Locke's writings and philosophy historically considered, and vindicated from the charge of contributing to the scepticism of Hume; by Edward Tagart. / Tagart, Edward, 1804-1858

LOCKE'S 
WRITINGS AND PHILOSOPHY 

HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED, 



VINDICATED FROM THE CHAEGE OF CONTRIBUTING 
TO THE SCEPTICISM OF HUME. 



BY 



EDWARD TAGART, P.S.A., F.L.S. 




LONDON: 

LONGMAN, BKOWN, GEEEN, AND LONGMANS. 
1855. 



T3 



" I know not how men, who have the same idea under different names, 
or different ideas under the same name, can in that case talk with one an- 
other." LOCKE. 



"I rejoice in your quotations from Locke. That great man has done 
more for the enlargement of the human faculties, and the establishment 
of pure Christianity, than any author I am acquainted with." BISHOP 

WATSON. 




PREFACE. 



THE Work now presented to the reader supposes 
careful students of the philosophy of the mind, with 
access to the books which profess to treat of it. It is 
a plea for English Philosophy and its great masters. 
It consists of two parts. The first is a vindication of 
Locke from prevalent misrepresentations, and especi- 
ally from the charge of encouraging scepticism in re- 
ligion and morals, showing, by a somewhat careful 
examination of Hume's metaphysical writings, that 
Hume neither built nor affected to build on any prin- 
ciples peculiar to Locke, and placing Locke in just re- 
lation to Descartes, Berkeley, Gassendi, and Leibnitz. 
The second contains a view of the progress of English 
philosophy, properly so called, from Bacon, through 
Hobbes, Locke, and Hartley, to more modern think- 
ers, such as Bentham, Mill, and Austin. It aspires 
to give such a view of the contents of the ' Essay on 
the Human Understanding' as may facilitate the pro- 



VI PREFACE. 

fitable study of it, and give to the reader a clear per- 
ception of its excellencies and defects. The second 
part arose naturally out of the first. Not having 
been originally contemplated, some slight repetitions 
of sentiment occur, which yet may not be unpleasing 
or useless to the reader. 

Brought up in a school in which Locke was the 
object of traditional veneration, a veneration height- 
ened and justified by reading, reflection, and experi- 
ence, I have seen with mingled astonishment and 
pain the attempts recently made to depose the master 
from his seat of honour, among those from whom bet- 
ter things were to be expected. But it is one thing 
to be convinced of the futility of the common objec- 
tions to Locke's philosophy, of the ignorance in which 
they originate, and of the injustice of the insinuations 
against its character and tendency another to dis- 
play that futility, that ignorance, that injustice before 
the eyes of an impartial inquirer by an elaborate pic- 
ture of the condition of mental and moral science be- 
fore and about his time, and a truthful representation 
of its progress since. Learned men, as well as others, 
are oftentimes hard to be convinced of the falsehood 
of an opinion once embraced by them ; " nor will they 
yield," says Lardner, " till they are overwhelmed by a 
heap of reasons." 



PREFACE. Vll 

In addition to the observance of the excellent rules 
laid down by Locke for remedying the imperfection 
and abuse of words, first, that words should be ap- 
plied, as near as may be, to such ideas as common use 
has annexed them to ; secondly, that they should be 
made, when doubtful or obscure, as clear as possible 
by explanation or definition, that is, by enumerating, 
in the case of terms significant of complex ideas, the 
several simple ones which enter into the complexity ; 
and thirdly, that there should be constancy in adhe- 
rence to the same meaning ; writers touching on the 
history of metaphysics should also observe a fourth 
rule, namely, that of "faithful quotation." They 
should never attempt to give the opinions of authors 
whom they criticize and controvert in words other 
than those which the authors themselves have used. 
Writers and thinkers worthy of attention express their 
notions in language deemed by them the fittest; a 
language not to be changed with advantage to their 
sentiments, except in so far as they have themselves 
supplied correction. Mr. Dugald Stewart, like most 
other writers on the mind, in his ' Dissertation on the 
Progress of Metaphysical Philosophy/ is very defec- 
tive in this respect. To that dissertation I must ac- 
knowledge myself indebted for opening many paths 
of interesting inquiry, though the result of inquiry 



Vlll PREFACE. 

has led me, for the most part, to conclusions very 
different from my guide's. 

In a work of this nature, surveying so wide and 
difficult a field, no doubt errors will be detected; 
some oversight of matters worthy of attention, some 
instances of bad reasoning, and of that laxity of 
phrase against which it is so difficult to guard. Such 
errors I shall rejoice to see corrected, being anxious 
only for the fullest investigation of the subject, for 
the advancement of mental and moral science. My 
wish is to be one of those combatants whom Locke 
describes " as a champion for knowledge, truth, and 
peace ; not a slave to vainglory, ambition, or a party." 
"Rational metaphysics," to translate a passage of 
D'Alembert in the admirable preliminary discourse to 
the ( Encyclopedic/ where he speaks of Locke as the 
Newton of the mind, " like experimental physics, can 
only consist in gathering with care all the facts, re- 
ducing them to a body, explaining some by others, 
and distinguishing those which ought to hold the first 
rank, to serve as the common basis." 

E.T. 

Wildwood, Hampstead, May, 1855. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Statement of the Design and Plan of the Work 1 

VModern Opinions concerning Locke, Stewart, Cousin, Remusat, 

x J. D. Morell, and others 4 

vfeigh estimation of Locke in England towards the middle of 

/ the Eighteenth Century 12 

VDr. Reid's Charge against Locke 16 

Priestley's Reply 20 

Account of the commencement of the Scotch School of Me- 
taphysics, 25 ; Animadversions on Reid and Stewart . . 26 

Criticism of Berkeley 38 

Of Hume 57 

Of J. S. Mill's view of Causation . . . . 135 

Stewart's remarks on Hume examined 142 

Defence of Hartley 144 

^Merits of Locke contrasted with Hume 153 

tjlobbes, Clarke, and Locke defended against Stewart, and 

Hume's infallible relations examined 157 

Certainty in connection with Propositions founded on uniform 

Experience 172 

Descartes on Innate Ideas examined 176 

Gassendi on Descartes 182 

Hobbes on Descartes 193 

Merits and Defects of Descartes ; . 194 

Merits of Campanella 198 

Merits and Defects of Descartes continued 203 

Gassendi's Influence upon Locke 210 

Locke on Innate Ideas defended . . 225 



X CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Hooker's anticipation of Locke 229 

x Henry More's Platonism 232 

Eeview of Leibnitz c 239 

Keview of Kant 285 

On the terms a priori and a posteriori 312 

OUTLINE OF THE PBOGBESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

Bacon 331 

Hobbes 338 

His antagonists, Clarendon, Tenison, Cumberland .... 360 

Locke 376 

His view of the sources of Ideas 377 

His view of the faculties of the Mind 384 

His view of Complex Ideas 399 

His view of Language 404 

His error about Abstract Ideas being without Patterns in 

Nature 408 

Hence about the nature of Demonstration, and its appli- 
cation to moral science 410 

Value of his Writings, and their practical results .... 423 

His Letters on Toleration 426 

His Considerations on the State of the Coinage 427 

' ^Treatises on Government 428 

Treatise on Education, compared with Milton's 435 

His Controversy with Stillingneet 438 

His Reasonableness of Christianity 441 

Reply to Edwards 443 

His Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles of St. Paul . . . 445 

Its fruits 446 

Hartley 449 

Bentham's obligations to Hartley 454 

James Mill's injustice to Hartley 460 

Dr. Brown compared with Hartley 461 

Alison's Essays on Taste 467 

Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments 468 

Butler to be classed with Law and Hartley 470 

Importance of the doctrine of Association as applied to Habit 
and Affection, and to Logic 473 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



Etymology one of the best guides to the meaning of terms . . 476 
Peculiar advantage enjoyed by the disciple of Locke and 
Hartley . . 480 



APPENDIX. 

1. Account of Locke's last hours and character, translated from 

Le Clerc 483 

2. Further examples of the supposed connection of Hume's 

scepticism with Locke's philosophy 490 

3. Passage from Sir Matthew Hale showing the state of opi- 

nion on Innate Ideas before Locke 493 

4. Opinion of Hume, by the translator of Buffier 494 

5. Hume's definition of Virtue, etc. etc 495 

Chronological Table of Writers on the Mind and kindred sub- 
jects .496 



UNIVERSITY 




LOCKED 
WEITINGS AND PHILOSOPHY 

HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 



ERRATA. 



Page 48, line 15, for excluded read included. 

Page 201, line 15, for before read after. 

Page 269, line 12 of note, insert a full stop between after and Leibnitz. 

Page 344, note, for Seldon read Selden. 



Hope ol satisfactory result; while the opinion is in- 
dustriously propagated that they do not contain the 
elements of a sound philosophy of the mind, but, on 
the contrary, that they encourage a scepticism fatal to 
true science, to the intellectual progress, the moral 
improvement, and the lasting happiness of mankind. 

To remove or soften these prejudices, and to vindi- 
cate their scientific worth, is the object of the present 
Work ; and in whatever degree success attends it, and 
truth accompanies, in that degree something will be 
done for the progress of correct thought, and to pro- 

B 



.2 DESIGN OF THE WORK. 

mote the use of intelligible language concerning the 
operations and powers of the human understanding. 
The path will be smoothed for future inquirers ; the 
prospect of possible additions to our knowledge of 
human nature in its deepest and darkest recesses may 
be brightened; for in mental, no less than in phy- 
sical science, it is desirable to know how to observe 
and what to observe, in order to attain substantial 
and satisfactory results. A patient and minute atten- 
tion to works and authors very much forgotten, and 
when not forgotten, much misrepresented, will be ne- 
cessary ; and although to extract from a multitude 
of metaphysical books the modicum of valuable and 
practical sense and reasonable logic which they con- 
tain, is like cleansing the Augean Stable or disen- 
tangling Nesera's net, yet to uphold the just autho- 
rity of one of the greatest and purest of English 
philosophers, to add one votive offering to his honoured 
memory, is a duty of gratitude and a labour of love. 
Some future historian of the literature and philosophy 
of the eighteenth century, continuing Mr. Hallam's 
labours, may be assisted with materials for a useful 
chapter. Could I indulge the faintest hope of being 
remembered in some distant day, I could wish it to 
be in connection, humble but not unworthy, with the 
name of Locke. " Magnus veri sacerdos V " The 
incomparable man, who emancipated human reason 
from the yoke of mystery and jargon; the greatest 
and best of philosophers f." "The father of the 

* The poet Gray. f Professor Austin, in his Jurisprudence. 



DESIGN OF THE WORK. 3 

modern logic*" and "of rational criticism." "First 
master of intellectual truth ! without whom those who 
have taught me would have been as nothing f." 
Such grateful praise has been given by disinterested 
and competent judges. It may be added, that he 
was the most distinguished champion of England's 
toleration and religious liberty ; foremost among those 
who endeavoured to make the purest reason compa- 
tible with benevolent religious faith knowledge in- 
strumental to devotion, and who considered the elu- 
cidation and defence of truth the first office of bene- 
volence the noblest service of mankind. 

In pursuing this subject, it is desirable at the out- 
set to adduce some evidence of the nature and pre- 
valence of the prejudices which I endeavour to re- 
move. The less-prepared reader will then judge how 
far there is real occasion for the present Essay. I 
shall then proceed to trace the origin and inquire into 
the reasonableness of these prejudices. In doing this, 
it will be necessary to enter fully and carefully into 
an examination of Hume's principles and reasonings, 
in order to show that the statements which I endea- 
vour to refute, are prejudices for which the authors 
have neither produced, nor in most instances pretended 
to adduce, any evidence whatsoever. This examina- 
tion will prepare us for the remarks, with which I 
shall venture to conclude, on the present condition of 

* Sir Humphry Davy ; and in what sense true, will be shown 
hereafter. 

t Jeremy Bentham's Works, vol. x., Bowring's edition. 

B 2 



4 MODERN OPINIONS CONCERNING LOCKE. 

mental and moral science, and on the means by which 
the study of it may be improved, and relieved from 
many embarrassments. In following this plan, much 
minute, but not unimportant literary history will of 
necessity demand attention ; but it may be hoped that 
its general accuracy, combined in some cases with 
novelty, as well as its sincerity of purpose, on a sub- 
ject of the highest moment, will repay whatever atten- 
tion may be given. 



MODERN OPINIONS CONCERNING LOCKE. 

* 

1. Mr. Dugald Stewart, in the Dissertation pre- 
fixed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, after mentioning 
some communications which took place by letter be- 
tween Dr. Butler, the author of the ' Analogy of 
Natural and Revealed Religion with the Constitution 
and Course of Nature/ and David Hume, expresses 
himself as follows : " Dr. Butler was, I think, the 
first of Mr. Locke's successors, who clearly perceived 
the dangerous consequences likely to be deduced from 
his account of the origin of our ideas, literally inter- 
preted. And although he has touched on this sub- 
ject but once, and that with his usual brevity, he 
has yet said enough to show that his opinion with 
respect to it was the same with that formerly con- 
tended for by Cudworth, in opposition to Gassendi 
and Hobbes, and which has since been revived by 
the ablest of Mr. Hume's antagonists. With these 
views, it may be reasonably supposed that he (?'. e. 



MODERN OPINIONS CONCERNING LOCKE. 5 

Butler) was not displeased to see the consequences 
of Locke's doctrine so very logically and forcibly 
pushed to their utmost limits, as the most effectual 
means of rousing the attention of the learned to a 
re-examination of this fundamental principle." 

The whole passage in Mr. Stewart's dissertation 
has reference to Hume's 'Treatise of Human Na- 
ture;' and it implies that in that Treatise some im- 
portant doctrine of Locke's was logically pushed to 
its utmost limits. It is worthy of notice, if only as 
a specimen of Mr. Stewart's mode of treating these 
subjects, that what Dr. Butler really alludes to, in the 
Essay on Personal Identity, is not Locke s account 
of the origin of our ideas, about which Butler says 
nothing, and to which I am not aware that he ever 
made objection, but certain expressions and supposi- 
tions concerning personal identity; of which Locke 
himself modestly says, "Did we know more of the 
thinking thing within one, we might see the absurdity 
of some of those suppositions I have made*." 

2. Monsieur V. Cousin, in his 'Cours d'Histoire 
de la Philosophic Morale/ speaks of ' sensualisme' and 
the ' Ecole sensualiste,' as represented by Locke, Con- 
dillac, Helvetius, Saint-Lambert, and of idealism as 
associated with the Scotch, with Kant and Fichte; 
and he makes certain criticisms on Locke, which, if 
not hereafter noticed, will only be passed over because 
they have been sufficiently animadverted upon by an 
excellent American writer, Mr. Bowen, in his 'Meta- 

* Essay on Understanding, b. ii. ch. 27, and Stewart's Disserta- 
tion, p. 217. 



MODERN OPINIONS CONCERNING LOCKE. 

physical Essays/ The terms ' sensualisme' and ' sen- 
sualist e' are not found in ordinary French dictionaries. 
They sound harshly to the English ear as expressive of 
a philosophical theory, especially when connected with 
the name and principles of Locke, who was as little of 
a sensualist, in the common English meaning of that 
term, as man could be. His taste, his principles, his 
habits, were in the highest degree remote from any 
tendency to the grosser indulgences of sense. Habi- 
tually an invalid, an exquisite refinement, a delicacy 
almost painful, pervades the expression of his counte- 
nance, as the common engravings and busts have trans- 
mitted it to us; and the grave lines which we now 
trace therein would have been deepened, or perhaps 
have relaxed into a smile, by the momentary suggestion 
that in future times his principles and his authority 
would come to be associated with any of the less pure, 
less worthy, and less elevated enjoyments, pursuits, 
and attributes of human nature. It could hardly 
have been intended by Monsieur Cousin to charge 
upon Locke any personal leaning to what in England 
would be most readily understood by a sensualist; 
but he takes no care to discuss an abstract philo- 
sophical question upon its merits, and to sever the 
simple matter of fact and of principle from the delu- 
sive mixture of motive and of consequences, from what 
Bentham aptly calls dislogistic phraseology. The ap- 
plause of his audience seduces him into declamation, 
when he should tax the understanding with patient 
analysis. But it is pleasanter to gather flowers which 



MODERN OPINIONS CONCERNING LOCKE. 7 

may be thrown away tomorrow, than to cut out steps 
in a hard rock, which, when once made, may thence- 
forth serve for easier ascent and wider views. 

3. After Cousin, as an additional evidence of the state 
of thought on metaphysical subjects among the students 
of France, C. Remusat may be referred to, in whose 
third Philosophical Essay, under the head of 'Reid/ the 
following sentiment occurs : " Sensualism however 
was not the only result of the philosophy of Locke. 
One and the same error may produce different errors 
may sometimes give authority to contrary errors. Thus 
from a philosophy which exaggerates the part played 
by sensation, it was doubtless natural to conclude the 
reference of all reality to that which is perceived by 
sense (senti\ a conclusion which drives us to consider 
only body in the universe. But as sensation taken 
alone, despoiled of the beliefs which accompany it and 
make it fruitful, reveals nothing but itself alone, it was 
equally possible, in following Locke, to see only in 
external objects the sensation which they occasion, to 
annihilate their proper existence, and to rest the boldest 
doubt on the humblest empiricism. Thus that doc- 
trine which sacrifices mind to sensation might give 
birth alike to the negation of mind, that is, mate- 
rialism ; and to the negation of matter, that is, ideal- 
ism ; in fine, the negation of both, universal negation 
or scepticism. Of all these errors, the least unreason- 
able appears to be materialism, that is the error of 
the French. Idealism without scepticism, or dogmatic 
on one side, and on the other, scepticism with prefe- 



8 MODERN OPINIONS CONCERNING LOCKE. 

rence for materialism, the two doctrines or rather two 
subtle views, two paradoxical speculations, which could 
not make a school, are represented in England by two 
philosophers without disciples, Berkeley and Hume. 
After Locke, Hume and Berkeley have been the im- 
mediate adversaries of Reid; and we shall soon see 
how he combated them. But their doctrines were 
little adapted to the English genius : it is on the soil 
of Germany speculations of this sort flourish*." 

4. Mr. J. D. Morell, in an ' Historical and Critical 
View of the Speculative Philosophy of Europe in the 
Nineteenth Century ' has the following remarks : 
" The principles of Locke's celebrated Essay we have 
already criticized at some length, and shown, we trust 
sufficiently, the dangerous readiness which it mani- 
fested to regard experience as the sole basis on which 
any system of truth could be erected." " The scep- 
ticism which arose out of the school of Locke, we 
find, in fact, to be the most deeply grounded in its 
principles, the most logical in its arguments, and the 
most sweeping in its conclusions, of any which the 
history of philosophy has recorded ; and the name of 
David Hume, its great advocate, will ever be remem- 
bered as associated with all that is bold and compre- 
hensive in the attacks which have been made against 
the validity of human knowledge." 

"Hume united in himself, to a high degree, the 
observing power of sensationalism with the faculty of 
abstract reasoning that has generally belonged pecu- 

* 'Essais sur la Philosophic,' by Remusat, vol. i. pp. 183-4. 



MODERN OPINIONS CONCERNING LOCKE. 

liarly to idealism, and knew perfectly what had been 
found unsatisfactory in the one system, as well as what 
was inconclusive in the other. He came, properly 
speaking, from the school of Locke, and adopted 
throughout the fundamental axioms of that philosophy 
for his own; but he could equally well employ the 
rationalistic method of Descartes whenever it suited 
his purpose, in order to strengthen the grounds of his 
startling unbelief." "To the first principles, from 
which he took his start, no one at that time could very 
strongly demur, as it was then generally admitted that 
Locke's account of the origin of our ideas was correct, 
and that the whole of our knowledge might really be 
traced to sensation and reflection as its source. Hume 
in fact did little more than change the current phrase- 
ology, when he said that all our mental phenomena 
consist of impressions and ideas ; including under the 
former our direct perceptions, and by the latter, mean- 
ing the signs of them, which by virtue of memory, 
association, etc., remain after the impression has ceased. 
In addition to this, he was only following Aristotle, 
the scholastic philosophers, Descartes, Malebranche, 
and Locke himself, when he assumed as indisputable 
the representationalist theory of human knowledge, 
and took for granted, that by the idea of any real 
outward existence we are to understand the represen- 
tation or copy of it actually existing within our own 
minds, this copy being the sole means by which we 
can attain to the knowledge of the objective*/' 

* Morell's Philosophy, vol. i. p. 272. 



10 MODERN OPINIONS CONCERNING LOCKE. 

There is more to the same purpose and in a similar 
spirit in Mr. Morell's volumes. His taste seems to 
have been formed upon French models, and in the 
school of Cousin, more than -upon a patient study of 
the solid writers of his own country. Such use of 
the terms 'sensationalism/ 'idealism/ 'rationalistic/ 
' representationalist/ is somewhat new to the English 
student; its value, with that of the correctness and 
precision of the whole statement, will be tested in 
some degree by that examination of Hume which lies 
before us. 

I throw into an Appendix some additional quota- 
tions from an Italian writer, Vincenzo Gioberti, from 
an American writer, a Mr. Rowland, and from a 
reviewer in the c Westminster and Foreign Quarterly/ 
and some other writers, which will illustrate still 
further the very extensive prevalence of these views 
of the influence of Locke. It is not worth while to 
detain the reader with their perusal here. 

It may be added that, partly by the reflex action of 
continental writers upon English opinion and taste, 
partly by the fear of social changes and of those 
reforms, ecclesiastical and educational, which are fa- 
voured by a clear, practical, and benevolent philo- 
sophy, the high estimation of Locke, as the founder 
of a true theory of the mind, as the leading dis- 
coverer in that important field of observation and 
inquiry, has of late years been declining in England, 
except among a few of the more independent and 
sober thinkers. Professor Sedgwick, in his 'Dis- 



MODERN OPINIONS CONCERNING LOCKE. 11 

course on the Studies of the University of Cambridge/ 
Dr. Whewell, in his recent ' History of Moral Philo- 
sophy/ though acknowledging the great merits of 
Locke in many respects, are upon the whole unfavour- 
able to him, and do not encourage the opinion that he 
furnishes the brightest light, and leads the way as our 
best guide, in the dark and intricate paths of meta- 
physical research. It is even more to be regretted 
that other English writers and thinkers, freer in posi- 
tion than the Professors in our Universities, who might 
be expected to appreciate the rare intellectual and 
moral qualities of the author of the 'Essay on the 
Human Understanding/ and to own their inestimable 
obligations to him, have lent a hand to the destruc- 
tion of his fame and influence, an influence already 
sufficiently dreaded by the lovers of darkness, and 
the favoured beneficiaries of exclusiveness and in- 
tolerance. 

Taking the evidence now adduced of the nature 
and prevalence of those impressions concerning Locke, 
the justice of which is to form the subject of our ex- 
amination, evidence the readiest to my hands, though 
not perhaps the most important, which the literature 
of later days supplies, we may pass to that minute in- 
quiry into the real influence of Locke's philosophy 
upon his immediate successors, and into the exact na- 
ture of that philosophy, which will test their correct- 
ness, and account for their origin and prevalence. 
This examination will prove a salutary philosophical 
exercise, of some value in itself, and of the highest 



12 HIGH ESTIMATION OF LOCKE 

importance in its results, in proportion to the com- 
pleteness and fidelity of the inquiry. 



HIGH ESTIMATION OF LOCKE IN THE FIRST HALF OF 
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

"Towards the close of the eighteenth century, it 
became fashionable sometimes to accuse Locke of 
preparing the way for scepticism a charge which, if 
it had been truly applicable to some of his opinions, 
ought rather to have been made against the long line 
of earlier writers, with whom he held them in com- 
mon ; sometimes, with more pretence, to allege that 
he had conceded too much to materialism ; sometimes 
to point out and exaggerate other faults and errors 
of his Essay ; till we have seemed to forget that it is 
perhaps the first, and still the most complete chart of 
the mind which has been laid down ; the most ample 
repertory of truths relating to our intellectual being ; 
and the one book which we are compelled to name as 
the first in metaphysical science." 

Such is Mr. Hallam's language in the third of his 
delightful and instructive volumes on the History of 
the Literature of Europe, and it will not be disre- 
garded by any one capable of following in the paths 
which he has trodden. It will be found, on a close 
examination of writers on the philosophy of the mind 
subsequent to Locke, worthy of the discrimination and 
judgment of its venerated author. 

For the first half of the eighteenth century the 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 13 

writings of Locke stood high in public estimation. 
His ' Essay on the Human Understanding*' had been 
early adopted as a text-book at the Universities. It 
became the " Novum Organum" of mental science, 
and pushed aside all previous works on that capital 
portion of the field of human knowledge. Conti- 
nental writers of the highest eminence acknowledged 
its vast importance. Le Clerc gave it deserved rank, 
by his review and account of it in the ' Bibliotheque 
Choisie' (torn, vi., 1706), preceded by Locke's own 
abridgment of it in the ' Bibliotheque Universelle,' 
1688, and followed by an eloge of Locke, after his 
death, earnest and affectionate, but not extravagant, 
the tribute of a friend and a philosopherf. 

The eminent and gifted Leibnitz early published 
some short reflections on it, which, while expressing 
considerable diversity of opinion, showed his high 

* First published in 1689, and abridged by Mr. Wynne, 1695, for 
University use. 

t Locke did what he could to induce Le Clerc to settle in Eng- 
land, and to provide for that eminent scholar a living in the English 
Church. But it could not be brought about. One wishes that, as in 
the case of Erasmus, England had had the honour of sheltering and 
gladdening in his declining years a man of so much learning and ac- 
complishment as Le Clerc, 

" Who scorned delights, and lived laborious days." 
The only notice of Locke which I trace in Gibbon is honourable and 
in connection with Le Clerc, who had given Locke's method of a 
commonplace book, in the 'Bibliotheque Universelle,' of which 
method Gibbon observes, " The exactness and perspicuity of that 
great man are seen in that trifle." See Locke's Familiar Correspon- 
dence with Molyneux, and Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works, in one 
vol., p. 433. 



14 HIGH ESTIMATION OF LOCKE 

sense of its importance and of the merits of the 
author. And he commented upon it at length, in 
'Nouveaux Essais sur 1'Entendement humain,' in 
1703. It was speedily translated into French by the 
admiring hand of Mons. Coste. A Latin translation 
appeared in 1701*. At home, writers of all classes 
united to extol and recommend it. The learned Bent- 
ley, in the Boyle Lectures against Atheism, in 1693, 
built upon Locke's principles, and "vented his notions 
from the pulpit f." Addison infused into his 'Spec- 
tators' a spirit of practical wisdom, and a refinement 
of feeling and taste> caught from the great philoso- 
pher, whom he delighted to mention with honour. 
His name was venerated, not merely as a synonym 
for intellectual sagacity, but for the pure and dispas- 
sionate love of truth, combined with a rational piety 
and calm religious faith ; as that of a man who had 
done perhaps more than any living individual to dis- 
sipate prejudices, to stimulate inquiry, to secure the 
liberties, and, by an example of intellectual and moral 
greatness, to promote the highest honour and happi- 
ness of his country. The friend of Somers and of 
William the Third, of Molyneux, of the first Shaftes- 
bury, of Pembroke, of Newton, and an inmate in the 
house of the daughter of Cudworth, he enjoyed and 

* Mr. Stewart observes " that we everywhere trace the influence 
of Locke's doctrines in Crousaz's ' Treatise of Logic.' " If the ' Art 
of Thinking,' by Crousaz, translated in 1724, be meant, the fact is 
otherwise : much of Locke's language is misapplied, and his autho- 
rity scarcely recognized. 

f See Locke's Letter to Molyneux, Feb. 22, 1697. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 15 

used the finest opportunities for intellectual accom- 
plishment, and for social influence the most beneficial 
and the most extensive. Who can read Coste's Cha- 
racter of Mr. Locke without sympathizing in its rap- 
tures of admiration for his "virtue, capacity, and the 
excellency of his writing" ? 

The high estimation in which Locke was held, 
about the middle of the last century, especially at 
Cambridge, when Law and Gay were also there as 
visitors or residents, associated in common studies, is 
shown by the beautiful address to the philosopher, 
which the poet Gray introduces into the fragment of 
a metaphysical poem, entitled, 'De Principiis Cogi- 
tandi,' designed to embody the philosophy of Locke. 

" Nee dedignare canentem, 
O decus ! Angliacse certe 6 lux altera gentis ! 
Si qua primus iter monstras, vestigia conor 
Signare incerta, tremulaque insistere planta. 
Quin potius due ipse (potes namque omnia) sanctum 
Ad limen, (si rite adeo, si pectore puro,) 
Obscurse reserans naturae ingentia claustra. 
Tu caecas rerum causas, fontemque severum 
Pande, Pater ; tibi enim, tibi, veri magne Sacerdos, 
Corda patent hominum, atque altse penetralia mentis." 

This invocation of Locke by Gray is the more im- 
pressive, because there was hardly any branch of learn- 
ing except the pure mathematics in which Gray had 
not acquired a mastery, and he had paid particular 
attention to metaphysical and moral science, ancient 
and modern. 

Prom the whole character of the metaphysical philo- 



16 REID, THE FIRST WHO CHARGES LOCKE 

sophy prevalent in England and at the Universities, at 
the period when Gray wrote, it is evident that not only 
had Shaftesbury lapsed into comparative oblivion, but 
that other writers also, who were opposed to Locke, 
such as Stillingfleet, and the less-remembered Norris, 
the Platonist, and Lee, and Lowde, who wrote on the 
Nature of Man, and drew forth some comments from 
Locke in the later editions of the Essay, had sunk into 
the same condition. Then Warburton* and Cony- 
beare spoke of Locke as " the honour of this age, and 
the instructor of the future," and of the Essay on the 
Human Understanding as " one of the noblest and 
most original books in the world." 



REID, THE FIRST WHO CHARGES LOCKE WITH 
LEADING TO SCEPTICISM. 

But after the writings of Berkeley and of Hume 
appeared, a different tone began to be in vogue. The 
depreciation of Locke, and the connection of his 
name with sceptical principles, came from the North, 
and the first who set the fashion was Dr. Thomas 
Reid, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the Univer- 
sity of Glasgow, who published, in 1764, an ' Inquiry 
into the Human Mind, on the principles of Common 
Sense.' I say the first, because Shaftesbury 's unwar- 

* See the Dedication to the Free-thinkers prefixed to the ' Divine 
Legation,' with the striking remarks on the treatment of Locke by 
Collins and by Shaftesbury: Warburton's Works, vol. i. p. 163, 
edit. 1811. 



WITH LEADING TO SCEPTICISM. 17 

rantable attack on Locke's Essay, which has of late 
been frequently quoted, and may be found in Stew- 
art's Dissertation (p. 118) mentioned with praise, as 
putting the question about innate ideas in a right 
light, although it really changes that question en- 
tirely, is a mere piece of rodomontade, passed over 
at the time as unworthy of its author. ' To throw 
truth and virtue out of the world/ is happily not 
within the scope of any man's powers ; and to speak 
thus of such a work as Locke's, can only be regarded 
as a hasty ebullition of. temper, which its author upon 
the least reflection must have repented. There is a 
severe and contemptuous notice of Shaftesbury in the 
Letters of the poet Gray : it is at the close of a letter 
addressed to Mr. Stonhewer, dated Cambridge, Au- 
gust 18, 1758, and may be given in a note*. 

* " You say you cannot conceive how Lord Shaftesbury came to 
be a philosopher in vogue. I will tell you. First, he was a lord. 
Secondly, he was as vain as any of his readers. Thirdly, men are 
very prone to believe what they do not understand. Fourthly, they 
will believe anything at all, provided they are under no obligation 
(? rational obligation) to believe it. Fifthly, they love to take a 
new road, even when that road leads nowhere. Sixthly, he was 
reckoned a fine writer, and seemed always to mean more than he 
said. Would you have any more reasons ? An interval of above 
forty years has pretty well destroyed the charm. A dead lord ranks 
but with commoners. Vanity is no longer interested in the matter, 
for the new road has become an old one. The mode of free-thinking 
is like that of ruffs and farthingales, and has given place to that of 
not thinking at all ; once it was reckoned disgraceful half to dis- 
cover and half to conceal the mind, but now we have been long 
accustomed to see it quite naked ; primness and affectation of style, 
like the good breeding of Queen Anne's Court, has turned to hoyden- 

C 



18 REID, THE FIRST WHO CHARGES LOCKE 

" I acknowledge," says Dr. Reid, in the dedication 
of his ' Inquiry into the Human Mind/ " that I never 
thought of calling in question the principles commonly 
received with regard to the human understanding, 
until the 'Treatise of Human Nature' was published 
in the year 1739. The ingenious author of that Trea- 
tise upon the principles of Locke, who was no sceptic, 
hath built a system of scepticism which leaves no 
ground to believe any one thing rather than its con- 
trary. His reasoning appeared to me to be just; 
there was therefore a necessity to call in question the 
principles or to admit the conclusion*/' Dr. Reid 
expresses himself still more strongly to the same effect 
at the conclusion of his work. After intimating that 
Locke's principles concerning ideas were in some im- 
portant particulars identical with those of Descartes, 
and that Berkeley's system is founded upon Cartesian 
principles, he says: "Thus we seef that Descartes 
and Locke take the road that leads to scepticism 
without knowing the end of it; but they stop short 
for want of light to carry them further. Berkeley, 
frighted at the appearance of the dreadful abyss, starts 
aside, and avoids it. But the author of the ' Treatise 

ing and rude familiarity." The above is followed, in Mason's ' Gray,' 
by some pertinent strictures on the writings of Lord Bolingbroke, 
and his attack on the * Moral Attributes of the Deity.' 

* 'Inquiry into the Human Mind/ by Dr. Reid. Dedication, 
p. 5, edit. 1769. 

f Conclusion of the ' Inquiry,' p. 374. Compare also various pas- 
sages relating to Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke, in the Intro- 
duction to the same work, p. 10. 



WITH LEADING TO SCEPTICISM. 19 

of Human Nature/ more daring and intrepid, without 
turning aside to the right hand or to the left, like 
Virgil's Alecto, shoots directly into the gulf : 

" Hie specus horrendum, et saevi spiracula Ditis 
Monstrantur : ruptoque ingens Aclieronte vorago 
Pestiferas aperit fauces." 

Dr. Reid's work reached a third edition in 1769. 
It was exceedingly well received. Being Professor of 
Philosophy in a Scotch University, the Doctor's opi- 
nions and statements were influential from his position ; 
and without examination (for how few would examine 
Descartes and Malebranche for themselves) they gained 
credit and were repeated. Mr. Dugald Stewart, in 
his account of the life and writings of Dr. Reid, pub- 
lished in 1802, declares that the idea of prosecuting 
the study of the Human Mind on the plan of Lord 
Bacon and his followers in physics, if not first con- 
ceived, was at least first successfully carried into exe- 
cution by Dr. Reid*. Dr. Reid was soon followed 
by two other writers in the same track, namely, Dr. 
Oswald, who published an ' Appeal to Common Sense 
in behalf of Religion/ a second edition of which came 
out in 1768, and Dr. James Beattie, more famous as 
a poet, who became Professor of Philosophy in Ma- 
rischal College, Aberdeen, in 1760, and first published 
his 'Essay on Truth' in 1770, an essay which went 
through five editions in as, many successive years an 
evidence of the fluctuation of taste and fashion in lite- 
rature. Thus we see that reputations flourish like 

* Stewart's Account, 4to, p. 40. 

c 2 



20 REID, THE FIRST WHO CHARGES LOCKE 

plants or weeds. They that grow most rapidly and 
are decked most gaily, for the most part decline also 
the soonest. The growth of the monarchs of the 
forest is slow and unnoticed ; but year after year they 
spread out their glories, and stand for ages, the object 
of ever-renewed admiration. So is it with the greatest 
productions of human intelligence : they bear fruit for 
successive generations, and fill the air season after sea- 
son with the perfume of their blossoms. 

These three writers, the Curiatii of the North, were 
not allowed to nourish their trumpets and claim a 
victory, without meeting an antagonist. A champion 
for England's superior sense against their common 
sense soon descended into the lists. They were sharply 
attacked and roughly handled by Dr. Priestley, who 
published an examination of them in 1774. It has 
been said that the flippant and sarcastic style which 
the Doctor assumed in his 'Examination' was disap- 
proved even by his own friends. If this be true, it 
may be readily imagined that those who were already 
unfriendly were deterred from looking into his pages, 
and found in the manner a sufficient excuse for under- 
valuing and disregarding the matter. 

Dr. Campbell, in his 'Philosophy of Rhetoric,' is 
particularly hard upon it*. He says*. " The attack 
was made in a manner which no man who has any 
regard to the name either of Englishman or of philo- 
sopher, will ever desire to see imitated in this or in 
any other country." Yet there is that vigour, pur- 

* See vol. i. pp. 94-97, edit. 1808. 



WITH LEADING TO SCEPTICISM. 21 

pose, and clearness in Dr. Priestley's work, which 
keeps the reader awake, and relieves the dryness of 
metaphysical disquisition. And Dr. Campbell's note 
proves that he also, candid and scholarly as upon the 
whole he was, could be blind to the real question at 
issue, in zeal for his discomfited countrymen. That 
question was not the existence of first truths or prin- 
ciples, as Dr. C. states it this Dr. Priestley never 
denied ; but it was the extent to which Reid and his 
coadjutors had misunderstood and misrepresented the 
philosophy of Locke and his school*. 

Dr. Priestley, ardent in everything, was the ardent 
disciple of Locke and Hartley. He thought he had 
found in these great and sober writers, not only a suf- 
ficient preservative from religious scepticism, but the 
elements of a true philosophy of the human mind. 
He was astounded and grieved at the manner in 
which these great masters of metaphysical science had 
been treated. He saw a modest and candid philo- 
sophy, as well as pure religion, endangered, wounded, 
betrayed, by officious and ill-judging friends. With a 
courage and energy characteristic of his free and gene- 
rous nature, he rose up at once and unhesitatingly in 
their defence. He advanced boldly, and with the first 
weapons at hand, into the camp of the enemy. He ex- 
posed their feeble resources and unworthy manoeuvres. 
He found their positions weak and untenable ; and he 

* The reader may compare with this Stewart's notice both of 
Campbell and Priestley in his account of Reid, which may be most 
conveniently referred to as reprinted in Hamilton's ' Eeid,' p. 27. 



22 REID, THE FIRST WHO CHARGES LOCKE 

scrupled not to represent their alliance as virtually a 
compact of prejudice and vanity. He denounced their 
principles as alike dangerous and false, and their works 
as destructive to the progress of sober and scientific 
inquiry, and to the proper estimation of writers far 
superior to themselves in all the highest attributes of 
the mind. 

Dr. Priestley's work, however severely animadverted 
upon for its tone and temper, a tone which no doubt 
contributed to alienate readers whom it would have 
been better, if possible, to conciliate, readers who, 
though refusing to be driven, might not unwillingly 
have been led, was never candidly examined, still less 
was it deliberately answered, by any of the parties 
whom he attacked. Yet nothing can be more candid 
nor more amiable than the letters of Dr. Priestley in 
his correspondence with Beattie, appended to later 
editions of the 'Examination*.' The present Sir W. 
Hamilton, in the notes to his edition of ' Reid,' has 
referred to it, admitting and even following up with 
confirmatory matter the reasonableness of some of its 
exceptions to Reid's statements and language, and 
damaging those statements and that language quite 
as unsparingly. Yet there are passages where SirW. 
Hamilton might have referred to Priestley with equal 
advantage, but has not done sof. Dr. Priestley was 
not convicted of misrepresenting the opinions nor mis- 

* See Butt's Priestley, vol. iii. 

t Compare Hamilton's ' Eeid,' p. 110, with Priestley's ' Examina- 
tion,' p. 97 ; Eeid, pp. 121, 122, with Priestley, pp. 60 and 89. 



WITH LEADING TO SCEPTICISM. 23 

quoting the statements of those on whom he com- 
mented. He was neither corrected nor confuted*. He 
showed that, far from being original in their views 
and expressions, with regard to intuition and common 
sense, the Scotch writers had been anticipated by Dr. 
Price, who published his ' Review of the Principal 
Questions in Morals' in 1758; and in some measure 
also by Mr. Harris, in the ' Hermes/ He might have 
added, by Father Buffier, in his ' Treatise on First 
Truths/ But Sir W. Hamilton has, I think, success- 
fully defended Reid from the charge of plagiarism 
brought against him by the translator of Buffier f. 

Now there was a part of the subject which Priestley 
left untouched, and which it is the chief purpose of 
this Inquiry to discuss, on account of its connection 
with the history, of philosophy and the current of 

* Yet the reader should consult the comments on Priestley in the 
Notes A to D of Stewart's * Essays on the Philosophy of the Mind,' 
first published in 1810. 

t The translation was published, with an instructive preface, in 
1780. This preface is anonymous. Who was the author ? The work 
was published by Johnson, of St. Paul's Churchyard ; and the suc- 
cessor to Johnson, now living, has informed me that he always 
understood Dr. Priestley to be the author. This has been supposed 
by other students ; but there is no allusion to that authorship in Dr. 
Priestley's works or letters. It was not like him to publish without 
his name. The style (though easy) and the spirit are scarcely his. 
The Rev. W. Turner, jun., of Halifax, a competent judge, has sug- 
gested that Berrington, the author of 'Letters on Materialism,' and the 
correspondent of Dr. Priestley, might possibly be the translator and 
editor in question. Whoever was the author, there is a severe notice 
of Hume in his preface (p. x.), which will be found in our Appendix, 
and justified to a great extent by the matter of the present work. 



24 REID, THE FIRST WHO CHARGES LOCKE 

opinion on speculative points of the highest import- 
ance to the present time. Valuable and suggestive 
as Priestley's examination of Reid, Beattie, and Os- 
wald is to the philosophical inquirer, for the acuteness 
and earnestness with which it exposes the pretension 
and shallowness of their productions, it would have 
been more valuable it would have produced proba- 
bly a far stronger impression on his contemporaries, 
even on the minds of those whom he opposed had 
he examined also the Treatise of Human Nature, and 
Hume's Inquiries and principles in general, instead 
of contenting himself with referring his readers to his 
own ' Institutes of Religion' for an answer to Hume ; 
and if he had shown or endeavoured to show that 
Hume's scepticism, to whatever it amounted, was nei- 
ther professedly nor legitimately deduced from the phi- 
losophy of Locke. It may therefore be thought, not- 
withstanding Dr. Priestley's animadversions on these 
writers, that Hume did build on Locke's foundations, 
and did support himself by Locke's principles ; and 
that his scepticism is the natural and unavoidable 
result and growth of what is now called the ' sensa- 
tional philosophy.' This is in fact the current doctrine, 
as has been partly shown, in Germany and France, 
and more recently in England and America. It was 
Hume, and the opinion that he was unanswered, that 
gave rise to the transcendental school, of which the 
celebrated Kant was founder, and in which Fichte, 
Schelling, Jacobi, and Hegel have since been teachers. 
There is some not unimportant literary history con- 



WITH LEADING TO SCEPTICISM > .05 

nected with this inquiry. About the time when 
Scotch philosophy began to invade the territory of 
which Locke had hitherto been master, there existed 
at Aberdeen a society, or club, for the discussion of 
literary and philosophical subjects, composed of men 
whose opinions were in many points congenial, and 
who have all been hailed among the revivers of Scotch 
literature. It is supposed that the topics which fill the 
works of Reid, Beattie, Oswald, Campbell, Gregory, 
and Gerard were first produced, and their merits dis- 
cussed, in this society, either in the form of an essay 
or of a question for familiar conversation*. 

It is probable that these Scotchmen were alarmed 
at the bad opinion which Hume's sceptical writings 
were calculated to diffuse of the nature and tendency 
of Scotch literature and Scotch philosophy. Their 
universities, as institutions for education, and their 
own character and influence as professors, might come 
to be in very bad repute, if it were supposed that any 
extensive sympathy existed among the professors of 
those universities with the views of their countryman 
a sympathy which the proverbial national partiality 
of the Scotch rendered far from antecedently impro- 
bable. While therefore Campbell and Gerard devoted 

* A very interesting account of this Society, called " The Wise 
Club," is given in the 'Life of Beattie,' by Sir W. Forbes. With- 
out doubt it laid the foundation of the popularity and the influence 
of Scotch philosophy and literature. With a natural partiality these 
friends praised each other's "learning and sagacity ;" nor would this 
be objected against them, if they had done justice to writers and 
philosophers far superior to themselves. 



26 REID, THE FIRST WHO CHARGES LOCKE 

themselves purely to the theological questions con- 
nected with the study and defence of Revealed Reli- 
gion, and both produced works which the theologian 
will highly value the one in his Dissertations pre- 
fixed to the Translation of the New Testament, the 
other in his 'Institutes' as constituting no mean por- 
tion of his critical apparatus, the professors of moral 
philosophy sought to encounter the sceptic in the 
rarer atmosphere of metaphysics, but with infinitely 
less success. The contests of metaphysicians are like 
those of Milton's angels. The sword of logic, even 
when tempered, like that of Michael from the armoury 
of God, " so that neither keen nor solid might resist 
that edge," ever inflicts what the poet calls " a dis- 
continuous wound." The ethereal substance is not 
long divisible. Metaphysicians are " spirits that live 
throughout, vital in every part !" 

"And, as they please, 

They limb themselves, and colour, shape, or size 
Assume, as likes them best, condense or rare." 

Even when most discomfited and confounded by an 
opposing and overwhelming force, the adherent of the 
most atheistic system of metaphysical philosophy con- 
soles himself with something like the sentiment of 
Satan : 

" True is, less firmly arm'd, 
Some disadvantage we endured and pain, 
Till now not known, but, known, as soon contemn'd ; 
Since now we find this our empyreal form 
Incapable of mortal injury, 



WITH LEADING TO 8CBPTICI 




Imperishable, and though pierced with woui 
Soon closing, and by native vigour heal'd*." 

Those who are familiar with metaphysical writers 
will feel sufficiently the force of the comparison. The 
absence of definite meaning in their terms is the tor- 
ment of the logical thinker "a limbo broad and large, 
the paradise of fools." They build a tower of Babel ; 
and trying to scale heaven, the result is a confusion 
of tongues. No questions of practical utility suscep- 
tible of satisfactory solution are kept before the mind. 
What is Time? What is Space? What is Being? 
What is absolute existence? What is the absolute 
in itself f? How are synthetical cognitions a priori 
possible ? These are the dark questions that, like the 

* The admirer of Dante may remember with pleasure that the 
author of the Inferno, and his guide, after an encounter with the 
poets, meet in the first region, which appears cheerful enough, with 
its castle of seven walls and gates, its pleasant stream, its mead with 
lively verdure fresh, the philosophic train Aristotle, whom he calls, 
with just appreciation, "the Master of the sapient throng;" "there 
Socrates and Plato both I marked, Tully, and moral Seneca, Avicen, 
and him who made that commentary vast, Averroes." The com- 
mentators may be left where they were seen ; but one would hope, 
with Zwingle and Augustin, that the merit of the great masters may 
ultimately save them, though unbaptized. See Gary's Dante, canto 4. 

f The reader may consult Morell's ' History of Philosophy,' vol. ii. 
p. 62, and consider the following definition of the Absolute given by 
Remusat in his account of Kant, p. 407 : " L'absolu est le caractere 
ou de la chose prise en soi, et de ce qu'elle vaut intrinsequement, ou 
de la chose valable a tous egards et tous les rapports. Ce dont 1'op- 
pose est impossible a tous egards et sous tous les rapports (et non 
pas seulement intrinsequement impossible) est absolument neces- 
saire. Tel est le veritable absolu. La~raison pur ose s'elever a cet 
absolu." Why not similar definitions of the 'resolute,' dissolute 



28 REID, THE FIRST WHO CHARGES LOCKE 

smoke ascending from the first touch of Aladdin's 
lamp, now meet us at the threshold of metaphysical 
inquiry, and on which are made to depend the further 
questions, whether we ourselves are merely accidents 
of an accident, or subjects of a creative Ruler, whose 
law we are competent in some measure to interpret 
and obey. It is forgotten that, if we could answer 
such questions to our satisfaction, and supply available 
definitions to the terms in doubt, little or nothing would 
be done towards a settlement of those points on which 
Locke pursued his inquiries, namely, "the original, 
certainty, and extent of human knowledge, together 
with the grounds and degrees of belief, opinion, and 
assent ;" " those measures whereby a rational creature, 
put into that state which man is in this world, may 
and ought to govern his opinions, and actions depend- 
ing thereon." We should still be left to inquire how 
the mind comes to be furnished with its vast store 
and endless variety of ideas, with all the materials of 
reason and knowledge? what are the powers of the 
understanding, and their limits ? whether ideas can be 
usefully distinguished into those of sensation and re- 
flection ? how ideas come to be associated with words, 
and simple ideas become complex ? and whence lan- 
guage derives its significancy and strength, and what 
are its defects and its perfections as an instrument of 

involute, convolute, etc., or any other Latin participle, without 
meaning except in connection with an object to which it is applied? 
To this great height the pure reason may dare to lift itself, till it 
finds an atmosphere too rare for useful and desirable existence. 



WITH LEADING TO SCEPTICISM. 29 

thought and communication ? and what is the quality 
in an act, or habit, or disposition, or agent, which 
entitles any one of the four to the epithet virtuous on 
the one hand, or vicious on the other? and by what 
methods the mind may be enriched and cultivated, 
and the dispositions and habits of the individual be 
improved? Upon these important questions tran- 
scendental philosophy seems to throw no light. It 
even scorns them, as empiricism ; but they are the 
questions which, till recently, chiefly exercised the 
thoughts and investigations of English thinkers, 
such as our Bacon, and Hobbes, and Selden, and 
Cumberland, and Locke, and Hartley, and Paley, and 
Law. 

This will appear more relevant as we proceed. 
Many philosophers had inquired into the Human 
Mind, and with no slight sagacity, before Dr. Reid 
undertook the task, and published the results of his 
inquiry in a work which Mr. Dugald Stewart so 
warmly eulogized as the first successful execution of 
Lord Bacon's plan of study. If to make bold asser- 
tions with complete indifference to the proof, to ap- 
peal to vulgar prejudice, under the title of common 
sense, in answer to refined and subtle arguments, 
to declaim, but not to analyse, to substitute meta- 
phors, fancies, prophecies, for an examination of na- 
ture, fact, and reasoning, to worship the idola tribus 
or idola specus ; if this be to execute Lord Bacon's 
plan of study, then indeed Dr. Reid has executed it. 
But whoever reads with conscientious care the authors 



30 REID, THE FIRST WHO CHARGES LOCKE 

who preceded Dr. Reid, will be only mortified to find 
to how little purpose they had written how com- 
pletely their excellencies and their faults were thrown 
away on this new candidate for literary distinction 
and philosophical discovery. It would perhaps be 
difficult to mention a treatise on any other subject of 
scientific investigation less worthy than this ' Inquiry 
into the Human Mind' by Dr. Reid, coming from a 
source of such repute, and considering the means of 
information within the author's easy reach. It is 
manifestly deficient in all the qualities of a careful 
philosophical production. No doubt our best authors 
have much improved, since Dr. Reid's time, in power 
of metaphysical analysis and closeness of metaphysi- 
cal reasoning*. But Reid should be judged by the 
standard of those whom he ought to have known, 
because he professed to study and understand them. 
Whoever reads with due attention the third and fourth 
chapters of Locke's Essay, Berkeley's 'Principles of 

* "We are grown" (says Mrs. Barbauld 'Preliminary Essay to 
Selections from the Spectator,' p. 6 speaking of the inaccuracies 
and vulgarisms which blemish the pages of Steele) " more accurate 
in our definitions, more discriminating in our investigations, more 
pure in our diction, more fastidious in our ornaments of style ; we 
possess standards of excellence of every kind to refer to, books mul- 
tiply on our hands, and we willingly consign to oblivion a portion of 
the old, to make way for the increasing demands of the new." Was 
not the first part of this passage truer a few years ago than it is now P 
Was it not truer before the * Edinburgh Review' began to put sober 
English authorship somewhat out of countenance by the unfairness 
and pretension of anonymous reviewing ; and before we began to be 
flooded with translations from the Germans and the French by those 
who have paid little attention to the English masters ? 



WITH LEADING TO SCEPTICISM. 31 

Human Knowledge/ the first volume of Hume's 
'Treatise of Human Nature/ the translation, with notes 
by Edmund Law, of King's ' Origin of Evil/ some of 
the earlier propositions of Hartley's ' Observations on 
Man/ particularly the eighth, tenth, twelfth, thirty- 
third, and seventy-ninth, and subsequent propositions 
relating to words and truth ; whoever, instead of con- 
fining himself to the authors whom Dr. Reid professes 
to review and correct, looks into the pages of the clear 
and thoughtful Hobbes, or of writers less immedi- 
ately concerned Descartes and Gassendi, Norris and 
Peter Browne, Jackson and Collins, or into the meta- 
physical correspondence of Clarke and Leibnitz, all 
of whom entered into the arena of metaphysical dis- 
cussion with a zeal and power characteristic of their 
day, for Locke left behind him an atmosphere glow- 
ing with light and warmth long after his sun had set, 
such a reader will feel that Dr. Reid's work, what- 
ever its reputation at home or on the continent, enti- 
tled an ' Inquiry into the Human Mind/ is altogether 
unworthy of its title, that it is, to say the least of it, 
a very shallow and feeble performance. 

An examination of a few pages of the introduction 
to the Inquiry will be amply sufficient to justify these 
remarks, and to convince the real student that his 
language and tone have far more the characteristics 
of a declaimer with too little of the show of ar- 
gument to entitle him to be called a sophist than 
of a philosopher, reasoning with antagonists, whose 
powers and views were to be respected on subjects 



32 REID, THE FIRST WHO CHARGES LOCKE 

demanding the nicest investigation, and the most 
carefully adjusted terms. A vein of sarcasm and ba- 
dinage runs through his work, destructive to serious 
reflection, as the influx of water is destructive to the 
working of a mine and the extraction of valuable ore. 
A sneer and an apostrophe are his weapons of argu- 
ment. Vulgar prejudice is enthroned under the form 
of common sense*. 

* Mr. Stewart has defended Dr. Reid against this charge. More 
recently, Sir W. Hamilton has published an Historical Survey of 
the Philosophy of Common Sense, appended to his edition of ' Eeid ; ' 
and he gives abundant examples of the use of the words from writers 
prior to Dr. Eeid. Hamilton makes much of Locke's own use of 
them in one passage of the Essay. I have observed them in Des- 
cartes, one of his immediate predecessors. But the question is, 
whether an instance can be produced, before Dr. Eeid, of a writer 
who rested the decision of any refined or difficult question in philo- 
sophy, in opposition to thinkers far above the vulgar^ a question 
which ordinary minds do not entertain or dismiss quickly, from a 
distaste or incapacity for subtle inquiries, on an appeal to common 
sense. And if an instance could be adduced, it would not justify 
the appeal, nor be a defence for Dr. Eeid. Sir W. Hamilton gives 
up that defence when he says : " Common sense is like common 
law. Each may be laid down as the general rule of decision ; but in 
the one case it must be left to the jurist, in the other to the philo- 
sopher, to ascertain what are the contents of the rule ; and though in 
both instances the common man may be cited as a witness for the 
custom or the fact, in neither can he be allowed to officiate as advo- 
cate or judge. It must be recollected also that in appealing to the 
consciousness of mankind, we only appeal to the consciousness of 
those not disqualified to pronounce a decision." JSTow to appeal from 
the multitude, who may be blinded by prejudice and passion, to the 
judge, the interpreter and administrator of the law, is to do the 
very opposite to that which Dr. Eeid did, who appealed from Locke, 
Berkeley, and Descartes, from the philosopher or judge, to the 
'plain man,' his ' plain neighbour,' and even the 'sensible day la- 




WITH LEADING TO SCEPTICISM. 



Examine the fifth section of the first chapter, en- 
titled, " Of Berkeley, of the Treatise of Human Na- 
ture, and of Scepticism." It is full of erroneous 
assertions, bold but unfounded, and frequently re- 
peated in the body of the work. He begins with 
saying " His (Berkeley's) arguments are founded 
upon the principles which were formerly laid down by 
Descartes, Malebranche, and Locke, and which have 
been very generally received." He then says, " that 
Hume proceeds upon the same principles, but carries 
them to their full length; and as the Bishop undid 
the whole material world, this author, upon the same 
f/ round, undoes the world of spirits, and leaves nothing 
in nature but ideas and impressions, without any sub- 
ject on which they may be impressed/' It would not 
be easy to find, in a treatise of repute on any other 
science, an equal amount of misstatement with that 
contained in these few sentences. There is no pre- 
tence to justify it by exact reference to the words or 
w r orks of the authors in question. The whole is a 
presumption on the ignorance or indifference of the 
reader, characteristic of the mode in which metaphy- 
sical and moral science is commonly treated. 

The principles of Locke are confounded with those 
of Descartes and Malebranche, without any distinct 

bourer.' In proof see the eighth section, p. 112, Hamilton's Reid. 
There are excellent remarks on common sense in the preface (p. 14) 
to Whately's 'Logic.' It may be added, that the character of the 
appeal was made still worse by Dr. Reid's coadjutors, Oswald and 
Beattie. 



34 REID, THE FIRST WHO CHARGES LOCKE 

account of any principles whatsoever. Now Locke 
had written fully and expressly against both certainly 
against Malebranche and it is commonly supposed 
that the whole of Locke's first book is directed spe- 
cially against Descartes. "Locke a combattu Des- 
cartes, quoique sans prononcer le nom de ce philosophe, 
et le premier livre de 1'Essai sur 1'Entendement humain 
est entierement dirige contre un point fondamental de 
la philosophic Cartesienne," says Degerando*. And 
the following is Mr. Stewart's language in the Disser- 
tation prefixed to the 'Encyclopaedia Britannica'f : 
"The extraordinary zeal displayed by Locke at the 
very outset of his work against the hypothesis 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 al- 
ways kept in view, in reading his argument on the sub- 
ject, that it is the Cartesian theory of innate ideas 
which he is here combating, according to which theory, 
as understood by Locke, an innate idea signifies some- 
thing coeval in its existence with the mind to which it 
belongs, and illuminating the understanding before the 
external senses begin to operate." On the other hand, 
Mr. Hallam says (vol. iv. p. 291) : " It is by no means 

* Histoire Comparee des Systemes, oh. 16. 

f P. 115, edit. 1842. Stewart's estimate of the illustrious En- 
glish philosopher appears to have greatly improved as his own 
studies were matured. He speaks of him in the Dissertation in a 
very different tone from that which pervades his earlier works. 
Nevertheless it contains much to which just exception may be taken, 
and the concluding remarks on Hume hereafter to be noticed are 
wholly inconsistent with this estimate and unworthy of it. An ob- 



WITH LEADING TO SCEPTICISM. 35 

evident that Locke had Descartes chiefly, if at all, in his 
view/' Without precise references on Locke's part, we 
cannot be confident on such a point. But admitting 
the theory of innate ideas combated by Locke, to be 
such as Mr. Stewart describes, it is questionable whe- 
ther it was Cartesian. Locke* speaks in his first book 
(c. 2, 14) of the "men of innate ideas," but he does 

servation is worth making on a common mistake respecting Locke's 
taste in poetry, propagated by a note of Mr. Stewart's. He says : 
" With, the disposition of Locke to depreciate the Ancients was in- 
timately connected that contempt 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." 
He then quotes Molyneux's expression to Locke : " All our Eng- 
lish poets except Milton have been mere ballad-makers in comparison 
to Sir E. Blackmore," and makes Locke's reply to this to be: 
"There is, I find, a strange harmony between your thoughts and 
mine/' Now it happens that Locke's words in reply have no refe- 
rence to Blackmore's merits as a poet, as the reader who consults 
the correspondence will see. Locke's thoughts were not running 
upon the subject of poetry, so much as upon building on hypotheses 
and innate ideas, and agreement of notions in this. And let not the 
reader be deterred from looking into Blackmore's poem on Creation, 
and its suggestive preface, by these depreciatory remarks. Of this 
poem, published in 1712, Johnson says : " If he had written nothing 
more, it would have transmitted him to posterity among the first fa- 
vourites of the English Muse." This is extravagant praise, but the 
poem illustrates very remarkably the manner in which Locke's prin- 
ciples and thoughts had taken possession of the general mind, and in 
which the most devout thinkers of that day considered the a poste- 
riori argument for the being of a God drawn from His works of 
nature all-sufficient for devotion and faith. It is easy to see that 
Blackmore aspires to be to Locke what Lucretius was to Epicurus. 
* We find allusions to Descartes and the Cartesians in Locke, 
b. iii. c. 4, 9 and 10 ; iv. c. 7, 12 and 13 ; and in the second reply 
to the Bishop of Worcester. Had Descartes any distinct theory of 

D 2 



36 REID, THE FIRST WHO CHARGES LOCKE 

not particularize the individuals in his view, if at the 
moment of using the expression he had any. His at- 
tention was drawn to Lord Herbert of Cherbury, to 
whom he alludes especially in the third chapter, after 
he had written a considerable portion of the Essay. 

A posthumous treatise of Locke remains to us, 
written expressly in confutation of the theory peculiar 
to Malebranche a theory which is far more likely to 
have given occasion to Berkeley's pure idealism than 
anything to be found in Locke himself, and which is 
indeed nearly identical with that of Berkeley in meta- 
physical and moral Bearing. According to Male- 
branche, " God, being intimately united to the soul, 
exhibits ideas to it*." It was Malebranche who led 
to Collier's disbelief in the existence of an external 
material world, and that agreement with and anticipa- 
tion of Berkeley, which we find in the ' Clavis Univer- 
salisf.' That Locke thought it worthy of his indus- 
trious pains to enter so fully into the examination and 
confutation of such a theory, a theory so likely to 
die out of itself, and which had so little to support it 
beyond the merits and talents of its author, is an 
encouragement for the present attempt to draw atten- 
tion to a neglected portion of literary history, and to 
the sources of prevailing errors in philosophical inquiry. 

innate ideas P And what was its influence if he had ? As this is 
a question of the greatest nicety and difficulty in the history of men- 
tal philosophy, I shall give in a future chapter some notes upon it. 

* See Malebranche, 1. iii. part 2, c. 1 : Locke's Examination, vol. iv. 
p. 196, 4to edition. 

t See ' Memoirs of Collier,' by the Rev. Robert Benson, p. 12. 



WITH LEADING TO SCEPTICISM. 37 

But it may be said, notwithstanding Locke's oppo- 
sition to some of the peculiar principles of Descartes 
and Malebranchc, that there were others which Locke 
held in common with them, and on which Berkeley 
built. If there were others, Dr. Reid at least has no't 
been careful to exhibit them. No doubt writers like 
Descartes, Hobbes, and Malebranche abound in ob- 
servations on human nature and the mind which are 
perfectly accordant with Locke's views, but without 
identity in important and peculiar principles. So all 
correct observations on reasoning, on habit, on the 
pleasures and pains, the sympathies and affections of 
our nature, from Aristotle downwards, are perfectly 
accordant with and even illustrative of the theory of 
association as developed by Hartley. So all correct 
reasoning had been in Aristotle's mood and figure, 
before Aristotle showed it must be so; though it is 
often, perhaps commonly, supposed that Aristotle in- 
vented the rules which he only expounded. So all just 
observation of nature and nature's laws before Lord 
Bacon's time was perfectly consistent with the prin- 
ciples of the ' Novum Organum ;' nor is it unpleasing 
to observe that Bacon occasionally does some justice 
to Aristotle's merits in natural history, and in ethics 
and rhetoric, though, with the consciousness of power 
to advance human intelligence, and with that impa- 
tience for improvements, characteristic of genius, he 
was disposed more generally to disparage than to 
applaud the efforts and successes of those who had 
trod the paths of science before him. 



38 BERKELEY. 

BERKELEY. 

*t- 

But did Berkeley himself build professedly upon 
the principles of Locke ? It is true the ingenious and 
amiable idealist could not have written his ' Principles 
of Human Knowledge/ exactly as we find it, had not 
Locke preceded him in his inquiries into the origin 
and certainty of all our knowledge ; but Berkeley 
begins his work with something like a sharp attack 
upon certain portions of the ' Essay on the Human 
Understanding/ those portions relating to abstract 
ideas and general terms found in the last three 
books of the * Essay/ The opinion that " the mind 
hath a power of framing abstract ideas or notions of 
things" was an opinion which Berkeley found, or 
thought he found, to be greatly in his way ; his cri- 
ticisms upon Locke's doctrine of abstraction as a 
mental power, and upon the value of abstract ideas, 
and the use of general terms, are not only ingenious, 
but, what is more, they are just. They have helped 
us to read Locke with greater intelligence, and to dis- 
cover in him some of those slips, of which writers, 
even more cautious and more exact than Locke in his 
' Essay' professes to be, are seldom, if ever, guiltless. 
The few pages of introduction to Berkeley's ' Princi- 
ples of Human Knowledge' form therefore an impor- 
tant step in the history and progress of metaphysical 
science, a step in which he has been followed, and 
for which he has been highly praised, by Hume, and 
more particularly by Home Tooke. 



'v 

'UNIVERSE 
.C. 

BERKELEY. 



And here it is to be observed that Mill's chapter on 
Abstraction, in his ' Analysis of the Human Mind/ 
turns almost wholly on the formation of abstract terms : 
the phrase l abstract ideas' does not occur in it. His 
prevfbus chapter on Classification has more to do with 
the mental power usually understood by the word 
abstraction, which, as a mental power or process, he 
defines to be, in conformity with its etymology, " se- 
parating one or more of the ingredients of a com- 
plex idea from the rest*/' It is also worthy of 
observation that the whole of the second volume of 
Home Tooke's ' Epea Pteroenta' turns also upon ab- 
straction, and he would drop even the word com- 
plex as an epithet for ideas, and confine it wholly to 
terms. May we not consider that Hartley improves 
upon Locke, by entirely dropping the word abstract 
in connection with ideas, and using chiefly the epithets 
complex and decomplex, the latter pointing by etymo- 
logy to the cluster of sensible impressions and states 
of feeling associated together in one term ? Yet for 
this improvement Locke himself prepared the way. 

"Words become general by being made the signs 
of general ideas/' says Locke. " But it seems," says 
Berkeleyf, "that a word becomes general by being 
made the sign not of an abstract general idea, but 
of several particular ideas, any one of which it indif- 
ferently suggests to the mind." This is true, and it 

* Mill's ' Analysis,' vol. i. p. 215. 

t Compare Locke, book iii. ch. iii. 6, with Berkeley's Intro- 
duction, p. 10. 



40 BERKELEY. 

may be remarked, that when we talk about ideas, 
whether our own or other men's ; when we give them 
epithets, and speak of compounding and decompound- 
ing, enlarging and refining them; turning them on 
all sides, repeating, comparing, and uniting them, 
Locke's too frequent language, we are always in a 
region of comparative obscurity ; but the nature and 
force of terms, etymologically considered, is more 
within our grasp, and this is especially to be regarded 
when applying terms borrowed from outward things 
to the supposed operations of the mind, and even 
from mechanical and chemical processes, endeavouring 
thereby to explain or describe those operations. This 
is a part of the history of mental philosophy, as it 
has been treated, and it may be hoped, improved in 
England, which has received very little attention. It 
appears to be utterly neglected by the Continental 
writers on metaphysical science in the greatest repute. 
But he who confines himself to the careful study of 
the great English writers, on the mind and its kindred 
subjects, will find more than enough to engage his 
thoughts with eminent advantage, while he makes the 
necessary and only fitting preparation for estimating 
at their real worth the writers of other countries, 
and becomes able to measure both the quantity and 
value of the ground which has been occupied and 
cultivated in common*. 



* Locke seems never more defective than when speaking of the 
names of mixed modes and relations, and of the composition and 
abstraction of ideas, as in the Fifth and Sixth Chapters of his Third 



BERKELEY. 41 

Berkeley repeats his attack upon the doctrine of 
abstract ideas in the 97th section of his ' Principles/ 
when he comes to speak of natural philosophy and 
the mathematics, and the connection of his theory 
with the principles and truths of those sciences. 

"It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing among 
men," writes Berkeley, with amusing naivete, "that 
houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible 
objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct 
from their being perceived by the understanding." 
"Is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or 
any combination of them, should exist unperceived ?" 
"If we thoroughly examine this tenet, it will perhaps 
be found at bottom to depend on the doctrine of ab- 

Book. While complaining of " the pudder made about essences and 
the jargon of the schools," it is evident he could not wholly emanci- 
pate himself from it. He even apologizes for his own obscurity, 
while he labours under " the difficulty of leading another by words 
into the thoughts of things" (Essay, b. iii. ch. vi. 43). Thus he 
speaks of " abstract ideas being the essences of the species, distin- 
guished by general names." Yet he perceived clearly enough, and 
intimates in other places, that general names were only significant 
of a combination of simple ideas ; and he might have perceived that 
names objects and simple ideas were all with which we were con- 
cerned. On this point no criticisms on Locke are more instructive 
than those of Home Tooke, who always touches the philosopher with 
fitting reverence, dissents from him with regret and diffidence, and 
who defends himself from the imputation of treating two men of the 
North, Lord Monboddo and Mr. Harris, with too much asperity, by 
entreating " the generous and grateful reader to recollect the manner 
in which these gentlemen and the common-sense Doctors had treated 
the vulgar, unlearned, and atheistical Mr. LocJce, for such are the 
imputations they cast upon that benefactor to his country." Epea 
Pteroenta, edit. 1829, vol. ii. p. 561. 



42 BERKELEY, 

stract ideas." But it may be answered, the belief in 
the real existence of sensible objects depends on no 
doctrine whatever, least of all a doctrine unknown 
and obscure. May it not arise from the constancy 
and uniformity of impressions made on us from with- 
out, independent of our own wills ? May it not be a 
part of our mental frame, of which, as no reasoning 
gives it, no reasoning can deprive us ? In the analysis 
of the mind, as in the aftatomy of the body, must we 
not rest upon certain phenomena or ultimate facts, the 
recognition of which constitutes our only valuable 
knowledge ? and is not this what we call the just inter- 
pretation of nature, when we see the connection of 
such facts with the highest law, and an end designed ? 
The genuine disciple of Locke disputes not the exis- 
tence of such ultimate facts, and stih 1 less the value of 
first principles and of primitive beliefs, which arise 
out of, and are inseparable from, the earty exercises 
of reason and speech, and which, when once gained, 
become " beliefs of consciousness," if it be thought 
proper so to call them; but he is not in haste to call 
his facts ultimate, nor his beliefs primitive or intui- 
tive, before he has cautiously investigated their nature 
and origin. 

There was another distinction of Locke's which 
Berkeley with great justice attacked : it was that be- 
tween the primary and secondary qualities of matter. 
" The ideas of the latter colours, sounds, tastes, etc. 
were acknowledged not to be resemblances of any- 
thing but sensations not of anything without the 



I1KI!KKLK\. 43 

mind ;" but of the former, our ideas of the primary 
qualities, namely extension, figure, and motion, these 
were supposed to be "patterns or images of things 
^existing without the mind, and dwelling in an inert 
senseless substance, called matter." " But it is evi- 
dent," says Berkeley, " that extension, figure, and mo- 
tion are only ideas existing in the mind ; an idea can 
be like nothing but another idea." " Hence it is plain 
that the very notion of what is called matter, or corpo- 
real substance, involves a contradiction in it*." 

With these animadversions upon Locke's principles 
and language before his eyes, and in the utter absence 
of any pretence elsewhere, on Berkeley's part, to build 
his theory of the non-existence of matter upon any 
principles or concessions which were peculiar to Locke, 
it is evidently a very great misrepresentation, on the 
part of Dr. Reid, to throw the onus of Berkeley's 
idealism upon the English philosopher. 

But Dr. Reid has done no justice to Berkeley nor 
to his argument. His advice to the man who finds 
himself entangled, or embrangled, as Berkeley calls it, 
in metaphysical toils, is to cut the knot which he can- 
not loose, and curse metaphysic. His comparison of 
philosophy to a fair lady, who befools her votaries, 
and is fit only to be sent back to the infernal regions, 
from which she came, is more worthy of the market- 
place than the professorial chair f. He would have done 

* Principles of Human Knowledge, 4th, 5th, and 9th sections, 
t The reader will observe also Reid's elegant language upon 
Hume's doctrine of ideas " Ideas turned out of house and home into 



44 BERKELEY. 

far better to examine closely Berkeley's argument; 
had he done so, he might perhaps have detected in it 
& petitio principii. He might perhaps have found, if 
he had. looked carefully, a flaw in the demonstration > 
which appeared so clear. It would have been far more 
satisfactory, by a faithful and candid representation 
of Berkeley's statements, to show, if possible, where 
the fallacy lay, than to indulge in declamations, sneers, 
and sarcasms, gratifying only to the hasty, the preju- 
diced, and unreflecting. 

After all, has not Berkeley rather assumed than 
proved the point in question the non-existence of an 
external material world ? Has he not sometimes at- 
tempted to prove too much, or asserted without proof 
what a reader following his own advice, and " making 
his words the occasion of his own thinking," will never 
concede to him? Thus he says, that "the absolute 
existence of unthinking things are words without a 
meaning, or which include a contradiction." But the 
cautious reader will perceive no such absence of mean- 
ing, none of the contradiction which Berkeley assumes. 
What more contradiction is there in the absolute ex- 
istence of an unthinking, than the absolute existence 
of a thinking thing ? At other times he overlooks the 
nature of the argument, and confounds the proof of 

the world, without a rag to cover their nakedness ;" and his confes- 
sion, in reference to Berkeley's theory, " that he would rather make 
one of those credulous fools whom Nature imposes upon, than of 
those wise and rational philosophers who resolve to withhold assent 
at the expense of being probably taken up, and clapped into a mad- 
house." Hamilton's Reid, p. 184. 



BERKELEY. 45 

an external world, which, as regards spirit, he concedes, 
with that of a material world, which he denies. " Be- 
cause we know not how ideas are produced, as he 
states in the 19th section, "because we are unable to 
comprehend in what manner body can act upon spirit ;" 
"hence," he says, "it is evident the production of 
ideas or sensations in our minds can be no reason why 
we should suppose matter or corporeal substances." 
Nor is there any reason why we should deny the fact, 
and reject the supposition, because we cannot com- 
prehend the manner. He admits there is a cause ex- 
ternal to ourselves, which does produce ideas. " We 
perceive," he says, " a continual succession of ideas : 
some are new excited, others are changed or totally 
disappear. There is therefore some came of these ideas, 
whereon they depend, and which produces and changes 
them. That this cause cannot be any quality, or idea, 
or combination of ideas, is clear from the preceding 
section. It must therefore be a substance ; but it has 
been shown that there is no corporeal or material sub- 
stance ; it remains, therefore, that the cause of ideas is 
an incorporeal active substance or spirit." Now this 
negative was not shown; the alternative therefore 
cannot be accepted as the only possible alternative. 

Again, in the 29th section, he repeats this : " As to 
the hearing and other senses, the ideas imprinted on 
them are not creatures of my will. There is therefore 
some other will or spirit that produces them." 

Thus the strength of Berkeley's argument depends 
on what is, after all, a mere assumption, namely, that 



46 BERKELEY. 

" the esse of things ispercipi*." But this is not to be 
hastily conceded. To be, and be perceived, are not 
the same. The esse is anterior and subservient to the 
percipi, which depends upon the esse, but is not the 
esse. Apply the maxim to the mind, and it will not 
sustain itself. The Divine Mind exists, as a cause of 
our perceptions ; but it exists independently of those 
perceptions. It exists indeed as a percipient, for per- 
cipient power cannot be separated from the thought 
of mind, and belief in it as mind. Here the esse and 
percipere may be considered one and the same ; per- 
cipiency constituting, if we please, the essence, and 
entering into our definition of mind. And yet, with 
regard to finite minds, each act of percipiency, being 
distinct in itself, is distinct also from the active perci- 
pient power, that is, from the being that perceives. 
But if the esse, in respect of mind, be not necessarily 
percipere, still less in respect of matter is it per dpi. 
Berkeley admits there is some cause of perception ex- 
ternal to ourselves. He is obliged continually to imply 
a distinction between the organs of sense, and the 
sensations or ideas arising from or conveyed through 
them. (See particularly the 90th section of his ' Prin- 
ciples/) He seems not to allow sufficient weight to the 
constancy and uniformity of certain impressions, ideas, 
and feelings which accompany us, independent of our 
desires and wills; that unfailing attendant sense, for 

* Beattie perceived this assumption on Berkeley's part, and hi^ 
use of it, but had not patience to follow it up logically." See Essay 
on Truth, p. 49, edit. 1778. 



BERKELEY. 47 

instance, of a bodily frame, which is so different from, 
and so completely the instrument and inlet of those 
feelings, thoughts, and passions which are peculiar 
to the mind. Thus solidity and extension are not 
merely names for affections or states of mind, grant- 
ing that all ideas associated with words imply such 
states ; they are also significant of external existences 
giving rise to those affections and states. This is 
equally true in respect of ideas of the secondary, as 
with what have been called the primary, qualities of 
matter. A cause operating from without is necessary 
to account for the idea. 

Can Berkeley be said to prove that such external 
existences are merely the ideas of another mind or 
spirit, imparted immediately to ours, a mode of spi- 
ritual action upon our spirit? The total absence of 
such proof, this great assumption of spiritual action, 
and of the existence of an Infinite Intelligent mind 
acting immediately and constantly upon our minds, 
without any attempt to establish that existence as a 
fact, is far more likely to have led to Hume's scepticism 
than anything to be found in Locke, whose chapter 
on the Being of a God seems at least to be deserving 
of some attention from a candid and philosophical in- 
quirer. Berkeley struggles to get rid of the abstract 
ideas of time, space, and motion, and denies the ab- 
solute existence of external realities corresponding to 
them, combating the definitions and distinctions laid 
down by the great Newton in his treatise of mecha- 
nics. These definitions and distinctions are of very 



48 BERKELEY. 

great importance in a metaphysical point of view, and 
deserve the closest attention from the exact inquirer. 
The acceptance of them, together with Newton's beau- 
tiful and profound language on the Deity, at the close 
of his ' Principia,' constitutes the best refuge and 
great security from the gross pantheism which, as in 
the case of Spinoza, refuses to the Supreme cause in- 
telligence will design, and of course all moral attri- 
butes. Without attempting here to defend Newton's 
refined distinctions between absolute and relative lime, 
true and apparent, mathematical and vulgar, may we 
not say that time, space, and motion are habitually 
conceived of, and reasoned upon, as independent of all 
mind, as the subsidiary and necessary elements of all 
finite existence ? Time and space are necessarily ex- 
cluded in the idea of motion. We do not commonly 
consider them as created, nor yet are they necessarily 
conceived of as attributes, still less as parts of the 
Creator ; for these are divisible, or are conceived to be 
so in relation to human measures of them, while the 
Creator is without parts and passions. It is now cus- 
tomary to call them essential forms of thought, inse- 
parable from our frames, or logical conditions of the 
understanding and practical reason. But the value of 
all such accounts or definitions depends upon the use 
made of them in subsequent reasoning, that is, upon 
their application to other conclusions ; for no one will 
pretend that the ideas themselves are rendered clearer. 
Nor is it proved by such accounts that the ideas do 
not grow out of, and are not suggested by, all our ex- 



BERKELEY. 49 

perience ; the first time out of the succession of our 
ideas, on which Locke dwells, as the origin and es- 
sence of our notion of time ; and the second space 
out of the perceived relation of objects one to another, 
the relation of outness, distance, and position, which 
accompany almost all the phenomena of sensation, 
but chiefly those of sight, in a less degree those of 
touch and hearing, and in least degree, if in any de- 
gree, those of smell and taste*. 

* Time, space, motion, God, freedom, immortality, with the 
associated ideas, and their origin, are now, as they have always 
been, the battle-field of dissentients in metaphysical speculations 
and inquiries. And could we ever bring the mystical adherents of 
transcendental philosophy to the point, or keep them to it, we might 
perhaps examine, with some hope of satisfaction, the value of their 
definitions and assertions. But they are emphatically ' children of 
the mist.' Like the witches and ghosts in ' Macbeth/ after they 
have delivered their oracles, they endure no further question, and 
vanish into thin air, leaving the questioner aghast. " That the 
notion of Space is a necessary condition of thought, and that as such 
it is impossible to derive it from experience, has been cogently de- 
monstrated by Kant," says Sir W. Hamilton, in a note on E-eid, 
p. 126; and the reader should look also at the notes, pp. 128, 129. 
But Locke, Hartley, and Mill have demonstrated the contrary, at 
least of the latter of the two propositions, if we may talk of demon- 
stration in the case. I shall therefore examine hereafter, as briefly 
as the matter will allow, the so-called demonstration by Kant; not 
that the admission of one side or the other is of practical consequence, 
any further than as the discussion of it may throw light on the proper 
philosophy of the mind, and help the right interpretation of our 
mental frame. Every idea, with which the mind is furnished after 
a certain experience, and of which it cannot divest itself, more espe- 
cially when, with a word annexed, used as a sign, it comes to be 
employed in reasoning in support of a fixed conclusion, may be 
called, with equal advantage and propriety, a necessary condition 
of thought. 

E 



50 BERKELEY. 

" To what purpose is it to dilate on that which may 
be demonstrated with the utmost evidence in a line or 
two, to any one that is capable of the least reflection ?" 
asks Berkeley. "It is but looking into your own 
thoughts, and so trying whether you can conceive it 
possible for a sound, or figure, or motion, or colour, to 
exist without the mind, or unperceived. This easy 
trial may make you see, that what you contend for is 
a downright contradiction. I am content to put the 
whole upon this issue." 

Berkeley is frequent in applying the term ' contra- 
diction' to assertions which do not imply it*. Inge- 
niously as this is worked out, the whole is but a re- 
petition of this. The answer is, we do perpetually 
conceive it possible. The perception itself, and a 
cause of perception, existing without us, are different 
things. There is an outward agency, uniform and 
independent, imparting to us certain conceptions ; and 
the belief in external realities, which, not being parts 
of our own minds, are not necessarily parts of or 
immediate imprints by another mind, involves in it 
no such contradiction as Berkeley pretends. 

" The things perceived by sense may be termed ex- 
ternal with regard to their origin, in that they are not 
generated from within, by the mind itself, but im- 
printed by a spirit distinct from that which perceives 
them. Sensible objects may likewise be said to be 
without the mind in another sense, namely, when they 

* Principles of Human Knowledge, 22nd section j and compare 
Sections 24, 56, 76, 79, and 88. 



BERKELEY. 51 

exist in some other mind. Thus, when I shut my eyes, 
the things I saw may still exist, but it must be in an- 
other mind." (Prin. Hum. Kn. 90th section.) This is 
rather assumption than proof. The ' musf is not the 
clear result of any ' why! The attentive reader will 
also perceive how arbitrary but harmless is Berkeley's 
previous account or definition in the 89th section, of 
the words thing, being, spirits, and ideas. The former 
spirits he calls "active, indivisible substances/' 
the latter ideas he calls "inert, fleeting, depen- 
dent beings, which subsist not by themselves, but are 
supported by and exist in minds or spiritual sub- 
stances." Again, it may be very true that an idea can 
be like nothing but an idea, as Berkeley says ; it may 
be even further true that it is only in the way of ac- 
commodation we can speak of one idea being like 
another idea ; there being, without some reference to 
objects or sensations, no standard or means of dis- 
tinct comparison. But all this is little to Berkeley's 
purpose ; for although we cannot conceive or explain 
how matter acts upon spirit, or spirit upon matter, 
a difficulty which Berkeley finds or feigns to be greatly 
in his favour, as little can we conceive how spirit 
acts upon spirit, directly and without the intervention 
of matter, or how an idea, or series of ideas, can pass 
from one mind to another by an act of will only. Of 
purely spiritual contact or influence for we must use 
these materialistic terms we have no more clear con- 
ception than of spirit in connection with matter. 
From impressions originating in causes without us, 

K 2 



52 BERKELEY. 

we infer the existence of minds like our own ; and the 
existence of mind is, no doubt, implied in all conscious- 
ness and thought, which cannot be said of the exist- 
ence of matter. But from these same impressions and 
signs we are also led to infer external realities, which, 
as they are not parts of our own minds, are not so 
obviously and necessarily the mere and direct agency 
of another mind or spirit, as Berkeley contends, and 
as Malebranche before him had set forth. And al- 
though Berkeley believed that he removed the chief 
source and support of atheism, when he removed 
matter from the universe, he seems not to have per- 
ceived that his own theory was not wholly free from 
the embarrassments of pantheism, since it left the argu- 
ment for the existence of one perfect supreme cause, 
one infinite, omniscient, benevolent, spiritual Being, 
precisely where it was ; it even reduced the mind to a 
mere mirror for the reflection of the imprinted images, 
or to a recipient of the excited ideas. It may be said 
however that the existence of such an Infinite mind 
was an assumption which formed a part, and a neces- 
sary part, of his theory. 

There is a continual flow of thought, a consciousness 
of perceptive and reflective power, more or less active 
and intense, always in the mind in its wakeful state. 
Images, faint or lively, of absent objects, present them- 
selves to the mind's eye ; remembrances of former im- 
pressions, anticipations of the future, more or less 
vivid, arise within, of which the mind is conscious as 
something totally distinct from the impressions of that 



BERKELEY. 53 

visible, tangible, audible world of sense, which remains 
outward and unchanged, or subject to certain observed 
and regular changes, which continue and go on inde- 
pendent of our attention. Thus the book which we 
hold in the hand, and which suggests so many ideas 
remote from its own simple character, the room which 
we occupy, the ground on which we stand, the chair in 
which we sit, the posture and action, voluntary or au- 
tomatic, of the body ; the whole scenery of nature from 
the window; all these outward things have a perma- 
nent relation to and connection with our whole life 
and being, which is manifestly different from that inner 
life, peculiar to the mind itself, that flux or reflux of 
thought, desire and will, which we never attribute to 
the objects present to the senses, nor to any conscious- 
ness but our own. After all, this constant natural 
feeling is perhaps the best, if not the only, argument 
for an external material world, if argument be required 
for it, and argument it deserves to be called. All our 
sensations and ideas remaining the same, our feel- 
ings of pleasure and pain, our hopes and fears, being 
the same with Berkeley's theory and without it, 
there is nothing to argue about, but the propriety 
and philosophical use of certain definitions; and if 
we define matter, as I believe Faraday does, a centre 
of powers, and if the same definition applies to mind, 
it is evident that what we are then concerned with is 
the different character, descriptions, or definitions of 
these powers, that is, the mixtures and clusters, so to 
speak, of the sensible impressions and associated ideas. 



54 BERKELEY. 

Here then we must rest; and when logic has done 
its utmost, we may amuse ourselves with poetry, and 
betake ourselves to the lines pf Arbuthnot, quoted by 
Beattie, as a summary of the evidence, so far as it is 
dependent on the phenomena of consciousness. 

" This frame, compacted with transcendent skill, 
Of moving joints, obedient to my will, 
Nursed from the fruitful glebe, like yonder tree, 
Waxes and wastes ; I call it mine, not me. 
New matter still the mouldering mass sustains, 
The mansion changed the tenant still remains, 
And from the fleeting stream repaired by food, 
Distinct, as is the swimmer from the flood*." 

I must now leave this criticism of Berkeley's theory. 
How far it is adequate or perfect the reader will judge. 
It might be easily extended, for with the pages of 
Berkeley open before us, what end is there to notes 
and comments ? Such as it is, it may help the future 
and youthful student of metaphysical philosophy to 
read the skilful and amiable idealist with more ad- 
vantage than he might otherwise have enjoyed, and 
with a more wakeful attention to his weak points. In 
all metaphysical reasonings, the maxim of Horace is 

* Since the above was written, I have looked into the disquisitions 
relating to the Philosophy of the Mind, by the late Lord Jeffrey, 
found in the third volume of his collected Papers. In these the 
eminent author has gone somewhat carefully into the speculations 
on the non-existence of matter, and the observations above made 
accord perfectly with Lord Jeffrey's views : " All beyond our own 
consciousness," he observes, " is matter of inference ; but it evidently 
implies no contradiction to suppose that such a thing as matter may 
exist, and that an omnipotent Being might make us capable of dis- 
covering its qualities." 



BERKELEY. 55 

invaluable, 'Principiis obsta* There are however se- 
veral incidental differences between Berkeley's prin- 
ciples and those of Locke, not to be overlooked by 
any one who attempts an exact comparison. 

From the principle that the duration of any finite 
spirit must be estimated by the number of ideas or 
actions succeeding each other in the same spirit or 
mind*, Berkeley made it a plain consequence that 
the soul always thinks : contrary to Locke's opinion, 
who contended that the soul does not always think, 
that it may exist in a state of sleep, and without ac- 
tual perceptions. 

Berkeley, supposing himself to have shown that the 
soul is indivisible, incorporeal, unextended, argued 
that "it is consequently incorruptible, a being in- 
dissoluble by the force of nature, that is to say, 
the soul of man is naturally immortal^" contrary to 
Locke's opinion, who thought that it could not be 
made out demonstratively by natural reason that 
the soul is immaterial, nor, consequently, in its own 
nature immortal, and who rested the hope of a future 
state, and especially the influence of it in a practical 
point of view, upon the declared or revealed will of 
God \ . Berkeley availed himself of Locke's language 
against the existence, anywhere but in the mind per- 

* See the 98th section of his ' Principles,' etc., and Locke, b. ii. 
c.i.19. 

f Principles, p. 97. 

Seethe ' Second Reply to the Bishop of Worcester,' p. 758, and 
compare the admirable passages in the 'Essay :' book ii. c. 21, and 
book iv. c. 4. 

I 



56 BERKELEY. 

ceiving, of what are called the secondary qualities of 
matter colours, tastes, and smells, and turned it 
against the existence of the so-called primary qualities 
bulk, figure, extension, number, and motion; and so 
denied matter altogether. But he did not trouble 
himself specially with Locke's views relating to the 
separate existence of matter and thought, and to the 
existence of an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent Being, 
whether matter be itself eternal or not, which are 
given in the tenth chapter of the fourth book of the 
'Essay*/ 

Again, the term Idea was applied by Locke ^as, I 
believe, by Gassendi before him to whatever could 
be the subject of thought and of discourse; but to 
Berkeley it appeared that " the term Idea would be 
improperly extended to signify everything we know, or 
have any notion of-\" 

These differences will not be considered of little 
importance by the careful inquirer. Others may pro- 
bably be traced. On the whole, it seems evident that 
Berkeley neither rested his theory, nor pretended to 
rest it, upon any principles peculiar to Locke. On 
this point therefore it has been shown that Dr. Reid's 
inquiry was calculated to give, as no doubt it has 
given, a very erroneous and mischievous impression. 

* An interesting account of a conversation between Sir Isaac 
Newton, the Earl of Pembroke, and Locke, on the possible creation 
of matter, extracted from Coste the French translator and friend 
of Locke may be found in the ' Edinburgh Review/ p. 352, No. 138, 
with comments on Reid's and Stewart's views of Locke's meaning. 

t See 89th Section. 



HUME, 



u: .-,7 




But how is it with Hume ? This is a more tender 
question. Berkeley's was eminently a religious mind. 
His amiable enthusiasm called forth warm sympathy 
and admiration from many of the finest spirits of his 
age. His ingeniously-woven theory was the fanciful 
garb of a dreaming philosopher, which shocked none 
of the prejudices, struck at none of the superstitions 
of the multitude. Neither priests nor lawyers felt 
their influence shaken, and their craft exposed, by his 
elaborate and fine-spun system. They thought he 
was answered sufficiently by a smile. 

" When Berkeley said, there was no matter, 
It was no matter, what he said." 

His theory of vision has taken, and yet retains, a high 
place in the estimation of metaphysical inquirers, as 
an important illustration of the manner in which the 
ideas of one sense are transferred by association to an- 
other*. The lover of the Scriptures the ancient lore 
of Christendom is indebted to him for many admi- 
rable observations on the excellency and usefulness 
of the Christian religion ; and the devout will concur 
with him heartily in the opinion that, as in reading 
other books, so in perusing the volume of Nature, we 
should propose to ourselves noble views, " such as to 
recreate and exalt the mind with a prospect of the 

* The review of this theory, by Mr. Samuel Bailey of Sheffield, 
published in 1842, has however considerably shaken its authority, 
and this notwithstanding the defence of it by a Westminster Kc- 
viewer. 



58 HUME. 

beauty, order, extent, and variety of natural things ; 
hence, by proper inferences, to enlarge our notions of 
the grandeur, wisdom, and- beneficence of the Crea- 
tor ; and, lastly, to make the several parts of the crea- 
tion, so far as in us lies, subservient to the ends they 
were designed for, God's glory, and the sustentation 
and comfort of ourselves and our fellow-creatures." 

But soon a very different competitor for the rank 
of philosophic chieftain appeared. The differences 
between the Irish and Scotch national character are 
somewhat strongly marked in the lives and tempers 
of Berkeley and of Hume. 

The life and correspondence of David Hume, pub- 
lished by Mr. J. Hill Burton, in 1846, enables us to 
approach the question whether -the philosophy of 
Locke laid any foundation or furnished any support 
for the scepticism of Hume, to whatever it amounted, 
with some means of judgment which previous in- 
quirers could scarcely have enjoyed. Of Hume's boy- 
hood and earlier days, of the domestic influences and 
the scholastic training under which he grew to man- 
hood, we learn little from these volumes of any in- 
terest or importance. The biographer, Mr. Burton, 
makes the most of some scanty notices by Hume him- 
self of his ancestral estate at Nine wells. Little is 
added to the few particulars which, in his simple auto- 
biography, he has chosen to give us. Rarely has a 
life been more destitute of points of domestic interest. 
He appears to have studied for a time at the University 
of Edinburgh, but how long cannot be ascertained. 



HUME. 59 

As soon as he had finished his studies there, or while 
pursuing them, he plunged into the vortex of meta- 
physical abstractions ; and we are called upon at once 
to inquire into the results of his struggles in that 
whirlpool, or rather to watch the paths of speculation 
and research into which his passion for literature hur- 
ried him, a passion which seized him early, and be- 
came the ruling passion of his life, and the great source 
of his enjoyments. It is not clear whether he was ac- 
quainted with the person, or had paid attention to 
the writings, of the eminent Francis Hutcheson, who 
was Professor of Philosophy at Glasgow from 1729 to 
1747. A letter to Hutcheson is given in Burton's 
Life*, from which it appears that Hume submitted 
some of the papers of his ' Treatise' to Hutcheson's 
perusal, and was favoured with his reflections upon 
them before publication. Yet in the third volume of 
Hume's ' Treatise of Human Nature,' which came out 
in 1740, he follows Hutcheson in maintaining that 
moral distinctions are not derived from reason, but 
from a moral sense, without mention of Hutcheson's 
name, or condescending to allude to the ' Inquiry into 
the original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue,' pub- 
lished about fifteen years before. Anxious for the re- 
putation of an original thinker and discoverer, his sense 
of obligation to preceding thinkers was never strongly 
marked. Gratitude is not the virtue of usurpers. 

A letter to a physician, written at the age of twenty- 
three, reveals the peculiar character of Hume's mind, 
* Vol. i. p. 112. 



60 HUME. 

and the boldness of his temper. The first part is as 
follows : 

" After fourteen or fifteeen years of age I was left to 
my own choice in my reading, and found it incline me 
almost equally to books of reasoning and philosophy, 
and to poetry and the polite authors. Every one who 
is acquainted either with the philosophers or critics, 
knows that there is nothing yet established in either of 

/ 7 / 

these two sciences *, and that they contain little more 
than endless disputes, even in the most fundamental 
articles. Upon examination of these I found a certain 
boldness of temper growing in me, which was not 
inclined to submit to any authority in these subjects, 
but led me to seek out some new medium, by which 
truth might be established. After much study and re- 
flection on this, at last, when I was about eighteen 
years of age, . there seemed to be opened up to me a 
new scene of thought, which transported me beyond 
measure, and made me, with an ardour natural to 
young men, throw up every other pleasure or busi- 

* We may contrast with this a passage from Gibbon's * Essay on 
the Study of Literature :' " Descartes was not a man of letters, but 
literature is under deep obligations to him. An intelligent philo- 
sopher, who inherited his method of reasoning, thoroughly inves- 
tigated the true principles of criticism Le Clerc, in his excellent 
'Ars Critica/ and several other works." Gibbon wrote this Essay 
before he was twenty-two years of age, a wonderful production for 
so young a man. What did Hume know of Descartes or Le Clerc 
at the same age ? Gibbon, like Hume, felt early the passion for lite- 
rary distinction; but he had a mind far more earnest and grateful, 
far more intent on the honour of literature, and through it the im- 
provement of mankind; notwithstanding a certain grossness of taste 
from which Hume was free. 



HUME. 61 

ness to apply entirely to it." Thence he determined 
to push his fortune in the world by the way of a 
scholar and philosopher. He was smit, he tells us, 
with the beauties of Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch ; no 
great range this even of Classical studies. We no- 
where learn from him what English authors he had 
read at this period with the slightest interest or profit. 
He does not tell us, nor can we gather from his first 
work, that he had perused with care and deep at- 
tention the works of Bacon, of Hobbes, of Cudworth, 
of Clarke, Locke, Cumberland, Law, and others who 
might be mentioned, who had gone with a power and 
penetration, which successors could not easily hope to 
emulate, into the nicest and most abstruse questions 
of metaphysical philosophy. He appears to have had 
no conception of the care and completeness with which 
the most difficult subjects in philosophy, natural reli- 
gion, history, and mathematics had been investigated 
before him by English philosophers and scholars, 
and of which the collection of pieces and letters by 
Newton, Clarke, Leibnitz, Collins, and other celebra- 
ted writers, first published by Des Maizeaux, at Am- 
sterdam, in 1720, may be taken as one of the most 
striking evidences ; and the very learned dissertation, 
published anonymously, but known to be by Dr. 
Waterland, on the a priori argument for the Being of 
a God, in connection with Law's ' Inquiry into our 
Ideas of Space and Time' (1734), as another. The 
name of Aristotle Hume nowhere mentions; and to 
the pages of the speculative Descartes, the learned 



62 HUME. 

Gassendi, and the excursive Leibnitz, he was at this 
time probably a stranger*. 

After leaving the University of Edinburgh, and 
paying a short visit to Bristol, Hume spent three years 
in Prance, from 1734 to 1737, very agreeably. Of 
the nature of his studies during this period we have no 
information of the slightest interest, beyond the in- 
timation that intercourse with some members of the 
Jesuits' College at La Pleche laid the foundation of his 
scepticism concerning miracles, and that he had paid 
attention to Butler's ' Analogy of Natural and Revealed 
Religion/ which came out in the year 1736. We must 
therefore judge from internal evidence of Hume's fit- 
ness to give such a complete and improved view of 
human nature, the understanding, the passions, and 
the foundation of morals, as he aspired thus early in 
life to be the author off. " Never literary attempt was 

* It is true that Hume, in the chapter on Knowledge and Proba- 
bility, refers to the opinions and arguments of Hobbes, Clarke, and 
Locke, on the subject of cause and effect, in order to confute them ; 
but how carelessly he treated them will be shown hereafter, when I 
come to examine Mr. Dugald Stewart's extraordinary commendations 
of the Sceptic. With obstinate determination to yield nothing in 
favour of a hated conclusion, Hume pretends to invalidate the pro- 
position admitted by all three, that " whatsoever has a beginning, 
has also a cause of existence." From the first, it was Hume's de- 
termination to put down, if possible, the propositions, "that no crea- 
ture could come into existence of itself," and "that there must be 
some one, and but one, necessary and self-existent Being, the cause 
of causes ;" these being the received axioms of natural religion. 
He calls the ancient maxim, " Ex nihilo nihil jit" an impious 
maxim ; in the spirit of a Mephistopheles, willing to extinguish the 
light of reason, rather than admit a ray to show the being of a God. 

f Two volumes came forth in 1739 ; the third, in 1740. 



HUME. 63 

more unfortunate," says Hume in his autobiography, 
" than my ' Treatise of Human Nature. 1 It fell dead- 
born from the press, without reaching such distinction 
as even to excite a murmur among the zealots*." The 
indifference with which it was received gave him deep 
mortification; but it fell from its own natural want 
of buoyancy. It had no inherent worth to sustain it. 
Two years after the publication, its author began to 
feel that he had attempted a task for which he was 
wholly incompetent, and that in the execution he had 
only exposed his weakness. The regret which Hume 
felt for his precipitancy deepened as he advanced in 
life ; and in a letter written to Sir G. Elliot, of Minto, 
in 1751, we find him thus expressing himself: 

" I believe the ' Philosophical Essays' contain every- 
thing of consequence relating to the Understanding, 
which you would meet with in the Treatise ; and I 
give you my advice against reading the latter. By 
shortening and simplifying the questions, I really 
render them much more complete. Addo dum minuo. 
The philosophical principles are the same in both; 
but I was carried away by the heat of youth and in- 
vention to publish too precipitately. So vast an un- 
dertaking, planned before I was one-and-twenty, and 
composed before twenty -five, must necessarily be very 
defective. I have repented my haste a hundred and 
a hundred times." 

* Hume received 50 for the manuscript of this work from an 
enterprising bookseller. What bookseller would now give a similar 
sum for a philosophical treatise by an author of no reputation ? 



64 HUME. 

The repentance, thus candidly expressed, was per- 
fectly well founded. The ' Treatise of Human Na- 
ture' is written neither iti philosophical style nor 
philosophical spirit. Its reasoning is viciously loose ; 
its language miserably inexact. It did not produce 
it could not produce any deep impression on the 
minds of its readers. It tended not to establish it 
scarcely even- aimed to establish a single important 
principle or truth connected with, or growing out of, 
the study of the constitution of the human mind, of 
the principles of morals, or the foundations and objects 
of political society. Full of sentiments and language 
which it could not have contained, but for the impulse 
and direction which Locke's 'Essay' had given to 
metaphysical inquiry, there is no attempt on the part 
of Hume to fix the knowledge and principles which 
he owed to Locke, nor to display the additions to 
that knowledge which he conceived himself capable 
of making; and this, while touching on the origin 
of our ideas, on knowledge and probability, on cause 
and effect, on space and time, on belief and scepti- 
cism, in short, on all those topics, which the mas- 
terly intellect of the English metaphysician had re- 
cently searched with so much persevering care, and 
with the success resulting from perfect singleness of 
purpose the dispassionate pursuit of truth. 

The first and second sections of the first part of 
the 'Treatise' exhibit the confusion which pervades 
Hume's method of treating the subject of the mind. 
The first is entitled, ' Of the origin and composition of 



HUME. 65 

ideas/ The second is a division of the subject. In 
the first, though he had blended into one inseparable 
mass ideas, impressions, and perceptions, complex and 
simple, forcible and faint, yet he had laid it down as 
a leading principle, that " ideas were derived from, 
and were but the faint images of impressions ;" under 
the last name, however, he comprehended all our sen- 
sations., passions, and emotions, as they make their 
first appearance in the soul. But in the second sec- 
tion he divides our impressions into two kinds, those 
of sensation, and those of reflection. " The first kind 
arises in the soul originally from unknown causes; the 
second is derived in a great measure from our ideas, 
and that in the following order." The order which 
he suggests becomes 'confusion worse confounded/ 
for he speaks of " an idea of pleasure or pain, when 
it returns upon the soul, producing new impressions 
of desire and aversion, hope and fear, which may pro- 
perly be called impressions of reflection, because de- 
rived from, it ; and these again, being copied by the 
memory and imagination, become ideas, which per- 
haps in their turn give rise to other impressions and 
ideas." Thus he leaves his reader in a state of pain- 
ful distraction, at a loss for any distinct impression 
or correct idea, in a perfect labyrinth of words. Be- 
tween the two, the understanding is beaten to and 
fro, like a shuttlecock between two noisy battledoors, 
and not allowed to settle anywhere. Par from esta- 
blishing the clear and satisfactory distinction which 
he undertook to make, he has only destroyed a dis- 



66 HUME. 

tinction tolerably good before. He has not shaken 
the strength nor added to the convenience of the phi- 
losophical structure, which Locke had founded on the 
phenomena of our physical and mental constitution, 
the ideas of sensation and of reflection. He has not 
elicited a fact, nor established a principle peculiar to 
himself, in any subsequent part of the Treatise, which 
has been received as valuable by any pupil of eminence 
in the school of Mental Philosophy*. 

But the 'Treatise of Human Nature' was not so 
wholly overlooked and neglected at its first appearance 
as Hume's language respecting it implies. On the 
contrary, it met with the attention of some candid 
readers and competent judges. This is evident, from 
the review to be found in the papers published under 
the title of the ' History of the Works of the Learned,' 
a periodical which came out in the years from 1738 
to 1742 inclusive. The criticism on Hume, found in 
the numbers for November and December 1739, is 

* In a note, p. 13, Hume brings a charge against Mr. Locke of 
perverting the word idea from its original sense. "I here make 
use of these terms, impression and idea, in a sense different from 
what is usual, and I hope this liberty will be allowed me. Perhaps 
I rather restore the word idea to its original sense, from which Mr. 
Locke had perverted it, in making it stand for all our perceptions." 
How far that observation is correct, the reader may be left to judge. 
The rest of the note is either unintelligible, or he uses the word im- 
pression as a synonym for perception, for which, yet, he says, there 
is no particular name in the English or any other language that he 
knows of. At the end of the section, p. 21, he professes to give, with 
an affected air of superiority to preceding philosophers, a clear state- 
ment of the question concerning innate ideas, so as to remove all 
disputes concerning it. 



HUME. 67 

somewhat elaborate, and on the whole much to the pur- 
pose. It points out not a few inconsistencies and ex- 
travagancies. It marks the love of paradox and the 
vein of egotism. Far from supposing that Hume had 
pushed to their legitimate consequences any principles 
peculiar to Locke, or that he was led to extreme scep- 
tical notions by Locke's method of analysis, the reviewer 
observes, " that a man who has never had the pleasure 
of reading Mr. Locke's incomparable Essay will peruse 
the author with much less disgust than those who have 
been used to the irresistible reasoning and wonderful 
perspicacity of that admirable writer." The reviewer 
with justice speaks of Hume as " trampling upon Mr. 
Locke, and pretending to restore or rectify what he 
had perverted*." It would be without advantage to 

* This review is attributed by Chalmers, in the Biographical Dic- 
tionary, and by Mr. J. Hill Burton, to Warburton, afterwards 
Bishop of Gloucester : I cannot find on what authority, although 
the opinion seems consistent enough with the internal evidence. I 
trace no allusion to that authorship in the Life and Letters of War- 
burton, published by his friend Hurd, amid many criticisms and 
papers, in which such allusion would seem almost unavoidable, con- 
sidering the pains bestowed on the review, and the importance 
attached by Warburton to whatever he did. In 1739, Warburton 
was busy with his defence of Pope against Crousaz, with notes on 
Shakespeare, and above all with the ' Divine Legation of Moses.' He 
speaks also of the whole periodical, under the title of the ' Works of 
the Learned' in a way somewhat inconsistent with the idea of his 
being concerned in the production of the papers. " The journal in 
general ia a most miserable one; and, to the opprobrium of our coun- 
try, we have neither any better, nor, I believe, any other." See 
* Nichols's Anecdotes of the Literature of the Eighteenth Century,' 
vol. v. p. 562. 

About 1757 or 1758 Bishop Hurd edited some remarks, written 

F 2 



68 HUME. 

the reader to adduce any considerable number of pas- 
sages in justification of the opinion that the ' Treatise 
of Human Nature' is characterized, to all the extent 
common in metaphysical writings, by looseness of ex- 
pression and inconclusive reasoning. Such books are 
now seldom read, and still less weighed and consi- 
dered; nor can the inquirer into the proper philo- 
sophy of the mind be encouraged with the hope that 
it will repay any attention which may be given it, by 
additions of value to his stock of thought. A few in- 
stances of arbitrary and unsatisfactory definition may 
suffice as samples of his manner. He defines an opi- 
nion or belief, " a lively idea, related to or associated 
with a present impression*." Is not the definition 
equally suitable for unbelief, a lively idea of the 
falsehood of a statement? Are not all present im- 
pressions associated with lively ideas? light, fire, 
ice, a throne, a crown? the thousand objects that 
awaken apprehension, or kindle hope and desire, 
the sound of a trumpet, the cry of distress ? In the 
midst of vague language about the business or affair, 
as he calls it, of causes and effects, he defines a cause 
to be " an object precedent and contiguous to another, 
and so united with it, that the idea of the one deter- 
mines the mind to form the idea of the other, and 

by Warburton on Hume's 'Natural History of Religion,' imme- 
diately on the first perusal of that Essay. See "Warburton's Works 
and Life, vol. i. pp. 65-69, and vol. xii. pp. 239-240. 

* Treatise, pp. 167, 172, 188. See also his definition quoted and 
criticized by Reid, in his ' Essay, etc., on the Intellectual Powers/ 
p. 352. 



HUME. 01) 

the impression of the one to form the more lively idea 
of the other*." He proceeds to lay down eight rules, 
by which to judge of causes and effects, of which the 
last is the following, " that an object which exists for 
any time in its full perfection without any effect, is not 
the sole cause of that effect, but requires to be assisted 
by some other principle, which may forward its influ- 
ence and operation^." What language can be more 
indefinite, less satisfactory, or, closely examined, more 
absurd f Who now is satisfied that mere precedence 
and contiguity constitute the amount and essence of 
his notion of cause ? If precedence relates to time, 
and contiguity to space, how little comparatively does 
the latter enter into the notion at all ! When 

" Morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime 
Advancing, sows the earth with orient pearl," 

the dawn precedes, and is contiguous to the rising of 
the sun, who "brings the day his bounteous gift." 
It is impossible to separate the idea of the one from 
that of the other ; but is the dawn the cause of its 
coming ? Is the moon contiguous to the ocean and 
the tidal motions? or is the sun contiguous to its 
attendant orbs? Is the resolution of the Board of 
East India Directors contiguous to the banks of the 
Ganges, where the effects of the resolution will be 
felt ? Yet the root of Hume's scepticism lies in this, 
as will be seen when the examination of his more im- 
portant work the ' Essays' comes to be entered 
upon; and what pretence is there for the assertion 

* Treatise, p. 298. t Ibid., p. 306. 



70 HUME. 

that anything in Locke suggested or supports this 
theory ? In regard to our belief in the continued ex- 
istence of external objects, he has a passage more re- 
markable for its childishness and confused verbosity, 
than for any just and useful discrimination : " All ob- 
jects to which we attribute a continued existence have 
a peculiar constancy, which distinguishes them from 
the impressions whose existence depends on our per- 
ception." He had previously made impressions and 
perceptions the same ; and it is obvious there can be 
no impression without a perception ; but here he con- 
founds objects with impressions, or rather he makes 
the constancy of objects that .which distinguishes one 
sort of objects from a peculiar class of impressions, 
as if the objects and impressions could be thus legi- 
timately compared. He goes on to say that " in the 
midst of changes which even the constancy admits 
of the objects have a coherence and a regular de- 
pendence, which produces very reasonably the opinion 
of their continued existence." What however are the 
constancy, the coherence, the regular dependence, and 
the continued existence, but different words for one 
and the same opinion and belief? unless you come 
to distinguish them by some reference to their etymo- 
logy or for a practical purpose, a distinction which 
we might hope to find in a good book of synonyms. 
A little attention to the first sentence of Aristotle's 
categories on common names might have suggested 
to Hume the desirableness of more coherence in his 
terms, and more dependence in his conclusions. 



HUME. 71 

But the most lively part of the Treatise is the 
last chapter, on the sceptical and other systems of 
philosophy, in which he attacks more particularly the 
modern system* of Mr. Locke. Because we have 
no idea of the substance of our minds, and cannot 
point to the particular impression of sensation and 
reflection that produces that idea, he would have us 
abandon altogether "the question concerning the sub- 
stance of the soul, as absolutely unintelligible" (p. 
434). He speaks of certain philosophers promising 
to diminish our ignorance ; but, unwilling to point 
too distinctly to other instructors, he makes no allu- 
sion to the controversy between the learned Dr. S. 
Clarke, Mr. Dodwell, and Collins, on this difficult sub- 
ject. For him such men had written and thought in 
vain. He pronounces the maxim, that an object may 
exist, and yet be nowhere, not only possible ; but he 
asserts that the greatest part of beings do and must 
exist after this manner ; meaning "apparently, by ob- 
jects and beings, merely our own perceptions, which 
have no necessary relation to one portion of space 
more than to another. He confounds the possibility 
of a maxim with the existence of a fact. He then 
endeavours to show that the hideous hypothesis of 
Spinoza, that there is only one substance in the 
world, is " almost the same with that of the imma- 
teriality of the soul" f ; and " that all the absurdities 

* See particularly the fourth section, on the Modern Philosophy, 
where he agrees with Berkeley, and argues against Locke. Trea- 
tise, vol. i. pp. 397-405. t Ibid., pp. 410, 419. 



72 HUME. 

which have been found in the system of Spinoza, may 
likewise be discovered in that of theologians" (p. 423). 
In the section on personal identity, he decides that 
we have no idea of self, such as some philosophers 
imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of, 
for " if any impression gives rise to the idea of self, 
that impression must continue invariably the same 
through the whole course of our lives, since self is 
supposed to exist after that manner. But there is 
no impression constant and invariable ; consequently 
there is no such idea" (p. 437). 

The careful metaphysical inquirer will do well to 
compare Mr. Hume's section with Locke's chapter 
on Identity and Diversity, and with the dissertation 
on personal identity added to Butler's 'Analogy'*. 
When we summon the philosopher, the divine, and 
the sceptic before us, and compare their views and 
methods, we shall have no difficulty, in this instance, 
in assigning the superiority to the divine in per- 
spicuity and precision. The sceptic, consistent with 
himself, concludes in "the affair" as he calls it, 
" that all the nice questions concerning personal iden- 
tity can never possibly be decided, and are rather 

* Locke's chapter, the 27th of his second book, was added in 
later editions of the Essay, at the instance of his friend and corre- 
spondent Molyneux, (see Letters between Molyneux and Locke, 
vol. iv. p. 292,) and is by no means a favourable specimen of the 
philosopher's care and powers. Butler observes, " he was hasty in 
some of his positions," but he appears unusually playful with his sub- 
ject, as hi the story of the ' Parrot of Mariman,' and in the sugges- 
tion that the soul of Heliogabalus might be in one of his hogs." 



HUME. 73 

to be regarded as grammatical than as philosophical 
difficulties." But he had previously suggested that, 
"as memory alone acquaints us with the conti- 
nuance and extent of the succession of our percep- 
tions, it is to be considered upon that account chiefly 
as the source of personal identity." "Had we no 
memory, we never should have any notion of causa- 
tion, nor consequently of that chain of causes and 
effects, which constitute our self, or person." It is 
easy to see how little the sceptic is in such language 
consistent with himself. But when least consistent 
with himself, he often approaches nearest to philosophy 
and truth. For let us listen to Mr. Locke " since 
consciousness always accompanies thinking, and it is 
that which makes every one to be what he calls self, 
and thereby distinguishes himself from all other think- 
ing things; in this alone consists personal identity, 
that is, the sameness of a rational being ; and as far as 
this consciousness can be extended backwards to any 
past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of 
that person*." Again: "As far as any intelligent 
being can repeat the idea of any past action with the 
same consciousness it had of it at first, and with the 
same consciousness it has of any present action, so 
far it is the same personal self." Thus memory and 
consciousness, and the connection of thought with 
thought, of present with past impressions, play a con- 
spicuous part in giving the idea, and even in constitut- 
ing the essence of personal identity, according to Mr. 

* Locke's Essay, book li. c. 27, 9 and 10. 



74 HUME. 

Locke. Butler, with true wisdom, does Mr. Locke 
the justice to admit that he has suggested much better 
answers than those which he, gives in form to the va- 
rious questions concerning personal identity ; for, says 
he, " when any one reflects upon a past action of his 
own, he is just as certain of the person who did that 
action, namely himself, the person who now reflects 
upon it, as he was certain that the action was at all 
done. Nay, very often a person's assurance of an action 
having been done, arises wholly from the consciousness 
(i.e. present remembrance) that he himself did it." 

" And he who can doubt whether perception by me- 
mory can be depended upon, may doubt also whether 
perception by deduction and reasoning, which also 
include memory, or indeed whether intuitive percep- 
tion can. Here then we can go no further. For it 
is ridiculous to attempt to prove the truth of those 
perceptions, whose truth we can no otherwise prove, 
than by other perceptions of exactly the same kind 
with them, and which there is just the same ground 
to suspect ; or to attempt to prove the truth of our 
faculties, which can be no 'otherwise proved than by 
the use or means of those very suspected faculties 
themselves." To such language and sentiments the 
sceptic himself must bow, and for these, (with much 
more that I do not quote, indicative of nice discrimi- 
nation, and germane to the matter,) the philosopher 
would embrace the prelate as a worthy pupil in his 
school, or as a successful fellow-student in the great 
school of nature, truth, and Providence. We see that 



HUME. 

all three really place personal identity in one and the 
same unity of consciousness, of which memory makes 
a part, or, to express it differently, in the association 
of present impressions with remembrances of the past 
and anticipations of the future. Herein consists that 
unbroken thread of life, of which the Fates three 
sisters, according to the ancient poets hold the des- 
tiny. Whether we are satisfied with this account of it 
or not, whether we agree with it or not, it is something 
to know how far such writers and thinkers approach 
each other, and are consistent, first with themselves, 
and next with the actual phenomena of our being. If 
Hume had paid due attention to what had been said 
before him on such topics, aiming less at originality 
and more at truth, he would have saved himself and 
his readers trouble, and earned a gratitude which now 
cannot be felt. 

At the conclusion of his chapter, Hume breaks out 
into that famous and often-quoted passage : " I am 
affrighted and confounded with that forlorn solitude in 
which I am placed, and fancy myself some strange un- 
couth monster, who, not being able to mingle and unite 
in society, has been expelled all human commerce and 
left utterly abandoned and disconsolate. Again, the 
intense view of the manifold contradictions and im- 
perfections in human reason has so wrought upon me 
and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all be- 
lief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion as 
even more probable or likely than another. Where 
am I, or what ? From what causes do I derive my 



76 HUME. 

existence, and to what condition shall I return ? . . . I 
am confounded with all these questions, and begin to 
fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imagin- 
able, environed with the deepest darkness, and utterly 
deprived of the use of every member and faculty." 

But these sentiments, with the addition that all are 
certainly fools who reason or believe anything, he 
pronounces to be the result of spleen and indolence ; 
and he concludes that, " in all the incidents of life we 
ought still to preserve our scepticism. If we believe 
that fire warms, or water refreshes, 'tis only because 
it costs us too much pains to think otherwise. Nay, 
if we are philosophers, it ought only to be upon scep- 
tical principles, and from an inclination which we feel 
to the employing ourselves after that manner." One 
gleam of light, one transient intimation of possible 
advantage in the midst of this darkness and difficulty, 
escapes him at last, when he says : " For my part, 
my only hope is that I may contribute a little to the 
advancement of knowledge, by giving in some parti- 
culars a different turn to the speculations of philoso- 
phers, and pointing out to them more distinctly those 
subjects, where alone they can expect assurance and 
conviction. Human nature is the only science of man, 
and yet has been hitherto the most neglected." The 
last sentence deserves but a qualified, if any assent. 
More books have been written, and had been, in 
Hume's day, on Human Nature, its characteristics 
and interests, physical and metaphysical, on man as 
an individual and a social being, as occupant of earth 



HUME. 77 

and heir of heaven, than on any other subject of scien- 
tific investigation. 

The dismay and alarm which Hume expresses at 
the darkness in which he is' involved, are often referred 
to in proof of the baneful and gloomy effects of scep- 
ticism on his own and other minds. When we con- 
sider the age at which these sentiments were written 
when we remember that they exhibit not the perma- 
nent characteristics of Hume's temper and feelings 
their force as evidence of such effect is much abated. 
We may agree with Hume in thinking that, after a 
certain term of life, the character is little influenced 
by abstract speculations. The habits and the temper 
generally become fixed. We must therefore judge of 
the probable or real effects of scepticism partly by an 
honest appeal to our own hearts and consciousness, 
partly by a broad survey of the characters which have 
been formed under the influence of belief and unbelief 
respectively, so far as we can bring them to any true 
or desirable tests to a common standard of virtue and 
social worth. We may place in contrast the lives and 
pages of a Milton, Newton, Locke, Boyle, Clarke, 
Addison, Hartley, and Butler, with those of Bayle, 
Bolingbroke, Hume, Shaftesbury, Gibbon, Helvetius, 
Voltaire, Rousseau. Perhaps we may compare the 
lives of a Wickliffe, a Luther, a Fenelon, a Wesley, a 
Priestley, with the most virtuous or the most learned 
of professed unbelievers. The dogmatism and intole- 
rance of the believing are among the chief causes of 
scepticism, by keeping alive a spirit of antagonism. 



78 HUME. 

Who ever argues against ' faith, hope, and charity/ 
in the abstract, or is worth listening to, if he does? 
And who that has tried to ' converse with heaven/ 
returns not from the effort with a deep consciousness 
of the inadequacy of the finite to comprehend the 
Infinite? Then, grateful for the light and strength 
vouchsafed to him, he gladly descends from the cold 
and exhausting regions of speculation into the lowly 
habitable vale of practical enjoyment and utility. 

" Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop 
Than when we soar." 

" The primal duties shine aloft like stars ; 
The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless, 
Are scatter'd at the feet of man, like flowers*." 

Whatever the demerits of the ' Treatise on Human 
Nature/ it would be gross injustice to lay any stress 
upon its contents as evidence of Hume's real senti- 
ments, after the decided manner in which he con- 
demned the work, and insisted upon being judged 
solely by the 'Essays, Moral and Political/ published in 
1742. A comparison of the first volume of the Trea- 
tise with the Inquiry concerning Human Understand- 
ing in the second volume of the Essays, particularly 
the chapters on Probability and the Idea of Necessary 
Connection, will show a considerable improvement in 
the latter in qualities both of matter and style. But 
much of the original leaven remains ; and to neither 
will the cautious reader be disposed to award any 
such share of praise, for ingenuity of thought and 

* Wordsworth's 'Excursion.' 



HUME. 70 

subtlety of argument, as it has been customary to be- 
stow upon them among writers north of the Tweed. 

The Inquiry concerning the principles of morals, 
with the appendix, which we now find in the ' Essays/ 
was, in Hume's own opinion, "of all his writings, 
historical, philosophical, or literary, incomparably the 
best." With the dissertation on the Passions, it fills 
about a third of the second volume of the ' Essays/ 
and contains all that he thought worth preserving, 
or could use to any purpose, of the second and third 
volumes of the Treatise. The passages retained are 
few, but they are among the best. 

It is generally thought that in this Inquiry utility 
was first broadly and clearly set forth as the basis of 
morals ; advantage to society being made the founda- 
tion of merit in actions and of moral approbation in 
character. Perhaps it is nowhere more distinctly ex- 
pressed than in the conclusion of the Essay on Justice. 

" The necessity of justice to the support of society 
is the sole foundation of that virtue; and since no 
moral excellence is more highly esteemed, we may 
conclude that this circumstance of usefulness has, in 
general, the strongest energy, and most entire com- 
mand over our sentiments. It must therefore be the 
source of a considerable part of the merit ascribed to 
humanity, benevolence, friendship, public spirit, and 
other social virtues of that stamp, as it is the sole 
source of the moral approbation paid to fidelity, jus- 
tice, veracity, integrity, and those other estimable and 
useful qualities and principles." 



80 HUME. 

Yet, after all, this is not very distinct or happy. It 
is remarkable that Hume nowhere attempts a defini- 
tion of virtue. If the above passage be compared with 
another from the appendix, a paper concerning Moral 
Sentiment, it will be seen how little Hume understood 
his subject or was consistent with himself. " Now as 
virtue is an end, and is desirable on its own account, 
without fee or reward, merely for the immediate sa- 
tisfaction which it conveys ; 'tis requisite that there 
should be some sentiment which it touches, some in- 
ternal taste or feeling, or whatever you please to call 
it, which distinguishes moral good and evil, and which 
embraces the one and rejects the other." 

" Thus the distinct boundaries and offices of reason 
and of taste are easily ascertained. The former con- 
veys the knowledge of truth and falsehood ; the latter 
gives the sentiment of beauty and deformity, vice and 
virtue" The reader may form his own opinion of the 
value of this distinction ; and of other statements which 
follow or accompany the above. On consideration he 
will probably concur in the criticism, suggested no 
doubt by such passages as these, pronounced by Mr. 
Austin in his ' Province of Jurisprudence determined/ 

" The hypothesis in question (namely that of a moral 
sense, or that certain inscrutable sentiments of appro < 
bation or disapprobation accompany our conceptions 
of certain human actions, which are not begotten by 
reflection upon the tendencies of the actions which 
excite them) has been embraced by sceptics as well as 
by religionists. For example, it is supposed by David 



HUME. M 

Hume, in his ' Essay on the Principles of Morals,' that 
some of our moral sentiments spring from a perception 
of utility ; but he also appears to imagine that others 
are not to be analysed, or belong exclusively to the 
province of taste. Such, I say, appears to be his 
meaning. For in this Essay, as in all his writings, he 
is rather acute and ingenious, than coherent and pro- 
found ; handling detached topics with signal dexterity, 
but evincing an utter inability to grasp his subject as 
a whole*." 

The criticism is eminently just, and too closely con- 
nected with the subject, though it be not the history 
of any theory of morals, but relates to inquiries more 
strictly metaphysical, to be omitted. 

Our chief business is with the inquiry concerning 
the Human Understanding. A close comparison of 
the Treatise with the Essays will show a considerable 
improvement in the latter. Much of the useless lan- 
guage on cause and effect found in the former is aban- 
doned to its destined oblivion. Sentiments dignified 
with the name of maxims, but never known as such 
before, are dropped into the same gulf. In the Trea- 
tise the most offensive paradoxes are put forward, for 
the sake of showing ingenuity in defending them ; for 
instance, that " Reason is, and ought only to be, the 
slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any 
other office than to serve and obey them." In the 
Essays he forbore their repetition. In the Treatise 
he is a sort of hard, uncompromising necessarian, as- 

* Austin's Jurisprudence, pp. 101, 102. 

G 



82 HUME. 

serting that " the doctrine of necessity, according to 
his explication of it, is not only innocent, but even 
advantageous to religion and morality." In the f Es- 
says' he is neither libertarian nor necessarian, but as 
favourable to liberty as to necessity ; for he ventures 
to affirm that the doctrines both of necessity and of 
liberty, as he explains them, " are not only consistent 
with morality and religion, but are absolutely essential 
to the support of them*." He concludes the Essay on 
liberty and necessity without deciding anything ex- 
cept " the impossibility of arriving at any satisfactory 
conclusion," which is of course the proper condition 
of the genuine sceptic. " To reconcile the indifference 
and contingency of human actions with prescience, 
or to defend absolute decrees, and yet free the Deity 
from being the author of sin, has been found hitherto 
to exceed all the skill of philosophy. Happy, if she 
be thence sensible of her temerity, when she pries into 
these sublime mysteries ; and, leaving a scene so full 
of obscurities and perplexities, return with suitable 
modesty to her true and proper province, the exami- 
nation of common life, where she will find difficulties 
enough to employ her inquiries, without launching 
into so boundless an ocean of doubt, uncertainty, and 
contradiction f." 

* Compare the Treatise, vol. ii. p. 237, with Essays, vol. ii. 
p. 108, 115. edit. 1764. 

f It does not appear that Hume had paid any attention to the 
controversy and correspondence between Hobbes and Bramhall, 
Bishop of Dromore, where the question of necessity, if not exhausted, 
is put perhaps in as clear and strong a light as it can be made to sus- 



HUME. 83 

In the two papers entitled ' Sceptical Doubts/ Mr. 
Hume does not appear to entertain himself, nor to 
propose to others, any real doubts about which he 
desired satisfaction ; but he makes many decided 
and sufficiently dogmatical assertions. Thus : " I shall 
venture to affirm, as a general proposition, which ad- 
mits of no exception, that the knowledge of this re- 
lation (that is, of cause and effect) is not in any in- 
stances attained by reasonings a priori*, but arises 
entirely from experience, when we find that any par- 
ticular objects are constantly conjoined with others." 
What is meant in these passages by "reasonings a 
priori," and who had ever contended or conceived 
that such reasonings gave a knowledge of the rela- 
tion of cause and effect ? Such reasonings were held 
before Hume's time to be reasonings from a cause, 
known, assumed, or conceived, to the certain or pro- 
tain, and it is easy to see which of the disputants has the mastery. 
Yet there seems one point in this difficult subject, to which Hobbes 
has not adverted with a due sense of its importance, that is, the 
force of the will, and of steady continued resolution in giving birth 
to a repeated and protracted series of acts fixing the habits, and 
thus influencing the individual life and character for a period inde- 
finitely long. A copy of this correspondence, made valuable by 
the notes of P. Mallet, Esq., who edited an excellent abridgment of 
Locke's Essay, and Hobbes' Philosophy, now scarcely to be met 
with, is in Dr. Williams's Library. I observe with pleasure that Dr. 
Priestley, of all the writers on Philosophical Necessity, appears best 
acquainted with the history of opinion on the subject, and his his- 
torical references are always correct and instructive. See particu- 
larly the preface to his Doctrine of Necessity illustrated. Rutt's 
Priestley, vol. iii. 

* Compare also subsequent passages, "when we reason a priori," 
etc., pp. 36, 38, 40. 

G 2 



84 HUME. 

bable effect. They supposed a knowledge of the re- 
lation already to exist, whencesoever the knowledge 
might be derived. Whatever Hume meant, it is sup- 
posed that he began that fallacious use of the words 
a priori, as an epithet for an intuition, or conception, 
now so common, under which use a twofold error or 
assumption lies concealed : first, that there are intui- 
tions and conceptions in the mind capable of being 
expressed in words, which are antecedent to or inde- 
pendent of experience, that is, of sensation and reflec- 
tion ; secondly, that there are propositions, or concep- 
tions, capable of being expressed in words, into the 
evidence of which, even into the meaning of which, we 
must not inquire prior to the admission of the reason- 
ings founded upon them, an intuitive certainty being 
pleaded or assumed for such propositions. As this 
is a point of considerable importance in tracing the 
history and appreciating the condition of modern me- 
taphysics, some observations upon it will be submitted 
in a future chapter. This proposition Mr. Hume en- 
deavours to establish by a variety of considerations. 
The reason is discernible in the following passage, 
which covertly contains the real sceptical doubt which 
he entertained, and which he designed rather to insi- 
nuate than to express. 

" Hence we may discover the reason why no philo- 
sopher, who is rational and modest, has ever pretended 
to assign the ultimate cause of any natural operation, 
or to show distinctly the action of that power which 
produces any single effect in the universe. 'Tis con- 



HUME. 85 

fessed, that the utmost effort of human reason is, to 
reduce the principles, productive of natural pheno- 
mena, to a greater simplicity, and to resolve the many 
particular effects into a few general causes, by means 
of reasonings from analogy, experience, and observa- 
tion. But as to the causes of these general causes, 
we should in vain attempt their discovery ; nor shall 
we ever be able to satisfy ourselves by any particular 
explication of them. These ultimate springs and prin- 
ciples are totally shut up from human curiosity and 
inquiry. Elasticity, gravity, cohesion of parts, com- 
munication of motion by impulse, these are probably 
the ultimate causes and principles which we shall ever 
discover in nature ; and we may esteem ourselves suf- 
ficiently happy, if by accurate inquiry and reasoning 
we can trace up the particular phenomena to, or near 
to, these general principles. The most perfect philo- 
sophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance 
a little longer ; as perhaps the most perfect philosophy 
of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to dis- 
cover larger portions of our ignorance. Thus the ob- 
servation of human blindness and weakness is the result 
of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite 
of our endeavours to elude or avoid it*." 

The covert atheism of the first part of this extract, 
and the vanity of attempting any exact metaphysical 
science or truth in the last, constitute the real scepti- 
cism which Mr. Hume took such pains to cherish and 
to instil. If this be so, there is no attempt at solution 

* Essays, vol. ii. pp. 38, 39. 



86 HUME. 

in any subsequent remarks. To suppose that we have 
in this any legitimate conclusion from principles pe- 
culiar to Locke, is to suppose what is utterly contrary 
to evidence. Instead of Hume being a disciple of 
Locke, with more truth may it be said that Diderot, 
who, in 1751, began the Trench Encyclopedic, was 
the disciple or fellow -labourer of Hume. " Strictly 
speaking," says Diderot, "there is but one sort of 
causes, that is, physical causes*/' We are reminded 
of the admirable lines of the author of the ' Dunciad/ 
written soon after the appearance of the Treatise ! 

" Philosophy, that leaned on Heaven before, 
Shrinks to her second cause, and is no more." 

In the second part of the paper entitled, ' Sceptical 
Doubts,' our author carries on his sifting humour. 
He asks, "What is the foundation of all conclusions 
from experience ?" and answers negatively, that " they 
are not founded on reasoning, or any process of the 
understanding." But what is a conclusion or an in- 
ference ? If there be any process to arrive at it, it 
must be a process of the mind or understanding. It 
is a result of thought, but who thinks or entertains 
ideas without an experience ? Mr. Hume, as often as 
most other metaphysicians, loses sight of his meaning, 
and destroys his argument by changing his terms. 

Comment on other passages of the 'Sceptical Doubts' 

* See the letter of Diderot to the Baron de Grimm, quoted by 
Stewart, Dissertation, p. 150 ; and compare the account of Diderot 
in the ' Dictionnaire des Sciences Philosophiques.' Paris, 1845. 



HUME. 87 

may be dispensed with, but it is worth while to ob- 
serve that the concluding paragraph is too positive to 
be consistent with any scepticism; and the reader 
may consider whether the perception and remembrance 
of sensible qualities the observation of the present, 
the memory of the past, and the expectation of the 
future are or are not processes of the understanding ? 
While Mr. Hume admits these to be the characteris- 
tics of all percipient natures even peasants, children, 
and beasts he would on that account hold them 
beneath the attention of the philosopher. Thus the 
most general are made the least important principles. 
The insignificance of a law is in proportion to its uni- 
versality ! Gravitation, which keeps the worlds in 
harmony, is subordinate to the explosive power of 
steam or gunpowder. It is of no moment that men 
usually walk erect upon the ground, because one man, 
at a loss otherwise for a subsistence, has been known 
to walk upon the ceiling with his head downwards. 

Where there are really no doubts, there can be no 
solutions. In the subsequent paper, entitled, ' Scep- 
tical Solutions of these Doubts/ we find chiefly a re- 
petition of the same statements, touching the entire 
dependence of our knowledge of causes and effects on 
experience, for which a new term is found, as if it 
were a new principle, namely, custom. "All infe- 
rences from experience, therefore, are effects of cus- 
tom, not of reasoning." A long but unsatisfactory 
note follows, on some common distinction between 
reason and experience ; the result of which is to show 



88 HUME. 

that there is no sufficient distinction, that the one 
supposes the other, and that neither is of value with- 
out the other. Much of the -subsequent language in 
the first part is open to obvious objection, as where he 
compares the belief in the existence of the sensible 
qualities of objects, and the expectation of effects in 
future similar to those experienced in the past, to the 
passion of love, when we receive benefits, or hatred, 
when we receive injuries, and says, " all these opera- 
tions (!) are a species of natural instincts, which no 
reasoning or process of thought is able to produce or 
to prevent." How much reasoning and thought, ex- 
perience and reflection, modify all our beliefs and 
passions, and expectations, he did not concern himself 
at that moment to inquire, forgetting that this in fact 
was the main business and proper purpose of his 
Essay, which is an illustration of it. 

A rich specimen of confusion of thought and lan- 
guage in an author affecting metaphysical depth occurs 
in the concluding section of these papers, where Mr. 
Hume proceeds to examine more accurately the nature 
of this belief, and of the customary conjunction whence 
it is derived; from which examination, readers who 
have no taste for the abstract sciences, and for such 
speculations, are politely warned off. He gives what 
he conceives to be the difference between fiction and 
belief. " The difference," he says, " lies in some sen- 
timent or feeling, which is annexed to the latter, not 
to the former, and which depends not on the will, 
nor can be commanded at pleasure. It must be ex- 



HUME. 89 

cited by nature, like all other sentiments, and must 
arise from the situation in which the mind is placed 
at any particular juncture. Whenever any object is 
presented to the memory or senses, it immediately, 
by the force of custom, carries the imagination to con- 
ceive that object, which is usually conjoined to it; 
and this conception is attended with a feeling or sen- 
timent different from the loose reveries of the fancy. 
In this consists the whole nature of belief." In the 
subsequent paragraph he attempts not a definition, 
but another description of this sentiment or feeling of 
belief, although he says it is a term of which no one 
is ever at a loss for the meaning. " I say then that 
belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, 
steady conception of an object, than what the imagi- 
nation alone is ever able to attain. This variety of 
terms, which may seem so unphilosophical, is intended 
only to express that act of the mind, which renders 
realities, or what is taken for such, more present to 
us than fictions, causes them to weigh more in the 
thought, and gives them a superior influence on the 
passions and imagination. Provided we agree about 
the thing, 'tis needless to dispute about the terms." 

Now, first, belief is not rightly or usefully opposed 
to fiction, but to unbelief or disbelief; it relates to 
the assent which the mind gives to propositions, or 
affirmations, respecting the past, the present, or the 
future; for the mind frames for itself propositions 
more or less distinct, whenever it forms a judgement 
attended with belief. Belief relates to the acceptance 



90 HUME. 

of testimony first of the senses, and next of other 
witnesses. It is confidence in the correctness of the 
inferences which experience leads us to draw from the 
sensible impressions. Fiction is feigned or false 
history, as distinguished from true or real history. It 
is the play of imagination as distinguished from the 
observation of fact. Liveliness of conception does not 
distinguish the sentiment or feeling of belief from that 
(sentiment or feeling) which attends the reveries of 
fancy. Dr. Brown has well observed this, criticizing 
these papers of Mr. Hume. The conception, which is 
present to the mind when perusing the statements of 
the historian may be very languid and unsteady, while 
the excitement of the imagination may be great when 
following the ideal pictures of the poet and the novel- 
ist. The fables of JEsop give a far more lively con- 
ception than the natural histories and catalogues of 
Aristotle, Buffon, and Linnaeus. 

But, secondly, no act of the mind renders realities 
more present to us than fictions, or causes them to 
weigh more in the thoughts. This is an obvious 
error. Surely realities act upon the mind, not the 
mind upon the realities. Whatever the force of imagi- 
nation, or internal feeling, and of that pre -occupation of 
mind, which prevents us occasionally from attending 
to the presence of sensible objects, in general the 
continuity and force of the impressions from without 
are sufficient to make us quite aware of the differ- 
ence between a fact and a fancy, an object and an 
idea. 



HUME. 91 

" Oh, who can hold a firo in his hand, 
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus P 
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite 
By bare imagination of a feast ?" 

" Let us then," says Mr. Hume, " take in the whole 
compass of this doctrine, and allow that the sentiment 
of belief is nothing but a conception of an object more 
intense and steady than what attends the mere pictures 
of the imagination ; and that this manner of concep- 
tion arises from a customary conjunction of the object 
with something present to the memory or senses. I 
believe that it will not be difficult, upon these suppo- 
sitions, to find other operations of the mind analogous 
to it ; and to trace up these phenomena to principles 
still more general*." 

But who will allow this ? The manner of concep- 
tion does not constitute the difference between a sen- 
sation caused by the presence of an object, and the 
remembrance or idea of that object, or of something 
else not present to the senses. Still less does it con- 
stitute the difference between belief and disbelief, fic- 
tion and fact. The conception of a centaur or satyr, 
of Bacchus and Silenus, may be far more lively than 
that of the personal appearance of the Roman Empe- 
rors. The figures on the Elgin marbles may be more 
distinctly impressed on the mind's eye than the ex- 
pression on the busts of Caesar and of Cicero. But 
belief in the existence of the one and the other as real 

* Sceptical Solutions, p. 59. Compare Brown's Essay on Cause 
and Effect, p. 308, edit, 1835. 



92 HUME. 

beings, assent to propositions respecting them, consti- 
tute a class of sentiments and feelings wholly different 
from the mere presence or ^remembrance of visual or 
audible impressions. 

When errors like these pervade Mr. Hume's Scep- 
tical Solution, it is evident that nothing is solved. 
No doubt which any man, rational and modest, se- 
riously entertained, ever was solved, and was believed 
by Hume to be solved, in any of his remarks. A 
few passages in the Treatise are preserved in these 
papers, one touching the influence of relics on the 
feelings of the Roman Catholics, another on the in- 
fluence of a sensation, such as that caused by the 
voice or hand-writing of a friend, to call up the idea 
of his personal appearance. But they affect no phi- 
losophical question ; they help no analysis of mental 
phenomena ; they point no moral. Let them, if they 
may, adorn a tale. 

We come to the 'Essay on the Idea of Necessary 
Connection/ the most laboured in the collection. There 
is concentrated the essence of Hume's sceptical phi- 
losophy, if philosophy it deserves to be called. Of this 
Essay he has made considerable use, both in the 
well-known paper on miracles, and the less known 
but not less remarkable Essay on Providence and a 
Future State, remarkable for contemptuous indiffer- 
ence to all the received principles and ordinary feel- 
ings of mankind ; for how subordinate is the question 
whether there be evidence for any peculiar, special, 
and exceptional interpositions of Providence, to the 



HUME. 93 

question whether there be an Intelligent and Benig- 
nant Providence at all. To the Essay on the Idea 
of Necessary Connection, the greatest attention must 
be paid by one who would know the nature and ex- 
tent of the scepticism of Hume. 

The general tenor of the section in the Treatise 
is preserved in the Essay, but with some improvement 
in the mode of putting the argument. Yet it is dif- 
ficult, without minute attention, without thorough 
acquaintance with Mr. Hume's style and sentiments, 
and even with it, to discern clearly the proposition 
which he seeks to establish. It is not clear whether 
we have or have not the idea in question; nor whether, 
if we have it, it can be rationally entertained, and 
made a basis for philosophical reasoning and con- 
clusion. Dr. Reid understood Hume to deny that 
we have the idea of power. He understood him to 
deny that we have any idea of power, because there is 
no one impression to which it can be specifically traced. 
On the other hand, Dr. Brown contends that this is 
a mistake of Reid's, that Hume admits and asserts 
we have it, quoting the sentence : " This connection, 
therefore) which we feel in the mind, or customary tran- 
sition of the imagination from one object to its usual 

J t/ / / 

attendant, is the sentiment or impression from which 
we form the idea of power or necessary connection*. 

* It seems obvious, that the connection which we feel in the mind 
is only another term for the idea of connection which Mr. Hume 
says is formed from a sentiment or impression. Do not the words 
feeling, sentiment, impression, and idea, signify one and the same 
subject of thought and reasoning? 



94 HUME. 

Nothing further is in the case. Contemplate the sub- 
ject on all sides, you will never find any other origin 
of this idea *." Nevertheless Dr. Reid's mistake was 
perfectly natural, at least on a superficial view : it was 
founded on the general course of Mr. Hume's argu- 
ment. Hume makes much use of his peculiar principle, 
that we have no idea without its corresponding im- 
pression, and because we have no impression of a 
power or a cause in what he conceives to be the ordi- 
nary sense of those terms, and in the sense in which 
some philosophers (though he mentions them not) have 
taken them, he concludes or seems to conclude we have 
no such idea. 

"Upon the whole there appears not, through all 
nature, any one instance of connection which is con- 
ceivable by us. All events seem entirely loose and 
separate. One event follows another, but we can never 
observe any tie between them : they seem conjoined, 
but never connected. And as we can have no idea of 
anything which never appeared to our outward sense 
or inward sentiment, the necessary conclusion seems 
to be, that we have no idea of connection or power at 
all ; and that these words are absolutely without any 
meaning, when employed either in philosophical rea- 
sonings or common life." 

If he had stopped there, Dr. Reid would have been 
partially right f; but he adds, "there still remains 
one method of avoiding this conclusion, and one source 

* Essays, p. 87. 

t This passage is referred to by Stewart (Dissertation, p. 214), 



HUME. 95 

which we have not yet examined. When one parti- 
cular species of event has always, in all instances, 
been conjoined with another, we make no longer any 
scruple to foretel the one upon the appearance of the 
other, and to employ that reasoning which can alone 
assure us of any matter of fact or existence. We then 
call the one object came, and the other effect. We 
suppose that there is some connection between them, 
some power in the one by which it infallibly produces 
the other, and operates with the greatest certainty and 
strongest necessity. 

" It appears, then, that this idea of a necessary con- 
nection amongst events arises from a number of simi- 
lar instances, which occur of the constant conjunction 
of events ; nor can that idea ever be suggested by any 
one of these instances, surveyed in all possible lights 
and positions. But there is nothing in a number of 
instances different from any single instance which is 
supposed to be exactly similar, except only, that after 
a repetition of similar instances the mind is carried by 
habit, upon the appearance of one event, to expect its 
usual attendant, and to believe that it will exist*." 

Now what Mr. Hume mentions as an exception is 
evidently no exception, but a different kind of asser- 
tion. The effect of repetition on the mind, the di- 
rection in which the mind is carried by habit, adds 

and well criticized by Brown ('Essay on Cause and Effect,' part iv. 
sect. 7, on Mr. Hume's Theory:) and compare Dr. Reid's First 
Essay, on Active Power in general,' ch. iv. 
* Essays, p. 86. 



96 HUME. 

nothing to the instances themselves, and varies not 
their character. In the recapitulation of the argument 
in the last paragraph of the Essay, where Hume 
repeats these views, he makes the same mistake; he 
confounds the different effect of repeated instances 
upon the imagination, the different degrees of confi- 
dence of anticipation in the mind, with a difference or 
change in the character of the instances themselves. 

The real object of all this, it may be presumed, is to 
pluck up by the roots the common argument in favour 
of a Supreme Intelligence and Power from the manifes- 
tations of intelligence, design, and power in the uni- 
verse. Because we have had no immediate experience, 
no impression of the connection between the will of a 
Supreme Being and any of the events or phenomena 
of the universe, we ought not to attempt to account 
for the phenomena by referring them to the existence 
of such a Being. It is travelling " out of the sphere 
of our experience," into regions unknown, into ques- 
tions beyond the grasp of our faculties. Mr. Hume 
refers to the Essay on the academical or sceptical 
philosophy*, as exhibiting these results: "While we 
cannot give a satisfactory reason why we believe, after 

* This Essay, like the rest of Hume's writings, abounds with 
ingenious and useful observations, but with strange inconsistencies. 
For in the same page (183) he says, " 'Tis only experience which 
teaches us the nature and bounds of cause and effect, and enables us 
to infer the existence of one object from that of another. Such is 
the foundation of moral reasoning, which forms the greatest part of 
human knowledge, and is the source of all human action and beha- 
viour." Yet shortly after he says, " Morals and criticism are not so 



111 MI:. 97 

a thousand experiments, that a stone will fall, or fire 
burn, can we ever satisfy ourselves concerning any 
determination which we may form with regard to the 
origin of worlds, and the situation of nature from, 
and to, eternity ?" 

As the whole of Hume's Sceptical Philosophy 
turns on this point, it is a duty to examine it with 
some care. And first, there is no pretence for attri- 
buting any assertion or thought concerned in his rea- 
soning to Locke. There is neither statement drawn 
from the pages, nor inference deduced from the prin- 
ciples of the great English metaphysician, to whom 
Hume pays little attention. His reference to Mr. 
Locke's chapter on 'Power/ in a note, is short but 
incorrect. Locke does not say what Hume represents 
him as saying, " that, finding from experience that there 
are several new productions in matter, and conclud- 
ing that there must somewhere be a power capable of 
producing them, we arrive at last, by this reasoning, 
at the idea of power." Locke's chapter on f Power' 
is one of the least happy portions of his great Essay. 
He was himself little satisfied with it, as appears by 
his letter to Molyneux, of July 15, 1693. But his 
language is not quite so muddy and inconsistent with 
himself, as Hume represents it. He suggests the only 

properly objects of the understanding as of taste and sentiment;" as 
if our tastes and sentiments were themselves to be excluded from the 
domain of knowledge, understanding, and criticism. Why did he not 
remember his own principle, expressed a few sentences before, that 
our difficulties in these matters " proceed entirely from the unde ter- 
minate meaning of words, which is corrected by juster definitions " ? 

H 



98 HUME. 

sources whence the idea of power can be derived. He 
lays it down that the mind, " taking notice of altera- 
tion in things without," " how one conies to an end, 
and ceases to be, and another begins to exist, which 
was not before ; reflecting also on what passes within 
itself, and observing a constant change of its ideas"- 
" so comes by that idea which we call power." Such, 
in consistency with his analytic view of the mind with 
his account of the origin of all our ideas, and striking 
out some useless words in which he has wrapped up 
his theory, such is the substance of his account of 
the origin of our idea of power. He attributes it to 
no reasoning. " If," he says at the end of the fourth 
section, "from the impulse bodies are observed to 
make one upon another, any one thinks he has a clear 
idea of power, it serves as well to my purpose, sen- 
sation being one of those ways whereby the mind 
comes by its ideas ; only I thought it worth while to 
consider here by the way, whether the mind doth not 
receive its idea of active power clearer from reflection 
on its own operations than it doth from any external 
sensation." Mr. Hume, on the other hand, denies 
that the idea of power can be derived " from the con- 
templation of bodies in single instances of their ope- 
ration," and he concludes that neither is it "copied 
from any sentiment or consciousness of power within 
ourselves." He especially combats at great length 
Mr. Locke's position that it is an idea arising chiefly 
from reflecting on the operations of our own minds, 
with what success will hereafter appear. 



HT'MK. 99 

It is to be regretted that Hume did not take the 
trouble to represent carefully, in Locke's own language, 
what* Locke really thought. He would then have per- 
ceived himself, and his readers have perceived after 
him, to what extent he did or did not agree with the 
English philosopher. If the idea of power or neces- 
sary connection arises from the contemplation of re- 
peated instances, or many uniform instances of se- 
quence of events, as Mr. Hume, so far as he is intel- 
ligible, admits, what is the difference, what the incon- 
sistency, between this and Mr. Locke's "observation 
of the operation of bodies by our senses" ? But the 
virtue of faithful quotation has been rare among meta- 
physicians, particularly among those who write for the 
softest heads, and the applause of a partial audience. 
How careless and how incorrect Dr. Reid could be in 
his representation of Locke on this very subject of 
power, active and passive, Sir W. Hamilton has shown 
in his notes to the late edition of Reid's collected 
writings*. 

Secondly, Mr. Hume makes a great point of a dis- 
tinction between what he calls a ' constant conjunction' 
and a ' necessary connection.' But there is no such 
difference between a junction and a tie in any essen- 
tial value of these terms, as to enable us to found 
upon that difference a metaphysical argument or a 
philosophical truth. The one does not refer any more 
than the other to any important peculiarities in the 
phenomena of matter or of mind. Had Hume paid 

* See Hamilton's Eeid, p. 519. 

H 2 



100 HUME. 

any salutary attention to the fourth book of Locke's 
Essay on the connection between language and thought, 
he would have paused before' he laid so much stress 
upon an arbitrary or imaginary difference between a 
conjunction and a connection, as if the one implied 
something in its own nature more casual and less ne- 
cessary than the other, as if the one expressed in- 
dependence of law and a union of events without a 
cause, while the other expressed dependence and in- 
volved more completely the notion of cause and of 
power. 

Thirdly, the stress of his argument evidently lies on 
the word necessary, which he never explains. Yet he 
must have known, if accustomed to nice metaphysical 
and logical distinctions, that the very word necessary 
had been taken in various senses, or considered in 
several relations*. To man, whatever happens inde- 
pendently of his own will may be said to be a neces- 

* A good and short view of the importance and meaning of the 
word necessary, with remarks on its introduction and use by the 
schoolmen, may by found in Waterland's Dissertation ' Upon the 
argument a priori for proving the existence of a First Cause,' men- 
tioned above. He distinguishes four kinds of necessity, logical, 
moral, physical, and metaphysical; and the distinction is well carried 
out. Those who are conversant with Dr. S. Clarke's ' Demonstra- 
tion' will remember that he dwells much on a necessity of the last 
kind, when he argues for " an absolute necessity of existence." The 
reader, desirous of accurate historical views on such metaphysical 
points, will be greatly assisted by that Dissertation. Touching on 
the connection of causes and effects with a masterly hand, and espe- 
cially on the application of the word necessary to that connection, 
it claims an attention, which hitherto it does not appear to have 
received. 




HUME. 

sary event, and whatever truth or proposition he can- 
not but admit without annihilating thought, or con- 
tradicting his faculties, is a necessary truth. Its cor- 
relatives are the words contingent, voluntary, acci- 
dental. Because we know not always what determines 
the will, and what is the sequence of events arising 
from unknown causes, we call such events contingent 
or accidental. Now the constant conjunction on 
which Mr. Hume lays stress, is in the proper sense 
of the term necessary to us. Means are as necessarily 
connected with, as they are constantly conjoined to, 
ends. Powers are necessary to the production of ef- 
fects. Antecedents necessarily precede consequents 
by the force of the terms, which have no meaning but 
as they imply order in place or sequence in time. In 
a procession some must go first, and others follow 
behind. Two distinct bodies cannot occupy the same 
space. Two persons cannot reason together or syl- 
logize in common without having a common premiss 
and agreeing in the use of their signs and understand- 
ing each other's language. Practically things may 
be tied together in as many ways as they are joined. 
They may be bound in paper and string, sown up 
with thread, nailed, and glued. All these words sug- 
gest thoughts, associated with various sensible im- 
pressions ; and thoughts suppose minds accessible to 
reasoning, and on which the reasoning is to take effect. 
For the purpose of the reasoning there is a necessary 
connection between the words, the thoughts, and the 
impressions. " Repeated similar instances," says Mr. 



102 HUME. 

Hume, " give rise infallibly to uniformity of expecta- 
tion, and determine the mind on the perception of 
one object to anticipate another." But what is this 
determination of the mind ? It is a case of indisso- 
luble association. It is a simple illustration of that 
great law of thought without which there could be no 
reasoning. There is a necessary connection between 
the nature and order of our thoughts and the pheno- 
mena which give rise or occasion to that order, as 
there is between reasoning and the signs or marks em- 
ployed to connect thoughts together, and impart them 
to another mind. When we open our eyes, it is not a 
matter of will what objects, forms, or colours we shall 
see. When a gun is fired close to the ear, it is not 
an arbitrary but a necessary result that we should be 
startled or disturbed by the sound. In vain would 
you try to persuade workmen to remain within a few 
feet of the piece of rock, to which a train of gun- 
powder has been properly applied for blasting, and 
which is about to be exploded. Life the last pos- 
session is at stake. Their belief in the established, 
that is necessary connection between cause and effect, 
in the uniformity of sequence, is inseparable from the 
exercise of their reason and faculties. Now the first 
powerful impression on the senses, such as heat from 
fire, or light from flame ; and the first conscious ex- 
ercise of the will in originating muscular motion, or 
bringing about a new sequence of phenomena, lays 
the foundation for that idea or sentiment of power, 
which repeated instances and uniformity of experience 



HUME. 103 

combine to strengthen. There is nothing in the re- 
petition of instances, but the repetition. The uni- 
formity and strength of expectation is conformable to 
the uniformity or invariabteness of the experience, al- 
though the degree and nature of expectations may vary 
in different minds in proportion to the amount of ob- 
servation and reflection, or be in accordance with the 
peculiar nature of the casual or acquired associations. 
Outward objects continually impress us with the idea 
of a sequence, independent of our own wills. The 
exertion of the will, the result of desire, is followed by 
changes which we feel that we ourselves originate, and 
which, without the existence and influence of that will, 
we feel and know, as much as we can know anything, 
would not exist. Hence the notion of power, first of 
specific powers, material and intellectual, which indi- 
vidually are known by experience, and afterwards of 
poiver itself; power, an abstract or general term, sig- 
nificant of a complex idea, a convenient abbreviation 
for whatever causes change, or involves the notion of 
a sequence of phenomena, whether in the world of 
matter or of mind. The succession of events in an or- 
der independent of our wills, and the existence of will 
in ourselves, however limited in its sphere of influence, 
enable and compel us to recognize powers out of our- 
selves, of which we are the subjects, and powers in our- 
selves, of which we are possessors. The sensible im- 
pressions leave traces of their existence in the memory, 
and recur to thought with uniform or varying associa- 
tions. The sensations and ideas become associated 



104 HUME. 

with language according to a certain law ; and the mi- 
niatures of sensation, to use Hartley's language, blend 
with the associated ideas, so as to form complex and 
decomplex ideas. Hence the formation, import, and 
use of such terms as power, virtue, honour, beauty, 
goodness, utility, order, law, generosity, philosophy, 
and so on, through the dictionary. In vain should 
we seek for any one particular impression in Hume's 
sense, however indefinite, to account for the ideas 
attached to these words ; but equally vain is it to deny 
the natural origin of the ideas in sensation and reflec- 
tion, experience, and consciousness ; and to question 
their connection with the realities and interests of our 
practical and hourly life. The terms experience and 
consciousness cover all the phenomena of our percep- 
tive and intellectual being. 

Whoever accepts the account now given of the 
origin and nature of the complex idea of power, will 
see at once the insufficiency and weakness of Hume's 
attempt to analyse the idea of necessary connection, 
and may think further comments on it unnecessary. 
But as the diligence of readers cannot always be 
trusted, some further exposure of its fallacies or ob- 
scurities may be useful. 

He runs the changes upon the words, influence, 
force, energy, command, and authority, in connection 
especially with the human will, without appearing to 
see that they alike involve the notion of power, if there 
be any notion of it. It is easy to show that his at- 
tempt to prove a negative, to prove that this notion 



HUME. 105 

comes neither from observation nor consciousness, is 
altogether a failure, and is inconsistent with his own 
statements and admissions. 

For example, to prove that " single instances" give 
no impression of power, he adduces the instance of 
motion in billiard-balls. " The impulse of one billiard- 
ball is attended with motion in the second. This is 
the whole that appears to the outward senses. The 
mind feels no sentiment or inward impression from 
this succession of objects." This is untrue. There 
can be no succession of objects, attracting any atten- 
tion, without an inward impression ; when we are 
talking of the one, we are talking of the other. Be- 
sides, the observation is more complex than Mr. 
Hume supposes. There is the will of the striker, 
directing one ball against another, and success or 
failure in the effort to give the balls a particular di- 
rection. If the observer saw motion arising in the 
first ball without an apparent mover, the first ball be- 
ginning to move and imparting motion to a second, 
without any apparent cause for the first motion, 
he would be at a loss to account for such beginning 
of motion; but he would not the less feel that there 
was, first, a cause out of himself, for the particular 
impression on his own mind his own perception 
of motion; nor would he the less believe, secondly, 
that wherever there is motion, there must be a moving 
power. 

Again, Hume says that, "from the first appear- 
ance of an object, we never can conjecture what effect 



106 HUME. 

will result from it." But do we ever perceive objects 
without effects ? We may not conjecture, on perceiv- 
ing a new object, with whose qualities we are not 
familiar, all the effects which it is capable of producing 
under conditions not yet observed. But this is no 
proof that the objects of nature do not from the first, 
from the dawn of intelligence, affect us by their sen- 
sible qualities, and that such objects as we do observe, 
by the manner in which they affect us, by the uni- 
formly experienced effects, do not give us the notion 
of power. In short what does Hume mean by his 
" repeated instances," but the observation or impres- 
sion of a uniformity of sequence? Again, he says, 
" there is no part of matter that does ever by its sen- 
sible qualities discover (he should have said disclose) 
any power or energy." But what are sensible quali- 
ties? Are they not the impressions made on our 
senses by outward objects ? Do not these objects act 
upon our senses in a uniform manner, independently 
of our volition ? Are not form, colour, and smell, in- 
separably associated with our idea of the rose ? If so, 
why is not this subjection of our senses to effects or 
impressions uniform and constant, but independent 
of our control and volition, an element in our notion 
of power ? Because we know specific effects only by 
experience, and learn to attribute them to specific 
causes, or invariable antecedents; because we learn 
particular powers, and their exercise, by observation, 
and conclude the dependence of the observed effects 
upon the observed causes, and derive from the repe- 



HUME. 107 

tition of instances the idea of necessary connection; 
therefore our idea of connection or power does not 
arise from the observation of body, or outward changes 
and sequences at all. Such, if I understand it, is Mr. 
Hume's argument. But the premises seem to hold 
a conclusion precisely the reverse of that at which he 
has arrived. 

Mr. Hume goes on with an attempt to prove that 
the idea of power is not an idea of reflection, or con- 
sciousness. He examines this pretension first with 
regard to the influence of volition over the organs of the 
body and afterwards to the command of the mind 
over itself or its ideas. Again, what are his proofs ? 
" The union of soul with body is very mysterious." 
" Is there," he asks, " any principle in all nature more 
mysterious ?" It may be so. But how does the my - 
steriousness of that union help to show that the con- 
sciousness which, in a sentence or two before, as he 
admitted, attends us every moment, a consciousness 
of the command of the will over the organs of the 
body, does not supply the idea of power, the idea of 
a necessary connection between that command of will 
and the resulting motion. But, secondly, "we are 
not able to move all the organs of the body with a like 
authority." " Why has the will an influence over the 
tongue and the fingers, and not over the heart and 
liver?" The question implies that we can move some 
organs with some authority. The question supposes 
that there is an influence within certain limits. That 
is enough. Instead of proving that the exercise of 



108 HUME. 

such authority and such influence is not the source of 
our idea of power, and of the necessary connection be- 
tween the will and the deed, it is a virtual admission 
of the contrary. The example of the man suddenly 
struck with palsy is little to Mr. Hume's purpose, and 
fatal to his own argument. That we learn the in- 
fluence of our will from experience alone, does not 
disprove such influence to be the true source of our 
idea of power. The influence, the authority, and the 
power, are the same thing under different terms. 
Thirdly, " we learn from anatomy that the immediate 
object of power in voluntary motion, is not the mem- 
ber itself which is moved; but certain muscles, and 
nerves, and animal spirits and perhaps something 
still more minute and more unknown through which 
the motion is successively propagated, ere it reach the 
member itself, whose motion is the immediate object 
of volition. Can there be a more certain proof that 
the power, by which this is performed, so far from 
being directly and fully known by an inward senti- 
ment or consciousness, is to the last degree myste- 
rious and unintelligible ?" But does the length of the 
chain through which the power is propagated alter 
the nature of the power ? A chain must equally be 
upheld ; the last link must be connected with the first, 
whether it consist of two or two hundred links. The 
weight on the last must be maintained by the power 
with which the first link is fastened to the beam, and 
by the power of the walls to support the beam. Ana- 
tomy cannot alter the metaphysics of muscular motion. 



HUME. 109 

It may reveal a longer or shorter process ; it may 
show the connection of the resulting motion with the 
will to be more immediate, or more remote ; but it 
does not destroy the necessary connection of the one 
with the other. It does not alter the consciousness 
of that connection. It does not show that such con- 
sciousness is not one source of our idea of power. 

So much, then, for Mr. Hume's attempt to prove 
that the idea of power is not an idea of reflection. 
The same observations apply to his remarks on the 
command of the mind over its ideas. The positions 
that " this command is limited," and that " our au- 
thority over our sentiments and passions is much 
weaker than that over our ideas," are admissions of 
the existence of some command and some authority, 
and therefore rather proofs than disproofs that reflec- 
tion on what passes within must be one source of all 
our ideas, and all our knowledge of power, physical 
or mental, intellectual or moral. Thus, when closely 
examined, Mr. Hume's arguments afford confirmation 
of Locke's theory, while they refute himself. They 
support a conclusion the reverse of that which he was 
anxious to establish. They even go to show that Mind 
is the true origin of all motion, as it is the sole in- 
herent possessor of wisdom, order, and law ; that it 
affords the only conceivable explanation of an adjust- 
ment of means to ends, or of the pursuit of an object 
by suitable contrivances. When, therefore, Hume 
advances to a confutation of the opinion of Male- 
branche and Berkeley, that everything is full of God, 



110 HUME. 

that to the constant agency of a Supreme Mind, 
every power of matter and finite mind must be attri- 
buted, when he contends that such theories are too 
bold for the weakness of human reason, and that we 
are alike profoundly ignorant of the operation of 
bodies on each other, and of minds on body, he for- 
gets the nature and extent of his own admissions. To 
argue from our ignorance is to argue from nothing. 
The facts we do know, or have admitted, be they few 
or many, are the only basis of just reasoning. He 
forgets that it is the proper business of the philosopher 
to arrive at some great ultimate principles on which 
the mind can rest with satisfaction, beyond which it 
feels no desire to go, which can be applied to all its 
wants, in consistency with all the phenomena of ob- 
servation and reflection, and ample for the purposes 
and government of life. 

Having sufficiently confused our idea of necessary 
connection, and left us in some doubt whether we 
have it or have it not ; whether, if we have it, the ex- 
perience or the repetition of instances on which it 
rests, justifies our entertaining it, and reasoning from 
it ; whether " all events are not really what they seem, 
entirely loose and separate" (though this is in fact as 
contrary to the appearance as to the reality), Hume 
passes on to the section on Liberty and Necessity, 
where he intimates that the most sublime and spe- 
cious reflections are in practice weak and ineffectual ; 
that no conclusions of the understanding can influence 
our natural emotions and affections; and he advances 



HUME. Ill 

to the subject of miracles, and of Providence, and a 
future state. In the one he would destroy the founda- 
tion of Revealed, in the other of Natural Religion. 

"While we argue from the course of nature, and 
infer a particular intelligent cause, which first be- 
stowed, and still preserves, order in the universe, we 
embrace a principle ivhick is both uncertain and use- 
Jess. 'Tis uncertain; because the subject lies entirely 
beyond the reach of human experience. Tis useless, 
because our knowledge of this cause being derived 
entirely from this course of nature, we can never, 
according to the rules of just reasoning, return back 
from the cause with any new inferences, or, making 
additions to the common and experienced course of 
nature, establish any new principles of conduct and 
behaviour." 

Such is Hume's defence of Epicurus ; such his in- 
difference to the principle that the order of the uni- 
verse argues an infinitely wise and benevolent Provi- 
dence. To Mr. Locke's argument from the existence 
of knowledge in ourselves, to the existence of " some 
knowing Being from all eternity," and its beautiful 
corollaries*, he makes no allusion; to the questions 
suggested by Hartley f, a summary of all metaphy- 
sical possibilities on the subject of Providence, he was 
most probably a stranger ; to Cudworth's noble tem- 
ple of worship, the Intellectual System/ he scorns a re- 
ference ; and to ' Clarke's Demonstration,' full of pro- 

* Essay, book iv. c. xi. f Proposition, iv. part ii. 



112 HUME. 

found and admirable thoughts, though not felicitous in 
some of its definitions, he refers only to show how 
little accurate consideration he chose to give it. But 
how little was Hume consistent with himself! There 
are times when he breaks out into acknowledgments 
which, like flashes of lightning, relieve for an instant 
the prevailing darkness. Thus he concludes the first 
appendix concerning moral sentiment, which proposes 
to ascertain the boundaries and offices of Reason and 
Taste, with saying, " The standard of the one, being 
founded on the nature of things, is eternal and inflex- 
ible, even by the will of the Supreme Being : the stand- 
ard of the other, arising from the internal frame and 
constitution of animals, is ultimately derived from that 
Supreme Will, which bestowed on each being its pe- 
culiar nature, and arranged the several classes and 
orders of existence*." His general corollary derived 
from all considerations on the natural history of reli- 
gion is, that " though the stupidity of men, barbarous 
and uninstructed, be so great, that they may not see a 
sovereign author in the more obvious works of nature, 
to which they are so much familiarized, yet it scarce 
seems possible that any one of good understanding 
should reject that idea, when once it is suggested to 
him. A purpose, an intention, a design is evident in 
everything ; and when our comprehension is so far en- 
larged as to contemplate the first rise of this visible 
system, we must adopt with the strongest conviction 
the idea of some intelligent cause or author. The 

* Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 369. 



HUME. 113 

uniform maxims too which prevail through the whole 
frame of the universe, naturally, if not necessarily, 
lead us to conceive this intelligence as single and 
undivided, where the prejudices of education oppose 
not so reasonable a theory. Even the contrarieties of 
nature, by discovering themselves everywhere, become 
proofs of some consistent plan, and establish one single 
purpose or intention, however inexplicable and incom- 
prehensible." " The good, the great, the sublime, the 
ravishing, are found eminently in the genuine prin- 
ciples of theism." " The universal propensity to be- 
lieve in invisible, intelligent" power, if not an original 
instinct, being at least a general attendant of human 
nature, may be considered as a kind of mark or stamp, 
which the Divine Workman has set upon his work, and 
nothing surely can more dignify mankind than to be 
thus selected from all the other parts of the creation, 
and to bear the image or impression of the Universal 
Creator*!" "Look out for a people entirely void of 
religion. If you find them at all, be assured that 
they are but few degrees removed from brutes." 

What more could the most ardent theist require than 
this ? and how much better would Mr. Hume have been 
employed in endeavouring to purify theological systems 
from error and inconsistency, in strengthening the 
influence of a genuine theism over the sweetest hopes 

* These warm sentiments and concessions in favour of Theism 
were added in the later editions of Hume's Essays. The small 
volume entitled 'Philosophical Essays concerning Human Under- 
standing,' published in 1748, ends with the Essay of the Academical 
or Sceptical Philosophy. 

I 



114 HUME. 

and most endearing charities of existence, than in per- 
suading himself and his readers of the uselessness of 
reason, and the inefficacy of every principle against 
the instincts of nature, amid the tempests of passion, 
or under the immediate visitations of physical pain ! 
Why should he thicken the obscurity of the region 
of philosophy into the outer darkness of despair, and 
spitefully dash down the taper, whose feeble beam 
affords the only solace in the desolation, the only 
guidance through the gloom ? 

The attempt to "ascend the height of this great 
argument" would lead to*paths remote from the pur- 
pose of this Essay, the object of which is to show that 
Hume neither built, nor pretended to build, on any 
principles peculiar to Locke. Experience Mr. Locke 
had shown to be the foundation of all our ideas, it 
followed from the denial of innate ideas. In expe- 
rience Mr. Locke included our simple ideas of sensa- 
tion, such as of colours, sounds, tastes, the rudiments 
of intelligence; he included also our more complex 
ideas of reflection, which imply the exercise of the 
faculties of the mind, memory, comparison, abstrac- 
tion, volition ; ideas of mental states, and whatever are 
the phenomena of consciousness. In it was therefore 
the origin of our idea of causation and of power. But 
in thus laying down the true chart of the human 
mind, Locke supplied to Hume, and his coadjutors, the 
French sceptics, none of the peculiar elements of their 
dogmatic scepticism*. But he did supply to Bentley, 

* No doubt the English deists of the early part of the last century, 



HUMK. 115 

Law, Butler, Palcy, Hartley, and many others, some of 
the elements or arguments for their benevolent reli- 
gious faith. The practice of associating Locke's name 
with the scepticism of the former, rather than with 
the eminently religious spirit of the latter, betrays the 
ignorance and the prejudice of those who indulge in it. 
It is alike injurious and unjust. Let it be left to those 
who are aliens by birth and feeling, from the great 
commonwealth of English sincerity and sense. Let it 
be repudiated by those who should cherish with gra- 
titude and pride the names and memories of their 
great chiefs, of the men who have conquered new 

such as Tindal, Collins, and Bolingbroke, sought to shelter them- 
selves under the authority of Locke, whom they held in high esteem. 
But they pleaded his great name to justiiy the freedom of their in- 
quiries, and to assert the supremacy of Reason; not pretending nor 
imagining that Locke's philosophical principles were more peculiarly 
favourable to their conclusions than those of any other metaphysical 
school. To these writers must be conceded the merit of being in- 
telligible and practical, of advocating principles which they con- 
ceived to be as useful, as rational, a merit which cannot be con- 
ceded, with the utmost stretch of charity, to the writers of tran- 
scendental idealism. Descartes, who may be considered as the foun- 
tain-head of the modern intuitional school, is, beyond question, far 
more sceptical, both in the foundations and in the tendency of his 
philosophy, than Locke. Spinoza began his course by endeavouring 
to demonstrate, in a geometrical method, the philosophical prin- 
ciples of Descartes. D'Alembert the best of the writers concerned 
in the Encyclopedic in the 'Discours Preliminaire,' has given a 
splendid and just eulogium of Locke, without intimating or con- 
ceiving any connection between his philosophy and either religious 
or philosophical scepticism. Compare Stewart's Dissertation, pp. 
144, 145. 

I 2 



116 HUME. 

provinces from the domain of ignorance, darkness, and 
superstition, and secured them for the culture, enjoy- 
ment, and improvement of mankind. 

But there is another work of Hume's, which enables 
us to judge of the nature and extent of his scepticism, 
a work less known, but by no means the least in- 
teresting or least elegant, the ' Dialogues of Natural 
Religion/ which, though written as early as 1751, 
was not published till after his death, which took place 
in 1776. In acuteness of reasoning, in charm of style, 
these dialogues have all, and more than all, his cha- 
racteristic excellence, the charm, notwithstanding 
frequent incorrectness, of a graceful ease. Without 
precision or clearness enough for logic and philosophy, 
they have the happy turns and sparkling lights that 
gratify the taste. The speakers are Philo, a mate- 
rialist of Spinoza's school; Cleanthes, a philosophi- 
cal theist, on the principles of Natural religion ; and 
Demea, an orthodox Christian, or one who receives 
the whole scheme of revealed religion, as commonly 
understood. Demea makes but a poor figure in the 
conversation, and quits before it is concluded. The 
weight of the discussion rests upon the first two. 
" Philo," says Dr. Priestley, " speaks the sentiments 
of the writer." But Mr. Burton affirms, " It is with 
Cleanthes the author shows most sympathy, very 
nearly professing that the doctrine announced by Cle- 
anthes is his own, while it will be found in his corre- 
spondence that he admits his having designedly en- 



HUME. 117 

deavoured to make the arguments of that speaker the 
most attractive*." This is confirmed by Hume's own 
language to Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto, to whom he 
submitted a portion of the manuscript in 1751. " You 
would perceive by the sample I have given you, that 
I make Clean thes the hero of the dialogue. Whatever 
you can think of to strengthen that side of the ar- 
gument will be most acceptable to me." The whole 
letter is worth attention, unfolding the state of Hume's 
mind, and the * absolute philosophical indifference* 
which he flatters himself, not without reason, that he 
had reached. But is such indifference peculiarly en- 
titled to the epithet philosophical? Was it the cha- 
racteristic of the early sages, whose names are like a 
trumpet-sound, calling to battle for right and truth? 
Are questions relating to Providence and the mind, 
the strength and the weakness of reason, frivolous, 
or to be treated as the playthings of children ? Are not 
a desire for truth and salutary views, and a desire to 
develope the consequences of truths useful to mankind, 
equally philosophical ? Was Bacon's passion for fruit, 
instead of dry leaves, unworthy of a great mind? 
Such questions answer themselves. Recurring to the 
dialogues, the truth is that Philo and Cleanthes come 
in the end nearly to an agreement ; and the last chap- 
ter, in which they do so, abounds in just sentiments 
beautifully expressed, sentiments which can hardly 
fail to be read with pleasure and with hearty concur- 

* 'Letters to Philosophical Unbelievers:' Priestley's Works, 
vol. iv. p. 368, Butt's edition. Burton's Life of Hume, vol. i. p. 320. 



118 HUME. 

rence by every philosophically religious mind. The 
distinction between true religion and religion as it 
is commonly found in the world is admirably put. 
History and daily life give ample evidence of the un- 
happy severance of the religious feelings from those 
great moral principles and habits, those sterling social 
virtues, which, from their connection with the perma- 
nent happiness of mankind, the philosopher must ever 
regard with chief concern, and associate with the 
proper and most acceptable worship of the Deity. 
When the orthodox Demea has given vent to the most 
extravagant opinions respecting the predominance of 
pain and misery in the universe, and departed, unable 
to bear the conversation further, Philo addresses Cle- 
anthes in the words, " You are sensible that, notwith- 
standing the freedom of my conversation and my love 
of singular arguments, no one has a deeper sense of 
religion impressed on his mind, or pays more profound 
adoration to the Divine Being, as he discovers himself 
to reason in the inexplicable contrivance and artifice 
of Nature. A purpose, an intention, a design strikes 
everywhere the most careless, the most stupid thinker ; 
and no man can be so hardened in absurd systems, 
as at all times to reject it." 

" The most agreeable reflection which it is possible 
for human imagination to suggest," replies Cleanthes, 
as the conversation advances, "is that of genuine 
theism, which represents us as the workmanship of a 
Being perfectly good, wise, and powerful ; who created 
us for happiness, and who, having implanted in us im- 



HUME. 119 

measurable desires of good, will prolong our existence 
to all eternity, and will transfer us into an infinite 
variety of scenes, in order to satisfy these desires, and 
render our felicity complete and durable. Next to 
such a Being himself (if the comparison be allowed), 
the happiest lot which we can imagine is that of being 
under his guardianship and protection*." 

In apology for Hume, we must remember that he 
had few encouragements in early life to connect reli- 
gion with the true honour and perfect happiness of 
mankind, with the social graces, with intellectual cul- 
ture, with active but mild benevolence, and with vir- 
tuous self-rule. To him terror appeared its primary 
principle ; gloom and melancholy, the characteristic of 
all devout people. " Among the votaries of religion 
(of which number the multifarious fraternity of Chris- 
tians is but a small part) there seem to be but few 
I will not say how few who are real believers in his 
(the Deity's) benevolence. They call him benevolent 
in words, but they do not mean that he is so in reality. 
They do not mean that he is benevolent as man is 
conceived to be benevolent ; they do not mean that he 
is benevolent in the only sense in which benevolence 
has a meaning. For if they did, they would recognize 
that the dictates of religion could be neither more nor 
less than the dictates of utility ; not a tittle different, 
not a tittle less or more. But the case is, that on a 
thousand occasions they turn their backs on the prin- 
ciple of utility. They go astray after the strange prin- 

* Dialogues of Natural Religion, pp. 228-255. 



120 HUME. 

ciples, its antagonists ; sometimes it is the principle of 
asceticism ; sometimes it is the principle of sympathy 
and antipathy. Accordingly the idea they bear in their 
minds, on such occasions, is but too often the idea of 
malevolence, to which idea, stripping it of its own 
proper name, they bestow the specious appellation of 
the social motive. Sometimes, in order the better to 
conceal the cheat, (from their own eyes doubtless, as 
well as from others,) they set up a phantom of their 
own, which they call justice, whose dictates are to 
modify which, being explained, means to oppose 
the dictates of benevolence*." 

In England, it is true, there had been writers, not 
a few, who, before Hume's time, had endeavoured to 
free religion, natural and revealed, from the reproach 
of being inimical to philosophical inquiry, to social 
improvement, to the innocent pleasures and amiable 
feelings of mankind ; not a few, who had endeavoured 
to associate " Glory to God in the highest," with its 
scriptural adjuncts, " peace on earth, and goodwill to 
man." Tillotson had maintained that " the great design 
of Christianity was the reforming men's natures, and 
governing their actions, the restraining their appetites 
and passions, the softening their tempers, and sweeten- 
ing their humours, and the raising their minds above 
the interests and follies of this present world to the 
hope and pursuit of endless blessedness f." Dr. Sa- 

* See Bentham's 'Principles of Morals and Legislation.' Ben- 
tham's Works, by Bowring, vol. i. p. 58. 
t Birch's Life of TiUotson, p. 551. 



O 

UN IYER SI 



HUME. 



muel Clarke* had endeavoured to show that 
tical duties which the Christian religion enjoins are all 
such as are most agreeable to our natural notions of 
God, and most perfective of the nature and condu- 
cive to the happiness and well-being of men." Moral 
virtue, he contended, "is the foundation and the 
sum, the essence and the life of all true religion ; for 
the security whereof all positive institution was prin- 
cipally designed, for the restoration whereof all re- 
vealed religion was ultimately intended ; and incon- 
sistent wherewith, or in opposition to which, all doc- 
trines whatsoever, supported by what pretence of rea- 
son or authority soever, are as certainly and necessarily 
false as God is true." Many divines of the English 
church followers of Arminius and Episcopius called 
Latitudinarians, had, like Fowler, Bishop of Gloucester, 
identified religion with true goodness of heart and life ; 
and no one more earnestly nor more admirably than 
the large-minded Joseph Glanvilf, who died compa- 
ratively young, but whose writings breathe a spirit, if 
not above his age, yet of the highest order of minds. 

* Clarke's ' Discourse concerning the unchangeable obligations of 
Natural Religion/ etc., p. 113, fifth edition. 

t See many admirable passages in his 'Remains,' published in 
1681, and his * Essays, 'passim. " The great design of religion and the 
Gospel is to perfect human nature ; and all the acts of worship, which 
Christianity binds upon us, tend to our perfection and felicity." 
Glanvil was of Oxford, the contemporary of the Cambridge men 
mentioned by Burnet (History of his own Time, i. 187), Whichcote, 
Cudwortb, WilMns, and Worthington. Why has he been so much 
forgotten? Mr. Hallam has done something to revive the impression 
of his merits. 



122 HUME. 

Locke had contended for the " reasonableness of Chris- 
tianity, as delivered in the Scriptures/' and given five 
great reasons for valuing it, which deserve to be deeply 
graven on the minds of all who desire to be considered 
rational Christians, and who are grateful for Christian 
hope. Lady Masham, his friend and disciple, the 
daughter of Cudworth, had published her tract in 
reply to the spiritualist John Norris, and to some of 
the wild and frightful sentiments of Malebranche*. 
She had placed religion in harmony with practical 
philosophy, in the regulation of our appetites and pas- 
sions. She had beautifully contended, in opposition 
to the ascetic principle, that, " as short-lived flowers, 
though they ought not to employ the continual care of 
our whole lives, may yet reasonably enough be found 
in our gardens, and delight us in their seasons, so the 
fading things of this life, though not to be fixed on as 
the ultimate good of eternal beings, yet there is no 
reason why we may not rejoice in them as the good 
gifts of God, and find all that delight in them which 
he has joined with their lawful use." The Honourable 
Robert Boyle had followed or accompanied in the 
same path, uniting the most accurate investigation 
of nature, and. the indefatigable pursuit and encou- 
ragement of experimental philosophy, with the most 

* Such as that " a child (by virtue of its union with the mother) 
does, whilst in her womb, know and love bodies, consequently there- 
fore is a sinner, and shall be necessarily damned :" mitigated in a 
note to being eternally deprived of the possession of God. Male- 
branche, Conversations Chretiennes, 1685, p. 114. Lady Masham's 
tract * On the Love of God' was published anonymously in 1696. 



HUME. 123 

ardent sentiments of devotion. There is also a scarce 
tract, by Bayes of Tunbridge, ' On the Divine Bene- 
volence, or an attempt to prove that the principal end 
of the Divine Providence and Government is the Hap- 
piness of his Creatures*/ The great Leibnitz had 
done still more in his ' Theodicy ' to vindicate the 
wisdom and goodness of the Deity. But such writers 
have been either unknown or held in little esteem north 
of the Tweed f. In Scotland, a gloomy and malevolent 
Calvinism had been the bequest of Knox to his will- 
ing followers ; Knox, a monk and an inquisitor, in 
the Genevan gown. There the Assembly's Catechism 
fastened its iron band round the head of youth, and 
formed the bars of a prison-house of thought, beyond 
which, if the eyes of the poor inmates wandered to 
view the fair creation without, they were taught in- 
stantly to withdraw them with mingled feelings of ap- 
prehension and mistrust. In Hume's time, or before 
it, such men as Bentley, Stillingfleet, and Warburton 
made the loudest noise in the arena of theological 
controversy, men whom neither religion nor phi- 
losophy rendered candid, temperate, and patient. 

* Of this tract, dated 1731, 1 possess a copy. The interest of it 
is diminished to the student by its being merely an answer to a 
superficial writer, who makes order, not happiness, the end of the 
Deity in creation. It is not a collection of proofs of benevolent 
design. Paley's chapter on the Goodness of the Deity is far more 
to the purpose. 

f Has not the Principal Campbell, one of the answerers of Hume, 
the honour of being the first, as he is yet the greatest and best, of 
the rational critics and moderate theologians whom Scotland has 
produced P 



124 HUME. 

Captious, petulant, arrogant in their temper and 
tone, they gave too much reason for the belief that 
danger to their craft alone inspired their zeal. They 
had too much of what Glanvil calls the animal reli- 
gion, too little of the Divine. The Boyle Lectures 
upon atheism, and the answer to Collins, by the first, 
though expressly founded on the principles of Locke ; 
the controversial letters of the second, animadverting 
on those principles, whom Locke laid on his back so 
gently as not to hurt him ; and the addresses to Tree- 
thinkers by the last, cannot, by any intellectual supe- 
riority, whatever the learning of their authors, com- 
pensate for their tone of assumption and bitterness, 
nor escape the charge of being too plainly deficient in 
the temper and the taste proper to religion and philo- 
sophy. 

So many valuable treatises on Natural Theology 
and the doctrine of a Providence have been written 
since Hume's time, that it would be quite beyond the 
limits and purposes of this Essay to attempt a survey 
of our philosophical and literary wealth on that great 
topic. But it would be difficult to name a dissertation 
in English prior to that by the good and learned Dr. 
Price, which takes up Hume's view of objections and 
difficulties comparable to it in depth and merit. Dr. 
Price indeed is not always as logical as a keen dis- 
putant wishing for truth on his own side of the ques- 
tion could desire, yet he entrenches himself in many 
strong and defensible positions. He makes reason 
tremble on the height to which she rises, in order to 



HUME. 125 

survey the vast, the universal scheme, yet he plants 
his footing on a rock. But while stretching an aching 
gaze into the infinite expanse, we are compelled to 
feel that our horizon is still limited. 

" Too, too contracted are these walls of flesh, 
This vital warmth too cold, these visual orbs, 
Though inconceivably endow 'd, too dim 
For any passion of the soul, that leads 
To ecstasy*." 

" Truth," says Cudworth in an admirable passage, 
" is bigger than our minds, and we are not the same 
with it, but have a lower participation only of the 
intellectual nature, and are rather apprehenders than 
comprehenders thereof. This is indeed one badge of 
our creaturely state, that we have not a perfectly com- 
prehensive knowledge, or such as is adequate and 
commensurate to the essences of things ; from whence 
we ought to be led to this acknowledgment, that there 
is another perfect mind or understanding Being above 
us in the universe, from which our imperfect minds 
were derived, and upon which they do depend." 
" Nevertheless, because our weak and imperfect minds 
are lost in the vast immensity and redundancy of the 
Deity, and overcome with its transcendent light and 

* A beautiful and refined religious philosophy pervades the poetry 
of Wordsworth, which shines out nowhere more brightly than in the 
third and fourth books of the ' Excursion.' That philosophy the 
mind well seasoned with the theopathetic principles and affections 
of Hartley's Rule of Life can now best appreciate, and we may 
hope it is destined to give increasing ple^ure as readers of culture 
multiply. 



126 HUME. 

dazzling brightness, therefore hath it to us an appear- 
ance of darkness and incomprehensibility, as the un- 
bounded expansion of light in the clear transparent 
aether hath to us the apparition of an azure obscurity, 
which yet is not an absolute thing in itself, but only 
relative to our sense, and a mere fancy in us*/' 

What happy effects earlier intercourse with such a 
mind as Dr. Price's might have produced on Hume's 
views and feelings, we may judge in part from the 
account of what passed between them in later days. 
" Mr. Hume had been so little accustomed to civility 
from his theological adversaries, that his admiration 
was naturally excited by the least appearance of it 
in any of their publications. Dr. Douglas (the late 
Bishop of Salisbury), Mr. Adams, and Dr. Price were 
splendid exceptions to this rudeness and bigotryf. 
Having been opposed by these divines with the can- 
dour and respect which were due to his abilities, and 
which it is shameful should ever be wanting in any 
controversy, he was desirous of meeting them all to- 
gether, in order to spend a few hours in familiar con- 
versation with them. Accordingly they all dined by 
invitation at Mr. Cadell's, in the Strand; and, as 
might be expected, passed their time in the utmost 
harmony and good-humour. In a subsequent inter- 
view with Mr. Price, when Mr. Hume visited him at 
his house at Newington Green, he candidly acknow- 
ledged that on one point Mr. Price had succeeded in 

* Cudworth's Intellectual System, p. 639, Birch's edition, 1740. 
t Principal Campbell might have been added as another. 



HUME. 127 

convincing him that his arguments were inconclusive ; 
but it does not appear that Mr. Hume, in consequence 
of this conviction, made any alteration in the subse- 
quent edition of his Essays. It may be added also 
that in the Dissertation on Miracles, which was in- 
tended as an answer to Mr. Hume's arguments against 
their credibility, Mr. Price had, as he thought, ex- 
pressed himself improperly, by speaking of the poor 
sophistry of those arguments, and using other language 
of the same kind. When he sent a copy of his book 
to Mr. Hume, who was then one of the Under-secre- 
taries of State, he made an apology to him, and pro- 
mised that nothing of the kind should appear in an- 
other edition. He received in consequence a very 
flattering letter from Mr. Hume, which he regarded 
more as a matter of civility than as a proof of his own 
book having wrought any change in the mind of that 
philosopher. When the work however appeared in a 
second edition, he fulfilled his promise, and sent him 
a corrected copy, for which he immediately received 
an acknowledgment expressive of Mr. Hume's wonder 
at such scrupulosity in one of Mr. Price's profession*." 
The readers who retain, and wish to retain, respect 
and value for the principles of natural and revealed 
religion, as received and understood by such men as 
Newton, Clarke, Leibnitz, and Locke, and who asso- 
ciate transcendental philosophy, not with the forms 
and expression of it in modern mystics, but with 

* Morgan's ' Life of Price,' pp. 16 and 17, as quoted in Monthly 
Repository of 1815, pp. 580, 581. 



128 HUME. 

those high questions and considerations, susceptible of 
clear and consistent statement, which affect the prac- 
tical well-being of man, and the elevation of his moral 
and intellectual nature, are the only readers likely to 
be touched and interested by these remarks. 

In considering the nature and extent of the scepti- 
cism of Hume, it presents itself under two aspects a 
religious and a philosophical scepticism; the former 
throwing clouds of obscurity, difficulty, and doubt 
over those religious beliefs, even the most simple and 
rational, which, though not appreciated by the vulgar, 
the most philosophical minds have ever delighted in ; 
the latter throwing mistrust and scorn over the human 
faculties themselves. That 'ignorance and blindness 
are the result of all philosophy/ is a favourite senti- 
ment with Hume. The understanding, according to 
him, is incompetent to arrive at any substantial or sa- 
tisfactory truth in morals and religion. Thus we see 
that those who would prevent mankind from enjoying 
the waters of life only hope to succeed by poisoning 
the fountains. They would destroy the very elements 
of thought. To shut up our books, to close discus- 
sion, to amuse ourselves with battledoor and shuttle- 
cock, and descend to the humble level of the animals 
that crop the food that lies before them, unknowing 
aught beyond or above, this is the proper result of 
Hume's philosophy. But we have seen how little he 
was consistent with himself. 

Before quitting the subject, it is desirable to take a 
short historical review of the chief discussions which 



HUME. 129 

have been given to the world on the subject of cau- 
sation, and to ascertain, as far as possible, what has 
been thought and agreed upon respecting it. It has 
been already intimated, that when Hume is clearest, 
when he approaches to the principle and statement on 
which he seems inclined to rest, he does not greatly 
differ from Locke's Theory of Causation, (so far as 
Locke can be said to have any theory, and so far as 
we gather it from his chapter on ' Power/) unless it be 
by omitting what Locke considered most important. 
Locke had intimated that we gain our idea of power 
from two sources, " observation of change in things 
without, and reflection on what passes in our own 
minds." Hume declares, "that when one particular 
species of events has always, in all instances, been 
conjoined with another, we make no longer any scruple 
to foretell the one upon the appearance of the other, 
and to employ that reasoning which can alone assure 
us of any matter of fact or existence. We then call 
the one object cause, and the other effect" " It ap- 
pears, then, that this idea of necessary connection 
arises from a number of similar instances, which occur, 
of the constant conjunction of these events." Now 
it seems evident that Hume's " similar instances" is 
substantially the same with Locke's "observation of 
change" If he adds anything to Locke, it consists 
in the suggestion of the uniformity, the invariable- 
ness, or the perfect similarity, of the sequence. 

Dropping all the language about conjunction and 
connection, or nearly dropping it, Hume has been 

K 



130 HUME. 

followed by Brown, in his inquiry into the relation 
between cause and effect; and by Mr. John Stuart 
Mill, in his long chapter on Causation. They agree 
in their view of the uniformity and invariableness of 
sequence, as constituting the essence or amount of 
what we know and mean when talking of causation. 
The invariable antecedent is by them termed the 
cause, the invariable consequent, the effect*. 

* Mill's Logic, book iii. ch. v. p. 339; and compare Brown's 
Inquiry, p. 12. It is singular that Mr. Stewart has made no refe- 
rence in his Dissertation to this work of Brown. Mr. Mill after- 
wards defines " the cause of a phenomenon to be the antecedent, or 
the concurrence of antecedents, on which it (i. e. the phenomenon) 
is invariably and unconditionally consequent." By unconditional, 
he means "subject to no other than negative conditions ;" or, as he 
has better expressed it elsewhere, "in the absence of preventing or 
counteracting causes ; an antecedent operating without obstructing 
conditions." In the headings of the sections, he says, the cause of 
a phenomenon is " the assemblage of its conditions;" and again, the 
cause is not the invariable antecedent, hut " the unconditional in- 
variable antecedent;" or again, "a cause 1 is the assemblage of phe- 
nomena, which occurring, some other phenomenon invariably com- 
mences." These variations in the mode of expression seem not 
very happy, nor is a definite and clear impression left upon the 
mind. 

It is not easy to see why such discussions as those which fill up 
a large portion of Mr. Mill's volumes, should be introduced into a 
system of logic. An abridgment of that system, excluding from it 
the controversial matter, which overlays and obscures it, preserving 
the definitions and reasonings in concise and simple form, would be 
useful to students and beginners. It might thus be brought into 
better and more perceptible harmony with logic, as hitherto received, 
and considered purely as a science of inference; such as Aristotle, 
"the master of the sapient throng," and Whately and De Morgan 
make it. A difference so conflicting as that between Whately, who 
denies that induction, "so far forth as it is a process of inquiry," 



HUME. 131 

But this invariable antecedence does not satisfy a 
large class of metaphysical thinkers as constituting 
the whole of what we mean by cause. They believe 
there is something more than this, not merely se- 
quence, but necessary sequence ; and this idea or feel- 
ing of necessary connection they consider to be a pri- 
mitive belief, or ultimate fact of consciousness, a form 
or law of thought indispensable to all reasoning, and 
referrible to no ulterior source. At the head of these 
metaphysicians, among the moderns, perhaps Dr. Reid 
deserves to be placed, who in his Essays on the intel- 
lectual and active powers, discusses at length, and in 
reply to Hume, the subject of " First Principles of 
Necessary Truths," and who thus expresses himself: 
" Causation is not an object of sense. The only ex- 
perience we can have of it is in the consciousness we 
have of exerting some power in ordering our thoughts 
and actions. But this experience is surely too narrow 
a foundation for a general conclusion, that all things 
that have had, or shall have, a beginning, must have a 
cause." He adds, that it is to be admitted as a first 

forms any part of logic; and Mill, who makes it, if not its essence, at 
least its most important part, shows that philosophers and thinkers 
have yet much to do in order to understand and approach each other 
upon the deepest questions ; and that there is much to be done, with 
singleness of aim, in order to bring the highest philosophy and 
severest logic into harmony with the wants and laws of our intel- 
lectual, moral, and religious life. Compare the last sentence of Mill's 
6th chapter, book iii., on the Composition of Causes ; Whately's Logic, 
book iv. ch. i. ; and De Morgan's Formal Logic, and its most excel- 
lent chapter ii., on objects, names, and ideas. 

* Hamilton's 'Reid,' pp. 452-461. chap. vi. essay 6. 

K 2 



132 HUME. 

or self-evident principle, for two reasons : first, the 
universal consent of mankind ; and, secondly, the prac- 
tice of life being grounded upon it in the most im- 
portant matters, even in cases where experience leaves 
it doubtful. After Reid, perhaps Kant may be num- 
bered among the chief thinkers of repute, who adopt 
a similar view, and who would speak of the idea of 
causation as " a pure and a priori intuition." But 
are not these merely new phrases of doubtful mean- 
ing, by which nothing is gained to reasoning, and 
something is lost to sense*? 

* While this work is passing through the press, a friend has 
called my attention to an article in the ' Prospective Review' for 
August, 1853, in which Sir W. Hamilton's philosophy is criticized, 
and the subject of causality is discussed. In it the following pas- 
sage occurs : " We never ask for a cause, except to resolve a ques- 
tion of comparison, why this, and not other than this ?" and the 
function which we demand from it is precisely that of elective deter- 
mination. Hence, among the assemblage of conditions which are 
collectively indispensable to a given result, we attach the name 
"cause" distinctively to that one which has overset the equilibrium 
of possibilities, and precipitated the actual fact. Whence this notion 
of preferential agency ? To what point does it refer us as the nati- 
vity of our causal belief? Can it be denied that, in the exercise of 
our own will, we are conscious of this very power, of fetching a 
single fact out of more than a single potentiality P that nowhere else 
than at this fountain-head of energy could this notion be got, requir- 
ing access as it does to the occult priorities of action, as well as to its 
posterior manifestations to the eye P and that only in so far as we 
interpret Nature by the type thus found, can we recognize there the 
characteristic element of causality P The will, therefore, we submit, 
so far from being the solitary exception to a universal rule of neces- 
sary causation, is itself the rule which makes all real causation free. 
Volitional agency is that which the mind originally sees in Nature, 
as in itself; the opposite term in that dynamic antithesis, on which 



HUME. 133 

Now, were we to admit invariable antecedence and 
invariable consequence to be a correct and adequate 
view of what we mean when we talk of causation, 
when we turn from the general idea to the particu- 
lars, or from the abstract, always more or less obscure, 
to the concrete, which is always more simple and clear, 
when we inquire into the kinds of sequence with 
which observation and reflection make us acquainted, 
we may divide these kinds conveniently into two; 
namely, first, material sequences ; and, secondly, men- 
tal, or intellectual and spiritual sequences ; for by the 
three last terms I should mean the same phenomena. 

the obstructed nisus of perception lands us : and never does the in- 
quisitive " whence ?" find repose along the linear ascent of antece- 
dents, till it reaches the only power intrinsically capable of fetching 
the determinate out of the indeterminate, viz. a Mind." 

A story is told of a king, who, having had his portrait painted by 
a fashionable artist, complained that the head was lost in the bril- 
liancy of the flowers by which it was surrounded. So in this article 
the quantum of needful sense is buried in the excess of metaphor. 
But the above extract shows a disposition, in quarters where it was 
not to be expected, to return to the sober English school of thought. 
Associating the idea of cause with the will or the consciousness of 
power within, and with election and preference, terms significant 
of mental states, it agrees with Locke in answering in the affirma- 
tive the question which Locke puts, when he says, " I thought it 
worth while to consider here by the way whether the mind doth not 
receive its idea of active power clearer by reflection on its own ope- 
rations, than by any external sensation." " The idea of the begin- 
ning of motion we have only from reflection on what passes in our- 
selves, where we find by experience, that barely by willing it, barely 
by a thought of the mind, we can move the parts of our bodies which 
were before at rest." Essay on the Understanding, book ii. chap. 
21. sect. 4. 



134 HUME. 

With these two different kinds of sequence experience, 
and experience alone, brings us acquainted, which in- 
cludes observation of change without and reflection on 
the succession of states within / Let us take a very 
simple case : the water boils when the kettle contain- 
ing it is placed on the fire, or subjected to the influ- 
ence of heat : the heat generates steam ; and this 
heat and steam, so essential to our daily domestic 
comfort, under the name of steam power, now per- 
forms a most wonderful part in all the materiel of 
our modern civilization. This heat (let chemists 
make of it what they may, under the name of caloric) 
is an invariable and uniform, and as we judge, refer- 
ring it to a law, a necessary antecedent to the de- 
sired or expected effects*. By a variety of instances 
of a like kind it might be shown that an assemblage 
of material conditions is always conceived of, and be- 
lieved in, as a necessary antecedent to material effects. 
In arranging the antecedents, so as to bring about 
these effects, the human will often plays a conspicuous 
part. But with respect to the grand phenomena and 
general laws of nature, such as the planetary motions) 
the course of the seasons, the structure and functions 
of organized beings, etc. of these man is only the 
observer and the registrar. 

* The classical reader will observe that consequents, results, 
effects, are terms of Latin origin, signifying the succession of phe- 
nomena, effect that which is done by an agent. The German lan- 
guage is happy in its term for cause Ursache, originating or first 
thing; less happy in its term for effect Wlrkung, working or ope- 
ration. 



HUME. 135 

But there is another class of phenomena attribut- 
able to mental or volitional antecedents, such as the 
purpose now fulfilled in this present writing, or the 
attention given to the requests or commands of a 
master by the servants of the household and by the 
members of a family. In every household the arrange- 
ments for the day, as well in the established routine 
as in the variations, depend on the will of the governor. 
The expression of that will leads to its execution ; or 
it may be silently fulfilled, and a permanent result be 
attained. Now the social enjoyments the gratifica- 
tions of taste, or of a sense of order and beauty and 
all the pleasures of amity, depend on the nature and 
exercise of this will, as modified in each individual 
by the passions, and by the actively exerted power 
of reflection and thought. But these mental antece- 
dents and moral consequents are known only by re- 
flection on what passes within : they are a class of an- 
tecedents and consequents peculiar to the mind, and 
perfectly distinct from those which we have called 
material. Our intellectual, moral, and social or sym- 
pathetic pleasures and pains, are made up of such 
antecedents and consequents, and they differ in cha- 
racter and degree, in proportion as the intellect is de- 
veloped, and the true social interests are cherished, 
or morally and religiously pursued. Hence we talk 
of mental power, meaning the several powers of me- 
mory, of imagination, of reflection, of reasoning, of 
utterance, of volition, affection, and the steady pur- 
suit of chosen ends. But as definition makes not the 



186 MILL. 

terms significant of simple ideas of sensation clearer, 
such as white, black, loud, low, sweet, bitter, and so 
on, so definition can hardly make the terms signi- 
ficant of certain mental powers and states, known 
only by consciousness or reflection, clearer, such as 
memory, will, desire, choice, judgement, these being 
the only terms appropriate to the phenomena, inter- 
preted in most cases at once and sufficiently by con- 
sciousness, or rather by early and habitual association. 

It is of great importance for distinct thinking to 
keep these two classes of powers distinct, for surely 
there is a foundation for the distinction, and a use for 
it, in what we observe and know, both of nature and 
the human frame or constitution. In observing and 
laying deep the foundation for this distinction, in 
other words, in pointing out the two sources of our 
idea of power, it appears to me that Locke has a 
great advantage over most of those who have discussed 
the subject after him, but who have not equally kept 
it in view. 

Mr. Mill expressly classes the human will among 
the physical causes; he could hardly say material 
causes. But where then is the distinction between 
physical and metaphysical, in the subjects of scientific 
investigation ? The moral sciences, which have special 
and exclusive relation to the phenomena arising out 
of, or concerned in, the human will and its functions, 
and which, according to Mr. Mill, would seem to re- 
quire a logic of their own, are then reduced to the 
level of the physical sciences. The phenomena depen- 



MILL. 137 

dent on mental antecedents or conditions, thus be- 
come blended with the phenomena confessedly depen- 
dent on material conditions, and the old and useful 
division of physics and metaphysics is destroyed. Mr. 
Mill's language on the subject of what he calls " per- 
manent causes/' or original natural agents ; his decla- 
rations against the theory that mind or will is the sole 
efficient cause of phenomena, against the theory which 
represents efficient causes as capable of being subjects 
of human knowledge ; the hints which he has dropped 
on the vanity of attempting to arrive at a final or ul- 
timate cause of any phenomena, seem to be largely 
affected by his determination to put this distinction 
out of sight. He considers certain material objects of 
the universe, such as the planetary bodies and their 
motions, permanent causes which cannot be referred 
to any higher cause. " We can give no account," he 
says, " of the origin of the permanent causes them- 
selves." " Why these particular natural agents existed 
originally, and no others, or why they are commingled 
in such and such proportions, and distributed in such 
and such a manner, is a question we cannot answer." 
He calls the opinion or supposition, that all pheno- 
mena are produced by the will of some sentient Being, 
an original Fetichism, and gives a brief history of 
what he considers to be " the original instinctive phi* 
losophy of mankind*." 

" Because among the infinite variety of the pheno- 
mena of nature there is one, namely, a particular mode 
* Mill's Logic, vol. i. pp. 363, 365, third edit. 



138 MILL. 

of action of certain nerves, which has for its cause, and 
as we are now supposing for its efficient cause, a state 
of our mind, and because this is the only efficient cause 
of which we are conscious, being the only one of which, 
in the nature of the case, we can be conscious, since it 
is the only one which exists within ourselves, does this 
justify us in concluding that all other phenomena must 
have the same kind of efficient cause with that one emi- 

/ x/ 

nently special, narrow, and peculiarly human or animal 
phenomenon* ?" 

Now the stress of Mr. Mill's argument, the vigour 
of his answer to those who contend that " volition is 
the sole efficient cause of all phenomena," seems to 
depend very much on the word all. But, even admit- 
ting that matter is good for some results, that the 
permanent causes which he allows of have been from 
eternity, or for an indefinite period of time equivalent 
to it, are they the sole causes beyond which the mind 
cannot go, nor legitimately desire to go? are these 
adequate to explain all the phenomena? "Volitions 
are not known/' he says, "to produce anything di- 
rectly, except nervous action, for the will influences 
the muscles only through the nerves." Is not this 
Hume's old argument from anatomy, introduced to ob- 
scure the subject of voluntary agency and mental phe- 
nomena ? Scarcely anything is more obscure, or less 
known and thought of, than what is here called ner- 
vous action. Be it what it may, be it the direct pro- 
duct of volition, still the indirect or ultimate products 

* Mill's Logic, vol. i. p; 371, third edit. 



MILL. 139 

are far more important ; nay the only products of any 
importance ; nervous action being a very insignificant 
and subordinate part of the phenomena dependent for 
existence upon the human will. The pleasures and 
pains, the happiness or misery of inappreciable mul- 
titudes for long periods of time, have been and may 
continue to be affected by the states of an individual 
will, commingled with other assisting conditions. All 
the interests of our intellectual, moral, and social being 
are wrapped, up, so to speak, in its character and 
agency. When we look out upon the universe, or 
turn reflection inward upon ourselves, we feel that 
material forms, existences, and laws are of no moment 
or interest, but for the results to animated beings, and 
for the connected phenomena. It is the subordina- 
tion of these forms to the various gradations of ani- 
mated creatures, it is the provision made for the sus- 
tenance and succession of the various species, each in 
their element, each subservient to a purpose beyond 
itself or conducive to a higher and more interesting 
result than its individual life, each part of a vast series 
of phenomena, it is this which demands an originat- 
ing and presiding intelligent Mind. In short, it is 
the presence of order and the recognition of law, the 
manifest and unquestionable adjustment of means to 
ends, which affects the intellect with its character of 
resistless power, and the heart, in its purest and hap- 
piest moods, at once with a sense of its subjection and 
dependence, and with an impression of all-pervading 
rectitude and benevolence. 



140 MILL. 

If we define philosophy to be the study of causes, 
and what better can be suggested ? for the know- 
ledge of causes has of all knowledge the best title to 
be considered emphatically power ; and, as Mr. Mill 
finely observes, "if we could determine what causes 
are correctly assigned to what effects, and what effects 
to what causes, we should be virtually acquainted with 
the whole course of nature*," can we be satisfied 
to stop in our search at certain material forms and 
motions as the "permanent causes" sufficient for all 
effects ? Are we precluded from seeking a final or ul- 
timate cause, a first mover, more adequate to account 
for all the phenomena and results to which these ma- 
terial forms and motions are subservient, such as the 
life of organized beings, perception and thought, and 
all the high developments of intellectual and spiritual 
life ? Can matter, when we examine it, be regarded 
properly as an agent at all? and even if material 
causes be admitted as sufficient antecedents and the 
only known antecedents for some material consequents, 
the important question still remains, Are there not 
still some phenomena referrible only to mind and a 
mind as superior to the human as the heavens are su- 
perior to a house ? In the acknowledgment of such 
a mind, have we not the only adequate Cause for and 
explanation of the most impressive phenomena with 
which we are concerned? That is the question, 
unless I misconceive it, on which what is called the 
a posteriori argument for the being of the Deity rests ; 

* Mill's Logic, vol. i. p. 381, third edit. 



MILL. 141 

and whether we argue from evidence of design and 
the adjustment of means to an end in nature, or, with 
Locke, " from the existence of knowledge in ourselves 
to some knowing being from eternity," the argument 
is still a posteriori, from effect to cause. It is a ques- 
tion which Mr. Mill has not directly touched ; nor is it 
to be lightly assumed that he would answer it in the 
negative. The argument, as carried out by Paley 
its most popular if not its most able advocate may 
not be perfectly nor equally satisfactory to all minds. 
But from Aristotle to Newton it has been the one 
great resting-place or stand-point of the profoundest 
thinkers and investigators of nature ; and even Hume, 
as we have seen, was disposed, in later and better days, 
to yield to the force of the impression. Mr. Mill has 
referred to Reid, among other comparatively recent 
writers, as the one religious metaphysician whose 
thoughts and language on the reciprocal action of 
mind and matter deserved his serious consideration. 
But in the letters of Sir Isaac Newton to Bentley, 
in certain portions of Cudworth, Clarke, Locke, and 
Hartley, in the Theodicy of Leibnitz, which is full of 
profound and beautiful thought, and in the notes to 
Price's Dissertations, may be found considerations on 
the respective powers of matter and mind, touching 
the nature and province of each, the laws of each, and 
the phenomena attributable to the one and to the 
other, far more worthy of the most deliberate and 
careful attention. These great writers have main- 
tained, with the greatest show of reason, that, be the 



142 STEWART ON HUME. 

laws of thought what they may, and howsoever the 
knowledge of them is arrived at, be it a knowledge 
given a priori, or learnt by experience, the recogni- 
tion of the highest law ever involves the notion and 
existence of a supreme, intelligent, percipient, and 
active Lawgiver or Lawmaker ; and let us remember 
that, without belief in the existence of such a being, 
we have no longer the benefit of the religious sanction 
for any theory of morals which we may be disposed 
to form, a sanction of which even Bentham allowed 
the great importance. We have no longer an object 
for those feelings of veneration, nor a foundation for 
those habits of obedience and submission, and those 
pure and exalting hopes and aspirations which, how- 
ever we may trifle with them in hours of ease and 
speculation, are in life's sore trials the only fountains 
of refreshment, and without which all the uses and 
enjoyments of the world become "weary, stale, flat, 
and unprofitable/* 

STEWART ON HUME. 

The importance which has been attached, and may 
continue to be attached, in the history of modern 
metaphysics, to what has been called Hume's Theory 
of Causation, justifies our attention to it, and this en- 
deavour to understand and explain it. The assertion 
that his scepticism, to whatever it amounted, is built 
on the principles of Locke, if not confuted, has been 
shown at least to require much examination and con- 



STEWART ON HUME. 143 

firmation before it is credited ; and the inquiry, which 
the reader may be supposed to have made, will pre- 
pare him for estimating the justice of some of Mr. 
Stewart's comments on the sceptic and his extrava- 
gant praises of his countryman, comments which have 
been the chief incitement to the foregoing critical and 
historical remarks. 

To the student and interpreter of nature, the lover 
of exact science and practical knowledge, there must 
ever be something trifling in the criticism of a criti- 
cism. Idle indeed are the strifes of words, which fill 
the pages of dissertational metaphysicians, who give 
us too much of noise without progress, dust with- 
out fruit, the whirl and rattle of machinery without 
the production of any article of value. But so little 
careful study is bestowed on metaphysical subjects, 
and so much authority is attributed to a certain class 
and school of writers, that it can hardly fail to be in- 
structive and useful if I exhibit somewhat in detail 
the statements to which just exception may be taken 
in Mr. Stewart's dissertation, not to say the unhappy 
prejudices and serious errors which he has contrived 
to heap together within the compass of a few pages, 
when commenting on Hume and Locke. 

First, he observes that " Hume has very great merit 
in separating entirely his speculations concerning the 
philosophy of the mind from all physiological hypo- 
theses about the nature of the union between soul and 
body." It is added, " His works are perfectly free 
from those gratuitous and wild conjectures, which a 



144 DEFENCE OF HARTLEY. 

few years afterwards were given to the world with so 
much confidence by Hartley and Bonnet, and in this 
his example has been of infinite use to his successors 
in this northern part of the island. I know of no 
part of Europe where such systems as those of Hartley 
and Bonnet have been so uniformly treated with the 
contempt they deserve as in Scotland." 

The contempt of which Mr. Stewart speaks betrays 
the narrow and prejudiced character of his own spe- 
culations and understanding. He would sacrifice the 
reputation and estimation of one of the greatest and 
best of Christian philosophers, the intimate friend and 
fellow-labourer of Drs. Law, Butler, Warburton, and 
Jortin, to enhance the merit or screen the ill of the 
most notorious sceptic of his own country. Hartley 
was an Englishman. The angelic sweetness of his 
countenance is a strong recommendation of whatever 
he thought and believed. Who can look at the en- 
graving of it without feeling it an argument in favour 
of his religious and amiable philosophy, presenting as 
it does a singular combination of feminine purity and 
grace with manly intellectual power* ? Heaven is re- 
flected in its soft and ingenuous, yet bright and beam- 
ing intellectual expression. Bonnet was a Frenchman. 
His writings have attracted very little attention in 
England. It does not appear that there was much 
ground for classing his speculations with those of 
Hartley. But to mention the views of such men, and 
especially of Hartley, in any connection with contempt, 

* Compare a passage on it in Wakefield's Memoirs. 



DEFENCE OF HARTLEY. 145 

redounds to the disgrace of a writer who fosters by 
such means the most unhappy prejudices in weak 
minds, minds ever too ready to receive them, and 
to assimilate their temper to the poison*. 

Dr. Hartley's great work, the Observations on Man, 
was not published till the year 1749. His theory of 
vibrations, the nicety and difficulty of which has 
blinded Mr. Stewart and many others to the rest of 
his system, may or may not be the nearest approach 
that has been made to an explanation of the un- 
doubted connection that exists, and which physiolo- 
gical inquiry more and more exhibits and illustrates, 
between the peculiar structure of the physical frame 
and the developments of intellectual and moral cha- 
racter. It is not my purpose to defend it, if I even 
understand it. As its author observed, it is " novel, 
intricate, extensive/' and remote, therefore, from com- 
mon apprehension. But it is sufficient to know that 
it originated in a suggestion of Sir Isaac Newton, at 
the end of his ' Principia' and ' Optics ;' that it was 
aided by the patient study of the writings of Boer- 
haave; that it is carried out with a refinement and 
consistency, which only a logical understanding can 
in the slightest degree appreciate; that it bears a 
near relation to what Descartes and Leibnitz have 
advanced concerning animal motion, and that it is in- 

* If we may trust the article on Bonnet in the ' Dictionnaire des 
Sciences Philosophiques,' one of his two great principles was "that 
ideas can only be studied in the fibres, which are the organs of 
them." This could not be said of Hartley with any justice. 

L 



146 DEFENCE OF HARTLEY. 

timately connected with another theory that of as- 
sociation to the vast importance of which the whole 
philosophic world, Mr. Stewart included, has been 
compelled to pay tribute of homage and respect, and 
which Laplace pronounces the sum of what has yet 
been done in the science of the mind : it is sufficient 
to know this, to save it and its author from con- 
tempt, if not to attract to both our careful and pro- 
found attention. Dr. Priestley's estimate of it, in the 
very valuable introductory Essays to his edition of a 
part of Hartley, appears candid and judicious. With 
what ardour would the Doctor have seized his pen 
to vindicate the fair fame of the philosopher, whom 
he considered the Newton of the Intellectual world, 
from the scorn and the aspersions of these new di- 
lettanti of the north ! Mr. Stewart himself admits 
there is a connection and dependence subsisting be- 
tween the mind and body, a mutual action and re- 
action of undoubted constancy and importance. He 
knew that Descartes and Malebranche dwell upon 
it at great length ; and that Leibnitz had his pre-esta- 
blished harmony between mind and matter. Why 
then should Hartley and Bonnet be singled out for 
contempt, in their endeavours to determine the nature 
and character of the union more nicely and exactly ? 
It seems to be agreed by all physiologists and anato- 
mists that the nerves are the conductors of pleasure 
and pain to certain nervous centres in the brain. 
Whatever truth there be, if any, in phrenology, in 
the phenomena of mesmerism, and of somnambulism, 



DEFENCE OF HARTLEY. 147 

and what is now called electro-biology, whatever be 
known of the philosophy of sleep and dreams, 
whatever be the physical conditions of the brain pre- 
ceding and accompanying a large and peculiar class 
of feelings involuntary and automatic sympathies 
and antipathies, known to every one's consciousness 
and experience, all, that can be considered true or 
known upon these and kindred subjects of inquiry, 
harmonizes sufficiently well with Hartley's theory, 
under which he has introduced the names of vibra- 
tions and vibratiuncles for want of other terms, guard- 
ing himself against being interpreted with too close 
analogy to the comparatively coarse vibrations of vi- 
sible and tangible strings, and speaking of " an infi- 
nitesimal elementary body, intermediate between the 
soul and gross body, as no improbable supposition*." 
We have now works professing to show how intellec- 
tual and moral qualities are hereditary and transmis- 
sible. Physicians by profession, who are also meta- 
physicians, and have leisure and taste for the higher 
sciences, as they have peculiar opportunities for ob- 
serving the functions of nature in the physical frame, 
and for tracing the peculiarities of intellectual and 
moral development, in connection with those of phy- 
sical temperament and organic structure, so they give 
us from time to time new views and proofs of the 
nature of this connection and dependence. Of this 
Sir Henry Holland's medical notes and reflections 
supply abundant testimony; and Dr. William Car- 

* Prop. v. cor. 4, and Prop. xxi. cor. 3. 

L 2 



148 DEFENCE OF HARTLEY. 

penter, in his ' Human Physiology/ has given very 
full and instructive evidence to show how much, the 
intellectual and emotional attributes of our nature are 
connected with or dependent on peculiar conditions 
of the brain. 

In these matters we are in danger from opposite 
sources, the Scylla and Charybdis of philosophical in- 
quirers ; on the one hand, of too hasty generaliza- 
tions from imperfect observation, and on the other, 
of rejecting phenomena worthy of careful record, be- 
cause not easily reconcilable with our favourite theories 
or habitual modes of thought. 

Of the pernicious effect of Mr. Stewart's prejudices 
against Hartley, a striking proof is found in the Life 
of the late Francis Homer. Recording a conversation 
with Richard Sharp, in one of the literary parties of 
London, Homer says of him, " He has paid much 
attention to metaphysics also, and appears to me to 
praise the best books, with the exception of Hartley, 
whom both he and Mackintosh admire extremely, 
though in Scotland we are prohibited from reading 
him by the contempt with which he is spoken of*." 
The prohibition has evidently extended from Scotland 
into Germany and France, whence, owing to the cheap 
translation of foreign works, and the interests of book- 
sellers, many, in this commercial age of literature, are 
in danger of receiving most erroneous impressions of 
English literature and philosophy f. Thus the article 

* Life of Francis Homer, vol. i. p. 240. 

t See the remarks on R Schlegel, in Stewart's 'Dissertations 



DEFENCE OF HARTLEY. 149 

on Hartley occupies but two pages in the 'Diction- 
naire des Sciences Philosophiques,' a work with which 
the authors have taken worthy pains, valuable, and in- 
deed now indispensable, to the metaphysical inquirer. 
Not a word is said in it about the theory of asso- 
ciation, afterwards adopted and illustrated by Brown 
and Alison and Mill ; nor is a hint given of the ad- 
mirable rule of life, the most complete and beautiful 
of all the systems of moral philosophy yet in being. 

Appended to a pleasing account of some members 
of the family of Hartley, of Bath, by the Rev. Richard 
Warner, there is an anecdote worth repeating in this 
connection. Speaking of his friend David Hartley, 
the son, an eminent member of Parliament, in the 
latter half of the eighteenth century, Mr. Warner says 
of him, " He inherited the placid temperament of his 
great and good father, the first, perhaps, of our En- 
glish metaphysicians ; the same clear analytical intel- 
lect ; the same devotion to the pure and single pursuit 
of truth ; the same simplicity and ingenuousness of 
general character*." 

and Philosophy,' p. 214. F. C. Schlosser, in his ' History of the 
Eighteenth Century, with Reference to Mental Cultivation,' makes 
Locke an antisupernaturalist ! and even asserts that Wollaston, in 
his ' Religion of Nature,' never mentions, at the end of his book, a 
future state of rewards and punishments ! Could he have read the 
book? 

* He then adds, "The countenance of the celebrated Dr. Hartley 
beamed with all the lights of his luminous and virtuous mind. 
Shackleton painted a very correct likeness of him, which was en 
graved, and prefixed to his son's quarto edition of his father's great 
work. David Hartley presented me with a proof impression of the 



150 DEFENCE OF HARTLEY. 

In the same volume by Mr. Warner are various re- 
miniscences of his friend Parr, who sympathized in 
his metaphysical predilections, and to whom we are in 
a great measure indebted for the preservation of Dr. 
Hartley's Latin tract, modestly entitled ' Conjecture 
queedam de Sensu, Motu, et Idearum Generatione/ 
reprinted, without date, among the Metaphysical 
Tracts of English Philosophers of the eighteenth cen- 
tury*. 

print. This engraving was once the occasion of some embarrassment 
to me. A large party were assembled to breakfast with me, at my 
house near Bath. Some branches of the late Earl of Selkirk's family 
were among the company. They had brought with them a very 
prepossessing young lady from Scotland, whose name, though of 
course announced, I had either not heard or had forgotten. She sat 
beside me at breakfast. Opposite to us were three portraits ; she 
looked attentively at them for a few moments, and said, 'Pray, 
Mr. W., whose portraits are those to the left hand? The right 
hand one I know well, but the central, and that next to it, are new 
to me.' * Oh ! the middle one is a print of my friend David Hart- 
ley ; and that to the right, a print of his great and good father, Dr. 
Hartley, author of the well-known Observations on Man, his frame, 
his duty, and expectations ; one of the most sensible, rational, and 
satisfactory metaphysical writers, in my opinion, that ever lived. 
By the bye, I have a little quarrel with your Scotch philosophers : 
they do not, I think, treat our metaphysicians, Locke, Clarke, and 
Hartley, with the respect they deserve. Indeed I am quite hurt that 
Dugald Stewart should have spoken so lightly of Dr. Hartley, as he 
does, in his admirable Philosophy of the Human Mind.' The excel- 
lent girl coloured, and replied, ' I am sure my father would be very 
sorry to know that he had written anything which gave Mr. Warner 
pain ! ' She was the daughter of the Scotch Professor." 

* This precious volume of Tracts was prepared for the press by 
Dr. Parr, and afterwards, as the advertisement informs us, completed 
for publication by the assistance of Clement T. Swanston, Esq., of 
the Chancery bar. A note in reference to the tract of Hartley, 



DEFENCE OF HARTLEY. 151 

The present remarks in defence of Hartley may be 
fitly closed by a quotation from the second disserta- 

with a statement of Dr. Parr's concerning it, occurs in Mr. Stewart's 
Dissertation, which cannot be suffered to pass without notice. 
"In a letter which I received from Dr. Parr," says Mr. Stewart, 
"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, 
4 that in this book, instead of the doctrine of necessity, Hartley openly 
declares for the indifferency of the will, as maintained by Archbishop 
King.' We are told by Dr. 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 upon so very essential a point should have un- 
dergone a complete change." (Stewart's Dissertation, p. 171.) Dr. 
Parr's remark does not quite amount to Mr. Stewart's interpreta- 
tion of it ; but I believe the whole passage is without foundation, 
and that the truly candid and kind-hearted Parr was for once mis- 
taken. Hartley was employed eighteen years upon his work, and 
his opinions were not likely to change suddenly and without deep 
thought upon such a subject. The Latin tract is a short but excel- 
lent abstract of the great work ; and of many of the most interesting 
passages, particularly of historical character, it is strictly a transla- 
tion. I have not found the phrase "liberum arbitrium" in it. In 
the ' Scholium Generale,' where Hartley sums up the uses of the 
doctrine of vibrations and association in his own beautiful spirit, 
nothing is said about free-will or necessity. 

In this volume of tracts there is an excellent anonymous Essay 
(dated 1747, dedicated to the students of the two Universities,) on 
the origin of the Human Appetites and Affections, showing how 
each arises from association. The editors do not appear to have known 
of a second edition of the Essay in 1758, carefully revised, and with 
many additions. Of this second edition I obtained a copy, formerly 
belonging to the late Walter Wilson, Esq., of Bath. Who was the 
author ? Could it have been the modest Gay, the friend of Dr. Law, 
and author of the Dissertation, also anonymous, prefixed to the Dis- 
sertation on the Origin of Evil P 



152 DEFENCE HARTLEY. 

tion of the ' Encyclopaedi; ritamiica/ by Sir James 
Mackintosh, which affords 11 agreeable contrast in its 
estimate of his merits, to he hostile language and 
contemptuous sneers oi Stewart. "His (Hart- 
ley's) style is entitled to n praise hut that of clear- 
ness, and a simplicity of di'-on -through which is visi- 
ble a singular simplicity of nnd. ( Wlat higker praiae 
does the pure and philosopfa mind desire?) No book 
perhaps exists which, with o few of the common al- 
lurements, comes at last i- much to please, by the 
picture it presents of the riter's character, a cha- 
racter which kept him pu? from the pursuit, often 
from the consciousness of nvelty, and ivndm'd him 
a discoverer in spite of hi \vn modesty. (// ///>///*/ 
be added, by the unsurpas^ *// /,//'/////// nnd bcanf// of 
the views which it gives o * fr<n,i<\ ///.v '//////, 

and expectations^) In th-i? singular passages, in 
which, amidst the profound iternal tranquillity of all 
the European nations, he f<> tells approaching convul- 
sions, to be followed by tin overthrow of states and 
churches, his quiet and gen spirit, elsewhere almost 
ready to inculcate passive jedience for the sake of 
peace, is supported under t \ awful forebodings by 
the hope of that general prcress in virtue and happi- 
ness which he saw through is preparatory confusion. 
A meek piety, inclining towrds mysticism, and some- 
times indulging in visions v ich borrow a lustre from 
his fervid benevolence, wa )eautifully, and perhaps 
singularly, blended in him >th zeal for the most un- 
bounded freedom of inquii flowing both from his 



MERITS LOCKE. 



153 



own conscientious belief ud his unmingled love of 
truth. Whoever can so r subdue his repugnance to 
petty or secondary faults to bestow a careful perusal 
on the work, must be 111 . tunate, if he does not see, 
feel, and own, that the i r was a great philosopher 
and a good man*." 

2. Again, Mr. Ste s on to praise Hume's 

juvenile speculations, foi having contributed to for- 
ward the progress of our . ional literature, containing 
the germs of Lord K;i historical law Tracts, and 
Elements of Critici- iiis is followed by a very 

high estimate of Hum- Treatise, as attended with 
another important effect i Scotland. " He had cul- 
tivated the art of wiin with much greater success 
than any of his predr and had formed his taste 

on the best models < ish composition. The in- 

fluence of his exampl PS to have been great and 

general; and was in nee more remarkable' than 

in the style of his p: antagonists, all of whom, 

in studying his sy>* caught in no inconsider- 

able degree the pmr )olish, and precision of his 
diction. Nobody, I iieve, will deny that Locke 
himself, considered ; English writer, is far sur- 
passed, not only by ] Ime, but by Reid, Campbell, 
Gerard, and Beattie of this fact it will not 1><> 

easy to find a more isfactory explanation, than in 
the critical eye with v Ich they were led to canvass a 
work, equally di*; \ed l>y the depth of its reason- 

* Dissertation Second, .opaedia Britannica,' Seventh edi- 
tion, p. 365. 



154 MERITS OF LOCKE. 

ings, and by the attractive form in which they are ex- 
hibited" And this is said of the Treatise of Human 
Nature ; than which, especially in the earlier portions, 
scarcely any writing can be less pure or precise more 
full of careless repetitions and tautology, where an 
argument is often called an affair or a circumstance ; 
where pronouns are continually used without a defi- 
nite antecedent, and where no useful aim or steady 
connection of parts can be traced ; a work with 
which the author himself felt justly dissatisfied, and 
which he deeply regretted a few years after the publi- 
cation*. 

Mr. Hume's taste was formed far more upon the 
model of the French than English writers. His well- 
known criticisms upon the best and greatest of them 
in his History speak ill for his judgement, even in 
later days. It does not appear that he had read so 
as to appreciate Hobbes and Bacon, whose condensed 
strength furnishes perhaps the best model for good 
philosophical writing ; and the shades of Shakspeare 

* I see nothing querulous nor peevish, as Mr. Stewart intimates, 
in Hume's remonstrances against being judged by a work upon 
which he himself pronounced sentence of condemnation. It seems 
like a wilful perverseness in such writers as Dr. Reid and Mr. Stew- 
art, notwithstanding such condemnation, to attach an importance to 
the treatise, which neither intrinsic merits, especially when com- 
pared with the essays designed to supersede it, nor its real influence 
on the public mind and on the direction of philosophic inquiry, can 
ever justify. The Essays have been frequently reprinted, and con- 
stantly admired. The treatise, I believe, was never called for a 
second time : copies of the first and only edition may now be easily 
obtained. 



MERITS OF LOCKE. 155 

and Spenser and Milton have only to arise in their 
Elysian beauty, to win for them an admiration and a 
love which the cold Scotchman knew not how to feel. 
To turn from Hume's Treatise to the pages of 
Locke, is like passing from the corrupt air of an over- 
heated apartment, where one can neither breathe freely 
nor see distinctly, into the open canopy of heaven, 
where the atmosphere is fresh and the objects are 
steady, and where we can hold again that converse 
with Nature by which, while the senses are gratified, 
the heart also is improved. The modesty and sweet- 
ness of Locke's prefatory matter, his candid account 
of the origin of the Essay, and submissive appeal to 
the judgement of the thoughtful and truth-seeking 
reader, partake scarcely less of the spirit of a saint 
than the philosopher ; and were we making a volume 
of elegant extracts, we could select from Locke pas- 
sages far superior to anything which could be found 
in Hume, distinguished as well for elegance of ex- 
pression and play of imagination, as for that depth and 
beauty of religious and moral sentiment, that truth 
which is the soul's lasting ah' men t, without which all 
the rest is vapour. The sweet feeling of Locke is 
beautifully illustrated by the letters to Sir Isaac New- 
ton, given in Lord King's Life, which brought the 
great Newton almost at his feet. The annals of phi- 
losophy and literature present scarcely any more af- 
fecting proof of elevation of sentiment and delicacy of 
consideration and taste. Whatever may be the spe- 
culative merits or defects of Locke's philosophy, now 



156 MERITS OF LOCKE. 

commonly and somewhat scornfully termed "sensa- 
tional" (by the French, " sensualiste"), its practical 
effects upon the mind and temper, as illustrated in his 
own life and that of Hartley, to say nothing of many 
humbler followers, have been of rare and incompara- 
ble order. We see that veneration and hope, a serene 
patience, a pure and expansive benevolence, a patriot- 
ism unspotted by the smallest taint of venality or any 
meaner thought, were its delicious fruits; while the 
results of the cold scepticism of Hume are chiefly 
manifest in the absence of any glowing admiration for 
the great or good, the beautiful or the true, in nature 
and in life, in Providence and in man. The deceitful, 
narrow-minded, and profligate Stuarts were the heroes 
of his historical defence and panegyric : and while he 
aimed to seat himself as president in the chair of phi- 
losophy, to give a new direction to inquiry, and to 
become the arbiter of questions which had divided 
Descartes and Gassendi, Hobbes and Malebranche, 
Leibnitz and Locke, Clarke and Spinoza, he would 
have struck from the mind and from the heart every 
sentiment and hope that lifts man above the brutes, 
attaches him to the eternal and invisible, and bids 
him feel, with our old Daniel, that 

" Unless above himself he can erect himself, 
How poor a thing is man !" 

But mere criticisms on style, however desirable in 
works on rhetoric, are of little consequence in histories 
of philosophy ; nor should I notice these things, but 
as illustrations of Mr. Stewart's peculiar and unhappy 



STEWART'S CRITICISMS EXAMINED. 157 

national partialities. Even the favourable notice of 
Addison, found in Hume's later Essays, a notice which 
Mr. Stewart somewhere quotes, is rather unfortunate 
for Hume's careful discrimination ; for in saying that 
Addison perhaps will be read with pleasure when 
Locke shall be entirely forgotten, he himself forgot, or 
had not observed, that Addison's pages are full of re- 
verential testimony to the merit and influence of that 
great and good philosopher, from whom, as well as 
from the many writers of the time who partook of his 
spirit and sympathized in his views, Addison derived 
that cheerful, practical wisdom, that happy combina- 
tion of genial moral sense with hopeful and grateful 
piety, which form the best antidote, by their own na- 
tural recommendations, to the dark and desolating 
scepticism, whose empire, in his early days, and in his 
unfortunate treatise, Hume was chiefly employed in 
maintaining*. 

3. Passing over what Mr. Stewart says of the strong 
leaning of Hume to the idealism of Malebranche and 
of Berkeley, and of his carrying the sceptical mode of 
reasoning further than any other modern philosopher 
with the single exception of Bayle, we come to the 
remarkable assertion that, 

* "Locke is an author whom I observe you frequently quote," 
says a correspondent in one of the ' Spectators.' The Nos. 62, on 
Mixed Wit, 64, on the Succession of Ideas, the papers on Instinct, 
on the Value of the Soul, on the Imagination, and on Immortality, 
are all in harmony with Locke, and bear witness to his influence. 
It was delightful to hear Mr. Thackeray's cordial appreciation and 
heartfelt praise of Addison, in his recent lectures on the wits of 
Queen Anne's time. 



158 STEWART'S CRITICISMS EXAMINED. 

" In the form in which the spirit of sceptical argu- 
ment appears in Mr. Hume's treatise, its mischievous 
tendency has been more than compensated by the im- 
portance of those results for which it has prepared the 
way. The principles which he assumes were sanc- 
tioned in common by Gassendi, by Descartes, and by 
Locke ; and from these, in most instances, he reasons 
with great logical accuracy and force. Perhaps in- 
deed it may be questioned if the errors which he 
adopted from his predecessors would not have kept 
their ground till this day, had not his sagacity dis- 
played so clearly the consequences which they neces- 
sarily involve. It is in this sense that we must un- 
derstand a compliment paid to him by the ablest of 
his adversaries'" (meaning Dr. Reid, as the foot-note 
shows,) "when he says, 'that Mr. Hume's premises 
often do more than atone for his conclusions.' ' 

If so, these premises, we presume, could not be the 
errors which he adopted from his predecessors ; but 
in truth the whole passage is an evidence of that in- 
distinctness which is the bane of such dissertational 
metaphysics as those which fill Mr. Stewart's pages. 
What the principles alluded to were, sanctioned in 
common by writers whom we know to have been 
warmly opposed to one another on many important 
points; what the errors, premises, and conclusions 
were, about which the author says so little, because 
the reader is supposed to know so much, it is impos- 
sible to guess, with any confidence of being right ; 
but it seems obvious that such remarks, with others on 



STEWART'S CRITICISMS EXAMINKD. 159 

which some further comment will be offered, are idly 
designed to save the reputation of Scotch philosophy 
from the reproach brought on it by the most heretical 
and sceptical of the class, at the expense and with the 
sacrifice of the greatest and most honoured names of 
other schools. Gassendi and Locke are to be immo- 
lated to appease the manes of Hume. Accordingly 
Mr. Stewart, becoming bolder as he advances, goes 
on to say, "that we are indebted to Hume for the 
most powerful antidotes we possess against some of 
the most poisonous errors of modern philosophy. The 
argument stated by Hume, in his Essay on the ' Idea 
of Necessary Connection/ forms a more valuable ac- 
cession to metaphysical science than the elaborate 
refutation of Spinozism by Bayle, as it lays the axe to 
the very root from which Spinozism springs." We 
are also informed that " all well-educated persons may 
be presumed to have acquired that general acquaint- 
ance with Mr. Hume's theory of causation/' which 
Stewart has supposed his readers to possess ; and that 
in his opinion, " it will now be acknowledged by every 
competent judge that Mr. Hume's objections to all the 
pretended demonstrations produced by Mr. Hobbes, 
Dr. Clarke, and Mr. Locke, for the necessity of a 
cause to every new existence, are conclusive and un- 
answerable. To expose the futility of their reason- 
ings on this subject was an important step made by 
Hume, who rendered an essential service to true phi- 
losophy, by thus pointing out indirectly to his suc- 
cessors the only solid ground on which that principle 



160 STEWART'S CRITICISMS EXAMINED. 

rests, the principle, namely, f that everything which 
begins to exist must have a cause/ It is to this ar- 
gument of Hume's (queer e, what argument ? for none 
has been stated), according to Kant's own acknow- 
ledgment, that we owe the Critique of Pure Reason ; 
and to this we are also indebted for the far more lu- 
minous refutations of scepticism by Mr. Humes own 
countrymen?' 

Thus we come round to the laudation of the Scotch 
triumvirate here intended, Messrs. Reid, Beattie, and 
Oswald, whose glory is but a reflection of that of 
Hume, their discoveries being a consequence of atten- 
tion to his directions or his hints. 

No doubt the reader has already formed an opinion 
of the extent to which Mr. Hume is entitled to the 
praise, the gratitude, and the homage which Mr. 
Stewart has offered to his memory. But if he ask 
himself what clearer conception he has gained of know- 
ledge and probability, and of cause and effect, from 
the perusal of Hume's sections* on these topics, he 
will probably be at a loss for a reply. There is cer- 
tainly one kind of philosophical relation, in addition 
to the four which Mr. Hume pronounces the only ob- 
jects of knowledge and certainty, which it would have 
been desirable to take into account, that is, the rela- 
tion between language and thought, between words 
and the objects or ideas suggested by them, and espe- 
cially the relation between reasoning and definition. 

Mr. Stewart, following closely in the steps of Dr. 

* Book i. part iii., Treatise of Human Nature. 



STEWART'S CRITICISMS EXAMIM D. 161 

Reid*, greatly applauds Hume's objections to what he 
calls the pretended demonstrations by Hobbes, and 
Clarke, and Locke, of the maxim that every beginning 
of existence must have a cause of existence, and he 
asserts that every competent judge must admit the ob- 
jections to be conclusive. It happens however that 
there are in Hume no distinct references to the places 
where the demonstrations are to be found. Nor have 
Dr. Reid and Mr. Stewart taken pains to verify them, 
and supply the deficiency. It is possible that Hume 
had some particular passages of these authors in view, 
trusting to his memory to represent their language and 
reasoning with sufficient correctness for his purpose ; 
but if he had, it is now very difficult to trace them. 
Had Hume, then quite a tyro in these matters, treated 
the authors in question with due respect, or been ear- 
nest in the establishment of any useful truth which 
they had missed, he would have taken suitable pains 
by careful reference to induce his readers to consult 
their pages. I more than suspect that what Hume 
loosely calls their demonstrations are nothing more 
than incidental argumentative considerations, to which 
they attached no importance, wherever found, and by 
no means professed attempts to demonstrate rigidly a 
proposition which they were all three disposed to as- 
sume, and which they supposed their readers would 
willingly concede. 

Thus in the first sentence of the second chapter 

* See Reid's 'Intellectual Powers,' (Essay VI. c. 6.) Hamil- 
ton's ' Reid,' p. 455. 

M 



162 STEWART'S CRITICISMS EXAMINED. 

of the ' Leviathan/ on Imagination, Hobbes assumes 
it as an axiom "that no thing can change itself;" and 
again, in his work on Liberty and Necessity, he says, 
" I conceive that nothing taketh beginning from itself, 
but from the action of some other immediate agent, 
without itself*." Again, he says, " It is peculiar to 
the nature of men to be inquisitive into the causes 
of the events they see, some more, some less ; and se- 
condly, upon the sight of anything that hath a begin- 
ning, to think also it had a cause, which determined 
the same to begin, then when it did, rather than sooner 
or later." 

It is not probable that, at the time when Hume 
wrote his Treatise, he had duly read the works of 
Hobbes. There is so much deep thought, such keen 
insight into nature and human nature, in the Com- 
putatio or Logic, in the Philosophy of Body and Ac- 
cident, in the controversy with Bramhall, and in his 
still more known treatises ; there is so much discri- 

* Molesworth's ' Hobbes,' vol. iii. p. 274. A passage near this 
(p. 276), intimating " that a man cannot imagine anything to begin 
without a cause," may be one that Hume had in his mind ; but if so, 
he has not represented Hobbes correctly. The admirer of Hobbes, 
the first writer of sterling English, such as we now use it or ought to 
use it, however familiar- with early editions, must feel greatly in- 
debted to Sir William Molesworth for the excellent index forming 
the eleventh volume of the collected English works. Under the 
word " Cause" will be found a masterly view of almost all that has 
been suggested since on the subject. He defines science or philoso- 
phy to consist " in the knowledge of the' causes of all things, so far 
forth as it may be attained" (Logic, vol. i. p. 68) : I had not observed 
this when writing the sentences which the reader may remember, 
supra, p. 140. 



STEWART'S CRITICISMS EXAMINED. 163 

minating remark on those difficult metaphysical topics, 
which Hume undertook thus early to handle, such 
as cause and effect, knowledge and power, space and 
time, liberty and law, imagination, action, and pas- 
sion, that the philosophical Quixote, had he known 
them, would have paused longer, and been deterred 
by conscious weakness, before he ventured into the 
arena of dispute without any weapons taken from the 
armoury of the great Leviathan. Passages like the 
following deserved his deep attention : " Curiosity, 
or love of the knowledge of causes, draws a man 
from consideration of the effect to seek the cause, and 
again the cause of that cause ; till of necessity he 
must come to this thought at last, that there is some 
cause, whereof there is no former cause, but is eternal ; 
which is it men call God. /So that it is impossible to 
make any profound inquiry into natural causes, with- 
out being inclined thereby to believe there is one God 
eternal; though they cannot have any idea of him (/. e. 
image, as afterwards explained) in their mind answer- 
able to his nature." 

" He that, from any effect he seeth come to pass, 
should reason to the next and immediate cause thereof, 
and from thence to the cause of that cause, and plunge 
himself profoundly into the pursuit of causes, shall 
at last come to this, that there must be, as even the 
heathen philosophers confessed, one first mover, that 
is, a first and an eternal cause of all things, which is 
that which men mean by the name of God ; and all 
this without thought of their fortune, the solicitude 

M 2 



164 STEWART'S CRITICISMS EXAMINED. 

whereof both inclines to fear, and hinders them from 
the search of the causes of other things ; and thereby 
gives occasion of feigning of as many gods, as there be 
men that feign them." 

In the fourth Book of his Essay, we find Locke 
thus expressing himself : " There is no truth more 
evident than that something must be from eternity. 
I have never yet heard of any man so unreasonable, 
or that could suppose so manifest a contradiction, as 
a time wherein there was perfectly nothing, this 
being of all absurdities the greatest, to imagine that 
pure nothing, the perfect negation and absence of all 
beings, should ever produce any real existence*/' In 
other passages of the Essay, it is assumed as an axiom 
that nothing can change itself. 

Clarke expressly calls his work a ' Demonstration.' 
The propositions which he undertook to demonstrate 
may be easily seen by recourse to his book. That 
which Mr. Hume mentions as his argument forms no 
part of them, or at least has no place of prominence 
and importance assigned to it. If Hume meant to 
represent that portion of Dr. S. Clarke's reasoning, 
which occurs under his first proposition, that " some- 

* Locke's Essay, book iv. c. 10. 8. I may add that, in Hume's 
Essay on the Principles of Morals, vol. ii. p. 234, there is a great 
misrepresentation of Hobbes and Locke. He says, "that they 
maintained the selfish system of morals." It is not true, in the 
sense given to it by Hume, namely, " that the most generous friend- 
ship, however sincere, is but a modification of self-love; and that, 
even unknown to ourselves, we seek only our own gratification while 
we appear the most deeply engaged in schemes for the liberty and 
happiness of mankind." 



STEWART'S CRITICISMS EXAMINED. 165 

thing has existed from eternity," he did not trouble 
himself to give it correctly. It never was Clarke's 
argument that " an object that exists absolutely, with- 
out any cause, must be its own cause." Let us do 
that justice to Dr. Clarke, which the Scotchmen have 
refused him. The following is a portion of his argu- 
ment : " Since something now is, 'tis manifest that 
something always was ; otherwise the things that now 
are must have risen out of nothing, absolutely and 
without cause, which is a plain contradiction in terms. 
For to say a thing is produced, and yet there is no 
cause at all of that production, is to say that some- 
thing is effected, when it is effected by nothing ; that 
is, at the same time when it is not effected at all. 
Whatever exists, has a cause of its existence either in 
the necessity of its own nature, and then it must have 
been of itself eternal; or in the will of some other 
Being, and then that other Being must, at least in the 
order of nature and causality, have existed before it*." 
To imply that " whatever exists may have a cause 
of its existence in the necessity of its own nature" is 
not perhaps very happy nor intelligible, but it is not 
the same thing as saying that "an object absolutely 
without any cause, must be its own cause." It is 
evident that Dr. Clarke here assumes, as he appears 
to do throughout his work, " that a beginning of ex- 
istence is an effect;" that "nothing begins to exist 
without a cause," a maxim which Hume professes 

* Compare Hume's Treatise, vol. i. p. 145, with Clarke ' On the 
Attributes,' Prop. i. 1. 



166 STEWART'S CRITICISMS EXAMINED. 

to examine and overthrow by means of his "idea of 
knowledge." But what that idea is, the reader will 
find either very difficult to trace out, or unworthy of 
approbation when he does trace it. 

In his section on ' Knowledge*/ Hume endeavours 
to make it appear that of seven philosophical relations, 
four only, depending solely on ideas, can be the ob- 
jects of knowledge and certainty. "All certainty arises 
from the comparison of ideas, and from the discovery 
of certain relations as are unalterable, so long as the 
ideas continue the same. These relations are resem- 
blance, proportions in quantity and number, degrees of 
any quality, and contrariety ; none of which are im- 
plied in this proposition, whatever has a beginning has 
also a cause of existence. That proposition, therefore, 
is not intuitively certain. At least any one who would 
assert it to be intuitively certain must deny these to 
be the only infallible relations, and must find some 
other relation of that kind to be implied in it, which 
it will then be time enough to examine." Therefore, 
as cause and effect is either not one of these relations, 
or not a relation at all, it follows of course that it can- 
not be an object of knowledge or certainty, a short 
way of disposing of the whole question. 

But are these indeed the "only infallible relations"? 
Are they themselves infallible ? The clearness and 
certainty of the demonstrations in propositions relating 
to number or quantity may be admitted. But with 
respect to "degrees of any quality," where there is no 

* Treatise, vol. i. p. 126. 



STEWART'S CRITICISMS EXAMINED. 167 

exact or agreed standard of comparison or measure- 
ment, it is evident the uncertainty must be greater 
than the certainty. Thus in the case of sounds, co- 
lours, smells, and tastes, and all qualities of body, all 
impressions from without, of which we have no per- 
fect measures as to degree or quality, together with 
that great variety of affections or states of mind, and 
all the pleasures and pains accompanying them, with 
their several degrees, comprehended under the word 
feeling, of the intensity or nature of which there is no 
exact standard, in point of resemblance or degree, a 
relation of one state with another may certainly exist ; 
one state may introduce another, or necessarily accom- 
pany and imply another; these states or conditions 
may be successive or simultaneous ; and in some pro- 
positions or truths relating to them, the mind may be 
as certain as in respect of any propositions or truths 
whatever ; yet the relations are not infallible only 
because the epithet infallible, if applicable to any ex- 
ercises and conclusions of the human understanding, 
ought to be used with the greatest modesty and cau- 
tion, and is the last term suited to the mouth of a 
professed sceptic. For the most part it is impossible 
to reduce to measure or number the most common, 
and, in point of happiness, and even life, the most 
important phenomena of sensation and feeling the 
occasions of action and passion. We cannot compare, 
by any exact standard, sweet with sweet, bitter with 
bitter, joy with joy, sorrow with sorrow. Hence the 
difficulties of mental and moral science, from the ob- 



168 STEWART'S CRITICISMS EXAMINED. 

scurity and uncertainty, or indefiniteness of the terms. 
It is not that these sciences require a new or peculiar 
logic, as Mr. J. S. Mill would imply ; for logic is one 
and the same for all science, a science per se the 
science of inference, teaching how, in certain forms of 
premise, certain forms of conclusion are involved. 
But it is that some common logic is applied too soon 
and too fast, and pushed too far, or rather, that it is 
erroneously applied, before observation has secured 
good premises, or definition stripped doubtful terms 
of ambiguity. Thus, when Hume refers our moral 
sentiments to an inward taste, he abandons them as 
subjects of philosophical discussion and investigation. 
De yustibus non disputandum. Connoisseurs in art 
may acccept in poetry a Homer, and in painting a 
Titian or a Raffaelle, as their standard of excellence, 
happy if they can agree in the grounds of their ap- 
preciation. But the mathematician smiles at their 
logomachy, when differences or disputes become warm 
and personal. In the physical sciences, in the various 
branches of natural philosophy, in such a science as 
astronomy and others that might be named, that which 
makes the propositions relating to them clear and im- 
portant, that which gives the mind a certainty in re- 
ceiving them proportionably so much stronger, is the 
enduring nature of the phenomena to which the pro- 
positions relate, it is the power of repeating the ob- 
servations, under conditions precisely similar, and of 
renewing experiments that is, of re-adjusting all the 
conditions on which the results or conclusions depend 



STEWARTS CRITICISMS 



JG ( J 

with exactness sufficient for proof, it is this wJifcfr" 
makes the propositions relating to such sciences more 
clear and important, and the certainty which the mind 
feels in connection with them proportionably so much 
stronger, the assent proportionably so much easier, 
than in the case of any propositions which concern 
the more transitory and varying conditions of our 
daily moral experience, conditions which we can 
never renew in precisely the same form, and upon 
which, when we desire to examine them closely, the 
lights are shifting and unsteady, both from within and 
from without. 

But further, there is a relation, as intimated above, 
of which Hume has taken no notice, but which ought 
to be taken into account, as one of the most common 
and important grounds of certainty in connection with 
affirmations or propositions, that is, the relation be- 
tween words and thoughts, or the associated ideas. 
A constant experience of the uniformity of the im- 
pressions made on the senses from without, with 
whatever variations modified or mingled, lays the 
foundation for the use and application of language, 
that is, the employment of words, as signs or marks 
for these impressions, among beings who receive them 
together, and would communicate with one another 
respecting their experience of the past and their anti- 
cipation of the future. In the right use or applica- 
tion of these signs, whether traditionally adopted or 
arbitrarily invented by the persons using them, a mu- 
tual certainty consists. Nor is there any necessity 



170 STEWARTS CRITICISMS EXAMINED. 

for looking further than this constant experience of 
the uniformity of nature for the origin of that ten- 
dency to expect a future similar to the past, of which 
every one is conscious, but of which some philoso- 
phers have made a portentous mystery, as if it were 
an inexplicable law of the mind, and a fundamental 
principle of belief. 

Certainty is a term significant of a condition of the 
mind. It is derived from the Latin certus, one of the 
participial forms of the verb cerno, and refers prima- 
rily to what the bodily eye, secondarily to what the 
so-called eye of the mind, clearly sees or determines, 
according to the old proverb " seeing is believing." 
It may be defined, confidence in the truth of asser- 
tions, founded on confidence in the correctness of im- 
pressions. In other words, it is founded, first, in the 
trustworthiness of the senses ; and secondly, on that 
exercise of the mental faculties, which arises out of, 
and is connected with, the use of the senses. Of 
these faculties memory is the chief, because without 
memory no proposition could be framed, no compari- 
son of objects could be made, no inference from com- 
parisons or propositions could be drawn, no anticipa- 
tion of a future could exist. Relying on memory and 
their faculties, the mass of mankind feel certainty in 
their judgements on a thousand matters of daily ex- 
perience, which come not under any of Hume's four 
heads of infallible relation. Indeed, that all the infal- 
lible relations of ideas are comprehended under these 
four, and that these deserve to be called infallible re- 



STEWART'S CRITICISMS EXAMINED. 171 

lations, is an assertion for which he has not attempted 
to produce any evidence ; nor has any student of the 
philosophy of the mind followed him in an analysis 
which, if correct and adequate, would be capable, no 
doubt, of many most important applications to sci- 
ence, physical and moral. 

And why this trifling on Hume's part, and on that 
of his commentators, with the great names of Hobbes, 
and Clarke, and Locke, and their pretended demonstra- 
tions? Has he overthrown the principle which these 
thinkers held in common, or thrown any new or strong 
light upon it ? He pretends that he has destroyed its 
intuitive, no less than its demonstrative, certainty. But 
a very slight acquaintance with the philosophy of 
Aristotle, of Hobbes, of Locke, of Hartley, and Mill, 
and Brown, is sufficient to make it manifest that our 
young philosopher has given a very inadequate ac- 
count of what he calls the " only infallible relations!' 
Mr. Stewart considers that, "when Hume attempts 
to show that the proposition in question is not in- 
tuitively certain, his argument appears to amount to 
nothing more than a logical quibble." The truth is, 
that Hume having bent his strength against the pre- 
tended demonstrations, quietly assumes, without any 
attempt at argument, that it is not intuitively certain. 
But what are intuitive or intuitional certainties ? I 
answer, all propositions which are assented to with- 
out hesitation the moment they are heard and the 
terms are understood, expressing thoughts or rela- 
tions of thought in harmony with all the phenomena 



172 STEWART'S CRITICISMS EXAMINED. 

of nature and the mind, that is, truths conformable 
to invariable experience. Whether there be or be not 
an intuitive certainty in the proposition that " to every 
beginning of existence there must be a cause/' every 
thinker will decide for himself, from an examination 
of his own mind, in connection with the terms. If 
mathematical definitions, axioms, and postulates rest 
ultimately upon their accordance with all the impres- 
sions of the senses, why may not an axiom, like that 
in question, rest ultimately upon its conformity with 
universal experience, or derive a part of its certainty 
from that source ? The man who affects to doubt it, 
may be asked to produce an instance of a beginning 
without a cause, or even to imagine it. 'Ex nihilo 
nihil fit/ is a maxim nearly as old as the records of 
human thought and he that feels he cannot destroy 
nor alter his own thoughts at pleasure, that he is 
physically and mentally subject to laws of being and 
an order of Nature independent of his own will, will 
not be easily satisfied with Mr. Hume's vague lan- 
guage on the relation of cause and effect, and his at- 
tempt to destroy a principle which lies at the founda- 
tion of all human art and science. When Hume's 
sections on the impressions of the senses and the me- 
mory, and of the inferences from the impression to 
the idea, are rigidly examined, they will be found, not 
only obscure and inconsistent, but really worthless*, as 
tending only to perplex and darken a subject of diifi- 

* Compare Mr. Stewart's comments in the Dissertation, p. 211, 
on these infallible relations. 



STEWART'S CRITICISMS EXAMINED. 173 

culty, rather than to arrive at principles fertile in use- 
ful application. 

Mr. Stewart supposes that a truth must be weak 
which rests upon experience alone, that there must 
be some other ground of certainty in propositions, 
besides harmony with fact, and agreement of ideas 
with one another. Hence, after Reid, he talks much 
of instinctive principles of belief, and fundamental 
laws of belief ; and he implies that Hume, by reveal- 
ing the weakness of all arguments relating to what 
has been called transcendental science, based upon 
experience, "has shut up for ever one of the most 
frequented and fatal paths which led philosophers 
astray/' and thereby compelled them to take those 
better and safer paths, in which himself and his 
Scotch predecessors have delighted to walk. 

But is Mr. Stewart consistent with himself? What 
are these ' fundamental laws and instinctive princi- 
ples'? In this very critique on Hume he has supplied 
an answer to his own principles, in a passage well 
worthy of attention, a passage which concedes every- 
thing to the most determined follower of Bacon and 
Hobbes and Locke and Hartley. 

" The distinction alluded to by Hume between the 
sensitive and the cogitative parts of our nature makes 
a great figure in the works of Cudworth and of Kant. 
By the former it was avowedly borrowed from the 
philosophy of Plato. To the latter it is not impro- 
bable that it may have been suggested by the passage 
in Hume. Without disputing its justness and its im- 



174 STEWART'S CRITICISMS EXAMINED. 

portance, I may be permitted to express my doubts of 
the propriety of stating, so strongly as has frequently 
been done, the one of these parts of our nature in 
contrast with the other. Would it not be more phi- 
losophical, as well as more pleasing, to contemplate the 
beautiful harmony between them, and the gradual 
steps by which the mind is trained by the intimations 
of the former ', for the deliberate conclusions of the 
latter? If, for example, our conviction of the perma- 
nence of the laws of nature be not founded on any 
process of reasoning (a proposition which Mr. Hume 
seems to have established with demonstrative evi- 
dence), but be either the result of an instinctive prin- 
ciple of belief, or of the association of ideas, operat- 
ing at a period when the light of reason has not yet 
dawned, what can be more delightful than to find this 
suggestion of our sensitive frame, verified by every step 

e/7 J J J J J 4 

which our reason afterwards makes in the study of 
physical science ; and confirmed with mathematical 
accuracy by the never-failing accordance of the phe- 
nomena of the heavens with the previous calculations 
of astronomers? Does not this afford a satisfaction 
to the mind, similar to what it experiences when we 
consider the adaptation of the instinct of suction, and 
of the organs of respiration to the physical properties 
of the atmosphere ? So far from encouraging scepti- 
cism, such a view of human nature seems peculiarly 
calculated to silence every doubt about the veracity of 
our faculties." 

Here we have the genuine and simple truth, some- 



STEWART'S CRITICISMS EXAMINED. 175 

what obscured, indeed, under a cloud of unsatisfactory 
phrases. The first association of ideas is the dawn of 
the light of reason. The first term rightly applied in 
its full and just significancy by a child, is the assu- 
rance which that child gives that the elements of rea- 
son are strong within him. Observation, memory, 
judgement, expectancy, are there. The apprehension 
of a law, and the conviction of the permanence of a 
law, become the highest functions of that mind, in its 
advanced conditions. It is certain the laws of nature 
whether of matter or of mind can be deduced 
only from observation of phenomena : the moment 
observation of fact clashes with the law, as previously 
received, the law is abrogated or modified. Explana- 
tions of the real or apparent exception are sought for 
in some still higher law, which embraces the newly- 
discovered order of things. 

It seems perfectly evident that we can have no ex- 
pectation nor imagination of the future, but what is 
founded on the experience of the past. For to expect 
that the future will be like the past, is to have had 
already ' a past/ which it is to resemble, and which 
has supplied us with conceptions and expectations. 
Call them, if you like, "suggestions of our sensitive 
frame-/ 5 it is but another phrase for the association 
of past with present impressions or ideas. The more 
you examine them, the more you will be inclined to 
resolve them into ideas of sensation and ideas of re- 
flection, associated in synchronous or successive order ; 
and when you have admitted this, you will be inclined 



176 DESCARTES AND GASSENDI 

also to admit, that experience, which covers the whole 
field of mental phenomena and development, is the 
great instructor; and that there can be no stronger 
evidence for any truth or principle or law, than its 
agreement with invariable and constant experience, 
its harmony with every known fact and repeated ob- 
servation, that is, with every test to which you can 
submit it. 

We have now seen how difficult it is to understand 
Hume's view of causation, from his obscurity and in- 
consistency ; and especially to understand the degree 
of authority which he would allow to our idea of it, 
whencesoever it may be drawn. Par from conceding 
to him the high merit which Stewart has assigned him, 
it may be said with more justice that he impeded the 
progress of metaphysical and moral science, by great 
injustice to his predecessors, by his inattention to their 
real sentiments, by his affectation of discoveries in 
fields of research more profoundly and carefully exa- 
mined before him, and especially by his passion for 
literary distinction, irrespective of the truth and value 
of the doctrines which he propounded. 

DESCARTES AND GASSENDI ON INNATE IDEAS. 

That close examination of Hume, which the reader 
may be supposed now to have instituted, prepares the 
way for some appreciation of the account given by Kant, 
in the Prolegomena to his Metaphysics, of the manner 
in which Hume's speculations affected his own. It was 



ON INNATE IDEAS. 177 

Hume, he tells us, who roused him from his dogmatic 
slumber. But before touching upon the question how 
far Kant has correctly represented Hume, it will be 
well to open that wider field of inquiry, comprehended 
by the old question concerning the existence of innate 
ideas. Some historical investigation of this subject 
will enable us better to appreciate the value of the 
phrases now again so current, owing doubtless to the 
influence of the idealism of the later schools of Ger- 
many, such as a priori conceptions, primal instincts 
and intuitions, fundamental or intuitive or instinctive 
perceptions, notions, and principles. Until the latter 
part of the last century Locke was supposed by most 
thinkers to have exterminated the ' men of innate 
ideas/ of instincts, and intuitions. But the advocates 
of instinctive principles have re-appeared, in numbers 
like to those mythologic beings which sprang up from 
the casting of Deucalion's stones after the deluge. 

It is a question of great interest in the history of 
modern metaphysics, and especially in weighing the 
merit of Locke's account of the origin of our know- 
ledge, whether Descartes had any particular or intel- 
ligible theory of innate ideas. If he had, it is difficult 
to trace it. Had any such theory formed a clear and 
important part of his metaphysical philosophy, Mr. 
Hallam would surely have made some allusion to it in 
his account of that philosophy. Yet Mr. D. Stewart 
speaks of Descartes' doctrine of innate ideas " as un- 
derstood and expounded by himself" adding these 
words in italics, "Because in Descartes' reasonings 

N 



178 DESCARTES AND GASSENDI 

on this question, there is no inconsiderable portion 
of most important truth, debased by a large and ma- 
nifest alloy of error *." Unfortunately Mr. Stewart 
gives no reference to the place where this exposition 
and the important truth is to be found, leaving the 
reader at a loss at the moment of greatest need ; nor 
am I acquainted with any English work which would 
supply the desired information. 

In the third of Descartes' Meditations the following 
passage occurs ; the nearest which I have found to 
the exposition in question f: "Now with regard to 
ideas, if they are regarded in themselves alone, and I 
refer them not to anything else, they cannot properly 
be considered false ; for whether I imagine a goat or 
a chimsera, it is no less true that I imagine the one 
than the other. Neither is any falsehood to be feared 
in the will itself, nor the affections ; for however de- 
praved my wishes, however much I may desire things 
which exist nowhere, it is not the less true that I do 
wish such things ; and thenceforth there remains only 
the judgments, in which I must take care that I be 
not deceived. Now the chief and most frequent error 
to be found in these consists in this that I may 
judge the ideas which exist within me, to be like or 
conformable to certain things placed without me. For 
truly, if I considered only the ideas themselves, and 

* Stewart's Dissertation, p. 68. 

t I translate it from the small quarto edition, Amsterdam, 1644, p. 
19 : ' Meditationes de Prima Philosophia, in quibus Dei existentia et 
animee humanse a corpore distinctio demonstrantur.' 



ON INNATE IDEAS. 179 

merely certain modes of thought, and refer them to 
no other thing whatsoever, they can scarcely give me 
any material of error. Now of these ideas some seem 
to me innate, others adventitious, others made by my- 
self ; for inasmuch as I understand what a thing is, 
what truth is, what thought is, these I seem to have 
from no other source than from my own nature. But 
that I now hear a noise, see the sun, feel the fire, these 
I have judged to proceed from certain things placed 
without me. And lastly, Sirens, HippogryfFs, and 
the like, are feigned by myself; or perhaps I may 
think even all to be adventitious, or all innate, or all 
feigned, for I have not as yet perceived the true origin 
of them." 

This division of ideas into three is evidently arbi- 
trary, and the account of those which are innate is 
loose and unsatisfactory. The classes are not distin- 
guished by any specific difference. To hear, see, and 
feel, are no less a part of our own nature, than after- 
wards to think of what we have seen and felt. Des- 
cartes himself appears afterwards little satisfied with 
it. 

" The opinion of Descartes upon innate ideas," says 
Degerando*, " has not been well understood, nor is this 
to be wondered at, for he has not well understood 
himself. On one side he repeats often that these 
ideas are born with us. He says particularly of the 
idea of God, " it is born and produced with me, from 
the time when I was created, in the same manner as 

* Hist. Comp. des Systemes, vol. vi. p, 185. 

N 2 



180 DESCARTES AND GASSENDI 

the idea of myself." He assures us " that the mind of 
the infant in the bosom of its mother has no less 
within itself the ideas of God, of itself, and of all those 
truths which are known of themselves, than adult per- 
sons have them, when they do not think of them, for 
it acquires them not afterwards with age"! "These 
ideas can have been placed in us only by God, who 
is their immediate cause. There is no metaphysical 
truth, in particular, which we cannot comprehend, if 
our mind is directed to consider it, and they are all 
" mentibus nostris congenitse." 

On the other hand, pressed by objections, Descartes 
admitted that these innate ideas existed only as possi- 
bilities. He considers them as natural, in so far as 
we have the faculty for producing them ; he finds 
them not distinct from the faculty of thought*. Such 
admissions amount to a denial of the principle that 
there are ideas properly innate, since the epithet is 
applicable to every idea which the mind comes in pro- 
cess of time to entertain. 

On the passage above quoted, from the third Me- 
ditation, we may remark Descartes' just observation, 
that " the epithets true and false are not properly ap- 
plied to mere ideas." Thus he prepares the way for 
the admission that they belong more properly to pro- 
positions ; although Descartes does not quite perceive 
this, and is by no means consistent with himself, since 
he makes clear and distinct perception his primary 

* Descartes' Correspondence, edit. Cousin, vol. viii. pp. 95, 268. 
Also Third Meditation, edit. Renouard, p. 120. 



ON INNATE IDEAS. 181 

test of truth, to which Gassendi took just exception. 
No doubt these epithets may be loosely applied to 
ideas, when it is meant that the ideas of a particular 
thinker on a particular subject are or are not corre- 
spondent to the qualities of the subject ; are or are not 
in accordance with all the phenomena and in agree- 
ment with all the perceptions and other ideas, which 
the same thinker will possess or entertain, when the 
subject of thought shall be further examined and bet- 
ter known. But under every such loose application, 
there is implied a secret reference to a proposition or 
conclusion of the mind not expressed ; and this view 
of the meaning of the epithets prepares the way for 
easy and available definitions of truth and falsehood. 
This is well laid down by Hobbes in the early part of 
his Computatio or Logic, and in other parts of his 
writings, and by Locke " On true and false ideas*." 

Even if we allow the application of the epithets to 
relations between thoughts or ideas and the objects 
of human contemplation, it will be found that they 
can be so applied with practical advantage only when 
such relations come to be expressed, that is, when 
they appear in the form of propositions, and then 
assist in ratiocination. 

That Descartes himself had no correct appreciation 
of the importance of the sentiment before us, I con- 

* Essay, book ii. ch. 32. Yet Locke afterwards forgot what he 
had so well said, or he would have expressed himself better when 
he came to discuss the reality of our knowledge, and the nature of 
truth and universal propositions. B. iv. ch. 4, 5, 6. 



182 DESCARTES AND GASSENDI 

elude, from what he has said in the fourth Meditation 
a most unsatisfactory one whose subject is "the 
true and the false." He begins it with speculation 
on the sort of faculties with which the Deity, as a 
good and powerful Being, must necessarily endow his 
creatures ; and, as he advances, he connects error with 
the will rather than the understanding*. 

The six Meditations of Descartes are short enough 
to be easily and agreeably read. But they gave rise 
to disquisitions, doubts, and arguments between him- 
self and Gassendi, to say nothing of those by Cater, 
Mersenne, Hobbes, Arnauld, and divers other theo- 
logians and philosophers, six times their length, the 
perusal of which is a more serious taskf. Gassendi 
pressed Descartes very closely ; and the Dutch printer 
of the Meditations and Objections naively says of 
Descartes that he became vehemently excited, and, 
forgetful of himself, forgot reason also, to which he 

* " D'ou est-ce done que naissent mes erreurs P C'est, a savoir, de 
cela seul, que la volonte* etant beaucoup plus ample et plus etendue 
que 1'entendement, je ne la contiens pas dans les memes limites, 
mais que je 1'etends aussi aux ckoses que je n'entends pas ; aux- 
quelles etant de soi indifferentes, elle s'egare fort aisement, et choisit 
le faux pour le vrai, et le mal pour le bien : ce qui fait que je me 
trompe et que je peche." Meditation 4, p. 101 : Simon's CEuvres de 
Descartes. 

t " Dans cette grande controverse, les objections de Hobbes pa- 
raissent les moins judicieuses, et les plus confuses ; celles d' Arnauld, 
les plus profondes, mais les plus reservees ; celles de Gassendi, les 
plus variees, les plus developpees ; celles du Pere Bourdin, Jesuite, 
les plus superficielles et les plus frivoles ; celles de Huet, les plus 
subtiles, les plus penetrantes." Degerando, Hist. Comp. des Syst. 
torn. vi. p. 238. 



ON INNATE IDEAS. 183 

should have chiefly attended, " Sui oblitus, rationis 
quoque oblivisceretur." It was in answer to Gas- 
sendi's remarks upon this portion of the Meditations 
that Descartes broke out into the insulting tone which 
has extorted even from Mr. Stewart the acknow- 
ledgment that, at least in the philosophy of the 
temper, the Epicurean Gassendi had greatly the ad- 
vantage. 

The comments of Gassendi on the passage are so 
instructive, not only with regard to any theory of in- 
nate ideas which Descartes may be supposed to have 
held, but to the whole subject which it opens, that I 
shall present them to the reader in an English form, 
the more readily, as the question of the extent to 
which Locke was indebted to Gassendi for his own 
peculiar views, or in which Locke agreed with him or 
was anticipated by him, though of deep interest to the 
philosophical inquirer, has never been fully discussed 
and examined by any English metaphysical writer. 
Mr. Hallam justly observes, that Gassendi' s works are 
now little known in England ; and even in Erance they 
appear no longer to receive the attention due to them. 
" Now the mind hath a faculty, not only of per- 
ceiving adventitious ideas, or such as it receives from 
things passed through the senses, of perceiving them, 
I say, naked and distinct, and altogether such as it 
receives them ; but, further, of variously compound- 
ing, dividing, contracting, amplifying, comparing them, 
and the like. Hence the third kind (i. e. of the 
three mentioned by Descartes) is not distinct from 



184 DESCARTES AND GASSENDI 

the second. For the idea of a chimera is no other 
than the idea of a lion's head, a goat's belly, a ser- 
pent's tail, of which the mind composes one ; though 
they be separately and singly adventitious. So the 
idea of a giant, or of a man like a mountain, or of the 
world conceived as a whole, is no other than adven- 
titious ; the idea of a man of common size, which 
the mind amplifies according to pleasure, although 
the idea is more confused, the larger the size is con- 
ceived. So the idea of a pyramid, of a city, or any 
other thing never beheld, is no other than the adven- 
titious idea of some pyramid before seen, some city, or 
any other thing, formed in no other way, and from 
thence multiplied and in some confused manner (con- 
fusd ratione aliqua) compared. As to the species 
which you call innate, truly there seem to be none 
such, and those which are called such seem also to 
have an adventitious origin. I have it, you say, from 
my nature, that I understand what a thing is (quid 
sit res). Now I suppose you are not speaking here 
of the power of intelligence, about which there is no 
doubt nor question, but rather concerning the idea of 
a thing. You speak not even concerning the idea of 
any one particular thing, for the sun, this stone, all 
individuals, are things, the ideas of which you ac- 
knowledge not to be innate. You speak therefore of 
the idea of a thing universally considered, and as far 
as it is synonymous with an entity (cum ente), and 
in its utmost latitude (tarn late quam illud patef). 
But I ask how this idea can be in the mind, unless 



ON INNATE IDEAS. 185 

there are at the same time so many individual things, 
and their kinds, from which the mind abstracts and 
forms the conception, which is peculiar to none of the 
individuals, and yet is found in all. Truly, if the 
idea of a thing be innate, then also will be the idea of 
an animal, of a plant, of a stone, of all universals ; and 
there will be no need that we fatigue ourselves with 
distinguishing many individuals, where, their various 
differences being disregarded, we only retain that 
which shall be seen to be common to all, or, what is 
the same thing, the idea of the genus. You say also 
that you have it from your nature, that you under- 
stand what truth is, or, as I interpret, the idea of 
truth. Now, if truth be nothing else than a con- 
formity of judgment with a fact or thing (cum re), 
concerning which a judgment is made, truth is a cer- 
tain relation, and therefore nothing distinct from the 
facts and ideas so related to each other, or, what is 
the same, from the very idea of the fact or thing; 
since this represents both itself and the thing to which 
it belongs. Wherefore the idea of truth is no other 
than the idea of a thing, so far as it is conform- 
able to the thing itself, and so far as it represents 
the very thing, of what sort it is. Hence therefore, if 
the idea of a thing be not innate, but adventitious, 
so also the idea of truth is adventitious, not in- 
nate. And when that is understood concerning any 
individual truth whatsoever, it may be understood 
universally concerning truth, the notion or idea of 
which (as has been already observed of the idea of a 



186 DESCARTES AND GASSENDI 

thing) is drawn from the notions or ideas of the sin- 
gulars or individuals. You say further that you have 
from your own nature an understanding of what 
thought is. But as the mind, from the idea of one 
city, frames the idea of another, so from the idea of 
one action, as of vision, of taste, it may frame the idea 
of another, suppose, of thought itself. A certain 
analogy is indeed recognized among the knowing fa- 
culties, and one easily leads on to the knowledge of 
another. However, concerning the idea of thought 
(cogitationis) trouble need not be taken ; but concern- 
ing the idea of the mind itself, and so of the soul, if 
we should grant this to be innate, there will be no 
disadvantage in admitting the idea of thought to be 
also innate. We must wait however until the fact be 
proved concerning the mind or soul." 

There is much good philosophy in this. It opens 
well the whole question of the relation between com- 
plex ideas and abstract terms. On all subjects of 
thought, the mind advances most naturally from indi- 
viduals to universals, from particulars to generals. The 
embarrassments of metaphysicians, the useless and 
unsatisfactory nature of their disputes and writings, 
arise from their plunging at once into abstractions, 
which are of little account until they come to be 
referred to and explained by the particulars which 
they comprehend, from which they are drawn, and 
which are always comparatively intelligible. 

Descartes' response to these remarks of Gassendi 
is very indifferent. He explains not his theory of 



ON INNATE IDEAS. 187 

innate ideas : he fences with the objections, but does 
not meet them. In reply to the observation that the 
mind has power to divide, contract, amplify, and com- 
pare, and frames its general idea out of many particu- 
lars, he merely says, " In this way you may prove that 
no statues' were ever made by Praxiteles, since he had 
not from himself the marble, out of which he carved 
them ; and that you have not made these objections, 
because you have composed them in words not in- 
vented by yourself, but borrowed from others." This 
is evidently evasive. Nay, the allusion is unfortu- 
nate for Descartes. The question related not to the 
existence of mental power and intentions, but to the 
origin of conceptions. Whence had Praxiteles his idea 
of the figure which he designed to execute ? Yet it 
seems not to have occurred to Descartes nor to Gassen- 
di, in this question, to inquire into the manner in which 
words first become associated with ideas in the mind 
of a child, and in which the power of comprehending 
words, as used by others, and of using them with ad- 
vantage for oneself, is gradually acquired. Here, how- 
ever, in this use of associated signs, lies the first great 
lesson in the philosophy of the mind. But surely 
Gassendi seems much nearer to the truth than his 
antagonist. 

The word innate was from the first used vaguely, 
and continues toHbe so used ; while the question that 
underlies it is not yet fairly disposed of, because it is 
seldom fairly stated. From the general prevalence, 
or assumed universality, of an idea or belief in the 



188 DESCARTES AND GASSENDI 

minds of men at a mature age, or in a certain state 
of culture and civilization, it was customary, even in 
Cicero's time, to argue the idea to be innate, and the 
belief to be well founded. " Gum enim non institute 
aliquo, aut more, aut lege sit opinio constituta, nia- 
neatque ad unum omnium firma consensio : intelligi 
necesse est, esse deos, quoniam insitas eorum, vel po- 
tius innatas cognitiones habemus. De quo autem om- 
nium natura consentit, id verum esse necesse est. Esse 
igitur deos, confitendum est*." But the value of the 
' innata cognitio' comes to nothing, or is reduced to a 
vanishing quantity, when Cotta and Balbus, Velleius 
and Lucilius compare their views, and endeavour to 
arrive at a firm, and not an erring or vague, opinion 
of the gods. If they had innate knowledge, why 
should they still be inquiring and seeking ? 

Among the allies of Gassendi in this great contro- 
versy, there was one who approached him in the ex- 
tent of his erudition, and in the vigour and freedom 
of his intellect, Peter Daniel Huet, the Bishop of 
Avranches. In the 'Censura Philosophise Cartesianae' 
Huet thus expresses himself f : 

"Although Descartes hath stealthily taken that 
much-vexed sentiment, concerning innate ideas, from 
the Platonic philosophy, yet he has interpolated some- 
what, to make it appear different. Be it different, as 

* Cicero de Natura Deorum, 1. i. 17. 

f Translated from the Latin of the 4th edition : Paris, 1694 : pp. 
135, 140 : " Falsum est, esse aliquid in intellectu, quod non fuerit 
in sensu." 



ON INNATE IDEAS. 189 

you please, yet with equal certainty can I show it to 
be false. He has stated the genus of ideas in us to 
be threefold, as I have said above ; of which one is 
adventitious, such as the idea of the sun, which every 
man hath in himself from the visible sun ; another 
sort is factitious, such as that idea of the sun which 
astronomers entertain by their reasonings ; a third 
sort however is born with us, which he calls natural, 
of which sort are the ideas of God, of the mind, of 
the natures which are called essences, of geometrical 
formulae, of the axioms which mathematicians use, 
and of other things like to these. These natural ideas 
sometimes he declares to be nothing else than the 
very faculty of thinking, by which our mind hath its 
power (qua mens nostra pollef), and which in the 
schools they are wont to call the first act of thinking : 
yet he continually lays it down that these ideas are 
forms of thought ; but that the thoughts themselves, 
or, as they commonly say, the second act of thinking, 
arises from the faculty of thinking. But these things 
are plainly repugnant ; for if a thought arises from 
the faculty of thinking, of necessity the thought differs 
from the faculty of thinking, as that which is effected 
differs from its cause. Again, if an idea is a form of 
thought, since a form is one thing, and that of which 
it is the form is another, and as the soul of a man is dif- 
ferent from the man, so an idea is one thing, and thought 
(the power of thinking it, cogitatio), another. Thus 
Descartes recognizes three things in himself, which he 
had pronounced to be one and the same ; namely, the 



190 DESCARTES AND GASSENDI 

faculty of thinking, the thinking, and the idea. When 
however he discusses the idea of God, which we bear 
impressed upon the mind, this he maintains to be neither 
formed, nor possible to be formed, out of our own 
mind, but to be by God himself stamped and im- 
pressed in our mind, just as the idea of those axioms 
which are held immutable and eternal. But there is 
here a much greater discrepancy ; for if ideas are the 
faculty of thinking, then the idea of God is a faculty 
of thinking concerning God ; and the ideas of all 
other things, are but the faculty of thinking of those 
other things. But that faculty of thinking may be 
applied to all things whatsoever, and is one and the 
same faculty ; as the faculty of painting, whether it 
be applied to paint a tree or a house, is the same 
faculty. Whence it is a plain conclusion, that the 
idea of God, and the other ideas which he calls na- 
tural and innate, differ not from the factitious nor 
adventitious ideas. 

"But further, when Descartes writes in another place 
that those eternal ideas, such, namely, as geometrical 
axioms, are marked in our minds by God, as laws by a 
king in the minds of those who obey their command, he 
confesses a difference between ideas and the faculty of 
thinking. Let us however be indulgent to Descartes, 
and so favourably interpret his opinion, that an innate 
idea such, namely, as of God is a faculty engendered 
in our mind by a certain mode of thinking ; so that, 
as often as the mind shall reflect, the idea of God will 
arise in the mind. But not even thus will he extricate 



ON INNATE IDEAS. 191 

himself ; for how will the innate idea differ from the 
factitious or adventitious idea ? For the idea of Alex- 
ander, which is factitious, may be called with equal 
right a faculty engendered in the mind by a certain 
mode of thinking, by which, as often as a man shall 
reflect, the idea of Alexander will arise in it. Thus 
Descartes vacillates in the whole of his doctrine. 
Moreover, when he would prove that the mind needs 
not the aid of the senses to form ideas, he uses this 
argument that nothing reaches the mind by the aid 
and interposition of the senses, but certain corporeal 
motions, which the mind perceives to be not such as 
they really are in the senses; and further, that the 
ideas of motions and figures, and much more of pain, 
of colours, of sounds, and other like things, are en- 
gendered in us, and that the mind exhibits them to 
itself, as often as it is excited by those corporeal mo- 
tions, to which ideas have no similitude ; whence he 
infers that, since those ideas of outward objects may be 
innate, and not arise from external things, with greater 
reason may the same thing be said of common no- 
tions, or axioms, which are neither in external things, 
nor can have come to the mind by means of corporeal 
motions, or a message of the senses : for that the ex- 
ternal things, and those motions, and the senses, are 
individuals, but the axioms are universals, having no 
affinity with the motions and the senses. Now we 
confess that the ideas of external things are formed 
by the mind, after that it has been admonished by 
some corporeal motion, and a message of the senses 



192 DESCARTES AND GASSENDI 

struck by outward objects (sensuum a rebus eocternis 
impulsoruni). But we say that these corporeal mo- 
tions impress a stroke (plagam*), or mark upon the 
brain ; which touch or stroke, the mind, very closely 
conjoined to it, perceiving in the brain, by this admo- 
nition as it were, conceives and forms this or that idea, 
though before it existed not ; but by no means does 
it recognize it, as if it had a former existence. Nor 
can it moreover conceive or form any idea, unless it 
shall perceive a touch of it in the brain. Moreover 
universal ideas are taken from the singulars, since the 
mind, attending in many objects to the same quality, 
selects that from the many in which it was dispersed, 
gathers it into one, and thence forms its universal 
idea. As in Peter and John, and other individual 
men, perceiving that they are animals endowed with 
reason, but no longer regarding Peter nor John, nor 
any individual, it draws forth and composes into one 
what had been manifold, and thus forms that general 
and universal idea, and concludes that every man is a 
rational animal f." 



* Plaga was the word used by Democritus, as we learn from the 
short but interesting fragment of Cicero, De Fato, many of the 
phrases of which occur in this treatise of Huet. We learn from 
this fragment that Democritus, Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Aris- 
totle, were the necessarians, or fatalists of antiquity. " Aliam quan- 
dam vim motus habebunt a Democrito impulsionis, quam plagam 
ille appellat." Cicero, De Fato, 20. 

f Censura Phil. Cartes, p. 135-140. Descartes, 3rd Medit. ; and 
also Principles of Phil., part i. ch. 15, 16, 18 ; Letters, vol. ii. letter 
54, vol. i. 59, 104, 99. 



ON INNATE IDEAS. 193 

Hobbcs also touched the subject briefly; and in 
his tenth objection, and Descartes' reply, we see how 
the controversy stood. After contending, and with 
reason, that our ideas of the attributes of the Deity, 
his infinitude and independence, involve the previous 
notions of things finite and dependent, Hobbes thus 
concludes : " Moreover, when M. Descartes says that 
the idea of God is innate and resident in us, I wish 
much to know if the souls of those who sleep pro- 
foundly and without dream, think. If they think not, 
then they have no ideas and therefore there is no 
idea which can be born and residing in us, for that 
which is innate and resident in us is always present 
to our thought." This argument is not very conclu- 
sive, and Descartes replies : " None of those things 
which we attribute to God can come from external 
objects, comme d'une cause exemptaire ; for there is 
nothing in the Deity like to external, that is, to cor- 
poreal things. Now it is manifest that all which we 
conceive to be in God unlike to the external cannot 
come into our thought by the entrance of these same 
things, but only by means of the cause of this diver- 
sity, that is to say, of God. 

" And I ask here in what manner this philosopher 
infers the intellection of the Deity from externals. 
For myself I explain easily the idea which I have of 
it, in saying that by the word idea I understand the 
form of all perception ; for who is he that conceives 
anything which he perceives not, and yet who has 
not this form or this idea of intellection ? whence, ex- 

o 



194 DESCARTES AND GASSENDI 

tending it to the infinite, he forms the idea of the 
divine intelligence. And what I say of this perfection 
may be extended to all the rest. 

"Now, inasmuch as I have availed myself of the 
idea of God which is in us, to demonstrate his exist- 
ence, and as in this idea a power so immense is con- 
tained, that, if it be true that God exists, we conceive 
it repugnant to this truth, that anything else exists 
unless created by him, it follows clearly from the de- 
monstration of his existence that all the world that 
is to say, all things which exist different from God- 
have been created by him. 

" Finally, when I say that any idea is born with us, 
or that it is naturally imprinted in our souls, I do not 
understand that it is always present to our thought, 
for, so understanding, there could be none such ; but 
7" understand only that we have in ourselves the faculty 
of producing it*" 

These extracts place before us with sufficient clear- 
ness the state of opinion and of the controversy con- 
cerning innate ideas before and about Locke's time. 
We see why Locke began his Essay with the chapter 
on that subject. It was necessary to clear the ground, 
and thus prepare a good foundation for his own ac- 
count of the origin of all our knowledge. However 

* See '(Euvres de Descartes' by M. Jules Simon, pp. 207, 208. 
This volume contains the Discours sur la Methode, Meditations, 
Traite des Passions, with the controversial objections and replies in 
a very convenient form. The reader may also consult Degerando, 
' Histoire Comparee;' and the authors of the ' Dictionnaire,' upon 
the articles Descartes, Gassendi, and Leibnitz. 



ON INNATE IDEAS. 195 

we may regret that Locke has not given us more of 
historical reference to account for the course of his 
thoughts and investigations, his Essay owes its influ- 
ence very much to the fact that he discusses the sub- 
ject upon its merits, and without reference to autho- 
rity ; for, like Bacon, like Hobbes, like Descartes him- 
self, he made his own, whatever he thought or consi- 
dered true relating to the mind. It seems evident 
that Descartes was beaten from his ground ; that he 
had no theory which he could explain and support 
against objections ; that he had no sufficient criterion 
for distinguishing what was, from what was not, an 
innate idea ; nor was there much in him to which 
Locke could reply, and which deserved his particular 
attention. If all that is innate in us be the faculty 
of producing ideas, then every idea, howsoever got- 
ten, is equally entitled to that epithet. 

No eulogist of Descartes has attempted to show 
that he had any advantage over his adversaries in this 
controversy. It has been said by M. Jules Simon, 
that " Descartes' theory of innate ideas is at bottom 
only the thesis common to all rationalists, namely, 
that all our ideas do not grow out of observation, and 
of the operations performed by the mind upon the 
data of experience, but that there exists in us a supe- 
rior faculty, by which we seize at once some ideas and 
principles of an authority necessary, universal, and ab- 
solute. To this question all the great metaphysical 
questions attach themselves, or rather, this question 
decided, metaphysics are accomplished." But such 

o 2 



196 DESCARTES AND GASSENDI 

statements cannot be accepted as correct. The ques- 
tions at issue are changed by the introduction of new 
terms. The first negative has yet to be proved. The 
existence of some superior facjdty who ever denied ? 

" Must I contemplate this great man (says Cousin, 
in his ' Eloge de Descartes'), in spite of the circum- 
spection of his steps, wandering in his metaphysics, 
and creating his system of innate ideas? But this 
error belonged to his genius. Accustomed to pro- 
found meditations, habituated to live apart from the 
senses, to seek in the soul, or in the essence of the 
Deity, for the origin, the order, and the thread of his 
convictions (connaissances), could he suppose that the 
soul was entirely dependent on the senses for its ideas ? 
Was it not too degrading for it to be only occupied 
with running over the physical world to gather thence 
the materials of its knowledge, like the botanist who 
collects his plants, or to extract principles from sensa- 
tions, like the chemist who analyses bodies ? It was 
reserved for Locke to give us concerning ideas the 
true system of nature, by developing a principle known 
to Aristotle, and seized by Bacon, but of which Locke 
is not less the creator, for a principle is not created 
until it is demonstrated to men/' The candour and 
the fulness of this concession in Locke's favour may 
be accepted and admired, but how can it be reconciled 
with other passages of the eloquent author ? * 

Mr. Stewart gives to Descartes the proud title of 

* The 6loge by Cousin, prefixed to his edition of Descartes, would 
be read with more pleasure by many, if the name of Bacon were 



ON INNATE IDEAS. 197 

Father of the Experimental Philosophy of the Human 
Mind. But we have seen what Stewart also said of 
Reid, as the first who executed Bacon's plan in that 
department of study. Such praises are more specious 
than discriminative. Descartes is still, or rather, he 
is again the idol of the French literati, for he was not 
so in the days of Montesquieu and D'Alembert. His 
independence, originality, and abstractedness, his 
effort to rear anew a temple of truth, on a foundation 
of his own, designed to stand for ages as the asylum 
of faith and virtue, will always have a great charm for 
those who love to dwell in regions of speculation, and 
on heights far above the common level. But he built 
a castle in the air; he was the Phaeton of modern 
philosophy : his wings melt as he rises, and we see 
him at last sinking and baffled in waters too powerful 
for his strength. He aspired to construct, from ab- 
stract principles, a theory of the universe and a theory 
of the human mind, and he disdained to wait upon 
nature as a teacher, and to receive humbly the lessons 
of patient observation. Hence he paid no attention 
to the first simple elements of human thought and 
reasoning; he refused to look at them in the light 
in which the great thinkers of his own day were dis- 
posed to view them. Hence the value of every prin- 
ciple and premiss which he adopted was warmly 
contested by men as free from the prejudices of the 

substituted for that of Descartes. If we read twenty pages of the 
one and of the other consecutively, the superior richness, grasp, and 
power of Bacon's intellect becomes most striking. 



198 CAMPANELLA. 

schools as himself, and equally anxious for light and 
truth ; for the authority of Aristotle, or rather, of 
those who pretended to expound Aristotle, but sub- 
stituted their own vain cobwebs in his place, was 
clearly gone at the end of the sixteenth century. 
Nor do we owe his deposition to Descartes, though 
he gave to Aristotelianism its most fatal blow. Even 
Bacon was but a bright morning star, the harbinger 
of the coming day. He was only the master-spirit of 
an age rich in great minds minds prepared to appre- 
ciate and honour his genius, but whose lustre is not to 
be eclipsed in his beams. Such were the admirable 
Kepler, the excellent Galileo, the fertile and imagina- 
tive Campanella. Of the merits of his great contem- 
poraries Descartes showed not a little jealousy, and 
the methods of Galileo in particular he vainly cen- 
sured*. 

On Kepler and Galileo it is not for me to enlarge. 
Their memory has been embalmed by worthier hands. 
But the name of Campanella is less known ; and some 
notice of his worth and works may be acceptable to 
the reader. He entered largely and freely into meta- 
physical and speculative philosophy; he was among 
the first, not merely to discard authority, whether that 
of Aristotle or any other name, but to urge and sup- 
port appeals to nature, observation, reason, and expe- 
rience. His writings breathe an enlightened, philo- 

* See a passage in Maclaurin's account of Sir I. Newton's Disco- 
veries, ch. iii. p. 55, and the reference ; Descartes' Epistolse, part 2, 
Ep. 91. 



CAMPANELLA. 199 

sophic spirit, worthy of any age, and most remarkable 
in his own, touching, as they do, wisely and beauti- 
fully on the compatibility between the acceptance of an 
historical revelation, rightly interpreted, and the pro- 
foundest investigation of nature ; or as we should now 
express it, between reason and faith, between natural 
and revealed religion. The common English notices 
of him are taken almost entirely from Brucker. They 
do no justice to his vigorous and manly thought, to 
the lofty poetical tone of his mind, to the manner in 
which he broke loose from the chains of scholasticism, 
and, emerging from the darkest cell of the cloister, 
delighted to expatiate in the air, the light, the free- 
dom of the intellectual day then advancing towards 
meridian splendour. His opinion that matter is a 
battle-field, on which the two great principles of heat 
and cold are struggling for mastery, whose united or 
balanced operation produces the beautiful phenomena 
of the heavens, and the vegetation and animation of 
the earth, and his disposition to believe in astrology, 
or some influence of the stars on human character 
and fortunes, detract little from his merits, when we 
consider the state of opinion on such subjects in men 
of more repute long after his time. He was among 
the very first of continental thinkers to discern the 
greatness of the mind of Bacon, and the rich promise 
of his methods ; above all, he had the courage to stand 
forth as the warm defender of Galileo, against all the 
prejudices of his order and all the tyranny of Rome. 
Campanella was himself a prisoner in the Inquisition 



200 CAMPANELLA. 

for about thirty years, and we are told that he was 
seven times put to the rack. His chief pieces were 
composed while suffering under this long oppression. 
They were printed at Frankfort by Tobias Adami, 
who received them from his hands, who supplied him 
with such books as Gilbert's recent treatise on mag- 
netism, and whom he calls "nostrse philosophic Sym- 
nrista*." They are as striking a proof of the triumph 
of the mind over adverse fortune, of a chivalrous and 
unconquerable spirit, as the annals of philosophy af- 
ford. The 'Apology for Galileo/ in particular, wherein 
he discusses the question, whether the method of 
philosophizing which Galileo celebrates, favours or 
opposes the Sacred Scriptures, appears to me to rank 
among the noblest pleas for liberty of thought, 
among the sublimest, because earliest efforts for the 
emancipation of genius and true philosophy from the 
thraldom of tyrants and of bigots. Its calm, full 
sense, without the least extravagance, in answer to 
the timid prejudices and shallow sophistry of the 
Jesuits, the extensive knowledge and just apprecia- 
tion of classic and patristic literature displayed in it, 
are a perfect marvel for its time. Thus he breaks 
forth : " Galileus autem fidei fundamentis inhseret ; 
et de naturalibus loquitur sobrie, sicut testis obser- 
vationum, non sicut opinator, uti facit Aristoteles de 
cerebro suo; quare propter hoc laudandus est. In- 
firmatio enim infidelium dogmatum, et mendaciorum 
gentilium, est roboratio Christianismi, non eversio 

* See the De Sensu Rerum, p. 30. 



CAMPANELLA. 201 

theologiae." But it is difficult to select one passage, as 
the key-note, from a piece so much in harmony with 
the sentiments which devout and philosophic Chris- 
tians of every age and all churches have cherished. 
" That strain I heard was of a higher mood," are 
words forced upon the memory in the contemplation 
of so much wisdom, mingled with so much virtue, 
and both so much forgotten. Yet the imputations of 
atheism and insanity were hurled against him while 
living, and threw their dark shadow over his memory 
long after his decease. 

The just appreciation of Bacon found in the pre- 
face, by Tobias Adami, to Campanula's chief work, 
the four parts of ' Real Philosophy/ published in 
1623, two years before the appearance of the second 
part of Bacon's ' Instauratio Magna,' possesses singu- 
lar interest, the more so when contrasted with Des- 
cartes' unworthy silence, and total neglect of the great 
English Chancellor's works and fame. " Quod si ad 
finem deducetur sagacissimi philosophi Francisci Ba- 
conis de Verulamio Angliae Cancellarii ' Instauratio 
Magna,' opus suscipiendum et consideratione ut et 
auxilio dignissimum, apparebit fortassis ad metam 
nos tendere unam, cum iisdem certe vestigiis rerum 
per sensum et experientiam indagandarum incedere 
profiteamur, quamvis non dubitem quin longe plura 
et majora per inductiones diligentiores, quibus ille in- 
sistit, investigari, multaque emendari et elucidari rec- 
tius possunt." 

Those parts in Campanula's ' Real Philosophy 



202 DESCARTES. 

which treat of morals and politics, are truly remark- 
able for just and discriminating sentiment. In the 
Politics we have some anticipation of Hobbes without 
his extravagances, as in the statement that men are 
driven into communities by the stimulants of neces- 
sity, and for the purposes of the common defence. 
In the Morals we have a definition of virtue, perhaps 
as good as any that has been suggested since : " Vir- 
tus ergo regula est passionum, notionum, et affec- 
tionum animi, et operationurn ad certe acquirendum 
verum bonum, et fugiendum verum malum." And 
so again, " Vitium vero est enormitas affectionum et 
operationum erga malum tanquam in bonum ferens. 
In omni nam operatione vitiosa, est ignorantia vel in- 
advertentia, et odium boni et Dei interpretative." It 
may be said, indeed, that the verum bonum et malum 
themselves require a definition, but the reader of Cam- 
panella would be at no serious loss. " Entia cuncta 
propriam beatitudinem appetunt*." 

But to return to Descartes. With regard to his 

* Mr. Hallam has touched, in a few paragraphs, the merits and 
character of Campanella, with genuine and truthful taste ; but with- 
out mentioning the 'Apology for Galileo.' In the library of Dr. 
Williams, in Redcross-street, there is a valuable quarto, containing 
the 'Prodromus Philosophise Instaurandse' (Frankfort, 1617), with 
an admirable preface by Adami, addressed to the philosophers of 
Germany; the treatise ' De Sensu Rerum et Magia' (1620); the 
'Apologia pro Galileo' (1622) ; the 'Realis Philosophise Epilogisticse 
Partes Quatuor,' with the ' Civitas Solis,' a kind of philosophical ro- 
mance (1623). No volume affords better illustration of that renewed 
vigour of the human mind, which, commencing at the end of the fif- 
teenth, was destined to shine out in all its brilliancy through the 
whole of the seventeenth, century. 



DESCARTES. 203 

first position, " Cogito, ergo sum," there seems little 
propriety in the " ergo :" for who ever felt his own 
existence after that argument more strongly than be- 
fore ? The objections to it by his adversaries I can- 
not treat as merely cavils. It is not a necessary pre- 
miss for any other truth which is made to rest upon 
it. Every schoolboy may translate cogito, ' I am, or 
exist, thinking/ The first person of every other verb 
assumes, rather than proves, the existence of an active, 
percipient, and intelligent being. Surely the simple 
good sense of Locke is to be more admired, when he 
says, "As for our own existence, we perceive it so 
plainly and so certainly, that it neither needs nor is ca- 
pable of any proof*." And the language of Maclaurin 
is not less worthy of attention. "As we are certain 
of our own existence, and of that of our ideas, by in- 
ternal consciousness ; so we are satisfied, by the same 
consciousness, that there are objects, powers, or causes 
without us, and that act upon us. For in many of 
our ideas, particularly those that are accompanied 
with pain, the mind must be passive, and receive 
the impressions (which are involuntary) from external 
causes or instruments, that depend not upon us." 
Maclaurin, in the admirable first chapter of his se- 
cond book, on space, time, matter, and motion, also 
concisely touches the subject of cause and effect. 
" The mind is intimately conscious of its own activity 
in reflecting upon its ideas, in examining and arrang- 
ing them, in forming such as are complex from the 

* Essay, book iv. eh. 9. 



204 DESCARTES. 

more simple, in reasoning from them, and in its elec- 
tions and determinations. From this, as well as from 
the influence of external objects upon the mind, and 
from the course of nature, it easily acquires the ideas 
of cause and effect." These sentences diow us the 
influence of Locke's sober mental philosophy upon 
the tone of mind prevalent among the thoughtful and 
scientific about the middle of the last century. Its 
harmony with the Newtonian physical system of the 
universe is beautifully developed in Maclaurin's in- 
estimable volume ; and we remark with pleasure that 
the ' Principia' of Newton came forth in the same 
year (1687) in which Locke finished his Essay on the 
Understanding ; both maintaining that whatever is 
not deduced from phenomena is to be called an hypo- 
thesis ; and that hypotheses, whether physical or me- 
taphysical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, 
have no place in a just philosophy. 

Again, Descartes' argument for the necessary ex- 
istence of an eternal, infinite, intelligent First Cause, 
from the idea of such a being existing in our minds, 
to which there must be some outward correspondent, 
may give a slight satisfaction to one who has the idea 
already established in his mind, and who has been ac- 
customed to rest upon it, as an indubitable and in- 
valuable truth. But there is no evidence that it ever 
produced an impression on one previously inclined to 
disbelieve the existence of a Supreme Intelligence, 
whether from the difficulties involved in the concep- 
tion, or the disproportion between the subject and our 



DESCARTES. 205 

faculties, or the imperfection of the analogy between 
the human and divine works and designs. It has 
not been generally resorted to as a stronghold of con- 
viction, by the firmest and most devout Theists*. 

* Cud worth, whose 'Intellectual System' is the great treasury of 
learning on the history of Natural Religion, certainly was disposed 
to allow its full weight to every argument for the Being of a God. 
He considered, but he rejected, the new argument of Descartes. 
" It hath been asserted by a late eminent philosopher, that there is 
no possible certainty to be had of anything, before we be certain of 
the existence of a God essentially good ; because we can never 
otherwise free our minds from the importunity of that suspicion, 
which, with irresistible force, may assault them ; that ourselves 
might possibly be made, either by chance or fate, or by the pleasure 
of some evil demon, or at least of an arbitrary, omnipotent Deity, 
as that we should be deceived in all our most clear and evident per- 
ceptions ; and therefore in geometrical theorems themselves, and 
even in our common notions. But when we are once assured of the 
existence of such a God as is essentially good, who therefore neither 
will nor can deceive, then, and not before, will this suspicion utterly 
vanish, and ourselves become certain that our faculties of reason 
and understanding are not false and imposturous, but rightly made. 
From which hypothesis it plainly follows that all those Theists, who 
suppose God to be a mere arbitrary Being, whose will is not deter- 
mined by any nature of good, or rule of justice, but itself is the first 
rule of both (they thinking this to be the highest perfection, liberty, 
and power), can never be reasonably certain of the truth of anything, 
not so much as that two and two make four ; because, so long as 
they adhere to that persuasion, they can never be assured but that 
such an arbitrary, omnipotent Deity might designedly make them 
such as should be deceived in all their clearest perceptions. 

" Now, though there be a plausibility of piety in this doctrine, as 
making the knowledge of a God essentially good so necessary a 
1 prcecognitum* to all other science, that there can be no certainty of 
truth at all without it ; yet does that very supposition, that our un- 
derstanding faculties might possibly be so made as to deceive us in 
all our clearest perceptions (wheresoever it is admitted), render it 



206 DESCARTES. 

Even Cud worth and Clarke assign to all such demon- 
strations a priori, a negative, rather than positive 
value. It is also a just observation of Mr. Stewart, 
that even Descartes' argument, as he has expressed it 
at the end of his third Meditation, is not entitled to 

utterly impossible ever to arrive to any certainty concerning the 
existence of a God essentially good ; forasmuch as this cannot be 
any otherwise proved than by the use of our faculties of understand- 
ing, reason, and discourse. For to say that the truth of our under- 
standing faculties is put out of all doubt and question as soon as 
ever we are assured of the existence of a God essentially good, who 
therefore cannot deceive ; whilst this existence of a God is itself no 
otherwise proved than by our understanding faculties ; that is at 
once to prove the truth of God's existence from our faculties of rea- 
son and understanding, and again to prove the truth of those facul- 
ties from the existence of a God essentially good : this, I say, is 
plainly to move round in a circle, and to prove nothing at all ; a 
gross oversight, which the forementioned philosopher seems plainly 
guilty of. 

" Wherefore, according to this hypothesis, we are of necessity con- 
demned to eternal scepticism, both concerning the existence of a 
God, when, after all our arguments and demonstrations for the same, 
we must at length gratify the Atheists with this confession in the 
conclusion, that it is nevertheless possible there may be none ; and 
also concerning all other things, the certainty whereof is supposed 
to depend upon the certainty of the existence of such a God as can- 
not deceive." (Intellectual System, pp. 716, 717, 4to, edited by 
Birch, 1743.) A very obscure paragraph follows this maintaining 
that, "as to the universal and abstract theorems of science, the mea- 
sure and rule of truth concerning them must be native and domestic 
to the mind;" "that every clear and distinct perception is an en- 
tity or truth ; that the very essence of truth here is this clear per- 
ceptibility or intelligibility ; that in false opinions, the perception of 
the understanding power itself is not false, but only obscure ; that 
it is not the understanding power or nature in us that erreth, but it 
is we ourselves who err, -when we rashly and unwarily assent to 
things not clearly perceived by it." No sentences can prove more 



DESCARTES. 207 

be called a priori, since it is drawn from a certain 
phenomenon of the human mind, and professes to 
offer for it an adequate solution. 

Again, when Descartes makes clear and distinct 
perception the test of truth, because every such per- 

clearly than these how much Locke was wanted, to make us aware 
of the reality of the distinction between ideas, or the bare notions 
of things in the mind, and propositions relating to these ideas, for 
the purpose of reasoning and conviction, and of the falseness of the 
distinction between ourselves when we assent, however rashly, to 
error, and the understanding nature or power thus supposed to be 
always true to itself. Cudworth afterwards endeavours to make out 
an argument or demonstration for the existence of a God, from our 
idea of him, as including necessary existence in it some other ways ; 
and he gives us some anticipation of Dr. Clarke's a priori argument, 
with which, and with Descartes, it may be usefully compared. But 
he confesses that such argumentation, by reason of its subtlety, can 
do but little execution, nor had he any opinion of ' demonstration a 
priori,' as his preface shows. 

The Eev. F. D. Maurice, in the article on Mental Philosophy, in 
the 'Encyclopaedia Metropolitana,' intimates that the Platonists of 
England in the latter part of the eighteenth century, Cudworth, 
Henry More, John Smith, and Worthington, should rather be called 
Cartesians, on account of the tendency and character of their specu- 
lations. But he gives no evidence for this. The foregoing extract 
shows how much Cudworth was opposed to Descartes upon a main 
point. The sweet-tempered Henry More, in whom Platonism as- 
sumes an interesting and captivating form, though an admirer and 
correspondent of Descartes, was by no means disposed to put him 
on a level with Plato and Plotinus. In the antidote against Atheism, 
he declines to rest the being of a Grod upon an argument so frail as 
that of Descartes, and in his Divine Dialogues, which, though vapid 
perhaps for our modern taste, have yet many divine passages in 
them, prelusions of the best parts of Paley's ' Natural Theology,'- 
speaking of Descartes' rash and frivolous attempt to explain the 
phenomena of nature and the universe by mechanical principles, as 
a design never to prove successful, Hylobares, the materialist, asks, 



208 DESCARTES. 

ception has God for its author, and God cannot be a 
deceiver, at the same time admitting that we are in 
many things the victims of error, even when we think 
we have clear evidence, this is either an obvious so- 
phism, or an arbitrary principle, whose value has never 
been acknowledged by successors. It has not contri- 
buted to the solution of any difficulties, nor the settle- 
ment of any disputes. 

Yet these are the chief principles of the 'Prima 
Philosophia/ Upon the whole they have passed into 
much the same oblivion as the physical principles of 
the ingenious, but not very candid nor high-minded 
author. Though candour compels us to acknowledge, 
and with gratitude, that he rendered most signal ser- 
vice to psychological philosophy by turning the mental 
vision inward upon itself, and accustoming us to watch 
the operations of our intellect, yet " the Cartesian phi- 
losophy, in one sense/' says Mr. Hallam* excellently 
well, "carried in itself the seeds of its own decline. 
It was the Scylla of many dogs ; it taught men to 
think for themselves, and to think often better than 
Descartes had done." 

"Why, where does Cartesius fail?" and lie is answered by Philo- 
theus, who certainly speaks the sentiments of More, " Nay, rather 
tell me, where he does not ? " Smith and Worthington have left 
nothing behind them but some select discourses, those of the latter 
scarcely remembered. Norris, a name that may be associated with 
these, though an Oxford man of later times, in his 'Ideal World,' 
appears as a genuine Platonist, and censures Descartes severely 
(ch. vi. 3). Descartes does not appear to have had in England 
any eminent disciple. 
* History of Literature, vol. iv. p. 206. 



DESCARTES. 209 

The Meditations of Descartes evidently suppose a 
mind already in an advanced state of culture. Such 
a mind only can propose the doubts, entertain the 
ideas, and follow the reasonings, which he treats as if 
they were the natural and primary conditions of every 
thinking being. Now of such a mind, long accus- 
tomed to abstract speculations, and nurtured in the 
atmosphere of schools, many things are true which 
could not safely be predicated of the mind of an 
infant, of the savage, or of the uninstructed, to say 
nothing of idiots and the half developed. As com- 
pounds in chemistry, and in the great chemistry of 
nature, like air and water, have qualities wholly differ- 
ent from those of the elements of which they are com- 
posed, and of these elements, as they exist apart, no 
trace is indicated until after patient and minute ana- 
lysis, so in the mind, the affections and powers ha- 
bitual to the full-grown and healthily- developed intel- 
lectual and moral character, and which have become 
a second nature, appear to have nothing in common 
with the elementary sensations and feelings out of 
which they really arise, and which alone are discerni- 
ble in the infant, when first it opens its eyes to the 
light, and begins to make acquaintance with the world 
and with itself*. 

* I cannot quit Descartes without fortifying what has been said 
by the remarks of Leibnitz, who was accused of wishing to build 
his own reputation upon the ruins of that of M. Descartes. " II est 
vrai cependant que M. Descartes a use d'artifice, pour profiter des 
decouvertes d'autres sans leur en vouloir paroitre redevable. II trai- 
toit d'excellens homines d'une maniere injuste et indigne, lorsqu'ils 

P 



210 



GASSENDI S INFLUENCE UPON LOCKE. 

Though the independence and originality of Des- 
cartes' speculations early attracted the sympathy of 
Locke, and were much preferred by him to the 
cloudy utterances of the Aristotelians and schoolmen 
still in repute and authority when Locke was a stu- 
dent at Oxford, it does not appear that Descartes 
suggested to Locke any one of the principles which 
constitute the vital parts of the Essay on the Human 
Understanding. Descartes and the Cartesians, if 
noticed at all by Locke, are noticed unfavourably*. 
But Gassendi, a name unnoticed in Dr. Reid's In- 
quiry into the Human Mind, the friend and admirer 
of Hobbes, carne, as already intimated, much nearer 
to the views which Locke took of the manner in which 

lui faisoient ombrage, et il avoit une ambition demesuree pour 
s'eriger en chef de parti. Mais cela ne diminue point la beaute de 
ses pensees. Bien loin d'approuver qu'on meprise et qu'on paye 
d'ingratitude le vrai merite, c'est cela que je blame principalement 
en M. Descartes, et encore plus en plusieurs de ses sectateurs, dont 
attaehement mal entendu a un seul auteur, nourrit la prevention, 
et les empeche de profiter des lumieres de tant d'autres. J'ai cou- 
tume de dire que la Philosophic Cartesienne est comme ranticham- 
bre de la verite, et qu'il est difficile de penetrer bien avant, sans 
avoir passe par-la : mais on se prive de la veritable connoissance du 
fond des choses, quand on s'y arrete." Leibnitii Opera, Erdmanns 
edition, p. 142. 

* See particularly b. iii. c. 4. 9, 10 ; b. iv. c. 7. 12, 13 ; and 
second reply to Bishop of Worcester, p. 755. The names of Gas- 
sendi and Bernier, having been mentioned by Stillingfleet, are in- 
troduced in Locke's second reply to the bishop, but without a hint 
of his personal acquaintance with the latter, or of any attachment 
to the writings of the former. 



GASSENDl's INFLUENCE UPON LOCKE. 211 

the understanding comes to be furnished with those 
ideas it has, and even anticipated Locke in his great 
division of the two sources of knowledge, sensation 
and reflection; at least the division follows naturally 
from what Gassendi had laid down, though it be not 
anywhere expressly made with the simplicity and clear- 
ness of his successor. Gassendi was, I conceive, the 
true intellectual parent of Locke ; that Leibnitz was 
of this opinion seems evident from the first page of 
his 'Nouveaux Essais sur rEntendement Humain;' 
but it is a question, difficult of solution, to what ex- 
tent Locke was sensible of the parentage and his obli- 
gations, or when and where he studied the writings of 
Gassendi, and made acquaintance with his philosophy. 
Some regret may reasonably be felt at the slight- 
ness of the information which can now be recovered, 
respecting Locke's early studies*. He had read 

* The life by the late Lord King adds little to what was known 
of him previously in this respect. It wants the care and complete- 
ness of a good literary and philosophical biography. It might have 
been enriched by many extracts from the correspondence of Locke 
with Molyneux, Limborch, and others, first published in 1706, and 
appended to Law's quarto edition, the only good one. It even omits 
some important facts, mentioned by Le Clerc, in the Life which is 
the foundation of Law's, such as the times when he took his degrees 
at Oxford. The whole of Le Clerc's life of Locke should have been 
given with additional notes, and especially its beautiful conclusion, 
only a part of which is taanslated. Yet we must be thankful for the 
extracts from the journals, notes, and adversaria of Locke, never 
before printed ; and accept the life as, upon the whole, an appropri- 
ate tribute from an honourable descendant of a branch of his family, 
to the memory of a great and justly -revered ancestor. The sweet 
account of Locke's last hours and death was doubtless communicated 

p 2 



212 GASSENDl's INFLUENCE UPON LOCKE. 

much more than can be traced, for he never makes 
any display of learning. Like Bacon, like Hobbes, 
like Descartes, he made his own, whatever he had 
learnt and believed on the subjects of his special in- 
vestigation. His early residence at Oxford and in 
the neighbourhood, his journeys thither to consult the 
libraries, his occasional allusions to the best and most 
curious books of his day, to the pursuits of naturalists 
and the discoveries of travellers, and his intimacy with 
the most distinguished, learned, and scientific of his 
contemporaries, render it certain that no important 
source of information was overlooked by him ; and it 
is manifest that Gassendi, after Hobbes, though per- 
haps in a manner forgotten by himself, had smoothed 
the way for the conclusions relating to the mind, 
which make the chief figure in the second book of 
the Essay. 

No part of Stewart's Dissertation* is less satisfac- 
tory than that which relates to Gassendi. He attri- 
butes to him the opinion "that there is not a single 
object of the understanding, which may not be ulti- 
mately analysed into sensible images, and, of conse- 
quence, that when Descartes proposed to abstract from 
these images in studying the mind, he (Gassendi) re- 

to Le Clerc by Lady Masham, the author of the first life of Locke 
in the ' General Historical Dictionary,' which life may have been 
the foundation of the careful but not too favourable biography 
which we have in the ' Biographia Britannica.' We learn this from 
a pleasing account of Lady Masham in a scarce book, 'Ballard's 
Lives of Illustrious Ladies of England.' 
* See pp. 70-74. 



GASSENDl's INFLUENCE UPON LOCKE. 213 

jected the only materials out of which it is possible 
for our faculties to rear any superstructure." He pro- 
fesses to use Gassendi' s own language, but without 
reference, in the words that " there is no real distinc- 
tion between imagination and intellection." And 
again he asserts " that the main scope of Gassendi's 
argument against Descartes is to materialize that class 
of our ideas which the Lockists as well as the Carte- 
sians consider as the exclusive objects of the power of 
reflection ; and to show that these ideas are all ulti- 
mately resolvable into images or conceptions borrowed 
from things external. It is not therefore what is 
sound and valuable in this part of Locke's system, 
but the errors grafted on it in the comments of some 
of his followers, that can justly be said to have been 
borrowed from Gassendi. Nor has Gassendi the 
merit of originality, even in these errors ; for scarcely 
a remark on the subject occurs in his works but what 
is copied from the accounts transmitted to us of the 
Epicurean metaphysics." 

This is wholly unfounded. Mr. Stewart was un- 
acquainted with Bender's abridgment of Gassendi; 
and could not have been a diligent reader of the 
works in folio, or these very serious misrepresenta- 
tions, which have not escaped the just animadversion 
of Mr. Hallam*, could not have been made. 

It appears that Locke was resident in and about 
Amsterdam in 1680, and for some years after. The 
Revolution of 1688 enabled him to return with satis- 

* History of Literature, vol. iv. p. 199. 



214 GASSENDl's INFLUENCE UPON LOCKE. 

faction to his country, which then, and greatly by his 
aid, redeemed itself from its disgrace, and escaped the 
greatest of calamities. Holland was at that time in a 
remarkable degree the country of free thought, deep 
learning, and ardent literature. At Amsterdam the 
' Meditations' of Descartes and the comments of Gas- 
sen di and his allies had been published as early as 
1 644 ; and Locke was intimate with all those scholars 
in Prance and on the continent, to whom the contro- 
versy between Descartes and his antagonists was likely 
to be familiar. We find from the Journal, portions of 
which are printed in Lord King's Life*, that when in 
Paris in the year 1677, Locke was very intimate with 
Monsieur Bernier, who must have been busy about 
that time with his abridgment of the * Philosophy' of 
Gassendi, published at Lyons in 1678. Although the 
conversations noted in the Journal turned only upon 
the travels in the East, by Bernier, of which sort of 
books Locke was particularly fond; yet it is natural 
to suppose that they discussed fully and freely the 
metaphysical questions, in which both were so deeply 
interested and engaged. Before this, when at Lyons 
in 1676, Locke mentions an interview with a Mr. 
Charlton ; and this was probably some relation of the 
Dr. Walter Charlton f, eminent in London as a physi- 

* Vol. i. p. 136. 

t Among the Birch MSS. relating to Locke, in the British 
Museum, there is a letter to one William Charleton, dated 1687. 
Walter Charlton was physician to Charles I., and the author of 
several publications. He printed, in 1670, ' Epicurus' Morals,' col- 
lected out of his own Greek text in Diogenes Laertius, prefixing an 



TOT 



GASSENDI'S INFLUENCE UPON LOCJ 

cian, who published ' Enquiries into Human Nature' 
chiefly anatomical, and an account of the ' Philoso- 
phy' of Gassendi. That Gassendi's name and works 
were in high esteem in England, at least among the 
deeper students and freest thinkers, before and about 
Locke's time, is evident from the manner in which he 
is noticed by the eminent Robert Boyle, in which Jo- 
seph Glanvil * often speaks of him, and from the pub- 
lications of Walter Charlton. The plan of Locke's 
Essay was indeed formed as early as 1770, and a 
sketch of it was then made, so that it could hardly 
have been from Bernier's abridgment that he acquired 
such knowledge of Gassendi's * Philosophy' as he may 
have had. But a few passages from the sixth volume 
of that abridgment will show how completely Locke 
harmonized with Gassendi, and how nearly he was 

apology for Epicurus, as to Ms three capital offences : first, that he 
held the souls of men are mortal ; secondly, that man is not obliged 
to worship God from hope of good or fear of evil, but rather on 
account of his transcendent excellency, beatitude, and immorta- 
lity ; thirdly, that self-homicide may be an act of heroic fortitude in 
cases of intolerable calamity. He also published, in 1654, a small 
folio, entitled " Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charltoniana ; or a 
fabric of science natural upon the hypothesis of atoms : founded by 
Epicurus, repaired by Petrus G-assendus, augmented by "W. Charl- 
ton." This work must be very rare, the only copy I could find 
being in the library of Sion College. 

* See Glanvil's Essay on ' Scepticism and Certainty,' pp. 38, 39, 
(1676), where he praises the renowned Gassendi, as a philosopher 
with whom he (Glanvil) is not fit to be named, and defends him from 
the charge of reviving a deadly scepticism. Also Life of the Hon. 
R. Boyle, by Birch, p. 80, where, in a letter to Hartlib, the friend 
of Milton, he calls Gassendus " a great favourite." 



216 GASSENDl's INFLUENCE UPON LOCKE. 

anticipated in that great division of the two sources 
of our ideas, which has been generally supposed to be 
Locke's own. 

Gassendi was for his day, an excellent anatomist, 
physiologist, and astronomer. His analytical remarks 
on the senses, the organs, the brain, the nerves, and 
on the ideas imparted to the mind through them, and 
thence deposited in the memory and the imagination, 
are acute, profound, instructive. He passes in the 
fourth book to discuss the understanding or reason- 
able soul; and the titles of the chapters, the very first 
words, convict Mr. Stewart of great misapprehension. 

" The first proof that the understanding is not ma- 
terial," says Gassendi, " is drawn from certain exer- 
tions of that faculty, which are evidently different from 
those of the imagination ; and we expressly commence 
this Treatise with this remark, in order to remove a 
prejudice which may be held, that the understanding 
is not a faculty distinct from the fancy or imaginative 
power, and that there is no difference between them 
but of more or less. But I maintain that we raise 
ourselves by reasoning to a knowledge of that which 
we cannot imagine, of which we can have no image 
nor appearance present to the mind, whatever efforts 
we may make, and that thus there is in us a species 
of intellection which is not imagination" 

After adducing as examples the conclusions which, 
by astronomical science, we are led to form concern- 
ing the sizes and relations of the heavenly bodies, he 
adds, " It is true that the understanding avails itself 



GASSENDl's INFLUENCE UPON LOCKE. 217 

of the image of fancy, as of certain steps, to arrive by 
reasoning at a knowledge of things, which it under- 
stands afterwards without appearances or phantasms, 
but it is in order to lift itself thereby above every 
material form, and to know effectively something of 
which it has no phantasm ; and this it is which marks 
as immateriality." He finds a second reason for its 
immateriality in those reflex actions, by which the 
understanding knows itself and its functions : "La 
seconde raison se prend des actions reflexes, par les- 
quelles I'entendement se connoit soi-mesme, et ses 
fonctions, et connoit specialement qu'il connoit ou en- 
tend : car cela est au-dessus de toute faculte corpo- 
relle, d'autant que ce qui est corporel ne scauroit se 
mouvoir vers soi-mesme qui soit different de lui. Et 
c'est la la cause de cet axiome, ' que rien riagit sur 
soi-mesme;' ce qui semble quelquefois agir sur soi 
n'etant jamais absolument le mesme, mais seulement 
une partie qui agit sur Fautre, comme lorsque la main 
frappe la cuisse, ou que Fextremite du doigt frappe le 
dedans de la main ; car du reste Fextremite du doigt 
ne peut pas agir sur elle-rnesrne*." As a third rea- 
son he gives the power of forming universal notions 
and of comprehending the nature of universality ; "for 
as it is the nature of universals to be abstract or de- 
spoiled of all material conditions and individual dif- 
ferences, such as greatness, figure, colour, etc., it is 
certain that the understanding which considers this 
abstraction is itself disengaged from matter, and of 
* Vol. vi. p. 345. 



218 GASSENDl's INFLUENCE UPON LOCKE. 

a nature more eminent than anything material;" as 
a fourth, the consideration that if the understanding 
were corporeal, it would never have recognized, as 
it does, nor supposed, any incorporeal nature ; and a 
fifth from the Will, which raises itself to honourable 
good, which disdains a good merely sensible and cor- 
poreal, and is above all appetites attached merely to 
matter. 

He adds, as a sixth consideration in support of the 
immateriality of the mind, the disproportion and dif- 
ference between the attributes or properties of matter 
and those of the understanding. 

" Granting that matter be reduced into atoms, or 
if you will, into particles, small, hard, or soft as you 
please, however small, subtle, and fine they may be, 
they will never be found capable but of three proper- 
ties, figure, solidity, or local movement, whence spring 
those other properties marked by these two verses : 

' Intervalla, vise, convexus, pondera, plagse, 
Concursus, motus, ordo, positura, figurse;' 

that is to say, a certain concourse, order, and arrange- 
ment, a certain disposition of movements, separations, 
impulses, reflexes, etc. ; and the human mind will never 
conceive them capable of anything else, 

" This being so, I ask, if we can discern any relation 
or proportion between these properties, and the excel- 
lence of the operations of an understanding ; or if it 
is possible that certain small bodies, very imperfect, 
and which have as the appendage of their nature no- 
thing but to be figured, round, square, pyramidal, 



GASSENDl's INFLUENCE UPON LOCKE. 219 

etc., solid, hard, and impenetrable, and to be capable 
of passing from one place to another, whether these 
have any relation to what we call thought, knowledge, 
meditation, reasoning, self-reflection. Never will you 
persuade me that when we contemplate the infinite 
extension of this universe, and thence see the absolute 
necessity of admitting some Eternal Being, God, or 
first principles, or both; when we inquire what are 
the first principles of things, or what we are ourselves, 
and the nature of our understanding, whether it be a 
substance corporeal or incorporeal ; when we remem- 
ber the past, consider the present, and anticipate the 
future ; when by a long chain of propositions, which 
we view as a whole, we thence arrive at demonstra- 
tions which have in them something of divinity ; when 
we converse one with another ; when we dispute, rea- 
son, and reflect on our reasonings ; never, I say, will 
you persuade me that in these lofty moods of mind, 
these inward efforts, these profound meditations, there 
is nothing within us but certain mixtures of small 
bodies, and that all this takes place only by means of 
shocks and counter- shocks, meetings and separations 
of these same small atoms, destitute of all feeling and 
all intelligence." 

He concludes his first chapter with discussing the 
probability of a substantial difference between the 
sensitive and the reasonable soul, and the impossibi- 
lity of fixing the seat, and even comprehending the 
nature, of pure intellection. 

In the second chapter he argues in favour of the 



220 GASSENDl's INFLUENCE UPON LOCKE. 

immortality of the human understanding, from the 
general consent of mankind in the belief of it, from 
the universality of the desire, and from the just go- 
vernment of God ; he examines objections, and justly 
censures the opinion of Descartes as a very strange 
foundation for a Christian verity that brutes do not 
feel, and are only machines. In the subsequent chap- 
ters he discusses the functions, habitudes, and perfec- 
tions of the understanding, in what respects it is dif- 
ferent from the senses, how it arrives at the know- 
ledge of universals, which knowledge or science is 
particularly the business of the intellect, and which 
(viz. universals) are much more easy of definition 
than individuals whose specific differences are not 
easily discerned and described. 

But Gassendi was a devoted admirer of Epicurus, 
and Mr. Stewart condemns him for servility in his at- 
tachment to that ancient. Weakness ^there may be 
in the excessive admiration of an unworthy object ; 
but servility, which is the being servant to another, 
and compliance with his will through fear or base- 
ness, there can hardly be. Attachment to the me- 
mory or the principles of a departed worthy may be 
misplaced, but there can be nothing servile in what is 
purely disinterested and sincere. The sty of Epicurus 
is in very bad repute ; but there is more affectation of 
delicacy than real discernment in the shock which the 
imagination of it gives to the nervous system. The 
Apostle Paul encountered at Athens certain of the 
Epicureans and Stoics ; but we have not been fa- 



GASSENDl's INFLUENCE UPON LOCKE. 221 

voured with means of judging to which party his 
sympathies leaned. If the Stoic aimed merely at in- 
sensibility to pain as the perfection of his being, this 
is evidently but the perfection of a stone, hardly that 
of the sloth. The nature of every man decides in 
favour of a state of positive pleasure. The pleasures 
of Epicurus, however, were by no means sensual. 
His habits were simple; his life was pure; his plea- 
sures were those of friendship, conversation, and phi- 
losophy. He seems to have erred by placing happi- 
ness too much in indolence of body and mere tran- 
quillity of mind. Labour and exertion he regarded 
as among the worst of evils. He dreaded the excite- 
ment so often coveted. He did not perceive that the 
highest enjoyment results from the energetic pursuit 
of worthy objects. Therefore he exempted the gods 
from interest in human affairs ; and the evils of hu- 
man life appeared to him a valid objection to the 
doctrine of a Providence, as occasioning pain to con- 
template and trouble to remove them. But the utili- 
tarian philosopher, whether of Hartley's, Paley's, or 
Benthain's school, who believes happiness the end 
alike of the Divine government and self-government, 
of human laws and of private ethics, must sympathize 
with Epicurus, and value especially his two last princi- 
ples, " that all pleasure, which either hinders a greater 
pleasure, or procures a greater pain, ought to be the 
object of our aversion ; and that all pain that dispels 
a greater pain, or makes way for a greater pleasure, 
ought to be coveted." Whoever compares the philo- 



222 GASSENDl's INFLUENCE UPON LOCKE. 

sophy, physical or moral, of Zeno and Epicurus, in 
the accounts left us by Diogenes Laertius*, the chief 
authority, will see reason to prefer the latter, as pos- 
sessing more distinctness and more consistency, more 
truth, simplicity, and exactness in terms and defini- 
tions, more of what Lucretius calls naturae species, 
ratioque ; and will sympathize in the enthusiasm of 
the poet, when he breaks out 

" Te sequor, 6 Graise gentis decus ! inque tuis mine 
Ficta pedum pono pressis vestigia signis. 

Floriferis ut apes in saltibus omnia limant, 
Omnia nos itidem depascimur aurea dicta, 
Aurea, perpetua semper dignissima vita." 

Lucretius, lib. iii. 

Without injustice to the proud virtues of the stoical 
wise man, we may, with Gassendi, with Charlton, 
and perhaps Glanvil, assign to Epicurus that superior 
discernment in the elements of morals, which Bacon 
and Newton certainly allotted to him in the depart- 
ment of physics. "The purest religion is the most 
refined Epicurism," said Lavater, in those aphorisms 
admired in the last century : " he who in the smallest 
given time can enjoy most of what he never shall re- 
pent, and what furnishes enjoyments still more unex- 

* The edition of Diogenes Laertius, in two volumes, Amsterdam, 
1692, professedly edited by Meibomius, but whose value appears 
greatly owing to the Dutch printer, Henry Wetstein, is one of those 
beautiful books which, like the edition of the Greek Testament, 
about half a century later, by John James Wetstein, with its in- 
valuable prolegomena, fills us with astonishment at the learning, 
industry, and taste of the scholars of a former age. 



GASSENDl's INFLUENCE UPON LOCKE. 223 

hausted, still less changeable, is the most religious and 
the most voluptuous of men." The pious Doddridge 
expresses the same idea in the well-known lines 

" Live, while you live ! the Epicure may say, 
And give to pleasure e'en the longest day. 
Live, while you live ! the Christian also cries, 
And give to God each moment as it flies. 
Lord, in my view let both united be, 
I live to pleasure, while I live to Thee." 

The association of ah 1 duty and labour with perma- 
nent happiness, cannot be too early, nor too strongly 
impressed upon the mind, as the real foundation and 
true safeguard of virtuous habit, the principle and 
centre to which all morality and religion gravitate, 
embracing alike the law of nature and of nations, the 
civil law and the Divine law, the interest of the indi- 
vidual and of the race. We trace the incipient appre- 
ciation of this principle in the Nicomachean ethics of 
Aristotle, no less than in the promising investigations 
of Epicurus ; but the full development of it is one of 
the great triumphs of modern mental and moral sci- 
ence. Humboldt has beautifully observed, that it was 
only after the promulgation of Christianity that a true 
perception of the grandeur and beauty of natural sce- 
nery, a feeling for the harmony and loveliness of nature, 
manifested itself in oratory and poetry, and became 
an element of pure devotion. To the same source of 
influence may doubtless be attributed that fuller de- 
velopment of the established connection between the 
Divine will and human happiness, between the secu- 
rity of individual and the pursuit of social good, which 



224 GASSENDI'S INFLUENCE UPON LOCKE. 

shines out with dazzling splendour in the Theodicy and 
optimism of Leibnitz, and in Hartley's rule of life. 

But with Gassendi's Epicureanism, be its worth or 
weakness what it may, Locke had nothing to do. He 
has made no allusion to it, nor are we concerned with 
it, except in so far as without some notice our esti- 
mate of Gassendi would be incomplete. We have 
now seen that sensation, and the reflex acts of the 
mind upon itself, were principal subjects of Gassendi's 
attention in considering the human frame and consti- 
tution. Yet it cannot be said that he laid down the 
two sources of all our knowledge with anything like 
the distinctness of his great successor, whose simple 
statement has enabled us to speak with comparative 
precision of the world or qualities of matter, on the 
one hand, and of the powers and affections peculiar 
to the mind, upon the other. In reading Gassendi, 
as in the study of the ancients generally, we appre- 
ciate him better by the light of knowledge which we 
bring to interpret the expression. The rays of all in- 
telligence shine brighter, whatever stars are out in our 
hemisphere, in proportion as the atmosphere of the 
observer is free from cloud, and the organ of vision 
itself is pure and strong. 

Gassendi was the friend and warm admirer of 
Hobbes, and Hobbes is considered pre-eminently a 
sensationalist. But before I touch this line of mental 
genealogy, I shall revert to the true nature and in- 
trinsic merits of Locke's first book on innate ideas. 



225 



LOCKE'S FIRST BOOK ON INNATE IDEAS DEFENDED. 

Those who talk of the deep moral instincts and 
the "a priori intuitions" of our nature, in so far as by 
this language they imply that antecedently to obser- 
vation and reflection, and independently of thought 
and instruction, the human mind is in possession of 
certain fundamental truths, axioms, principles, or feel- 
ings, whose value is to be assumed rather than weighed, 
which evaporate rather than become condensed and 
solid under any process of logical analysis, cannot ad- 
mit that Locke has demonstrated the non-existence of 
innate ideas. Yet the demonstration is very simple. 
Our ideas are either simple or complex. Into these 
two classes they have been divided, and the division 
is intelligible and useful ; and may be regarded as 
complete, till a more inteUigible and useful be sug- 
gested. Now, if we have not a simple idea of sensa- 
tion, not the idea of a single object of nature, nor of 
any quality of matter, before we have been affected 
from without by an object imparting such sensation ; 
if the ideas of colours, of sounds, tastes, smells, sup- 
pose senses, and impressions on the senses, without 
which the ideas would not exist ; if extension, motion, 
hardness, softness, solidity, liquidity, squareness, 
roundness, are terms significant of many impres- 
sions on the senses, and imply the existence of bodies 
moved, extended, square, round, etc., bodies having the 
qualities and imparting the ideas to which we give 
these names ; a fortiori, we cannot have any innate 

Q 



226 DEFENCE OF LOCKE'S 

complex idea, such as of drunkenness, theft, matri- 
mony, diplomacy, war, and all the ideas of social and 
moral relation, ideas of government and law, all which 
Locke calls mixed modes ; fox every complex idea will 
be found to imply the previous existence of many 
sensations, of the relation of sensations and feelings 
to each other, and to mental states, that is, to per- 
cipient and sensitive natures. And what term is there 
significant of a mental state or mental power, which 
does not imply the previous existence of a vast sphere 
of sensation, observation, and experience ? In such 
a sphere, memory, comparison, reflection, desire, will, 
choice, imagination, anticipation, and so on, find the 
occasions of their exercise, life its school of disci- 
pline, and the intellectual faculties their soil of growth 
or of decay. And although the combination of sim- 
ple ideas, and the perception of their relation to one 
another and to mental states, to all the wants and con- 
ditions of humanity, be the act and property of the 
mind itself, no complex idea can be considered innate 
which is resolvable into simple ideas admitted to come 
by way of sensation from without, and to which the 
previous existence of the simple ideas is essential. 

There is another consideration, or another mode of 
putting the argument. Is it true that all our ideas 
relate either to the properties of matter, or properties 
of mind ? that we cannot conceive of any subject of 
thought not comprised within one or other of these 
two classes ? that these comprise the ego and non ego y 
the moi and non-moi, as some now express it, but with 



FIRST BOOK ON INNATE IDEAS. 227 

less of useful distinction and preciseness ? God, na- 
ture, and man, or the mind, complete, according to 
Bacon, the circle of the sciences. Now, of the pro- 
perties of matter no one would pretend any know- 
ledge or idea without sensation. To be the subject 
of sensation, to have a sensation, is the first act or 
condition of the percipient created mind, the first phe- 
nomenon of consciousness. But perception or per- 
cipiency cannot be conceived to exist without some- 
thing perceptible existing without or independently ; 
for even the relations of truth, a perception of the 
harmony or disagreement of ideas, in so far as ideas 
are regarded as separate entities, may be viewed as 
something independent of the mind perceiving those 
relations and that harmony. Even the percipiency of 
the Divine mind is not conceivable, and the terms 
expressive of the Divine attributes are without mean- 
ing, except as they have relation to an outward sen- 
sible universe, that is, a universe occupied by beings 
whose relations to each other are totally different from 
those which they bear to the Creator, which relations 
are the subject of distinct consideration and know- 
ledge. No power is conceivable without a sphere in 
which it is exercised, without things or beings acted 
upon ; no goodness without beings to whom good is 
done ; no wisdom without something to know or be 
known. Much more do the various properties and 
faculties of the human mind, such as memory and 
will, judgment, classification, and abstraction, appetite 
or aversion, suppose an external world to furnish sub- 



228 DEFENCE or LOCKE'S 

jects for memory and choice, materials for mental ex- 
ercise and moral discipline, pleasures to desire, or 
pains to avoid. 

There is yet a third consideration. Of the ideas 
existing in different minds, there is no possibility of 
ascertaining that they have any resemblance to each 
other, any common origin, but in one of two ways, 
either by referring them to some outward object or 
source, marked by a common name, which, in the 
case of ideas of sensation, is obvious, and for which 
usage of common names provision is made by the 
uniformity of nature, and of the sensible impressions 
ab extra ; or by denning the terms significant of com- 
plex . ideas, that is, resolving them into the more sim- 
ple elements, which definition and resolution will be 
found also to rest in the end upon the association of 
some uniform impressions ab extra, or upon certain 
feelings of pleasure or pain peculiar to the human 
frame, and common to beings similarly framed. This 
will be more clear when we come to consider what 
terms are, and what are not, susceptible of definition. 

These are not exactly Locke's modes of attacking 
the existence of innate ideas ; but they flow rather 
from the positions which he has established, and from 
the theory of the mind which he has developed. He 
contends chiefly against the supposed existence of in- 
nate principles and maxims. He maintains that they 
are unnecessary; that the mind arrives at them by 
degrees ; that there is no evidence that the minds of 
infants and savages are furnished even with the sim- 



FIRST BOOK ON INNATE IDEAS. 229 

plest, still less with such as imply complex moral re- 
lations ; that the supposition is gratuitous, and the 
hasty resort of indolence, as Leibnitz would have ex- 
pressed it, a " sophisme paresseu|Ji It was enough 
for him to show that every principle and every maxim 
implied a knowledge of objects, and a perception of 
the relation of objects and beings to one another, 
which could not exist but in a mind furnished by a 
world of sensation ab extra. 

It has not been much observed, I think, that there 
was one English writer of the greatest eminence be- 
fore Locke's time, who quite agreed in the opinion 
that the human mind is at first wholly unfurnished 
with knowledge and ideas, a writer never suspected 
of any tendency to scepticism, and one of the greatest 
ornaments of the English church, "a man of deep 
thoughts," as Locke calls him, namely, the learned 
and judicious Hooker. 

" The soul of man being therefore at the first as a 
book wherein nothing is, and yet all things may be im- 
printed, we are to search by what steps and degrees 
it riseth unto perfection of knowledge ... as stones, 
though in dignity of nature inferior unto plants, yet 
exceed them in firmness of strength, or durability of 
being; and plants, though beneath the excellency of 
creatures endued with sense, yet exceed them in the 
faculty of vegetation and of fertility ; so beasts, 
though otherwise behind men, may notwithstanding 
in actions of sense and fancy go beyond them, be- 
cause the endeavours of nature, when it hath an 



230 DEFENCE OF LOCKED 

higher perfection to seek, are in lower the more re- 
miss, not esteeming thereof so much as those things 
do, which have no better end proposed unto them. 
The soul of man therefore . being capable of more 
divine perfection, hath (besides the faculties of grow- 
ing unto sensible knowledge, which is common unto 
us with beasts) a further ability, whereof in them 
there is no show at all, the ability of reaching higher 
than unto sensible things. Till we grow to some 
ripeness of years, the soul of man doth only store 
itself with conceits of things of more open and in- 
ferior quality, which afterwards do serve as instru- 
ments unto that which is greater ; in the meanwhile, 
above the reach of meaner creatures it ascendeth not : 
when once it comprehendeth anything above this, as 
the differences of time, affirmations, negations, and 
contradiction in speech, we then count it to have some 
use of natural reason. Whereunto, if afterwards there 
might be added the right helps of true art and learn- 
ing (which helps, I must confess, this age of the world, 
carrying the name of a learned age, doth neither much 
know, nor greatly regard), there would undoubtedly 
be almost as great a difference in maturity of judg- 
ment between men therewith inured, and that which 
now men are, as between men that are now, and in- 
nocents, which speech, if any condemn as hyperbolical, 
let them consider but this one thing : no art is at the 
first finding out so perfect as industry may after make 
it ; yet the very first man \_he alludes to Aristotle] that 
to any purpose- knew the way we speak of, and fol- 






FIRST BOOK ON INNATE IDEAS. 231 



lowed it, hath alone thereby performed more very near 
in all parts of natural knowledge, than sithence in any 
one part the whole world besides hath done. In the 
poverty of that other new devised aid two things there 
are, notwithstanding, singular. Of marvellous quick 
despatch it is, and doth show them that have it as 
much almost in three days, as if it had dwelt three- 
score years with them. Again, because the curiosity 
of man's wit doth many times with peril wade farther 
in the search of things than were convenient, the same 
is thereby restrained unto such generalities as, every- 
where offering themselves, are apparent unto men of 
the weakest conceit that need be ; so as, following the 
rules and precepts thereof, we may find it to be an 
art which teacheth the way of speedy discourse, and 
restraineth the mind of man, that it may not wax 
overwise. Education and instruction are the means, 
the one by use, the other by precept, to make our na- 
tural faculty of reason both the better and the sooner 
able to judge rightly between truth and error, good 
and evil. But at what time a man may be said so 
far forth to have attained the use of reason, as suffi- 
ceth to make him capable of those laws, whereby he 
is then bound to guide his actions; this is a great 
deal more easy for common sense to discern, than for 
any man by skill and learning to determine ; even as 
it is not in philosophers, who best know the nature 
both of fire and gold, to teach what degree of the one 
will serve to purify the other, so well as the artisan 
(which doth this by fire) discerneth by sense when 



232 HENRY MORE. 



the fire hath that degree of heat which sufficeth for 
his purpose*." 

What argument in favour of innate ideas, and of 
instinctive intellectual and moral sentiments, can out- 
weigh these considerations? But comments, objec- 
tions, difficulties, cavils, have been thrown out, and 
continue to be thrown out, on the opposite side. A 
language is still prevalent, implying that these consi- 
derations are not convincing. They are either not 
understood or they are purposely disregarded. Two 
writers of Locke's own time, one, Henry More, the 
Platonist, considerably earlier in the philosophical 
field, the other, Leibnitz, somewhat later, demand 
particular notice, not so much on account of the emi- 
nence of their names, or the weight of their argu- 
ments, as because little or nothing has been added by 
subsequent writers to their statements and views upon 
the subject. 

In More's 'Antidote against Atheism f/ there will 
be found sundry considerations, designed to show that 
the mind of man is not abrasa tabula, but has actual 
knowledge of her own. He maintains that the mind 

* Hooker's 'Ecclesiastical Polity,' book i. 6. A portion of this 
passage is quoted by Locke, but for a different purpose (Essay, 
b. iv. c. 17. 7). The high praise of Aristotle, the allusion to the 
vain verbiage of Hamus, as the new devised aid, and the whole cha- 
racter of the passage, are very remarkable. The first four books of 
the Eccl. Polity were printed as early as 1594. 

f It was printed as early as 1653, and forms the first work in the 
collection of his philosophical writings, published in one volume 
folio, in 1712 ; see particularly the fifth and sixth chapters. More 
died September 1, 1687. 



HENRY MORE. 233 

of man, exercised in the close observation of its own 
operations, cannot but discover that there is an active 
and actual knowledge in a man, of which outward ob- 
jects are rather the reminders than the first begetters 
or implanters ; by which he understands, riot ideas 
flaring like so many torches before the animadversive 
faculty, but an active sagacity, or quick recollection, 
whereby, some small business being hinted, she runs 
out presently into a more clear and larger conception. 
He compares the condition of the soul to that of a 
skilful musician fallen asleep upon the grass, who, 
not dreaming of his musical faculty, being suddenly 
jogged and wakened by a friend, and desired to sing, 
forthwith exhibits his plentiful stores of melody and 
harmony. He begins with saying that the soul takes 
first occasion of thinking from external objects, and 
that this has imposed upon some men's judgments, 
they not warily enough distinguishing between ex- 
trinsical occasions, and adequate or principal causes 
of things. 

In the sixth chapter he contends that the soul, on 
the exhibition of a circle to it, acknowledges forthwith 
that if it be perfect, all the lines from a point within 
to the perimeter must be exactly equal ; and so of a 
triangle, that if it be the right figure, the angles must 
be closed in indivisible points ; and because accuracy 
in a circle or triangle cannot be set out in any mate- 
rial subject, therefore the soul hath in herself a more 
exquisite knowledge than matter can lay open before 
her ; that there are a multitude of relative notions or 



234 HENRY MORE. 

ideas which, not being impresses of any material ob- 
ject, are the natural furniture of the human under- 
standing : such are cause and effect, whole and part, 
like and unlike, equality and inequality, proportion 
and analogy ; these, not being sensible or physical af- 
fections of matter, are active conceptions proceeding 
from the soul herself. But he destroys the ground of 
his own argument, by suggesting that if in a room of 
like sides, one side be altered, and another not, the 
one not altered hath the notion of dissimilitude be- 
longing to it ; and if, of two pounds of lead, the half 
of one be taken, the other hath lost its notion of 
equal, and acquired a new one of double the other. 
He is so simple as not to perceive that the notions 
are only in the mind, and that without the previous 
external alteration the notions could not exist. He 
goes on to say that one and the same part of matter 
is capable of two contrary ideas, (meaning, of giving 
occasion to contrary ideas,) adding, that " ideas are no 
affections of matter, and therefore do not affect our 
senses ;" and here he has no meaning, for who ever 
maintained that ideas do affect the senses? and he 
could hardly mean that material objects do not affect 
them. He concludes that, having proved certain 
single ideas to be in the mind, several complex no- 
tions are also there, such as that the whole is bigger 
than the part ; if you take equal from equal, the re- 
mainders are equal ; every number is either even or 
odd, which are true to the soul at the very first pro- 
posal, as any one in his wits does plainly perceive. 



HENRY MORE. 235 

But the question is not as to the existence of single 
ideas and complex notions in the mind, but how they 
come there, and ivhcn they first appear. 

To the student of Locke, these notions and asser- 
tions respecting the innate truths of the mind, or ac- 
tive conceptions proceeding from the soul herself, are 
scarcely worth repeating : but the advocate of innate 
ideas, the Platonist and Cartesian, must be allowed to 
have fair play, and speak for himself. With more 
learning than Locke, Henry More had not less the 
love of truth, nor less purity of design ; he was looked 
upon by Dr. Outram as the holiest person upon the 
earth. But he wanted Locke's strong, determinate, 
practical sense. He had early muddled himself with 
Platonism : he mistook the colours of that cloud for 
the pure light of heaven. An enthusiastic lover of 
reason and philosophy in the abstract, he knew not 
the nature and value of its only tools, definite terms. 
He is scarcely less remarkable than Cudworth for 
barbarous and obsolete expressions, such as incompos- 
sibility, self-essentiated, hylopathy, idiopathy. His 
pages may be looked into by the curious, and are full 
of matter to gratify the curious ; but he deserves to be 
remembered chiefly as a poet, whose childhood was 
nourished on the divine morality and fancy of Spen- 
ser's Faery Queene, and whose Platonism is most 
agreeable when tuned to the music of the Spenserian 
verse. He was one of the starry lights, gleaming 
through the mist, whom Locke's rise above the hori- 
zon caused to " pale their ineffectual fires." 



236 HENRY MORE. 

In the expression that external objects furnish but 
the first occasion of thinking, and only stir up the 
soul to a sort of consciousness of the conceptions 
already existing within herself, More has anticipated 
what Leibnitz and Stewart, Cousin and others, have 
said in contradiction or modification of the opinion 
that the mind is originally without ideas, and begins 
to entertain them by the first impressions on the 
senses from without. This is a matter worthy of 
some consideration. 

Mr. D. Stewart, in his ' Elements of the Philosophy 
of the Human Mind/ enlarges on the question of the 
origin of our knowledge, reducing it to one of fact : 
" Concerning the occasions on which the mind is led 
to form those simple notions, into which our thoughts 
may be analysed, and which may be considered as the 
principles or elements of human knowledge*." At- 
taching great importance to Dr. Reid's inquiries con- 
cerning the history of our notions of extension and 
figure, and suggesting that similar inquiries may be 
proposed concerning the occasions on which we form 
the notions of time, of motion, of number, of causa- 
tion, and an infinite variety of others, Stewart ven- 
tures to affirm, "that the mind cannot, without the 
grossest absurdity, be considered in the light of a re- 
ceptacle, which is gradually furnished from without, 
nor in that of a tabula rasa, upon which copies or re- 
semblances of things external are imprinted." And 
he goes on to say, " That those ideas, which Mr. Locke 

* Stewart's Elements, p. 96, edit. 1802. 



HENRY MORE. 237 

calls ideas of reflection (or, in other words, the notions 
which we form of the subjects of our own conscious- 
ness), are not suggested to the mind immediately by 
the sensations arising from the use of our organs of 
perception, is granted on all hands, and therefore, the 
amount of the doctrine now mentioned, is nothing 
more than this, that the first occasions on which our 
various intellectual faculties are exercised, are fur- 
nished by fhe impressions made on our organs of 
sense ; and consequently, that without these impres- 
sions, it would have been impossible for us to arrive 
at the knowledge of our faculties. Agreeably to this 
explanation of the doctrine, it may undoubtedly be 
said with plausibility (and I am inclined to believe with 
truth) that the occasions on which all our notions are 
formed, are furnished either immediately or ultimately 
by sense ; but if I am not much mistaken, this is not 
the meaning which is commonly annexed to the doc- 
trine, either by its advocates or their opponents." 

But this is a very poor way of philosophizing, first 
to call Mr. Locke's doctrine a gross absurdity, and 
then to admit everything which Mr. Locke asserts, 
without condescending to quote his exact expressions. 
The whole question turns on the value of the phrase, 
" furnishing the occasion." Would Mr. Locke have 
objected to it ? You admit that a child is unfurnished 
with ideas of colours, tastes, smells, and so on, with- 
out an impression from without ; that by an impres- 
sion on the organs of sense, the ideas of sensation, 
properly so called, are furnished, or that the presence 



238 HENRY MORE. 

of something external furnishes the occasion for the 
idea. Would the idea be there without the impres- 
sion or occasion ? The follower of Locke believes 
that it would not. Is it meant that the idea is in the 
mind before the occasion, or that the occasion awakens 
what Henry More says was only asleep? The fol- 
lower of Locke believes such an opinion wholly un- 
founded. Wordsworth, in the beautiful ode on the 
intimations of Immortality, may say : 

" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 
The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 

And cometh from afar : 
Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

Prom God, who is our home : 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy !" 

And this may be delicious as poetry, where we assume 
what we please, and please by assuming. But philo- 
sophy assumes nothing, and humbly waits on nature 
and on fact, "naturae interpres et minister." It is 
hardly conceivable that an intelligent person, with the 
first chapter of Locke's second book open before him, 
can satisfy himself that, by substituting the word 
" occasion' for the word " origin" he approaches 
nearer to the philosophy of the mind ; that he alters 
or modifies the truth of Locke's statements ; that he 
throws any light whatever upon the sources of our 
ideas, as comprehended by observation and experience, 
and coming from sensation and reflection*. 

* Whoever would inquire into the value of these terms, occasion 



LEIBNITZ. 239 

If any man could have shaken the credit of Locke's 
'Essay on the Understanding/ could have modified 
the main conclusions which the Essay tended to esta- 
blish, or thrown new and important light upon the 

and origin, and see whether the use of the former contributes to any 
important modification of Locke's views, will do well to read care- 
fully that portion of Bowen's Essays, pp. 50, 51, where, in a paper 
on Kant and his philosophy, he supposes " something (quaere, what ?) 
added by the mind to sensible impressions, originally, instinctively, 
and wholly unlike any quality existing in the outward thing," and 
also the criticism on Locke by Mr. J. D. Morell, vol. i. pp. 99-102. 
The latter writer says, " Where Locke found a difficulty in showing 
the direct dependence of any idea upon experience, he soon disco- 
vered the means of showing its indirect dependence upon it ; and 
having done this, he incorrectly concluded that the whole of our 
knowledge could be derived from this one source. We owe it 
mainly to Kant, that this fallacy has been thoroughly probed and 
refuted. In the very first paragraph of his great work (' The Cri- 
tique of Pure Reason') he points us to experience as the occasion of 
every possible conception, which the mind forms ; but proves after- 
wards, most convincingly, that the true cause of many of our con- 
ceptions is to be found solely in the original constitution of the un- 
derstanding or of the reason." And thus Locke is to be deposed, 
and Kant enthroned! The truth is, that Locke would have ad- 
mitted not only that many, but that all " our conceptions have their 
cause in the original constitution of the understanding or of the rea- 
son." But to say that conceptions have their cause in the original 
constitution of the mind, is nothing to the purpose in determining 
the real nature of a particular part of that constitution. My im- 
pression is, that Kant never condescended to quote correctly a single 
statement of Locke, and the whole is of a piece with Cousin's unpar- 
donable misrepresentations, when, in the second lesson of his * Cours 
d'Histoire de la Philosophic Morale' (1839, pp. 82, 83), he makes 
Locke say that " sensation is the source of all our ideas," and asks, 
" Is the mind, before experience, void of every faculty, of all intel- 
lectual virtualite?" as if Locke denied this, as if he had not as- 
serted an original capacity for knowing whatever could be known, 



240 LEIBNITZ. 

subjects which it discussed, that man was Leibnitz. 
The extent of his attainments, the freedom and bold- 
ness of his speculations, the penetration, the ardour, 
the activity, the comprehensiyeness of his intellect, his 
untiring labour, his love of truth and knowledge, all 
these eminent qualities (dashed a little by too much 
self-confidence, too great ambition of distinction, ori- 
ginality, and display) enabled him to follow Locke's 
course with every possible advantage. As a sharp- 
shooter in ambush, watching from a height the course 
of a regiment marching in the valley below, may pick 
out every distinguished foe, or every weak straggler, 
for fatal aim, so Leibnitz, when in his 'Nouveaux 
Essais' he criticizes the 'Essay on the Understand- 
ing/ chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph, may 
be supposed to allow no defective argument, no weak 
point, no hasty assertion, to escape him. Not that he 
criticized Locke in any hostile spirit ; on the contrary, 
he does ample justice to the intellectual, as he deeply 
felt the great moral qualities of the English philoso- 

as if he had not dwelt at length on various natural faculties ; nay 
more, " I deny not," he says emphatically, " that there are natural 
tendencies imprinted on the minds of men, and that from the very 
first instances of sense and perception, there are some things that 
are grateful, and others unwelcome to them ; some things that they 
incline to, and others that they fly ; but this makes nothing for in- 
nate characters on the mind, which are to be principles of knowledge, 
regulating our practice." Essay, b. i. c. iii. 3. The reviewer of 
Cousin's ' Histoire,' in the ' Edinburgh Review,' some years ago, ob- 
served this and his unjust and perverse attempt to identify Locke 
with the school of Condillac, and such writers as Helvetius, Saint- 
Lambert, and Volney. 




LEIBNITZ. 241 



pher. But he admitted nothing without the principle 
of " sufficient reason" and he unfortunately preferred 
his own reason before another man's, as he did in the 
case of the great Newton, if he could find or make a 
plausible excuse for doing so. 

Leibnitz published, as early as 1696, some reflec- 
tions upon Locke's Essay, now to be found in the edi- 
tions of Locke. They were early put into Locke's 
hands by his Dutch correspondents, one of whom thus 
wrote to Locke : " They say a thousand good things 
of this mathematician. He threatened long ago great 
and excellent things, without producing anything but 
some detached demonstrations. I think, nevertheless, 
that he does not understand you, and I doubt whether 
he understands himself." "This sort of fiddling" 
(says Locke to Molyneux*, in reference to this paper 
of reflections) "makes me think that he is not that 
very great man as has been talked of him ;" to which 
Molyneux replies, " He is either very unhappy in 
expressing, or I am very dull in apprehending his 
thoughts." 

Upon a careful perusal, it will be seen that these 
early reflections of Leibnitz are not very consistent 
with his subsequent remarks in the more lengthened 
criticism of the ' Nouveaux Essais,' which latter work 
probably Locke did not live to peruse, for they were 
not published till 1703, when Locke had received 
many warnings that his departure was at hand. In 

* See Locke's Correspondence with Molyneux, Law's quarto edi- 
tion, vol. iv. pp. 354-358. 

R 



242 LEIBNITZ. 

the reflections, Leibnitz thinks there is something 
solid in Plato's doctrine of reminiscences. In the 
' Nouveaux Essais' he has an ingenious argument to 
show that this doctrine affects not the question of 
innate ideas. He contends that not only our ideas, 
but even our sentiments, spring from our own pro- 
per depths, and so in the Essays he talks much of 
the depth of the soul, comparing it to an inward 
spring, as if anything in Locke was inconsistent with 
this, be its depth and capacity, or its inward active 
life, what it may. When he says, " that ideas, true 
or real, are those of which we are assured the execu- 
tion is possible, others are doubtful, or (in case of the 
proof of impossibility) chimerical ; now the possibi- 
lity of some ideas is proved as much a priori by the 
demonstrations, wherein we avail ourselves of the pos- 
sibility of other ideas more simple, as a posteriori by 
experiences, for that which exists must be possible ; 
but primitive ideas are those whose possibility is in- 
demonstrable, and which are in fact nothing but the 
attributes of God ;" surely M. Le Clerc, Molyneux, 
and Locke, were justified in considering him unintel- 
ligible to others, whether he understood himself or not. 
Leibnitz, in the ' Nouveaux Essais,' adopted a mode 
of criticism not favourable to distinctness, namely, that 
of a dialogue, in which Philalethes, a disciple, acts as 
the representative of Locke ; and Theo^hilus appears 
as a modified, or improved Cartesian, and speaks the 
sentiments of Leibnitz. Philalethes appears rather to 
a disadvantage ; he is not quick in seizing the weak 



LEIBNITZ. 243 

points of his antagonist ; he does not quote very care- 
fully Locke's exact words ; he omits some of the most 
telling and powerful of Locke's observations. Theo- 
philus speaks with freedom and confidence, and pours 
out a torrent of remark, which sweeps before it the 
straws of objection, and even blocks of difficulty, a 
torrent turbid and impetuous, often throwing up 
beautiful foam, but more wild and astonishing than 
useful and clear. There are nevertheless in the latter 
part of the ' Nouveaux Essais,' many very pleasing 
and just observations and illustrations, particularly 
when touching the subject of language, which the 
lover of metaphysical reading, with Locke open before 
him, will thoroughly enjoy. 

Great obscurity pervades the doctrine of Leibnitz 
concerning innate ideas. It is almost impossible to 
condense it, to represent in a few words what his 
theory on this subject is, and even to make out the 
one proposition, or the several propositions which he 
undertook to establish, and in which he conceived 
himself successful. We have no translation of Leib- 
nitz's chief metaphysical works in English, and no 
tolerable representation of his course of thought and 
argument in the ' Nouveaux Essais.' The accompany- 
ing short but candid representation of his comments 
on the first book of Locke may therefore be welcome 
to the reader. 

Theophilus, who speaks for Leibnitz, sets out with 
stating that he aspires to new views, to go further 
than any one had yet gone into the depths of meta- 



244 LEIBNITZ. 

physical truth. He professes to unite Plato with 
Democritus, Aristotle with Descartes, the schoolmen 
with the moderns, theology and morality with reason. 
He finds an intelligible explanation of the union of 
body and soul, of the true principles of things in the 
unity of the substances, and in their harmony pre- 
established by the primitive substance. Besides a 
new analysis of things, which was to explain every- 
thing, he comprehended better than any one else the 
analysis of notions, or ideas and truths : he under- 
stood better than any one, the nature of a ." true, 
clear, distinct, adequate idea ; of primitive truths and 
true axioms ; of the distinction between necessary 
truths, and truths of fact ; between the reasonings of 
men and the deductions of brutes, which are a shadow 
of them." His system would render more admirable 
the sovereign source of creation and its beauties. He 
had at one time an inclination for the side of the Spi- 
nozists, who leave only infinite power to the Deity, 
who, recognizing neither perfections nor wisdom in 
a supreme intelligence, and despising the search for 
final causes, derive everything from a brute necessity. 
But new lights had cured him, and he had since taken 
the name of Theophilus the lover of God. 

" I have long been," says Theophilus, " for the in- 
nate idea of God with Descartes, and consequently, 
for other innate ideas, which come not from the senses. 
I go further, and think that all our thoughts and actions 
come from our soul, from its own depth, without being 
given by the senses. 



LEIBNITZ. 245 

" But granting for the present that the external 
senses are the cause of part of our thoughts, I shall 
inquire how we may say that there are ideas and prin- 
ciples which do not come from the senses, which we 
find in ourselves without forming them, though the 
senses give us occasion to perceive them. Your author 
[Locke], with laudable zeal against the idleness of 
taking things for granted which ought to be proved, 
has not sufficiently distinguished the origin of neces- 
sary truths, whose source is in the understanding, and 
those of fact, which we draw from sensible experiences, 
and even from the confused perceptions which are in 
us. The disposition which we have to recognize the 
idea of God is in human nature; a readiness to re- 
ceive the doctrine comes from the nature of the soul. 
General consent is an index, though not a demonstra- 
tion, of an innate principle : the decisive proof is, that 
their certainty comes only from what is in us ; though 
they be not known, yet they may be innate, inasmuch 
as we recognize them when they are first heard. We 
have an infinity of convictions which we perceive only 
when we have need of them. 

" Philalethes. Can we say that all propositions 
which are reasonable, and which the mind may come 
to regard as such, are already imprinted on the soul ? 

"Theophilus. Truly ; in respect of pure ideas, which 
I oppose to the phantasms of the senses, and of neces- 
sary truths, truths of reason, which I oppose to truths 
of fact. In this sense we may say that all arithmetic 
and all geometry are innate, and are in a manner 



246 LEIBNITZ. 

virtually in us. All truths which we can derive from 
innate primitive convictions, may be called innate, be- 
cause the mind can draw them from its own depth, 
though it be not easy. 

" Ph. Are there then truths graven in the soul, 
which it never has known, and never shall know ? 

" Th. I see no absurdity in this ; for some things 
superior to any we can now know, may develope 
themselves in another state. It is certain that the 
senses suffice not to show the necessity of certain 
truths, and that the mind has a disposition to draw 
them, as well active as passive, from its own depths ; 
that the senses are necessary to give occasion and ex- 
cite attention to them, and to carry the mind to some 
rather than to others. The able persons who are of 
a different opinion, appear not to have sufficiently 
meditated on the difference between necessary or 
eternal truths, and truths of experience, as all our 
discussion shows. The original proof of necessary 
truths comes from the understanding alone, other 
truths come from experience and observation ; our 
mind is capable of knowing the one from the other, 
but is the source only of the first, and whatever num- 
ber of particular experiences one may have of a uni- 
versal truth, one can never be sure of the universality 
by induction, without knowing the necessity by reason. 

"Ph. But all who reflect will find that the consent 
which the mind gives, without difficulty, to certain 
truths, depends on the faculty of the human mind. 

" Th. It is the relation of the mind to such truths 



LEIBNITZ. 247 

which renders the exercise of the faculty easy and 
natural, and which makes us call them innate. It is 
not a naked faculty, which consists in the possibility 
of understanding them; it is a disposition, an apti- 
tude, a pre-formation, which determines our soul, and 
causes them to be drawn from it. 

"Intellectual ideas, which are the source of necessary 
truths, come not from the senses. It is true that the 
express knowledge of truths is posterior (in nature or 
time) to the express knowledge of ideas, as the nature 
of truths depends on the nature of ideas, before we 
form expressly one and the other, and the truths or 
ideas, which come from the senses, depend on the 
senses at least in part. But the ideas which come 
from the senses are confused in some degree, and the 
truths which depend on them are so also ; whilst the 
ideas of intellect and the truths which depend on them 
are distinct. The latter have not their origin from the 
senses, though it may be that we should never know 
them without the senses. 

" Ph. If any one can find a proposition, the ideas 
of which are innate, he cannot do me a greater favour 
than to name it. 

" Th. I should name the propositions of arithmetic 
and geometry, which are all of this nature ; and in 
matters of necessary truth, one may find others. 

" Ph. Can we say then that the most difficult and 
profound of sciences are innate ? 

" Th. The actual knowledge of them is not so ; but 
the virtual knowledge may be called so, as the figure 



248 LEIBNITZ. 

traced by the veins of marble is in the marble before 
it is discovered by working. 

" Ph. It is difficult to conceive that a truth is in the 
mind, if the mind has never thought of such truth. 

" Th. That is to say, it is difficult to conceive there 
are veins in marble before we discover them. The 
objection approaches too near to a petitio principii. 
All who admit innate truths without founding them 
upon Platonic reminiscence, admit such as have never 
yet been thought of. In other respects this reason- 
ing proves too much. For if truths are thoughts, 
we must be deprived of truths, not only on which one 
has not thought, but of which we are not actually 
thinking. And if truths are not thoughts, but habi- 
tudes and aptitudes, natural or acquired, nothing hin- 
ders there being some in us, of which we have never 
yet thought, no, nor ever will think." 

The last sentiment is extraordinary. There appears 
to be nothing, in the subsequent criticisms by Leibnitz 
.on the second and third chapters of Locke, touching 
innate principles, which adds to the clearness or to the 
force of the above. He speaks of "maxims known 
by instinct, and of innate principles, which are not a 
part of natural light, of innate truths, known in two 
fashions, by light and by instinct. Thus," he says, 
" we are carried to acts of humanity by instinct, be- 
cause they are pleasing; by reason, when they are 
proved to be just." Here every sentence introduces 
new terms of doubtful value ; he lays down new pro- 
positions which have nothing to do with the question 



LEIBNITZ. 249 

at issue ; and he brings in analogies which, like the 
veins of marble, mislead rather than illustrate. 

The weightiest passage in Leibnitz, much applauded 
and often quoted by his admirers, occurs in his re- 
marks on Locke's second book. 

" Th. They will oppose to me this axiom received 
among philosophers, ' that there is nothing in the soul 
which comes not from the senses/ But we must ex- 
cept the soul itself and its affections. Nihil est in 
intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu ; excipe nisi ipse 
intellectus. Moreover the soul includes being, sub- 
stance, unity, identity, cause, perception, reasoning, 
and a quantity of other notions which the senses can- 
not give. This agrees sufficiently with your author 
of the Essay, who seeks a good part of our ideas in 
the reflection of the mind upon its own nature. 

" Ph. I hope then you will grant to this able author, 
that all ideas come from sensation or reflection ; that 
is, from observations made on objects external and 
sensible, or upon the internal operations of our soul. 

" Th. To avoid a contest which has already detained 
us too long, I profess that when you say that ideas 
come to us from one or other of these causes, I un- 
derstand it of the actual perception of them, for I 
think I have shown, that they are in us, before they are 
perceived, in so far as they have anything distinct." 

Leibnitz is not so much read, nor are his principles 
so familiar to English thinkers as to render this trans- 
lation of select passages from his ' Nouveaux Essais' 
unnecessary. Few will go along with him, no one 



250 LEIBNITZ. 

has undertaken to support him, in the sentiments and 
assertions which have been given. They scarcely 
bear examination ; being in fact scarcely intelligible. 
On the one hand, they seem to concede to Locke every- 
thing which he lays down ; on the other, they contend 
for so much as, if received, must overthrow Locke's 
system and make his statements comparatively worth- 
less. But let us hear Locke himself : " To say a 
notion is imprinted on the mind, and yet at the same 
time to say that the mind is ignorant of it, and never 
yet took notice of it, is to make this impression 
nothing. No proposition can be said to be in the 
mind which it never yet knew, which it was never yet 
conscious of/' " If the capacity of knowing be the 
natural impression contended for, all the truths a man 
ever comes to know, will, by this account, be every one 
of them innate ; and this great point will amount to 
no more, than only a very improper way of speaking, 
which, whilst it pretends to assert the contrary, says 
nothing different from those who deny innate princi- 
ples." " That certainly can never be thought innate, 
which we have need of reason to discover, unless, as 
I have said, we will have all the certain truths that 
reason ever teaches us, to be innate."' Now this is 
precisely what Leibnitz did contend for. Why, then, 
did he not quote these expressions of Locke, and de- 
fend the propriety of his way of speaking ? It seems 
a monstrous extravagance to assert that the truths of 
Newton's Principia, and of every other profound work, 

* Locke's Essay, b. 1, c. ii., 5, 9. 



LEIBNITZ. 251 

however remote from common studies and apprehen- 
sion such as the Institutes of Justinian, or the prin- 
ciples of his own Theodicaea are innate in all human 
minds, because a few have known them ; or because 
(what is more doubtful) all may be capable of know- 
ing them. The discussion turns upon the word in- 
nate, whether it refer to the capacity of forming no- 
tions and ideas, which Locke asserts as distinctly as 
possible, or the actual conscious existence of notions 
and ideas, previous to sensible impression, or to re- 
flection, which Locke denies, and Leibnitz too. 

With regard to the celebrated exception taken by 
Leibnitz to the old maxim " that there is nothing in 
the intellect which hath not been first in the senses, 
nisi ipse intellectus" it is of no value ; because the 
intellectus cannot be in the intellectus ; both the in- 
tellectus and sensus being taken for granted in the 
maxim, the value of which depends upon what is 
meant by intellectus and sensus. If by the intellect 
be understood all those intellections, those conclusions 
of the reasoning power from phenomena, those com- 
plex ideas and notions, clusters of sensible impressions 
and mental states associated together under one term, 
and united in propositions, of which, as Gassendi 
says, there neither is nor can be any sensible image 
or impression, the disciple of Locke and Hartley does 
not maintain the maxim. But if it be meant merely 
that to all such intellections a sensible impression, or 
a feeling of some kind, derived from the sensitive 
frame, is a necessary groundwork, that there is a 



252 LEIBNITZ. 

root or seed, so to speak, of the most refined intellec- 
tual results in sensation ; that sensations are the pri- 
mary elements on which "the soul and its affections" 
begin to operate ; that what we first remember, name, 
and compare, are these sensations and feelings or 
clusters of sensible impressions, without which we 
should not know we have a soul ; if by sensus be 
meant the perceptive power, the recipient of impres- 
sions ab extra, without which there never was any 
intellectual power in man, in this sense the disciple of 
Locke and Hartley and MiU might hold the maxim 
to be true, nor is it clear that the disciple of Leibnitz 
and Stewart would deny it. For when we talk of 
the depths of the soul, be they as profound as we 
please, let its original activity be as great, and its in- 
nate faculties and capacities and affections be as nu- 
merous as we please, this makes nothing against the 
justness of that analytical view of the mind of which 
Locke and Hartley and Mill are the great teachers ; 
nor does it modify or shake in the least the import- 
ance of that law of association, and the truth of the 
related doctrines which Hartley first comprehended in 
entirety, and of which Leibnitz had scarcely a glim- 
mering perception. 

This topic might be pursued ; but it is a waste of 
reasoning to confute authors who confute themselves. 
There is a very short mode of putting to the test the 
soundness of the instinctive or innate principle philo- 
sophy. It rests too much upon a fallacious meta- 
phorical language, in a manner self-destructive ; a 



LEIBNITZ. 253 

language indebted for its force to those very pheno- 
mena of the senses, which it affects at the same time 
to despise. Thus it makes much of the inward depth, 
and capacity, the activity and fulness of the soul*. 
But the very difficult question, whether the most com- 
prehensive and refined intellectual conclusions whe- 
ther the results of the reflective powers in their most 
perfect and beautiful developments whether the most 
refined affections and habits of theopathy, sympathy, 
and the moral sense, are traceable or not to a common 
sensational root, so to speak, as Hartley was disposed 
to believe, is not to be decided by the language of 
metaphor, imagination, and enthusiasm. It is a ques- 
tion of nature and fact ; a question of that nice and 
difficult introspection, which nothing hinders more 
effectually than the dust of words. 

Now, the examination of the philosophy and natural 
history of language contains within itself the confuta- 
tion of tfre philosophy of instinctive principles or in- 
nate ideas. For, putting aside the question whether 
words are the arbitrary signs of ideas, or themselves 
the result of a law of nature, deep and subtle, when 
we inquire what words are, and what are not, capable 
of definition, we find that all such words as are signi- 
ficant of simple ideas of uniform impressions on the 
senses, such as of colours, taste, sounds, and smells, 
whose meaning depends on the uniformity of the sen- 

* Compare the account of Condillac in the ' Dictionnaire des 
Sciences Philosophiques,' where his philosophy is said to have been 
buried in the tomb of De Stutt de Tracy. 



254 LEIBNITZ. 

sible impressions, are incapable of definition. Such 
also are words significant of states of inward feeling, 
e.g. pain and pleasure, joy, sorrow, hope and fear, 
and many others, comprehending classes of emotional 
states, when considered without reference to any of 
the particulars that give them force. But words sig- 
nificant of a cluster of sensible impressions, marking 
a property or union of properties common to a number 
of individuals ; words significant of complex ideas, or 
collections of simple ideas, passing under one name, 
these are susceptible of definition ; and the definition 
is useful when he to whom the explanation or defini- 
tion is given, has in him all the simple ideas for a 
collection of which the name defined is made to stand*. 
Thus every definition is made ultimately to rest upon 
the uniformity of sensible impressions, or of simple 
emotional states. Hence there can be no reasoning 
upon ideas existing in different minds, but what is 
based upon a uniformity of impressions ab extra, 
or a similarity of emotions and passions ab infra ; the 
language appropriate to the latter being obscure, un- 
scientific, and incapable of application to reasoning, in 
proportion to the difficulty of referring it to a common 
external object, as an admitted common measure or 
test of reality and truth. The assent to the postulates 
and axioms of geometry depends on the rapid associa- 

* See the fourth, chapter of Locke's second book, with which 
Locke's logic may be said to begin. Compare also an admirable 
passage on words susceptible of definition, in Bernier's abridgment of 
Gassendi, liv. iv. c, v. ; also Trendelenberg's Elements of Aristotelian 
Logic, 59, on definition. 



LEIBNITZ. 255 

tion of uniform sensible impressions with the meaning 
of the terms. Such are the following : " The whole 
is greater than a part ;" "If equals be taken from 
equals, the remainders are equal." To argue that the 
ideas of totality and divisibility, of equality and in- 
equality, are innate in the mind from the readiness of 
the assent to these axioms, is the same thing as to say 
that a child has got all the ideas of number, before it 
has learnt to count its fingers, and all the ideas of 
morality before it has seen a mother's frown, or been 
forbidden to snatch an ornament and play with the fire. 
It is much the same as to suppose that all the laws of 
nature are known a priori ; that examples in grammar 
are made to fit rules, instead of rules being merely the 
exponents of phenomena ; that theory precedes obser- 
vation; that the human mind is not the subject but 
the source of law. It is to arrogate an original divi- 
nity for the mind, and by that arrogance to rob it of 
its real strength. It is to refuse to acquire Divine 
science by the study of nature and history, and the 
patient reception of Divine instruction. As we de- 
rive our ideas of number from the existence of things 
capable of being numbered, so we derive our ideas of 
geometrical figures from the existence in nature of 
forms and figures corresponding to their definitions. 

Leibnitz, like many others before and after him, 
speaks of instinct as if it were a term applicable to 
the intellectual and moral developments of man. But 
the term instinct is always best regarded as merely a 
term of ignorance. It is significant of that propen- 



256 LEIBNITZ. 

sity peculiar to some insects and animals, such as the 
bee, the ant, the beaver, and the bird, whereby they 
build their habitations and provide for their future, 
in a manner for the most part undeviating, without 
instruction, observation, or experience, and for which 
we can account in no other way, than by ascribing it 
to the force of nature. The bees of the present day 
build their cells, and collect their honey, precisely 
like the bees in Virgil's Georgics, the last bees are 
as the first. There is nothing in man analogous to 
this. The human child can do nothing, knows no- 
thing, without guidance, without instruction. Even 
the use of articulate sounds for the expression of 
thoughts and emotions, the distinguishing character- 
istic of man, is an acquisition slowly made, and so 
various in quality and degree as to remove it from 
the category of instincts. Though we may say, in 
common parlance, that the infant sucks the breast, 
and begins to use its senses and its hands by instinct, 
and we may talk of instinctive powers, passions, and 
emotions, because of a prevalence of such powers and 
passions approaching to universality, it is only justifi- 
able in common parlance, intimating our willing igno- 
rance of the ultimate character and laws of all such 
functions and tendencies, beyond the fact of their ex- 
istence, and our indisposition to inquire further*. 

* Compare a passage on the terms Instinctive and Instinct, in 
Austin's Jurisprudence, p. 96. Mr. James Mill, in his Analysis of 
the Phenomena of the Human Mind, takes a similar view. See 
also Law's preface to King on the Origin of Evil. 



LEIBNITZ. 257 

Tendencies, capacities, appetites, powers, which may 
be called instinctive, are not denied by the disciple of 
Locke and Hartley. He may term those rare gifts 
and endowments, which distinguish some persons so 
remarkably from the common herd, natural and in- 
ward, when he chooses not to seek further for their 
origin, and comprehends them in that NATURE, which 
stands for everything that has been, is, or shall be. 
But whether we raise our thoughts to contemplate 
the genius of Homer, of Plato and Aristotle, of 
Shakespeare, of Bacon and Newton, or turn them 
downwards to the lowest and humblest forms of hu- 
manity, scarce raised above the brutes, no doubt some 
approach to an explanation of the diversity of charac- 
ter, to a correct theory of the phenomena of life and 
mind, may be found in the peculiar aptitude resulting 
from original physical conformation, acted upon by 
favourable external conditions, for that precise develop- 
ment of intellectual power and moral tendency, which 
marks and makes the individual* both in what he has 
in common with the race and what is singular. Every 
child is born with a frame like that of other children, 
but with modifications and peculiarities inherited from 
the parents. It brings into the world a constitutional 
tendency to associate some classes of sensations and 
ideas rather than others. One sense being from the 
first more acute than others, the pleasures and pains, 
the tastes and predilections, differ from the first in 
kind and in degree ; one child is constitutionally 
phlegmatic, another irritable. Now, the original 



258 LEIBNITZ. 

perceptive power and the associative tendency taken 
together form the primary elements of our intellectual 
and moral life. Hence the justification of the senti- 
ment, " Poeta nascitur, non jit ;" and what is true of 
the poet is true of the musician, the painter, the 
sculptor, the orator, the statesman, the philanthropist. 
The acuteness of the sense, and the predisposition to 
retain some impressions, to neglect and discard others, 
gives early bias to the imagination, the trains of which 
soon become habitual ; these mix themselves in ways 
and degrees imperceptible with the moral sense, and 
with the social, sympathetic, and theopathetic affec- 
tions, as Hartley calls them, as these again are sub- 
sequently developed. According as external condi- 
tions operate upon the original basis, the native 
tendency is favoured or counteracted. Thus the ana- 
logy is complete between the development of vege- 
table and of intellectual life. For as from every seed 
and its germ of vegetation springs the appropriate 
leaf and flower and fruit, so from every sensitive 
frame, with its predisposition to associate and retain 
certain classes of sensation, and ideas of sensation, 
there is developed, in infinite variety, a certain definite 
form of intellectual power and moral grace on the 
one hand, or what we esteem deformity and weakness 
and depravity on the other. Were it conceded that 
men are born naturally equal, according to the opinion 
of those who, like Helvetius, attribute everything to 
education, nothing to endowment of nature, an in- 
equality, a marked and essential difference of power 



LEIBNITZ. 251> 

and tendency in children becomes palpable to the ac- 
curate observer after a few months of existence. When 
Wordsworth says that 

" Men from men 

Differ in constitution of their minds 
By mystery not to be explained," 

the sentiment may be modified by this recognition of 
some of the broad facts of nature, and some of the 
known laws of the mind. With these facts and laws, 
the genius of a Pope, " who lisped in numbers, for the 
numbers came," and of a Newton, who is said to have 
anticipated or known by intuition the demonstrations, 
of Euclid without perusing them, are sufficiently in 
harmony. One child, habituated from the first dawn 
of intelligence to accurate observation and just ex- 
pression, speaks truthfully, describes faithfully, and 
reasons consecutively ; habituated only to good argu- 
ments, it rejects bad ones, with a facility or faculty 
that may be called natural and instinctive. But it 
is in reality as much acquired as the skill of a rope- 
dancer, or the endurance of a fetish, there being a 
foundation for both in nature and nature's pliancy. 
Another child never reasons but in the fashion of 
Dame Quickly or the late Mr. Southey. When terror 
and falsehood have been the primary elements of 
education, when thieves and outlaws have been the 
guardians and tutors of youth, all the subsequent 
exercises of reason and habit will resolve themselves 
into predatory cunning and skilful self-defence. 

Upon the principle of Leibnitz and his followers 

s 2 



260 LEIBNITZ. 

that everything in man is innate and instinctive the 
vilest passions, the wildest delusions, the most extra- 
vagant errors, no less than the sublimest forms of 
intellectual and moral greatness, shelter themselves 
equally under the authority of nature ; and nothing 
remains but the temporary will and caprice of the in- 
dividual, to determine what shah 1 be chosen as valu- 
able, and what rejected as worthless or hurtful among 
the opinions and predilections of mankind. The ad- 
vocates of intuitions forget that they wield a two-edged 
sword, a weapon easily turned against themselves, and 
as powerful for him who denies as for him who asserts 
what they are pleased to assume as instinctive truth. 
The doubts of Bayle, the caustic satire of Voltaire, the 
pantheism of Spinoza, are at least as natural, and 
may plead the authority of instinct quite as well, as 
the pre-established harmony and monadology of Leib- 
nitz ; and surely the wild excesses of the Munster 
Anabaptists, or the Family of Love, and the heathen 
superstitions of the poor priest-ridden papists, present 
forms of faith arid practice far more congenial to the 
natural dispositions and innate faculties of the multi- 
tude, than the mild and practical religion of a Fenelon 
and an Oberlin, or the philosophic faith of a Newcome 
and a Paley, of a Priestley and a Channing. Surely 
no man, who has paid due attention to the melancholy 
history of human superstition, and watched the reluc- 
tance with which mankind associate the idea of duty 
with happiness, of virtue with benevolence, can attach 
value to instincts and intuitions as a guide and au- 
thority in religion. 



LEIBNITZ. 2G1 

Gibbon has touched with a master's hand the cha- 
racter of Leibnitz, not only in various passages of his 
bountiful essay on the Study of Literature, but chiefly 
in the pupcr on the Antiquities of the House of Bruns- 
wick. " The genius and studies of Leibnitz have 
ranked his name with the first philosophic names of 
his age and country : but his reputation, perhaps, 
would be more pure and permanent if he had not am- 
bitiously grasped the whole circle of human science. 
As a theologian he successively contended with the 
sceptics, who believe too little, and with papists, who 
believe too much, and with the heretics, who believe 
otherwise than is inculcated by the Lutheran confes- 
sion of Augsburg. Yet the philosopher betrayed his 
love of union and toleration : his faith in revelation 
was accused, while he proved the Trinity by the prin- 
ciples of logic ; and in the defence of the attributes 
and providence of the Deity, he was suspected of a 
secret correspondence with his adversary Bayle. The 
metaphysician expatiated in the fields of air : his pre- 
established harmony of the soul and body might have 
provoked the jealousy of Plato ; and his optimism, the 
best of all possible worlds, seems an idea too vast for 
a mortal mind." 

The portrait is completed with these true touches. 
" He designed more than he could execute : his ima- 
gination was too easily satisfied with a bold and rapid 
glance on the subject which he was impatient to leave ; 
and Leibnitz may be compared to those heroes whose 
empire has been lost in the ambition of universal con- 
quest." 



262 LEIBNITZ. 

The great work of Leibnitz is the ' Theodicaea/ 
There he puts forth all his strength, and appears to 
the best advantage. In all the array of learning and 
of literature, he sallies forth as a champion, confident 
of victory, to contend against every subtlety of scep- 
ticism. When Bayle opens his batteries, and levels 
his syllogisms against the citadel of faith, Leibnitz 
feels that he has built ramparts, within which he 
can lie entrenched and secure; and the keep may 
be acknowledged to be invulnerable, although the 
" pre-established harmony" and the principle of " the 
sufficient reason/' with other distinctions without a 
difference, may be surrendered as outworks incapa- 
ble of defence. To the lover of metaphysical studies 
nothing can be more delightful than this work of 
Leibnitz. He has lightened the heaviest, and adorned 
the gravest subject, with the riches of forgotten 
literature, and every variety of pleasing observation, 
" egayer une matiere, dont le serieux peut rebu- 
ter." He seems more than Gassendi to deserve the 
character of " the most philosophic among literati, the 
most literary among philosophers." How has it hap- 
pened that the chief production of so great a name 
should have produced on the whole so little effect on 
English philosophy and English thought ? We have 
translations of Bayle, of Helvetius, of Montesquieu ; 
why not of the ' Theodicsea' of Leibnitz ? Was the 
subject too difficult for the many, or the treatment too 
little satisfactory for the few ? The familiarity of the 
French language to the student and the scholar can- 



LEIBNITZ. 263 

not account for the preference given by translators 
and publishers to far inferior works. Perhaps, like 
the learned ' Histoire du Manicheisme/ by Beau- 
sobre*, which Lardner long ago wished translated, 
and to which Gibbon confessed his obligations, the 
work was too free and too good, too remote from the 
common paths to suit the purposes of trade. Yet 
many considerations suggest themselves to explain, in 
some degree, the slight impression produced by this 
work of Leibnitz : 1, the difficulty of the subject, and 
the little attention given to the higher metaphysics ; 

* I may here be allowed to correct a very serious mistake made 
by Mr. J. D. Morell, in the ' Historical View of the Speculative 
Philosophy of Europe, during the Nineteenth Century,' relative to 
Beausobre. Speaking of the confusion attendant on the progress of 
the Leibnitzian-Wolfian system in Germany, he says (vol. i. p. 196), 
in the midst of it, " Scepticism, as might be expected, also made its 
appearance, and the celebrated divine M. de Beausobre, whom we 
may regard as its best representative, wrote an ingenious work, in 
which he advocated an almost undisguised Pyrrhonism, and made 
the Wolfian philosophy an especial object of his attack and ridicule." 
This is grievously erroneous. The learned divine was no sceptic, 
and deserved far other notice at the hands of Mr. Morell. It were 
to be wished that at least that portion of his valuable work on Mani- 
cheeism had been translated which is entitled, " A discourse, show- 
ing that the apocryphal and fabulous books, very far from casting 
suspicion upon the certainty of the miraculous facts contained in the 
Gospels, and by consequence the certainty of the Christian religion, 
concur to confirm them." Beausobre died in 1738. A good biogra- 
phical notice is prefixed to the second volume of the ' Histoire du 
Manicheisme.' The sceptic and sensualist was one Lewis Beau- 
sobre, privy-counsellor of Frederic the Great, who published *Le 
Pyrrhonisme du Sage,' 1754, and 'Les Songes d'Epicure,' 1756, and 
who died in 1783, and had no known connection even with the family 
of the divine. 



264 LEIBNITZ. 

2, the strict Lutheranism, or modified Calvinism, in 
the interpretation of Scripture, which pervades the 
work, rendering it from the first distasteful to the 
Arminian predilections of the English school of liberal 
theology, an interpretation now considered quite un- 
philosophical ; 3, its pure necessarianism, equally ob- 
noxious to the orthodox, who, like Calvin, have always 
dreaded the attempt to harmonize the decrees of God 
with the deductions of reason, and to level to human 
comprehension the Divine works and ways ; 4, the the- 
ories and distinctions with which the work abounds, 
such as that of the harmony between the soul and 
body, without any mutual dependence or connection, 
such as the distinction between an absolute and a 
hypothetical or metaphysical necessity, between the 
freedom of the will from any constraining poioer, and 
its subjection to the law of the greatest apparent good., 
together with the non-existence of any liberty or 
equilibrium of indifference, any proper self-moving 
power ; theories and distinctions peculiar to Leibnitz, 
more subtle than satisfactory ; 5, the jealousy and in- 
justice which Leibnitz had manifested towards New- 
ton, and his opposition to the Newtonian philosophy. 
This alienated the minds of many of the philosophic 
English from him. On the whole he does not shine 
in the controversy with Dr. Samuel Clarke*. But 

* There is an amusing evidence of this, and of Dr. Johnson's 
readiness and reading, in a characteristic conversation between the 
lexicographer and the Rev. Hector M'Lean, pastor of Col and Tyryi, 
recorded in Boswell's ' Tour to the Hebrides.' " Mr. M'Lean said 
he had a confutation of Bayle, by Leibnitz. Johnson : ' A confuta- 




LEIBNITZ. 

\\liat controversy, even between greatesl 
settled disputed points in metaphysical philosophy? 
The ' Theodicaea' itself probably would have been 
more valued, had it been more an independent work, 
and less a work of criticism and of reply to Bayle. 

The 'Theodicaea/ after an excellent preface, pro- 
ceeds with a discourse on the conformity of reason 
with faith. Here the author pursues a beaten path, 
which Locke and others had well cleared before him. 
Unhappy the man whose faith and reason are at war ; 
who cherishes a faith which he dares not bring to the 
light of day ; which is a mere relic of traditional and 
ignorant reverence, valued only when secreted from 
inspection, worthless for the uses of life; a flame 
trembling at every breath of opinion, and expiring in 
the first process of examination and analysis, just as 
a light goes out, or an insect dies when plunged into 
a phial of hydrogen or azote. 

The discourse is followed by essays in three parts, 
on the goodness of God, the liberty of man, and the 

tion of Bayle, Sir ! what part of Bayle do you mean P The greatest 
part of his writings are not confutable : it is historical and critical.' 
Mr. M'Lean said, 'The irreligious part;' and proceeded to talk 
of Leibnitz's controversy with Clarke, railing Leibnitz a great man.' 
Johnson : ' Why, Sir, Leibnitz persisted in affirming that Newton 
called space ' sensorium numinis,' notwithstanding he was corrected, 
and desired to observe that Newton's words were ' quasi (he should 
have said tanquam) sensorium numinis.' No, Sir ; Leibnitz was as 
paltry a fellow as I know. Out of respect to Queen Caroline, who 
patronized him, Clarke treated him too well.' " This conversation 
took place in October, 1773, and, with what follows relative to 
Dr. Clarke, is worthy of note. 



266 LEIBNITZ. 

origin of evil. The first part treats the subject chiefly 
on its merits ; the second and third dwell at length 
on the difficulties and doubts of Bayle. As there can 
be no nutriment more wholesome for the heart, no me- 
dicine to " minister to a mind diseased" more efficaci- 
ous than the sentiments of Leibnitz on the goodness of 
the Deity, I shall give in the Appendix an analytical 
view of his first essay on that topic. They present a 
happy contrast to those gloomy and cheerless views of 
the prevalence of evil and misery in the world, which 
are usually taken by sceptics and unbelievers. Who 
has not observed that the extremes of a harsh theology 
and of total unbelief meet upon the common ground 
of the excessive wickedness of man, and of the miseries 
and hopelessness of life ? 

Leibnitz had paid great attention to all that in 
English literature and philosophy related to that most 
difficult question, " the origin of evil." Nothing con- 
nected with the subject seems to have escaped him. 
He was familiar with the controversy between Bishop 
Bramhall and Hobbes. He criticized with justice and 
acuteness the essay by Archbishop King, written ori- 
ginally in Latin, while a taste for Latin yet lingered 
as the proper language of philosophy, the essay after- 
wards translated with learned notes by Dr. Edmund 
Law. He perceived the great defect of that essay. 
It is the failure, in the fifth and last chapter, of 
applying to moral evil the same simple principle 
which had been established in relation to physical 
evil, namely, that only so much evil is admitted as 



U'.IKNITZ. 



267 



could not be avoided, but with the sacrifice of greater 
preponderant good; that therefore benevolence itself 
required the existence of the evil, inasmuch as bene- 
volence could not be satisfied with less than the 
greatest possible amount of good. This is the prin- 
ciple which runs through the ' Theodicaea, ' as its key- 
note. It is a principle as intelligible as tenable ; no 
less capable of useful practical application to all the 
speculative difficulties of the understanding, than con- 
solatory in all the pains and sorrows of human life ; 
the only principle that can harmonize faith and reason, 
which is the axis of religion, natural and revealed, and 
the acceptance of which is alone needed to give to the 
optimism of Leibnitz an easy and sure triumph over 
the virtual atheism of Spinoza. Yes ! " there is some 
soul of goodness in things evil, would men but care- 
fully distil it out ;" and the great poet of human nature 
may have felt, when giving utterance to that senti- 
ment, that he was then assigning to mankind the 
office which raised them nearest to the Deity, and 
giving them the key to unlock all the mysteries of 
Providence. 

" From seeming evil still educing good, 
And better thence again, and better still, 
In infinite progression*." 

Touching the essay on the origin of evil, and the 

* Thomson's Hymn, at the close of the ' Seasons,' from which, 
as well as from many passages of Pope and Akenside, it may be in- 
ferred that the philosophy of Locke and the optimism of Leibnitz 
had taken stronger hold of the affections, and more deeply tinged 
the imaginations of the thinking men of the last century than we 
are now accustomed to suppose. 



268 LEIBNITZ. 

subject, it would be injustice to pass over the excel- 
lent observations of the Rev. Latham Wainewright, in 
his Appendix (p. 177) to a vindication of Dr. Paley's 
' Theory of Morals/ a vindication whose merit is 
far above its fame. " With respect to this celebrated 
work of Archbishop King, the reasoning contained in 
the first four chapters on the evil of defect, and on 
natural evil, is, I think, rational and satisfactory, as 
far as it extends, considering the obscurity in which 
the disquisition is involved; but when he comes to 
treat of the origin of moral evil, he seems to be totally 
unable to contend with the difficulty of his subject. 
The hypothesis by which he attempts to reconcile the 
different solutions of the long-debated questions re- 
specting liberty and necessity, is as curious as it is 
unfounded ; namely, that the will possesses the power 
of rendering things agreeable which were before indif- 
ferent, merely by its own agency. . . . The notes of 
Bishop Law to the first part of this treatise contain 
many valuable, and some very profound remarks ; but 
as soon as he undertakes the defence of his author's 
singular hypothesis, his efforts are as little successful 
in producing conviction as those of the latter. Both 
the comment and the text have equally failed." 

Mr. Waine wright is perfectly right. He would pro- 
bably have referred to the paper by Leibnitz on the 
work of Archbishop King had he been aware that the 
same observation had occurred to the German critic ; 
nor need I scruple to add, that these defects of a book, 
repeatedly perused, had become palpable to myself, 



LKIBNITZ. 269 

before I had made acquaintance either with Leibnitz 
or Wainewright*. 

There is another work on the origin of evil, that 
by Dr. John Clarke, a brother of Dr. Samuel Clarke, 
and an expositor of Newton's philosophy, who treated 

* Mr. Dugald Stewart's notice of this work of King and of Law's 
translation, in the Preliminary Dissertation, affords a striking in- 
stance of his inaccuracy. " The name of Law (he says, p. 170) was 
first known to the public by an excellent translation, accompanied 
by many learned and some very judicious notes, of Archbishop 
King's work on the origin of evil ; a work of which the great object 
was to combat the optimism of Leibnitz, and the Manicheism im- 
puted to Bayle." It were charitable to suppose that the translation 
alone is here alluded to. King's original Latin work * De Origine 
Mali,' appeared in 1702. It was impossible it should combat an 
optimism which did not come forth to the world till about twelve 
years after Leibnitz published his 'Theodicsea' in 1710, and his object 
was precisely the same with that of King, whose defects he thought 
to remedy. That object was far nobler, and more important than 
Stewart represents it. It is not to be degraded into a merely per- 
sonal dispute. It was, as the translator of King states it, to enable 
us clearly to " comprehend how the present state of things is the 
very best in all respects, and worthy of a most wise, powerful, and 
beneficent Author : and why, taking the whole system of beings to- 
gether, and eveiy class in its order, none could possibly have been 
made more perfect or placed in a better." It was, in short, to furnish 
an ample vindication of Divine Providence, in the production, preser- 
vation, and government of the universe. It may be doubted whether 
Stewart ever had a copy of King's ' De Origine Mali' in the original 
before him ; and certainly he was not acquainted with the animad- 
versions of Leibnitz upon it ; and I must add that he appears inca- 
pable of treating the subject of it and the argument without min- 
gling in his comments offensive personalities, coarse and unjust invec- 
tives. Why else does he charge Law with affecting that profound 
veneration for Locke, the sincerity of which is proved by every line 
of his writings, and by the care and dignity with which he edited 
Locke's works P Why else does he speak of the coarse caricatures, 



270 LEIBNITZ. 

the subject in the Boyle Lectures*. It is unsatisfac- 
tory from the same defect, though not to the same 
degree. It is a somewhat laboured and dull reply to 
the sceptical difficulties of Bayle, who felt the existence 
of evil under the government of one supremely per- 
fect Being, incomprehensible and inexplicable, and of 
whom Hume was in this respect the immediate fol- 
lower. Dr. Clarke, endeavouring to show the har- 
mony of the physical universe, builds upon the prin- 
ciples of the great Newton, whose philosophy he ex- 
pounded in a distinct work. He had only to apply, 
in the second volume, to moral evil the principle which 
he lays down with success in the first in respect to 
physical evil, and to bring out that principle more 
distinctly, and with more force, thrusting the argu- 
ment home, as in the following passage : ' The 
whole therefore is reduced to this ; either that there 
must be no created beings at all, or they must be 
liable to some evils. Let the supposition be what it 
will, it amounts to the same. All that is reasonably 
to be expected, or agreeable to the notions we have 
of wisdom is, that there should be variety in the works 
of creation; that every part should be as perfect as 
it can be in its place ; that they should all be sub- 
by Hartley and Priestley 1 , of Locke's refined remarks on the Associ- 
ation of Ideas, when he must have known, if he knew anything, 
that such caricature was as far from their thought as it was alien from 
their feelings, no less inconsistent with the earnest spirit of their 
philosophy, than with their unfeigned reverence for the master ? 
* These were published in two volumes, 8vo, in 1720. 

1 See the Notes NN to the Dissertation, p. 269. 



LKTBNITZ. 271 

servient to one another, and promote the good of the 
whole." Again ; " It is agreeable to the notions we 
have of wisdom in general, and to what we know of 
creation from observation and fact, to think that every 
the most minute part of the universe is governed by 
a certain law, which tends to the good of the whole, 
and that every evil or irregularity is the natural result 
of this under particular circumstances, and is of small 
moment, compared with the general good, and conse- 
quently no reasonable objection*." 

In such views as these, all inquiries into the origin 
of evil, and all attempts to reconcile the vices of man- 
kind, pain, diseases, poverty, and death, with the ex- 
istence and government of a God supremely good, 
must at last terminate ; they are the only refuge from 
aching scepticism ; and where men like Boyle, New- 
ton, and Leibnitz, and Hartley, and Lindsey, and 
Priestley, have rested, weaker heads may well be con- 
tent to find repose. 

In such a view Soame Jeiiyns also rested, in his 
'Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil/ 
His speculations on the unavoidableness of moral, 
political, and religious evils, in such a world as this, 
are not only bold and ingenious, but they are often 
satisfactory and well founded. He thought himself 
original in the opinion, that " God would never have 
permitted the existence of natural evil, but from the 
impossibility of preventing it without the loss of su- 

* Dr. John Clarke's 'Enquiry into the Cause and Origin of Evil/ 
vol. i. pp. 217-219. 



272 LEIBNITZ. 

perior good ; and on the same principle the admis- 
sion of moral evil is equally consistent with the Divine 
goodness ; and who is he so knowing in the whole 
stupendous system of nature as to assert, that the 
wickedness of some beings may not, by means uncon- 
ceivable to us, be beneficial to innumerable unknown 
orders of others ? or that the punishment of some may 
not contribute to the felicity of numbers infinitely su- 
perior?" To this purpose the learned Hugenius says, 
with great sagacity, " Praeterea credibile est, ipsa ilia 
animi vitia magnae hoininum parti, non sine summo 
concilio, data esse : cum enim Dei providentia talis 
sit Tellus, ejusque incolae, quales cernimus, absurdum 
enim foret existimare omnia hsec alia facta esse, quam 
ille voluerit, sciveritque futura*." 

* See the collected edition of Soame Jenyns' works, vol. iii. p. 102 ; 
and Hugenius, Cosmotheoros, lib. i. p. 34, there quoted. On this 
work of Jenyns, Dr. Samuel Johnson fell, armed with his gigantic 
club, in a review which has been called " one of the finest speci- 
mens of criticism in the language." The critic dealt some heavy 
and successful blows against its weaker parts. He turned into ad- 
mirable pleasantry the notion that men's calamities may be the 
sport and pastime of a superior order of beings k But the book is 
better than the review, and after all in better spirit, more thought- 
ful and suggestive. It supplied the reviewer with some of his best 
sentiments, such as those on the nature and criterion of virtue (both 
Johnson and Jenyns being what we now call utilitarian), and on 
death as the infallible cure for all other evils. Johnson's temper 
and views of life were at first harsh and gloomy. His early experi- 
ences were very bitter. The evils of the world were serious evils 
with him. He remembered his own struggles with poverty and 
wretchedness, and seems to have considered his escape exceptional, 
and the common condition of mankind hopeless and miserable. If 
he could admit for a moment that out of some evils a higher good 



LEIBNITZ. 273 

When views like these have been entertained by so 
many thoughtful religious men, it is idle to say with 
Gibbon, that they are " too vast for a mortal mind." 
There is nothing in them particularly difficult. If we 
may speak of the " problem of creation being solved 
under some restricting conditions," these conditions 
may best be found in the unavoidable limitations of 
finite created beings in their sphere of action and per- 
ception. All evil, natural or moral, resolves itself ulti- 
mately into the pain felt by sentient beings. This 
is the " nodus, vindice dignus." The only question 
of moment is, is that pain subservient to a superior 
good? would the happiness of creation have been 
less, upon the whole, without it ? would the abolition 
of the particular pain have involved the abolition of 
we know not what superior amount of good ? There 
is no difficulty in supposing and maintaining with 
Leibnitz the affirmative. 

Nor is there any necessity for the supposition to 
which Leibnitz and Jenyns give too much counte- 
nance, that the sufferings of some moral agents may 
be accounted for, on the principle that these sufferings 
are more conducive to the happiness of other beings 

and superior happiness might spring, he had not power to grasp it 
and apply it as a general principle, and use it as the key to unlock 
all the secret chambers, the lamp to irradiate all the darkest recesses 
of Providence. Johnson must be ranked among those who, whether 
sceptics or Christians, consider the existence of evil under the go- 
vernment of an infinitely wise and benevolent Deity inexplicable, 
and all attempts to solve the difficulty unsuccessful, if not presump- 
tuous. 



274 LEIBNITZ. 

than ultimately to their own. There is no necessity 
for supposing that any beings exist, whose existence 
is not on the whole a blessing to themselves ; whose 
non-existence, taking in the whole of their time, be 
it longer or shorter, would not be so much detracted 
from the happiness of the universe. The scriptural 
Christian remembers with pleasure that the word ap- 
plied to punishment, and to the retributions of a fu- 
ture state, in the New Testament, signifies "corrective 
discipline*" and intimates the subjugation of evil, if 
not a final issue in virtue and happiness. The de- 
struction of sin, the triumph of life over death, the 
working of all things together for good, is a favourite 
doctrine of the Apostle Paul. And Origen was not 
the worse Christian, nor the worse philosopher, for be- 
lieving in what is now called " universal restoration," 
that all would be ultimately holy and happy. Leib- 
nitz, therefore, who contended so warmly for the pre- 
ponderance of good in this life, and who maintained 
that every sane man at its close would wish to go 
through a similar course, should not have burdened 
his defence of the goodness of God with the gratuit- 
ous supposition that the preponderance of good might 
be less in a future state ; that some might then and 
there be left in a position justly to curse their being 
and its author, without motive to gratitude or obe- 
dience, cradled in horrors, and condemned to pangs 

* See the admirable observations of Jortin, ' Remarks on Eccle- 
siastical History,' vol. i. pp. 220-223 ; and ' Lindsey's Conversations 
on the Divine Government,' a charming volume. 



LEIBNITZ. 275 

unending and unmitigated. For if the tendency of 
things in this life on the whole is good, and not a 
single law of nature and of life, not a single sense, limb, 
part, or faculty of organized being can be adduced, 
which is not conducive more to the conservation, the 
enjoyment, the perfection of its possessor and his ex- 
istence, than the contrary, then a fortiori in a future 
life, only conceived and hoped for as a consummation 
of the present, the tendency to good will be more 
rapid, the happiness unsullied and complete. 

"To reconcile the existence of evil with the wis- 
dom and goodness of God," says Mr. Austin, " is a task 
which surpasses the powers of our narrow and feeble 
understandings. This is a deep which our reason is 
too short to fathom. Prom the decided predominance 
of good which is observable in the order of the world, 
and from the manifold marks of wisdom which the 
order of the world exhibits, we may draw the cheering 
inference that its Author is good and wise. Why 
the world which he has made is not already perfect, 
or why a benevolent Deity tolerates the existence of 
evil, or what (if I may so express myself) are the ob- 
stacles in the way of his benevolence, are clearly ques- 
tions which it were impossible to solve, and which it 
were idle to agitate, although they admitted a solu- 
tion. It is enough for us to know that the Deity is 
perfectly good; and that since he is perfectly good, 
he wills the happiness of his creatures. This is a 
truth of the greatest practical moment. For the cast 
of the affections, which we attribute to the Deity, de- 

T2 



276 LEIBNITZ. 

termines, for the most part, the cast of our moral sen- 
timents*." 

Sentiments on such a subject, adopted after so much 
careful reflection, and expressed with so just a regard 
to the best feelings of our nature, especially when 
taken in connection with those preceding them, it 
would be presumptuous to expect to modify. Still 
it is possible for the mind, in its highest meditative 
moods, to view all evils, physical and moral, only 
as shadows that heighten the beauty and warm the 
colour of the picture and the landscape, like discords 
that give richness to harmony, like acids that give 
pungency to sweets ; and why can we not apply a 
principle of reason and analogy, manifest in small 
things, to the greater and more serious ? If eclipses 
were unavoidable in the natural universe, the plan 
and motion of the heavenly bodies being what they 
are, then the terror and superstition of mankind on 
observing the phenomena were equally unavoidable, 
mankind being what they are. It is evident that 
the intellectual powers, the social affections, the moral 
graces, the earnest sympathies of our nature, all these, 
which constitute the charm of cultivated and vigor- 
ous life, are developed by the struggle with difficulty, 
with danger, and with death. Thus what we call evil, 
in its darkest as well as lightest forms, is the school 
of human virtue, and the great element of superior 
and lasting happiness. 

He who reads often, and considers deeply, the de- 

* Province of Jurisprudence determined, p. 93. 



LEIBNITZ. 277 

monstration of Hartley (Proposition 103), that " God 
is infinitely benevolent," may find all his difficulties 
respecting the moral government of the universe gra- 
dually disappear. In Hartley's own language he will 
be convinced that, " since this world is a system of 
benevolence, and consequently its Author the object 
of unbounded love and adoration, benevolence and 
piety are the only true guides in our inquiries into 
it, the only keys which will unlock the mysteries of 
nature, and clues which lead through her labyrinths. 
Of this, all branches of natural history and natural 
philosophy afford abundant instances ; and the same 
thing may be said of civil history, when illustrated 
and cleared by the Scriptures, so as to open to view 
the successive dispensations of God to mankind; but 
it has been more particularly taken notice of in the 
frame of the human body, and in the symptoms and 
tendencies of distempers. In all these matters let the 
inquirer take it for granted previously that everything 
is right, and the best that it can be ' caeteris manen- 
tibus ;' i. e., let him, with a pious confidence, seek for 
benevolent purposes, and he will be always directed 
to the right road; and after a due continuance in 
it, attain to some new and valuable truth ; whereas 
every other principle and motive to examination, being 
foreign to the great plan upon which the universe is 
constructed, must lead to endless mazes, errors, and 
perplexities*." This is the only philosophy worthy 

* Hartley's Observations on Man, Prop. 155. " The pursuit of 
the pleasures of imagination ought to be regulated by the precepts 
of benevolence, piety, and the moral sense." 



278 LEIBNITZ. 

of the Christian ! Of late it has gone much out of 
fashion. Such philosophy gave a tone to thought and 
imagination in the earlier part of the last century ; it 
found its way into poetry, and is not faintly echoed 
in a certain optimism, an earnest, hopeful faith and 
devotion glowing in the beautiful pages of Pope and 
Thompson and Akenside. It has tinged the spirit of 
Wordsworth, in that portion of the ' Excursion/ called 
" Despondency corrected ;" and in his earlier and 
better days, it was the philosophy of Samuel Taylor 
Coleridge, when he gave to his son the name of 
Hartley, when he wrote the best parts of the ' Friend/ 
when he sought the sympathy and encouragement of 
earnest and independent men, and before his habits 
became morbid and debased, and his mind therefore 
preyed upon itself. 

The question, whether the laws of creation and ani- 
mated being are designedly beneficent, expressions of 
the will of an active, intelligent, and infinitely bene- 
volent Being, transcends in interest and importance 
every other which can be placed before the human 
mind for answer and solution. To that question all 
inquiries respecting the laws of mind as well as mat- 
ter evidently lead up. No one has treated it in a 
more interesting manner than Leibnitz. It alone is 
worthy the name of transcendental philosophy. An 
answer in the affirmative lies at the base of all philo- 
sophical belief in an historical revelation, and in the 
line of evidence lies the point of contact between a 
sound mental philosophy and an elevating religious 
faith. 



LEIBNITZ. 279 

The optimism of Leibnitz has been compared with 
that of Plato* ; but there can be no legitimate com- 
parison. The optimism of Leibnitz is clear, and his 
opinion is firm, founded on the existence and govern- 
ment of one infinitely good Creator. It is more than 
doubtful whether Plato had any distinct and steady 
conception of such a Being, so as to reason from it 
as a first principle. We may find passages in the 
Tirnseus, the Republic, the Phsedo, which taken by 
themselves, and interpreted by the light of our modern 
knowledge and convictions, may satisfy a philosophical 
and devout theist. French and English translators 
have often given to Plato as much as possible the air 
and language of a Christian philosopher. In selec- 
tions, like that of Dacier, the study of Platonism 
may be easy and agreeable. But those who endea- 
vour to interpret Plato by himself will not presume 
upon superior penetration to Cicero's, when in the De 
Natura Deorumf he breaks forth, " Jam de Platonis 
inconstantia longum est dicere ; qui in Timaeo, partern 
hujus mundi nominari neget posse : in Legum autem 
libris, quid sit omnino Deus, anquiri oportere non 
censeat. Quod vero sine corpore ullo Deum vult esse, 
ut Graeci dicant ao-cofjuarov, id quale esse possit, in- 
telligi non potest. Careat enim sensu, necesse est, 
careat etiam prudentia, careat voluptate ; quse omnia 
una cum deorum notione comprehendimus. Idem et 
in Timeeo dicit, et in legibus, et mundum Deum esse, 
et ccelum, et astra, et animos, et eos quos majorum 

* Stewart's Dissertation, pp. 126, 127. t I*b- i. . 12. 



280 LEIBNITZ. 

institutis accepinms : quse et per se sunt falsa per- 
spicue, et inter sese vehementer repugnantia*." 

Leibnitz, it has been said, belonged to that noble 
family of thinkers which numbers among its chiefs 
Pythagoras, Plato, and Descartes, who, " seeing in the 
human mind something more than the passive subject 
of sensation, an empty possibility, a product of phy- 
sical organization, would ascribe to reason a divine 
origin, and an authority superior to that of sensible 
experience, and would subject facts to principles, 
things to ideas. He sprang historically from Des- 
cartes, and was the immediate adversary of Gassendi 
and of Locke, f" 

But names and epithets must not deceive us, nor 
be too readily accepted. The leading principles of 

* "Now of the inconsistency of Plato it were long to speak. He 
in the Timseus says that the Deity cannot be called a part of this 
world ; but in the books of Laws, he considers that the question 
what the Deity is in all respects ought not to be entertained. When 
he would have the Deity without any body, how that can be, it is 
impossible to understand ; for if he be destitute of perception, he 
must be also destitute of foresight, destitute of enjoyment; all 
which we comprehend in the notion of the Gods. The same philo- 
sopher says, both in the Timseus and in the books of Laws, now that 
the world is God, now the heaven, and the stars and the earth and 
souls, and those whom we have been taught to receive as such by 
the institutions of our ancestors. These things are manifestly false 
in themselves, and intensely repugnant to one another." 

t See the article Leibnitz in the ' Dictionnaire des Sciences Philo- 
sophiques.' Those who wish for a short view of the philosophy of 
Leibnitz, will find it best in the paper entitled Monadologie, printed 
in 1714, containing a resume of his Theodicsea, and of all his philo- 
sophy. 



LEIBNITZ. 281 

the ' Theodicaea' are separable from the peculiar theo- 
ries of Leibnitz, from his spiritual monads, his pre- 
established harmony, his sufficient reason; and per- 
haps it might be shown that Leibnitz, in whatever 
he possessed of useful knowledge of the mind, owed 
more to Bacon, to Gasseudi, and to Locke, than to 
Descartes. 

All who have paid attention to the history of phi- 
losophy, recognize at once two tendencies of thought, 
which, like streams rising among the distant hills, 
have continued strikingly distinct, though often ap- 
proaching and sometimes mingling their waters ; some- 
times, after long windings, lost in distance and obscu- 
rity, re-appearing, sparkling with light and extend- 
ing in beauty. These streams are the Platonic and 
the Aristotelian. The one gathers its strength from 
native and inward resources : its waters well up, as 
it is expressed, from the deep fountains of the soul. 
The other is enriched by the perpetual accession of 
many small but separate rills, that pour their contri- 
fcutions into the common receptacle of waters. The 
Platonist, imaginative, poetical, impatient of the re- 
straints of logical deduction, seizing the broad facts 
and first phenomena of our so-called moral conscious- 
ness, without analysis, repudiating definition, relies on 
strong impressions, stirring words, and popular pre- 
dilections. The Aristotelian, taking his lessons and 
laws from repeated observation, and justifying his con- 
clusions by actual experiment, by the faithful inter- 
pretation of phenomena, endeavours to make his mind 



282 LEIBNITZ. 

a mirror of the universe. Cautious, exact, consistent, 
definite, he is not like the spider spinning cobwebs 
from his own bowels, to use Bacon's admirable simile, 
but like the bee gathering treasure from the sweets 
of nature, and storing them up for lasting uses and 
future happiness. Perhaps the later continental me- 
taphysicians, from Descartes through Leibnitz and 
Kant downwards, have allied themselves to the school 
of Plato, imitating his manner, and coveting his dis- 
tinction. But on the continent, as in political move- 
ments everything has been lost by the attempt to re- 
construct society on abstract principles, and bring 
new and untried theories suddenly into action ; by 
the neglect and contempt of ancient and existing in- 
stitutions, instead of the endeavour to adapt them to 
altered circumstances, and thus to introduce changes 
at once possible and safe, which time might show to 
be amendments ; in short, as there has been a per- 
petual change of masters, without increased security 
of law and wider scope for social action ; so in litera- 
ture and philosophy, the passion for originality, the 
desire of every man to found a school and shine apart 
with unborrowed light, rather than to form part of a 
bright galaxy adding to the general illumination ; the 
disdain of known truths, received principles, plain 
language, and syllogistic reasoning, these have been 
unhappily the obstacles to progress and to truth. 
More especially they have been so in those depart- 
ments of thought, such as morals, jurisprudence, psy- 
chology, and theology, wherein it is so much easier by 



LEIBNITZ. 283 

new, uncouth, or obsolete expressions, to play with 
the bubbles of reputation and raise the stare of 
wonder, than by the discovery of new facts, or by 
the better arrangement and classification of admitted 
and positive phenomena, to illustrate old principles 
or establish new. 

I know not whether we have in English literature 
a work of criticism of equal dimensions so just, so 
instructive, so beautiful, as that of Rene Rapin, 'La 
Comparaison de Plato et d'Aristote.' It is noticed 
by I. D'Israeli in the Curiosities of Literature, in a 
short paper on the same subject. A similar com- 
parison has been instituted and pursued with power 
and discrimination by Degerando in his 'Histoire 
comparee des Systemes/ After holding the balance 
very evenly, and doing full justice to the fine taste 
and beautiful spirit of Plato, Rapin gives the palm of 
real worth to Aristotle, and adds his strength to the 
opinion of our learned Selden, no inferior judge, " that 
there never breathed that person to whom the world 
is more beholden than to Aristotle*." 

Happily the English mind has been and is essen- 
tially Aristotelian, practical rather than sentimental, 
using imagination to adorn, not to pervert truth, to 
polish, not to conceal facts. To the greatest names that 
can be mentioned of the Platonic family, it opposes 
names of superior weight, those of Bacon, Hobbes, 

* Selden's Table-talk, edit. 1716, p. 124 ; a manual of wisdom in 
matters of Church and State. Rapin sums up his judgement in the 
words, " Plato frequently only thinks to express himself well ; Aris- 
totle only thinks to think justly." 



284 LEIBNITZ. 

Newton, Boyle, Locke, Hartley, Paley, Bentham, and 
many others, eminent disciples and coadjutors, men 
whose method of philosophizing has been fundament- 
ally the same ; whose great aim it ever was to be con- 
sistent with nature, and consistent with themselves ; 
who believed the Divine will and human duty and hu- 
man happiness ultimately to coalesce. This maybe 
more fully developed when we come to trace briefly the 
genealogy of English metaphysics. Meantime there 
are welcome signs of a better era in the foreign 
schools. Trendelenberg, in the admirable preface to 
his ' Elernenta Logices Aristotelese/ turns in the right 
direction. He observes that nothing now seems firm 
or settled in philosophy ; that such is the inconstancy 
and variety in the use of philosophical terms, that 
often a merely perplexing and learned loquacity puts 
on the specious ornaments of philosophy; that he 
who seeks the elements of logic must be commanded 
to return to the refinement and simplicity of Aristotle. 
And Barthelemy St. Hilaire, in the preface to his valu- 
able translation of the Logic of Aristotle into French, 
has demonstrated how widely the modern German 
writers of eminence, Hegel, Fichte, and Schelling, 
have departed from the path of useful philosophy, by 
neglecting the chart and guidance of Aristotle, and 
mingling, like Hegel, under the title of logic, in one 
mass of confusion, metaphysics, the entire body of 
philosophy, the intelligence of man in all its develop- 
ments, nay the very history of humanity itself*. 

* See Logique d'Aristote, par J. Barthelemy St. Hilaire : preface, 
p. 149. Paris, 1844. 



KANT. 285 

REFLECTIONS ON KANT. 

The name of St. Hilaire brings us to the inquiry 
whether there be anything in the philosophy of Kant 
enabling us to solve questions left difficult and dark 
by his predecessors. St. Hilaire*, surely a competent 
judge, has asserted that in Kant's judgement respect- 
ing the categories of Aristotle, there are almost as 
many errors as thoughts ; that he mistook altogether 
the design and spirit of Aristotle's logic; that while 
Aristotle was seeking the most general signification 
of all words in their relation to things, the design of 
Kant was wholly different ; that while Aristotle was 
building his logic upon observation and experience, 
as he built his natural history, his meteorology, and 
his politics, Kant was seeking for pure conceptions 
of the understanding and necessary forms of thought. 
Though Aristotle has never spoken of what Kant 
calls conceptions, Kant would judge Aristotle as if 
Aristotle were merely one of his own disciples, but 
a faithless or stupid disciple. If St. Hilaire is right, 
the offence is great. There can be no progress in 
philosophy, when the paths smoothed by preceding 
labourers are not only deserted, but their very di- 
rection and character misrepresented, for the sake of 
acquiring a false distinction by the pretence of new 
discoveries and superior methods of procedure. 

Kant as a thinker appears to have purposely isolated 
himself from mankind. He was not only self-ba- 

* Preface, p. 80. 



286 KANT. 

nished from the commonwealth of literature by the 
use of a language peculiar to himself, but there is 
ground for thinking that he loved much more to dog- 
matize among people who could not correct him, on 
subjects which they either had not studied or could 
not comprehend, than to find out what had been al- 
ready wisely established, and to render more intelli- 
gible and easy what was before difficult and obscure. 
It has been observed by Remusat, a favourable critic, 
that the student should bring to his pages a very 
amiable spirit, and be willing to interpret him in the 
manner most favourable to truth and to himself. But 
an author, whether he write to instruct or to please, 
should tax the patience of his readers as little as pos- 
sible. If he cannot attract their sympathies by the 
graces of composition, he should not repel them by 
harshness and barbarisms, for which there can be no 
excuse in necessity. Sciolists and novices in meta- 
physical speculation, who are ever ready to mistake 
obscurity for depth, may continue to look into the 
dark waters for what they will never find. But to 
German transcendentalism the disciple of Aristotle 
and Bacon applies the proverb, " He who blows into 
the dust will be sure to fill his own eyes." 

The injustice which Kant has done to Aristotle is 
accordant with the treatment of his more immediate 
predecessors. By the absence of careful reference to 
their pages, he conceals his own misconceptions or 
misrepresentations, and secures an air of novelty for 
statements and views which, so far as they are intelli- 



KANT. 287 

gible, are by no means original or peculiar. Thus in 
the preface to his ' Prolegomena zur Metaphysik' he 
gives an account of the influence of Hume's specula- 
tions upon his own*. But could any one understand 
what Hume's views and speculations were from Kant's 
account ? We have seen how obscure and inconsis- 
tent Hume's language and statements are ; yet it is 
necessary to know them accurately, in order to under- 
stand how far comments upon them are just. How 
vain is the reply to assertions which, perhaps, were 
never made; and, on language originally vague and 
inconsistent, how idle are comments still more mys- 
terious ! 

" Since the Essays of Locke and Leibnitz, or rather 
since the origin of metaphysics, so far as their history 
reaches, no circumstance has occurred which could be 
more decisive of the fate of this science, than the at- 
tack which David Hume made upon it. He brought 
no light to this part of cognition, but he struck a 
spark, by which, had it met with susceptible tinder, a 
light steadily increasing might have been obtained. 
Hume set out from a single but important notion in 
metaphysics, namely, the connection of cause and 
effect, and with this the consequent conceptions of 
power and action ; and he requires of Reason to an- 
swer him, what right she has to think that something 
may be so laid down, that if it be settled or granted 

* There appears to have been an early translation of Hume's 
Essays into German, in four volumes, from which, in his notes, Kant 
quotes a passage. 



288 KANT. 

(gesetzf) something else must also of necessity be 
granted ; for this the notion of cause implies. He 
proved incontrovertibly that it is impossible for rea- 
son to conceive of such a ^connection a priori and 
from notions ; for this involves necessity. But we 
cannot discover why, because something is, something 
else must necessarily be ; and how the notion of such 
a connection a priori can be introduced. Hence he 
inferred that reason entirely deceives herself with this 
idea, and takes it falsely for her own child, when it is 
nothing but a bastard of the imagination, which, im- 
pregnated by experience, has brought certain concep- 
tions under the law of association, and substitutes a 
subjective necessity thence arising, that is custom, 
for an objective insight. Hence he concluded that 
reason has not a power of thinking of connections of 
this sort, of themselves universally, for her concep- 
tions would be in that case mere fictions ; and all her 
cognitions pretending to subsist a priori would be 
mere falsely stamped common experiences, which is as 
much as to say that there are no metaphysics, and 
can be none*." 

After some observations on the effect of Hume's 
conclusion in setting the good heads of his time to 
work to solve the problem, and on his being misun- 
derstood by them all, the transcendental philosopher 

* I have seen several translations of this passage (Kant's Sammt- 
liche Werke, vol. iii. pp. 5, 6), but it is difficult to give a satisfactory 
one ; part of it is given from the Latin version of Born, in Stewart's 
Dissertation, p. 193, quoted from Willich. 



KANT. 289 

goes on : " The question is not whether the concep- 
tion of causation is right, useful, and relatively to the 
whole cognition of nature indispensable, for of this 
Hume never harboured a doubt ; but whether it is 
thought of a priori by reason, and in this manner 
has internal truth independent of all experience, and 
consequently more extensive utility, which is not li- 
mited to objects of experience merely ; on this subject 
Hume wanted information, and, as he himself tells us, 
always kept his mind open to instruction, if any one 
would vouchsafe to bestow it upon him." 

" I freely confess that it was this very hint of David 
Hume which first roused me from my dogmatic slum- 
ber, and gave to my investigations in the field of con- 
templative philosophy a totally different direction. I 
was far from acceding to his conclusions, which I con- 
sidered to arise only from this, that he did not con- 
template the whole question, but only a part of it, 
which could lead to nothing, unless the whole were 
taken into account. When we proceed from a well 
founded, though not thoroughly digested thought, 
suggested by another, we may certainly hope, by con- 
tinued investigation, to advance further than the acute 
man could do to whom we are indebted for the first 
spark of the light. I first inquired, therefore, whether 
the doubt of Hume could be regarded as a general 
one. I soon perceived that the conception of the con- 
nection of causes and effects is by no means the only 
one by which the understanding thinks of the con- 
nections of things a priori (or as Born has it, ex 

u 



290 KANT. 

anticipatione), but rather that the whole of metaphy- 
sics depends on these (conceptions?). I endeavoured 
to ascertain their number, and when this succeeded 
with me beyond expectation, I advanced to the deduc- 
tion of those conceptions, which I was now persuaded 
were not derived from experience, as Hume feared, but 
arise from the pure understanding. This deduction, 
which seemed impossible to my acute predecessor, and 
which no one besides him had conceived, although 
every one confidently used such conceptions, without 
caring on what their objective validity depended, 
this deduction, I say, was the most difficult which 
could be undertaken for the behoof of metaphysics ; 
and what made the matter worse, metaphysics, as far 
as the science already existed, could render me no 
assistance, since the very possibility of metaphysics 
depended on that deduction. When, therefore, I 
had succeeded in solving the question of Hume, not 
merely in the particular instance, but in respect of the 
whole faculty of the pure reason, I could then take 
sure steps, though slow ones, so as at length to deter- 
mine fully and on universal principles, the whole ex- 
tent of the pure reason, both as to its boundaries and 
materials. This metaphysics required, to erect a sys- 
tem on a plan determinate and secure." 

On this passage Mr. Stewart has given some useful 
and instructive observations, showing the injustice of 
Kant to his predecessors, and the absence of that 
originality to which he lays claim. But it is open to 
much graver objections. 



KANT. 291 

After that careful examination of Mr. Hume's lan- 
guage and reasoning, which the reader may be sup- 
posed to have made, he is prepared for an estimate of 
the value of the foregoing representation. And it 
may be asked, would Hume have recognized his own 
meaning or thought in the dress which Kant has given 
to it? Would he have assented to the correctness 
of such an account of his problem, doubt, scruple, 
or whatever other name be given to his theory of 
the origin and his opinion of the value of our ' idea 
of necessary connection' f our notion of cause and 
power? ' Would he have understood it ? 

There is no clear statement, in the midst of what 
professes to be an historical account, of Hume's real 
argument and position. There is nothing in Hume 
about ' subjective necessity' or * objective validity' 
nothing about a conception of a connection of things 
a priori. Such language, borrowed from the school- 
men, would probably have been as distasteful and un- 
intelligible to him as to subsequent thinkers. Nobody 
would conceive, from anything which Kant has said, 
that Hume contended, rightly or wrongly, that " this 
idea of a necessary connection amongst events arises 
from a number of similar instances which occur of the 
constant conjunction of these events." There is no- 
thing in Kant to help us in ascertaining whether it 
do or do not arise from this source. The absence 
of distinct reference to Hume's actual language, and 
even to the particular Essay in question, is destruc- 
tive to exact inquiry. Hume's question was not 

u 2 



292 KANT. 

" whether the conception of cause is thought of a 
priori by reason, and in this manner has internal 
truth independent of all experience?'' He would 
either not have understood, this language, or he would 
have said it was idle, since in his own opinion he had 
proved, at any rate he had laid it down as a first 
principle, that every idea arises from an impression, 
and therefore there could be in the human mind 
no idea or conception a priori, if by a priori be 
meant conceptions antecedent to all impressions ad 
extra, or to all experiences. The proposition just 
mentioned was the real foundation or starting-point 
of Hume's metaphysics. It pervades his metaphysi- 
cal and sceptical Essays. That proposition, with its 
various applications, forms the subject of Brown's mi- 
nute and careful criticism in his f Essay on Cause and 
Effect,' where Hume's inconsistencies are pointed out. 
Yet it is one which Kant has never touched ; and he 
did not perceive that the man who, like Hume, de- 
duced all ideas from impressions, and yet compre- 
hended under impressions all our inward passions, 
emotions, and desires, that is, the most complex 
states of feeling, the rank growth of an indefinite ex- 
perience, had done nothing to clear but much to 
perplex the question of the origin of our ideas, of the 
security of our knowledge, and of the compass of the 
human understanding. 

The language and the principles of the Kantian or 
critical philosophy can never come into general use in 
England, being remote from the tastes, the habits, and 



KANT. t 293 

the practical aims of the English scholar, gentleman, 
statesman, or man of business. Nevertheless a cer- 
tain number of writers and readers will continue to 
trouble themselves with the transcendental school of 
philosophy, flattering themselves that their notions on 
the highest subjects will transcend thereby the no- 
tions of ordinary men. The name of Coleridge, who 
did what could be done to introduce into the speech 
and thought of Englishmen the distinction between 
the understanding and the reason*, between the spe- 

* See Coleridge's ' Friend,' 5th Interposed Essay, vol. i. edit. 1818; 
the article on Coleridge's Plagiarisms, in ' Blackwoocl's Magazine' 
for March, 1840 ; and the note in Sir W. Hamilton's ' Dissertation 
on the History of Association,' appended to his edition of Reid, 
p. 800. 

" L'entendement est la faculte des regies, la raison la faculte des 
principes ; a 1'une, les regies de 1'experience ; a 1'autre, les principes 
des regies." So C. Remusat in the ' Essay on Kant,' vol. i. p. 405. 
Unfortunately for such distinction, the words understanding and 
reason have got a meaning and force in the English language incon- 
sistent with it, of which meaning it is impossible to deprive them. 
I have read attentively the long note in Hamilton, p. 806, and the 
short one in Thomson, on the words subject and object, subjective 
and objective, and have often considered their worth without finding 
any. The meaning is for the most part arbitrary ; that is, such as 
may be assumed and conceded for the moment without being in har- 
mony with received use or any substantial advantage. They are 
commonly interchangeable, every subject being the object, and 
every object the subject, of thought, consideration, and reasoning. 
" The subject" says Mr. Thomson, " is the mind that thinks" 
" The subject of knowledge is exclusively the ego or conscious 
mind" says Sir W. Hamilton. The objection is that such a mean- 
ing is wholly contrary to the received use, and to the etymology 
of the term. The subject of a discourse is always that particular 
matter or range of idea which subjects that is, lies under (sub- 



294 KANT. 

culative and the practical reason, and to make the 
terms subject and object, aesthetic and dialectic, avail- 
able for common use, may long continue to exert some 
influence, notwithstanding -the proof that he copied 
largely from the Germans without acknowledging his 
obligations, trusting to their statements and references 
without attempting to verify them, and thus affecting 
a knowledge of the schoolmen, which might easily 
appear considerable amid the total ignorance of other 
men. It may long continue to be thought and said, 
especially by younger men, whose time and powers 
will be wasted in the pursuit of shadows, or of 
sounds less real and instructive even than shadows, 
that there is a depth and truth, a fundamental science, 
in the ' Critique of Pure Reason/ which would resolve 
all doubts and difficulties could we but reach it. It 
wul be said that no one can judge of Kant's philoso- 

jicio) the thinking power; like the insect or the drop for the 
microscope, not the magnifying or visual power itself. We speak 
of the subject under consideration, and the object of our attention : 
the first has reference to the course and flow of our thoughts, the 
second to the use and impression of the senses such as a sound, a 
light, etc. But the meaning is by no means constant. As to the 
compounds, subject-object, and object-object, they are self-destructive. 
The attempted explanations of such compounds, so absolute, and so 
relative, are worse than useless ; would they were amusing ! They 
only support Hobbes in the opinion that there is nothing so absurd 
but it may be found in the books of philosophers. 

The terms subjective and objective are not infrequent in Cud- 
worth and Norris, and writers of their day. Probably they were 
gradually dropped by subsequent metaphysical writers, by Locke 
and his successors, because they wanted other, and found better, 
terms to express all that they wished to say. 



KANT. 295 

phy who has not mastered his peculiar style. Ob- 
scurity will be in the master an argument for depth, 
and in the disciples, who cannot, however, be interpre- 
ters, an argument for penetration. But what is im- 
plied by this ? Are there phenomena of nature and 
of the mind capable of being discerned in Germany 
and expressed in German, which cannot be expressed 
in English, though with less conciseness and felicity ? 
Are the definitions of terms, fitted for reasoning in 
German, incapable of being rendered fit by any trans- 
mission into English ? There is no doubt a wide 
difference between the mental habitudes and charac- 
teristics of the German metaphysicians and the Eng- 
lish, but the difference may be lessened by a willing- 
ness to approach each other; and the only mode of 
doing this is by a scrupulous adherence to the com- 
mon ground of fact well ascertained, carefully sifted, 
and faithfully mirrored in language not to be mis- 
taken. Do we see in Kant or his translators any 
evidence of this philosophic spirit and philosophic 
power? Was it not far less his ambition to arrive 
at truths where others had arrived before him, to 
rest on facts where others could rest with him, than 
to strike into new paths, to found a new school of in- 
quiry and philosophy, in which he alone was to be 
leader and master ? With this view, was it not much 
easier to use terms in a manner regardless of their 
customary use than to observe facts, overlooked be- 
fore, but whose value must be recognized the moment 
attention is directed to them? Hence Aristotle, 



296 KANT. 

Bacon, Hobbes, and Locke were held comparatively 
light in his esteem, notwithstanding what he has said 
occasionally in their praise. It was not to be sup- 
posed that they had any adequate insight into the 
nature either of matter or of mind. As Euclid and 
Euler are to be of no moment until the question is 
answered, " how are pure mathematics possible ?" so 
Locke and Hartley are not to be allowed to contain 
any valuable observations on the laws and powers of 
the human mind until they have answered a question 
peculiar to the transcendental philosopher, according 
to whom " all metaphysicians were to be suspended 
from their occupation until they had answered the 
question, ' Wie sind synthetische Erkenntnisse a pri- 
ori moglich ?" (" How are synthetical cognitions a 
priori possible ?") a question ridiculous by reason of 
the absence of meaning in the terms. For it may 
be asked, first, do they exist ? possible in reference 
to whose or what capacity? what is a cognition 
a priori ? and next, what a synthetical cognition a 
priori ? 

Not only are the words analytical and synthetical 
continually applied by Kant to judgements or propo- 
sitions which are neither one nor the other, but the 
words a priori and a posteriori are also applied by 
him to propositions, to facts, and conceptions, some- 
times admissible, at others doubtful, as if such words 
were significant of qualities by which these concep- 
tions and propositions could be satisfactorily distin- 
guished from each other, and classified accordingly. 



KANT. 297 

It is now high time to consider and to determine 
how far Kant's obscurity, as the acknowledged foun- 
tain of a stream whose waters are colouring and ob- 
scuring the progress of English metaphysical science, 
arises merely from this perversion of terms, from the 
use of terms apparently logical, learned, and classical 
in an illogical, unlearned, and barbarous manner. 
Almost every page of Kant's ' Critique/ whether you 
read it in German, Latin, or English, will furnish 
ample material to guide in the decision of this ques- 
tion; and that, not merely where he undertakes to 
correct Aristotle, as in respect of the categories, pre- 
dicaments, or post-predicaments, but where he darkens 
by attempted explanation the common or fundamental 
conceptions of the human mind, whether innate or ac- 
quired. If we examine first Kant's metaphysical ex- 
planation, and next his transcendental exposition of 
the conceptions of space and time, we find the follow- 
ing assertions : 1 . Space is no empirical conception 
derived from external experiences. And this for the 
one reason repeated in various forms, a reason which 
is in fact but a repetition of the assertion, namely 
that external experience itself is first only possible by 
the representation of space already existing in the 
mind, and lying at the foundation of experiences ; 2. 
Space is a necessary representation a priori which lies 
at the foundation of all external intuitions ; 3. It is 
no discursive or universal conception of the relation- 
ship of things in general, but ' a pure intuition'; 4. 
Space is represented as an infinite given quantity. 



298 KANT. 

Then, after being told that we must think each con- 
ception as a representation contained in an endless 
multitude of different possible representations, he 
concludes, consequently the original representation of 
space is intuition a priori, and not conception* '. 

These assertions are followed by conclusions from 
the above conceptions, which are 1. "Space repre- 
sents no property at all of things in themselves ; 2. 
Space is nothing else but the form of all phenomena 
of the external senses, i.e., the subjective condition 
of sensibility, under which alone external intuition 
(aussere Anschauung) is possible to us." We might 
here ask how far the sensations of smell, of sound, of 
taste, which are among the phenomena of our senses, 
would give any notion or conception of space without 
the help of sight and touch, and how far space can be 
rightly called their form ; but passing this, and pass- 
ing also an attempted distinction between sensible in- 
tuition and pure intuition, we come to the conclusion 
" that the empiric reality of space is to be maintained 
(in respect to all possible external experience), al- 
though we acknowledge the transcendental ideality of 
the same ; that is, that it is nothing, so soon as we 
omit the condition of the possibility of experience, and 

* This is from the translation of the 'Critique,' published by Picker- 
ing, in 1838. I admit it does not fairly represent the German, an 
edition of which, by Karl Rosenkrantz, of Leipzig, 1838, is before 
me ; but no possible translation makes any important difference. 

On Kant's contorted and abusive use of terms, the reader must 
consult Sir W. Hamilton's ' Dissertation on the Philosophy of Com- 
mon Sense/ edit, of Eeid, pp. 762-768, 769. 



KANT. 299 

assume it (space) as something which lies at the 
foundation of things in themselves." 

Then follows a metaphysical explanation and trans- 
cendental exposition of Time : which also is, 1. No 
empirical conception ; 2. It is a necessary representa- 
tion, lying at the foundation of all intuitions, given 
a priori ; 3. Upon this necessity, a priori, is grounded 
the possibility of apodictical principles, or axioms, as 
to time in general. 4. Time is no discursive or gene- 
ral conception, but a pure form of sensible intuition. 
Different times are only parts of the very same time. 

That these statements have in them nothing par- 
ticularly novel, any one may see who looks into the 
writings of Cudworth and Price, referred to by Mr. 
Stewart, or into the amusing disquisitions of Soame 
Jenyns, who, in the fourth, on the nature of time, 
says, "It is only the mode in which some created 
beings are ordained to exist, but in itself has really 
no existence at all;" or into the early work of Law, 
on ' Space, Time, Immensity, and Eternity/ or Watts' 
* Philosophical Essays/ But be they new or old, they 
are indefensible. They are assertions which cannot 
be accepted as just. They have no foundation in 
reason, being unsupported alike by reflection on 
what passes within and observation of things with- 
out. They all proceed upon the false assumption, 
which is the vital principle of the Kantian philosophy, 
that there are representations (a very bad word) or 
conceptions given subjectively, and existing a priori 
in the mind, which are necessary to the admission of 



300 KANT. 

objective realities. This is wholly incapable of proof. 
It is contrary to the known manner in which our 
knowledge of objects and of their qualities, and their 
relation to each other, is attained. When Kant lays 
down the axioms, that different times are not con- 
temporaneous, but in succession, and that different 
spaces are not in succession, but contemporaneous, 
it may be asked how any one comes to assent to 
these axioms but by having observed some things to 
exist together in space, and some events to follow 
each other in succession. And be the assertions re- 
specting space and time, true or false, valuable or 
worthless, no light is thrown upon the origin of our 
ideas and the certainty of our knowledge, nothing is 
proved with respect to the powers, operations, and 
habitudes of the human mind. 

To appreciate the value of all this language about 
space and time, it is necessary to consider the spe- 
culations and sentiments of preceding thinkers ; to 
compare their definitions ; and to ask ourselves whe- 
ther these definitions and assertions render our ideas 
clearer, or serve any purpose in reasoning for the sup- 
port of further conclusions. It may be further asked, 
whether similar accounts may be given with equal 
propriety of all other abstract terms or complex ideas, 
such as truth, virtue, beauty, glory, life, the soul, the 
will; whether these are pure intuitions existing a 
priori in the mind ? We may ask whether the same 
account may or may not be given of our notions of 
the elements, air, fire, water, moisture, heat, and so 



KANT. 301 

on, and all things whatsoever, whose objective reality 
may perhaps be conceded, but whose philosophical 
definitions will depend on their subjective character; 
that is, on the mode in which the mind conceives 
them, and reasons upon them. 

How much more satisfactory is the account of space 
and time, of body and motion, given by Maclaurin, 
in his account of Sir I. Newton's discoveries ! 

" Space is extended without limits, immovable, uni- 
form and similar in all its parts, and void of all re- 
sistance. It consists indeed of parts which may be 
distinguished into other parts, less and less, without 
end, but cannot be separated from each other, and 
have their situation and distances changed." 

" Body is extended in space, moveable, bounded by 
figure, solid and impenetrable, resisting by its inertia, 
divisible into parts, less and less without end, that 
may be separated from each other, and have their 
situation or distances changed in any manner." 

" Erona the succession of our own ideas, and from 
the successive variations of external objects in the 
course of nature, we easily acquire the ideas of dura- 
tion and time, and of their measures. We conceive 
time, or absolute time, to flow uniformly in an un- 
changeable course, which alone serves to measure 
with exactness the change of all other things." 

He goes on with an account of motion, real or ab- 
solute, relative and apparent. 

The worth of these definitions or accounts consists, 
not merely in their subserviency to subsequent rea- 



302 KANT. 

soning and conclusion, not merely in their consistency 
with all other phenomena and noumena with all 
that is objective and subjective, if we must use those 
terms, but in their applicability to our notions of par- 
ticular spaces and particular times, as well as to the 
abstract notions, if such there be. Unfortunately, 
with the abstract notions alone the transcendentalist 
deems it proper to concern himself ; and, by attempt- 
ing to account for the abstract notions, and define 
the terms, without any regard to particulars, he soon 
reasons them away to nothing, and all his language 
is destitute of practical value and application. Such 
mental philosophers, like botanists and physiologists 
who build arbitrary systems without attention to na- 
ture, are soon encumbered with their own rubbish. 
The worth of Maclaurin's account is evident, by its 
applicability to all spaces and all times, to all the 
phenomena of the heavens and the earth, to seasons 
and their change, to the largest and longest conceiv- 
able as well as to the smallest and shortest, to the 
revelations of the telescope and the microscope, to 
astronomical spaces and geological eras and epochs, 
the experience of a life and the history of a nation 
and of the world. It is consistent with any and 
every measure of them; time being measured by 
motion, and space by body. Far different is it with 
the language of the transcendentalist. It is utterly 
incapable of satisfactory application to particulars. 
Our notion of the space occupied by a particular 
body, our notions, for example, of the space of a 



KANT. 303 

room, a house, a garden, a field, an estate, a king- 
dom, a globe, a planetary system, may be called 
pure intuitions, or representations a priori lying at 
the foundation of things, if any one chooses so to 
call them. But he who maintains that our notions 
of such particular spaces, and of the relative propor- 
tions of bodies in them, do not come from sensible 
observation, and are not dependent upon observation 
ab extra, appears not to be worth an argument. 
Now if our notions of any and all the parts of space 
that is to say, of all given or actual spaces, are 
altogether dependent upon sensible observation, and 
do not and cannot exist without it, with what pro- 
priety can you maintain that we have in our mind a 
notion of space in the abstract, existing previous to 
all observation as a pure or a priori intuition ? The 
very existence of one and the same abstract notion 
in different minds may be questioned, and the term 
space is only valuable when employed in some posi- 
tive relation to existing bodies. 

So with regard to time and times. If we have not 
in our minds a priori the ideas of a minute, an hour, 
a day, month, year, or any measured period, if our 
ideas of these parts of time are entirely dependent 
upon the succession of impressions, and of observed 
changes and motions, by means of which we make 
these divisions, and understand one another's lan- 
guage in reference to them, if no one of these ideas 
would exist without the uniformity of the sensible 
impressions to which they refer, upon what grounds 



304 KANT. 

can it be maintained that every man, that every child 
has a notion of time in the abstract, existing as a 
pure intuition, previous to all experience? It is 
contrary to all we observe of the progress and deve- 
lopment of the intellect. You may call time a neces- 
sary representation, which lies at the foundation of 
all intuitions ; " eine nothwendige Vorstellung*, die 
alien Anschauungen zum Grunde liegt." But the 
language is without meaning, or fallaciously, unscien- 
tifically metaphorical. Time is no representation of 
anything. A representation cannot lie at the foun- 
dation of anything. Intuitions, in the sense of the 
transcendentalist, whether internal or external, for 
he does not scruple to speak of both kinds, do not 
exist. Every proposition may be called an intuitive 
truth to which assent is given the moment it is heard, 
the terms being understood ; and because it requires 
no reasoning, nor new observation to support it. 
Does the readiness of the assent and the perception 
of the truth depend on the conformity of the propo- 
sition to universal experience, or on ideas for which 
no experience has been necessary ? 

Ear more to the purpose, in point of thought and 
reasoning, than all the indefinite verbiage of the 
transcendentalist, far more consistent with all the 
phenomena of observation and the uses of science, 
with the Newtonian philosophy of the universe, and 
the Hartleian theory of association, are the ingenious 

* On the vague generality of the word Vorstellung, see Sir W. 
Hamilton, whom nothing escapes, in his edit, of Reid, p. 805. 



KANT. 305 

remarks of a forgotten and now almost unknown 
English writer, to which it is a pleasure to turn, and 
in which the thoughtful reader may find some little 
satisfaction. "1. As space in the total is illimitate 
and immense, so is time in its totality non-principiate 
and interminable. 2. As every moment of time is 
the same in all places, so is every canton or part of 
place the same in all time. 3. As place, whether any 
or no body be allocated therein, doth still persist the 
same immovably and invariably, so doth unconcerned 
time flow on eternally in the same calm and equal 
tenour, whether any or no thing hath duration therein, 
whether anything be moved or remain quiet. 4. As 
place is incapable of expansion, discontinuity, etc., 
by any cause whatever, so is time incapable of accele- 
ration, retardation, or suspension, it moving on no less 
when the sun was suspended in the days of Joshua 
than at any time before or since. 5. As God was 
pleased out of the infinite space to elect a certain 
determinate region for the situation, so hath He, out 
of infinite time, elected a determinate part for the 
duration of the world. 6. And therefore, as every- 
thing, in respect of its here and there, enjoys a pro- 
portionate part of the mundane space, so likewise 
doth it, according to its now and then of existence, 
enjoy a proportionate part of mundane duration. 7. 
As in relation to place we say everywhere and some- 
where, so in relation to time we say always and some- 
times : and as it is competent to the creature to be 
only somewhere in respect of place, and sometime in 

x 



306 KANT. 

respect of time, so it is the prerogative of the Creator 
to be everywhere as to place, and for ever as to time ; 
and therefore those two illustrious attributes, immen- 
sity and eternity, are proper only to God. 8. As 
place hath dimension permanent, whereby it responds 
to the longitude, latitude, and profundity of body, so 
hath time dimension successive, to which the motion 
of bodies may be adequated ; hence comes it that as 
by the longitude of any standing measure (e.g. an ell) 
we commensurate the longitude of place, so by the 
flux of an horologe do we commensurate the flux of 
time 

" From this parallelism it is difficult not to conclude 
that time is infinitely older than motion, and conse- 
quently independent upon it, as also that time is only 
indicated by motion, as the mensuration by the men- 
sura*." 

Good sense like this is consistent with any and all 
other propositions which we may lay down, not only 

* Abbreviated from the 'Physiologia Epicuro-Gassendo-Charl- 
toniana.' See supra, p. 215. Hobbes defines Space " the phantasm 
of a thing existing without the mind simply" and Time, a phantasm 
of motion. See his * Philosophy of Place and Time,' Molesworth's 
edit. vol. i. pp. 94-96. All that the logician requires is that the 
subsequent reasoning be consistent with the definition; and per- 
haps this definition will be found as useful, and the subsequent 
reasoning as much to the purpose, as anything in Kant. Apply the 
language of the latter to the philosophy of Galileo and Kepler, 
as it is developed in their own works, or in the ' Lives of Eminent 
Men/ published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Know- 
ledge, a precious and admirable volume, and its worthlessness 
becomes transparent. 



KANT. 307 

concerning time and space, but concerning the bodies 
that fill the one, and the events that follow in the 
other. The doctrines and the principles of the aesthe- 
tic transcendentalist, whether they be a priori judge- 
ments or the contrary, are inconsistent alike with our 
common language, and with all the perceptions and 
notions to which that language is adapted. 

In the tolerably intelligible and certainly conscien- 
tious account of the philosophy of Kant, which we 
find in the essays of Remusat, the proposition that 
there are in the mind cognitions or conceptions given 
a priori antecedent to experience, is the gate of en- 
trance to the whole field of his speculations. It is 
continually repeated, continually implied ; whoever 
declines assent to it is stopped at the threshold. 

" Experience gives," according to Kant, " not a ri- 
gorous universality, but a generality springing from 
induction. But there are judgements rigorously uni- 
versal: such are mathematical propositions. Reason 
employs such judgements, and takes them for points 
d'appui. Could experience exist if there were not 
rules which give it form and value ? The conditions 
by which a judgement is good or bad, are apparently 
' a priori' in the mind. Mathematics are built upon 
ideas a priori * . ' ' 

Is not this mere assumption, not only unsupported 
by evidence, but refuted by the consideration that no 
two persons reason together save by the help of agreed 
signs significant of ideas common to both, forming a 

* Abbreviated from Eemusat. 

x 2 



308 KANT. 

part of their common conscious experience, of which 
universality, or absence of exception, is an ingre- 
dient? while not a single term employed in these 
assertions can be of value except as associated with 
the same or a like idea, whencesoever gotten. 

When it is asserted that mathematical ideas, that 
is, the ideas of figure, number, quantity, or magni- 
tudes, of lines, angles, circles, proportion, and so 
on, that the propositions or judgements relating to 
them whether in arithmetic, algebra, or geometry 
exist in the mind a priori, antecedent to experience 
and observation, the assertion seems nothing better 
than a bold defiance of nature and fact. In mathe- 
matical reasoning, no axiom is more constantly em- 
ployed than this ' things which are equal to the 
same are equal to one another.' Are the ideas of 
equality and inequality in the mind of a child before 
things have been observed, measured, or weighed? 
He must be obstinately determined to support a 
theory who has the hardihood to assert it. 

Among the many writers who have undertaken to 
give an account of Kant's philosophy, scarcely any 
attempt it by a close adherence to his own language. 
It may be therefore always a question whether the 
account is correct and ought to be accepted. But 
whether we read the original, or study it in a trans- 
muted and diluted form, the most important inquiry 
is, what new facts we obtain, before unknown or dis- 
regarded, and to what new principles and laws of the 
mind we are conducted by a more able or judicious 



KANT. 309 

classification of phenomena previously known and 
admitted. The account given under the article Kant 
in the ' Dictionnaire des Sciences Philosophiques ' is 
highly favourable, and evidently written by a warm 
admirer. Let us take an important passage. 

" The a priori principles, which serve to constitute 
the knowledge of nature, or, as Kant says, to render 
experience possible, that is to say, the principles of 
speculative or theoretic reason, are without doubt 
necessary principles ; but what right have we to af- 
firm that this necessity is not purely relative to the 
constitution of our mind ? How can we pretend that 
they are anything but the conditions imposed by this 
very constitution on the possibility of experience? 
But if, on the other side, we conceive anything which 
escapes these conditions, on what foundation are we 
to determine its nature and to affirm its reality, at 
least when we do not address ourselves to morals, 
that is to say, when we do not pass from the specula- 
tive to the practical reason ? So far there will be for 
us only pure conceptions, possible, without doubt, and 
perhaps even necessary for the attainment of specu- 
lative knowledge, but whose objective reality will re- 
main hypothetical. But ask the practical reason, 
that is to say, examine the principles a priori, which 
it imposes on the will : these principles are necessary 
not only for our will ; they are absolutely necessary, 
for they are imposed equally on the will of every 
rational being whomsoever; consequently they have 
an objective value, which it is impossible to doubt. 



310 KANT. 

Behold then, established by the practical reason, an 
objective truth, absolutely independent of experience 
the truth of the moral law. However, all which is 
necessarily bound to this truth, everything which is a 
condition or consequence of it, must be admitted by 
this very thing. Now, such are precisely the liberty 
of the will, the life of the soul after death, the Di- 
vine Providence. The first is the very condition of 
the moral law ; the other two are consequences of it. 
Thus the practical reason, in laying down the moral 
law as an absolute truth, secures at the same time 
the objective reality of that of which the speculative 
reason can affirm only the possibility. The moral law 
is therefore, according to Kant, the sole foundation on 
which we can rest, in order to determine or affirm 
anything beyond experience ; and, since this founda- 
tion is the only one, every determination and affirma- 
tion of this kind has value only in so far as it rests 
upon, and finds its limits in, this very condition. 
It is thus that Kant opposes to the scepticism to 
which the critic of speculative reason has conducted 
him, a moral dogmatism, which has for its foundation 
the indestructible authority of the moral law, and for 
its corollaries the fact entirely certain of liberty 
which fact is the very condition of the operation of 
this law, and belief in the immortality of the soul, 
and in Divine Providence, without which the moral 
destination of man could not be accomplished. Such 
is the solution to which Kant arrives upon that great 
question, which he has made the principal object of 



KANT. 311 

his Critick. " Metaphysical scepticism and moral 
dogmatism behold, in a word, on this point the 
twofold residt of the Critick of Kant*!" 

And are we in these days to accept this as the 
philosophy of the mind? Is this a satisfactory ac- 
count of the grounds and certainty of human know- 
ledge, of the powers and operations of the human 
understanding, of the pure reason? In these asser- 
tions, unsupported by argument or evidence, in a 
a mass of terms thus used without regard to pro- 
priety or definition, in a scepticism thus dogmati- 
cal, united with a dogmatism thus sceptical, are we 
to find repose? By reason thus suicidal, its two 
arms, the speculative and practical, fighting against 
each other, are the most difficult of philosophical 
questions to be supposed at rest? Assume, if you 
will, as postulates and axioms necessary for all phi- 
losophy, the liberty of the will, the existence of a 
moral law, the immortality of the soul, and a Divine 
Providence ; but do not pretend that by virtue of 
these assumptions you rightfully claim to be mon- 
arch of metaphysical science, or that you have thrown 
any light upon the manner in which the mind comes 
to be furnished with its ideas, upon the laws of 
thought, upon the extent and limits of human know- 
ledge, the power or weakness of the human under- 
standing. He who turns over the pages of Hobbes, 
and Locke, and Hartley, and believes they contain 

* Translated from the French; 'Dictionnaire des Sciences,' vol. iii. 
pp. 404, 405. 



312 ON THE TERMS 

some valuable sense and truth, explanatory of the na- 
ture of the mind, can only smile with astonishment 
at the high pretensions, the mysterious jargon of the 
transcendentalist, and call to mind the youth and the 
philosopher so admirably described in the ' Rasselas ' 
of Johnson ; when the pupil, after listening for some 
time to a discourse on what it is ' to live according 
to Nature/ feeling that he should understand the 
master less as he heard him longer, " bowed and was 
silent ; and the philosopher, supposing him satisfied, 
rose up, and departed with the air of a man who co- 
operated with the great and unchangeable system of 
things/' 

ON THE TERMS A PRIORI AND A POSTERIORI. 

The terms a priori and a posteriori are now con- 
tinually used as epithets descriptive of qualities, real 
or imaginary, by which certain ideas and principles, 
certain conceptions, judgements, and intuitions, are 
supposed to be distinguished from other ideas and 
principles. Of this, the foregoing pages supply many 
instances. What is the distinction ? Is it intelligi- 
ble? Is it useful? 

" Principles a priori bear the name," says the 
translator of Kant*, "not merely on this account, 
that they contain in themselves the foundation of 
other judgements, but because they are not them- 

* ' Kant's Critic of Pure Reason,' p. 142 ; Pickering's edit. 1838. 
The translation may not be good ; but could any translation be given 
not open to insuperable objections ? 



A PRIORI AND A POSTERIORI. 

selves grounded upon higher and more general cog- 
nitions. Still this property does not exempt them 
always from a proof. For although such (queer e, 
proof) could not be carried further objectively, but 
rather lies at the foundation of all cognition of its 
object, this still does not prevent a proof from being 
possible to be procured from the subjective sources 
of the possibility of the cognition of an object in gene- 
ral ; nay,, even that it is necessary, since the propo- 
sition otherwise would bring upon itself the greatest 
suspicion of a mere subreptitious assertion." 

Allowing this to be English, allowing for some 
obvious changes of the terms from a principle, which 
is a statement used in proof, to a proposition, which 
is commonly a statement to be proved, are we any 
nearer to a comprehension of the judgements not 
grounded upon higher and more general cognitions, 
and therefore called a priori, by summoning to our 
aid, in proof of their possibility, "the subjective 
sources of the possibility of a cognition of an object 
in general"? Of these subjective sources we con- 
fess a perfect ignorance, and feel ourselves in rayless 
darkness. The perusal of such a passage is like en- 
trance into a damp, dark cavern, in which we have 
nothing to guide, instruct, or amuse us, but the echoes 
of our own noises. 

A passage from a thoughtful English writer, which 
relates to the historical and illustrates the modern 
use of the terms now under consideration, will show 
the importance of attending closely to their meaning. 



314 ON THE TERMS 

" Pure logic/' (says Mr. Thomson, in his ' Outline 
of the Necessary Laws of Thought') " treats only of 
those laws and conditions to which objects of sense are 
subjected in the mind ; and hence it is called an a 
priori science. It unfolds the laws of the intettectus 
ipse, and gives no account of the impressions of the 
senses. This view of logic it is hoped will meet with 
general assent." The hope appears a desperate and 
forlorn one. What is there in the logic of Aristotle, 
in Whately, De Morgan, or the Mills, about the laws 
and conditions to which objects of sense are subjected 
in the mind? and how can you treat of these without 
any account of the impressions of the senses? He 
adds : " Before leaving the subject, it must be noted 
that the term a priori has undergone important 
changes of meaning. In Aristotle's philosophy the 
general truth is 'naturally' prior (irporepov rfj ^va-et) 
to the particular, and the cause to the effect. But 
since we know the particular before the universal, and 
the effect before we seek the cause, the particular and 
the effect are each prior in respect to us (irporepov 
Trpos ripas). (Anal. Post. 1. ii. ; Top. 6. iv. ; Meta- 
phys. 5. (A) xi. p. 1018, edit. Berol.) Following this, 
the schoolmen call the argument which proceeds from 
cause to effect a priori demonstration. But with 
Hume ( c Sceptical Doubts ') a priori has the sense 
given in the text, which Kant has fixed* in the lan- 

* On Kant's use of the terms a priori and a posteriori, and twist- 
ing of other received logical terms into new significations, I com- 
mend to the reader's earnest attention the remarks of Sir William 



A PRIORI AND A POSTERIORI. 315 

guage of philosophy ; and we purposely abstain from 
touching the great question of metaphysics how 
much of our knowledge is from the mind itself, and 
how much from experience. The conflicting opinions 
upon this matter will never be reconciled ; and per- 
haps the best service which philosophy could receive, 
would be rendered by marking out the region which 
must be mutually ceded by the opposite schools." 

On this passage I remark, that Aristotle's mean- 
ing is clear enough, and worthy of himself. He fre- 
quently intimates that nature proceeds upon a general 
law or principle, of which individual things or phe- 
nomena present to us the examples, and that in na- 
ture the order or law exists before the individual thing 
or phenomenon, which is but a consequence of that 
order or law ; in other words, the general cause pre- 
cedes every individual effect. There is a foundation 
for this position in philosophical thought and scientific 
observation. Thus it is the law of gravitation which 
sooner or later brings every ripe and un gathered apple 
to the ground. Thus it is the law of vegetation, or 
the continued action of the same causal power, which 
produces the blossom and fruit, season after season, 
upon every tree. Thus the laws of planetary motion 
determine the place in the heavens of every wandering 
star at every given moment. But Aristotle also de- 
Hamilton, in his * Dissertation on the Philosophy of Common 
Sense/ p. 762 et seq., which contains a vast amount of useful 
historical matter, but with many assertions over which the thought- 
ful reader will pause with hesitation. 



316 ON THE TERMS 

cides, at least by implication, that for man there can 
be no a priori knowledge of nature or its laws, no a 
priori judgement or principle, because he must ob- 
serve individual things before he can generalize; he 
can only deduce nature's order or laws from the phe- 
nomena ; and he can know nothing of effects or 
causes prior to observation that is, to experience. 

There is an admirable passage on the value of the 
word 'prior/ or the Trpdrepov, in the Categories of 
Aristotle, of which the following translation may be 
proposed*. " One thing is said to be prior to another 
in four respects : first and chiefest, in respect of time, 
in reference to which one thing is said to be older and 
more ancient than another ; by its time being longer, 
it is called older and more ancient. Secondly, one 
thing is before another when there is no reciprocal 
correspondence in the order or consequence of their 
existence, as, for instance, one is prior to two, because 
of two things existing, it follows immediately that one 
exists ; but from the existence of one it is not neces- 
sary that there are two ; so that there is no corre- 
spondence between the existence of one thing and the 
existence of any more. Hence it appears that what- 
soever is prior is such that its existence is not con- 
sequent upon the existence of any other thingf (or, 

* I translate from Bekker's Aristotle' (4to. Berol. 1831. p. 14). 
Those who have attempted to turn Aristotle into exact and elegant 
English know its difficulty. 

"|" 'A(' ov p,f) dvTio-Tpffal rj TOV elvat dKo\oi>0rj<ns ; the Latin, " A quo 
non reciprocatur existendi consecutio ;" the French of St. Hilaire, 
" Quand il n'en sort pas reciproqueinent 1'existence d'un autre." 



A PRIORI AND A POSTERIORI. 317 

when it springs not necessarily from the existence 
of another thing). Thirdly, priority applies to any 
order whatsoever, as in respect of sciences and dis- 
courses. In demonstrative sciences the prior and the 
posterior exist according to a certain order ; thus the 
elements precede in order the demonstrations of geo- 
metry, and in grammar the letters (or elements, a-rot- 
Xela) precede the syllables. In discourses, in like man- 
ner, the exordium precedes the narration. Besides 
what has been mentioned, whatever is better and more 
honourable seems by nature to hold the first rank. 
Thus many are wont to call those first in rank among 
themselves (jpiriores), whom they love and honour most. 
However, this is the least common of the modes of 
using the term. Such, for the most part, as have been 
mentioned are the modes of speaking of priority. But 
in addition to those mentioned, there may appear to 
be another mode of priority. Thus, in things which 
involve reciprocally their existence, that which is in 
any manner the cause of existence to another thing, 
may reasonably be called prior by nature. Mani- 
festly there are some such things. That man exists, 
is involved, with reference to the consequences of that 
existence, in every true discourse concerning him. 
For if man exists, the proposition is true in which 
we say that man exists, and reciprocally if the pro- 
position be true in which we assert that man exists, 
man does exist. But though the true proposition is 
by no means the cause of the existence of the man, 
yet the existence of the man appears to be in some 



318 ON THE TERMS 

manner the cause of the existence of the true proposi- 
tion ; for, according as a thing does or does not exist, 
the proposition is true or false. Thus in five modes 
one thing may be said toJbe prior to another." 

Thus much for Aristotle's use of the term irporepov, 
and well he knew the importance of using terms con- 
sistently and with meaning. We may judge from 
this what he would have understood by an argument 
a priori. Some priority in respect of time, of place, 
of rank, or authority, would always have been re- 
garded by him. Whether the schoolmen were led 
by Aristotle's language and logic to their use of the 
term a priori, as an epithet for certain kinds of argu- 
ment, it may not be easy to ascertain. But it is 
evident that, according to his use of the term, there 
can be no a priori argument for the existence of a 
Deity ; for if we mean by the Deity the First Cause, 
to him there there can be nothing prior in time, or 
place, or authority. 

It is said that Hume began that new use of the 
term a priori, which afterwards became fixed by Kant. 
Now Hume, as we have shown, *and as any one who 
examines his Treatise and Essays may soon con- 
vince himself, was a very loose writer, and his ex- 
ample in the use of terms was a bad one; for he 
wrote merely for the sake of literary distinction and 
advancement. The desire for truth, and of human 
improvement and happiness, had a very small share 
of influence upon him. But it is not clear that 
Hume meant by c reasons a priori' (a frequent ex- 



A PRIORI AND A POSTERIORI. 319 

prcssion with him), anything but what was then com- 
monly meant, namely arguments from a cause known 
or assumed to the effect, and he was certainly not 
the first who used the expression loosely and in a 
doubtful sense. Leibnitz furnishes many instances 
of such use. For instance, in the preface to the ' New 
Essays' he says, " II y a encore un autre point de con- 
sequence, ou je suis oblige de m'eloigner non seule- 
ment des sentimens de notre auteur, mais aussi de 
ceux de la plupart des modernes : c'est que je crois, 
avec la plupart des anciens, que tous les genies, toutes 
les ames, toutes les substances simples creees, sont 
toujours a un corps, et qu'il n'y a jamais des ames 
qui en soient entierement separees. J'en ai des mi- 
sons a priori* " 

The expression ' reasons a priori,' thus used by 
Leibnitz and Hume, may easily be supposed to sig- 
nify arguments from a known cause or an assumed 
premiss, in favour of a certain effect or conclusion. 
But whatever their meaning, it cannot justify the ap- 
plication of the term ' a priori ' to a conception, an in- 
tuition, a judgement, analytic and synthetic, in order 
thereby to give peculiar and intrinsic authority to 
some proposition which may be very doubtful and 
disputable. Let it not be supposed that, by the use 
of that or any other term, it is proved that there are 
conceptions, judgements, or principles, which do not 
come to the mind through the senses, and do not 
rest ultimately upon phenomena ad extra, which may 

* Compare also a passage of Leibnitz, quoted supra, p. 242. 



320 ON THE TERMS 

be assumed as belonging to the mind per se, and in- 
dependently of sensible experience, except as hypo- 
theses for the purpose of an argument. 

Upon what Mr. Thomson* calls the great question of 

* Thomson's ' Outline of the Necessary Laws of Thought ' is an 
instructive and thoughtful volume. But is it not imfavourably influ- 
enced by modern transcendentalism? Why is logic called 'a science 
of the laws of thought ' ? Are there not many such laws, of which 
logic takes no account P such as the law, that sensations and the 
ideas of sensation recur in the order in which they were originally 
associated or experienced, as in the repetition of prayers and of 
familiar passages of poetry, and in counting. It is easy to count 
and repeat forwards ; not so backwards. It is a law of thought 
that men can only reason with the signs to which they have been 
accustomed ; that minds can only communicate with minds by help 
of signs previously known and agreed upon. But the study of 
languages and grammar, and of Roman and Arabic numerals, and 
of the meaning of algebraic symbols, forms no essential part of 
logic. It is a law of thought, that men's habits and occupations 
determine the nature of their knowledge and their mental charac- 
ter. In vain do you apply to the breaker of stones, the hedger and 
ditcher, for an opinion on the respective merits of Bacon and Aris- 
totle. Again, drunkenness and disease impair the faculties and 
take away the voluntary and the reasoning powers. But the sub- 
jection of thought to the laws of habit and the physical conditions 
of the brain forms no proper part of logic. 

The only laws of thought with which Mr. Thomson's book is 
really concerned are those that relate to reasoning, proof, argu- 
ment, or demonstration ; and logic is in fact with him, as with Aris- 
totle and De Morgan, nothing more than "the science of infer- 
ence," but at the same time nothing less. 

Mr. J. S. Mill is inclined to define logic " as the science which 
treats of the operations of the human understanding in the pursuit 
of truth" The last words must not be forgotten ; but he adds, 
" The sole object of logic is the guidance of one's own thoughts:" 
and again, " It takes cognizance of our intellectual operations only 
as they conduce to our own knowledge." (Mill's Introduction, 



A PRIORI AND A POSTERIORI. 321 

metaphysics, " how much of our knowledge is from 
the mind itself, how much from experience?" on 
which it is said, "conflicting opinions will never be 
reconciled," the preceding remarks, under the head 
of Locke and Leibnitz, on innate ideas, were designed 
to bear ; and, if just, they may help to settle it. But 
at the risk of some repetition, as it is called the great 
metaphysical question of the day, the subject may with 
advantage be touched again, the light upon it being 
somewhat varied. The following propositions seem 
tenable ; and the appeal being to facts, and the facts 
not very far from us, either the phenomena of ob- 
servation or of consciousness, if there were a dis- 
position among metaphysical inquirers to understand 
each other, and to attend to the real nature of the 
mind and the meaning of their terms, the decision of 
such a question should not be very difficult. 

1. A question which opposes experience to the 
mind as a distinct source and fountain of knowledge, 
either in reference to quality or copiousness of sup- 
ply, seems not a very wise one, since one cannot exist 
without the other; for when we talk of experience, 
we mean the experience of the mind, or that which 
could not exist without it ; and when we talk of the 
mind and our knowledge, we never mean to exclude, 

' Definition and Province of Logic,' pp. 4 and 5.) Now the object 
of logic, as an art, used to be to prove or convince; the object of 
rhetoric, to persuade or induce ; and the word o-v\\oyia> meant, I 
collect and infer, or, as I have sometimes thought it might be, I 
think or reckon with another, to count together, computatio, as 
Hobbes calls it. 



322 ON THE TERMS 

but, on the contrary, to include, whatsoever is confor- 
mable to and within the range of our experience, at 
least when we lay down true propositions concern- 
ing it. But perhaps the. question is only intended to 
put in another form an inquiry into the value of 
Locke's two sources of knowledge, sensation and re- 
flection ; and it means, how many of our ideas have 
their origin in the one source, how many in the 
other? and how many true propositions the wisest 
are in possession of, relating to each ? But even with 
that meaning, the question is not a very wise one, be- 
cause we are without means of measurement; while 
nothing that Locke has taught is controverted, and 
no light upon his philosophy is thrown, by any opi- 
nion respecting the quantity of knowledge traceable 
to sources with which he did not concern himself. 
By a man's mind is commonly meant either the ac- 
tual amount of his knowledge, howsoever obtained, 
or the instrument and faculties by which he acquires 
knowledge of any sort or degree. 

" There are of knowledge two kinds," says Hobbes* 

/ t/ 

with that clearness and strength which satisfy and 
gratify ; " whereof one is knowledge of fact, the other, 
knowledge of the consequence of one affirmation to 
another. The former is nothing else than sense and 
memory, and is absolute knowledge, as when we see 
a fact doing or remember it done ; and this is the 
knowledge required in a witness. The latter is called 
science, and is continual ; as when we know that if 

* ' Leviathan,' ch. ix. : Of the several subjects of knowledge. 



A PRIORI AND A POSTERIORI. 323 

the fyure shown be a circle, then any straight line 
1 /trough the centre shall divide it into two equal parts ; 
and this is the knowledge required in a philosopher, 
that is to say, of him that pretends to reasoning." 

This last kind of knowledge seems much the same 
with what Locke calls demonstrative, and includes 
his relation of ideas, or perception of agreement and 
disagreement of ideas, with one another. But whe- 
ther this be true or not, the above distinction is as 
good as it is simple, and is in harmony with all we 
know and all we think, whether of inductive or de- 
ductive science. 

2. Whatever we know of the mind itself is from 
the mind. Its powers and qualities are known by 
their exercise ; and the powers may be confessed in- 
nate, although no idea, especially in the form of a pro- 
position, can be called so. Thus we know from reflec- 
tion alone, taught by experience, what is meant by 
the will, the memory, the judgement, a sensation, a 
thought, and by ah 1 other terms significant of emo- 
tions and passions, and all our internal states. Gene- 
rally speaking, these terms do not require, and per- 
haps they scarcely admit of, definition. Yet the phi- 
losopher may try, and often with success, to analyse 
the more complex states of mind and feeling into 
the more simple and elementary. Thus the will may 
be defined, that state of desire, accompanied by con- 
sciousness of power, which immediately precedes 
muscular action. Every one is conscious of the dif- 
ference between an accidental and an intentional 

Y 2 



324 ON THE TERMS 

movement, between a pain endured and a pain in- 
flicted, between a pleasure unexpected and a pleasure 
sought and procured. Motives and intentions, im- 
mediate or remote, mingle with and modify, if they 
do not constitute, the will, which is sometimes signifi- 
cant of the single and simple desire preceding a par- 
ticular act, sometimes significant of a more complex 
a less definite and distinct condition of the mind, 
accompanying a series of acts, and extending its in- 
fluence over a longer time. Care must be taken that 
a different definition, or idea of it, be not assumed 
or implied in the same argument. 

Let us take an account or definition of memory. 
"Memory," says Ergates, in the 'Physiological Inqui- 
ries*/ " memory is a recurrence of sensations which 
existed formerly, produced by the operation of some 
internal changes, after the causes by which the first 
sensations were excited have ceased to exist/' In 
such a definition or account of memory, is there not 
at once too much and too little ? To sensation should 
be added, at least, "ideas of sensation" and of re- 
flection, and former mental states results of previous 
thought. From it should be taken away all allusion 
to theory about the manner in which the recur- 
rence of sensation is produced. An inquiry into the 
internal changes which may precede memory is not 
necessary to understand the term. The assumption 
that some, though unknown, internal changes, whe- 

* A small volume just published, and understood to be by Sir 
Benjamin C. Brodie. 



A PRIORI AND A POSTERIORI. 325 

ther of the brain or not, do precede and produce it, 
ought not to be mixed up with a definition of me- 
mory itself. The word memory has not commonly, 
nor ought it to have philosophically, any reference 
to such changes, whether they exist or not. But, be 
the definition of the terms significant of mental states 
right or wrong, it is required by good reasoners that 
the subsequent reasoning be consistent with the de- 
finition, that is, with itself. 

Now, as there are many sensational states, many 
shades, for example, of whiteness and blueness, and 
of other colours, and many kinds of sweet and bit- 
ter, many tastes and many sounds which cannot be 
described or defined, and which cannot be conceived 
by those who are not able to make acquaintance with 
them through the eyes, ears, and palate, so there are 
many states of desire and aversion, of joy and sorrow, 
which cannot be described in words, and are wholly 
incommunicable ; and the best terms, which we can 
employ as significant of such states, can only be in- 
telligible to those who interpret them by help of a 
similar or analogous past experience. 

3. All mental and emotional states are phenomena 
of consciousness ; but the word consciousness covers, or 
includes, all that we rejlect upon, all that we experi- 
ence. Is there any mental power or state that does 
not imply a sensational experience? In order that 
a sensation be remembered, that its recurrence be 
dreaded or desired, it must have been first expe- 
rienced. Before an act can be willed, the results of 



326 ON THE TERMS 

a muscular act being anticipated, there must have 
been experience of similar results from similar mus- 
cular action. The sucking of a child is at first auto- 
matic, and may be called instinctive; in process of 
time it becomes voluntary. The arts of talking and 
walking are acquired by effort and degree. At first 
each step and each word require the will ; soon they 
become automatic, or secondarily automatic. And 
thus the study of the voluntary and the mechanical 
conditions of our mental and physical frame, under 
the guidance of the Hartleian theory of Association, 
becomes a most important and most interesting part 
of the science of human nature. The memory of 
pleasure originates the desire to renew it, of pain, 
the desire to avoid it. Memory and desire are ele- 
ments in the formation of the will. Whoever marks 
the growth of thought, and its expression, in a child, 
observes that, after the first dawn of intelligence, in 
the notice of objects, accompanied with smiles or 
tears a language not confined to the human race, 
it soon begins to mark, with a term significant, 
some outward object, such as mother, nurse, flower, 
tree, dog, cat, and so on, each term being associated 
with a cluster of sensible impressions. When the 
child has been accustomed to recall the sensations 
which have occurred together in past time, and to 
anticipate their recurrence in the future, and to mark 
the cluster of sensations by a term or sign, then the 
term, whenever used in the absence of the object 
or objects, calls up, in Hartleian language, the minia- 



A PRIORI AND A POSTERIORI. 327 

tures of the sensations. By degrees the child learns 
to interpret and apply a variety of terms significant 
of inward or emotional states, of desire and aversion, 
of hope and fear, pain and pleasure, memory and for- 
getfulness. It begins to explain its physical condi- 
tions, mental or metaphysical, objective and subjec- 
tive ; and it speaks of being hungry and thirsty, en- 
vious or complacent, knowing or ignorant. 

4. These facts being heeded, the existence of any 
a priori or intuitive knowledge, in the sense of 
knowledge altogether independent of or antecedent 
to experience, can never be admitted. Every finite 
created mind emerges, so to speak, out of a state 
of nothingness, darkness, ignorance. It has nothing 
but what is given it. It knows nothing but what it 
learns. In the sense of a recipient of impressions, 
every mind may at first be compared to a tabula 
rasa, to which Aristotle justly compares the soul or 
thinking power ; and even if there may belong to the 
tabula, metaphorically speaking, a colour of its own, 
which gives to the impressions a tint peculiar to the 
individual, of that tint no opinion can be formed 
prior to experience. In most cases, it is certain that 
the mind acquires all its valuable and communicable 
knowledge by slow degrees; though the degrees in 
facility or power of acquisition be infinitely varied. 
Of self-knowledge, sometimes called the most valua- 
ble knowledge, the knowledge of the inward pro- 
pensities and powers which affect our conduct and 



328 ON THE TERMS 

happiness as individuals, there can be none, till, as 
the divinest of poets expresses it, 

" Till old experience do attain 
To something of prophetic strain." 

5. If there be truths, or axioms, entitled to be 
called a priori, such truths and axioms cannot con- 
tradict our experience, but must be conformable and 
in harmony with it. If not derived from experience, 
they must be supported by it. The terms in which 
such a priori judgements are expressed must be in 
harmony with all our natural and acquired associa- 
tions, when they embody propositions which have the 
firm, unhesitating, and unqualified assent of the un- 
derstanding. And further, in order that a founda- 
tion be laid for the use of language, mutually intelli- 
gible, in order that two or more persons may reason 
and syllogize together, the phenomena of sensation 
and thought must be common to all who use the lan- 
guage ; and the terms so used must be the received, 
authorized, and standard coin of the realm of the re- 
public of letters ; not the spurious and unrecognized 
issue of some private speculator or joint-stock com- 
pany, whose promise to pay in the full value of ster- 
ling sense will perhaps never be honoured. It is the 
utter ignorance or perverse rejection of the Hartleian 
theory of Association, which raises so many difficul- 
ties in the path of inquirers, who will not accept its 
aid to remove them*. 

* On the received use of the terms " argument or reasoning a 
priori and a posteriori ," some accounts are given and some exam- 



A PRIORI AND A POSTERIORI. 329 

These remarks on the great metaphysical question 
of the day may place it in a light new to some read- 
ers, and help to its decision. 

It cannot be necessary to enlarge further on the 
common and formerly received meaning of arguments 
a priori and a posteriori. But, as Bernier's Abridg- 
ment of Gassendi on the Understanding is less readily 
met with than some of the other works to which a 
note refers the reader, the following remarks of that 
writer on the subject seem to be worth attention, es- 
pecially in connection with what has been said above 
respecting Aristotle. 

" The understanding always commences with known 
individual things. Thence it happens that when we 
say, with Aristotle, that singulars are truly more known 
and more manifest in respect to us (quoad nos), but 
that universals are more known and manifest as to 
nature (manifestiora naturd), it is certainly very dif- 
ficult to understand well what he would say ; for all 
the notion and evidence which we can have of uni- 
versals depends on the notion and evidence of the 
individuals. 

"No doubt we prove many things of such and 

pies may be found in Law's Preface to the translation of King on 
'The Origin of Evil,' p. ix.; in Watts' Logic; in the learned dis- 
sertation of Waterland upon * The Argument a priori for proving 
the Existence of a First Cause,' before referred to ; and in Dr. 
John Clarke, on the Origin of Evil. Our own modern logicians, 
Whately, De Morgan, and Mill, do not make such kinds of argu- 
ment the subject of their particular attention, nor admit any dis- 
tinction as an important part of logic. 



330 A PRIORI AND A POSTERIORI. 

such individuals by general axioms, which are con- 
sequently more known and more manifest, but we 
have first drawn these axioms from individuals, that 
is, by an induction which -we have made of many in- 
dividuals; insomuch that all the clearness and cre- 
dence which these axioms have in our esteem, they 
owe* 1 it to preceding singulars, which have so much 
the more right to have this clearness and credence 
attached to them when the formal axiom is present, 
' propter quod unumquodque est tale, et illud ma- 
gis est tale/ 

" Hence it happens that we have ordinarily more 
consideration for the demonstration called propter 
quid, or a priori, than for that which we call quia, or 
a posteriori ; because the former proceeds from uni- 
versals to particulars from causes to effects, while 
the latter proceeds in a manner wholly contrary. We 
must nevertheless see whether we have a right to do 
this ; since no demonstration a priori can have cre- 
dence, or be received, without supposing the demon- 
stration a posteriori, by which it must be proved. 
For how is it, for example, that, having to prove that 
man feels, from this proposition, Every animal feels ; 
how, I say, will you establish the truth of this 
position, should some one hesitate to grant it, except 
by making induction of the individual animals, of 
whom there is not one that does not feel*?" 

* Translated from the French of Bernier's Abridgment of Gas- 
sendi, ' De 1'Entendement,' vol. vi. pp. 349-441. 



331 



OUTLINE OF THE PROGRESS OF 
ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

Bacon. English philosophy, mental and moral no 
less than physical, properly begins with the great 
name of Bacon. In writers of an earlier date, such 
as Anselm and Bradwardine*, some anticipations of 
the most profound metaphysical speculations of a 
later day may be found. They discussed the nature 
and freedom of the will, the arguments for a Provi- 
dence, the dependence of man on the laws of nature. 
But they can scarcely be said to have entered upon 
the study of the mind as a distinct subject for sci- 
entific observation, even had they written in English. 
Not so Bacon. His comprehensive mind failed not 
to observe how necessary it is, with a view to the 
advancement of learning, to know the nature and 
power of the instrument with which man acquires 
knowledge, the mind, according to Aristotle, being 
the 'form of forms-)-.' 

* Thomas Wright published in 1604 a work on the ' Passions of 
the Mind,' of considerable interest. Huarte's ' Triall of Wits/ 
translated out of Spanish into Italian, and Englished out of the 
Italian in 1596, is also a book full of curious metaphysic thought. 
But they are fitter for the antiquary and minute inquirer than for 
one who would take a rapid but just view of the progress of men- 
tal philosophy since the revival of letters. Anselm in some mea- 
sure anticipated Descartes. Bradwardine, whose works, ' De Causa 
Dei,' etc., were edited by Sir H. Savile in 1618, was the first 
English Necessarian. The reader may consult Chalmers' Biogra- 
phical Dictionary, and Priestley's Works, vol. iii. p. 456. 

J" On the meaning of the word form, see a very good note in 
Thomson's ' Outline,' pp. 27-31. 



332 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

The Essays of Bacon, first published in 1597, 
under the title ' Counsells Civil and Moral,' are a 
treasury of observations on what has since been called 
'private ethics/ In the ^Advancement of Learning/ 
first printed in 1605, in all that relates to the rea- 
son and the four kinds of demonstration, to inven- 
tion, to suggestion and the art of memory, to the 
false appearances imposed upon us by the general 
nature of the mind, by every man's individual nature, 
by custom, and by words, we have a rich collec- 
tion of pregnant hints, if not anticipating much that 
Hobbes, and Locke, and Hartley afterwards taught, 
following the Baconian method, yet laying deep 
the foundation for their work, and in harmony with 
all that has since been discovered and enforced by 
the physicians and metaphysicians of most exact and 
patient observation*. 

We should not now define metaphysics to consist 
" in the inquiry of formal and final causes," as Bacon 

* The passage on the connection of the mind and body their 
mutual influence and dependence, suggests the thought that Leib- 
nitz had not studied Bacon carefully enough to profit by him as he 
might have done. See * Advancement of Learning,' Bacon's Works, 
4to edit. 1778, pp. 64-70. The letter and discourse to Sir Henry 
Savile, touching helps for the intellectual powers, appears to be a 
fragment unfinished, but eminently worthy of the great author. It 
was first published in Stephens' collection, but unfortunately ap- 
pears without date as to the time of its composition. The modern 
editors of English classics and philosophers, such as Bacon and 
Hobbes, would do well to mention the copies and editions which 
they have used for their reprints, and to mark the time when the 
several works were composed. When the works are not printed 
in the order in which they were originally published, nor accom- 
panied by any dates of original publication, nor by any biography 






PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 333 

does*; although this is perhaps what Kant would 
make it, interpreting him charitably, when he speaks 
of transcendental metaphysics, because he makes no 
distinct reference to Bacon or Bacon's meaning. Me- 
taphysic is become a humbler study. It is now ge- 
nerally confined to an analysis of the faculties of the 
mind. It deals with the study of the extent and 
limits, the power and weakness of the human under- 
standing in the search after truth ; and with the study 
of the propensities to action, of pleasures and pains, 
with a view to the regulation of the desires and pas- 
sions. But Bacon suggested the path. " The know- 
ledge which respecteth the faculties of the mind of 
man," says Baconf, " is of two kinds ; the one re- 
specting his understanding and reason, and the other 
his will, appetite, and affection; whereof the former 
produceth position or decree, the latter action or exe- 
cution." "Human philosophy hath two parts, ra- 
tional and moral." 

Of the first part of the 'Advancement of Learning/ 
Bacon sweetly says, " This writing seemeth to me not 
much better than that noise or sound which musi- 
cians make while they are tuning their instruments, 
which is nothing pleasant to hear, but yet is a cause 
why the music is sweeter afterwards. So have I been 

from which the dates can be gathered, the study of the author's 
mind, and of the course and changes of his thoughts and occu- 
pations, is involved in difficulties, which such information would 
help to remove. 

* Works, 4to, vol. i. p. 57. t Ib. vol. i. pp. 72, 73, 



334 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

content to tune the instruments of the Muses, that 
they may play that have better hands." 

The first part was but a prelude to the second ; 
the ' Instauratio Magna, of Novum Organum for the 
Interpretation of Nature/ published and dedicated to 
King James in 1620. With its noble and immortal 
aphorisms, it may be compared to a splendid over- 
ture, prophetic of choicest melodies soon to delight 
the ear, and breathe into the soul a spirit of power 
and hope far above its ordinary moods. 

The axioms and aphorisms which Bacon lays down, 
as essential to the profitable pursuit of the knowledge 
of material and external nature, are also applicable 
to the study of the mind. The same tendency to 
hasty generalizations from partial and imperfect ob- 
servation is to be guarded against. The same con- 
stant recurrence to observation of facts and instances 
is to be observed. The same emancipation from the 
slavery of words is to be achieved. The laws of 
thought, like those of matter, must be studied in and 
deduced from phenomena; and the phenomena can 
only be known by observation, first of what passes in 
ourselves, and next by the signs of the processes to 
which other minds are subject. Thus in the philo- 
sophy of the mind, no less than in the philosophy of 
matter, experience and induction, in Bacon's sense 
of these terms, constitute by far the best, if not the 
only demonstration. " Sed demonstratio longe opti- 
ma est experientia ; modo haereat in ipso experimen- 
to" (Aphorism Ixx.). The principles of Bacon were 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 335 

appreciated and acted upon by Hobbes and Gassendi, 
by Locke and Newton, by Boyle and Hartley, all of 
whom entered into his spirit and followed in his path ; 
while Descartes showed not a little jealousy of the 
great master, and employed his imagination in con- 
structing a priori systems; and even Leibnitz was 
not a little unwilling to be guided by one, in whose 
light his own grew dim or was eclipsed*. 

" If the moral philosophers, that have spent such 
an infinite quantity of debate touching good and the 
highest good, had cast their eye abroad upon nature, 
and beheld the appetite that is in ah! things to re- 
ceive and to give ; the one motion affecting preserva- 
tion and the other multiplication ; which appetites are 
most evidently seen in living creatures, in the plea- 
sure of nourishment and generation ; and in man do 
make the aptest and most natural division of all his 
desires, being either of sense of pleasure, or sense of 
power ; and in the universal frame of the world are 
figured, the one in the beams of heaven which issue 
forth, and the other in the lap of the earth which 
takes in : and again, if they had observed the motion 
of congruity or situation of the parts in respect of the 

* How altered is the state of opinion in England since Warbur- 
ton, among his memoranda, wrote : " Descartes and Leibnitz were 
both great geniuses. I pity the first, for he was a visionary : I 
despise the other, for he was a cheat"! See selection of papers of 
Warburton, edited by Eev. Francis Kilvert, 1841, p. 332. It is said 
of Mr. Jackson, that he once heard Sir Isaac Newton pleasantly tell 
Dr. Clarke that he had broken Leibnitz's heart with his reply. See 
Whiston's Hist. Memoirs of Dr. Clarke, p. 132. 



336 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

whole, evident in so many particulars : and lastly, if 
they had considered the motion familiar in attraction 
of things, to approach to that which is higher in the 
same kind : when by these observations, so easy and 
concurring in natural philosophy, they should have 
found out this quaternion of good, in enjoying or 
fruition, effecting or operation, consenting or pro- 
portion, and approach or assumption, they would 
have saved and abridged much of their long and 
wandering discourses of pleasure, virtue, duty, and 
religion. So likewise, in this same logic and rhetoric, 
or acts of argument and grace of speech, if the great 
masters of them would but have gone a form lower, 
and looked but into the observations of grammar 
concerning the kinds of words, their derivations, de- 
flexions, and syntax, specially enriching the same with 
the helps of several languages, with their differing 
proprieties of words, phrases, and tropes, they might 
have found out more and better footsteps of common 
reason, help of disputation, and advantages of cavilla- 
tion than many of these which they have propounded." 
(' Valerius Terminus, of the Interpretation of Nature/ 
Bacon's Works, 4to, vol. i. p. 380.) 

Upon this suggestion of Bacon, Hobbes and Locke 
appear to have acted, however unconsciously. The 
sense of pleasure and the sense of power were, in the 
estimation of Hobbes, the great if not sole movers 
of mankind the real and rightful governors of the 
political and moral world. The later and larger por- 
tions of Locke's Essay turn on the kinds and the 






PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 337 

value of words ; not indeed on their derivation, but 
their definition, that is, their fitness for the purpose 
of exact reasoning and true science. In Home Tooke's 
estimation, it was more a work on grammar than on 
the mind. It might be a very profitable task so to 
systematize the works of Bacon and of Hobbes, as 
to mark exactly the points of agreement in what they 
teach concerning human nature, and concerning the 
advancement not only of learning, but with it all the 
interests of mankind. 

Of all the writers who have put their thoughts on 
record for the delight and improvement of mankind, 
Bacon seems most to deserve the praise that he never 
sleeps. I speak of his philosophical works. Open 
where you will, his pages teem with observations and 
expressions worthy of everlasting remembrance ; rich 
with a knowledge of fact, a purpose of good, and 
a felicity of illustration, that mixture of fruit and 
flower which constitute the highest feast of reason, a 
banquet for the mind wholesome and delicious. He 
may not be always faithful to his own principles. He 
may sometimes be rash in concluding, and mistake a 
complex for a simple phenomenon. He may not be 
always just to his predecessors, and Aristotle certainly 
deserved from him a better title than that of sophist*. 

* " The ' Organon' of Aristotle and the ' Orgamun' of Bacon stand 
in relation, but the relation of contrariety : the one considers the 
laws under which the subject thinks ; the other, the laws under 
which the object is to be known. To compare them together is there- 
fore to compare together qualities of different species. Each proposes 
a different end ; both in different ways are useful ; and both ought to 

Z 



338 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

But no philosopher has equalled him in the utterance 
of great thoughts in a style proportionately great ; and 
his works are indeed as an awaking, a trumpet-note, 
" both of the wants in man's present condition, and 
the nature of the supplies to be wished." His errors 
as a man are unwillingly remembered in connection 
with so much intellectual greatness. No man has so 
largely overpaid the evil which he inflicted on the liv- 
ing generation, by the greatness and splendour of his 
bequests to posterity. 

Hobbes. It must have been between the years 
1612 and 1620, in which last year the second part of 
the 'Novum Organum Scientiarum' was published, 
that Hobbes assisted Bacon in turning his writings 
into Latin, Hobbes being then in repute for the excel- 
lence of his Latin style. We are indebted primarily 

be assiduously studied." So Sir W. Hamilton, note, p. 712, to Reid's 
' Brief Account of Aristotle's Logic.' This is said loosely, with more 
apparent, than adequate truth. Aristotle's doctrine of the syllo- 
gism, or view of the laws of inference, is here chiefly regarded. 
But he never mistook this doctrine for a complete view of the laws 
of the mind, nor advanced it for more than it was worth. His 
'Ethics,' and 'Rhetoric,' and 'Natural History,' and paper on ' The 
Soul,' are Baconian, so to speak, in method and spirit. Of Bacon 
it certainly is not true, that in attention to " the laws under which 
the object is known," a sentence which does not express happily 
either the aim or character of his ' Instauratio Magna,' he over- 
looked the laws affecting the mind itself; or, as he expresses it, "the 
doctrine of the soul and of its faculties." The real relation of 
Bacon to Aristotle is not a subject for hasty decision. Something 
is said of it, and with his lively force, in Macaulay's article on 
Bacon, though more of Bacon's relation to Seneca and to Plato. 
The depreciation of syllogism and induction drew forth the defence 
of both by Mr. De Morgan, in his ' Formal Logic.' 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 339 

for our knowledge of this intercourse between the 
philosophers of Malmesbury and of Gorhambury to 
that singular being, John Aubrey, the antiquary, him- 
self a friend of Hobbes a pupil of the same tutor*. 
Aubrey's account runs thus : " The Lord Chancellor 
Bacon loved to converse with him. He assisted his 
lordship in translating several of his essays into Latin; 
one I well remember is that of the 'Greatness of Cities :' 
the rest I have forgott. His lordship was a very con- 
templative person, and was wont to contemplate h\ his 
delicious walkes at Gorhambury ; and dictate to Mr. 
Bushell, or some other of his gentlemen, that attended 
with ink and paper, ready to sett down presently his 
thoughts. His lordship would often say that he bet- 
ter liked Mr. Hobbes taking his thoughts than any 
of the others, because he understood what he wrote ; 
which the others not understanding, my lord would 
many times have a hard task to make sense of what 
they writtf." 

It has been considered remarkable that Locke has 
nowhere expressed any obligations to Hobbes, nor 
spoken respectfully of his intellect and writings ; but 
it is still more remarkable that Hobbes has never 
alluded to this intimacy with Bacon, nor uttered a 
word of grateful admiration. We do not know that 
Locke ever saw Hobbes, though they were forty years 

* Aubrey communicated to Antony a Wood the particulars in- 
serted in the ' Athense Oxonienses ;' and from Aubrey, Blackbourn 
got the information inserted in the ' Vitse Hobbeanse Auctarium.' 

f See ' Letters written by eminent Persons, and Lives of eminent 
Men, by John Aubrey, Esq.' (1813, vol. ii. p. 602. Edited by Bliss.) 

'A 2 



340 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

contemporaries, and there is reason for thinking that 
Locke never paid that attention to the works of Hobbes 
which they deserved at his hands. In the case of 
Bacon and Hobbes there was, it appears, intimate 
personal intercourse. Hobbes was twenty-eight years 
the younger ; yet the sense of generous appreciation 
appears, by the above testimony, only on the side of 
Bacon*. It is possible that Hobbes remembered with 
pain Bacon's moral defects ; for he had none of Ba- 
con's passion for wealth, splendour, and power. It was 
about the time of this intimacy with Bacon, or soon 
after, that Hobbes began to be deeply impressed with 
the nullity of the logic and metaphysics of the -schools, 
and to perceive the importance of attending to the 
mathematical modes of reasoning in connection with 
the study of morals and politicsf. Yet perhaps we 
cannot attribute much influence to the authority and 
guidance of Bacon in the formation of Hobbes's in- 
tellect. Both were born great ; that is, endowed with 

* Bacon's name occurs once in the English works of Hobbes, vol. 
vii, p. 112, and once in the Latin works, vol. iv. p. 316 ; but only 
in connection with experiments relating to water and its motion. 
Bacon died in 1626. It was not till about twenty years after 
that Hobbes first appeared as an author in the book, ' De Give' ; 
although he had printed his translation of Thucydides as early 
as 1628. 

t It seems scarcely credible that he was forty years old before he 
looked on geometry, when his attention was accidentally attracted 
to Euclid's Elements, which lay open before him in a gentleman's 
library. That book now forms a part of every boy's education ; yet, 
such is Aubrey's account. What could have been the course of edu- 
cation at Oxford when Hobbes was at Magdalen Hall, whither he 
went, as a good scholar, in 1603 ? 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 341 

a pre-disposition to thought, with an inherent energy 
of mind, which would have forced their way to distinc- 
tion, through all impediments, independent of slight 
adventitious aids ; like that ivy which, by its power 
of native growth, whether it cling to the mouldering 
wall or the decaying tree, overtops and at length up- 
holds that from which it originally derived support. 
Nature and history were for both the great instruc- 
tors. To both the past and the present opened their 
treasures. Both were earnest to extend and to secure 
the empire of man over nature and himself. 

In addition to this intercourse with Bacon, Hobbes 
enjoyed the society, and even intimacy, of most of 
the great thinkers of his day ; but of no one more 
remarkable than the great Galileo, whom he is said 
to have attended daily when at Pisa in Italy, where 
he was with his patron from the year 1634 to 1637. 
They are reputed to have been alike in temperament 
and manners, and united in friendship the more closely 
because both had been tormented by the censures of 
the ecclesiastics. Something of resemblance is discer- 
nible in their portraits ; in the square and expansive 
brow, in the deep-sunk and piercing eye, in the firm 
and expressive mouth. 

A difficulty in the study of Hobbes 's philosophy and 
writings arises from the circumstance that the same 
thoughts and principles are repeated so often, in dif- 
ferent forms, in what appear to be at first so many 
different works. Not only have we his philosophy in 
an English and Latin form, but in the ' Treatise con- 



342 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

cerning Human Nature/ in the ' De Corpore Politico, 
or the Elements of Law, moral and politic, ' both of 
which were extracted from him by friends, and pub- 
lished in 1650, and again in the ' Philosophical Ru- 
diments concerning Government and Society/ printed 
in 1651, we have only an extended view of the little 
treatise ' De Give/ first printed for private circulation 
in 1642; while the matter of all appears in the most 
mature form in the ' Leviathan/ wherein his system of 
religious, political, and moral principles is complete, 
and digested with great care and pains*. 

The independence and originality, the earnestness 
and depth of Hobbes' thoughts, together with his clear, 
nervous, masterly style, cannot fail to attract the ad- 
miration of every generous and high-minded reader. 
Such a reader perceives at once that he has in him 
" such things as challenge the greatest attention /' 
and he has only to read the epistle dedicatory to the 
Earl of Devonshire, and the preface to the reader, pre- 
fixed to the 'Philosophical Rudiments' in 1651, to 
conceive for the author high esteem, " as a man who 
thought no expense of time and industry too great for 
the scrutiny of truth /' and who sought for it in the 
most difficult matters, in moral and civil prudence, 
" matters most necessary to the completion of that 
happiness which is consistent with human life." 

Public opinion has its effective Index Expurgatorius. 
No body of men exercises a more powerful influence 
over public opinion in England than the clergy; but 

* See Life of Hobbes, prefixed to the folio of 1771, p. xv. 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 343 

no works are more fatal to this influence, none more 
hostile to spiritual pretensions and ecclesiastical do- 
mination, than those of Hobbes. Hence no writer of 
equal merit has been so much neglected, none is so 
entirely out of fashion ; yet no writer is more fitted 
to form the strong, the independent, self-relying mind ; 
to remove from fact and nature the veil of words, to 
make us understand both what we think and why we 
think it. He regarded the clergy as factious towards 
the state, tyrannous and grasping towards the people. 
Their conduct in his day gave much reason for so re- 
garding them. Religion was then, as often before 
and since, if not the chief source of civil discord, at 
least a great element in the excitement and the strife. 
There can be no more effectual preservative against 
the tendency to mistake submission to a priest and a 
credulous superstition for the spirit of religion, and 
against the tendency to confound the Church of Christ 
with a body of domineering ecclesiastics, than that 
part of the Leviathan' entitled ' Of the Kingdom of 
Darkness/ The comparison of the Papacy with the 
kingdom of the fairies, and the short account of the 
whole synthesis and construction of the Pontifical 
power, is a delicious morsel of history and satire. 

It is not, however, the clergy only who appear to 
disadvantage in the ' Leviathan/ but human nature 
itself. Men are there represented as in constant dan- 
ger from one another, the objects of a just suspicion 
and mistrust ; herding together solely for mutual pro- 
tection, and kept together by the necessary ties of a 



344 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

selfish interest ; using each other's weaknesses for self- 
glorification, envy and malice being large ingredients 
in the compound of good manners and social order. 
If any metaphysician desefve the title of sensationalist, 
it may be Hobbes. Significant of an opinion of fact, 
it is no title of reproach. All our conceptions, accord- 
ing to him, proceed from the sense or action of things 
upon the brain. If any moralist deserve to be called 
selfish, it is Hobbes, who says that by love is under- 
stood the joy man taketh in any present good ; and 
who speaks of the affection which men bestow on 
strangers, as " either contract, whereby they seek to 
purchase friendship ; or fear, which maketh them to 
purchase peace!' (Human Nature, ch. ix.) With him, 
might is the foundation of right, and goodness is con- 
stancy in attention to self. Obedience to law must be 
enforced by power; and moral obligation* arises from 
fear of evil and necessity of submission. 

Yet, whatever his defects, the metaphysician will 
delight in the depth and truth of his observations on 
the intellect, the imagination, and the passions ; the 
logician will peruse and re-peruse his excellent remarks 
on definition and demonstration, and the nature and 
value of first principles ; and the philosophical Chris- 
tian will weigh with candour and attention his esti- 
mate of the relation of the Church to the State, of 
Scripture to the civil law, and learn to test in silent 

* " There can be no obligation without an obliger," says Seldon, 
in his ' Table Talk,' a book which indicates, if not the influence of 
his friend Hobbes, a general harmony of opinion. 



PROGRESS OF KNGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 345 

meditation the amount and value of his faith, and the 
real but secret nature of his hopes and fears. 

It is not easy to give a short, and at the same 
time just, account of the moral and political princi- 
ples of Hobbes. In 1637, Hobbes returned from 
Italy with the Earl of Devonshire into England. The 
troubles in Scotland growing high, and popular dis- 
content spreading southwards, threatening the entire 
subversion of the peace of the island, he bent his 
thoughts to politics, and composed something against 
the pestilential opinions which began generally to pre- 
vail. It was this that engaged him to commit to pa- 
per certain observations, out of which he first composed 
his book 'De Give,' and which grew up afterwards 
into that system called the Leviathan/ " The true 
scope of his discourse was no more than this," says the 
author of the Life prefixed to the folio of 1751, " that 
security can be only enjoyed where there is peace; 
that peace cannot be maintained without dominion ; 
that dominion cannot be supported without arms ; that 
arms will prove but a weak defence, if not put into 
one hand ; and, even then, that they will scarcely re- 
strain such as shall be prompted to discord by the fear 
of an evil greater than death itself, which is the case 
in religious disputes." This account of the scope of 
the 'Leviathan' is just. The most doubtful proposi- 
tion is, " that arms will prove but a weak defence, if 
not put into one hand." The comparative safety of 
the mass of the people under a despotism, and under 
a mixed form of government, is a subject which Hobbes 



346 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

has discussed, but on which the materials for forming 
a just judgement have much increased since his time ; 
and we must be sensible, that there had been no such 
experience before his days,~as there has been since, of 
the peace and prosperity of mankind under a consti- 
tutional monarchy and in a free republic. 

Enough has been made of the peculiarity, and, as 
some think, the absurdity, of certain of his definitions; 
such as, that " laughter proceedeth from a sudden con- 
ception of some ability in him that laugheth;" " glory 
is the passion which proceedeth from the imagination 
or conception of our own power above the power of 
him that contendeth with us*/' But he is not without 
sentiments which imply a delicate and refined appre- 
ciation of true goodness of heart and the true graces 
of life and happiness ; thus he says, " that much laugh- 
ter at the defects of others is a sign of pusillanimity. 
For of great minds, one of the proper works is to help 
and free others from scorn, and compare themselves 
only with the most able." As with other philoso- 
phical writers, perhaps it is less by the chief propo- 
sitions which he seeks to establish, than by the pro- 
found truth of incidental and subordinate passages, 
that the excellence of Hobbes is to be appreciated. 
So with the greater poets, it is less the subject and 
construction of their poem, than the beauty of fa- 
vourite passages, that wins admiration, and leaves an 
indelible impression on the memory and the heart. 

If we judge of Hobbes by the dedication to his 

* See chap, ix., ' Treatise on Human Nature.' 



PROGRESS Of ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 347 

patron and the preface to the reader, attached to the 
' Philosophical Rudiments concerning Government and 
Society/ we shall give him credit for pure motives, and 
form an opinion highly favourable of his temper and 
intent. He saw his country boiling hot with ques- 
tions concerning the rights of dominion and the obe- 
dience due from subjects, the true forerunners of an 
approaching war. He hoped to persuade his readers 
rather "to brook with patience some inconveniences 
under government (because human affairs cannot pos- 
sibly be without some), than self-opinionatedly to dis- 
turb the quiet of the public ; that, weighing the justice 
of things, not by the persuasion and advice of pri- 
vate men, but by the laws of the realm, they would 
not suffer ambitious men to wade through streams 
of blood to their own power ; that they would esteem 
it better to enjoy themselves in the present state, than, 
by waging war, endeavour to procure a reformation 
for other men in another age, themselves in the mean- 
while either killed or consumed with rage/' He first 
sets it down for a principle, " by experience known to 
all men, that the dispositions of men are naturally 
such, that except they be restrained through fear of 
some coercive power, every man will distrust and 
dread each other; and as by natural right he may, 
so by necessity he will, be forced to make use of the 
strength he hath toward the preservation of himself." 
" Though mankind be not wicked by nature, nor all 
nor the larger part wicked, yet, because we cannot 
distinguish the wicked from the righteous, there is a 



348 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

necessity of suspecting, heeding, anticipating, subju- 
gating, self-defending, ever incident to the most honest 
and fairest conditioned." Building on this founda- 
tion, he demonstrates first, that the state of men, with- 
out civil society, properly called the state of nature, is 
nothing else but a mere war of all against all ; and in 
that war, all men have equal right to all things : next, 
that all men, as soon as they understand this hateful 
condition, have a natural desire to be freed from this 
misery. But this cannot be done, except by compact 
they all quit that right they have to all things. He 
then declares what the nature of compact is ; by what 
the right of one might be transferred into another to 
make their compacts valid; also, what rights and to 
whom they must be granted, for the establishing of 
of peace ; meaning, what those dictates of reason are, 
which may be properly termed the laws of nature. 
These he discusses under the title Liberty. 

Under the title Dominion he shows what civil go- 
vernment is, and the supreme power in it, and what 
the divers kinds are ; he discusses their several con- 
veniences and inconveniences ; he unfolds what those 
things are which destroy it, and what his or their 
duty who rule in chief. 

Under the title Religion he endeavours to demon- 
strate, by strong reason, that the powers exercised 
by rulers over their subjects, and the obedience due 
from subjects unto their princes, are not contrary to 
religion, nor to the Christian religion. Finally, he re- 
quests his readers, " if they meet with some things 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 349 

which have more of sharpness, and less of certainty, 
than they ought to have, since they are not so much 
spoken for the maintenance of parties as the esta- 
blishment of peace, and by one whose just grief for 
the present calamities of his country may justly be 
allowed some liberty, to deign to receive them with 
an equal mind." 

In the tone of this address to his readers, there is 
much to win respect; nor can there be a doubt of 
Hobbes's earnest desire for truth and peace, and of his 
profound and anxious thought on the most difficult and 
important questions in moral and political philosophy. 
But his opinion of human nature, of its inherent and 
unconquerable selfishness and folly, oozes out when 
he exhorts his readers to consult their ease and enjoy- 
ment, rather than seek to procure a reformation for 
other men in another age; while all that he says, 
under the head of Liberty, indicates his belief, not 
only in the original, but the continued and lasting pre- 
dominance of the selfish passions, of suspicious and 
hostile feelings. 

The defects of Hobbes seem to lie rather in what he 
omits than in what he asserts. Thus he frequently 
alludes to the infinitude, the eternity, the omnipotence 
of the Deity. He expatiates not on his wisdom and 
his goodness. He admits, for piety's sake, the pro- 
priety of giving to the Divine Being every title indi- 
cative of our desire and willingness to honour him ; 
but he urges no reasons for that honour, and is evi- 
dently a stranger to the fervours of devotion. He con- 



350 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

tends that sovereign power is the source and founda- 
tion of law, and that punishment or fear of evil alone 
enforces obedience. He rarely, if ever, intimates that 
the power, whether divine er human, originally bene- 
volent, is exercised for good; and although this in- 
dubitably follows from what he himself lays down, it 
enters not into his philosophy to consider how the 
motives to obedience may be strengthened by a per- 
ception of the ultimate harmony between self-love and 
social, the human and divine. He argues at length, 
from passages of Scripture, that obedience to the civil 
sovereign, being Christian, is a part of the duty of a 
Christian ; but he drops no word of encouragement 
for any Christian believers to seek the improvement of 
the civil law, by an infusion of the peace-preserving and 
benevolent spirit of the Gospel. It may be true, that 
the natural state of man is, very often and very much, 
a state of warfare. The history of nations commonly 
accounted civilized, testifies the amount and constancy 
of the struggles in which mankind engage for aggran- 
disement or preservation. How bloody are the early 
annals of all civilized countries ! What treachery, ra- 
pine, and murder make up the history of the Middle 
Ages ! Until times comparatively recent, how foul 
and savage have been the domestic feuds of Scot- 
land ! What frightful suffering has the mad ambition 
of France repeatedly spread over Europe ! * What 

* See a description of the horrors of the wars of Francis I. and 
Charles V. in Sismondi's 'Histoire des Francais,' vol. xii. p. 74, and 
' Essay on the painful moral of History,' by the Rev. George Walker. 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 351 

horrors afflicted the Netherlands under the govern- 
ment of Alva ! How long, how melancholy, are the 
records of persecution for opinion's sake ! What a 
iii i iul in the shape of man, and under the name of 
Christian, was the Inquisitor ! It may be true that a 
selfish interest is the secret spring of a vast majority 
of human actions ; for every individual has the care of 
his individual life, which is made up of bodily func- 
tions and of mental trains. It may be true that men 
enter into society for mutual safety, and convey to a 
supreme power, or common master, something of ori- 
ginal freedom, called natural right, to secure a greater 
good, under the name of social right. But when 
Hobbes labours to support the paradox, that man is 
not born fit for society*, and that he is made so 
only by education, he is merely fighting against him- 
self. For if, according to himself, faith and com- 
pacts are necessary to civil societies, he should have 
shown, not merely that children and fools are inca- 
pable of appreciating their defects and wants, but 
that men, as rational beings, are unfitted to form com- 
pacts and to observe faith. He should have shown 
that men are, by nature, more disposed to roam the 
desert and the prairie, as solitary beasts of prey, than 
to be united in bands of friendly alliance and joyful 
communion. He omits to observe that man, in his 
wildest state, exhibits the influence and appreciates 
the happiness of the domestic and social relations ; 
that if by the necessity of nature he is driven into 

* See tlic note, vol. ii. p. 2, Moleswortk's ' Hobbes.' 



352 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

society, he is soon bound to it by the strongest ties 
of habit, and by the immediate and constant percep- 
tion of advantage ; that the conjugal, parental, and 
filial affections are early developed ; and that the de- 
sire for self-preservation is stimulated, and the mo- 
tives for personal security are strengthened, by what- 
soever makes life itself more happy as well as more 
secure. But the impossibility of being happy in one- 
self without seeing others also happy; the pleasure, 
genuine, though rare, of contributing to human enjoy- 
ment and improvement; the natural strength and 
rapid development of the social affections, their purity 
and their force; the power of self-sacrifice for the 
sake of country and mankind, whose interests are iden- 
tified with the pursuit and dissemination of truth and 
liberty ; these are considerations which rarely, if ever, 
enter into the speculations of Hobbes. He did not 
view nature from the golden side. He dwelt more on 
that which was to be feared or despised in man, than 
to be loved and honoured. Though he lived among 
the first men of his time, he formed no ardent friend- 
ships. He knew not, from his own experience, the 
influence of any refining domestic ties, and earnest 
social affections. To enjoy the ease which was his 
utmost moral ambition, he was content with finding 
shelter and protection in the house of a powerful pa- 
tron; and, from his chamber of security and seclu- 
sion, he looked out upon the world, only to observe 
and register the struggles and animosities of nation 
against nation, sect against sect, neighbour against 



IMIOGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 353 

neighbour; and while he employed his reason in spe- 
culating on the causes of social discord and the secu- 
rities of peace, he examined the nature of the human 
passions and the strength of the human understand- 
ing, with the value of common language and the no- 
tions in repute, to discover and expose the dangerous 
and evil tendencies of the one, and the weakness and 
absurdity of the other. 

Yet, though Hobbes looks habitually on the darkest 
side of human nature, no writer is more suggestive. 
With unsparing hand he strips off the disguises and 
lays bare the pretences by which men who relinquish 
no interest, who forego no pleasure, which submission to 
power and compliance with custom can secure them, 
would persuade themselves and others that they are 
the most religious, most patriotic, and most benevo- 
lent of beings ; but at the same time he compels the 
candid and disinterested reader to turn a searching 
eye upon the condition of the inner man, and to ex- 
amine in what respects his purposes and conduct are 
conformable to that rule of life which the understand- 
ing approves, and the conscience acknowledges as 
binding. Upon that great question raised by Hobbes, 
namely, in what cases the private conscience or opi- 
nion should be obeyed when it dictates a course con- 
trary to that which public authority in the shape 
of law, civil and ecclesiastical may determine to en- 
force, he may throw no valuable light ; but when 
touching on the impotence of human laws and institu- 
tions, among men who dread a greater evil than any 

2 A 



354 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

which their fellows can inflict, or hope a greater good 
than any they can give, he makes us comprehend the 
serious nature of the position taken when we assume 
superiority to the leaders of society around us in our 
knowledge of truth and human good, and identify, 
perhaps too readily and confidently, the dictates of our 
own reason with the laws of nature and of God. 

No great writer can be judged by a selection of 
peculiar, and perhaps highly exceptionable, passages. 
From this rule Hobbes is the last to be exempt. A 
good body of important rules for social conduct, and 
of hints for the improvement of life and society, may 
be gathered from his pages, by one who searches them 
in the love of truth and goodness. He is commonly 
quoted as if he had said and taught that " might is 
right ;" and it is true that, in what he calls a state of 
nature, a state in which human law restrains not, 
and reason has reached no sense of a divine law, the 
power of a man to get and to keep constitute his right; 
but, in such a condition of things, moral terms are 
no more applicable to men than to the beasts of the 
forest. It is more just to Hobbes to represent him as 
maintaining that "might makes right;" a truth which 
no one can consistently dispute who judges law to 
emanate from power, and rights to be possessions or 
liberties or faculties secured to an agent by laws hu- 
man or divine. The divine power must be the first 
and original source of all rights enjoyed by beings 
created and subordinate, whether in relation to other 
beings they be subject or sovereign, governors or 



I'KMHJRESS OF ENGLISH I'll H.OSOi'H Y. 355 

govern^!. The will or law of God is to all mankind 
the ultimate rule of right. It would have helped 
Hobbes, in some portions of his argument, had IK; 
adverted to the derivation of the terms ' right ' and 
\/V/-v// a derivation which furnishes the clue to their 
only valuable meaning. The right and the just are 
clearly that -which is ordered, first, by the law of 
God the supreme will ; or, secondly, the law of the 
land the civil or supreme earthly power ; or, third- 
ly, the law of society or public opinion, imperfectly 
declared; or lastly, the law of conscience that opi- 
nion of good which determines every man in his pri- 
vate course. When these laws or commands point to 
one and the same course of action, coalesce in their 
decision, and that course is practically followed, then 
we may say that all is right*. Those who talk of the 
rights of man as well as of the laws of nature are sel- 
dom aware how much their meaning is disguised in 
metaphor, and how often they conceal the most anar- 
chical and dangerous fallacies under the specious gloss 
of liberty and truth. 

In reading Hobbes, it must ever be remembered 
that he is writing against anarchy and those who fa- 

* The article on " Rights" in the ' Encyclopedia Britannica' is 
worth attention. It divides them into natural and adventitious, 
alienable and inalienable, perfect and imperfect. On the first it 
takes the view of Hobbes; on the last it shows the difficulty of draw- 
ing the lines of moral right with distinctness and precision. See 
also Bentham's papers " on anarchical fallacies and on principles 
tending to anarchy," full of a just political pliilosophy, and deserv- 
ing careful study. Vol. ii. and iii. of Bowring's edition of Bentham. 

2 A 2 



356 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

voured it, or the principles which led to it. His mind 
was sorely impressed with the frightful evils of civil 
contest, which in his view were more dreadful than 
those of despotism ; and without attempting to over- 
throw, appearing rather to support, the authority of 
the Scriptures, he wished to guard against the danger 
of that private interpretation of them which encou- 
raged rebellion against the civil sovereign. The Co- 
venanter, wielding the sword in one hand and the 
Bible in the other, and gloating over the texts of the 
Old Testament to inflame his wrath against his mis- 
believing neighbours, as the enemies of Israel and of 
Jehovah, was in his opinion a most unhappy model of 
the man and of the Christian. In the attempt to de- 
pict the incompatibility of such a character with civil 
order and improvement, he could hardly avoid senti- 
ments offensive to those who, upon different principles 
or pretences, were disposed to exercise a tyranny op- 
pressive and injurious, and to claim exclusive privi- 
leges which must foster in the rest of the community 
a natural and well-founded jealousy. 

One of the most obnoxious sentiments of Hobbes 
was that the Deity was a spirit corporeal, meaning 
1 a substance that has magnitude.' Incorporeal sub- 
stances pure spirit without body, were words to him 
without meaning, incomprehensible. In a- remarkable 
passage, he maintains " that the universe, that is, the 
whole mass of things that are, is corporeal ; that it 
hath dimensions, namely length, breadth, and depth 
and because the universe is all, that which is no 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 357 

of it is nothing, and consequently nowhere. Nor does 
it follow from hence that spirits are nothing, for they 
have dimensions, and are therefore really bodies, 
though that name be given in common speech to 
such bodies only as are visible, or palpable, that is, 
have some degree of opacity. But for spirits, they 
call them incorporeal ; which is a name of more ho- 
nour, and may therefore with more piety be attri- 
buted to God himself; in whom we consider, not 
what attribute expresseth best his nature, which is 
incomprehensible, but what best expresseth our de- 
sire to honour him*." 

This opinion, of what he calls the corporeity of the 
Deity, was connected by Hobbes with a theory of the 
origin and cause of motion. There is no such thing, 
he asserts, as an incorporeal movement^; and by mo- 
tion Hobbes endeavoured to explain everything, as far 
as explanation is possible to man, namely, sensation 
and perception, and all the affections and qualities 
of the mind, as well as all the changes and appear- 
ances of matter ; and from it he deduced the neces- 
sity of human actions. 

Prom these opinions it was inferred that Hobbes 
was an atheist at heart, and that his philosophy was 
atheistic ; and among those who so considered it Dr. 
Samuel Clarke ranks first and highest. Dr. Clarke 
devotes to Hobbes a great portion of the latter part 
of his demonstration of the Being and Attributes 

* Works : Leviathan, vol. iii. p. 672. 
f Works, vol. i. p. 430. 



358 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

of God. He uses towards Hobbes no language 
of virulence, but endeavours to play him off against 
himself, nor altogether without success. But Dr. 
Clarke has mixed up two questions wholly distinct : 
the existence of an intelligent first cause, having a 
power of beginning motion, who has endued created 
beings with perception and motion ; and the question 
of the freedom of the human will. He has not ad- 
duced from Hobbes any passage in which he denies the 
first proposition ; and a careful reader easily discerns 
a wide difference between the language and senti- 
ments of Hobbes and those of Spinoza. The omni- 
science, omnipotence, eternity, and goodness of the 
Deity, Hobbes has never questioned, nor is there any- 
thing in his works inconsistent with belief in them. 
He has avoided the use of the word matter, and pre- 
ferred that of body, which he considered to be in- 
volved in that of substance. His philosophy of body, 
or natural philosophy, and the attempt to account for 
the origin of motion, must not be confounded with 
his religious philosophy, if such it may be called. The 
last is best seen in the final chapters of the ' Philo- 
sophical Rudiments of Government and Society ;' and 
the rational Christian will find nothing to disapprove 
in his language concerning the Deity. 

" But that we may understand what manner of wor- 
ship of God natural reason doth assign us, let us be- 
gin from his attributes. Where, first, it is manifest 
that existence is to be allowed him ; for there can be 
no will to honour him who, we think, hath no being. 



IMNKJIIKSS OF KNULIS11 I'HILOSOPHY. 359 

Next, those philosophers who said that God was the 
world, or the world's soul, that is say, a part of it, 
spake unworthily of God; for tluy attribute nothing 
to him, but wholly deny his being. For by the word 
God we understand the world's cause ; but in say- 
ing that the world is God, they say that it hath no 
cause, that is as much as there is no God. In like 
manner, they who maintain the world not to be cre- 
ated, but eternal, because there can be no .cause of 
an eternal thing, in denying the world to have a cause, 
they deny also that there is a God. They also have a 
wretched apprehension of God, who, imputing idleness 
to him, do take from him the government of the world 
and of mankind. For say, they should acknowledge 
him omnipotent : yet if he mind not these inferior 
things, that same threadbare sentence will take place 
with them : ' quod supra nos, nihil ad nos :' what is 
above us doth not concern us. And seeing there is 
nothing for which they should either love or fear him, 
truly he will be to them as though he were not at all. 
Moreover, in attributes which signify greatness or 
power, those which signify some finite or limited thing 
are not signs at ah 1 of an honouring mind. For we 
honour not God worthily, if we ascribe less power or 
greatness to him than possibly we can. But every 
finite thing is less than we can, for most easily we 
may always attribute more to a finite thing. No 
shape therefore must be assigned to God, for all 
shape is finite ; nor must he be said to be conceived 
or comprehended by imagination, or any other faculty 



360 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

of our soul ; for whatsoever we conceive is finite?' . . 
He concludes : " He therefore who would not ascribe 
any other titles to God than what reason commands, 
must use such as are either negative, as infinite, eter- 
nal, incomprehensible, etc. ; or superlative, as most 
good, most great, most powerful, etc. ; or indefinite, 
as good, just, strong, creator, king, and the like ; in 
such sense as not to describe what he is (which were 
to circumscribe him within the narrow limits of our 
phantasy) ; but to confess his own admiration and 
obedience, which is the property of humility and of 
a mind yielding all the honour it possibly can do. 
For reason dictates one name alone which doth signify 
the nature of God, that is existent, or simply that he 
is : and one in order to, and in relation to us, namely 
God, under which is contained both King, and Lord, 
and Father." 

" The charge of Atheism" says Dr. Priestley*, " has 
been so much hackneyed in religious controversy, as to 

* See the Introduction to 'A Free Discussion of the Doctrines of 
Materialism and Philosophical Necessity, in a correspondence be- 
tween Dr. Price and Dr. Priestly.' (Priestley's Works, vol. iv. p. 12.) 
He adds in a note, " Whatever views of Divine revelation were en- 
tertained by this philosopher, he has not always been fairly contro- 
verted;" and he afterwards points out the partial and unfair man- 
ner in which Lord Clarendon and even Leland treated him. " I am 
rather surprised," says Dr. Priestley, in another part of his works 
(vol. iii. p. 457), " that Mr. Locke, who seems to have been so much 
indebted to Mr. Hobbes for the clear view which he has given us of 
several principles of human nature, should have availed himself so 
little of what he might have learned from him on this subject" (viz. 
of the doctrine of necessity). " I cannot find, what I would gladly 
discover, that Mr. Locke acknowledged his precursor either in the 






PROGRESS OF ENGLISH 

have passed almost into ridicule. It was the common 
charge against the primitive Christians, and has hardly 
ever failed to be urged, on one pretence or other, 
against every man who has dissented from the gene- 
rally received faith. But perhaps no character has 
suffered more generally, and at the same time more 
undeservedly, on this account, than that of Mr. Hobbes, 
who, notwithstanding his heterodoxy in politics, ap- 
pears to me, as far as I can judge from such of his 
writings as have fallen in my way, to have been no 
atheist, but a sincere Christian, and a conscientious, 
good man." The passage is worthy of Dr. Priestley's 
discriminative, candid, and fearless mind ; worthy of 
one anxious and careful to judge for himself, without 
any bias of prejudice or interest, and for truth's sake 
alone. No doubt it is very difficult to determine what 
degree of importance Hobbes attached to the light and 
truths of Scripture, what hopes and fears from their 
promises or threatenings he entertained in his secret 
heart. He strains not a few passages to a purpose 
evidently beside and beyond that of the writer or 

Essay or his Defences. In his 'Second Reply to the Bishop of Wor- 
cester' he seems to shun the acquaintance ; for, referring to some 
statement of his opponent, he says, ' I am not so well read in Hobbes 
or Spinoza, as to be able to say what were their opinions in this 
matter.' He presently after alludes to them as ' those justly de- 
cried names.' " 

I have already intimated, p. 340 supra, that Locke was not well 
read in Hobbes, and that his agreement with Hobbes in some prin- 
ciples was owing to the influences of Gassendi. A wide difference 
in political views may account for some of that aversion which Locke 
expresses. 



362 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

speaker, as when he argues for an unlimited obedience 
to civil rulers, from the direction of Christ to his hear- 
ers to obey the instructions of those who sit in Moses' 
seat. He calls fear of power invisible, feigned by the 
mind or imagined from tales publicly allowed, religion; 
not allowed, superstition. It may be' asked, is such a 
notion of religion compatible with any serious faith in 
the government of a good Providence ? and what room 
or provision does it leave for gratitude and hope ? He 
calls the scriptural writers " an innocent kind of men, 
without much knowledge of the world." It is lan- 
guage so different from that commonly used by all 
who wish to be understood as reverencing the Bible, 
and deriving from it their light of duty and comfort 
in sorrow their rule of life and their hope in death, 
that it needs a very large allowance for all the peculia- 
rities of the human mind to believe him sincere, or 
using other than the argumentum ad hominem, in the 
attempt to support, by the Scriptures, his own views 
of the natural moral laws, and of the duty of obe- 
dience in all things to the civil power. Could he 
have believed, it may be asked, in a power of ration- 
ally and philosophically interpreting the Scriptures 
by the help of learning and the learned, when he 
contended that the right and power of interpretation 
rested with the State? The answer may be, that 
he thought the disadvantages of allowing the right of 
a private interpretation greater than that of refusing 
it ; that the learned must submit their judgement, as 
he himself professed to do, to the supreme power; 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 363 

and he docs less than the Papist, who places his ec- 
clesiastical superiors above the State, and no more 
than the statesman, who enjoins what shall be taught 
as the doctrine of Scripture, who determines what men 
shall be teachers in the Church, on what conditions 
they shall hold livings and enjoy benefices, who decides 
what assemblies of Christians and what ceremonies 
shall be lawful. His principle of the subordination of 
the clergy to the state was nothing more than the 
Erastianism* upheld by some of the most noted of 
the clerical order and others in England long before 
and after his day, among whom may be placed Hooker 
and Parker, Whitgift and Lightfoot, Selden and Whit- 
lock. In the present day there seem not to be two 
opinions among thinking men, who are not biassed by 
their order, on the necessity of submission to the civil 

* Tlie book of Erastus, an eminent German physician, the full 
title of which is " Explicatio gravissimae qusestionis utrum Excom- 
municatio, quatenus religionem intelligentes et amplexantes, a Sacra- 
mentorum usu, propter admission facinus arcet, mandato nitatur 
divino, an excogitata sit ab hominibus," was published in 1589, six 
years after his death, according to his dying request. It is signifi- 
cant of the times that both the place of publication and name of the 
editor and publisher were concealed, Pesclavii being put for Londini, 
and Sultaceterum for Castelvetrum. The book is probably scarce, 
little known, and less read ; but full of just criticism, solid learning, 
and wise thought. In seventy-five theses he examines the nature of ex- 
communication, so far as it is determined by the Scriptures ; he shows 
that excommunication, as practised in the Roman Catholic church 
and by the clergy, was a usurpation contrary to the spirit of Chris- 
tianity ; and that all power of punishing for ofiences, and of exclud- 
ing from privileges, religious as well as civil, ought to reside in the 
magistrate alone. There is a copy of the work, with valuable MS. 
notes, in the library of Dr. Williams' foundation in Eedcross-street. 

The necessary or useful relations of the church to the state, and 



364 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

power on the part of those who are discharging a duty 
which the state prescribes, or enjoying privileges which 
the state secures. Those who have controverted Hobbes 
have rarely treated him with fairness. What can be 
more in accordance with the abject views of human na- 
ture, which Hobbes is charged with, than the intima- 
tion to Sir C. Cavendish by Clarendon, as recorded by 
himself: " For such a book, by the constitution of any 
government now established in Europe, whether mon- 
archical or democratical, the author must be punished 
in the highest degree, and with the most severe penal- 
ties" ? Tenison, who published the ' Creed of Hobbes 
examined/ in 1670, makes it the business of his little 
book " to expose this insolent and pernicious writer ; 
to show unto his countrymen that weakness of head 
and venom of mouth which is in the philosopher, who 
hath rather seduced and poisoned their imaginations 
than conquered their reason." He alleges twelve arti- 
cles as those of Hobbes's ' Creed/ selecting the most 
obnoxious opinions or statements, but not always 

of the clergy to the church, are subjects that must occupy more and 
more the attention of statesmen and philosophical inquirers. The 
history of opinion on the subject is full of interest. Erastus had 
among his predecessors Occam, so called from the village of that name 
in Surrey, who, in the fourteenth century, opposed the tyranny of the 
papal over the civil power, in a book ' De Potestate Ecclesiastica et 
Sseculari.' Of this, or a part of it, entitled " A Dialogue between a 
Knight and a Clerke, concerning the power spiritual and temporal," 
a most interesting account may be found in Oldys' ' Librarian,' p. 5. 
Erastus has been followed by Archbishop Wake in his ' Authority of 
Christian Princes over their Ecclesiastical Synods asserted, 'in 1697. 
Many supported Wake in the controversy on the rights and powers 
of the English Convocation. Hoadly, and more recently Wliately, 
take similar views in their ^ermons on the Kingdom of Christ. 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 365 

adhering to Hobbes's own language; rather giving 
inferences from some of his expressions and argu- 
ments without regard to the qualifying considerations 
and practical ends with which in Hobbes's mind they 
were connected. Both Clarendon and Tenison were 
very unjust to the philosopher of Malmesbury, by 
charging him with design to support the usurpa- 
tion of Cromwell ; but from the fact that his book 
'De Give' got abroad as early as 1642, which con- 
tained the elements of his philosophy of man and of 
government, as weh 1 as from his own credible assur- 
ances, it is clear that the evils of civil war and of 
popular discontent had early led his thoughts to con- 
sider the true bonds of civil society, the conditions of 
civil liberty, and the compatibility of the exercise and 
utterance of private judgement with social union and 
the public interest. 

Among the most candid, liberal, and philosophical 
of the antagonists of Hobbes, the amiable Richard 
Cumberland, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough, de- 
serves honourable mention. The ' Disquisitio Philoso- 
phica de Legibus Naturae/ in which he professes to 
refute the elements of the moral and political philo- 
sophy of Hobbes, came forth in 1672, about seven 
years before the death of Hobbes, then an octogena- 
rian, and probably little disposed to pay attention to 
his new and youthful critic. Mr. Hallam has judici- 
ously devoted to Cumberland a good portion of his 
literary labour, and given a very fair view of his merits 
and defects. In his attempts to unfold the principle 



366 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 



we are can> i e d by the laws of nature to the prac- 
tice of virtue, which consists in the pursuit of the 
common good, some anticipation may be traced of the 
Hartleian theory concerning the development of the 
social affections, and the ultimate coalescence of uni- 
versal philanthropy with refined self-interest. But 
even Cumberland does not do justice to Hobbes's in- 
tentions. The tone of his book is pleasing ; but his 
style is diffuse and his terms very indefinite. Of this 
fault we are perhaps less aware when we read it in the 
Latin than in translation. Probably Hobbes would 
not have disputed the main principle which Cumber- 
land sought to establish, namely, "that the pursuit, 
according to our ability, of the common good, con- 
duces to the good of each of its parts, in which our 
own felicity, as that of one part, is contained." But 
of the common good our knowledge is comparatively 
imperfect. Our power to promote it is confined within 
limits infinitely small. We promote it most when we 
serve the interests and discharge the duties which are 
our peculiar province that is, when we care for those 
individuals specially dependent on our care*. 

Hobbes is remarkable for his anticipation of many 
of the doctrines subsequently adopted and expounded 

* Compare Cumberland, 1, 16. A translation of Cumberland's 
' Disquisitio' was published in 1727, in 4to, by the Rev. John Max- 
well, accompanied by dissertations on the laws of nature. In this work 
the thread of the verbosity is so much finer than the staple of the 
argument, that it may have suggested to Johnson that delicious bit 
of satire upon the philosopher who explained what it is to live ac- 
cording to nature, already alluded to as occurring in the ' Hasselas.' 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 3G7 

by the profoundest investigators of the mind. He at- 
tributes the beginnings of all the thoughts of man, to 
that which we call sense ; " for there is no conception 
in a man's mind, which hath not, at first totally, or by 
parts, bivn begotten upon the organs of sense ; the rest 
are derived from that original." In attributing the 
beginning of sensation to motion, he may be considered 
to have made some approaches to the theory of vibra- 
tions which Sir Isaac Newton suggested, and which 
Hartley afterwards adopted and developed. Even Locke 
leaned to the opinion, if we judge from some passages 
in the 8th chapter of his second book, where he speaks 
of" all sensation being produced in us only by different 
degrees and modes of motion in our animal spirits, 
variously agitated by external objects," and of " bodies 
producing ideas in us manifestly by impulse, the only 
way which we can conceive bodies to operate in." 

Hobbes has been also represented as understanding 
fully the principle of Association, when, under the head 
of imagination, he teaches that " not every thought to 
every thought succeeds indifferently;" " that the train 
of the thoughts or of mental discourse is of two sorts, 
the first unguarded, without design, and inconstant; 
the second more constant, as being regulated by some 
desire and design*." This however seems no more 

* See Dr. Whewell on Hobbes, in his recent volume on the His- 
tory of Moral Philosophy, Lecture II. ; and Sir W. Hamilton on 
* The History of Mental Association,' in his edition of Reid, pp. 
892, 893. " The cause of the coherence or consequence of one con- 
ception to another is their first coherence or consequence at that 
time, that they are produced by sense ; as, for example, from St. An- 



368 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

than Aristotle taught before him in connection with 
the phenomena of memory, and with the efforts of the 
mind to recall what was formerly observed or known 
but cannot be immediately remembered, on which Sir 
W. Hamilton has founded the opinion that Aristotle 
was the first teacher of the doctrine of Mental Associ- 
ation. But notwithstanding some explanation of the 
phenomena of memory, and of terms significant of the 
passions, in a manner accordant with the law of asso- 

drew the mind runneth to St. Peter, because their names are read 
together ; from St. Peter to a stone, from the same cause ; from stone 
to foundation, because we see them together." Treatise on Human 
Nature, ch. iv. 

" The train of thoughts, or mental discourse, is of two sorts. The 
first is unguided, without design, and inconstant ; wherein there is 
no passionate thought, to govern and direct those that follow to it- 
self, as the end and scope of some desire or other passion ; in which 
case the thoughts are said to wander, and seem impertinent one to 
another, as in a dream. Such are commonly the thoughts of men 
that are not only without company, but without care of anything ; 
though even then their thoughts are as busy as at other times, but 
without harmony ; as the sound which a lute out of tune would 
yield to any man, or, in tune, to one that could not play. And yet 
in this wild ranging of the mind a man may oft perceive the way of 
it, and the dependence of one thought upon another. For in a dis- 
course of our present civil war, what could seem more impertinent 
than to ask (as one did) what was the value of a Roman penny ? Yet 
the coherence to me was manifest enough. For the thought of the 
war introduced the thought of the delivering up of the King to his 
enemies ; the thought of that, brought in the thought of the deliver- 
ing up of Christ ; and that again the thought of the thirty pence 
which was the price of that treason ; and thence easily followed that 
malicious question ; and all this in a moment of time, for thought 
is quick." Leviathan, ch. iii., Of the Consequence or Train of Imagi- 
nation. 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. .'U> ( .) 

elation, that either Aristotle or Hobbes understood 
that law, or had any perception of its importance in 
explaining the phenomena of the mind and reasoning, 
in forming the character and affections, as afterwards 
expounded in the works of Hartley, Brown, and Mill, 
were an assertion not to be received without a much 
more exact comparison than has yet been instituted 
or given to the world. 

There were other points clearly intimated by Hobbes 
on which Locke laid no little stress, such as th&t truth 
always involves a reference, tacit or express, to propo- 
sitions ; that government is founded on a compact, 
virtual or express ; that the doctrine of the Messiah- 
ship of Christ is the simple and single fundamental 
article of the Christian faith as developed in the Scrip- 
tures ; principles on which Locke dwelt at length in 
his Treatises on Government, his letters on Tolera- 
tion, and his admirable work on the ' Reasonableness 
of Christianity according to the Scriptures/ 

I have been the longer upon Hobbes, from a convic- 
tion that he deserves to occupy a far higher place in the 
estimation of English readers, even of the most liberal 
school, than is usually allowed him. Yet none but 
the disinterested lovers of truth and goodness, warped 
by no sinister bias of interest or ambition, agitated by 
no passion for place and pelf, degraded by no depend- 
ence on the opinion of a greater or lesser public, yet 
earnest in pursuit of human good, should trouble them- 
selves with his pages, which, like a medicine bitter but 
wholesome, purge the mind from prejudices of selfish - 

2 B 



370 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

ness and vanity, and clear the understanding to appre- 
ciate the sources of its weakness and its strength. 
Comparing him with Montaigne, Rochefoucauld, and 
La Bruyere, Hallam, an upright and not usually a se- 
vere judge, says thai; " a cold and heartless indiffer- 
ence to right distils from his pages." I should rather 
say, there is in him a sort of contemptuous and bitter 
satisfaction in exposing the selfishness, falsehood, and 
cruelty of mankind, the shallowness of much that passed 
for phitosophy, the predominance of the animal and hos- 
tile passions, and especially the pretences of men desi- 
rous of power and reputation, concealing their real 
ends; and all this without any corresponding regard 
to the unnoticed virtues of our common humanity and 
the kindly offices of daily domestic life to balance the 
impression. This gives an air of cynicism and mis- 
anthropy to his philosophy, more apparent than real. 
It is not without good effect in counteracting that weak 
and amiable sentimentalism, which delights to view 
mankind as merely the creatures of innocence and 
misfortune ; which sometimes indulges a morbid ten- 
derness for crime and criminals; and forgets that 
the chief part of human suffering arises from the op- 
pression of the few, the supineness of the many, the 
avarice, the self-indulgence, the negligence, and vice 
of all*. 

* I cannot forbear reprinting the admirable remarks on Hobbes 
by Mr. Austin in his 'Province of Jurisprudence Determined.' The 
note is long, but the book is now scarce and out of print, and the matter 
is of supreme importance. " By his modern censors, French, German, 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 371 

In reading Hobbes, we cannot but observe with 
pleasure how vast is the improvement in the state of 

and even English, Hobbes's main design, in his various treatises on po- 
litics, is grossly and thoroughly mistaken. With a marvellous igno- 
rance of the writings which they impudently presume to condemn, 
they style him ' the apologist of tyranny ;' meaning by that rant, that 
his main design is the defence of monarchical government. Now, 
though he prefers monarchical to popular or oligarchical government, 
it is certain that his main design is the establishment of these pro- 
positions : 1. That sovereign power, whether it reside in one, or in 
many or a few, cannot be limited by positive law ; 2. That a present 
or established government, be it a government of one, or a govern- 
ment of many or a few, cannot be disobeyed by its subjects consist- 
ently with the common weal, or consistently with the law of God as 
known through utility or the Scriptures. That his principal pur- 
pose is not the defence of monarchy, is sufficiently evinced by the 
following passages from his ' Leviathan : '* The prosperity of a peo- 
ple ruled by an aristocratical or democratical assembly, cometh not 
from aristocracy or democracy, but from the obedience and concord 
of the subjects : nor do the people nourish in a monarchy because 
they are ruled by one man, but because they obey him. Take 
away, in a state of any kind, the obedience, and consequently the 
concord of the people, and they shall not only not nourish, but in 
short time be dissolved. And they that go about by disobedience 
to doe no more than reforme the commonwealth, shall find they doe 
thereby destroy it.' ' In monarchy one man is supreme ; and all 
other men who have power in the state, have it by his commission, 
and during his pleasure. In aristocracy or democracy there is one 
supreme assembly ; which supreme assembly hath the same un- 
limited power that in monarchy belongeth to the monarch. And 
which is the best of these three kinds of government, is not to be 
disputed there where any of them is already established.' So many 
similar passages occur in the same treatise, and also in his treatise 
' De Give,' that they who confidently style him the ' apologist of 
tyranny or monarchy,' must have taken their notion of his purpose 
from mere hearsay. A dip here or there into either of the decried 
books would have led them to withhold their sentence. To those 
who have really read, although in a cursory manner, these, the most 

2 B 2 



372 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

society since his time. He evidently could not con- 
ceive that condition of constitutional liberty which, 

lucid and easy of profound and elaborate compositions, the current 
conception of their object and tendency is utterly laughable. 

" The capital errors in Hobbes's political treatises are the follow- 
ing: 1. He inculcates too absolutely the religious obligation of 
obedience to present or established government. He makes not the 
requisite allowance for the anomalous and excepted cases wherein 
disobedience is counselled by that very principle of utility which 
indicates the duty of submission. Writing in a season of civil dis- 
cord, or writing in apprehension of its approach, he naturally fixed 
his attention on the glaring mischiefs of resistance, and scarcely 
adverted to the mischiefs which obedience occasionally engenders. 
And although his integrity was not less remarkable than the gigantic 
strength of his understanding, we may presume that his extreme 
timidity somewhat corrupted his judgement, and inclined him to 
insist unduly upon the evils of rebellion and strife. 2. Instead of 
directly deriving the existence of political government from a per- 
ception by the bulk of the governed of its great and obvious expe- 
diency, he ascribes the origin of sovereignty, and of independent 
political society, to a fictitious agreement or covenant. He ima- 
gines that the future subjects covenant with one another, or that 
the future subjects covenant with the future sovereign, to obey 
without reserve every command of the latter ; and of this imagi- 
nary covenant, immediately preceding the formation of the political 
government and community, the religious duty of the subjects to 
render unlimited submission, and the divine right of the sovereign 
to exact and receive such submission, are, according to Hobbes, 
necessary and permanent consequences. He supposes, indeed, that 
the subjects are induced to make that agreement, by their percep- 
tion of the expediency of government, and by their desire to escape 
from anarchy. But, placing his system immediately on that inter- 
posed figment, instead of resting it directly on the ultimate basis of 
utility, he often arrives at his conclusions in a sophistical and quib- 
bling manner, though his conclusions are commonly such as the 
principle of utility will warrant. The religious duty of the subjects 
to render unlimited obedience, and the divine right of the sovereign 
to exact and receive such obedience, cannot, indeed, be reckoned 



PROGRESS OP ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 373 

since the Revolution of 1688, the British dominions 
have enjoyed, and in which so many of the citizens of 

amongst those of Hobbes's conclusions which that principle will 
justify. In truth, the duty and the right cannot be inferred logic- 
ally even from liis own fiction. For, according to his own fiction, 
the subjects were induced to promise obedience, by their perception 
of the utility of government ; and, 'since their inducement to the 
promise was that perception of utility, they hardly promised to 
obey in those anomalous cases wherein the evils of anarchy are sur- 
passed by the evils of submission. And though they promised to 
obey even in those cases, they are not religiously obliged to render 
unlimited obedience ; for, as the principle of general utility is the 
index to religious obligations, no religious obligation can possibly 
arise from a promise whose tendency is generally pernicious. Be- 
sides, though the subject founders of the political community were 
religiously obliged by their mischievous promise, a religious obliga- 
tion would hardly be imposed upon their followers, by virtue of a 
mischievous agreement to which their followers were strangers. 
The last objection however is not exclusively applicable to Hobbes's 
peculiar fiction. That, or a like objection, may be urged against all 
the romances which derive the existence of government from a fan- 
cied original contract. Whether we suppose, with Hobbes, that the 
subjects were the only promisers, or we suppose, with others, that 
the sovereign also covenanted ; whether we suppose, with Hobbes, 
that they promised unlimited obedience, or we suppose, with others, 
that their promise contained reservations ; we can hardly suppose 
that the contract of the founders, unless it be presently useful, 
imposes religious obligations on the present members of the com- 
munity. 

"If these two capital errors be kept in mind by the reader, 
Hobbes's extremely celebrated, but extremely neglected, treatises 
may be read to great advantage. I know of no other writer (ex- 
cepting our great contemporary Jeremy Bentham) who has uttered 
so many truths, at onqe new and important, concerning the neces- 
sary structure of supreme political government, and the larger of 
the necessary distinctions implied by positive law. And he is sig- 
nally gifted with the talent, peculiar to writers of genius, of inciting 
the mind of the student to active and original thought. 



374 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

this great country, of every grade, unite to consider j 
and to pursue the public good ; in which there has j 
been unexampled security for person and for pro- 
perty ; ample liberty of "discussion and of the press, 
without danger to the public peace ; while, aided by 

" The authors of the antipathy with which he is commonly re- 
garded, were the papistical clergy of the Roman Catholic Church, 
the high-church clergy of the Church of England, and the Presby- 
terian clergy of the true-blue complexion. In matters ecclesiastical 
(a phrase of uncertain meaning, and therefore of measureless com- 
pass), independence of secular authority was more or less affected 
by churchmen of each of those factions. In other words, they held 
that their own church was co-ordinate with the secular govern- 
ment ; or that the secular government was not of itself supreme, 
but rather partook in the supreme powers with one or more of the 
clerical order. Hobbes's unfailing loyalty to the present temporal 
sovereign, was alarmed and offended by this anarchical pretension ; 
and he repelled it with a weight of reason, and an aptness and pun- 
gency of expression, which the aspiring and vindictive priests did 
bitterly feel and resent. Accordingly, they assailed him with the 
poisoned weapons which are ministered by malignity and cowardice. 
All of them twitted him (agreeably to their wont) with flat atheism ; 
whilst some of them affected to style him an apologist of tyranny or 
misrule, and to rank him with the perverse writers (Macchiavelli, 
for example) who really have applauded tyranny maintained by abi- 
lity and courage. By these calumnies, those conspiring and potent 
factions blackened the reputation of their common enemy. And so 
deep and enduring is the impression which they made upon the 
public mind, that ' Hobbes the atheist,' or ' Hobbes the apologist 
of tyranny,' is still regarded with pious or with republican horror, 
by all but the extremely few who have ventured to examine his 
writings. 

" Of positive atheism ; of mere scepticism concerning the exist- 
ence of the Deity ; or of, what is more impious and mischievous 
than either, a religion imputing to the Deity human infirmities and 
vices ; there is not, I believe, in any of his writings, the shadow of 
a shade." 






I'KOCJKESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 375 

tlir fostering influence of commerce and literature, 
of art and science, there has been an increasing adap- 
tation of institutions to the welfare and improvement 
of every sect and class ; and the problem of tffe great- 
est degree of individual freedom, compatible with the 
general good and the speedy, upright, and effective 
administration of law, approaches solution. 

Locke. Amid the abundance of critical remarks on 
Locke, which have dropped from metaphysical writers 
since his time, and which show that no book in the Eng- 
lish language has commanded more attention and ex- 
erted greater influence than the ' Essay on the Human 
Understanding/ there exists no criticism of marked 
importance and authority in which the contents of the 
Essay are fully and carefully examined, and its true 
merits are determined. Among the critics, a high 
place, as we have seen, must be assigned to Leibnitz ; 
less on account of the success with which he has con- 
troverted Locke's views, than of his great name and 
learning, and of the pains with which he went over 
every part of the Essay. Yet the ' Nouveaux Essais' 
of Leibnitz have had few readers in England, partly 
because the path of inquiry pursued in it is remote 
from common studies, still more perhaps because the 
clearness and simplicity were wanting in him, for 
which Locke on the whole is remarkable, notwithstand- 
ing the occasional clouds allowed, through inadver- 
tence, to gather and settle over his path. After what 
has already been said of Leibnitz, it will be enough to 
repeat that none of the leading principles of Locke are 



376 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

overthrown by him; and in many important respects 
there is a complete agreement, e.g. that of the har- 
mony between faith and reason. The most successful 
and valuable criticisms are those in which his great 
stores of philological learning are brought forth in sup- 
port of Locke's hints on words and language ; and in 
which he defends Aristotle and syllogism from Locke's 
inconsiderate disparagement*. 

The subject of the first book of Locke's ' Essays/ 
Innate Principles, has been somewhat fully dis- 
cussed, not to say disposed of, in the foregoing pages. 
Those who contend that Locke has not established 
his negative generally show that they have paid little 
attention to his arguments, that they do not under- 
stand the question, that they have not carefully weighed, 
as they do not quote correctly, his language. They 
confound the presence and existence of some determi- 
nate ideas at an advanced period of life with the capa- 
city for forming and entertaining them. They confound 

* See particularly the ' Nouveaux Essais,' on the Reason, book iv. 
ch. 17. It may be doubted whether Locke had read Aristotle in the 
original, or studied the Analytics, Ethics, and Rhetoric as they came 
from the author. In his estimate of the nature and value of syllo- 
gism he appears to have considered only the abuses of it among 
the schoolmen, whose influence still reigned in the Universities 
when Locke was a student, not yet overthrown by Bacon, nor the la- 
bours of Ramus and Wilson, and Bishop Sanderson. What particu- 
lar instances of abuse of syllogism among the schoolmen had given 
Locke his evident disgust it is not easy to decide. A short and very 
just view of the place which logic and the syllogism ought to hold 
in our esteem, is given in the closing pages of Thomson's ' Outline 
of the Laws of Thought.' 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 377 

the uniform or probable development of certain fun- 
damental conceptions or notions, such, for instance, 
as those of space, time, number, and causality, inse- 
parable from all intellectual functions and processes, 
and necessary to all reasoning, with their presence in 
the mind of an infant or an embryo. They assume 
that the ideas which they choose to call innate, and 
which they arbitrarily fix upon without any definite 
principle of selection or any attempt at enumeration, 
are not complex ; that they are not capable of being 
traced to ulterior sources, that is, to more simple ideas 
of sensation or reflection. They assume, not only that 
they exist in all rational minds capable of being defined 
or sufficiently clear for reasoning, but that they are 
wholly independent of impressions from without. They 
also imagine that an idea or a principle is of less value 
or of less authority in proportion as it is deducible 
from any other latent root or fact or law of the mind, 
as if then destitute of the stamp of nature and but an 
arbitrary construction of the human will. But the 
question turns upon what is the law of nature and of 
the mind? That any idea or principle should be 
imagined of less value when shown to grow necessa- 
rily out of our constitution, and to be the legitimate 
result of the exercise of the senses and thoughts thence 
arising, seems to be an absurdity too great to be en- 
tertained by any man who is capable of estimating the 
difference between a child, a Hottentot, a wild Indian, 
and a Bacon or Newton, a Galileo or Humboldt ; be- 
tween the vacancy of ignorance on the one hand, and 



378 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

a mind enriched with all the sources of information, 
and all the stimulants and aids to reflection, which be- 
long to man in the most highly refined and civilized 
condition. Declaimers, addressing an audience dis- 
posed to agree with them, may appeal with safety to 
the deep indestructible principles of our nature, and talk 
of the instinctive emotions welling up from the foun- 
tains of the heart, and of the primary innate convictions 
stamped upon the mind ; but the moment a doubtful 
proposition is enunciated, or a phrase that jars upon 
the ear of reason is breathed, the force of the appeal 
is gone, and the hearer inwardly ejaculates, " What 
will this babbler say ? " He multiplies words without 
knowledge ! Every word which the rhetorician utters 
is merely an illustration of the nature and power of the. 
law of association, governing the intellects and emo- 
tions of his hearers. One simple paragraph of Locke 
decides the question. " If we will attentively consider 
new-born children, we shall have little reason to think 
that they bring many ideas into the world with them. 
For bating, perhaps, some faint ideas of hunger and 
thirst and warmth, and some pains which they may 
have felt in the womb, there is not the least appear- 
ance of any settled ideas in them ; especially of ideas 
answering the terms which make up those universal 
propositions that are esteemed innate principles. One 
may perceive how, by degrees, afterwards ideas come 
into their minds ; and that they get no more, nor no 
other, than what experience and the observation of 
things, that come in their way, furnish them with : 






PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 379 

which might be enough to satisfy us, that they are not 
original characters stamped upon the mind*." 

The difficulties of Locke's 'Essay/ and the objections 
raised against it, have arisen chiefly out of the contents 
of the second book, in which he unfolds his view of 
the original sources of all our ideas. " These two, I 
say, viz. external material things, as the objects of sen- 
sation ; and the operation of our own minds within, 
as the objects of reflection, are to me the only origi- 
nals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings." 
" 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, which are all 
those different perceptions they produce in us ; and 
the mind furnishes the understanding with ideas of its 
own operations." 

A beautiful passage follows on the state of a child 
at his first coming into the world, and on the late pe- 
riod in which the operations of the mind are made the 
distinct and separate objects of contemplation. 

In the existence, influence, and importance of sen- 
sations and ideas of sensation, all philosophers seem 
agreed. The use of language depends, it is evident, 
upon the reality and uniformity of the impressions of 
the senses, and on the presence of similar ideas and 
feelings in thinking minds connected with them. Were 
there not marks or signs commonly agreed upon, sig- 
nificant of such impressions and of the associated ideas 

* Essay, book i. eh. 4, 2. 



380 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

and feelings, there could be no mutual converse. Ne- 
vertheless two great questions have arisen, and are yet 
in abeyance, touching Locke's account of the sources 
of our ideas, and affecting' chiefly the second of the 
two, which he calls reflection. First, whether it be 
really a distinct source, and not ultimately resolvable 
into sensation. So thought Condillac, who called ideas 
of reflection" transformed sensations," a phrase which 
met with no acceptance, and is not a happy one to ex- 
press the mental phenomena. So thought Hartley, 
who says, " It appears to me that all the most com- 
plex ideas arise from sensation, and that reflection is 
not a distinct source, as Locke makes it." So thought 
also Peter Browne, Bishop of Cork, who contends 
" that that maxim of the logicians, nihil est in intel- 
lect^ quod non fuit prius in sensu, is to be taken for 
a sure and fundamental truth ; the true meaning of 
which is, that the ideas of sense are the first founda- 
tion on which we raise our whole superstructure of 
knowledge, and that all the discoveries we can make 
in things temporal and spiritual, together with the 
most refined and abstracted notions of them in the 
mind of man, take their rise originally from sensation!' 
It is remarkable that this Bishop of Cork considered 
the dangerous and sceptical influence of Locke, who 
was no favourite with him, to arise out of his having 
made reflection a distinct source of ideas*. 

* Those who do not consult Condillac's ' Traite des Sensations/ a 
book well worthy of attention, will find him not unfairly represented 
in Brown's thirty- third 'Lecture on the Philosophy of the Mind.' 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 381 

A second question is admitting the reality and 
value of Locke's two sources, whether the enumera- 
tion is complete, and there be not ideas of the highest 
importance referable to some other source. So thought 
Dr. Price, who says, " It is hard to determine exactly 
what Locke meant by sensation and reflection ;" " that 
it will be impossible to derive some of the most im- 
portant of our ideas from them." He adds, towards 
the close of his section on the origin of our ideas in 
general : " After the mind, from whatever possible 
causes, has been furnished with ideas of any objects, 
they become themselves objects of our intellective fa- 
culty, from whence arises a new set of ideas, which 
are the perceptions of this faculty" He speaks also 
of " ideas arising from intuitions of the natures of 
things." The logician may ask, what is this new in- 
tellective faculty? How does it differ from Locke's 
reflective power ? and what is the determinate charac- 
teristic of this set of ideas, to constitute the class ? of 
what one thing or object of nature have we an intui- 
tion prior to observation and reflection ? And if we 
have not an idea of the simplest object of external na- 
ture prior to observation, what valuable ideas can we 
have of the operations and principles of the human 
mind and morals, intangible and evanescent as the 
phenomena of imagination and emotion are, without 
reflection the element of self-knowledge ? 

See also * Hartley on Man'; 'Eighty-eighth Proposition on Logic '; 
and Browne's ' Procedure, Extent, and Limits of the Human Under- 
standing, 1729 ' (a book to which Stewart has drawn attention), 
part 3, chapter 1, et seq. Compare also Locke, b. ii. c. 12. 8. 



382 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

Dr. Reid, whom Price admired, gives us about 
twelve instinctive principles of nature or elements of 
knowledge in his inquiry into the mind*. It is clear 
that Locke has failed to satisfy a large number of emi- 
nent writers on the mindf. 

The student must give his deepest attention to these 
questions, turning the mind inward on itself, aided by 
whatever light other investigators may have thrown 
upon its darkest recesses; but always carefully dis- 
tinguishing the statements of Locke himself from 
those of any other writer, whether of his own school 
or a school the most opposed to his. . 

* See Priestley's enumeration, in his Examination of Reid. 

t In the course of some admirable observations on Locke by the 
Rev. John J. Tayler, in his ' Retrospect of the Religious Life of 
England' (p. 348), the following passage occurs : " He (Locke) looked 
for the ultimate source of knowledge and ground of certainty, not in 
abstractions, which he treated as gratuitous figments of the mind, 
but in facts of a twofold order which admitted of no dispute, the 
impressions of sense and the suggestions of consciousness ; the mind, 
as he argued, coming into the world a mere tabula rasa, and deriv- 
ing the ideas which furnish the materials of its knowledge exclusively 
from this twofold experience. It may be questioned whether this 
view, called forth by a strong feeling of error in the opposite direc- 
tion, embraces the entire subject of the mind, and does not rather 
confine itself to one side of it; whether it allows enough to the influ- 
ence, not indeed of innate ideas, but of inherent tendencies, some 
common to the race, some peculiar to individuals, and giving birth 
to all the varieties of genius and character which control the asso- 
ciations and determine the conclusions of the mind, independent of all 
external influence, and so yield a higher kind of certainty on some 
subjects, than is attainable by logical deduction from the simple facts 
of experience" On this passage I remark 1st. That the phrase 
"suggestions of consciousness" does not express happily Locke's 
second source of ideas namely, " reflection on the operations of our 



PROGRESS OP ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 383 

Having laid down these two sources of our ideas, 
Locke proceeds to consider them as simple and com- 
plex ; the former simple ones coming both from sen- 
sation and reflection, " the materials of all our know- 
ledge, neither invented, nor framed, nor to be de- 
stroyed ; the latter, made at pleasure" " the mind 
having the power to repeat, compare, and unite the 
simple ideas even to an almost infinite variety." (Book 
ii. ch. 2, p. 2). But this power of the rnind to make 
complex ideas for itself requires qualification. What 
we can do is to put together arbitrarily a cluster of 

own minds;" but this is of minor importance. 2nd. That Locke's 
view of the sources of our knowledge allows quite as much to " in- 
herent tendencies," whatever these may be, as any other view or 
system : it is not incompatible with any truth concerning these ten- 
dencies. It has never yet been shown, and it ought not to be taken 
for granted, that there are associations and conclusions on any subjects 
" independent of all external influences," and not flowing from " in- 
ward experiences," in Locke's sense of the terms. By an inherent 
tendency we may understand a tendency or predisposition, arising 
out of the physical frame and constitution, to remember (associate) 
some ideas rather than others. No philosophical observer doubts 
the existence of such a tendency. Locke expressly asserts it ; and 
his view of the mind is quite compatible with any amount of strength 
in it. 3rd. There is no higher certainty attainable on any subject 
of human thought than that which arises from the evidence of the 
senses, or which consists of rational conclusions the agreement of 
ideas and propositions with that evidence. If we do not know and 
rely upon our own sensations, thoughts, and feelings, we can know 
nothing else. No " higher certainty" is conceivable than that felt in 
conclusions fairly deduced from, or necessarily involved in, premises 
received as true. On this all mathematical and moral evidence and 
reasoning, that is, all truth, ultimately rests. It is the spring of 
induction and deduction. It includes instances and principles, phe- 
nomena and laws. 



384 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

simple ideas, and to give to that cluster a name ; as 
centaur, hippogriff; and we call the cluster of ideas, 
attached to the name, a complex idea. To what ex- 
tent, however, this power of the mind over its simple 
or complex ideas reaches, and how far the nature of 
the complex ideas is adequately explained by Locke, 
are matters for consideration arising out of the sub- 
sequent chapters. Among the simple ideas of sensa- 
tion, Locke gives a whole chapter to solidity, selected 
somewhat arbitrarily for discussion : solidity, he says, 
distinguishes the extension of body from the exten- 
sion of space; and he passes on to consider other 
simple ideas both of sensation and reflection. In these 
chapters, the 7th and 8th, he has laid himself open to 
the just animadversion of successive critics, such as 
Stillingfleet, Berkeley, and Dugald Stewart. His dis- 
tinction between the primary and secondary qualities 
of matter, a distinction made by preceding writers and 
perhaps prevalent in his day, is now universally given 
up ; nor, can many of his sentiments and statements be 
successfully defended by his warmest admirers. One 
apologetic sentence of Locke's requires to be often 
borne in mind by the candid reader. Powers in out- 
ward objects to produce ideas in us, he says, " I call 
qualities ; and as they are sensations or perceptions in 
our understandings, I call them ideas : which ideas, 
if I speak of sometimes as in the things themselves, I 
would be understood to mean those qualities in the 
objects which produce them in us." In the course of 
his ' Essay' he is often regardless of this distinction, 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 385 

and confounds qualities of outward objects with ideas 
of them in our minds. 

Regardless of a just order, when we might expect 
him to proceed with the discussion of ideas he inter- 
poses three chapters, 9th, 10th, and llth, on the 
faculties of the mind. These chapters deserve careful 
perusal from the student; but his view of the faculties 
of the mind cannot be regarded as complete, nor his 
discussion of them as very satisfactory*. A sweet 
modesty graces their close, conciliating the reader. 
" I pretend not to teach," he says, " but to inquire ; 
and therefore cannot but confess here again, that ex- 
ternal and internal sensation are the only passages 
that I can find of knowledge to the understanding. 
These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows 
by which light is let into this dark room." " These 
are my guesses concerning the means whereby the 
understanding comes to have and retain simple ideas." 

What are the faculties of the human mind ? After 
all that has been written on this branch of philosophy, 
we are yet so much in the dark, that few even of the 
most thoughtful agree in their enumeration and de- 
scription. 

When Bacon, in his ' Advancement of Learning,' 
speaks of the faculties of the soul, he had evidently 
formed no distinct view of the nature and number of 

* It is significant of the slight importance which Locke attached 
to these chapters, that he passes them over without comment in the 
abstract of the Essay given to Le Clerc, published in French in the 
' Bibliotheque Choisie,' and printed in Lord King's Life of Locke. 

2 c 



386 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

these faculties, though he abounds with excellent ob- 
servations on the memory and its improvement, on 
the imagination and its pleasures, on the reason and 
its uses. In his general distribution of human know- 
ledge, he tells us, that history addresses itself to the 
memory, poetry to the imagination, philosophy to the 
reason. He divides the soul into two parts, the un- 
derstanding or reason, and the will or appetite ; but 
when he treats of the understanding or reason, which 
terms he uses synonymously, he turns from an analysis 
of it to speak of the arts of invention, of judging, of 
remembering, and of demonstrating. 

When Hobbes treats of the virtues commonly called 
intellectual*, he contents himself with speaking of such 
abilities as men commonly admire and desire in them- 
selves ; of a wit natural and acquired, quick or slow ; of 
good judgment, discretion and prudence, and power. 
In his work on human nature he begins with the sense, 
and proceeds to the imagination, remembrance, and 
discourse. 

Hartley, after treating of the ideas generated from 
sensations and their association, proceeds to consider 
the application of his theory to the understanding, af- 
fection, memory, and imagination ; and in the accuracy 
and fulness of his observations of fact, in the charm 
of a condensed thought and simplicity of style, he far 
excels all other metaphysical writers. 

Reid, in his ' Essays on the Intellectual Powers/ 
begins with the powers we have by means of our ex- 

* Leviathan, ch. viii. 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 387 

tcrnal senses, under which he treats of sensation, per- 
ception, and its objects ; and he then treats of memo- 
ry, conception, abstraction, judgment, and reasoning. 
Dugald Stewart, in his 'Elements of the Philosophy 
of the Mind/ discusses attention, conception, abstrac- 
tion, the influence of association, memory, and the 
imagination. It is evident from his pages how little 
philosophers agree in the use of these terms, how 
often they are used interchangeably, and how many 
different terms are significant of the same phenomena 
and processes of thought. James Mill, in his 'Ana- 
lysis of the Mind/ following very much the order of 
Hartley, treats first of sensation, then of ideas and the 
association of ideas, next of naming. He discusses 
well the use and value of the terms consciousness and 
conception ; he observes that Mr. Stewart did not 
understand the real distinction between conception 
and imagination ; he believes the last to consist in 
trains of ideas ; and he proceeds to treat of classifi- 
cation, abstraction, memory, belief, ratiocination, and 
evidence. 

Thus, with some agreement, there is great diversity 
among philosophers in their enumeration and analysis 
of the faculties of the mind, soul, reason, or understand- 
ing, which terms, for the purposes of analysis, are 
used synonymously. Hence much of the difficulty 
and perplexity in the character and condition of men- 
tal science. A reference to the pages of Brown and 
Abercronibie would strengthen this evidence, and a 
collection of the definitions would be very curious. 

2 c 2 



388 PROGRESS OE ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

4 

Adam Smith founds his theory of moral sentiments 
upon sympathy, which he makes a distinct principle 
of our nature and of the mind, without seeking to de- 
termine how much all sympathy is dependent on me- 
mory, imagination, and the judgment. Some writers, 
following Kant, make the pure reason a faculty dis- 
tinct from the understanding ; and others speak of an 
aesthetic faculty, to which they assign the province of 
taste. Common language implies that whatever in- 
crease of power may be gained by culture or habit to 
the original capabilities of our nature, such increase of 
power may be considered new faculties. Thus we 
talk of a faculty for languages, for music, for drawing. 
Faculty seems here facilitas from / ado a power of 
accomplishing. Now, since the memory, the imagi- 
nation, and the reason, whatever its functions, are 
concerned in everything which we attempt and ac- 
complish, these may be considered primary faculties. 

To return to Locke. Perception he treats of as the 
first faculty, Retention the next, Discerning he calls 
another faculty; and, among other operations, he 
speaks of comparing, compounding, naming, and abs- 
tracting. It is evident that "perception" as the first 
step and degree towards knowledge, and the inlet 
of all the materials of it, is with Locke sometimes 
equivalent to sensation, sometimes to reflection*. 

* Locke's Essay, b. ii. ch. 9, 15. Comp. b. ii. cli. 1 and 6. 
Locke often uses the word perception in the sense of a sensation ; 
at other times in the sense of the recognition of an idea as an idea of 
sensation or of reflection. Thus he says (b. ii. ch. 8, 1), " What- 
soever is so constituted by nature as to be able, by ' affecting our 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 381) 

Perception, like consciousness, is therefore a word of 
little value in the analysis of the mind ; for to have 
a sensation or idea, and to perceive that we have it, 
or to be conscious we have it, is all one. When 
treating of perception as a faculty of the mind exer- 
cised about its ideas and the inlet of all knowledge, 
he had forgotten his frequent use of the word in pre- 
vious chapters, particularly in the first of the second 
book on the original of all our ideas, where he says, 
" To ask at what time a man has first any ideas, is 
to ask when he begins to perceive : having ideas, and 
perception, being the same thing!' 

After all that has been written on perception and 
theories of perception, it will never have other than a 
general and vague signification, being equivalent, as 
Locke suggests, to thinking in general. Thus we 
speak of a man of quick or of dull perceptions, having 
reference to the speed with which he arrives at just 
conclusions from the incidental phenomena of the 
senses, whether as to their causes or consequences. 
Its etymology may be some guide to its best mean- 
ing ; perception, from percipio, being an idea caught 
(per) by means of some sensation. Thus we hear 
words, and perceive their meaning. We see a smile 
or frown, and perceive the thought or feeling which 

senses, to cause any perception in the mind,' doth hereby produce in 
the understanding a simple idea." Is there any difference in such 
a passage between an affection of the senses, a perception in the 
mind, and an idea in the understanding ? Are they not different 
phrases for one and the same phenomenon? Compare ch. i. 3 
and 4. 



390 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

occasions it. We perceive the conclusion at which 
an argument or speech is tending, before it is an- 
nounced ; we perceive, that is, we anticipate the re- 
sult in which a train of events will issue, or to follow 
the employment of certain means and agencies, before 
it comes about. But this use of the words perceive 
and perception, however common, will not be accept- 
able to all philosophers ; for Sir William Hamilton 
expressly says*, we perceive nothing but what is ac- 
tually present to an organ of sensef ; and " that we 
reach a distant reality, not by sense, not by percep- 

* See a note to his edition of Eeid, p. 247. 

f Among the dissertations, historical, critical, and supplementary, 
appended by Sir W. Hamilton to his edition of Eeid, is one, Note 
C, " On the various theories of external perception," in which he 
considers that he has accomplished his primary end, which was to 
display, to discriminate, and to lay down a nomenclature of the vari- 
ous theories of perception, actual and possible. But in describing 
or attempting to ascertain the doctrine of preceding metaphysicians, 
especially that of Eeid and Stewart, he introduces a number of new 
terms which help us to understand neither the philosophers nor the 
mind. He speaks of two kinds of consciousness one a conception, 
the other a perception (p. 820) ; of two or four kinds of perception 
one presentative, the other representative. ; one mediate, the other 
immediate (822) ; he talks of egoistical and non-egoistical idealism, 
presentationists and representationists. That we may appreciate 
the value of these terms, he refers us chiefly to his own notes and 
papers. Among them is the remarkable one (p. 806) on the terms 
object and objective, subject and subjective. 

The learned reader will consider whether his knowledge of the 
mind be improved, and any useful distinctions arrived at, in these 
papers of Sir W. Hamilton. The less learned may be advised to 
compare with them the chapters of Hobbes (Leviathan, ch. vii. and 
viii.), on the Ends of Discourse and the Virtues commonly called 
intellectual, and the contrary Defects. 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 391 

tion, but 1 1/ inference!' This limitation of perception 
to mere sensation is quite inconsistent with the old 
and received use of the term, of which we have many 
examples in the common version of the Scriptures ; a 
very good standard of legitimate English. An admi- 
rable instance is given by Johnson, under the word 
perceive : Mark ii. 8, " Jesus perceived in his spirit, 
that they so reasoned within themselves." We have 
another in 1 Sam. iii. 8, " And Eli perceived [that is, 
he drew the conclusion] that the Lord had called 
Samuel." 

Of memory Locke treats under the term retention. 
Of all the faculties of the mind, commonly so called, 
the memory seems the most clear and determinate in 
its character and functions. Its importance is univer- 
sally recognized. Its influence dawns with the first 
smile of intelligence in infancy, and in mature life it 
is in constant exercise, essential to all intellectual func- 
tions and processes ; an ingredient in all the moral 
affections, dispositions, and habits. Without memory, 
though present sensations should make a present im- 
pression, there could be neither reason, nor hope, nor 
desire. The mind would be only like a mirror, 
that passively reflects the transient image, or an in- 
strument that produces sounds unconsciously. A me- 
mory, full, exact, and ready, is the chief element of 
all intellectual power. Most of Bacon's hints on the 
culture of the intellectual power, in the fragment to 
Saville, turn upon helps for the memory. 

The eleventh chapter Locke entitles " Of discerning 



392 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

and other Operations of the Mind." He calls the"power 
of discerning and distinguishing between the several 
ideas we may take notice of in our minds, a faculty;" 
and adds: " If in having our ideas in the memory ready 
at hand consists quickness of parts; in this, of hav- 
ing them unconfused, and being able nicely to distin- 
guish one thing from another where there is but the 
least difference, consists in a great measure the exact- 
ness of judgment and clearness of reason which is to 
be observed in one man above another." But when 
we discern that a colour is not a sound, that a smell 
is not a taste, is this owing to a peculiar faculty? Has 
not Locke here made a faculty for himself, or ascribed 
to a peculiar faculty a common phenomenon of the 
mind, inseparable from sensation, perception, and me- 
mory, and from every process of thought and reason- 
ing ? In the same chapter Locke speaks of comparing, 
compounding, and abstracting ideas as other opera- 
tions, intimating a design to treat of them more fully 
afterwards. He was attacked by Berkeley*, not with- 
out reason, for what he says of general signs and uni- 
versal ideas; and while we trace in the observations 
on the faculties of brutes as compared with men, on 
the characteristics of wit and judgment, much that 
indicates acute thought, the careful reader discerns a 
want of clearness and mastery of the subject. He 
considers the faculty of abstracting or making general 
ideas as peculiar to man, and that which puts a per- 

* Comp. Berkeley's ' Principles of Knowledge,' p. 9, and Locke, 
b. iii. ch. 3, and on General Terms. 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 393 

feet distinction betwixt man and brutes. But though 
brutes do not use general signs, it does not at all 
follow that they have not the power of abstracting. 
In denying them this power, it seems to me that 
Locke is much too positive. Thus, a dog abstracts 
his master from his dress, and mankind from other 
animals. Animals certainly remember, imagine, or 
dream, and infer or conclude. These elements of 
reason they possess ; and could they tell us all their 
ideas, they would probably surprise us by the amount 
of their power in forming, cherishing, and associating 
ideas, in anticipating consequences, and in feeling at- 
tachments. 

The exact student will turn with interest to those 
chapters of the fourth book (the fourteenth and seven- 
teenth), in which Locke treats of the judgment and 
the reason as distinct faculties. He will observe that 
in the former he says : " The mind has two faculties 
conversant about truth and falsehood; first, know- 
ledge, whereby it certainly perceives and is undoubt- 
edly satisfied of the agreement or disagreement of any 
ideas. Secondly, judgment, which is the putting 
ideas together, or separating them, when their cer- 
tain agreement or disagreement is not perceived, but 
presumed, which is, as the name imports, taken to 
be so before it certainly appears. If it so unites or 
separates them as in reality things are, it is right 
judgment." Reason Locke describes variously, as 
"that faculty whereby man is supposed to be dis- 
tinguished from beasts ;" " as necessary and assist- 



394 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY 

ing to all our other faculties, and indeed containing 
two of them, viz. sagacity and illation or inference 
which finds out the means or intermediate ideas, 
and rightly applies them to discover certainty in de- 
monstrations, and probability in opinion." In reason 
he considers there are four degrees first, the disco- 
vering of truths ; second, the methodical disposition 
of them ; third, the perceiving their connection ; and 
fourth, making a right conclusion. 

In the chapter on Reason, he discusses, as before 
observed, the use of syllogism, which upon the whole 
he considers but as " the art of fencing with the little 
knowledge we have, without making any additions." 
Even were it only this, a mere art of fencing, it 
might be useful exercise and practice the gymnastics 
of the mind. But it is remarkable that Locke did 
not perceive that mathematical demonstrations, instead 
of being without syllogisms, are strictly syllogistic, and 
that true syllogism, Aristotle's legitimate logic, is nei- 
ther more nor less than that exercise of the reason- 
ing power, that art of adjusting terms, collecting inter- 
mediate ideas, and discovering connections and depen- 
dencies, on the importance of which he is himself dwell- 
ing through the whole of the last two books of his 
Essay. If all reasoning, whatever the subject, can be 
reduced to syllogistic form, as the profoundest reason- 
ers seem to admit, it is manifestly no mean part of 
knowledge to be able to distinguish a perfect from an 
imperfect syllogism, and to know what sorts of con- 
clusion are legitimate under certain sorts of premiss. 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 395 

Such knowledge would seem to have a much closer 
connection with all the business of human life, and all 
the exercises of the understanding, than that of many 
branches of physical science, which are far more re- 
mote from any immediate purpose of utility ; such as 
the characteristics, subdivisions, classes, and proper- 
ties of mosses and ferns, of seaweeds and shells. But 
no part of knowledge, no path of curiosity, is to be 
despised. It is no more an argument against formal 
logic that a country gentlewoman naturally connects 
the ideas of wind, clouds, rain, wetting, taking cold, 
relapse, and danger of death, and easily understands 
that she must not go abroad in bad weather after a 
fever, than it is an argument against grammar that 
the same gentlewoman speaks and writes correctly 
without having studied the rules, or in her own mind 
distinguishing and remembering the names of the 
parts of speech. 

The account which Locke has given of the faculties 
of the mind, his attempt at an analysis of the reason, 
cannot be regarded as distinct and successful. When 
writing of the judgment and reason in the fourth book, 
he had probably forgotten what he had said of per- 
ception, retention, and the discerning faculty in the 
second; and no small part of the obscurity of the 
Essay arises from this want of distinctness in the ar- 
rangement and treatment of his matter concerning 
the faculties commonly called intellectual. To ordi- 
nary readers this must be a source of obscurity and 
confusion next in its influence to the cloud that 



396 PROGEESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

lowers under the word ' idea/ and the related words, 
simple and complex, mixed modes, relations, sub- 
stances, and essences. In an essay on the human 
understanding we should 'now expect a more distinct 
account of these faculties, and their peculiar or dis- 
tinctive functions, and indeed we have it in Hartley 
and in James Mill. That Hume, in his ' Treatise on 
the Understanding/ and Kant, in his ' Critic of the 
pure Reason/ have supplied any deficiency in Locke 
or corrected any error in him, I have failed to dis- 
cover. 

Upon the imagination, as a distinct faculty, Locke 
has not touched; and the omission has been made a 
heavy charge against him*. He speaks indeed of 
"pictures and visions of the fancy/' and could not 
be unaware of the nature and importance of a fa- 
culty which he has himself not seldom beautifully 
exercised. A chapter upon it would have been most 
welcome from his hand, and made a valuable addition 
to his work. Its omission may be due to the consi- 
deration that the imagination is subservient for the 
most part to pleasure and amusement, while Locke 
was concerned with the pursuit of truth, and with 
the exercises of the understanding in relation to the 
reality and extent of human knowledge. He appears 
to have considered it more dangerous than useful, 

* See particularly Sedgwick's ' Discourse on the Studies of the 
University of Cambridge,' pp. 49, 50, edit. 1834. The Professor 
makes ' the omission' of what he calls ' the faculties of moral judg- 
ment, ' another great fault of Locke. 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 307 

more a friend to error and superstition than to truth 
and philosophy. But even in this view, its influence 
over the mind and reasoning powers deserved his 
more considerate attention, while the imagination is 
not without importance in the discovery and develop- 
ment of strictly scientific truth. It is an element in 
what we call invention, not merely as exercised in 
works of imagination commonly so called, poems and 
tales, the novel and the drama, pictures, statues, and 
music, but in all the arts and ends of life, in tracing 
the connection between causes and effects, means and 
ends, and in all that contributes to conviction and per- 
suasion, that is, logic and rhetoric. When analysed, 
perhaps it will be found to consist in the voluntary 
combination of the ideas of sensation and reflection, 
simple or complex, in an order different from that in 
which they were originally impressed, whether for pur- 
poses of pleasure or utility. By it we renew past en- 
joyments and anticipate new, and thus we are enabled 
to adorn, enjoy, and enrich the present. Its existence 
and power among the faculties of the mind furnishes 
one of the best illustrations of the wisdom and be- 
nevolence of the Author of our frame, since it is to 
the capacities of the mind what perfume and colour 
and form are to external nature, whence come the 
charms of variety and beauty in the vegetable and 
animal kingdoms. It is to the mind what the breath 
of summer is to the strings of the ^Eolian harp, or 
the light of day to the bosom of the still and all-reflect- 
ing lake. The sense of beauty springs from the ima- 



398 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

gination. Affection and love accompany her path. 
The poet, the painter, the sculptor, the musician, fol- 
low in her train, and do her selectest homage. Even 
the logician and philosopher confess her "awful 
charms." Religion sanctions and hallows her influ- 
ence. 

Upon the whole, the simple division of the primary 
faculties adopted by Bacon* seems as good as any that 
has been suggested since ; 1, memory; 2, imagina- 
tion ; 3, the reason. The memory recalls and cherishes 
the impression of the past in the order synchronous 
and successive. Imagination combines and deals with 
them for the purpose and gratification of the present. 
Reason examines the necessary connection, agreement 
or disagreement of ideas, of causes and effects, and 
especially recognizes the relation of all events and all 
being to law, and this may be considered its highest 
function. Of reason it may be said that it marks 
objects, and their conceived relations to one another, 
with appropriate names; that it arranges and classi- 
fies ; it distinguishes, separates, and combines ; it 

* In a passage in the ' Novum Organum' (lib. 1, 127), in which 
Bacon expressly considers his logic of induction applicable to the 
study of mental and moral affections and states, as well as to inani- 
mate nature, he speaks particularly : " De motibus mentalibus memo- 
ries, compositionis et divisionis, judicii, et reliquorum." The distinc- 
tion attempted by some moderns between the reason and the under- 
standing, as faculties with separate and distinguishable functions, 
seems to me arbitrary, unintelligible, no less inconsistent with the 
usage of the past than incapable of useful application to the future. 
A really useful analysis of the " pure reason" must be something 
very different from Kant's ' Critic.' 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 399 

counts and concludes ; it forms propositions and 
traces connections and consequences. Thus its two 
great functions may be considered to be induction 
and deduction, of which geometry and the mathe- 
matics furnish the most simple, easy, and perfect ex- 
amples. Its province is the attainment of knowledge 
and the establishment of truth. But I do not pre- 
sume to attempt an exact philosophical analysis of 
the functions included in what we term exclusively 
and par excellence the Reason. There is beautiful 
simplicity and force in the Baconian statement and 
division, that memory makes the historian ; imagina- 
tion the poet and the artist ; reason the philosopher. 
Each of these faculties is accompanied in every mo- 
ment of exercise by perception and consciousness, 
while sensation may be regarded as the root and 
trunk of which these are the flower and fruit. 

Having disposed however summarily of the facul- 
ties, Locke proceeds to the discussion of " complex 
ideas'' his chapter on which is by no means a happy 
one. He speaks of such ideas as being compounded 
and decompounded, and reduced under three heads : 
1st, modes, which also he divides into simple and com- 
plex, apologizing for the use of the term ; 2nd, sub- 
stances ; 3rd, relations. He then enters upon a dis- 
cussion of the simple modes of space, duration, and 
number ; of infinity ; of other simple modes, meaning 
the sensations of sound, taste, colour, and the ideas of 
such sensations. 

On modes of thinking, modes of pleasure and pain, 



400 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

he gives a very instructive and useful chapter, wor- 
thy of great attention ; the long chapters on Power, 
and on Identity and Diversity are interposed; he 
then touches more fully on what he calls mixed 
modes, complex ideas of substances and of relations ; 
and finishes with the chapters on ideas, as they are 
obscure and confused, real and fantastical, adequate 
and inadequate, true and false. 

Having touched before on the origin, nature, and 
metaphysical difficulty of the ideas of space and time, 
I shall not dwell at length on Locke's account, nor 
examine closely his definitions, but repeat an obser- 
vation implied on the former occasion. It is this : 
Whether we have, or have not, determinate ideas 
of space and time, whether they are complex, sim- 
ple, or abstract ; whether we can or cannot give satis- 
factory and available definitions of the terms signi- 
ficant of the ideas, both the ideas and terms are then 
clearest and most useful when considered as alto- 
gether relative, space as related to bodies, and time 
as related to the succession of impressions. Take 
other words, such as magnitude or size, height and 
depth. The abstract ideas are obscure. The terms 
are clearest when relative to objects compared and 
measured, and to the conceived position of an ob- 
server ; that is, to the present or remembered impres- 
sions of sense. 

Careful examination of Locke's second book will 
furnish the student with a variety of observations, 
acute, profound, instructive ; but he will detect not a 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 401 

little obscurity and inconsistency, arising from phrases 
ill guarded, and corroborating the account of the man- 
ner in which the Essay was composed, namely, by 
snatches and at distant intervals; the matter being 
put together before the whole subject and the depen- 
dence of the several parts had been well considered, 
and the arrangement fully determined. The use of 
the terms simple and mixed modes, which seems in a 
great measure peculiar to Locke, is now almost obso- 
lete, and a source of difficulty to the ordinary reader 
of the Essay, without any corresponding advantage. 

It would make a volume, if all the exceptionable 
and infelicitous passages in the chapters on Ideas were 
marked and duly commented upon. But the logical 
reader will see without difficulty Locke's defects. He 
will see that when he wrote these chapters he had not 
wholly disengaged himself from the jargon of the 
schoolmen or later metaphysicians about modes and 
accidents, substances and essences. He will see that he 
often confounds ideas with the objects which give oc- 
casion to them ; that he speaks of the mind as com- 
pounding and decompounding ideas, when it is only 
embarrassed by words without distinct ideas annexed. 
It will be seen that the vast importance and influence 
of language, and the necessity of taking into account 
its rationale and philosophy, had not dawned upon 
Locke's mind when he wrote this part of the Essay ; 
that he became more and more deeply alive to it as he 
advanced towards the conclusion ; and that if Locke 
had from the first entertained the views which he sub- 

2 D 



402 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

sequently unfolded, as to what words are and what are 
not susceptible of definition, much of what he has 
written on ideas, obscure and confused, adequate and 
inadequate, true and false, would have been omitted, 
more would have been modified, and all would have 
been improved. In proportion as Locke himself 
went over what he had written, he found that he 
had much to alter and to add. In a very inter- 
esting letter to Dr. Sloane, dated December 2, 1699, 
he says: "I took the liberty to send you, just be- 
fore I left town, the last edition of my Essay. There 
are two new chapters in it : one of the Association 
of Ideas, another of Enthusiasm. These two I ex- 
pect you should read and give me your opinion upon, 
though I have made other large additions*." With re- 
spect to the chapter on Poioer in particular, we see 
the difficulties in which Locke felt himself involved, 
and the little satisfaction which it gave, partly by the 
correspondence with Limborch, which occupied Locke 
within a few months of his decease, partly by the ad- 

* This is said of the fourth edition, printed in 1698. The chapter 
on Identity and Diversity was added at the instance of Molyneux 
to the third edition, which contained also, in the epistle to the reader, 
a characteristic vindication of his view of " moral relations," in re- 
ply to the animadversions of Mr. Lowde, who published in 1692 a 
discourse concerning ' The Nature of Man.' See the letters between 
Molyneux and Locke, Law's edit., vol. iv. p. 292, and the note by 
Law, vol. i. p. 209. Compare a remarkable passage referring to the 
Chapter on Power, in the preface to Law's edition. 

The letter to Dr. Sloane is now among the MSS. of the British 
Museum. It is printed in Forster's Original Letters of Locke, Sid- 
ney, and Shaftesbury (1830). 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 403 

ditions and alterations made in the third and subse- 
quent editions, to which he thus beautifully alludes: 
' The ideas of will, volition, liberty, and necessity, in 
this chapter of Power, came naturally in my way. In 
a former edition of this treatise I gave an account of 
my thoughts concerning them, according to the light 
I then had ; and now, as a lover of truth, and not a 
worshiper of my own doctrines, I own some change 
of my own opinion, which I think I have discovered 
ground for. In what I first writ, I with an unbiassed 
indifferency followed, truth whither I thought she led 
me. But neither being so vain as to fancy infallibi- 
lity, nor so disingenuous as to dissemble my mistakes 
for fear of blemishing my reputation, I have, with the 
same desire for truth only, not been ashamed to pub- 
lish what a severer inquiry has suggested. It is not 
impossible but that some may think my former notions 
right, and some (as I have already found) these latter, 
and some neither. I shah 1 not at all wonder at this 
variety in men's opinions : impartial deductions of rea- 
son being so rare, and exact ones in abstract notions 
not so very easy, especially if of any length. And 
therefore I should think myself not a little beholden 
to any one who would, upon these or any other grounds, 
fairly clear this subject of liberty from any difficulties 
that may yet remain." (Book ii. ch. 21, 72.) 

We learn from the correspondence with Molyneux 
that some parts of the third book of the Essay con- 
cerning words, though the thoughts were easy and 
clear enough, yet cost Locke more pains to express 

2 D 2 



404 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

than all the rest ; and we see him again struggling with 
difficulties in a net of his own making, when touching 
on real and nominal essences, names of mixed modes 
and of substances. At length he breaks into light 
as he advances to consider the imperfection and 
abuse of words, and the remedies for these imperfec- 
tions and abuses, with which he concludes this book. 
"I must confess then, that when I first began this 
discourse of the understanding, and a good while after, 
I had not the least thought that any consideration of 
words was at all necessary to it. But when, having 
passed over the original and composition of our ideas, 
I began to examine the extent and certainty of our 
knowledge, I found that it had so near a connection 
with words, that, unless their force and manner of sig- 
nification were first well observed, there could be very 
little said clearly and pertinently concerning know- 
ledge ; which, being conversant about truth, had con- 
stantly to do with propositions. And though it ter- 
minated in things, yet it was so much for the most 
part by the intervention of words, that they seemed 
scarce separable from our general knowledge." 

" I am apt to imagine that were the imperfections 
of language, as the instrument of knowledge, more 
thoroughly weighed, a great many of the controversies 
that make such a noise in the world, would of them- 
selves cease ; and the way to knowledge, and perhaps 
peace too, lie a great deal opener than it does*." 

* The above is quoted by Tooke, ' Epea Pteroenta,' vol. i. pp. 31, 
32, Taylor's edition. Locke's Essay, b. iii. ch. 9, 10, 11. While 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 405 

Two exquisite sections* follow, on the difficulties 
arising from words in discourses of religion, law, and 
morality, "matters of the highest concernment." And 
to these, as well as to the practical treatise on the 
Conduct of the Understanding, which is their corol- 
lary, the observation of the excellent Hallam will ap- 
ply j " I cannot think any parent or instructor jus- 
tified in neglecting to put them in the hands of a 
boy when the reasoning faculties become developed. 
It will give him a sober and serious, not flippant or 
self-conceited, independency of thinking ; and, while it 
teaches how to distrust ourselves and to watch those 
prejudices which necessarily grow up from one cause 
or another, will inspire a reasonable confidence in what 
he has well considered, by taking off a little of that 

engaged in this Work, I have looked with pleasure into the copy of 
Locke's Essay formerly belonging to John Home Tooke, with his 
MS. notes in pencil, now happily deposited in the British Museum. 
The notes are such as the reader of the ' Epea Pteroenta' would ex- 
pect. He observes the superiority in the tone and spirit of Locke's 
preface and dedication to anything to be found in Harris, the author 
of the Hermes. He marks with strong disapprobation ' No ! no ! 
no i ' the many chapters and passages relating to complex, adequate 
and inadequate, false and obscure, ideas ; intimating that all the dif- 
ficulties and obscurities arise not from ideas, which are well enough, 
but from mistakes in words, incorrect language, and bad grammar. 
He grasps with eagerness at every passage intimating Locke's atten- 
tion to philology and early dictionaries. 

The late Sydney Smith, in his amusing, and in many respects 
excellent, Lectures on Moral Philosophy, joins J. H. Tooke with 
Hume, as one of the authors who disparage Locke : but surely this 
is a mistake. 

* Book iii. ch. 9, 22, 23. 



406 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

deference to authority which is the more to be regret- 
ted in its excess, that, like its cousin-german, party 
spirit, it is frequently united to loyalty of heart and 
the generous enthusiasm of youth." 

The attention which Locke gives to ideas, and his 
frequent introduction of that word, when his meaning 
would be clearer had he attended more to things or 
propositions, has darkened more particularly his discus- 
sion of the applicability of demonstrative reasoning to 
morality, a subject to which he has reverted again and 
again, and with which he has mixed up a considerable 
number of sentiments that cannot be accepted*. Be- 
fore examining his views on this topic with the care 
which it demands, it is worth while to observe that 
Locke's division of knowledge into three kinds, intui- 
tive, demonstrative, and sensitive, is open to objection. 
The division is not good, because the two first seem 
to rest upon and to include the last, and it may be 
questioned whether Locke has assigned to each kind 
a mark sufficiently distinct. His account of knowledge 
seems in itself unsatisfactory ; he represents it as con- 
sisting alone in " the perception of the connection and 
agreement or disagreement and repugnancy of any of 
our ideas." This notion is very often repeated, and 

* The portions of the Essay in which this subject is touched are, 
b. iii. ch. 11, 16-18 ; b. iv. ch. 2 and 3, 18-20 ; ch. 4, 6-10 ; 
ch. 12, 6 to the end. These passages the student should carefully 
compare and endeavour to analyse. All that Locke says elsewhere 
on truth, certainty, general and trifling propositions, on maxims, 
ideas, their origin, their combination, their archetypes, will be mo- 
dified by the result of such analysis. 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 407 

it is one on which he lays great stress. Surely he is 
much nearer to the truth and to the account which 
would in general be given, when he intimates, as in 
several other places, that our knowledge consists in 
having ideas conformable to the real qualities of things, 
and that words are valuable only as they lead us to 
the " thoughts of things" When, therefore, he speaks 
(b. iv. ch. 2, 1) of a " kind of truths which the mind 
perceives at the first sight of the ideas together by 
bare intuition" without the intervention of any other 
idea, and " of this kind of knowledge as the clearest 
and most certain that human frailty is capable of"! 
and when he adds, " Thus the mind perceives that 
white is not black, that a circle is not a triangle, that 
three are more than two, and equal to one and two ;" 
it is apparent that what we know is merely that one 
object or idea is not another; that we have different 
names for different objects or impressions, sensations, 
or ideas ; and that we are not to call one by the name 
which it has been agreed shall be the name of another. 
This knowledge, if worthy to be called such, is after 
all more a knowledge of names, and of agreed signs for 
ideas, than of the agreement or repugnancy of ideas 
among themselves ; about which, as will be shown, 
there is much difficulty. 

Another notion, which I humbly think is a very se- 
rious error on Locke's part, runs very much through 
the latter part of the Essay. It is the more neces- 
sary to point out this error distinctly, because it has not 
been dwelt upon, if observed, by former critics. Nay, 



408 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

it has been assumed that Locke is correct, and his opi- 
nion has been adopted and enforced by some of his 
thoughtful successors*. The notion is this : that the 
complex or abstract ideas, the essences of mixed modes, 
are made by the understanding, "very arbitrarily," 
" independent from any original patterns in naturef." 
"There is nothing more evident, than that for the 
most part, in the framing these ideas, the mind searches 
not its patterns in nature, nor refers the ideas it makes 
to the real existence of things ; but puts such together 
as may best serve its own purposes, without tying 
itself to a precise imitation of anything that really ex- 
ists." This Locke afterwards modifies a little by the 
statement that such ideas "are not indeed jumbled 
together at random, but SUITED TO AN END." " Though 
they be combinations that are loose enough, and have 
as little union in themselves as several other to which 
the mind never gives a connection that combines them 
into one idea ; yet they are always made for the con- 
venience of communication, which is the chief end of 
language." He contends, nevertheless, that " for the 
originals of mixed modes, and for the meaning of terms 
significant of such modes, we need look no further than 
the mind itself, where their original patterns and es- 
sences are; and hence "that the real and nominal 
essence in mixed modes are the same." He asks, 

* See a passage in Law's preface, page ix, and compare the dis- 
sertation by Gay, prefixed to Law's translation of King, ' De Ori- 
gine Mali.' 

t See b. iii. ch. 5, 5, 6, 7. 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 409 

" whether children learn not the names of mixed modes 
before they have their ideas ? What one of a thou- 
sand ever frames the abstract idea of glory or ambition 
before he has heard the names of them ? In simple 
ideas and substances, I grant, it is otherwise, which 
being such ideas as have a real existence and union in 
nature, the ideas or names are got one before the other 
as it happens*." 

This whole argument he considers " new and a little 
out of the way." It is on the ground of the supposed 
similarity of the complex ideas of morality to the ideas 
concerned in mathematical reasoning, " in this respect, 
that they are alike framed by the mind without any 
real archetypes, that he founds his opinion of the pos- 
sible application of demonstrative reasoning to mora- 
lity as well as to the mathematics-)-." 

* Book iii. ch. 5, 15. 

f Comp. b. iii. ch. 11, 15. Morality being such combinations 
of ideas not having standing patterns existing their names may 
be defined. Men may exactly know the ideas that go to each com- 
position, and so use their words in a certain and undoubted signifi- 
cation ; perfectly declaring what they stand for. And therefore the 
negligence or perverseness of mankind cannot be excused, if their 
discourses in morality be not much more clear than those in natural 
philosophy, since they are about ideas in the mind, which are none of 
them false and disproportionate, they having no external beings for 
the archetypes which they are referred to, and must correspond with. 

Supposing the last sentiment well founded, it seems to me that it 
should have led Locke to an opposite conclusion. For is it not the 
want of a standing pattern existing, which renders the name indis- 
tinct, and the attainment of an acceptable definition difficult, if not 
impossible ? 

Comp. also, 18 ; " Another reason that makes the defining of 
mixed modes so necessary, especially of moral words, is what I men- 



410 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

Now Locke has repeatedly observed, that our com- 
plex ideas are collections of simple ideas, and that 
abstract names are only valuable as they stand always 
for the same collections. The conveniency of language 
consists, he justly says, in the tying of similar collec- 
tions by one term together. But if the most complex 
ideas are collections of simple ideas ; if they may at 
last be analysed into simple ideas, of which they are 
composed; and if the simple ideas, whether of sensa- 
tion or of reflection, come from existing things ; (e. g. 
simple ideas of sensation from objects, beings, or 
substances whose qualities affect the senses, and simple 
ideas of reflection from conditions or states of the 
mind, and inward feelings known by consciousness, 
which is here but another word for reflection, and 
which states and feelings are capable of being marked 
and recognized by words), it follows that the terms 
significant of the complex ideas have just as much re- 
ference to real existences as the terms significant of 
the simple ideas which enter into the complexity, and 

tioned a little before, namely, that it is the only way whereby the 
signification of the most of them can be known with certainty. For 
the ideas they stand for being for the most part such, whose com- 
ponent parts nowhere exist together, but scattered and mingled with 
others, it is the mind alone that collects them, and gives them the 
union of one idea ; and it is only by words, enumerating the several 
simple ideas which the mind has united, that we can make known to 
others what their names stand for ; the assistance of the senses in 
this case not helping us by the proposal of sensible objects, to show 
the ideas which our names of this kind stand for, as it does often in 
the names of sensible simple ideas, and also to some degree in those 
of substances." 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. Ill 

X 

no more. Take Locke's favourite instance. What a 
great mixture of independent ideas are contained in 
that complex one of a procession, a triumph! ideas of 
persons, habits, tapers, orders, motions, sounds, cha- 
riots, horses, elephants, banners, the fasces, laurels, 
captives, conquerors. Surely Locke is wrong in sup- 
posing that such a complex idea or cluster of mul- 
titudinous impressions, synchronous and successive, is 
more arbitrary that is, less dependent on real out- 
ward existences and phenomena than the idea of any 
one of the substances, gold, wood, cloth, tallow, iron ; 
or any one of the sensations, of colours, sounds, mo- 
tions, without which there could be neither procession, 
nor idea of it, nor term significant. 

" When we speak," says Locke*, " of justice and 
gratitude, we frame to ourselves no imagination of 
any thing existing which we could conceive ; but our 
thoughts terminate in the abstract ideas of those vir- 
tues, and look not further, as they do when we speak 
of a horse or iron, whose specific ideas we consider not 
as barely in the mind, but as in things themselves, 
which afford the original patterns of those ideas." 
I apprehend this is wholly fallacious ; and if Locke 
had not elsewhere made the certainty and reality of 
knowledge to consist in the conformity of ideas to the 
real qualities of objects if he had not strenuously 
maintained its reality on that ground, the charge of 
scepticism might have been brought with more sem- 
blance of plausibility against him, as maintaining that' 

* Book iii. ch. 5, 12. 



412 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

moral ideas were wholly arbitrary, and that the terms 
significant of them had no clear, positive, and trace- 
able relation to existing beings. It is true that ideas, 
whencesoever derived, exist nowhere but in the mind; 
but the ideas themselves and terms significant are of 
value solely by their relation to the actual phenomena 
of nature, and the real and positive conditions of hu- 
man feeling and human beings. In reasoning upon 
moral relations, such as justice and gratitude, our 
thoughts no more terminate in the abstract ideas than 
in the case of the horse or iron. The actual rela- 
tions of moral beings to one another are the subject of 
thought and question. The terms are of value, and 
attempts to settle that value are of importance, solely 
on account of their reference to existing beings. The 
archetypes or patterns of moral ideas, to use Locke's 
words, are the pleasures and pains of existing moral 
beings. Because they are so, it is necessary to seek, 
and desirable to determine, of what combinations of 
simple ideas the complex ones are made up ; for upon 
this depends the significancy of the terms. Yet senti- 
mental moralists, confident in their knowledge of the 
Deity's revelations, and giving to their private notions 
the reverenced name of conscience, which they do not 
admit to be perverted or ill-informed in their own case, 
despise inquiry into the sources and securities of hu- 
man happiness, and stigmatize the calculation of plea- 
sures and pains as a cold utilitarian selfishness. This is 
the ignorant and fashionable sentimentalism of the day. 
It may be itself the cloak of a selfish and malignant 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH FHILOSOPHT. 413 

spirit ; a shelter for every species of fraud, vice, false- 
hood, injustice, and oppression. Of the worth of such 
a theory, Philip the Second of Spain presents a nota- 
ble illustration. He thought he should be wanting in 
his duty to God, to the Church, and the State, if he 
did not exterminate heretics with fire and sword. But 
whence had he obtained his notions of the Deity, of 
the Church, and of the State ? Of what sort were his 
moral instincts and innate ideas, and in what mould 
cast ? He brought them from Spanish nurses and the 
school of the Jesuits. And when the plea of conscience 
is set up for a practice adverse to the happiness of 
mankind, and for an opinion that sanctions such prac- 
tice, and which appears to another utterly erroneous 
and mischievous, of what value is the plea ? what test 
does it furnish of truth or virtue ? 

Among the many admirable observations which 
Mr. Hallam has made on Locke, there are some re- 
lating to Locke's error about the want of correspon- 
dence between the mathematical conceptions and the 
real existence of geometrical figures, which deserve 
repetition here, no less on account of their intrinsic 
worth, than of their connection with inquiries into 
the nature of demonstrative reasoning and the cer- 
tainty of our moral knowledge. After quoting se- 
veral passages from Locke, and among them the fol- 
lowing, "All the discourses of the mathematicians 
about the squaring of a circle, conic sections, or any 
other part of mathematics, concern not the existence 
of any of those figures; but their demonstrations, 



414 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

which, depending on their ideas, are the same whether 
there be any square or circle in the world or no;" Mr. 
Hallam observes, " A geometrical figure is a portion 
of space contained in boundaries determined by given 
relations. It exists in the infinite round about us, as 
the statue exists in the block. No one can doubt, if 
he turns his mind to the subject, that every point in 
space is equidistant in all directions from certain other 
points. Draw a line through all these, and you have 
the circumference of a circle ; but the circle itself and 
its circumference exist before the latter is delineated. 
The orbit of a planet is not a regular geometrical 
figure, because certain forces disturb it. But this 
disturbance means only a deviation from a line which 
exists really in space, and which the planet would ac- 
tually describe, if there were nothing in the universe 
but itself and the centre of attraction. The expression 
therefore of Locke, ' whether there be any square or 
circle existing in the world or no/ is highly inaccu- 
rate, the latter alternative being an absurdity. All 
possible figures, and that in 'number numberless/ 
exist everywhere ; nor can we evade the perplexities 
into which the geometry of infinites throws our ima- 
gination, by considering them as mere beings of rea- 
son, the creatures of the geometer, which I believe 
some are half-disposed to do, nor by substituting the 
vague and un philosophical notion of indefinitude for 
a positive objective infinity*/' 

* Hallam's Literature of Europe, vol. iv. pp. 280 etseq. The reader 
will do well to consult the instructive paragraph which follows this 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 415 

This error of Locke's, of a supposed want of con- 
formity in real existences to the mathematical ideas of 
figure and number, is the more remarkable on account 
of his frequent allusions to the strength and clearness 
of mathematical reasonings, derived from the diagrams 
and the sensible impressions. "Wrong names," he 
observes, with great truth, "in moral discourses, 
breed usually more disorder, because they are not so 
easily rectified as in mathematics, where the figure 
once drawn and seen makes the name useless and of 
no force. For what need of a sign, when the thing 

in Mr. Hallam's Literature, and mark attentively the whole of his 
criticism on Locke. 

Locke's Essay, b. iv. ch. 4, 8. " That which is requisite to make 
our knowledge certain, is the clearness of our ideas ; and that which 
is required to make it real, is that they answer their archetypes. Nor 
let it be wondered that I place the certainty of our knowledge in our 
ideas, with so little care and regard (as it may seem) to the real ex- 
istence of things, since most of those discourses, which take up the 
thoughts, and engage the disputes of those who pretend to make it 
their business to inquire after truth and certainty, will, I presume, 
upon examination, be found to be general propositions and notions, 
in which existence is not at all concerned" Then, following Mr. 
Hallam's quotation : " In the same manner the truth and certainty 
of moral discourses abstracts from the lives of men, and the exist- 
ence of those virtues in the world, whereof they treat. Nor is 
Tully's Offices less true, because there is nobody in the world that 
exactly practises his rules, and lives up to that pattern of a virtuous 
man which he has given us, and which existed nowhere when he 
writ, but in idea. If it be true in speculation, *. e. in idea, that 
murther deserves death, it will also be true of any action that exists 
conformable to that idea of murther. As for other actions, the truth 
of that proposition concerns them not. And thus it is of all other 
species of things which have no other essences but those ideas which 
are in the minds of men." 



416 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

signified is present, and in view ? But in moral names 
that cannot be so easily and shortly done, because of 
the many decompositions that go to the making up 
the complex ideas of those modes. But yet, for all 
this, miscalling of any of those ideas, contrary to the 
usual signification of the words of that language, hin- 
ders not, but that we may have certain and demon- 
strative knowledge of their several agreements and 
disagreements, if we will carefully, as in mathematics, 
keep to the same precise ideas, and trace them in their 
several relations one to another, without being led 
away by their names. If we but separate the idea un- 
der consideration from the sign that stands for it, our 
knowledge goes equally on in the discovery of real truth 
and certainty, whatever sounds we make use of*." 
It is remarkable that Locke did not perceive, when 
writing such a passage, that if our ideas want confor- 
mity to the reality of nature, if our moral ideas do 
not conform to the positive relations of moral beings, 
we cannot properly be said to have moral knowledge 
at all. Our notions, without such conformity, are 
merely dreams. A madman may reason consecutively 
and demonstratively upon his own erroneous concep- 
tions ; but he is mad nevertheless, and the madness 
consists in the want of conformity between his ideas 
and the reality of things. The man who believed he 
was made of glass, was right in concluding that he 
must not knock himself against a wall. His first idea 
was the great delusion. False assumptions are pro- 

* Essay, b. iv. ch. 4, 9. 



PROGRESS OP ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 417 

l>a !>ly a far more frequent source of error than incon- 
sequential reasoning. 

Thus it appears that Locke, in seeking to determine 
the nature of demonstration, has dwelt too much on 
the agreement and disagreement of ideas, and ideas 
alone. If he were right in this, of course it would lead 
us to consider whether there be any, and what may 
be the specific difference between the ideas of figure, 
number, and magnitude, and the ideas of morality ; 
and no doubt there is a simplicity and uniformity in 
the ideas, or it were better to say, the subject-matter 
of geometrical reasoning and of arithmetical and alge- 
braic calculation, not belonging to the subject-matter 
of moral reasoning*. There is, as Locke perceived, 
far greater complexity in the latter. It is further evi- 
dent that Locke had not a clear view of the nature 
of demonstration. To demonstrate is to show that a 
proposition not granted to be true is true by virtue 
of some premiss previously admitted or assumed as a 
criterion of truth, or by virtue of some other truth 
previously demonstrated. Such is Mr. De Morgan's 

* Hence, perhaps, something of mechanical character in all the 
branches of mathematics, exclusively pursued. Notwithstanding 
the intensity of application, the closeness and continuity of attention 
required for them, to which comparatively few are equal, but which 
are in themselves most valuable and enviable qualities of the intel- 
lect, yet, when exclusively pursued) they may give a character of nar- 
rowness and poverty to the understanding. The furniture of the 
mind, supplied by figures and numbers only, may have far less con- 
nection with all the wants and uses of life than that stored up by 
the diligent and philosophical student of history and nature, of lite- 
rature and art. 

2 E 



418 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

just account of it ; and it deserves to be well laid up 
in the mind. If we examine Locke's favourite ex- 
ample, the demonstration that the three angles of a 
triangle are equal to two right angles, the ideas of 
any given angles in a given figure remain distinct, and 
probably no young geometer ever thinks about the 
agreement or disagreement of the ideas, but he refers 
the angles in question to a common measure which all 
angles have ; he considers their equality to all the pos- 
sible angles on the same side of a straight line ; and 
he admits the proposition because he has admitted 
this common measure or test; and he perceives that 
the reasoning will apply to every example. 

This simplicity and uniformity in the subject-matter 
of mathematical reasoning, and comparative complexity 
m the subject-matter of moral science, has not been 
sufficiently regarded by those who have sought to dis- 
tinguish between contingent and demonstrative reason- 
ing, as if the contingency were in the reasoning, not in 
the matter. The relations of figure and numbers, an- 
gles and lines, magnitudes and motions, to one another, 
which are the subjects of mathematical investigation, 
and on which the axioms and definitions turn, remain 
the same through all time and to all observers. The 
figure of the earth, and all figure and all number, that is, 
everything with which the geometrical and arithmetical 
reasoner is concerned, are the same now as in the days 
of Euclid and Archimedes. But the phenomena with 
which moral propositions and historical statements are 
concerned, are comparatively evanescent. It is irapos- 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 419 

sible to fix and recall them, to renew them in precisely 
the same conditions. The actors in the tragedy of the 
death of Caesar, their actual thoughts and passions, are 
no more. A brief record, the words of an historian, 
alone remain to excite our imagination and form opi- 
nion. Still it is only in proportion as mankind are sub- 
ject, from age to age, to similar thoughts and passions, 
that is, in proportion as their physical and mental frame 
presents some uniform characteristics, that we can ar- 
rive at general propositions in morality, the truth and 
value of which must ever rest, like those of mathema- 
tics, upon the facts, upon certain ever-recurring, if 
not permanent phenomena, determinate and admitted. 
But general propositions consist of words or signs ; 
and the sole question is, how far the words or signs are 
free from ambiguity. 

Now Locke decides that the names of simple ideas, 
and those only, are incapable of being defined. This 
he illustrates at some length, and on it we have already 
made some observations. But the names significant of 
complex states, we are told, maybe defined*. If then the 
complex ideas or states are made up of a collection of 
simple ideas, it follows that we can only define by enu- 
merating the several simples that enter into the col- 
lection ; that is to say, in the examination of complex 

* Hartley, Prop. 80, divides words into four classes. 1. Such as 
have ideas only. 2. Such as have both ideas and definitions. 3. 
Such as have definitions only. 4. Such as have neither ideas nor 
definitions. I demur to the last class, and to his reason for making 
such a class. How can particles vary the sense of a sentence, if they 
nothing of themselves ? 

2 E 2 



420 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

states of mind, and in the definition of the terms signifi- 
cant, we must find out and enumerate the more simple 
and elementary. Now the subject-matter of morality 
being the actions, habits, and dispositions of moral 
agents, their motives and consequences, their causes 
and effects, supposing every action to have an object, 
and that object or motive to be the attainment or com- 
munication of a pleasure, the avoidance or infliction 
of a pain, to some sentient being, it follows that a 
study of human pleasures and pains must form the 
chief part of the study of morality. Morality thus be- 
comes neither more nor less than the study of human 
happiness and of the rules or means for promoting and 
securing it ; and until this is clearly seen and admitted 
by professed moralists, no progress can be made in the 
scientific treatment of their subject. In this view the 
classification made by Hartley in the first instance, and 
by Bentham afterwards*, of pleasures and pains, form 
by far the most important contributions to ethical 
science in modern times. 

In the chapter on the improvement of our know- 
ledge the 12th of the 4th book Locke returns to 
the proposition that " morality is capable of demon- 
stration'' and he talks " of the habitudes and relations 
of the ideas, which are the real essences that ethics 
are conversant about." But, after all, he gets no fur- 
ther than this one rule, " to get and fix in our minds 
clear, distinct, and complete ideas, as far as they are 
to be had, and annex to them proper and constant 
names." Now distinct ideas are gotten from careful 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 421 

observation of nature; that is, in morality, of the ac- 
tions and passions of men; and our chief concern 
must be the propriety and constancy of the names. In 
the chapter on wrong assent or error, in one short 
sentence Locke puts in a strong and just light the 
connection between men's notions of truth and mora- 
lity and their practical behaviour : " as the foundation 
of error will lie in wrong measures of probability, so 
the foundation of vice will lie in wrong measures of 
good." If this be true, and perhaps on close exami- 
nation of fact it will be found to be a pregnant truth, 
the object of the scientific moralist is evidently to find 
out for himself and point out to others, the right mea- 
sures of good. 

Where are these measures to be had? Is this only 
an improved form of the old inquiry after the summum 
bonum ? It is but an endeavour to determine the rule 
of life. Now the common practice of mankind affords 
some rule or measure ; their opinions or principles, 
in so far as we can gather them, a better rule ; the 
opinions of the select few, of the choicest thinkers or 
most careful observers, a still higher rule ; and the rule 
of life thus formed may be supposed to harmonize 
with what is called the divine rule, as deduced from 
nature and Scripture. Thus the devout theist, the 
philosophical Christian, the patriot citizen, the lover 
of mankind, will be least at a loss to determine what 
is the rule of life and duty. For the most part, what- 
ever difficulties or differences there may be in the 
theory of morals, there is an agreement in practical re- 



422 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

suits ; and the voice of mankind, by express laws, by 
books, by converse, and by daily examples, agrees in 
pronouncing some actions and their class right and 
virtuous, others as determinately wrong and vicious. 

Yet such is the complexity of the matter entering 
into the settlement of moral truth, and such the obscu- 
rity and ambiguity of the terms, that when the most 
candid give a close attention to the subject, they find 
themselves embarrassed to a degree which, without 
such attention, they could not have anticipated. When, 
for example, we peruse a chapter in Blackstone's Com- 
mentaries touching on public or private wrongs ; when 
we seek to determine the difference between justifi- 
able and felonious homicide, between killing by cul- 
pable neglect of proper precaution against accident 
and killing with intent to take away life, without law- 
ful plea of self-defence, with malice aforethought ; and 
when further we attend a court of law and bring logic 
and philosophy to bear upon the evidence there given 
and the language there employed by witnesses, by the 
counsel, and by the judge, we learn the difficulty of ap- 
preciating, by agreed measures, the complex matters 
concerned in moral and social right, and of determi- 
ning the application of the rules to particular cases. 
We shall be often deeply affected by a sense of the 
difficulty and obscurity attending first upon inquiry 
into the facts, and next, upon clothing in suitable lan- 
guage the impressions of facts, which go to the settle- 
ment of moral truth. The intent of the law-makers, 
the application of that intent to the case in hand, the 



t'KO<;HKss ol I.N(ilJSll 1'IIILOSOPHY. 423 

guilt of the respective agents in their present infraction 
of the law, the amount of evil accruing from that in- 
fraction, and the means of preventing the like evil in 
time to come, all appear involved in hopeless obscu- 
rity ; and a rare combination of integrity and experi- 
ence is required for a safe conclusion. Yet such is the 
perverseness of mankind, that even those, from whom 
better things might be expected, systematically discou- 
rage a serious attention to the difficulties and obscu- 
rities of moral and political science; and they who 
descend with the lamp of patient thought into the 
darkest caverns of prejudice and error, who take most 
pains to shed a ray of light upon the path of safety 
and of progress, are commonly vilified as the advo- 
cates of sensualism and selfishness. 

As the last chapters, on the imperfection and abuse 
of words, and the remedies thereof, constitute the 
most valuable portion of the third book, so the later 
chapters of the fourth book of the Essay, on the ex- 
istence of a Deity, the improvement of knowledge, the 
nature and degrees of assent and error, on faith and 
reason, and the division of the sciences, deserve the 
deepest attention. No writings in the English lan- 
guage breathe a purer and loftier spirit, or tend more 
powerfully to form the candid, philosophical, religious 
mind. It is not only that high ethical character to 
which Mr. Hallam does full justice, that freedom from 
the spirit of party and absence of partiality even to 
his own opinions, apart from the evidence which facts 
and reasonings furnish, but what is more, because so 



424 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

rare in the philosopher, a constant remembrance of 
the relation between the human finite intellect and the 
infinite unknown ; that modest sense of human igno- 
rance and error, combined with an anxiety to turn to 
good account whatever can be known with any ap- 
proach to certainty ; and above all, that disposition to 
find the final cause of everything in the wisdom and 
benevolence of the Creator ; these are the moral graces 
that shed their halo round the memory of the illus- 
trious Locke, and make his Essay on the Understand- 
ing at the same time a work well fitted to purify and 
enlarge the heart. Should any taste for genuine Eng- 
lish thought and literature survive the present race of 
thinkers, should it again be reckoned among the need- 
ful accomplishments of an English gentleman to know 
well the greatest and best authors of his country, the 
estimation of Locke will rise once more to its just 
height, and the candid youth of universities and halls 
will be taught to pronounce with veneration the name 
of the most philosophical of Christians, the most Chris- 
tian of philosophers. 

A review of the writings and philosophy of Locke 
would be unpardonably defective without some careful 
reverential notice of the works, whose merit has been 
thrown too deeply into the shade by the peculiar h}ter- 
est of the Essay. The sixteen years, which Locke spent 
chiefly at the seat of the Masharns at Gates, from the 
time of the Revolution in 1688 to his death in 1704, 
give us a most agreeable picture of the life of a patriot 
and philosopher. The Essay on the Understanding had 



PROGRESS OP ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 425 

been prepared for the press and was finished in Hol- 
land about the end of 1687*; the papers on Toleration 
also had been published in Latin before Locke returned 
from Holland, and the Thoughts on Education had been 
communicated to Edward Clarke, of Chipley, in letters, 
before 1G90. Still the larger part of the four goodly 
quartos which now make up Law's edition, were 
written during those years of comparative retirement, 
the fruit of his mature and patient thought, the 
produce of an industrious hand, guided by a benevo- 
lent, religious mind. Thanks to the smoky atmosphere 
of London, and to the asthmatic pains and troubles 
which drove him to the fields of Essex ! To these we 
owe in part, under Providence, the noblest vindications 
of civil and religious liberty, some of the worthiest tri- 
butes to the reasonableness and value of the Christian's 
faith, which adorn the literature and history of England. 
They compelled the philosopher's withdrawal from 
engagements, honourable and important, which the 
greatest and best of his country pressed upon his ac- 
ceptance ; and this retirement gave him " leisure for 
immortal occupations." 

No foreign critic can be expected to do full justice 
to the merits and character of Locke. He is the type 
of the English mind, and " its large, sound, round- 
about sense." His spirit was eminently practical. He 
had in view, in all his writings, a direct practical result. 
He never for a moment forgot the subserviency of 

* The original copy is said to exist, dated 1671. See Lord King's 
Lite, vol. i. p. 10. 



426 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

truth to virtue, of virtue to happiness. To the last he 
studied no less for his own improvement than for that 
of his country and mankind ; and he had the happi- 
ness of laying deep the foundation of England's future 
greatness, in two most important constitutional mea- 
sures, the one touching its material prosperity, the 
other its religious and moral progress, in which, to his 
immortal honour, his influence over the sovereign and 
the government was exerted with the best effect. The 
Act of Toleration was among the earliest fruits of 
that revolution which placed William and Mary on the 
throne, and was passed in the first session of 1689. 
" There is a tradition," says Lord King*, " that the 

* See King's Life, vol. i. p. 327. In a careful Life, more distinct 
information on such a point, and extracts from Locke's correspon- 
dence, would have been given. The following translation of the por- 
tions of Locke's letters relating to the subject may be acceptable to 
the reader. But the whole correspondence will be found translated 
by J. T. Butt, Esq., in the Monthly Repository for 1818, vol. xiii., 
with good historical notes. 

" In Parliament measures are already commenced in favour of 
toleration under a double title namely Comprehension and Indul- 
gence. The first proposes that the benefits of the Church are to be 
extended, so that by the removal of part of the ceremonies it may 
comprehend more persons. The other aims at the toleration of 
those, who will not or cannot unite themselves to the English Church 
on the offered conditions. How lax or strict these conditions will 
be, I scarcely yet know ; but this I feel, that the episcopal clergy do 
not much favour these and other matters, which are now agitated ; 
whether to their own or the republic's advantage, let them see. 
Farewell. Your most affectionate J. L." 

This is dated, " London, March 12, 1689." A second letter is 
dated, " London, 6th June, 1689." 

" I do not doubt that you have heard before this that toleration is 
now at length established by law among us. Not perhaps with that 



PROCJRKSS ()!' IvMiLlSH I'llILOSOPH Y. 427 

terms of the Toleration Act were negotiated by Locke 
himself: and the fact is in some degree confirmed by 
an expression in one of his letters to Limborch." The 
subject had long employed Locke's thoughts. The 
Ittter to Limborch, written while he was in conceal- 
ment in Holland, in 1685, was translated into English 
in 1689 by a nephew of Andrew Marvell's a Rev. Mr. 
Popple, and defended against one Proast in two later 
publications in 1690. 

The considerations on the state of the coinage 
concerning raising the value of the money and lower- 
ing the interest, were printed in 1691, and some fur- 
ther considerations in 1695. They were addressed to 

latitude which you and the like of you, without ambition or dread 
of Christian truth, might wish. But it is something to go thus far. 
With these beginnings I hope the foundations of liberty and peace 
are laid, on which the Church of Christ may be once for all esta- 
blished. None are prohibited from worship of their own, nor ex- 
posed to punishments, except it be the Eomanists, provided only 
they will take the oath of fidelity, and renounce transubstantiation 
and certain dogmas of the Romish church. But the Quakers are ex- 
cused from the oath ; nor upon them would that confession of faith, 
which you will see in the Act, have been obtruded by a bad example, 
if some of them had not offered that confession, an imprudence 
which many among them, and those the more earnest, greatly de- 
plore. I thank you for the copies of the tract concerning tolerance 
and peace which you have sent me : the bound I have received ; the 
unbound have not yet come to hand. I understand that some Eng- 
lishman is already employed in translating the little book concerning 
toleration. That principle, so favourable to peace and probity, I wish 
everywhere to prevail. I rejoice that you have written the history of 
the Inquisition, and hope it will soon come forth, a work useful and 
expected. I have sent to Le Clerc the Act passed in favour of tolera- 
tion, from whom you will learn how far this liberty is extended." 



428 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

the great Lord Somers, and show Locke's mastery 
over the principles of what has since been called " po- 
litical economy," as well as the pure patriotism and 
high moral feeling which animated all his proceedings. 
He cleared the subject of trade and commerce and the 
uses of money from mystery. His wisdom happily 
was recognized. His advice, that there should be no 
alteration of the standard, nor any attempt to raise the 
denomination, was followed. The consequence was 
that disturbances in many parts of the country were 
quieted. The clipped and bad coin in circulation was 
called in, and the great recoinage of 1695 restored 
the current money of the country to the full legal 
standard ; and England was saved from one cause of 
those convulsions which have afflicted her nearest 
neighbours. 

Besides these labours in connection with the reli- 
gious liberty of his country and the security of its com- 
merce, Locke had been employed in examining the 
rational foundations of human society and the philo- 
sophy of government. In 1689 he gave to the world 
the fruit of his meditations, in two treatises on the 
subject ; in the first, overthrowing the false principles 
of Sir Robert Filmer and his followers, whose works 
even Locke's antagonism and Algernon Sydney's ela- 
borate papers on government before him have scarcely 
saved from oblivion ; the second, treating of the true 
original, extent, and end of civil government. Of 
the excellent fifth .Chapter, in this second treatise, 
Mr. Hallarn justly says, " it would be sufficient, if all 



PROGRESS 01 FACT, is II PHILOSOPHY. 

Locke's other writings had perished, to leave him a 
high name in philosophy." The same may be said 
of its later chapters on prerogative, conquest, usur- 
pation, tyranny, and the dissolution of governments. 
The treatise was written, it has been supposed, to 
justify the Revolution of 1688, which placed William 
the Third on the throne, but it has nothing of a party 
character. It is the result of those profound and anx- 
ious thoughts on the philosophy and ends of govern- 
ment, called forth in times of political disturbance and 
change ; and it remains one of the few very important 
works which our literature has to boast on that diffi- 
cult subject, deserving the special study of the edu- 
cated Englishman*. " The importance of labour in 
the production of wealth," says James Millf, " was 
very clearly perceived both by Hobbes and Locke;" 

* Of the works on the philosophy of government, the most impor- 
tant in English literature seem to be, after Bacon and Hobbes, the 
following. Dr. John Taylor's ' Elements of Civil Law,' 3rd edit. 1755 ; 
Beccaria's ' Treatise on Crimes and Punishments,' translated in 1766; 
Priestley's ' Essays and Lectures;' Bentham's 'Fragment on Go- 
vernment,' a critique on Blackstone's Preface, and his ' Treatise of 
Morals and Legislation ; ' Paley's * Political Philosophy ; ' James 
Mill's Article 'On Government' in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 
7th edit. ; Austin's 'Province of Jurisprudence determined.' Besides 
these we have a slight treatise by Mackintosh ' On the Law of Na- 
ture and Nations,' and an ' Essay' by Sir "W. Temple. We have 
also translations of Grotius, Puffendorf, and Montesquieu, and nu- 
merous works on the English Government and Constitution, besides 
the works on political economy. But the greatest and best writers 
may be considered to have built upon Locke's principles and sprung 
from his school. 

f Article on ' Political Economy,' Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 
xviii. p. 273. Locke's Treatise on Government, ch. v. 40-43. 



430 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

but after quoting the sections* in which Locke shows 
" that if we rightly consider things as they come to 
our use, and cast up the several expenses about them, 
what in them is purely owing to nature and what to 
labour, we shall find that in most of them ninety-nine 
hundredths are wholly to be put on the account of la- 
bour ;" and again, " 'tis labour which puts the greatest 
part of value upon land, without which it would scarcely 
be worth anything ;" he adds, " this is a very remark- 
able passage. It contains a far more distinct and com- 
prehensive statement of the fundamental doctrine, that 
labour is the constituent principle of value than is to he 
found in any other writer previous to Smith, or than is- 
to be found even in the Wealth of Nations!" Labour, 
Locke teaches, in the beginning gave a right of pro- 
perty, in the maintenance of which right all society 
is interested, and for which chiefly it is constituted, 
right and conveniency going together. He appears 
to have a great advantage over Hobbes in the view 
that, not merely mutual fear, which if alone prevailing 
must drive every individual into solitude, but obliga- 
tions of necessity, convenience, and inclination, which 
God put him under, drove man into society, fitting 
him also with understanding and language to enjoy it. 
Locke also maintains much more distinctly and im- 
pressively than Hobbes the responsibilities and duties 
of the governing, as well as of the governed, in a civil 
society. " Absolute arbitrary power, or governing 
without settled standing laws, can neither of them con- 

* Locke, ch. v. 40, 41, 42, 43. 



PROGRESS <>1 KNCMSII PHILOSOPHY. 431 

sist with the ends of society and government, which 
men would not quit the freedom of the state of nature 
for, and tie themselves up under, were it not to pre- 
serve their lives, liberties, and fortunes, and by stated 
rules of right and property to secure their peace and 
quiet. It cannot be supposed that they should intend, 
had they a power so to do, to give to any one or more 
an absolute arbitrary power over their persons and 
estates, and put a force into the magistrate's hand to 
execute his unlimited will arbitrarily upon them. This 
were to put themselves into a worse condition than 
the state of nature, wherein they had a liberty to de- 
fend their right against the injuries of others, and 
were upon equal terms of force to maintain it, whether 
invaded by a single man, or many in combination." 

Adam Smith, in his great work, ' The Wealth of 
Nations/ has not treated his subject historically ; but 
in his early chapters on the origin of the use of money, 
and the settlement by law of its relative value in ex- 
change, he might have adverted with advantage to 
Locke's clear views upon this subject, and to his great 
influence in saving England from those evils which in 
other countries have arisen from the pernicious inter- 
ference of governments with the standard of value. The 
'study of Locke would probably have saved him from 
some other errors into which he seems to have fallen, 
as to the relative productiveness of labour, and its uni- 
formly equal value. The absence of any reference to 
these papers of Locke on the part of Adam Smith is 
one indication, among many others, of the neglect or 



432 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

the partiality with which English literature and philo- 
sophy have too commonly been treated in Scotland. 
The chief difficulty in Locke arises from his supposing 
the existence of a known lawof nature, distinct enough 
to be recognized, directing men in their conduct to 
each other antecedently to their entering into civil so- 
ciety ; by which law he seems to understand some- 
thing more than a principle of self-preservation, a 
perception of the advantage to be derived from some 
restraint of individual liberty and submission to a 
common rule. When he makes individual assent the 
foundation of obligation to civil obedience, the reader 
must carefully note the many modes in which he sup- 
poses that assent to be tacitly given ; and how it is 
implied in any the least enjoyment of a privilege or 
right conferred by an existing community ; such as " a 
lodging only for a week ; or whether it be barely tra- 
velling on the highway ; and in effect it reaches as far 
as the very being of any one within the territories of 
that government*." 

Paley, in his chapter on the duty of submission to 
civil government, discusses briefly, but dismisses sum- 
marily, the notion of its being founded on compact, 
though supported by the venerable name of Locke. 
He asserts that " no such compact was ever made in 
reality, no such original convention of the people was 
ever holden, or in any country could be holden, ante- 
cedent to the existence of civil government in that 
country." But surely it is true that in all govern- 

* Locke on Government, b. ii. cli. 8, 119. 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 433 

nicnts, called constitutional, the actual laws have been 
matters of express compact between the parties go- 
verning and the parties to be governed, as in the case 
of our own Magna Charta, and the earlier statutes of 
the Witenagemote ; and in the earliest forms of govern- 
ment supposable, the parental or patriarchal, there is 
an implied compact of obedience on the one hand, 
for care, provision, and protection on the other. 

Whatever views may be taken of the origin of civil 
government, and of the forms deemed most fit to at- 
tain its ends, certainly no philosopher would think any 
government defensible in so far as it was proved or 
believed to be hostile to human happiness, or would 
deny that form to be the best which could be shown 
to secure the greatest amount of human good. The 
maxim at the end of the Roman law, quoted by Bacon 
in his Essay on Judicature, " salus populi suprema 
lex," must be the maxim of every philosophical legis- 
lator*/' 

In the treatise on government Locke makes great 
use of the matter of the tenth section of the first book 

* A controversy of considerable interest and importance arose 
out of these papers on government in the latter half of the last cen- 
tury, between Tucker, Dean of Gloucester, who attacked and mis- 
represented, and Dr. Joseph Towers, who ably and successfully vin- 
dicated, Locke's principles. The political and other tracts of Towers, 
collected in three volumes in 1796, now scarce in their collected 
form, are an able and valuable vindication of civil and religious 
liberty, of philosophical and enlightened religion. Dr. Towers, the 
assistant of Dr. Kippis in the ' Biographia Britannica,' was one of 
the first to perceive and correct the offences of Hume against the 
principles of both. 



434 PROGRESS OY ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, where Hooker enters 
upon the origin of government, and founds all upon 
consent. Hooker did not live to finish his great work. 
The subject seems to have~been too difficult for him. 
The later books, though probably not altered from 
the MSS., are evidently not as he would have pub- 
lished them, had he lived to send them forth*. Upon 
the whole, Hooker must be considered as resolving 
the Church as a power into the State, and his work 
was equally exceptionable to Episcopalians and Pres- 
byterians, that is, to all who had high notions of ec- 
clesiastical independence and supremacy. Fuller, in 

* Can the Cliurch have a polity, in a strict sense, that is, be a so- 
ciety, wherein the majority enforce their will and opinion by tempo- 
ral penalties ? Can it be anything but a society, like that of the 
first Christians, voluntarily meeting to cultivate together, with forms 
changeable at pleasure, the feelings of devotion, benevolence, and 
hope? "Our citizenship" (TroA/revpi), says Paul, "is in heaven." 
Philippians iii. 20. " The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship 
over them ; but it shall not be so among you," said the Saviour, " for 
whoso is greatest among you, let him be your servant." " The 
weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual." A number of 
passages will occur to the thoughtful reader. An important criti- 
cism of Hooker and his connection with Locke occurs in Hallam's 
Constitutional History of England, vol. i. pp. 292-302. See also a 
note at the end of the Rev. J. J. Tayler's E-etrospect of the Eeligi- 
ous Life of England. Mr. Hallam says, " that whatever may be the 
imperfections of the Ecclesiastical Polity, they are far more than 
compensated by its eloquence and reasonings ;" but with the highest 
admiration of the piety and general spirit of Hooker, and the gran- 
deur of his march as to style of composition, I cannot feel that he 
mastered his subject, or that his reasoning is satisfactory. His im- 
portant terms, especially in the later books, are by no means cleared 
from ambiguity, and his sense is overpowered by his literature and 
learning. 



PlUHiKKSS OF KMJMSII PHILOSOPHY. 435 

his notice of Hooker, among the worthies of Devon, 
puts in his quaint way the difficulties felt by his 
readers. " Hereupon it is that they (/. e. people who 
read his book with a prejudice, that as Jephtha vowed 
to sacrifice the first living thing which met him, these 
are resolved to quarrel with the first word which oc- 
curreth therein) take exception at the very title there- 
of, ' Ecclesiastical Politic/ as if unequally yoked, 
Church with some mixture of citiness ; that the dis- 
cipline, jure divino, may bow to human inventions. 
But be it reported to the judicious, whether, when all 
is done, a reserve must not be left for prudential sup- 
plies in Church government'' The judicious will not 
undertake to explain very confidently the meaning of 
these last words. 

Before these admirable treatises on civil society, or 
what concerns the happiness of a community, were 
written, Locke had turned his attention to the subject 
of education, and the formation of individual improve- 
ment and character. Nowhere does his admirable tem- 
per and philosophy shine more brightly than in those 
thoughts dedicated to his friend Edward Clarke, of 
Chipley. " He has uttered more good sense on the 
subject," says Hallam*, " than will be found in any 
preceding writer." " Much has been written, and often 
well, since the days of Locke ; but he is the chief 
source from which it has been ultimately derived. 
The patient attention to every circumstance a peculiar 
characteristic of the genius of Locke is in none of his 

* Literature of Europe, vol. iv. ch. 4. 

2 F2 



436 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

works better displayed. His rules for "the health of 
children, though sometimes trivial, since the subject 
has been more regarded ; his excellent advice as to 
checking effeminacy and tknorousness ; his observa- 
tions on their curiosity, presumption, idleness, on their 
plays and recreations, bespeak an intense, though 
calm, love of truth and goodness ; a quality which few 
have possessed more fully, or known so well how to 
exert, as this admirable author." 

It is pleasing to compare Locke's treatise with Mil- 
ton's on the same subject. Both were called forth at 
the instigation of eminent friends. Milton dedicates 
his to Master Samuel Hartlib, an active promoter of 
all that was good in his day, one of whom all that we 
can now learn is eminently favourable ; Locke his to 
Edward Clarke, of Chipley, and speaks with interest 
of some children and parents, now unknown, whom 
he had specially in view. Both display the character- 
istics, the peculiar mental habitudes and tastes, of the 
authors. While Milton's is a brief plan, and upon the 
whole a very impracticable one, of an academy or gym- 
nasium for an assemblage of youth educated together, 
Locke is more full on the special influences to be ex- 
erted by parents or tutors on the individual. Milton 
seems to have least hesitation in prescribing a wide 
range of intellectual tasks particularly when enu- 
merating the classical authors, whom he supposes his 
pupils competent to master. He talks of " heroic poems 
and Attic tragedies, of stateliest and most regal argu- 
ment," and of " recreating and composing the travailed 



PllOGKKSS OF ENGLISH Pll I l-OSOl'll Y. 437 

spirits with the solemn and divine harmonies of music 
heard or learned." Locke speaks of gardening and 
carpentering as diversions not unsuited for a gentle- 
man. In gardening he delighted and excelled. In the 
soft air of lawns and flowers his difficulty of breath- 
ing was relieved. He tells us, " it is very seldom 
seen that any one discovers mines of gold or silver in 
Parnassus ; that it is a pleasant, but a barren soil." 
This is in connection with the practice of exercising 
boys much in making Latin verses, now far less in 
fashion than formerly. " Of music," he says, " that 
it wastes time and engages in odd company, and is 
seldom much commended and esteemed among men 
of parts and business. But," he adds, and here 
Milton and all good men are at one with him, 
" the great business of all is virtue and wisdom a 
mastery over the inclinations, and submitting ap- 
petite to reason. Under whose care soever a child is 
put, during the tender and flexible years of his life, 
this is certain, it should be one who thinks Latin and 
language the least part of education ; one who, know- 
ing how much virtue and a well-tempered soul is to 
be preferred to any sort of learning or language, 
makes it his chief business to form the mind of his 
scholars, and give that a right disposition, which if 
once got, though all the rest should be neglected, would 
in due time produce all the rest ; and which, if it be 
not got and settled, so as to keep out ill and vicious 
habits, languages, sciences, and all the other accom- 



438 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

plishments of education, will be to no purpose but to 
make the worse and more dangerous man*." 

In the year 1697 Locke was engaged in contro- 
versy with Stillingfleet, the JBishop of Worcester, on 
the merits of certain portions of the Essay on the 
Understanding, which the Bishop thought open to 
objection. These portions had supplied John Toland 
with some of the weapons with which, in his work 
entitled ' Christianity not Mysterious,' he was consi- 
dered to wound the Christian religion in its vital or 
tenderest parts. A very unfavourable estimate of the 
Bishop's share in the controversy is given by Law, in 
his Life of Locke. But Mr. Hallam considers that 
the Bishop does not make so poor a figure as is com- 
monly supposed. The patience and care with which 
Locke examines his statements and pursues him 
through every turn are almost unique in controversy, 
and Locke's prolixity indicates not only the man of 
leisure, but the invalid. While he treats the Bishop 
with formal deference, he is sore and indignant at 
being mixed up with writers in whose conclusions and 
arguments he was in no way concerned, with Hobbes 
and Spinoza, no less than Toland. If the Bishop had 
any advantage over Locke, it was in connection with 
those notions about ideas, as a ground of certainty, 
wherein, as we have intimated and as the controversy 
with Stillingfleet further shows, Locke is often at fault. 
Toland' s work, though it gave great offence at the 
time, appears now but a very mild defence of the sim- 

* Locke on Education, 177. 



I'iUHiKKSS OF KNdUSIl PHILOSOPHY. 

plicity and intelligibleness of the Christian scheme, 
since we have become accustomed to the extravagances 
of German rationalism, under cover of which a man 
holds himself entitled to the name of Christian because 
he obeys the high impulses and instincts of his own 
spiritual nature, even when he finds himself impelled 
to deny the existence of an historical Christ, and even 
of a personal Deity*. 

To the generality of readers probably the most 
interesting portion of Locke's letters to Stillingfleet 
\\ ill be the conclusion of his second letter, where he 
discusses the supposed connection between the irii ma- 
teriality and natural immortality of the human soul, 
and the opinions of the ancients on this point, and 
enlarges on the value of the Christian religion, in 
bringing life and immortality to light. Locke here 
shows himself familiar enough with Cicero, Plato, and 
Aristotle. He indicates also the relative importance 
which will be attached to an historical revelation, ac- 
cording as the natural arguments for a future state 
rise or fall in estimation. Some, with Leibnitz, we 

* See an instructive letter of Niebuhr to a friend, relative to 
Cousin's cloudy utterances, the echoes of Hegel, in the Life of 
Niebuhr, translated by Miss Winkworth ; and Andrews Norton on 
the * Latest Form of Infidelity.' 

Toland was from the first a troublesome adventurer, and seems 
to have ended with being an atheist of Spinoza's school. But he 
had much curious learning, and was perhaps persecuted into atheism, 
when, if he had been let alone, he would have struggled out of that 
whirlpool of scepticism, and reached some terra fir ma of philosophy 
on which the seeds of social virtue and religion may be sown with 
promise and ripen for harvest. 



440 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

find still disposed 'to contend "that it must be infi- 
nitely more advantageous to religion and morality to 
demonstrate that the soul is naturally immortal, than 
to rest the belief in a future state upon the promise 
of God;" others again, with more support in the lan- 
guage of the New Testament, will maintain with 
Locke, that though the light of nature gave some ob- 
scure glimmering, some uncertain hopes of a future 
state, yet human reason could attain to no certainty 
about it, but that it was " Jesus Christ alone who 
had brought life and immortality to light through the 
Gospel." 

We derive from what may be called, though perhaps 
not deservedly, Locke's minor works, much valuable 
light on the course of his reading and studies. In 
these he acknowledges his obligations to Descartes for 
freeing him from the trammels of the schoolmen, and 
teaching him to think for himself, not for any accurate 
knowledge of the human mind and constitution. We 
see that he had studied Bacon and Gassendi, and that 
high estimation of Hooker, to which we have already 
alluded, whom he calls the arch-philosopher. The opi- 
nion expressed above, that he was not well read in 
Hobbes, is confirmed by a passage towards the close 
of his second vindication of the Reasonableness of 
Christianity, in reply to Dr. Edwards, wherein Locke 
says that he did not know that " certain words, equi- 
valent to his proposition that Jesus is the Christ, were 
in the Leviathan, or anything like them*." 

* Law's edition of Locke, vol. iii. p. 270. 



HUN 1IT 

PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOP^^^ r4Atn -^\^ 

In 1G95 Locke published his Reasonableness of 
Christianity, according to the Scriptures, at first -ano- 
nymously, but it was soon known to be his. This 
work may be considered the earliest philosophical de- 
fence of Revealed Religion in the English language, 
a defence of Christianity in the sense in which the 
Armiiiian or latitudinarian divines of the Church of 
England and the learned English Presbyterian dissen- 
ters of a later day have understood it. After showing, 
by copious extracts from the New Testament, that the 
one simple doctrine which lies at the foundation of the 
Christian faith is that Jesus is the Christ, he vindicates 
its importance by a summary of the related principles 
and of the advantages accruing from their establish- 
ment and diffusion. First, it made the " one invisible 
and true God" known to the world, and that with such 
evidence and energy that polytheism and idolatry have 
nowhere been able to withstand it ; 2, it gave that 
" clear knowledge of their duty which was wanting to 
mankind;" 3, it brought in a plain, spiritual, suitable 
worship of the I)eity, teaching every one to look after 
his own heart, and to know that it was that alone which 
God had regard to and accepted; 4, it brought the 
greatest encouragement to a virtuous and pious life 
by its doctrine of a future state before our Saviour's 
time not wholly hid, yet not clearly known upon 
which foundation, and upon which alone, morality 
stands firm and may defy all competition ; 5, and be- 
sides all this, it gives the promise of divine assistance, 
God's spirit, to help us to do what and how we should. 



442 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

Whatever deficiencies there may be supposed to be in 
Locke's view of revealed religion, the philosophical and 
devout religionist of every school will read with can- 
dour and delight, the admirable observations with 
which he has accompanied .and enforced it, and the 
more he reads and ponders them, the more highly will 
he esteem their truth and beauty. 

Fabricius*, in his Syllabus of the writers who have 
written on the truth of the Christian religion, enume- 
rates as of the English school before Locke, Stillingfleet, 
Baxter, Whitby, Henry More, Jeremy Taylor, Samuel 
Parker, Burnet, and Halliwell. Some translations of 
Grotius had appeared, which Fabricius does not men- 
tion, and a few other works not unworthy of attention 
to the minute inquirer. In the writers whom he does 
mention, many profound and valuable remarks in vin- 
dication and illustration of the religion of the Old and 
New Testament Scriptures may be found. But they 
are all more darkly tinged with what the scholar and 
philosopher of our day would be apt to consider error 
and superstition than Locke. The writer who seems 
to come nearest to him in the excellency of his matter 
and thought on this great subject is the learned, 
eloquent, and philosophical Dr. Isaac Barrow, whose 
sermons on the Christian religion were edited by Til- 
lotson in 1683. Barrow was an eminent Arminian 
divine ; and his sermons on God the Father Almighty, 
on Jesus as the true Messiah, and particularly one on 

* J. A. Fabricii Delectus argumentorum et syllabus Scriptorum 
qui veritatem R. C* asseruerunt. 4to. 



PROCJUKSS OK KMJUSII I>11 ILOSOPH Y. 443 

(lie excellency of the Christian religion, while full of 
noble thoughts on reason and duty and natural reli- 
gion, are for the most part in beautiful harmony with 
Locke's conceptions, although expressions occasionally 
drop from him which Locke would not have used. 

Locke's high social position and reputation contri- 
buted to draw to his work on Christianity the greatest 
attention, independently of its intrinsic merits. It was 
natural that it should be attacked in some quarters, as 
warmly defended and applauded in others. He was 
soon charged with Socinianism, in those days and still 
a very odious epithet, very few having read a line of 
the works of Socinus, Crellius, Schlichtingius, and the 
other learned Fratres Poloni. Among the violent op- 
ponents of Locke, one Dr. John Edwards was fore- 
most, a bitter and prolific polemical writer, who in his 
Thoughts concerning the Causes of Atheism, 1695, a 
Discourse on Truth and Error, and Socinianism Un- 
masked, emptied the vials of his wrath upon Locke's 
metaphysics and religion, and scrupled not to apply 
to him the epithets false, perfidious, shuffling, among 
many others characteristic of the writer and his age*. 

Locke soon published a first and second vindica- 

* This John Edwards was the son of Dr. Thomas Edwards, a fa- 
mous Presbyterian writer, and enemy to the Independents, the au- 
thor of the ' Grangrsena.' He inherited the bitterness of a father, who 
considered toleration the last and strongest hold of Satan. He was 
but one of a number of Edwardses, who were zealous against heresy 
and Socinianism. Two gloried in the name of Jonathan Edwards, 
one of Wrexliam in North Wales, and a second of New Jersey in 
America, author of the celebrated treatise against free-will. 



444 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

tion of his work in reply. Ear from treating his op- 
ponent with the severity which some have charged 
upon him, he exhibits a patience and condescension, of 
which only his anxiety for truth and goodness could 
be the spring. Locke met -with an able and warm 
supporter in a rector of Steeple, in Dorsetshire, the 
Rev. Samuel Bolde, whose tracts in vindication of the 
Essay on the Human Understanding and of the work 
on the Reasonableness of Christianity, in reply to 
Edwards and Broughton and Norris, were collected in 
1706. Mr. Locke was also complimented by a writer 
who dedicates to him one of the Unitarian tracts, in 
4to, entitled ' The Exceptions of Mr. Edwards, in his 
Causes of Atheism against the Reasonableness of Chris- 
tianity as delivered in the Scriptures, examined, etc.,' 
1695. " Some ingenious persons have judged this 
piece to be by Locke himself, and if," says his edi- 
tor,* "they are right in their conjecture, as I have no 
doubt they are, the address to himself that is prefixed 
to it must have been made on purpose to conceal the 
true author, as a more attentive perusal of the whole 
tract will convince any onef." 

* Bishop Law's Preface, pp. vi. vii. 

f" The conclusion is much in Locke's style and temper, but that the 
dedication to himself should be Locke's own though it be a modest 
composition, savours perhaps too much of artifice for that upright 
and conscientious philosopher. These double-columned prints, as 
Edwards styles them, published during the last decennium of the se- 
venteenth century, under the patronage of Firmin and his associates, 
display quite as much learning and acuteness on the subject of " pri- 
mitive Christianity" as will be found in any subsequent productions 
in English theological literature, and they kept public attention quite 



PROGRESS 01 KNCI.lsil PHILOSOPHY. 4-1-5 

Thus the controversies produced by Mr. Locke's 
writings were warm and active, and no doubt they 
contributed powerfully to that silent change in men's 
views and tempers, and that greater exactness in their 
reasonings on philosophy and religion, that sobriety 
of thought and mutual toleration, which began to pre- 
vail at the beginning of the eighteenth century. 

The four last years of his life were employed by 
Locke in the calm and diligent study of the Scriptures; 
and particularly of the writings of St. Paul. Of this 
we have the pleasing and valuable fruits in the Para- 
phrase and Notes upon the Epistles to the Romans, 
the Galatians, and the Corinthians, but more especially 
in the admirable preface, which appears to be the ear- 
liest work in English on the philosophical criticism of 
the Scriptures, a short piece, which no man who would 
study for himself the important records of revealed re- 
ligion can be excused for neglecting to peruse. " In his 
paraphrase and notes upon the Epistles of St. Paul," 
says Bishop Law, " how fully does our author obviate 
the erroneous doctrines (that of absolute reprobation in 
particular) which had been falsely charged upon the 
Apostle ! And to Mr. Locke's honour it should be re- 
membered, that he was the first of our commentators 

as much alive to it. Then Sherlock and Wallis shook the Univer- 
sities with their differences, and the learned author of the treatise 
' De Uno Deo Patre/ Crellius, was in frequent conference with 
Archbishop Tillotson, and sometimes an inmate of his house. 

An anonymous work on Mr. Locke's religion was printed in 
1700, which has been attributed to Atterbury. It is not without 
learning and some acquaintance with the metaphysics of his day. 



446 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

who showed what it was to comment upon the Apo- 
stolic writings ; by taking the whole of an epistle toge- 
ther, and striking off every signification of every term 
foreign to the main scope of it ; by keeping this point 
constantly in view, and carefully observing each re- 
turn to it after any digression ; by tracing out a strict, 
though somewhat less visible, connection in that very 
consistent writer, St. Paul, touching the propriety and 
pertinence of whose writings to their several subjects 
and occasions he appears to have formed the most just 
conception ; and thereby confessedly led the way to 
some of our best modern interpreters." 

The works of Lord Barrington, of the learned Peirce 
of Exeter, of the not less learned Dr. George Benson, 
and particularly that of Dr. John Taylor on the Epistle 
to the Romans, bear testimony to the salutary influ- 
ence of Locke on rational theology and the interpre- 
tation of Scripture. Lord Barrington wrote much in 
vindication of dissent and of civil and religious liberty. 
Strong testimony to the influence of Locke in the for- 
mation of his opinions is borne by his son Shute Bar- 
rington, the Bishop of Durham*. The ' Miscellanea 
Sacra' were published in 1725. In the same year, 
James Peirce, of Exeter, dedicated to the nephew of 
Locke, Sir Peter King (who was in that year created 
Lord Chancellor, with the title of Baron of Ockham), 
his Paraphrase and Notes on the Epistles to the Co- 
lossians, Philippians, and Hebrews, after the manner 

* See the Life prefixed to the edition edited by the Rev. George 
Townsend, p. xx. 



PROGRESS ol KMM.ISI1 PHILOSOPHY. I I? 

of Mr. Locke. This was followed by Dr. Benson's 
work on the remaining Epistles, to Philemon, to the 
Thessalonians, to Timothy, and Titus, in 1734; and 
by Benson's history of the first planting the Christian 
religion in 1735. An edition of Dr. Taylor's work on 
the Romans came forth in 1745. Its invaluable key 
to the Apostolic writings was wisely placed by Bishop 
Watson, in his excellent collection of theological tracts, 
in company with some of the works of Locke, Barring- 
ton, and Hartley. But one learned dissenting divine, 
the celebrated Dr. Isaac Watts, who made great, 
though not always wise, use of Locke's philosophical 
writings in his Logic, and his little work on the Im- 
provement of the Mind, much praised by Dr. John- 
son, represents Locke in heaven as repenting of 
this work on Paul ; and the poetical divine concludes 
some verses on this subject by making the philoso- 
pher exclaim, 

" Eternal darkness veil the lines 

Of that unhappy book, 

Where glimmering reason with false lustre shines, 
Where the mortal pen mistook 
What the celestial meant!" 

These lines however were written in Watts 's earlier 
days. He lived to nearly the middle of the eigh- 
teenth century, dying in 1748 ; and in his age would 
probably have looked back with the greatest satis- 
faction to the lines, full of praise and admiration, ad- 
dressed to John Shute, afterwards Lord Barrington, 
' On Locke's dangerous Sickness some time after 



448 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

he had retired to study the Scriptures/ dated June, 
1704. 

And must the man of wondrous mind 
(Now his rich thoughts are just refined) 

Forsake our longing eyes? 
Reason at length submits to wear 
The wings of Faith ; and lo, they rear 
Her chariot high, and nobly bear 

Her prophet to the skies. 

We have now seen that in the philosophy of the 
mind, of government, of education, and of the connec- 
tion between natural and revealed religion, Locke 
stands far above all his predecessors after the revival 
of letters ; and further, that he prepared the way for 
whatever additions have been made since his day to 
our knowledge of the human mind, of the principles 
of moral and political philosophy, and to the rational 
criticism of the Scriptures. We have shown what are 
his real merits, and his chief defects ; and this is essen- 
tial, not only to the just appreciation of the admirable 
philosopher himself, but, what is of more importance, to 
an estimate of the present condition of the science of 
mind and morals, and to any well-founded expectations 
of the progress of mankind in self-knowledge, which is 
the instrument of self-government and improvement, 
and in the virtues and habits which are the best se- 
curity for social happiness. He therefore is scarcely 
worthy of the name of Englishman, he can have no 
proper sense of the value of the literature and institu- 
tions of his country, who does not assign to Locke a 
place in the first rank among the instructors and be- 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 449 

ju'tartors of his species. There Barry has placed him, 
conspicuous among his great compeers, in that ad- 
mirable but little estimated production of England's 
art the large picture of Elysium, which adorns the 
room of the Society of Arts in the Adelphi, a pic- 
ture which renders heaven inviting by the noble so- 
ciety which it assembles, and which awakens the rap- 
ture of confidence and hope in connection with the 
assurance of the poet 

" Yet there the soul shall enter which hath earned 
That privilege by virtue*." 

We now come to the important question, what has 
been done since Locke's time, and by whom, to ad- 
vance our knowledge of the laws of thought ? 

Hartley. In the later editions of Locke's Essay ap- 
peared a chapter on Association, a term not originating 
with Locke, but significant with him of a certain num- 
ber of facts, such as the connection of ideas with sen- 
sations, which he thought particularly worthy of atten- 
tion in the study of the mind. He applied it to explain 
some of the remarkable peculiarities in the temper and 
habits of individuals; and that in this light only or 
chiefly he viewed the law of association is evident from 
the posthumous work on the Conduct of the Under- 
standing, where he enlarges somewhat upon it. Thus 
in the Essay he dwells on what is odd and extrava- 
gant in the opinions of men ; on a sort of madness to 
which the minds of some are subject from wrong con- 
nections of ideas ; on darkness bringing with it the 

* Wordsworth's Laodamia. 

2 G 



450 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

ideas of goblins and sprites ; on custom " settling habits 
of thinking in the understanding, as well as of deter- 
mining in the will, and of motions in the body ; all 
which seems to be but trains of motion in the animal 
spirits, which once set agoing, continue in the same 
steps they have been used to." He intimates however 
that some of our ideas have a natural correspondence 
and connection one with another ; that it is the office 
and excellency of our reason to trace these ; and that 
those who have children, or the charge of their educa- 
tion, should diligently watch and carefully prevent the 
undue connection of ideas in the minds of young peo- 
ple. " Though I have (he observes, 41 of the Con- 
duct of the Understanding), in the second book of my 
Essay concerning human understanding, treated of the 
association of ideas, yet having done it there histori- 
cally, giving a view of the understanding in this as 
well as its several other ways of operating, rather than 
designing there to inquire into the remedies that ought 
to be applied to it, it will under this latter considera- 
tion afford other matter of thought to those who have 
a mind to instruct themselves thoroughly in the right 
way of conducting their understandings ; and that the 
rather, because this, if I mistake not, is as frequent a 
cause of mistake and error in us, as perhaps anything 
else that can be named ; and is a disease of the mind 
as hard to be cured as any, it being a very hard thing 
to convince any one that things are not so, and natu- 
rally so, as they constantly appear to him." 

It had been well had Locke pursued the inquiry 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 451 

into the natural and rational connections and corre- 
spondence of ideas. He however caught but a dim 
view of the influence of custom in forming the mind 
and character towards the close of his meditations. 

It was reserved for the great and good Dr. Hartley 
to follow up the inquiry, and to demonstrate the entire 
dependence of the phenomena of language, and con- 
sequently of reasoning, upon the principle of associa- 
tion, and to show the immense influence of that prin- 
ciple upon all the affections and habits, the emotions 
and passions, of our active and moral nature, of which 
the love of money and the desire of reputation and 
glory afford the most obvious instances and proofs. 
Among those who affect a knowledge of the philosophy 
of mind, hardly one can be found who disowns alto- 
gether the vast importance of this principle of associa- 
tion ; but very few recognize the full extent of it ; still 
fewer are disposed to do justice to Hartley in deve- 
loping the theory. The injustice of the Scotch school 
to his merits, the bitterness of Stewart in connection 
with his memory and name, are unaccountable. Even 
the English school of metaphysics, so far as it is re- 
presented by some of the modern utilitarians, if Mill's 
analysis of the human mind may be considered a 
standard, has cast only dark shadows over the remains 
of the sweet-tempered philosopher whose religious 
faith and anticipations that school would hold in 
scorn. 

The dissertation by Gay, of Sidney College, Cam- 
bridge, of whose studies and life unfortunately little 

2 c2 



452 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

can now be recovered*, appended to Law's translation 
of King ' On the Origin of Evil/ further suggested 
the possibility of accounting for almost all the com- 
plicated phenomena of the human mind, its powers 
and dispositions, by the principle of association. In 
that dissertation Mr. Gay had observed, that " our 
approbation of morality and all affections whatsoever 
are finally resolvable into reason pointing out private 
happiness, and are conversant only about things ap- 
prehended to be means tending to this end ; and that 
whenever this end is not perceived, they are to be ac- 
counted for from the association of ideas, and may 
properly enough be called habits." It was in oppo- 
sition to Francis Hutcheson's theory of a moral sense, 
who published his Inquiry into the original of our 
Ideas of Beauty and Virtue in 1726, that Gay sent 
forth his dissertation. But his observations amount 
to little more than conjectures! . 

The following are among the important proposi- 
tions which Hartley has demonstrated : 1, that sen- 
sations leave traces of themselves in the mind, such as 
are called simple ideas of sensation ; 2, that it is the 
tendency of simple ideas to run into complex ones by 
means of association; 3, that voluntary and semi- 
voluntary motions are deducible from association, the 

* "Our Bishop (i. e. Law) always spoke of this gentleman in terms 
of the greatest respect. In the Bible, and in the writings of Mr. 
Locke, no man, he used to say, was so well versed. Law calls him 
' honest Mr. Gay.' " Nichols' Literary Anecdotes, vol. ii. pp. 66, 535. 

f" See the second of the valuable Introductory Essays prefixed to 
Priestley's Abridgment of Hartley, 1775, p. xxii. 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 453 

voluntary being sometimes converted by association 
into automatic, the automatic into voluntary ; 4, that 
compound or mental pleasures and pains arise from 
simple bodily ones by means of words, symbols, and 
associated circumstances ; 5, that the arts of logic 
and rational grammar depend entirely on association ; 
6, and that our passions and affections can be no more 
than aggregates of simple ideas united by association. 
The bearing of these important truths upon all mental 
and even physical science, upon the principles of reli- 
gion and morality, upon education and the whole dis- 
cipline of life, must strike the minds of the thoughtful 
and inquisitive at once ; but their importance can be 
fully appreciated only by the diligent study of Dr. Hart- 
ley himself, who has pursued his theory with a patience 
and caution, an exactness and consistency, unequalled 
by any other metaphysical writer. He has examined, 
in a manner worthy of the subject and a great philo- 
sopher, the agreement of the phenomena of sensation 
generally, that is to say, of taste, sight, smell, hearing, 
and touch, of muscular motion, intoxication, disease, 
sleep, dreams, and other conditions of our bodily frame, 
with his doctrine of vibrations and of the generation 
and association of ideas. By these he has explained, in 
a rational and clear manner, the formation of the pas- 
sions and affections in all their complexness, as we 
find them in actual and social life. He has divided 
our intellectual affections, that is, our intellectual 
pleasures and pains, into six classes ; namely, those of 
imagination, ambition, self-interest, sympathy, theo- 



454 PROGRESS or ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

pathy, and the moral sense. All these classes have 
their minor subdivisions. They all presuppose the 
existence and continuance of pleasures and pains of 
mere sensation, from which all take their rise. Al- 
though the classification may not be considered quite 
satisfactory, nor the order in which he has handled 
them the most natural, no approach had been made 
before Hartley's time to a more convenient or philoso- 
phical division and classification of the phenomena. It 
assigns a place for every important principle or truth 
which concerns our individual and social improvement 
and happiness. 

The only other moralist who has attempted a sci- 
entific and practical catalogue, an exact, careful, and 
useful division of our pleasures and pains, is Bentham. 
According to Bentham, the several simple pleasures 
of which human nature is susceptible are these : 1, 
the pleasures of sense ; 2, of wealth ; 3, of skill ; 4, of 
amity ; 5, of a good name ; 6, of power ; 7, of piety; 
8, of benevolence ; 9, of malevolence ; 10, of memory; 
11, of imagination ; 12, of expectation ; 13, those de- 
pendent on association ; 14, of relief. 

Bentham's remarks on morals must be judged of in 
connection with his purpose. He had in view chiefly 
the principles of legislation and the objects and duties 
of the legislator. He therefore touches but inciden- 
tally on the formation of a rule of life, or the maxims 
which should govern private behaviour, and which he 
calls private ethics. These rules or maxims he con- 
siders dependent upon those particular conditions . of 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 455 

age, sex, health, social connections and relations, pro- 
perty, etc., which are so variable as almost to baffle 
classification and enumeration. Hence, while he con- 
tends that pleasures are valuable in proportion to their 
duration, their intensity, their security, their fecun- 
dity, and their purity, he leaves his reader without 
means of judging how far, in his opinion or in truth, 
the pleasures of amity, of benevolence, of the moral 
sense, and of religion, admitting the last to coincide 
with those of utility and of enlightened benevolence, 
are more durable, more pure, more fertile than the 
simple pleasures of the senses. Nor is his account 
and division of the several pleasures very satisfactory. 
From his catalogue we might strike out, with advan- 
tage, the pleasures of malevolence. For malevolence 
can only arise from the recollection of past, or the an- 
ticipation of future suffering ; and if we are ever male- 
volent, if we really wish evil to another sentient being, 
it must be on the ground of some associated good 
of a remedy for an evil past or, since the past is 
irrevocable, the prevention of a like evil in time to 
come. On a close examination of his classes it will 
be found that they run much into each other in the 
manner which Hartley has beautifully shown. Thus 
Bentham speaks of the pleasures of novelty excited by 
the appearance of new ideas, which he calls, at one 
time, pleasures of the imagination ; but he tells us at 
another, they may be excited by the appearance of sen- 
sible objects. And we may have novelty in odours, 
tastes, shades of colour, and forms of beauty, which 



456 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

are pleasures of the senses. He speaks of the plea- 
sures of imagination produced by association. But 
all the pleasures of wealth, of piety, of memory, ima- 
gination, and expectation resolve themselves into cases 
of association, which cannot therefore be made a dis- 
tinct class. He also identifies the pleasures of amity 
with those of honour and the moral sense ; and the 
connection no doubt is very close. But if the moral 
sense be a compound of our opinions respecting the 
value or lawfulness of pleasures and the guide to their 
enjoyment, its pleasures resolve themselves into self-ap- 
proval or amity. They must spring from a conscious- 
ness of acting ourselves, or from observing others to 
act, in conformity with our rule. 

In this respect Hartley has a great advantage. He 
not only leads the individual to aspire, but points the 
way, and builds the steps by which he may ascend. 
He proves that the pleasures of the senses, the most 
innocent and allowable, are subordinate to the deve- 
lopment, and become enhanced by the pursuit, of the 
pleasures of sympathy, of imagination, of the intellect, 
and of the moral sense ; that the pleasures of sensa- 
tion, imagination, of the intellect, of ambition, require 
to be regulated by a regard to the moral sense ; and 
that the moral sense itself is purified and perfected by 
theopathy, that is, by the precepts of piety or the love 
of God. " For the perpetual exertion of a pleasing 
affection towards a Being infinite in power, knowledge, 
and goodness, who is also our friend and father, can- 
not but enhance all our joys and alleviate all our sor- 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 457 

rows; the sense of his presence and protection will 
restrain all actions that are excessive, irregular, or hurt- 
ful ; support and encourage us in all such as are of a 
contrary nature ; and infuse such peace and tranquil- 
lity of mind, as will enable us to see clearly and act 
uniformly. The perfection, therefore, of every part of 
our natures must depend upon the love of God, and 
the constant comfortable sense of his presence. 

" With respect to benevolence, or the love of our 
neighbour, it may be observed, that this can never be 
free from partiality and selfishness, till we take our 
station in the divine nature, and view everything from 
thence, and in the relation which it bears to God." 

Now if there be any ground for believing in the 
existence of an intelligent Creator and governor of the 
universe, infinite in power, and willing the happiness 
of his creatures, these views of duty and rational self- 
interest are demonstrably just. But they are alien from 
the views and speculations of the political utilitarian 
school, who, if they do not expressly renounce and sys- 
tematically argue down the sublime pleasures of the 
religious sense or sanction, evidently treat them as 
purely visionary, irrational, and impossible. Perhaps 
they habitually conceive of religion in the light of a 
dangerous, pernicious, and malignant fanaticism and 
superstition. 

I conceive that Bentham, in whatever he has of va- 
luable truth, and he has much, for who can read his 
sixth chapter, on the circumstances influencing sensi- 
bility, without being wiser and better? in his analysis 



458 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

of motives and his classification of pleasures and pains 
was far more indebted to Hartley and his school, per- 
haps than he was aware of, certainly than he has ac- 
knowledged. He refers indeed to Priestley's edition 
of Hartley for a very satisfactory account, upon the 
principle of association, of the phenomena and influ- 
ence of habit. But Hartley's rule of life was not in- 
cluded in Priestley's edition, and to the complete work 
I have not found an allusion in Bentham. He ac- 
knowledges that he took his favourite principle of the 
greatest happiness of the greatest number from Priest- 
ley's Essay on Government, in 1768, or from Bec- 
caria, whom he calls " an angel of light." He seems 
not to have been aware that he was perfectly antici- 
pated in his view of the sanctions of morality by Gay, 
in the dissertation often alluded to*. 

* It is remarkable that Dr. Whewell, in his recent History of 
Moral Philosophy, has not even mentioned the name of Hartley, 
though he has devoted many lectures to Bentham's morals and legis- 
lation. Dr. Whewell gives two reasons why we cannot make the 
truth, " that actions are right and virtuous in proportion as they 
promote the happiness of mankind," the basis of morality; first, 
" we cannot calculate all the consequences of any action ; second, 
happiness is derived from moral elements, and therefore we cannot 
properly derive morality from happiness." I submit, in reply, first, 
that we calculate, as much as we can j that it is by such calculation 
only we arrive at or justify general rules ; that in the most impor- 
tant steps of life, and where we have no rules, or very imperfect 
rules, as in the use of superfluous wealth, in the choice of a pro- 
fession of a dwelling of companions or society, of relaxations, we 
always act upon such calculation of consequences as is within our 
power. He that is habitually reckless of consequences is in danger 
of being habitually immoral or a vicious fool. Secondly, what is 
meant by moral elements ? Dr. Whewell uses morality in a double 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 459 

The merits of Hartley, his most important views and 
propositions, with the facts and arguments adduced in 
support of them, have been systematically ignored by 
most of those who even in England have treated of the 
same subjects after him, and ventured criticisms on 
his system. Of this I shall adduce striking instances, 
while I show the true relation in which some of the 
more eminent later metaphysicians, such as James Mill, 
Brown, Adam Smith, Alison, Paley, and Tucker, stand 
to Hartley. 

Thus James Mill prefaces the chapter on the Asso- 
ciation of Ideas, in his Analysis of the Mind, with a 
quotation from Brown's Lectures ; yet he took from 

sense, at one time as an epithet for the actions or mores of men ; 
at another, for a system of rules to be applied to those actions. His 
argument appears to be, that because happiness is derived from hu- 
man actions therefore the consideration of that happiness can fur- 
nish us with no rules, can be no sufficient criterion of the worth of 
some acts, the worthlessness of others. The inference should be pre- 
cisely the contrary. In another sentence he takes the term virtue in 
two or more senses : at one time it seems the name of an act in it- 
self; at another, for a rule of action, or the conformity of that act 
to a rule ; and at another, for a portion of the happiness resulting 
from an act, " one of the things determining happiness" 

Dr. Whewell appears not to have read the answers given by Mr. 
Austin, in his ' Province of Jurisprudence,' to the old and oft-repeated 
objections to the principle of utility and the difficulties attending it. 
And he applies to such a system as Eutherforth's the epithets low 
and lax and poor. Are there fewer difficulties attending any other 
system P To whose system will he give the names of liigh and strict 
and rich ? From whose system will he hope to derive a greater num- 
ber of acts beneficial to mankind, or more strength and fervour of 
benevolent effort and disposition ? The philosopher and Christian 
will welcome the system, be it whose it may. 



460 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

Hartley its chief matter*. From Hartley came the im- 
portant distinction of the two cases of association, the 
synchronous and the successive. From Hartley came 
the principle that the causes of strength in association 
are two the vividness of the associated feelings, and 
the frequency of the association ; and that simple ideas 
run into complex ones by means of association. He 
has mentioned Dr. Hartley, at the close of his chapter, 
as calling the union of two complex ideas into one by 
the name of a duplex idea ; but I have not found the 
word duplex in Hartley. What Hartley lays down in 
the fourth corollary of his twelfth proposition is, that 
" as simple ideas run into complex ones by association, 
so complex ideas run into decomplex ones by the same; 
but here the varieties of the associations, which increase 
with the complexity, hinder particular ones from being 
so close and permanent between the complex parts of 
decomplex ideas, as between the simple parts of com- 
plex parts of complex ones : to which it is analogous 
in languages, that the letters of words adhere closer 
together than the words of sentences, both in writing 
and speaking." Mr. Mill's subsequent chapters on 
naming, on classification, memory, belief, and ratioci- 
nation are all founded on Hartleian principles, and 
coloured with Hartleian language; but without any 
acknowledgment of obligation to that great author, 
whose chapters on words and the ideas associated with 
them, may be justly considered the basis of all accurate 
metaphysical study. 

* Compare Hartley's Tenth Propos. with Mill's Analysis, p. 53. 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 4G1 

Dr. Brown, himself one of the best investigators of 
the mind among the Scotch, devoted many of his 
Lectures to the phenomena of what he calls sim- 
ple and relative suggestion ; " of these two orders of 
feelings, and these alone," he says, " consists the whole 
varied tissue of our trains of thought*." The author 
whom he seems to consider as worthy of most attention 
for his classification of the associate feelings is Mr. 
Hume, to whom the philosophers of his own country 
are accustomed to refer. But Hume knew compara- 
tively nothing of the nature and importance of the law 
of association. In a criticism on Dr. Hartley (43rd 
Lecture), Brown acknowledges that there is consider- 
able acuteness displayed in his work, that it contains 
some successful analyses of complex feelings, and that 
it has been of service in promoting a spirit of inquiry. 
He asserts however that the advantage has been in- 
considerable compared with the great evil which has 
flowed from it, by leading the inquirer to acquiesce 
in remote analogies and to adopt explanations and 
arrangements of the phenomena of mind, not as they 
agree with the actual phenomena, but as they chance 
to agree with some supposed phenomena of our ma- 
terial part. Of this evil he has adduced no instance. 
He has not condescended to quote with care a single 
sentence of Hartley, nor adduced an example of such 
a misled inquirer. He has chosen to represent the 
hypothesis of vibrations as merely Hartley's ; but the 

* Dr. Brown's 'Lectures on the Philosophy of the Mind,' from 
34th to 52nd. 



462 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

truth is, that the suggestion, as it emanated from Sir 
Isaac Newton, had produced on the students of human 
nature, before Hartley's time, a far deeper impression 
than any but minute and careful inquirers into the 
history of metaphysical speculations would suppose. 
I gather this from a remarkable passage in Dr. John 
Clarke's work on the Origin of Evil, and incidental ob- 
servations in other authors*. 

* " The seat of sensation is in the brain. In order therefore to 
perception, it is necessary that the particular motions excited by 
external objects should be conveyed thither ; which make different 
impressions, or raise different ideas in the mind, as they are propa- 
gated by a different medium or through different senses. Thus, to 
produce vision it is necessary that the object be capable of reflect- 
ing rays of light, and that those rays also should be capable of being 
reflected ; that they may be thrown upon the eye ; and the same may 
be said of refraction likewise, that they may meet to form the image 
at the bottom of the eye. Hence it is that the eye is composed of 
different humours, having different degrees of the power proportioned 
to the distance. It is also necessary that the rays of light should be 
very small, that they may freely pass through those humours : yet 
that they should be of different bigness and shape, to excite different 
sorts of colours by their vibrations. After this manner the images 
of external objects are conveyed to the bottom of the eye, from 
whence they are carried along through the optic nerve to the senso- 
rium, and are there taken notice of by the mind ; in order to effect 
which it is necessary also that these vibrations should be continued 
along those nerves, which are therefore compounded of solid, uni- 
form, and transparent capillaments containing a medium proper for 
that purpose. In the same manner are sounds likewise excited by 
the different vibrations of the air, in the same proportion as those of 
light, and carried to the sensorium by the auditory nerves. These 
are all subject to particular laws, the least alteration or disturbance 
of which immediately creates a proportionable disorder or confu- 
sion." Dr. John Clarke's Enquiry into the Origin of Evil, vol. i. 
pp. 250-252. 1722. 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 4G3 

Had Brown taken his view of the doctrine of Asso- 
ciation from Hartley's statements, he would not have 
said that the term was limited to those states of mind 
which are exclusively denominated " ideas ;" and " that 
this has deprived us of the aid which we might have 
received from it in the analysis of many of the most 
complex phenomena;" nor would he have proposed 
to drop the term association, to make way for that of 
suggestion. Dr. Hartley had shown at large before 
him that every sensation possible to the human frame 
may by association enter into our more complex emo- 
tions, and " that the influence of the associating prin- 
ciple extends not to ideas only, but to every species of 
affection of which the human mind is susceptible." 

Dr. Brown, like a racer bfolting from the course, in- 
stead of bending his efforts steadily towards the goal, 
breaks away into the regions of poetry and rhetoric, 
and dazzles us with the splendours of Virgil, and Ci- 
cero, and Seneca, and Akenside, when his reader is 
anxious to consult the simple phenomena of his own 
mind, or to listen reverently to the oracles of nature 
and of truth. 

Thus the question, "what are the general circum- 
stances which regulate the succession of our ideas? 
what the primary and secondary laws of simple and re- 
lative suggestion ?" a question propounded in the 
34th is not answered till we come to the 37th Lecture 
of his volume. The remarks on these laws, however 
just, are perfectly familiar to the Hartleian. Though 
he has not told us very distinctly what the primary 



464 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

laws of suggestion, founded on the mere relations of 
objects or feelings to each other, are, he gives the name 
of secondary laws to those operations which account 
for the variety in the effects of the former. The oc- 
casional suggestions that flow from the primary are 
various, according as the original feelings have been, 
1st, of longer or shorter continuance ; 2, more or less 
lively ; 3, of more or less frequent occurrence ; 4, 
more or less recent ; 5, more or less pure from the 
occasional and varying mixture of other feelings ; 6, 
according to differences of original constitution ; 7, ac- 
cording to differences of temporary emotion ; 8, ac- 
cording to changes produced in the state of the body ; 
9, according to general tendencies produced by prior 
habits. In the 45th Lecftire, following Hartley, with- 
out acknowledgment, he arranges the phenomena of 
relative suggestion under the two orders of coexistence 
and succession. 

He proposes to drop the term association to make 
way for that of suggestion; but the suggestion has not 
been adopted because the terms had been already ap- 
propriated to their respective meanings. Association 
expresses the primary fact. Before one object, sen- 
sation, or idea can suggest another, they must have 
been previously experienced in company ; that is, there 
must be a previous association binding them together 
in order of time or place. It is remarkable that 
Brown has not dwelt on the phenomena of language, 
on the suggestion of ideas by words, to illustrate the 
importance of the law of association. Yet he has made 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 465 

great use of the principle throughout his volume, in 
explaining every important faculty whether concep- 
tion, memory, imagination, or reasoning; and every 
natural or acquired emotion, immediate, prospective, 
or retrospective ; and every complex notion, such as 
those which we form of matter and resistance. He 
has made use of it when contending, in opposition 
to Dr. Reid, who calls perception " a peculiar mental 
faculty'' that " perception, in its relation to our origi- 
nal sensations of touch, as much as in relation to the 
immediate feelings which we derive from smell, taste, 
sight, and hearing, is only one of the many ope- 
rations of the suggesting or associating principle." 
He tells us that " of the influence of association on 
the moral character of man, the whole history of our 
race, when we compare the vices and virtues of ages 
and nations with each other, is but one continued 
though varied display." He illustrates its influence 
at great length and with great beauty of sentiment 
and language in "the moral inspiration of parental 
love," in the force and direction given to the pas- 
sion of ambition. He might have found a familiar 
instance of its power in the passion for money, and its 
intensity in the habits of the miser. While going 
over all this ground he has not adverted to the inves- 
tigations of the great Hartley, whose principles he 
was indeed confirming, but whose facts in illustra- 
tion of the principle are more numerous and more 
impressive, and whose deductions and methods are 
more simple, more logical, more convincing. Is there 

2 H 



466 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

anything in Brown equal in value to this single co- 
rollary of Hartley* ? " It is of the utmost conse- 
quence to morality and religion, that the affections 
and passions should be analysed into their simple 
compounding parts by reversing the steps of the as- 
sociations which concur to form them. For thus we 
may learn how to cherish and improve good ones, 
check and root out such as are mischievous and im- 
moral, and how to suit our manner of life, in some 
tolerable measure, to our moral and religious wants. 
And as this holds in respect of persons of all ages, so 
it is particularly true and worthy of consideration in 
respect of children and youth. The world is indeed 
sufficiently stocked with general precepts for this pur- 
pose, grounded on experience; and whosoever will 
follow these faithfully may expect general good suc- 
cess. However, the doctrine of association, when 
traced up to the first rudiments of understanding and 
affection, unfolds such a scene as cannot fail both to 
instruct and alarm all such as have any degree of in- 
terested concern for themselves or of a benevolent one 
for others. It ought to be added, that the doctrine of 
association explains also the rise and progress of those 
voluntary and semivoluntary powers which we exert 
over our ideas, affections, and bodily motions (as I 
shall show hereafter), and by so doing this teaches us 
how to regulate and improve these powers," Hartley 
afterwards shows in a most instructive and philoso- 
phical manner, by the power of using the hand and 

* Compare Brown, Lecture 25, and Hartley, Props, xi. and xxi. 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 467 

the legs gradually acquired by children, of producing 
intelligent sounds, of speaking and writing, and by a 
variety of other instances, that the voluntary and semi- 
voluntary motions are deducible from association, and 
" that it will be found upon a careful and impartial in- 
quiry that the motions which occur every day in com- 
mon life, and which follow the idea called the will 
immediately or mediately, do this (i.e. do occur and 
do follow) in proportion to the number and degree of 
strength in the associations." This is true, and one of 
the most important and suggestive truths connected 
with the structure and laws of the mind. It fur- 
nishes the real clue to the explanation of character and 
habit. It suggests the proper methods for self-disci- 
pline and improvement, and for the discipline and im- 
provement of others. Every object in life confirms its 
truth. The rod of the schoolmaster, the sceptre of the 
sovereign, the ermine of the judge and the lawn of the 
priest, the cradle of the infant and the grave of the 
philosopher, the dungeon and the church, the charge 
to the jury and the sermon of the preacher, owe their 
influence entirely to the force and character of the as- 
sociations; and every habit and propensity illustrate 
the law of association, from those of the epicure and 
the anchorite to those of the saint and the philan- 
thropist. 

One very elegant production of an English divine 
settled in Edinburgh deserves mention in connection 
with the history and nature of the doctrine of associa- 
tion, ' Essays on Taste/ by Archibald Alison, father 

2 H 2 



468 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

of the modern historian. Alison seems to have con- 
sidered Dugald Stewart as the writer who gave the 
bias to his speculations ; and with the unfailing prac- 
tice of the coteries of Edinburgh, Adam Smith lauds 
Alison and Alison lauds Smith. He has not men- 
tioned the name of Hartley, but he has proved that 
our emotions of the beauty and sublimity of the mate- 
rial world and of the human countenance and form are 
resolvable into cases of association ; and in the same 
manner he might have proved, what he has only sug- 
gested, that our emotions of moral beauty and sub- 
limity, our moral sentiments of every kind, are entirely 
resolvable into the operation of the same great law, 
namely, the law of sensible pleasures and pains pass- 
ing gradually into intellectual and moral ones. The 
Essays of Alison are a charming illustration of the 
truth of the Hartleian chapters relating to imagination 
and to sympathy. 

Whatever is correct in Adam Smith's ' Theory of 
Moral . Sentiments/ a work of earlier date, deserving 
much attention, easily falls in with the Hartleian the- 
ory. For what is that power of sympathy, of throw- 
ing ourselves into the situation of another, imagining 
the feelings of others, and supposing ourselves specta- 
tors of our own conduct, but the renewal of the trains 
of association, but the application of notions and feel- 
ings, already gotten by experience, to new junctures 
as they arise? The theory is obviously inadequate 
for an explanation of all the phenomena of our moral 
life, and for the formation of a wise rule. By making 



PROGRESS OP ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 469 

present or popular sentiments the test of right and 
wrong, it affords no provision for the elevation and 
improvement of the popular standard of right. It 
will not bear a close examination, since the sympathies 
of men with each other, and their no less real and 
important antipathies, are dependent on their edu- 
cations, habits, interests, connections, tastes, society, 
party, and professed religion. But the book, full as it 
is of inconsistencies, of ill-considered and incorrect ex- 
pressions, illustrates the value of one of the elements 
in forming the rule of life, namely, the common sen- 
timents of mankind ; and when it tells us that actions 
of a beneficent tendency, which proceed from proper 
motives, seem alone to require a reward ; actions of a 
hurtful tendency seem alone to deserve punishment, 
it points in the right direction, and grows into harmony 
with the soundest and most thoughtful philosophy. 

When we compare such writers as Locke, Cumber- 
land, Law, Butler, Hartley, Tucker, Paley, Austin, and 
even Bentharu together, we perceive them to agree in 
the following fundamental principles : that the will 
of God is the fountain of moral obligation ; that the 
tendency of actions to ultimate happiness is an index 
to the tacit commands of God, or the chief guide to 
the knowledge of His wih 1 ; that the Deity wills the 
happiness of his creatures, therefore the means of that 
happiness, therefore virtue, which is the employment 
of the means ; that the dictates of natural and re- 
vealed religion, and the dictates of right reason and 
the principles of utility, suggest the same rule of life, 



470 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

and coalesce in their instruction ; that rational and 
refined self-interest, and the truths or principles of 
religion, natural and revealed, point to one and the 
same course of life, to the culture of the same private 
and public affections, the discharge of the same social 
obligations and duties ; or, what is the same thing, 
the pursuit of the same end, namely, the happiness 
of mankind. 

I have classed Butler with Paley, Law, and Hartley, 
that is, with those who may be called the religious 
utilitarians. He is not commonly considered of that 
school. But there is no substantial difference as to 
facts or principles. Repeated perusal has satisfied me 
that Butler is perfectly utilitarian, substantially Hart- 
leian. He has not accounted nor attempted to ac- 
count for the facts in the same way. He has not 
traced, with care and exactness, the phenomena of hu- 
man affections to their ultimate principles or laws. 
He has not gone so deeply into the origin and forma- 
tion of the several affections and moral feelings, nor 
deduced the rules of life with the same care and pre- 
cision. His language is more vague and less consis- 
tent ; still there is a harmony in general views and 
results. Examine, for instance, his three first sermons 
on Human Nature. He lays down what no one dis- 
putes, or is worth disputing with if he does, that (1.) 
" there is such a thing, in some degree, as real good- 
will in man to man;" (2.) " that the several passions 
and affections contribute to public good as really as to 
private " (3.) " that there is a principle of reflection in 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 471 

men, by which they approve or disapprove their own 
actions ;" " that conscience is this principle of reflec- 
tion." These are the three points established in his 
first sermon ; but he talks in it of self-love, as if there 
were an affection for self independent of, and distinct 
from, the particular gratifications and pleasures sought 
for, and of men violating their nature, as if their na- 
ture did not include everything done and every thought 
of the mind; as if propensities to evil were not as 
natural as propensities to good, forgetting the theo- 
logy which teaches that propensities to evil alone are 
natural. The second sermon is less happy, owing 
to this unadvised use of the terms nature and self- 
love. The attempt to show the natural supremacy 
and sacred authority of conscience seems partly su- 
perfluous, since the subordination of other principles, 
passions, and motives of action, its office as regulator, 
is assumed in the definition or notion of it; and 
partly unsatisfactory, since, if conscience be but the 
principle of reflection, applied to our conduct, to ac- 
tions, their motives, "and their consequences, if the 
reflection turns on the conformity of actions to the 
rule, which is their Tightness ; the question, how we 
come by the rule, and what or who gives it authority, 
remains unanswered. 

A similar error pervades the third sermon. There 
is no value in the phrase of " man being a law to him- 
self," every man being at liberty, and feeling himself 
at liberty, except where some law, the dictate of a 
power superior, restrains him. However, in the con- 



472 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

elusion of the whole argument which he is insisting 
upon, Butler is eminently utilitarian, and as much an 
advocate for a so-called selfish system in his view of 
the foundation and end of morals, as Bentham him- 
self. Thus he says, " Conscience and self-love, if we 
understand our true happiness, always lead us the 
same way. Duty and interest are perfectly coincident, 
for the most part, in this world ; but entirely and in 
every instance, if we take in the future and the whole, 
this being implied in the notion of a good and perfect 
administration of things." The concluding sermons 
upon the love of our neighbour, the love of God, and the 
ignorance of man, are in perfect and beautiful accord- 
ance with the Hartleian theory and principles ; but they 
are far less clear and determinate in their directions, 
less full and abundant in their suggestions as to the 
means and methods of improving the temper and 
making the heart better, and " avoiding that general 
wrong frame of mind, from which all the mistaken 
pursuits and far the greatest part of the unhappi- 
ness of life proceeds/' " He who should find out one 
rule to assist us in this work, would deserve infi- 
nitely better of mankind than all the improvers of 
other knowledge put together." Now Hartley has 
found out many rules, and his merits in this respect 
are supreme. 

I shall not touch at length upon Paley. There is 
little evidence of reading or of deep thought in his 
1 Moral and Political Philosophy/ His clear forcible 
style has done more for his popularity and influence than 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 473 

his principles or arguments. Tucker's ' Light of Na- 
ture ' was his favourite book. Now Tucker's philosophy 
is, with some exceptions, a sort of diluted Hartleianism. 
Its loose and rambling method makes it rather pain- 
ful than satisfactory to the logical reader, however 
amusing and suggestive for an hour of vacancy. 

If the most important phenomena of the mind and 
the best portions of the best writers are comparatively 
neglected, even among the few who, in England, may 
be thought to have paid most attention to mental and 
moral science, still less can the literati of Gemany 
and France be supposed to know what is most valu- 
able in the English masters. 

In the scarce Latin tract by Hartley, reprinted in 
the volume of 'Metaphysicians of the Eighteenth 
Century ' prepared by Dr. Parr, there is a passage so 
remarkable for its wisdom, that I cannot but sum up 
and enforce the matter of these pages with truth so 
valuable. While it points to the quarter whence light 
may be expected, it prophesies the darkness that must 
continue till that light shall dawn. Had not the Eng- 
lish metaphysician been driven from his rightful place 
of estimation by unhappy prejudices, hastily taken 
up and sedulously propagated, the history of mental 
science would have been brighter, its study more 
agreeable, and the culture of it far more fruitful. In 
the translation, I drop the few phrases relating to vi- 
brations, as not necessary to the principle. 

" The doctrine of Association moreover is absolutely 
necessary to form a true logic. Nor will it be suffi- 



474 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

cient for this purpose, that attention be given only to 
associations formed in mature life. We must attend 
to them in their very cradles. We must investigate, 
with the greatest care, the impressions and ideas which 
are joined by custom with single words and sentences, 
and thus at length arrive ~ at a right determination 
concerning the nature of the ideas affixed to words, 
and the assent and dissent which are connected with 
propositions. When these things are physiologically 
treated, new light will forthwith dawn on the arts of 
thinking and discoursing. All are agreed in exclaim- 
ing with one voice, that the advancement of science is 
most impeded by the ambiguities and overwhelming 
mass of words ; and that the strifes of the learned are, 
with scarcely an exception, nothing but vain logoma- 
chies. It is to be desired therefore, that the nature 
and use of words being carefully sifted, the useless be 
thrown aside, the vague be limited, and that the sci- 
ences themselves be advanced by tools more simple 
and more adapted for use. Now here the doctrine of 
Association, unless I greatly err, will afford excellent 
aid, and will conduce most powerfully, as well to root 
out altogether prejudiced opinions, as to build up 
the sciences in solid form, and to free them from the 
sophistries and subtleties of sceptics*/' 

* " Doctrina porro Associations ad veram logicem condendam om- 
nino necessaria est. Neque satis erit in hunc finem, ut quis perse- 
quatur associations setate matura factas. Ordiendum est ab ipsis 
incunabulis. Perquirendum accuratissimae queenam Impressiones et 
Ideae, i. e. vibrationes et vibratiunculse cum singulis vocibus et sen- 
tentiis usitato conjungantur ; et sic demum recte statuetur de na- 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 475 

When we open a ' Critic/ or pretended examination 
and analysis of the pure reason, and find such expres- 
sions as the amphiboly and antinomy of reason ; ' ex- 
ternal and internal intuition; 'analytical cognitions 
a priori? ' synthetical cognitions a posteriori / or when 
opening Schelling's 'Transcendental Idealism/ we 
stumble at the threshold on such a sentiment as " that 
all knowledge consists in the agreement of the objec- 
tive with the subjective/' a repetition of language 
which we find in Nprris's ' Intelligible World/ and by 
him probably borrowed from the later Platonizing 
schoolmen, and which means either the agreement of 
ideas with realities, or has no meaning ; when a pe- 
culiar knowledge of the mind, some rare insight into 
its darkest recesses, is conceived to lie hid under such 
phraseology, yet, after the closest attention, no new 
facts, no principles in harmony with the rest of our 
thoughts and feelings, capable of application to the 

tura Idearum vocibus affixarum, assensusque et dissensus, qui pro- 
positionibus adhibentur. His autem physiologice tractatis, novum 
lumen protinus accedet artibus cogitandi et disserendi. Cordati 
omnes uno ore clamant, augmentum scientiarum quam maxim e im- 
pediri verborum ambiguitatibus, et mole obruente ; litesque erudi- 
torum fere universas esse nil nisi logomachias inanes. Optandum 
est itaque, ut verborum natura et usu diligenter excussis, abjici- 
antur inutilia, limitentur vaga, s'cientiseque ipsae apparatu simpli- 
ciore, et ad praxin accommodatiore, instruantur. Egregiam vero 
hie operam praestabit, ni fallor, Doctrina Associationis, qualis a doc- 
trina vibrationum nasci supra ostensa est, simulque magnopere con- 
ducet, turn ad radices prsejudicatarum opinionum penitus extirpandas, 
turn ad scientias solide aedificandas, expediendasque a Scepticoruni 
implicationibus et argutiis." 



476 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

conduct of the understanding, suited to the wants 
and business of life, can be discovered, it is evident 
that we are driven back upon such truth as Hartley 
expresses. We are compelled to acknowledge that 
the study of words, their etymology, their natural his- 
tory, so to speak, as a guide to the associated sensa- 
tions and ideas, must constitute one chief portion of 
mental philosophy. The English metaphysicians and 
logicians alone appear to feel this. Mr. De Morgan, 
in his ' Formal Logic/ rightly conceives that the ulti- 
mate elements of logic lie wrapt up in whatever sound 
truth can be arrived at respecting the relations of ob- 
jects, ideas, and names. 

In regard to the common terms of logic, a refer- 
ence to etymology readily suggests their appropriate 
meaning. Take the words, subject, copula, predi- 
cate, premiss major and minor, proposition, analytic, 
synthetic, conclusion, de-monstrate, e-vidence, in-fer- 
ence, de-duction, in-duction ; the scholar, knowing 
their derivation from the Greek or Latin, easily dis- 
cerns their meaning and the reason for their use. It 
is observable that almost all the terms common in 
metaphysical books, significant of mental operations 
and conditions, are of Latin or Greek origin. Such 
are sensation, perception, conception, conscious, con- 
science, with its associates and derivatives, abstraction, 
intuition, imagination, fancy, memory, association, sug- 
gestion, attention, observation, apprehension, volition, 
comprehension, discernment, recollection, etc. For 
the organs and operations of sense we have short 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 477 

emphatic words, such as eye, head, ear, nose, smell, 
taste ; and for the strong emotions and passions, such 
as love, hate, joy, grief, woe, which come to us gene- 
rally more from the Saxon element of our language ; 
although the connection even of these with the Latin 
is, in many cases, easily traceable ; but for the ab- 
stractions of the mind, for what we may call the 
conditions and laws of thought, we have only such 
long classical terms as the above. Now the so-called 
mental philosophers have turned for the most part 
to the mind itself, selecting arbitrarily its more ob- 
scure phenomena in order to fasten on these terms 
a meaning more precise than that of common use, 
and often inconsistent with it. But if terms were 
used without much precision, loosely and interchange- 
ably, by the writers from whom they have descended, 
such as Cicero and Plato, how vain seems the effort to 
seek for nicer distinction in later days and to hope 
that any distinction will be habitually observed ! How 
idle seems the attempt to assign to the mind as many 
distinct faculties, with separate functions and opera- 
tions, as there are compound terms of Latin origin to 
express its complex affections and associations ! How 
much better to turn to etymology to find easy defini- 
tions, and meanings more accordant with the common 
acceptation, which meanings were likely to flow as by 
a kind of legitimate authority from the first examples, 
as a slight acquaintance with etymology teaches. It 
is true that many terms come in time to change their 
meaning, and scarcely a trace of the original applica- 



478 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

tion is left in the adopted and existing sense. But 
this is less the case with terms of scientific use and 
with the compounds of classical origin' than with words 
of constant application in the familiar uses and chan- 
ging customs of common life, such as gate, city, wit, 
and the French eglise. 

To the value of the per in per-ception I have already 
adverted. A similar observation holds in respect of 
con in con-ception. To conceive is to put ideas to- 
gether. The expressions, ' I can easily conceive that/ 
or ' I could not have conceived that he would act in 
such a manner/ signify, either I can or cannot recon- 
cile the new statement or idea presented to the mind 
with previous notions. To the etymology in the case 
of the word conception, the late Mr. Mill has adverted 
in his chapter on that subject. " It is applied," he 
says, " exclusively to cases of the secondary feelings ; 
to the idea, not the sensation, and to compound, not 
to single ideas." " I conceive, that is, I take together 
a horse ; that is, the several ideas combined under 
the name, and constituting a compound idea." No 
doubt the terms conscious and conscience had refer- 
ence originally to what two or more persons knew 
together, as Hobbes has suggested, and hence came 
easily to signify what was known confidently or inti- 
mately. Intuition from intueor, attention from adtendo, 
faculty from facio, abstraction from abstralto, are easily 
seen to draw their force from their fountains; the 
analogy of mental actions to material processes being 
always discernible in the expressions applied to the 



PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 479 

mind. So the participles right, just, absolute, infi- 
nite, abstract, concrete, and many others, have a clear 
and useful meaning when the force of the verbs from 
which they come is kept in view ; and metaphysicians 
lose themselves by trying to fix a meaning on such 
participles and adjectives irrespective of those realities 
and particulars, whether objects of sense or conditions 
of human thought and action, to which alone they 
can be applied with meaning and advantage. After 
all, as Locke often suggests, a good dictionary is the 
best metaphysical treatise*. 

When, by reference to etymology, or any other and 
better method, a definite and satisfactory meaning, a 
meaning significant of fact, shall be given to the 
terms employed in mental and moral science, the 
study will be cleared from the difficulties and obscu- 
rity now surrounding it, and the reasoning will be- 
come more satisfactory. The laws of the mind, like 
the so-called laws of material nature, will be perceived 
to be classes of facts, or the permanent order and suc- 
cession of undisputed phenomena. In both cases the 

* Mr. Samuel Bailey, the author of many excellent works on the 
mind, in a recent volume has dwelt on the value and distinction of 
the terms discerning, perceiving, and conceiving. He has gone over 
much of the ground touched in these pages, and with very striking 
agreement in the results of metaphysical study ; particularly in his 
remarks on the force of general and abstract terms, and in his view 
of the evils arising from the treatment of mental abstractions as real 
entities. He has not adverted to etymology as a useful and safe 
guide to the meaning of metaphysical terms. Perhaps his discussion 
of that meaning might sometimes have been cleared and simplified 
had he done so. 



480 PROGRESS OF ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY. 

laws can only be derived from, and be verified by, 
observation and experience. If they do not rest upon 
these, and be not conformable to them, they are mere 
hypotheses or dreams. Opinionum commenta delet 
dies ; naturae judicia confirmat. When the mind is 
thus studied, its leading faculties, memory, imagina- 
tion, and reason, will be found to work upon one 
simple principle, that of association, which, like the 
sap, or the element of nutrition to the vegetable king- 
dom, will be an ultimate principle, beyond which in- 
vestigation cannot go. These faculties, aided by lan- 
guage, their chief instrument, will be seen fraught 
with use and beauty, God's choicest gifts. For by 
their aid, all the traces of beneficence that reign in 
nature become transfused into the mind, and again 
the pleasurable emotions of the mind become reflected 
in the forms of external nature, to which a new and 
permanent interest is given by their perceived con- 
nection with benevolent design, that is, with the hap- 
piness present or to come of sentient, intellectual, and 
active beings. Imbued with this principle, the mind, 
though it be but a dark cavern, echoes faintly the 
first mandate, " Let there be light ;" or like a mirror, 
though it be broken, contorted, and foul with dust, it 
becomes capable of reflecting, in some humble mea- 
sure, the divine conception, when " God saw all that 
he had made, and behold, it was very good !" 

One great and inestimable advantage the disciple 
of Bacon, Locke, and Hartley must enjoy over the 
pupils of every other school. A philosophy, intelli- 



PROGRESS OF KNCLlsil I'll M.osoNI Y. 481 

gible, consistent, and practical, will supply him with 
u number of rules available for constant self-regula- 
tion, improvement, and happiness. Sympathy with the 
pure and lofty spirit of the masters, and the constant 
study of their works, will mould the temper to a like 
heavenly frame. Through the purification of the heart 
the understanding will be cleared. No fumes of pre- 
judice and passion, of envy or malignity, will rise to 
dim the eye of the mind. Curiosity, stimulated by 
the desire of good, will issue in truth and the attain- 
ment of useful knowledge. All that is solid and in- 
structive in science, all that is sublime and beautiful 
in the order of nature, graceful and sweet in poetry 
and the expression of human sentiment, all that is de- 
licate, tender, consoling and elevating in common life 
and the instruction of Scripture, will mix with it and 
vanish into it, to enhance the radiance of the glory of 
God. Teaching us that benevolence is the fountain 
and happiness the end of universal being, by attract- 
ing to itself all our pleasures, and by softening, if not 
subduing, all our pains, such philosophy will place 
us among the men who 

" With God himself 

Hold converse ; grow familiar, day by day, 
With his conceptions ; act upon his plan, 
And form to his the relish of our souls." 

Then, in the exquisite language of Milton : 

"How charming is divine Philosophy ! 
Not harsh and crabbed, as dull fools suppose, 
But musical as is Apollo's lute, 
And a perpetual feast of nectar'd sweets, 
Where no crude surfeit reigns." 

2 i 



APPENDIX. 



I. 

An Account of Locke's last hours, Death, and Character, // 
lated from Le Clerc's Eloge of Locke (Bibliotheque Choisie, 
vol. vi. p. 395, 1705). 

FOB more than a year before he died, his weakness became so 
great that he could not apply himself powerfully to anything, 
and could scarcely write a letter to one of his friends without 
pain. Hitherto he had written with his own hand everything 
which he had occasion to write, and as he was not accustomed 
to dictate, he could not avail himself of the services of a secre- 
tary. Although his frame became weaker, his temper did not 
change, and if his chest had permitted him to take part in con- 
versation, he would have been still the same. A few weeks 
before his death, he foresaw that his time was not long, but 
it did not prevent him from being as gay as usual, and when 
surprise was expressed, he was wont to say, " Live, while you 
live." 

The study of Holy Writ had produced in him a piety lively 
and sincere, though far removed from affectation. As he re- 
mained a long time unable to go to the church, he thought 
proper, some months before his death, to take the Lord's Sup- 
per at home, as is done in England, and two of his friends par- 
took of it with him. When the minister began to officiate he 
said to him, "that his feelings were those of perfect charity 
towards all mankind, and of sincere union with the Church 
of Christ, by whatever name distinguished." He was too en- 
lightened to take the Communion as a symbol of schism and 
division, as many ill-instructed people do, who, when they take 
the Communion in their church, condemn all other Christian 

2 i 2 



484 APPENDIX. 

societies. He was deeply penetrated with admiration of the 
wisdom of God in the manner in which he had willed the sal- 
vation of mankind, and when he conversed thereon, he could 
not refrain from exclaiming, " Oh the depth of the riches of 
the wisdom and of the knowledge of God !" He was persuaded 
that every one must be convinced of this by reading the Scrip- 
tures without prejudice ; and ta this he exhorted often those 
with whom he conversed towards the close of his life. His 
application to this study had given him an idea of the Chris- 
tian religion more noble and more enlarged than that which he 
had before entertained ; and if he had had sufficient strength 
to commence new works, there is much ground for thinking 
that he w r ould have composed some designed to convey to the 
minds of others, in all its vastness, this great and sublime idea. 
Some weeks before his death, as he could no longer walk, he 
had been carried in an arm-chair about the house ; but La'dy 
Masham having gone to see him the 27th of October, 1704, 
instead of finding him in his study, as usual, found him in bed. 
On her expressing surprise, he said to her, that he had resolved to 
stay in bed, as he had fatigued himself too much by rising the day 
before, that he could not sustain this fatigue, and that he knew 
not that he should ever get up again. He could not dine that 
day ; and after dinner, those who loved his company, having 
gone into his room, proposed to him to read something to oc- 
cupy his mind ; but he declined it. Nevertheless, some one hav- 
ing brought some papers into his room, he wished to know 
what they were, and they read them to him ; after which he 
said that what he had to do here must be done forthwith, 
and he thanked God for it. Thereupon they approached his 
bed, and he added his wish, "that they would remember him 
in the evening prayer." They said to him, that if he would 
like it, all the family would come into his room to offer prayer, 
and he consented. They then inquired if he thought himself 
about to die, and he replied, that perhaps it might happen 
that night, but that it could not be delayed three or four days. 
He had then a cold sweat, but recovered soon after. They of- 
fered him a little mourn (a strong beer which is made at Bruns- 
wick), which he had taken with pleasure a week before. He 
thought it the least injurious of strong beverages, as I myself 



APPENDIX. 485 

have heard him say. He took some spoonfuls of it, and drank 
to the health of the company, saying, " I wish you all happi- 
ness when I .shall have departed." The persons who wnv in 
his chamber having gone out, except Lady Masham, who re- 
mained sitting by his bedside, he exhorted her to regard this 
world only as a state of preparation for a better, adding, that 
he had lived long enough, and that he blessed God for having 
passed his life happily ; yet that this life appeared to him as a 
mere vanity. After supper, the family went up into his cham- 
ber again to pray to God, and between eleven and twelve he 
appeared a little better. Lady Masham having wished to 
watch by him, he would not permit it, and said that perhaps 
he should sleep ; but that if he felt any change he would call 
her. He did not sleep ; but resolved to try to get up on the 
morrow, as he did. They carried him into his study, and 
placed him on a more comfortable chair, where he slept at in- 
tervals a considerable time. Appearing a little revived, he 
wished that they would dress him as he was accustomed to be, 
and asked for some small beer, which he very seldom tasted, 
after which, he entreated Lady Masham, who was reading the 
Psalms in a very low voice, to read aloud. She did so, and he 
appeared very attentive, until the approach of death prevented 
it. He then requested this lady to read no more, and a few 
minutes after, on the 28th of October, 1704, about three o'clock 
in the afternoon, in his seventy-third year, he expired. 

Thus died one of the most excellent philosophers of our day, 
who, after having thoroughly examined all parts of philosophy, 
and having developed its most secret mysteries with uncom- 
mon penetration and exactness, happily turned his attention 
to the Christian religion. He examined it at the fountain, and, 
with the same freedom with which he had treated the other 
sciences, and he found it so reasonable and so beautiful, that he 
consecrated the remainder of his life to it, and endeavoured 
to impart to others that high esteem which he had conceived 
for it. He mingled with it no melancholy, no superstition, as 
sometimes happens to people who give themselves up to de- 
votion only after disappointment (chagrin). The same light 
which had guided him in his philosophical studies, guided him 
in that of the New Testament, and lighted up in his heart a 



486 APPENDIX. 

piety perfectly rational, arid worthy of Him who has given us 
reason, to profit by revelation, and whose revealed will sup- 
poses the use of all the good faculties which he has given, to 
know, to admire, and to obey it. 

It is not necessary here to eulogize the mind of Mr. Locke, 
nor to speak of its comprehensiveness, its penetration, its ex- 
actness. His works, which may be read in many languages, 
are the proof of it, and his eternal monument. I shall only 
give here the portrait received from an illustrious person to 
whom he was perfectly known. 

" He was, she says (and I can confirm the testimony in great 
measure by what I have myself seen here), a profound philo- 
sopher, and a man fitted for great affairs. He had great know- 
ledge of elegant literature, and manners full of politeness and 
most engaging. He knew something on almost every subject 
which can be useful to mankind, and searched to the bottom 
every subject which he had studied ; but he was superior in all 
these acquirements in this, that he did not appear raised in his 
own esteem on account of this illumination. No one wore less 
the air of a master, nor was less dogmatical than he, and he 
was by no means hurt when people did not enter into his opi- 
nions. There are however a species of squabblers, who, after 
having been often refuted, return again and again to the 
charge, and do nothing but repeat the same thing. He could 
not endure these people, and spoke of them sometimes with 
a little heat, but he was the first to recognize his idle distur- 
bance. 

" In the least affairs of life, as well as in speculative opinions, 
he was ready to give himself up to Eeason, whoever it was that 
led him thither ; the faithful servant, or, if you will, the slave 
of Truth, whom he never abandoned, and loved for herself 
alone. He accommodated himself to the capacity of humbler 
minds, and in disputing with them, diminished not the force 
of their reasonings against himself, though they might not have 
been well expressed. He conversed with pleasure with persons 
of all sorts, and endeavoured to profit by their intelligence, 
which arose not only from the good manners imparted by his 
education, but from an opinion that there was scarcely a per- 
son from whom he could not learn something advantageous. 



VI'l'KNDIX. 

II nice lie had learned so many tilings eoneeniiiii; the art* 
(rud- that In. seemed to have made these things his partimlar 
study, and they who pursued these things profeMOonattj, often 
profited by his knowledge and consulted him \\ it h pleasure. 

" If there were anything to which he could not accommodate 
himself, it was had manners, which filled him with disgust when 
he saw that they sprang, not from ignorance of the world, but 
from pride, barbarism, bad temper, brutal stupidity, and other 
such like vices. Yet he was very far from despising any one. 
because he had a disagreeable exterior. He regarded civility 
not only as a thing agreeable and fit to gain affection, but as a 
duty of Christianity, which ought to be observed the more, as 
persons do not commonly attend to it. He recommended with 
this view a treatise by the gentlemen of Port Royal (Sur les 
Moyens de Conserver la Paix avec les Hommes), and he highly 
approved the sermons which he had heard from Dr. "Whichcot 
on this subject, and which have since been printed. 

" His conversation was very agreeable with all persons, and 
even to ladies ; and no one was better received than he among 
persons of the highest rank. For he was by no means austere, 
and as the conversation of persons of condition is usually more 
easy and less formal, if Mr. Locke had not these talents natu- 
rally, he had acquired them by intercourse with the world ; and 
this rendered him so much the more agreeable to those who, 
not knowing him, did not expect to find these manners in a man 
so much devoted to study. Those who sought the acquaint- 
ance of Mr. Locke, to learn from him whatever a man of his 
knowledge could teach, and who approached him with respect, 
were surprised to find in him, not only the manners of a man 
well-bred, but all the politeness which they could desire. 

" He spoke often against ridicule, which requires delicate 
1 mndling in conversation, and is dangerous if not well managed. 
He could employ raillery as well as most people ; but he never 
said anything which could shock or injure any one. He knew 
how to soften whatever he said, and give it an agreeable turn. 
If he rallied his friends, it was for some considerable fault, or 
upon some point which would turn to their advantage when 
they knew it. As he was wonderfully civil, even when he com- 
menced his raillery, they fell as well assured of something 



488 xU'PENDIX. 

obliging as when he at length expressed it. He never ridiculed 
a misfortune or a natural defect. 

" He was very charitable to the poor, provided they were not 
idle, vicious, nor such as never went to any church, but fre- 
quented the alehouse on Sunday. He had special compassion 
for those who, after having laboured as much as they had been 
able in youth, sank into poverty in their old-age. He would say 
it was not enough to save them from dying of hunger, but that 
we ought to help them to live with some comfort. Thus he 
sought opportunities of doing good to those who deserved it, 
and often in his walks he visited the poor of the neighbourhood, 
and gave them something wherewith to comfort them in their 
necessities, or to purchase the remedies which he prescribed 
for them if they were sick and had no doctor. He did not like 
anything to be wasted which might be useful ; this was, in his 
opinion, to lose the treasure of which God has made us the 
economists. Thus he was a man of order, and one who kept 
exact accounts of everything. 

"If he was subject to any passion, it was that of auger; but 
he mastered it by reason, and it rarely led him to any wrong. 
He saw perfectly its folly. He used to say that it availed no- 
thing, neither in the education of children nor keeping servants 
in order, and that it tended to destroy the authority which 
might be exerted over them. He was kind towards his ser- 
vants, and took pains to instruct them with gentleness as to 
the manner in which they were to serve him. 

" Not only did he keep strictly a secret entrusted to him, but 
he never mentioned again what might be injurious, though he 
had not been warned to silence ; nor did he at any time by in- 
discretion or inattention do mischief to his friends. He was 
particular in keeping to his word, and what he promised was 
sacred. He was scrupulous as to the recommendation of per- 
sons whom he did not know, and never could bring himself to 
praise those whom he thought not praiseworthy. When told 
that his recommendations had not the effect that was expected, 
he said, * that it arose from this, that he never deceived any 
one by saying more than he knew ; that whatever he was an- 
swerable for must be found such as he described; otherwise his 
recommendations would never have any weight.' 



AIM'KMHX. 489 

"His greatest enjoyment \\as thai of com ith intelli- 

gent persons, and he valued their society. He had all the <|iiali- 
ties which could render his friendship delightful. He played 
cards only out of good nature, though being often in the com- 
pany of persons who did so, he played not badly, when the oc- 
casion came. But he never proposed it, and said that it was 
only an amusement for those who had no conversation. In 
dress he was neat, without affectation, without singularity. He 
was naturally very active and always employed, as much as his 
health would permit. Sometimes he took pleasure in working 
in a garden, which he understood perfectly well. He loved a 
walk, but his weakness of chest not permitting him to walk 
much, he took exercise on horseback after dinner, and when he 
could not bear the fatigue of this, in a wheel-chair ; and wished 
always to have company, though only that of a child, for he de- 
lighted in the conversation of children well brought up. 

" The weakness of his health gave inconvenience to no one 
but himself, and the only pain w r hich he occasioned was that of 
observing him to suffer. His mode of living was like that of 
others, except that he drank only water, and believed that this 
had preserved his life so long, in spite of his feeble constitution. 
He attributed to the same cause the preservation of his sight, 
which was very little injured at the close of his life, for he 
could read by candlelight books of all kinds, if the type was not 
very small, and he never used glasses. He had no other incon- 
venience but that of his asthma, except that about four years 
before his death he became very deaf. This lasted however 
scarcely more than six months. Finding himself deprived of 
the pleasure of conversation, he expressed his doubts in a letter 
to one of his friends whether it were not better to be blind 
than deaf. But he suffered very patiently his disadvantages." 

"We have here the portrait of this great man, drawn from 
nature and by no means flattered. I wish it were in my power 
not only to render the memory of him immortal, but still more 
to give his mind an eternal life, by inducing men of letters to 
seek truth, to love it, and defend it as he did. But better 
than all my praises and exhortations would be the study of his 
works ; and I learn that he has left one on the conduct of the 
understanding in pursuit of truth, which will soon be given to 



490 APPENDIX. 

the world. The bookseller who prints this * Bibliotheque' will 
publish it in French with his other posthumous works. 

On the 28th of October, 1853, the 149th anniversary of his 
death, I visited the tombs of Locke and of the Mashams in the 
churchyard of High Lever in Essex, in company with a learned 
friend, the Rev. Benjamin Mardon. The day was calm and 
bright. Instead of lamenting, with Bishop Law, the tomb's de- 
cay, we had the pleasure of finding it in excellent preservation, 
and of reading on the spot the beautiful and characteristic 
epitaph written by the philosopher himself. 



II. 

Examples of the Prevalence of the Opinion of Locke's Connec- 
tion with Scepticism and with Hume. 

" Mr. Hume's religious opinions chiefly appear in his ' Philo- 
sophical Essays.' In these he endeavours, on the system of 
Locke, who was a firm believer in Christianity, to rear a sys- 
tem of materialism. He advances sentiments which subvert 
the foundations of morality and religion, and aims wholly to set 
aside all proofs of a divine revelation." HENRY. A. ROWLAND, 
' On the common Maxims of Infidelity .' New York. 1850. 

The late Eev. JOSEPH MILKEE, A.M., in section viii. p. 
154, of his work entitled, ' Gibbon's Account of Christianity 
considered, together with some Strictures on Hume's Dialogues 
concerning Natural Religion' A.D. 1781, thus severely animad- 
verts on Mr. Locke's theological writings : " Mr. Locke led 
the fashion in introducing a pompous parade of reasoning into 
religion ; from that time a rational religion has been the cant 
term with all who profess to be wiser than others. The pro- 
per humble subserviency of reason to Christianity as a very 
useful but submissive handmaid, has been discarded. He ap- 
pears to know little or nothing of that divine faith which the 
Scripture describes ; from Locke down to Hume, that is to say, 
from a cold historical assent down to atheism itself, or to what 



UM'KMHX. I'.) I 



is much the same, Ihere lias been a ^niiliial melancholy deelcii- 
sion tVoin evangelical simplicity. Reason has impertinently 
meddled with the Gospel, and that with such overbearing sedu- 
lity as to darken it more and more ; and rivers of tears \\mihl 
not suffice to bewail the increase of moral misery \\ hieli, since 
Mr. Locke's time, has pervaded these kingdoms." Quoted hi/ 
the late KEY. E. WALLACE, ' Antitrinitarian Biography? under 
the article l John Locke? vol. iii. p. 409. 

Locke was vindicated from the attacks of Milner and an- 
other author, Mr. Kett, by Thomas Ludlam, of Leicester, who 
published, with his brother William, 1807, some useful essays, 
scriptural, moral, and logical, designed to promote attention 
to clearness of ideas, precision of expression, and accuracy of 
reasoning. 

" Again, we think it quite legitimate to infer the character 
and tendency of any school of thought from the writers it has 
actually produced. And. what lias been the school that has 
grown out of the 'sensational' philosophy of Locke? From 
this school has sprung the materialism of Priestley, the French 
school of Deism that preceded the Revolution, the atheism of 
Darwin, the utilitarian ethics of Bentham and of Paley. On 
the other hand, from the Cartesian idealism we derive, in di- 
rect'descent, the devout (if somewhat exaggerated) spiritualism 
of Malebranche, of Bishop Berkeley, of Pascal, of Fenelon, to 
say nothing of the brilliant array of German thinkers of Leib- 
nitz, Kant, and Eichte of Schelling and of Hegel, with the 
modern school of Cousin in France ; writers destined, we believe, 
to emancipate Christianity from the trammels of scholasticism, 
and to give it once more the Catholic character and spiritual 
power contemplated by its holy Founder." Westminster Re- 
view ; Article on Rogers' } s Reason and Faith, vol. Ivi. Oct. 1851. 
The author of the above did not condescend to spell quite 
correctly the names of some of the philosophers to whom he 
refers. A very different spirit pervades subsequent articles 
in the Eeview, such as that entitled ' Iconoclasm in German 
Philosophy? Review of Schopenhauer, New Series, vol. iii. for 
April. ' Universal Postulate? Review of Metaphysical Works. 
vol. iv. Oct. 1853. 



492 APPENDIX. 

" It may appear strange to say that sensationalism is conform- 
able to Cartesian principles, and that Locke, Condillac, Diderot, 
with all their numerous and unhappy progeny, are legitimate 
descendants of Descartes ; since he gives to his doctrines an air 
of the purest theism, and would establish on a solid basis the 
spirituality of human minds. But the theism of Descartes is 
wholly paralogistic ; his doubt, methodical and absolute ; and 
the endeavour to make inward feeling the basis of everything 
knowable, necessarily led to the negation of every material and 
sensible reality. He who starts from doubt can only end in 
doubt ; because the summit of the scientific pyramid must re- 
semble the foundation. He who sets out from fact cannot arrive 
at truth, since fact is contingent and relative ; and truth in its 
radical character is necessary and absolute. Moreover sensa- 
tionalism (il sensismo), despoiled of the contradictions of its 
partisans, and reduced to its true essence by the severe logic 
of David Hume, is peculiarly sceptical, terminating in a sub- 
jective play of the mind which is constrained to dally with ap- 
pearances after removing all reality ; and it manifests itself as 
the ultimate end of every doctrine which places the elements 
of knowledge in the sentiment of the individual mind. If 
Locke, and even Condillac, knew not how to avert this conse- 
quence, they showed themselves more prudent than Descartes, 
by rejecting the bold rationalism which the French philosopher 
had fabricated in the air ; and if less sagacious, they appeared 
at any rate more judicious." Translated from the Italian of 
VINCENZO GIOBERTI : ' lutroduzione allo Studio della Filosofia, 
vol. i. pp. 139, 140. Brussels, 1844. 

Gioberti gives the following estimate of English philosophy 
as compared with the French and German : " English philo- 
sophy, of which we have not yet said a word, occupies a middle 
place between the French and the German, and partakes of 
the mixed genius of the present inhabitants of Great Britain, 
who are allied to the German race through the Anglo-Saxons, 
the Danes, the Normans, and some more ancient migrations, 
and to the Celtic through the remains of the Cimri and the 
Gauls. Hence arises that wonderful temperament of the Eng- 
lish genius, and the civil greatness of the nation, whose man- 
liness is the more striking in comparison with the childishness 



APPENDIX. 

or decrepit ude of the other European nations The English 
genius is allied to the Positive, and most skilful in Ili: studies 
and the business of exterior life ; but it does not forget, on 
that account, that the true value of material things depends 
on the conceptions of the mind, and that practical sense can- 
not have place without morality and religion." 



in. 

A remarkable Passage from Sir Mattneic Hale's l Primitive Ori- 
gination of Mankind' (1677, pp. GO, 61), showing the State 
of Opinion on Innate Ideas or Connate Principles before or 
about Locke's Time. 

" I come now to consider of those rational instincts, as I 
call them, the connate principles engraven in the human soul, 
which, though they are truths acquirable and deducible by ra- 
tional consequence and argumentation, yet they seem to be 
inscribed in the very crasis and texture of the soul, antecedent 
to any acquisition by industry or the exercise of the discursive 
faculty in man ; and therefore they may be well called antici- 
pations, prenotions, or .sentiments characterized and engraven 
in the soul, born with it, and growing up with it, till they re- 
ceive a check by ill customs or educations, or an improvement 
and advancement by the due exercise of the faculties. I shall 
show first what they are : secondly, what moves me to think 
that such are connatural. 

" 1. Touching the former, I think those implanted and con- 
natural anticipations are these : namely, that there is a God ; 
that he is of greatest power, wisdom, goodness, and perfection ; 
that he is pleased with good and displeased with evil ; that he 
is placable ; that he is to be feared, honoured, loved, worshiped, 
and obeyed ; that he will reward the good and punish the evil; 
a secret sentiment of the immortality of the soul, or that it 
survives the body, to be capable of rewards and punishments, 
according to its deportment in this life ; certain common no- 
tions of moral good and evil, of decorum and turpe ; that faith 
and promises are to be kept ; that a man must do as he would 
be done by; that the obscene parts and actions, though other- 



494 APPENDIX. 

wise natural, are not to be exposed to public view, obvelatio 
pudendorum; that a man must be grateful for benefits re- 
ceived. These, and some such common notions or intimate 
propensions, seem to be connaturally engraven in the soul 
antecedently to any discursive rationication ; and though they 
are not so distinct and explicit, yet they are secret biases, in- 
clining the human nature primarily to what is useful and con- 
venient for it in proportion to the state of an intellectual 
nature." .... He goes on to call them certain rational in- 
stincts, a certain congenite stock of rational sentiments, predis- 
posing and inclining to the good and convenience proportion- 
able to a rational and intellectual life. 

" 2. And that which inclines me to believe this is, not only 
the congruity of the supposition to the convenience of the hu- 
man nature, and the instance of the sensible instincts in the 
animal nature proportioned to their convenience, and the great 
importance of them to the convenience thereof; but also that 
which is observable in the attentive consideration of the 
manners of mankind in general, which seems to have those 
common sentiments in them, and to accord in them in a very 
great measure ; and though evil customs and education much 
prevails among men, yet it doth not wholly obliterate these 
sentiments, at least from the generality of mankind." 



IV. 

Opinion of Hume ly the Translator of Buffer's 'First Truths.' 

" Hume is indeed a metaphysician of such subtilty, at least, 
that his own conceptions appear to have escaped the intelli- 
gence of himself. I have frequently analysed a multiplicity 
of his sentences, paragraphs, and pages : I have assiduously 
endeavoured to affix the properest idea to each word, and to 
consider the whole in all the points of view within my power ; 
and yet without a possibility of comprehending his intention. 
Diffident of my own abilities, I have consulted men of distin- 
guished eminence in metaphysical learning: these also have 
united in the previous conclusions. Of this fact I can adduce 
innumerable instances, that through his Essays, together with 



MM'KMHV l'.).'> 

usual imintelligibility, lie has not only lu-ni guilt\ nt'inlru- 
opinions which him 1 no other tendency than thai <!' 
levelling all distinction between virtue and \iee, and of 
minating that supreme felicity which necessarily results from 
the exercise of religion and morality ; but that he abounds 
with more flagrant self-contradictions than can be found in any 
writer whom I have read : for such is the truth, that men not 
only acquire reputation in metaphysical literature by the \er\ 
means which would inevitably preclude it in all others, but 
they are more secure from the detection of that criticism which 
is generally within the reach of common understandings. 

" Metaphysical researches in their nature include a difficulty 
of being comprehended : the readers, therefore, of such pro- 
ductions, whenever they encounter a passage unintelligible in 
itself, are inclined to suppose it to have sprung from the ab- 
struseness of the matter, and kindly impute to an insufficiency 
in themselves, the want of comprehending that which the 
author himself had never conceived with any degree of ideal 
precision, nor expressed with intelligible perspicuity ; and thus 
the latter acquires the reputation of being extremely refined, 
and deep in the knowledge of his subject, and beyond his rea- 
der's reach of thought, when, in fact, he was only truly incom- 
prehensible, and not to be fathomed either by himself or even 
the most extensive line of the human intellect." 



V. 

Definitions of Virtue. 

I have said that Hume nowhere attempts a definition of vir- 
tue. This is incorrect. He does attempt it ; but not where we 
should most expect it. In the first appendix to his Essays con- 
cerning moral sentiments, he thus expresses himself: 

" The hypothesis which we embrace is plain. It maintains 
that morality is determined by sentiment. It defines virtue 
to be whatever mental action or quality gives to a spectator the 
pleasing sentiment of approbation ; and vice, the contrary." 

According to this definition there can be no virtue without 
a spectator, and the virtue is entirely dependent on the nat lire 
of a spectator's sentiments his approbation or disapprobation. 



496 APPENDIX. 

Mr. Belsham has collected and discussed several definitions 
of virtue at the end of his ' Elements of the Philosophy of the 
Human Mind.' Henry Grove, in his ' System of Moral Phi- 
losophy/ (vol. ii. pp. 198, 199) gives others, from Aristotle 
downwards, I have collected many more. Gay's Dissertation 
contains a very important one. One of the worst accounts of 
virtue is that by Bishop Butler in- the Dissertation on Virtue 
appended to the ' Analogy,' as follows : 

" It is that which all ages and all countries have made pro- 
fession of in public ; it is that which every man you meet puts on 
the show of ; it is that which the primary and fundamental laws 
of all civil constitutions over the face of the earth make it their 
business and endeavour to enforce the practice of upon man- 
kind ; namely justice, veracity, and regard to common good." 

The last words, " regard to common good" come the nearest 
to a rational account or idea of it. 



VI. 

I proposed (p. 266) to give in the Appendix an analytical 
view of the Essay on the Goodness of God, contained in the 
' Theodicsea' by Leibnitz. On reflection, as this work is ex- 
tended beyond the length originally contemplated, I consider- 
it best to reserve for separate publication a translation of that 
Essay, already prepared, should there be encouragement to give 
it to the public. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF WRITERS ON MENTAL AND 
MORAL PHILOSOPHY, AND KINDRED SUBJECTS, 

COMPILED WITH RELATION TO ITS PROGRESS IN ENGLAND, AND TO 
THE OPINIONS AND INFLUENCE OF LOCKE. 

1597. Lord Bacon's Essays, or Counsells Civil and Moral. 

1605. Bacon's Advancement of Learning, or First Part of the In- 

stauratio. 

1617. Campanella, Philosophise instaurandse Prodromus. 
1620. Bacon's Instauratio Magna. Second Part. 



M'l'KMHX. 

1623. Campanula. Realis Philosophm. 

ir.iM. Herbert (Lord) of Cherbury, 1 >.- \Yniah-. 

K',2 1. Gassendi, Exercitationes Paradoxicco adversus Aristoteleos. 

1625. Grotius, Do Jure Belli; its Introduction ront.iins a state- 
ment of the principles of morals prevalent in Christendom. 

1627. Hakewill's, George, Apologie of tin- JV\\rr and Providence 
of God in the Government of the World. 

1637. Descartes' Discourse on Method ; Dioptrics. 

1637. Barlow, Dr. Thomas, Exercitationes aliquot Metaphysics 

de Deo, 4to, Oxon. 

1638. Brerewood, Edward, Tractatus Lojjici. 
10 in. Ethici. 

1640. Anderson, Robert, Logica ; a compendium of Aristotle. 

1641. Descartes' Meditationes de Prima Philosophia. 

1641. Crakanthorp, Logica. 

1642. Hobbes, De Give ; a few copies. 

1645. Herbert, Lord, De Causis Errorum ; annexed to a third edi- 

tion of De Veritate. 

1646. CulverwelTs Discourse of the Light of Nature. 

1650. Hobbes' Treatise on Human Nature, and Elements of Po- 
licy, or of the Law. 

165 1 . Philosophical Rudiments of Government and Society ; 

Leviathan ; with his Life. 

1655. Elementa Philosophise. 

1656. Ward, Seth, Exercitationes in Hobbii Philosophiam. 
1656. Crellius, John, Prima Ethices Elementa ; Ethica Christiana ; 

Ethica Aristotelica ad S. L. Normanne emendata. 
1658. Gassendi's Syntagma Philosophicum ; Logic, Physics, and 

Ethics. 

1661. Glanvil, Joseph, Vanity of Dogmatizing. 
1663. Lucy, William (Bishop of St. David's), Observations on 

Hobbes' Leviathan. 
1663. Charleton, Dr. W., Account of the Philosophy of Gassendi. 

1666. Parker, S., Free and Impartial Censure of the Platonic Phi- 

losophy. 

1667. Ward, Seth, Essays on the Attributes of God, Immortality 

of the Soul, etc. 
1669. Ramus, Peter, Dialectics duo libri ; a reprint by Dounam. 

1669. De la Forge, De Mente Humana. 

1670. Pascal, B., Pensees. 

1670. Spinoza, Tractatus Politico-theologicus. 
1670. Tenison, T., Creed of Mr. Hobbes Examined. 
1672. Cumberland, R., De Legibus Nature. 



498 APPENDIX. 

1672. Puffendorf, De Jure Naturae et Gentium. See Kennett's 
edition with Barbeyrac's Preface and Notes. 

1672. Le Grand, Apologia pro Renato Descartes, an Answer to 
Parker. 

1672. Milton, J., Artis Logicse plenior Institutio, ad Rami metho 

dum concinnata. 

1673. Ferguson, Robert, Discourse of Moral Virtue and Grace. 

1674. Malebranclie, Recherche de la Verite. 

1674. Tepelin, J., Historia Philosophise Cartesianse. 

1675. Institutio Philosophise secundum principia Renati Des- 

cartes, in usum Juventutis : much read in Cambridge. 

1676. Clarendon's Survey of Errors in Hobbes' Leviathan. 

1676. Glanvil, Joseph, Essays on several Subjects in Philosophy 

and Religion. 

1677. Spinoza, Opera Posthuma. 

1678. Parker, S., De Deo et Providentia. 

1678. Bernier's Abrege de la Philosophic de Gassendi. 

1678. Burthogge's Organum ; or, Discourse of Reason and Truth. 

1678. Cudworth's Intellectual System. 

1678. Edwards on the Will. 

1679. More, Dr. H., Collected Works. 

1681. Parker, S., Divine Authority of the Law of Nature. 

1682. Baxter's Immortality of the Soul and Nature of Spirits. 

1682. Rust, Dr., Discourse of Truth, with Glanvil's Lux Orientalis. 

1683. Arnauld, A., Des vraies et des fausses Idees contre Male- 

branche. 

1684. Whitby, D., Ethices Compendium, a text-book at Oxford. 
1684. Leibnitz, Acta Eruditorum ; Meditations on Knowledge, 

Truth, and Ideas. 

1686. Horneck, Anthony, First Fruits of Reason. 

1687. Wallis, Institutio Logicse, ad communes usus accommodatse. 
1689. Locke's Essay on the Human Understanding. 

1689. Regis, J. S., Systeme de la Philosophic. 

1689. Huet, P., Censura Philosophise Cartesianse. 

1690. Aldrich, Compendium Artis Logicse. 

1693. Bentley, R., On the Folly of Atheism. 

1694. Burthogge, R., On Reason, and the Nature of Spirits ; Au- 

thor of a Letter to Mr. Locke, 'On the Soul of the World 
and of particular Souls/ in Lord Somers' Tracts, vol. ii. 
p. 229. 

1695. Toland's Christianity not Mysterious. 
1695. Locke's Reasonableness of Christianity. 

1695. Norris, J., Account of Reason and Faith, in reply to Locke. 



APPENDIX. 1 ( ' ( > 

lt> ( J(). Leibnitz, Reflexions sur 1'Essai de rEntendnm-nt Ilniimin 

do M. Locke. 
1697. Boldo, S., Tract in Vindication of Locke. 

1697. Collier, ,I-r., Essays on Moral Subjects. 

1698. Lowde on the Nature of Man. 

1699. Shaftesbury's Inquiry concerning Virtue; surreptitiously 

printed. 

1700. Account of Mr. Locke's Eeligion ; supposed to be by A 1 1 <T- 

bury. 

1701. Norris, John, Essay towards the Theory of an Intelligible 

World, First Part ; a Second Part in 1704. 

1702. King, Archbishop, De Origine Mali. 

1702. Lee, Henry, B.D., Anti- Scepticism ; or, Notes upon each 

Chapter of Mr. Locke's Essay, etc. 

1703. Broughton, John, Nature of the Soul. 

1703. Leibnitz, Nouveaux Essais de 1'Entendement Humaiu. 

1704. Clarke, Dr. Samuel, Boyle Lectures on the Being and At- 

tributes of the Deity, followed by Lectures on the Nature 
of Christianity. 

1705. Le Clerc, Eloge de M. Locke ; Bibliotheque Choisie. 

1706. Bold, Samuel, Collected Tracts in Vindication of Locke. 
1706. Cudworth, an Abridgment of his Intellectual System, by 

Thomas Wise. 

1706. Layton's Search after Souls. 

1706. Carroll, W., Dissertation on the Tenth Chapter of Locke's 
Essay, wherein that Author's Endeavours to establish Spi- 
noza's Atheistical Hypothesis are confuted. 

1709. Berkeley, Bishop, Theory of Vision. 

1710. Principles of Human Knowledge. 

1711. Shaftesbury's Characteristics, in 3 vols., and Inquiry con- 

cerning Virtue. 

1712. Crousaz, J. Peter, Systeme des Reflexions qui peuvent con- 

tribuer a la nettete et a 1'etude de nos Connoissances. 

1713. Collier, Arthur, Clavis Universalis ; being a Demonstration 

of the Non-existence of an External World. 

1713. Berkeley, Bishop, Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous. 
1715. Collins, Anthony, Philosophical Inquiry concerning Human 

Liberty. 
1717. Burner, Pere, Traite des premieres Verites. 

1717. Green, Robert, Principles of Philosophy for Cambridge. 

1718. Colliber, Samuel, Inquiry into the Existence of God: \\ith 
' Remarks on Dr. Clarke's Lectures on the Being ami At- 
tributes of God. 



500 APPENDIX. 

1720. Clarke, Dr. John, On the Origin of Evil, 2 vols., 8vo. 

1722. Wollaston's Religion of Nature. 

1723. Mandeville, Dr. Bernard de, Fable of the Bees ; to which 

there were various answers the following year. 

1724. Carmichael's, Dr. Gerscham, edition of Puffendorf De Officio 

Hominis et Civis, with Notes. 

1724. Buffier, Elemens de Metaphysique. 

1724. Lyon's Infallibility of Human Judgment. 

1724. Watts, Dr. Isaac, Logic. 

1725. Crousaz, Tentamen Novum Metaphysicum. 

1726. Butler, Bishop, Sermons on Human Nature. 
1726. Fiddes, Dr. Eichard, General Treatise of Morality. 

1726. Hutcheson, F., Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of 
Beauty and Virtue ; first edition with his name. 

1726. Balguy, John, A Letter to a Deist concerning the Beauty 
and Excellence of Moral Virtue, etc. 

1726. Gretton's Review of the Argument a priori, in Reply to Dr. 
Clarke. 

1728. Browne, Peter, Procedure, Extent, and Limits of the Hu- 
man Understanding. 

1728. Balguy, Foundation of Moral Goodness, in reply to Hutche- 
son. (2nd Part in 1733.) 

1728. Innes, Dr. Alex., Inquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue. 

1729. Kennett's edition of Puffendorf. 's Law of Nature and Na- 

tions. 

1730. Clarke, Dr. John, Demonstration of Newton's Philosophy. 

1731. Cudworth's Eternal and Immutable Morality, edited by 

Chandler, Bishop of Durham. 

1732. Law, Edmund, Translation of King, on the Origin of Evil. 

with Notes. 
1732. Berkeley's Alciphron ; or, Minute Philosopher. 

1732. Watts, Dr. I., Philosophical Essays, with Remarks on Locke. 

1733. Mosheim's Translation into Latin of Cudworth's Eternal 

and Immutable Morality. 

1733. Campbell, Dr. Archibald, Inquiry into the Original of Moral 

Virtue. 

1734. Berkeley's Analyst. 

1734. Law's Inquiry into the Ideas of Space, Time, Immensity, 
and Eternity, with Waterland's Historical Dissertation on 
the Argument a priori. 

1734. Ernesti ; de Mente Humana, initia Doctrinse solidioris. 

1734. Colliber, Samuel, Free Thoughts concerning Souls, in four 
Essays. 



AN'IADIX ,")0l 

1736. But l-r. Bishop, Annl.^y of Helicon, Natural and Hr\ rah-d, 

in tin- Constitution and Course of Natun*. 

1730. Gravesande, Introductio ad Philosophiam, Metaphysicam, et 
Logicam. Follower of Leibnitz. 

1737. Baxter, Andrew, Inquiry into the Nature of the Soul; a 

first edition without date ; 4to in 1735. 

1738. Warburton, Divine Legation of Moses. 

1739. Hume, David, Treatise of Human Nature, 2 vols., a third in 

1740. 

1742. Essays, forming chiefly 1st volume of subsequent 

editions. 

1743. Birch's edition of Cudworth's Intellectual System, with a 

Life of the Author, and translation of Mosheim's Notes. 

1743. Cockburn, Catharine, Essay concerning the Foundation of 

Moral Duty; with a Defence of Locke, edited by Dr. 
Birch in 1751. 

1744. Berkeley's Siris. 

1744. Rutherforth's Essay on the Nature and Obligation of Virtue. 

1744. Harris, James, Treatises. 

1745. Condillac, on the Origin of Human Knowledge. Traite des 

Sensations. 

1747. Hutcheson, F., Short Introduction to Moral Philosophy, 
translated. 

1747. Burlamaqui, Principles of Natural Law. 

1748. Hartley, David, Observations on Man. 

1748. Maclaurin, Account of Sir I. Newton's Discoveries. 
1748. Montesquieu, Esprit des Loix. 

1748. Reid, Dr. T., Essay on Quantity, in Transactions of the Royal 

Society. 

1749. Grove, Henry, System of Moral Philosophy. 

1750. Baxter's (Andrew) Appendix to his Inquiry into the Nature 

of the Soul. 

1751. Glover, Philips, Inquiry concerning Virtue and Happiness. 
1751. Home, Henry (Lord Kames), Essays on the Principles of 

Morality and Natural Religion. 

1751. Harris, J., Hermes ; or, Philosophical Inquiry concerning 

Universal Grammar. 

1752. Hume, D., Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. 

1752. Burlamaqui, Political Law, translated by Nugent. 

1753. Balfour, James, A Delineation of the Nature and Obligation 

of Morality, with Reflections on Hume. 

1753. Some Thoughts on Self-Love, Innate Ideas, Free-will ; oc- 

casioned by Hume and Bolingbroke. Anon. 

1754. Bolingbroke's View of Philosophy, in Letters to a Friend. 



502 APPENDIX. 

1754. Rutherforth, Institutes of Natural Law. 

1755. Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy, with Life, by Leechman, 

2 vols. 4to. 

1755. Taylor's Elements of Civil Law. 

1756. Burke's Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime 

and Beautiful. 

1756. Hume, D., Essay on the Natural History of Religion. 

1757. Price, Dr. R., Eeview of Morals. 

1757. Warburton, W. (Bishop), Eemarks on Hume's Natural His- 

tory of Religion. 

1758. Helvetius, De 1'Esprit. 

1758. Boscovich, Theoria Philosophise Naturalis. 

1759. Smith, Adam, Theory of Moral Sentiments. 

1759. Taylor (Dr. John, of Norwich), Examination of Hutcheson's 

Scheme of Morality. 

1760. Sketch of Moral Philosophy ; or, Essay to demonstrate 

the Principles of Virtue and Religion. 

1761. Home (Lord Kames), Introduction to the Art of Thinking. 

1762. Elements of Criticism. 

1763. Tucker, Abraham, Free-will ; part of the Light of Nature 

pursued, published in 4 vols. in 1765. 

1764. Reid, Dr. Thomas, Inquiry into the Human Mind. 

1765. Blackstone, Sir W., Commentaries on the Laws of England, 

1st vol. 

1766. Beccaria, Dei Delitti e delle Pene ; translated into English. 

1767. Ferguson, Dr. A., Institutes of Moral Philosophy. 
1767. Price, Dr. R., Dissertations. 

1767. Adams, Dr. W., Essay in reply to Hume. 

1768. Oswald, Appeal to Common Sense. 

1768. Priestley, Dr. Joseph, Essay on Government. 

1770. Beattie, Dr. T., Essay on Truth. 

1774. Priestley, Dr., Examination of Reid, Beattie, and Oswald. 
1775. Edition of Hartley, with Introductory Essays. 

1775. Harris, James, Philosophical Arrangements. 

1775. Powell, Dr. Wm. Sam., Discourses edited by Dr. Thomas 

Balguy ; one * On Public Virtue.' 

1776. Smith, Adam, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the 

Wealth of Nations. 
1776. Condillac, Course of Study. 
1776. Campbell, Dr. A., Philosophy of Rhetoric. 
1776. Bentham, Jeremy, Fragment on Government ; Critique on 

Blackstone. 
1776. Berington, Rev. Jos., Letter on Materialism and on Hart - 

ley's Theory. 



M'I'KNDIX. 

177(>. Philosophical Discourse on the Nature of Humnn IV 
\\ itli remarks on Berkeley. 

1777. Sharpe, Gram illc, Tract on the Law of Nature and Princi- 
ples of Action in Man. 

1779. Sharpc, Granville, Dialogues concerning Innate Principles. 

(See M. E. for year.) 

1780. Buffier, First Truths, translated, with Preface. 

1781. Tucker, Joseph, Treatise concerning Civil Government. 

1781. Kant, Immanuel, Kritik der reinen Vernunft. 

1782. Towers, Dr. Joseph, Vindication of Locke's Political Prin- 

ciples. 
1785. Eeid, Dr. T., Essays on the Intellectual Powers. 

1785. Paley, Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy. 

1786. Tooke, J. Home, Epea Pteroenta. 

1788. Eeid, Dr. Thomas, Essays on the Active Powers. 

1789. Bentham, J., Principles of Morals and Legislation. 
1.789. Cooper, Thomas, Ethical Tracts. 

1790. Alison, Arch., Essays on Taste. 

1790. Gisborne, Thomas, Examination of Paley. 
1790. Trembley, Essai sur les Prejuges. 

1792. Gregory, Dr. James, Philosophical Essays on the relation of 
Motive and Action, and that of Cause and Effect, etc. 

1792. Stewart, Dugald, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human 

Mind. 

1793. Crornbie, Dr. A., on Philosophical Necessity. 

1793. Godwin, W., Inquiry concerning Political Justice. 

1794. Doddridge,Dr., Lectures on Pneumatology, Ethics, and Divi- 

nity, third edition, by Kippis. 
1794. Darwin, Dr. E., Zoonomia ; or, Laws of Organic Life. 

1794. Morell, Thomas, Notes and Annotations on Locke, written 

by order of Queen Caroline. 

1795. Intellectual Physics, believed to be by Governor Pownall, of 

Bath. 

1796. Gilbert's Law of Evidence, with an Abridgment of Locke by 

C. Lofft. 

1797. Croft, Dr., Defence of Paley 's Moral Philosophy. 

1798. Willich, Dr. A. F. M., Elements of Critical Philosophy, 

from Kant. 

1798. Brown, Dr. Thomas, Observations on Darwin's Zoonomia. 

1799. Monboddo, Lord, Ancient Metaphysics, 6 vols. 4to. 

1800. Cogan, Dr. T., Philosophical Treatise on the Passions. 

1800. Pearson, Dr., Two Pamphlets against Paley. 

1801. Malmesbury, Lonl. edition of Hams'> Philological and Phi- 

losophical Works, with Lit'r. 



504 APPENDIX. 

1801. Belsham, Thomas, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human 

Mind. 
1806. Brown, Dr. T., Essay on Cause and Effect, second edit. 

1806. Knight, R. P., Essay on the Principles of Taste. 

1807. Cogan, Dr. T., Ethical Treatise. 

1809. Kirwan, Richard, Metaphysical Essays. 

1810. Stewart, Dugald, Essays on t^e Philosophy of the Mind. 
1817. Cogan, Dr. T., Ethical Questions. 

1832. Austin, John, the Province of Jurisprudence determined. 

1835. Hampden, Dr. R. D., Lectures introductory to the Study of 
Moral Philosophy. 

1842. Bowen, Francis, Critical Essays on Subjects connected with 
Speculative Philosophy. Boston, U.S. 

1849. Lectures on the Application of Metaphysical Science 

to the Evidences of Religion. 

1850. Smith, Rev. Sydney, Elementary Sketches of Moral Philo- 
sophy. 

1852. Whewell, Dr. W., Lectures on the History of Moral Philo- 
sophy in England. 

1854. Outline of the Laws of Thought, by William Thomson, M.A. 

To these should be added the modern works of highest repute on 
Logic, by Whately, De Morgan, and Mill ; the dissertations on 
the History of Philosophy, by Stewart and Mackintosh, in the 
Encyclopaedia Britannica ; works on Physiology as connected with 
the Mind ; and the books of Mr. S. Bailey ; but with recent works 
well known I have been less particular as to the date of their ap- 
pearance. A similar table might be compiled for France and 
Germany. 



THE END. 




JOHN EDWABD TAYLOR, PBINTEB, 
LITTLE QUEEN STBEET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS. 



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