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that which has fallen under my review."

It will probably be in the recollection of most, if not all, of our readers, that, in Part First of this Preliminary Discourse, Mr Stewart had brought down his review of the various contributions made, by preceding philosophers, to the Inductive Philosophy of the Human Mind, as far as the period when Leibnitz appeared on the horizon as a star of the first magnitude; remarking, with his usual acuteness and accuracy of discrimination, that "Leibnitz the Jurist belongs to one century, and Leibnitz the Philosopher to another." This being the point to which Mr Stewart had conducted the inquiry, Part Second, which embraces the "Progress of Metaphysics during the eighteenth century," naturally commences with an "Historical and Critical Review of the Philosophical Works of Locke and Leibnitz.'

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JOHN LOCKE, whose Essay on Human Understanding forms a new and brilliant era in the History of Philosophy, was born at Wrington in Somersetshire, in 1632. His father had been a captain in the Parliament's army during the civil wars; "a circumstance," says MrS., "which it may be presumed, from the son's political opinions, would not be regarded by him as a stain on the memory of his parent.' In the carly part of his life, Mr Locke applied himself indefatigably to the study of medicine, an art, indeed, which he never exercised as a regular calling, but in which, if we may credit the incidental testimony of Sydenham, he had made no inconsiderable proficiency. This early dedication of his mind to subjects of medical inquiry, Mr S. regards as an admirable training for those studies connected with Mental Philosophy, on which he was afterwards destined to shed such a strong and powerful light: "the complicated, and fugitive, and often equivocal phenomena of disease requiring in the observer a far greater portion of discriminating sagacity than those of Physics, strictly so called; resembling, in this respect, much more nearly, the phenomena about which Metaphysics, Ethics, and Politics, are conversant." Plausible as it seems, we are not perfect

ly sure that this observation is altogether correct. It may be perfectly true, as Mr S. asserts, that not a single passage occurs in Mr Locke's Essay, "savouring of the Anatomical Theatre, or of the Chemical Laboratory;" and Mr S. may, if he pleases, regard this as a proof of Mr Locke's superiority to men of understandings less comprehensive, and less cultivated by a liberal education; but still we cannot help thinking that Mr Locke had never been very zealous in his attachment to medical pursuits, and that he had never acquired that professional enthusiasm peculiar to those who are conversant with only one subject, which is theorigin of all pedantry. Hartley, Darwin, and Cabanis, are remarkable instances of that pre-disposition, which exists in nearly all medical men, to extend the principles, and even the details and technicalitics, of their own precarious science, to almost every other; and of that incapacity which seems somehow to be generated by anatomical demonstrations and physiological researches, of conceiving thought attached to any thing but a material and organised substance. The writings of physiologists might also be referred to, in illustration of our remark: for it would be difficult, if not impossible, to point out one, from Haller to Richerand and Abernethy, who has not either directly espoused, or tacitly and virtually inclined to, the most unqualified materialism. No man is better aware than Mr S. that the same charge has been frequently, and probably not altogether unjustly, brought even against Mr Locke. If, therefore, we were to draw any inference from a large induction of facts, it would certainly be, in opposition to the opinion expressed by Mr S. on this occasion, that the study of medicine is by no means 66 happily calculated to prepare the mind" for the prosecution of speculations connected with the Philosophy of the Human Mind. We are not sure that even the late Dr Thomas Brown, certainly one of the most acute Metaphysicians of his time, was altogether delivered from the bias of his medical education; as an example of which we would crave permission to refer to his very singular observations on what

he has been pleased to denominate "Muscular Feelings." (Physiology of the Mind, p. 48-49. Edin. 1820.) But to return from this digression: In 1666, Mr Locke, then in his thirty-fifth year, formed a very intimate acquaintance with the celebrated Lord Shaftesbury. This event led to a total revolution in the line of his studies, and in the habits of his life. His place of residence was forthwith transferred from the academic shades of the university to the bustle and excitement of the metropolis; and, for the first time, he began to turn his thoughts to political subjects. From London, too, he made occasional excursions to various parts of France, Germany, and Holland, for which last country, he always, like another great man, Descartes, expressed a decided preference; charmed, no doubt, with the sight of the happiness and prosperity of the Dutch, then enjoying the blessings of civil and religious liberty, to which his own countrymen were, at that time, unhappily strangers.

The plan of the Essay on Human Understanding is said to have been formed as early as the year 1670, although it was not carried into complete execution till the year 1687, when he availed himself of the leisure which his exile in Holland afforded to complete his long meditated design." Soon after the revolution, however, he returned to England, and published the first edition of his work in 1690. The detached and carptimsort of manner (if we may be permitted to say so) in which this wonderful performance was composed, is stated in the Prefatory Epistle to the Reader, and is too singular a fact in literary history to be here omitted. "Were it fit to trouble thee with the history of this Essay, I should tell thee, that five or six friends meeting at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject very remote from this, found themselves quickly at a stand by the difficulties that rose on every side. After we had a while puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course; and that, before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine

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our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were, were not, fitted to deal with. This I proposed to the company, who all readily assented, and thereupon it was agreed that this should be our first inquiry. Some hasty and undigested thoughts, on a subject I had never before considered, which I set down, against our next meeting, gave the first entrance into this discourse, which having been thus begun by chance, was continued by entreaty; written by incoherent parcels; and, after long intervals of neglect, resu med again, as my humour or occasions permitted; and at last, in a retirement, where an attendance on my health gave me leisure, it was brought into that order thou now seest it." "This discontinued way of writing," as Mr Locke himself describes it, would seem to account in a satisfactory manner for many of the peculiarities of the Essay on Human Understanding, one of which is, that "it is the fourth and last book alone which bears directly on the author's principal object;" and that, in this book, there are few, if any, references to the preceding parts of the Essay. The author himself, indeed, informs us, that "when he first put pen to paper, he thought all he should have to say on this matter would have been contained in one sheet of paper; but the farther he went, the larger prospect he had; new discoveries led him still on; and so it grew insensibly to the bulk it now appears in." From all which, we should be led to conclude, that, in the order of composition, the last book was first written, and that the other parts of the Essay were gradually developed in the author's mind while occupied with the original subject of inquiry. It may likewise be observed here, that the inquiries contained in the first and second books are more of a scholastic and abstract nature than those which we meet with in the sequel of the work; and that the third book,

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To the manner in which the Essay on Human Understanding has been shewn to have been composed, and to the consequent immethodical and arbitrary disposition of the materials, are undoubtedly to be ascribed those frequent unqualified propositions and apparent anomalies and contradictions which obtrude themselves on the attention of the diligent student, and which have been eagerly pounced upon by the numerous adversaries and opponents of Mr Locke, in order to secure the weight of his authority to give currency to doctrines which he had never dreamed of as deducible from his own opinions, and which he would have been the first man to disavow and condemn. In many cases, however, a little more patience, and a grain of honesty, might have satisfied these individuals that the incongruities upon which they were so prone to expatiate, would, in a great majority of instances, have either entirely vanished, or, at least, been greatly modified and extenuated, had one part of Mr Locke's performance been made the interpreter of the rest. Yet it must be confessed, that these exponential and qualifying clauses and limitations are frequently to be found at great distances from the doctrines which they respective ly modify, and that they are to be discovered only by those who seek the truth in the love of it, and whose great object is, not to accummulate materials for controversy, but to acquire, or disseminate, useful knowledge. In judging of an author like Mr Locke," the captiousness of verbal criticism" ought to yield to the exercise of a better principle, prompting us to seek for opportunities of praise rather than of censure, and to be more desirous to collate question able passages and reconcile apparent inconsistencies, than to exaggerate partial defects and to generalize incidental errors.

With that bearish dogmatism ingrained in his nature, Warburton asserts, that the Essay on Human Understanding, on its first appear

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ance, " had neither followers nor admirers, nor hardly a single approver.' Now the Bishop of Gloucester is contradicted, almost in express terms, by Lord Shaftesbury, who had no affection for Locke, but, on the contrary, whose ill-nature towards the gentlest, most placable, and most generous of human beings, does no sort of credit to his memory, otherwise overloaded with much well-merited opprobrium: “I am not sorry," says the author of the Characteristics to one of his correspondents," that I lent you Locke's Essay, a book that may as well qualify men for business and the world, as for the sciences and a university. No one has done more towards the recalling of philosophy from barbarity into use and practice of the world, and into the company of the better and polite sort, who might well be ashamed of it in its other dress. one has opened a better and clearer way to reasoning." In addition to the obvious inference to be derived from this passage it may be mentioned, that no less than four editions of the work were printed in ten years, and three others in four more, an incidental proof of which is, that the author refers to the sixth edition in the Epistle to the Reader prefixed to all the subsequent impressions. Before the year 1748, no less than thirteen editions had been given to the public. Is it possible that the Commentator of the Dunciad could have been ignorant of these conclusive facts, when he asserted, that, " at the time Mr Locke first published his Essay, he had neither followers nor admirers, and hardly a single approver?” Unless in the instance of the publications of Mr Stewart himself, such a

rapid succession of editions is quite unexampled in the History of Metaphysics; and it ought not to be forgotten, in stating this resemblance, what advantages and accomplishments, in point of skill, taste, and tact in composition, and what varied and almost infinite richness and splendor of illustration combine to render the Philosophical Works of the author before us, not merely the most popular of any that have ever issued from the press, but even to raise them to the rank of classical models in the particular science which

with a conspicuous place in the Dunciad. In a letter to Horace Walpole, Voltaire claims the merit of having been the first who made known to his countrymen Mr Locke's performance, of which he speaks in terms of such unqualified and extravagant commendation, as to justify the sus

the author has so successfully cultivated. "To a person," says M. S., "who reads with attention and candour the work in question, it is much more easy to enter into the prejudices which at first opposed themselves to its complete success, than to conceive how it should so soon have acquired its just celebrity. Something, I suspicion that he was but slenderly, if pect, must be ascribed to the political importance which Mr Locke had previously acquired as the champion of religious toleration; as the great apostle of the revolution; and as the intrepid opposer of a tyranny which had recently been overthrown."

Mr Locke's Essay was no less successful on the Continent than in his own country. The eagerness with which every thing proceeding from the pen of the author of the Letters on Toleration may be supposed to have been read by those numerous and enlightened individuals who had been expatriated by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantz, conjoined with the circumstance of Coste's excellent French Translation having appeared much about the same time, may be supposed to have greatly contributed to render the work popular. It is, however, curious to remark, that, although Locke was personally and extensively known in Holland, the Work does not appear to have been much read in that country beyond the immediate circle of the author's friends; which may be accounted for by the great favour with which the Cartesian Philosophy had just begun to be regarded in the Netherlands, where it had at first met with such resolute opposition. In Germany the case was nearly similar. At this time, Leibnitz (who had contracted some unaccountable jealousy towards Mr Locke) had reached the zenith of his literary and scientific reputation, and was looked up to (if we may employ the irreverent expressions of Baron Grimm) as the infallible Head of the Holy Philosophical Church in that country. It was in Switzerland that Locke's real merits were first discriminated and appreciated, as the reader will find, by consulting the Preface to the sensible performance of De Crousaz, whom Pope, in revenge for his acute exposition of the slender metaphysics of the Essay on Man, has honoured

at all, acquainted with the book which he appears so eager to eulogize."Locke seul a développé L'Intendement Humain, dans un livre où il n'y que des vérités; et ci qui rend l'ouvrage parfait, toutes ces vérités sont claires." The striking coincidence between many of the doctrines of Locke and Gassendi could hardly have been overlooked by the admirers and followers of the latter; especially if we consider that the translation of Coste, above alluded to, must have rendered the opinions of the English metaphysician easily accessible to his countrymen, and that, at this time, the Essay on Human Understanding was well known on other parts of the Continent. "One thing is certain," however, (we employ the words of our author) "that, long before the middle of the last century, the Essay on Human Understanding was not only read by the learned, but had made its way into the circles of fashion at Paris. In what manner this is to be accounted for, it is not easy to say; but the fact will not be disputed by those who are at all acquainted with the History of French Literature."

To enter at large into the particular doctrines on the subject of the Origin of our Ideas, either promulgated by Locke himself, or ascribed to him by such of his disciples as Condillac, Diderot, and Horne Tooke, is obviously incompatible with the limits to which, in this brief and therefore imperfect notice, we are necessarily confined: but we cannot, nevertheless, dismiss the subject without a word or two in reference to the monstrous absurdities which have at various times, and by different writers, been grafted on the Lockian Theory, and a few cursory remarks as to the special merits and defects of the classification in the Essay on Human Understanding. The expression of Condillac, that " ideas are nothing but transformed

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sensations," and the more expanded statement of Diderot, that every idea must necessarily, when brought to its state of ultimate decomposition, resolve itself into a sensible representation or picture;" (this is precisely the pervading principle of the analytical investigations in the Diversions of Purley;) and "since every thing in our understanding has been introduced there by the channel of sensation, whatever proceeds out of the understanding is either chimerical, or must be able, in returning by the same road, to re-attach itself to its sensible archetype;" as well as the allegation of Condorcet, that "Locke was the first who proved that all our ideas are compounded of sensations;" must all be regarded as very erroneous, not to say dangerous, expositions of Mr Locke's theory, which, moreover, is either grossly misrepresented, or totally misunderstood by the writers above alluded to, who seem to have taken certain dogmas for granted, as originated by Locke, without giving themselves the trouble to ascertain their accuracy or inaccuracy by an inspection of his works. This will be set in the clearest light by the following passage: "If it shall be demanded, When a man begins to have any ideas? I think the true answer is, When he first has any

sensation.

For since there appear not to be any ideas in the mind, before the senses have conveyed any, I conceive that ideas in the understanding are coeval with sensation. In time, however, the mind comes to reflect on its own operations, about the ideas got by sensation, and thereby stores itself with a new set of ideas, which I call Ideas of Reflection. These are the Impressions that are made on our senses by outward objects, that are extrinsical to the mind; and its own operations proeceding from powers intrinsical, and proper to itself, which, when reflected on by itself, become also objects of its contemplation, are, as I have said, The original of all our knowledge. (Essay on Human Understanding, pp. 79-80. London, 1753.) Numerous passages of the same tenor and import with the above might be produced from the Essay, and, in point of fact, Mr Stewart has inarshalled a whole array of them in his

elegant pages; sufficient, indeed, to convince the most determined follower of Diderot or Tooke, that their masters have totally mistaken, or, what is no less probable, misinterpreted the meaning of Mr Locke on the subject of the Origin of our Ideas. It cannot be supposed that we should stop here, to attempt to refute the sceptical conclusions that have been drawn, by various writers, both in France and England, from this mistaken view, or erroneous interpretation, of some unguarded passages in Mr Locke's Essay. This, indeed, is the less necessary, as Reid, Beattie, and particularly Mr Stewart, have already effected this desirable object in the ablest and most satisfactory manner. Suffice it to observe, that, when Mr Locke resolved the elements of all our knowledge into ideas of sensation and reflection, his theory is liable to be effectually assailed, not so much from its erroneous, as from its defective, classification. There are ideas in the human mind which cannot, without the greatest violence to language, and to the common sense of mankind, be arranged under either of the categories above named. The term Reflection, as employed by Mr Locke, is nearly, if not altogether, synonymous with the term Consciousness as applied by later philoso

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Philosophers to signify that immediate * "Consciousness is a word used by knowledge which we have of our present thoughts and purposes, and, in general, of all the present operations of our minds. Whence we may observe, that consciousness is only of things present. To apply consciousness to things past, which sometimes is done in popular discourse, is to confound consciousness with memory." (Essays on the Powers of the Human Mind, by T. Reid, D.D. F. R. S. E.— Edin. 1808. p. 10. 8vo. edit.) Dr Thos. Brown, with his usual acuteness, discerned the uselessness of this cumbrous phraseology, and has reduced the study of Me

taphysics to something more simple and

accessible than heretofore. "Conscious

ness," (says he, Physiology of the Mind, p. 25. Edin. 1820.) "in its widest sense, is truly nothing more than a general name, expressive of the whole variety of our feelings. In this sense, to feel, is to be conscious, and not to be conscious is not to feel." To show the reader in what a

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