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for this branch of study, an appellation should have been pitched upon, which seems to take for granted, in its etymological import, the truth of a hypothesis, which has not only been completely exploded for more than fifty years, but which has been shewn to be the prolific parent of half the absurdities both of ancient and modern metaphysicians.'— pp. 112-13.

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In Britain, however, notwithstanding our more advanced progress in the philosophy of the mind, there is one class of writers whose doctrines upon the origin of ideas are to the full as extravagant as those of the French theorists to whom we have alluded. This is the physiologico-metaphysical class-a class, says Mr. Stewart, which distinguishes itself by a creed made up of scholastic metaphysics and hypothetical physiology.' The fourth essay consists of some very pointed strictures upon this class of theorists, of whom the most noted are Hartley, Priestley, and Darwin. They all agree that the ideas of sensation are the elements of which all others are compounded; and Dr. Darwin even goes so far as to say that < ideas are material things,' and reasons about them as such through the whole of his book.

In this respect,' says Mr. Stewart, our English physiologists have far exceeded Diderot himself, who ventured no further than to affirm, that" every idea must necessarily resolve itself ultimately into a sensible representation or picture." This language of Diderot's, (a relic of the old ideal system,) they have not only rejected with contempt, but they have insisted, that when it was used by the Aristotelians, by Des Cartes and by Locke, it was meant by them to be understood only as a figure or metaphor. They have accordingly substituted instead of it, the supposition, that the immediate objects of thought are either particles of the medullary substance of the brain, or vibrations of these particles,―a supposition which, according to my apprehension of it, is infinitely more repugnant to common sense, than the more enigmatical and oracular language transmitted to us from the dark ages;--while, with all its mechanical apparatus, it does not even touch that difficulty concerning the origin of our knowledge, of which the images and species of the schoolmen sufficiently shew, that these subtle disputants were not altogether unaware.'-p. 139.

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For this notable absurdity of the materiality of ideas our modern physiological metaphysicians seem to have gone back to the works of Sir Kenelm Digby, and Dr. Hooke. The latter, in a curious passage of his Cutlerian Lectures tells us that there is a continued chain of ideas coiled up in the brain,' and that the substance of this organ is the material out of which these ideas are formed.'-It is with some difficulty that Mr. Stewart maintains his usual philosophical composure while adverting to the doctrines of this class of metaphysicians; and in one place, indeed, he so far gives way to his contempt as to say, that any serious refutation of

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their

their hypothesis of the materiality of ideas would be just as ridiculous as Seneca's grave reply to some of his stoical predecessors who maintained that the cardinal virtues are animals. The whole of Dr. Darwin's metaphysical speculations afford, he thinks, an instructive illustration of the profound remark of Bacon, that men of confined scientific pursuits are apt, when they afterwards betake themselves to philosophy and general contemplations, to wrest and corrupt them with their former conceits.'

The influence of Dr. Darwin's medical occupations on his habits of thinking, may be traced,' he observes, in almost every page of his works, both philosophical and poetical;-not only in the phisiological language in which he uniformly describes our mental operations, but even in his detached theories upon the various incidental questions which he has started. It is sufficient to mention, as instances, his account of the mechanical process by which the human countenance is first moulded into a smile;—and his theory of beautiful forms, deduced from the pleasurable sensations, associated by an infant with the bosom of its nurse. The enthusiastic praise which he bestows upon a conjecture of Mr. Hume's, "that the world may possibly have been generated rather than created," is perhaps explicable, in part, on the same principle.'-p. 143.

The last, and perhaps the most original and profound, of the first series of essays, is directed against some late philological speculations, which have been thought to afford an inductive demonstration of the doctrine which derives all our knowledge immediately from the senses, and even to go far to prove the materiality of the thinking principle. Mr. Stewart here chiefly alludes to the etymological doctrines and researches of Mr. Tooke, and the conclusions to which they have been supposed to be subservient by the author of Zoonomia, and others of the same school. It is maintained by Mr. Tooke, that in order to ascertain the philosophical import of any word, it is necessary to trace it historically through all its changes to its primitive and literal signification; and that the philosopher who annexes to it any meaning, at all different from its primitive and literal meaning, imposes equally upon himself and on others. No one who recollects that the philosophy of the mind has no specific or appropriate phraseology can be at a loss to perceive to what conclusions this principle, if it were admitted as sound, would lead. Among other consequences, it must follow that all our ideas are strictly referable to the senses, and to them alone, because all the terms by which they are denoted are literally applicable only to the qualities and phenomena of material things.

In truth,' says Mr. Stewart, it is upon this general principle, combined with a fact universally acknowledged among philosophers, (the impossibility of speaking about mind or its phenomena, without employing a metaphorical phraseology,) that so many of our late philologists

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and grammarians, dazzled with the discoveries which they have made, have shewn a disposition to conclude, (as Diderot and Helvetius formerly did from other principles,) that the only real knowledge we possess relates to the objects of our external senses; and that we can annex no idea to the word mind itself, but that of matter in the most subtile and attenuated form which imagination can lend it.'—p. 169.

Nothing, we confess, ever appeared to us more weak or extravagant, than to attempt to deduce the philosophical theory of the mind, from its metaphorical and analogical phraseology. The transference of words originally applied to matter and its phenomena to the qualities of mind, was, as Mr. Stewart justly observes, the natural consequence of our perceptive powers having been long and incessantly exercised upon matter, before the phenomena of mind became objects of attention. It was natural, when terms came to be wanted for these after objects of knowledge, that they should be taken from things long and familiarly known. It may amuse and gratify the philologer to show that even the terms which denote our most abstracted thoughts were at first borrowed from material phenomena; but it is very necessary to remind him, says Mr. Stewart, that these etymological discoveries can never interfere with our actual conceptions of the objects of our conscious

ness.

After the philologer has told us (for example) that imagination is borrowed from an optical image, and acuteness from a Latin word, denoting the sharpness of a material instrument, we are no more advanced in studying the theory of the human intellect, than we should be in our speculations concerning the functions of money, or the political effects of the national debt, by learning, from Latin etymologists, that the word pecunia, and the phrase aes alienum had both a reference, in their first origin, to certain circumstances in the early state of Roinan manners. It appears to me,' he adds, that to appeal to etymology in a philosophical argument (excepting, perhaps, in those cases where the word itself is of philosophical origin) is altogether nugatory; and can serve, at the best, to throw an amusing light on the laws which regulate the operations of human fancy.'-pp. 161-166.

Mr. Stewart shows very satisfactorily, that it was indispensably necessary, towards the communication of thought, to borrow from the familiar objects of sense such words as came to be wanted to express new ideas about things abstracted from matter; and therefore he adds, nature seems to have given the mind a tendency to express itself metaphorically or analogically upon such occasions. In this way, the same circumstances which open an easier vent to the utterance of the speaker, must necessarily contribute powerfully to assist and prompt the apprehension of the hearer.

The prevalence of this tendency has been often,' he says, 're

marked

marked among rude nations; and has been commonly accounted for, partly from the warmth of imagination supposed to be peculiarly characteristical of savages, and partly from the imperfections of their scanty vocabularies. The truth, however, is, that the same disposition is exhibited by man in every stage of his progress; prompting him uniformly, whenever the enlargement of his knowledge requires the use of a new word for the communication of his meaning, instead of coining at once a sound altogether arbitrary, to assist, as far as possible, the apprehension of his hearers, either by the happy employment of some old word in a metaphorical sense, or by grafting etymologically on some well known stock, a new derivative, significant, to his own fancy, of the thought he wishes to impart.'-p. 150.

In farther illustration of this tendency of the mind to enrich language, rather by a modification of the old than by a creation of new materials, he remarks, that it is owing to this cause

that the number of primitive or radical words, in a cultivated tongue, bears so small a proportion to the whole amount of its vocabulary. In an original language, such as the Greek, the truth of this remark may be easily verified; and, accordingly, it is asserted by Mr. Smith, that the number of its primitives does not exceed three hundred. In the compounded languages now spoken in Europe, it is a much more difficult task to establish the fact; but an irresistible presumption in its favour arises from this circumstance, that all who have turned their attention of late, in this island, to the study of etymology, are impressed with a deep and increasing conviction, founded on the discoveries which have been already made, that this branch of learning is still in its infancy; and that the roots of an immense variety of words, commonly supposed to be genuine radicals, may be traced, in a satisfactory manner, to the Saxon or to the Icelandic. The delight which all men, however unlettered, take in indulging their crude conjectures on the etymological questions which are occasionally started in conversation, is founded on the same circumstance; their experimental knowledge of the difficulty of introducing into popular speech a new sound, entirely arbitrary in its selection, and coined out of materials unemployed before.' p. 151.

From these considerations Mr. Stewart draws the conclusion, that the application to the mind of words borrowed from the properties of matter, is only the natural and necessary consequence of that progressive order in which the mind becomes acquainted with the different objects of its knowledge, and of those general laws which govern human thought in the employment of arbitrary signs.'

In order the more strongly to show that the metaphors we employ in speaking of the mental phenomena, have no connection with our actual notions of them, or with their philosophical theory, Mr. Stewart aptly appeals to the fact that a variety of metaphors may be applied with equal propriety and significancy to the

same

same phenomena. What numerous and incongruous images do we not apply to memory for example! We liken it indiscriminately to a tablet, to a canvas, and to a receptacle; and to the sound philosopher, no inconvenience can arise from these incongruous and hypothetical expressions; because he rests his reasonings upon the thing signified, and not upon the sign. But to him who attempts to philosophize about our faculties upon Mr. Tooke's plan, this variety must be extremely embarrassing. To an inquirer of this description it may not,' says Mr. Stewart, be improper to hint, that the several hypotheses involved in the various metaphors alluded to are completely exclusive of each other; and to submit to his consideration, whether the indiscriminate use, among all our most precise writers, of these obviously inconsistent images, does not justify us in concluding, that none of them has any connection with the true theory of the phenomena which he conceives them to explain; and that they deserve the attention of the metaphysician, merely as familiar illustrations of the mighty influence exerted over our most abstracted thoughts, by language and by early associations.'

The total proscription of figurative terms from all abstract discussions, has been recommended by some philosophical grammarians, as the only means of avoiding errors similar to those which have misled Mr. Tooke. Mr. Stewart shows in a very few words that the execution of such a scheme would be found wholly impracticable; acutely observing, that the only effectual remedy against the inconvenience to which these writers allude is, to vary, from time to time, the metaphors we employ, so as to prevent any one of them from acquiring an undue ascendent over the others, either in our own minds or in those of our readers.'-' It is by the exclusive use of some favourite figure,' he adds, 'that careless thinkers are gradually led to mistake a simile or distant analogy for a legitimate theory.'

Some late metaphysicians, too easily misled by etymological fancies, have stated with confidence that the figurative language applied to the mind, affords a proof that the doctrine of its materiality is agreeable even to general belief; and that the opposite hypothesis has originated in the blunder of confounding what is very minute, with what is immaterial. These writers, says Mr. Stewart, would do well to examine the circumstances which have led men, in all ages, to apply to the thinking principle some appellation syuonymous with spiritus or veuμa; and in other cases to liken it to a spark of fire, or some other of the most impalpable and mysterious modifications of matter. The sequel of his argument upon this point is animated and beautiful.

Whence this diposition to attenuate and subtilize, to the very verge of

existence,

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