Those who wish to see how far human ingenuity can push a complete confusion of ideas into the verge of the strictest logical demonstration and self-evident truth, may find all that they want in Dr Clarke's celebrated work on the Attributes,' which contains more logical acuteness and more power of scholastic disputation than any other work that I know of in modern times. Hartley has lost himself in the same endless labyrinth of finite and infinite series. Locke's statement of this question is only better, because it is shorter, and goes straight forward, without stopping to answer difficulties. And ESSAY IX. ON TOOKE'S "DIVERSIONS OF PURLEY." I WOULD class the merits of Mr Tooke's work under three heads: the etymological, the grammatical, and the philosophical. The etymological part is excellent, the grammatical part indifferent, and the philosophical part to the last degree despicable; it is downright, unqualified, unredeemed nonsense. As Mr Tooke himself says that all metaphysical reasoning is nonsense, it is scarcely rude to say that his metaphysical reasoning is so. It appears to me to be "mere midsummer madness." He ought not indeed. to have meddled with logic or metaphysics after such a declaration; he ought to have supposed that he laboured under some natural defect in this respect, as a man who finds no harmony in any tune that is played to him, may without much modesty conclude that he has no ear for music. The opinion which I have here advanced of this writer's merits as a general reasoner may seem a bold one; but the proof of it is not difficult; it is as easy as transcribing. I have only to take a few passages in which he has applied etymology to the illustration of moral and metaphysical truth, to make his undistinguishing admirers blush, not for their idol, but for the weakness and bounded faculties of human nature. Mr Tooke lays it down as a maxim, that the mind has neither complex nor abstract ideas. H. was in some things a zealot, and his zeal had led him to believe that his system of etymology would in some way or other establish this metaphysical principle, and overturn the established notions of law, morality, philosophy, and divinity. The full development and execution of this project is reserved for a future volume, but there are perpetual hints and intimations of it in the two first, something like the aerial music and flying noises in Prospero's island. The author seems constantly in his own mind on the point of detecting all imposture and delusion with the Ithuriel spear of etymology, but he as constantly draws back, and postpones his triumph. The second volume of the 'Diversions' consists chiefly of about two thousand instances of the etymology of words, to prove that there can be no abstract ideas; scarcely one |