in this philosophy all be considered as purely pathological, is equally clear, because emotions and sensations are viewed as being altogether homogeneous. We see no room, therefore, in the system of psychology we have just considered, for any of the more lofty and spiritual phenomena of human nature. The soul fettered down to sense, can only live in the present; its noblest conceptions are but the images of sensual objects; its highest perception of moral law, is but a calculation of pleasure and pain; the foundations of religion, so far as they depend upon our rational ideas of God, of Duty, of Immortality, are undermined; and the holy stream of disinterested love to God, in which the weary spirit finds its only rest, is dried up at the very fountain. Whether the author would have sanctioned such inferences, I have no means whatever of judging; but unless I have greatly mistaken his principles, the application of correct logic must necessarily bring such conclusions sooner or later to light.

The whole of our objections, then, may now be concentrated in a single remark. The author, it is evident, fixed his attention upon one of the great fundamental facts of our consciousness, that of finite nature operating upon us through the channels of sense. In looking steadfastly to this fact, he doubtless succeeded in analysing many phenomena, that might otherwise have eluded all observation; but in the meantime he entirely lost sight of the other two fundamental notions, those of the active

self and the infinite. Through the omission of these elements he reduced our pure and primitive ideas to the character of mere abstractions, and the energy of the will to that of a passive sensational feeling.

The error committed is the exact opposite of that which Kant committed before him. The German philosopher, in discovering all the forms of the understanding, neglected sufficiently to analyse the matter; the English philosopher, on the contrary, in directing his attention almost exclusively to the matter, wellnigh entirely neglected the form. Many thanks, however, are still due to him for his labours, inasmuch as they give one tack to the vessel in which the world's philosophy is sailing, which, while it takes that vessel for a time from its true course, will, nevertheless, aid in bringing it at last so much further on its way to the land, where truth reposes. Analysis, as we have before remarked, to be close and penetrating, must give rise to error as well as to truth; it only needs an enlightened eclecticism to grasp the one, and to reject the other.

We have entered into Mr Mill's analysis somewhat more fully than we should have done, (considering that our design is to give a brief historical sketch of the different systems of philosophy with their comparative merits, rather than to dwell at length upon the works of particular authors,) because it is so able a representative of the advanced school of Locke, as existing in England during the

present century. Not that we mean to say, that Locke and Mill in all respects coincide. So far from that, the points of difference are very considerable, and on many questions, as that of the classification of the intellectual powers, quite dissimilar; but still both the method and the nature of the analysis so closely resemble each other in the two cases, that they are at once seen to belong to the same school of philosophy.

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The precise position which Mill would take in the scale of sensationalism, is about midway between Locke on the one hand, and the French Ideologists on the other. The latter of these regard all mental operations as being different forms of sensation the former, although looking upon the senses as the primary source from whence the material of our knowledge is derived, yet strongly asserts the existence of certain active faculties, by which this material is moulded; the author now before us, differing from both, admits only sensations and ideas, comprehending under these more than the French philosophers, but by no means so much as our great English metaphysician would contend for. Other writers of the same class have wavered somewhere between these two points, but they all retain such a degree of resemblance to each other, that to adduce them here would be only to reproduce similar doctrines under varied forms, and then to urge against them similar objections; neither, indeed, were we to attempt it, could we bring forward any authors, who have set forth the main doctrines

themselves with so much clearness and force of reasoning, as the one we have already examined.

There is one work, however, recently published, of such great and unquestionable merit, that it were wrong to omit a distinct mention of it, in estimating the sensational phenomena of the present ageI mean a work entitled, "A system of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive," by John Stuart Mill. The author, it is true, aims simply at discovering and expounding the proper methods of investiga ting truth, without pledging himself to any system of speculative philosophy; but still there are so many points of a speculative nature touched upon, all in the spirit of the "Analysis" above considered, that he must necessarily be regarded as a partisan of the modern Lockian school of metaphysics. The evidences of his adherence to this school are scattered more or less throughout the whole work. Let us adduce one or two examples.

First, in his discussion of the real meaning to be attached to the term substance, he embraces the opportunity of placing the science of ontology entirely beyond the reach of the human faculties.' Not, indeed, that he has pretended to enter into the full merits of the case, since that would have been foreign to the object of his whole work; but the view he takes of the question, "en passant," implies, that we have no right to assume any conception as asserting obejctive validity, which lies (as

1 Vol. i. p. 78, et seq.

that of substance does) without the range of our sense-perceptions, and rests upon purely rational or intuitive evidence. According to this view of the question, we may understand somewhat of qualities, since they come to us as actual phenomena, but we can know nothing of substance, since, if it exist, it is hidden behind a screen of impenetrable obscurity.

Now we believe that a thorough analysis of the case will show, that reason has as much right to assure us of the nature and existence of being or substance, as perception has to assure us of the phenomena we term qualities; that just in the same manner as we have an outward intuition of the one by the senses, so we have an inward intuition of the other by the reason. The cognisance of attributes by perception is as much a subjective process, as much a part of my inward consciousness, as is the cognisance of matter or substance by the reason; and if we deny the objective validity of the latter, there is no superior evidence why we should accept that of the former. As well may we, in fact, reject the reality of any quality as an objective phenomenon, as reject the substratum in which it adheres. We know the properties of the external world, says our author, because we have sensations which immediately convey them. But then, what are sensa tions except states of mind? If a state of mind termed sensation can give us the knowledge of properties, why may not a state of mind termed intuition or reason give us the knowledge of sub