would, in all probability, systematize a set of hypotheses, as unfounded as those which we are anxious to discard.

Neither of these writers has hit on the only effectual remedy against this inconvenience ;-to vary, from time to time, the metaphors we employ, so as to prevent any one of them from acquiring an undue ascendant over the others, either in our own minds, or in those of our readers. It is by the exclusive use of some favourite figure, that careless thinkers are gradually led to mistake a simile or distant analogy for a legitimate theory.

For an illustration of this suggestion, which I consider as a most important logical rule in prosecuting the study of Mind, I must refer to my former work. Obvious as it may appear, I do not recollect to have met with it in the writings of any of my predecessors. It is very possible, that in this my memory may deceive me; but one thing is certain, that none of them has attempted to exemplify it systematically in his own practice.

After these remarks, it is almost superfluous to add, that it is, in many cases, a fortunate circumstance, when the words we employ have lost their pedigree; or (what amounts nearly to the same thing) when it can be traced by those alone who are skilled in ancient and in foreign languages. Such words have in their favour the sanction of immemorial use; and the obscurity of their history prevents them from misleading the imagination, by recalling to it the sensible objects and phenomena to which they owed their origin. The notions, accordingly,

we annex to them may be expected to be peculiarly precise and definite, being entirely the result of those habits of induction which I have shewn to be so essentially connected with the acquisition of language.

THE philological speculations, to which the foregoing criticisms refer, have been prosecuted by various ingenious writers, who have not ventured (perhaps who have not meant) to draw from them any inferences in favour of Materialism. But the obscure hints frequently thrown out, of the momentous conclusions to which Mr Tooke's discoveries are to lead, and the gratulations with which they were hailed by the author of Zoonomia, and by other physiologists of the same school, leave no doubt with respect to the ultimate purpose to which they have been supposed to be subservient. In some instances, these writers express themselves, as if they conceived the Philosophy of the Human Mind to be inaccessible to all who have not been initiated in their cabalistical mysteries; and sneer at the easy credulity of those who imagine, that the substantive spirit means anything else than breath; or the adjective right, anything essentially different from a line forming the shortest distance between two points. The language of those metaphysicians who have recommended an abstraction from things external as a necessary preparation for studying our intellectual frame, has been censured as bordering upon enthusiasm, and as calculated to inspire a childish wonder at a department of knowledge, which, to the few

Essay V. who are let into the secret, presents nothing above the comprehension of the grammarian and the anatomist. For my own part, I have no scruple to avow, that the obvious tendency of these doctrines to degrade the nature and faculties of man in his own estimation, seems to me to afford, of itself, a very strong presumption against their truth. Cicero considered it as an objection of some weight to the soundness of an ethical system, that "it savoured of "nothing grand or generous" (nihil magnificum, nihil generosum sapit):-Nor was the objection so trifling as it may at first appear; for how is it possible to believe, that the conceptions of the multitude, concerning the duties of life, are elevated, by ignorance or prejudice, to a pitch, which it is the business of Reason and Philosophy to adjust to a humbler aim? From a feeling somewhat similar, I frankly acknowledge the partiality I entertain towards every theory relating to the human Mind, which aspires to ennoble its rank in the creation. I am partial to it, not merely because it flatters an inoffensive, and perhaps not altogether a useless pride; but because, in the more sublime views which it opens of the universe, I recognise one of the most infallible characteristics, by which the conclusions of inductive science are distinguished from the presumptuous fictions of human folly.

When I study the intellectual powers of Man, in the writings of Hartley, of Priestley, of Darwin, or of Tooke, I feel as if I were examining the sorry mechanism that gives motion to a puppet. If, for a moment, I am carried along by their theories of

human knowledge, and of human life, I seem to myself to be admitted behind the curtain of what I had once conceived to be a magnificent theatre; and, while I survey the tinsel frippery of the wardrobe, and the paltry decorations of the scenery, am mortified to discover the trick which had cheated my eye at a distance. This surely is not the characteristic of truth or of nature; the beauties of which invite our closest inspection,-deriving new lustre from those microscopical researches which deform the most finished productions of art. If, in our physical inquiries concerning the Material World, every step that has been hitherto gained has at once exalted our conceptions of its immensity, and of its order, can we reasonably suppose, that the genuine philosophy of the Mind is to disclose to us a spectacle less pleasing, or less elevating, than fancy or vanity had disposed us to anticipate?

In dismissing this subject, it is, I hope, scarcely necessary to caution my readers against supposing, that the scope of the remarks now made is to undervalue the researches of Mr Tooke and his followers. My wish is only to mark out the limits of their legitimate and very ample province. As long as the philologer confines himself to discussions of grammar and of etymology, his labours, while they are peculiarly calculated to gratify the natural and liberal curiosity of men of erudition, may often furnish important data for illustrating the progress of laws, of arts, and of manners;-for clearing up obscure passages in ancient writers ;-or for tracing the migrations of mankind, in ages of which we have no

historical records. And although, without the guidance of more steady lights than their own, they are more likely to bewilder than to direct us in the study of the Mind, they may yet (as I shall attempt to exemplify in the Second Part of this Volume) supply many useful materials towards a history of its natural progress;―more particularly towards a history of Imagination, considered in its relation to the principles of Criticism. But, when the speculations of the mere scholar, or glossarist, presume to usurp, as they have too often done of late, the honours of Philosophy, and that for the express purpose of lowering its lofty pursuits to a level with their own, their partisans stand in need of the admonition which Seneca addressed to his friend Lucilius, when he cautioned him against those grammatical sophists who, by the frivolous details of their verbal controversies, had brought discredit on the splendid disputations of the stoical school: "Relinque istum ludum litera"rium philosophorum, qui rem magnificentissimam "ad syllabas vocant, qui animum minuta docendo "demittunt et conterunt, et id agunt ut philosophia "potius difficilis quam magna videatur.” *

Seneca, Epist. 71.-" Abandon this literary pastime, intro"duced by men who would bring the noblest of all sciences to "the test of words and syllables; who, by the minuteness of their "disquisitions, let down the mind and wear out its powers, and seem anxious to invest philosophy with new difficulties, when "it ought to have been their aim to display her in all her gran"deur."