wrong our apprehensions of eternity, and our hopes of future good? What has dead material mechanism to do with thoughts such as these? Yet are they, by God's law, bound up in personal consciousness within the framework of our bodies. Of all the material illustrations of our Author's work, the most worthless inconsequential and absurd, are, I think, those he professes to draw from the calculating machine of Mr. Babbage.

§ 10. On the Ideal Theory of Locke—imperfections of his Analysis. Schools of the Idealist and the Sensualist. Mischief of setting up Idealism as the interpreter of material nature, illustrated by the works of Oken, &c.

I have endeavoured, in the following Discourse*, to point out some of the imperfections in the great Essay of Locke on the Human Understanding. We readily admit that there is, in the uninformed mind, no innate knowledge of external nature, and no innate universal propositions expressing human judgments anterior to all acquired knowledge. But there are born with us many well-defined, inherent principles and capacities whereby, in every human being of sound mind, knowledge resolves itself into certain forms of thought, and certain natural judgments of things without us: and these forms of thought are as much a part of our nature as our conceptions from the sense of sight. The mind of man, in the reception of its first elements

Infra, pp. 45-56.

of knowledge, cannot with any truth be likened (as has been done by Locke) to a sheet of blank paper. The analogy would be far more true were the mind of man likened to a sheet of paper, prepared by chemical skill, which shews some picture or design the moment the light is made to shine upon it.

Neither do I believe in the "ideal theory" of Locke, if by these words he meant anything beyond the first natural perceptions we derive from the impressions on our senses. With the exception of the sense of sight, there is nothing like an intervening picture between any object that impresses our senses and the first conceptions we form of it. And in the sense of sight, the picture on the expanded filaments of the optic nerve is nothing more than a material impression on the organ subservient to the sense and there is no intervening idea, or form, between that impression and the first perceptions we derive from the sense of sight. Our first perceptions derived through the senses are our first ideas. Neither is it, I believe, true that the mind is really passive in the acquisition of its first sensual perceptions or ideas. From first to last the mind is active, though acting in subordination to the rigid laws of nature. Neither is there any truth in the "ideal theory," in the sense in which these words have been so often used; nor can the mind in any parts of its progress, from the first glimmerings of its knowledge, be compared, with a show of truth, to a dead sheet of blank paper on which ideas are traced, independently of the mind itself, by the hand of nature.

On these questions we owe, I think, a very deep debt of gratitude to the common-sense metaphysical school of Scotland*.

I know, full well, the imperfection and feebleness of the metaphysical parts of the following Discourse; and to any academic reader who wishes to follow out the subjects I have hardly touched on, I would recommend the critical discussion of Locke's Essay in the Lectures of Victor Cousin; which may perhaps be used both as a guide and a safeguard, should he wish to pass onwards to the higher transcendental speculations of the German schoolt. The works of this writer have, by some men, been sneered at and undervalued because they are critical and eclectic. But this may be, and often is, a first-rate merit. There can be no end to the motley forms of science if every succeeding author is to give us a new system. Because we reject some part of the scheme of Locke, or think that the common-sense, inductive school of Scotland has fallen short of a perfect system :-because we think that the idealism of the German school may have been pushed too far, by shutting from our view the true foundations

* Brown contends-that Locke has been misunderstood that by the word idea he never meant to affirm that there was, except perhaps in the sense of sight, a real picture or image between an external object and the percipient mind-that he only used the word idea figuratively; his language being that in current use, and tinged, sometimes unconsciously to himself, by opinions (not his own) of the philosophers who had gone before him. Cousin takes a contrary view. The discussion of this point is of no importance to my present purpose: but I may state, by the way, that Locke has often expressed himself ambiguously and incautiously, if he did not hold the views attributed to him by Reid and Cousin.

+ L'Histoire de la Philosophie, Vol. 11. Lecture VI. to Lecture xxv. Paris, Edition 1829.

of that great mass of material knowledge which rests on the evidence of our senses, and is, therefore, fundamentally empirical or sensual:-because we believe all this, it follows not that we are to deny the good that is already done, or to close our eyes to the great truths that have been in part unfolded. No system of psychology has perhaps yet been published, or ever will be published, in such a form as to contain the whole essence of metaphysical truth.

When I addressed the members of Trinity College at the Annual Commemoration of 1832, I had not read the Lectures of Professor Cousin, and I hardly knew his work by name: but the following sentence (from the conclusion of his twenty-second Lecture) contains a kind of summary of his views, and expresses very simply some of the truths shadowed forth in the following Discourse. "Il n'y a pas d'idées innées, il n'y a pas de propositions innées, attendu qu'il n'y a ni idées ni propositions réellement existantes; et encore, il n'y a pas d'idées et de propositions générales, universellement et primitivement admises sous la forme d'idées et de propositions générales; mais il est certain que l'entendement de tous les hommes est gros en quelque sorte de jugemens naturels, et que l'on peut dire innés, en ce sens qu'ils sont le développement primitif, universel et nécessaire de l'entendement humain."

We all admit the comprehensive truth of the old adage as applied to material science, Nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu. Experience is the beginning and occasion of all knowledge: but it is not knowledge

before it has been moulded into a new and better form by the innate powers of the mind itself. The adage taken in its nakedness tells us but half the truth. To give it its full meaning we must add another clause, first given to it by Leibnitz, and it then stands as follows, and is pregnant with truth and meaning: Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius in sensu præter intellectum ipsum. The very knowledge we first acquire by experience, forces us, by a true logical necessity, towards a contemplation of certain indwelling faculties of the mind which must exist before all experience; and without which (as is well observed by Kant and Coleridge, and the whole modern school of Idealists,) experience itself would be impossible.

in

In the following extract Professor Cousin describes, very clear terms, the difference between the two opposed schools of psychology (the idealist and the sensual or empirical); and at the same time indicates the weak points of both :- En général, l'idéalisme néglige plus ou moins la question de l'origine des idées, et ne les envisage guère que dans leurs caractères actuels. Se plaçant d'abord au faite de l'entendement développé comme il l'est aujourd'hui, il n'en recherche pas les acquisitions successives et le développement historique....il part de la raison et non de l'expérience. Locke, au contraire, préoccupé de la question de l'origine des idées, en néglige les charactères actuels, confond leur condition chronologique avec leur fondement logique, et la puissance de la raison avec celle de l'experience, qui la précède et la guide, mais ne la constitue pas.-L'expérience, mise à sa juste place,