is not invariably followed by the corresponding perception: nevertheless, Dr. Brown calls the impression upon the organ the cause of the state of mind, which, in his phraseology, is perception. In like manner, certain words are the causes of the ideas of the mind when we peruse any writing. Now it seems to us that both these examples contradict Dr. Brown's theory; and that to impute causation to the organic affections or the words of a book, is entirely unauthorized. If thoughts be acts of the mind, we may speak of the occasions of our thoughts; but their cause is the mind itself.

We have wished to shun minute and verbal criticism; and have endeavoured to collect our author's meaning from a careful comparison of the various passages where it was most pointedly expressed: yet we cannot leave this part of Dr. Brown's speculations without bringing to the test some assertions, of which, we think the correctness to be more than questionable. "When we say of any thing that it has been followed, is followed, and will always be followed by a particular change, and say at another time, that it has the power of producing that change, we do not make the slightest difference of affirmation; we only alter the words in which our unaltered meaning is conveyed." Now, whether we speak accurately or not, it is very plain that the phrases quoted above are not equivalent. In the one, we ascribe the change to the antecedent as the cause of its existence; in the other, we merely affirm that the change is, and always will be subsequent to the antecedent: while it must be admitted that the cause of this subsequence may be an act of the Almighty's will, or a decree which has been from eternity. In the pre-established harmony of Leibnitz, the movements of the body are supposed to be adjusted to the acts of the mind, so as to answer all the phenomena, while the acts of the mind and the motions of the body are completely independent of each other, each series separately depending on the appointment of the Creator. In this hypothesis, it would be very absurd to call the mental desire the cause of the motion of a limb, though perfectly unexceptionable to say that the desire has been, is, and always will be followed by the corporeal movement. It is not to be denied, we assume, that the Creator might have endued objects with certain properties, by the agency of which they may originate changes; and the only question which can need our attention is, whether this has been done, or whether the fiat of Jehovah himself intervenes in every change; either immediately, as in the system of occa

* Inquiry, p. 67.

sional causes; or once for all time, as in the system of Leibnitz. Dr. Brown's theory, as we have already had occasion to remark, most frequently accords with the last mentioned system, though sometimes it seems to be difficult to make his language conform to any theory. "We speak of effects and causes as truly different, since it is unquestionably not the same thing to follow uniformly a certain change, and to precede uniformly a certain change." In this passage we have described, a change, as something between an antecedent and consequent but how it came there, we are unable to determine. There is no efficiency in the antecedent of the change, and of course none in the consequent nor does this change appear to be provided for in the system of pre-established antecedents and consequents; and we can reduce it to order only by an interposition of creative power. Non tali dignus vindice nodus.

We are anxious that the conclusion should not be drawn from the freedom of our criticism on some parts of Dr. Brown's writings, that we lightly esteem what he has done for metaphysical science: we value very highly the Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, though, as a whole, the work is very incomplete; and have felt less restraint in our strictures, because that there is greater danger of our being deceived into too favourable an opinion of an exemplar imitabile vitiis, than of the opposite error. Dr. Brown has introduced analysis into the investigation of mental science, to a greater extent and more successfully than had been done by any of his predecessors; and if those who read his lectures, should derive from the employment nothing more than that disposition to search every subject to the bottom, and to separate the elements of every compound, which shines so conspicuously in almost every page, they will have made an acquisition of which it is impossible to exaggerate the value.

Dr. Brown's contribution to the science of the human mind, would have been, however, incomparably more deserving of our gratitude, if the excellent author had not been trammelled by a preconceived system; and had been at liberty to follow truth and exhibit her unadorned loveliness without the factitious garb and attitudes of a theory. The Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect, is at the foundation of Dr. Brown's metaphysical speculations; and its consequences are followed out with the most fearless confidence in their accuracy. In one of the sections of the Inquiry, the decision is calmly announced that mind is not more active than matter; and we are left to draw

* Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. i. p. 71.
+ The fourth of part first.

the obvious inference from this proposition, that neither mind nor matter are or can be possessed of activity; and, that since "the beginning of days," material changes and mental changes have been rolling onward under one invariable necessary law. Indeed, philosophical precision would require of the partisans of this hypothesis to reject the word "change" as meaningless. The same opinions, as we have seen, were carried by our author into the philosophy of the mind; and the phenomena were made to bend to the results of the "Inquiry." The application of its proper object to an organ of sense is immediately followed by perception; and the perception is again followed by another mental phenomenon: here then is invariable antecedence; and the perception is therefore named an affection of the mind: and the notion which follows the perception, a state of the mind.— The organic affection is the cause of the perception, and the perception is the cause of the subsequent state. The term, emotion, found favour with Dr. Brown, because it did not conflict with his previous opinions.

The writings of Dr. Brown very frequently display their author as too ambitious of the reputation of a discoverer; and sometimes, we are persuaded, the credit of originality is claimed when what is original consists chiefly in words. We are sorry to be obliged to mark a disposition to criticise the errors of preceding authors without an equal willingness to do justice to their merits. It was certainly incumbent on Dr. Brown, in the station which he filled, to point out to his pupils what he esteemed to be erroneous in the writings which had reputation; and this duty was really more imperative in proportion as the fame of any individual was exalted: but Dr. Brown manifestly delighted in showing, by a severe scrutiny of the works of his predecessors, how little had been done for mental science before his own labours; and in the case of Dr. Reid, at least, has been unjust in his strictures. We do not wish to violate the maxim "De Mortuis," but it is becoming, and indeed obligatory on all, to vindicate the reputation of departed worthies against the attacks of their survivors, and even against those of each other.

The merit of overthrowing the ideal system is adjudged to Dr. Reid by Mr. Stewart: and the quotations which Dr. Brown has made from authors who wrote before Dr. Reid, are not conclusive against his claim to this honour. Passages may be selected from the writings of almost any author, which, when separated from their connexion, will appear to convey sentiments nearly

A very remarkable instance may be seen in the note on Miracles, which is appended to the Inquiry. We might make frequent specifications in the Lectures.

the reverse of those which were intended; and therefore, although a few paragraphs may be culled from the works of Des Cartes and others, apparently consistent with the more enlightened views of the present day in relation to perception, we cannot thence infer that such was the belief of those eminent men. We have never thought that Locke was an idealist, although there are many parts of his Essay on the Human Understanding that can be reconciled to no other theory; perhaps those who reverence the great Locke less than ourselves would say, with some plausibility, that there are many passages consistent with the true theory of perception. If then Locke's vision was not clear on this subject, and we see him wandering, occasionally, from the regions of truth into those of conjecture and hypothesis, there is every reason to believe that his sagacity advanced far before those who preceded him, or even his contemporaries; and that they were still more bewildered. Besides, it is a singular circumstance, and may seem incredible to some that Dr. Brown's own opinions do not differ extremely from those of the Idealists. We are safe, at least, in the position that they are not so far removed from Idealism as the doctrines of Reid; and this may partly explain why Dr. Brown is disposed to view, more favourably, Des Cartes and his school. We have no reference, at present, to a resemblance already exhibited, relative to the formation of ideas; nor do we charge Dr. Brown with the folly of supposing images as objects of the mind when we think: but Dr. Brown indisputably uses language which seems to deny the perception of external objects by the mind; and thus the mind perceives only the organic affections, whether these be images or agitations of the medullary substance, or any thing else, is comparatively of little import.

There are proofs in abundance of the assertion just made in Dr. Brown's confutation of Dr. Reid's "supposed" improvements in the science of mind, as also in other places. We wish to avoid extracts, except when they are absolutely indispensible; and shall, therefore, detain our readers with but a single passage

"So far, indeed, would the confutation of this hypothesis (the Ideal) as to perception, be from lessening the force of the scepticism as to the existence of matter, that of two sceptics, one believing every thing, with respect to ideas, which Dr. Reed supposed himself to have confuted, and the other believing ideas to be mere states of his mind, there can be no question that the former would be the more easy to be overcome, since his belief would already involve the existence of SOMETHING separate from the mind; while the other might maintain that all of which he was conscious, was the mere series of affections of his own mind, and VOL. III.-No. 5.

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that beyond this consciousness he could know nothing. All that remains then to supply the place of logical demonstration is the paramount force of universal and irresistible belief. We are conscious, indeed, only of the feelings that are the momentary states of our own mind: but some of these it is absolutely impossible for us not to ascribe to causes that are external and independent of us."t

Dr. Brown here informs us that the mind knows nothing more than its own consciousness, and that we believe in the existence of a material world, because this belief is inseparably linked by the constitution of our nature to certain feelings of the mind; and, in fact, this necessarily follows from viewing perception as a state of mind. Such is not the doctrine of Reid: the mind believes that there is a material world, because it perceives it; and, therefore, when Dr. Reid had overthrown the hypothesis of ideas as objects of perception, the evidence of the existence of a material world was as strong as that of the mind's own existence since we may call the existence of the mind itself into doubt with as much reason as the accuracy of its powers. The mind may, with the same propriety, question whether the mind exists, as whether that exists which the mind perceives to exist. To ask why the miud believes in the existence of that which it perceives, is sheer nonsense: it believes it because it perceives it; and no more valid reason can be given for our belief of any truth. Dr. Brown's animadversion then on Dr. Reid is entirely groundless; as it supposes Dr. Reid's views of perception to be coincident with his own; which is very far from being the fact. Dr. Brown's speculations much more nearly resemble those of the persons whose errors Dr. Reid exposed, than the doctrines of Reid himself.

There is an equally unfounded criticism of Dr. Brown on & distinction made by Dr. Reid, between those properties of bodies which are perceived by the mind, and those, the existence of which is only known from their effects, and this stricture must also be referred to an imperfect acquaintance with Dr. Reid's theory of perception: or perhaps more truly to Dr. Brown's hypothesis, that all properties of matter equally operate upon, or affect the mind: and, consequently, the mind can know nothing more than the impression made upon itself. The primary qualities of bodies cause certain sensations which are felt, and also the secondary; and, in this particular, primary and secondary qualities of matter are similar: but the primary qualities, the causes of the sensations, are perceived directly by the mind; the secondary are not ; and in this they are different. "They are distinguished by this," says Dr. Reid, "that of the primary, we Ib. pp. 320-323.

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* Lectures, vol, i. p. 356.

+ Ib. p. 357.