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ly, and from which he had never called upon his reason to disentangle him. This was, his anxious care to go out or in "at a door or passage, by a certain number of steps from a " certain point, or at least so as that either his right or his left "foot (I am not certain which) should constantly make the first "actual movement when he came close to the door or passage. "Thus I conjecture: for I have, upon innumerable occasions, "observed him suddenly stop, and then seem to count his steps "with a deep earnestness; and when he had neglected or gone 66 wrong in this sort of magical movement, I have seen him go « back again, put himself in a proper posture to begin the ceremony, and, having gone through it, break from his abstraction, walk briskly on, and join his companion *."

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The remark may appear somewhat out of place, but, after the last quotation, I may be permitted to say, that the person to whom it relates, great as his powers, and splendid as his accomplishments undoubtedly were, was scarcely entitled to assert, that "Education is as well known, and has long "been as well known, as ever it can be." What a limited estimate of the objects of education must this great man have formed! They who know the value of a well regulated and unclouded mind, would not incur the weakness and wretchedness exhibited in the foregoing description, for all his literary acquirements and literary fame.

* Boswell's Johnson, Vol. I. p. 264, 4to edit.

+ Ibid. p. 514.

III

Continuation of the Subject.-General Remarks on the Difference between the Evidence of Experience, and that of Analogy.

ACCORDING to the account of experience which has been hitherto given, its evidence reaches no farther than to an anticipation of the future from the past, in cases where the same physical cause continues to operate in exactly the same circumstances. That this statement is agreeable to the strict philosophical notion of experience, will not be disputed. Whereever a change takes place, either in the cause itself, or in the circumstances combined with it in our former trials, the anticipations which we form of the future cannot with propriety be referred to experience alone, but to experience co-operating with some other principles of our nature. In common discourse, however, precision in the use of language is not to be expected, where logical or metaphysical ideas are at all concerned; and, therefore, it is not to be wondered at, that the word experience should often be employed with a latitude greatly beyond what the former definition authorizes. When I transfer, for example, my conclusions concerning the descent of heavy bodies from one stone to another stone, or even from a stone to a leaden bullet, my inference might be said, with sufficient accuracy for the ordinary purposes of speech, to have the evidence of experience in its favour; if indeed it would not savour of scholastic affectation to aim at a more rigorous enunciation of the proposition. Nothing, at the same time, can

be more evident than this, that the slightest shade of difference which tends to weaken the resemblance, or rather to destroy the identity of two cases, invalidates the inference from the one to the other, as far as it rests on experience solely, no less than the most prominent dissimilitudes which characterize the different kingdoms and departments of nature.

Upon what ground do I conclude that the thrust of a sword through my body, in a particular direction, would be followed by instant death? According to the popular use of language, the obvious answer would be,-upon experience, and experience alone. But surely this account of the matter is extremely loose and incorrect; for where is the evidence that the internal structure of my body bears any resemblance to that of any of the other bodies which have been hitherto examined by anatomists? It is no answer to this question to tell me, that the experience of these anatomists has ascertained a uniformity of structure in every human subject which has as yet been dissected; and that therefore I am justified in concluding, that my body forms no exception to the general rule. My question does not relate to the soundness of this inference, but to the principle of my nature, which leads me thus not only to reason from the past to the future, but to reason from one thing to another which, in its external marks, bears a certain degree of resemblance to it. Something more than experience, in the strictest sense of that word, is surely necessary to explain the transition from what is identically the same, to what is only similar; and yet my yet my inference in this instance is made with the most assured and unqualified

confidence in the infallibility of the result. No inference, founded on the most direct and long-continued experience, nor indeed any proposition established by mathematical demonstration, could more imperiously command my assent.

In whatever manner the province of experience, strictly so called, comes to be thus enlarged, it is perfectly manifest, that without some provision for this purpose, the principles of our constitution would not have been duly adjusted to the scene in which we have to act. Were we not so formed as eagerly to seize the resembling features of different things and different events, and to extend our conclusions from the individual to the species, life would elapse before we had acquired the first rudiments of that knowledge which is essential to the preservation of our animal existence.

This step in the history of the human mind has been little, if at all, attended to by philosophers; and it is certainly not easy to explain, in a manner completely satisfactory, how it is made. The following hints seem to me to go a considerable way towards a solution of the difficulty.

It is remarked by Mr Smith, in his Considerations on the Formation of Languages, that the origin of genera and species, which is commonly represented in the schools as the effect of an intellectual process peculiarly mysterious and unintelligible, is a natural consequence of our disposition to transfer to a new object the name of any other familiar object which possesses such a degree of resemblance to it, as to serve the memory for

an associating tie between them. It is in this manner, he has shown, and not by any formal or scientific exercise of abstraction, that, in the infancy of language, proper names are gradually transformed into appellatives; or, in other words, that individual things come to be referred to classes or assortments *

This remark becomes, in my opinion, much more luminous and important, by being combined with another very original one, which is ascribed to Turgot by Condorcet, and which I do not recollect to have seen taken notice of by any later writer on the human mind. According to the common doctrine of logicians, we are led to suppose that our knowledge begins in an accurate and minute acquaintance with the characteristical properties of individual objects; and that it is only by the slow exercise of comparison and abstraction, that we attain to the notion of classes or genera. In opposition to this idea, it was a maxim of Turgot's, that some of our most abstract and general notions are among the earliest which we form. What meaning he annexed to this maxim, we

A writer of great learning and ability (Dr Magee of Dublin) who has done me the honour to animadvert on a few passages of my works, and who has softened his criticisms by some expressions of regard, by which I feel myself highly flattered, has started a very acute objection to this theory of Mr Smith, which I think it incumbent on me to submit to my readers, in his own words. As the quotation, however, with the remarks which I have to offer upon it, would extend to too great a length to be introduced here, I must delay entering on the subject till the end of this volume. See Note (K).

"M. Turgot croyoit qu'on s'étoit trompé en imaginant qu'en général l'esprit n'ac"quiert des idées générales ou abstraites que par la comparaison d'idées plus particuli"ères. Au contraire, nos premières idées sont très-gênérales, puisque ne voyant d'abord

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