it, (of the fire-place, &c.) enter the eye at the same moment. At the coming on of evening, it was my frequent amusement to watch the image or reflection of the fire, that seemed burning in the bushes or between the trees in different parts of the garden or the fields beyond it, according as there was more or less light; and which still arranged itself among the real objects of vision, with a distance and magnitude proportioned to its greater or lesser faintness. For still as the darkness increased, the image of the fire lessened and grew nearer and more distinct; till the twilight had deepened into perfect night, when all outward objects being excluded, the window became a perfect looking-glass: save only that my books on the side shelves of the room were lettered, as it were, on their backs with stars, more or fewer as the sky was more or less clouded, (the rays of the stars being at that time the only ones transmitted.) Now substi will we have no dreams in their place? His melancholy will have changed its drapery; but will it find no new costume wherewith to clothe itself? His impetuous temperament, his deep-working mind, his busy and vivid imaginations-would they not have been a trouble to him in a world, where nothing was to obey his power, to cease to be that which had been, in order to realize his pre-conceptions of what it ought to be? His sensibility, which found objects for itself, and shadows of human suffering in the harmless Brute, and even the Flowers which he trod upon-might it not naturally, in an unspiritualized age, have wept, and trembled, and dissolved, over scenes of earthly passion, and the struggles of love with duty? His pity, that so easily passed into rage, would it not have found in the inequalities of mankind, in the oppressions of governments and the miseries of the governed, an entire instead of a divided object? And might not a perfect constitution, a gov-tute the Phantom from Luther's brain for the images ernment of pure reason, a renovation of the social contract, have easily supplied the place of the reign of Christ in the new Jerusalem, of the restoration of the visible Church, and the union of all men by one faith in one charity? Henceforward then, we will conceive his reason employed in building up anew the edifice of earthly society, and his imagination as pledging itself for the possible realization of the structure. We will lose the great reformer, who was born in an age which needed him, in the Philosopher of Geneva, who was doomed to misapply his energies to materials the properties of which he misunderstood, and happy only that he did not live to witness the direful effects of his system. ESSAY III. Pectora cui credam? quis me lenire docibit Mordaces curas, quis longas fallere noctes Ex quo summa dies tulerit Damona sub umbras? Omnia paulatim consumit longior ætas, Vivendoque simul morimur, rapimurque manendo. Ite tamen, lacrymæ! purum colis æthera, Damon! Nec mihi conveniunt lacrymæ. Non omnia terræ Obruta! vivit amor, vivit dolor! ora negatur Dulcia conspicere: flere et meminisse relictum est. THE two following Essays I devote to elucidation, the first of the theory of Luther's Apparitions stated perhaps too briefly in the preceding Number: the second for the purpose of removing the only difficulty, which I can discover in the next section of the Friend to the Reader's ready comprehension of the principles, on which the arguments are grounded. First, I will endeavor to make my Ghost-Theory more clear to those of my readers, who are fortunate enough to find it obscure in consequence of their own good health and unshattered nerves. The window of my library at Keswick is opposite to the fire-place, and looks out on the very large garden that occupies the whole slope of the hill on which the house stands. Consequently, the rays of the light transmitted through the glass, (i. e. the rays from the garden, the opposite mountains, and the bridge, river, lake, and vale interjacent) and the rays reflected from of reflected light (the fire for instance) and the forms of his room and his furniture for the transmitted rays, and you have a fair resemblance of an apparition, and a just conception of the manner in which it is seen together with real objects. I have long wished to devote an entire work to the subject of Dreams, Visions, Ghosts, Witchcraft, &c. in which I might first give, and then endeavor to explain the most interesting and best attested fact of each, which has come within my knowledge, either from books or from personal testimony. I might then explain in a more satisfactory way the mode in which our thoughts in states of morbid slumber, become at times perfectly dramatic (for in certain sorts of dreams the dullest Wight become a Shakspeare) and by what law the Form of the vision appears to talk to us its own thoughts in a voice as audible as the shape is visible; and this too oftentimes in connected trains, and not seldom even with a concentration of power which may easily impose on the soundest judgments, uninstructed in the Optics and Acoustics of the inner sense, for Revelations and gifts of Prescience. In aid of the present case, I will only remark, that it would appear incredible to persons not accustomed to these subtle notices of self-observation, what small and remote resemblances, what mere hints of likeness from some real external object, especially if the shape be aided by color, will suffice to make a vivid thought consubstantiate with the real object, and derive from it an outward perceptibility. Even when we are broad awake, if we are in anxious expectation, how often will not the most confused sounds of nature be heard by us as inarticulate sounds? For instance, the babbling of a brook will appear for a moment the voice of a Friend, for whom we are waiting, calling out our own names, &c. A short meditation, therefore, on the great law of the imagination, that a likeness in part tends to become a likeness of the whole, will make it not only conceivable but probable, that the ink-stand itself, and the dark-colored stone on the wall, which Luther perhaps had never till then noticed, might have a considerable influence in the production of the Fiend, and of the hostile act by which his obtrusive visit was repelled. name of THE GREAT HOUSE, its exterior having oeen long connected in my childish imagination with the feelings and fancies stirred up in me by the perusal of the Arabian Nights' Entertainments.* Beyond all other objects, I was most struck with the magnificent staircase, relieved at well proportioned intervals by spacious landing-places, this adorned with grand or showy plants, the next looking out on an extensive prospect through the stately window with its sidepanes of rich blues and saturated amber or orange tints: while from the last and highest the eye commanded the whole spiral ascent with the marbled pavement of the great hall from which it seemed to rested. My readers will find no difficulty in translating these forms of the outward senses into their intellectual analogies, so as to understand the purport of the Friend's LANDING-PLACES, and the objects, he proposed to himself, in the small groups of Essays interposed under this title between the main divisions of the work. A lady once asked me if I believed in ghosts and apparitions. I answered with truth and simplicity: No, madam! I have seen far too many myself. I have indeed a whole memorandum book filled with records of these Phenomena, many of them interesting as facts and data for Psychology, and affording some valuable materials for a theory of perception and its dependence on the memory and imagination. "In omnem actum Perceptionis imaginatio influet efficienter." WOLFE. But He is no more, who would have realized this idea: who had already established the foundations and the law of the theory; and for whom I had so often found a pleasure and a comfort, even during the wretched and restless nights of sickness, in watch-spring up as if it merely used the ground on which it ing and instantly recording these experiences of the world within us, of the "gemina natura, quæ fit et facit, et creat et creatur!" He is gone, my friend! my munificent co-patron, and not less the benefactor of my intellect!-He who, beyond all other men known to me, added a fine and ever-wakeful sense of beauty to the most patient accurary in experimental Philosophy and the prouder researches of metaphysical science; he who united all the play and spring of fancy with the subtlest discrimination and inexorable judgment; and who controlled an almost painful exquisiteness of taste by a warmth of heart, which in the practical relations of life made allowances for faults as quick as the moral taste detected them; a warmth of heart, which was indeed noble and preeminent, for alas! the genial feelings of health contributed no spark toward it! Of these qualities I may speak, for they belonged to all mankind. The higher virtues, that were blessings to his friends, and the still higher that resided in and for his own soul, are themes for the energies of solitude, for the awfulness of prayer!-virtues exercised in the barrenness and desolation of his animal being; while he thirsted with the full stream at his lips, and yet with unwearied goodness poured out to all around him, like the master of a feast among his kindred in the day of his own gladness! Were it but for the remembrance of him alone and of his lot here below, the disbelief of a future state would sadden the earth around me, and blight the very grass in the field. ESSAY IV. Χαλεπον, ω δαιμόνιε, μη παραδείγμασι χρωμενον ἱκανῶς ἐνδείκνυσθαί τι τω ν μειζόνων. κινδυνεύει γαρ ημων ἕκαςος οἷον "οναρ, ειδως απαντα, παντ' αυ πάλιν ωσπερ υπαρ α'γνοεῖν. PLATO, Polit. p. 47. Ed. Bip. Translation. It is difficult, excellent friend! to make any comprehensive truth completely intelligible, unless we avail ourselves of an example. Otherwise we may as in a dream, seem to know all, and then as it were, awaking find that we know nothing.-PLATO. My best powers would have sunk within me, had I not soothed my solitary toils with the anticipation of many readers-(whether during the Writer's life, or when his grave shall have shamed his detractors into a sympathy with its own silence, formed no part in this self-flattery) who would submit to any reasonable trouble rather than read "as in a dream seeming to know all, to find on awaking that they know nothing." Having, therefore, in the three preceding numbers selected from my conservatory a few plants, of somewhat gayer petals and a livelier green, though like the Geranium tribe of a sober character in the whole physiognomy and odor, I shall first devote a few sentences to a catalogue raisonné of my introductory lucubrations, and the remainder of the Essay to the prospect, as far as it can be seen distinctly from our present site. Within a short distance several ways meet: and at that point only does it appear to me that the reader will be in danger of mistaking the road. Dropping the metaphor, I would say that there is one term, the meaning of which has become unsettled. To different persons it conveys a different idea, and not seldom to the same person at different times; while the force, and to a certain extent, the intelligibility of the following sections depend on its being interpreted in one sense exclusively. Essays from 1. to IV. inclusive convey the design and contents of the work: the FRIEND'S judgment respecting the style, and his defence of himself from the charges of Arrogance and presumption. Say rather, that such are the personal threads of the dis course for it will not have escaped the Reader's As I had read one volume of these tales over and over again before my fifth birth-day, it may be readily conjectured of what sort these fancies and feelings must have been. The book, I well remember, used to lie in a certain corner of the parlour-window at my dear Father's Vicarage-house: and I can never forget with what a strange mixture of obscure dread and intense desire I used to look at the volume and watch it, AMONG my earliest impressions I still distinctly re- till the morning sunshine had reached and nearly covered it. member that of my first entrance into the mansion of a neighboring Baronet, awfully known to me by the when, and not before, I felt the courage given me to seize the precious treasure and hurry off with it to some sunny corner in our play-ground. fool; and the man, who will not permit himself to call an action by its proper name without a previous calculation of all its probable consequences, may be indeed only a coxcomb, who is looking at his fingers through an opera-glass; but he runs no small risk of becoming a knave. The chances are against him. Though he should begin by calculating the consequences in regard to others, yet by the mere habit of never contemplating an action in its own proportions and immediate relations to his moral being, it is scarcely possible but that he must end in selfishness: for the you, and the THEY will stand on different occasions for a thousand different persons, while the I is one only, and recurs in every calculation. Or grant that the principle of expediency should prompt to the same outward deeds as are commanded by the law of reason; yet the doer himself is debased. But if it be replied, that the re-action on the agent's own mind is to form a part of the calculation, then it is a rule that destroys itself in the very propound or ethical division of the Friend, when we shall have detected and exposed the equivoque between an action and the series of motions by which the determinations of the Will are to be realized in the world of the senses. What modification of the latter corresponds to the former, and is entitled to be called by the same name, will often depend on time, place, persons, and circumstances, the consideration of which requires an exertion of the judgment; but the action itself remains the same, and like all other ideas pre-exists in the reason,* or (in the more ex pressive and perhaps more precise and philosophical language of St. Paul) in the spirit, unalterable because unconditional, or with no other than that most awful condition, AS SURE AS GOD LIVETH, IT IS SO! observation, that even in these prefatory pages principles and truths of general interest form the true contents, and that amid all the usual compliments and courtesies of THE FRIEND's first presentation of himself to the Reader's acquaintance the substantial object is still to assert the practicability, without disguising the difficulties, of improving the morals of mankind by a direct appeal to their Understandings: and to show the distinction between Attention and Thought, and the necessity of the former as a habit or discipline without which the very word, Thinking, must remain a thoughtless substitute for dreaming with our eyes open; and lastly, the tendency of a certain fashionable style with all its accommodations to paralyse the very faculties of manly intellect by a series of petty stimulants. After this preparation, The Friend proceeds at once to lay the foundations common to the whole work by an inquiry into the duty of communicating Truth, and the conditions under which it may be communicated with safety, from the Fifth to the Sixteenth Essay inclusive.ing, as will be more fully demonstrated in the second Each Essay will, he believes, be found complete in itself, yet an organic part of the whole considered as one disquisition. First, the inexpediency of pious Frauds is proved from History, the shameless assertion of the indifference of Truth and Falsehood exposed to its deserved infamy, and an answer given to the objection derived from the impossibility of conveying an adequate notion of the truths we may attempt to communicate. The conditions are then detailed, under which, right though inadequate notions may be taught without danger, and proofs given, both from facts and from reason, that he, who fulfils the conditions required by Conscience, takes the surest way of answering the purposes of Prudence. This is, indeed, the main characteristic of the moral system taught by the Friend throughout, that the distinct foresight of Consequences belongs exclusively to that infinite Wisdom which is one with that Almighty Will, on which all consequences depend; but that for Man-to obey the simple unconditional commandment of eschewing every act that implies a self-contradiction, or in other words, to produce and maintain the greatest possible Harmony in the component impulses and faculties of his nature, involves the effects of Prudence. It is, as were, Prudence in short-hand or cypher. A pure Conscience, that inward something, that eos olketos, which being absolute unique no man can describe, because every man is bound to know, and even in the eye of the Law is held to be a person no longer than he may be supposed to know it-the Conscience, I say, bears the same relation to God, as an accurate Time-piece bears to the Sun. The Time-piece merely indicates the relative path of the Sun, yet we can regulate our plans and proceedings by it with the same confidence as if it was itself the efficient cause of light, heat, and the revolving seasons; on the self-evident axiom, that in whatever sense two things (for instance, A. and C. D. E.) are both equal to a third thing (B.) they are in the same sense equal to each other. Cunning is circuitous folly. In plain English, to act the knave, is but a roundabout way of playing the These remarks are inserted in this place, because the principle admits of easiest illustration in the instance of veracity and the actions connected with the same, and may then be intelligibly applied to other departments of morality, all of which Wollaston indeed considers as only so many different forms of. truth and falsehood. So far the Friend has treated of oral communication of the truth. The applicability of the same principle is then tried and affirmed in publications by the Press, first as between the individual and his own conscience and then between the publisher and the state: and under this head the Friend has considered at large the questions of a free Press and the law of libel, the anomalies and peculiar difficulties of the latter, and the only possible solution compatible with the continuance of the former: a solution rising out of and justified by the necessarily anomalous and unique nature of the law itself. He confesses, that he looks back on this discussion concerning the Press and its limits with a satisfaction unusual to him in the review of his own labors: and if the date of their first publication (September, 1809, be remembered, it will not perhaps be denied on an impartial comparison, that he has treated this most important subject (so especially interesting in the pre *See the Statesman's Manual, p. 23. sent times) more fully and more systematically than it had hitherto been. Interum tum recti conscientia, tum illo me consolor, quód octimis quibusque certe non improbamur, fortassis omnibus placituri, simul atque livor obitu conquieverit. pressed the Truth for which the Friend is contending. But that this was Harrington's meaning is evident. Otherwise instead of comparing two faculties with each other, he would contrast a faculty with one of its own objects, which would involve the same absurdity as if he had said, that man might rather be defined an astronomical than a seeing animal, because other animals possessed the sense of Sight, but were incapable of beholding the satellites of Saturn, or the nebule of fixed stars. If further confirmation be necessary, it may be supplied by the following reflections, the leading thought of which I remember to have read in the works of a continental Philosopher. It should seem easy to give the definite distinction of the Reason from the Understanding, because we constantly imply it when we speak of the difference between ourselves and the brute creation. No one, except as a figure of speech, ever speaks of an animal reason; but that many animals possess a share of Understanding, perfectly distinguishable from mere Instinct, we all allow. Few persons have a favorite dog without making instances of its intelligence an occasional topic of conversation. They call for our admiration of the individual animal, and not with exclusive reference to the Wisdom in Nature, as in the case of the storgè or maternal instinct of beasts; or of the hexangular cells of the bees, and the wonderful coincidence of this form with the geometrical demonstration of the largest possible number of rooms in a given space. Likewise, we distinguish various degrees of Understanding there, and even discover from inductions supplied by the Zoologists, that the Understanding appears (as a general rule) in an inverse proportion to the Instinct. We hear little or nothing of the instincts of "the half-reasoning elephant," and as little of the Understanding of Caterpillars and Butterflies. (N. B. Though REASONING does not in our language, in the lax use of words natural in conversation or popular writings, imply scientific conclusion, yet the phrase "half-reasoning" is evidently used by Pope as a poetic hyperbole.) But Reason is wholly denied, equally to the highest as to the lowest of the brutes; otherwise it must be wholly attributed to them, and with it therefore Self-consciousness, and personality, or Moral Being. Lastly, the subject is concluded even as it commenced, and as beseemed a disquisition placed as the steps and vestibule of the whole work, with an enforcement of the absolute necessity of principles grounded in reason as the basis or rather as the living root of all genuine expedience. Where these are despised or at best regarded as aliens from the actual business of life, and consigned to the ideal world of speculative philosophy and utopian politics, instead of state-wisdom we shall have state-craft, and for the talent of the governor the cleverness of an embarrassed spendthrift-which consists in tricks to shift off difficulties and dangers when they close upon us, and to keep them at arm's length, not in solid and grounded courses to preclude or subdue them. We must content ourselves with expedient-makers-with | fire-engines against fires, Life-boats against inundations; but no houses built fire-proof, no dams that rise above the water-mark. The reader will have observed that already has the term, reason, been frequently contradistinguished from the understanding, and the judgment. If the Friend could succeed in fully explaining the sense in which the word REASON, is employed by him, and in satisfying the reader's mind concerning the grounds and importance of the distinction, he would feel little or no apprehension concerning the intelligibility of these Essays from first to last. The following section is in part founded on this distinction: the which remaining obscure, all else will be so as a system, however clear the component paragraphs may be, taken separately. In the appendix to his first Lay Sermon, the Author has indeed treated the question at considerable length, but chiefly in relation to the heights of Theology and Metaphysics. In the next number he attempts to explain himself more popularly, and trusts that with no great expenditure of attention the reader will satisfy his mind, that our remote ancestors spoke as men acquainted with the constituent parts of their own moral and intellectual being, when they described one man as being out of his senses, another as out of his wits, or deranged in his understanding, and a third as having lost his reason. Observe, the understanding may be deranged, weakened, or perverted; but the reason is either lost or not lost, that is, wholly present exception, p. 45. I do not know Dr. Elliotson, but I do know or wholly absent. ESSAY V. Man may rather be defined a religious than a rational character, in regard that in other creatures there may be something of Reason, but there is nothing of Religion. HARRINGTON. Is the Reader will substitute the word "Understanding" for "Reason," and the word "Reason" for -Religion," Harrington has here completely ex I should have no objection to define Reason with Jacobi, and with his friend Hemsterhuis, as an organ * I have this moment looked over a Translation of Blumenbach's Physiology by Dr. Elliotson, which forms a glaring Professor Blumenbach, and was an assiduous attendant on ting as well as of reflecting the rays of light. The application is obvious. If the reader therefore will take the trouble of bearing in mind these and the following explanations, he will have removed beforehand every possible dif ficulty from the Friend's political section. For there is another use of the word, Reason, arising out of the former indeed, but less definite, and more exposed to misconception. In this latter use it means the understanding considered as using the Reason, so far as by the organ of Reason only we possess the ideas of the Necessary and the Universal; and this is the more common use of the word, when it is applied with any attempt at clear and distinct conceptions. In this narrower and derivative sense the best definition of Reason which I can give, will be found in the third member of the following sentence, in which the understanding is described in its three-fold operation, and from each receives an appropriate name. The sense, (vis sensitiva vel intuitiva) perceives: Vis regulatrix (the understanding, in its own peculiar ope ration) conceives: Vis rationalis (the Reason or ra tionalized understanding) comprehends. The first is impressed through the organs of sense, the second combines these multifarious impressions into individ bearing the same relation to spiritual objects, the Universal, the Eternal, and the Necessary, as the eye bears to material and contingent phenomena. But then it must be added, that it is an organ identical with its appropriate objects. Thus, God, the Soul, eternal Truth, &c., are the objects of Reason; but they are themselves reason. We name God the Supreme Reason; and Milton says, “Whence the Soul Reason receives, and Reason is her Being." Whatever is conscious Self-knowledge is Reason; and in this sense it may be safely defined the organ of the Supersensuous; even as the Understanding wherever it does not possess or use the Reason, as another and inward eye, may be defined the conception of the Sensuous, or the faculty by which we generalize and arrange the phenomena of perception: that faculty, the functions of which contain the rules and constitute the possibility of outward Experience. In short, the Understanding supposes something that is understood. This may be merely its own acts or forms, that is, formal Logic; but real objects, the materials of substantial knowledge, must be furnished, we might safely say revealed, to it by Organs of Sense. The understanding of the higher Brutes has only or gans of outward sense, and consequently material objects only; but man's understanding has likewise anual Notions, and by reducing these notions to Rules, organ of inward sense, and therefore the power of according to the analogy of all its former notices, acquainting itself with invisible realities or spiritual constitutes Experience: the third subordinates both objects. This organ is his Reason. Again, the Un- these notions and the rules of experience to ABSOLUTE derstanding and Experience may exist without Rea- PRINCIPLES or necessary Laws: and thus concerning son. But Reason cannot exist without Understand- objects, which our experience has proved to have ing; nor does it or can it manifest itself but in and real existence, it demonstrates moreover, in what through the understanding, which in our elder wri- way they are possible, and in doing this constitutes ters is often called discourse, or the discursive faculty, Science. Reason therefore, in this secondary sense, as by Hooker, Lord Bacon, and Hobbes: and an un- and used not as a spiritual Organ but as a Faculty derstanding enlightened by reason Shakspeare gives (namely, the Understanding or Soul enlightened by as the contra-distinguishing character of man, under that organ)-Reason, I say, or the scientific Faculty, the name discourse of reason. In short, the human is the Intellection of the possibility or essential prounderstanding possesses two distinct organs, the out-perties of things by means of the Laws that consti ward sense, and "the mind's eye," which is reason: wherever we use that phrase (the mind's eye) in its proper sense, and not as a mere synonyme of the memory or the fancy. In this way we reconcile the promise of Revelation, that the blessed will see God, with the declaration of St. John, God hath no one seen at any time. We will add one other illustration to prevent any misconception, as if we were dividing the human soul into different essences, or ideal persons. In this piece of steel I acknowledge the properties of hardness, brittleness, high polish, and the capability of forming a mirror. I find all these likewise in the plate glass of a friend's carriage; but in addition to all these, I find the quality of transparency, or the power of transmit *Of this no one would feel inclined to doubt, who had seen the poodle dog whom the celebrated Blumenbach, a name so dear to science, as a physiologist and Comparative Anatomist, and not less dear as a man, to all Englishmen who have ever resided at Gottingen in the course of their education, trained up, not only to hatch the eggs of the hen with all the mother's care and patience, but to attend the chicken afterwards, and land dog, who watched and guarded a family of young children with all the intelligence of a nurse, during their walks. find the food for them. I have myself known a Newfound tute them. Thus the rational idea of a Circle is that of a figure constituted by the circumvolution of a straight line with its one end fixed. Every man must feel, that though he may not be exerting his faculties in a different way, when in one instance he begins with some one self-evident truth. (that the radii of a circle, for instance, are all equal.) and in consequence of this being true sees at once, without any actual experience, that some other thing must be true likewise, and that, this being true, some third thing must be equally true, and so on till he comes, we will say, to the properties of the lever, considered as the spoke of a circle: which is capable of having all its marvellous powers demonstrated even to a savage who had never seen a lever, and without supposing any other previous knowledge in his mind, but this one, that there is a conceivable figure, all possible lines from the middle to the cir cumference of which are of the same length: of when, in the second instance, he brings together the facts of experience, each of which has its own sepa rate value, neither increased nor diminished by the truth of any other fact which may have preceded it; and making these several facts bear upon some parti |