exposed him to the charge of first appealing to the divine attributes in proof of the authority of his faculties; and afterwards, of appealing to these faculties, in proof of the existence of God.

It is wonderful, that it should have escaped the penetration of this most acute thinker, that a vicious circle of the same description is involved in every appeal to the intellectual powers, in proof of their own credibility; and that unless this credibility be assumed as unquestionable, the farther exercise of human reason is altogether nugatory. The evidence for the existence of God seems to have appeared to Descartes too irresistible and overwhelming, to be subjected to those logical canons which apply to all the other conclusions of the understanding.*

Extravagant and hopeless as these preliminary steps must now appear, they had nevertheless an obvious tendency to direct the attention of the author, in a singular degree, to the phenomena of thought; and to train him to those habits of abstraction from external objects, which, to the bulk of mankind, are next to impossible. In this way, he was led to perceive, with the evidence of consciousness, that the attributes of Mind were still more clearly and distinctly knowable than those of Matter; and that, in studying the former, so far from attempting to explain them by analogies borrowed from the latter, our chief aim ought to be, to banish as much as possible from the fancy, every analogy, and even every analogical expression, which, by inviting the attention abroad, might divert it from its proper business at home. In one word, that the only right method of philosophizing on this subject was comprised in the old Stoical precept (understood in a sense somewhat different from that originally annex

* How painful is it to recollect, that the philosopher who had represented his faith in the veracity of God, as the sole foundation of his confidence in the demonstrations of mathematics, was accused and persecuted by his contemporaries as an atheist; and that, too, in the same country (Holland) where, for more than half a century after his death, his doctrines were to be taught in all the universities with a blind idolatry! A zeal without knowledge, and the influence of those earthly passions, from which even Protestant divines are not always exempted, may, it is to be hoped, go far to account for this inconsistency and injustice, without adopting the uncharitable insinuation of D'Alembert: " Malgré toute la sagacité qu'il avoit employée pour prouver l'existence de Dieu, il fut accusé de la nier par des ministres, qui peutêtre ne la croyoient pas."

ed to it), Nec te quæsiveris extra. A just A just conception of this rule, and a steady adherence to its spirit, constitutes the groundwork of what is properly called the Experimental Philosophy of the Human Mind. It is thus that all our facts relating to Mind must be ascertained; and it is only upon facts thus attested by our own consciousness, that any just theory of Mind can be reared.

Agreeably to these views, Descartes, was, I think the first who clearly saw, that our idea of Mind is not direct, but relative;-relative to the various operations of which we are conscious. What am I? he asks, in his second Meditation: A thinking being,-that is, a being doubting, knowing, affirming, denying, consenting, refusing, susceptible of pleasure and of pain.* Of all these things I might have had complete experience, without any previous acquaintance with the qualities and laws of matter; and therefore it is impossible that the study of matter can avail me aught in the study of myself. This, accordingly, Descartes laid down as a first principle; that nothing comprehensible by the imagination can be at all subservient to the knowledge of Mind; and that the sensible images involved in all our common forms of speaking concerning its operations, are to be guarded against with the most anxious care, as tending to confound, in our apprehensions, two classes of phenomena, which it is of the last importance to distinguish accurately from each other.†

"Non sum compages illa membrorum, quæ corpus humanum appellatur: non sum etiam tenuis aliquis aer istis membris infusus; non ventus, non ignis, non vapor, non halitus. Quid igitur sum? res cogitans; quid est hoc? nempe dubitans, intelligens, affirmans, negans, volens, nolens," &c. Med. Sec.

"Itaque cognosco, nihil eorum quæ possum Imaginatione comprehendere, ad hanc quam de me habeo notitiam pertinere; mentemque ab illis diligentissime esse avocandam, ut suam ipsa naturam quàm distinctissime percipiat. Ibid. A few sentences before, Descartes explains with precision in what sense Imagination is here to be understood. "Nihil aliud est imaginari quam rei corporeæ figuram seu imaginem contemplari."

The following extracts from a book published at Cambridge in 1660 (precisely ten years after the death of Descartes,) while they furnish a useful comment on some of the above remarks, may serve to show, how completely the spirit of the Cartesian philosophy of Mind had been seized, even then, by some of the members of that university.

"The souls of men exercising themselves first of all nivńcu xgobarix, as the Greek philosopher expresseth himself, merely by a progressive kind of motion, spending themselves about bodily and material acts, and conversing only with sensible things; they are apt to acquire such deep stamps of material phantasms to themselves, that they cannot imagine their own Being to be any other than material and

To those who are familiarly acquainted with the writings of Locke, and of the very few among his successors who have thoroughly entered into the spirit of his philosophy, the foregoing observations may not appear to possess much either of originality or of importance; but when first given to the world, they formed the greatest step ever made in the science of Mind, by a single individual. What a contrast do they exhibit, not only to the discussions of the schoolmen, but to the analogical theories of Hobbes at the very same period! and how often have they been since lost sight of, notwithstanding the clearest speculative conviction of their truth and importance, by Locke himself, and by the greatest part of his professed followers! Had they been duly studied and understood by Mr. Horne Tooke, they would have furnished him with a key for solving those etymological riddles, which, although mistaken by many of his contemporaries for profound philosophical discoveries, derive, in fact, the whole of their mystery, from the strong bias of shallow reasoners to relapse into the same scholastic errors, from which Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Reid, have so successfully labored to emancipate the mind.

If any thing can add to our admiration of a train of thought manifesting in its author so unexampled a triumph over the strongest prejudices of sense, it is the extraordinary circumstance of its having first occurred to a young man, who had spent the years commonly devoted to academical study, amid the dissipation and tumult of camps.*

divisible, though of a fine ethereal nature. It is not possible for us well to know what our souls are, but only by their xivńouis nunλinal, their circular or reflex motions, and converse with themselves, which can only steal from them their own secrets." Smith's Select Discourses, pp. 65, 66.

For

"If we reflect but upon our own souls, how manifestly do the notions of reason, freedom, perception, and the like, offer themselves to us, whereby we may know a thousand times more distinctly what our souls are, than what our bodies are. the former we know, by an immediate converse with ourselves, and a distinct sense of their operations; whereas all our knowledge of the body is little better than merely historical, which we gather up by scraps and piecemeal, from more doubtful and uncertain experiments which we make of them; but the notions which we have of a mind, i. e. something within us that thinks, apprehends, reasons, and discourses, are so clear and distinct from all those notions which we can fasten upon a body, that we can easily conceive that if all body-being in the world were destroyed, yet we might then as well subsist as now we do." Ibid. p. 98.

"Descartes porta les armes, d'abord en Hollande, sous le célèbre Maurice de Nassau; de-là en Allemagne, sous Maximilien de Bavière, au commencement de la guerre de trente ans. Il passa ensuite au service de l'Empereur Ferdinand II. pour

Nothing could make this conceivable but the very liberal education which he had previously received under the Jesuits, at the college of La Flèche ;* where, we are told, that while yet a boy, he was so distinguished by habits of deep meditation, that he went among his companions by the name of the Philosopher. Indeed, it is only at that early age, that such habits are to be cultivated with complete success.

The glory, however, of having pointed out to his successors the true method of studying the theory of Mind, is almost all that can be claimed by Descartes in logical and metaphysical science. Many important hints, indeed, may be gleaned from his works; but, on the whole, he has added very little to our knowledge of human nature. Nor will this appear surprising, when it is recollected, that he aspired to accomplish a similar revolution in all the various departments of physical knowledge ;-not to mention the time and thought he must have employed in those, mathematical researches, which, however lightly esteemed by himself, have been long regarded as the most solid basis of his fame.t

Among the principal articles of the Cartesian philosophy, which are now incorporated with our prevailing and most accredited doctrines, the following seem to me to be chiefly entitled to notice:

voir de plus près les troubles de la Hongrie. On croit aussi, qu'au siège de la Rochelle, il combattit, comme volontaire, dans une bataille contre la flotte Angloise." Thomas, Eloge de Descartes, Note 8.

When Descartes quitted the profession of arms, he had arrived at the age of twentyfive.

*It is a curious coincidence, that it was in the same village of La Flèche that Mr. Hume fixed his residence, while composing his Treatise of Human Nature. Is it not probable that he was partly attracted to it, by associations similar to those which presented themselves to the fancy of Cicero, when he visited the walks of the Academy?

In the beginning of Descartes's dissertation upon Method, he has given a very interesting account of the pursuits which occupied his youth! and of the considerations which suggested to him the bold undertaking of reforming philosophy.

Such too is the judgment pronounced by D'Alembert. Les mathématiques dont Descartes semble avoir fait assez peu de cas, font néanmoins aujourd'hui la partie la plus solide et la moins contestée de sa gloire." To this he adds a very ingenious reflection on the comparative merits of Descartes, considered as a geometer and as a philosopher. "Comme philosophe, il a peut-être été aussi grand, mais il n'a pas été si heureux. La Géométrie, qui par la nature de son objet doit toujours gagner sans perdre, ne pouvoit manquer, étant maniée par un aussi grand génie, de faire des progrès très-sensibles et apparens pour tout le monde. La philosophie se trouvoit dans un état bien different; tout y étoit à commencer; et que ne coûtent point les premiers pas en tout genre! le mérite de les faire dispense de celui d'en faire de grands." Disc. Prél.

1

1. His luminous exposition of the common logical error of attempting to define words which express notions too simple to admit of analysis. Mr. Locke claims this improvement as entirely his own; but the merit of it unquestionably belongs to Descartes, although it must be owned that he has not always sufficiently attended to it in his own researches.*

2. His observations on the different classes of our prejudices; particularly on the errors to which we are liable in consequence of a careless use of language as the instrument of thought. The greater part of these observations, if not the whole, had been previously hinted at by Bacon; but they are expressed by Descartes with greater precision and simplicity, and in a style better adapted to the taste of the present age.

3. The paramount and indisputable authority which, in all our reasonings concerning the human mind, he ascribes to the evidence of consciousness. Of this logical principle he has availed himself, with irresistible force, in refuting the scholastic sophisms against the liberty of human actions, drawn from the prescience of the Deity, and other considerations of a theological nature.

4. The most important, however, of all his improvements in metayhysics, is the distinction which he has so clearly and so strongly drawn between the primary and the secondary qualities of matter. qualities of matter. This distinction was not unknown to some of the ancient schools of philosophy in Greece; but it was afterwards rejected by Aristotle, and by the schoolmen; and it was reserved for Descartes to place it in such a light, as (with the exception of a very few sceptical or rather paradoxical theorists) to unite the opinions of all succeeding inquirers. For this step, so apparently easy, but so momentous in its consequences, Descartes was not indebted to any long or difficult processes of reasoning; but to those habits of accurate and patient attention to the operations of his own mind,

"The names of simple ideas are not capable of any definitions; the names of all complex ideas are. It has not, that I know, been yet observed by any body, what words are, and what are not capable of being defined." (Locke's Essay, Book iii. chap. iv. §iv.) Compare this with the Principia of Descartes, 1. 10; and with Lord Stair's Philologia Nova Experimentalis, pp. 9, and 79, printed at Leyden in

1686.