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Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. By the late J. L. Burckhardt. 4to. 25s. Morton's Travels in Russia. 8vo. 14s. bds. 1 THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW. OCTOBER, 1830. ART. I.-Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind. By James Mill, Esq. In 2 Vols. London. Baldwin and Cradock. 1829. METAPHYSICS! a word of terror to most people; 6 and no wonder. A science which professed to treat of "the principles and causes of all things existing," and the principal parts of which were divided into "Ontology, Cosmology, Anthroposophy, Psychology, Pneumatology, and Metaphysical Theology," might justify a little alarm. Being', essence,' 'substance," 6 mode' quality,' attribute,' essential,' accidental,' terms that confronted him at his very entrance into the first division of this magnificent and mysterious temple, were not remarkably calculated to abate the apprehension of a timid student. To examine into "the essence of the world, and all that it contains; into its eternal laws, into the nature of matter, into the nature of motion, into the nature of tangible bodies, into their attributes and adjuncts, into all that can be known of them by reasoning and experience, and more especially, whether God, in creating the world, must necessarily have created the best possible world, and whether this would be so in fact;" was, it must be confessed, to open a somewhat extensive and difficult field of speculation. To inquire, "whether the essence of the mind be distinct from its existence; whether, in that case, its essence might not subsist when it had no actual existence, and if so, then what are all the qualities inherent in it as a nonentity"-it would appear, was the object of Psychology. VOL. XIII.-Westminster Review. T Then there was a distinct science termed Angelography, the purpose of which was, to discover the properties of spirit; to ascertain in what its effective existence consists; to determine, "whether angels pass from one point of space to another, without passing through the intermediate points, whether they can visibly discern objects in the dark? whether more than one can exist at the same moment in the same physical point? whether they can exist in a perfect vacuum with any relation to the absolute corporeal void; and whether, if an angel were in vacuo, the void could still truly be termed perfect :" while the questions to be determined by Metaphysical Theology were, "the nature of the Divine Essence; whether the Deity exist in imaginary space as much as in the space that is real, whether he can cause a mode to exist without a substance? whether, in knowing all things, he knows universals, or only things singular? whether he love a possible unexisting angel better than an actual existing insect?" There can be little doubt, that to most people of the present day, a clear solution of some of these questions would appear somewhat difficult. Into the minds of others, it is possible that a suspicion might enter, that even could the solution be rendered quite perfect, it would yield but little profit. But such was not the ancient opinion. It cannot be denied that there was a time when the acutest minds conceived that in devoting themselves to speculations of this nature, they were pursuing the truest and sublimest philosophy by the best possible means, and when the prosecution of such inquiries with extraordinary subtlety and great zeal, was rewarded with a reverence amounting to idolatry. But, because this called Metaphysics, and because the labour and ingenuity spent upon such speculations were worse than useless, shall we conclude that all inquiry into the constitution of the human mind is idle, and that the hope of deriving any real and valuable knowledge from the cultivation of mental philosophy is a delusion. This is the inference which some persons would deduce, and the practical lesson which they would have us learn from the record which history has handed down to us of ancient error and folly. was Precisely what Alchemy is to modern Chemistry, ancient Metaphysics is to Mental Science. The objects at which alchemy aimed, and the jargon which constituted its only language, do not afford a greater contrast to the exact and useful researches of modern chemistry, and the clearness and precision of its present nomenclature, than the true objects of mental science, the simplicity and definiteness of its language, exhibit to the metaphysical speculations of past ages, and the jargon in which the vain disputations they produced were carried on; a jargon which was at once the easy refuge of ignorance, and the inevitable and the constant source of mental delusion. The search after the philosopher's stone, after the powder of projection, after the alcahest or general solvent, after the elixir of life, after the universal medicine-in a word, after the stone of transmutation, and the medicine of immortality-a search which the strongest intellects of those days pursued with the most intense and unremitting application; the cultivation of that mysterious and delusive art which has been emphatically said to be without principle, beginning in falsehood, proceeding in labour, and ending in beggary, and the chimeras of which were darkly shadowed forth under the emblems of " the lion,” the “dragon," "the panther," "the flying bird," ""the flying bird," "the red eagle,' "the crow," "the toad,"-that art which enchanted the credulous, perplexed the acute, silenced the sceptical, beggared the rich, and enriched the knavish-that art was the precursor and the origin of a science which has already changed in some degree the face of nature, and completely altered the condition of civilized society; which has multiplied our national resources beyond the power of calculation; "brought the treasures of the abyss to the surface of the earth; given the feeble arm of man the momentum of an Afrite; commanded manufactures to arise, as the rod of the prophet produced water in the desert; afforded the means of dispensing with that time and tide which wait for no man, and with its cloudy machinery produced a change in the world, the effects of which, extraordinary as they are, are perhaps only now beginning to be felt." In like manner the art of disputation, the art of making subtle and barren distinctions, and of practising upon the mind to an extent, and with a success, which now excites our astonishment, the cheat of words; an art to which some of the strongest and acutest intellects were for ages fondly and exclusively devoted, this art, which instead of strengthening and enlightening, darkened and corrupted the understanding, was the precursor and the origin of a science which is destined to produce in the intellectual and the moral state of man, an equally stupendous, and an incomparably more felicitous, change than chemistry, with all its triumphs, can ultimately achieve in his physical condition. This master science which has for its object to show what the human mind is, what its capacities are, what are the best means of improving them, and what are the sources from which their truest and their most permanent gratifications must flow, is divided into two great branches-the intellectual and the moral: the first includes an exposition of the phenomena of the mind the second a consideration of those phenomena as pleasurable or painful, as good or evil. The one relates to the powers of the mind; the other to their direction: the first is called mental, the second moral philosophy. We purpose to avail ourselves of the present occasion to offer an illustration or two of the usefulness of attending to the first branch of this science, which, it is obvious, must be understood before the second can be studied with any reasonable hope of success. The object of mental is precisely the same as that of natural science but what is the object of natural science? To ascertain phenomena and their relations. Suppose the object of the natural philosopher be to find out what a substance is, or, as it is commonly expressed, to ascertain its nature, what has he to do? First, to discover the number of elements of which it is composed, and secondly, the various changes which it is capable of undergoing from other bodies, or which it is capable of producing in other bodies, together with the order in which such changes take place; that is, to ascertain among these changes what events are antecedents and what consequents. Material objects, as ordinarily presented to us, consist of aggregates. Of the separate bodies that compose the mass we have commonly no perception: we distinguish only the mass. Now one of the first and most important objects of science is to make us acquainted with these separate bodies. This object it accomplishes by the process termed Analysis. Analysis separates the different bodies which co-exist in a substance, and exhibits them in their separate state. This is beautifully illustrated by the manner in which chemistry accomplishes this object, by means of that great instrument with which it works, the process termed decomposition. Of substances that are really compound, but that appear simple, chemical decomposition demonstrates the true constitution by exhibiting in a separate state their component elements. Hence it has been said by Dr. Brown, with that felicity of illustration for which he is often so eminently distinguished, that chemistry, considered as a source of knowledge, is an instrument precisely analogous to the microscope, doing for us just what the microscope accomplishes, enabling us to see the small objects which are constantly before us, but which the imperfection of our senses renders us incapable of distinguishing. Had our eyes been better, chemistry would have been without usefulness and even |