discourse concerning the works of nature, may indeed tell us what sort of world they would have made, if God had committed that task to their ingenuity; but, without a wisdom truly divine, it is impossible for them to form an idea of the universe, at all approaching to that in the mind of its Creator. And, although your method promises everything that can be expected from human genius, it does not, therefore, lay any claim to the art of divination; but only boasts of deducing from the assumed data, all the truths which follow from them as legitimate consequences; which data, can, in physics, be nothing else but principles previously established by experiment.¹ In Gassendi's controversies with Descartes, the name of Bacon seems to be studiously introduced on various occasions, in a manner still better calculated to excite the curiosity of his antagonist; and in his historical review of logical systems, the heroical attempt which gave birth to the Novum Organon is made the subject of a separate chapter, immediately preceding that which relates to the Metaphysical Meditations of Descartes.

The partiality of Gassendi for the Epicurean physics, if not originally imbibed from Bacon, must have been powerfully encouraged by the favourable terms in which he always mentions the Atomic or Corpuscular theory. In its conformity to that luminous simplicity which everywhere characterizes the operations of nature, this theory certainly possesses a decided superiority over all the other conjectures of the ancient philosophers concerning the material universe; and it reflects no small honour on the sagacity both of Bacon and of Gassendi, to have perceived so clearly the strong analogical presumption which this conformity afforded in its favour, prior to the unexpected lustre thrown upon it by the researches of the Newtonian school. With all his admiration, however, of the Epicurean physics, Bacon nowhere shews the slightest leaning towards the metaphysical or ethical doctrines of the same sect; but, on the contrary, considered (and, I apprehend, rightly considered) the atomic theory as incomparably more hostile to atheism, than the hypothesis of four mutable elements, and of one immutable fifth essence. In this last opinion, there is every reason to believe that Gassendi fully concurred; more especially, as he was a zealous advocate for the investigation of final causes, even in inquiries strictly physical. At the same time, it cannot be denied, that, on many questions, both of Meta-

physics and of Ethics, this very learned theologian (one of the most orthodox, professedly, of whom the Catholic church has to boast), carried his veneration for the authority of Epicurus to a degree bordering on weakness and servility; and although, on such occasions, he is at the utmost pains to guard his readers against the dangerous conclusions commonly ascribed to his master, he has nevertheless retained more than enough of his system to give a plausible colour to a very general suspicion, that he secretly adopted more of it than he chose to avow.

As Gassendi's attachment to the physical doctrines of Epicurus, predisposed him to give an easier reception than he might otherwise have done to his opinions in Metaphysics and in Ethics, so his unqualified contempt for the hypothesis of the Vortices, seems to have created in his mind an undue prejudice against the speculations of Descartes on all other subjects. His objections to the argument by which Descartes has so triumphantly established the distinction between Mind and Matter, as separate and heterogeneous objects of human knowledge, must now appear, to every person capable of forming a judgment upon the question, altogether frivolous and puerile; amounting to nothing more than this, that all our knowledge is received by the channel of the external senses,—insomuch, that there is not a single object of the understanding which may not be ultimately analyzed into sensible images; and of consequence, that when Descartes proposed to abstract from these images in studying the mind, he rejected the only materials out of which it is possible for our faculties to rear any superstructure. The sum of the whole matter is (to use his own language), that “there is no real distinction between imagination and intellection,” meaning, by the former of these words, the power which the mind possesses of representing to itself the material objects and qualities it has previously perceived. It is evident, that this conclusion coincides exactly with the tenets inculcated in England at the same period by his friend Hobbes,¹ as well as with those revived at a latter period by Diderot, Horne Tooke, and many other writers, both French and English, who, while they were only repeating the exploded dogmas of Epicurus, fancied they were pursuing, with miraculous success, the new path struck out by the genius of Locke.

It is worthy of remark, that the argument employed by Gassendi against Descartes, is copied almost verbatim from his own version of the account given by Diogenes Laertius.

of the sources of our knowledge, according to the principles of the Epicurean philosophy; ¹—so very little is there of novelty in the consequences deduced by modern materialists from the scholastic proposition, Nihil est in intellectu quod non fuit prius in sensu. The same doctrine is very concisely and explicitly stated in a maxim formerly quoted from Montaigne, that “the senses are the beginning and end of all our knowledge;”—a maxim which Montaigne learned from his oracle Raymond de Sebonde;—which, by the present race of French philosophers, is almost universally supposed to be sanctioned by the authority of Locke;—and which, if true, would at once cut up by the roots, not only all metaphysics, but all ethics, and all religion, both natural and revealed. It is accordingly with this very maxim that Madame du Deffand (in a letter which rivals anything that the fancy of Moliere has conceived in his Femmes-Savantes) assails Voltaire for his imbecility in attempting a reply to an atheistical book then recently published. In justice to this celebrated lady, I shall transcribe part of it in her own words, as a precious and authentic document of the philosophical tone affected by the higher orders in France, during the reign of Louis XV.

“J’entends parler d’une refutation d’un certain livre, (Système de la Nature.) Je voudrois l’avoir. Je m’en tiens à connoître ce livre par vous. Toutes refutations de système doivent être bonnes, surtout quand c’est vous qui les faites. Mais, mon cher Voltaire, ne vous ennuyez-vous pas de tous les raisonnemens métaphysiques sur les matières inintelligibles. Peut-on donner des idées, ou peut-on en admettre d’autres que celles que nous recevons par nos sens?”—If the Senses be the beginning and end of all our knowledge, the inference here pointed at is quite irresistible. ²

A learned and profound writer has lately complained of the injustice done by the present age to Gassendi; in whose works, he asserts, may be found the whole of the doctrine commonly ascribed to Locke concerning the origin of our knowledge. ³ The re-

mark is certainly just, if restricted to Locke's doctrine as interpreted by the greater part of philosophers on the Continent; but it is very wide of the truth, if applied to it as now explained and modified by the most intelligent of his disciples in this country. The main scope, indeed, of Gassendi's argument against Descartes, is to materialize that class of our ideas which the Lockists as well as the Cartesians consider as the exclusive objects of the power of reflection; and to shew that these ideas are all ultimately resolvable into images or conceptions borrowed from things external. It is not, therefore, what is sound and valuable in this part of Locke's system, but the errors grafted on it in the comments of some of his followers, that can justly be said to have been borrowed from Gassendi. Nor has Gassendi the merit of originality, even in these errors; for scarcely a remark on the subject occurs in his works, but what is copied from the accounts transmitted to us of the Epicurean metaphysics.

Unfortunately for Descartes, while he so clearly perceived that the origin of those ideas which are the most interesting to human happiness, could not be traced to our external senses, he had the weakness, instead of stating this fundamental proposition in plain and precise terms, to attempt an explanation of it by the extravagant hypothesis of innate ideas. This hypothesis gave Gassendi great advantages over him, in the management of their controversy; while the subsequent adoption of Gassendi's reasonings against it by Locke, has led to a very general but ill-founded belief, that the latter, as well as the former, rejected, along with the doctrine of innate ideas, the various important and well-ascertained truths combined with it in the Cartesian system.

The hypothetical language afterwards introduced by Leibnitz concerning the human soul (which he sometimes calls a living mirror of the universe, and sometimes supposes to contain within itself the seeds of that knowledge which is gradually unfolded in the progressive exercise of its faculties), is another impotent attempt to explain a mystery unfathomable by human reason. The same remark may be extended to some of Plato's reveries on this question, more particularly to his supposition, that those ideas which cannot be traced to any of our external senses, were acquired by the soul in its state of pre-existence. In all of these theories, as well as in that of Descartes, the cardinal truth is assumed as indisputable, that the Senses are not the only sources of human knowledge; nor is anything wanting to render them correctly logical, but the statement of this truth as an ultimate fact (or at least as a fact hitherto unexplained) in our intellectual frame.

It is very justly observed by Mr Hume, with respect to Sir Isaac Newton, that "while he seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he showed, at the same time, the imperfections of the mechanical philosophy, and thereby restored her ultimate se-

crets to that obscurity in which they ever did, and ever will remain.”¹ When the justness of this remark shall be as universally acknowledged in the science of Mind as it now is in Natural Philosophy, we may reasonably expect that an end will be put to those idle controversies which have so long diverted the attention of metaphysicians from the proper objects of their studies.

The text of Scripture, prefixed by Dr Reid as a motto to his Inquiry, conveys, in a few words, the result of his own modest and truly philosophical speculations on the origin of our knowledge, and expresses this result in terms strictly analogous to those in which Newton speaks of the law of gravitation :—“The inspiration of the Almighty hath given them understanding.” Let our researches concerning the development of the Mind, and the occasions on which its various notions are first formed, be carried back ever so far towards the commencement of its history, in this humble confession of human ignorance they must terminate at last.

I have dwelt thus long on the writings of Gassendi, much less from my own idea of their merits, than out of respect to an author, in whose footsteps Locke has frequently condescended to tread. The epigrammatic encomium bestowed on him by Gibbon, who calls him “le meilleur philosophe des litterateurs, et le meilleur litterateur des philosophes,” appears to me quite extravagant.² His learning, indeed, was at once vast and accurate ; and, as a philosopher, he is justly entitled to the praise of being one of the first who entered thoroughly into the spirit of the Baconian logic. But his inventive powers, which were probably not of the highest order, seem to have been either dissipated amidst the multiplicity of his literary pursuits, or laid asleep by his indefatigable labours, as a Commentator and a Compiler. From a writer of this class, new lights were not to be expected in the study of the human Mind ; and accordingly, here he has done little or nothing, but to revive and to repeat over the doctrines of the old Epicureans. His works amount to six large volumes in folio ; but the substance of them might be compressed into a much smaller compass, without any diminution of their value.

In one respect Gassendi had certainly a great advantage over his antagonist—the good humour which never forsook him in the heat of a philosophical argument. The comparative indifference with which he regarded most of the points at issue between them, was perhaps the chief cause of that command of temper so uniformly displayed in all his controver-

sies, and so remarkably contrasted with the constitutional irritability of Descartes. Even the faith of Gassendi in his own favourite master, Epicurus, does not seem to have been very strong or dogmatical, if it be true that he was accustomed to allege, as the chief ground of his preferring the Epicurean physics to the theory of the Vortices, "that chimera for chimera, he could not help feeling some partiality for that which was two thousand years older than the other."¹

About twenty years after the death of Gassendi (who did not long survive Descartes), Malebranche entered upon his philosophical career. The earlier part of his life had, by the advice of some of his preceptors, been devoted to the study of ecclesiastical history, and of the learned languages; for neither of which pursuits does he seem to have felt that marked predilection which afforded any promise of future eminence. At length, in the twenty-fifth year of his age, he accidentally met with Descartes' Treatise on Man, which opened to him at once a new world, and awakened him to a consciousness of powers, till then unsuspected either by himself or by others. Fontenelle has given a lively picture of the enthusiastic ardour with which Malebranche first read this performance; and describes its effects on his nervous system as sometimes so great, that he was forced to lay aside the book till the palpitation of his heart had subsided.

It was only ten years after this occurrence when he published The Search after Truth; a work which, whatever judgment may now be passed on its philosophical merits, will always form an interesting study to readers of taste, and a useful one to students of human nature. Few books can be mentioned, combining, in so great a degree, the utmost depth and abstraction of thought, with the most pleasing sallies of imagination and eloquence; and none, where they who delight in the observation of intellectual character may find more ample illustrations, both of the strength and weakness of the human understanding. It is a singular feature in the history of Malebranche, that, notwithstanding the poetical colouring which adds so much animation and grace to his style, he never could read, without disgust, a page of the finest verses;² and that, although Imagination was manifestly the predominant ingredient in the composition of his own genius, the most elaborate passages in his works are those where he inveighs against this treacherous faculty, as the prolific parent of our most fatal delusions.³

In addition to the errors, more or less incident to all men, from the unresisted sway of imagination during the infancy of reason, Malebranche had, in his own case, to struggle with all the prejudices connected with the peculiar dogmas of the Roman Catholic faith. Unfortunately, too, he everywhere discovers a strong disposition to blend his theology and his metaphysics together; availing himself of the one as an auxiliary to the other, wherever, in either science, his ingenuity fails him in establishing a favourite conclusion. To this cause is chiefly to be ascribed the little attention now paid to a writer formerly so universally admired, and, in point of fact, the indisputable author of some of the most refined speculations claimed by the theorists of the eighteenth century. As for those mystical controversies about Grace with Anthony Arnauld, on which he wasted so much of his genius, they have long sunk into utter oblivion; nor should I have here revived the recollection of them, were it not for the authentic record they furnish of the passive bondage in which, little more than a hundred years ago, two of the most powerful minds of that memorable period were held by a creed, renounced, at the Reformation, by all the Protestant countries of Europe; and the fruitful source, wherever it has been retained, of other prejudices, not less to be lamented, of an opposite description.¹

When Malebranche touches on questions not positively decided by the church, he exhibits a remarkable boldness and freedom of inquiry; setting at nought those human authorities which have so much weight with men of unenlightened erudition; and sturdily opposing his own reason to the most inveterate prejudices of his age. His disbelief in the

readers against the undue influence of imagination over the judgment, to exemplify the boundless fertility and originality of his own. The following allusion of Bacon's, quoted by Malebranche, is eminently apposite and happy: "Omnes perceptiones tam sensus quam mentis sunt ex analogia hominis, non ex analogia universi: Estque intellectus humanus instar speculi inaequalis ad radios rerum, qui suam naturam naturae rerum immiscet, camque distorquet et inficit."

¹ Of this disposition to blend theological dogmas with philosophical discussions, Malebranche was so little conscious in himself, that he has seriously warned his readers against it, by quoting an aphorism of Bacon's, peculiarly applicable to his own writings: "Ex divinorum et humanorum maledana admixtione non solum educitur philosophia phantastica, sed etiam religio haeretica. Itaque salutare admodum est si mente sobria fidei tantum dentur quae fidei sunt." In transcribing these words, it is amusing to observe, that Malebranche has slyly suppressed the name of the author from whom they are borrowed; manifestly from an unwillingness to weaken their effect, by the suspicious authority of a philosopher not in communion with the Church of Rome. Recherche de la Vérité, Liv. ii. chap. ix.

Dr Reid, proceeding on the supposition that Malebranche was a Jesuit, has ascribed to the antipathy between this order and the Jansenists, the warmth displayed on both sides, in his disputes with Arnauld (Essays on the Int. Powers, p. 124); but the fact is, that Malebranche belonged to the Congregation of the Oratory; a society much more nearly allied to the Jansenists than to the Jesuits; and honourably distinguished, since its first origin, by the moderation as well as learning of its members.

reality of sorcery, which, although cautiously expressed, seems to have been complete, affords a decisive proof of the soundness of his judgment, where he conceived himself to have any latitude in exercising it. The following sentences contain more good sense on the subject, than I recollect in any contemporary author. I shall quote them, as well as the other passages I may afterwards extract from his writings, in his own words, to which it is seldom possible to do justice in an English version.

“ Les hommes même les plus sages se conduisent plutôt par l'imagination des autres, je veux dire par l'opinion et par la coutume, que par les regles de la raison. Ainsi dans les lieux où l'on brule les sorciers, on ne voit autre chose, parce que dans les lieux où l'on les condamne au feu, on croit veritablement qu'ils le sont, et cette croyance se fortifie par les discours qu'on en tient. Que l'on cesse de les punir et qu'on les traite comme des fous, et l'on verra qu'avec le tems ils ne seront plus sorciers; parce que ceux qui ne le sont que par imagination, qui font certainement le plus grand nombre, deviendront comme les autres hommes.

“ C'est donc avec raison que plusieurs Parlemens ne punissent point les sorcières: ils s'en trouve beaucoup moins dans les terres de leur ressort: Et l'envie, la haine, et la malice des méchans ne peuvent se servir de ce prétexte pour accabler les innocens.”

How strikingly has the sagacity of these anticipations and reflections been verified, by the subsequent history of this popular superstition in our own country, and indeed in every other instance where the experiment recommended by Malebranche has been tried! Of this sagacity much must, no doubt, be ascribed to the native vigour of a mind struggling against and controlling early prejudices; but it must not be forgotten, that, notwithstanding his retired and monastic life, Malebranche had breathed the same air with the associates and friends of Descartes and of Gassendi; and that no philosopher seems ever to have been more deeply impressed with the truth of that golden maxim of Montaigne—“ Il est bon de frotter et limer notre cervelle contre celle d'autrui.”

Another feature in the intellectual character of Malebranche, presenting an unexpected contrast to his powers of abstract meditation, is the attentive and discriminating eye with which he appears to have surveyed the habits and manners of the comparatively little circle around him; and the delicate yet expressive touches with which he has marked and defined some of the nicest shades and varieties of genius.¹ To this branch of the Philosophy of Mind, not certainly the least important and interesting, he has contributed a greater num-

ber of original remarks than Locke himself; ¹—since whose time, with the single exception of Helvetius, hardly any attention has been paid to it, either by French or English metaphysicians. The same practical knowledge of the human understanding, modified and diversified, as we everywhere see it, by education and external circumstances, is occasionally discovered by his very able antagonist Arnauld; affording, in both cases, a satisfactory proof, that the narrowest field of experience may disclose to a superior mind those refined and comprehensive results, which common observers are forced to collect from an extensive and varied commerce with the world.

In some of Malebranche's incidental strictures on men and manners, there is a lightness of style and fineness of tact, which one would scarcely have expected from the mystical divine, who believed that he saw all things in God. Who would suppose that the following paragraph forms part of a profound argument on the influence of the external senses over the human intellect?

“ Si par exemple, celui qui parle s'énonce avec facilité, s'il garde une mesure agréable

¹ In one of Locke's most noted remarks of this sort, he has been anticipated by Malebranche, on whose clear yet concise statement, he does not seem to have thrown much new light by his very diffuse and wordy commentary. “ If in having our ideas in the memory ready at hand, consists quickness of parts; in this of having them unconfused, and being able nicely to distinguish one thing from another, where there is but the least difference, consists, in a great measure, the exactness of judgment and clearness of reason, which is to be observed in one man above another. And hence, perhaps, may be given some reason of that common observation, that men who have a great deal of wit, and prompt memories, have not always the clearest judgment, or deepest reason. For Wit, lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures, and agreeable visions in the fancy; Judgment, on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully, one from another, ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude, and by affinity to take one thing for another.” Essay, &c. B. ii. c. xi. § 2.

“ Il y a donc des esprits de deux sortes. Les uns remarquent aisément les différences des choses, et ce sont les bons esprits. Les autres imaginent et supposent de la ressemblance entr'elles, et ce sont les esprits superficiels.” Rech. de la Vérité. Liv. ii. Seconde Partie, chap. ix.

At a still earlier period, Bacon had pointed out the same cardinal distinction in the intellectual characters of individuals.

“ Maximum et velut radicale discrimen ingeniorum, quoad philosophiam et scientias, illud est; quod alia ingenia sint fortiora et aptiora ad notandas rerum differentias; alia, ad notandas rerum similitudines. Ingenia enim constantia et acuta, figere contemplationes, et morari, et hærere in omni subtilitate differentiarum possunt. Ingenia autem sublimia, et discursiva, etiam tenuissimas et catholicas rerum similitudines et cognoscunt, et componunt. Utrumque autem ingenium facile labitur in excessum, prensando aut gradus rerum, aut umbras.”

That strain I heard was of a higher mood! It is evident, that Bacon has here seized, in its most general form, the very important truth perceived by his two ingenious successors in particular cases. Wit, which Locke contrasts with judgment, is only one of the various talents connected with what Bacon calls the discursive genius; and indeed, a talent very subordinate in dignity to most of the others.

dans ses périodes, s'il a l'air d'un honnête homme et d'un homme d'esprit, si c'est une personne de qualité, s'il est suivi d'un grand train, s'il parle avec autorité et avec gravité, si les autres l'écouent avec respect et en silence, s'il a quelque réputation, et quelque commerce avec les esprits du premier ordre, enfin, s'il est assez heureux pour plaire, ou pour être estimé, il aura raison dans tout ce qu'il avancera; et il n'y aura pas jusqu'à son collet et à ses manchettes, qui ne prouvent quelque chose."¹

In his philosophical capacity, Malebranche is to be considered in two points of view: 1. As a commentator on Descartes; and, 2. As the author of some conclusions from the Cartesian principles, not perceived or not avowed by his predecessors of the same school.

¹ I shall indulge myself only in one other citation from Malebranche, which I select partly on account of the curious extract it contains from an English publication long since forgotten in this country; and partly as a proof that this learned and pious father was not altogether insensible to the ludicrous.

"Un illustre entre les Savans, qui a fondé des chaires de Géométrie et d'Astronomie dans l'Université d'Oxford,² commence un livre, qu'il s'est avisé de faire sur les huit premières propositions d'Euclide, par ces paroles. Consilium meum est, auditores, si vires et valetudo suffecerint, explicare definitiones, petitiones, communes sententias, et octo priores propositiones primi libri elementorum, cætera post me venientibus relinquere: et il le finit par celles-ci: Exsolvui per Dei gratiam, Domini auditores, promissum, liberavi fidem meam, explicavi pro modulo meo definitiones, petitiones, communes sententias, et octo priores propositiones elementorum Euclidis. Hic annis fessus cyclas artemque repono. Succedent in hoc munus alii fortasse magis vegeto corpore et vivido ingenio. Il ne faut pas une heure à un esprit médiocre, pour apprendre par lui-même, ou par le secours du plus petit géomètre qu'il y ait, les définitions, demandes, axiomes, et les huit premières propositions d'Euclide; et voici un auteur qui parle de cette entreprise, comme de quelque chose de fort grand, et de fort difficile. Il a peur que les forces lui manquent; Si vires et valetudo suffecerint. Il laisse à ses successeurs à pousser ces choses: cætera post me venientibus relinquere. Il remercie Dieu de ce que, par une grace particulière, il a exécuté ce qu'il avoit promis: exsolvui per Dei gratiam promissum, liberavi fidem meam, explicavi pro modulo meo. Quoi? la quadrature du cercle? la duplication du cube? Ce grand homme a expliqué pro modulo suo, les définitions, les demandes, les axiomes, et les huit premières propositions du premier livre des Elements d'Euclide. Peut-être qu'entre ceux qui lui succéderont, il s'en trouvera qui auront plus de santé, et plus de force que lui pour continuer ce bel ouvrage: Succedent in hoc munus alii fortasse magis vegeto corpore, et vivido ingenio. Mais pour lui il est temps qu'il se repose; hic annis fessus cyclas artemque repono."

After reading the above passage, it is impossible to avoid reflecting, with satisfaction, on the effect which the progress of philosophy has since had, in removing those obstacles to the acquisition of useful knowledge, which were created by the pedantic taste prevalent two centuries ago. What a contrast to a quarto commentary on the definitions, postulates, axioms, and first eight propositions of Euclid's First Book, is presented by Condorcet's estimate of the time now sufficient to conduct a student to the highest branches of mathematics! "Dans le siècle dernier, il suffisoit de quelques années d'étude pour savoir tout ce qu'Archimède et Hipparque avoient pu connoître; et aujourd'hui deux années de l'enseignement d'un professeur vont au delà de ce que savoient Leibnitz ou Newton." (Sur l'Instruction Publique.) In this particular science, I am aware that much is to be ascribed to the subsequent invention of new and more general methods; but, I apprehend, not a little also to the improvements gradually suggested by experience, in what Bacon calls the traditive part of logic.

1. I have already taken notice of Malebranche's comments on the Cartesian doctrine concerning the sensible, or, as they are now more commonly called, the secondary qualities of matter. The same fulness and happiness of illustration are everywhere else to be found in his elucidations of his master's system; to the popularity of which he certainly contributed greatly by the liveliness of his fancy, and the charms of his composition. Even in this part of his writings, he always preserves the air of an original thinker; and, while pursuing the same path with Descartes, seems rather to have accidentally struck into it from his own casual choice, than to have selected it out of any deference for the judgment of another. Perhaps it may be doubted, if it is not on such occasions, that the inventive powers of his genius, by being somewhat restrained and guided in their aim, are most vigorously and most usefully displayed.

In confirmation of this last remark, I shall only mention, by way of examples, his comments on the Cartesian theory of Vision,—more especially on that part of it which relates to our experimental estimates of the distances and magnitudes of objects; and his admirable illustration of the errors to which we are liable from the illusions of sense, of imagination, and of the passions. In his physiological reveries on the union of soul and body, he wanders, like his master, in the dark, from the total want of facts as a foundation for his reasonings; but even here his genius has had no inconsiderable influence on the inquiries of later writers. The fundamental principle of Hartley is most explicitly stated in The Search after Truth;¹ as well as a hypothesis concerning the nature of habits, which, rash and unwarranted as it must now appear to every novice in science, was not thought unworthy of adoption in The Essay on Human Understanding.²

2. Among the opinions which chiefly characterize the system of Malebranche, the leading one is, that the causes which it is the aim of philosophy to investigate are only occasional causes; and that the Deity is himself the efficient and the immediate cause of every effect in the universe.¹ From this single principle, the greater part of his distinguishing doctrines may be easily deduced, as obvious corollaries.

That we are completely ignorant of the manner in which physical causes and effects are connected, and that all our knowledge concerning them amounts merely to a perception of constant conjunction, had been before remarked by Hobbes, and more fully shown by Glanville in his Scépsis Scientifica. Malebranche, however, has treated the same argument much more profoundly and ably than any of his predecessors, and has, indeed, anticipated Hume in some of the most ingenious reasonings contained in his Essay on Necessary Connection. From these data, it was not unnatural for his pious mind to conclude, that what are commonly called second causes have no existence; and that the Divine power, incessantly and universally exerted, is, in truth, the connecting link of all the phenomena of nature. It is obvious, that, in this conclusion, he went farther than his premises warranted; for, although no necessary connections among physical events can be traced by our faculties, it does not therefore follow that such connections are impossible. The only sound inference was, that the laws of nature are to be discovered, not, as the ancients supposed, by a priori reasonings from causes to effects, but by experience and observation. It is but justice to Malebranche to own, that he was one of the first who placed in a just and strong light this fundamental principle of the inductive logic.

On the other hand, the objections to the theory of occasional causes, chiefly insisted on by Malebranche's opponents, were far from satisfactory. By some it was alleged, that it ascribed every event to a miraculous interposition of the Deity; as if this objection were not directly met by the general and constant laws everywhere manifested to our senses,—in a departure from which laws, the very essence of a miracle consists. Nor was it more to the pur-

ils n'y trouvent plus de résistance. Car c'est dans cette facilité que les esprits animaux ont de passer dans les membres de notre corps, que consistent les habitudes." Rech. de la Vérité, Liv. ii. chap. v.

"Habits seem to be but trains of motion in the animal spirits, which, once set a-going, continue in the same steps they have been used to, which, by often treading, are worn into a smooth path." Locke, Book ii. chap. xxxiii. § 6.

¹ "Afin qu'on ne puisse plus douter de la fausseté de cette miserable philosophie, il est nécessaire de prouver qu'il n'y a qu'un vrai Dieu, parce qu'il n'y a qu'une vraie cause; que la nature ou la force de chaque chose n'est que la volonté de Dieu: que toutes les causes naturelles ne sont point de véritable causes, mais seulement des causes occasionnelles." De la Vérité, Livre vi. 2de Partie, chap. iii.

pose to contend, that the beauty and perfection of the universe were degraded by excluding the idea of mechanism; the whole of this argument turning, as is manifest, upon an application to Omnipotence of ideas borrowed from the limited sphere of human power.¹ As to the study of natural philosophy, it is plainly not at all affected by the hypothesis in question; as the investigation and generalization of the laws of nature, which are its only proper objects, present exactly the same field to our curiosity, whether we suppose these laws to be the immediate effects of the Divine agency, or the effects of second causes, placed beyond the reach of our faculties.²

Such, however, were the chief reasonings opposed to Malebranche by Leibnitz, in order to prepare the way for the system of Pre-established Harmony; a system more nearly allied to that of occasional causes than its author seems to have suspected, and encumbered with every solid difficulty connected with the other.

From the theory of occasional causes, it is easy to trace the process which led Malebranche to conclude, that we see all things in God. The same arguments which convinced him, that the Deity carries into execution every volition of the mind, in the movements of the body, could not fail to suggest, as a farther consequence, that every perception of the mind is the immediate effect of the divine illumination. As to the manner in which this illumination is accomplished, the extraordinary hypothesis adopted by Malebranche was forced upon him, by the opinion then universally held, that the immediate objects of our perceptions are not things external, but their ideas or images. The only pos-

sible expedient for reconciling these two articles of his creed, was to transfer the seat of our ideas from our own minds to that of the Creator.¹

In this theory of Malebranche, there is undoubtedly, as Bayle has remarked,² an approach to some speculations of the latter Platonists; but there is a much closer coincidence between it and the system of those Hindoo philosophers, who (according to Sir William Jones) "believed that the whole creation was rather an energy than a work; by which the infinite Mind, who is present at all times, and in all places, exhibits to his creatures a set of perceptions, like a wonderful picture, or piece of music, always varied, yet always uniform."³

In some of Malebranche's reasonings upon this subject, he has struck into the same train of thought which was afterwards pursued by Berkeley (an author to whom he bore a very strong resemblance in some of the most characteristical features of his genius); and, had he not been restrained by religious scruples, he would, in all probability, have asserted, not less confidently than his successor, that the existence of matter was demonstrably inconsistent with the principles then universally admitted by philosophers. But this conclusion Malebranche rejects, as not reconcilable with the words of Scripture, that "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." "La foi m'apprend que Dieu a crée le ciel et la terre. Elle m'apprend que l'Écriture est un livre divin. Et ce livre ou son apparence me dit nettement et positivement, qu'il y a mille et mille créatures. Donc voilà toutes mes apparences changées en réalités. Il y a des corps; cela est démontré en toute rigueur la foi supposée."⁴

In reflecting on the repeated reproduction of these, and other ancient paradoxes, by modern authors, whom it would be highly unjust to accuse of plagiarism;—still more, in reflecting on the affinity of some of our most refined theories to the popular belief in a remote quarter of the globe, one is almost tempted to suppose, that human invention is li-

The celebrated doubt of Descartes concerning all truths but the existence of his own mind (it cannot be too often repeated), was the real source, not only of the inconsistency of Malebranche on this head, but of the chief metaphysical puzzles afterwards started by Berkeley and Hume. The illogical transition by which he attempted to pass from this first principle to other truths, was early remarked by some of his own followers, who were accordingly led to conclude, that no man can have full assurance of anything but of his own individual existence. If the fundamental doubt of Descartes be admitted as reasonable, the conclusion of these philosophers (who were distinguished by the name of Egoists), is unavoidable.

mited, like a barrel-organ, to a specific number of tunes. But is it not a fairer inference, that the province of pure Imagination, unbounded as it may at first appear, is narrow, when compared with the regions opened by truth and nature to our powers of observation and reasoning?¹ Prior to the time of Bacon, the physical systems of the learned performed their periodical revolutions in orbits as small as the metaphysical hypotheses of their successors; and yet, who would now set any bounds to our curiosity in the study of the material universe? Is it reasonable to think, that the phenomena of the intellectual world are less various, or less marked with the signatures of Divine wisdom?

It forms an interesting circumstance in the history of the two memorable persons who have suggested these remarks, that they had once, and only once, the pleasure of a short interview. "The conversation," we are told, "turned on the non-existence of matter. Malebranche, who had an inflammation in his lungs, and whom Berkeley found preparing a medicine in his cell, and cooking it in a small pipkin, exerted his voice so violently in the heat of their dispute, that he increased his disorder, which carried him off a few days after."² It is impossible not to regret, that of this interview there is no other record;—or rather, that Berkeley had not made it the ground-work of one of his own dialogues. Fine as his imagination was, it could scarcely have added to the picturesque effect of the real scene.³

Anthony Arnauld, whom I have already mentioned as one of the theological antagonists of Malebranche, is also entitled to a distinguished rank among the French philosophers of this period. In his book on true and false ideas, written in opposition to Malebranche's scheme of our seeing all things in God, he is acknowledged by Dr Reid to have struck the first mortal blow at the ideal theory; and to have approximated very nearly to his own refutation of this ancient and inveterate prejudice.¹ A step so important would, of itself, be sufficient to establish his claim to a place in literary history; but what chiefly induces me again to bring forward his name, is the reputation he has so justly acquired by his treatise, entitled The Art of Thinking;² a treatise written by Arnauld, in conjunction with his friend Nicole, and of which (considering the time when it appeared) it is hardly possible to estimate the merits too highly. No publication certainly, prior to Locke's Essay, can be named, containing so much good sense, and so little nonsense on the science of Logic; and very few have since appeared on the same subject, which can be justly preferred to it, in point of practical utility. If the author had lived in the present age, or had been less fettered by a prudent regard to existing prejudices, the technical part would probably have been reduced within a still narrower compass; but even there, he has contrived to substitute for the puerile and contemptible examples of common logicians, several interesting illustrations from the physical discoveries of his immediate predecessors; and has indulged himself in some short excursions, which excite a lively regret that he had not, more frequently and freely, given scope to his original reflections. Among these excursions, the most valuable, in my opinion, is the twen-

ing the imagination, he, at first, had neither followers nor admirers; but being everywhere clear, and everywhere solid, he at length worked his way, and afterwards was subject to no reverses. He was not affected by the new fashions in philosophy, who leaned upon none of the old; nor did he afford ground for the after-attacks of envy and folly by any fanciful hypotheses, which, when grown stale, are the most nauseous of all things."

The foregoing reflections on the opposite fates of these two philosophers, do honour on the whole to Warburton's penetration; but the unqualified panegyric on Locke will be now very generally allowed to furnish an additional example of "that national spirit, which," according to Hume, "forms the great happiness of the English, and leads them to bestow on all their eminent writers such praises and acclamations, as may often appear partial and excessive."

tieth chapter of the third part, which deserves the attention of every logical student, as an important and instructive supplement to the enumeration of sophisms given by Aristotle.¹

The soundness of judgment, so eminently displayed in the Art of Thinking, forms a curious contrast to that passion for theological controversy, and that zeal for what he conceived to be the purity of the Faith, which seem to have been the ruling passions of the author's mind. He lived to the age of eighty-three, continuing to write against Malebranche's opinions concerning Nature and Grace, to his last hour. "He died," says his biographer, "in an obscure retreat at Brussels, in 1692, without fortune, and even without the comfort of a servant; he, whose nephew had been a Minister of State, and who might himself have been a Cardinal. The pleasure of being able to publish his sentiments, was to him a sufficient recompense." Nicole, his friend and companion in arms, worn out at length with these incessant disputes, expressed a wish to retire from the field, and to enjoy repose. "Repose!" replied Arnauld; "won't you have the whole of eternity to repose in?"

An anecdote which is told of his infancy, when considered in connection with his subsequent life, affords a good illustration of the force of impressions received in the first dawn of reason. He was amusing himself one day with some childish sport, in the library of the Cardinal du Perron, when he requested of the Cardinal to give him a pen:—And for what purpose, said the Cardinal?—To write books, like you, against the Huguenots. The Cardinal, it is added, who was then old and infirm, could not conceal his

joy at the prospect of so hopeful a successor; and, as he was putting the pen into his hand, said, "I give it to you, as the dying shepherd Damctas bequeathed his pipe to the little Corydon."

The name of Pascal (that prodigy of parts, as Locke calls him) is more familiar to modern ears, than that of any of the other learned and polished anchorites, who have rendered the sanctuary of Port-Royal so illustrious; but his writings furnish few materials for philosophical history. Abstracting from his great merits in mathematics and in physics, his reputation rests chiefly on the Provincial Letters; a work from which Voltaire, notwithstanding his strong prejudices against the author, dates the fixation of the French language; and of which the same excellent judge has said, that "Molière's best comedies do not excel them in wit, nor the compositions of Bossuet in sublimity." The enthusiastic admiration of Gibbon for this book, which he was accustomed from his youth to read once a year, is well known; and is sufficient to account for the rapture with which it never fails to be spoken of by the erudite vulgar¹ in this country. I cannot help, however, suspecting, that it is now more praised than read in Great Britain; so completely have those disputes, to which it owed its first celebrity, lost their interest. Many passages in it, indeed, will always be perused with delight; but it may be questioned, if Gibbon himself would have read it so often from beginning to end, had it not been for the strong hold which ecclesiastical controversies, and the Roman Catholic faith, had early taken of his mind.

In one respect, the Provincial Letters are well entitled to the attention of philosophers; inasmuch as they present so faithful and lively a picture of the influence of false religious views in perverting the moral sentiments of mankind. The overwhelming ridicule lavished by Pascal on the whole system of jesuitical casuistry, and the happy effects of his pleasantry in preparing, from a distance, the fall of that formidable order, might be quoted as proofs, that there are at least some truths, in whose defence this weapon may be safely employed;—perhaps with more advantage than the commanding voice of Reason herself. The mischievous absurdities which it was his aim to correct, scarcely admitted of the gravity of logical discussion; requiring only the extirpation or the prevention of those early prejudices which choke the growth of common sense and of conscience: And for this purpose, what so likely to succeed with the open and generous minds of youth, as Ridicule, managed with decency and taste; more especially when seconded, as in the Pro-

vincial Letters, by acuteness of argument, and by the powerful eloquence of the heart? In this point of view, few practical moralists can boast of having rendered a more important service than Pascal to the general interests of humanity. Were it not, indeed, for his exquisite satire, we should already be tempted to doubt, if, at so recent a date, it were possible for such extravagancies to have maintained a dangerous ascendant over the human understanding.

The unconnected fragment of Pascal, entitled Thoughts on Religion, contains various reflections which are equally just and ingenious; some which are truly sublime; and not a few which are false and puerile: the whole, however, deeply tinctured with that ascetic and morbid melancholy, which seems to have at last produced a partial eclipse of his faculties. Voltaire has animadverted on this fragment with much levity and petulance; mingling, at the same time, with many very exceptionable strictures, several of which it is impossible to dispute the justness. The following reflection is worthy of Addison; and bears a strong resemblance in its spirit to the amiable lessons inculcated in his papers on Cheerfulness:¹

“To consider the world as a dungeon, and the whole human race as so many criminals doomed to execution, is the idea of an enthusiast; to suppose the world to be a seat of delight, where we are to expect nothing but pleasure, is the dream of a Sybarite; but to conclude that the Earth, Man, and the lower Animals, are, all of them, subservient to the purposes of an unerring Providence, is, in my opinion, the system of a wise and good man.”

From the sad history of this great and excellent person (on whose deep superstitious gloom it is the more painful to dwell, that, by an unaccountable, though not singular coincidence, it was occasionally brightened by the inoffensive play of a lively and sportive fancy), the eye turns with pleasure to repose on the mitis sapientia, and the Elysian imagination of Fenelon. The interval between the deaths of these two writers is indeed considerable; but that between their births does not amount to thirty years; and, in point of education, both enjoyed nearly the same advantages.

The reputation of Fenelon as a philosopher would probably have been higher and more universal than it is, if he had not added to the depth, comprehension, and soundness of his judgment, so rich a variety of those more pleasing and attractive qualities, which are commonly regarded rather as the flowers than the fruits of study. The same remark may be extended to the Fenelon of England, whose ingenious and original essays on the Pleasures

of Imagination would have been much more valued by modern metaphysicians, had they been less beautifully and happily written. The characteristical excellence, however, of the Archbishop of Cambray, is that moral wisdom which (as Shaftesbury has well observed) "comes more from the heart than from the head ;" and which seems to depend less on the reach of our reasoning powers, than on the absence of those narrow and malignant passions, which, on all questions of ethics and politics (perhaps I might add of religion also), are the chief source of our speculative errors.

The Adventures of Telemachus, when considered as a production of the seventeenth century, and still more as the work of a Roman Catholic Bishop, is a sort of prodigy ; and it may, to this day, be confidently recommended, as the best manual extant, for impressing on the minds of youth the leading truths, both of practical morals and of political economy. Nor ought it to be concluded, because these truths appear to lie so near the surface, and command so immediately the cordial assent of the understanding, that they are therefore obvious or critical ; for the case is the same with all the truths most essential to human happiness. The importance of agriculture and of religious toleration to the prosperity of states ; the criminal impolicy of thwarting the kind arrangements of Providence, by restraints upon commerce ; and the duty of legislators to study the laws of the moral world as the ground-work and standard of their own, appear, to minds unsophisticated by inveterate prejudices, as approaching nearly to the class of axioms ;—yet, how much ingenious and refined discussion has been employed, even in our own times, to combat the prejudices which everywhere continue to struggle against them ; and how remote does the period yet seem, when there is any probability that these prejudices shall be completely abandoned !

"But how," said Telemachus to Narbal, "can such a commerce as this of Tyre be established at Ithaca ?" "By the same means," said Narbal, "that have established it here. Receive all strangers with readiness and hospitality ; let them find convenience and liberty in your ports ; and be careful never to disgust them by avarice or pride : above all, never restrain the freedom of commerce, by rendering it subservient to your own immediate gain. The pecuniary advantages of commerce should be left wholly to those by whose labour it subsists ; lest this labour, for want of a sufficient motive, should cease. There are more than equivalent advantages of another kind, which must necessarily result to the Prince from the wealth which a free commerce will bring into his state ; and commerce is a kind of spring, which to divert from its natural channel is to lose."¹ Had the same question

been put to Smith or to Franklin in the present age, what sounder advice could they have offered?

In one of Fenelon's Dialogues of the Dead, the following remarkable words are put into the mouth of Socrates: "It is necessary that a people should have written laws, always the same, and consecrated by the whole nation; that these laws should be paramount to everything else; that those who govern should derive their authority from them alone; possessing an unbounded power to do all the good which the laws prescribe, and restrained from every act of injustice which the laws prohibit."

But it is chiefly in a work which did not appear till many years after his death, that we have an opportunity of tracing the enlargement of Fenelon's political views, and the extent of his Christian charity. It is entitled Direction pour la Conscience d'un Roi; and abounds with as liberal and enlightened maxims of government as, under the freest constitutions, have ever been offered by a subject to a sovereign. Where the variety of excellence renders selection so difficult, I must not venture upon any extracts; nor, indeed, would I willingly injure the effect of the whole by quoting detached passages. A few sentences on liberty of conscience (which I will not presume to translate) may suffice to convey an idea of the general spirit with which it is animated. "Sur toute chose, ne forcez jamais vos sujets à changer de religion. Nulle puissance humaine ne peut forcer le retranchement impénétrable de la liberté du cœur. La force ne peut jamais persuader les hommes; elle ne fait que des hypocrites. Quand les rois se mêlent de religion, au lieu de la protéger, ils la mettent en servitude. Accordez à tous la tolérance civile, non en approuvant tout comme indifférent, mais en souffrant avec patience tout ce que Dieu souffre, et en tâchant de ramener les hommes par une douce persuasion."

AND SO MUCH for the French philosophy of the seventeenth century. The extracts last quoted forewarn us, that we are fast approaching to a new era in the history of the Human Mind. The glow-worm 'gins to pale his ineffectual fire; and we scent the morning air of the coming day. This era I propose to date from the publications of Locke and of Leibnitz; but the remarks which I have to offer on their writings, and on those of their most distinguished successors, I reserve for the Second Part of this Discourse; confining myself, at present, to a very short retrospect of the state of philosophy, during the preceding period, in some other countries of Europe.¹

Progress of Philosophy during the Seventeenth Century, in some parts of Europe, not included in the preceding Review.

DURING the first half of the seventeenth century, the philosophical spirit which had arisen with such happy auspices in England and in France, has left behind it few or no traces of its existence in the rest of Europe. On all questions connected with the science of mind (a phrase which I here use in its largest acceptance), authority continued to be everywhere mistaken for argument; nor can a single work be named, bearing, in its character, the most distant resemblance to the Organon of Bacon; to the Meditations of Descartes; or to the bold theories of that sublime genius who, soon after, was to shed so dazzling a lustre on the north of Germany. Kepler and Galileo still lived; the former languishing in poverty at Prague; the latter oppressed with blindness, and with ecclesiastical persecution at Florence; but their pursuits were of a nature altogether foreign to our present subject.

One celebrated work alone, the treatise of Grotius De Jure Belli et Pacis (first printed in 1625), arrests our attention among the crowd of useless and forgotten volumes, which were then issuing from the presses of Holland, Germany, and Italy. The influence of this treatise, in giving a new direction to the studies of the learned, was so remarkable, and continued so long to operate with undiminished effect, that it is necessary to allot to the author, and to his successors, a space considerably larger than may, at first sight, seem due to their merits. Notwithstanding the just neglect into which they have lately fallen in our Universities, it will be found, on a close examination, that they form an important link in the history of modern literature. It was from their school that most of our best writers on Ethics have proceeded, and many of our most original inquirers into the Human Mind; and it is to the same school (as I shall endeavour to shew in the Second Part of this Discourse), that we are chiefly indebted for the modern science of Political Economy.¹

For the information of those who have not read the treatise De Jure Belli et Pacis, it may be proper to observe, that, under this title, Grotius has aimed at a complete system of Natural Law. Condillac says, that he chose the title, in order to excite a more general curiosity; adding (and, I believe, very justly), that many of the most prominent defects of his work may be fairly ascribed to a compliance with the taste of his age. "The author," says Condillac, "was able to think for himself; but he constantly labours to support his conclusions by the authority of others; producing, on many occasions, in support of the most obvious and indisputable propositions, a long string of quotations from the Mosaic law; from the Gospels; from the Fathers of the Church; from the Casuists; and not unfrequently, in the very same paragraph, from Ovid and Aristophanes." In consequence of this cloud of witnesses, always at hand to attest the truth of his axioms, not only is the attention perpetually interrupted and distracted; but the author's reasonings, even when perfectly solid and satisfactory, fail in making a due impression on the reader's mind; while the very little that there probably was of systematical arrangement in the general plan of the book, is totally kept out of view.

In spite of these defects, or rather, perhaps, in consequence of some of them, the impression produced by the treatise in question, on its first publication, was singularly great. The stores of erudition displayed in it, recommended it to the classical scholar; while the happy application of the author's reading to the affairs of human life, drew the attention of such men as Gustavus Adolphus; of his Prime-Minister, the Chancellor Oxenstierni; and of the Elector Palatine, Charles Lewis. The last of these was so struck with it, that he founded at Heidelberg a Professorship for the express purpose of teaching the Law of Nature and Nations;—an office which he bestowed on Puffendorff; the most noted, and, on the whole, the most eminent of those who have aspired to tread in the footsteps of Grotius.

The fundamental principles of Puffendorff possess little merit in point of originality, being a sort of medley of the doctrines of Grotius, with some opinions of Hobbes; but his book is entitled to the praise of comparative conciseness, order, and perspicuity; and accordingly came very generally to supplant the treatise of Grotius, as a manual or institute for students, notwithstanding its immense inferiority in genius, in learning, and in classical composition.

The authors who, in different parts of the Continent, have since employed themselves in commenting on Grotius and Puffendorff; or in abridging their systems; or

pergo, quod si tale futurum est, ut lectores demereri possit, habebit quod tibi debeat posteritas, qui me ad hunc laborem et auxilio et hortatu tuo excitasti." Gassendi Opera, Tom. V. p. 294.

in altering their arrangements, are innumerable; but notwithstanding all their industry and learning, it would be very difficult to name any class of writers, whose labours have been of less utility to the world. The same ideas are constantly recurring in an eternal circle; the opinions of Grotius and of Puffendorff, where they are at all equivocal, are anxiously investigated, and sometimes involved in additional obscurity; while, in the meantime, the science of Natural Jurisprudence never advances one single step; but, notwithstanding its recent birth, seems already sunk into a state of dotage.¹

In perusing the systems now referred to, it is impossible not to feel a very painful dissatisfaction, from the difficulty of ascertaining the precise object aimed at by the authors. So vague and indeterminate is the general scope of their researches, that not only are different views of the subject taken by different writers, but even by the same writer in different parts of his work;—a circumstance which, of itself, sufficiently accounts for the slender additions they have made to the stock of useful knowledge; and which is the real source of that chaos of heterogeneous discussions, through which the reader is perpetually forced to fight his way. A distinct conception of these different views will be found to throw more light than might at first be expected on the subsequent history of Moral and of Political science; and I shall therefore endeavour, as accurately as I can, to disentangle and separate them from each other, at the risk perhaps of incurring, from some readers, the charge of prolixity. The most important of them may, I apprehend, be referred to one or other of the following heads:

1. Among the different ideas which have been formed of Natural Jurisprudence, one of the most common (particularly in the earlier systems) supposes its object to be—To lay down those rules of justice which would be binding on men living in a social state, without any positive institutions; or (as it is frequently called by writers on this subject), living together in a state of nature. This idea of the province of Jurisprudence seems to have been uppermost in the mind of Grotius, in various parts of his treatise.

To this speculation about the state of nature, Grotius was manifestly led by his laudable anxiety to counteract the attempts then recently made to undermine the foundations of morality. That moral distinctions are created entirely by the arbitrary and revealed will

of God, had, before his time, been zealously maintained by some theologians even of the reformed church; while, among the political theorists of the same period, it was not unusual to refer these distinctions (as was afterwards done by Hobbes) to the positive institutions of the civil magistrate. In opposition to both, it was contended by Grotius, that there is a natural law coeval with the human constitution, from which positive institutions derive all their force; a truth which, how obvious and tritical soever it may now appear, was so opposite in its spirit to the illiberal systems taught in the monkish establishments, that he thought it necessary to exhaust in its support all his stores of ancient learning. The older writers on Jurisprudence must, I think, be allowed to have had great merit in dwelling so much on this fundamental principle; a principle which renders "Man a Law to Himself;" and which, if it be once admitted, reduces the metaphysical question concerning the nature of the moral faculty to an object merely of speculative curiosity.¹ To this faculty the ancients frequently give the name of reason; as in that noted passage of Cicero, where he observes, that "right reason is itself a law; congenial to the feelings of nature; diffused among all men; uniform; eternal; calling us imperiously to our duty, and peremptorily prohibiting every violation of it. Nor does it speak," continues the same author, "one language at Rome and another at Athens, varying from place to place, or time to time; but it addresses itself to all nations, and to all ages; deriving its authority from the common sovereign of the universe, and carrying home its sanctions to every breast, by the inevitable punishment which it inflicts on transgressors."²

The habit of considering morality under the similitude of a law, (a law engraved on the human heart,) led not unnaturally to an application to ethical subjects of the technical language and arrangements of the Roman jurisprudence; and this innovation was at once facilitated and encouraged, by certain peculiarities in the nature of the most important of all the virtues,—that of justice; peculiarities which, although first explained fully by

Hume and Smith, were too prominent to escape altogether the notice of preceding moralists.

The circumstances which distinguish justice from the other virtues, are chiefly two. In the first place, its rules may be laid down with a degree of accuracy, whereof moral precepts do not, in any other instance, admit. Secondly, its rules may be enforced, inasmuch as every transgression of them implies a violation of the rights of others. For the illustration of both propositions, I must refer to the eminent authors just mentioned.

As, in the case of justice, there is always a right, on the one hand, corresponding to an obligation on the other, the various rules enjoined by it may be stated in two different forms; either as a system of duties, or as a system of rights. The former view of the subject belongs properly to the moralist—the latter to the lawyer. It is this last view that the writers on Natural Jurisprudence (most of whom were lawyers by profession) have in general chosen to adopt; although, in the same works, both views will be found to be not unfrequently blended together.

To some indistinct conception among the earlier writers on Natural Law, of these peculiarities in the nature of justice, we may probably ascribe the remarkable contrast pointed out by Mr Smith, between the ethical systems of ancient and of modern times. "In none of the ancient moralists," he observes, "do we find any attempt towards a particular enumeration of the rules of justice. On the contrary, Cicero in his Offices, and Aristotle in his Ethics, treat of justice in the same general manner in which they treat of generosity or of charity."

But, although the rules of justice are in every case precise and indispensable; and although their authority is altogether independent of that of the civil magistrate, it would obviously be absurd to spend much time in speculating about the principles of this natural law, as applicable to men, before the establishment of government. The same state of society which diversifies the condition of individuals to so great a degree as to suggest problematical questions with respect to their rights and their duties, necessarily gives birth to certain conventional laws or customs, by which the conduct of the different members of the association is to be guided; and agreeably to which the disputes that may arise among them are to be adjusted. The imaginary state referred to under the title of the State of Nature, though it certainly does not exclude the idea of a moral right of property arising from labour, yet it excludes all that variety of cases concerning its alienation

and transmission, and the mutual covenants of parties, which the political union alone could create;—an order of things, indeed, which is virtually supposed in almost all the speculations about which the law of nature is commonly employed.

2. It was probably in consequence of the very narrow field of study which Jurisprudence, considered in this light, was found to open, that its province was gradually enlarged, so as to comprehend, not merely the rules of justice, but the rules enjoining all our other moral duties. Nor was it only the province of Jurisprudence which was thus enlarged. A corresponding extension was also given, by the help of arbitrary definitions, to its technical phraseology, till at length the whole doctrines of practical ethics came to be moulded into an artificial form, originally copied from the Roman code. Although justice is the only branch of virtue in which every moral Obligation implies a corresponding Right, the writers on Natural Law have contrived, by fictions of imperfect rights, and of external rights, to treat indirectly of all our various duties, by pointing out the rights which are supposed to be their correlates:—in other words, they have contrived to exhibit, in the form of a system of rights, a connected view of the whole duty of man. This idea of Jurisprudence, which identifies its object with that of Moral Philosophy, seems to coincide nearly with that of Puffendorff; and some vague notion of the same sort has manifestly given birth to many of the digressions of Grotius.

Whatever judgment may now be pronounced on the effects of this innovation, it is certain that they were considered, not only at the time, but for many years afterwards, as highly favourable. A very learned and respectable writer, Mr Carmichael of Glasgow, compares them to the improvements made in Natural Philosophy by the followers of Lord Bacon. "No person," he observes, "liberally educated, can be ignorant, that, within the recollection of ourselves and of our fathers, philosophy has advanced to a state of progressive improvement hitherto unexampled; in consequence partly of the rejection of scholastic absurdities, and partly of the accession of new discoveries. Nor does this remark apply solely to Natural Philosophy, in which the improvements accomplished by the united labours of the learned have forced themselves on the notice even of the vulgar, by their palpable influence on the mechanical arts. The other branches of philosophy also have been prosecuted during the last century with no less success; and none of them in a more remarkable degree than the science of Morals.

"This science, so much esteemed, and so assiduously cultivated by the sages of antiquity, lay, for a length of time, in common with all the other useful arts, buried in the rubbish of the dark ages, till (soon after the commencement of the seventeenth century), the

incomparable treatise of Grotius de Jure Belli et Pacis restored to more than its ancient splendour that part of it which defines the relative duties of individuals; and which, in consequence of the immense variety of cases comprehended under it, is by far the most extensive of any. Since that period, the most learned and polite scholars of Europe, as if suddenly roused by the alarm of a trumpet, have vied with each other in the prosecution of this study,—so strongly recommended to their attention, not merely by its novelty, but by the importance of its conclusions, and the dignity of its object.”¹

I have selected this passage, in preference to many others that might be quoted to the same purpose from writers of higher name; because, in the sequel of this historical sketch, it appears to me peculiarly interesting to mark the progress of Ethical and Political specula-

Puffendorff's principal work, entitled De Jure Naturæ et Gentium, was first printed in 1672, and was afterwards abridged by the author into the small volume referred to in the foregoing paragraph. The idea of Puffendorff's aim, formed by Mr Carmichael, coincides exactly with the account of it given in the text: “Hoc demum tractatu edito, facile intellexerunt æquiores harum rerum arbitri, non aliam esse genuinam Morum Philosophiam, quam quæ ex evidentibus principiis, in ipsa rerum natura fundatis, hominis atque civis officia, in singulis vitæ humanæ circumstantiis debita, eruit ac demonstrat; atque adeo Juris Naturalis scientiam, quantumvis diversam ab Ethica quæ in scholis dudum obtinuerat, præ se ferret faciem, non esse, quod ad scopum et rem tractandam, verè aliam disciplinam, sed eandem rectius duntaxat et solidius traditam, ita ut, ad quam prius malè collineaverit, tandem reipsâ feriret scopum.” See Carmichael's edition of the Treatise De Officio Hominis et Civis, p. 7.

To so late a period did this admiration of the Treatise, De Officio Hominis et Civis, continue in our Scotch Universities, that the very learned and respectable Sir John Pringle (afterwards President of the Royal Society of London), adopted it as the text-book for his lectures, while he held the Professorship of Moral Philosophy at Edinburgh. Nor does the case seem to have been different in England. “I am going,” says Gray, in a letter written while a student at Cambridge, “to attend a lecture on one Puffendorff.” And, much in the same spirit, Voltaire thus expresses himself with respect to the schools of the Continent: “On est partagé, dans les écoles, entre Grotius et Puffendorff. Croyez moi, lisez les Offices de Cicéron.” From the contemptuous tone of these two writers, it should seem that the old systems of Natural Jurisprudence had entirely lost their credit among men of taste and of enlarged views, long before they ceased to form an essential part of academical instruction; thus affording an additional confirmation of Mr Smith's complaint, that “the greater part of universities have not been very forward to adopt improvements after they were made; and that several of those learned societies have chosen to remain, for a long time, the sanctuaries in which exploded systems found shelter and protection, after they had been hunted out of every other corner of the world.” Considering his own successful exertions, in his academical capacity, to remedy this evil, it is more than probable that Mr Smith had Grotius and Puffendorff in his view, when he wrote the foregoing sentence.

tion in that seat of learning, which, not many years afterwards, was to give birth to the Theory of Moral Sentiments, and to the Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. The powerful effect which the last of these works has produced on the political opinions of the whole civilized world, renders it unnecessary, in a Discourse destined to form part of a Scottish Encyclopædia, to offer any apology for attempting to trace, with some minuteness, the train of thought by which an undertaking, so highly honourable to the literary character of our country, seems to have been suggested to the author.

The extravagance of the praise lavished on Grotius and Puffendorff, in the above citation from Carmichael, can be accounted for only by the degraded state into which Ethics had fallen in the hands of those who were led to the study of it, either as a preparation for the casuistical discussions subservient to the practice of auricular confession, or to justify a scheme of morality which recommended the useless austerities of an ascetic retirement, in preference to the manly duties of social life. The practical doctrines inculcated by the writers on Natural Law, were all of them favourable to active virtue; and, how reprehensible soever in point of form, were not only harmless, but highly beneficial in their tendency. They were at the same time so diversified (particularly in the work of Grotius) with beautiful quotations from the Greek and Roman classics, that they could not fail to present a striking contrast to the absurd and illiberal systems which they supplanted; and perhaps to these passages, to which they thus gave a sort of systematical connection, the progress which the science made in the course of the eighteenth century, may, in no inconsiderable degree, be ascribed. Even now, when so very different a taste prevails, the treatise de Jure Belli et Pacis possesses many charms to a classical reader; who, although he may not always set a very high value on the author's reasonings, must at least be dazzled and delighted with the splendid profusion of his learning.

The field of Natural Jurisprudence, however, was not long to remain circumscribed within the narrow limits commonly assigned to the province of Ethics. The contrast between natural law and positive institution, which it constantly presents to the mind, gradually and insensibly suggested the idea of comprehending under it every question concerning right and wrong, on which positive law is silent. Hence the origin of two different departments of Jurisprudence, little attended to by some of the first authors who treated of it, but afterwards, from their practical importance, gradually encroaching more and more on those ethical disquisitions by which they were suggested. Of these departments, the one refers to the conduct of individuals in those violent and critical moments when the bonds of political society are torn asunder; the other, to the mutual relations of independent communities. The questions connected with the former article, lie indeed within a compara-

tively narrow compass; but on the latter so much has been written, that what was formerly called Natural Jurisprudence, has been, in later times, not unfrequently distinguished by the title of the Law of Nature and Nations. The train of thought by which both subjects came to be connected with the systems now under consideration, consists of a few very simple and obvious steps.

As an individual who is a member of a political body necessarily gives up his will to that of the governors who are entrusted by the people with the supreme power, it is his duty to submit to those inconveniences which, in consequence of the imperfection of all human establishments, may incidentally fall to his own lot. This duty is founded on the Law of Nature, from which, indeed, (as must appear evident on the slightest reflection) conventional law derives all its moral force and obligation. The great end, however, of the political union being a sense of general utility, if this end should be manifestly frustrated, either by the injustice of laws, or the tyranny of rulers, individuals must have recourse to the principles of natural law, in order to determine how far it is competent for them to withdraw themselves from their country, or to resist its governors by force. To Jurisprudence, therefore, considered in this light, came with great propriety to be referred all those practical discussions which relate to the limits of allegiance, and the right of resistance.

By a step equally simple, the province of the science was still farther extended. As independent states acknowledge no superior, the obvious inference was, that the disputes arising among them must be determined by an appeal to the Law of Nature; and accordingly, this law, when applied to states, forms a separate part of Jurisprudence, under the title of the Law of Nations. By some writers we are told, that the general principles of the Law of Nature, and of the Law of Nations, are one and the same, and that the distinction between them is merely verbal. To this opinion, which is very confidently stated by Hobbes,¹

Puffendorff has given his sanction; and, in conformity to it, contents himself with laying down the general principles of natural law, leaving it to the reader to apply it as he may find necessary, to individuals or to societies.

The later writers on Jurisprudence have thought it expedient to separate the law of nations from that part of the science which treats of the duties of individuals; ¹ but without being at sufficient pains to form to themselves a definite idea of the object of their studies. Whoever takes the trouble to look into their systems, will immediately perceive, that their leading aim is not (as might have been expected), to ascertain the great principles of morality binding on all nations in their intercourse with each other; or to point out with what limitations the ethical rules recognized among individuals must be understood, when extended to political and unconnected bodies; but to exhibit a digest of those laws and usages, which, partly from considerations of utility, partly from accidental circumstances, and partly from positive conventions, have gradually arisen among those states of Christendom, which, from their mutual connections, may be considered as forming one great republic. It is evident, that such a digest has no more connection with the Law of Nature, properly so called, than it has with the rules of the Roman law, or of any other municipal code. The details contained in it are highly interesting and useful in themselves; but they belong to a science altogether different; a science, in which the ultimate appeal is made, not to ab-

mark on this part of his philosophy, that its aim is precisely the reverse of that of Grotius; the latter labouring, through the whole of his treatise, to extend, as far as possible, among independent states, the same laws of justice and of humanity, which are universally recognized among individuals; while Hobbes, by inverting the argument, exerts his ingenuity to shew, that the moral repulsion which commonly exists between independent and neighbouring communities, is an exact picture of that which existed among individuals prior to the origin of government. The inference, indeed, was most illogical, inasmuch as it is the social attraction among individuals which is the source of the mutual repulsion among nations: and as this attraction invariably operates with the greatest force where the individual is the most completely independent of his species, and where the advantages of the political union are the least sensibly felt. If, in any state of human nature, it be in danger of becoming quite evanescent, it is in large and civilized empires, where man becomes indispensably necessary to man; depending for the gratification of his artificial wants on the co-operation of thousands of his fellow-citizens.

Let me add, that the theory, so fashionable at present, which resolves the whole of morality into the principle of utility, is more nearly akin to Hobbsm, than some of its partisans are aware of.

¹ The credit of this improvement is ascribed by Vattel (one of the most esteemed writers on the subject), to the celebrated German philosopher Wolfius, whose labours in this department of study he estimates very highly. (Questions de Droit Naturel. Berne, 1762.) Of this great work I know nothing but the title, which is not calculated to excite much curiosity in the present times: "Christiani Wolfii ius Naturæ methodo scientifica pertractatum, in 9 Tomos distributum." (Francof. 1740.) "Non est," says Lampredi, himself a professor of public law, "qui non deterreatur tanta librorum farragine, quasi vero Herculeo labore opus esset, ut quis honestatem et justitiam addiscat."

stract maxims of right and wrong, but to precedents, to established customs, and to the authority of the learned.

The intimate alliance, however, thus established between the Law of Nature and the conventional Law of Nations, has been on the whole attended with fortunate effects. In consequence of the discussions concerning questions of justice and of expediency which came to be blended with the details of public law, more enlarged and philosophical views have gradually presented themselves to the minds of speculative statesmen; and, in the last result, have led, by easy steps, to those liberal doctrines concerning commercial policy, and the other mutual relations of separate and independent states, which, if they should ever become the creed of the rulers of mankind, promise so large an accession to human happiness.

3. Another idea of Natural Jurisprudence, essentially distinct from those hitherto mentioned, remains to be considered. According to this, its object is to ascertain the general principles of justice which ought to be recognized in every municipal code; and to which it ought to be the aim of every legislator to accommodate his institutions. It is to this idea of Jurisprudence that Mr Smith has given his sanction in the conclusion of his Theory of Moral Sentiments; and this he seems to have conceived to have been likewise the idea of Grotius, in the treatise de Jure Belli et Pacis.

"It might have been expected," says Mr Smith, "that the reasonings of lawyers upon the different imperfections and improvements of the laws of different countries, should have given occasion to an inquiry into what were the natural rules of justice, independent of all positive institution. It might have been expected, that these reasonings should have led them to aim at establishing a system of what might properly be called Natural Jurisprudence, or a theory of the principles which ought to run through, and to be the foundation of the laws of all nations. But, though the reasonings of lawyers did produce something of this kind, and though no man has treated systematically of the laws of any particular country, without intermixing in his work many observations of this sort, it was very late in the world before any such general system was thought of, or before the philosophy of laws was treated of by itself, and without regard to the particular institutions of any nation. Grotius seems to have been the first who attempted to give the world anything like a system of those principles which ought to run through, and be the foundation of the laws of all nations; and his Treatise of the Laws of Peace and War, with all its imperfections, is perhaps, at this day, the most complete work that has yet been given on the subject."

Whether this was, or was not, the leading object of Grotius, it is not material to decide; but if this was his object, it will not be disputed that he has executed his design in a very desultory manner, and that he often seems to have lost sight of it altogether, in the midst

of those miscellaneous speculations on political, ethical, and historical subjects, which form so large a portion of his Treatise, and which so frequently succeed each other without any apparent connection or common aim.¹

Nor do the views of Grotius appear always enlarged or just, even when he is pointing at the object described by Mr Smith. The Roman system of Jurisprudence seems to have warped, in no inconsiderable degree, his notions on all questions connected with the theory of legislation, and to have diverted his attention from that philosophical idea of law, so well expressed by Cicero,—“Non à pratoris edicto, neque à duodecim tabulis, sed penitus ex intimâ philosophiâ, hauriendam juris disciplinam.” In this idolatry, indeed, of the Roman law, he has not gone so far as some of his commentators, who have affirmed, that it is only a different name for the Law of Nature; but that his partiality for his professional pursuits has often led him to overlook the immense difference between the state of society in ancient and modern Europe, will not, I believe, be now disputed. It must, at the same time, be mentioned to his praise, that no writer appears to have been, in theory, more completely aware of the essential distinction between Natural and Municipal laws. In one of the paragraphs of his Prolegomena, he mentions it as a part of his general plan, to illustrate the Roman code, and to systematize those parts of it which have their origin in the Law of Nature. “The task,” says he, “of moulding it into the form of a system, has been projected by many, but hitherto accomplished by none. Nor indeed was the thing possible, while so little attention was paid to the distinction between natural and positive institutions; for the former being everywhere the same, may be easily traced to a few general principles, while the latter, exhibiting different appearances at different times, and in different places, elude every attempt towards methodical arrangement, no less than the insulated facts which individual objects present to our external senses.”

This passage of Grotius has given great offence to two of the most eminent of his commentators, Henry and Samuel de Cocceii, who have laboured much to vindicate the Roman legislators against that indirect censure which the words of Grotius appear to convey. “My chief object,” says the latter of those writers, “was, by deducing the Roman law from its source in the nature of things, to reconcile Natural Jurisprudence with the civil code; and, at the same time, to correct the supposition implied in the foregoing passage of Grotius, which is indeed one of the most exceptionable to be found in his work. The re-

marks on this subject, scattered over the following commentary, the reader will find arranged in due order in my twelfth Preliminary Dissertation, the chief design of which is to systematize the whole Roman law, and to demonstrate its beautiful coincidence with the Law of Nature." In the execution of this design, Cocceii must, I think, be allowed to have contributed a very useful supplement to the jurisprudential labours of Grotius, the Dissertation in question being eminently distinguished by that distinct and luminous method, the want of which renders the study of the treatise de Jure Belli et Pacis so peculiarly irksome and unsatisfactory.

The superstitious veneration for the Roman code expressed by such writers as the Cocceii, will appear less wonderful, when we attend to the influence of the same prejudice on the liberal and philosophical mind of Leibnitz; an author, who has not only gone so far as to compare the civil law (considered as a monument of human genius) with the remains of the ancient Greek geometry; but has strongly intimated his dissent from the opinions of those who have represented its principles as being frequently at variance with the Law of Nature. In one very powerful paragraph, he expresses himself thus: "I have often said, that, after the writings of geometricians, there exists nothing which, in point of strength, subtlety, and depth, can be compared to the works of the Roman lawyers. And as it would be scarcely possible, from mere intrinsic evidence, to distinguish a demonstration of Euclid's from one of Archimedes or of Appollonius (the style of all of them appearing no less uniform than if reason herself were speaking through their organs,) so also the Roman lawyers all resemble each other like twin-brothers; insomuch that, from the style alone of any particular opinion or argument, hardly any conjecture could be formed about its author. Nor are the traces of a refined and deeply meditated system of Natural Jurisprudence anywhere to be found more visible, or in greater abundance. And even in those cases where its principles are departed from, either in compliance with the language consecrated by technical forms, or in consequence of new statutes, or of ancient traditions, the conclusions which the assumed hypothesis renders it necessary to incorporate with the eternal dictates of right reason, are deduced with the soundest logic, and with an ingenuity that excites admiration. Nor are these deviations from the Law of Nature so frequent as is commonly apprehended."

In the last sentence of this passage, Leibnitz had probably an eye to the works of Grotius and his followers; which, however narrow and timid in their views they may now appear, were, for a long time, regarded among civilians as savouring somewhat of theoretical innovation, and of political heresy.

To all this may be added, as a defect still more important and radical in the systems of

Natural Jurisprudence considered as models of universal legislation, that their authors reason concerning laws too abstractedly, without specifying the particular circumstances of the society to which they mean that their conclusions should be applied. It is very justly observed by Mr Bentham, that, "if there are any books of universal Jurisprudence, they must be looked for within very narrow limits." He certainly, however, carries this idea too far, when he asserts, that "to be susceptible of an universal application, all that a book of the expository kind can have to treat of, is the import of words; and that, to be strictly speaking universal, it must confine itself to terminology; that is, to an explanation of such words connected with law, as power, right, obligation, liberty, to which are words pretty exactly correspondent in all languages."¹ His expressions, too, are somewhat unguarded, when he calls the Law of Nature "an obscure phantom, which, in the imaginations of those who go in chace of it, points sometimes to manners, sometimes to laws, sometimes to what law is, sometimes to what it ought to be."² Nothing, indeed, can be more exact and judicious than this description, when restricted to the Law of Nature, as commonly treated of by writers on Jurisprudence; but if extended to the Law of Nature, as originally understood among ethical writers, it is impossible to assent to it, without abandoning all the principles on which the science of morals ultimately rests. With these obvious, but, in my opinion, very essential limitations, I perfectly agree with Mr Bentham, in considering an abstract code of laws as a thing equally unphilosophical in the design, and useless in the execution.

In stating these observations, I would not be understood to dispute the utility of turning the attention of students to a comparative view of the municipal institutions of different nations; but only to express my doubts whether this can be done with advantage, by referring these institutions to that abstract theory called the Law of Nature, as to a common standard. The code of some particular country must be fixed on as a ground-work for our speculations; and its laws studied, not as consequences of any abstract principles of justice, but in their connection with the circumstances of the people among whom they originated. A comparison of these laws with the corresponding laws of other nations, considered also in their connection with the circumstances whence they arose, would form a branch of study equally interesting and useful; not merely to those who have in view the profession of law, but to all who receive the advantages of a liberal education. In fixing on such a standard, the preference must undoubtedly be given to the Roman law, if for no other reason than this, that its technical language is more or less incorporated with all our municipal regulations in this part of the world: and the study of this language, as well as of the other technical parts of

Jurisprudence (so revolting to the taste when considered as the arbitrary jargon of a philosophical theory), would possess sufficient attractions to excite the curiosity, when considered as a necessary passport to a knowledge of that system, which so long determined the rights of the greatest and most celebrated of nations.

"Universal grammar," says Dr Lowth, "cannot be taught abstractedly; it must be done with reference to some language already known, in which the terms are to be explained and the rules exemplified."¹ The same observation may be applied (and for reasons strikingly analogous) to the science of Natural or Universal Jurisprudence.

Of the truth of this last proposition Bacon seems to have been fully aware; and it was manifestly some ideas of the same kind which gave birth to Montesquieu's historical speculations with respect to the origin of laws, and the reference which they may be expected to bear, in different parts of the world, to the physical and moral circumstances of the nations among whom they have sprung up. During this long interval, it would be difficult to name any intermediate writer, by whom the important considerations just stated were duly attended to.

In touching formerly on some of Bacon's ideas concerning the philosophy of law, I quoted a few of the most prominent of those fortunate anticipations, so profusely scattered over his works, which, outstripping the ordinary march of human reason, associate his mind with the luminaries of the eighteenth century, rather than with his own contemporaries. These anticipations, as well as many others of a similar description, hazarded by his bold yet prophetic imagination, have often struck me as resembling the pierres d'attente jutting out from the corners of an ancient building, and inviting the fancy to complete what was left unfinished of the architect's design;—or the slight and broken sketches traced on the skirts of an American map, to connect its chains of hills and branches of rivers with some future survey of the contiguous wilderness. Yielding to such impressions, and eager to pursue the rapid flight of his genius, let me abandon for a moment the order of time, while I pass from the Fontes Juris to the Spirit of Laws. To have a just conception of the comparatively limited views of Grotius, it is necessary to attend to what was planned by his immediate predecessor, and first executed (or rather first begun to be executed) by one of his remote successors.

The main object of the Spirit of Laws (it is necessary here to premise) is to show, not, as has been frequently supposed, what laws ought to be,—but how the diversities in the physical and moral circumstances of the human race have contributed to produce diversities

in their political establishments, and in their municipal regulations.¹ On this point, indeed, an appeal may be made to the author himself. "I write not," says he, "to censure anything established in any country whatsoever; every nation will here find the reasons on which its maxims are founded." This plan, however, which, when understood with proper limitations, is highly philosophical, and which raises Jurisprudence, from the uninteresting and useless state in which we find it in Grotius and Puffendorff, to be one of the most agreeable and important branches of useful knowledge (although the execution of it occupies by far the greater part of his work), is prosecuted by Montesquieu in so very desultory a manner, that I am inclined to think he rather fell into it insensibly, in consequence of the occasional impulse of accidental curiosity, than from any regular design he had formed to himself when he began to collect materials for that celebrated performance. He seems, indeed, to confess this in the following passage of his preface: "Often have I begun, and as often laid aside, this undertaking. I have followed my observations without any fixed plan, and without thinking either of rules or exceptions. I have found the truth only to lose it again."

But whatever opinion we may form on this point, Montesquieu enjoys an unquestionable claim to the grand idea of connecting Jurisprudence with History and Philosophy, in such a manner as to render them all subservient to their mutual illustration. Some occasional disquisitions of the same kind may, it is true, be traced in earlier writers, particularly in the works of Bodinus; but they are of a nature too trifling to detract from the glory of Montesquieu. When we compare the jurisprudential researches of the latter with the systems previously in possession of the schools, the step which he made appears to have been so vast as almost to justify the somewhat too ostentatious motto prefixed to them by the author; Polem sine Matre creatam. Instead of confining himself, after the example of his predecessors, to an interpretation of one part of the Roman code by another, he studied the spirit of these laws in the political views of their authors, and in the peculiar circumstances of that extraordinary race. He combined the science of law with the history of political society, employing the latter to account for the varying aims of the legislator; and the former, in its turn, to explain the nature of the government, and the manners of the people. Nor did he limit his inquiries to the Roman law, and to Roman history; but, convinced that the general principles of human nature are everywhere the same, he searched for new lights among the subjects of every government, and the inhabitants of every climate; and, while he thus opened inex-

haustible and unthought-of resources to the student of Jurisprudence, he indirectly marked out to the legislator the extent and the limits of his power, and recalled the attention of the philosopher from abstract and useless theories, to the only authentic monuments of the history of mankind.¹

This view of law, which unites History and Philosophy with Jurisprudence, has been followed out with remarkable success by various authors since Montesquieu's time; and for a considerable number of years after the publication of the Spirit of Laws, became so very fashionable (particularly in this country), that many seem to have considered it, not as a step towards a farther end, but as exhausting the whole science of Jurisprudence. For such a conclusion there is undoubtedly some foundation, so long as we confine our attention to the ruder periods of society, in which governments and laws may be universally regarded as the gradual result of time and experience, of circumstances and emergencies. In enlightened ages, however, there cannot be a doubt, that political wisdom comes in for its share in the administration of human affairs; and there is reasonable ground for hoping, that its influence will continue to increase, in proportion as the principles of legislation are more generally studied and understood. To suppose the contrary, would reduce us to be mere spectators of the progress and decline of society, and put an end to every species of patriotic exertion.

Montesquieu's own aim in his historical disquisitions, was obviously much more deep and refined. In various instances, one would almost think he had in his mind the very shrewd aphorism of Lord Coke, that, "to trace an error to its fountain-head, is to refute it;"—a species of refutation, which, as Mr Bentham has well remarked, is, with many understandings, the only one that has any weight.² To men prepossessed with a blind ve-

neration for the wisdom of antiquity, and strongly impressed with a conviction that everything they see around them is the result of the legislative wisdom of their ancestors, the very existence of a legal principle, or of an established custom, becomes an argument in its favour; and an argument to which no reply can be made, but by tracing it to some acknowledged prejudice, or to a form of society so different from that existing at present, that the same considerations which serve to account for its first origin, demonstrate indirectly the expediency of now accommodating it to the actual circumstances of mankind.

According to this view of the subject, the speculations of Montesquieu were ultimately directed to the same practical conclusion with that pointed out in the prophetic suggestions of Bacon; aiming, however, at this object, by a process more circuitous; and, perhaps, on that account, the more likely to be effectual. The plans of both have been since combined with extraordinary sagacity, by some of the later writers on Political Economy; ¹ but with their systems we have no concern in the present section. I shall therefore only remark, in addition to the foregoing observations, the peculiar utility of these researches concerning the history of laws, in repressing the folly of sudden and violent innovation, by illustrating the reference which laws must necessarily have to the actual circumstances of a people,—and the tendency which natural causes have to improve gradually and progressively the condition of mankind, under every government which allows them to enjoy the blessings of peace and of liberty.

The well-merited popularity of the Spirit of Laws, gave the first fatal blow to the study of Natural Jurisprudence; partly by the proofs which, in every page, the work afforded, of the absurdity of all schemes of Universal Legislation; and partly by the attractions which it possessed, in point of eloquence and taste, when contrasted with the insupportable dulness of the systems then in possession of the schools. It is remarkable, that Montesquieu has never once mentioned the name of Grotius;—in this, probably, as in numberless other instances, conceiving it to be less expedient to attack established prejudices openly and in front, than gradually to undermine the unsuspected errors upon which they rest.

If the foregoing details should appear tedious to some of my readers, I must request

them to recollect, that they relate to a science which, for much more than a hundred years, constituted the whole philosophy, both ethical and political, of the largest portion of civilized Europe. With respect to Germany, in particular, it appears from the Count de Hertzberg, that this science continued to maintain its undisputed ground, till it was supplanted by that growing passion for Statistical details, which, of late, has given a direction so different, and in some respects so opposite, to the studies of his countrymen.¹

When from Germany we turn our eyes to the south of Europe, the prospect seems not merely sterile, but afflicting and almost hopeless. Of Spanish literature I know nothing but through the medium of Translations; a very imperfect one, undoubtedly, when a judgment is to be passed on compositions addressed to the powers of imagination and taste; yet fully sufficient to enable us to form an estimate of works which treat of science and philosophy. On such subjects, it may be safely concluded, that whatever is unfit to stand the test of a literal version, is not worth the trouble of being studied in the original. The progress of the Mind in Spain during the seventeenth century, we may therefore confidently pronounce, if not entirely suspended, to have been too inconsiderable to merit attention.

"The only good book," says Montesquieu, "which the Spaniards have to boast of, is that which exposes the absurdity of all the rest." In this remark, I have little doubt that there is a considerable sacrifice of truth to the pointed effect of an antithesis. The unqualified censure, at the same time, of this great man, is not unworthy of notice, as a strong expression of his feelings with respect to the general insignificance of the Spanish writers.

The inimitable work here referred to by Montesquieu, is itself entitled to a place in this Discourse, not only as one of the happiest and most wonderful creations of Human fancy, but as the record of a force of character, and an enlargement of mind, which, when contrasted with the prejudices of the author's age and nation, seem almost miraculous. It is not merely against Books of Chivalry that the satire of Cervantes is directed. Many other follies and absurdities of a less local and temporary nature have their share in his ridicule; while not a single expression escapes his pen that can give offence to

the most fastidious moralist. Hence those amusing and interesting contrasts by which Cervantes so powerfully attaches us to the hero of his story; chastising the wildest freaks of a disordered imagination, by a stateliness yet courtesy of virtue, and (on all subjects but one) by a superiority of good sense and of philosophical refinement, which, even under the most ludicrous circumstances, never cease to command our respect and to keep alive our sympathy.

In Italy, notwithstanding the persecution undergone by Galileo, physics and astronomy continued to be cultivated with success by Torricelli, Borelli, Cassini, and others; and in pure geometry, Viviani rose to the very first eminence, as the Restorer, or rather as the Diviner of ancient discoveries; but, in all those studies which require the animating spirit of civil and religious liberty, this once renowned country exhibited the most melancholy symptoms of mental decrepitude. "Rome," says a French historian, "was too much interested in maintaining her principles, not to raise every imaginable barrier against what might destroy them. Hence that index of prohibited books, into which were put the history of the President de Thou; the works on the liberties of the Gallican church; and (who could have believed it?) the translations of the Holy Scriptures. Meanwhile, this tribunal, though always ready to condemn judicious authors upon frivolous suspicions of heresy, approved those seditious and fanatical theologians, whose writings tended to the encouragement of regicide, and the destruction of government. The approbation and censure of books (it is justly added) deserve a place in the history of the human mind."

The great glory of the Continent towards the end of the seventeenth century (I except only the philosophers of France) was Leibnitz. He was born as early as 1646; and distinguished himself, while still a very young man, by a display of those talents which were afterwards to contend with the united powers of Clarke and of Newton. I have already introduced his name among the writers on Natural Law; but, in every other respect, he ranks more fitly with the contemporaries of his old age than with those of his youth. My reasons for thinking so will appear in the sequel. In the meantime, it may suffice to remark, that Leibnitz, the Jurist, belongs to one century, and Leibnitz, the Philosopher, to another.

In this, and other analogous distributions of my materials, as well as in the order I have followed in the arrangement of particular facts, it may be proper, once for all, to observe, that much must necessarily be left to the discretionary, though not to the arbitrary decision of the author's judgment;—that the dates which separate from each other the different stages in the progress of Human Reason, do not, like those which occur in the history of the exact sciences, admit of being fixed with chronological and indisputable precision;

while, in adjusting the perplexed rights of the innumerable claimants in this intellectual and shadowy region, a task is imposed on the writer, resembling not unfrequently the labour of him, who should have attempted to circumscribe, by mathematical lines, the melting and intermingling colours of Arachne's web ;

In quo diversi niteant cum mille colores,
Transitus ipse tamen spectantia lumina fallunt,
Usque adeo quod tangit idem est, tamen ultima distant.

But I will not add to the number (already too great) of the foregoing pages, by anticipating, and attempting to obviate, the criticisms to which they may be liable. Nor will I dissemble the confidence with which, amid a variety of doubts and misgivings, I look forward to the candid indulgence of those who are best fitted to appreciate the difficulties of my undertaking. I am certainly not prepared to say with Johnson, that "I dismiss my work with frigid indifference, and that to me success and miscarriage are empty sounds." My feelings are more in unison with those expressed by the same writer in the conclusion of the admirable preface to his edition of Shakespeare. One of his reflections, more particularly, falls in so completely with the train of my own thoughts, that I cannot forbear, before laying down the pen, to offer it to the consideration of my readers.

"Perhaps I may not be more censured for doing wrong, than for doing little ; for raising in the public, expectations which at last I have not answered. The expectation of ignorance is indefinite, and that of knowledge is often tyrannical. It is hard to satisfy those who know not what to demand, or those who demand by design what they think impossible to be done."

right, in achieving the perplexed rights of the innumerable claimants in the intellectual and shadowy region, a task is imposed on the writer, requiring not unfrequently the labour of him, who should have attempted to circumvent, by mathematical lines, the study and interesting colours of Aristotle's web;

In one divine moment can still return,
Tremble for these spectres local ghost,
I have also paid my debt to them, since then.

But I will not add to the number (already too great) of the foregoing pages by any lengthy, and attempting to obviate, the criticism to which they may be liable. For will I dissimulate the confidence with which, amid a variety of doubts and hesitations, I look forward to the candid indulgence of those who are best fitted to appreciate the subtle colours of my undertaking. I am certainly not prepared to say with Johnson, that "I dislike my work with rigid indifference, and that to me success and misfortune are equally equal." My feelings are more in union with those expressed by the same writer in the conclusion of the admirable preface to his edition of Shakespeare. (One of his volumes does, more particularly, fill in so completely with the terms of my own thoughts, that I cannot forbear, before laying down the pen, to offer it to the consideration of my readers.)

"Perhaps I may not be more remunerated for doing nothing than for doing little, for resting in the public expectations which at last I have not answered. The expectation of ignorance is infinite, and that of knowledge is often tremendous. It is hard to satisfy those who know not what to demand, or those who demand by themselves that they should be satisfied to be done."