real explanation of the evil report which has gone forth against metaphysics. But we suspect that this is exactly one of those hasty conclusions from first appearances, which we have just condemned. Speculative men have for some time past turned their attention a good deal to the philosophy of mind, and it has happened (from causes which are perfectly explicable), that speculative men, during the same period, have had a sort of vanity in professing scepticism upon religious subjects; but it does not therefore follow that metaphysics and infidelity have any natural alliance. It was not always thus. In the ancient world, the infidels were found among the natural philosophers; in the schools of Epicurus, not in those of Plato and Aristotle. In the middle ages, metaphysics were assiduously cultivated by the stoutest doctors of the Church: Aquinas and Abelard, and Ockham, and all the pillars of orthodoxy, were deep in the philosophy of Aristotle, and fought as fiercely about universals, as if the fate of religion had depended on the controversy; while those, who, neglecting such matters, quietly cultivated researches into physics, laboured under a pretty general suspicion of infidelity. Galileo was sent to a dungeon in his old age, not for any speculations upon mind, but for the discoveries he had made respecting the constitution of nature. So late as the days of Sir Thomas Brown, that learned and eloquent writer informs us that the physicians had long been generally supposed to entertain opinions unfavourable to the truth of Christianity; and he published his Religio Me

dici to rescue himself from the imputation which attached to his profession. And, in our own time, the greatest naturalist in Italy professed Atheism. It may therefore, perhaps, be fairly said, that, in respect of any supposed tendency to scepticism, the evidence of history is full as strong against natural philosophy as against metaphysics; yet who ever dreamed of proscribing the natural sciences? Let us at least be just, and either condemn the researches of Galileo and Newton, or acknowledge that neither the philosophy of mind nor the philosophy of nature have any natural alliance with scepticism, though sceptics may occasionally be found among the students of both.

The end of all knowledge is to enable us better to understand the will of God, and more perfectly to obey it. Unsanctified by these principles, neither wit nor learning can be of any lasting benefit to their possessors, and may but swell the sad account they must one day render. Let us not be misunderstood. If we recommend metaphysical studies, or any other studies not strictly religious, it is not for their own sake that we recommend them. Every thing is trifling which has not some respect to our everlasting destiny; and it matters really very little, if the amusement of the present time is our only object, whether that is sought at a puppet-show, or in the schools of philosophy. Life resembles a well-constructed drama. There must be variety of incidents and some little episode may fairly be admitted. But unity of action is indispensable, and every lesser

part must tend upon the whole to swell the interest of the great catastrophe. In the pursuits of learn ing, if we would be wise to any purpose, the glory of God must be our great aim; the advancement of practical holiness in our own hearts, and in the world, an object continually present to our thoughts. Directed towards such ends, the value of learning is unquestionable, and is indeed now doubted only by weak enthusiasts. Different pursuits may be suited to different understandings and conditions of life: some studies may be in their nature more practically profitable than others: but in the circle of useful sciences, we cannot hesitate to include the philosophy of the human mind: we see many reasons for expecting advantages to result from its cultivation, and none of any real moment for proscribing it.

Mr. Stewart, after dismissing the topics discussed in his preliminary chapters, employs about an hundred and fifty pages in noticing different theories which have prevailed respecting the sources of hu man knowledge. It is certainly to be lamented that these inquiries should have engaged too exclusively the attention of metaphical writers; so that, by many persons, the whole science of the philosophy of the mind is imagined to be confined to this, the least satisfactory and least useful part of it. Yet the subject is curious in itself, and is rendered still more so by the efforts which some very powerful and original thinkers have made to clear its obscurity. It would be a very serious undertaking to

follow Mr. Stewart systematically through this “dark, illimitable ocean; but we may track his voyage, and admire the skill with which he keeps his reckoning, notwithstanding a cloudy sky, shifting winds, and

cross currents.

The first Essay, which is divided into four chapters, treats principally of the account which Mr. Locke gave of the origin of human knowledge. This great man was the first who applied the canons of philosophy, which Bacon had recommended, to metaphysical researches; and though his conclusions were far from being always correct, his labours were so considerable as to have purchased for him, both in this country and upon the continent, the character of the father of the intellectual philosophy. The following are his leading opinions respecting the origin of our knowledge. He insists that the mind naturally is unfurnished with any of the materials of knowledge; in contradiction to the schoolmen, and to Des Cartes, who held the doctrine of innate ideas. Through the medium of the senses, (he says,) we acquire all our ideas of external objects; and (agreeing with the schoolmen in their opinion that the external objects themselves are not united to the mind,) he describes the ideas thus received to be copies or images of the objects. The other class of our ideas he conceives to be derived from the "perception of the operation of our mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got." These ideas thus acquired “the understanding has the power to repeat, compare, and unite; and so can make at

pleasure new complex ideas; but it has not the power to invent or frame one new simple idea in the mind, not taken in by the ways before mentioned.*"

This fair structure, stately and imposing as it was, when the hand of Locke erected it, has suffered some loss of its early splendour. It has been assailed by more modern artists; and though enough of it remains to testify to the magnificence of the design, a considerable portion of the building has been levelled with the ground. First came Leibnitz and Lord Shaftesbury, who insist that many things are innate in the mind, particularly the intellectual powers themselves, and the simple ideas which are necessarily unfolded by their exercise. A part of this, doubtless, is true; but the truth is so obvious that it may, perhaps, safely be affirmed, that Mr. Locke never dreamed of denying it. That our faculties, as conception, memory, and the like, are not ideas acquired by sensation or reflection, is just as plain as that the powers of perceiving and reflecting are not so acquired. It is mere trifling to say, that Mr. Locke has not marked the distinction. He was not bound to mark it. It is involved of necessity in the statement of his theory. For the rest; by what sort of logic is it that ideas," unfolded by the exercise of our facultiest," can be shewn to be innate?

Locke's Essay, Book ii. Chap. 1, 2.

We quote from Mr. Stewart's translation, or rather version, of the passage in Leibnitz's works; the original is very obscure.