Locke's character, he would not have borrowed from any other writer any material part of his doctrines, without the most scrupulous avowal of the source from whence it was derived.

Locke agreed with Descartes in thinking that we perceive by means of some intermediate agent between the object and the mind; he disagreed with him as to the origin of our ideas,- Descartes being of opinion that some were innate, and Locke conceiving that they were all derived either from our senses or from the power we possess of reflecting on the operations of our understandings. They differed with regard to the essence of matter and mind. Descartes believed that the essence of mind consisted in thought, and had a very singular idea that the essence of matter consisted in extension. Locke very properly determined that the word essence has no meaning; and that we know nothing about the essence of either one or the other, and never can know any thing at all about essences.

With respect to innate ideas, it has been objected to Mr. Locke that he has not sufficiently explained the meaning of the word. Does he mean connate ideas, that develope themselves as soon as we are born? if so, the dispute is quite insignificant. If Mr. Locke means by the word idea (as I believe he may be shown to do) any impression or passion of our nature, does it not seem very strange to deny that self-love, anger, and pity are innate, though some of these do not develope themselves at the immediate period of our birth? In his account of the formation of abstract general ideas, Mr. Locke has been, as is generally thought, completely confuted by Bishop Berkeley: in that notion which he held, in common with all his predecessors, of an intermediate agent between the mind and the outer world, he has been refuted by Dr. Reid. His book upon the Use and Abuse of Language is generally considered as one of the most valuable in his Essay. The wonder is, that

so few important errors should be discovered in a work which takes up the science of the human mind at so barbarous a period, and which has stood for a century the critical inquisition of the ablest men in the keenest and most inquisitive of all the branches of knowledge.

One of the most extraordinary men who appeared after Locke was Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne in Ireland; of whom Pope says, that there was given

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"To Berkeley every virtue under heaven;"

and of whom Bishop Atterbury said, that, "before he "saw that gentleman, he did not think that so much. "understanding, so much knowledge, so much innocence, and so much humility, had been the portion of any but angels." To give a clear notion of the Bishop's theory, we must, for a moment, animadvert to Mr. Locke's doctrines on the same subject. He thought, for instance, that there were outward objects; some intermediate agents coming from that outward agent, which excited the idea in the mind; and, lastly, that there was the mind itself. For instance, that there was a moon, an image coming from the moon, an idea excited by that image, and a mind in which that image existed. Now, says Bishop Berkeley, you allow that you do not see the objects themselves, but only certain representatives of those objects; therefore, as you never see the objects themselves, what proof have you of their existence? You have none; and all your notions on these subjects are fallacious. There is no sun, no moon, no stars, nor earth, nor sea, they are all notions of the mind. Such was the system of one of the most pious men that ever lived; and a system by which he hoped to put an end for ever to all scepticism and irreligion.

In this sketch the name of Arthur Collier must not be omitted. He was Rector of Langford Magna, near Salisbury, and published a book, in 1713, which he calls "The Universal Key, or a New Inquiry after Truth;

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"being a Demonstration of the Non-existence or Impossibility of an External World." He is a very acute man, but a very bad writer; and, what is singular enough, he had never read Berkeley's theory (which had then been published three years), or Locke's Essay (which had been published twenty-four years). That two writers, Berkeley and Collier, should meet together at such a conclusion, without the smallest knowledge of each other's intentions, is certainly a very extraordinary fact in the history of philosophy.

The outward world being thus annihilated, Mr. Hume determined to cure men of the absurdity of supposing they had any minds; and turned the same sort of argument to their destruction. As thought is only a representative of mind, and as you never see the original, how do you know there is any original? And so, in this manner, the rash and extraordinary hypothesis, that man is a being made up of body and mind, was detected, exposed, and ridiculed.

In answer to these metaphysical lunacies, Dr. Reid has contended, that, for all reasoning, there must be some first principles from whence such reasoning originates, and which must necessarily be incapable of proof or they would not be first principles; and that facts so irresistibly ingrafted upon human belief as the existence of mind and matter, must be assumed for truths, and reasoned upon as such. All that these sceptics have. said of the outer and the inner world may, with equal justice, be applied to every other radical truth. Who can prove his own personal identity? A man may think himself a clergyman, and believe he has preached for these ten years last past; but I defy him to offer any sort of proof that he has not been a fishmonger all the time. †

[Two pages of manuscript are here wanting.]

ever doubt that all reasoning must end in arbitrary belief; that we must, at last, come to that point where the only reply can be, "I am so,-this belief is the con"stitution of my nature,-God willed it." I grant that this reasoning is a ready asylum for ignorance and imbecility, and that it affords too easy a relief from the pain of rendering a reason: but the most unwearied vigour of human talents must at last end there; the wisdom of ages can get no further; here, after all, the porch, the garden, the Academy, the Lyceum, must close their labours.

Much as we are indebted to Dr. Reid for preaching up this doctrine, he has certainly executed it very badly; and nothing can be more imperfect than the table of first principles which he has given us,—an enumeration of which is still a desideratum of the highest importance. The sceptics may then call the philosophy of the human mind merely hypothetical; but if it be so, all other knowledge must of course be hypothetical also; and if it be so, and all is erroneous, it will do quite as well as reality if we keep up a certain proportion in our errors: for there may be no such things as lunar tables, no sea, and no ships; but, by falling into one of these errors after the other, we avoid shipwreck, or, what is the same thing, as it gives the same pain, the idea of shipwreck. So with the philosophy of the human mind: I may have no memory, and no imagination,-they may be mistakes; but if I cultivate them both, I derive honour and respect from my fellow-creatures, which may be mistakes also; but they harmonise so well together, that they are quite as good as realities. The only evil of errors is, that they are never supported by consequences; if they were, they would be as good as realities. Great merit is given to Dr. Reid for his destruction of what is called the ideal system, but I confess I cannot see the important consequences to which it has yet led.

Oswald, Beattie, and a few more Scotch writers, who

are very little known or read, have supported that appeal to the common sense of mankind in favour of first principles which, in my very humble opinion, was so wisely and philosophically instituted by Dr. Reid, and which hereafter promises to rear up the strongest bulwark against the sceptical school.

About the year 1730, the Rev. Mr. Gay published a dissertation on the fundamental principle of virtue. It was not published in a separate form, but prefixed to Archdeacon Law's translation of Archbishop King's "Origin of Evil." In this dissertation Mr. Gay asserted the possibility, and explained the mode, of deducing all our intellectual pleasures and pains from the principle of association. It was this publication of Mr. Gay which first induced Dr. Hartley to turn his thoughts to the subject; and the result of his studies, was a conviction that not only all our intellectual pleasures and pains, but that all the phenomena of memory, imagination, volition and reasoning, may be referred to this principle: so that nothing more is requisite to make a man what he is, but a sentient principle, with this single property, and the influence of such circumstances as he has been actually exposed to. As Dr. Hartley was excited to this part of his system by Mr. Gay's dissertation, he was led to the next and more reprehensible part of it by a query of Sir Isaac Newton's, at the end of his "Optics." "Do not the rays of light," says Sir Isaac, "in falling upon the bottom of the eye, excite vibrations "in the tunica retina? and do not these vibrations, propagated along the solid fibres of the optic nerves "into the brain, cause the sense of seeing?" This was enough for Dr. Hartley's system, which contends that the mind receives its notices of things by means of a vibration excited in the nerve and brain. When the excitement is considerable, he calls it a vibration; when less, it is a vibratiuncle. I need not add, that all this is a mere hypothesis, without a shadow of proof; and that

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