the late collection of his "Lyrical Ballads and other poems." The explanation which Mr. Wordsworth has himself given, will be found to differ from mine, chiefly, perhaps, as our objects are different. It could scarcely, indeed, happen otherwise, from the advantage I have enjoyed of frequent conversation with him on a subject to which a poem of his own first directed my attention, and my conclusions concerning which, he had made more lucid to myself by many happy instances drawn from the operation of natural objects on the mind. But it was. Mr. Wordsworth's purpose to consider the influences of fancy and imagination as they are manifested in poetry, and, from the different effects, to conclude their diversity in kind; while it is my object to investigate the seminal principle, and then, from the kind, to deduce the degree. My friend has drawn a masterly sketch of the branches, with their poetic fruitage. I wish to add the trunk, and even the roots, as far as they lift themselves above ground, and are visible to the naked eye of our common consciousness.

Yet, even in this attempt, I am aware that I shall be obliged to draw more largely on the reader's attention, than so immethodical a miscellany can authorize; when in such a work (the Ecclesiastical Policy) of such a mind as Hooker's, the judicious author, though no less admirable for the perspicuity than for the port and dignity of his language; and though he wrote for men of learning in a learned age, saw, nevertheless, occasion to anticipate and guard against "complaints of obscurity," as often as he was to trace his subject "to the highest well-spring and fountain." Which, (continues he,) "because men are not accustomed to, the pains we take are more needful, a great deal, than acceptable; and the matters we handle seem, by reason of newness, (till the mind grow better acquainted with them,) dark and intricate." I would gladly, therefore, spare both myself and others this labour, if I knew how without it to present an intelligible statement of my poetic creed; not as my opinions, which weigh for nothing, but as deductions from established premises, conveyed in such a form as is calculated either to effect a fundamental conviction, or to receive a fundamental confutation. If I may dare once more adopt the words of Hooker, " they, unto whom we shall seem tedious, are in no wise injured by us, because it is in their own hands to spare that labour, which they are not willing to endure." Those at least, let me be

permitted to add, who have taken so much pains to render me ridiculous for a perversion of taste, and have supported the charge by attributing strange notions to me on no other authority than their own conjectures, owe it to themselves, as well as to me, not to refuse their attention to my own statement of the theory, which I do acknowledge; or shrink from the trouble of examining the grounds on which I rest it, or the arguments which I offer in its justification.

CHAPTER V.

On the law of association—Its history traced from Aristotle to Hartley.

THERE have been men in all ages, who have been impelled, as by an instinct, to propose their own nature as a problem, and who devote their attempts to its solution. The first step was to construct a table of distinctions, which they seem to have formed on the principle of the absence or presence of the wILL. Our various sensations, perceptions and movements, were classed as active or passive, or as media partaking of both. A still finer distinction was soon established between the voluntary and the spontaneous. In our perceptions we seem to ourselves merely passive to an external power, whether as a mirror reflecting the landscape, or as a blank canvas on which some unknown hand paints it. For it is worthy of notice, that the latter, or the system of idealism, may be traced to sources equally remote with the former, or materialism; and Berkeley can boast an ancestry at least as venerable as Gassendi or Hobbs. These conjectures, however, concerning the mode in which our perceptions originated, could not alter the natural difference in things and thoughts. In the former, the cause appeared wholly external; while in the latter, sometimes our will interfered as the producing or determining cause, and sometimes our nature seemed to act by a mechanism of its own, without any conscious effort of the will, or even against it. Our inward experiences were thus arranged in three separate classes, the passive sense, or what the school-men call the merely receptive quality of the mind; the voluntary; and the spontaneous, which holds the middle place between both. But it is not in human nature to meditate on any mode of action, without inquiring after the law that governs it; and in the explanation of the spontaneous movements of our being, the metaphysician took the lead of the anatomist and natural philosopher. In Egypt, Palestine, Greece, and India, the analysis of the mind had reached its noon and manhood, while experimental research was still in its dawn and infancy. For many, very many centuries, it has been difficult to advance a new truth, or even a new error, in the philosophy of the intellect or morals.

With regard, however, to the laws that direct the spontaneous movements of thought, and the principle of their intellectual mechanism, there exists, it has been asserted, an important exception, most honourable to the moderns, and in the merit of which our own country claims the largest share. Sir James Mackintosh (who, amid the variety of his talents and attainments, is not of less repute for the depth and accuracy of his philosophical inquiries, than for the eloquence with which he is said to render their most difficult results perspicuous, and the driest attractive,) affirmed, in the lectures delivered by him at Lincoln's Inn Hall, that the law of association, as established in the contemporaneity of the original impressions, formed the basis of all true psychology; and any ontological or metaphysical science, not contained in such (i. c. empirical) psychology, was but a web of abstractions and generalizations. Of this prolific truth, of this great fundamental law, he declared HOBBS to have been the original discoverer, while its full application to the whole intellectual system we owe to David Hartley; who stood in the same relation to Hobbs, as Newton to Kepler; the law of association being that to the mind, which gravitation is

to matter.

Of the former clause in this assertion, as it respects the comparative merits of the ancient metaphysicians, including their commentators, the school men, and of the modern French and British philosophers, from Hobbs to Hume, Hartley and Condillac, this is not the place to speak. So wide indeed is the chasm between this gentleman's philosophical creed and mine, that so far from being able to join hands, we could scarce make our voices intelligible to each other and to bridge it over, would require more time, skill and power, than I believe myself to possess. But the latter clause involves for the greater part a mere question of fact and history, and the accuracy of the statement is to be tried by documents rather than reasoning.

First, then, I deny Hobbs's claim in toto: for he had been anticipated by Des Cartes, whose work "De Methodo" preceded Hobbs's "De Natura Humana," by more than a year. But what is of much more importance, Hobbs builds nothing on the principle which he had announced. He does not even announce it, as differing in any respect from the general laws of material motion and impact: nor was it, indeed, possible for him so to do, compatibly

with his system, which was exclusively material and mechanical. Far otherwise is it with Des Cartes; greatly as he too, in his after writings, (and still more egregiously his followers, De la Forge, and others,) obscured the truth by their attempts to explain it on the theory of nervous fluids and material configurations. But in his interesting work "De Methodo," Des Cartes relates the circumstance which first led him to meditate on this subject, and which since then has been often noticed and employed as an instance and illustration of the law. A child who, with its eyes bandaged, had lost several of his fingers by amputation, continued to complain for many days successively of pains, now in his joint, and now in that of the very fingers which had been cut off. Des Cartes was led by this incident to reflect on the uncertainty with which we attribute any particular place to any inward pain or uneasiness, and proceeded, after long consideration, to establish it as a general law, that contemporaneous impressions, whether images or sensations, recal each other mechanically. On this principle, as a ground work, he built up the whole system of human language, as one continued process of association. He showed in what sense not only general terms, but generic images, (under the name of abstract ideas,) actually existed, and in what consists their nature and power. As one word may become the general exponent of many, so, by association, a simple image may represent a whole class. But in truth, Hobbs himself makes no claims to any discovery, and introduces this law of association, or, (in his own language,) discursus mentalis, as an admitted fact, in the solution alone of which it is, by causes purely physiological, he arrogates any originality. His system is briefly this: whenever the senses are impinged on by external objects, whether by the rays of light reflected from them, or by cffluxes of their finer particles, there results a correspondent motion of the innermost and subtlest organs. This motion constitutes a representation, and there remains an impression of the same, or a certain disposition to repeat the same motion. Whenever we feel several objects at the same time, the impressions that are left (or, in the language of Mr. Hume, the ideas) are linked together. Whenever, therefore, any one of the movements which constitute a complex impression, are renewed through the senses, the others succeed mechanically. It follows of necessity, therefore, that Hobbs, as well as Hartley, and all others who derive as