DISSERTATIONS. ti ON THE HISTORY OF METAPHYSICAL AND ETHICAL, AND OF MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE; BY DUGALD STEWART, F. R. SS. LOND. & EDIN. THE RIGHT HON. SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH, LL. D. F. R. S. ; JOHN PLAYFAIR, F. R. SS. LOND. & EDIN. AND SIR JOHN LESLIE, CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. WITH A GENERAL INDEX. ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK, EDINBURGH; SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO., WHITTAKER & CO., AND HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO., LONDON ; AND JOHN CUMMING, DUBLIN. M.DCCC.XXXV. y . Printed by THOMAS ALLAN & Company, 265 High Street, Edinburgh. ADVERTISEMENT. THE first of the following Dissertations, in its first Part, exhibits a view of the progress of Metaphysical and Ethical Philosophy from the revival of Letters till the close of the seventeenth century ; and its second Part is devoted to the Metaphysical Philosophy of the eighteenth. The history of the Ethical Philosophy of that period is continued in the Second Dissertation. The Third, in two Parts, brings down the history of Mathematical and Phy- sical Science till the era marked by the discoveries of Newton and Leibnitz ; and the last continues the inquiry throughout the eighteenth century. The continuations just mentioned were ren- dered necessary by the death of the two eminent men who laid the foundations and raised the principal part of the superstructure of these celebrated Discourses. The First and Third were written for, and prefixed to, the Sup- plement to the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Editions of the ENCY- CLOPAEDIA BRITANNICA ; and the Second and Fourth were written for the Seventh Edition, now in course of publication ; the whole, printed in their natural order, constituting the first or introductory volume of that work. As these Dissertations exhibit a copious and accurate view of the progress of Knowledge and Discovery in those 434013 IV ADVERTISEMENT. grand divisions of Science of which they treat, and as they are the productions of writers of high and acknowledged reputation, the Publishers feel assured that they will meet the wishes of many by detaching them from the extensive work to which they are pre- fixed, and presenting them to the literary world in a separate form. In doing so, they have used the double column and type of that work, because, to have thrown the matter of this publication into any other form, would have so extended its bulk and price as materially to interfere with its circulation and utility. The Publishers have only to add, that in order to facilitate re- ference, they have annexed a general and copious Index of the contents of the several Dissertations above specified. EDINBURGH, November 1835. CONTENTS. DISSERTATION FIRST. Progress of Metaphysical and Ethical Philosophy. Page. PREFACE, containing some Critical Remarks on the Discourse prefixed to the French Encyclopedic, . PART FIRST. INTRODUCTION, ..... 13 CHAPTER I. From the Revival of Letters to the publication of Bacon's Philo- sophical Works, . . . .14 CHAPTER II. From the publication of Bacon's Philosophical Works till that of the Essay on Human Understanding. Section 1. Progress of philosophy in England during this period. Bacon, 32 Hobbes, 40 Antagonists of Hobbes, . . . . 42 Section 2. Progress of Philosophy in France during the seventeenth century. Montaigne Charron La Rochefoucauld, Descartes Gassendi Malebranche, ... 56 Section 3. Progress of Philosophy during the seventeenth century in some parts of Europe not included in the preceding Review, 84 PART SECOND. INTRODUCTION, ..... 99 Progress of Metaphysics during the eighteenth century. Section 1. Historical and Critical Review of the Philosophical Works of Locke and Leibnitz Locke, . . . .100 Section 2. Continuation of the Review of Locke and Leibnitz Leibnitz, 123 Section 3. Of the Metaphysical Speculations of Newton and Clarke. Di- gression with respect to the system of Spinoza, Collins, and Jonathan Edwards. Anxiety of both to reconcile the scheme of Necessity with Man's Moral Agency. Departure of some later Necessitarians from their views, . . . 139 vi CONTENTS. Page. Section 4. Of some Authors who have contributed, by their Critical or His- torical Writings, to diffuse a taste for Metaphysical Studies. Bayle. Fontenelle. Addison. Metaphysical Works of Berkeley, . . . . . .151 Section 5. Hartleian School, . . . . . 169 Section 6. Condillac, and other French metaphysicians of a later date, 172 Section 7. Kant, and other metaphysicians of the New German School, 1 87 Section 8. Metaphysical Philosophy of Scotland, . . . 204 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS, ...... 232 DISSERTATION SECOND. Ethical Philosophy Eighteenth Century. INTRODUCTION, ....... 293 Section, 1. Preliminary Observations, . . . 296 Section 2. Retrospect of Ancient Ethics, .... 299 Section 3. Retrospect of Scholastic Ethics, .... 307 Section 4. Modern Ethics, . . . . . .315 Hobbes, . . ... 316 Section 5. Controversies concerning the Moral Faculties and the Social Af- fections. Cumberland. Cudworth. Clarke. Shaftesbury. Bossuet. Fenelon . Leibnitz. Malebranche. Edwards. Buffier, 323 Section 6. Foundations of a more just theory of Ethics. Butler. Hutcheson. Berkeley. Hume. Smith. Price. Hartley. Tucker. Paley. Bentham. Stewart. Brown, 342 Section 7. General Remarks, ..... 400 NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS, ...... 417 DISSERTATION THIRD. Progress of Mathematical and Physical Science. PART FIRST, .... ... 433 Section 1. Mathematics. 1. Geometry, .... 434 2. Algebra, ...... 440 Section 2. Experimental Investigation. 1. Ancient Physics, . 449 2. Novum Organum, ..... 453 CONTENTS. Vll Page. SectimS. Mechanics. ]. Theory of Motion, 474 2. Hydrostatics, .... 480 Section 4. Astronomy. 1. Ancient Astronomy, . . .481 2. Copernicus and Tycho, . . 484 3. Kepler and Galileo, ..... 488 4. Descartes, Huygens, &c. .... 493 5. Establishment of Academies, &c. . . . 499 6. Figure and Magnitude of the Earth, . . .501 Section 5. Optics. 1. Optical Knowledge of the Ancients, . , 503 2. From Alhazen to Kepler, .... 506 3. From Kepler to the commencement^of Newton's Optical Discoveries, ...... 509 PART SECOND. From the commencement of Newton's Discoveries to the year 1818, ...... 517 PERIOD FIRST. Section 1. The New Geometry, . . . ibid. Section 2. Mechanics, General Physics, &c. ... 535 Section 3. Optics, ....... 545 Section 4. Astronomy, ...... 554 DISSERTATION FOURTH. Mathematical and Physical Science Eighteenth Century. INTRODUCTION, ........ 575 Section 1. Speculative Mathematics. 1. Geometry," . . . 580 2. Arithmetic, ...... 586 3. Algebra, . . . . . .591 4. The Higher Calculus} ..... 598 Section 2. Applicate Science. 1. Dynamics, .... 602 2. Hydrostatics and Pneumatics, .... 607 3. Electricity, . . . . . .', 617 4. Magnetism, . . . . . , . 624 5. Optics, . ... 630 6. Doctrine of Heat, ..... 639 7. Astronomy, ..... 655 DISSERTATION FIRST: EXHIBITING A GENERAL VIEW SINCE THE REVIVAL OF LETTERS IN EUROPE. BY DUGALD STEWART, ESQ. F.R.SS. LOND. AND EDIN. LATE PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. PREFACE, CONTAINING SOME CRITICAL REMARKS ON THE DISCOURSE PREFIXED TO THE FRENCH ENCYCLOPEDIA WHEN I ventured to undertake the task of contributing a Preliminary Dissertation to the Encyclopedia Britannica, my original in- tention was, after the example of D'Alembert, to have begun with a general survey of the va- rious departments of human knowledge. The outline of such a survey, sketched by the com- prehensive genius of Bacon, together with the corrections and improvements suggested by his illustrious disciple, would, I thought, have ren- dered it comparatively easy to adapt their intel- lectual 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 examina- tion, 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 ^rroneous. 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 ar- rived 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 au- thority of the writers whose opinions I presume to controvert. Before entering on his main subject, D'Alem- bert is at pains to explain a distinction which he represents as of considerable importance be- tween the Genealogy of the sciences, and the Encyclopedical arrangement of the objects of human knowledge. 1 " In examining the for- mer," he observes, " our aim is, by remounting 1 " II ne faut pas confondre Tordre Encyclop&Uque des connoissances humaines avec la G&iealogie des Sciences.' Avertissement, p. 7- DISS. I. PART I. A PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. . to tlje .origin and genesis of our ideas, to trace ' this causes to; which thfis 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 compre- hend, in one general scheme., all the various de- partments of study ; to arrange them into pro- per classes ; and to point out their mutual rela- tions and dependencies." Such a scheme is some- times likened by D'Alembert to a map or chart of the intellectual world; sometimes to a Ge- nealogical 1 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 suc- cessfully this chart or tree, a philosophical deli- neation 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 arrange- ment of scientific pursuits, which it is the pur- pose of the Encyclopedical Tree to exhibit. 2 In treating of the first of these su ejects, it can- not 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 spi- rit 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 epi- grammatic 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 au- thor's idea, with regard to the scope of his in- quiries. 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 develope- ment of its powers, the successive steps by which the curiosity may be conceived to have been gradually conducted from one intellectual pur- suit 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 civilised and inquisitive individual. The former was undoubtedly that which prin- cipally figured in his conceptions, and to which, I apprehend, he ought to have confined himself exclusively; whereas, in fact, he has so com- pletely 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 phi- losophising on their sensations, on the exist- ence 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 1 It is to be regretted, that the epithet Genealogical should have been employed on this occasion, where the author's wish was to contradistinguish the idea denoted by it, from that historical view of the sciences to which the word Genealogy had been previously applied. t 2 The true reason of this might perhaps have been assigned in simpler terms by remarking, that the order of invention is, in most cases, the reverse ofthat fitted for didactic communication. This observation applies not only to the analytical and synthetical processes of the individual, but to the progressive improvements of the species, when compared wit'h the fl 1*1*0 tirroTYi ar\ 4-e r\i*Aas**!V.A*1 U,, 1 .,_:! **.! 3 & _!.. __ _ l _li / >_i . . * * __ __! i , -i A| taught before they studied speculative geometry ; 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 posterio- rem, sed post medicinam inventam, rationem esse qusesitam." PREFACE TO THE FIRST DISSERTATION. to the philosophy of Descartes; meditations which, in the order of time, have been uniform- ly 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. Of this sort of conjectured or theoretical his- tory, the most unexceptionable specimens which have yet appeared, are indisputably the frag- ments in Mr Smith's posthumous work on the History of Astronomy, and on that of the An- cient Systems of Physics and Metaphysics. That, in the latter of these, he may have occa- sionally accommodated his details to his own peculiar opinions concerning the object of Phi- losophy, may perhaps, with some truth, be al- leged ; but he must at least be allowed the me- rit of completely avoiding the error by which D'Alembert was misled ; and, even in those in- stances where he himself seems to wander a little from the right path, of furnishing his suc- cessors with a thread, leading by easy and al- most insensible steps, from the first gross per- ceptions of sense, to the most abstract refine- ments of the Grecian schools. Nor is this the only praise to which these fragments are en- titled. By seizing on the different points of view from which the same object was contem- plated 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 aber- rations and caprices of the understanding, sub- servient 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 Dis- course does not seem to have any immediate connection with the sequel. We are led, in- deed, to expect, that it is to prepare the way for the study of the Encyclopedical Tree after- wards 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 altoge- ther foreign to the general design ; while, from the metaphysical obscurity which pervades it, the generality of readers are likely to receive an impression, either unfavoui'able to the perspi- cuity 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 EncycZ&pedie, it had been re- served 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 ad- vantage ; for, with all its imperfections, it bears numerous and precious marks of its author's hand. In delineating his Encyclopedical Tree, D'A- lembert has, in my opinion, been still more un- successful than in the speculations which have been hitherto under our review. His venera- tion 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 in- curable defects and blemishes. In this part of Bacon's logic, it must, at the same time, be owned, that there is something peculiarly capti- vating 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 illus- trious names, I have presumed to bestow on it. Of the leading ideas to which I more particu- larly 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 oc- cupied, are either spiritual or material, and the media employed for this purpose are our ideas, either directly received, or derived from reflec- tion. The system of our direct knowledge con- sists entirely in the passive and mechanical ac- cumulation 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 study- ing them as models for imitation. PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. " 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 under- stood, not the faculty of conceiving or repre- senting to ourselves what we have formerly per- ceived, 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 render- ing imitation subservient to the creations of genius. " These three faculties suggest a correspond- ing division of human knowledge into three branches, 1. History, which derives its materials from Memory ; 2. Philosophy, which is the pro- duct 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 ap- pears to us conformable to the natural progress of our intellectual operations. 2 The Imagina- tion 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 ana- logy is wanting, the combinations are extrava- gant 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 com- bines and adorns; two processes of the mind, it must at the same time be confessed, which seern 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 per- haps 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 En- cyclopedical Tree, a natural and convenient sub- division is afforded by the metaphysical distri- bution of things into Material and Spiritual. " With these two classes of existences," he ob- serves farther, " history and philosophy are equally conversant; but as far Imagination, her imitations are entirely confined to the mate- rial world ; a circumstance," he adds, " which 1 The latitude given by D'Alembert to the meaning of the word Poetry is a real and very important improvement on Bacon, who restricts it to Fictitious History or Fables. (De Aug. Scient. Lib. ii. cap. i.) D'Alembert, on the other hand, employs it in its natural signification, as synonymous with invention or creation. " La Peinture, la Sculpture, 1' Architec- ture, la Poe'sie, la Musique, et leurs differentes divisions, composent la troisieme distribution ge'ne'rale qui nait de 1'Imagi- nation, et dont les parties sont comprises sous le nom de Beaux-Arts. On peut les rapporter tous a la Poe'sie, en prenant ce mot dans sa signification naturelle, qui n'est autre chose qu'invention ou creation." 2 In placing Reason before Imagination, D'Alembert departs from the order in which these faculties are arranged by Bacon. " Si nous n'avons pas place', comme lui, la Raison apres PImagination, c'est que nous avons suivi dans le systeme Encyclopedique, 1'ordre metaphysique des operations de 1'esprit, plutot que Tordre historique de ses progres depuis la re- naissance 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. PREFACE TO THE FIRST DISSERTATION. 5 conspires with the other arguments above stated, in justifying Bacon for assigning to her the last place in his enumeration of our intellectual fa- culties." l 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 ex- tracts be as sound and decisive as I apprehend them to be. Of these objections a very obvious one is sug- gested by a consideration, of which D'Alembert himself has taken notice, that the three facul- ties to which he refers the whole operations of the understanding are perpetually blended to- gether 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 in- vigorate particular faculties more than others ; that the study of History, for example, al- though it may occasionally require the aid both of Reason and of Imagination, yet chiefly fur- nishes occupation to the Memory ; and that this is sufficient to justify the logical division of our mental powers as the ground-work of a corre- sponding 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 de- tails, accumulated without discrimination, with- out a scrupulous examination of evidence, or without any attempt to compare and to genera- lize ? For the cultivation of that species of his- tory, in particular, which alone deserves a place in the Encyclopedical Tree, it may be justly af- firmed, that the rarest and most comprehensive combination of all our mental gifts is indispen- sably requisite. Another, and a still more formidable objec- tion 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 Generaliza- tion passed over in silence ? powers which, ac- cording as they are cultivated or neglected, con- stitute the most essential of all distinctions be- tween the intellectual characters of individuals. A corresponding distinction, too, not less im- portant, may be remarked among the objects of human study, according as our aim is to treasure up particular facts, or to establish general con- clusions. 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 arrange- ments, 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 conse- quently, 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 hu- 1 In this exclusive limitation of the province of Imagination to things Material and Sensible, D'Alembert has followed the definition given by Descartes in his second Meditation : " Imaginari nihil aliud est quam rei corporece figuram sen imagi- nem contemplari ;" a power of the mind, which (as I have elsewhere observed) appears to me to be most precisely ex- pressed in our language by the word Conception. The province assigned to Imagination by D'Alembert is more extensive than this, for he ascribes to her also a creative and combining power ; but still his definition agrees with that of Descartes, inasmuch as it excludes entirely from her dominion both the intellectual and the moral worlds. 2 I allude here to the following apology for Bacon, suggested by a very learned and judicious writer: " On a fait cependant a Bacon quelques reproches assez fonde's. On a observe que sa classification des sciences repose sur une distinction qui n'est pas rigoureuse, puisque la me'moire, la raison, et [Imagination concourent necessairement dans chaque art, comme dans chaque science. Mais on peut re'pondre, que 1'un ou 1'autre de ces trois faculte's, quoique seconde'e par les deux autres, peut cependant jouer le role principal. En prenant la distinction de Bacon dans ce sens, sa classifica- tion reste exacte, et devient tres utile." (DEGERANDO, Hut. Comp. Tome I. p. 298.) 6 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. man knowledge, the art of Poetry has one en- tire 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 Imagina- tion, he has rendered the classification of his pre- decessor incomparably more indistinct and illo- gical than it seemed to be before. That all the creations or new combinations of Imagination, imply the previous process of de- composition or analysis, is abundantly manifest ; and, therefore, without departing from the com- mon and popular use of language, it may un- doubtedly be said, that the faculty of abstraction is not less essential to the Poet, than to the Geo- meter 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 Imagina- tion as synonymous Avith Invention, I should not have thought it worth while (at least so far as the geometer is concerned) to dispute his proposi- tion. But that this was not the meaning annex- ed 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 cogniz- ance of our senses, naturally led 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 acknowledgment, 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 strong- ly contrasted in their characteristical features, was least of all to be expected from a logician, who had previously limited the province of Ima- gination 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 cha- racter 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 cognisance 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 1 This assertion must, however, be understood with some qualifications ; for, although the Poet, as well as the Geometer and the Metaphysician, be perpetually called upon to decompose, by means of abstraction, the complicated objects of per- ception, it must not be concluded that the abstractions of all the three are exactly of the same kind. Those of the Poet amount to nothing more than to a separation into parts of the realities presented to his senses ; which separation is only a preliminary step to a subsequent recomposition into new and ideal forms of the things abstracted ; whereas the abstractions of the Metaphysician and of the Geometer form the very objects of their respective sciences. PREFACE TO THE FIRST DISSERTATION. together in our various intellectual pursuits, is sufficient to show how ill adapted such an ana- lysis must for ever remain to serve as the basis of an Encyclopedical distribution. 1 The circumstance to which this part of Ba- con's philosophy is chiefly indebted for its po- pularity, is the specious simplicity and compre- hensiveness 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 plausi- bility ; the word History being understood to comprehend all our knowledge of particular facts and particular events ; the word Philoso- phy, all the general conclusions or laws inferred from these particulars by induction ; and the word Poetry, all the arts addressed to the ima- gination. 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 magni- ficent design, conceived by Bacon, of enumerat- ing, 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, un- susceptible of any useful application to enlight- en 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 ad- vantage. At the period when Bacon wrote, it was of much more consequence to exhibit to the learned a comprehensive sketch, than an ac- curate 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 acade- mies which, soon after, sprung 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 anti- cipations 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 cu- riosity. If his classifications be sometimes arti- ficial 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 ap- parent 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 in- tellectual 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, 1 In justice to the authors of the Encyclopedical Tree prefixed to the French Dictionary, it ought to be observed, that it is spoken of by D'Alembert, in his Preliminary Discourse, with the utmost modesty and diffidence ; and that he has ex- pareille division, pas entierement de'sap- prouve par les bons esprits." And, some pages afterwards, " Si le public e'claire' donne son approbation a ces changemens, elle sera la recompense de notre docilite ; et s'il ne les approuve pas, nous n'en serons que plus convaincus de Timpossi- bilite de former un Arbre Encyclopedique qui soil au gre de tout le monde." 8 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. 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 suc- cessors. 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 Apol- lonius and Archimedes was found, after an in- terval of two thousand years, to furnish a torch to the physical inquiries of Newton ; while, in the further progress of knowledge, the Etymo- logy of Languages has been happily employed to fill up the chasms of Ancient History ; and the conclusions of Comparative Anatomy, to il- lustrate the Theory of the Earth. For my own part, even if the task were executed with the most complete success, I should be strongly in- clined to think, that its appropriate place in an Encyclopaedia would be as a branch of the article on Logic ; certainly not as an exordium to the Preliminary Discourse; the enlarged and re- fined views which it necessarily presupposes be- ing peculiarly unsuitable to that part of the work which may be expected, in the first instance, to attract the curiosity of every reader. Before concluding this preface, I shall sub- join a few slight strictures on a very concise and comprehensive division of the objects of Human Knowledge, proposed by Mr Locke, as the ba- sis of a new classification of the sciences. Al- though 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 found- ed on just principles ; more especially as it is completely at variance not only with the lan- guage and arrangement adopted in these preli- minary essays, but with the whole of that plan on which the original projectors, as well as the con- tinuators, of the Encyclopedia Britannica, ap- pear 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, " with- in 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 him- self 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. *otf/xj, 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 num- ber and figure, &c. " 2. Ilgaxr/xj], 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 prac- tise them. The end of this is not bare specula- tion, but right, and a conduct suitable to it. * " 3. 2?j/is/wr;x), or the doctrine of signs, the most usual whereof being words, it is aptly enough termed also Aoytxri, Logic. The business of this is to consider the nature of signs the From this definition it appears, that as Locke included under the title of Physics, not only Natural Philosophy, pro- perly so called, but Natural Theology, and the Philosophy of the Human Mind, so he meant to refer to the head of Practict, not only Ethics, but all the various Arts of life, both mechanical and liberal. PREFACE TO THE FIRST DISSERTATION. 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, di- vision 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 hap- piness; and the right use of signs, in order to knowledge ; being toto ccelo different, they seem- ed 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 ex- presses himself in the above quotation, he ap- pears 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 philo- sophers of ancient Greece. " The ancient Greek Philosophy," says Mr Smith, "was divid- ed 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" Mi- 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, what- ever was taught in the ancient schools of Greece, concerning their nature, made a part of the sys- tem 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 comprises only the Supreme Being and the human soul, is surely as much in- cluded under the notion of natural object as body is ; and is knowable to the philosopher purely in the same way, by observation and experience." * A similar train of thinking led the late cele- brated M. Turgot to comprehejid under the name of Physics, not only Natural Philosophy (as that phrase is understood by the Newtonians), but Metaphysics, Logic, and even History. 4 Notwithstanding all this weight of authority, it is difficult to reconcile one's self to an arrange- ment which, while it classes with Astronomy, with Mechanics, with Optics, and with Hy- drostatics, 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 charac- teristical attributes ? Is not the one the appro- priate field and province of observation, a power 1 See the concluding chapter of the Essay on Human Understanding, entitled, " Of the Division of the Sciences." J Wealth of Nations, Book v. chap. i. 3 Philosophy of Rhetoric, Book i. chap. v. Part iii- 1. 4 " Sous le nom de sciences physiques je comprends la logique, qui est la connoissance des operations de notre esprit et de la generation denos ide'es; la metaphvsique, qui s'occupe de la nature et de 1'origine des etres ; et enfin la physique, pro- prement dite, qui observe 1'action rautuelle des corps les uns sur les autres, et les causes et 1'enchainement des phenomenes sensibles. On pourroit y ajouter Vhistoire." (CEuvres de TURGOT, Tome II. pp. 284, 285.) In the year 1793, a quarto volume was published at Bath, entitled Intellectual Physics. It consists entirely of speculations concerning the human mind, and is by no means destitute of merit. The publication was anonymous ; but I have reason to believe that the author was the late well-known Governor Pownall. DISS. I. PART I. B 10 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. habitually awake to all the perceptions and im- pressions of the bodily organs ? And does not the other fall exclusively under the cognisance of reflection ; an operation which inverts all the ordinary habits of the understanding, abstract- ing 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 illogical- ly, 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 Materialists, or that of their opponents, it is a proposition equally certain and equally indisputable, that the phe- nomena of Mind and those of Matter, as far as they come under the cognisance 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 re- spect 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 pe- culiarly 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. Mat- ter and Mind, therefore, it should seem, are the two most general heads which ought to form the ground-work of an Encyclopedical classifi- cation of the sciences and arts. No branch of human knowledge, no work of human skill, can be mentioned, which does not obviously fall un- der the former head or the latter. Agreeably to this twofold classification of the sciences and arts, it is proposed, in the follow- ing 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 de- sign ; 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 comprehensive- ness, 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 rivalship 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 in- tellectual and moral improvement of the spe- cies. 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 PREFACE TO THE FIRST DISSERTATION. undertaking. It is chiefly in judging of ques- tions " coming home to their business and bo- soms," that casual associations lead mankind astray ; and of such associations ho\v incalcu- lable 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 dis- coveries 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, al- though at once the most necessary and the most widely diffused of all the metals, commonly re- quires a discriminating eye to detect its exist- ence, 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 Mathemati- cian or of the Chemist. When an inveterate prejudice is destroyed by extirpating the casual associations on which it was grafted, how power- ful 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 re- spect, the religious and academical establish- ments in some parts of Europe are not without their use to the Historian of the Human Mind. Immoveably moored to the same station by the strength of their cables, and the weight of their anchors, they enable him to measure the rapi- dity 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 recol- lection of our former blindness. Like the fan- tastic 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 obiect, the spell is broken for ever ; nor can any effort of thought again conjure up the spectres which have va- nished. 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 show 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 equal- ly 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 ex- ample of the French Encyclopedie cannot here be 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 ; where- as, on the present occasion, a porch was to be adapted to an irregular edifice, reared, at differ- ent periods, by different architects. It seemed, accordingly, most advisable to avoid, as much as possible, in these Introductory Essays, all in- novations in language, and, in describing the different arts and sciences, to follow scrupulous- ly the prevailing and most intelligible phrase- ology. 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 Poli- tical Philosophy; understanding, by Metaphy- sics, 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 12 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. of legislation which, according to Bacon's defi- departments of knowledge, and the easy transi- nition, aims to ascertain those " Leges legum, tions by which the curiosity is invited from the ex quibus informatio peti potest quid in singulis study of any one of them to that of the other legibus bene aut perperam positum aut constitu- two, will sufficiently appear from the following turn sit." The close affinity between these three Historical Review. DISSERTATION FIRST. PART FIRST. IN the following Historical and Critical Sketches, it has been judged proper by the dif- ferent 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 consist- ent with distinctness and perspicuity, the mi- nuteness 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 enu- merate the names or 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 developement and progress of the human mind. 1 I have ventured here to combine a scriptural expression with an allusion of Plato's to a Grecian game ; an allusion which, in his writings, is finely and pathetically applied to the rapid succession of generations, 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 du- ties of this fleeting scene. TivvStn; TI KKI ixr^tQovrH TrSa; , jtaS/ivri^ XaftvraSa ro> f>'mi fa^dSiSotrts aXXoy l| a'XXoiv. (PLATO, Leg. lib. vi.) Et quasi cursores vita'i lampada tradunt LUCRET. 14 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. CHAPTER I. 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 pre- ceded the revival of letters in the western part of Europe, forms the most melancholy blank which occurs, from the first dawn of recorded civilisation, in the intellectual and moral his- tory of the human race. In one point of view alone, the recollection of it is not altogether un- pleasing, inasmuch as, by the proof it exhibits of the inseparable connection between ignorance and prejudice on the one hand, and vice, mi- sery, and slavery on the other, it affords, in conjunction with other causes, which will after- wards fall under our review, some security against any future recurrence of a similar cala- mity. It would furnish a very interesting and in- structive 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 esta- blishments all over the Christian world, in pre- serving, amidst the general wreck, the inesti- mable 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 pre- cious 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 aus- picious ray of intellectual light across the sur- rounding 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 con- ducted the student to the very confines of ethical as well as of political speculation ; and served, in the meantime, as a substitute of no inconsider- able value for both these sciences. According- ly we find that, while in its immediate effects it powerfully contributed, wherever it struck its roots, by ameliorating and systematizing the ad- ministration of justice, to accelerate the progress of order and of civilization, it afterwards furnish- ed, in the further 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 jurispru- Philological Inquiries, Part III. chap. L DISSERTATION FIRST. 15 dence 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, how- ever unpromising in their first aspect, were des- tined, in the last result, to prepare the way for that never to he 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." i The revival of letters may be considered as coeval with the fall of the Eastern empire, to- wards the close of the fifteenth century. In con- sequence 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 patro- nage of the illustrious House of Medicis, secu- red 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 ad- miration for the wisdom of antiquity ; and in proportion as the pedantry of the schools disap- peared in the universities, that of erudition and philology occupied its place. Meanwhile, an important advantage was gain- ed in the immense stock of materials which the ancient authors supplied to the reflections of speculative men ; and which, although frequent- ly accumulated with little discrimination or pro- fit, were much more favourable to the develope- ment of taste and of genius than the unsubstan- tial subtleties of ontology or of dialectics. By such studies were formed Erasmus, 2 Ludovicus Vives, 3 Sir Thomas More, 4 and many other ac- complished 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 1 Dr Robertson, from whom I quote these words, has mentioned this change as the glory of the present age, meaning, I presume, the period which has elapsed since the time of Montesquieu. By what steps the philosophy to which he alludes took its rise from the systems of jurisprudence previously in fashion, will appear in the sequel of this Discourse. 8 The writings of Erasmus probably contributed still more than those of Luther himself to the progress of the Reforma- tion among men of education and taste ; but, without the co-operation of bolder and more decided characters than his, little would to this day have been effected in Europe among the lower orders. " Erasmus imagined," as is observed by his bio- grapher, " that at length, by training up youth in learning and useful knowledge, those religious improvements would gradually be brought about, which the Princes, the Prelates, and the Divines of his days could not be persuaded to admit or to tolerate." ( JORTIN', p. 279.) In yielding, however, to this pleasing expectation, Erasmus must have flattered himself with the hope, not only of a perfect freedom of literary discussion, but of such reforms in the prevailing modes of instruc- tion, as would give complete scope to the energies of the human mind ; for, where books and teachers are subjected to the censorship of those who are hostile to the dissemination of truth, they become the most powerful of all auxiliaries to the authority of established errors. It was long a proverbial saying among the ecclesiastics of the Romish church, that " Erasmus laid the egg, and Luther hatched it ;" and there is more truth in the remark, than in most of their sarcasms on the same subject. 3 Ludovicus Vives was a learned Spaniard, intimately connected both with Erasmus and More ; with the former of whom he lived for some time at Louvain, " where they both promoted literature as much as they could, though not with- out great opposition from some of the divines." JORTIN, p. 255. " He was invited into England by Wolsey, in 1523 ; and coming to Oxford, he read the Cardinal's lecture of Humanity, and also lectures of Civil Law, which Henry VI1L and his Queen, Catherine, did him the honour of attending (Ibid. p. 207.) He died at Bruges in 1554. In point of good sense and acuteness, wherever he treats of philosophical questions, he yields to none of his contempo- raries ; and in some of his anticipations of the future progress of science, he discovers a mind more comprehensive and sagacious than any of them. Erasmus appears, from a letter of his to Budaeus, dated in 1521, to have foreseen the bril- liant career which Vives, then a very young man, was about to run. " Vives in stadio literario, non minus feliciter quam gnaviter decertat, et si satis ingenium hominis novi, non conquiescet, donee omnes a tergo reliquerit." For this letter (the whole of which is peculiarly interesting, as it contains a character of Sir Thomas More, and an account of the extraordinary accomplishments of his daughters), See JOETIK'S Life of Erasmus, Vol. II. p. 366. et scq. * See Note A. 16 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. 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 circum- stances operated still more directly and power- fully, by their influence, in undermining the au- thority 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, requir- ing the teachers to promise upon oath, that in their public lectures, they would follow no other guide. Luther, l who was perfectly aware of the cor- ruptions which the Romish church had contriv- ed to connect with their veneration for the Sta- girite, 2 not only threw off the yoke himself, but, in various parts of his writings, speaks of Aris- totle with the 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?"* The same freedom of thought on to- pics 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 mo- ment in the science of political economy; " How far it is consistent with morality to ac- cept 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 un- worthy of Mr Bentham. To the latter he replies, by showing, that the Mosaic law on this point was not a moral but a municipal prohibition ; a prohibition not to be judged of from any par- ticular text of Scripture, but upon the principles of natural equity. s 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 unfor- tunately given the sanction of his name to the doctrines of the Peripatetic school : 8 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 1 Born 1483, died 1546. 2 In one of his letters he writes thus : " Ego simpliciter credo, quod impossibile sit ecclesiam reformari, nisi funditus canones, decretales, scholastica theologia, philosophia, logica, ut nunc habentur, eradicentur, et alia instituantur." BRUCK- ERI Hitt. Crit. Phil. Tom. IV. p. 95. 3 For a specimen of Luther's scurrility against Aristotle, see BAYLE, Art. Luther, Note HH. In Luther's Colloquia Mensalia we are told, that " he abhorred the Schoolmen, and called them sophistical locusts, cater- pillars, frogs, and lice." From the same work we learn, that " he hated Aristotle, but highly esteemed Cicero, as a wise and a good man." See JORTIN'S Life of Erasmus, p. 121. 4 " Nihil adjumenti ex ipso haberi posse non solum ad theologiam seu sacras literas, verum etiam ad ipsam naturalem philosophiam. Quid enim juvet ad rerum cognitionem, si de materia, forma, motu, tempore, nugari et cavillari queas ver- bis ab Aristotele conceptis et przEscriptis ?" BRUCK. Hist. Phil. Tom. IV. p. 101. The following passage to the same purpose is quoted by Bayle : " Non mihi persuadebitis, philosophiam esse garrulita- tem illam de materia, motu, infinite, loco, vacuo, tempore, quae fere in Aristotele sola discimus, talia quae nee intellectum, nee affectum, nee communes hominum mores quidquam juvent ; tantum contentionibus serendis, seminandisque idonea." BAYLE, Art. Luther, Note HH. I borrow from Bayle another short extract from Luther : " Nihil ita ardet animus, quam histrionem ilium (Aristotelem), qui tarn vere Grseca larva ecclesiam lusit, multis revelare, ignominiamque ejus cunctis ostendere, si otium esset. Habeo in manus commentariolos in 1. Physicorum, quibus fabulam Aristsei denuo agere statui in meum istum Protea (Aristotelem). Pars crucis meae vel maxima est, quod videre cogor fratrum optima ingenia, bonis studiis nata, in istis coenis 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 partizan of the sect of Nominalists, or, as they were then generally called, Tcrminists BRUCK. Tom. IV. pp. 93, 94, et sea. s See Note B. " Et Melanchthoni quiclem praecipue debetur conservatio philosophise Aristotelicae in academiis protestantium. Scripsit is compendia plerarumque disciplinarum philosophise Aristotelicse, quae in Academiis diu regnarunt." HEINECCTI, Elem. Hist. Phil. ciii. See also BAYLE'S Dictionary, Art. Melanchthon. DISSERTATION FIRST. 17 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 in- fancy, 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 lite- rature and the wonders of science. Thus error was perpetuated ; and, instead of yielding to time, acquired additional influence in each suc- cessive generation.* In modern times, this in- fluence of names is, comparatively speaking, at an end. The object of a public teacher is no longer to inculcate a particular system of dog- mas, 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 where- as 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 tech- nical phraseology, have fostered such prejudices against themselves, as have blinded the public mind to all the lights they were able to commu- nicate. Of this remark a melancholy illustra- tion occurs, as M. Turgot long ago predicted, in the case of the French Economists; and many examples of a similar import might be pro- duced from the history of science in our coun- try; more particularly from the history of the va- rious 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 know- ledge, another has co-operated very extensively and powerfully ; the rise of the lower orders in the different countries of Europe, in conse- quence partly of the enlargement of commerce, and partly of the efforts of the Sovereigns to re- duce the overgrown power of the feudal aristo- cracy. Without this emancipation of the lower or- ders, and the gradual diffusion of wealth by which it was accompanied, the advantages de- rived 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 for acquiring it ; and it is only by the encouragement which such a state of society presents to industry and ambi- tion, that the selfish passions of the multitude can be interested in the intellectual improve- ment 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 de- basing and misleading the minds of their infe- riors. 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 con- 1 It was in consequence of this mode of conducting education by means of oral instruction alone, that the different sects of philosophy arose in ancient Greece ; and it seems to have been with a view of counteracting 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 unbiassed 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 as- sume 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. Lucullns, 3. DISS. I. PART I. C 18 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. strained 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 im- provement of useful science, not merely in pro- portion 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 de- fence, 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 let- ters, analogous to what the invention of gun- powder produced in the art of war. " All the splendid distinctions of mankind," as the Cham- pion and Flower of Chivalry indignantly ex- claimed, " 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 cor- recting the errors and prejudices which had misled philosophers during so long a succession of ages. To this cause, chiefly, must be ascrib- ed the ardour with which we find various inge- nious 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.* 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 pos- sessed an extensive knowledge of what is called the Materia Medica, and that he had employed much time in working on the animal, the vege- table, 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 ex- perience." The same author quotes from Pa- racelsus a remarkable expression, in which he calls the philosophy of Aristotle a wooden foun- dation. " He ought to have attempted," con- tinues Le Clerc, " to have laid a better ; but if he has not done it, he has at least, by discover- ing its weakness, invited his successors to look out for a firmer basis." 5 Lord Bacon himself, while he censures the moral frailties of Paracelsus, and the blind em- piricism 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 record- ing their results, that he has added to the trouble and tediousness of experimenting. By wander- ing 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, at- tempt to raise a structure of philosophy with a few experiments of distillation." Two other circumstances, of a nature widely different from those hitherto enumerated, al- though, probably, in no small degree to be ac- counted for on the same principles, seconded, with an incalculable accession of power, the sud- 1 " The sacred books were, in almost all the kingdoms and states of Europe, translated into the language of each respec- tive people, particularly in Germany, Italy, France, and Britain." (MOSHEIM'S Eccles. Hist. Vol. III. p.'2G5.) The effect of this single circumstance in multiplying the number of readers and of thinkers, and in giving a certain stability to the mutable forms of oral speech, may be easily imagined. The common translation of the Bible into' English is pronounced by Dr Lowth to be still the best standard of our language. ' Hsec nostra (ut ssepe diximus) felicitatis cujusdam sunt potius quam facultatis, et potius temporis partut quam ingenii." Nov. Org. Lib. i. c. xxiii. * Histoire de la M^decine (a la Haye, 1729), p. 819. DISSERTATION FIRST. 19 den impulse which the human mind had just re- ceived. The same century which the invention of printing and the revival of letters have made for ever memorable, was also illustrated by the dis- covery of the New World, and of the passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope ; events which may be justly regarded 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 equa- tor, were consumed in countries bordering on the pole ; the industry of the north was trans- planted 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 hu- man race. Will they add to the tranquillity, to the enjoyments, and to the happiness of man- kind ? 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 con- cludes, 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 Ba- con has well observed) they have fully verified the Scripture prophecy, multi pertransibunt et au- gebitur 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 gra- dual renewal, (in proportion as modern govern- ments became effectual in securing order and tranquillity) of that intercourse between the dif- ferent states of Europe, which had,' in a great measure, ceased during the anarchy and turbu- lence of the middle ages. In consequence of these combined causes, aid- ed 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 ' Neque omittenda est prophetia Danielis de ultimis mundi temporibus ; multi pertransibimt et augelitur scientia : Ma- nifeste innuens et significans, ease in fatis, id est, in providentia, ut pertransitus mundi (qui per tot longinquas navigationes impletur plane, aut jam in opere esse videtur) et augmenta scientiarum in eandem cetatem incidant." Nov. Org. Lib. xciii. 2 Such as the accidental inventions of the telescope and of the microscope. The powerful influence of these inventions may be easily conceived, not only in advancing the sciences of Astronomy and of Natural History, but in banishing many of the scholastic prejudices then universally prevalent. The effects of the telescope, in this respect, have been" often re- marked ; but less attention has been given to those of the microscope, which, however, it is probable, contributed not a little to prepare the \yay for the modern revival of the Atomic or Corpuscular Philosophy, by Bacon, Gassendi, and New- ton. 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 Demociitus, exsilu- isset forte ; et modum videndi Atomum, quern 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 di 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 bor- rowed. The two facts, when combined, 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 t,o 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 in- struments 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 20 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. 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, TychoBrahe, Kepler, and Galileo. The step made by Copernicus may be justly regarded as one of the proudest triumphs of hu- man 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 con- clusions, at a period when the theory of motion was so imperfectly understood ; or the bold spi- rit of inquiry which encouraged him to exercise his private judgment, in opposition to the autho- rity 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 enco- mium bestowed on him by Kepler, who 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 inspiring 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 mat- ters 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. " Hsec et cetera hujusmodi latent in pandectis sevi sequentis, non antea discenda, quam librum hunc Deus arbiter sseculorum recluserit mortalibus." 1 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 de- serving of our attention occurs in any of these departments prior to the seventeenth century ; and nothing which bears the most remote ana- logy to the rapid strides made, during the six- teenth, 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 commit- ted to writing, transcribing them from the com- mon reason and common feelings of human na- ture, 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, un- doubtedly, 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 priest- hood. 5 Many years were yet to elapse, before Condorcet concerning the invention of printing. " L'invention de rimprimerie a sans doute avance 1 le progres de 1'espece humaine ; mais cette invention toit elle-meme une suite de 1'usage de la lecture repandu dans un grand nombre de pays." Vie de Turgot. 1 Epit. Astron. Copernic. 2 Proinde sic statuinius, nihilo minus divina prsecepta esse ea, quse a sensu communi et naturae jadicio mutuati docti ho- authority of a learned German Professor, Christ. Meiners See his Historia Doctrina: de Vero Deo. Lemgoviae, 1780, p. 12. 3 It is observed by Dr Cudworth, that the doctrine which refers the origin of moral distinctions to the arbitrary ap- pointment of the Deity, was strongly reprobated by the ancient fathers of the Christian church, and 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 prohi- bited by God, and which cannot be made good, if it be commanded by him. In this doctrine he was quickly followed by Petrus Alliacus, 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 DISSERTATION FIRST. 21 any attempts were to be made to trace, with wards adopted in the casuistry of the Jesuits, analytical accuracy, the moral phenomena of and so inimitably exposed by Pascal in the Pro- human life to their first principles in the consti- vincial Letters. The arguments against them tution and condition of man, or even to disen- employed by the Reformers, cannot, in strict pro- tangle the plain and practical lessons of ethics priety, be considered as positive accession to the from the speculative and controverted articles of stock of hujnan knowledge ; but what scientific theological systems. * discoveries can be compared to them in value ! 2 A similar observation may be applied to the From this period may be dated the decline 3 powerful appeals, in the early Protestant wri- of that worst of all heresies of the Romish ters, to the moral judgment and moral feelings church, which, by opposing Revelation to Rea- of the human race, from those casuistical subtle- son, endeavoured to extinguish the light of both : ties, with which the schoolmen and monks of and the absurdity, so happily described by the middle ages had studied to obscure the light Locke, became every day more manifest, of at- of nature, and to stifle the voice of conscience, tempting " to persuade men to put out their These subtleties were precisely analogous in eyes, that they might the better receive the re- their spirit to the pia et religiosa calliditas, after- mote light of an invisible star by a telescope." persuasions. The Catholics have even begun to recriminate on the Reformers as the first broachers 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 ra- tionem exsulare jubent a moralibus praeceptis quae in sacris literis traduntur, et in absurdam enormemque LUTHE-IU sen- tentiam imprudentes incidunt (quam egregie et elegantissime refutavit Melchior Canus Loc. Theolog. Lib. ix. et x.), et ea decent, quae si sectatores inveniant moralia omnia susque deque miscere, ac revelationem ipsam inutilem omnino et ineffi- cacemredderepossent." (LAMPREDI FLOREKTINI Juris Naturae et Gentium Theorcmata, 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 re- ligious 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 igno- rance, 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 moralisers," candidly ac- knowledges, " that the notions of these great men concerning the important science of morality were far from being suffi- ciently accurate or extensive. Melanchthon himself, whose exquisite judgment rendered him peculiarly capable of re- ducing 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 late, sin, free-will, faith, fwpe, and cliarity." 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 main- tain certain systems of doctrine, few were employed in cultivating that master-science which has virtue^ life, and manners, for its objects." Tbid. pp. 120. 121. 3 " Et tamen hi doctores angelici, cheruUci, seraphici, non modo universam philosophiam ac theologiam erroribus quam- plurimis inquinarunt : verum etiam in philosophiam moralem invexere sacerrima ista principia prolabilismi, methodi dirigendi intcnt'umem, reservationis mentalis, pcccat i philosophici, quibus Jesuitae etiamnum mirifice delectantur." HEINECC. Elem. flistor. Phil. ci. See also the references. With respect to the ethics of the Jesuits, which exhibit a very fair picture of the general state of that science, prior to the Reformation, See the Provincial Letters ; MOSHEIM'S Ecclesiastical History, Vol. IV. p. 354 ; DORNFORD'S Translation of Putter's Historical Developement of the present Political Constitution of the Germanic Empire, Vol. II. p. 6. ; and the Appendix to PENROSE'S Hampton Lectures. 3 I have said, the decline of this heresy ; for it was by no means immediately extirpated even in the reformed churches. " As late as the year 1598, Daniel Hofman, Professor of Divinity in the University of Helmstadt, laying hold of some particular opinions of Luther, extravagantly maintained, that philosophy was the mortal enemy of religion ; that truth was divisible into two branches, the one philosophical and the other theological ; and that what was true in philosophy was fake in theology." MOSHEIBI, Vol. IV. p. 18. 22 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. 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 ex- tensive influence of the Machiavelian 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 superio- rity of his genius, an astonishing ascendant, 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 acquaintance with all those arts of dis- simulation and intrigue, which in the petty cabinets of Italy, were then universally con- founded with political wisdom ; an imagination familiarized to the cool contemplation of what- ever 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 Caesar Borgia. To all this must be supperadded 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 Ma- chiavel unquestionably were, he cannot be num- bered among the benefactors of mankind. In none in nis writings does he exhibit any marks of that lively sympathy with the fortunes of the human race, or of that warm zeal for the inte- rests 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 re- cent 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 go- verning, but his own advantage ; the very cir- cumstance 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 hoodwink- ing the many ; a policy less or more practised by statesmen in all ages and countries ; buf which, wherever the freedom of the press is re- spected, 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 mys- teries of King-Craft, was to point out indirectly to the governed the means by which the en- croachments of their rulers might be most ef- fectually resisted; and, at the same time, to satirize, under the ironical mask of loyal and courtly admonition, the characteristical vices of princes. 2 But, although this hypothesis has been sanctioned by several distinguished names, and derives some verisimilitude from various in- cidents 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 ' There is a third kind of tyranny, which most properly deserves that odious name, and which stands in direct opposi- tion to royalty ; it takes place when one man, the worst perhaps and basest in the country, governs a kingdom with no other view than the advantage of himself and his family." ARISTOTLE'S Politics, Book vi. chap. x. See Dr GILLIES'S Translation. 4 See Note C. DISSERTATION FIRST. 23 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 Machia- velism 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 unquali- fied ; 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, as- sassinations, and poisonings (says a French his- torian), prevailed more than ever. They were thought to be the growth of Italy, where the rage and weakness of the opposite factions con- spired to multiply them. Morality gradually disappeared, and with it all security in the inter- course of life. The first principles of duty were obliterated by the joint influence of atheism and of superstition." 1 And here, may I be permitted to caution my readers against the common error of confound- ing the double doctrine of Machiavelian politi- cians, with the benevolent reverence for establish- ed 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 show 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, pre- pares the still irritable eye, by the glimmering dawn of a darkened apartment, for enjoying in safety the light of day. 8 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 Prime 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 open- Millot. * How strange is the following misrepresentation of Fontenelle's fine and deep saying, by the comparatively coarse han< the Baron de Grimm ! " II disoit, que s'il cut tenu la verite dans ses mains comme un oiseau, il 1'auroit etouffe'e, taut i of the 1 taut il regardoit le plus beau present du ciel inutile et dangereux pour le genre humain." (Memoires Historiqucs, &c- par le BARON DE GRIMM. Londres, 1814. Tome I. p. 340.) Of the complete inconsistency of this statement, not only with the testimony of his most authentic biographers, but with the general tenor both of his life and writings, a judgment may be formed from an expression of D'Alembert, in his very ingenious and philosophical parallel between Fontenelle and La Motte. " Tous deux ont porte trop loin leur revolte d^cidee, quoique douce en apparence, contre les dieux et les lois du Parnasse ; mais la liberte" des opinions de la Motte semble tenir plus intimement a 1'inte'ret personnel qu'il avoit de les soutenir ; et la liberte' des opinions de Fontenelle a Mnteret general, peitt-ttre quclquefois mal cntcndu, qifil prcnoit au progres de la raison dans tons les genres. What follows may be regarded in the light of a comment on the maxim above quoted : " La finesse de la Motte est plus developpe'e, celle de Fontenelle laisse plus a deviner a son lecteur. La Motte, sans jamais en trop dire, n'oublie de ce que son sujet lui pre'sente, met habilement tout en oeuvre, et semble craindre perdre par des reticences trop subtiles quelqu'un de ses avantages ; Fontenelle, sans jamais fitre obscur, excepte pour ceux qui ne meritent pas meme qu'on soit clair, se manage a la fois et le plaisir de sous-entendre, et celui d'esperer qu'il sera pleine- ment entendu par ceux qui en sont dignes." Etoge de la Motte, 24 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. ly 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. 1 It is observed by Mr Hume, that " there is scarcely any maxim in the Prince, which subse- quent experience has not entirely refuted." " Machiavel," says the same writer, " was cer- tainly a great genius ; but having confined his study to the furious and tyrannical governments of ancient times, or to the little disorderly prin- cipalities of Italy, his reasonings, especially upon monarchical governments, have been found ex- tremely 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." 8 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 politi- cal 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 em- pirical 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 circum- stances of the world, of trusting to such re- sults, 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 Ma- chiavel, that I cannot help pausing for a mo- ment 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 im- proved in modern times, yet monarchical govern- ment 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 en- couraged, 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 allow- ing 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." 5 For this very remarkable fact, it seems diffi- cult 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 re- gard the wealth and prosperity and instruction of their subjects as the firmest basis of their gran- deur in directing their attention to objects of national and permanent utility. How encoura- ging the prospect thus opened of the future his- tory of the world ! And what a motive to ani- mate the ambition of those, who, in the solitude of the closet, aspire to bequeath their contribu- tions, how slender soever, to the progressive mass of human improvement and happiness ! In the bright constellation of scholars, histo- rians, artists, and wits, who shed so strong a lustre on Italy during that splendid period of its history which commences with the revival of 1 VOLTAIRE, Essay on Universal History. 1 Essay on Civil Liberty. 3 lUd. DISSERTATION FIRST. 25 letters, it is surprising how few names occur, which it is possible to connect, by any palpable link, with the philosophical or political specula- tions of the present times. As an original and profound thinker, the genius of Machiavel com- pletely 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 know- ledge, and are now remembered chiefly from the occasional recurrence of their names in the catalogues of the curious, or in the works of philological erudition. The zeal of Cardinal Bessarion, and of Marsilius Ficinus, for the re- vival of the Platonic philosophy, was more pe- culiarly remarkable, and, at one time, produced so general an impression, as to alarm the follow- ers of Aristotle for the tottering authority of their master. If we may credit Launoius, this great revolution was on the point of being ac- tually accomplished, when Cardinal Bellarmine warned Pope Clement VIII. of the peculiar dan- ger of showing 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 con- clusions with his premises, we are not informed. To those who are uninitiated in the mysteries of the conclave, his inference would certainly ap- pear much less logical than that of the old Ro- man Pagans, who petitioned the Senate to con- demn 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 belong- ing 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 posterity 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 per- manent place in the annals of modern science. His principal work, entitled Antibarbarus,* is not only a bold invective against the prevailing ignorance and barbarism of the schools, but con- tains so able an argument against the then fashion- able doctrine of the Realists concerning general ideas, that Leibnitz thought it worth while, a centu- ry 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 reform- ed faith having driven him from Italy, he sought an asylum at Oxford, where, in 1587, he was ap- pointed professor of the Civil Law, an office which he held till the period of his death in 161 1. 3 He was the author of a treatise De Jure Belli, in three books, which appeared successively in 1588 and 1589, and were first published to- gether at Hanau in 1598. His name, however, 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 depart- ment of study which, forty years afterwards, the celebrated treatise De Jure Belli et Pads was 1 His Ditcustion.es Peripateticce were printed at Venice in 1571- Another work, entitled Novade Universit Philosophla, also printed at Venice, appeared in 1593. I have never happened to meet with either ; but from the account given of the au- thor 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 Peripateticce are mentioned by Brucker in the following terms : " Opus egregium, doctum, varium, luculentum, ted 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 Pa- tricius in his account of the Peripatetic philosophy " In qua tractatione fatemur egregiam enitere Patricii doctrinam, in- genii elegantiam prorsus admirabilem, et quod primo loco ponendum est, insolitam veteris philosophise cognitionem, cujus ope nos Peripateticae disciplinae historiae multoties lucem attulisse, grati suis locis professi sumus." Ibid. p. 426. 2 Antibarbarus, sive de Veris Principiis et Vera Ratione Philosophandi contra Pseudo-philosophos. Parmae, 1553. " Les faux philosophes," dit Fontenelle, " e'toient tous les scholastiques passes et pre'sens ; et Nizolius s'eleve avec la derniere hardi- esse centre leurs ide'es monstrueuses et leur langage barbare. La longue et constante admiration qu'on avoit eu pour Aris- tote, ne prouvoit, disoit-il, que la multitude des sots et la dure'e de la sottise." The merits of this writer are much too lightly estimated by Brucker See Hist. Phil. Tom. IV. Pars I. pp. 91. 92. 3 WOOD'S Athence Oxonienses, Vol. II. col. 90. Dr Bliss's edition. DISS. I. PART I. D 26 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. 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 Secre- tary. J The only other Italian of whom I shall take notice at present, is Campanella; 2 a philoso- pher 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 read- ers 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 pro- nounced in it), contains some general remarks on intellectual character, which are in every re- spect 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 judg- ment, 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 compa- red with Bacon, and the other with Campa- nella, 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 be- yond the reach of the human powers. The former, accordingly, are best fitted for deliver- ing the first elements of knowledge, the latter for establishing conclusions of important and general application." * The annals of France, during this period, present very scanty materials for the History of Philosophy. The name of the Chancellor de 1'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 magis- trate, he has left behind him a reputation un- rivalled to this day. 4 His wise and indulgent principles on the subject of religious liberty, and the steadiness with which he adhered to them, under circumstances of extraordinary dif- ficulty and danger, exhibit a splendid contrast to the cruel intolerance, which, a few years be- 1 The claims of Albericus Gentilis to be regarded as the father of Natural Jurisprudence, are strongly asserted by his countryman Lampredi, in his very judicious and elegant work, entitled, Juris Publici Theoremata, published at Pisa in 1782. " Hie 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 aggrederetur : dignus sane qui prae ceteris memoretur, Italise enim, in qua ortus erat, et unde Juris Romani disciplinam hauserat, gloriam auxit, effecitque ut quae fuerat bonarum arti- um omnium restitutrix et altrix, eadem esset et prima Jurisprudentiae Naturalis magistra." 4 Born 1568, died 1639. * LEIBNIT. Opera, Vol. VI. p. 303, ed. Dutens It is probable that, in the above passage, Leibnitz alluded more to the elevated tone of Campanella's reasoning on moral and political subjects, when contrasted with that of Hobbes, than to the intellectual superiority of the former writer above the latter. No philosopher, certainly, has spoken with more reverence than Campanella has done, on various occasions, of the dignity of human nature. A remarkable instance of this occurs in his eloquent comparison of the human hand with the organs of touch in other animals. (Vide CAMPAN. Physiolog. cap. xx. Art. 2.) Of his Political Aphorisms, which form the third part of his treatise on Morals, a sufficient idea for our purpose is conveyed by the concluding corollary, " Probitas custodit regem populosque ; non autem indocta Machiavellistarum astu- tin." On the other hand, Campanella's works abound with immoralities and extravagancies far exceeding those of tia. Hobbes. In his idea of a perfect commonwealth (to which he gives the name of Civitas Sofa), the impurity of Tiis imagi- nation, and the unsoundness of his judgment, are equally conspicuous. He recommends, under certain regulations, a com- munity of women; and, in every thing connected with procreation, lays great stress on *' : ~ : *-- i * Magistral au-dessus de tout eloge ; et d'apres lequel on a jugd tous ceux qui ont ( sans avoir son courage ni ses lumieres." RENAULT, Abregi Chronologique. the opinions of astrologers. ose s'asseoir sur ce mime tribunal DISSERTATION FIRST. 27 fore, had disgraced the character of an illustri- ous Chancellor of England. The same philo- sophical and truly catholic spirit distinguished his friend, the President de Thou, * and gives the principal charm to the justly admired pre- face prefixed to his history. In tracing the pro- gress 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 gunpowder, and of the telescope. Contemporary with these great men was Bo- din (or Bodinus), 2 an eminent French lawyer, who appears to have heen 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; 5 while, in his refined combina- tions of historical facts, he has more than once struck into a train of speculation, bearing a strong resemblance to that afterwards pursued by Montesquieu. 4 Of this resemblance, so re- markable an instance occurs in his chapter on the moral effects of Climate, and on the atten- tion 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 plagia- rism. 5 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 six- teenth 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 im- perfectly 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 Republique, which seem to me objects of con- siderable curiosity, when contrasted with the general spirit of the age in which they were written. The first relates to liberty of con- science, for which he was a strenuous and in- trepid advocate, not only in his publications, but as a member of the Etats Generaitx, assembled at Blois in 1576. " The mightier that a man is (says Bodin), the more justly and temperate- ly 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 for- bidding any new to be chosen in their places, so that, by that means, their colleges might, by 1 " One cannot help admiring," says Dr Jortin, " the decent manner in which the illustrious Thuanus hath spoken of Calvin :" " Acri vir ac vehemehti ingenio, et admirabili facundia prseditus ; turn inter protestantes magni nominis theolo- gus." (Life of Erasmus, p. 555.) The same writer has remarked the great decency and moderation with which Thuanus speaks of Luther. Ibid. p. 1 13. 5 Born 1530, died 1596. 3 See, in particular, the preface to his book, entitled Methodus adfacilem Hittoriarum cognitionem. * See the work De la Republique, passim. In this treatise there are two chapters singularly curious, considering the time when they were written ; the second and third chapters of the sixth book. The first is entitled, Det Finances ; the second, Le Moyen ffempicher que les Monnoyes soyent alterees de Prix ou falsifiies. The reasonings of the Author on various points there treated of, will be apt to excite a smile among those 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 im- portance 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 ex- presses himself with respect to the work De Republica: " Opus in quo ut omni scientiarum genere non tincti sed imbutijn- genii fidem fecit, sic nonnullis, qui recte judicant, non omnino ab ostentationis innato genii vitio vacuum se probavit. Hirt. Lib. cxvii. ix. s See Note D. 28 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. 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 of the Orisons ; wherein it was decreed, that the ministers of the reformed religion should be maintained of the profits and revenues of the church, the reli- gious men nevertheless still remaining in their cloisters and convents, to be by their death sup- pressed, 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 pro- vided for." 1 The aim of the chapter from which I have extracted the foregoing passage, is to show, that " it is a most dangerous thing, at one and the same time, to change the form, laws, and cus- toms 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 state 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 con- joining the extremities of nature, as by putting the spring between winter and summer, and autumn betwixt summer and winter, mode- rating 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." 8 Notwithstanding these wise and enlightened maxims, it must be owned, on the other hand, that Bodin has indulged himself in various spe- culations, 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 con- stituted 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 Demonomanie ; 5 while the ec- 1 Book iv. chap. iii. The book from which this quotation is taken was published only twenty-three years after the mur- der of Servetus at Geneva ; an event which leaves so deep a stain on the memory not only of Calvin, but on that of the milder and more charitable Melanchthon. The epistle of the latter to Bullinger, where he applauds the conduct of the judges who condemned to the flames this incorrigible heretic, affords the most decisive of all proofs, how remote the senti- ments of the most enlightened Fathers of the Reformation were from those Christian and philosophical principles of tole- ration, to which their noble exertions have gradually, and now almost universally, led the way. - Ibid The substance of the above reflection has been compressed by Bacon into the following well-known aphorisms. " Time is the greatest innovator ; shall we then not imitate time ? " What innovator imitates time, which innovates so silently as to mock the sense ?" The resemblance between the two passages is still more striking in the Latin versions of their respective authors. " Deum igitur praepotentem naturae parentem imitemur, qui omnia paulatim : namque semina perquam exigua in ar- bores excelsas excrescere jubet, idque tarn occulte ut nemo sentiat." BODINUS. " Novator maximus tempus ; quidni igitur tempus imitemur ?" " Quis novator tempus imitatur, quod novationes ita insinuat, ut sensus fallant ?" BACOK. The Treatise of Bodin De la Ripullique (by far the most important of his works) was first printed at Paris in 1576, and was reprinted seven times in the space of three years. It was translated into Latin by the author himself, with a view chiefly (as is said) to the accommodation of the scholars of England, among whom it was so highly esteemed, that lectures upon it were given in the University of Cambridge, as early as 1580. In 1579, Bodin visited London in the suite of the Due d'Alencon ; a circumstance which probably contributed not a little to recommend his writings, so very soon after their publication, to the attention of our countrymen. 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 Kriolles's merits as an historian, and as an English writer, see the Rambler, No. 123. * De la Demonomanie des Sorciers. Par J. BODIN ANGEVIN, a Paris, 1580. This book, which exhibits so melancholy DISSERTATION FIRST. 29 centricity of his religious tenets was such, as to with him on points of theology.* Nor was the incline the candid mind of Grotius to suspect study of the severer sciences, on all occasions, him of a secret leaning to the Jewish faith. 1 an effectual remedy against such illusions of the In contemplating the characters of the eminent imagination. The sagacious Kepler was an as- persons who appeared about this era, nothing is trologer and a visionary ; and his friend Tycho more interesting and instructive, than to remark Brahe, the Prince of Astronomers, kept an idiot in the astonishing combination, in the same minds, his service, to whose prophecies he listened as of the highest intellectual endowments, with the revelations from above. 4 During the long night most deplorable aberrations of the understand- of Gothic barbarism, the intellectual world had ing ; and even, in numberless instances, with the again become, like the primitive earth, " with- most childish superstitions of the multitude, out form and void ;" the light had already ap- Of this apparent inconsistency, Bodinus does peared ; " and God had seen the light that it was not furnish a solitary example. The same re- good ;" but the time was not yet come to " di- mark may be extended, in a greater or less de- vide it from the darkness." 5 gree, to most of the other celebrated names In the midst of the disorders, both political hitherto mentioned. Melanchthon, as appears and moral, of that unfortunate age, it is pleasing from his letters, was an interpreter of dreams, to observe the anticipations of brighter pro- and a caster of nativities ; " and Luther not only spects, in the speculations of a few individuals, sanctioned, by his authority, the popular fables Bodinus himself is one of the number ; 6 and to about the sexual and prolific intercourse of Satan his name may be added that of his countryman with the human race, but seems to have serious- and predecessor Budaeus. 7 But, of all the ly believed that he had himself frequently seen writers of the sixteenth century, Ludovicus the arch enemy face to face, and held arguments Vives seems to have had the liveliest and the a contrast to the mental powers displayed in the treatise De la Republique, was dedicated by the author to his friend, the President de Thou ; and it is somewhat amusing to find, that it exposed Bodin himself to the imputation of being a ma- giciail. For this we have the testimony of the illustrious historian just mentioned. (THUAVUS, Lib. cxvii. ix.) Nor did it recommend the author to the good opinion of the Catholic church, having been formally condemned and prohibited by the Roman Inquisition. The Reflection of the Jesuit Martin del Rio on this occasion is worth transcribing. " Adco Inlricum et pericnlosum de his disserere, nisi Deum semper, et catholicam fidem, eccksiccque Romance censuram tanquam cynosuram sequaris." . Disquisitionum Magicarum, Libri Sex. Auctore MAKTINO DEL Rio, Societatis Jesu Presbytero. Venit 1640, p. 8, 1 Epist. ad Cordesium (quoted by BAYLE.) 2 JORTIN'S Life of Erasmus, p. 156. 3 See Note E. 4 See the Life of Tycho Brahe, by GASSENDI. 5 I have allotted to Bodin a larger space than may seem due to his literary importance ; but the truth is, I know of no political writer, of the same date, whose extensive and various and discriminating reading appears to me to have contri- buted more to facilitate and to guide the researches of his successors, or whose references to ancient learning have been more frequently transcribed without acknowledgment. Of late his works have fallen into very general neglect ; otherwise it is impossible that so many gross mistakes should be current about the scope and spirit of his principles. By many he has been mentioned as a zealot for republican forms of government, probably for no better reason than that he chose to call his book a Treatise De RepuUica ; whereas, in point of fact, he is uniformly a warm and able advocate for monarchy ; and, although no friend to tyranny, has, on more than one occasion, carried his monarchical principles to a very blameable ex- cess (See, in particular, chapters fourth and fifth of the Sixth Book.) On the other hand, Grouvelle, a writer of some note, has classed Bodin with Aristotle, as an advocate for domestic slavery. " The reasonings of both," he says, " are re- futed by Montesquieu." (De FAutorite de Montesquieu dans la Revolution presente. Pans, 1789.) Whoever has the curiosity to compare Bodin and Montesquieu together, will be satisfied, that, on this point, their sentiments were exactly the same ; and that, so far from refuting Bodin, Montesquieu has borrowed from him more than one argument in support of his general conclusion. The merits of Bodin have been, on the whole, very fairly estimated by Bayle, who pronounces him " one of the ablest men that appeared in France during the sixteenth century." " Si nous voulons disputera Jean Bodin la qualite d'e"crivain exact et judicieux, laissons lui sans controverse, un grand ge'nie, un vaste savoin une me'moire et une lecture prodigieuses. ' See, in particular, his Method of Studying History, chap. vii. entitled Confutatio eorum qui quatuor Monarchias Aureaque Scecula statuerunt. In this chapter, after enumerating some of the most important discoveries and inventions of the moderns, he concludes with mentioning the art of printing, of the value of which he seems to have formed a very just estimate. " Una Typographia cum omnibus veterum inventis certare facile potest. Itaque non minus peccant, qui a veteribus aiunt omnia comprehensa, quam qui illos de veteri multarum artium possessione deturbant. Habet Natura scientiarum thesauros innumerabiles, qui nullis setatibus exhauriri possunt." In the same chapter Bodinus expresses himself thus : " -ffitas ilia quam auream vocant, si ad nostram conferatur^rraz videri possit." 7 The works of Budseus were printed at Basle, in four volumes folio, 1557. My acquaintance with them is much too slight to enable me to speak of them from my own judgment. No scholar certainly stood higher in the estimation of his age. " Quo viro," says Ludovicus Vives, " Gallia acutiore ingenio, acriore judicio, exactiore diligentia, majore erudi- tione nullum unquam produxit ; hac vero setate nee Italia quidem." The praise bestowed on him by other contemporary writers of the highest eminence is equally lavish. 30 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. 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 Or- ganon . " 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." 1 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 Ra- mus 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 un- common acuteness as well as eloquence, and placed in a very strong light some of the most vulnerable parts of the Aristotelian logic ; with- out, however, exhibiting any marks of that deep sagacity which afterwards enabled Bacon, Des- cartes, 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; 2 while his avowed partiality for the reformed faith (to which he fell a martyr in the massacre of Paris), procured many prose- lytes to his opinions in all the Protestant coun- tries of Europe. In England his logic had the honour, in an age of comparative light and re- finement, 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, " al- though 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. Be- fore human reason was able to advance, it was necessary that it should first be released from the weight of its fetters. 5 1 VIVES de Caus. Corrupt. Artium, Lib. i. Similar ideas occur in the works of Roger Bacon : " Quanto juniores tanto perspicaciores, quia juniores posteriores successione temporum ingrediuntur labores priorum." (Opus Majus, edit. Jebb. p. 9.) Nor were they altogether overlooked by ancient writers. " Veniet tempus, quo ista quse latent nunc in lucem dies extrahet, et longioris aevi diligentia. Veniet tempus, quo posteri nostri tarn aperta nos ignorasse mirabuntur." (SENECA, Queest. Nat. Lib. vii. c. 25.) This language coincides exactly with that of the Chancellor Bacon ; but it was re- served for the latter to illustrate the connection between the progress of human knowledge, and of human happiness ; or (to borrow his own phraseology) the connection between the progress of knowledge, and the enlargement of man's power over the destiny of his own species. Among other passages to this purpose, See Nov. Org. Lib. i. cxxix. 2 To the accomplishments of Ramus as a writer, a very flattering testimony is given by an eminent English scholar, by no means disposed to overrate his merits as a logician. " Pulsa tandem barbarie, Petrus Ramus politioris literaturse vir, ausus est Aristotelem acrius ubique et liberius incessere, universamque Peripateticam philosophiam exagitare. Ejus DMetica exiguo tempore fuit apud plurimos summo in pretio, maxime eloquentiae studiosos, idque idio scholasticorum, quorum dictio et stylus ingrata fuerant auribus Ciceronianis." Logicce Artis Compendium, Auctore R. SANDERSON, Episc. Lincoln, pp. 250. 251. Edit. Decima. Oxon. The first edition was printed in 1618. 3 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 indignation? meae tempero, quin ilium accipiam pro suo merito, regeram- que validius in ejus caput, quae contra veteres jactat convicia." Had Barrow confined this censure to the weak and arro- gant 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 prsecepti uni- cum exemplum est, ac ssepissime nullum : sed unico et singular! exemplo non potest artifex effici ; pluribus opus est et dissimilibus. Et quidem, ut Aristotelis exempla tantummodo non falsa sint, qualia tamen sunt? Omne 6 est a : omne cest 6 ergo omne c est a, Exemplum Aristotelis est puero a grammaticis et oratoribus venienti, et istam mutorum Mathema- ticorum linguam ignoranti, novum et durum : et in totis Analyticis ista non Attica, non lonica, non Dorica, non .flSolica, non communi, sed geometrica lingua usus est Aristoteles, odiosa pueris, ignota populo, a communi sensu remota, a rhetoricae usu et ab humanitatis usu alienissima." (P. RAMI pro PMlosophica Parisiensis Academics 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. DISSERTATION FIRST. It is observed with great truth, by Condorcet, that, in the times of which we are now speak- ing 1 , " 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, with- out 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." 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 con- troversies everywhere divided the opinions of the multitude ; involving those collateral dis- cussions concerning the liberty of conscience, and the relative claims of sovereigns and sub- jects, 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 medi- tate 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 po- litical speculations of this period turn almost en- tirely on the comparative advantages and disad- vantages of different forms of government, or on the still more alarming questions concerning the limits of allegiance and the right of resist- ance. The dialogue of our illustrious countryman Buchanan, De Jure Regni apud Scotos, though occasionally disfigured by the keen and indig- nant 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 govern- ment, are anticipated and refuted, and a power- ful argument is urged against that doctrine of Utility which has attracted so much notice in our times. The political reflections, too, inci- dentally 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 specta- tors. 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 un- thinking 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 genius 1 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 philosophi- cal world. 2 1 Praefervidum Scotorum ingenium. * That, at the end of the sixteenth century, the Scottish nation were advancing not less rapidly than their neighbours, in every species of mental cultivation, is sufficiently attested by their literary remains, both in the Latin language and in their own vernacular tongue. A remarkable testimony to the same purpose occurs in the dialogue above quoted, the author of which had spent the best years of his life in the most polished society of the Continent. " As often," says Buchanan, " as I turn my eyes to the niceness and elegance of our own times, the ancient manners of our forefathers appear sober and venerable, but withal rough and horrid." " Quoties oculos ad nostri temporis munditias et elegantiam refero, antiquitas ilia sancta et sobria, sed horrida tamen, et nondum satis expolita fuisse videtur." (De Jure Regni apud Scotos.) One would think, that he conceived the taste of his countrymen to have then arrived at the ne plus ultra of national refinement^ Aurca mine, oiiin sylvestribus horrida dumis. 32 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. CHAPTER II. FROM THE PUBLICATION OF BACON'S PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS, TILL THAT OF THE ESSAY ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. SECTION I. Progress of Philosophy in England during this period, BACON.' THE state of science towards the close of the sixteenth century, presented a field of observa- tion singularly calculated to attract the curio- sity, 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 contri- buted to cherish the natural liberality and inde- pendence of his mind. Sir Joshua Reynolds has remarked, in one of his academical Dis- courses, that " every seminary of learning is surrounded with an atmosphere of floating knowledge, where every mind may imbibe some- what congenial to its own original concep- tions." * He might have added, with still great- er 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 inconsider- able value for the education of youth. The merits of Bacon, as the father of Experi- mental Philosophy, are so universally acknow- ledged, 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; al- though the whole scope and tenor of his specu- lations show, 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 anticipa- tions of particular discoveries afterwards to l>e made in physics, that his writings have had so powerful an influence in accelerating the ad- vancement 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 un- derstanding. 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 de- scribe 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." Born 1561, died 1626. ' Discourse delivered at the opening of the Royal Academy, January 2, 1769. DISSERTATION FIRST. 33 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 phe- nomena. Among these, the most valuable re- late 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 vari- ous 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-clapt metaphysics of the new German school. 1 In considering ima- gination 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. 8 His illustra- tion of the different classes of prejudices inci- dent 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 mention- ing the name of his great predecessor. The chief improvement made by Locke, in the far- ther prosecution of the argument, is the appli- cation of Hobbes's theory of association, to ex- plain in what manner these prejudices are ori- ginally generated. In Bacon's scattered hints on topics connected with the Philosophy of the Mind, strictly so called, nothing is more remarkable than the pre- cise and just ideas they display of the proper aim of this science. He had manifestly re- flected 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 im- portant results, and has in general stated them without the slightest reference to any physiolo- gical 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 arid 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 over- looked (I mention it to the credit of both authors), 1 " Cum mundus sensibilis sit anima rational! dignitate inferior, videtur Po'csit haec humanae naturae largiri quze historia denegat ; atque animo umbris rerum utcunque satisfacere, cum solida haberi non possint. Si quis enim rem acutius in- trospiciat, firmum ex Pol'ti sumitur argumentum, magnitudinem rerum magis illustrem, ordinem magis perfectum, et va- rietatem magis pulchram, animse humanae complacere, quam in natura ipsa, post lapsum, reperiri ullo modo possit. Qua- propter, cum res gestae et eventus, qui verae historiae subjiciuntur, non sint ejus amplitudinis, in qua anima humana sibi satist'aciat, praesto est Po'ctls, quae facta magis heroica confingat. Cum historia vera successus rerum, minime pro meritis virtutum et scelerum narret, corrigit earn Poesis, et exitus, et fortunas, secundum merita, et ex lege Nemeseos, exhibet. Cum historia vera obvia rerum satietate et similitudine, animse humanae fastidio sit reficit earn Faesit, inexpectata, et varia, et vicissitudinum plena canens. Adeo ut Po'csis ista non solum ad delectationem, sed ad animi magnitudinem, et ad mores conferat." ( De Aug. Scient. Lib. ii. cap. xiii.) 2 To this branch of the philosophy of mind, Bacon gives the title of Doclrina de fuedere, sive de commnni viticulo anima: et corporis ( De Aug. Sclent. Lib. iv. cap. i.) Under this article, he mentions, among other desiderata, an inquiry (which he recommends to physicians) concerning the influence of imagination over the body. His own words are very remarkable ; more particularly, the clause in which he remarks the effect of fixing and concentrating the attention, in giving to ideal objects the power of realities over the belief. " Ad aliud quippiam, quod hue pertinet, parce admodum, nee pro rei sub- tilitate, vel utilitate, inquisitum est ; quatenus seilieet ipsa imaglnttio animcc vel cogitatio perquam Jixa, et vcluti in fidem gitandam exaltata, valeat ad immutandum corpus imaginantis." (Ibid.) He suggests also, as a curious problem, to ascer- tain how far it is possible to fortify and exalt the imagination ; and by what means this may most effectually be done. The class of facts here alluded to, are manifestly of the same description with those to which the attention of philosophers has been lately called by the pretensions of Mesmer and of Perkins : " Atque huic conjuncta est disquisitio, quomodo ima- ginatio intendi et fortificari possit ? Quippe, si imaginatio fortis tantarum sit virium, operse pretium fuerit nosse, quibus modis earn exaltari, et se ipsa majorem fieri detur ? Atque hie oblique, nee minus periculose se insinuat palliatio qusedam et defensio maxima; partis Magicr Ccremonialis" &c. &c DC Aug. Sclent. I Jb. iv. cap. iii. DISS. I. 1'AIIT 1. F. 34 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. that in such instances the fact is commonly so stated, as to render it easy for the reader to de- tach it from the theory. As to the scholastic questions concerning the nature and essence of mind, whether it he 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 uni- formly passed them over with silent contempt ; and has probably contributed not less effectually to bring them into general discredit, by this in- direct intimation of his own opinion, than if lie 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 oc- casion, " approve of that confused and promiscu- ous 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 con- sidered 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 until 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 Gram- mar) do no less honour to his sagacity. " Gram- mar," he observes, " is of two kinds, the one lite- rary, 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 t enable him to speak it with correctness and purity. The latter directs the attention, not to the analogies which words bear to words, but the analogies which words bear to things;" 2 or, as he after- wards explains himself more clearly, " to lan- guage considered as the sensible portraiture or image of the mental process." In farther illus- tration 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 af- fairs ; 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." 5 Ideas of this sort have, in the course of a very few years, already become com- mon, and almost tritical ; but how different was the case two centuries ago ! With these sound and enlarged views con- cerning 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 1 Notwithstanding the extravagance of Spinoza's own philosophical creed, he is one of the very few among Bacon's successors, who seem to have been fully aware of the justness, importance, and originality of the method pointed out in the Novum^ Organon for the study of the Mind. " Ad haec intelligenda, non est opus naturam mentis cognoscere, sed suf- ficit, mentis sive perceptionum historiolam concinnare modo illo quo VERULAMIUS docet." SPIN. Epist. 42. In order to comprehend the whole merit of this remark, it is necessary to know that, according to the Cartesian phrase- ology, which is here adopted by Spinoza, the word perception is a general term, equally applicable to all the intellectual operations. The words of Descartes himself are these : " Omnes modi cogitandi, quos in nobis experimur, ad duos gene- ro, volitio, sive operatio voluntatis. cupere, aversari, affirmare, negare, -Princip. Phil. Pars I. ~ * De Aug. Scient. Lib. vi. can. i. Ibid. DISSERTATION FIRST. 35 remarks, savouring of the habits of thinking prevalent in his time. A curious example of this occurs in the same chapter which contains his excellent definition or description of uni- versal 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 subtile in ancient, than it now is in modern times." J How very un- like 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 conde- scended to quote. These observations afford me a convenient opportunity for remarking the progress and dif- fusion of the philosophical spirit, since the begin- ning of the seventeenth century. In the short passage just cited from Bacon, there are involv- ed no less than two capital errors, which are now almost universally ranked, by men of edu- cation, 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 preposi- tions and auxiliary verbs, are, both of them, the deliberate and systematical contrivances of spe- culative grammarians ; the other (still less ana- logous 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 ris- ing 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 re- sult merely of the different circumstances in which men are placed, has been long receiv- ed as an incontrovertible logical maxim ; or ra- ther, 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 recognised 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 various aspects ; to the history of lan- guages, 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 eigh- teenth century, and forms a characteristical feature in its philosophy, which even the ima- gination of Bacon was unable to foresee. It would be endless to particularize the ori- ginal suggestions thrown out by Bacon on topics connected with the science of Mind. The few passages of this sort already quoted, are produ- ced 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 theo- retical 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 re- spect to the influence of custom and the forma- tion of habits ; a most important article of mo- ral philosophy, on which he has enlarged more ably and more usefully than any writer since Aristotle. * Under the same head of Ethics may 1 De Aug. Scient. Lib. vi. cap. i. 3 De Aug. Scient. Lib. viL cap. iii. 36 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. 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 over- looked before. This, indeed, is a characteristic of all Bacon's writings, and is only to be ac- counted for by the inexhaustible aliment they furnish to our own thoughts, and the sympa- thetic activity they impart to our torpid faculties. The suggestions of Bacon for the improve- ment of Political Philosophy, exhibit as strong a contrast to the narrow systems of contempo- rary statesmen, as the Inductive Logic to that of the Schools. How profound and comprehen- sive are the views opened in the following pas- sages, when compared with the scope of the cele- brated treatise De Jure Belli et Pads ; a work which was first published about a year before Bacon's death, and which continued, for a hun- dred and fifty years afterwards, to be regarded in all the Protestant universities of Europe as an inexhaustible treasure of moral and jurispru- dential wisdom ! " The ultimate object which legislators ought to have in view, and to which all their enact- ments and sanctions ought to be subservient, is, that the citizens may live happily. For this pur- pose, 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 mili- tary arrangements ; that they should be guard- ed 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." 1 " The science of such matters certainly belongs more parti- cularly to the province of men who, by habits of public business, have been led to take a com- prehensive survey of the social order ; of the in- terests 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 wis- dom of laws, both from considerations of jus- tice and of policy. The great desideratum, accordingly, is, by investigating the principles of natural justice, and those of political expedi- ency, to exhibit a theoretical model of legisla- tion, which, while it serves as a standard for estimating the comparative excellence of muni- cipal codes, may suggest hints for their correc- tion and improvement, to such as have at hearfJ the welfare of mankind." 2 How precise the notion was that Bacon had formed of a philosophical system of jurispru- dence (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 execu- tion, to investigate those " LEGES LEGUM, ex quibus informatio peti possit, quid in singulis legibus bene aut perperam positum aut consti- tutum sit." 8 I do not know if, in Bacon's 1 Exemplnm Tractalns de Fcmtibiis Juris, Aphor. 5. This enumeration of the different objects of law approaches very nearly to Mr Smith's ideas on the same subject, as expressed by himself in the concluding sentence of his Tlicory of Moral Sentiments. " In another Discourse, I shall endeavour to give an account of the general principles of law and govern- ment, and of the different revolutions they have undergone in the different ages and periods of society ; not only in what concerns justice, but in what concerns police, revenue, and arms, and whatever else is the object of law." * De Aug. Sclent. Lib. viii. cap. iii. 3 De Fontibus Juris, Aphor. 6. From the preface to a small tract of Bacon's entitled, Tfte Elements of the Common Laws of England, written while he was Solicitor-General to Queen Elizabeth, we learn, that the phrase legum leges had been previously used by some " great Civilian." To what Civilian Bacon here alludes, I know not ; but, whoever he was, I doubt much if he annexed to it the comprehensive and philosophical meaning so precisely explained in the above definition. Bacon himself, when he wrote his Tract on the Common Laws, does not seem to have yet risen to this vantage-ground of Universal Jurisprudence. His great object (he tells us) was " to collect the rules and grounds dispersed throughout the body of the same laws, 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 tune, 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 Fontilws Juris ; but merely to the leading and governing rules which give to a municipal system whatever it possesses of DISSERTATION FIRST. 37 prophetic anticipations of the future progress of Physics, there be any thing more characteristi- cal, both of the grandeur and of the justness of his conceptions, than this short definition ; more particularly, when we consider how widely Gro- tius, 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 at- tending, at the same time, to the cautious and temperate maxims so frequently inculcated by the author, on the subject of political innova- tion. " 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 con- nected with these aphorisms, are the profound reflections in the first book De Augmentis Scien- tiarum, on the necessity of accommodating every new institution to the character and circum- stances 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 senti- ments 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 distinc- tion which it indirectly marks, between " deep and vulgar laws ;" the former invariably aiming to accomplish their end, not by giving any sud- den 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 obstacles which check the progressive tendencies of society. It is probable, that, on this occasion, Bacon had an eye more particularly to the memorable sta- tute of alienation; to the effects of which (what- ever were the motives of its author) the above description certainly applies in an eminent de- gree. 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 ; origi- nating 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. re- lating to the police of his kingdom, are generally contrived with more judgment than his com- mercial regulations. The same writer adds, that " the more simple ideas of order and equity are sufficient to guide a legislator in every thing 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 con- trary 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 con- firmation of these general remarks, are pe- culiarly gratifying to those who have a pleasure in tracing the slow but certain progress of rea- son and liberality. " During the reign," says he, " of Henry VII. it was prohibited to ex- analogy and consistency. To these rules Bacon gives the title of leges legitm ; but the meaning of the phrase, on this oc- casion, 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. 38 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. port horses, as if that exportation did not en- courage the breed, and make them more plen- tiful 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 EVI- DENT, 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 his- torian continues, the " law enacted against in- closures, and for the keeping up of farm-houses, scarcely deserves the praises bestowed on it by Lord Bacon. If husbandmen understand agri- culture, and have a ready vent for their com- modities, we need not dread a diminution of the people employed in the country. During a cen- tury and a half after this period, there was a frequent renewal of laws and edicts against de- population ; 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 im- policy 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 de- velopement 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 un- derstanding and the heart, to the abundant har- vest 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 educa- tion the title of the Georgics of the Mind ; iden- tifying, by a happy and impressive metaphor, the two proudest functions entrusted to the legi- slator, the encouragement of agricultural in- dustry, and the care of national instruction. In both instances, the legislator exerts a power which is literally productive or creative ; com- pelling, 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 hu- man 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 Pads,, the contrast is mortifying indeed. And yet, so much better suited were the talents and accom- plishments of Grotius to the taste, not only of his contemporaries, but of their remote descend^ ants, that, while the merits of Bacon failed, for a century and a half, to command the general admiration of Europe, * 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."* 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 Paris, that the science of NaturalJurisprudence became, in this island, an object of much attention, even " La cele'brite' en France des Merits du Chancelier Bacon n'a guere pour date que celle de 1'Encyclopedie." (Histoire des Mathematiques par Montucla, Preface, p. ix.) It is an extraordinary circumstance, that Bayle, who has so often wasted his erudition and acuteness on the most insignificant characters, and to whom Le Clerc has very justly ascribed the merit of une exactitude etonnante dans des choscs de neant, should have devoted to Bacon only twelve lines of his Dictionary. * See Note F. DISSERTATION FIRST. 39 to the learned. In order, therefore, to give to the sequel of this section some degree of con- tinuity, I shall reserve my ohservations on Gro- tius 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 coun- try, prior to the appearance of Mr Locke's Essay. The rapid advancement of intellectual culti- vation 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 gene- ral features of that period ; and are in themselves causes sufficient to produce effects of the utmost importance. A country whose language was en- riched by the works of Hooker, Raleigh, and Ba- con, 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 Spen- cer and Shakspeare had written, seemed a suf- ficient plea to rescue the Commons of England from the appellation of Brutes, with which Hen 1 - ry the Eighth had addressed them." The re- mark 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 acquire- ments of the enlightened few are insensibly im- parted 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. 1 In the foregoing list of illustrious names, Mr Fox has, with much propriety, connected those of Bacon and Raleigh ; two men, who, not- withstanding the diversity of their professional pursuits, and the strong contrast of their cha- racters, exhibit, nevertheless, in their capacity of authors, some striking features of resem- blance. Both of them owed to the force of their own minds, their emancipation from the fetters of the schools ; both were eminently distinguish- ed 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 unpolish- ed countrymen, the richness, variety, and grace, which might be lent to the English idiom, by the hand of a master. * It is not improbable that Mr Fox might have included the name of Hobbes in the same enu- meration, had he not been prevented by an aversion to his slavish principles of government, and by his own disrelish for metaphysical theories. As a writer, Hobbes unquestionably ranks high among the older English classics, and is so pe- culiarly distinguished by the simplicity and ease of his manner, that one would naturally have expected from Mr Fox's characteristical taste, 1 It is not so foreign as may at first be supposed to the object of this Discourse, to take notice here of the extraordinary demand for books on Agriculture under the government of James I. The fact is thus very 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 im- provement. 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 au- thors ; but only of detached passages, which may be selected from all of them, as earnests 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 L.OWTH'S English Grammar. 40 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. that he would have relished his style still more than that of Bacon 1 or of Raleigh. It is with the philosophical merits, however, of Hobbes, that we 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 innume- rable opponents ! Little else, indeed, but the systems which he published, and the contro- versies 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 excep- tions to this remark, furnished by the metaphy- sical 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 dis- cussions have a constant reference, either in the way of comment or refutation. HOBBES.* " 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."* Nor was the opposition to Hobbes confined to the clerical order, or to the controversialists of his own times. The most eminent moralists and politi- cians 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 Hobbism 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 autho- rity, 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, and a very extensive tour through France and Italy, he had the good fortune, upon his return to Eng- land, to be admitted into the intimacy and con- fidence of Lord Bacon ; a circumstance which, we may presume, contributed not a little to en- courage that bold spirit of inquiry, and that aversion to scholastic learning, which character- ise 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 pas- sions ! But such was the obstinacy of his tem- per, and his overweening self-conceit, that, in- stead of co-operating with Bacon in the execu- tion of his magnificent design, he resolved to rear, on a foundation exclusively his own, a com- plete 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 ob- jects only of contempt and ridicule ! 4 In the political writings of Hobbes, we may perceive the influence also of other motives. From his earliest years, he seems to have been 1 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 thit, 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 BURNETT'S Trans- lation of M ORE'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 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 qua- lities and graces of style, are his prose compositions, to those of his immediate predecessors, Dryden, Pope, and Addison ! 2 Born 1588, died 1679. 3 Divine Legation, Pref. to Vol. II. p. 9. * See Note G. DISSERTATION FIRST. 41 decidedly hostile to all the forms of popular go- vernment ; 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 so- ciety of his philosophical friends at Paris. It was there he wrote his book De Give, a few copies of which were printed, and privately circulated in 1642. The same work was after- wards given to the public, with material cor- rections 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 strength- en 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 after- wards to offer on the coincidence between the principles of Hobbes and those of Locke. In their practical conclusions, indeed, with re- spect 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 en- joy the good things of this world. Man, too, is (according to Hobbes) by nature a solitary and purely selfish animal ; the social union being en- tirely an interested league, suggested by pruden- tial views of personal advantage. The necessary consequence is, that a state of nature must be a state of perpetual warfare, in which no indivi- dual 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 en- joyment 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 ?" l An additional argu- ment to the same purpose may, according to some later Hobbists, be derived from the in- stinctive 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 ne- cessary 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 conse- quence 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 com- mitted ; nor can they be punished for misgovern- ment. 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 re- solving itself into the discordant elements of which it was at first composed. The will of the magistrate, therefore, is to be regarded as the ulti- 1 Of Man, Part I. chap. xiii. * De Cor pore Politico, Part I. chap. i. 10. DISS. I. PART I. 42 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. mate standard of right and wrong, and his voice to be listened to by every citizen as the voice of conscience. Not many years afterwards, * 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 govern-i ment is the strong chain by which he is kept from mischief. The fundamental principles here maintained are the same as in the book De Give; but as it inveighs more particularly against ec- clesiastical tyranny, with the view of subjecting the consciences of men to the civil authority, it lost the author the favour of some powerful pro- tectors he had hitherto enjoyed among the Eng- lish divines who attended Charles II. in France ; and he even found it convenient to quit that kingdom, and to return to England, where Crom- well (to whose government his political tenets were now as favourable as they were meant to be to the royal claims) suffered him to remain un-? molested. 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. 2 The details which I have entered into, with respect to the history of Hobbes's political writ- ings, will be found, by those who may peruse them, to throw much light on the author's reason- ings. 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 com- pletely 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 bo " 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 seven- teenth century. Mr Addison, 011 the other hand, gives a decided preference (among all the books written by Hobbes) to his Treatise on Hu- man 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 similiar topics. They are the only part of his works which it is pos- sible 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 Know- ledge, and on the factitious nature of our moral principles ; to the latter (among a variety of hints of less consequence), his theory concern- ing the nature of those established connections among physical events, which it is the business of the natural philosopher to ascertain, 3 and the substance of his argument against the scho- lastic doctrine of general conceptions. It is from the works of Hobbes, too, that our later Neces- sitarians 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 1 In 1651. * See Note H. 3 The same doctrine, concerning the proper object of natural philosophy (commonly ascribed to Mr Hume, both by his followers and by his opponents), is to be found in various writers contemporary with Hobbes. It is stated, with uncom- mon precision and clearness, in a book entitled Scepsis Scientifica, or Confessed Ignorance the way to Science, by Joseph Glanvill, (printed in 1665). The whole work is strongly marked with the features of an acute, an original, and, in matters of science, a somewhat sceptical genius ; and, when compared with the treatise on witchcraft, by the same author, adds another proof to those already mentioned, of the possible union of the highest intellectual gifts with the most degrading .intellectual weaknesses. With respect to the Scepsis Scientifica, it deserves to be noticed, that the doctrine maintained in it concerning physical causes and effects does not occur in the form of a detached observation, of the value of which the author might not have been fully aware, but is the very basis of the general argument running through all his discussions. DISSERTATION FIRST. which runs through the philological materialism of Mr Home 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 ex- plicit and confident terms. Of this idea (than which, in point of fact, nothing can be imagin- ed more puerile and unsound), Mr Tooke' s etymologies, when he applies them to the solu- tion of metaphysical questions, are little more than an ingenious expansion, adapted and level- led to the comprehension of the multitude. The speculations of Hobbes, however, con- cerning 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 doc- trines, which, having a more immediate refer- ence 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 an- nals of modern literature ; and although they now derive their whole interest from the extra- ordinary 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. ANTAGONISTS OF HOBBES. Cud worth 1 was one of the first who success- fully combated this new philosophy. As Hobbes, in the frenzy of his political zeal, had been led to sacrifice wantonly all the principles of re- ligion 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 ma- gistrate, was so obviously subversive of all the commonly received ideas concerning the moral constitution of human nature, that it became in- dispensably necessary, either to expose the so- phistry 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 de- sire of self-preservation. Between some of these tenets of the courtly Hobbists, and those inculcated by the Cromwel- lian Antinomians, there was a very extraor- dinary 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." a 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 bor- rowed their most valuable materials. 3 1 Born 1617, died 1688. 2 Hume For a more particular account of the English Antinomians, See Mosheim, Vol. IV. p. 534, et seq. 3 The mind, according to Cudworth, perceives, by occasion of outward objects, as much more than is represented to it by sense, as a learned man does in the best written book, than an illiterate person or brute. " To the eyes of both, the same characters will appear ; but the learned man, in those characters, will see heaven, earth, sun, and stars ; read pro- found theorems of philosophy or geometry ; learn a great deal of new knowledge from them, and admire the wisdom of the composer ; while, to the other, nothing appears but black strokes drawn on white paper. The reason of which is, that the mind of the one is furnished with certain previous inward anticipations, ideas, and instruction, that the other wants." " In the room of this book of human composition, let us now substitute the book of Nature, written all over with the characters and impressions of divine wisdom and goodness, but legible only to an intellectual eye. To the sense both of man and brute, there appears nothing else in it, but, as in the other, so many inky scrawls ; that is, nothing but figures and colours. But the mind, which hath a participation of the divine wisdom that made it, upon occasion of those sensible delineations, exerting its own inward activity, will have not only a wonderful scene, and large prospects of 44 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. 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 ac- cordingly, it was very shrewdly observed by Cudworth, that the licentious system which flou- rished in his time (under which title, I pre- sume, he comprehended the immoral tenets of the fanatics as well as of the Hobbists), " 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, disputa- tious period during which Cudworth lived, af- forded him peculiarly favourable opportunities of judging from experience, of the practical ten- dency of this metaphysical dogma ; and the re- sult of his observations deserves the serious at- tention of those who may be disposed to regard it in the light of a fair and harmless theme for the display of controversial subtility. To argue, in this manner, against a speculative principle from its palpable effects, is not always so illogi- cal as some authors have supposed. " You re- peat 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 mo- rals which appeared in the course of the eigh- teenth century. To this argument may, more particularly, be traced the origin of the cele- brated 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 be- tween 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 con- troversy must evidently be delayed, till the writ- ings of these more modern authors shall fall un- der review. The Intellectual System of Cudworth embraces a field much wider than his treatise of Immu- table Morality. The latter is particularly direct- ed against the ethical doctrines of Hobbes, and of the Antinomians ; but the former aspires to tear up by the roots all the principles, both phy- sical and metaphysical, of the Epicurean philo- sophy. It is a work, certainly, which reflects much honour on the talents of the author, and still more on the boundless extent of his learn- ing ; 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 me- taphysicians. Of its faults (beside the general disposition of the author to discuss questions placed altogether beyond the reach of our facul- ties), the most prominent is the wild hypothesis of a plastic nature ; or, in other words, " of a vital and spiritual, but unintelligent and neces- sary agent, created by the Deity for the execu- other thoughts laid open before it, and variety of knowledge, logical, mathematical, and moral, displayed ; but also clearly read the divine wisdom and goodness in every page of this great volume, as it were written in large and legible characters." I do not pretend to be an adept in the philosophy of Kant ; but I certainly think I pay it a very high compliment, 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 ipie intelkctus." 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. K) avros & (nut) votlTt; iffnv, ulvvrto ge.tvft yaf, *v Aau Xtyav, iTiTU%ri rut doZuv, it,; iueiiai xara ftigns 'i^ovfft. *H ftlv yo,^ yvufti)) uffvcg L'jtjTa/, x.u6'o\ou a^atfiKtfis trn' %ttig6tiu Afyo^tfo, %a*.irjrtftr ;, ori oiStv fadturign rmvoiroiaf. AlUST. Rhet. Lib. il. C. The whole chapter is interesting and instructive, and shows how profoundly Aristotle had meditated the principles of the rhetorical art. DISSERTATION FIRST. 55 taking them for the serious and profound genera- lisations of science. As for La Rochefoucauld, we know, from the best authorities, that, in pri- vate 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 ne- ver 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 speci- mens 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 wo- men. 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 in- different. Every one studied to advance him- self by pleasing, serving, or ruining others. Idle- ness 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 Rochefou- cauld'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 Taller, expresses his in- dignation at this general bias among the French writers of his age. " It is impossible," he ob- serves, " 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." 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 others 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 malig- nant influence on French literature, as early as the time of La Rochefoucauld, and even of Mon- taigne ; 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 for- tifying them by the aid of those logical princi- ples, 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 revolu- tionists have entailed such merited disgrace, it is usual to remount no higher than to the profli- gate period of the Regency ; but the seeds of its most exceptionable doctrines had been sown in that country at an earlier era, and were indebt- ed for the luxuriancy of their harvest, much more to the political and religious soil where they struck their roots, than to the skill or fore- sight 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- culative students. Neither of them can be said to have enriched the stock of human knowledge by the addition of any one important general 1 Taller, No. 103. The last paper of the Tatkr was published in 1711 ; and, consequently, the above passage must be understood as referring to the modiih tone of French philosophy prior to the death of Louis XIV. 56 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. conclusion ; but the maxims of both have ope- rated 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 appendage of lo- gical 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 metaphysi- cal speculation. It is time, however, now to turn our attention to a subject far more inti- mately connected with the general progress of human reason, the philosophy of Descartes. DESCARTES GASSENDI MALEBRAN CHE. According to a late writer, 1 whose literary decisions (excepting where he touches on reli- gion or politics) are justly entitled to the high- est deference, Descartes has a better claim than any other individual, to be regarded as the fa- ther of that spirit of free inquiry, which in mo- dern Europe has so remarkably displayed itself in all the various departments of knowledge. Of Bacon, he observes, " that though he pos- sessed, 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 ex- emplify, had little or no eifect in accelerating the rate of discovery." As for Galileo, he re- marks, on the other hand, " that his exclu- sive taste for mathematical and physical re- searches, 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 cha- racteristical 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 te- merity 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 call- ed upon men to throw off the yoke of authority, acknowledging no influence but what reason should avow : And his call was obeyed bv a multitude of followers, encouraged by the bold- ness, and fascinated by the enthusiasm of their leader." In these observations, the ingenious author has rashly generalised 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;" not that it necessarily follows from this, that, even in France, no previous eifect 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 me- rits, Condorcet seems to have had no idea. His eulogy, therefore, is rather misplaced than ex- cessive. 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 num- 1 Condorcet. 2 One reason for this is well pointed out by D'Alembert. " II n'y a que les chefs de secte en tout genre, dont les ouvrages puissent avoir un certain e'clat ; Bacon n'a pas e'te' du nombre, et la forme de sa philosophic s'y opposoit : eUe e"toit trop sage pour elonner personne." Disc- Prel. DISSERTATION FIRST. 57 ber or importance of the facts which he has re- marked concerning our intellectual powers, to various other writers of an earlier date. I al- lude merely to his clear and precise conception of that operation of the understanding (distin- guished afterwards in Locke's Essay by the name of Reflection}, through the medium of which all our knowledge of Mind is exclusively to be ob- tained. Of the essential subserviency of this power to every satisfactory conclusion that can be formed with respect to the mental phenome- na, and of the futility of every theory which woul'd attempt to explain them by metaphors "borrowed from the material world, no other phi- losopher prior to Locke seems to have been ful- ly aware ; and from the moment that these truths were recognised 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 Ma- terialists of the last century, that Descartes was the first Metaphysician by whom the pure im- materiality of the human soul was taught ; and that the ancient philosophers, as well as the schoolmen, went no farther than to consider mind as the result of a material organisation, in which the constituent elements approached to evanescence in point of subtlety. Both of these propositions I conceive to be totally un- founded. 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 materialise its essence, but merely from want of more unexceptionable lan- guage, might be shown with demonstrative evi- dence, if this were the proper place for entering into the discussion. But what is of more im- portance to be attended to, on the present oc- casion, is the effect of .Descartes' writings in dis- entangling the logical principle above mentioned, from the scholastic question about the nature of mind, as contradistinguished from matter. It DISS. I. PART 1. were indeed to be wished, that he had perceiv- ed still more clearly and steadily the essential importance of keeping this distinction constant- ly in view ; but he had at least the merit of il- lustrating, by his own example, in a far greater degree than any of his predecessors, the possi- bility of studying the mental phenomena, with- out reference to any facts but those which rest on the evidence of consciousness. The meta- physical question about the nature of mind he seems to have considered as a problem, the so- lution 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 oc- curred in the case of Mr Locke, who, although he has been at great pains to show, 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 un- guarded 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 ne- cessity of abstracting from the analogy of mat- ter, 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 sub- ject 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 shown to have no quality in common with Matter, its dissolution was physically impossible ; the other, that if this assumption could be dis- proved, it would necessarily follow, that the whole man must perish at death. For the last of these opinions Dr Priestley and many other specula- tive theologians have of late very zealously con- tended; flattering themselves, no doubt, with H 58 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. 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 comparion of the course of human affairs with the moral judg- ments 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 in- definite improvement of which our intellectual powers seem to be susceptible, this acute but superficial writer attached himself exclusively to the old and hackneyed pneumatological argu- ment ; 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 logi- cal consequence of its immateriality ; instead of considering it as depending on the will of that Being by whom it was at first called into exist- ence ? And, on the other hand, is it not uni- versally 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 im- materiality of mind, is not to establish any posi- tive conclusion as to its destiny hereafter ; but to repel the reasonings alleged by materialists, as proofs that its annihilation must be the ob- vious 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 ne- cessary dependence on his metaphysical opinion concerning its being and properties, as a separate substance.* Between these two parts of his system, however, there is, if not a demonstrative connection, at least a natural and manifest af- finity ; 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 me- taphysical conclusion. It is to be regretted, that, in stating this conclusion, his commentators should so frequently make use of the word spiri- tuality; 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 dogmati- cally assumes. 5 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 in- dividuals, it never unfolds itself in any consider- able 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 1 " We shall here be content," says the learned John Smith of Cambridge, " with that sober thesis of Plato, in his Timceus, who attributes the perpetuation of all substances to the benignity and liberality of the Creator ; whom he there- fore brings in thus speaking, upt*; 'urn afanKroi otil ciXvroi, x. 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 uni- versal than it is, if he had not added to the depth, comprehension, and soundness of his judgment, so rich a variety of those more pleas- ing and attractive qualities, which are common- ly 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 Spectator, No. 381 and 387. DISSERTATION FIRST. 83 metaphysicians, had they been less beautifully and happily written. The characteristical ex- cellence, however, of the Archbishop of Cam- bray is, that moral wisdom, which (as Shaftes- bury 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 specu- lative errors. The Adventures of Tetemachys, when consider- ed as a production of the seventeenth centuiy, 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 mo- rals 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 trite ; for the case is the same with all the truths most essential to human happiness. The importance of agricul- ture and of religious toleration to the prosperity of states ; the criminal impolicy of thwarting the kind arrangements of Providence, by re- straints upon commerce ; and the duty of legis- lators to study the laws of the moral world as the groundwork and standard of their own, ap- pear, 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 every- where 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 es- tablished at Ithaca?" " By the same means," said Narbal, " that have established it here. Receive all strangers with readiness and hospi- tality ; let them find convenience and liberty in your ports; and be careful never to disgust them by avarice or pride : above all, never re- strain 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 neces- sarily 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 di- vert 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 ad- vice 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 every thing 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 ap- pear 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 govern- ment as, under the freest constitutions, have ever been offered by a subject to a sovereign. Where the variety of excellence renders selec- tion so difficult, I must not venture upon any extracts; nor, indeed, would I willingly injure the effect of the whole by quoting detached pas- sages. 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 a changer de religion. 1 HAWKESWORTH'S Translation. 84 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Nulle puissance humaine ne peut forcer le re- tranchement impenetrable de la liberte du cceur. La force ne peut jamais persuader les hommes ; elle ne fait que des hypocrites. Quand les rois se melent de religion, au lieu de la proteger, ils la mettent en servitude. Accordez a tous la to- lerance civile, non en approuvant tout comme indifferent, mais en souffrant avec patience tout ce que Dieu souffre, et en tachant 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 Jire ; and we scent the morning air of the coming day. This era I propose to date from the pub- lications of Locke and of Leibnitz : but the re- marks which I have to offer on their writings, and on those of their most distinguished suc- cessors, 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. l SECTION III. 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 cen- tury, 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 ques- tions connected with the science of mind (a phrase which I here use in its largest acceptation), au- thority continued to be everywhere mistaken for argument; nor can a single work be named, bearing, in its character, the most distant resem- blance to the Organon of Bacon ; to the Medita- tions 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 lan- guishing in poverty at Prague ; the latter op- pressed with blindness, and with ecclesiastical persecution, at Florence: but their pursuits were of a nature altogether foreign to our pre- sent 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, Ger- many, 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. Not- withstanding 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 lite- rature. 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 1 I have classed Telemaque and the Direction pour la Conscience ffun Roi with the philosophy of the seventeenth century, although the publication of the former was not permitted till after the death of Louis XIV. nor that of the latter till 1748. The tardy appearance of both only shows how far the author had shot a-head of the orthodox religion and politics of his times. DISSERTATION FIRST. 85 I shall endeavour to show in the Second Part of this Discourse), that we are chiefly indebted for the modern science of Political Economy. l 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, Gro- tius has aimed at a complete system of Natural Law. Condillac says, that he chose the title, in order to excite a more general curiosity ; add- ing (and, I believe, very justly), that many of the most prominent defects of his works 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 con- stantly labours to support his conclusions by the authority of others; producing, on many oc- casions, in support of the most obvious and in- disputable propositions, a long string of quota- tions from the Mosaic law; from the Gospels; from the Fathers of the Church ; from the Ca- suists ; 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 applica- tion of the author's reading to the affairs of hu- man life, drew the attention of such men as Gustavus Adolphus ; of his Prime Minister, the Chancellor Oxenstiern; and of the Elector Pa- latine, Charles Lewis. The last of these was so struck with it, that he founded at Heidelberg a Professorship for the express purpose of teach- ing 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 Gro- tius, as a manual or institute for students, not- withstanding 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 in altering their ar- rangements, are innumerable : but notwithstand- ing 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 ad- vances one single step ; but, notwithstanding its recent birth, seems already sunk into a state of dotage.* In perusing the systems now referred to, it is impossible not to feel a very painful dissatisfac- tion, from the difficulty of ascertaining the pre- cise object aimed at by the authors. So vague 1 From a letter of Grotius, quoted by Gassendi, we learn, that the treatise De Jure Belli et Pact*, was undertaken at the request of his learned friend Peireskius. " Non otior, sed in illo de jure gentium opere 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. 3 I have borrowed, in this last paragraph, some expressions from Lampredi. " Grotii et Puffendorfii interpretes, viri quidem diligentissimi, sed qui vix fructum aliquem tot commentariis, adnotationibus, compendiis, tabulis, caeterisque ejus- niodi aridissimis laboribus attulerunt : perpetuo circulo eadem res circumagitur, quid uterque senserit quseritur, interdum etiam utriusque sententise obscurantur ; disciplina nostra tamen ne latum quidem unguem progreditur, et dum aliorum sententiae disquiruntur et explanantur, Rerum Natura quasi senio confecta squalescit, neglectaque jacet et inobservata omnino (Juris Publici Theoremata, p. 34.) PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. 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, suffi- ciently 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 disen- tangle and separate them from each other, at the risk perhaps of incurring, from some read- ers, the charge of prolixity. The most import- ant 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 posi- tive 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... /frfj To this speculation about the state of nature, Grotius was manifestly led by his laudable anxi- ety 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, be- fore 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 opposi- tion 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 ob- vious and trite 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 al- lowed 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 meta- physical question concerning the nature of the moral faculty, to an object merely of speculative curiosity. 1 To this faculty the ancients fre- quently 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 viola- tion of it. Nor does it speak," continues the same author, " one language at Rome and ano- ther at Athens, varying from place to place, or time to time ; but it addresses itself to all na- tions 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." 8 The habit of considering morality under the similitude of a law (a law engraved on the hu- man heart), led not unnaturally to an applica- tion to ethical subjects of the technical language and arrangements of the Roman jurisprudence, and this innovation was at once facilitated and 1 " Upon whatever we suppose that our moral faculties are founded, whether upon a certain modification of reason, upon an original instinct, called a moral sense, or upon some other principle of our nature, it cannot be doubted that they were given us for the direction of our conduct in this life. They carry along with them the most evident badges of this autho- rity, which denote that they were set up within us to be the supreme arbiters of all our actions, to superintend all our senses, passions, and appetites, and to judge how far each of them was either to be indulged or restrained. The rules, therefore, which they prescribe, are to be regarded as the commands and laws of the Deity, promulgated by those vicege- rents which he has set up within us." SMITH'S Tteory of Moral Sentiments, Part iii. chap, v.) See also Dr BUTLER'S very original and philosophical Discourses on Human Nature. 3 Frag. Lib. iii. de Rep. DISSERTATION FIRST. 87 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 pre- ceding 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 au- thors just mentioned. As, in the case of justice, there is always a right, on the one hand, corresponding to an obliga- tion 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 Juris- prudence (most of whom were lawyers by pro- fession) have in general chosen to adopt; al- though, 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 at- tempt towards a particular enumeration of the rules of justice. On the contrary, Cicero in his Offices, and Aristotle in his Ethics, treat of jus- tice 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 refer- red 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 excludes all that variety of cases concerning its alienation and transmission, and the mutual co- venants of parties, which the political union alone could create ; an order of things, indeed, which is virtually supposed in almost all the spe- culations about which the law of nature is com- monly employed. 2. It was probably in consequence of the very narrow field of study which Jurisprudence, con* sidered in this light, was found to open, that its province was gradually enlarged, so as to com- prehend, 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 defini- tions, 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 mo- ral 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 con- trived to exhibit, in the form of a system of rights, a connected view of the whole duty of man. This idea of Jurisprudence, which iden- tifies its object with that of Moral Philosophy, seems to coincide nearly with that of Puffen- dorff ; and some vague notion of the same sort Theory of Moral Sentimentt, Part vii. sect. iv. 88 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. has manifestly given birth to many of the di- gressions of Grotius. Whatever judgment may now he 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 favour- able. 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 igno- rant, that, within the recollection of ourselves and of our fathers, philosophy has advanced to a state of progressive improvement hitherto un- exampled ; in consequence partly of the rejection of scholastic absurdities, and partly of the ac- cession of new discoveries. Nor does this re- mark apply solely to Natural Philosophy, in which tne improvements accomplished by the united labours of the learned have forced them- selves on the notice even of the vulgar, by their palpable influence on the mechanical arts. The other branches of philosophy also have been pro- secuted during the last century with no less suc- cess ; and none of them in a more remarkable degree than the science of Morals. " This science, so much esteemed, and so as- siduously 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 individu- als ; 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 speculation in that seat of learning, which, not many years afterwards, was to give birth to the Theory of Moral Senti- ments, 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 civilised world, renders it unnecessary, in a Discourse destined to form part of a Scotish Encyclopedia, to offer any apology for attempting to trace, with some 1 The last sentence is thus expressed in the original. " Ex illo tempore, quasi classico dato, ab eruditissimis passim et politissimis viris excoli certatim coepit, utilissima hsec nobilissimaque doctrina." See the edition of Puffendorff, De Officio Hominit et Civis, by Professor Gerschom Carmichael of Glasgow, 1?24 ; an author whom Dr Hutchison pronounces to be " by far the best commentator on Puffendorff; and " whose notes," he adds, " are of much more value than the text." See his short Introduction to Moral Philosophy. Puffendorff's principal work, entitled De Jure Naturae 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 aequiores harum rerum arbitri, non aliam esse genuinam Mortrni Philosophiam, quam quae ex evidentibus principiis, in ipsa rerum natura fundatis, hominis atque civis omcia, in singulis vitse humanse circumstantiis debita, eruit ac demonstrat ; atque adeo Juris Naturalis scientiam, quantumvis diversam ab Ethica quae in scholis dudum obtinuerat, prae se ferret faciem, non esse, quod ad scopum et rem tractandam, vere aliam disciplinam, sed eandem rectius duntaxat et solidius tra- ditam, ita ut, ad quam prius male collineaverit, tandem reipsa 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 portage", dans les e*coles, entre Grotius et Puffendorff. Croyez-moi, lisez les Offices de Ciceron." From the contemptuous tone of these two writers, it should seem that the old systems of Natural Jurispru- dence 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 aca- demical 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. DISSERTATION FIRST. 89 minuteness, the train of thought by which an undertaking, so highly honourable to the lite- rary 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 tothepractice 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 di- versified (particularly in the work of Grotius) with beautiful quotations from the Greek and Roman classics, that they could not fail to pre- sent a striking contrast to the absurd and illibe- ral systems which they supplanted ; and per- haps 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 Pads possesses many charms to a classi- cal 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 pre- sents 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 DISS. I. PART. I. more and more on those ethical disquisitions by which they were suggested. Of these depart- ments, the one refers to the conduct of indivi- duals in those violent and critical moments when the bonds of political society are torn asunder ; the other, to the mutual relations of independ- ent 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 con- sideration, consists of a few very simple and obvious steps. As an individual who is a member of a politi- cal 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 sub- mit to those inconveniences which, in conse- quence of the imperfection of all human esta- blishments, 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 inde- pendent 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 Na- tions. By some writers we are told, that the M 90 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. 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 ver- bal. To this opinion, which is very confidently stated by Hobbes, l Puffendorff has given his sanction ; and in conformity to it, contents him- self 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 na- tions from that part of the science which treats of the duties of individuals ;* 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 recognised among individuals must be understood, when extended to political and un- connected bodies; but to exhibit a digest of those laws and usages, which, partly from con- siderations of utility, partly from accidental cir- cumstances, and partly from positive conven- tions, have gradually arisen among those states of Christendom, which, from their mutual con- nections, 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 abstract maxims of right and wrong, but to precedents, to established customs, and to the authority of the learned. The intimate alliance, however, thus establish- ed between the Law of Nature and the conven- tional 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 present- ed themselves to the minds of speculative states- men ; and, in the last result, have led, by easy: steps, to those liberal doctrines concerning com- mercial 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 hu- man happiness. 1 " Lex Naturalis dividi potest in naturalem hominum quse sola obtinuit dici Lex Naturae, et naturalem civitatum quae dici potest Lex Gentium, vulgo autem Jus Gentium appellatur. Prsecepta utriusque eadem sunt ; sed quia civitates semel institutes induunt proprietates hominum personales, lex quam loquentes de hominum singulorum officio naturalem dicimus, applicata totis civitatibus, nationibus, sive gentibus, vocatur Jus Gentium." De Give, cap. xiv. 4. In a late publication, from the title of which some attention to dates might have been expected, we are told, that " Hobbes*s book De Give appeared but a little time before the treatise of Grotius ;" whereas, in point of fact, Hobbes's book did not appear till twenty-two years after it. A few copies were indeed printed at Paris, and privately circulated by Hobbes, as early as 1642, but the book was not published till 1647- (See " An Inquiry into the Foundation and History of the Late of Nations in Europe" &c. by Robert Ward of the Inner Temple, Esq. London, 1795). This inaccuracy, however, is trifling, when compared with those committed in the same work, in stating the distinguishing doctrines of the two systems. As a writer on the Law of Nations, Hobbes is now altogether unworthy of notice. I shall therefore only remark 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 recognised 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 at- traction 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 civilised 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 Hobbism, than some of its partisans are aware of. 2 The credit of this improvement is ascribed by Vattel (one of the most esteemed writers on the subject), to the cele- brated German philosopher Wolfius, whose labours in this department of study he estimates very highly. (Questiont 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 : " Christian! Wolfii Jus Naturae 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." DISSERTATION FIRST. 91 3. Another idea of Natural Jurisprudence, essentially distinct from those hitherto mention- ed, remains to be considered. According to this, its object is to ascertain the general prin- ciples of justice which ought to be recognised 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 Jurispru- dence that Mr Smith has given his sanction in the conclusion of his Theory of Moral Senti- ments ; and this he seems to have conceived to have been likewise the idea of Grotius, in the treatise de Jure Belli et Pacts. " 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 ex- pected, 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 na- tion. Grotius seems to have been the first who attempted to give the world any thing 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 per- haps, 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 desul- tory 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 con- nection 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 legisla- tion, and to have diverted his attention from that philosophical idea of law, so well expressed by Cicero, " Non a prsetoris edicto, neque a duodecim tabulis, sed penitus ex intima philo- sophia, 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 distinc- tion between Natural and Municipal laws. In one of the paragraphs of his Prolegomena, he mentions it as a part of his general plan, to illus- trate the Roman code, and to systematise those parts of it which have their origin in the Law of Nature. " The task," says he, " of mould- ing it into the form of a system, has been pro- jected 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 1 " Of what stamp," says a most ingenious and original thinker, *' are the works of Grotius, PufFendorff, and Burla- maqui? Are they political or ethical, historical or juridical, expository or censorial? Sometimes one thmg, sometimes another: they seem hardly to have settled the matter with themselves." J&EHT HAM'S Introduction to the Principles of Mo- rals and Legitlation, p. 327- 92 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS, every attempt towards methodical arrangement, no less than the insulated facts which indi- vidual objects present to our external senses." This passage of Grotius has given great of- fence to two of the most eminent of his com- mentators, Henry and Samuel de Cocceii, who have laboured much to vindicate the Roman le- gislators 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 Juris- prudence 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 remarks on this subject, scattered over the following commentary, the reader will find ar- ranged in due order in my twelfth Preliminary Dissertation, the chief design of which is to sys- tematise the whole Roman Law, and to demon- strate its beautiful coincidence with the Law of Nature." In the execution of this design, Coc- ceii must, I think, be allowed to have contri- buted a very useful supplement to the jurispru- dential 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 unsatis- factory. 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 libe- ral and philosophical mind of Leibnitz ; an au- thor who has not only gone so far as to com- pare the civil law (considered as a monument of human genius) with the remains of the an- cient Greek geometry; but has strongly inti- mated his dissent from the opinions of those who have represented its principles as being fre- quently 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 no- thing which, in point of strength, subtlety, and depth, can be compared to the works of the Ro- man lawyers. And as it would be scarcely pos- sible, from mere intrinsic evidence, to distin- guish a demonstration of Euclid's from one of Archimedes or of Appollonius (the style of all of them appearing no less uniform than if rea- son herself were speaking through their organs), so also the Roman lawyers all resemble each other like twin-brothers ; inasmuch that, from the style alone of any particular opinion or ar- gument, hardly any conjecture could be formed about its author. Nor are the traces of a re- fined and deeply meditated system of Natural Ju- risprudence 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 conse- crated by technical forms, or in consequence of new statutes, or of ancient traditions, the con- clusions which the assumed hypothesis renders it necessary to incorporate with the eternal dic- tates of right reason, are deduced with the soundest logic, and with an ingenuity that ex- cites 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 ti- mid 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 spe- cifying the particular circumstances of the so- ciety 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 look- ed for within very narrow limits." He cer- tainly, however, carries this idea too far, when he asserts, that " to be susceptible of an uni- versal application, all that a book of the expo- sitory 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 con- DISSERTATION FIRST. 93 nected with law, as power, right, obligation, li- berty, to which are words pretty exactly cor- respondent in all languages." 1 His expres- sions, too, are somewhat unguarded, when he calls the Law of Nature " an ohscure phantom, which in the imaginations of those who go in chase of it, points sometimes to manners, some- times to laws, sometimes to what law is, some- times to what it ought to be." 2 Nothing, indeed, can be more exact and judicious than this de- scription, when restricted to the Law of Nature, as commonly treated of hy writers on Jurispru- dence , but if extended to the Law of Nature, as originally understood among ethical writers, it is impossible to assent to it, without abandon- ing 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 consider- ing 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 in- stitutions 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 groundwork 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 na- tions, 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 undoubt- edly 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 munici- pal regulations in this part of the world : and the study of this language, as well as of the other technical parts of Jurisprudence (so re- volting to the taste when considered as the ar- bitrary jargon of a philosophical theory), would possess sufficient attractions to excite the curio- sity, when considered as a necessary passport to a knowledge of that system which so long de- termined 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." 3 The same obser- vation may be applied (and for reasons strik- ingly 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 specula- tions 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 in- termediate writer, by whom the important con- siderations 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 an- ticipations, 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 Introduction to the Principles of Morali and Legislation, p. 323. * Ibid. p. 327- * Preface to his EngKih Grammar. 94 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. map, to connect its chains of hills and branches of rivers with some future survey of the con- tiguous wilderness. Yielding to such impres- sions, 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 Ju- ris to the Spirit of Laws. To have a just con- ception 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 any thing establish- ed 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 Juris- prudence, from the uninteresting and useless state in which we find it in Grotius and Puffen- dorff, to be one of the most agreeable and im- portant 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 in- clined to think he rather fell into it insensibly, in consequence of the occasional impulse of ac- cidental curiosity, than from any regular de- sign he had formed to himself when he began to collect materials for that celebrated perform- ance. He seems, indeed, to confess this in the following passage of his preface : " Often have I begun, and as often laid aside, this undertak- ing. 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 Juris- prudence with History and Philosophy, in such a manner as to render them all subservient to their mutual illustration. Some occasional dis- quisitions 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 pos- session 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 ; Prolem 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 jof 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 govern- ment, 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 sub- jects of every government, and the inhabitants of every climate; and, while he thus opened inexhaustible 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. 2 1 This, though somewhat ambiguously expressed, must, I think, have been the idea of D'Alembert in the following sen- tence ; " Dans cet ouvrage, M. de Montesquieu s'occupe moins des loix qu'on a faites, que de celles qu'on a du faire." (Eloge dc M. de Montesquieu.) According to the most obvious interpretation of his words, they convey a meaning which I conceive to be the very reverse of the truth. * As examples of Montesquieu's peculiar and characteristical style of thinking in The Spirit of Laws, may be mentioned his Observations on the Origin and Revolutions of the Roman Laws on Successions ; and what he has written on the History of the Civil Lotos in his own Country ,- above all, his Theory of the Feudal Laws among the Franks, considered in relation to the re- DISSERTATION FIRST. 95 This view of law, which unites History and Philosophy with Jurisprudence, has been follow- ed out with remarkable success by various au- thors since Montesquieu's time ; and for a con- siderable 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 so- ciety, in which governments and laws may be universally regarded as the gradual result of time and experience, of circumstances and emer- gencies. 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 hop- ing, 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 so- ciety, and put an end to every species of pa- triotic exertion. Montesquieu's own aim in his historical dis- quisitions, 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 lias well remarked, is, with many understand- ings, the only one that has any weight. * To men prepossessed with a blind veneration for the wisdom of antiquity, and strongly impressed with a conviction that every thing they see around them is the result of the legislative wis* dom of their ancestors, the very existence of a legal principle, or of an established custom, be- comes an argument in its favour ; and an argu- ment 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 ; * but with their systems we have no concern in the present sec- tion. 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 in- novation, by illustrating the reference which laws must necessarily have to the actual circum- stances 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 volutions of their monarchy. On many points connected with these researches, his conclusions have been since controverted ; but all his successors have agreed in acknowledging him as their common master and guide. 1 " If our ancestors have been all along under a mistake, how came they to have fallen into it ? is a question that naturally occurs upon all such occasions. The case is, that, in matters of law more especially, such is the dominion of authority over our minds, and such the prejudice it creates in favour of whatever institution it has taken under its wing, that, after all manner of reasons that can be thought of in favour of the institution have been shewn to be insufficient, we still can- not forbear looking to some unassignable and latent reason for its efficient cause. But if, instead of any such reason, we can find a cause for it in some notion, of the erroneousness of which we are already satisfied, then at last we are content to give it up without farther struggle ; and then, and not till then, our satisfaction is complete." Defence of Usury, pp. 94, 95. 2 Above all, by Mr Smith; who, in his Wealth of Nations, has judiciously and skilfully combined with the investigation of general principles, the most luminous sketches of theoretical history relative to that form of political society which has given birth to so many of the institutions and customs peculiar to modern Europe " The strong ray of philosophic light on this interesting subject," which, according to Gibbon, " broke from Scotland in our times," was but a reflection, though with a far steadier and more concentrated force, from the scattered but brilliant sparks kindled by the genius of Montesquieu. I shall afterwards have occasion to take notice of the mighty influence which his writings have had on the subsequent history of Scottish literature. 96 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. which, in every page, the work afforded, of the absurdity of all schemes of Universal Legisla- tion; 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, pro- bably, as in numberless other instances, con- ceiving it to be less expedient to attack esta- blished 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, constitu- ted the whole of philosophy, both ethical and political, of the largest portion of civilised Eu- rope. With respect to Germany, in particu- lar, it appears from the Count de Hertzberg, that this science continued to maintain its un- disputed 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 hope- less. 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 troubje 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 un- worthy 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 en- largement 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 Cer- vantes is directed. Many other follies and ab- surdities 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 stateli- ness 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 1 " La connoissance des e'tats qu'on se plait aujourd'hui d'appeller Statistigue, est une de ces sciences qui sont devenues a la mode, et qui ont pris une vogue ge'ne'rale depuis quelques anne'es ; elle a presque de'posse'de' celle du Droit Public, qui regnoit au commencement et jusques vers le milieu du siecle present." Reflexiont sur la Force des Etats. Par M. le Comte de Hertzberg. Berlin, 1782. 2 " Lord Bolingbroke told Mr Spence, as he informs us in his Anecdotes, that Dryden assured him, he was more in- debted to the Spanish critics, than to the writers of any other nation." (MALONE, in a Note on Dryderi's Etsqy on Dramatic Poesy. The same anecdote is told, though with a considerable difference in the circumstances, by Warton, in his Essay on the writings of Pope. " Lord Bolingbroke assured Pope, that Dryden often declared to him, that he got more from the Spanish critics, than from the Italian, French, and all other critics put together." I suspect that there is some mistake in this story. A Spanish gentleman, equally well acquainted with the literature of his own country and with that of England, assures me, that he cannot recollect a single Spanish critic from whom Dryden can reasonably be supposed to have derived any important lights. DISSERTATION FIRST. 97 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 Tor- ricelli, Borelli, Cassini, and others ; and in pure Geometry, Viviani rose to the very first emi- nence, 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 main- taining her principles, not to raise every ima- ginable 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 transla- tions of the Holy Scriptures. Meanwhile, this tribunal, though always ready to condemn ju- dicious authors upon frivolous suspicions of heresy, approved those seditious and fanatical theologists, whose writings tended to the en- couragement of regicide, and the destruction of government. The approbation and censure of books (it is justly added) deserves 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 him- self, while still a very young man, by a display of those talents which were afterwards to con- tend 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 Phi- losopher, to another. In this, and other analogous distributions of my materials, as well as in the order I have fol- lowed in the arrangement of particular facts, it may be proper, once for all, to observe, that much must necessarily be left to the discretion- ary, though not to the arbitrary decision of the author's judgment ; that the dates which sepa- rate 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 in- disputable 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 unfre- quently 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 fallit ; 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 anticipat- ing, and attempting to obviate, the criticisms to which they may be liable. Nor will I dissem- ble 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 John- son, that " I dismiss my work with frigid in- difference, and that to me success and miscar- riage are empty sounds." My feelings are more in unison with those expressed by the same writer in the conclusion of the admirable pre- face to his edition of Shakspeare. One of his reflections, more particularly, falls in so com- pletely 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 tyran- nical. It is hard to satisfy those who know not what to demand, or those who demand by de- sign what they think impossible to be done." DISS. I. PART. I. DISSERTATION FIRST. PART SECOND. IN the farther prosecution of the plan of which I traced the outline in the Preface to the First Part of this Dissertation, I find it neces- sary to depart considerably from the arrange- ment which I adopted in treating of the Phi- losophy of the seventeenth century. During that period, the literary intercourse between the different nations of Europe was comparatively so slight, that it seemed advisable to consider, separately and successively, the progress of the mind in England, in France, and in Germany. But from the era at which we are now arrived, t/ie Republic of Letters may be justly understood to comprehend, not only these and other coun- tries in their neighbourhood, but every region of the civilised earth. Disregarding, according- ly, all diversities of language and of geographi- cal situation, I shall direct my attention to the intellectual progress of the species in general ; enlarging, however, chiefly on the Philosophy of those parts of Europe, from whence the rays of science have, in modern times, diverged to the other quarters of the globe. I propose also, in consequence of the thickening crowd of useful authors, keeping pace in their numbers with the diffusion of knowledge and of liberality, to allot separate discourses to the history of Metaphysics, of Ethics, and of Politics ; a distribution which, while it promises a more distinct and connected view of these different subjects, will furnish con- venient resting-places, both to the writer and to the reader, and can scarcely fail to place, in a stronger and more concentrated light, what- ever general conclusions may occur in the course of this survey. The foregoing considerations, combined with the narrow limits assigned to the sequel of my work, will sufficiently account for the contract- ed scale of some of the following sketches, when compared with the magnitude of the questions to which they relate, and the peculiar interest which they derive from their immediate influ- ence on the opinions of our own times. In the case of Locke and Leibnitz, with whom the metaphysical history of the eighteenth cen- tury opens, I mean to allow myself a greater de- gree of latitude. The rank which I have as- signed to both in my general plan seems to re- quire, of course, a more ample space for their leading doctrines, as well as for those of some of their contemporaries and immediate succes- sors, than I can spare for metaphysical systems of a more modern date ; and as the rudiments of the most important of these are to be found in the speculations either of one or of the other, I shall endeavour, by connecting with my re- view of their works, those longer and more ab- stract discussions which are necessary for the illustration of fundamental principles, to avoid, as far as possible, in the remaining part of my discourse, any tedious digressions into the thorny paths of scholastic controversy. The critical remarks, accordingly, which I am now to offer on their philosophical writings, will, I trust, 100 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. enable me to execute the very slight sketches which are to follow, in a manner at once more easy to myself, and more satisfactory to the bulk of my readers. But what I have chiefly in view in these pre- liminary observations, is to correct certain mis- apprehensions concerning the opinions of Locke and of Leibnitz, which have misled (with very few exceptions) all the later historians who have treated of the literature of the eighteenth century. I have felt a more particular solici- tude to vindicate the fame of Locke, not only against the censures of his opponents, but against the mistaken comments and eulogies of his ad- mirers, both in England and on the Continent. Appeals to his authority are so frequent in the reasonings of all who have since canvassed the same subjects, that, without a precise idea of his distinguishing tenets, it is impossible to form a just estimate, either of the merits or demerits of his successors. In order to assist my readers in this previous study, I shall endeavour, as far as I can, to make Locke his own commentator ; earnestly entreating them, before they proceed to the sequel of this dissertation, to collate care- fully those scattered extracts from his works, which, in the following section, they will find brought into contact with each other, with a view to their mutual illustration. . My own con- viction, I confess, is, that the Essay on Human Understanding has been much more generally applauded than read ; and if I could only flatter myself with the hope of drawing the atten- tion of the public from the glosses of commen- tators to the author's text, I should think that I had made a considerable step towards the correction of some radical and prevailing errors, which the supposed sanction of his name has hitherto sheltered from a free exami- nation. PROGRESS OF METAPHYSICS DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. * uF SECTION I. Historical and Critical Review of the Philosophical Works of Locke and Leibnitz. LOCKE. BEFORE entering on the subject of this sec- tion, it is proper to premise, that, although my design is to treat separately of Metaphysics, Ethics, and Politics, it will be impossible to keep these sciences wholly unmixed in the course of my reflections. They all run into each other by insensible gradations ; and they have all been happily united in the comprehensive speculations of some of the most distinguished writers of the eighteenth century. The connection between Metaphysics and Ethics is more peculiarly close ; the theory of Morals having furnished, ever since the time of Cudworth, several of the most abstruse questions which have been agitated concerning the general principles, both intel- lectual and active, of the human frame. The inseparable affinity, however, between the dif- ferent branches of the Philosophy of the Mind, does not afford any argument against the arrange- ment which I have adopted. It only shows, that it cannot, in every instance, be rigorously adhered to. It shall be my aim to deviate from it as seldom, and as slightly, as the miscellaneous nature of my materials will permit. JOHN LOCKE, from the publication' of whose Essay on Human Understanding a new era is to be dated in the History of Philosophy, was born at Wrington in Somersetshire, in 1632. Of DISSERTATION FIRST. -.101 his father nothing remarkable is recorded, but that he was a captain in the Parliament's army during the civil wars ; a circumstance which, it may be presumed from the son's political opi- nions, would not be regarded by him as a stain on the memory of his parent. In the earlier part of Mr Locke's life, he pro- secuted for some years, with great ardour, the study of medicine ; an art, however, which he never actually exercised as a profession. Ac- cording to his friend Le Clerc, the delicacy of his constitution rendered this impossible. But, that his proficiency in the study was not in- considerable, we have good evidence in the de- dication prefixed to Dr Sydenham's Observations cm the History and Cure of Acute Diseases ;* where he boasts of the approbation bestowed on his METHOD by Mr John Locke, who (to borrow Sydenham's own words) " examined it to the bottom ; and who, if we consider his genius and penetrating and exact judgment, has scarce any superior, and few equals, now living." The merit of this METHOD, therefore, which still continues to be regarded as a model by the most competent judges, may be presumed to have be- longed in part to Mr Locke, 8 a circumstance which deserves to be noticed, as an additional confirmation of what Bacon has so sagaciously taught, concerning the dependence of all the sciences relating to the phenomena, either of Matter or of Mind, on principles and rules de- rived from the resources of a higher philosophy. On the other hand, no science could have been chosen, more happily calculated than Medicine, to prepare such a mind as that of Locke for the prosecution of those speculations which have immortalised his name ; the complicated, and fugitive, and often equivocal phenomena of dis- ease, requiring in the observer a far greater portion of discriminating sagacity, than those of Physics, strictly so called; resembling, in this respect, much more nearly, the phenomena about which Metaphysics, Ethics, and Politics, are conversant. I have said, that the study of Medicine forms one of the best preparations for the study of Mind, to suck an understanding as Locke's. To an understanding less comprehensive, and less cultivated by a liberal education, the effect of this study is likely to be similar to what we may trace in the works of Hartley, Darwin, and Cabanis ; to all of whom we may more or less apply the sarcasm of Cicero on Aristoxenus, the Musician, who attempted to explain the nature of the soul by comparing it to a Harmony ; Hie AB ARTIFICIO SUO NON RECESSIT. 5 In Locke's Essay, not a single passage occurs, savouring of the Anatomical Theatre, or of the Chemical Laboratory. In 1666, Mr Locke, then in his thirty-fifth year, formed an intimate acquaintance with Lord Ashley, afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury; from which period a complete change took place, both in the direction of his studies, and in his habits of life. His attention appears to have been then turned, for the first time, to political subjects; and his place of residence transferred from the university to the metropolis. From London (a scene which gave him access to a society very different from what he had previously lived in)* he occasionally passed over to the Continent, where he had an opportunity of profiting by the conversation of some of the most distinguished persons of his age. In the course of his fo- reign excursions, he visited France, Germany, and Holland ; but the last of these countries seems to have been his favourite place of resi- dence ; the blessings which the people there en- joyed, under a government peculiarly favourable to civil and religious liberty, amply compensat- 1 Published in the year 1676. 2 It is remarked of Sydenham, by the late Dr John Gregory, " That though full of hypothetical reasoning, it had not the usual effect of making him less attentive to observation ; and that his hypotheses seem to have sat so loosely about him, that either they did not influence his practice at all, or he could easily abandon them, whenever they would not bend to his experience." This is precisely the idea of Locke concerning the true use of hypotheses. " Hypotheses, if they are well made, are at least great helps to the memory, and often direct us to new discoveries." LOCKE'S Worlcs, Vol. III. p. 81. See also some remarks on the same subject in one of his letters to Mr Molyneux. (The edition of Locke to which I uniformly refer, is that printed at London in 1812, in Ten Volumes 8vo.) 3 Tusc. QuEest. Lib. 1. * Villiers Duke of Buckingham, and the Lord Halifax, are particularly mentioned among those who were delighted with his conversation. PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. ing, in his view, for what their uninviting ter- ritory wanted in point of scenery and of climate. In this respect, the coincidence between the taste of Locke and that of Descartes throws a pleasing light on the characters of both. The plan of the Essay on Human Understanding is said to have been formed as early as 1670; but the various employments and avocations of the Author prevented him from finishing it till 1687, when he fortunately availed himself of the leisure which his exile in Holland afforded him, to complete his long meditated design. He re- turned to England soon after the Revolution, and published the first edition of his work in 1690 ; the busy and diversified scenes through which he had passed during its progress, having probably contributed, not less than the acade- mical retirement in which he had spent his youth, to enhance its peculiar and characte- ristical merits. Of the circumstances which gave occasion to this great and memorable undertaking, the fol- lowing interesting account is given in the Pre- fatory Epistle to the Reader. " Five or six friends, meeting at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject very remote from this, found them- selves quickly at a stand, by the difficulties that rose on every side. After we had a while puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course, and that, before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to ex- amine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with. This I proposed to the company, who all readily assented, and thereupon it was agreed, that this should be our first inquiry. Some hasty and undigested thoughts on a sub- ject I had never before considered, which I set down against our next meeting, gave the first entrance into this discourse, which having been thus begun by chance, was continued by en- treaty ; written by incoherent parcels, and, after long intervals of neglect, resumed again as my humour .or occasions permitted ; and at last in retirement, where an attendance on my health gave me leisure, it was brought into that order thou now seest it." Mr Locke afterwards informs us, that " when he first put pen to paper, he thought all he should have to say on this matter would have been contained in one sheet, but that the far- ther he went the larger prospect he had ; new discoveries still leading him on, till his book grew insensibly to the bulk it now appears in." On comparing the Essay on Human Under- standing with the foregoing account of its origin and progress, it is curious to observe, that it is the fourth and last book alone which bears di- rectly on the author's principal object. In this book, it is further remarkable, that there are few, if any references to the preceding parts of the Essay; insomuch that it might have been published separately, without being less intel- ligible than it is. Hence, it seems not unreason- able to conjecture, that it was the first part of the work in the order of composition, and that it contains those leading and fundamental thoughts which offered themselves to the au- thor's mind, when he first began to reflect on the friendly conversation which gave rise to his philosophical researches. The inquiries in the first and second books, which are of a much more abstract, as well as scholastic nature, than the sequel of the work, probably opened gradu- ally on the author's mind in proportion as he studied his subject with a closer and more con- tinued attention. They relate chiefly to the origin and to the technical classification of our ideas, frequently branching out into collateral^ and sometimes into digressive discussions, with- out much regard to method or connection. The third book (by far the most important of the whole), where the nature, the use, and the abuse of language are so clearly and happily illustrated, seems, from Locke's own account, to have been a sort of after-thought; and the two excellent chapters on the Association of Ideas and on En- thusiasm (the former of which has contributed, as much as any thing else in Locke's writings, to the subsequent progress of Metaphysical Phi- losophy, were printed, for the first time, in the fourth edition of the Essay. I would not be understood, by these remarks, to undervalue the two first books. All that I have said amounts to this, that the subjects which they treat of are seldom susceptible of any prac- DISSERTATION FIRST. 103 tical application to the conduct of the under- standing ; and that the author has adopted a new phraseology of his own, where, in some in- stances, he might have much more clearly con- veyed his meaning without any departure from the ordinary forms of speech. But although these considerations render the two first books inferior in point of general utility to the two last, they do not materially detract from their merit, as a precious accession to the theory of the Human Mind. On the contrary, 1 do not hesitate to consider them as the richest con- tribution of well-observed and well-described facts, which was ever bequeathed to this branch of science by a single individual, and as the indisputable, though not always acknowledged, source of some of the most refined conclusions, with respect to the intellectual phenomena, which have been since brought to light by succeeding inquirers. After the details given by Locke himself, of the circumstances in which his Essay was be- gun and completed ; more especially, after what he has stated of the " discontinued way of writ- ing," imposed on him by the avocations of a busy and unsettled life, it cannot be thought surprising, that so very little of method should appear in the disposition of his materials ; or that the opinions which, on different occasions, he has pronounced on the same subject, should not always seem perfectly steady and consistent. In these last cases, however, I am inclined to think that the inconsistencies, if duly reflected on, would be found rather apparent than real. It is but seldom that a writer possessed of the powerful and upright mind of Locke, can rea- sonably be suspected of stating propositions in direct contradiction to each other. The pre- sumption is, that, in each of these propositions, there is a mixture of truth, and that the error lies chiefly in the unqualified manner in which the truth is stated ; proper allowances not being made, during the fervour of composition, for the partial survey taken of the objects from a particular point of view. Perhaps it would not be going too far to assert, that most of the seem- ing contradictions which occur in authors ani- mated with a sincere love of truth, might be fairly accounted for by the different aspects which the same object presented to them upon different occasions. In reading such authors, accordingly, when we meet with discordant ex- pressions, instead of indulging ourselves in the captiousness of verbal criticism, it would better become us carefully and candidly to collate the questionable passages ; and to study so to re- concile them by judicious modifications and cor- rections, as to render the oversights and mis- takes of our illustrious guides subservient to the precision and soundness of our own conclusions. In the case of Locke, it must be owned, that this is not always an easy task, as the limitations of some of his most exceptionable propositions are to be collected, not from the context, but from different and widely separated parts of his Essay. * In a work thus composed by snatches (to bor- row a phrase of the author's), it was not to be expected, that he should be able accurately to draw the line between his own ideas, and the hints for which he was indebted to others. To those who are well acquainted with his specula- tions, it must appear evident, that he had studied diligently the metaphysical writings both of Hobbes and of Gassendi ; and that he was no stranger to the Essays of Montaigne, to the phi- losophical works of Bacon, or to Malebranche's Inquiry after Truth. 2 That he was familiarly conversant with the Cartesian system may be presumed from what we are told by his bio- 1 That Locke himself was sensible that some of his expressions required explanation, and was anxious that his opi- nions should be judged of rather from the general tone and spirit of his work, than from detached and isolated proposi- tions, may be inferred from a passage in one of his notes, where he replies to the animadversions of one of his antagonists (the Reverend Mr Lowde), who had accused him of calling in question the immutability of moral distinctions, " "" But (says Locke) the good man does well, and as becomes his calling, to be watchful in such points, and to take the alarm, even at expressions which, standing alone by themselves, might sound ill, and be suspected." (LOCKE'S Works, Vol. II. p. 93. Note.) 8 Mr Addison has remarked, that Malebranche had the start of Locke, by several years, in his notions on the subject of Duration (Spectator, No. 94.) Some other coincidences, not less remarkable, might be easily pointed out in the opinions of the English and of the French philosopher. PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. grapher, that it was this which first inspired him with a disgust at the jargon of the schools, and led him into that train of thinking which he after- wards prosecuted so successfully. I do not, however, recollect that he has anywhere in his Essay mentioned the name of any one of these authors. 1 It is probable, that, when he sat down to write, he found the result of his youth- ful reading so completely identified with the fruits of his subsequent reflections, that it was impossible for him to attempt a separation of the one from the other ; and that he was thus occasionally led to mistake the treasures of me- mory for those of invention. That this was really the case, may be farther presumed from the peculiar and original cast of his phraseo- logy, which, though in general careless and un- polished, has always the merit of that charac- teristical' unity and radness of style, which de- monstrate, that, while he was writing, he con- ceived himself to be drawing only from his own resources. With respect to his style, it may be further ob- served, that it resembles that of a well educated and well informed man of the world, rather than of a recluse student who had made an object of the art of composition. It everywhere abounds with colloquial expressions, which he had pro- bably caught by the ear from those whom he considered as models of good conversation ; and hence, though it now seems somewhat antiqua- ted, and not altogether suited to the dignity of the subject, it may be presumed to have contri- buted its share towards his great object of turn- ing the thoughts of his contemporaries to logi- cal and metaphysical inquiries. The author of the Characteristics, who will not be accused of an undue partiality for Locke, acknowledges, in strong terms, the favourable reception which his book had met with among the higher classes. " I am not sorry, however," says Shaftesbury, to one of his correspondents, " that I lent you Locke's Essay, a book that may as well qualify men for business and the world, as for the sciences and a university. No one has done more to- wards the recalling of philosophy from barbarity, into use and practice of the world, and into the company of the better and politer sort, who might well be ashamed of it in its other dress* No one has opened a better and clearer way to reasoning." 8 In a passage of one of Warburton's letters to Hurd, which I had occasion to quote in the first part of this Dissertation, it is stated as a fact, that, " when Locke first published his Essay, he had neither followers nor admirers, and hardly a single approver." I cannot help suspecting very strongly the correctness of this assertion, not only from the flattering terms in which the Essay is mentioned by Shaftesbury in the foregoing quotation, and from the frequent allusions to its doctrines by Addison and other popular writers of the same period, but from the unexampled sale of the book, during the fourteen years which elapsed between its publication and Locke's death. Four editions were printed in the space of ten years, and three others must have ap- peared in the space of the next four ; a refer- ence being made to the sixth edition by the au- thor himself, in the epistle to the reader, prefix- ed to all the subsequent impressions. A copy of the thirteenth edition, printed as early as 1748, is now lying before me. So rapid and so extensive a circulation of a work, on a subject so little within the reach of common readers, is the best proof of the established popularity of the author's name, and of the respect generally entertained for his talents and his opinions. That the Essay on Human Understanding should have excited some alarm in the University of Oxford, was no more than the author had rea- son to expect from his boldness as a philosophi- cal reformer ; from his avowed zeal in the cause of liberty, both civil and religious; from the suspected orthodoxy of his Theological Creed ; and (it is but candid to add) from the apparent 1 The name of Hobbes occurs in Mr Locke's Reply to the Bishop of Worcester. See the Notes on his Essay, B. iv. c. 3. It is curious that he classes Hobbes and Spinoza together, as writers of the same stamp ; and that he disclaims any intimate acquaintance with the works of either. " I am not so well read in Holbes and Spinoza as to be able to say what were their opinions in this matter, but possibly there be those who will think your Lordship's authority of more use than those just- Jy decried names," &c. &c. * See Shaftesbury's First Letter to a Student at the University. . , DISSERTATION FIRST. 105 coincidence of his ethical doctrines with those of Hobbes. 1 It is more difficult to account for the long continuance, in that illustrious seat of learn- ing, of the prejudice against the logic of Locke (by far the most valuable part of his work), and of that partiality for the logic of Aristotle, of which Locke has so fully exposed the futility. In the University of Cambridge, on the other hand, the Essay on Human Understanding was, for many years, regarded with a reverence ap- proaching to idolatry ; and to the authority of some distinguished persons connected with that learned body may be traced (as will afterwards appear) the origin of the greater part of the ex- travagancies which, towards the close of the last century, were grafted on Locke's errors, by the disciples of Hartley, of Law, of Priestley, of Tooke, and of Darwin. z To a person who now reads with attention and candour the work in question, it is much more easy to enter into the prejudices which at first opposed themselves to its complete success, than to conceive how it should so soon have acquired its just celebrity. Something, I suspect, must be ascribed to the political importance which Mr Locke had previously acquired as the champion of religious toleration ; as the great apostle of the Revolution ; and as the intrepid opposer of a tyranny which had been recently overthrown. In Scotland, where the liberal constitution of the universities has been always peculiarly fa- vourable to the diffusion of a free and eclectic spirit of inquiry, the philosophy of Locke seems very early to have struck its roots, deeply and permanently, into a kindly and congenial soil. Nor were the errors of this great man implicit- ly adopted from a blind reverence for his name. The works of Descartes still continued to be studied and admired ; and the combined systems of the English and the French metaphysicians served, in many respects, to correct what was faulty, and to supply what was deficient, in each. As to the ethical principles of Locke, where they appear to lean towards Hobbism, a powerful antidote against them was already prepared in the Treatise De Jure Belli et Pacis, which was then universally and deservedly re- garded in this country as the best introduction that had yet appeared to the study of moral science. If Scotland, at this period, produced no eminent authors in these branches of learn- ing, it was not from want of erudition or of ta- lents ; nor yet from the narrowness of mind in- cident to the inhabitants of remote and insula- ted regions; but from the almost insuperable difficulty of writing in a dialect, which imposed upon an author the double task of at once ac- quiring a new language, and of unlearning his own. 3 The success of Locke's Essay, in some parts of the Continent, was equally remarkable ; owing, no doubt, in the first instance, to the very accurate translation of it into the French language by Coste, and to the eagerness with which every thing proceeding from the author of the Letters on Toleration* may be presumed to 1 " It was proposed at a meeting of the heads of houses of the University of Oxford, to censure and discourage the reading of Locke's Essay ; and, after various debates among themselves, it was concluded, that each head of a house should endeavour to prevent its being read in his college, without coming to any public censure." (See Des Maizeaux's note on a letter from Locke to Collins LOCKE'S Works, Vol. X. p. 284. * I have taken notice, with due praise, in the former part of this discourse, of the metaphysical speculations of John Smith, Henry More, and Ralph Cudworth ; all of them members and ornaments of the University of Cambridge about the middle of the seventeeth century. They were deeply conversant in the Platonic Philosophy, and applied it with great success in combating the Materialists and Necessitarians of their times. They carried, indeed, some of their Platonic no- tions to an excess bordering on mysticism, and may, perhaps, have contributed to give a bias to some of their academical successors towards the opposite extreme. A very pleasing and interesting account of the characters of these amiable and ingenious men, and of the spirit of their philosophy, is given by Burnet in the History of his Own Times. To the credit of Smith and of More it may be added, that they were among the first in England to perceive and to acknowledge the merits of the Cartesian Metaphysics. 3 Note S. * The principle of religious toleration was at that time very imperfectly admitted, even by those philosophers who were the most zealously attached to the cause of civil liberty. The great Scottish lawyer and statesman, Lord Stair, himself no mean philosopher, and, like Locke, a warm partizan of the Revolution, seems evidently to have regretted the impunity which Spinoza had experienced in Holland, and Hobbes in England. " Execrabilis ille Atheus Spinosa adeo impudens est, ut affirmet omnia esse absolute necessaria, et nihil quod est, fuit, aut erit, aliter fieri potuisse, in quo omnes superiores Atheos excessit, aperte negans omnem Deitatem, nihilque praeter potentias naturae agnoscens. " Vaninus Deitatem non aperte negavit, sed causam illius prodidit, in tractatu quern edidit, argumenta pro Dei existen- tia tanquarn futilia et vana rejiciens, adferendo contrarias omnes rationes per modum objectionum, easque prosequendo ut DISS. I. PART II. O 106 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. have been read by the multitude of learned and to as the great oracle in every branch of learn- enlightened refugees, whom the revocation of ing and of science. If I am not mistaken, it the edict of Nantz forced to seek an asylum in was in Switzerland, where (as Gibbon observes) Protestant countries. In Holland, where Locke " the intermixture of sects had rendered the was personally known to the most distinguish- clergy acute and learned on controversial topics," ed characters, both literary and political, his that Locke's real merits were first appreciated work was read and praised by a discerning few, on the Continent with a discriminating impartia- with all the partiality of friendship ; 1 but it does lity. In Crousaz's Treatise of Logic (a book not seem to have made its way into the schools which, if not distinguished by originality of ge- till a period considerably later. The doctrines nius, is at least strongly marked with the sound of Descartes, at first so vehemently opposed in and unprejudiced judgment of the author), we that country, were now so completely triumph- everywhere trace the influence of Locke's doc- ant, both among philosophers and divines, B that trines ; and, at the same time, the effects of the it was difficult for a new reformer to obtain a Cartesian Metaphysics, in limiting those hasty hearing. The case was very nearly similar in expressions of Locke, which have been so often Germany, where Leibnitz (who always speaks misinterpreted by his followers. 4 Nor do Crou- coldly of Locke's Essay) 5 was then looked up saz's academical labours appear to have been less indissolubiles videantur; postea tamen larvam exuit, et atheismum clare professus est, ET JUSTISSIME IN INCLYTA URBE THOLOSA DAMNATTJS EST ET CREMATUS. " Horrendus Hobbesius tertius erat atheism! promoter, qui omnia principia moralia et politica subvertit, eorumque loco naturalem vim et humana pacta, ut prima principia moralitatis, societatis, et politici regiminis substituit : NEC TA- MEN SPINOSA AUT HOBBIUS, QUAMVIS IN REGIONIBUS REFORMATIS VIXERINT ET MORTUI SINT, NEDUM EXEMPLA FACTI SUNT IN ATHEORUM TERROREM, UT NE VEL ULLAM P^ENAM SENSERINT." ( Physiol. NOVO, Expcrimentalis. Lugd. Batav. 16G6, pp. 16, 17.) 1 Among those whose society Locke chiefly cultivated while in Holland, was the celebrated Le Clerc, the author of the Sibliotheque Universelle, and the Sibliotheque Choisie, besides many other learned and ingenious publications. He appears to have been warmly attached to Locke, and embraced the fundamental doctrines of his Essay without any slavish deference for his authority. Though he fixed his residence at Amsterdam, where he taught Philosophy and the Belles Lettres, he was a native of Geneva, where he also received his academical education. He is, therefore, to be numbered with Locke's Swiss disciples. I shall have occasion to speak of him more at length afterwards, when I come to mention his controversy with Bayle. At present, I shall only observe, that his Eloge on Locke was published in the Bibliotheque Choisie (Anne"e 1 705,) Tom. VI. ; and that some important remarks on the Essay on Human Understanding, particularly on the chapter on Power, are to be found in the 12th Vol. of the same work (Anne'e 1707-) 2 Quamvis huic sectae (Cartesianse) initio acriter se opponerent Theologi et Philosophi Belga?, in Academiis tamen eorum hodie (1727,) vix alia, quam Cartesiana principia inculcantur. (HEINECCII Ekm. Hist. Philosoph.) In Gravesande's Jntroductio ad Philosophiam, published in 1736, the name of Locke is not once mentioned. It is probable that this last au- thor was partly influenced by his admiration for Leibnitz, whom he servilely followed even in his physical errors. 3 In Lockio sunt qusedam particularia non male exposita, sed in summa longe aberravit a janua, nee naturam mentis veritatisque intellexit (LEIBNITZ. Op. Tom. V. p. 355. ed. Dutens.) M. Locke avoit de la subtilite' et de 1'addresse, et quelque espece de metjiphysique superficielle qu'il savoit relever. (Ibid. pp. 11, 12.) Heineccius, a native of Saxony, in a Sketch of the History of Philosophy, printed in 1728, omits altogether the name of Locke in his enumeration of the logical and metaphysical writers of modern Europe. In a passage of his logic, where the same author treats of clear and obscure, adequate and inadequate ideas (a subject on which little or nothing of any value had been advanced before Locke), he observes, in a note, " Debemus hanc Doctrinam Leibnitio, eamque deinde sequutus est illust. Wolfius." * Of the Essay on Human Understanding Crousaz speaks in the following terms : " Clarissimi, et merito celebratissimi Lockii de Intellectu Humano eximium opus, et auctore suo dignissimum, logicis utilissimis semper annumerabitur." (Preefat.) If Pope had ever looked into this Treatise, he could not have committed so gross a mistake, as to introduce the author into the Dunciad, among Locke's Aristotelian opponents ; a distinction for which Crousaz was probably indebted to his acute strictures on those passages in tlte Essay on Man, which seem favourable to fatalism. Prompt at the call, around the goddess roll Broad hats, and hoods, and caps, a sable shoal ; Thick and more thick the black blockade extends, A hundred head df Aristotle's fiiends. Nor wert thou, Isis ! wanting to the day (Though Christ-church long kept prudishly away). Each staunch Polemic, stubborn as a rock, Each fierce Logician, still expelling Locke, Came whip and spur, and dash'd through thin and thick On German Crousaz, and Dutch Burgersdyck. Warburton, with his usual scurrility towards all Pope's adversaries as well as his own, has called Crousaz a blundering Swiss ; but a very different estimate of his merits has been formed by Gibbon, who seems to have studied his works much more carefully than the Right Reverend Commentator on the Dunciad. " M. de Crousaz, the adversary of Bayle and Pope, is not distinguished by lively fancy or profound reflection ; and DISSERTATION FIRST. 107 useful than his writings ; if a judgment on this public notice in France. Voltaire, in a letter to point may be formed from the sound philosophi- Horace Walpole, asserts, that he was the first cal principles which he diffused among a nume- person who made the name of Locke known to rous race of pupils. One of these (M. Alia- his countrymen ; 2 but I suspect that this asser- mand), the friend and correspondent of Gibbon, tion must be received with considerable quali- deserves particularly to be noticed here, on ac- fications. The striking coincidence between count of two letters published in the posthumous some of Locke's most celebrated doctrines and works of that historian, containing a criticism those of Gassendi, can scarcely be supposed to on Locke's argument against innate ideas, so very have been altogether overlooked by the followers able and judicious, that it may still be read with and admirers of the latter ; considering the im- ad vantage by many logicians of no small note mediate and very general circulation given on the in the learned world. Had these letters hap- Continent to the Essay on Human Understanding, pened to have sooner attracted my attention, I by Coste's French version. The Gassendists, too, should not have delayed so long to do this tardy it must be remembered, formed, even before justice to their merits. 1 the death of their master, a party formidable in I am not able to speak with confidence of the talents as well as in numbers ; including, among period at which Locke's Essay began to attract other distinguished names, those of Moliere, s even in his own country, at the end of a few years, his name and writings are almost obliterated. But his Philosophy had been formed in the school of Locke, his Divinity in that of Limborch and Le Clerc ; in a long and laborious life, several generations of pupils were taught to think, and even to write ; his lessons rescued the Academy of Lausanne from Cal- vinistic prejudices ; and he had the rare merit of diffusing a more liberal spirit among the people of the Pays de Vaud." (GIBBON'S Memoirs.) In a subsequent passage Gibbon says, " the logic of Crousaz had prepared me to engage with his master Locke, and his antagonist Bayle ; of whom the former may be used as a bridle, and the latter applied as a spur to the curiosity of a young philosopher." (Ibid.) The following details, independently of their reference to Crousaz, are so interesting in themselves, and afford so strong a testimony to the utility of logical studies, when rationally conducted, that I am tempted to transcribe them. " December 1755. In finishing this year, I must remark how favourable it was to my studies. In the space of eight months, I learned the principles of drawing ; made myself completely master of the French and Latin languages, with which I was very superficially acquainted before, and wrote and translated a great deal in both ; read Cicero's Epistles ad Familiares, his Brutus, all his Orations, his Dialogues de Amicitia et de Senectute ; Terence twice, and Pliny's Epistles. In French, Giannoni's History of Naples, 1'Abbe' Banier's Mythology, and M. lloehat's Memoires sur la Suisse, and wrote a very ample relation of my tour. I likewise began to study Greek, and went through the grammar. I began to make very large collections of what I read. But what I esteem most of all, from the perusal and meditation of De Crousaz's logic, I not only understood the principles of that science, but formed my mind to a habit of thinking and reasoning, I had no idea of before." After all, I very readily grant, that Crousaz's logic is chiefly to be regarded as the work of a sagacious and enlightened compiler ; but even this (due allowance being made for the state of philosophy when it appeared) is no mean praise. " Good sense (as Gibbon has very truly observed) is a quality of mind hardly less rare than genius." 1 For some remarks of M. Allamand, which approach very near to Reid's Objections to the Ideal Theory, See Note T. Of this extraordinary man Gibbon gives the following account in his Journal ; " C'est un ministre dans le Pays de Vaud, et un des plus beaux ge"nies que je connoisse. II a voulu embrasser tous les genres ; mais c'est la Philosophic qu'il a le plus approfondi. Sur toutes les questions il s'est fait des systemes, ou du moins des argumens toujours originaux et tou- jours inge'nieux. Ses ide'es sont fines et lumineuses, son expression heureuse et facile. On lui reproche avec raison trop de rafinement et de subtilite dans Pesprit ; trop de fierte, trop d'ambition, et trop de violence dans le caractere. Get homme, qui auroit pu eclairer ou troubler une nation, vit et mourra dans 1'obseuriteV' It is of the same person that Gibbon sneeringly says, in the words of Vossius, " Est sacrificulus in pago, et rusticos dccipit." y " Je peux vous assurer qu'avant moi personne en France ne connoissoit la poesie Angloise ; a peine avoit on entendu parler de Locke. J'ai e'te persecute pendant trente ans par une nuee de fanatiques pour avoir dit que Locke est 1'Her- eule de la Me'taphysique, qui a pose* les bornes de 1'Esprit Humain." (Feniey, 1768.) In the following passage of the Age of Louis XIV. the same celebrated writer is so lavish and undistinguishing in his praise of Locke, as almost to justify a doubt whether he had ever read the book which he extols so highly. " Locke seul a deVeloppe Ventendement humain, dans un livre ou il n'y a que des ve'rite's ; et ce qui rend 1'ouvrage parfait, toutes ces ve'rite's sont claires." 3 Moliere was in his youth so strongly attached to the Epicurean theories, that he had projected a translation of Lu- cretius into French. He is even said to have made some progress in executing his design, when a trifling accident de- termined him, in a moment of ill humour, to throw his manuscript into the fire. The plan on which he was to proceed in this bold undertaking does honour to his good sense and good taste, and seems to,me the only one on which a successful version of Lucretius can ever be executed. The didactic passages of the poem were to be translated into prose, and the descriptive passages into verse. Both parts would have gained greatly by this compromise ; for, where Lucretius wishes to unfold the philosophy of his master, he is not less admirable for the perspicuity and precision of his expressions, than he is on other occasions, where his object is to detain and delight the imaginations of his readers, for the charms of his figurative diction, and for the bold relief of his images. In instances of the former kind, no modern language can give 108 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Chapelle, 1 and Bernier;* all of them eminent- ly calculated to give the tone, on disputed ques- tions of Metaphysics, to that numerous class of Parisians of both sexes, with whom the practical lessons, vulgarly imputed to Epicurus, were not likely to operate to the prejudice of his specu- lative principles. Of the three persons just men- tioned, the two last died only a few years before Locke's Essay was published ; and may be pre- sumed to have left behind them many younger pupils of the same school. One thing is certain, that, long before the middle of the last century, the Essay on Human Understanding was not only read by the learned, but had made its way into the circles of fashion at Paris. s In what man- ner this is to be accounted for, it is not easy to say ; but the fact will not be disputed by those who are at all acquainted with the his- tory of French literature. In consequence of this rapid and extensive circulation of the work in question, and the strong impression that it everywhere produced, by the new and striking contrast which it ex- hibited to the doctrines of the schools, a very re- markable change soon manifested itself in the prevailing habits of thinking on philosophical subjects. Not that it is to be supposed that the opinions of men, on particular articles of their former creed, underwent a sudden alteration, I speak only of the general effect of Locke's dis- cussions, in preparing the thinking part of his readers, to a degree till then unknown, for the unshackled use of their own reason. This has always appeared to me the most characteristical feature of Locke's Essay ; and that to which it is chiefly indebted for its immense influence on the philosophy of the eighteenth century. Few books can be named, from which it is possible to ex- tract more exceptionable passages ; but, such is the liberal tone of the author ; such the man- liness with which he constantly appeals to reason, as the paramount authority which, even in re- ligious controversy, every candid disputant is bound to acknowledge ; and such the sincerity and simplicity with which, on all occasions, he appears to inquire after truth, that the general effect of the whole work may be regarded as the best of all antidotes against the errors involved in some of its particular conclusions.* To attempt any general review of the doctrines even the semblance of poetry to the theories of Epicurus ; while, at the same tune, in the vain attempt to conquer this dif- ficulty, the rigorous precision and simplicity of the original are inevitably lost. The influence of Gassendi's instructions may be traced in several of Moliere's comedies ; particularly in the Femmet Savantes, and in a little piece Le Manage Force, where an Aristotelian and a Cartesian doctor are both held up to the same sort of ridicule, which, in some other of his performances, he has so lavishly bestowed on the medical professors of his time. 1 The joint author, with Bachaumont, of the Voyage en Provence, which is still regarded as the most perfect model of that light, easy, and graceful badinage which seems to belong exclusively to French poetry. Gassendi, who was an in- timate friend of his father, was so charmed with his vivacity while a boy, that he condescended to be his instructor in phi- losophy ; admitting, at the same time, to his lessons, two other illustrious pupils, Moliere and Bernier. The life of Cha- pelle, according to all his biographers, exhibited a complete contrast to the simple and ascetic manners of his master ; but, if the following account is to be credited, he missed no opportunity of propagating, as widely as he could, the speculative principles in which he had been educated. u II etoit fort eloquent dans 1'ivresse. II restoit ordinairement le dernier a table, et se mettoit a expliquer aux valets la philosophie d' Epicure." (Biographic UniverseUe, article Chapelle, Paris, 1813.) He died in 1686. 2 The well known author of one of our most interesting and instructive books of travels. After his return from the East, where he resided twelve years at the court of the Great Mogul, he published at Lyons, an excellent Abridgment of the Philosophy of Gassendi, in 8 vols. 1 2mo ; a second edition of which, corrected by himself, afterwards appeared, in seven volumes. To this second edition (which I have never met with) is annexed a Supplement, entitled Doutes de M. Bernier sur quelques uns des principaux Chapitres de son Abrege de la Philosophie de Gassendi. It is to this work, I presume, that Leibnitz alludes in the following passage of a letter to John Bernouilli ; and, from the manner in which he speaks of its contents, it would seem to be an object of some curiosity. " Frustra quaesivi apud typographos librum cui titulus ; Doutes de M. Bernier sur la Philosophie, in Gallia ante annos aliquot editum et mihi visum, sed nunc non repertum. Vel- lem autem ideo iterum legere, quia ille Gassendistorum fuit Princeps ; sed paullo ante mortem, libello hoc edito ingenue professus est, in quibus necGassendus nee Cartesius satisfaciant." (LEIBNITII et Jo. BEHNOUILH Commerc. Epist. 2 voL 4to. Laussanae et Genevse, 1745.) Bernier died in 1688. 3 A decisive proof of this is afforded by the allusions to Locke's doctrines in the dramatic pieces then in possession of the French stage. See Note U. 4 The maxim which he constantly inculcates is, that " Reason must be our last judge and guide in every thing." (LOCKE'S Works, VoL III. p. 145.) To the same purpose, he elsewhere observes, that " he who makes use of the light and faculties God has given him, and seeks sincerely to discover truth by those helps and abilities he has, may have this satisfaction in doing his duty as a rational creature ; that, though he should miss truth, he will not miss the reward of it. For he governs his assent right, and places it as he should, who in any case or matter whatsoever, believes or disbelieves, according as reason directs him. He that does otherwise, transgresses against his own light, and misuses those faculties which were given him to no other end, but to search and follow the clearer evidence and greater probability." (Ibid. p. 123.) DISSERTATION FIRST. 109 sanctioned, or supposed to be sanctioned, by the name of Locke, would be obviously incompatible with the design of this Discourse ; but, among these doctrines, there are two, of fundamental importance, which have misled so many of his successors, that a few remarks on each form a necessary preparation for some historical details which will afterwards occur. The first of these doctrines relates to the ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS; the second to THE POWER OF MORAL PERCEPTION, AND THE IMMUTABILITY OF MORAL DISTINC- TIONS. On both questions, the real opinion of Locke has, if I am not widely mistaken, been very grossly misapprehended or misrepresented, by a large portion of his professed followers, as well as of his avowed antagonists. 1. The objections to which Locke's docti-ine concerning the origin of our ideas, or, in other words, concerning the sources of our knowledge, are, in my judgment, liable, I have stated so fully in a former work, l that I shall not touch on them here. It is quite sufficient, on the pre- sent occasion, to remark, how very unjustly this doctrine (imperfect, on the most favourable con- struction, as it undoubtedly is) has been con- founded with those of Gassendi, of Condillac, of Diderot, and of Home Tooke. The substance of all that is common in the conclusions of these last writers, cannot be better expressed than in the words of their Master, Gassendi. " All our knowledge (he observes in a letter to Descartes) appears plainly to derive its origin from the senses ; and although you deny the maxim, ' Quicquid est in intellectu prseesse debere in sensu,' yet this maxim appears, nevertheless, to be true ; since our knowledge is all ultimately obtained by an influx or incursion from things external; which knowledge afterwards under- goes various modifications by means of analogy, composition, division, amplification, extenuation, and other similar processes, which it is un- necessary to enumerate."* This doctrine of Gassendi' s coincides exactly with that ascribed to Locke by Diderot and by Home Tooke ; and it differs only verbally from the more concise statement of Condillac, that " our ideas are nothing more than transformed sensations." " Every idea," says the first of these writers, " must necessarily, when brought to its state of ultimate decomposition, resolve it- self into a sensible representation or picture ; and since every thing in our understanding has been introduced there by the channel of sensation, whatever proceeds out of the understanding is either chimerical, or must be able, in returning by the same road, to re-attach itself to its sensible archetype. Hence an important rule in phi- losophy, that every expression which cannot find an external and a sensible object, to which 1 Philosophical Essays. " Deinde oranis nostra notitia videtur plane ducere originem a sensibus ; et quamvis tu neges quicquid est in intellectu praeesse debere in sensu, videtur id esse nihilominus verum, cum nisi sola incursione xara. vregi-rrainv, ut loquuntur, fiat ; per- ficiatur tamen analogia, compositione, divisione, ampliatione, extenuatione, aliisque similibus modis, quos commemorare nihil est necesse." (Objectiones in Meditationem Secundam.) This doctrine of Gassendi's is thus very clearly stated and illustrated, by the judicious authors of the Port Royal Logic : " Un phiiosophe qui est estime' dans le monde commence sa logique par cette proposition : Omnis idea orsum ducit a sensibus. Toute idee tire son origine des sens. II avoue neanmoins que toutes nos ide'es n'ont pas e'te' dans nos sens telles qu'elles sont dans notre esprit: mais ilpre'tend qu'elles ont au moins etd forme'es de celles qui ont passe 7 par nos sens, ou par composition, comme lorsque des images separees de 1'or et d'une montagne, on s'en fait une montagne d'or ; ou par ampliation et diminu- tion, comme lorsque de 1'image d'un homme d'une grandeur ordinaire on s'en forme un ge'ant ou un pigme'e ; ou par ac- commodation et proportion, comme lorsque de 1'idde d'une maison qu'on a vue, on s'en forme 1'image d'une maison qu'on n'a pas vue. ET AINSI, dit il, NOUS CONCEVONS DIEU QUI NE PEUT TOMBER sous LES SENS, sous L'IMAGE D'UN VENE- RABLE VIEILLARD." " Selon cette pense'e, quoique toutes nos ide'es ne fussent semblables a quelque corps particulier que nous ayons vu, ou qui ait frappe 7 nos sens, elles seroient neanmoins toutes corporelles, et ne vous representeroient rien qui ne fut entrd dans nos sens, au moins par parties. Et ainsi nous ne concevons rien que par des images, semblables a celles qui se forment dans les cerveau quand nous voyons, ou nous nous imaginons des corps." (VArt de Penser, 1. Partie. c. 1.) The reference made, in the foregoing quotation, to Gassendi's illustration drawn from the idea of God, affords me an opportunity, of which I gladly avail myself, to contrast it with Locke's opinion on the same subject. " How many amongst us will be found, upon inquiry, to fancy God, in the shape of a man, sitting in heaven, and to have many other absurd and unfit conceptions of him ? Christians, as well as Turks, have had whole sects owning, or contending earnestly for it, that the Deity was corporeal and of human shape : And although we find few amongst us, who profess themselves Anthropomor- phites (though some I have met with that own it), yet, I believe, he that will make it his business, may find amongst the ignorant and uninstructed Christians, many of that opinion." * (Vol. I. p. 67.) * In the judgment of a very learned and pious divine, the bias towards Anthropomorphism, which Mr Locke has here so severely reprehended, is not confined to " ignorant and uninstructed Christians." " If Anthropomorphism (says Dr Maclaine) was banished from theology, orthodoxy would be deprived of some of its most precious phrases, and our confessions of faith 110 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. it can thus establish its affinity, is destitute of language, that various detached passages may signification." (Oeuvres de Diderot, Tom. VI.) he quoted from his work, which seem, on a Such is the exposition given hy Diderot, of superficial view, to justify their comments, yet what is regarded in France as Locke's great of what weight, it may be asked, are these pas- and capital discovery ; and precisely to the same sages, when compared with the stress laid by purpose we are told by Condorcet, that " Locke the author on Reflection, as an original source of was the first who proved that all our ideas are our ideas, altogether different from Sensation? compounded of sensations." (Esquisse Historique, " The other fountain," says Locke, " from which &c.) experience furnisheth the understanding with If this were to be admitted as a fair account ideas, is the perception of the operations of our of Locke's opinion, it would follow, that he has own minds within us, as it is employed about not advanced a single step beyond Gassendi and the ideas it has got ; which operations, when the Hobbes; both of whom have repeatedly expressed soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish themselves in nearly the same words with Di- the understanding with another set of ideas, derot and Condorcet. But although it must be which could not be had from things without ; granted, in favour of their interpretation of his and such are Perception, Thinking, Doubting, Be- " Let the ideas of being and matter be strongly joined either by education or much thought, whilst these are still com- bined in the mind, what notions, what reasonings will there be about separate spirits ? Let custom, from the very childhood, have joined figure and shape to the idea of God, and what absurdities will that mind be liable to about the Deity?" (Vol. II. p. 144.) The authors of the Port Royal Logic have expressed themselves on this point to the very same purpose with Locke ; and have enlarged upon it still more fully and forcibly. (See the sequel of the passage above quoted.) Some of their remarks on the subject, which are more particularly directed against Gassendi, have led Brucker to rank them among the advocates for innate ideas (BRUCKER, Historia de Ideis, p. 27 1), although these remarks coincide exactly in substance with the foregoing quo- tation from Locke. Like many other modern metaphysicians, this learned and laborious, but not very acute historian, could imagine no intermediate opinion between the theory of innate ideas, as taught by the Cartesians, and the Epicurean account of our knowledge, as revived by Gassendi and Hobbes ; and accordingly thought himself entitled to conclude, that whoever rejected the one must necessarily have adopted the other. The doctrines of Locke and of his predecessor Arnauld will be found, on examination, essentially different from both. Persons little acquainted with the metaphysical speculations of the two last centuries are apt to imagine, that when " all knowledge is said to have its origin in the senses," nothing more is to be understood than this, that it is by the impressions of external objects on our organs of perception, that the dormant powers of the understanding are at first awakened. The foregoing quotation from Gassendi, together with those which I am about to produce from Diderot and Condorcet, may, I trust, be useful in correcting this very common mistake ; all of these quotations explicitly asserting, that the external senses furnish not only the occasions by which our intellectual powers are excited and developed, but all the materials about which our thoughts are conversant ; or, in other words, that it is impossible for us to think of anything, which is not either a sensible image, or the result of sensible images combined together, and transmuted into new forms by a sort of logical che- mistry. That the powers of the understanding would for ever continue dormant, were it not for the action of things ex- ternal on the bodily frame, is a proposition now universally admitted by philosophers. Even Mr Harris and Lord Mon- boddo, the two most zealous, as well as most learned of Mr Locke's adversaries in England, have, in the most explicit man- ner, expressed their assent to the common doctrine. " The first class of ideas (says Monboddo) is produced from ideas fur- nished by the senses ; the second arises fronrthe operations of the mind upon these materials: for I do not deny, that in this our present state of existence, all our ide^as, and all our knowledge, are ultimately to be derived from sense and matter." (Vol. I. p. 44. 2d Ed.) Mr Harris, while he holds the same language, points out, with greater precision, the essential dif- ference between his philosophy and that of the Hobbists. " Though sensible objects may be the destined medium to awa- ken the dormant energies of man's understanding, yet are those energies themselves no more contained in sense, than the explosion of a cannon in the spark which gave it fire." (HERMES.) On this subject see Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Vol. I. chap. i. sect. 4. To this doctrine I have little doubt that Descartes himself would have assented, although the contrary opinion has been generally supposed by his adversaries to be virtually involved in his Theory of Innate Ideas. My reasons for thinking so, the reader will find stated in Note X. and systems of doctrine would be reduced within much narrower bounds." (Note on Mosheim's Church History, Vol. IV. p. 550.) On this point I do not presume to offer any opinion ; but one thing I consider as indisputable, that it is by means of Anthropomorphism, and other idolatrous pictures of the invisible world, that superstition lays hold of the infant mind. Such pictures operate not upon Reason, but upon the Imagination; producing that temporary belief with which I conceive all the illusions of imagination to be accompanied. In point of fact, the bias of which Locke speaks extends in a greater or less degree to all men of strong imaginations, whose education has not been very carefully superintended in early infancy. I have applied to Anthropomorphism the epithet idolatrous, as it seems to be essentially the same thing to bow down and worship a graven image of the Supreme Being, and to worship a supposed likeness of Him conceived by the Imagination. In Bernier's Abridgment of GassendVs Philosophy (Tom. III. p. 13 et seq.) an attempt is made to reconcile with the Epi- curean account of the origin of our knowledge, that more pure and exalted idea of God to which the mind is gradually led by the exercise of its reasoning powers : But I am very doubtful, if Gassendi would have subscribed, in this instance, to the comments of his ingenious disciple. DISSERTATION FIRST. Ill lieving, Reasoning, Knowing, Witting, and all the different actings of our own minds, which, we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings ideas as distinct as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself : And though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense. But as I call the other SENSATION, so I call this REFLECTION; the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself." J (LOCKE'S Works, Vol. I. p. 78.) " The understanding seems to me not to have the least glimmering of any ideas which it doth not receive from one of these two. External objects furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities ; and the mind furnishes the understand- ing with ideas of its own operations" (Ibid. p. 79.) In another part of the. same chapter, Locke expresses himself thus : " Men come to be fur- nished with fewer or more simple ideas from without, according as the objects they converse with afford greater or less variety ; and from the operations of their minds within, according as they more or less UEFLECT on them. For, though he that contemplates the operations of his mind, cannot but have plain and clear ideas of them ; yet, unless he turn his thoughts that way, and consider them attentively, he will no more have clear and distinct ideas of all the ope- rations of his mind, and all that may be ob- served therein, than he will have all the parti- cular ideas of any landscape, or of the parts and motions of a clock, who will not turn his eyes to it, and with attention heed all the parts of it. The picture, or clock, may be so placed, that they may come in his way every day ; but yet he will have but a confused idea of all the parts they are made up of, till he applies himself with attention to consider them in each particular. " And hence we see the reason why it is pretty late before most children get ideas of the operations of their own minds ; and some have not any very clear or perfect ideas of the great- est part of them all their lives Children, when they first come into it, are surrounded with a world of new things, which, by a con- stant solicitation of their senses, draw the mind constantly to them, forward to take notice of new, and apt to be delighted with the variety of changing objects. Thus, the first years are usually employed and directed in looking abroad. Men's business in them is to acquaint themselves with what is to be found without ; and so grow- ing up in a constant attention to outward sensa- tions, seldom make any considerable reflection on what passes within them, till they come to be of riper years ; and some scarce ever at all." (Ibid. pp. 80. 81.) I beg leave to request more particularly the attention of my readers to the following pa- ragraphs : " If it be demanded, when a man begins to have any ideas ? I think the true answer is, when he first has any sensation I conceive that ideas in the understanding are coeval with sen- sation ; which is such an impression or motion, made in some part of the body, as produces some perception in the understanding. It is about these impressions made on our senses by out- ward objects, that the mind seems first to em- ploy itself in such operations as we call Percep- tion, Remembering, Consideration, Reasoning, &c. " In time, the mind comes to reflect on its own operations, and about the ideas got by sen- sation, and thereby stores itself with a new set of ideas, which I call ideas of reflection. These impressions that are made on our senses by ob- jects extrinsical to the mind ; and its own opera- tions, proceeding from powers intrinsical and pro- per to itself (which, when reflected on by itself, become also objects of its contemplation), are, as I have said, the original of all knowledge"* (Ibid. pp. 91. 92.) A few other scattered sentences, collected 1 Note Y. 3 The idea attached by Locke in the above passages to the word Reflection is clear and precise. But in the course of his subsequent speculations, he does not always rigidly adhere to it, frequently employing it in that more extensive and popu- lar sense in which it denotes the attentive and deliberate consideration of any object of thought, whether relating to the ex- 112 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS, from different parts of Locke's Essay, may throw additional light on the point in question. " I know that people, whose thoughts are im- mersed in matter, and have so subjected their minds to their senses, that they seldom reflect on anything beyond them, are apt to say, they can- not comprehend a thinking thing, which perhaps is true: But I affirm, when they consider it well, they can no more comprehend an extended thing. " If any one say, he knows not what 'tis thinks in him ; he means he knows not what the substance is of that thinking thing : No more, say I, knows he what the substance is of that solid thing. Farther, if he says, he knows not /tow he thinks ; I answer, Neither knows he Iiow he is extended ; how the solid parts of body are united, or cohere together to make extension." -(Vol. II. p. 22.) " I think we have as many and as clear ideas belonging to mind, as we have belonging to body, the substance of each being equally unknown to us ; and the idea of thinking in mind as clear as of extension in body ; and the communication of motion by thought which we attribute to mind, is as evident as that by impulse, which we ascribe to body. Constant experience makes us sensible of both of these, though our narrow un- derstanding can comprehend neither. l " To conclude ; Sensation convinces us, that there are solid extended substances ; and Re- flection, that there are thinking ones : Expe- rience assures us of the existence of such beings ; and that the one hath a power to move body by impulse, the other by thought ; this we cannot doubt of. But beyond these ideas, as received from their proper sources, our faculties will not reach. If we would inquire farther into their nature, causes, and manner, we perceive not the nature of Extension clearer than we do of Think- ing. If we would explain them any farther, one is as easy as the other ; and there is no more difficulty to conceive how a substance we know not should by thought set body into motion, than how a substance we know not should, by im- pulse, set body into motion." (Ibid. pp. 26. 27.) The passage in Locke which, on a superficial view, appears the most favourable to the misin- terpretation put on his account of the Sources of our Knowledge, by so many of his professed followers, is, in my opinion, the following : " It may also lead us a little towards the ori- ginal of all our notions and knowledge, if we re- mark, how great a dependence our words have on common sensible ideas ; and how those which are made use of to stand for actions and notions quite removed from sense, have their rise from thence, and from obvious sensible ideas are transferred to more abstruse significations, and made to stand for ideas that come not under the cognizance of our senses ; v. g. to imagine, appre- hend, comprehend, adhere, conceive, instil, disgust, ternal or to the internal world. It is in this sense he uses it when he refers to Reflection our ideas of Cause and Effect, of Identity and Diversity, and of all other relations. " All of these (he observes) terminate in, and are concerned about, those simple ideas, either of Sensation or Reflection, which I think to be the whole materials of all our knowledge." (Book II. c. xxv. sect. 9.) From this explanation it would appear that Locke conceived it sufficient to justify his account of the ori- gin of our knowledge, if it could be shown that all our ideas terminate in, and are concerned about, ideas derived either from Sensation or Reflection, according to which comment ifrwill not be a difficult task to obviate every objection to which his fundamental principle concerning the two sources of our ideas may appear to be liable. In this lax interpretation of a principle so completely interwoven with the whole of his philosophy, there is undoubtedly a departure from logical accuracy ; and the same remark may be extended to the vague and indefinite use which he occasion- ally makes of the word Reflection , a word which expresses the peculiar and characteristical doctrine, by which his system is distinguished from that of the Gassendists and Hobbists. All this, however, serves only to prove still more clearly, how widely remote his real opinion on this subject was from that commonly ascribed to him by the French and German com- mentators. For my own part, I do not think, notwithstanding some casual expressions which may seem to favour the con- trary supposition, that Locke would have hesitated for a moment to admit, with Cudworth and Price, that the Understand- ing is itself a source of new ideas. That it is by Reflection (which, according to his own definition, means merely the exercise of the Understanding on the internal phenomena) that we get our ideas of memory, imagination, reasoning, and of all other intellectual powers, Mr Locke has again and again told us ; and from this principle it is so obvious an inference, that all the simple ideas which are necessarily implied in our intellectual operations, are ultimately to be referred to the same source, that we cannot reasonably suppose a philosopher of Locke's sagacity to admit the former proposition, and to withhold his assent to the latter. 1 In transcribing this paragraph, I have taken the liberty to substitute the word Mind instead of Spirit. The two words were plainly considered by Locke, on the present occasion, as quite synonymous ; and the latter (which seems to involve a theory concerning the nature of the thinking principle) is now almost universally rejected by English metaphysicians from their Philosophical Vocabulary. DISSERTATION FIRST. 113 disturbance, tranquillity, &c. are all words taken from the operations of sensible things, and ap- plied to certain modes of thinking. Spirit, in its primary signification, is breath ; angel, a mes - senger : and I doubt not, but if we could trace them to their sources, we should find, in all languages, the names which stand for things that fall not under our senses, to have had their first rise from sensible ideas. By which we may give some kind of guess what kind of notions they were, and whence derived, which filled their minds, who were the first begijiners of languages ; and how nature, even in the naming of things, unawares suggested to men the originals and principles of all their knowledge." So far the words of Locke coincide very near- ly, if not exactly, with the doctrines of Hobbes and of Gassendi ; and I have not a doubt, that a mistaken interpretation of the clause which I have distinguished by italics, furnished the germ of all the mighty discoveries contained in the Eia nrtgofvra t If Mr Tooke, however, had studied with due attention the import of what immediate- ly follows, he must have instantly perceived how essentially different Locke's real opinion on the subject was from what he conceived it to be. " Whilst to give names, that might make known to others any operations they felt in themselves, or any other ideas that came not under their senses, they were fain to borrow words from ordinary known ideas of sensation, by that means to make others the more easily to conceive those operations they experienced in themselves, which made no outward sensible appearances; and then, when they had got known and agreed names, to signify those internal operations of their own minds, they were sufficiently furnish- ed to make known by words all their other ideas ; since they could consist of nothing but either of outward sensible perceptions, or of the inward operations of their minds about them." (Vol. II. pp. 147, 148.) From the sentences last quoted it is manifest, that when Locke remarked the material etymo- logy of all our language about mind, he had not the most distant intention to draw from it any inference which might tend to identify the sensible images which this language presents to the fancy, with the metaphysical notions which DISS. I. PART II. it figuratively expresses. Through the whole of his Essay, he uniformly represents sensation and reflection as radically distinct sources of know- ledge ; and, of consequence, he must have con- ceived it to be not less unphilosophical to attempt an explanation of the phenomena of mind by the analogy of matter, than to think of explain- ing the phei^mena of matter by the analogy of mind. To this fundamental principle concern- ing the origin of our ideas, he has added, in the passage now before us, That, as our knowledge of mind is posterior in the order of time to that of matter (the first years of our existence being necessarily occupied about objects of sense), it is not surprising, that " when men wished to give names that might make known to others any operations they felt in themselves, or any other ideas that came not under their senses, they should have been fain to borrow words from ordinary known ideas of sensation, by that means to make others the more easily to conceive those operations which make no outward sensible ap- pearances." According to this statement, the purpose of these "borrowed" or metaphorical words is not (as Mr Tooke concluded) to explain the nature of the operations, but to direct the attention of the hearer to that internal world, the phenomena of which he can only learn to comprehend by the exercise of his own power of reflection. If Locke has nowhere affirmed so explicitly as his predecessor Descartes, that " nothing conceivable by the power of imagina- tion can throw any light on the operations of thought," it may be presumed that he consider- ed this as unnecessary, after having dwelt so much on reflection as the exclusive source of all our ideas relating to mind ; and on the peculiar difficulties attending the exercise of this power, in consequence of the effect of early associations in confounding together our notions of mind and of matter. The misapprehensions so prevalent on the Continent, with respect to Locke's doctrine on this most important of all metaphysical questions, began during his own life time, and were coun- tenanced by the authority of no less a writer than Leibnitz, who always represents Locke as a par- tizan of the scholastic maxim, Nihil est in intel- lectu quod non fuerit in sensu. " Nempe (says p 114 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Leibnitz, in reply to this maxim) nihil est in in- honour to the acuteness of the critic ; but it is tellectu quod non fuerit in sensu, nisi ipse intel- not easy to conceive on what grounds it should kctus." x The remark is excellent, and does have been urged as an objection to a writer, who 1 Opera, Tom. V. pp. 358, 359. That the same mistake still keeps its ground among many foreign writers of the highest class, the following passage affords a sufficient proof: " Leibnitz a combattu avec une force de dialectique admirable le Systeme de Locke, qui attribue toutes nos idees a nos sensations. On avoit mis en avant cet axiome si connu, qu'il n'y avoit rien dans 1'intelligence qui n'eut 4i4 d'abord dans les sensations, et Leibnitz y ajouta cette sublime restriction, si ce n'est rintelligence elle-mtme. De ce principe derive toute la philosophic nouvelle qui exerce tant d'influence sur les esprits en Allemagne." (MAD. DE STAEL de VAlle- magne, Tom. III. p. 65.) I observed in the First Part of this Dissertation (page 67), that this sublime restrictidh on which so much stress has been laid by the partizans of the German school, is little more than a translation of the following words of Aristotle : Ka/ aurtt 'm vovs vottTo; iffrtv, uffvrifi ra, vovTa' i*ri ftlv yap TUV otviu iiXns, TO auTo tfri TO voouv xcii TO vooupivov. ( De Anima, Lib. III. Cap. V.) As to Locke, the same injustice which he received from Leibnitz was very earl}' done to him irhis own country. In a tract printed in 1697, by a mathematician of some note, the author of the Essay on Human Understanding is represented as holding the same opinion with Gassendi concerning the origin of our ideas. " Idea nomine sensu utor ; earum originem an a sensibus solum, ut Gassendo et Lockio nostrati, caeterisque plurimis visum est, an aliunde, hujus loci non est inquirere." (De Spatio Reali, seu Ente Infinite Conamen Mathematico-Metaphysicum. Auctore JOSEPHO llAPHSON, Reg. Soc. Socio. This tract is annexed to the second edition of a work entitled Analysis Mquationum Universalis. Lond. 1702.) In order to enable my readers more easily to form a judgment on the argument in the text, I must beg leave once more to remind them of the distinction already pointed out between the Gassendists and the Cartesians ; the former asserting, that, as all our ideas are derived from the external senses, the intellectual phenomena can admit of no other explanation than what is furnished by analogies drawn from the material world ; the latter rejecting these analogies altogether, as de- lusive and treacherous lights in the study of mind ; and contending, that the exercise of the power of reflection is the only medium through which any knowledge of its operations is to be obtained. To the one or the other of these two classes, all the metaphysicians of the last century may be referred ; and even at the present day, the fundamental question which formed the chief ground of controversy between Gassendi and Descartes (I mean the question concerning the proper logical method of studying the mind) still continues the hinge on which the most important disputes relating to the internal world will be found ultimately to turn. According to this distinction, Locke, notwithstanding some occasional slips of his pen, belongs indisputably to the class of Cartesians ; as well as the very small number of his followers who have entered thoroughly into the spirit of his philo- sophy. To the class of Gassendists, on the other hand, belong all those French metaphysicians, who professing to tread in Locke's footsteps, have derived all their knowledge of the Essay on Human Understanding from the works of Condillac ; together with most of the commentators on Locke who have proceeded from the school of Bishop Law. To these may be added (among the writers of later times) Priestley, Darwin, Beddoes, and, above all, Home Tooke with his numerous disciples. The doctrine of Hobbes on this cardinal question coincided entirely with that of Gassendi, and, accordingly, it is not unusual hi the present times, among Hobbes's disciples, to ascribe to him the whole merit of that account of the origin of our knowledge, which, from a strange misconception, has been supposed to have been claimed by Locke as his own dis- covery. But where, it may be asked, has Hobbes said anything about the origin of those ideas which Locke refers to the power of reflection^ and may not the numerous observations which Locke has made on this power as a source of ideas peculiar to itself, be regarded as an indirect refutation of that theory which would resolve all the objects of our knowledge into sensations, as their ultimate elements ? This was not merely a step beyond Hobbes ; but the correction of an error which lies at the very root of Hobbes's system ; an error under which (it may be added) the greater part of Hobbes's eulogists have the misfortune still to labour. It is with much regret I add, that a very large proportion of the English writers, who call themselves Lockists, and who, I have no doubt, believe themselves to be so in reality, are at bottom (at least in their metaphysical opinions) Gassendists or Hobbists. In what respect do the following observations differ from the Epicurean theory concerning the origin of our knowledge, as expounded by Gassendi ? " The ideas conveyed by sight, and by our other senses, having entered the mind, intermingle, unite, separate, throw themselves into various combinations and postures, and thereby generate new ideas of reflection, strictly so called; such as those of comparing, dividing, distinguishing, of abstraction, relation, with many others; all which remain with us as stock for our further use on future occasions." I do not recollect any passage, either in Helvetius or Diderot, which contains a more explicit and decided avowal of that Epicurean system of Metaphysics, which it was the great aim both of Descartes and of Locke to overthrow. In the following conjectures concerning the nature of our ideas, the same author has far exceeded in extravagance any of the Metaphysicians of the French school. " What those substances are, whereof our ideas are the modifications, whether parts of the mind as the members are of our body, or contained in it like wafers in a box, or enveloped by it likcjish in water, whether of a spiri. tual, corporeal, or middle nature between loth, I need not now ascertain. All I mean to lay down at present is this, that, in every exercise of the understanding, that which discerns is numerically and substantially distinct from that which is dis- cerned ; and that an act of the understanding is not so much our own proper act, as the act of something else operating upon us." I should scarcely have thought it worth while to take notice of these passages, had not the doctrines contained in the work from which they are taken, been sanctioned in the most unqualified terms by the high authority of DrPaley. "There is one work (he observes) to which I owe so much, that it would be ungrateful not to confess the obligation : I mean the writings of the late Abraham Tucker, Esq. part of which were published by himself, and the remainder since his death, under the title of the Light of Nature Pursued, by Edward Search, Esq." " I have found, in this writer, more original thinking and observation upon the several subjects that he has taken in hand, than in any other, not to say than in all others put together. His talent also for illustration is unrivalled. But his thoughts are diffused through a long, various, and irregular work. I shall account DISSERTATION FIRST. 115 has insisted so explicitly and so frequently on re- flection, as the source of a class of ideas essential- ly different from those which are derived from sensation. To myself it appears, that the words of Leibnitz only convey, in a more concise and epigrammatic form, the substance of Locke's doctrine. Is any thing implied in them which Locke has not more fully and clearly stated in the following sentence ? " External objects furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities; and the mind furnishes the under- standing with ideas of its own operations." (LOCKE'S Works, Vol. I. p. 79.) The extraordinary zeal displayed by Locke, at the very outset of his work, against the hy- pothesis of innate ideas, goes far to account for the mistakes committed by his commentators, in interpreting his account of the origin of our knowledge. It ought, however, to be always kept in view, in reading his argument on the subject, that it is the Cartesian theory of innate ideas which he is here combating ; according to which theory (as understood by Locke), an in- nate idea signifies something coeval in its existence with the mind to which it belongs, and illuminat- ing the understanding before the external senses begin to operate. The very close affinity be- tween this theory, and some of the doctrines of the Platonic school, prevented Leibnitz, it is probable, from judging of Locke's argument against it, with his usual candour ; and disposed him hastily to conclude, that the opposition of Locke to Descartes proceeded from views essen- tially the same with those of Gassendi, and of his other Epicurean antagonists. How very widely he was mistaken in this conclusion, the numerous passages which I have quoted in Locke's own words sufficiently demonstrate. In what respects Locke's account of the origin of our ideas falls short of the truth, will appear, when the metaphysical discussions of later times come under our review. Enough has been al- ready said to show, how completely this account has been misapprehended, not only by his oppo- nents, but by the most devoted of his admirers ; a misapprehension so very general, and at the same time so obviously at variance with the whole spirit of his Essay, as to prove to a de- monstration that, in point of numbers, the in- telligent readers of this celebrated work have hitherto borne but a small proportion to its purchasers and panegyrists. What an illustra- tion of the folly of trusting, in matters of lite- rary history, to the traditionary judgments copied by one commentator or critic from another, when recourse may so easily be had to the original sources of information i 1 II. Another misapprehension, not less pre- valent than the former, with respect to Locke's philosophical creed, relates to the power of mo- ral perception, and the immutability of moral distinctions. The consideration of such ques- 1 In justice to Dr Hartley, I must here observe, that, although his account of the origin of our ideas is precisely the same with that of Gassendi, Hobbes, and Condillac one of his fundamental principles being, that the ideas of sensation are the elements of which all the rest are compounded (HARTLEY on Man, 4th Ed. p. 2. of the Introduction) he has not availed himself, like the other Gassendists of later times, of the name of Locke to recommend this theory to the favour of his readers. On the contrary, he has very clearly and candidly pointed out the wide and essential distinction between the two opinions. " It may not be amiss here to take notice how far the theory of these papers has led me to differ, in respect of logic, from Mr Locke's excellent Essay on the Human Understanding, to which the world is so much indebted for re- moving prejudices and encumbrances, and advancing real and useful knowledge. " First, then, it appears to me, that all the most complex ideas arise from sensation, and that reflection it not a distinct tource, as Mr Locke makes it." (HARTLEY on Man, 4th Ed. p. 360 of the Introduction.) This last proposition Hartley seems to have considered as an important and original improvement of his own on Locke's it no mean praise, if I have been sometimes able to dispose into method, to collect into heads and articles, or to exhibit in more compact and tangible masses, what, in that excellent performance, is spread over too much surface." (I'rincipks of Moral and Political Philosophy, Preface, pp. 25, 26.) Of an author whom Dr Paley has honoured with so very warm an eulogy, it would be equally absurd and presumptuous to dispute the merits. Nor have I any wish to detract from the praise here bestowed on him as an original thinker and ob- server. I readily admit, also, his talent for illustration, although it sometimes leads him to spar into bombast, and more frequently to sink into buffoonery. As an honest inquirer after moral and religious truth, he is entitled to the most un- qualified approbation. But, I must be permitted to add, that, as a metaphysician, he seems to me much more fanciful than solid ; and, at the same time, to be so rambling, verbose, and excursive, as to be more likely to unsettle than to fix the principles of his readers. 116 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. tions, it may at first sight be thought, belongs nature ; and when combined with the premises rather to the history of Ethics than of Meta- from which it is deduced, affords a good illus- physics ; but it must be recollected, that, in in- tration of the impossibility, in tracing the pro- troducing them here, I follow the example of gress of these two sciences, of separating corn- Locke himself, who has enlarged upon them at pletely the history of the one from that of the considerable length, in his Argument against other. the Theory of Innate Ideas. An Ethical disqui- In what sense Locke's reasonings against /n- sition of this sort formed, it must be owned, an nate Ideas have been commonly understood, may aukward introduction to a work on the Human be collected from the following passage of an Understanding; but the conclusion on which it author, who had certainly no wish to do injus- is meant to bear is purely of a Metaphysical tice to Locke's opinions. logic ; whereas, in fact, it is only a relapse into the old Epicurean hypothesis, which it was one of the main objects of Locke's Essay to explode. I would not have enlarged so fully on Locke's account of the origin of our ideas, had not a mistaken view of his argument on this head, served as a ground-work for the whole Metaphysical Philosophy of the French Encyclopedic. That all our knowledge is derived from our external senses, is everywhere assumed by the conductors of that work as a demonstrated principle ; and the credit of this demonstration is uniformly ascribed to Locke, who, we are told, was the first that fully un- folded and established a truth, of which his predecessors had only an imperfect glimpse. La Harpe, in his Lycee, has, on this account, justly censured the metaphysical phraseology of the Encyclopedic, as tending to degrade the intellectual nature of man ; while, with a strange inconsistency, he bestows the most unqualified praise on the writings of Condillac. Little did he suspect, when he wrote the following sentences, how much the reasonings of his favourite logician had contributed to pave the way for those conclusions which he reprobates with so much asperity in Diderot and D'Alembert. " La gloire de Condillac est d'avoir e'te' le premier disciple de Locke ; mais si Condillac eut un maitre, il merita d'en ser- vir a tous les autres ; il repandit me'me une plus grande lumiere sur les de'couvertes du philosophe Anglois ; il les rendjt pour ainsi dire sensibles, et c'est grace a lui qu'elles sont devenues communes et familieres. En un mot, la saine Me'ta- physique ne date en France, que des ouvrages de Condillac, et a ce titre il doit etre comptd dans le petit nombre d'hommes qui ont avance' la science qu'ils ont cultivee." (Lycee, Tome XV. pp. 136. 137- La Harpe proceeds in the same panegyrical strain through more than seventy pages, and concludes his eulogy of Con- dillac with these words : " Le style de Condillac est clair et pur comme ses conceptions ; c'est en general 1'esprit le plus juste et le plus lumineux qui ait contribue', dans ce siecle, aux progres de la bonne philosophic." (Ibid. p. 214.) La Harpe's account of the power of Reflection will form an appropriate supplement to his comments on Condillac. " L'im- pression sentie des objets se nomme perception ; 1'action de 1'ame qui les considere, se nomme reflexion. Ce mot, il est vrai, exprime un mouvement physique, celui de se replier sur soi-meme ou sur quelque chose ; mais toutes nos idees venant da sent, nous sommes souvent obliges de nous servir de termes physiques pour exprimer les operations de 1'ame." (Ibid. p. 158.) In another passage, he defines Reflection as follows : " La facultd de reflexion, c'est-a-dire, le pouvoir qu'a notre Sme, de comparer, d'assembler, de combiner les perceptions." (Ibid. p. 183.) How widely do these definitions of reflection differ from that given by Locke ; and how exactly do they accord with the Philosophy of Gassendi, of Hobbes, and of Diderot ! In a lately published sketch Of the State of French Literature during the Eighteenth Century (a work, to which the Author's taste and powers as a writer have attracted a degree of public attention something beyond what was due to his philosophi- cal depth and discernment), there are some shrewd, nnd, in my opinion, sound remarks, on the moral tendency of that me- taphysical system to which Condillac gave so much circulation and celebrity. I shall quote some of his strictures which bear more particularly on the foregoing argument. " Autrefois, negligeant d'examiner tout ce mecanisme des sens, tous ces rapports directs du corps avec les objets, les phi- losophes ne s'occupoient que de ce qui se passe au-dedans de l'homme. La science de 1'Sme, telle a e'te' la noble etude de Descartes, de Pascal, de Malebranche, de Leibnitz. (Why omit in this list the name of Locke ?) Peut-^tre se per- doient-ils quelquefois dans les nuages des hautes regions ou ils avoient pris leur vol ; peut-etre leurs travaux etoient-ils sans application directe ; mais du moins ils suivoient une direction e'leve'e, leur doctrine e'toit en rapport avec les pensees qui nous agitent quand nous refle'chissons profonde'ment sur nous-memes. Cette route conduisoit ne'cessairement au plus nobles des sciences, a la religion, et a la morale. Elle supposoit dans ceux qui la cultivoient un ge'nie elevd et de vastes meditations. " On se lassa de les suivre ; on traita de vaines subtilites, on fle'trit du titre de reVeries scholastiques les travaux de ces grandes esprits. On se jeta dans la science des sensations, espdrant qu'elle seroit plus a la porte'e de 1'intelligence humaine. On s'occupa de plus en plus des rapports me'caniques de l'homme avec les objets, et de 1'influence de son organisation phy- sique. De cette sorte, la mdtaphysique alia toujours se rabaissant, au point que maintenant, pour quelques personnes, elle se confond presque avec la physiologic. . . . Le dix-huitieme siecle a voulu faire de cette maniere d'envisager 1'homme un de ses principaux litres de gloire " Condillac est le chef de cette ecole. C'est dans ses ouvrages que cette me'taphysique exerce toutes les seductions de la methode, et de la lucidite' ; d'autant plus claire, qu'elle est moins profonde. Peu d"'^crivains ont obtenu plus de succes. II reduisit a la porte'e du vulgaire la science de la pensee, en retranchant tout ce qu'elle avoit d'elevd. Chacun fut surpris et glorieux de pouvoir philosopher si facilement ; et Ton eut une grande reconnoissance pour celui a qui Ton devoit ce bienfait. On ne s'apperqut pas qu'il avoit rabaissd la science, au lieu de rendre ses disciples capable d'y atteindre." (Tableau de la Litterature Francoite pendant le dix-huitieme Siecle, pp. 87- 88. 89. 92.) DISSERTATION FIRST. " The First Book (says Dr Beattie) of the Essay on Human Understanding, which, with sub- mission, I think the worst, tends to establish this dangerous doctrine, that the human mind, previous to education and habit, is as suscep- tible of any one impression as of any other : -a. doctrine which, if true, would go near to prove, that truth and virtue are no better than human contrivances ; or at least, that they have nothing permanent in their nature, but may be as changeable as the inclinations and capacities of men." Dr Beattie, however, candidly and judi- ciously adds, " Surely this is not the doctrine that Locke meant to establish; but his zeal against innate ideas, and innate principles, put him off his guard, and made him allow too little to instinct, for fear of allowing too much." In this last remark, I perfectly agree with Dr Beattie ; although I am well aware, that a con- siderable number of Locke's English disciples have not only chosen to interpret the first book of his Essay in that very sense in which it ap- peared to Dr Beattie to be of so mischievous a tendency, but have avowed Locke's doctrine, when thus interpreted, as their own ethical creed. In this number, I am sorry to say, the respec- table name of Paley must be included. 1 It is fortunate for Locke's reputation, that, in other parts of his Essay, he has disavowed, in the most unequivocal terms, those dangerous conclusions which, it must be owned, the gene- ral strain of his first book has too much the ap- pearance of favouring. " He that hath the idea (he observes on one occasion) of an intelligent, but frail and weak being, made by and depend- ing on another, who is omnipotent, perfectly wise, and good, will as certainly know, that man is to honour, fear, and obey God, as that the sun shines when he sees it ; nor can he be surer, in a clear morning, that the sun is risen, if he will but open his eyes, and turn them that way. But yet these truths being never so certain, never so clear, he may be ignorant of either, or all of them, who will never take the pains to employ his faculties as he should to inform himself about them." To the same purpose, he has elsewhere said, that " there is a Law of Nature, as intel- ligible to a rational creature and studier of that law, as the positive laws of commonwealths." Nay, he has himself, in the most explicit terms, anticipated and disclaimed those dangerous con- sequences which, it has been so often supposed, it was the chief scope of this introductory chap- ter to establish. " I would not be mistaken, as if, because I deny an innate law, I thought thei*e were none but positive laws. There is a great deal of difference between an innate law and a law of nature ; between something im- * printed on our minds in their very original, and something that we, being ignorant of, may at- tain to the knowledge of, by the use and due application of our natural faculties. And I think they equally forsake the truth, who, run- ning into the contrary extremes, either affirm an innate law, or deny that there is a law know- able by the light of nature, without the help of a positive revelation." (Vol. I. p. 44.) Nor was Locke unaware of the influence on men's lives of their speculative tenets concerning these metaphysical and ethical questions. On this point, which can alone render such discussions interesting to human happiness, he has express- ed himself thus : " Let that principle of some of the philosophers, that all is matter, and that there is nothing else, be received for certain and indubitable, and it will be easy to be seen, by the writings of some that have revived it again in our days, what consequences it will lead in- to.... Nothing can be so dangerous as principles thus taken up without due questioning or exami- nation ; especially if they be such as influence men's lives, and give a bias to all their actions. He that with Archelaus shall lay it down as a principle, that right and wrong, honest and dis- honest, are defined only by laws, and not by nature, will have other measures of moral recti- tude and pravity, than those who take it for granted, that we are under obligations antece- dent to all human constitutions." (Vol. III. p. 75.) Is not the whole of this passage evidently 1 See Principkt of Moral and Political Philosophy, Book I. Chap. 5, where the author discusses the question concerning a moral tense. 118 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. pointed at the Epicurean maxims of Hobbes and of Gassendi ? l Lord Shaftesbury was one of the first who sounded the alarm against what he conceived to be the drift of that philosophy which denies the existence of innate principles. Various strictures on this subject occur in the Characteristics ; par- ticularly in the treatise entitled Advice ty an Au- thor ; but the most direct of all his attacks upon Locke is to be found in his 8th Letter, address- ed to a Student at the University. In this let- ter he observes, that " all those called free wri- ters now-a-days have espoused those principles which Mr Hobbes set a foot in this last age." " Mr Locke (he continues), as much as I ho- nour him on account of other writings (on Go- vernment, Policy, Trade, Coin, Education, To- leration, &c.) and as well as I knew him, and can answer for his sincerity as a most zealous Christian and believer, did however go in the self-same tract ; and is followed by the Tindals, and all the other free authors of our times ! " 'Twas Mr Locke that struck the home blow : for Mr Hobbes's character, and base slavish principles of government, took off the poison of his philosophy. 'Twas Mr Locke that struck at all fundamentals, threw all order and virtue out of the world, and made the very ideas of these (which are the same with those of GOD) unnatural, and without foundation in our minds. Innate is a word he poorly plays upon : the right word, though less used, is connatural. For what has birth or progress of the foetus out of the womb to do in this case ? the question is not about the time the ideas entered, or the moment that one body came out of the other ; but whe- ther the constitution of man be such, that, being adult and grown up, * at such a time, sooner or later (no matter when,) the idea and sense of order, administration, and a GOD, will not infal- libly, inevitably, necessarily spring up in him." In this last remark Shaftesbury appears to me to place the question about innate ideas upon the right and only philosophical footing ; and to af- ford a key to all the confusion running through Locke's argument against their existence. The sequel of the above quotation is not less just and valuable but I must not indulge myself in any farther extracts. It is sufficient to mention the perfect coincidence between the opinion of Shaftesbury, as here stated by himself, and that formerly quoted in the words of Locke ; and, of consequence, the injustice of concluding, from some unguarded expressions of the latter, that there was, at bottom, any essential difference between their real sentiments. 5 Under the title of Locke's Metaphysical (or, to speak with more strict precision, his Logical] writings, may also be classed his tracts on Edu- cation, and on the Conduct of the Understand- 1 To the above quotations from Locke, the following deserves to be added : " Whilst the parties of men cram their tenets down all men's throats, whom they can get into their power, without permitting them to examine their truth or falsehood, and will not let truth have fair play in the world, nor men the liberty to search after it ; what improvements can be expected of this kind ? What greater light can be hoped for in the moral sciences ? The subject part of mankind in most places might, instead thereof, with Egyptian bondage expect Egyptian darkness, were not the candle of the Lord set up by himself in merCs minds, which it is impossible for the breath or power of man wholly to extinguish." Vol. II. pp. 343, 344. * Lord Shaftesbury should have said, " grown up to the possession and exercise of his reasoning powers." 3 I must, at the same time, again repeat, that the facts and reasonings contained in the introduction to Locke's Essay go very far to account for the severity of Shaftesbury's censures on this part of his work. Sir Isaac Newton himself, an in- timate friend of Locke's, appears, from a letter of his which I have read in his own handwriting, to have felt precisely in the same manner with the author of the Characteristics. Such, at least, were hisjirst impressions ; although he afterwards requested, with a humility and candour worthy of himself, the forgiveness of Locke, for this injustice done to his character. " I beg your pardon (says he) for representing that you struck at the root of morality in a principle you laid down in your book of ideas, and designed to pursue in another book ; and that I took you for a Hobbist." In the same letter Newton alludes to certain unfounded suspicions which he had been led to entertain of the propriety of Locke's conduct in some of their private concerns; adding, with an ingenuous and almost infantine simplicity, '' I was so much affected with this, that when one told me you was sickly and would not live> I answered, 'twere better if you were dead. I desire you to forgive me this uncharitableness." The letter is subscribed, your most humble and most unfortunate servant, Is. Newton.* The rough draft of Mr Locke's reply to these afflicting acknowledgments was kindly communicated to me by a friend some years ago. It is written with the magnanimity of a philosopher, and with the good-humoured forbearance of a man of the world ; and it breathes throughout so tender and so unaffected a veneration for the good as well as great qualities of the excellent person to whom it is addressed, as demonstrates at once the conscious integrity of the writer, and the supe- riority of his mind to the irritation of little passions. I know of nothing from Locke's pen which does more honour to his * It is dated at the Bull in Shoreditch, London, September 1693 ; and is addressed, For John Locke, Etq. at Sir Fra. Masham's Bart, at Oatcs, in Essex. DISSERTATION FIRST. 119 ing. These tracts are entirely of a practical of Locke. The candid and unreserved thoughts nature, and were plainly intended for a wider of such a writer upon such subjects as Education, circle of readers than his Essay ; but they every- and the culture of the intellectual powers, possess where bear the strongest marks of the same zeal an intrinsic value, which is not diminished by for extending the empire of Truth and of Reason, the consideration of their triteness. They not and may be justly regarded as parts of the same only serve to illustrate the peculiarities of the great design. 1 It has been often remarked, that author's own character and views, but, con- they display less originality than might have sidered in a practical light, come recommended been expected from so bold and powerful a think- to us by all the additional weight of his dis- er ; and, accordingly, both of them have long criminating experience. In this point of view, fallen into very general neglect. It ought, how- the two tracts in question, but more especially ever, to be remembered, that, on the most im- that on the Conduct of the Understanding, will portant points discussed in them, new suggestions always continue to be interesting manuals to are not now to be looked for ; and that the great such as are qualified to appreciate the mind from object of the reader should be, not to learn some- which they proceeded.* thing which he never heard of before, but to It must not, however, be concluded from the learn, among the multiplicity of discordant pre- apparent triteness of some of Locke's remarks, to cepts current in the world, which of them were the present generation of readers, that they were sanctioned, and which reprobated by the judgment viewed in the same light by his own con tempo- temper and character ; and I introduce it with peculiar satisfaction, in connection with those strictures which truth has ex- torted from me on that part of his system which to the moralist stands most in need of explanation and apology. MR LOCKE TO MR NEWTON. " SIR, Oates, 5th October . 93. " I have been ever since I first knew you so kindly and sincerely your friend, and thought you so much mine, that I could not have believed what you tell me of yourself, had I had it from any body else. And though I cannot but be mightily troubled that you should have had so many wrong and unjust thoughts of me, yet, next to the return of good offices, such as from a sincere good will I have ever done you, I receive your acknowledgment of the contrary as the kindest thing you could have done me, since it gives me hopes I have not lost a friend I so much valued. After what your letter expresses, I shall not need to say anything to justify myself to you : I shall always think your own reflection on my carriage both to you and all mankind will sufficiently do that. Instead of that, give me leave to assure you, that I am more ready to forgive you than you can be to desire it ; and I do it so freely and fully that I wish for nothing more than the op- portunity to convince you that I truly love and esteem you ; and that I have still the same good will for you as if nothing of this had happened. To confirm this to you more fully, I should be glad to meet you anywhere, and the rather, because the conclusion of your letter makes me apprehend it would not be wholly useless to you. I shall always be ready to serve you to my utmost, in any way you shall like, and shall only need your commands or permission to do it. " My book is going to press for a second edition ; and, though I can answer for the design with which I writ it, yet, since you have so opportunely given me notice of what you have said of it, I should take it as a favour if you would point out to me the places that gave occasion to that censure, that, by explaining myself better, I may avoid being mistaken by others, or unwillingly doing the least prejudice to truth or virtue. I am sure you are so much a friend to both, that, were you none to me, I could expect this from you. But I cannot doubt but you would do a great deal more than this for my sake, who, after all, have all the concern of a friend for you, wish you extremely well, and am, without compliment," &c. &c. (For the preservation of this precious memorial of Mr Locke, the public is indebted to the descendants of his friend and relation the Lord Chancellor King, to whom his papers and library were bequeathed. The original is still in the posses- sion of the present representative of that noble family ; for whose flattering permission to enrich my Dissertation with the above extracts, I feel the more grateful, as I have not the honour of being personally known to his Lordship.) 1 Mr Locke, it would appear, had once intended to publish his thoughts on the Conduct of the Understanding, as an ad- ditional chapter to his Essay. u I have lately," says he, in a Letter to Mr Molyneux, " got a little leisure to think of some additions to my book against the next edition, and within these few days have fallen upon a subject that I know not how far it will lead me. I have written several pages on it, but the matter, the farther I go, opens the more upon me, and I cannot get sight of any end of it. The title of the chapter will be, Of the Conduct of the Understanding, which, if I shall pursue as far as I imagine it will reach, and as it deserves, will, I conclude, make the largest chapter of my Essay." (LOCKE'S Works, Vol. IX. p. 407.) 2 A similar remark may be extended to a letter from Locke to his friend Mr Samuel Bold, who had complained to him of the disadvantages he laboured under from a weakness of memory. It contains nothing but what might have come from the pen of one of Newberry's authors ; but with what additional interest do we read it, when considered as a comment by Locke on a suggestion of Bacon's ! (LOCKE'S Works, Vol. X. p. 317.) It is a judicious reflection of Shenstone's, that " every single observation published by a man of genius, be it ever so tri- vial, should be esteemed of importance, because he speaks from his own impressions ; whereas common men publish common things, which they have perhaps gleaned from frivolous writers. I know of few authors to whom this observation applies more forcibly and happily than to Locke, when he touches on the culture of the intellectual powers. His precepts, indeed, are not all equally sound ; but they, in general, contain a large proportion of truth, and may always furnish to a specula- tive mind matter of useful meditation. 120 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS, raries. On the contrary, Leibnitz speaks of the Treatise on Education as a work of still greater merit than the Essay on Human Understanding. l Nor will this judgment be wondered at by those who, abstracting from the habits of thinking in which they have been reared, transport them- selves in imagination to the state of Europe a hundred years ago. How flat and nugatory seem now the cautions to parents about watching over those associations on which the dread of spirits in the dark is founded ! But how different was the case (even in Protestant countries) till a very recent period of the last century ! I have, on a former occasion, taken notice of the slow but (since the invention of printing) cer- tain steps by which Truth makes its way in the world ; " the discoveries, which, in one age, are confined to the studious and enlightened few, be- coming, in the next, the established creed of the learned ; and, in the third, forming part of the elementary principles of education." The har- mony, in the meantime, which exists among truths of all descriptions, tends perpetually, by blending them into one common mass, to increase the joint influence of the whole ; the contributions of individuals to this mass (to borrow the fine allusion of Middleton) " resembling the drops of rain, which, falling separately into the water, mingle at once with the stream, and strengthen the general current." Hence the ambition, so natural to weak minds, to distinguish themselves by paradoxical and extravagant opinions ; for these, having no chance to incorporate themselves with the progressive reason of the species, are the more likely to immortalise the eccentricity of their authors, and to furnish subjects of won- der to the common compilers of literary history. This ambition is the more general, as so little expence of genius is necessary for its gratification. " Truth (as Mr Hume has well observed) is one thing, but errors are numberless;" and hence (he might have added) the difficulty of seizing the former, and the facility of swelling the num- ber of the latter. * Having said so much in illustration of Locke's philosophical merits, and in reply to the common charge against his metaphysical and ethical prin- ciples, it now only remains for me to take notice of one or two defects in his intellectual character, which exhibit a strong contrast to the general vigour of his mental powers. Among these defects, the most prominent is, the facility with which he listens to historical evidence, when it happens to favour his own con- clusions. Many remarkable instances of this occur in his long and rambling argument (some- what in the style of Montaigne) against the ex- istence of innate practical principles ; to which may be added, the degree of credit he appears to have given to the popular tales about mer- maids, and to Sir William Temple's idle story of Prince Maurice's " rational and intelligent parrot." Strange ! that the same person who, in matters of reasoning, had divested himself, almost to a fault, of all reverence for the opinions of others, should have failed to perceive, that, of all the various sources of error, one of the most copious and fatal is an unreflecting faith in hu- man testimony ! The disrespect of Locke for the wisdom of antiquity, is another prejudice which has fre- quently given a wrong bias to his judgment. The idolatry in which the Greek and Roman writers were held by his immediate predecessors, although it may help to account for this weak- ness, cannot altogether excuse it in a man of so strong and enlarged an understanding. Locke (as we are told by Dr Warton) " affected to de- preciate the ancients ; which circumstance (he adds), as I am informed from undoubted autho- rity, was the source of perpetual discontent and dispute betwixt him and his pupil, Lord Shaftes- 1 LKIB. Op. Tom. VI. p. 226. * Descartes has struck into nearly the same train of thinking with the above, but his remarks apply much better to the writings of Locke than to his own. " L/expeVience m'apprit, que quoique mes opinions surprennent d'abord, parce qu'elles sont fort diffe'rentes des vul- gaires, cependant, apres qu'on les a comprises on les trouve si simples et si conformes au sens commun, qu'on cesse entieretnent de les admirer, et par la meme d'en faire cas : parceque tel est le naturel des homines qu'ils n'estiment que les choses qui leur laissent d'admiration et qu'ils ne possedent pas tout-a-fait. C'est ainsi que quoique la sante soit le plus grand de tous les biens qui concernent le corps, c'est pourtant celui auquel nous faisons le moins de reflexion, et que nous goutons le moins. Or, la connoissance de la ve'rite est comme la santd de Tame ; lorsque on la possede on n'y pense plus." Lettret, Tome I. Lettre xliii.) DISSERTATION FIRST. bury ; who, in many parts of the Characteristics, has ridiculed Locke's philosophy, and endea- voured to represent him as a disciple of Hobbes." To those who are aware of the direct opposition between the principles of Hobbes, of Montaigne, of Gassendi, and of the other minute philosophers with whom Locke sometimes seems unconsci- ously to unite his strength, and the principles of Socrates, of Plato, of Cicero, and of all the soundest moralists, both of ancient and of mo- dern times, the foregoing anecdote will serve at once to explain and to palliate the acrimony of some of Shaftesbury's strictures on Locke's Ethical paradoxes. 1 With this disposition of Locke to depreciate the ancients, was intimately connected that con- tempt which he everywhere expresses for the study of Eloquence, and that perversion of taste which led him to consider Blackmore as one of the first of our English poets. 2 That his own imagination was neither sterile nor torpid, ap- pears sufficiently from the agreeable colouring and animation which it has not unfrequently imparted to his style : but this power of the mind he seems to have regarded with a peculiarly jea- lous and unfriendly eye ; confining his view ex- clusively to its occasional effects in misleading the judgment, and overlooking altogether the important purposes to which it is subservient, both in our intellectual and moral frame. Hence, in all his writings, an inattention to those more attractive aspects of the mind, the study of which (as Burke has well observed) " while it com- municates to the taste a sort of philosophical solidity, may be expected to reflect back on the severer sciences some of those graces and ele- gancies, without which the greatest proficiency in these sciences will always have the appear- ance of something illiberal." To a certain hardness of character, not unfre- quently united with an insensibility to the charms of poetry and of eloquence, may partly be as- cribed the severe and forbidding spirit which has suggested some of the maxims in his Tract on Education. 3 He had been treated, himself, it would appear, with very little indulgence by his parents ; and probably was led by that filial veneration which he always expressed for their memory, to ascribe to the early habits of self- denial imposed on him by their ascetic system of ethics, the existence of those moral qualities which he owed to the regulating influence of his own reason in fostering his natural dispositions ; and which, under a gentler and more skilful cul- ture, might have assumed a still more engaging and amiable form. His father, who had served in the Parliament's army, seems to have retain- ed through life that austerity of manners which characterised his puritanical associates ; and, notwithstanding the comparative enlargement and cultivation of Mr Locke's mind, something of this hereditary leaven, if I am not mistaken, continued to operate upon many of his opinions and habits of thinking. If, in the Conduct of the Understanding, he trusted (as many have thought) too much to nature, and laid too little stress on logical rules, he certainly fell into the opposite extreme in everything connected with the culture of the heart ; distrusting nature al- together, and placing his sole confidence in the effects of a systematical and vigilant discipline. That the great object of education is not to thwart and disturb, but to study the aim, and to facilitate the accomplishment of her beneficial arrangements, is a maxim, one should think, obvious to common sense ; and yet it is only of late years that it has begun to gain ground even among philosophers. It is but justice to Rous- seau to acknowledge, that the zeal and elo- quence with which he has enforced it, go far to compensate the mischievous tendency of some of his other doctrines. To the same causes it was probably owing, that Locke has availed himself so little in his Conduct of the Understanding, of his own favou- rite doctrine of the Association of Ideas. He 1 Plebeii Philosophi (says Cicero) qui a Platone et Socrate, et ab ea familia dissident. 2 " All our English poets, except Milton," says Molyneux in a letter to Locke, " have been mere ballad-makers in comparison to Sir Richard Blackmore." In reply to which Locke says, " There is, I with pleasure find, a strange har- mony throughout between your thoughts and mine." (LOCKE'S Works, Vol. IX. pp. 423, 426.) 3 Such, for example, as this, that " a child should never be suffered to have what he craves, or so much as spedkt fir, much less if he cries for it !" A maxim (as his correspondent Molyneux observes) " which seems to bear hard on the tender spirits of children, and the natural affections of parents." (LOCKE'S Works, Vol. IX. p. 319.) DISS. I. PART II. O 122 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS, has been, indeed, at sufficient pains to warn pa- rents and guardians of the mischievous conse- quences to he apprehended from this part of our constitution, if not diligently watched over in our infant years. But he seems to have alto- gether overlooked the positive and immense re- sources which might he derived from it, in the culture and amelioration, both of our intellec- tual and moral powers ; in strengthening (for instance), by early habits of right thinking, the authority of reason and of conscience ; in blend- ing with our best feelings the congenial and ennobling sympathies of taste and of fancy ; and in identifying, with the first workings of the imagination, those pleasing views of the order of the universe, which are so essentially necessary to human happiness. A law of our nature, so mighty and so extensive in its influ- ence, was surely not given to man in vain ; and the fatal purchase which it has, in all ages, af- forded to Machiavellian statesmen, and to poli- tical religionists, in carrying into effect their joint conspiracy against the improvement and welfare of our species, is the most decisive proof of the manifold uses to which it might be turn- ed in the hands of instructors, well disposed and well qualified humbly to co-operate with the ob- vious and unerring purposes of Divine Wisdom. A more convenient opportunity will after- wards occur for taking some notice of Locke's writings on Money and Trade, and on the Prin- ciples of Government. They appear to me to connect less naturally and closely with the li- terary history of the times when they appeared, than with the systematical views which were opened on the same subjects about fifty years afterwards, by some speculative politicians in France and in England. I shall, therefore, de- lay any remarks on them which I have to offer, till we arrive at the period when the questions to which they relate began everywhere to at- tract the attention of the learned world, and to be discussed on those general principles of ex- pediency and equity, which form the basis of the modern science of Political Economy. With respect to his merits as a logical and metaphysi- cal reformer, enough has been already said for this introductory section : but I shall have oc- casion, more than once, to recur to them in the following pages, when I come to review those later theories, of which the germs or rudiments may be distinctly traced in his works ; and of which he is, therefore, entitled to divide the praise with such of his successors as have rear- ed to maturity the prolific seeds scattered by his hand. 1 SECTION II. Contimiation of the Review of Locke and Leibnitz. LEIBNITZ. INDEPENDENTLY of the pre-eminent rank, which the versatile talents and the universal learning of Leibnitz entitle him to hold among the illustrious men who adorned the Continent of Europe during the eighteenth century, there are other considerations which have determin- fixing the commencement of the period, on the history of which I am now to enter. The school of which he was the founder was strong- ly discriminated from that of Locke, by the ge- neral spirit of its doctrines ; and to this school a large proportion of the metaphysicians, and ed me to unite his name with that of Locke, in also of the mathematicians of Germany, Hol- 1 And yet with what modesty does Locke speak of his own pretensions as a Philosopher ! " In an age that produces such masters as the great Huygenius and the incomparable Mr Newton, it is ambition enough to be employed as an under- labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge." (Ettay on Human Understanding. Epistle to the Reader.} See Note Z. DISSERTATION FIRST. 123 land, France, and Italy, have ever since his time had a decided leaning. On the funda- mental question, indeed, concerning the Origin of our Knowledge, the philosophers of the Con- tinent (with the exception of the Germans, and a few eminent individuals in other countries) have, in general, sided with Locke, or rather with Gassendi ; hut, in most other instances, a partiality for the opinions, and a deference for the authority of Leibnitz, may be traced in their speculations, both on metaphysical and physical subjects. Hence a striking contrast between the characteristical features of the continental philosophy, and those of the contemporary sys- tems which have succeeded each other in our own island ; the great proportion of our most noted writers, notwithstanding the opposition of their sentiments on particular points, having either attached themselves, or professed to attach themselves, to the method of inquiry recom- mended and exemplified by Locke. But the circumstance which chiefly induced me to assign to Leibnitz so prominent a place in this historical sketch, is the extraordinary influence of his industry and zeal, in uniting, by a mutual communication of intellectual lights and of moral sympathies, the most powerful and leading minds scattered over Christendom. Some preliminary steps towards such an union had been already taken by Wallis in England, and by Mersenne in France ; but the literary commerce, of which they were the centres, was confined almost exclusively to Mathematics and to Physics ; while the comprehensive corre- spondence of Leibnitz extended alike to every pursuit interesting to man, either as a specu- lative or as an active being. From this time forward, accordingly, the history of philosophy involves, in a far greater degree than at any former period, the general history of the human mind; and we shall find, in our attempts to trace its farther progress, our attention more and more irresistibly withdrawn from local de- tails to more enlarged views of the globe which we inhabit. A striking change in this literary commerce among nations took place, at least in the western parts of Europe, before the death of Leibnitz ; but, during the remainder of the last century, it continued to proceed with an accelerated rapidity over the whole face of the civilised world. A multitude of causes, un- doubtedly, conspired to produce it ; but I know of no individual whose name is better entitled than that of Leibnitz, to mark the era of its commencement. 1 I have already, in treating of the philosophy of Locke, said enough, and perhaps more than enough, of the opinion of Leibnitz concerning the origin of our knowledge. Although expressed in a different phraseology, it agrees in the most essential points with the innate ideas of the Car- tesians; but it approaches still more nearly to some of the mystical speculations of Plato. The very exact coincidence between the language of Leibnitz on this question, and that of his con- temporary Cudworth, whose mind, like his own, was deeply tinctured with the Platonic Meta- physics, is not unworthy of notice here, as an historical fact ; and it is the only remark on this part of his system which I mean to add at pre- sent to those in the preceding history. " The seeds of our acquired knowledge," says Leibnitz, " or, in other words, our ideas, and the eternal truths which are derived from them, are contained in the mind itself; nor is this won- derful, since we know by our own consciousness, that we possess within ourselves the ideas of ex- istence, of unity, of substance, of action, and other ideas of a similar nature." To the same purpose, we are told by Cudworth, that " the mind con- tains in itself virtually (as the future plant or tree is contained in the seed] general notions of all things which unfold and discover themselves as occasions invite, and proper circumstances occur." The metaphysical theories, to the establish- 1 The following maxims of Leibnitz deserve the serious attention of all who have at heart the improvement of mankind : " On trouve dans le monde plusieurs personnes bien intentionnees ; mais le mal est, qu'elles ne s'entendent point, et ne travaillent point de concert. S'il y avoit moyen de trouver une espece de glu pour les reunir, on feroit quelque chose. Le mal est souvent que les gens de bien ont quelques caprices ou opinions particulicifes, qui font qu'ils sont contraires entr'eux L'esprit sectaire consiste proprement dans cette prevention de vouloir que les autres se regleut sur nos maximes, au lieu qu'on se devroit contenter de voir qu'on aille au but principal." (Ltm. Op. Tom. I. p. 740.) 124 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. ment of which Leibnitz chiefly directed the force of his genius, are the doctrine of Pre-established Harmony ; and the scheme of Optimism, as new mo- delled by himself. On neither of these heads will it be necessary for me long to detain my readers. 1. According to the system of Pre-established Harmony, the human mind and human body are two independent but constantly correspond- ent machines ; adjusted to each other like two unconnected clocks, so constructed, that, at the same instant, the one should point the hour, and the other strike it. Of this system the follow- ing summary and illustration are given by Leib- nitz himself, in his Essay entitled Theodiccea : " I cannot help coming into this notion, that God created the soul in such manner at first, that it should represent within itself all the simultaneous changes in the body ; and that he has made the body also in such manner, as that it must of itself do what the soul wills : So that the laws which make the thoughts of the soul follow each other in regular succession, must produce images which shall be coincident with the impressions made by external objects upon our organs of sense ; while the laws by which the motions of the body follow each other, are likewise so coincident with the thoughts of the soul, as to give to our volitions and actions the very same appearance, as if the latter were really the natural and the necessary consequences of the former." (LEiB. Op. I. p. 163.) Upon another occasion he observes, that " every thing goes on in the soul as if it had no body, and that every thing goes on in the body as if it had no soul." (Ibid. II. p. 44.) To convey his meaning still more fully, Leib- nitz borrows from Mr Jaquelot 1 a comparison, which, whatever may be thought of its justness, must be at least allowed some merit in point of ingenuity. " Suppose that an intelligent and powerful being, who knew, beforehand, every particular thing that I should order my footman to do to-morrow, should make a machine to re- semble my footman exactly, and punctually to perform, all day, whatever I directed. On this supposition, would not my will in issuing all the details of my orders, remain, in every respect, in the same circumstances as before? And would not my machine-footman, in performing his dif- ferent movements, have the appearance of acting only in obedience to my commands ?" The in- ference to be drawn from this comparison is, that the movements of my body have no direct dependence whatever on the volitions of my mind, any more than the actions of my machine- footman would have on the words issuing from my lips. The same inference is to be extended to the relation which the impressions made on my different senses bear to the co-existent percep- tions arising in my mind. The impressions and perceptions have no mutual connection, resembling that of physical causes with their effects; but the one series of events is made to correspond invariably with the other, in consequence of an eternal harmony between them pre-established by their common Creator. From this outline of the scheme of Pre-establish- ed Harmony, it is manifest, that it took its rise from the very same, train of thinking which produced Malebranche's doctrine of Occasional Causes. The authors of both theories saw clearly the impossibility of tracing the mode in which mind acts on body, or body on mind ; and hence were led rashly to conclude, that the connection or union which seems to exist between them is not real, but apparent. The inferences, however, which they drew from this common principle were directly opposite ; Malebranche maintain- ing, that the communication between mind and body was carried on by the immediate and in- cessant agency of the Deity ; while Leibnitz con- ceived, that the agency of God was employed only in the original contrivance and mutual ad- justment of the two machines ; all the subsequent phenomena of each being the necessary results of its own independent mechanism, and, at the same time, the progressive evolutions of a com- prehensive design, harmonising the laws of the one with those of the other. Of these two opposite hypotheses, that of Leib- nitz is by far the more unphilosophical and un- tenable. The chief objection to the doctrine of Author of a Book entitled Conformite de la Foi avec la Raison. DISSERTATION FIRST. 125 occasional causes is, that it presumes to decide upon a question of which human reason is alto- gether incompetent to judge ; our ignorance of the mode in which matter acts upon mind, or mind upon matter, furnishing not the shadow of a proof that the one may not act directly and immediately on the other, in some way incom- prehensible by our faculties. 1 But the doctrine of Pre-established Harmony -, besides being equally liable to this objection, labours under the ad- ditional disadvantage of involving a perplexed and totally inconsistent conception of the nature of Mechanism ; an inconsistency, by the way, with which all those philosophers are justly charge- able, who imagine that, by likening the universe to a machine, they get rid of the necessity of admitting the constant agency of powers essen- tially different from the known qualities of mat- ter. The word Mechanism properly expresses a combination of natural powers to produce a cer- tain effect. When such a combination is success- ful, a machine, once set a-going, will sometimes continue to perform its office for a considerable time, without requiring the interposition of the artist : And hence we are led to conclude, that the case may perhaps be similiar with respect to the universe, when once put into motion by the Deity. This idea Leibnit/ carried so far as to exclude the supposition of any subsequent agency in the first contriver and mover, excepting in the case of a miracle. But the falseness of the analogy appears from this, that the moving force in every machine is some natural power, such as gravity or elasticity; and, consequently, the very idea of mechanism assumes the existence of those active powers, of which it is the professed object of a mechanical theory of the universe to give an explanation. Whether, therefore, with Malebranche, we resolve every effect into the immediate agency of God, or suppose, with the great majority of Newtonians, that he employs the instrumentality of second causes to accom- plish his purposes, we are equally forced to ad- mit.- with Bacon, the necessity not only of a first contriver and mover, but of his constant and effi- cient concurrence (either immediately or me- diately) in carrying his design into execution : " Opus (says Bacon) quod operatur Deus a pri- mordio usque adfinem" In what I have now said I have confined my- self to the idea of Mechanism as it applies to the material universe ; for, as to this word, when 1 The mutual action, or (as it was called in the schools) the mutual influence (infiitxus) of soul and body, was, till the time of Descartes, the prevailing hypothesis, both among the learned and the vulgar. The reality of this influx, if not positively denied by Descartes, was at least mentioned by him as a subject of doubt ; but by Malebranche and Leibnitz it was confidently rejected as absurd and impossible. (See their works passim.} Gravesande, who had a very strong leaning towards the doctrines of Leibnitz, had yet the good sense to perceive the inconclusiveness of his reasoning in this particu- lar instance, and states in opposition to it the following sound and decisive remarks : " Non concipio, quomodo mens in corpus agere possit ; non etiam video, quomodo ex motu nervi perceptio sequatur ; non tamen inde sequi mihi apparet, omnem influxum esse rejiciendum. " Substantiae incognitae sunt. Jam videmus naturam mentis nos latere ; scimus hanc esse aliquid, quod ideas habet, has confert, &c. sed ignoramus quid sit subjectum, cui has proprietates conveniant. " Hoc idem de corpore dicimus ; est extensum, impenetrable, &c. sed quid est quod habet hasce proprietates ? Nulla nobis via aperta est, qua ad hanc cognitionem pervenire possimus. " Inde concludimus, multa nos latere, quae proprietates mentis et corporis spectant. " Invicta demonstratione constat, non men tern in corpus, neque hoc in illam agere, ut corpus in corpus agit ; sed mihi non videtur inde concludi posse, omnem influx-urn esse impossibilem. " Motu suo corpus non agit in aliud corpus, sine resistente ; sed an non actio, omnino di versa, et cujus ideam non habemus, in aliam substantiam dari possit, et ita tamen, ut causa etlectui respondeat, in re adeo obscura, determinare non ausim. Difficile certe est influxum negare, quando exacte perpendimus, quomodo in minimis quae mens percipit, relatio detur cum agitationibus in corpore, et quomodo hujus motus cum mentis determinatiombus conveniant. Attendo ad ilia qua? medici, et anatomici, nos de his docent. " Nihil, ergo, de systemate influxus determine, praeter hoc, mihi nondum hujus impossibilitatem satis clare demonstratam esse videri." (Introductio ad Philosophiam. ) See Note A A. With respect to the manner in which the intercourse between Mind and Matter is carried on, a very rash assertion escaped Mr Locke in the first edition of his Essay. " The next thing to be considered is, how bodies produce ideas in us, and that is manifestly by impulse, the only teat/ which tee can conceive bodies operate in." (Essay, B. II. ch. viii. 11.) In the course of Locke's controversial discussions with the Bishop of Worcester, he afterwards became fully sensible of this important oversight ; and he had the candour to acknowledge his error in the following terms : " 'Tis true, I have said, that bodies operate by impulse, and nothing else. And so I thought when I writ it, and can yet conceive no other way of their operations. But I am since convinced, by the judicious Mr Newton's incomparable book, that it is too bold a presumption to limit God's power in this point by my narrow conceptions. > And, therefore, in the next edi- tion of my book, I will take care to have that passage rectified." It is a circumstance that can only be accounted for by the variety of Mr Locke's other pursuits, that in all the later edi- tions of the Essay which have fallen in my way, the proposition in question has been allowed to remain as it originally stood. 126 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. applied by Leibnitz to the mind, which he calls a Spiritual Automaton, I confess myself quite un- able to annex a meaning to it : I shall not, there- fore, offer any remarks on this part of his sys- tem. 1 To these visionary speculations of Leibnitz, a strong and instructive contrast is exhibited in the philosophy of Locke ; a philosophy, the main object of which is less to enlarge our knowledge, than to make us sensible of our ignorance ; or (as the author himself expresses it) "to prevail with the busy mind of man to be cautious in meddling with things exceeding its comprehen- sion ; to stop when it is at the utmost extent of its tether ; and to sit down in a quiet ignorance of those things, which, upon examination, are found to be beyond the reach of our capacities." ......" My right hand writes," says Locke, in another part of his Essay, " whilst my left hand is still. What causes rest in one, and motion in the other ? Nothing but my will, a thought of my mind; my thought only changing, my right hand rests, and the left hand moves. This is matter of fact which cannot be denied. Explain this and make it intelligible, and then the next step will be to understand Creation In the meantime, it is an overvaluing ourselves, to re- duce all to the narrow measure of our capaci- ties ; and to conclude all things impossible to be done, whose manner of doing exceeds our com- prehension If you do not understand the operations of your own finite Mind, that think- ing thing within you, do not deem it strange that you cannot comprehend the operations of that eternal infinite Mind, who made and governs all things, and whom the heaven of heavens can- not contain." 9 (Vol. II. pp. 249, 250.) This contrast between the philosophical cha- racters of Locke and of Leibnitz is the more de- serving of notice, as something of the same sort has ever since continued to mark and to discri- minate the metaphysical researches of the Eng- lish and of the German schools. Various ex- ceptions to this remark may, no doubt, be men- tioned ; but these exceptions will be found of trifling moment, when compared with the indis- putable extent of its general application. The theory of pre-established harmony led, by a natural and obvious transition, to the scheme of Optimism. As it represented all events, both in the physical and moral worlds, as the neces- sary effects of a mechanism originally contrived and set a-going by the Deity, it reduced its au- thor to the alternative of either calling in ques- tion the Divine power, wisdom, and goodness, or of asserting that the universe which he had called into being was the best of all possible systems. This last opinion, accordingly, was eagerly embraced by Leibnitz ; and forms tfie subject of a work entitled Theodiccea, in which are combined together, in an extraordinary de- gree, the acuteness of the logician, the imagina- tion of the poet, and the impenetrable, yet sub- lime darkness, of the metaphysical theologian. 5 The modification of Optimism, however, adopt- ed by Leibnitz, was, in some essential respects, peculiar to himself. It differed from that of Plato, and of some other sages of antiquity, in considering the human mind in the light of a spiritual machine, and, of consequence, in posi- 1 Absurd as the hypothesis of a Pre-established Harmony may now appear, not many years have elapsed since it was the pre- vailing, or rather universal creed, among the philosophers of Germany. " II fut un temps" (says the celebrated Euler) " ou le systeme de 1'harmonie pre-e'tablie etoit tellement en vogue dans toute I'Allemagne, que ceux qui en doutoient, pas- soientpour des ignorans, ou desesprits home's. " (Lettres de M. EULER dune Princesse d" 1 Allemagne, 83e Lettre.) It would be amusing to reckon up the succession of metaphysical creeds which have been since swallowed with the same implicit faith by this learned and speculative, and (in all those branches of knowledge where imagination has no influence over the judg- ment) profound and inventive nation. 2 That this is a fair representation of the scope of Lpcke's philosophy, according to the author's own view of it, is demon- strated by the two mottos prefixed to the Essay on Human Understanding. The one is a passage of the book of JEccksiastes, which, from the place it occupies in the front of his work, may be presumed to express what he himself regarded as the most important moral to be drawn from his speculations. " As thouknowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child ; even so, thou knowest not the works of God, who maketh all things." The other motto (from Cicero) strongly expresses a sentiment which every competent judge must feel on comparing the above quo- tations from Locke, with the monads and the pre-established harmony of Leibnitz. " Quam bellum est velle confiteri potius nescire quod nescias, quam ista eff utientem nauseare, atque ipsum sibi displicere !" See Note B B. ' " La Theodicee seule (says Fontenelle) suffiroit pour representer M. Leibnitz. Une lecture immense, des anecdotes curieuses sur les livres ou les personnes, beaucoup d'e'quite' et meme de faveur pour tous les auteurs cites, fut ce en les combattant ; des vues sublimes et lumineuses, des raisonnemens au fond desquels on sent toujours 1'esprit geometrique, un style ou la force domine, et ou cependant sontadmisles agremens d'une imagination heureuse." Eloge de Leibnitz. DISSERTATION FIRST. 127 lively denying the freedom of human actions. According to Plato, every thing is right, so far as it is the work of God ; the creation of beings endowed with free will, and consequently liable to moral delinquency and the government of the world by general laws, from which oc- casional evils must result, furnishing no ob- jection to the perfection of the universe, to which a satisfactory reply may not be found in the partial and narrow views of it, to which our fa- culties are at present confined. But he held at the same time, that, although the permission of moral evil does not detract from the goodness of God, it is nevertheless imputable to man as a fault, and renders him justly obnoxious to punishment. This system (under a variety of forms) has been in all ages maintained by the wisest and best philosophers, who, while they were anxious to vindicate the perfections of God, saw the importance of stating their doctrine in a manner not inconsistent with man's free will and moral agency. The scheme of Optimism, on the contrary, as proposed by Leibnitz, is completely subversive of these cardinal truths. It was, indeed, view- ed by the great and excellent author in a very different light; but in the judgment of the most impartial and profound inquirers, it leads, by a short and demonstrative process, to the annihi- lation of all moral distinctions. 1 It is of great importance to attend to the dis- tinction between these two systems ; because it has, of late, become customary among sceptical writers, to confound them studiously together, in order to extend to both that ridicule to which the latter is justly entitled. This, in particu- lar, was the case with Voltaire, who, in many parts of his later works, and more especially in his Candide, has, under the pretence of expos- ing the extravagancies of Leibnitz, indulged his satirical raillery against the order of the uni- verse. The success of his attempt was much aided by the confused and inaccurate manner in which the scheme of optimism had been re- cently stated by various writers, who, in their zeal to " vindicate the ways of God," had been 1 It is observed by Dr Akenside, that " the Theory of Optimism has been delivered of late, especially abroad, in a man- ner which subverts the freedom of human actions ; whereas Plato appears very careful to preserve it, and has been in that re- spect imitated by the best of his followers." (Notes on the 2d Book of the Pleasures of the Imagination.) I am perfectly aware, at the same time, that different opinions have been entertained of Plato's real sentiments on this sub- ject ; and I readily grant that passages with respect to Fate and Necessity may be collected from his works, which it would be very difficult to reconcile with any one consistent scheme (See the Notes of Mosheim on his Latin Version of Cudworth's Intellectual System, Tome. I. pp. 10. 3 10, et seq. Lugd. Batav. 1773-) Without entering at all into this question, I may be permitted here to avail myself, for the sake of conciseness, of Plato's name, to distinguish that modification of optimism which I have opposed in the text to the optimism of Leibnitz. The follow- ing sentence, in the 10th Book De RepuUica, seems sufficient of itself to authorise this liberty : 'A^trn & aJWoros*, v TI/J.UV xai artpeiltav, vrx'tav a; iXaTruv aiirrif ixairras l'. uir7a i^oftitm. Qtof dvairnis. Virtus inviolabilis ac libera quam prout honerabit quis aut ncgliget, ita plus aut minut ex ea possidebit. Eligentis quidem culpa est omnis. Deus vero extra culpam. A short abstract of the allegory with which Leibnitz concludes his Theodiccea, will convey a clearer idea of the scope of that work, than I could hope to do by any metaphysical comment. The groundwork of this allegory is taken from a dialogue on Free- Will, written by Laurentius Valla, in opposition to Boethius ; in which dialogue, Sextus, the son of Tarquin the Proud, is introduced as consulting Apollo about his destiny. Apollo predicts to him that he is to violate Lucretia, and afterwards, with his family, to be expelled from Rome. ( ' Exul inopsque cades irata pulsus ub urbc.) Sextus complains of the prediction. Apollo replies, that the fault is not his ; that he has only the gift of seeing into futurity ; * that all things are regulated by Jupiter ; and that it is to him his complaint should be addressed. (Here finishes the allegory of Valla, which Leibnitz thus continues, agreeably to Ms own principles.) In consequence of the advice of the Oracle, Sextus goes to Dodona to complain to Jupiter of the crime which he is destined to perpetrate. " Why (says he), oh Jupiter ! have you made me wicked and miserable ? Either change my lot and my will, or admit that the fault is yours, not mine." Jupiter replies to him : " llenounce all thoughts of Rome and of the crown ; be wise, and you shall be happy. If you return to Rome you are undone." Sextus, unwilling to submit to such a sacrifice, quits the Temple, and abandons himself to his fate. After his departure, the high priest, Theodorus, asks Jupiter why he had not given another Will to Sextus. Jupiter sends Theodorus to Athens to consult Minerva. The goddess shows him the Palace of the Destinies, where are represen- tations of all possible worlds, -j- each of them containing a Sextus Tarquinius with a different Will, leading to a catastrophe more or less happy. In the last and best of these worlds, forming the summit of the pyramid composed by the others, the high priest sees Sextus go to Rome, throw every thing into confusion, and violate the wife of his friend. " You see" (says the Goddess of Wisdom) " it was not my father that made Sextus wicked. He was wicked from all eternity, and he was always so in consequence of his own will. J Jupiter has only bestowed on him that existence which he could not refuse him in the best of all possible worlds. He only transferred him from the region of possible to that of actual beings. What great " Futura novi, non facio." } World (it must be remembered) is here synonymous with Universe. " Vides Sextum a Patre meo non fuisse factum improbum, talis quippe ab omni aeternitate fuit, et quidem semper ]i- bere ; existere tantum ei concessit Jupiter, quod ipsum profecto ejus sapientia mundo, in quo ille continebatur, denegare non poterat : ergo Sextum e regione possibilium ad rerum existentium classem transtulit." 128 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. led to hazard principles more dangerous in their position, that no event in the universe could consequences, than the- prejudices and errors possibly have been different from what has actu- which it was their aim to correct. 1 ally taken place. 5 The distinguishing feature of The zeal of Leibnitz in propagating the dogma this article of the Leibnitzian creed is, that, while of Necessity is not easily reconcileable with the the Hobbists and Spinozists were employing their hostility which, as I have already remarked, he ingenuity in connecting together Materialism uniformly displays against the congenial doctrine and Necessity, as branches springing from one of Materialism. Such, however, is the fact, and common root, Leibnitz always speaks of the soul I believe it to be quite unprecedented in the pre- as a machine purely spiritual, 5 a machine, how- vious history of philosophy. Spinoza himself has ever, as necessarily regulated by pre-ordained not pushed the argument for necessity further and immutable laws, as the movements of a clock than Leibnitz, the reasonings of both conclud- or the revolutions of the planets. In consequence ing not less forcibly against the free-will of God of holding this language, he seemed to represent than against the free-will of man, and, of con- Man in a less degrading light than other neces- sequence, terminating ultimately in this pro- sitarians ; but, in as far as such speculative te- events does the crime of Sextus draw after it ? The liberty of Rome the rise of a government fertile in civil and mili- tary virtues, and of an empire destined to conquer and to civilise the earth." Theodorus returns thanks to the goddess, and acknowledges the justice of Jupiter. 1 Among this number must be included the author of the Essay on Man, who, from a want of precision in his metaphy- sical ideas, has unconsciously fallen into various expressions, equally inconsistent with each other and with his own avowed opinions : If plagues and earthquakes break not Heaven's design, Why then a Borgia or a Catiline ? Who knows but He whose hand the lightning forms, Who heaves old Ocean, and who wings the storms, Pours fierce ambition on a Caesar's mind, Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind ? * '* * The general order since the whole began, Is kept in Nature, and is kept in Man. This approaches very nearly to the optimism of Leibnitz, and has certainly nothing in common with the optimism of Plato. Nor is it possible to reconcile it with the sentiments inculcated by Pope in other parts of the same poem. What makes all physical and moral ill ? There deviates Nature, and here wanders Will. In this last couplet he seems to admit, not only that Will may wander, but that Nature herself may deviate from the general order; whereas the doctrine of his universal prayer is, that, while the material world is subjected to established laws, man is left to be the arbiter of his own destiny : Yet gav'st me in this dark estate To know the good from ill, And, binding Nature fast in fate, Left free the human will. In the Dunciad, too, the scheme of Necessity is coupled with that of Materialism, as one of the favourite doctrines of the sect of free-thinkers. Of nought so certain as our Reason still, Of nought so doubtful as of Soul and Will. " Two things" (says Warburton, who professes to speak Pope's sentiments) " the most self-evident, the existence of our souls and the freedom of our will !" 2 So completely, indeed, and so mathematically linked, did Leibnitz conceive all truths, both physical and moral, to be with each other, that he represents the eternal geometrician as incessantly occupied in the solution of this problem, The State of one Monad (or elementary atom) being given, to determine the state, past, present, and future, of the whole universe. 3 " Cuncta itaque in homine certa sunt, et in antecessum determinata, uti in cseteris rebus omnibus, et anima humana est spirituale quoddam automatum." LEIB. Op. Tom. I. p. 156. In a note on this sentence, the editor quotes a passage from Bilfinger, a learned German, in which an attempt, is made to vindicate the propriety of the phrase, by a reference to the etymology of the word automaton. This word, it is observed, when traced to its source, literally expresses something which contains within itself its principle of motion, and, consequently, it ap- plies still more literally to Mind than to a machine. The remark, considered in a philological point of view, is indisputably just ; but is it not evident, that it leads to a conclusion precisely contrary to what this author would deduce from it ? What- ever may have been the primitive meaning of the word, its common, or rather its universal meaning, even among scientific writers, is, a material machine, moving without any foreign impulse ; and, that this was the idea annexed to it by Leibnitz, appears from his distinguishing it by the epithet spirituale, an epithet which would have been altogether superfluous had he intended to convey the opinion ascribed to him by Bilfinger. In applying, therefore, this language to the mind, we may conclude, with confidence, that Leibnitz had no intention to contrast together mind and body, in respect of their moving or actuating principles, but only to contrast them in respect of the substances of which they are composed. In a word, he con- ceived both of them to be equally machines, made and wound up by the Supreme Being ; but the machinery in the one case to be material, and in the other spiritual. DISSERTATION FIRST. 129 nets may be supposed to have, any practical ef- of the atheistic creed, with an air of Platonic feet on human conduct, the tendency of his doc- mysticism. The influence of his example appears trines is not less dangerous than that of the most to me to have contributed much to corrupt the obnoxious systems avowed by his predecessors. 1 taste and to bewilder the speculations of his coun- The scheme of necessity was still farther adorn- trymen; giving birth, in the last result, to that ed and sublimed in the Theodiccea of Leibnitz, heterogeneous combination of all that is pernicious by an imagination nurtured and trained in the in Spinozism, with the transcendental eccentrici- school of Plato. " May there not exist," he asks ties of a heated and exalted fancy, which, for on one occasion, " an immense space beyond the many years past, has so deeply tinctured both region of the stars ? and may not this empyreal their philosophy and their works of fiction. 5 heaven be filled with happiness and glory? It In other parts of Europe, the effects of iheTheo- niay be conceived to resemble an ocean, where dic&a have not been equally unfavourable. In the rivers of all those created beings that are des- France, more particularly, it has furnished to tined for bliss shall finish their course, when the few who have cultivated with success the arrived in the starry system, at the perfection of Philosophy of Mind, new weapons for combat- their respective natures." (LEIB. Op. Tom. I. ing the materialism of the Gassendists and Hob- p. 135. ) a bists ; and, in England, we are indebted to it for In various other instances, he rises from the the irresistible reasonings by which Clarke sub- deep and seemingly hopeless abyss of Fatalism, verted the foundations on which the whole su- to the same lofty conceptions of the universe ; perstructure of Fatalism rests. 4 and has thus invested the most humiliating article It may be justly regarded as a proof of the 1 The following remark in Madame de Stael's interesting and eloquent review of German philosophy bears marks of a haste and precipitation with which her criticisms are seldom chargeable : " Les opinions de Leibnitz tendent surtout au perfectionnement moral, s'il est vrai, comme les philosophes Allemands ont tache' de le prouver, que le libre arbitre repose sur la doctrine qui affranchit 1'ame des objets exterieures, et que la vertu ne puisse exister sans la parfaite independance du vouloir." 2 The celebrated Charles Sonnet, in his work entitled, Contemplation de la Nature, has indulged his imagination so far, in following out the above conjecture of Leibnitz, as to rival some of the wildest flights of Jacob Behmen. " Mais 1'dchelle de la creation ne se termine point au plus Sieves des mondes planetaires. La commence un autre univers, dont 1'etendue est peut-etre a celle de 1'univers des Fixes, ce qu'est 1'espace du syste'me solaire a la capacitd d'une noix. " La, comme des ASTRES resplendissans, brillent les HIERARCHIES CELESTES. " La rayonnent de toutes parts les ANGES, les AB.CHANGES, les SEBAPHINS, les CHEHUBINS, les TRONES, les VERTU s, les PIUNCIPAUTE'S, les DOMINATIONS, les PUISSANCES. " Au centre de ces AUGUSTES SPHERES, e'clate le SOLEIL DE JUSTICE, L'ORIENT D'EXHAUT, dont tous les ASTRES empruntent leur lumiere et leur splendeur." " La Theodicee de Leibnitz," the same author tells us in another passage, " est un de mes livres de devotion : J'ai intitule mon Exemplaire, Manuel de Philosophic Chretienne." * " The gross appetite of Love (says Gibbon) becomes most dangerous when it is elevated, or rather disguised, by sen- timental passion." The remark is strikingly applicable to some of the most popular novels and dramas of Germany ; and something very similar to it will be found to hold with respect to those speculative extravagancies which, in the German systems of philosophy, are elevated or disguised by the imposing cant of moral enthusiasm. In one of Leibnitz's controversial discussions with Dr Clarke, there is a passage which throws some light on his taste, not only in matters of science, but in judging of works of imagination. " Du temps de M. Boyle, et d'autres excellens hommes qui ileurissoient en Angleterre sous Charles II. on n'auroit pas ose* nous debiter des notions si creuses. (The notions here al- luded to are those of Newton concerning the law of gravitation.) J'espere que le beautemps reviendra sous un aussi bon gou- vernement que celui d'a present. Le capital de M. Boyle etoit d'inculquer que tout se faisoit mechaniquement dans la phy- sique. Mais c'est un malheur des hommes, de se degouter enfin de la raison me"me, et de s'ennuyer de la lumiere. Les chimeres commencent a revenir, et plaisent parce qu'elles ont quelque chose de merveilleux. II arrive dans le pays philo- sophique ce qui est arrive" dans le pays poetique. On s'est lassd des romans raisonnables, tel que la Clelie Francoise ou rAramene Alkmande ; et on est revenu depuis quelque temps aux Conies des Fees." (Cinquieme Ecrit de M. LEIBNITZ, p. 2G6.) From this passage it would seem, that Leibnitz looked forward to the period, when the dreams of the Newtonian philo- sophy would give way to some of the exploded mechanical theories of the universe ; and when the Fairy-talcs then in fa- shion (among which number must have been included those of Count Anthony Hamilton) would be supplanted by the re- vival of such reasonable Romances as the Grand Clelia. In neither of these instances does there seem to be much probability, at present, that his prediction will be ever verified. The German writers, who, of late years, have made the greatest noise among the sciolists of this country, will be found less indebted for their fame to the new lights which they have struck out, than to the unexpected and grotesque forms in which they have combined together the materials supplied by the invention of former ages, and of other nations. It is this combination of truth and error in their philosophical systems, and of right and wrong in their works of fiction, which has enabled them to perplex the understandings, and to unsettle the principles of so many, both in Metaphysics and Ethics. In point of profound and extensive erudition, the scholars of Germany still continue to maintain their long established su- periority over the rest of Europe. * A very interesting account is given by Leibnitz, of the circumstances which gave occasion to his Theodica-a, in a letter DISS. I. PART II. R 130 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. progress of reason and good sense among the Metaphysicians of this country since the time of Leibnitz, that the two theories of which I have been speaking, and which, not more than a century ago, were honoured by the opposition of such an antagonist as Clarke, are now re- membered only as subjects of literary history. In the arguments, however, alleged in support of these theories, there are some logical principles Involved, which still continue to have an ex- tensive influence over the reasonings of the learned, on questions seemingly the most remote from all metaphysical conclusions. The two most prominent of these are, the principle of the Sufficient Reason, and the Law of Continuity ; both of them so intimately connected with some of the most celebrated disputes of the last cen- tury, as to require a more particular notice than may, at first sight, seem due to their importance. I. Of the principle of the Sufficient Reason, the following succinct account is given by Leib- nitz himself, in his controversial correspondence with Dr Clarke : " The great foundation of Mathematics is the principle of contradiction or identity ; that is, that a proposition cannot be true and false at the same time. But, in order to proceed from Mathematics to Natural Philo- sophy, another principle is requisite (as I have observed in my Theodiccea] ; I mean, the prin- ciple of the Sufficient Reason ; or, in other words, that nothing happens without a reason why it should be so, rather than otherwise : And, ac- cordingly, Archimedes was obliged, in his book De JEquilibrio, to take for granted, that if there be a balance, in which every thing is alike on both sides, and if equal weights are hung on the two ends of that balance, the whole will be at rest. It is because no reason can be given why one side should weigh down rather than the other. Now, by this single principle of the Sufficient Reason, may be demonstrated the being of a God, and all the other parts of Metaphysics or Natural Theology; and even, in some measure, those physical truths that are independent of Mathematics, such as the Dynamical Principles, or the Principles of Forces." to a Scotch gentleman, Mr Burnet of Kemney ; to whom he seems to have unbosomed himself on all subjects without any reserve : " Mon livre intitule Essais dc Theodicee, sur la bonte de Dieu, la liberte de 1'homme. et 1'origine de mal, sera bientot acheve. La plus grande partie de cet ouvrage avoit cte faite par lambeaux, quand je me trouvois chez la feue Reine de Prusse, ou ces matieres etoient souvent agite'es a 1'occasion du Dictionnaire et des autres ouvrages de M. Bayle, qu'on y lisoit beaucoup. Apres la mort de cette grande Princesse, j'ai rassemble et augmente" ces pie'ces sur 1'exhortation des amis qui en etoient informed etj'en ai fait 1'ouvrage clont je viens de parler. Comme j'ai medite" sur cette matiere depuis ma jeunesse, je pretends de 1'avoir discutee a fond." (LEIBNITZ, Opera, Tom. VI. p. 284.) In another letter to the same correspondent, he expresses himself thus: " La plupart de mes sentirnens out e'te* enfin arrete's apres une deliberation de 20 ans: car j'ai comment bien jeune a me'diter, et je n'avois pas encore 15 ans, quand je mepromenois des journe'es entieres dans un bois, pour prendre parti entre Aristote et Democrite. Cependant j'ai change et re'change' sur des nouvelles lumieres, et ce n'est que depuis environ 12 ans que je me trouve satisfait, et que je suis arrive* a des demonstrations sur ces matieres qui n'en paroissent point capables : Cependant de la maniere que je m'y prends, ces demonstrations peuvent etre sensibles comrne celles des nombres, quoique le sujet passe Pimagination." (Ibid. p. 253.) The letter from which this last paragraph is taken is dated in the year 1697- My chief reason for introducing these extracts, was to do away an absurd suspicion, which has been countenanced by some respectable writers (among others by Le Clerc), that the opinions maintained in the Theodicic of Leibnitz were not his real sentiments, and that his own creed, on the most important questions there discussed, was not very different from that of Bayle. Gibbon has even gone so far as to say, that " in his defence of the attributes and providence of the Deity, he was suspected of a secret correspondence with his adversary." (Antiquities of the House of Brunswick.) In support of this very improbable charge, I do not know that any evidence has ever been produced, except the following passage, in a letter of his, addressed to a Professor of Theology in the University of Tubingen (Pfaffius) : " Ita prorsus est, vir summe re- verende. uti scribis, de Theodicaea mea. Item acu tetigisti ; et miror, neminem hactenus fuisse, qui sensum hunc meum senserit. Neque enim Philosophorum est rem serio semper agere ; qui in fmgendis hypothesibus, uti bene mones, ingenii sui vires experiuntur. Tu, qui Theologus, in refutandis erroribus Theologum agis." In reply to this it is observed, by the learned editor of Leibnitz's works, that it is much more probable that Leibnitz should have expressed himself on this particular occasion in jocular and ironical terms, than that he should have wasted so much ingenuity and learning in sup- port of an hypothesis to which he attached no faith whatever ; an hypothesis, he might have added, with which the whole principles of his philosophy are systematically, and, as he conceived, mathematically connected. It is difficult to believe, that among the innumerable correspondents of Leibnitz, he should have selected a Professor of Theology at Tubingen, as the sole depository of a secret which he was anxious to conceal from all the rest of the world. Surely a solitary document such as this weighs less than nothing, when opposed to the details quoted in the beginning of this note ; not to mention its complete inconsistency with the character of Leibnitz, and with the whole tenor of his writings. For my own part, I cannot help thinking, that the passage in question has far more the air of persiflage provoked by the vanity of Pfaffius, than of a serious compliment to his sagacity and penetration. No injunction to secrecy, it is to be observed, is here given by Leibnitz to his correspondent. DISSERTATION FIRST. 131 Some of the inferences deduced by Leibnitz from this almost gratuitous assumption are so paradoxical, that one cannot help wondering he was not a little staggered about its certainty. Not only was he led to conclude, that the mind is necessarily determined in all its elections by the influence of motives, insomuch that it would be impossible for it to make a choice between two things perfectly alike ; but he had the boldness to extend this conclusion to the Deity, and to assert, that two things perfectly alike could not have been produced even by Divine Power. It was upon this ground that he rejected a vacuum, because all the parts of it would be perfectly like to each other ; and that he also rejected the supposition of atoms, or similar particles of mat- ter, and ascribed to each particle a monad, or active principle, by which it is discriminated from every other particle. x The application of his principle, however, on which he evidently valued himself the most, was that to which I have already alluded; the demonstrative evidence with which he conceived it to establish the impossibility of free-agency, not only in man, but in any other intelligent being : * a conclusion which, under whatever form of words it may be disguised, is liable to every objection which can be urged against the system of Spinoza. With respect to the principle from which these important consequences were deduced, it is ob- servable, that it is stated by Leibnitz in terms so general and vague, as to extend to all the ' different departments of our knowledge ; for he tells us, that there must be a sufficient reason for every existence, for every event, and for every truth. This use of the word reason is so extreme- ly equivocal, that it is quite impossible to annex any precise idea to the proposition. Of this it is unnecessary to produce any other proof than the application which is here made of it to things so very different as existences, events, and truths ; in all of which cases, it must of necessity have different meanings. It would be a vain attempt, therefore, to combat the maxim in the form in which it is commonly appealed to : Nor, indeed, can we either adopt or reject it, without con- sidering particularly how far it holds in the va- rious instances to which it may be applied. The multifarious disc ussions, h o we ver, of a phy- sical, a metaphysical, and a theological nature, 3 necessarily involved in so detailed an examina- tion, would, in the present times {even if this were a proper place for introducing them), be equally useless and uninteresting ; the peculiar opinions of Leibnitz on most questions connect- ed with these sciences having already fallen into complete neglect. But as the maxim still con- tinues to be quoted by the latest advocates for the scheme of necessity, it may not be altogether superfluous to observe, that, when understood to refer to the changes that take place in the material universe, it coincides entirely with the common maxim, that " every change implies the operation of a cause ;" and that it is in con- sequence of its intuitive evidence in this particu- lar case, that so many have been led to acquiesce in it, in the unlimited terms in which Leibnitz has announced it. One thing will be readily See Note CC. * The following comment on this part of the Leibnitzian system is from the pen of one of his greatest admirers, Charkt Bonnet : " Cette Metaphysique transcendante deviendra un peu plus intelligible, si 1'on fait attention, qu'en vertu du principe de la raison siiffisante^ tout est necessairement lie' dans 1'univers. Toutes les Actions des Etres Simples sont bar- moniques, ou subordonne'es les unes aux autres. L'exercice actuel de 1'activitd d'une monade donne'e, est determine' par 1'exercice actuel de I'activite' des monades auxquelles elle correspond immediatement. Cette correspondance continue d'un point quelconque de 1'univers jusqu'a ses extremitds. llepre'sentez-vouz les ordres circulaires et coricentriques qu'une pierre excite dans une eau dormante : Elles vont toujours en s'elargissant et en s'affoiblissant. " Mais, I'e'tat actuel d'une monade est ndcessairement determine^ par son e'tat ante'ce'dent : Celui-ci par un e'tat qui a prece'de', et ainsi en remontant jusqu'a 1'instant de la creation. ** " Ainsi le passe, le present, et le futur ne forment dans la meme monade qu'une seul chaine. Notre philosophe disoit ingenieusement, que le present est toujours gros de I'avenir. " II disoit encore que 1'Eternel Gedmetre resolvoit sans cesse ce Probleme ; I'e'tat d'une monade e'tant donne", en ddter- miner I'e'tat passe', present, et futur de tout 1'univers." BONNET, Tom. VIII. p. 303, 304, 305.) 3 Since the time of Leibnitz, the principle of the sufficient reason has been adopted by some mathematicians as a legiti- mate mode of reasoning in plane geometry ; in which case, the application made of it lias been in general just and logical, notwithstanding the vague and loose manner in which it is expressed. In this science, however, the use of it can never be attended with much advantage ; except perhaps in. demonstrating a few elementary truths (such as the 5th and 6th propo- sitions of Euclid's first book), which are commonly established by a more circuitous process : and, even in these instances, the spirit of the reasoning might easily be preserved under a different form, much less exceptionable in point of phraseology. 132 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. granted, that the maxim, when applied to the determinations of intelligent and moral agents, is not quite so obvious and indisputable, as when applied to the changes that take place in things altogether inanimate and passive. What then, it may be asked, induced Leibnitz, in the enunciation of his maxim, to depart from the form in which it has generally been stated, and to substitute, instead of the word cause, the word reason, which is certainly not only the more unusual, but the more ambiguous expression of the two ? Was it not evidently a perception of the impropriety of calling the motives from which we act the causes of our actions ; or, at least of the inconsistency of this language with the common ideas and feelings of mankind ? The word reason is here much less suspicious, and much more likely to pass current without examination. It was therefore with no small dexterity, that Leibnitz contrived to express his general principle in such a manner, that the impropriety of his language should be most ap- parent in that case in which the proposition is instantaneously admitted by every reader as self- evident ; and to adapt it, in its most precise and definite shape, to the case in which it was in the greatest danger of undergoing a severe scrutiny. In this respect, he has managed his argument with more address than Collins, or Edwards, or Hume, all of whom have applied the maxim to mind, in the very same words in which it is usually applied to inanimate matter. But on this article of Leibnitz's philosophy, which gave occasion to his celebrated controversy with Clarke, I shall have a more convenient op- portunity to offer some strictures, when I come to take notice of another antagonist, more formi- dable still, whom Clarke had soon after to contend with on the same ground. The person I allude to is Anthony Collins ; a writer certainly not once to be compared with Leibnitz, in the grasp of his intellectual powers ; but who seems to have studied this particular question with greater at- tention and accuracy, and who is universally al- lowed to have defended his opinions concerning it in a manner far more likely to mislead the opi- nions of the multitude. II. The same remark which has been already made on the principle of the Sufficient Reason may be extended to that of the Law of Continui- ty. In both instances the phraseology is so in- determinate, that it may be interpreted in vari- ous senses essentially different from each other ; and, accordingly, it would be idle to argue against either principle as a general theorem, without attending separately to the specialties of the manifold cases which it may be understood to comprehend. Where such a latitude is taken in the enunciation of a proposition, which, so far as it is true, must have been inferred from an induction of particulars, it is at least possible that, while it holds in some of its applications, it may yet be far from possessing any claim to that universality which seems necessarily to belong to it, when considered in the light of a metaphy- sical axiom, resting on its own intrinsic evi- dence. Whether this vagueness of language was the effect of artifice, or of a real vagueness in the author's notions, may perhaps be doubted ; but that it has contributed greatly to extend his re- putation among a very numerous class of readers, may be confidently asserted. The possession of a general maxim, sanctioned by the authori- ty of an illustrious name, and in which, as in those of the schoolmen, more seems to be meant than meets the ear, affords of itself no slight gratification to the vanity of many ; nor is it inconvenient for a disputant, that the maxims to which he is to appeal should be stated in so du- * bious a shape, as to enable him, when pressed in an argument, to shift his ground at pleasure, from one interpretation to another. The extra- ordinary popularity which, in our own times, the philosophy of Kant enjoyed, for a few years, among the countrymen of Leibnitz, may, in like manner, be in a great degree ascribed to the imposing aspect of his enigmatical oracles, and to the consequent facility of arguing without end, in defence of a system so transmutable and so elusive in its forms. The extension, however, given to the Law of Continuity, in the later publications of Leibnitz, and still more by some of his successors, has been far greater than there is any reason to think was originally in the author's contempla- tion. It first occurred to him in the course of one of his physical controversies, and was probably DISSERTATION FIRST. suggested by the beautiful exemplifications of it which, occur in pure geometry. At that time it does not appear that he had the slightest idea of its being susceptible of any application to the ob- jects of natural history ; far less to the succes- sion of events in the intellectual and moral worlds. The supposition of bodies perfectly hard, liaving been shown to be inconsistent with two of his leading doctrines, that of the constant maintenance of the same quantity of force in the Universe, and that of the proportionality of forces to the squares of the velocities, he found himself reduced to the necessity of asserting, that all changes are produced by insensible gra- dations, so as to render it impossible for a body to have its state changed from motion to rest, or from rest to motion, without passing through all the intermediate states of velocity. From this assumption he argued, with much ingenuity, that the existence of atoms, or of perfectly hard bodies, is impossible ; because, if two of them should meet with equal and opposite motions, they would necessarily stop at once, in violation of the law of continuity. It would, perhaps, have been still more logical, had he argued against the universality of a law so gratuitously assumed, from its incompatibility with an hypo- thesis, which, whether true or false, certainly involves nothing either contradictory or impro- bable : but as this inversion of the argument would have undermined some of the fundamental principles of his physical system, he chose ra- ther to adopt the other alternative, and to an- nounce the law of continuity as a metaphysical truth, which admitted of no exception whatever. The facility with which this law has been adopt- ed by subsequent philosophers is not easily ex- plicable ; more especially, as it has been main- tained by many who reject those physical errors, in defence of which Leibnitz was first led to advance it. One of the earliest, and certainly the most illustrious, of all the partizans and defenders of this principle, was John Bernouilli, whose dis- course on motion first appeared at Paris in 1727, having been previously communicated to the Royal Academy of Sciences, in 1724 and 1726. J It was from this period it began to attract the general attention of the learned ; although many years were yet to elapse, before it was to ac- quire that authority which it now possesses among our most eminent mathematicians. Mr Maclaurin, whose Memoir on the Percus- sion of Bodies gained the prize from the Royal Academy of Sciences, in 1724, continued from that time, till his death, the steady opposer of this new law. In his Treatise of Fluxions, pub- lished in 1742, he observes, that " the existence of hard bodies void of elasticity has been reject- ed for the sake of what is called the Law of Continuity ; a law which has been supposed to be general, without sufficient ground." 2 And still more explicitly, in his Posthumous Account of Newton's Philosophical Discoveries, he complains of those who " have rejected hard bodies as im- possible, from far-fetched and metaphysical con- siderations ;" proposing to his adversaries this unanswerable question, " Upon what grounds is the law of continuity assumed as an universal law of nature?" 5 1 " En effet (says Bernouilli), un pareil principe de durete' (the supposition to wit of bodies perfectly hard) ne s^auroit exister ; c'est une chimere qui repugne a cette loi ge'ne'rale que la nature observe constamment dans toutes ses operations ; je parle de cet ordre immuable et perpe'tuel e'tabli depuis la creation de Tunivers, qtfon pent appeUer LOI DE CONTINUITE, en vertu de laquelle tout ce qui s'exe'cute, s'exe'cute par des degrds infiniment petits. II semble que le bon sens dicte, qu'aucun changement ne peut se faire par taut ; natura non opcratur per saltum ; rien ne peut passer d'une extremitd si 1'autre, sans passer par tous les degre's du milieu," &c. The continuation of this passage (which I have not room to quote) is curious, as it suggests an argument, in proof of the law of continuity, from the principle of the sufficient reason. It may be worth while to observe here, that though, in the above quotation, Bernouilli speaks of the law of continuity as an arbitrary arrangement of the Creator, he represents, in the preceding paragraph, the idea of perfectly hard bodies, as in- volving a manifest contradiction. 2 Maclaurin's Fluxions, Vol. II. p. 438. 3 Nearly to the same purpose Mr Robins, a mathematician and philosopher of the highest eminence, expresses himself thus : " M. Bernouilli (in his Discount sur les Lois de la Communication du Mouvcmcnt), in order to prove that there are no bodies perfectly hard and inflexible, lays it down as an immutable law of nature, that no body can pass from motion to rest instantaneously, or without having its velocity gradually diminished. That this is a law of nature, M. Bernouilli thinks is evident from that principle, Natura non operator per saltum, and from good sense. BUT HOW GOOD SENSE CAN, OF ITSELF, WITHOUT EXPERIMENT, DETERMINE ANY OF THE LAWS OF NATURE, IS TO ME VERY ASTONISHING. Indeed, from any thing M. Bernouilli has said, it would have been altogether as conclusive to have begun at the other end, and have disput- 134 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. In the speculations hitherto mentioned, the law of continuity is applied merely to such suc- cessive events in the material world as are con- nected together by the relation of cause and effect ; and, indeed, chiefly to the changes which take place in the state of bodies with respect to motion and rest. But in the philosophy of Leibnitz, we find the same law appealed to as an indisputable principle in all his various re- searches, physical, metaphysical, and theologi- cal. He extends it with the same confidence to mind as to matter, urging it as a demonstrative proof, in opposition to Locke, that the soul never ceases to think even in sleep or in deliquium; * nay, inferring from it the impossibility that, in the case of any animated being, there should be such a thing as death, in the literal sense of that word. 3 It is by no means probable that the author was at all aware, when he first intro- duced this principle into the theory of motion, how far it was to lead him in his researches con- cerning other questions of greater moment ; nor does it appear that it attracted much notice from the learned, but as a new mechanical axiom, till a considerable time after his death. Charles Bonnet of Geneva, a man of unques- tionable talents and of most exemplary worth, was, as far as I know, the first who entered fully into the views of Leibnitz on this point perceiving how inseparably the law of con- tinuity (as well as the principle of the suffi- cient reason) was interwoven with his scheme of universal concatenation and mechanism; and inferring from thence not only all the paradoxi- cal corollaries deduced from it by its author, but some equally bold conclusions of his own, which Leibnitz either did not foresee in their full extent, or to which the course of his inquiries did not particularly attract his attention. The most remarkable of these conclusions was, that all the various beings which compose the uni- verse, form a scale descending downwards with- out any chasm or saltus, from the Deity to the simplest forms of unorganised matter; 3 a pro- position not altogether new in the history of philosophy, but which I do not know that any writer before Bonnet had ventured to assert as a metaphysical and necessary truth. With what important limitations and exceptions it must be received, even when confined to the compa- ed, that no body can pass instantaneously from motion to rest ; because it is an immutable law of nature that all bodies shall be flexible." (llouiNS, Vol. II. p. 174. 175.) In quoting these passages, I would not wish to be understood as calling in question the universality of the Law of Con- tinuity in the phenomena of moving bodies ; a point on which I am not led by the subject of this discourse to offer any opinion ; but on which I intend to hazard some remarks in a Note at the end of it See Note D D. All that I would here assert is, that it is a law, the truth of which can be inferred only by an induction from the phenomena ; and to which, ac- cordingly, we are not entitled to say that there cannot possibly exist any exceptions. 1 " Je tiens que 1'aMne, et meme le corps, n'est jamais sans action, et que Time n'est jamais sajis quelque perception ; meme en dormant on a quelque sentiment confus et sombre du lieu ou Ton est, et d'autres choses. Mats quand Inexperience ne le confirmeroit pas, je crois qu'il y en a demonstration. C'est a peu pres comme on ne s^auroit prouver absolument par les experiences, s'il n'y a point de vuide dans 1'espace, et s'il n'y a point de repos dans la matiere. Et cependant ces questions me paroissent decide'es de'monstrativement, aussi bien qu'a M. Locke." (LEiu. Op. Tome II. p. 220.) 2 See Note E E. 3 " Leibnitz admettoit comme un principe fondamental de sa sublime philosophic, qu'il n'y a jamais de sauts dans la nature, et que tout est continu ou nuance' dans le physique et dans le moral. C'^toit sa fameuse Loi de Continuite, qu'il croyoit retrouver encore dans les mathdmatiques, et <;'avoit e'td cette loi qui lui avoit inspird la singuliere pre- diction dont je parlois."* " Tous les tres, disoit il, ne forment qu'une seule chaine, dans laquelle les differentes classes, comme autant d'anneaux, tiennent si e'troitement les unes aux autres, qu'il est impossible aux sens et a 1'imagination de fixer pre'cise'ment le point ou quelqu'un commence ou finit : toutes les especes qui bordent ou qui occupent, pour ainsi dire, les regions d'inflection, et de rebroussement, devoit etre Equivoques et doue'es de caracteres qui peuvent se rapporter aux especes voisins Egalement. Ainsi, 1'existence des zoophytes ou Plant-Animaux n'a rien de monstrueux ; mais il est m^me convenable a 1'ordre de la nature qu'il y en ait. Et telle est la force du principe de continuite chez moi, que non seulement je ne serois point e'toune' d'apprendre, qu'on eut trouve' des etres, qui par rapport a plusieurs proprie'te's, par exemple, celle de se nourrir ou de se multiplier, puissent passer pour des vegetaux a aussi bon droit que pour des animaux, . . . J'en serois si peu e'tonne', dis-je, que meme je suis convaincu qu'il doit y en avoir de tels, que 1'Histoire Naturelle parviendra peut-etre a connoitre un jour," &c. &c (Contemplation de la Nature, pp. 341. 342.) Bonnet, in the sequel of this passage, speaks of the words of Leibnitz, as a prediction of the discovery of the Polypus, deduced from the Metaphysical principle of the Law of Continuity. But would it not be more philosophical to regard it as a query founded on the analogy of nature, as made known to us by experience and observation ?-f- * La prediction de la de'couverte des Polypes. t Ad eum modum summus opifex rerum seriem concatenavit a planta ad hominem, ut quasi sine ullo cohcereant intervallo ; sic ZattpuTo. cum plantis bruta conjungunt ; sic cum homine simia quadrupedes. Itaque in hominis quaque specie invenimus divinos, humanos, feros. SCALIGEB, (prefixed as a motto to Mr White's Essay on the regular gradatwn in Matt. London, 1799.) DISSERTATION FIRST. 135 rative anatomy of animals, has been fully de- monstrated by Cuvier; 1 and it is of material consequence to remark, that these exceptions, how few soever, to a metaphysical principle, are not less fatal to its truth than if they exceeded in number the instances which are quoted in sup- port of the general rule.* At a period somewhat later, an attempt has been made to connect the same law of continuity with the history of human improvement, and more particularly with the progress of invention in the sciences and arts. Helvetius is the most noted writer in whom I have observed this last extension of the Leibnitzian principle ; and I have little doubt, from his known opinions, that, when it occurred to him, he conceived it to af- ford a new illustration of the scheme of necessi- ty, and of the mechanical concatenation of all the phenomena of human life. Arguing in sup- port of his favourite paradox concerning the ori- ginal equality of all men in point of mental capa- city, he represents the successive advances made by different individuals in the career of discovery, as so many imperceptible or infinitesimal steps, each individual surpassing his predecessor by a trifle, till at length nothing is wanting but an additional mind, not superior to the others in natural powers, to combine together, and to turn to its own account, their accumulated la- bours. " It is upon this mind," he observes, " that the world is always ready to bestow the attribute of genius. From the tragedies of The Passion, to the poets Hardy and Rotrou, and to the Mariamne of Tristan, the French theatre was always acquiring successively an infinite number of inconsiderable improvements. Cor- neille was born at a moment, when the addition he made to the art could not fail to form an epoch ; and accordingly Corneille is universally regarded as a Genius. I am far from wishing," Helvetius adds, " to detract from the glory of this great poet. I wish only to prove, that Na- ture never proceeds PER SALTUM, and that the Law of Continuity is always exactly observed. The re- marks, therefore, now made on the dramatic art, may also be applied to the sciences which rest on observation." 5 (De I' Esprit, Dis. IV. Chap. I.) With this last extension of the Law of Con- tinuity, as well as with that of Bonnet, a care- less reader is the more apt to be dazzled, as there is a large mixture in both of unquestionable truth. The mistake of the ingenious writers lay in pushing to extreme cases a doctrine, \vhich, 1 Lecons ff Anatomic Comparie. 9 While Bonnet was thus employing his ingenuity in generalising, still farther than his predecessors had done, the law of continuity, one of the most distinguished of his fellow citizens, with whom he appears to have been connected in the closest and most confidential friendship (the very ingenious M. Le Sage), was led, in the course of his researches concerning the physical cause of gravitation, to deny the existence of the law, even in the descent of heavy bodies. " The action of gravity (according to him) is not continuous." In other words, " each of its impressions is finite ; and the interval of time which separates it from the following impression is of a finite duration." Of this proposition he offers a proof, which he considers as demonstrative ; and thence deduces the following very paradoxical corollary, That " Projectiles do not move in curvilinear paths, but in rectilinear polygons." * " C'est ainsi (he adds) qu'un pres, qui vu de pres, se trouve convert de parties vertes reellement separees, offre cependant aux personnes qui le regardent de loin, la sensation d'une verdure continue* : Et qu'un corps poll, auquel le microscope decouvre mille solutions de continuite, paroit a Poeil nu, posse'der une continuity parfaite." " Ge'ne'ralement, le simple bons sens, qui veut, qu'on suspende son jugement sur ce qu'on ignore, et que Ton ne tranche pas hardiment sur la non-existence de ce qui echappe a nos sens, auroit du empecher des gens qui s'appelloient philosophes de decider si dogmatiquement, la continuite re'elle, de ce qui avoit une continuite apparente ; et la non-existence des in- tervalles qu'ils n'apercevoient pas." (Essai de Chymie Mecanique. Couronne" en 1758, par 1'Acade'mie de Rouen : Imprime a Geneve, 17C1. pp. 94. 95. 96.) a It may, perhaps, be alleged, that the above allusion to the Law of Continuity was introduced merely for the sake of il- lustration, and that the author did not mean his words to be strictly interpreted ; but this remark will not be made by those who are acquainted with the philosophy of Helvetius. Let me add, that, in selecting Corneille as the only exemplification of this theory, Helvetius has been singularly unfor- tunate. It would have been difficult to have named any other modern poet, in whose works, when compared with those of his immediate predecessors, the Law of Continuity has been more remarkably violated. " Corneille (says a most judicious French critic) est, pour ainsi dire, de notre terns ; mais ses contemporains n'en sont pas. Le Cid, les Horaces, Cinna, Po- liencte, forment le commencement de cette chaine brillante qui rcunit notre litterature actuelle de celle du regne de Riche- lieu et de la rninoritd de Louis XIV. ; mais autour de ces points lumineux regne encore une nuit profonde ; leur eclat les rapproche en apparence de nos yeux ; le reste, repousse* dans 1'obscurite, semble bien loin de nous. Pour nous Corpeille est moderne, et Rotrou ancien," &c. (For detailed illustrations and proofs of these positions, see a slight but masterly his- torical sketch of the French Theatre, by M. Suard.) " Ullas vero curvas in rerum natura esse negavere multi. Nominabo tantum, qui nunc occurrunt : LuUnum, Basionem, Regium, Bmtartem, et quern parum abest, quin addam Hobbesium." (LEIBNITZ, Op. Tom. II. p. 47-) 136 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. when kept within certain limits, is not only so- lid but important ; a mode of reasoning, which, although it may be always safely followed out in pure Mathematics (where the principles on which we proceed are mere definitions), is a never-failing source of error in all the other sciences; and which, when practically applied to the concerns of life, may be regarded as an infallible symptom of an understanding better fitted for the subtle contentions of the schools, than for those average estimates of what is ex- pedient and practicable in the conduct of affairs, which form the chief elements of political saga- city and of moral wisdom. * If on these two celebrated principles of Leib- nitz, I have enlarged at greater length than may appear to some of my readers to be necessary, I must remind them, 1st, Of the illustration they afford of what Locke has so forcibly urged with respect to the danger of adopting, upon the faith of reasonings a priori, metaphysical conclu- sions concerning the laws by which the universe is governed : 2dly, Of the proof they exhibit of the strong bias of the human mind, even in the present advanced stage of experimental know- ledge, to grasp at general maxims, without a careful examination of the grounds on which they rest ; and of that less frequent, but not less unfortunate bias, which has led some of our most eminent mathematicians to transfer to sciences, resting ultimately on an appeal to facts, those habits of thinking which have been formed amidst the hypothetical abstractions of pure geometry : Lastly, Of the light they throw on the mighty influence which the name and autho- rity of Leibnitz have, for more than a century past, exercised over the strongest and acutest understandings in the most enlightened coun- tries of Europe. It would be improper to close these reflections on the philosophical speculations of Leibnitz, without taking some notice of his very ingenious and original thoughts on the etymological study of languages, considered as a guide to our con- clusions concerning the origin and migrations of different tribes of our species. These thoughts were published in 1710, in the Memoirs of the Berlin Academy ; and form the first article of the first volume of that justly celebrated collec- tion. I do not recollect any author of an ear- lier date, who seems to have been completely aware of the important consequences to which the prosecution of this inquiry is likely to lead ; nor, indeed, was much progress made in it by any of Leibnitz's successors, till towards the end of the last century ; when it became a favourite object of pursuit to some very learned and inge- nious men, both in France, Germany, and Eng- land. Now, however, when our knowledge of the globe, and of its inhabitants, is so wonder- fully enlarged by commerce, and by conquest ; and when so great advances have been made in the acquisition of languages, the names of which, till very lately, were unheard of in this quarter of the world ; there is every reason to hope for a series of farther discoveries, strengthening pro- gressively, by the multiplication of their mutual points of contact, the common evidence of their joint results ; and tending more and more to dissipate the darkness in which the primeval history of our race is involved. It is a field, of which only detached corners have hitherto been explored ; and in which, it may be confidently presumed, that unthought of treasures still lie hid, to reward sooner or later the researches of our posterity. 8 My present subject does not lead me to speak of the mathematical and physical researches, 1 Locke has fallen into a train of thought very similar to that of Bonnet, concerning the Scale of Beings ; but has ex- pressed himself with far greater caution ; sta'ting it modestly as an inference deduced from an induction of particulars, not as the result of any abstract or metaphysical principle. (See LOCKE'S Works, Vol. III. p. 101.) In one instance, indeed, he avails himself of an allusion, which, at first sight, may appear to favour the extension of the mathematical Law of Continuity to the works of creation ; but it is evident, from the context, that he meant this allusion merely as a popular illustration of a fact in Natural History ; not as the rigorous enunciation of a theorem applicable alike to all truths, mathematical, physi- cal, and moral. " It is a hard matter to say where sensible and rational begin, and where insensible and irrational end ; and who is there quick-sighted enough to determine precisely, which is the lowest species of living things, and which is the first of those who have no life ? Things, as far as we can observe, lessen and augment, as the quantity does in a regular cone, where, though there be a manifest odds betwixt the bigness of the diameter at a remote distance, yet the difference between the upper and under, where they touch one another, is hardly discernible." (Hid.) See some Reflections on this speculation of Locke's in the Spectator. No. 519. See Note F F. DISSERTATION FIRST. 137 which have associated so closely the name of Leib- nitz with that of Newton, in the history of modern science ; of the inexhaustible treasures of his erudition, both classical and scholastic ; of his vast and manifold contributions towards the elucidation of German antiquities and of Roman jurisprudence ; or of those theological controver- sies, in which, while he combated with one hand the enemies of revelation, he defended, with the other, the orthodoxy of his own dogmas against the profoundest and most learned divines of Eu- rope. Nor would I have digressed so far as to allude here to these particulars, were it not for the unparalleled example they display, of what a vigorous and versatile genius, seconded by habits of persevering industry, may accomplish, within the short span of human life. Even the relaxations with which he was accustomed to fill up his moments of leisure, partook of the general character of his more serious engagements. By early and long habit, he had acquired a singular facility in the composition of Latin verses ; and he seems to have delighted in loading his muse with new fetters of his own contrivance, in ad- dition to those imposed by the laws of classical prosody. l The number, besides, of his literary correspondents was immense ; including all that was most illustrious in Europe : and the rich materials everywhere scattered over his letters are sufficient of themselves to show, that his amusements consisted rather in a change of ob- jects, than in a suspension of his mental activi- ty. Yet while we admire these stupendous mo- numents of his intellectual energy, we must not forget (if I may borrow the language of Gibbon) that " even the powers of Leibnitz were dissipat- ed by the multiplicity of his pursuits. He at- tempted more than he could finish ; he designed more than he could execute ; his imagination was too easily satisfied with a bold and rapid glance on the subject which he was impatient to leave ; and he may be compared to those heroes whose empire has been lost in the ambition of universal conquest."" From some expressions which Leibnitz has occasionally dropped, I think it probable, that he himself became sensible, as he advanced in life, that his time might have been more pro- fitably employed, had his studies been more con- fined in their aim. " If the whole earth (he has observed on one occasion) had continued to be of one language and of one speech, human life might be considered as extended beyond its pre- sent term, by the addition of all that part of it which is devoted to the acquisition of dead and foreign tongues. Many other branches of know T ledge, too, may, in this respect, be classed with the languages ; such as Positive Laws, Cere- monies, the Styles of Courts, and a great pro- portion of what is called critical erudition. The utility of all these arises merely from opinion ; nor is there to be found, in the innumerable volumes that have been written to illustrate them, a hundredth part, which contains any- thing subservient to the happiness or improve- ment of mankind." The most instructive lesson, however, to be drawn from the history of Leibnitz, is the in- competency of the most splendid gifts of the un- derstanding, to advance essentially the interests either of Metaphysical or of Ethical Science, un- less accompanied with that rare devotion to truth, which maybe regarded, if not as the basis, at least as one of the most indispensable elements, of mo- ral genius. The chief attraction to the study of philosophy, in his mind, seems to have been (what many French critics have considered as a chief source of the charms of the imitative arts) the pride of conquering difficulties : a feature of his character which he had probably in his own eye, when he remarked (not without some de- gree of conscious vanity), as a peculiarity in the turn or cast of his intellect, that to him " all difficult things were easy, and all easy things 1 A remarkable instance of this is mentioned by himself in one of his letters. " Annos natus tredecim una die trecentos versus hexametros effudi, sine elisione omnes, quod hoc fieri facile posse forte affirmassem." (LEIB. Op. Tom. V. p. 304.) He also amused himself occasionally with writing verses in German and in French. 4 May I presume to remark farther, that the native powers of Leibnitz's mind, astonishing and preternatural as they certainly were, seem sometimes oppressed and overlaid under the weight of his still more astonishing erudition ? The in. fluence of his scholastic reading is more peculiarly apparent in warping his judgment, and clouding his reason, on all ques- tions connected with Metaphysical Theology. DISS. I. PART. II. S 138 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. difficult." 1 Hence the disregard manifested in his writings to the simple and obvious conclu- sions of experience and common sense ; and the perpetual effort to unriddle mysteries over which an impenetrable veil is drawn. " Scilicet su- blime et erectum ingenium, pulchritudinem ac speciem excelsae magnseque glorise vehementins quam caute appetebat." It is to be regretted, that the sequel of this fine eulogy does not equal- ly apply to him. " Mox mitigavit ratio et setas; retinuitque, quod est difficillimum, et in sapientia modum" 2 How happily does this last expression characterise the temperate wisdom of Locke, when contrasted with that towering, but impo- tent ambition, which, in the Theories of Opti- mism and of Pre-established Harmony, seemed to realize the fabled revolt of the giants against the sovereignty of the gods ! After all, a similarity may be traced between these two great men in one intellectual weakness common to both ; a facility in the admission of facts, stamped sufficiently (as we should now think) by their own intrinsic evidence, with the marks of incredibility. The observation has been often made with respect to Locke ; but it would be difficult to find in Locke's writings, any thing so absurd as an account gravely trans- mitted by Leibnitz to the Abbe de St Pierre, and by him communicated to the Royal Acade- my of Sciences at Paris, of a dog who spoke. s No person liberally educated could, I believe, be found at present in any Protestant country of Christendom, capable of such credulity. By what causes so extraordinary a revolution in the minds of men has been effected, within the short space of a hundred years, I must not here stop to inquire. Much, I apprehend, must be ascribed to our enlarged knowledge of nature, and more particularly to those scientific voyages and tra- vels which have annihilated so many of the prodigies which exercised the wonder and sub- dued the reason of our ancestors. But, in what- ever manner the revolution is to be explained, there can be no doubt that this growing dispo- sition to weigh scrupulously the probability of alleged facts against the faith due to the testi- monies brought to attest them, and, even in some cases, against the apparent evidence of our own senses, enters largely and essentially into the composition of that philosophical spirit or temper, which so strongly distinguishes the eighteenth century from all those which preced- ed it. 4 It is no small consolation to reflect, that some important maxims of good sense have been thus familiarised to the most ordinary un- derstandings, which, at so very recent a period, failed in producing their due effect on two of the most powerful minds in Europe. On reviewing the foregoing paragraphs, I am almost tempted to retract part of what I have written, when I reflect on the benefits which the world has derived even from the errors of Leib- nitz. It has been well and justly said, that " every desideratum is an imperfect discovery ;" to which it may be added, that every new pro- blem which is started, and still more every at- tempt, however abortive, towards its solution, strikes out a new path, which must sooner or later lead to the truth. If the problem be sol-" vible, a solution will in due time be obtained : if insolvible, it will soon be abandoned as hope- less by general consent ; and the legitimate field of scientific research will become more fertile, in proportion as a more accurate survey of its boundaries adapts it better to the limited re- sources of the cultivators. In tins point of view, what individual in mo- dern times can be compared to Leibnitz ! To how many of those researches, which still use- fully employ the talents and industry of the learned, did he not point out and open the way ! From how many more did he not warn the wise to withhold their curiosity, by his bold and fruitless attempts to burst the barriers of the invisible world ! The best eloge of Leibnitz is furnished by the literary history of the eighteenth century ; a history which, whoever takes the pains to com- pare with his works, and with his epistolary correspondence, will find reason to doubt 1 " Sentio paucos esse mei characteris, et omnia facilia mihi difficilia, omnia contra difficilia mihi facilia ease." LEIB. Op. Tom. VI. p. 302. Tacitus, Agric. 3 See Note G G. See Note H H. DISSERTATION FIRST. 139 whether, at the singular era when he appeared, he could have more accelerated the advancement of knowledge by the concentration of his studies, than he has actually done by the universality of his aims ; and whether he does not afford one of the few instances to which the words of the poet may literally be applied : " Si non errasset, fecerat ille minus." ' SECTION III. Of the Metaphysical Speculations of Newton and Clarke. Digression with respect to the System of Spinoza. Collins and Jonathan Edwards. Anxiety of both to reconcile the Scheme of Necessity with Man's Moral Agency. Departure of some later Necessitarians from their views. * THE foregoing review of the philosophical writings of Locke and of Leibnitz naturally leads our attention, in the next place, to those of our illustrious countrymen Newton and Clarke ; the former of whom has exhibited, in his Prin- eipia and Optics, the most perfect exemplifica- tions which have yet appeared, of the cautious logic recommended by Bacon and Locke ; while the other, in defending against the assaults of Leibnitz the metaphysical principles on which the Newtonian philosophy proceeds, has been led, at the same time, to vindicate the authority of various other truths, of still higher impor- tance, and more general interest. The chief subjects of dispute between Leibnitz and Clarke, so far as the principles of the New- tonian philosophy are concerned, have been long ago settled, to the entire satisfaction of the learn- ed world. The monads, and the plenum, and the pre-established harmony of Leibnitz, already rank, in the public estimation, with the vortices of Descartes, and the plastic nature of Cudworth ; while the theory of gravitation prevails every- where over all opposition ; and (as Mr Smith remarks) " has advanced to the acquisition of the most universal empire that was ever esta- blished in philosophy." On these points, there- fore, I have only to refer my readers to the col- lection published by Dr Clarke, in 1717, of the controversial papers which passed between him and Leibnitz during the two preceding years; a correspondence equally curious and instructive; and which, it is to be lamented, that the death of Leibnitz in 1716 prevented from being longer continued. 7 Although Newton does not appear to have de- 1 See Note 1 1. 2 In conformity to the plan announced in the preface to this Dissertation, I confine myself to those authors whose opinions have had a marked and general influence on the subsequent history of philosophy ; passing over a multitude of other names well worthy to be recorded in the annals of metaphysical science. Among these, I shall only mention the name of Boyle, to whom the world is indebted, beside some very acute remarks and many fine illustrations of his own upon metaphysical questions of the highest moment, for the philosophical arguments in defence of religion, which have added so much lustre to the names of Derham and Bentley ; and, far above both, to that of Clarke.* The remarks and illustrations, which I here refer to, are to be found in his Inquiry into the Vulgar Notion of Nature, and in his Essay, inquiring -whether, and hove, a Natu- ralist should consider Fmal Causes. Both of these tracts display powers which might have placed their author on a level with Descartes and Locke, had not his taste and inclination determined him more strongly to other pursuits. I am inclined to think, that neither of them is so well known as were to be wished. I do not even recollect to have seen it anywhere no- ticed, that some of the most striking and beautiful instances of design in the order of the material world, which occur in the Sermons preached at Boyle's Lecture, are borrowed from the works of the founder, -f- Notwithstanding, however, these great merits, he has written too little on such abstract subjects to entitle him to a place among English metaphysicians ; nor has he, like Newton, started any leading thoughts which have since given a new direc- tion to the studies of metaphysical inquirers. From the slight specimens he has left, there is reason to conclude, that his mind was still more happily turned than that of Newton, for the prosecution of that branch of science to which their con- temporary Locke was then beginning to invite the attention of the public. 3 From a letter of Leibnitz to M. Remond de Montmort, it appears that he considered Newton, and not Clarke, as his To the English reader it is unnecessary to observe, that I allude to the Sermons preached at the Lecture founded by the Honourable Robert Boyle. j- Those instances, more especially, which are drawn from the anatomical structure of animals, and the adaptation of their perceptive organs to the habits of life for which they are destined. 140 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. voted much of his time to Metaphysical re- searches, yet the general spirit of his physical investigations has had a great, though indirect, influence on the metaphysical studies of his suc- cessors. It is justly and profoundly remarked by Mr Hume, that " while Newton seemed to draw off the veil from some of the mysteries of nature, he showed, at the same time, the imper- fections of the mechanical philosophy, and there- by restored her ultimate secrets to that obscurity in which they ever did, and ever will remain." In this way, his discoveries have co-operated powerfully with the reasonings of Locke in pro- ducing a general conviction of the inadequacy of our faculties to unriddle those sublime enigmas on which Descartes, Malebranche, and Leib- nitz, had so recently wasted their strength, and which, in the ancient world, were regarded as the only fit objects of philosophical curiosity. It is chiefly too since the time of Newton, that the ontology and pneumatology of the dark ages have been abandoned for inquiries resting on the solid basis of experience and analogy; and that philosophers have felt themselves emboldened by his astonishing discoveries concerning the more distant parts of the material universe, to argue from the known to the unknown parts of the moral world. So completely has the pre- diction been verified which he himself hazarded, in the form of a query, at the end of his Optics, that " if natural philosophy should continue to be improved in its various branches, the bounds of moral philosophy would be enlarged also." How far the peculiar cast of Newton's genius qualified him for prosecuting successfully the study of Mind, he has not afforded us sufficient data for judging ; but such was the admiration with which his transcendent powers as a Mathe- matician and Natural Philosopher were univer- sally regarded, that the slightest of his hints on other subjects have been eagerly seized upon as indisputable axioms, though sometimes with little other evidence in their favour but the sup- posed sanction of his authority. 1 The part of his works, however, which chiefly led me to con- nect his name with that of Clarke, is a passage in the Scholium annexed to his Principia, 2 which may be considered as the germ of the celebrated" real antagonist in this controversy. " M. Clarke, ou plutot M. Newton, dont M. Clarke soutient les dogmes, est en dispute avec moi sur la philosophic." (LEIB. Of. Tom. V. p. 33.) From another letter to the same correspondent we learn, that phie de M. Newton." (Ibid.) See also a letter from Leibnitz to M. des Maizeaux in the same volume of his works, p. 39. 1 Witness Hartley's Physiological Theory of the Mind, founded on a query in Newton's Qptict ; and a long list of theories in medicine, grafted on a hint thrown out in the same query, in the form of a modest conjecture. 2 This Scholium, it is to be observed, first appeared at the end of the second edition of the Principia, printed at Cambridge in 1713. The former edition, published at London in 1687, has no Scholium annexed to it. From a passage, however, in a letter of Newton's to Dr Bentley (dated 1692), it seems probable, that as far back, at least, as that period, he had thoughts of attempting a proof a priori of the existence of God. After some new illustrations, drawn from his own discoveries, of the common argument from final causes, he thus concludes : " There is yet another argument for a Deity, which I take to be a very strong one ; but, till the principles on which it is grounded are better received, I think it more advisable to let it sleep." {Four Letters from Sir /. Newton to Dr Bentley, p. 11. London, Dodsley, 1756.) It appears from this passage, that Newton had no intention, like his predecessor Descartes, to supersede, by any new ar- gument of his own for the existence of God, the common one drawn from the consideration of final causes ; and, therefore, nothing could be more uncandid than the following sarcasm pointed by Pope at the laudable attempts of his two country- men to add to the evidence of this conclusion, by deducing it from other principles : " Let others creep by timid steps and slow, On plain experience lay foundations low, By common sense to common knowledge bred, And last to Nature's cause thro' Nature led : We nobly take the high priori-road, And reason downwards till we doubt of God." That Pope had Clarke in his eye when he wrote these lines, will not be doubted by those who recollect the various other occasions in which he has stepped out of his way, to vent an impotent spleen against this excellent person. " Let Clarke live half his life the poor's support, But let him li ve the other half at court." And again : " Even in an ornament its place remark ; Nor in a hermitage set Dr Clarke :" in which last couplet there is a manifest allusion to the bust of Clarke, placed in a hermitage by Queen Caroline, together with those of Newton, Boyle, Locke, and Wollaston. See some fine verses on these busts in a poem called the Grotto, by Matthew Green. DISSERTATION FIRST. 141 argument a priori for the existence of God, which is commonly j though, I apprehend, not justly, regarded as the most important of all Clarke's contributions to Metaphysical Philosophy. I shall quote the passage in Newton's own words, to the oracular conciseness of which no English version can do justice. " jJEternus est et infinitus, omnipotens et om- nisciens ; id est, durat ab seterno in seterimm, et adest ab infinite in infinitum Non est aeternitas et infinitas, sed seternus et infinitus ; non est duratio et spatium, sed durat et adest. Durat semper et adest ubique, et existendo sem- per et ubique durationem et spatium constituit." 1 Proceeding on these principles, Dr Clarke argued, that, as immensity and eternity (which force themselves irresistibly on our belief as necessary existences, or, in other words, as existences of which the annihilation is impossible) are not substances, but attributes, the immense and eter- nal Being, whose attributes they are, must exist of necessity also. The existence of God, there- fore, according to Clarke, is a truth that follows with demonstrative evidence from those concep- tions of space and time which are inseparable from the human mind " These (says Dr Reid) are the speculations of men of superior genius ; but whether they be as solid as they are sublime, or whether they be the wanderings of imagination in a region beyond the limits of the human understanding, I am at a loss to deter- mine." After this candid acknowledgment from Dr Reid, I need not be ashamed to confess my own doubts and difficulties on the same ques- tion. 2 But although the argument, as stated by Clarke, does not carry complete satisfaction to my mind, I think it must be granted that there is something peculiarly wonderful and over- whelming in those conceptions of immensity and eternity, which it is not less impossible to banish from our thoughts, than the consciousness of our own existence. Nay, further, I think that these conceptions are very intimately connected with the fundamental principles of Natural Religion. For when once we have established, from the evidences of design everywhere manifested around us, the existence of an intelligent and powerful cause, we are unavoidably led to apply to this cause our conceptions of immensity and eternity, and to conceive Him as filling the infi- nite extent of both with his presence and with his power. Hence we associate with the idea of God those awful impressions which are naturally produced by the idea of infinite space, and per- haps still more by the idea of endless duration. Nor is this all. It is from the immensity of space that the notion of infinity is originally de- rived ; and it is hence that we transfer the ex- pression, by a sort of metaphor, to other subjects. When we speak, therefore, of infinite power, wis- dom, and goodness, our notions, if not wholly borrowed from space, are at least greatly aided by this analogy ; so that the conceptions of Im- mensity and Eternity, if they do not of them- selves demonstrate the existence of God, yet ne- cessarily enter into the ideas we form of his na- ture and attributes. To these various considerations it may be added that the notion of necessary existence which we derive from the contemplation of Space and of Time, renders the same notion, when applied to the Supreme Being, much more easy to be apprehended than it would otherwise be. It is not, therefore, surprising, that Newton and Clarke should have fallen into that train of thought which encouraged them to attempt a demonstration of the being of God from our conceptions of Immensity and Eternity; and still less is it to be wondered at, that, in pursu- ing this lofty argument, they should have soar- ed into regions where they were lost in the clouds. I have said above, that Clarke's demonstra- tion seems to have been suggested to him by a passage in Newton's Scfiolium. It is, however, 1 Thus translated by Dr Clarke : " God is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient ; that is, he endures from everlasting to everlasting, and is present from infinity to infinity. He is not eternity or infinity, but eternal and infinite. He is not duration or space, but he endures and is present. He endures always, and is present everywhere, and by exist- ing always and everywhere, constitutes duration and space." (See CLARKE'S Fourth Reply to Leibnitz.) * An argument substantially the same with this for the existence of God, is hinted at very distinctly by Cudworth, Intellect. System, Chap. V. sect. 3. 4. Also by Dr Henry More, Enchlr. Metaph. Cap. 8. sect. 8. See MOSHEIU'S TransL of Cudworth, Tom. II. p. 356. 142 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. more than probable that he had himself struck into a path very nearly approaching to it, at a much earlier period of his life. The following anecdote of his childhood, related, upon his own authority, by his learned and authentic, though, in many respects, weak and visionary biogra- pher ( Whiston), exhibits an interesting example of an anomalous development of the powers of reflection and abstraction, at an age when, in ordinary cases, the attention is wholly engross- ed with sensible objects. Such an inversion of the common process of nature in unfolding our different faculties, is perhaps one of the rarest phenomena in the intellectual world; and, wherever it occurs, may be regarded as strongly symptomatic of something peculiar and decided in the philosophical character of the individual. " One of his parents," says Whiston, " ask- ed him when he was very young, Whether God could do every thing ? He answered, Yes ! He was asked again, Whether God could tell a lie ? He answered, No ! And he understood the ques- tion to suppose, that this was the only thing that God could not do ; nor durst he say, so young was he then, that he thought there was any thing else which God could not do; while yet, well he remembered, that he had, even then, a clear conviction in his own mind, that there was one thing which God could not do ; that he could not annihilate that space which was in the room where they were." 1 With this early and deep impression on his mind, it is easy to conceive how Newton's Scholium should have encouraged him to resume the musings of his boyish days, concerning the necessary existence of space ; and to trace, as far as he could, its connection with the prin- ciples of Natural Theology. But the above anec- dote affords a proof how strongly his habits of thought had long before predisposed him for the prosecution of a metaphysical idea, precisely the same with that on which this Scholium proceeds. It would be superfluous to dwell longer on the history of these speculations, which, what- ever value they may possess in the opinion of persons accustomed to deep and abstract rea- soning, are certainly not well adapted to ordi- nary or to uncultivated understandings. This consideration furnishes, of itself, no slight pre- sumption, that they were not intended to be the media by which the bulk of mankind were to be led to the knowledge of truths so essential -to human happiness ; and, accordingly, it was on this very ground, that Bishop Butler, and Dr Francis Huteheson, were induced to strike into a different and more popular path for establish- 1 The question concerning the necessary existence of Space and of Time formed one of the principal subjects of discus- sion between Clarke and Leibnitz. According to the former, space and time are, both of them, infinite, immutable, and indestructible. According to his antagonist, " space is nothing but the order of things co-existing," and " time nothing but the order of things successive !" The notion of real absolute Space, in particular, he pronounces to be a mere chimera and superficial imagination ; classing it with those prejudices which Bacon called idola tribus (See his 4th Paper, 14.) It has always appeared to me a thing quite inexplicable, that the great majority of philosophers, both in Germany and in France, have, on the above question, decided in favour of Leibnitz. Even D'Alembert himself, who, on most metaphy- sical points, reasons so justly and so profoundly, has, in this instance, been carried along by the prevailing opinion (or, pe'r- haps, it would be more correct to say, by the fashionable phraseology) among his countrymen. " Y auroit-il un espace, s'il n'y avoit point de corps, et une duree s'il n'y avoit rien ? Ces questions viennent, ce me semble, de ce qu'on suppose au temps et a 1'espace plus de re'alite' qu'ils n'en ont Les enfants, qui disent que le vuide n'est rien, ont raison parce qu'ils s'en tiennent au simples notions du sens commun :* et les philosophes qui veulent re'aliser le vuide se perdent dans leurs spe'culations : le vuide a e'te' enfantd par les abstractions, et voila 1'abus d'une me'thode si utile a bien des e'gards. fTil rfy avoit point de corps et de succession, P espace ct le temps seroient possibles, mais Us n'existeroient pat.''' (Melanges, &c. T. V. xvi.) Bailly, a writer by no means partial to D'Alembert, quotes, with entire approbation, the foregoing observa- tions ; subjoining to them, in the following terms, his own judgment on the merits of this branch of the controversy be- tween Clarke and Leibnitz. " La notion du temps et de 1'espace, est un des points sur lesquels Leibnitz a combattu con- tre Clarke ; mais il nous semble que 1'Anglois n'a rien oppose de satisfaisant auxraisons de Leibnitz." ( Eloge de Leibnitz. ) As for the point here in dispute, I must own, that it does not seem to me a fit subject for argument ; inasmuch as I can- not even form a conception of the proposition contended for by Leibnitz. The light in which the question struck Clarke in his childhood, is the same in which I am still disposed to view it ; or rather, I should say, is the light in which I must ever view it, while the frame of my understanding continues unaltered. Of what data is human reason possessed, from which it is entitled to argue in opposition to truths, the contrary of which it is impossible not only to prove, but to express in terms comprehensible by our faculties ? For some remarks on the scholastic controversies concerning space and time, see the First Part of this Dissertation, Note I. See also Locke's Essay, Book ii. Chap. 13. 16, 17, 18. copy * I quote the sequel of this passage on the authority of Bailly (see his Eloge on Leibnitz), for it is not to be found in the py of the Melanges before me printed at Amsterdam in 1767- DISSERTATION FIRST. 143 fng the fundamental principles of religion and morality. Both of these writers appear to have communicated, in very early youth, their doubts and objections to Dr Clarke ; and to have had, even then, a glimpse of those inquiries by which they were afterwards to give so new and so for- tunate a direction to the ethical studies of their countrymen. It is sufficient here to remark this circumstance as an important step in the progress of Moral Philosophy. The farther il- lustration of it properly belongs to another part of this discourse. The chief glory of Clarke, as a metaphysical author, is due to the boldness and ability with which he placed himself in the breach against the Necessitarians and Fatalists of his times. With a mind far inferior to that of Locke, in comprehensiveness, in originality, and in ferti- lity of invention, he was nevertheless the more wary and skilful disputant of the two, possess- ing, in a singular degree, that reach of thought in grasping remote consequences, which effec- tually saved him from those rash concessions into which Locke was frequently betrayed by the greater warmth of his temperament, and vi- vacity of his fancy. This logical foresight (the natural result of his habits of mathematical study) rendered him peculiarly fit to contend with adversaries, eager and qualified to take ad- vantage of every vulnerable point in his doc- trines; but it gave, at the same time, to his style a tameness, and monotony, and want of colouring, which never appear in the easy and spirited, though often unfinished and unequal, sketches of Locke. Voltaire has somewhere said of him, that he was a mere reasoning ma- chine fun moulin a raisonnementj, and the ex- pression (though doubtless much too unquali- fied) possesses a merit, in point of just discri- mination, of which Voltaire was probably not fully aware. 1 I have already taken notice of Clarke's de- fence of moral liberty in opposition to Leibnitz ; but soon after this controversy was brought to a 1 In the extent of his learning, the correctness of his taste, and the depth of his scientific acquirements, Clarke possess- ed indisputable advantages over Locke ; with which advantages he combined another not less important, the systematical steadiness with which his easy fortune and unbroken leisure enabled him to pursue his favourite speculations through the whole course of his life. On the subject of Free-will, Locke is more indistinct, undecided, and inconsistent, than might have been expected from his powerful mind, when directed to so important a question. This was probably owing to his own strong feelings in fa- vour of man's moral liberty, struggling with the deep impression left on his philosophical creed by the writings of Hobbes, and with his deference for the talents of his own intimate friend, Anthony Collins.* That Locke conceived him- self to be an advocate for free-will, appears indisputably from many expressions in his Chapter on Power ; and yet, in that very chapter, he has made various concessions to his adversaries, in which he seems to yield all that was contended for by Hobbes and Collins : And, accordingly, he is ranked, with some appearance of truth, by Priestley, with those who, while they opposed verbally the scheme of necessity, have adopted it substantially, without being aware of their mistake. In one of Locke's letters to Mr Molyneux, he has stated, in the strongest possible terms, his conviction of man's free agency ; resting this conviction entirely on our indisputable consciousness of the fact. This declaration of Locke I consi- der as well worthy of attention in the argument about Free Will ; for, although in questions of pure speculation, the au- thority of great names is entitled to no weight, excepting in so far as it is supported by solid reasonings, the case is other- wise with facts relating to the phenomena of the human mind. The patient attention with which Mr Locke had studied these very nice phenomena during the course of a long life, gives to the results of his metaphysical experience a value of the same sort, but much greater in degree, with that which we attach to a delicate experiment in chemistry, when vouched by a Black or a Davy. The ultimate appeal, after all, must be made by every person to his own consciousness ; but when we have the experience of Locke on the one hand, and that of Priestley and Belsham on the other, the contrast is surely sufficient to induce every cautious inquirer to re-examine his feelings before he allows himself to listen to the statements of the latter in preference to that of the former. For the information of some of my readers, it may be proper to mention that it has of late become fashionable among a certain class of metaphysicians, boldly to assert, that the evidence of their consciousness is decidedly in favour of the scheme of necessity. But to return to Mr Locke. The only consideration on this subject which seems to have staggered him, was the difficul- ty of reconciling this opinion with the prescience of God. As to this theological difficulty, I have nothing to say at present. The only question which I consider as of any consequence, is the matter of fact ; and, on this point, nothing can be more explicit and satisfactory than the words of Locke. In examining these, the attentive reader will be satisfied, that Locke's declaration is not (as Priestley asserts) in favour of the Liberty of Spontaneity, but in favour of the Liberty of Indifference ; for as to the former, there seems to be no difficulty in reconciling it with the prescience of God. " I own (says Mr Locke) freely to you the weakness of my understanding, that though it be unquestionable that there is omnipotence and omnisci- ence in God our Maker, and though / cannot have a clearer perception of anything than that I am free ; yet I cannot make free- dom in man consistent with omnipotence and omniscience in God, though I am as fully persuaded of both as of any truth I most firmly assent to ; and therefore I have long since given off the consideration of that question ; resolving all inte this short conclusion, that, if it be possible for God to make a free agent, then man is free, though I see not the way of it." See Note KK. 144 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. conclusion by the death of his antagonist, he had to resume the same argument, in reply to his countryman, Anthony Collins ; who, follow- ing the footsteps of Hobbes, with logical talents not inferior to those of his master, and with a weight of personal character in his favour, to which his master had no pretensions, x gave to the cause which he so warmly espoused, a de- gree of credit among sober and serious inquir- ers, which it had never before possessed in Eng- land. I have reserved, therefore, for this place, the few general reflections which I have to offer on this endless subject of controversy. In stat- ing these, I shall be the less anxious to con- dense my thoughts, as I do not mean to return to the discussion in the sequel of this historical sketch. Indeed, I do not know of anything that has been advanced by later writers, in support of the scheme of necessity, of which the germ is not to be found in the inquiry of Collins. In order to enter completely into the motives which induced Clarke to take so zealous and so prominent a part in the dispute about Free Will, it is necessary to look back to the sys- tem of Spinoza ; an author, with whose pecu- liar opinions I have hitherto avoided to dis- tract my readers' attention. At the time when he wrote, he does not appear to have made many proselytes ; the extravagant and alarming consequences in which his system terminated, serving with most persons as a sufficient anti- dote against it. Clarke was probably the first who perceived distinctly the logical accuracy of his reasoning ; and that, if the principles were admitted, it was impossible to resist the conclu- sions deduced from them. 2 It seems to have been the object both of Leibnitz and of Collins, to obviate the force of this indirect argument against the scheme of necessity, by attempting to reconcile it with the moral agency of man ; a task which, I think, it must be allowed, was much less ably and plausibly executed by the former than by the latter. Convinced, on the other hand, that Spinoza had reasoned from his premises much more rigorously than either Col- lins or Leibnitz, Clarke bent the whole force of his mind to demonstrate that these premises were false ; and, at the same time, to put in- cautious reasoners on their guard against the seducing sophistry of his antagonists, by show- ing, that there was no medium between admit- ting the free-agency of man, and of acquiescing in all the monstrous absurdities which the creed of Spinoza involves. Spinoza, * it may be proper to mention, was an Amsterdam Jew of Portuguese extraction, wbo (with a view probably to gain a more favourable reception to his philosophical dogmas) withdrew himself from the sect in which he had been edu- cated, and afterwards appears to have lived chiefly in the society of Christians; 4 without, however, making any public profession of the Christian faith, or even submitting to the cere- mony of baptism. In his philosophical creed, he at first embraced the system of Descartes, 1 In speaking disrespectfully of the personal character of Hobbes, I allude to the base servility of his political principles, and to the suppleness with which he adapted them to the opposite interests of the three successive governments under which his literary life was spent. To his private virtues the most honourable testimony has been borne, both by his friends and by his enemies. 2 Dr Reid's opinion on this point coincides exactly with that of Clarke. See his Essays on the Active Powers of Man, (p. 289, 4to. Edition), where he pronounces the system of Spinoza to be " the genuine, and the most tenable system of ne- cessity." 3 Born 1632, died 1677- It is observed by Bayle, that " although Spinoza was the first who reduced Atheism to a sys- tem, and formed it into a body of doctrine, connected according to the method of geometricians, yet, in other respects, his opinion is not new, the substance of it being the same with that of several other philosophers, both ancient and modern, European and Eastern." See his Diet. art. Spinoza, and the authorities in Note S. It is asserted by a late German writer, that " Spinoza has been little heard of in England, and not at all in France, and that he has been zealously defended and attacked by Germans alone." The same writer informs us, that " the philosophy of Leibnitz has been little studied in France, and not at all in England." (Lectures on the History of Literature, by FRED. SCHLEGEI. English Transl. published at Edin. 1818. Vol. II. p. 243.) Is it possible that an author who pronounces so dogmatically upon the philosophy of England, should never have heard the name of Dr Clarke ? * The Synagogue were so indignant at his apostacy, that they pronounced against him their higJiest sentence of excom- munication called Schammata. The form of the sentence may be found in the Treatise of Selden, DC Jure Naturae et Gentium, Lib. IV. c. 7> It is a document of some curiosity, and will scarcely suffer by a comparison with the Popish form of ex- communication recorded by Sterne. For some farther particulars with respect to Spinoza see Note LL. DISSERTATION FIRST. 145 and began his literary career with a work en- titled, Renati Descartes Principiorum Philoso- phies, Pars Prima et Secunda, More Geometrico Demonstrates, 1663. It was, however, in little else than his physical principles that he agreed with Descartes; for no two philosophers ever differed more widely in their metaphysical and theological tenets. Fontenelle characterises his system as a " Cartesianism pushed to extra- vagance" (une Cartesianisme outree) ; an expres- sion which, although far from conveying a just or adequate idea of the whole spirit of his doctrines, applies very happily to his boldness and pertinacity in following out his avowed principles to the most paradoxical consequences which he conceived them to involve. The re- putation of his writings, accordingly, has fallen entirely (excepting perhaps in Germany and in Holland) with the philosophy on which they were grafted ; although some of the most ob- noxious opinions contained in them are still, from time to time, obtruded on the world, un- der the disguise of a new form, and of a phra- seology less revolting to modern taste. 1 In no part of Spinoza's works has he avowed himself an atheist ; but it will not be disputed, by those who comprehend the drift of his rea- sonings, that, in point of practical tendency, Atheism and Spinozism are one and the same. In this respect, we may apply to Spinoza (and I may add to Vanini also) what Cicero has said of Epicurus, Verbis reliquit Deos, re sustulit ; a remark which coincides exactly with an ex- pression of Newton's in the Scholium at the end of the Prindpia : " DEUS sine dominio, provi- dentia, et causis finalibus, nihil aliud est quam FATUM et NATURA."* Among other doctrines of natural and reveal- ed religion, which Spinoza affected to embrace, was that of the Divine Omnipresence ; a doc- trine which, combined with the Plenum of Des- cartes, led him, by a short and plausible process of reasoning, to the revival of the old theory which represented God as the soul of. the world; or rather to that identification of God and of the material universe, which I take to be still more agreeable to the idea of Spinoza. 5 I am particularly anxious to direct the attention of my readers to this part of his system, as I con- ceive it to be at present very generally misrepre- " On vient de proposer a 1' Academic de Berlin, pour sujet de concours : " Quels sont les points de contact du Car- tesianisme et du systeme de Spinoza ?" (Recherches Philosophiques, par M. DE RONALD, 1818.) 2 One of the most elaborate and acute refutations of Spinozism which has yet appeared is to be found in Bayle's Dic- tionary, where it is described as " the most monstrous scheme imaginable, and the most diametrically opposite to the clearest notions of the mind." The same author affirms, that " it has been fully overthrown even by the weakest of its adversaries." " It does not, indeed, appear possible" (as Mr Maclaurin has observed) " to invent another system equallv absurd; amoimting (as it does in fact) to this proposition, that, there is but one substance in the universe, endowed with infinite attributes (particularly infinite extension and cogitation), which produces all other things necessarily as its own modifications, and which alone is, in all events, both physical and moral, at once cause and effect, agent and patient View of Newton's Discoveries, Book I. Chap. 4. 3 Spinoza supposes that there are in God two eternal properties, thought and extension ; and as he held, with Descartes, that extension is the essence of matter, he must necessarily have conceived materiality to be an essential attribute of God. "Per Corpus intelligo modum, qui Dei essentiam quatenus ut res extensa consideratur, certo et determinate modo expri- mit." (Eihica ordine Geomelrico Demonstrata, Pars 2. Defin. 1. See also Ethic. Pars 1. Prop. 14.) With respect to the other attributes of God, he held, that God is the cause of all things ; but that he acts, not from choice, but from necessity ; and of consequence, that he is the involuntary author of all the good and evil, virtue and vice,- which are exhibited in human life. il Res nullo alio modo, neque alio ordine a Deo produci potuerunt, quam productae sunt." Ibid. Pars 1. Prop. 33.) In one of his letters to Mr Oldenburgh (Letter 21), he acknowledges, that his ideas of God and of nature were very different from those entertained by modern Christians; adding by way of explanation, " Deum rerum omnium causam immanentem, iion vero transeuntem statuo ;" an expression to which I can annex no other meaning but this, that God is inseparably and essentially united with his works, and that they form together but one being. The diversity of opinions entertained concerning the nature of Spinozism has been chiefly owing to this, that some have formed their notions of it from the books which Spinoza published during his life, and others from his posthumous re- mains. It is in the last alone (particularly in his Ethics) that his system is to be seen completely unveiled and undisguis- ed. In the former, and also in the letters addressed to his friends," he occasionally accommodates himself, with a very tem- porising spirit, to what he considered as the prejudices of the world. In proof of this, see his Tractatus Thcologico-Politicus, :md his epistolary correspondence, passim ; above all, his letter to a young friend who had apostatised from Protestantism to the Catholic Church. The letter is addressed, " Nobilissimo Juveni, Alberto Burgh." (SPIN. Op. T. II. p. 695.) The edition of Spinoza's works to which my references are made, is the complete and very accurate one published at Jena in 1802, by Henr. Eberh. Gottlob Paulus, who styles himself Doctor and Professor of Theology. This learned divine is at no pains to conceal his admiration of the character as well as talents of his author ; nor does he seem to have much to object to the system of Spinozism, as explained in his posthumous work upon Ethics ; a work which, the editor admits, contains the only genuine exposition of Spinoza's creed. " Sedes systematis quod sibi condidit in ethica est." (Prcef. Iterates Editionis, p. ix!) In what manner all this was reconciled in his theological lectures with the doctrines either of natural or of revealed religion, it is not very easy to imagine. Perhaps he only affords a new example of what DISS. I. PART II. T 146 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. sented, or, at least, very generally misunder- tant affinity to the absurd creed with which stood ; a thing not to be wondered at, consider- they have been confounded. I am afraid that ing the total neglect into which his works have Pope, in the following lines of the Dunciad, long fallen. It is only in this way I can ac- suffered himself so far to be misled by the ma- count for the frequent use which has most un- lignity of Warburton, as to aim a secret stab fairly been made of the term Spinozism to stig- at Newton and Clarke, by associating their figu- matise and discredit some doctrines, or rather rative, and not altogether unexceptionable Ian- some modes of speaking, which have been sane- guage, concerning space (when they called it tioned, not only by the wisest of the ancients, the sensorium of the Deity), with the opinion of but by the highest names in English philosophy Spinoza, as I have just explained it. 1 and literature; and which, whether right or ' f i Thrust some Mechanic Cause into His place, wrong, will be found, on a careful examma- Or bind in matter) or diffuse in space tion and comparison, not to have the most dis- Dr Clarke long ago remarked, that " Believing too- much and too little have commonly the luck to meet together, like two things moving contrary ways in the same circle." (Third Letter to Dodieell.) A late German writer, who, in his own opinions, has certainly no leaning towards Spinozism, has yet spoken of the mo- ral tendency of Spinoza's writings, in terms of the warmest praise. " The morality of Spinoza (says M. Fred. Schlegel) is not indeed that of the Bible, for he himself was no Christian, but it is still a pure and noble morality, resembling that of the ancient Stoics, perhaps possessing considerable advantages over that system. That which makes him strong when op- posed to adversaries who do not understand or feel his depth, or who unconsciously have fallen into errors not much diffe- rent from his, is not merely the scientific clearness and decision of his intellect, but in a much higher degree the openhearted- ness, strong feeling, and conviction, with which all that he says seems to gush from his heart and soul." (Led. O/FRED. SCHLEGEL, Eng. Transl. Vol. II. p. 244.) The rest of the passage, which contains a sort of apology for the system of Spinoza, is still more curious. Although it is with the metaphysical tenets of Spinoza alone that we are immediately concerned at present, it is not al- together foreign to my purpose to observe, that he had also speculated much about the principles of government ; and that the coincidence of his opinions with those of Hobbes, on this last subject, was not less remarkable than the similarity of their views on the most important questions of metaphysics and ethics. Unconnected as these different branches of know- ledge may at first appear, the theories of Spinoza and of Hobbes concerning all of them, formed parts of one and the same system ; the whole terminating ultimately in the maxim with which, according to Plutarch, Anaxarchus consoled Alex- ander after the murder of Clytus : nv re va%$iv a.-ra rav K^araurot Sixain livai. Even in discussing the question about Liber- ty and Necessity, Hobbes cannot help glancing at this political corollary. " The power of God alone is a sufficient justifica- tion of any action he doth.". ..." That which he doth is made just by his doing it.". ..." Power irresistible justifies all actions really and properly, in whomsoever it be found." (Of Liberty and Necessity, addressed to the Lord Marquis of Newcastle.) Spinoza has expressed himself exactly to the same purpose (See his Tractalus Politicus, Cap. 2. 3, 4.) So steadily, indeed, is this practical application of their abstract principles kept in view by both these writers, that not one generous feeling is ever suffered to escape the pen of either in favour of the rights, the liberties, or the improvement of their species. The close affinity between those abstract thories which tend to degrade human nature, and that accommodating morality which prepares the minds of men for receiving passively the yoke of slavery, although too little attended to by the writers of literary history, has not been overlooked by those deeper politicians who are disposed (as has been alleged of the first of the Caesars) to consider their fellow-creatures " but as rubbish in the way of their ambition, or tools to be employed in re- moving it." This practical tendency of the Epicurean philosophy is remarked by one of the wisest of the Roman states- men ; and we learn from the same high authority, how fashionable this philosophy was in the higher circles of his country- men, at that disastrous period which immediately preceded the ruin of the Republic. " Nunquam audiviin Epicuri schola, ' ; qui in ore sunt caeterorum omnium philoso- cupiam ; cujus imaginem non modo in tabulis The prevalence of Hobbism at the court of Charles II. (a fact acknowledged by Clarendon himself) is but one of the many instances which might be quoted from modern times in confirmation of these remarks. The practical tendency of such doctrines as would pave the way to universal scepticism, by holding up to ridicule the extravagancies and inconsistencies of the learned, is precisely similar. We are told by Tacitus (Annal. Lib. 14), that Nero was accustomed, at the close of a banquet, to summon a party of. philosophers, that he might amuse himself with lis- tening to the endless diversity and discordancy of their respective systems : nor were there wanting philosophers at Rome, the same historian adds, who were flattered to be thus exhibited as a spectacle at the table of the Emperor. What a deep and instructive moral is conveyed by this anecdote ! and what a contrast does it afford to the sentiment of one of 1 Warburton, indeed, alw&y&professes great respect for Newton ; but of his hostility to Clarke it is unnecessary to produce any other proof than his note on the following line of the Dunciad : " Where Tindal dictates, and Silenus snores." B. iv. I. 492. May I venture to add, that the noted line of the Essay on Man, " And showed a Newton as we show an ape," could not possibly have been written by any person impressed with a due veneration for this glory of his species ? DISSERTATION FIRST. 147 How little was it suspected by the poet, when this sarcasm escaped him, that the charge of Spinozism and Pantheism was afterwards to be brought against himself, for the sublimest pas- sage to be found in his writings ! " All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul. * * * Lives through all Life, extends througJi all extent, Spreads undivided, operates unspent." l Bayle was, I think, the writer who first led the way to this misapplication of the term Spinozism ; and his object in doing so was plainly to destroy the effect of the most refined and philosophical conceptions of the Deity which were ever formed by the unassisted power of human reason. " Estne Dei sedes nisi terra, et pontus, et ae'r, Et coeluin, et virtus ? Superos quid quaerimus ultra ? Jupiter est quodcuraque vides, quocum_que moveris." " Is there a place that God would choose to love Beyond this earth, the seas, yon Heaven above, And virtuous minds, the noblest throne for Jove ; Why seek we farther then ? Behold around, How all thou seest does with the God abound, Jove is alike to all, and always to be found." HOWE'S Lucan. Who but Bayle, could have thought of extract- ing anything like Spinozism from such verses as these ! On a subject so infinitely disproportioned to our faculties, it is vain to expect language which will bear a logical and captious examination. Even the Sacred Writers themselves are forced to adapt their phraseology to the comprehension of those to whom it is addressed, and frequently borrow the figurative diction of poetry to convey ideas which must be interpreted, not according to the letter, but the spirit of the passage. It is thus that thunder is called the voice of God ; the wind, His breath ; and the tempest, the blast of His nostrils. Not attending to this circum- stance, or rather not choosing to direct to it the attention of his readers, Spinoza has laid hold of the well known expression of St Paul, that " in God we live, and move, and have our being," as a proof that the ideas of the apostle, concern- ing the Divine Nature, were pretty much the same with his own ; a consideration which, if duly weighed, might have protected some of the passages above quoted from the uncharitable cri- ticisms to which they have frequently been ex- posed. 8 To return, however, to Collins, from whose controversy with Clarke I was insensibly led aside into this short digression about Spinoza : iis passage, as Warton has remarked, bears a very striking analogy to a noble one in the old Orphic verses quoted in atise riEj/ x'offiv, ascribed to Aristotle ; and it is not a little curious, that the same ideas occur in some specimens of 1 This the treatise Hindoo poetry," translated by Sir W. Jones ; more particularly in the Hymn to Narrayna, or the Spirit of God, taken, as he informs us, from the writings of their ancient authors : Omniscient Spirit, whose all-ruling power Bids from each sense bright emanations beam ; Glows in the rainbow, sparkles in the stream, &c. &c. 8 Mr Gibbon, in commenting upon the celebrated lines of Virgil, " Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus, " Mens agitat molem, et magno se corpore miscet," observes, that. " the mind which is INFUSED into the different parts of matter, and which MINGIES ITSELF with the mighty mass, scarcely retains any property of a spiritual substance, and bears too near an affinity to the principles which the im- pious Spinoza revived rather than invented." He adds, however, that " the poverty of human language, and the obscu- rity of human ideas, make it difficult to speak worthily of the GREAT FIRST CAUSE ; and that our most religious poets (particularly Pope and Thomson), in striving to express the presence and energy of the Deity in every part of the universe, deviate unwarily into images which require a favourable construction. But these writers (he candidly remarks) deserve that favour, by the sublime manner in which they celebrate the Great Father of the universe, and by those effusions of love and gratitude which are inconsistent with the materialist's system." (Misc. Works, Vol. II. pp. 509, 510.) May I be permitted here to remark, that it is not only difficult but impossible to speak of the omnipresence and omnipo- tence of God, without deviating into such images ? With the doctrine of the Anima Mundi, some philosophers, both ancient and modern, have connected another theory, according to which the souls of men are portions of the Supreme Being, with whom they are re-united at death, and in whom they are finally absorbed and lost. To assist the imagination in conceiving this theory, death has been compared to the breaking of a phial of water, immersed in the ocean. It is needless to say, that this incomprehensible jargon has no necessary connection with the doctrine which represents God as the soul of the world, and that it would have been loudly disclaimed, not only by Pope and Thomson, but by Epictetus, Antoninus, and all the wisest and soberest of the Stoical school. Whatever objections, therefore, may be made to this doctrine, let not its supposed consequences be charged upon any but those who may expressly avow them. On such a subject, as Gibbon has well remarked, " we should be slow to suspect, and still slower to condemn." (Ibid. p. 510.) Sir William Jones mentions a very curious modification of this theory of absorption, as one of the doctrines of the Vedanta school. " The Vedanta school represent Elysian happiness as a total absorption, tJiough not such at to destroy consciousness, in the Divine Essence." (Dissertation on the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India.) 148 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. I have already said, that it seems to have been the aim of Collins to vindicate the doctrine of Necessity from the reproach brought on it by its supposed alliance with Spinozism ; and to retort upon the partizans of free-will the charges of favouring atheism and immorality. In proof of this I have only to quote the account given by the author himself, of the plan of his work : " Too much care cannot be taken to prevent being misunderstood and prejudged, in handling questions of such nice speculation as those of Liberty and Necessity ; and, therefore, though I might in justice expect to be read before any judgment be passed on me, I think it proper to premise the following observations : " 1. First, Though I deny liberty in a certain meaning of that word, yet I contend for liberty, as it signifies a power in man to do as he wills or pleases. " 2. Secondly, "When I affirm necessity, I con- tend only for moral necessity ; meaning thereby, that man, who is an intelligent and sensible being, is determined by his reason and his senses ; and I deny man to be subject to such necessity as is in clocks, watches, and such other beings, which, for want of sensation and intelligence, are subject to an absolute, physical, or mecha- nical necessity. " 3. Thirdly, I have undertaken to show, that the notions I advance are so far from being in- consistent with, that they are the sole founda- tions of morality and laws, and of rewards and punishments in society ; and that the notions I explode are subversive of them." 1 In the prosecution of his argument on this question, Collins endeavours to show, that man is a necessary agent, 1. From our experience. (By experience he means our own consciousness that we are necessary agents.) 2. From the impossibility of liberty.* 3. From the conside- ration of the Divine prescience. 4. From the nature and use of rewards and punishments ; and 5. From the nature of morality. 5 In this view of the subject, and, indeed, in the very selection of his premises, it is remarkable how completely Collins has anticipated Dr Jona- than Edwards, the most celebrated and indis- putably the ablest champion of the scheme of Necessity who has since appeared. The coinci- dence is so perfect, that the outline given by the former, of the plan of his work, might have served with equal propriety as a preface to that of the latter. From the above summary, and still more from the whole tenor of the Philosophical Inquiry, it is evident, that Collins (one of the most obnoxious writers of his day to divines of all denomina- tions) was not less solicitous than his successor Edwards to reconcile his metaphysical notions with man's accountableness and moral agency. The remarks, accordingly, of Clarke upon Col- lins's work, are equally applicable to that of Ed- wards. It is to be regretted that they seem never to have fallen into the hands of this very acute and honest reasoner. As for Collins, it is a remarkable circumstance, that he attempted no reply to this tract of Clarke's, although he lived twelve years after its publication. The reasonings contained in it, together with those on the same subject in his correspondence with Leibnitz, and in his Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, form, in my humble opi- nion, the most important as well as powerful of all his metaphysical arguments. 4 The ad- versaries with whom he had to contend were, both of them, eminently distinguished by inge- nuity and subtlety, and he seems to have put forth to the utmost his logical strength, in con- tending with such antagonists. " The liber- ty or moral agency of man (says his friend Bishop Hoadly) was a darling point to him. He excelled always, and showed a superiority to all, whenever it came into private discourse or pub- lic debate. But he never more excelled than when he was pressed with the strength Leibnitz was master of; which made him exert all his 1 A Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human Liberty, 3d edit. Lond. 1735. * See Note M M. 3 See Note NN. * Voltaire, who, in all probability, never read either Clarke or Collins, has said that the former replied to the latter only by Theological reasonings : " Clarke n'a repondu a Collins qu'en Theologien," (Quest, sur F Encyclopedic, Art. Liberte.) Nothing can be more remote from the truth. The argument of Clarke is wholly Metaphysical; whereas, his antagonist, in various instances, has attempted to wrest to his own purposes the words of Scripture. DISSERTATION FIRST. 149 talents to set it once again in a clear light, to guard it against the evil of metaphysical obscu- rities, and to give the finishing stroke to a sub- ject which must ever be the foundation of mo- rality in man, and is the ground of the account- ableness of intelligent creatures for all their actions." 1 It is needless to say, that neither Leibnitz nor Collins admitted the fairness of the inferences which Clarke conceived to follow from the scheme of necessity : But almost every page in the subsequent history of this controversy may be regarded as an additional illustration of the soundness of Clarke's reasonings, and of the sa- gacity with which he anticipated the fatal er- rors likely to issue from the system which he opposed. " Thus (says a very learned disciple of Leib- nitz, who made his first appearance as an author about thirty years after the death of his mas- ter) * thus, the same chain embraces the phy- sical and moral worlds, binds the past to the present, the present to the future, the future to eternity." " That wisdom which has ordained the ex- istence of this chain, has doubtless willed that of every link of which it is composed. A CA- LIGULA is one of those links, and this link is of iron : A MARCUS AURELIUS is another link, and this link is of gold. Both are necessary parts of one whole, which could not but exist. Shall God then be angry at the sight of the iron link ? What absurdity ! God esteems this link at its proper value : He sees it in its cause, and he approves this cause, for it is good. God beholds moral monsters as he beholds physical monsters. Happy is the link of gold ! Still more happy if he know that he is only fortunate. 9 He has attained the highest degree of moral perfec- tion, and is nevertheless without pride, knowing that what he is, is the necessary result of the place which he must occupy in the chain." " The gospel is the allegorical exposition of this system ; the simile of the potter is its sum- mary." 4 (BONNET, T. VIII. pp. 237, 238.) In what essential respect does this system differ from that of Spinoza? Is it not even more dangerous in its practical tendency, in consequence of the high strain of mystical devo- tion by which it is exalted ?* This objection, however, does not apply to the quotations which follow. They exhibit, without any colourings of imagination or of en- thusiasm, the scheme of necessity pushed to the remotest and most alarming conclusions which it appeared to Clarke to involve ; and as they express the serious and avowed creed of two of our contemporaries (both of them men of dis- tinguished talents), may be regarded as a proof, that the zeal displayed by Clarke against the 1 Preface to the folio ed. of Clarke's Works. The vital importance which Clarke attached to this question, has given to the concluding paragraphs of his remarks on Collins, an earnestness and a solemnity of which there are not many instances in his writings. These paragraphs cannot be too strongly recommended to the attention of those well-meaning persons, who, in our own times, have come forward as the apostles of Dr Priestley's " great and glorious Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity." a Charles Bonnet, born 1720, died 1793. 3 The words in the original are, " Heureux le chainon d'or ! plus heureux encore, s'il sait qu'il n'est qu' heureux" The double meaning of heureux, if it render the expression less logically precise, gives it at least an epigrammatic turn, which cannot be preserved in our language. 4 See Note O O. _ 5 Among the various forms which religious enthusiasm assumes, there is a certain prostration of the mind, which, under the specious disguise of a deep humility, aims at exalting the Divine perfections, by annihilating all the powers which belong to Human Nature. " Nothing is more usual for fervent devotion (says Sir James Mackintosh, in speaking of some theories current among the Hindoos), than to dwell so long and so warmly on the meanness and worthlessness of created" things, arid on the all-sufficiency of the Supreme Being, that it slides insensibly from comparative to absolute lan- guage, and in the eagerness of its zeal to magnify the Deity seems to annihilate everything else." (See Philosophy of the Human Mind, Vol. II. p. 529, 2d ed.) This excellent observation may serve to account for the zeal displayed by Bonnet, and many other devout men, in fa- vour of the Scheme of Necessity. " We have nothing (they frequently and justly remind us) but what we have re- ceived." But the question here is simply a matter of fact, whether we have or have not received from God the gift of Free Will ; and the only argument, it must be remembered, which they have yet been able to advance for the nega- tive proposition, is, that this gift was impossible, even for the power of God ; nay, the same argument which annihi- lates the power of Man, annihilates that of God also, and subjects him, as well as all his creatures, to the control of causes which he is unable to resist. So completely does this scheme defeat the pious views in which it has sometimes originated. I say sometimes ; for the very same argument against the liberty of the Will is employed by Spinoza, ac- cording to whom the free-agency of man involves the absurd supposition of an impenum in imperio in the universe. (Tractat. Polit. Cap. II. 6.) 150 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. metaphysical principles which led ultimately to such results, was not so unfounded as some worthy and able inquirers have supposed. May I be permitted to observe farther on this head, that, as one of these writers spent his life in the pay of a German prince, and as the other was the favourite philosopher of another sovereign, still more illustrious, the sentiments which they were so anxious to proclaim to the world, may be presumed to have been not very offensive, in their judgments, to the ears of their protectors ? " All that is must be (says the Baron de Grimm, addressing himself to the Duke of Saxe- Gotha) all that is must be, even because it is ; this is the only sound philosophy ; as long as we do not know this universe a priori (as they say in the schools), ALL is NECESSITY. 1 Liberty is a word without meaning, as you shall see in the letter of M. Diderot." The following passage is extracted from Di- derot's letter here referred to : " I am now, my dear friend, going to quit the tone of a preacher, to take, if I can, that of a philosopher. Examine it narrowly, and you will see that the word Liberty is a word devoid of meaning ; * that there are not, and that there cannot be free beings ; that we are only what accords with the general order, with our organi- zation, our education, and the chain of events. These dispose of us invincibly. We can no more conceive a being acting without a motive, than we can one of the arms of a balance acting without a weight. The motive is always exte- rior and foreign, fastened upon us by some cause distinct from ourselves. What deceives us, is the prodigious variety of our actions, joined to the habit which we catch at our birth, of confounding the voluntary and the free. We have been so often praised and blamed, and have so often praised and blamed others, that we contract an inveterate prejudice of believing that we and they will and act freely. But if there is no liberty, there is no action that merits either praise or blame; neither vice nor virtue, no- thing that ought either to be rewarded or punish- ed. What then is the distinction among men ? The doing of good and the doing of ill ! The doer of ill is one who must be destroyed, not punished. The doer of good is lucky, not vir- tuous. But though neither the doer of good or of ill be free, man is nevertheless a being to be modified ; it is for this reason the doer of ill should be destroyed upon the scaffold. From thence the good effects of education, of plea- sure, of grief, of grandeur, of poverty, &c. ; from thence a philosophy full of pity, strongly attached to the good, nor more angry with the wicked, than with the whirlwind which fills one's eyes with dust. Strictly speaking, there is but one sort of causes, that is, physical causes. There is but one sort of necessity, which is the same for all beings. This is what reconciles me to humankind : it is for this rea- son I exhorted you to philanthropy. Adopt these principles if you think them good, or show me that they are bad. If you adopt them, they will reconcile you too with others and with yourself: you will neither be pleased nor angry with yourself for being what you are. Reproach others for nothing, and repent of nothing ; this is the first step to wisdom. Be- sides this, all is prejudice and false philosophy." 5 The prevalence of the principles here so earnest- ly inculcated among the higher orders in France, at a period somewhat later in the history of the monarchy, may be judged of from the occasion- al allusions to them in the dramatic pieces then chiefly in request at Paris. In the Manage de Figaro (the popularity of which was quite un- 1 The logical inference ought undoubtedly to have been, " as long as we know nothing of the universe a priori, we are not entitled to say of anything that it either is, or is not, necessary." 2 Does not this remark of Diderot apply with infinitely greater force to the word necessity, as employed in this con- troversy ? 3 Nearly to the same purpose, we are told by Mr Belsham, that " the fallacious feeling of remorse is superseded by the doc- trine of necessity." (Elem. p. 284.) And again, " Remorse supposes free will. It is of little or no use in moral disci- pline. In a degree, it is even pernicious." (Ibid. p. 406.) Nor does the opinion of Hartley seem to have been different. " The doctrine of Necessity has a tendency to abate all resentment against men. Since all they do against us is by the appointment of God, it is rebellion against him to be offend- ed with them." For the originals of the quotations from Grimm and Diderot, see Note P P. DISSERTATION FIRST. 151 exampled), the hero of the piece, an intriguing valet in the service of a Spanish courtier, is in- troduced as thus moralising, in a soliloquy on his own free-agency and personal identity. Such an- exhibition upon the English stage would have been universally censured as out of character and extravagant, or rather, would have been com- pletely unintelligible to the crowds by which our theatres are filled. " Oh bisarre suite d'evenemens ! Comment cela m'a-t-il arrive ? Pourquoi ces choses et non pas d'autres ? Qui les a fixees snr ma tete ? Force de parcourir la route ou je suis entre sans le savoir, comme j'en sortirai sans le vouloir, je 1'ai jonchee d'autant de fleurs que ma gaiete me la permit : encore je dis ma gaiete, sans savoir si elle est a moi plus que le -reste, ni merne qui est ce moi dont je m'occupe." That this soliloquy, though put into the mouth of Figaro, was meant as a picture of the philo- sophical jargon at that time affected by courtiers and men of the world, will not be doubted by those who have attended to the importance of the rolles commonly assigned to confidential valets in French comedies, and to the habits of fami- liarity in which they are always represented as living with their masters. The sentiments which they are made to utter may, accordingly, be safely considered as but an echo of the lessons which they have learned from their superiors. x My anxiety to state, without any interruption, my remarks on some of the most important questions to which the attention of the public was called by the speculations of Locke, of Leibnitz, of Newton, and of Clarke, has led me, in various instances, to depart from the strict order of Chronology. It is time for me, how- ever, now to pause, and, before I proceed far- ther, to supply a few chasms in the foregoing sketch. SECTION IV. Of some Authors who have contributed, by their Critical or Historical Writings, to diffuse a Taste for Metaphysical Studies. Bayle Fontenelle Addison. Metaphysical Works of Berkeley. AMONG the many eminent persons who were either driven from France, or who went into voluntary exile, in consequence of the revoca- tion of the edict of Nantz, the most illustrious by far was Bayle; 2 who, fixing his residence in Holland, and availing himself, to the utmost ex- tent, of the religious toleration then enjoyed in that country, diffused from thence, over Europe, a greater mass of accurate and curious informa- tion, accompanied by a more splendid display of acute and lively criticism, than had ever before come from the pen of a single individual. 5 Happy ! if he had been able to restrain within due bounds his passion for sceptical, and licenti- ous discussion, and to respect the feelings of the wise and good, on topics connected with religion * A reflection of Voltaire's on the writings of Spinoza may, I think, be here quoted without impropriety. " Vous etes tres confus, Baruc Spinoza, mais etes vous aussi dangereux qu'on le dit ? Je soutiens que non, et ma raison c'est que vous etes confus, que vous avez e'crit en mauvais Latin, et qu'il n'y a pas dix personnes en Europe qui vous lisent d'un bout a 1'autre. Quel est 1'auteur dangereux ? C'est celui qui est lu par les Oisifs de la Cour, et par les Dames." ( Quest, sur fEncyclop. Art. Dieu.) Had Voltaire kept this last remark steadily in view in his own writings, how many of those pages would he have cancel- led which he has given to the world ! 9 Born in 1647, died 1705. 3 The erudition of Bayle is greatly undervalued by his antagonist Le Clerc. " Toutes les lumieres philosophiques de M. Bayle consistoient en quelque peu de Pe'ripate'tisme, qu'il avoit appris des Je'suites de Toulouse, et un peu de Carte'sia- nisme, qu'il n'avoit jamais approfondi." (Bib. Choisie, TOM. XII. p. 106.) In the judgment of Gibbon, " Bayle's learning was chiefly confined to the Latin authors ; and he had more of a certain multifarious reading than of real erudition. Le Clerc, his great antagonist, was as superior to him in that respect as inferior in every other." (Extraits Raisonnes de met Lecture*, p. 62.) 152 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. and morality. But, in the peculiar circum- stances in which he was educated, combined with the seducing profession of a literary ad- venturer, to which his hard fortune condemned him, such a spirit of moderation was rather to be wished than expected. When Bayle first appeared as an author, the opinions of the learned still continued to be di- vided between Aristotle and Descartes. A con- siderable number leaned, in secret, to the meta- physical creed of Spinoza and of Hobbes ; while the clergy of the Roman Catholic and the Pro- testant churches, instead of uniting their efforts in defence of those truths which they professed in common, wasted their strength against each other in fruitless disputes and recriminations. In the midst of these controversies, Bayle, keeping aloof as far as possible from all the parties, indulged his sceptical and ironical hu- mour at the common expence of the various combatants. Unattached himself to any sys- tem, or, to speak more correctly, unfixed in his opinions on the most fundamental questions, he did not prosecute any particular study with sufficient perseverance to add materially to the stock of useful knowledge. The influence, how- ever, of his writings on the taste and views of speculative men of all persuasions, has been so great, as to mark him out as one of the most conspicuous characters of his age; and I shall accordingly devote to him a larger space than may, at first sight, appear due to an author who has distinguished himself only by the extent of his historical researches, and by the sagacity and subtlety of his critical disquisitions. We are informed by Bayle himself, that his favourite authors, during his youth, were Plu- tarch and Montaigne; and from them, it has been alleged by some of his biographers, he im- bibed his first lessons of scepticism. In what manner the first of these writers should have contributed to inspire him with this temper of mind, is not very obvious. There is certainly no heathen philosopher or historian whose mo- rality is more pure or elevated ; and none who has drawn the line between superstition and re- ligion with a nicer hand. 1 Pope has with per- fect truth said of him, that " he abounds more in strokes of good nature than any other au- thor;" to which it may be added, that he abounds also in touches of simple and exquisite pathos, seldom to be met with among the greatest paint- ers of antiquity. In all these respects what a contrast does Bayle present to Plutarch ! Considering the share which Bayle ascribes to Montaigne's Essays in forming his literary taste, it is curious, that there is no separate article allotted to Montaigne in the Historical and Critical Dictionary. What is still more curious, there is more than one reference to this article, as if it actually existed; without any explanation of the omission (as far as I recol- lect) from the author or the publisher of the work. Some very interesting particulars, however, con- cerning Montaigne's life and writings, are scat- tered over the Dictionary, in the notices of other persons, with whom his name appeared to Bayle to have a sufficient connection to furnish an apology for a short episode. It does not seem to me a very improbable conjecture, that Bayle had intended, and per- haps attempted, to write an account of Mon- taigne ; and that he had experienced greater difficulties than he was aware of, in the execu- tion of his design. Notwithstanding their com- mon tendency to scepticism, no two characters were ever more strongly discriminated in their most prominent features ; the doubts of the one resulting from the singular coldness of his mo- ral temperament, combined with a subtlety and over-refinement in his habits of thinking, which rendered his ingenuity, acuteness, and erudition, more than a match for his good sense and sa- gacity ; the indecision of the other partaking 1 See, in particular, his account of the effects produced on the character of Pericles by the sublime lessons of Anaxagoras. Plutarch, it is true, had said before Bayle, that atheism is less pernicious than superstition ; but how wide the difference between this paradox, as explained and qualified by the Greek philosopher, and as interpreted and applied in the Reflections on the Comet ! Mr Addison himself seems to give his sanction to Plutarch's maxim in one of his papers on Cheerfulness. " An eminent Pagan writer has made a discourse to show, that the atheist, who denies a God, does him less dishonour than the man who owns his being, but, at the same time, believes him to be cruel, hard to please, and terrible to human nature, for my own part, says he, I would rather it should be said of me, that there was never any such man as Plutarch, than that Plutarch was ill-natured, capricious, and inhuman." (Spectator, No. 494.) DISSERTATION FIRST. 153 more of the shrewd and soldier-like etourderie of Henry IV. when he exclaimed, after hearing two lawyers plead on opposite sides of the same question, " Ventre St Gris! il me semble que tous les deux ont raison" Independently of Bayle's constitutional bias towards scepticism, some other motives, it is probable, conspired to induce him, in the com- position of his Dictionary, to copy the spirit and tone of the old Academic school. On these col- lateral motives a strong and not very favourable light is thrown by his own candid avowal in one of his letters. " In truth (says he to his correspondent Minutoli), it ought not to be thought strange, that so many persons should have inclined to Pyrrhonism ; for of all things in the world it is the most convenient. You may dispute with impunity against every body you meet, without any dread of that vexatious argument which is addressed ad hominem. You are never afraid of a retort ; for as you announce no opinion of your own, you are always ready to abandon those of others to the attacks of so- phists of every description. In a word, you may dispute and jest on all subjects without in- curring any danger from the lex talionis" i It is amusing to think, that the Pyrrhonism which Bayle himself has here so ingeniously accounted for, from motives of conveniency and of literary cowardice, should have been mistaken by so many of his disciples for the sportive triumph of a superior intellect over the weaknesses and errors of human reason. 2 The profession of Bayle, which made it an object to him to turn to account even the sweep- ings of his study, affords an additional explana- tion of the indigested mass of heterogeneous and inconsistent materials contained in his Dictio- nary. Had he adopted any one system exclusive- ly, his work would have shrunk in its dimen- sions into a comparatively narrow compass. 5 When these different considerations are ma- turely weighed, the omission by Bayle of the article Montaigne will not be much regretted by the admirers of the Essays. It is extremely doubtful if Bayle would have been able to seize the true spirit of Montaigne's character ; and, at any rate, it is not in the delineation of charac- ter that Bayle excels. His critical acumen, indeed, in the examination of opinions and 1 " En verite, line faut pas trouver etrange que tant des gens aient donne' dans le Pyrrhonisme. Car c'est la chose du monde le plus commode. Vous pouvez impune'ment disputer contre tous venans, et sans craindre ces argumens ad hominem, qui font quelquefois tant de peine. Vous ne craignez point la retorsion ; puisque ne soutenant rien, vous abandonnez de bon coeur a tous les sophismes et a tous les raisonnemens de la terre quelque opinion que ce soit. Vous n'etes jamais obligd d'en venir a la defensive. En un mot, vous contestez et vous daubez sur toutes choses tout votre saoul, sans craindre la peine du talion." (Oeuv. Div. de Bayle, IV. p. 537.) 2 The estimate formed by Warburton of Bayle's character, both intellectual and moral, is candid and temperate. " A writer whose strength and clearness of reasoning can only be equalled by the gaiety, easiness, and delicacy, of his wit; who, pervading human nature with a glance, struck into the province of paradox, as an exercise for the restless vigour of his mind : who, with a soul superior to the sharpest attacks of fortune, and a heart practised to the best philosophy, had not yet enough of real greatness, to overcome that last foible of superior geniuses, the temptation of honour, which the acade- mical exercise of wit is supposed to bring to its professors. (Divine Legation.) If there be anything objectionable in this panegyric, it is the unqualified praise bestowed on Bayle's wit, which, though it seldom fails in copiousness, in poignancy, or in that grave argumentative irony, by which it is still more characte- ristically marked, is commonly as deficient in gaiety and delicacy as that of Warburton himself. Leibnitz seems perfectly to have entered into the peculiar temper of his adversary Bayle, when he said of him, that " the only way to make Bayle write usefully, would be to attack him when he advances propositions that are sound and true ; and to abstain from attacking him, when he says anything false or pernicious." " Le vrai moyen de faire e'crire utilement M. Bayle, ce seroit de 1'attaquer, lorsqu'il ecrit des bonnes choses et vraies, car ce seroit le moyen de le piquer pour continuer. Au lieu qu'il ne faudroit point 1'attaquer quand il en dit de mauvaises, car cela 1'engagera a en dire d'autres aussi mauvaises pour soutenir les premieres." (Tom. VI. p. 273.) Leibnitz elsewhere says of him : Ubi bene, nemo melius (Tom. I. p. 257-) 3 " The inequality of Bayle's voluminous works (says Gibbon) is explained by his alternately writing for himself, for the bookseller, and for posterity ; and if a severe critic would reduce him to a single folio, that relic, like the books of the Sybils, would become still more valuable." (GIBBON'S Mem. p. 50.) Mr Gibbon observes in another place, that, " if Bayle wrote his Dictionary to empty the various collections he had made, without any particular design, he could not have chosen a better plan. It permitted him everything, and obliged him to nothing. By the double freedom of a Dictionary and of Notes, he could pitch on what articles he pleased, and say what he pleased on those articles." (Extraits Raisonnis de mes Lectures, p. 64.) " How could such a genius as Bayle," says the same author, " employ three or four pages, and a great apparatus of learning, to examine whether Achilles was fed with marrow only ; whether it was the marrow of lions and stags, or that oflions only?" &c (Ibid. p. 66.) For a long and interesting passage with respect to Bayle's history and character, see GIBBON'S Memoirs, &c. Vol. I. pp. 49, 50, 51. DISS. I. PART. II. U 154 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. arguments, is unrivalled; but his portraits of persons commonly exhibit only the coarser linea- ments which obtrude themselves on the senses of ordinary observers; and seldom, if ever, evince that discriminating and divining eye, or that sympathetic penetration into the retire- ments of the heart, which lend to every touch of a master artist, the never-to-be-mistaken ex- pression of truth and nature. It furnishes some apology for the unsettled state of Bayle's opinions, that his habits of thinking were formed prior to the discoveries of the Newtonian School. Neither the vortices of Descartes, nor the monads and pre-established harmony of Leibnitz, were well calculated to inspire him with confidence in the powers of the human understanding ; nor does he seem to have been led, either by taste or by genius, to the study of those exacter sciences in which Kepler, Galileo, and others, had, in the preceding age, made such splendid advances. In Geometry he never pro- ceeded beyond a few of the elementary proposi- tions ; and it is even said (although I apprehend with little probability) that his farther progress was stopped by some defect in his intellectual powers, which disqualified him for the successful prosecution of the study. It is not unworthy of notice, that Bayle was the son of a Calvinist minister, and was destin- ed by his father for his own profession ; that during the course of his education in a college of Jesuits he was converted to the Roman Ca- tholic persuasion ; 1 and that finally he went to Geneva, where, if he was not recalled to the Protestant faith, he was at least most thorough- ly reclaimed from the errors of Popery. 2 To these early fluctuations in his religious creed, may be ascribed his singularly accurate knowledge of controversial theology, and of the lives and tenets of the most distinguished divines of both churches ; a knowledge much more minute than a person of his talents could well be supposed to accumulate from the mere impulse of literary curiosity. In these respects he ex- hibits a striking resemblance to the historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire : Nor is the parallel between them less exact in the similar effects produced on their minds, by the polemical cast of their juvenile studies! Their common propensity to indulge in indecency is not so easily explicable. In neither does it seem to have originated in the habits of a dissolute youth ; but in the wantonness of a polluted and distempered imagination. Bayle, it is well known, led the life of an anchoret ; 3 and the li- centiousness of his pen is, on that very account, the more reprehensible. But, everything con- sidered, the grossness of Gibbon is certainly the more unaccountable, and perhaps the more un- pardonable of the two. 4 1 " For the benefit of education, the Protestants were tempted to risk their children in the Catholic Universities ; and in the 22d year of his age young Bayle was seduced by the arts and arguments of the Jesuits of Thoulouse. He remained about seventeen months in their hands a voluntary captive." (GIBBON'S Misc. Works, Vol. I. p. 49.) 2 According to Gibbon, " the piety of Bayle was offended by the excessive worship of creatures ; and the study of physics convinced him of the impossibility of transubstantiation, which is abundantly refuted by the testimony of our senses." (Ibid. p. 49.) The same author, speaking of his own conversion from Popery, observes (after allowing to his Preceptor Mr Pavillard " a handsome share" of the honour), " that it was principally "effected by his private reflections ;" adding the following very curious acknowledgment: " I still remember my solitary transport at the discovery of a philosophical argument against the doctrine of Transubstantiation ; that the text of Scripture, which seems to inculcate the real presence, is attested only by a single sense our sight ; while the real presence itself is disproved by three of our senses the sight, the touch, and the taste." (Ibid. p. 58.) That this "philosophical argument" should have had any influence on the mind of Gibbon, even at the early period of life when he made " the discovery," would appear highly improbable, if the fact were not attested by himself; but as for Bayle, whose logical acumen was of a far harder and keener edge, it seems quite impossible to con- ceive, " that the study of physics" was at all necessary to open his eyes to the absurdity of the real presence ; or that he would not at once have perceived the futility of appealing to our senses or to our reason, against an article of faith which professedly disclaims the authority of both. 3 " Chaste dans ses discours, grave dans ses discours, sobre dans ses alimens, austere dans son genre de vie." (Portrait de Bayle par M. SATJRIN, dans son Sermon sur 1'accord de la Religion avec la Politique.) 4 In justice to Bayle, and also to Gibbon, it should be remembered, that over the most offensive passages in their works they have drawn the veil of the learned languages. It was reserved for the translators of the Historical and Critical Dic- tionary to tear this veil asunder, and to expose the indelicacy of their author to every curious eye. It is impossible to ob- serve the patient industry and fidelity with which they have executed this part of their task without feelings of indignation and disgust. For such an outrage on taste and decorum, their tedious and feeble attacks on the Manicheism of Bayle offer but a poor compensation. Of all Bayle's suspected heresies, it was perhaps that which stood the least in need of a serious refutation ; and, if the case had been otherwise, their incompetency to contend with such an adversary would have only injured the cause which they professed to defend. DISSERTATION FIRST. 155 On the mischievous tendency of Bayle's work to unsettle the principles of superficial readers, and, what is worse, to damp the moral enthusi- asm of youth, by shaking their faith in the re- ality of virtue, it would be superfluous to enlarge. The fact is indisputable, and is admitted even by his most partial admirers. It may not be equally useless to remark the benefits which (whether foreseen or not by the author, is of little conse- quence) have actually resulted to literature from his indefatigable labours. One Ihing will, I ap- prehend, be very generally granted in his favour, that, if he has taught men to suspend their judg- ment, he has taught them also to think and to reason for themselves ; a lesson which appeared to a late philosophical divine of so great impor- tance, as to suggest to him a doubt, whether it would not be better for authors to state nothing but premises, and to leave to their readers the task of forming their own conclusions. 1 Nor can Bayle be candidly accused of often discover- ing a partiality for any particular sect of philo- sophers. He opposes Spinoza and Hobbes with the same spirit and ability, and apparently with the same good faith, with which he controverts the doctrines of Anaxagoras and of Plato. Even the ancient sceptics, for whose mode of philosophising he might be supposed to have felt some degree of tenderness, are treated with as little ceremony as the most extravagant of the dogmatists. He has been often accused of a leaning to the most absurd of all systems, that of the Manicheans ; and it must be owned, that there is none in defence of which he has so often and so ably 2 exerted his talents ; but it is easy to perceive, that, when he does so, it is not from any serious faith which he attaches to it (per- haps the contrary supposition would be nearer the truth), but from the peculiarly ample field which it opened for the display of his contro- versial subtlety, and of his inexhaustible stores of miscellaneous information. * In one passage he has pronounced with a tone of decision which he seldom assumes, that "it is absurd, indefen- sible, and inconsistent with the regularity and order of the universe ; that the arguments in favour of it are liable to be retorted ; and that, granting it to be true, it would afford no solu- tion of the difficulties in question."* The ap- parent zeal with which, on various occasions, he has taken up its defence, may, I think, be reason- ably accounted for, by the favourable opportu- nity it afforded him of measuring his logical powers with those of Leibnitz. 5 To these considerations it may be added, that, in consequence of the progress of the sciences since Bayle's time, the unlimited scepticism commonly, and perhaps justly imputed to him, is much less likely to mislead than it was a cen- tury ago ; while the value of his researches, and of his critical reflections, becomes every day more conspicuous, in proportion as more en- larged views of nature, and of human affairs, enable us to combine together that mass of rich but indigested materials, in the compilation of which his own opinions and principles seem to have been totally lost. Neither comprehen- sion, indeed, nor generalisation, nor metaphysical 1 See the preface to Bishop Butler's Sermons. * Particularly in the article entitled Paulicians. 3 One of the earliest as well as the ablest of those who undertook a reply to the passages in Bayle which seem to favour Manicheism, candidly acquits him of any serious design to recommend that system to his readers. " En repondant aux objections Maniche'ennes, je ne pretends faire aucun tort a M. Bayle : que je ne soup^onne nullement de les favoriser. Je suis persuadd qu'il n'a pris la libertd philosophique de dire, en Men des rencontres, le pour et le contre, sans ritn dissimu- ler, que pour donner de 1'exercice a ceux qui entendent les matieres qu'il traite, et non pour favoriser ceux dont il explique les raisons." fParrhasiana, ou Pensees Diverses, p. 302, par M. LE CLEEC. Amsterdam, 1699.) 4 See the illustration upon the Sceptics at the end of the Dictionary. 5 This supposition may be thought inconsistent with the well known fact, that the Theodice'e of Leibnitz was not pub- lished till after the death of Bayle. But it must be recollected, that Bayle had previously entered the lists with Leibnitz in the article Rorarius, where he had urged some very acute and forcible objections against the scheme of pre-established har- mony ; a scheme which leads so naturally and obviously to that of optimism, that it was not difficult to foresee what ground Leibnitz was likely to take in defending his principles. The great aim of Bayle seems to have been to provoke Leibnitz to unfold the whole of his system and of its necessary consequences ; well knowing what advantages in the management of such a controversy would be on the side of the assailant- The tribute paid by Leibnitz to the memory of his illustrious antagonist deserves to be quoted. " Sperandum est, Bxlium luminibus illis nunc circumdari, quod terris negutum est : cum credibile sit, bonam voiuntatem ei nequaquam defuisse." " Candidus insuetum miratur limen Olympi, Sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera Daphnis." 156 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. depth, l are to be numbered among the charac- teristical attributes of his genius. Far less does he ever anticipate, by the moral lights of the soul, the slow and hesitating decisions of the un- derstanding; or touch with a privileged hand those mysterious chords to which all the social sympathies of our frame are responsive. Had his ambition, however, been more exalted, or his philanthropy more warm and diffusive, he would probably have attempted less than he actually accomplished ; nor would he have stooped to en- joy that undisputed pre-eminence which the public voice has now unanimously assigned him, among those inestimable though often ill requit- ed authors, whom Johnson has called " the pioneers of literature." The suspense of judgment which Bayle's Dictionary inspires with respect to facts, is, per- haps, still more useful than that which it en- courages in matters of abstract reasoning. Fon- tenelle certainly went much too far, when he said of history, that it was only a collection of Fables Convenues ; a most significant and happy phrase, to which I am sorry that I cannot do justice in an English version. But though Fon- tenelle pushed his maxim to an extreme, there is yet a great deal of important truth in the re- mark ; and of this I believe every person's con- viction will be stronger, in proportion as his knowledge of men and of books is profound and extensive. 2 Of the various lessons of historical scepticism to be learned from Bayle, there is none more practically valuable (more especially in such revolutionary times as we have witnessed) than that which relates to the biographical portraits of distinguished persons, when drawn by their theological and political opponents. In illustra- tion of this, I have only to refer to the copious and instructive extracts which he has produced from Roman Catholic writers, concerning the lives, and still more concerning the deaths, of Luther, Knox, 5 Buchanan, and various other leaders or partizans of the Reformation. It would be impossible for any well-informed Pro- testant to read these extracts, without indulging a smile at their incredible absurdity, if every feeling of levity were not lost in a sentiment of deep indignation at the effrontery and falsehood of their authors. In stating this observation, I have taken my examples from Roman Catholic libellers, without any illiberal prejudices against the members of that church. The injustice done by Protestants to some of the conscientious de- fenders of the old faith has been, in all probabi- lity, equally great ; but this we have no oppor- tunity of ascertaining here, by the same direct evidence to which we can fortunately appeal, in vindication of the three characters mentioned above. With the history of two of them every person in this country is fully acquainted ; and I have purposely selected them in preference to others, as their names alone are sufficient to cover with disgrace the memory of their calumniators.* A few years before the death of Bayle, Fon- tenelle began to attract the notice of Europe. 5 I class them together on account of the mighty influence of both on the literary taste of their contemporaries ; an influence in neither case founded on any claims to original genius, or to important improvements ; but on the attractions which they possessed in common, though in very different ways, as popular writers ; and on the easy and agreeable access which their works opened to the opinions and speculations of the 1 I speak of that metaphysical depth which is the exclusive result of what Newton called patient thinking. In logical quickness, and metaphysical subtlety, Bayle has never been surpassed. 2 Montesquieu has expressed himself on this subject, in nearly as strong terms as Fontenelle. " Les Histoires sont des faits faux composes sur des faits vrais, ou bien a 1'occasion des vrais." (Pensees Diverses de MONTESQUIEU, Tom. V. de ses (Euvres. Ed. de Paris, 1818.) 3 See Note QQ. 4 Of all Bayle's works, " the most useful and the least sceptical," according to Gibbon, " is his Commentaire Philcso- pJiique on these words of the Gospel, Compel them to come in." The great object of this commentary is to establish the general principles of Toleration, and to remonstrate with the members of Protestant churches on the inconsistency of their refusing to those they esteem heretics, the same indulgence which they claim for themselves in Catholic countries. The work is diffuse and rambling, like all Bayle's compositions ; but the matter is excellent, and well deserves the praise which Gibbon has bestowed on it. * Bayle died in 1706. Fontenelle's first work in prose (the Dialogues of the Dead) was published as early as 1683, and was quickly followed by his Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds. DISSERTATION FIRST. 157 learned. Nor do I depart so far as might at first be supposed, from the order of chronology, in passing from the one to the other. For though Fontenelle survived almost to our own times (having very nearly completed a century at the time of his death), the interval between his birth and that of Bayle was only ten years, and he had actually published several volumes, both in prose and verse, before the Dictionary of Bayle appeared. But my chief reason for connecting Fonte- nelle rather with the contemporaries of his youth than with those of his old age is, that, during the latter part of his life, he was left far behind in his philosophical creed (for he never renoun- ced his faith as a Cartesian) 1 by those very pupils to whose minds he had given so power- ful an impulse, and whom he had so long taught by his example, the art (till then unknown in modern times) of blending the truths of the severer sciences with the lights and graces of eloquence. Even this eloquence, once so much admired, had ceased, before his death, to be re- garded as a model, and was fast giving way to the purer and more manly taste in writing, re- commended by the precepts, and exemplified in the historical compositions of Voltaire. Fontenelle was a nephew of the great Cor- neille ; but his genius was, in many respects, very strongly contrasted with that of the author of the Cid. Of this he has himself enabled us to judge by the feeble and unsuccessful attempts in dramatic poetry, by which he was first known to the world. In these, indeed, as in all his productions, there is an abundance of ingenu- ity, of elegance, and of courtly refinement ; but not the faintest vestige of the mens divinior, or of that sympathy with the higher and nobler passions which enabled Corneille to re-animate and to reproduce on the stage the heroes of an- cient Rome. The circumstance, however, which more peculiarly marks and distinguishes his writings, is the French mould in which education and habit seem to have recast all the original features of his mind ; identifying, at the same time, so perfectly the impressions of art with the workmanship of nature, that one would think the PARISIAN, as well as the MAN, had started fresh and finished from her creative hand. Even in his Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds, the dry discussions with the Marchioness about the now forgotten vortices of Descartes, are en- livened throughout by a never-failing spirit of light and national gallantry, which will for ever render them an amusing picture of the manners of the times, and of the character of the author. The gallantry, it must be owned, is often strained and affected ; but the affectation sits so well on Fontenelle, that he would appear less easy and graceful without it. The only other production of Fontenelle's youth which deserves to be noticed is his History of Oracles ; a work of which the aim was, to combat the popular belief that the oracles of an- tiquity were uttered by evil spirits, and that all these spirits became dumb at the moment of the Christian sera. To this work Fontenelle con- tributed little more than the agreeable and live- ly form in which he gave it to the world ; the chief materials being derived from a dull and prolix dissertation on the same subject, by a learned Dutchman. The publication excited a keen opposition among divines, both Catholic and Protestant ; and, in particular, gave occa- sion to a very angry, and, it is said, not con- temptible criticism, from a member of the So- ciety of Jesuits. 9 It is mentioned by La Harpe, as an illustration of the rapid change in men's 1 Excepting on a few metaphysical points. The chief of these were, the question concerning the origin of our ideas, and that relating to the nature of the lower animals. On the former of these subjects he has said explicitly : " L'An- cienne Philosophic n'a pas toujours eu tort. Elle a soutenu que tout ce qui e'toit dans Pesprit avoit pasti par let sens, et nous n'aurions pas mal fait de conserver cela d'elle." (Fragment of an intended Treatise on the Human Mind.) On another occasion, he states his own opinion on this point, in language coinciding exactly with that of GassendL " A force d'ope'rer sur les premieres iddes formees par les sens, d'y ajouter, d'en retrancher, de les rendre de particulieres universelles, d'univer- selles plus universelles encore, 1'esprit les rend si diffeYentes de ce qu'elles e*toient d'abord qu'on a quelquefois peine a recon- noitre leur origine. Cependant qui voudra prendre le fil et le suivre exactement, retournera toujours de I'ide'e la plus sublime et la plus eleve*e, a quelque idee sensible et grossiere." * To this criticism, the only reply made by Fontenelle was a single sentence, which he addressed to a Journalist who had urged him to take up arms in his own defence. '* Je laisserai mon censeur jouir en paix de son triomphe ; je consens que le diable ait e'te' prophete, puisque le Jesuite le veut, et qu'il croit cela plus orthodoxe." (D'ALEMBERT, Eloge de la Moite.) We are told by D'Alembert, that the silence of Fontenelle, on this occasion, was owing to the advice of La 158 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. opinions which took place during Fontenelle's life, that a book which, in his youth, was cen- sured for its impiety, was regarded before his death as a proof of his respect for religion. The most solid basis of Fontenelle's fame is his History of the Academy of Sciences, and his Eloges of ike Academicians. Both of these works, but more especially the latter, possess, in an eminent degree, all the charms of his former publications, and are written in a much simpler and better taste than any of the others. The materials, besides, are of inestimable value, as succinct and authentic records of one of the most memorable periods in the history of the human mind ; and ,are distinguished by a rare imparti- ality towards the illustrious dead, of all coun- tries, and of all persuasions. The philosophi- cal reflections, too, which the author has most skilfully interwoven with his literary details, discover a depth and justness of understanding far beyond the promise of his juvenile Essays; and afford many proofs of the soundness of his logical views, x as well as of his acute and fine discrimination of the varieties and shades of character, both intellectual and moral. The chief and distinguishing merit of Fonte- nelle, as the historian of the Academy, is the happy facility with which he adapts the most abstruse and refined speculations to the compre- hension of ordinary readers. Nor is this excel- lence purchased by any sacrifice of scientific precision. What he aims at is nothing more than an outline ; but this outline is always exe- cuted with the firm and exact hand of a master. " When employed in composition (he has some- where said) my first concern is to be certain that I myself understand what I am about to write ;" and on the utility of this practice every page of his Historical Memoirs may serve as a comment. 2 As a writer of Eloges, he has not been equal- led (if I may be allowed to hazard my own opi- nion) by any of his countrymen. Some of those, indeed, by D'Alembert and by Condorcet, ma- nifest powers of a far higher order than belonged to Fontenelle ; but neither of these writers pos- sessed Fontenelle's incommunicable art of in- teresting the curiosity and the feelings of his readers in the fortunes of every individual whom he honoured by his notice. In this art it is not improbable that they might have succeeded bet- ter had they imitated Fontenelle's self-denial in sacrificing the fleeting praise of brilliant colour- ing, to the fidelity and lasting effect of their portraits ; a self-denial which in him was the more meritorious, as his great ambition plainly was to unite the reputation of a bel-esprit with that of a philosopher. A justly celebrated aca- demician of the present times (M. Cuvier), who has evidently adopted Fontenelle as his model, has accordingly given an interest and truth to his Eloges, which the public had long ceased to expect in that species of composition. 5 But the principal charm of Fontenelle's Eloges Motte. " Fontenelle bien tente' de terrasser son adversaire par la facilite qu'il y trouvoit, fut retenu par les avis prudens de La Motte ; cet ami lui fit craindre de s'alie'ner par sa re'ponse une socie'te qui s'appeloit Legion, quand on avoit affaire au dernier de ses membres." The advice merits the attention of philosophers in all countries, for the spirit of Jesuitism is not confined to the Church of Rome. 1 An instance of this which happens at present to recur to my memory, may serve to illustrate and to confirm the above remark. It is unnecessary to point out its coincidence with the views which gave birth to the new nomenclature in chemistry. " If languages had been the work of philosophers, they might certainly be more easily learned. Philosophers would have established everywhere a systematical uniformity, which would have proved a safe and infallible guide ; and the man- ner of forming a derivative word, would, as a necessary consequence, have suggested its signification. The uncivilised nations, who are the first authors of languages, fell naturally into that notion with respect to certain terminations, all of which have some common property or virtue ; but that advantage, unknown to those who had it in their hands, was not carried to a sufficient extent." * From this praise, however, must be excepted, the mysterious jargon in which (after the example of some of his con- temporaries) he has indulged himself in speaking of the geometry and calculus of infinites. " Nous le disons avec peine (says D'Alembert), et sans vouloir outrager les manes d'un homme celebre qui n'est plus, il n'y a peut-etre point d'ouvrage 011 Ton trouve des preuves plus frequentes de Tabus de la me'taphysique, que dans 1'ouvrage tres connu de M. Fontenelle, qui a pour titre Siemens de la Geometric de Vlnfini ; ouvrage dont la lecture est d'autant. plus dangereuse aux jeunes ge'o- metres que Tauteur y presente les sophismes avec une sorte d 'elegance et de grace, dont le sujet ne paroissoit pas suscep- tible." -(Melanges, &c. Tom. V. p. 264.) * D'Alembert, in his ingenious parallel of Fontenelle and La Motte, has made a remark on Fontenelle's style when he aims at simplicity, of the justness of which French critics alone are competent judges. " L'un et 1'autre ont ecrit en prose avec beaucoup de clarte', d'ele'gance, de simplicite' meme ; mais La Motte avec une simplicite' plus naturelle, et Fontenelle DISSERTATION FIRST. 159 arises from the pleasing pictures which they everywhere present of genius and learning in the scenes of domestic life. In this respect, it has been justly said of them by M. Suard, x that " they form the noblest monument ever raised to the glory of the sciences and of letters." Fon- tenelle himself, in his Eloge of Varignon, after remarking, that in him the simplicity of his cha- racter was only equalled by the superiority of his talents, finely adds, " I have already be- stowed so often the same praise on other mem- bers of this academy, that it may be doubted whether it is not less due to the individuals, than to the sciences which they cultivated in com- mon." What a proud reply does this reflection afford to the Machiavellian calumniators of phi- losophy ! The influence of these two works of Fon- tenelle on the studies of the rising generation all over Europe, can be conceived by those alone who have compared them with similar produc- tions of an earlier date. Sciences which had long been immured in colleges and cloisters, began at length to breathe the ventilated and wholesome air of social life. The union of phi- losophy and the fine arts, so much boasted of in the schools of ancient Greece, seemed to promise a speedy and invigorated revival. Geometry, Mechanics, Physics, Metaphysics, and Morals, became objects of pursuit in courts and in camps ; the accomplishments of a scholar grew more and more into repute among the other characteristics of a gentleman : and (what was of still greater importance to the world) the learned discovered the secret of cultivating the graces of writing, as a necessary passport to truth, in a refined but dissipated age. Nor was this change of manners confined to one of the sexes. The other sex, to whom na- ture has entrusted the first development of our intellectual and moral powers, and who may, therefore, be regarded as the chief medium through which the progress of the mind is con- tinued from generation to generation, shared also largely in the general improvement. Fontenelle aspired above all things to be the philosopher of the Parisian circles ; and certainly contributed not a little to diffuse a taste for useful know- ledge among women of all conditions in France, by bringing it into vogue among the higher classes. A reformation so great and so sudden could not possibly take place, without giving birth to much affectation, extravagance, and folly ; but the whole analogy of human affairs encourages us to hope, that the inconveniencies and evils connected with it will be partial and temporary, and its beneficial results permanent and progressive. 8 Among the various moral defects imputed to Fontenelle, that of a complete apathy and in- avec une simplicity plus e'tudie'e : car la simplicite peut 1'etre, et des lors elle devient maniere, et cesse d'etre module." An idea very similar to this is happily expressed by Congreve, in his portrait of Amoret : Coquet and Coy at once her air, Both studied, though both seem neglected : Careless she is with artful care, Affecting to seem unaffected. 1 Notice sur la Vie et les Ecrits du Docteur Robertson. (Paris, 1817-) * Among the various other respects in which Fontenelle contributed to the intellectual improvement of his countrymen, it ought to be mentioned, that he was one of the first writers in France who diverted the attention of metaphysicians from the old topics of scholastic discussion, to a philosophical investigation of the principles of the fine arts. Various original hints upon these subjects are scattered over his works : but the most favourable specimens of his talents for this very delicate species of analysis are to be found in his Dissertation on Pastorals, and in his Theory concerning the Delight iee derive from Tragedy.* His speculations, indeed, are not always just and satisfactory ; but they are seldom deficient in novelty or re- finement. Their principal fault, perhaps, arises from the author's disposition to carry his refinements too far ; in con- sequence of which, his theories become chargeable with that sort of sublimated ingenuity which the French epithet Alambique, expresses more precisely and forcibly than any word in our language. Something of the same philosophical spirit may be traced in Fenelon's Dialogues on Eloquence, and in his Letter on Rhetoric and Poetry. The former of these treatises, besides its merits as a speculative discussion, contains various prac- tical hints, well entitled to the attention of those who aspire to eminence as public speakers ; and of which the most apparently trifling claim some regard, as the results of the author's reflections upon an art which few ever practised with greater success. Let me add, that both of these eminent men (who may be regarded as the fathers of philosophical criticism in France) were zealous partizans and admirers of the Cartesian metaphysics. It is this critical branch of metaphysical science which, * In the judgment of Mr Hume, " there is not a finer piece of criticism than Fontenelle's Dissertation on Pastorals ; in which, by a number of reflections and philosophical reasonings, he endeavours to fix the just medium between simplicity and refinement, which is suitable to that species of poetry." 160 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. sensibility to all concerns but his own is by far the most prominent. A letter of the Baron de Grimm, written immediately after Fontenelle's death, but not published till lately, has given a new circulation in this country to some anec- dotes injurious to his memory, which had long ago fallen into oblivion or contempt in France. The authority, however, of this adventurer, who earned his subsistence by collecting and retail- ing, for the amusement of a German Prince, the literary scandal of Paris, is not much to be relied on in estimating a character with which he does not appear to have had any opportunity of becoming personally acquainted ; more especially as, during Fontenelle's long decline, the great majority of men of letters in France were dis- posed to throw his merits into the shade, as an acceptable homage to the rising and more dazzling glories of Voltaire. 1 It is in the Aca- demical Memoirs of D'Alembert and Condorcet (neither of whom can be suspected of any un- just prejudice against Voltaire, but who were both too candid to sacrifice truth to party feel- ings) that we ought to search for Fontenelle's real portrait:* Or rather (if it be true, as Dr Hutcheson has somewhere remarked, that " men have commonly the good or bad quali- ties which they ascribe to mankind") the most faithful Eloge on Fontenelle himself is to be found in those which he has pronounced upon others. That the character of Fontenelle would have been more amiable and interesting, had his vir- tues been less the result of cold and prudent calculation, it is impossible to dispute. But his conduct through life was pure and blameless ; and the happy serenity of his temper, which prolonged his life till he had almost completed his hundredth year, served as the best comment on the spirit of that mild and benevolent philo- sophy, of which he had laboured so long to ex- tend the empire. It is a circumstance almost singular in his history, that since the period of his death, his reputation, both as a man and as an author, has been gradually rising. The fact has been as remarkably the reverse with most of those who have calumniated his memory. While the circle of mental cultivation was thus rapidly widening in France, a similar pro- gress was taking place, upon a larger scale, and under still more favourable circumstances, in England. To this progress nothing contributed in my opinion, has been most successfully cultivated by French writers ; although too many of them have been infected (after the example of Fontenelle) with the disease of sickly and of hyper-metaphysical subtlety. From this censure, however, must be excepted the Abbd Dubos, whose Critical Reflections on Poetry and Painting is one of the most agreeable and instructive works that can be put into the hands of youth. Few books are better calculated for leading their minds gradually from literature to philosophy. The author's theories, if not always profound or just, are in general marked with good sense as well as with ingenuity ; and the subjects to which they relate are so peculiarly attrac- tive, as to fix the attention even of those readers who have but little relish for speculative discussions. " Ce qui fait la bonte'de cet ouvrage (says Voltaire) c'est qu'il n'y a que pen d'erreurs, et beaucoup de reflexions vraies, nouvelles, et pro- fondes. II manque cependant d'ordre et sur-tout de precision ; il auroit pu etre ecrit avec plus de feu, de grace, et d'ele'- gance ; mats Fecrivain pense et fait penser." (Siecle de Louis XIV.) 1 As to Voltaire himself, it must be mentioned, to his honour, that though there seems never to have been much cordia- lity between him and Fontenelle, he had yet the magnanimity to give a place to this Nestor of French literature in his catalogue of the eminent persons who adorned the reign of Louis XIV. : a tribute of respect the more flattering, as it is the single instance in which he has departed from his general rule of excluding from his list the names of all his li ving con- temporaries. Even Fontenelle's most devoted admirers ought to be satisfied with the liberality of Voltaire's eulogy, in which, after pronouncing Fontenelle " the most universal genius which the age of Louis XIV. had produced," he thus sums up his merits as an author. " Enfin on 1'a regarde comme le premier des hommes dans 1'art nouveau de repandre de la lumiere et des graces sur les sciences abstraites, et il a eu du me'rite dans tous les autres genres qu'il a traites. Tant de talens ont ete' soutenus par la connoissance des langues et de 1'histoire, et ila ete sans contrcdit au-dessus detout les scavans qui n'ont pas eu le don de finvention" * Condorcet has said expressly, that his apathy was confined entirely to what regarded himself; and that he was always an active, though frequently a concealed friend, where his good offices could be useful to those who deserved them. " On a cru Fontenelle insensible, parce que sachant mSitriser les mouvemens de son ame il se conduisoit d'apres son esprit, toujours juste et toujours sage. D'ailleurs, il avoit consent! sans peine a conserver cette reputation d'insensibilite' ; il avoit souffert les plaisanteries de ses societe's sur sa froideur, sans chercher a les de'tromper, parce que, bien sur que les vraies amis n'en seroit pas la dupe, il voyoit dans cette reputation un moyen commode de se delivrer des indifferens sans bl^sser leur amour- propre." (Eloge de Fontenelle, par CONDOHCET.) Many of Fontenelle's sayings, the import of which must have depended entirely on circumstances of time and place un- known to us, have been absurdly quoted to his disadvantage, in their literal and most obvious acceptation. " I hate war (said he), for it spoils conversation." Can any just inference be drawn from the levity of this convivial sally, against the humanity of the person who uttered it ? Or rather, when connected with the characteristical finesse of Fontenelle's wit, does it not lead to a conclusion precisely opposite ? DISSERTATION FIRST. 161 more powerfully than the periodical papers pub- lished under various titles by Addison 1 and his associates. The effect of these in reclaiming the public taste from the licentiousness and grossness introduced into England at the period of the Restoration ; in recommending the most serious and important truths by the united at- tractions of wit, humour, imagination, and elo- quence ; and, above all, in counteracting those superstitious terrors which the weak and igno- rant are so apt to mistake for religious and moral impressions has been remarked by numberless critics, and is acknowledged even by those who felt no undue partiality in favour of the authors. e Some of the papers of Addison, however, are of an order still higher, and bear marks of a mind which, if early and steadily turned to philoso- phical pursuits, might have accomplished much more than it ventured to undertake. His fre- quent references to the Essay an Human Under- standing, and the high encomiums with which they are always accompanied, show how suc- cessfully he had entered into the spirit of that work, and how completely he was aware of the importance of its object. The popular nature of his publications, indeed, which rendered it necessary for him to avoid everything that might savour of scholastic or of metaphysical discussion, has left us no means of estimating his philosophical depth, but what are afforded by the results of his thoughts on the particular topics which he has occasion to allude to, and by some of his incidental comments on the scientific merits of preceding authors. But these means are sufficiently ample to justify a very high opinion of his sound and unprejudiced judgment, as well as of the extent and correct- ness of his literary information. Of his powers as a logical reasoner he has not enabled us to form an estimate ; but none of his contempo- raries seem to have been more completely tinc- tured with all that is most valuable in the me- taphysical and ethical systems of his time. 3 But what chiefly entitles the name of Addi- son to a place in this Discourse, is his Essays on the Pleasures of Imagination ; the first attempt in England to investigate the principles of the fine arts ; and an attempt which, notwithstand- ing many defects in the execution, is entitled to the praise of having struck out a new avenue to the study of the human mind, more alluring than any which had been opened before. In this respect, it forms a most important supple- ment to Locke's Survey of the Intellectual Powers ; and it has, accordingly, served as a text, on which the greater part of Locke's disciples have been eager to offer their comments and their corrections. The progress made by some of these in exploring this interesting region has been great ; but let not Addison be defrauded of his claims as a discoverer. Similar remarks may be extended to the hints suggested by Addison on Wit, on Humour, and on the causes of Laughter. It cannot, indeed, be said of him, that he exhausted any one of these subjects ; but he had at least the merit of starting them as problems for the consideration of philosophers ; nor would it be easy to name among his successors, a single writer who has made so important a step towards their solution, as the original proposer. The philosophy of the papers to which the fore- going observations refer, has been pronounced to be slight and superficial, by a crowd of modern metaphysicians, who were but ill entitled to erect themselves into judges on such a question. 4 The singular simplicity and perspicuity of Addison's style have contributed much to the prevalence 1 Born in 1672, died in 1719. 2 See Pope's Imitations of Horace, Book II. Epistle I. " Unhappy Dryden," &c. &c. * I quote the following passage from Addison, not as a specimen of his metaphysical acumen, hut as a proof of his good sense in divining and obviating a difficulty which I believe most persons will acknowledge occurred to themselves when they first entered on metaphysical studies : " Although we divide the soul into several powers and faculties, there is no such division in the soul itself, since it is the whole soul that remembers, understands, wills, or imagines. Our manner of considering the memory, understanding, will, imagination, and the like faculties, is for the better enabling us to express ourselves in such abstracted subjects of speculation, not that there is any such division in the soul itself." In another part of the same paper, Addison observes, that " what we call the faculties of the soul are only the different ways or modes in which the soul can exert herself." (Spectator, No. 600.) For some important remarks on the words Powert and Faculties, as applied to the Mind, see Locke, B. II. Ch. xxi. S 20. See Note RE. DISS. I. PART II. X 162 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. of this prejudice. Eager for the instruction, and unambitious of the admiration of the multi- tude, he everywhere studies to bring himself down to their level ; and even when he thinks with the greatest originality, and writes with the most inimitable felicity, so easily do we en- ter into the train of his ideas, that we can hard- ly persuade ourselves that we could not have thought and written in the same manner. He has somewhere said of " fine writing," that it " consists of sentiments which are natural, with- out being obvious :" and his definition has been applauded by Hume, as at once concise and just. Of the thing defined, his own periodical essays exhibit the most perfect examples. To this simplicity and perspicuity, the wide circulation which his works have so long main- tained among all classes of readers, is in a great measure to be ascribed. His periods are not constructed, like those of Johnson, to " elevate and surprise," by filling the ear and dazzling the fancy ; but we close his volumes with greater reluctance, and return to the perusal of them with far greater alacrity. Franklin, whose fugitive publications on political topics have had so extra- ordinary an influence on public opinion, both in the Old and New Worlds, tells us that his style in writing was formed upon the model of Addison : Nor do I know anything in the history of his life which does more honour to his shrewdness and sagacity. The copyist, indeed, did not pos- sess the gifted hand of his master, Museo con- tingens cuncta lepore ; but such is the effect of his plain and seemingly artless manner, that the most profound conclusions of political economy assume, in his hands, the appearance of indis- putable truths ; and some of them, which had been formerly confined to the speculative few, are already current in every country of Europe, as proverbial maxims. 1 To touch, however slightly, on Addison's other merits, as a critic, as a wit, as a specula- tive politician, and, above all, as a moralist, would lead me completely astray from my pre- sent object. It will not be equally foreign to it to quote the two following short .passages, which, though not strictly metaphysical, are, both of them, the result of metaphysical habits of thinking, and bear a stronger resemblance than anything I recollect among the wits of Queen Anne's reign, to the best philosophy of the pre- sent age. They approach, indeed, very nearly to the philosophy of Turgot and of Smith. " Among other excellent arguments for the immortality of the soul, there is one drawn from the perpetual progress of the soul to its perfec- tion, without a possibility of ever arriving at it; which is a hint that I do not remember to have seen opened and improved by others who have written on this subject, though it seems to me to carry a great weight with it. A brute arrives at a point of perfection that he can never pass. In a few years he has all the endowments he is capable of; and were he to live ten thousand more, would be the same thing he is at present. Were a human soul thus at a stand in her ac- complishments, were her faculties to be full- blown, and incapable of further enlargement, I would imagine it might fall away insensibly, and drop at once into a state of annihilation. But can we believe a thinking being, that is in a perpetual progress of improvement, and tra- velling on from perfection to perfection, . after having just looked abroad into the works of its Creator, and made a few discoveries of his in- finite goodness, wisdom, and power, must perish at her first setting out, and in the very begin- ning of her inquiries ?" 8 The philosophy of the other passage is not unworthy of the author of the Wealth of Nations. The thought may be traced to earlier writers, but certainly it was never before presented with the same fulness and liveliness of illustration ; nor do I know, in all Addison's works, a finer in- stance of his solicitude for the improvement of his fair readers, than the address with which he 1 The expressions " Laissez nousfaire," and "pas trap gouverner" whirh comprise, in a few words, two of the most im- portant lessons of Political Wisdom, are indebted chiefly for their extensile circulation to the short and luminous comments of Franklin (See his Political Fragments, 4.) 2 This argument has been prosecuted with great ingenuity and force of reasoning (blended, however, with some of the peculiarities of his Berkeleian metaphysics) by the late Dr James Hutton. (See his Investigation of the Principles of Know- ledge, Vol. III. p. 195, et seq. Edin. 1794.) DISSERTATION FIRST. 163 here insinuates one of the sublimest moral les- sons, while apparently aiming- only to amuse them with the geographical history of the muff and the tippet. " Nature seems to have taken a particular care to disseminate her blessings among the dif- ferent regions of the world, with an eye to the mutual intercourse and traffic among- mankind ; that the natives of the several parts of the globe might have a kind of dependance upon one another, and be united together by their com- mon interest. Almost every degree produces something peculiar to it. The food often grows in one country, and the sauce in another. The fruits of Portugal are corrected by the products of Barbadoes ; the infusion of a China plant, sweetened with the pith of an Indian cane. The Philippine Islands give a flavour to our Euro- pean bowls. The single dress of a woman of quality is often the product of a hundred cli- mates. The muff and the fan come together from the opposite ends of the earth. The scarf is sent from the torrid zone, and the tippet from beneath the pole. The brocade petticoat rises out of the mines of Peru, and the diamond neck- lace out of the bowels of Indostan." But I must not dwell longer on the fascinat- ing pages of Addison. Allow me only, before I close them, to contrast the last extract with a remark of Voltaire, which, shallow and con- temptible as it is, occurs more than once, both in verse and in prose, in his voluminous writings. II murit, a Moka, dans le sable Arabique, Ce Gaffe neVessaire aux pays des frimats ; II met la Fievre en nos climats, Et le remede en Amerique. (Epitre au Hoi du Prusse, 1750.) And yet Voltaire is admired as a philosopher by many who will smile to hear this title bestow- ed upon Addison ! It is observed by Akenside, in one of the notes to the Pleasures of Imagination, that " Philoso- phy and the Fine Arts can hardly be conceiv- ed at a greater distance from each other than at the Revolution, when Locke stood at the head of one party, and Dryden of the other." He observes, also, that " a very great progress to- wards their re-union had been made within these few years." To this progress the chief impulse was undoubtedly given by Addison and Shaftesbury. Notwithstanding, however, my strong parti- ality for the former of these writers, I should be truly sorry to think, with Mr Hume, that " Addison will be read with pleasure when Locke shall be entirely forgotten." (Essay on the Different Species of Philosophy.} A few years before the commencement of these periodical works, a memorable accession was made to metaphysical science, by the pub- lication of Berkeley's New TJieory of Vision, and of his Principles of Human Knowledge. Possess- ed of a mind which, however inferior to that of Locke in depth of reflection and in soundness of judgment, was fully its equal in logical acute- ness and invention, and in learning, fancy, and taste, far its superior, Berkeley was singularly fitted to promote that re-union of Philosophy and of the Fine Arts which is so essential to the prosperity of both. Locke, we are told, despis- ed poetry ; and we know from one of his own letters, that, among our English poets, his fa- vourite author was Sir Richard Blackmore. Berkeley, on the other hand, counted the society of all, from whose conversation and manners he could hope to add to the embellishments of his genius; and although himself a decided and High Church Tory, l lived in habits of friend- ship with Steele and Addison, as well as with Pope and Swift. Pope's admiration of him seems to have risen to a sort of enthusiasm. He yielded to Berkeley's decision on a very delicate question relating to the exordium of the Essay on Man ; and on his moral qualities he has be- stowed the highest and most unqualified eulogy to be found in his writings. . ' See a volume of Sermons, preached in the chapel of Trinity College, Dublin. See also a Discourse addressed to Ma- gistrates, &c. printed in 1?36. In both of these publications, the author carries his Tory principles so far, as to represent the doctrine of passive obedience and non-resistance as an essential article of the Christian faith. " The Christian religion makes every legal constitution sacred, by commanding our submission thereto. Let every soul be subject to the higher power*, saith St Paul, for the powers that be are ordained of God." 164 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. " Even in a Bishop I can spy desert ; Seeker is decent ; Rundle has a heart ; Manners with candour are to Benson given ; To Berkeley every virtue under Heaven." With these intellectual and moral endow- ments, admired and blazoned as they were by the most distinguished wits of his age, it is not surprising that Berkeley should have given a popularity and fashion to metaphysical pursuits, which they had never before acquired in Eng- land. Nor was this popularity diminished by the boldness of some of his paradoxes : on the contrary, it was in no small degree the effect of them ; the great bulk of mankind being always prone to mistake a singularity or eccentricity of thinking, for the originality of a creative genius. The solid additions, however, made by Berke- ley to the stock of human knowledge were im- portant and brilliant. Among these, the first place is unquestionably due to his New Theory of Vision ; a work abounding with ideas so dif- ferent from those commonly received, and, at the same time, so profound and refined, that it was regarded by all but a few accustomed to deep metaphysical reflection, rather in the light of a philosophical romance, than of a sober inquiry after truth. Such, however, has been since the progress and diffusion of this sort of knowledge, that the leading and most abstracted doctrines contained in it, form now an essential part of every elementary treatise of optics, and are adopted by the most superficial smatterers in science as fundamental articles of their faith. Of a theory, the outlines of which cannot fail to be familiar to a great majority of my readers, it would be wholly superfluous to attempt any explanation here, even if it were consistent with the limits within which I am circumscribed. Suffice it to observe, that its chief aim is to dis- tinguish the immediate and natural objects of sight from the seemingly instantaneous conclu* sions which experience and habit teach us to draw from them in our earliest infancy; or, in the more concise metaphysical language of a later period, to draw the line between the ori- ginal and the acquired perceptions of the eye. They who wish to study it in detail, will find ample satisfaction, and, if they have any relish for such studies, an inexhaustible fund of enter- tainment, in Berkeley's own short but masterly exposition of his principles, and in the excellent comments upon it by Smith of Cambridge ; by Porterfield ; by Reid ; and, still more lately, by the author of the Wealth of Nations. 1 That this doctrine, with respect to the acquir- ed perceptions of sight, was quite unknown to the best metaphysicians of antiquity, we have direct evidence in a passage of Aristotle's Nico- machian Ethics, where he states the distinction between those endowments which are the imme- diate gift of nature, and those which are the fruit of custom and habit. In the former class, he ranks the perceptions of sense, mentioning particularly the senses of seeing and of hearing* The passage (which I have transcribed in a Note) is curious, and seems to me decisive on the subject. 2 The misapprehensions of the ancients on this very obscure question will not appear surprising, when it is considered, that forty years after the publication of Berkeley's Theory of Vision, and sixty years after the date of Locke's Essay, the subject was so imperfectly understood in France, that Condillac (who is, to this day, very gene- rally regarded by his countrymen as the father of genuine logic and metaphysics) combated at great length the conclusions of the English phi- losophers concerning the acquired perceptions of sight ; affirming that " the eye judges naturally of figures, of magnitudes, of situations, and of 1 By this excellent judge, Berkeley's New Theory of Vision is pronounced to be " one of the finest examples of Philoso- phical Analysis that is to be found in our own, or any other language." (Essays on Philosophical Subjects. Lond. 1795, p. 215.) 2 Ou yag Ix r rXXa*;j (Sv, ij a'aXXax/j xovffa.i ret! &tf6titr (Ethic. Nicomach. Lib. ii. cap. 1.) " For it is not from seeing often, or from hearing often, that we get these senses ; but, on the contrary, instead of get- ting them by using them, we use them because we have got them." Had Aristotle been at all aware of the distinction so finely illustrated by Berkeley, instead of appealing to the percep- tions of these two senses, as instances of endowments coeval with our birth, he would have quoted them as the most striking of all examples of the effects of custom in apparently identifying our acquired powers with our original faculties. DISSERTATION FIRST. 165 distances." His argument in support of this opinion is to be found in the sixth section of his Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge. It is difficult to suppose, that a person of mature years, who had read and studied Locke and Berkeley with as much care and attention as Condillac appears to have bestowed on them, should have reverted to this ancient and vulgar prejudice ; without suspecting that his metaphy- sical depth has been somewhat overrated by the world. 1 It is but justice, however, to Condillac to add, that, in a subsequent work, he had the candour to acknowledge and to retract his er- ror ; a rare example of that disinterested love of truth, which is so becoming in a philosopher. I quote the passage (in a literal, though some- what abridged version), not only to show, that, in the above statement, I have not misrepre- sented his opinion, but because I consider this remarkable circumstance in his literary history as a peculiarly amiable and honourable trait in his character. " We cannot recall to our memory the igno- rance in which we were born : It is a state which leaves no trace behind it. We only re- collect our ignorance of those things, the know- ledge of which we recollect to have acquired ; and to remark what we acquire, some previous knowledge is necessary. That memory which now renders us so sensible of the step from one acquisition to another, cannot remount to the first steps of the progress ; on the contrary, it supposes them already made ; and hence the origin of our disposition to believe them connate with ourselves. To say that we have learnt to see, to hear, to taste, to smell, to touch, appears a most extraordinary paradox. It seems to us that nature gave us the complete use of our senses the moment she formed them, and that we have always made use of them without study, because we are no longer obliged to study in order to use them. I retained these prejudices at the time I published my Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge ; the reasonings of Locke on a man born blind, to whom the sense of sight was afterwards given, did not undeceive me : and / maintained against this philosopher that the eye judges naturally of figures., of sizes, of situa- tions, and of distances." Nothing short of his own explicit avowal could have convinced me, that a writer of so high pretensions and of such unquestionable ingenuity as Condillac, had real- ly commenced his metaphysical career under so gross and unaccountable a delusion. In bestowing the praise of originality on Berkeley's Theory of Vision, I do not mean to say, that the whole merit of this Theory is ex- clusively his own. In this, as in most other cases, it may be presumed, that the progress of the human mind has been gradual : And, in point of fact, it will, on examination, be found, that Berkeley only took up the inquiry where Locke dropped it ; following out his principles to their remoter consequences, and placing them in so great a variety of strong and happy lights, as to bring a doctrine till t/ien understood but by a few, within the reach of every intelligent and attentive reader. For my own part, on com- paring these two philosophers together, I am at a loss whether most to admire the powerful and penetrating sagacity of the one, or the fertility of invention displayed in the illustrations of the other. What can be more clear and forcible than the statement of Locke quoted in the Note below ; and what an idea does it convey of his superiority to Condillac, when it is considered, that he anticipated a priori the same doctrine which was afterwards confirmed by the fine analysis of Berkeley, and demonstrated by the judicious experiments of Cheselden j while the 1 Voltaire, at an earlier period, had seized completely the scope of Berkeley's theory ; and had explained it with equal brevity and precision, in the following passage of his Elements of the Newtonian Philosophy : " II faut absolument conclure, que les distances, les grandeurs, les situations ne sont pas, a proprement parler, des choses visibles, c'est a dire, ne sont pas les objets propres et imme'diats de la vue. L'objet propre et imme'diat de la vue n'est autre chose que la lumiere colore'e : tout le reste, nous ne le sentons qu'a la longue et par experience. Nous apprenons a voir, pre'cise'ment comme nous apprenons a parler et a lire. La difference est, que 1'art de voir est plus facile, et que la nature est e'galement a tous notre maitre. " Les jugemens soudains, presque uniformes, que toutes nos ames a un certain age portent des distances, des grandeurs, des situations, nous font penser, qu'il n'y a qu'a ouvrir les yeux pour voir la maniere dont nous voyons. On se trompe, il y faut le secours des autres sens. Si les hommes n'avoient que le sens de la vue, ils n'auroient aucun moyen pour con- noitre I'e'tendue en longeur, largeur et profondeur, et un pur esprit ne la connoitroit peut-etre, a moins que Dieu ne la lui reVelat." Phys. Newton, Chap. 7- 166 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. French metaphysician, with all this accumula- to it by many who, in all probability, derived tion of evidence before him, relapsed into a pre- their whole information concerning it from the ]udice transmitted to modern times, from the traditional and inexact transcripts of book-mak- very infancy of optical science ! l ing historians. In the introductory sentences I believe it would be difficult to produce from of his Essay, he states very clearly and candid- any writer prior to Locke, an equal number of im- ly the conclusions of his immediate predecessors portant facts relating to the intellectual phenome- on this class of our perceptions ; and explains, na, as well observed, and as unexceptionably de- with the greatest precision, in what particulars scribed, as those which I have here brought under his own opinion differs from theirs. " It is, I my reader's eye. It must appear evident, besides, think, agreed by all, that distance, of itself, can- to all who have studied the subject, that Locke not be seen. For distance being a line directed has, in this passage, enunciated, in terms the end- wise to the eye, it projects only one point most precise and decided, the same general con- in the fund of the eye, which point remains in- clusion concerning the effect of constant and variably the same, whether the distance be early habits, which it was the great object of longer or shorter. Berkeley's Theory of Vision to establish, and " I find it also acknowledged, that the esti- which, indeed, gives to that work its chief value, mate we make of the distance of objects consi- when considered in connection with the Philo- derably remote, is rather an act of judgment sophy of the Human Mind. grounded on experience, than of sense. For ex- Berkeley himself, it is to be observed, by no ample, when I perceive a great number of inter- means lays claim to that complete novelty in mediate objects, such as houses, fields, rivers, his Theory of Vision, which has been ascribed and the like, which I have experienced to take 1 " We are farther to consider," says Locke, " concerning perception, that the ideas we receive by sensation are often in grown people altered by the judgment, without our taking notice of it. When we set before our eyes a round globe, of any uniform colour, v. g. gold, alabaster, or jet, it is certain that the idea thereby imprinted in our mind is of a flat circle, va- riously shadowed, with several degrees of light and brightness coming to our eyes. But we having by use been accustomed to perceive what kind of appearance convex bodies are wont to make in us, what alterations are made in the reflections of light by the difference of the sensible figure of bodies ; the judgment presently, by an habitual custom, alters the appear- ances into their causes, so that, from what truly is variety of shadow or colour, collecting the figure it makes it pass for a mark of figure, and frames to itself the perception of a convex figure, and an uniform colour ; when the idea we receive from thence is only* plane variously coloured, as is evident in painting. * * * " But this is not, I think, usual in any of our ideas, but those received by sight ;* because sight, the most comprehensive of all our senses, conveying to our minds the ideas of lights and colours, which are peculiar only to that sense ; and also the far different ideas of space, figure, or motion, the several varieties whereof change the appearances of its proper objects, viz. light and colours, we bring ourselves by use to judge of the one by the other. This, in many cases, by a settled habit in things whereof we have frequent experience, is performed so constantly and so quick, that we take that for the perception of our sensation, which is an idea formed by our judgment ; so that one, viz. that of sensation, serves only to excite the other, and is scarce taken notice of itself: as a man who reads or hears with attention or understanding, takes little notice of the characters or sounds, but of the ideas that are excited in him by them. " Nor need we wonder that it is done with so little notice, if we consider how very quick the actions of the mind are per- formed ; for as itself is thought to take up no space, to have no extension, so its actions seem to require no time, but many of them seem to be crowded into an instant. I speak this in comparison to the actions of the body. Any one may easily observe this in his own thoughts, who will take the pains to reflect on them. How, as it were in an instant, do our minds with one glance see all the parts of a demonstration, which may very well be called a long one, if we consider the time it will require to put it into words, and step by step show it to another ? Secondly, we shall not be so much surprised that this is done in us with so little notice, if we consider how the facility which we get of doing things by a custom of doing makes them often pass in us without our notice. Habits, especially such as are begun very early, come at last to produce actions in us, which often escape our observations. How frequently do we in a day cover our eyes with our eye-lids, with- out perceiving that we ai - e at all in the dark ? Men that have by custom got the use of a bye-word, do almost in every sentence pronounce sounds, which, though taken notice of by others, they themselves neither hear nor observe ; and, there- fore, it is not so strange, that our mind should often change the idea of its sensation into that of its judgment, and make one serve only to excite the other, without our taking notice of it." (LOCKE'S Works, Vol. I. p. 123, et tcq.) * Mr Locke might, however, have remarked something very similar to it in the perceptions of the ear ; a very large pro- portion of its appropriate objects being rather judged of than actually perceived. In the rapidity (for example) of common conversation, how many syllables, and even words, escape the notice of the most attentive hearer ; which syllables and words are so quickly supplied from the relation which they bear to the rest of the sentence, that it is quite impossible to dis- tinguish between the audible and the inaudible sounds ! A very palpable instance of this occurs in the difficulty expe- rienced by the most acute ear in catching proper names or arithmetical sums, or words borrowed from unknown tongues, the first time they are pronounced. DISSERTATION FIRST. 167 up a considerable space ; I thence form a judg- ment or conclusion, that the object I see beyond them is at a great distance. Again, when an object appears faint and small, which, at a near distance, I have experienced to make a vigorous and large appearance, I instantly conclude it to be far off. And this, 'tis evident, is the result of experience ; without wliich, from the faintness and littleness, I should not have inferred any- thing concerning the distance of objects. " But when an object is placed at so near a distance, as that the interval between the eyes bears any sensible proportion to it, it is the re- ceived opinion that the two optic axes, concur- ring at the object, do there make an angle, by means of which, according as it is greater or less, the object is perceived to be nearer or far- ther off. " There is another way mentioned by the optic writers, whereby they will have us judge of those distances, in respect of which the breadth of the pupil hath any sensible bigness ; and that is, the greater or less divergency of the rays, which, issuing from the visible point, do fall on the pupil ; that point being judged nearest, which is seen by most diverging rays, and that remoter, which is seen by less diver- ging rays." These (according to Berkeley) are the " com- mon and current accounts" given by mathema* ticians of our perceiving near distances by sight. He then proceeds to show, that they are unsa- tisfactory ; and that it is necessary, for the so- lution of this problem, to avail ourselves of prin- ciples borrowed from a higher philosophy : Af- ter which, he explains, in detail, his own theory concerning the ideas (sensations) which, by ex- perience, become signs of distance; 1 or (to use his own phraseology) " by which distance is suggested* to the mind." The result of the whole is, that, " a man born blind, being made to see, would not at first have any idea of dis- tance by sight. TJie sun and stars, the remotest objects as well as the nearest, would all seem to be in his Eye, or rather in his Mind." s From this quotation it appears, that, before Berkeley's time, philosophers had advanced greatly beyond the point at which Aristotle stopped, and towards which Condillac, in his -first publication, made a retrograde movement. Of tliis progress some of the chief steps may be traced as early as the twelfth century in the Optics of Alhazen ; 4 and they may be perceived still more clearly and distinctly in various op- tical writers since the revival of letters ; parti- cularly in the Optica Promota of James Gre- gory. 5 Father Malebranche went still farther, and even anticipated some of the metaphysical 1 For assisting persons unaccustomed to metaphysical studies to enter into the spirit and scope of Berkeley's Theory, the best illustration I know of is furnished by the phenomena of the Phantasmagoria. It is sufficient to hint at this application of these phenomena, to those who know anything of the subject. 2 The word suggest is much used by Berkeley, in this appropriate and technical sense, not only in his Theory of Vision, but in his Principles of Human Knowledge, and in his Minute Philosopher. It expresses, indeed, the cardinal principle on, which his Theory of Vision hinges ; and is now so incorporated with some of our best metaphysical speculations, that one cannot easily conceive how the use of it was so long dispensed with. Locke (in the passage quoted in the Note, p. 107- ) uses the word excite for the same purpose ; but it seems to imply an hypothesis concerning the mechanism of the mind, and by no means expresses the fact in question with the same force and precision. It is remarkable, that Dr Reid should have thought it incumbent on him to apologise for introducing into philosophy a word so familiar to every person conversant with Berkeley's works. " I beg leave to make use of the word suggestion, be- cause I know not one more proper to express a power of the mind, which seems entirely to have escaped the notice of phi- losophers, and to which we owe many of our simple notions which are neither impressions nor ideas, as well as many origi- nal principles of belief. I shall endeavour to explain, by an example, what I understand by this word. We all know that a certain kind of sound suggests immediately to the mind a coach passing in the street ; and not only produces the imagina- tion, but the belief, that a coach is passing. Yet there is no comparing of ideas, no perception of agreements or disagree- ments to produce this belief; nor is there the least similitude between the sound we hear, and the coach we imagine and believe to be passing." So far Dr Reid's use of the word coincides exactly with that of Berkeley ; but the former will be found to annex to it a meaning more extensive than the latter, by employing it to comprehend not only those intimations which are the result of experience and habit ; but another class of intimations (quite overlooked by Berkeley), those which result from the original frame of the human mind (See REID'S Inquiry, chap. ii. sect. 7.) 3 I request the attention of my readers to this last sentence, as I have little doubt that the fact here stated gave rise to the theory which Berkeley afterwards adopted, concerning the non-existence of the material world. It is not, indeed, sur- prising that a conclusion, so very curious with respect to the objects of sight, should have been, in the first ardour of dis- covery, too hastily extended to those qualities also which are the appropriate objects of touch. 4 Alhazen, Lib. ii. N N. 10. 12. 39. See the end of Prop. 28. 168 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. reasonings of Berkeley concerning the means by which experience enables us to judge of the dis- tances of near objects. In proof of this, it is sufficient to mention the explanation he gives of the manner in which a comparison of the percep- tions of sight and of touch teaches us gradually to estimate by the eye the distances of all those objects which are within reach of our hands, or of which we are accustomed to measure the dis- tance, by walking over the intermediate ground. In rendering this justice to earlier writers, I have no wish to detract from the originality of Berkeley. With the single exception, indeed, of the passage in Malebranche which I have just referred to, and which it is more than pro- bable was unknown to Berkeley when his theory first occurred to him, 1 I have ascribed to his predecessors nothing more than what he has himself explicitly acknowledged to belong to them. All that I wished to do was, to supply some links in the historical chain, which he has omitted. The influence which this justly celebrated work has had, not only in perfecting the theory of optics, but in illustrating the astonishing ef- fects of early habit on the mental phenomena in general, will sufficiently account to my intelli- gent readers for the length to which the fore- going observations upon it have extended. Next in point of importance to Berkeley's New Theory of Vision, which I regard as by far the most solid basis of his philosophical fame, may be ranked his speculations concerning the Objects of General Terms, and his celebrated argument against the existence of the Material World. On both of these questions I have elsewhere ex- plained my own ideas so fully, that it would be quite superfluous for me to resume the consi- deration of them here.* In neither instance are his reasonings so entirely original as has been commonly supposed. In the former, they co- incide in substance, although with immense im- provements in the form, with those of the scho- lastic nominalists, as revived and modified by Hobbes and Leibnitz. In the latter instance, they amount to little more than an ingenious and elegant development of some principles of Malebranche, pushed to certain paradoxical but obvious consequences, of which Malebranche, though unwilling to avow them, appears to have been fully aware. These consequences, too, had been previously pointed out by Mr Norris, a very learned divine of the church of England, whose name has unaccountably failed in obtain- ing that distinction to which his acuteness as a logician, and his boldness as a theorist, justly entitled him ! 5 The great object of Berkeley, in maintaining his system of idealism, it may be proper to re- mark in passing, was to cut up by the roots the scheme of materialism. " Matter (he tells -us himself) being once expelled out of nature, drags with it so many sceptical and impious notions. * * * * Without it your Epicureans, Hobbists, and the like, have not even the shadow of a pretence, but become the most cheap and easy triumph in the world." Not satisfied with addressing these abstract speculations to the learned, Berkeley conceived them to be of such moment to human happiness, that he resolved to bring them, if possible, witlv- in the reach of a wider circle of readers, by throwing them into the more popular and amu- sing form of dialogues. 4 The skill with which 1 Berkeley's Theory was published when he was only twenty-five ; an age when it can scarcely be supposed that his me- taphysical reading had been very extensive. * See Philosophical,Essays. * Another very acute metaphysician of the same church (Arthur Collier, author of a Demonstration of the Non-existence and Impossibility of an External World) has met with still greater injustice. His name is not to be found in any of our Bio- graphical Dictionaries. In point of date, his publication is some years posterior to that of Norris, and therefore it does not possess the same claims to originality ; but it is far superior to it in logical closeness and precision, and is not obscured to the same degree with the mystical theology which Norris (after the example of Malebranche) connected with the scheme of Idealism. Indeed, when compared with the writings of Berkeley himself, it yields to them less in force of argument, than in composition and variety of illustration. The title of Collier's book is " Clavis Universalis, or a New Inquiry after Truth, being a Demonstration, &c. &c. By Arthur Collier, Rector of Langford Magna, near Sarum. (Lond. printed for Robert Gosling, at the Mitre and Crown, against St Dunstan's Church, Fleet Street, 1713.)" The motto prefixed by Col- lier to his work is from Malebranche, and is strongly characteristical both of the English and French Inquirer after Truth. " Vulgi assensus et approbatio circa materiam difficilem est certum argumentum falsitatis istius opinionis cui assentitur." (Maleb. De Inquir. Verit. Lib. iii. p. 194.) See Note S S. * I allude here chiefly to Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher ; for as to the dialogues between Hylas and Ph'donous, they aspire to no higher merit than that of the common dialogues between A and B ; being merely a compendious way of stat- ing and of obviating the principal objections which the author anticipated to his opinions. DISSERTATION FIRST. 169 he has executed this very difficult and unpro- mising task cannot be too much admired. The characters of his speakers are strongly marked and happily contrasted; the illustrations exhibit a singular combination of logical subtlety and of poetical invention , and the style, while it every- where abounds with the rich, yet sober colour- ings of the author's fancy, is perhaps superior, in point of purity and of grammatical correct- ness, to any English composition of an earlier date. * The impression produced in England by Berkeley's Idealism was not so great as might have been expected ; but the novelty of his pa- radoxes attracted very powerfully the attention of a set of young men who were then prose- cuting their studies at Edinburgh, and who formed themselves into a society for the express purpose of soliciting from the author an expla- nation of some parts of his theory which seemed to them obscurely or equivocally expressed. To this correspondence the amiable and excellent prelate appears to have given every encourage- ment ; and I have been told by the best autho- rity, that he was accustomed to say, that his reasonings had been nowhere better understood than by this club of young Scotsmen. 8 The in- genious Dr Wallace, author of the Discourse on the Numbers of Mankind, was one of the leading members ; and with him were associated several other individuals whose names are now well known and honourably distinguished in the learned world. Mr Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, which was published in 1739, affords sufficient evidence of the deep impression which Berkeley's writings had left upon his mind ; and to this juvenile essay of Mr Hume's may be traced the origin of the most important meta- physical works which Scotland has since pro- duced. It is not, however, my intention to prosecute farther, at present, the history of Scottish phi- losophy. The subject may be more convenient- ly, and I hope advantageously resumed, after a slight review of the speculations of some Eng- lish and French writers, who, while they pro- fessed a general acquiescence in the doctrines of Locke, have attempted to modify his funda- mental principles in a manner totally incon- sistent with the views of their master. The re- marks which I mean to offer on the modern French school will afford me, at the same time, a convenient opportunity of introducing some strictures on the metaphysical systems which have of late prevailed in other parts of the Con- tinent. SECTION V. Harileian School. THE English writers to whom I have alluded in the last paragraph, I shall distinguish by the title of Dr Hartley's School ; for although I by no means consider this person as the first author of any of the theories commonly ascribed to him (the seeds of all of them having been previously sown in the university where he was educated), it was nevertheless reserved for him to combine them together, and to exhibit them to the world in the imposing form of a system. Among the immediate predecessors of Hart- ley, Dr Law, afterwards Bishop of Carlisle, 1 Dr War ton, after bestowing high praise on the Minute Philosopher, excepts from his encomium " those passages in the fourth dialogue, where the author has introduced his fanciful and whimsical opinions about vision." (Essay on the Writings and Genius of Pope, Vol. II. p. 264.) If I were called on to point out the most ingenious and original part of the whole work, it would be the argument contained in the passages here so contemptuously alluded to by this learned and (on all questions of taste) most respectable critic. 2 The authority I here allude to is that of my old friend and preceptor, Dr John Stevenson, who was himself a member of the Rarikenian Club, and who was accustomed for many years to mention this fact in his Academical Prelections. DISS. I. PART II. Y 170 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. seems to have been chiefly instrumental in pre- paring the way for a schism among Locke's dis- ciples. The name of Law was first known to the public by an excellent translation, accom- panied by many learned, and some very judi- cious notes, of Archbishop King's work on the Origin of Evil ; a work of which the great ob- ject was to combat the Optimism of Leibnitz, and the Manicheism imputed to Bayle. . In making this work more generally known, the translator certainly rendered a most acceptable and important service to the world, and, indeed, it is upon this ground that his best claim to li- terary distinction is still founded. 1 In his own original speculations, he is weak, paradoxical, and oracular ; * affecting, on all occasions, the most profound veneration for the opinions of Locke, but much more apt to attach himself to the errors and oversights of that great man, than to enter into the general spirit of his meta- physical philosophy. To this translation, Dr Law prefixed a Dis- sertation concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue, by the Reverend Mr Gay: a per- formance of considerable ingenuity, but which would now be entitled to little notice, were it not for the influence it appears to have had in suggesting to Dr Hartley the possibility of ac- counting for all our intellectual pleasures and pains, by the single principle of the Association of Ideas. We are informed by Dr Hartley himself, that it was in consequence of hearing some account of the contents of this dissertation, he was first led to engage in those inquiries which produced his celebrated Theory of Human Nature. The other principle on which this theory pro- ceeds (that of the vibrations and vibratiuncles in the medullary substance of the brain) is also of Cambridge origin. It occurs in the form of a query in Sir Isaac Newton's Optics; and a distinct allusion to it, as a principle likely to throw new light on the 'phenomena of mind, is to be found in the concluding sentence of Smith's Harmonies. Very nearly about the time when Hartley's Theory appeared, Charles Bonnet of Geneva published some speculations of his own, pro- ceeding almost exactly on the same assumptions. Both writers speak of vibrations (ebranlemens) in the nerves ; and both of them have recourse to a subtle and elastic ether, co-operating with the nerves in carrying on the communication between soul and body. 5 This fluid Bonnet conceived to be contained in the nerves, in a manner analogous to that in which the electric fluid is contained in the solid bodies which con- duct it ; differing in this respect from the Car- tesians as well as from the ancient physiologists, who considered the nerves as hollow tubes or pipes, within which the animal spirits were in- cluded. It is to this elastic ether that Bonnet ascribes the vibrations of which he supposes the nerves to be susceptible ; for the nerves them- selves (he justly observes) have no resemblance to the stretched cords of a musical instrument. 4 1 King's argument in proof of the prevalence in this world, both of Natural and Moral Good, over the corresponding Evils, has been much and deservedly admired ; nor are Law's Notes upon this head entitled to less praise. Indeed, it is in this part of the work that both the author and his commentator appear, in my opinion, to the greatest advantage. 3 As instances of this I need only refer to the first and third of his Notes on King; the former of which relates to the word substance ; and the latter to the dispute between Clarke and Leibnitz concerning space. His reasonings on both sub- jects are obscured by an affected use of hard and unmeaning words, ill becoming so devoted an admirer of Locke. The same remark may be extended to an Inquiry into the Ideas of Space and Time, published by Dr Law in 1734. The result of Law's speculations on Space and Time is thus stated by himself: " That our ideas of them do not imply any external ideatum or objective reality ; that these ideas (as well as those of infinity and number) are universal or abstract ideas, existing under that formality no where but in the mind ; nor affording a proof of any thing, but of the power which the mind has to form them." (LAW'S Trans, of King, p. 7. 4th edit.) This language, as we shall afterwards see, approaches very nearly to that lately introduced by Kant. Dr Law's favourite author might have cautioned him against such jargon. (See Essay on the Hitman Understanding, Book II. Chap. xiii. 17, 18.) The absurd application of the scholastic word tubtfance to empty space ; an absurdity in which the powerful mind of Gravesande acquiesced many years after the publication of the Essay on Human Understanding, has probably contributed not a little to force some authors into the opposite extreme of maintaining, with Leibnitz and Dr Law, that our idea of space does not imply any external ideatum or objective reality. Graves'aiide's words are these : " Substantive sunt aut cogitantes, aut non cogitantes ; cogitantes duas novimus, Deum et Mentem nostram : praeter has et alias dari in dubium non revocamus. Duae etiam substantial, qua; non cogitant, nobis note sunt Spatium et Corpus." GRAVESANDE, Introd. ad Philosophiam, 19. Essai Analytique de FAme, Chap. v. See also the additional notes on the first chapter of the seventh part of the Con- tcmplatwn de la Nature. 1 Mais les nerfs sont mous, ils ne sont point tendus comme les cordes d'un instrument ; les objets y exciteroient-ils done DISSERTATION FIRST. 171 Hartley's Theory differs in one respect from this, as he speaks of vibrations and vibrati uncles in the medullary substance of the brain and nerves. He agrees, however, with Bonnet, in thinking, that to these vibrations in the nerves the co-operation of the ether is essentially ne- cessary ; and, therefore, at bottom the two hy- potheses may be regarded as in substance the same. As to the trifling shade of difference be- tween them, the advantage seems to me to be in favour of Bonnet. Nor was it only in their Physiological Theo- ries concerning the nature of the union between soul and body, that these two philosophers agreed. On all the great articles of metaphy- sical theology, the coincidence between their conclusions is truly astonishing. Both held the doctrine of Necessity in its fullest extent ; and both combined with it a vein of mystical devo- tion, setting at defiance the creeds of all esta- blished churches. The intentions of both are allowed, by those who best knew them, to have been eminently pure and worthy ; but it cannot be said of either, that his metaphysical writings have contributed much to the instruction or to the improvement of the public. On the con- trary, they have been instrumental in spreading a set of speculative tenets very nearly allied to that sentimental and fanatical modification of Spinozism, which, for many years past, has pre- vailed so much, and produced such mischievous effects in some parts of Germany. l But it is chiefly by his application of the asso- ciating principle to account for all the mental phenomena, that Hartley is known to the world ; and upon this I have nothing to add to what I have already stated in another work. (Phil. Essays, Essay IV.) His Theory seems to be al- ready fast passing into oblivion ; the temporary popularity which it enjoyed in this country having, in a great measure, ceased with the life of its zealous and indefatigable apostle Dr Priestley. 8 It would be unfair, however, to the translator of Archbishop King, to identify his opinions with those of Hartley and Priestley. The zeal with which he contends for man's free agency is sufficient, of itself, to draw a strong line of distinction between his Ethical System and theirs. (See his Notes on King, passim.} But I must be allowed to say of him, that the gene- ral scope of his writings tends, in common with that of the two other metaphysicians, to depre- ciate the evidences of Natural Religion, and more especially to depreciate the evidences which the light of nature affords of a life to come ; les vibrations analogues a celle d'une corde pince'e ? Ces vibrations se communiqueroient-elles a 1'instant au siege de 1'ame ? La chose paroit difficile a concjevoir. Mais si Ton admet dans les nerfs un fluide dont la subtilit^ et I'elasticite" approche de celle de la lumiere ou de 1'e'ther, on expliquera facilement par le secours de ce fluide, et la ce'le'rite' avec laquelle les impres- sions se communiquent a 1'ame, et celle avec laquelle 1'slme Execute tant d'ope"rations differentes." (Essai Anal. Chap, v.) " Au reste, les physiologistes qui avoient cru que les filets nerveux etoient solides, avoient cede' a des apparences trom- peuses. Ils vouloient d'ailleurs faire osciller les nerfs pour rendre raison des sensations, et les nerfs ne peuvent osciller. Us sont mous, et nullement e'lastiques. Un nerf coupe' ne se retire point. C'est le fluide invisible que les nerfs renfer- ment, qui est doue" de cette e'lasticite' qu'on leur attribuoit, et d'une plus grande elasticite encore." (Contemp. de la Nature, VII. Partie, Chap. i. Note at the end of the chapter.) M. Quesnai, the celebrated author of the Economical System, has expressed himself to the same purpose concerning the supposed vibrations of the nerves : " Plusieurs physiciens ont pense que le seul eTjranlement des nerfs, cause" par les objets qui touchent les organes des corps, suffit pour occasioner le mouvement et le sentiment dans les parties ou les nerfs sont ebranles. Ils se representent les nerfs comme des cordes fort tendus, qu'un le'ger contact met en vibration dans toute leur ^tendue. Des philosophes, peu instruits en anatomie, ont pu se former un telle ide'e Mais cette tension qu'on sup- pose dans les nerfs, et qui les rend si susceptibles d'e'branlement et de vibration, est si grossierement imagine'e qu'il seroit ridicule de s'occuper sejieusement a la refuter." (Econ. Animate, sect. 3. c. 13.) As this passage from Quesnai is quoted by Condillac, and sanctioned by his authority (Traite des Animaux, Chap, iii.), it would appear that the hypothesis which supposes the nerves to perform their functions by means of vibrations was going fast into discredit, both among the metaphysicians and the physiologists of France, at the very time when it was beginning to attract notice in England, in consequence of the visionary speculations of Hartley. 1 In a letter which I received from Dr Parr, he mentions a treatise of Dr Hartley's which appeared about a year before the publication of his great work ; to which it was meant by the author to serve as a precursor. Of this rare treatise I had never before heard. " You will be astonished to hear," says Dr Parr, " that in this book, instead of the doctrine of ne- cessity, Hartley openly declares for the indifference of the will, as maintained by Archbishop King." We are told by Hartley himself that his notions upon necessity grew upon him while he was writing his observations upon man ; but it is curious (as Dr Parr remarks), that in the course of a year, his opinions on so very essential a point should have under- gone a complete change. 2 Dr Priestley's opinion of the merits of Hartley's work is thus stated by himself: " Something was done in this field of knowledge by Descartes, very much by Mr Locke, but most of all by Dr" Hartley, who has thrown more useful light upon the theory of the mind, than Newton did upon the theory of the natural world." (Remarks on Reid, Seattle, and Oswald, p. 2. London, 1774.) 172 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. " a doctrine equally necessary to comfort the weakness, and to support our lofty ideas of the grandeur of human nature ;" 1 and of which it seems hard to confine exclusively the knowledge to that portion of mankind who have been fa- voured with the light of Revelation. The in- fluence of the same fundamental error, arising, too, from the same mistaken idea, of thus strengthening the cause of Christianity, may be traced in various passages of the posthumous work of the late Bishop of Llandaff. It is won- derful that the reasonings of Clarke and of But- ler did not teach these eminent men a sounder and more consistent logic; or, at least, open their eyes to the inevitable consequences of the rash concessions which they made to their ad- versaries. * Among the disciples of Law, one illustrious exception to these remarks occurs in Dr Paley, whose treatise on Natural Theology is unques- tionably the most instructive as well as inte- resting publication on that subject which has appeared in our times. As the book was in- tended for popular use, the author has wisely avoided, as much as possible, all metaphysical discussions ; but I do not know that there exists any other work where the argument from final causes is placed in so great a variety of pleasing and striking points of view. SECTION VI. Condillac, and other French Metaphysicians of a later date. WHILE Hartley and Bonnet were indulging their imagination in theorising concerning the nature of the union between soul and body, Condillac was attempting to draw the attention of his countrymen to the method of studying the phenomena of Mind recommended and ex- emplified by Locke. 3 Of the vanity of expect- ing to illustrate, by physiological conjectures, 1 SMITH'S Theory of Moral Sentiments, 6th ed. Vol. I. pp. 325, 326. Dr Law's doctrine of the sleep of the soul, to which his high station in the church could not fail to add much weight in the judgment of many, is, I believe, now universally adopted by the followers of Hartley and Priestley ; the theory of vi- brations being evidently inconsistent with the supposition of the soul's being able to exercise her powers in a separate state from the body. 2 Without entering at all into the argument with Dr Law or his followers, it is sufficient here to mention, as an histori- cal fact, their wide departure from the older lights of the English church, from Hooker downwards. " All religion," says Archbishop Tillotson, whom I select as an unexceptionable organ of their common sentiments, " is founded on right no- tions of God and his perfections, insomuch that Divine Revelation itself does suppose these for its foundations ; and can signify nothing to us unless they be first known and believed ; so that the principles of natural religion are the foundation of that which is revealed." (Sermon 41.) " There is an intrinsical good and evil in things, and the reasons and respects of moral good and evil are fixed and immutable, eternal and indispensable. Nor do they speak safely who make the Divine will the rule of moral good and evil, as if there were nothing good or evil in its own nature antecedently to the will of God ; but, that all things are therefore good and evil because God wills them to be so." (Sermon 88.) " Natural religion is obe- dience to the natural law, and the performance of such duties as natural light, without any express and supernatural reve- lation, doth dictate to men. These lie at the bottom of all religion, and are the great fundamental duties which God re- quires of all mankind. These are the surest and most sacred of all other laws ; those which God hath rivetted in our souls and written upon our hearts ; and these are what we call moral duties, and most valued by God, which are of eternal and perpetual obligation, because they do naturally oblige, without any particular and express revelation from God ; and these are the foundation of revealed and instituted religion; and all revealed religion does suppose them and build upon them." Sermons 48. 49. 3 It may appear to some unaccountable, that no notice should have been taken, in this Dissertation, of any French me- taphysician during the long interval between Malebranche and Condillac. As an apology for this apparent omission, I beg leave to quote the words of an author intimately acquainted with the history of French li terature and philosophy, and emi- nently qualified to appreciate the merits of those who have contributed to their progress. " If we except," says Mr Adam Smith, in a Memoir published in 1755, "the Meditations of Descartes, I know of nothing in the works of French writers which aspires at originality in morals or metaphysics ; for the philosophy of Regius and that of Malebranche are nothing more than the meditations of Descartes unfolded with more art and refinement. But Hobbes, Locke, Dr Mandeville, Lord Shaftesbury, Dr Butler, Dr Clarke, and Mr Hutcheson, each in his own system, all different and all incompatible, have tried to be original, at least in some points. They have attempted to add something to the fund of observations col- DISSERTATION FIRST. 173 the manner in which the intercourse between the thinking principle and the external world is carried on, no philosopher seems ever to have been more completely aware ; and, accordingly, he confines himself strictly, in all his researches concerning this intercourse, to an examination of the general laws by which it is regulated. There is, at the same time, a remarkable coin- cidence between some of his views and those of the other two writers. All of the three, while they profess the highest veneration for Locke, have abandoned his account of the origin of our ideas for that of Gassendi ; and, by doing so, have, with the best intentions, furnished arms against those principles which it was their com- mon aim to establish in the world. z It is much to be regretted, that by far the greater part of those French writers who have since speculated about the human mind, have acquired the whole of their knowledge of Locke's philosophy through this mistaken comment upon its fundamental principle. On this subject I have already ex- hausted all that I have to offer on the effect of Condillac's writings; and I flatter myself have sufficiently shown how widely his commentary differs from the text of his author. It is this commentary, however, which is now almost universally received on the Continent as the doctrine of Locke, and which may justly be re- garded as the sheet-anchor of those systems which are commonly stigmatised in England with the appellation of French philosophy. Had Condillac been sufficiently aware of the conse- quences which have been deduced (and I must add logically deduced) from his account of the origin of our knowledge, I am persuaded, from his known candour and love of truth, that he would have been eager to acknowledge and to retract his error. In this apparent simplification and generali- sation of Locke's doctrine, there is, it must be acknowledged, something, at first sight, ex- tremely seducing. It relieves the mind from the painful exercise of abstracted reflection, and amuses it with analogy and metaphor when it looked only for the severity of logical discus- sion. The clearness and simplicity of Condil- lac's style add to the force of this illusion, and flatter the reader with an agreeable idea of the powers of his own understanding, when he finds himself so easily conducted through the darkest labyrinths of metaphysical science. It is to this cause I would chiefly ascribe the great popula- rity of his works. They may be read with as little exertion of thought as a history or a novel ; and it is only when we shut the book, and at- tempt to express in our own words the sub- stance of what we have gained, that we have the mortification to see our supposed acquisitions vanish into air. The philosophy of Condillac was, in a more peculiar manner, suited to the taste of his own country, where (according to Mad. de Stael) " few read a book but with a view to talk of it." 8 Among such a people, speculations which are addressed to the power of reflection can never expect to acquire the same popularity with theories expressed in a metaphorical lan- lected by their predecessors, and already the common property of mankind. This branch of science, which the English themselves neglect at present, appears to have been recently transported into France. I discover some traces of it not only in the Encyclopedic, but in the Theory of Agreeable Sensations, by M. de Pouilly; and much more in the late discourse of M. Rousseau, On the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality of Ranks among Men-" Although I perfectly agree with Mr Smith in his general remark on the sterility of invention among the French meta- physicians posterior to Descartes, when compared to those of England, I cannot pass over the foregoing quotation with- out expressing my surprise, 1st, To find the name of Malebranche (one of the highest in modern philosophy) degraded to a level with that of Regius ; and, Idly, To observe Mr Smith's silence with respect to Buffier and Condillac, while he men- tions the author of the Theory of Agreeable Sensations as a metaphysician of original genius. Of the merits of Condillac, whose most important works were published several years before this paper of Mr Smith's, I am about to speak in the text ; and those of Buffier I shall have occasion to mention in a subsequent part of this discourse. In the mean time, I shall only say of him, that I regard him as one of the most original as well as sound philosophers of whom the eighteenth century has to boast. 1 Condillac's earliest work appeared three years before the publication of Hartley's Theory. It is entitled, " Essai tur rOrigine des Connoistances Humaiiies. Ouvrage ow Von rtduit a tin seul principe tout cequi concerne Fentendement hnmain.'" This seul principe is the association of ideas. The account which both authors give of the transformation of sensations into ideas is substantially the same. * " En France, on ne lit guere un ouvrage que pour en parler." (Allemagne, Tom. I. p. 292.) The same remark, I am much afraid, is becoming daily more and more applicable to our own island. 174 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. guage, and constantly recalling to the fancy the impressions of the external senses. The state of society in France, accordingly, is singularly unfavourable to the inductive philosophy of the human mind ; and of this truth no proof more decisive can he produced, than the admiration with which the metaphysical writings of Con- dillac have been so long regarded. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that Condillac has, in many instances, been eminent- ly successful, both in observing and describing the mental phenomena ; but, in such cases, he commonly follows Locke as his guide ; and, wherever he trusts to his own judgment, he seldom fails to wander from his way. The best part of his works relates to the action and re- action of thought and language on each other, a subject which had been previously very pro- foundly treated by Locke, but which Condillac has had the merit of placing in many new and happy points of view. In various cases, his conclusions are pushed too far, and in others are expressed without due precision; but, on the whole, they form a most valuable accession to this important branch of logic; and (what not a little enhances their value) they have been instrumental in recommending the subject to the attention of other inquirers, still better qua- lified than their author to do it justice. In the speculation, too, concerning the origin and the theoretical history of language, Condil- lac was one of the first who made any consider- able advances ; nor does it reflect any discredit on his ingenuity, that he has left some of the principal difficulties connected with the inquiry very imperfectly explained. The same subject was soon after taken up by Mi* Smith, who, I think, it must be owned, has rather slurred over these difficulties, than attempted to remove them ; an omission on his part the more re- markable, as a very specious and puzzling ob- jection had been recently stated by Rousseau, not only to the theory of Condillac, but to all speculations which have for their object the so- lution of the same problem. " If language" (says Rousseau) " be the result of human con- vention, and if words be essential to the exer- cise of thought, language would appear to be necessary for the invention of language." 1 " But" (continues the same author) " when, by means which I cannot conceive, our new gram- marians began to extend their ideas, and to generalise their words, their ignorance must have confined them within very narrow bounds. How, for example, could they ima- gine or comprehend such words as matter, mind, substance, mode, figure, motion, since our phi- losophers, who have so long made use of them, scarcely understand them, and since the ideas attached to them, being purely metaphysical, can have no model in nature ?" " I stop at these first steps" (continues Rous- seau), " and intreat my judges to pause, and consider the distance between the easiest part of language, the invention of physical substantives, and the power of expressing all the thoughts of man, so as to speak in public, and influence so- ciety. I entreat them to reflect upon the time and knowledge it must have required to dis- cover numbers, abstract words, aorists, and all the tenses of verbs, particles, syntax, the art of connecting propositions and arguments, and how to form the whole logic of discourse. As for myself, alarmed at these multiplying diffi- culties, and convinced of the almost demon- strable impossibility of language having been formed and established by means merely human, I leave to others the discussion of the problem, * Whether a society already formed was more necessary for the institution of language, or a language already invented for the establishment of society?'" 2 Of the various difficulties here enumerated, that mentioned by Rousseau, in the last sentence, was plainly considered by him as the greatest of all ; or rather as comprehending under it all 1 That men never could have invented an artificial language, if they had not possessed a natural language, is an observa- tjon of Dr Reid's; and it is this indisputable and self-evident truth which gives to Rousseau's remark that imposing plau- sibility, which, at first sight, dazzles and perplexes the judgment. I by no means say, that the former proposition affords a key to all the difficulties suggested by the latter ; but it advances us at least one important step towards their solution. 8 Discours sitr V Origins et les Fondcmens de rinegalite parmi les Hommes. DISSERTATION FIRST. 175 the rest. But this difficulty arises merely from his own peculiar and paradoxical theory ahout the artificial origin of society ; a theory which needs no refutation, hut the short and luminous aphorism of Montesquieu, that " man is horn in society, and there he remains." The other dif- ficulties touched upon hy Rousseau, in the for- mer part of this quotation, are much more se- rious, and have never yet heen removed in a manner completely satisfactory : And hence some very ingenious writers have been led to conclude, that language could not possibly have been the work of human invention. This ar- gument has been lately urged with much acute- ness and plausibility by Dr Magee of Dublin, and by M. de Bonald of Paris. * It may, how- ever, be reasonably questioned, if these philoso- phers would not have reasoned more logically, had they contented themselves with merely af- firming, that the problem has not yet been solv- ed, without going so far as to pronounce it to be absolutely insolvable. For my own part, when I consider its extreme difficulty, and the short space of time during which it has engaged the attention of the learned, I am more dispos- ed to wonder at the steps which have been al- ready gained in the research, than at the num- ber of desiderata which remain to employ the ingenuity of our successors. It is justly re- marked by Dr Ferguson, that, " when language has attained to that perfection to which it ar- rives in the progress of society, the speculative mind, in comparing the first and the last stages of the progress, feels the same sort of amaze- ment with a traveller, who, after rising insen- sibly on the slope of a hill, comes to look down from a precipice, to the summit of which he scarcely believes he could have ascended with- out supernatural aid."* With respect to some of the difficulties point- ed out by Rousseau and his commentators, it may be here remarked in passing (and the ob- servation is equally applicable to various pas- sages in Mr Smith's dissertation on the same subject), that the difficulty of explaining the theory of any of our intellectual operations af- fords no proof of any difficulty in applying that operation to its proper practical purpose ; nor is the difficulty of explaining the metaphysical nature of any part of speech a proof, that, in its first origin, it implied any extraordinary effort of intellectual capacity. How many metaphy- sical difficulties might be raised about the ma- thematical notion of a line ? And yet this notion is perfectly comprehended by every peasant, when he speaks of the distance between two places ; or of the length, breadth, or height of his cottage. In like manner, although it may be difficult to give a satisfactory account of the origin and import of such words as of or by, we ought not to conclude, that the invention of them implied any metaphysical knowledge in 1 The same theory has been extended to the art of writing ; but if this art was first taught to man by an express reve- lation from Heaven, what account can be given of its present state in the great empire of China? Is the mode of writing practised there of divine or of human origin ? 3 Principles of Moral and Political Science, Vol. I. p. 43. Edin. 1792. To this observation may be added, by way of com- ment, the following reflections of one of the most learned prelates of the English church : " Man, we are told, had a lan- guage from the beginning ; for he conversed with God, and gave to every animal its particular name. But how came man by language ? He must either have had it from inspiration, ready formed from his Creator, or have derived it by the exer- tion of those faculties of the mind, which were implanted in him as a rational creature, from natural and external objects with which he was surrounded. Scripture is silent on the means by which it was acquired. We are not, therefore, war- ranted to affirm, that it was received by inspiration, and there is no internal evidence in language to lead us to such a sup- position. On this side, then, of the question, we have nothing but uncertainty ; but on a subject, the causes of which are so remote, nothing is more convenient than to refer them to inspiration, and to recur to that easy and comprehensive argu- ment, A/of 3* \n\iitra /SowXt)' that is, man enjoyed the great privilege of speech, which distinguished him at first, and still continues to distinguish him as a rational creature, so eminently from the brute creation, without exerting those reasoning faculties, by which he was in other respects enabled to raise himself so much above their level. Inspiration, then, seems to have been an argument adopted and made necessary by the difficulty of accounting for it otherwise ; and the name of inspiration carries with it an awfulness, which forbids the unhallowed approach of inquisitive discussion." (Essay on the Study of Antiquities, by Dr BUR- GESS, 2d edit. Oxford, 1782. Pp. 85, 86.) It is farther remarked very sagaciously, and I think very decisively, by the same author, that " the supposition of man having received a language ready formed from his Creator, is actually inconsistent with the evidence of the origin of our ideas, which exists in language. For, as the origin of our ideas is to be traced in the words through which the ideas are conveyed, so the origin of language is referable to the source from whence our (first) ideas are derived, namely, natural and external objects." (Ibid. pp. 83, 84.) 176 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. the individual who first employed them. * Their simultaneous effort of the most sublime and import, we see, is fully understood by children comprehensive abilities." * of three or four years of age. It is, however, less in tracing the first rudi- In this view of the History of Language I ments of speech, than in some collateral inqui- have been anticipated by Dr Ferguson. " Parts ries concerning the genius of different languages, of speech" (says this profound and original that Condillac's ingenuity appears to advantage, writer), which, in speculation, cost the gram- Some of his observations, in particular, on the marian so much study, are, in practice, familiar connection of natural signs with the growth of to the vulgar. The rudest tribes, even the idiot a systematical prosody, and on the imitative arts and the insane, are possessed of them. They of the Greeks and Romans, as distinguished are soonest learned in childhood, insomuch that from those of the moderns, are new and cu- we must suppose human nature, in its lowest rious ; and are enlivened with a mixture of his- state, competent to the use of them ; and, with- torical illustration, and of critical discussion, out the intervention of uncommon genius, man- seldom to be met with among metaphysical kind, in a succession of ages, qualified to ac- writers. complish in detail this amazing fabric of Ian- But through all his researches, the radical guage, which, when raised to its height, appears error may, more or less, be traced, which lies so much above what could be ascribed to any at the bottom of his system; 3 and hence it is, 1 In this remark I had an eye to the following passage in Mr Smith's dissertation : " It is worth while to observe, that those prepositions, which, in modern languages, hold the place of the ancient cases, are, of all others, the most general, and abstract, and metaphysical; and, of consequence, would probably be the last invented. Ask any man of common acuteness, what relation is expressed by the preposition above ? He will readily answer, that of superiority. By the preposition below 2 He will as quickly reply, that of inferiority. But ask him what relation is expressed by the preposition o/2 and, if he has not beforehand employed his thoughts a good deal upon these subjects, you may safely allow him a week to consider of his answer." 1 The following judicious reflections, with which M Raynouard concludes the introduction to his Elimens de la Langue Romane, may serve to illustrate some of the above observations. The modification of an existing language is, I acknow"! ledge, a thing much less wonderful than the formation of a language entirely new ; but the processes of thought, it is rea- sonable to think, are, in both cases, of the same kind ; and the consideration of the one is at least a step gained towards the elucidation of the other. " La langue Romane est peut-etre la seule a la formation de laquelle il soit permis de remonter ainsi, pour decouvrir et expliquer le secret de son industrieux mecanisme. . . . J'ose dire que 1'esprit philosophique, consulte sur le choix des moyens qui devraient epargner a 1'ignorance beaucoup deludes penibles et fastidieux, n'eut pas Ae* aussi heureux que 1'ig- norance elle-meme ; il est vrai qu'elle avoit deux grands maitres ; la NE'CESSITE' et le TEMS. _" En considerant a quelle epoque d'ignorance et de barbarie s'est forme' et perfectionne' ce nouvel idiome, d'apres des principes indique's seulement par Panalogie et 1'euphonie, on se dira peut-etre comme je me le suis dit ; 1'homme porte en soi-meme les principes d'une logique naturelle, d'un instinct regulateur, que nous admirons quelquefois dans les enfans. Oui, la Providence nous a dQtd de la facultd indestructible et des moyens ingenieux d'exprimer, de communiquer, d'e'terni- ser par la parole, et par les signes permanens ou elle se reproduit, cette pensde qui est 1'un de nos plus beaux attributs, et qui nous distingue si dminemment et si avantageusement dans 1'ordre de la creation." (Elimens de la Grammaire de la Langue Romane avant TAn. 1000. Pp. 104, 105. A Paris, 1816.) In the theoretical history of language, it is more than probable, that some steps will remain to exercise the ingenuity of our latest posterity. Nor will this appear surprising, when we consider how impossible it is for us to judge, from our own experience, of the intellectual processes which pass in the minds of savages. Some instincts, we know, possessed both by them and by infants (that of imitation, for example, and the use of natural signs), disappear in by far the greater number of in- dividuals, almost entirely in the maturity of their reason. It does not seem at all improbable, that other instincts connect- ed with the invention of speech, may be confined to that state of the intellectual powers which requires their guidance : nor is it quite impossible, that some latent capacities of the understanding may be evolved by the pressure of necessity. The facility with which infants surmount so many grammatical and metaphysical difficulties, seems to me to add much weight to these conjectures. In tracing the first steps of the invention of language, it ought never to be forgotten, that we undertake a task more si- milar than might at first be supposed, to that of tracing the first operations of the infant mind. In both cases, we are apt to attempt an explanation from reason alone, of what requires the co-operation of very different principles. To trace the theoretical history of geometry, in which we know for certain, that all the transitions have depended on reasoning alone, is a problem which has not yet been completely solved. Nor has even any satisfactory account been hitherto given of the experimental steps by which men were gradually led to the use of iron. And yet how simple are these problems, when compared with that relating to the origin and progress of language I 3 A remarkable instance of this occurs in that part of Condillac's Cours ffEtude, where he treats of the art of writing : " Vous savez, Monseigneur, comment les memes noms ont e'te' transposes des objets qui tombent sous les sens a ceux qui les echappent. Vous avez remarque', qu'il y en a qui sont encore en usage dans 1'un et 1'autre acceptation, et qu'il y en a qui sont devenus les noms propres des choses, dont ils avoient d'abord ete les signes figures. " Les premiers, tel que le mouvement de 1'ame, son penchant, sa rijlexion, donnent un corps a des choses qui n'en ont pas. Los seconds, tels que la pensee, la volonte, le desir, ne peignent plus rien, et laissent aux idees abstraites cette spiritualite qui les derobe aux sens. Mais si le langage doit etre 1'image de nos pense'es, on a perdu beaucoup, lorsqu' oubliant la pre- DISSERTATION FIRST. 177 that, with all his skill as a writer, he never ele- vates the imagination, or touches the heart. That he wrote with the best intentions, we have satisfactory evidence ; and yet hardly a philo- sopher can he named, whose theories have had more influence in misleading the opinions of his contemporaries. 1 In France, he very early attained to a rank and authority not inferior to those which have been so long and so deserved- ly assigned to Locke in England ; and even in this country, his works have been more gene- rally read and admired, than those of any fo- reign metaphysician of an equally recent date. The very general sketches to which I am here obliged to confine myself, do not allow me to take notice of various contributions to metaphy- sical science, which are to be collected from writers professedly intent upon other subjects. I must not, however, pass over in silence the name of Buffon, who, in the midst of those magnificent views of external nature, which the peculiar character of his eloquence fitted him so admirably to delineate, has frequently indulged himself in ingenious discussions con- cerning the faculties both of men and of brutes. His subject, indeed, led his attention chiefly to man, considered as an animal ; but the pecu- liarities which the human race exhibit in their physical condition, and the manifest reference which these bear to their superior rank in the creation, unavoidably engaged him in specula- tions of a higher aim, and of a deeper interest. In prosecuting these, he has been accused (and perhaps with some justice) of ascribing too much to the effects of bodily organisation on the intellectual powers ; but he leads his reader in so pleasing a manner from matter to mind, that I have no doubt he has attracted the curio- sity of many to metaphysical inquiries, who would never otherwise have thought of them. In his theories concerning the nature of the brutes, he has been commonly considered as leaning to the opinion of Descartes ; but I can- not help thinking, without any good reason. Some of his ideas on the complicated operations of insects appear to me just and satisfactory ; and while they account for the phenomena, without ascribing to the animal any deep or comprehensive knowledge, are far from de- grading him to an insentient and unconscious machine. In his account of the process by which the use of our external senses (particularly that of sight) is acquired, Buffon has in general follow- rniere signification des mots, on a e'fface' jusqu'au traits qu'ils donnoient aux id^es. Toutes les langues sont en cela plus ou moins de'fectueuses, toutes aussi ont des tableaux plus ou moins conserve's." (Cours cTEtude, Tome II. p. 212. a Parme, 1775.) Condillac enlarges on this point at considerable length ; endeavouring to show, that whenever we lose sight of the ana- logical origin of a figurative word, we become insensible to one of the chief beauties of language. " In the word examen, for example, a Frenchman perceives only the proper name of one of our mental operations. A Roman attached to it the same idea, and received over and above the image of weighing and balancing. The case is the same with the words ame and anima ; pensee and cogitatio. In this view of the subject, Condillac plainly proceeded on his favourite principle, that all our notions of our mental ope* rations are compounded of sensible images. Whereas the fact is, that the only just notions we can form of the powers of the mind are obtained by abstracting from the qualities and laws of the material world. In proportion, therefore, as the analogical origin of a figurative word disappears, it becomes a fitter instrument of metaphysical thought and reasoning (See Philosophical Essays, Part I. Essay V. Chap, iii.) 1 A late writer (M. de Bonald), whose philosophical opinions, in general, agree nearly with those of La Harpe, has, how- ever, appreciated very differently, and, in my judgment, much more sagaciously, the merits of Condillac : " Condillac a eu sur 1'esprit philosophique du dernier siecle, 1'influence que Voltaire a prise sur 1'esprit religieux, et J. J. Rousseau sur les opinions politiques. Condillac a mis de la seche'resse et de la minutie dans les esprits ; Voltaire du penchant a la raillerie et a la frivolite ; Rousseau les a rendus chagrins et mecontens Condillac a encore plus faussd 1'esprit de la nation, parce que sa doctrine e'toit enseignee dans les premieres etudes a des jeunes gens qui n'avoient encore lu ni Rous- seau ni Voltaire, et que la maniere de raisonner et la direction philosophique de 1'esprit s'e'tdndent a tout." ( Recherches Phil Tome I. pp. 187, 188.) The following criticism on the supposed perspicuity of Condillac's style is so just and philosophical, that I cannot refrain from giving it a place here : Condillac est, ou paroit etre, clair et me'thodique ; mais il faut prendre garde que la clarte' des pensees, comme la transparence des objets physiques, peut tenir d'un deTaut de profondeur, et que la me'thode dans les e'crits, qui suppose la patience de 1'esprit, n'en prouve pas toujours la justesse; et moins encore la fe'condite'. II y a aussi une clarte' de style en quelque sorte toute materielle, qui n'est pas incompatible avec I'obscuritd dans les idees. Rien de plus facile a entendre que les mots de sensations transformies dont Condillac s'est servi, parce que ces mots ne parlent qu'a 1'imagination, qui se figure a volonte' des transformations et des changemens. Mais cette transformation, applique'e aux operations de 1'esprit, n'est qu'un mot vide de sens ; et Condiilac lui-meme auroit e'td bien embarrasse d'en donner une explication satisfaisante. Ce philosophe me paroit plus heureux dans ses apper^us que dans ses demonstrations : La route de la ve'rite' semble quelquefois s'ouvrir devant lui, mais retenu par la circonspection naturelle a un esprit sans chaleur, et intimide' par la faiblesse de son propre systeme, il n'ose s'y engager." (Ibid. Tome I. pp. 33. 34.) DISS. I. PART. II. Z 178 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. ed the principles of Berkeley; and, notwith- standing some important mistakes which have escaped him in his applications of these prin- ciples, I do not know that there is anywhere to be found so pleasing or so popular an exposition of the theory of vision. Nothing certainly was ever more finely imagined, than the recital which he puts into the mouth of our first pa- rent, of the gradual steps by which he learned the use of his perceptive organs ; and although there are various parts of it which will not bear the test of a rigorous examination, it is impos- sible to read it without sharing in that admira- tion, with which we are told the author himself always regarded this favourite effusion of his eloquence. Nor are these the only instances in which Buffon has discovered the powers of a metaphy- sician. His thoughts on probabilities (a sub- ject widely removed from his favourite studies) afford a proof how strongly some metaphysical questions had laid hold of his curiosity, and what new lights he was qualified to throw on them, if he had allowed them to occupy more of his attention. 1 In his observations, too, on the peculiar nature of mathematical evidence, he has struck into a train of the soundest think- ing, in which he has been very generally fol- lowed by our later logicians.* Some particular expressions in the passage I refer to are excep- tionable; but his remarks on what he calls Verites de Definition are just and important; nor do I remember any modern writer, of an earlier date, who has touched on the same argu- ment. Plato, indeed, and after him Proclus, had called the definitions of geometry Hypothe- ses ; an expression which may be considered as involving the doctrine which Buffon and his successors have more fully unfolded. What the opinions of Buffon were on those essential questions, which were then in dispute among the French philosophers, his writings do not furnish the means of judging with certainty. In his theory of Organic Molecules, and of In- ternal Moulds, he has been accused of entertain- ing views not very different from those of the ancient atomists ; nor would it perhaps be easy to repel the charge, if we were not able to op- pose to this wild and unintelligible hypothesis the noble and elevating strain, which in general so peculiarly characterises his descriptions of nature. The eloquence of some of the finest passages in his works has manifestly been in- spired by the same sentiment which dictated to one of his favourite authors the following just and pathetic reflection : " Le spectacle de la nature, si vivant, si anime pour ceux qui recon- noissent un Dieu, est mort aux yeux de 1'athee, et dans cette grande harmonic des etres ou tout parle de Dieu d'une voix si douce, il n'aper^oit qu'un silence eternel." 5 I have already mentioned the strong bias to- wards materialism which the authors of the En- cyclopedic derived from Condillac's comments upon Locke. These comments they seem to have received entirely upon credit, without ever being at pains to compare them with the origi- nal. Had D'Alembert exercised freely his own judgment, no person was more likely to have perceived their complete futility; and, in fact, he has thrown out various observations which strike at their very root. Notwithstanding, however, these occasional glimpses of light, he invariably reverts to the same error, and has once and again repeated it in terms as strong as Condillac or Gassendi. The author who pushed this account of the origin of our knowledge to the most extraordi- nary and offensive consequences, was Helvetius. His book, De PEsprit> is said to have been com- 1 See his Essai Prince, the author seems to have been more un- der the influence of spleen, of ill-humour, and of blasted hopes, than of any deliberate or sys- tematical purpose, either favourable or adverse to human happiness. The prevailing sentiment in his mind probably was, Si populus vult decipi, decipiatur. e According to this view of the subject, Ma- chiavel's Prince, instead of being considered as a new system of political morality, invented by himself, ought to be regarded merely as a di- gest of the maxims of state policy then univer- sally acted upon in the Italian courts. If I be not mistaken, it was in this light that the book was regarded by Lord Bacon, whose opinion concerning it being, in one instance, somewhat ambiguously expressed, has been supposed by several writers of note (particularly Bayle and Mr Roscoe) to have coincided with that quoted above from Albericus Gentilis. To me it ap>- pears, that the very turn of the sentence ap- pealed to on this occasion is rather disrespectful - than otherwise to Machiavel's character. " Est itaque quod gratias agamus Machiavellio et hu- jusmodi scriptoribus, qui aperte et indissimulanter proferunt, quid homines facere soleant, non quid" debeant." (De Aug. Scient. Lib. vii. cap. ii.) The best comment, however, on these words, is to be found in another passage of Bacon, where he has expressed his opinion of Machiavel's mo- ral demerits in terms as strong and unequivocal as language can furnish. " Quod enim ad ma- las artes attinet ; si quis Machiavellio se dederit in disciplinam ; qui prsecipit," &c. &e. &c. See the rest of the paragraph (De Aug. Scient. Lib. viii. cap. ii.) See also a passage in Book vii. chap. viii. beginning thus : " An non et hoc ve- rum est, juvenes naulto minus Pohticce quam Ethicce auditores idoneos esse, antequam reli- gione et doctrina de moribus et oineiis plane im- buantur ; ne forte judicio depravati et corrupti, in earn opinionem veniant, non esse rerum dif- 1 See in particular ROUSSEAU Du Control Social, Liv. iii. c. vi. s Many traces of this misanthropic disposition occur in the historical and even in the dramatic works of Machiavel. It is very justly observed by M. de Sismondi, that " the pleasantry of his comedies is almost always mingled with gall. His laughter at the human race is but the laughter of contempt." DISSERTATION FIRST. 235 ferentias morales veras et solidas, sed omnia ex utilitate. - Sic enim Machiavellio dicere placet, Quod si contigisset Ccssarem bello superatum fuisse, Catilina ipso fuisset odiosior," &c. &c. After these explicit and repeated declarations of his sentiments on this point, it is hard that Bacon should have heen numbered among the apolo- gists of Machiavel, by such high authorities as Bayle, and the excellent biographer of Lorenzo de Medicis. It has been objected to me, that in the fore- going observations on the design of the Prince, I have taken no notice of the author's vindication of himself and his writings, in his letter to ZENOBIUS BUONDELMONTIUS, annexed to the old English translation of Machiavel, printed at London in 1675 and 1680. In the preface to this translation, we are told, that the letter in question " had never before been published in any language, but lurked for above eighty years in the private cabinets of his own kindred, or the descendants of his admirers in Florence, till, in the Pontificate of Urban VIII., it was procured by the Jesuits and other busy bodies, and brought to Rome with an intention to divert that wise Pope from his design of making one of Nicholas Machiavel's name and family cardinal, as (not- withstanding all their opposition) he did, not long after. When it was gotten into that city, it wanted not those who had the judgment and curiosity to copy it, and so at length came to en- joy that privilege which all rare pieces (even the sharpest libels and pasquins) challenge at that court, which is to be sold to strangers, one of which, being a gentleman of this country, brought it over with him at his return from thence in 1645, and having translated it into English, did communicate it to divers of his friends ; and by means of some of them, it hath been my good fortune to be capable of making thee a present of it ; and let it serve as an apology for our author and his writings, if thou thinkest he need any." As the translation of Machiavel, from which Notes this advertisement is copied, is still in the hands iu us *" at i 0n g of many readers in this country, it may not be ( ^-^~w_/ improper to mention here, that the letter in question is altogether of English fabrication ; and (as far as I can learn) is quite unknown on the Continent. It is reprinted at the end of the second volume of Farneworth's Translation of Machiavel's works, 1762, with the following statement prefixed to it. 1 " The following letter having been printed in all the editions of the old translation, it is here given to the reader, though it certainly was not written by Machiavel. It bears date in 1537, and his death is placed by all the best historians in 1530. There are, besides, in it many internal marks, which to the j udicious will clearly prove it to be the work of some other writer, vainly endeavouring at the style and manner of our excellent author. The letter is indeed a spirited and judicious defence of Machiavel and his writings ; but it is written in a style too inflated, and is utterly void of that elegance and precision which so much distinguish the works of the Florentine secretary." To the author of this last translation we are farther indebted for a very curious letter of Dr Warburton's, which renders it probable that the forgery was contrived and carried into execution by the Marquis of Wharton. I shall transcribe the letter in Warburton's words. " There is at the end of the English transla- tion of Machiavel's works, printed in folio, 1680, a translation of a pretended letter of Machiavel to Zenobius Buondelmontius, in vindication of himself and his writings. I believe it has been generally understood to be a feigned thing, and has by some been given to Nevil, he who wrote, if I do not mistake, the Plato Redivivus. But many years ago, a number of the famous Marquis of Wharton's papers (the father of the Duke) were put into my hands. Amongst these was the press copy (as appeared by the printer's marks, where any page of the printed letter began and ended) of this remarkable letter in the Marquis's hand-writing, as I took it to be, compared with 1 In a book published 1816, this letter is referred to without any expression of doubt as to its authenticity. MILLER'S Lecturet on the Philosophy of Modern History, Dublin, 1816, p. 17- See 236 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes and other papers of his. The person who intrusted Illustrations. me with tnese P a P ers ' and wno J understood had given them to me, called them back out of my hands. This anecdote I communicated to the late Speaker ; and, at his desire, wrote down the substance of what I have told you, in his book of the above edition. W. GLOUCESTER." 1 From a memoir read before the French Insti- tute in July 1814, by M. Daunou, 2 it appears that some new light has been lately thrown on the writings and life of Machiavel by the dis- covery of some of his unpublished papers. The following particulars cannot fail to be gratifying to many of my readers. " M. Ginguene continue son Histoire de la Lit- terature Italienne, et vient de communiquer a la classe 1'un des articles qui vont composer le septieme tome de cette histoire. C'est un tableau de la vie et des ecrits de Nicolas Machiavel. La vie de cet ecrivain celebre est le veritable com- mentaire de ses livres; et jusqu'ici ce commen- taire etoit reste fort incomplet. Par exemple, on se bornait a dire, que la republique de Florence, dontil etoit le secretaire, 1'avoit charge de di verses missions politiques a la cour de France, a la cour de Rome, aupres du Due de Valentinois, aupres de 1'Empereur, au camp de Pise, &c. &c. M. Ginguene le suit annee par annee dans toutes ses legations, il en fait connoitre 1'objet etles principales circonstances. Cette vie devient ainsi une partie essentielle de 1'histoire de Florence, et tient meme a celle des puissances qui etoient alors en relation avec cette republique. On lit peu dans la collection des CEuvres de Machiavel, ses correspondances politiques, quineanmoins offrent tous ces details et jettent un grand jour sur son caractere et sur ses intentions. Malheu- reusement, ce jour lui est peu favorable, et ne nous eclaire que trop sur le veritable sens dans lequel doit etre pris son Traite du Prince si diversement juge. L'une des pieces les plus curieuses et les plus decisives est une lettre qu'il ecrivit de la campagne ou il s'etoit retire' apres la rentree des Medicis a Florence H niustrati venoit d'etre destitue de ses emplois ; implique ^"v~* dans une conspiration contre ces princes, il avoit etc incarcere, mis a la torture, et juge innocent, soit qu'il le fut en effet, soit que les tourmens n'eussent pu lui arracher 1'aveu de sa faute. II trace dans ce lettre le tableau de ses occupations et de ses projets, des travaux et des distractions qui remplissent ses journees. Pour sortir d'une position voisine de la misere, il sent la necessite de rentrer en grace avec les Medicis, et n'en trouve pas de meilleur moyen que de dedier le Traite du Prince qu'il vient d'achever a Julien le Jeune, frere du Leon X., et a qui ce Pape avoit confie le gouvernement de Flo- rence. Machiavel croit que son Traite ne peut manquer d'etre agreable et utile a un prince, et surtout a un nouveau prince. Quelque terns apres, il fit en effet homage de ce livre, non a Julien, mais a Laurent II. Cette lettre, qui n'est connue en Italie, que depuis peu d'annees, etoit encore ignoree en France. M. Ginguene 1'a traduite : il pense qu'elle ne laisse aucune incertitude sur le but et les intentions de 1'au- teur du Traite du Prince." Some farther de- tails on this subject are to be found in a subse- quent memoir by the same author, read before the French Institute in July 1815. Soon after reading the above passage in M. Daunou's Report, I received nearly the same in- formation from the north of Italy. It cannot be so well expressed as in the words of the writer : " Pray tell Mr Stewart that there is a veiy remarkable letter of Machiavel' s lately publish- ed, written to a private friend at the very time he was engaged in the composition of the Prince, and not only fixing the date of that work, but explaining in a manner disgraceful to the author, the use he made of it, in putting it into the hands of the Medicis family. The letter is besides full of character, and describes, 1 In a letter from Warburton to the Reverend Mr Birch, there is the following passage : " I told you, I think, I had several of old Lord Wharton's papers. Amongst the rest, is a manuscript in his own handwriting, a pretended translation of a manuscript apologetical epistle of Machiavel's, to his friend Zenobio. It is a wonderful fine thing. There are the printer's marks on the manuscript, which makes me think it is printed. There is a postscript of Lord Wharton's to it, by which it appears this pretended translation was designed to prefix to an English edition of his works. As I know nothing of the English edition of Machiavel, I wish you would make this out, and let me know." (Illustrations of the Literary History of the 18th century, intended as a sequel to the Literary Anecdotes by JOHN NICHOLS. Vol. II. p. 88.) 8 Rapport sur les Travaux de la Classe cTHistoire, &c. 1 Juillet, 1814. DISSERTATION FIRST. 237 fotes and in a very lively manner, the life he was leading when driven away from Florence. This parti- v~>^ cular letter may be read at the end of the last volume of Pignotti's Storia della Toscana; a book published here, but which was in all the London shops before I came away. It is to be found also with several others, which are entertaining and curious, in a new collection published at Florence in 1814, of Machiavel's public dispatches and familiar letters. By the way, I must likewise tell Mi- Stewart that my late reading has suggested a slight criticism upon one expression of his with regard to Ma- chiavel's Prince, where he calls it one of the " latest of his publications." The fact is, that the three great works were none of them pub- lished in his lifetime, nor for four years after his death. They appear to have been all writ- ten at the same period of his life, during the eight or ten years of leisure that were forced upon him ; and I believe it may be made out from the works themselves, that the Prince was composed and finished first of the three, then the Discourses, and last of all the History. This and the first having been written for the Medicis family, the MSS. were in their hands, and they published them ; the Discourses were printed by the care of some of his personal friends. If Mr Stewart wishes to have the proof of all this in detail, I can draw it out without any trouble." The foregoing passage will be read by many with no common interest, when it is known that it formed part of a letter from the late Francis Horner, written a very few weeks be- fore his death. Independently of the satisfac- tion I feel in preserving a memorial of his kind attention to his friends, at a period when he was himself an object of such anxious solicitude to his country, I was eager to record the opi- nion of so perfect and accomplished a judge on a question which, for more than two centuries, has divided the learned world; and which, his profound admiration of Machiavel's genius, com- bined with the most unqualified detestation of Machiavel's principles, had led him to study with peculiar care. The letter is dated Pisa, December 17. 1816. The united tribute of respect already paid by Mr Horner's political friends and his political Notes and opponents, to his short but brilliant and spotless career in public life, renders all additional eulo- T11 , r m Illustrations. gies on his merits as a statesman, equally feeble and superfluous. Of the extent and variety of his learning, the depth and accuracy of his scientific attainments, the classical (perhaps somewhat severe) purity of his taste, and the truly philosophical cast of his whole mind, none had better opportunities than myself to form a judgment, in the course of a friendship which commenced before he left the University, and which grew till the moment of his death. But on these rare endowments of his understanding, or the still rarer combination of virtues which shed over all his mental gifts a characteristi- cal grace and a moral harmony, this is not the proper place to enlarge. Never certainly was more completely realized the ideal portrait so nobly imagined by the Roman poet : " A calm devotion to reason and justice, the sanctuary of the heart undefiled, and a breast glowing with inborn honour." Compositum jus fasque animo, sanctosque recessus Mentis, et incoctum generoso pectus honesto. NOTE D, p. 27. The charge of plagiarism from Bodin has been urged somewhat indelicately against Montes- quieu, by a very respectable writer, the Cheva- lier de Filangieri. " On a cru, et 1'on croit peut-etre encore, que Montesquieu a parle le premier de 1'influence du climat. Cette opinion est une erreur. Avant lui, le delicat et inge"- nieux Fontenelle s'etoit exerce sur cet objet. Machiavel, en plusieurs endroits de ses ouvrages, parle aussi de cette influence du climat sur le physique et sur le moral des peuples. Chardin, un de ces voyageurs qui savent observer, a fait beaucoup de reflexions sur I'influence physique et moral des climats. L'Abbe Dubos a soutenu et developpe les pensees de Chardin ; et Bodin, qui peut-etre avoit lu dans Poly be que le climat determine les formes, la couleur, et les mceurs des peuples, en avoit deja fait, cent cinquante ans auparavant, la base de son systeme, dans son livre de la Republique, et dans sa Methode de 1'Histoire. Avant tous ces ecrivains, 1'im- mortel Hippocrate avoit traite fort au long cette 238 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes and Illustrations. matiere dans son fameux ouvrage de F air, des eaux, et des lieux. L'auteur de 1' Esprit des Lois, sans citer un seul de ces philosophes, etablit a son tour un systeme ; mais il ne fit qu'alterer les principes d'Hippocrate, et donner une plus gran de extension aux idees de Dubos, de Chardin, et de Bodin. II voulut faire croire au public qu'il avoit eu le premier quelques idees sur ce sujet ; et le public Ten crut sur sa parole." La Science de la Legislation, ouvrage traduit de Vita- lien. Paris, 1786. Tom. I. pp. 225, 226. The enumeration here given of writers whose works are in every body's hands, might have satisfied Filangieri, that, in giving his sanction to this old theory, Montesquieu had no wish to claim to himself the praise of originality. It is surprising, that, in the foregoing list, the name of Plato should have been omitted, who concludes his fifth book, De Legibus, with remarking, that " all countries are not equally susceptible of the same sort of discipline ; and that a wise legisla- tor will pay a due regard to the diversity of na- tional character, arising from the influence of climate and of soil." It is not less surprising, that the name of Charron should have been over- looked, whose observations on the moral influ- ence of physical causes discover as much ori- ginality of thought as those of any of his succes- sors. See De la Sagesse, Livre i. chap, xxxvii. NOTE E, p. 29. Innumerable instances of Luther's credulity and superstition are to be found in a book en- titled Martini Lutheri Colloquia Mensalia, fyc. first published, according to Bayle, in 1571. The only copy of it which I have seen, is a trans- lation from the German into the English tongue by Captain Henrie Bell. (London 1652.) This work, in which are " gathered up the fragments of the divine discourses which Luther held at his table with Philip Melanchthon, and divers other learned men," bears to have been origi- nally collected " out of his holy mouth" by I)r Anthony Lauterbach, and to have been after- wards " digested into common-places" by Dr Aurifaber. Although not sanctioned with Lu- ther's name, I do not know that the slightest doubts of its details have been suggested, even by such of his followers as have regretted the Note indiscreet communication to the public, of his m a t nd unreserved table-talk with his confidential com- ^*~v~ panions. The very accurate Seckendorff has not called in question its authenticity ; but on the contrary, gives it his indirect sanction, by remarking, that it was collected with little pru- dence, and not less imprudently printed : " Libro Colloquiorum Mensalium minus quidem caute composite et vulgato." (BAYLE, article LUTHER, Note L.) It is very often quoted as an autho- rity by the candid and judicious Dr Jortin. In confirmation of what I have said of Luther's credulity, I shall transcribe, in the words of the English translator, the substance of one of Luther's Divine Discourses, " concerning the devil and his works." " The devil (said Lu- ther) can transform himself into the shape of a man or a woman, and so deceive th people ; in- somuch that one thinketh he lieth by a right woman, and yet is no such matter ; for, as St Paul saith, the devil is strong by the child of unbelief. But inasmuch as children or devils are conceived in such sort, the same are very horrible and fearful examples. Like unto this, it is also with what they call the Nix in the wa- ter, who draweth people unto him as maids and virgins, of whom he begetteth devils' children. The devil can also steal children away; as sometimes children within the space of six weeks after their birth are lost, and other children, called supposititii, or changelings, laid in their places. Of the Saxons they were called Kill- crops. " Eight years since," said Luther, " at Des- sau, I did see and touch such a changed child, which was twelve years of age ; he had his eyes, and all members, like another child; he did no- thing but feed, and would eat as much as two clowns were able to eat. I told the Prince of Anhalt, if I were prince of that country, I would venture homicidium thereon, and would throw it into the river Moldaw. I admonished the people dwelling in that place devoutly to pray to God to take away the devil. The same was done ac- cordingly, and the second year after the change- ling died. " In Saxony, near unto Halberstad, was a man that also had a kittcrop, who sucked the DISSERTATION FIRST. 239 fotes Llld rations mother and five other women dry, and besides devoured very much. This man was advised that he should, in his pilgrimage at Halberstad, make a promise of the killcrop to the Virgin Marie, and should cause him there to be rocked. This advice the man followed, and carried the changeling thither in a basket. But going over a river, being upon the bridge, another devil that was below in the river, called and said, Killcrop f killcrop ! Then the child in the bas- ket (which never before spoke one word), an- swered, Ho, ho. The devil in the water asked further, Whither art thou going ? The child in the basket said, I am going towards Hocklestad to our loving mother, to be rocked. The man being much affrighted thereat, threw the child, with the basket, over the bridge into the water. Whereupon the two devils flew away together, and cried Ho, ho, ha, tumbling themselves over one another, and so vanished." (pp. 386, 387.) With respect to Luther's Theological Disputes with the Devil, see the passages quoted by Bayle, Art. Luther, Note U. Facts of this sort, so recent in their date, and connected with the history of so great a charac- ter, are consolatory to those who, amid the fol- lies and extravagancies of their contemporaries, are sometimes tempted to despair of the cause of truth, and of the gradual progress of human reason. Note F, p. 38. Ben Jonson is one of the few contemporary writers by whom the tran seen dant genius of Ba- con appears to have been justly appreciated ; and the only one I know of, who has transmit- ted any idea of his forensic eloquence ; a subject on which, from his own professional pursuits, combined with the reflecting and philosophical cast of his mind, Jonson was peculiarly qualified to form a competent judgment. " There hap- pened," says he, " in my time, one noble speak- er, who was full of gravity in his speaking. No man ever spoke more neatly, more pressly, more weightily, or suffered less emptiness, lest idle- ness in what he uttered. No member of his speech but consisted of its own graces. His hearers could not cough, or look aside from him, without loss. He commanded where he spoke, and had his judges angry and pleased at his de- votion. The fear of every man that heard him was, that he should make an end." No finer description of the perfection of this art is to be found in any author, ancient or modern. The admiration of Jonson for Bacon (whom he appears to have known intimately 1 ) seems almost to have blinded him to those indelible shades in his fame, to which, even at this dis- tance of time, it is impossible to turn the eye without feelings of sorrow and humiliation. Yet it is but candid to conclude, from the post- humous praise lavished on him by Jonson and by Sir Kenelm Digby, 8 that the servility of the courtier, and the laxity of the judge, were, in the relations of private life, redeemed by many estimable and amiable qualities. That man must surely have been marked by some rare fea- tures of moral as well as of intellectual great- ness, of whom, long after his death, Jonson could write in the following words : " My conceit of his person was never increas- ed toward him by his place or honours ; but I have and do reverence him, for the greatness that was only proper to himself, in that he seemed to me ever, by his works, one of the greatest men, and most worthy of admiration, that had been in many ages. In his adversity, I ever prayed that God would give him strength, for greatness he could not want. Neither could I condole in a word or syllable for him, as know- ing no accident could do harm to virtue, but rather help to make it manifest." In Aubrey's anecdotes of Bacon, 5 there are several particulars not unworthy of the atten- tion of his future biographers. One expression of this writer is more peculiarly striking : " In short, all that were great and good loved and Notes and Illustrations- 1 Jonson is said to have translated into Latin great part of the books De Augmentis Scientiarum. Dr Warton states this (I do not know on what authority) as an undoubted fact. Essay on (he Genius and Writings of Pope. 3 See his letters to M. de Fermat, printed at the end of FEUMAT'S Opera Mathematics Tolosse, 1679. 3 Lately published in the extracts from the Bodleian library. 240 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes honoured him." * When it is considered, that Illustrations Aubrey's knowledge of Bacon was derived chief- ly through the medium of Hobbes, who had lived in habits of the most intimate friendship with both, and whose writings shew that he was far from being an idolatrous admirer of Bacon's philosophy, it seems impossible for a candid mind, after reading the foregoing short but com- prehensive eulogy, not to feel a strong inclina- tion to dwell rather on the fair than on the dark side of the Chancellor's character, and, before pronouncing an unqualified condemnation, care- fully to separate the faults of the age from those of the individual. An affecting allusion of his own, in one of his greatest works, to the errors and misfortunes of his public life, if it does not atone for his faults, may, at least, have some effect in softening the asperity of our censures. " Ad literas potius quam ad aliud quicquam natus, et ad res ge- rendas nescio quo fato contra genium suum ab- reptus." De Aug. Sclent. L. viii. c. iii. Even in Bacon's professional line, it is now admitted, by the best judges, that he was great- ly underrated by his contemporaries. " The Queen did acknowledge," says the Earl of Es- sex, in a letter to Bacon himself, " you had a great wit, and an excellent gift of speech, and much other good learning. But in law, she ra- ther thought you could make shew, to the utmost of your knowledge, than that you were deep." " If it be asked," says Dr Hurd, " how the Queen came to form this conclusion, the answer is plain. It was from Mr Bacon's having a great wit, an excellent gift of speech, and much other good learning." (KURD'S Dialogues.) The following testimony to Bacon's legal knowledge (pointed out to me by a learned friend) is of somewhat more weight than Queen Elizabeth's judgment against it : " What might we not have expected," says Mr Hargrave, af- ter a high encomium on the powers displayed by Bacon in his ' Reading on the Statute of Uses ;' " what might we not have expected from the hands of such a master, if his vast mind bad not so embraced within its compass the whole field of science, as very much to detach him from professional studies !" It was probably owing in part to his court- disgrace, that so little notice was taken of Ba- Nc con, for some time after his death, by those Eng- lish writers who availed themselves, without any scruple, of the lights struck out in his works. A very remarkable example of this oc- curs in a curious, though now almost forgotten book (published in 1627), entitled, An Apology or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God in the Government of the World, by George Hakewill, D. D. Archdeacon of Surrey. It is plainly the production of an uncommonly liberal and enlightened mind ; well stored with various and choice learning, collected both from ancient and modern authors. Its general aim may be guessed at from the text of Scripture prefixed to it as a motto, " Say not thou, what is the cause that the former days are better than these, for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this ;" and from the words of Ovid, so happily applied by Hakewill to the " common error touching the golden age," Prisca juvent alios, ego me mine denique natum Gratulor. That the general design of the book, as well as many incidental observations contained in it, was borrowed from Bacon, there cannot, I ap- prehend, be a doubt ; and yet I do not recollect more than one or two references (and these very slight ones) to his writings, through the whole volume. One would naturally have expected, that, in the following passage of the epistle de- dicatory, the name of the late unfortunate Chan- cellor of England, who had died in* the course of the preceding year, might have found a place along with the other great clerks there enume- rated : " I do not believe that all regions of the world, or all ages in the same region, afford wits always alike ; but this I think (neither is it my opinion alone, but of Scaliger, Vives, Bu- dseus, Bodin, and other great clerks), that the wits of these latter ages, being manured by in- dustry, directed by precepts, and regulated by method, may be as capable of deep speculations, and produce as masculine and lasting births, as any of the ancienter times have done. But if we conceive them to be giants, and ourselves dwarfs ; if we imagine all sciences already to have received their utmost perfection, so as we need not but translate and comment on what DISSERTATION FIRST. 241 fates they have done, surely there is little hope that rations we s h u hi ever come near them, much less -v-xy match them. The first step to enable a man to the achieving of great designs, is to be persuad- ed that he is able to achieve them ; the next not to be persuaded, that whatsoever hath not yet been done, cannot therefore be done. Not any one man, or nation, or age, but rather mankind is it, which, in latitude of capacity, answers to the universality of things to be known." In another passage, Hakewill ob- serves, that, " if we will speak properly and punctually, antiquity rather consists in old age, than in the infancy or youth of the world." I need scarcely add, that some of the foregoing sentences are almost literal transcripts of Bacon's words. The philosophical fame of Bacon in his own country may be dated from the establishment of the Royal Society of London ; by the founders of which, as appears from their colleague, Dr Sprat, he was held in so high estimation, that it was once proposed to prefix to the history of their labours some of Bacon's writings, as the best comment on the views with which they were undertaken. Sprat himself, and his illus- trious friend Cowley, were among the number of Bacon's earliest eulogists ; the latter in an Ode to the Royal Society, too well known to require any notice here ; the former in a very splendid passage of his History, from which I shall borrow a few sentences, as a conclusion and ornament to this note. " For, is it not wonderful, that he who had run through all the degrees of that profession, which usually takes up men's whole time ; who had studied, and practised, and governed the common law ; who had always lived in the crowd, and borne the greatest burden of civil business; should yet find leisure enough for these retired studies, to excel all those men, who separate themselves for this very purpose? He was a man of strong, clear, and powerful imaginations ; his genius was searching and in- imitable ; and of this I need give no other proof than his style itself; which as, for the most part, it describes men's minds, as well as pic- Notes tures do their bodies, so it did his above all i llus t" a d tions . men living. The course of it vigorous and ma- jestical ; the wit bold and familiar ; the compa- risons fetched out of the way, and yet the more easy : * In all expressing a soul equally skilled in men and nature." NOTE G, p. 40. The paradoxical bias of Hobbes's understand- ing is never so conspicuous as when he engages in physical or in mathematical discussions. On such occasions, he expresses himself with even more than his usual confidence and arrogance. Of the Royal Society (the Virtuosi, as he calls them, that meet at Gresham College} he writes thus : " Conveniant, studia conferant, experi- menta faciant quantum volunt, nisi et principiis utantur meis, nihil proficient." And elsewhere: " Ad causas autem propter quas proficere ne paullum quidem potuistis nee poteritis, acce- dunt etiam alia, ut odium Hobbii, quia nimium libere scripserat de academiis veritatem : Nam ex eo tempore irati physici et mathematici veri- tatem ab eo venientem non recepturos se palam professi sunt." In his English publications, he indulges in a vein of coarse scurrility, of which his own words alone can convey any idea. " So go your ways," says he, addressing him- self to Dr Wallis and Dr Seth Ward, two of the most eminent mathematicians then in Eng- land, " you uncivil ecclesiastics, inhuman di- vines, de-doctors of morality, unasinous col- leagues, egregious pair of Issachars, most wretched indices and vindices academiarum ; and remember Vespasian's law, that it is unlawful to give ill language first,, but civil and lawful to re- turn it." NOTE H. p. 42. With respect to the Leviathan, a very curious anecdote is mentioned by Lord Clarendon. " When I returned," says he, " from Spain by Paris, Mr Hobbes frequently came to me, and 1 By the word easy, I presume Sprat here means the native and spontaneous growth of Bacon's own fancy, in opposi- tion to the traditionary similes borrowed by common-place writers from their predecessors. DISS. I. PART II. 2 H 242 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes and told me that his book, which he would call Le- JllunratM us viathan ^ was tnen printing in England, and that he received every week a sheet to correct ; and thought it would be finished within a little more than a month. He added, that he knew when I read the book I would not like it ; and there- upon mentioned some conclusions ; upon which I asked him why he would publish such doctrines ; to which, after a discourse between jest and ear- nest, he said, * The truth is, I have a mind to go home' " In another passage, the same writer ex- presses himself thus : " The review and con- clusion of the Leviathan is, in truth, a sly ad- dress to Cromwell, that, being out of the king- dom, and so being neither conquered nor his subject, he might, by his return, submit to his government, and be bound to obey it. This re- view and conclusion he made short enough to hope that Cromwell might read it; where he should not only receive the pawn of his new subject's allegiance, by declaring his own obli- gations and obedience ; but by publishing such doctrines as, being diligently infused by such a master in the art of government, might secure the people of the kingdom (over whom he had no right to command) to acquiesce and submit to his brutal power." That there is no exaggeration or misrepresen- tation of facts in these passages, with the view of injuring the character of Hobbes, may be confidently presumed from the very honourable testimony which Clarendon bears, in another part of the same work, to his moral as well as intellectual merits. " Mr Hobbes," he observes, " is a man of excellent parts ; of great wit ; of some reading ; and of somewhat more thinking ; one who has spent many years in foreign parts and observations; understands the learned as well as modern languages ; hath long had the reputation of a great philosopher and mathema- tician; and in his age hath had conversation with many worthy and extraordinary men. In a word, he is one of the most ancient acquain- tance I have in the world, and of whom I have always had a great esteem, as a man, who, be- sides his eminent learning and knowledge, hath been always looked upon as a man of probity, and of a life free from scandal." NOTE I, p. 58. It is not easy to conceive how Descartes re- conciled, to his own satisfaction, his frequent use of the word substance, as applied to the mind, with his favourite doctrine, that the essence of the mind consists in thought. Nothing can be well imagined more unphilosophical than this last doctrine, in whatever terms it is expressed ; but to designate by the name of substance, what is also called thought., in the course of the same argument, renders the absurdity still more gla- ring than it would otherwise have been. I have alluded, in the text, to the difference between the popular and the scholastic notion of substance. According to the latter, the word substance corresponds to the Greek word ouova, as employed by Aristotle to denote the first of the predicaments; in which technical sense it 19 said, in the language of the schools, to signify that which supports attributes, or which is sub- ject to accidents. At a period when every person liberally educated was accustomed to this bar- barous jargon, it might not appear altogether absurd to apply the term substance to the human soul, or even to the Deity. But, in the present times, a writer who so employs it may be as- sured, that, to a great majority of his readers, it will be no less puzzling than it was to Crambe, in Martinus Scriblerus, when he first heard it thus defined by his master Cornelius. * How extraordinary does the following sentence now sound even to a philosophical ear ? and yet it is copied from a work published little more than seventy years ago, by the learned and judicious Gravesande : " Substantial sunt aut cogitantes, aut non cogitantes; cogitantes duas novimus, 1 " When he was told, a substance was that which was subject to accidents, then soldiers, quoth Crambe, are the most sub- stantial people in the world." Let me add, that, in the list of philosophical reformers, the authors of Martinus Scriblerus ought not to be overlooked. Their happy ridicule of the scholastic Logic and Metaphysics is universally known ; but few are aware of the acuteness and sagacity displayed in their allusions to some of the most vulnerable passages in Locke's Essay. In this part of the work it is commonly understood that Arbuthnot had the principal share. DISSERTATION FIRST. 243 and Deum et mentem nostram. Duse etiam sub- stantiee, quse non cogitant, nobis notse sunt. itrations. ~v-x^ spatium et corpus." Introd. ad Phil. 19. The Greek word ou long prior to that which is commonly considered as the commencement of our literary history, I shall afterwards have occasion to speak. At present, I shall only observe, that it was in the Scottish universities that the philosophy of Locke, as well as that of Newton, was first adopted as a branch of academical education. NOTE T, p. 107. Extract of a letter from M. Allamand to Mr Gibbon. (See GIBBON'S Miscellaneous Works.} " Vous avez sans doute raison de dire que les propositions evidentes dont il s'agit, ne sont pas de simples idees, mais des jugemens. Mais ayez aussi la complaisance de reconnoitre que M. Locke les alleguant en exemple d'idees qui passent pour innees, et qui ne le sont pas selon lui, s'il y a ici de la meprise, c'est lui qu'il faut relever la-dessus, et non pas moi, qui n'avois autre chose a faire qu'a refuter sa maniere de raisonner contre Finneite de ces idees ou juge- mens la. D'ailleurs, Monsieur, vous remarquerez, s'il vous plait, que dans cette dispute il s'agit en effet, de savoir si certaines verites evidentes et communes, et non pas seulement certaines idees simples, sont innees ou non. Ceux qui affirment, ne donnent guere pour exemple d'idees simples qui le soyent, que celles de Dieu, de 1' unite, et de 1' existence ; les autres exemples sont pris de propositions completes, que vous appellez j uge- mens. " Mais, dites vous, y aura-t-il done des juge- mens innes? Le jugement est il autre chose qu'un acte de nos facultes intellectuelles dans la comparison des idees? Le jugement sur les verites evidentes, n'est il pas une simple vue de ces verites la, un simple coup d'oeil que 1'esprit jette sur elles ? J'accorde tout cela. Et de grace, gu'est ce qu' idee ? N'est cepas vue, ou coup d'oeil, si vous voulez ? Ceux qui definissent 1'idee autre- ment, ne s'eloignent-ils pas visiblement du sens et de 1'intention du mot ? Dire que les idees sont les especes des chosesimprimees dans 1'esprit, comme 1'image de 1'objet sensible est tracee dans Foeil, n'est ce pas jargonner plutot que definir ? Or c'est la faute, qu'ont fait tous les metaphy- siciens, et quoique M. Locke Fait bien sentie, il a mieux aime se facher contre eux, et tirer contre les girouettes de la place, que s'appliquer a demeler ce galimatias. Que n'a-t-il dit, non seulement il n'y a point d'idees innees dans le sens de ces Messieurs ; mais il n'y a point d'idees du tout dans ce sens la ; toute idee est un acte, une vue, un coup d'ceil de I' esprit. Des lors demander s'il y a des idees innees, c'est demander s'il y a certaines verites si evidentes et si communes que tout esprit non stupide puisse naturellement, sans culture et sans maitre, sans discussion, sans raisonnement, les reconnoitre d'un coup d'ceil, et souvent meme sans s'apper^evoir qu'on jette ce coup d'oeil. L'affirmative me paroit incon- testable, ct selon moi, la question est vuidee par la. " Main tenant prenez garde, Monsieur, que cette maniere d'enteudre 1'affaire, va au but des partisans des idees innees, tout comme la leur ; et par la meme contredit M. Locke dans le sien. Car pourquoi voudroit on qu'il y a eu des idees innees ? C'est pour en opposer la certitude et Fevidence au doute universel des sceptiques, qui est ruine d'un seul coup, s'il y a des verites dont^ la vue soit necessaire et naturelle a Fhomme. Or vous sentez, Monsieur, que je puis leur dire cela dans ma facon d'expliquer la chose, tout aussi bien que les partisans ordinaires des idecs innees dans la leur. Et voila ce que semble incommoder un peu M. Locke, qui, sans se declarer Pyrrhonien, laisse appercevoir un peu trop de foible pour le Pyrrhonisme, et a beaucoup contribue a le nourrir dans ce siecle. A force de vouloir marquer les bornes de nos connois- sances, ce qui etoit fort necessaire, il a quelque- fois tout mis en bornes." NOTE U, p. 108. " A decisive proof of this is afforded by the allusions to Locke's doctrines in the dramatic pieces then in possession of the French stage," &c. In a comedy of Destouches (entitled La Fausse Agnes), which must have been written long be- fore the period in question, ] the heroine, a live- ly and accomplished girl, supposed to be just 1 This little piece was first published in 1757, three years after the author's death, which took place in 1754, in the se- venty-fourth year of his age. But we are told by D'Alembert, that from the age of sixty, he had renounced, from senti- DISSERTATION FIRST. 251 Notes arrived from Paris at her father's house in Poi- strations. * ou > * s introduced as first assuming the appear- ~v~*-J ance of imbecility, in order to get rid of a dis- agreeable lover ; and, afterwards, as pleading her own cause in a mock trial before an absurd old president and two provincial ladies, to convince them that she is in reality not out of her senses. In the course of her argument on this subject, she endeavours to astonish her judges by an ironical display of her philosophical knowledge ; warning them of the extreme difficulty and nicety of the question upon which they were about to pronounce. " Vous voulez juger de moi ! mais, pour juger sainement, il faut une grande eten- due de connoissances ; encore est il bien dou- teux qu'il y en ait de certaines Avant done que vous entrepreniez de prononcer sur mon sujet, je demande prealablement que vous exa- miniez avec moi nos connoissances en general, les degres de ces connoissances, leur etendue, leur realite ; que nous convenions de ce que c'est que la verite, et si la verite se trouve effective- ment. Apres quoi nous traiterons des proposi- tions universelles, des maximes, des proposi- tions frivoles, et de la foiblesse, ou de la solidite de iios lumieres Quelque personnes tiennent pour verite, que 1'homme nait avec cer- tains principes inees, certaines notions primitives, certains caracteres qui sont comme graves dans son esprit, des le premier instant de son exist- ence. Pour moi, j'ai longtemps examine ce sentiment, et j'entreprends de la combattre, de le refuter, de 1'aneantir, si vous avez la patience de m'ecouter." I have transcribed but a part of this curious pleading ; but, I presume, more than enough to "show, that every sentence, and almost every word of it, refers to Locke's doc- trines. In the second and third sentences, the titles of the principal chapters in the fourth book of his Essay are exactly copied. It was impos- sible that such a scene should have produced the slightest comic effect, unless the book alluded to had been in very general circulation among the higher orders ; I might perhaps add, in much more general circulation than it ever obtained among that class of readers in England. At no Notes period, certainly, since it was first published m and . (such is the difference of national manners), could similar allusions have been made to it, or to any other work on so abstract a subject, with the slightest hope of success on the London stage. And yet D'Alembert pronounces La Fausse Agnes to be apiece, pleine de mouvement etde gaiete. NOTE X, p. 110. " Descartes asserted," says a very zealous Lockist, M. de Voltaire, " that the soul, at its coming into the body, is informed with the whole series of metaphysical notions ; knowing God, infinite space, possessing all abstract ideas ; in a word, completely endued with the most su- blime lights, which it unhappily forgets at its issuing from the womb. " With regard to myself," continues the same writer, " I am as little inclined as Locke could be, to fancy that, some weeks after I was conceived, I was a very learned soul ; knowing at that time a thousand things which I forgot at my birth ; and possessing, when in the womb (though to no manner of purpose), knowledge which I lost the instant I had occasion for it ; and which I have never since been able to recover perfectly." Letters concerning the English Nation. Letter 13. Whatever inferences may be deducible from some of Descartes's expressions, or from the comments on these expressions by some who as- sumed the title of Cartesians, I never can per- suade myself, that the system of innate ideas, as conceived and adopted by him, was meant to give any sanction to the absurdities here treated by Voltaire with such just contempt. In no part of Descartes's works, as far as I have been able to discover, is the slightest ground given for this extraordinary account of his opinions. Nor was Descartes the first person who intro- duced this language. Long before the date of his works, it was in common use in England ; and is to be found in a Poem of Sir John Davis, published four years before Descartes was born. merits of piety, all thoughts of writing for the stage (Eloge de Destoitches. ) This carries the date of all his dramatic works, at least as far back as 1740. As for Destouches's own familiarity with the writings of Locke, it is easily accounted for by his residence in England from 1717 to 1723, where he remained, for some time after the departure of Cardinal Du- bois, as CJmrge d'affaires. Voltaire did not visit England till 1727. 252 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes (See Sect. XXVI. of The Immortality of the , and . Soul. ) The title of this Section expressly as- lllustrations. / serts, That there are innate ideas in the soul. In one of Descartes's letters, he enters into some explanations with respect to this part of his philosophy, which he complains had been very grossly misunderstood or misrepresented. To the following passage I have no doubt that Locke himself would have subscribed. It strikes myself as so very remarkable, that, in order to attract to it the attention of my readers, I shall submit it to their consideration in an English translation. " When I said that the idea of God is innate in us, I never meant more than this, that Na- ture has endowed us with a faculty by which we may know God ; but I have never either said or thought, that such ideas had an actual exist- ence, or even that they were species distinct from the faculty of thinking. I will even go farther, and assert that nobody has kept at a greater dis- tance than myself from all this trash of scholas- tic entities, insomuch that I could not help smil- ing when I read the numerous arguments which Regius has so industriously collected to show that infants have no actual knowledge of God while they remain in the womb. Although the idea of God is so imprinted on our minds, that every person has within himself the faculty of knowing him, it does not follow that there may not have been various individuals who have passed through life without ever making this idea a distinct object of apprehension ; and, in truth, they who think they have an idea of a plurality of Gods, have no idea of God what- soever." (CARTESII, Epist. Pars I. Epist. xcix.) After reading this passage from Descartes, may I request of my readers to look back to the extracts in the beginning of this note, from Vol- taire's letters ? A remark of Montesquieu, oc- casioned by some strictures hazarded by this lively but very superficial philosopher on the Spirit of Laws, is more peculiarly applicable to him when he ventures to pronounce judgment on metaphysical writers : " Quant a Voltaire, il a trap a" esprit pour m' entendre ; tous les livres qu'il lit, il les fait, apres quoi il approuve ou critique ce qu'il a fait." (Lettre a M. FAbbe de Guasco.) The remark is applicable to other critics as well as to Voltaire. The prevailing misapprehensions with respect to this, and some other principles of the Carte- sian metaphysics, can only be accounted for by supposing, that the opinions of Descartes have been more frequently j udged of from the glosses of his followers, than from his own works. It seems to have never been sufficiently known to his adversaries, either in France or in England, that, after his philosophy had become fashion- able in Holland, a number of Dutch divines, whose opinions differed very widely from his, found it convenient to shelter their own errors under his established name ; and that some of them went so far as to avail themselves of his authority in propagating tenets directly oppo- site to his declared sentiments. Hence a dis- tinction of the Cartesians into the genuine and the pseudo-Cartesians ; and hence an inconsis- tency in their representations of the metaphysi- cal ideas of their master, which can only be cleared up by a reference (seldom thought of) to his own very concise and perspicuous text. (FABRICII Bib. Gr. lib. iii. cap. vi. p. 183^ HEINECC. EL Hist. Phil. ex.) Many of the objections commonly urged against the innate ideas of Descartes are much more ap- plicable to the innate ideas of Leibnitz, whose language concerning them is infinitely more hypothetical and unphilosophical ; and some- times approaches nearly to the enthusiastic theo- logy of Plato and of Cudworth. Nothing in the works of Descartes bears any resemblance, in point of extravagance, to what follows : " Pul- cherrima multa sunt Platonis dogmata, esse in divina mente mundum intelligibilem, quern ego quoque vocare soleo regionem idearum ; ob- jectum sapientiae esse ra ovrus ovra, substantias nempe simplices, quae a me monades appellantur, et semel existentes semper perstant, crowra dtxrixa, rrig tpw, id est, Deum et Animas, et harum po- tissimas mentes, producta a Deo simulacra divi- nitatis Porroqusevis mens, ut recte Plotinus, quendam in se mundum intelligibilem continet, imo mea sententia et hunc ipsum sensibilem sibi reprassentat Sunt in nobis semina eorum, quse discimus, idese nempe, et quse inde nascuntur, seternse veritates Longe ergo praferendae Notes and Illustrati DISSERTATION FIRST. 253 sunt Platonis notifies innatce, quas reminiscentice nomine velavit, tabulae rasae Aristotelis et Lockii, aliorumque recentiorum, qui irif/Jcj philoso- phantur." (LEIB. Opera, Tom. II. p. 223.) Wild and visionary, however, as the forego- ing propositions are, if the names of Gassendi and of Hobbes had been substituted instead of those of Aristotle and of Locke, I should have been disposed to subscribe implicitly to the judgment pronounced in the concluding sen- tence. The metaphysics of Plato, along with a considerable alloy of poetical fiction, has at least the merit of containing a large admixture of im- portant and of ennobling truth ; while that of Gassendi and of Hobbes, besides its inconsis- tency with facts attested, every moment, by our own consciousness, tends directly to level the rational faculties of man with the instincts of the brutes. In the Acta Eruditorum for the year 1684, Leibnitz observes, that " in the case of things which we have never thought of, the innate ideas in our minds may be compared to the figure of Hercules in a block of marble." This seems to me to prove, that the difference between him and Locke was rather in appearance than in reality ; and that, although he called those ideas innate which Locke was at pains to trace to sen- sation or to reflection, he would have readily granted, that our first knowledge of their exis- tence was coeval with the first impressions made on our senses by external objects. That this was also the opinion of Descartes is still more evident, notwithstanding the ludicrous point of view in which Voltaire has attempted to exhibit this part of his system. NOTE Y, p. 111. Mr Locke seems to have considered this use of the word reflection as peculiar to himself ; but it is perfectly analogous to the xivfasn; xuzXixat of the Greek philosophers, and to various expres- sions which occur in the works of John Smith of Cambridge, and of Dr Cudworth. We find it in a Poem on the Immortality of the Soul, by Sir John Davis, Attorney- General to Queen Elizabeth ; and probably it is to be met with in English publications of a still earlier date. All things without which round about we see, We seek to know, and have wherewith to do ; But that whereby we reason, live, and be, Within ourselves, we strangers are thereto. Is it because the mind is like the eye, Through which it gathers knowledge by degrees ; Whose rays reflect not, but spread outwardly ; Not seeing itself, when other things it sees ? No, doubtless ; for the mind can backward cast Upon herself her understanding light ; < But she is so corrupt, and so defac'd, As her own image doth herself affright. As is the fable of the Lady fair, Which for her lust was turned into a cow ; When thirsty, to a stream she did repair, And saw herself transform'd, she wist not how : At first she startles, then she stands amaz'd ; At last with terror she from hence doth fly, And loathes the wat'ry glass wherein she gaz'd, And shuns it still, although for thirst she die. For even at first reflection she espies Such strange chimeras, and such monsters there ; Such toys, such antics, and such vanities, As she retires and shrinks for shame and fear. I have quoted these verses, chiefly because I think it not improbable that they may have suggested to Gray the following very happy allusion in his fine Fragment De Principiis Co- gitandi : Qualis Hamadryadum quondam si forte sororum Una, novos peregrans saltus, et devia rura (Atque illam in viridi suadet procumbere ripa Fontis pura quies, et opaci frigoris umbra) ; Dum prona in latices_speculi de margine pendet, Mirata est subitam venienti occurrere Nympham Mox eosdem, quos ipsa, artus, eadem ora gerentem Una inferre gradus, una succedere sylvse Aspicit alludens ; seseque agnoscit in undis : Sic sensu intqrno rerum simulacra suarum Mens ciet, et proprios observat conscia vultus. NOTE Z, p. 122. The chief attacks made in England on Locke's Essay, during his own lifetime, were by Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester ; John Nor- ris, 1 Rector of Bemerton ; Henry Lee, B. D. ; Notes a-d Illustrations, 1 Of this person, who was a most ingenious and original thinker, I shall have occasion afterwards to speak. 254 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes and the Reverend Mr Lowde (author of a Dis- liiuslrations. "H^ 56 concerning the Nature of Man). Of these four writers, the first is the only one whose ob- jections to Locke are now at all remembered in the learned world ; and for this distinction, Stil- lingfleet is solely indebted (I speak of him here merely as a metaphysician, for in some other departments of study, his merits are universally admitted) to the particular notice which Locke has condescended to take of him, in the Notes incorporated with the later editions of his Essay. The only circumstance which renders these Notes worthy of preservation, is the record they furnish of Locke's forbearance and courtesy, in managing a controversy carried on, upon the other side, with so much captiousness and aspe- rity. An Irish bishop, in a letter on this sub- ject to Mr Molyneux, writes thus : " I read Mr Locke's letter to the Bishop of Worcester \vith great satisfaction, and am wholly of your opi- nion, that he has fairly laid the great bishop on his back, but it is with so much gentleness, as if he were afraid not only of hurting him, but even of spoiling or tumbling his clothes." The work of Lee is entitled " Anti-scepticism, or Notes upon each chapter of Mr Locke's Es- say concerning Human Understanding, with an explanation of all the particulars of which he treats, and in the same order. By Henry Lee, B. D. formerly Fellow of Emanuel College in Cambridge, now Rector of Tichmarsh in North^ amptonshire." London, 1702, in folio. The strictures of this author, which are often acute and sometimes just, are marked through- out with a fairness and candour rarely to be met with in controversial writers. It will appear remarkable to modern critics that he lays parti- cular stress upon the charms of Locke's style, among the other excellencies which had conspir- ed to recommend his work to *public favour. " The celebrated author of the Essay on Hu- man Understanding has all the advantages desir- able to recommend it to the inquisitive genius of this age ; an avowed pretence to new methods of discovering truth and improving learning ; an unusual coherence in the several parts of his scheme ; a singular clearness in his reasonings ; Note and above all, a natural elegancy of style ; an ,., a unaffected beauty in his expressions ; a j ust pro- v-x-v portion and tuneable cadence in all his periods." (See the Epistle Dedicatory. J NOTE A A, p. 125. For the information of some of my readers, it may be proper to observe, that the word in/lux came to be employed to denote the action of body and soul on each other, in consequence of a pre- vailing theory which supposed that this action was carried on by something intermediate (whe- ther material or immaterial was not positively decided } flowing from the one substance to the other. It is in this sense that the word is un- derstood by Leibnitz, when he states as an in- surmountable objection to the theory of influx, that " it is impossible to conceive either mate- rial particles or immaterial qualities to pass from body to mind, or from mind to body." Instead of the term influx, that of influence came gradually to be substituted by our English writers; but the two words were originally: synonymous, and were used indiscriminately as late as the time of Sir Matthew Hale. (See his Primitive, Origination of Mankind.) In Johnson's Dictionary, the primitive and radical meaning assigned to the word influence (which he considers as of French extraction) is " the power of the celestial aspects operating upon terrestrial bodies and affairs ;" and in the Encyclopedia of Chambers, it is defined to be " a quality supposed to flow from the bodies of the stars, either with their heat or light, to which astrologers vainly attribute all the events which happen on the earth." To this astrolo- gical use of the word Milton had plainly a re- ference in that fine expression of his L? Allegro, " Store of ladies whose bright eyes " Rain influence." 1 It is a circumstance worthy of notice, that a word thus originating in the dreams of astro- 1 The explanation of the word influence, given in the Dictionary of the French Academy, accords perfectly with the tenor of the above remarks. " Vertu qui, suivant les Astrologues, dicoule des Astres sur les corps sublunaires." DISSERTATION FIRST. 255 )tes logers and schoolmen, should now, in our lan- ations ua e ' ^ e appropriated almost exclusively to ~*~s politics. " Thus," says Blackstone, " are the electors of one branch of the legislature secured from any undue influence from either of the other two, and from all external violence and com- pulsion ; but the greatest danger is that in which themselves co-operate by the infamous practice of bribery and corruption." And again, " The crown has gradually and imperceptibly gained almost as much in influence as it has lost in pre- rogative." In all these cases, there will be found at bot- tom one common idea, the existence of some se- cret and mysterious connection between two things, of which connection it is conceived to be impossible or unwise to trace what Bacon calls the latens processus. NOTE BB, p. 126. After these quotations from Locke, added to those which I have already produced from the same work, the reader may judge of the injustice done to him by Leibnitz, in the first sentence of his correspondence with Clarke. " II semble que la religion naturelle meme s'affoiblit extremement. Plusieurs font les ames corporelles; d'autres font Dieu lui-meme cor- porel. " M. Locke et ses sectateurs, doutentau moins, si les ames ne sont mater ielles, et naturellement perissables." Dr Clarke, in his reply to this charge, admits that " some parts of Locke's writings may justly be suspected as intimating his doubts whether the soul be immaterial or no ; but herein (he adds) he has been followed only by some Materialists, enemies to the mathematical principles of philo- sophy, and who approve little or nothing in Mr Locke's writings, but his errors." To those who have studied with care the w/iole writings of Locke, the errors here alluded to will appear in a very venial light when compared with the general spirit of his philosophy. Nor can I forbear to remark farther on this occasion, that supposing Locke's doubts concerning the immateriality of the soul to have been as real as Clarke seems to have suspected, this very cir- cumstance would only reflect the greater lustre Notes on the soundness of his logical views concerning ... and . the proper method of studying the mind ; in ^x~v-v the prosecution of which study, he has adhered much more systematically than either Descartes or Leibnitz to the exercise of reflection, as the sole medium for ascertaining the internal phe- nomena; describing, at the same time, these phenomena in the simplest and most rigorous terms which our language affords, and avoiding, in a far greater degree than any of his prede- cessors, any attempt to explain them by analogies borrowed from the perceptions of the external senses. I before observed, that Leibnitz greatly under- rated Locke as a metaphysician. It is with re- gret I have now to mention, that Locke has by no means done justice to the splendid talents and matchless erudition of Leibnitz. In a letter to his friend Mr Molyneux, dated in 1697, he expresses himself thus : " I see you and I agree pretty well concerning Mr Leibnitz ; and this sort of fiddling makes me hardly avoid thinking that he is not that very great man as has been talked of him." And in another letter, written in the same year to the same correspondent, after referring to one of Leibnitz's Memoirs in the Acta Eruditorum (De Primse Philosophise Emen- datione), he adds, " From whence I only draw this inference, that even great parts will not master any subject without great thinking, and that even the largest minds have but narrow swallows." Let me add, that in my quotations from Eng- lish writers, I adhere scrupulously to their own phraseology, in order to bring under the eye of my readers, specimens of English composition at different periods of our history. I must re- quest their attention to this circumstance, as some expressions in the former part of this Dis- sertation, which have been censured as Scot- ticisms, occur in extracts from authors who, in all probability, never visited this side of the Tweed. NOTE CC, p. 131. After studying, with all possible diligence, what Leibnitz has said of his monads in different parts of his works, I find myself quite incom- 256 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes petent to annex any precise idea to the word as Illusions he has employed it. I shall, therefore, aim at nothing more in this note, but to collect, into as small a compass as I can, some of his most intelligible attempts to explain its meaning. " A substance is a thing capable of action. It is simple or compounded. A simple substance is that which has no parts. A compound sub- stance is an aggregate of simple substances or of monads. " Compounded substances, or bodies, are mul- titudes. Simple substances, lives, souls, spirits, are units. 1 Such simple substances must exist everywhere ; for without simple substances there could be no compounded ones. All nature therefore is full of life." (Tom. II. p. 32.) " Monads, having no parts, are neither ex- tended, figured, nor divisible. They are the real atoms of nature, or, in other words, the elements of things." (Tom. II. p. 20.) (It must not, however, be imagined, that the monads of Leibnitz have any resemblance to what are commonly called atoms by philoso- phers. On the contrary, he says expressly, that " monads are not atoms of matter, but atoms of substances ; real units, which are the first principles in the composition of things, and the last elements in the analysis of substances ; of which principles or elements, what we call bo- dies are only the phenomena"} (Tom. II. pp. 53. 325.) In another passage we are told, that " a mo- nad is not a material but A formal atom, it being impossible for a thing to be at once material, and possessed of a real unity and indivisibility. It is necessary, therefore," says Leibnitz, " to revive the obsolete doctrines of substantial forms (the essence of which consists in force), separat- ing it, however, from the various abuses to which it is liable." (Ibid. p. 50.) " Every monad is a living mirror, represent- ing the universe, according to its particular point of view, and subject to as regular laws as the universe itself." " Every monad, with a particular body, makes a living substance." " The knowledge of every soul (dme) extends N< to infinity, and to all things; but this know- Illus ^ ledge is confused. As a person walking on the ^*~\ margin of the sea, and listening to its roar, hears the noise of each individual wave of which the whole noise is made up, but without being able to distinguish one sound from ano- ther, in like manner, our confused perceptions are the result of the impressions made upon us by the whole universe. The case (he adds) is the same with each monad." " As for the reasonable soul or mind (I' 'esprit) , there is something in it more than in the monads, or even than in those souls which are simple. It is not only a mirror of the universe of created things, but an image of the Deity. Such minds are capable of reflected acts, and of conceiving what is meant by the words /, substance, monad, soul, mind ; in a word, of conceiving things and truths unconnected with matter; and it is this which renders us capable of science and of de- monstrative reasoning. " What becomes of these souls, or forms, on the death of the animal ? There is no alterna- tive (replies Leibnitz) but to conclude, that not only the soul is preserved, but that the animal also with its organical machine continues to exist, although the destruction of its grosser parts has reduced it to a smallness as invisible to our eyes as it was before the moment of conception. Thus neither animals nor souls perish at death ; nor is there such a thing as death* if that word be understood with rigorous and metaphysical accuracy. The soul never quits completely the body with which it is united, nor does it pass from one body into another with which it had no connection before; a metamorphosis takes place, but there is no metempsychosis. (Tom. II. pp. 51, 52.) On this part of the Leibnitzian system, D'Alembert remarks, that it proves nothing more than that the author had perceived better than any of his predecessors, the impossibility of forming a distinct idea of the nature of matter ; a subject, however (D'Alembert adds), on which the theory of the monads does not seem calcu- 1 " Les substances simples, les vies, les ames, les esprits, sont des unite's." DISSERTATION FIRST. 257 Notes and x .,, ustrations. (Without lated to throw much light. I would rather say altogether denying the justness of J D'Alembert's criticism), that this theory took its rise from the author's vain desire to explain the nature of forces ; in consequence of which he suffers himself perpetually to be led astray from those sensible effects which are exclusively the proper objects of physics, into conjectures con- cerning their efficient causes, which are altoge- ther placed beyond the reach of our research. NOTE D D, p. 134. The metaphysical argument advanced by the Leibnitzians in proof of the law of continuity has never appeared to me to be satisfactory. " If a body at rest (it has been said) begins, per saltum, to move with any finite velocity, then this body must be at the same indivisible instant in two different states, that of rest and of motion, which is impossible." 1 As this reasoning, though it relates to a phy- sical fact, is itself wholly of a metaphysical na- ture ; and as the inference deduced from it has been generalised into a LAW, supposed to extend to all the various branches of human knowledge, it is not altogether foreign to our present sub- ject briefly to consider how far it is demonstra- tively conclusive, in this simplest of all its pos- sible applications. On the above argument, then, I would re- mark, 1. That the ideas both of rest and of mo- tion, as well as the more general idea conveyed by the word state, all of them necessarily involve the idea of time or duration ; and, consequently, a body cannot be said to be in a state either of rest or of motion, at an indivisible instant. Whe- ther the body be supposed (as in the case of mo- tion) to change its place from one instant to an- other ; or to continue (as in that of rest) for an instant in the same place, the idea of some finite portion of time will, on the slightest reflection, illustrations. be found to enter as an essential element into our conception of the physical fact. 2. Although it certainly would imply a con- tradiction to suppose a body to be in two differ- ent states at the same instant, there does not appear to be any inconsistency in asserting that an indivisible instant may form the limit between a state of rest and a state of motion. Suppose one half of this page to be painted white, and the other black, it might, I apprehend, be said with the most rigorous propriety, that the transition from the one colour to the other was made per saltum ; nor do I think it would be regarded as a valid objection to this phraseology, to repre- sent it as one of its implied consequences, that the mathematical line which forms their common limit, must at once be both black and white. It seems to me quite impossible to elude the force of this reasoning, without having recourse to the existence of something intermediate be- tween rest and motion, which does not partake of the nature of either. Is it conceivable that a body can exist in any state which docs not fall under one or other of the two predicaments, rest or motion ? If this question should be answered in the negative, will it not follow that the transition from one of these states to the other must, of necessity, be made per saltum, and must consequently vio- late the supposed law of continuity ? Indeed, if such a law existed, how could a body at rest begin to move, or a body in motion come to a state of rest ? But farther, when it is said that " it is im- possible for a body to have its state changed from motion to rest, or from rest to motion, without passing through all the intermediate de- grees of velocity," what are we to understand by 1 " Si toto tempore," says Father Boscovich, speaking of the Law of Continuity in the Collision of Bodies, " ante con- tactuin subsequentis corporis superficies antecedens habuit 12 gradus velocitatis, et sequent! 9, saltu facto momentaneo ipso initio contactus ; in ipso motnento ea tempora dirimente debuissent habere et 12 et 9 simul, quod est absurdum. Duas enim velocitates simul habere corpus non potest." Theoria Phil. Nat. &c. Boscovich, however, it is to be observed, admits the existence of the Law of Continuity in the phenomena of Motion alone ( 143), and rejects it altogether in things co-existent with each other ( 142). In other cases, he says, Nature does not observe the Law of Continuity with mathematical accuracy, but only affects it ; by which expression he seems to mean, that, where she is guilty of a taltus, she aims at making it as moderate as possible. The expression is certainly deficient in metaphysical precision; but it is not unworthy of attention, inasmuch as it affords a proof, that Boscovich did not (with the Leibnitzians) conceive Mature, or the Author of Nature, as obeying an irresistible necessity in observing or not observing the Law of Continuity. DISS. I. PART II. 2 K 258 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes the intermediate degrees of velocity between rest and Illustrations motion ? Is not ever y velocity, how small soever, a finite velocity ; and does it not differ as essen- tially from a state of rest, as the velocity of light? It is observed by Mr PI ay fair (Dissertation on the Progress of Mathematical and Physical Science, Part I. Sect, iii.), that Galileo was the first who maintained the existence of the law of continuity, and who made use of it as a principle in his reasonings on the phenomena of motion. Mr Playfair, however, with his usual discrimi- nation and correctness, ranks this among the mechanical discoveries of Galileo. Indeed, it does not appear that it was at all regarded by Galileo (as it avowedly was by Leibnitz) in the light of a metaphysical and necessary law, which could not by any possibility be violated in any of the phenomena of motion. It was probably first suggested to him by the diagram which he employed to demonstrate, or rather to illustrate, the uniformly accelerated motion of falling bo- dies ; 1 and the numberless and beautiful exem- plifications of the same law which occur in pure geometry, sufficiently account for the disposition which so many Mathematicians have shown to extend it to all those branches of physics which admit of a mathematical consideration. My late illustrious friend, who, to his many other great and amiable qualities, added the most perfect fairness and candour in his inquiries after truth, has (in the Second Part of his Disserta- tion) expressed himself with considerably great- er scepticism concerning the law of continuity, than in his Outlines of Natural Philosophy. In that work he pronounced the metaphysical ar- gument, employed by Leibnitz to prove its ne- cessity, " to be conclusive." (Sect. VI. 99, b.) In the Second Part of his Dissertation (Sect, ii.), he writes thus on the same subject : " Leibnitz considered this principle as known a priori, because, if any saltus were to take place, that is, if any change were to happen without the intervention of time, the thing changed must be in two different conditions at the same indi- vidual instant, which is obviously impossible. Whether this reasoning be quite satisfactory or no, the conformity of the law to the facts gene- rally observed cannot but entitle it to great au- thority in judging of the explanations and theo- ries of natural phenomena." The phrase, Law of Continuity, occurs repeat- edly in the course of the correspondence be- tween Leibnitz and John Bernouilli, and ap- pears to have been jftrst used by Leibnitz him- self. The following passage contains some in- teresting particulars concerning the history of this law : " Lex Continuitatis, cum usque adeo sit rationi et naturae consentanea, et usum ha- beat tarn late patentem, mirum tamen est earn a nemine (quantum recorder) antea adhibitam fuisse. Mentionem ejus aliquam feceram olim in Novellis Reipublicse Literarias (Juillet, 1687, p. 744), occasione collatiunculse cum Malebranchio, qui ideo meis considerationibus persuasus, suam de legibus motus in Inquisitione Veritatis exposi- tam doctrinam postea mutavit; quod brevi li- bello edito testatus est, in quo ingenue occa- sionem mutationis exponit. Sed tamen paullo promptior, quain par erat, fuit in novis legibus constituendis in eodem libello, antequam mecum communicasset ; nee tantum in veritatem, sed etiam in illam ipsam Legem Continuitatis, etsi minus aperte, denuo tamen impegit ; quod nolui viro optimo objicere, ne viderer ejus existima- tioni detrahere velle." Epist. Leibnit. ad Joh. Bernouilli, 1697. From one of John Bernouilli's letters to Leib- nitz, it would appear that he had himself a con- viction of the truth of this law, before he had any communication with Leibnitz upon the subject. " Placet tuum criterium pro examinandis re- 1 Descartes seems, from his correspondence with Mersenne, to have been much puzzled with Galileo's reasonings con- cerning the descent of falling bodies ; and in alluding to it, has, on different occasions, expressed himself with an indecision and inconsistency of which few instances occur in his works. (Vide Cartesii Epist. Pars II. Epist. xxxiv. xxxv. xxxvii. xci.) His doubts on this point will appear less surprising, if compared with a passage in the article Michaniqne in D'Alembert's Siemens de Philosophic. " Tous les philosophes paroissent convenir, que la vitesse avec laquelle les corps qui tombent com- mencent a se mouvoirest absolument nulle," &c. &c. (See his Melanges, Tom. IV. p. 219, 220.) DISSERTATION FIRST. 259 gulis motuum, quod legem continuitatis vocas; est enim per se evidens, et velut a natura nobis inditum, quod evanescente inaequalitate hypo- thesium, evanescere quoque debeant inaequali- tates eventuum. Hinc multoties non satis mi- rari potui, qui fieri potuerit, ut tarn incongruas, tarn absonas, et tarn manifesto inter se pug- nantes regulas, excepta sola prima, potuerit con- dere Cartesius, vir alias summi ingenii. Mihi videtur vel ab infante falsitatem illarum palpari posse, eo quod ubique saltus ille, naturae adeo inimicus, manifesto nimis elucet." Epist. BER- NOUILLI ad Leib. 1696. Vide LEIBNITZII et Jo. BERNOUILLI Comm. Epist. 2 vols. 4to. Lausannae et Genevae, 1745.) NOTE E E, p. 134. Mais il restoit encore la plus grande question, de ce que ces ames ou ces formes deviennent par la mort de 1'animal, ou par la destruction de 1'individu de la substance organise. Et c'est ce qui embarrasse le plus ; d'autant qu'il paroit peu raisonnable que les ames restent inutilement dans un chaos de matiere confuse. Cela m'a fait juger enfin qu'il n'y avoit qu'un seul parti raisonnable a prendre; et c'est celui de la conservation non seulement de 1'ame, mais encore de 1'animal meme, et de la ma- chine organique; quoique la destruction des parties grossieres 1'ait reduit a une petitesse qui n'echappe pas moins a nos sens que celle ou il etoit avant que de naitre. (LEIB. Op. Tom. II. p. 51.) .... Des personnes fort exactes aux experi- ences se sont deja aper^ues de notre terns, 1 qu'on peut douter, si jamais un animal tout a fait nouveau est produit, et si les animaux tout en vie ne sont deja en petit avant la conception dans les semences aussi bien que les plantes. Cette doctrine etant posee, il sera raisonnable de juger, que ce qui ne commence pas de vivre ne cesse pas de vivre non plus; et que la mort, comme la generation, n'est que la transforma- tion du meme animal qui est tantot augmente, et tantot diminue. (Ibid. pp. 42, 43.) Notes and . . . . Et puisqu' ainsi il n'y a point de pre- miere naissance ni de generation entierement T11 nouvelle de 1'animal, il s'ensuit qu'il n'y en aura point d' extinction finale, ni de mort entiere prise a la rigueur metaphysique ; et que, par conse- quent, au lieu de la transmigration des ames, il n'y a qu'une transformation d'un meme animal, selon que les organes sont plies differement, et plus ou moins developpes. (Ibid. p. 52.) Quant a la Metempsycose, je crois que 1'ordre ne 1'admet point; il veut que tout soit expli- cable distinctement, et que rien ne se fasse par saut. Mais le passage de Tame d'un corps dans 1'autre seroit un saut etrange et inexplicable. II se fait toujours dans 1'animal ce qui se fait pre- sentement: C'est que le corps est dans un changement continuel, comme un fleuve, et ce que nous appellons generation ou mort, n'est qu'un changement plus grand et plus prompt qu'a 1'ordinaire, tel que seroit le saut ou la ca- taracte d'une riviere. Mais ces sauts ne sont pas absolus et tels que je desaprouve ; comme seroit celui d'un corps qui iroit d'un lieu a un autre sans passer par le milieu. Et de tels sauts ne sont pas seulement defendus dans les mouvemens, mais encore dans tout ordre des choses ou des veri- tes. The sentences which follow afford a proof of what I have elsewhere remarked, how much the mind of Leibnitz was misled, in the whole of this metaphysical theory, by habits of think- ing formed in early life, amidst the hypothetical abstractions of pure geometry; a prejudice (or idol of the mathematical den) to which the most important errors of his philosophy might, with- out much difficulty, be traced. Or comme dans une ligne de geometric il y a certains points distingues, qu'on appelle sommets, points d'in- flexion, points de rebroussement, ou autrement ; et comme il y en a des lignes qui en ont une infinite, c'est ainsi qu'il faut concevoir dans la vie d'un animal ou d'une personne les terns d'un changement extraordinaire, qui ne laissent pas d'etre dans la regie gen6rale ; de meme que les points distingues dans la courbe se peu vent determiner par sa nature generate ou son equa- tion. On peut toujours dire d'un animal c'est 1 The experiments here referred to are the observations of Swammerdam, Malpighi, and Lewenhoeck. 260 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes Illusion, tout comme id, la difference n'est que du plus ou moins."-(Tom. V. p. 18.) NOTE FF, p. 136. The praise which I have bestowed on this Memoir renders it necessary for me to take some notice of a very exceptionable proposition which is laid down in the first paragraph, as a fundamental maxim, that " all proper names were at first appellatives ;" a proposition so completely at variance with the commonly re- ceived opinions among later philosophers, that it seems an object of some curiosity to inquire, how far it is entitled to plead in its favour the authority of Leibnitz. Since the writings of Condillac and of Smith, it has, so far as I know, been universally acknowledged, that, if there be any one truth in the Theoretical History of Lan- guage, which we are entitled to assume as an incontrovertible fact, it is the direct contrary of the above proposition. Indeed, to assert that all proper names were at first appellatives, would appear to be nearly an absurdity of the same kind as to maintain, that classes of objects existed before individual objects had been brought into being. When Leibnitz, however, comes to explain his idea more fully, we find it to be something very different from what his words literally im- ply ; and to amount only to the trite and indis- putable observation, that, in simple and primi- tive languages, all proper names (such as the names of persons, mountains, places of resi- dence, &c. ) are descriptive or significant of cer- tain prominent and characteristical features, distinguishing them from other objects of the same class ; a fact, of which a large proportion of the surnames still in use, all over Europe, as well as the names of mountains, villages, and rivers, when traced to their primitive roots, afford numerous and well known exemplifica- tions. Not that the proposition, even when thus ex- plained, can be assumed as a general maxim. It holds, indeed, in many cases, as the Celtic and the Saxon languages abundantly testify in our own island ; but it is true only under cer- tain limitations, and it is perfectly consistent with the doctrine delivered on this subject by Note * the greater part of philologers for the last fifty njustmii years. ^s~v~+ In the history of language, nothing is more remarkable, than the aversion of men to coin words out of unmeaning and arbitrary sounds ; and their eagerness to avail themselves of the stores already in their possession, in order to give utterance to their thoughts on the new topics which the gradual extension of their ex- perience is continually bringing within the circle of their knowledge. Hence metaphors, and other figures of speech ; and hence the various changes which words undergo, in the way of amplification, diminution, composition, and the other transformations of elementary terms which fall under the notice of the etymologist. Were it not, indeed, for this strong and universal bias of our nature, the vocabulary of every language would, in process of time, become so extensive and unwieldy, as to render the acquisition of one's mother tongue a task of immense diffi- culty, and the acquisition of a dead or foreign tongue next to impossible. It is needless to observe, how immensely these tasks are facili- tated by that etymological system which runs, more or less, through every language ; and which everywhere proceeds on certain analogi- cal principles, which it is the business of the practical grammarian to reduce to general rules, for the sake of those who wish to speak or to write it with correctness. In attempting thus to trace backwards the steps of the mind towards the commencement of its progress, it is evident, that we must at last arrive at a set of elementary and primitive roots, of which no account can be given, but the arbitrary choice of those who first hap- pened to employ them. It is to this first stage in the infancy of language that Mr Smith's re- marks obviously relate ; whereas the proposi- tion of Leibnitz, which gave occasion to this note, as obviously relates to its subsequent stages, when the language is beginning to as- sume somewhat of a regular form, by composi- tions and other modifications of the materials previously collected. From these slight hints it may be inferred, 1st, That the proposition of Leibnitz, although DISSERTATION FIRST. 261 Notes and it may seem, from the very inaccurate and 1S equivocal terms in which it is expressed, to "v*^ stand in direct opposition to the doctrine of Smith, was really meant by the author to state a fact totally unconnected with the question under Smith's consideration. 2dly, That even in the sense in which it was understood by the author, it fails entirely, when extended to that first stage in the infancy of language, to which the introductory paragraphs in Mr Smith's dis- course are exclusively confined. NOTE GG, p. 138. " Je viens de recevoir une lettre d'un Prince Regnant de 1'Empire, ou S. A. me marque avoir vu deux fois ce printems a la derniere foire de Leipsig, et examine avec soin un chien qui parle. Ce chien a prononce distinctement plus de trente mots, repondant meme assez a propos a son maitre : il a aussi prononce tout 1'alpha- bet excepte les lettres m, n, x." (LEIB. Opera, Tom. V. p. 72.) Thus far the fact rests upon the authority of the German prince alone. But from a passage in the History of the Academy of Sciences, for the year 1706, it appears that Leibnitz had himself seen and heard the dog. What follows is trans- cribed from a report of the Academy upon a letter from Leibnitz to the Abbe de St Pierre, giving the details of this extraordinary occur- rence. " Sans un garant tel que M. Leibnitz, temoin oculaire, nous n'aurions pas la hardiesse de rap- porter, qu'aupres de Zeitz dans la Misnie, il y a un chien qui parle. C'est un chien de Paysan, d'une figure des plus communes, et de grandeur mediocre. Un jeune enfant lui entendit pousser quelques sons qu'il crut ressembler a des mots Allemands, et sur cela se mit en tete de lui ap- prendre a parler. Le maitre, qui n'avoit rien de mieux a faire, n'y epargna pas le terns ni ses peines, et heureusement le disciple avoit des dis- positions qu'il cut ete difficile de trouver dans un autre. Enfin, au bout de quelques annees, le chien scut prononcer environ une trentaine de mots : de ce nombre sont The, Caffe, Chocolat, Assembled, mots Francois, qui ont passe dans 1'Allemand tels qu'ils sont II est a remarquer, que le chien avoit bien trois ans quand il fut mis Notes a 1'ecole. II ne parle que par echo, c'est a dire, Iu ** apres que son maitre a prononce un mot ; et il semble, qu'il ne repete que par force et malgre lui, quoiqu'on ne le maltraite pas. Encore une fois, M. Leibnitz 1'a vu et entendu." (Expose d'une lettre de M. Leibnitz a 1'Abbe de St Pierre sur un chien qui parle.) " Get expose de la lettre de M. Leibnitz se trouve dans 1'Histoire de PAcademie des Sciences, annee 1706. Ce sont les Auteurs de 1'Histoire de 1' Academic qui parlent." (LEIB. Opera, Vol. II. p. 180. P. II.) May not all the circumstances of the above story be accounted for, by supposing the master of the dog to have possessed that peculiar species of imitative power which is called Ventriloquism ? Mathews, I have no doubt, would find little difficulty in managing such a deception, so as to impose on the senses of any person who had never before witnessed any exhibition of the same kind. NOTE H H, p. 138. When I speak in favourable terms of the Philosophical Spirit, I hope none of my readers will confound it with the spirit of that false philosophy, which, by unhinging every rational principle of belief, seldom fails to unite in the same characters the extremes of scepticism and of credulity. It is a very remarkable fact, that the same period of the eighteenth century, and the same part of Europe which were most dis- tinguished by the triumphs of Atheism and Materialism, were also distinguished by a greater number of visionaries and impostors than had ever appeared before, since the revival of letters. Nor were these follies confined to persons of little education. They extended to men of the highest rank, and to many individuals of dis- tinguished talents. Of this the most satisfactory proofs might be produced ; but I have room here only for one short quotation. It is from the pen of the Due de Levis, and relates to the celebrat- ed Mareschal de Richelieu, on whom Voltaire has lavished so much of his flattery. " Ce dont je suis positivement certain, c'est que cet homme spirituel (Le Mareschal de Richelieu) etoit 262 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes superstitieux, et qu'il croyoit aux predictions Illusions des astrologues et autres sottises de cet espece. Je 1'ai vu refusant a Versailles d'aller faire sa cour au fils aine de Louis XVI. en disant seri- eusement, qu'il savoitque cet enfant n'etoit point destine au trone. Cette credulite superstitieuse, generale pendant la ligue, etoit encore tres com- mune sous la regence lorsque le Due de Richelieu entra dans le monde ; par la plus bizarre des inconsequences, elle s'allioit tres bien avec la plus grande impiete, et la plupart des material- istes croyoient aux esprits ; aujourd'hui, ce genre de folie est tres rare ; mais beaucoup de gens, qui se moquent des astrologues, croient SL des predictions d'une autre espece." (Souvenirs et Portraits, par M. DE LEVIS, a Paris, 1813.) Some extraordinary facts of the same kind are mentioned in the Memoirs of the Marquis de Bouitte. According to him, Frederic the Great himself was not free from this sort of superstition. A similar remark is made by an ancient historian, with respect to the manners of Rome at the period of the Gothic invasion. " There are many who do not presume either to bathe, or to dine, or to appear in public, till they have diligently consulted, according to the rules of astrology, the situation of Mercury, and the aspect of the Moon. It is singular enough that this vain credulity may often be discovered among the prophane sceptics, who impiously doubt or deny the existence of a Celestial Power." (GIBBON, from Ammianus Marcel- linus, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. V. p. 278.) NOTE 1 1, p. 139. The following estimate of Leibnitz, considered in comparison with his most distinguished con- temporaries, approaches, on the whole, very nearly to the truth ; although some doubts may be entertained about the justness of the decision in the last clause of the sentence. " Leibnitz, aussi hardi que Descartes, aussi subtil que Bayle. peut-etre moins profond que Newton, et moins sage que Locke, mais seul universel entre Notes tous ces grand homines, paroit avoir embrasse m us ^j le domaine de la raison dans toute son etendue, ^-*~v^ et avoir contribue le plus a repandre cet esprit philosophique que fait aujourd'hui la gloire de notre siecle." (BAILLY, Elogede Leibnitz.) I have mentioned in the text only a part of the learned labours of Leibnitz. It remains to be added, that he wrote also on various subjects connected with chemistry, medicine, botany, and natural history ; on the philosophy and lan- guage of the Chinese ; and on numberless other topics of subordinate importance. The philolo- gical discussions and etymological collections, which occupy so large a space among his works, would (even if he had produced nothing else) have been no inconsiderable memorials of the activity and industry of his mind. Manifold and heterogeneous as these pursuits may at first appear, it is not difficult to trace the thread by which his curiosity was led from one of them to another. I have already remarked a connection of the same sort between his different metaphysical and theological researches; and it may not be altogether uninteresting to extend the observation to some of the subjects enume- rated in the foregoing paragraph. The studies by which he first distinguished himself in the learned world (I pass over that of jurisprudence, * which was imposed on him by the profession for which he was destined) were directed to the antiquities of his own coun- try; and more particularly to those connected with the history of the house of Brunswick. With this view he ransacked, with an unex- ampled industry, the libraries, monasteries, and other archives, both of Germany and of Italy ; employing in this ungrateful drudgery several of the best and most precious years of his life. Mortified, however, to find how narrow the li- mits are, within which the range of written re- cords is confined, he struck out for himself and 1 Bailly, in his Eloge on Leibnitz, speaks of him in terms of the most enthusiastic praise, as a philosophical jurist, and aa a man fitted to become the legislator of the human race. To me, I must own, it appears, that there is no part of his writings in which he discovers less of his characteristical originality, than where he professes to treat of the law of nature. On these occasions, how inferior does he appear to Grotius, not to speak of Montesquieu and his disciples ! DISSERTATION FIRST. 263 Notes his successors a new and unexpected light, to lustrations S u ^ e them through the seemingly hopeless ^^r**^ darkness of remote ages. This light was the study of etymology, and of the affinities of dif- ferent tongues in their primitive roots ; a light at first faint and glimmering, but which, since his time, has continued to increase in bright- ness, and is likely to do so more and more as the world grows older. It is pleasing to see his curiosity on this subject expand, from the names of the towns and rivers and mountains in his neighbourhood, till it reached to China and other regions in the east ; leading him, in the last re- sult, to some general conclusions concerning the origin of the different tribes of our species, ap- proximating very nearly to those which have been since drawn from a much more extensive range of data by Sir William Jones, and other philologers of the same school. As an additional light for illustrating the an- tiquities of Germany, he had recourse to natu- ral history ; examining, with a scientific eye, the shells and other marine bodies everywhere to be found in Europe, and the impressions of plants and fishes (some of them unknown in this part of the world) which are distinctly legible, even by the unlettered observer, on many of our fos- sils. In entering upon this research, as well as on the former, he seems to have had a view to Germany alone ; on the state of which (he tells us), prior to all historical documents, it was his purpose to prefix a discourse to his History of the House of Brunswick. But his imagination soon took a bolder flight, and gave birth to his Protogcea; a dissertation which (to use his own words) had for its object " to ascertain the ori- ginal face of the earth, and to collect the ves- tiges of its earliest history from the monuments which nature herself has left of her successive operations on its surface." It is a work which, wild and extravagant as it may now be regard- ed, is spoken of by Buffon with much respect; and is considered by Cuvier as the ground-work of Buffon's own system on the same subject. In the connection which I have now pointed out between the Historical, the Philological, and the Geological speculations of Leibnitz, Helvetius might have fancied that he saw a new exemplification of the law of continuity ; but the true light in which it ought to be viewed, is as a faithful picture of a philosophical mind eman- cipating itself from the trammels of local and conventional details, and gradually rising from subject to subject, till it embraces in its survey those nobler inquiries which, sooner or later, will be equally interesting to every portion of the human race. l NOTE K K, p. 143. Of Locke's affectionate regard for Collins, notwithstanding the contrariety of their opinions on some questions of the highest moment, there exist many proofs in his letters, published by M. Des Maizeaux. In one of these, the following passage is remarkable. It is dated from Gates in Essex, 1703, about a year before Locke's death. " You complain of a great many defects ; and that very complaint is the highest recommenda- tion I could desire to make me love and esteem you, and desire your friendship. And if I were now setting out m the world, I should think it my great happiness to have such a companion as you, who had a true relish for truth ; would in earnest seek it with me ; from whom I might receive it undisguised; and to whom I might communicate what I thought true freely. Be- lieve it, my good friend, to love truth for truth's sake, is the principal part of human perfection Notes 1 In the above note, I have said nothing of Leibnitz's project of a philosophical language, founded on an alphabet of Human Thoughts, as he has nowhere given us any hint of the principles on which he intended to proceed in its formation, although he has frequently alluded to the practicability of such an invention in terms of extraordinary confidence. (For some remarks on these passages in his works, see Philosophy of the Human Mind, Vol. II. pp. 143, et scq.) In some of Leibnitz's expressions on this subject, there is a striking resemblance to those of Descartes in one of his letters. (See the preliminary discourse prefixed to the ABBE EMERY'S Pensies de Descartes, p. xiv. et seq.J In the ingenious essay of Michaelis On the Influence of Opinions on Language, and of Language on Opinions (which obtained the prize from the lloyal Society of Berlin in 1759, there are some very acute and judicious reflections on the impossibili- ty of carrying into effect, with any advantage, such a project as these philosophers had in view. The author's argument on this point seems to me decisive, in the present state of human knowledge ; but who can pretend to fix a limit to the possible attainments of our posterity ! 264 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes in this world, and the seed-plot of all other vir- IIlustrations. tues '' and > if * mistake not > y ou have ** mucl1 of it as ever I met with in any body. What, then, is there wanting to make you equal to the best; a friend for anyone to be proud of?" The whole of Locke's letters to Col- lins are highly interesting and curious; more particularly that which he desired to be deliver- ed to him after his own death. From the ge- neral tenor of these letters, it may be inferred, that Collins had never let Locke fully into the secret of those pernicious opinions which he was afterwards at so much pains to disseminate. NOTE L L, p. 144. In addition to the account of Spinoza given in Bayle, some interesting particulars of his his- tory may be learnt from a small volume, en- titled, La Vie de 13. de Spinoza, JLiree des ecrits de ce Fameux Philosophe, et du temoignage de plu- sieurs personnes dignes de foi, qui I'ont connu par- ticulierement : par JEAN COLERUS, Ministre de FEglise Lutherienne de la Haye. 1706. 1 The book is evidently written by a man altogether unfit to appreciate the merits or demerits of Spinoza as an author ; but it is not without some value to those who delight in the study of human character, as it supplies some chasms in the narrative of Bayle, and has every appear- ance of the most perfect impartiality and can- dour. According to this account, Spinoza was a per- son of the most quiet and inoffensive manners ; of singular temperance and moderation in his pas- sions; contented and happy with an income which barely supplied him with the necessaries of life ; and of too independent a spirit to accept of any addition to it, either from the favour of princes, or the liberality of his friends. In con- formity to the law, and to the customs of his ancestors (which he adhered to, when he thought them not unreasonable, even when under the sentence of excommunication), he resolved to learn some mechanical trade; and fortunately selected that of grinding optical glasses, in which he acquired so much dexterity, that it furnished him with what he conceived to be a sufficient maintenance. He acquired also enough of the art of designing, to produce good portraits in chalk and china-ink, of some distinguished persons. For the last five years of his life he lodged in the house of a respectable and religious family, who were tenderly attached to him, and from whom his biographer collected various interest- ing anecdotes. All of them are very credit- able to his private character, and more particu- larly show how courteous and amiable he must have been in his intercourse with his inferiors. In a bill presented for payment after his death, he is styled by Abraham Keveling, his barber- surgeon, Benedict Spinoza, of blessed memory ; and the same compliment is paid to him by the tradesman who furnished gloves to the mourners at his funeral. These particulars are the more deserving of notice, as they rest on the authority of a very zealous member of the Lutheran communion, and coincide exactly with the account given of Spinoza by the learned and candid Mosheim., " This man (says he) observed, in his conduct, the rules of wisdom and probity much better than many who profess themselves Christians ; nor did he ever endeavour to pervert the senti- ments or to corrupt the morals of those with whom he lived ; or to inspire, in his discourse, a contempt of religion or virtue." (Eccles. History, translated by Dr MACLAINE, Vol. IV. p. 252.) Among the various circumstances connected with Spinoza's domestic habits, Colerus men- tions one very trifling singularity, which ap- pears to me to throw a strong light on his ge- neral character, and to furnish some apology for his eccentricities as an author. The ex- treme feebleness of his constitution (for he was consumptive from the age of 20) having unfitted him for the enjoyment of convivial pleasures, he spent the greater part of the day in his chamber alone ; but when fatigued with study, he would sometimes join the family party below, The Life of Spinoza by Colerus, with some other curious pieces on the same subject, is reprinted in the complete edi- tion of Spinoza's Works, published at Jena, in 1802. DISSERTATION FIRST. 265 Notes and take a part in their conversation, however [lustrations insignificant its subject might be. One of the -x-v"x^ amusements with which he was accustomed to unbend his mind, was that of entangling flies in a spider's web, or of setting spiders a-fight- ing with each other ; on which occasions (it is added) he would observe their combats with so much interest, that it was not unusual for him to be seized with immoderate fits of laughter. Does not this slight trait indicate very decidedly a tendency to insanity ; a supposition by no means incompatible (as will be readily admitted by all who have paid any, attention to the phe- nomena of madness) with that logical acumen which is so conspicuous in some of his writ- ings ? His irreligious principles he is supposed to have adopted, in the first instance, from his Latin preceptor Vander Ende, a physician and classical scholar of some eminence ; but it is much more probable, that his chief school of atheism was the synagogue of Amsterdam; where, without any breach of charity, a large proportion of the more opulent class of the as- sembly may be reasonably presumed to belong to the ancient sect of Sadducees. (This is, I presume, the idea of Heineccius in the follow- ing passage : " Quamvis Spinoza Cartesii prin- cipia methodo mathematica demon strata dede- rit ; Pantheismum tamen ille non ex Cartesio didicit, sed domi habuit, quos sequeretur" In proof of this, he refers to a book entitled Spi- nozisnms in Judaismo, by Waechterus.) The blasphemous curses pronounced upon him in the sentence of excommunication were not well calculated to recal him to the faith of his ances- tors ; and when combined with his early and hereditary prejudices against Christianity, may go far to account for the indiscriminate war which he afterwards waged against priests of all denominations. The ruling passion of Spinoza seems to have been the love of fame. " It is owned (says Bayle) that he had an extreme desire to immor- talise his name, and would have sacrificed his life to that glory, though he should have been torn to pieces by the mob." (Art. Spinoza.} NOTE M M, p. 148. In proof of the impossibility of Liberty, Col- lins argues thus : " A second reason to prove man a necessary agent is, because all his actions have a begin- ning. For whatever has a beginning must have a cause ; and every cause is a necessary cause. " If anything can have a beginning, which has no cause, then nothing can produce some- thing. And if nothing can produce something, then the world might have had a beginning without a cause ; which is an absurdity not only charged on atheists, but is a real absurdity in itself.* * * * *Liberty, therefore, or a power to act or not to act, to do this or another thing under the same causes, is an impossibility and atheistical. l " And as Liberty stands, and can only be grounded on the absurd principles of Epicurean atheism; so the Epicurean atheists, who were the most popular and most numerous sect of the atheists of antiquity, were the great assertors of liberty ; as, on the other side, the Stoics, who were the most popular and numerous sect among the religionaries of antiquity, were the great assertors of fate, and necessity" (COL- LINS, p. 54.) As to the above reasoning of Collins, it can- not be expected that I should, in the compass of a Note, " boult this matter to the bran." It is sufficient here to remark, that it derives all its plausibility from the unqualified'terms in which the maxim (priBsv avairtov) has frequently been stated. " In the idea of every change (says Dr Price, a zealous advocate for the freedom of the will) is included that of its being an effect." (Review, 8fc. p. 30, 3d edition.) If this maxim be literally admitted without any explanation or restriction, it seems difficult to resist the con- clusions of the Necessitarians. The proper statement of Price's maxim evidently is, that Notes and Illustrations- 1 To the same purpose Edwards attempts to show, that " the scheme of free-will (by affording an exception to that die. tate of common sense which refers every event to a cause) would destroy the proof a posteriori for the being of God." DISS. I. PART II. 2 L 266 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes and " in every change we perceive in inanimate mat- Illustrations ter > the idea of its bein an e ff ect is necessaril y involved;" and that lie himself understood it under this limitation appears clearly from the application he makes of it to the point in dis- pute. As to intelligent and active beings, to affirm that they possess the power of self-deter- mination, seems to me to be little more than an identical proposition. Upon an accurate analysis of the meaning of words, it will be found that the idea of an efficient cause implies the idea of Mind ; and, consequently, that it is absurd to ascribe the volitions of mind to the efficiency of causes foreign to itself. To do so must un- avoidably involve us in the inconsistencies of Spinozism ; by forcing us to conclude that everything is passive, and nothing active in the universe ; and, consequently, that the idea of a First Cause involves an impossibility. But upon these hints I must not enlarge at present ; and shall, therefore, confine myself to what falls more immediately within the scope of this Dis- course, Collins's Historical Statement with re- spect to the tenets of the Epicureans and the Stoics. In confirmation of his assertion concerning the former, he refers to the following well known lines of Lucretius : Denique si semper motus connectitur omnis, &c. &c. (Lucret. Lib. 2. v. 251.) On the obscurity of this passage, and the in- consistencies involved in it, much might be said ; but it is of more importance, on the pre- sent occasion, to remark its complete repug- nance to the whole strain and spirit of the Epi- curean Philosophy. This repugnance did not escape the notice of Cicero, who justly consi- ders Epicurus as having contributed more to establish, by this puerile subterfuge, the autho- rity of Fatalism, than if he had left the argu- ment altogether untouched. " Nee vero quis- quam magis confirmare mihi videtur non modo fatum, verum etiam necessitatem et vim om- nium rerum, sustulisseque motus animi volun- taries, quam hie qui aliter obsistere fato fatetur se non potuisse nisi ad has commenticias decli- nationes confugisset." (Liber de Fato, cap. 20.) Notes and On the noted expression of Lucretius (fatis avolsa voluntas) some acute remarks are made T n ' lllustratn in a note on the French translation by M. de la v-x~v~* Grange. They are not improbably from the pen of the Baron d'Holbach, who is said to have contributed many notes to this translation. Whoever the author was, he was evidently strongly struck with the inconsistency of this particular tenet with the general principles of the Epicurean system. " On est surpris qu' Epicure fonde la liberte humaine sur la declinaison des atonies. On de- mande si cette declinaison est necessaire, ou si elle est simplement accidentelle. Necessaire, comment la liberte peut elle en etre le resultat ? Accidentelle, par quoi est elle determinee ? Mais on devrait bien plutot etre surpris, qu'il lui soit venu en idee de rendre 1'homme libre dans un systeme qui suppose un enchainement necessaire de causes et d'effets. C'etoit une recherche curie use, que la raison qui a pu faire d'Epicure 1'Apotre de la Liberte." For the theory which follows on this point, I must refer to the work in question. (See Traduction Nou- velle de Lucrece, avec des Notes, par M. DE LA GRANGE, Vol. I. pp. 218, 219, 220, a Paris, 1768.) But whatever may have been the doctrines of some of the ancient Atheists about man's free- agency, it will not be denied, that in the History of MODERN Philosophy, the schemes of Atheism and of Necessity have been hitherto always con- nected together. Not that I would by any means be understood to say, that every Neces- sitarian must ipso facto be an Atheist, or even that any presumption is afforded by a man's at- tachment to the former sect, of his having the slightest bias in faA r our of the latter; but only that every modern Atheist I have heard of has been a Necessitarian. I cannot help adding, that the most consistent Necessitarians who have yet appeared, have been those who follow- ed out their principles till they ended in Spino- zism, a doctrine which differs from atheism more in words than in reality. In what Collins says of the Stoics in the above quotation, he plainly proceeds on the supposi- tion that all Fatalists are of course Necessita- DISSERTATION FIRST. 267 Notes rians ; l and I agree with him in thinking, that lustrations ^" s wou ^ ^ e * ne case if they reasoned logically, -x-vv^ It is certain, however, that a great proportion of those who have belonged to the first sect have disclaimed all connection with the second. The Stoics themselves furnish one very remarkable instance. I do not know any author by whom the liberty of the will is stated in stronger and more explicit terms, than it is by Epictetus in the very first sentence of the Enchiridion. In- deed the Stoics seem, with their usual passion for exaggeration, to have carried their ideas about the freedom of the will to an unphiloso- phical extreme. If the belief of man's free-agency has thus maintained its ground among professed Fatalists, it need not appear surprising, that it should have withstood the strong arguments against it, which the doctrine of the eternal decrees of God, and even that of the Divine prescience, appear at first sight to furnish. A remarkable instance of this occurs in St Augustine (distinguished in ec- clesiastical history by the title of the Doctor of Grace j, who has asserted the liberty of the will in terms as explicit as those in which he has an- nounced the theological dogmas with which it is most difficult to reconcile it. Nay, he has gone so far as to acknowledge the essential import- ance of this belief, as a motive to virtuous con- duct. " Quocirca nullo modo cogimur, aut re- tenta preescientia Dei, tollere voluntatis arbi- trium, aut retento voluntatis arbitrio, Deum, quod nefas est, negare prsescium futurorum, sed utrumque amplectimur, utrumque fideliter et veraciter confitemur : illud, ut bene credamus ; hoc ut bene vivamus." Descartes has expressed himself on this point nearly to the same purpose with St Augustine. In one passage he asserts, in the most unquali- fied terms, that God is the cause of all the ac- tions which depend on the Free-will of Man ; and yet, that the Will is really free, he consi- ders as a fact perfectly established by the evi- dence of consciousness. " Sed quemadmodum existentise divinse cognitio non debet liberi nos- tri arbitrii certitudinem tollere, quia illud in no- bismet ipsis experimur et sentimus ; ita neque liberi nostri arbitrii cognitio existentiam Dei apud nos dubiam facere debet. Independentia enim ilia quam experimur, atque in nobis per- sentiscimus, et quae actionibus nostris laude vel vituperio dignis efficiendis sufficit, non pugnat cum dependentia alterius generis, secundum quam omnia Deo subjiciuntur." (CARTESII Epistolce, Epist. VIII. IX. Pars i.) These let- ters form part of his correspondence with the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of Frederick, King of Bohemia, and Elector Palatine. We are told by Dr Priestley, in the very in- teresting Memoirs of his own Life, that he was educated in the strict principles of Calvinism ; and yet it would appear, that while he remained a Calvinist, he entertained no doubt of his being a free-agent. " The doctrine of Necessity," he also tells us, " he first learned from Collins ; * and was established in the belief of it by Hart- ley's Observations on Man." (Ibid. p. 19.) He farther mentions in another work, that " he was not a ready convert to the doctrine of Necessity, and that, like Dr Hartley himself, he gave up his liberty with great reluctance." (Preface to the Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity Illustrated, 2d edit. Birmingham, 1782, p. xxvii.) These instances afford a proof, I do not say of the compatibility of man's free-agency with those schemes with which it seems most at variance, but of this compatibility in the opinion of some of the profoundest thinkers who have turned their attention to the argument. No conclusion, therefore, can be drawn against a man's belief in his own free-agency, from his embracing other metaphysical or theological tenets, with which Notes 1 Collins states this more strongly in what he says of the Pharisees. " The Pharisees, who were a religious sect, as- cribed all things to fate or to God's appointment, and it was the first article of their creed, that Fate and God do all, and, consequently, they could not assert a true liberty when they asserted a liberty together with this fatality and necessity of all things." (COLLINS, p. 54.) 2 We are elsewhere informed by Priestley, that " it was in consequence of reading and studying the Inquiry 01 Collins, he was first convinced of the truth of the doctrine of Necessity, and was enabled to see the fallacy of most of the arguments in favour of Philosophical Liberty : though (he adds) 1 was much more confirmed in this principle by my acquaintance with Hartley's Theory of the Human Mind: a work to which I owe much more than I am able to express." (Preface, &c. &c. p. xxvii.) 268 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes it may appear to ourselves impossible to recon- and -i ., Illustrations. clle As for the notion of liberty, for which Collins professes himself an advocate, it is precisely that of his predecessor Hobbes, who defines a free- agent to be, " he that can do if he will, and for- bear if he will." (HOBBES'S Works, p. 484, fol. ed.) The same definition has been adopted by Leibnitz, by Gravesande, by Edwards, by Bon- net, and by all our later necessitarians. It can- not be better expressed than in the words of Gravesande : " Facultas faciendi quod libuerit, qucecunque fuerit voluntatis deter minatio" fin- trod, ad Philosoph. 115.) Dr Priestley ascribes this peculiar notion of free-will to Hobbes as its author ; l but it is, in fact, of much older date even among modern metaphysicians ; coinciding exactly with the doctrine of those scholastic divines who contend- ed for the Liberty of Spontaneity, in opposition to the Liberty of Indifference. It is, however, to Hobbes that the partizans of this opinion are in- debted for the happiest and most popular illus- tration of it that has yet been given. " I con- ceive," says he, " liberty to be rightly defined, The absence of all the impediments to action that are not contained in the nature and intrinsical quality of the agent. As, for example, the wa- ter is said to descend freely, or to have liberty to descend by the channel of the river, because there is no impediment that way : but not across, because the banks are impediments. And, though water cannot ascend, yet men never say, it wants the liberty to ascend, but the faculty or power, because the impediment is in the nature of the water, and intrinsical. So also we say, he that is tied wants the liberty to go, because the impediment is not in him, but in his hands ; whereas we say not so of him who is sick or lame, because the impediment is in himself." (Treatise of Liberty and Necessity.) According to Bonnet, " moral liberty is the power of the mind to obey without constraint the impulse of the motives which act upon it." This definition, which is obviously the same in substance with that of Hobbes, is thus very just- ly, as well as acutely, animadverted on by Cuvier. " N'admettant aucune action sans motif, comme dit-il, il ri'y a aucun effet sans cause, Bonnet definit la liberte morale le pouvoir de I'ame de suivre sans contrainte les motifs dont elleeprouve 1'impulsion ; et resout ainsi les objections que 1'on tire de la prevision de Dieu ; mais peut- etre aussi detournent-t-il 1'idee qu'on se fait d'ordinaire de la liberte. Malgre ces opinions que touchent au Materialisme et au Fatalisme, Bonnet fut tres religieux." (Biographic Uni- verselle, a Paris, 1812. Art. Bonnet.) From this passage it appears, that the very ingenious writer was as completely aware as Clarke or Reid, of the unsoundness of the defi- nition of moral liberty given by Hobbes and his followers ; and that the ultimate tendency of the doctrine which limits the free-agency of man to (what has been called) the liberty of spontaneity, was the same, though in a more disguised form, with that of fatalism. For a complete exposure of the futility of this definition of liberty, as the word is employed in the controversy about man's free-agency, I have only to refer to Clarke's remarks on Collins, and to Dr Reid's Essays on the Active Powers of Man. In this last work, the various meanings of this very ambiguous word are explained with great accuracy and clearness. The only two opinions which, in the actual state of metaphysical science, ought to be stated in contrast, are that of Liberty (or free-will) on the one side, and that of Necessity on the other. As to the Liberty of Spontaneity (which expresses a fact altogether foreign to the point in question), I can conceive no motive for inventing such a phrase, but a desire in some writers to veil the scheme of necessity from their readers, under a language less revolting to the sentiments of mankind ; and, in others, an anxiety to banish 1 " The doctrine of philosophical necessity," says Priestley, " is in reality a modern thing, not older, I believe, than Mr Hobbes. Of the Calvinists, I believe Mr Jonathan Edwards to be the first." (Illustrations of Philosophical Necessity, p. 195.) Supposing this statement to be correct, does not the very modern date of Hobbes's alleged discovery furnish a very strong presumption against it ? DISSERTATION FIRST. 269 Notes it as far as possible from their own thoughts, istrations ^Y substituting instead of the terms in which *~v*-' it is commonly expressed, a circumlocution which seems, on a superficial view, to concede something to the advocates for liberty. If this phrase (the Liberty of Spontaneity) should fall into disuse, the other phrase (the Liberty of Indifference j, 1 which is commonly stated in opposition to it, would become com- pletely useless ; nor would there be occasion for qualifying with any epithet, the older, simpler, and much more intelligible word, Free-iuill. The distinction between physical and moral necessity I conceive to be not less frivolous than those to which the foregoing animadversions relate. On this point I agree with Diderot, that the word necessity (as it ought to be under- stood in this dispute) admits but of one interpre- tation. NOTE N N, p. 148. To the arguments of Collins, against man's free-agency, some of his successors have added, the inconsistency of this doctrine with the known effects of education (under which phrase they com- prehend the moral effects of all the external cir- cumstances in which men are involuntarily placed) in forming the characters of individuals. The plausibility of this argument (on which much stress has been laid by Priestley and others) arises entirely from the mixture of truth which it involves ; or, to express myself more correctly, from the evidence and importance of the fact on which it proceeds, when that fact is stated with due limitations. That the influence of education, in this com- prehensive sense of the word, was greatly under- rated by our ancestors, is now universally ac- knowledged; and it is to Locke's writings, more than to any other single cause, that the change in public opinion on this head is to be ascribed. On various occasions, he has ex- pressed himself very strongly with respect to the extent of this influence ; and has more than once intimated his belief, that the great majori- ty of men continue through life what early edu- Notes cation had made them. In making use, how- rn and . e < Illustrations. ever, of this strong language, his object (as is ^~*~v~*^>' evident from the opinions which he has avowed in other parts of his works) was only to arrest the attention of his readers to the practical lessons he was anxious to inculcate ; and not to state a metaphysical fact which was to be literally and rigorously interpreted in the controversy about liberty and necessity. The only sound and useful moral to be drawn from the spirit of his observations, is the duty of gratitude to Heaven for all the blessings, in respect of education and of external situation, which have fallen to our own lot ; the impossibility of ascertaining the involuntary misfortunes by which the seeming demerits of others may have been in part occa- sioned, and in the same proportion diminished ; and the consequent obligation upon ourselves, to think as charitably as possible of their con- duct, under the most unfavourable appearances. The truth of all this I conceive to be implied in these words of Scripture, " To whom much is given, of him much will be required;" and, if possible, still more explicitly and impressively, in the parable of the Talents. Is not the use which has been made by Ne- cessitarians of Locke's Treatise on Education, and other books of a similar tendency, only one instance more of that disposition, so common among metaphysical Sciolists, to appropriate to themselves the conclusions of their wiser and more sober predecessors, under the startling and imposing disguise of universal maxims, ad- mitting neither of exception nor restriction ? It is thus that Locke's judicious and refined re- marks on the Association of Ideas have been ex- aggerated to such an extreme in the coarse cari- catures of Hartley and of Priestley, as to bring, among cautious inquirers, some degree of dis- credit on one of the most important doctrines of modern philosophy. Or, to take another case still more in point ; it is thus that Locke's reflections on the effects of education in modify- ing the intellectual faculties, and (where skil- fully conducted) in supplying their original 1 Both phrases are favourite expressions with Lord Kanies in his discussions on this subject. See in particular the Ap- pendix to his Essay on Liberty and Necessity, in the last edition of his Essays on Morality and Natural Religion. 270 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes defects, have been distorted into the puerile Illusions, paradox of Helvetius, that the mental capacities v-x-v->^> of the whole human race are the same at the moment of hirth. It is sufficient for me here to throw out these hints, which will be found to apply equally to a large proportion of other theories started by modern metaphysicians. Before I finish this note, I cannot refrain from remarking, with respect to the argument for Necessity drawn from the Divine prescience, that, if it be conclusive, it only affords an addi- tional confirmation of what Clarke has said concerning the identity of the creed of the Ne- cessitarians with that of the Spinozists. For, if God certainly foresees all the future volitions of his creatures, he must, for the same reason, foresee all his own future volitions ; and if this knowledge infers a necessity of volition in the one case, how is it possible to avoid the same inference in the other ? NOTE OO, p. 149. A similar application of St Paul's comparison of the potter is to be found both in Hobbes and in Collins. Also, in a note annexed by Cowley to his ode entitled Destiny ; an ode written (as we are informed by the author) " upon an ex- travagant supposition of two angels playing a game at chess ; which, if they did, the specta- tors would have reason as much to believe that the pieces moved themselves, as we have for thinking the same of mankind, when we see them exercise so many and so different actions. It was of old said by Plautus, Dii nos quasi pilas homines habent, " We are but tennis-balls for the gods to play withal," which they strike away at last, and still call for new ones ; and St Paul says, " We are but the clay in the hand of the potter" For the comparison of the potter., alluded to by these different writers, see the epistle to the Romans, chap. ix. verses 18, 19, 20, 21. Upon these verses the only comment which I have to offer is a remark of the apostle Peter, that " In the epistles of our beloved brother Paul are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest unto their own destruction." The same similitude of the potter makes a con- spicuous figure in the writings of Hobbes, who has availed himself of this, as of many other in- * sulated passages of Holy Writ, in support of principles which are now universally allowed to strike at the very root of religion and mora- lity. The veneration of Cowley for Hobbes is well known, and is recorded by himself in the ode which immediately precedes that on Des- tiny. It cannot, however, be candidly supposed, that Cowley understood the whole drift of Hobbes' doctrines. The contrary, indeed, in the present instance, is obvious from the ode before us ; for while Cowley supposed the angels to move, like chess-men, the inhabitants of this globe, Hobbes (along with Spinoza) plainly conceived that the angels themselves, and even that Being to which he impiously gave the name of God, were all of them moved, like knights and pawns, by the invisible hand of fate or ne- cessity. Were it not for the serious and pensive cast of Cowley's mind, and his solemn appeal to the authority of the apostle, in support of the doc- trine of destiny, one would be tempted to con- sider the first stanzas of this ode in the light of a jeu d 'esprit, introductory to the very charac- teristical and interesting picture of himself, with which the poem concludes. NOTE PP, p. 150. " Tout ce qui est doit etre, par cela meme que cela est. Voila la seule bonne philosophic. Aussi longtemps que nous ne connaitrons pas cet univers, comme on dit dans 1'ecole, a priori, tout est necessite. La liberte est un mot vide de sens, comme vous allez voir dans la lettre de M. Diderot." (Lettre de Grimm au Due de Saxe-Gotha.) " C'est ici, mon cher, que je vais quitter le ton de predicateur pour prendre, si je peux, celui de philosophe. Regardez-y de pres, et vous verrez que le mot liberte est un mot vide de sens ; qu'il n'y a point, et qu'il ne peut y avoir d'etres libres ; que nous ne sommes que ce qui convient a 1'ordre general, a 1'organisa- tion, a 1'education, et a la chaine des evenemens. Voila ce qui dispose de nous invinciblement. DISSERTATION FIRST. 271 Notes On ne concoit non plus qu'un etre agisse sans us *" ations motif, qu'un des bras d'une balance agisse sans ^-v^ 1'action d'un poids, et le motif nous est toujours exterieur, etranger, attache ou par une nature ou par une cause quelconque, qui n'est pas nous. Ce qui nous trompe, c'est la prodigieuse variete de nos actions, jointe a 1' habitude que nous avons prise tout en naissant, de confondre le volontaire avec le libre. Nous avons tant loue, tant repris, nous 1'avons etc tant de fois, que c'est un prejuge bien vieux que celui de croire que nous et les autres voulons, agissons libre- ment. Mais s'il n'y a point de liberte, il n'y a point d' action qui merite la louange ou le blame; il n'y a ni vice, ni vertu, rien dont il faille re- compenser ou chatier. Qu'est ce qui distingue done les hommes ? La bienfaisance ou la mal- faisance. Le malfaisant est un homme qu'il faut detruire et non punir ; la bienfaisance est une bonne fortune, et non une vertu. Mais quoique 1'homme bien ou malfaisant ne soit pas libre, I'liomme n'en est pas moins un etre qu'on modifie ; c'est par cette raison qu'il faut detruire le malfaisant sur une place publique. De la les bons effets de 1'exemple, des discours, de 1'edu- cation, du plaisir, de la douleur, des grandeurs, de la misere, &c. ; de la un sorte de philosophic pleine de commiseration, qui attache fortement aux bons, qui n'irrite non plus centre le mechant, que centre un ouragan qui nous remplit les yeux de poussiere. II n'y a qu'une sorte de causes a proprement parler ; ce sont les causes physiques. II n'y a qu'une sorte de necessite, c'est la meme pour tous les etres. Voila ce qui me reconcilie avec le genre humain ; c'est pour cette raison que je vous exhortais a la philanthropic. Adop- tez ces principes si vous les trouvez bons, ou montrez-moi qu'ils sont mauvais. Si vous les adoptez, ils vous reconcilieront aussi avec les autres et avoc vous-meme ; vous ne vous saurez ni bon ni mauvais gre d'etre ce qui vous etes. Ne rien reprocher aux autres, ne se repentir de rien ; voila les premiers pas vers la sagesse. Ce qui est hors de la est prejuge, fausse philo- sophic." ( Correspondance Litteraire, Philoso- phique, et Critique, addressee au Due de Saxe- Gotha, par le BARON DE GRIMM et par DIDE- ROT. Premiere Partie, Tom. I. pp. 300, 304, 305, 306, Londres, 1814.) NOTE Q Q, p. 156. See in Bayle the three articles Luther, Knox } and Buchanan. The following passage concern- ing Knox may serve as a specimen of the others. It is quoted by Bayle from the Cosmographie Universelle of Thevet, a writer who has long sunk into the contempt he merited, but whose zeal for legitimacy and the Catholic faith raised him to the dignity of almoner to Catherine de Medicis, and of historiographer to the King of France. I borrow the translation from the Eng- lish Historical Dictionary. " During that time the Scots never left Eng- land in peace ; it was when Henry VIII. played his pranks with the chalices, relics, and other ornaments of the English churches ; which tra- gedies and plays have been acted in our time in the kingdom of Scotland, by the exhortations of Noptz, 1 the first Scots minister of the bloody Gospel. This firebrand of sedition could not be content with barely following the steps of Lu- ther, or of his master, Calvin, who had not long before delivered him from the gallies of the Prior of Capua, where he had been three years for his crimes, unlawful amours, and abominable fornications ; for he used to lead a dissolute life, in shameful and odious places, and had been also found guilty of the parricide and murder committed on the body of the Archbishop of St Andrew's, by the contrivances of the Earl of Rophol, of James Lescle, John Lescle, their uncle, and William du Coy. This simonist, who had been a priest of our church, being fattened by the benefices he had enjoyed, sold them for ready money; and finding that he could not make his cause good, he gave himself up to the most terrible blasphemies. He persuaded also several devout wives and religious virgins to abandon themselves to wicked adulterers. Nor was this all. During two whole years, he never ceased to rouse the people, encouraging them to Notes Thus Thevet (says Bayle) writes the name of Knox. 272 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes and take up arms against the Queen, and to drive her out of the kingdom, which he said was Illustrations. . _ elective, as it had been formerly in the time ot heathenism The Lutherans have churches and oratories. Their ministers sing psalms, and say mass ; and though it he different from ours, yet they add to it the Creed, and other prayers, as we do. And when their mi- nisters officiate, they wear the cope, the cha- suble, and the surplice, as ours do, being con- cerned for their salvation, and careful of what relates to the public worship. Whereas the Scots have lived these twelve years past without laws, without religion, without ceremonies, con- stantly refusing to own a King or a Queen, as so many brutes, suffering themselves to be im- posed upon by the stories told them by this arch -hypocrite Noptz, a traitor to God and to his country, rather than to follow the pure Gos- pel, the councils, and the doctrine of so many holy doctors, both Greek and Latin, of the Ca- tholic church." If any of my readers be yet unacquainted with the real character and history of this distin- guished person, it may amuse them to compare the above passage with the very able, authentic, and animated account of his life, lately pub- lished by the reverend and learned Dr M'Crie. NOTE R R, p. 161. Dr Blair, whose estimate of the distinguishing beauties and imperfections of Addison's style reflects honour on the justness and discernment of his taste, has allowed himself to be carried along much too easily, by the vulgar sneers at Addison's want of philosophical depth. In one of his lectures on rhetoric he has even gone so far as to accuse Addison of misapprehending, or, at least, of mis-stating, Locke's doctrine con- cerning secondary qualities. But a comparison of Dr Blair's own statement with that which he censures, will not turn out to the advantage of the learned critic ; and I willingly lay hold of this example, as the point at issue turns on one of the most refined questions of metaphysics. The words of Addison are these : ' Things would make but a poor appearance to the eye, if we saw them only in their proper figures and motions. And what reason can we Notes assign for their exciting in us many of those jj, J ideas which are different from anything that ex- ^-x-v-v ists in the objects themselves (for such are light and colours), were it not to add supernumerary ornaments to the universe, and make it more agreeable to the imagination ?" After quoting this sentence, Dr Blair proceeds thus : " Our author is now entering on a theory, which he is about to illustrate, if not with much philosophical accuracy, yet with great beauty of fancy and glow of expression. A strong in- stance of his want of accuracy appears in the manner in which he opens the subject. For what meaning is there in things exciting in us many of tJtose ideas which are different from any- thing that exists in the objects ? No one, sure, ever imagined that our ideas exist in the objects. Ideas, it is agreed on all hands, can exist no- where but in the mind. What Mr Locke's phi- losophy teaches, arid what our author should have said, is, exciting in us many ideas of qualities which are different from anything that exists in the objects" Let us now attend to Locke's theory, as stated by himself : " From whence I think it is easy to draw this observation, That the ideas of primary qua- lities of bodies are resemblances of them, and their patterns do really exist in the bodies them- selves, but the ideas produced in us by these secondary qualities have no resemblance of them at all. There is nothing like our ideas existing in the bodies themselves. They are in the bodies we denominate from them, only a power to produce these sensations in us. And what is sweet, blue, or warm in idea, is but the cer- tain bulk, figure, and motion of the insensible parts in the bodies themselves, which we call so." The inaccuracy of Locke in conceiving that our ideas of primary qualities are resemblances of these qualities, and that the patterns of such ideas exist in the bodies themselves, has been fully exposed by Dr Reid. But the repetition of Locke's inaccuracy (supposing Addison to have been really guilty of it) should not be charged upon him as a deviation from his master's doc- DISSERTATION FIRST. 273 Notes trine. To all, however, who understand the istrations. subject, it must appear evident, that Addison ^v*^ has, in this instance, improved greatly on Locke, by keeping out of view what is most exception- able in his language, while he has retained all that is solid in his doctrine. For my own part, I do not see how Addison's expressions could be altered to the better, except, perhaps, by substi- tuting the words unlike to, instead of different from. But in this last phrase, Addison has been implicitly followed by Dr Blair, and certainly would not have been disavowed as an interpre- ter by Locke himself. Let me add, that Dr Blair's proposed emendation (" exciting in us many ideas of qualities, which are different from any thing that exists in the objects"), if not wholly unintelligible, deviates much farther from Locke's meaning than the correspondent clause in its original state. The additional words of qualities throw an obscurity over the whole proposition, which was before sufficiently precise and perspicuous. 1 My principal reason for offering these remarks in vindication of Addison's account of secondary qualities was, to prepare the way for the sequel of the passage animadverted on by Dr Blair. " We are everywhere entertained with pleas- ing shows and apparitions. We discover imagi- nary glories in the heavens and in the earth, and see some of this visionary beauty poured out upon the whole creation. But what a rough unsightly sketch of nature should we be enter- tained with, did all her colouring disappear, and the several distinctions of light and shade vanish? 2 In short, our souls are delightfully lost and bewildered in a pleasing delusion, and we walk about like the enchanted hero of a romance, who sees beautiful castles, woods, and Notes meadows, and, at the same time, hears the jj lus *" alions warbling of birds and the purling of streams ; but, upon the finishing of some secret spell, the fantastic scene breaks up, and the disconsolate knight finds himself on a barren heath, or in a solitary desert." In this passage one is at a loss whether most to admire the author's depth and refinement of thought, or the singular felicity of fancy dis- played in its illustration. The image of the enchanted hero is so unexpected, and, at the same time, so exquisitely appropriate, that it seems itself to have been conjured up by an enchanter's wand. Though introduced with the unpretend- ing simplicity of a poetical simile, it has the effect of shedding the light of day on one of the darkest corners of metaphysics. Nor is the language in which it is conveyed unworthy of the attention of the critic ; abounding through- out with those natural and happy graces, which appear artless and easy to all but to those who have attempted to copy them. The praise which I have bestowed on Addison as a commentator on this part of Locke's Essay will not appear extravagant to those who may take the trouble to compare the conciseness and elegance of the foregoing extracts with the pro- lixity and homeliness of the author's text. (See LOCKE'S Essay, Book II. chap. viii. 17, 18.) It is sufficient to mention here, that his chief illustration is taken from " the effects of manna on the stomach and guts." NOTE S S, p. 168. For the following note I am indebted to my 1 Another passage, afterwards quoted by Dr Blair, might have satisfied him of the clearness and accuracy of Addison's ideas on the subject. " I have here supposed that my reader is acquainted with that great modern discovery, which is, at present, universally acknowledged by all the inquirers into Natural Philosophy ; namely, that light and colours, as apprehended by the imagination, are only ideas in the mind, and not qualities that have any existence in matter. As this is a truth which has been proved incontestibly by many modern philosophers, if the English reader would see the notion explained at large, he may find it in the eighth book of Mr Locke's Essay on Human Understanding." 1 have already taken notice (Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Vol. I. Note P.) of the extraordinary precision of the above statement, arising from the clause printed in Italics. By a strange slip of memory I ascribed the merit of this very judicious qualification, not to Addison, but to Dr Akenside, who transcribed it from the Spectator. The last quotation affords me also an opportunity of remarking the correctness of Addison's information about the his- tory of this doctrine, which most English writers have conceived to be an original speculation of Locke's. From some of Addison's expressions, it is more than probable, that he had derived his. first knowledge of it from Malebranche. 2 On the supposition made in this sentence, the face of Nature, instead of presenting a " rough unsightly sketch," would, it is evident, become wholly invisible. But I need scarcely say, this does not render Mr Addison's allusion less pertinent. DISS. I. PART II. 2 M 274 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes learned friend Sir William Hamilton, Professor Illustrations. ^ Universal History in the University of Edin- burgh. " The Clavis Universalis of Arthur Collier, though little known in England, has been trans- lated into German. It is published in a work entitled " Samlung" &c. &c. literally, " A Col- lection of the most distinguished Authors who deny the existence of their own bodies, and of the whole material world, containing the dialogues of Berkeley, between Hylas and Phi- lonous, and Collier's Universal Key translated, with Illustrative Observations, and an Appendix, wherein the existence of Body is demonstrated, by John Christopher Eschenbach, Professor of Philosophy in Rostock." (Rostock, 1756, 8vo.) The remarks are numerous, and show much reading. The Appendix contains, 1. An ex- position of the opinion of the Idealists, with its grounds and arguments. 2. A proof of the external existence of body. The argument on which he chiefly dwells to show the existence of matter is the same with that of Dr Reid, in so far as he says, " a direct proof must not here be expected ; in regard to the fundamental prin- ciples of human nature, this is seldom possible, or rather is absolutely impossible." He argues at length, that the Idealist has no better proof of the existence of his soul than of the existence of his body ; " when an Idealist says, lam a thinking being ; of this I am certain from internal conviction ; I would ask from whence he derives this certainty, and why he excludes from this conviction the possi- bility of deception ? He has no other answer than this, I feel it. It is impossible that I can have any representation of self without the consciousness of being a thinking being. In the same manner, Eschenbach argues that the feeling applies to the existence of body, and that the ground of belief is equally strong and conclusive, in respect to the reality of the objective, as of the subjective, in perception." NOTE TT, p. 182. " And yet Diderot, in some of his lucid intervals, seems to have thought and felt very differently." The following passage (extracted from his Pensees P/iilosophigues) is pronounced by La Harpe to be not only one of the most eloquent which Diderot has written, but to be one of the iu l best comments which is any where to be found ^ on the Cartesian argument for the existence of God. It has certainly great merit in point of reasoning; but I cannot see with what propriety it can be considered as a comment upon the ar- gument of Descartes ; nor am I sure if, in point of eloquence, it be as well suited to the English as to the French taste. " Convenez qu'il y auroit de la folie a refuser a vos semblables la faculte de penser. Sans doute, mais que s'ensuit-il de la? II s'ensuit, que si 1'univers, que dis-je 1'univers, si 1'aile d'un papillon m'offre des traces mille fois plus distinctes d'une intelligence que vous n'avez d'indices que votre semblable a la faculte de penser, il est mille fois plus fou de nier qu'il existe un Dieu, que de nier que votre semblable pense. Or, que cela soit ainsi, c'est a vos lu- mieres, c'est a votre conscience que j'en appelle. Avez-vous jamais remarque dans les raisonne- mens, les actions, et la conduite de quelque homme que ce soit, plus d'intelligence, d'ordre, de sagacite, de consequence, que dans le meca- nisme d'un insecte ? La divinite n'est elle pas aussi clairement empreinte dans 1'oeil d'un ciron, que la faculte de penser dans les ecrits du grand Newton ? Quoi ! le monde forme prouverait moins d'intelligence, que le monde explique? Quelle assertion ! 1'intelligence d'un premier etre ne m'est pas mieux demontree par ses ou- vrages, que la faculte de penser dans un philo- sophe par ses Merits? Songez done que je ne vous objecte que 1'aile d'un papillon, quand je pourrais vous ecraser du poids de 1'univers." This, however, was certainly not the creed which Diderot professed in his more advanced years. The article, on the contrary, which im- mediately follows the foregoing quotation, there is every reason to think, expresses his real sen- timents on the subject. I transcribe it at length, as it states clearly and explicitly the same argu- ment which is indirectly hinted at in a late pub- lication by a far more illustrious author. " J'ouvre les cahiers d'un philosophe eelebre, et je lis : ' Athees, je vous accorde que le mouve- ment est essentiel a la matiere ; qu'en eoncluez- vous ? que le monde resulte du jet fortuit d'a- DISSERTATION FIRST. 275 Notes and tomes ? J'aimerois autant que vous me dissiez , que 1'Iliade d'Homere ou la Henriade de Vol- llustrations. 1 -x^v"^-^ taire est un resultat de jets fortuits de carac- teres ?' Je me garderai bien de faire ce raisonne- ment a un athee. Cette comparaison lui don- neroit beau jeu. Selon les lois de 1'analyse des sorts, me diroit-il, je ne doit etre surpris qu'une chose arrive, lorsqu'elle est possible, et que la difficulte de Pev6nement est compensee par la quantite des jets. II y a tels nombre de coups dans lesquels je gagerois avec avantage d'amener cent mille six a la fois avec cent mille des. Quelle que fut la somme finie de caracteres avec laquelle on me proposeroit d'engendrer fortuitement 1'Iliade, il y a telle somme finie de jets qui me rendroit la proposition avanta- geuse; mon avantage seroit meme infini, si la quantite de jets accordee etoit infinie," &c. &c. ( Pensees Philosophiques, par DIDEROT, XXL) My chief reason for considering this as the genuine exposition of Diderot's own creed is, that he omits no opportunity of suggesting the same train of thinking in his other works. It may be distinctly traced in the following pas- sage of his Traite du Beau, the substance of which he has also introduced in the article Beau of the Encyclopedic. " Le beau n'est pas toujours 1'ouvrage d'une cause intelligente; le mouvement etablit souvent, soit dans un etre considere solitairement, soit entre plusieurs etres compares entr'eux, une multitude prodigieuse de rapports surprenans. Les cabinets d'histoire naturelle en offrent un grand nombre d'exemples. Les rapports sont alors des resultats de combinaisons fortuites, du moins par rapport a nous. La nature imite en se jouant, dans cent occasions, les productions Notes d'art ; et Ton pourroit demander, je ne dis pas jii "ti si ce philosophe qui fut jete par une tempete sur les bords d'une lie inconnue, avoit raison de se crier, a la vue de quelque figures de geo- metric ; ' Courage, mes amis, void des pas d 'homines ;' mais combien il faudroit remarquer de rapports dans un etre, pour avoir une certi- tude complete qu'il est 1'ouvrage d'un artiste 1 (en quelle occasion, un seul defaut de symme- trie prouveroit plus que toute somme donnee de rapports) ; comment sont entr'eux le temps de 1'action de la cause fortuite, et les rapports ob- serves dans les effets produits ; et si (a 1'excep- tion des ceuvres du Tout-Puissant) * il y a des cas ou le nombre des rapports ne puisse jamais etre compense par celui des jets." With respect to the passages here extracted from Diderot, it is worthy of observation, that if the atheistical argument from chances be con- clusive in its application to that order of things which we behold, it is not less conclusive when applied to every other possible combination of atoms which imagination can conceive, and affords a mathematical proof, that the fables of Grecian mythology, the tales of the genii, and the dreams of the Rosicrusians, may, or rather must, all of them, be somewhere or other rea- lized in the infinite extent of the universe : a proposition which, if true, would destroy every argument for or against any given system of opinions founded on the reasonableness or the unreasonableness of the tenets involved in it; and would, of consequence, lead to the subver- sion of the whole frame of the human under- standing. 5 1 Is not this precisely the sophistical mode of questioning known among Logicians by the name of Sorites or Acervus ? " Vitiosum sane," says Cicero, " et captiosum genus." (Acad. Qucest. Lib. IV. xvi.) 2 To those who enter fully into the spirit of the foregoing reasoning, it is unnecessary to observe, that this parenthetical clause is nothing better than an ironical salvo. If the argument proves any thing, it leads to this general conclusion, that the apparent order of the universe affords no evidence whatever of the existence of a designing cause. 3 The atheistical argument here quoted from Diderot is, at least, as old as the time of Epicurus. Nam certe neque consilio primordia rerum Ordine se quseque, atque sagaci mente locarunt Nee quos quseque darent motus pepigere profecto ; Sed quia multimodis, multis, mutata, per omne Ex infinite vexantur percita plagis, Omne genus motus, et coatus experiundo, Tandem deveniunt in taleis disposituras, Qualibus hsec rebus consistit summa creata (LUCRE T. Lib. I. 1. 1020.) And still more explicitly in the following lines : Nam cum respicias immensi temporis omne Praeteritum spatium ; turn motus materialis Multimodi quam sint ; facile hoc adcredere possis, Semina saepe in eodem, ut nunc sunt, ordine posta. (lUd. Lib. III. L C67-) 276 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes Mr Hume, in his Natural History of Religion illustrations. (Sect. XL), has drawn an inference from the v ^~ v "* w -' internal evidence of the Heathen Mythology, in favour of the supposition that it may not be al- together so fabulous as is commonly supposed. " The whole mythological system is so natural, that in the vast variety of planets and worlds contained in this universe, it seems more than probable, that somewhere or other it is really carried into execution." The argument of Di- derot goes much farther, and leads to an exten- sion of Mr Hume's conclusion to all conceivable systems, whether natural or not. But further, since the human mind, and all the numberless displays of wisdom and of power which it has exhibited, are ultimately to be re- ferred to a fortuitous concourse of atoms, why might not the Supreme Being, such as we are commonly taught to regard him, have been Himself (as well as the Gods of Epicurus) * the result of the continued operation of the same blind causes ? or rather, must not such a Being have necessarily resulted from these causes ope- rating from all eternity, through the immensity of space ?- a conclusion, by the way, which, ac- cording to Diderot's own principles, would lead us to refer the era of his origin to a period inde- finitely more remote than any given point of time which imagination can assign ; or, in other words, to a period to which the epithet eternal may with perfect propriety be applied. The amount, therefore, of the whole matter is this, that the atheistical reasoning, as stated by Di- derot, leaves the subject of natural, and, I may add, of revealed religion, precisely on the same footing as before, without invalidating, in the very smallest degree, the evidence for any one of the doctrines connected with either; nay more, superadding to this evidence, a mathema- tical demonstration of the possible truth of all those articles of belief which it was the ob- ject of Diderot to subvert from their founda- tion. It might be easily shown, that these prin- ciples, if pushed to their legitimate consequences, instead of establishing the just authority of rea- son in our constitution, would lead to the most Notes unlimited credulity on all subjects whatever ; illustration or (what is only another name for the same ^-^"v^- thing) to that state of mind, which, in the words of Mr Hume, " does not consider any one pro- position as more certain, or even as more pro- bable, than another." The following curious and (in my opinion) instructive anecdote has a sufficient connection with the subject of this note, to justify me in subjoining it to the foregoing observations. I transcribe it from the Notes annexed to the Abbe de Lille's poem entitled La Conversation. (A Paris, 1812.) " Dans la societe du Baron d'Holbach, Dide- rot proposa un jour de nommer un avocat de Dieu, et on choisit 1'Abbe Galiani. II s'assit et debuta ainsi : " Un jour a Naples, un homme de la Basili- cate prit devant nous, six des dans un cornet, et paria d'amener rafle de six. Je dis cette chance etoit possible. II 1'amena sur le champ line seconde fois ; je dis la meme chose. II re- mit les des dans le cornet trois, quatre, cinq fois, et toujours rafle de six. Sangue di Bacco, - m'ecriai-je, les des sont pipes; et ils 1'etoient. " Philosophes, quand je considere Pordre toujours renaissant de la nature, ses lois immu- ables, ses revolutions toujours constantes dans une variete infinie ; cette chance unique et con- servatrice d'un univers tel que nous le voyons, qui revient sans cesse, malgre cent autres mil- lions de chances de perturbation et de destruc- tion possibles, je m'ecrie : certes la nature est pipee!" The argument here stated strikes me as irre- sistible ; nor ought it at all to weaken its effect, that it was spoken by the mouth of the Abbe Galiani. Whatever his own professed principles may have been, this theory of the loaded die appears evidently, from the repeated allusions to it in his familiar correspondence, to have produced a very deep impression on his mind. (See Corre- spondance inedite de 1'Abbe GALIANI, &c. Vol. I. pp. 18, 42, 141, 142, a Paris, 1818.) Cic. de Nat. Deor. Lib. I. XXIV. DISSERTATION FIRST. 277 Notes As the old argument of the atomical atheists stations. * s pl am ly that on which the school of Diderot "w^ are still disposed to rest the strength of their cause, I shall make no apology for the length of this note. The sceptical suggestions on the same subject which occur in Mr Hume's Essay on the Idea of Necessary Connection, and which have given occasion to so much discussion in this country, do not seem to me to have ever pro- duced any considerable impression on the French philosophers. NOTE U U, p. 182. Among the contemporaries of Diderot, the author of the Spirit of Laws is entitled to parti- cular notice, for the respect with which he al- ways speaks of natural religion. A remarkable instance of this occurs in a letter to Dr War- burton, occasioned by the publication of his View of Bolingbroke's Philosophy. The letter, it must be owned, savours somewhat of the politi- cal religionist ; but how fortunate would it have been for France, if, during its late revolutionary governments, such sentiments as those here ex- pressed by Montesquieu had been more gene- rally prevalent among his countrymen ! " Celui qui attaque la religion revelee n'attaque que la re- ligion revelee ; mais celui qui attaque la religion naturelle attaque toutesles religions dumonde. . . . II n'est pas impossible d'attaquer une religion revelee, parce qu'elle existe par des faits parti- culiers, et que les faits par leur nature peuvent etre une matiere de dispute ; mais il n'en est pas de meme de la religion naturelle ; elle est tiree de la nature de Phomme, dont on ne peut pas disputer encore. J'ajoute a ceci, quel peut etre le motif d'attaquer la religion revelee en Angleterre ? On 1'y a tellement purge de tout prejuge destructeur qu'elle n'y peut faire de mal et qu'elle y peut faire, au contraire, une infinite de biens. Je sais, qu'un homme en Espagne ou en Portugal que 1'on va bruler, ou qui craint d'etre brule, parce qu'il ne croit point de cer- tains articles dependans ou non de la religion revelee, a un juste sujet de 1'attaquer, parce qu'il peut avoir quelque esperance de pourvoir a sa defense naturelle : mais il n'en est pas de meme en Angleterre, ou tout homme qui attaque la religion revelee 1'attaque sans interet, et ou cet homme, quand il reussiroit, quand meme il auroit raison dans le fond, ne feroit que de- truire une infinit6 de biens pratiques, pour etablir une verite purement speculative." (For the whole letter, see the 4to edit, of MONTES- QUIEU'S Works. Paris, 1788. Tome V. p. 391. Also Warburton's Works by KURD, Vol. VII. p. 553. London, 1758.) In the foregoing passage, Montesquieu hints more explicitly than could well have been ex- pected from a French magistrate, at a considera- tion which ought always to be taken into the account, in judging of the works of his country- men, when they touch on the subject of reli- gion ; I mean, the corrupted and intolerant spirit of that system of faith which is imme- diately before their eyes. The eulogy bestowed on the church of England is particularly deserv- ing of notice, and should serve as a caution to Protestant writers against making common cause with the defenders of the church of Rome. With respect to Voltaire, who, amidst all his extravagancies and impieties, is well known to have declared open war against the principles maintained in the Systeme de la Nature, it is re- marked by Madame de Stael, that two different epochs may be distinguished in his literary life ; the one, while his mind was warm from the philosophical lessons he had imbibed in Eng- land ; the other, after it became infected with those extravagant principles which, soon after his death, brought a temporary reproach on the name of Philosophy. As the observation is ex- tended by the very ingenious writer to the French nation in general, and draws a line be- tween two classes of authors who are frequently confounded together in this country, I shall transcribe it in her own words. " II me semble qu'on pourroit marquer dans le dix-huitieme siecle, en France, deux epoques parfaitement distinctes, celle dans laquelle Pin- fluence de PAngleterre s'est fait sentir, et ^elle ou les esprits se sont precipites dans la destruc- tion : Alors les lumieres se sont changees en in- cendie, et la philosophic, magicienne irritee, a consume le palais ou elle avoit etale ses pro- diges. " En politique, Montesquieu appartient a la 278 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes premiere epoque, Raynal a la seconde ; en reli- . g ion > les ecrits de Voltaire, qui avoit la tolerance pour but, sont inspires par 1'esprit de la pre- miere moiti6 du siecle; mais sa miserable et vaniteuse irreligion a fletri la seconde." (De FAUemagne, Tome III. pp. 37, 38.) Nothing, in truth, can be more striking than the contrast between the spirit of Voltaire's ear- ly and of his later productions. From the for- mer may be quoted some of the sublimest sen- timents anywhere to be found, both of religion and of morality. In some of the latter, he appears irrecoverably sunk in the abyss of fatalism. Examples of both are so numerous, than one is at a loss in the selection. In making choice of the following, I am guided chiefly by the com- parative shortness of the passages. " Consulte Zoroastre et Minos, et Solon, Et le sage Socrate, et le grand Ciceron : Us ont adore' tous un maitre, un juge, un pere ; Ce systeme sublime 1'homme est nifcessaire. C'est le sacr lien de la socie"te, Le premier fondement de la sainte e'quit^ ; Le frein du scele'rat, 1'dsperance du juste. Si les cieux, depouille's de leur empreinte auguste, Pouvoient cesser jamais de le manif'ester, Si Dieu n'existoit pas, il faudroit 1'iuventer." 1 Nor is it only on this fundamental principle of religion that Voltaire, in his better days, de- lighted to enlarge. The existence of a natural law engraved on the human heart, and the li- berty of the human will, are subjects which he has repeatedly enforced and adorned with all his philosophical and poetical powers. What can be more explicit, or more forcible, than the following exposition of the inconsistencies of fatalism ? " Vois de la libert^ cet ennemi mutin, Aveugle partisan d'un aveugle destin ; Entends comme il consulte, approuve, ou delibe're, Entends de quel reproche il couvre un adversaire, Vois comment d'un rival il cherche d se venger, Comme il punit son fils, et le veut corriger. II le croyoit done libre ? Oui sans doute, et lui-meme Dement a chaque pas son funeste systeme. II mentoit d son coeur, en voulant expliquer Ce dogme absurde a croire, absurde a pratiquer. II reconnoit en lui le sentiment qu'il brave, II agit comme libre et parle comme esclave." 2 This very system, however, which Voltaire has here so severely reprobated, he lived to avow as the creed of his more advanced years. The words, indeed, are put into the mouth of a ficr titious personage ; but it is plain, that the writer meant to be understood as speaking his own sentiments. " Je vois une chaine immense, dont tout est chainon ; elle embrasse, elle serre aujourd'hui la nature," &c. &c. " Je suis done ramene malgre moi a cette ancienne idee, que je vois etre la base de tous les systemes, dans laquelle tous les philosophes retombent apres mille detours, et qui m'est de- montre par toutes les actions des hommes, par les miennes, par tous les evenemens que j'ai lus, que j'ai vus, et aux-quelles j'ai eu part ; c'est le Fatalisme, c'est la Necessite dont je vous ai deja parle." (Lettres de Memmius a Ciceron. See" (Euvres de VOLTAIRE, Melanges^ Tome IV. p. 358. 4to. Edit. Geneve, 1771.) " En effet" (says Voltaire, in another of his pieces), il seroit bien singulier que toute la na- ture, tous les astres, obeissent a des lois eter- nelles, et qu'il y eut un petit animal haut de cinq pieds, qui au mepris de ces lois put agir toujours comme il lui plairoit au seul gre de son caprice." To this passage Voltaire adds the fol- lowing acknowledgment : " L'ignorant qui pense ainsi n'a pas toujours pense de meme, 5 mais il est enfin contraint de se rendre." (Le Philosophe Ignorant.} Notwithstanding, however, this change in 1 A thought approaching very nearly to this occurs in one of Tillotson's Sermons. " The being of God is so comfortable, so convenient, so necessary to the felicity of mankind, that (as Tully admirably says) Dii immortales ad usum hominum fabri- catipene videantur. If God were not a necessary being of himself, he might almost be said to be made for the use and benefit of Man." For some ingenious remarks on this quotation from Cicero, see JORTIN'S Tracts, Vol. I. p. 371. 2 These verses form a part oi a Discourse on the Liberty of Man ; and the rest of the poem is in the same strain. Yet so very imperfectly did Voltaire even then understand the metaphysical argument on this subject, that he prefixed to his Discourse the following advertisement. " On entend par ce mot liberte, le pouvoir de faire ce qu'on veut. II n'y a, et ne peut y avoir d'autre liberte" It appears, therefore, that in maintaining the liberty of spontaneity, Voltaire conceived himself to be combating the scheme of Necessity ; whereas this sort of liberty, no Necessitarian or Fatalist was ever hardy enough to dispute. 3 In proof of this he refers to his Treatise of Metaphysics, written forty years before, for the use of Madame du Chatelet. DISSERTATION FIRST. 279 Voltaire's philosophical opinions, he continued to the last his zealous opposition to atheism. 1 But in what respects it is more pernicious than fatalism, it is not easy to discover. A reflection of La Harpe's, occasioned by some strictures of Voltaire's upon Montesquieu, applies with equal force to the numberless in- consistencies which occur in his metaphysical speculations : " Les objets de meditation etoient trop etrangers a 1'excessive vivacite de son esprit. Saisir fortement par 1'imagination les objets qu'elle ne doit montrer que d'un cote, c'est ce qui est du Poete ; les embrasser sous toutes les faces, c'est ce qui est du Philosophe, et Vol- taire etoit trop exclusivement 1'un pour etre Pautre." (Cours de Litterat. Tome XV. pp. 46, 47.) A late author e has very justly reprobated that spiritual deification of nature which has been long fashionable among the French, and which, according to his own account, is at present not unfashionable in Germany. It is proper, how- ever, to observe, that this mode of speaking has been used by two very different classes of wri- ters ; by the one with an intention to keep as much as possible the Deity out of their view, while studying his works ; by the other, as a convenient and well understood metaphor, by means of which the frequent and irreverent mention of the name of God is avoided in philo- sophical arguments. It was with this last view, undoubtedly, that it was so often employed by Newton, and other English philosophers of the same school. In general, when we find a wri- ter speaking of the wise or of the benevolent in- tentions of nature, we should be slow in imput- ing to him any leaning towards atheism. Many of the finest instances of Final Causes, it is cer- tain, which the eighteenth century has brought to light, have been first remarked by inquirers who seem to have been fond of this phraseology ; and of these inquirers, it is possible that some would have been less forward in bearing testi- mony to the truth, had they been forced to avail themselves of the style of theologians. These speculations, therefore, concerning the intentions Notes or designs of Nature, how reprehensible soever illustrations. and even absurd in point of strict logic the lan- guage may be in which they are expressed, may often be, nay, have often been, a step towards something higher and better ; and, at any rate, are of a character totally different from the blind chance of the Epicureans, or the conflicting principles of the Manicheans, NOTE XX, p. 195. " In the attempt, indeed, which Kant has made to enumerate the general ideas which are not de- rived from experience, but arise out of the pure un- derstanding, Kant may well lay claim to the praise of originality" The object of this problem is thus stated by his friend, Mr Schulze, the au- thor of the Synopsis formerly quoted. (The fol- lowing translation is by Dr Willich, Elements, &c. p. 45.) " To investigate the whole store of original notions discoverable in our understanding, and which lie at the foundation of all our knowledge ; and at the same time to authenticate their true descent, by showing that they are not derived from experience, but are pure productions of the understanding. " 1. The perceptions of objects contain, in- deed, the matter of knowledge, but are in them- selves blind and dead, and not knowledge ; and our soul is merely passive in regard to them. " 2. If these perceptions are to furnish know- ledge, the understanding must think of them, and this is possible only through notions (con- ceptions), which are the peculiar form of our understanding, in the same manner as space and time are the form of our sensitive faculty. " 3. These notions are active representations of our understanding-faculty; and as they re- gard immediately the perceptions of objects, they refer to the objects themselves only mediately. " 4. They lie in our understanding as pure notions a priori, at the foundation of all our knowledge. They are necessary forms, radical 1 See the Diet. Philosophique, Art. AtMisme. See also the Strictures on the Sytttme de la Nature in the Question* sur VEn- ojclnp'die ; the very work from which the above quotation is taken. Frederick Schlegel. Lectures on the History of Literature. Vol. II. p. 169. Edinburgh, 1818. 280 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes and Illustrations. notions, categories (predicaments), of which all our knowledge of them must be compounded : And the table of them follows. " Quantity ; unity, plurality, totality. " Quality ; reality, negation, limitation. " Relation ; substance, cause, reciprocation. " Modality ; possibility, existence, necessity. " 5. Now, to think and to judge is the same thing; consequently, every notion contains a particular form of judgment concerning objects. There are four principal genera of judgments : They are derived from the above four possible functions of the understanding, each of which contains under it three species ; namely, with re- spect to " Quantity, they are universal, particular, sin- gular judgments. " Quality, they are affirmative, negative, in- finite judgments. " Relation, they are categorical, hypothetical, disjunctive judgments. " Modality, they are problematical, assertory, apodictical judgments." These tables speak for themselves without any comment. NOTE YY, p. 195. Kant's notions of Time are contained in the following seven propositions : 1. Idea temporis non oritur sed supponitur a sensibus. 2. Idea tem- poris est singularis, non generalis. Tempus enim quodlibet non cogitatur, nisi tanquam pars unius ejusdem temporis immensi. 3. Idea itaque tem- poris est intuitus, et quoniam ante omnem sensa- tionem concipitur, tanquam conditio respectuum in sensibilibus obviorum, est intuitus, non sen- sualis, sed purus. 4. Tempus est quantum conti- nuum et legum continui in mutationibus universi principium. 5. Tempus non est objectivum aliquid etreale, nee substantia, nee accidens, nee relatio, sed subjectiva conditio, per naturam mentis humanse necessaria, quselibet sensibilia, certa lege sibi co- ordinandi, et intuitus purus. 6. Tempus est conceptus verissimus, et, per omnia possibilia sensuum objecta, in iiifinitum patens, intuitivse repraesentationis conditio. 7. Tempus itaque est principium formale nfundi sensibilis absolute pri- j] mum." v With respect to Space, Kant states a series of similar propositions, ascribing to it very nearly the same metaphysical attributes as to Time, and running as far as possible a sort of parallel be- tween them. " A. Conceptus spatii non abstrahi- tur a sensationibus externis. B. Conceptus spatii est singularis reprcesentatio omnia in se compre- hendens, non sub se continens notio abstracta et communis. C. Conceptus spatii itaque est intuitus purus; cum sit conceptus singularis; sensa- tionibus non conflatus, sed omnis sensationis ex- ternse forma fundamentalis. D. Spatium non est aliquid objectivi et realis, nee substantia, nee accidens, nee relatio; sed subjectivum et ideale, e natura mentis stabili lege proficiscens, veluti schema, omnia omnino externe sensa sibi co-ordinandi. E. Quanquam conceptus spatii, ut objectivi alicujus et realis entis vel affectio- nis, sit imaginarius, nihilo tamen secius respec- tive ad sensibilia quacunque, non solum est ve- rissimus, sed et omnis veritatis in sensualitate externa fundamentum." These propositions are extracted from a Dis- sertation written by Kant himself in the Latin language. * Their obscurity, therefore, cannot be ascribed to any misapprehension on the part of a translator. It was on this account that I thought it better to quote them in his own un- altered words, than to avail myself of the cor- responding passage in Bern's Latin version of the Critique of Pure Reason. To each of Kant's propositions concerning Time and Space I shall subjoin a short com- ment, following the same order in which these propositions are arranged above. 1. That the idea of Time has no resemblance to any of our sensations, and that it is, therefore, not derived from sensation immediately and di- rectly, has been very often observed ; and if nobody had ever observed it, the fact is so very obvious, that the enunciation of it could not en- title the author to the praise of much ingenuity. Whether " this idea be supposed in all our sen- l De Mtmdi SensiURs atque Intelligibttis forma et principiis. Dissertatio pro loco professions Log. et Metaph. Ordinariae rite sibi Vindicando ; quam exigentibus statutis Academicis publice tuebitur IMMANUEL KANT.lRegiomonti, 1770. DISSERTATION FIRST. 28J Notes b-ations," or (as Kant explains himself more niustrations. c l ear ty i n his third proposition) " be conceived <^s~v~^s by the mind prior to all sensation," is a ques- tion which seems to me at least doubtful ; nor do I think the opinion we form concerning it a matter of the smallest importance. One thing is certain, that this idea is an inseparable con- comitant of every act of memory with respect to past events ; and that, in whatever way it is acquired, we are irresistibly led to ascribe to the thing itself an existence independent of the will of any being whatever. 2. On the second proposition I have nothing to remark. The following is the most intelli- gible translation of it that I can give. " The idea of Time is singular, not general ; for any particular length of Time can be conceived only as a part of one and the same immense whole." 3. From these premises (such as they are) Kant concludes, that the idea of time is intui- tive ; and that this intuition, being prior to the exercise of the senses, is not empirical but pure. The conclusion here must necessarily partake of the uncertainty of the premises from which it is drawn ; but the meaning of the author does not seem to imply any very erroneous principle. It amounts, indeed, to little more than an ex- planation of some of his peculiar terms. 4. That Time is a continued quantity is indis- putable. To the latter clause of the sentence I can annex no meaning but this, that time enters as an essential element into our conception of the law of continuity, in all its various applica- tions to the changes that take place in Nature. 5. In this proposition Kant assumes the truth of that much contested, and, to me, incompre- hensible doctrine, which denies the objective reality of time. He seems to consider it merely as a subjective condition, inseparably connected with the frame of the Human Mind, in conse- quence of which it arranges sensible phenomena, according to a certain law, in the order of suc- cession. 6. What is meant by calling Time a true con- ception, I do not profess to understand; nor am I able to interpret the remainder of the sentence in any way but this, that we can find no limits to the range thus opened in our conceptions to the succession of sensible events. DISS. 1. PART II. 7. The conclusion of the whole matter is, that Notes Time is " absolutely the first formal principle and c .1 .-, i i i T illustrations. ot the sensible world. I can annex no mean- ing to this ; but I have translated the original, word for word, and shall leave my readers to their own conjectures. A. It appears from this, that, in the opinion of Kant, the idea of Space is connate with the mind, or at least, that it is prior to any infor- mation received from the senses. But this doc- trine seems to me not a little doubtful. Indeed, I rather lean to the common theory, which sup- poses our first ideas of Space or Extension to be formed by abstracting this attribute from the other qualities of matter. The idea of Space, however, in whatever manner formed, is mani- festly accompanied with an irresistible convic- tion, that Space is necessarily existent, and that its annihilation is impossible ; nay, it appears to me to be also accompanied with an irresistible conviction, that Space cannot possibly be ex- tended in more than three dimensions. Call either of these propositions in question, and you open a door to universal scepticism. B. I can extract no meaning from this, but the nugatory proposition, that our conception of Space leads us to consider it as the place in which all things are comprehended. C. " The conception of Space, therefore, is a pure intuition." This follows as a necessary co- rollary (according to Kant's own definition) from Prop. A. What is to be understood by the clause which asserts, that Space is the fun- damental form of every external sensation, it is not easy to conjecture. Does it imply merely that the conception of Space is necessarily in- volved in all our notions of things external ? In this case, it only repeats over, in different and most inaccurate terms, the last clause of Prop. B. What can be more loose and illogical than the phrase external sensation ? D. That Space is neither a substance, nor an accident, nor a relation, may be safely granted ; but does it follow from this that it is nothing objective, or, in other words, that it is a mere creature of the imagination? This, however, would seem to be the idea of Kant ; and yet I SN 282 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes cannot reconcile it with what he says in Prop. Illusions. E -J that tne conception of Space is the founda- tion of all the truth we ascribe to our percep- tions of external objects. (The author's own words are " omnis veritatis in sensualitate ex- terna fundamentum I") 1 Upon the whole, it appears to me, that, among these various propositions, there are some which are quite unintelligible ; that others assume, as first principles, doctrines which have been dis- puted by many of our most eminent philoso- phers ; that others, again, seem to aim at in- volving plain and obvious truths in darkness and mystery; and that not one is expressed with simplicity and precision, which are the na- tural results of clear and accurate thinking. In considering time and space as the forms of all sensible phenomena, does Kant mean any thing more but this, that we necessarily refer every sensible phenomenon to some point of space, or to some instant of time ? If this was really his meaning, he has only repeated over, in obscurer language, the following propositions of Newton ; " Ut ordo partium temporis est immutabilis, sic etiam ordo partium spatii. Moveantur haec de locis suis, et movebuntur (ut ita dicam) de seipsis. Nam tempora et spatia sunt sui ipsorum et rerum omnium quasi loca. In tempore, quoad ordinem successionis ; in spatio, quoad ordinem situs locantur universa. De illorum essentia est ut sint loca : et loca primaria moveri absur- dum est." I have quoted this passage, not from any de- sire of displaying the superiority of Newton over Kant, but chiefly to show how very nearly the powers of the former sink to the same level with those of the latter, when directed to inqui- ries unfathomable by the human faculties. What abuse of words can be greater than to say, That neither the parts of time nor the parts of Note space can be moved from their places ? a In the m us ?" t Principia of Newton, however, this incidental V-x-v discussion is but a spot on the sun. In the Critique of Pure Reason, it is a fair specimen of the rest of the work, and forms one of the chief pillars of the whole system, both metaphysical and moral. NOTE Z Z, p. 196. The following quotation will account for the references which I have made to Mr Nitsch among the expounders of Kant's Philosophy. It will also serve to show that the Critique of Pure Reason has still some admirers in England, not less enthusiastic than those it had formerly in Germany. " In submitting this fourth Treatise on the Philosophy of Kant to the reader" (says the author of these articles in the Encyclopedia Londinensis), " I cannot deny myself the satis- faction of publicly acknowledging the great as- sistance which I have derived in my literary pur- suits, from my excellent and highly valued friend: Mr Henry Richter. To him I am indebted for the clearness and perspicuity with which the thoughts of the immortal Kant have been con- veyed to the public. Indeed, his comprehensive knowledge of the system, as well as his enthusi- astic admiration of its general truth, render him a most able and desirable co-operator. Should, therefore, any good result to mankind from our joint labours in the display of this vast and pro- found system, he is justly entitled to his share of the praise. It is with sincere pleasure that I reflect upon that period, now two and twenty years ago, when we first studied together under the same master, Frederic Augustus Nitsch, who 1 Mr Nitsch has remarked this difficulty, and has attempted to remove it. " The most essential objection (he observes) to Kant's system is, that it leads to scepticism ; because it maintains, that the figures in which we see the external objects clothed are not inherent in those objects, and that consequently space is something -within, and not without the mind." (pp. 144, 145.) " It may be further objected (he adds), that, if there be no external space, there is also no external world. But this is concluding by far too much from these premises. If there be no external space, it will follow, that we are not authorised to assign extension to external things, but there will follow no more." (p. 149.) Mr Nitsch then proceeds to obviate these objections ; but his reply is far from satisfactory, and is indeed not less applicable to the doctrine of Berkeley than to that of Kant. This point, however, I do not mean to argue here. The concessions which Nitsch has made are quite sufficient for my present purpose. They serve at least to satisfy my own mind, that I have not misrepresented Kant's meaning. * Was it not to avoid the palpable incongruity of this language that Kant was led to substitute the word/orww instead of places ; the former word not seeming to be so obviously inapplicable as the latter to time and space in common ; or, to speak more correctly, being, from its extreme vagueness, equally unmeaning when applied to both ? DISSERTATION FIRST. 283 Notes originally imported the seeds of TRANSCENDEN- lustradons TAL PHILOSOPHY from its native country, to >*w^ plant them in our soil ; and though, as is usually the case, many of those seeds were scattered by the wind, I trust that a sufficient number have taken root to maintain the growth of this vigo- rous and flourishing plant, till the time shall come, when, by its general cultivation, England may be enabled to enrich other nations with the most perfect specimens of its produce. Professor Nitsch, who thus bestowed upon our country her first attainments in the department of Pure Science, has paid the debt of nature. I confess it is some reflection upon England, that she did not foster and protect this immediate disciple of the father of philosophy ; but the necessities of this learned and illustrious man unfortunately compelled him to seek that subsistence else- where, which was withheld from him here. At Rostock, about the year 1813, this valuable member of society, and perfect master of the philosophy he undertook to teach, entered upon his immortal career as a reward for his earthly services. It is with the most heartfelt satisfac- tion that I add my mite of praise to his revered memory. But for him, I might ever have re- mained in the dark regions of sophistry and un- certainty." NOTE A A A, p. 201. Among the secondary mischiefs resulting from the temporary popularity of Kant, none is more to be regretted than the influence of his works on the habits, both of thinking and of writing, of some very eminent men, who have since given to the world histories of philosophy. That of Tenneman in particular (a work said to possess great merit) would appear to have been vitiated by this unfortunate bias in the views of its author. A very competent judge has said of it, that " it affords, as far as it is completed, the most accurate, the most minute, and the most rational view we yet possess of the different systems of philosophy; but that the critical philosophy being chosen as the vantage ground from whence the survey of former systems is taken, the continual reference in Kant's own language to his peculiar doctrines, renders it frequently impossible for those who have not studied the dark works of this modern Heracli- tus to understand the strictures of the historian on the systems even of Aristotle or Plato." (See the article BRUCKER in the Encyclo- paedia Britannica, 7th Ed.) We are told by the same writer, that " among the learned of Germany, Brucker has never enjoyed a very distinguished reputation." This I can very easily credit; but I am more inclined to in- terpret it to the disadvantage of the German taste, than to that of the historian. Brucker is indeed not distinguished by any extraordinary measure of depth or of acuteness ; but in indus- try, fidelity, and sound judgment, he has few superiors ; qualities of infinitely greater value in the undertaker of a historical work, than that passion for systematical refinement, which is so apt to betray the best-intentioned writers into false glosses on the opinions they record. Notes When the above passage was written, I had not seen the work of Buhle. I have since had an opportunity of looking into the French trans- lation of it, published at Paris in 1816 ; and I must frankly acknowledge, that I have seldom met with a greater disappointment. The account there given of the Kantian system, to which I turned with peculiar eagerness, has, if possible, involved to my apprehension, in additional ob- scurity, that mysterious doctrine. From this, however, I did not feel myself entitled to form an estimate of the author's merits as a philo- sophical historian, till I had read some other articles of which I considered myself better qualified to judge. The following short extract will, without the aid of any comment, enable such of my readers as know anything of the literary history of Scotland, to form an opinion upon this point for themselves. " Reid n'attaqua les systemes de ses predeces- seurs et notamment celui de Hume, que parce qu'il se croyait convaincu de leur defaut de fondement. Mais un autre antagoniste, non moins celebre, du scepticisme de Hume, rut, en outre, guide par la haine qu'il avoit vouee & son illustre compatriote, lequel lui rtpondit avec beau- coup d'aigreur et d'animosite. James Beattie, 284 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes and professeur de morale a Edimbourg, puis ensuite, de losrique et de morale a 1'Universite d' Aberdeen, Illustrations. & * ^reference sur Hume lorsqu il Jut question de remplir la chaire vacante d Edimbourg. Cette circonstance devint sans doute la principale source de 1'inimitie que les deux savans co^urent 1'un pour 1'autre, et qui influa meme sur le ton qu'ils employerent dans les raisonnemens par lesquels ils se combattirent." (Tome V. p. 235.) To this quotation may I be pardoned for adding a few sentences relative to myself ? " L'ouvrage de Dugald Stewart, intitule, Ele- ments of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, est un syncretisme des opinions de Hartley et de Reid. Stewart borne absolument la connois- sance, tant de Tame que des choses exterieures, a ce que le sens commun nous en apprend, et croit pouvoir ainsi mefrtre 1'etude de la meta- physique a 1'abri du reproche de rouler sur des choses qui depassent la sphere de notre intelli- gence, ou qui sont tout-a-fait inutiles dans la pratique de la vie Les chapitres suivans renferment le developpement du principe de 1'association des idees. Ils sont presqu' entitle- ment ecrits d'apres Hartley. Stewart fait de- river de ce principe toutes les facultes intellec- tuelles et pratiques de I'liomme." (Tom. V. pp. 330, 331.) Of the discrimination displayed by Buhle in the classification of systems and of authors, the title prefixed to his 19th chapter may serve as a specimen : " Philosophy of Condillac, of Helve- tius, of Baron d'HoJbach, of Robinet, of Bonnet, of Montesquieu, of Burlemaqui, of Vattel, and of Reid." But the radical defect of Buhle's work is, the almost total want of references to original au- thors. We are presented only with the general results of the author's reading, without any guide to assist us in confirming his conclusions when right, or in correcting them when wrong. This circumstance is of itself sufficient to anni- hilate the value of any historical composition. Sismondi, in mentioning the history of mo- dern literature by Bouterwek, takes occasion to pay a compliment (and, I have no doubt, a very deserved one) to German scholars in general ; observing, that he has executed his task " avec une etendue d'erudition, et une loyaute dans la maniere d'en faire profiter ses lecteurs, qui Note semblent propres aux savans Allemands." j llu *" d (De la Litt. du Midi de V Europe, Tom, I. p. 13, ^-^v a Paris, 1813.) I regret that my ignorance of the German language has prevented me from profiting by a work of which Sismondi has ex- pressed so favourable an opinion ; and still more, that the only history of philosophy from the pen of a contemporary German scholar, which I have had access to consult, should form so remarkable an exception to Sismondi's observation. The contents of the preceding note lay me under the necessity, in justice to myself, of taking some notice of the following remark, by an anonymous critic, on the first part of this Dissertation, published in 1815. (See Quarterly Review, Vol. XVII. p. 42.) " In the plan which Mr Stewart has adopted, if he has not consulted his strength, he has at least consulted his ease ; for, supposing a per- son to have the requisite talent and information, the task which our author has performed, is one which, with the historical abstracts of Buhle or " Tenneman, cannot be supposed to have required any very laborious meditation." On the insinuation contained in the foregoing passage, I abstain from offering any comment. I have only to say, that it was not till the summer of 1820 that I saw the work of Buhle; and that I have never yet had an opportunity of seeing that of Tenneman. From what I have found in the one, and from what I have heard of the other, I am strongly inclined to suspect, that when the anonymous critic wrote the above sentence, he was not less igno- rant than myself of the works of these two his- torians. Nor can I refrain from adding (which I do with perfect confidence), that no person competent to judge on such a subject can read with attention this Historical Sketch, without perceiving that its merits and defects, whatever they may be, are at least all my own. NOTE B B B, p. 204. Of the Scottish authors who turned their at- tention to metaphysical studies, prior to the DISSERTATION FIRST. 285 Notes and ustrations union of the two Kingdoms, I know of none so eminent as George Dalgarno of Aberdeen, au- thor of two works, both of them strongly marked with sound philosophy, as well as with original genius. The one published at London, 1660, is entitled, " Ars signorum, vulgo character uni- versalis et lingua philosophica, qua poterunt ho- mines diversissimorum idiomatum, spatio duarum septimanarum, omnia animi sui sensa (in rebus familiaribus ) non minus intelligibiliter, sive scri- bendo, sive loquendo, mutuo communicare, quam linguis propriis vernaculis. Prceterea, hinc etiam poterunt juvenes, philosophic principia, et veram logiccB praxin, citius et facilius multo imbibere, quam ex vulgaribus philosophorum scriptis." The other work of Dalgarno is entitled, " Didascolo- cophus, or the Deaf and Dumb Man's Tutor." Printed at Oxford, 1680. I have given some account of the former in the notes at the end of the first volume of the Philosophy of the Human Mind; and of the latter, in a Memoir, published in Vol. VII. of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. As they are now become extremely rare, and would together form a very small octavo volume, I cannot help thinking that a bookseller, who should reprint them, would be fully indemnified by the sale. The fate of Dalgarno will be hard indeed, if, in addition to the unjust neglect he experienced from his contemporaries, the proofs he has left of his philosophical talents shall be suffered to sink into total oblivion. Lord Stair's Physiologia Nova Experimental (published at Leyden in 1686) is also worthy of notice in the literary history of Scotland. Al- though it bears few marks of the eminent ta- lents which distinguished the author, both as a lawyer and as a statesman, it discovers a very extensive acquaintance with the metaphysical as well as with the physical doctrines, which were chiefly in vogue at that period ; more par- ticularly with the leading doctrines of Gassendi, Descartes, and Malebranche. Many acute and some important strictures are made on the errors of all the three, and at the same time complete justice is done to their merits; the writer every where manifesting an indepen- dence of opinion and a spirit of free inquiry, very uncommon among the philosophers of the seventeenth century. The work is dedicated Notes to the Royal Society of London, of the utility j,, and . of which institution, in promoting experimental knowledge, he appears to have been fully aware. The limits of a note will not permit me to enter into farther details concerning the state of philosophy in Scotland, during the interval between the union of the Crowns and that of the Kingdoms. The circumstances of the coun- try were indeed peculiarly unfavourable to it. But memorials still exist of a few individuals, sufficient to show, that the philosophical taste, which has so remarkably distinguished our countrymen during the eighteenth century, was in some measure an inheritance from their im- mediate predecessors. Leibnitz, I think, some- where mentions the number of learned Scotch- men by whom he was visited in the course of their travels. To one of them (Mr Burnet of Kemney) he has addressed a most interesting letter, dated in 1697, on the general state of learning and science in Europe ; opening his mind on the various topics "which he introduces, with a freedom and confidence highly honour- able to the attainments and character of his correspondent. Dr Arbuthnot, who \vas born about the time of the Restoration, may serve as a fair specimen of the very liberal education which was then to be had in some of the Scot- tish Universities. The large share which he is allowed to have contributed to the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus abundantly attests the va- riety of his learning, and the just estimate he had formed of the philosophy of the schools ; and in one or two passages, where he glances at the errors of his contemporaries, an attentive and intelligent reader will trace, amid all his pleasantry, a metaphysical depth and soundness which seem to belong to a later period. Is there no Arbuthnot now, to chastise the follies of our craniologists ? NOTE C C C, p. 214 The letter which gives occasion to this note was written twenty years after the publication of the Treatise of Human Nature. As it relates, however, to the history of Mr Hume's studies 286 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes previous to that publication, I consider this as Illustrations tne P r P er P lace for introducing it. The Dia- ~*~v~^ logue to which the letter refers was plainly that which appeared after Mr Hume's death, under the title of Dialogues on Natural Religion. " Ninewells, March 19. 1751. " DEAR SIR You would perceive by the sample I have given you, that I make Cleanthes the hero of the dialogue. Whatever you can think of to strengthen that side of the argument will be most acceptable to me. Any propensity you imagine I have to the other side crept in upon me against my will ; and it is not long ago that I burned an old manuscript book, wrote before I was twenty, which contained, page af- ter page, the gradual progress of my thoughts on that head. It begun with an anxious search after arguments to confirm the common opinion ; doubts stole in, dissipated, returned, were again dissipated, returned again, and it was a per- petual struggle of a restless imagination against inclination, perhaps against reason. " I have often thought that the best way of composing a dialogue would be for two persons that are of different opinions about any question of importance, to write alternately the different parts of the discourse, and reply to each other. By this means that vulgar error would be avoid- ed of putting nothing but nonsense into the mouth of the adversary : and, at the same time, a variety of character and genius being upheld, would make the whole look more natural and unaffected. Had it been my good fortune to live near you, I should have taken on me the character of Philo in the dialogue, which you'll own I could have supported naturally enough ; and you would not have been averse to that of Cleanthes. I believe, too, we could both of us have kept our tempers very well ; only you have not reached an absolute philosophical indiffe- rence on these points. What danger can ever come from ingenious reasoning and inquiry? The worst speculative sceptic ever I knew was a much better man than the best superstitious devotee and bigot. I must inform you too, that this was the way of thinking of the ancients on this subject. If a man made profession of phi- losophy, whatever his sect was, they always ex- pected to find more regularity in his life and manners than in those of the ignorant and illi- terate. There is a remarkable passage of Ap- pian to this purpose. That historian observes, that, notwithstanding the established prepos- session in favour of learning, yet some philoso- phers who have been trusted with absolute power have very much abused it ; and he in- stances in Critias, the most violent of the Thirty, and Aristion, who governed Athens in the time of Sylla. But I find, upon inquiry, that Critias was a professed Atheist, and Aris- tion an Epicurean, which is little or nothing different ; and yet Appian wonders at their cor- ruption as much as if they had been Stoics or Platonists. A modern zealot would have thought that corruption unavoidable. " I could wish that Cleanthes's argument could be so analysed as to be rendered quite formal and regular. The propensity of the mind towards it, unless that propensity were as strong and universal as that to believe in our senses and experience, will still, I am afraid, be esteemed a suspicious foundation. 'Tis here I wish for your assistance. We must endeavour to prove that this propensity is somewhat diffe- rent from our inclination to find our own figures in the clouds, our face in the moon, our passions and sentiments even in inanimate matter. Such an inclination may and ought to be controlled, and can never be a legitimate ground of assent. " The instances I have chosen for Cleanthes are, I hope, tolerably happy ; and the confusion in which I represent the sceptic seems natural. But, si quid novisti rectius, &c. " You ask me, if the idea of cause and effect is nothing but vicinity ? (you should have said con- stant vicinity or regular conjunction) / would gladly know whence is that farther idea of causa- tion against which you argue ? The question is pertinent ; but I hope I have answered it. We feel, after the constant conjunction, an easy transition from one idea to the other, or a con- nection in the imagination ; and, as it is usual for us to transfer our own feelings to the ob- jects on which they are dependent, we attach the internal sentiment to the external objects. If no single instances of cause and effect appear to have any connection, but only repeated simi- DISSERTATION FIRST. 287 Notes lar ones, you will find yourself obliged to have recourse to this theory. ustrations. s~v~*+J " I am sorry our correspondence should lead us into these abstract speculations. I have thought, and read, and composed very little on such questions of late. Morals, politics, and literature, have employed all my time ; but still the other topics I must think more curious, im- portant, entertaining, and useful, than any geo- metry that is deeper than Euclid. If, in order to answer the doubts started, new principles of philosophy must be laid, are not these doubts themselves very useful ? Are they not prefer- able to blind and ignorant assent ? I hope I can answer my own doubts ; but, if I could not, is it to be wondered at ? To give myself airs and speak magnificently ; might I not observe that Columbus did not conquer empires and plant colonies ? " If I have not unravelled the knot so well in these last papers I sent you, as perhaps I did in the former, it has not, I assure you, proceed- ed from want of good will. But some subjects are easier than others; and sometimes one is happier in one's researches and inquiries than at other times. Still I have recourse to the si quid novisti rectius ; not in order to pay you a compliment, but from a real philosophical doubt and curiosity." 1 An unfinished draught of the letter to which the foregoing seems to have been the reply, has been preserved among Sir Gilbert Elliot's pa- pers. This careless fragment is in his own handwriting, and exhibits an interesting speci- men of the progress made in Scotland among the higher classes, seventy years ago, not only in sound philosophy, but in purity of English style. " DEAR SIR Inclosed I return your papers, which, since my coming to town, I have again read over with the greatest care. The thoughts which this last perusal of them has suggested I shall set down, merely in compliance with your desire, for I pretend not to say any- thing new upon a question which has already been examined so often and so accurately. I must freely own to you, that to me it appears extremely doubtful, if the position which Cle- anthes undertakes to maintain can be supported, at least in any satisfactory manner, upon the principles he establishes and the concessions he makes. If it be only from effects exactly simi- lar that experience warrants us to infer a simi- lar cause, then I am afraid it must be granted, that the works of Nature resemble not so nearly the productions of man as to support the conclu- sion which Cleanthes admits can be built only on that resemblance. The two instances he brings to illustrate his argument are indeed ingenious and elegant ; the first, especially, which seem- ingly carries great weight along with it: the other, I mean that of the Vegetating Library, as it is of more difficult apprehension, so I think it is not easy for the mind either to retain or to apply it. But, if I mistake not, this strong objection strikes equally against them both. Cleanthes does no more than substitute two ar- tificial instances in the place of natural ones : but if these bear no nearer a resemblance than natural ones to the effects which we have expe- rienced to proceed from men, then nothing can justly be inferred from them; and if this re- semblance be greater, then nothing farther ought to be inferred from them. In one respect, how- ever, Cleanthes seems to limit his reasonings more than is necessary even upon his own prin- ciples. Admitting, for once, that experience is the only source of our knowledge, I cannot see how it follows, that, to enable us to infer a si- milar cause, the effects must not only be similar, but exactly and precisely so. Will not expe- rience authorise me to conclude, that a machine or piece of mechanism was produced by human art, unless I have happened previously to see a machine or piece of mechanism exactly of the same sort ? Point out, for instance, the contri- vance and end of a watch to a peasant, who had never before seen any thing more curious than the coarsest instruments of husbandry, will he not immediately conclude, that this watch is an effect produced by human art and design ? And Notes The original is in the possession of the Earl of Minto. 288 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. I would still farther ask, does a spade or a plough much more resemhle a watch than a watch does an organised animal ? The result of our whole experience, if experience indeed be the only principle, seems rather to amount to this : There are but two ways in which we have ever ob- served the different parcels of matter to be thrown together ; either at random, or with de- sign and purpose. By the first we have never seen produced a regular complicated effect, cor- responding to a certain end ; by the second, we uniformly have. If, then, the works of nature, and the productions of man, resemble each other in this one general characteristic, will not even experience sufficiently warrant us to ascribe to both a similar though proportionable cause ? If you answer, that abstracting from the experience we acquire in this world, order and adjustment of parts is no proof of design, my reply is, that no conclusions, drawn from the nature of so chi- merical a being as man, considered abstracted from experience, can at all be listened to. The principles of the human mind are clearly so con- trived as not to unfold themselves till the pro- per objects and proper opportunity and occasion be presented. There is no arguing upon the na- ture of man but by considering him as grown to maturity, placed in society, and become ac- quainted with surrounding objects. But if you should still farther urge, that, with regard to in- stances of which we have no experience, for aught we know, matter may contain the prin- ciples of order, arrangement, and the adjust- ment of final causes, I should only answer, that whoever can conceive this proposition to be true, has exactly the same idea of matter that I have of. mind. I know not if I have reasoned justly upon Cleanthes's principles, nor is it indeed very material. The purpose of my letter is barely to point out what to me appears the fair and phi- losophical method of proceeding in this inquiry. That this universe is the effect of an intelligent designing cause, is a principle which has been most universally received in all ages and in all nations ; the proof uniformly appealed to is, the admirable order and adjustment of the works of nature. To proceed, then, experimentally and philosophically, the first question in point of or- der seems to be, what is the effect which the contemplation of the universe, and the several Not parts of it, produces upon a considering mind ? Jllus a t "^ This is a question of fact ; a popular question, ^s~v the discussion of which depends not upon refine- ments and subtlety, but merely upon impartia- lity and attention. I ask, then, what is the sen- timent which prevails in one's mind, after hav- ing considered not only the more familiar ob- jects that surround him, but also all the disco- veries of Natural Philosophy and Natural His- tory ; after having considered not only the ge- neral economy of the universe, but also the most minute parts of it, and the amazing adjustment of means to ends with a precision unknown to human art, and in instances innumerable ? Tell me (to use the words of Cleanthes), does not the idea of a contriver flow in upon you with a force like that of sensation ? Expressions how just ! (yet in the mouth of Cleanthes you must allow me to doubt of their propriety.) Nor does this conviction only arise from the consideration of the inanimate parts of the creation, but still more strongly from the contemplation of the fa- culties of the understanding, the affections of the heart, and the various instincts discoverable both in men and brutes ; all so properly adapted to the circumstances and situation both of the species and the individual. Yet this last obser- vation, whatever may be in it, derives no force from experience. For who ever saw a mind produced ? If we are desirous to push our ex- periments still farther, and inquire, whether the survey of the universe has regularly and uni- formly led to the belief of an intelligent cause ? Shall we not find, that, from the author of the book of Job to the preachers at Boyle's Lecture, the same language has been universally held ? No writer, who has ever treated this subject, but has either applied himself to describe, in the most emphatical language, the beauty and order of the universe, or else to collect together and place in the most striking light, the many in- stances of contrivance and design which have been discovered by observation and experiment. And when they have done this, they seem to have imagined that their task was finished, and their demonstration complete; and indeed no wonder, for it seems to me, that we are scarce more assured of our own existence, than that DISSERTATION FIRST. 289 Notes and this well-ordered universe is the effect of an in- S trations. tel % entcaUSe - -v"^ " This first question, then, which is indeed a question of fact, being thus settled upon obser- vations which are obvious and unrefined, but not on that account the less satisfactory, it be- comes the business of the philosopher to inquire, whether the conviction arising from these obser- vations be founded on the conclusions of reason, the reports of experience, or the dictates of feel- ing, or possibly upon all these together ; but if his principles shall not be laid so wide as to ac- count for the fact already established upon prior evidence, we may, I think, safely conclude, that his principles are erroneous. Should a philoso- pher pretend to demonstrate to me, by a system of optics, that I can only discern an object when placed directly opposite to my eye, I should certainly answer, your system must be defec- tive, for it is contradicted by matter of fact." Notes END OF THE FIRST DISSERTATION. DISS. I. PART II. 20 DISSERTATION SECOND; EXHIBITING A GENERAL VIEW OF THE PROGRESS OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY, CHIEFLY DURING THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES. BY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH, LL.D. F.R.S. M.P. DISSERTATION SECOND. INTRODUCTION. THE inadequacy of the words of ordinary lan- guage for the purposes of Philosophy, is an an- cient and frequent complaint ; of which the just- ness will he felt by all who consider the state to which some of the most important arts would he reduced, if the coarse tools of the common labourer were the only instruments to be em- ployed in the most delicate operations of ma- nual expertness. The watchmaker, the opti- cian, and the surgeon, are provided with instru- ments which are fitted, by careful ingenuity, to second their skill ; the philosopher alone is doomed to use the rudest tools for the most re- fined purposes. He must reason in words of which the looseness and vagueness are suitable, and even agreeable, in the usual intercourse of life, but which are almost as remote from the extreme exactness and precision required, not only in the conveyance, but in the search of truth, as the hammer and the axe would be un- fit for the finest exertions of skilful handiwork ; for it is not to be forgotten, that he must him- self think in these gross words as unavoidably as he uses them in speaking to others. He is in this rfespect in a worse condition than an as- tronomer who looked at the heavens o'nly with the naked eye, whose limited and partial obser- vation, however it might lead to error, might not directly, and would not necessarily deceive. He might be more justly compared to an arith- metician compelled to employ numerals not only cumbrous, but used so irregularly to denote dif- ferent quantities, that they not only often de- ceived others, but himself. The Natural Philosopher and Mathematician have in some degree the privilege of framing their own terms of art ; though that liberty is daily narrowed by the happy diffusion of these great branches of knowledge, which daily mixes their language with the general vocabulary of educated men. The cultivator of Mental and Moral Philosophy can seldom do more than mend the faults of his words by definition ; a necessary but very inadequate expedient, in a great measure defeated in practice by the un- avoidably more frequent recurrence of the terms in their vague than in their definite acceptation ; in consequence of which the mind, to which the 294 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. definition is faintly and but occasionally present, naturally suffers, in the ordinary state of atten- tion, the scientific meaning to disappear from remembrance, and insensibly ascribes to the word a great part, if not the whole, of that po- pular sense which is so very much more familiar even to the most veteran speculator. The ob- stacles which stood in the way of Lucretius and Cicero, when they began to translate the subtile philosophy of Greece into their narrow and bar- ren tongue, are always felt by the philosopher when he struggles to express, with the neces- sary discrimination, his abstruse reasonings in words which, though those of his own language, he must take from the mouths of those to whom his distinctions would be without meaning. The Moral Philosopher is in this respect sub- ject to peculiar difficulties. His statements and reasonings often call for nicer discriminations of language than those which are necessary in describing or discussing the purely intellectual part of human nature ; but his freedom in the choice of words is more circumscribed. As he treats of matters on which all men are disposed to form a judgment, he can as rarely hazard glaring innovations in diction, at least in an adult and mature language like ours, as the ora- tor or the poet. If he deviates from common use, he must atone for his deviation by hiding it, and can only give a new sense to an old word by so skilful a position of it as to render the new meaning so quickly understood that its no- velty is scarcely perceived. Add to this, that in those most difficult inquiries for which the utmost coolness is not more than sufficient, he is often forced to use terms commonly connect- ed with warm feeling, with high praise, with severe reproach ; which excite the passions of his readers when he most needs their calm atten- tion and the undisturbed exercise of their im- partial judgment. There is scarcely a neutral term left in Ethics ; so quickly are such expres- sions enlisted on the side of Praise or Blame, by the address of contending passions. A true philosopher must not even desire that men should less love virtue or hate vice, in order to fit them for a more unprejudiced judgment on his speculations. There are perhaps not many occasions where the penury and laxity of language are more felt than in entering on the history of sciences where the first measure must be to mark out the boun- dary of the whole subject with some distinct- ness. But no exactness in these important ope- rations can be approached without a new divi- sion of human knowledge, adapted to the pre- sent stage of its progress, and a reformation of all those barbarous, pedantic, unmeaning, and (what is worse) wrong-meaning names which continue to be applied to the greater part of its branches. Instances are needless where nearly all the appellations are faulty. The term Me- taphysics affords a specimen of all the faults which the name of a science can combine. To those who know only their own language, it must, at their entrance on the study, convey no meaning. It points their attention to nothing. If they examine the language in which its parts are significant, they will be misled into the per- nicious error of believing that it seeks some- thing more than the interpretation of nature. It is only by examining the history of ancient Philosophy that the probable origin of this name will be found, in the application of it, as the running title of several essays of Aristotle, which were placed in a collection of the manu- scripts of that great philosopher, after his trea- tise on Physics. It has the greater fault of an unsteady and fluctuating signification ; denoting one class of objects in the seventeenth century, and another in the eighteenth even in the nineteenth not quite of the same import in the mouth of a German, as in that of a French or English philosopher; to say nothing of the far- ther objection that it continues to be a badge of undue pretension among some of the followers of the science, while it has become a name of reproach and derision among those who alto- gether decry it. The modern name of the very modern science called Political Economy, though deliberately bestowed on it by its most eminent teachers, is perhaps a still more notable sample of the like faults. It might lead the ignorant to confine it to retrenchment in national expenditure ; and a consideration of its etymology alone would lead into the more mischievous error of believing it to teach, that national wealth is best promoted by DISSERTATION SECOND. 295 the contrivance and interference of lawgivers, in opposition to its surest doctrine, which it most justly boasts of having discovered and en- forced. It is easy to conceive an exhaustive analysis of Human Knowledge, and a consequent division of it into parts corresponding to all the classes of objects to which it relates : a representation of that vast edifice, containing a picture of what is finished, a sketch of what is building, and even a conjectural outline of what, though re- quired by completeness and convenience, as well as symmetry, is yet altogether untouched. A system of names might also be imagined derived from a few roots, indicating the objects of each part, and showing the relation of the parts to each other. An order and a language somewhat resembling those by which the objects of the sciences of Botany and Chemistry have, in the eighteenth century, been arranged and denoted, are doubtless capable of application to the sciences generally, when considered as parts of the system of knowledge. The attempts, however, which have hitherto been made to accomplish the ana- lytical division of knowledge which must neces- sarily precede a new nomenclature ot the sciences, have required so prodigious a superiority of ge- nius in the single instance of approach to success by Bacon, as to discourage rivalship nearly as much as the frequent examples of failure in sub- sequent times. The nomenclature itself is at- tended with great difficulties, not indeed in its conception, but in its adoption and usefulness. In the Continental languages to the south of the Rhine, the practice of deriving the names of science from Greek must be continued ; which would render the new names for a while unin- telligible to the majority of men. Even in Ger- many, where a flexible and fertile language affords unbounded liberty of derivation and com- position from native roots or elements, and where the newly derived and compounded words would thus be as clear to the mind, and almost as little startling to the ear of every man, as the oldest terms in the language, yet the whole no- menclature would be unintelligible to other na- tions. The intercommunity of the technical terms of science in Europe has been so far broken down by the Germans, and the influence of their literature and philosophy is so rapidly increasing in the greater part of the Continent, that though a revolution in scientific nomenclature be pro- bably yet far distant, the foundation of it may be considered as already prepared. But although so great an undertaking must be reserved for a second Bacon and a future generation, it is necessary for the historian of any branch of knowledge to introduce his work by some account of the limits and contents of the sciences of which he is about to trace the progress ; and though it will be found impos- sible to trace throughout the treatise a distinct line of demarcation, yet a general and imperfect sketch of the boundaries of the whole, and of the parts of our present subject, may be a con- siderable help to the reader, as it has been a useful guide to the writer. There is no distribution of the parts of know- ledge more ancient than that of the Physical and Moral Sciences, which seems liable to no other objection, than that it does not exhaust the subject. Even this division, however, can- not be safely employed, without warning the reader, that no science is entirely insulated, and that the principles of one are often only the conclusions and results of another. Every branch of knowledge has its root in the theory of the Understanding, from which even the ma- thematician must learn what can be known of his magnitude and his numbers ; and Moral Science is founded on that other hitherto un- named part of the philosophy of human nature (to be constantly and vigilantly distinguished from Intellectual Philosophy), which contem- plates the laws of sensibility, of emotion, of desire and aversion, of pleasure and pain, of happiness and misery ; and on which arise the august and sacred landmarks that stand con- spicuous along the frontier between Right and Wrong. But however multiplied the connections of the Moral and Physical Sciences are, it is not difficult to draw a general distinction between them. The purpose of the Physical Sciences throughout all their provinces, is to answer the question What is ? They consist only of facts arranged according to their likeness, and ex- pressed by general names given to every class 296 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. of similar facts. The purpose of the Moral Sciences is to answer the question What ought to be? They aim at ascertaining the rules which aught to govern voluntary action, and to which those hahitual dispositions of mind which are the source of voluntary actions ought to be adapted. It is obvious that Willy Action, Habit, Disposi- tion, are terms denoting facts in human nature, and that an explanation of them must be sought in Mental Philosophy ; which, if knowledge be divided into Physical and Moral, must be placed among physical sciences; though it essentially differs from them all in having for its chief ob- ject those laws of thought which alone render any other sort of knowledge possible. But it is equally certain that the word Ought introduces the mind into a new region, to which nothing physical corresponds. However philosophers may deal with this most important of words, it is instantly understood by all who do not at- tempt to define it. No civilized speech, perhaps no human language, is without correspondent terms. It would be as reasonable to deny that Space and Greenness are significant words, as to affirm that Ought, Right, Duty, Virtue, are sounds without meaning. It would be fatal to an Ethi- cal Theory that it did not explain them, and that it did not comprehend all the conceptions and emotions which they call up. There never yet was a theory which did not attempt such an explanation. SECTION I. Preliminary Observations. THERE is no man who, in a case where he was a calm by-stander, would not look with more satisfaction on acts of kindness than on acts of cruelty. No man, after the first excite- ment of his mind has subsided, ever whispered to himself with self-approbation and secret joy that he had been guilty of cruelty or baseness. Every criminal is strongly impelled to hide these qualities of his actions from himself, as he would do from others, by clothing his conduct in some disguise of duty or of necessity. There is no tribe so rude as to be without a faint perception of a difference between right and wrong. There is no subject on which men of all ages and na- tions coincide in so many points as in the gene- ral rules of conduct, and in the qualities of the human character which deserve esteem. Even the grossest deviations from the general consent will appear, on close examination, to be not so much corruptions of moral feeling, as either ig- norance of facts ; or errors with respect to the consequences of action ; or cases in which the dissentient party is inconsistent with other parts of his own principles, which destroys the value of his dissent ; or where each dissident is con- demned by all the other dissidents, which im- measurably augments the majority against him. In the first three cases he may be convinced by argument, that his moral judgment should be changed on principles which he recognises as just; and he can seldom, if ever, be condemned at the same time by the body of mankind who agree in their moral systems, and by those who on some other points dissent from that general code, without being also convicted of error by inconsistency with himself. The tribes who ex- pose new-born infants, condemn those who abandon their decrepit parents to destruction. Those who betray and murder strangers, are condemned by the rules of faith and humanity which they acknowledge in their intercourse with their countrymen. Mr Hume, in a dia- logue in which he ingeniously magnifies the moral heresies of two nations so polished as the Athenians and the French, has very satisfactorily resolved his own difficulties. " In how many cir- cumstances would an Athenian and a Frenchman of merit certainly resemble each other? Human- DISSERTATION SECOND. 297 ity, fidelity, truth, justice, courage, temperance, constancy, dignity of mind The principles upon which men reason in morals are always the same, though their conclusions are often very dif- ferent." 1 He might have added, that almost every deviation which he imputes to each nation is at variance with some of the virtues justly esteemed by both ; and that the reciprocal condemnation of each other's errors which appears in his statement entitles us on these points to strike out the suffrages of both, when collecting the general judgment of mankind. If we bear in mind that the question relates to the coincidence of all men in considering the same qualities as virtues, and not to the preference of one class of virtues by some, and of a different class by others, the exceptions from the agreement of mankind, in their system of practical morality, will be reduced to absolute insignificance ; and we shall learn to view them as no more affecting the harmony of our moral faculties, than the re- semblance of the limbs and features is affected by monstrous conformations, or by the unfortu- nate effects of accident and disease in a very few individuals." It is very remarkable, however, that though all men agree that there are acts which ought to be done, and acts which ought not to be done ; though the far greater part of mankind agree in their list of virtues and duties, of vices and crimes ; and though the whole race, as it advances in other improvements, is as evidently tending towards the moral system of the most civilized nations, as children in their growth tend to the opinions as much as to the experience and strength of. adults ; yet there are no questions in the circle of inquiry to which answers more various have been given than How men have thus come to agree in the rule of life ; Whence arises their general reverence for it ; and What is meant by affirming that it ought to be in- violably observed ? It is singular, that where we are most nearly agreed respecting rules, we should perhaps most differ as to the causes of our agreement, and as to the reasons which justify us for adhering to it. The discussion of these subjects composes what is usually called the Theory of Morals, in a sense not in all respects coincident with what is usually con- sidered as Theory in other sciences. When we investigate the causes of our moral agreement, the term Theory retains its ordinary scientific sense ; but when we endeavour to ascertain the reasons of it, we rather employ the term as im- porting the theory of the rules of an art. In the first case, Theory denotes, as usual, the most general laws to which certain facts can be reduced ; whereas in the second, it points out the efficacy of the observance, in practice, of certain rules, for producing the effects intended to be produced in the art. These reasons also may be reduced under the general sense by stat- ing the question relating to them thus : What are the causes, why the observance of certain rules enables us to execute certain purposes ? An account of the various answers attempted to be made to these inquiries, properly forms the History of Ethics. The attentive reader may already perceive, that these momentous inquiries relate to at least two perfectly distinct subjects : 1. The nature of the distinction between right and wrong in human conduct, and 2. The nature of those feel- ings with which right and wrong are contem- plated by human beings. The latter consti- tutes what has been called the Theory of Mo- ral Sentiments; the former consists in an in- vestigation into the Criterion of Morality in action. Other most important questions arise in this province. But the two problems which have been just stated, and the essential distinc- tion between them, must be clearly apprehended 1 Philosophical Works, vol. IV. p. 420, 422. Edinb. 1826. " On convient le plus souvent de ces instincts de la conscience. La plus grande et la plus saine partie du genre hu- main leur rend te'moignage. Les Orientaux, et les Grecs, et les Remains conviennent en cela ; et il faudroit etre aussi abruti que les sausages Ame'ricains pour approuver leurs coutumes, pleines d'une cruaute' qui passe meme celle des betes. Cependant ces mimes sauvages sentent Hen ce que c'est que la justice en d'autres occasions ; et quoique il n'y ait point de mauvaise pratique peut-etre qui ne soil autoris^e quelque part, il y en a peu pourtant qui ne soient condamne'es le plus souvent, et par la plus grande partie des hommes." (LEIBNITZ, (Euvres Philofophiques, p. 49. Amst. et Leipz. 1765, 4to.) There are some admirable observations on this subject in Hartley, especially in the development of the 49th Proposi- tion. " The rule of life drawn from the practice and opinions of mankind corrects and improves itself perpetually, till at last it determines entirely for virtue, and exclude* all kinds and degrees of vice." (Observations on Man, I. 207-) DISf:. II. 2 P 298 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. by all who are desirous of understanding the controversies which have prevailed on ethical subjects. The discrimination has seldom been made by Moral Philosophers; the difference between the two problems has never been uni- formly observed by any of them : and it will appear, in the sequel, that they have been not rarely altogether confounded by very eminent men, to the destruction of all just conception and of all correct reasoning in this most import- ant, and perhaps most difficult of sciences. It may therefore be allowable to deviate so far from historical order, as to illustrate the nature and to prove the importance of the dis- tinction, by an example of the effects of ne- glecting it, taken from the recent works of justly celebrated writers; in which they discuss questions much agitated in the present age, and therefore probably now familiar to most readers of this Dissertation. DrPaley represents the principle of a moral sense as being opposed to that of utility. * Now, it is evident that this representation is founded on a confusion of the two questions which have been stated above. That we are endued with a moral sense, or, in other words, a faculty which immediately approves what is right and con- demns what is wrong, is only a statement of the feelings with which we contemplate actions. But to affirm that right actions are those which conduce to the wellbeing of mankind, is a pro- position concerning the outward effects by which right actions themselves may be recog- nised. As these affirmations relate to different subjects, they cannot be opposed to each other, any more than the solidity of earth is inconsist- ent with the fluidity of water ; and a very little reflection will show it to be easily conceivable that they may be both true. Man may be so constituted as instantaneously to approve cer- tain actions without any reference to their con- sequences ; and yet reason may nevertheless discover, that a tendency to produce general happiness is the essential characteristic of such actions. Mr Bentham also contrasts the prin- ciple of utility with that of sympathy, of which he considers the moral sense as being one of the forms. 2 It is needless to repeat, that proposi- tions which affirm or deny anything of different subjects, cannot contradict each other. As these celebrated persons have thus inferred or implied the non-existence of a moral sense, from their opinion that the morality of actions depends upon their usefulness, so other philoso- phers of equal name have concluded, that the utility of actions cannot be the criterion of their morality, because a perception of that utility appears to them to form a faint and in- considerable part of our moral sentiments, if indeed it be at all discoverable in them. 5 These errors are the more remarkable, because the like confusion of perceptions with their objects, of emotions with their causes, or even the omis- sion to mark the distinctions, would, in every other subject, be felt to be a most serious fault in philosophizing. If, for instance, an element were discovered to be common to all bodies which our taste perceives to be sweet, and to be found in no other bodies, it is apparent that this discovery, perhaps important in other respects, would neither affect our perception of sweet- ness, nor the pleasure which attends it. Both would continue to be what they have been since the existence of mankind. Every proposition concerning that element would relate to sweet bodies, and belong to the science of Chemistry ; while every proposition respecting the percep- tion or pleasure of sweetness would relate either to the body or mind of man, and accordingly belong either to the science of Physiology, or to that of Mental Philosophy. During the many ages which passed before the analysis of the sun's beams had proved them to be com- pounded of different colours, white objects were seen, and their whiteness was sometimes felt to be beautiful, in the very same manner as since that discovery. The qualities of light are the object of Optics ; the nature of beauty can be as- 1 Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy. Compare book i. chap. v. with book ii. chap. vi. " Introduction to the Principles of Morality and Legislation, chap. ii. 3 SMITH'S Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part iv. Even Hume, in the third book of his Treatise of Human Nature, the most precise, perhaps, of his philosophical writings, uses the following as the title of one of the sections : " MORAL DIS- TINCTIONS derived from a Moral Sense." DISSERTATION SECOND. certained only by each man's observation of his own mind; the changes in the living frame which succeed the refraction of light in the eye, and precede mental operation, will, if they are ever to be known by man, constitute a part of Physiology. But no proposition relating to one of these orders of phenomena can contra- dict or support a proposition concerning another order. The analogy of this latter case will justify another preliminary observation. In the case of the pleasure derived from beauty, the ques- tion whether that pleasure be original or deriv- ed is of secondary importance. It has been often observed that the same properties which are admired as beautiful in the horse, contribute also to his safety and speed ; and they who in- fer that the admiration of beauty was originally founded on the convenience of fleetness and firmness, if they at the same time hold that the usefulness is gradually effaced, and that the ad- miration of a certain shape at length rises in- stantaneously without reference to any purpose, may, with perfect consistency, regard a sense of beauty as an independent and universal prin- ciple of human nature. The laws of such a feeling of beauty are discoverable only by self-, observation. Those of the qualities which call it forth are ascertained by examination of the outward things which are called beautiful. But it is of the utmost importance to bear in mind, that he who contemplates the beautiful propor- tions of a horse, as the signs and proofs of secu- rity or quickness, and has in view these conve- nient qualities, is properly said to prefer the horse for his usefulness, not for his beauty; though he may choose him from the same out- ward appearance which pleases the admirer of the beautiful animal. He alone who derives immediate pleasure from the appearance itself, without reflection on any advantages which it may promise, is truly said to feel the beauty. The distinction, however, manifestly depends, not on the origin of the emotion, but on its ob- ject and nature when completely formed. Many of our most important perceptions through the eye are universally acknowledged to be acquired. But they are as general as the original percep- tions of that organ ; they arise as independently of our will, and human nature would be quite as imperfect without them. An adult who did not immediately see the different distances of objects from his eye, would be thought by every one to be as great a deviation from the ordinary state of man as if he were incapable of distin- guishing the brightest sunshine from the dark- est midnight. Acquired perceptions and senti- ments may therefore be termed natural, as much as those which are more commonly so called, if they be as rarely found wanting. Ethical theories can never be satisfactorily discussed by those who do not constantly bear in mind, that the question concerning the existence of a moral faculty in man which immediately approves or disapproves without reference to any further ob- ject, is perfectly distinct, on the one hand, from that which inquires into the qualities thus ap- proved or disapproved ; and on the other, from an inquiry whether that faculty be derived from other parts of our mental frame, or be itself one of the ultimate constituent principles of human nature. SECTION II. Retrospect of Ancient Ethics. INQUIRIES concerning the nature of mind, ed the understanding of civilized men. Frag- the first principles of knowledge, the origin ments of such speculation are handed down and government of the world, appear to have from the legendary age of Greek philosophy, been among the earliest objects which employ- In the remaining monuments of that more an- 300 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. cient form of civilisation which sprung up in Asia, we see clearly that the Braminical philo- sophers, in times perhaps before the dawn of western history, had run round that dark and little circle of systems which an unquenchable thirst of knowledge has since urged both the speculators of ancient Greece and those of Chris- tendom to retrace. The wall of adamant which bounds human inquiry has scarcely ever been discovered by any adventurer, until he was roused by the shock which drove him back. It is otherwise with the theory of morals. No controversy seems to have arisen regarding it in Greece, till the rise and conflict of the Stoical and Epicurean schools ; and the ethical disputes of the modern world originated with the writings of Hobbes about the middle of the seventeenth century. Perhaps the longer abstinence from debate on this subject may have sprung from reverence for morality. Perhaps also, where the world were unanimous in their practical opinions, little need was felt of exact theory. The teachers of morals were content with par- tial or secondary principles, with the combina- tion of principles not always reconcilable, even with vague but specious phrases which in any degree explained or seemed to explain the rules of the art of life which seemed at once too evident to need investigation, and too venerable to be approached by controversy. Perhaps the subtile genius of Greece was in part withheld from indulging itself in ethical controversy by the influence of Socrates, who was much more a teacher of virtue than even a searcher after truth Whom, well inspired, the oracle pronounced Wisest of men. It was doubtless because he chose that better part that he was thus spoken of by the man whose commendation is glory, and who, from the loftiest eminence of moral genius ever reached by a mortal, was perhaps alone worthy to place a new crown on the brow of the mar- tyr of virtue. Aristippus indeed, a wit and a worldling, bor- rowed nothing from the conversations of So- crates but a few maxims for husbanding the enjoyments of sense. Antisthenes also, a hearer but not a follower, founded a school of parade and exaggeration, which caused his master to disown him by the ingenious rebuke, " I see your vanity through your threadbare cloak." 1 The modest doubts of the most sober of moralists, and his indisposition to fruitless abstractions, were in process of time employed as the foun- dation of systematic scepticism ; the most pre- sumptuous, inapplicable, and inconsistent of all the results of human meditation. But though his lessons were thus distorted by the perverse ingenuity of some who heard him, the authority of his practical sense may be traced in the mo- ral writings of those most celebrated philosophers who were directly or indirectly his disciples. Plato, the most famous of his scholars, the most eloquent of Grecian writers, and the earliest moral philosopher whose writings have come down to us, employed his genius in the compo- sition of dialogues, in which his master per- formed the principal part. These beautiful conversations would have lost their charm of- verisimilitude, of dramatic vivacity, of pictu- resque representation of character, if they had been subjected to the constraint of method. They necessarily presuppose much oral instruc- tion. They frequently quote, and doubtless oftener allude to the opinions of predecessors and contemporaries whose works have perished, and of whose doctrines only some fragments are preserved. In these circumstances, it must be difficult for the most learned and philosophical of his commentators to give a just representation of his doctrines, if he really framed or adopted a system. The moral part of his works is more accessible. 2 The vein of thought which runs through them is always visible. The object is to inspire the love of truth, of wisdom, of beauty, especially of goodness the highest beauty, and of that supreme and eternal mind, which con- tains all truth and wisdom, all beauty and good- 1 DIOG. LAERT. vi. ^ELIAN. ix. 35. - HEUSDE, Initia Philosoph. Plat. 1827 ; a hitherto incomplete work of great perspicuity and elegance, in which we must excuse the partiality which belongs to a labour of love. DISSERTATION SECOND. 301 ness. By the love or delightful contemplation and pursuit of these transcendent aims for their own sake only, he represented the mind of man as raised from low and perishable objects, and prepared for those high destinies which are ap- pointed for all those who are capable of them. The application to moral qualities of terms which denote outward beauty, though by him perhaps carried to excess, is an illustrative me- taphor, as well warranted by the poverty of lan- guage as any other employed to signify the acts or attributes of mind. 1 The beautiful in his language denoted all that of which the mere contemplation is in itself delightful, without any admixture of organic pleasure, and without being regarded as the means of attaining any farther end. The feeling which belongs to it he called love ; a word which, as comprehending compla- cency, benevolence, and affection, and reaching from the neighbourhood of the senses to the most sublime of human thoughts, is foreign from the colder and more exact language of our philoso- phy ; but which perhaps then happily served to lure both the lovers of poetry and the votaries of superstition to the school of truth and good- ness in the groves of the Academy. He enforced these lessons by an inexhaustible variety of just and beautiful illustrations, sometimes striking from their familiarity, sometimes subduing by their grandeur ; and his works are the store- house from which moralists have from age to age borrowed the means of rendering moral in- struction easier and more delightful. Virtue he represented as the harmony of the whole soul ; as a peace between all its principles and desires, assigning to each as much space as they can oc- cupy, without encroaching on each other ; as a state of perfect health, in which every function was performed with ease, pleasure, and vigour ; as a well-ordered commonwealth, where the obedient passions executed with energy the laws and commands of reason. The vicious mind presented the odious character, sometimes of dis- cord, of war ; sometimes of disease; always of passions warring with each other in eternal anarchy. Consistent with himself, and at peace with his fellows, the good man felt in the quiet of his conscience a foretaste of the approbation of God. " Oh what ardent love would virtue inspire if she could be seen." " If the heart of a tyrant could be laid bare, we should see how it was cut,and torn by its own evil passions and by an avenging conscience." 2 Perhaps in every one of these illustrations, an eye trained in the history of Ethics may discover the germ of the whole or of a part of some sub- sequent theory. But to examine it thus would not be to look at it with the eye of Plato. His aim was as practical as that of Socrates. He employed every topic, without regard to its place in a system, or even always to its force as argument, which could attract the small portion of the community then accessible to cultivation ; who, it should not be forgotten, had no moral instructor but the philosopher, unaided, if not thwarted, by the reigning superstition ; for reli- gion had not then, besides her own discoveries, brought down the most awful and the most beautiful forms of moral truth to the humblest station in human society. 5 Ethics retained her sober spirit in the hands of his great scholar and rival Aristotle, who, 1 The most probable etymology of xXas seems to be from x,a.a to bum. What burns commonly shines. Schon, in Ger- man, which means beautiful, is derived from scheinen, to shine. The word xxXos was used for right, so early as the Home- ric Poems. //. xvii. 19. In the philosophical age it became a technical term, with little other remains of the metaphorical sense than what the genius and art of a fine writer might sometimes rekindle. Honestum, the term by which Cicero translates the aA.av$ being derived from outward honours, is a less happy metaphor. In our language, the terms being from foreign roots, contribute nothing to illustrate the progress of thought. 2 Let it not be forgotten, that for this terrible description, Socrates, to whom it is ascribed by Plato (De Rep. ix.) is called " PrcEstantissimus sapientice," by a writer of the most masculine understanding, the least subject to be transported by en- thusiasm. (TAC. Ann. vi. 6.) " Quce vulnera /" says Cicero, in alluding to the same passage. (De Officiis, iii. 21.) 3 There can hardly be a finer example of Plato's practical morals than his observations on the treatment of slaves. Genuine humanity and real probity, says he, are brought to the test, by the behaviour of a man to slaves, whom he may wrong with impunity. A/0eJXa; y-a '/> Quru xcti [in vr^.a.yrus ff'Quv Tnv ~oix,),v, (Liatav 5s ovra; TO a0ixa iv TOVTOI; Tut avQ^unuv cv 01; awrtf ftfiiov adman. (PLATO de Legibus* lib. vi. edit. Bipont. VIII. 303.) That Plato was considered as the fountain of ancient morals, would be sufficiently evident from Cicero alone. " Ex hoc igitur Platonis, quasi quodam sancto augustoque fonte, nostra omnis manabit oratio." (Tusc. Qucest. v. 13.) Perhaps the sober Quintilian meant to mingle some censure with the highest praise : " Plato, qui eloquendi facultate divina quadam et Homerica, multum supra prosam orationem surgit." (Inst. Oral. x. 1.) 302 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. though he certainly surpassed all men in acute distinction, in subtile argument, in severe me- thod, in the power of analyzing what is most compounded, and of reducing to simple prin- ciples the most various and unlike appearances, yet appears to be still more raised above his fel- lows by the prodigious faculty of laying aside these extraordinary endowments whenever his present purpose required it ; as in his History of Animals, in his Treatises on Philosophical Cri- ticism, and in his Practical Writings, political as well as moral. Contrasted as his genius was to that of Plato, not only by its logical and me- taphysical attributes, but by the regard to ex- perience and observation of nature which, in him perhaps alone, accompanied them ; though they may be considered as the original represen- tatives of the two antagonist tendencies of Phi- losophy that which would ennoble man, and that which seeks rather to explain nature ; yet opposite as they are in other respects, the mas- ter and the scholar combine to guard the Rule of Life against the licentious irruptions of the Sophists. In Ethics alone their systems differed more in words than in things. 1 That happiness con- sisted in virtuous pleasure, chiefly dependent on the state of mind, but not unaffected by outward agents, was the doctrine of both. Both would with Socrates have called Happiness " unre- pented Pleasure." Neither distinguished the two elements which they represented as consti- tuting the supreme good from each other ; part- ly, perhaps, from a fear of appearing to separate them. Plato more habitually considered happi- ness as the natural fruit of virtue; Aristotle oftener viewed virtue as the means of attaining happiness. The celebrated doctrine of the Peri- patetics, which placed all virtues in a medium between opposite vices, was probably suggested by the Platonic representation of its necessity to keep up harmony between the different parts of our nature. The perfection of a compound machine is attained where all its parts have the fullest scope for action. Where one is so far exerted as to repress others, there is a vice of excess. When any one has less activity than it might exert without disturbing others, there is a vice of defect. The point which all reach without collision against each other, is the me- diocrity in which the Peripatetics placed virtue. It was not till near a century after the death of Plato that Ethics became the scene of philo- sophical contest between the adverse schools of Epicurus and Zeno ; whose errors afford an in- structive example, that in the formation of the- ory, partial truth is equivalent to absolute falsehood,. As the astronomer who left either the centripetal or the centrifugal force of the planets out of his view, would err as completely as he who excluded both, so the Epicureans and Stoics, who each confined themselves to real but not exclusive principles in morals, departed as widely from the truth as if they had adopted no part of it. Every partial theory is indeed di- rectly false, inasmuch as it ascribes to one or few causes what is produced by more. As the extreme opinions of one if not both of these^ schools have been often revived with variations and refinements in modern times, and are still not without influence on ethical systems, it may be allowable to make some observations 011 this earliest of moral controversies. " All other virtues," said Epicurus, " grow from prudence, which teaches that we cannot live pleasurably without living justly and virtuously, nor live justly and virtuously without living plea- surably." 8 The illustration of this sentence formed the whole moral discipline of Epicurus. To him we owe the general concurrence of reflect- ing men in succeeding times, in the important truth, that men cannot be happy without a vir- tuous frame of mind and course of life ; a truth of inestimable value, not peculiar to the Epicu- reans, but placed by their exaggerations in a stronger light ; a truth, it must be added, of " Una et consentiens duobus vocabulis philosophise forma instituta eSt, Academicorum et Peripateticorum ; qui rebus congruentes, nominibus difFerebant." (Cic. Acad. Qurrst. i. 4.) BovXtrai (A^nrrart^ne) JTT tirai *ra.

.ti a-^nv i-^ovyri aSt aXayon a TI ^vfjLQtqov. (THUCYD. vi. 85.) 2 "Ethsec quidem locum aliquem haberent, etiamsi daretur (quod sine summo scelere dari nequit) non esse Deum, aut non curari ab eo negotia humana." (Proleg. 11.) And in another place, " Jus naturaleest dictatum rectae rationis, indicans actui alicui, ex ejus convenientia aut disconvenientia cum ipsa natura rational! et social!, inesse moralem turpitudinem aut necessitatem moralem, ac consequenter ab auctore naturae Deo talem actum aut vetari aut praecipi. Actus de quibus tale exstat dictatum, debiti sunt aut illicit! per se, atque ideo a Deo necegsario praecepti aut vetitiintelliguntur." (Lib. i. cap. i. sect. 10.) Born in 1588; died in 1679. 4 Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, and Grotius. The writings of the first are still as delightful and wonderful as they ever were, and his authority will have no end. Descartes forms an era in the history of Metaphysics, of Physics, of Mathema- tics. The controversies excited by Grotius have long ceased, but the powerful influence of his works will be doubted by those only who are unacquainted with the disputes of the seventeenth century. DISSERTATION SECOND. 317 nearly thirty that he supplied the defects of his early education, by classical studies so successfully prosecuted, that he wrote well in the Latin then used by his scientific contemporaries ; and made such proficiency in Greek as, in his earliest work, the Translation of Thucydides, published when he was forty, to afford a specimen of a version still valuedfor its remarkable fidelity; though written with a stiffness and constraint very opposite to the masterly facility of his original compositions. It was after forty that he learned the first rudi- ments of geometry (so miserably defective was his education ); but yielding to the paradoxical disposition apt to infect those who begin to learn after the natural age of commencement, he ex- posed himself, by absurd controversies with the masters of a science which looks down with scorn on the Sophist. A considerable portion of his mature age was passed on the Continent, where he travelled as tutor to two successive Earls of Devonshire ; a family with whom he seems to have passed near half a century of his long life. In France his reputation, founded at that time solely on personal intercourse, became so great, that his observations on the Meditations of Descartes were published in the works of that philosopher, together with those of Gassendi and Arnauld. 1 It was about his sixtieth year that he began to publish those philosophical writings which contain his peculiar opinions ; which set the understanding of Europe into ge- neral motion, and stirred up controversies among metaphysicians and moralists, not even yet de- termined. At the age of eighty-seven he had the boldness to publish metrical versions of the Iliad and Odyssey, which the greatness of his name, and the singularity of the undertaking, still render objects of curiosity, if not of criti- cism. He owed his influence to various causes ; at the head of which may be placed that genius for system, which, though it cramps the growth of knowledge, 8 perhaps finally atones for that mischief, by the zeal and activity which it rouses among followers and opponents, who discover truth by accident, when in pursuit of weapons for their warfare. A system which attempts a task so hard as that of subjecting vast provinces of human knowledge to one or two principles, if it presents some striking instances of con- formity to superficial appearances, is sure to delight the framer ; and, for a time, to subdue and captivate the student too entirely for sober reflection and rigorous examination. The evil does not indeed very frequently recur. Perhaps Aristotle, Hobbes, and Kant, are the only per- sons who united in the highest degree the great faculties of comprehension and discrimination which compose the Genius of System. Of the three, Aristotle alone could throw it off where it was glaringly unsuitable ; and it is deserving of observation, that the reign of system seems, from these examples, progressively to shorten in proportion as reason is cultivated and knowledge advances. But, in the first instance, consist- ency passes for truth. When principles in some instances have proved sufficient to give an un- expected explanation of facts, the delighted reader is content to accept as true all other de- ductions from the principles. Specious pre- mises being assumed to be true, nothing more can be required than logical inference. Mathe- matical forms pass current as the equivalent of mathematical certainty. The unwary admirer is satisfied with the completeness and symmetry of the plan of his house unmindful of the need of examining the firmness of the foundation and the soundness of the materials. The system- maker, like the conqueror, long dazzles and overawes the world ; but when their sway is past, the vulgar herd, unable to measure their aston- ishing faculties, take revenge by trampling on fallen greatness. The dogmatism of Hobbes was, however un- justly, one of the sources of his fame. The founders of systems deliver their novelties with the undoubting spirit of discoverers; and their 1 The prevalence of freethinking under Louis XIII., to a far greater degree than it was avowed, appears not only from the complaints of Mersenne and of Grotius, but from the disclosures of Guy Patin ; who, in his Letters, describes his own conversations with Gassendi and Naude, so as to leave no doubt of their opinions. 8 " Another error," says the Master of Wisdom, " is the over-early and peremptory reduction of knowledge into arts and methods, from which time commonly receives small augmentation." (BACON'S Advancement of Learning, book i.) " Method," says he, " carrying a show of total and perfect knowledge, has a tendency to generate acquiescence." What pregnant words ! PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. followers arc apt to be dogmatical, because they can see nothing beyond their own ground. It might seem incredible, if it were not established by the experience of all ages, that those who differ most from the opinions of their fellow- men are most confident of the truth of their own. But it commonly requires an overween- ing conceit of the superiority of a man's own judgment, to make him espouse very singular notions ; and when he has once embraced them, they are endeared to him by the hostility of those whom he contemns as the prejudiced vul- gar. The temper of Hobbes must have been originally haughty. The advanced age at which he published his obnoxious opinions, rendered him more impatient of the acrimonious opposi- tion which they necessarily provoked ; until at length a strong sense of the injustice of the punishment impending over his head, for the publication of what he believed to be truth, co- operated with the peevishness and timidity of his years, to render him the most imperious and morose of dogmatists. His dogmatism has in- deed one quality more offensive than that of most others. Propositions the most adverse to the opinions of mankind, and the most ab- horrent from their feelings, are introduced into the course of his argument with mathematical coldness. He presents them as demonstrated conclusions, without deigning to explain to his fellow-creatures how they all happened- to be- lieve the opposite absurdities ; without even the compliment of once observing how widely his discoveries were at variance with the most an- cient and universal judgments of the human understanding. The same quality in Spinoza indicates a recluse's ignorance of the world. In Hobbes it is the arrogance of a man who knows mankind and despises them. A permanent foundation of his fame consists in his admirable style, which seems to be the very perfection of didactic language. Short, clear, pre- cise, pithy, his language never has more than one meaning, which never requires a second thought to find. By the help of his exact method, it takes so firm a hold on the mind, that it will not allow attention to slacken. His little tract on Human Nature has scarcely an ambiguous or a needless word. He has so great a power of always choosing the most significant term, that he never is reduced to the poor expedient of using many in its stead. He had so thoroughly studied the genius of the language, and knew so well to steer between pedantry a-nd vulgarity, that two centuries have not superannuated prob- ably more than a dozen of his words. His ex- pressions are so luminous, that he is clear with- out the help of illustration. Perhaps no writer of any age or nation, on subjects so abstruse, has manifested an equal power of engraving his thoughts on the mind of his readers. He seems never to have taken a word for ornament or pleasure ; and he deals with eloquence and poetry as the natural philosopher who explains the mechanism of children's toys, or deigns to contrive them. Yet his style so stimulates at- tention, that it never tires ; and, to those who are acquainted with the subject, appears to have as much spirit as can be safely blended with reason. He compresses his thoughts so un- affectedly, and yet so tersely, as to produce oc- casionally maxims which excite the same agree- able surprise with wit, and have become a sort of philosophical proverbs ; the success of which . he partly owed to the suitableness of such forms of expression to his dictatorial nature. His words have such an appearance of springing from his thoughts, as to impress on the reader a strong opinion of his originality, and indeed to prove that he was not conscious of borrow- ing; though conversation with Gassendi must have influenced his mind; and it is hard to be- lieve that his coincidence with Ockham should have been purely accidental, on points so im- portant as the denial of general ideas, the refer- ence of moral distinctions to superior power, and the absolute thraldom of religion under the civil power, which he seems to have thought ne- cessary, to maintain that independence of the state on the church with which Ockham had been contented. His philosophical writings might be read with- out reminding any one that the author was more than an intellectual machine. They never be- tray a feeling except that insupportable arro- gance which looks down on men as a lower species of beings ; whose almost unanimous hos- tility is so far from shaking the firmness of his DISSERTATION SECOND. 319 conviction, or even ruffling the calmness of his contempt, that it appears too petty a circum- stance to require explanation, or even to merit notice.. Let it not be forgotten, that part of his renown depends on the application of his ad- mirable powers to expound truth when he meets it. This great merit is conspicuous in that part of his treatise of Human Nature which relates to the percipient and reasoning faculties. It is also very remarkable in many of his secondary principles on the subject of government and law, which, while the first principles are false and dangerous, are as admirable for truth as for his accustomed and unrivalled propriety of expres- sion. 1 In many of these observations he even shows a disposition to soften his paradoxes, and to conform to the common sense of mankind.* It was with perfect truth observed by my excellent friend Mr Stewart, that " the ethical principles of Hobbes are completely interwoven with his political system."* He might have said, that the whole of Hobbes's system, moral, religious, and in part philosophical, depended on his political scheme ; not indeed logically, as con- clusions depend on premises, but (if the word may be excused) psychologically, as the formation of one opinion may be influenced by a disposi- tion to adapt it to previously cherished opinions. The Translation of Thucydides, as he himself boasts, was published to show the evils of popu- lar government.* Men he represented as being originally equal, and having an equal right to all things, but as being taught by reason to sacri- fice this right for the advantages of peace, and to submit to a common authority, which can preserve quiet, only by being the sole depositary of force, and must therefore be absolute and un- limited. The supreme authority cannot be suf- ficient for its purpose, unless it be wielded by a single hand ; nor even then, unless his absolute power extends over religion, which may prompt men to discord by the fear of an evil greater than death. The perfect state of a community, according to him, is where law prescribes the religion and morality of the people, and where the will of an absolute sovereign is the sole foun- tain of law. Hooker had inculcated the simple truth, that " to live by one man's will is the cause of many men's misery." Hobbes em- braced the daring paradox, that to live by one man's will is the only means of all men's happi- ness. Having thus rendered religion the slave of every human tyrant, it was an unavoidable consequence, that he should be disposed to lower her character, and lessen her power over men ; that he should regard atheism as the most effec- tual instrument of preventing rebellion ; at least that species of rebellion which prevailed in his time, and had excited his alarms. The formi- dable alliance of religion with liberty haunted his mind, and urged him to the bold attempt of rooting out both these mighty principles ; which, when combined with interests and passions, when debased by impure support, and provoked by unjust resistance, have indeed the power of fearfully agitating society ; but which are, never- theless, in their own nature, and as far as they are unmixed and undisturbed, the fountains of justice, of order, of peace, as well as of those moral hopes, and of those glorious aspirations after higher excellence, which encourage and exalt the soul in its passage through misery and depravity. A Hobbist is the only consistent persecutor ; for he alone considers himself as bound, by whatever conscience he has remain- ing, to conform to the religion of the sovereign. 1 See De Corpore Politico, Part i. chap. ii. iii. iv. and Leviathan, Part i. chap. xiv. xv. for remarks of this sort, full of sagacity. y " The laws of nature are immutable and eternal ; for injustice, ingratitude, arrogance, pride, iniquity, acception of per- sons, and the rest, can never be made lawful. For it can never be that war shall preserve life, and peace destroy it." (Leviathan, Part i. chap. xv. See also Part ii. chap. xxvi. xxviiL on Laws, and on Punishments.) 1 See Dissertation First, p. 42. The political state of England is indeed said by himself to have occasioned his first philosophical publication. Nascitur interea scelus execrabile belli. Horreo spectans, Meque ad dilectam confero Lutetiam, Postque duos annos edo De Give Libellum. ( Vita Hobbesii.) * The speech of Euphemus in the 6th book of that historian, and the conference between the ministers from Athens and the Melean chiefs, in the 5th book, exhibit an undisguised Hobbism, which was very dramatically put into the mouth of Athenian statesmen at a time when, as we learn from Plato and Aristophanes, it was preached by the Sophists. 320 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. He claims from others no more than he is him- self ready to yield to any master; 1 while the religionist who persecutes a member of another communion, exacts the sacrifice of conscience and sincerity, though professing that, rather than make it himself, he is prepared to die. REMARKS. The fundamental errors on which the ethical system of Hobbes is built are not peculiar to him ; though he has stated them with a bolder precision, and placed them in a more conspicu- ous station in the van of his main force, than any other of those who have either frankly avowed or tacitly assumed them, from the be- ginning of speculation to the present moment. They may be shortly stated as follows. 1. The first and most inveterate of these er- rors is, that he does not distinguish thought from feeling, or rather that he in express words con- founds them. The mere perception of an object, according to him, differs from the pleasure or pain which that perception may occasion, no otherwise than as they affect different organs of the bodily frame. The action of the mind in perceiving or conceiving an object is precisely the same with that of feeling the agreeable or disagreeable. 2 The necessary result of this ori- ginal confusion is, to extend the laws of the in- tellectual part of our nature over that other part of it, hitherto without any adequate name, which feels, and desires, and loves, and hopes, and wills. In consequence of this long confusion, or want of distinction, it has happened that, while the simplest act of the merely intellectual part has many names, (such as sensation, per- ception, impression, &c.) the correspondent act of the other not less important portion of man is not denoted by a technical term in philoso- phical systems; nor by a convenient word in common language. Sensation has another more common sense. Emotion is too warm for a ge- neric term. Feeling has some degree of the same fault, besides its liability to confusion with the sense of touch. Pleasure andpain represent only two properties of this act, which render its re- petition the object of desire or aversion; which last states of mind presuppose the act. Of these words, emotion seems to be the least objec- tionable, since it has no absolute double mean- ing, and does not require so much vigilance in the choice of the accompanying words as would be necessary if \ve were to prefer feeling ; which, however, being a more familiar word, may, with due caution, be also sometimes em- ployed. Every man who attends to the state of his own mind will acknowledge, that these words, emotion andfeeling, thus used, are perfect- ly simple, and as incapable of further explana- tion by words as sight or hearing; which may indeed be rendered into synonymous words, but^ never can be defined by any more simple or more clear. Reflection will in like manner teach that perception, reasoning, and judgment may be conceived to exist without being followed by emotion. Some men hear music without gratifi- cation : one may distinguish a taste without being pleased or displeased by it ; or at least the relish or disrelish is often so slight, without lessening the distinctness of the sapid qualities, that the distinction of it from the perception cannot be doubted. 1 Spinoza adopted precisely the same first principle with' Hobbes, that all men have a natural right to all things. ( Tractatus Politicus, cap. ii. sect. 3.) He even avows the absurd and detestable maxim, that states are not bound to observe their treaties longer than the interest or danger which first formed the treaties continues. But on the internal constitu- tion of states he embraces opposite opinions. Servitutit enim non pacis interest omnem potestatem ad unum tramferre. (Ibid. cap. vi. sect. 4.) Limited monarchy he considers as the only tolerable example of that species of government. An aristo- cracy nearly approaching to the Dutch system during the suspension of the Stadtholdership, he seems to prefer. He speaks favourably of democracy, but the chapter on that subject is left unfinished. " Nulla plane templa urbium sumptibus aedifi- canda, nee jura de opinionibus statuenda." He was the first republican atheist of modern times, and probably the earliest irreligious opponent of an ecclesiastical establishment. * This doctrine is explained in his tract on Human Nature, c. vii.-x. " Conception is a motion in some internal substance of the head, which proceeding to the heart, when it helpeth the motion there, it is called pleasure ; when it weakeneth or hindereth the motion, it is called pain." The same matter is handled more cursorily, agreeably to the practical purpose of the work, in Leviathan, Part i. chap. vi. These passages are here referred to as proofs of the statement in the text. With the materialism of it we have here no concern. If the multiplied suppositions were granted, we should not advance one step towards understanding what they profess to explain. The first four words are as unmeaning as if one were to say that greenness is very loudl It is obvious that many motions which promote the motion of the heart are extremely painfuL DISSERTATION SECOND. 321 The multiplicity of errors which have flowed into Moral Science from this original confusion is very great. They have spread over many schools of philosophy; and many of them are prevalent to this day. Hence the laws of the understanding have heen applied to the affec- tions ; virtuous feelings have been considered as just reasonings ; evil passions represented as mistaken judgments ; and it has been laid down as a principle, that the will always follows the last decision of the practical intellect. l 2. By this great error, Hobbes was led to re- present all the variety of the desires of men, as being only so many instances of objects delibe- rately and solely pursued; because they were the means, and at the time perceived to be so, of directly or indirectly procuring organic gratifi- cation to the individual. 2 The human passions are described as if they reasoned accurately, de- liberated coolly, and calculated exactly. It is assumed that, in performing these operations, there is and can be no act of life in which a man does not bring distinctly before his eyes the pleasure which is to accrue to himself from the act. From this single and simple principle, all human conduct may, according to him, be ex- plained and even foretold. The true laws of this part of our nature (so totally different from those of the percipient part) were, by this grand mistake, entirely with- drawn from notice. Simple as the observation is, it seems to have escaped not only Hobbes, but many, perhaps most philosophers, that our desires seek a great diversity of objects ; that the attainment of these objects is indeed follow- ed by, or rather called Pleasure; but that it could not be so, if the objects had not been pre- viously desired. Many besides him have really represented self as the ultimate object of every action ; but none ever so hardily thrust forward the selfish system in its harshest and coarsest shape. The mastery which he shows over other metaphysical subjects, forsakes him on this. He does not scruple, for the sake of this system, to distort facts of which all men are conscious; and to do violence to the language in which the result of their uniform experience is conveyed. " Acknowledgment of power is called Honour."' His explanations are frequently sufficient con- futations of the doctrine which required them. " Pity is the imagination of future calamity to ourselves, proceeding from the sense (observa- tion) of another man's calamity." " Laughter is occasioned by sudden glory in our eminence, or in comparison with the infirmity of others." Every man who ever wept or laughed, may de- termine whether this be a true account of the state of his mind on either occasion. " Love is a conception of his need of the one person de- sired ;" a definition of love, which, as it ex- cludes kindness, might perfectly well compre- hend the hunger of a cannibal, provided that it were not too ravenous to exclude choice. " Good-will, or charity, which containeth the na- tural affection of parents to their children, consists in a man's conception that he is able not only to accomplish his own desires, but to assist other men in theirs :" from which it follows, as the pride of power is felt in destroying as well as in saving men, that cruelty and kindness are the same passion. 4 Such were the expedients to which a man of the highest class of understanding was driven, in order to evade the admission of the simple and evident truth, that there are in our nature perfectly disinterested passions, which seek the wellbeing of others as their object and end, without looking beyond it to self, or pleasure, or happiness. A proposition, from which such a man could attempt to escape only by such means, may be strongly presumed to be true. 3. Hobbes having thus struck the affections out of his map of human nature, and having to- tally misunderstood (as will appear in a suc- ceeding part of this Dissertation) the nature even of the appetites, it is no wonder that we should 1 " Voluntas semper sequitur ultimum indicium intellectus practici." 2 See the passages before quoted. a Human Nature, chap. viii. The ridiculous explanation of the admiration of personal beauty, " as a sign of power ge- nerative," shows the difficulties to which this extraordinary man was reduced by a false system. 4 Ibid. chap. ix. I forbear to quote the passage on Platonic love, which immediately follows. But, considering Hobbes's blameless and honourable character, that passage is perhaps the most remarkable instance of the shifts to which his selfish system reduced him. DISS. II. 2 S 322 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. find in it not a trace of the moral sentiments. Moral good 1 he considers merely as consisting in the signs of a power to produce pleasure ; and repentance is no more than regret at having missed the way : so that, according to this sys- tem, a disinterested approbation of, and rever- ence for virtue, are no more possible than dis- interested affections towards our fellow-crea- tures. There is no sense of duty, no compunc- tion for our own offences, no indignation against the crimes of others, unless they affect our own safety; no secret cheerfulness shed over the heart by the practice of welldoing. From his philosophical writings it would be impossible to conclude that there are in man a set of emotions, desires, and aversions, of which the sole and final objects are the voluntary actions and habitual dispositions of himself and of all other voluntary agents ; which are properly called Moral Senti- ments ; and which, though they vary more in degree, and depend more on cultivation, than some other parts of human nature, are as seldom as most of them found to be entirely wanting. 4. A theory of man which comprehends in its explanations neither the social affections, nor the moral sentiments, must be owned to be suffi- ciently defective. It is a consequence, or ra- ther a modification of it, that Hobbes should constantly represent the deliberate regard to personal advantage, as the only possible motive of human action ; and that he should altogether disdain to avail himself of those refinements of the selfish scheme which allow the pleasures of benevolence and of morality, themselves, to be a most important part of that interest which rea- sonable beings pursue. 5. Lastly, though Hobbes does in effect ac- knowledge the necessity of morals to society, and the general coincidence of individual with public interest truths so palpable that they never have been excluded from any ethical sys- tem he betrays his utter want of moral sensibil- ity by the coarse and odious form in which he has presented the first of these great principles ; and his view of both leads him most strongly to sup- port that common and pernicious error of moral reasoners, that a perception of the tendency of good actions to preserve the being and promote the wellbeing of the community, and a sense of the dependence of our own happiness upon the general security, either are essential constituents of our moral feelings, or are ordinarily mingled with the most effectual motives to right conduct. The court of Charles II. were equally pleased with Hobbes's poignant brevity, and his low esti- mate of human motives. His ethical epigrams became the current coin of profligate wits. Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire, who re- presented the class still more perfectly in his morals than in his faculties, has expressed their opinion in verses, of which one line is good enough to be quoted : Fame bears no fruit till the vain planter dies. Dryden speaks of " the philosopher and poet (for such is the condescending term employed) of Malmesbury," as resembling Lucretius in haughtiness. But Lucretius, though he held many of the opinions of Hobbes, had the sensi- bility as well as genius of a poet. His dogma- tism is full of enthusiasm ; and his philosophical^ theory of society discovers occasionally as much tenderness as can be shown without reference to individuals. He was a Hobbist in only half his nature. The moral and political system of Hobbes was a palace of ice, transparent, exactly proportioned, majestic, admired by the unwary as a delight- ful dwelling ; but gradually undermined by the central warmth of human feeling, before it was thawed into muddy water by the sunshine of true philosophy. When Leibnitz, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, reviewed the moral writers of modern times, his penetrating eye saw only two who were capable of reducing morals and jurisprudence to a science. " So great an enter- prise," says he, " might have been executed by the deep-searching genius of Hobbes, if he had not set out from evil principles ; or by the judg- ment and learning of the incomparable Grotius, if his powers had not been scattered over many Which he calls the pulchrum, for want, as he says, of an English word to express it. (Leviathan, Part i. c. vi.) DISSERTATION SECOND. 323 subjects, and his mind distracted by the cares of an agitated life." 1 Perhaps in this estimate, admiration of the various and excellent quali- ties of Grotius may have overrated his purely philosophical powers, great as they unquestion- ably were. Certainly the failure of Hobbes was owing to no inferiority in strength of intellect. Probably his fundamental errors may be im- puted, in part, to the faintness of his moral sen- sibilities, insufficient to make him familiar with those sentiments and affections which can be known only by being felt ; a faintness perfectly compatible with his irreproachable life, but which obstructed, and at last obliterated, the only channel through which the most important materials of ethical science enter into the mind. Against Hobbes, says Warburton, the whole church militant took up arms. The answers to the Leviathan would form a library. But the far greater part have followed the fate of all controversial pamphlets. Sir Robert Filmer was jealous of any rival theory of servitude. Harrington defended liberty, and Clarendon the church, against a common enemy. His philo- sophical antagonists were, Cumberland, Cud- worth, Shaftesbury, Clarke, Butler, and Hutche- son. Though the last four writers cannot be considered as properly polemics, their labours were excited, and their doctrines modified, by the stroke from a vigorous arm which seemed to shake Ethics to its foundation. They lead us far into the eighteenth century ; and their works, occasioned by the doctrines of Hobbes, sowed the seed of the ethical writings of Hume, Smith, Price, Kant, and Stewart ; in a less degree, also, of those of Tucker and Paley : not to mention Mandeville, the buffoon and sophister of the ale-house; or Helvetius, an ingenious but flimsy writer, the low and loose moralist of the vain, the selfish, and the sensual. SECTION V. Controversies concerning the Moral Faculties and the Social Affections. CUMBERLAND CUDWORTH CLARKE SHAFTESBURY BOSSUETFENELON LEIBNITZ MALEBRANCHE EDWARDSBUFFIER. DR RICHARD CUMBERLAND,* raised to the see of Peterborough after the revolution of 1688, was the only professed answerer of Hobbes. His work on the Law of Nature still retains a place on the shelf, though not often on the desk. The philosophical epigrams of Hobbes form a con- trast to the verbose, prolix, and languid diction of his answerer. The forms of scholastic argu- ment serve more to encumber his style than to insure his exactness. But he has substantial merits. He justly observes, that all men can only be said to have had originally a right to all things, in a sense in which right has the same meaning with power. He shows that Hobbes is at variance with himself; inasmuch as the dic- tates of right reason, which, by his own state- ment, teach men for their own safety to forego the exercise of that right, and which he calls Laws of Nature, are coeval with it ; and that mankind perceive the moral limits of their power as clearly and as soon as they are conscious of its existence. He enlarges the intimations of Grotius on the social feelings, which prompt men to the pleasures of pacific intercourse, as certainly as the apprehension of danger and de- struction urges them to avoid hostility. The 1 " Et tale aliquid potuisset vel ab incomparabilis Grotii judicio et doctrina, vel a profundo Hobbii ingenio prsestari ; nisi ilium multa distraxissent ; hie vero prava constituisset principia." (LEIBNITII Epist. ad Molanum ; IV. Pars iii. p. 2?G-) Born in 1632 ; died in 1718. 324 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. fundamental principle of his Ethics is, that "the greatest benevolence of every rational agent to all others is the happiest state of each individual, as well as of the whole." 1 The happiness accruing to each man from the obser- vance and cultivation of benevolence, he con- siders as appended to it by the supreme Ruler ; through which he sanctions it as his law, and reveals it to the mind of every reasonable creature. From this principle he deduces the rules of mo- rality, which he calls the Laws of Nature. The surest, or rather only mark that they are the commandments of God, is, that their observance promotes the happiness of man : for that reason alone could they be imposed by that Being whose essence is love. As our moral faculties must to us be the measure of all moral excellence, he infers that the moral attributes of the Divinity must in their nature be only a transcendent degree of those qualities which we most approve, love, and revere, in those moral agents with whom we are familiar. 2 He had a momentary glimpse of the possibility that some human, actions might be performed with a view to the happiness of others, without any consideration of the pleasure reflected back on ourselves. 3 But it is too faint and transient to be worthy of observation, other- wise than as a new proof how often great truths must flit before the understanding, before they can be firmly and finally held in its grasp. His only attempt to explain the nature of the moral faculty, is the substitution of practical reason (a phrase of the schoolmen, since become celebrat- ed from its' renewal by Kant) for right reason ;* and his definition of the first, as that which points out the ends and means of action. Throughout his whole reasoning, he adheres to the accustom- ed confusion of the quality which renders actions virtuous, with the sentiments excited in us by the contemplation of them. His language on the identity of general and individual interest is ex- tremely vague ; though it be, as he says, the foundation-stone of the Temple of Concord among men. It is little wonder that Cumberland should not have disembroiled this ancient and established confusion, since Leibnitz himself, in a passage where he reviews the theories of morals which had gone before him, has done his utmost to perpetuate it. " It is a question," says he, " whether the preservation of human society be the first principle of the law of nature. This our author denies, in opposition to Grotius, who laid down sociability to be so ; to Hobbes, who ascribed that character to mutual fear ; and to Cumberland, who held that it was mutual bene- volence ; which are all three only different names for the safety and welfare of society." 5 Here the great philosopher considered benevolence or fear, two feelings of the human mind, to be the first principles of the law of nature ; in the same sense in which the tendency of certain actions to the wellbeing of the community may be so regarded. The confusion, however, was then common to him with many, as it even now is with most. The comprehensive view was his own. He perceives the close resemblance of these various and even conflicting opinions, in that important point of view in which they re- late to the effects of moral and immoral actions on the general interest. The tendency of virtue to preserve amicable intercourse was enforced by Grotius; its tendency to prevent injury was dwelt on by Hobbes ; its tendency to promote an interchange of benefits was inculcated by Cumberland. 1 CUMBERLAND de Legibus Natures^ cap. i. sect. 12. first published in London, 1672, and then so popular as to be reprint- ed at Lubeck in 1683. * Ibid. cap. v. sect. 19. s Ibid. cap. ii. sect. 20. * " Whoever determines his judgment and his will by right reason, must agree with all others who judge according to right reason in the same matter." (Ibid. cap. ii. sect. 8.) This is in one sense only a particular instance of the identical proposi- tion, that two things which agree with a third thing must agree with each other in that in which they agree with the third. But the difficulty entirely consists in the particular third thing here introduced, namely, " right reason," the nature of which not one step is made to explain. The position is curious, as coinciding with " the universal categorical imperative," adopted as a first principle by Kant. LEIBN. IV. Pars iii. p. 271. The unnamed work which occasioned these remarks (perhaps one of Thomasius) appeared in 1699. How long after this Leibnitz's Dissertation was written, does not appear. DISSERTATION SECOND. 325 CUDWORTH.' CUDWORTH, one of the eminent men educated t>r promoted in the English Universities during the Puritan rule, was one of the most distinguish- ed of the Latitudinarian or Arminian party who came forth at the Restoration, with a love of liber- ty imbibed from their Calvinistic masters, as well as from the writings of antiquity, yet tempered by the experience of their own agitated age ; and with a spirit of religious toleration more impar- tial and mature, though less systematic and professedly comprehensive, than that of the In- dependents, the first sect who preached that doctrine. Taught by the errors of their time, they considered religion as consisting, not in vain efforts to explain unsearchable mysteries', but in purity of heart exalted by pious feelings, and manifested by virtuous conduct. 2 The go- vernment of the church was placed in their hands by the revolution, and their influence was long felt among its rulers and luminaries. The first generation of their scholars turned their attention too much from the cultivation of the heart to the mere government of outward action ; and in succeeding times the tolerant spirit, not natural to an establishment, was with difficulty kept up by a government whose ex- istence depended on discouraging intolerant pre- tensions. No sooner had the first sketch of the Hobbian philosophy 3 been privately circulated at Paris, than Cudworth seized the earliest oppor- tunity of sounding the alarm against the most justly odious of the modes of thinking which it cultivates, or forms of expression which it would introduce; 4 the prelude to a war which occu- pied the remaining forty years of his life. The Intellectual System, his great production, is di- rected against the atheistical opinions of Hobbes : it touches ethical questions but occasionally and incidentally. It is a work of stupendous eru- dition, of much more acuteness than at first appears, of frequent mastery over diction and illustration on subjects where it is most rare ; and it is distinguished, perhaps beyond any other volume of controversy, by that best proof of the deepest conviction of the truth of a man's principles, a fearless statement of the most for- midable objections to them ; a fairness rarely practised but by him who is conscious of his power to answer them. In all his writings, it must be owned, that his learning obscures his reasonings, and seems even to oppress his pow- erful intellect. It is an unfortunate effect of the redundant fulness of his mind, that it over- flows in endless digressions, which break the chain of argument, and turn aside the thoughts of the reader from the main object. He was edu- cated before usage had limited the naturaliza- tion of new words from the learned languages ; before the failure of those great men, from Bacoir to Milton, who laboured to follow a Latin order in their sentences, and the success of those men of inferior powers, from Cowley to Addison, who were content with the order, as well as the words, of pure and elegant conversation, had, as it were, by a double series of experiments, ascertained that the involutions and inversions of the ancient languages are seldom reconcil- able with the genius of ours ; and, unless skil- fully, as well as sparingly introduced, are at variance with the natural beauties of our prose composition. His mind was more that of an an- cient than of a modern philosopher. He often 1 Born in 1617; died in 1688. * See the beautiful account of them by Burnet, (Hist. I. 321, Oxford edit. 1823) who was himself one of the most dis- tinguished of this excellent body; with whom maybe classed, notwithstanding some shades of doctrinal difference, his early master, Leighton, bishop of Dunblane, a beautiful writer, and one of the best of men. The earliest account of them is in a curious contemporary pamphlet, entitled, An Account of the new Sect of Latitude-men at Cambridge, republished in the collection of tracts entitled, Phoenix Britannicus. Jeremy Taylor deserves the highest and perhaps the earliest place among them. But Cudworth's excellent sermon before the House of Commons (31st March 1647) in the year of the publication of Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying, may be compared even to Taylor in charity, piety, and the most liberal toleration. ' De Give, 1642. * Dantur boni et mail rationa ceternoe et indispensabiles. Thesis for the degree of B. D. at Cambridge in 1644. (BiRCH's Life of Cudworth, prefixed to his edition of the Intellectual System, p. viL Lond. 1743, 2 vols. 4to.) PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. indulged in that sort of amalgamation of fancy with speculation, the delight of the Alexandrian doctors, with whom he was most familiarly con- versant; and the Intellectual System, both in thought and expression, has an old and foreign air, not unlike a translation from the work of a later Platonist. Large ethical works of this eminent writer are extant in manuscript in the British Museum. 1 One posthumous volume on morals was published by Dr Chandler, bishop of Durham, entitled, A Treatise concerning Eter- nal and Immutable Morality. * But there is the more reason to regret (as far as relates to the history of opinion) that the larger treatises are still unpublished, because the above volume is not so much an ethical treatise as an introduc- tion to one. Protagoras of old, and Hobbes then alive, having concluded that right and wrong were unreal, because they were not perceived by the senses, and because all human knowledge consists only in such perception, Cudworth en- deavours to refute them, by disproving that part of their premises which forms the last-stated proposition. The mind has many conceptions (ywj/iara) which are not cognizable by the senses ; and though they are occasioned by sensible ob- jects, yet could not be formed but by a faculty superior to sense. The conceptions of justice and duty he places among them. The distinction of right from wrong is discerned by reason; and as soon as these words are denned, it be- comes evident that it would be a contradiction in terms to affirm that any power, human or divine, could change their nature ; or, in other words, make the same act to be just and unjust at the same time. They had existed eternally, in the only mode in which truths can be said to be eternal, in the Eternal Mind ; and they were indestructible and unchangeable like that Su- preme Intelligence. 5 Whatever judgment may be formed of this reasoning, it is manifest that it relates merely to the philosophy of the understanding, and does not attempt any explanation of what constitutes the very essence of morality, its relation to the will. That we perceive a distinction between right' and wrong as much as between a triangle and a square, is indeed true ; and may possibly lead to an explanation of the reason why men should adhere to the one and avoid the other. But it is not that reason. A command or a precept is not a proposition. It cannot be said that either is true or false. Cudworth, as well as many who succeeded him, confounded the mere apprehension by the understanding that right is different from wrong, with the practical authority of these important conceptions, exer- cised over voluntary actions, in a totally distinct province of the human soul. Though his life was devoted to the assertion of divine Providence, and though his philosophy was imbued with the religious spirit of Plato- nism, 4 yet he had placed Christianity too purely in the love of God and man to be considered as having much regard for those controversies about rites and opinions with which zealots disturb the world. They represented him as having fallen into the same heresy with Milton and with Clarke ; 5 and some of them even charged him with atheism, for no other reason than that he was not afraid to state the atheistic difficul- ties in their fullest force. As blind anger heaps inconsistent accusations on each other, they call- ed him at least " an Arian, a Socinian, or a Deist." 6 The courtiers of Charles II., who were delighted with every part of Hobbes but his in- 1 A curious account of the history of these MSS. by Dr Kippis, is to be found in the Biographia Eritannica, IV. 549. * London, 1731, 8vo. 3 " There are many objects of our mind which we can neither see, hear, feel, smell, nor taste, and which did never en- ter into it by any sense ; and therefore we can have no sensible pictures or ideas of them, drawn by the pencil of that inward limner or painter which borrows all his colours from sense, which we call Fancy : and if we reflect on our own cogitations of these things, we shall sensibly perceive that they are not phantastical, but noematical: as, for example, justice, equity, duty and obligation, cogitation, opinion, intellection, volition, memory, verity, falsity, cause, effect, genus, species, nullity, contingency, possibility, impossibility, and innumerable others." (Eternal and Immutable Morality, p. 140.) We have here an anticipation of Kant. * Et/s-i/3H, u rtxvov, I yu.% iwrtfiuv axfus xftiffriitvifri. Be pious, my son, for piety is the sum of Christianity. (Motto affixed to the sermon above mentioned.) 5 The following doctrine is ascribed to Cudworth by Nelson, a man of good understanding and great worth : " Dr Cud- worth maintained that the Father, absolutely speaking, is the only supreme God ; the Son and Spirit being God only by his concurrence with them, and their subordination and subjection to him." (NELSON'S Life of Bull, p. 339.) 6 TURNER'S Discourse on the Messiah, p. 335. DISSERTATION SECOND. tegrity, did their utmost to decry his antagonist. They turned the railing of the bigots into a sarcasm against religion ; as we learn from him who represented them with unfortunate fidelity. " He has raised," says Dryden, " such strong objections against the being of God, that many think he has not answered them ;" " the com- mon fate," as Lord Shaftesbury tells us, "of those who dare to appear fair authors." l He had, in- deed, earned the hatred of some theologians, better than they could know from the writings published during his life ; for in his posthumous work he classes with the ancient atheists those of his contemporaries, whom he forbears to name, who held " that God may command what is con- trary to moral rules ; that he has no inclination to the good of his creatures; that he may justly doom an innocent being to eternal torments ; and that whatever God does will, for that reason is just, because he wills it." 2 It is an interesting inci- dent in the life of a philosopher, that Cudworth's daughter, Lady Masham, had the honour to nurse the infirmities and to watch the last breath of Mr Locke, who was opposed to her father in specu- lative philosophy, but who heartily agreed with him in the love of truth, liberty, and virtue. CLARKE. 3 CONNECTED with Cudworth by principle, though separated by some interval of time, was Dr Samuel Clarke, a man eminent at once as a di- vine, a mathematician, a metaphysical philoso- pher, and a philologer ; who, as the interpreter of Homer and Ca3sar, the scholar of Newton, and the antagonist of Leibnitz, approved himself not unworthy of correspondence with the highest order of human spirits. Roused by the preva- lence of the doctrines of Spinoza and Hobbes, he endewvoured to demonstrate the being and attri- butes of God, from a few axioms and definitions, in the manner of geometry; an attempt in which, with all his powers of argument, it must be owned that he is compelled sometimes tacitly to assume what the laws of reasoning required him to prove ; and that, on the whole, his failure may be regarded as a proof that such a mode of argument is beyond the faculties of man.* Justly considering the moral attributes of the Deity as what alone renders him the object of religion, and to us constitutes the difference be- tween theism and atheism, he laboured with the utmost zeal to place the distinctions of right and wrong on a more solid foundation ; and to explain the conformity of morality to reason, in a manner calculated to give a precise and scien- tific signification to that phraseology which all philosophers had, for so many ages, been content to employ, without thinking themselves obliged to define. It is one of the most rarely successful efforts of the human mind, to place the understanding at the point from which a philosopher takes the views that compose his system, to recollect con- stantly his purposes, to adopt for a moment his previous opinions and prepossessions, to think in his words and to see with his eyes ; especially when the writer widely dissents from the sys- tem which he attempts to describe, and after a general change in the modes of thinking and in the use of terms. Every part of the present Dissertation requires such an excuse; but perhaps it may be more necessary in a case like that of Clarke, where the alterations in both respects have been so insensible, and in some respects appear so limited, that they may escape atten- tion, than after those total revolutions in doc- 1 Moralists, Part ii. sect. 3. * Eternal and Immutable Morality, p. 11. He names only one book published at Franeker. He quotes Ockham as having formerly maintained the same monstrous positions. To many, if not to most of these opinions or expressions, ancient and modern, reservations are adjoined, which render them literally reconcilable with practical morals. But the dangerous abuse to which the incautious language of ethical theories is liable, is well illustrated by an anecdote related in Plutarch's Life of Alexander. A sycophant named Anaxarchas consoled that monarch for the riftirder of Clitus, by assuring him that every act of a ruler must be just. nv ra irgax&v Lfa rou jt^arauvns S**/av. (PLUT. Oper. I. 639. Franc. 1599.) 3 Born in 1675 ; died in 1729. 4 This admirable person had so much candour as in effect to own his failure, and to recur to those other arguments in support of this great truth, which have in all ages satisfied the most elevated minds. In Proposition viii. (Being and Attri- butes of God, p. 47) which affirms that the first cause must be " intelligent," (where, as he truly states, " lies the main question between us and the atheists") he owns, that the proposition cannot be demonstrated strictly and properly a priori. See Notes and Illustrations, note M. 328 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. trine, where the necessity of not measuring other times by our own standard must be ap- parent to the most un distinguish ing. The sum of his moral doctrine may be stated as follows. Man can conceive nothing without at the same time conceiving its relations to other things. He must ascribe the same law of per- ception to every being to whom he ascribes thought. He cannot therefore doubt that all the relations of all things to all must have al- ways been present to the Eternal Mind. The re- lations in this sense are eternal, however recent the things may be between whom they subsist. The whole of these relations constitute truth. The knowledge of them is omniscience. These eternal different relations of things involve a consequent eternal fitness or unfitness in the ap- plication of things one to another ; with a re- gard to which, the will of God always chooses, and which ought likewise to determine the wills of all subordinate rational beings. These eter- nal differences make it fit and reasonable for the creatures so to act; they cause it to be their duty, or lay an obligation on them so to do, se- parate from the will of God, 1 and antecedent to any prospect of advantage or reward. 9 Nay, wilful wickedness is the same absurdity and insolence in morals, as it would be in natural things to pretend to alter the relations of num- bers, or to take away the properties of ma- thematical figures. 3 "Morality,'' says one of his most ingenious scholars, " is the practice of reason." 4 Clarke, like Cudworth, considered such a scheme as the only security against Hobbism, and probably against the Calvinistic theology, from which they were almost as averse. Not content, with Cumberland, to attack Hobbes on ground which was in part his own, they thought it necessary to build on entirely new founda- tions. Clarke more especially, instead of sub- stituting social and generous feeling for the self- ish appetites, endeavoured to bestow on morality the highest dignity, by thus deriving it from reason. He made it more than disinterested ; for he placed its seat in a region where interest never enters, and passion never disturbs. By ranking her principles with the first truths of science, he seemed to render them pure and im- partial, infallible and unchangeable. It might be excusable to regret the failure of so noble an attempt, if the indulgence of such regrets did not betray an unworthy apprehension that the same excellent ends could only be attained by such frail means ; and that the dictates of the most severe reason would 'not finally prove re- concilable with the majesty of virtue. REMARKS. The adoption of mathematical forms and terms was, in England, a prevalent fashion among writers on moral subjects during a large part of the eighteenth century. The ambition of mathe- matical certainty, on matters concerning which it is not given to man to reach it, is a frailty from which the disciple of Newton ought in reason to have been withheld, but to which he was naturally tempted by the example of his master. Nothing but the extreme difficulty of detaching assent from forms of expression to which it has been long wedded, can explain the fact, that the incautious expressions above cited, into which Clarke was hurried by his moral sensibility, did not awaken him to a sense of the error into which he had fall en. As soon as he had said that " a wicked act was as absurd as an attempt to take away the properties of a figure," he ought to have seen, that principles which led logically to such a conclusion were untrue* As it is an impossibility to make three and three cease to be six, it ought, on his principles, to be impossible to do a wicked act. To act without regard to the relations of things, as if a man were to choose fire for cooling, or ice for heating, would be the part either of a lunatic or an idiot. The murderer who poisons by arsenic, acts agreeably to his knowledge of the power of that substance to kill, which is a relation between two things ; 1 " Those who found all moral obligation on the will of God must recur to the same thing, only they do not explain how the nature and will of God is good and just." (Being and Attributes of God, Proposition xii.) * Evidence of Natural and Revealed Religion, p. 4, 6th edit. Lond. 1724. 3 Ibid. p. 42. * LOWMAH on the Unity and Perfections of God, p. 29. Lond. 1737. DISSERTATION SECOND. 329 as much as the physician who employs an emetic after the poison, acts upon his belief of the ten- dency of that remedy to preserve life, which is another relation between two things. All men who seek a good or bad end by good or bad means, must alike conform their conduct to some rela- tion between their actions as means and their object as an end. All the relations of inanimate things to each other are undoubtedly observed as much by the criminal as by the man of virtue. It is therefore singular that Dr Clarke suffer- ed himself to be misled into the representation, that virtue is a conformity with the relations of things universally, vice a universal disregard of them, by the certain, but here insufficient truth, that the former necessarily implied a regard to certain particular relations, which were always disregarded by those who chose the latter. The distinction between right and wrong can, there- fore, no longer depend on relations as such, but on a particular class of relations. And it seems evident that no relations are to be considered, ex- cept those in which a living, intelligent, and voluntary agent is one of the beings related. His acts may relate to a law, as either observing or infringing it ; they may relate to his own mo- ral sentiments and those of his fellows, as they are the objects of approbation or disapprobation; they may relate to his own welfare, by increas- ing or abating it ; they may relate to the well- being of other sentient beings, by contributing to promote or obstruct it : but in all these, and in all supposable cases, the inquiry of the moral philosopher must be, not whether there be a re- lation, but what the relation is ; whether it be that of obedience of law, or agreeableness to moral feeling, or suitableness to prudence, or coincidence with benevolence. The term rela- tion itself, on which Dr Clarke's system rests, being common to right and wrong, must be struck out of the reasoning. He himself inci- dentally drops intimations which are at variance with his system. *' The Deity," he tells us, " acts according to the eternal relations of things, in order to the welfare of the whole universe ;" and subordinate moral agents ought to be go- verned by the same rules, " for the good of the public." ' No one can fail to observe that a new element is here introduced the wellbeing of communities of men, and the general happiness of the world which supersedes the consideration of abstract relations and fitnesses. There are other views of this system, how- ever, of a more general nature, and of much more importance, because they extend in a con- siderable degree to all systems which found moral distinctions or sentiments, solely or ulti- mately, upon reason. A little reflection will discover an extraordinary vacuity in this sys- tem. Supposing it were allowed that it satis- factorily accounts for moral judgments, there is still an important part of our moral sentiments which it passes by without an attempt to ex- plain them. Whence, on this scheme, the plea- sure or pain with which we review our own ac- tions, or survey those of others ? What is the nature of remorse ? Why do we feel shame ? Whence is indignation against injustice ? These are surely no exercise of reason. Nor is the as- sent of reason to any other class of propositions followed or accompanied by emotions of this na- ture, by any approaching them, or indeed neces- sarily by any emotion at all. It is a fatal objec- tion to a moral theory, that it contains no means of explaining the most conspicuous, if not the most essential, parts of moral approbation and disapprobation. But to rise to a more general consideration : Perception and emotion are states of mind per- fectly distinct ; and an emotion of pleasure or pain differs much more from a mere perception, than the perceptions of one sense do from those of another. The perceptions of all the senses have some qualities in common. But an emo- tion has not necessarily anything in common with a perception, but that they are both states of mind. We perceive exactly the same quali- ties in coffee when we may dislike it, as after- wards when we come to like it. In other words, the perception remains the same when the sen- sation of pain is changed into the opposite sen- sation of pleasure. The like change may oc- cur in every case where pleasure or pain (in such instances called sensations) enter the mind DISS. II. Evidence of Natural and Revealed Religion, p. 4. 2 T 330 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. with perceptions through the eye or the ear. The prospect or the sound which was disagree- able may become agreeable, without any altera- tion in our idea of the objects. We can easily imagine a percipient and thinking being without a capacity of receiving pleasure or pain. Such a being might perceive what we do ; if we could conceive him to reason, he might reason justly ; and if he were to judge at all, there seems no reason why he should not judge truly. But what could induce such a being to will or to act ? It seems evident that his existence could only be a state of passive contemplation. Reason, as reason, can never be a motive to action. It is only when we superadd to such a being sensi- bility, or the capacity of emotion or sentiment, (or what in corporeal cases is called sensation) of desire and aversion, that we introduce him into the world of action. We then clearly dis- cern, that when the conclusion of a process of reasoning presents to his mind an object of de- sire, or the means of obtaining it, a motive of action begins to operate ; and reason may then, but not till then, have a powerful though indi- rect influence on conduct. Let any argument to dissuade a man from immorality be employ- ed, and the issue of it will always appear to be an appeal to a feeling. You prove that drunk- enness will probably ruin health. No position founded on experience is more certain. Most persons with whom you reason must be as much convinced of it as you are. But your hope of success depends on the drunkard's fear of ill health ; and he may always silence your argu- ment by telling you that he loves wine more than he dreads sickness. You speak in vain of the infamy of an act to one who disre- gards the opinion of others; or of its impru- dence to a man of little feeling for his own fu- ture condition. You may truly, but vainly, tell of the pleasures of friendship to one who has little affection. If you display the delights of liberality to a miser, he may always shut your mouth by answering, " The spendthrift may pre- fer such pleasures ; I love money more." If you even appeal to a man's conscience, he may answer you, that you have clearly proved the im- morality of the act, and that he himself knew it before ; but that now when you had renewed and freshened his conviction, he was obliged to own, that his love of virtue, even aided by the fear of dishonour, remorse, and punishment, was not so powerful as the desire which hurried him into vice. Nor is it otherwise, however confusion of ideas may cause it to be so deemed, with that calm re- gard to the welfare of the agent, to which philo- sophers have so grossly misapplied the hardly in- telligible appellation of self-love. The general tendency of right conduct to permanent wellbeing is indeed one of the most evident of all truths. But the success of persuasives or dissuasives ad- dressed to it, must always be directly propor- tioned, not to the clearness with which the truth is discerned, but to the strength of the principle addressed, in the mind of the individual ; and to the degree in which he is accustomed to keep an eye on its dictates. A strange prejudice pre- vails, which ascribes to what is called self-love an invariable superiority over all the other mo- tives of human action. If it were to be called by a more fit name, such as foresight, prudence, or, what seems most exactly to describe its na- ture, a sympathy with the future feelings of the agent, it would appear to every observer to be^ very often, too languid and inactive, always of late appearance, and, sometimes, so faint as to be scarcely perceptible. Almost every human passion in its turn prevails over self-love. It is thus apparent that the influence of reason on the will is indirect, and arises only from its being one of the channels by which the objects of desire or aversion are brought near to these springs of voluntary action. It is only one of these channels. There are many other modes of presenting to the mind the proper objects of the emotions which it is intended to excite, whether of a calmer or of a more active nature ; so that they may influence conduct more power- fully than when they reach the will through the channel of conviction. The distinction between conviction and persuasion would indeed be other- wise without a meaning: to teach the mind would be the same thing as to move it ; and eloquence would be nothing but logic, although the greater part of the power of the former is displayed in the direct excitement of feeling ; on condition, indeed, (for reasons foreign to our present pur- pose) that the orator shall never appear to give DISSERTATION SECOND. 331 counsel inconsistent with the duty or the lasting welfare of those whom he would persuade. In like manner it is to be observed, that though reasoning be one of the instruments of education, yet education is not a proof of reasoning, but a wise disposal of all the circumstances which in- fluence character, and of the means of producing those habitual dispositions which insure well- doing, of which reasoning is but one. Very similar observations are applicable to the great arts of legislation and government; which are here only alluded to as forming a strong illustra- tion of the present argument. The abusive extension of the term Reason to the moral faculties, one of the predominant errors of ancient and modern times, has arisen from causes which it is not difficult to discover. Reason does in truth perform a great part in every case of moral sentiment. To reason often belong the preliminaries of the act ; to reason altogether belongs the choice of the means of execution. The operations of reason, in both cases, are comparatively slow and lasting ; they are capable of being distinctly recalled by mem- ory. The emotion which intervenes between the previous and the succeeding exertions of reason is often faint, generally transient, and scarcely ever capable of being reproduced by an effort of the mind. Hence the name of reason is applied to this mixed state of mind; more especially when the feeling, being of a cold and general nature, and scarcely ruffling the sur- face of the soul, such as those of prudence and of ordinary kindness and propriety, almost passes unnoticed, and is irretrievably forgotten. Hence the mind is, in such conditions, said by moralists to act from reason^ in contradistinction to its more excited and disturbed state, when it is said to act from passion. The calmness of reason gives to the whole compound the appearance of un- mixed reason. The illusion is further promoted by a mode of expression used in most languages. A man is said to act reasonably, when his con- duct is such as may be reasonably expected. Amidst the disorders of a vicious mind, it is difficult to form a reasonable conjecture con- cerning future conduct ; but the quiet and well- ordered state of virtue renders the probable acts of her fortunate votaries the object of very ra- tional expectation. As far as it is not presumptuous to attempt a distinction between modes of thinking foreign to the mind which makes the attempt, and modes of expression scarcely translatable into the only technical language in which that mind is wont to think, it seems that the systems of Cudworth and Clarke, though they appear very similar, are in reality different in some important points of view. The former, a Platonist, sets out from those IDEAS, (a word, in this acceptation of it, which has no corresponding term in English) the eternal models of created things, which, as the Athenian master taught, pre-existed in the everlasting intellect, and, of right, rule the will of every inferior mind. The illustrious scholar of Newton, with a manner of thinking more natural to his age and school, considered pri- marily the very relations of things themselves ; conceived indeed by the Eternal Mind, but which, if such inadequate language may be par- doned, are the law of its will, as well as the model of its works. * EARL OF SHAFTESBURY.' LORD SHAFTESBURY, the author of the Charac- teristics, was the grandson of Sir Antony Ashley Cooper, created Earl of Shaftesbury, one of the master spirits of the English nation, whose vices, the bitter fruits of the insecurity of a troublous time, succeeded by the corrupting ha- bits of an inconstant, venal, and profligate court, have led an ungrateful posterity to overlook his 1 Mr Wollaston's system, that morality consisted in acting according to truth, seems to coincide with that of Dr Clarke. The murder of Cicero by Popilius Lenas, was, according to him, a practical falsehood ; for Cicero had been his benefactor, but Popilius acted as if that were untrue. If the truth spoken of be, that gratitude is due for benefits, the reasoning is evidently a circle. If any truth be meant, indifferently, it is plain that the assassin acted in perfect conformity to several certain truths ; such as the malignity of Antony, the ingratitude and venality of Popilius, and the probable impunity of his crime, when law was suspended, and good men without power. 1 Born in 1671 ; died in 1713. 332 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. wisdom, and disinterested perseverance, in ob- taining for the English nation the unspeakable benefits of the Habeas Corpus act. The for- tune of the Characteristics has been singular. For a time the work was admired more undis- tinguishingly than its literary character war- rants. In the succeeding period it was justly criticised, but too severely condemned. Of late, more unjustly than in either of the former cases, it has been generally neglected. It seemed to have the power of changing the temper of its critics. It provoked the amiable Berkeley to a harshness equally unwonted and unwarranted ; l while it softened the rugged Warburton so far as to dispose the fierce yet not altogether un- generous polemic to praise an enemy in the very heat of conflict. B Leibnitz, the most celebrated of Continental philosophers, warmly applauded the Character- istics^ and, (what was a more certain proof of admiration) though at an advanced age, cri- ticised that work minutely. 3 Le Clerc, who had assisted the studies of the author, contri- buted to spread its reputation by his Journal, then the most popular in Europe. Locke is said to have aided in his education, probably rather by counsel than by tuition. The author had indeed been driven from the regular stu- dies of his country by the insults with which he was loaded at Winchester school, when he was only twelve years old, immediately after the death of his grandfather ; a choice of time which seemed not so much to indicate anger against the faults of a great man, as triumph over the principles of liberty, which seemed at that time to have fallen for ever. He gave a gen- uine proof of respect for freedom of thought, by preventing the expulsion, from Holland, of Bayle, (with whom he differs in every moral, political, and, it may be truly added, religious opinion) when, it must be owned, the right of asylum was, in strict justice, forfeited by the se- cret services which the philosopher had rendered to the enemy of Holland and of Europe. In the small part of his short life which premature infirmities allowed him to apply to public affairs, he co-operated zealously with the friends of freedom; but, as became a moral philosopher, he supported, even against them, a law to allow those who were accused of treason to make their defence by counsel, although the parties first to benefit from this act of imperfect justice were conspirators to assassinate King William, and to re-enslave their country. On that occasion it is well known with what admirable quickness he took advantage of the embarrassment which seized him, when he rose to address the House of Commons. " If I," said he, " who rise only to give my opinion on this bill, am so confound- ed that I cannot say what I intended, what must the condition of that man be, who, with- out assistance, is pleading for his own life !" He was the friend of Lord Somers ; and the tribute paid to his personal character by Warburton, who knew many of his contemporaries and some of his friends, may be considered as evidence of its excellence. His fine genius and generous spirit shine through his writings ; but their lustre is often dimmed by peculiarities, and, it must be said, by affectations, which, originating in local, tem- porary, or even personal circumstances, are particularly fatal to the permanence of fame. There is often a charm in the egotism of an art- less writer, or of an actor in great scenes. But other laws are imposed on the literary artist. Lord Shaftesbury, instead of hiding himself be- hind his work, stands forward with too frequent marks of self-complacency, as a nobleman of polished manners, with a mind adorned by the 1 BERKELEY'S Minute Philosopher, Dialogue iii. ; but especially his Theory of Vision Vindicated, Lond. 1733, (not re- published in the quarto edition of his works) where this most excellent man sinks for a moment to the level of a railing polemic. y It is remarkable that the most impure passages of Warburton's composition are those in which he lets loose his contro- versial zeal, and that he is a fine writer principally where he writes from generous feeling. " Of all the virtues which were so much in this noble writer's heart and in bis writings, there was not one he more revered than the love of public liberty. ...The noble author of the Characteristics had many excellent qualities, both as a man and a writer. He was temperate, chaste, honest, and a lover of his country. In his writings he has shown how much he has imbibed the deep sense, and how naturally he could copy the gracious manner, of Plato." (Dedication to the Freethinkers, prefixed to the Divine Legation.) Warburton, however, soon relapses, but not without excuse; for he thought himself vindicating the memory of Locke. * Ojaera, torn. III. p. 39-66. DISSERTATION SECOND. 333 fine arts, and instructed by ancient philosophy ; shrinking with a somewhat effeminate fastid- iousness from the clamour and prejudices of the multitude, whom he neither deigns to con- ciliate nor puts forth his strength to subdue. The enmity of the majority of churchmen to the government established at the Revolution, was calculated to fill his mind with angry feelings ; which overflow too often, if not upon Christian- ity itself, yet upon representations of it, closely intertwined with those religious feelings to which, in other forms, his own philosophy ascribes sur- passing worth. His small, and occasional writ- ings, of which the main fault is the want of an object or a plan, have many passages remark- able for the utmost beauty and harmony of lan- guage. Had he imbibed the simplicity, as well as copied the expression and cadence of the greater ancients, he would have done more jus- tice to his genius ; and his works, like theirs, would have been preserved by that quality, with- out which but a very few writings, of whatever mental power, have long survived their writers. Grace belongs only to natural movements ; and Lord Shaftesbury, notwithstanding the frequent beauty of his thoughts and language, has rarely attained it. He is unfortunately prone to plea- santry, which is obstinately averse from con- straint, and which he had no interest in raising to be the test of truth. His affectation of liveliness as a man of the world, tempts him sometimes to overstep the indistinct boundaries which sepa- rate familiarity from vulgarity. Of his two more considerable writings, the Moralists, on which he evidently most valued himself, and which is spoken of by Leibnitz with enthusiasm, is by no means the happiest. Yet perhaps there is scarcely any composition in our language more lofty in its moral and religious sentiments, and more exquisitely elegant and musical in its diction, than the Platonic representation of the scale of beauty and love, in the speech to Palemon, near the close of the first part. 1 Many passages might be quoted, which in some measure justify the enthusiasm of the septuage- narian geometer. Yet it is not to be concealed that, as a whole, it is heavy and languid. It is a modern antique. The dialogues of Plato are often very lively representations of conversations which might take place daily at a great univer- sity, full, like Athens, of rival professors and eager disciples, between men of various character, and great fame as well as ability. Socrates runs through them all. His great abilities, his still more venerable virtues, his cruel fate, especially when joined to his very characteristic pecu- liarities, to his grave humour, to his homely sense, to his assumed humility, to the honest sliness with which he ensnared the Sophists, and to the intrepidity with which he dragged them to justice, gave unity and dramatic inter- est to these dialogues as a whole. But Lord Shaftesbury's dialogue is between fictitious per- sonages, and in a tone at utter variance with English conversation. He had great power of thought and command over words. But he had no talent for inventing character and bestowing life on it. The Inquiry concerning Virtue* is nearly exempt from the faulty peculiarities of the author ; the method is perfect, the reasoning just, the style precise and clear. The writer has no purpose but that of honestly proving his prin- ciples; he himself altogether disappears; and he is intent only on earnestly enforcing what he truly, conscientiously, and reasonably believes. Hence the charm of simplicity is revived in this production, which is unquestionably entitled to a place in the first rank of English tracts on Moral Philosophy. The point in which it becomes especially per- tinent to the subject of this Dissertation is, that it contains more intimations of an original and important nature on the Theory of Ethics than perhaps any preceding work of modern times. 3 It is true that they are often but intimations, cursory, and appearing almost to be casual ; so that many of them have escaped the notice of most readers, and even writers on these subjects. Characteristics, Treatise v. The Moralists, Part i. sect. 3. Ibid. Treatise iv. * I am not without suspicion that I have overlooked the claims of Dr Henry More, who, notwithstanding some un- couthness of language, seems to have given the first intimations of a distinct moral faculty, which he calls " the Boniform Faculty ;" a phrase against which an outcry would now be raised as German. Happiness, according to him, consists in a constant satisfaction, ftn ayotn 2u id. note N. DISSERTATION SECOND. 339 did. Would a father affectionately interested in a son's happiness, of very lukewarm feel- ings of morality, but of good sense enough to weigh gratifications and sufferings exactly, he really desirous that his son should have these virtues in a less degree than Regulus, merely because they might expose him to the fate which Regulus chose ? On the coldest calculation he would surely perceive, that the high and glow- ing feelings of such a mind during life, altogether throw into shade a few hours of agony in leaving it. And, if he himself were so unfortunate that no more generous sentiment arose in his mind to silence such calculations, would it not be a re- proach to his understanding not to discover, that though in one case out of millions such a character might lead a Regulus to torture, yet, in the common course of nature, it is the source not only of happiness in life, but of quiet and honour in death. A case so extreme as that of Regulus will not perplex, if we bear in mind, that though we cannot prove the act of heroic virtue to be conducive to the interest of the hero, yet we may perceive at once, that nothing is so conducive to his interest as to have a mind so formed that it could not shrink from it, but must rather embrace it with gladness and tri- umph. Men of vigorous health are said some- times to suffer most in a pestilence. No man was ever so absurd as for that reason to wish that he were more infirm. The distemper might return once in a century. If he were then alive, he might escape it ; and even if he fell, thr balance of advantage would be in most cases greatly on the side of robust health. In esti- mating beforehand the value of a strong bodily frame, a man of sense would throw the small chance of a rare and short evil entirely out of the account. So must the coldest and most self- ish moral calculator, who, if he be sagacious and exact, must pronounce, that the inconveniences to which a man may be sometimes exposed by a pure and sound mind, are no reasons for regret- ting that we do not escape them by possessing minds more enfeebled and distempered. Other occasions will call our attention, in the sequel, to this important part of the subject. But the great name of Leibnitz seemed to require that his de- grading statement should not be cited without warning the reader against its egregious fallacy. MALEBRANCHE. 1 THIS ingenious philosopher and beautiful writer is the only celebrated Cartesian who has professedly handled the Theory of Morals. * His theory has in some points of view a conformity to the doctrine of Clarke; while in others it has given occasion to his English follower Norris 5 to say, that if the Quakers understood their own opinion of the illumination of all men, they would explain it on the principles of Malebranche. " There is," says he, " one parent virtue, the universal virtue, the virtue which renders us just and perfect, the virtue which will one day render us happy. It is the only virtue. It is the love of the universal order, as it eternally existed in the Divine reason, where every creat- ed reason contemplates it. This order is com- posed of practical as well as speculative truth. Reason perceives the moral superiority of one being over another, as immediately as the equal- ity of the radii of the same circle. The rela- tive perfection of beings is that part of the im- movable order to which men must conform their minds and their conduct. The love of order is the whole of virtue, and conformity to order constitutes the morality of actions." It is not difficult to discover, that in spite of the singular skill employed in weaving this web, it answers no other purpose than that of hiding the whole difficulty. The love of universal or- der, says Malebranche, requires that we should value an animal more than a stone, because it is more valuable ; and love God infinitely more than man, because he is infinitely better. But without presupposing the reality of moral dis- 1 Born in 1638 ; died in 1715. * Traits, de Morale. Rotterdam, 1684. 1 Author of the Theory of the Ideal World, who well copied, though he did not equal the clearness and choice of expres- sion which belonged to his master. 340 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. tinctions, and the power of moral feelings, the two points to be proved, how can either of these propositions be evident, or even intel- ligible? To say that a love of the eternal order will produce the love and practice of every virtue, is an assertion untenable unless we take morality for granted, and useless if we do. In his work on Morals, all the incidental and secondary remarks are equally well consid- ered and well expressed. The manner in which he applied his principle to the particulars of human duty, is excellent. He is perhaps the first philosopher who has precisely laid down and rigidly adhered to the great principle, that virtue consists in pure intentions and dispositions of mind) without which, actions, however con- formable to rules, are not truly moral ; a truth of the highest importance, which, in the theolo- gical form, may be said to have been the main principle of the first Protestant Reformers. The ground of piety, according to him, is the con- formity of the attributes of God to those moral qualities which we irresistibly love and revere. l " Sovereign princes," says he, " have no right to use their authority without reason. Even God has no such miserable right." 8 His dis- tinction between a religious society and an established church, and his assertion of the right of the temporal power alone to employ coercion, are worthy of notice, as instances in which a Catholic, at once philosophical and or- thodox, could thus speak, not only of the na- ture of God, but of the rights of the church. JONATHAN EDWARDS.' THIS remarkable man, the metaphysician of America, was formed among the Calvinists of New England, when their stern doctrine retained its rigorous authority. 4 His power of subtile ar- gument, perhaps unmatched, certainly unsur- passed among men, was joined, as in some of the ancient Mystics, with a character which raised his piety to fervour. He embraced their doctrine, probably without knowing it to be theirs. " True religion," says he, " in a great measure consists in holy affections. A love of divine things, for the beauty and sweetness of their moral excellency, is the spring of all holy affections." 5 Had he suffered this noble principle to take the right road to all its fair consequences, he would have entirely concurred with Plato, with Shaftesbury, and Malebranche, in devotion to " the first good, first perfect, and first fair." But he thought it necessary after- wards to limit his doctrine to his own persua- sion, by denying that such moral excellence could be discovered in divine things by those Christians who did not take the same view with him of their religion. All others, and some who hold his doctrines with a more enlarged spirit, may adopt his principle without any limitation. His ethical theory is contained in his Disser- tation on the Nature of True Virtue ; and in another, On God's Chief End in the Creation, published in London thirty years after his death. True virtue, according to him, consists in be- nevolence, or love to being " in general," which he afterwards limits to " intelligent being," though sentient would have involved a more reasonable limitation. This good-will is felt towards a particular being, first in pro- portion to his degree of existence (for, says he, " that which is great has more existence, and is farther from nothing, than that which is little" ) ; and secondly, in proportion to the degree in which that particular being feels benevolence to others. Thus God, having infinitely more ex- istence and benevolence than man, ought to be infinitely more loved; and for the same rea- 1 " II faut aimer 1'Etre infiniment parfait, et non pas un fantome epouvantable, un Dieu injuste, absolu, puissant, mais sans bont^ et sans sagesse. S'il y avoit un tel Dieu, le vrai Dieu nous de'fendroit de 1'adorer et de 1'aimer. II y a peut-etre plus de danger d'offenser Dieu lorsqu'on lui donne une forme si horrible, que de me'priser ce fantome." (Traite de Morale, chap, viii.) 2 Ibid. chap. xxii. 1 Born in 1703, at Windsor in Connecticut ; died in 1758, at Princeton in New Jersey. Notes and Illustrations, note O. * EDWARDS on Religious Affections, p. 4, 187. Lond. 1796. DISSERTATION SECOND. 341 son, God must love himself infinitely more than he does all other beings. 1 He can act only from regard to himself, and his end in creation can only be to manifest his whole nature, which is called acting for his own glory. As far as Edwards confines himself to creat- ed beings, and while his theory is perfectly in- telligible, it coincides with that of universal benevolence, hereafter to be considered. The term being is a mere encumbrance, which serves indeed to give it a mysterious outside, but brings with it from the schools nothing ex- cept their obscurity. He was betrayed into it by the cloak which it threw over his really un- meaning assertion or assumption, that there are degrees of existence ; without which that part of his system which relates to the Deity would have appeared to be as baseless as it really is. When we try such a phrase by applying it to matters within the sphere of our experience, we see that it means nothing but degrees of certain faculties and powers. But the very application of the term being to all things, shows that the least perfect has as much being as the most perfect ; or rather that there can be no difference, so far as that word is concerned, between two ^things to which it is alike applicable. The justness of the compound proportion on which human vir- tue is made to depend, is capable of being tried by an easy test. If we suppose the greatest of evil spirits to have a hundred times the bad passions of Marcus Aurelius, and at the same time a hundred times his faculties, or, in Ed- wards's language, a hundred times his quantity of being, it follows from this mor,al theory, that we ought to esteem and love the devil exactly in the same degree as we esteem and love Mar- cus Aurelius. The chief circumstance which justifies so much being said on the last two writers, is their concurrence in a point towards which Ethical Philosophy had been slowly approaching, from the time of the controversies raised up by Hobbes. They both indicate the increase of this tendency, by introducing an element into their theory, for- eign from those cold systems of ethical abstrac- tion, with which they continued in other respects to have much in common. Malebranche makes virtue consist in the love of order, Edwards in the love of being. In this language we perceive a step beyond the representation of Clarke, which made it a conformity to the relations of things ; but a step which cannot be made without pass- ing into a new province ; without confessing, by the use of the word love, that not only per- ception and reason, but emotion and sentiment, are among the fundamental principles of morals. They still, however, were so wedded to scholas- tic prejudice, as to choose two of the most aerial abstractions which can be introduced into argu- ment, being and order, to be the objects of those strong active feelings which were to govern the human mind. BUFFIER.* THE same strange disposition to fix on ab- stractions as the objects of our primitive feelings, and the end sought by our warmest desires, manifests itself in the ingenious writer with whom this part of the Dissertation closes, under a form of less dignity than that which it assumes in the hands of Malebranche and Clarke. Buf- fier, the only Jesuit whose name has a place in the history of Abstract Philosophy, has no pecu- liar opinions which would have required any mention of him as a moralist, were it not for the just reputation of his treatise on First Truttis, with which Dr Reid so remarkably, though un- aware of its existence, coincides, even in the misapplication of so practical a term as com- mon sense to denote the faculty which recog- nises the truth of First Principles. His phi- losophical writings 5 are remarkable for that 1 The coincidence of Malebranche with this part of Edwards, is remarkable. Speaking of the Supreme Being, he says, " // s'aime invlnciblement." He adds another more startling expression, " Certainement Dieu ne peut agir que pour lui- meme : il n'a point d'autre motif que son amour propre." (Traits de Morale, chap, xvii.) * Born in 1661 ; died in 1737- 3 Cours dc Sciences. Paris, 1732, folio. PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. perfect clearness of expression, which, since the great examples of Descartes and Pascal, has been so generally diffused as to have become one of the enviable peculiarities of French philo- sophical style, and almost of the French lan- guage. His ethical doctrine is that most common- ly received among philosophers, from Aristotle to Paley and Bentham : " I desire to be happy ; but as I live with other men, I cannot be happy without consulting their happiness:" a propo- sition perfectly true indeed, but far too narrow, as inferring, that in the most benevolent acts a man must pursue only his own interest, from the fact that the practice of benevolence does increase his happiness, and that because a vir- tuous mind is likely to be the happiest, our ob- servation of that property of virtue is the cause of our love and reverence for it. SECTION VI. Foundations of a more just Tlieory of Ethics. BUTLER HUTCHESON BERKELEY HUME SMITH PRICE HARTLEY TUCKER PALEYBENTHAMSTEWART BROWN. FROM the beginning of ethical controversy to the eighteenth century, it thus appears, that the care of the individual for himself, and his re- gard for the things which preserve self, were thought to form the first, and, in the opinion of most, the earliest of all the principles which prompt men and other animals to activity ; that nearly all philosophers regarded the appetites and desires, which look only to self-gratification, as modifications of this primary principle of self- love; and that a very numerous body consid- ered even the social affections themselves as nothing more than the produce of a more la- tent and subtile operation of the desire of in- terest, and of the pursuit of pleasure. It is true, they often spoke otherwise; but it was rather from the looseness and fluctuation of their language, than from distrust in their doc- trine. It is true, also, that perhaps all repre- sented the gratifications of virtue as more un- mingled, more secure, more frequent, and more lasting, than other pleasures; without which they could neither have retained a hold on the assent of mankind, nor reconciled the principles of their systems with the testimony of their hearts. We have seen how some began to be roused from a lazy acquiescence in this an- cient hypothesis, by the monstrous consequences which Hobbes had legitimately deduced from it. A few, of pure minds and great intellect, laboured to render morality disinterested, by tracing it to reason as its source; without con- sidering that reason, elevated indeed far above interest, is also separated by an impassable gulf, from feeling, affection, and passion. At length it was perceived by more than one, that through whatever length of reasoning the mind may pass in its advances towards action, there is placed at the end of any avenue through which it can advance, some principle wholly unlike mere reason, some emotion or sentiment which must be touched, before the springs of will and action can be set in motion. Had Lord Shaftesbury steadily adhered to his own prin- ciples had Leibnitz hot recoiled from his state- ment the truth might have been regarded as promulged, though not unfolded. The writings of both prove, at least to us, enlightened as we are by what followed, that they were skilful in sound- ing, and that their lead had touched the bottom. But it was reserved for another moral philosopher to determine this hitherto unfathomed depth. 1 1 The doctrine of the Stoics is thus put by Cicero into the mouth of Cato : " Placet his, inquit, quorum ratio mihi probatur, simul atque natum sit animal, (hinc enim est ordiendum) ipsum sibi conciliari et commendari ad se conservandum. DISSERTATION SECOND. 343 BUTLER. 1 BUTLER, who was the son of a Presbyterian trader, early gave such promise, as to induce his father to fit him, by a proper education, for being a minister of that persuasion. He was edu- cated at one of their seminaries under Mr Jones of Gloucester, where Seeker, afterwards arch- bishop of Canterbury, was his fellow-student. Though many of the dissenters had then begun to relinquish Calvinism, the uniform effect of that doctrine, in disposing its adherents to meta- physical speculation, long survived the opinions which caused it, and cannot be doubted to have influenced the mind of Butler. When a student at the academy of Gloucester, he wrote private letters to Dr Clarke on his celebrated Demonstra- tion^ suggesting objections which were really in- superable, and which are marked by an acute- ness which neither himself nor any other ever surpassed. Clarke, whose heart was as well schooled as his head, published the letters, with his own answers, in the next edition of his work; and, by his good offices with his friend and follower, Sir Joseph Jekyll, obtained for the young philosopher an early opportunity of mak- ing his abilities and opinions known, by the ap- pointment of preacher at the Chapel of the Master of the Rolls. He was afterwards raised to one of the highest seats on the Episcopal bench, through the philosophical taste of Queen Caroline, and her influence over the mind of her husband, which continued long after her death. " He was wafted," says Horace Walpole, " to the see of Durham, on a cloud of Metaphy- sics." 2 Even in the fourteenth year of his widowhood, George II. was desirous of inserting the name of the Queen's metaphysical favourite in the Regency Bill of seventeen hundred and fifty-one. His great work on the Analogy of Religion to the Course of Nature., though only a commentary on the singularly original and pregnant passage of Origen, which is so honestly prefixed to it as a motto, is, notwithstanding, the most original and profound work extant in any language on the Philosophy of Religion. It is entirely beyond our present scope. His ethical discussions are contained in those deep and sometimes dark Dis- sertations which he preached at the Chapel of the Rolls, and afterwards published under the name of Sermons, while he was yet fresh from the schools, and full of that courage with which youth often delights to exercise its strength in abstract reasoning, and to push its faculties into the recesses of abstruse speculation. But his youth was that of a sober and mature mind, early taught by nature to discern the boundaries of knowledge, and to abstain from fruitless ef- forts to reach inaccessible ground. In these sermons, 5 he has taught truths more capable of being exactly distinguished from the doctrines of his predecessors, more satisfactorily establish- ed by him, more comprehensively applied to par- ticulars, more rationally connected with each other, and therefore more worthy of the name of discovery, than any with which we are ac- quainted; if we ought not, with some hesita- tion, to except the first steps of the Grecian phi- losophers towards a Theory of Morals. It is a peculiar hardship, that the extreme ambiguity of language, an obstacle which it is one of the chief merits of an ethical philosopher to vanquish, is one of the circumstances which prevent men et ad suum statum, et ad ea quse conservantia sunt ejus status diligenda ; alienari autem ab interitu, iisque rebus quae in- teritum videantur afferre. Id ita esse sic probant, quod, antequam voluptas aut dolor attigerit, salutaria appetant parvi, aspementurque contraria. Quod non fieret, nisi statum suum diligerent, interitum timerent. Fieri autem non posset ut ap- peterent aliquid, nisi scnsum hdberent , eoque se et SIM diligerent. Ex QUO INTELLIGI DEBET, PRIXCIPIUAI DUCTUM ESSE A SE DILIGENDI." (De Finibus, lib. iii. cap. v.) We are told that diligendo is the reading of an ancient MS. Perhaps the omission of ' a' would be the easiest and most reasonable emendation. The above passage is perhaps the fullest and plainest statement of the doctrines prevalent till the time of Butler. 1 Born in 1C92; died in 1752. 2 WALPOLE'S Memoirs. 3 See Sermons i. ii. and iii. On Human Nature; v. On Compassion ; viii. On Resentment; ix. On Forgiveness ; xi. and xii. On the Love of our Neighbour; and xiii. On the Love of God; together with the excellent Preface. 344 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. from seeing the justice of applying to him so ambitious a term as discovery. Butler owed more to Lord Shaftesbury than to all other wri- ters besides. He is just and generous towards that philosopher; yet, whoever carefully com- pares their writings, will without difficulty dis- tinguish the two builders, and the larger as well as more regular and laboured part of the edifice, which is due to Butler. Mankind have various principles of action ; some leading directly to the private good, some immediately to the good of the community. But the private desires are not self-love, or any form of it ; for self-love is the desire of a man's own happiness, whereas the object of an appe- tite or passion is some outward thing. Self-love seeks things as means of happiness ; the private appetites seek things, not as means, but as ends. A man eats from hunger, and drinks from thirst; and though he knows that these acts are necessary to life, that knowledge is not the motive of his conduct. No gratification can in- deed be imagined without a previous desire. If all the particular desires did not exist inde- pendently, self-love would have no object to employ itself about; for there would be no happiness, which, by the very supposition of the opponents, is made up of the gratifications of various desires. No pursuit could be selfish or interested, if there were not satisfactions first gained by appetites which seek their own out- ward objects without regard to self; which sa- tisfactions compose the mass which is called a man's interest. In contending, therefore, that the benevolent affections are disinterested, no more is claimed for them than must be granted to mere animal appetites and to malevolent passions. Each of these principles alike seeks its own object, for the sake simply of obtaining it. Pleasure is the result of the attainment, but no separate part of the aim of the agent. The desire that another person may be gratified, seeks that out- ward object alone, according to the general course of human desire. Resentment is as dis- interested as gratitude or pity, but not more so. Hunger or thirst may be, as much as the purest benevolence, at variance with self-love. A re- gard to our own general happiness is not a vice, but in itself an excellent quality. It were well if it prevailed more generally over craving and short-sighted appetites. The weakness of the social affections, and the strength of the private desires, properly constitute selfishness ; a vice utterly at variance with the happiness of him who harbours it, and as such, condemned by self-love. There are as few who attain the greatest satisfaction to themselves, as who do the greatest good to others. It is absurd to say with some, that the pleasure of benevolence is selfish because it is felt by self. Understand- ing and reasoning are acts of self, for no man can think by proxy ; but no one ever called them selfish. Why ? Evidently because they do not regard self. Precisely the same reason applies to benevolence. Such an argument is a gross confusion of self, as it is a subject of feel- ing or thought, with self considered as the object of either. It is no more just to refer the private appetites to self-love because they commonly promote happiness, than it would be to refer them to self-hatred in those frequent cases where their gratification obstructs it. But, besides the private or public desires, and" besides the calm regard to our own general wel- fare, there is a principle in man, in its nature supreme over all others. This natural supre- macy belongs to the faculty which surveys, ap- proves, or disapproves the several affections of our minds and actions of our lives. As self- love is superior to the private passions, so con- science is superior to the whole of man. Pas- sion implies nothing but an inclination to follow it ; and in that respect passions differ only in force. But no notion can be formed of the principle of reflection, or conscience, which does not comprehend judgment, direction, superin- tendency. Authority over all other principles of action is a constituent part of the idea of con- science, and cannot be separated from it. Had it strength as it has right, it would govern the world. The passions would have their power but according to their nature, which is to be subject to conscience. Hence we may under- stand the purpose at which the ancients, perhaps confusedly, aimed, when they laid it down, that virtue consisted in following nature. It is neither easy, nor, for the main object of the DISSERTATION SECOND. 345 moralist, important, to render the doctrines of the ancients by modern language. If Butler re- turns to this phrase too often, it was rather from the remains of undistinguishing reverence for antiquity, than because he could deem its em- ployment important to his own opinions. The tie which holds together Religion and Morality, is, in the system of Butler, somewhat different from the common representations, but not less close. Conscience, or the faculty of ap- proving or disapproving, necessarily constitutes the bond of union. Setting out from the belief of Theism, and combining it, as he had entitled himself to do, with the reality of conscience, he could not avoid discovering, that the being who possessed the highest moral qualities, is the ob- ject of the highest moral affections. He con- templates the Deity through the moral nature of man. In the case of a being who is to be perfectly loved, " goodness must be the simple actuating principle within him ; this being the moral quality which is the immediate object of love." " The highest, the adequate object of this affection, is perfect goodness ; which, there- fore, we are to love with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength." " We should refer ourselves implicitly to him, and cast ourselves entirely upon him. The whole at- tention of life should be to obey his commands." l Moral distinctions are thus presupposed before a step can be made towards religion : virtue leads to piety ; God is to be loved, because good- ness is the object of love ; and it is only after the mind rises through human morality to di- vine perfection, that all the virtues and duties are seen to hang from the throne of God. REMARKS. There do not appear to be any errors in the ethical principles of Butler. The following remarks are intended to point out some defects in his scheme ; and even that attempt is made with the unfeigned humility of one who rejoices in an opportunity of doing justice to that part of the writings of a great philosopher which has not been so clearly understood, nor so justly estimated by the generality, as his other works. 1. It is a considerable defect, though perhaps unavoidable in a sermon, that he omits all in- quiry into the nature and origin of the private appetites, which first appear in human nature. It is implied, but it is not expressed in his rea- sonings, that there is a time before the child can be called selfish, any more than social, when these appetites seem as it were separately to pursue their distinct objects, long antecedent to the state of mind in which all their gratifica- tions are regarded as forming the mass called happiness. It is hence that they are likened to instincts, in contradiction to their subsequent distinction, which requires reason and experi- ence. 2 2. Butler shows admirably well, that unless there were principles of action independent of self, there could be no pleasures and no happi- ness for self-love to watch over. A step farther would have led him to perceive, that self-love is altogether a secondary formation; the result of the joint operation of reason and habit upon the primary principles. It could not have existed without presupposing original appetites and or- ganic gratifications. Had he considered this part of the subject, he would have strengthened his case by showing that self-love is as truly a derived principle, not only as any of the social affections, but as any of the most confessedly ac- quired passions. It would appear clear, that as self-love is not divested of its self-regarding character by considering it as acquired, so the social affections do not lose any part of their dis- interested character, if they be considered as formed from simpler elements. Nothing would more tend to root out the old prejudice which treats a regard to self as analogous to a self-evi- dent principle, than the proof, that self-love is itself formed from certain original elements, and that a living being long subsists before its ap- pearance. 5 1 Sermon xiii. On the Love of God. * The very able work ascribed to Mr Hazlitt, entitled Essay on the Principles of Human Action, Lond. 1805, contains original views on this subject. 3 Compare this statement with the Stoical doctrine explained by Cicero in the book de Finibus, quoted above, of which it is the direct opposite. DISS. II. 2 X 346 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. 3. It must be owned that those parts of Butler's discourses which relate to the social affections are more satisfactory than those which handle the question concerning the moral sentiments. It is not that the real existence of the latter is not as well made out as that of the former. In both cases he occupies the unassailable ground of an appeal to consciousness. All men (even the worst) feel that they have a conscience and disinterested affections. But he betrays a sense of the greater vagueness of his notions on this subject. He falters as he approaches it. He makes no attempt to determine in what state of mind the action of conscience consists. He does not venture steadily to denote it by a name. He fluctuates between different appellations, and multiplies the metaphors of authority and com- mand, without a simple exposition of that mental operation which these metaphors should only have illustrated. It commands other principles. But the question recurs, why, or how ? Some of his own hints, and some fainter inti- mations of Shaftesbury, might have led him to what appears to be the true solution ; which, perhaps from its extreme simplicity, has escaped Trim and his successors. The truth seems to be, that the moral sentiments in their mature state, are a class of feelings which have no other object but the mental dispositions leading to voluntary action, and the voluntary actions which flow from these dis- positions. We are pleased with some disposi- tions and actions, and displeased with others, in ourselves and our fellows. We desire to culti- vate the dispositions, and to perform the actions, which we contemplate with satisfaction. These objects, like all those of human appetite or de- sire, are sought for their own sake. The peculi- arity of these desires is, that their gratification requires the use of no means. Nothing (unless it be a volition) is interposed between the desire and the voluntary act. It is impossible, therefore, that these passions should undergo any change by transfer from the end to the means, as is the case with other practical principles. On the other hand, as soon as they are fixed on these ends, they cannot regard any further object. When another passion prevails over them, the end of the moral faculty is converted into a means of gratification. But volitions and actions are not themselves the end, or last object in view, of any other desire or aversion. Nothing stands between the moral sentiments and their object. They are, as it were, in contact with the will. It is this sort of mental position, if the expression may be pardoned, that explains, or seems to explain those characteristic properties which true philo- sophers ascribe to them, and which all reflecting men feel to belong to them. Being the only de- sires, aversions, sentiments, or emotions, which regard dispositions and actions, they neces- sarily extend to the whole character and conduct. Among motives to action, they alone are just- ly considered as universal. They may and do stand between any other practical principle and its object ; while it is absolutely impos- sible that another shall intercept their con- nection with the will. Be it observed, that though many passions prevail over them, no other can act beyond its own appointed and li- mited sphere ; and that the prevalence itself, leaving the natural order undisturbed in any other part of the mind, is perceived to be a dis- order, when seen in another man, and felt to be so by the mind disordered, when the disorder subsides. Conscience may forbid the will to contribute to the gratification of a desire. No desire ever forbids will to obey conscience. This result of the peculiar relation of con- science to the will, justifies those metaphorical expressions which ascribe to it authority and the right of universal command. It is immutable ; for, by the law which regulates all feelings, it must rest on action, which is its object, and beyond which it cannot look; and as it employs no means, it never can be transferred to nearer ob- jects, in the way in which he who first desires an object as a means of gratification, may come to seek it as his end. Another remarkable pecu- liarity is bestowed on the moral feelings by the nature of their object. As the objects of all other desires are outward, the satisfaction of them may be frustrated by outward causes. The moral sentiments may always be gratified, because voluntary actions and moral dispositions spring from within. No external circumstance affects them. Hence their independence. As the moral sentiment needs no means, and the de- sire is instantaneously followed by the volition, DISSERTATION SECOND. 347 it seems to be either that which first suggests the relation between command and obedience, or at least that which affords the simplest instance of it. It is therefore with the most rigorous precision that authority and universality are ascribed to them. Their only unfortunate pro- perty is their too frequent weakness; but it is apparent that it is from that circumstance alone that their failure arises. Thus considered, the language of Butler concerning conscience, that, " had it strength as it has right it would govern the world," which may seem to be only an effusion of generous feeling, proves to be a just statement of the nature and action of the highest of human faculties. The union of uni- versality, immutability, and independence, with direct action on the will, which distinguishes the moral sense from every other part of our practical nature, renders it scarcely metaphori- cal language to ascribe to it unbounded sove- reignty and awful authority over the whole of the world within ; shows that attributes, well denoted by terms significant of command and control, are, in fact, inseparable from it, or ra- ther constitute its very essence ; justifies those ancient moralists who represent it as alone se- curing, if not forming the moral liberty of man ; and finally, when religion rises from its roots in virtuous feeling, it clothes conscience with the sublime character of representing the divine pu- rity and majesty in the human soul. Its title is not impaired by any number of defeats ; for every defeat necessarily disposes the disinterest- ed and dispassionate by-stander to wish that its force were strengthened : and though it may be doubted whether, consistently with the present constitution of human nature, it could be so in- vigorated as to be the only motive to action, yet every such by-stander rejoices at all acces- sions to its force ; and would own, that man be- comes happier, more excellent, more estimable, more venerable, in proportion as conscience ac- quires a power of banishing malevolent passions, of strongly curbing all the private appetites, of influencing and guiding the benevolent affections themselves. Let it be carefully considered whether the same observations could be made with truth, or with plausibility, on any other part or ele- ment of the nature of man. They are entirely independent of the question, whether conscience be an inherent or an acquired principle. If it be inherent, that circumstance is, according to the common modes of thinking, a sufficient proof of its title to veneration. But if pro- vision be made in the constitution and circum- stances of all men, for uniformly producing it, by processes similar to those which produce other acquired sentiments, may not our rever- ence be augmented by admiration of that su- preme wisdom which, in such mental contri- vances, yet more brightly than in the lower world of matter, accomplishes mighty purposes by instruments so simple ? Should these specu- lations be thought to have any solidity by those who are accustomed to such subjects, it would be easy to unfold and apply them so fully, that they may be thoroughly apprehended by every intelligent person. 4. The most palpable defect of Butler's scheme is, that it affords no answer to the question, " What is the distinguishing quality common to all right actions ?" If it were answered, " Their criterion is, that they are approved and com- manded by conscience," the answerer would find that he was involved in a vicious circle ; for conscience itself could be no otherwise de- fined than as the faculty which approves and commands right actions. There are few circumstances more remarkable than the small number of Butler's followers in Ethics ; and it is perhaps still more observable, that his opinions were not so much rejected as overlooked. It is an instance of the importance of style. No thinker so great was ever so bad a writer. Indeed, the ingenious apologies which have been lately attempted for this defect, amount to no more than that his power of thought was too much for his skill in language. How gene- ral must the reception have been of truths so cer- tain and momentous as those contained in But- ler's Discourses, with how much more clear- ness must they have appeared to his own great understanding, if he had possessed the strength and distinctness with which Hobbes enforces odious falsehood, or the unspeakable charm of that transparent diction which clothed the un- fruitful paradoxes of Berkeley ! 348 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. HUTCHESON.' THIS ingenious writer began to try his own strength by private Letters, written in his early youth to Dr Clarke, the metaphysical patriarch of his time; on whom young philosophers seem to have considered themselves as possessing a claim, which he had too much goodness to reject. His correspondence with Hutcheson is lost ; but we may judge of its spirit by his answers to Butler, and by one to Mr Henry Home, 2 afterwards Lord Kames, then a young adventurer in the prevalent speculations. Nearly at the same period with Butler's first publication, s the writ- ings of Hutcheson began to show coincidences with him, indicative of the tendency of moral theory to a new form, to which an impulse had been given by Shaftesbury, and which was roused to activity by the adverse system of Clarke. Lord Molesworth, the friend of Shaftesbury, patron- ised Hutcheson, and even criticised his manu- script. Though a Presbyterian, he was be- friended by King, archbishop of Dublin, him- self a metaphysician ; and he was aided by Mr Synge, afterwards a bishop, to whom specula- tions somewhat similar to his own had occurred. Butler and Hutcheson coincided in the two important positions, that disinterested affections, and a distinct moral faculty, are essential parts of human nature. Hutcheson is a chaste and simple writer, who imbibed the opinions, with- out the literary faults of his master, Shaftesbury. He has a clearness of expression, and fulness of illustration, which are wanting in Butler. But he is inferior to both these writers in the appearance at least of originality, and to Butler especially in that philosophical courage which, when it discovers the fountains of truth and falsehood, leaves others to follow the streams. He states as strongly as Butler, that " the same cause which determines us to pursue happiness for ourselves, determines us both to esteem and benevolence on their proper occasions even the very frame of our nature." 4 It is vain, as he justly observes, for the patrons of a refined selfishness to pretend that we pursue the happi- ness of others for the sake of the pleasure which we derive from it ; since it is apparent that there could be no such pleasure if there had been no previous affection. " Had we no affection dis- tinct from self-love, nothing could raise a desire of the happiness of others, but when viewed as a mean of our own." * He seems to have been the first who entertained just notions of the formation of the secondary desires, which had been overlooked by Butler. " There must arise, in consequence of our original desires, secondary desires of every thing useful to gratify the pri- mary desire. Thus, as soon as we apprehend the use of wealth or power to gratify our original de- sires, we also desire them. From their univer- sality as means arises the general prevalence of these desires of wealth and power." 8 Proceed- ing farther in his zeal against the selfish system^ than Lord Shaftesbury, who seems ultimately to rest the reasonableness of benevolence on its subserviency to the happiness of the individual, he represents the moral faculty to be, as well as self-love and benevolence, a calm general im- pulse, which may and does impel a good man to sacrifice not only happiness, but even life itself, to virtue. As Mr Locke had spoken of an internal sensation, Lord Shaftesbury once or twice of a reflex sense, and once of a moral sense, Hutcheson, who had a steadier, if not a clear- er view of the nature of conscience than But- ler, calls it a Moral Sense ; a name which quickly became popular, and continues to be a part of philosophical language. By sense, he understood a capacity of receiving ideas, to- gether with pleasures and pains, from a class of 1 Born in Ireland in 1694 ; died at Glasgow in 1747- 2 WOODHOUSELEE'S Life of Lord Kamet, vol. I. Append. No. 3. J The first edition of Butler's Sermons was published in 1726, in which year also appeared the second edition of Hutche- son's Inquiry into Beauty and Virtue. The Sermons had been preached some years before, though there is no likelihood that the contents could have reached a young teacher at Dublin. The place of Hutcheson's birth is not mentioned in any ac- count known to me. Ireland may be truly said to be " incuriosa suorum." * Inquiry, p. 152. B Essay on the Passions, p. 17- * Ibid. p. 8. DISSERTATION SECOND. 349 objects. The term moral was used to describe the particular class in question. It implied only that conscience was a separate element in our nature, and that it was not a state or act of the understanding. According to him, it also implied that it was an original and implanted principle; but every other part of his theory might be embraced by those who hold it to be derivative. The object of moral approbation, according to him, is general benevolence ; and he carries this generous error so far as to deny that pru- dence, as long as it regards ourselves, can be morally approved ; an assertion contradicted by every man's feelings, and to which we owe the Dissertation on the Nature of Virtue which But- ler annexed to his Analogy. By proving that all virtuous actions produce general good, he fancied that he had proved the necessity of regarding the general good in every act of virtue ; an in- stance of that confusion of the theory of moral sentiments with the criterion of moral actions, against which the reader was warned at the open- ing of this Dissertation, as fatal to Ethical Philo- sophy. He is chargeable, like Butler, with a vicious circle, in describing virtuous acts as those which are approved by the moral sense, while he at the same time describes the moral sense as the faculty which perceives and feels the morality of actions. He was the father of speculative philosophy in Scotland, at least in modern times ; for though in the beginning of the sixteenth century the Scotch are said to have been known through- out Europe by their unmeasured passion for dialectical subtilties, l and though this metaphy- sical taste was nourished by the controversies which followed the Reformation, yet it languish- ed, with every other intellectual taste and talent, from the Restoration, first silenced by civil dis- orders, and afterwards repressed by an exem- plary but unlettered clergy, till the philosophy of Shaftesbury was brought by Hutcheson from Ireland. We are told by the writer of his Life, (a fine piece of philosophical biography) that " he had a remarkable degree of rational enthusiasm for learning, liberty, religion, virtue, and human happiness;" 8 that he taught in public with per- suasive eloquence ; that his instructive conversa- tion was at once lively and modest ; that he unit- ed pure manners with a kind disposition. What wonder that such a man should have spread the love of knowledge and virtue around him, and should have rekindled in his adopted country a relish for the sciences which he cultivated ! To him may also be ascribed that proneness to mul- tiply ultimate and original principles in human nature, which characterized the Scottish School till the second extinction of a passion for meta- physical speculation in Scotland. A careful perusal of the writings of this now little studied philosopher will satisfy the well-qualified reader, that Dr Adam Smith's ethical speculations are not so unsuggested as they are beautiful. BERKELEY.* THIS great metaphysician was so little a mo- ralist, that it requires the attraction of his name to excuse its introduction here. His Theory of Vision contains a great discovery in mental phi- losophy. His immaterialism is chiefly valuable as a touchstone of metaphysical sagacity ; show- Ing those to be altogether without it, who, like Johnson and Beattie, believed that his specula- tions were sceptical, that they implied any dis- trust in the senses, or that they had the smallest 1 The character given of the Scotch by the famous and unfortunate Servetus, in his edition of Ptolemy, (1533) is in many respects curious. " Gallis amicissimi, Anglorumque regi maxime infesti. Subita ingenia, et in ultionem prona, fero- ciaque. In bello fortes, inedise, vigiliae, algoris patientissimi, decenti forma sed cultu negligentiori ; invidi natura et caeterorum mortalium contemptores ; ostentant plus nimio nobilltatem suam, et in summa etiam egestate suum genus ad regiam stirpem refcrunt, NEC NON DIALECTJCIS AUGUTIIS SIBI BLANDIUNTUR.." Subita ingenia is an expression equivalent to the " Praefervidum Scotorum ingenium" of Buchanan. Churchill almost agrees in words with Servetus : Whose lineage springs From great and glorious, though forgotten kings. And the strong antipathy of the late King George III. to what he called " Scotch Metaphysics," proves the permanency of the last part of the national character. s late by Dr LEECHMAN, prefixed to HUTCHESON'S System of Moral Philosophy, 1755. * Born near Thomastown in Ireland, in 1684 ; died at Oxford in 1753. 350 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. tendency to disturb reasoning or alter conduct. Ancient learning, exact science, polished socie- ty, modern literature, and the fine arts, contrib- uted to adorn and enrich the mind of this ac- complished man. All his contemporaries agreed with the satirist in ascribing To Berkeley every virtue under heaven. Adverse factions and hostile wits concurred only in loving, admiring, and contributing to advance him. The severe sense of Swift endur- ed his visions; the modest Addison endeavour- ed to reconcile Clarke to his ambitious specula- tions. His character converted the satire of Pope into fervid praise. Even the discerning, fastidious, and turbulent Atterbury said, after an interview with him, " So much understand- ing, so much knowledge, so much innocence, and such humility, I did not think had been the portion of any but angels, till I saw this gentle- man." 1 " Lord Bathurst told me, that the Members of the Scriblerus Club being met at his house at dinner, they agreed to rally Berke- ley, who was also his guest, on his scheme at Bermudas. Berkeley, having listened to the many lively things they had to say, begged to be heard in his turn, and displayed his plan with such an astonishing and animating force of eloquence and enthusiasm, that they were struck dumb, and after some pause, rose all up together, with earnestness exclaiming, ' Let us set out with him immediately.'" 2 It was when thus beloved and celebrated that he conceived, at the age of forty-five, the design of devoting his life to reclaim and convert the natives of North America; and he employed as much influence and solicitation as common men do for their most prized objects, in obtaining leave to resign his dignities and revenues, to quit his accom- plished and affectionate friends, and to bury himself in what must have seemed an intellec- tual desert. After four years' residence at New- port in Rhode Island, he was compelled, by the refusal of Government to furnish him with funds for his College, to forego his work of he- roic, or rather godlike benevolence ; though not without some consoling forethought of the for- tune of the country where he had sojourned. Westward the course of empire takes its way, The first four acts already past, A fifth shall close the drama with the day, TIME'S NOBLEST OFFSPRING IS ITS LAST. Thus disappointed in his ambition of keeping a School for savage children, at a salary of a hun- dred pounds by the year, he was received, on his return, with open arms by the philosophical queen, at whose metaphysical parties he made one with Sherlock, who, as well as Smalridge, was his supporter, and with Hoadley, who, fol- lowing Clarke, was his antagonist. By her in- fluence, he was made bishop of Cloyne. It is one of his highest boasts, that though of Eng- lish extraction, he was a true Irishman, and the first eminent Protestant, after the unhappy contest at the Revolution, who avowed his love for all his countrymen. He asked, " Whether their habitations and furniture were not more sordid than those of the savage Americans?" 3 " Whether a scheme for the welfare of this nation should not take in the whole inhabitants ?" and, " Whether it was a vain attempt, to project the' flourishing of our Protestant gentry, exclusive of the bulk of the natives ?" 4 He proceeds to pro- mote the reformation suggested in this pregnant question by a series of Queries, intimating, with the utmost skill and address, every reason that proves the necessity, and the safety, and the wisest mode of adopting his suggestion. He contributed, by a truly Christian address to the Roman Catholics of his diocese, to their perfect quiet during the rebellion of 1745; and soon after published a letter to the clergy of that per- suasion, beseeching them to inculcate indus- try among their flocks, for which he received their thanks. He tells them, that it was a say- ing among the negro slaves, " if negro were not negro, Irishman would be negro" It is difficult to read these proofs of benevolence and fore- sight without emotion, at the moment when, 6 after a lapse of near a century, his suggestions have been at length, at the close of a struggle of twenty-five years, adopted, by the admis- DUNCOMBE'S Letters, 106, 107. WARTON on Pope. See his Querist, 358; published in 1?35. Ibid. 255. * April 1829. DISSERTATION SECOND. sion of the whole Irish nation to the privileges of the British Constitution. The patriotism of Berkeley was not, like that of Swift, tainted by disappointed ambition; nor was it, like Swift's, confined to a colony of English Pro- testants. Perhaps the Querist contains more hints, then original, still unapplied in legislation and political economy, than are to be found in any equal space. From the writings of his advanced years, when he chose a medical Tract 1 to be the vehicle of his philosophical reflections, though it cannot be said that he relinquished his early opinions, it is at least apparent that his mind had received a new bent, and was habitually turned from reasoning towards con- templation. His immaterialism indeed modest- ly appears, but only to purify and elevate our thoughts, and to fix them on Mind, the para- mount and primeval principle of all things. " Perhaps," says he, " the truth about innate ideas may be, that there are properly no ideas or passive objects in the mind but what are de- rived from sense, but that there are also, be- sides these, her own acts and operations such are notions ;" a statement which seems once more to admit general conceptions, and which might have served, as well as the parallel pass- age of Leibnitz, as the basis of the modern phi- losophy of Germany. From these compositions of his old age, he appears then to have recurred with fondness to Plato and the later Platonists ; writers from whose mere reasonings an intellect so acute could hardly hope for an argumentative satisfaction of all its difficulties, and whom he probably rather studied as a means of inuring his mind to objects beyond the visible diurnal sphere, and of attaching it, through frequent meditation, to that perfect and transcendent goodness to which his moral feelings always pointed, and which they incessantly strove to grasp. His mind, enlarging as it rose, at length receives every theist, however imperfect his be- lief, to a communion in its philosophic piety. " Truth," he beautifully concludes, " is the cry of all, but the game of a few. Certainly, where it is the chief passion, it does not give way to vulgar cares, nor is it contented with a little ardour in the early time of life ; active perhaps to pursue, but not so fit to weigh and revise. He that would make a real progress in know- ledge, must dedicate his age as well as youth, the later growth as well as first fruits, at the altar of Truth." So did Berkeley, and such were almost his latest words. His general principles of Ethics may be shortly stated in his own words : " As God is a being of infinite goodness, his end is the good of his creatures. The general wellbeing of all men of all nations, of all ages of the world, is that which he designs should be procured by the concur- ring actions of each individual." Having stated that this end can be pursued only in one of two ways either by computing the consequences of each action, or by obeying rules which generally tend to happiness and having shown the first to be impossible, he rightly infers, " that the end to which God requires the concurrence of human actions, must be carried on by the ob- servation of certain determinate and universal rules or moral precepts, which in their own na- ture have a necessary tendency to promote the wellbeing of mankind, taking in all nations and ages, from the beginning to the end of the world."* A romance, of which a journey to an Utopia, in the centre of Africa, forms the chief part, called The Adventures of Signor Gau- dentio di Lucca, has been commonly ascribed to him; probably on no other ground than its union of pleasing invention with benevolence and ele- gance. 5 Of the exquisite grace and beauty of his diction, no man accustomed to English com- position can need to be informed. His works are, beyond dispute, the finest models of phi- losophical style since Cicero. Perhaps they surpass those of the orator, in the wonderful art by which the fullest light is thrown on the most minute and evanescent parts of the most subtile of human conceptions. Perhaps he also surpassed Cicero in the charm of sim- plicity, a quality eminently found in Irish wri- ters before the end of the eighteenth century ; conspicuous in the masculine severity of Swift, 1 Siris, or Reflections on Tar Water. 7 Sermon in Trinity College Chapel, on Passive Obedience, 1?12. J Gentleman's Magazine, January 1777- 352 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. in the Platonic fancy of Berkeley, in the native tenderness and elegance of Goldsmith, and not withholding its attractions from Hutcheson and Leland, writers of classical taste, though of inferior power. The two Irish philosophers of the eighteenth century may be said to have co-operated in calling forth the metaphysical genius of Scotland ; for, though Hutcheson spread the taste, and furnished the principles, yet Berkeley undoubtedly produced the scep- ticism of Hume, which stimulated the instinc- tive school to activity, and was thought incap- able of confutation, otherwise than by their doctrines. DAVID HUME. 1 THE Life of Mr Hume, written by himself, is remarkable above most, if not all writings of that sort, for hitting the degree of interest between coldness and egotism which becomes a modest man in speaking of his private history. Few writers, whose opinions were so obnoxious, have more perfectly escaped every personal imputa- tion. Very few men of so calm a character have been so warmly beloved. That he approached to the character of a perfectly good and wise man, is an affectionate exaggeration, for which his friend Dr Smith, in the first moments of his sorrow, may well be excused. 8 But such a praise can never be earned without passing through either of the extremes of fortune ; with- out standing the test of temptations, dangers, and sacrifices. It may be said with truth, that the private character of Mr Hume exhibited all the virtues which a man of reputable station, under a mild government, in the quiet times of a civilized country, has often the opportunity to practise. He showed no want of the qualities which fit men for more severe trials. Though others had warmer affections, no man was a kinder relation, a more unwearied friend, or more free from meanness and malice. His cha- racter was so simple, that he did not even affect modesty ; but neither his friendships nor his de- portment were changed by a fame which filled all Europe. His good nature, his plain manners, and his active kindness, procured him at Paris the enviable name of the good David, from a society not so alive to goodness, as without reason to place it at the head of the qualities of a celebrated man. s His whole character is faith- fully and touchingly represented in the story of La Roche,* where Mr Mackenzie, without con- cealing Mr Hume's opinions, brings him into contact with scenes of tender piety, and yet pre- serves the interest inspired by genuine and un- alloyed, though moderated feelings and affec- tions. The amiable and venerable patriarch of Scottish Literature was averse from the opinions of the philosopher on whom he has composed this best panegyric. He tells us that he read the manuscript to Dr Smith, " who declared he did not find a syllable to object to, but added, with his characteristic absence of mind, that he was surprised he had never heard of the anecdote be- fore." 5 So lively was the delineation thus sanc- tioned by the most natural of all testimonies. Mr Mackenzie indulges his own religious feel- ings by modestly intimating, that Dr Smith's answer seemed to justify the last words of the tale, " that there were moments when the phi- losopher recalled to his mind the venerable fi- gure of the good La Roche, and wished that he had never doubted." To those who are strangers to the seductions of paradox, to the intoxication of fame, and to the bewitchment of prohibited opinions, it must be unaccountable, that he who revered benevolence should, without apparent regret, cease to see it on the Throne of the Uni- verse. It is a matter of wonder that his habitual esteem for every fragment and shadow of moral excellence should not lead him to envy those who contemplated its perfection in that living and paternal character which gives it a power over the human heart. On the other hand, if we had no experience 1 Born at Edinburgh in 1711 ; died there in 1776. 2 Dr Smith's Letter to Mr Strahan. annexed to the Life of Hume. * See Notes and Illustrations, note P. * Mirror, Nos. 42, 43, 44. * MACKENZIE'S Life of John Home, p. 21. DISSERTATION SECOND. 353 of the power of opposite opinions in producing irreconcilable animosities, we might have hoped that those who retained such high privileges would have looked with more compassion than dislike on a virtuous man who had lost them. In such cases it is too little remembered, that repugnance to hypocrisy, and impatience of long concealment, are the qualities of the best formed minds ; and that, if the publication of some doctrines proves often painful and mis- chievous, the habitual suppression of opinion is injurious to reason, and very dangerous to sin- cerity. Practical questions thus arise, so diffi- cult and perplexing, that their determination generally depends on the boldness or timidity of the individual, on his tenderness for the feel- ings of the good, or his greater reverence for the free exercise of reason. The time is not yet come when the noble maxim of Plato, " that every soul is unwillingly deprived of truth," will be practically and heartily applied by men to the honest opponents who differ from them most widely. In his twenty-seventh year he published at London the Treatise of Human Nature., the first systematic attack on all the principles of know- ledge and belief, and the most formidable, if universal scepticism could ever be more than a mere exercise of ingenuity. 1 This memorable work was reviewed in a Journal of that time, 2 in a criticism not distinguished by ability, which affects to represent the style of a very clear writer as unintelligible sometimes from a pur- pose to insult, but oftener from sheer dulness which is unaccountably silent respecting the consequences of a sceptical system ; and which concludes with a prophecy so much at variance with the general tone of the article, that it would seem to be added by a different hand. " It bears incontestable marks of a great capa- city, of a soaring genius, but young, and not yet thoroughly practised. Time and use may ripen these qualities in the author, and we shall probably have reason to consider this, com- pared with his later productions, in the same light as we view the juvenile works of Milton, or the first manner of Raphael." The great speculator did not, in this work, amuse himself, like Bayle, with dialectical ex- ercises, which only inspire a disposition towards doubt, by showing in detail the uncertainty of most opinions. He aimed at proving, not that nothing was known, but that nothing could be known ; from the structure of the under- standing to demonstrate, that we are doomed for ever to dwell in absolute and universal ig- norance. It is true that such a system of uni- versal scepticism never can be more than an in- tellectual amusement, an exercise of subtilty ; of which the only use is to check dogmatism, but which perhaps oftener provokes and pro- duces that much more common evil. As those dictates of experience which regulate conduct must be the objects of belief, all objections which attack them in common with the prin- ciples of reasoning must be utterly ineffectual. Whatever attacks every principle of belief can destroy none. As long as the foundations of knowledge are allowed to remain on the same level (be it called of certainty or uncertainty) with the maxims of life, the whole system of human conviction must continue undisturbed. When the sceptic boasts of having involved the results of experience and the elements of geometry in the same ruin with the doctrines of religion and the principles of philosophy, he may be answered, That no dogmatist ever claimed more than the same degree of certainty for these various con- victions and opinions ; and that his scepticism, therefore, leaves them in the relative condition in which it found them. No man knew better, or owned more frankly than Mr Hume, that to 1 Sextus, a physician of the empirical, i. e. anti-theoretical school, who lived at Alexandria in the reign of Antoninus Pius, has preserved the reasonings of the ancient Sceptics as they were to be found in their most improved state, in the writings of /Enesidemus, a Cretan, who was a Professor in the same city, soon after the reduction of Egypt into a Roman province. The greater part of the grounds of doubt are very shallow and popular. There are, among them, intimations of the argument against a necessary connection of causes with effects, afterwards better presented by Glanville in his Scepsis Scientifica. See Notes and Illustrations, note Q. - History of the Works of the Learned, November and December 1739, p. 353-404. This Review is attributed by some (CHALMERS, Biographical Dictionary) to Warburton, but certainly without foundation. DISS. II. . 2 Y 354 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. this answer there is no serious reply. Univer- sal scepticism involves a contradiction in terms. It is a belief that there can be no belief. It is an attempt of the mind to act without its structure, and hy other laws than those to which its nature has subjected its operations. To reason without assenting to the principles on which reasoning is founded, is not unlike an effort to feel without nerves, or to move without muscles. No man can be allowed to be- an opponent in reasoning, who does not set out with admitting all tJie principles, without the admission of which it is impossible to reason. ' It is indeed a puerile, nay, in the eye of wisdom, a childish play, to attempt either to establish or to confute principles by argument, which every step of that argument must pre- suppose. The only difference between the two cases is, that he who tries to prove them can do so only by first taking them for granted ; and that he who attempts to impugn them falls at the very first step into a contradiction, from which he never can rise. It must, however, be allowed, that universal scepticism has practical consequences of a very mischievous nature. This is because its univer- sality is not steadily kept in view, and con- stantly borne in mind. If it were, the above short and plain remark would be an effectual antidote to the poison. But in practice, it is an armoury from which weapons are taken to be employed against some opinions, while it is hidden from notice that the same weapon would equally cut down every other conviction. It is thus that Mr Hume's theory of causation is used as an answer to arguments for the exist- ence of the Deity, without warning the reader that it would equally lead him not to expect that the sun will rise to-morrow. It must also be added, that those who are early accustomed to dispute first principles are never likely to acquire, in a sufficient degree, that earnestness and that sincerity, that strong love of truth, and that conscientious solicitude for the formation of just opinions, which are not the least virtues of men, but of which the cultivation is the more especial duty of all who call themselves philo- sophers. 8 It is not an uninteresting fact, that Mr Hume having been introduced by Lord Kames (then Mr Henry Home) to Dr Butler, sent a copy of his Treatise to that philosopher at the moment of his preferment to the bishopric of Durham ; and that the perusal of it did not deter the philosophic prelate from " everywhere recom- mending Mr Hume's Moral and Political Es- says"* published two years afterwards; Essays which it would indeed have been unworthy of such a man not to have liberally commended , for they, and those which followed them, what- ever may be thought of the contents of some of them, must be ever regarded as the best models in any language, of the short but full, of the clear and agreeable, though deep discussion of difficult questions. Mr Hume considered his Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals as the best of his wri- tings. It is very creditable to his character, that he should have looked back with most complacency on a Tract the least distinguished by originality, and the least tainted with para- dox, among his philosophical works; but deserv- ing of all commendation for the elegant perspi- cuity of the style, and the novelty of illustration and inference with which he unfolded to general readers a doctrine too simple, too certain, and too important, to remain till his time undis- covered among philosophers. His diction has, indeed, neither the grace of Berkeley nor the strength of Hobbes ; but it is without the verbo- sity of the former, or the rugged sternness of the latter. His manner is more lively, more easy, more ingratiating, and, if the word may 1 This maxim, which contains a sufficient answer to all universal scepticism, or, in other words, to all scepticism properly so called, is significantly conveyed in the quaint title of an old and rare book, entitled, Scivi, sive Sceptices et Scepticorum a Jure Disputationis Excltisio, by THOMAS WHITE, the metaphysician of the English Catholics in modern times " Fortu- nately," says the illustrious sceptic himself, " since Reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices for that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical delirium" ( Treatise of Human Nature, I. 467) ; almost in the sublime and immor- tal words of Pascal : La liaison confond les Dogmatistes, et la Nature les Sceptiqnes. " It would be an act of injustice to those readers who are not acquainted with that valuable volume entitled, Essays on the Formation of Opinions, not to refer them to it as enforcing that neglected part of morality. To it may be added, a masterly article in the Westminster Review, occasioned by the Estays. ' WOODHOUSELEE'S Life of Kames, I. 86, 104. DISSERTATION SECOND. 355 be so applied, more amusing, than that of any other metaphysical writer. * He knew himself too well to be, as Dr Johnson asserted, an imi- tator of Voltaire ; who, as it were, embodied in his own person all the wit and quickness and versatile ingenuity of a people which surpasses other nations in these brilliant qualities. If he must be supposed to have had an eye on any French writer, it would be a more plausible guess, that he sometimes copied, with a tem- perate hand, the unexpected thoughts and famil- iar expressions of Fontenelle. Though he care- fully weeded his writings in their successive editions, yet they still contain Scotticisms and Gallicisms enough to employ the successors of such critics as those who exulted over the Pata- vinity of the Roman Historian. His own great and modest mind would have been satisfied with the praise which cannot be withheld from him, that there is no writer in our language who, through long works, is more agreeable ; and it is no derogation from him, that, as a Scots- man, he did not reach those native and secret beauties, characteristical of a language, which are never attained, in elaborate composition, but by a veiy small number of those who famil- iarly converse in it from infancy. The Enquiry affords perhaps the best speci- men of his style. In substance, its chief merit is the proof, from an abundant enumeration of particulars, that all the qualities and actions of the mind which are generally approved by man- kind agree in the circumstance of being useful to society. In the proof, (scarcely necessary) that benevolent affections and actions have that tendency, he asserts the real existence of these affections with unusual warmth; and he well abridges some of the most forcible arguments of Butler, 3 whom it is remarkable that he does not mention. To show the importance of his prin- ciple, he very unnecessarily distinguishes the comprehensive duty of justice, from other parts of morality, as an artificial virtue, for which our respect is solely derived from notions of utility. If all things were in such plenty that there could never be a want, or if men were so benevolent as to provide for the wants of others as much as for their own, there would, says he, in neither case be any justice, because there would be no need for it. But it is evident that the same reasoning is applicable to every good affection and right action. None of them could exist if there were no scope for their exercise. If there were no suffering, there could be no pity and no relief. If there were no offences, there could be no placability. If there were no crimes, there could be no mercy. Temperance, prudence, pa- tience, magnanimity, are qualities of which the value depends on the evils by which they are respectively exercised. 3 On purity of manners, it must be owned that Mr Hume, though he controverts no rule, yet treats vice with too much indulgence. It was his general disposition to distrust virtues which are liable to exaggeration, and may be easily counterfeited. The ascetic pursuit of purity, and hypocritical pretences to patriotism, had too much withdrawn the respect of his equally calm and sincere nature from these excellent virtues ; more especially as severity in both these respects was often at apparent variance with affection, which can neither be long assumed, nor ever overvalued. Yet it was singular that he who, in his Essay on Polygamy and Divorce,* had so 1 These commendations are so far from being at variance with the remarks of the late most ingenious Dr Thomas Brown, on Mr Hume's " mode of writing," (Enquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect, 3d ed. 327) that they may rather be re- garded as descriptive of those excellencies of which the excess produced the faults of Mr Hume as a mere searcher and teacher; justly, though perhaps severely, animadverted on by Dr Brown. 2 Enquiry, sect. ii. part i., especially the concluding paragraphs ; those which precede being more his own. 3 " Si nobis, cum ex hac vita migraverimus, in beatorum insulis, ut fabulae ferunt, immortale aevum degere liceret, quid opus esset eloquentia, cum judicia nulla fierent ? aut ipsis etiam virtutibus ? Nee enim fortitudine indigeremus, nullo pro- posito aut labore aut periculo ; nee justitia, cum essct nihil quod appeteretur allcni ; nee temperantia, quae regeret eas quae nullae essent libidines : ne prudentia quidem egeremus, nullo proposito delectu bonorum et malorum. Una igitur essemus beati cognitione rerum et scientia." (Frag. Cic. Hortens. apud AUGUSTIN. de Trinitate.) Cicero is more extensive, and therefore more consistent, than Hume ; but his enumeration errs both by excess and defect. He supposes knowledge to render beings happy in this imaginary state, without stooping to inquire how. He omits a virtue which might well exist in it, though we cannot conceive its formation in such a state the delight in each other's wellbeing ; and he omits a con- ceivable though unknown vice, that of unmixed ill-will, which would render such a state a hell to the wretch who har- boured the malevolence. * Essays and Treatises, vol. I. 356 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. well shown the connection of domestic ties with the outward order of society, should not have perceived their deeper and closer relation to all the social feelings of human nature. It cannot he enough regretted, that, in an Enquiry writ- ten with a very moral purpose, his hahit of ma- king truth attractive, hy throwing over her the dress of paradox, should have given him for a moment the appearance of weighing the mere amusements of society and conversation against domestic fidelity, which is the preserver of do- mestic affection, the source of parental fondness and filial regard, and, indirectly, of all the kind- ness which exists between human beings. That families are schools where the infant heart learns to love, and that pure manners are the ce- ment which alone holds these schools together, are truths so certain, that it is wonderful he should not have betrayed a stronger sense of their importance. No one could so well have proved that all the virtues of that class, in their vajious orders and degrees, minister to the be- nevolent affections; and that every act which separates the senses from the affections tends, in some degree, to deprive kindness of its natural auxiliary, and to lessen its prevalence in the world. It did not require his sagacity to discover that the gentlest and tenderest feelings flourish only under the stern guardianship of these severe virtues. Perhaps his philosophy was loosened, though his life was untainted, by that universal and undistinguishing profligacy which prevailed on the Continent, from the regency of the Duke of Orleans to the French revolution ; the most dissolute period of European history, at least since the Roman emperors. l At Rome, indeed, the connection of licentiousness with cruelty, which, though scarcely traceable in individuals, is generally very observable in large masses, bore a fearful testimony to the value of austere purity. The alliance of these remote vices seemed to be broken in the time of Mr Hume. Pleasure, in a more improved state of society, seemed to return to her more natural union with kindness and tenderness, as well as with refine- ment and politeness. Had he lived fourteen years longer, however, he would have seen, that the virtues which guard the natural seminaries of the affections are their only true and lasting friends. The demand of all well-informed men for the improvement of civil institutions the demand of classes of men growing in intelligence, to be delivered from a degrading inferiority, and admitted to a share of political power propor- tioned to their new importance, being feebly yet violently resisted by those ruling Castes who neither knew how to yield nor how to withstand being also attended by very erroneous principles of legislation, having suddenly broken down the barriers (imperfect as these were) of law and government, led to popular excesses, desolat- ing wars, and a military dictatorship, which for a long time threatened to defeat the reforma- tion, and to disappoint the hopes of mankind. This tremendous convulsion threw a fearful light on the ferocity which lies hid under the arts and pleasures of corrupted nations ; as earthquakes and volcanoes disclose the layers which compose the deeper parts of our planet, beneath a fertile and flowery surface. A part of this dreadful re- sult may be ascribed, not improbably, to that relaxation of domestic ties, unhappily natural to the populace of vast capitals, and at that time countenanced and aggravated by the example of their superiors. Another part doubtless arose from the barbarizing power of absolute govern- ment, or, in other words, of injustice in high places. A very large portion attests, as strongly as Roman history, though in a somewhat differ- ent manner, the humanizing efficacy of the family virtues, by the consequences of the want of them in the higher classes, whose profuse and ostenta- tious sensuality inspired the laborious and suffer- ing portion of mankind with contempt, disgust, envy, and hatred. The Enquiry is disfigured by another speck of more frivolous paradox. It consists in the at- tempt to give the name of virtue to qualities of the understanding; and it would not have de- served the single remark about to be made on it, had it been the paradox of an inferior man. He has altogether omitted the circumstance on which depends the difference of our sentiments regarding moral and intellectual qualities. . We 1 See Notes and Illustrations, note R. DISSERTATION SECOND. 357 admire intellectual excellence, but we bestow no moral approbation on it. Such approbation has no tendency directly to increase it, because it is not voluntary. We cultivate our natural dis- position to esteem and love benevolence and justice, because these moral sentiments, and the expression of them, directly and materially dis- pose others, as well as ourselves, to cultivate these two virtues. We cultivate a natural anger against oppression, which guards our- selves against the practice of that vice, and be- cause the manifestation of it deters others from its exercise. The first rude resentment of a child is against every instrument of hurt. We confine it to intentional hurt, when we are taught by experience that it prevents only that species of hurt ; and at last it is still further li- mited to wrong done to ourselves or others, and in that case becomes a purely moral sentiment. We morally approve industry, desire of know- ledge, love of truth, and all the habits by which the understanding is strengthened and rectified, because their formation is subject to the will. 1 But we do not feel a moral anger against folly or ignorance, because they are involuntary. No one but the religious persecutor, a mischievous and overgrown child, wreaks his vengeance on involuntary, inevitable, compulsory acts or states of the understanding, which are no more affected by blame than the stone which the foolish child beats for hurting him. Reasonable men apply to every thing which they wish to move, the agent which is capable of moving it ; force to outward substances, arguments to the under- standing, and blame, together with all other motives, whether moral or personal, to the will alone. It is as absurd to entertain an abhor- rence of intellectual inferiority or error, however extensive or mischievous, as it would be to cherish a warm indignation against earthquakes or hurricanes. It is singular that a philosopher who needed the most liberal toleration should, by representing states of the understanding as moral or immoral, have offered the most philo- sophical apology for persecution. That general utility constitutes a uniform ground of moral distinctions, is a part of Mr Hume's ethical theory which never can be im- pugned, until some example can be produced of a virtue generally pernicious, or of a vice gene- rally beneficial. The religious philosopher who, with Butler, holds that benevolence must be the actuating principle of the Divine mind, will, with Berkeley, maintain that pure benevolence can prescribe no rules of human conduct but such as are beneficial to men ; thus bestowing on the theory of Moral Distinctions the certainty of demonstration in the eyes of all who believe in God. The other question of moral philosophy which relates to the theory of Moral Approbation, has been by no means so distinctly and satisfactorily handled by Mr Hume. His general doctrine is, that an interest in the wellbeing of others, im- planted by nature, which he calls Sympathy in his Treatise of Human Nature, and much less happily Benevolence in his subsequent Enquiry,* prompts us to be pleased with all generally be- neficial actions. In this respect his doctrine nearly resembles that of Hutcheson. He does not trace his principle through the variety of forms which our moral sentiments assume. There are very important parts of them, of which it affords no solution. For example, though he truly represents our approbation, in others, of qualities useful to the individual, as a proof of benevolence, he makes no attempt to explain our moral approbation of such virtues as temperance and fortitude in ourselves. He. entirely overlooks that consciousness of the rightful supremacy of the moral faculty over every other principle of human action, without an ex- planation of which, ethical theory is wanting in one of its vital organs. Notwithstanding these considerable defects, his proof from induction of the beneficial tend- ency of virtue, his conclusive arguments for human disinterestedness, and his decisive ob- servations on the respective provinces of reason and sentiment in morals, concur in ranking the 1 " In hac qusestione primas tenet Voluntas, qua, lit ait Augustinus, peccatur, et recte vivitur." (Hyperaspstc , Diatribe adversus Servum Arbitrium MARTINI LUTHERI, per DESIDERIUM ERASMUM Rotterdamensem.) 8 Essays and Treatises, vol. II. 358 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Enquiry with the ethical treatises of the highest quiry concerning Virtue, Butler's Sermons, and merit in our language, with Shaftesbury's En- Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. ADAM SMITH.' THE great name of Adam Smith rests upon the Enquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations ; perhaps the only book which produced an immediate, general, and irrevoc- able change in some of the most important parts of the legislation of all civilized states. The works of Grotius, of Locke, and of Montesquieu, which bear a resemblance to it in character, and had no inconsiderable analogy to it in the ex- tent of their popular influence, were productive only of a general amendment, not so conspicuous in particular instances, as discoverable, after a time, in the improved condition of human af- fairs. 2 The work of Smith, as it touched those matters which may be numbered, and measured, and weighed, bore more visible and palpable fruit. In a few years it began to alter laws and treaties, and has made its way, throughout the convulsions of revolution and conquest, to a due ascendant over the minds of men, with far less than the average obstructions of prejudice and clamour, which choakthe channels through which truth flows into practice. The most eminent of those who have since cultivated and improved the science will be the foremost to address their immortal master, Tenebris tantis tarn clarum extollere lumen Qui primus potuisti, INLUST RANS COMMODA VIT.*, Te sequor ! (LucRET. lib. iii.) In a science more difficult, because both ascend- ing to more simple general principles, and run- ning down through more minute applications, though the success of Smith has been less com- plete, his genius is not less conspicuous. Per- haps there is no ethical work since Cicero's Of- fices, of which an abridgement enables the reader so inadequately to estimate the merit, as the Theory of Moral Sentiments. This is not chiefly owing to the beauty of diction, as in the case of Cicero ; but to the variety of explanations of life and manners which embellish the book often more than they illuminate the theory. Yet, on the other hand, it must be owned that, for pure- ly philosophical purposes, few books more need abridgement : for the most careful reader fre- quently loses sight of principles buried under illustrations. The naturally copious and flow- ing style of the author is generally redundant, and the repetition of certain formularies of the system is, in the later editions, so frequent as to be wearisome, and sometimes ludicrous. Per- haps Smith and Hobbes may be considered as forming the two extremes of good style in our philosophy ; the first of graceful fulness falling into flaccidity ; while the masterly concision of the second is oftener tainted by dictatorial dry- ness. Hume and Berkeley, though they are nearer the extreme of abundance, 5 are probably the least distant from perfection. That mankind are so constituted as to sympa- thize with each other's feelings, and to feel pleasure in the accordance of these feelings, are the only facts required by Dr Smith, and they certainly must be granted to him. To adopt the feelings of another, is to approve them. When the sentiments of another are such as would be excited in us by the same objects, we approve them as morally proper. To obtain this accord, it becomes necessary for him who enjoys or suf- fers, to lower his expression of feeling to the point to which the by-stander can raise his fel- low-feelings ; on which are founded all the high virtues of self-denial and self-command ; and it is equally necessary for the by-stander to raise his sympathy as near as he can to the level of the original feeling. In all unsocial passions, such as anger, we have a divided sympathy be- tween him who feels them and those who are the 1 Born in 1?23 ; died in 1790. 2 Notes and Illustrations, note S. 3 This remark is chiefly applicable to Hume's Essays. tenor, though it has Cicefonian passages. His Treatise of Human Nature is more Hobbian in its general DISSERTATION SECOND. 359 objects of them. Hence the propriety of ex- tremely moderating them. Pure malice is al- ways to be concealed or disguised, because all sympathy is arrayed against it. In the private passions, where there is only a simple sympathy that with the original passion the expression has more liberty. The benevolent affections, where there is a double sympathy with those who feel them, and those who are their objects are the most agreeable, and may be indulged with the least apprehension of finding no echo in other breasts. Sympathy with the gratitude of those who are benefited by good actions, prompts us to consider them as deserving of reward, and forms the sense of merit; as fellow-feeling with the resentment of those who are injured by crimes leads us to look on them as worthy of punishment, and constitutes the sense of demerit. These senti- ments require not only beneficial actions, but be- nevolent motives for them ; being compounded, in the case of merit, of a direct sympathy with the good disposition of the benefactor, and an indirect sympathy with the persons benefited ; in the op- posite case, with precisely opposite sympathies. He who does an act of wrong to another to gratify his own passions, must not expect that the spec- tators, who have none of his undue partiality to his own interest, will enter into his feelings. In such a case, he knows that they will pity the person wronged, and be full of indignation against him. When he is cooled, he adopts the sentiments of others on his own crime, feels shame at the impropriety of his former passion, pity for those who have suffered by him, and a dread of punishment from general and just re- sentment. Such are the constituent parts of remorse. Our moral sentiments respecting ourselves arise from those which others feel concerning us. We feel a self-approbation whenever we believe that the general feeling of mankind co- incides with that state of mind in which we our- selves were at a given time. " We suppose ourselves the spectators of our own behaviour, and endeavour to imagine what effect it would in this light produce in us." We must view our own conduct with the eyes of others before we can judge it. The sense of duty arises from putting ourselves in the place of others, and adopting their sentiments respecting our own conduct. In utter solitude there could have been no self-approbation. The rules of morality are a summary of those sentiments ; and often beneficially stand in their stead when the self- delusions of passion would otherwise hide from us the non-conformity of our state of mind with that which, in the circumstances, can be entered into and approved by impartial by- standers. It is hence that we learn to raise our mind above local or temporary clamour, and to fix our eyes on the surest indications of the ge- neral and lasting sentiments of human nature. " When we approve of any character or action, our sentiments are derived from four sources : first, we sympathize with the motives of the agent ; secondly r , we enter into the gratitude of those who have been benefited by his actions ; thirdly, we observe that his conduct has been agreeable to the general rules by which those two sympathies generally act ; and, last of all, when we consider such actions as forming part of a system of behaviour which tends to promote the happiness either of the individual or of so- ciety, they appear to derive a beauty from this utility, not unlike that which we ascribe to any well-contrived machine." ' REMARKS. That Smith is the first who has drawn the at- tention of philosophers to one of the most cu- rious and important parts of human nature who has looked closely and steadily into the workings of Sympathy, its sudden action and re- action, its instantaneous conflicts and its emo- tions, its minute play and varied illusions is sufficient to place him high among the culti- vators of mental philosophy. He is very original in applications and expla- nations ; though, for his principle, he is some- what indebted to Butler, more to Hutch eson, and most of all to Hume. These writers, except Hume in his original work, had derived sym- Theory of Moral Sentiments, II. 304. Edinb. 1801. 360 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. pathy, or great part of it, from benevolence. 1 Smith, with deeper insight, inverted the order. The great part performed by various sympathies in moral approbation was first unfolded by him ; and besides its intrinsic importance, it strength- ened the proofs against those theories which ascribe that great function to Reason. Another great merit of the theory of sympathy is, that it brings into the strongest light that most import- ant characteristic of the moral sentiments which consists in their being the only principles lead- ing to action, and dependent on emotion or sen- sibility, with respect to the objects of which, it is not only possible but natural for all man- kind to agree. 3 The main defects of this theory seem to be the following. 1. Though it is not to be condemned for de- clining inquiry into the origin of our fellow- feeling, which, being one of the most certain of all facts, might well be assumed as ultimate in speculations of this nature, it is evident that the circumstances to which some speculators ascribe the formation of sympathy at least contribute to strengthen or impair, to contract or expand it. It will appear, more conveniently, in the next article, that the theory of sympathy has suffered from the omission of these circumstances. For the present, it is enough to observe how much our compassion for various sorts of animals, and our fellow-feeling with various races of men, are proportioned to the resemblance which they bear to ourselves, to the frequency of our intercourse with them, and to other causes which, in the opinion of some, afford evidence that sympathy itself is dependent on a more general law. 2. Had Smith extended his view beyond the mere play of sympathy itself, and taken into ac- count all its preliminaries, and accompaniments, and consequences, it seems improbable that he should have fallen into the great error of repre- senting the sympathies in their primitive state, without undergoing any transformation, as con- tinuing exclusively to constitute the moral sen- timents. He is not content with teaching that they are the roots out of which these sentiments grow, the stocks on which they are grafted, the elements of which they are compounded; doc- trines to which, nothing could be objected but their unlimited extent. He tacitly assumes, that if a sympathy in the beginning caused or formed a moral approbation, so it must eA*er continue to do. He proceeds like a geologist who should tell us that the layers of this planet had always been in the same state, shutting his eyes to transition states and secondary forma- tions ; or like a chemist who should inform us that no compound substance can possess new qualities entirely different from those which be- long to its materials. His acquiescence in this old and still general error is the more remark- able, because Mr Hume's beautiful Dissertation on the Passions 3 had just before opened a strik- ing view of some of the compositions and de- compositions which render the mind of a formed man as different from its original state, as the organization of a complete animal is from the condition of the first dim speck of vitality. It is from this oversight (ill supplied by morat rules, a loose stone in his building) that he has exposed himself to objections founded on expe- rience, to which it is impossible to attempt any answer. For it is certain that in many, nay in most cases of moral approbation, the adult man approves the action or disposition merely as right, and with a distinct consciousness that no process of sympathy intervenes between the approval and its object. It is certain that an unbiassed person would call it moral approbation, only as far as it excluded the interposition of any reflection between the conscience and the mental state approved. Upon the supposition of an unchanged state of our active principles, it would follow that sympathy never had any share in the greater part of them. Had he ad- mitted the sympathies to be only elements enter- ing into the formation of Conscience, their dis- appearance, or their appearance only as auxili- 1 There is some confusion regarding this point in Butler's first sermon on Compassion. - The feelings of beauty, grandeur, and whatever else is comprehended under the name of Taste, form no exception, for they do not lead to action, but terminate in delightful contemplation ; -which constitutes the essential distinction between them and the moral sentiments, to which, in some points of view, they may doubtless be likened. 3 Essays and Treatises, vol. II. DISSERTATION SECOND. 361 aries, after the mind is mature, would have been no more an objection to his system, than the conversion of a substance from a transi- tional to a permanent state is a perplexity to the geologist. It would perfectly resemble the destruction of qualities, which is the ordinary effect of chemical composition. 3. The same error has involved him in an- other difficulty perhaps still more fatal. The sympathies have nothing more of an imperative character than any other emotions. They attract or repel like other feelings, according to their intensity. If, then, the sympathies con- tinue in mature minds to constitute the whole of conscience, it becomes utterly impossible to explain the character of command and suprem- acy, which is attested by the unanimous voice of mankind to belong to that faculty, and to form its essential distinction. Had he adopted the other representation, it would be possible to conceive, perhaps easy to explain, that con- science should possess a quality which belonged to none of its elements. 4. It is to this representation that Smith's theory owes that unhappy appearance of ren- dering the rule of our conduct dependent on the notions and passions of those who surround us, of which the utmost eiforts of the most re- fined ingenuity have not been able to divest it. This objection or topic is often ignorantly urged; the answers are frequently solid ; but to most men they must always appear to be an ingeni- ous and intricate contrivance of cycles and epi- cycles, which perplex the mind too much to satisfy it, and seem devised to evade difficulties which cannot be solved. All theories which treat conscience as built up by circumstances inevitably acting on all human minds, are, in- deed, liable to somewhat of the same miscon- ception ; unless they place in the strongest light (what Smith's theory excludes) the total de- struction of the scaffolding which was neces- sary only to the erection of the building, after the mind is adult and mature, and warn the hastiest reader, that it then rests on its own foundation alone. 5. The constant reference of our own dispo- sitions and actions to the point of view from which they are estimated by others, seems to be rather an excellent expedient for preserving our impartiality, than a fundamental principle of Ethics. But impartiality, which is no more than a removal of some hinderance to right judg- ment, supplies no materials for its exercise, and no rule, or even principle, for its guidance. It nearly coincides with the Christian precept of doing unto others as we would they should do unto us ; an admirable practical maxim, but, as Leibnitz has said truly, intended only as a cor- rection of self-partiality. 6. Lastly, this ingenious system renders all morality relative, by referring it to the plea- sure of an agreement of our feelings with those of others, by confining itself entirely to the question of moral approbation, and by provid- ing no place for the consideration of that quality which distinguishes all good from all bad ac- tions ; a defect which will appear in the sequel to be more immediately fatal to a theorist of the sentimental, than to one of the intellectual school. Smith shrinks from considering utility in that light as soon as it presents itself, or very strange- ly ascribes its power over our moral feelings to admiration of the mere adaptation of means to ends, which might surely be as well felt for the production of wide-spread misery, by a con- sistent system of wicked conduct, instead of ascribing it to benevolence, with Hutcheson and Hume, or to an extension of that very sympathy which is his own first principle. RICHARD PRICE. 1 ABOUT the same time with the celebrated work of Smith, but with a popular reception very different, Dr Richard Price, an excellent and eminent non-conformist minister, published A Review of the principal Questions in Morals ; fl an attempt to revive the intellectual theory of 1 Born in 1723; died in 1791. DISS. II. * The third edition was published at London in 1787- 2z 362 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. moral obligation, which seemed to have fallen under the attacks of Butler, Hutcheson, and Hume, even before Smith. It attracted little observation at first ; but being afterwards coun- tenanced by the Scottish School, may seem to deserve some notice, at a moment when the kindred speculations of the German metaphysi- cians have effected an establishment in France, and are no longer unknown in England. The understanding itself is, according to Price, an independent source of simple ideas. " The various kinds of agreement and disagree- ment between our ideas, spoken of by Locke, are so many new simple ideas." " This is true of our ideas of proportion, of our ideas of iden- tity and diversity, existence, connection, cause and effect, power, possibility, and of our ideas of right and wrong." " The first relates to quantity, the last to actions, the rest to all things." " Like all other simple ideas, they are undefineable." It is needless to pursue this theory farther, till an answer shall be given to the observation made before, that as no perception or judgment, or other unmixed act of understanding, merely as such, and without the agency of some inter- mediate emotion,, can affect the will, the account given by Dr Price of perceptions or judgments respecting moral subjects, does not advance one step towards the explanation of the authority of conscience over the will, which is the matter to be explained. Indeed, this respectable writer felt the difficulty so much as to allow, " that in contemplating the acts of moral agents, we have both a perception of the understanding and a feeling of the heart." He even admits, that it would have been highly pernicious to us if our reason had been left without such support. But he has not shown how, on such a supposition, we could have acted on a mere opinion ; nor has he given any proof that what he calls sup- port is not, in truth, the whole of what directly produces the conformity of voluntary acts to morality. l DAVID HARTLEY. 2 THE work of Dr Hartley, entitled Observations on Man, s is distinguished by an uncommon union of originality with modesty, in unfolding a simple and fruitful principle of human nature. It is disfigured by the absurd affectation of ma- thematical forms then prevalent ; and it is en- cumbered and deformed by a mass of physiolo- gical speculations, groundless, or at best uncer- tain, wholly foreign from its proper purpose, which repel the inquirer into mental philosophy from its perusal, and lessen the respect of the physiologist for the author's judgment. It is an unfortunate example of the disposition predomi- nant among undistinguishing theorists to class together all the appearances which are observed at the same time, and in the immediate neigh- bourhood of each other. At that period, chemi- cal phenomena were referred to mechanical prin- ciples ; vegetable and animal life were subjected to mechanical or chemical laws ; and while some physiologists* ascribed the vital functions to the understanding, the greater part of metaphysi- cians were disposed, with a grosser confusion, to derive the intellectual operations from bodily causes. The error in the latter case, though less immediately perceptible, is deeper and more fundamental than in any other ; since it over- looks the primordial and perpetual distinction between the being which thinks and the thing which is thought of; not to be lost sight of, by the mind's eye, even for a twinkling, without involving all nature in darkness and confusion. 1 The following sentences will illustrate the text, and are in truth applicable to all moral theories on merely intellectual principles : " Reason alone, did we possess it in a higher degree, would answer all the ends of the passions. Thus there would be no need of parental affection, were all parents sufficiently acquainted with the reasons for taking upon them the guidance and support of those whom nature has placed under their care, and were they virtuous enough to le always determined ly those reasons." (PRICE'S Review, 121.) A very slight consideration will show, that without the last words the preceding part would be utterly false, and with them it is utterly insignificant. 1 Born in 1705 ; died in 1757- 3 London, 1749. * G. E. STAHL, born in 1660 ; died in 1734 ; a German physician and chemist of deserved eminence. DISSERTATION SECOND. 363 Hartley and Condillac, 1 who, much about the same time, but seemingly without any knoAv- ledge of each other's speculations, 2 began in a very similar mode to simplify, but also to muti- late the system of Locke, stopped short of what is called Materialism, winch consummates the confusion, but touched its threshold. Thither, it must be owned, their philosophy pointed, and thither their followers proceeded. Hartley and Bonnet, 5 still more than Condillac, suffered them- selves, like most of their contemporaries, to overlook the important truth, that all the changes in the organs which can be likened to other material phenomena, are nothing more than an- tecedents and prerequisites of perception, bearing not the faintest likeness to it; as much outward in relation to the thinking principle, as if they occurred in any other part of matter ; and of which the entire comprehension, if it were at- tained, would not bring us a step nearer to the nature of thought. They who would have been the first to exclaim against the mistake of a sound for a colour, fell into the more unspeak- able error of confounding the perception of ob- jects, as outward, with the consciousness of our own mental operations. Locke's doctrine, that REFLECTION was a separate source of ideas, left room for this greatest of all distinctions, though with much unhappiness of expression, and with no little variance from the course of his own speculations. Hartley, Candillac, and Bonnet, in hewing away this seeming deformity from the system of their master, unwittingly struck off the part of the building which, how- ever unsightly, gave it the power of yielding some shelter and guard to truths, of which the exclusion rendered it utterly untenable. They became consistent Nominalists; a controversy on which Locke expresses himself with confu- sion and contradiction ; but on this subject they added nothing to what had been taught by Hobbes and Berkeley. Both Hartley and Con- dillac 4 have the merit of having been unseduced by the temptations either of scepticism or of useless idealism ; which, even if Berkeley and Hume could have been unknown to them, must have been within sight. Both agree in referring all the intellectual operations to the association of ideas, and in representing that association as reducible to the single law, that ideas which en- ter the mind at the same time, acquire a ten- dency to call up each other, which is in direct proportion to the frequency of their having en- tered together. In this important part of their doctrine they seem, whether unconsciously or otherwise, to have only repeated, and very much expanded, the opinion of Hobbes. 5 In its sim- plicity it is more agreeable than the system of Mr Hume, who admitted five independent laws of association ; and it is in comprehension far superior to the views of the same subject by Mr Locke, whose ill-chosen name still retains its place in our nomenclature, but who only appeals to the principle as explaining some fancies and whimsies of the human mind. The capital fault of Hartley is that of a rash generalization, which may prove imperfect, and which is at least pre- mature. All attempts to explain instinct by this principle have hitherto been unavailing. Many of the most important processes of reasoning have not hitherto been accounted for by it. 6 It would appear by a close examination, that even this theory, simple as it appears, presupposes many facts relating to the mind, of which its authors 1 Born in 1715 ; died in 1780. * Traitt sur VOrigine des Connoissances Humaines, 1746 ; Traite des Systemes, 1749 ; Traite des Sensations, 1754. Foreign books were then little and slowly known in England. Hartley's reading, except on theology, seems confined to the physi- cal and mathematical sciences ; and his whole manner of thinking and writing is so different from that of Condillac, that there is not the least reason to suppose the work of the one to have been known to the other. The work of Hartley, as we learn from the sketch of his life by his son, prefixed to the edition of 1791, was begun in 1?30, and finished in 1746. Born in 1720; died in 1793. * The following note of Condillac will show how much he differed from Hartley in his mode of considering the Newton- ian hypothesis of vibrations, and how far he was in that respect superior to him. " Je suppose ici et ailleurs que les per- " Ce que les logiciens ont dit des raisonnements dans bien des volumes, me paroit entierement superflu, et de nul usage" (CONDILLAC, I. 115); an assertion of which the gross absurdity will be apparent to the readers of Dr Whately's Treat'ue on Logic, one of the most important works of the present age. 364 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. do not seem to have suspected the existence. How many ultimate facts of that nature, for ex- ample, are contained and involved in Aristotle's celebrated comparison of the mind in its first state to a sheet of unwritten paper ! 1 The tex- ture of the paper, even its colour, the sort of in- strument fit to act on it, its capacity to receive and to retain impressions, all its differences, from steel on the one hand to water on the other, certainly presuppose some facts, and may imply many, without a distinct statement of which, the nature of writing could not be ex- plained to a person wholly ignorant of it. How many more, as well as greater laws, may be ne- cessary to enable mind to perceive outward ob- jects ! If the power of perception may be thus dependent, why may not what is called the asso- ciation of ideas, the attraction between thoughts, the power of one to suggest another, be affected by mental laws hitherto unexplored, perhaps un- observed ? But to return from digression into the intel- lectual part of man : It becomes proper to say, that the difference between Hartley and Con- dillac, and the immeasurable superiority of the former, are chiefly to be found in the applica- tion which Hartley first made of the law of as- sociation to that other unnamed portion of our nature with which morality more immediately deals; that which feels pain and pleasure, is influenced by appetites and loathings, by desires and aversions, by affections and repugnances. Condillac's Treatise on Sensation, published five years after the work of Hartley, reproduces the doctrine of Hobbes with its root, namely, that love and hope are but transformed sensations, 2 by which he means perceptions of the senses ; and its wide-spread branches, consisting in de- sires and passions, which are only modifications of self-love. " The words goodness and beauty," says he, almost in the very words of Hobbes, " express those qualities of things by which they contribute to our pleasures." 5 In the whole of his philosophical works, we find no trace of any desire produced by association, of any disinter- ested principle, or indeed of any distinction be- tween the percipient and what, perhaps, we may now venture to call the emotive or the pathematic part of human nature, until some more conve- nient and agreeable name shall be hit on by some luckier or more skilful adventurer, in such new terms as seem to be absolutely necessary. To the ingenuous, humble, and anxiously con- scientious character of Hartley, we owe the know- ledge that, about the year 1730, he was inform- ed that the Rev. Mr Gay of Sidney College, Cambridge, then living in the west of England, asserted the possibility of deducing all our intel- lectual pleasures and pains from association; that this led him (Hartley) to consider the power of association ; and that about that time Mr Gay published his sentiments on this matter in a dis- sertation prefixed to Bishop Law's Translation of King's Origin of Evil.* No writer deserves more the praise of abundant fairness than Hartley in this avowal. The dissertation of which he speaks is mentioned by no philosopher but himself. It suggested nothing apparently to any other read- er. The general texture of it is that of home- spun selfishness. The writer had the merit to see and to own that Hutcheson had established as a fact the reality of moral sentiments and dis- interested affections. He blames, perhaps just- ly, that most ingenious man, 5 for assuming that these sentiments and affections are implanted, and partake of the nature of instincts. The ob- ject of his dissertation is to reconcile the mental appearances described by Hutcheson with the 1 See Notes and Illustrations, note U. 2 CONDILLAC, III. 21 ; more especially Traite des Sensations, part ii. chap. vi. " Its love for outward objects is only an effect of love for itself." 3 Traite des Sensations, part iv. chap. iii. 4 Hartley's Preface to the Observations on Man. The word intellectual is too narrow. Even mental would be of very doubtful propriety. The theory in its full extent requires a word such as inorganic, (if no better can be discovered) extend- ing to all gratification, not distinctly referred to some specific organ, or at least to some assignable part of the bodily frame. * It lias not been mentioned in its proper place, that Hutcheson appears nowhere to greater advantage than in Letters on the Fable of the Bees, published when he was very young, at Dublin, in a publication called Hibernicus. " Private vices public benefits," says he, " may signify any one of these five distinct propositions : 1. They are in themselves public be- ne ts ' or > 2. They naturally produce public happiness ; or, 3. They may be made to produce it ; or, 4. Thev may natu- rally flow from it ; or, 5. At least they may probably flow from it in our infirm nature." (See a small volume containing Thoughts on Laughter, and Observations on the Fable of the Sees, Glasgow, 1758, in which these letters are republished.) DISSERTATION SECOND. 365 first principle of the selfish system, that " the true principle of all our actions is our own hap- piness." Moral feelings and social affections are, according to him, " resolvable into reason, pointing out our private happiness ; and when- ever this end is not perceived, they are to be ac- counted for from the association of ideas." Even in the single passage in which he shows a glimpse of the truth, lie begins with confusion, advances with hesitation, and after holding in his grasp for an instant the principle which sheds so strong a light around it, suddenly drops it from his hand. Instead of receiving the statements of Hutcheson (his silence relating to Butler is unaccountable) as enlargements of the science of man, he deals with them merely as difficulties to be reconciled with the received system of universal selfishness. In the conclusion of his fourth section, he well exemplifies the power of association in forming the love of money, of fame, of power, &c. ; but he still treats these effects of association as aberrations and infirmi- ties, the fruits of our forgetfulness and short- sightedness, and not at all as the great process employed to sow and rear the most important principles of a social and moral nature. This precious mine may therefore be truly said to have been opened by Hartley; for he who did such superabundant justice to the hints of Gay, would assuredly not have withheld the like tribute from Hutcheson, had he observ- ed the happy expression of " secondary pas- sions," which ought to have led that philoso- pher himself farther than he ventured to ad- vance. The extraordinary value of this part of Hartley's system has been hidden by various causes, which have also enabled writers who borrow from it to decry it. The influence of his medical habits renders many of his examples displeasing, and sometimes disgusting. He has none of that knowledge of the world, of that fa- miliarity with literature, of that delicate percep- tion of the beauties of nature and art, which not only supply the most agreeable illustrations of mental philosophy, but afford the most obvious and striking instances of its happy application to subjects generally interesting. His particular applications of the general law are often mis- taken, and seldom more than brief notes and hasty suggestions ; the germs of theories which, while some might adopt them without deten- tion, others might discover without being aware that they were anticipated. To which it may be added, that in spite of the imposing forms of geometry, the work is not really distinguished by good method, or even uniform adherence to that which had been chosen. His style is en- titled to no praise but that of clearness, and a simplicity of diction, through which is visible a singular simplicity of mind. No book perhaps exists which, with so few of the common allure- ments, comes at last so much to please by the picture it presents of the writer's character, a character which kept him pure from the pursuit, often from the consciousness of novelty, and ren- dered him a discoverer in spite of his own modes- ty. In those singular passages in which, amidst the profound internal tranquillity of all the Euro- pean nations, he foretells approaching convul- sions, to be followed by the overthrow of states and churches, his quiet and gentle spirit, else- where almost ready to inculcate passive obe- dience for the sake of peace, is supported under its awful forebodings by the hope of that general progress in virtue and happiness which he saw through the preparatory confusion. A meek piety, inclining towards mysticism, and sometimes in- dulging in visions which borrow a lustre from his fervid benevolence, was beautifully, and perhaps singularly, blended in him with zeal for the most unbounded freedom of inquiry, flowing both from his own conscientious belief and his un- mingled love of truth. Whoever can so far subdue his repugnance to petty or secondary faults as to bestow a careful perusal on the work, must be unfortunate if he does not see, feel, and own, that the writer was a great phi- losopher and a good man. To those who thus study the work, it will be apparent that Hartley, like other philosophers, either overlooked, or failed explicitly to an- nounce, that distinction between perception and emotion, without which no system of mental philosophy is complete. Hence arose the partial and incomplete view of truth conveyed by the use of the phrase " association of ideas." If the word association^ which rather indicates the connection between separate things, than the 366 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. perfect combination and fusion which occur in many operations of the mind, must, notwith- standing its inadequacy, still be retained, the phrase ought at least to be "association of thoughts with emotions, as well as with each other." With that enlargement an objection to the Hart- leian doctrine would have been avoided, and its originality, as well as superiority over that of Condillac, would have appeared indisputable. The examples of avarice and other factitious passions are very well chosen ; first, because few will be found to suppose that they are original principles of human nature ; x secondly, because the process by which they are generated, being subsequent to the age of attention and recollec- tion, may be brought home to the understanding of all men ; and, thirdly, because they afford the most striking instance of secondary passions, which not only become independent of the pri- mary principles from which they are derived, but hostile to them, and so superior in strength as to be capable of overpowering their parents. As soon as, the mind becomes familiar with the frequent case of the man who first pursued money to purchase pleasure, but at last, when he be- comes a miser, loves his hoard better than all that it could purchase, and sacrifices all pleasures for its increase, we are prepared to admit that, by a like process, the affections, when they are fixed on the happiness of others as their ultimate object, without any reflection on self, may not only be perfectly detached from self-regard or private desires, but may subdue these, and every other antagonist passion which can stand in their way. As the miser loves money for its own sake, so may the benevolent man delight in the wellbeing of his fellows. His good-will be- comes as disinterested as if it had been implant- ed and underived. The like process applied to what is called self-love, or the desire of perma- nent wellbeing, clearly explains the mode in which that principle is gradually formed from the separate appetites, without whose previous existence no notion of wellbeing could be ob- tained. In like manner, sympathy, perhaps it- self the result of a transfer of our own personal feelings by association to other sentient beings, and of a subsequent transfer of their feelings to our own minds, engenders the various social af- fections, which at last generate in most minds some regard to the wellbeing of our country, of mankind, of all creatures capable of pleasure. Rational self-love controls and guides those far keener self-regarding passions of which it is the child, in the same manner as general benevo- lence balances and governs the variety of much warmer social affections from which it springs. It is an ancient and obstinate error of philoso- phers to represent these two calm principles as being the source of the impelling passions and affections, instead of being among the last re- sults of them. Each of them exercises a sort of authority in its sphere, but the dominion of neither is co-existent with the whole nature of man. Though they have the power to quicken and check, they are both too feeble to impel; and if the primary principles were extinguished, they would both perish from want of nourish?- ment. If indeed all appetites and desires were destroyed, no subject would exist on which either of these general principles could act. The affections, desires, and emotions, having for their ultimate object the dispositions and actions of voluntary agents, which alone, from the nature of their object, are co-extensive with the whole of our active nature, are, according to the same philosophy, necessarily formed in every human mind by the transfer of feeling which is effected by the principle of association. Gratitude, pity, resentment, and shame, seem to be the simplest, the most active, and the most uniform elements in their composition. It is easy to perceive how the complacency inspired by a benefit may be transferred to a benefactor, thence to all beneficent beings and acts. The well-chosen instance of the nurse familiarly exemplifies the manner in which the child transfers his complacency from the grati- fication of his senses to the cause of it, and thus learns an affection for her who is the source of 1 A very ingenious man, Lord Kames, whose works had a great effect in rousing the mind of his contemporaries and countrymen, has indeed fancied that there is " a hoarding instinct" in man and other animals. But such conclusions are not so much objects of confutation, as ludicrous proofs of the absurdity of the premises which lead to them. DISSERTATION SECOND. 367 his enjoyment. With this simple process con- cur, in the case of a tender nurse, and far more of a mother, a thousand acts of relief and en- dearment, of which the complacency is fixed on the person from whom they flow, and in some degree extended by association to all who re- semble that person. So much of the pleasure of early life depends on others, that the like pro- cess is almost constantly repeated. Hence the origin of benevolence may be understood, and the disposition to approve all benevolent, and disapprove all malevolent acts. Hence also the same approbation and disapprobation are ex- tended to all acts which we clearly perceive to promote or obstruct the happiness of men. When the complacency is extended to action, benevolence may be said to be transformed into a part of conscience. The rise of sympathy may probably be explained by the process of association, which transfers the feelings of others to ourselves, and ascribes our own feelings to others; at first, and in some degree, always in proportion as the resemblance of ourselves to others is complete. The likeness in the outward signs of emotion is one of the widest channels in this commerce of hearts. Pity thereby be- comes one of the grand sources of benevolence, and perhaps contributes more largely than gra- titude. It is indeed one of the first motives to the conferring of those benefits which inspire grateful affection. Sympathy with the sufferer, therefore, is also transformed into a real senti- ment, directly approving benevolent actions and dispositions, and more remotely all actions that promote happiness. The anger of the sufferer, first against all causes of pain, afterwards against all intentional agents who produce it, and final- ly against all those in whom the infliction of pain proceeds from a mischievous disposition, when it is communicated to others by sympathy, and is so far purified by gradual separation from selfish and individual interest as to be equally felt against all wrong-doers, whether the wrong be done against ourselves, our friends, or our enemies, is the root out of which springs that which is commonly and well called a Sense of Justice the most indispensable, perhaps, of all the component parts of the moral faculties. It is the main guard against wrong. It relates to that portion of morality where many of the out- ward acts are capable of being reduced under certain rules, of which the violations, wherever the rule is sufficiently precise, and the mischief sufficiently great, may be guarded against by the terror of punishment. In the observation of the rules of justice consists duty ; breaches of them we denominate crimes. An abhorrence of crimes, especially of those which indicate the absence of benevolence, as well as of regard to justice, is peculiarly strong ; because well-framed penal laws, being the lasting declaration of the moral indignation of many generations of man- kind, exceedingly strengthen the same feeling in every individual, as long as they remain in unison with the sentiments of the age and coun- try for which they are destined, and, indeed, wherever the laws do not so much deviate from the habitual feelings as to produce a struggle between law and sentiment, in which it is hard to say on which side success is most deplorable. A man who performs his duties may be esteemed, but is not admired; because it requires no more than ordinary virtue to act well where it is shameful and dangerous to do otherwise. The righteousness of those who act solely from such inferior motives, is little better than that "of the Scribes and Pharisees." Those only are just in the eye of the moralist who act justly from a constant disposition to render to every man his own. 1 Acts of kindness, of gene- rosity, of pity, of placability, of humanity, when they are long continued, can hardly fail mainly to flow from the pure fountain of an excellent nature. They are not reducible to rules ; and the attempt to enforce them by punishment would destroy them. They are virtues of which the essence consists in a good disposition of mind. As we gradually transfer our desire from praise to praise worthiness, this principle also is adopted into consciousness. On the other hand, * " Justitia est constans et perpetna voluntas suum cuique tribuendi ;" an excellent definition in the mouth of the Stoical moralists, from whom it is borrowed, but altogether misplaced by the Roman Jurists in a body of laws which deal only with outward acts in their relation to the order and interest of society. 368 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. when we are led by association to feel a painful contempt for those feelings and actions of our past self which we despise in others, there is developed in our hearts another element of that moral sense. It is a remarkable instance of the power of the law of association, that the con- tempt or abhorrence which we feel for the bad actions of others may be transferred by it, in any degree of strength, to our own past actions of the like kind. And as the hatred of bad actions is transferred to the agent, the same transfer may occur in our own case in a manner perfectly similar to that of which we are conscious in our feelings towards our fellow-creatures. There are many causes which render it generally feebler ; but it is perfectly evident that it requires no more than a sufficient strength of moral feeling to make it equal ; and that the most apparently hyperbolical language used by penitents, in de- scribing their remorse, may be justified by the principle of association. At this step in our progress, it is proper to ob- serve, that a most important consideration has escaped Hartley, as well as every other philoso- pher. 1 The language of all mankind implies that the moral faculty, whatever it may be, and from what origin soever it may spring, is intelligibly and properly spoken of as ONE. It is as com- mon in mind as in matter for a compound to have properties not to be found in any of its con- stituent parts. The truth of this proposition is as certain in the human feelings as in any ma- terial combination. It is therefore easily under- stood, that originally separate feelings may be so perfectly blended by a process performed in every mind, that they can no longer be disjoined from each other, but must always co-operate, and thus reach the only union which we can conceive. The sentiment of Moral Approbation, formed by association out of antecedent affections, may be- come so perfectly independent of them, that we are no longer conscious of the means by which it was formed, and never can in practice repeat, though we may in theory perceive, the process by which it was generated. It is in that mature and sound state of our nature that our emotions at the view of Right and Wrong are ascribed to Conscience. But why, it may be asked, do these feelings, rather than others, run into each other, and constitute Conscience ? The answer seems to be what has already been intimated in the ob- servations on Butler. The affinity between these feelings consists in this, that while all other feelings relate to outward objects, they alone contemplate exclusively the dispositions and actions of voluntary agents. When they are completely transferred from objects, and even persons, to dispositions and actions, they are fitted, by the perfect coincidence of their aim, for combining to form that one faculty which is di- rected only to that aim. The words Duty and Virtue, and the word Ought, which most perfectly denotes Duty, but is also connected with Virtue, in every well-consti- tuted mind, in this state become the fit language of the acquired, perhaps, but universally and ne- cessarily acquired, faculty of Conscience. Some account of its peculiar nature has been attempted in the remarks on Butler ; for others a fitter oc- casion will occur hereafter. Some light may how- ever now be thrown on the subject by a short state- ment of the hitherto unobserved distinction be- tween the moral sentiments and another class of feelings with which they have some qualities in common. The pleasures (so called) of Imagina- tion appear, at least in most cases, to originate in association. But it is not till the original cause of the gratification is obliterated from the mind, that they acquire their proper character. Order and proportion may be at first chosen for their con- venience : it is not until they are admired for their own sake that they become objects of taste. Though all the proportions for which a horse is valued may be indications of speed, safety, strength, and health, it is not the less true that they only can be said to admire the animal for his beauty, who leave such considerations out of the account while they admire. The pleasure of contemplation in these particulars of nature and art becomes universal and immediate, being entirely detached from all regard to individual beings. It contemplates neither use nor interest. See supra, section on Butler. DISSERTATION SECOND. 369 In this important particular the pleasures of imagination agree with the moral sentiments. Hence the application of the same language to both in ancient and modern times. Hence also it arises that they may contemplate the very same qualities and objects. There is certainly much beauty in the softer virtues much gran- deur in the soul of a Hero or a Martyr. But the essential distinction still remains. The purest moral taste contemplates these qualities only with quiescent delight or reverence. It has no further view; it points towards no action. Conscience, on the contrary, containing in it a pleasure in the prospect of doing right, and an ardent desire to act well, having for its sole object the dispositions and acts of voluntary agents, is not, like moral taste, satisfied with passive contemplation, but constantly tends to act on the will and conduct of the man. Moral taste may aid it, may be absorbed into it, and usually contributes its part to the formation of the moral faculty ; but it is distinct from that faculty, and may be disproportioned to it. Con- science, being by its nature confined to mental dispositions and voluntary acts, is of necessity excluded from the ordinary consideration of all things antecedent to these dispositions. The circumstances from which such states of mind may arise, are most important objects of con- sideration for the understanding ; but they are without the sphere of conscience, which never ascends beyond the heart of the man. It is thus that in the eye of conscience man becomes ame- nable to its authority for all his inclinations as well as deeds ; that some of them are approved, loved, and revered ; and that all the outward effects of disesteem, contempt, or moral anger, are felt to be the just lot of others. But, to return to Hartley, from this perhaps intrusive statement of what does not properly belong to him : He represents all the social af- fections of gratitude, veneration, and love, in- spired by the virtues of our fellow-men, as ca- pable of being transferred by association to the transcendent and unmingled goodness of the Ruler of the world, and thus to give rise to piety, to which he gives the name of the theopa- thetic affection. This principle, like all the for- mer in the mental series, is gradually detached DISS. II. from the trunk on which it grew : it takes sepa- rate root, and may altogether overshadow the parent stock. As such a being cannot be con- ceived without the most perfect and constant re- ference to his goodness, so piety may not only become a part of conscience, but its governing and animating principle, which, after long lend- ing its own energy and authority to every other, is at last described by our philosopher as swal- lowing up all of them in order to perform tlie same functions more infallibly. In every stage of this progress we are taught by Dr Hartley that a new product appears, which becomes perfectly distinct from the ele- ments which formed it, which may be utterly dissimilar to them, and may attain any degree of vigour, however superior to theirs; Thus the objects of the private desires disappear when we are employed in the pursuit of our lasting wel- fare; that which was first sought only as a means, may come to be pursued as an end, and prefer- red to the original end ; the good opinion of our fellows becomes more valued than the benefits* for which it was at first courted ; a man is ready to sacrifice his life for him who has shown ge- nerosity, even to others ; and persons otherwise of common character are capable of cheerfully marching in a forlorn hope, or of almost instinc- tively leaping into the sea to save the life of an entire stranger. These last acts, often of almost unconscious virtue, so familiar to the soldier and the sailor, so unaccountable on certain systems of philosophy, often occur without a thought of applause and reward; too quickly for the thought of the latter, too obscurely for the hope of the former ; and they are of such a nature that no man could be impelled tf> them by the mere ex- pectation of either. The gratitude, sympathy, resentment, and shame, which are the principal constituent parts of the Moral Sense, thus lose their separate agency, and constitute an entirely new faculty, co-extensive with all the dispositions and actions of voluntary agents ; though some of them are more predominant in particular cases of moral sentiment than others, and though the aid of all continues to be necessary in their original cha- racter, as subordinate but distinct motives of ac- tion. Nothing more evidently points out the 3 A 370 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. distinction of the Hartleian system from all sys- tems called selfish, not to say its superiority in respect to disinterestedness over all moral sys- tems before Butler and Hutcheson, than that excellent part of it which relates to the Rule of Life. The various principles of human action rise in value according to the order in which they spring up after each other. We can then only be in a state of as much enjoyment as we are evidently capable of attaining, when we prefer interest to the original gratifications honour to interest the pleasures of imagination to those of sense the dictates of conscience to pleasure, interest, and reputation the well- being of fellow-creatures toourown indulgences; in a word, when we pursue moral good and social happiness chiefly and for their own sake. " With self-interest," says Hartley, somewhat inaccurately in language, " man must begin. He may end in self-annihilation. Theopathy, or piety, although the last result of the purified and exalted sentiments, may at length swallow up every other principle, and absorb the whole man." Even if this last doctrine should be an exaggeration unsuited to our present con- dition, it will the more strongly illustrate the compatibility, or rather the necessary connec- tion, of this theory with the existence and power of perfectly disinterested principles of human action. It is needless to remark on the secondary and auxiliary causes which contribute to the forma- tion of moral sentiment ; education, imitation, general opinion, laws and government. They all presuppose the moral faculty : in an improved state of society they contribute powerfully to strengthen it, and on some occasions they en- feeble, distort, and maim it ; but in all cases they must themselves be tried by the test of an ethical standard. The value of this doctrine will not be essen- tially affected by supposing a greater number of original principles than those assumed by Dr Hartley. The principle of association applies as much to a greater as to a smaller number. It is a quality common to it with all theories, that the more simplicity it reaches consistently with truth, the more perfect it becomes. Causes are not to be multiplied without necessity. If by a considerable multiplication of primary desires the law of association were lowered nearly to the level of an auxiliary agent, the philosophy of human nature would still be under indelible obligations to the philosopher who, by his for- tunate error, rendered the importance of that great principle obvious and conspicuous. ABRAHAM TUCKER. 1 IT has been the remarkable fortune of this writer to have been more prized by the culti- vators of the same subjects, and more disregard- ed by the generality even of those who read books on such matters, than perhaps any other philosopher. 2 He had many of the qualities which might be expected in an affluent country gentleman, living in a privacy undisturbed by political zeal, and with a leisure unbroken by the calls of a profession, at a time when Eng- land had not entirely renounced her old taste for metaphysical speculation. He was naturally endowed, not indeed with more than ordinary acuteness or sensibility, nor with a high degree of reach and range of mind, but with a singular capacity for careful observation and original re- flection, and with a fancy perhaps unmatched in producing various and happy illustration. The most observable of his moral qualities appear to have been prudence and cheerfulness, good-na- ture and easy temper.. The influence of his si- tuation and character is visible in his writings. Indulging his own tastes and fancies, like most English squires of his time, he became, like 1 Born in 1705; died in 1774. a " I have found in this writer more original thinking and observation upon the several subjects that he has taken in hand than in any other, not to say than in all others put together. His talent also for illustration is unrivalled." (PALEY, Preface to Moral and Political Philosophy.) See the excellent preface to an abridgement, by Mr Hazlitt, of Tucker's work, published in London in 1807- May I venture to refer also to my own discourse on the Laic of Nature and Nations, London, 1799. Mr Stewart treats Tucker and Hartley with unwonted harshness. DISSERTATION SECOND. 371 many of them, a sort of humourist. Hence much of his originality and independence ; hence the boldness with which he openly employs il- lustrations from homely objects. He wrote to please himself more than the public. He had too little regard for readers, either to sacrifice his sincerity to them, or to curb his own pro- lixity, repetition, and egotism, from the fear of fatiguing them. Hence he became as loose, as rambling, and as much an egotist as Montaigne ; but not so agreeably so, notwithstanding a con- siderable resemblance of genius ; because he wrote on subjects where disorder and egotism are unseasonable, and for readers whom they disturb instead of amusing. His prolixity at last increased itself, when his work became so long, that repetition in the latter parts partly arose from forgetfulness of the former; and though his freedom from slavish deference to general opinion is very commendable, it must be owned, that his want of a wholesome fear of the public renders the perusal of a work which is extremely interesting, and even amusing in most of its parts, on the whole a laborious task. He was by early education a believer in Christian- ity, if not by natural character religious. His calm good sense and accommodating temper led him rather to explain established doctrines in a manner agreeable to his philosophy, than to as- sail them. Hence he was represented as a time- server by free-thinkers, and as a heretic by the orthodox. L Living in a country where the se- cure tranquillity flowing from the Revolution was gradually drawing forth all mental activity towards practical pursuits and outward objects, he hastened from the rudiments of mental and moral philosophy, to those branches of it which touch the business of men. 2 Had he recast without changing his thoughts, had he de- tached those ethical observations for which he had so peculiar a vocation, from the disputes of his country and his day, he might have thrown many of his chapters into their proper form of essays, which might have been compared, though not likened, to those of Hume. But the coun- try gentleman, philosophic as he was, had too much fondness for his own humours to engage in a course of drudgery and deference. It may, however, be confidently added, on the authority of all those who have fairly made the experi- ment, that whoever, unfettered by a previous system, undertakes the labour necessary to dis- cover and relish the high excellencies of this metaphysical Montaigne, will find his toil light- ened as he proceeds, by a growing indulgence, if not partiality, for the foibles of the humourist; and at last rewarded, in a greater degree per- haps than by any other writer on mixed and applied philosophy, by being led to commanding stations and new points of view, whence the mind of a moralist can hardly fail to catch some fresh prospects of nature and duty. It is in mixed, not in pure philosophy, that his superiority consists. In the part of his work which relates to the intellect, he has adopted much from Hartley, hiding but ag- gravating the offence by a change of technical terms ; and he was ungrateful enough to coun- tenance the vulgar sneer which involves the mental analysis of that philosopher in the ridi- cule to which his physiological hypothesis is liable. 3 Thus, for the Hartleian term Associa- tion he substitutes that of Translation, when he adopts the same theory of the principles which move the mind to action. In the practical and applicable part of that inquiry he indeed far surpasses Hartley ; and it is little to add, that he unspeakably exceeds that bare and naked thinker in the useful as well as admirable facul- ty of illustration. In the strictly theoretical 1 This disposition to compromise and accommodation, which is discoverable in Paley, was carried to its utmost length by Mr Hey, a man of much acuteness, Professor of Divinity at Cambridge. 8 Perhaps no philosopher ever stated more justly, more naturally, or more modestly than Tucker, the ruling maxim of his life. " My thoughts," says he, " have taken a turn from my earliest youth towards searching into the foundations and measures of right and wrong ; my love for retirement has furnished me with continual leisure ; and the exercise of my reason has been my daily employment." * Light of Nature, I. c. xviii. of which the conclusion may be pointed out as a specimen of perhaps unmatched fruitfulness, vivacity, and felicity of illustration. The admirable sense of the conclusion of chap. xxv. seems to have suggested Paley's good chapter on Happiness. The alteration of Plato's comparison of reason to a charioteer, and the passions to the horses, in chap. xxvi. is of characteristic and transcendent excellence. 372 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. part his exposition is considerably fuller; but the defect of his genius becomes conspicuous when he handles a very general principle. The very term Translation ought to have kept up in his mind a steady conviction that the secondary motives to action become as independent, and seek their own objects as exclusively, as the primary principles. His own examples are rich in proofs of this important truth. But there is a slippery descent in the Theory of Human Na- ture, by which he, like most of his forerunners, slid unawares into selfishness. He was not pre- served from this fall by seeing that all the deli- berate principles which have self for their object are themselves of secondary formation ; and he was led to the general error by the notion that Pleasure, or, as he calls it, Satisfaction, was the original and sole object of all appetites and de- sires ; confounding this with the true but very different proposition, that the attainment of all the objects of appetite and desire is productive of pleasure. He did not see that, without pre- supposing Desires, the word Pleasure would have no signification ; and that the representa- tions by which he was seduced would leave only one appetite or desire in human nature. He had no adequate and constant conception, that the translation of Desire from the end to the means occasioned the formation of a new passion, which is perfectly distinct from, and altogether independent of, the original desire. Too fre- quently (for he was neither obstinate nor uni- form in error) he considered these translations as accidental defects in human nature, not as the appointed means of supplying it with its variety of active principles. He was too apt to speak as if the selfish elements were not de- stroyed in the new combination, but remain- ed still capable of being recalled, when conve- nient, like the links in a chain of reasoning, which we pass over from forgetfulness, or for brevity. Take him all in all, however, the neglect of his writings is the strongest proof of the disinclination of the English nation, for the last half century, to Metaphysical Phi- losophy. 1 WILLIAM PALEY.* THIS excellent writer, who, after Clarke and Butler, ought to be ranked among the brightest ornaments of the English church in the eigh- teenth century, is, in the history of philosophy, naturally placed after Tucker, to whom, with praiseworthy liberality, he owns his extensive obligations. It is a mistake to suppose that he owed his system to Hume, a thinker too refined, and a writer perhaps too elegant, to have natu- rally attracted him. A coincidence in the prin- ciple of utility, common to both with so many other philosophers, affords- no sufficient ground for the supposition. Had he been habitually in- fluenced by Mr Hume, who has translated so many of the dark and crabbed passages of But- ler into his own transparent as well as beautiful language, it is not possible to suppose that such a mind as that of Paley should have fallen into those principles of gross selfishness of which Mr Hume is a uniform and zealous antagonist. The natural frame of Paley's understanding fitted it more for business and the world than for philosophy ; and he accordingly enjoyed with considerable relish the few opportunities which the latter part of his life afforded of tak- ing a part in the affairs of his county as a ma- gistrate. Penetration and shrewdness, firm- ness and coolness, a vein of pleasantry, fruitful though somewhat unrefined, with an original homeliness and significancy of expression, were 1 Much of Tucker's chapter on Pleasure, and of Paley's on Happiness (both of which are invaluable), is contained in the passage of The Traveller, of which the following couplet expresses the main object : " Unknown to them when sensual pleasures cloy, " To fill the languid pause with finer joy." " An honest man," says Mr Hume, " has the frequent satisfaction of seeing knaves betrayed by their own maxims." (Enquiry into Morals.) " I used often to laugh at your honest simple neighbour Flamborough, and one way or another generally cheated him once a year. Yet still the honest man went forward without suspicion, and grew rich, while I still continued tricksy and cun- ning, and was poor, without the consolation of being honest." (Vicar of Wakefield. chap, xxvi.) Born in 1?43 ; died in 1805. DISSERTATION SECOND. 373 perhaps more remarkable in his conversation than the restraints of authorship and profession allowed them to be in his writings. Grateful remembrance brings this assemblage of qualities with unfaded colours before the mind at the present moment, after the long interval of twen- ty-eight years. His taste for the common busi- ness and ordinary amusements of life fortunate- ly gave a zest to the company which his neigh- bourhood chanced to yield, without rendering him insensible to the pleasures of intercourse with more enlightened society. The practical bent of his nature is visible in the language of his writings, which, on practical matters, is as precise as the nature of the subject requires, but, in his rare and reluctant efforts to rise to first principles, becomes indeterminate and un- satisfactory ; though no man' composition was more free from the impediments which hinder a writer's meaning from being quickly and clearly seen. He seldom distinguishes more exactly than is required for palpable and direct useful- ness. He possessed that chastised acuteness of discrimination, exercised on the affairs of men, and habitually looking to a purpose beyond the mere increase of knowledge, which forms the character of a lawyer's understanding, and which is apt to render a mere lawyer too subtile for the management of affairs, and yet too gross for the pursuit of general truth. His style is as near perfection in its kind as any in our lan- guage. Perhaps no words were ever more ex- pressive and illustrative than those in which he represents the art of life to be that of rightly " setting our habits. " 4 The most original and ingenious of his writ- ings is the HOTCB Paulines. The Evidences of Christianity are formed out of an admirable translation of Butler's Analogy, and a most skil- ful abridgement of Lardner's Credibility of the Gospel History. He may be said to have thus given value to two works, of which the first was scarcely intelligible to most of those who were most desirous of profiting by it ; and the second soon wearies out the greater part of readers, though the few who are more patient have al- most always been gradually won over to feel pleasure in a display of knowledge, probity, charity, and meekness, unmatched by an avow- ed advocate in a case deeply interesting his warmest feelings. His Natural Theology is the wonderful work of a man who, after sixty, had studied anatomy in order to write it; and it could only have been surpassed by a man who, to great originality of conception and clearness of exposition, added the advantage of a high place in the first class of physiologists. 1 It would be unreasonable here to say much of a work which is in the hands of so many as his Moral and Political Philosophy. A very few re- marks on one or two parts of it may be suffi- cient to estimate his value as a moralist, and to show his defects as a metaphysician. His ge- neral account of virtue may indeed be chosen for both purposes. The manner in which he deduces the necessary tendency of all virtuous actions to the general happiness, from the good- ness of the Divine Lawgiver, though the prin- ciple be not, as has already more than once ap- peared, peculiar to him, but rather common to most religious philosophers, is characterized by a clearness and vigour which have never been surpassed. It is indeed nearly, if not entirely, an identical proposition, that a Being of unmixed benevolence will prescribe those laws only to his creatures which contribute to their wellbeing. When we are convinced that a course of conduct is generally beneficial to all men, we cannot help considering it as acceptable to a benevo- lent Deity.. The usefulness of actions is the mark set on them by the Supreme Legislator, by which reasonable beings discover it to be His will that such actions should be done. In this apparently unanswerable deduction it is partly admitted, and universally implied, that the prin- ciples of right and wrong may be treated apart from the manifestation of them in the Scriptures. If it were otherwise, how could men of perfectly different religions deal or reason with each other on moral subjects? How could they regard rights and duties as subsisting between them ? To what common principles could they appeal 1 See Animal Mechanics, by Mr Charles Bell, published by the Society for Useful Knowledge. 374 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. in their differences ? Even the Polytheists them- selves, those worshippers of Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust, Whose attributes are rage, revenge, or lust, by a happy inconsistency are compelled, how- ever irregularly and imperfectly, to ascribe some general enforcement of the moral code to their divinities. If there were no foundation for morality antecedent to revealed religion, we should want that important test of the conformi- ty of a revelation to pure morality, by which its claim to a divine origin is to be tried. The in- ternal evidence of religion necessarily presup- poses such a standard. The Christian contrasts the precepts of the Koran with the pure and benevolent morality of the Gospel. The Maho- metan claims, with justice, a superiority over the Hindoo, inasmuch as the Mussulman reli- gion inculcates the moral perfection of one Su- preme Ruler of the world. The ceremonial and exclusive character of Judaism has ever been regarded as an indication that it was intend- ed to pave the way for a universal religion, a morality seated in the heart, and a worship of sublime simplicity. These discussions would be impossible, unless morality were previously proved or granted to exist. Though the science of Ethics is thus far independent, it by no means follows that there is any equality, or that there may not be the utmost inequality, in the moral tendency of religious systems. The most ample scope is still left for the zeal and activity of those who seek to spread important truth. But it is absolutely essential to ethical science that it should contain principles, the authority of which must be recognised by men of every conceivable variety of religious opinion. The peculiarities of Paley's mind are dis- coverable in the comparison, or rather contrast, between the practical chapter on Happiness, and the philosophical portion of the chapter on Vir- tue. " Virtue is the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness." 1 It is not perhaps very important to observe, that these words, which he offers as " a definition," ought in pro- priety to have been called a proposition; but it is much more necessary to say that they con- tain a false account of virtue. According to this doctrine, every action not done for the sake of the agent's happiness is vicious. Now, it is plain that an act cannot be said to be done for the sake of any thing which is not present to the mind of the agent at the moment of action. It is a contradiction in terms to affirm that a man acts for the sake of any object, of which, however it may be the necessary consequence of his act, he is not at the time fully aware. The unfelt consequences of his act can no more in- fluence his will than its unknown consequences. Nay, further, a man is only with any propriety said to act for the sake of his chief object ; nor can he with entire correctness be said to act for the sake of any thing but his sole object. So that it is a necessary consequence of Paley's proposition, that every act which flows from generosity or benevolence is a vice. So also of every act of obedience to the will of God, if it arises from any motive but a desire of the re- ward which he will bestow. Any act of obe- dience influenced by gratitude, and affection, and veneration towards supreme benevolence and perfection, is so far imperfect; and if it arises solely from these motives it becomes a vice. It must be owned, that this excellent and most enlightened man has laid the foundations of religion and virtue in a more intense and ex- clusive selfishness than was avowed by the Ca- tholic enemies of Fenelon, when they persecuted him for his doctrine-of a pure and disinterested love of God. In another province, of a very subordinate kind, the disposition of Paley to limit his princi- ples to his own time and country, and to look at them merely as far as they are calculated to amend prevalent vices and errors, betrayed him into narrow and false views. His chapter on what he calls the Law of Honour is unjust, even in its own small sphere, because it supposes ho- nour to allow what it does not forbid; though the truth be, that the vices enumerated by him are only not forbidden by honour, because they are PALEY, book i. chap. vii. DISSERTATION SECOND. 375 not within its jurisdiction. He considers it as " a system of rules constructed by people of fashion ;" a confused and transient mode of expression, which may be understood with diffi- culty by our posterity, and which cannot now be exactly rendered perhaps in any other language. The subject, however, thus narrowed and low- ered, is neither unimportant in practice, nor un- worthy of the consideration of the moral philo- sopher. Though all mankind honour virtue and despise vice, the degree of respect or contempt is often far from being proportioned to the place which virtues and vices occupy in a just system of Ethics. -Wherever higher honour is bestowed on one moral quality than on others of equal or greater moral value, what is called a point of ho- nour may be said to exist. It is singular that so shrewd an observer as Paley should not have observed a law of honour far more permanent than that which attracted his notice, in the feel- ings of Europe respecting the conduct of men and women. Cowardice is not so immoral as cruelty, nor indeed so detestable, but it is more despicable and disgraceful. The female point of honour forbids indeed a great vice, but one not so great as many others by which it is not vio- lated. It is easy enough to see. that where we are -strongly prompted to a virtue by a natural impulse, we love the man who is constantly ac- tuated by the amiable sentiment, but we do not consider that which is done without difficulty as requiring or deserving admiration and distinc- tion. The kind affections are their own rich re- ward, and they are the object of affection to others. To encourage kindness by praise would be to insult it, besides its effect in producing counterfeits. It is for the conquest of fear, it would be still more for the conquest of resent- ment, if that were not, wherever it is real, the cessation of a state of mental agony, that the applause of mankind is reserved. Observations of a similar nature will easily occur to every reader respecting the point of honour in the other sex. The conquest of natural frailties, es- pecially in a case of far more importance to mankind than is at first sight obvious, is well dis- tinguished as an object of honour, and the con- trary vice is punished by shame. Honour is not wasted on those who abstain from acts which are punished by the law. These acts may be avoided without a pure motive. Wherever a virtue is easily performed by good men wherever it is its nature to be attended by delight wherever its outward observance is so necessary to society as to be enforced by punishment it is not the proper object of honour. Honour and shame, therefore, may be reasonably dispensed, without being strictly proportioned to the intrinsic mo- rality of actions, if the inequality of their distri- bution contributes to the general equipoise of the whole moral system. A wide disproportion, however, or indeed any disproportion not justifiable on moral grounds, would be a depravation of the moral principle. Duelling is among us a disputed case, though the improvement of manners has rendered it so much more infrequent, that it is likely in time to lose its support from opinion. Those who excuse individuals for yielding to a false point of honour, as in the suicides of the G reeks and Romans, may consistently blame the faulty prin- ciple, and rejoice in its destruction. The shame fixed on a Hindoo widow of rank who volun- tarily survives her husband, is regarded by all other nations with horror. There is room for great praise and some blame in other parts of Paley's works. His political opinions were those generally adopted by mode- rate whigs in his own age. His language on the Revolution of 1688 may be very advantageously compared, both in precision and in generous bold- ness, 1 to that of Blackstone, a great master of classical and harmonious composition, but a fee- ble reasoner and a confused thinker, whose writings are not exempt from the taint of sla- vishness. It cannot be denied that Paley was sometimes rather a lax moralist, especially on public duties. 1 " Government may be too secure. The greatest tyrants have been those whose titles were the most unquestioned. "Whenever, therefore, the opinion of right becomes too predominant and superstitious, it is abated by breaking the custom. Thus the Revolution broke the custom of succession, and thereby moderated, both in the prince and in the people, those lofty notions of hereditary right, which in the one were become a continual incentive to tyranny, and disposed the other to invite servitude, by undue compliances and dangerous concessions." (! J ALEY, book vi. chap, ii.) 376 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. It is a sin which easily hesets men of strong good sense, little enthusiasm, and much experience. They are naturally led to lower their precepts to the level of their expectations. They see that higher pretensions often produce less good, to say nothing of the hypocrisy, extravagance, and turbulence, to which they lend some colour. As those who claim more from men often gain less, it is natural for more sober and milder casuists to present a more accessible virtue to their fol- lowers. It Avas thus that the Jesuits began, till, strongly tempted by their perilous station as the moral guides of the powerful, some of them by degrees fell into that absolute licentiousness for which all, not without injustice, have been cruelly immortalized by Pascal. Indulgence, which is a great virtue in judgment concerning the actions of others, is too apt, when blended in the same system with the precepts of mora- lity, to be received as a licence for our own of- fences. Accommodation, without which society would be painful, and arduous affairs would be- come impracticable, is more safely imbibed from temper and experience, than taught in early and systematic instruction. The middle region be- tween laxity and rigour is hard to be fixed, and it is still harder steadily to remain within its boundaries. Whatever may be thought of Pa- ley's observations on political influence and ec- clesiastical subscription, as temperaments and mitigations which may preserve us from harsh judgment, they are assuredly not well qualified to form a part of that discipline which ought to breathe into the opening souls of youth, at the critical period of the formation of character, those inestimable virtues of sincerity, of inte- grity, of independence, which will even guide them more safely through life than mere pru- dence, while they provide an inward fountain of pure delight, immeasurably more abundant than all the outward sources of precarious and perish- able pleasure. JEREMY BENTHAM. THE general scheme of this Dissertation would be a sufficient reason for omitting the name of a living writer. The devoted attachment and invincible repugnance which an impartial esti- mate of Mr Bentham has to encounter on either side, are a -strong inducement not to deviate from that scheme in his case. But the most brief sketch of ethical controversy in England would be imperfect without it ; and perhaps the utter hopelessness of any expedient for satisfy- ing his followers, or softening his opponents, may enable a writer to look steadily and solely at what he believes to be the dictates of truth and justice. He who has spoken of former phi- losophers with unreserved freedom, ought per- haps to subject his courage and honesty to the severest test by an attempt to characterize such a contemporary. Should the very few who are at once enlightened and unbiassed be of opinion that his firmness and equity have stood this trial, they will be the more disposed to trust his fairness where the exercise of that quality is more easy. The disciples of Mr Bentham are more like the hearers of an Athenian philosopher than the pupils of a modern professor, or the cool prose- lytes of a modern writer. They are in general men of competent age, of superior understand- ing, who voluntarily embrace the laborious study of useful and noble sciences ; who derive their opinions not so much from the cold perusal of his writings, as from familiar converse with a master from whose lips these opinions are re- commended by simplicity, disinterestedness, ori- ginality, and vivacity ; aided rather than im- peded by foibles not unamiable, enforced of late by the growing authority of years and of fame, and at all times strengthened by that undoubt- ing reliance on his own judgment which migutily increases the ascendant of such a man over those who approach him. As he and they deserve the credit of braving vulgar prejudices, so they must be content to incur the imputation of fall- ing into the neighbouring vices of seeking dis- tinction by singularity ; of clinging to opinions because they are obnoxious ; of wantonly wound- ing the most respectable feelings of mankind; of regarding an immense display of method and nomenclature as a sure token of a corresponding increase of knowledge ; and of considering them- DISSERTATION SECOND. 377 selves as a chosen few, whom an initiation into the most secret mysteries of philosophy entitles to look down with pity, if not contempt, on the profane multitude. Viewed with aversion or dread by the public, they become more bound to each other and to their master ; while they are provoked into the use of language which more and more exasperates opposition to them, A hermit in the greatest of cities, seeing only his disciples, and indignant that systems of go- vernment and law which he believes to be per- fect are disregarded at once by the many and the powerful, Mr Bentham has at length been betrayed into the most un philosophical hypothe- sis, that all the ruling bodies who guide the community have conspired to stifle and defeat his discoveries. He is too little acquainted with doubts to believe the honest doubts of others, and he is too angry to make allowance for their prejudices and habits. He has embraced the most extreme party in practical politics ; mani- festing more dislike and contempt towards those who are more moderate supporters of popular principles than towards their most inflexible op- ponents. To the unpopularity of his philoso- phical and political doctrines he has added the more general and lasting obloquy which arises from an unseemly treatment of doctrines and principles which, if there were no other motives for reverential deference, even a regard to the feelings of the best men requires to be approach- ed with decorum and respect. Fifty-three years have passed since the publi- cation of Mr Bentham's first work, A Fragment on Government, a considerable octavo volume, employed in the examination of a short para- graph of Blackstone, unmatched in acute hy- percriticism, but conducted with a severity which leads to an unjust estimate of the writer criticised, till the like experiment be repeated on other writings. It was a waste of extraordinary power to employ it in pointing out flaws and patches in the robe occasionally stolen from the philosophical schools, which hung loosely and unbecomingly on the elegant commentator. This volume, and especially the preface, abounds in fine, original, and just observation ; it contains the germs of most of his subsequent productions, and it is an early example of that disregard for the method, proportions, and occasion of a writ- ing which, with all common readers, deeply af- fects its power of interesting or instructing. Two years after, he published a most excellent tract on The Hard Labour Bill, which, concur- ring with the spirit excited by Howard's inqui- ries, laid the foundation of just reasoning on Re- formatory Punishment. The Letters on Usury 1 are perhaps the best specimen of the exhaustive discussion of a moral or political question, leav- ing no objection, however feeble, unanswered, and no difficulty, however small, unexplained ; remarkable also for the clearness and spirit of the style, for the full exposition which suits them to all intelligent readers, for the tender and skilful hand with which prejudice is touched, and for the urbanity of his admirable apology for projectors, addressed to Dr Smith, whose temper and manner he seems for a time to have imbibed. The Intro- duction to the Principles of Morals and Politics, printed before the Letters, but published after them, was the first sketch of his system, and is still the only account of it by himself. The great merit of this work, and of his other writings in relation to Jurisprudence properly so called, is not within our present scope. To the Roman jurists belongs the praise of having al- lotted a separate portion of their Digest to the signification of the words of most frequent use 1 They were addressed to Mr George Wilson, who retired from the English bar to his native country, and died at Edin- burgh in 1816 ; an early friend of Mr Bentham, and afterwards an intimate friend of Lord Ellenborough, Sir Vicary Gibbs, and of all the most eminent of his professional contemporaries. The rectitude of judgment, purity of heart, elevation of ho- nour, the sternness only in integrity, the scorn of baseness, and indulgence towards weakness, which were joined in him with a gravity exclusive neither of feeling nor of pleasantry, contributed still more than his abilities and attainments of va- rious sorts, to a moral authority with his friends, and in his profession, which few men more amply possessed, or more use- fully exercised. The same character, somewhat softened, and the same influence, distinguished his closest friend, the late Mr Lens. Both were inflexible and incorruptible friends of civil and religious liberty, and both knew how to reconcile the warmest zeal for that sacred cause, with a charity towards their opponents, which partisans, often more violent than steady, treated as lukewarm. The present writer hopes that the good-natured reader will excuse him for having thus, perhaps un- seasonably, bestowed heartfelt commendation on those who were above the pursuit of praise, and the remembrance of whose good opinion and good- will help to support him under a deep sense of faults and vices, DISS. II. 3 B 378 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. in law and legal discussion. 1 Bentham not only first perceived and taught the great value of an introductory section, composed of definitions of general terms, as subservient to brevity and pre- cision in every part of a code, but he also dis- covered the unspeakable importance of natural arrangement in jurisprudence, by rendering the mere place of a proposed law in such an arrange- ment a short and easy test of the fitness of the proposal. 2 But here he does not distinguish be- tween the value of arrangement as scaffolding, and the inferior convenience of its being the very frame-work of the structure. Mr Bentham, in- deed, is much more remarkable for laying down desirable rules for the determination of rights, and the punishment of wrongs, in general, than for weighing the various circumstances which require them to be modified in different countries and times in order to render them either more useful, more easily introduced, more generally respected, or more certainly executed. The art of legislation consists in thus applying the prin- ciples of jurisprudence to the situation, wants, interests, feelings, opinions, and habits, of each distinct community at any given time. It bears the same relation to jurisprudence which the mechanical arts .bear to pure Mathematics. Many of these considerations serve to show, that the sudden establishment of new codes can sel- dom be practicable or effectual for their purpose ; and that reformations, though founded on the principles of jurisprudence, ought to be not only adapted to the peculiar interests of a people, but engrafted on their previous usages, and brought into harmony with those national dis- positions on which the execution of laws de- pends. 3 The Romans, under Justinian, adopted at least the true principle, if they did not apply it with sufficient freedom and boldness. They considered the multitude of occasional laws, and the still greater mass of usages, opinions, and determinations, as the materials of legislation, not precluding, but demanding a systematic ar- rangement of the whole by the supreme autho- rity. Had the arrangement been more scienti- fic, had there been a bolder examination and a more free reform of many particular branches, a model would have been offered for liberal imi- tation by modern lawgivers. It cannot be de- nied, without injustice and ingratitude, that Mi- Ben tham has done more than any other wri- ter to rouse the spirit of juridical reforma- tion, which is now gradually examining every part of law, and, when further progress is fa- cilitated by digesting the present laws, will doubtless proceed to the improvement of all. Greater praise it is given to few to earn. It ought to satisfy Mr Bentham, for the disappoint- ment of hopes which were not reasonable, that Russia should receive a code from him, or that North America could be brought to renounce the variety of her laws and institutions, on the single authority of a foreign philosopher, whose opinions had not worked their way either into legislation or into general reception in his own country. It ought also to dispose his followers to do fuller justice to the Romillys and Broughams, with- out whose prudence and energy, as well as rea- son and eloquence, the best plans of reformation must have continued a dead letter, for whose sake it might have been fit to reconsider the ob- loquy heaped on their profession, and to show more general indulgence to all those whose chief offence seems to consist in their doubts whether sudden changes, almost always imposed by vio- lence on a community, be the surest road to lasting improvement. It is unfortunate that Ethical Theory, with 1 Digest, lib. 1. tit. 1C. De Verborum Significatione. 2 See a beautiful article on Codification, in the Edinburgh Review, vol. XXIX. p. 217. It need no longer be concealed that it was contributed by Sir Samuel Homilly. The steadiness with which he held the balance in weighing the merits of his friend against his unfortunate defects, is an example of his union of the most commanding moral principle with a sensi- bility so warm, that, if it had been released from that stern authority, it would not so long have endured the coarseness and roughness of human concerns. From the tenderness of his feelings, and from an anger never roused but by cruelty and base- ness, as much as from his genius and his pure taste, sprung that original and characteristic eloquence, which was the hope of the afflicted as well as the terror of the oppressor. If his oratory had not flowed so largely from this moral source, which years do not dry up, he would not perhaps have been the only example of an orator who, after the age of sixty, daily increased in polish, in vigour, and in splendour. 3 An excellent medium between those who absolutely require new codes, and those who obstinately adhere to ancient usages, has been pointed out by M. Meyer, in his most justly celebrated work, Institutions Jiidiciaires des Princijpaux Pays de VEurope, tome I. Introduction, p. 8, 9. La Haye et Amst. 1819-23, 6 vols. 8vo. DISSERTATION SECOND. 379 which we are now chiefly concerned, is not the province in which Mr Bentham has reached the most desirahle distinction. It may be remarked, both in ancient and in modern times, that what- ever modifications prudent followers may intro- duce into the system of an innovator, the prin- ciples of the Master continue to mould the ha- bitual dispositions, and to influence the practical tendency of the School. Mr Bentham preaches the principle of utility with the zeal of a disco- verer. Occupied more in reflection than in reading, he knew not, or forgot, how often it had been the basis, and how generally an essen- tial part, of moral systems. 1 That in which he really differs from others, is in the necessity which he teaches, and the example which he sets, of constantly bringing that principle before us. This peculiarity appears to us to be his radical error. In an attempt, of which the constitution of human nature forbids the success, he seems to us to have been led into fundamental errors in moral theory, and to have given to his practi- cal doctrine a dangerous taint. The confusion of moral approbation with the moral qualities which are its objects, common to Mr Bentham with many other philosophers, is much more uniform and prominent in him than in most others. This general error, already mentioned at the opening of this Dissertation, has led him more than others to assume, that be- cause the principle of utility forms a necessary part of every moral theory, it ought therefore to be the chief motive of human conduct. Now it is evident that this assumption, rather tacitly than avowedly made, is wholly gratuitous. No practical conclusion can be deduced from the principle, but that we ought to cultivate those habitual dispositions which are the most effectual motives to useful actions. But before a regard to our own interest, or a desire to promote the wel- fare of men in general, be allowed to be the ex- clusive, or even the chief regulators of human conduct, it must be shown that they are the most effectual motives to such useful actions. It is demonstrated by experience that they are not. It is even owned by the most ingenious writers of Mr Bentham's school, that desires which are pointed to general and distant objects, although they have their proper place and their due value, are commonly very faint and ineffectual induce- ments to action. A theory founded on utility, therefore, requires that we should cultivate, as excitements to practice, those other habitual dis- positions which we know by experience to be generally the source of actions beneficial to our- selves and our fellows ; habits of feeling produc- tive of habits of virtuous conduct, and in their turn strengthened by the re-action of these last. What is the result of experience on the choice of the objects of moral culture ? Beyond all dispute, that we should labour to attain that state of mind in which all the social affections are felt with the utmost warmth, giving birth to more compre- hensive benevolence, but not supplanted by it ; when the moral sentiments most strongly ap- prove what is right and good, without being perplexed by a calculation of consequences, though not incapable of being gradually rectifi- ed by reason, whenever they are decisively prov- ed by experience not to correspond in some of their parts to the universal and perpetual effects of conduct. It is a false representation of hu- man nature to affirm that " courage" is only " prudence." 2 They coincide in their effects, and it is always prudent to be courageous. But a man who fights because he thinks it more haz- ardous to yield, is not brave. He does not be- come brave till he feels cowardice to be base and painful, and till he is no longer in need of any aid from prudence. Even if it were the interest of every man to be bold, it is clear that so cold a consideration cannot prevail over the fear of danger. Where it seems to do so, it must be by the unseen power either of the fear of shame, or of some other powerful passion, to which it lends its name. It was long ago with striking 1 See Notes and Illustrations, note V. 2 Mr MILL'S Analysis of the Human Mind, vol. II. p. 237. It would be unjust not to say that this book, partly perhaps from a larger adoption of the principles of Hartley, holds out fairer opportunities of negotiation with natural feelings and the doctrines of former philosophers, than any other production of the same school. But this very assertion about courage clearly shows at least a forgetfulness that courage, even if it were the offspring of prudence, would not for that reason be a species of it. 380 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. justice observed by Aristotle, that he who ab- stains from present gratification, under a dis- tinct apprehension of its painful consequences, is only prudent, and that he must acquire a dis- relish for excess on its own account, before he deserves the name of a temperate man. It is only when the means are firmly and unalterably converted into ends, that the process of forming the mind is completed. Courage may then seek, instead of avoiding danger. Temperance may prefer abstemiousness to indulgence. Prudence itself may choose an orderly government of con- duct, according to certain rules, without regard to the degree in which it promotes welfare. Benevolence must desire the happiness of others, to the exclusion of the consideration how far it is connected with that of the benevolent agent ; and those alone can be accounted just who obey the dictates of justice from having thoroughly learned an habitual veneration for its strict rules and for its larger precepts. In that complete state the mind possesses no power of dissolving the combinations of thought and feeling which impel it to action. Nothing in this argument turns on the difference between implanted and acquired principles. As no man can cease, by any act of his, to see distance, though the power of seeing it be universally acknowledged to be an acquisition, so no man has the power to ex- tinguish the affections and the moral sentiments, however much they may be thought to be ac- quired, any more than that of eradicating the bodily appetites. The best writers of Mr Ben- tham's school overlook the indissolubility of these associations, and appear not to bear in mind that their strength and rapid action con- stitute the perfect state of a moral agent. The pursuit of our own general welfare, or of that of mankind at large, though from their vagueness and coldness they are unfit habitual motives and unsafe ordinary guides of conduct, yet perform functions of essential importance in the moral system. The former, which we call self-love, preserves the balance of all the active principles which regard ourselves ulti- mately, and contributes to subject them to the authority of the moral principles. l The latter, which is general benevolence, regulates in like manner the equipoise of the narrower affections ; quickens the languid, and checks the encroach- ing ; borrows strength from pity, and even from indignation ; receives some compensation, as it enlarges, in the addition of beauty and grandeur, for the weakness which arises from dispersion ; enables us to look on all men as brethren, and overflows on every sentient being. The general interest of mankind, in truth, almost solely af- fects us through the affections of benevolence and sympathy; for the coincidence of general with individual interest, even where it is certain, is too dimly seen to produce any emotion which can impel to, or restrain from action. As a gen- eral truth, its value consists in its completing the triumph of morality, by demonstrating the absolute impossibility of forming any theory of human nature which does not preserve the su- periority of virtue over vice ; a great, though not a directly practical advantage. The followers of Mr Bentham have carried to an unusual extent the prevalent fault of the more modern advocates of utility, who have dwelt sp exclusively on the outward advantages of virtue as to have lost sight of the delight which is a part of virtuous feeling, and of the beneficial influence of good actions upon the frame of the mind. " Benevolence towards others," says Mr Mill, " produces a return of benevolence from them." 3 The fact is true, and ought to be stated. But how unimportant is it in comparison with that which is passed over in silence, the pleasure of the affec- tion itself, which, if it could become lasting and intense, would convert the heart into a heaven ! No one who has ever felt kindness, if he could accurately recall his feelings, could hesitate about their infinite superiority. The cause of the general neglect of this consideration is, that it is only when a gratification is something distinct from a state of mind, that we can easily learn to consider it as a pleasure. Hence the great error respecting the affections, where the inherent de- light is not duly estimated, on account of that very peculiarity of being a part of a state of mind, See Notes and Illustrations, note W. Analysis of the Human Mind, vol. II. DISSERTATION SECOND. 381 which renders it unspeakably more valuable as independent of every thing without. The social affections are the only principles of human nature which have no direct pains. To have any of these desires is to be in a state of happiness. The malevolent passions have properly no pleasures ; for that attainment of their purpose which is improperly so called, consists only in healing or assuaging the torture which envy, jealousy, and malice, inflict on the malignant mind. It might with as much propriety be said that the toothache and the stone have pleasures, because their removal is followed by an agree- able feeling. These bodily disorders, indeed, are often cured by the process which removes the suffering; but the mental distempers of envy and revenge are nourished by every act of odious indulgence which for a moment suspends their pain. The same observation is applicable to every virtuous disposition, though not so obviously as to the benevolent affections. That a brave man is, on the whole, far less exposed to danger than a coward, is not the chief advantage of a courage- ous temper. Great dangers are rare ; but the constant absence of such painful and mortifying sensations as those of fear, and the steady con- sciousness of superiority to what subdues ordi- nary men, are a perpetual source of inward en- joyment. No man who has ever been visited by a gleam of magnanimity can place any outward advantage of fortitude in comparison with the feeling of being always able fearlessly to defend a righteous cause. L Even Humility, in spite of first appearances, is a remarkable example. It has of late been unwarrantably used to signify that painful consciousness of inferiority which is the first stage of envy. 8 It is a term conse- crated in Christian ethics to denote that disposi- tion which, by inclining towards a modest esti- mate of our qualities, corrects the prevalent tendency of human nature to overvalue our merits and to overrate our claims. What can be a less doubtful or a much more considerable blessing than this constant sedative, which soothes and composes the irritable passions of vanity and pride ? What is more conducive to lasting peace of mind than the consciousness of proficiency in that most delicate species of equity which, in the secret tribunal of conscience, labours to be im- partial in the comparison of ourselves with others? What can so perfectly assure us of the purity of our moral sense, as the habit of contemplating, not that excellence which we have reached, but that which is still to be pursued; 5 of not con- sidering how far we may outrun others, but how far we are from the goal ? Virtue has often outward advantages, and always inward delights ; but the second, though constant, strong, inaccessible, and inviolable, are not easily considered by the common observer as apart from the virtue with which they are blend- ed. They are so subtile and evanescent as to escape the distinct contemplation of all but the very few who meditate on the acts of mind. The outward advantages, on the other hand, cold, uncertain, dependent, and precarious as they are, yet stand out to the sense and to the memory, may be handled and counted, and are perfectly on a level with the general apprehen- sion. Hence they have become the almost ex- clusive theme of all moralists who profess to fol- low reason. There is room for suspecting that a very general illusion prevails on this subject. Probably the smallest part of the pleasure of virtue, because it is the most palpable, has be- come the sign and mental representative of the whole. The outward and visible sign suggests insensibly the inward and mental delight. Those who display the external benefits of magnani- mity and kindness, would speak with far less fervour, and perhaps less confidence, if their feel- ings were not unconsciously affected by the mental state which they overlook in their state- ments, though they feel some part of it when they write or speak on it. When they speak of 1 According to Cicero's definition of fortitude, " Virtus pugnans pro cequitate." The remains of the original sense of Virtus, Manhood, give a beauty and force to these expressions, which cannot be preserved in our language. The Greek AJZT, and the German Tugend, originally denoted Strength, afterwards Courage, and at last Virtue. But the happy deriva- tion of Virtus from Vir gives an energy to the phrase of Cicero, which illustrates the use of etymology in the hands of a skilful writer. * Mr MILL'S Analysis of the Human Mind, vol. II. p. 222. 1 For a description of vanity, by a great orator, see the liev. R. HALL'S Sermon on Modern Infidelity. 382 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. what is without, they feel what was within, and their words excite the same feeling in others. Is it not probable that much of our love of praise may be thus ascribed to humane and sociable pleasure in the sympathy of others with us ? Praise is the symbol which represents sym- pathy, and which the mind insensibly substitutes for it in recollection and in language. Does not the desire of posthumous fame, in like manner, manifest an ambition for the fellow-feeling of our race, when it is perfectly unproductive of any advantage to ourselves ? In this point of view, it may be considered as the passion of which the very existence proves the mighty power of dis- interested desire. Every other pleasure from sympathy is confined to the men who are now alive. The love of fame alone seeks the sym- pathy of unborn generations, and stretches the chain which binds the race of man together, to an extent to which hope sets no bounds. There is a noble, even if unconscious, union of morality with genius in the mind of him who sympathizes with the masters who lived twenty centuries before him, in order that he may learn to com- mand the sympathies of the countless genera- tions who are to come. In the most familiar, as well as in the highest instances, it would seem, that the inmost thoughts and sentiments of men are more pure than their language. Those who speak of " a regard to character," if they be serious, generally infuse into that word, unawares, a large portion of that sense in which it denotes the frame of the mind. Those who speak of " honour" very often mean a more refined and delicate sort of conscience, which ought to render the more educated classes of society alive to such smaller wrongs as the la- borious and the ignorant can scarcely feel. What heart does not warm at the noble exclamation of the ancient poet: " Who is pleased by false honour, or frightened by lying infamy, but he who is false and depraved !" Every uncorrupted mind feels unmerited pain as a bitter reproach, and regards a consciousness of demerit as a drop of poison in the cup of honour. How different is the applause which truly delights us all, a proof that the consciences of others are in har- mony with our own ! " What," says Cicero, " is glory but the concurring praise of the good, the unbought approbation of those who judge aright of excellent virtue !" A far greater than Cicero rises from the purest praise of man, to more sublime contemplations. Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, But lives and spreads aloft, by those pure eyes And perfect witness of all-judging Jove. Those who have most inculcated the doctrine of utility have given another notable example of the very vulgar prejudice which treats the un- seen as insignificant. Tucker is the only one of them who occasionally considers that most im- portant effect of human conduct which consists in its action on the frame of the mind, by fitting its faculties and sensibilities for their appointed purpose. A razor or a penknife would well enough cut cloth or meat ; but if they were often so used, they would be entirely spoiled. The same sort of observation is much more strongly applicable to habitual dispositions, which, if they be spoiled, we have no certain means of repla- cing or mending. Whatever act, therefore, dis- composes the moral machinery of mind, is more injurious to the welfare of the agent than most disasters from without can be ; for the latter are commonly limited and temporary ; the evil of the former spreads through the whole of life. Health of mind, as well as of body, is not only productive in itself of a greater sum of enjoy- ment than arises from other sources, but is the only condition of our frame in which we are ca- pable of receiving pleasure from without. Hence it appears how incredibly absurd it is to prefer, on grounds of calculation, a present interest to the preservation of those mental habits on which our wellbeing depends. When they are most moral, they may often prevent us from obtaining advantages. It would be as absurd to desire to lower them for that reason, as it would be to weaken the body, lest its strength should render it more liable to contagious disorders of rare occurrence. It is, on the other hand, impossible to com- bine the benefit of the general habit with the advantages of occasional deviation; for every such deviation either produces remorse, or weak- ens the habit, and prepares the way for its gra- dual destruction. He who obtains a fortune by the undetected forgery of a will, may indeed be DISSERTATION SECOND. 383 honest in his other acts ; but if he had such a scorn of fraud hefore as he must himself allow to be generally useful, he must suffer a severe punishment from contrition ; and he will be haunted with the fears of one who has lost his own security for his good conduct. In all cases, if they be well examined, his loss by the distem- per of his mental frame will outweigh the profits of his vice. By repeating the like observation on similar occasions, it will be manifest that the infirmity of recollection, aggravated by the defects of lan- guage, gives an appearance of more selfishness to man than truly belongs to his nature; and that the effect of active agents upon the habitual state of mind, one of the considerations to which the epithet " sentimental" has of late been ap- plied in derision, is really among the most se- rious and reasonable objects of moral philosophy. When the internal pleasures and pains which accompany good and bad feelings, or rather form a part of them, and the internal advantages and disadvantages which follow good and bad actions, are sufficiently considered, the comparative im- portance of outward consequences will be more and more narrowed ; so that the Stoical philoso- pher may be thought almost excusable for re- jecting it altogether, were it not an indispensably necessary consideration for those in whom right habits of feeling are not sufficiently strong. They alone are happy, or even truly virtuous, who have little need of it. The later moralists who adopt the principle of utility, have so misplaced it, that in their hands it has as great a tendency as any theore- tical error can have, to lessen the intrinsic plea- sure of virtue, and to unfit our habitual feelings for being the most effectual inducements to good conduct. This is the natural tendency of a dis- cipline which brings utility too closely and fre- quently into contact with action. By this ha- bit, in its best state, an essentially weaker mo- tive is gradually substituted for others which must always be of more force. The frequent appeal to utility as the standard of action tends to introduce an uncertainty with respect to the conduct of other men, which would render all intercourse insupportable. It affords also so fair a disguise for selfish and malignant passions, as often to hide their nature from him who is their prey. Some taint of these mean and evil principles will at least creep in, and by their venom give an animation not its own to the cold desire of utility. The moralists who take an active part in those affairs which often call out unamiable passions, ought to guard with peculiar watchfulness against such self-delusions. The sin that must most easily beset them, is that of sliding from general to particular consequences, that of trying single actions, instead of dis- positions, habits, and rules, by the standard of utility, that of authorizing too great a latitude for discretion and policy in moral conduct, that of readily allowing exceptions to the most important rules, that of too lenient a censure of the use of doubtful means when the end seems to them good, and that of believing unphiloso- phically, as well as dangerously, that there can be any measure or scheme so useful to the world as the existence of men who would not do a base thing for any public advantage. It was said of Andrew Fletcher, " he would lose his life to serve his country, but would not do a base thing to save it." Let those preachers of utility who suppose that such a man sacrifices ends to tneans, consider whether the scorn of baseness be not akin to the contempt of danger, and whether a nation composed of such men would not be in- vincible. But theoretical principles are coun- teracted by a thousand causes, which confine their mischief as well as circumscribe their be- nefits. Men are never so good or so bad as their opinions. All that can be with reason ap- prehended is, that they may always produce some part of their natural evil, and that the mischief will be greatest among the many who seek excuses for these passions. Aristippus found in the Socratic representation of the union of virtue and happiness a pretext for sensuality ; and many Epicureans became voluptuaries in spite of the example of their master ; easily drop- ping by degrees the limitations by which he guarded his doctrines. In proportion as a man accustoms himself to be influenced by the utility of particular acts, without regard to rules, he approaches to the casuistry of the Jesuits, and to the practical maxims of Coesar Borgia. Injury on this as on other occasions has been PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. suffered by Ethics, from its close affinity to Ju- risprudence. The true and eminent merit of Mr Bentham is that of a reformer of jurisprudence. He is only a moralist with a view to being a jurist ; and he sometimes becomes for a few hurried moments a metaphysician with a view to laying the foundation of both the moral sciences. Both he and his followers have treated Ethics too juridically. They do not seem to be aware, or at least they do not bear constantly in mind, that there is an essential difference in the sub- jects of these two sciences. The object of law is the prevention of actions injurious to the community. It considers the dispositions from which they flow only indirect- ly, to ascertain the likelihood of their recur- rence, and thus to determine the necessity and the means of preventing them. The direct ob- ject of Ethics is only mental disposition. It considers actions indirectly as the signs by which such dispositions are manifested. If it were possible for the mere moralist to see that a moral and amiable temper was the mental source of a bad action, he could not cease to approve and love the temper, as we sometimes presume to suppose may be true of the judgments of the Searcher of Hearts. Religion necessarily coin- cides with morality in this respect ; and it is the peculiar distinction of Christianity that it places the seat of virtue in the heart. Law and Ethics are necessarily so much blended, that in many intricate combinations the distinction becomes obscure. But in all strong cases the difference is evident. Thus, law punishes the most sincerely repentant ; but wherever the soul of the penitent can be thought to be thoroughly purified, reli- gion and morality receive him with open arms. It is needless, after these remarks, to observe, that those whose habitual contemplation is di- rected to the rules of action, are likely to under- rate the importance of feeling and disposition ; an error of very unfortunate consequences, since the far greater part of human actions flow from these neglected sources ; while the law inter- poses only in cases which may be called excep- tions, which are now rare, and ought to be less frequent. The coincidence of Mr Bentham's school with the ancient Epicureans in the disregard of the pleasures of taste and of the arts dependent on imagination, is a proof both of the inevitable adherence of much of the popular sense of the words " interest" and " pleasure," to the same words in their philosophical acceptation, and of the pernicious influence of narrowing " utility" to mere visible and tangible objects, to the ex- clusion of those which form the larger part of human enjoyment. The mechanical philosophers who, under Des- cartes and Gassendi, began to reform Physics in the seventeenth century, attempted to explain all the appearances of nature by an immediate reference to the figure of particles of matter im- pelling each other in various directions, and with unequal force, but in all other points alike. The communication of motion by impulse they con- ceived to be perfectly simple and intelligible. It never occurred to them, that the movement of one ball when another is driven against it, is a fact of which no explanation can be given which will amount to more than a statement of its constant occurrence. That no body can act where it is not, appeared to them as self-evident as that the whole is equal to all the parts. By this axiom they understood that no body moves another without touching it. They did not per- ceive, that it was only self-evident where it means that no body can act where it has not the power of acting ; and that if it be understood more largley, it is a mere assumption of the pro- position on which their whole system rested. Sir Isaac Newton reformed Physics, not by simplifying that science, but by rendering it much more complicated. He introduced into it the force of attraction, of which he ascertained many laws, but which even he did not dare to represent as being as intelligible and as con- ceivably ultimate as impulsion itself. It was necessary for Laplace to introduce intermediate laws, and to calculate disturbing forces, before the phenomena of the heavenly bodies could be reconciled even to Newton's more complex theory. In the present state of physical and chemical knowledge, a man who should attempt to refer all the immense variety of facts to the simple impulse of the Cartesians, would have no chance of serious confutation. The number of laws augments with the progress of knowledge. The DISSERTATION SECOND. 385 speculations of the followers of Mr Bentham are not unlike the unsuccessful attempt of the Car- tesians. Mr Mill, for example, derives the whole theory of Government 1 from the single fact, that every man pursues his interest when he knows it ; which he assumes to be a sort of self-evident practical principle, if such a phrase he not con- tradictory. That a man's pursuing the interest of another, or indeed any other object in nature, is just as conceivable as that he should pursue his own interest, is a proposition which seems never to have occurred to this acute and ingenious writer. Nothing, however, can be more certain than its truth, if the term " interest" be em- ployed in its proper sense of general wellbeing, which is the only acceptation in which it can serve the purpose of his arguments. If, indeed, the term be employed to denote the gratification of a predominant desire, his proposition is self- evident, but wholly unserviceable in his argu- ment; for it is clear that individuals and multi- tudes often desire what they know to be most inconsistent with their general welfare. A na- tion, as much as an individual, and sometimes more, may not only mistake its interest, but, per- ceiving it clearly, may prefer the gratification of a strong passion to it. 2 The whole fabric of his political reasoning seems to be overthrown by this single observation ; and instead of attempt- ing to explain the immense variety of political facts by the simple principle of a contest of in- terests, we are reduced to the necessity of once more referring them to that variety of passions* habits, opinions, and prejudices, which we dis- cover only by experience. Mr Mill's Essay on Education 5 affords another example of the incon- venience of leaping at once from the most gene- ral laws, to a multiplicity of minute appearances. Having assumed, or at least inferred from insuf- ficient premises, that the intellectual and moral character is entirely formed by circumstances, he proceeds, in the latter part of the essay, as if it were a necessary consequence of that doctrine that we might easily acquire the power of com- bining and directing circumstances in such a manner as to produce the best possible character. Without disputing for the present the theoreti- cal proposition, let us consider what would lie the reasonableness of similar expectations in a more easily intelligible case. The general theory of the winds is pretty well understood; we know that they proceed from the rushing of air from those portions of the atmosphere which are more condensed, into those which are more rare- fied ; but how great a chasm is there between that simple law and the great variety of facts which experience teaches us respecting winds ! The constant winds between the tropics are large and regular enough to be in some measure capable of explanation ; but who can tell why, in variable climates, the wind blows to-day from the east, to-morrow from the west ? Who can foretell what its shifting and variations are to O be? Who can account for a tempest on one day, and a calm on another ? Even if we could foretell the irregular and infinite variations, how far might we not still be from the power of com- bining and guiding their causes ? No man but the lunatic in the story of Rasselas ever dreamt that he could command the weather. The diffi- culty plainly consists in the multiplicity and minuteness of the circumstances which act on the atmosphere. Are those which influence the formation of the human character likely to be less minute and multiplied ? The style of Mr Bentham underwent a more remarkable revolution than perhaps befell that of any other celebrated writer. In his early works, it was clear, free, spirited, often and sea- sonably eloquent. Many passages of his later writings retain the inimitable stamp of genius ; but he seems to have been oppressed by the vast- ness of his projected works, to have thought that he had no longer more than leisure to pre- serve the heads of them, to have been impelled by a fruitful mind to new plans before he had completed the old. In this state of things, he 1 Etsay on Government, originally printed in the Supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. 2 The same mode of reasoning has been adopted by the writer of a late criticism on Mr MILL'S Essay. See Edinburgh Review, No. 97, March 1829. 3 In the Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. DISS. II. 3 C PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. gradually ceased to use words for conveying his thoughts to others, but merely employed them as a short-hand to preserve his meaning for his own purpose. It was no wonder that his lan- guage should thus become obscure and repulsive. Though many of his technical terms are in them- selves exact and pithy, yet the overflow of his vast nomenclature was enough to darken his whole diction. It was at this critical period that the arrange- ment and translation of his manuscripts were undertaken by M. D union t, a generous disciple, who devoted a genius formed for original and lasting works, to diffuse the principles and pro- mote the fame of his master. He whose pen Mirabeau did not disdain to borrow, who, in the same school with Romilly, had studiously pursued the grace as well as the force of com- position, was perfectly qualified to strip of its uncouthness a philosophy which he understood and admired. As he wrote in a general lan- guage, he propagated its doctrines throughout Europe, where they were beneficial to jurispru- dence, but perhaps injurious to the cause of re- formation in government. That they became more popular abroad than at home, is partly to be ascribed to the taste and skill of M. Dumont ; partly to that tendency towards free specula- tion and bold reform which was more prevalent among nations newly freed, or impatiently aspir- ing to freedom, than in a people long satisfied with the possession of a system of government like that which others were struggling to ob- tain, and not yet aware of the imperfections and abuses in their laws, to the amendment of which a cautious consideration of Mr Bentham's works will undoubtedly most materially con- tribute. DUGALD STEWART. 1 MANIFOLD are the discouragements rising up at every step in that part of this Dissertation which extends to very recent times. No sooner does the writer escape from the angry disputes of the living, than he may feel his mind clouded by the name of a departed friend. But there are happily men whose fame is brightened by free discussion, and to whose memory an ap- pearance of belief that they needed tender treat- ment would be a grosser injury than it could suffer from a respectable antagonist. Dugald Stewart was the son of Dr Matthew Stewart, Professor of Mathematics in the Uni- versity of Edinburgh ; a station immediately before filled by Maclaurin, on the recommenda- tion of Newton. Hence the poet spoke of " the philosophic sire and son." 2 He was educated at Edinburgh, and he heard the lectures of Reid at Glasgow. He was early associated with his father in the duties of the Mathematical Profes- sorship ; and during the absence of Dr Adam Ferguson as Secretary to the Commissioners sent to conclude a peace with North America, he occupied the chair of Moral Philosophy. He was appointed to the Professorship on the resig- nation of Ferguson, not the least distinguished among the modern moralists inclined to the Stoical school. This office, filled in immediate succession by Ferguson, Stewart, and Brown, received a lustre from their names, which it owed in no degree to its modest exterior or its limited ad- vantages ; and was rendered by them the highest dignity, in the humble, but not obscure, esta- blishments of Scottish literature. The lect ures of Mr Stewart, for a quarter of a century, render- ed it famous through every country where the light of reason was allowed to penetrate. Per- haps few men ever lived, who poured into the breasts of youth a more fervid and yet reason- able love of liberty, of truth, and of virtue. How many are still alive, in different countries, and in every rank to which education reaches, who, if they accurately examined their own minds and lives, would not ascribe much of whatever goodness and happiness they possess, to the early impressions of his gentle and per- suasive eloquence ! He lived to see his disciples 1 Born in 1753; died in 1828. 2 Burns. DISSERTATION SECOND. 387 distinguished among the lights and ornaments of the council and the senate. 1 He had the consolation to be sure that no words of his pro- moted the growth of an impure taste, of an ex- clusive prejudice, of a malevolent passion. With- out derogation from his writings, it may be said that his disciples were among his best works. He, indeed, who may justly be said to have cul- tivated an extent of mind which would other- wise have lain barren, and to have contributed to raise virtuous dispositions where the natural growth might have been useless or noxious, is not less a benefactor of mankind, and may indi- rectly be a larger contributor to knowledge, than the author of great works, or even the discoverer of important truths. The system of conveying scientific instruction to a large audience by lectures, from which the English universities have in a great measure departed, renders his qualities as a lecturer a most important part of his merit in a Scottish university which still ad- heres to the general method of European educa- tion. Probably no modern ever exceeded him in that species of eloquence which springs from sensibility to literary beauty and moral excel- lence ; which neither obscures science by pro- digal ornament, nor disturbs the serenity of pa- tient attention ; but though it rather calms and soothes the feelings, yet exalts the genius, and insensibly inspires a reasonable enthusiasm for whatever is good and fair. He embraced the philosophy of Dr Reid, a patient, modest, and deep thinker, 2 who, in his first work (Enquiry into the Human Mind), de- serves a commendation more descriptive of a philosopher than that bestowed by Professor Cousin of having made " a vigorous protest against scepticism on behalf of common sense." His observations on suggestion, on natural signs, on the connection between what he calls sensa- tion and perception, though perhaps occasioned by Berkeley, whose idealism Reid had once adopted, are marked by the genuine spirit of original observation. As there are too many who seem more wise than they are, so it was the more uncommon fault of Reid to appear less a philosopher than he really was. Indeed his temporary adoption of Berkeleianism is a proof of an unprejudiced and acute mind. Perhaps no man ever rose finally above the seductions of that simple and ingenious system, who had not sometimes tried their full effect by surrendering his whole mind to them. But it is never with entire impunity that philosophers borrow vague and inappropriate terms from vulgar use. Never did man afford a stronger instance of the danger than Reid, in his two most unfortunate terms, Common Sense and Instinct. Common Sense is that average portion of understanding, possessed by most men, which, as it is nearly always applied to conduct, has acquired an almost exclusively practical 1 As an example of Mr Stewart's school may be mentioned Francis Horner, a favourite pupil, and, till his last moment, an affectionate friend. The short life of this excellent person is worthy of serious contemplation, by those more especially, who, in circumstances like his, enter on the slippery path of public affairs. Without the aids of birth or fortune, in an as- sembly where aristocratical propensities prevail, by his understanding, industry, pure taste, and useful information, still more by modest independence, by steadiness and sincerity, joined to moderation, by the stamp of unbending integrity, and by the conscientious considerateness which breathed through his well-chosen language, he raised himself, at the early age of thirty-six, to a moral authority which, without these qualities, no brilliancy of talents or power of reasoning could have acquired. No eminent speaker in Parliament owed so much of his success to his moral character. His high place was therefore honourable to his audience and to his country. Regret for his death was expressed with touching unanimity from every part of a divided assembly, unused to manifestations of sensibility, abhorrent from theatrical display, and whose tribute on such an occasion derived its peculiar value from their general coldness and sluggishness. The tears of those to whom he was unknown were shed over him ; and at the head of those by whom he was " praised, wept, and honoured," was one, whose commendation would have been more enhanced in the eye of Mr Horner, by his discernment and veracity, than by the signal proof of the concurrence of all orders, as well as parties, which was afforded by the name of Howard. 2 Those who may doubt the justice of this description will do well to weigh the words of the most competent of judges, who, though candid and even indulgent, was not prodigal of praise. " It is certainly very rare that a piece so deeply philo- sophical is wrote with so much spirit, and affords so much entertainment to the reader. Whenever I enter into your ideas, no man appears to express himself with greater perspicuity. Your style is so correct and so good English, that I found not any thing worth the remarking. I beg my compliments to my friendly adversaries Dr Campbell and Dr Gerard, and also to Dr Gregory, whom I suspect to be of the same disposition, though he has not openly declared himself such." (Letter from Mr Hnme to Dr Reid: STEWART'S Biographical Memoirs, p. 417-) The latter part of the above sentences (written after a perusal of the proof-sheets of Dr Reid's Enquiry, but before its publication) sufficiently shows, that Mr Hume felt no displeasure against Reid and Campbell, undoubtedly his most for- midable antagonists, however he might resent the language of Dr Beattie, an amiable man, an elegant and tender poet, and a good writer on miscellaneous literature in prose, but who, in his Essay on Truth an unfair appeal to the multitude on philosophical questions indulged himself in the personalities and invectives of a popular pamphleteer. 388 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. sense. Instinct is the habitual power of pro- ducing effects like contrivances of reason, yet so far beyond the intelligence and experience of the agent, as to be utterly inexplicable by refer- ence to them. No man, if he had been in search of improper words, could have discovered any more unfit than these two, for denoting that law, or state, or faculty of mind, which compels us to acknowledge certain simple and very ab- stract truths, not being identical propositions, to lie at the foundation of all reasoning, and to be the necessary ground of all belief. Long after the death of Dr Reid, his philoso- phy was taught at Paris by M. Royer Collard, ' who, on the restoration of free debate, became the most philosophical orator of his nation, and now fills, with impartiality and dignity, the chair of the Chamber of Deputies. His inge- nious and eloquent scholar, Professor Cousin, dissatisfied with what he calls " the sage and timid" doctrines of Edinburgh, which he con- sidered as only a vigorous protest, on behalf of common sense, against the scepticism of Hume, sought in Germany for a philosophy of " such a masculine and brilliant character as might command the attention of Europe, and be able to struggle with success on a great theatre, against the genius of the adverse school." 2 It may be questioned whether he found in Kant more than the same vigorous protest, under a more systematic form, with an immense nomen- clature, and constituting a philosophical edifice of equal symmetry and vastness. The prefer- ence of the more boastful system, over a philo- sophy thus chiefly blafmed for its modest preten- sions, does not seem to be entirely justified by its permanent authority in the country which gave it birth ; where, however powerful its in- fluence still continues to be, its doctrines do not appear to have now many supporters : and, in- deed, the accomplished Professor himself rapid- ly shot through Kantianism, and now appears to rest or to stop at the doctrines of Schelling and Hegel, at a point so high, that it is hard to descry from it any distinction between objects, even that indispensable distinction between Reality and Illusion. As the works of Reid, and those of Kant, otherwise so different, ap- pear to be simultaneous efforts of the conserva- tive power of philosophy to expel the mortal poison of scepticism, so the exertions of M. Royer Collard and M. Cousin, however at va- riance in metaphysical principles, seem to have been chiefly roused by the desire of delivering Ethics from that fatal taint of personal, and, indeed, gross interest, which that science had received in France from the followers of Con- dillac, especially Helvetius, St Lambert, and Cabanis. The success of these attempts to ren- der Speculative Philosophy once more popular in the country of Descartes, has already been considerable. The French youth, whose desire of knowledge and love of liberty afford an aus- picious promise of the succeeding age, have eagerly received doctrines, of which the moral part is so much more agreeable to their liberal spirit, than the selfish theory, generated in the stagnation of a corrupt, cruel, and dissolute tyranny. These agreeable prospects bring us easily back to our subject; for though the restoration of Speculative Philosophy in the country of Des- cartes is due to the precise statement and vi- gorous logic of M. Royer Collard, the modifica- tions introduced by him into the doctrine of Reid coincide with those of Mr Stewart, and would have appeared to agree more exactly, if the forms of the French philosopher had not been more dialectical, and the composition of Mr Stewart had retained less of that oratorical cha- racter, which belonged to a justly celebrated speaker. Amidst excellencies of the highest order, his writings, it must be confessed, leave some room for criticism. He took precautions against offence to the feelings of his contempo- raries, more anxious and frequent than the im- patient searcher for truth may deem necessary. For the sake of promoting the favourable re- 1 Fragments of his lectures have been recently published in a French translation of Dr Reid, by M. Jonffroy : (Euvret Completes de THOMAS REID, vol. IV. Paris, 1828. 2 Court de Philosophic, par M. COUSIN, le^on xii. Paris, 1828. DISSERTATION SECOND. 389 ception of philosophy itself, he studies perhaps too visibly to avoid whatever might raise up prejudices against it. His gratitude and native modesty dictated a superabundant care in sof- tening and excusing his dissent from those who had been his own instructors, or who were the objects of general reverence. Exposed by his station, both to the assaults of political preju- dice, and to the religious animosities of a coun- try where a few sceptics attacked the slumber- ing zeal of a Calvinistic people, it would have been wonderful if he had not betrayed more wariness than would have been necessary or be- coming in a very different position. The ful- ness of his literature seduced him too much into multiplied illustrations. Too many of the ex- pedients happily used to allure the young may unnecessarily swell his volumes. Perhaps a successive publication in separate parts made him more voluminous, than he would have been if the whole had been at once before his eyes. A peculiar susceptibility and delicacy of taste produced forms of expression, in themselves ex- tremely beautiful, but of which the habitual use is not easily reconcilable with the condensation desirable in works necessarily so extensive. If, however, it must be owned that the caution in- cident to his temper, his feelings, his philosophy, and his station, has somewhat lengthened his composition, it is not less true, that some of the same circumstances have contributed towards those peculiar beauties which place him at the head of the most adorned writers on philosophy in our language. Few writers rise with more grace from a plain groundwork, to the passages which require greater animation or embellishment. He gives to narrative, according to the precept of Bacon, the colour of the time, by a selection of happy expressions from original writers. Among the secret arts by which he diffuses elegance over his diction, may be remarked the skill which, by deepening or brightening a shade in a se- condary term, by opening partial or prepara- tory glimpses of a thought to be afterwards un- folded, unobservedly heightens the import of a word, and gives it a new meaning, without any offence against old use. It is in this manner that philosophical originality may be reconciled to purity and stability of speech, that we may avoid new terms, which are the easy resource of the unskilful or the indolent, and often a cha- racteristic mark of writers who love their lan- guage too little to feel its peculiar excellencies, or to study the art of calling forth its powers. He reminds us not unfrequently of the cha- racter given by Cicero to one of his contempo- raries, " who expressed refined and abstruse thought in soft and transparent diction." His writings are a proof that the mild sentiments have their eloquence as well as the vehement passions. It would be difficult to name works in which so much refined philosophy is joined with so fine a fancy, so much elegant litera- ture, with such a delicate perception of the distinguishing excellencies of great writers, and with an estimate in general so just of the ser- vices rendered to knowledge by a succession of philosophers. They are pervaded by a philoso- phical benevolence, which keeps up the ardour of his genius, without disturbing the serenity of his mind, which is felt in his reverence for knowledge, in the generosity of his praise, and in the tenderness of his censure. It is still more sensible in the general tone with which he re- lates the successful progress of the human un- derstanding, among many formidable enemies. Those readers are not to be envied who limit their admiration to particular parts, or to excel- lencies merely literary, without being warmed by the glow of that honest triumph in the ad- vancement of knowledge, and of that assured faith in the final prevalence of truth and justice, which breathe through every page of them, and give the unity and dignity of a moral purpose to the whole of these classical works. He has often quoted poetical passages, of which some throw much light on our mental opera- tions. If he sometimes prized the moral com- mon-places of Thomson and the speculative fancy of Akenside more highly than the higher poetry of their betters, it was not to be wonder- ed at that the metaphysician and the moralist should sometimes prevail over the lover of poetry. His natural sensibility was perhaps occasionally cramped by the cold criticism of an unpoetical age ; and some of his remarks may be thought to indicate a more constant and exclusive regard 390 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. to diction than is agreeable to the men of a ge- neration who have been trained by tremendous events to a passion for daring inventions, and to an irregular enthusiasm, impatient of minute elegancies and refinement. Many of those beau- ties which his generous criticism delighted to magnify in the works of his contemporaries, have already faded under the scorching rays of a fiercer sun. Mr Stewart employed more skill in contriving, and more care in concealing, his very important reforms of Reid's doctrines, than others exert to maintain their claims to originality. Had his well-chosen language of " laws of human thought or belief" been at first adopted in that school, instead of " instinct" and " common sense," it would have escaped much of the reproach (which Dr Reid himself did not merit) of shallowness and popularity. Expressions so exact, employed in the opening, could not have failed to influence the whole system, and to have given it, not only in the general estimation, but in the minds of its framers, a more scientific complexion. In those parts of Mr Stewart's speculations in which he most departed from his general principles, he seems sometimes, as it were, to be suddenly driven back by what he unconsciously shrinks from as ungrateful apostasy ; and to be desirous of making amends to his master, by more harsh- ness, than is otherwise natural to him, towards the writers whom he has insensibly approached. Hence perhaps the unwonted severity of his lan- guage towards Tucker and Hartley. It is thus at the very time when he largely adopts the Principle of Association in his excellent Essay on the Beautiful, 1 that he treats most rigidly the latter of these writers, to whom, though nei- ther the discoverer nor the sole advocate of that principle, it surely owes the greatest illustration and support. In matters of far other importance, causes perhaps somewhat similar may have led to the like mistake. When he absolutely contra- dicts Dr Reid, by truly stating that " it is more philosophical to resolve the power of habit into the association of ideas, than to re- solve the association of ideas into habit,"" he, in the sequel of the same volume, 3 refuses to go farther than to own, that " the theory of Hart- ley concerning the origin of our affections, and of the moral sense, is a most ingenious refinement on the selfish system, and that by means of it the force of many of the common reasonings against that system is eluded;" though he somewhat inconsistently allows, that " active principles which, arising from circumstances in which all the situations of mankind must agree, are there- fore common to the whole species, at whatever period of life they may appear, are to be regard- ed as a part of human nature, no less than the instinct of suction ; in the same manner as the acquired perception of distance, by the eye, is to be ranked among the perceptive powers of man, no less than the original perceptions of the other senses." 4 In another place also he makes a remark on mere beauty, which might have led him to a more just conclusion respecting the the-" ory of the origin of the affections and the moral sense : " It is scarcely necessary forme to observe, that, in those instances where association operates in heightening (or he might have said creates) the pleasures we receive from sight, the pleasing emo- tion continues still to appear, to our conscious- ness, simple and uncom pounded." * To this re- mark he might have added, that until all the separate pleasures be melted into one, as long as any of them are discerned and felt as distinct from each other, the associations are incom- plete, and the qualities which gratify are not called by the name of beauty. In like manner, as has been repeatedly observed, it is only when all the separate feelings, pleasurable and pain- ful, excited by the contemplation of voluntary action, are lost in the general sentiments of ap- 1 STEWART'S Philosophical Essays, partii. essay i. especially chap. vi. The condensation, if not. omission, of the discussion of the theories of Buffier, Reynolds, Burke, and Price, in this essay, would have lessened that temporary appearance which is unsuitable to a scientific work. * Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. I. p. 281, edit. 1792, 4to. Ibid. p. 383. * Ibid. p. 385. * Philosophical Essays, part ii. essay i, chap. vi. DISSERTATION SECOND. 391 probation or disapprobation, when these gene- ral feelings retain no trace of the various emo- tions which originally attended different actions, when they are held in a state of perfect fusion by the habitual use of the words used in every language to denote them, that conscience can be said to exist, or that we can be considered as endowed with a moral nature. The theory which thus ascribes the uniform formation of the moral faculty to universal and paramount laws, is not a refinement of the selfish system, nor is it any modification of that hypothesis. The partisans of selfishness maintain, that in acts of will the agent must have a view to the pleasure or happiness which he hopes to reap from it. The philosophers who regard the social affections and the moral sentiments as formed by a process of association, on the other hand, con- tend that these affections and sentiments must work themselves clear from every particle of self-regard, before they deserve the names of benevolence and of conscience. In the actual state of human motives, the two systems are not to be likened, but to be contrasted to each other. It is remarkable that Mr Stewart, who admits the " question respecting the origin of the affec- tions to be rather curious than important," 1 should have held a directly contrary opinion respecting the moral sense ; 2 to which these words, in his sense of them, seem to be equally applicable. His meaning in the former affirma- tion is, that if the affections be acquired, yet they are justly called natural; and if their origin be personal, yet their nature may and does become disinterested. What circumstance distinguishes the former from the latter case ? With respect to the origin of the affections, it must not be overlooked that his language is somewhat con- tradictory. For if the theory on that subject from which he dissents were merely " a refine- ment on the selfish system," its truth or false- hood could not be represented as subordinate, since the controversy would continue to relate to the existence of disinterested motives of hu- man conduct. 5 It may also be observed, that he uniformly represents his opponents as de- riving the affections from self-love, which, in its proper sense, is not the source to which they refer even avarice ; and which is itself derived from other antecedent principles, some of which are inherent, and some acquired. If the object of this theory of the rise of the most important feelings of human nature were, as our philoso- pher supposes, " to elude objections against the selfish system," it would be at best worthless. Its positive merits are several. It affirms the actual disinterestedness of human motives, as strongly as Butler himself. The explanation of the men- tal law, of which benevolence and conscience are formed habitually, when it is contemplated deeply, impresses on the mind the truth that they not only are but must be disinterested. It confirms, as it were, the testimony of conscious- ness, by exhibiting to the understanding the means employed to insure the production of dis- interestedness. It affords the only effectual an- swer to the prejudice against the disinterested theory, from the multiplication of ultimate facts and implanted principles, which, under all its other forms, it seems to require. No room is left for this prejudice by a representation of dis- interestedness, which ultimately traces its forma- tion to principles almost as simple as those of Hobbes himself. Lastly, every step in j ust ge- neralization is an advance in philosophy. No one has yet shown, either that man is not ac- tually disinterested, or that he may not have been destined to become so by such a process as has been described : the cause to which the effects are ascribed is a real agent, which seems adequate to the appearance ; and if future obser- vation should be found to require that the theory shall be confined within narrower limits, such a limitation will not destroy its value. The acquiescence of Mr Stewart in Dr Reid's general representation of our mental constitu- 1 Outlines of Moral Philosophy, p. 93. * Outlines, p. 1 17- " This is the most important question that can be stated with respect to the Theory of Morals." 3 In the Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man (vol. I. p. 104) Mr Stewart has done more manifest injustice to the Hartleian theory, by calling it "a doctrine fundamentally the, same" with the selfish system, and especially by represent- ing Hartley, who ought to be rather classed with Butler and Hume, as agreeing with Gay, Tucker, and Paley. 392 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. tion, led him to indulge more freely the natural bent of his understanding, by applying it to theo- ries of character and manners, of life and litera- ture, of taste and the arts, more than to the con- sideration of those more simple principles which rule over human nature under every form. His chief work, as he frankly owns, is indeed rather a collection of such theories, pointing toward the common end of throwing light on the structure and functions of the mind, than a systematic treatise, such as might be expected from the title of " Elements." It is in essays of this kind tbat he has most surpassed other cultivators of mental philosophy. His remarks on the effects of casual associations may be quoted as a speci- men of the most original and just thoughts, con- veyed in the best manner. 1 In this beautiful passage, he proceeds from their power of con- fusing speculation, to that of disturbing expe- rience and of misleading practice ; and ends with their extraordinary effect in bestowing on trivial, and even ludicrous circumstances, some portion of the dignity and sanctity of those sublime prin- ciples with which they are associated. The style, at first only clear, afterwards admitting the ornaments of a calm and grave elegance, at last rising to as high a strain as philosophy will endure, and of which all the parts (various as their nature is) are held together by an invisible thread of gentle transition, affords a specimen of adaptation of manner to matter which it will be hard to match in any philosophical writer. Another very fine remark, which seems to be as original as it is just, may be quoted as a sample of those beauties with which his writings abound. " The apparent coldness and selfishness of man- kind may be traced, in a great measure, to a want of attention and a want of imagination. In the case of those misfortunes which happen to ourselves or our near connections, neither of these powers is necessary to make us acquainted with our situation. But without an uncommon degree of both, it is impossible for any man to comprehend completely the situation of his neighbour, or to have an idea of the greater part of the distress which exists in the world. If we feel more for ourselves than for others, in the former case the facts are more fully be- fore us than they can be in the latter." 2 Yet several parts of his writings afford the most satisfactory proof, that his abstinence from what is commonly called metaphysical speculation, arose from no inability to pursue it with sig- nal success. As examples, his observations on General Terms, and on Causation, may be ap- pealed to with perfect confidence. In the first two Dissertations of the volume bearing the title of Philosophical Essays, he with equal boldness and acuteness grapples with the most extensive and abstruse questions of mental philosophy, and points out both the sources and the uttermost boundaries of human knowledge with a Verula- mean hand. In another part of his writings, he calls what are denominated first principles of experience, "fundamental laws of human belief, or primary elements of human reason;" 3 which last form of expression has so close a resemblance to the language of Kant, that it should have pro- tected the latter from the imputation of writing jargon. Mr Stewart's excellent volume entitled Out- lines of Moral Philosophy,* though composed only as a text-book for the use of his hearers, is one of the most decisive proofs that he was perfectly qualified to unite precision with ease, to be brief with the utmost clearness, and to write with be- coming elegance in a style where the meaning is not overladen by ornaments. This volume contains his properly Ethical Theory, 5 which is much expanded, but not substantially altered, in his Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers, 6 a work almost posthumous, and composed under circumstances which give it a deeper interest than can be inspired by any desert in science. Though, with his usual modesty, he manifests an anxiety to fasten his ethical theory to the kindred specu- lations of other philosophers of the Intellectual School, especially to those of Cudworth, recent- ly clothed in more modern phraseology by Price, yet he still shows that independence and origin- > Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. I. p. 340-352. 2 Ibid. vol. I. p. 502. Ibid. vol. II. p. 57. 4 Edinburgh, 1794, 8vo. 5 P. 76-148. 8 Two vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1828. DISSERTATION SECOND. 393 ality which all his aversion from parade could not entirely conceal. Highly duty, virtue, moral obligation, and the like or the opposite forms of expression, represent, according to him, certain thoughts, which arise necessarily and instantane- ously in the mind (or in the reason, if we take that word in the large sense in which it denotes all that is not emotive) at the contemplation of actions, and which are utterly incapahle of all resolution, consequently of all explanation, and which can he known only hy being experienced. These thoughts or ideas, or by whatever other name they may be called, are followed as inex- plicably, but as inevitably, by pleasurable and painful emotions, which suggest the conception of moral beauty ; a quality of human actions dis- tinct from their adherence to or deviation from rec- titude, though generally coinciding with it. The question which a reflecting reader will here put is, whether any purpose is served by the intro- duction of the intermediate mental process be- tween the particular thoughts and the moral emotions. How would the view be darkened or confused, or indeed in any degree changed, by withdrawing that process, or erasing the words which attempt to express it ? No advocate of the intellectual origin of the moral faculty has yet stated a case in which a mere operation of reason or judgment, unattended by emotion, could, con- sistently with the universal opinion of mankind, as it is exhibited by the structure of language, be said to have the nature or to produce the effects of Conscience. Such an example would be equivalent to an experimentum cruets on the side of that celebrated theory. The failure to produce it, after long challenge, is at least a presumption against it, nearly approach- ing to that sort of decisively discriminative experiment. It would be vain to restate what has already been too often repeated, that all the objections to the selfish philosophy turn upon the actual nature, not upon the original source of our principles of action ; and that it is by a confusion of these very distinct questions alone that the confutation of Hobbes can be made ap- parently to involve Hartley. Mr Stewart ap- pears, like most other metaphysicians, to have blended the inquiry into the nature of our moral sentiments with that other which only seeks a DISS. II. criterion to distinguish moral from immoral habits of feeling and action ; for he considers the appearance of moral sentiment at an early age, before the general tendency of actions could be ascertained, as a decisive objection to the origin of these sentiments in association, an objection which assumes that, if utility be the criterion of morality, associations with utility must be the mode by which the moral sentiments are formed, which no skilful advocate of the theory of association will ever allow. That the main, if not sole object of conscience is to go- vern our voluntary exertions, is manifest. But how could it perform this great function if it did not impel the will ? and how could it have the latter effect as a mere act of reason, or in 7 deed in any respect otherwise than as it is made up of emotions, by which alone its grand aim could in any degree be attained ? Judgment and reason are therefore preparatory to conscience, not properly a part of it. That the exclusion of reason reduces virtue to be a relative quality, is another instance of the confusion of the two questions in moral theory ; for though a fitness to excite approbation may be only a relation of objects to our susceptibility, yet the proposition that all virtuous actions are beneficial, is a pro- position as absolute as any other within the range of our understanding. A delicate state of health, and an ardent de- sire to devote himself exclusively to study and composition, induced Mr Stewart, while in the full blaze of his reputation as a lecturer, to re- tire, in 1810, from the labour of public instruc- tion. This retirement, as he himself describes it, was that of a quiet but active life. Three quarto and two octavo volumes, besides the magnificent Dissertations prefixed to this En- cyclopaedia, were among its happy fruits. These Dissertations are, perhaps, the most profusely ornamented of any of his compositions ; a pecu- liarity which must in part have arisen from a principle of taste, which regarded decoration as more suitable to the history of philosophy than to philosophy itself. But the memorable in- stances of Cicero, of Milton, and still more those of Dryden and Burke, seem to show that there is some natural tendency in the fire of genius to burn more brightly or to blaze more fiercely in 3 D 394 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. the evening than in the morning of human life. Probably the materials which long experience supplies to the imagination, the boldness with which a more established reputation arms the mind, and the silence of the low but formidable rivals of the higher principles, may concur in pro- ducing this unexpected and little observed effect. It was in the last years of his life, when suf- fering under the effects of a severe attack of palsy, with which he had been afflicted in 1822, that Mr Stewart most plentifully reaped the fruits of long virtue and a well-ordered mind. Happily for him, his own cultivation and exer- cise of every kindly affection had laid up for him a store of that domestic consolation which none who deserve it ever want, and for the loss of which, nothing beyond the threshold can make amends. The same philosophy which he had cultivated from his youth upward employed his dying hand. Aspirations after higher and brighter scenes of excellence, always blended with his elevated morality, became more earnest and deeper as worldly passions died away, and earthly objects vanished from his sight. THOMAS BROWN. 1 A WHITER, as he advances in life, ought to speak with diffidence of systems which he had only begun to consider with care after the age in which it becomes hard for his thoughts to flow into new channels. A reader cannot be said practically to understand a theory, till he has acquired the power of thinking, at least for a short time, with the theorist. Even a hearer, with all the helps of voice in 'the instructor, of countenance from him and from fellow-hearers, finds it difficult to perform this necessary process without either being betrayed into hasty and un- distinguishing assent, or falling, while he is in pursuit of an impartial estimate of opinions, in- to an indifference about their truth. I have felt this difficulty in reconsidering ancient opinions : but it is perhaps more needful to own its power, and to warn the reader against its effects, in the case of a philosopher well known to me, and with whom common friendships stood in the stead of much personal intercourse, as a cement of kindness. I very early read Brown's Observations on the Zoonomia of Dr Darwin, the perhaps un- matched work of a boy in the eighteenth year of his age. 2 His first tract on Causation ap- peared to me the finest model of discussion in mental philosophy since Berkeley and Hume ; with this superiority over the latter, that its aim is that of a philosopher who seeks to enlarge knowledge, not that of a sceptic, the most illus- trious of whom have no better end than that of displaying their powers in confounding and dark- ening every truth ; so that their very happiest efforts cannot be more leniently described than as brilliant fits of mental debauchery. 3 From a diligent perusal of his succeeding works at the time of their publication, I was prevented by pursuits and duties of a very different nature. These causes, together with ill health and grow- ing occupation, hindered me from reading his Lectures with due attention, till it has now be- come a duty to consider with care that part of them which relates to Ethics. Dr Brown was born in one of those families of ministers in the Scottish church who, after a 1 Born in 1778 ; died in 1820. * WELSH'S Life of Brown, p. 43 ; a pleasingly affectionate work, full of analytical spirit and metaphysical reading, of such merit, in short, that I could wish to have found in it no phrenology. Objections a priori in a case dependent on facts are indeed inadmissible. Even the allowance of presumptions of that nature would open so wide a door for prejudices, that at most they can be considered only as maxims of logical prudence, which fortify the watchfulness of the individual. The fatal objection to phrenology seems to me to be, that what is new in it, or peculiar to it, has no approach to an adequate foundation in experience. * " Bayle, a writer who, pervading human nature at his ease, struck into the province of paradox as an exercise for the unwearied vigour of his mind ; who, with a soul superior to the sharpest attacks of fortune, and a heart practised to the best philosophy, had not enough of real greatness to overcome that last foible of superior minds, the temptation of honour which the academic exercise of wit is conceived to bring to its professor." So Warburton (Divine Legation, book i. sect. 4), speaking of Bayle, but perhaps in part excusing himself! in a noble strain, of which it would have been more agreeable to find the repetition than the contrast in his language towards Hume. DISSERTATION SECOND. 395 generation or two of a humble life spent in piety and usefulness, with no more than needful knowledge, have more than once sent forth a man of genius from their cool and quiet shade, to make his fellows wiser or better by tongue or pen, by head or hand. Even the scanty endow- ments and constant residence of that church, by keeping her ministers far from the objects which awaken turbulent passions and disperse the un- derstanding on many pursuits, afforded some of the leisure and calm of monastic life, without the exclusion of the charities of family and kin- dred. It may be well doubted whether this un- dissipated retirement, which during the eigh- teenth century was very general in Scotland, did not make full amends for the loss of curious and ornamental knowledge, by its tendency to quali- fy men for professional duty, by the cultivation of reason among a considerable number, and by those opportunities for high meditation, and for the unchangeable concentration of mind on wor- thy objects, to the few who had the natural capa- city for such exertions. 1 An authentic account of the early exercises of Brown's mind is preserved by his biographer. 2 At the age of nineteen he took a part with others, some of whom became the most memorable men of their time, in the foundation of a private so- ciety in Edinburgh, under the name of " the Academy of Physics." 3 The character of Dr Brown is very attractive, as an example of one in whom the utmost ten- derness of affection, and the indulgence of a flowery fancy, were not repressed by the high- est cultivation, and by a perhaps excessive re- finement of intellect. His mind soared and roamed through every region of philosophy and poetry ; but his untravelled heart clung to the hearth of his father, to the children who shared it with him, and after them, first to the other part- ners of his childish sports, and then almost solely to those companions of his youthful studies who continued to be the friends of his life. Specula- tion seemed to keep his kindness at home. It is observable, that though sparkling with fancy, he does not seem to have been deeply or durably touched by those affections which are lighted at its torch, or at least tinged with its colours. His heart sought little abroad, but contentedly dwelt in his family and in his study. He was one of those men of genius who repaid the tender care of a mother by rocking the cradle of her repos- ing age. He ended a life spent in searching foi truth, and exercising love, by desiring that he should be buried in his native parish, with his " dear father and mother." Some of these delightful qualities were perhaps hidden from the casual observer in general society, by the want of that perfect simplicity of manner which is doubtless their natural representative. Man- ner is a better mark of the state of a mind, than those large and deliberate actions which form what is called conduct. It is the constant and insensible transpiration of character. In serious acts a man may display himself. In the thou- sand nameless acts which compose manner, the mind betrays its habitual bent. But manner is then only an index of disposition, when it is that of men who live at ease in the intimate famili- arity of friends and equals. It may be diverted from simplicity by causes which do not reach so deep as the character ; by bad models, or by a restless and wearisome anxiety to shine, arising from many circumstances, none of which are pro- bably more common than the unseasonable ex- ertions of a recluse student in society, and the 1 See SIH H. MONCREIFF'S Life of the Reverend Dr Erskine. - WELSH'S Life of Brown, p. 77> and App. p. 498. 3 A part of the first day's minutes is here borrowed from Mr Welsh : " 7th January 179? Present, Mr Erskine, Pre- sident, Mr Brougham, Mr Ileddie, Mr Brown, MrBirbeck, Mr Leyden," &c. who were afterwards joined by Lord Webb Seymour, Messrs Homer, Jeffrey, Smyth, &c. Mr Erskine, who thus appears at the head of so remarkable an association, and whom diffidence and untoward circumstances have hitherto withheld from the full manifestation of his powers, conti- nued to be the bosom friend of Brown to the last, and showed the constancy of his friendship for others by converting all his invaluable preparations for a translation of Sultan Baber's Commentaries (perhaps the best, certainly the most European work of modern eastern prose) into the means of completing the imperfect attempt of Leyden ; with a regard equally ge- nerous to the fame of his early friend, and to the comfort of that friend's surviving relations. The review of Baber's Com- mentaries, by M. Silvestre de Sacy, in the Journal des Savons for May and June 1829, is perhaps one of the best specimens ex- tant of the value of literary commendation when it is bestowed with conscientious calmness, and without a suspicion of bias, by one of the greatest orientalists, in a case where he pronounces every thing to have been done by Mr Erskine " which could have been performed by the most learned and the most scrupulously conscientious of editors and translators." 39G PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. unfortunate attempts of some others, to take by violence the admiration of those with whom they do not associate with ease. The association with unlike or superior companions which least distorts manners, is that which takes place with those classes whose secure dignity generally renders their own manners easy; with whom the art of pleasing or of not displeasing each other in society is a serious concern ; who have leisure enough to discover the positive and ne- gative parts of the smaller moralities ; and who, being trained to a watchful eye on what is ludi- crous, apply the lash of ridicule to affectation, the most ridiculous of faults. The busy in every department of life are too respectably oc- cupied to form these manners or to bestow them. They are the frivolous work of polished idleness ; and perhaps their most serious value consists in the war which they wage against affectation; though even there they betray their nature in punishing it, not as a deviation from nature, but as a badge of vulgarity. The prose of Dr Brown is brilliant to excess. It must not be denied that its beauty is some- times womanly ; that it too often melts down precision into elegance ; that it buries the main idea under a load of illustration, of which every part is expanded and adorned with such a visi- ble labour, as to withdraw the mind from atten- tion to the thoughts which it professes to intro- duce more easily into the understanding. It is darkened by excessive brightness ; it loses ease and liveliness by over-dress ; and, in the midst of its luscious sweetness, we wish for the strik- ing and homely illustrations of Tucker, and for the pithy and sinewy sense of Paley, either of whom, by a single short metaphor from a fami- liar, perhaps a low object, could at one blow set the two worlds of reason and fancy in move- ment. It would be unjust to censure severely the de- clamatory parts of his Lectures ; they are excus- able in the first warmth of composition. They might even be justifiable allurements in attracting young hearers to abstruse speculations. Had he lived, he would probably have taken his thoughts out of the declamatory forms of spoken address, and given to them the appearance, as well as the reality, of deep and subtile discussion. The habits indeed of so successful a lecturer, and the natural luxuriancy of his mind, could not fail to have somewhat tinctured all his compositions ; but though he might still have fallen short of simplicity, he certainly would have avoided much of the diffusion, and even common-place, which hang heavily on original and brilliant thoughts ; for it must be owned, that though, as a thinker, he is unusually original, yet when he falls among the declaimers, he is infected by their common-places. In like manner, he would assuredly have shortened or left out many of the poetical quo- tations which he loved to recite, and which hearers even beyond youth hear with delight. There are two very different sorts of passages of poetry to be found in works on philosophy, which are as far asunder from each other in value as in matter. A philosopher will admit some of those wonderful lines or words which bring to light the infinite varieties of character, the furious bursts or wily workings of passion, the winding approaches of temptation, the slip- pery path to depravity, the beauty of tender- ness, the grandeur of what is awful and holy in" man. In every such quotation, the moral phi- losopher, if he be successful, uses the best mate- rials of his science ; for what are they but the results of experiment and observation on the hu- man heart, performed by artists of far other skill and power than his ? They are facts which could have only been ascertained by Homer, by Dante, by Shakspeare, by Cervantes, by Milton. Every year of admiration since the unknown period when the Iliad first gave delight, has extorted new proofs of the justness of the picture of hu- man nature, from the responding hearts of the admirers. Every strong feeling which these masters have excited is a successful repetition of their original experiment, and a continually growing evidence of the greatness of their dis- coveries. Quotations of this nature may be the most satisfactory, as well as the most delightful, proofs of philosophical positions. Others of in- ferior merit are not to be interdicted : a pointed maxim, especially when familiar, pleases, and is recollected. I cannot entirely conquer my pas- sion for the Roman and Stoical declamation of some passages in Lucan and Akenside. But DISSERTATION SECOND. 397 quotations from those who have written on phi- losophy in verse, or, in other words, from those who generally are inferior philosophers, and vo- luntarily deliver their doctrines in the most dis- advantageous form, seem to be unreasonable. It is agreeable, no doubt, to the philosopher, still more to the youthful student, to meet his abstruse ideas clothed in the sonorous verse of Akenside. The surprise of the unexpected union of verse with science is a very lawful enjoyment. But such slight and momentary pleasures, though they may tempt the writer to display them, do not excuse a vain effort to obtrude them on the sym- pathy of the searcher after truth in after-times. It is peculiarly unlucky that Dr Brown should have sought supposed ornament from the moral common-places of Thomson, rather than from that illustration of philosophy which is really to be found in his picturesque strokes. Much more need not be said of Dr Brown's own poetry, somewhat voluminous as it is, than that it indicates fancy and feeling, and rose at least to the rank of an elegant accomplish- ment. It may seem a paradox, but it appears to me that he is really most poetical in those poems and passages which have the most pro- perly metaphysical character. For every various form of life and nature, when it is habitually contemplated, may inspire feeling ; and the just representation of these feelings may be poe- tical. Dr Brown observed man, and his wider world, with the eye of a metaphysician; and the dark results of such contemplations, when he reviewed them, often filled his soul with feelings which, being both grand and melan- choly, were truly poetical. Unfortunately, how- ever, few readers can be touched with fellow- feeling. He sings to few, and must be content with sometimes moving a string in the soul of the lonely visionary, who, in the day-dreams of youth, has felt as well as meditated on the mys- teries of nature. His heart has produced charm- ing passages in all his poems ; but, generally speaking, they are only beautiful works of art and imitation. The choice of Akenside as a fa- vourite and a model may, without derogation from that writer, be considered as no proof of a poetically formed mind. 1 There is more poetry in many single lines of Cowper than in volumes of sonorous verses such as Akenside's. Philoso- phical poetry is very different from versified philosophy. The former is the highest exertion of genius, the latter cannot be ranked above the slighter amusements of ingenuity. Dr Brown's poetry was, it must be owned, composed either of imitations, which, with some exceptions, may be produced and read without feeling, or of effu- sions of such feelings only as meet a rare and faint echo in the human breast. A few words only can here be bestowed on the intellectual part of his philosophy. It is an open revolt against the authority of Reid ; and, by a curious concurrence, he began to lecture nearly at the moment when the doctrines of that phi- losopher came to be taught with applause in France. Mr Stewart had dissented from the language of Reid, and had widely departed from his opinions on several secondary theories. Dr Brown rejected them entirely. He very justly considered the claim of Reid to the merit of de- tecting the universal delusion which had be- trayed philosophers into the belief that ideas which were the sole objects of knowledge had a separate existence, as a proof of his having mis* taken their illustrative language for a metaphy- sical opinion ; e but he does not do justice to the service which Reid really rendered to mental science, by keeping the attention of all future speculators in a state of more constant watchful- ness against the transient influence of such an illusion. His choice of the term feeling* to de- note the operations which we usually refer to the understanding, is evidently too wide a de- parture from its ordinary use, to have any pro- bability of general adoption. No definition can strip so familiar a word of the thoughts and emotions which have so long accompanied it, so as to fit it for a technical term of the highest 1 His accomplished friend Mr Erskine confesses that Brown's poems " are not written in the language of plain and gross emotion. The string touched is too delicate for general sympathy. They are in an unknown tongue to one half" (h might have said nineteen twentieths) " of the reading part of the community." (WELSH'S Life of Brown^ p. 431.) * BROWN'S Lectures, vol. II. p. 1-49. Ibid. vol. I. p. 220, &c. 398 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. abstraction. If we can be said to have a feeling " of the equality of the angle of forty-five degrees to half the angle of ninety degrees," x we may call Geometry and Arithmetic sciences of feeling. He has very forcibly stated the necessity of assum- ing " the primary universal intuitions of direct be- lief" which, in their nature, are incapable of all proof. They seem to be accurately described as notions which cannot be conceived separately, but without which nothing can be conceived. They are not only necessary to reasoning and to belief, but to thought itself. It is equally im- possible to prove or to disprove them. He has very justly blamed the school of Reid for " an extravagant and ridiculous" multiplication of those principles which he truly represents as inconsistent with sound philosophy. To philo- sophize is indeed nothing more than to simplify securely. 2 The substitution of suggestion for the former phrase, association of ideas, would hardly deserve notice in so cursory a view, if it had not led him to a serious misconception of the doctrines and deserts of other philosophers. The fault of the latter phrase is rather in the narrowness of the last, than in the inadequacy of the first word. Association presents the fact in the light of a re- lation between two mental acts. Suggestion de- notes rather the power of the one to call up the other. But whether we say that the sight of ashes suggests fire, or that the ideas of fire and ashes are associated, we mean to convey the same fact ; and, in both cases, an exact thinker means to accompany the fact with no hypothe- sis. Dr Brown has supposed the word associa- tion as intended to affirm that there was some " intermediate process" 3 between the original succession of the mental acts, and the power which they acquired therefrom of calling up each other. This is quite as much to raise up imaginary antagonists for the honour of con- quering them, as he justly reprehends Dr Reid for doing in the treatment of preceding philoso- phers. He falls into another more important and unaccountable error, in representing his own reduction of Mr Hume's principles of association (resemblance, contrariety, causation, contiguity in time or place) to the one principle of conti- guity, as a discovery of his own, by which his theory is distinguished from " the universal opinion of philosophers." 4 Nothing but too ex- clusive a consideration of the doctrines of the Scottish school could have led him to speak thus of what was hinted by Aristotle, distinctly laid down by Hobbes, and fully unfolded both by Hartley and Condillac. He has, however, ex- tremely enlarged the proof and the illustration of this law of mind, by the exercise of "a more subtile analysis," and the disclosure of " a finer species of proximity." 5 As he has thus aided and confirmed, though he did not discover the general law, so he has rendered a new and very important service to mental science, by what he properly calls " secondary laws of suggestion" 6 or association, circumstances which modify the action of the general law, and must be distinct- ly considered, in order to explain its connection with the phenomena. The enumeration and exposition are instructive, and the example is worthy of commendation. For it is in this lower region of science that most remains to be dis- covered ; it is that which rests most on observa- tion, and least tempts to controversy ; it is by improvements in that part of knowledge that the foundations are secured, and the whole building so repaired as to rest steadily on them. The distinction of common language between the head and the heart, which, as we have seen, is so often overlooked or misapplied by metaphy- sicians, is, in the system of Brown, signified by the terms " mental states" and " emotions." It is unlucky that no single word could be found for the former, and that the use of " feeling," as the generic term, should disturb its easy 1 BROWN'S Lectures, vol. I. p. 222. * Dr Brown always expresses himself best where he is short and familiar. " An hypothesis is nothing more than a rea- son for making one experiment or observation rather than another." (Lectures, vol. I. p. 1?0.) In Ifil2, as the present writer observed to him that Reid and Hume differed more in words than in opinion, he answered, " Yes, Reid bawled out, we must believe an outward world ; but added in a whisper, we can give no reason for our belief. Hume cries out, we can give no reason for such a notion ; and whispers, I own we cannot get rid of it." 3 Lectures, vol. II. p. 335-347- 4 Ibid. vol. II. p. 349. s Ibid. vol. II. p. 218, &C. 6 Ibid. vol. II. p. 270. DISSERTATION SECOND. 399 comprehension when it is applied more natu- rally. In our more proper province he has followed Butler, who appears to have been chiefly known to him through Mr Stewart, in the theory of the social affections. Their disinterestedness is en- forced by the arguments of both these philoso- phers, as well as of Hutcheson. 1 It is observ- able, however, that he applies the principle of suggestion or association boldly to this part of human nature, and seems inclined to refer to it even sympathy itself. 2 It is hard to understand how, with such a disposition on the subject of a principle so generally thought ultimate as Sym- pathy., he should, inconsistently with himself, fol- low Mr Stewart in representing the theory which derives the affections from association as " a Modification of the Selfish System." 3 He mistakes that theory by stating, that it derives the affec- tions from our experience that our own interest was connected with that of others ; while in truth it considers our regard to our own interest as formed from the same original pleasures by association, which, by the like process, may and do directly generate affections towards others, without passing through the channel of regard to our general happiness. But, says he, this is only an hypothesis, since the formation of these affections is acknowledged to belong to a time of which there is no remembrance;* an objec- tion fatal to every theory of any mental function, subversive, for example, of Berkeley's discovery of acquired visual perception, and most strange- ly inconsistent in the mouth of a philosopher whose numerous simplifications of mental theory are and must be founded on occurrences which precede experience. It is in all other cases, and it must be in this, sufficient that the principle of the theory is really existing, that it explains the appearances, that its supposed action resembles what we know to be its action in those similar cases of which we have direct experience. Last- ly, he in express words admits that, according to the theory to which he objects, we have af- fections which are at present disinterested. 5 Is it not a direct contradiction in terms to call such a theory " a modification of the selfish system?" His language in the sequel clearly indicates a distrust of his own statement, and a suspicion that he is not only inconsistent, but altogether mistaken. 6 As we enter more deeply into the territory of Ethics, we at length discover in Brown a distinc- tion, the neglect of which by preceding specula- tors we have more than once lamented as pro- ductive of obscurity and confusion : " The moral affections," says he, " which I consider at present, I consider rather physiologically" (or, as he elsewhere better expresses it, " psycholo- gically") " than ethically, as parts of our mental constitution, not as involving the fulfilment or vio- lation of duties." 7 He immediately, however, loses sight of this distinction, and reasons incon- sistently with it, instead of following it to its proper consequences in his explanation of con- science. Perhaps, indeed, (for the words are capable of more than one sense,) he meant to distinguish the virtuous affections from those sentiments which have morality exclusively in view, rather than to distinguish the theory of moral sentiment from the attempt to ascertain the characteristic quality of right action. Friend- ship is conformable in its dictates to morality; but it may, and does exist, without any view to it. He who feels the affections, and performs the duties of friendship, is the object of that distinct emotion which is called moral appro- bation. It is on the subject of conscience that, in imi- tation of Mr Stewart, and with no other argu- ments than his, he makes bis chief stand against the theory which considers the formation of that master faculty itself as probably referable to the necessary and universal operation of those laws of human nature to which he himself ascribes almost every other state of mind. On both sides of this question the supremacy of conscience is alike held to be venerable and absolute. Once * BROWN'S Lectures, vol. III. p. 248. Ibid. vol. III. p. 282. Ibid. vol. IV. p. 82, et seq. 4 lUd. vol. IV. p. 87. * Ibid. vol. IV. p. 87. Ibid. vol. IV. p. 94-97. ' Ibid. vol. III. p. 231. 400 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. more, be it remembered, that the question is purely philosophical, and is only whether, from the impossibility of explaining its formation by more general laws, we are reduced to the neces- sity of considering it as an original fact in hu- man nature, of which no further account can be given. Let it, however, be also remembered, that we are not driven to this supposition by the mere circumstance, that no satisfactory ex- planation has yet appeared ; for there are many analogies in an unexplained state of mind to states already explained, which may justify us in believing that the explanation requires only more accurate observation, and more patient meditation, to be brought to that completeness which it probably will attain. SECTION VII. GENERAL REMARKS. HAVING thus again premised an already often repeated warning, it remains that we should offer a few observations on the questions so understood, which naturally occur on the con- sideration of Dr Brown's argument in sup- port of the proposition, that moral approbation is not only in its mature state independent of and superior to any other principle of human nature, regarding which there is no dispute, but that its origin is altogether inexplicable, and that its existence is an ultimate fact in mental science. Though these observations are imme- diately occasioned by the perusal of Brown, they are yet, in the main, of a general nature, and might have been made without reference to any particular writer. The term Suggestion, which might be inof- fensive in describing merely intellectual asso- ciations, becomes peculiarly unsuitable when it is applied to those combinations of thought with emotion, and to those unions of feeling, which compose the emotive nature of man. Its com- mon sense of a sign recalling the thing signified, always embroils the new sense vainly forced upon it. No one can help owning, that if it were consistently pursued, so as that we were to speak of suggesting a feeling or passion, the lan- guage would be universally thought absurd. To suggest love or hatred is a mode of expression so manifestly incongruous, that most readers would choose to understand it as suggesting reflections on the subject of these passages. Suggest would not be understood by any common reason as sy- nonymous with revive or rekindle. Defects of the same sort may indeed be found in the pa- rallel phrases of most if not all philosophers, and all of them proceed from the same source, namely, the erroneous but prevalent notion, that the law of association produces only such a close union of a thought and a feeling, as gives one the power of reviving the other ; instead of the truth, that it forms them into a new compound, in which the properties of the component parts are no longer discoverable, and which may itself become a substantive principle of human nature. They supposed the condition, produced by its power, to resemble that of material substances in a state of mechanical diffusion ; whereas in reality it may be better likened to a chemical combination of the same substances, from which a totally new product arises. The language in- volves a confusion of the question which relates to the origin of the principles of human activity, with the other and far more important question which relates to their nature; and as soon as this distinction is hidden, the theorist is either betrayed into the selfish system by a desire of clearness and simplicity, or tempted to the need- less multiplication of ultimate facts by mistaken anxiety for what he supposes to be the guards of our social and moral nature. The defect is com- mon to Brown with his predecessors, but in him less excusable ; for he saw the truth and recoil- ed from it. DISSERTATION SECOND. 401 It is the main defect of the terra association itself, that it does not, without long habit, convey the notion of a perfect union, but rather leads to that of a combination which may be dissolved, if not at pleasure, at least with the help of care and exertion ; which is utterly and dangerously false in the important cases where such unions are considered as constituting the most essential principles of human nature. Men can no more dissolve these unions than they can disuse their habit of judging of distance by the eye, and often by the ear. But suggestion implies, that what suggests is separate from what is suggest- ed, and consequently negatives that unity in an active principle which the whole analogy of na- ture, as well as our own direct consciousness, shows to be perfectly compatible with its origin in composition. Large concessions are, in the first place, to be remarked, which must be stated, because they very much narrow the matter in dispute. Those who, before Brown, contended against beneficial tendency as the standard of morality, have either shut their eyes on the connection of vir- tue with general utility ; or carelessly and ob- scurely allowed, without further remark, a con- nection which is at least one of the most re- markable and important of ethical facts. He acts more boldly, and avowedly discusses " the relation of virtue to utility." He was compell- ed by that discussion to make those concessions which so much abridge this controversy. " Uti- lity and virtue are so related, that there is per- haps no action generally felt to be virtuous, which it would not be beneficial that all men in similar circumstances should imitate." 1 " In every case of benefit or injury willingly done, there arise certain emotions of moral appro- bation or disapprobation." 2 " The intentional produce of evil, as pure evil, is always hated ; and that of good, as pure good, always loved." 3 All virtuous acts are thus admitted to be uni- versally beneficial ; morality and the general benefit are acknowledged always to coincide. It is hard to say, then, why they should not be re- ciprocally tests of each other, though in a very different way ; the virtuous feelings, fitted as they are by immediate appearance, by quick and powerful action, being sufficient tests of mora- lity in the moment of action, and for all prac- tical purposes ; while the consideration of ten- dency to general happiness, a more obscure and slowly discoverable quality, should be applied in general reasoning, as a test of the sentiments and dispositions themselves. It has been thus employed, and no proof has been attempted, that it has ever deceived those who used it in the pro- per place. It has uniformly served to justify our moral constitution, and to show how reasonable it is for us to be guided in action by our higher feelings. At all events it should be, but has not been considered, that from these concessions alone it follows, that beneficial tendency is at least one constant property of virtue. Is not this, in effect, an admission that beneficial tendency does dis- tinguish virtuous acts and dispositions from those which we call vicious? If the criterion be in- complete or delusive, let its faults be specified, and let some other quality be pointed out, which, either singly or in combination with beneficial tendency 5 may more perfectly indicate the dis- tinction. But let us not be assailed by arguments which leave untouched its value as a test, and are in truth directed only against its fitness as an im- mediate incentive and guide to right action. To those who contend for its use in the latter cha- racter, it must be left to defend, if they can, so untenable a position. But all others must re- gard as pure sophistry the use of arguments against it as a test, which really show nothing more than its acknowledged unfitness to be a motive. When voluntary benefit and voluntary injury are pointed out as the main, if not the sole ob- jects of moral approbation and disapprobation, when we are told truly, that the production of good, as good, is always loved, and that of evil, 1 Lectures, vol. IV. p. 45. The unphilosophical word " perhaps" must be struck out of the proposition, unless the whole be considered as a mere conjecture. It Limits no affirmation, but destroys it, by converting it into a guess. See the like concession, vol. IV. p. 33, with some words interlarded, which betray a sort of reluctance and fluctuation, indicative of the difficulty with which Brown struggled to withhold his assent from truths which he unreasonably dreaded. Ibid. vol. III. p. 567. Ibid. vol. III. p. 021. DISS. II. 3 402 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. as such, always hated, can we require a more clear, short, and unanswerable proof, that bene- ficial tendency is an essential quality of virtue ? It is indeed an evidently necessary consequence of this statement, that if benevolence be amiable in itself, our affection for it must increase with its extent ; and that no man can be in a per- fectly right state of mind, who, if he consider general happiness at all, is not ready to acknow- ledge that a good man must regard it as being in its own nature the most desirable of all objects, however the constitution and circumstances of human nature may render it unfit or impossible to pursue it directly as the object of life. It is at the same time apparent that no such man can consider any habitual disposition, clearly discerned to be in its whole result at variance with general happiness, as not unworthy of being cultivated, or as not fit to be rooted out. It is manifest that, if it were otherwise, he would cease to be benevolent. As soon as we conceive the sublime idea of a Being who not only fore- sees, but commands, all the consequences of the actions of all voluntary agents, this scheme of reasoning appears far more clear. In such a case, if our moral sentiments remain the same, they compel us to attribute his whole govern- ment of the world to benevolence. The conse- quence is as necessary as in any process of rea- son ; for if our moral nature be supposed, it will appear self-evident, that it is as much im- possible for us to love and revere such a Being, if we ascribe to him a mixed or Imperfect bene- volence, as to believe the most positive contra- diction in terms. Now, as religion consists in that love and reverence, it is evident that it can- not subsist without a belief in benevolence as the sole principle of divine government. It is nothing to tell us that this is not a process of reasoning, or, to speak more exactly, that the first propositions are assumed. The first propo- sitions in every discussion relating to intellectual operations must likewise be assumed. Con- science is not reason, but it is not less an es- sential part of human nature than reason. Prin- ciples which are essential to all its operations are as much entitled to immediate and implicit assent, as those principles which stand in the same relation to the reasoning faculties. The laws prescribed by a benevolent Being to his creatures must necessarily be founded on the principle of promoting their happiness. It would be singular indeed, if the proofs of the goodness of God, legible in every part of nature, should not, above all others, be most discoverable and conspicuous in the beneficial tendency of his moral laws. But we are asked, if tendency to general wel- fare be the standard of virtue, why is it not al- ways present to the contemplation of every man who does or prefers a virtuous action ? Mijst not utility be in that case " the felt essence of virtue ?" l Why arc other ends, besides general happiness, fit to be morally pursued ? These questions, which are all founded on that confusion of the theory of actions with the theory of sentiments, against which the reader was so early warned, 2 might be dismissed with no more than a reference to that distinction from the forgetfulness of which they have arisen. By those advocates of utility, indeed, who hold it to be a necessary part of their system, that some glimpse at least of tendency to personal or ge- neral wellberng is an essential part of the mo- tives which render an action virtuous, these questions cannot be satisfactorily answered. Against such they are arguments of irresistible force ; but against the doctrine itself, rightly understood and justly bounded, they are alto- gether powerless. The reason why there may, and must be, many ends morally more fit to be pursued in practice than general happiness, is plainly to be found in the limited capacity of man. A perfectly good Being, who foresees and commands all the consequences of action, can- not indeed be conceived by us to have any other end in view than general wellbeing. Why evil exists under that perfect government, is a ques- tion towards the solution of which the human understanding can scarcely advance a single step. But all who hold the evil to exist only for good, and own their inability to explain why or how, 1 Lectures, vol. IV. p. 38. See supra, p. 297-299. DISSERTATION SECOND. 403 are perfectly exempt from any charge of incon- sistency in their obedience to the dictates of their moral nature. The measure of the faculties of man renders it absolutely necessary for him to have many other practical ends ; the pursuit of all of which is moral, when it actually tends to general happiness, though that last end never entered into the contemplation of the agent. It is impossible for us to calculate the eifects of a single action, any more than the chances of a single life. But let it not be hastily concluded, that the calculation of consequences is impossible in moral subjects. To calculate the general tendency of every sort of human action, is a possible, easy, and common operation. The ge- neral good effects of temperance, prudence, for- titude, justice, benevolence, gratitude, veracity, fidelity, of the affections of kindred, and of love for our country, are the subjects of calculations which, taken as generalities, are absolutely un- erring. They are founded on a larger and firmer basis of more uniform experience, than any of those ordinary calculations which govern pru- dent men in the whole business of life. An appeal to these daily and familiar transactions furnishes at once a decisive answer, both to those advocates of utility who represent the con- sideration of it as a necessary ingredient in vir- tuous motives, as well as moral approbation, and to those opponents who turn the unwar- rantable inferences of unskilful advocates into proofs of the absurdity into which the doctrine leads. The cultivation of all the habitual sentiments from which the various classes of virtuous actions flow the constant practice of such actions the strict observance of rules in all that province of Ethics which can be subjected to rules the watchful care of all the outworks of every part of duty, of that descending series of useful ha- bits which, being securities to virtue, become themselves virtues, are so many ends which it is absolutely necessary for man to pursue and to seek for their own sake. " I saw D'Alembert," says a very late writer, " congratulate a young man very coldly, who brought him a solution of a problem. The young man said, ' I have done this in order to have a seat in the Academy.' Sir,' answered D'Alem- bert, ' with such dispositions you never will earn one. Science must be loved for its own sake, and not for the advantage to be derived. No other principle will enable a man to make pro- gress in the sciences.' " * It is singular that D'Alembert should not perceive the extensive application of this truth to the whole nature of man. No man can make progress in a virtue who does not seek it for its own sake. No man is a friend, a lover of his country, a kind father, a dutiful son, who does not consider the culti- vation of affection and the performance of duty in all these cases respectively as incumbent on him for their own sake, and not for the advan- tage to be derived from them. Whoever serves another with a view of advantage to himself is universally acknowledged not to act from affec- tion. But the more immediate application of this truth to our purpose is, that in the case of those virtues which are the means of cultivating and preserving other virtues, it is necessary to acquire love and reverence for the secondary virtues for their own sake, without which they never will be effectual means of sheltering and strengthening those intrinsically higher qualities to which they are appointed to minister. Every moral act must be considered as an end, and men must banish from their practice the regard to the most naturally subordinate duty as a means. Those who are perplexed by the supposition that secondary virtues, making up by the extent of their beneficial tendency for what in each particular instance they may want in magnitude, may become of as great importance as the pri- mary virtues themselves, would do well to con- sider a parallel though very homely case. A house is useful for many purposes: many of these purposes are in themselves, for the time, more important than shelter. The destruction of the house may, nevertheless, become a greater evil than the defeat of several of these purposes, because it is permanently convenient, and indeed necessary to the execution of most of them. A 1 Mimoires de Montlosier, vol. I. p. 50. PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. floor is made for warmth, for dryness to sup- port tables, chairs, beds, and all the household implements which contribute to accommodation and to pleasure. The floor is valuable only as a means ; but, as the only means by which many ends are attained, it may be much more valuable than some of them. The table might be, and generally is, of more valuable timber than the floor ; but the workman who should for that rea- son take more pains in making the table strong than the floor secure would not long be employ- ed by customers of common sense. The connec- tion of that part of morality which regulates the intercourse of the sexes with benevolence, affords the most striking instance of the very great im- portance which may belong to a virtue, in itself secondary, but on which the general cultivation of the highest virtues permanently depends. Delicacy and modesty may be thought chiefly worthy of cultivation, because they guard purity ; but they must be loved for their own sake, with- out which they cannot flourish. Purity is the sole school of domestic fidelity, and domestic fidelity is the only nursery of the affections be- tween parents and children, from children to- wards each other, and, through these affections, of all the kindness which renders the world habit- able. At each step in the progress, the appropriate end must be loved for its own sake ; and it is easy to see how the only means of sowing the seeds of benevolence, in all its forms, may become of far greater importance than many of the modi- fications and exertions even of benevolence it- self. To those who will consider this subject, it will not long seem strange that the sweetest and most gentle affections grow up only under the apparently cold and dark shadow of stern duty. The obligation is strengthened, not weak- ened, by the consideration that it arises from human imperfection; which only proves it to be founded on the nature of man. It is enough that the pursuit of all these separate ends leads to general wellbeing, the promotion of which is the final purpose of the creation. The last and most specious argument against beneficial tendency, even as a test, is conveyed in the question, why moral approbation is not be- stowed on every thing beneficial, instead of be- ing confined, as it confessedly is, to voluntary acts. It may plausibly be said, that the esta- blishment of the beneficial tendency of all those voluntary acts which are the objects of moral approbation is not sufficient, since, if such ten- dency be the standard, it ought to follow, that whatever is useful should also be morally ap- proved. To answer, as has before been done, 1 that experience gradually limits moral approba- tion and disapprobation to voluntary acts, by teaching us that they influence the will, but are wholly wasted if they be applied to any other object, though the fact be true, and contributes somewhat to the result, is certainly not enough. It is at best a partial solution. Perhaps, on re- consideration, it is entitled only to a secondary place. To seek a foundation for universal, ar- dent, early, and immediate feelings, in processes of an intellectual nature, has, since the origin of philosophy, been the grand error of ethical in- quirers into human nature. To seek for such a foundation in association, an early and insen- sible process, which confessedly mingles itself with the composition of our first and simplest feelings, and which is common to both parts of our nature, is not liable to the same ani- madversion. If conscience be uniformly pro- duced by the regular and harmonious co-opera- tion of many processes of association, the ob- jection is in reality a challenge to produce a complete theory of it, founded on that princi- ple, by exhibiting such a full account of all these processes as may satisfactorily explain why it proceeds thus far and no farther. This would be a very arduous attempt, arid perhaps it may be premature. But something may be more modestly tried towards an outline, which, though it might leave many particulars 'unex- plained, may justify a reasonable expectation that they are not incapable of explanation ; and may even now assign such reasons for the limi- tation of approbation to voluntary acts, as may convert the objection derived from that fact into a corroboration of the doctrines to which it has See supra, p. 356, 357. DISSERTATION SECOND, 405 been opposed as an insurmountable difficulty. Such an attempt will naturally lead to the close of the present Dissertation. The attempt has indeed been already made, 1 but not without great apprehensions on the part of the author that he has not been clear enough, especially in those parts which appeared to himself to owe most to his own reflection. He will now en- deavour, at the expense of some repetition, to be more satisfactory. There must be primary pleasures, pains, and even appetites, which arise from no prior state of mind, and which, if explained at all, can be derived only from bodily organization ; for if there were not, there could be no secondary de- sires. What the number of the underived prin- ciples may be, is a question to which the an- swers of philosophers have been extremely va- rious, and of which the consideration is not necessary to our present purpose. The rules of philosophizing, however, require that causes should not be multiplied without necessity. Of two explanations, therefore, which give an equally satisfactory account of appearances, that theory is manifestly to be preferred which sup- poses the smaller number of ultimate and inex- plicable principles. This maxim, it is true, is subject to three indispensable conditions. 1. That the principles employed in the explanation should be known really to exist : in which con- sists the main distinction between hypothesis and theory. Gravity is a principle universally known to exist ; ether and a nervous fluid are mere suppositions. 2. That these principles should be known to produce effects Mke those which are ascribed to them in the theory. This is a further distinction between hypothesis and theory; for there are an infinite number of de- grees of likeness, from the faint resemblances which have led some to fancy that the functions of the nerves depend on electricity, to the re- markable coincidences between the appearances of projectiles on earth, and the movements of the heavenly bodies, which constitutes the New- tonian system ; a theory now perfect, though exclusively founded on analogy, and in which one of the classes of phenomena brought toge- ther by it is not the subject of direct experience. 3. That it should correspond, if not with all the facts to be explained, at least with so great a majority of them as to render it highly proba- ble that means will in time be found of reconcil- ing it to all. It is only on this ground that the Newtonian system justly claimed the title of a legitimate theory during that long period when it was unable to explain many celestial appear- ances, before the labours of a century, and the genius of Laplace, at length completed the theory, by adapting it to all the phenomena. A theory may be just before it is complete. In the application of these canons to the theory which derives most of the principles of human action from the transfer of a small num- ber of pleasures, perhaps organic, by the law of association to a vast variety of new objects, it cannot be denied, \st. That it satisfies the first of the above conditions, inasmuch as association is really one of the laws of human nature ; 2dly, That it also satisfies the second, for association certainly produces effects like those which are referred to it by this theory, otherwise .there would be no secondary desires, no acquired re- lishes and dislikes ; facts universally acknow- ledged, which are and can be explained only by the principle called by Hobbes mental discourse; by Locke, Hume, Hartley, Condillac, and the majority of speculators, as well as in common speech, association; by Tucker, translation; and by Brown, suggestion. The facts generally referred to the principle resemble those which are claimed for it by the theory in this important particular, that in both cases equally, pleasure becomes attached to perfectly new things, so that the derivative desires become perfectly in- dependent on the primary. The great dissimi- larity of these two classes of passions has been supposed to consist in this, that the former al- ways regards the interest of the individual, while the latter regards the welfare of others. The philosophical world has been almost entirely di- vided into two sects ; the partisans of selfishness, comprising mostly all the predecessors of Butler, See tupra, p. 346-7, 365-9. 406 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. and the greater part of his successors ; and the advocates of benevolence, who have generally contended that the reality of disinterestedness de- pends on its being a primary principle. Enough has been said by Butler against the more fa- tal heresy of selfishness. Something has al- ready been said against the error of the ad- vocates of disinterestedness, in the progress of this attempt to develope ethical truths histo- rically, in the order in which inquiry and con- troversy brought them out with increasing brightness. The analogy of the material world is indeed faint, and often delusive; yet we dare not utterly reject that on which the whole technical language of mental and moral science is necessarily grounded. The whole creation teems with instances where the most powerful agents and the most lasting bodies are the ac- knowledged results of the composition, some- times of a few, often of many elements. These compounds often in their turn become the ele- ments of other substances ; and it is with them that we are conversant chiefly in the pursuits of knowledge, solely in the concerns of life. No man ever fancied, that because they were com- pounds, they were therefore less real. It is impossible to confound them with any of the separate elements which contribute towards their formation. But a much more close resem- blance presents itself. Every secondary desire, or acquired relish, involves in it a transfer of pleasure to something which was before indiffer- ent or disagreeable. Is the new pleasure the less real for being acquired ? Is it not often pre- ferred to the original enjoyment ? Are not many of these secondary pleasures indestructible ? Do not many of them survive primary appetites ? Lastly, the important principle of regard to our own general welfare, which disposes us to prefer it to immediate pleasure, unfortunately called self-love (as if, in any intelligible sense of the term love, it were possible for a man to love himself), is perfectly intelligible if its origin be ascribed to association, but utterly incompre- hensible if it be considered as prior to the appe- tites and desires, which alone furnish it with materials. As happiness consists of satisfactions, self-love presupposes appetites and desires which are to be satisfied. If the order of time were important, the affections are formed at an. earlier period than many self-regarding passions, and they always precede the formation of self-love. Many of tiie later advocates of the disinterest- ed system, though recoiling from an apparent approach to the selfishness into which the purest of their antagonists had occasionally fallen, were gradually obliged to make concessions to the derivative system, though clogged with the contradictory assertion, that it was only a refine- ment of selfishness: and we have seen that Brown, the last and not the least in genius of them, has nearly abandoned the greater, though not indeed the most important part of the terri- tory in dispute, and scarcely contends for any underived principle but the moral faculty. In this state of opinion among the very small number in Great Britain who still preserve some remains of a taste for such speculations, it is needless here to trace the application of the law of association to the formation of the secondary desires, whether private or social. For our pre- sent purposes, the explanation of their origin may be assumed to be satisfactory. In what follows, it must, however, be steadily borne in mind, that this concession im r olves an admission that the pleasure derived from low objects may be transferred to the most pure ; that from a part of a self-regarding appetite such a pleasure may become a portion of a perfectly disinterest- ed desire ; and that the disinterested nature and absolute independence of the latter are not in the slightest degree impaired by the considera- tion, that it is formed by one of those grand mental processes to which the formation of the other habitual states of the human mind have been, with great probability, ascribed. When the social affections are thus formed, they are naturally followed in every instance by the will to do whatever can promote their object. Compassion excites a voluntary determination to do whatever relieves the person pitied. The like process must occur in every case of grati- tude, generosity, and affection. Nothing so uniformly follows the kind disposition as the act of will, because it is the only means by which the benevolent desire can be gratified. The re- sult of what Brown justly calls "a finer analysis," shows a mental contiguity of the affection to the DISSERTATION SECOND. 407 volition to be much closer than appears on a coarser examination of this part of our nature. No wonder, then, that the strongest association, the most active power of reciprocal suggestion, should subsist between them. As all the affec- tions are delightful, so the volitions, voluntary acts which are the only means of their gratifica- tion, become agreeable objects of contemplation to the mind. The habitual disposition to per- form them is felt in ourselves, and observed in others, with satisfaction. As these feelings be- come more lively, the absence of them may be viewed in ourselves with a pain, in others with an alienation capable of indefinite increase. They become entirely independent sentiments; still, however, receiving constant supplies of nourish- ment from their parent affections, which, in well-balanced minds, reciprocally strengthen each other; unlike the unkind passions, which are constantly engaged in the most angry con- flicts of civil war. In this state we desire to experience these beneficent volitions, to cultivate a disposition towards them, and to do every cor- respondent voluntary act. They are for their own sake the objects of desire. They thus constitute a large portion of those emotions, desires, and affections, which regard certain dispositions of the mind and determinations of the will as their sole and ultimate end. These are what are called the moral sense, the moral sentiments, or best though most simply, by the ancient name of Con- science; which has the merit, in our language, of being applied to no other purpose, which pecu- liarly marks the strong working of these feelings on conduct, and which, from its solemn and sacred character, is well adapted to denote the vener- able authority of the highest principle of human nature. Nor is this all : It has already been seen that not only sympathy with the sufferer, but indig- nation against the wrong-doer, contributes a large and important share towards the moral feelings. We are angry at those who disappoint our wish for the happiness of others. We make the resentment of the innocent person wronged our own. Our moderate anger approves all well-proportioned punishment of the wrong-doer. We hence approve those dispositions and actions of voluntary agents which promote such suitable punishment, and disapprove those which hinder its infliction or destroy its effect; at the head of which may be placed that excess of punish- ment beyond the average feelings of good men which turns the indignation of the calm by- stander against the culprit into pity. In this state, when anger is duly moderated, when it is proportioned to the wrong, when it is detached from personal considerations, when dispositions and actions are its ultimate objects, it becomes a sense of justice, and is so purified as to be fitted to be a new element of conscience. There is no part of morality which is so directly aided by a conviction of the necessity of its ob- servance to the general interest, as justice. The connection between them is discoverable by the most common understanding. All public deli- berations profess the public welfare to be their object; all laws propose it as their end. This calm principle of public utility serves to me- diate between the sometimes repugnant feelings which arise in the punishment of criminals, by repressing undue pity on one hand, and re- ducing resentment to its proper level on the other. Hence the unspeakable importance of criminal laws as a part of the moral education of mankind. Whenever they carefully conform to the moral sentiments of the age and country, when they are withheld from approaching the limits within which the disapprobation of good men would confine punishment, they contribute in the highest degree to increase the ignominy of crimes, to make men recoil from the first sug- gestions of criminality, and to nourish and ma- ture the sense of justice, which lends new vigour to the conscience with which it has been united. Other contributary streams present them- selves. Qualities which are necessary to virtue, but may be subservient to vice, may, independ- ently of that excellence or of that defect, be in themselves admirable. Courage, energy, deci- sion, are of this nature. In their wild state they are often savage and destructive. When they are tamed by the society of the affections, and trained up in obedience to the moral facul- ty, they become virtues of the highest order, and, by their name of magnanimity, proclaim the general sense of mankind that they are the characteristic qualities of a great soul. They 408 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. retain whatever was admirable in their unre- claimed state, together with all that they borrow from their new associate and their high ruler. Their nature, it must be owned, is prone to evil ; but this propensity does not hinder them from being rendered capable of being ministers of good, in a state where the gentler virtues re- quire to be vigorously guarded against the attacks of daring depravity. It is thus that the strength of the well-educated elephant is sometimes em- ployed in vanquishing the fierceness of the tiger, and sometimes used as a means of defence against the shock of his brethren of the same species. The delightful contemplation, however, of these qualities, when purely applied, becomes one of the sentiments of which the dispositions and actions of voluntary agents are the direct and final object. By this resemblance they are associated with the other moral principles, and with them con- tribute to form Conscience, which, as the master faculty of the soul, levies such large contribu- tions on every province of human nature. It is important, in this point of view, to con- sider also the moral approbation which is un- doubtedly bestowed on those dispositions and ac- tions of voluntary agents which terminate in their own satisfaction, security, and wellbeing. They have been called duties to ourselves, as absurd- ly as a regard to our own greatest happiness is called self-love. But it cannot be reasonably doubted, that intemperance, improvidence, ti- midity, even when considered only in relation to the individual, are not only regretted as im- prudent, but blamed as morally wrong. It was excellently observed by Aristotle, that a man is not commended as temperate, so long as it costs him efforts of self-denial to persevere in the practice of temperance, but only when he pre- fers that virtue for its own sake. He is not meek, nor brave, as long as the most vigorous self- command is necessary to bridle his anger or his fear. On the same principle, he may be judi- cious or prudent ; but he is not benevolent if he confers benefits with a view to his own greatest happiness. In like manner, it is ascertained by experience, that all the masters of science and of art that all those who have successfully pursued truth and knowledge love them for their own sake, without regard to the gene- rally imaginary dower of interest, or even to the dazzling crown which fame may place on their heads. 1 But it may still be reasonably asked, why these useful qualities are morally im- proved, and how they become capable of being combined with those public and disinterested sentiments which principally constitute con- science ? The answer is, because they are en- tirely conversant with volitions and voluntary actions, and in that respect resemble the other constituents of conscience, with which they are thereby fitted to mingle and coalesce. Like those other principles, they may be detached from what is personal and outward, and fixed on the dispositions and actions, which are the only means of promoting their ends. The sequence of these principles and acts of will becomes so fre- quent, that the association between both may be as firm as in the former cases. All those senti- ments of which the final object is astateof the will, become thus intimately and inseparably blended ; and of that perfect state of solution (if such words may be allowed) the result is Conscience the judge and arbiter of human conduct ; which, though it does not supersede ordinary mo- tives of virtuous feelings and habits, which are the ordinary motives of good actions, yet exer- cises a lawful authority even over them, and ought to blend with them. Whatsoever actions and dispositions are approved by conscience acquire the name of virtues or duties : they are pronounced to deserve commendation ; and we are justly considered as under amoral obligation to practise the actions and cultivate the dispositions. The coalition of the private and public feel- 1 See the Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties, a discourse forming the first part of the third volume of the Library of Entertaining Knowledge, London, 1829. The author of this Essay, for it can be no other than Mr Brougham, will by others be placed at the head of those who, in the midst of arduous employments, and surrounded by all the allurements of society, yet find leisure for exerting the unwearied vigour of their minds in every mode of rendering permanent service to the hu- man species ; more especially in spreading a love of knowledge, and diffusing useful truth among all classes of men. These voluntary occupations deserve our attention still less as examples of prodigious power than as proofs of an intimate con- viction, which binds them by unity of purpose with his public duties, that (to use the almost dying words of an excellent person) " man can neither be happy without virtue, nor actively virtuous without liberty, nor securely free without rational knowledge." (Close of Sir W. JONES'S last Discourse to tlie Asiatic Society of Calcutta.) DISSERTATION SECOND. 409 ings is very remarkable in two points of view, from which it seems hitherto to have been scarce- ly observed. First, It illustrates very forcibly all that has been here offered to prove, that the peculiar character of the moral sentiments con- sists in their exclusive reference to states of will, and that every feeling which has that quality, when it is purified from all admixture with dif- ferent objects, becomes capable of being absorb- ed into Conscience, and of being assimilated to it, so as to become a part of it. For no feelings can be more unlike each other in their object than the private and the social ; and yet, as both employ voluntary actions as their sole immedi- ate means, both may be transferred by associa- tion to states of the will, in which case they are transmuted into moral sentiments. No exam- ple of the coalition of feelings in their general nature less widely asunder, could afford so much support to this position. Secondly, By raising qualities useful to ourselves to the rank of virtues, it throws a strong light on the relation of virtue to individual interest; very much as justice illus- trates the relation of morality to general interest. The coincidence of morality with individual inte- rest is an important truth in Ethics. It is most manifest in that part of Ethics which we are now considering. A calm regard to our general interest is indeed a faint and infrequent motive of action. Its chief advantage is, that it is re- gular, and that its movements may be calculat- ed. In deliberate conduct it may often be relied on, though perhaps never safely without know- ledge of the whole temper and character. But in moral reasoning at least, the coincidence is of unspeakable advantage. If there be a miser- able man who has cold affections, a weak sense of justice, dim perceptions of right and wrong, and faint feelings of them; if, still more wretch- ed, his heart be constantly torn and devoured by malevolent passions the vultures of the soul ; we have one resource still left, even in cases so dreadful. Even he still retains a human principle, to which we can speak. He must own that he has some wish for his own lasting welfare. We can prove to him that bis state of mind is inconsistent with it. It may be impos- sible indeed to show, that while his disposition continues the same, he can derive any enjoy- ment from the practice of virtue. But it may be most clearly shown, that every advance in the amendment of that disposition is a step towards even temporal happiness. If he do not amend his character, we may compel him to own that he is at variance with himself, and offends against a principle of which even he must recognise the reasonableness. The formation of Conscience from so many elements, and especially the combination of ele- ments so unlike as the private desires and the social affections, early contributes to give it the appearance of that simplicity and independence which in its mature state really distinguish it. It becomes, from these circumstances, more dif- ficult to distinguish its separate principles ; and it is impossible to exhibit them in separate ac- tion. The affinity of these various passions to each other, which consists in their having no ob- ject but states of the will, is the only common pro- perty which strikes the mind. Hence the faci- lity with which the general terms, first probably limited to the relations between ourselves and others, are gradually extended to all voluntary acts and dispositions. Prudence and temper- ance become the objects of moral approbation. When imprudence is immediately disapproved by the by-stander, without deliberate considera- tion of its consequences, it is not only displeas- ing, as being pernicious, but it is blamed as wrong, though with a censure so much inferior to that bestowed on inhumanity and injustice, as may justify those writers who use the milder term improper. At length, when the general words come to signify the objects of moral ap- probation, and the reverse, they denote merely the power to excite feelings which are as inde- pendent as if they were underived, and which coalesce the more perfectly, because they are de- tached from objects so various and unlike as to render their return to their primitive state very difficult. ,The question, 1 why we do not morally approve the useful qualities of actions which are altogether involuntary, may now be shortly and satisfacto- DISS. II. 1 See tupra, p. 347- 3F 410 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. rily answered : because conscience is in perpe- tual contact, as it were, with all the dispositions and actions of voluntary agents, and is by that means indissolubly associated with them exclu- sively. It has a direct action on the will, and a constant mental contiguity to it. It has no such mental contiguity to involuntary changes. It has never perhaps been observed, that an opera- tion of the conscience precedes all acts deliber- ate enough to be in the highest sense voluntary, and does so as much when it is defeated as when it prevails. In either case the association is re- peated. It extends to the whole of the active man. All passions have a definite outward ob- ject to which they tend, and a limited sphere within which they act. But conscience has no object but a state of will ; and as an act of will is the sole means of gratifying any passion, conscience is co-extensive with the whole man, and without encroachment curbs or aids every feeling, even within the peculiar province of that feeling itself. As will is the universal means, conscience, which regards will, must be a uni- versal principle. As nothing is interposed be- tween conscience and the will when the mind is in its healthy state, the dictate of conscience is followed by the determination of the will, with a promptitude and exactness which very naturally is likened to the obedience of an inferior to the lawful commands of those whom he deems to be rightfully placed over him. It therefore seems clear, that on the theory which has been attempt- ed, moral approbation must be limited to volun- tary operations, and conscience must be universal, independent, and commanding. One remaining difficulty may perhaps be ob- jected to the general doctrines of this Disserta- tion, though it does not appear at any time to have been urged against other modifications of the same principle. " If moral approbation," it may be said, " involve no perception of beneficial tendency, whence arises the coincidence between that principle and the moral sentiments ?" It may seem at first sight, that such a theory rests the foundation of morals upon a coincidence al- together mysterious, and apparently capricious and fantastic. Waiving all other answers, let us at once proceed to that which seems conclusive. It is true that conscience rarely contemplates so distant an object as the welfare of all sentient beings. But to what point is every one of its elements directed ? What, for instance, is the aim of all the social affections ? Nothing but the production of larger or smaller masses of happi- ness among those of our fellow-creatures who are the objects of these affections. In every case these affections promote happiness, as far as their foresight and their power extend. What can be more conducive, or even necessary, to the being and wellbeing of society, than the rules of justice ? Are not the angry passions themselves, as far as they are ministers of morality, employed in re- moving hinderances to the welfare of ourselves and others, which is indirectly promoting it? The private passions terminate indeed in the happiness of the individual, which, however, is a part of general happiness, and the part over which we have most power. Every principle of which conscience is composed has some portion of happiness for its object. To that point they all converge. General happiness is not indeed one of the natural objects of conscience, because our voluntary acts are not felt and perceived to affect it. But how small a step is left for rea- son. It only casts up the items of the account. It has only to discover that the acts of those who labour to promote separate portions of happiness must increase the amount of the whole. It may be truly said, that if observation and experience did not clearly ascertain that beneficial tendency is the constant attendant and mark of all virtu- ous dispositions and actions, the same great truth would be revealed to us by the voice of conscience. The coincidence, instead of being arbitrary, arises necessarily from the laws of human nature, and the circumstances in which mankind are placed. We perform and approve virtuous actions, partly because conscience re- gards them as right, partly because we are prompted to them by good affections. All these affections contribute towards general wellbeing, though it were not necessary, nor would it be fit, that the agent should be distracted by the contemplation of that vast and remote object. The various relations of conscience to religion we have already been led to consider on the principles of Butler, of Berkeley, of Paley, and especially of Hartley, who was led by his own DISSERTATION SECOND. 411 piety to contemplate as the last and highest stage of virtue and happiness, a sort of self- annihilation, which, however unsuitable to the present condition of mankind, yet places in the strongest light the disinterested character of the system, of which it is a conceivable though perhaps not attainable result. The complete- ness and rigour acquired by conscience, when all its dictates are revered as the commands of a perfectly wise and good Being, are so obvious, that they cannot be questioned by any reason- able man, however extensive his incredulity may be. It is thus that conscience can add the warmth of an affection to the inflexibility of principle and habit. It is true that, in exa- mining the evidence of the divine original of a religious system, in estimating an imperfect re- ligion, or in comparing the demerits of religions of human origin, conscience must be the stand- ard chiefly applied. But it follows with equal clearness, that those who have the happiness to find satisfaction and repose in divine revela- tion, are bound to consider all those precepts for the government of the will, delivered by it, which are manifestly universal, as the rules to which all their feelings and actions should conform. The true distinction between con- science and a taste for moral beauty has already been pointed out; 1 a distinction which, not- withstanding its simplicity, has been unobserved by philosophers, perhaps on account of the fre- quent co-operation and intermixture of the two feelings. Most speculators have either denied the existence of the taste, or kept it out of view in their theory, or exalted it to the place which is rightfully filled only by conscience. Yet it is perfectly obvious that, like all the other feel- ings called pleasures of imagination, it termi- nates in delightful contemplation, while the moral faculty always aims exclusively at volun- tary action. Nothing can more clearly show that this last quality is the characteristic of con- science, than its being thus found to distinguish that faculty from the sentiments which most nearly resemble it, most frequently attend it, and are most easily blended with it. SOME attempt has now been made to develope the fundamental principles of ethical theory, in that historical order in which meditation and discussion brought them successively into a clearer light. That attempt, as far as it re- gards Great Britain, is at least chronologically complete. The spirit of bold speculation, con- spicuous among the English of the seventeenth century, languished after the earlier part of the eighteenth, and seems, from the time of Hutcheson, to have passed into Scotland, where it produced Hume, the greatest of sceptics, and Smith, the most eloquent of modern mo- ralists; besides giving rise to that sober, mo- dest, perhaps timid Philosophy, which is com- monly called Scotch, which has the singular merit of having first strongly and largely in- culcated the absolute necessity of admitting certain principles as the foundation of all rea- soning, and as being the indispensable con- ditions of thought itself. In the eye of the moralist, all the philosophers of Scotland, Hume and Smith as much as Reid, Campbell, and Stewart, have also the merit of having avoid- ed the selfish system ; and of having, under whatever variety of representation, alike main- tained the disinterested nature of the social af- fections and the supi'eme authority of the moral sentiments. Brown reared the standard of re- volt against the masters of the Scottish School, and in reality, still more than in words, adopt- ed those very doctrines against which his pre- decessors, after their war against scepticism, uniformly combated. The law of association, though expressed in other language, became the nearly universal principle of his system; and perhaps it would have been absolutely universal if he had not been restrained rather by respectful feelings than by cogent reasons. With him the love of speculative philosophy, as a pursuit, appears to have expired in Scot- land. There are some symptoms, yet how- ever very faint, of the revival of a taste for it among the English youth. It was received with approbation in France from M. Royer Collard, the scholar of Stewart more than of Reid, and 1 See supra, p. 368, 369. 412 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. with enthusiasm from his pupil and successor M. Cousin, who has clothed the doctrines of the Schools of Germany in an unwonted eloquence, which always adorns, but sometimes disguises them. The history of Political Philosophy, even if its extent and subdivisions were better denned, would, it is manifest, have occupied another Dis- sertation, at least equal in length to the present. The most valuable parts of it belong to Civil History. It is too often tainted by a turbulent and factious spirit to be easily combined with the calmer history of the progress of science, or even of the revolutions of speculation. In no age of the world were its principles so inter- woven with political events, and so deeply im- bued with the passions and divisions excited by them, as in the eighteenth century. It was at one time the purpose, or rather per- haps hope, of the writer, to close this discourse by an account of the ethical systems which have prevailed in Germany during the last half cen- tury; which, maintaining the same spirit amidst great changes of technical language, and even of speculative principle, have now exclusive pos- session of Europe to the north of the Rhine, have been welcomed by the French youth with open arms, have roused in some measure the languishing genius of Italy, but are still little known and unjustly estimated by the mere English reader. He found himself, however, soon reduced to, the necessity of either being su- perficial, and by consequence uninstructive ; or of devoting to that subject a far longer time than he can now spare, arid a much larger space than the limits of this work would probably allow. The majority of readers will indeed be more disposed to require an excuse for the extent of what has been done, than for the relinquish ment of projected additions. All readers must agree that this is peculiarly a subject on which it is better to be silent than to say too little. A very few observations, however, on the Ger- man Philosophy, as far as relates to its ethical bearings and influence, may perhaps be pardoned. These remarks are not so much intended to be applied to the moral doctrines of that school, considered in themselves, as to those apparent de- fects in the prevailing systems of Ethics through- out Europe, which seem to have suggested the necessity of their adoption. Kant has himself acknowledged that his whole theory of the per- cipient and intellectual faculty \fas intended to protect the first principles of human knowledge against the assaults of Hume. In like manner, his ethical system is evidently framed for the purpose of guarding certain principles, either directly governing, or powerfully affecting prac- tice, which seemed to him to have been placed on unsafe foundations by their advocates, and which were involved in perplexity and con- fusion, especially by those who adapted the re- sults of various and sometimes contradictory systems to the taste of multitudes, more eager to know than prepared to be taught. To the theoretical reason he superadded the practical reason, which had peculiar laws and prin- ciples of its own, from which all thfi rules of morals may be deduced. The practical reason cannot be conceived without these laws ; there- fore they are inherent. It perceives them to be necessary and universal. Hence, by a process not altogether dissimilar, at least in its gross re- sults, to that which was employed for the like" purpose by Cudworth and Clarke, by Price, and in some degree by Stewart, he raises the social affections, and still more the moral sentiments, above the sphere of enjoyment, and beyond that series of enjoyments which is called happiness. The performance of duty, not the pursuit of happiness, is in this system the chief end of man. By the same intuition we discover that virtue deserves happiness ; and as this desert is not uniformly so requited in the present state of existence, it compels us to believe a moral go- vernment of the world, and a future state of ex- istence, in which all the conditions of the prac- tical reason will be realized; truths, of which, in the opinion of Kant, the argumentative proofs were at least very defective, but of which the revelations of the practical reason afforded a more conclusive demonstration than any process of reasoning could supply. The understanding, he owned, saw nothing in the connection of mo- tive with volition different from what it discover- ed in every other uniform sequence of a cause and an effect. But as the moral law delivered by the practical reason issues peremptory and DISSERTATION SECOND. 413 inflexible commands, the power of always obey- ing tbem is implied in their very nature. All in- dividual objects, all outward things, must indeed be viewed in the relation of cause and effect. They are necessary conditions of all reasoning. But the acts of the faculty which wills, of which we are immediately conscious, belong to another province of mind, and are not subject to these laws of the theoretical reason. The mere intellect must still regard them as necessarily connected ; but the practical reason distinguishes its own liberty from the necessity of nature, conceives volition without at the same time conceiving an antecedent to it, and regards all moral beings as the original authors of their own actions. Even those who are unacquainted with this complicated and comprehensive system, will at once see the slightness of the above sketch. Those who understand it, will own that so brief an outline could not be otherwise than slight. It will, however, be sufficient for the present purpose, if it render what follows intelligible. With respect to what is called the practical reason, the Kantian system varies from ours, in treating it as having more resemblance to the intellectual powers than to sentiment and emo- tion. Enough has already been said on that question. At the next step, however, the dif- ference seems to resolve itself into a misunder- standing. The character and dignity of the human race surely depend, not on the state in which they are born, but on that which they are all destined to attain or to approach. No man would hesitate in assenting to this observation, when applied to the intellectual faculties. Thus, the human infant comes into the world imbecile and ignorant ; but a vast majority acquire some vigour of reason and extent of knowledge. Strictly, the human infant is born neither self- ish nor social ; but the far greater part acquire some provident regard to their own welfare, and a number, probably not much smaller, feel some sparks of affection towards others. On our principles, therefore, as much as on those of Kant, human nature is capable of disinterested sentiments. For we too allow and contend that our moral faculty is a necessary part of human nature, that it universally exists in human beings, that we cannot conceive any moral agents without qualities which are either like, or produce the like effects. It is necessarily re- garded by us as co-extensive with human, and even with moral nature. In what other sense can universality be predicated of any proposition not identical ? Why should it be tacitly assumed that all these great characteristics of conscience should necessarily presuppose its being unformed and underived? What contradiction is there between them and the theory of regular and uniform formation ? In this instance it should seem that a general assent to truth is chiefly if not solely obstructed by an inveterate prejudice, arising from the mode in which the questions relating to the af- fections and the moral faculty have been dis- cussed among ethical philosophers. Generally speaking, those who contend that these parts of the mind are acquired, have also held that they are, in their perfect state, no more than modi- fications of self-love. On the other hand, philo- sophers " of purer fire," who felt that conscience is sovereign, and that affection is disinterested, have too hastily fancied that their ground was untenable, without contending that these quali- ties were inherent or innate, and absolutely un- derived from any other properties of mind. If a choice were necessary between these two systems as masses of opinion, without any freedom of dis- crimination and selection, I should unquestion- ably embrace that doctrine which places in the clearest light the reality of benevolence and the authority of the moral faculty. But it is surely easy to apply a test which may be applied to our conceptions as effectually as a decisive experiment is applied to material substances. Does not he who, whatever he may think of the origin of these parts of human nature, believes that actually conscience is supreme, and affection terminates in its direct object, retain all that for which the partisans of the underived principles value and cling to* their system ? " But they are made," these philosophers may say, " by this class of our antagonists, to rest on insecure foundations. Unless they are underived, we can see no reason for regarding them as independent." In answer, it may be asked, how is the connection between these two qualities established ? It is really as- sumed. It finds its way easily into the mind 414 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. under the protection of another coincidence, which is of a totally different nature. The great majority of those speculators who have repre- sented the moral and social feelings as acquired, have also considered them as being mere modi- fications of self-love, and sometimes as being casually formed and easily eradicated, like local and temporary prejudices. But when the na- ture of our feelings is thoroughly explored, is it not evident that this coincidence is the result of superficial confusion ? The better moralists ob- served accurately, and reasoned justly, on the province of the moral sense and the feelings in the formed and mature man. They reasoned mistakenly on the origin of these principles. But the Epicureans were by no means right, even on the latter question ; and they were total- ly wrong on the other and far more momentous part of the subject. Their error is more exten- sive, and infinitely more injurious. But what should now hinder an inquirer after truth from embracing but amending their doctrine where it is partially true, and adopting without any change the just description of the most important prin- ciples of human nature which we owe to their more enlightened as well as more generous an- tagonists ? Though unwilling to abandon the arguments by which, from the earliest times, the existence of the supreme and eternal mind has been esta- blished, we, as well as the German philosophers, are entitled to call in the help of our moral na- ture to lighten the burden of those tremendous difficulties which cloud his moral government. The moral nature is an actual part of man, as much on our scheme as on theirs. Even the celebrated question of Liberty and Necessity may perhaps be rendered somewhat less perplexing, if we firmly bear in mind that peculiar relation of conscience to will which we have attempted to illustrate. It is impossible for reason to consider occurrences otherwise than as bound together by the connection of cause and effect ; and in this circumstance con- sists the strength of the necessitarian system. But conscience, which is equally a constituent part of the mind, has other laws. It is composed of emotions and desires, which contemplate only those dispositions which depend on the will. Now, it is the nature of an emotion to withdraw the mind from the contemplation of every idea but that of the object which excites it. Every desire exclusively looks at the object which it seeks. Every attempt to enlarge the mental vision al- ters the state of mind, weakens the emotion or dissipates the desire, and tends to extinguish both. If a man, while he was pleased with the smell of a rose, were to reflect on the chemical combinations from which it arose, the condition of his mind would be changed from an enjoy- ment of the senses to an exertion of the under- standing. If, in the view of a beautiful scene, a man were suddenly to turn his thoughts to the disposition of water, vegetables, and earths, on which its appearance depended, he might en- large his knowledge of geology, but he must lose the pleasure of the prospect. The anatomy and analysis of the flesh and blood of a beauti- ful woman necessarily suspend admiration and affection. Many analogies here present them- selves. When life is in danger either in a storm or a battle, it is certain that less fear is felt by the commander or the pilot, and even by the private soldier actively engaged, or the common- seaman laboriously occupied, than by those who are exposed to the peril, but not employed in the means of guarding against it. The reason is not that the one class believe the danger to be less. They are likely in many instances to per- ceive it more clearly. But having acquired a habit of instantly turning their thoughts to the means of counteracting the danger, their minds are thrown into a state which excludes the as- cendency of fear. Mental fortitude entirely depends on this habit. The timid horseman is haunted by the horrors of a fall. The bold and skilful thinks only about the best way of curb- ing or supporting his horse. Even when all means are equally unavailable, and his condition appears desperate to the by-stander, he still owes to his fortunate habit that he does not suffer the agony of the coward. Many cases have been known where fortitude has reached such strength that the faculties, instead of being con- founded by danger, are never raised to their highest activity by a less violent stimulant. The distinction between such men and the coward does not depend on difference of opinion about DISSERTATION SECOND. 415 the reality or extent of the danger, but on a state of mind which renders it more or less ac- cessible to fear. Though it must be owned that the moral sentiments are very different from any other human faculty, yet the above observations seem to be in a great measure applicable to every state of mind. The emotions and desires which compose conscience, while they occupy the mind, must exclude all contemplation of the cause in which the object of these feelings may have ori- ginated. To their eye the voluntary dispositions and actions, their sole object, must appear to be the first link of a chain. In the view of con- science they have no foreign original. The con- science being so constantly associated with all volitions, its view becomes habitual : being al- ways possessed of some, and capable of intense warmth, it predominates over the habits of thinking of those few who are employed in the analyses of mental occupations. The reader who has in any degree been inclined to adopt the explanations attempted above, of the im- perative character of conscience, may be dis- posed also to believe that they afford some foun- dation for that conviction of the existence of a power to obey its commands, which (it ought to be granted to the German philosophers) is irresistibly suggested by the commanding tone of all its dictates. If such an explanation should be thought worthy of consideration, it must be very carefully distinguished from that illusive sense by which some writers have laboured to reconcile the feeling of liberty with the reality of necessity. v In this case there is no illusion ; nothing is required but the admission, that every faculty observes its own laws, and that when the action of the one fills the mind, that of every other is suspended. The ear cannot see, nor can the eye hear. Why then should not the greater powers of reason and conscience have different habitual modes of contemplating voluntary actions ? How strongly do experience and analogy seem to require the arrangement of motive and volition under the class of causes and effects ! With what irresistible power, on the other hand, do all our moral sentiments re- move extrinsic agency from view, and concen- trate all feeling in the agent himself! The one manner of thinking may predominate among the speculative few in their short moments of abstraction ; the other will be that of all other men, and of the speculator himself when he is called upon to act, or when his feelings are powerfully excited by the amiable or odious dispositions of his fellow-men. In these work- ings of various faculties there is nothing that can be accurately described as contrariety of opinion. An intellectual state, and a feeling, never can be contrary to each other. They are too utterly incapable of comparison to be the subject of contrast. They are agents of a perfectly different nature, acting in different spheres. A feeling can no more be called true or false, than a demonstration, considered simply in itself, can be said to be agreeable or disagreeable. It is true, indeed, that in conse- quence of the association of all mental acts with each other, emotions and desires may occasion habitual errors of judgment; but liability to error belongs to every exercise of human reason ; it arises from a multitude of causes; it con- stitutes, therefore, no difficulty peculiar to the case before us. Neither truth nor falsehood can be predicated of the perceptions of the senses, but they lead to false opinions. An object seen through different mediums may by the inex- perienced be thought to be no longer the same. All men long concluded falsely, from what they saw, that the earth was stationary, and the sun in perpetual motion around it. The greater part of mankind still adopt the same error. Newton and Laplace used the same language with the ignorant, and conformed (if we may not say to their opinion) at least to their habits of thinking on all ordinary occasions, and during the far greater part of their lives. Nor is this all : The language which represents various states of mind is very vague. The word which denotes a compound state is often taken from its princi- pal fact, from that which is most conspicuous, most easily calkd to mind, most warmly felt, or most frequently recurring. It is sometimes bor- LORD KAMES, in his Essays on Morality and Natural Religion, and in his Sketches of the History of Man. 416 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. rawed from a separate, but, as it were, neigh- bouring condition of mind. The grand distinc- tion between thought and feeling is so little ob- served, that we are peculiarly liable to confusion on this subject. Perhaps when we use language which indicates an opinion concerning the acts of the will, we may mean little more than to ex- press strongly and warmly the moral sentiments which voluntary acts alone call up. It would argue disrespect for the human understanding, vainly employed for so many centuries in recon- ciling contradictory opinions, to propose such suggestions without peculiar diffidence ; but be- fore they are altogether rejected, it may be well to consider, whether the constant success of the advocates of necessity on one ground, and of the partisans of free-will on another, does not seem to indicate that the two parties contemplate the subject from different points of view, that nei- ther habitually sees more than one side of it, and that they look at it through the medium of dif- ferent states of mind. It should be remembered that these hints of a possible reconciliation between seemingly re- pugnant opinions are proposed, not as perfect analogies, but to lead men's minds into the in- quiry, whether that which certainly befalls the mind, in many cases on a small scale, may not, under circumstances favourable to its develop- ment, occur with greater magnitude, and more important consequences. The coward and brave, as has been stated, act differently at the approach of danger, because it produces exertion in the one and fear in the other. But very brave men must, by the terms, be few. They have little aid in their highest acts, therefore, from fellow- feeling. They are often too obscure for the hope of praise, and they have seldom been train- ed to cultivate courage as a virtue. The very reverse occurs in the different view taken by under- standing and by conscience, of the nature of volun- tary actions. The conscientious view must, in some degree, present itself to all mankind. It is therefore unspeakably strengthened by gene- ral sympathy. All men respect themselves for being habitually guided by it. It is the object of general commendation ; and moral discipline has no other aim but its cultivation. Whoever does not feel more pain from his crimes than from his misfortunes, is looked on with general aversion. And when it is considered that a Being of per- fect wisdom and goodness estimates us accord- ing to the degree in which conscience governs our voluntary acts, it is surely no wonder that, in this most important discrepancy between the great faculties of our nature, we should con- sider the best habitual disposition to be that which the coldest reason shows us to be most conducive to welldoing and wellbeing. On every other point, at least, it should seem that, without the multiplied suppositions and immense apparatus of the German School, the authority of morality may be vindicated, the disinterestedness of human nature asserted, the first principles of knowledge secured, and the hopes and consolations of mankind preserved. Ages may yet be necessary to give to ethical theory all the forms and language of science, and to apply it to the multiplied and complicated facts and rules which are within its province. In the mean time, if any statement of the opinions here unfolded or intimated shall be proved to be at variance with the reality of social affections, and with the feeling of moral distinction, the author of this Dissertation will be the first to relinquish a theory which will then show itself inadequate to explain the most indisputable, as well as by far the most important, parts of human nature. If it shall be shown to lower the character of man, to cloud his hopes, or to impair the sense of duty, he will be grateful to those who may point out his error, and deliver him from the poignant regret of adopting opinions which lead to consequences so pernicious. NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. ites id ations. NOTE A, p. 305. THE remarks of Cicero on the Stoicism of Cato are perhaps the most perfect specimen of that refined raillery which attains the object of the orator without general injustice to the person whose authority is for the moment to be abated. " Accessit his doctrina non moderata, nee mitis, sed, ut mihi videtur, paulo asperior et durior quam aut veritas aut natura patiatur." After an enumeration of the Stoical paradoxes, he adds : " Haec homo ingeniosissimus M. Cato arripuit, neque disputandi causa, ut magna pars, sed ita vivendi. Nostri autem illi (fatebor enim me quoque in adolescentia diffisum ingenio meo qusesisse adjumenta doctrinse) nostri, inquam, illi a Platone atque Aristotele moderati homines et temperati aiunt apud sapientem valere aliquando gratiam; viri boni esse misereri; omnes virtutes mediocritate quadam moderatas. Hos ad magistros si qua te fortuna, Cato, cum ista na- tura detulisset, non tu quidem vir melior esses, nee fortior, nee temperantior, nee justior (neque enim esse posses), sed paulo ad lenitatem pro- pensior." ( CICERO pro Murena.) NOTE B, p. 309. The greater part of the following extract from Grotius's History of the Netherlands is inserted as the best abridgement of the ancient history of these still subsisting controversies known in our time. I extract also the introduction as a mo- del of the manner in which an historian may state a religious dispute which has influenced political affairs; but far more because it is an unparalleled example of equity and forbearance in the narrative of a contest of which the histo- rian was himself a victim. " Habuit hie annus (1608) baud spernendi DISS. II. quoque mali semina, vix ut arma desierant, ex- orto publicse religionis dissidio, latentibus initiis, sed ut paulatim in majus erumperet. Lugduni sacras literas docebant viri eruditione prsestan- tes Gomarus et Arminius, quorum ille seterna Dei lege fixum memorabat, cui hominum salus destinaretur, quis in exitium tenderet ; inde alios ad pietatem trahi, et tractos custodiri ne elabantur ; relinqui alios communi humanitatis vitio et suis criminibus involutes : hie vero contra integrum judicem, sed eundem optimum patrem, id reorum fecisse discrimen, ut peccandi pertsesis fiduciamque in Christum reponentibus veniam ac vitam daret, contumacibus prenam ; Deoque gratum, ut omnes resipiscant, ac meliora edocti retineant ; sed cogi neminem. Accusa- bantque invicem; Arminius Gomarum, quod peccandi causas Deo ascriberet, ac fati persua- sione teneret immobiles animos ; Gomarus Ar- minium, quod longius ipsis Romanensium scitis hominem arrogantia impleret, nee pateretur soli Deo acceptam ferri, rem maximum, bonam men- tern. Constat his queis cura legere veterum libros, antiques Christianorum tribuisse homi- num voluntati vim liberam, tarn in acceptanda, quam in retinenda disciplina ; unde sua praemiis ac suppliciis aequitas. Neque iidem tamen omisere cuncta divinam ad bonitatem referre, cujus munere salutare semen ad nos pervenisset, ac cujus singular! auxilio pericula nostra indi- gerent. Primus omnium Augustinus, ex quo ipsi cum Pelagio et eum secutis certamen (nam ante aliter et ipse senserat), acer disputandi, ita libertatis vocem relinquere, ut ei decreta quaedam Dei praeponeret, quae vim ipsam destruere vide- rentur. At per Graeciam quidem Asiamque re- tenta vetus ilia ac simplicior sententia. Per oc- cidentem magnum Augustini nomen multos traxit in consensum, repertis tamen per Gallium et alibi qui se opponerent. Posterioribus saecu- 3 G 418 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes lis, cum schola non alio magis quam Augustino Illustrations ^octore uteretur, quis ipsi sensus, quis dexter pugnare visa conciliandi modus, diu inter Fran- cisci et Dominici familiam disputato, doctissimi Jesuitarum, cum exactiori subtilitate nodum sol- vere laborassent, Romae accusati aegre damna- tionem effugere. At Protestantium princeps, Lutherus, egressus monasterio quod Augustini ut nomen, ita sensus sequebatur, parte Augustini arrepta, id quod is reliquerat, libertatis nomen, coepit exscindere; quod tarn grave Erasmo vi- sum, ut cum caetera ipsi us aut probaret aut si- lentio transmitteret, hie objiciat sese: cujus ar- gumentis motus Philippus Melan.chthon, Lutheri adjutor, quae prius scripserat immutavit, auc tor- que fuit Luthero, quod multi volunt, certe quod constat Lutheranis, deserendi decreta rigida et conditionem respuentia; sic tamen ut libertatis vocabulum quam rem magis perhorrescererit. At in altera Protestantium parte dux Calvinus, primis Lutheri dictis in hac controversia inhae- rescens, novis ea fulsit praesidiis, addiditque in- tactum Augustino, veram ac salutarem fidem rem esse perpetuam et amitti nesciam : cujus proinde qui sibi essent conscii, eos aeternae felicitatis jam nunc certos esse, quos interim in crimina, quan- tumvis gravia, prolabi posse non diffitebatur. Auxit sententiae rigorem Genevae Beza, per Ger- maniam Zanchius, Ursinus, Piscator, saepe eo usque provecti, ut, quod alii anxie vitaverant, apertius nonnunquam traderent, etiam peccandi necessitatem a prima causa pendere : quse ampla Lutheranis criminandi materia." (H. GROTII Hist. lib. xvii. p. 552.) NOTE C, p. 309. The Calvinism, or rather Augustinianism, of Aquinas, is placed beyond all doubt by the fol- lowing passages : " Praedestinatio est causa gratia? et gloriae." ( Opera, VII. 356, edit. Paris. 1664.) " Numerus prsedestinatorum certus est." (Ibid. 363.) " Praescientia meritorum nullo modo est causa praedestinationis divinae." (Ibid. 370.) " Liberum arbitrium est facultas qua bonum eligitur, gratia assistente, vel malum, eadem de- sistente." (Ibid. VIII. 222.) " Deus inclinat ad bonum administrando vir- tutem agendi et monendo ad bonum. Sed ad malum dicitur inclinare in quantum gratiam non praebet, per quam aliquis a malo retrahere- tur." (Ibid. 364.) On the other side : " Accipitur fides pro eo quo creditur, et est virtus, et pro eo quod creditur, et non est virtus. Fides qua creditur, si cum caritate sit, virtus est." (Ibid. IX. 236.) " Divina bonitas est primum principium com- municationis totius quam Deus creaturis largi- tur." " Quam vis omne quod Deus vult justum sit, non tamen ex hoc justum dicitur quod Deus illud vult." (Ibid. 697.) NOTE D, p. 309. The Augustinian doctrine is, with some hesi- tation and reluctance, acquiesced in by Scotus, in that milder form which ascribes election to an express decree, and considers the rest of mankind as only left to the deserved penalties of their transgressions. " In hujus quaestionis solutions mallem alios audire quam docere." ( SCOTI Opera, V. 1329. Lugd. 1639.) This modesty and pru- dence is foreign from the dogmatical genius of a Schoolman ; and these qualities are still more ap- parent in the very remarkable language which he applies to the tremendous doctrine of repro- bation. " Eorum autem non miseretur (scil. Deus) quibus gratiam non prcebendam esse aequitate occultissima et ab humanis sensibus remotissimaju- dicat" (Ibid. 1329.) In the commentary on Scotus which follows, it appears that his acute disciple Ockham disputed very freely against the opinions of his master. " Mala fieri bonum esf is a startling paradox, quoted by Scotus from Augustin. (Ibid. 1381.) It appears that Ock- ham saw no difference between election and re- probation, and considered those who embraced only the former as at variance with themselves. (Ibid. 1313.) Scotus, at great length, contends that our thoughts (consequently our opinions) are not subject to the will. (VI. 1054-1056.) One step more would have led him to acknowledge that all erroneous judgment is involuntary, and there- DISSERTATION SECOND. 419 Votes and stralions. fore inculpable and unpunishable, however per- nicious. His attempt to reconcile foreknowledge with contingency (V. 1300-1327), is a remarkable example of the power of human subtlety to keep up the appearance of a struggle where it is im- possible to make one real effort. But the most dangerous of all the deviations of Scotus from the system of Aquinas is, that he opened the way to the opinion that the dis- tinction of right and wrong depends on the mere will of the Eternal Mind. The absolute power of the Deity, according to him, extends to all but contradictions. His regular power (ordi- nata) is exercised conformably to an order es- tablished by himself; " si PLACET VOLUNTATI, sub qua libera est, RECTA EST LEX." (ScoT. V. 1368, et seq.) NOTE E, p. 309. yt Hatiav ctKowfiov aKouffav iraffav van (PLAT. Soph. edit. Bip. II. 224.) uvai. (Ibid. 227.) Plato is quoted on this subject by Marcus Aurelius, in a manner which shows, if there had been any doubt, the meaning to be, that all error is involuntary. riatfa -^w^y axovrfa, pjjtf/v (llXarwv), Cr^rai aX}02/a. Every mind is unwillingly led from truth. (EPICT. lib. i. cap. xxviii.) Augustin closes the long line of ancient tes- timony to the involuntary character of error : " Quis est qui velit decipi ? Fallere nolunt bo- ni; falli autem nee boni volunt nee mali." (AuG. Serm. de Verbo.) NOTE F, p. 310. From a long, able, and instructive disserta- tion by the commentator on Scotus, it appears that this immoral dogma was propounded in terms more bold and startling by Ockham, who openly affirmed, that *' moral evil was only evil because it was prohibited." " Oc- hamus, qui putat quod nihil posset esse malum sine voluntate prohibitiva Dei, hancque volun- tatem esse liberam; sic ut posset earn non habere, et consequenter ut posset fieri quod nul- la prorsus essent mala." (ScoT. VII. p. 859.) But, says the commentator, " Dico primo legem naturalem non consistere in jussione ulla quse sit actus voluntatis Dei. Haec est communissima theologorum sententia." (ScoT. VII. p. 858.) And indeed the reason urged against Ockham completely justifies this approach to unanimity. " For," he asks, " why is it right to obey the will of God ? Is it because our moral faculties perceive it to be right ? But they equally per- ceive and feel the authority of all the primary principles of morality; and if this answer be made, it is obvious that those who make it do in effect admit the independence of moral distinc- tions on the will of God." " If God," said Ockham, " had commanded his creatures to hate himself, hatred of God would have been praiseworthy." (DoMiN. SOTO de Justitia et Jure, lib. ii. qusest. 3, " Utrum prce- cepta Decalogi sint dispensabilia ;" a book dedi- cated to Don Carlos, the son of Philip II. ) Suarez, the last scholastic philosopher, rejected the Ock- hamical doctrine, but allowed will to be a part of the foundation of morality. " Voluntas Dei non est tota ratio bonitatis aut malitise." ( SUAREZ de Legibus, lib. ii. 66, p. 71. edit. Lond. 1679.) As the great majority of the Schoolmen sup- ported their opinion of this subject by the con- sideration of eternal and immutable ideas of right and wrong in the divine intellect, it was natural that the Nominalists, of whom Ockham was the founder, who rejected all general ideas, should also have rejected those moral distinc- tions which were then supposed to originate in such ideas. Gerson was a celebrated Nominal- ist ; and he was the more disposed to follow the opinions of his master, because they agreed in maintaining the independence of the State on the Church, and the superiority of the Church over the Pope. NOTE G, p. 310. It must be premised that Charitas among the ancient divines corresponded with E^wj of the Platonists, and with the 4>/X;a of later philoso- phers, as comprehending the love of all that is loveworthy in the Creator or his creatures. It is the theological virtue of charity, and corre- Notes 420 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes and spends with no term in use among modern mo- ralists. "Cum obi ectum amoris sit bonum, dupli- Illustrations. ,. . citer potest aliquis tendere in bonum alicujus rei ; uno modo, quod bonum ittiusrei ad alterum refer at, sicut amat quis vinum in quantum dulcedinem vini peroptat ; et hie amor vocatur a quibusdam amor concupiscentiae. Amor autem iste non ter- minatur ad rem qua dicitur amari, sed reflectitur ad rem illam cui optatur bonum illius rei. Alio modo amor fortior in bonum alicujus rei, ita quod ad rem ipsam TERMINATUR; et hie est amor benevolentise. Qua bonum nostrum in Deo per- fectum est, sicut in causa universali bonorum; ideo bonum in ipso esse magis naturaliter complacet quam in nobis ipsis : et ideo etiam amore ami- citise naturaliter Deus ab homine plus seipso dili- gitur." The above quotations from Aquinas will pro- bably be sufficient for those who are acquainted with these questions, and they will certainly be thought too large by those who are not. In the next question he inquires, whether in the love of God there can be any view to reward. He ap- pears to consider himself as bound by authority to answer in the affirmative; and he employs much ingenuity in reconciling a certain expecta- tion of reward with the disinterested character ascribed by him to piety in common with all the affections which terminate in other beings. " Nihil aliud est merces nostra quam perfrui Deo. Ergo charitas non solum non excludit, sed etiam facit habere oculum ad mercedem." In this answer he seems to have anticipated the re- presentations of Jeremy Taylor (Sermon on Growth in Grace] ; of Lord Shaftesbury (Inquiry concerning Virtue, book i. part iii. sect. 3) ; of Mr T. Erskine (Freeness of the Gospel, Edinb. 1828) ; and more especially of Mr John Smith (Discourses, Lond. 1660). No extracts could convey a just conception of the observations which follow, unless they were accompanied by a longer examination of the technical lan- guage of the Schoolmen than would be war- ranted on this occasion. It is clear that he distinguishes well the affection of piety from the happy fruits, which, as he cautiously expresses it, " are in the nature of a reward," just as the consideration of the pleasures and advantages of friendship may enter into the affection and strengthen it, though they are not its objects, Note? and never could inspire such a feeling. It seems in us * rat i to me also that he had a dimmer view of another ^-^~v* doctrine, by which we are taught, that though our own happiness be not the end which we pursue in loving others, yet it may be the final cause of the insertion of disinterested affections into the nature of man. " Ponere mercedem aliquam finem amoris ex parte amati, est contra rationem amicitia?. Sed ponere mercedem esse finem amoris ex parte amantis, non tamen ulti- mum, prout scilicet ipse amor est qusedam ope- ratio amantis, non est contra rationem amicitise. Possum operationem amoris amare propter ali- quid aliud, salva amicitia. Potest habeas chari- tatem habere oculum ad mercedem, uti ponat beati- tudinem creatam Jinem amoris, non autem Jinem amati" Upon the last words my interpretation chiefly depends. The immediately preceding sentence must be owned to have been founded on a distinction between viewing the good fruits of our own affections as enhancing their intrin- sic pleasures, and feeling love for another on account of the advantage to be derived from him ; which last is inconceivable. NOTE H, p. 310. " Potestas spirit ualis et secularis utraque deducitur a potestate divina; ideo in tantum secularis est sub spirituali, in quantum est a Deo supposita; scilicet, in his quse ad salutem aniinse pertinent. In his autem quce ad bonum civile spectant, est magis obediendum potestati seculari; sicut illud Matthsei, ' Reddite qua sunt Csesaris Csesari.' " What follows is more doubtful. " Nisi forte potestati spirituali etiam potestas secularis conjungatur, ut in Papa, qui utriusque potestatis apicem tenet." (VIII. 435.) Here, says the French editor, it may be doubt- ed whether Aquinas means the Pope's temporal power in his own dominions, or a secular autho"- rity indirectly extending over all for the sake of religion. My reasons for adopting the more ra- tional construction are shortly these : 1. The text of Matthew is so plain an assertion of the independence of both powers, that it would be the height of extravagance to quote it as an au- thority for the dependence of the state. At DISSERTATION SECOND. 421 most it could only be represented as recon- cilable with such a dependence in one case. 2. The word forte seems manifestly to refer to the territorial sovereignty acquired by the Popes. If they have a general power in secu- lar affairs, it must be because it is necessary to their spiritual authority; and in that case to call it fortuitous would be to ascribe to it an ad- junct destructive of its nature. 3. His former reasoning on the same question seems to be de- cisive. The power of the Pope over bishops, he says, is not founded merely in his supe- rior nature, but in their authority being alto- gether derived from his, as the proconsular power from the imperial. Therefore he infers that this case is not analogous to the relation between the civil and spiritual power, which are alike derived from God. 4. Had an Italian monk of the twelfth century really intended to affirm the Pope's temporal authority, he proba- bly would have laid it down in terms more ex- plicit and more acceptable at Rome. Hesitation an,d ambiguity are here indications of unbelief. Mere veneration for the apostolical see might present a more precise determination against it, as it caused the quotation which follows, respect- ing the primacy of Peter. ( AQUIN. Opera, VIII. 434, 435.) A mere abridgement of these very curious pas- sages might excite a suspicion that I had tinc- tured Aquinas unconsciously with a colour of my own opinions. Extracts are very difficult, from the scholastic method of stating objections and answers, as well as from the mixture of theological authorities with philosophical rea- Notes and sons. NOTE I, p. 312. The debates in the first assembly of the Council of Trent (1546), between the Dominicans who adhered to Aquinas, and the Franciscans who followed Scotus on original sin, justification, and grace, are to be found in Fra Paolo, Istoria del Concilia Tridentino, lib. ii. They show how much metaphysical controversy is hid in a theological form, how many disputes of our times are of no very ancient origin, and how strongly the whole western church, through all the divisions into which it has been separated, has manifested the same unwillingness to avow the Augustiniau T1 t Illustrations. system, and the same fear of contradicting it. To his admirably clear and short statement of these abstruse controversies, must be added that of his accomplished opponent Cardinal Pallavicino (lib. vii. and viii.), who shows still more evidently the strength of the Augustinian party, and the disposition of the Council to tolerate opinions almost Lutheran, if not accompanied by revolt from the Church. A little more compromising disposition in the Reformers might have be- trayed reason to a prolonged thraldom. We must esteem Erasmus and Melanchthon, but we should reserve our gratitude for Luther and Calvin. The Scotists maintained their doctrine of merit of congruity, waived by the Council, and soon after condemned by the Church of England ; by which they meant that they who had good dispositions always received the divine grace, not indeed as a reward of which they were worthy, but as aid which they were fit and willing to receive. The Franciscans denied that belief was in the power of man. " I Fran- cescani lo negavano seguendo Scoto, qual vuole che siccome dalle dimostrazioni per necessita nasce la scienza, cosi dalle persuasioni nasca la fede ; e ch'essa e nell' intelletto, il quale e agente naturale, e mosso naturalmente dall'oggetto. Al- legavano 1'esperienza, che nessuno puo credere che vuole, ma quello che gli par vero." (FRA PAOLO, Istoria del Concilio Triderdino^ I. 193. edit. Helmstadt, 1763, 4to.) Cardinal Sforza Pallavicino, a learned and very able Jesuit, was appointed, according to his own account, in 1651, many years after the death of Fra Paolo, to write a true history of the Council of Trent, as a corrective of the misrepresentations of the celebrated Venetian. Algernon Sidney, who knew this court historian at Rome, and who may be believed when he speaks well of a Jesuit and a Cardinal, com- mends the work in a letter to his father, Lord Leicester. At the end of Pallavicino's work is a list of three hundred and sixty errors in mat- ters of fact, which the Papal party pretend to have detected in the independent historian, whom they charge with heresy or infidelity, and, in either case, with hypocrisy. 422 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. NOTE K, p. 314. " Hoc tempore, Ferdinando et Isabella regnan- tibus, in academia Salmantina jacta sunt ro- bustioris theologies semina; ingentis enim famse vir Franciscus de Victoria, non tarn lucubrati- onibus editis, quamvis hsec non magnae molis at magni pretii sint, sed doctissimorum theologo- rum educatione, quamdiu fuerit sacrse scientize honos inter mortales, vehementer laudabitur." (ANTONII Bibl. Hisp. Nova, Prasf. iv. Madrid, 1783.) " Si ad morum instructores respicias, Sotus iterum nominabitur." (Ibid.) NOTE L, p. 314. The title of the published account of the con- ference at Valladolid is, " The controversy be- tween the Bishop of Chiapa and Dr Sepulveda ; in which the Doctor contended that the con- quest of the Indies from the natives was lawful, and the Bishop maintained that it was unlaw- ful, tyrannical, and unjust, in the presence of many theologians, lawyers, and other learned men assembled by his Majesty." (ANTONII Bibl. Hisp. Nova, torn. i. p. 192.) Las Casas died in 1566, in the 92d year of his age; Sepulveda died in 1571, in his 82d year. Sepulveda was the scholar of Pomponatius, and a friend of Erasmus, Cardinal Pole, Aldus Manutius, &c. In his book De Justis Belli Causis contra Indos suscepti, he contended only that the king might justly " ad ditionem Indos, non herilem sed regiam et civilem, lege belli re- digere." (ANTONIUS in voce Sepulveda: Bibl. Hisp. Nova, torn. i. p. 703.) But this smooth and specious language covered a poison. Had it entirely prevailed, the cruel consequence of the defeat of the advocate of the oppressed would alone have remained; the limitations and softenings employed by their opponent to obtain success would have been speedily disregarded and forgotten. Covarruvias, another eminent Jurist, was sent by Philip II. to the Council of Trent, at its re- newal in 1560, and, with Cardinal Buoncam- pagni, drew up the decrees of reformation. Francis Sanchez, the father of philosophical grammar, published his Minerva at Salamanca in 1587 ; so active was the cultivation of philo- sophy in Spain in the age of Cervantes. NOTE M, p. 327. " Alors en repassant dans mon esprit les di- verses opinions qui m'avoient tour-a-tour en- traine depuis ma naissance, je vis que bien qu'aucune d'elles ne fut assez evidente pour pro- duire immediatement la conviction, elles avoient divers degres de vraisemblance, et que 1'assenti- ment interieur s'y pretoit ou s'y refusoit a diffe- rentes mesures. Sur cette premiere observation, comparant entr' elles toutes ces differentes idees dans le silence des prejuges, je trouvai que la premiere, et la plus commune, etoit aussi la plus simple et la plus raisonnable; et qu'il ne lui manquoit, pour reunir to us les suffrages, que d' avoir etc proposee la derniere. Imaginez tous vos philosophes anciens et modernes, ayant d'a- bord epuise leur bizarres systemes de forces, de chances, de fatalite, de necessite, d'atomes, de monde anime, de matiere vivante, de materia- lisme de toute espece ; et apres eux tous 1'illustre Clarke, eclairant le monde, annon^ant enfml'Etre des etres, et le dispensateur des choses. Avec quelle universelle admiration, avec quel applau- dissement unanime n'eut point ete recu ce nou- veau systeme si grand, si consolant, si sublime, si propre a clever 1'ame, a donner une base a la vertu, et en meme terns si frappant, si lumineux, si simple, et, ce me -semble, offrant moins de choses incomprehensibles a 1'esprit humain, qu'il n'en trouve d'absurdes en tout autre systeme ! Je me disois, les objections insolubles sont com- munes a tous, parceque 1'esprit de 1'homme est trop borne pour les resoudre : elles ne prouvent done rien centre aucun par preference, mais quelle difference entre les preuves direetes." (Emile, tome III. livre iv. p. 25.) NOTE N, p. 337. " Est autemjus quadam potentia moralis, et obligatio necessitas moralis. Moralem autem intelligo, quse apud virum bonum sequipollet natural!: Nam ut prseclare jurisconsultus Ro- manus ait, quce contra bonos mores sunt, ea nee DISSERTATION SECOND. 423 otes facer e nos posse credendum est. Vir bonus autem rations. es t qui amat omnes, quantum ratio permittit. Justitiam igitur, quse virtus est hujus affectus rectrix, quern /Xa&gwtf/ai> Graeci vacant, commo- dissime, ni falloi", definiemus caritatem sapientis, hoc est, sequentem sapientiae 'dictata. Itaque, quod Carneades dixisse fertur, justitiam esse summam stultitiam, quia alienis utilitatibus con- suli jubeat, neglectis propriis, ex ignorata ejus definitione natura est. Caritas est benevolentia universalis, et benevolentia ainandi sive diligendi habitus. Amare autem sive diligere est felici- tate alterius delectari, vel, quod eodem redit, fe- licitatem alienam adsciscere in suam. Unde difficilis nodus solvitur, magni etiam in Theolo- gia momenti, quomodo amor non mercenarius detur, qui sit a spe metuque et omni utilitatis respectu separatus : scilicet, quorum utilitas de- lectat, eorum felicitas nostram ingreditur, nam quae delectant, per se expetuntur. Et uti pul- chrorum contemplatio ipsa jucunda est, pictaque tabula Raphaelis intelligentem afficit, etsi nullos census ferat, adeo ut in oculis deliciisque feratur, quodam simulacro amoris ; ita quum res pulchra simul etiam felicitatis est capax, transit affectus in verum amorem. Superat autem divinus amor alios amores, quos Deus cum maximo successu amare potest, quando Deo simul et felicius nihil est, et nihil pulchrius felicitateque dignius intel- ligi potest. Et quum idem sit potentise sapien- tiaeque summae, felicitas ejus non tantum ingre- ditur nostram (si sapimus, id est, ipsum ama- mus), sed et facit. Quia autem sapientia carita- tem dirigere debet, hujus quoque definitione opus erit. Arbitror autem notioni hominum op- time satisfieri, si sapientiam nihil aliud esse dicamus, quam ipsam scientiam. felicitatis." (LEIBNITII Opera, torn. IV. pars iii. p. 294.) " Et jus quidem merum sive strictum nascitur ex principio servandse pacis ; sequitas sive caritas ad majus aliquid contendit, ut, dum quisque alteri prodest quantum potest, felicitatem suara augeat in aliena; et, ut verbo dicam, jus stric^ turn miseriam vitat, jus superius ad felicitatem tendit, sed qualis in hanc mortalitatem cadit. Quod vero ipsam vitam, et quicquid hanc vitam expetendam facit, magno commodo alieno post- habere debeamus, ita ut maximos etiam dolores in aliorum gratiam perferre oporteat; magis pulchre praecipitur a philosophic quam solide demonstra- Notes tur. Nam decus et gloriam, et animi sui virtute In * n( *. gaudentis sensum, ad quaa sub honestatis nomine provocant, cogitationis sive mentis bona esse constat, magna quidem, sed non omnibus nee omni malorum acerbitati prasvalitura, quando non omnes aeque imaginando afficiuntur; prsesertim quos neque educatio liberalis, neque consuetude vivendi ingenua, vel vitae sectaeve disciplina ad honoris aestimationem, vel animi bona sentienda assuefecit. Ut vero universali demonstratione conficiatur, omne honestum esse utile, et omne turpe damnosum, assumenda est immortalitas animffi, et rector universi Deus. Ita fit, ut omnes in civitate perfectissima vivere intelligamur, sub monarcha, qui nee ob sapientiam falli, nee ob potentiam vitari potest ; idemque tarn amabilis est, ut felicitas sit tali domino servire. Huic igitur qui animam impendit, Christo docente, earn lucratur. Hujus potentia providentiaque effici- tur, ut omne jus in factum transeat, ut nemo laedatur nisi a se ipso, ut nihil recte gestum sine praemio sit, nullum peccatum sine poena." (Ibid. p. 296.) NOTE O, p. 340. The writer of this Discourse was led, on a former occasion, by a generally prevalent no- tion, too nearly to confound the theological doc- trine of predestination with the philosophical opinion which supposed the determination of the will to be, like other events, produced by adequate causes. ( See a criticism on Mr Stewart's Dissertation, Edirib. Review, XXXVI. 255.) More careful reflection has corrected a confusion common to him with most writers on the sub- ject. What is called Sublapsarian Calvinism, which was the doctrine of the most eminent men, including Augustin and Calvin himself, ascribed to God, and to man before the fall, what is called free-will, which they even own still to exist in all the ordinary acts of life, though it be lost with respect to religious morality. The decree of election, on this scheme, arises from God's foreknowledge that man was to fall, and that all men became thereby with justice liable to eternal punishment. The election of some to salvation was an act of divine goodness, and the 424 PRELIMINARY DISSERTATIONS. Notes preterition of the rest was an exercise of holiness - This sublapsarian predestination is evidently irreconcilable with the doctrine of necessity, which considers free-will, or volitions not caused by motives, as absolutely inconsistent with the definition of an intelligent being, which is, that he acts from a motive, or, in other words, with a purpose. The supralapsarian scheme, which represents the fall itself as fore-ordained, may indeed be built on necessitarian principles. But on that scheme original sin seems wholly to lose that importance which the former system gives it as a revolution in the state of the world, requiring an interposition of divine power to remedy a part of its fatal effects. It becomes no more than the first link in the chain of predestined offences. Yet both Catholic and Protestant predestinarians have borrowed the arguments and distinctions of philosophical necessitarians. One of the propositions of Jansenius, condemned by the bull of Innocent X. in 1653, is, that " to merit or demerit in a state of lapsed nature, it is not necessary that there should be in man a liberty free from necessity ; it is sufficient that there be a libertyfree from constraint." (DuriN, Histoire de FEglise en abrege, siecle xvii. livre iv. chap.viii. p. 193.) Luther, in his once famous treatise de Servo Arbitrio against Erasmus (print- ed in 1526), expresses himself as follows : " Hie est fidei summus gradus, credere ilium esse cle- mentem qui tarn paucos salvat, tarn multos dam- nat ; credere justum qui sua voluntate nos ne- cessario damnabiles facit, ut videatur, ut Eras- mus refert, delectari cruciatibus miserorum, et odio potius quam amore dignus." My copy of this stern and abusive book is not paged. In another passage, he states the distinction be- tween co-action and necessity as familiar a hun- dred and thirty years before it was proposed by Hobbes, or condemned in the Jansenists. " Ne- cessario dico,non coacte,sed, ut illi dicunt, neces- sitate immutabilitatis, non coactionis; hoc est, homo, cum vocat Spiritus Dei, non quidem vio- lentia, velut raptus obtorto collo, nolens facit ma- lum, quemadmodum fur aut latro nolens ad pce- nam ducitur, sed sponte et libera voluntate facit." He uses also the illustration of Hobbes, from the difference between a stream forced out of its course and freely flowing in its chan- nel. NOTE P, p. 352. Though some parts of the substance of the following letter have already appeared in various forms, perhaps the account of Mr Hume's ill- ness, in the words of his friend and physician Dr Cullen, will be acceptable to many readers. I owe it to the kindness of Mrs Baillie, who had the goodness to copy it from the original, in the collection of her late learned and excellent hus- band, Dr Baillie. Some portion of what has been formerly published I do not think it ne- cessary to reprint. From DR CULLEN to DR HUNTER. " MY DEAR FRIEND, I was favoured with yours by Mr Halket on Sunday, and have an- swered some part of it by a gentleman whom I was otherwise obliged to write by ; but as I was not certain how soon that might come to your hand, I did not answer your postscript ; in do- ing which, if I can oblige you, a part of the me- rit must be that of the information being early, and I therefore give it you as soon as I possibly could. You desire an account of Mr Hume's last days, and I give it you with some pleasure ; for though I could not look upon him in his ill- ness without much concern, yet the tranquillity and pleasantry which he constantly discovered did even then give me satisfaction, and, now that the curtain is dropped, allows me to indulge the less allayed reflection. He was truly an ex- ample des grands hommes qui sont morts en plaisantant....l?or many weeks before his death he was very sensible of his gradual decay ; and his answer to inquiries after his health was, seve- ral times, that he was going as fast as his ene- mies could wish, and as easily as his friends could desire. He was not, however, without a frequent recurrence of pain and uneasiness ; but he passed most part of the day in his drawing- room, admitted the visits of his friends, and, with his usual spirit, conversed with them upon lite- rature, politics, or whatever else \vas accidental- ly started. In conversation he seemed to be per- DISSERTATION SECOND. 425 'otes ind fectly at ease, and to the last abounded with that pleasantry, and those curious and enter- trations. ' v~**~' taining anecdotes, which ever distinguished him. O ' O This, however, I always considered rather as an effort to he agreeahle ; and he at length acknow- ledged that it became too much for his strength. For a few days before his death, he became more averse to receive visits ; speaking became more and more difficult for him, and for twelve hours before his death his speech failed altogether. His senses and judgment did not fail till the last hour of his life. He constantly discovered a strong sensibility to the attention and care of his friends; and, amidst great uneasiness and lan- guor, never betrayed any peevishness or impa- tience. This is a general account of his last days ; but a particular fact or two may perhaps convey to you a still better idea of them. " About a fortnight before his death, he added a codicil to his will, in which he fully discover- ed his attention to his friends, as well as his own pleasantry. What little wine he himself drank was generally port, a wine for which his friend the poet [John Home] had ever declared the strongest aversion. David bequeaths to his friend John one bottle of port ; and, upon condition of his drink- ing this even at two down-sittings, bestows upon him twelve dozen of his best claret. He plea- santly adds, that this subject of wine was the only one upon which they had ever differed. In the codicil there are several other strokes of raillery and pleasantry, highly expressive of the cheerfulness which he then enjoyed. He even turned his attention to some of the simple amuse- ments with which he had been formerly pleased. In the neighbourhood of his brother's house in Berwickshire is a brook, by which the access in time of floods is frequently interrupted. Mr Hume bequeaths L.100 for building a bridge over this brook, but upon the express condition that none of the stones for that purpose shall be taken from a quarry in the neighbourhood, which forms part of a romantic scene in which, in his earlier days, Mr Hume took particular de- light. Otherwise the money to go to the poor of the parish. " These are a few particulars which may per- D1SS. II. haps appear trifling; but to me no particulars seem trifling that relate to so great a man. It is perhaps from trifles that we can best distin- ' guish the tranquillity and cheerfulness of the philosopher, at a time when the most part of mankind are under disquiet, anxiety, and some- times even horror....! had gone so far when I was called to the country ; and I have returned only so long before the post as to say, that I am most affectionately yours, " WILLIAM CULLEN. " Edinburgh, \1th September 1776." NOTE Q, p. 353. Pyrrho was charged with carrying his scepti- cism so far as not to avoid a carriage if it was driven against him. ^Enesidemus, the most famous of ancient sceptics, with great probabi- lity vindicates the more ancient doubter from such lunacy, of which indeed his having lived to the age of ninety seems sufficient to acquit him. )]CV (piXoffopsiv [itv aurov Kara rov rv\$ itfofflt , fif\ (tsvroi yt owrgoogarwj exaffra ffgarniv. (DlOG. LAERT. lib. ix. sect. 62.) Brief and imperfect as our accounts of ancient scepticism are, it does appear that their reason- ing on the subject of causation had some resem- blance to that of Mr Hume. Avutgovai ds ro airiov w5r ro airiov ruv srgog n sffn, vrgos yao ry ainurary tarr ra 8t Tgos n vxivourat ftovov vf3aivn SKI rov you. ( Am ST. de Anima, lib. iii. cap. v. Opera, torn. II. p. 50. Paris, 1639.) . A little before, in the same treatise, appears a great part of the substance of the famous maxim, Nil est in intellects, quod non prim fuit in sensu. "Rds pavraffia, xivqatg n$ bczsi tivai, xai ov/t avsv aiffdqffiug yiyvttsQai. (Ibid. 47.) In the tract on Memory and Reminiscence we find his enumeration of the principles of as- sociation. A/a y. xai u