If, indeed, the complication of the process could remove any difficulty which truly exists, or even any difficulty which is supposed to exist, the system might be more readily adopted by that human weakness, to which the removal of a single difficulty is of so much value. But the very attempt to remove the difficulty, is merely by presenting it in another form. Omnipotent, as the Creator is, he is still, like that mind which he has formed after his own image, a spiritual Being; and though there can be no question as to the extent of his power over matter, the operation of this infinite power is as little conceivable by us, in any other way than as a mere antecedence of change, as the reciprocal limited action of mind and matter, in man, and the objects which he perceives and moves. It is itself indeed, a proof of action of this very kind; and to state it, with the view of obviating any difficulty that may be supposed to be involved in the mutual influence of mind and matter, seems as absurd, as it would be for a sophist, who should profess to believe, from an examination of the wings of birds, that their heavy pinions are incapable of bearing them through the air, to illustrate his paradox by the majestic soaring of the eagle, when he mounts still higher and higher through the sunshine that encircles him, before he stoops from his height above the clouds, to the cliffs which he deigns to make his lowly home. The system of occasional causes, though it ceased to be known, or at least to be adopted, under that name, has not the less continued, by a mere change of denomination, to receive the assent of philosophers, who rejected it under its ancient name. It is, indeed, the spirit of this system alone, which gives any sense whatever to the distinction that is universally made of causes, as physical and efficient,—a distinction which implies, that, beside the antecedents and consequents, in a series of changes, which are supposed to have no mutual influence, and might, therefore, be antecedent and consequent in any other order, there is some intervening agency, which is, in every event of the series, the true efficient. Matter, in short, does not act on mind, nor mind on matter. The physical cause, in this nomenclature, that exists for no purpose, as being absolutely inefficient; or, in other words, absolutely incapable of producing any change whatever, is the occasional cause of the other nomenclature, and nothing more; and all which was cumbrous and superfluous in the one, is equally cumbrous and superfluous in the other. On this subject, however, which I have discussed at large in my work on Cause and Effect, I need not add any remarks to those which I offered in an early part of the course. It is sufficient, at present, to point out the absolute identity of the two doctrines in every thing but in name. The next system to which I would direct your attention, is that of Malebranche, who is, indeed, to be ranked among the principal assertors of the doctrine of occasional causes, which we have now been considering, but who, in addition to this general doctrine, had peculiar views of the nature of perception. His opinions, on this subject, are delivered, at great length, in the second volume of his Search of Truth-La Recherche de la Verité-a work which is distinguished by much eloquence, and by many very profound remarks on the sources of human error, but which is itself an example, in the great system which it supports, of error as striking as any of those which it eloquently and profoundly discusses. It is truly unfortunate for his reputation as a philosopher, that these discussions do not form a separate work, but are blended with his own erroneous system, the outline of which every one knows too well, to think of studying its details. All that is necessary, to give him his just reputation, is merely that he should have written less. He is at present known, chiefly as the author of a very absurd hypothesis. He would have been known, and studied, and honoured, as a very acute observer of our nature, if he had never composed those parts of his work, to which, probably, when he thought of other generations, he looked as to the basis of his philosophic fame. His hypothesis, as many of you probably know, is, that we perceive not objects themselves, but the ideas of them which are in God. He begins his supposed demonstration of this paradox with a sort of negative proof, by attempting to show the inadequacy of every other mode of accounting for our perception of the ideas of things; for I need scarcely state to you, what is involved in the very enunciation of his metaphysical theorem, that he regards ideas as distinct from perception itself, not the mind affected in a certain manner, but something separate and independent of the mind. 66 He then proceeds to his positive proof, asserting, in the first place, that it is "absolutely necessary that God should have in himself the ideas of all the beings which he has created, since otherwise he could not have produced them ;" and, in the second place, that God is united to our soul by his presence, so that he may be said to have that relation of place to the mind, which space has to body."+ Wherever the human mind is, there God is, and consequently all the ideas which are in God. We have thus a fund of all the ideas necessary for perception, and a fund, which, in consequence of the ubiquity of the divine mind, is ever present, requiring, therefore, for our perception of them, only that divine will, without which no change can take place. That perception takes place, by the presence of this one stock of ideas eternally present in the divine mind, with which every other mind is united,rather than by the creation of an infinite number of ideas in each separate mind, he conceives to be proved by various reasons,-by the greater simplicity of this mode, by its peculiar consistency with that state of dependence on the divine Being, as the source of all light, in which the mind of man is represented in many passages of Scripture, by various notions, such as those of infinity, genera, species, &c. the universality of which he conceived to be inconsistent with the absolute unity and limitation of every idea, that does not derive a sort of infinity from the mind in which it exists,-and by some other reasons, very mystical and very feeble, in which, though it may not be difficult to discover what their author meant, it is certainly very difficult to conceive, how a mind so acute as his, could have been influenced by them. It is, indeed, only this relation of the mind of Malebranche to his own very strange hypothesis, which there is any interest in tracing; for, though I have thought it my duty to give you a slight sketch of the hypothesis itself, as a part of the general history of our science, with which the reputation and genius of its author render it necessary for you to have some acquaintance, I am far from thinking that it can throw any light on our speculations, in the present improved state of the Science of Mind. I shall not waste your time, therefore, with pointing out to you the innumerable objections to his hypothesis, which, after the view already given by me of the simple process of * Recherche de la Verité, Liv. III. c. vi. VOL. I. 39 t Ibid. perception, are, I trust, so manifest, as not to require to be pointed out. It may be more interesting to consider, in the history of the Philosophy of Mind, what circumstances led to the formation of the hypothesis. In the first place I may remark, that, notwithstanding his veneration for the greater number of the opinions of Des Cartes, Malebranche unfortunately had not adopted the very enlightened views of that eminent philosopher, with respect to the nature of ideas. He considered them as existing distinct from the sentient or percipient mind,-and, reasoning very justly from this error, inferred their presence in the mind of the Deity,-who formed the universe, not casually, but according to conceptions, that must have preceded creation, -the archetypes, or exemplars, of all that was to be created. This opinion, as to the eternal forms subsisting in the divine mind, agrees exactly with that of Plato, in one of the most celebrated of his doctrines, and certainly one of the most poetical,-which, though a term of praise that usually does not imply much excellence of philosophy, is the species of praise to which the philosophy of Plato has the justest claim. It has been delivered, in very powerful verse, by one of our own poets, who describes himself as, in science, a follower of the genius of ancient Greece, and who was worthy of the inspiring presence of that majestic guide : · "Ere the radiant sun Sprang from the east, or 'mid the vault of night Ere mountains, woods, or streams, adorn'd the globe Or Wisdom taught the sons of men her lore,— Then lived the Almighty One, then, deep retired In his unfathom'd essence, view'd the forms, The forms eternal of created things; The radiant sun, the moon's nocturnal lamp, The mountains, woods, and streams, the rolling globe, Of days, on them, his love divine, he fix'd His admiration, till, in time complete, Of life, informing each organic frame; Hence, the green earth, and wild resounding waves; It is in the writings of St. Augustine, however,-who had himself imbibed a considerable portion of the spirit of the Platonic philosophy, that the true source of the hypothesis, which we are now reviewing, is to be found. This very eminent father of the church,-whose acuteness and eloquence would have entitled him to very high consideration, even though his works had related to subjects less interesting to man, than those noble subjects of which they treat, seems to have met with peculiar honour from the French theologians, and to have given a very evident direction to their intellectual inquiries. It is indeed impossible to read the works of any of the theological metaphysicians of that country, without meeting with constant references to the opinions of St. Austin, and an implied reference, even where it is not expressed, particularly. to the very opinions most analogous to those of Malebranche. The opinion of Augustine, to which I particularly allude, is that which Pleasures of Imagination, Book I. v. 59-78. forms the principal doctrine of his metaphysical philosophy,—that there is a supreme eternal universal Truth, which is intimately present to every mind, and in which all minds alike perceive the truths, which all alike are, as it were, necessitated to believe,-the truths of arithmetic and geometry, for example, and the primary essential truths of morality. These truths we feel to be eternal, because we feel that they are not contingent on the existence of those who perceive them, but were, and are, and must for ever be the same; and we feel also, that the truth is one, whatever be the number of individuals that perceive it, and is not converted into many truths, merely by the multitude of believers. "If," says he, "in discoursing of any truth, I perceive that to be true which you say, and you perceive that to be true which I say,-where, I pray you, do we both see this at the very moment? I certainly see it not in you, nor you in me, but both see it in that unchangeable truth, which is beyond and above our individual minds. 'Si ambo videmus verum esse quod dicis, et ambo videmus verum esse quod dico, ubi, quæso, id videmus? Nec ego utique in te, nec tu in me; sed ambo in ipsa quæ supra mentes nostras est, incommutabili veritate." " You must not conceive that I am contending for the justness of the opinion which I am now stating to you-I state it merely as illustrative of the system of Malebranche. If we suppose, with Augustine, that there is one eternal Truth, which contains all truths, and is present to all minds that perceive in it the truths which it contains, it is but one step more, and scarcely one step more, to believe that our ideas of all things are contained and perceived in one omnipresent Mind, to which all other minds are united, and which is itself the eternal Truth, that is present to all. Indeed, some of the passages which are quoted in the Search of Truth, from St. Austin, show how strongly the author conceived his own opinions to be sanctioned by that ancient authority. For some of the happiest applications which have been made of this very ancient system of Christian metaphysics, I may refer you particularly to the works of Fenelon,-to his demonstration of the existence of God, for example, in which many of the most abstract subtleties of the Metaphysics of Augustine become living and eloquent, in the reasonings of this amiable writer, who knew so well how to give, to every subject which he treated, the tenderness of his own heart, and the persuasion and devout confidence of his own undoubting belief. In this Protestant country, in which the attention of theologians has been almost exclusively devoted to the Scriptures themselves, and little comparative attention paid to the writings of the Fathers,-unless, as strictly illustrative of the texts of Scripture, or of the mere History of the Church,—the influence of the metaphysical opinions of St. Austin is less to be traced; and the argument drawn from the eternal omnipresent ideas of unity, and number and infinity, on which so much stress is laid by Catholic philosophers, in demonstrating the existence of God, is hence scarcely to be found at all, or, at least, occupies a very inconsiderable place, in the numerous works of our countrymen, on the same great subject. The system of Malebranche might indeed have arisen in this country; for we have had writers, who, without his genius, have adopted his errors; but there can be no doubt, that it was, by its very nature, much more likely to arise, in the country which actually produced it. LECTURE XXXI. HISTORY OF OPINIONS REGARDING PERCEPTION, CONCLUDED ON THE EXTERNAL AFFECTIONS COMBINED WITH DESIRE, OR ON ATTENTION. IN In my last Lecture, gentlemen, I gave you a slight sketch of some theories, or, to speak more accurately, of some hypothetical conjectures, which have been formed with respect to perception,-pointing out to you, at the same time, the two supposed difficulties which appear to me to have led to them, in false views of the real objects of perception, and of the nature of causation; the difficulty of accounting, with these false views, for the supposed perception of objects at a distance, and for the agency of matter on a substance, so little capable as mind, of being linked with it, by any common bond of connexion. Of such hypotheses, we considered three,--the doctrine of the Peripatetics as to perception by species, or shadowy films, that flow from the object to the organ, the Cartesian doctrine of the indirect subserviency of external objects, as the mere occasions on which the Deity himself, in every instance, produces in the mind the state which is termed perception,-and the particular doctrine of Malebranche, himself a zealous defender of that general doctrine of occasional causes, as to the perception of objects, or rather of the ideas of objects in the divine mind. The only remaining hypothesis, which deserves to be noticed, is a very celebrated one, of Leibnitz, the doctrine of the pre-established harmony, which, I have no doubt, originated in the same false view of the necessity of some connecting link in causation; and was intended, therefore, like the others, to obviate the supposed difficulty of the action of matter on mind, and of mind on matter. According to this doctrine, the body never acts on the mind, nor the mind on the body, but the motions of the one, and the feelings of the other, are absolutely independent, having as little influence on each other, as they have on any other mind and body. The mind feels pain, when the body is bruised, but, from the pre-established order of its own affections, it would have felt exactly the same pain, though the body at that moment, had been resting upon roses. The arm, indeed, moves at the very moment, when the mind has willed its motion; but, it moves of itself, in consequence of its own pre-established order of movement, and would move therefore, equally, at that very moment, though the mind had wished it to remain at rest. The exact correspondence of the motions and feelings, which we observe, arises merely from the exactness of the choice of the Deity, in uniting with a body, that was formed by Him, to have of itself, a certain order of independent motions, a mind, that was formed of itself to have a certain order of independent but corresponding feelings. In the unerring exactness of this choice, and mutual adaptation, consists the exquisiteness of the harmony. But, however exquisite, it is still a harmony only, without the slightest reciprocal action. The mind, and its organic frame, are, in this system,-to borrow the illustration of it which is commonly used,-like two time-pieces, which have no |