ably true; and the contrary of them cannot be conceived by insanity itself.

It may perhaps be thought, that the discrimination of contingent from necessary truth is, in practice, of little consequence; but we happen to judge otherwise. Practice, in truth, discovers the utility of the distinction. If reasoning on contingent truths is, from its nature, exposed to fallacy, our knowledge in this department arises almost entirely from the power of generalizing our observations; and both in the observation and in the inference we may be deceived. In the one, we may be misled by false appearances; in the other, deceived by false analogies.

As the writer before us seems somewhat to lean to the heresies of Locke on these subjects, we may be permitted to observe, a little more at length, on the uncertainty of the knowledge derived from observation. In generalizing, it is generally allowed, that we are much exposed to error; but it does not seem to be suffi ciently considered, that much of what seems to be simple observation, is nothing but generalization in disguise; and that the senses have frequently the credit of suggesting what, in effect, consists merely of inferences from their testimony. An astronomer scruples not to affirm, that he is observing the heavenly bodies, when he is observing only their images in his reflector. A man standing at a window, looks on a field thick with corn, and remarks, that light successive shadows occasionally fly over its surface, and that the surface itself appears in constant and gentle agitation. In the position which he occupies, he perhaps can neither feel a single breath of air, nor perceive a single cloud in the atmosphere; yet he unhesitatingly affirms, that he sees the corn fanned by the wind, and that he sees the shadows of clouds occasionally passing over it. It is manifest, that here, while he is, in semblance, barely describing a certain appearance in nature, he is in reality applying to that appearance the general results furnished by his previous observation. Ideas long and intimately associated, imperceptibly become representatives of each other, exactly as terms metaphorically used, are at length turned into a literal signification of the objects which, before, they figuratively designated.

The same thing occurs in philosophical experiment. Before, for example, it had been suspected that the vibrations of a pendulum were affected by its geographical situation in point of latitude, no man would have scrupled to employ one of a given length, as a measure of comparative duration, at any two points upon the globe. Having so employed it, he might have asserted, on the ground of personal and careful observation, the equality

of

of two portions of time measured in different latitudes, and in truth very different from each other. His mistake, it is clear, would have arisen, not from the fallibility of his senses, but from a precipitate and erroneous application of the general maxim, that the laws of nature are uniform. It would be easy to cite examples of similar errors that have actually sprung from similar

causes.

A student indeed of human nature would find it a subject of truly curious speculation, to observe how much of life is inevitably disposed of on trust, and how far that presumption from appearances, of which we have spoken, necessarily extends. I land on a foreign coast, and cast my eyes on a near object, which I affirm to be a tree. I afterwards affirm it to have been such, and should, without hesitation, repeat the affirmation even in a court of justice. What is it that, in fact, I see on this occasion? Only an irregular and graceful outline, filled up with an agreeable variety of lights and colours. The difference is immense between what I see, and what, by the term employed, I virtually predicate of it. I predicate of it, that if I were to approach it, I should feel it to be a solid body, consisting of various hardness and texture; that, if the earth immediately about it were removed, I should find a continuation of that substance which I call the stem, and this again broken into ramifications similar to those which I denominate the branches; that on penetrating, with a sharp instrument, the rough outer rind of the stem, I should find another substance, of a different colour, harder, and less porous; and, within that, another of still different texture, which I call the pith; that on a close examination of the leaves, I should discover them to be full of minute woody threads interlaced with a pulpy fibrous substance of the most exquisite woof; and that the whole of this wonderful structure is provided with innumerable tubes and ducts, which communicate moisture from the earth to every part. My assertion also conveys, that the object which I see has gradually arisen from a small seed deposited within the soil, or else was originally a small portion cut off from a similar production of nature, and set in the ground; and that it, from time to time, produces seeds which are capable of expanding into organic bodies resembling itself. I imply, further, that this vegetable structure will at length decay and finally mix with the earth; that, if deprived beyond a certain time, of rain, heat and light, it will languish; that, if forcibly separated from the soil, its organic life will cease; and that, if placed in fire, it will be consumed. It is of little consequence to urge, that all these particulars, and many more that might be mentioned, are

hardly within my remotest contemplation, when I pronounce the word tree. It may be enough to reply, that, if questioned on the meaning of the term, I should, without any demur, resolve it into these very particulars, or, at least, should refer the inquirer to some better authority by which he would find them distinctly enunciated. Yet it is possible that the vast mass of presump-. tions on which, in this instance, I have proceeded, may be utterly baseless. It is possible that I may have been deceived by one of those perfect and learned imitations of nature, of which, rare as they are, we know painting to be capable.

These remarks will surely not be considered as sanctioning any thing like scepticism, as the term is commonly understood, in philosophy. We would only preserve inviolate the landmarks which nature has placed between the various objects that employ the human reason.

We are now called to leave this train of reflection, on which we have but imperfectly delivered ourselves, and to offer a few remarks on the subject more immediately connected with this article. To classify indeed the various species of moral evidence, is an undertaking rather too colossal for our limits. All that we can even attempt to effect, on the present occasion, is a general distribution of them.

The materials of moral reasoning are evidently furnished by our senses; but our senses would be completely inefficient in the matter, or at the best would be efficient in vain, were it not for the conviction,-which, if not born with us, is the earliest result of our observation,-that the course of nature is governed by invariable laws. This conviction extends to human testimony, in which, it has long been remarked, children appear to have an unbounded confidence. Testimony, being thus accredited by our experience, fully repays the service, by enabling us to add, at pleasure, to our own stock of experience all the asserted or recorded experience of mankind. Yet, though testimony may thus be considered as acting only by virtue of our previous experience, it may fairly in the classification of the species of moral evidence, be considered separately, and as forming a division by itself. Moral evidence is thus distributed into two great classes—observation and testimony.

This account, however, of the origin of our reliance on testimony, involves, as our readers well know, an arduous controversy. The whole question seems, to us, this;-whether our belief in human testimony be an ultimate principle, or be referrible to that general confidence in the regularity of the laws of nature, which all parties allow to be, if not an original, yet a

very

very early inmate of the human breast. We need hardly remark, that the onus probandi lies on the abettors of the former opinion, the spirit of philosophy requiring us to accept the simpler of two explanations, if it afford an equally satisfactory account of the phenomena to be explained.

The argument urged by Reid, Campbell, Adam Smith, and Professor Stewart, in favour of the instinctive principle of creduli ty, or as it should rather, in our judgment, be termed, the principle of credence, amounts to this, that infants repose an implicit reliance on testimony, while their experience is yet too limited to afford them any proof, from facts, of its credibility. In fact, they believe every thing; and the experience of advanced life, far from augmenting, gradually corrects and diminishes their credulity.

To this argument a decisive answer seems to be, that our confidence in testimony is measured less by the absolute, than by the relative amount of our experience of its truth. In illustration of this position, we shall be allowed previously to assume, that the confidence of a child in what he conceives to be the course of nature, is about equally strong with the confidence of an adult person in what his better conceptions represent to him as that course. Dr Reid's school will certainly concede the truth of this lemma; and in fact it does not seem to be questionable. But if this concession be once made, the fallacy of the argument for the principle of credulity becomes apparent. The experience which a child has had in matters of testimony, must clearly bear the same proportion to his experience of the general course of nature, which the experience of a man in testimony must bear to his general experience. Relatively to his shorter life, the child has made an equal number of trials on the subject; and it is no less clear, that, relatively to the number of trials, the probability is, that the issue has been favourable an equal number of times. It follows with all the certainty of demonstration, that the confidence which experience alone would confer on a child, in the truth of testimony, will be as powerful as that which is derived by a mature mind from the same source; because it bears the same relation to his general confidence in the laws of nature. Consequently, to explain the credulity of an infant mind, by exalting it into an ul timate fact, is unnecessary and unphilosophical.

Suppose a child to have had the opportunity of making but ten observations on the credit due to testimony, while a man of middling age shall have made ten thousand. If, in each case, the truth has been told nine times out of the ten, it does not appear why the child should be more deeply affected by the

failure

failure in the tenth instance, than the man by the failure of his thousand. To draw this conclusion, is, in effect, either to contend that the mind has an instinctive disposition to incredulity; or to maintain this infinite absurdity, that when both terms of a proportion are multiplied into the same number, the proportion itself is altered. To imagine that the infant, dissatisfied: with the limited extent of his observation, will remain in scepticism, is to deny what is on all hands allowed, that the limited. extent of his observation does not prevent him from acquiring a very strong confidence in what his experience embraces of the laws of nature.

But, although the principle of evidence must be regarded as the offspring of experience, there are other fources from which, without the creation of any new inftinctive principles, we may conceive it to derive nourishment and force. Little as we know of the manner in which the mind of man is affected by his phyfical organization, we are certain of the exiftence of that influence. That alacrity of animal fpirits, that redundance (if the expreffion may be allowed) of vitality, which seems to thed fuch an atmosphere of gladness about the young of all animals, is generally believed to be partly conftitutional. With this alacrity, however, is allied, or identified, the difpofition or the ability to cultivate joyous emotions, and to reject thofe of a contrary quality. This may be one reafon why fufpicion finds the entrance fo difficult into a youthful heart; for unquestionably, where the tafte is not greatly vitiated, to fufpect, and to be happy, is impoffible. Befides this, all the a greeable emotions appear to have a mutual, and perhaps an indeAtructible affinity; and the fentiments of complacency and regard, excited in the mind of the infant by the prefence of a parent, can have little in common with doubt and diflruft. There are, too, feelings, either inherent, or early implanted, in human nature, which difpofe confcious weakness to deify indefinite fuperiority: and though refpect for power does not neceffarily imply confidence, it feems not improbable that, where the two fentiments coexift, by reciprocal excitements to fresh exercife, they reciprocally lend and borrow fresh energy. Thus are the affections of filial reverence and attachment gradually generated in the dawn of existence, by the operation of that mingled procefs of thought and feeling, which, in maturer life, with the confent of the most enlarged reafon, and confiftently with the fevereft obfervation of the nature of man and of things, induces the enlightened philofopher to repofe in the protection of invisible agency, and to caft at once his hopes and his fears at the feet of the Father of the universe.

There is one remark which, in this place, we cannot suppress. The doctrine of the principle of credulity was originally derived,

VOL. XII. NO. 23.

we