shown that the vis representativa, or the Sentient, is itself a species of being; i.e. either as a property or attribute, or as an hypostasis or self subsistence. The former is, indeed, the assumption of materialism; a system which could not but be patronized by the philosopher, if only it actually 5 performed what it promises. But how any affection from without can metamorphose itself into perception or will, the materialist has hitherto left, not only as incomprehensible as he found it, but has aggravated it into a comprehensible absurdity. For, grant that an object from without could 10 act upon the conscious self, as on a consubstantial object ; yet such an affection could only engender something homogeneous with itself. Motion could only propagate motion. Matter has no Inward. We remove one surface, but to meet with another. We can but divide a particle into particles; 15 and each atom comprehends in itself the properties of the material universe. Let any reflecting mind make the experiment of explaining to itself the evidence of our sensuous intuitions, from the hypothesis that in any given perception there is a something which has been communicated to it by 20 an impact, or an impression ab extra. In the first place, by the impact on the percepient, or ens representans, not the object itself, but only its action or effect, will pass into the same. Not the iron tongue, but its vibrations, pass into the metal of the bell. Now in our immediate perception, it 25 is not the mere power or act of the object, but the object itself, which is immediately present. We might indeed attempt to explain this result by a chain of deductions and conclusions; but that, first, the very faculty of deducing and concluding would equally demand an explanation ; 30 and secondly, that there exists in fact no such intermediation by logical notions, such as those of cause and effect. It is the object itself, not the product of a syllogism, which is present to our consciousness. Or would we explain this supervention of the object to the sensation, by a productive 35

5

faculty set in motion by an impulse; still the transition, into the percepient, of the object itself, from which the impulse proceeded, assumes a power that can permeate and wholly possess the soul,

"And like a God by spiritual art,

Be all in all, and all in every part."

COWLEY.

And how came the percipient here? And what is become of the wonder-promising MATTER, that was to perform all these marvels by force of mere figure, weight and motion? 10 The most consistent proceeding of the dogmatic materialist is to fall back into the common rank of soul-and-bodyists; to affect the mysterious, and declare the whole process a revelation given, and not to be understood, which it would be prophane to examine too closely. "Datur non intelligitur." 15 But a revelation unconfirmed by miracles, and a faith not commanded by the conscience, a philosopher may venture to pass by, without suspecting himself of any irreligious tendency.

Thus, as materialism has been generally taught, it is 20 utterly unintelligible, and owes all its proselytes to the propensity so common among men, to mistake distinct images for clear conceptions; and vice versa, to reject as inconceivable whatever from its own nature is unimaginable. But as soon as it becomes intelligible, it ceases to be 25 materialism. In order to explain thinking, as a material phænomenon, it is necessary to refine matter into a mere modification of intelligence, with the two-fold function of appearing and perceiving. Even so did Priestley in his controversy with Price! He stript matter of all its material 30 properties; substituted spiritual powers; and when we expected to find a body, behold! we had nothing but its ghost! the apparition of a defunct substance !

I shall not dilate further on this subject; because it will, (if God grant health and permission), be treated of at large

IO

and systematically in a work, which I have many years been preparing, on the PRODUCTIVE LOGOS human and divine; with, and as the introduction to, a full commentary on the Gospel of St. John. To make myself intelligible as far as my present subject requires, it will be sufficient briefly 5 to observe.-I. That all association demands and presupposes the existence of the thoughts and images to be associated.-2. The hypothesis of an external world exactly correspondent to those images or modifications of our own being, which alone, (according to this system), we actually 10 behold, is as thorough idealism as Berkeley's, inasmuch as it equally, (perhaps, in a more perfect degree,) removes all reality and immediateness of perception, and places us in a dream world of phantoms and spectres, the inexplicable swarm and equivocal generation of motions in our own brains. 15 -3. That this hypothesis neither involves the explanation, nor precludes the necessity, of a mechanism and co-adequate forces in the percepient, which at the more than magic touch of the impulse from without is to create anew for itself the correspondent object. The formation of a copy is not 20 solved by the mere pre-existence of an original; the copyist of Raphael's Transfiguration must repeat more or less perfectly the process of Raphael. It would be easy to explain a thought from the image on the retina, and that from the geometry of light, if this very light did not present 25 the very same difficulty. We might as rationally chant the Brahmin creed of the tortoise that supported the bear, that supported the elephant, that supported the world, to the tune of "This is the house that Jack built." The sic Deo placitum est we all admit as the sufficient cause, and the 30 divine goodness as the sufficient reason; but an answer to the whence? and why? is no answer to the how? which alone is the physiologist's concern. It is a mere sophisma pigrum, and (as Bacon hath said) the arrogance of pusillanimity, which lifts up the idol of a mortal's fancy and commands us 35

to fall down and worship it, as a work of divine wisdom, an ancile or palladium fallen from heaven. By the very same argument the supporters of the Ptolemaic system might have rebuffed the Newtonian, and pointing to the sky with 5 self-complacent * grin have appealed to common sense, whether the sun did not move and the earth stand still.

CHAPTER IX

Is philosophy possible as a science, and what are its conditions ?— Giordano Bruno—Literary aristocracy, or the existence of a tacit compact among the learned as a privileged order-The author's obligations to the Mystics;-to Immanuel Kant-The difference between the letter and the spirit of Kant's writings, and a vindication of prudence in the teaching of philosophy-Fichte's attempt to complete the critical system-Its partial success and ultimate failure-Obligations to Schelling; and among English writers to Saumarez.

AFTER I had successively studied in the schools of Locke, Berkeley, Leibnitz, and Hartley, and could find in neither of them an abiding place for my reason, I began to ask myself; 10 is a system of philosophy, as different from mere history and historic classification, possible? If possible, what are its necessary conditions? I was for a while disposed to answer the first question in the negative, and to admit that the sole practicable employment for the human mind was to observe, 15 to collect, and to classify. But I soon felt, that human nature itself fought up against this wilful resignation of intellect; and as soon did I find, that the scheme taken with all its consequences and cleared of all inconsistencies, was not less impracticable than contra-natural. Assume in 20 its full extent the position, nihil in intellectu quod non prius

in sensu, without Leibnitz's qualifying præter ipsum intellectum, and in the same sense, in which the position was understood by Hartley and Condillac: and what Hume had demonstratively deduced from this concession con

* "And Coxcombs vanquish Berkeley with a grin." Pope.

cerning cause and effect, will apply with equal and crushing force to all the other eleven categorical forms, and the logical functions corresponding to them. How can we make bricks without straw? or build without cement? We learn all things indeed by occasion of experience; but 5 the very facts so learnt force us inward on the antecedents, that must be pre-supposed in order to render experience itself possible. The first book of Locke's Essays, (if the supposed error, which it labors to subvert, be not a mere thing of straw, an absurdity which no man ever did, or 10 indeed ever could, believe,) is formed on a σópioμa ÉтepoTýσews, and involves the old mistake of Cum hoc : ergo, propter hoc.

The term, Philosophy, defines itself as an affectionate seeking after the truth; but Truth is the correlative of 15 Being. This again is no way conceivable, but by assuming as a postulate, that both are ab initio, identical and coinherent; that intelligence and being are reciprocally each other's substrate. I presumed that this was a possible conception, (i.e. that it involved no logical inconsonance,) from 20 the length of time during which the scholastic definition of the Supreme Being, as "actus purissimus sine ulla potentialitate," was received in the schools of Theology, both by the Pontifician and the Reformed divines. The early study of Plato and Plotinus, with the commentaries and the 25 THEOLOGIA PLATONICA of the illustrious Florentine; of Proclus, and Gemistius Pletho; and at a later period of the De Immenso et Innumerabili," and the "De la causa, principio ed uno," of the philosopher of Nola, who could boast of a Sir Philip Sidney and Fulke Greville among his patrons, 30 and whom the idolaters of Rome burnt as an atheist in the

* Videlicet; quantity, quality, relation, and mode, each consisting of three subdivisions. Vide Kritik der reinen Vernunft, PP. 95 and 106. See too the judicious remarks on Locke and Hume.