drilling for some time in the exercise of applying it would do no sort of injury to the lawyer's mind, and that, at no distant period, the public would become sensible of the good effects of the discipline by the altered state of its purse.

The imputation of Realism lies with still greater force against the whole body of physicians than it does against the body of lawyers. Unfortunately for the medical mind, a catalogue of names has been drawn up, under the dignified appellation of Nosology, each name standing at the head of an enumeration of a certain set of symptoms; these names have been mistaken universally (or with few and rare exceptions) for things; and consequently the symptoms of diseases for diseases themselves; the mere signs of disorder for the disordered state. It has happened, therefore, and according to the laws which regulate the suggestion and succession of the trains of ideas in the human mind, it could not but happen, that in practice, at the bed-side of the sick, medical men have set themselves to find out the name to which the symptoms presenting themselves might be referred, not to discover the morbid condition of the organ on which the symptoms depend; and that when they have taken the pen in hand to prescribe, or the pestle and mortar to compound, what they have had in view, as the thing to be combatted, has been the nosological name under which an artificial classification chanced to arrange certain sets of symptoms; not the morbid processes, which alone constitute the disease, which alone admit of counteraction, which alone can be objects of treatment. With the name is associated in the practitioner's mind a certain set of remedies: as soon as the symptoms suggest the name, the name invariably suggests that particular set of remedies: consequently, if the name suggested denote an opposite morbid state from that which actually exists, an opposite set of remedies to that which the case requires must be employed. And what is the consequence? What must be the consequence in all the cases in which life depends on the counteraction of morbid processes, which are never thought of; and the existence of which are never even an object of attention? What must be the consequence, when men to whom the salvation of life is intrusted, from the belief that their professional pursuits have made them acquainted with the means of saving life, are ignorant even of the very object at which it is their business to aim? The practical consequences of this miserable cheat of words, with which the medical mind has so long abused itself-what must they have been? Melancholy and many are those consequences, of which Death could speak, but which the Grave conceals!

We shall advert to but one other class of professional men, who have wretchedly failed in the object of their pursuit, and who continue to fail in it, in consequence of their ignorance of the structure of the human mind. Had' the schoolmaster been as intimately acquainted with mental and moral phenomena as he has been profoundly ignorant of them, what would have been the mental and the moral state of the present generation of men? Whether his purpose be to communicate any thing from the stores already accumulated in the great treasury of human knowledge, or to show how mental labour must be directed in order to furnish any new contribution to those stores; whether he aim at forming a mental or moral habit, or endeavour to prevent the formation of any; whether his object be to instruct or to govern, to stimulate or to curb, to guide or to counteract, he can do neither without an acquaintance with the constitution of the mind upon which he has to operate. Nothing connected with human affairs is calculated to fill an enlightened and benevolent man with deeper regret, than the fact (and unhappily the more it is investigated the more clearly it appears to be a fact) that up to the present time all the prevalent systems of education, all the popular modes of teaching, all the instruments of instruction, all school-books and all school-discipline, (with few exceptions) have been founded in a total ignorance of the human mind. Some of these plans, it is true, have been constructed with such exquisite art and skill, to counteract the purposes for which they were professedly framed, as to excite a suspicion that they were devised with a consummate knowledge of the human mind for the express purpose of being turned against it. Of Latin and Greek Grammars, and of the mode of teaching language in general, long prevalent and still prevalent in the schools, some of the older grammarians have indeed said, in so many words, that the Devil actually had a hand in their invention. And unquestionably if the human ráce have an evil genius, and if he be the author of those inventions, the moment when the idea of them first occurred to him must have been one of exultation. From the first day they were put in operation, until the present, they have wrought his will with such steadiness and power, that he must have taken an amazing pride and pleasure in witnessing how well they worked. To an extent which even he could hardly have anticipated, they have kept the human mind in a state of perpetual infancy, obliging each successive generation to go over precisely the same ground as the preceding, and with the same toil; allowing incredibly little to be transmitted from mind to mind; making every one climb by the same rugged path the same steep ascent, and causing

time to erase, not to deepen, the print of the steps by which some have succeeded in reaching the summit, and the vestiges of which might have rendered the ascent less difficult to others. By inverting the natural order in which they ought to be studied, by beginning with the abstract instead of the concrete, by pretending to expound the general law before the individual facts were made known, the study, even of the phenomena of nature, and of their varied and extended dependencies, than the perception and tracing out of which there is nothing that excites in the young mind a more intense interest or a more pure delight, has been turned into loathing. The period of human life when all the faculties of the human being are vigorous and fresh, and might be kept in a state of almost constant activity, a period the recollections of which ought to be those of unmixed delight from association with the highly pleasurable sensations that are the natural result of healthful and vigorous exercise,-this period has, in many cases, been rendered one of so much restraint and mortification that it cannot be recurred to without feelings of the most painful regret, not unmixed with indignation. But the full magnitude of the mischief is to be seen in the ultimate result, which has been, not only to counteract the developement of the mind and to cramp its powers, but to corrupt its affections, and to render it, what we so often see it, narrow, dark, feeble, cowardly, and selfish. In a word, what has been called Education, instead of consisting of a discipline wisely adapted to expand the faculties, to store the mind with useful knowledge, and above all, to form it to habits of reflection, discrimination, calmness, self-control, self-denial, truth, courage and benignity, has consisted of a process which applied in infancy, and brought to operate with surprising constancy and force through the successive periods of youth and adolescence, has ended by making the MAN, in the most comprehensive and the worst sense of those words, alternately slave and tyrant.

When it is considered that the evils which have been adverted to, affect the highest powers and the most precious interests of the human being, and that there is not a single human being to whom their baneful influence has not in some degree extended, while of many thousands it may be most truly affirmed that they have occasioned the total and irretrievable ruin-some conception may be formed of the importance of that science, which, when cultivated with success, will put an end to them; which alone is adequate to remove them, and which will diminish them in proportion as it is understood and brought into operation. This science we have called the master-science; and it is so, not only because it is in itself the noblest, but also because VOL. XIII.-Westminster Review.

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it exerts a paramount influence over the acquisition, the extension, and the use, of every other. He who increases our knowledge of this science is our benefactor in the highest sense in which one human being can be the benefactor of another; and we doubt not that the time will come, when the benefit conferred by the author of "The Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind" will be felt and acknowledged to be inestimable. This work is strictly what its name implies, an analytical investigation of the mental phenomena. It consists not of disquisition, not of diffuse and rhetorical writing, but of a close and scientific examination into the composition of the various mental aggregates, the successions of which constitute our existence. It may be considered as a series of exercises, in which the points to be ascertained are stated with clearness and precision, and the mode of arriving at the results sought for is shown and indicated in such a manner, that the student is taught, not only how to arrive at any one particular result, but at any result of the same nature which to him may be yet unknown. And this we look upon to be the great excellence of the work; the habit of mind which the study of it is calculated to form; the habit of mental reflection, or rather of mental dissection, without which no progress can be made in the cultivation of this science, and which can be acquired only by labour and perseverance. Those only who have in some degree succeeded in acquiring this habit are aware of the difficulty of putting and keeping it in exercise, or know how very rarely that exercise is performed. All long-continued voluntary efforts are painful. Few persons, until they make the trial, are aware of the difficulty of keeping the arm extended at full length, without allowing any relaxation of the muscles, for the space of ten minutes; nor is it commonly suspected that it is equally difficult to fix the attention, without interruption or diversion, on a single point of consciousness alone, for the same space of time. The power of continuous attention, however, is capable of being strengthened to a far greater degree even than the power of continuous muscular exertion; and while there is no study in which this power is more requisite than in that of the mental phenomena, there is none which has so remarkable a tendency to improve and to perfect the faculty.

It is certain that he who, without having previously exercised his mind in investigations of this nature, reads this work as he would read an account of some natural phenomena, or as he would go over a bare chemical analysis, will peruse it with little profit. It will do good to none whom it does not induce to observe with closeness his own states of consciousness; whom

it does not excite to perform for himself those mental analyses which have indeed been performed for him, but which have been given chiefly as specimens; whom it does not stimulate to repeat again and again, these and similar analyses, until the processes shall have become perfectly easy, familiar, and sure. When the student has acquired this power, then he will understand the value of the instrument which is now put into his hands, and will see with what incredible advantage it is capable of being applied to the most important subjects that can occupy his attention-subjects in which his own happiness, and that of his fellow beings are most deeply involved.

"I am fully aware," says Professor Stewart," that whoever in treating of the human mind, aims to be understood, must lay his account with forfeiting, in the opinion of a very large proportion of his readers, all pretensions to depth, to subtlety, or to invention. I may add that it is chiefly in those discussions which possess the best claims to originality, where he may expect to be told by the multitude, that they have learned from him nothing but what they knew before."

"Such is the strange nature of man," observes Professor Brown, "that the simplicity of truth, which might seem to be its essential charm, and which renders it doubly valuable in relation to the weakness of his faculties, is the very circumstance that renders it least attractive to him; and though, in his analysis of every thing that is compound in matter, or involved in thought, he constantly flatters himself that it is this very simplicity which he loves and seeks, he yet, when he arrives at absolute simplicity, feels an equal tendency to turn away from it, and gladly prefers to it any thing that is more mysterious, merely because it is mysterious. I am persuaded, said one who knew our nature well, that if the majority of mankind could be made to see the order of the universe, such as it is; as they would not remark in it any virtues attached to certain numbers, nor any properties inherent in certain planets, nor fatalities in certain times and revolutions of these, they would not be able to restrain themselves, on the sight of this admirable regularity and beauty, from crying out with astonishment, What, is this all?"

Although we do not doubt that the exclamation, What, is this all? will burst from the lips of not a few on arriving at the result of many of the analyses which have been most successfully performed by Mr. Mill, nevertheless there is a class of readers who will clearly perceive, and gladly acknowledge, how much this author has done towards accomplishing the prediction of Hartley, that some one would ultimately succeed in resolving all the mental phenomena into sensation and association. There