forced to abandon the undertaking in despair; partly from the scholastic barbarism of the style, and partly from my utter inability to unriddle the author's meaning. Whenever I have happened to obtain a momentary glimpse of light, I have derived it, not from Kant himself, but from my previous acquaintance with those opin ions of Leibnitz, Berkeley, Hume, Reid, and others, which he had endeavored to appropriate to himself, under the deep disguise of a new phraseology." If one metaphysician finds it so hard to comprehend the system of another, with what despair must we ordinary readers lay presumptuous hands on these recondite books! Dr. Brown has treated with deep disdain, some of the opinions of Reid, affirming, that he did not understand in Locke, the doctrines he presumed to overthrow: and Brown, in a late article in the Edinburgh Review, has had a fair portion of retaliation. Such is the progress of this science, and such the fate of its authors. As in Greenland, the shivering inhabitants, in their long night, commensurate with the season, are doomed to see the morning apparently ushered in with a mock-sun, which, glimmering for a while, retires, and leaves them to their frosts and shades; so has the world been deluded by these professed enlighteners of our inner nature. They are witnesses, who, with whatever delusions misled, or with whatever falsehood they speak, will never prejudice the cause to which they are summoned, if they are never credited until they are found to agree.

There must certainly be some defect in a science which is thus incomprehensible to the mind of its acutest professors, and where systems chase each other down, like the shadows of the clouds on the summer plain. Aristotle reigned in the schools for two thousand years; not, however, as an investigator of mind alone. His natural history, his criticism, his political speculations, helped to elevate him to his supreme reputation. But since his day, it may truly be said, that metaphysical writers have "vernal lives, which blossom but to die." Leibnitz and Descartes, on the continent, Locke, in England, and Edwards, in our own land, have had the longest reputation. But the authority of all these high geniuses is evidently on the wane. Men begin to dare to question their authority and, as it has often been remarked in history, that there is but a step between the dethronement and death of a king, so it is with a metaphysical writer; he must be adored as the oracle of nature, or despised as the author of jargon and darkness. The moment he totters, he falls forever. What is the reason of all this? Is it, that these writers have been playing with the credulity of mankind? Is it, that they write with a purpose not to be un

derstood? Are they moral jugglers, who cheat our eyes with va nishing phantoms?

"Thus I hurl

My dazzling spells into the spongy air

of power, to cheat the eye with blear illusion,
And give it false presentments."

Or is it, that the science itself eludes the grasp of the human mind? Certain it is, that a history of all the speculations in this department, would be as great a collection of moral monsters, of all sizes and shapes, and hideous forms, as were seen statues of different kinds, by Brydone, in the garden of the Sicilian nobleman.*

"Ulmus opaca, ingens: quam sedem Somnia vulgo
Vana tenere ferunt, foliisque sub omnibus hærent
Multaque præterea variarum monstra ferarum
Centauri in foribus stabulant, Syllæque biformes,
Et centum geminus Briareus, ac bellua Lernæ
Horrendum stridens, flammisque armata chimæra :
Gorgones, Harpyæque et forma tricorporis umbra."

We should have one philosopher, saying, that the soul was air, and another, that it was fire, and another, the concord of a harmonious tune. We should have Hobbes, with his doctrine of necessity, and Bramhall, with his liberty, and a third set of reasoners, striking a balance between them. We should have Berkeley, with his world without matter, and Hume, with his world without souls, and the Chinese philosophers, combining both,-a world without matter or spirit. We should have Kant, with his time and space, as qualities of the mind alone,—his pure reason, with all its transcendentals. We should have enough to make a reasonable man distrust the whole science, and weep or laugh over the vagaries of his fellow-beings, as the spirit of pity or of satire happened to predominate in his breast.

There are two special reasons, among many subordinate ones, why this science is so fluctuating, and, in all its rational forms, ap pears so absurd to proficients in different schools.

In the first place, language is approximative, and never can fully express the nature of things. When a man applies a word to an internal operation of the mind, there is always something there, which, in his conception, answers to it. But it will ever be doubtful, whether the word conveys the same precise conception to his neighbor; and if he should present to him the same conception or notion, it still remains a question, whether this is the best word to convey it. Fixing on the precise terms to convey a mental operation, has always appeared to us, (if the reader will allow so homely

*See Brydone's Travels.

a comparison,) like putting a cover on a tin pail, when the opening of the same is almost too small to receive the cover. Just as you have made it fit exactly on one side, (the object of your present attention,) you find it flies out on another; and thus several hands, in successively attempting to put it on, but change the place of the chasm. This is exactly what metaphysicians have been doing, in overthrowing each other. The predecessors of Mr. Locke, ima gining that they saw a certain class of truths, in which all men agree, as soon as they understand them, and which are adopted as maxims, called these truths innate, that is, not necessary to be proved by reasoning. But Mr. Locke, finding that the word innate might be construed to mean a great many absurdities, denied the existence of such innate ideas. No doubt the existence of innate ideas was an absurdity, in the sense in which Locke chose to understand the term; and it is very probable, that it was a truth, in the sense in which it was used by its first advocates. They had a reality floating in their minds, when they affirmed it, and Locke had a reality floating in his mind, when he denied it. The language is approximative to invisible ideas, and therefore it may always be disputed, and always misunderstood. For this reason, we regard it the most vulgar of all literary wisdom, to innovate in the vocabulary of mental philosophy. For, no language being accurate, and the first language being tied by custom to the broadest and best-defined mental operations, which first met the notice of observers, he who innovates, with a hope of being more accurate, will find, that he has adapted the cover to one side of the pail, and having left an opening on the other side, he will leave a place for others to innovate on him.

The other reason why metaphysics is so perpetually changing, is, that it has so little to do with practical life.* There never was a greater error than that uttered by Hume, that these internal

* Perhaps it may be proper here to say what we mean by metaphysics. The radical idea of this word, according to the usus loquendi, in modern times, seems to be a more acute and subtle insight into the mind, and its faculties, than suffices for ordinary life. Cicero and Burke, Homer and Shakspeare, all speak of the mind, its powers and passions; but no man thinks of calling them metaphysicians, because they take the broadest views expressed by common language, and found all their remarks upon them. But when a man professes to Took closer, to form a new classification, to distinguish with more minuteness than is necessary, or known in common life, he then becomes a metaphysician. The etymology of the word is well known, and clearly exemplifies our explanation of it. Aristotle first wrote on material philosophy, and entitled these books Buixa, or physics. He then, supposing it to be the most difficult, treated of the mind, and entitled his books peraÞvoza, metaphysics; that is, subjects which were superphysical, to be studied after (μera) them, as being more difficult. We shall find, that Mr. Locke bad this meaning in his mind, when he says, Essay on the Human Understanding, B. IV. Ch. v. Sec. 11, " Moral truth, is speaking of things according to the persuasion of our own minds, though the proposition we speak agree not to the reality of things: metaphysical truth, is nothing but the real

inspections of the mind, these nice disquisitions, similar to his own, on man and the mental powers, are useful to the orator and the poet, just as a knowledge of anatomy may be useful to the statuary or painter. For, in the first place, the comparison is unfortunate; it being not true, that the knowledge of anatomy is or can be of much importance to the statuary or painter; and secondly, How little have disputes of metaphysicians had to do with any principle, which a man in practical life has had to apply in nerving the intellect, or moving the heart? Even when true, the principles of the metaphysician lie so far back in man's interior nature, that the practical man has nothing to do with them, in any of the great purposes of life. It is like the chimical properties of the water, compared with those properties, which are useful to the boatman. It is true, we have no doubt, and may be proved by a double course of experiments, the analytic and synthetical, that water is composed of two gases, mixed in a certain proportion. But when the boatman plies the oar, or uses the sail, he never thinks of this discovery. The navigation of boats was as perfect before it was known, as it is now, and is not at all affected by the knowledge of the chimist. It is now some twenty years, since we were put to study Locke at one of our colleges. Locke is certainly one of the clearest, the most practical, the least dreamy, of all the metaphysical race; and it is astonishing, how little we have had occasion to apply any one principle taught in his copious pages. Whenever any remark has come in our way, it has never emanated from the essentials of his system. It has always been one of those supernumerary flowers, which every sensible writer scatters in his path.* Mixed modes, association of ideas, identity, and diversity, are sounds, that have long since died on our ears.

existence of things." What he supposes, requires a much closer inspection to be seen. There is another use of the word, above nature, μetaÞvσixa, supernatural, as when Lady Macbeth speaks of the metaphysical aid by which her husband was to be crowned, that is, the aid of the infernal powers, of which the witches were the agents. The general meaning of the word, as we understand it, is a view and classification of the mental powers, more subtle than poets, historians, orators, politicians, lawyers, traders, merchants, and (we wish we could add) theologians, have thought it necessary, for their purposes and proots, to take. It is a science which, rejecting the language formed by the classifications made in the exigencies of real life, forms a new language and a new classification of its own : that is, it rejects sunshine for moonshine, art for nature, the experience of ages (for the common language is the analysis of ages,) for the experience of one man, and he a being who has spent his whole life in dreaming in a closet. The history of the science is its condemnation; and we need not add, (though it is our own individual opinion, and we wish to involve our brother reviewers in no heresies of our own private creed,) that we hold the whole tribe of metaphysicism, quasi metaphysicians, from Locke, with his glimmerings of good sense, down to Coleridge, with his glimmering darkness, of little worth. They all have some truth, but not growing out of their systems. A nightingale may sometimes sing on a crab-tree. Every writer, whatever his system may be, will scatter through his pages some remarks of common sense, which are extraneous to his system. Thus

*

But, as among the shades of the night, there are different degrees of darkness, so there is a different degree of clearness in the language and arrangements of these systems, all of which fall so much behind the other sciences in point of perspicuity. During the middle ages, we are told, that the most obscure and unprofitable controversies agitated the schools; questions, not only having nothing to do with practical life by the remotest inference, but of which a reasonable man could not form the most distant conception of the point at issue.

"Faith, gospel, all, seemed made to be disputed,
And none had sense enough to be confuted."

In modern times, however, metaphysicians have turned their attention to something more clear and intelligible. The age of a more rational science began, perhaps, with Descartes, was forwarded by Locke, and some, perhaps, would conclude, was completed by the Scotch philosophers. The moon has broke out from the clouds, and has shed a pleasing, if not a guiding ray, over the forests and fields, if not on the highway that leads us to our business and pleasures. But, alas, the fickle planet of the night seems to be again withdrawing her head behind her original veil of obscurity. Metaphysical speculations seem to be returning to their former mysticism. Either we are beginning to assume the prejudices of old men ; or our minds are too feeble to keep pace with the sublime progress of the science; or our efforts have been unfortunate, and our books ill-selected; or the genius of cranioscopy laid her hand on our ill-fated skull, at the natal hour, and crushed in the protuberance assigned to these investigations: either some of these causes have existed, or all of them; or else metaphysical investigation is returning to the most idle mysticism, that ever amused and deluded the human mind. The only wonder about the business, is, that systems so vague, so dark, so recondite, so puzzling, and so unprofitable, should detain the attention and conquer the reason of beings, who profess to be descended from that Adam who gave names to beast, bird, and fowl, and not the shadows of a visionary imagination.

The reason of this progression into obscurity, is partly owing to the nature of the science. There are two views we may take of the soul. One is, to inspect the thing itself; to contemplate its general nature; to regard it as the instrument of thought, as

Stewart remarks, concerning Smith's work on the Moral Sentiments, that there are many observations in it, which the reader will find to be valuable and just, whatever he may conclude concerning the fundamentals. My meaning is, that all that I found practical in Locke, is of a similar character.