they must take a normal development, undue stress is laid on that rudimentary impression of a Deity of which even he who worships a cat, a monkey, or a block of stone, is not wholly destitute; and men are apt to under-estimate the necessity of that careful and just culture by which alone this cardinal truth can admit of complete extrication and a just development. It is forgotten that the want of that development makes all the difference between an ennobling and elevating idea of God, and one of which not only Locke, but many more would say, that they question whether it would not be as well to be without it altogether.

Again, the advocate on the same side is apt to say, 'The prin'ciples of morals are universal; no nations are so savage, none so 'barbarous that some glimmering of moral truth, and some sen'timent of social duty, are not to be found among them.' It is granted; but the world notwithstanding affords too abundant proof, in the variety of deflections to which conscience is subject,— extending even to the absolute inversion of some moral principles, the transformation of virtues into vices and of vices into virtues, the consecration, among many nations, of the most hideous enormities, that apart from a sedulous and just culture of the moral nature so vaunted, there is scarcely any limit to the degree in which that flexible nature may be bent and perverted by association and habit and early misinstruction. If it is said that there is no nation that has inverted the entire moral code, thus bearing witness to the presence of certain great moral principles and tendencies in the human mind, this is quite true; but it is equally true, first, that neither has there ever been a nation without some species of education, calculated in some degree to develop the moral faculty; since the very circumstances in which all mankind are placed, their instincts, and their mutual necessities and relations, involve from the earliest periods of childhood a species of training for the development of the moral sentiments; and secondly, that notwithstanding all this, the hideous distortions to which moral sentiment is subject, the degree in which so many barbarous nations have hallowed fraud and revenge, and quenched benevolence and compassion, shows that it is hardly possible to affix limits to the extent to which these principles of our nature may be overlaid and disguised.

Once more; the advocate of the same one-sided philosophy is apt to say, from the unquestionable existence of a religious tendency and a religious faculty in man, that all external revelation is either impossible or superfluous; that each man is an oracle to himself, and in possession of all essential religious

truth. What sort of an oracle nature is, if left to itself alone, let the religions which man in all ages has devised and practised, the inveterate superstitions, fanaticism, and cruelty which have darkened the earth, declare!

On the other hand, the advocate of the opposite exaggeration, that is, in favour of man's being principally, if not wholly, the creature of sensible experience, inclines to the contrary and equally pernicious extremes; suspects in relation to morals, that man is just capable of being any thing that education and arbitrary laws may make him, and that these alone constitute actions right or wrong; in relation to religion, that man is, in like manner, equally susceptible of falsehood and truth, and that the systems he may adopt, apart from their influence on happiness, are about equally worthy of a wise man's attention,that is, not worthy of it at all. And thus, as on the former hypothesis, all religions, from Buddhism to Christianity, are too apt to be regarded as equally sacred, if not equally beneficial, in virtue of their being the product of the religious faculties of man; so, on the latter hypothesis, though men's religions are, it is granted, enormously different, they are all to be regarded as equally false (though not equally expedient), as the mere fabrication of arbitrary associations! Similar errors (it might easily be shown), though not equally pernicious, are apt to flow from similar exaggerations in respect to the phenomena of taste; some folks, on the one hand, exaggerating man's original susceptibility to the beautiful, and ignoring the fact, that it is only as it is justly cultivated, that it will be ever worth a farthing; and others affirming that the beautiful is wholly factitious, and that literally and absolutely de gustibus non disputandum.

Only by acknowledging then, the co-ordinate importance of these two phases of our nature, and viewing even with suspicion any such analysis as would result in the disparagement of either, only by sedulously guarding ourselves from extremes on the one side or the other, can philosophy preserve itself from errors far more formidable than any of a merely speculative nature. Just as it is true, that sensation and experience are an essential and inseparable condition, as we are at present constituted, of all our latent mental activity, without which the mind itself would practically be dormant, nay, practically be nothing; so it is equally true, that for the just extrication and development of all the more potent and diffusive principles of humanity, (as those which respect religion and morals,) an external culture is indispensable, unspeakably more careful and prolonged than

is necessary for eliciting the fundamental notions of magnitude and number.*

The phenomena of sensation disengage some of our elementary cognitions with unfailing uniformity, the ideas which respect magnitude and number, for example, being uniform in the race; and we may be certain they will be so as long as our eyes and ears have such a marvellous similarity and precision in their operations. But the moment we come to activities of a higher order, and which yet, as most philosophers and most men who are not philosophers (perhaps quite as much to the purpose) agree to be as really characteristic of humanity as any sensations' whatever,-we mean the intuitions (of moral and religious truth, we see that as the variations in the external conditions of development are much wider, so they are connected with an analogous want of uniformity and precision in the extrication of the intuitions themselves. Whatever the sublime possibilities for our nature, they are fulfilled only in compliance with the proper external conditions; in proportion as we remember that if man is half what he is by the internal laws of his being, he is also half what he is by experience and education. If all this were duly felt, we cannot help suspecting that men would not renew age after age this controversy, any more than they would obstinately dispute whether the action of the external light or the structure of a reflecting surface has more to do with the particular colour of an object, since without both the one and the other we should have no colour at all.

Having thus stated our views of the fundamental principles of Locke's philosophy, and our convictions that he was never rightfully claimed by the sensational school, we must proceed to justify our assertion, that he has not met with justice at M. Cousin's hands. We must maintain that M. Cousin not only does not, as he ought to do, fairly exercise his eclectic' faculty, (which, we must frankly say, has often been more strenuously exerted with far less prospect of success,) in endeavouring to collate apparent ambiguities and inconsistencies, and thus show Locke not to be contradictory where he seems so, but that he often creates contradictions where Locke has left none. cannot, of course, follow him through the analysis of all the fundamental ideas of Locke's second book, but shall confine ourselves to those we before mentioned.

We

* Indeed it requires much caution to form right opinions, and, as "Dr. Moore observes, "If ideas were innate, it would save much trouble "to many worthy persons." (Sharp's Letters and Essays, p. 145.)

And, first, with regard to the idea of space, M. Cousin says that Locke must, on his theory derive it from sensation or reflection; it cannot come from the latter, it therefore must be got from the former. He then represents Locke as so deriving it in his chapter on Solidity." That Locke does so derive historically the idea of space is admitted; but then, says M. Cousin, the idea of space, in the system of Locke, should be reduced and is reduced to that of body.' Now that Locke does not confound the two ideas is evident even from that chapter; but in his subsequent long chapter expressly on Space,' he asserts, half a score of times over, the perfect distinction between them.

Two or three examples will be sufficient. He says, 'That 'men have ideas of space without a body their very disputes ' about a vacuum plainly demonstrate, as is showed in another ' place.* . . . Of pure space, then, and solidity there are 'several (amongst which I confess myself one) who persuade themselves they have clear and distinct ideas, and that they 'can think on space without any thing in it that resists or is protruded by body.f.... There are some that would per'suade us that body and extension are the same thing.' He then proceeds expressly to show the contrary; because, First, extension includes no solidity, nor resistance to the "motion of body, as body does. . . . Secondly, the parts of pure space are inseparable the one from the other, so that the continuity cannot be separated, neither really nor mentally. Thirdly, the parts of pure space are immoveable, which follows from their inseparability. .. Thus the determined idea of simple space distinguishes it plainly and sufficiently from body.' To these might be added many more passages. Nothing, then, can surely be more monstrous than M. Cousin's representation that Locke, after thus frequently and clearly distinguishing, ends by confounding, the ideas of space and body, involves himself in inextricable confusion, and asserts the identity of the one with the other: This,' says he, is what Locke has 'done in the systematic parts of his work, though, contradicting himself more than once, for he often speaks of space as wholly distinct from solidity. But when his system comes in, when the necessity of drawing the idea of space from sensation comes in, then he affirms that the idea of space is acquired by sight and touch; and as touch, aided by sight, gives us only body and not space, Locke for this reason alone reduces space to + Ibid. § 5.

* Book ii. ch. 4. § 3.

Book ii. ch. 13.

body; he does this expressly when he says, that "to ask "whether this universe exists somewhere, is to ask whether "the universe exists." The confusion of the existence of space ' and the existence of the universe is the confusion of the idea • of space and the idea of body; and this confusion was necessary that the system might be, at least in appearance, ' rigorous.'

It is much the same with M. Cousin's misconception of Locke's idea of duration. Having given him deserved praise for deducing the idea of duration from the succession of our thoughts (making it therefore an idea of reflection ab origine), he declares that Locke has confounded the idea of time with that of succession; so that, according to Locke, the existence of time depends on man's perception of it, though he has expressly affirmed the contrary.

'Locke saw,' says M. Cousin, that the idea of time is given 'us in succession, and that for us the first succession is necessarily the succession of our ideas. Thus far Locke merits only praise, for he gives the succession of our ideas as the only ⚫ condition of the acquisition of the idea of time; but the condition of a thing is easily taken for the thing itself; and Locke, 'after having taken the idea of body, the mere condition of the idea of space for the idea of space, takes also the condition of 'the idea of time for the idea itself; he confounds succession with time; he no longer simply says, "the succession of our "ideas is the condition of the conception of time;" but he says, "time is nothing else than the succession of our ideas."" Whether here, as with regard to space, Locke gives a satisfactory account of the genesis of the notion or not, most assuredly he ought not to have been charged with having reduced his idea of 'duration' back again to mere succession.' But let us hear Locke himself: A man having from reflection

* Lecture xviii. On M. Cousin's inversion of Locke's meaning on this subject we spare ourselves the trouble of saying anything further; for it is amply exposed in a brief but acute article in this journal. (Vol. lix. p. 359.) The writer shows not only that Locke every where maintains the contrary of what M. Cousin affirms, but that the only passage (that above cited by M. Cousin) which could by possibility give any plausibility to the charge can only be made to do so by insulating it from its context. M. Cousin has utterly misapprehended the passage by not attending to the two meanings of the word 'place in English, which,' says Locke, 'properly means the position of a 'body in space relatively to others, in which sense the universe has no place; sometimes, but more improperly, the space any body occupies,' in which sense the universe has a place.