The Project Gutenberg eBook of The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 11 (of 12) This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook. Title: The collected works of William Hazlitt, Vol. 11 (of 12) Author: William Hazlitt Editor: Arnold Glover A. R. Waller Release date: November 19, 2023 [eBook #72168] Language: English Original publication: London: J. M. Dent & Co, 1902 Credits: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT, VOL. 11 (OF 12) *** THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT IN TWELVE VOLUMES VOLUME ELEVEN _All rights reserved_ THE COLLECTED WORKS OF WILLIAM HAZLITT EDITED BY A. R. WALLER AND ARNOLD GLOVER WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY W. E. HENLEY ❦ Fugitive Writings ❦ 1904 LONDON: J. M. DENT & CO. McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.: NEW YORK Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE This volume and volume XII. contain those of Hazlitt’s writings which remained uncollected during his lifetime and have not been included in earlier volumes of the present edition. Some of these writings were published by the author’s son in the three works of which particulars are given below; one of them, the essay ‘On Abstract Ideas,’ was published in the second edition (1836) of _An Essay on the Principles of Human Action_ (cf. Bibliographical Note, vol. VII. p. 384); a few, viz. ‘Common Places’ and ‘Trifles Light as Air,’ were included in Mr. W. C. Hazlitt’s edition of _The Round Table_ (Bohn’s Standard Library, 1871); but most of the papers are here reprinted for the first time. See the Table of Contents, where the essays which have never been republished before are marked by an asterisk. The evidence upon which the Editors have relied in respect of this fresh material will be found in the Notes. A great many of the Essays now printed have not hitherto been identified as Hazlitt’s, but none have been included concerning which the Editors feel any doubt. The works published by the author’s son and referred to above are as follows:— 1. ‘_Literary Remains of the late William Hazlitt._ With a Notice of his Life, By his Son, and Thoughts on his Genius and Writings, By E. L. Bulwer, Esq., M.P. and Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, M.P. In Two Volumes. London: Saunders and Otley, Conduit Street. 1836.’ Vol. I. contained (as a frontispiece) Bewick’s crayon drawing of Hazlitt reproduced in vol. VIII. of the present edition; a Sonnet ‘written on seeing Bewick’s Chalk-Drawing of the Head of Hazlitt’ by Sheridan Knowles; a ‘Biographical Sketch’ of Hazlitt by his son; ‘Some Thoughts on the Genius of William Hazlitt’ signed ‘The Author of “Eugene Aram”‘; ‘Thoughts upon the Intellectual Character of the late William Hazlitt,’ by Mr. Sergeant Talfourd, M.P.; ‘Character of Hazlitt,’ by Charles Lamb, extracted from the well-known ‘Letter of Elia to Robert Southey, Esq.’ (1823); six ‘Sonnets to the Memory of Hazlitt’ by ‘A Lady’; and the following essays by Hazlitt, viz.: (i) Project for a new Theory of Civil and Criminal Legislation, (ii) Definition of Wit, (iii) On Means and Ends, (iv) Belief, whether Voluntary? (v) Personal Politics, (vi) On the Writings of Hobbes, (vii) On Liberty and Necessity, (viii) On Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding, and (ix) On Tooke’s Diversions of Purley.—Vol. II. contained the following essays by Hazlitt, viz.: (i) On Self-Love, (ii) On the Conduct of Life; or, Advice to a School-boy, (iii) On the Fine Arts, (iv) The Fight, (v) On the Want of Money, (vi) On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth, (vii) The Main-Chance, (viii) The Opera, (ix) Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen, (x) My First Acquaintance with Poets, (xi) The Shyness of Scholars, (xii) The Vatican, and (xiii) On the Spirit of Monarchy. Of these, the essay ‘On the Fine Arts’ and the essay on ‘The Vatican’ are included in vol. IX. of the present edition; the rest are published in this volume or in vol. XII. 2. ‘_Sketches and Essays._ By William Hazlitt. Now first collected by his Son. London: John Templeman, 248, Regent Street. MDCCCXXXIX.’ An Advertisement states that ‘The volume which the Editor has here the gratification of presenting to the public, consists of Essays contributed by their author to various periodicals. None of them have hitherto been published in a collective form, and it is confidently anticipated that they will be received as an acceptable Companion to the “Table Talk” and “Plain Speaker.”’ The contents are as follows: (i) On Reading New Books, (ii) On Cant and Hypocrisy, (iii) Merry England, (iv) On a Sun-Dial, (v) On Prejudice, (vi) Self-Love and Benevolence (a Dialogue), (vii) On Disagreeable People, (viii) On Knowledge of the World, (ix) On Fashion, (x) On Nicknames, (xi) On Taste, (xii) Why the Heroes of Romance are insipid, (xiii) On the Conversation of Lords, (xiv) The Letter-Bell, (xv) Envy, (xvi) On the Spirit of Partisanship, (xvii) Footmen, and (xviii) A Chapter on Editors. This volume was reprinted in 1852 with ‘Sketches and Essays’ as a half-title and the following title-page: ‘Men and Manners: Sketches and Essays. By William Hazlitt. London: Published at the office of the Illustrated London Library, 227 Strand. MDCCCII.’ In this edition the essay entitled ‘Self-Love and Benevolence (A Dialogue)’ is omitted. A third edition (which has been reprinted from time to time) was published in 1872 in Bohn’s Standard Library, edited by Mr. W. C. Hazlitt. 3. ‘_Winterslow: Essays and Characters written there._ By William Hazlitt. Collected by his Son. London: David Bogue, Fleet Street. MDCCCL.’ This small 8vo volume contained the following essays: (i) My First Acquaintance with Poets, (ii) Of Persons One Would Wish to Have Seen, (iii) Party Spirit, (iv) On the Feeling of Immortality in Youth, (v) On Public Opinion, (vi) On Personal Identity, (vii) Mind and Motive, (viii) On Means and Ends, (ix) Matter and Manner, (x) On Consistency of Opinion, (xi) Project for a new Theory of Civil and Criminal Legislation, (xii) On the Character of Burke, (xiii) On the Character of Fox, (xiv) On the Character of Pitt, (xv) On the Character of Lord Chatham, (xvi) Belief, whether Voluntary, and (xvii) A Farewell to Essay-Writing. This volume was republished in 1872 along with _Sketches and Essays_ in the volume of Bohn’s Standard Library referred to above. Of the essays published in _Winterslow_ the Characters of Burke, Fox, Pitt and Lord Chatham are included in vol. III. of the present edition (_Political Essays_). The rest of the essays published in _Sketches and Essays_ and _Winterslow_ are included in vols. XI. and XII. of the present edition. It will be seen that _Literary Remains_ and _Winterslow_ to some extent overlap one another, and that _Winterslow_ contained several essays which had already been published in _Political Essays_. Under these circumstances it has been found necessary in the present edition to adopt a fresh scheme of arrangement in place of republishing _Literary Remains_, _Sketches and Essays_ and _Winterslow_ as they stand. Each essay, whether contained in one of those posthumous collections or now republished for the first time, is printed in chronological order under the heading of the magazine or newspaper in which it originally appeared; and the magazines themselves are arranged in a chronological order based upon the respective dates at which Hazlitt began to contribute to them. The only exception to this last scheme of arrangement is that at the end of the present volume it was found convenient to take the ‘Common Places’ from _The Literary Examiner_ a little before their turn. They should strictly have followed the contributions to _The Liberal_ in vol. XII., but it was thought better not to divide between two volumes the important essays from _The New Monthly Magazine_ which now begin vol. XII. This plan of arrangement seemed on the whole the simplest and best, and it is hoped that with the aid of the Tables of Contents and the Index the reader will have no difficulty in finding any particular essay. In the present edition all the essays, the magazine source of which is known, have been printed _verbatim_ from the magazines themselves. In preparing _Literary Remains_, _Sketches and Essays_ and _Winterslow_ for the press the author’s son took considerable liberties with the text. In one or two cases the alterations which he made may have been based on a MS. or a copy of a magazine with corrections by Hazlitt, but far more often the essays were reprinted with omissions and trifling alterations made, as it would seem, by the editor himself on his own responsibility. Some passages thus omitted and now restored for the first time are of great interest. The more important of them are specially indicated in the notes. In the few cases where the author’s son added passages from a MS. or other authoritative source, the passages have been given either in the text (with a note indicating where they occur), or in the Notes. In addition to the essays printed in the text of this volume and to those referred to in the notes it may be convenient to mention here a few essays which may have been written by Hazlitt but have been omitted from the present edition on the ground that his authorship is not sufficiently certain. They are arranged in the following list under the heading of the magazine in which they first appeared. I. _The Examiner._ 1. A review (Sept. 29 and Oct. 13, 1816) of George Ensor’s _On the State of Europe in January, 1816_. This work of George Ensor’s (1769–1843), ‘full,’ as the reviewer says, ‘of undeniable facts, and undeniable inferences from them,’ was likely to appeal to Hazlitt’s political sympathies. The review consists mainly of extracts from the work itself, but what there is of comment is certainly very much in Hazlitt’s vein. 2. ‘A Modern Tory Delineated’ (Oct. 6). This paper, which is dated from Gloucester, Oct. 1, 1816, has certainly a very strong flavour of Hazlitt. 3. Some political leaders and articles which appeared at the beginning of 1817 and are not signed with Leigh Hunt’s mark. The most important of these are: ‘Mr. Pitt—Finance, Sinking Fund’ (Jan. 19); ‘Defence of National Debt’ (Jan. 26); ‘Progress of Finance’ (Feb. 16); and ‘Friends of Revolution’ (Feb. 23). 4. Some theatrical notices published in 1828, viz.: June 29 (_The Rivals_); Aug. 3 and 10 (_Cosi fan Tutte_); Oct. 19 (Kean’s Shylock, _Figaro_, and Mathews in _The May Queen_); Oct. 26 (Madame Vestris in _The Marriage of Figaro_, and Rovere the conjurer); Nov. 2 (Farren’s Dr. Cantwell in _The Hypocrite_, _The Youthful Queen_, and Kean’s Overreach, Macbeth and Othello); Nov. 16 (_Guy Mannering_ and _The Stranger_). II. _The Edinburgh Magazine_ (new Series). Three papers on the criminal law, viz.: ‘Historical View of the Progress of Opinion on the Criminal Law and the Punishment of Death’ (March, 1819, vol. IV. p. 195); ‘Parliamentary Report on the Criminal Laws’ (Dec., 1819, vol. V. p. 491); and a short paper on the same subject (Jan. 1820, vol. VI. p. 26). Mr. W. C. Hazlitt in his _Memoirs, etc._ (vol. I. p. xxvi.) attributes these articles to Hazlitt, perhaps on the strength of some MS. or proof in his possession at the date of the _Memoirs_ (1867). Hazlitt’s authorship, however, though very probable, does not seem to be certain, and as the papers consist largely of extracts from a Parliamentary Report, they have been omitted from the present edition. Hazlitt’s views on capital punishment will be found in an extract which was first published in _Fraser’s Magazine_ in 1831 and is reprinted in vol. XII. III. _The London Magazine._ 1. A review of ‘The Memoirs of Mr. Hardy Vaux’ (Jan. 1820, vol. I. p. 25). 2. ‘Letters of Foote, Garrick,’ etc. (Dec. 1820, vol. II. p. 647, and Feb. 1821, vol. III. p. 202). 3. A review of Byron’s _Marino Faliero_ (May, 1821, vol. III. p. 550). 4. A review of Byron’s _Sardanapalus_ (Jan. 1822, vol. V. p. 66). CONTENTS[1] PAGE On Abstract Ideas 1 _FRAGMENTS OF LECTURES ON PHILOSOPHY_ (1812) On the Writings of Hobbes 25 On Liberty and Necessity 48 On Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding 74 On Tooke’s ‘Diversions of Purley’ 119 On Self-Love 132 _CONTRIBUTIONS TO_ THE MORNING CHRONICLE *Madame de Staël’s Account of German Philosophy and Literature 162 *The Same Subject continued 167 *The Same Subject continued 172 *The Same Subject continued (On Abstraction) 180 *Fine Arts. British Institution 187 *The Stage 191 *Fine Arts (The Louvre) 195 _CONTRIBUTIONS TO_ THE CHAMPION *Wilson’s Landscapes at the British Institution 198 *On Gainsborough’s Pictures 202 *Mr. Kemble’s Penruddock 205 *Introduction to an Account of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses 208 *On Genius and Originality 210 *On the Imitation of Nature 216 *On the Ideal 223 *L. Buonaparte’s Charlemagne: ou l’Église Délivrée 230 *The Same Subject continued 234 *L. Buonaparte’s Collection of Pictures 237 *British Institution 242 *The Same Subject continued 246 *The Same Subject continued 248 *On Mr. Wilkie’s Pictures 249 _CONTRIBUTIONS TO_ THE EXAMINER *On Rochefoucault’s Maxims 253 On the Predominant Principles and Excitements of the Human Mind[2] 258 The Love of Power or Action as Main a Principle in the Human Mind as Sensibility to Pleasure or Pain[2] 263 Essay on Manners[3] 269 *Kean’s Bajazet, and ‘The Country Girl’ 274 *Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity 277 *Parallel Passages in various Poets 282 *Mr. Locke a great Plagiarist 284 [The Same Subject continued] 578 *Shakespear’s Female Characters 290 *Miss O’Neill’s Widow Cheerly 297 *Penelope and The Dansomanie. 299 *Oroonoko 301 *The Pannel and The Ravens 303 *John Gilpin 305 *Don Giovanni and Kean’s Eustace de St. Pierre 307 *Character of the Country People 309 *Mr. Macready’s Macbeth 315 *Guy Faux 317 *The Same Subject continued 323 *The Same Subject concluded 328 Character of Mr. Canning 334 *The Dandy School 343 *Actors and the Public 348 *French Plays 352 *French Plays (continued) 356 *The Theatres and Passion-Week 358 *Charles Kean 362 *Some of the Old Actors 366 *The Company at the Opera 369 *The Beggar’s Opera 373 *The Taming of the Shrew and L’Avare 377 *Mrs. Siddons 381 *The Three Quarters, etc. 384 *Mr. Kean 389 _CONTRIBUTIONS TO_ THE TIMES *Munden’s Sir Peter Teazle 392 *Young’s Hamlet 394 *Dowton in The Hypocrite 395 *Miss Brunton’s Rosalind 396 *Maywood’s Zanga 397 *Kean’s Richard III. 399 *The Wonder 401 *Venice Preserved 402 *She Stoops to Conquer 403 *Kean’s Macbeth 404 *Kean’s Othello 405 *Kean and Miss O’Neill 407 *The Honey Moon 409 *Mr. Kean 410 *King John 410 _CONTRIBUTIONS TO_ THE YELLOW DWARF *The Press—Coleridge, Southey, Wordsworth, and Bentham 411 *Mr. Coleridge’s Lectures 416 *Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage 420 The Opera 426 _CONTRIBUTIONS TO_ THE EDINBURGH (NEW SCOTS) MAGAZINE *On the Question whether Pope was a Poet 430 *On Respectable People 433 On Fashion 437 On Nicknames 442 Thoughts on Taste 450 The Same Subject continued 454 The Same Subject continued[4] 459 _CONTRIBUTIONS TO_ THE LONDON MAGAZINE *On the Present State of Parliamentary Eloquence 464 *Haydon’s ‘Christ’s Agony in the Garden’ 481 *Pope, Lord Byron, and Mr. Bowles 486 On Consistency of Opinion 508 On the Spirit of Partisanship 521 *‘The Pirate’ 531 *‘Peveril of the Peak’ 537 _CONTRIBUTIONS TO_ THE LITERARY EXAMINER Common Places 540 NOTES 563 _ESSAYS NOT CERTAINLY HAZLITT’S, AND FRAGMENTS_ Character of Mr. Wordsworth’s New Poem The Excursion 572 The Duke D’Enghien 577 Coleridge’s ‘Christabel’ 580 Sketches of the History of the Good Old Times 582 Historical Illustrations of Shakespeare 601 Mr. Crabbe 603 [Illustration: FACSIMILE (REDUCED) OF HAZLITT’s HANDWRITING, FROM A MS. IN THE POSSESSION OF MR. W. C. HAZLITT.] FUGITIVE WRITINGS ON ABSTRACT IDEAS I shall in this essay state Mr. Locke’s account of generalization, abstraction, and reasoning, as contrasted with the modern one, and then endeavour to defend the existence of these faculties, or acts of the mind from the objections urged against them by Hume, Berkeley, Condillac, and others, which are in truth merely repetitions of what Hobbes has said on the subject. I must premise, however, that I do not think it possible ever to arrive at a demonstration of generals or abstractions by beginning in Mr. Locke’s method with particular ones: this faculty of abstraction is by most considered as a sort of artificial refinement upon our other ideas, as an excrescence, no ways contained in the common impressions of things, nor scarcely necessary to the common purposes of life, and it is by Mr. Locke altogether denied to be among the faculties of brutes. It is the ornament and top-addition of the mind of man, which proceeding from simple sensations upwards, is gradually sublimed into the abstract notions of things; ‘from the root springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves more airy, last the bright consummate flower.’ On the other hand, I conceive that all our notions from first to last, are strictly speaking, general and abstract, not absolute and particular; and that to have a perfectly distinct idea of any one individual thing, or concrete existence, either as to the parts of which it is composed, or the differences belonging to it, or the circumstances connected with it, would imply an unlimited power of comprehension in the human mind, which is impossible. All particular things consist of, and lead to an infinite number of other things. Abstraction is a consequence of the limitation of the comprehensive faculty, and mixes itself more or less with every act of the mind of whatever kind, and in every moment of its existence. There is no idea of an individual object, which consists of a single impression, but of a number of impressions massed together: there is no idea of a particular quality of an object, which is perfectly simple, or which is not the result of a number of impressions of the same sort classed together by the mind without attending to their particular differences. Every idea of an object is, therefore, in a strict sense an imperfect and general notion of an aggregate: of a house, or tree, as well as of a city, or forest: of a grain of sand as well as of the universe. Every idea of a sensible quality, as of the whiteness of the sheet of paper before me, or the hardness of the table on which I lean, implies the same power of generalization, of connecting several impressions into one sort, as the most refined and abstract idea of virtue and justice, of motion, or extension, or space of time, or being itself. This view of the subject is not, I confess, very obvious at first sight, and it will be more easily understood after I have stated the arguments of others on this difficult question. The concise account of the nature of abstract ideas is that which Mr. Locke has given, as follows. ‘All things that exist being particular, it may be perhaps thought reasonable that words which ought to be conformed to things should be so too, I mean in their signification: but yet we find quite the contrary. The far greatest part of words that make all languages are general terms, which has not been the effect of neglect or chance, but of reason and necessity.’ ‘First, it is impossible that every particular thing should have a distinct peculiar name. For the signification and use of words depending on that connection which the mind makes between its ideas and the sounds it uses as signs of them, it is necessary in the applications of names to things, that the mind should have distinct ideas of the things, and retain also the particular name that belongs to every one, with its peculiar appropriation to that idea. But it is beyond the power of human capacity to frame and retain distinct ideas of all the particular things we meet with; every bird and beast we see, every tree and plant that affect the senses, could not find a place in the most capacious understanding. If it be looked on as an instance of a prodigious memory, that some generals have been able to call every soldier in their army by his proper name, we may easily find a reason why men never attempted to give names to each sheep in their flock, or crow that flies over their heads, much less to call every leaf of plants or grain of sand that came in their way, by a peculiar name. Secondly, if it were possible, it would not serve to the chief end of language. Men would not in vain heap up names of particular things that would not serve them to communicate their thoughts. Men learn names, and use them in talk with others, only that they may be understood, which is then only done, when by use or consent, the sound I make by the organs of speech, excites in another man’s mind who hears it, the idea I apply to it in mine when I speak it. This cannot be done by names applied to particular things, whereof I alone have the ideas in my mind, the names of them could not be significant, intelligible to another who was not acquainted with all those very particular things which had fallen under my notice. Thirdly, granting this feasible, which I think it is not, yet a distinct name of every particular thing would not be of any great use for the improvement of knowledge; which though founded in particular things, enlarges itself by general views, to which things reduced into sorts under general names are properly subservient. These with the names belonging to them come within some compass, and do not multiply every moment beyond what either the mind can contain, or use requires, and therefore in these men have for the most part stopped. But yet not so, as to hinder themselves from distinguishing particular things by appropriated names, where convenience demands it. And therefore in their own species, which they have to do with, and wherein they have often occasion to mention particular persons, they make use of proper names; and these distinct individuals have distinct denominations. Besides persons, countries, cities, rivers, mountains, and other like distinctions of place have usually found particular names, and that for the same reason; and I doubt not but if we had reason to mention particular horses, as often as we have to mention particular men, we should have proper names for the one as familiarly as for the other, and Bucephalus would be a word as much in use as Alexander. And therefore we see amongst jockies, horses have their proper names to be known and distinguished by, as commonly as their servants, because amongst them there is often occasion to mention this or that particular horse, when he is out of sight. The next thing to be considered is how general words came to be made. For since all things that exist are only particulars, how come we by general terms, or where find we those general natures they are supposed to stand for? Words become general by being made the signs of general ideas, and ideas become general by separating from them the circumstances of time and place, and any other ideas that may determine them to this or that particular existence. By this way of abstraction they are made capable of representing more individuals than one, each of which having in it a conformity to that abstract idea is (as we call it) of that sort. ‘But to deduce this a little more distinctly, it will not, perhaps, be amiss to trace our notions and names from their beginning, and observe by what degrees we proceed, and by what steps we enlarge our ideas from their first infancy. There is nothing more evident than that the ideas of the persons children converse with, are like the persons themselves, only particulars. The ideas of the nurse and the mother are well framed in the mind and like pictures of them there, represent only those individuals. The names they first give rise to are confined to these individuals, and the names of _nurse_ and _mamma_ which the child uses, determine themselves to those persons. Afterwards when time and a larger acquaintance has made them observe that there are a great many other things in the world, that in some common agreements of shape, and several other properties resemble their father and mother, and those persons they have been used to, they frame an idea which they find those many particulars do partake in, and to that they give with others the name _Man_, for example. And thus they come to have a general name, and a general idea. Wherein they make nothing new, but only leave out of the complex idea they had of Peter and James, Mary and Jane, that which is peculiar to each, and retain what is common to them all. By the same way that they come by the general name and idea of man, they easily advance to more general names and notions. For observing that several things that differ from their idea of man, and therefore cannot be comprehended under that name, have yet certain qualities wherein they agree with man, by retaining only those qualities and uniting them into one idea, they have again another and more general idea; to which having given a name, they make a term of a more comprehensive extension; which new idea is made, not by any new addition, but only as before, by leaving out the shape, and some other properties signified by the name man, and retaining only a body with life, sense, and spontaneous motion, comprehended under the name _animal_. That this is the way that men first formed general ideas and general names to them, I think is so evident that there needs no other proof of it, but the considering of a man’s self or others, and the ordinary proceedings of their mind in knowledge: and he that thinks general natures or notions are anything else but _such abstracts and partial ideas of more complex ones taken at first from particular existencies_, will I fear be at a loss where to find them. For let any one reflect and then tell me, wherein does his idea of _man_ differ from that of Paul and Peter, or his idea of horse from that of Bucephalus, but in the leaving out something that is peculiar to each individual; and retaining so much of those particular complex ideas of several particular existencies, as they are found to agree in? Of the complex ideas signified by the names _man_ and _horse_, leaving out those particulars wherein they differ, and retaining only those wherein they agree, and of those making a new distinct complex idea and giving the name _animal_ to it, one has a more general term that comprehends with man several other creatures. ‘Leave out of the idea of animal sense and spontaneous motion, and the remaining complex idea, made up of the remaining simple ones of body, life, and nourishment, becomes a more general one under the more comprehensive word _vivens_. And not to dwell upon these particular, so evident in itself, by the same way the mind proceeds to _body_, _substance_, and at last to _being_, thing, and such universal terms, which stand for any of our ideas whatsoever. To conclude: this whole mystery of genera and species, which make such a noise in the schools, and are with justice so little regarded out of them, is nothing else but abstract ideas, more or less comprehensive, with names annexed to them. In all which this is constant and invariable, that every more general term stands for such an idea as is but a part of any of those contained under it.’ The author adds, ‘It is plain by what has been said, that general and universal belong not only to the real existence of things, but are the inventions and creatures of the understanding, made by it, for its own use, and concern only signs, whether words or ideas. Words are general, when used for signs of general ideas, and so are applicable indifferently to many particular things; and ideas are general when they are set up as the representatives of many particular things, but universality belongs not to things themselves, which are all of them particular in their existence, even those words and ideas which in their significations are general. When, therefore, we quit particulars, the generals that rest are only creatures of our own making, their general nature being nothing but the capacity they are put in to of signifying many particulars. For the signification they have is nothing but a relation, that by the mind of man is added to them.’ See p. 15, vol. 2. Mr. Locke at first here evidently supposes that we have ideas answering to general terms, i.e. certain ideas of such particulars as a number of things are found to agree in, or that there are some common qualities by retaining which and only leaving out what is peculiar and foreign, without adding anything new, we get at the general notion. He afterwards to all appearance reduces these general notions to mere signs or sounds with which several particular ideas are associated, but which do not correspond to any common properties or general nature really inhering in these particular things. In the same manner he continues to take different sides of the question, when he comes to treat of genera, and species, when his antipathy to the word _essence_ constantly drives him back into the notion that all our ideas of essences are mere terms, and the want of solidity in that opinion again as constantly disposes him to admit a real difference in the sorts of things, besides the difference of the names we give to them. For immediately after affirming that the abstract essences of things are the workmanship of the understanding, he adds, ‘I would not here be thought to forget, much less to deny, that nature, in the production of things makes several of them alike: there is nothing more obvious, especially in the races of animals, and all things propagated by seed. But yet, I think we may say, the sorting of them by names is the workmanship of the understanding taking occasion from the similitude it observes amongst them to make abstract general ideas, and set them up as patterns in forms (for in that sense the word form has a very proper signification), to which as particular things existing are found to agree, so they come to be of that species, have that denomination, or are put into that class. For when we say this is a _man_, that a _horse_, &c. what do we else but rank things under different specific names, as agreeing to those abstract ideas, of which we have made these names the signs? And what are the essences of those species set out and marked by names, but those abstract ideas in the mind, which are as it were the bonds between particular things that exist,’ &c. For my own part I must confess that I agree with the Bishop of Worcester on this occasion, who asks, ‘What is it that makes Peter, James, and John real men? Is it the attributing the general name to them? No, certainly, but that the true and real essence of a man is in every one of them. They take their denomination of being men from that common nature or essence which is in them.’ On the opposite system it is not the nature of the thing which determines the imposition of the name, but the imposition of the name which determines the nature of the thing; or giving them the name makes Peter, James, and John men, as in the opinion of some divines Baptism makes them Christians. That there is a real difference in things and ideas, answering to their general names, appears evident from this single observation, that if it were not so, we could never know how to apply these general names, and we could no more distinguish between a man and a horse than we could tell at first sight, that one man’s proper name was John and another’s Thomas. The puzzle about genera and species, in this view of the question, seems to arise from a very obvious transposition of ideas. Because the abstracting or separating these general ideas from particular circumstances is the workmanship of the understanding: it has, therefore, been inferred, that the ideas themselves are so too, and that they exist no where but in the mind which perceives them. But I would fain ask, in the account which Mr. Locke gives of the abstract ideas of _animal_ for example, whether body, sense, and motion, as they exist in different individuals, have not a general nature, or something common in all those individuals. If _body_ in one case expresses the same thing, or same idea as _body_ in another, their generals belong to things and ideas, as well as to names; if body in one case expresses quite a different thing in one to what it does in another, then it is not easy to imagine what determines the mind to apply the name to these different things, or on what foundation Mr. Locke’s definition rests. Extreme opinions were not in general the side on which Mr. Locke erred; and, on the present occasion, he has qualified his opposition to the prevailing system in such a manner, that it is difficult to say in what point he admitted or rejected it. He evidently, in the general scope of this argument, admits the reality of abstract ideas in the mind, though he denies the existence of real sorts, or nature of things of the mind to correspond to them: for the expressions which intimate any doubt of the former are occasional and parenthetical, and his acknowledgment that there is something in nature which guides and determines the mind in the sorting of things and giving names to them is equally extorted from him. There is none of this doubt and perplexity in the minds of his French commentators; none of this suspicion of error and anxious desire to correct it; no lurking objections arise to stagger their confidence in themselves; it is all the same light airy self-complacency; not a speck is to be seen in the clear sky of their metaphysics, not a cloud obscures the sparkling current of their thoughts. In the logic of Condillac, the whole question of abstract ideas, of genera and species, and of the nature of reasoning as founded upon them, is settled and cleared from all difficulties, past, present, and to come, with as little expence of thought, time, and trouble, as possible. The Abbé demonstrates with ease. ‘General ideas,’ he says, ‘of which we have explained the formation, are a part of the aggregate idea of each of the individuals to which they correspond, and they are considered, for this reason, as so many partial or imperfect ideas. The idea of man, for instance, makes part of the complex ideas of Peter and Paul, since it is equally to be found in both. There is no such thing as man in general. This partial idea has then no reality out of the mind, but it has one in the mind, where it exists separately from the aggregate or individual ideas of which it is a part. All our general ideas are then so many abstract ideas, and you see that we form them only in consequence of taking from each individual idea that which is common to all. ‘But what, in truth, is the reality which a general and abstract idea has in the mind. It is nothing but a name: or, if it is any thing more, it necessarily ceases to be abstract, and general. When, for example, I think of a _man_, I consider this word as a common denomination, in which case, it is very evident, that my idea is in some sort circumscribed within this name, that it does not extend to anything beyond it, and that consequently it is nothing but the name itself. If, on the contrary, thinking of man in general, I contemplate any thing in this word, besides the mere denomination, it can only be by representing myself to some one man; and a man can no more be man in general, or in the abstract in my mind, than in nature. Abstract ideas are therefore only denominations. If we will absolutely think that they are something else, we shall only resemble a painter who should obstinately persist in painting the figure of a man in general, and who would still paint only individuals. This observation concerning abstract and general ideas, demonstrates that their clearness depends entirely on the order in which we have arranged the denominations of classes; and that, consequently, to determine this sort of ideas, there is only one means, which is to construct a language properly. ‘This confirms what we have already demonstrated, how necessary words are to us: for if we had no general terms, we should have no abstract ideas, we should have neither _genera_, or _species_, and without _genera_ and _species_, we could reason upon nothing. But if we reason only by means of words this is a new proof that we can only reason well or ill, according as the language, in which we reason, is well or ill made. The analysis of our thoughts can only enable us to reason in proportion as by instructing us how to class our abstract ideas, it enables us how to form our language correctly, and the whole art of reasoning is thus reduced to the art of well speaking.’ What in this supremacy of words is to be the criterion of well speaking the Abbé does not say. ‘To speak, to reason, to form general or abstract ideas, are then in fact the same thing: and this truth, simple as it is, might pass for a discovery. Certainly, men in general have not had any notion of it; this is evident from the manner in which they speak and reason; it is evident from the abuse which they make of abstract ideas; finally, it is evident from the difficulties which those persons confessedly find in conceiving of abstract ideas who have so little in speaking of them. ‘The art of reasoning resolves into the construction of languages, only because the order of our ideas itself depends entirely on the subordination that subsists between the names given to _genera_ and _species_; and as we arrive at new ideas only by forming new classes, it follows that we can only determine or define our ideas by determining their classes. In this case we should reason well, because we should be guided by analogy in our conclusions as well as in the acceptation of words. ‘Convinced, therefore, that classes or sorts of things are pure denominations, we shall never think of supposing that there exist in nature _genera_ or _species_; and we shall understand by these words nothing but a certain mode of classing things according to the relations which they have to ourselves and to one another. We shall be sensible that we can only discover those relations, and not what the things truly are.’ Berkeley handled his subjects with little tenderness, and he has perfectly anatomised this subject of abstract ideas. In choosing to answer the objections to this doctrine as stated by him, I shall not be accused of wishing to encounter a mean adversary. I can only trust to the goodness of my cause. I hope I shall be excused for going at some length into the argument, because it is one of the most difficult and complicated in itself, and is of the most extensive application to other questions relating to the human understanding. If we can come to any satisfactory issue to it, it will be worth the pains of enquiry. ‘It is agreed on all hands,’ says this author, ‘that the quantities or modes of things do never really exist in each of them, apart by itself, and separated from all others, but are mixed, as it were, and blended together, several in the same object. But we are told the mind being able to consider each quality singly, or abstracted from those other qualities with which it is united, does by that means frame to itself abstract ideas. For example, there is perceived by sight, an object, extended, coloured, and moved. This mixed idea the mind resolving into its simple constituent parts, and viewing each by itself exclusive of the rest, does frame the abstract ideas of extension, colour, and motion. Not that it is possible for colour or motion to exist without extension, but only that the mind can frame to itself by abstraction the idea of colour, exclusive of extension, and of motion exclusive both of colour and extension. Again, the mind having observed that in the particular extensions perceived by sense, there is something common and alike in all, and some other things peculiar, as this or that figure, or magnitude, which distinguish them one from another, it considers apart, or singles out by itself that which is most common, making thereof a most abstract idea of extension, line, surface, or solid, nor has any figure or magnitude, but is an idea prescinded from all these. So likewise the mind by leaving out of the particular colours perceived by sense, that which distinguishes them one from another, and retaining that which only is common to all, makes an idea of colour in abstract, which is neither red, nor blue, not white, &c. And in like manner by considering motion abstractedly, not only the body moved, but likewise from the figure it describes, and all particular directions and velocities, the abstract idea of motion is framed, which equally corresponds to all particular motions whatsoever that may be perceived by sense. ‘And as the mind frames to itself abstract ideas of qualities, or modes, so does it by the precision or mental separation, attain abstract ideas of the more compound beings, which include several co-existent qualities:—for example, the mind having observed, that Peter, James, John, &c., resemble each other in certain common agreements of shape, and other qualities, leaves out of the complex or compounded idea it has of Peter, James, &c., that which is peculiar to each, retaining only what is common to all; and so makes an abstract idea wherein the particulars equally partake, abstracting entirely, and cutting off all those circumstances and differences which might determine it, to any particular existence. And after this manner it is said, we come by the abstract idea of man, or if you please humanity, or human nature; ’tis true, there is included colour, because there is no man but has some colour, but then it can be neither white nor black, nor any particular colour, because there is no one particular colour, wherein all men partake; so there is included stature, but then it is neither tall stature, nor low stature, nor yet middle stature, but something abstracted from all these; and so of the rest. Moreover, there being a great variety of other creatures that partake in some parts, not all, of the complex idea, man, the mind leaving out those parts which are peculiar to men, and retaining those only which are common to all living creatures, frames the idea of animals, which abstracts not only from all particular men, but also, all birds, beasts, fishes, and insects. By _Body_ is meant body without any particular shape, or figure, there being no one shape or figure common to all animals, without covering of hair, feathers, or scales, &c. nor yet naked; hair, feathers, scales, and nakedness, being the distinguishing properties of particular animals, and for that reason left out of the abstract idea; upon the same account the spontaneous motion must be neither in walking, nor flying, nor creeping, it is nevertheless a motion, but what that motion is, it is not easy to conceive.’ ‘Whether others have this wonderful faculty of abstracting their ideas, they best can tell: for myself I dare be confident I have it not. I have a faculty of imagining or representing to myself the ideas of those particular things I have perceived, and of variously compounding and dividing them. I can imagine a man with two heads or the upper part of a man joined to the body of a horse; I can consider the hand, the eye, the nose, each by itself, abstracted or separated from the rest of the body. But then, whatever hand or eye, I imagine, it must have some particular shape, and colour. Likewise, the idea of man that I frame to myself must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny; a strait, or a crooked; a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man. I cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract idea above-described: and it is equally impossible for me to form the abstract idea of motion distinct from the body moving, and which is neither swift nor slow, curvilinear nor rectilinear, and the like may be said of other abstract general ideas whatsoever: to be plain, I own myself able to abstract in one sense, as when I consider some particular parts or qualities separated from others, with which, though they are united in some objects, yet it is possible they may really exist without them. But I deny that I can abstract from one another, or conceive separately those qualities, which it is impossible should exist so separated:—or that I can frame a general notion by abstracting from particulars in the manner aforesaid, which two last are the proper acceptation of abstraction; and there is ground to think most men will acknowledge themselves to be in my case. ‘The generality of men, which are simple and illiterate, never pretend to abstract notions. It is said they are difficult and not to be attained without pains and study; we may therefore reasonably conclude that, if such there be, they are confined only to the learned. I proceed to examine what can be alleged in defence of the doctrine of abstraction, and try if I can discover what it is that inclines the man of speculation to embrace an opinion so remote from common sense as that seems to be. There has been a late excellent and deservedly esteemed philosopher, who no doubt has given it very much, by seeming to think the having abstract general ideas is what puts the difference in point of understanding betwixt man and beast.’ The author here quotes a passage from Mr. Locke on the subject, which it is not necessary to give, and afterwards his opinion that words become general by being made signs of general ideas. He then proceeds:—‘To this I cannot assent, being of opinion that a word becomes general by being made the sign, not of an abstract general idea, but of several particular ideas, any one of which it indifferently suggests to the mind.’ ‘If we will annex a meaning to our words and speak only of what we can only conceive, I believe we shall acknowledge that an idea, which considered in itself is particular, becomes general, by being made to represent or stand for all other particular ideas _of the same sort_. To make this plain by example, suppose a geometrician is demonstrating the method of cutting a line in two equal parts. He draws for instance a black line of an inch in length: this which is in itself a particular line, is nevertheless, with regard to its signification, general, since, as it is there used, it represents all particular lines whatsoever, so that what is demonstrated of it is demonstrated of all lines, or in other words of a line in general; and, as that particular line becomes general, by being made a sign, so the name _line_, which taken absolutely, is particular, by being a sign, is made general. And as the former owes its generality not to its being the sign of an abstract or general line, but of all particular right lines that may possibly exist, so the latter must be thought to derive its generality from the same cause, namely, the various particular lines which it indifferently denotes.’ ‘To give the reader a clearer view of the nature of abstract ideas, and the uses they are thought necessary to, I shall add one more passage out of the Essay on Human Understanding, which is as follows:—“Abstract ideas are not so obvious or easy to children, or the yet unexercised mind as particular ones. If they seem so to grown men, it is only by constant and familiar use they are made so. For when we nicely reflect upon them, we shall find that general ideas are fictions and contrivances of the mind, that carry difficulty with them, and do not so easily offer themselves as we are apt to imagine. For example, does it not require some skill and pains to form the general idea of a triangle (which is yet none of the abstract, comprehensive, and difficult), for it must be neither oblique nor rectangle, neither equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once. In effect it is something imperfect that cannot exist, an idea wherein some parts of different and inconsistent ideas are put together. ’Tis true the mind in this imperfect state has need of such ideas, and makes all the haste it can to them, for the convenience of communication and enlargement of knowledge, to both of which it is naturally very much inclined. But yet one has reason to suspect such ideas are marks of our imperfections, at least this is enough to show that the most abstract and general ideas are not those that the mind is first and most easily acquainted with, nor such as its earliest knowledge is conversant about.”‘—After laughing at this description of the general idea of a triangle, which is neither oblique nor rectangle, equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once, Berkeley adds, ‘much is here said of the difficulty that abstract ideas carry with them, and the pains and skill requisite to the forming of them. And it is on all hands agreed that there is need of great toil and labour of mind, to emancipate our thoughts from particular objects, and raise them to those sublime speculations that are conversant about abstract ideas. From all which the natural consequences should seem to be, that so difficult a thing as forming abstract ideas was not necessary for communication, which is so familiar to all sorts of men. But, we are told, if they seem obvious and easy to grown men, it is only because by constant and familiar use they are made so. Now I would fain know at what time it is, men are employed in surmounting that difficulty and furnishing themselves with those necessary helps for discourse. It cannot be when they are grown up, for then it seems they are not conscious of any such pains-taking; it therefore remains to be the business of their childhood. And surely the great and multiplied labour of framing abstract notions will be found a hard task for that tender age. Is it not a hard thing to imagine that a couple of children cannot prate of their sugar plums, and rattles, and the rest of their little trinkets, till they have first packed together numberless inconsistencies, and so framed in their minds general abstract ideas, and annexed them to every common name they make use of. ‘It is I know a point much insisted on that all knowledge and demonstration are about universal notions, to which I fully assent. But then it does not appear to me that those notions are formed by abstraction, in the manner premised; universality, so far as I can comprehend, not consisting in the absolute, positive nature and conception of any thing, but in the relation it bears to the particulars signified, or represented by it. But here it will be demanded, how we can know any proposition to be true of all particular triangles, except we have seen it first demonstrated of the abstract idea of a triangle which equally agrees to all? ‘For because a property may be demonstrated to agree to some particular triangle, it will not thence follow that it equally belongs to every other with it. For example, having demonstrated that the three angles of an isosceles, rectangular triangle, are equal to two right ones, I cannot therefore conclude this affection argues to all other triangles, which have neither a right angle, nor two equal sides. It seems, therefore, that to be certain this proposition is universally true we must either make a particular demonstration for every particular triangle, which is impossible, or once for all demonstrate it of the abstract idea of a triangle, in which all the particulars do indifferently partake, and by which they are all equally represented.’ To which I answer, that though the idea I have in view, whilst I make the demonstration, be, for instance, that of an isosceles, not a regular triangle, whose sides are of a determinate length, I may nevertheless be certain it extends to all other rectilinear triangles of what sort or bigness soever. And that neither because the right angle, nor the equality, nor determinate length of the sides are at all concerned in the demonstration. It is true, the diagram I have in view includes all these particulars, but then there is not the least mention made of them in the proofs of the proposition. It is not said the three angles are equal to two right ones, because one of these is a right angle, or because the sides comprehending it are of the same length. Which sufficiently shews that the right angle might have been oblique and the sides unequal, and for all the others the demonstrations have held good. And for this reason it is that I conclude that to be true of any oblique angular, or scalenon, which I had demonstrated of a particular right angled, equicrural, triangle, and not because I demonstrated the proposition of the abstract idea of a triangle.’ The author then adds some further remarks on the use of abstract terms, and concludes—‘May we not, for example, be affected with the promise of a _good thing_, though we have not an idea of what it is? or is not the being threatened with danger sufficient to excite a dread, though we think not of a particular evil likely to befal us, and yet frame to ourselves an idea of danger in abstract?’ Introduction to Principles of Human Knowledge, p. 31. Hume, who has taken up Berkeley’s arguments on this subject, and affirms that the doctrine of abstract ideas applies the flattest of all contradictions, that it is possible for the same thing to be and not to be, has enlarged a good deal on this last topic of the manner in which words may be supposed to excite general ideas. His words are these: ‘Where we have found a resemblance between any two objects that often occur to us, we apply the same name to all of them, whatever differences we may observe in the degrees of their quantity and quality, and whatever differences may appear among them. After we have acquired a custom of this kind, the hearing of that name revives the idea of one of these objects, and makes the imagination conceive it with its particular circumstances and proportions. But as the same word is supposed to have been frequently applied to other individuals that are different in many respects from the idea which is immediately present to the mind, the word not being able to revive the idea of all these individuals, only _touches_ the soul, if I may be allowed so to speak, and revives that custom, which we have acquired by surveying them. They are not in reality present to the mind, but only in power, nor do we draw them out distinctly in the imagination, but keep ourselves in readiness to survey any of them, as we may be prompted by a present design or necessity. The word raises up an individual idea, along with a certain custom; and that custom produces any other individual one, for which we may have occasion.’ Treatise of Human Nature, p. 43, 4. The author afterwards adds, with his usual candour, that this account does not perfectly satisfy him, but he relies principally on the logical demonstration of the impossibilities of abstract ideas just before given. I confess it does not seem an easy matter to recover the argument in this state of it; however, I will attempt it. What I shall endeavour will not be so much to answer the foregoing reasoning as to prove that in a strict sense all ideas whatever are mere abstractions and can be nothing else; that some of the most clear, distinct, and positive ideas of particular objects are made up of numberless inconsistencies; and that as Hume expresses it, they do touch the soul, and are not drawn distinctly in the imagination, &c. Though I shall not be able to point out distinctly the fallacy of the foregoing reasonings, I hope to make it appear that there must be something wrong in the premises, and that the nature of thought and ideas is quite different from what is here supposed. I may be allowed to set off one paradox against another, and as these writers affirm that all abstract ideas are particular images, so I shall try to prove that all particular images are abstract ideas. If it can be made to appear that our ideas of particular things themselves are not particular, it may be easily granted that those which are in general allowed to be abstract are all so. The existence of abstract and complex ideas in the mind has been disputed for the same reason, that is, in falsely attributing individuality, or absolute unity to the objects of sense. While each thing or object was said to be absolutely one and simple, there was found to be no reach, compass, or expansion of mind, to comprehend it; and, on the other hand, there was no room on the same supposition for the doctrine of abstraction, for there is no abstracting from absolute unity. That which is one positive, indivisible thing, must remain entire as this, or cease to exist. There is no alternative between individuality and nothing. As long as we are determined to consider any one thing or idea, as the knot of a chain, or the figure of a man, or any thing else, as one individual, it must, as it were, go together: we can take nothing away without destroying it altogether. I have already shewn that there is no one object which does not consist of a number of parts and relations, or which does not require a comprehensive facility in the mind in order to conceive of it. Now abstraction is a necessary consequence of the limitation of this power of the mind, and if it were a previous condition of our having the ideas of things that we should comprehend distinctly all the particulars of which they are composed, we could have no ideas at all. An imperfectly comprehended is a general idea. But the mind perfectly comprehends the whole of no one object. That is, it has not an absolute and distinct knowledge of all its parts or differences, and consequently all our ideas are abstractions, that is a general and confused result from a number of undistinguished, and undistinguishable impressions, for there is no possible medium between a perfectly distinct comprehension of all the particulars, which is impossible, or that imperfect and confused one, that properly constitutes a general notion in the one case or the other. To explain this more particularly. In looking at any object, as a house on the opposite side of the way, it is supposed that the impression I have of it is a perfectly distinct, precise, or definite idea, in which abstraction has no concern. And the general idea of a house, it is said, is rather a mere word, or must reduce itself to some such positive, individual image as that conveyed by the sight of a particular house, it being impossible that it should be made up of the confused, imperfect, and undistinguishable impressions of several different objects of the same kind. Now it appears to me the easiest thing in the world to shew that this sensible image of a particular house, into which the general is to be resolved for greater clearness, is itself but a confused and vague notion, or numberless inconsistencies packed together; not one precise individual thing, or any number of things, distinctly perceived. For I would ask of any one who thinks his senses furnish him with these infallible and perfect conceptions of things, free from all contradiction and perplexity, whether he has a precise knowledge of all the circumstance of the object prescribed to him. For instance, is the knowledge which he has that the house before him is larger than another near it, in consequence of his intentively considering all the bricks of which it is composed, or can he tell that it contains a greater number of windows than another, without distinctly counting them? Let us suppose, however, that he does. But this will not be enough unless he has also a distinct perception of the numbers and the size of the panes of glass in each window, or of any mark, stain, or dirt in each separate brick? Otherwise his idea of each of these particulars will still be general, and his most substantial knowledge built on shadows; that is composed of a number of parts of the parts of which he has no knowledge. If objects were what mankind in general suppose them, single things, we could have no notion of them but what was particular, for by leaving out any thing we should leave out the whole object, which is but one thing. We may also be said to have a particular knowledge of things in proportion to the number of parts we distinguish in them. But the real foundation of all our knowledge, is and must be general, that is, a mere confused impression or effect of feeling produced by a number of things, for there is no object which does not consist of an infinite number of parts, and we have not an infinite number of distinct ideas answering to them. Yet it cannot be denied that we have some knowledge of things, that they make some impression on us, and this knowledge, this impression, must therefore be an abstract one, the natural result of a limited understanding, which is variously affected by a number of things at the same time, but which is not susceptible of itself to an infinite number of modifications. If it should be said that the sensible image of the house is still one, as being one impression, or given result, I answer that the most abstract ideas of a house, and the imperfect recollection of a number of houses is in the same sense one, and a real idea, distinct from that of a tree, though far from being a particular image. Again, it is said, that in conceiving of the idea of man in general, we must conceive a man a particular sign or figure. I would ask first is this to be understood merely of his height, or of his form in general? If the latter, it would imply that we have, wherever we pronounce the word _man_, no ideas at all, or a distinct conception of a man with a head and limbs of a certain extent and proportion, of every turn in each feature, of every variety in the formation of each part, as well as of its distance from every other part, a knowledge which no sculptor or painter ever had of any one figure of which he was the most perfect master, for it would be a knowledge of an infinite number of lines drawn in all directions from every part of the body, with their precise length and terminations. Those who have consigned this business of abstraction over to the senses with a view to make the whole matter plain and easy, have not been aware of what they have been doing. They supposed with the vulgar that it was only necessary to open the eyes in order to see, and that the images produced by outward objects are completely defined, and unalterable things, in which there can be no dimness and confusion. These speculators had no thought but they saw as much of a landscape as Poussin, and knew as much about a face that was before them as Titian or Vandyke would have done. This is a great mistake; the having particular and absolute ideas of things is not only difficult, but impossible. The ablest painters have never been able to give more than one part of nature, in abstracted views of things. The most laborious artists never finished to perfection any one part of an object, or had ever any more than a confused, vague, uncertain notion of the shape of the mouth or nose, or the colour of an eye. Ask a logician, or any common man, and he will no doubt tell you that a face is a face, a nose is a nose, a tree is a tree, and that he can see what it is as well as another. Ask a painter and he will tell you otherwise. Secondly, when it is asserted that we must necessarily have the idea of a particular sign, when we think of any in general, all that is intended by it is, I believe, that we must think of a particular height. This idea it is supposed must be particular and determinate, just as we must draw a line with a piece of chalk, or make a mark with the slides of a measuring rule, in one place and not in the other. I think it may be shewn that this view of the question is also utterly fallacious, and out of the order of our ideas. The height of the individual is thus resolved with the ideas of the lines terminating or defining it, and the intermediate space of which it properly consists is entirely forgotten. For let us take any given height of a man, whether tall, short, or middle-sized, and let that height be as visible as you please, I would ask whether the actual height to which it amounts, does not consist of a number of other lengths: as if it be a tall man, the length will be six feet, and each of these feet will consist of so many inches, and those inches will be again made up of decimals, and those decimals of other subordinate parts, which must be all distinctly placed, and added together before the sum total, which they compose, can be pretended to be a distinct particular, or individual idea; I can only understand by a particular thing either one precise individual, or a precise number of individuals. Instead of its being true that all general ideas of extension are deducible to particular positive extension, the reverse proposition is I think demonstrable: that all particular extensions, the most positive and distinct, are never any thing else than a more or less vague notion of extension in general. In any given visible object we have always the general idea of something extended, and never of the precise length; for the precise length as it is thought to be is necessarily composed of a number of lengths too many, and too minute to be necessarily attended to, or jointly conceived by the mind, and at last loses itself in the infinite divisibility of matter. What sort of distinctness or individual can therefore be found in any visible image, or object of sense, I cannot well conceive: it seems to me like seeking for certainty in the dancing of insects in the evening sun, or for fixedness or rest in the motions of the sea. All particulars are thought nothing but generals, more or less defined by circumstances, but never perfectly so; in this all our knowledge both begins and ends, and if we think to exclude all generality from our ideas of things, we must be content to remain in utter ignorance. The proof that our ideas of particular things are not themselves particular, is the uncertainty and difficulty we have only in comparing them with one another. In looking at a line an inch long, I have a certain general impression of it, so that I can tell it is shorter than another, three or four times as long, drawn on the same sheet of paper, but I cannot immediately tell that it is shorter than one only a tenth or twentieth of an inch longer. The idea which I have of it is therefore not an exact one. In looking at a window I cannot precisely tell the number of panes of glass it contains, yet I can easily say whether they are few or many, whether the window is large or small. Now if all our ideas were made up of particulars, we never could pronounce generally whether there were few or many of these panes of glass, but we should know the precise number, or at least pitch on some precise number in our minds, and this we could not help knowing. There must be either 5, 10, 20, or 30; for it is in vain to urge that the idea in my mind is a floating one, and shifts from one of them to another, so that I cannot tell the moment after which it was; but what is this imperfect recollection but a confused contradictory and abstract idea? Here is a plain dilemma: it is a fact that we have some idea of a number of objects presented to us. It is also a fact that we do not know the precise number, nor can we assign any number confidently whether right or wrong. Whether this idea is but an abstract and general one it seems hard to say. Those who contend that we cannot have an idea of a man in general, without conceiving of some particular man, seem to have little reason, since the most particular idea we can form of a man, either in imagination or from the actual impression, is but a general idea. Those who say we cannot conceive of an army of men without conceiving of the individuals composing it, ought to go a step further, and affirm that we must represent to ourselves the features, form, complexion, size, posture, and dress, with every other circumstance belonging to each individual. We must admit the notion of abstraction, first or last, unless any one will contend for this infinite refinement in our ideas of things, or assert that we have no idea at all. For the same process takes place in it, and is absolutely necessary to our most particular notions of things, as well as our most general, namely, that of abstracting from particulars, or of passing over the minute differences of things, taking them in the gross, and attending to the general effect of a number of distinguished and distinguishable impressions. It is thus we arrive at our first notion of things, and thus that all our after knowledge is acquired. The knowledge upon which our ideas rest is general, and the only difference between abstract and particular, is that of being more or less general, of leaving out more or fewer circumstances, and more or fewer objects, perceived either at once or in succession, and forming either a particular whole, aggregate, or a class of things. It may be asked farther whether our ideas of things, however abstract in general, with respect to the objects they represent, are not in their own nature, and absolute existence particular. To this hard question I shall return the best answer I can. 1. It is sufficient to the present purpose that ideas are general in their representation, however particular in themselves. Each idea is something in itself, and not another idea. This is equally true of the most abstract or particular ideas of things. The abstract idea of a man is the abstract idea of a man, not the abstract idea of a horse, nor the particular one of any given individual man. It is characterized by general properties, and distinguished by general circumstances, and is neither a mere word without any idea, nor a particular image of one thing; so the idea of a particular man, though still only a general result from a number of particulars is sufficiently positive for the actual purposes of thought, and distinguishable from that other general result or impression which institutes the idea of a particular horse, for instance. 2. That our general notions are any otherwise particular than as they are the same with themselves, and different from one another, is more than I know. I must demur on this question, whatever others may do. Whatever contradictions are involved in the one side of it, those on the other seem as great. For it is not easy to imagine any thing more absurd than the supposition that the idea of a line for instance is precisely, and to a hair’s breadth or to the utmost possible exactness, of a certain length, when neither the precise number nor the precise proportion of the parts composing this line are at all known. It is like saying that we cast up an account to the utmost degree of nicety, when not one of the items is known, but as of an average conjecture or in round numbers. We generally estimate our notion of a particular extension by the point or matter at all terminating it, and it seems as if this did not admit of an ambiguity, or variation. But in fact all ideas are a calculation of particulars, and when the parts are only known in gross, the sum total, or resulting idea can only be so too. The smallest division of which our notions are susceptible is a general idea. In the progress of the understanding, we never begin from absolute unity but always from something that is more. How then is it possible that these general conceptions should form a whole always commensurate to a precise number of absolute unity I cannot conceive, any more than how it is possible to express a fraction in whole numbers. The two things are incompatible. As to any thing like conscious individuality, i.e. that which assigneth limits to our ideas, we know they have it not. 3. I would observe that ideas, as far as they are distinct and particular, seem to involve a greater contradiction than when they are confused and general. For, in proportion to their distinctness, must be the number of different acts of the mind excited at the same time; i.e. in proportion to the individuality of the image or idea, if I may so express myself, the thought ceases to be individual, inasmuch as the simplicity of the attention is thus necessarily broken and divided into a number of different actions, which yet are all united in the same conscious feeling, or there could be no connection between them. How then we should ever be able to conceive of things distinctly, clearly, and particularly, seems the wonder: not how different impressions acting at once on the mind should be confused, and as it were massed together, in a general feeling, for want of sufficient activity in the intellectual faculties to give form and a distinct place to all that throng of objects which at all times solicit the attention. Let any one make the experiment of counting a flock of sheep driven fast by him, and he will soon find his imagination unable to keep pace with the rapid succession of objects, and his idea of particular number slide into the general idea of multitude; not that because there are more objects than he possibly can count, he will think there are many, or that the word flock will present to his mind a mere name, without any particulars corresponding to it. Every act of the attention, every object we see or think of, presents a proof of the same kind. 4. I conceive that the mind has not been fairly dealt with in this and other similar questions of the same sort. Matter alone seems to have the privilege of presenting difficulties, and contradictions at every turn; but the moment any thing of this kind is observed in the understanding, all the petulance of logicians is up in arms, and the mind is made the mark on which they vent all the modes and figures of their impertinence. Let us take an example from some of these self-evident matters of fact, which contain at least as many, and as great contradictions, as any in the most abstruse metaphysical doctrine, such as in extension, motion, and the curve of lines. Now as to the first of these, extension: if we suppose it to be made up of points, which are in themselves without extension, but by their combination produce it, we must suppose two unextended things, when joined together, to become extended, which is like supposing, that by adding together several nothings, we can arrive at something. On the other hand, if we suppose the ultimate parts of which extension is composed, to be themselves extended, we then attribute extension to that which is indivisible, or affirm a thing to consist of parts, and to have none, at the same time. The old argument against the possibility of motion is well known: it was said that the body moving must either be in the place where it was, or in that into which it was passing. Now, if it was in either of these, or in any one place, it must be at rest; and as it could not be in both at once, it followed that a body moving could exist no where, or that there was no such thing as motion in nature. Again, a curve line is described mathematically by a point moving, but always out of a strait line. Now, a strait line is the nearest between any two points. But that a body should move forward, and not move strait forward to the next point to which it is going, seems to imply no less an absurdity than the affirming that a thing never moves in the direction in which it is going, but always out of it; for, if it moves in the same direction, the smallest moment of time, this is not a curve, but a strait line; and if it does not continue to move in the same direction at all, it seems utterly inconceivable that it should make any progress, or move either in a curve or a strait line. Yet any one who, on the strength of the contradiction involved in the ideas of extension, motion, or curve lines, should severally deny or disbelieve any one of them, would be thought to want common sense. I think there are certain facts of the mind which are equally evident and unaccountable. Those who contend that the one are to be admitted, and the other not, because the one are the objects of sense, and the other not, do not deserve any serious answer. It is as much a fact, that I remember having seen the sun yesterday, as that I see it to-day, and both of them are much more certain facts than that there is any such body as the sun really existing out of the mind. I will now return to Berkeley, and endeavour to answer his chief objections to the doctrine of abstract ideas. First, then, I conceive that he has himself virtually given up the question, when he allows that the mind may be affected with the promise of a good thing, or terrified by the apprehension of danger, without thinking of any particular good or evil that is likely to befal us. What this idea of good or evil, which is not particular, can be, other than abstract, I cannot conceive; and to say that it is not an idea, but a mere feeling excited by custom, is an answer very little to the purpose. For this feeling, this custom, is itself a general impression, and could not, without a power of abstraction in the mind, think, without a power of being acted upon by a number of different impulses of pleasure and pain, concurring to produce a general effect, abstracted from the particular feelings themselves, or the objects first exciting them. All abstract ideas are several impressions of the same kind, and are merely customary affections of the mind, not distinct images of things. But if it be said that the word idea properly signifies an image, and must be something distinct, then I answer, first, that this would only restrict the use of the word _idea_ to particular things, and not affect the real question in dispute, and secondly, that there is no such thing as a distinct and particular image in the mind. The manner in which Berkeley explains the nature of mathematical demonstrations, according to his system, shews its utter inadequateness to any purposes of general reasoning, and is a plain confession of the necessity of abstract ideas. For all the answer he gives to the question, how can we know any proposition to be true in general, from having found it so in a particular instance, comes to this, that though the diagram we have in view includes a number of particulars, yet we know the principle to be true generally, because _there is not the least mention made of these particulars in the proof of the proposition_. But I would ask also, whether there is not the least thought of them in the mind? The truth is, that the mind upon Berkeley’s principle must think of the particular right angled, isosceles, triangle in question, or it can have no idea at all, for it has no general idea of a triangle to which it can apply the name generally. If we suppose that there is any such general form, or notion to which the other particular circumstances are merely superadded, and which may be left standing, though they are taken away, we then run immediately to all the absurdities of abstraction, which he so much wishes to avoid. If we then demonstrate the proposition of the particular diagram before us, as of a determinate size, shape, &c., this demonstration cannot hold good generally. If we are supposed to omit all these particular circumstances in our minds, then we either demonstrate the proposition of the general and abstract idea of a triangle, or of no idea at all; for after the particulars are omitted, or not attended to by the mind, the only idea remaining must be a general one. Farther, that on which I am willing to rest the whole controversy, is the following remark, _viz._, that without the general idea of a line or triangle, there could be no particular one; that is, no idea of any one line or triangle, as of the same form, or as any way related to any other, so that there could be no common measure or line to connect any of our thoughts or reasoning together into a general conclusion. For to take the former instance as the most simple. When we speak of any particular extension, it is evident that we understand something which is not particular. Besides what is peculiar to it, it must have something which is not peculiar to it, but general, to merit the common appellation. Berkeley says, ‘An idea which in itself is particular, becomes general, by being made to represent or stand for all other particular ideas _of the same sort_.’ I do request that the import of these last words may be attended to. Do they suggest any idea or none; if they mean any thing, it must be something more than the particular ideas which are said to be of the same sort, _i.e._ some general notion of them. But this will involve all the absurdities of abstraction. If there is any thing in the mind besides these particular ideas themselves—any thing that compares or contrasts them, that refers to this or that belief, this comparison or classifying can be nothing but a perception of a general nature in which these things agree, or the general resemblance which the mind perceives between the several impressions. If there is no such comparison or perception of resemblance, or idea of abstract qualities, then there can be no idea answering to the words ‘of the same sort;’ but these particular ideas will be left standing by themselves, absolutely unconnected. As far as our ideas are merely particular, _i.e._ are negations of other ideas, so far they must be perfectly distinct from each other: there can be nothing between them to blend or associate them together. Each separate idea would be surrounded with a _chevaux de frise_ of its own, in a state of irreconcilable antipathy to every other idea, and the fair form of nature would present nothing but a number of discordant atoms. A particular line would no more represent another line, than it would represent a point: one colour could no more resemble another colour, or suggest its idea, than it could that of a sound, or a smell; there could be no clue to make us class different shades of the same colour under one general name, any more than the most opposite: one triangle would be as distinct from another, as from a square or a cube, and so through the whole system of art and nature. There must be a mutual leaning, a greater proximity between some ideas than others: a common point to which they tend, that is a common quality: a general nature, in which they are identified: or there could not be in the mind more ideas of same or like, or different, or judgment, or reasoning, or truth, or falsehood, than in the stones in the fields, or the sands of the sea-shore. The idea of classing things implies only the same sort of general comparison, or abstract idea of likeness, that is necessary to the idea of any simple sensible quality of an object. In both cases, we only contemplate a number of things as alike or under the same general notion, without attending to their actual differences. Take the idea, for instance, of a slab of white marble. As long as only one such piece of marble is considered, it is supposed to be a particular object, and its whiteness is supposed to be perceived by the mind as a simple sensible quality. If, on the contrary, several such slabs of marble are presented to the mind, this is commonly considered as producing a general idea of marble and of whiteness. But this idea of whiteness, not as a quality of a particular thing, but as a common quality of different things, is rejected by the moderns as implying the supposition, that several different ideas can coalesce in the same general notion, which amounts, they say, to the contradiction that a thing may be the same, and different at the same time. Now I would affirm whatever there is absurd or inconceivable in this latter case applies equally to the former. For what possible idea can any man form of a slab of white marble, in any other way than that of abstraction? Is the idea of its whiteness as a sensible quality the idea of a point. Is it one single impression? This Berkeley and others deny, for they say there can be no idea of colour without extension, or of quality without quantity. If there are in this object several impressions of colour, I would ask are they all distinctly perceived? Are they all the same? Or if not, are all their differences perceived by the mind, before it possibly can be impressed with the general idea of a certain sensible quality, or that the object before it is white? Is the mind aware of even the slightest stain in this object, of every thing that may happen to vary it? Yet, if the idea falls anything short of this minute and perfect knowledge, it can only be an imperfect and general notion. That is, a number of differences must be massed together in a common feeling of likeness, and a number of separate parts make up the idea of a given object. Yet this is all that is implied in forming the ideas of whiteness in general, as belonging to several objects, or of colour, or extension, or any other idea whatever, drawn from numberless objects, impressed at numberless times. If particular objects or qualities were single things, there would then be some precise limit between them and abstract or general ideas, but as the most particular object, or qualities, as well as the most general combinations and classes of things are necessarily confused and mixed results, and nothing more than a number of impressions, never distinctly analyzed by the mind, there can be no general reasoning to disprove abstracted ideas in the common sense of the word. ON THE WRITINGS OF HOBBES In the following Essays I shall attempt to give some account of the rise and progress of modern metaphysics, to state the opinions of the principal writers who have treated on the subject, from the time of Lord Bacon to the present day, and to examine the arguments by which they are supported. In the first place, it will be my object to shew what the real conclusions of the most celebrated authors were, and the steps by which they arrived at them: to trace the connexion or point out the difference between their several systems, as well as to inquire into the peculiar bias and turn of their minds, and in what their true strength or weakness lay. This will undoubtedly be best done by an immediate reference to their works whenever the nature of the subject admits of it, or whenever their mode of reasoning is not so loose and desultory as to render the quotation of particular passages a useless as well as endless labour. In the History of English Philosophy, of which I published a prospectus some time ago, I intended to have gone regularly through with all the writers of any considerable note who fell within the limits of my plan, and to have given a detailed analysis of their several subjects and arguments. But this would lead to much greater length and minuteness of inquiry than seems consistent with my present object, and would besides, I am afraid, prove (what Hobbes, speaking of these subjects in general, calls) ‘but dry discourse.’ To avoid this as much as possible, I shall pass over all those writers who have not been distinguished either by the boldness of their opinions, or the logical precision of their arguments. Indeed I shall confine my attention more particularly to those who have made themselves conspicuous by deviating from the beaten track, and who have struck out some original discovery or brilliant paradox; whose metaphysical systems trench the closest on morality, or whose speculations, by the interest as well as novelty attached to them, have become topics of general conversation. Secondly, besides stating the opinions of others, one principal object which I shall have in view will be to act as judge or umpire between them, to distinguish, as far as I am able, the boundaries of true and false philosophy, and to try if I cannot lay the foundation of a system more conformable to reason and experience, and, in its practical results at least, approaching nearer to the common sense of mankind, than the one which has been generally received by the most knowing persons who have attended to such subjects within the last century; I mean the material or _modern_ philosophy, as it has been called. According to this philosophy, as I understand it, all thought is to be resolved into sensation, all morality into the love of pleasure, and all action into mechanical impulse. These three propositions, taken together, embrace almost every question relating to the human mind, and in their different ramifications and intersections form a net, not unlike that used by the enchanters of old, which, whosoever has once thrown over him, will find all his efforts to escape vain, and his attempts to reason freely on any subject in which his own nature is concerned, baffled and confounded in every direction. This system, which first rose at the suggestion of Lord Bacon, on the ruins of the school-philosophy, has been gradually growing up to its present height ever since, from a wrong interpretation of the word _experience_, confining it to a knowledge of things without us; whereas it in fact includes all knowledge relating to objects either within or out of the mind, of which we have any direct and positive evidence. We only know that we ourselves exist, the most certain of all truths, from the experience of what passes within ourselves. Strictly speaking, all other facts of which we are not immediately conscious, are so in a secondary and subordinate sense only. Physical experience is indeed the foundation and the test of that part of philosophy which relates to physical objects: further, physical analogy is the only rule by which we can extend and apply our immediate knowledge, or infer the effects to be produced by the different objects around us. But to say that physical experiment is either the test or source or guide of that other part of philosophy which relates to our internal perceptions, that we are to look to external nature for the form, the substance, the colour, the very life and being of whatever exists in our minds, or that we can only infer the laws which regulate the phenomena of the mind from those which regulate the phenomena of matter, is to confound two things entirely distinct. Our knowledge of mental phenomena from consciousness, reflection, or observation of their correspondent signs in others is the true basis of metaphysical inquiry, as the knowledge of _facts_, commonly so called, is the only solid basis of natural philosophy. To say that the operations of the mind and the operations of matter are in reality the same, so that we may always make the one exponents of the other, is to assume the very point in dispute, not only without any evidence, but in defiance of every appearance to the contrary. Lord Bacon was undoubtedly a great man, indeed one of the greatest that have adorned this or any other country. He was a man of a clear and active spirit, of a most fertile genius, of vast designs, of general knowledge, and of profound wisdom. He united the powers of imagination and understanding in a greater degree than almost any other writer. He was one of the strongest instances of those men, who by the rare privilege of their nature are at once poets and philosophers, and see equally into both worlds. The schoolmen and their followers attended to nothing but essences and species, to laboured analyses and artificial deductions. They seem to have alike disregarded both kinds of experience, that relating to external objects, and that relating to the observation of our own internal feelings. From the imperfect state of knowledge, they had not a sufficient number of facts to guide them in their experimental researches; and intoxicated with the novelty of their vain distinctions, taught by rote, they would be tempted to despise the clearest and most obvious suggestions of their own minds. Subtile, restless, and self-sufficient, they thought that truth was only made to be disputed about, and existed no where but in their demonstrations and syllogisms. Hence arose their ‘logomachy’—their everlasting word-fights, their sharp debates, their captious, bootless controversies. As Lord Bacon expresses it, ‘they were made fierce with dark keeping,’ signifying that their angry and unintelligible contests with one another were owing to their not having any distinct objects to engage their attention. They built altogether on their own whims and fancies, and buoyed up by their specific levity, they mounted in their airy disputations in endless flights and circles, clamouring like birds of prey, till they equally lost sight of truth and nature. This great man therefore intended an essential service to philosophy, in wishing to recall the attention to facts and ‘experience’ which had been almost entirely neglected; and thus, by incorporating the abstract with the concrete, and general reasoning with individual observation, to give to our conclusions that solidity and firmness which they must otherwise always want. He did nothing but insist on the necessity of ‘experience,’ more particularly in natural science; and from the wider field that is open to it there, as well as the prodigious success it has met with, this latter application of the word, in which it is tantamount to physical experiment, has so far engrossed the whole of our attention, that mind has for a good while past been in some danger of being overlaid by matter. We run from one error into another; and as we were wrong at first, so in altering our course, we have turned about to the opposite extreme. We despised ‘experience’ altogether before; now we would have nothing but ‘experience,’ and that of the grossest kind. We have, it is true, gained much by not consulting the suggestions of our own minds in questions where they inform us of nothing; namely, in the particular laws and phenomena of the natural world; and we have hastily concluded, reversing the rule, that the best way to arrive at the knowledge of ourselves also, was to lay aside the dictates of our own consciousness, thoughts, and feelings, as deceitful and insufficient guides, though they are the only means by which we can obtain the least light upon the subject. We seem to have resigned the natural use of our understandings, and to have given up our own existence as a nonentity. We look for our thoughts and the distinguishing properties of our minds in some image of them in matter, as we look to see our faces in a glass. We no longer decide physical problems by logical dilemmas, but we decide questions of logic by the evidences of the senses. Instead of putting our reason and invention to the rack indifferently on all questions, whether we have any previous knowledge of them or not, we have adopted the easier method of suspending the use of our faculties altogether, and settling tedious controversies by means of ‘four champions fierce—hot, cold, moist and dry,’ who with a few more of the retainers and hangers-on of matter determine all questions relating to the nature of man and the limits of the human understanding very learnedly. That which we seek however, namely, the nature of the mind and the laws by which we think, feel, and act, we must discover in the mind itself or not at all. The mind has laws, powers, and principles of its own, and is not the mere puppet of matter. This general bias in favour of mechanical reasoning and physical experiment, which was the consequence of the previous total neglect of them in matters where they were strictly necessary, was strengthened by the powerful aid of Hobbes, who was indeed the father of the modern philosophy. His strong mind and body appear to have resisted all impressions but those which were derived from the downright blows of matter: all his ideas seemed to lie like substances in his brain: what was not a solid, tangible, distinct, palpable object was to him nothing. The external image pressed so close upon his mind that it destroyed the power of consciousness, and left no room for attention to any thing but itself. He was by nature a materialist. Locke assisted greatly in giving popularity to the same scheme, as well by espousing many of Hobbes’s metaphysical principles as by the doubtful resistance which he made to the rest. And it has been perfected and has received its last polish and roundness in the hands of some French philosophers, as Condillac and others. It has been generally supposed that Mr. Locke was the first person who, in his ‘Essay on the Human Understanding’ established the modern metaphysical system on a solid and immoveable basis. This is a great mistake. The system, such as it is, existed entire in all its general principles in Hobbes before him; this was never unequivocally or explicitly avowed by the author of the ‘Essay on the Human Understanding.’ Locke merely endeavoured to accommodate Hobbes’s leading principle to the more popular opinions of the time; and all that succeeding writers have done to improve upon his system, and clear it of inconsistent and extraneous matter, has only tended to reduce it back to the purity and simplicity in which it is to be found in Hobbes. The immediate and professed object of both these writers is indeed the same, namely, to account for our ideas and the formation of the human understanding from sensible impressions. But in the execution of this design, Mr. Locke has deviated widely and at almost every step from his predecessor. This difference would almost unavoidably arise from the natural character of their minds, which were the most opposite conceivable. Hobbes had the utmost reliance on himself, and was impatient of the least doubt or contradiction. He saw from the beginning to the end of his system. He is always therefore on firm ground, and never once swerves from his object. He is at no pains to remove objections, or soften consequences. Granting his first principle, all the rest follows of course. There is an air of grandeur in the stern confidence with which he stands alone in the world of his own opinions, regardless of his contemporaries, and conscious that he is the founder of a new race of thinkers. Locke, on the other hand, was a man, who without the same comprehensive grasp of thought had a greater deference for the opinions of others, and was of a much more cautious and circumspect turn of mind. He could not but meet with many things in the peremptory assertions of Hobbes that must make him pause, that he would be at a loss to reconcile to an attentive observation of what passed in his own mind, and that would equally shock the prevailing notions both of the learned and the ignorant. He was therefore led to consider the different objections to the system which had been left unanswered and unnoticed, to make a compromise between the received doctrines, and the violent paradoxes contained in the ‘Leviathan’ and the ‘Treatise of Human Nature,’ or to admit these last with so many qualifications, with so much circumlocution and preparation, and after such an appearance of the most mature and candid examination, and of willingness to be convinced on the other side of the question, as to obviate the offensive and harsh effect which accompanies the abrupt dogmatism of the original author. It was perhaps necessary that the opinions of Hobbes should undergo this sort of metamorphosis before they could gain a hearing: as the direct rays of the sun must be blunted and refracted by passing through some denser medium in order to be borne by common eyes. So sheathed and softened, their sharp, unpleasant points taken off, his doctrines almost immediately met with a favourable reception, and became popular. The general principle being once established without its particular consequences, and the public mind assured, it was soon found an easy task to point out the inconsistency of Mr. Locke’s reasoning in many respects, and to give a more decided tone to his philosophical system. Berkeley was one of the first who tried the experiment of pushing his principles into the verge of paradox on the question of abstract ideas, which he has done with admirable dexterity and clearness, but without going beyond the explicitness of Hobbes on the same question. Subsequent writers added different chapters to supply the deficiencies of the Essay, which, with scarcely a single exception, may be found essentially comprized in that institute and digest of modern philosophy, our author’s ‘Leviathan.’ In thus giving the praise of originality and force of mind to Hobbes, and regarding Locke merely as his follower, I may be thought to venture on dangerous ground, or to lay unhallowed hands on a reputation which is dear to every lover of truth. But if something is due to fame, something is also due to justice. I confess however, that having brought this charge against the ‘Essay on the Human Understanding,’ I am bound to make it good in the fullest manner; otherwise, I shall be inexcusable. What I therefore propose in the remainder of the present Essay is to show that Mr. Locke was not really the founder of the modern system of philosophy as it respects the human mind; and I shall think that I have sufficiently established this point, if I can make it appear, both that the principle itself on which that system rests, and all the striking consequences which have been deduced from it, are to be found in the writings of Hobbes, more clearly, decidedly, and forcibly expressed than they are in the ‘Essay on the Human Understanding.’ When I speak of the principle of the modern metaphysical system, I mean the assumption that the operations of the intellect are only a continuation of the impulses existing in matter, or that all the thoughts and conceptions of the mind are nothing more nor less than various modifications of the original impressions of things on a being endued with sensation or simple perception. This system considers ideas merely as they are caused by external objects, acting on the organs of sense, and tries to account for them on that hypothesis solely. It is upon this principle of excluding the understanding as a distinct faculty or power from all share in its own operations, that the whole of Hobbes’s reasoning proceeds. Let us see what he makes of it. The first part of the ‘Leviathan,’ entitled ‘Of Man,’ begins in this manner: CHAPTER I.—OF SENSE.—‘Concerning the thoughts of man, I will consider them, first singly, and afterwards in train, or dependence upon one another. Singly, they are every one a representation or appearance of some quality or other accident of a body without us; which is commonly called an _object_: Which object worketh on the eyes, ears, and other parts of man’s body; and by diversity of working, produceth diversity of appearances. ‘The Original of them all is that which we call SENSE: For there is no conception in a man’s mind which hath not at first, totally or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense. The rest are derived from that original. ‘The cause of sense is the external body or object which presseth the organ proper to each sense, either immediately as in the taste and touch, or mediately as in seeing, hearing, and smelling: which pressure by the mediation of nerves, and other strings and membranes of the body, continued inwards to the Brain and Heart, causeth there a resistance or counter-pressure, or endeavour of the heart to deliver itself: which endeavour, because _outward_, seemeth to be some matter without. And this seeming or fancy is that which men call sense: and consisteth to the eye, in a light or colour figured; to the ear, in a sound; to the nostril, in an odour; to the tongue and palate, in a savour, and to the rest of the body in heat, cold, hardness, softness, and such other qualities, as we discern by feeling. All which qualities called _sensible_ are in the object that causeth them but so many several motions of the matter by which it presseth our organs diversely. Neither in us that are pressed are they any thing else but divers motions; for motion produceth nothing but motion. But their appearance to us is fancy, the same waking as dreaming. And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the eye maketh us fancy a light, and pressing the ear produceth a din, so do the bodies also we see or hear produce the same by their strong, though unobserved action. For if those colours and sounds were in the bodies or objects that cause them, they could not be severed from them, as by glasses and in echoes by reflection we see they are: where we know the thing we see is in one place, the appearance in another, and though at some certain distance, the real and very object seems invested with the fancy it begets in us; yet still the object is one thing, the image or fancy is another. So that sense in all cases is nothing else but original fancy; caused, as I have said, by the pressure, that is, by the motion of external things upon our eyes, ears, and other organs thereunto ordained. ‘But the Philosophy-schools, through all the universities of Christendom, grounded upon certain texts of Aristotle, teach another doctrine; and say, For the cause of vision, that the thing seen sendeth forth on every side a _visible species_, (in English) _a visible show_, _apparition_, _aspect_, or _being seen_; the receiving whereof into the eye, is _seeing_. And for the cause of _hearing_, that the thing heard sendeth forth an _audible species_, that is, an _audible aspect_, or _audible being seen_; which entering at the ear, maketh _hearing_. Nay, for the cause of _understanding_ also, they say the thing understood sendeth forth an _intelligible species_, that is an _intelligible being seen_; which coming into the understanding, makes us understand. I say not this as disapproving the use of universities: but because I am to speak hereafter of their office in a commonwealth, I must let you see on all occasions by the way, what things would be amended in them; amongst which the frequency of insignificant speech is one.’—_Leviathan_, p. 4. Thus far our author. It is evident that in this account he has laid the foundation of Berkeley’s ideal system, though he does not seem any where to have gone the whole length of that doctrine. He has entered more at large into this point in the ‘Discourse of Human Nature,’ published in 1640, ten years before the ‘Leviathan’; and as the subject is curious, and treated in a very decisive way, I will quote the concluding passage, which is a recapitulation of the rest. ‘As colour is not inherent in the object, but an effect thereof upon us, caused by such motion in the object as hath been described; so neither is sound in the thing we hear, but in ourselves. One manifest sign thereof is, that as a man may see, so also he may hear double or treble, by multiplication of echoes, which echoes are sounds as well as the original, and not being in one and the same place, cannot be inherent in the body that maketh them. And to proceed to the rest of the senses, it is apparent enough that the smell and taste of the same thing are not the same to every man, and therefore are not in the thing smelt or tasted, but in the men. So likewise the heat we feel from the fire is manifestly in us, and is quite different from the heat which is in the fire: for our heat is pleasure or pain, according as it is great or moderate; but in the coal there is no such thing. By this the fourth and last proposition is proved; viz. That as in vision, so also in conceptions that arise from other senses, the subject of their inherence is not in the object, but in the sentient. And from hence also it followeth that whatsoever accidents or qualities our senses make us think there be in the world, they be not there, but are seeming and apparitions only: the things that really are in the world without us, are those motions by which these seemings are caused. And this is the great deception of sense, which also is to be by sense corrected: for as sense telleth me, when I see directly, that the colour seemeth to be in the object; so also sense telleth me when I see by reflection, that colour is not in the object.’—_Human Nature_, chap. ii. p. 9. The second chapter of the ‘Leviathan’ contains an account of the manner in which our ideas are generated, and is as follows: ‘That when a thing lies still, unless somewhat else stir it, it will lie still for ever, is a truth that no man doubts of. But that when a thing is in motion, it will eternally be in motion, unless somewhat else stay it, though the reason be the same (namely, that nothing can change itself) is not so easily assented to. For men measure not only other men, but all other things by themselves; and because they find themselves subject after motion to pain and lassitude, think every thing else grows weary of motion, and seeks repose of its own accord; little considering whether it be not some other motion wherein that desire of rest they find in themselves consisteth. From hence it is, that the Schools say, heavy bodies fall downward out of an appetite to rest, and to conserve their nature in that place which is most proper for them: ascribing appetite and knowledge of what is good for their conservation (which is more than man has) to things inanimate, absurdly. ‘When a body is once in motion, it moveth (unless something else hinder it) eternally: and whatsoever hindereth it, cannot in an instant, but in time and by degrees quite extinguish it. And as we see in the water, though the wind cease, the waves give not over rolling for a long time after; so also it happeneth in that motion which is made in the internal parts of a man then, when he sees, hears, &c. For after the object is removed or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the thing seen, though more obscure than when we see it. And this is it the Latins call _imagination_, from the image made in seeing; and apply the same, though improperly, to all the other senses. But the Greeks call it _fancy_; which signifies appearance, and is as proper to one sense, as to another. Imagination is therefore nothing but _decaying sense_; and is found in man and many other living creatures, as well sleeping as waking. ‘The decay of sense in men waking is an obscuring of it in such manner as the light of the sun obscureth the light of the stars, which stars do no less exercise their virtue by which they are visible in the day than in the night. But because amongst many strokes, which our eyes, ears, and other organs receive from external bodies, the predominant only is sensible, therefore the light of the sun being predominant, we are not affected with the action of the stars. And any object being removed from our eyes, though the impression it made in us remain; yet other objects more present succeeding, and working on us, the imagination of the past is obscured, and made weak; as the voice of a man is in the noise of the day. From whence it follows, that the longer the time is, after the sight or sense of any objects the weaker is the imagination. For the continual change of man’s body destroys in time the parts which in sense were moved: so that distance of time and of place hath one and the same effect in us. For as at a great distance of place, that which we look at appears dim, and without distinction of the smaller parts, and as voices grow weak and inarticulate, so also after great distance of time, our imagination of the past is weak; and we lose (for example) of cities we have seen many particular streets, and of actions, many particular circumstances. This decaying sense, when we would express the thing itself (I mean fancy itself) we call Imagination, as I said before: but when we would express the decay, and signify that the sense is fading, old and past, it is called _Memory_. So that imagination and memory are but one thing which for divers considerations hath divers names. Much memory or memory of many things is called Experience. ‘Again, imagination being only of those things which have been formerly perceived by sense, either all at once, or by parts at several times, the former (which is the imagining the whole object as it was presented to the sense) is _simple imagination_; as when one imagineth a man or horse which he hath seen before. The other is _compounded_, as when from the sight of a man at one time, and of a horse at another, we conceive in our mind a centaur. So when a man compoundeth the image of his own person with the image of the actions of another man; as when a man conceives himself a Hercules or an Alexander (which happeneth often to them which are much taken with the reading of Romaunts) it is a compound imagination, and properly but a fiction of the mind. ‘There be also other imaginations that rise in man, (though waking) from the great impression made in sense: as from gazing upon the sun, the impression leaves an image of the sun before our eyes a long time after; and from being long and vehemently attent upon geometrical figures, a man shall in the dark (though awake) have the image of lines and angles before his eyes: which kind of fancy hath no particular name; as being a thing that doth not commonly fall into men’s discourse. ‘The imaginations of them that sleep are those we call dreams: and these also (as all other imaginations) have been before, either totally or by parcels in the sense, and because the brain and nerves, which are the necessary organs of sense, are so benumbed in sleep, as not easily to be moved by the action of external objects, there can happen in sleep no imagination; and therefore no dream but what proceeds from the agitation of the inward parts of man’s body; which inward parts, for the connexion they have with the brain and other organs, when they be distempered, do keep the same in motion; whereby the imaginations there formerly made, appear as if a man were waking; saving that the organs of sense being now benumbed, so as there is no new object, which can master and obscure them with a more vigorous impression, a dream must needs be more clear in this silence of sense, than are our waking thoughts. And hence it cometh to pass, that it is a hard matter, and by many thought impossible, to distinguish exactly between sense and dreaming. For my part, when I consider that in dreams I do not often, nor constantly think of the same persons, places, subjects, and actions that I do waking; nor remember so long a train of coherent thoughts dreaming, as at other times; and because waking I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdities of my waking thoughts,—I am well satisfied, that being awake, I know I dream not; though when I dream, I think myself awake.’—_Leviathan_, pp. 4, 5, 6. The concluding paragraph of this Chapter is remarkable. ‘The imagination that is raised in man (or any other creature endued with the faculty of imagining) by words or other voluntary signs, is that we generally call _Understanding_: and is common to man and beast. For a dog by custom will understand the call or rating of his master, and so will many other beasts. That understanding which is peculiar to man, is the understanding not only his will, but his conceptions and thoughts, by the sequel and contexture of the names of things into affirmations, negations, and other forms of speech; and of this kind of understanding I shall speak hereafter.’—Page 8. As in the first two chapters Mr. Hobbes endeavours to show that all our thoughts, considered singly or in themselves, have their origin in sensation, so in the next chapter, he resolves all their combinations or connexions one with another into the principle of association, or the coexistence of their sensible impressions. ‘By consequence or train of thoughts,’ he says, ‘I understand that succession of one thought to another, which is called (to distinguish it from discourse in words) _mental discourse_.’ ‘When a man thinketh on any thing whatsoever, his next thought after it is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently. But as we have no imagination, whereof we have not formerly had sense in whole or in parts; so we have no transition from one imagination to another, whereof we never had the like before in our senses. The reason whereof is this. All fancies are motions within us, reliques of those made in sense: and those motions that succeeded one another in the sense, continue also together after sense: insomuch as the former coming again to take place, and be predominant, the latter followeth, by coherence of the matter moved, in such manner, as water upon a plane table is drawn which way any one part of it is guided by the finger. But because in sense to one and the same thing perceived, sometimes one thing, sometimes another succeedeth, it comes to pass in time, that in the imagining of any thing, there is no certainty what we shall imagine next. Only this is certain, it shall be something that succeeded the same before, at one time or another.’—Page 9. The comprehension and precision with which the law of association is here unfolded as the key to every movement of the mind, and as regulating every wandering thought, cannot be too much admired; it is enough to say that Hartley, who certainly understood more of the power of association than any other man, has added nothing to this short passage, as far as relates to the succession of ideas. He has indeed extended its application in unravelling the fine web of our affections and feelings, by showing how one idea transfers the feeling of pleasure or pain to others associated with it, which is not here noticed. Whether this principle really has all the extent and efficacy ascribed to it by either of these writers will be made the subject of a future inquiry. How well our author understood the question, and how much it had assumed a consistent and systematic form in his mind will appear from the instances he brings in illustration of this intricate and at the time almost unthought-of subject. ‘The train of thoughts or mental discourse is of two sorts. The first is unguided, without design and inconstant; wherein there is no passionate thought to govern and direct those that follow to itself as the end and scope of some desire or other passion; in which case the thoughts are said to wander and seem impertinent one to another as in a dream. Such are commonly the thoughts of men, that are not only without company, but also without care of any thing: though even then their thoughts are as busy as at other times, but without harmony, as the sound which a lute out of tune would yield to any man, or in tune to one that could not play. And yet in this wild ranging of the mind, a man may ofttimes perceive the way of it, and the dependence of one thought upon another. For in a discourse of our present civil war, what could seem more impertinent than to ask (as one did) what was the value of a Roman penny? Yet the coherence to me was manifest enough. For the thoughts of the war introduced the thought of the delivering up the king to his enemies; the thought of that brought in the thought of the delivering up of Christ; and that again the thought of the thirty pence, which was the price of that treason: and thence easily followed that malicious question; and all this in a moment of time; for thought is quick. ‘The second’ [that is the second sort of association] ‘is more constant, as being regulated by some desire, and design. For the impression made by such things as we desire or fear, is strong and permanent, or, if it cease for a time, of quick return; so strong it is sometimes as to hinder and break our sleep. From desire ariseth the thought of some means we have seen produce the like of what we aim at: and from the thought of that, the thought of means to that mean, and so continually till we come to some beginning within our own power.’ He adds,—‘This train of regulated thoughts is of two kinds: one, when of an effect imagined, we seek the causes or means that produce it; and this is common to man and beast. The other is when imagining anything whatsoever, we seek all the possible effects that can by it be produced: that is to say, we imagine what we can do with it when we have it. Of which I have not at any time seen any sign but in man only; for this is a curiosity hardly incident to the nature of any living creature that has no other passion but sensual, such as are hunger, thirst, lust, and anger. In sum, the discourse of the mind when it is governed by design, is nothing but seeking or the faculty of invention, which the Latins call _sagacitas_ and _solertia_, a finding out of the causes of some effect, present or past; or of the effects of some present or past cause. Sometimes a man desires to know the event of an action; and then he thinketh of some like action past, and the events thereof one after another; supposing like events will follow like actions. As he that foresees what will become of a criminal, re-cons what he has seen follow on the like crime before; having this order of thoughts, the crime, the officer, the prison, the judge, and the gallows, which kind of thoughts is called foresight, and prudence or providence; and sometimes wisdom; though such conjecture, through the difficulty of observing all circumstances, be very fallacious. But this is certain; by how much one man has more experience of things past than another; by so much also he is more prudent; and his expectations the seldomer fail him. The present only has a being in nature; things past have a being in the memory only, but things to come have no being at all; the future being but a fiction of the mind, applying the sequels of actions past to the actions that are present; which with most certainty is done by him that has most experience; but not with certainty enough, and though it be called prudence when the event answereth our expectation, yet in its own nature it is but presumption; for the foresight of things to come, which is providence, belongs only to him by whose will they are to come: from him only, and supernaturally, proceeds prophecy. The best prophet naturally is the best guesser; and the best guesser, he that is most versed and studied in the matters he guesses at; for he hath most signs to guess by.’—Page 10. After this account he immediately adds,— ‘There is no other act of man’s mind that I can remember, naturally planted in him, so as to need no other thing to the exercise of it but to be born a man, and live with the use of his five senses. Those other faculties, of which I shall speak by and by, and which seem proper to man only, are acquired, and increased by study and industry; and of most men learned by instruction and discipline; and proceed all from the invention of words and speech: for besides sense and thoughts, and the train of thoughts, the mind of man has no other motion, though by the help of speech and method, the same faculties may be improved to such a height, as to distinguish men from all other living creatures.’—Page 11. The conclusion of this chapter in which the author treats of the limits of the imagination is too important, and has laid the foundation of too many speculations, to be passed over. ‘Whatsoever we imagine is finite. Therefore there is no idea, or conception of any thing we call infinite. No man can have in his mind an image of infinite magnitude; nor conceive infinite swiftness, infinite time, or infinite force, or infinite power. When we say any thing is infinite, we signify only that we are not able to conceive the ends and bounds of the thing named; having no conception of the thing, but of our own inability: and therefore the name of God is used, not to make us conceive him (for he is incomprehensible and his greatness and power are inconceivable) but that we may honour him. And because whatsoever we conceive has been perceived first by sense, either all at once, or by parts, a man can have no thought, representing any thing, not subject to sense. No man, therefore, can conceive any thing, but he must conceive it in some place, and indued with some determinate magnitude, and which may be divided into parts; not that any thing is all in this place, and all in another place at the same time; nor that two or more things can be in one and the same place at once: for none of these things ever have, nor can be incident to sense; but are absurd speeches, taken upon credit (without any signification at all), from deceived philosophers, and deceived, or deceiving schoolmen.’—Page 11. By the extracts which I shall next borrow from his account of language and reasoning, it will appear that our author not only threw out the first hints of the modern system, which reduces all reasoning and understanding to the mechanism of language, but that by a very high kind of abstraction, he carried it to perfection at once. The whole race of plodding commentators, or dashing paradox-mongers since his time have not advanced a step beyond him. I shall give this part somewhat at large, both because the question is intricate in itself, and as it will serve as a specimen of his general mode of writing, in which dry sarcasm, keen observation, extensive thought, and the most rigid logic conveyed in a concise and masterly style, are all brought to bear upon the same object. ‘The invention of printing,’ he says, ‘though ingenious, compared with the invention of letters is no great matter. But who was the first that found the use of letters, is not known. He that first brought them into Greece, men say, was Cadmus, the son of Agenor, King of Phœnicia. A profitable invention for continuing the memory of time past, and the conjunction of mankind, dispersed into so many and distant regions of the earth; and withal difficult, as proceeding from a watchful observation of the divers motions of the tongue, palate, lips, and other organs of speech, whereby to make as many differences of characters to remember them; but the most noble and profitable invention of all other, was that of speech, consisting of names or appellations, and their connections; whereby men register their thoughts, recall them when they are past, and also declare them one to another for mutual utility and conversation; without which there had been amongst men, neither commonwealth, nor society, nor contract, nor peace, no more than amongst lions, bears, and wolves. The first author of speech was God himself, that instructed Adam how to name such creatures as he presented to his sight; for the scripture goeth no farther in this matter. But this was sufficient to direct him to add more names, as the experience and use of the creatures should give him occasion; and to join them in such manner by degrees, as to make himself understood, and so by succession of time, so much language might be gotten, as he had found use for; though not so copious as an orator or philosopher has need of: for I do not find any thing in the scripture, out of which, directly or by consequence can be gathered, that Adam was taught the names of all figures, numbers, measures, colours, sounds, fancies, relations; much less the names of words and speech, as, general, special, affirmative, negative, interrogative, optative, infinitive, all which are useful; and least of all, of entity, intentionality, quiddity, and other insignificant words of the school. ‘The manner how speech serveth to the remembrance of the consequence of causes and effects, consisteth in the imposing of names, and the connexion of them. Of names, some are proper, and singular to one only thing; as _Peter_, _John_, _this man_, _this tree_: and some are common to many things; _man_, _horse_, _tree_; every of which though but one name, is nevertheless the name of divers particular things; in respect of all which together, it is called an universal; there being nothing in the world universal but names; for the things named are every one of them individual and singular. One universal name is imposed on many things for their similitude in some quality, or other accident: and whereas a proper name bringeth to mind one thing only, universals recall any one of those many. By this imposition of names, some of larger, some of stricter signification, we turn the reckoning of the consequences of things imagined in the mind, into a reckoning of the consequences of appellations. For example: a man that hath no use of speech at all, that is born and remains perfectly deaf and dumb, if he set before his eyes a triangle, and by it two right angles (such as are the corners of a square figure,) he may by meditation compare and find, that the three angles of that triangle are equal to those two right angles that stand by it: but if another triangle be shown him different in shape from the former, he cannot know without a new labour, whether the three angles of that also be equal to the same. But he that hath the use of words, when he observes that such equality was consequent, not to the length of the sides, nor to any other particular thing in his triangle but only to this, that the sides were straight, and the angles three and that that was all for which he named it a triangle, will boldly conclude universally that such equality of angles is in all triangles whatsoever, and register his invention in these general terms: every triangle hath its three angles equal to two right angles. And thus the consequence found in one particular, comes to be registered and remembered as an universal rule; discharges our mental reckoning of time and place; delivers us from all labour of the mind, saving the first, and makes that which was found true here, and now, to be true in all times and places. But the use of words in registering our thoughts, is in nothing so evident as in numbering. A natural fool that could never learn by heart the order of numeral words, as _one_, _two_, and _three_, may observe every stroke of the clock, and nod to it, or say _one_, _one_; but can never know what hour it strikes. And it seems, there was a time when those names of number were not in use, and men were fain to apply their fingers of one or both hands to those things they desired to keep account of; and that thence it proceeds, that now our numeral words are but ten, in any nation, and in some but five, and then they begin again. And he that can tell ten, if he recite them out of order, will lose himself, and not know when he hath done: much less will he be able to add, and subtract, and perform all other operations of arithmetic. So that without words there is no possibility of reckoning of numbers; much less of magnitudes, of swiftness, of force, and other things, the reckoning whereof is necessary to the being, or well-being of mankind.’—_Leviathan_, chap. iv., pp. 12, 14. The same train of reasoning occurs in the ‘Discourse of Human Nature,’ with some variation in the expression. ‘By the advantage of names it is that we are capable of science, which beasts for want of them are not; nor man, without the use of them; for as a beast misseth not one or two out of her many young ones, for want of those names of order, _one_, _two_, and _three_, and which we call _number_; so neither would a man without repeating orally or mentally those words of number, know how many pieces of money or other things lie before him. Seeing there be many conceptions of one and the same thing, and that for every conception we give it a several name, it followeth that for one and the same thing, we have many names or attributes; as to the same man we give the appellations of _just_, _valiant_, _strong_, _comely_, &c. And again, because from divers things we receive like conceptions, many things must needs have the same appellations: as to all things we _see_ we give the name of _visible_. Those names we give to many, are called universal to them all: as the name of _man_ to every particular of mankind. Such appellations as we give to one only thing, we call individual, or singular; as _Socrates_ and other proper names, or by circumlocution, _He that writ the Iliads_, for _Homer_. ‘The universality of one name to many things hath been the cause that men think the _things_ are themselves universal: and so seriously contend that besides Peter and John, and all the rest of the men that are, have been, or shall be in the world, there is yet something else that we call man, viz. _Man in general_, deceiving themselves by taking the universal or general appellation for the thing it signifieth. For if one should desire the painter to make him the picture of a man, which is as much as to say of a man in general, he meaneth no more but that the painter should choose what man he pleaseth to draw, which must needs be some of them that are or have been or may be, none of which are universal. But when he would have him to draw the king or any particular person, he limiteth the painter to that one person he chooseth. It is plain therefore there is nothing universal but names, which are therefore called indefinite, because we limit them not ourselves, but leave them to be applied by the hearer: whereas a singular name is limited and restrained to one of the many things it signifieth, as when we say, _This man_, pointing to him, or giving him his proper name, or in some such way.’—_Human Nature_, chap. v. pp. 25, 26. We shall have occasion to see, in the course of this inquiry, how exactly Berkeley’s account of the process of abstraction, in contradiction to Locke’s opinion, corresponds in every particular with this passage of our author. To return to his account of truth, reason, &c. ‘When two names are joined together into a consequence or affirmation, by the help of this little verb, _is_, as thus: _a man is a living creature_; if the latter name, _living creature_, signify all that the former name, _man_, signifieth, then the affirmation or consequence is true; otherwise false. For True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood. Error there may be, as when we expect that which shall not be, or suspect what has not been: but in neither case can a man be charged with untruth. ‘Seeing, then, that truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeketh precise truth had need to remember what every name he uses stands for, and to place it accordingly: or else he will find himself entangled in words, as a bird in lime-twigs. And therefore in Geometry (which is the only science that it has pleased God hitherto to bestow on mankind) men begin at settling the significations of their words, which settling of significations they call definitions, and place them in the beginning of their reckoning. By this it appears how necessary it is for any man that aspires to true knowledge to examine the definitions of former authors, and either to correct them when they are negligently set down, or to make them himself. For the errors of definition multiply themselves according as the reckoning proceeds; and lead men into absurdities which they at last see, but cannot avoid without reckoning anew from the beginning. From whence it happens that they which trust to books do as they that cast up many little sums into a greater, without considering whether those little sums were rightly cast up or not, and at last finding the error visible, and not mistrusting their first grounds, know not which way to clear themselves, but spend time in fluttering over their books, as birds that entering by the chimney, and finding themselves enclosed in a chamber, flutter at the false light of a glass window, for want of wit to consider which way they came in. So that in the right definition of names, lies the first use of speech, which is the acquisition of science, and in wrong or no definitions lies the first abuse, from which proceed all false and senseless tenets; which make them that take their instruction from the authority of books and not from their own meditations, to be as much below the condition of ignorant men, as men endued with true science are above it. For between true science and erroneous doctrines, ignorance is in the middle. Natural sense and imagination are not subject to absurdity. Nature itself cannot err; and as men abound in copiousness of language, so they become more wise or more mad than ordinary. Nor is it possible without letters for any man to become either excellently wise or (unless his memory be hurt by disease or ill constitution of organs) excellently foolish. For words are wise men’s counters, they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools, that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, a Thomas Aquinas, or any other doctor whatsoever. ‘Subject to names is whatsoever can enter into, or be considered in an account, and be added one thing to another to make a sum, or subtracted one from another and leave a remainder. The Latins called accounts of money _rationes_, and accounting, _ratiocinatio_, and that which we in bills or books of accounts call _items_, they call _nomina_, or names; and thence it seems to proceed that they extended the word _ratio_ to the faculty of reckoning in all other things. The Greeks have but one word, λογος for both speech and reason, not that they thought there was no speech without reason, but no reason without speech: and the act of reasoning they call syllogism, which signifieth summing up (or putting together) the consequences of one saying to another. For reason is nothing but reckoning (that is, adding and subtracting) of the consequences of general names agreed upon for the marking and signifying of our thoughts; I say marking them, when we reckon by ourselves, and signifying them, when we demonstrate or approve our reckonings to other men. ‘And as in arithmetic, unpractised men must, and professors themselves may, often err, and cast up false, so also in any other subject of reasoning, the ablest, most attentive, and most practised men may deceive themselves, and infer false conclusions: not but that reason itself is always right reason, as well as arithmetic is a certain and infallible art. But no one man’s reason, nor the reason of any number of men makes the certainty: no more than an account is therefore well cast up, because a great many men have unanimously approved it. And, therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord set up for right reason the reason of some arbitrator or judge, so it is in all debates of what kind soever: and when men that think themselves wiser than all others, clamour and demand right reason for judge, yet seek no more but that things should be determined by no other men’s reason but their own, it is as intolerable in the society of men as it is in play, after trump is turned, to use for trump on every occasion that suit whereof they have most in their hand. For they do nothing else that will have every of their passions, as it comes to bear sway in them, to be taken for right reason, and that in their own controversies, betraying their want of right reason by the claim they lay to it. ‘When a man reckons without the use of words, which may be done in particular things (as when upon the sight of any one thing, we conjecture what was likely to have preceded, or is likely to follow upon it), if that which he thought likely to have preceded it, hath not preceded it, this is called error, to which even the most prudent men are subject. But when we reason in words of general signification, and fall upon a general inference which is false, though it be commonly called error, it is indeed an absurdity or senseless speech. For error is but a deception in presuming that somewhat is past, or to come, of which, though it were not past, or not to come, yet there was no impossibility discoverable. But when we make a general assertion, unless it be a true one, the possibility of it is inconceivable. And words whereby we conceive nothing but the sound, are those we call absurd, insignificant, and nonsense. And, therefore, if a man should talk to me of _a round quadrangle_, or _accidents of bread in cheese_, or _immaterial substances_, or _of a free subject_, a _free-will_, or any _free_ but free from being hindered by opposition; I should not say he were in an error, but that his words were without meaning, that is to say, absurd.’—Chap. iv. v., pp. 15, 18, &c. The account of the passions and affections which follows next in order, is the same in almost every particular as that which is given in modern treatises on this subject, except that Mr. Hobbes seems to make curiosity or the desire of knowledge, an original passion of the mind, peculiar to man. From this part I shall only quote two passages, and then proceed to his treatise on the ‘Doctrine of Necessity,’ which will conclude my account of this author. The first passage is the one from which Locke has copied his famous definition of the difference between wit and judgment. After observing (Chap. viii.) that the difference of men’s talents does not depend on natural capacity, which, he says, is nothing else but sense, wherein men differ so little from one another, or from brutes, that it is not worth the reckoning, he goes on: ‘This difference of quickness in imagining is caused by the difference of men’s passions, that love and dislike, some one thing, some another, and therefore some men’s thoughts run one way, some another, and are held to and observe differently the things that pass through their imagination. And whereas in this succession of thoughts there is nothing to observe in the things they think on, but either in what they be like one another or in what they be unlike—those that observe their similitudes, in case they be such as are but rarely observed by others, are said to have a good wit, by which is meant on this occasion a good fancy. But they that observe their differences and dissimilitudes, which is called distinguishing and discerning and judging between thing and thing, in case such discerning be not easy, are said to have a good judgment; and particularly, in matter of conversation and business, wherein times, places, and persons are to be discerned, this virtue is called discretion. The former, that is, fancy, without the help of judgment, is not commended for a virtue, but the latter which is judgment or discretion, is commended for itself, without the help of fancy.’ p. 32. This definition, which Locke took entire from our author without acknowledgment, and which has been so often referred to, is evidently false, for as Harris, the author of ‘Hermes,’ has very well observed, the finding out the equality of the three angles of a triangle to two right ones would upon the principle here stated, be a piece of wit instead of an act of the understanding or judgment, and ‘Euclid’s Elements’ a collection of epigrams.[5] The other passage which I proposed to quote chiefly as an instance of our author’s power of imagination, is as follows. In speaking of the degree of madness, as in fanatics and others, he says: ‘Though the effect of folly in them that are possessed of an opinion of being inspired be not always visible in one man, by any very extravagant action that proceedeth from such passion, yet when many of them conspire together, the rage of the whole multitude is visible enough. For what greater argument of madness can there be than to clamour, strike, and throw stones at our best friends? Yet this is somewhat less than such a multitude will do. For they will clamour, fight against, and destroy those, by whom, all their lifetime before, they have been protected and secured from injury. And if this be madness in the multitude, it is the same in every particular man. For as in the midst of the sea, though a man perceive no sound of that part of the water next him, yet he is well assured that part contributes as much to the roaring of the sea as any other part of the same quantity, so also though we perceive no great unquietness in one or two men, yet we may be well assured that their singular passions are parts of the seditious roaring of a troubled nation.’ Even Mr. Burke did not disdain to borrow one of Hobbes’s images. The author of the ‘Leviathan’ compares those who attempt to reform a decayed commonwealth to ‘the foolish daughters of Pelias who desiring to renew the youth of their decrepit father did by the counsel of Medea cut him in pieces and boil him, together with strange herbs, but made not of him a new man.’ I think this is better expressed than the same allusion in Burke, which is I dare say well known to my readers. I shall not here enter into the doctrine of Liberty and Necessity, which Hobbes has stated with great force and precision as a general question of cause and effect, and without any particular reference to his mechanical theory of the mind, as I shall fully investigate this subject in my next Essay. I have thus taken a review of the metaphysical writings of Hobbes, as far as was necessary to establish what I at first proposed, namely, the general conformity, and almost entire coincidence between his opinions, and the principles of the modern system of philosophy. The praise of originality at least, of boldness and vigour of mind, belongs to him. The strength of reason which his application of a general principle to explain almost all the phenomena of human nature implies, can hardly be surpassed. The truth of the system is another question, which I shall hereafter proceed to consider. I will first, however, distinctly enumerate the leading principles of his philosophy, as they are to be found in Hobbes, and in the latest writers of the same School. They are, I conceive, as follows: 1. That all our ideas are derived from external objects, by means of the senses alone. 2. That as nothing exists out of the mind but matter and motion, so it is itself with all its operations nothing but matter and motion. 3. That thoughts are single, or that we can think of only one object at a time. In other words, that there is no comprehensive power or faculty of understanding in the mind. 4. That we have no general or abstract ideas. 5. That the only principle of connexion between one thought and another is association, or their previous connexion in sense. 6. That reason and understanding depend entirely on the mechanism of language. 7 and 8. That the sense of pleasure and pain is the sole spring of action, and self-interest the source of all our affections. 9. That the mind acts from a mechanical or physical necessity, over which it has no controul, and consequently is not a moral or accountable agent.—The manner of stating and reasoning upon this point is the only circumstance of importance in which modern writers differ from Hobbes. 10. That there is no difference in the natural capacities of men, the mind being originally passive to all impressions alike, and becoming whatever it is from circumstances. All of these positions it is my intention to oppose to the utmost of my ability. Except the first, they are most or all of them either denied or doubtfully admitted by Locke. And as it is his admission of the first principle which has opened a door, directly or indirectly, to all the rest, I shall devote the Essay next but one to an examination of the account which he gives of the origin of our ideas from sensation. It may perhaps be thought, that the neglect into which Hobbes’s metaphysical opinions have fallen was originally owing to the obloquy excited by the misanthropy and despotical tendency of his political writings. But it seems to me that he has been almost as hardly dealt with in the one case as in the other. As to his principles of government, this may at least be said for them, that they are in form and appearance very much the same with those detailed long after in Rousseau’s ‘Social Contract,’ and evidently suggested the plan of that work, which has never been considered as a defence of tyranny. The author indeed requires an absolute submission in the subject to the laws, but then it is to be in consequence of his own consent to obey them. Every man is at least _supposed_ to be his own lawgiver. Secondly, as to the misanthropy with which he is charged, for having made fear the actual foundation and cement of civil society, he has I think made his own apology very satisfactorily in these words: ‘It may seem strange to some man that hath not well weighed these things, that nature should thus dissociate and render men apt to invade and destroy one another; and he may therefore, not trusting to the inference made from the passions, desire perhaps to have the same confirmed by experience. Let him therefore consider with himself—when taking a journey he arms himself, and seeks to go well accompanied; when going to sleep he locks his doors; when even in his house, he locks his chests, and this when he knows there be laws and public officers, armed to revenge all injuries that shall be done him;—what opinion I say, he has of his fellow subjects when he rides armed, of his fellow citizens when he locks his doors, and of his children and servants, when he locks his chests. Does he not then accuse mankind as much by his actions as I do by my words? Yet neither of us accuse man’s nature in it.’—_Leviathan_, p. 62. It is true the bond of civil government according to his account, is very different from Burke’s ‘_soft collar of social esteem_,’ and takes away the sentimental part of politics. But I confess I see nothing liberal in this ‘order of thoughts,’ as Hobbes elsewhere expresses it, ‘the crime, the officer, the prison, the judge and the gallows,’ which is nevertheless a good description of the nature and end of political institutions. The true reason of the fate which this author’s writings met with was that his views of things were too original and comprehensive to be immediately understood, without passing through the hands of several successive generations of commentators and interpreters. Ignorance of another’s meaning is a sufficient cause of fear, and fear produces hatred: hence arose the rancour and suspicion of his adversaries, who, to quote some fine lines of Spenser, ——‘Stood all astonied like a sort of steers ’Mongst whom some beast of strange and foreign race Unwares is chanced, far straying from his peers: So did their ghastly gaze betray their hidden fears.’ ON LIBERTY AND NECESSITY In this Essay I shall give the best account I can of the question concerning liberty and necessity from the writings of others, and afterwards add a few remarks of my own on the explanation of the terms employed in this controversy. Of Mr. Hobbes’s discourse on this subject, I should be nearly disposed to say with Gassendi, when another work of his, ‘De Cive,’ was presented to him, ‘This treatise, though small in bulk, is in my judgment the very marrow of philosophy.’ In order to give a clear and satisfactory view of the question, I shall be obliged to repeat some things I have before stated, for which the importance of the subject as well as other circumstances will, I hope, be a sufficient excuse. The doctrine of necessity is stated by this author with great force and precision as a general question of cause and effect, and with scarcely any particular reference to his mechanical theory of the mind. From this naked simple view of the matter, I cannot consistently with truth withhold my full and entire assent. The ground-work, the pure basis of the doctrine is in my opinion incontestable; it cannot be denied without overturning all the rules of science, as well as the plainest dictates of the understanding: whoever attacks it there in its stronghold, will only injure the cause he espouses. It is that rock upon which whoever falls will be dashed to pieces. But though I cannot pretend to undermine the foundation, yet I may attempt to shake some parts of the superstructure, and to clear away the crust of materialism which has grown over it. In my opinion, the representations which have commonly been given of the subject by the writers on both sides of the argument are almost equally erroneous, and their opposite conclusions built on an equal misconception of the true principle of necessity. By the principle of moral or philosophical necessity is meant then that the mind is invariably governed by certain laws which determine all its operations; or in other words, that the regular succession of cause and effect is not confined to mere matter, while the impulses of the will are left quite unaccounted for, self-caused, perfectly contingent and fantastical. We in general attribute those things to chance the causes of which we do not understand, both in mind and matter. But as there is a greater latitude and inconstancy in the one than in the other, insomuch that we can hardly ever predict with certainty the effect of particular motives on the mind, the opinion of chance, arbitrary inclination, or self-determination had gained much deeper root with respect to the operations of mind than to those of matter. The fallacy of this opinion Hobbes has exposed in a masterly, and I think unanswerable manner, and without running into those paradoxical conclusions from the first position which later necessarians have deduced from it. He affirms that necessity is perfectly consistent with human liberty; that is, that the most strict and inviolable connexion of cause and effect does not prevent the full, free, and unrestrained development of certain powers in the agent, or take away the distinction between the nature of virtue and vice, praise and blame, reward and punishment, but is the foundation of all moral reasoning. Except Dr. Jonathan Edwards, he is the only professed necessarian that I know of who has not been led, by the customary use of language, to quit the original definition of the term, and to slide from a philosophical into a vulgar and practical necessity. But I will state his reasoning in his own words, which are the best. They are as follows: ‘My opinion about Liberty and Necessity. ‘_First_, I conceive that when it cometh into a man’s mind to do or not to do some certain action, if he have no time to deliberate, the doing it or abstaining necessarily follows the present thought he hath of the good or evil consequences thereof to himself; as, for example, in sudden anger the action shall follow the thought of revenge; in sudden fear, the thought of escape; also when a man hath time to deliberate, but deliberateth not, because never any thing appeared that could him make doubt of the consequence, the action follows his opinion of the goodness or harm of it. These actions I call voluntary, because these actions that _follow immediately_ the last appetite are voluntary, are here: where is only one appetite that one is the last. ‘_Secondly_, I conceive when a man deliberates whether he shall do a thing or not do it, that he does nothing else but consider whether it be better for himself to do it or not to do it; and to consider an action, is to imagine the consequences of it both good and evil; from whence is to be inferred, that deliberation is nothing else but alternate imagination of the good and evil sequels of an action, or (which is the same thing) alternate hope and fear, or alternate appetite to do or quit the action of which he deliberateth. ‘_Thirdly_, I conceive that in all deliberations, that is to say, in all alternate succession of contrary appetites, the last is that which we call the will, and is immediately next before the doing of the action, or next before the doing of it become impossible. All other appetites to do, and to quit, that come upon a man during his deliberations, are called intentions, and inclinations, but not wills, there being but one will, which also in this case may be called the last will, though the intentions change often. ‘_Fourthly_, I conceive that those actions which a man is said to do upon deliberation, are said to be voluntary, and done upon choice and election, so that voluntary action, and action proceeding from election is the same thing; and that of a voluntary agent, it is all one to say, he is free, and to say, he hath not made an end of deliberating. ‘_Fifthly_, I conceive liberty to be rightly defined in this manner: liberty is the absence of all the impediments to action that are not contained in the nature and intrinsical quality of the agent, as for example, the water is said to descend freely, or to have liberty to descend by the channel of the river, because there is no impediment that way, but not across, because the banks are impediments, and though the water cannot ascend, yet men never say it wants the liberty to ascend, but the faculty or power, because the impediment is in the nature of the water, and intrinsical. So also we say, he that is tied wants the liberty to go, because the impediment is not in him, but in his bands; whereas we say not so of him that is sick or lame, because the impediment is in himself. ‘_Sixthly_, I conceive that nothing taketh beginning from itself, but from the action of some other immediate agent without itself. And that, therefore, when first a man hath an appetite or will to something, to which immediately before he had no appetite nor will, the cause of his will, is not the will itself, but something else not in his own disposing; so that whereas it is out of controversy, that of voluntary actions the will is the necessary cause, and by this which is said, the will is also caused by other things whereof it disposeth not, it followeth, that voluntary actions have all of them necessary causes, and therefore are necessitated. ‘_Seventhly_, I hold that to be a sufficient cause, to which nothing is wanting that is needful to the producing of the effect. The same also is a necessary cause. For if it be possible that a sufficient cause shall not bring forth the effect, then there wanteth somewhat which was needful to the producing of it, and so the cause was not sufficient; but if it be impossible that a sufficient cause should not produce the effect, then is a sufficient cause a necessary cause (for that is said to produce an effect necessarily that cannot but produce it;) hence it is manifest, that whatsoever is produced, is produced necessarily: for whatsoever is produced hath had a sufficient cause to produce it, or else it had not been; and therefore also voluntary actions are necessitated. ‘_Lastly_, I hold that the ordinary definition of a free agent, namely, that a free agent, is that, which, when all things are present which are needful to produce the effect, can nevertheless not produce it, implies a contradiction, and is nonsense; being as much as to say, the cause may be sufficient, that is to say necessary, and yet the effect shall not follow. ‘MY REASONS.—For the first five points, wherein it is explicated—1. what spontaneity is; 2. what deliberation is; 3. what will, propension and appetite are; 4. what a free agent is; 5. what liberty is; there can no other proof be offered but every man’s own experience, by reflection on himself, and remembering what he himself meaneth when he saith an action is spontaneous: a man deliberates: such is his will: that agent or that action is free. Now he that reflecteth so on himself, cannot but be satisfied, that deliberation is the consideration of the good or evil sequels of an action to come; that by spontaneity is meant inconsiderate action (or else nothing is meant by it); that will is the last act of our deliberation; that a free agent is he that can do if he will, and forbear if he will; and that liberty is the absence of external impediments. But, to those that out of custom speak not what they conceive, but what they hear, and are not able, or will not take the pains to consider what they think when they hear such words, no argument can be sufficient; because experience and matter of fact is not verified by other men’s arguments, but by every man’s own sense and memory. For example, how can it be proved that to love a thing and to think it good is all one, to a man that hath not marked his own meaning by those words? or how can it be proved that eternity is not _nunc stans_ to a man that says those words by custom, and never considers how he can conceive the thing in his mind? Also the sixth point, that a man cannot imagine any thing to begin without a cause, can no other way be made known, but by trying how he can imagine it; but if he try, he shall find as much reason (if there be no cause of the thing) to conceive it should begin at one time as another, that he hath equal reason to think it should begin at all times, which is impossible, and therefore he must think there was some special cause why it began then, rather than sooner or later, or else that it began never, but was eternal. ‘For the seventh point, which is, that all events have necessary causes, it is there proved in that they have sufficient causes. Further, let us in this place also suppose any event never so casual, as the throwing (for example) “ames ace” upon a pair of dice, and see if it must not have been necessary before it was thrown. For seeing it was thrown, it had a beginning, and consequently a sufficient cause to produce it, consisting partly in the dice, partly in outward things, as the posture of the parts of the hand, the measure of force applied by the caster, the posture of the parts of the table, and the like. In sum, there was nothing wanting which was necessarily requisite to the producing of that particular cast, and consequently the cast was necessarily thrown; for if it had not been thrown, there had wanted somewhat requisite to the throwing of it, and so the cause had not been sufficient. In the like manner it may be proved that every other accident, how contingent soever it seem, or how voluntary soever it be, is produced necessarily. The same may be proved also in this manner. Let the case be put, for example, of the weather: ’tis necessary that to-morrow it shall rain or not rain. If, therefore, it be not necessary it shall rain, it is necessary it shall not rain, otherwise there is no necessity that the proposition, it shall rain or not rain, should be true. I know there be some that say, it may necessarily be true that one of the two shall come to pass, but not, singly that it shall rain, or that it shall not rain, which is as much as to say, one of them is necessary, yet neither of them is necessary; and therefore to seem to avoid that absurdity, they make a distinction, that neither of them is true _determinate_, but _indeterminate_, which distinction either signifies no more but this, one of them is true, but we know not which, and so the necessity remains, though we know it not; or if the meaning of the distinction be not that, it hath no meaning, and they might as well have said, one of them is true _titirice_, but neither of them, _tu patulice_. ‘The last thing in which also consisteth the whole controversy, namely, that there is no such thing as an agent, which when all things requisite to action are present, can nevertheless forbear to produce it; or (which is all one) that there is no such thing as freedom from necessity, is easily inferred from that which hath been before alleged. For if it be an agent it can work, and if it work there is nothing wanting of what is requisite to produce the action, and consequently the cause of the action is sufficient, and if sufficient, then also necessary, as hath been proved before. And thus you see how the inconveniences, which it is objected must follow upon the holding of necessity, are avoided, and the necessity itself demonstratively proved. To which I could add, if I thought it good logic, the inconvenience of denying necessity, as that it destroyeth both the decrees and the prescience of God Almighty; for whatsoever God hath purposed to bring to pass by man, as an instrument, or foreseeth shall come to pass; a man, if he have liberty as hath been affirmed from necessitation, might frustrate, and make not to come to pass, and God should either not foreknow it, and not decree it, or he should foreknow such things shall be, as shall never be, and decree that which shall never come to pass. This is all that hath come into my mind touching this question since I last considered it.’ The letter from which the foregoing extract is taken is addressed to the Marquis of Newcastle, and dated at Rouen in 1651, twenty years before the publication of Spinoza’s most exact and beautiful demonstration of the same principle. Some of Hobbes’s antagonists had charged him with having borrowed his arguments from Marsennus, a French author; to which in one of his controversial tracts Hobbes replies with some contempt, that this Marsennus had heard him talk on the subject when he was in Paris, and had borrowed them from him. Dr. Priestley has done justice to Hobbes on this question of necessity, and I suspect more than justice in denying that the Stoics were acquainted with the same principle. At any rate, the modern commentators on the subject (and Dr. Priestley among them) have added nothing to it but absurdities, from which our author’s logic protected him; for he seldom reasoned wrong but when he reasoned from wrong premises. As this question is one of the most interesting in the history of philosophy, I shall perhaps be excused for adding one more extract (of considerable length) to prove that Hobbes is not, in this instance, chargeable with the practical inferences which have been made from his doctrine. In answer to the objections of Bishop Bramhall, with whom he had a controversy on the subject, he says: ‘Of the arguments from reason, the first is that which his Lordship saith is drawn from Zeno’s beating of his man, which is therefore called _Argumentum Baculinum_, that is to say, a wooden argument. The story is this: Zeno held that all actions were necessary: his man therefore being for some fault beaten, excused himself upon the necessity of it: to avoid this excuse, his master pleaded likewise the necessity of beating him. So that not he that maintained, but he that derided the necessity was beaten, contrary to that his Lordship would infer. ‘The second argument is taken from certain inconveniences which his Lordship thinks would follow such an opinion. ‘The first inconvenience, he says, is this, that the laws which prohibit any action will be unjust. ‘2. That all consultations are vain. ‘3. That admonitions to men of understanding are of no more use than to children, fools, and madmen. ‘4. That praise, dispraise, reward and punishment are in vain. ‘5 and 6. That counsels, arts, arms, books, instruments, study, tutors, medicines are in vain.’ Hobbes’s answer to these conclusions is I think quite satisfactory. He says— ‘To which arguments his Lordship, expecting I should answer by saying, “the ignorance of the event were enough to make us use the means,” adds (as it were a reply to my answer foreseen) these words, “_Alas! how should our not knowing the event be a sufficient motive to make us use the means?_” Wherein his Lordship says right: but my answer is not that which he expecteth. I answer: ‘First, that the necessity of an action doth not make the laws that prohibit it unjust. To let pass that not the necessity, but the will to break the law maketh the action unjust, because the law regardeth the will and no other antecedent cause of action, and to let pass that no law can possibly be unjust, inasmuch as every man maketh (by his consent) the law he is bound to keep, and which consequently must be just, unless a man can be unjust to himself;—I say, what necessary cause soever precede an action, yet if the action be forbidden, he that doth it willingly may be justly punished. For instance, suppose the law on pain of death prohibit stealing, and that there be a man who by the strength of temptation is necessitated to steal, and is thereupon put to death, does not this punishment deter others from stealing? Is it not a cause that others steal not? Doth it not frame and make their wills to justice? To make the law is therefore to make a cause of justice, and to necessitate justice, and consequently ’tis no injustice to make such a law. The intention of the law is not to grieve the delinquent for what is past and not to be undone; but to make him and others just that else would not be so; and respecteth not the evil act past, but the good to come. Insomuch as without the good intention for the future, no past act of a delinquent would justify his killing in the sight of God. ‘Secondly, I deny that it maketh consultations to be vain. ’Tis the consultation that causeth a man and necessitateth him to choose to do one thing rather than another: so that unless a man say that that cause is in vain which necessitateth the effect, he cannot infer the superfluousness of consultation out of the necessity of the election proceeding from it. But it seemeth his Lordship reasons thus: “If I must do this rather than that, I shall do it though I consult not at all;” which is a false proposition and a false consequence, and no better than this: “If I shall live till to-morrow, I shall live till to-morrow, though I run myself through with a sword to-day.” If there be a necessity that an action shall be done, or that any effect shall be brought to pass, it does not therefore follow that there is nothing necessarily requisite as a means to bring it to pass; and therefore when it is determined that one thing shall be chosen before another, ’tis determined also for what cause it shall be chosen, which cause for the most part is deliberation or consultation; and therefore consultation is not in vain, and indeed the less in vain by how much the election is more necessitated, if _more_ and _less_ had any place in necessity. ‘The same answer is to be given to the third supposed inconvenience, namely, that admonitions are in vain: for admonitions are parts of consultation, the admonitor being a counsellor for the time to him that is admonished. ‘The fourth pretended inconvenience is, that praise, dispraise, reward and punishment will be in vain. To which I answer, that for praise and dispraise, they depend not at all on the necessity of the action praised or dispraised. For what is it else to praise, but to say a thing is good; good, I say, for me or for some body else, or for the state and commonwealth? And what is it to say an action is good, but to say it is as I would wish, or as another would have it, or according to the will of the state, that is to say, according to the law. Does my Lord think that no action can please me or him or the commonwealth, that should proceed from necessity? Things may therefore be necessary, and yet praiseworthy, as also necessary, and yet dispraised, and neither of them both in vain, because praise and dispraise, and likewise reward and punishment, do by example make and conform the will to good and evil. It was a very great praise in my opinion that Velleius Paterculus gives Cato, when he says that he was good by nature, _et quia aliter esse non potuit_. ‘To the last objection, that counsels, arts, arms, instruments, books, study, medicines, and the like would be superfluous, the same answer serves as to the former, that is to say, that this consequence, _if the effect shall come to pass, then it shall come to pass without its causes_, is a false one, and those things named counsels, arts, arms, &c. are the causes of those effects.’—Page 291. ‘His Lordship’s third argument consisteth in other inconveniences, which he saith will follow, namely, impiety, and negligence of religious duties, as repentance and zeal to God’s service, &c. To which I answer as to the rest, that they follow not. I must confess, if we consider the greatest part of mankind, not as they should be, but as they are, that is, as men whom either the study of acquiring wealth or preferment, or whom the appetite of sensual delights or the impatience of meditation, or the rash embracing of wrong principles have made unapt to discuss the truth of things; I must, I say, confess that the dispute of this question will rather hurt than help their piety, and therefore if his Lordship had not desired this answer, I should not have written it, nor do I write it but in hopes your Lordship and his will keep it private. Nevertheless in very truth, the necessity of events does not of itself draw with it any impiety at all. For piety consisteth only in two things: one that we honour God in our hearts, which is, that we think as highly of his power as we can, (for to honour any thing is nothing else but to think it to be of great power). The other is that we signify that honour and esteem by our words and actions, which is called _cultus_, or worship of God. He therefore that thinketh that all things proceed from God’s eternal will, and consequently are necessary, does he not think God omnipotent? Does he not esteem of his power as highly as is possible, which is to honour God as much as may be in his heart? Again, he that thinketh so, is he not more apt by external acts and words to acknowledge it, than he that thinketh otherwise? Yet is this external acknowledgment the same thing which we call worship; so that this opinion fortifies piety in both kinds, external and internal, and therefore is far from destroying it. And for repentance, which is nothing else but a glad returning into the right way, after the grief of being out of the way, though the cause that made him go astray were necessary, yet there is no reason why he should not grieve; and, again, though the cause why he returned into the way were necessary, there remaineth still the cause of joy. So that the necessity of the acting taketh away neither of those parts of repentance—grief for the error, and joy for returning.’—_Tripos_, p. 292. The author afterwards properly defines a moral agent to be one that acts from deliberation, choice, or will, not from indifference; and, speaking of the supposed inconsistency between choice and necessity, adds: ‘Commonly when we see and know the strength that moves us, we acknowledge necessity; but when we see not or mark not the force that moves us, we then think there is none, and that it is not causes but liberty that produceth the action. Hence it is that they think he doth not choose this that of necessity chooses it, but they might as well say, fire doth not burn, because it burns of necessity.’ The general question is thus stated by Mr. Hobbes in the beginning of his treatise: the point is not, he says, ‘whether a man can be a free agent; that is to say, whether he can write or forbear, speak or be silent, according to his will, but whether the will to write, and the will to forbear, come upon him according to his will, or according to any thing else in his own power. I acknowledge this liberty, that I can do if I will; but to say—I can will if I will, I take to be an absurd speech. In fine, that freedom which men commonly find in books, that which the poets chaunt in the theatres, and the shepherds on the mountains, that which the pastors teach in the pulpits, and the doctors in the universities, and that which the common people in the markets, and all mankind in the whole world do assent unto, is the same that I assent unto, namely, that a man hath freedom to do if he will, but whether he hath freedom to will is a question neither the bishop nor they ever thought on.’ All in which I differ from Hobbes is, that I think there is a real freedom of choice and will, as well as of action, in the sense of the author, that is, not a freedom from necessity or causes in either case, but a liberty in any given agent to exert certain powers without being controlled or impeded in their exercise by another agent. Helvetius says, ‘It is true we can form a tolerably distinct idea of the word _liberty_, understood in a common sense. A man is free who is neither loaded with irons, nor confined in prison, nor intimidated like the slave by the dread of chastisement: in this sense, the liberty of a man consists in the free exercise of his power: I say of his power, because it would be ridiculous to mistake for a want of liberty the incapacity we are under to pierce the clouds like the eagle, to live under the water like the whale, or to become king, emperor, or pope. We have so far a sufficiently clear idea of the word. But this is no longer the case when we come to apply liberty to the will. What must this liberty then mean? We can only understand by it a free power of willing or not willing a thing: but this power would imply that there may be a will without motives, and consequently an effect without a cause. A philosophical treatise on the liberty of the will would be a treatise of effects without a cause.’—_Helvetius on the Mind_, p. 44. Now I cannot perceive why there is any more difficulty in annexing a meaning to the word liberty, as it relates to the faculties of the mind than as it relates to those of the body, or why a treatise of the one should be a treatise of effects without a cause any more than of the other. If the distinction between liberty and necessity is lost in this case, it is not because liberty but because necessity can have no place in the will, or because we cannot easily put a padlock on the mind. If the prisoner who has his chains struck off, walks or runs, dances or leaps, is this an instance of an effect without a cause, because it is an effect of liberty, or of what Helvetius calls the free exercise of his power? Not that he can exert this power without means or motives, that is, without ground to move on, or limbs to move with, or breath to draw, or will to impel him, but ‘with all these means and appliances to boot’ he has a power to do certain things which his chains deprived him of the liberty of doing, but which the striking them off restores to him again. Why then, if liberty does not in its common sense signify an effect without a cause, but the free exercise of a power, did it not signify the same thing or something similar as applied to the mind? Has the mind no powers, or are they necessarily impeded and hindered from operating? My notion of a free agent, I confess, is not that represented by Mr. Hobbes, namely, one that when all things necessary to produce the effect are present can nevertheless not produce it; but I believe a free agent of whatever kind, is one which where all things necessary to produce the effect are present, can produce it; its own operation not being hindered by any thing else. The body is said to be free when it has the power to obey the direction of the will: so the will may be said to be free when it has the power to obey the dictates of the understanding. The absurdity of the libertarians is in supposing that liberty of action, and liberty of will have the same identical source, viz. the will; or that as it is the will that moves the body, so it is the will that moves itself in order to be free. Mr. Locke’s chapter ‘On Power,’ in the first volume of the Essay, contains his account of liberty and necessity, and has been more found fault with than any other part of his work; I think without reason. He seems evidently to have admitted the definition of necessity, though he has avoided the name, which is not much to be wondered at, considering the misconception to which it is liable, and which can scarcely be separated from it in the closest reasoning, much less as a term of general signification. In other words, he denies the power of the mind to act without a cause or motive, or, in any manner in any circumstances, from mere indifferency and absolute self motion; but he at the same time rejects the inference which has been drawn from this principle, that the mind is not an agent at all, but entirely subject to external force or blind impulse. What he has said is little more than an expansion of Hobbes’s general description of practical liberty, ‘that it is a power to do, if we will.’ Thus, according to Mr. Locke, it would not be so absurd to give a restive horse the spur or the whip to make him go straight forward on a plain road, as it would be in order to make him leap up a precipice a hundred feet high. The one the horse has a power or liberty to do if he will, the other he has no power to do at any rate. That is, here are two sorts of impediments, one that may be overcome, and which it is right to take means to overcome, and another which cannot be overcome, and which it is therefore absurd to meddle with. To say that these two necessities are in effect the same, is an abuse of language; yet for not lumping them together in the dashing style of our modern wholesale dealers in paradox, Mr. Locke has been made the subject of endless abuse and contumely. The difference between them, as stated by this author with great force and earnestness of feeling, in truth constitutes all that men in general mean when they talk of freedom of will, and make it, as in this sense it is, the ground-work of morality. There are certain powers which the mind has of governing not only the actions of the body, but of regulating its own thoughts and desires, and it is to make us exert these powers that all the distinctions, rules and sanctions of morality have been established. It must be ridiculous to attempt to make us do, what upon the face of the thing it was known we could not do; yet it is on this literal and unqualified interpretation of the term, as implying a flat impossibility of the contrary, an utter incapacity and helplessness in the mind, a concurrence of causes foreign to the will itself, and irresistible in their effect, and with which it must therefore be in vain to contend, that most of the consequences from the doctrine of necessity have been built; such as that reward and punishment are absurd and improper, that virtue and vice are words without a meaning, that the assassin is no more a moral or accountable agent than the dagger which he uses, and many others of the same stamp. The sword and the assassin would be equally moral and accountable agents, if they were both equally accessible to moral motives, that is, to reward and punishment, praise and blame, &c.; but they are not. This seems to be a distinction of great pith and moment. It is said to be a mere difference of words; at least it makes all the difference whether such motives as reward and punishment, praise and blame, should be applied or not, and this one should think was a difference of practice. It is objected, indeed, that still both are equally necessary agents. But this appears to me to be a confusion of words. It is in vain to exhort flame not to burn, or to be angry with poison for working: and it would be equally in vain to exhort men to certain actions or to resent others, if exhortation and resentment had no more effect upon them, that is, if they were really governed by the same sort of blind, physical, unreasoning, unresisting necessity. In fact, the latest necessarians have abandoned the true, original, philosophical meaning of the term, in which it implies no more than the connection between cause and effect, and have substituted for it the prejudiced notion of their adversaries, who confound it with mechanical necessity, ‘fixed fate, foreknowledge absolute,’ or the unconditional _fiat_ of omnipotence. The following extracts which I shall condense as much as I can consistently with the nature of the argument, will shew the view which Mr. Locke has taken of this subject. I would only observe, by the by, that I so far agree with Hobbes and differ from Mr. Locke, in thinking that liberty in the most extended and abstract sense is applicable to material as well as voluntary agents; moral liberty, _i.e._ freedom of will evidently is not, because such agents have no such faculty. ‘All the actions that we have any idea of,’ says my author, ‘reducing themselves to these two, _viz._ thinking and moving, so far as a man has a power to think or not to think, to move or not to move, according to the preference or direction of his own mind, so far is a man free. Wherever any performance or forbearance are not equally in a man’s power, wherever doing or not doing will not equally follow upon the preference of his mind, directing it, there he is not free, though perhaps the action may be voluntary. Where any particular action is not in the power of the agent, to be produced by him according to his volition, there he is not at liberty; that agent is under necessity. So that liberty cannot be where there is no thought, no volition, no will; but there may be thought, there may be volition, there may be will, where there is no liberty. A little consideration of an obvious instance or two may make this clear. ‘A tennis-ball, whether in motion by the stroke of a racket, or lying still at rest, is not by any one taken to be a free agent. If we inquire into the reason, we shall find it is because we conceive not a tennis-ball to think; and consequently not to have any volition, or preference of motion to rest or _vice versâ_; and therefore has not liberty, is not a free agent, but both its motion and rest come under our idea of necessity, and are so called. Likewise a man falling into the water (a bridge breaking under him) has not herein liberty, is not a free agent. For though he has volition, though he prefers his not falling to falling, yet the forbearance of that motion not being in his power, the stop or cessation of that motion follows not upon his volition; and therefore therein he is not free. So a man striking himself or his friend by a convulsive motion of his arm, no body thinks he has in this liberty, every one pities him as acting by necessity and constraint.’ Here I will just stop to observe that the stanch sticklers for necessity, who make up by an excess of zeal for their want of knowledge, would read this passage with a smile of self-complacent contempt, and remark profoundly that whether the man struck his friend on purpose, or from a convulsive motion, he was equally under necessity, and the object of pity. Now whether he is an object of pity, I shall not dispute; but I conceive he is also an object of anger in the one case which he is not in the other, because anger will prevent a man’s striking you again, but will not cure him of St. Vitus’s dance. It is to this sort of indiscriminate, blind, senseless necessity which neutralizes all things and actions, and under the pretence of establishing the operation of causes, destroys the distinction between the different degrees and kinds of necessity, to which I do not profess myself a convert. To return.—‘As it is in the motions of the body,’ proceeds Mr. Locke, ‘so it is in the thoughts of our minds: where any one is such, that we have power to take it up or lay it by, according to the preference of the mind, there we are at liberty. Yet some ideas to the mind, like some motions to the body, are such as in certain circumstances it cannot avoid, nor obtain their absence by the utmost effort it can use. A man on the rack is not at liberty to lay by the idea of pain, and divert himself with other contemplations. And sometimes a boisterous passion hurries our thoughts, as a hurricane does our bodies, without leaving us the liberty of thinking on other things which we would rather choose. But as soon as the mind regains the power to stop or continue, begin or forbear any of these motions of the body without, or of the mind within, according as it thinks fit to prefer either to the other, we then consider the man as free again.’ ‘But freedom,’ says my author, ‘unless it reaches farther than this, will not serve the turn; and it passes for a good plea that a man is not free at all, if he is not as free to will, as he is to act what he wills. Concerning a man’s liberty, there yet therefore is raised this farther question, whether a man be free to will? And as to that I imagine that a man in respect of willing, when any action in his power is once proposed to his thoughts as presently [that is, immediately] to be done, cannot be free. The reason whereof is very manifest; for it being unavoidable that the action depending on his will should exist or not exist, and its existence or non-existence following perfectly the determination of his will, he cannot avoid willing the existence or non-existence of that action; it is absolutely necessary that he will the one, or the other, _i.e._ prefer the one to the other, since one of them must necessarily follow.’—Page 246. This seems to be the weak part of Mr. Locke’s reasoning, and is the only place, as I remember, where he has considered the certainty of the event as inconsistent with the practical liberty for which he contends. At this rate, it must be given up altogether: there can be no such thing as liberty. For in all cases whatever, one determination must happen rather than another. In all cases whatever, we must choose either one way or another, or suspend our choice. Suspense and deliberation, as Helvetius and others have justly remarked, are in this sense equally necessary with precipitation of judgment. The actual or final event is in both cases the necessary consequence of preceding causes, but that does not destroy freedom of choice in either case, if the event depends upon the exercise of choice, whether the time allowed for the mind to choose in, be longer or shorter. If by liberty be meant the uncertainty of the event, then liberty is a nonentity: but if it be supposed to relate to the concurrence of certain powers of an agent in the production of that event, then it is as true and as real a thing as the necessity to which it is thus opposed, and which consists in the exclusion of certain powers possessed by an agent from operating in the producing of any event. At the same time it must be granted, that the power of deliberation is the most valuable privilege of our rational nature, and the great enlargement of the discursive faculty of the will. Mr. Locke seems only to have erred in mistaking a difference of degree or extent for one of kind. The practical truth of the distinction is undeniable. His words are:— ‘The mind having in most cases, as is evident from experience, a power to suspend the execution and satisfaction of any of its desires, and so all, one after another, is at liberty to consider the objects of them, examine them on all sides, and weigh them with others. In this lies the liberty man has; and from the not using of it right comes all that variety of mistakes, errors, and faults, which we run into in the conduct of our lives, and our endeavours after happiness: whilst we precipitate the determination of our wills, and engage too soon before due examination. For during the suspension of any desire, before the will be determined to action, we have an opportunity to examine, view, and judge of the good or evil of what we are going to do; and when upon due examination we have judged, we have done our duty, all that we can or ought to do, in pursuit of our happiness; and it is not a fault, but a perfection of our nature, to desire, will, and act, according to the last result of a fair examination. This seems to me the source of all liberty; in this seems to consist that which is (I think improperly) called _free-will_.’—_Essay_, vol. i. p. 264. Moral liberty, it should seem then, all the liberty which a man has or which he wants, does not after all consist in a power of indifferency, or in a power of choosing, without regard to motives, but in a power of exciting his reason and of obeying it. There are two general positions advanced by the author in the course of this inquiry, to neither of which I can agree; namely, that action always proceeds from uneasiness, and that we are perfect judges of present good and evil. With respect to the first, it is true indeed that nothing can be an object of desire till we suffer uneasiness from the want of it, but it is just as true, that the want of any thing does not cause uneasiness in the mind, unless it is first an object of desire, or unless the prospect of it gives us pleasure. As to the second position, that we cannot be deceived in judging of our actual sensations, it would be true, if the sensation and the judgment formed upon it were the same, but they neither are nor can be. Let any person smell to a rose, and look at a beautiful prospect or hear a fine piece of music at the same instant, and try to determine which of them gives him most pleasure. If he has the least doubt or hesitation, the principle laid down by Mr. Locke cannot pass for an axiom. From not accurately distinguishing between sensation and judgment, some writers have been led to confound good and evil with pleasure and pain. Good or evil is properly that which gives the mind pleasure or pain on reflection, that is, which excites rational approbation or disapprobation. To consider these two things as either the same or in any regular proportion to each other, is I think to betray a very superficial acquaintance with human nature. Yet in defiance of the necessary distinction between the faculties by which we feel and by which we judge, these moralists have laid it down as a fundamental rule that all pleasures which are so in themselves are equally good and commendable; yet as these ideas relate solely to the reflex impression made by certain things on the understanding, to insist that we shall judge of them by an appeal to the senses, is unwisely to overturn the principle of the division of labour among our faculties, and to force one to do the office of another. For this there seems no more reason than for attempting to hear with our fingers, to see a sound, or feel a colour. ‘Oh! who can paint a sun-beam to the blind; Or make him feel a shadow with his mind.’ Yet the absurdity of the attempt arises only from the inaptitude of the organ to the object. Among simple ideas Mr. Locke reckons that of power. It were to be wished that he had given it as simple a source as possible, viz. the feeling we have of it in our own minds, which he sometimes seems half inclined to do, instead of referring it to our observation of the successive changes which take place in matter. It is by this means alone, that is, by making it an original idea derived from within, like the sense of pleasure or pain, and quite distinct from the visible composition and decomposition of other objects, that we can avoid being driven into an absolute scepticism with regard to cause and effect. For Hume has, I think, demonstrated that in the mere mechanical series of sensible appearances, there is nothing to suggest this idea, or point out the indissoluble connection of one event with another, any more than in the flies of a summer. We get this idea solely from the exertion of muscular or voluntary power in ourselves: whoever has stretched forth his hand to an object, must have the idea of power. Under the idea of power I include all that relates to what we call force, energy, weakness, effort, ease, difficulty, impossibility, &c. Accordingly, I should conceive that no man of strong passions, or great muscular activity would ever give up the idea of power. Hume, who seems to have discarded it with the least compunction, was an easy, indolent, good-tempered man, who did not care to stir out of his arm-chair; a languid, Epicurean philosopher, of a reasonable corpulency, who was hurried away by no violent passions, or intense desires, but looked on most things with the same eye of listlessness and indifference. He was one of the subtlest and most metaphysical of all metaphysicians. And perhaps he was so for the reason here stated. The Scotch in general are not metaphysicians: they have in fact always a purpose, they aim at a particular point, they are determined upon something beforehand. This gives a hardness and rigidity to their understandings, and takes away that tremulous sensibility to every slight and wandering impression which is necessary to complete the fine balance of the mind, and enable us to follow all the infinite fluctuations of thought through their nicest distinctions. To return to the doctrine of necessity. I shall refer to the authority of but one more writer, who has indeed exhausted the subject, and anticipated what few remarks I had to offer upon it: I mean Jonathan Edwards, in his treatise on the Will. This work, setting aside its Calvinistic tendency with which I have nothing to do, is one of the most closely reasoned, elaborate, acute, serious, and sensible among modern productions. No metaphysician can read it without feeling a wish to have been the author of it. The gravity of the matter and the earnestness of the manner are alike admirable. His reasoning is not of that kind, which consists in having a smart answer for every trite objection, but in attaining true and satisfactory solutions of things perceived in all their difficulty and in all their force, and in every variety of connexion. He evidently writes to satisfy his own mind and the minds of those, who like himself are intent upon the pursuit of truth for its own sake. There is not an evasion or ambiguity in his whole book, nor a wish to produce any but thorough conviction. He does not therefore lead his readers into a labyrinth of words, or entangle them among the forms of logic, or mount the airy heights of abstraction, but descends into the plain, and mingles with the business and feelings of mankind, and grapples with common sense, and subdues it to the force of true reason. All philosophy depends no less on deep and real feeling than on power of thought. I happen to have Edwards’s ‘Inquiry concerning Freewill,’ and Dr. Priestley’s ‘Illustrations of Philosophical Necessity,’ bound up in the same volume: and I confess that the difference in the manner of these two writers is rather striking. The plodding, persevering, scrupulous accuracy of the one, and the easy, cavalier, verbal fluency of the other, form a complete contrast. Dr. Priestley’s whole aim seems to be to evade the difficulties of his subject, Edwards’s to answer them. The one is employed according to Berkeley’s allegory, in flinging dust in the eyes of his adversaries, while the other is taking true pains in digging into the mine of knowledge. All Dr. Priestley’s arguments on this subject are mere hackneyed common-places. He had in reality no opinion of his own, and truth, I conceive, never takes very deep root in those minds on which it is merely engrafted. He uniformly adopted the vantage ground of every question, and borrowed those arguments which he found most easy to be wielded, and of most service in that kind of busy intellectual warfare to which he was habituated. He was an able controversialist, not a philosophical reasoner. Dr. Priestley states in his ‘Illustrations’ and in his letter to Dr. Horsley, that the difference between physical and moral necessity is merely verbal. He says, speaking of the connexion between cause and effect in the mind, ‘Give me the thing and I will readily give up the name.’ It appears to me that Dr. Priestley was quite as much attached to the name as to the thing, and that the philosophical principle of necessity, without its unpopular title, would have afforded him but little satisfaction. Now the obnoxiousness of the name, and in my opinion, almost all the difficulty and repugnance which the generality of men find in admitting the doctrine arises from the ambiguity lurking under the term necessity, which includes both kinds of necessity, moral and physical, and with which Dr. Priestley delights to probe the prejudices of his adversaries, thinking the differences of moral and physical necessity a mere question of words, and that provided there are any laws or any causes operating upon the mind, it is of no sort of consequence what those laws or causes are. It is the same inability to distinguish between one cause and another which creates the vulgar prejudice against necessity, and which is exposed in a very satisfactory manner by the author of the ‘Inquiry into the Will.’ He says, in a letter written expressly to vindicate himself from having confounded moral with physical necessity, ‘On the contrary, I have largely declared that the connexion between antecedent things and consequent ones which takes place with regard to the acts of men’s wills, which is called moral necessity, is called by the name of _necessity_ improperly; and that all such terms as _must_, _cannot_, _impossible_, _unable_, _irresistible_, _unavoidable_, _invincible_, &c. when applied here, are not applied in their proper signification, and are either used nonsensically, and with perfect insignificance, or in a sense quite diverse from their original and proper meaning, and their use in common speech; and that such a necessity as attends the acts of men’s wills, is more properly called _certainty_ than _necessity_. I think it is evidently owing to a strong prejudice in persons’ minds, arising from an insensible habitual perversion and misapplication of such-like terms, that they are ready to think that to suppose a certain connexion of men’s volitions without any foregoing motives or inclinations, is truly and properly to suppose such a strong irrefragable chain of causes and effects as stands in the way of, and makes utterly vain, opposite desires and endeavours, like immovable and impenetrable mountains of brass; and impedes our liberty like walls of adamant, gates of brass, and bars of iron: whereas all such representations suggest ideas as far from the truth, as the East is from the West. I know it is in vain to endeavour to make some persons believe this, or at least fully and steadily to believe it: for if it be demonstrated to them, still the old prejudice remains, which has been long fixed by the use of the terms _necessary_, _must_, &c. the association with these terms of certain ideas, inconsistent with liberty, is not broken, and the judgment is powerfully warped by it; as a thing that has been long bent and grown stiff, if it be straightened, will return to its former curvity again and again.’ The reasoning in the ‘Inquiry’ to which the author here refers, in justification of himself, is as follows: ‘Men in their first use of such phrases as these, _must_, _cannot_, _unavoidable_, _irresistible_, &c. use them to signify a necessity of constraint or restraining a natural necessity or impossibility, or some necessity that the will has nothing to do in. A thing is said to be _necessary_, when we cannot help it, let us do what we will. So any thing is said to be _impossible_ to us, when we would do it, or would have it brought to pass and endeavour it, but all our desires and endeavours are in vain. And that is said to be _irresistible_, which overcomes all our opposition, resistance and endeavour to the contrary. And we are said to be _unable_ to do a thing, when our utmost supposable desires and endeavours to do it are insufficient. All men find, and begin to find in early childhood, that there are innumerable things which cannot be done which they desire to do; and innumerable things, which they are averse to, that must be; they cannot avoid them, whether they choose them or no. It is to express this necessity which men so soon and so often find, and which so greatly affects them in innumerable cases, that such terms and phrases are first formed; and it is to signify such a necessity that they are first used, and that they are most constantly used in the common affairs of life; and not to signify any such metaphysical, speculative and abstract notion as that connexion [between cause and effect] in the nature and course of things, to signify which they who employ themselves in philosophical inquiries into the first origin and metaphysical relations and dependencies of things, have borrowed those terms, for want of others. But we grow up from our cradles in a use of such phrases entirely different from this, or from the one in which they are used in the controversy about liberty and necessity. And it being a dictate of the universal sense of mankind, evident to us as soon as we begin to think, that the necessity signified by these terms in the sense in which we first learn them, does excuse persons, and free them from all fault or blame, hence our idea of excusableness or faultlessness is tied to these phrases by a strong habit, which grows up with us;—or if we use the words as terms of art in another sense, yet unless we are exceeding circumspect and wary, we shall insensibly slide into the vulgar use of them, and so apply the words in a very inconsistent manner: this habitual connexion of ideas will deceive and confound us in our reasonings and discourses whenever we pretend to use the terms in that manner.’—Pages 20, 21, 290, &c. ‘It follows that when the aforesaid terms are used in cases wherein no opposition, or insufficient will or endeavour is or can be supposed, but the very nature of the supposed case (as that of willing or choosing) excludes any such opposition, will, or endeavour, these terms are then not used in their proper signification, but quite beside their use in common speech.’—Pages 21, 22. The author has, I think, in these passages, laid open the source of most of the confusion on the subject in question. For this double meaning lurking under the word necessity has been the chief reason why persons, who were guided more by their own feelings and the customary associations of language than by formal definitions, have altogether rejected the doctrine; while persons of a more logical turn, who could not deny the truth of the abstract principle, have yet in their explanations of it, and inferences from it, fallen into the same vulgar error as their opponents. The partisans for necessity have given up their common sense, as they supposed, to their reason, while the advocates for liberty rejected a demonstrable truth from a dread of its consequences; and both have been the dupes of a word. I have been the more ready to appeal to this writer’s authority, because he is allowed on all hands to be one of the most strict, severe, and logical of all necessarians. What he has said on the subject of free-will, as consisting in perfect contingence, independent of all motive, or as implying an absolute beginning of action without any precedent determining cause might, one would imagine, have been sufficient, even if Hobbes’s reasonings had not, to banish that opinion out of the world. He has followed it through all its windings, and detected it in all its varying shades, with equal patience and sagacity. He sums up the absurdities of this notion of liberty, or of mere absolute self-will, in these words: ‘The following things are all essential to it, viz. that an action should be necessary, and not necessary; that it should be from a cause and no cause; that it should be the fruit of choice and design, and not the fruit of choice and design; that it should be the beginning of motion and exertion, and yet be consequent on previous exertion; that it should be before it is; that it should spring immediately out of indifference and equilibrium, and yet be the effect of preponderation; that it should be self-originated, also have its original from something else; that it is what the mind causes itself, of its own will, and can produce or prevent, according to its choice, or pleasure, and yet what the mind has no power to prevent, precluding all previous choice in the affair. So that an act of the will [determining itself by its own free-will], according to their metaphysical account of it, is something of which there is no idea, it is nothing but a confusion of the mind, excited by words without any distinct meaning. If some learned philosopher, who had been abroad, in giving an account of the curious observations he had made in his travels, should say, “He had been in Tierra del Fuego, and there had seen an animal, which he calls by a certain name, that begat and brought forth itself, and yet had a sire and a dam distinct from itself; that it had an appetite and was hungry before it had a being; that his master, who led him, and governed him at his pleasure, was always governed by him, and driven by him where he pleased: that when he moved, he always took a step before the first step; that he went with his head first, and yet always went tail foremost; and this though he had neither head nor tail;” it would be no impudence at all to tell such a traveller, though a learned man, that he himself had no notion or idea of such an animal as he gave an account of, and never had, nor ever would have.’—Page 281, of the _Inquiry_. The author seems to have hit upon the source of this erroneous account of free-will, with his usual truth of feeling. He says, almost immediately after:—‘The thing which has led men into this inconsistent notion of action, when applied to volition, as though it were essential to this internal action that the agent should be self-determined in it, and that the will should be the cause of it, was probably this: that according to the sense of mankind, and the common use of language, it is so with respect to men’s external actions; which are what originally, and according to the vulgar use and most proper sense of the word, are called _actions_. Men in these are self-directed, self-determined, and their wills are the cause of the motions of their bodies, and the external things that are done; so that unless men do them voluntarily, and of choice, and the action be determined by their antecedent volition, it is no action or doing of theirs. Hence some metaphysicians have been led unwarily, but exceeding absurdly, to suppose the same concerning volition itself, _that_ that also must be determined by the will; which is to be determined by antecedent volition, as the motion of the body is; not considering the contradiction it implies.’—_Ibid._, page 286. I shall proceed to state as briefly as I can my own notions of liberty and necessity, as far as they any way differ from the foregoing account. First, then, I conceive that if by necessity be understood and only understood the connexion of cause and effect, or the constant dependence of one thing on another, in the human mind as well as in matter, that according to this interpretation all things are equally certain and necessary. On the other hand, if by liberty be meant any thing opposite to this connexion of cause and effect: that is, a positive beginning of any action or motion out of nothing, or out of a state of indifference, or from itself, I believe that there is no such thing as liberty in the mind any more than in matter. All things have their preceding determining causes, and nothing is, but what must be in the precise given circumstances. This has been demonstrated over and over again, and the contrary supposition reduced to a manifest absurdity in every possible way by Hobbes, Hume, Hartley, Edwards, Priestley, and others. But, secondly, I conceive that the question does not stop here, because certain ideas have been annexed to these terms of liberty and necessity, both by the learned and by common men, which have nothing at all to do with the affirmation or denial of the simple connexion between cause and effect. What I shall therefore attempt will be to point out a few instances of the misapplication of the term to prove a necessity not included in the certainty of the event, and to disprove liberty in a sense in which it does not interfere with that certainty, or with philosophical necessity: that is, I shall attempt to show in what sense, in conformity with the general law to which all things are by their nature subject, man is an agent, a free agent, a moral and accountable agent; that is, deserving of reward and punishment, praise and blame, &c. Now by an agent I mean any thing that acts or has a power to operate, that is, to produce effects; by a free agent I mean one that is not hindered from acting; by a moral and accountable agent I mean one that acts from will, and is influenced by motives; by reward and punishment I mean what every one does; by praise and blame I mean our approbation or disapprobation of any agent that is conscious of our sentiments towards him, or that is capable of reflecting on his own conduct, and of being affected by what others think of it. If by an agent be meant the beginner of action, or one that produces an effect of itself, there can be no such thing; but if by an agent be meant one that contributes to an effect, there is such a thing as an agent; and the more any thing contributes to an effect and determines it to be this or that, the more it is an agent. If by freedom be meant a freedom from causes, or necessity in the abstract, there can be no freedom in this sense, but there may be and is a freedom from certain causes and from certain kinds and degrees of necessity; that is, from physical causes, or compulsion, and from absolute, unconditional necessity. If all things are equally necessary, that do not spring out of nothing, then indeed the distinction between liberty and necessity must be in all cases absurd. Again, by free-will I do not mean the power or liberty to act without motives, but with motives. The mind cannot act without an occasion or ground for acting, but this does not shew that it is no agent at all, or that it is not a free agent; that is, that its action is restrained or hindered by the action of anything else. The intellectual and voluntary powers are free, just as the corporeal are, namely, when they are free to produce certain effects, which, if excited, they can produce, as the body is free when it can move in consequence of the mind’s direction; it is no longer free when though the same reason exists for its moving, it is hindered by something else from obeying the impulse. In short, liberty is this: the power in any agent in given circumstances to operate in a certain manner, if left to itself; or perhaps more unequivocally, opportunity given to any agent to exert certain powers to produce an effect, when nothing but those powers and the absence of impediments is wanting to produce it. To be free is to possess all the requisites for acting in one’s-self, and in the circumstances, and not to be counteracted. Again if moral good and evil are supposed to be something self-created, then they are merely fictions of the mind; but if we suppose an agent to be entitled to praise or blame, reward or punishment, not because he is a self-willed, but a voluntary agent, that is to say, a being possessing certain powers and habitually and with determination exerting them to certain purposes, then there will be a foundation for this distinction in nature. To the idea of moral responsibility, it is not necessary that the agent should be the sole or absolutely first cause of the evil, for example, but that he should be one real, determining cause of it, and while he remains what he is, the same effects will follow. An agent is the author of any evil, when without him, that is, without something peculiar and essential to his disposition and character, it would not exist. 1. Every thing is an agent that is any way necessary or conducing to an effect. The doctrine of second causes does not destroy agency. It no more proves that those causes do not act because something has acted before them, than that they do not exist, because something has existed before them. The theological writers on this side of the question affirm, I think improperly, that God or the first cause is the sole agent in the universe, to which all second causes are to be referred as instruments, having no real efficacy of their own. If so, all events are produced immediately by the divine agency, that is, all second causes are parts of the divine essence, and in all that we see or hear or feel, we must conceive of something far more deeply interfused, a spirit and a motion that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and breathes through all things. This doctrine is that of Spinoza: but upon this supposition second causes, as the immediate operation of the Deity are and must be real and efficient. On the other hand, if to exclude this system of pantheism, we consider the things and appearances about us as merely natural, still what are called second causes must be real and efficient causes, or they could not produce their effects. If nothing can operate but the first cause, then whatever produces effects is the Deity: but if this conclusion be thought objectionable, then we must allow other causes of events to be really and truly such in themselves: for from that which is no cause, which has no power, any more than nothing, nothing can follow. All second causes, that is, all things that exist are, therefore, either parts of the Deity or parts of nature, and in neither case can they be absolutely insignificant, worthless, null, and of no account. Dr. Priestley is for having men refer all the good in the universe to God as the author of it, and all the evil that takes place to man or to second causes. I cannot think that this is sound philosophy nor practical wisdom. The necessarians have evidently borrowed their notions of agency and second causes from the advocates for liberty: for taking up the same unfounded assumption of the libertarians, that action is the absolute beginning of motion, and that any thing short of this is no action at all, and finding that the will was not a cause in the absurd sense supposed by their adversaries, they have concluded that it was no cause at all; not considering whether a cause might not be more properly defined that which produces an effect in consistency with other things than that which produces it independently of them. Action then in any sense of the word is the same as co-operation. It may be asked, whether this account does not destroy the distinction between active and passive. I answer that it does, if by active be meant unconnected action, and by passive connected action; but not else. That is, if by action be understood the positive determinate tendency or the additional impulse to the production of any effect, and by passiveness an indifference in any agent to this or that motion, except as it is acted upon by, and transmits the efficacy of other causes, this distinction will remain as broad and palpable as ever. Any thing is so far active as it modifies and re-acts upon the original impulse; it is passive in as far as it neither adds to, nor takes from that original impulse, but merely has a power of receiving and continuing it. This I take to be the practical and philosophical meaning of the terms. This distinction therefore, applies equally to matter and mind. The explosion of gunpowder cannot be attributed entirely or principally to the spark which ignites it, because the effect is increased a thousand-fold by the inherent qualities of the gunpowder. The motion communicated by one body to another in void space is considered as the mere passive result of the former, because the effect in the second agent is simply the continuation of what it was in the first. So it is in the mind. Motives do not act upon it simply or absolutely; but according to the dictates of the understanding or the bias of the will. At one time we yield to any idle inclination that happens to prevail, and at others resist to the utmost the strongest motives. That is, the mind is itself an agent, one chief determining cause of our volitions. It is on the view taken by the mind of motives, on our disposition to attend to or neglect them, to compare and weigh them, that their effect depends. But the necessarians have always delighted to illustrate the operations of the mind in volition by referring to the impulse communicated by one billiard-ball to another, or to different weights in a pair of scales. Both which illustrations are as little applicable as possible, because in neither of them is there supposed to be the least activity of action; that is, the least capacity to resist or increase or alter the impressed force in the thing acted upon. That is, the mind in these similes is requisite as a merely passive agent, by which I mean a thing perfectly indifferent and nugatory, a mere cypher without any character of its own, that is neither good nor bad, neither deserving of praise nor blame; a cameleon, colourless kind of thing, the sport of external impulses and accidental circumstances, or of a necessity in which it has itself no share. Thus the responsibility of the mind has been taken from it, and transferred to outward circumstances, and all characters in themselves rendered alike indifferent. This is the necessary consequence of abstracting the influence of motives from the mind on which and by which they act. I prefer exceedingly to the modern instances of a couple of billiard-balls, or a pair of scales, the illustration of Chrysophus, the stoic in Cicero, who says, ‘Ille igitur qui protrusit cylindrum dedit ei principium motionis, volubilitatem autem non dedit: sic visum objectum imprimet quidem et quasi signabit in animo suam speciem, sed assensio erit in potestate nostrâ.’ That is, suppose I push against a heavy body; if it be square it will not move: if it be cylindrical it will. What the difference of form is to the stone, the difference of disposition is to the mind. In fact, the necessarians, to maintain this doctrine of the nullity of second causes, have been forced to consider every thing as a succession of simple impulses passing from hand to hand: so that there being no fixed point, no resting-place for the imagination, we are perpetually obliged to shift the cause from one object to another: every thing has to be accounted for, and referred back to something else, and in this ceaseless whirl of fleeting causes all ideas of power or agency seem to slide from under us. Lest the mind should prove refractory, to the laws ascribed to it, they thought it most prudent to deprive it of all activity and power of resistance. They were very absurdly afraid that without this their whole scheme might be overturned, as if though the mind were freed from being the servile drudge of external impulses, it would not still follow the bent of its own nature. The above distinction will, I conceive, set the mind free from one of the shackles imposed on it by the necessarians, namely, that imbecility, helplessness, and indifference, which they have superadded to the regular connexion of cause and effect, though it makes no essential part of it. The mind, according to the advocates for free-will, is a perfectly detached, unconnected, independent cause: according to the necessarians, it is no cause at all: neither branch of the antithesis is true. 2. According to the definition of liberty above given, freedom, that is free agency, is applicable to mind as well as to matter. Free-will does not, because will does not, belong to it. By a free agent, I understand, with Hobbes, one that is not hindered from acting according to his natural or determinate bias. The body is free when it can obey the impulse of the mind; so also a billiard-ball might be said to be free while it is not fixed to the table, or hindered from being impelled by the stroke of the mace. In the same sense, the water, as Mr. Hobbes observes, is said to descend freely along the channel of the river, while no obstacle intercepts its progress. But though necessarians allow liberty to the body, and to inanimate things, they deny that it is in any sense applicable to the mind or will. ON LOCKE’S ESSAY ON THE HUMAN UNDERSTANDING This work owes its present rank among philosophical productions, to its embodiment of the great principle first brought forward by Hobbes. All its author’s attempts to modify this principle or reconcile it to common notions have been gradually exploded, and have given place to the more severe and logical deductions of Hobbes from the same general principle. Mr. Locke took the faculties of the mind as he found them in himself and others, and endeavoured to account for them on _a new principle_. By this compromise with candour and common sense, he prepared the way for the introduction of the principle, which being once established, very soon overturned all the trite opinions and vulgar prejudices which were improperly associated with it. There was in fact no place for them in the new system. The great defect with which the ‘Essay on the Human Understanding’ is chargeable is, that there is not really a word about the nature of the understanding in it, nor any attempt to show what it is or whether it is or is not any thing, distinct from the faculty of simple perception. The operations of thinking, comparing, discerning, reasoning, willing, and the like, which Mr. Locke ascribes to it, are the operations of nothing, or of I know not what. All the force of his mind seems to have been so bent on exploding innate ideas, and tracing our thoughts to their external source, that he either forgot or had not leisure to examine what the internal principle of all thought is. He took for his basis a bad simile—that the mind is like a blank sheet of paper, originally void of all characters whatever; for this, though true as far as relates to innate ideas, that is, to any impressions actually existing in it, is not true of the mind itself, which is not like a sheet of paper, the passive receiver and retainer of the impressions made upon it. The inference from this simile has however been that the understanding is nothing in itself, nor the cause of any thing; never acting, but always acted upon; that it is but a convenient repository for the straggling images of things, a sort of empty room into which ideas are conveyed from without through the doors of the senses, as you would carry goods into an unfurnished lodging; and hence it has been found necessary by succeeding writers to get rid of those different faculties and operations which Mr. Locke elsewhere allows to belong to the mind, but which are in truth only compatible with the active powers and independent nature of the understanding. I will first state Mr. Locke’s account of the origin of our ideas in his own words, and will then endeavour to show in what that account is defective; that is, what other act or faculty of the mind I conceive to be necessary to the formation of our ideas, besides sensation or simple perception. After employing eighty pages in a very laborious, and for the most part sensible refutation of the doctrine of innate ideas, which was popular at the time, but which Hobbes has not deigned to notice, their impossibility being implied in the general principle that all our ideas are derived from the senses, Mr. Locke proceeds in the second book to treat of Ideas, and their origin. He then says: ‘Every man being conscious to himself that he thinks, and that which his mind is applied about whilst thinking being the ideas that are there, it is past doubt that men have in their minds several ideas, such are those expressed by the words, _whiteness_, _hardness_, _sweetness_, _thinking_, _motion_, _man_, _elephant_, _army_, _drunkenness_, and others: it is in the first place then to be inquired how he comes by them. I know it is a received doctrine that men have native ideas and original characters stamped upon their minds in their very first being. This opinion I have at large examined already: but I suppose what I have said will be much more easily admitted when I have shewn whence the understanding may get all the ideas it has, and by what ways and degrees they may come into the mind, for which I shall appeal to every one’s own observation and experience. Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas: how comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it, in an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from EXPERIENCE: in that all our knowledge is founded, and from that it ultimately derives itself.... ‘First, our senses, conversant about particular sensible objects, do convey into the mind several distinct perceptions of things, according to those various ways, wherein those objects do affect them; and thus we come by those ideas we have of _yellow_, _white_, _heat_, _cold_, _soft_, _hard_, _bitter_, _sweet_, and all those which we call sensible qualities, which when I say the senses convey into the mind, I mean, they from external objects convey into the mind what produces there those perceptions. This great source of most of the ideas we have, depending wholly upon our senses, and derived by them to the understanding, I call SENSATION. ‘Secondly, the other fountain from whence experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas, is the perception of the operations of our own mind within us, as it is employed about the ideas it has got: which operations when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which could not be had from things without: and such are _perception_, _thinking_, _doubting_, _believing_, _reasoning_, _knowing_, _willing_, and all the different actings of our own minds; which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself; and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense. But as I call the other sensation, so I call this REFLECTION; the ideas it affords being such only as the mind gets by reflecting on its own operations within itself.... These two I say, _viz._ external, material things, as the objects of sensation, and the operations of our own minds within as the objects of REFLECTION, are to me the only originals from whence all our ideas take their beginnings. The term _operations_ here I use in a large sense, as comprehending not barely the actions of the mind about its ideas, but some sort of passions arising sometimes from them, such as is the satisfaction or uneasiness arising from any thought.’ ‘The understanding,’ proceeds Mr. Locke, ‘seems to me not to have the least glimmering of any ideas, which it doth not receive from one of these two. External objects furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities, which are all those different perceptions they produce in us; and the mind furnishes the understanding with ideas of its own operations. These, when we have taken a full survey of them, and their several modes, combinations, and relations, we shall find to contain all our whole stock of ideas: and that we have nothing in our minds, which did not come in one of these two ways.’—_Essay_, vol. I. p. 84. Again, page 150, he says: ‘I pretend not to teach but to inquire, and therefore cannot but confess here again, that external and internal sensation are the only passages that I can find of knowledge to the understanding. These alone, as far as I can discover, are the windows by which light is let into this dark room. For methinks the understanding is not much unlike a closet, wholly shut from light, with only some little opening left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things without: would the pictures coming into such a dark room but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them.’ This account of the origin of every thing that exists in the mind differs from the simplicity of Hobbes’s system, and of the modern philosophy, in supposing that there is another distinct source of ideas, besides sensation, namely, reflection on the operations of our own minds. I confess this addition appears to me to be very awkwardly and inartificially made. For, in the first place, it is obvious to remark that in most at least, if not all the instances enumerated by the author, the operations themselves are the proper and immediate sources of our ideas, not this kind of reflection on them, which seems to be nothing but the repetition or recollection of the first conscious impression, the perception of a perception. For example, Mr. Locke includes among operations of our own minds ‘some sort of passions arising from our ideas,’ _i.e._ as he explains it, the sense of pleasure and pain. Now it is surely a little preposterous to make, not the original feeling itself, but the after consideration or reflection on that feeling, the source of our idea of pleasure or pain. In this sense, reflection must be the source of all our ideas, whether of external objects, or the operations of our own minds, for in the same sense it may be argued, that the first impression of a sensible object is not the source of the idea we have of it, till the soul comes to reflect on and consider that original impression. But it might be said with equal propriety, that we have one source of ideas, viz., sensation, and another source of ideas, viz. ideas. From the view which Mr. Locke has here taken of the subject, though the passions, or the satisfaction and uneasiness attending certain things are ranked among the operations of the mind, yet it is not quite clear whether we are supposed to have any consciousness of them or not; whether they are not as remote from any thing like perception, as the lifeless objects without us, till coming to be afterwards reflected on and taken notice of by the mind, they furnish the understanding with a new set of ideas. The same reasoning may be applied to the other operations of perception, thinking, &c. for it seems to me that the original act of perceiving or thinking is the source of my idea of those mental operations, just as the first impression of any sensible object is the source of my idea of that object. Not sensation and reflection, therefore, but sensation and the operations of our own minds are more properly the sources of our ideas, that is, these two furnish materials for our reflection. I should not have dwelt so long upon this distinction, which may be thought of little importance in itself, but that I believe it has led to most of the errors of the ‘Essay.’ For in consequence of separating the operations of the mind in a manner from the mind itself, and making them exist only as objects for its contemplation, Mr. Locke has been satisfied with considering those operations as acting upon the mind like external things, not as emanating from it. Thus, by a general formula, all our ideas of every kind are represented as communicated to the mind by something foreign to it, instead of growing out of, and being a part of its own nature and essence. Secondly, another objection to this division of our ideas into those of sensation and reflection is, that it does not differ in any decisive manner from the more simple statement of Hobbes and others, who derive all our ideas from sensation. For by sensation these writers do not understand merely the external image, but the perception or feeling which accompanies it, and they contend that all our other ideas are continuations, modifications, or different arrangements of the original impressions, produced by objects on the senses. Now there is nothing in the extract above given to disprove this statement: and if so, the original hypothesis will remain in its full force. Indeed Mr. Locke himself does not seem to have made up his mind, whether it were so or not. For though he speaks of the mind as furnishing the understanding with ideas, and with the materials of reason and knowledge, and enumerates and explains the several operations of the mind in comparing, distinguishing, &c. yet he elsewhere speaks of ideas as existing in the understanding like pictures in a gallery, or as if the whole process of the intellect were resolvable into the power of receiving, retaining, carrying, and transposing the gross materials furnished by the senses. In this case, I think the simplest way at once is to make sensation the foundation of all our other ideas and faculties. For my own part, the reason why I cannot assent to this doctrine is, that I believe there is another act or faculty of the mind implied in all our ideas, for which neither sensation nor any of its modes can ever account, and which I shall here proceed to explain. The principle which I shall attempt to prove is, that ideas are the offspring of the understanding, not of the senses. By a sensation is meant the perception produced by the impression of the several parts of an outward object, each by itself, on the correspondent parts of an organised sentient being: by an idea I mean the conception produced by a number of these together on the same conscious principle. Besides the succession or juxtaposition of different sensible impressions, I suppose that there is a common principle of thought, a superintending faculty, which alone perceives the relations of things, and enables us to comprehend their connexions, forms, and masses. This faculty is properly the understanding, and it is by means of this faculty that man indeed becomes a reasonable soul. What has led more than any thing else to the exclusion of the understanding as a distinct faculty of the mind, and to the principle of resolving the acts of judging, reasoning, &c., into mere association, or succession of ideas, has been the considering ideas themselves, or those particular objects which are marked by one name, or strike at once upon the senses, as _simple things_. Mr. Locke, it is true, has avoided this error as far as relates to our ideas of substances, but he reckons among simple ideas of the qualities of things several ideas, which are evidently complex, such as extension, figure, motion, and number. Hence, having laid in a certain stock of ideas without the necessity of the understanding, it was thought an easy matter to build up the whole structure of the human mind without it, as we build a house with stones. The method, therefore, which I shall take to establish the point I have in view, will be by showing that there is no one of these simple ideas, or ideas of particular things, which are made the foundation of all the rest, that is not itself an aggregate of many things, or that can subsist a moment but in the understanding. I can conceive of a being endued with the power of sensation, or simple perception, so as to receive the direct impressions of things, and also with memory, so as to retain them for any length of time, as they were severally and unconnectedly presented, yet without the smallest degree of understanding, or without ever having so much as a single thought. The state of such a being would be that of animal life, and something more with the addition of memory, but it would not amount to intellect; which implies, besides actual, living impressions, the power of perceiving their relations to one another, of comparing and contrasting them, and of regarding the different parts of any object as making one whole. Without this ‘discourse of reason,’ this surrounding and forming power, we could never have the idea of a single object, as of a table or a chair, a blade of grass, or a grain of sand. Every one of these includes a certain configuration, hardness, colour, &c., _i.e._ ideas of different things, received by different senses, which must be put together by the understanding before they can be referred to any particular thing, or considered as one idea. Without this faculty, all our ideas would be necessarily decomposed, and crumbled down into their original elements and fluxional parts. We could assuredly never carry on a chain of reasoning on any subject, for the very links of which this chain must consist would be ground to powder. There would be an infinite divisibility in the impressions of the mind, as well as in the objects of matter. There would be a total want of union, fellowship, and mutual intelligence between them, for each impression must remain absolutely simple and distinct, unknown to, and unconscious of the rest, shut up in the narrow cell of its own individuality. No two of these atomic impressions could ever club together to form even a sensible point, much less should we be able to arrive at any of the larger masses, or nominal descriptions of things. The most that sensation could possibly do for us, would be to furnish us with the ideas of what Mr. Locke calls the simple qualities of objects, as of colour or pressure, though not as a general notion or diffused feeling; for it is certain that no one idea could ever contain more than the tinge of a single ray of light, or the puncture of a single particle of matter. Let us, however, for a moment suppose that the several parts of objects are to be considered as individual things, or ideal units; and then see whether, without the cementing power of the understanding, we shall be able to conceive of them as forming a complete whole, or any one entire object. Thus we may have a notion of the legs and arms of a chair as so many distinct, positive things; but without the power of perceiving them together in their several proportions and situations, we could not have the idea of a chair as one thing, or as a piece of furniture, intended for a particular use. It is the mind (if I may be allowed such an expression) that makes up the idea of the chair, and fits it together: that is in this case the cabinet-maker, who unites the loose, disjointed parts, and makes them one firm and well-compacted object. I might instance to the same purpose a statue. Will any one say, that if the head and limbs and different parts of a fine statue were to be taken asunder, broken in pieces, and strewed about the floor, and first shown to him in that state, he would have the same idea of the beauty, proportions, posture, and effect of the whole, as if he had seen it in its original state? But the idea which such a person might have of the statue in this way would be completeness and harmony itself, compared with any idea which could result from the sensible impression of the several parts. For he might still in fancy piece together the broken, mutilated fragments, prop up the limbs, set the head upon the shoulders, and make out a crazy image of the whole; but without the understanding reacting on the senses, and informing the eye with judgment and knowledge, there would be no possibility whatever of comparing the different impressions received: no one part could have the slightest reference to any other part or to the whole; there would be no principle of cohesion left: we might have an infinite number of microscopic impressions and fractions of ideas, but there being nothing to unite them together, the most perfect grace and symmetry would be only one mass of unmeaning, unconscious confusion. All nature, all objects, all parts of all objects would be equally ‘without form and void.’ _The mind alone is formative_, to use the expression of a great German writer; or it is that alone which by its pervading and elastic energy unfolds and expands our ideas, that gives order and consistency to them, that assigns to every part its proper place, and fixes it there, and that frames the idea of the whole. Or, in other words, it is the understanding alone that perceives relation, but every object is made up of relation. In short, there is no object or idea which does not consist of a number of parts arranged in a certain manner, but of this arrangement the parts themselves cannot be sensible. To make each part conscious of its relation to the rest is to suppose an infinite number of intellects instead of one; and to say that a knowledge or perception of each part separately, without a reference to the rest, can produce a conception of the whole; that is, that a knowledge where no two impressions are or ever can be compared, can include a comparison between them and many others, is a contradiction and an absurdity. It may be said perhaps, that not the sensation excited by any of the parts of an object separately, but the sum of our sensations, excited by all the parts, produces our idea of the whole. But it is not possible that in a given number of impressions, where the mind never has perception of more than a single part, there should be contained notwithstanding a view of the whole at once. For as a single part cannot of itself represent the whole object, so neither can this part by being actually joined to others, which by the supposition are never perceived to be joined with it, produce that idea, any more than if those other parts had no existence. If the impression of the parts of an object, absolutely and individually considered, were the same thing as the idea of the object, any number of actual impressions, arranged in any manner whatever, would necessarily be the same object. But this is contrary to all fact. For then a curve line, consisting of the same number of points, would not be distinguishable from a straight one, nor a square from a triangle of the same dimensions, and so on. In a being endued only with a power of sensation, and supposed to be simple and undivided, there could be no room for more than an individual impression at once. Our sensations must always succeed each other. One thought must have completely passed away, before another could supply its place. Our ideas would leave no traces of themselves, like the bubbles that rise and disappear on the water, or the snow that melts as it falls. There would be nothing in their fugitive, momentary existence to bind them together. Ere we could stop to compare any one impression with any other, it would be lost for ever in the dark abyss of time. Nothing could be connected with any thing else, either coexisting with it, or going before or after it. If on the other hand, we suppose any merely sentient being to be extended and compounded, or to be capable of receiving more than one impression at once, we shall yet gain little by it. Such a sentient being will be nothing but a number of distinct sentient beings. For as in the former instance, no two impressions could co-exist together, so in the latter, though they existed together, there could be no sort of communication between them. They would be absolutely cut off from and exclusive of each other. The mind in attending to any one must be wholly absorbed by it, and insensible of the rest. Our sensations would to every rational purpose be placed as completely out of the sphere of each other’s consciousness, as if they were parcel of another intellect, or floated in the region of the moon. That any number of detached, unconnected, actual sensations, impressed on different sentient beings, would not of themselves imply a conception of any one entire object is what every one is ready to grant:—it would be equally clear, that this idea could not arise from the impression of the different parts of an object on the different parts of the same organized, extended, sentient substance, but that in this case we involuntarily transfer our own consciousness to a being incapable of it, and identify these distinct sensible impressions in the same common intellect. It is strange that Mr. Locke should rank among simple ideas that of number, which he defines to be the idea of unity repeated. But how this idea of successive or distinct units can ever give the idea of repetition unless the former instances are borne in mind, I cannot conceive. There might be a transition from one unit to another, but no addition or aggregate formed. As well might we suppose that a body of an inch diameter by shifting from place to place might enlarge its dimensions to a foot or a mile, as that a succession of units, perceived separately, should produce the complex idea of number. The natural fool that Mr. Hobbes speaks of, may be supposed to observe every stroke of the clock, and nod to it, or say one, one, one: but he could never know what hour it strikes, according to Mr. Hobbes, without the use of those names of order, one, two, three, &c. nor according to my notion, without the help of that orderly understanding which first invented those names, and comprehends their meaning. On the material hypothesis, the mind can have but one idea at a time, and the idea of number could never enter into it. Though Mr. Locke constantly supposes the mind to perceive relations, and explains its operations in reasoning, comparing, &c. on this principle, there is but one place in his work, in which he seems to have been upon the point of discovering that this principle is at the bottom of all our ideas whatever. He says, in the beginning of his chapter on Power, which he classes among simple ideas, and which in my opinion has a much more simple source than that which he assigns to it,—‘I confess power includes in it _some kind of relation_ (a relation to action or change), as indeed which of our ideas, of what kind soever, when attentively considered, does not? For our ideas of extension, duration, and number, do they not all contain in them a secret relation of the parts? Figure and motion have something relative in them much more visibly: and sensible qualities, as colours and smells, what are they but the powers of different bodies in relation to our perception? and if considered in the things themselves, do they not depend on the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of the parts? All which include some kind of relation in them. Our idea therefore of power I think may well have a place amongst other simple ideas, and be considered as one of them, being one of those that make a principal ingredient in our complex ideas of substances.’—_Essay_, vol. i. p. 234. That is to say, in other words, the idea of power, which is confessedly complex according to Mr. Locke, as depending on the changes we observe produced in one thing by another, is to pass for a simple idea, because it has as good a right to this denomination as other complex ideas, which are usually classed as simple ones. It is thus that the inquiring mind seems to be always hovering on the brink of truth, but that timidity or indolence, or prejudice, which is both combined, makes us shrink back, unwilling to trust ourselves to the fathomless abyss. I have thus endeavoured to give some account of what I mean by the understanding, as the principle which is the foundation not only of judgment, reason, choice, and deliberate action, but is included in every idea of the mind, or conception even of sensible objects. I am aware that what I have said may be looked upon as rhapsody and extravagance by the strictest sect of those who are called philosophers. The understanding has been set aside as an awkward incumbrance, since it was conceived practicable to carry on the whole business of thought and reason by a succession of external images and sensible points. The fine network of the mind itself, the cords that bind and hold our scattered perceptions together, and form the means of communication between them, are dissolved and vanish before the clear light of modern metaphysics, as the gossamer is dissipated by the sun. The adepts in this system smile at the contradictions involved in the supposition of perceiving the relations between different things, and say that this implies the absurdity that the mind may have two ideas at once, which is with them impossible. Now I shall only contend that if the mind cannot have two ideas at the same time, it can never have any, since all the ideas we know of consist of more than one: and though the consciousness we have of attending to different objects at once, when we compare, judge, reason, will, &c., has been resolved into a deception of the mind in mistaking a rapid succession of objects for one general impression, yet it will hardly be pretended that we deceive ourselves in thinking we have any ideas at all. Mr. Horne Tooke, who is certainly one of the ablest commentators on the doctrines of that school, says that it is as absurd to talk of a complex idea as of a complex star, meaning that our ideas are as perfectly distinct from, and have as little to do with one another, as the stars that compose a constellation. Other writers, to avoid the seeming contradiction of supposing the mind to divide its attention between different objects, have suggested the instant of its passing from one to the other as the true point of comparison between them; or that the time when it had an idea of both together, was the time when it had an idea of neither. As it was evident that while the mind was entirely taken up with one idea, it could not have any knowledge of another which did not yet exist, or had passed away, and as both impressions cannot be supposed to co-exist in the same conscious understanding (for on this system there is no such faculty), this short, precious interval, this moment of leisure from both, this lucky vacancy of thought, is pitched upon as that in which the mind performs all its functions, and contemplates its various ideas in their absence, as from some vantage ground the traveller stops to survey the country on both sides of him. To such absurdities are ingenious men driven by setting up argument against fact, and denying the most obvious truths for which they cannot account, like the sophist who denied the existence of motion, because he could not understand its nature. It might be deemed a sufficient answer to those who build systems and lay down formal propositions on the principle that the mind can comprehend but one idea at a time, to say that they consequently can have no meaning in what they write, since when they begin a sentence they cannot have the least idea of what will be the end of it, and by the time they get to the end of it must totally forget the beginning. ‘Peace to all such!’ To show, however, that I am not quite singular in my notions on this subject of consciousness, and to remove, as I think, every shadow of doubt upon it, I beg leave to refer my readers to two passages, the one in Rousseau, and the other in Abraham Tucker, in support of the almost obsolete prejudice which I have here endeavoured to defend. The one is an argument to prove that judgment and sensation are not the same, in the Vicar’s profession of faith in ‘Emilius,’ and the other is the chapter on the independent existence of mind in the ‘Light of Nature Pursued.’ The passage in Rousseau seems evidently to have been intended as an answer to the maxim of Helvetius that _to feel is to judge_, and to his reasoning on this maxim, which is as follows:— ‘The question being reduced within these limits, I shall examine at present whether the act of the mind in judging is any thing more than a sensation. When I judge of the size or colour of the objects around me, it is evident that the judgment formed of the different impressions, which these objects make upon my senses, is properly only a sensation: that I may say indiscriminately, either I _judge_, or I _feel_, that of two objects, the one which I call _a yard_ makes upon me a different impression from another which I call _a foot_: that the colour called _red_, produces a different effect upon the sight from that which I call _yellow_; and I conclude that in this case to judge is only to feel or perceive by the senses. But it may be said, let us suppose that any one desires to know whether strength of body is preferable to mere bulk; are we certain that we can decide this point by means of the senses alone? Most undoubtedly, I reply: for in order to my coming to a decision on the subject, my memory must first retrace to me successively the different situations in which I may happen most frequently to find myself in the course of my life. In this case, then, to judge is to see that in these different situations strength will be oftener an advantage to me than size. But it may be retorted, when the question is to decide whether in a king justice is preferable to mercy, is it conceivable that the conclusion here formed depends entirely on sensation? The affirmative has undoubtedly at first sight the air of a paradox: nevertheless, in order to establish its truth, we will presuppose in any one a knowledge of what is meant by good and evil, and also of the principle that one action is worse than another, according as it is more injurious to the well-being of society. On this supposition, what method ought the orator or poet to take, in order to show most clearly that justice, preferable in a king to mercy, preserves the greatest number of citizens to the state? ‘The orator will present three several pictures to the imagination of his supposed hearer: in the first he will represent a just king, who condemns and gives orders for the execution of a criminal; in the second, will be seen the good king, who opens the doors of his dungeon, and strikes off the chains of the same criminal; in the third picture, the criminal himself will be the principal figure, who, armed with a poniard, on his escape from his cell hastens to assassinate fifty of his fellow-citizens. But who is there that at the sight of these three pictures will not instantly perceive that justice which, by the death of a single individual, saves the lives of fifty persons, is preferable to mercy? Nevertheless, this judgment is really nothing but a sensation. In fact, if from the habit of connecting certain ideas with certain words, the sound of these words may, as experience demonstrates, excite in us almost the same sensations which we should feel from the actual presence of the objects, it is evident that from the contemplation of these three pictures, to judge that in a king justice is preferable to mercy, is to feel and see that in the first picture a single citizen is sacrificed, while in the third fifty are massacred; whence I conclude that every act of the judgment is only a sensation.’—_Helvetius on the Mind_, p. 12. On this statement I may be permitted to remark that as the author affirms that sensation is the same thing as judgment, so he seems to conceive that the assertion of any proposition is the same thing as the proof of it. He supposes three several pictures to be presented to a man of understanding, and that from an attentive contemplation and comparison of the different objects and events contained in them, he comes to a judgment or conclusion, _viz._ _That justice is preferable to mercy_. ‘Nevertheless,’ he says, ‘this judgment is really nothing but a sensation.’ This is all the proof he brings; and perhaps, considering the language and country in which this celebrated author wrote, it is reasoning good enough. Do I say this with any view to throw contempt on that lively, ingenious, gay, social, and polished people? No; but philosophy is not their _forte_: they are not in earnest in these remote speculations. In order duly to appreciate their writings, we must consider them not as the dictates of the understanding, but as the effects of constitution. Otherwise we shall do them great injustice. They pursue truth, like all other things, as far as it is agreeable; they reason for their amusement; they engage in abstruse questions to vary the topics of conversation. Whatever does not answer this purpose is banished out of books and society as a morose and cynical philosophy. To obtrude the dark and difficult parts of a question, or to enter into an elaborate investigation of them, is considered as a piece of ill-manners. Those writers, therefore, have been the most popular among the French who have supplied their readers with the greatest number of dazzling conclusions founded on the most slight and superficial evidence, whose reasonings could be applied to every thing, because they explained nothing, and who most effectually kept out of sight every thing true or profound or interesting in a question. Who would ever think of plunging into abstruse, metaphysical inquiries concerning the nature of the understanding, when he may with entire ease to himself and satisfaction to others solve all the phenomena of the mind by repeating in three words, _Juger est sentir_. As it was the object of the school-philosophy, by a jargon of technical distinctions, to sharpen the eagerness of debate and give birth to endless verbal controversies, so the modern system, transferring philosophy from the cloistered hall to the toilette and the drawing-room, is calculated, by a set of portable phrases, as familiar and as current as the forms of salutation, to silence every difference of opinion, and to produce an euthanasia of all thought. I have made these remarks not to prejudice the question, but to prevent the prejudice arising on the other side, from seeing the writers of a whole nation, not deficient in natural talents or in acquired advantages, agree in delivering the most puerile absurdities as profound and oracular truths. The train of thought into which the author has fallen in the passage above cited is pretty obvious. Having undertaken to prove that the ideas of justice and mercy are mere sensations, and that the conclusion that justice is preferable to mercy is also a mere sensation, in order to shew the possibility of this he conjures up the ideas of a good and a bad king, of a criminal, a prison, chains, a dagger, and fifty citizens massacred before the eyes of the spectator, which form the subject of three imaginary pictures, and which are in general considered as so many sensible objects. All these sensible objects he supposes to be implied in, and to be the materials out of which we frame the judgment or conclusion, that justice is better than mercy; and therefore he infers that there is nothing else implied in or necessary to that judgment, and that consequently it is nothing but a sensation. Having succeeded in resolving the compound and general ideas of justice and mercy, good and evil, into a number of sensible appearances, his imagination is entirely occupied with the novelty of the objects before him, and he drops altogether the consideration, whether the combination and comparison of these several objects or sensations which is absolutely necessary to their forming the moral ideas or inference spoken of, is not the act of some other faculty. In short, the principle that a judgment is nothing but a sensation, is not only a perfectly gratuitous assertion, but an assertion either without meaning, or a palpable contradiction. For the single objects presented in the foregoing metaphysical pictures, and which are supposed to constitute the judgment, are not one sensation, but many. Now if it be meant that these single objects, as they are perceived separately, or successively, one by one, without the intervention of any reflex act of the mind combining and comparing them together, constitute of themselves the judgment, ‘that justice is preferable to mercy,’ this is to say, in so many words, that the mind forms a comparison between things without comparing them, and judges of their relations without perceiving them. On the other hand, if it be meant to include the acts of the mind in comparing, judging, inferring, &c. in the term _sensation_, then the proposition that judgment or sensation are the same, will be nothing but an idle and insignificant abuse of words, and will only prove that if to the sensation, or perception of particular objects we add the faculty of comparing and judging, nothing farther will be necessary for it to compare and judge. I shall therefore dismiss this well known maxim as no better than a misnomer, as an attempt to shorten the labour of thought by the interposition of an unmeaning phrase, and to confound all the distinctions of the understanding by an equivoque. It will not be amiss in this place to transcribe a passage from the Logic of the Abbé Condillac (a work which may be regarded as the quintessence of slender thought, and of the art of substituting words for things) to show how far the doctrine of the origin of all our ideas from sensation may be carried, and what an imbecility it produces in the mind, and deadness to any but external objects. The design of the passage is to prove that morality is a visible thing. This however is a work of supererogation, even on the principle supposed: for it is not necessary to refer morality to any thing visible or audible, or to any other of the senses, but the sense of pleasure and pain; our feelings of this kind being allowed to come from, and make a part of our original sensations. But this system is not an improvement on reason, but a progression in superficiality and absurdity, a vast vacuity, where ‘fluttering its pennons vain, the mind drops down ten thousand fathoms deep.’ ‘Moral ideas,’ says my author, ‘seem to elude the senses: they at least elude the senses of those philosophers who deny that our knowledge proceeds from sensation. They would gladly know of what colour virtue is, or of what colour vice is. I answer that virtue consists in the habitual performance of good actions, as vice consists in the habitual performance of bad ones. Now these habits and these actions are visible. ‘What, then, is the morality of actions a thing which falls under the cognizance of the senses! Wherefore should it not? Morality depends solely on the conformity between our actions and the laws; but these actions are visible, and the laws are so equally, since they are certain conventions made by men. ‘But it will be said, if the laws are only things of convention, they must be altogether arbitrary. They may indeed be sometimes arbitrary; there are but too many such laws; but those which determine whether our actions are good or bad, are not so, nor can they be so. They are the work of man, it is true, because they are conventions which we have made; nevertheless, we alone have not made them: nature made them as well as we, she dictated them to us, and it was not in our power to make others. The wants and the faculties of man being given, the laws which are to regulate his conduct must necessarily follow: and though we enacted them, God who has created us with such wants and such faculties, is in truth our sole legislator. In obeying the laws which are conformable to our nature, we render obedience to him who is the author of our nature; and this is that which perfects the morality of actions.’—Page 56. For a work entitled Logic, there are a pleasant number of contradictions in this passage. To pass over many of them, if the laws here spoken of are such merely in consequence of their being visible, then all visible objects are laws, and all laws are equally moral. But no! there are some arbitrary laws. Now if the goodness of the law depends on their conformity to our wants and faculties, neither of these are visible, any more than God who is said to be our only lawgiver. So that ‘the latter end of this system of law and divinity forgets the beginning.’ That those actions are moral which are conformable to a moral law, and that those laws are moral, which are agreeable to our nature and wants, may be readily admitted: but I cannot myself think that this conformity is an object of the senses, or that the true features of morality can ever be discerned but by the eye of the understanding. The friends of morality, it seems, according to our author, are not to despair, or to suppose that the distinctions of right and wrong are banished entirely out of the material system. They only become more clear and legible than ever; we are still right in asserting virtue to have a real existence, namely, on paper, and in supposing that we have some idea of it, as consisting of the letters of the alphabet. Almost in the same manner, Mr. Horne Tooke very gravely defines the essence of _law_ and _just_, from the etymology of these words, to consist in their being something _laid down_, and something _ordered_ (_jussum_); and when pressed by the difficulty that there are many things laid down and ordered which are neither laws nor just, he makes answer that their obligation depends on a higher species of law and justice, to wit, a law which is no where laid down, and a justice which is no where ordered, except indeed by the nature of things, on which the etymology of these two words does not seem to throw any light. On all the other points of the modern metaphysical system, such as the nature of abstraction, judgment and reasoning, the materiality of the soul, free-will, the association of ideas, &c. Mr. Locke either halts between two opinions, or else takes the common-place side of the question. The motion of the system, which bears his name and which by this very delay gained all that it wanted to become popular, was retrograde in him, not progressive. The extracts I am about to give from his work will I think establish this point. They will at the same time show him to be a man of strong practical sense, of much serious thought and inquiry, and considerable freedom of opinion, and a real lover of truth, though not so bold and systematic a reasoner, or so great a dealer in paradoxes as some others. Moderation, caution, a wish to examine every side of a question, and an unwillingness to decide till after the most mature and circumspect investigation, and then only according to the clearness of the evidence, seem to have been the characteristics of his mind, none of which denote the daring innovator, or maker of a system. What there is of system in his work is Hobbes’s, as I have already shown: the deviations from its common sense and general observation are his own. There is throughout his reasoning the same contempt for the schoolmen, and the same preference of native, rustic reason to learned authority: the same notion of the necessity for reforming the system of philosophy, and of the possibility of doing this by a more exact use of words: there is the same dissatisfaction with the prevailing system, but he at the same time entertained doubts of his own. What he wanted was confidence and decision. The prolixity and ambiguity of his style seem to have arisen from this source: for he is never weary of examining and re-examining the same objection, and he states his arguments with so many limitations and with such a variety of expression to prevent misapprehension, that it is often difficult to guess at his real meaning. There is it must be confessed a sort of heaviness about him, a want of clearness and connection, which in spite of all his pains, and the real plodding strength of his mind he was never able to overcome. To return to his account of complex ideas: the beginning of his observations on this subject is as follows: ‘We have hitherto considered those ideas, in the reception whereof the mind is only passive, which are those simple ones received from sensation and reflection before mentioned, whereof the mind cannot make one to itself, nor have any idea which does not consist wholly of them. But as the mind is wholly passive in the reception of all its simple ideas, so it exerts several acts of its own, whereby out of its simple ideas, as the materials and foundations of the rest, the other are framed. The acts of the mind wherein it exerts its power over its simple ideas, are chiefly these three. ‘1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another, so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one; in which way it gets all its ideas of _relations_. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence; this is called _abstraction_: and thus all its general ideas are made. This shows man’s power to be much about the same in the material and intellectual world: for the materials in both being such as he has no power over, either to make or destroy, all that man can do is either to unite them together, or to set them by one another, or wholly to separate them.’—Vol. i. p. 151. The first great point which Mr. Locke labours to prove in his Essay, is that there are no innate ideas, which he seems to have established very fully and clearly, if indeed so obvious a truth required any formal demonstration. His chief proofs are from the case of a man born blind, who has no idea of colours, and from the ignorance which children and idiots have of those first principles and universal maxims, which some philosophers and theologians, confounding the faculties of the mind with actual impressions, had supposed to be legibly engraven on the mind by the hand of its author. For the supposing the understanding to be a distinct faculty of the mind no more proves our ideas to be innate, than the allowing perception to be a distinct original faculty of the mind, which everybody does, proves that there must be innate sensations. These two positions have, however, been sometimes considered as convertible by the partisans on both sides of the question; the one arguing from the existence of the soul and the power of thought to the positive perception of certain truths, and the others concluding that by denying any original inherent impressions, they had overturned the supposition of the different faculties and powers which must be in the mind, to account for the first production or subsequent modification of sensation or of thought. For instance, it has been made a consequence of the doctrine that there were no innate ideas, that there could be no such thing as genius, or an original difference of capacity; as if the capacity were not perfectly distinct from the actual impressions by the very theory itself, and as if there might not be a difference in the capacity of acquiring ideas as all experience shows, though none in the knowledge acquired, because this capacity had never yet been exerted. As well might we argue that of two houses that are just built one is as commodious and capacious as the other, as well fitted for the reception of guests and the disposal of furniture, because at present neither of them is furnished or inhabited. The following passages will show the manner in which our author treats this part of his subject: ‘The child certainly knows that the nurse that feeds it is neither the cat it plays with, nor the blackamoor it is afraid of: that the wormseed or mustard it refuses is not the apple or sugar it cries for; this it is certainly and undoubtedly assured of: but will any one say it is by virtue of this principle, _That it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be_, that it so firmly assents to these and other parts of its knowledge? Or that the child has any notion or apprehension of that proposition at an age, wherein yet, it is plain, it knows a great many other truths? He that will say, children join these several abstract speculations with their sucking bottles and their rattles, may perhaps with justice be thought to have more passion and zeal for his opinion, but less sincerity and truth than one of that age. Though therefore there be several general propositions that meet with constant and ready assent as soon as proposed to men grown up, who have attained the use of more general and abstract ideas, and names standing for them, yet they not being to be found in those of tender years, who nevertheless know other things, they cannot pretend to universal assent of intelligent persons, and so by no means can be supposed innate: it being impossible, that any truth which is innate (if there were any such) should be unknown, at least to any one who knows any thing else. Since if they are innate truths, they must be innate thoughts; there being nothing a truth in the mind which it has never thought on. ‘That the general maxims we are discoursing of, are not known to children, idiots, and a great part of mankind, we have already sufficiently proved. But there is this farther argument against their being innate, that these characters, if they were native and original impressions, should appear fairest and clearest in those persons in whom yet we find no footsteps of them. And it is in my opinion a strong presumption that they are not innate, since they are least known to those in whom if they were innate, they must need exert themselves with most force and vigour. For children, idiots, savages, and illiterate people being of all others the least corrupted by custom or borrowed opinion, learning or education having not cast their native thoughts into new moulds, nor by superinducing foreign and studied doctrines, confounded those fair characters nature had written there; one might reasonably imagine that in their minds these innate notions should lie open fairly to every one’s view, as it is certain the thoughts of children do. One would think according to these men’s principles that all these native beams of light (were there any such) should in those who have no reserves, no acts of concealment, shine out in their full lustre, and leave us in no more doubt of their being there than we are of their love of pleasure and abhorrence of pain. But alas, amongst children, idiots, savages, and the grossly illiterate, what general maxims are to be found? What universal principle of knowledge? Their notions are few and narrow, borrowed only from those objects they have had most to do with, and which have made upon their senses the frequentest and strongest impressions. A child knows his nurse and his cradle, and by degrees the playthings of a little more advanced age; and a young savage has perhaps his head filled with love and hunting, according to the fashion of his tribe. But he that from a child untaught, or a wild inhabitant of the woods will expect these abstract maxims and reputed principles of science, will I fear find himself mistaken. Such kind of general propositions [as that which is, is; and that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be] are seldom mentioned in the huts of Indians, much less are they to be found in the thoughts of children, or any impressions of them on the minds of naturals. They are the language and business of the schools and academies of learned nations, accustomed to that sort of conversation or learning, where disputes are frequent: these maxims being suited to artificial argumentation, and useful for conviction, but not much conducing to the discovery of truth, or advancement of knowledge.’ I do not know that Mr. Locke has sufficiently distinguished between two things which I cannot very well express otherwise than by a turn of words, namely, an innate knowledge of principles, and innate principles of knowledge. His arguments seem to me conclusive against the one, but not against the other, for I think that there are certain general principles or forms of thinking, something like the moulds in which any thing is cast, according to which our ideas follow one another in a certain order, though the knowledge, _i.e._, perception of what these principles are, and the forming them into distinct propositions is the result of experience. It is true, the child distinguishes between its nurse and the blackamoor, between bitter and sweet: what hinders it from confounding them? The ideas of _same_ and _different_ are not included in these ideas themselves, nor are they peculiar to any of them, but general terms. What then determines the child to annex them uniformly to certain things and not to others? It is plain then, that our ideas are not at liberty to run into clusters as they please or as it happens, but are regulated by certain laws, to which they must conform; or that the manner in which we conceive of things does not depend simply on the particular nature of the things, but on the general nature of the understanding. Mr. Locke is clear for certain innate practical principles or general tendencies regulating all our actions, namely, the love of pleasure, and aversion to pain. He does not however admit, as I can find, of any thing similar to the operations of the understanding. The analogy, notwithstanding, holds exactly the same in both cases. For the child is no more conscious of any such general practical principle regulating all his desires, than of any speculative principle regulating his notion of things: he gets the idea of both from experience of their effects; but I think that if there were no such principles in the mind itself, previous to the actual impression of objects, and merely developed or called into action by them, we must be perfectly indifferent both to the reception of pleasure and pain, as we should feel no more repugnance to admit one conclusion than another, however absurd or contradictory. The necessity we are under of perceiving certain agreements or disagreements between our ideas is as much, and in the same sense, the foundation of judgment and reasoning, as the general desire of happiness and aversion to misery is the foundation of morality. This property of the understanding, by which certain judgments, naturally follow certain perceptions, and are followed by other judgments, is the faculty of reason, of order and proportion in the mind, and is indeed nothing but the understanding acting by rule or necessity. The long controversy between Locke and Leibnitz with respect to innate ideas turned upon the distinction here stated, innate ideas being thus referred not to the actual impressions of objects, but to the forms or moulds existing in the mind, and in which those impressions are cast. Leibnitz contended that there was a germ or principle of truth, a pre-established harmony between its innate faculties and its acquired ideas, implied in the essence of the mind itself. According to the one it was like a piece of free stone, which the mason hews with equal ease in all directions, and into any shape, as circumstances require: according to the other, it resembles a piece of marble strongly ingrained, with the figure of a man, or other animal, inclosed in it, and which the sculptor has only to separate from the surrounding mass. I will add one more passage to draw the attention of my readers to this intricate subject, and to show that the difficulties surrounding it were not completely cleared up or even apprehended by the author of the ‘Essay.’ ‘Hath a child,’ he says, ‘an idea of impossibility and identity, before it has of white or black, sweet or sour? Or is it from the knowledge of this principle that it concludes that wormwood rubbed on the nipple hath not the same taste that it used to receive from thence? Is it the actual knowledge of _Impossibile est idem esse et non esse_ that makes a child distinguish between its mother and a stranger, or that makes it fond of the one, and fly the other? Or does the mind regulate itself and its assent by ideas that it never had? Or the understanding draw conclusions from principles which it never yet knew or understood? The names _impossibility_ and _identity_ stand for two ideas, so far from being innate, or born with us, that I think it requires great care and attention to form them right in our understandings. They are so far from being brought into the world with us, so remote from the thoughts of infancy and childhood, that I believe upon examination it will be found that many grown men want them. ‘If identity (to instance in that alone) be a native impression, and consequently so clear and obvious to us that we must needs know it even from our cradles; I would gladly be resolved by one of seven or seventy years old, Whether a man, being a creature consisting of soul and body, be the same man when his body is changed? Whether Euphorbus and Pythagoras, having had the same soul, were the same man, though they lived several ages asunder? Nay, whether the cock too, which had the same soul, were not the same with both of them? Whereby perhaps it will appear that our idea of sameness is not so settled and clear as to deserve to be thought innate in us. For if those innate ideas are not so clear and distinct as to be universally known and naturally agreed on, they cannot be subjects of universal and undoubted truths, but will be the unavoidable occasion of perpetual uncertainty. For I suppose every one’s idea of identity will not be the same that Pythagoras and thousand others of his followers have: and which then shall be true, which innate? Or are these two different ideas of identity both innate?’—Page 60. Two things are obvious to remark on this passage. First, it seems clear that the child, before it can pronounce that one thing is or is not the same as another, must have the idea of what _same_ is, _i.e._ of identity: or it would be impossible for it to know what is or is not the same. This idea, then, is necessarily included in or the result of the first comparison it is able to make between any two of its impressions as alike or unlike. Secondly, the difficulty of determining the question proposed by Mr. Locke does not arise from the meaning of the word _identity_, but of the word _man_. For if this is once clear and settled, there will be no great effort of the understanding required to determine whether a man is the same or not. They define him to be a creature consisting of body and soul, and it is plain that if one of these, the body, is altered, the man is not the same. The whole question, therefore, here seems to turn on deciding what qualities are essential to the idea of man, so that by keeping or leaving out some, he will or will not retain his identity, in the practical and moral sense of the term. It is the complex and general idea of man that the child wants, not that of identity or sameness which is reflected to it from every object it meets, and which it perceives to agree or disagree with some other. In a note to one of the chapters on Innate Ideas, there is some account of the controversy between our author and the Bishop of Worcester (Stillingfleet) on the question whether the idea of a God be innate and universal. The Bishop is anxious to have the universal belief in a Deity understood in a strict sense, while Mr. Locke thinks it must be reduced to a very great and decided majority, there being instances of whole nations without this idea. ‘This,’ he says ‘is all the universal consent which truth of matter-of-fact will allow; and therefore all that can be made use of to prove a God. I would crave leave to ask your lordship, were there ever in the world any atheists or no? For if any one deny a God, such a perfect universality of consent is destroyed, and if nobody does deny a God, what need of arguments to convince atheists?’—Page 63. This is the acutest turn he has any where given to an argument. The concluding passage of his account of innate ideas is worth quoting. It is a good description of the true spirit of philosophy, inclining a little too much to self-opinion, from which, perhaps, it is not easily separable: ‘What censure doubting thus of innate principles may deserve from men who will be apt to call it pulling up the old foundations of knowledge and certainty, I cannot tell; I persuade myself at least that the way I have pursued, being conformable to truth, lays those foundations surer. This I am certain, I have not made it my business to quit or follow any authority in the ensuing discourse; truth has been my only aim; and wherever that has appeared to lead, my thoughts have impartially followed without minding whether the footsteps of any other lay that way or no. Not that I want a due respect to other men’s opinions; but after all the greatest reverence is due to truth; and I hope it will not be thought arrogance to say, that perhaps we should make greater progress in the discovery of rational and contemplative knowledge, if we sought it in the fountain, _in the consideration of things themselves_, and made use rather of our own thoughts than other men’s to find it. For I think we may as rationally hope to see with other men’s eyes, as to know by other men’s understandings. So much as we ourselves consider and comprehend of truth and reason, so much we possess of real and true knowledge. The floating of other men’s opinions in our brains makes us not one jot the more knowing, though they happen to be true. What in them was science, is in us but opiniatrety, whilst we give up our assent only to reverend names, and do not, as they did, employ our own reason to understand those truths which gave them reputation. Aristotle was certainly a knowing man; but nobody ever thought him so, because he blindly embraced and confidently vented the opinions of another. And if the taking up of another’s principles, without examining them, made not him a philosopher, I suppose it will hardly make any body else so. In the sciences, every one has so much as he really knows and comprehends: what he believes only and takes upon trust, are but shreds, which however well in the whole piece, make no considerable addition to his stock who gathers them. Such borrowed wealth, like fairy money, though it were gold in the hand from which he received it, will be but leaves and dust when it comes to use.’—Page 80. In treating of the origin of our ideas, Mr. Locke labours to prove that men think not always:—thinking, according to him, being to the soul what motion is to the body; not its essence, but one of its operations. In this opinion he may, as far as I know, be right: but I think his proof of it drawn from the effects of sleep fails. The reason why I think so is that I was never awakened suddenly but I found myself dreaming, though in the interval required to awake gradually from sleep we frequently forget our dreams before we are quite awake, the impressions which objects have time to make upon our bodies taking place of and obliterating the faint traces of our sleeping thoughts. The common notion that the mind is then most awake when the body is asleep, deserves the contempt with which Mr. Locke treats it. It is one of the absurdities of _common sense_, which is not entirely free from them any more than philosophy. Those who can find any argument in favour of the immaterial nature and independent powers of the soul in the sublime flights which it takes when emancipated from the intrusion of sensible objects must have finer dreams than I have. It would be well for this opinion if we could regularly forget the next morning the smart repartees, magnificent sentiments and profound remarks we so often dream we make. The singular significance which in sleep we attach to absolute nonsense seems to arise from the very impotence of our efforts, as we fancy that we can fly because we cannot move at all. In sleep, indeed, the forms of imagination assume the appearance of reality, but this advantage they seem to owe chiefly to what Hobbes calls the silence of sense. That sleep, however, consists wholly in this silence of sense (not affecting the mind itself) is so far from being true, that it is not even necessary to it. Persons who walk in their sleep, as I know from experience, get out of bed with their eyes open, see and feel the objects about them, open the window, and leisurely survey the opposite trees and houses, long before they recollect where they are, or before the fresh air and the regular succession of known objects dispel the drowsy phantoms of the night. The only essential difference between our sleeping and waking thoughts I believe is, that in sleep the comprehensive faculty flags and droops; so that being unable to consider many things at once or to retain a succession of ideas in mind, we confound things together, and pass from one object to another without order or connexion, any single circumstance in which they agree being sufficient to make us associate them together or substitute one for the other. Our thoughts are, as it were, disentangled from the circumstances and consequences which at other times clog their motions: they are let loose, and left at liberty to wander in any direction that chance presents. The greatest singularity observable in dreams is the faculty of holding a dialogue with ourselves, as if we were really and effectually two persons. We make a remark, and then expect the answer, which we are to give ourselves, with the same gravity of attention, and hear it with the same surprise as if it were really spoken by another person. We are played upon by puppets of our own moving. We are staggered in an argument by an unforeseen objection, or alarmed at a sudden piece of information of which we have no apprehension till it seems to proceed from the mouth of some one with whom we fancy ourselves conversing. We have in fact no idea of what the question will be that we put to ourselves, till the moment of its birth. Mr. Locke in treating of our sensations as effects of the impressions of the qualities of things, distinguishes these qualities according to the usual opinion into primary and secondary. The former he considers as really and in themselves the same as they appear to our senses: the other as merely the effects produced by certain objects on the mind and not existing out of it. As this question forms one of the common-places of metaphysical inquiry, I shall give some account of it in his own words. ‘The qualities that are in bodies, rightly considered, are of three sorts. ‘First, The bulk, figure, number, situation, and motion or rest of their solid parts; these are in them whether we perceive them or no; and we have by these an idea of the thing as it is in itself: these I call primary qualities. ‘Secondly, The power that is in any body by reason of its insensible primary qualities to operate after a peculiar manner on any of our senses, and thereby produce in us the different ideas of several colours, sounds, smells, tastes, &c. These are usually called sensible qualities. ‘Thirdly, The power that is in any body, by reason of the particular constitution of its primary qualities, to make such a change in the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of another body, as to make it operate on our senses differently from what it did before. Thus the sun has a power to make wax white, and fire to make lead fluid. These are usually called powers. ‘The first of these, as has been said, I think, may be properly called, real, original, or primary qualities, because they are in the things themselves, whether they are perceived or no: and upon their different modifications it is that the secondary qualities depend. The other two are only powers to act differently upon other things, which powers result from the different modifications of those primary qualities. ‘But though these two latter sorts of qualities are powers barely, and nothing but powers, relating to several other bodies, and resulting from the different modifications of the original qualities, yet they are generally thought otherwise of. For the second sort, viz., the powers to produce several ideas in us by our senses, are looked upon as real qualities in the things thus affecting us: but the third sort are called and esteemed barely powers. For example, the ideas of heat or light, which we receive by our eye or touch from the sun are commonly thought real qualities, existing in the sun, and something more than mere powers in it. But when we consider the sun in reference to wax which it melts or blanches, we look on the whiteness and softness produced in the wax, not as qualities in the sun, but effects produced by _powers_ in it: whereas, if rightly considered, these qualities of light and warmth, which are perceptions in me when I am warmed or enlightened by the sun, are no otherwise in the sun than the changes made in the wax, when it is blanched or melted, are in the sun. They are all of them equally powers in the sun, depending on its primary qualities: whereby it is enabled in the one case so to alter the bulk, figure, texture, or motion of some of the insensible parts of my eyes or hands, as thereby to produce in me the idea of light or heat; and in the other, it is able so to alter the bulk, figure, texture, or motion of the insensible parts of the wax, as to make them fit to produce in me the distinct ideas of white and fluid. The reason why the one are ordinarily taken for real qualities, and the other only for bare powers, seems to be, because the ideas we have of distinct colours, sounds, &c., containing nothing at all in them of bulk, figure, or motion, we are not apt to think them the effects of those primary qualities which appear not to our senses to operate in their production, and with which they have not any apparent congruity or conceivable connexion. Hence it is that we are so forward to imagine that those ideas are the resemblances of something really existing in the objects themselves. But in the other case, in the operation of bodies, changing the qualities, one of another, we plainly discover that the quality produced hath commonly no resemblance with any thing in the thing producing it; wherefore we look on it as a bare effect of power. For though receiving the idea of heat or light from the sun, we are apt to think it is a perception and resemblance of such a quality _in_ the sun, yet when we see wax or a fair face receive change of colour from the sun, we cannot imagine that to be the perception or resemblance of any thing in the sun, because we find not those different colours in the sun itself. For our senses being able to observe a likeness or unlikeness of sensible qualities in two different external objects, we forwardly enough conclude the production of any sensible quality in any subject to be an effect of bare power, and not the communication of any quality, which was really in the efficient, when we find no such sensible quality in the thing that produced it. But ourselves not being able to discover any unlikeness between the idea produced in us and the quality of the object producing it, we are apt to imagine that our ideas are resemblances of some thing in the objects, and not the effects of certain powers placed in the modification of their primary qualities, with which primary qualities the ideas produced in us have no resemblance.’ Vol. i. page 127. From the secondary qualities later writers, as Hume and Berkeley, have proceeded to the primary ones, and have endeavoured to shew that they have not a real existence out of the mind, any more than the others. Hume says, ‘The fundamental principle of the modern philosophy is the opinion concerning colours, sounds, tastes, smells, heat and cold,’ &c.; and Bishop Berkeley has made use of the same principle to banish the least particle of matter out of the universe. What Hume has said is merely taken from Berkeley, from whom his opinions are generally borrowed. As I do not know that I shall have a better opportunity, I will here state Berkeley’s arguments against the existence of these primary qualities, or his _ideal_ system, in his own words. I will only first observe, on the argument against the existence of the secondary qualities of things, from their different effects in different circumstances and on different persons, which Hume considers as the only solid one, but which Berkeley thinks more doubtful, seems to me no argument at all; for that an object changes its colour, or food its taste, is in consequence of distance or of the interposition of another object, or of the indisposition of the organ, and does not prove that the object has not a particular colour, or the food a particular taste, but that colour is combined with and altered by the colour of the air, and that taste is combined with and altered by another taste in the mouth or stomach. The logical inference is merely that one object has not the same sensible qualities as another, or, as Berkeley has remarked, that we do not know what the true or natural qualities of any object are. ‘It is evident,’ says Bishop Berkeley, ‘to any one who takes a survey of the objects of Human Knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses, or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind, or, lastly, ideas formed by help of memory and imagination; either compounding, dividing, or barely representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways. By sight I have the ideas of light and colours, with their several degrees and variations. By touch I perceive hard and soft, heat and cold, motion and resistance, &c. and of all these more and less, either as to quantity or degree. Smelling furnishes me with odours: the palate with tastes; and hearing conveys sounds to the mind in all their variety of tone and composition. And as several of these are observed to accompany each other, they come to be marked by one name, and so to be reputed as one thing. Thus, for example, a certain colour, taste, smell, figure, and consistence, having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name _apple_. Other collections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book, and the like sensible things; which, as they are pleasing or disagreeable, excite the passions of love, hatred, joy, grief, &c. ‘2. But besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewise something which knows and perceives them, and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining, remembering, &c. about them. This perceiving, active being is what I call _mind_, _spirit_, _soul_, or _myself_. By which words I do not denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived, for the existence of an idea consists in being perceived. ‘3. That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what every body will allow; and to me it is no less evident that the various sensations or ideas imprinted on the sense, however blended or combined together, (that is, whatever objects they compose,) cannot exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving them. I think an intuitive knowledge may be obtained of this, by any one that shall attend to what is meant by the term _exist_, when applied to sensible things. The table I write on, I say, exists; _i.e._ I see and feel it, and if I were out of my study, I should say it existed, meaning thereby, that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it. There was an odour, _i.e._ it was smelt; there was a sound, _i.e._ it was heard; a colour or figure, and it was perceived by sight or touch. This is all that I can understand by these and the like expressions. For as to what is said of the absolute existence of unthinking things without any relation to their being perceived, that is to me perfectly unintelligible. Their _esse_ is _percipi_, nor is it possible they should have any existence, out of the minds or thinking things which perceive them. ‘4. It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing among men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding. But with how great an assurance and acquiescence soever this principle may be entertained in the world, yet whoever shall find in his heart to call it in question, may, if I mistake not, perceive it to involve a manifest contradiction. For what are the forementioned objects but the things we perceive by sense, and what, I pray you, do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? And is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived? ‘5. If we thoroughly examine this tenet, it will, perhaps, be found at bottom to depend on the doctrine of _abstract ideas_. For can there be a nicer strain of abstraction than to distinguish the existence of sensible objects from their being perceived, so as to conceive them existing unperceived? Light and colours, heat and cold, extension and figures, in a word, the things we see and feel, what are they but so many sensations, notions, ideas, or impressions on the sense; and is it possible to separate, even in thought, any of these from perception? For my part, I might as easily divide a thing from itself. I may, indeed, divide in my thoughts, or conceive apart from each other, those things which, perhaps, I never perceived by sense so divided. Thus I imagine the trunk of a human body without the limbs, or conceive the smell of a rose without thinking on the rose itself. So far I will not deny I can abstract, if that may be properly called _abstraction_ which extends only to the conceiving separately such objects as it is possible may really exist or be actually perceived asunder. But my conceiving or imagining power does not extend beyond the possibility of real existence or perception. Hence, as it is impossible for me to see or feel any thing without an actual sensation of that thing, so it is impossible for me to conceive in my thoughts any sensible thing or object distinct from the sensation or perception of it. In truth, the object and the sensation are the same thing, and cannot therefore be extracted from each other. ‘6. Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, viz. that all the choir of heaven, and furniture of the earth, in a word, all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind, that their _esse_ is to be perceived or known; that consequently, so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some eternal spirit: it being perfectly unintelligible, and involving all the absurdity of abstraction, to attribute to any single part of them an existence independent of a spirit. To make this appear with all the light and evidence of an axiom, it seems sufficient if I can but awaken the reflection of the reader, that he may take an impartial view of his own meaning, and turn his thoughts upon the subject itself, free and disengaged from all embarrass of words and prepossession in favour of received mistakes. ‘7. From what has been said, it is evident there is not any other substance than spirit, or that which perceives. But for the fuller demonstration of this point, let it be considered, the sensible qualities are colour, figure, motion, smell, taste, &c.; _i.e._ the ideas perceived by sense. Now, for an idea to exist in an unperceiving thing is a manifest contradiction; for to have an idea is all one as to perceive; that, therefore, wherein colour, figure, &c. exist must perceive them. Hence it is clear there can be no unthinking substance or _substratum_ of those ideas. ‘8. But, say you, though the ideas themselves do not exist without the mind, yet there may be things like them whereof they are copies or resemblances, which things exist without the mind, in an unthinking substance. I answer, an idea can be like nothing but an idea, a colour or figure, can be like nothing but another colour or figure. If we look but never so little into our thoughts, we shall find it impossible for us to conceive a likeness except only between our ideas. Again, I ask whether those supposed originals, or external things, of which our ideas are the pictures or representations, be themselves perceivable or no? If they are, then they are ideas, and we have gained our point; but if you say they are not, I appeal to any one whether it be sense to assert a colour is like something which is invisible: hard or soft, like something which is intangible, and so of the rest. ‘9. Some there are who make a distinction between _primary_ and _secondary_ qualities; by the former, they mean extension, figure, motion, rest, solidity or impenetrability, and number; by the latter, they denote all other sensible qualities, as colours, sounds, tastes, &c. The ideas we have of these they acknowledge not to be the resemblances of any thing existing without the mind, or unperceived, but they will have our ideas of the primary qualities to be patterns or images of things which exist without the mind, in an unthinking substance, which they call _matter_. By matter, therefore, we are to understand an inert, useless substance, in which extension, figure, motion, &c. do actually subsist. But it is evident from what we have already shewn, that extension, figure, and motion are only ideas existing in the mind, and that consequently neither they nor their archetypes can exist in an unperceiving substance. Hence it is plain that the very notion of what is called _matter_ or _corporeal substance_ involves a contradiction in it, insomuch that I should not think it necessary to spend more time in exposing its absurdity; but because the tenet of the existence of matter seems to have taken so deep a root in the minds of philosophers, and draws after it so many ill consequences, I choose rather to be thought prolix and tedious, than omit any thing that might conduce to the full discovery and extirpation of that prejudice. ‘10. They who assert that figure, motion, and the rest of the primary or original qualities do exist without the mind, in unthinking substances, do at the same time acknowledge that colours, sounds, heat, cold, &c. do not, which they tell us are sensations existing in the mind alone, that depend on, and are occasioned by the different size, texture, motion, &c. of the minute particles of matter. This they take for an undoubted truth, which they can demonstrate beyond all exception. Now if it be certain that those original qualities are inseparably united with the other sensible qualities, and not, even in thought, capable of being abstracted from them, it plainly follows that they exist only in the mind. But I desire any one to reflect and try whether he can, by any abstraction of thought, conceive the extension and motion of a body, without all other sensible qualities. For my own part, I see evidently that it is not in my power to form an idea of a body extended and moving, but I must withal give it some colour or other sensible quality, which is acknowledged to exist only in the mind. In short, extension, figure, and motion, abstracted from all other qualities, are inconceivable. Where, therefore, the other sensible qualities are, there must these be also, _i.e._ in the mind, and no where else. ‘11. Again, _great_ and _small_, _swift_ and _slow_, are allowed to exist nowhere without the mind, being entirely relative, and changing as the frame or position of the organs of sense varies. The extension, therefore, which exists without the mind, is neither great nor small, the motion neither swift nor slow; that is, they are nothing at all. But, say you, they are extension in general and motion in general. Thus we see how much the tenet of extended, moveable substances, existing without the mind, depends on that strange doctrine of _abstract ideas_. And here I cannot but remark, how nearly the vague and indeterminate description of matter, or corporeal substance, which the modern philosophers are run into by their own principles, resembles that antiquated and so much ridiculed notion of _materia prima_, to be met with in Aristotle and his followers. Without extension, solidity cannot be conceived; since, therefore, it has been shown that extension exists not in an unthinking substance, the same must also be true of solidity. ‘12. That number is entirely the creature of the mind, even though the other qualities be allowed to exist without it, will be evident to whoever considers that the same thing bears a different denomination of number, as the mind views it with different aspects. Thus the same extension is one, or three, or thirty-six, according as the mind considers it with reference to a yard, a foot, or an inch. Number is so visibly relative, and dependent on men’s understandings, that it is strange to think how any one should give it an absolute existence without the mind. We say _one_ book, _one_ page, _one_ line, &c., all these are equally units, though some contain several of the others; and in each instance it is plain the unit relates to some particular combination of ideas arbitrarily put together by the mind. ‘13. Unity, I know, some will have to be a simple or uncompounded idea, accompanying all other ideas into the mind. That I have any such idea answering the word _unity_ I do not find, and if I had, methinks I could not miss finding it; on the contrary, it should be the most familiar to my understanding, since it is said to accompany all other ideas, and to be perceived by all the ways of sensation and reflection.[6] To say no more, it is an _abstract idea_. ‘14. I shall farther add, that after the same manner as modern philosophers prove colours, tastes, &c., to have no existence in matter, or without the mind, the same thing may be likewise proved of all other sensible qualities whatever. Thus for instance, it is said, that heat and cold are affections only of the mind, and not at all patterns of real beings existing in the corporeal substances which excite them, for that the same body which appears cold to one hand, seems warm to another. Now, why may we not as well argue, that figure and extension are not patterns or resemblances of qualities existing in matter, because to the same eye at different stations, or eyes of a different texture at the same station, they appear various, and cannot therefore be the images of any thing settled and determinate without the mind? Again, ’tis proved that sweetness is not really in the sapid thing, because the thing remaining unaltered, the sweetness is changed into bitter, as in case of a fever, or otherwise vitiated palate. Is it not as reasonable to say, that motion is not without the mind, since if the succession of ideas in the mind become swifter, the motion, it is acknowledged, shall appear slower without any external alteration. ‘15. In short, let any one consider those arguments which are thought manifestly to prove that colours, tastes, &c. exist only in the mind, and he will find they may with equal force be brought to prove the same thing of extension, figure, and motion. Though it must be confessed this method of arguing does not so much prove that there is no extension, colour, &c. in an outward object, as that we do not know by sense which is the true extension or colour of the object. But the foregoing arguments plainly show it to be impossible that any colour or extension at all, or other sensible quality whatsoever, should exist in an unthinking subject without the mind, or in truth, that there should be any such thing as an outward object.’—_Principles of Human Knowledge_, pp. 54, &c. Again, he says, page 58:— ‘But though it were possible that solid, figured movable substances may exist without the mind, corresponding to the ideas we have of bodies, yet how is it possible for us to know this? Either we must know it by sense or by reason. As for our senses, by them we have the knowledge only of our sensations, ideas, or those things that are immediately perceived by sense, call them what you will; but they do not inform us that things exist without the mind, or unperceived, like to those which are perceived. This the materialists themselves acknowledge. It remains, therefore, that if we have any knowledge at all of external things, it must be by reason, inferring their existence from what is immediately perceived by sense. But I do not see what reason can induce us to believe the existence of bodies without the mind, from what we perceive, since the very patrons of matter themselves do not pretend there is any necessary connexion betwixt them and our ideas. I say it is granted on all hands (and what happens in dreams, frenzies, and the like, puts it beyond dispute) that it is possible we might be affected with all the ideas we have now, though there were no bodies existing without resembling them. Hence it is evident the supposition of external bodies is not necessary for the producing our ideas, since it is granted they are produced sometimes, and might possibly be produced always, in the same order we see them in at present, without their concurrence. But though we might possibly have all our sensations without them, yet perhaps it may be thought easier to conceive and explain the manner of their production, by supposing external bodies in their likeness rather than otherwise, and so it might be at least probable there are such things as bodies that excite their ideas in our minds. But neither can this be said, for though we give the materialists their external bodies, they, by their own confession, are never the nearer knowing how our ideas are produced, since they own themselves unable to comprehend in what manner body can act upon spirit, or how it is possible it should imprint any idea in the mind. Hence it is evident the production of ideas or sensations in our minds, can be no reason why we should suppose matter or corporeal substances, since that is acknowledged to remain equally inexplicable with, or without this supposition. If therefore it were possible for bodies to exist without the mind, yet to hold they do so, must needs be a very precarious opinion; since it is to suppose, without any reason at all, that God has created innumerable beings that are entirely useless, and serve to no manner of purpose. ‘But say what we can, some one perhaps might be apt to reply, he will still believe his senses, and never suffer any arguments, how plausible soever, to prevail over the certainty of them. Be it so, assert the evidence of sense as high as you please, we are willing to do the same. That what I see and hear, and feel, doth exist, _i.e._ is perceived by me, I no more doubt than I do of my own being: but I do not see how the testimony of sense can be alleged as a proof for the existence of any thing which is not perceived by sense. We are not for having any man turn sceptic, and disbelieve his senses; on the contrary, we give them all the stress and assurance imaginable, nor are there any principles more opposite to scepticism than those we have laid down, as shall be hereafter clearly shown. Secondly, it will be objected that there is a great difference between real fire, for instance, and the idea of fire, betwixt dreaming or imagining oneself burnt and actually being so: if you suspect it to be only the idea of fire which you see, do but put your hand into it, and you’ll be convinced with a witness. This and the like may be urged in opposition to our tenets. To all which the answer is evident from what hath been already said, and I shall only add in this place, that if real fire be very different from the idea of fire, so also is the real pain that it occasions very different from the idea of the same pain, and yet nobody will pretend that real pain either is, or can possibly be, in an unperceiving thing or without the mind, any more than its idea.’ Now with regard to this system, whatever we may think of the solidity of the foundation, the superstructure is as light and elegant as possible. There is a peculiar character in the metaphysical writings of Berkeley which is to be found no where else. With all the closeness and subtilty of the deepest reflection, they combine the ease and vivacity of a common essay: so that the most violent paradoxes and elaborate distinctions are rendered familiar by the simplicity of the style. His writings show that he had thought with the utmost intensity on almost every subject, yet he has the same careless freedom of manner as if he had never thought at all. He is never entangled in the labyrinth of his own thoughts, and the buoyancy of his spirit surmounts every objection with a singular felicity, as if his mind had wings. It is perhaps worth remarking that the ‘Principles of Human Knowledge’ were published in 1710, at a time when the author was only five-and-twenty, as was the ‘Essay on Vision,’ the greatest by far of all his works, and the most complete example of elaborate analytical reasoning and particular induction joined together that perhaps ever existed. It is also generally free from that air of paradox and fanciful hypothesis which runs through his other writings.[7] I mention this the more because I believe that the greatest efforts of intellect have almost always been made while the passions are in their greatest vigour, and before hope loses its hold on the heart, and is the elastic spring which animates all our thoughts. On the reasoning I have just quoted I will make one or two remarks without pretending to enter into the real difficulties of the question. First, it seems to me that the argument against the existence of the secondary qualities, drawn from the various effects produced by them on different minds or in different circumstances, which Hume mentions as the only solid one, and which Berkeley thinks more doubtful, is no argument at all. That an object at a distance, for example, does not look like the same object near is in consequence of the interposition of the air, which gives it a different hue; the logical inference merely is that one object has not the same sensible qualities as another, or as Berkeley has remarked, since the effect depends upon the combination and reaction of a number of things that we do not know what the true or natural qualities of each object are. 2. The proof of the non-existence of the primary qualities or of matter altogether, as inconceivable by the mind, goes upon the supposition that what is different cannot be the same. ‘An idea,’ says Berkeley, ‘can be like nothing but an idea, a perception like nothing but a perception.’ But it might be proved in this manner that a print cannot resemble a picture, because that which has colour cannot be represented by any thing without colour. That as far as our ideas are perceptions they do not resemble any thing in matter is true, but no one ever supposed that in this respect there was any resemblance between them, or that matter thought. That they cannot be alike in any thing does not seem to me proved by this mode of reasoning: for that our ideas of things are not mere perceptions is evident from this, that they are different among themselves, that is, have other distinguishing qualities besides being perceived. 3. Berkeley’s argument against the existence of matter not merely as the object or archetype, but as the cause of our sensations, is founded on the notion that we have a right to reject every general conclusion in which there is the least flaw or difficulty. Common sense is brought to the bar, like an old offender, and condemned upon the slightest shadow of evidence. If the vulgar system is vulnerable in any part, it is taken for granted that it ought to be discarded, to make room for a perfectly rational and philosophical account, the sufficiency of the understanding being never once doubted. But all this severe logic and scrutiny into the perfect connexion of our ideas vanishes, when the author comes to explain the cause of our external impressions, or to find a substitute for matter. This, he says, is God or an all-powerful spirit, and yet he affirms that we have no more idea of spirit than of matter, and consequently the one ought upon this theory to pass for a nonentity as much as the other. ‘We perceive a continual succession of ideas, some are anew excited, others are changed or totally disappear. There is therefore some cause of those ideas, whereon they depend, and which produces and changes them. That this cause cannot be any quality or idea or combination of ideas, is clear from what has been said. It must therefore be a substance, but it has been shewn that there is no corporeal or material substance. It remains therefore that the cause of ideas is an incorporeal active substance or spirit. ‘A spirit is one simple, undivided, active being: as it perceives ideas, it is called the understanding, and as it produces or otherwise operates about them, it is called the will. Hence there can be no idea formed of a soul or spirit. For all ideas whatever being passive and inert, they cannot represent unto us by way of image or likeness that which acts. Such is the nature of spirit or that which acts, that it cannot be itself perceived, but only by the effects which it produceth. If any man shall doubt of the truth of what is here delivered, let him but reflect and try if he can frame the idea of any power or active being. A little attention will make it plain to any one, that to have an idea which shall be like that active principle of motion and change of ideas, is absolutely impossible.’ That is to say, matter is here excluded from being the cause or in any way the occasion of our ideas, because we know not what it is, and the inference is, that the cause of our ideas must be spirit, of which we are equally ignorant. The reasoning might have been reversed. But it is thus that philosophy seems to be in general nothing else but ‘reason pandering will.’ The literal conclusion from the foregoing argument is, that there is nothing in the universe but oneself, nor even that, but only the present idea: all other words must signify nothing. To return to Mr. Locke. He has treated on the same question in the second volume, but without advancing any thing remarkable on it, and it is the only place in which he loses his temper, and substitutes ridicule for argument. In the chapter on Perception, there are some observations on the manner in which our judgments alter the impressions of sensible objects, which are well worth notice, and show that the author was well acquainted with what may be called the practical processes of the human mind. He says, p. 130, ‘We are farther to consider concerning perception, that the ideas we receive by sensation are often in grown people altered by the judgment without our taking notice of it. When we set before our eyes a round globe of any uniform colour, _e.g._ gold, alabaster, or jet, it is certain that the idea thereby imprinted in our mind is of a flat circle, variously shadowed with several degrees of light and brightness coming to our eyes. But we having by use been accustomed to perceive what kind of appearance convex bodies are wont to make in us, what alterations are made in the reflections of light by the difference of the sensible figures of bodies, the judgment presently, by an habitual custom, alters the appearances into their causes; so that from that which truly is variety of shadow or colour, collecting the figure, it makes it pass for a mark of figure, and frames to itself the perception of a convex figure and an uniform colour, when the idea we receive from thence is only a plane variously coloured; as is evident in painting. To which purpose I shall here insert a problem of that very ingenious and studious promoter of real knowledge, the learned and worthy Mr. Molineux, which he was pleased to send me in a letter some months since: and it is this: “Suppose a man born blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to distinguish between a cube and a sphere of the same metal and nigh of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt the one and the other, which is the cube, which the sphere. Suppose then the cube and sphere placed on a table, and the blind man made to see: Quere, whether by his sight, before he touched them, he could now distinguish and tell which is the globe, which the cube?” To which the acute and judicious proposer answers, “No. For though he has obtained the experience of how a globe, how a cube affects his touch, yet he has not yet attained the experience that what affects his touch so or so, must affect his sight so or so; or that a protuberant angle in the cube that pressed his hand unequally, shall appear to his eye as it does in the cube.” I agree’ (says Mr. Locke) ‘with this thinking gentleman, whom I am proud to call my friend, in his answer to this his problem; and am of opinion that the blind man at first sight, would not be able with certainty to say, which was the globe, which the cube, whilst he only saw them; though he could unerringly name them by his touch, and certainly distinguish them by the difference of their figures felt. This I have set down, and leave with my reader as an occasion for him to consider how much he may be beholden to experience, improvement, and acquired notions, where he thinks he has not the least use of, or help from them, and the rather, because this observing gentleman farther adds, that having upon the occasion of my book, proposed this to divers very ingenious men, he hardly ever met with one that at first gave the answer to it which he thinks true, till by hearing his reasons they were convinced.’ Mr. Locke then adds other instances to the same effect, as ‘That a man who reads or hears with attention and understanding takes little notice of the characters or sounds, but of the ideas that are excited in him by them. How frequently do we in a day cover our eyes with our eyelids, without at all perceiving that we are in the dark! Men that by custom have got the use of a by-word do almost in every sentence pronounce sounds, which though taken notice of by others, they themselves neither hear nor observe: and therefore it is not so strange that our mind should often change the idea of its sensation into that of its judgment, and make one serve only to excite the other without our taking notice of it.’ On the problem above stated, which has been often made a subject of dispute, I shall only remark that the answer given to it, with which Mr. Locke agrees, is directly repugnant to his doctrine of the real existence of the primary qualities of matter, namely figure and extension. For it is plain, that if there is any thing in external objects answering to their ideas in our minds, the ideas we have of those qualities and which are conveyed by different senses, must be like one another. If the ideas of figure as a visible and tangible thing have no resemblance to themselves, it is ridiculous to suppose that they can coincide with any thing out of them in nature. Secondly, it appears to me that the mind must recognise a certain similarity between the impressions of different senses in this case. For instance, the sudden change or discontinuity of the sensation, produced by the sharp angles of the cube, is something common to both ideas, and if so, must afford a means of comparing them together. Berkeley, in his ‘Essay on Vision,’ goes so far as to deny that there is any intuitive analogy between the ideas of number as conveyed by different senses, and asserts that the distinction between the two legs of a statue, for instance, as perceived by the touch or by the sight would not imply any idea of like or same. I grant this consequence to be true, on the principle maintained by him that there are no abstract ideas in the mind, for on this principle there can be no idea answering to the words _same_ or _different_, but then this argument would destroy all kind of coincidence not only between ideas of different senses, but between repeated impressions of the same sense. The ‘Essay on Vision,’ of which I have already spoken, apparently originated in the problem here inserted, and is a more complete exemplification of the effects of association with respect to objects of sight than is to be found even in Hartley’s account of this subject. Mr. Locke’s account of the distinction between wit and understanding I have already noticed; his explanation of the difference between idiots and madmen has been often referred to, and is as follows: ‘The defect in naturals seems to proceed from want of quickness, activity, and motion in the intellectual faculties, whereby they are deprived of reason: whereas madmen, on the other side, seem to suffer by the other extreme. For they do not appear to me to have lost the faculty of reasoning; but having joined together some ideas very wrongly, they mistake them for truths; and they err as men do that argue right from wrong principles: for, by the violence of their imaginations, having taken their fancies for realities, they make right deductions from them. Thus you shall find a distracted man, fancying himself a king, with a right inference require suitable attendance, respect, and obedience: others, who have thought themselves made of glass, have used the caution necessary to preserve such brittle bodies. Hence it comes to pass, that a man who is very sober, and of a right understanding in all other things, may in one particular be as frantic as any in Bedlam, if either by any sudden very strong impression, or long fixing his fancy upon one sort of thoughts, incoherent ideas have been cemented together so powerfully as to remain united. But there are degrees of madness, as of folly; the disorderly jumbling together of ideas is in some more, and some less. In short, herein seems to lie the difference between idiots and madmen: that madmen put wrong ideas together, and so make wrong propositions, but argue and reason right from them: but idiots make very few or no propositions, and reason scarce at all.’ Mr. Locke’s account of Liberty and Necessity, contained in his chapter ‘On Power,’ has been commented upon in the previous Essay. As is there remarked, it is one which has been more found fault with than any other part of his work, I think without reason. He seems evidently to have admitted the definition of necessity, but not the name, which is not much to be wondered at, considering the improper use to which it is liable, and which can scarce be separated from it in the closest reasoning, much less as a term of general signification: in other words, he denies the power of the mind to act without a cause or motive, or, in any manner, in any circumstances, from mere indifference and absolute self motion; but he at the same time denies the inference which has been drawn from this principle, that the mind is not an agent at all, but altogether subject to external force, or blind impulse. Mr. Locke, in treating of complex ideas, divides them into three sorts, those of modes, substances, and relations. First, ‘Modes,’ he says, ‘I call such complex ideas, which, however compounded, contain not in them the supposition of subsisting by themselves, but are considered as dependences on, or affections of substances: such are the ideas signified by the words _triangle_, _gratitude_, _murder_, &c. Of these modes there are two sorts. 1. There are some which are only variations or different combinations of the same simple idea, without the mixture of any other, as a _dozen_ or _score_, which are nothing but the ideas of so many distinct units added together, and these I call simple modes. 2. There are others, compounded of simple ideas of several kinds put together, to make one complex one; _e.g._ _beauty_, consisting of a certain composition of colour and figure, causing delight in the beholder; _theft_, which being the concealed change of the possession of any thing, without the consent of the proprietor, contains, as is visible, a combination of several ideas of several kinds, and these I call _mixed modes_.’ With respect to modes, the author endeavours to shew, I think improperly, that as they are put together arbitrarily by the mind, according to circumstances, that they have no real existence in nature, and that the ideas we form of them are always correct. Neither of these consequences will be found to follow: _i.e._ the circumstances and actions which constitute theft do actually exist without the mind and are necessary to that idea, though it is arbitrary in me according to the occasion or the purpose in view, to think of that collection of ideas or another, which shall constitute robbery; that is, I may add or leave out the circumstance of violence, as it happens; secondly, I may, without being aware of it, add or leave out some circumstance necessary to the combination of ideas spoken of, and thus confuse one idea with another, and not merely miscal, as Mr. Locke supposes, but misconceive the mode in question. We then merely miscal when though we give a wrong name to a thing, the idea is kept perfectly distinct and clear from other ideas, otherwise we confound both names and things. But it will not be contended, that the ideas of theft, robbery, and fraud, for instance, are always kept clear in every one’s mind, so that he is at no loss ever to define them, or can immediately in all cases refer any action to the class to which it belongs. Every collection of ideas which the mind puts together is undoubtedly that collection and no other; but in forming the ideas of mixed modes, the mind does something more than this, or it supposes one collection of ideas to be the same as another which it has had at a former time, and gives a certain name to, and in this supposition it often errs. On this subject, the author is a good deal puzzled with the question, how it is possible for the mind ever to confound one idea with another? It is indeed a puzzling question, but the answer which he gives to it in resolving it into a mistake of words, is very unsatisfactory. For there is no more reason why we should mistake one name or sign of an idea for another, than why we should mistake the ideas themselves. If every circumstance belonging to our ideas was necessarily clear and self-evident to the mind, the sign affixed to it, which is one of those circumstances, would be so too, and we find that in those things with which we have a thorough acquaintance, we never confound one name with another, or if we should, it does not disturb the idea, and is of no consequence. Among the second sort of complex ideas Mr. Locke classes those of substances. These, he says, are such combinations of simple ideas as are taken to represent distinct, particular things, subsisting by themselves, in which the supposed or confused idea of substance, such as it is, is always the first or chief. Thus, if to substance be joined the simple idea of a certain dull whitish colour, with certain degrees of weight, hardness, ductility and fusibility, we have the idea of lead; and a combination of the ideas of a certain sort of figure, with the power of motion, thought, and reasoning, joined to substance, make the ordinary idea of a man. Now of substances also there are two sorts of ideas; one of single substances, as they exist separately, as of a man or a sheep; the other of several of those put together, as an army of men or a flock of sheep: which collective ideas of several substances are as much each of them one single idea as that of a man or an unit.’ He then adds, ‘and the third sort of complex ideas is that which we call relative, which consists in the consideration and comparing one idea with another.’ This last sort of ideas seems to me the only ones that are perfectly simple and indivisible: things themselves are always complex. Mr. Locke considers rightly that we know nothing of the nature of substance, and that we can only define it as an abstract idea of some thing, that supports accidents or connects different sensible qualities together. For this modest confession of his own ignorance he was however called to a very severe account by the learned of the time, Bishop Stillingfleet and others, who thought they knew more of the matter, and could penetrate the essence of things. The ‘Essay on the Human Understanding’ is swelled out with repeated and long extracts from this controversy, and they are not the least valuable part of the work, as they show to what shifts men can be driven, to defend systematically not truth but their own opinion, who become blind and obstinate by implicit faith, and who by adhering to every established prejudice drive others into all the absurdities of paradox. Mr. Locke’s own account of our ideas of substance is a good deal spun out, and is enriched with as many illustrations from the qualities of gold, as if he had been candidate for the place of assay-master of the mint. The chapter ‘On Identity’ is perhaps the best reasoned and the most full of thought and observation of any in the Essay: though the author sets out with an observation which seems to augur differently. For after explaining identity as it relates to individuality, or implies that a thing is the same with itself, he says, ‘From what has been said it is easy to discover what is so much inquired after, the _principium individuationis_: and that, it is plain, is existence itself, which determines a being of any sort to a particular time and place, incommunicable to two beings of the same kind.’ He then, very wisely quitting this principle which would certainly be of no use to him, proceeds directly to account for the identity of different things from a continuance, not of the same substance, but of the same essence, or of the characteristic properties of any thing, carried on in succession; as a river is the same while it flows through the same channel, or an oak while it retains the same organization, and a man while he retains the same life and continued consciousness. In the chapter entitled ‘Of true and false Ideas,’ the author supposes truth to depend on some mental or verbal proposition, and does not, like Hobbes and the modern metaphysical writers, make it consist entirely in a form of words. In the last chapter of the first volume he treats of the association of ideas. This chapter was added after the first edition of the work, and he confesses, that the subject was something new to him. He has treated it in that mixed way of observation and reasoning, in which the peculiar force of his mind lay. The account he has given of it does not form a system, but the fragments of a system, something like the French memoirs that are to serve for the materials of a history. He does not appear to have laid down any general theorem on the subject, or to have been aware of the possibility of applying this principle to account in a plausible manner for the whole chain of our thoughts and feelings, as Hobbes and Hartley have done. Sound, practical, good sense, and a kind of discursive observation, neither grovelling in vulgar common place, nor soaring into the regions of paradox, are in fact the general characteristics of his mind, which has not been understood by his admirers and commentators. A short passage will suffice to show his manner of considering this doctrine of association. ‘Many children,’ he says, ‘imputing the pain they endured at school to their books they were corrected for, so join those ideas together that a book becomes their aversion, and they are never reconciled to the study and use of them all their lives after: and thus reading becomes a torment to them, which otherwise possibly they might have made the great pleasure of their lives. There are rooms convenient enough that some men cannot study in, and fashions of vessels, which though ever so clean and commodious they cannot drink out of, and that by reason of some accidental ideas which are annexed to them, and make them offensive: and who is there that has not observed some man to flag at the appearance, or in the company of some certain person, not otherwise superior to him, but because having once on some occasion got the ascendant, the idea of authority and distance goes along with that of the person? And he that has been thus subjected is not able to separate them. Instances of this kind are so plentiful every where, that if I add one more, it is only for the pleasant oddness of it: it is of a young gentleman, who having learned to dance, and that to great perfection, there happened to stand an old trunk in the room where he learned: the idea of this remarkable piece of household stuff had so mixed itself with all the turns and steps of his dances, that though in that chamber he could dance exceedingly well, yet it was only whilst that trunk was there; nor could he perform well in any other place, unless that, or some such other trunk had its due position in the room.’ The following passage approaches the nearest to the statement of a general principle: ‘This strong combination of ideas, not allied by nature, the mind makes in itself either voluntarily or by chance: and hence it comes in different men to be very different, according to their different inclinations, educations, interests, &c. Custom settles habits of thinking in the understanding, as well as of determining in the will, and of motions in the body: all which seems to be but trains of motion in the animal spirits, which once set agoing continue in the same steps they have been used to, which by often treading are worn into a smooth path, and the motion in it becomes easy, and as it were natural. As far as we can comprehend thinking, thus ideas seem to be produced in our minds; or if they are not, this may serve to explain their following one another in an habitual train when once they are put into that track, as well as it does to explain such motions of the body. A musician used to any tune will find, that let it but once begin in his head, the ideas of the several notes of it will follow one another orderly in his understanding, without any care or attention, as regularly as his finger moves orderly over the keys of the organ to play out the tune he has begun, though his inattentive thoughts be elsewhere a wandering. Whether the natural cause of these ideas, as well as of that regular dancing of the fingers, be the motion of his animal spirits, I will not determine, how probable soever by this instance it appears to be so; but this may help us a little to conceive of intellectual habits, and of the tying together of ideas. That there are such associations of them made by custom in the minds of most men, I think nobody will question, who has well considered himself or others; and to this perhaps might be justly attributed most of the sympathies and antipathies observable in men, which work as strongly and produce as regular effects as if they were natural, and are therefore called so, though they at first had no other original but the accidental connexion of two ideas, which either the strength of the first impression or future indulgence so united, that they always afterwards kept company together in that man’s mind, as if they were but one idea. I say, most of the antipathies, I do not say all; for some of them are truly natural, depend upon our original constitution, and are born with us; but a great part of those which are counted natural, would have been known to be from unheeded though perhaps early impressions, or wanton fancies at first, which would have been acknowledged the original of them, if they had been warily observed.’ The former part of this passage, relating to the dancing of the animal spirits, the Abbé Condillac in his ‘Logic’ has paraphrased with a self-sufficiency, an assumption of originality, and a smoothness of flippancy, peculiar almost to himself. On the subject of materialism, Mr. Locke seems to have had two opinions; the first, that as far as we can discern, the properties of mind and matter are utterly distinct and irreconcileable; the second, that God might for aught we know be able to superadd to matter a faculty of thinking: either the one or the other of these opinions must be without meaning. In speaking of the difficulties attending both sides of this question, he has, however, offered one of the best moral cautions against precipitancy of judgment and impatience of inquiry to be found in any author. He says, (vol. ii. p. 203:) ‘He that considers how hardly sensation is in our thoughts reconcilable to extended matter, or existence to any thing that hath no extension at all, will confess that he is very far from certainly knowing what his soul is. It is a point which seems to me to be put out of the reach of our knowledge: and he who will give himself leave to consider freely, and look into the dark and intricate part of each hypothesis, will scarce find his reason able to determine him fixedly for or against the soul’s materiality. Since on which side soever he views it, either as an unextended substance, or a thinking extended matter, the difficulty to conceive either, will, whilst either alone is in his thoughts, still drive him to the contrary side. An unfair way which some men take with themselves; who because of the unconceivableness of some thing they find in one, throw themselves violently into the contrary hypothesis, though altogether as unintelligible to an unbiassed understanding. This serves not only to show the weakness and scantiness of our knowledge, but the insignificant triumph of such sort of arguments, which drawn from our own views may satisfy us that we can find no certainty on one side of the question; but do not at all thereby help us to truth, by running into the opposite opinion, which on examination will be found clogged with equal difficulties.’ Mr. Locke has not, I think, himself enough attended to this admirable caution in his adoption of the common argument to demonstrate the existence of God _à priori_, towards which I conceive not the slightest advances can be made in this method. For the axiom that every thing must have a cause can never be made to infer the existence of a first cause, that is, of something without a cause. It is equally impossible for the human mind to conceive of the beginning of existence, or to pass from nothing to something, either by the help of an infinite series of finite existences, or by the infinite duration of one simple, absolute existence. 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. And Locke’s statement of this question is only better, because it is shorter, and goes straight forward, without stopping to answer difficulties. 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. He 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 of which two thousand meanings is anything else but a more abstract idea than the word was in general supposed to convey: for example, the word _loaf_ commonly stands for a pretty substantial, solid, tangible kind of an idea, and is not suspected of any latent, very refined, abstracted meaning. The author shows, on the contrary, that the word has no such palpable, positive meaning, as the particular object to which we apply it, but merely signifies something, any thing, raised or _lifted_ up. A singular method, surely, of reducing all general and abstract signs to individual, physical objects! Yet we find this tiresome catalogue of derivations concluded in this manner. ‘And on this subject of _subaudition_ I will at present exercise your patience no farther: for my own begins to flag. You have now instances of my doctrine in, I suppose, about a thousand words. Their number may be easily increased. But I trust these are sufficient to discard that imagined operation of the mind, which has been termed _abstraction_: and to prove that what we call by that name, is merely one of the contrivances of language, for the purpose of more speedy communication.’—Page 396, vol. ii. How a thousand instances of words, signifying a common quality or abstract idea, with something understood (_subauditum_), can be supposed to discard that imagined operation of the mind called abstraction, or in what subaudition differs from abstraction, or whether there is not something _subintellectum_, as well as _subauditum_,—that is, certain circumstances left out by the mind for the necessary progress of thought, as well as in language, for its more speedy communication,—it is not easy to guess. This farcical mummery, this inexplicable dumb show, this emphatical insignificance, neither admits nor deserves any answer. The only places in the work in which this wary reasoner has fairly committed himself, and given an intelligible explanation of his mode of applying his system to general questions, are in his account of the words, _right and wrong_, _just and unjust_, in his list of metaphysical nonentities, demonstrated to be such because they are expressed by the past participles of certain verbs, and in his definition of Truth. These, therefore, I shall give as specimens, and I hope they will be quite satisfactory. The ‘Diversions of Purley,’ it should be observed, is supposed to be carried on in a dialogue between the author and Sir Francis Burdett. ‘Enough, enough,’ says Burdett, ‘innumerable instances of the same may, I grant you, be given from all our ancient authors. But does this import us any thing?’ ‘TOOKE. Surely, much, if it shall lead us to the clear understanding of the words we use in discourse. For as far as we “know not our own meaning,” as far as “our purposes are not endowed with words to make them known,” so far we “gabble like things most brutish.” But the importance rises higher, when we reflect upon the application of words to metaphysics. And when I say metaphysics, you will be pleased to remember that all general reasoning, all politics, law, morality, and divinity, are merely metaphysics.’ [What is this general reasoning of Mr. Tooke’s?] ‘Well,’ replies his pupil, ‘you have satisfied me that wrong, however written, whether wrang, wrong or wrung, like the Italian _torto_ and the French _tort_, is merely the past tense or participle of the verb to wring; and has merely that meaning. ‘TOOKE. True; it means wrung or wrested from the _right_ or _ordered_ line of conduct. Right is no other than _rectum_, the past participle of the Latin verb _regere_. The Italian _dritto_, and the French _droit_, are no other than the past participle _directum_. In the same manner our English word _just_ is the past participle of the verb _jubere_ (_jussum_). ‘BURDETT. What, then, is law? ‘TOOKE. It is merely the past participle _lag_, of the Gothic and Anglo-Saxon verb _legan_, _ponere_; and it means something or anything _laid down_ as a rule of conduct. Thus when a man demands his _right_, he only asks that which it is _ordered_ he shall have. A _right_ conduct is that which is ordered. A _right_ line is that which is ordered or directed, not a random extension, but the shortest between two points. A _right_ and _just_ action is such a one as is ordered and commanded. The right hand is that which custom, and those who have brought us up, have ordered or directed us to use in preference, when one hand only is employed, and the left hand is that which is _lieved_ or left. ‘BURDETT. Surely the word _right_ is sometimes used in some other sense. And see, in this newspaper before us, M. Portalis, contending for the _concordat_, says:—“The multitude are much more impressed with what they are _commanded_ to obey, than with what is proved to them to be _right_ and _just_.” This will be complete nonsense, if _right_ and _just_ mean _ordered_ and _commanded_. ‘TOOKE. I will not undertake to make sense of the arguments of M. Portalis. The whole of his speech is a piece of wretched mummery, employed to bring back again to France the more wretched mummery of pope and popery. Writers on such subjects are not very anxious about the meaning of their words. Ambiguity and equivocation are their strongholds. Explanation would undo them. ‘BURDETT. Well, but Mr. Locke uses the word in a manner hardly to be reconciled with your account of it. He says:—“God has a right to do it, we are his creatures.” ‘TOOKE. It appears to me highly improper to say, that God has a right, as it is also to say that God is just. For nothing is ordered, directed, or commanded concerning God. The expressions are inapplicable to the Deity: though they are common, and those who use them have the best intentions. They are applicable only to men, to whom alone language belongs, and of whose sensations only words are the representations; to men, who are by nature the subjects of orders and commands, and whose chief merit is obedience. ‘BURDETT. Every thing, then, that is ordered and commanded is right and just. ‘TOOKE. Surely; for that is only affirming that what is ordered and commanded is—ordered and commanded. ‘BURDETT. These sentiments do not appear to have made you very conspicuous for obedience. There are not a few passages, I believe, in your life, where you have opposed what was ordered and commanded. Upon your own principles, was that _right_? ‘TOOKE. Perfectly. ‘BURDETT. How now! was it ordered and commanded that you should oppose what was ordered and commanded? Can the same thing be at the same time both right and wrong? ‘TOOKE. Travel back to the island of Melinda, and you will find the difficulty most easily solved. A thing may be at the same time both _right_ and _wrong_, as well as _right_ and _left_. It may be commanded to be done, and commanded not to be done. The law, _i.e._ that which is laid down, may be different by different authorities. ‘I have always been most obedient when most taxed with disobedience. But my right hand is not the right hand of Melinda. The right I revere is not the right adored by sycophants, the _jus vagum_, the capricious command of princes or ministers. I follow the law of God (which is laid down by him for the rule of my conduct) when I follow the laws of human nature: which, without any testimony, we know must proceed from God, and upon these are founded the rights of man, or what is ordered for man.’ On this passage I will observe that I think it would be difficult for Mr. Tooke himself to find a more precious instance of unmeaning jargon in the writings of any school-divine. Mr. Tooke first pretends gravely to define the essence of _law_ and _just_ from the etymology of those words, by saying that they are something _laid down_ and something _ordered_; and when pressed by the difficulty that there are many things laid down and many things ordered which are neither ‘law’ nor ‘just,’ makes answer that their obligation depends on a higher species of law and justice, to wit, a law which is no where laid down, and a justice which is no where ordered, except indeed by the nature of things, on which the etymology of these two words does not seem to throw much light. At one time, it seems quite demonstrable that the essence of all law, right, and justice consists in its being ordered or communicated by words: the very idea is absurd, unless we conceive of it as some thing either spoken or written in a book; and yet the very next moment this fastidious reasoner sets up the unwritten, uncommunicated law of God, which he says must conform to the laws of human nature, as the rule of his conduct, and as paramount to all other positive orders and commands whatever. What is this original law of God or nature, which Mr. Tooke sets up as the rule of right? Is it the good of the whole, or self-interest? Is it the voice of reason, or conscience, or the moral sense? Here then we have to set out afresh in our pursuit, and to grope our way as well as we can through the old labyrinth of morality, divinity, and metaphysics. This new-invented patent lamp of etymology goes out just as it is beginning to grow dark, and as the path becomes intricate. Neither can I at all see why our author should quarrel with M. Portalis for using these words in their common sense. He affirms that the whole of this gentleman’s speech is a piece of wretched mummery, that his distinction between what is right and what is commanded is a senseless ambiguity, and that explanation would undo him. Yet he himself, two pages after, discovers that this distinction has a real meaning in it, and that he has acted upon it all his life. ‘The one,’ he says, ‘is the _jus vagum_, the capricious command of princes; the other is the law of God and nature.’ It is not impossible but M. Portalis might have given quite as profound an explanation of his own meaning. Junius’s sarcasm did not, it seems, entirely cure Mr. Tooke ‘of the little sneering sophistries of a collegian.’ Mr. Tooke next makes strange havoc with a whole host of metaphysical agents; like Sir Richard Blackmore, ‘Undoes creation at a jerk, And of redemption makes damn’d work.’ ‘Rebelling angels, the forbidden tree, Heaven, hell, earth, chaos, all’— are weighed in the balance and found wanting. We cannot say with Marvell, that the argument ‘Holds us a while misdoubting his intent, That he would ruin (for I saw him strong) The sacred truths to fable and old song. (So Sampson groped the temple’s posts in spite) The world o’erwhelming to revenge his sight.’ For Mr. Tooke leaves us in no doubt about his intent. All these sacred truths are, according to him, so many falsehoods, which by taking possession of certain adjectives and participles, have palmed themselves upon the world as realities, but which, by spelling their names backwards, he proposes to exorcise and reduce to their original nothingness again. Here follows a list of them which he has strung together, as a warning to all other pseudo-substantives. It is rather strange, by the bye, that the author should have resorted to this mode of argument, since he affirms that adjectives are the names of things, as well as substantives; and laughs at Dr. South for saying that they are the names of nothing. ‘These words, these participles and adjectives,’ says Mr. Tooke, ‘not understood as such, have caused a metaphysical jargon and a false morality, which can only be dissipated by etymology. And when they come to be examined you will find that the ridicule which Dr. Conyers Middleton has so justly bestowed upon the papists for their absurd coinage of saints, is equally applicable to ourselves and to all other metaphysicians; whose moral deities, moral causes, and moral qualities are not less ridiculously coined and imposed upon their followers. Fate Destiny Luck Lot Chance Accident Heaven Hell Providence Prudence Innocence Substance Fiend Angel Apostle Saint Spirit True False Desert Merit Fault. &c. &c. as well as _just_, _right_, and _wrong_, are all merely participles poetically embodied and substantiated by those who use them. ‘So Church, for instance (_Dominicum aliquid_) is an adjective; and formerly a most wicked one: whose misinterpretation caused more slaughter and pillage of mankind than all the other cheats together.’ Sir Francis says, ‘Something of this sort I can easily perceive, but not to the extent you carry it. I see that those sham deities, Fate and Destiny, aliquid _fatum_, quelque chose _destinée_, are merely the past participles of _fari_ and _destiner_. That Chance (“high arbiter,” as Milton calls him) and his twin-brother Accident are merely the participles of _escheoir_, _cheoir_, and _cadere_. And that to say, it befell me by chance or by accident, is absurdly saying it befell me by falling. ‘I agree with you, that Providence, Prudence, Innocence, Substance, and all the rest of that tribe of qualities (in _ence_ and _ance_) are merely the neuter plurals of the present participles of _ordere_, _nocere_, _stare_, &c. &c. That Angel, Saint, Spirit, are the past participles αγγελλειυ, sanciri, spirare. That the Italian _cucolo_, a cuckoo, gives us the verb to cucol, and its past participle cuckold.’ And what if it does: will Mr. Tooke therefore pretend to say that there is no such thing? This is indeed turning etymology to a good account. It is clearing off old scores with a vengeance, and establishing morality on an entirely new basis. For my own part, I can only say of the whole of the reasoning of this author, with Voltaire’s Candide, ‘_la tête me tourne: on ne sait ou l’on est_.’ Whether any or all of those metaphysical beings enumerated by Mr. Tooke do or do not exist, what their nature or qualities are, whether modes, relatives, substances, I shall not here undertake to determine, but I do conceive that none of these questions can be resolved in any way by inquiring whether the names denoting them are not the past participles of certain verbs. A shorter method would I think be to say at once that all metaphysical and moral terms, whether participles or not, are but names, that names are not things, and that therefore the things themselves have no existence. It is upon this philosophical principle that the heroical Jonathan Wild proceeds in his definition of the word Honour, for after losing himself to no purpose in the common metaphysical jargon on the subject, and in moral causes and qualities, he comes at last to this clear and unembarrassed conclusion,—‘That honour consists in the word _honour_, and nothing else.’ I will only give one instance more of this reformed system of logic and metaphysics. ‘BURDETT. I still wish for an explanation of one word more: which on account of its extreme importance ought not to be omitted. What is Truth? You know when Pilate had asked the same question, he went out and would not stay for an answer, and from that time to this no answer has been given. And from that time to this mankind have been wrangling and tearing each other to pieces for the truth, without once considering the meaning of the word.’ ‘TOOKE. This word will give us no trouble. Like the other words, _true_ is also a past participle of the Saxon verb _treowan_, confidere, to think, to believe firmly, to be thoroughly persuaded of, to trow. _True_, as we now write it, or _trew_, as it was formerly written, means simply and merely that which is trowed, and instead of its being a rare commodity upon earth, except only in words, there is nothing but truth in the world. ‘That every man, in his communication with others, should speak that which he troweth, is of so great importance to mankind, that it ought not to surprise us, if we find the most extravagant and exaggerated praises bestowed upon truth. But truth supposes mankind; for whom and by whom alone the word is formed, and to whom only it is applicable. If no man, no truth. There is therefore no such thing as eternal, immutable, everlasting truth; unless mankind, such as they are at present, be also eternal, immutable, and everlasting. Two persons may contradict each other, and yet both speak truth. For the truth of one person may be opposite to the truth of another. To speak truth may be a vice as well as a virtue; for there are many occasions when it ought not to be spoken. If you reject my explanation, find out if you can some other possible meaning of the word, or content yourself with Johnson, by saying that _true_ is not false, and _false_ is—not true. For so he explains the words.’—Vol. ii. p. 407. In a note the author adds, ‘Mr. Locke, in the second book of his Essay, chapter xxxii., treats of _true_ and _false_ ideas, and is much distressed throughout the whole chapter, because he had not in his mind any determinate meaning of the word _true_. If that excellent man had himself followed the advice which he gave to his disputing friends concerning the word _liquor_; if he had followed his own rule, previously to writing about _true_ and _false_ ideas, and had determined what meaning he applied to _true_, _being_, _thing_, _real_, _right_, _wrong_, he could not have written the above chapter, which exceedingly distresses the reader, who searches for a meaning where there is none to be found.’ Whether Mr. Locke would have been satisfied with Mr. Tooke’s account of these words, I cannot say. I know that I am not. I do not think it the true one. It is therefore not the true one. Mr. Tooke thinks it is, and therefore it is the true one. Which of us is right? That what a man thinks, he thinks, and that if he speaks what he thinks, he speaks truth in one principal sense of the word, is what does not require much illustration; but whether what he thinks is true or false, whether his opinion is right or wrong, or whether there is not another possible and actual meaning of the terms besides that given by Mr. Tooke, is the old difficulty, which remains just where it was before, in spite of etymology. The application of the theory of language to the philosophy of the mind, Mr. Tooke has reserved for a volume by itself: the principle, however, which he means to establish, he has very explicitly laid down in the beginning of his first volume. ‘The business of the mind,’ he says, ‘as far as it concerns language, appears to me to be very simple. It extends no farther than to receive impressions, that is, to have sensations or feelings. What are called its operations, are merely the operations of language. The greatest part of Mr. Locke’s Essay, that is, all which relates to what he calls the _composition_, _abstraction_, _complexity_, _generalization_, _relation_, &c. of ideas, does indeed merely concern language. If he had been sooner aware of the inseparable connexion between words and knowledge, he would not have talked of the composition of ideas; but would have seen that the only composition was in the terms; and consequently that it was as improper to talk of a complex idea as of a complex star. It is an easy matter, upon Mr. Locke’s own principles and a physical consideration of the senses and the mind, to prove the impossibility of the composition of ideas; and that they are not ideas, but merely terms which are general and abstract.’—Vol. i. pp. 39, 51, &c. Now I grant that Mr. Locke’s own principles, and a physical consideration of the mind, do lead to the conclusion here stated, that is, to an absurdity; and it is from thence I have endeavoured to show more than once that those principles, and the considering the mind as a physical thing, are themselves absurd. How a term can be complex otherwise than from the complexity of its meaning, that is, of the idea attached to it, is difficult to understand. As to the other position, that we have no general ideas, but that it is the terms only that are general and abstract, Mr. Tooke has borrowed this piece of philosophy from Mr. Locke, who borrowed it from Hobbes. ‘Universality’ says Mr. Locke, as quoted by our author, ‘belongs not to things, which are all of them particular in their existence. When, therefore, we quit particulars, the generals that rest are only creatures of our own; their general nature being nothing but the capacity they are put into of signifying or representing many particulars.’ I have, however, before shown how very loose, uncertain, and wavering, Mr. Locke’s reasoning on this subject is, though I cannot agree with Mr. Tooke that it is therefore ‘_very different from that incomparable author’s usual method of proceeding_.’ There is one question which may be asked with respect to this statement, which, if fairly answered, will perhaps, decide the point in dispute: _viz._ if there is no general nature in things, or if we have no general idea of what they have in common or the same, how is it that we know when to apply the same general terms to different particulars, which on this principle will have nothing left to connect them together in the mind? For example, take the words, _a white horse_. Now say they, it is the terms which are general or common, but we have no general or abstract idea corresponding to them. But if we had no general idea of _white_, nor any general idea of _a horse_, we should have nothing more to guide us in applying this phrase to any but the first horse, than in applying the terms of an unknown tongue to their respective objects. For it is the idea of something general or common between the several objects, which can alone determine us in assigning the same name to things which, considered as particulars, or setting aside that general nature, are perfectly distinct and independent. Without this link in the mind, this general perception of the qualities of things, the terms _a white horse_ could no more be applied, and would, in fact, be no more applicable to animals of this description generally, than to any other animal. In short, what is it that ‘puts the same common name into a capacity of signifying many particulars,’ but that those particulars are, and are conceived to be of the same kind? That is, general terms necessarily imply a class of things and ideas. Language without this would be reduced to a heap of proper names: and we should be just as much at a loss to name any object generally, from its agreement with others, as to know whether we should call the first man we met in the street by the name of John or Thomas. The existence and use of general terms is alone a sufficient proof of the power of abstraction in the human mind; nor is it possible to give even a plausible account of language without it. But Mr. Tooke has on all possible occasions sacrificed common sense to a false philosophy and epigrammatic logic. In opposition to this author’s assertion, that we have neither complex nor abstract ideas, I think it may be proved to a demonstration that we have no others. If our ideas were absolutely simple and individual, we could have no idea of any of those objects which in this erring, half-thinking philosophy are called individual, as a table or a chair, a blade of grass, or a grain of sand. For every one of these includes a certain configuration, hardness, colour, &c. _i.e._ ideas of different things, and received by different senses, which must be put together by the understanding before they can be referred to any particular thing, or form one idea. Without the cementing power of the mind, all our ideas would be necessarily decomposed and crumbled down into their original elements and flexional parts. We could indeed never carry on a chain of reasoning on any subject, for the very links of which this chain must consist, would be ground to powder. No two of these atomic impressions could ever club together to form even a sensible point, much less should we be able ever to arrive at any of the larger masses, or nominal descriptions of things. All nature, all objects, all parts of all objects would be equally ‘without form and void.’ _The mind alone is formative_, to borrow the expression of a celebrated German writer, or it is that alone which by its pervading and elastic energy unfolds and expands our ideas, that gives order and consistency to them, that assigns to every part its proper place, and that constructs the idea of the whole. Ideas are the offspring of the understanding, not of the senses. In other words, it is the understanding alone that perceives relation, but every object is made up of a bundle of relations. In short, there is no object or idea which does not consist of a number of parts arranged in a certain manner, but of this arrangement the parts themselves cannot be conscious. A ‘physical consideration of the senses and the mind’ can never therefore account for our ideas, even of sensible objects. Mr. Locke’s own principles do indeed exclude all power of understanding from the human mind. The manner in which Hobbes and Berkeley have explained the nature of mathematical demonstration upon this system shows its utter inadequacy to any of the purposes of general reasoning, and is a plain confession of the necessity of abstract ideas. Mr. Hume considers the principle that abstraction is not an operation of the mind, but of language, as one of the most capital discoveries of modern philosophy, and attributes it to Bishop Berkeley. Berkeley has however only adopted the arguments and indeed almost the very words of Hobbes. The latter author in the passage which has been already quoted says, ‘By this imposition of names, some of larger, some of stricter signification, we turn the reckoning of the consequences of things imagined in the mind into a reckoning of the consequences of appellations. For example, a man that hath no use of speech at all, such as is born and remains perfectly deaf and dumb, if he set before his eyes a triangle, and by it two right angles, (such as are the corners of a square figure) he may by meditation compare and find that the three angles of that triangle are equal to those two right angles that stand by it. But if another triangle be shewn him different in shape from the former, he cannot know without a new labour, whether the three angles of that also be equal to the same. But he that hath the use of words, when he observes that such equality was consequent not to the length of the sides, nor to any other particular thing in his triangle, but only to this, that the sides were straight and the angles three, and that that was all for which he named it a triangle, will boldly conclude universally, that such equality of angles is in all triangles whatsoever; and register his invention in these general terms: _Every triangle hath its three angles equal to two right ones_. And thus the consequence found in one particular, comes to be registered and remembered as an universal rule; and discharges our mental reckoning of time and place, and delivers us from all labour of the mind saving the first, and makes that which was found true _here_ and _now_ to be true _in all times_ and _places_.’—_Leviathan_, p. 14. Bishop Berkeley gives the same view of the nature of abstract reasoning in the introduction to his ‘Principles of Human Knowledge.’ ‘But here,’ he says, ‘it will be demanded how we can know any proposition to be true of all particular triangles, except we have first seen it demonstrated of the abstract idea of a triangle, which agrees equally to all. To which I answer, that though the idea I have in view, whilst I make the demonstration be, for instance, that of an isosceles rectangular triangle, whose sides are of a determinate length, I may nevertheless be certain it extends to all other rectilinear triangles of what sort or bigness soever. And that because neither the right angle nor the equality nor the determinate length of the sides are at all concerned in the demonstration. ’Tis true, the diagram I have in view includes all these particulars, but then there’s not the least mention made of them in the proof of the proposition. It is not said the three angles are equal to two right ones, because one of them is a right angle, or because the sides comprehending it are of the same length; which sufficiently shows that the right angle might have been oblique and the sides unequal, and for all that the demonstration have held good. And for this reason it is that I conclude that to be true of any oblique angular or scalenon, which I had demonstrated of a particular right angled equicrural triangle, and not because I demonstrated the proposition of the abstract idea of a triangle.’—Page 34. This answer does not appear to me satisfactory. It amounts to this, that though the diagram we have in view includes a number of particular circumstances, not applicable to other cases, yet we know the principle to be true generally, because _there is not the least mention made of these particulars in the proof of the proposition_. When it is asserted that we must necessarily have the idea of a particular size whenever we think of a man in general, all that is intended I believe is that we must think of a particular height. This idea it is supposed must be particular and determinate, just as we must draw a line with a piece of chalk, or make a mark with the slider of a measuring instrument in one place and not in another. I think it may be shown that this view of the question is also extremely fallacious and an inversion of the order of our ideas. The height of the individual is thus resolved into the consideration of the lines terminating or defining it, and the intermediate space of which it properly consists is entirely overlooked. For let us take any given height of a man, whether tall, short, or middle-sized, and let that height be as visible as you please, I would ask whether the actual length to which it amounts does not consist of a number of other lengths, as if it be a tall man, the length will be six feet, and each of these feet will consist of as many inches, and those inches will be again made up of decimals, and those decimals of other subordinate and infinitesimal parts, which must be all distinctly perceived and added together before the sum total which they compose can be pretended to be a distinct, particular, or individual idea. In any given visible object we have always a gross, general idea of something extended, and never of the precise length; for this precise length as it is thought to be is necessarily composed of a number of lengths too many, and too minute to be separately attended to or jointly conceived by the mind, and at last loses itself in the infinite divisibility of matter. What sort of distinctness or individuality can therefore be found in any visible image or object of sense, I cannot well conceive: it seems to me like seeking for certainty in the dancing of insects in the evening sun, or for fixedness and rest in the motions of the sea. All particulars are nothing but generals, more or less defined according to circumstances, but never perfectly so. The knowledge of any finite being rests in generals, and if we think to exclude all generality from our ideas of things, as implying a want of perfect truth and clearness, we must be constrained to remain in utter ignorance. Let any one try the experiment of counting a flock of sheep driven fast by him, and he will soon find his imagination unable to keep pace with the rapid succession of objects; and his idea of a particular number slide into the general notion of multitude: not that because there are more objects than he can possibly count he will think there are none, or that the word _flock_ will present to his mind a mere name without any idea corresponding to it. Every act of the attention, every object we see or think of, offers a proof of the same kind. The application of this view of the subject to explain the difference between the synthetical and analytical faculties, between generalization and abstraction in the proper acceptation of this last word, between common sense or feeling and understanding or reason, demands a separate essay. I do not think it possible ever to arrive at the truth upon these, or to prove the existence of general or abstract ideas, by beginning in Mr. Locke’s method with particular ones. This faculty of abstraction or generalization (to use the words indifferently) is indeed by most considered as a sort of artificial refinement upon our other ideas, as an excrescence, no ways contained in the common impressions of things, nor scarcely necessary to the common purposes of life; and is by Mr. Locke altogether denied to be among the faculties of brutes. It is the ornament and top-addition of the mind of man which proceeding from simple sensation upwards, is gradually sublimed into the abstract notions of things: ‘so from the root springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves more airy, last the bright consummate flower.’ On the other hand, I imagine that all our notions from first to last are, strictly speaking, general and abstract, not absolute and particular, and that this faculty mixes itself more or less with every act of the mind, and in every moment of its existence. Lastly, I conceive that the mind has not been fairly dealt with in this and other questions of the same kind. The difficulty belonging to the notion of abstraction or comprehension it is perhaps impossible ever to clear up: but that is no reason why we should discard those operations from the human mind any more than we should deny the existence of motion, extension, or curved lines in nature, because we cannot explain them. Matter alone seems to have the privilege of presenting difficulties and contradictions at any time, which pass current under the name of _facts_; but the moment any thing of this kind is observed in the understanding, all the petulance of logicians is up in arms. The mind is made the mark on which they vent all the modes and figures of their impertinence; and metaphysical truth has in this respect fared like the milk-white hind, the emblem of pure faith, in Dryden’s fable, which ‘Has oft been chased With Scythian shafts and many winged wounds Aimed at her heart, was often forced to fly, And doomed to death, though fated not to die.’ ON SELF-LOVE The modern system of philosophy has one great advantage, which makes it difficult to attack it with any hopes of success, namely, that it is not founded on any of the prevailing opinions or natural feelings of mankind. It rests upon a single principle—its boasted superiority over all prejudice. Unsupported by facts or reason, it is by this circumstance alone enabled to trample upon every dictate of the understanding or feeling of the heart, as weak and vulgar prejudices. In this alone it is secure and invulnerable. To this it owes its giant power and dreaded name. Let the contradictions and fallacies contained in the system be proved over and over again, still the answer is ready:—all the objections made to it are resolved into _prejudice_. Destitute of every other support, it staggers our faith in received opinions by the hardihood of its assertions, and derives its claim to implicit credence by the boldness of its defiance of all established authority. Common sense is brought to the bar like an old offender, and condemned without a hearing. Under the shelter of this presumption there is no absurdity so great as not to be advanced with impunity. There is no hypothesis, however gratuitous, however inadequate, or however unfounded, that is not held up as the true one, if it is but contrary to all observation and experience. The grossest credulity succeeds to the most extravagant scepticism. From being the slaves of authority we become the dupes of paradox. Every opinion which is so absurd as never to have been affirmed before is converted into an undeniable truth. Whoever dares to question it, unawed by the authority on the one hand, and undazzled by the novelty on the other, is considered as a person of a narrow and bigoted understanding, and as relinquishing all claim to the exercise of his reason. We are effectually deterred from protesting against any of these ‘wise saws and modern instances’ by the dread of being mixed up with the vulgar, and we dare not avoid the common feelings of humanity lest we should be ridiculed as the dupes of self-love, or of the whining cant of moralists. There is however no bigotry so blind as that which is founded on a supposed exemption from all prejudice. The mind in this case identifies every opinion of its own with reason itself: and regarding the objections made to it as proceeding from a jaundiced and distorted view of the case, it converts them into the strongest confirmations of the depth and comprehensiveness of its own views. There are accordingly no people so little capable of reasoning as those who make the loudest pretensions to it: and having assumed the name of Philosophers, are astonished that any one should call their title in question. I have been led to make these observations from reading Helvetius’s account of self-love, which is nothing but a series of misrepresentations and assumptions of the question, and which can only have imposed upon his readers from that tone of confidence and alertness which men always have in attacking a received and long-established principle, and a tacit and involuntary feeling that boldness of opinion implies strength and independence of mind. A few examples will show that this censure is well-founded. ‘What,’ says this author in the beginning of his view of the question,—‘what is the human understanding? It is the assemblage of his ideas. To what sort of understanding do we give the name of talent? To the understanding concentrated upon a single subject; that is to say to a large assemblage of ideas of the same kind. ‘Now if there are no innate ideas, human understanding and genius are only acquired; and both one and the other have the following faculties for their principles: ‘1. Physical sensibility; without which we could receive no sensations. ‘2. Memory, that is to say, the faculty of recalling the sensations received. ‘3. The interest which we have in comparing our sensations together, that is to say, in observing with attention the resemblances and differences, the agreements and disagreements of several objects amongst them. It is this interest which fixes the attention, and in minds commonly well-organised, is the efficient cause of understanding.’ It is added in a note, ‘To judge, according to M. Rousseau, is not to feel. The proof of his opinion is that we have a faculty or power which enables us to compare objects. Now this power according to him cannot be the effect of physical sensibility. But,’ continues Helvetius, ‘if Rousseau had more profoundly considered the question, he would have perceived that this power (or faculty of understanding) is no other than the interest itself which we have to compare these objects, and that this interest takes its rise in the feeling of self-love, which is the immediate effect of physical sensibility.’ This is the author’s account of the understanding. It is bold and decided, but it is not on that account either more or less true. It comes to this; that the faculty or power of understanding is owing to the use we have for such a faculty; or that we have a power of comparing our sensations, because we have an interest in comparing them, and that therefore this power is nothing but the effect of physical sensibility. So that a man before he has any understanding, feeling the want of it, supplies himself with this very necessary faculty by an act of the will, and out of pure friendly regard to himself. The interest or desire to fly might at this rate supply us with a pair of wings, or an effort of curiosity might furnish us with a new sense, or an effort of self-interest might enable a man to be in two places at once. All these consequences might very easily follow, if we were only satisfied to believe any extravagance of assertion, and to use words systematically without either connexion or meaning. The whole of this writer’s argument against the existence of a benevolent principle in the mind is founded either on a play of words, or an arbitrary substitution of one feeling for another. He has confounded, and does not even seem to have been aware of the distinction between, self-love, considered as a rational principle of action, or the voluntary and deliberate pursuit of our own good as such, and that immediate interest or gratification which the mind may have in the pursuit of any object either relating to ourselves or others. He sometimes evidently considers the former of these, that is, a deliberating, calculating, conscious selfishness, as the only rational principle of action, and treats all other feelings as romance and folly, or even denies their existence; while at other times he contends that the most disinterested generosity, patriotism, and love of fame, are equally and in the strictest sense self-love, because the pursuit of these objects is connected with and tends immediately and intentionally to the gratification of the individual who has an attachment to them. After stating the sentiment of Rousseau, that without an innate and abstract sense of right and wrong we should not see the just man and the true citizen consult the public good to his own prejudice, Helvetius goes on thus:—‘No one, I reply, has ever been found to promote the public good when it injured his own interest. The patriot who risks his life to crown himself with glory, to gain the public esteem, and to deliver his country from slavery, yields to the feeling which is most agreeable to him. Why should he not place his happiness in the exercise of virtue, in the acquisition of public respect, and in the pleasure consequent upon this respect? For what reason, in a word, should he not expose his life for his country, when the sailor and soldier, the one at sea, and the other in the trenches, daily expose theirs for a shilling? The virtuous man who seems to sacrifice his own good to that of the public is only governed by a sentiment of noble self-interest. Why should M. Rousseau deny here that interest is the exclusive and universal motive of action, when he himself admits it in a thousand places of his work?’ The author then quotes the following passage from Rousseau’s ‘Emilius’ in support of his doctrine:—‘A man may indeed pretend to prefer my interest to his own: however plausibly he colours over this falsehood, I am quite sure it is one.’ But I would ask why, on the principle just stated by Helvetius, he should not prefer another to himself, ‘if it is agreeable to him?’ Why should he not place his happiness in the exercise of friendship? Why should he not risk his life for his friend, as well as the patriot for his country, or as the soldier or sailor for a shilling a day? What is become, all of a sudden, of that noble self-interest which identifies us with our country and our kind? Is it quite forgot? Has it evaporated with a breath? Is there nothing of it left? When any instances are brought, or supposed, of the sacrifice of private interest to principle, or virtue, or passion, it is immediately pretended that these instances are not at all inconsistent with the grand universal principle of self-interest, which embraces all the sentiments and affections of the human mind, even the most heroical and disinterested. But the moment these instances are out of sight and the evasion is no longer necessary, this expansive principle shrinks into its own natural littleness again; and excludes all regard to the good of others as romantic and idle folly. All those instances of virtue which are at one moment perfectly compatible with this ‘universal principle of action’ are the next moment said to be incompatible with it, and the author after his little rhetorical glozings on the extensive views and generous sacrifices of self-interest, immediately descends into the vulgar proverb that ‘the misfortunes of others are but a dream.’ To proceed: Helvetius says, (p. 14): ‘What we understand by goodness or the moral sense in man, is his benevolence towards others: and this benevolence we always find in proportion to the utility they are of to him. I prefer my fellow-citizens to strangers, and my friend to my fellow-citizens. The welfare of my friend is reflected upon me. If he becomes more rich and more powerful, I partake of his riches and his power. Benevolence towards others is nothing, then, but the effect of love to ourselves.’ The inference here stated, that benevolence is merely a reflection from self-love, is founded on the assumption that we always feel for others in proportion to the advantage they are of to us, and this assumption is a false one. That the habitual or known connexion between our own welfare and that of others, is one great source of our attachment to them, one bond of society, is what I do not wish to deny: the question is whether it is the only one in the mind, or whether benevolence has not a natural basis of its own to rest upon, as well as self-love. Grant this, and the actual effects which we observe in human life will follow from both principles combined: but to say that our attachment to others is in the exact ratio of our obligations to them, is contrary to all we know of human nature. I would ask whether the affection of a mother for her child is owing to the good received or bestowed; to the child’s power of conferring benefits, or its standing in need of assistance? Are not the fatigues which the mother undergoes for the child, its helpless condition, its little vexations, its sufferings from ill health or accidents, additional ties upon maternal tenderness, which by increasing the attention to the wants of the child and anxiety to supply them, produce a proportionable interest in an attachment to its welfare? Helvetius justly observes that we prefer a friend to a stranger, but the reason which he assigns for it, that our interests and pleasures are more closely allied, is not the only one. We participate in the successes of our friends, it is true, but we also participate in their distresses and disappointments, and it is not always found that this lessens our regard for them. Benevolence, therefore, is not a mere physical reflection from self-love. His account of friendship agrees exactly with that which the grave historian of Jonathan Wild has given of the friendship between his hero and Count La Ruse: ‘Mutual interest, the greatest of all purposes, was the cement of this alliance, which nothing of consequence but superior interest was capable of dissolving.’ The mechanical principle of association, understood in a strict sense, will not account for the multifarious and mixed nature of our affections, and if we do not understand it in a strict sense, it will then only be another name for sympathy, imagination, or any thing else. ‘What then in truth,’ proceeds this author, ‘is the natural goodness, or moral sense, so much extolled by the English? What distinct idea can we form of such a sense, or on what evidence found its existence? If we allow a moral sense, why not allow an algebraical or chemical sense? Nothing is more absurd than this theological philosophy of Shaftesbury, and yet most of the English are as much delighted with it as the French formerly were with their music. It is not the same with other nations. No foreigner can understand the one or hear the other. It is a film on the eye of the English, which it is necessary to remove in order that they may see. ‘According to their philosophy, a man in a state of indifference sitting in his elbow chair, desires the good of others: but in as far as he is indifferent, man desires and can desire nothing. A state of desire and indifference is incompatible. These philosophers repeat in vain that the moral sense is implanted in man, and makes him at a certain time disposed to compassionate the sufferings of his fellows. This system is in fact nothing more than the system of innate ideas overturned by Locke. For my part, I can form an idea of my five senses, and of the organs which constitute them: but I confess that I have no more idea of a moral sense than of a moral elephant and castle. The enthusiasts for “moral beauty” are ignorant of the contempt in which these nations are held by all those who, either in the character of statesmen, officers of police, or men of the world, have an opportunity of knowing what human nature is.’—Page 15. In reply to the dogmatical question with which this passage begins—‘What distinct idea can be given of the moral sense?’—I answer for myself, the following very explicit one: namely, that it is the natural preference of good to evil, arising from the conception or idea formed of them in the understanding. Those who assert a moral sense, affirm that there is a faculty of some sort or other inseparable from the nature of a rational and intelligent being, that enables us to form a conception of good and evil, or of the feelings of pleasure and pain generally speaking, which ideas so formed have a natural tendency to excite certain affections and actions. Those, on the other hand, who deny a moral sense, or any thing equivalent to it, must affirm either that we can form no idea whatever of the feelings of others, or of good and evil generally speaking, or that these ideas have no possible influence over the mind, except from their connexion with physical impressions, memory, habit, self-interest, or some other motive, quite distinct from the ideas themselves. But I have already shown that without the co-operation of rational motives, there could be neither habit, nor self-interest, nor voluntary action of any kind. The moral is therefore nothing but the application of the understanding to the feelings or ideas of good. The question, consequently, whether there is a moral sense, is reducible to this; whether the mind can understand or conceive, or be affected by any thing beyond its own physical or mechanical feelings. If it can, then there is something in man besides his five senses and the organs which compose them, for these can give him no thought, conception, or sympathy with any thing beyond himself, or even with himself beyond the present moment. The actions, and events, and feelings of human life, the passions and pursuits of men, could no more go on without the interference of the understanding than without an original principle of physical sensibility. Neither the one nor the other explains the whole economy of our moral nature, but that is no reason why both are not essential and integrant parts of it. The five senses and the organs which compose them will not account for the science of morality, let it be as imperfect as it may, any more than for the science of algebra or chemistry in the different degrees in which they are possessed by different men. The point is not whether reason is furnishing us with a perfect and infallible rule of action, absolute over any other motive or passion, but whether it is any rule at all, whether it has any possible influence over our moral feelings. According to Helvetius, the moral sense is either a word without meaning, or it must signify one of our five senses: that is, impressions not actually affecting one or other of these are to him absolutely nothing. It is strange that after this he should propose to take the film from the eyes of those who ridiculously fancy that they have other ideas. It is as if a blind man should undertake to undeceive those who can see, with respect to certain chemical notions, called objects of sight. In confirmation of his theory, he refers the romantic admirers of moral beauty to the opinion of certain classes and professions of men, whose visual ray has been purged, and who, it should seem, possess a sort of second sight into human nature, namely, ministers of state, officers of police, and men of business. Either this argument is a satire on these characters, or on the understanding of his readers. If these respectable, and, I dare say, very well-meaning persons, are by the narrowness of their occupations and views, precluded from any general knowledge of human nature, or the virtues of the human heart, it is an uncivil irony to propose them as consummate judges of the abstract nature of man. If, on the other hand, in spite of their employment, they retain the same notions and liberality of feeling as other men, there is no reason to suppose that they would subscribe to the sentiment of our author, that morality ‘is an affair of the five senses:’ a proposition which any minister of state, or police officer, or man of the world, possessed of the least common sense, would treat with as much contempt and incredulity as Shaftesbury or Hutcheson. Our author’s observation, that the notion of a moral sense or natural disposition to sympathise with others, is only the doctrine of innate ideas in disguise, is another misconception of the nature of the question. The actual feeling of compassion is not, as he says, innate; but this no more proves that the disposition to compassion or benevolence is not innate, than the fact that the ideas or feelings of pleasure and pain are not innate and born with us, proves that physical sensibility is not an original faculty of the mind. Moral sensibility, or the capacity of being affected by the ideas of certain objects, is as much a part of our nature as physical sensibility, or the capacity of being affected in a certain manner by the objects themselves. Helvetius says, physical sensibility is the only quality essential to the nature of man: I answer, that physical sensibility is _not_ the only quality essential to the nature of man. To show how senseless and insignificant is this kind of reasoning, I will refer back to Helvetius’s concise profession of his metaphysical faith, which is that he can form an idea of the five senses and of the organs of them, but of nothing else. Now, I may ask, how he comes by this _idea_? Which of his senses or which of the organs of them is it that gives him an idea of the other four? Has the eye an action of words, or the ear of colours, or either of the impressions of taste, smell, or feeling? Which of them is the common sense? or if none, must we not suppose some superintending faculty to which all the other impressions are subject, and which alone can give him an idea of his own senses or their organs? Another instance of the utter want of logical and consecutive reasoning which characterizes the French philosophers, might be given in their singular proof of the selfishness of the human mind from the incompatibility of a state of desire and a state of indifference. The English philosophers are charged with representing a man in a state of indifference, ‘seated in his arm-chair,’ as desiring the good of others. This arm-chair it should seem, no less than his state of indifference, presents certain insurmountable barriers to his desires, which they cannot pass so as to affect him with the slightest concern for any thing beyond it. So far as a man is indifferent to every thing, he cannot it is true desire any thing. All that follows from this is, that so far as he desires the good of others he is not in a state of indifference. That a man cannot desire an object and not desire it at the same time requires no proof. But what ought to have been proved, and what was meant to be so, is that a man in a state of indifference to the welfare of others on his own account, cannot desire it for their sake, and this is what is not proved by the truism mentioned. The general maxim, that I cannot desire any object as long as I am indifferent to it, cannot be made to show that self-interest is the only motive that can make me pass from the one state into the other. By indifference, as used by the writers here ridiculed, in a popular sense, is evidently meant the want of personal or physical interest in any object, and to say that this necessarily implies the want of every other kind of interest in it, of all rational desire of the good of others, is a meagre assumption of the point in dispute. It is strange that these pretenders to philosophy choose to insult the English writers for daring to wear the plain, homely, useful, national garb of philosophy, while their most glossy and most fashionable suits are made up of the shreds and patches stolen from our countryman Hobbes, disguised with a few spangles, tinselled lace, and tagged points of their own. Helvetius’s paraphrase of Hobbes’s maxim, that ‘pity is only another name for self-love,’ is as follows: ‘What then do I feel in the presence of an object of compassion? A strong emotion. What causes this emotion? The recollection of the sufferings to which man is subject, and to which I am myself liable. It is this consideration that disturbs, that torments me, and so long as the unfortunate sufferer continues in my presence I am affected with melancholy sensations. Have I relieved him,—do I no longer see him? A calm is insensibly restored to my breast, because in proportion to the distance to which he is removed, the remembrance of the evils which his sight recalled is gradually effaced. When I was concerned for him, then, I was concerned only for myself. What are, in fact, the sufferings which I compassionate the most? They are those not only which I have felt myself, but those which I may still feel. Those evils the more present to my memory impress me more strongly. My sympathy with the sufferings of another is always in exact proportion to my fear of being exposed to the same sufferings myself. I would willingly, if it were possible, destroy the very germ of my own sufferings in him, and thus be released from the apprehension of the like evils to myself in time to come. The love of others is never any thing more in the human mind than the effect of love to ourselves, and consequently of our physical sensibility.’—Vol. ii. page 20. To this I answer as follows:—What do I feel in the presence of an object of compassion? A strong emotion. What causes this emotion? Not, certainly, the general recollection of the sufferings to which man in general is subject, or to which I myself may be exposed. It is not this remote and accidental reflection, which has no particular reference to the object before me, but a strong sense of the sufferings of the particular person, excited by his immediate presence, which affects me with compassion, and impels me to his relief. The relief I afford him, or the absence of the object, lessens my uneasiness, either by the contemplation of the diminution of his sufferings, to which I have contributed, or by diverting my mind from the consideration of his sufferings. Neither the relief afforded, nor the absence of the object could produce this effect, if the strong emotion which I experience did not relate to the particular object. It is the fate of the individual, and of him only, which I am contemplating, and my sympathy accordingly rises and falls with it, or as my attention is more or less fixed upon it. A total alteration in the situation of the individual produces a total change in my feelings with respect to him, which could not be the case, if my compassion depended wholly on my sense of my own security, or the general condition of human nature. In feeling compassion for another, therefore, it was not for myself that I was concerned, but for the sufferer: my feelings were, in a manner, bound up with his, and I forgot for the moment both myself and others. But do I not compassionate most those evils which I have felt myself? Yes; because from my own knowledge of them I have a more lively sense of what others must suffer from them: just in the same manner I dread those evils most with respect to myself in time to come. For those evils which I have not experienced, I feel, for that reason, less sympathy in respect to others, and less dread with reference to myself in time to come. Neither do I always feel for others in proportion as I dread the same feelings myself. The memory of my past sufferings cannot excite my disposition to relieve those of others, and the imaginary apprehension of my own _future_ sufferings can only tend to produce voluntary action on the same principle as my imagination of those or others. I do not wish to prevent their sufferings as the germ or cause of mine, but because they are of the same nature as mine. Benevolence, therefore, is not the effect of self love, though it is the effect of our physical sensibility, combined with our other faculties. I will in this place insert the reply of Bishop Butler (a true philosopher) to the same argument in Hobbes, in a note to one of his sermons. ‘If any person can in earnest doubt whether there be such a thing as good-will in one man towards another (for the question is not concerning either the degree or extensiveness of it, but concerning the affection itself,) let it be observed, that _whether man be thus or otherwise constituted, what is the inward frame in this particular_ is a mere question of fact or natural history, not proveable immediately by reason. It is therefore to be judged of and determined in the same way other facts or historical matters are; by appealing to the external senses, or inward perceptions, respectively, as the matter under consideration is cognizable by one or the other; by arguing from acknowledged facts and actions, inquiring whether these do not suppose and prove the matter in question so far as it is capable of proof. And, lastly, by the testimony of mankind. Now that there is some degree of benevolence amongst men, may be as strongly and plainly proved in all these ways, as it could possibly be proved, supposing there was this affection in our nature. And should any one think fit to assert, that resentment in the mind of man was absolutely nothing but reasonable concern for our own safety, the falsity of this, and what is the real nature of that passion, could be shown in no other ways than those in which it may be shown, that there is such a thing in _some degree_ as _real_ good-will in man towards man. ‘There being manifestly this appearance of men’s substituting others for themselves, and being carried out and affected towards them as towards themselves; some persons, who have a system which excludes every affection of this sort, have taken a pleasant method to solve it; and tell you it is _not another_ you are at all concerned about, but your _self only_, when you feel the affection called compassion; _i.e._ there is a plain matter of fact, which men cannot reconcile with the general account they think fit to give of things; they therefore, instead of _that_ manifest fact, substitute _another_, which is reconcilable to their own scheme. For does not every body by compassion mean an affection the object of which is another in distress? Instead of this, but designing to have it mistaken for this, they speak of an affection or passion, the object of which is ourselves, or danger to ourselves. Suppose a person to be in real danger, and by some means or other to have forgot it; any trifling accident, any sound might alarm him, recall the danger to his remembrance, and renew his fears: but it is almost too grossly ridiculous (though it is to show an absurdity) to speak of that sound or accident as an object of compassion; and yet, according to Mr. Hobbes, our greatest friend in distress is no more to us, no more the object of compassion or of any affection in our heart. Neither the one nor the other raises any emotion in our mind, but only the thoughts of our liableness to calamity, and the fear of it: and both equally do this. ‘There are often three distinct perceptions or inward feelings upon sight of persons in distress: real sorrow and concern for the misery of our fellow-creatures; some degree of satisfaction from a consciousness of our freedom from that misery; and, as the mind passes on from one thing to another, it is not unnatural from such an occasion to reflect upon our own liableness to the same or other calamities. The two last frequently accompany the first, but it is the first _only_ which is properly compassion, of which the distressed are the object, and which directly carries us with calmness and thought to their assistance. Any one of these, from various and complicated reasons, may in particular cases prevail over the other two; and there are, I suppose, instances where the bare _sight_ of distress, without our feeling any compassion for it, may be the occasion of either or both of the two latter.’ I shall proceed to examine the objection to the doctrine of benevolence, on the supposition that our sympathy when it exists is really a part of our interest. This objection was long ago stated by Hobbes, Rochefoucault, and Mandeville, and has been adopted and glossed over by Helvetius. It is pretended, then, that in wishing to relieve the distresses of others we only desire to remove the uneasiness which pity creates in our mind; that all our actions are unavoidably selfish, as they all arise from the feeling of pleasure or pain existing in the mind of the individual, and that whether we intend our own good or that of others, the immediate gratification connected with the idea of any object is the sole motive which determines us to the pursuit of it. First, this objection does not at all affect the main question in dispute. For if it is allowed that the idea of the pleasures or pains of others excites an immediate interest in the mind, if we feel sorrow and anxiety for their imaginary distresses exactly in the same way that we do for our own, and are impelled to action by the same principle, whether the action has for its object our own good, or that of others; in a word, if we sympathise with others as we do with ourselves, the nature of man as a voluntary agent must be the same, whether we choose to call this principle self-love, or benevolence, or whatever refinements we may introduce into our manner of explaining it. The relation of man to himself and others as a moral agent is plainly determined, whether a rational pursuit of his own future welfare and that of others is the real or only the ostensible motive of his actions. Were it not that our feelings are so strongly attached to names, the rest would be a question more of speculative curiosity than practice. All that, commonly speaking, is meant by the most disinterested benevolence is this immediate sympathy with the feelings of others, as by self-love is meant the same kind of attachment to our own future interests. For if by self-love we understand any thing beyond the impulse of the present moment, any thing different from inclination, let the object be what it will, this can no more be a mechanical thing than the most refined and comprehensive benevolence. Self-love, used in the sense which the above objection implies, must therefore mean some thing very different from an exclusive principle of deliberate, calculating selfishness, rendering us indifferent to every thing but our own advantage, or from the love of physical pleasure or aversion to physical pain, which could produce no interest in any but sensible impressions. In a word, it expresses merely any inclination of the mind be it to what it will, and does not at all determine or limit the object of pursuit. Supposing, therefore, that our most generous feelings and actions were so far equivocal, the object only bearing a show of disinterestedness, the secret motive being always selfish, this would be no reason for rejecting the common use of the term _disinterested benevolence_, which expresses nothing more than an immediate reference of our actions to the good of others, as self-love expresses a conscious reference of them to our own good as means to an end. This is the proper meaning of the terms. If we denominate our actions not from the object in view, but from the inclination of the individual, there will be an end at once, both of ‘selfishness’ and ‘benevolence.’ But farther, I deny that there is any foundation for the objection itself, or any reason for resolving the feelings of compassion or our voluntary motives in general into a principle of mechanical self-love. That the motive to action exists in the mind of the person who acts, is what no one can deny, or I suppose ever meant to deny. The passion excited and the impression producing it must necessarily affect the individual. There must always be some one to feel and act, or there could evidently be no such thing as feeling or action. If therefore it had ever been implied as a condition in the love of others, that this love should not be felt by the person who loves them, this would be to say that he must love them and not love them at the same time, which is too palpable an absurdity to be thought of for a moment. It could never, I say, be imagined that in order to feel for others, we must in reality feel nothing, or that benevolence, to exist at all, must exist no where. This kind of reasoning is therefore the most arrant trifling. To call my motives or feelings selfish, because they are felt by myself, is an abuse of all language: it might just as well be said that my idea of the monument is a selfish idea, or an idea of myself, because it is I who perceive it. By a selfish feeling must be meant, therefore, a feeling, not which belongs to myself (for that all feelings do, as is understood by every one) but which _relates_ to myself, and in this sense benevolence is not a selfish feeling. It is the individual who feels both for himself and others; but by self-love is meant that he feels only for himself; for it is presumed that the word _self_ has some meaning in it, and it would have absolutely none at all, if nothing more were intended by it than any object or impression existing in the mind. It therefore becomes necessary to set limits to the meaning of the terms. If we except the burlesque interpretation of the word just noticed, self-love can mean only one of these three things. 1. The conscious pursuit of our own good as such; 2. The love of physical pleasure and aversion to physical pain; 3. The gratification derived from our sympathy with others. If all our actions do not proceed from one of these three principles, they are all resolvable into self-love. First, then, self-love may properly signify, as already explained, the love or affection excited by the idea of our own interest, and the conscious pursuit of it as a general, remote, ideal object. In this sense, that is, considered with respect to the proposed end of our actions, I have shown sufficiently that there is no exclusive principle of self-love in the human mind which constantly impels us, as a set purpose, to pursue our own advantage and nothing but that. Secondly, any being would be strictly a selfish agent, all whose impulses were excited by mere physical pleasure or pain, and who had no sense or imagination, or anxiety about any thing but its own bodily feelings. Such a being could have no idea beyond its actual, momentary existence, and would be equally incapable of rational self-love or benevolence. But it is allowed on all hands that the wants and desires of the human mind are not confined within the limits of his bodily sensations. Thirdly, it is said that though man is not merely a physical agent, but is naturally capable of being influenced by imagination and sympathy, yet that this does not prove him to be possessed of any degree of disinterestedness or real good-will to others; since he pursues the good of others only from its contributing to his own gratification; that is, not for their sakes, but for his own, which is still selfishness. That is, the indulgence of certain affections necessarily tends, without our thinking of it, to our own immediate gratification, and the impulse to prolong a state of pleasurable feeling and put a stop to whatever gives the mind the least uneasiness, is the real spring and over-ruling principle of our actions. If our benevolence and sympathy with others arose out of and was entirely regulated by this principle of self-gratification, then these might indeed be with justice regarded as the ostensible accidental motives of our actions, as the form or vehicle which served only to transmit the efficacy of any other hidden principle, as the mask and cover of selfishness. But the supposition itself is the absurdest that can well be conceived. Self-love and sympathy are inconsistent. The instant we no longer suppose man to be a physical agent, and allow him to have ideas of things out of himself and to be influenced by them, that is, to be endued with sympathy at all, he must necessarily cease to be a merely selfish agent. The instant he is supposed to conceive and to be affected by the ideas of other things, he cannot be wholly governed by what relates to himself. The terms ‘selfish’ and ‘natural agent’ are a contradiction. For the one expression implies that the mind is actuated solely by the impulse of self-love, and the other that it is in the power and under the control of other motives. If our sympathy with others does not always originate in the pleasure with which it is accompanied to ourselves, or does not cease the moment it becomes troublesome to us, then man is not entirely and necessarily the creature of self-love. He is under another law and another necessity, and in spite of himself is forced out of the direct line of his own interest, both future and present, by other principles inseparable from his nature as an intelligent being. Our sympathy therefore is not the servile, ready tool of our self-love, but this latter principle is itself subservient to and over-ruled by the former; that is, an attachment to others is a real independent principle of human action. What I wish to state is this: that the mind neither constantly aims at nor tends to its own individual interest. That in benevolence, compassion, friendship, &c. the mind does aim at its good, is what every one must acknowledge. The only sense then in which our sympathy with others can be construed into self-love, must be that the mind is so constituted that without forethought or any reflection in itself, or when seeming most occupied with others, it is still governed by the same universal feeling of which it is wholly unconscious; and that we indulge in compassion, &c. only because and in as far as it coincides with our own immediate gratification. If it could be shown that the current of our desires always runs the same way, either with or without knowledge, I should confess that this would be a strong presumption of what has been called the falsity of human virtue. But it is not true that such is the natural disposition of the mind. It is not so constructed as to receive no impressions but those which gratify its desire of happiness, or to throw off every the least uneasiness relating to others, like oil from water. It is not true that the feelings of others have no natural hold upon the mind but by their connexion with self-interest. Nothing can be more evident than that we do not on any occasion blindly consult the interest of the moment; there is no instinctive unerring bias to our own good, which in the midst of contrary motives and doubtful appearances, puts aside all other impulses and guides them but to its own purposes. It is against all experience to say that in giving way to the feelings of sympathy, any more than to those of rational self-interest (for the argument is the same in both cases), I always yield to that impulse which is accompanied with most pleasure at the time. It is true that I yield to the strongest impulse, but not that my strongest impulse is to pleasure. The idea, for instance, of the relief I may afford to a person in extreme distress, is not necessarily accompanied by a correspondent degree of pleasurable sensation to counterbalance the painful sensation his immediate distress occasions in my mind. It is certain that sometimes the one and sometimes the other may prevail without altering my purpose in the least. I am led to persevere in it by the idea of what are the sufferings, and that it is in my power to alleviate them: though that idea is not always the most agreeable contemplation I could have. Those who voluntarily perform the most painful duties of friendship or humanity do not do them from the immediate gratification arising therefrom; it is as easy to turn away from a beggar as to relieve him; and if the mind were not actuated by a sense of truth, and of the real consequences of its actions, we should uniformly listen to the distresses of others with the same sort of feeling as we go to see a tragedy, only because we calculate that the pleasure is greater than the pain. But I appeal to every one whether this is a true account of human nature. There is indeed a false and bastard kind of feeling commonly called sensibility, which is governed altogether by this reaction of pity on our own minds, and which instead of disproving only serves more strongly to distinguish the true. Upon the theory here stated the mind is supposed to be imperceptibly attached to or to fly from every idea or impression simply as it affects it with pleasure or pain: all other impulses are carried into effect or remain powerless according as they touch this great spring of human affection, which determines every other movement and operation of the mind. Why then do we not reject at first every tendency to what may give us pain? Why do we sympathise with the distresses of others at all? ‘The jealous God at sight of human ties, Spreads his light wings and in a moment flies.’ Why does not our self-love in like manner, if it is so perfectly indifferent and unconcerned a principle as it is represented, immediately disentangle itself from every feeling or idea which it finds becoming painful to it? It should seem we are first impelled by self-love to feel uneasiness at another’s sufferings, in order that the same principle of tender concern for ourselves may afterwards impel us to get rid of that uneasiness by endeavouring to remove the suffering which is the cause of it. In desiring to relieve the distress of another, it is pretended that our only wish is to remove the uneasiness it occasions us: do we also feel this uneasiness in the first instance for the same reason, or from regard to ourselves! It is absurd to say that in compassionating others I am only occupied with my own pain or uneasiness, since this very uneasiness arises from my compassion. It is to take the effect for the cause. One half of the process, namely, our connecting the sense of pain with the idea of it, has evidently nothing to do with self-love: nor do I see any more reason for ascribing the active impulse which follows to this principle, since it does not tend to remove the idea of the object as it gives _me_ pain, or as it actually affects _myself_, but as it is supposed to affect another. Self, mere positive self, is entirely forgotten, both practically and consciously. The effort of the mind is not to remove the idea or the immediate feeling of pain as an abstract impression of the individual, but as it represents the pain which another feels, and is connected with the idea of another’s pain. So long then as this imaginary idea of what another feels excites my sympathy with him, as it fixes my attention on his sufferings, however painful, as it impels me to his relief, and to employ the necessary means for that purpose, at the expense of my ease and satisfaction, that is, so long as I am interested for others, it is not true that my only concern is for myself, or that I am governed solely by the principles of self-interest. Abstract our sympathy as it were from itself, and resolve it into another principle, and it will no longer produce the effects which we constantly see it produce wherever it exists. Let us suppose, for a moment, that the sensations of others were embodied by some means or other with our own, that we felt for them exactly as for ourselves, would not this give us a real sympathy in them, and extend our interest and identity beyond ourselves? Would the motives and principles by which we are actuated be the same as before? But the imagination, though not in the same degree, produces the same effects: it modifies and overrules the impulses of self-love, and binds us to the interests of others as to our own. If the imagination gives us an artificial interest in the welfare of others, if it determines my feelings and actions, and if it even for a moment draws them off from the pursuit of an abstract principle of self-interest, then it cannot be maintained that self-love and benevolence are the same. The motives that give birth to our social affections are by means of the understanding as much regulated by the feelings of others as if we had a real communication and sympathy with them, and are swayed by an impulse altogether foreign to self-love. If it should be said, that after all we are as selfish as we can be, and that the modifications and restrictions of the principle of self-love are only a necessary consequence of the nature of a thinking being, I answer, that this is the very point I wish to establish; or that it is downright nonsense to talk of a principle of entire selfishness in connexion with a power of reflection, that is, with a mind capable of perceiving the consequences of things beyond itself, and of being affected by them. Should any desperate metaphysician persist in affirming that my love of others is still the love of myself, because the impression exciting my sympathy must exist in my mind, and so be a part of myself, I would answer that this is using words without affixing any distinct meaning to them. The love or affection excited by any general idea existing in my mind, can no more be said to be the love of myself, than the idea of another person is the idea of myself, because it is I who perceive it. This method of reasoning, however, will not go a great way to prove the doctrine of an abstract principle of self-interest; for, by the same rule, it would follow that in hating another person I hate myself. Indeed, upon this principle, the whole structure of language is a continued absurdity. It is pretended by a violent assumption, that benevolence is only a desire to prolong the idea of another’s pleasure in one’s own mind, because the idea exists there: malevolence must, therefore, be a disposition to prolong the idea of pain in one’s own mind for the same reason, that is, to injure oneself, for by this philosophy no one can have a single idea which does not refer to, nor any impulse which does not originate in, self. But the love of others cannot be built on the love of self, considering this last as the effect of ‘physical sensibility;’ and the moment we resolve self-love into the rational pursuit of a remote object, it has been shown that the same reasoning applies to both, and that the love of others has the same necessary foundation in the human mind as the love of ourselves. I have endeavoured to prove that there is no real, physical, or essential difference between the motives by which we are naturally impelled to the pursuit of our own welfare and that of others. The truth of this paradox, great as it seems, may be brought to a very fair test: namely, the being able to demonstrate that the doctrine of self-interest, as it is commonly understood, is in the nature of things an absolute impossibility; and, the being able to account for that hypothesis,—that is, for the common feeling and motives of men from habits, and a confused association of ideas aided by the use of language. If others cannot answer my reasons, and if I can account for their prejudices, I should not be justified in hastily relinquishing my opinion, merely on account of its singularity. It may not be improper briefly to recapitulate the former argument as far as it proceeded. I am far from denying that there is a difference between real or physical impulses and ideal motives, but I contend that this distinction is quite beside the present purpose. For self-love properly relates to action, and all action relates to the future, and all future objects are ideal, and the interest we take in all such objects, and the motives to the pursuit of them are ideal too. The distinction between self-love and benevolence, therefore, as separate principles of action, cannot be founded on the difference between real and imaginary objects, between physical and rational motives, inasmuch as the motives and objects of the one and the other are equally ideal things. Whether we voluntarily pursue our own good or that of another, we must inevitably pursue that which is at a distance from us, something out of ourselves, abstracted from the being that acts and wills, and that is incompatible always with our present sensation or physical existence. Self-love, therefore, as the actuating principle of the mind, must imply the efficacy and operation of the imagination of the remote ideas of things, as connected with voluntary action, and the most refined benevolence, the greatest sacrifices of natural affection, of sincerity, of friendship, or humanity, can imply nothing more. The notion of the necessity of actual objects or impressions as the motives to action could not so easily have gained ground as an article of philosophical faith, but from a perverse distinction of the use of the idea to abstract definitions or external forms, having no reference to the feelings or passions; and again from associating the word _imagination_ with merely fictitious situations and events such as never have a real existence, and which consequently do not admit of action. If then self-love, even the most gross and palpable, can only subsist in a rational and intellectual nature, not circumscribed within the narrow limits of animal life, or of the ignorant present time, but capable of giving life and interest to the forms of its own creatures, to the unreal mockeries of future things, to that shadow of itself which the imagination sends before; is it not the height of absurdity to stop here, and poorly and pitifully to suppose that this pervading power must bow down and worship this idol of its own making, and become its blind and servile drudge, and that it cannot extend its creatures as widely around it, as it projects them forward, that it cannot breathe into all other forms the breath of life, and endow even sympathy with vital warmth, and diffuse the soul of morality through all the relations and sentiments of human life? Take away the real, physical, mechanical principle of self-interest, and it will have no basis to rest upon, but that which it has in common with every principle of natural justice or humanity. That there is no real, physical, or mechanical principle of selfishness in the mind, has been abundantly proved. All that remains is, to show how the continued identity of the individual with himself has given rise to the notion of self-interest, which after what has been premised will not be a very difficult task. What I shall attempt to show will be, that individuality expresses not either absolute unity or real identity, but properly such a particular relation between a number of things as produces an immediate or continued connexion between them, and a correspondent marked separation between them and other things. Now, in coexisting things, one part may by means of this communication mutually act and be acted upon by others, but where the connexion is continued, or in successive identity of the individual, though what follows may depend intimately on what has gone before, that is, be acted upon by it, it cannot react upon it; that is, the identity of the individual with itself can only relate practically to its connexion with its past, and not with its future self. Every human being is distinguished from every other human being both numerically and characteristically. He must be numerically distinct by the supposition, or he would not be another individual, but the same. There is, however, no contradiction in supposing two individuals to possess the same absolute properties: but then these original properties must be differently modified afterwards from the necessary difference of their situations, unless we conceive them both to occupy the same relative situation in two distinct systems, corresponding exactly with each other. In fact, every one is found to differ essentially from every one else; if not in original qualities, in the circumstances and events of their lives, and consequently in their ideas and characters. In thinking of a number of individuals, I conceive of them all as differing in various ways from one another as well as from myself. They differ in size, in complexion, in features, in the expression of their countenances, in age, in occupation, in manners, in knowledge, in temper, in power. It is this perception or apprehension of their real differences that first enables me to distinguish the several individuals of the species from each other, and that seems to give rise to the most obvious idea of individuality, as representing, first, positive number, and, secondly, the sum of the differences between one being and another, as they really exist, in a greater or less degree in nature, or as they would appear to exist to an impartial spectator, or to a perfectly intelligent mind. But _I_ am not in reality more different from others than any one individual is from any other individual, neither do I in fact suppose myself to differ really from them otherwise than as they differ from each other. What is it then that makes the difference seem greater _to me_, or that makes me feel a greater change in passing from my own idea to that of another person, than in passing from the idea of another person to that of any one else? Neither my existing as a separate being, nor my differing from others, is of itself sufficient to account for the idea of self, since I might equally perceive others to exist and compare their actual differences without ever having this idea. Farther, individuality is sometimes used to express not so much the absolute difference or distinction between one individual and another, as a relation or comparison of that individual with itself, whereby we tacitly affirm that it is in some way or other the same with itself, or one idea. Now in one sense it is true of all existences whatever that they are literally the same with themselves; that is, they are what they are, and not something else. Each thing is itself, is that individual thing, and no other; and each combination of things is that combination, and no other. So also each individual conscious being is necessarily the same with himself; or in other words, that combination of ideas which represents any individual person is that combination of ideas, and not a different one. This literal and verbal is the only true and absolute identity which can be affirmed of any individual; which, it is plain, does not arise from a comparison of the different parts or successive impressions composing the general idea one with another, but each with itself or all of them taken together with the whole. I cannot help thinking that some idea of this kind is frequently at the bottom of the perplexity which is felt by most people who are not metaphysicians (not to mention those who are), when they are told that man is not always the same with himself, their notion of identity being that he must always be what he is. He is the same with himself, in as far as he is not another. When they say that the man is the same being in general, they do not really mean that he is the same at twenty that he is at sixty, but their general idea of him includes both these extremes, and therefore the same man, that is, the same collective idea, is both the one and the other. This however is but a rude logic. Not well understanding the process of distinguishing the same individual into different metaphysical sections, to compare, collate, and set one against the other (so awkwardly do we at first apply ourselves to the analytical art), to get rid of the difficulty the mind produces a double individual, part real and part imaginary, or repeats the same idea twice over; in which case it is a contradiction to suppose that the one does not correspond exactly with the other in all its parts. There is no other absolute identity in the case. All individuals (or all that we name such) are aggregates, and aggregates of dissimilar things. Here, then, the question is not how we distinguish one individual from another, or a number of things from a number of other things, which distinction is a matter of absolute truth, but how we come to confound a number of things together, and consider many things as the same, which cannot be strictly true. This idea must then merely relate to such a connexion between a number of things as determines the mind to consider them as one whole, each part having a much nearer and more lasting connexion with the rest than with any thing else not included in the same collective idea. (It is obvious that the want of this close affinity and intimate connexion between any number of things is what so far produces a correspondent distinction and separation between one individual and another.) The eye is not the same thing as the ear; it is a contradiction to call it so. Yet both are parts of the same body, which contains these and infinite other distinctions. The reason of this is, that all the parts of the eye have evidently a distinct nature, a separate use, a greater mutual dependence on one another than on those of the ear; at the same time that there is a considerable connexion between the eye and the ear, as parts of the same body and organs of the same mind. Similarity is in general but a subordinate circumstance in determining this relation. For the eye is certainly more like the same organ in another individual, than the different organs of sight and hearing are like one another in the same individual. Yet we do not, in making up the imaginary individual, associate our ideas according to this analogy, which would answer no more purpose than the things themselves would, so separated and so united; but we think of them in that order in which they are mechanically connected together in nature, and in which alone they can serve to any practical purpose. However, it seems hardly possible to define the different degrees or kinds of identity in the same thing by any general rule. The nature of the thing will best point out the sense in which it is to be the same. Individuality may relate either to absolute unity, to the identity or similarity of the parts of any thing, or to an extraordinary degree of connexion between things neither the same, nor similar. This last sense principally determines the positive use of the word, at least with respect to man and other organized beings. Indeed, the term is hardly ever applied in common language to other things. To insist on the first circumstance, namely, absolute unity, as essential to individuality, would be to destroy all individuality; for it would lead to the supposition of as many distinct individuals as there are thoughts, feelings, actions, and properties in the same being. Each thought would be a separate consciousness, each organ a different system. Each thought is a distinct thing in nature; but the individual is composed of numberless thoughts and various faculties, and contradictory passions, and mixed habits, all curiously woven, and blended together in the same conscious being. But to proceed to a more particular account of the origin of the idea of self, which is the connexion of a being with itself. This can only be known in the first instance from reflecting on what passes in our own minds. I should say that individuality in this sense does not arise either from the absolute simplicity of the mind, or from its identity with itself, or from its diversity from other minds, which are not in the least necessary to it, but from the peculiar and intimate connection which subsists between the several faculties and perceptions of the same thinking being constituted as man is; so that, as the subject of his own reflection or consciousness, the same things impressed on any of his faculties produce a quite different effect upon him from what they would do, if they were impressed in the same way on any other being. The sense of personality seems then to depend entirely on the particular consciousness which the mind has of its own operations, sensations, or ideas. Self is nothing but the limits of the mind’s consciousness; as far as that reaches it extends, and where that can go no further, it ceases. The mind is one, from the confined sphere in which it acts; or because it is not all things. It is nearer and more present to itself than to other minds. What passes within it, what acts upon it immediately from without, of this it cannot help being conscious; and this consciousness is continued in it afterwards, more or less perfectly. All that does not come within this sphere of personal consciousness, all that has never come within it, is equally without the verge of self; for that word relates solely to the difference of the manner, or the different degrees of force and certainty with which, from the imperfect and limited nature of our faculties, certain things affect us as they act immediately upon ourselves, and are supposed to act upon others. Hence it is evident that personality itself cannot extend to futurity; for the whole of this idea depends on the peculiar force and directness with which certain impulses act upon the mind. It is by comparing the knowledge I have of my own impressions, ideas, feelings, powers, &c. with my knowledge of the same or similar impressions, ideas, &c. in others, and with this still more imperfect conception that I form of what passes in their minds when this is supposed to be entirely different from what passes in my own, that I acquire the general notion of self. If I could form no idea of any thing passing in the minds of others, or if my ideas of their thoughts and feelings were perfect representations, _i.e._ mere conscious repetitions of them, all personal distinction would be lost either in pure sensation or in perfect universal sympathy. In the one case it would be impossible for me to prefer myself to others, as I should be the sole object of my own consciousness; and in the other case I must love all others as myself, because I should then be nothing more than a part of a whole, of which all others would be equally members with myself. This distinction, however, subsists as necessarily and completely between myself and those who most nearly resemble me, as between myself and those whose characters and properties are the very opposite to mine. Indeed, the distinction itself becomes marked and intelligible in proportion as the objects or impressions themselves are intrinsically the same, as then it is impossible to mistake the true principle on which it is founded, namely, the want of any direct communication between the feelings of one being and those of another. This will shew why the difference between ourselves and others appears greater to us than that between other individuals, though it is not really so. Considering mankind in this twofold relation, as they are to themselves, or as they appear to one another, as the subjects of their own thoughts, or the thoughts of others, we shall find the origin of that wide and absolute distinction which the mind feels in comparing itself with others, to be confined to two faculties, viz., sensation, or rather consciousness, and memory. To avoid an endless subtilty of distinction, I have not given here any account of consciousness in general; but the same reasoning will apply to both. The operation of both these faculties is of a perfectly exclusive and individual nature, and so far as their operation extends (but no farther) is man a personal, or if you will, a selfish being. The sensation excited in me by a piece of red-hot iron striking against any part of my body is simple, absolute, terminating as it were in itself, not representing any thing beyond itself, nor capable of being represented by any other sensation, or communicated to any other being. The same kind of sensation may be indeed excited in another by the same means, but this sensation will not imply any reference to, or consciousness of mine; there is no communication between my nerves and another’s brain, by which he can be affected with my sensations as I am myself. The only notice or perception which another can have of this sensation in me, or which I can have of a similar sensation in another, is by means of the imagination. I can form an imaginary idea of that pain as existing out of myself; but I can only feel it as a sensation when it is actually impressed on myself. Any impression made on another can neither be the cause nor object of sensation to me. Again, the impression or idea left in my mind by this sensation, and afterwards excited either by seeing iron in the same state, or by any other means, is properly an idea of memory. This recollection necessarily refers to some previous impression in my own mind, and only exists in consequence of that impression, or of the continued connexion of the same mind with itself: it cannot be derived from any impression made on another. My thoughts have a particular mechanical dependence only on my own previous thoughts or sensations. I do not remember the feelings of any one but myself. I may, indeed, remember the objects which must have caused such and such feelings in others, or the outward signs of passion which accompanied them. These, however, are but the recollections of my own immediate impressions of what I saw, and I can only form an idea of the feelings themselves by means of the imagination. But, though we take away all power of imagination from the human mind, my own feelings must leave behind them certain traces, or representations of themselves retaining the same general properties, and having the same intimate connexion with the conscious principle. On the other hand, if I wish to anticipate my own future feelings, whatever these may be, I must do so by means of the same faculty by which I conceive of those of others, whether past or future. I have no distinct or separate faculty on which the events and feelings of my future being are impressed before hand, and which shows, as in an enchanted mirror, to me, and me alone, the reversed picture of my future life. It is absurd to suppose that the feelings which I am to have hereafter, should excite certain correspondent impressions of themselves before they have existed, or act mechanically upon my mind by a secret sympathy. The romantic sympathies of lovers, the exploded dreams of judicial astrology, the feats of magic, do not equal the solid, substantial absurdity of this doctrine of self-interest, which attributes to that which is not and has not been, a mechanical operation and a reality in nature. I can only abstract myself from this present being, and take an interest in my future being, in the same sense and manner in which I can go out of myself entirely, and enter into the minds and feelings of others. In short, there neither is nor can be any principle belonging to the individual that antecedently identifies his future events with his present sensation, or that reflects the impression of his future feelings backwards with the same kind of consciousness that his past feelings are transmitted forward through the channels of memory. The size of the river as well as its taste depends on the water that has already fallen into it. I cannot roll back its course, nor is the stream next the source affected by the water which falls into it afterwards, yet we call both the same river. Such is the nature of personal identity. It is founded on the continued connexion of cause and effect, and awaits their gradual progress, and does not consist in a preposterous and wilful unsettling of the natural order of things. There is an illustration of this argument, which, however quaint or singular it may appear, I rather choose to give than omit any thing which may serve to make my meaning clear and intelligible. Suppose then a number of men employed to cast a mound into the sea. As far as it has gone, the workmen pass backwards and forwards on it: it stands firm in its place, and though it advances further and further from the shore, it is still joined to it. A man’s personal identity and self-interest have just the same principle and extent, and can reach no farther than his actual existence. But if any man of a metaphysical turn, seeing that the pier was not yet finished, but was to be continued to a certain point, and in a certain direction, should take it into his head to insist that what was already built, and what was to be built were the same pier, that the one must therefore afford as good footing as the other, and should accordingly walk over the pier-head on the solid foundation of his metaphysical hypothesis—he would act a great deal more ridiculously, but would not argue a whit more absurdly than those who found a principle of absolute self-interest on a man’s future identity with his present being. But, say you, the comparison does not hold in this, that a man can extend his thoughts (and that very wisely too), beyond the present moment, whereas in the other case he cannot move a single step forwards. Grant it. This will only show that the mind has wings as well as feet, which is a sufficient answer to the selfish hypothesis. If the foregoing account be true (and for my part, the only perplexity that crosses my mind in thinking of it arises from the utter impossibility of conceiving of the contrary supposition), it will follow that those faculties which may be said to constitute self, and the operations of which convey that idea to the mind, draw all their materials from the past and present. But all voluntary action, as I have before largely shown, must relate solely and exclusively to the future. That is, all those impressions or ideas with which selfish, or more properly speaking, personal feelings must be naturally connected are just those which have nothing to do at all with the motives to action in the pursuit either of our own interest, or that of others. If indeed it were possible for the human mind to alter the present or the past, so as either to recal what was past, or to give it a still greater reality, to make it exist over again, and in some more emphatical sense, then man might, with some pretence of reason, be supposed naturally incapable of being impelled to the pursuit of any _past_ or _present_ object but from the mechanical excitement of personal motives. It might in this case be pretended that the impulses of imagination and sympathy are of too light, unsubstantial, and remote a creation to influence our real conduct, and that nothing is worthy of the concern of a wise man in which he has not this direct, unavoidable, and homefelt interest. This is, however, too absurd a supposition to be dwelt on for a moment. The only proper objects of voluntary action are (by necessity) future events: these can excite no possible interest in the mind but by the aid of the imagination; and these make the same direct appeal to that faculty, whether they relate to ourselves or to others, as the eye receives with equal directness the impression of our own external form or that of others. It will be easy to perceive by this train of reasoning how, notwithstanding the contradiction involved in the supposition of a generally absolute self-interest, the mind comes to feel a deep and habitual conviction of the truth of this principle. Finding in itself a continued consciousness of its past impressions, it is naturally enough disposed to transfer the same sort of identity and consciousness to the whole of its being. The objects of imagination and of the senses are, as it were, perpetually playing into one another’s hands, and shifting characters, so that we lose our reckoning, and do not think it worth while to mark where the one ends and the other begins. As our actual being is constantly passing into our future being, and carries the internal feeling of consciousness along with it, we seem to be already identified with our future being in this permanent part of our nature, and to feel by a mutual impulse the same necessary sympathy with our future selves that we know we shall have with our past selves. We take the tablets of memory, reverse them, and stamp the image of self on that which as yet possesses nothing but the name. It is no wonder then that the imagination, constantly disregarding the progress of time, when its course is marked out along the straight unbroken line of individuality, should confound the necessary differences of things, and convert a distant object into a present reality. The interest which is hereafter to be felt by this continued conscious being, this indefinite unit, called _me_, seems necessarily to affect me in every state of my existence,—‘thrills in each nerve, and lives along the line.’ In the first place we abstract the successive modifications of our being, and _particular_ temporary interests, into one simple nature and general principle of self-interest, and then make use of this nominal abstraction as an artificial medium to compel those particular actual interests into the closest affinity and union with each other, as different lines meeting in the same centre must have a mutual communication with each other. On the contrary, as I always remain perfectly distinct from others (the interest which I take in their former or present feelings being like that which I take in their future feelings, never any thing more than the effect of imagination and sympathy), the same illusion and transposition of ideas cannot take place with regard to these; namely, the confounding a physical impulse with the rational motives to action. Indeed the uniform nature of my feelings with regard to others (my interest in their welfare having always the same source and sympathy) seems by analogy to confirm the supposition of a similar simplicity in my relation to myself, and of a positive, natural, absolute interest in whatever belongs to that self, not confined to my actual existence, but extending over the whole of my being. Every sensation that I feel, or that afterwards recurs vividly to my memory strengthens the sense of self, which increased strength in the mechanical feeling is indirectly transferred to the general idea, and to my remote, future, imaginary interest; whereas our sympathy with the feelings of others being always imaginary, standing only on its own basis, having no sensible interest to support it, no restless mechanical impulse to urge it on, the ties by which we are bound to others hang loose upon us: the interest we take in their welfare seems to be something foreign to our own bosoms, to be transient, arbitrary, and directly opposed to that necessary, unalienable interest we are supposed to have in whatever conduces to our own well-being. There is another consideration (and that probably the principal one) to be taken into the account in explaining the origin and growth of our selfish habits, which is perfectly consistent with the foregoing theory, and evidently arises out of it. There is naturally, then, no essential difference between the motives by which I am impelled to the pursuit of my own good or that of others: but though there is not a difference in kind, there is one in degree. We know better what our own future feelings will be than what those of others will be in a like case. We can apply the materials afforded us by experience with less difficulty and more in a mass in making out the picture of our future pleasures and pains, without frittering them away or destroying their original sharpnesses: in a word, we can imagine them more plainly, and must therefore be more interested in them. This facility in passing from the recollection of my former impressions to the anticipation of my future ones makes the transition almost imperceptible, and gives to the latter an apparent reality and presentness to the imagination, to a degree in which the feelings of others can scarcely ever be brought home to us. It is chiefly from this greater readiness and certainty with which we can look forward into our own minds than out of us into those of other men, that that strong and uneasy attachment to self, which often comes at last to overpower every generous feeling, takes its rise; not, as I think I have shown, from any natural and impenetrable hardness of the human heart, or necessary absorption of all its thoughts and purposes in a blind exclusive feeling of self-interest. It confirms this account, that we constantly are found to feel for others in proportion as we know from long acquaintance with the turn of their minds, and events of their lives, ‘the hair-breadth scapes’ of their travelling history, or ‘some disastrous stroke which their youth suffered,’ what the real nature of their feelings is; and that we have in general the strongest attachment to our immediate relatives and friends, who from this intercommunity of thoughts and feelings may more truly be said to be a part of ourselves than from even the ties of blood. Moreover, a man must be employed more usually in providing for his own wants and his own feelings than those of others. In like manner he is employed in providing for the immediate welfare of his family and connexions much more than in providing for the welfare of those who are not bound by any positive ties. And we accordingly find that the attention, time, and pains bestowed on these several objects give him a proportionable degree of anxiety about, and attachment to his own interest, and that of those connected with him; but it would be absurd to conclude that his affections are therefore circumscribed by a natural necessity within certain impassable limits, either in the one case or the other. It should not be forgotten here that this absurd opinion has been very commonly referred to the effects of natural affection as it has been called, as well as of self-interest; parental and filial affection being supposed to be originally implanted in the mind by the ties of nature, and to move round the centre of self-interest in an orbit of their own, within the circle of our families and friends. This general connexion between the habitual pursuit of any object and our interest in it, will account for the well-known observation, that the affection of parents to children is the strongest of all others, frequently overpowering self-love itself. This fact does not seem easily reconcilable to the doctrine that the social affections are all of them ultimately to be deduced from association, or the reputed connexion of immediate selfish gratification with the idea of some other person. If this were strictly the case we must feel the strongest attachment to those from whom we had received, instead of those to whom we had done, the greatest number of kindnesses, or where the greatest quantity of actual enjoyment had been associated with an indifferent idea. Junius has remarked that friendship is not conciliated by the power of conferring benefits, but by the equality with which they are received and may be returned. I have hitherto purposely avoided saying any thing on the subject of our physical appetites and the manner in which they may be thought to affect the principle of the foregoing reasonings. They evidently seem at first sight, to contradict the general conclusion which I have endeavoured to establish, as they all of them tend either exclusively or principally to the gratification of the individual, and at the same time refer to some future or imaginary object, as the source of this gratification. The impulse which they give to the will is mechanical, and yet this impulse, blind as it is, constantly tends to and coalesces with the pursuit of some rational end. That is, here is an end aimed at, the desire and regular pursuit of a known good, and all this produced by motives evidently mechanical, and which never impel the mind but in a selfish direction: it makes no difference in the question whether the active impulse proceed directly from the desire of positive enjoyment, or a wish to get rid of some positive uneasiness. I should say then that, setting aside what is of a purely physical nature in the case, the influence of appetite over our volitions may be accounted for consistently enough with the foregoing hypothesis, from the natural effects of a particularly irritable state of bodily feeling, rendering the idea of that which will heighten and gratify its susceptibility of pleasurable feeling, or remove some painful feeling, proportionably vivid, and the object of a more vehement desire than can be excited by the same idea, when the body is supposed to be in a state of indifference, or only ordinary sensibility to that particular kind of gratification. Thus the imaginary desire is sharpened by constantly receiving supplies of pungency, from the irritation of bodily feeling, and its direction is at the same time determined according to the bias of this new impulse; first, indirectly by having the attention fixed on our own immediate sensation; secondly, because that particular gratification, the desire of which is increased by the pressure of physical appetite, must be referred primarily and by way of distinction to the same being, by whom the want of it is felt, that is, to myself. As the actual uneasiness which appetite implies can only be excited by the irritable state of my own body, so neither can the desire of the correspondent gratification subsist in that intense degree, which properly constitutes appetite, except when it tends to relieve that very same uneasiness by which it was excited, as in the case of hunger. There is in the first place the strong mechanical action of the nervous and muscular systems co-operating with the rational desire of my own belief, and forcing it its own way. Secondly, this state of uneasiness grows more and more violent, the longer the relief which it requires is withheld from it: hunger takes no denial, it hearkens to no compromise, is soothed by no flattery, tired out by no delay. It grows more importunate every moment, its demands become larger the less they are attended to. The first impulse which the general love of personal ease receives from bodily pain will give it the advantage over my disposition to sympathise with others in the same situation with myself, and this difference will be increasing every moment, till the pain is removed. Thus, if I at first, either through compassion or by an effort of the will, am regardless of my own wants, and wholly bent upon satisfying the more pressing wants of my companions, yet this effort will at length become too great, and I shall be incapable of attending to any thing but the violence of my own sensations, or the means of alleviating them. It would be easy to show from many things that mere appetite (generally, at least, in reasonable beings) is but the fragment of a self-moving machine, but a sort of half organ, a subordinate instrument even in the accomplishment of its own purposes; that it does little or nothing without the aid of another faculty to inform and direct it. Before the impulses of appetite can be converted into the regular pursuit of a given object, they must first be communicated to the understanding, and modify the will through that. Consequently, as the desire of the ultimate gratification of the appetite is not the same with the appetite itself, that is mere physical uneasiness, but an indirect result of its communication to the thinking or imaginative principle, the influence of appetite over the will must depend on the extraordinary degree of force and vividness which it gives to the idea of a particular object; and we accordingly find that the same cause which irritates the desire of selfish gratification, increases our sensibility to the same desires and gratification in others, where they are consistent with our own, and where the violence of the physical impulse does not overpower every other consideration. MADAME DE STAËL’S ACCOUNT OF GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE. _The Morning Chronicle._] [_Feb. 3, 1814._ The most interesting part of Madame De Staël’s very ingenious and elegant work on Germany is undoubtedly (to literary readers) that in which she has sketched with so much intelligence and grace, the present state of opinions with respect to philosophy and taste in that country. I have not yet seen any satisfactory abstract of her reasonings on either of these subjects. The article in _The Edinburgh Review_ touches but lightly and incidentally on them, from the variety and pressure of other topics of a more lively and general interest. I shall attempt to supply this deficiency, and at the same time to offer some farther thoughts on each subject. The two points on which I wish to enlarge are the view which Madame De Staël takes of German poetry, as contrasted with the French, and secondly of the spirit and principles of the German philosophy, that of Professor Kant, as opposed to the French system of philosophy which is not indeed peculiar to them as a nation, but common to the age. I shall begin with the last first, not only because it is perhaps the most important, but because I think that as the English were the first to propagate the latter system (for the French have only adopted it from us, carrying its practical and popular application farther), we ought not to be the last to disclaim and explode it. It may not be uninteresting as a branch of national literature, to take a general view of the rise and progress of their philosophy, before we come to examine Madame De Staël’s account of the system which Kant has opposed to it, and to shew in what that system is well-founded, and where it fails. According to the prevailing system,—I mean the material or modern philosophy, as it has been called, all thought is to be resolved into sensation, all morality into the love of pleasure, and all action into mechanical impulse. These three propositions taken together, embrace almost every question relating to the human mind, and in their different ramifications and intersections form a net, not unlike that used by the enchanters of old, which, whosoever has once thrown over him, will find all farther efforts vain, and his attempts to reason freely on any subject in which his own nature is concerned, baffled and confounded in every direction. This system, which first rose at the suggestion of Lord Bacon, on the ruins of the school-philosophy, has been gradually growing up to its present height ever since, from a wrong interpretation of the word _experience_, confining it to a knowledge of things without us; whereas it in fact includes all knowledge, relating to objects either within or out of the mind, of which we have any direct and positive evidence. We only know that we ourselves exist, the most certain of all truths, from the experience of what passes within ourselves. Strictly speaking, all other facts of which we are not immediately conscious, are such in a secondary and subordinate sense only. Physical experience is indeed the foundation and the test of that part of philosophy which relates to physical objects: farther, physical analogy is the only rule by which we can extend and apply our immediate knowledge, or infer the effects to be produced by the different objects around us. But to say that physical experiment is either the test, or source, or guide of that other part of philosophy which relates to our internal perceptions, that we are to look in external nature for the form, the substance, the colour, the very life and being of whatever exists in our minds, or that we can only infer the laws which regulate the phenomena of the mind from those which regulate the phenomena of matter, is to confound two things entirely distinct. Our knowledge of mental phenomena from consciousness, reflection, or observation of their correspondent signs in others is the true basis of metaphysical inquiry, as the knowledge of _facts_, commonly so called, is the only solid basis of natural philosophy. To assert that the operations of the mind and the operations of matter are in reality the same, so that we should always regard the one as symbols or exponents of the other, is to assume the very point in dispute, not only without any evidence, but in defiance of every appearance to the contrary. Lord Bacon was undoubtedly a great man, indeed one of the greatest that have adorned this or any other country. He was a man of a clear and active spirit, of a most fertile genius, of vast designs, of general knowledge, and of profound wisdom. He united the powers of imagination and understanding in a greater degree than almost any other writer. He was one of the most remarkable instances of those men, who, by the rare privilege of their nature, are at once poets and philosophers, and see equally in both worlds—the individual and sensible, and the abstracted and intelligible forms of things. The Schoolmen and their followers attended to nothing but names, to essences and species, to laboured analyses and artificial deductions. They seem to have alike disregarded all kinds of experience, whether relating to external objects, or to the observation of our own internal feelings. From the imperfect state of knowledge, they had not a sufficient number of facts to guide them in their experimental researches; and intoxicated with the novelty of their vain distinctions, learnt by rote, they were tempted to despise the clearest and most obvious suggestions of their own minds. Subtle, restless, and self-sufficient, they thought that truth was only made to be disputed about, and existed no where but in their demonstrations and syllogisms. Hence arose their ‘logomachies’—their everlasting word-fights, their sharp debates, their captious, bootless controversies. As Lord Bacon expresses it, ‘they were made fierce with dark keeping,’ signifying that their angry and unintelligible contests with one another were owing to their not having any distinct objects to engage their attention. They built altogether on their own whims and fancies; and, buoyed up by their specific levity, they mounted in their airy disputations in endless flights and circles, clamouring like birds of prey, till they equally lost sight of truth and nature. This great man, therefore, intended an essential service to philosophy, in wishing to recall the attention to facts and experience which had been almost entirely neglected; and thus, by incorporating the abstract with the concrete, and general reasoning with individual observation, to give to our conclusions that solidity and firmness which they must otherwise always want. He did nothing but insist on the necessity of experience, more particularly in natural science; and from the wider field that is open to it there, as well as the prodigious success it has met with, this latter application of the word, in which it is tantamount to physical experiment, has so far engrossed the whole of our attention, that mind has, for a good while past, been in some danger of being overlaid by matter. We run from one error into another, and as we were wrong at first, so in altering our course, we have passed into the opposite extreme. We despised experience altogether before: now we would have nothing but experience, and that of the grossest kind. We have, it is true, gained much by not consulting the suggestions of our own minds in questions where they inform us of nothing, namely, on the particular laws and phenomena of the material world; and we have hastily concluded (reversing the rule) that the best way to arrive at the knowledge of ourselves also, was to lay aside the dictates of our own consciousness, thoughts, and feelings, as deceitful and insufficient guides, though they are the only means by which we can obtain the least light upon the subject. We seem to have resigned the natural use of our understandings, and to have given up our own existence as a nonentity. We look for our thoughts and the distinguishing properties of our minds in some image of them in matter as we look to see our faces in a glass. We no longer decide physical problems by logical dilemmas, but we decide questions of logic by the evidence of the senses. Instead of putting our reason and invention to the rack indifferently on all questions, whether we have any previous knowledge of them or not, we have adopted the easier method of suspending the use of our faculties altogether, and settling tedious controversies by means of ‘four champions fierce—hot, cold, moist and dry,’ who with a few more of the retainers and hangers on of matter determine all questions relating to the nature of man and the limits of the human understanding very learnedly. But the laws by which we think, feel, and act, we must discover in the mind itself, or not at all. This original bias in favour of mechanical reasoning and physical analogy was confirmed by the powerful aid of Hobbes, who was, indeed, the father of the modern philosophy. His strong mind and body appear to have resisted all impressions, but those which were derived from the downright blows of matter: all his ideas seemed to lie like substances in his brain: what was not a solid, tangible, distinct, palpable object, was to him nothing. The external image pressed so close upon his mind that it destroyed the power of consciousness, and left no room for attention to any thing but itself. He was by nature a materialist. Locke assisted greatly in giving popularity to the same scheme, as well by espousing the chief of Hobbes’s metaphysical principles as by the doubtful resistance which he made to the rest. And it has been perfected and has received its last polish and roundness in the hands of some French philosophers, as Condillac and others. The modern metaphysical system assumes as its basis that the operations of the intellect are only a continuation of the impulses existing in matter; or that all the thoughts and conceptions of the mind are nothing more than various modifications of the original impressions of things on a being endued with sensation or simple perception. This system considers ideas merely as they are caused by outward impressions acting on the organs of sense, and excludes the understanding as a distinct faculty or power from all share in its own operations. The following is a summary of the general principles of this philosophy as they are expressly laid down by Hobbes, and by the latest writers of the French school. 1. That our _ideas_ are copies of the impressions made by external objects on the senses. 2. That as nothing exists out of the mind but matter and motion, so it is itself with all its operations nothing but matter and motion. 3. That thoughts are single, or that we can think of only one object at a time. 4. That we have no general nor abstract ideas. 5. That the only principle of connection between one thought and another is association, or their previous connection in sense. 6. That reason and understanding depend entirely on the mechanism of language. 7 and 8. That the sense of pleasure and pain is the sole spring of action, and self-interest the source and centre of all our affections. 9. That the mind acts from a mechanical or physical necessity, over which it has no controul, and consequently is not a moral or accountable agent.—_The manner of reasoning upon this last question is the only circumstance of importance in which Hobbes differs decidedly from modern writers._ 10. That there is no difference in the natural capacities of men, the mind being originally passive to all impressions alike, and becoming whatever it is from circumstances. Except the first, all of these positions are either denied or doubtfully admitted by Mr. Locke. It is, however, his admission of the first principle, which has opened a door directly or indirectly to all the rest. The system of Kant is a formal and elaborate antithesis to that which bears the name of Locke, and it is built on ‘the _sublime_ restriction (as Madame de Staël expresses it) added by Leibnitz to the well-known axiom _nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu_—NISI INTELLECTUS IPSE.’ It is in the manner of proving this restriction, and of explaining this word, _the intellect_, that the whole question depends, and to this I shall devote another letter. AN ENGLISH METAPHYSICIAN. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED _The Morning Chronicle._] [_Feb. 17, 1814._ The principle that _all the ideas, operations, and faculties of the mind may be traced to, and ultimately accounted for, from simple sensation_, is all that remains of Mr. Locke’s celebrated Essay, and that to which it owes its present rank among philosophical productions. His various attempts to modify this principle, or reconcile it to common notions have been gradually exploded, and have given place, one by one, to the more severe and logical deductions of Hobbes from the same general principle. Mr. Locke took the faculties of the mind as he found them in himself and others, and instead of levelling the structure, was contented to place it on a new foundation. By this compromise with prudence and candour, he prepared the way for the introduction of the principle, which being once established, very soon overturned all the trite opinions, and vulgar prejudices, which had been improperly associated with it. There was in fact, no place for them in the new system. I confess it strikes some degree of awe into the mind, and makes it feel, that fame, even the best, is not a substantial thing, but the uncertain shadow of real excellence, when we reflect that the immortal renown, which attends the name of Locke as the great luminary of the age in which he lived, is but a dim and borrowed lustre from the writings of one, whom he himself calls, and who has been universally considered as ‘a justly decried author.’ The sentence of the poet is as applicable here as it ever was— ‘Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies; But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, And perfect witness of all-judging Jove!’ The great defect with which the Essay on Human Understanding is chargeable, is that there really is not a word about the understanding in it, nor any attempt to shew what it is, or whether it is, or is not any thing, distinct from the faculty of simple perception. The operations of thinking, comparing, discerning, reasoning, willing, and the like, which Mr. Locke generally ascribes to it, are the operations of nothing, or of we know not what. All the force of his mind seems to have been so bent on exploding innate ideas, and tracing our thoughts to their external source, that he either forgot, or had not leisure to examine what the internal principle of all thought is. He took for his basis a bad simile, namely, that the mind is like a blank sheet of paper, originally void of all characters, and merely passive to the impressions made upon it: for this, though true as far as relates to innate ideas, that is, to any impressions previously existing in the mind, is not true of the mind itself, or of the manner in which it forms its ideas of the objects actually impressed upon it. The obvious tendency of this simile was to convert the understanding into the mere passive receiver and retainer of physical impressions, a convenient repository for the straggling images of things, or a sort of empty room into which ideas are conveyed from without through the doors of the senses, as you would carry goods into an unfurnished lodging. And hence, again, it has been found necessary, by subsequent writers, to get rid of those different faculties and operations, which Mr. Locke elsewhere supposes to belong to the mind, but which are in truth only compatible with the active powers, and independent nature of the mind itself. It was to remedy this deficiency that Leibnitz proposed to add to the maxim of Locke, _that there is nothing in the understanding which was not before in the senses_—‘that sublime restriction,’ so much applauded by Madame de Staël—‘EXCEPT THE UNDERSTANDING ITSELF:’ and it is to the establishment and development of this distinction, that the whole of the Kantean philosophy appears to be directed. In what manner, and in what success (judging from the representations we have received of it) remains to be shewn. The account which Madame de Staël has given of this system is full of the graces of imagination and the charm of sentiment: it passes slightly over many of the difficulties, and softens the abruptness of the reasoning by the harmony of the style. It is therefore the most popular and pleasing account which has been given of the system of the German Philosopher: but after all, it will be better to take his own statement, though somewhat ‘harsh and crabbed’ as the most tangible, authentic, and satisfactory. ‘The following,’ says his translator Willich, ‘are the elements of his _Critique of Pure Reason_, the first of Kant’s systematical works, and the most remarkable for profound reasoning and the striking illustrations, with which it throughout abounds. ‘We are in possession of certain notions _à priori_[8] which are absolutely independent of all experience, although the objects of experience correspond with them, and which are distinguished by necessity, and strict universality. To these are opposed empirical notions, or such as are only possible _à posteriori_, that is, through experience. Besides these, we have certain notions, with which no objects of experience ever correspond, which rise above the world of sense, and which we consider as the most sublime, such as God, liberty, immortality. There is always supposed in every empirical notion, or impression of external objects, a pure perception _à priori_, a form of the sensitive faculty, _viz._ space and time. This form first renders every actual appearance of objects possible. By the sensitive faculty we are able to form perceptions; by the understanding we form general ideas. By the sensitive faculty we experience impressions, and objects are given to us; by the understanding we bring representations of these objects before us: we think of them. Perceptions and general ideas are the elements of all our knowledge. Without the sensitive faculty, no object could be given (proposed to) us; without the understanding none would be thought of by us. These two powers are really distinct from one another; but neither of the two without the other can produce a _notion_. In order to obtain a distinct notion of any one thing, we must present to our general ideas objects in perception, and reduce our perceptions to, or connect them with, these general ideas. As the sensitive faculty has its determined forms, so has our understanding likewise forms _à priori_. These may be properly termed _categories_; they are pure ideas of the understanding, which relate, _à priori_, to the objects of perception in general. The objects of experience, therefore, are in no other way possible; they can in no other way be thought of by us, and their multiplied diversity can only be reduced to one act of judgment, or to one act of consciousness, by means of these categories of sense. Hence, the categories have objective reality. They are either categories of 1. _Quantity_, as unity, number, totality; or, 2. Of _Quality_, as reality, negation, limitation; or, 3. Of _Relation_, as substance and accident, cause and effect; or, 4. Of _Modality_, as possibility and impossibility, existence and non-existence, necessity and contingency. ‘The judgment is the capacity of applying the general ideas of the understanding to the information of experience. The objects of experience are regulated according to these ideas; and not, _vice versâ_, our ideas according to the objects.’ Such is the outline of this author’s account of the intellect, which, after all, appears to be rather dogmatical than demonstrative. He is much more intent on raising an extensive and magnificent fabric, than on laying the foundations. Each part does not rest upon its own separate basis, but, like the workmanship of some lofty arch, is supported and rivetted to its place by the weight and regular balance of the whole. Kant does not appear to trouble himself about the evidence of any particular proposition, but to rely on the conformity and mutual correspondence of the different parts of his general system, and its sufficiency, if admitted, to explain all the phenomena of the human intellect with consistency and accuracy;—in the same manner as the decypherer infers that he has found the true key of the hieroglyphic hand-writing, when he is able to solve every difficulty by it. However profound and comprehensive we may allow the views of human nature unfolded by this philosopher to be, his method is necessarily defective in simplicity, clearness, and force. His reasoning is seldom any thing more than a detailed, paraphrased explanation of his original statement, instead of being (what it ought to be) an appeal to known facts, or a deduction from acknowledged principles, or a detection of the inconsistencies of other writers. The extreme involution and technicality of his style proceed from the same source; that is, from the necessity of adapting a conventional language to the artificial and arbitrary arrangement of his ideas. The whole of Kant’s system is evidently an elaborate antithesis or contradiction to the modern philosophy, and yet it is by no means a real approximation to popular opinion. Its chief object is to oppose certain fundamental principles to the _empirical_ or mechanical philosophy, and it either rejects or explains away the more common and established notions, except so far as they coincide with the rigid theory of the author. He sets out with a preconceived hypothesis; and all other facts and opinions are made to bend to a predominant purpose. The founder of the _transcendental_ philosophy very properly insists on the distinction between the sensitive and the intellectual faculties, and makes this division the ground-work of his entire system. He considers the joint operation of these different powers as necessary to all our knowledge, and enumerates with scrupulous formality the different ideas which originate in this complex progress, and points out the share which each has in each. The author conceives of certain general ideas, as _substance_ and _accident_, _cause_ and _effect_, _totality_, _number_, _quantity_, _relation_, _possibility_, _necessity_, etc. as pure ideas of the understanding; and he classes _space_ and _time_ as primary forms of the sensitive faculty.[9] All this may be very true; but the proof may also be required, and it is not given. Yet modern metaphysicians are not likely, either as sceptical inquirers after truth, or as lovers of abstruse paradoxes, to be satisfied with the bare assumption of a common prejudice. They will say, either that all these ideas have no real existence in the mind, that they are mere abstract terms which owe their force and validity to the mechanism of language; or admitting their existence in the mind, they will contend with Locke, that they are only general, reflex, and compound ideas, originally derived from sensation. ‘Whence do all the ideas and operations of the mind proceed?’ _From experience_, is the answer given by the modern philosophy—_From experience and from the understanding_, is the answer given by Kant. The former solution has the advantage of simplicity; and the logical proof is wanting to the latter. To compare grave things with gay, the display which this celebrated philosopher makes of his categories, his forms of the sensitive faculty, his pure ideas, and _à priori_ principles, somewhat resembles the method taken by Sir Epicure Mammon in _The Alchymist_ to persuade his sceptical friend that he is about to discover the philosopher’s stone by overpowering his imagination with the description of the fine things he will do when he has it:—‘And all this I will do with the stone.’ ‘But will all this give you the stone?’ says Pertinax Surly, who ‘will not believe antiquity’ any more than our modern sceptics. I think that the truth may be got at much more simply, and without all this parade of words. The business of the mind is twofold—to receive impressions and to perceive their relations; without which there can be no ideas. Now the first of these is the office of the senses, and is the only original function of the mind, according to the prevailing system. The second is properly the office of the understanding, and is that, the nature or existence of which is the great point in debate between the contending parties. The more complex and refined operations of this faculty, such as judging, reasoning, abstraction, willing, etc. are either totally denied, or at best resolved into simple ideas of sensation by modern metaphysical writers. I know of no better way, therefore, to establish the contrary hypothesis than to take these simple ideas of the moderns, and shew that they contain the same necessary principles of the understanding, the same operations of judging, comparing, distinguishing, abstracting, which they discard with so much profound contempt, or treat as accidental and artificial results of some higher faculty. If it can be proved that the understanding, in the strict and exclusive sense, is necessary to our having any _ideas_ whatever,—that the very terms are synonymous and inseparable—that in the first original conception of the simplest object of nature there is implied the same principle, a power of perceiving the relations of different things, which is only exerted in a more perfect and comprehensive manner in the most complex and difficult processes of the human intellect, one would think that there must be an end of the question. AN ENGLISH METAPHYSICIAN. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED _The Morning Chronicle._] [_March 3, 1814._ ‘For men to have recourse to subtleties in raising difficulties, and then to complain that they should be taken off by minutely examining these subtleties, is a strange kind of proceeding.’ I cannot better explain the modern theory of the understanding (which it will be the object of this letter to consider) than in the words of one of the best and ablest commentators of that school, Mr. Horne Tooke. ‘The business of the mind,’ he says ‘appears to me to be very simple. It extends no farther than to receive impressions, that is, to have sensations or feelings. What are called its operations are merely the operations of language. The greatest part of Mr. Locke’s Essay, that is, all which relates to what he calls _the composition_, _abstraction_, _complexity_, _generalization_, _relation_, etc. of ideas, does indeed merely concern language. If he had been sooner aware of the inseparable connection between words and knowledge, he would not have talked of the composition of ideas, but would have seen that the only composition was in the terms, and consequently, that it was as improper to talk of a complex idea as of a complex star! I will venture to say that it is an easy matter, upon Mr. Locke’s own principles and a physical consideration of the senses and the mind, to prove the impossibility of the composition of ideas, and that they are not ideas, but merely terms, which are general and abstract.’—Diversions of Purley, Vol. i. p. 39, 51, &c.[10] Now this is very explicit, and, I also conceive, very logical. For I am ready to grant that ‘Mr. Locke’s own principles and a physical consideration of the mind’ do lead to the conclusions here stated; and it is on that account that I shall attempt to shew that those principles and the consideration of the mind, as a physical thing, are in themselves absurd. These writers taking up the principle, that to have sensations or feelings was the only real faculty of the mind, and perceiving that the having sensations merely was a different thing from having an idea or consciousness of their relations (inasmuch as no sensation as such can include a knowledge of or reference to any other) have inferred very rationally that all the operations of the mind founded on a principle of general consciousness or common understanding, _viz._ _compounding_, _comparing_, _discerning_, _judging_, _reasoning_, etc. were excluded from their physical theory of sensation, and must be referred to some trick or deception of the mind, the mechanism of language or habitual association of ideas. According to this theory, besides the sensible impressions of individual objects, and their distinct traces left in the memory—the rest is merely words. In supposing that we combine these different impressions together, that we compare different objects, that we reason upon them, it seems we only deceive ourselves, and mistake a rapid and mechanical transition from one idea to another for the actual perception of the relations between them. Thus have these philosophers sacrificed all the known facts and conscious operations of the mind to a literal deduction from a gross verbal fallacy. For what are these single objects or individual ideas, of which the senses are competent to take cognizance, and beyond which the understanding can never advance a step? Neither more nor less than complex and general ideas, which imply all the same intellectual impossibilities of comparing, judging, distinguishing, &c. _i.e._ of perceiving a number of diversified relations, of connecting the MANY into the ONE, which are objected to the more deliberate and formal acts of understanding and reason. The mind, say they, can perceive but one idea at a time, that is, it may perceive a square or a triangle, but it cannot compare them together, or perceive their proportions, because to do this, it must attend to different ideas at once. Yet what is this individual idea of a square, for instance, but an idea of given lines, their direction, equality, connection, &c. all which must be combined together in the mind, before it can possibly form any idea of the object? Mr. Tooke says, the complexity is in the term. I should say, the individuality is in the term, that is, in the application of one name to a collective idea, which superficial reasoners, at once the slaves of idle paradox and vulgar prejudice, have therefore imagined to be one thing. The whole error of this system has, indeed, arisen from considering ideas themselves, or those particular objects, which are marked by a single name, or strike at once, and in a mass, upon the senses, as simple things. But there is no one of these particular ideas, as they are called, which is not an aggregate of many things, or that can subsist for a moment but in the understanding. By destroying the composition of ideas, all ideas as well as all combinations of ideas, would be completely and for ever banished from the mind; which would be left a mere _tabula rasa_, a blank, indeed, or would at all times strictly resemble what Mr. Locke describes it to be in its original state, ‘a dark closet with a little glimmering of light let in through the loop-holes of the senses.’ Writers, in general, who have maintained the existence of a distinct faculty besides the senses, have applied themselves to shew that, besides particular ideas or objects, it was necessary to admit the understanding to explain the perception of the relations between them. My purpose is to shew that the same perception of relation, the same understanding is implied in the very ideas or objects themselves. To have sensations is not to compare them, that is, sensation and understanding are not the same thing. To have ideas, it is necessary to compare our sensations, that is, ideas and understanding are the same thing. I can conceive then of a being endued with the power of sensation, so as to receive the direct impressions of outward objects, and also with memory, so as to retain them for any length of time, as they were severally and unconnectedly presented, yet without any signs of understanding. The state of such a being would be that of animal life, and something more (with the addition of memory), but it would not amount to intellect. As this distinction is rather difficult to be explained, I hope I may be allowed to express it in any way I can, and without sacrificing to the graces. Suppose a number of animalculæ, as a heap of mites in a rotten cheese, lying as close together as they possibly can (though the example should be of something more ‘drossy and divisible’ of something less reasonable, approaching nearer to pure sensation than we can conceive of any creature that exercises the functions of the meanest instinct). No one will contend that in this heap of living matter there is any idea or intimation of the number, position, or intricate involutions of that little, lively, restless tribe. This idea is evidently not contained in any of the parts separately, nor is it contained in all of them put together. That is, the aggregate of many actual sensations is, we here plainly see, a totally different thing from the collective idea, comprehension or consciousness of those sensations, as connected together into one whole, or of any of their relations to each other. We may go on multiplying sensations to the end of time, without ever advancing one step in the other process, or producing a single thought. But in what, I would ask, does this supposition differ from that of many distinct particles of matter, full of animation, tumbling about, and pressing against each other, in the same brain, except that we make use of this brain as a common medium to unite their different desultory actions in the same general principle of thought or consciousness—that is, understanding? Or, if this comparison should be thought not courtly enough, let us imagine one of Mrs. Salmon’s full faced, comely wax figures, sitting in its chair of state, to be suddenly endued with life and physical organization but nothing more. Such an unaccountable _lusus naturæ_ would answer exactly to the theory of modern metaphysicians, or would be capable of receiving feelings or impressions by its different organs, but would be totally void of any reflection upon them. It would be only a bloated mass of listless sensation, a sordid compound of proud flesh and irritable humours, a mere animal existence, a living automation, crawling all over with morbid feelings, but without the least ray of understanding, or any knowledge of itself or of the things around, incapable of consistency of character or purpose, of foresight, deliberation, sympathy, and of all that distinguishes human reason or dignifies human nature! Besides actual, sensible impressions, I suppose that there is a common principle of thought, a superintending faculty, which alone perceives the relations of things and enables us to comprehend their connections, forms, and masses. This faculty is properly the understanding, and it is by means of this faculty that man indeed becomes a reasonable soul. Without this surrounding and forming power, we could never conceive the idea of any one object, as of a table or a chair, a blade of grass or a grain of sand. Every one of these includes a certain configuration, hardness, colour, size, &c. _i.e._ impressions of different things, received by different senses, which must be put together by the understanding before they can be referred to any particular object, or considered as one idea. Without this faculty, all our ideas would be necessarily decomposed, and crumbled down into their original elements and fluxional parts. We could assuredly in this case never connect the different links in a chain of reasoning together, for the very links of which this chain must consist would be ground to powder. We could neither form any comparison between our ideas, nor have any ideas to compare. There would be an infinite divisibility in the impressions of the mind, as well as in the parts of material objects. Each separate impression must remain absolutely simple and distinct, unknown to and unconscious of the rest, shut up in the narrow cell of its own individuality. No two of these atomic impressions could ever club together to form even a sensible point, much less should we be able to arrive at any of the larger masses or nominal descriptions of things. The most that sensation could possibly do for us would be to furnish the mind with ideas of some of those which Mr. Locke calls the simple qualities of objects, as of colour or pressure, though not as a general notion or diffused feeling, for it is certain that no one impression could ever contain more than the tinge of a single ray of light, or the puncture of a single particle of matter. Perhaps we might in this way be supposed to possess an infinite number of microscopic impressions and fractions of ideas, but there being nothing to arrange or bind them together, the whole would present only a disjointed mass of blind, unconscious confusion. All nature, all objects, all parts of all objects, would be equally ‘without form and void.’ _The mind alone is formative_, to use the expression of Kant; or it is that which by its pervading and elastic energy unfolds and expands our ideas, that gives order and consistency to them, that assigns to every part its proper place, and fixes it there, and that frames the idea of the whole. Or in other words, it is the understanding alone that perceives relation, but every object is made up of a bundle of relations. In short, there is no object or idea which does not consist of a number of parts arranged in a certain manner, but of this arrangement the parts themselves cannot be sensible. To make each part conscious of its relation to all the rest is to suppose an infinite number of intellects instead of one; and to say that a knowledge or perception of each part separately _without_ a reference to the rest can produce a conception of the whole, is a contradiction in terms. Ideas then are the offspring of the understanding, not of the senses. An idea necessarily implies, not only a number of distinct positive impressions, but some bond of union between them, some internal conscious principle to which they are alike communicated, and which grasps, overlooks, and comprehends the whole. The idea of a square, for example, is not the same thing with the compound impression made by the figure on the senses. For the immediate impression of any one of the sides cannot, as a mere sensation, be accompanied with an additional knowledge or reflex image of the remaining three sides, but is a perfectly distinct, physical thing; neither can the actual coexistence of all these impressions be accompanied with a consciousness of their mutual relations to each other, _i.e._ with an idea of the whole, without supposing some general representative faculty, to which these distinct impressions are referred. Otherwise, different impressions made on the same organized or sentient being would no more produce the slightest continuity of thought or idea of the same object than different physical impressions conveyed to different organized beings would produce an immediate consciousness of these different objects or of the relations between them. If to have sensations were the same thing as to compare them, then different persons seeing different objects might without any communication make an exact comparison between them. If to have the sensible impression of the different parts of an object were the same thing as to form an idea of it, then different persons looking at the two halves of any object would be able to compound an idea of the whole between them, though each of them was perfectly unconscious of what was passing in the other’s mind. Unless we suppose some faculty of this sort which opens a direct communication between our perceptions, so that the same thinking principle is at the same time cognisant of different impressions, and of their relations to each other, it seems a thing impossible to conceive how any comparison can take place between different impressions existing at the same time, or between our past and present impressions, or ever to explain what is meant by saying, ‘_I_ perceive such and such objects, _I_ remember such and such events,’ since these different impressions are evidently referred to the same conscious being, which very idea of individuality could never have been so much as conceived of, if there were no other connection between our perceptions, than that which arises from the juxtaposition of the particles of matter on which they are actually impressed, or from ‘a physical consideration of the senses and the mind.’ The mind in this case consisting of nothing more than a succession of material points, each part would be sensible of the corresponding part of any object which might be impressed upon it, but could certainly know nothing of the impression which was made on any other part of the same organic substance, except by its communication to the same general principle of understanding. Ideas would exist in the mind, like tapestry figures or pictures in a gallery, without a spectator. On this hypothesis, I perfectly agree with Mr. Horne Tooke, that it would be as absurd to talk of a complex idea as of a complex star; for each impression or sensation must be as perfectly distinct from, and unconnected with the rest, as the stars that compose a constellation. One idea or impression would have no more connection with any other, than if it were parcel of another intellect, or floated in the region of the moon.[11] It is strange that Mr. Locke should rank among simple ideas that of number, which he defines to be the idea of unity repeated. But how the impression of successive or distinct units should ever give the idea of repetition, unless the former instances are borne in mind, I have not the slightest conception. There might be an endless transition from one unit to another, but no addition made or ideal aggregate formed. As well might we suppose, that a body of an inch diameter, by shifting from place to place, may enlarge its dimensions to a foot or a mile, as that a succession of units, perceived separately, should produce the complex idea of multitude. On the mechanical hypothesis, the mind can receive or attend to but one impression at a time, and the idea of number would be too mighty for it. Though Mr. Locke constantly supposes the mind to perceive relations, and explains its common operations on this principle, there is but one place in his work in which he seems to have been upon the point of discovering that this principle lies at the foundation of, and is absolutely necessary to all our ideas whatever. He says, in the beginning of his chapter on Power, which he classes among simple ideas, ‘I confess power includes in it _some kind of relation_ (a relation to action or change), as, indeed, which of our ideas, of what kind soever, when attentively considered, does not? For our ideas of extension, duration, and number, do they not all contain in them a secret relation of the parts? Figure and motion have something relative in them much more visibly; and sensible qualities, as colours and smells, what are they but the powers of different bodies in relation to our perception? And if considered in the things themselves, do they not depend on the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of the parts? All which include some kind of relation in them. Our idea, therefore, of power, I think, may well have a place amongst other simple ideas, and be considered as one of them, being one of those that make a principal ingredient in our complex ideas of substances.’—Essay on Human Understanding, vol. i. p. 234. That is to say, in other words, the idea of power, though confessedly complex, according to Mr. Locke, as depending on the changes we observe produced by one thing on another, is to pass for a simple idea, because it has as good a right to this denomination as other complex ideas, which are usually classed as simple ones. It is thus that the inquiring mind seems to be always hovering on the brink of truth: but timidity, or indolence, or prejudice, makes us shrink back, unwilling to trust ourselves to the fathomless abyss. I have thus given the best account which it is in my power to give of the understanding, as that conscious, comprehensive principle, which is the source not only of judgment and reasoning, but which is implied in every possible idea of the mind, or conception even of sensible objects. Every such object, it has been shewn, is made up of a number of individual impressions, yet how these perfectly detached, and desultory impressions should of themselves contain or produce a knowledge of their relations to each other, of their order, number, likeness, distances, limits, &c. by which alone they can be connected into one whole—without being first communicated to the same conscious principle of thought, to one diffusive, and yet self-centered intellect, one undivided active spirit, co-extended with the object, and yet ever present to itself, that ‘Thrills in each nerve, and lives along the line,’ it is difficult to imagine. There is no idea that is not evolved from this coinstantaneous power in the mind. The activity which Shakespeare ascribes to _Ariel_ is not greater than that which is necessary to the production of the meanest thought. ‘Jove’s light’nings more momentary and sight-outrunning are not!’ AN ENGLISH METAPHYSICIAN. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED (ON ABSTRACTION) _The Morning Chronicle._] [_April 8, 1814._ I am aware that the long digression on the formation of our ideas, with which I troubled you in my last, will be looked upon as rhapsody and extravagance by the strictest sect of those who are called philosophers. The understanding has been set aside by these ingenious persons as an awkward incumbrance, since they conceived it practicable to carry on the whole business of thought and reason by a succession of individual images and sensible points. The fine network of the mind, the intellectual cords that bind and hold our scattered perceptions together, and form the living line of communication between them, are dissolved and vanish before the clear light of modern metaphysics, as the gossamer is dissipated by the sun. The adepts in this system smile at the contradictions involved in the supposition of perceiving the relations between different things, and say that the common theory of the understanding leads to the absurdity that the mind may attend to two ideas at once, which is with them impossible. What I have endeavoured to establish, is, that if the mind cannot have more than one idea at a time, it can never have any, since all the ideas we know of consist of more than one; and though the conviction we have of attending to different impressions at once, when we compare, distinguish, judge, reason, &c. has been gratuitously resolved into a deception of the mind, mistaking a rapid succession of objects for a joint conception of them, yet it will hardly be pretended that we deceive ourselves in thinking we have any ideas at all. Whether the advocates for this hypothesis will sit down contented under the total dissipation of all thought, the utter privation of all ideas, to which, by their own arguments, they will have reduced themselves, it remains for them to determine. We have seen that Mr. Tooke resolves the complexity of our ideas into the complexity of the terms made use of. How a term can be complex, otherwise than from the complexity of its meaning, that is, of the idea attached to it, is by no means easy to understand. Other writers, to avoid the seeming contradiction of supposing the mind to divide its attention between different objects, have suggested the instant of its passing from one to the other as the true point of comparison between them; or that the time when it had the idea of both together, was the time when it had an idea of neither. To such absurdities are ingenious men driven by setting up argument against fact, and denying the most obvious truths for which they cannot account, like the sophist who denied the existence of motion, because he could not understand its nature. It might perhaps be deemed a sufficient answer to those who build systems and lay down learned propositions on the principle that the mind can comprehend but one idea at a time, to say that they consequently can have no meaning in what they write, since when they begin a sentence, they cannot have the least idea what will be the end of it, and by the time they get there, must totally forget the beginning.—‘Peace to all such.’[12] Mr. Horne Tooke justly complains of the uncertainty, confusion, and laxity of Mr. Locke’s reasoning on the subject of abstract ideas, though I cannot agree with him that it is therefore ‘very different from that incomparable author’s usual method of proceeding.’—See Essay on Human Understanding, vol. ii. p. 15, &c. I am quite at a loss to determine, from Mr. Locke’s various statements, whether he really supposed the abstraction to be in the ideas, or merely in the terms. There is none of this wavering and perplexity in the minds of his French commentators, none of this suspicion of error, and anxious desire to correct it; no unforeseen objections arise to stagger their natural confidence in themselves; it is all the same light, airy, self-complacency, not a speck is seen to sully the clear sky of their philosophy, not a wrinkle disturbs the smooth and smiling current of their thoughts. In the Logic of the Abbé Condillac, that manual of the modern sciolist, the question of abstract ideas is settled and cleared from all difficulties, past, present, and to come, with as little expence of thought, time, and trouble, as possible. The Abbé demonstrates with ease. ‘But what in truth,’ he asks, ‘is the reality which a general and abstract idea has in the mind? It is nothing but a name; or if it is any thing more, it necessarily ceases to be abstract and general. If in thinking of _a man_ in general I contemplate anything in this word, besides the mere denomination, it can only be by representing to myself some one man; and a man can no more be a man in the abstract in my mind than in nature. Abstract ideas are therefore only denominations. This confirms what we have already demonstrated, how necessary words are to us; for if we had no general terms, we should have no abstract ideas; if we had no abstract ideas, we should have neither _genera_ nor _species_; and without _genera_ and _species_, we could reason upon nothing. To speak, to reason, to form general and abstract ideas, are then in fact the same thing; and this truth, simple as it is, might pass for a discovery. Certainly, men in general have not even had a notion of it.’—Logic, p. 136. Now, in order to prevent these _genera_ and _species_, and all rational ideas along with them, from being precipitated into the empty abyss of words prepared for them by these philosophers, it may be proper to ask one question, viz. if we have no idea of _genera_ and _species_, or of what different things have in common or alike, that is, if the idea is nothing but the name, how is it that we know when to apply the same general name to different particulars, which on this principle can have nothing left to connect them in the mind? For example, take the words, _a white horse_. Now, say they, it is the terms which are general or common, but we have no general or abstract idea corresponding to them. But if we have no general idea of _white_, nor any general idea of _a horse_, what have we left to guide us in applying the phrase to any but the first horse, any more than in applying the terms of an unknown tongue to their respective objects? In short, what is it that ‘puts the same common name into a capacity of signifying many particulars,’ but that common nature or kind which is conceived to belong to them? Condillac says, that without general terms, there would be no general ideas; it appears to me, that without general ideas there could be no general terms. Language without this would be reduced to a heap of proper names, and we should be as completely at a loss to class any object generally from its agreement with others, or to say at sight, this is a man, this is a horse, as to know whether we should call the first man we accidentally met in the street by the name of John or Thomas. The very existence of language is alone a sufficient proof of the power of abstraction in the human mind. It is so far from being true, according to the modern philosophy, that we have neither complex nor general ideas, that, I think, it may be proved to a demonstration that we have and can have no others. I must premise, however, that I do not believe it possible ever to arrive at general or abstract ideas by beginning in Mr. Locke’s method with particular images. This faculty of abstraction is by most writers considered as a sort of artificial refinement upon our other ideas, as an excrescence no ways contained in the common impressions of things, nor necessary to the common purposes of life; and is by Mr. Locke altogether denied to be among the faculties of brutes. It is described as the ornament and top-addition of the mind of man, which proceeding from simple sensations upwards is gradually sublimed into the abstract notions of things:— ‘So from the root Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves More airy, last the bright consummate flower.’ On the contrary, I conceive that all our notions, from first to last, are (strictly speaking) general and abstract, not absolute or particular; and that to have a perfectly distinct idea of any one individual object or concrete existence, either as to the parts of which it is composed, or the differences belonging to it, or the circumstances connected with it, would require an unlimited power of comprehension in the human mind, which is impossible. All particular things consist of, and even lead to, an infinite number of other things. Abstraction is therefore a necessary consequence of the limitation of the comprehensive faculty, and mixes itself, more or less, with every act of the understanding, of whatever kind, during every moment of its existence. The same fallacy has led to the rejection of abstract and general ideas which has led to the rejection of complex ones, viz. that of supposing sensible images to be perfectly simple or individual things. But the truth is, that there is no one idea of an individual object which is any thing more than a general and imperfect notion of it: for as there is no such idea which does not relate to a number of complicated impressions and their connections, so we can conceive the whole of no one object. Again, there is no idea of a particular quality of any object, which is perfectly simple and definite, but the result of a number of sensible impressions of the same sort, classed together by the mind under the abstract notion of likeness, or of something common between them, without attending to their difference in other respects. This view of the subject is not, I confess, very obvious at first sight, and requires strong and clear proof, but it also admits of it. The only way to defend our common sense against the sophisms of the moderns is to retort their own analytical distinctions upon them. In looking at any object, as at St. James’s Palace, for example, it is taken for granted that the impression I have of it is a perfectly distinct, precise, and definite idea, in which abstraction or generalisation has no concern. Now it appears to me an easy matter to shew that this sensible image of a particular building is itself but a vague and confused notion, not one precise, individual impression, or any number of impressions, distinctly perceived. For I would demand of any one who thinks his senses furnish him with these infallible and perfect images of things, free from all contradiction and perplexity, what is the amount of the knowledge which he has of the object before him? For instance, is the knowledge which he has that St. James’s Palace is larger than the houses which are near it, owing to his perceiving, with a glance of the eye, all the bricks of which the front is composed, or can he not tell that it contains a number of windows of different sizes, without distinctly counting them? Let us even suppose that he has this exact knowledge, yet this will not be enough unless he has also a distinct perception of the number and size of the panes of glass in each window, and of every mark, stain, or dent in each brick, otherwise, his idea of each of these particulars will still be general, and his most substantial knowledge built on shadows, that is, composed of a number of parts, of the parts of which he has no knowledge. In the same manner that I form an idea of St. James’s Palace, I can form an idea of Pall-Mall, of the adjoining streets, of Westminster, and London, of Paris, of France, and England, and of the different cities and kingdoms of the world. At least, I do not see the point of separation in this progressive scale of our ideas. May I not be able, in looking out of my window, to distinguish, first, a certain object in the distance, then that it is a man, then that it is a person whom I know, and all this before I can distinguish his particular features; and after I can distinguish those features, what do I know or see of them, except their general form, expression, and effect? Little or nothing. Let any one, who is not an artist, or let any one who is, attempt to give an outline from memory of the features of his most intimate friend, and he will feel the truth of this remark. Yet though he does not know the exact turn of any one feature, he will instantly, and without fail, recognise the person the moment he meets him in the street, and that often, merely from catching a glimpse of some part of his dress, or from peculiarity of motion, though he may be quite at a loss to define in what this peculiarity consists, or to account for its impression on him. We may be said to have a particular knowledge of things, in proportion to the number of parts which we distinguish in them. But the real ultimate foundation of all our knowledge is and must be general, that is, made up of masses, not of points, a mere confused result of a number of impressions, not analysed by the mind, since there is no object which does not consist of an infinite number of parts, and we have not an infinite number of distinct ideas, answering to them. The knowledge of every finite being rests in generals, and if we think to exclude all generality from our ideas of things, as implying a want of perfect truth and clearness, it will be impossible for the mind to form an idea of any one object whatever. Let any person try the experiment of counting a flock of sheep driven fast by him, and he will soon find his imagination unable to keep pace with the rapid succession of objects, and his idea of a positive number slide into the general notion of multitude. But because there are more objects passing before him than he can possibly count, he will not, therefore, think that there are none, nor will the word, _flock_, present to his mind a mere name without any idea corresponding to it. Every act of the attention, every object we see or think of, offers a proof of the same kind. These remarks will be found to contain the answer to the common argument used on this subject, that in thinking of a man in general, we must always conceive of a man of a particular size and figure. Now if it be meant that when we pronounce the word _man_, we have either no idea at all, or a distinct and perfect one of an entire figure of a man with all its parts and proportions, it would amount to a knowledge, which no sculptor or painter ever had of any one figure of which he was the most thorough master, and which he had immediately before him. Or if it be only meant that we think of a particular height, which must be a precise, positive, determinate idea, even this supposition may in the same way be shewn to be exceedingly fallacious, and an inversion of the natural order of our ideas. For take any given height of a man, whether tall, short, or middle-sized, and let that height be as visible as you please, yet the actual height to which it amounts must be made up of the length of the different parts, the head, the face, the neck, the body, limbs, &c. all which must be distinctly added together by the mind, before the sum total which they compose can be pretended to be a precise, definite, individual idea. In the impression then of a given visible object, we have only a general idea of something more or less extended, and never of the precise length itself, for this precise length (as it is thought to be) is necessarily composed of a number of subordinate lengths, too many and too minute to be separately attended to, or jointly conceived by the mind, and at last loses itself in the infinite divisibility of matter. What sort of absolute certainty can therefore be found in any such image or ideas, I cannot well conceive: it seems to me like seeking for distinctness in the dancing of insects in the evening sun, or for fixedness and rest in the motion of the sea. All particulars are nothing but generals, more or less defined according to circumstances, but never perfectly so. Lastly, as the ideas of sensible objects can only be general notions, so the ideas of sensible qualities are properly abstract ideas of likeness or of something common between a number of sensible impressions of the same class or sort. For example, the idea I have of the whiteness of a marble statue is not the idea of a point, nor of any number of points, with all their differences and circumstances, but a relative idea of the colour of the whole statue. Now in arriving at this general result, or in classing its sensible impressions together as of the same sort or quality, the mind certainly is not conscious of every stain in the colour of the marble, or streak that may happen to vary it, or of its shape or size, or of every difference of light and shade, arising from inequality of surface, &c. Yet if the idea falls any thing short of this minute and absolute knowledge, it can only be an imperfect and abstract one. The idea of whiteness in the same object (or as a sensible quality) necessarily implies the same power of _abstracting from particulars_ in the mind, as the general idea of whiteness taken from different objects, from a white horse, a white cloud, a white wall, a white lily, or from all the other white objects I have ever seen. The precise differences of form, size, and every other actual circumstance in these particular images, are as little necessary to be attended to in forming the general idea of whiteness, as the differences of shape, size, and colour in every particle of the statue of white marble are to the general impression of colour in the whole object. I will only add, that the mind has not been fairly dealt with in this and other questions of the same sort. The difficulties belonging to the abstraction, complexity, generalization, &c. of our ideas, it is, perhaps, impossible ever to clear up; but that is no reason why we should discard these operations from the human mind, any more than we should deny the existence of motion, of extension, or of curve lines, because we cannot explain them. Matter alone seems to have the privilege of presenting difficulties and contradictions at every turn, which pass current under the name of _facts_: but the moment any thing of this kind is observed in the understanding, all the petulance of logicians is up in arms against it. The mind is made the mark on which they vent all the moods and figures of their impertinence; and metaphysical truth has, in this respect, fared like the milk-white hind, the emblem of pure faith, in Dryden’s fable, which ‘had oft been chased— With Scythian shafts, and many winged wounds Aimed at her heart, was often forced to fly, And doomed to death, though fated not to die.’ AN ENGLISH METAPHYSICIAN. FINE ARTS. BRITISH INSTITUTION _The Morning Chronicle._] [_February 5, 1814._ The exhibition of this year is, we think, upon the whole, inferior to the one or two last exhibitions; for though the historical department is quite as respectably filled, there is not the same proportion of pleasing representations of common life, and natural scenery. In spite of certain classical prejudices, we should be sorry to see this which has been the most successful walk of the modern English school, neglected for the pursuit of prize-medals and _epic mottos_, which look well in the catalogue. There is indeed a greater difference between an historical picture, and a picture of an historical subject, than even some eminent painters seem to have imagined. But we are, we confess, so little refined in our taste, as to prefer a good imitation of common nature to a bad imitation of the highest, or rather to an imitation of nothing. Many of the pictures exhibited by young artists at this Institution, have shewn a capacity for correct and happy delineation of actual objects and domestic incidents, perhaps only inferior to the master-pieces of the Dutch school, from the use of a less perfect vehicle, and the want of long practice, steadily and uniformly directed to the same object. But in the higher, and what is rather affectedly called the epic style of art,—in giving the movements of the loftier and more violent passions, this country has not a single painter to boast, who has made even a faint approach to the excellence of the great Italian painters. We have indeed a good number of specimens of the clay-figure, the bones and muscles of the man, the anatomical mechanism, the regular proportions measured by a two-foot rule—large canvasses covered with stiff figures arranged in decent order, with the characters and story correctly expressed by uplifted eyes or hands, according to old receipt-books for the passions, and with all the hardness and inflexibility of figures carved in wood, and painted over in good strong body colours, that look as if some of nature’s journeymen had made them, and not made them well. But we still want a Prometheus to give life to the cumbrous mass, to throw an intellectual light over the opaque image, to embody the inmost refinements of thought to the outward eye, to lay bare the very soul of passion. That picture is of little comparative value, which can be completely _translated_ into another language, of which the description in a common catalogue is as good, and conveys all that is expressed by the picture itself; for it is the excellence of every art to give what can be given by no other, in the same degree. Much less is that picture to be esteemed which only injures and defaces the idea already existing in the mind’s eye, which does not come up to the conception which the imagination forms of the subject, and substitutes a dull reality for high sentiment; for the art is in this case an incumbrance, not an assistance, and interferes with, instead of adding to, the stock of our pleasurable sensations. But we should be at a loss to point out (we will not say any English picture, but certainly) any English painter, who in heroic and classical composition, has risen to the height of his subject, and answered the expectation of the well-informed spectator, or excited the same impression by visible means as had been excited by words, or by reflection. That this inferiority in English art is not owing to a deficiency of genius, imagination, or passion, is proved sufficiently by the works of our poets and dramatic writers, which, in loftiness and force, are certainly not surpassed by those of any other nation. But whatever may be the depth of internal thought and feeling in the English character, it seems to be _more internal_, and (whether this is owing to climate, habit, or physical constitution) to have, comparatively, a less immediate and powerful communication with the organic expression of passion, which exhibits the thoughts and feelings in the countenance, and furnishes matter for the historic muse of painting. The English artist is instantly sensible that the flutter, grimace, and extravagance of the French physiognomy, are incompatible with high history; and we are at no loss to explain in this way, that is, from the defect of existing models, why the productions of the French school are marked with all the affectation of national caricature, or sink into tame and lifeless imitations of the antique. May we not account satisfactorily for the general defects of our own historic productions in a similar way,—from a certain inertness and constitutional phlegm, which does not habitually impress the workings of the mind by correspondent traces on the countenance, and which may also render us less sensible of these outward and visible signs of passion, even when they are so impressed there? The irregularity of proportion and want of symmetry in the structure of the national features, though it certainly enhances the difficulty of infusing natural grace and grandeur into the works of art, rather accounts for our not having been able to attain the exquisite refinements of Grecian sculpture, than for our not having rivalled the Italian painters in expression. The strongest exception to these general remarks in the present collection, is certainly _Mr. Bird’s Picture of Job_, surrounded by his friends. Many of the heads and figures in this very able composition have a strong and deeply infused tincture of true history. The best of them are in a mixed style, which reminds us at the same time of Annibal Caracci, and N. Poussin. The three finest figures are undoubtedly those of Job, and the man and woman seated on each side of him. The countenance of Job displays a noble firmness with a mixture of suppressed feeling, not, perhaps, sufficiently marked for the character or for the interest of the subject. The full grey drapery which envelopes his whole figure, has an admirable effect, and seems in a manner to shroud him from the attacks of external misfortune, in the consolations of his own mind. The action of the man on his right hand, pointing with his finger, and indeed the whole figure, are equally appropriate and striking. The posture of the man leaning on a marble slab, is also natural and picturesque, though it has too great an appearance of ease and indifference for the occasion. The drapery of this last figure is remarkably loose and flimsy, or what the painters, we believe, call _woolly_. There are several other good heads in the picture; but both the countenance and attitude of the man behind the messenger, and the face of the figure between Job and the front figure in red, are mean and vulgar—mere low life, without sense or dignity. The expression in the countenance of the messenger, who comes to inform Job of the last calamity that has befallen him, is neither intelligent nor beautiful; and the whole of the figure, both by its situation and the quantity of light thrown upon it, assumes a prominence disproportioned to its importance, and throws the rest of the composition into a kind of half back-ground. The story is illustrated (whether with chronological propriety or not we leave to the critics) by a group of figures just behind the circle of Job and his friends, carrying off the dead body of one of his children. The great fault of this picture, which displays much sense, character, study, and invention, is the heaviness and monotony of the colour. It is of one uniform leaden tone, as if it had been smeared over with putty, except where a sudden transition to a glaring red or yellow, or the introduction of a spotty light, not at all accounted for, serves, instead of relieving, to add greater weight to that mechanic gloom, which affects, not the imagination, but the eye. We think it right to notice a defect which may be more easily remedied by attention, viz. that the extremities of Mr. Bird’s figures are in general very ill made out. Mr. Allston’s large picture of _the dead man restored to life by touching the bones of Elisha_, deserves great praise both for the choice and originality of the subject, the judicious arrangement of the general composition, and the correct drawing and very great knowledge of the human figure throughout. The figure of the revived soldier in the foreground is noble and striking; the drapery about him is equally well imagined and well executed. There is also a very beautiful head of a young man in a blue drapery with his hands lifted together, and in the act of attention to another, who is pointing out the miracle, which has much of the simple dignity and pathos of Raphael. With respect to the general colour and expression of this picture, we think it has too much of the look of a French composition. The faces are in the school of Le Brun’s heads—theoretical diagrams of the passions—not natural and profound expressions of them; forced and overcharged, without precision or variety of character. The colouring, too, is without any strongest contrasts or general gradations, and is half-toned and half-tinted away, between reddish brown flesh and wan-red drapery, till all effect, union, and relief, is lost. It would be unjust not to add, that we think Mr. Allston’s picture demonstrates great talents, great professional acquirements, and even genius; but we suspect that he has paid too exclusive an attention to the instrumental and theoretical parts of his art. The object of art is not merely to display knowledge, but to give pleasure. There is a small picture of _Diana bathing_, by this gentleman, which we think equally admirable for the character and drawing. The knowledge of the human figure in this pleasing composition might be opposed with advantage to the utter ignorance of it in some Musidora sketches, in which the limbs seem to have been kneaded in paste, and are thrown together like a bundle of drapery. Of Mr. Hilton’s picture of _Mary Magdalen anointing the feet of our Saviour_, we have little more to say, than that the figures are much larger than life, and that, we understand, it has been purchased by the Institution for 500 guineas. Mr. West’s picture of _Lot and his Family_ is one of those highly finished specimens of _metallurgy_ which too often proceed from the President’s hardware manufactory. As to the subject, we conceive it has been often enough treated in a country famed for ‘pure religion breathing household laws.’ We do not mean to lay it down as a rule, that the sublimity of the execution may not redeem the deformity of the subject of a composition, as there is a great and acknowledged difference between Shakspeare and the Newgate Calendar; but this of Mr. West’s is a mere furniture picture, and offers no palliation from the genius displayed by the artist. Having touched unawares on this very delicate subject of the ethics of painting, we shall just notice, that the picture of ‘Venus weeping over the dead body of Adonis,’ seems to have been painted _tout expres_, for the purpose of being bought up by some member of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. Mr. Turner’s grand landscape of _Apullius_ and _Apullia_ has one recommendation, which must always enhance the value of this most able artist’s productions, that the composition is taken _verbatim_ from Lord Egremont’s picture of ‘Jacob and Laban.’ The beautiful arrangement is Claude’s; the powerful execution is his own. From this specimen of parody, and from his never-enough-to-be-admired picture of ‘Mercury and Herse,’ we could almost wish that this gentleman would always work in the trammels of Claude or N. Poussin. All the taste and all the imagination being borrowed, his powers of eye, hand, and memory, are equal to any thing. In general, his pictures are a waste of morbid strength. They give pleasure only by the excess of power triumphing over the barrenness of the subject. The artist delights to go back to the first chaos of the world, or to that state when the waters were merely separated from the dry land, and no creeping thing nor herb bearing fruit was seen upon the face of the land. The figures in the present picture are execrable. Claude’s are flimsy enough; but these are impudent and obtrusive vulgarity. The utter want of a capacity to draw a distinct outline with the force, the depth, the fulness, and precision of this artist’s eye for colour, is truly astonishing. There is only one part of the colouring of Mr. Turner’s landscape which did not please us: it is the blue of the water nearest the foreground, immediately after the dark brown shadow of the trees. The picture of the _Favourite Lamb_, by Collins, has exquisite feeling. The groupe of children surrounding the little victim, and arresting him in his progress to the butcher’s cart, has a degree of natural pathos and touching simplicity, which we have never seen surpassed in any picture of the kind. It may easily draw tears from eyes, at all used to the melting mood. THE STAGE. _The Morning Chronicle_] [_February 24, 1814._ The manner in which Shakespeare’s plays have been generally altered, or rather mangled, by modern mechanists, is in our opinion a disgrace to the English Stage. The patch-work _Richard_ which is acted under the sanction of his name, is a striking example of this remark. The play itself is undoubtedly one of the finest effusions of Shakespeare’s genius. It is as truly _Shakespearian_—that is, it has as much of the author’s mind, of passion, character, and interest, with as little alloy of the peculiarities of the age, or extraneous matter, as almost any other of his productions. Wherever Shakespeare relied upon himself, and did not appeal to the taste of his audience, he outstripped all competition, and this he did as often as he had a motive in his subject to do so; he had none in his vanity, or in the affectation of conforming to certain critical rules. The winds blow as they list; and the golden tide of passion no sooner rises in his breast, than it swells and bears down every thing in its mighty course. The ground-work of the character of _Richard_,—that mixture of intellectual vigour with moral depravity, in which Shakespeare delighted to shew his strength,—gave full scope as well as temptation to the exertion of his genius. The character of his hero is almost everywhere predominant, and marks its lurid track throughout. The original play is, however, too long for representation, and there are some few scenes which might be better spared than preserved and by omitting which, it would remain a complete whole. The only rule, indeed, for altering Shakespeare, is to retrench certain passages which may be considered either as superfluous or obsolete, but not to add or transpose any thing. The arrangement and developement of the story, and the mutual contrast and combination of the _dramatis personæ_, are in general as finely managed as the developement of the characters or the expression of the passions. This rule has not been adhered to in the present instance. Some of the most important and striking passages in the principal character have been omitted, to make room for tedious and misplaced extracts from other plays; the only intention of which seems to have been, to make the character of _Richard_ as odious and disgusting as possible. A bugbear seems to have been always necessary to the English nation, and—give them but this to vent their spleen upon—they will, either in matters of taste or opinion, ‘as tenderly be led by the nose as asses are.’ It is apparently for no other purpose than to make _Gloucester_ stab _King Henry_ on the stage, that the fine abrupt introduction of this character in the opening of the play is lost in the tedious whining morality of the uxorious King (taken from another play);—we say _tedious_, because it interrupts the business of the scene, and loses its beauty and effect by having no intelligible connection with the previous character of the mild and well-meaning monarch. The passages which Mr. Wroughton has to recite are in themselves exquisitely pathetic, but they have nothing to do with the world that _Richard_ has to ‘bustle in.’ In the same spirit of vulgar caricature is the scene between _Richard_ and _Lady Anne_ (when his wife)—interpolated, merely to gratify this favourite propensity to disgust and loathing. With the same perverse consistency, _Richard_, after his last fatal struggle, is raised up by some Galvanic process, to utter the imprecation, without any motive but pure malignity, which is so finely put into the mouth of _Northumberland_ on hearing of _Percy’s_ death. We hope that Mr. Kean, when he acts _Macbeth_, will die as Shakespeare makes him, and not with four lines of canting penitence (a common-place against ambition) in his mouth. To make room for these needless additions and interpolations, many of the most striking passages in the real play have been omitted by the foppery and ignorance of the prompt-book critics. We do not mean to insist merely on passages which are fine as poetry and to the reader, such as _Clarence’s_ dream, &c. but those which are important to the developement of the character, and peculiarly adapted for stage effect. We give the following as instances among many others. The first is the scene where _Richard_ enters abruptly to the Queen and her friends, to defend himself: _Enter_ GLOUCESTER. _Glo._ They do me wrong, and I will not endure it. Who are they that complain unto the King, That I, forsooth, am stern, and love them not? By holy Paul, they love his Grace but lightly, That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours; Because I cannot flatter, and look fair, Smile in men’s faces, smooth, deceive, and cog, Duck with French nods and apish courtesy, I must be held a rancorous enemy. Cannot a plain man live, and think no harm, But thus his simple truth must be abused With silken, sly, insinuating Jacks _Gray._ To whom in all this presence speaks your Grace? _Glo._ To thee, that hast nor honesty nor grace; When have I injured thee? When done thee wrong? Or thee? or thee? or any of your faction? A plague upon you all! What can be more characteristic than the turbulent pretensions to meekness and simplicity in this address? Again, the versatility and adroitness of _Richard_ is admirably described in the following ironical answer to Brakenbury:— _Brakenbury._ I beseech your graces both to pardon me, His Majesty hath straitly given in charge, That no man shall have private conference, Of what degree soever, with your brother. _Glo._ E’en so, and please your worship, Brakenbury, You may partake of any thing we say: We speak not reason, man—we say the King Is wise and virtuous, and his noble Queen Well strook in years, fair, and not jealous. We say that Shore’s wife hath a pretty foot, A cherry lip, a passing pleasing tongue: That the Queen’s kindred are made gentle folks. How say you, Sir? Can you deny all this? _Brak._ With this, my Lord, myself have nought to do. _Glo._ What, fellow, nought to do with Mistress Shore? I tell you, Sir, he that doth nought with her, Excepting one, were best to do it secretly alone. _Brak._ What one, my Lord? _Glo._ Her husband, knave—wouldst thou betray me? The feigned reconciliation of Gloucester with the Queen’s kinsmen, is also a master-piece. One of the finest features in the play, and which serves to shew, as much as any thing, the deep duplicity of _Richard_, is the unsuspecting security of _Hastings_, at the very time when the former is plotting his death. Perhaps the two most beautiful passages in the original, are the farewell apostrophe of the _Queen_ to the Tower, where her children are shut up from her, and _Tyrrel’s_ description of their death. We will finish our quotations with them:— _Queen._ Stay, yet look back with me, unto the Tower; Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes, Whom envy hath immured within your walls; Rough cradle for such little pretty ones; Rude, rugged nurse, old sullen playfellow, For tender princes! The other passage is the account of their death by _Tyrrel_:— Dighton and Forrest, whom I did suborn To do this piece of ruthless butchery, Albeit they were flesh’d villains, bloody dogs, Wept like to children in their death’s sad story: O thus! quoth Dighton, lay the gentle babes; Thus, thus! quoth Forrest, girdling one another, Within their innocent alabaster arms; Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, And in that summer-beauty kiss’d each other; A book of prayers on their pillow lay, Which once, quoth Forrest, almost changed my mind. But Oh the Devil!—there the villain stopped: When Dighton thus told on—we smothered The most replenished sweet work of nature, That from the prime creation ere she framed. These are those wonderful bursts of feeling, done to the very height of nature which our Shakespeare alone could give. We do not insist on the repetition of these last passages as proper for the stage; we should indeed be loth to trust them with almost any actor; but we should wish them to be retained, at least in preference to the fantoccini exhibition of the young Princes, bandying childish wit with their uncle. We have taken the present opportunity to offer these remarks on the necessity of acting the plays of our great Bard, in spirit and substance, instead of burlesquing them, because we think the stage has acquired in Mr. Kean an actor capable of doing singular justice to many of his finest delineations of character. FINE ARTS—THE LOUVRE _The Morning Chronicle_] [_March 24, 1814._ ‘If Blücher, if the Cossacks, get to Paris,—to Paris, the seat of Bonaparte’s pride and insolence,—what mercy will they shew to it, or why should they shew it any mercy? Will they spare the precious works of art, to decorate the palace of a monster whom they justly detest? Will they treat the Thuileries more tenderly than the French Officers, only eight months ago, openly threatened to treat Berlin? Is Paris, Bonaparte’s Paris, more sacred than Moscow? or are the slaves of the Corsican more inviolable than the brave and virtuous citizens of Hamburgh? No, no; the indignant warriors will cry,— “Away to Heav’n respective Lenity, And fire-eyed Fury be my conduct now.” ‘There is no other mode by which the Parisians can disarm the vengeance which now so closely impends over them, than by disclaiming for ever him whose crimes have been the just cause of that vengeance. Paris under the white standard, returning to loyalty and virtue, may be spared by a generous conqueror;—but Paris, identified with Bonaparte, must partake all the vindictive sentiments which are attached to that hateful name. [Yet some time ago this writer assured us that if the French people identified themselves with Bonaparte, they ought not to be separated from him.] ‘In what momentous times do we live! Perhaps, the famous city of which we speak may even now be laid in ashes! Perhaps and more welcome be the omen, it may have returned to its allegiance, and proclaimed its native Sovereign, and set a price on the head of that wicked rebel who still dares to call himself the Emperor of France.’—_Times_, March 17. ‘Nay, if you mouth, I’ll rant as well as you!’ It is a pity to spoil this morsel of Asiatic eloquence, so worthy of the subject and the sentiments; but the evident meaning of it is, that the French must expect to do penance in sack-cloth and ashes, or consent to put on the old livery jackets, made up for them by our army-agents long ago, and which have unfortunately lain on hand ever since. If so, they must needs be ‘pigeon-liver’d, and lack gall.’ Yet we hardly know what to say to the chivalrous and classical politicians of the Stock Exchange. They are not driven to the extremity of Gothic rage by the ranking inveteracy, and old unsatisfied grudge of the Pitt-school. Yet surely no pitiable enthusiast that ‘Scrawls With desperate charcoal on his darken’d walls,’ can be more incorrigible to reason. They are always setting out on their way to Paris from Moscow, while the Pitt-school studiously return to join Lord Hawkesbury in the year 1793, or they think the whole ceremony incomplete! The treaty of Pilnitz does not stand between our modern popular incendiaries and their just revenge! They live only in ‘this present ignorant time!’ They see the white standard of the Bourbons waving over the walls of Paris, unspotted with the blood of millions of Frenchmen! They do not seem ever to have known, or (with our poet-laureat) they forget, that the same standard to which our milky politicians advise the French people, sick of destruction, and panting for freedom, to fly for deliverance and repose, is that very standard, which, for twenty years, hovering round them, now seen like a cloudy speck in the distance—now spreading out its drooping lilies wide, has been the cause of that destruction—has robbed them at once of liberty and of repose! Moscow is, however, the watch-word of the renegados of _The Times_. It seems to them just that Paris should be sacrificed to revenge the setting fire to Moscow by the Russians, and that the monuments of art in the Louvre ought to be destroyed because they are Bonaparte’s. No; they are ours as well as his;—they belong to the human race; he cannot monopolize all genius and all art. But these madmen would, if they could, blot the Sun out of heaven, because it shines upon France. They verify the old proverb, ‘Tell me your company, and I’ll tell you your manners!’ They, no more than their friends the Cossacks, can perceive any difference between the Kremlin and the Louvre. There is at least one difference, that the one may be built up again, and the other cannot. For there, in the Louvre, in Bonaparte’s Louvre, are the precious monuments of art—the sacred pledges which human genius has given to time and nature;—there ‘stands the statue that enchants the world;’ there is the _Apollo_, the _Laocoon_, the _Dying Gladiator_, the _Head of the Antinous_, _Diana with her Fawn_, and all the glories of the antique world;— ‘There is old Proteus coming from the sea, And wreathed Triton blows his winding horn.’ There, too, are the two _St. Jeromes_, Correggio’s and Dominichino’s; there is Raphael’s _Transfiguration_, the _St. Mark_ of Tintoret, Paul Veronese’s _Marriage of Cana_, the _Deluge_ of Nicholas Poussin, and Titian’s _St. Peter Martyr_;—all these, and more than these, of which the world is scarce worthy. Yet all these amount to nothing in the eyes of those virtuosos the Cossacks, and their fellow-students of _The Times_! ‘What’s Hecuba to them, or they to Hecuba?’ But we must be allowed to see with our own eyes, and to have certain feelings of our own. We will not be brayed by these quacks _like fools in a mortar_. We too, as Mr. Burke expresses it, have ‘real feelings of flesh and blood beating in our bosoms.’ ‘We look up with awe to Kings; with affection to parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and with respect to nobility.’ But all this is a machine that goes on of itself, and may be repaired if out of order. We bow willingly to Lords and Commoners, though we know that ‘breath can make them as a breath has made.’ Blücher, Wittgenstein, Winzingerode, and Ktzichigoff, are true heroes; their names become the mouth well, and rouse the ear as the sound of a trumpet; but they are the heroes of a day, and all that they have done might be as well done by others to-morrow. But here it is: once destroy the great monuments of art, and they cannot be replaced. Those mighty geniuses, who have left their works behind them an inheritance to mankind, live but once to do honour to themselves and their nature. ‘But once put out their light, and there is no Promethean heat that can their light relumine.’ Nor ought it ever to be re-kindled, to be extinguished a second time by the harpies of the human race. What have ‘the worshippers of cats and onions’ to do with those triumphs of human genius, which give the eternal lie to their creed? We would therefore recommend these accomplished pioneers of civilisation and social order, after they have done their work at the Louvre, to follow the river-side, and they will come to a bare inclosure, surrounded by four low walls. It is the place where the Bastille stood: let them rear that, and all will be well. And then some whiffling poet who celebrated the fall of that monument of mild paternal sway—that sacred ark of the confidence of Kings—that strong bulwark of ‘time-hallowed laws,’ and precious relic of ‘the good old times,’ in an ode, may hail its restoration in a sonnet! WILSON’S LANDSCAPES, AT THE BRITISH INSTITUTION _The Champion._] [_July 17, 1814._ The landscapes of this celebrated artist may be divided into three classes;—his Italian landscapes, or imitations of the manner of Claude, his copies of English scenery, and his historical compositions. The first of these are, in our opinion, by much the best; and of the pictures of this class in the present collection, we should, without any hesitation, give the preference to the _Apollo and the Seasons_, and to the _Phaeton_. The figures are of course out of the question—(Wilson’s figures are as uncouth and slovenly as Claude’s are insipid and finical)—but the landscape in both pictures is delightful. In looking at them we breath the very air which the scene inspires, and feel the genius of the place present to us. In the first, there is all the cool freshness of a misty spring morning: the sky, the water, the dim horizon all convey the same feeling. The fine grey tone, and varying outline of the hills, the graceful form of the retiring lake, broken still more by the hazy shadows of the objects that repose on its bosom; the light trees that expand their branches in the air, and the dark stone figure and mouldering temple, that contrast strongly with the broad clear light of the rising day, give a charm, a truth, a force and harmony to this landscape, which produce the greater pleasure the longer it is dwelt on.—The distribution of light and shade resembles the effect of light on a globe. The _Phaeton_ has the dazzling fervid appearance of an autumnal evening; the golden radiance streams in solid masses from behind the flickering clouds; every object is baked in the sun;—the brown foreground, the thick foliage of the trees, the streams shrunk and stealing along behind the dark high banks, combine to produce that richness, and characteristic propriety of effect, which is to be found only in nature, or in art derived from the study and imitation of nature. The glowing splendour of this landscape reminds us of the saying of Wilson, that in painting such subjects, he endeavoured to give the effect of insects dancing in the evening sun. His eye seemed formed to drink in the light. These two pictures, as they have the greatest general effect, are also more carefully finished in the particular details than the other pictures in the collection. This circumstance may be worth the attention of those who are apt to think that strength and slovenliness are the same thing. _Cicero at his Villa_ is a clear and beautiful representation of nature. The sky is admirable for its pure azure tone. Among the less finished productions of Wilson’s pencil, which display his great knowledge of perspective, are _A Landscape with figures bathing_, in which the figures are wonderfully detached from the sea beyond; and _A View in Italy_, with a lake and a little boat, which appear at an immeasurable distance below:—the boat is diminished to ‘A buoy almost too small for sight.’ _A View of Ancona_; _Adrian’s Villa at Rome_; a small blue greenish landscape; _The Lake of Neimi_; a small, richly-coloured landscape of the banks of a river; and a landscape containing some light and elegant groups of trees, are masterly and interesting sketches. _A View on the Tiber_, near Rome, a dark landscape which lies finely open to the sky; and _A View of Rome_, are successful imitations of N. Poussin. _A View of Sion House_, which is hung almost out of sight, is remarkable for the clearness of the perspective, particularly in the distant windings of the River Thames, and still more so for the parched and droughty appearance of the whole scene. The air is adust, the grass burned up and withered: and it seems as if some figures, reposing on the level, smooth shaven lawn on the river’s side, would be annoyed by the parching heat of the ground. We consider this landscape, which is an old favourite, as one of the most striking proofs of Wilson’s genius, as it conveys not only the image, but the feeling of nature, and excites a new interest unborrowed from the eye, like the fine glow of a summer’s day. There is a sketch of the same subject, called _A View on the Thames_. _A View near Llangollen, North Wales_; _Oakhampton Castle, Devonshire_; and _The Bridge at Llangollen_, are the principal of Wilson’s English landscapes. They want almost every thing that ought to recommend them. The subjects are not fit for the landscape-painter, and there is nothing in the execution to redeem them. Ill-shaped mountains, or great heaps of earth, trees that grow against them without character or elegance, motionless water-falls, a want of relief, of transparency, and distance,—without the imposing grandeur of real magnitude (which it is either not within the province of the art to give, or which is certainly not given here), are the chief features and defects of these pictures.—The same general objections apply to _Solitude_, and to one or two pictures near it, which are masses of common-place confusion. In near scenes, the effect must depend almost entirely on the difference in the execution, and the details: for the difference of colour alone is not sufficient to give relief to objects placed at a small distance from the eye. But in Wilson there are commonly no details; all is loose and general; and this very circumstance, which assisted him in giving the massy contrasts of light and shade, deprived his pencil of all force and precision within a limited space. In general, air is necessary to the landscape-painter: and for this reason, the lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland afford few subjects for landscape-painting. However stupendous the scenery of that country is, and however powerful and lasting the impression which it must always make on the imagination, yet the effect is not produced merely through the eye of the spectator, but arises chiefly from collateral and associated feelings. There is the knowledge of the distance from which we have seen the objects, in the midst of which we are now placed,—the slow, improgressive motion which we make in traversing them,—the abrupt precipice,—the torrent’s roar,—the dizzy rapture and boundless expanse of the prospect from the highest mountains,—the difficulty of their ascent,—their loneliness, and silence;—in short, there is a constant sense and superstitious awe of the collective power of matter, of the gigantic and eternal forms of nature, on which from the beginning of time the hand of man has made no impression, and which by the lofty reflections they excite in him, give a sort of intellectual sublimity even to his sense of physical weakness. But there is little in all these circumstances that can be translated into the picturesque, which depends not on the objects themselves, so much as on the symmetry and relation of these objects to one another. In a picture a mountain shrinks to a molehill, and the lake that expands its broad bosom to the sky, seems hardly big enough to launch a fleet of cockle-shells. Wilson’s historical landscapes, the two _Niobes_, _Celadon and Amelia_, _Meleager and Atalanta_, do not, in our opinion, deserve the name; that is, they do not excite feelings corresponding with the scene and story represented. They neither display true taste nor fine imagination; but are affected and violent exaggerations of clumsy, common nature. They are all made up of the same mechanical materials, an overhanging rock, bare shattered trees, black rolling clouds, and forked lightning. The scene of _Celadon and Amelia_, though it may be proper for a thunder-storm, is not a place for lovers to walk in. The _Meleager and Atalanta_ is remarkable for nothing but a castle at a distance, very much ‘resembling a goose-pye.’ The figures in the two other pictures are not like the children of _Niobe_, punished by the Gods, but like a groupe of rustics, crouching from a hail-storm. In one of these, however, there is a fine break in the sky worthy of the subject. We agree with Sir J. Reynolds, that Wilson’s mind was not, like N. Poussin’s, sufficiently imbued with the knowledge of antiquity to transport the imagination two thousand years back, to give natural objects a sympathy with preternatural events, and to inform rocks, and trees, and mountains with the presence of a God.[13] The writer of the Preface to the Catalogue of the British Gallery, says—‘Few artists have excelled Wilson in the tint of air, perhaps the most difficult point of attainment for the landscape-painter: every object in his pictures keeps its place, because each is seen through its proper medium. _This excellence alone_ gives a charm to his pencil, and by judicious application may be turned to the advantage of the British artist.’—This praise is equivocal: if it be meant that ‘the tint of air’ is the only excellence of Wilson’s landscapes, the observation is not true. He had also great truth, harmony, and richness of local colouring: he had a fine feeling of the proportions and conduct of light and shade; and, in general, an eye for graceful form, as far as regards the bold and varying outlines of indefinite objects—as may be seen in his foregrounds, hills, etc.—where the mind is left to chuse according to an abstract principle, as it is filled or affected agreeably by certain combinations,—and is not tied down to an imitation of characteristic and articulate forms. In his figures, trees, cattle, buildings and in every thing which has a determinate and regular form, Wilson’s pencil was not only deficient in accuracy of outline, but even in perspective and actual relief. His trees, in particular, seem pasted on the canvas, like botanical specimens. We shall close these remarks with observing, that we cannot subscribe to the opinion of those who assert that Wilson was superior to Claude as a man of genius: nor can we discern any other grounds for this opinion, than those which lead to the general conclusion, that the more slovenly the performance, the finer the picture; and that that which is imperfect is superior to that which is perfect. It might as well be said, that a sign-painting is better than the reflection of a landscape in a mirror; and the only objection that can be made in the latter case cannot be made to the landscapes of Claude, for in them the Graces themselves have, with their own hands, assisted in disposing and selecting every object.—Is the general effect in his pictures injured by the details? Is the truth inconsistent with the beauty of the imitation? Are the scope and harmony of the whole destroyed by the exquisite delicacy of every part? Does the perpetual profusion of objects and scenery, all perfect in themselves, interfere with the simple grandeur, and immense extent of the whole? Does the precision with which a plant is marked in the foreground, take away from the air-drawn distinctions of the blue, glimmering distant horizon? Is there any want of that endless airy space, where the eye wanders at liberty under the open sky, explores distant objects, and returns back as from a delightful journey? There is no comparison between him and Wilson. The landscapes of Claude have all that is exquisite and refined in art and nature. Every thing is moulded into grace and harmony; and at the touch of his pencil, shepherds with their flocks, temples and groves, and winding glades, and scattered hamlets, rise up in never-ending succession, under the azure sky, and the resplendent sun, ‘while universal Pan, ‘Knit with the Graces, and the hours in dance Leads on the eternal spring.’— There is a fine apostrophe in a sonnet of Michael Angelo’s to the earliest Poet of Italy: ‘Fain would I to be what our Dante was, Forego the happiest fortunes of mankind;’ What landscape-painter does not feel this of Claude![14] ON GAINSBOROUGH’S PICTURES _The Champion._] [_July 31, 1814._ There is an anecdote connected with the reputation of Gainsborough’s Pictures, which rests on pretty good authority. Sir Joshua Reynolds, at one of the Academy dinners, speaking of Gainsborough, said to a friend, ‘He is undoubtedly the best English landscape-painter.’ ‘No,’ said Wilson, who overheard the conversation, ‘he’s not the best English landscape-painter, but he is the best portrait-painter in England.’ They were certainly both wrong; but the story is creditable to the variety of Gainsborough’s talents. Of his portraits, in the present collection at the British Gallery, the only fine one is _A Portrait of a Youth_. This picture is from Lord Grosvenor’s collection, where it used to look remarkably well, and has been sometimes mistaken for a Vandyke. There is a spirited glow of youth about the face, and the attitude is striking and elegant. The drapery of blue satin is admirably painted. The _Portrait of Garrick_ is interesting as a piece of biography. He looks much more like a gentleman than in Reynolds’s tragi-comic representation of him.—There is a considerable lightness and intelligence in the expression of the face, and a piercing vivacity about the eyes, to which the attention is immediately directed. Gainsborough’s own portrait, which has, however, much truth and character, and makes a fine print, seems to have been painted with the handle of his brush. There is a portrait of _The Prince Regent leading a horse_, in which it must be confessed the man has the advantage of the animal. Gainsborough’s landscapes are of two classes, or periods; his early and his later pictures. The former are, we imagine, the best. They are imitations of nature, or of painters who imitated nature;—such as a _Woody Scene_; another, which is a fine imitation of Ruysdale; and a _Road Side, with figures_, which has great truth and clearness. His later pictures are flimsy caricatures of Rubens, who himself carried inattention to accuracy of detail to the utmost limit that it would bear. Lord Bacon says, that ‘distilled books are, like distilled waters, flashy things.’ The same may be said of pictures.—Gainsborough’s latter landscapes are bad water-colour drawings, washed in by mechanical movements of the hand, without any communication with the eye. The truth seems to be, that Gainsborough found there was something wanting in his ‘_early manner_,’—that is, something beyond mere literal imitation of natural objects, and he seems to have concluded, rather hastily, that the way to arrive at that _something more_, was to discard truth and nature altogether. He accordingly ran from one extreme into the other. We cannot conceive anything carried to a greater excess of slender execution and paltry glazing, than _A Fox hunted with grey-hounds_, _A romantic Landscape with Sheep at a Fountain_, and many others. We were, however, much pleased with an upright landscape, with figures, which has a fine, fresh appearance of the open sky, with a dash of the wildness of Salvator Rosa; and also with _A Bank of a River_, which is remarkable for the elegance of the forms and the real delicacy of the execution. _A Group of Cattle in a warm Landscape_ is an evident imitation of Rubens, but no more like to Rubens than ‘I to Hercules.’ _Landscape with a Waterfall_ should be noticed for the sparkling clearness of the distance. _Sportsmen in a Landscape_ is copied from Teniers with much taste and feeling, though very inferior to the original picture in Lord Radnor’s collection. Of the fancy pictures, on which Gainsborough’s fame chiefly rests, we are disposed to give the preference to his _Cottage Children_. There is, we apprehend, greater truth, variety, force, and character, in this groupe, than in any other. The colouring of the light-haired child is particularly true to nature, and forms a sort of natural and innocent contrast to the dark complexion of the elder sister, who is carrying it. _The Girl going to the Well_ is, however, the general favourite. The little dog is certainly admirable. His hair looks as if it had been just washed and combed. The attitude of the _Girl_ is also perfectly easy and natural. But there is a consciousness in the turn of the head, and a sentimental pensiveness in the expression, which is not taken from nature, but intended as an improvement on it. There is a regular insipidity, a systematic vacancy, a round, unvaried smoothness, to which real nature is a stranger, and which is only an idea existing in the painter’s mind. We think the gloss of art is never so ill bestowed as on subjects of this kind, which ought to be studies of natural history. It is perhaps the general fault of Gainsborough, that he presents us with an ideal common life, whereas it is only the reality that is here good for any thing. His subjects are softened and sentimentalised too much, it is not simple, unaffected nature that we see, but nature sitting for her picture. Gainsborough, we suspect, from some of the pictures in this collection, led the way to that masquerade style, which piques itself on giving the air of an Adonis to the driver of a hay-cart, and models the features of a milk-maid on the principles of the antique. The _Girl and Pigs_ is hardly liable to this objection. There is a healthy glow in the girl’s face, which seems the immediate effect of the air blowing upon it. The expression is not quite so good. The _Fox-dogs_ are admirable. The young one is even better than the old one, and has undeniable hereditary pretensions. The _Shepherd Boys_ are fine. We do not like the _Boys with Dogs fighting_. We see no reason why the one should be so handsome and the other so ugly, why the one should be so brown and the other so yellow, or why their dogs should be of the same colour as themselves: nor why the worst-looking of the two should be most anxious to part the fray. The sketch of the _Woodman_, the original of which was unfortunately burned, fully justifies all the reputation it has acquired. It is a really fine study from nature. There is a picture of Gainsborough’s somewhere of _A Shepherd Boy in a Storm_, of which we many years ago saw an indifferent copy in a broker’s shop, but in which the unconscious simplicity of the boy’s expression, looking up with his hands folded, and with timid wonder, the noisy chattering of a magpye perched above him, and the rustling of the coming storm in the branches of the trees, produced a romantic pastoral impression, which we have often recalled with no little pleasure since that time. We have always, indeed, felt a strong prepossession in favor of Gainsborough, and were disappointed at not finding his pictures in the present collection, all that we had wished to find them. He was to be considered, perhaps, rather as a man of taste, and of an elegant and feeling mind, than as a man of genius; as a lover of the art, rather than an artist. He pursued it, with a view to amuse and sooth his mind, with the ease of a gentleman, not with the severity of a professional student. He wished to make his pictures, like himself, amiable; but a too constant desire to please almost necessarily leads to affectation and effeminacy. He wanted that vigour of intellect, which perceives the beauty of truth; and thought that painting was to be gained, like other mistresses, by flattery and smiles. It is an error which we are disposed to forgive in one, around whose memory, both as a man and an artist, many fond recollections, many vain regrets must always linger. Peace to his shade![15] MR. KEMBLE’S PENRUDDOCK _The Champion._] [_Nov. 20, 1814._ Mr. Kemble lately appeared at this theatre in the character of Penruddock, and was received (not indeed with waving handkerchiefs, and laurel garlands thrown on the stage, but what is much better) with heart-felt approbation and silent tears. His delineation of the part is one of his most correct and interesting performances, and one of the most perfect on the modern stage. The deeply rooted, mild, pensive melancholy of the character, its embittered recollections and dignified benevolence, were given by Mr. Kemble with equal truth, elegance, and feeling. This admirable actor appeared to be the unfortunate, but amiable individual whom he represented; and the expression of the sentiments, the look, the tone of voice, exactly true to nature, struck a correspondent chord in every bosom.—The range of characters, in which Mr. Kemble shines, and is superior to every other actor, are those which consist in the developement of some one sentiment or exclusive passion. From a want of rapidity, of scope, and variety, he is often deficient in expressing the bustle and complication of different interests, nor does he possess the faculty of overpowering the mind by sudden and irresistible bursts of passion. But in giving the habitual workings of a predominant feeling, as in Penruddock, Coriolanus, and some others, where all the passions move round a central point, and have one master key, he stands unrivalled. In Penruddock, he broods over the recollection of disappointed hope, till it becomes a part of himself, it sinks deeper into his mind the longer he dwells upon it, and his whole person is moulded to the character. The weight of sentiment which oppresses him never seems suspended, the spring at his heart is never lightened, his regrets only become more profound as they become more durable. So in Coriolanus, he exhibits the ruling passion with the same continued firmness, he preserves the same haughty dignity of demeanour, the same energy of will, and unbending sternness of temper throughout. He is swayed by a single impulse. His tenaciousness of purpose is only irritated by opposition: he turns neither to the right nor to the left: but the vehemence with which he moves forward increases every instant, till it hurries him to the catastrophe. In Leontes, in the Winter’s Tale, the growing jealousy of the king, and the exclusive possession which it at length obtains of his mind, are marked in the finest manner, particularly where he exclaims— ‘Is whispering nothing? Is leaning cheek to cheek? is meeting noses? Kissing with inside lip? stopping the career Of laughter with a sigh, a note infallible Of breaking honesty? horsing foot on foot? Skulking in corners? wishing clocks more swift? Hours minutes? the noon, midnight? and all eyes Blind with the pin and web, but theirs; theirs only That would unseen be wicked? Is this nothing? Why then the world and all that’s in ‘t is nothing. The covering sky is nothing, Bohemia nothing, My wife is nothing, if this be nothing.’ In the course of this enumeration every proof tells harder, his conviction becomes more rivetted at every step of his progress, and at the end his mind is wound up to a frenzy of despair. In such characters, Mr. Kemble has no occasion to call in the resources of invention, or the tricks of the art; his excellence consists entirely in the increasing intensity with which he dwells on a given feeling or enforces a predominant passion. In Hamlet, on the contrary, Mr. Kemble unavoidably fails from a want of flexibility, or of that quick sensibility, which yields to every motive, and is borne away with every breath of fancy, which is distracted by the multiplicity of its reflections, and lost in its own purposes. There is a perpetual undulation of feeling in the character of Hamlet (though it must be confessed, much of this, which is the essence of the play, is left out on the stage), but in Mr. Kemble’s acting ‘there is no variableness nor shadow of turning.’ He plays it like a man in armour, with a determined inveteracy of purpose, in one undeviating strait line, which is as remote from the natural grace and easy susceptibility of the character, as the sharp angles and abrupt starts to produce an effect, which Mr. Kean introduces into it. Mr. Kean’s Hamlet is, in our opinion, as much too ‘splenetic and rash,’ as Mr. Kemble’s is too deliberate and formal. In Richard, Mr. Kemble has not that tempest and whirlwind of the passions, that life and spirit, and dazzling rapidity of motion, which, as it were, fills the stage, and burns in every part, which Mr. Kean displayed in it till he was worn out by the managers. Mr. Kean’s acting, in general, strongly reminds us of the lines of the poet, when he describes ‘The fiery soul that working out its way Fretted the pigmy body to decay, And o’erinformed the tenement of clay.’ Mr. Kemble’s manner on the contrary has always something dry, hard and pedantic in it. ‘You shall relish him more in the scholar than the soldier.’ But his monotony does not fatigue, his formality does not displease, because there is always sense and feeling in what he does. The fineness of Mr. Kemble’s figure has perhaps led to that statue-like appearance which his acting is sometimes too apt to assume; as the diminutiveness of Mr. Kean’s person has probably forced him to bustle about too much, and to attempt to make up for the want of dignity of form by the violence and contrast of his attitudes. If Mr. Kemble were to remain in the same posture for half an hour, his figure would only produce admiration—if Mr. Kean were to stand still only for a moment, the contrary effect would be produced. To return to Penruddock and the Wheel of Fortune. The only novelties were Miss Foote in Emily Tempest, and her lover, Mr. Farley, as Sir David Daw. The latter, who is a Welch Adonis of five-and-twenty, from the natural advantages of his person, and the artificial improvements which were added to it, was a very admirable likeness, on a reduced scale, of the Prince Regent. We do not know whether the burlesque was intended, but it had a laughable effect. We acknowledge that Mr. Farley is one of those persons whom we always welcome heartily when we see him. What with laughing at him and laughing with him, we hardly know a more comic personage. Miss Foote played and looked the part of Emily Tempest very naturally and very prettily, but without giving to the character either much interest or much elegance. Her voice is in itself as sweet as her person, and when she exerts it, she articulates with ease and clearness: but we should add, that she has a habit of tripping in her common speaking, that is, of dropping her voice so low, except where a particular emphasis is to be laid, as to make it difficult for the ear to follow the sense. INTRODUCTION TO AN ACCOUNT OF SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS’S DISCOURSES _The Champion._] [_Nov. 27, 1814._ The general merit of these Discourses is so well established that it would be needless to enlarge on it here. The graces of the composition are such, that scholars have been led to suspect that it was the style of Burke (the first prose-writer of our time) carefully subdued, and softened down to perfection: and the taste and knowledge of the subject displayed in them are so great, that this work has been, by common consent, considered as a text-book on the subject of art, in our English school of painting, ever since its publication. Highly elegant and valuable as Sir Joshua’s opinions are, yet they are liable (so it appears to us) to various objections; and it becomes more important to state these objections, because, as it generally happens, the most questionable of his precepts are those which have been the most eagerly adopted, and carried into practice with the greatest success. The errors, if they are such, which we shall attempt to point out, are not casual, but systematic. There is a finespun metaphysical theory, either not very clearly understood, or not very correctly expressed, pervading Sir Joshua’s reasoning; and which appears to have led him in several of the most important points to conclusions, either false or only true in part.[16] The rules thus laid down, as general and comprehensive maxims, are in fact founded on a set of half principles, which are true only as far as they imply a negation of the opposite errors, but contain in themselves the germ of other errors just as fatal: which, if strictly and literally understood, cannot be defended, and which by being taken in an equivocal sense, of course leave the student as much to seek as ever. The English school of painting is universally reproached by foreigners with the slovenly and unfinished state in which they send their productions into the world, with their ignorance of academic rules and neglect of the subordinate details; in other words, with aiming at _effect_ only in all their works of art: and though it is by no means necessary that we should adopt the defects of the French and German painters, yet we might learn from them to correct our own. There was no occasion to encourage our constitutional indolence and impatience by positive rules, or to incorporate our vicious habits into a system. Or if our defects were to be retained, at least they ought to have been tolerated only for the sake of certain collateral and characteristic excellencies out of which they might be thought to spring. Thus a certain degree of precision or regularity might be sacrificed rather than impair that boldness, vigour, and originality of conception, in which the strength of the national genius might be supposed to lie. But the method of instruction pursued in the Discourses seems calculated for neither of these objects. Without endeavouring to overcome our habitual defects, which might be corrected by proper care and study, it damps our zeal, ardour, and enthusiasm. It places a full reliance neither on art nor nature, but consists in a kind of fastidious tampering with both. Both genius and industry are put out of countenance in turn. The height of invention is made to consist in compiling from others, and the perfection of imitation in not copying from nature. We lose the substance of the art in catching at a shadow, and are thought to embrace a cloud for a Goddess! That we may not seem to prejudge the question, we shall state at once, and without further preface, the principal points in the Discourses which we deem either wrong in themselves, or liable to misconception and abuse. They are the following:— 1. _That genius or invention consists chiefly in borrowing the ideas of others, or in using other men’s minds._ 2. _That the great style in painting depends on leaving out the details of particular objects._ 3. _That the essence of portrait consists in giving the general character, rather than the individual likeness._ 4. _That the essence of history consists in abstracting from individuality of character and expression as much as possible._ 5. _That beauty or ideal perfection consists in a central form._ 6. _That to imitate nature is a very inferior object in art._ All of these positions appear to require a separate consideration, which we shall give them in the following articles on this subject. ON GENIUS AND ORIGINALITY _The Champion._] [_December 4, 1814_ It is a leading and favourite position of the Discourses that genius and invention are principally shewn in borrowing the ideas, and imitating the excellences of others. Differing entirely from those ‘who have undertaken to write on the art of painting, and have represented it as a kind of _inspiration_, as a _gift_ bestowed upon peculiar favourites at their birth,’ Sir Joshua proceeds to add, ‘I am, on the contrary, persuaded, that by imitation only,’ (that is, of former masters,) ‘variety and even originality of invention is produced. I will go further! even genius, at least what is generally called so, is the child of imitation.’ ‘There can be no doubt but that he who has most materials has the greatest means of invention; and if he has not the power of using them, it must proceed from a feebleness of intellect.’ ‘Study is the art of using other men’s minds.’ ‘It is from Raphael’s having taken so many models, that he became himself a model for all succeeding painters; always imitating, and always original.’ Vol. i. p. 151, 159, 169, &c. All that Sir Joshua says on this subject, is either vague and contradictory, or has an evident bias the wrong way. That genius either consists in, or is in any proportion to, the knowledge of what others have done, in any branch of art or science, is a paradox which hardly admits serious refutation. The answer is indeed so obvious and so undeniable, that one is almost ashamed to give it. As it happens in all such cases, an advantage is taken of the old-fashioned simplicity of truth to triumph over it. It is another of Sir Joshua’s theoretical opinions, often repeated, and almost as often retracted in his lectures, that there is no such thing as genius in the first formation of the human mind. That is not the question here, though perhaps we may recur to it. But, however a man may come by the faculty which we call _genius_, whether it is the effect of habit and circumstances, or the gift of nature, yet there can be no doubt, that what is meant by the term, is a power of original observation and invention. To take it otherwise, is a solecism in language, and a misnomer in art. A work demonstrates genius exactly as it contains what is to be found no where else, or in proportion to what we add to the ideas of others from our own stores, and not to what we receive from them. It may contain also what is to be found in other works, but it is not that which stamps it with the character of genius. The contrary view of the question can only tend to deter those who have genius from using it, and to make those who are without genius, think they have it. It is attempting to excite the mind to the highest efforts of intellectual excellence, by denying the chief ground-work of all intellectual distinction. It is from the same general spirit of distrust of the existence or power of genius that Sir Joshua exclaims with confidence and triumph, ‘There is one precept, however, in which I shall only be opposed by the vain, the ignorant, and the idle. I am not afraid that I shall repeat it too often. You MUST HAVE NO DEPENDENCE ON YOUR OWN GENIUS. If you have great talents, industry will improve them. If you have but moderate abilities, it will supply their deficiency. Nothing is denied to well directed labour; nothing can be obtained without it. Not to enter into metaphysical discussions on the nature and essence of genius, I will venture to assert, that assiduity unabated by difficulty, and a disposition eagerly directed to the object of its pursuit, will produce effects similar to those which some call the _result of natural powers_.’ P. 44, 45. Yet so little influence had the metaphysical theory, which he wished to hold _in terrorem_ over the young enthusiast, on Sir Joshua’s habitual unreflecting good sense, that he afterwards, in speaking of the attainments of Carlo Maratti, which, as well as those of Raphael, he attributes to his imitation of others, says, ‘It is true there is nothing very captivating in Carlo Maratti; but this proceeded from a want which cannot be completely supplied, that is, _want of strength of parts. In this, certainly, men are not equal_; and a man can bring home wares only in proportion to the capital with which he goes to market. Carlo, by diligence, made the most of what he had: but there was undoubtedly a heaviness about him, which extended itself uniformly to his invention, expression, his drawing, colouring, and the general effect of his pictures. The truth is, he never equalled any of his patterns in any one thing, and he added little of his own.’ P. 172. Poor Carlo, it seems, then, was excluded from the benefit of the sweeping clause in this general charter of dulness, by which all men are declared to be equal in natural powers, and to owe their superiority only to superior industry. What is here said of Carlo Maratti is, however, an exact description of the fate of all those, who, without any genius of their own, pretend to avail themselves of the genius of others. Sir Joshua attempts to confound genius and the want of it together, by shewing, that some men of great genius have not disdained to borrow largely from their predecessors, while others, who affected to be entirely original, have really invented little of their own. This is from the purpose. If Raphael, for instance, had only copied his figure of St. Paul from Massacio, or his groupe, in the sacrifice of Lystra, from the ancient bas-relief, without adding other figures of equal force and beauty, he would have been considered as a mere plagiarist. As it is, the pictures here referred to, would undoubtedly have displayed more genius, that is, more originality, if those figures had also been his own invention. Nay, Sir Joshua himself, in giving the preference of genius to Michael Angelo, does it on this very ground, that ‘Michael Angelo’s works seem to proceed from his own mind entirely, and that mind so rich and abundant, that he never needed, or seemed to disdain to look abroad for foreign help;’ whereas, ‘Raffaelle’s materials are generally borrowed, though the noble structure is his own.’ On the justice of this last statement, we shall remark presently. Perhaps Reynolds’s general account of the insignificance of genius, and the all-sufficiency of the merits of others, may be looked upon as an indirect apology for the gradual progress of his own mind, in selecting and appropriating the beauties of the great artists who went before him: he appears anxious to describe and dignify the process, from which he himself derived such felicitous results, but which, as a general system of instruction, can only produce mediocrity and imbecility. It is a lesson which a well-bred drawing-master might with great propriety repeat by rote to his fashionable pupils, but which a learned professor, whose object was to lead the aspiring mind to the heights of fame, ought not to have offered to the youth of a nation. ‘You must have no dependence on your own genius,’ is, according to Sir Joshua, the universal foundation of all high endeavours, the beginning of all true wisdom, and the end of all true art. Would Sir Joshua have given this advice to Michael Angelo, or to Raphael, or to Correggio? Or would he have given it to Rembrandt, or Rubens, or Vandyke, or Claude Lorraine, or to our own Hogarth? Would it have been followed, or what would have been the consequence, if it had?—That we should never have heard of any of these personages, or only heard of them as instances to prove that nothing great can be done without genius and originality! We are at a loss to conceive where, upon the principle here stated, Hogarth would have found the materials of his Marriage a la Mode? or Rembrandt his Three Trees? or Claude Lorraine his Enchanted Castle, with that one simple figure in the foreground,— ‘Sole sitting by the shores of old romance?’ Or from what but an eye always intent on nature, and brooding over ‘beauty, rendered still more beautiful’ by the exquisite feeling with which it was contemplated, did he borrow his verdant landscapes and his azure skies, the bare sight of which wafts the imagination to Arcadian scenes, ‘thrice happy fields, and groves, and flowery vales,’ breathing perpetual youth and freshness? If Claude had gone out to study on the banks of the Tyber with Sir Joshua’s first precept in his mouth, ‘Individual nature produces little beauty,’ and had returned poring over the second, which is like unto it, ‘You must have no dependence on your own genius,’ the world would have lost one perfect painter.[17] Rubens would have shared the same fate, with all his train of fluttering Cupids, warriors and prancing steeds, panthers and piping Bacchanals, nymphs, fawns and satyrs, if he had not been reserved for ‘the tender mercies’ of the modern French critics, David and his pupils, who think that the Luxembourg gallery ought to be destroyed, to make room for their own execrable performances. Or we should never have seen that fine landscape of his in the Louvre, with a rainbow on one side, the whole face of nature refreshed after the shower, and some shepherds under a group of trees piping to their heedless flocks, if instead of painting what he saw and what he felt to be fine, he had set himself to solve the learned riddle proposed by Sir Joshua, whether _accidents in nature_ should be introduced in landscape, since Claude has rejected them. It is well that genius gets the start of criticism; for if these two great landscape painters, not being privileged to consult their own taste and inclinations, had been compelled to wait till the rules of criticism had decided the preference between their different styles, instead of having both, we should have had neither. The folly of all such comparisons consists in supposing that we are reduced to a single alternative in our choice of excellence, and the true answer to the question, ‘Which do you like best, Rubens’s landscapes or Claude’s?’ is the one which was given on another occasion—both. If it be meant which of the two an artist should imitate, the answer is, the one which he is likely to imitate best. As to Rembrandt, he would not have stood the least chance with this new theory of art. But the warning sounds, ‘you must have no dependence on your own genius,’ never reached him in the little study where he watched the dim shadows cast by his dying embers on the wall, or at other times saw the clouds driven before the storm, or the blaze of noon-day brightness bursting through his casement on the mysterious gloom which surrounded him. What a pity that his old master could not have received a friendly hint from Sir Joshua, that getting rid of his vulgar musty prejudices, he might have set out betimes for the regions of _virtù_, have scaled the ladder of taste, have measured the antique, lost himself in the Vatican, and after ‘wandering through dry places, seeking he knew not what, and finding nothing,’ have returned home as great a critic and painter as so many others have done! Of Titian, Vandyke, or Correggio we shall say nothing here, as we have said so much in another place. A theory, then, by which these great artists could have been lost to themselves and to the art, and which explains away the two chief supports and sources of all art, _nature_ and _genius_, into an unintelligible jargon of words, cannot be intrinsically true. The principles thus laid down may be very proper to conduct the machinery of a royal academy, or to precede the distribution of prizes to the students, or to be the topics of assent and congratulation among the members themselves at their annual exhibition dinner: but they are so far from being calculated to foster genius or to direct its course, that they can only blight or mislead it, wherever it exists, and ‘lose more men of talents to this nation,’ by the dissemination of false principles, than have been already lost to it by the want of any. But it may be said, that though the perfection of portrait or landscape may be derived from the immediate study of nature, yet higher subjects are not to be found in it; that there we must raise our imaginations by referring to artificial models; and that Raphael was compelled to go to Michael Angelo and the antique. Not to insist that Michael Angelo himself, according to Sir Joshua’s account, formed an exception to this rule, it has been well observed on this statement, that what Raphael borrowed was to conceal or supply his natural deficiencies: what he excelled in was his own. Raphael never had the grandeur of form of Michael Angelo, nor the correctness of form of the antique. His expression was perfectly different from both, and perhaps better than either, certainly better than what we have seen of Michael Angelo in the prints from him compared with those from Raphael in the Vatican. In Raphael’s faces, particularly his women, the expression is superior to the form; in the antique statues, the form is evidently the principal thing. The interest which they excite is in a manner external, it depends on a certain grace and lightness of appearance, joined with exquisite symmetry and refined susceptibility to voluptuous emotions, but there is no pathos; or if there is, it is the pathos of present and physical distress, rather than of sentiment. There is not that deep internal interest which there is in Raphael; which broods over the suggestions of the heart with love and fear till the tears seem ready to gush out, but that they are checked by the deeper sentiments of hope and faith. What has been remarked of Leonardo da Vinci, is still more true of Raphael, that there is an angelic sweetness and tenderness in his faces peculiarly adapted to his subjects, in which natural frailty and passion are purified by the sanctity of religion. They answer exactly to Milton’s description of the ‘human face divine.’ The ancient statues are finer objects for the eye to contemplate: they represent a more perfect race of physical beings, but we have no sympathy with them. In Raphael, all our natural sensibilities are raised and refined by pointing mysteriously to the interests of another world. The same intensity of passion appears also to distinguish Raphael from Michael Angelo. Michael Angelo’s forms are grander, but they are not so full of expression. Raphael’s, however ordinary in themselves, are full of expression even to o’erflowing: every nerve and muscle is impregnated with feeling, or bursting with meaning. In Michael Angelo, on the contrary, the powers of body and mind appear superior to any events that can happen to them, the capacity of thought and feeling is never full, never tasked or strained to the utmost that it will bear. All is in a lofty repose and solitary grandeur which no human interests can shake or disturb. It has been said that Michael Angelo painted _man_, and Raphael _men_; that the one was an epic, the other a dramatic painter. But the distinction we have made is perhaps truer and more intelligible, _viz._ that the former gave greater dignity of form, and the latter greater force and refinement of expression. Michael Angelo borrowed his style from sculpture, which represented in general only single figures, (with subordinate accompaniments,) and had not to express the conflicting actions and passions of a multitude of persons. He is much more picturesque than Raphael. The whole figure of his Jeremiah droops and hangs down like a majestic tree surcharged with showers. His drawing of the human figure has all the characteristic freedom and boldness of Titian’s landscapes.[18] To return to Sir Joshua. He has given one very strange proof that there is no such thing as genius, namely, that ‘the degrees of excellence which proclaims genius is different in different times and places.’ If Sir Joshua had aimed at a confutation of himself, he could not have done it more effectually. For what is it that makes the difference but that which originates in a man’s self, _i.e._, is first done by him, is genius, and when it is no longer original, but borrowed from former examples, it ceases to be genius, since no one can establish this claim by following the steps of others, but by going before them? The test of genius may be different, but the thing itself is the same,—a power at all times to do or to invent what has not before been done or invented. It is plain from the passage above cited what influenced Sir Joshua’s mind in his views on this subject. He quarrelled with genius from being annoyed with premature pretensions to it. He was apprehensive that if genius were allowed to stand for any thing, industry would go for nothing in the minds of ‘the vain, the ignorant, and the idle.’ But as genius will do little without labour in an art so mechanical as painting, so labour will do still less without genius. Indeed, wherever there is true genius, there will be true labour, that is, the exertion of that genius in the field most proper for it. Sir Joshua, from his unwillingness to admit one extreme, has fallen into the other, and has mistaken the detection of an error for a demonstration of the truth. ‘The human understanding,’ says Luther, ‘resembles a drunken clown on horseback; if you set it up on one side, it tumbles over on the other.’ ON THE IMITATION OF NATURE _The Champion._] [_December 25, 1814._ The imitation of nature is the great object of art. Of course, the principles by which this imitation should be regulated, form the leading topic of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s lectures. It is certain that the mechanical imitation of individual objects, or the parts of individual objects, does not always produce beauty or grandeur; or, generally speaking that _the whole of art does not consist in copying nature_. Reynolds seems hence disposed to infer, that the whole of art consists in _not_ imitating individual nature. This is also an error, and an error on the worst side. Sir Joshua’s general system may be summed up in two words,—‘_That the great style in painting consists in avoiding the details, and peculiarities of particular objects_.’ This sweeping principle he applies almost indiscriminately to portrait, history, and landscape;—and he appears to have been led to the conclusion itself, from supposing the imitation of particulars to be inconsistent with general truth and effect. It will not be unimportant to inquire how far this opinion is well-founded: for it appears to us, that the highest perfection of the art depends, not on the separation, but on the union (as far as possible) of general truth and effect with individual distinctness and accuracy. First, it is said that the great style in painting, as it relates to the immediate imitation of external nature, consists in avoiding the details of particular objects. It consists neither in giving nor avoiding them, but in something quite different from both. Any one may avoid the details. So far, there is no difference between the Cartoons, and a common sign-painting. Greatness consists in giving the larger masses and proportions with truth;—this does not prevent giving the smaller ones too. The utmost grandeur of outline, and the broadest masses of light and shade, are perfectly compatible with the greatest minuteness and delicacy of detail, as may be seen in nature. It is not, indeed, common to see both qualities combined in the imitations of nature, any more than the combination of other excellences; nor are we here saying to which the principal attention of the artist should be directed; but we deny, that, considered in themselves, the absence of the one quality is necessary or sufficient to the production of the other. If, for example, the form of the eyebrow is correctly given, it will be perfectly indifferent to the truth or grandeur of the design, whether it consist of one broad mark, or is composed of a number of hair-lines, arranged in the same order. So, if the lights and shades are disposed in fine and large masses, the _breadth_ of the picture, as it is called, cannot possibly be affected by the filling up of those masses with the details;—that is, with the subordinate distinctions which appear in nature. The anatomical details in Michael Angelo, the ever-varying outline of Raphael, the perfect execution of the Greek statues, do not assuredly destroy their symmetry or dignity of form;—and in the finest specimens of the composition of colour, we may observe the largest masses combined with the greatest variety in the parts, of which those masses are composed. The _gross_ style consists in giving no details,—the _finical_ in giving nothing else. Nature contains both large and small parts,—both masses and details; and the same may be said of the most perfect works of art. The union of both kinds of excellence, of strength with delicacy, as far as the limits of human capacity and the shortness of human life would permit, is that which has established the reputation of the greatest masters. Farther,—their most finished works are their best. The predominance, however, of either excellence in these masters, has, of course, varied according to their opinion of the relative value of these different qualities,—the labour they had the time or patience to bestow on their works,—the skill of the artist, or the nature and extent of his subject. But, if the rule here objected to,—that the careful imitation of the parts injures the effect of the whole,—be at once admitted, slovenliness would become another name for genius, and the most unfinished performance would necessarily be the best. That such has been the confused impression left on the mind by the perusal of Sir Joshua’s discourses, is evident from the practice as well as the conversation of many (even eminent) artists. The late Mr. Opie proceeded entirely on this principle. He left many admirable studies of portraits, particularly in what relates to the disposition and effect of light and shade. But he never finished any of the parts, thinking them beneath the attention of a great man. He went over the whole head the second day as he had done the day before, and therefore made no progress. The picture at last, having neither the lightness of a sketch, nor the accuracy of a finished work, looked coarse, laboured, and heavy. ‘Would you then have an artist finish like Denner?’ is the triumphant appeal which is made as decisive against all objections. To which, as it is an appeal to authority, the proper answer seems to be,—‘No; but we would have him finish like Titian or Correggio.’ Denner is an example of finishing not to be followed, but shunned, because _he did nothing but finish_; because he finished ill, and because he finished to excess;—for in all things there is a certain proportion of means to ends. He pored into the littlenesses of objects, till he lost sight of nature, instead of imitating it. He represents the human face, perhaps, as it might appear through a magnifying glass, but certainly not as it ever appears to us. It is the business of painting to express objects as they appear naturally, not as they may be made to appear artificially. His flesh is as blooming and glossy as a flower or a shell. Titian’s finishing, on the contrary, is equally admirable, because it is engrafted on the most profound knowledge of effect, and attention to the character of what he represents. His pictures have the exact look of nature, the very tone and texture of flesh. The endless variety of his tints is blended into the greatest simplicity. There is a proper degree both of solidity and transparency. All the parts hang together: every stroke tells, and adds to the effect of the rest. To understand the value of any excellence, we must refer to the use which has been made of it, not to instances of its abuse. If there is a certain degree of ineffectual microscopic finishing, which we never find united with an attention to other higher and more indispensable parts of the art, we may suspect that there is something incompatible between them, and that the pursuit of the one diverts the mind from the attainment of the other. But this is the real point to stop at—where alone we should limit our theory or our efforts. Wherever different excellences have been actually united to a certain point of perfection, to that point (abstractedly speaking) we are sure that they may, and ought to be united again. There is no occasion to add the incitements of indolence, affectation, and false theory, to the other causes which contribute to the decline of art! Sir Joshua seems, indeed, to deny that Titian finished much, and says that he produced, by two or three strokes of his pencil, effects which the most laborious copyists would in vain attempt to equal. It is true that he availed himself, in a considerable degree, of what is called _execution_, to facilitate his imitation of nature, but it was to facilitate, not to supersede it. By the methods of scumbling or glazing, he often broke the masses of his flesh,—or by laying on lumps of colour produced particular effects, to a degree that he could not otherwise have reached without considerable loss of time. We do not object to execution: it saves labour, and shews a mastery both of hand and eye. But then there is nothing more distinct than execution and _daubing_. Indeed, it is evident, that the only use of execution is to give the details more compendiously, and sometimes, even more happily. Leave out all regard to the details, reduce the whole into crude unvarying masses, and it becomes totally useless; for these can be given just as well without execution as with it. Titian, however, made a very moderate, though a very admirable use of this power; and those who copy his pictures will find, that the simplicity is in the results, not in the details. The other Venetian painters made too violent a use of execution, unless their subjects formed an excuse for them. Vandyke successfully employed it in giving the last finishing to the details. Rembrandt employed it still more, and with more perfect truth of effect.—Rubens employed it equally, but not so as to produce an equal resemblance of nature. His pencil ran away with his eye.—To conclude our observations on this head, we will only add, that while the artist thinks that there is any thing to be done, either to the whole or to the parts of his picture, which can give it still more the look of nature, if he is willing to proceed, we would not advise him to desist.—This rule is still more necessary to the young student, for he will relax in his attention as he grows older. And again, with respect to the subordinate parts of a picture, there is no danger that he will bestow a disproportionate degree of labour upon them, because he will not feel the same interest in copying them, and because a much less degree of accuracy will serve every purpose of deception;—the nicety of our habitual observations being always in proportion to our interest in the objects.—Sir Joshua somewhere objects to the attempt to deceive by painting; and his reason is, that wax-work, which deceives most effectually, is a very disagreeable as well as contemptible art. It might be answered, first, that nothing is much more unlike nature than such figures generally are, and farther, that they only produce the appearance of prominence and relief, by having it in reality,—in which they are just the reverse of painting. Secondly, with regard to EXPRESSION, we can hardly agree with Sir Joshua that ‘_the perfection of imitation consists in giving the general idea or character, not the peculiarities of individuals_.’—We do not think this rule at all well-founded with respect to portrait-painting, nor applicable to history to the extent to which Sir Joshua carries it. For the present, we shall confine ourselves to the former of these. No doubt, if we were to chuse between the general character and the peculiarities of feature, we ought to prefer the former. But they are so far from being incompatible with, that they are not without some difficulty distinguishable from, each other. There is indeed a general look of the face, a predominant expression arising from the correspondence and connection of the different parts, which it is always of the first and last importance to give; and without which no elaboration of detached parts, or marking of the peculiarity of single features, is worth any thing; but which at the same time, is certainly not destroyed, but assisted, by the careful finishing, and still more by giving the exact outline of each part. It is on this point that the French and English schools differ, and (in my opinion) are both wrong. The English seem generally to suppose, that, if they only leave out the subordinate parts, they are sure of the general result. The French, on the contrary, as idly imagine, that by attending to each separate part, they must infallibly arrive at a correct whole,—not considering that, besides the parts, there is their relation to each other, and the general character stamped upon them by the mind itself, which to be seen must be felt,—for it is demonstrable that all expression and character are perceived by the mind, and not by the eye only. The French painters see only lines, and precise differences;—the English only general masses, and strong effects. Hence the two nations constantly reproach one another with the difference of their styles of art; the one as dry, hard and minute, the other as gross, gothic, and unfinished; and they will probably remain for ever satisfied _with each other’s defects_, which afford a very tolerable fund of consolation on either side. There is something in the two styles, which arises, perhaps, from national countenance as well as character:—the French physiognomy is frittered away into a parcel of little moveable compartments and distinct signs of intelligence,—like a telegraphic machinery. The English countenance, on the other hand, is too apt to sink into a lumpish mass, with very few ideas, and those set in a sort of stupid stereotype. To return to the proper business of portrait-painting. We mean to speak of it, not as a lucrative profession, nor as an indolent amusement, (for we interfere with no man’s profits or pleasures), but as a _bona fide_ art, the object of which is to exercise the talents of the artist, and to add to the stock of ideas in the public. And in this point of view, we should imagine that that is the best portrait which contains the fullest representation of individual nature. Portrait-painting is the biography of the pencil, and he who gives most of the peculiarities and details, with most of the general character,—that is of _keeping_,—is the best biographer, and the best portrait-painter. What if Boswell (the prince of biographers) had not given us the scene between Wilkes and Johnson at Dilly’s table, or had not introduced the little episode of Goldsmith strutting about in his peach-coloured coat after the success of his play,—should we have had a more perfect idea of the general character of those celebrated persons from the omission of these particulars? Or if Reynolds had not painted the former as ‘_blinking Sam_,’ or had given us such a representation of the latter as we see of some modern poets in some modern magazines, the fame of that painter would have been confined to the circles of fashion,—where they naturally look for the same selection of beauties in a portrait, as of topics in a dedication, or a copy of complimentary verses! It has not been uncommon that portraits of this kind, which professed to admit all the peculiarities, and to heighten all the excellences of a face, have been elevated by ignorance and affectation, to the dignified rank of historical portrait. But in fact they are merely _caricature transposed_: that is, as the caricaturist makes a mouth wider than it really is, so the painter of _flattering likenesses_ (as they are termed) makes it not so wide, by a process just as mechanical, and more insipid. Instead, however, of objecting captiously to common theory or practice, it will perhaps be better to state at once our own conceptions of historical portrait. It consists, then, in seizing the predominant form or expression, and preserving it with truth throughout every part. It is representing the individual under one consistent, probable, and striking view; or shewing the different features, muscles, etc. in one action, and modified by one principle. A face thus painted, is _historical_;—that is, it carries its own internal evidence of truth and nature with it; and the number of individual peculiarities, as long as they are true to nature, cannot lessen, but must add to the general strength of the impression. To give an example or two of what we mean. We conceive that the common portrait of Oliver Cromwell would be less valuable and striking if the wart on the face were taken away. It corresponds with the general roughness and knottiness of the rest of the face;—or if considered merely as an accident, it operates as a kind of circumstantial evidence of the genuineness of the representation. Sir Joshua Reynolds’s portrait of Dr. Johnson has altogether that sluggishness of outward appearance,—that want of quickness and versatility,—that absorption of faculty, and look of purblind reflection, which were characteristic of his mind. The accidental discomposure of his wig indicates his habits. If, with the same felicity and truth of conception, this portrait (we mean the common one reading) had been more made out, it would not have been less historical, though it would have been more like and natural. Titian’s portraits are the most historical that ever were painted; and they are so for this reason, that they have most consistency of form and expression. His portraits of Hippolito de Medici, and of a young Neapolitan nobleman in the Louvre, are a striking contrast in this respect. All the lines of the face in the one;—the eyebrows, the nose, the corners of the mouth, the contour of the face,—present the same sharp angles, the same acute, edgy, contracted expression. The other face has the finest expansion of feature and outline, and conveys the most exquisite idea possible of mild, thoughtful sentiment. The harmony of the expression constitutes as great a charm in Titian’s portraits, as that of colour. The similarity sometimes objected to them, is partly national, and partly arises from the class of persons whom he painted. He painted only Italians; and in his time none but persons of the highest rank, senators or cardinals, sat for their pictures. Sir Joshua appears to have been led into several errors by a false use of the terms _general_ and _particular_. Nothing can be more different than the various application of both these terms to different things, and yet Sir Joshua constantly uses and reasons upon them as invariable. There are three senses of the expression _general character_, as applied to ideas or objects. In the first, it signifies the general appearance or aggregate impression of the whole object, as opposed to the mere detail of detached parts. In the second, it signifies the class, or what a number of such objects have in common with one another, to the exclusion of their characteristic differences. In this sense it is tantamount to _abstract_. In the third it signifies what is usual or common, in opposition to mere singularity, or accidental exceptions to the ordinary course of nature. The general idea or character of a particular face, _i.e._ the aggregate impression resulting from all the parts combined, is surely very different from the abstract idea, or what it has in common with several others. If on giving the former all character depends; to give nothing but the latter is to take away all character. The more a painter _comprehends_ of what he sees, the more valuable his work will be: but it is not true that his excellence will be the greater, the more he _abstracts_ from what he sees.—There is an essential distinction which Sir Joshua has not observed. The details and peculiarities of nature are only inconsistent with abstract ideas, and not with general or aggregate effects. By confounding the two things, Sir Joshua excludes the peculiarities and details not only from his historical composition, but from an enlarged view and comprehensive imitation of individual nature. We have here attempted to give some account of what should be meant by the _ideal_ in portrait-painting: in our next and concluding article on this subject, we shall attempt an explanation of this term, as it applies to historical painting. ON THE IDEAL. _The Champion._] [_January 8, 1815._ ‘For I would by no means be thought to comprehend those writers of surprising genius, the authors of immense romances, or the modern novel and Atalantis writers, who, without any assistance from nature or history, record persons who never were, or will be, and facts which never did, nor possibly can happen: whose heroes are of their own creation, and their brains the chaos whence all their materials are collected. Not that such writers deserve no honour; so far from it, that perhaps they merit the highest. One may apply to them what Balzac says of Aristotle, that they are _a second nature_; for they have no communication with the first, by which authors of an inferior class, who cannot stand alone, are obliged to support themselves, as with crutches.’—FIELDING’S _Joseph Andrews_, vol. ii. What is here said of certain writers of romance, would apply equally to a great number of painters of history. These persons, not without the sanction of high authority, have come to the conclusion that they had only to quit the vulgar path of truth and reality, in order that they ‘might ascend the brightest heaven of invention,’—and that to get rid of nature was all that was necessary to the loftiest flights of art, as the soul disentangled from the load of matter soars to its native skies. But this is by no means the truth. All art is built upon nature; and the tree of knowledge lifts its branches to the clouds, only as it has struck its roots deep into the earth. He is the greatest artist, not who leaves the materials of nature behind him, but who carries them with him into the world of invention;—and the larger and more entire the masses in which he is able to apply them to his purpose, the stronger and more durable will his productions be. Sir Joshua Reynolds admits that the knowledge of the individual forms and various combinations of nature, is necessary to the student, but it is only in order that he may _avoid_ them, and steering clear of all representation of things as they actually exist, wander up and down in the empty void of his own imagination, having nothing better to cling to, than certain shadowy middle forms, made up of an abstraction of all others, and containing nothing in themselves. Stripping nature of substance and accident, he is to exhibit a decompounded, disembodied, vague, ideal nature in her stead, seen through the misty veil of metaphysics, and covered with the same fog and haze of confusion, while ‘Obscurity her curtain round him draws, And siren sloth a dull quietus sings.’ The concrete, and not the abstract, is the object of painting, and of all the works of imagination. History-painting is _imaginary_ portrait-painting. The portrait-painter gives you an individual, such as he is in himself, and vouches for the truth of the likeness as a matter of fact: the historical painter gives you the individual such as he is likely to be,—that is, approaches as near to the reality as his imagination will enable him to do, leaving out such particulars as are inconsistent with the preconceived idea,—as are merely trifling and accidental,—and retaining all such as are striking, probable, and consistent. Because the historical painter has not the same immediate data to go upon, but must connect individual nature with an imaginary subject, is that any reason why he should discard individual nature altogether, and thus leave nothing for his imagination, or the imagination of the spectator to work upon? Portrait and history differ as a narration of facts or a probable fiction differ; but abstraction is the essence of neither. That is not the finest historical head which has least the look of nature, but which has most the look of nature, if it has the look of history also. But it has the look of nature, _i.e._ of striking and probable nature,—as it has a marked and decided character, and not a character of indifference: and as the features and expression are consistent with themselves, not as they are common to others. The ideal is that which answers to the idea of something, and not to the idea of any thing, or of nothing. Any countenance strikes most upon the imagination, either in a picture or in reality, which has most distinctness from others, and most identity with itself. The keeping in the character, not the want of character, is the essence of history. Without some such limitation as we have here given, on the general statement of Sir Joshua, we see no resting-place where the painter or the poet is to make his stand, so as not to be pushed to the utmost verge of naked common-place inanity,—nor do we understand how there should be any such thing as poetry or painting tolerated. A _tabula rasa_, a verbal definition, the bare name, must be better than the most striking description or representation;—the argument of a poem better than the poem itself,—or the catalogue of a picture than the original work. Where shall we stop in the easy down-hill pass of effeminate, unmeaning insipidity? There is one circumstance, to be sure, to recommend the system here objected to, which is, that he who proposes this ideal perfection to himself, can hardly fail to succeed in it. An artist who paints on the infallible principle of not imitating nature, in representing the meeting of Telemachus and Calypso, will not find it difficult to confound all difference of sex or passion, and in pourtraying the form of Mentor, will leave out every distinctive mark of age or wisdom. In representing a Grecian marriage he will refine on his favourite principles till it will be possible to transpose the features of the bridegroom and the bride without the least violation of propriety; all the women will be like the men; and all like one another, all equally young, blooming, smiling, elegant, and insipid. On Sir Joshua’s theory of the _beau ideal_, Mr. Westall’s pictures are perhaps the best that ever were painted, and on any other theory, the worst; for they exhibit an absolute negation of all expression, character, and discrimination of form and colour. We shall endeavour to explain our doctrine by some examples which appear to us either directly subversive of, or not very obviously included in, Sir J. Reynolds’s theory of history painting, or of the principles of art in general. Is there any one who can possibly doubt that Hogarth’s pictures are perfectly and essentially _historical_?—or that they convey a story perfectly intelligibly, with faces and expressions which every one must recognise? They have evidently a common or general character, but that general character is defined and modified by individual peculiarities, which certainly do not take away from the illusion or the effect any more than they would in nature. There is, in the polling for votes, a fat and a lean lawyer, yet both of them are lawyers, and lawyers busy at an election squabble. It is the same with the voters, who are of all descriptions, the lame, the blind, and the halt, yet who all convey the very feeling which the scene inspires, with the greatest variety and the greatest consistency of expression. The character of _Mr. Abraham Adams_ by Fielding, is somewhat particular, and even singular: yet it is not less intelligible or striking on that account; and his lawyer and his landlady, though copied from individuals in real life, had yet, as he himself observes, existed four thousand years, and would continue to make a figure in the world as long as certain passions were found united with certain situations, and operating on certain dispositions. It will, we suppose, be objected that this, though history and invention, is not high history, or poetical invention. We would answer then at once by appealing to Shakespeare. It will be allowed that his characters are poetical as well as natural; yet the individual portrait is almost as striking as the general expression of nature and passion. It is this and this only which distinguishes him from the French school. Dr. Johnson, proceeding on the same theoretical principles as his friend Sir Joshua, affirms, that the excellence of Shakespeare’s characters consists in their generality. We grant in one sense it does; but we will add that it consists in their particularity also. Are the admirable descriptions of the kings of Thrace and Inde in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, less poetical or historical, or ideal, because they are distinguished by traits as characteristic as they are striking;—in their lineaments, their persons, their armour, their other attributes, the one black and broad, the other tall, and fair, and freckled, with yellow crisped locks that glittered as the sun. The four white bulls, and the lions which accompany them are equally fine, but they are not fine because they present no distinct image to the mind. The effect of this is somehow lost in Dryden’s Palamon and Arcite, and the poetry is lost with it. Much more is it necessary to combine individuality with the highest works of art in painting, ‘whose end and use both at the first, now is, and was, to hold as ’twere the mirror up to nature.’ The painter gives the degree and peculiarity of expression where words in a manner leave off, and if he does not go beyond mere abstraction, he does nothing. The cartoons of Raphael, and his pictures in the Vatican, are sufficiently historical, yet there is hardly a face or figure in any of them which is anything more than fine and individual nature finely disposed. The late Mr. Barry, who could not be suspected of a prejudice on this side of the question, speaks thus of them,—‘In Raphael’s pictures (at the Vatican) of the Dispute of the Sacrament and the School of Athens, one sees all the heads to be entirely copied from particular characters in nature, nearly proper for the persons and situation which he adapts them to; and he seems to me only to add and take away what may answer his purpose in little parts, features, &c.: conceiving, while he had the head before him, ideal characters and expressions, which he adapts these features and peculiarities of face to. This attention to the particulars which distinguish all the different faces, persons and characters, the one from the other, gives his pictures quite the verity and unaffected dignity of nature, which stamp the distinguishing differences betwixt one man’s face and body and another’s.’ If any thing is wanting to the conclusiveness of this testimony, it is only to look at the pictures themselves, particularly the Miracle of the Conversion, and the Assembly of Saints, which are little else than a collection of divine portraits, in natural and expressive attitudes,—full of the loftiest thought and feeling, and as varied as they are fine. It is this reliance on the power of nature, which has produced those master-pieces by the prince of painters, in which expression is all in all;—where one spirit—that of truth—pervades every part, brings down heaven to earth, mingles cardinals and popes with angels and apostles, and yet blends and harmonises the whole by the true touches and intense feeling of what is beautiful and grand in nature. It is no wonder that Sir Joshua, when he first saw Raphael’s pictures in the Vatican, was at a loss to discover any great excellence in them, if he was looking out for his theory of the ideal, of neutral character and middle forms. Another authority, which has been in some measure discovered since the publication of Sir Joshua’s Discourses, is to be found in the Elgin Marbles, taken from the Acropolis, and supposed to be the works of the celebrated Phidias. The process of fastidious refinement, and flimsy abstraction, is certainly not visible there. The figures have all the ease, the simplicity, and variety of nature, and look more like living men turned to stone than any thing else. Even the details of the subordinate parts, the loose folds in the skin, the veins under the belly or on the sides of the horses, more or less swelled as the animal is more or less in action, are given with scrupulous exactness. This is true nature, and true history. In a word, we can illustrate our position here better than we could with respect to painting, by saying that these invaluable remains of antiquity are precisely like casts taken from nature.—Michael Angelo and the antique may still be cited against us, and we wish to speak on this subject with great diffidence. We confess, they appear to us much more artificial than the others, but we do not think that this is their excellence. For instance, it strikes us that there is something theatrical in the air of the _Apollo_, and in the _Hercules_ an ostentatious and over-laboured display of the knowledge of the muscles. Perhaps the fragment of the _Theseus_ at Lord Elgin’s has more grandeur as well as more nature than either of them. The form of the limbs, as affected by pressure or action, and the general sway of the body, are better preserved in it. The several parts in the later Greek statues are more balanced, made more to tally like modern periods; each muscle is more equally brought out, and highly finished, and is so far better in itself, but worse as a part of a whole. If these wonderful productions have a fault, it is the want of simplicity, of a due subordination of parts, which sometimes gives them more a look of perfect lay-figures put into attitudes, than of real imitations of nature. The same objection may be urged against the works of Michael Angelo, and is indeed the necessary consequence either of selecting from a number of different models, or of proceeding on a scientific knowledge of the structure of the different parts; for the physical form is something given and defined, but motion is various and infinite. The superior symmetry of form, common to the ancient statues, we have no hesitation in attributing to the superior symmetry of the models in nature, and to the superior opportunity for studying them. In general, we would be understood to mean, that the ideal is not a voluntary fiction of the brain, a fanciful piece of patch-work, a compromise between the defects of nature, or an artificial balance struck between innumerable deformities, (as if we could form a perfect idea of beauty though we never had seen any such thing,) but a preference of what is fine in nature to what is less so. There is nothing fine in art but what is taken almost immediately and entirely from what is finer in nature. Where there have been the finest models in nature, there have also been the finest works of art. The Greek statues were copied from Greek forms. Their portraits of individuals were often superior to their personifications of their gods; the head of the _Antinous_, for example, to that of the _Apollo_. Raphael’s expressions were taken from Italian faces; and we have heard it observed, that the women in the streets of Rome seem to have walked out of his pictures in the Vatican. If we are asked, then, what it is that constitutes historic expression or ideal beauty, we should answer, not (with Sir Joshua) abstract expression or middle forms, but consistency of expression in the one, and symmetry of form in the other. A face is historical, which is made up of consistent parts, let those parts be ever so peculiar or uncommon. Those details or peculiarities only are inadmissible in history, which do not arise out of any principle, or tend to any conclusion,—which are merely casual, insignificant, and unconnected,—which do not _tell_; that is, which either do not add to, or which contradict the general result,—which are not integrant parts of one whole, however strange or irregular that whole may be. That history does not require or consist in the middle form or central features is proved by this, that the antique heads of fauns and satyrs, of _Pan_ or _Silenus_, are perfectly grotesque and singular; yet are as undoubtedly historical, as the Apollo or the Venus, because they have the same predominant, intelligible, characteristic expression throughout. _Socrates_ is a person whom we recognise quite as familiarly, from our general acquaintance with human nature, as _Alcibiades_.[19] The simplicity or the fewness of the parts of a head facilitates this effect, but is not necessary to it. The head of a negro, a mulatto, &c. introduced into a picture is always historical, because it is always distinct from the rest, and uniform with itself. The face covered with a beard is historical for the same reason, because it presents distinct and uniform masses. Again, a face, not so in itself, becomes historical by the mere force of passion. The same strong passion moulds the features into the same emphatic expression, by giving to the mouth, the eyes, the forehead, etc., the same expansion or contraction, the same voluptuous movement or painful constraint. All intellectual and impassioned faces are historical;—the heads of philosophers, poets, lovers, and madmen. Passion sometimes produces beauty by this means, and there is a beauty of form, the effect entirely of expression; as a smiling mouth, not beautiful in common, becomes so by being put into that action. Sir Joshua was probably led to his opinions on art in general by his theory of beauty, which he makes to consist in a certain central form, the medium of all others. In the first place, this theory is questionable in itself: or if it were not so, it does not include many other things of much more importance in historical painting (though perhaps not so in sculpture[20]) namely, character, which necessarily implies individuality; expression, which is the excess of thought or feeling, strength or grandeur of form, which is excess also.—There seems, however, to be a certain symmetry of form, as there is a certain harmony of sounds or colours, which gives pleasure, and produces beauty, independently of custom. Custom is undoubtedly one source or condition of beauty, but it appears to be rather its limit than its essence; that is, there are certain given forms and proportions established by nature in the structure of each thing, and sanctioned by custom, without which there can only be distortion and incongruity, but which alone do not produce beauty. One kind is more beautiful than another; and the objects of the same kind are not beautiful merely as we are used to them. The rose or lily is more beautiful than the daisy, the swan than the crow, the greyhound than the beagle, the deer than the wild goat; and we invariably prefer the Greek to the African face, though our own inclines more to the latter. We admire the broad forehead, the straight nose, the small mouth, the oval chin. Regular features are those which record and assimilate most to one another. The Greek face is made up of smooth flowing lines, and correspondent features; the African face of sharp angles and projections. A row of pillars is beautiful for the same reason. We confess, on this subject of beauty, we are half-disposed to fall into the mysticism of Raphael Mengs, who had some notion about a principle of _universal harmony_, if we did not dread the censure of an eminent critic. CHARLEMAGNE: OU L’ÉGLISE DÉLIVRÉE. _The Champion_] [_December 18, 1814._ It seldom happens that the same family produces an emperour and an epic poet. So it is, however, in the present instance. The brother of Buonaparte may be allowed to take his rank among poets, as Buonaparte himself has done among kings. But the historian of Charlemagne does not appear to us to present quite the same formidable front to the established possessors of the seats of the muses, as the imitator of Charlemagne did to the hereditary occupiers of thrones. A self-will without controul, an ambition without bounds, a gigantic daring which built its confidence of success on the contempt of danger, were the means by which Buonaparte obtained and lost his portentous power; and by which he would probably have lost it on the borders of the Ganges, or among the sands of the Red Sea, if he had not been prevented by the snows of Russia. Our poet is not the same monster of genius that his brother was of power. In the career of fame, he does not risk the success of his reputation by the unlimited extravagance of his pretensions. His muse does not disdain to borrow the conceptions of others, or to submit to the rules of art; and the boldest flights of his imagination seldom pass the bounds of a well-regulated enthusiasm. _Charlemagne_ is the work of a very clever man, rather than a great poet; it displays more talent than genius, more ingenuity than invention. It is more artificial than original. In saying this, we would not be understood to mean, that it is without considerable novelty, either of description or sentiment. Far, very far from it: almost every page presents examples of both, equally striking and elegant, which it would be difficult to refer immediately to any similar passages in other authors. But the whole wants character: it does not bear the stamp of the same presiding mind: no new world of imagination is opened to the view: we do not feel the presence of a power which we have never felt before, and which we can never forget. The stanzas are all equally or proportionably good: but they are as good separately, as taken together: they do not run into one another; they do not make a poem. There is no strong impulse given, no overpowering grandeur of effect. In scarcely any part of the story does the mind look back with terror and delight at what is past, or hurry on with eager curiosity to what is to come. The art is too apparent. The author is too busy in managing his materials, in selecting, adorning, varying, and amplifying them to the best advantage: but they seem something external to him. His subject has not taken entire possession of his mind, and therefore he does not take full possession of his readers. Yet it is certain that all the materials of poetry are here;—imagery, incident, character, passion, thought, and observation—all but the divine enthusiasm of the poet, which can alone communicate true warmth and enthusiasm to others. There is one praise which we most willingly bestow on this poem, which is, that it is not _French_. It is not another HENRIADE:—that is, it is not poetry devoid of all imagination, and of every thing like imagination. On the contrary, it abounds with variety and distinctness of conception, and is evidently written on the model of Italian poetry. We were a little surprised to find that the author had not adopted the common heroic French verse, but has borrowed the Italian Stanza with varying rhymes, and a little half verse in the middle, which has an agreeable effect enough in the lighter parts of the poem, but does not accord so well with the more serious and impressive. The following stanzas will give our readers an idea of the metre, and of the general style of description.—They represent Charlemagne traversing the Alps the night before a battle. ‘Au dessus du mont Jove, un mont plus escarpé S’élance dans la nue, et sa cime effrayante N’offre point des sentiers la trace rassurante. Par les vents orageux sans cesse il est frappé. Ici, plus de forêts, plus de germe de vie: Sur la surface unie L’ardente canicule en vain darde ses feux: Des glaçons entassés (piramide éternelle!) Etouffent la nature; et dans ces tristes lieux, A sa fécondité la terre est infidèle. C’est par là qu’aujourd’hui Charles s’ouvre un passage, Les coursiers délaissés errent dans le vallon: Et par mille détours le terrible escadron Avance lentement sur la pente sauvage. L’astre des nuits suivait son cours silencieux; Les vents impétueux Entrechoquant par fois les lances formidables, S’opposaient vainement à ces audacieux, Qui suivant de leur chef les pas infatigables, Touchent enfin le sol du piton sourcilleux. En cercles resserrés près du fils de Pepin, Ses dignes compagnons au loin jettent la vue Sur une ténébreuse et profonde étendue De mobiles vapeurs, de nuages sans fin. Appuyés sur leur glaive ils dominent la sphere Où le bruyant tonnerre S’allume par le choc des principes divers. Le barde peint ainsi les ombres eclatantes D’Oscar et de Fingal errant au haut des airs, Et brandissant encor leurs lances flamboyantes. Tels, auprès d’Ilion, les dieux enfants d’Homère, Franchissant de l’Ida les sommets ébranlés, Près du fils de Saturne en foule rassemblés, Sont décrits préparant les destins de la terre. Ces fantômes divins furent jadis des preux: Les siècles ténébreux, Osant de Jéhova dénaturer l’image, Dressèrent des autels aux héros fabuleux:[21] Et de l’idolatrie affirmissant l’ouvrage, De ces guerriers obscurs[21] Homère fit de dieux Ainsi les paladins, environnant leur roi,’ etc. _Chant huitieme._ We might refer to many other passages equally picturesque, though perhaps to none so poetical. Such as the comparison of Roland taken from the scene of combat by Oliver, to a lion led off by an African, that still roars as he follows his well-known guide;—the first appearance of Armelie, the death of Wilfred at the altar, the vanishing of Adelard from the sight of Charlemagne, the forest of Eresbourg, the Druidical sacrifice, and the funeral rites of Orlando in the valley of Ronscevalles. The language of the poem often bears a striking resemblance to the language of painting, or seems like a detailed description of some _chef d’œuvre_ of the art, rather than the creation of the poet’s fancy. We should have little doubt that the solitary church in the valley of Ronscevalles is copied from that in the back-ground of Titian’s _St. Peter Martyr_, and the massacre at the altar in the first canto is certainly taken from some picture of Raphael! In the sentiments of this poem there is more feebleness, a greater number of Gallicisms, than in the imagery. We meet with such courtly expressions as these: ‘Les Francs à chaque instant voient de nouveaux guerriers _Solliciter l’honneur d’embrasser leur defense_!’ The devil addresses the deity with the following piece of high-flown sentimentality: ‘Pour braver les remords, et la gêne et la flamme, Je ne demande rien _qu’un seul rayon d’espoir_.’ We know, indeed, from whence the allusion is taken, and we wonder the more at the affectation implied in the alteration. It is like some of Pope’s refinements on Isaiah. In giving an account of the sorrow which prevails in heaven at the disasters of the church of Christ, the author has expressed a trite theological sentiment with more felicity than we recollect to have seen it expressed before: ‘On entend à ces mots toutes les voix célestes D’une douce tristesse exhaler les soupirs. La harpe ainsi murmure au souffle des zéphirs. Les habitants du ciel n’ont point ces sons funestes— Qu’ici-bas les malheurs arrachent aux humains. Aux peines, aux chagrins, Aux passions du monde ils ne sont plus en proie; D’un amour sans mélange ils goûtent la douceur: Leurs maux sont moins amers, plus purs que notre joie; Et leur tristesse à peine altère leur bonheur.’ The conception of his Heaven is much more just than that of Hell, though the execution is (almost as a matter of course) less powerful. The two figures of Adam and Moses, in the former, are particularly fine: ‘Le père des humains voit sa nombreuse race, Et calcule, pensif, le nombre des élus! Moïse près de lui, d’un seul regard embrasse Les enfants d’Israël en tous lieux répandus.’ Our poet has, very good-naturedly, (and we hope with the approbation of his holiness the Pope, to whom this work is dedicated,) set aside two stanzas for the secret conveyance of the souls of virtuous heathens and of little children, into the abodes of the blest. The author of _Charlemagne_ has constructed his hell upon an entirely new and fanciful theory. We see no sort of reason why Satan should not, in strict propriety, sit upon a throne; nor why his followers should be degraded from the rank of fallen angels into modern French revolutionists. We like Milton’s account much better in all respects; and our author himself, as is the natural consequence of all affectation, flounders into contradiction in the very next verse, where he gives a most superb account of Lucifer. In the same spirit, he has made a more enlightened distribution of crimes and punishments; and established an entire new set of regulations and bye-laws in the regions of the damned. Alexander and the two Brutuses figure there with Cain and other murderers, while ‘the noble Cæsar’ is exempted. Now we have no notion of such a philosophical hell as our poetical casuist would carve out. This celebrated place is, we think, of all others the least liable to plans of reform. It is almost the oldest establishment upon record, and placed quite out of the reach of the progress of reason and metaphysics. We hate disputes in poetry, still more than in religion. At least, whatever appeals to the imagination, ought to rest on undivided sentiment, on one undisputed tradition, one catholic faith.[22] Besides, the whole account of the infernal regions is an excrescence, equally misplaced and improbable. None of the heroes of the poem descend there, but as Satan is brought thence to appear to Charlemagne in the shape of a lying priest, this opportunity is taken to describe the geography of the place according to the latest discoveries. There is one point in which we agree with the poet, _viz._ in his indignation against tyrants and their flatterers, though he does not go so far as honest Quevedo, who, when his hero wonders to see so few kings in hell, makes his guide reply sullenly, ‘Here are all that ever reigned.’ We shall conclude our remarks on this part of the poem with the author’s description of the punishment of Cain, which we think the most striking. ‘Ici rugit Cain, les cheveux hérissés, Et portant sur son front la marque sanguinaire. “Cain, Cain, réponds: qu’as-tu fait de ton frère?” A cette voix du Ciel tous ses sens sont glacés; Cain croit voir Abel éclatant de lumière; Et d’un bras téméraire, Il ose encor frapper l’objet de son courroux: Il voudrait le priver d’une seconde vie: Mais l’ombre glorieuse échappant à ses coups, Redouble dans son cœur les tourments de l’envie.’ THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED _The Champion._] [_December 25, 1814._ The story of a poem is seldom worth a long description. It may be sufficient to say in the present case, that the danger to which the church was exposed, and from which it was afterwards delivered, arose from the second marriage of _Charlemagne_ with _Armelie_, the daughter of _Didier_, the King of the Lombards, who was exerting himself to depose Pope Adrian. Charlemagne had divorced his first wife, _Adelinde_, but he is warned in a vision to take her again to his bosom. He does so, and _Didier_ and his daughter consequently become the enemies of this Christian Emperor, who takes arms to defend the Holy See. After the usual casualties and fluctuations of fortune, the son of Pepin finally triumphs. On a more careful examination, we see no reason to alter our first opinion of this poem. It has given us no strong impulse, nor left any permanent trace on our minds. It opens no new and rich vein of poetry, though certainly great talents are shewn in the use which is made of existing materials. Perhaps it may be said that this is all that can be done in a modern poem: if so, that _all_ is hardly worth the doing. There is no one who has borrowed his materials more than Milton, or who has made them more completely his own: there is hardly a line which does not breathe the same lofty spirit, hardly a thought or image which he has not clothed with the majesty of his genius. It is the same in reading other great poets. The informing mind is every where present to us. Who is there that does not know and feel sensibly the majestic copiousness of Homer, the polished elegance of Virgil, enamoured of its own workmanship,—the severe grandeur of Dante, the tender pathos of Tasso, the endless voluptuousness of Spenser, and the unnumbered graces of Ariosto? Even the mysterious solemnity of Ossian, and the wild romantic interest of Walter Scott, are something gained to the imagination. But in the present instance, we do not feel the same participation with the author’s mind, nor accession of strength to our own. So little is it in the power even of the most accomplished art to counterfeit nature. The true Florimel did not differ more from the Florimel which was made for the witches’ son, than true genius from the most successful and elaborate imitation of it. We shall close these remarks with extracting two passages which in the opinion of our readers will perhaps be thought to amount to a complete refutation of our objections. The first is the description of the funeral rites of Orlando, in the thirteenth canto. ‘Gaiffre a suivi son guide au fond du précipice, Un clocher solitaire a frappé ses regards: Dans les jours du repos, les fidèles épars Accourent au signal du divin sacrifice. Ici du haut des monts descendent les pasteurs. La vierge des douleurs De ces mortels obscurs y reçoit la prière: Sur un autel de bois on a sculpté ses traits; Les nombreux ex-voto de la divine mère Dans ces lieux écartés attestant les bienfaits. Un son plaintif et sourd vient de frapper les airs; C’est l’airain qui gémit pour les pompes funèbres. Dans le temple le jour a fait place aux ténèbres; Des signes de la mort les parois sont couverts. Un saint pontife offrait la victime ineffable; Et sa voix secourable Invoquait pour nos preux le céleste repos. Un simple sarcophage au milieu de l’enceinte Retrace à tous les yeux la tombe du héros, Et répand dans les cœurs une tristesse sainte. Le prêtre des hameaux, suivant l’antique usage, Dans l’Eglise chrétienne en tout temps révéré, Trois fois avec l’eau sainte et l’encensoir sacré Fait solennellement le tour du sarcophage. “Dans le sein de ton Dieu sois heureux à jamais: Roland, repose en paix.” Du pontife telle est la fervente prière. Ces mots ont terminé le sacrifice saint; Et la foule se rend dans le champ funéraire Ou gît, sous une croix, le corps du paladin.’ In the nineteenth canto, Lawrence and her children, after their escape from Bourdeaux, arrive at the castle of Melaric, an old christian knight, when the following example of perfect description occurs:— ‘La nuit envellopait les champs & les remparts; Sur les murs menaçants de la salle gothique Une teinte plus sombre & plus mélancholique Couvrait les boucliers, les glaives, & les dards; Le vent du soir soufflait des gorges du Pyrène; Et sa fougueuse halcine Des armures des preux entrechoquait l’airain. Les lances, les cimiers rendent des sons funèbres: Leur murmure plaintif ressemble au cri lointain D’un guerrier qui succombe au milieu des ténèbres.’ The author in his notes gives us to understand that he is about another epic poem, the hero of which is Isolier, a native of Corsica, and which is to bear the same relation to Charlemagne, that the Odyssey does to the Iliad. LUCIEN BUONAPARTE’S COLLECTION, ETC. _The Champion._] [_January 22, 1815._ We have been able to obtain access to the almost inaccessible collection of the Prince of Canino. The liberality with which the collections of foreign princes are thrown open to strangers and the public is often boasted of; but this liberality, we suppose, ceases when the same collections are exposed in this country for sale. The pictures of Lucien Buonaparte, which are valued at £40,000, are kept in most ‘vile durance’; and even the ticket of admission, which we presented to a person who seems placed at the door to keep persons out, and not to let them in, was inspected and objected to with the same scrupulous jealousy as if it had been a bank-note presented in payment of the purchase-money of the collection. A cursory glance round the room was sufficient to explain the source of so much mystery and caution. The pictures are in general mere trash. Nor is the general dearth of attraction relieved by even a few examples of first-rate excellence. The only exception to these remarks which struck us was an exquisite female head by Leonardo da Vinci. It is one of the finest specimens we have seen of that great master, both for expression, drawing, the spirit and delicacy of the execution, and the preservation of the tone of colouring. There is in Leonardo’s female heads a grace and charm of expression, which is peculiar to himself—a character of natural sweetness and playful tenderness, mixed up with the pride of conscious intellect, and with the graceful reserve of personal dignity. He blends purity with voluptuousness; and the expression of his women is equally characteristic of ‘the mistress or the saint!’ His pictures are always worked up to the utmost height of the idea he had conceived, with an elaborate felicity. No painter made more a religion of his art! His fault is, that his style of execution is too mathematical; that is, his pencil does not follow the graceful variety of nature, but substitutes certain refined gradations both of form and colour, producing equal changes in equal distances, with a mechanical uniformity. Leonardo was a man of profound learning as well as genius; and perhaps transferred too much of the formality of science to his favourite art. In making this objection, we have had in our eye two of the most celebrated pictures, the _Jocunda_ in the Louvre, and the _St. John_ in the possession of Mr. Hope. The picture in the present collection has more flexibility and variety; as well as greater heightening of colour; and perhaps the latter effect may be the cause of the former. It is not impossible that a certain degree of monotony may have been sometimes produced by the rubbing off of the higher tints and finishing touches of the pencil, so as to leave little more of the picture than the general ground-work. To return to the collection before us. The only remaining pictures which can excite any interest are, some curious specimens of the early masters, Ghirlandaio, Bellino, and others;—some small sketches of Titian; a finely coloured Holy Family by the same master; a portrait by Sebastian del Piombo; a sketch of Diana and Acteon, by A. Caracci; a landscape by Ruysdael; and a transfiguration, said to be by Vasari. Besides these, there is a Frenchified Salvator Rosa, coloured pink and blue, a copy of Domenichino’s head of St. Jerome, one or two pretended Claudes, and some _amatory_ pictures of the modern French school. To these shall we add the picture of Lucien Buonaparte himself? Nothing certainly can go beyond it in its way. It is the very _priggism_ of portrait-painting. We have already said something of the French style of portraits, and we shall here add a few remarks in explanation, though we are aware that any hints of a want of refinement will be thrown away on a nation so entirely _spirituel_ as the French, and we are also afraid that some of our own artists may take credit to themselves for as many excellences, as we may charge their neighbours with defects. The French systematically paint all objects as they would paint _still life_; and hence they in general never paint any thing _but still life_. It is not possible to paint that which has life and motion by the same mechanical process by which that which has neither life nor motion may be represented. Thus it is not possible to imitate the human countenance, which is moveable and animated, as you would imitate a piece of drapery, or a chair, or a table, in which the physical appearance is every thing, and that appearance always remains the same. The industry of the eye and hand will go a great way in giving the effect of a number of parts of any external object, arranged in the same order; but to give truth of effect to that which is always varying, and always expressive of more than strikes the senses, imagination and feeling are absolutely required. Whenever there is life and motion, life and motion become the principal things; and any attempt to give these, without a distinct operation or feeling of the mind as to what constitutes their essence, by a mere attention to the physical form, or particular details, must necessarily destroy all appearance both of one and the other. To instance in expression only. This can only be given by being felt. Take for instance the outline of part of a face, and let it be so placed as to form part of the outline of a rock, or any other inanimate object. A copy of this, done with tolerable care, will seem to be the same thing: but let it be known that this is really a part of a human countenance, and then it will probably be found to be quite different _from the difference of expression_. We distinguish all objects more or less by habitual knowledge; and this knowledge is always acute in proportion to the interest excited, that is, to the intensity of the feeling or passion which is combined with the immediate impression on the senses. Expression is therefore only caught by sympathy; and it has been received as a maxim, that no painter can succeed in giving an expression which is totally foreign to his own character. There are some painters who cannot paint a wise man, and others who cannot paint a fool: some who cannot give strength, and others softness to their works. It is the want of character, of flexibility, and transient expression, which is the great defect of French portraits. Without the indications of the mind breathed into the countenance and moulding the features, the whole must appear stiff, hard, mean, unconnected, and lifeless—like the mask of a face, not like the face itself—forced, affected, and unnatural. Another consequence of this mode of copying the letter and leaving out the spirit of all objects, is that the face in general looks the least finished part of the picture, for while the other parts remain the same, this necessarily varies, and the only way to make up for the want of literal exactness, must be by seizing the force and animation of the expression. A head that does not look like life, cannot look like any thing else.—The portrait of Lucien Buonaparte is a striking confirmation of these remarks. We do not know how to describe it otherwise than by saying that it looks as if the artist had first modelled the face in wax, oiled it over, painted the lips purple, stuck on a pair of artificial eyebrows, and inserted a pair of dark blue glass eyes, and then set to work to copy every part of this perverse misrepresentation, with tedious and disgusting accuracy. In a portrait of the author of Charlemagne, one has a right to expect some refinement of intellect and feeling, if not the marks of elevated genius. No such thing. The picture has just the appearance of a spruce holiday mechanic, with all the hardness, littleness, and vulgarity of expression which is to be found in nature, where the countenance has not been expanded by thought and sentiment, and in art, where this expression has been entirely overlooked. The French artists themselves, both men and women, seem to be aware of the dilemma to which they are reduced, and prefer copying from plaster casts, or lay figures, to painting from the life; which baffles the mechanical minuteness and ‘laborious foolery’ of their style of art. They set about painting a face as they would about engraving a picture. This cannot possibly answer. From the general idea of the liveliness and volatility of the French character one would be apt to suppose, that instead of the method here described, their artists would have adopted the happier mode proposed by Pope in describing his characters of women: ‘Come, then, the colours and the ground prepare, Dip in the rainbow, trick her off in air, Chuse a firm cloud, before it falls, and in it Catch, ere the change, the Cynthia of a minute!’ But the days of Watteau are over, and the plodding gravity of the Dutch has succeeded to the natural levity of French art. It is no wonder: for both proceed from a want of real concentration and force of intellect.[23] There is another picture in this collection which we would recommend to the attention of all _whom it may concern_, as a most instructive lesson of the vanity of human pretensions, and the capriciousness of national taste. It is the historical picture of the return of Marcus Sextus, by Guerin, one of the most admired painters of the modern French school. This picture combines all the vices of that school in their most confirmed and aggravated state, and yet it drew, at the time when it was first exhibited in Paris, crowds of admirers, whose raptures were excited exactly in proportion as it flattered their habitual prejudices, and outraged every principle of common sense. It consists of three figures, that of the husband standing in front of the bed, the wife who lies dead upon it being behind him, and the daughter kneeling at his feet. Now all these figures seem as if they had been cut out of pasteboard, smeared over with putty to represent the shadows, and then stuck flat against the canvass to make a picture. This is not truth, nor invention, nor art, nor nature: but it is the French style of painting. Their pictures are sections of statues, or architectural elevations of the human figure. They have the effect neither of painting nor sculpture; for painting has colour, and the appearance of substance, sculpture has real substance without colour; but these have neither colour, substance, nor the appearance of it, but consist of mere lines. Whatever they may do, we cannot think this the highest style of history: because proceeding on arithmetical principles only, it wants two out of three of the physical requisites of the art of painting. The picture of Guerin is painted in strong contrast of light and shade, and ought to have proportionable prominence and relief. But from the habit of attending only to lines and detached parts, that is, of never combining the lesser masses into larger ones, or of contemplating the general appearance of nature, the whole effect is frittered away, and neither the prominent parts stand out, nor do the receding ones fall back. The same flat, imbecile, and dingy effect is produced, as by smearing white streaks upon a black ground, without knowledge or design, or reference to any actual object in nature. The drawing in this picture is equally characteristic of the general French style, and equally repulsive. It is not easy to explain the elaborate absurdity of the process: but it is in reality this. The painter has taken the figure of an antique statue for the figure of his hero. But finding that the position would not answer his purpose; he therefore gets a lay-figure made from a cast of this statue, and distorting it into the attitude he wants, places it against some object which props it up, with the two feet stretched out before it, as if it could neither move nor stand; and this the artist calls painting history, and copying the ancients. This is what no other nation dare attempt. The expression which is given to these mockeries of art and nature, is of a piece with the rest. It is either copied tamely, servilely, and without effect, from the model before them, or if any thing is added to it, all grace and feeling is instantly lost in the extravagance of grimace and affectation. The ambition of these refiners on nature is like that of Pygmalion to give life and animation to a stone, but no miracle has yet come to their assistance.[24] The French are incapable of painting true history, for they are a people essentially without imagination, and without a knowledge of the passions that belong to it. All that is powerful in them, is immediate sensation—the rest is either levity, or formality, or distortion. Take the picture of the deluge by Girodet. In this, a daughter is represented clinging to her mother by the hair of her head, the mother is clinging to the husband, he is at the same time supporting his father with his other arm, and is enabled to support the whole of this exquisite family groupe by taking hold of the branch of a tree which has just broken off by the weight. This effort of imagination almost equals the exploit of the clown in the pantomime, who contrives to balance a dozen men on one another’s shoulders. If Poussin or Raphael had been fortunate enough to study in the central schools of Paris, what a difference would this new principle of grouping have introduced into their pictures of the Deluge and the Incendio del Borgo. Before we quit this subject of French art, we would notice that there are two pictures of the Emperor Napoleon to be seen at present, one in Leicester-fields, which is very bad, and another in the Adelphi, by Lefebre, which is tolerably good. The last is one of the best French portraits we have ever seen. The effect however is only good, very near, and is best when each part is seen through a magnifying glass. There is considerable character, firmness of drawing, and prominence in the features. Still it does not convey an adequate idea of the man. It is heavy, perplexed, and sullen, without sufficient fierceness or energy, and indeed without either the high or the bad qualities of the original. It has, notwithstanding, the appearance of being what is understood by a faithful likeness, and only wants that full developement of the workings of the mind, which every portrait ought to have, and which, in a portrait like the present, would be invaluable. BRITISH INSTITUTION _The Champion._] [_February 5, 1815._ The Exhibition of this year, which opens to the public on Monday, is said to be inferior to the last:—that was said to be inferior to the one before it,—that to the preceding one, and so on. This is the common cant respecting all Exhibitions; and the reason is obvious enough. We are naturally less struck by pictures of the same degree and class of excellence, by the same artists, on repetition than at first sight; and the art appears to be retrograde, only because it is not progressive. Perhaps, however, there is some foundation for the objection in the present instance. At least, we think there is a falling off in the historical department: though that is the department of the art which would least bear any kind of retrenchment. We do not know whether to lay the blame of the deficiency on those artists, who have been away this summer on their visit to the French capital, or on those who have remained behind. The picture in this branch of the art which pleased us the most on looking into it, and which we conceive has decidedly the greatest number of excellent parts, though the general effect is very far from striking, is ‘_Brutus exhorting the Romans to revenge the Death of Lucretia_,’ by C. L. Eastlake. The artist will excuse us, if we say that we think the principal figure, that of _Brutus_, by much the worst part of the picture. A more theatrical, and less impressive figure we have seldom seen. He is quite an orator of the modern stamp, and has nothing of the ‘antique Roman’ about him. He is not a bit better than any of the blustering, canting, vapid, Canning school, and is evidently an orator to be disposed of. We would advise Mr. Eastlake to take a hint from a high quarter, and get rid of him, at any rate. The effect of the attitude of this figure, which is represented pointing with a sword to the body of _Lucretia_, behind him, is almost entirely lost by the want of distinct foreshortening and prominent relief.[25] The figure of _Brutus_ seems in a line with that of _Lucretia_. Indeed, the same defect pervades the whole picture, which is laid-in like mosaic, and the general pale, stone-colour appearance of the drapery, and of the flesh, adds to this effect. No one figure comes out before the rest to the eye, till by tracing it down to the feet, you find where it stands. The dead figure of _Lucretia_ herself is a complete piece of marble. We wish to notice more particularly, because it is an excellence very rare in an English artist, that the attention to costume in the decorations of the bier on which the dead body lies, and in the other ornaments in the back-ground of the picture, gives an additional air of truth and consequently of interest to the scene. The peculiar merit of this composition is the great variety of distinct faces and characteristic expressions to be found in it. These, if not of a very high order, are at least much better than the pompous nonentities to which we are accustomed. There is very little of passion or emotion given or attempted, but we think the expression of attention in the surrounding audience is varied very happily, and with great truth of nature. The most picturesque and interesting part of the picture is the groupe in which a girl with a back-figure is supporting (we suppose) the mother of _Lucretia_. The expression of the countenance in the latter reminded us of Annibal Caracci, and we are always glad to be reminded of him. Certainly the same effect was not produced upon our minds by the boy in the foreground, with sandy hair and weak eyes, who is crying so piteously: still less did we like the figure of a man in the right hand corner, who is explaining the story to another with his fists clenched, and in a boxing attitude. The model for a Roman warrior is as little to be sought in a Fives Court, as of a Roman patriot in a debating society, or even (with leave be it spoken) in an English House of Commons. We have dwelt the longer on this picture, because its immediate effect on the eye is by no means in proportion to its real merit. The drab-coloured quakerism of the tone conceals it from observation almost as much as if it had a veil over it. We do not really understand the object of these sickly half-tints, which all French artists, and some of our own, affect. Nicolas Poussin, who had no relief of light and shade, had strong contrasts of colour: or even if he had had neither, the great distinctness of his outline, and his striking manner of telling the story, might still have formed a sufficient excuse for him. In short, the style of colouring adopted in this picture may, for aught we know, accord very well with some more artificial and recondite style of historical composition; but we are sure, it has nothing to do with natural expression, or immediate effect. It has been said, that ‘a great book is a great evil.’ We think the same thing might be applied to pictures: or at least we should not instance the large picture in this collection of _The Burial of our Lord_, by C. Coventry, as an exception to the rule. We admit, however, that the face, dress, and figure of the old man holding the drapery over Christ, are picturesque, and in the fine manner of Rembrandt. The attitude and action of this figure are exactly the same as those of a similar figure in Mr. Bird’s picture of the same subject. This is rather a singular coincidence in two pictures exhibited at the same time, and which it is therefore improbable to suppose could have been copied one from the other. The other figures about Christ we cannot bring ourselves to admire: they resemble painted wood. The colour of the Christ is a livid purple, the worst of all possible colours. The women are better; though the fine turn in the waist of one of them is not in the best style of history, which does not profess to exhibit women of fashion. Mr. Bird’s picture of _The Entombment of Christ_, is, we conceive, very inferior to his picture last year of _Job and his Friends_. The colouring is equally bad, and the composition is not equally good. There is one pretty figure of a girl, but her prettiness is not an advantage to the subject. In all things, ‘It is place which lessens and sets off.’ Mr. Bird constantly introduces the extremities of the hands and feet into his pictures, only to show how ill he can paint them. The picture of _The Surrender of Calais_ has been already before the public. Among the historical pictures, we suppose from its name, we must rank that of the _Prophet Ezra_, by G. Hayter, though it does not appear to us to belong to the class. It is a fine, rich, and strongly painted picture of a man reading a book. The being able to copy nature with truth and effect is not history, though we think it is the first step to it. In this picture, which we believe is a first essay, Mr. Hayter has not redeemed the pledge he gave in his miniatures. If we could paint such miniatures as he does, we would do nothing but paint miniatures always; and laugh at the advertisements of great historical pictures in the newspapers. The _St. Bernard_, by the same artist, is very indifferent. Mr. Harlowe’s _Hubert and Arthur_ is the greatest piece of coxcombry and absurdity we remember to have seen. We do not think that any one who pleases has a right to paint a libel on Shakspeare. The generality of the historical pictures in the gallery are such as have been always painted, and as will always be painted, in spite of all that can be said to the contrary, and therefore it is as well to say nothing about them. Miss Jackson’s _Mars subdued by Peace_ is a very pleasing composition. Both the face and expression of the figure of _Peace_ are those of a very beautiful and interesting girl, though from the tender pensiveness of the features she seems rather as if sending _Mars_ out to battle than disarming him; and as to the God of War himself, he does not look like one whom ‘deep scars of thunder have intrenched,’ but as if he had been kept a long time at home in a lady’s chamber. The Cupids (when Ladies imagine Cupids, what can they be less?) are very nice, little, chubby fellows. There are two pictures of _The Sick Pigeon_ and _The Favourite Kitten_ by Miss Geddes, both of which we like, gallantry out of the question. The kitten in the last is exquisitely painted. You may almost hear it _purring_. Among the foreign contributors to this department we ought to mention _Music_, by M. Messora, in the manner of the early Italian masters, and _Devotion_, a small picture by J. Laschallas, which is hung almost out of sight, and which, if it were hung a little lower, we suspect, would be found to be ‘a good picture and a true.’ To the scene from the _Marriage of Figaro_, by Chalon, no praise of ours could add the slightest grace or lustre. We wonder where he got the figure of his _Susan_, or how he dared to paint her! In the domestic scenes, and views of interiors, &c. this exhibition is much like the former ones, except that we miss Collins, and find no one to replace him. Of the landscapes, Burnett’s, Fielding’s, Nasmyth’s, Hofland’s, and Glover’s are the best. In Mr. Glover’s large picture of _Jacob and Laban_ (which we believe was exhibited and much admired in Paris), there is a want of harmony and lightness in the whole: but there is a groupe of trees in the foreground, which Claude himself would not have disdained to borrow. Mr. Hofland’s landscapes, without being much finished, have the look, the tone, and freshness of nature. The _View of Edinburgh_ is, we think, the best. Some of the others are too much abstractions of aerial perspective: they are naked and cold, and represent not the objects of nature so much as the medium through which they are seen. We will only add, in our professional capacity, that this gentleman’s pictures shew themselves, and that he need not be at the trouble of shewing them. Nasmyth’s pictures are not too much finished, but they want a certain breadth, which nature always adds to perfect finishing. Fielding is a new and most promising artist, of whom we mean to say more. Of the two Burnetts, we shall only remark at present, that they have made no addition to their live-stock since last year, which consisted then, as it does now, of one black, one yellow, and one spotted cow. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED _The Champion._] [_February 12, 1815._ _Cottage Child at Breakfast_, W. Collins, A.R.A. This is a pleasing little picture, but inferior to Mr. Collins’s general performances. The shadow cast on the wall is like plaster of a darker colour, nor should we have suspected it to be meant for shadow, had it not been pointed out to us. _Reapers_, by the same artist, is a still greater falling off. The mixture of minute finishing and slovenliness in the execution, and of blues and yellows in the colouring of this picture is to us very unaccountable. _Devotion_, J. Laschallas. We wish that we could conjure this little picture out of its frame to have a nearer view. The drawing, expression, tone, and composition appear to us admirable. _A Scolding Wife; her Husband having spent all his Money at the Fair_, L. Cossé. This is not a very pleasant subject, nor very pleasantly treated. The little child blowing the trumpet is the pretty part of the picture. There is one figure of a woman in a blue stuff gown, sitting by the fire-side, in an attitude of yawning, which both for the truth of the colouring and the action, is inimitable. _A Country Scene_, by the same, has the hard brickdusty tone which there is in the faces of the other picture; but the expression is natural and good. _A Colour-Grinder_, R. T. Bone, is a spirited and faithful imitation of nature. _A Study from Nature_, J. Harrison, is a well-painted head. At the same time, there is something about it very unpleasant to us. _Hebe_ and _Sunrise_, by H. Howard, R.A., were, we believe, in last year’s Exhibition at Somerset-house. There is a certain grace and elegance in both of them. The fantastic, playful lightness of the figures in the last is perhaps carried to a degree of affectation. The faces of the Pleiades are very pretty and very insipid. _Conrade and Gulnare_, H. Singleton. We could neither understand this picture nor the lines from Lord Byron’s _Corsair_, which are intended to explain the subject of it. _Brutus exhorting the Romans to revenge the Death of Lucretia._ Of this composition we find we have already said quite enough. _View of Arthur’s Seat near Edinburgh_, P. Nasmyth, is a very nicely painted landscape. We like all this gentleman’s landscapes, except _A View of Edinburgh_, which is just like a painting on a tea-board. _Breaking the Ice_, by James Burnett, is a very delightful picture. It has the effect of walking out in a fine winter’s morning. Many incidental associations are very happily introduced; the pigeons collected on the thatch of a shed, and the robin-redbreast perched in a window of an out house. The pigeons are, however, too small, and the colour on the breast of the robin is on fire. Perhaps these objections are too minute. The pigeon-house looks suspended in the air, and the sky and branches of the trees seen against it are painted with admirable brilliancy. _Peasants going to Market_, by the same artist, is of equal merit. The skirt of the drapery of the peasant girl looks as if the sun shone directly upon it. The docks in the foreground of the picture are very highly finished, and touched with great spirit, but we never saw this kind of plant of the lightish green colour, which is here given to it. _Milking_, by John Burnett, is a very brilliant little picture. The red dress of the girl at the milk-pail is as rich as possible. The trees at a little distance are too much in sharp points and touches. The cattle in the landscapes of both the painters of this name are too much in heavy masses, and form too violent a contrast to the lightness of the landscape about them. _The Watering Place_, P. H. Rogers, deserves considerable praise, both for the colouring and composition. _Banks of the Thames_, J. Wilson, is a very clever picture. The foreground and the distance are equally well painted; but they do not appear in keeping. The one is quite clear, and the other covered with haze. _Morning_, and _View from Rydal Woods_, by C. V. Fielding, are both masterly performances. The last, in particular, is a rich, mellow landscape, and presents a fine, woody, and romantic scene, which in some degree calls off our admiration from the merit of the artist to the beauties of nature. This is a sacrifice of self-love which many of our artists do not seem willing to make. They too often chuse their subjects, not to exhibit the charms of nature, but to display their own skill in making something of the most barren subjects. We think this objection applies to Mr. Hofland’s landscapes in general. The scene he selects is represented with great truth and felicity of pencil, but it is, generally speaking, one we should neither wish to look at, nor to be in. In his _Loch-Lomond_ and _Stirling Castle_, the effect of the atmosphere is finely given; but this is all. We wish to enter our protest against this principle of separating _the imitation_ from _the thing imitated_, particularly as it is countenanced by the authority of the ablest landscape painter of the present day, of whose landscapes some one said, that ‘they were pictures of nothing, and very like!’ THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED _The Champion._] [_February 19, 1815._ _Battle-piece_, B. Barker, is a spirited sketch, harmoniously coloured. In force of drawing and expression, it is inferior to _The Standard_, by Ab. Cooper. There is too violent an opposition of white and black in the horses in this picture; and the eye does not immediately connect the heads of the animals with the rest of their bodies. This picture, however, displays great knowledge of the subject, and considerable strength of composition. _A Study from Nature_, by the same artist, Ab. Cooper, is a masterly little picture. _Birds_, from nature, and _Plovers_, from nature, by M. Chantry, are both excellent in their kind. _View of Richmond, Yorkshire_, by W. Westall, A.R.A. is deficient in perspective and in other respects. The river below seems to be on a level with the high foreground from which it is seen. The representing declivities by means of aerial perspective is, we believe, one of the difficulties of the art, and we do not remember any successful instances of it, except in some of Wilson’s landscapes. _A Boy lamenting the Death of his Favourite Rabbit_, W. Davison, is a very pleasing composition in the style of Gainsborough. The landscape has too much the blue greenish hue and slender execution of Gainsborough’s back-grounds. The boy is well painted. There is a picture of this kind by Murillo in the collection at Dulwich, which we would earnestly recommend to every painter of such subjects. Or we might as well, in other words, recommend them to look at nature. _Forest Scene_, by J. Stark, is painted with great truth of colour and effect. _Stacking Hay_, P. Dewint, has great merit. _Jacob taking charge of the Flocks and Herds of Laban_, J. Glover. We have already spoken of this picture. The group of tall green trees in the foreground is excellent, but there is a leaden tone spread over the rest of the picture, which is neither gratifying to the eye, nor true to nature. _The Emperor Alexander, in his Droschi_, by A. Sauerweide, is like all the other pictures, busts, &c. we have seen of him, and not at all like the descriptions we have heard of his fine person and countenance. _The Duke of Wellington attacking the Rear of Marshal Soult’s Army on the Pont de Miserali over the Great fall of Salamondi, and pursuing them through the Passes of the Sierra Morone in Portugal, 1809_, from a sketch by Major-general Hawker, by Perry Nursey. This is not a good picture; but it gives one a good idea of the sport which is to be found in this sort of royal game. In looking at it we have something like ocular demonstration of the truth of what Cowper, the poet, says— ‘War is a game, which were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at!’ ON MR. WILKIE’S PICTURES _The Champion._] [_March 5, 1815._ In one of Archbishop Herring’s letters, written during a tour in Wales, is the following very picturesque description of a scene at an inn. ‘I set out upon this adventurous journey on a Monday morning, accompanied (as bishops usually are) by my chancellor, my chaplain, secretary, two or three friends, and our servants. The first part of our road lay across the foot of a long ridge of rocks, and was over a dreary morass, with here and there a small dark cottage, a few sheep and more goats in view, but not a bird to be seen, save, now and then, a solitary hern, watching for frogs. At the end of four of their miles, we got to a small village, where the view of things mended a little, and the road and the time were beguiled by travelling for three miles along the side of a fine lake, full of fish, and transparent as glass. That pleasure over, our work became very arduous, for we were to mount a rock, and in many places of the road, over natural stairs of stone. I submitted to this, which, they told me, was but a taste of the country, and to prepare me for worse things to come. However, worse things did not come that morning, for we dined soon after out of our own wallets; and though our inn stood in a place of the most frightful solitude, and the best formed for the habitation of monks (who once possessed it) in the world, yet we made a cheerful meal. The novelty of the thing gave me spirits, and the air gave me appetite, much keener than the knife I ate with. We had our music too; for there came in a harper, who soon drew about us a group of figures, that Hogarth would give any price for. The harper was in his true place and attitude; a man and a woman stood before him, singing to his instrument wildly, but not disagreeably; a little dirty child was playing with the bottom of the harp; a woman, in a sick night-cap, hanging over the stairs; a boy with crutches, fixed in a staring attention, and a girl carding wool in the chimney, and rocking a cradle with her naked feet, interrupted in her business by the charms of the music; all ragged and dirty, and all silently attentive. These figures gave us a most entertaining picture, and would please you, or any man of observation; and one reflection gave me particular comfort, that the assembly before us demonstrated, that, even here, the influential sun warmed poor mortals, and inspired them with love and music.’ The figures in this description form a very striking group, and we should like much to see them transferred to the canvass. Those of the girl with naked feet rocking the cradle, the little child playing with the bottom of the harp, and the man and woman singing wildly before it are the most beautiful. There is one observation made by the writer to which we do not assent, that the figures are such as Hogarth would have given any price for. We doubt whether he would have meddled with them at all, for there was no one who understood his own powers better, or more seldom went out of his way. His _forte_ was satire, he painted the follies or vices of men, and we do not know that there is a single picture of his, containing a representation of merely natural or domestic scenery. The subject described in the passage we have given above would have exactly suited an excellent painter of the present day, we mean Mr. Wilkie; and would indeed form a very delightful companion to his Blind Fiddler. With all our admiration of this last-mentioned composition, we think the story described by the bishop clearly has the poetry on its side. The highest authority on art in this country, we understand, has pronounced that Mr. Wilkie united the excellences of Hogarth to those of Teniers. We demur to this decision, in both its branches; but in demurring to authority, it is necessary to give our reasons. We conceive that this excellent and deservedly admired artist has certain essential, real, and indisputable excellences of his own; and we think it, therefore, the less important to clothe him with any vicarious merits, which do not belong to him. Mr. Wilkie’s pictures, generally speaking, derive almost their whole merit from their _reality_, or the truth of the representation. They are works of pure imitative art, and the test of this style of composition is to represent nature, faithfully and happily, in its simplest combinations. It may be said of an artist, like Mr. Wilkie, that _nothing human is indifferent to him_. His mind takes an interest in, and it gives an interest to, the most familiar scenes and transactions of life. He professedly gives character, thought, and passion in their lowest degrees, and every-day forms. He selects the commonest events and appearances of nature for his subjects; and trusts to their very commonness for the interest and amusement he is to excite. Mr. Wilkie is a serious, prosaic, literal narrator of facts, and his pictures may be considered as diaries, or minutes of what is passing constantly about us. Hogarth, on the contrary, is essentially a comic painter; his pictures are not indifferent, unimpassioned descriptions of human nature, but rich, exuberant satires upon it. He is carried away by a passion for the _ridiculous_. His object is ‘to shew vice her own feature, scorn her own image.’ He is so far from contenting himself with still life, that he is always on the verge of caricature, though without ever falling into it. He does not represent folly or vice in its incipient, or dormant, or _grub_ state, but full grown, with wings, pampered into all sorts of affectation, airy, ostentatious, and extravagant. Folly is there seen at the height—the moon is at the full—it is ‘the very error of the time.’ There is a perpetual collision of eccentricities—a tilt and tournament of absurdities—the prejudices and caprices of mankind are let loose, and set together by the ears, as in a bear-garden. Hogarth paints nothing but comedy, or tragicomedy. Wilkie paints neither one nor the other. Hogarth never looks at any object but to find out a moral or a ludicrous effect. Wilkie never looks at any object but to see that it is there. Hogarth’s pictures are a perfect jest-book from one end to the other. We do not remember a single joke in Wilkie’s, except one very bad one of the boy in The Blind Fiddler, scraping the gridiron, or fire-shovel, we forget which.[26] In looking at Hogarth, you are ready to burst your sides with laughing at the unaccountable jumble of odd things, which are brought together: you look at Wilkie’s pictures with a mingled feeling of curiosity and admiration at the accuracy of the representation. For instance, there is a most admirable head of a man coughing in The Rent-Day: the action, the keeping, the choaked sensation are inimitable: but there is nothing to laugh at in a man coughing. What strikes the mind is the difficulty of a man’s being painted coughing, which here certainly is a master-piece of art. But turn to the blackguard cobler in the Election Dinner, who has been smutting his neighbour’s face over, and who is lolling his tongue out at the joke with a most surprising obliquity of vision, and immediately ‘your lungs begin to crow like chanticleer.’ Again, there is the little boy crying in The Cut Finger, who only gives you the idea of a cross, disagreeable, obstinate child in pain: whereas the same face in Hogarth’s Noon, from the ridiculous perplexity it is in, and its extravagant, noisy, unfelt distress at the accident of having let fall the pye-dish, is quite irresistible. Mr. Wilkie in his picture of the Ale-house door, we believe, painted Mr. Liston as one of the figures, without any great effect. Hogarth would have given any price for such a subject, and would have made it worth any money. We have never seen any thing, in the expression of comic humour, equal to Hogarth’s pictures, but Liston’s face! We have already remarked that we did not think Hogarth a fit person to paint a romantic scene in Wales. In fact, we know no one who had a less pastoral imagination. Mr. Wilkie paints interiors: but still you always connect them with the country. Hogarth, even when he paints people in the open air, represents them either as coming from London, as in the polling for votes at Brentford, or as returning to it, as the dyer and his wife at Bagnigge Wells. In this last picture he has contrived to convert a common rural image into a type and emblem of city cuckoldom. He delights in the thick of St. Giles’s or St. James’s. His pictures breathe a certain close greasy tavern air. The fare he serves up to us consists of high-seasoned dishes, ragouts and olla podridas, like the supper in Gil Blas, which it requires a strong stomach to digest. Mr. Wilkie presents us with a sort of lenten fare, very good and wholesome, but rather insipid than overpowering.[27] As an artist, Mr. Wilkie is not at all equal to Teniers. Neither in truth and brilliant clearness of colouring, nor in facility of execution, is there any comparison. Teniers was a perfect master in both these respects, and our own countryman is positively defective, notwithstanding the very laudable care with which he finishes every part of his pictures. There is an evident smear and dragging of the paint, which is also of a bad purple, or puttyish tone, and which never appear in the pictures of the Flemish artist, any more than in a looking-glass. Teniers, probably from his facility of execution, succeeded in giving a more local and momentary expression to his figures. They seem each going on with his particular amusement or occupation; while Wilkie’s have in general more a look of sitting for their pictures. Their compositions are very different also: and in this respect, perhaps, Mr. Wilkie has the advantage. Teniers’s boors are usually amusing themselves at skittles, or dancing, or drinking, or smoking, or doing what they like in a careless desultory way; and so the composition is loose and irregular. Wilkie’s figures are all drawn up in a regular order, and engaged in one principal action, with occasional episodes. The story of the Blind Fiddler is the most interesting, and the best told. The two children before the musician are delightful. The Card-players is the best coloured of his pictures, if we are not mistaken. The Politicians, though excellent as to character and composition, is inferior as a picture to those which Mr. Wilkie has since painted. His latest pictures, however, do not appear to us to be his best. There is something of manner and affectation in the grouping of the figures, and a pink and rosy colour spread over them, which is out of place. The hues of Rubens and Sir Joshua do not agree with Mr. Wilkie’s subjects. The picture which he has just finished of Distraining for Rent is very highly spoken of by those who have seen it. We must here conclude this very general account; for to point out the particular beauties of any one of our artist’s pictures, would require a long article by itself. ON ROCHEFOUCAULT’S MAXIMS. _The Examiner._] [_October 23, 1814._ The celebrated maxims of Rochefoucault contain a good deal of truth mixed up with more falsehood. They might in general be easily reversed. The whole artifice of the author consists in availing himself of the _mixed_ nature of motives, so as to detect some indirect or sinister bias even in the best, and he then proceeds to argue as if they were _simple_, that is, had but one principle, and that principle the worst. By the same extreme mode of reasoning which he adopts, that is, by taking the exception for the rule, it might be shewn that there is no such thing as selfishness, pride, vanity, revenge, envy, &c. in our nature, with quite as much plausibility as he has attempted to shew that there is no such thing as love, friendship, gratitude, generosity, or true benevolence. If the slightest associated circumstance, or latent impulse connected with our actions, is to be magnified into the whole motive, merely by the microscopic acuteness which discovered it, why not complete the paradox, by resolving our vices into some pretence to virtue, which almost always accompanies and qualifies them? Or is it to be taken for granted that our vices are sincere, and our virtues only hypocrisy and affectation? Shakespeare has given a much simpler and better account of the matter, when he says, ‘The web of our life is of a mingled yarn: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our vices would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.’ The most favourable representations of human nature are not certainly the most popular. The character of _Sir Charles Grandison_ is insipid compared with that of _Lovelace_, as _Satan_ is the hero of _Paradise Lost_; and Mandeville’s _Fable of the Bees_ is read with more interest and avidity than the _Practice of Piety_ or Grove’s _Ethics_. Whatever deviates from the plain path of duty, or contradicts received opinions, seems to imply a strength of will, or a strength of understanding, which seizes forcibly on the attention. Whether it is fortitude or cowardice, or both, there is a strong propensity in the human mind, if its suspicions are once raised, _to know the worst_. It is the same in speculation as in practice. When once the fairy dream in which we have lulled our senses or imagination is disturbed, we only feel ourselves secure from the delusions of self-love by distrusting appearances altogether, and revenge ourselves for the cheat which we think has been put upon us, by laughing at the credulity of those who are still its dupes.[28] Even the very love of virtue makes the mind proportionably impatient of every thing like doubt respecting it, and prompts us to escape from tormenting suspense in total indifference, as jealousy cures itself by destroying its object. The _Fable of the Bees_, the _Maxims of Rochefoucault_, the _Treatise on the Falsity of Human Virtues_, and the book _De l’Esprit_ have owed much of their popularity to the consolation they afforded to disappointed hope. However this may be, a collection of amiable paradoxes on the other side of the question, would have but few readers. There would be less point and satire, though there would not be less truth nor, as far as the analytical process is concerned, less ingenuity, in exalting our bad qualities into virtues, than in debasing our good ones into vices. I will give an example or two of what I mean. Thus, it might be argued that there is no such thing as envy: or that what is called by that name, does not (if strictly examined) arise from a hatred of real excellence, but from a suspicion that the excellence is not real, or not so great as it is supposed to be, and consequently that the preference given to others is an act of injustice done to ourselves. For whenever all doubt is removed of the reality of the excellence, either from our own convictions, or from the concurrent opinion of mankind in general, envy ceases. This is the reason why the reputation of the dead never excites this passion, because it has been fully established by the most unequivocal testimony, it has received a sanction which fills the imagination and gains the assent at once, and the fame of the great men of past times is placed beyond the reach of envy, because it is placed beyond the reach of doubt. We feel no misgivings as to the solidity of their pretensions, nor any apprehension that our admiration or praise will be thrown away on what does not deserve it. No one envies Shakespeare or Rubens, because no one entertains the least doubt of their genius. We are as prodigal of our admiration of universally acknowledged excellence, making a sort of religious idolatry of it, as we are niggardly and cautious in fixing the stamp of our approbation on that which may turn out to be only counterfeit. It is not because we are competitors with the living and not with the dead: but because the claims of the one are fully established, and of the other not. Why else indeed are we competitors with the one and not with the other? Accordingly, where living merit is so clear as to bring immediate and entire conviction to the mind, we are no longer disposed to stint or withhold our applause, any more than to dispute the light of the sun. For instance, who ever felt the least difficulty in acknowledging the merits of Wilkie or Turner, merely because these artists are now living? If immediate celebrity has not always been the reward of extraordinary genius, this has been owing to the incapacity of the public to judge of the highest works of art. There is no want of instances where the popular opinion has outstripped the claims of justice, whenever the merits of the artist were on a level with the common understanding, and of an obvious character. Sir Joshua Reynolds had his full share of popularity in his lifetime. Raphael Mengs was cried up by his countrymen and contemporaries as equal to Raphael; and Mr. West at present stands as high in the estimation of the public as he does in his own. On the other hand, and in opposition to what was said above (though the exception still confirms the rule), the French hate Shakespeare and Rubens, for no other reason than because there is nothing in their minds which really enables them to understand or relish either. The admiration which they hear others express of this great painter and greater poet, appears to them a delusion, an instance of false taste, and a bigoted preference of that which is full of faults to that—_which is without beauties_. The disputes and jealousies of different nations respecting each other’s productions, arise chiefly from this source. We despise French painting, French poetry, and French philosophy, not because they are French, but because they appear to us to want the essential requisites of genius, feeling, and common sense. We do not feel any reluctance to admire Titian or Rembrandt, or Phidias or Homer, or Boccace or Cervantes, merely because they were not English. They speak the universal language of truth and nature. Our national and local prejudices for the most part operate only as a barrier against national and local absurdities. To the same purpose, I might mention some modern poets and critics who are actuated by nearly as intolerant feelings towards Pope and Dryden, as if they had been their contemporaries.[29] They are not their cotemporaries, but the explanation is obvious. From the want of congeniality of mind, and a taste for their peculiar excellencies, the space which those writers occupy in the eyes of the world seems comparatively disproportionate to their merits; and hence the irritation and gall which follows. The highest reputation and the highest excellence almost always destroy envy; whereas, on the common supposition, we ought to feel the greatest envy, where there is the greatest superiority, and the greatest admiration of it in others. If we never become entirely free from it in modern works, it is because with respect to them we can never ‘make assurance double sure,’ by having our own feelings confirmed by the united voices of ages and nations. True genius and true fame seize our admiration, and our admiration, when once excited, becomes a passion, and we take a delight in exaggerating the excellences of our idol as if they were our own. On the contrary, we all envy that reputation which is acquired by trick or cunning, or by mere shewy accomplishments, as when with moderate talents, dexterously applied, or an appeal to ignorant credulity, a man ‘gets the start of the majestic world,’ and obtains the highest character for qualities which he does not possess. It becomes an imposture and an insult, which we resent as such. The jealousy and uneasiness produced in the mind by a pedantic or dazzling display of useless accomplishments may be traced to a similar source. Hence the old objection, _materiam superabat opus_. True warmth and vigour communicate warmth and vigour: and we are no longer inclined to dispute the inspiration of the oracle, when we feel the ‘presens Divus’ in our own bosoms. But when without gaining any new light or heat, we only find our ideas thrown into confusion and perplexity by an art that we cannot comprehend, this is a kind of superiority which must always be painful, and can never be cordially admitted. It is for this reason that the extraordinary talents of the late Mr. Pitt were always viewed, except by those of his own party, with a sort of jealousy, and grudgingly acknowledged: while those of his more popular rivals were admitted by all parties in the most unreserved manner, and carried by acclamation. Mr. Burke was scouted only by the common herd of politicians, who did not understand him. So on the stage, we imagine Mrs. Siddons could hardly have excited envy or jealousy in the breast of any person, not totally devoid of common sensibility: because her talents bore down all opposition, and filled the mind at once with delight and awe. Mr. Kean has a strong and most absurd party against him: but we will venture to say that if his figure, or his voice, or his judgment, were better, that is, if he had fewer defects, he would have fewer detractors from his excellencies. Any peculiar defects excite ridicule and enmity by bringing the whole claim to our applause into question. A perfect actor would not be an object of envy even to some newspaper critics. Perfect beauty excites this feeling less among women than half pretensions to it. In the same manner, upstart wealth or newly acquired honours produce contempt rather than respect, from not being accompanied with any strong or permanent associations of pleasure or power. There is nothing more apt to occasion the feeling of envy than the sudden and unexpected rise of persons we have long known under different circumstances, not from the immediate comparison with ourselves (the extravagant admiration of each other’s talents among friends is an answer to this supposition) so much as from the disbelief of the reality of their pretensions, and our inability to overcome our previous prejudice against them. It is the same where striking mental inequalities exist, or where the moral properties render us averse to acknowledge merit of a different kind, or where the countenance or manner does not denote genius. Every such incongruity increases the difficulty of connecting hearty admiration with ideas so opposite to it. I have known artists whose physiognomy was so much against them, that no one would ever think highly of them, though they were to paint like Raphael; and I once heard a very sensible man say, that if Sir Isaac Newton had lisped, he could not have fancied him to be a great man. I myself have felt a jealousy of pretensions which I thought inferior to my own, but I never knew what envy of great talents was. I do not indeed like to be put down by persons I despise, or to seem to myself less than nothing. In a word, we feel the same jealousy and irritation at seeing others surpassed, whom we have been accustomed to admire; and what is more, grow jealous of our own approximation to an equality with them. Every ingenuous mind shrinks from a comparison of itself, with what it looks up to, and is ashamed of any advantage it may gain over those whom it regards as having higher powers and pretensions. The idea of fame is too pure and sacred to be mingled with our own. Our admiration of others is stronger than our vanity. Poor indeed is that mind which has no other idol but self. It is the want of all real imagination and enthusiasm, or that little glittering halo of personal conceit which surrounds every Frenchman, and does not suffer him to see or feel any thing beyond it, that makes the French perhaps the most contemptible people in the world. ON THE PREDOMINANT PRINCIPLES AND EXCITEMENTS IN THE HUMAN MIND ‘The web of our lives is of a mingled yarn.’ _The Examiner._] [_February 26, 1815._ ‘Anthony Codrus Urceus, a most learned and unfortunate Italian, born 1446, was a striking instance’ (says his biographer) ‘of the miseries men bring upon themselves by setting their affections unreasonably on trifles. This learned man lived at Forli, and had an apartment in the palace. His room was so very dark, that he was forced to use a candle in the day time; and one day, going abroad without putting it out, his library was set on fire, and some papers which he had prepared for the press were burned. The instant he was informed of this ill news, he was affected even to madness. He ran furiously to the palace, and, stopping at the door of his apartment, he cried aloud, “Christ Jesus! what mighty crime have I committed? whom of your followers have I ever injured, that you thus rage with inexpiable hatred against me?” Then turning himself to an image of the Virgin Mary near at hand, “Virgin” (says he) “hear what I have to say, for I speak in earnest, and with a composed spirit. If I shall happen to address you in my dying moments, I humbly entreat you not to hear me, nor receive me into heaven, for I am determined to spend all eternity in hell.” Those who heard these blasphemous expressions endeavoured to comfort him, but all to no purpose; for, the society of mankind being no longer supportable to him, he left the city, and retired, like a savage, to the deep solitude of a wood. Some say he was murdered there by ruffians; others that he died at Bologna, in 1500, after much contrition and penitence.’ Almost every one may here read the history of his own life. There is scarcely a moment in which we are not in some degree guilty of the same kind of absurdity, which was here carried to such a singular excess. We waste our regrets on what cannot be recalled, or fix our desires on what we know cannot be attained. Every hour is the slave of the last; and we are seldom masters either of our thoughts or of our actions. We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-interest. Rousseau, in his Emilius, proposed to educate a perfectly reasonable man, who was to have passions and affections like other men, but with an absolute control over them. He was to love and to be wise. This is a contradiction in terms. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a tea-cup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives. ‘Friends now fast sworn, On a dissension of a doit, break out To bitterest enmity. So fellest foes, Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep, To take the one the other, by some chance Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends, And interjoin their issues.’ We are little better than humoured children to the last, and play a mischievous game at cross-purposes with our own happiness and that of others. We have given the above story as a striking contradiction to the prevailing doctrine of modern systems of morals and metaphysics, that man is purely a sensual and selfish animal, governed solely by a regard either to his immediate gratification or future interest. This doctrine we mean to oppose with all our might, whenever we meet with it. We are, however, less disposed to quarrel with it, as it is opposed to reason and philosophy, than as it interferes with common sense and observation. If the absurdity in question had been confined to the schools, we should not have gone out of our way to meddle with it: but it has got abroad in the world, has crept into ladies’ toilettes, is entered in the common-place of beaux, is in the mouth of the learned and ignorant, and forms a part of popular opinion. It is perpetually applied as a false measure to the characters and conduct of men in the common affairs of the world, and it is therefore our business to rectify it if we can. In fact, whoever sets out on the idea of reducing all our motives and actions to a simple principle, must either take a very narrow and superficial view of human nature, or make a very perverse use of his understanding in reasoning on what he sees. The frame of our minds, like that of our bodies, is exceedingly complicated. Besides mere sensibility to pleasure and pain, there are other original independent principles, necessarily interwoven with the nature of man as an active and intelligent being, and which, blended together in different proportions, give their form and colour to our lives. Without some other essential faculties, such as will, imagination, &c., to give effect and direction to our physical sensibility, this faculty could be of no possible use or influence; and with those other faculties joined to it, this pretended instinct of self-love will be subject to be everlastingly modified and controlled by those faculties, both in what regards our own good and that of others; that is, must itself become in a great measure dependent on the very instruments it uses. The two most predominant principles in the mind, besides sensibility and self-interest, are imagination and self-will, or (in general) the love of strong excitement, both in thought and action. To these sources may be traced the various passions, pursuits, habits, affections, follies and caprices, virtues and vices of mankind. We shall confine ourselves in the present article, to give some account of the influence exercised by the imagination over the feelings. To an intellectual being, it cannot be altogether arbitrary what ideas it shall have, whether pleasurable or painful. Our ideas do not originate in our love of pleasure, and they cannot therefore depend absolutely upon it. They have another principle. If the imagination were ‘the servile slave’ of our self-love, if our ideas were emanations of our sensitive nature, encouraged if agreeable, and excluded the instant they became otherwise, or encroached on the former principle, then there might be a tolerable pretence for the Epicurean philosophy which is here spoken of. But for any such entire and mechanical subserviency of the operations of the one principle to the dictates of the other, there is not the slightest foundation in reality. The attention which the mind gives to its ideas is not always owing to the gratification derived from them, but to the strength and truth of the impressions themselves, _i.e._ to their involuntary power over the mind. This observation will account for a very general principle in the mind, which cannot, we conceive, be satisfactorily explained in any other way, we mean _the power of fascination_. Every one has heard the story of the girl who being left alone by her companions, in order to frighten her, in a room with a dead body, at first attempted to get out, and shrieked violently for assistance, but finding herself shut in, ran and embraced the corpse, and was found senseless in its arms. It is said that in such cases there is a desperate effort made to get rid of the dread by converting it into the reality. There may be some truth in this account, but we do not think it contains the whole truth. The event produced in the present instance does not bear out the conclusion. The progress of the passion does not seem to have been that of diminishing or removing the terror by coming in contact with the object, but of carrying this terror to its height from an intense and irresistible impulse, overcoming every other feeling. It is a well-known fact that few persons can stand safely on the edge of a precipice, or walk along the parapet wall of a house, without being in danger of throwing themselves down; not we presume from a principle of self-preservation; but in consequence of a strong idea having taken possession of the mind, from which it cannot well escape, which absorbs every other consideration, and confounds and overrules all self-regards. The impulse cannot in this case be resolved into a desire to remove the uneasiness of fear, for the only danger arises from the fear. We have been told by a person, not at all given to exaggeration, that he once felt a strong propensity to throw himself into a cauldron of boiling lead, into which he was looking. These are what Shakespear calls ‘the toys of desperation.’ People sometimes marry, and even fall in love on this principle—that is, through mere apprehension, or what is called a fatality. In like manner, we find instances of persons who are as it were naturally delighted with whatever is disagreeable,—who catch all sorts of unbecoming tones and gestures,—who always say what they should not, and what they do not mean to say,—in whom intemperance of imagination and incontinence of tongue are a disease, and who are governed by an almost infallible instinct of absurdity. The love of imitation has the same general source. We dispute for ever about Hogarth, and the question can never be decided according to the common ideas on the subject of taste. His pictures appeal to the love of truth, not to the sense of beauty; but the one is as much an essential principle of our nature as the other. They fill up the void of the mind; they present an everlasting succession and variety of ideas. There is a fine observation somewhere made by Aristotle, that the mind has a natural appetite of curiosity or desire to know; and ‘most of that knowledge which comes in by the eye, for this presents us with the greatest variety of differences.’ Hogarth is relished only by persons of a certain strength of mind and penetration into character; for the subjects in themselves are not pleasing, and this objection is only redeemed by the exercise and activity which they give to the understanding. The great difference between what is meant by a severe and an effeminate taste or style, depends on the distinction here made. Our teasing ourselves to recollect the names of places or persons we have forgotten, the love of riddles and of abstruse philosophy, are all illustrations of the same general principle of curiosity, or the love of intellectual excitement. Again, our impatience to be delivered of a secret that we know; the necessity which lovers have for confidants, auricular confession, and the declarations so commonly made by criminals of their guilt, are effects of the involuntary power exerted by the imagination over the feelings. Nothing can be more untrue, than that the whole course of our ideas, passions, and pursuits, is regulated by a regard to self-interest. Our attachment to certain objects is much oftener in proportion to the strength of the impression they make on us, to their power of rivetting and fixing the attention, than to the gratification we derive from them. We are perhaps more apt to dwell upon circumstances that excite disgust and shock our feelings, than on those of an agreeable nature. This, at least, is the case where this disposition is particularly strong, as in people of nervous feelings and morbid habits of thinking. Thus the mind is often haunted with painful images and recollections, from the hold they have taken of the imagination. We cannot shake them off, though we strive to do it: nay, we even court their company; we will not part with them out of our presence; we strain our aching sight after them; we anxiously recal every feature, and contemplate them in all their aggravated colours. There are a thousand passions and fancies that thwart our purposes and disturb our repose. Grief and fear are almost as welcome inmates of the breast as hope or joy, and more obstinately cherished. We return to the objects which have excited them, we brood over them, they become almost inseparable from the mind, necessary to it; they assimilate all objects to the gloom of our own thoughts, and make the will a party against itself. This is one chief source of most of the passions that prey like vultures on the heart, and embitter human life. We hear moralists and divines perpetually exclaiming, with mingled indignation and surprise, at the folly of mankind in obstinately persisting in these tormenting and violent passions, such as envy, revenge, sullenness, despair, &c. This is to them a mystery; and it will always remain an inexplicable one, while the love of happiness is considered as the only spring of human conduct and desires. We shall resume this subject in a future paper.[30] THE LOVE OF POWER OR ACTION AS MAIN A PRINCIPLE IN THE HUMAN MIND AS SENSIBILITY TO PLEASURE OR PAIN _The Examiner._] [_April 9, 1815._ The love of power or action is another independent principle of the human mind, in the different degrees in which it exists, and which are not by any means in exact proportion to its physical sensibility. It seems evidently absurd to suppose that sensibility to pleasure or pain is the only principle of action. It is almost too obvious to remark, that sensibility alone, without an active principle in the mind, could never produce action. The soul might lie dissolved in pleasure, or be agonised with woe; but the impulses of feeling, in order to excite passion, desire, or will, must be first communicated to some other faculty. There must be a principle, a fund of activity somewhere, by and through which our sensibility operates; and that this active principle owes all its force, its precise degree and direction, to the sensitive faculty, is neither self-evident nor true. Strength of will is not always nor generally in proportion to strength of feeling. There are different degrees of activity as of sensibility in the mind; and our passions, characters, and pursuits, often depend no less upon the one than on the other. We continually make a distinction in common discourse between sensibility and irritability, between passion and feeling, between the nerves and muscles; and we find that the most voluptuous people are in general the most indolent. Every one who has looked closely into human nature must have observed persons who are naturally and habitually restless in the extreme, but without any extraordinary susceptibility to pleasure or pain, always making or finding excuses to do something,—whose actions constantly outrun the occasion, and who are eager in the pursuit of the greatest trifles,—whose impatience of the smallest repose keeps them always employed about nothing,—and whose whole lives are a continued work of supererogation. There are others again who seem born to act from a spirit of contradiction only, that is, who are ready to act not only without a reason, but against it,—who are ever at cross-purposes with themselves and others,—who are not satisfied unless they are doing two opposite things at a time,—who contradict what you say, and if you assent to them, contradict what they have said,—who regularly leave the pursuit in which they are successful to engage in some other in which they have no chance of success,—who make a point of encountering difficulties and aiming at impossibilities, that there may be no end of their exhaustless task: while there is a third class whose _vis inertiæ_ scarcely any motives can overcome,—who are devoured by their feelings, and the slaves of their passions, but who can take no pains and use no means to gratify them,—who, if roused to action by any unforeseen accident, require a continued stimulus to urge them on,—who fluctuate between desire and want of resolution,—whose brightest projects burst like a bubble as soon as formed,—who yield to every obstacle,—who almost sink under the weight of the atmosphere,—who cannot brush aside a cobweb in their path, and are stopped by an insect’s wing. Indolence is want of will—the absence or defect of the active principle—a repugnance to motion; and whoever has been much tormented with this passion, must, we are sure, have felt that the inclination to indulge it is something very distinct from the love of pleasure or actual enjoyment. Ambition is the reverse of indolence, and is the love of power or action in great things. Avarice, also, as it relates to the acquisition of riches, is, in a great measure, an active and enterprising feeling; nor does the hoarding of wealth, after it is acquired, seem to have much connection with the love of pleasure. What is called niggardliness, very often, we are convinced from particular instances that we have known, arises less from a selfish principle than from a love of contrivance, from the study of economy as an art, for want of a better, from a pride in making the most of a little, and in not exceeding a certain expense previously determined upon; all which is wilfulness, and is perfectly consistent, as it is frequently found united, with the most lavish expenditure and the utmost disregard for money on other occasions. A miser may in general be looked upon as a particular species of _virtuoso_. The constant desire in the rich to leave wealth in large masses, by aggrandising some branch of their families, or sometimes in such a manner as to accumulate for centuries, shews that the imagination has a considerable share in this passion. Intemperance, debauchery, gluttony, and other vices of that kind, may be attributed to an excess of sensuality or gross sensibility; though even here, we think it evident that habits of intoxication are produced quite as much by the strength as by the agreeableness of the excitement; and with respect to some other vicious habits, curiosity makes many more votaries than inclination. The love of truth, when it predominates, produces inquisitive characters, the whole tribe of gossips, tale-bearers, harmless busy bodies, your blunt honest creatures, who never conceal what they think, and who are the more sure to tell it you the less you want to hear it,—and now and then a philosopher. Our passions in general are to be traced more immediately to the active part of our nature, to the love of power, or to strength of will. Such are all those which arise out of the difficulty of accomplishment, which become more intense from the efforts made to attain the object, and which derive their strength from opposition. Mr. Hobbes says well on this subject: ‘But for an utmost end, in which the ancient philosophers placed felicity, and disputed much concerning the way thereto, there is no such thing in this world nor way to it, than to Utopia; for while we live, we have desires, and desire presupposeth a further end. Seeing all delight is appetite, and desire of something further, there can be no contentment but in proceeding, and therefore we are not to marvel, when we see that as men attain to more riches, honour, or other power, so their appetite continually groweth more and more; and when they are come to the utmost degree of some kind of power, they pursue some other, as long as in any kind they think themselves behind any other. Of those therefore that have attained the highest degree of honour and riches, some have affected mastery in some art, as Nero in music and poetry, Commodus in the art of a gladiator; and such as affect not some such thing, must find diversion and recreation of their thoughts in the contention either of play or business, and men justly complain as of a great grief that they know not what to do. Felicity, therefore, by which we mean continual delight, consists not in having prospered, but in prospering.’ This account of human nature, true as it is, would be a mere romance, if physical sensibility were the only faculty essential to man, that is, if we were the slaves of voluptuous indolence. But our desires are kindled by their own heat, the will is urged on by a restless impulse, and, without action, enjoyment becomes insipid. The passions of men are not in proportion only to their sensibility, or to the desirableness of the object, but to the violence and irritability of their tempers, and the obstacles to their success. Thus an object, to which we were almost indifferent while we thought it in our power, often excites the most ardent pursuit or the most painful regret, as soon as it is placed out of our reach. How eloquently is the contradiction between our desires and our success described in Don Quixote where it is said of the lover, that ‘he courted a statue, hunted the wind, cried aloud to the desert!’ The necessity of action to the mind, and the keen edge it gives to our desires, is shewn in the different value we set on past and future objects. It is commonly and we might almost say universally supposed, that there is an essential difference in the two cases. In this instance, however, the strength of our passions has converted an evident absurdity into one of the most inveterate prejudices of the human mind. That the future is really or in itself of more consequence than the past, is what we can neither assent to nor even conceive. It is true, the past has ceased to be and is no longer any thing, except to the mind; but the future is still to come, and has an existence in the mind only. The one is at an end, the other has not even had a beginning; both are purely ideal: so that this argument would prove that the present only is of any real value, and that both past and future objects are equally indifferent, alike nothing. Indeed, the future is, if possible, more imaginary than the past; for the past may in some sense be said to exist in its consequences; it acts still; it is present to us in its effects; the mouldering ruins and broken fragments still remain; but of the future there is no trace. What a blank does the history of the world for the next six thousand years, present to the mind, compared with that of the last! All that strikes the imagination, or excites any interest in the mighty scene, is _what has been_. Neither in reality, then, nor as a subject of general contemplation, has the future any advantage over the past; but with respect to our own passions and pursuits it has. We regret the pleasures we have enjoyed, and eagerly anticipate those which are to come; we dwell with satisfaction on the evils from which we have escaped, and dread future pain. The good that is past is like money that is spent, which is of no use, and about which we give ourselves no farther concern. The good we expect is like a store yet untouched, in the enjoyment of which we promise ourselves infinite gratification. What has happened to us we think of no consequence,—what is to happen to us, of the greatest. Why so? Because the one is in our power, and the other not; because the efforts of the will to bring an object to pass or to avert it strengthen our attachment to or our aversion from that object; because the habitual pursuit of any purpose redoubles the ardour of our pursuit, and converts the speculative and indolent interest we should otherwise take in it into real passion. Our regrets, anxiety, and wishes, are thrown away upon the past, but we encourage our disposition to exaggerate the importance of the future, as of the utmost use in aiding our resolutions and stimulating our exertions. It in some measure confirms this theory, that men attach more or less importance to past and future events, according as they are more or less engaged in action and the busy scenes of life. Those who have a fortune to make, or are in pursuit of rank and power, are regardless of the past, for it does not contribute to their views: those who have nothing to do but to think, take nearly the same interest in the past as in the future. The contemplation of the one is as delightful and real as of the other. The season of hope comes to an end, but the remembrance of it is left. The past still lives in the memory of those who have leisure to look back upon the way that they have trod, and can from it ‘catch glimpses that may make them less forlorn.’ The turbulence of action and uneasiness of desire _must_ dwell upon the future; it is only amidst the innocence of shepherds, in the simplicity of the pastoral ages, that a tomb was found with this inscription—‘I ALSO WAS AN ARCADIAN!’ We feel that some apology is necessary for having thus plunged our readers all at once into the middle of metaphysics. If it should be asked what use such studies are of, we might answer with Hume, _perhaps of none, except that there are certain persons who find more entertainment in them than in any other_. An account of this matter, with which we were amused ourselves, and which may therefore amuse others, we met with some time ago in a metaphysical allegory, which begins in this manner:— ‘In the depth of a forest, in the kingdom of Indostan, lived a monkey, who, before his last step of transmigration, had occupied a human tenement. He had been a Bramin, skilful in theology, and in all abstruse learning. He was wont to hold in admiration the ways of Nature, and delighted to penetrate the mysteries in which she was enrobed; but in pursuing the footsteps of philosophy, he wandered too far from the abode of the social Virtues. In order to pursue his studies, he had retired to a cave on the banks of the Jumna. There he forgot society, and neglected ablution; and therefore his soul was degraded to a condition below humanity. So inveterate were the habits which he had contracted in his human state, that his spirit was still influenced by his passion for abstruse study. He sojourned in this wood from youth to age, regardless of everything, _save cocoa-nuts and metaphysics_.’ For our own part, we should be content to pass our time much in the same way as this learned savage, if we could only find a substitute for his cocoa-nuts! We do not however wish to recommend the same pursuit to others, nor to dissuade them from it. It has its pleasures and its pains—its successes and its disappointments. It is neither quite so sublime nor quite so uninteresting as it is sometimes represented. The worst is, that much thought on difficult subjects tends, after a certain time, to destroy the natural gaiety and dancing of the spirits; it deadens the elastic force of the mind, weighs upon the heart, and makes us insensible to the common enjoyments and pursuits of life. ‘Sithence no fairy lights, no quick’ning ray, Nor stir of pulse, nor objects to entice Abroad the spirits; but the cloyster’d heart Sits squat at home, like pagod in a niche Obscure.’ Metaphysical reasoning is also one branch of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The study of man, however, does, perhaps, less harm than a knowledge of the world, though it must be owned that the practical knowledge of vice and misery makes a stronger impression on the mind, when it has imbibed a habit of abstract reasoning. Evil thus becomes embodied in a general principle, and shews its harpy form in all things. It is a fatal, inevitable necessity hanging over us. It follows us wherever we go: if we fly into the uttermost parts of the earth, it is there: whether we turn to the right or the left, we cannot escape from it. This, it is true, is the disease of philosophy; but it is one to which it is liable in minds of a certain cast, after the first order of expectation has been disabused by experience, and the finer feelings have received an irrecoverable shock from the jarring of the world. Happy are they who live in the dream of their own existence, and see all things in the light of their own minds; who walk by faith and hope; to whom the guiding star of their youth still shines from afar, and into whom the spirit of the world has not entered! They have not been ‘hurt by the archers,’ nor has the iron entered their souls. They live in the midst of arrows and of death, unconscious of harm. The evil things come not nigh them. The shafts of ridicule pass unheeded by, and malice loses its sting. The example of vice does not rankle in their breasts, like the poisoned shirt of Nessus. Evil impressions fall off from them like drops of water. The yoke of life is to them light and supportable. The world has no hold on them. They are in it, not of it; and a dream and a glory is ever around them! ESSAY ON MANNERS _The Examiner._] [_September 3, 1815._ Nothing can frequently be more striking than the difference of style or manner, where the _matter_ remains the same, as in paraphrases and translations. The most remarkable example which occurs to us is in the beginning of the _Flower and Leaf_ by Chaucer, and in the modernisation of the same passage by Dryden. We shall give an extract from both, that the reader may judge for himself. The original runs thus:— ‘And I that all this pleasaunt sight see, Thought sodainly I felte so sweet an aire Of the elgentere, that certainely There is no herte I deme, in such dispaire, Ne with thoughts froward and contraire So overlaid, but it should soone have bote, If it had ones felt this savour sote. And as I stood and cast aside mine eie, I was of ware the fairest medler tree, That ever yet in all my life I see, As full of blossomes as it might be, Therein a goldfinch leaping pretile Fro bough to bough, and as him list he eet, Here and there of buds and floures sweet. And to the herber side was joyning This faire tree of which I have you told; And at the last the bird began to sing, When he had eaten what he eat wold, So passing sweetly, that by manifold It was more pleasaunt than I could devise; And when his song was ended in this wise, The nightingale with so mery a note Answered him, that all the wood rang So sodainly, that as it were a sote, I stood astonied, so was I with the sang Thorow ravished, that till late and lang, I ne wist in what place I was, ne where, And aye me thought she sang even by mine ear. Wherefore I waited about busily On every side, if I her might see, And at the last I gan full well espie Where she sat in a fresh green laurer tree, On the further side even right by me, That gave so passing a delicious smell, According to the eglentere full well. Whereof I had so inly great pleasure; That as me thought I surely ravished was Into Paradise, where my desire Was for to be and no further to passe, As for that day, and on the sote grasse I sat me downe, for as for mine intent, The birdes song was more convenient, And more pleasaunt to me by manifold, Than meat or drinke, or any other thing, Thereto the herber was so fresh and cold, The wholesome savours eke so comforting, That as I deemed, sith the beginning Of the world was never seene or then So pleasaunt a ground of none earthly man. And as I sat, the birdes harkening thus, Me thought that I heard voices sodainly, The most sweetest and most delicious That ever any wight I trow truly Heard in their life; for the harmony And sweet accord was in so good musike, That the voices to angels most was like.’ In this passage the poet has let loose the very soul of pleasure. There is a spirit of enjoyment in it, of which there seems no end. It is the intense delight which accompanies the description of every object, the fund of natural sensibility it displays, which constitutes its whole essence and beauty. Now this is shewn chiefly in the manner in which the different objects are anticipated, and the eager welcome which is given to them; in his repeating and varying the circumstances with a restless delight; in his quitting the subject for a moment, and then returning to it again, as if he could never have his fill of enjoyment. There is little of this in Dryden’s paraphrase. The same ideas are introduced, but not in the same manner, nor with the same spirit. The imagination of the poet is not borne along with the tide of pleasure—the verse is not poured out, like the natural strains it describes, from pure delight, but according to rule and measure. Instead of being absorbed in his subject, he is dissatisfied with it, tries to give an air of dignity to it by factitious ornaments, to amuse the reader by ingenious allusions, and divert his attention from the progress of the story by the artifices of the style. ‘The painted birds, companions of the spring, Hopping from spray to spray, were heard to sing; Both eyes and ears received a like delight, Enchanting music, and a charming sight: On Philomel I fixed my whole desire, And listen’d for the queen of all the quire: Fain would I hear her heavenly voice to sing, And wanted yet an omen to the spring. Thus as I mus’d, I cast aside my eye And saw a medlar tree was planted nigh: The spreading branches made a goodly show, And full of opening blooms was every bough: A goldfinch there I saw with gaudy pride Of painted plumes, that hopp’d from side to side, Still pecking as she pass’d; and still she drew The sweets from every flow’r, and suck’d the dew; Suffic’d at length, she warbled in her throat, And tun’d her voice to many a merry note, But indistinct, and neither sweet nor clear, Yet such as sooth’d my soul, and pleas’d my ear. Her short performance was no sooner tried, When she I sought, the nightingale, replied: So sweet, so shrill, so variously she sung, That the grove echo’d, and the vallies rung: And I so ravish’d with her heavenly note, I stood entranc’d, and had no room for thought; But all o’erpower’d with ecstasy of bliss, Was in a pleasing dream of paradise: At length I wak’d; and looking round the bower, Search’d every tree, and pry’d on every flower, If any where by chance I might espy The rural poet of the melody: For still methought she sung not far away; At last I found her on a laurel spray. Close by my side she sat, and fair in sight, Full in a line, against her opposite; Where stood with eglantine the laurel twin’d; And both their native sweets were well conjoin’d. On the green bank I sat, and listen’d long; (Sitting was more convenient for the song) Nor till her lay was ended could I move, But wish’d to dwell for ever in the grove. Only methought the time too swiftly pass’d, And every note I fear’d would be the last. My sight, and smell, and hearing were employ’d, And all three senses in full gust enjoy’d. And what alone did all the rest surpass The sweet possession of the fairy place; Single, and conscious to myself alone Of pleasures to th’ excluded world unknown: Pleasures which no where else were to be found, And all Elysium in a spot of ground. Thus while I sat intent to see and hear, And drew perfumes of more than vital air, All suddenly I heard the approaching sound Of vocal music, on th’ enchanted ground: An host of saints it seem’d, so full the quire, As if the blest above did all conspire To join their voices, and neglect the lyre.’ Compared with Chaucer, Dryden and the rest of that school were merely _verbal poets_. They had a great deal of wit, sense and fancy; they only wanted truth and depth of feeling. But we shall have to say more on this subject, when we come to consider the old question which we have got marked down in our list, whether Pope was a poet? To return to the subject of our last Number, Lord Chesterfield’s character of the Duke of Marlborough is a good illustration of his general theory. He says:—‘Of all the men I ever knew in my life (and I knew him extremely well) the late Duke of Marlborough possessed the graces in the highest degree, not to say engrossed them; for I will venture (contrary to the custom of profound historians, who always assign deep causes for great events) to ascribe the better half of the Duke of Marlborough’s greatness and riches to those graces. He was eminently illiterate: wrote bad English, and spelt it worse. He had no share of what is commonly called parts; that is, no brightness, nothing shining in his genius. He had most undoubtedly an excellent good plain understanding with sound judgment. But these alone would probably have raised him but something higher than they found him, which was page to King James II.’s Queen. There the graces protected and promoted him; for while he was Ensign of the Guards, the Duchess of Cleveland, then favourite mistress of Charles II., struck by these very graces, gave him five thousand pounds; with which he immediately bought an annuity of five hundred pounds a year, which was the foundation of his subsequent fortune. His figure was beautiful, but his manner was irresistible by either man or woman. It was by this engaging, graceful manner, that he was enabled during all his wars to connect the various and jarring powers of the grand alliance, and to carry them on to the main object of the war, notwithstanding their private and separate views, jealousies, and wrong headedness. Whatever court he went to (and he was often obliged to go himself to some resty and refractory ones) he as constantly prevailed, and brought them into his measures.’[31] Grace in woman has often more effect than beauty. We sometimes see a certain fine self-possession, an habitual voluptuousness of character, which reposes on its own sensations, and derives pleasure from all around it, that is more irresistible than any other attraction. There is an air of languid enjoyment in such persons, ‘in their eyes, in their arms, and their hands, and their face,’ which robs us of ourselves, and draws us by a secret sympathy towards them. Their minds are a shrine where pleasure reposes. Their smile diffuses a sensation like the breath of spring. Petrarch’s description of Laura answers exactly to this character, which is indeed the Italian character. Titian’s pictures are full of it: they seem sustained by sentiment, or as if the persons whom he painted sat to music. There is one in the Louvre (or there was) which had the most of this expression, we ever remember. It did not look downward; ‘it looked forward, beyond this world.’ It was a look that never passed away, but remained unalterable as the deep sentiment which gave birth to it. It is the same constitutional character (together with infinite activity of mind) which has enabled the greatest man in modern history to bear his reverses of fortune with gay magnanimity, and to submit to the loss of the empire of the world with as little discomposure as if he had been playing a game at chess. After all, we would not be understood to say that manner is every thing.[32] Nor would we put Euclid or Sir Isaac Newton on a level with the first _petit-maître_ we might happen to meet. We consider _Æsop’s Fables_ to have been a greater work of genius than Fontaine’s translation of them; though we are not sure that we should not prefer Fontaine for his style only, to Gay, who has shewn a great deal of original invention. The elegant manners of people of fashion have been objected to us to shew the frivolity of external accomplishments, and the facility with which they are acquired. As to the last point, we demur. There are no class of people who lead so laborious a life, or who take more pains to cultivate their minds as well as persons, than people of fashion. A young lady of quality who has to devote so many hours a day to music, so many to dancing, so many to drawing, so many to French, Italian, &c., certainly does not pass her time in idleness; and these accomplishments are afterwards called into action by every kind of external or mental stimulus, by the excitements of pleasure, vanity and interest. A Ministerial or Opposition Lord goes through more drudgery than half a dozen literary hacks; nor does a reviewer by profession read half the same number of publications as a modern fine lady is obliged to labour through. We confess, however, we are not competent judges of the degree of elegance or refinement implied in the general tone of fashionable manners. The successful experiment made by _Peregrine Pickle_, in introducing his strolling mistress into genteel company, does not redound greatly to their credit. In point of elegance of external appearance, we see no difference between women of fashion and women of a different character, who dress in the same style. KEAN’S BAJAZET AND ‘THE COUNTRY GIRL’ _The Examiner._] [_November 12, 1815._ The lovers of the drama have had a very rich theatrical treat this week, Mr. Kean’s first appearance in _Bajazet_, two new _Miss Peggys_ in the _Country Girl_, and last, though not least, Miss Stephens’s reappearance in _Polly_. Of Mr. Kean’s _Bajazet_ we have not much to say, without repeating what we have said before. The character itself is merely calculated for the display of physical passion and external energy. It is violent, fierce, turbulent, noisy, and blasphemous, ‘full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’ Mr. Kean did justice to his author, or went the whole length of the text. A viper does not dart with more fierceness and rapidity on the person who has just trod upon it than he turns upon _Tamerlane_ in the height of his fury. An unslaked thirst of vengeance and blood has taken possession of every faculty, like the savage rage of a hyaena, assailed by the hunters. His eyeballs glare, his teeth gnash together, his hands are clenched. In describing his defeat, his voice is choked with passion; he curses, and the blood curdles in his veins. Never was the fiery soul of barbarous revenge, stung to madness by repeated shame and disappointment, so completely displayed. This truth of nature and passion in Mr. Kean’s acting carries every thing before it. He was the only person on the stage who seemed alive. The mighty _Tamerlane_ appeared no better than a stuffed figure dressed in ermine, _Arpasia_ moaned in vain, and _Moneses_ roared out his wrongs unregarded, like the hoarse sounds of distant thunder. Nothing can withstand the real tide of passion once let loose; and yet it is pretended, that the great art of the tragic actor is in damming it up, or cutting out smooth canals and circular basons for it to flow into, so that it may do no harm in its course. It is the giving way to natural and strong impulses of the imagination that floats Mr. Kean down the stream of public favour with all his faults—‘a load to sink a navy.’ The only wonder was to see this furious character suffered to go about and take the whole range of the palace of _Tamerlane_, without the least let or impediment. It shewed a degree of magnanimity in Mr. Pope, which is without any parallel, even in modern times. It is understood that the play was originally written by the whig poet Rowe, and regularly acted on the anniversary of our whig revolution, as a compliment to King William, and a satire on Louis XIV. For any thing we know, the resemblance of _Tamerlane_ to King William may be sufficiently strong, there the historian and the poet may agree tolerably well; but what traits the Tartar Chieftain and the French Monarch had in common, it would be difficult to find out. If any more recent allusion was intended in its revival, it fell still wider of the mark. The play of _Tamerlane_ may be divided into two heads—cant and rant. _Tamerlane_ takes the first part, and _Bajazet_ the second. This last hurls defiance at both gods and men. He is utterly regardless of consequences, and rushes upon his destruction like a wild beast into the toils. He utters but one striking sentiment, when he defends ambition as the hunger of noble minds. _Bajazet’s_ character is energy without greatness. He is blind to every thing but the present moment, and insensible to every thing but the present impulse. True greatness is the reverse of this. It shews all the energy of courage, but none of the impatience of despair. It struggles with difficulty, but yields to necessity. It does every thing, and suffers nothing. It sees events with the eye of history, and makes Time the Judge of Fortune. Courage with calmness constitutes the perfection of the heroic character, as the effeminate and sentimental unite the extremes of activity and irritability. We never saw Mr. Kean look better. His costume and his colour had a very picturesque effect. The yellow brown tinge of the Tartar becomes him much better than the tawny brick-dust complexion of the Moor in _Othello_. Now for our two Country Girls. We have seen both without any great effort of our patience: to confess a truth, we had rather see the _Country Girl_ two nights running than _Tamerlane_; as we would rather have been Wycherley than Rowe. The comedy of the _Country Girl_ is taken from Moliere’s _School for Wives_. It is however a perfectly free imitation, or rather an original work, founded on the same general plot, with additional characters, and in a style wholly different. Scarcely a line is the same. The long, speechifying dialogues in the French comedy are cut down into a succession of smart conversations and lively scenes: there is indeed a certain pastoral sweetness or sentimental naivete in the character of _Agnes_, which is lost in _Miss Peggy_, who is however the more natural and mischievous little rustic of the two. The incident of her running up against her guardian as she is running off with her gallant in the park, and the contrivance of the second letter which she imposes on her jealous fool as _Alithea’s_, are Wycherley’s. The characters of _Alithea_, _Harcourt_, and of the fop _Sparkish_, who appears to us so exquisite, and to others so insipid, are additional portraits from the reign and court of Charles II. Those who object to the scenes between this gentleman and his mistress as unnatural, can never have read the _Memoirs of the Count de Grammont_,—an authentic piece of English history, in which we trace the origin of so many noble families. What an age of wit and folly, of coxcombs and coquets, when the world of fashion led purely ornamental lives, and their only object was to make themselves or others ridiculous. Happy age, when the utmost stretch of a morning’s study went no further than the choice of a sword knot, or the adjustment of a side curl; when the soul spoke out in all the persuasive eloquence of dress; when beaux and belles, enamoured of themselves in one another’s follies, fluttered like gilded butterflies in giddy mazes through the walks of St. James’s Park! The perfection of this gala out-of-door comedy is in Etherege, the gay Sir George! Then comes Wycherley, and then Congreve, who hands them into the drawing-room. Congreve is supposed to have been the inventor of the epigrammatic, clenched style of comic dialogue; but there is a great deal of this both in Wycherley and Etherege, with more of a _janty_ tone of flippant gaiety in the latter, and more incident, character, and situation in the former. The _Country Girl_ holds unimpaired possession of the stage to this day, by its wit, vivacity, nature, and ingenuity. Nothing can be worse acted, and yet it goes down, for it supplies the imagination with all that the actors want. Mr. Bartley had some merit as _Moody_, Mr. Fawcet none. Barrymore, at Covent Garden played _Harcourt_ well. We have seen him in better company, and he reminded us of it. He was much of the gentleman, and as much at home on the stage (from long practice) as if he had been in his own apartments. As to the two _Miss Peggys_, we hardly know how to settle their pretensions. If Mrs. Mardyn overacts her part to that degree that she seems only to want a skipping-rope to make it complete, Mrs. Alsop is so stiff and queer that she seems to have only just escaped from a back-board and steel monitor. If Mrs. Alsop has the clearest voice, Mrs. Mardyn has the brightest eyes. Mrs. Alsop has most art, Mrs. Mardyn has most nature. If Mrs. Mardyn is too profuse of natural graces, too young and buoyant and exuberant in all her movements, the same fault cannot be found with Mrs. Alsop, whose smiles give no pleasure, and whose frowns give unmingled pain. Mrs. Alsop’s _Peggy_ is a clever recitation of the character, without being the thing; and Mrs. Mardyn’s is a very full development of her own person, which is the thing itself. Mrs. Alsop is the best actress, though not worth a pin, and Mrs. Mardyn is the most desirable woman, which is always worth something. We may apply to these two ladies what Suckling said of one of his mistresses— ‘I take her body, you her mind,— Which has the better bargain.’ DOCTRINE OF PHILOSOPHICAL NECESSITY _The Examiner._] [_December 10, 1815_ ——‘For I had learnt a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air And the blue sky, and in the mind of man, A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.’ Perhaps, the doctrine of what has been called philosophical necessity was never more finely expressed than in these lines of a poet, who, if he had written only half of what he has done, would have deserved to be immortal. There can be no doubt that all that exists, exists by necessity; that the vast fabric of the universe is held together in one mighty chain, reaching to the ‘threshold of Jove’s throne’; that whatever has a beginning, must have a cause; that there is no object, no feeling, no action, which, other things being the same, could have been otherwise; that thought follows thought, like wave following wave; that chance or accident has no share in any thing that comes to pass in the moral or the physical world; that whatever is, must be; that whatever has been, must have been; that whatever is to be will be necessarily. I never could doubt for a moment of the truth of this general principle, and I never could comprehend the inferences which have commonly been drawn from it, both by friends and foes. All the moral consequences which have been attributed to it appear to me mere idle prejudices against it on one side, and equally gratuitous concessions on the other. The doctrine of necessity leaves morality just where it found it. It does not destroy goodness of disposition or energy of character, any more than it destroys beauty or strength of person. It does not take away the powers of the mind any more than the use of the limbs. That every thing is by necessity, no more proves that there is no such thing as good and evil, virtue and vice, right and wrong, in the moral world, than it proves that there is no such thing as day or night, heat or cold, sweet or sour, food or poison, in the physical. Merit and demerit, that is to say, praise and blame, reward and punishment, have no place in the physical world, but that is because they have no effect there; and for the same reason they have a place in the moral, because they have an effect there. All the practical conclusions which have been ascribed to the difference between liberty and necessity, may be equally accounted for (as they really had their rise) from the difference between moral and physical necessity. Man acts from a cause; and so far he resembles a stone; but he does not act from the same cause, and herein he differs from it. There is a print which I have seen from a picture by Ludovico Caracci, in which a female figure, with a lion by her side, is represented striking a flame of fire at her feet with a drawn sword. I do not very well understand the allegory, but it appears to me to furnish a very tolerable illustration of the difference between moral and physical necessity: for whether this figure strikes the flame with the flat or the sharp side of the sword, it divides and rises again equally; it is incapable of punishment for it has no sense of pain, nor does it apprehend a repetition of the blow. Is it the same with the human mind? No; for it has both the sense of pain and the sense of consequences, which render it liable to punishment, by making that punishment one effectual and necessary means of influencing its conduct. A man differs from a stone in that he has feeling and understanding; and it is this difference that makes him a moral and responsible agent in the true meaning of the terms, by connecting his present impulses with their future consequences. It may be said that animals have feeling, and a certain degree of understanding: and so far they are liable to correction and punishment. A dog or a horse is terrified at the whip or the spur as well as encouraged by kindness. We very properly, therefore, threaten them with the one and allure them with the other, though we neither preach to them of heaven nor hell, because they have no notion about either. As far as they have understanding, they have free-will, for these two words mean one and the same thing. Man is the only religious animal, because he alone (from a greater power of imagination) extends his views of consequences into another state of being.—The application of praise or blame, as well as of reward and punishment, is proper, wherever it is likely to have an effect. We do not talk to the deaf: we do not shew pictures to the blind; we do not reason with a wild beast; we do not quarrel with a stone. Because it would be useless. But we _do_ talk to those who can hear; we shew pictures to those who can see; we reason with prejudice; we quarrel with ill-nature. The human mind differs from an inanimate substance or an automaton, inasmuch as it is actuated by sympathy as well as by necessity. We indeed praise a flower, a statue, or a beautiful face, because they give us pleasure: we praise a virtuous action, as an additional incentive to virtue. ‘Praise and blame, reward and punishment’ (says Mr. Hobbes) ‘are just and proper, because they fashion the will to justice.’ Merit, in the scholastic sense, means something self-caused, and independent of motives. This sense of the term is flat nonsense, for there is nothing without a cause—nothing which is not owing to some other thing. The whole theory of merit may be said to turn upon the capacity of any person or thing to mould itself according to the opinion entertained of it. A stone has not this capacity; and therefore there is no merit in a stone. If you tell a country girl that she is handsome or well made, her answer generally will be, that ‘She is as God made her.’ This however does not prove that she is not well made. It is only meant to shew, that as she has had no hand in her own shape, and can do nothing to mend it, the merit is so far none of hers. But if you praise the neatness of her dress, she has not the same evasion left, but thinks the flattery well bestowed, for she is conscious that this depends upon herself; that she can stay a longer or a shorter time at her glass as she pleases; and that the pains she has taken have been with a view to the good opinion you express of her. The difference between natural and acquired graces is an obvious dictate of common sense; unless we adopt the opinion of the Clown, that ‘a good favour is the effect of study, but reading and writing come by nature.’ It is a piece of brutality and ill-nature to point at a hump-backed man, and call him My Lord: but there is no great harm in laughing at a person with an aukward slovenly gait, for the ridicule may remedy the defect. A person has it in his power to turn his toes out instead of in, whenever he chuses: he cannot get rid of a natural deformity by any effort of will. Beauty and power of every kind excite our love and admiration, whether in nature, in morals, or in art; but still with a difference. St. Paul’s is a much nobler as well as larger building than St. Dunstan’s. We accordingly admire the one much more than the other; but we allow no more merit to the one than the other. All the difference of merit we ascribe to the architect, and not to the building. Why so? Because all the vanity belongs to the architect, and not to the building.—St. Paul’s stands where it does; it lifts its majestic dome to the skies, whether it is seen or not, whether it is admired or not. It has (familiarly speaking) done nothing to deserve our good opinion, for it has done nothing with a view to it. Now for the same reason that the building has not, the builder _has_ merited our good opinion, for he did what he has done with that very view; was sensible to that good opinion, and stimulated to exertion by it. It is evident that the admiration we bestow on any work of art, as an actual object, is involuntary; it makes no difference in the object whether we bestow it or not; we therefore do not make a point of bestowing it: the praise we give to the artist is voluntary, and merited in this farther sense, that we are bound to bestow it as a means to an end: we indulge it not merely as a sentiment naturally excited by the contemplation of excellence, but the expression of which is a reward due to the pains taken by the artist, and to the encouragement of genius. Disapprobation and punishment on the other hand necessarily give pain to the person who is the object of them, but it is to produce a remote good. However, it equally follows in either case, that our love and hatred of what is amiable or odious in conscious agents must be different from our feeling towards unconscious ones, from the sense of the difference of the consequences. The lever, the screw, and the wedge, are the great instruments of the mechanical world: opinion, sympathy, praise and blame, reward and punishment, are the lever, the screw, and the wedge, of the moral world. A house is built of stones; human character depends on motives. Is there therefore no difference between one character and another? As well might it be said that there is no difference between one building and another. If merit means something in character, independent of motives and of all other things, then there can be no such thing as merit: but if by merit we mean something which excites our approbation of one character more than another, and which something is still farther entitled to our approbation, because it depends upon it for its motive and encouragement, then undoubtedly this word has a rational meaning in it. To deny praise or blame, reward or punishment, to actions, because they are produced by motives, is to take away the prop from a house, because it supports it.—Necessity only supersedes merit by superseding the operation of motives. It is pretended, that if any action is not perfectly gratuitous, if it can be traced to any other cause, the merit must be transferred to that other cause, and so on without end. This infinite series may be cut short by observing, that any action is entitled to our good opinion which is affected by it. If our opinion had no influence on the actions of others, there would so far be no merit. If any one going up Holborn-hill is pushed by a stronger man against a window and breaks it, who is the responsible person? The one who pushed the other, and not the one who broke the glass. Because punishment or correcting the moral sense will not prevent a weak man from being pushed against a window by a strong one, but it will prevent the strong man from pushing him against it. It makes no difference that this person did not act at first without a motive; the point is, that here is another motive which will counteract the former one. The true cause of any thing in the practical and moral sense, is that, by removing which the effect ceases. A man is a moral agent only in so far as he can do what he will: for motives can only operate on the will. A man in chains or held by force is not accountable for what he does, for blame or praise him ever so much, and he will do, not what you wish him, but what others force him to do. You may reasonably exhort a man not to throw himself over Westminster Bridge, but it is in vain, after he has thrown himself over, to call out to him to stop. Morality means that we have the power to do certain things, _if we will_, or help them, _if we please_. Merit is moral energy. It is the sense of merit which is the great stimulus of exertion. One thing is more difficult, requires a greater effort than another. The sense of merit is in proportion to the sense of difficulty. The highest praise is given to the highest exertions, the greatest rewards are due where the greatest sacrifices have been made. The degree of merit depends then on the degree of voluntary power exerted: for exertion deserves every kind of encouragement and assistance as it becomes difficult. We give a boy sixpence for going a mile; a shilling for going two. We need not offer rewards and largesses to vice and indolence; for all the sanctions of religion and morality are not sufficient to correct them. The admiration with which the story of Marvell and his leg of mutton is read has not prevented the facility of some modern patriots in commencing courtiers; but if it should only save us from a single birthday ode, it will be something. The phlegmatic Dutchman, in playing at skittles, follows his bowl with his eye, writhes his body to make it turn right, and cheers it with his voice. If the bowl had sympathy so as to bend with his body, and to be encouraged to go a little farther by his praising it, there would be some sense in his doing so. Amphion is said to have raised the walls of Thebes with the sound of his lyre: in one sense the fable might be true, for he might have drawn together and civilized his followers by the power of song. The words which Madame de Staël some time ago addressed to the Germans, _Allemagne, tu es une nation, et tu pleurs_, were not without their effect. Neither perhaps would the same words be so now, addressed to her own country—_France, tu es une nation, et tu pleurs!_ We have been led to these remarks by receiving an epistle from an elderly maiden lady, who complains that she has spent her whole life in censuring and back-biting her neighbours, and that by what we let fall some time ago, about there being no such thing as merit and demerit, we had debarred her of the only use of her tongue and pleasure of her life. We are sorry to have interrupted her, and hope she will now proceed. We have a good deal left to say on the subject:— ‘But there is matter for a second rhyme, And we to this must add another tale.’ PARALLEL PASSAGES IN VARIOUS POETS _The Examiner._] [_December 24, 1815._ Being very busy or very indolent this week (it is no matter which), we have had recourse to our common-place book (the first or last resource of authors), and there find the following instances of parallel passages, which are at the service of the critics. The conclusion of Voltaire’s tragedy of _Zaire_ is the speech of _Orosman_, who has killed his mistress, to her brother, _Nerestan_:— [‘Et toi, guerrier infortuné,’ &c. to ‘Dis que je l’adorais, et que l’ai vengé.’] This will probably remind our readers, as it did us, of _Othello’s_ farewell speech:— [‘Soft you; a word or two before you go,’ &c.] After transcribing the above passage, we were looking about for the traces of the former one, which had ‘vanished into thin air,’ and were beginning to suspect that our parallel had totally failed, till in looking into the lucubrations of Mr. William Wade, who has tried to pick a hole in Shakespear, we learnt that the French translator of our poet had _bona fide_ translated the passage into legitimate French verse, and that Voltaire had in consequence, with singular modesty, complained that Ducis had improved upon the original and stolen the whole turn of the passage from him. To be sure, there is a wide difference in the two passages. There is nothing in the French poet of the ‘No more of that,’ that fine natural interruption to the gasconade which his distress had just extorted from him; there is nothing of ‘One that loved not wisely, but too well,’ there is nothing of Indian pearls or Arabian gums, nor is there any allusion to Aleppo, nor description of ‘a malignant and a turbaned Turk’; nor any thing like that fine return upon himself, and transition from the depth of a dejected spirit to the recollection of former acts of daring defiance, while in his despair he inflicts on himself the blow with which he formerly chastised an insolent foe. These circumstances are given ‘as over-measure’ in Shakespear, and would be considered as superfluous and extravagant by the French critics; yet they are exactly the circumstances which the Moor _Othello_ must have been best acquainted with, and which, as some of the most striking circumstances of his past life, would be forcibly recalled to his memory in parting with it. Voltaire has not invented any thing of the same sort for his dying hero; his speech (though a very good one of its kind) is, as Susannah says to Trim, ‘as flat as the palm of one’s hand;’ it has nothing objectionable in it; it is just such a speech as any crowned head might make in any of the four quarters of the globe.—May we be allowed to add (in passing), that Mr. Kean does not act this scene well? He gnashes his teeth, and strikes the dagger into his bosom, as if he had taken some particular enmity against his own flesh. But this is not so in Shakespear. The feeling of _Othello_ is a lofty absence of mind, in which he throws himself back from the present into the past; the image he recalls furnishes not only the precedent but the consolation of his present act; and the pang which he inflicts on himself is relieved, and unconsciously confounded with the recollection of former acts of grandeur, and elevation of soul. But to proceed.— In the _Agamemnon_ of Æschylus, is a very beautiful description of the signal fires that were to announce the destruction of Troy, thus translated by Potter:— [‘What speed could be the herald of this news,’ &c. to ‘Giv’n by my Lord t’announce the fall of Troy.’] In Drayton’s _Polyolbion_ (Song 30) this idea is finely varied:— [‘Which Copland scarce had spoke, but quickly every hill,’ &c. to ‘Did mightly commend old Copland for her song.’] Again, in a poem of Mr. Wordsworth we find the following lines:— [‘When I had gazed perhaps two minutes’ space,’ &c. to ‘That there was a loud uproar in the hills.’] We have been urged several times to take up the subject of Mr. Wordsworth’s Poems, in order to do them justice. In doing this, we should satisfy neither his admirers nor his censurers. We have once already attempted the thankless office, and it did not succeed. Indeed we think all comment on them superseded by those lines of Withers, which are a complete anticipation of Mr. Wordsworth’s style, where, speaking of poetry, he says,— ‘In my former days of bliss Her divine skill taught me this, That from every thing I saw I could some invention draw; And raise pleasure to her height Through the meanest object’s sight;— By the murmur of a spring, Or the least bough’s rustling, By a daisy whose leaves spread Shut when Titan goes to bed; Or a shady bush or tree, She could more infuse in me Than all Nature’s beauties can In some other wiser man.’ MR. LOCKE A GREAT PLAGIARIST _The Examiner._] [_February 25, 1816._ Mr. Locke has at this day all over Europe the character of one of the most profound and original thinkers that ever lived, and he is perhaps, without any exception, the most barefaced, deliberate, and bungling plagiarist, that ever appeared in philosophy. The reputation which he has acquired, as the founder of the new system in philosophy, or of any part of that system, is a pure imposition. Hobbes was the undoubted founder of the system; and he not only laid the foundation, but he completed the building. Every one of the principles of the modern, material philosophy of the mind, is to be found in his works, perfect and entire, as it is in the latest commentators of the French school. He not only took for his basis the principle that there is no other original faculty in the mind but sensation: he also pushed this principle into all its consequences, with a severe, masterly, and honest logic, of which there is scarcely any other example. By thus shewing the full extent of his system, ‘the very head and front of his offending,’ without any disguise, he only got himself an ill name, and his system was consigned to infamy or oblivion. Mr. Locke adopted the first principle, with a clumsy addition to it, but so as to secure himself the reputation of an original thinker; and at the same time, by not following it in a bold and decided manner into any one of its necessary consequences, he avoided giving the alarm to popular apprehension, and made a temporary compromise with the common sense and prejudices of his readers. The door being however opened to the introduction of this philosophy, by the admission of the general principle, all the rest by degrees followed as a matter of course; and it has been the business of the ablest metaphysicians ever since to clear what has been considered as the philosophy of Locke, from the inconsistences and imperfections which he had suffered to creep into it: all which improvements on Locke’s Essay are only a recurrence to the principles laid down by Hobbes, in the most explicit and unequivocal manner. To shew how little this last writer has been read, even by professed metaphysicians, Hume attributes the doctrine, that there are no abstract ideas, to Berkeley as an original discovery, though the arguments used by Berkeley are almost word for word taken from those used by Hobbes on the same subject. Yet Locke, in order we suppose to prevent inquiry into the originality of his own claims, calls Hobbes ‘a justly exploded author.’ This question is curious (philosophy apart) as a branch of literary history. It is, we know, dangerous to tamper with established reputation; nor should we perhaps have ventured to hazard the accusation we have here made, if we had not been supported by the authority of so well informed, candid, and respectable a writer as Dugald Stewart, whose testimony is of the more value, as he does not seem to be aware of the general propensity of Mr. Locke to appropriate the ideas of others to his own use, without disguise or acknowledgement. To any one who takes the trouble to peruse Professor Stewart’s very elegant Dissertation just published, on the rise and progress of modern Metaphysics, it will be evident that every one of those original discoveries, to which the author of the Essay on Human Understanding owes his celebrity, and on which he particularly plumed himself, is taken in substance and almost in words from writers of whom he does not once make mention; for example, his proposed division of the sciences, brought forward with great parade and formality, into Physics, Ethics, and Logic, which is the old division of the Greek philosophy; his definition of words which are definable or not definable, which is taken expressly from Descartes; his account of the origin of our ideas, that of association, of the social compact, etc. which are borrowed from Hobbes; his distinction of the properties of matter into primary and secondary, and his theory of consciousness or reflection as a distinct source of ideas, which belong to Descartes; his hypothesis about animal spirits, as the medium of association of ideas, adopted from Malbranche; his account of judgment and wit, which is to be found in Hobbes, &c. &c. If it be asked, whether Mr. Locke has not had the merit of combining the materials thus derived from other sources into a complete and masterly system, the answer would be, that his work is one of the most confused, undigested, and contradictory, that has been published on the subject. There is no one to whom those lines of the poet were ever more applicable. ‘Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil, Nor in the glistering foil Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies, But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes, And perfect witness of all-judging Jove.’ We should hope that Mr. Stewart will examine into and state his conviction on this question fully and clearly in the account of Mr. Locke’s Essay, which he has promised in the continuation of his work. If he would lend the sanction of his name to shew the real foundation on which Mr. Locke’s reputation rests, it would not be the least service he has rendered to philosophy. ‘To trace an error to its source is often the only way to refute it.’ The task is no doubt an invidious, but it is a necessary one. The name of Locke is in a manner dear to every lover of truth; but truth itself should be still dearer. It will perhaps be amusing to the reader (though not initiated in such studies) to see the manner in which an idea is bandied about, in these speculations, from author to author, to no sort of purpose. ‘In one of Mr. Locke’s most noted remarks,’ (says the learned Professor) ‘he has been anticipated by Malbranche, on whose clear yet concise statement he does not seem to have thrown much new light by his very diffuse and wordy commentary.’—‘If in having our ideas in the memory ready at hand, consists quickness of parts; in this of having them unconfused, and being able nicely to distinguish one thing from another, where there is but the least difference, consists, in a great measure, the exactness of judgment and clearness of reason; which is to be observed in one man above another. And hence perhaps may be given some reason of that common observation, that men who have a great deal of wit and prompt memories, have not always the clearest judgment or deepest reason. For Wit, lying most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures and agreeable visions in the fancy: Judgment on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully one from another, ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude and by affinity to take one thing for another.’—_Essay_, _etc._ B. ii. c. xi. § 2. ‘Il y a donc des esprits de deux sortes. Les uns remarquent aisément les différences des choses, et ce sont les bons esprits. Les autres imaginent et supposent de la ressemblance entr’elles, et ce sont les esprits superficielles.’—_Recherche de la Vérité._ ‘At an earlier period, Bacon had pointed out the same cardinal distinction in the intellectual characters of individuals. “The greatest and as it were radical distinction of geniuses, in respect of philosophy and science, is this; that some are more able and apt at noting the differences of things; others at noting their similitudes. For steady and acute minds can fix their contemplations, and remain and dwell on every subtlety of distinction; whereas more lofty and discursive imaginations recognize and compound even the slightest and commonest resemblances of things.” ‘_That strain I heard was of a higher mood!_—It is evident that Bacon has here seized, in its most general form, the very important truth perceived by his two ingenious successors in particular cases. _Wit_, which Locke contrasts with _Judgment_, is only one of the various talents connected with what Bacon calls the _discursive genius_; and indeed a talent very subordinate in dignity to most of the others.’—_Note to the Dissertation_, p. 116. Mr. Locke, by Wit, in the passage here referred to, evidently means ingenuity or fancy generally speaking; for in the last hundred years, the use of this term has undergone a great alteration. He however borrowed his definition immediately from ‘that exploded author,’ Hobbes, who says in the _Leviathan_, p. 32,—‘Whereas, in the succession of thoughts, there is nothing to observe in the things we think on, but either in what they be like one another, or in what they be unlike;—those that observe their similitudes, in case they be such as are but rarely observed by others, are said to have a good wit, by which is meant on this occasion a good fancy. But they that observe their differences and dissimilitudes, which is called distinguishing and discerning and judging between thing and thing, in case such discerning be not easy, are said to have a good judgment; and particularly in matters of conversation and business, wherein times, places, and persons, are to be discerned, this virtue is called Discretion.’ What is most remarkable in this traditional definition of wit and judgment, is, that it is altogether unfounded; for as Harris, the author of _Hermes_, has very well observed, the finding out the equality of the three angles of a triangle to two right ones, would, upon the principles here stated, be a sally of wit, instead of an act of the understanding, and Euclid’s Elements a collection of _bon mots_. It may be said in explanation, that wit discovers false resemblances only. But neither is this true. Wit consists in an illustration of an idea by some lucky coincidence or contrast, which idea may be either false or true, as it happens. But the best wit is always the truest. When the French punsters the other day changed the title of some loyal order from _Compagnons du Lys_ into _Compagnons d’Ulysse_, the wit lost none of its efficacy, because there was a lurking suspicion in the mind that the insinuation was true. When Mr. Grattan, some years ago, said, that the only resources of Ministers were ‘the guinea or the gallows,’ the alliteration proved nothing, but neither did it disprove any thing. When the late ingenious Professor Porson, in reply to some enthusiast of the modern school of poetry, who was exclaiming ‘that some contemporary bards would be admired when Homer and Virgil were forgotten,’ made answer,—‘And not till then,’—he shewed more wit, and perhaps not less judgment, than his antagonist. Besides, the wit here consisted in the distinction. We shall shortly go more into this subject in three papers, which we propose to write, on Imagination, Wit, and Judgment, when we shall endeavour to shew that these faculties, though not the same, nor always found together, are not so incompatible as dullness on the one hand, and folly on the other, would lead the world to suppose. The most sensible man of our acquaintance is also the wittiest; and the most extravagant blockhead the dullest matter-of-fact man. The greatest poet that ever lived, had the most understanding of human nature and affairs. Martinus Scriblerus contains the best commentary on the Categories; and we shrewdly suspect that Voltaire and Moliere were two as wise men, that is, knew as many things that were true and useful, as Malbranche and Descartes. It would have been hard to persuade either of those laughing philosophers that they saw all things in God, or that animals were machines. These are ‘the laborious fooleries’ of the understanding. Mr. Stewart has interspersed his history of the progress of opinions with some interesting biographical sketches. Of Anthony Arnaud, the author of the _Port Royal Logic_, we learn, that ‘he lived to the age of eighty-three, continuing to write against Malbranche’s opinions concerning _Nature and Grace_, to his last hour.’ He died, says his biographer, in an obscure retreat at Brussels, in 1692, without fortune, and even without the comfort of a servant; he, whose nephew had been a minister of state, and who might himself have been a cardinal. The pleasure of being able to publish his sentiments was to him a sufficient recompense. Nicole, his friend and companion in arms, worn out at length with these incessant disputes, expressed a wish to retire from the field, and to enjoy repose. ‘_Repose!_’ replied Arnaud; ‘won’t you have the whole of eternity to repose in?’—An anecdote which is told of his infancy, when considered in connection with his subsequent life, affords a good illustration of the force of impressions received in the first dawn of reason. He was amusing himself one day with some childish sport, in the library of the Cardinal du Perron, when he requested of the Cardinal to give him a pen:—And for what purpose? said the Cardinal.—To write books, like you, against the Huguenots. The Cardinal, it is added, who was old and infirm, could not conceal his joy at the prospect of so hopeful a successor: and, as he was putting the pen into his hand, said, ‘I give it to you as the dying shepherd Damaetas bequeathed his pipe to the little Corydon.’ Of the celebrated metaphysician Descartes, it appears that he was ‘a bold campaigner’ in his youth; that he served in Holland under Prince Maurice of Nassau; in Germany, under Maximilian of Bavaria, in the thirty years’ war; in Hungary, and at the siege of Rochelle, as a volunteer against the English. He passed his life in camps till the age of five-and-twenty, when he retired to spend the remainder of it—in proving his own existence! What then, it may be asked after all, is the use of such studies and pursuits? Of the same use as pursuing gilded butterflies, or any other toy that amuses the mind. Mr. Hume fixed his residence, while composing his Treatise of _Human Nature_, at the village of La Flèche, where Descartes was brought up. This is an interesting trait in the life of a philosopher, who was by no means of the romantic cast. We do not very well understand the lenity or rather the respect with which the memory of Mr. Hume is always treated by our author, who is so hard upon Hobbes and others. There is also too much notice taken of Adam Smith, who, whatever might be his merits as a political economist, was of a very subordinate class as a philosopher— ‘The tenth transmitter of a foolish creed.’ May we add, that the distinctions of Metaphysics and Geography have nothing in common, nor is truth of any particular country. The learned Professor makes too little account of the German philosopher Kant, whose maxim that ‘the mind alone is formative,’ is the only lever by which the modern philosophy can be overturned. He has indeed overlaid this simple principle by his logical technicalities, his categories and stuff, as Locke has confounded all common sense with his ideas of sensation and ideas of reflection. Nothing can be done towards a true theory of the mind, till philosophers are convinced that all ideas are ideas of the understanding; and that it requires all the same faculties to have the _idea_ of the stud of a brass nail in an old arm-chair, that is, the perception of connection, limits, form, difference, aye, and of abstraction, in this simple object, as in the highest speculations of theological or metaphysical science. The modern philosophers contend that the mind has no idea of any thing but sensible images: the way to turn the tables upon them is then to prove, that in the idea of every one of these sensible objects, there is necessarily involved the exercise of all those faculties, of which they deny the existence, and which are exerted, only in a different degree, in the most simple or the most refined operations of the understanding. SHAKESPEAR’S FEMALE CHARACTERS _The Examiner._] [_July 28, 1816._ Shakespear’s women (we mean those who were his favourites, and whom he intended to be the favourites of the reader) exist almost entirely in the relations and charities of domestic life. They are nothing in themselves, but every thing in their attachment to others. We think as little of their persons as they do themselves, because we are let into the secrets of their hearts, which are more important. We are too much interested in their affairs to stop to look at their faces, except by stealth and at intervals. We catch their beauties only sideways as in a glass, but we everywhere meet their hearts coming at us,—_full butt_, as _Miss Peggy_ meets her husband in the Park. No one ever hit the true perfection of the female character, the sense of weakness leaning on the strength of its affections for support, so well as Shakespear—no one ever so well painted natural tenderness free from all affectation and disguise, that ‘Calls true love acted simple modesty’— no one else ever so well shewed how delicacy and timidity, urged to an extremity, grow romantic and extravagant, for the romance of his heroines (in which they abound) is only an excess of the common prejudices of their sex, scrupulous of being false to their vows, truant to their affections, and taught by the force of their feelings when to forego the forms of propriety for the essence of it. His women are in this respect exquisite logicians, for they argue from what they feel, and that is a sure game, when the stake is deep. They know their own minds exactly. High imagination springs from deep habit; and Shakespear’s women only followed up the idea of what they liked, of what they had sworn to with their tongues, and what was engraven on their hearts, into its untoward consequences. They were the prettiest little set of martyrs and confessors on record. We have almost as great an affection for _Imogen_ as she had for _Posthumus_; and she deserves it rather better. Of all Shakespear’s women she is perhaps the most touching, the most tender, and the most true. As to _Desdemona_, who was alone a match for her in good faith and heroic self-devotion, she had her faults, and she suffered for them. _Imogen’s_ incredulity as to her husband’s infidelity is much the same as _Desdemona’s_ backwardness to believe Othello’s jealousy. Her answer to the most distressing part of the picture is only, ‘my Lord, I fear, has forgot Britain.’ Her readiness to pardon _Iachimo’s_ falsehoods, and his designs upon her virtue, is a good lesson to prudes; and shews (as perhaps Shakespear intended it, or nature for him) that where there is a strong attachment to virtue, it has no need to bolster itself up with an outrageous or affected antipathy to vice. The morality of Shakespear in this way is great; but it is not to be found in the four last lines of his plays, in the form of extreme unction. The scene in which _Pisanio_ gives _Imogen_ her husband’s letter accusing her of incontinency, is as fine as anything could be:— ‘_Pisanio._ What cheer, Madam? _Imogen._ False to his bed! What is it to be false? To lie in watch there, and to think on him? To weep ’twixt clock and clock! If sleep charge nature, To break it with a fearful dream of him, And cry myself awake? That’s false to ’s bed, is it? _Pisanio._ Alas, good lady! _Imogen._ I false? thy conscience witness, Iachimo, Thou didst accuse him of incontinency, Thou then look’dst like a Villain: Now methinks, Thy favour’s good enough. Some Jay of Italy, Whose mother was her painting, hath betrayed him: Poor I am stale, a garment out of fashion, And for I am richer than to hang by th’ walls, I must be ript; to pieces with me. Oh, Men’s vows are women’s traitors. All good seeming By thy revolt, oh Husband, shall be thought Put on for villainy: not born where ‘t grows, But worn a bait for Ladies. _Pisanio._ Good Madam, hear me— _Imogen._ Talk thy tongue weary, speak: I have heard I am a strumpet, and mine ear, Therein false struck, can take no greater wound, Nor tent to bottom that.’—— When _Pisanio_, who had been charged to kill his mistress, puts her in a way to live, she says— ‘Why, good fellow, What shall I do the while? Where bide? How live? Or in my life what comfort, when I am Dead to my Husband?’ Yet when he advises her to disguise herself in boy’s clothes, and suggests ‘a course pretty and full in view,’ by which she may ‘happily be near the residence of _Posthumus_,’ she exclaims— ‘Oh, for such means, Though peril to my modesty, not death on ‘t, I would adventure.’ And when _Pisanio_, enlarging on the consequences, tells her she must change— ——‘Fear and niceness, The handmaids of all women, or more truly, Woman its pretty self, into a waggish courage, Ready in gibes, quick answer’d, saucy, and As quarellous as the weazel’— She interrupts him hastily:— ‘Nay, be brief: I see unto thy end, and am almost A man already.’ In her journey thus disguised to Milford-Haven, she loses her guide and her way; and unbosoming her complaints, says beautifully,— ——‘My dear Lord, Thou art one of the false ones: now I think on thee, My hunger’s gone; but even before, I was At point to sink for food.’ She afterwards finds, as she thinks, the dead body of _Posthumus_, and engages herself as a foot-boy to serve a Roman Officer, when she has done all due obsequies to him whom she calls her former master: ——‘And when With wild wood-leaves and weeds I ha’ strewed his grave, And on it said a century of pray’rs, Such as I can, twice o’er, I’ll weep and sigh, And leaving so his service, follow you, So please you entertain me.’ Now this is the very religion of love. Is it not? All this, which is the essence of the character, is free from every thing like personal flattery or laboured description. She relies little on her personal charms, which she fears may have been eclipsed by some painted jay of Italy; she relies only on her merit, and her merit is in the depth of her love, her truth and constancy. Our admiration of her beauty is excited as it were with as little consciousness as possible on her part. There are two delicious descriptions given of her, one when she is asleep, and one when she is supposed dead. _Arviragus_ thus addresses her: ——‘With fairest flowers, While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, I’ll sweeten thy sad grave; thou shalt not lack The flow’r that’s like thy face, pale primrose, nor The azure’d hare-bell, like thy veins, no, nor The leaf of eglantine, which not to slander, Out-sweeten’d not thy breath.’ The yellow _Iachimo_ gives another thus, when he steals into her bed-chamber: ——‘Cytherea, How bravely thou becom’st thy bed! Fresh lily, And whiter than the sheets! That I might touch— But kiss, one kiss—’Tis her breathing that Perfumes the chamber thus: the flame o’ th’ taper Bows toward her, and would under-peep her lids To see th’ enclosed lights now canopied Under the windows, white and azure, laced With blue of Heav’n’s own tinct—on her left breast A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops I’ th’ bottom of a cowslip.’ There is a moral sense in the proud beauty of this last image, a rich surfeit of the fancy,—as that well-known passage beginning, ‘Me of my lawful pleasure she restrained, and prayed me oft forbearance,’ sets a keener edge upon it by the inimitable picture of modesty and self-denial. _Desdemona_ is another instance (almost to a proverb) of the devotedness of the sex to a favourite object. She is ‘subdued even to the very quality of her lord,’ and to _Othello’s_ ‘honours and his valiant parts her soul and fortunes consecrates.’ The lady protests as much herself, and she is as good as her word. There is not a set description of her in any part of the play; and the only thing that tends that way is the equivocal and somewhat luscious dialogue that takes place between _Iago_ and _Cassio_ as an accompaniment to the ceremonies of the wedding-night. We see her visage in her mind: her character every where predominates over her person: ‘A maiden, never bold; Of spirit so still and quiet, that her motion Blush’d at itself.’ She is not a painted idol, carved out of the poet’s brain, but is herself a worshipper at the shrine of duty. As Milton dashes the luxurious effect of his descriptions by a moral, Shakespear qualifies it by the interest of the story, as in the scene where _Othello_ takes _Desdemona_ by the hand. The truth of conception, with which timidity and boldness are united in the same character, is marvellous. The extravagance of her actions, the pertinacity of her affections, in a manner arises out of the gentleness of her nature. It is an unreserved reliance on the purity of her intentions, a surrender of her fears to her love, a knitting of herself (heart and soul) to the fate of another. Bating the commencement of her passion, which is a little fantastical and self-willed (though that may be accounted for in the same way from an inability to resist a rising inclination) her whole character consists in having no will of her own, no prompter but her obedience. Her romantic turn is only a consequence of the domestic and practical part of her disposition; and instead of following _Othello_ to Cyprus, she would rather have remained at home, ‘a moth of peace,’ if her husband could have staid with her. Her resignation and angelic sweetness of nature do not desert her at the last. The scenes in which she laments and tries to account for _Othello’s_ harsh usage of her are exquisitely managed. After he has struck her and called her names, she says: ——‘Alas, Iago, What shall I do to win my lord again? Good friend, go to him; for by this light of Heaven, I know not how I lost him. Here I kneel; If e’er my will did trespass ’gainst his love, Either in discourse, or thought, or actual deed, Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense Delighted them on any other form; Or that I do not, and ever did, And ever will, though he do shake me off To beggarly divorcement, love him dearly, Comfort forswear me. Unkindness may do much, And his unkindness may defeat my life, But never taint my love.... _Iago._ I pray you be content: ’tis but his humour. The business of the state does him offence. _Desdemona._ If ’twere no other.’—— The scene which follows with her maid and the song of the Willow are equally beautiful, and shew Shakespear’s extreme power of varying the expression of passion, in all its moods and in all circumstances. One of the finest passages in Mr. Wordsworth’s poems is that where he has given us his opinion of _Desdemona_: ‘Books, dreams, are each a world; and books, we know, Are a substantial world, both pure and good, Round which, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, Our pastime and our happiness may grow; · · · · · Matter wherein right voluble I am, Two let me mention dearer than the rest, The gentle lady wedded to the Moor, And heavenly Una with her milk-white lamb.’ We have said enough to explain our idea of the general turn of Shakespear’s female characters. We need not mention _Ophelia_ or _Cordelia_, both of which admit of little external decoration, and which it would seem impossible to treat in any other way than as Shakespear has represented them, abstracted from every thing but their heart-breaking ties to others, if Tate had not adorned the person of _Cordelia_ with a number of beauties, and finished her story with a lover. _Cleopatra_, who has certainly a personal identity of her own, and who is described in all the glowing pomp of eastern luxury, is not an exception to what we have said, for she is not intended as a model of her sex. What we best recollect of _Cressida_, is _Pandarus’s_ description of her after bringing her to the tent, where he says,—‘And her heart beats like a new-ta’en sparrow’—which must be allowed to be quite Shakesperian. _Miranda_ appears to be the most conscious of her charms of any of his favourites (perhaps from the very solitude in which she had lived), a sort of miracle of her father’s island, and the goddess of her new-found lover’s idolatry. _Perdita_ is a very pretty low-born lass, the Queen of curds and cream—but she makes us think of other things more than of her face. There is one passage in which the poet has, we suspect, very artfully rallied the indifference of the sex to abstract reasoning: ‘_Perdita._ Sir, the fairest flowers o’ th’ season Are our carnations, and streak’d gilly-flowers, Which some call Nature’s bastards: of that kind Our rustic garden’s barren, and I care not To get slips of them. _Polixenes._ Wherefore, gentle maiden, Do you neglect them? _Perdita._ For I have heard it said, There is an art which, in their piedness shares With great creating nature. _Polixenes._ Say, there be, Yet nature is made better by no mean, But nature makes that mean; so o’er that art Which you say adds to nature, is an art That nature makes: you see, sweet maid, we marry A gentler scyon to the wildest stock, And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race. This is an art Which does mend nature, change it rather; but The art itself is nature. _Perdita._ So it is. _Polixenes._ Then make your garden rich in gilly-flowers, And do not call them bastards. _Perdita._ _I’ll not put The dibble in earth, to set one slip of them_,’ etc. Here the lady gives up the argument, but keeps her opinion. We had forgot one charming instance to our purpose, which is the character of _Helen_ in _All’s Well that Ends Well_; and this also puts us in mind that Shakespear probably borrowed his female characters from the Italian novelists, and not from English women. MISS O’NEILL’S WIDOW CHEERLY _The Examiner._] [_January 12, 1817._ We have few idols, and those few we do not like to lose. But the warmth of our idolatry of Miss O’Neill will be brought to a much lower temperature if she goes on playing comedy at this rate. We cannot form any compromise in our imagination between _Belvidera_ and the _Widow Cheerly_. To speak our minds plainly, Miss O’Neill is by far the best tragic actress we ever saw, with one great exception, and she is the worst comic actress we remember, without any exception at all. Her comedy is cast in lead, and sad _doleful dumps_ she makes of it. It is tragedy in low-heeled shoes. Her spirit is boisterousness; her playfulness languid affectation; her familiarity oppressive; her gaiety lamentable. There never was such labour in vain. A smile trickles down her cheek like a tear, and her voice whines through a repartee in as many winding bouts of mawkish insinuation as through the most pathetic address. We cannot bear all this evident condescension; it overpowers us. In one scene she was very much applauded: it is that in which the _Widow Cheerly_ gives a characteristic description of her former husband’s introduction of her to his bottle-companions: ‘This is _my_ wife,’ etc. Now it cannot be denied that she mimicked the airs and manner of the fox-hunting squire very well, and her voice fairly gave the house a box on the ear. But we do not wish to see Miss O’Neill in the part of _Squire Western_. We conceive that this delightful actress cannot descend lower than the soldier’s daughter, except by playing the sailor’s daughter, and giving the word of command in a striped blue jacket and trowsers instead of a striped green gown. In these tom-boy hectoring heroines Mrs. Charles Kemble, whom, to the best of our belief, she imitates, beats her out and out; and Mrs. Mardyn, besides being taller and handsomer, has really more of the _vis comica_. But we will have done with this ungrateful subject. The comedy itself, of _The Soldier’s Daughter_, is the _beau ideal_ of modern comedy. It contains the whole theory and practice of sentimentality, of which a bank-note offered and declined is the circulating medium, and a white cambric pocket-handkerchief, that catches the crystal tear in the eye of sensibility ere it falls, the visible emblem. _Mr._ and _Mrs. Melford_ are an amiable young couple in lodgings and in great distress, but you do not learn how they got into one any more than the other. They utter their complaints, but are too delicate to touch upon the cause, and you sympathise with their sorrows, not with their misfortunes. They have a little girl, who has a little doll, which she christens ‘Miss Good Gentleman,’ after a person whose name she does not know. This is a very palpable hit, and tells amazingly. The unknown benefactor of these unfortunates _incognito_ is a young _Mr. Heartall_, a wild, giddy character, that is, in the modern sense, a person who never stands still on the stage—who is always running into scrapes, which he walks out of without leaving any apology or account behind him. Then there is the _Widow Cheerly_, in the same house with the _Melfords_, whose heart and whose _ridicule_ are ever open to the distressed, and who makes a match with _Young Heartall_, because he makes her an offer, it not being consistent with the gallantry of a soldier’s daughter to decline a challenge of that sort. Then there is _Old Heartall_, uncle to _Young Heartall_, and an East Indian Governor, who says one thing and does another; calls his nephew a scoundrel, and throws his arms round his neck. He is not a character, but a contradiction. Then there is a Mr. Ferret, who commits all sorts of unaccountable villainies through the piece, without any ostensible motives, and at the end of it you find that he has acted upon an abstract principle of avarice. ‘If,’ he says, ‘there had been no such thing as avarice, I had not been a villain.’ This is a very edifying confession of faith; and so not finding this principle answer, he repents upon an abstract principle of repentance, and also at the instigation of his old benefactor, (just arrived from the East and accordingly a great moralist), who reads him a great moral lecture, and advises him to give up his ill-gotten gains. As _Mr. Ferret_ submits to his advice backed by the law, _Old Heartall_ is prevailed on to forgive his designs upon the lives, characters, and fortunes of his acquaintance, from an amiable weakness of heart, and because the _Widow Cheerly_, who intercedes for him, ‘has roguish eyes.’ Mr. Liston plays a foolish servant in the _Heartall_ family, whose name is _Timothy_. The name of _Timothy_ is one of the jokes of this part: Mr. Liston’s face is the other, and the best of the two. The whole tone of this play reminded us strongly of a very excellent criticism which we had read a short time before on the _cant_ of Modern Comedy, in one of the notes to Mr. Lamb’s Specimens of Early Dramatic Poetry:— ‘The insipid levelling morality to which the modern stage is tied down would not admit of such admirable passions as these scenes are filled with. A puritanical obtuseness of sentiment, a stupid infantile goodness, is creeping among us, instead of the vigorous passions, and virtues clad in flesh and blood, with which the old dramatists present us. Those noble and liberal casuists could discern in the differences, the quarrels, the animosities of men, a beauty and truth of moral feeling, no less than in the iteratively inculcated duties of forgiveness and atonement. With us, all is hypocritical meekness. A reconciliation scene (let the occasion be never so absurd and unnatural) is always sure of applause. Our audiences come to the theatre to be complimented on their goodness. They compare notes with the amiable characters in the play, and find a wonderful similarity of disposition between them. We have a common stock of dramatic morality, out of which a writer may be supplied, without the trouble of copying it from originals within his own breast. To know the boundaries of honour—to be judiciously valiant—to have a temperance which shall beget a smoothness in the angry swellings of youth—to esteem life as nothing when the sacred reputation of a parent is to be defended, yet to shake and tremble under a pious cowardice when that ark of an honest confidence is found to be frail and tottering—to feel the true blows of a real disgrace blunting that sword which the imaginary strokes of a supposed false imputation had put so keen an edge upon but lately—to do, or to imagine this done in a feigned story, asks something more of a moral sense, somewhat a greater delicacy of perception in questions of right and wrong, than goes to the writing of two or three hackneyed sentences about the laws of honour as opposed to the laws of the land or a common-place against duelling. Yet such things would stand a writer now a days in far better stead than Captain Ager and his conscientious honour; and he would be considered as a far better teacher of morality than old Rowley or Middleton, if they were living.’ PENELOPE AND THE DANSOMANIE. _The Examiner._] [_January 19, 1817._ KING’S THEATRE. This theatre was opened for the present season under very favourable auspices; and we congratulate the public on the prospect of the continuance of this addition to the stock of elegant amusement. Though the opera is not among the ordinary resources of the lovers of the drama, it is a splendid object in the _vista_ of a winter’s evening, and we should be sorry to see it mouldering into decay, its graceful columns and Corinthian capitals fallen, and its glory buried in Chancery. We rejoice when the Muses escape out of the fangs of the law, nor do we like to see the Graces arrested—in a _pas de trois_. We do not ‘like to see the unmerited fall of what has long flourished in splendour; any void produced in the imagination; any ruin on the face of Art.’ At present we hope better things from the known tastes and talents of the gentleman who is understood to have undertaken the management of the principal department, and from what we have seen of the performances with which the company have commenced their career. The pieces on Saturday and Tuesday were the Opera of _Penelope_ by Cimarosa, and the inimitable comic Ballet, _The Dansomanie_. The first is, what it professes to be, a Grand Serious Opera: but it is somewhat heavy and monotonous. It introduced to the English Stage several actors of considerable eminence abroad. The principal were Mad. Camporese as _Penelope_, Madame Pasta as _Telemachus_, and Signor Crivelli as _Ulysses_. The last of these appears to be as good an actor as a singer. His gestures have considerable appropriateness and expression, besides having that sustained dignity and studied grace, which are essential to the harmony of the Opera; and his tones in singing are full, clear, and so articulate, that any one at all imbued with the Italian language can follow the words with ease. Madame Camporese performed _Penelope_, and drew down the frequent plaudits of the house by the sweetness of her voice, and the flexibility of execution which she manifested in some of the most difficult and impassioned passages. If we were to express our opinion honestly, we should say that we received most pleasure from Madame Pasta’s _Telemachus_. There is a natural eloquence about her singing which we feel, and therefore understand. Her dress and figure also answered to the classical idea we have of the youthful _Telemachus_. Her voice is good, her action is good: she has a handsome face, and _very_ handsome legs. The ladies, we know, think otherwise: this is the only subject on which we think ourselves better judges than they.—Of the _Dansomanie_ we will say nothing, lest we should be supposed to have caught the madness which it ridicules so sportively and gracefully. The whole is excellent, but the Minuet de la Cour is sublime: and the Gavot which succeeds it, is as good. Madame Leon was exquisite, and she had a partner worthy of her. ‘Such were the joys of our dancing days.’ Really when we see these dances, and hear the music, which our old fantastical dancing master used to scrape upon his kit, played in full orchestra, we do not know what to make of it; we wish we were old dancing-masters, or learning to dance; or that we had lived in the time of Henry IV. The tears do not come in our eyes; that source is dry: but we exclaim with the Son of Fingal, ‘Roll on, ye dark-brown years! ye bring no joy on your wing to Ossian.’ OROONOKO. _The Examiner._] [_January 26, 1817._ DRURY-LANE. Southern’s tragedy of _Oroonoko_, which has not been acted, we believe, for some years, has been brought forward here to introduce Mr. Kean as the Royal Slave. It was well thought of. We consider it as one of his best parts. It is also a proof to us of what we have always been disposed to think, that Mr. Kean, when he fully gives up his mind to it, is as great in pure pathos as in energy of action or discrimination of character. In general, he inclines to the violent and muscular expression of passion, rather than to that of its deep, involuntary, heart-felt workings. If he does this upon any theory of the former style of expression being more striking and calculated to produce an immediate effect, we think the success of his _Richard II._ and of this play alone (not to mention innumerable fine passages in his other performances), might convince him of the perfect safety with which he may trust himself in the hands of the audience, whenever he chuses to indulge in ‘the melting mood.’ We conceive that the range of his powers is greater in this respect than he has yet ventured to display, and that if the taste of the town is not yet ripe for the change, he has genius enough to lead it, wherever truth and nature point the way. His performance of _Oroonoko_ was for the most part decidedly of a mild and sustained character; yet it was highly impressive throughout, and most so, where it partook least of violence or effort. The strokes of passion which came unlooked for and seemed to take the actor by surprise, were those that took the audience by surprise, and only found relief in tears. Of this kind was the passage in which, after having been harrowed up to the last degree of agony and apprehension at the supposed dishonourable treatment of his wife, and being re-assured on that point, he falls upon her neck with sobs of joy and broken laughter, saying, ‘I knew they could not,’ or words to that effect. The first meeting between him and _Imoinda_ was also very affecting; and the transition to tenderness and love in it was even finer than the expression of breathless eagerness and surprise. There were many other passages in which the feelings, conveyed by the actor, seemed to gush from his heart, as if its inmost veins had been laid open. In a word, Mr. Kean gave to the part that glowing and impetuous, and at the same time deep and full expression, which belongs to the character of that burning zone, which ripens the souls of men, as well as the fruits of the earth! The most striking part in the whole performance was in the uttering of a single word. _Oroonoko_, in consequence of his gentle treatment, and the flattering promises that are held out to him of safe conduct to his own country, of the restoration of his liberty and his beloved _Imoinda_, thinks well of the persons into whose hands he has fallen; and it is in vain that _Aboam_ (Mr. Rae) tries to work him up to suspicion and revenge by general descriptions of the sufferings of his countrymen, or of the cruelty and treachery of their white masters: but at the suggestion of the thought, that if they remain where they are, _Imoinda_ will become the mother, and himself, a prince and a hero, the father of a race of slaves, he starts and the manner in which he utters the ejaculation ‘Hah!’ at the world of thought which is thus shewn to him, like a precipice at his feet, resembles the first sound that breaks from a thunder-cloud, or the hollow roar of a wild beast, roused from its lair by hunger and the scent of blood. It is a pity that the catastrophe does not answer to the grandeur of the menace; and that this gallant vindicator of himself and his countrymen fails in his enterprise, through the treachery and cowardice of those whom he attempts to set free, but ‘who were by nature slaves!’ The story of this _servile war_ is not without a parallel elsewhere: it reads ‘a great moral lesson’ to Europe, only changing _black_ into _white_; and the manner in which _Oroonoko_ is prevailed on to give up his sword, and his treatment afterwards, by a man in British uniform, seems to have been the model of the Convention of Paris. It only required one thing to have made it complete, that the Governor, who is expected in the island, should have arrived in time to break the agreement, and save the credit of his subaltern. The political allusions throughout, that is, the appeals to common justice and humanity, against the most intolerable cruelty and wrong, are so strong and palpable, that we wonder the piece is not prohibited. There is that black renegade _Othman_, who betrays his country in the hopes of promotion, and the favour of his betters: how like he is to many a white-faced loon, but that ‘the devil has not damned them black!’ Politics apart—_Oroonoko_ is a very interesting moral play. It is a little tedious sometimes, and a little common-place at all times, but it has feeling and nature to supply what it wants in other respects. The negroes in it (we could wish them out of it, but then there would be no play) are very _ugly customers_ upon the stage. One blackamoor in a picture is an ornament, but a whole cargo of them is more than enough. This play puts us out of conceit with both colours, theirs and our own; the sooty slave’s, and his cold, sleek, smooth-faced master’s.—Miss Somerville was a great relief to the natural and moral deformity of the scene. She looked like the _idea_ of the poet’s mind. Her resigned, pensive, unconscious look and attitude, at the moment she is about to be restored to the rapturous embrace of her lover, was a beautiful dramatic picture. She is an acquisition to the milder parts of tragedy. She interests on the stage, for she is interesting in herself. She cannot help being a heroine, if she but shews herself. She was as elegantly dressed in _Imoinda_, for an Indian maid, in light, flowered drapery, as she was in _Imogine_, for a lady of old romance, in trains of lead-coloured satin. Her voice is sweet, but lost in its own sweetness; and we who hear her at some distance, can only catch ‘the music of her honey-vows,’ like the indistinct murmur of a hive of bees. Mr. Bengough does not improve upon us by acquaintance. All that we have of late discovered in him is that he has grey eyes. Little Smith made an excellent representative of the coasting Guinea captain. John Bull could not desire to have better justice done to his mind or his body.—Southern, the author of _Oroonoko_, was also the author of _Isabella, or the Fatal Marriage_, in both of which ‘he often has beguiled us of our tears.’ He died at the age of eighty-six, in 1746. Gray, the poet, speaks thus of him in a letter, dated from Burnham, in Buckinghamshire, 1737. ‘We have here old Mr. Southern, at a gentleman’s house a little way off: he is now seventy-seven years old, and has almost wholly lost his memory: but is as agreeable as an old man can be: at least I persuade myself so, when I look at him, and think of _Isabella_ and _Oroonoko_.’ ‘THE PANNEL’ AND ‘THE RAVENS’ _The Examiner._] [_February 2, 1817._ There has been little new this week. A new after-piece or melo-drame has been brought forward at Covent-garden, and the old farce of the _Pannel_ revived at Drury-Lane. We can say but little in praise of the former, except the excellence of the acting and the manner in which it is got up. The strength of the house is mustered in a second-rate production, and from the list of names in the play-bills, the public go to see the performers, if not the performance, and come away at least half satisfied. They manage these things differently at Drury-lane, and not so well. We deny that the comic strength of the two houses is so unequal as is sometimes supposed. For instance, at Drury-lane, they have Munden, Dowton, Oxberry, and Knight; Harley is droll too; and in women, they beat them out and out, for they have Miss Kelly. To be sure, they have not Liston; so they must kick the beam. Mr. Liston is the greatest comic genius of the age. If we were very dull and sad indeed, we should avoid going to any farce or comedy in which he did not appear, as only tantalising to our feelings, and promising relief without affording it: but we must be dull indeed, if we did not bite at the bait of Mr. Liston’s _Lubin Log_. His comic humour is a sort of oil or ‘balsam of fierabras’ for all imaginary wounds that are not a foot deep. His laugh might tickle royalty itself after the howling of the rabble, or make one of the wax figures at Mrs. Salmon’s relax from the inflexibility of its state. Then there is Miss Stephens at Covent-garden, and there are the three Miss Dennets—like ‘Circe and the Sirens three.’ We always see the Miss Dennets at the theatre, and they sometimes glide before our imagination at other times; but we seldom hear Miss Stephens now. We want to see her again in _Mandane_, in which we have seen her eight times already, and to hear her sing _If o’er the cruel tyrant Love_, which we could hear her sing for ever. We want to see her in _Polly_ for the seventh time, and in _Rosetta_ for the fifth, we believe it will be, when we see her in it again, which will be when she next plays in it. Pray how long will it be first, Mr. Fawcett? We suppose not till Miss O’Neill is tired of tiring the audience in _Mrs. Oakley_, or ‘the ravens are hoarse that croak over Mr. Emery’s head’ in the Pangs of Conscience. _Something new, always something new._ That is the taste of Covent Garden, and the town. It is not our’s. We are for something old. _Toujours perdrix._ We like to read the same books, and to see the same plays, and the same faces over again—_always provided_ we liked them at first. Now there is one face which we never liked, and never shall like, which is the face of Tyranny, and the older it gets, the uglier it gets in our eyes, and in this, as a matter of taste, we differ entirely with Mr. Canning, though he has been declared by a classical authority to be ‘the most elegant mind since Virgil.’ We differ with him notwithstanding.—_The Ravens, or the Pangs of Conscience_, is a melo-drame taken from the French, of the same breed, but an inferior specimen, as the _Maid and Magpie_, and the _Family of Anglade_. It is a kind of renewal of the age of augury adapted to the modern theories of probability, by being reduced within the limits of natural history. These pieces take for their text the lines, ‘And choughs and magpies shall bring forth The secret’st man of blood.’ In the _Pangs of Conscience_, as in the _Maid of Palisseau_, there is a robbery, a trial of persons innocently suspected of it, and a discovery of the real perpetrators, just at the critical moment, by the intervention of two of the feathered creation. Just as sentence has been pronounced on the supposed criminals (Terry and Blanchard) by the Judge, (Barrymore, who really performed this character admirably) two Ravens fly in upon the stage, the same who had hovered over the scene of the murder and robbery in the adjacent forest, and by their silent but dreadful appeal to the conscience of _Jacques du Noir_ (Emery), who is not like his cousin _Bruno du Noir_ (poor Farley) a hardened, but a conscientious villain, reveal the mystery of the whole transaction, by which the guilty are punished, and the innocent miraculously escape.—There was some fine and powerful acting by Emery in the part of the repentant assassin. _Bruno_ in vain endeavours to appease and quiet him, but he still roars out lustily to give vent both to the pangs of his conscience and the ‘grief of a wound’ which he has got in the encounter from an old rusty fowling-piece of Fawcett’s, whom they plunder and kill. The greatest part of this romantic fiction is tedious, and the whole of it improbable, but from the goodness of the acting, and some strokes of interest in the situations, it went off with applause. Of the _Pannel_, we have only room to add that we think _Beatrice_, who is the subordinate heroine of the piece, the best specimen of Mrs. Alsop’s acting. We saw it from a remote part of the house, and her _voice and manner_ at this distance sometimes reminded us of her mother’s. JOHN GILPIN _The Examiner._] [_May 4, 1817._ DRURY-LANE. When Mr. Dowton advertised for his benefit that he was to appear in the after-piece as _John Gilpin_, and to ride for that night only, we immediately felt tempted to go as the self-appointed executors and residuary legatees of the original author of the story, who concludes his account with these two lines— ‘And when he next does ride abroad, May we be there to see.’ So we took upon us to fulfil Cowper’s wish, and went to see, not _John Gilpin_, nor, as we are credibly informed, even Mr. Dowton, but something very laughable, and still more absurd, which had however a certain charm about it, from the very name of the hero of the piece. We have an interest in _John Gilpin_; aye, almost as great an interest as we have in ourselves; for we remember him almost as long. We remember the prints of him and his travels hung round a little parlour where we used to visit when we were children—just about the time of the beginning of the French Revolution. While the old ladies were playing at whist, and the young ones at forfeits, we crept about the sides of the room and tracked _John Gilpin_ from his counter to his horse, from his own door to the turnpike, and far beyond the turnpike gate and the bell at Edmonton, with loss of wig and hat, but with an increasing _impetus_ and reputation, the farther he went from home. ‘The turnpike men their gates wide open threw, He carries weight, he rides a race, ’Tis for a thousand pounds.’ What an impression was here made, never to be effaced! What a thing it is to be an author, and how much better a thing it is to be a reader, with all the pleasure and without any of the trouble—but without any of the fame, you will say. That is not worth two-pence. And yet true fame is something, the fame, for instance, of Cowper or of Thomson—not to live in the mouths of pedants, and coxcombs, and professional men, but in the heart and soul of every living being, to mingle with every thought, to beat in every pulse, to be hailed with transport by those who are young, and to be remembered with regret by those who are old, to be ‘first, last, and midst’ in the minds of others. True fame is like a Lapland sun, that never goes down; it rises with us in the morning, and rolls round and round till our night of life. Why, look here, what a thing it is to be an author! _John Gilpin_ delighted us when we were children, and were we to die to-morrow, the name of _John Gilpin_ would excite a momentary sense of pleasure. The same feeling of delight, with which at ten years old we read the story, makes us thirty years after go, laughing, to see the play. In all that time, the remembrance has been cherished at the heart, like the pulse that sustains our life. ‘That ligament, fine as it was, was never broken!’ and yet it was nearly broken the other night, in the after-piece of this name, and would have been quite so for the evening, if it had not been for Mr. Munden, who, as a subordinate agent, prevented Mr. Dowton from breaking his neck in the principal character. We differed from the audience on this occasion, who did not much relish Mr. Munden in his part of a cockney: we relished him altogether and mightily. His speech, his countenance, and his dress, were in high costume and keeping. There was a greatness of gusto about _Timothy Brittle_, _Mrs. Gilpin’s_ favourite but unfortunate son-in-law. It might be said of Mr. Munden in this character, that not only did his dress appear to have come fresh from the shop-board, his coat, his pantaloons, his waistcoat—but his speech was clipped and snipped as with a pair of sheers, and his face looked just as if the tailor’s goose had gone over it. It was a fine and inimitable piece of acting, but it was damned.—Dowton, in _The Rivals_, played _Mrs. Malaprop_, and Mrs. Sparks played _Sir Anthony Absolute_. We cannot say much of these transformations, for the performers themselves remained just the same, breeches and petticoats out of the question; nothing was transformed or ridiculous but their dress. Dowton was as blunt and bluff, and Mrs. Sparks was as keen, querulous, and scolding, as in any of their usual characters. The effect was flat after the first _entrée_, and the whole play was, in other respects, very poorly got up;—quite in the comic _negligé_ of _Drury-lane_.—We ought to say something of Mrs. Hill, who came out on Tuesday evening as _Lady Macbeth_. She is neither a good nor a bad actress. She has, however, a sentimental drawl in her voice and manner which is very little to our taste, and not at all in character as _Lady Macbeth_. The King never dies. Why should Mrs. Siddons ever die? Why, because Kings are fictions in law: Mrs. Siddons was one of nature’s greatest works. DON GIOVANNI AND KEAN’S EUSTACE DE ST. PIERRE _The Examiner._] [_May 18, 1817._ The last time we saw the Opera of _Don Giovanni_ was from a distant part of the house: we saw it the other evening near; and as the impression was somewhat different, we wish to correct one or two things in our former statement. Madame Fodor sings and acts the part of _Zerlina_ as charmingly as ever, but she does not _look_ it so well near as at a greater distance. She has too much _em bon point_, is too broad-set for the idea of a young and beautiful country girl: her mouth is laughing and good-natured, but does not answer to Spenser’s description of _Belphebe_,—and it cannot be concealed that _Zerlina_, the delightful Zerlina, has a cast in her eyes. Her singing, however, made us forget all these defects, and after the second line of _La ci darem_, we had quite recovered from our disappointment. On the whole, we at present prefer the air of _Vedrai Carino_, which she sings to _Masetto_ to comfort him, even to the duet with _Don Giovanni_. There was some uncertainty about _encoring_ her in this song,—not, we apprehend, because the audience were afraid of tiring the actress, but because they were tired themselves. Madame Fodor was _encored_ in all her songs throughout the piece.—This might be thought hard upon her; we dare say she would have thought it harder if she had not. Signor Ambrogetti’s acting as _Don Giovanni_ improves upon a nearer acquaintance. There is a softness approaching to effeminacy in the expression of his face, which accords well with the character, and an insinuating archness in his eye, which takes off from the violent effect of his action. The serenade of _Don Giovanni_ was omitted. As to Naldi, he is in too confirmed possession of the stage to be corrigible to advice. He is one of those old birds that are not to be caught with chaff. The sly rogue, _Leporello_, seems to have grown grey in the service of iniquity, and hangs his nose over the stage with a formidable _bravura_ aspect, as if he could suspend the orchestra from it. Angrisani is an admirable, and we might say, first-rate comic actor. He has fine features; a manly, rustic voice; and we never saw disdain, impatience, the resentment and relenting of the jealous lover, better expressed than in the scene between him and Madame Fodor, where she makes that affecting appeal to his forgiveness in the song of _Batte, Batte, Masetto_. It was inimitably acted on both sides. DRURY-LANE. Mr. Kean has appeared in _Eustace de St. Pierre_ in the _Surrender of Calais_. He has little to do in it; and he might as well not have appeared in the character, for he does not look well in it. He was badly dressed in a doublet of green baize, and in villainous yellow hose. It was like the player’s description of Hecuba— ‘A clout upon that head Where late the diadem stood: and for a robe A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up.’ But we shall not, ‘though we have seen this, with tongue in venom steep’d, pronounce treason against fortune’s state,’ or against the Managers of Drury-lane. Mr. Kean shewed his usual talents in this part; but it afforded less scope and fewer opportunities for them than any part in which we have ever seen him. We are not sorry, however, that he has got into the part, as a kind of truce with tragedy. Why should he not, like other actors, sometimes have a part to walk through? Must we for ever be expecting from him, as if he were a little _Jupiter tonans_, ‘thunder, nothing but thunder?’ It is too much for any mortal to play _Othello_ and _Sir Giles_ in the same week—we mean, as Mr. Kean plays them. He is, we understand, to appear in a new character, and sing a new song, for his benefit to-morrow week. CHARACTER OF THE COUNTRY PEOPLE _The Examiner._] [_July 18, 1819._ ‘Here be truths.’—_Dogberry._ First, there is an old woman in the neighbouring village, fifty-six years old, with a wooden leg, who never saw a leg of mutton roasted, or a piece of beef put into the pot; and who regards any person who has not lived all his life on rusty bacon as a non-descript or ‘mountain foreigner.’ Yet this venerable matron, who now officiates as cook to a lady ‘retired from public haunts’ into a remote part of the country, kept her father’s house, who was a little farmer, for twenty years; so that she ranks, in the scale of rural existence, above her neighbours. What then must the notions of most of them be of the _savoir vivre_? Is this the sum and substance of all our boasts of the roast-beef of old England?—The truth is, that the people in this part of the country (I do not know how it is in others) have neither food nor cloathing wherewith to be content; nor are they content without them, nor with those that have them. Any one dressed in a plain broad-cloth coat is in their eyes a sophisticated character, as outlandish a figure as my _Lord Foppington_. A smock-frock, and shoes with hob-nails in them, are an indispensable part of country etiquette; and they hoot at or pelt any one, who is presumptuous enough to depart from this appropriate costume. This, if we may believe a philosophical poet of the present day, is the meaning of the phrase in Shakespear, ‘pelting villages,’ he having been once set upon in this manner by ‘a crew of patches, rude mechanicals,’ who disliked him for the fantastic strangeness of his appearance. Even their tailors (of whom you might expect better things) hate decency, and will spoil you a suit of clothes, rather than follow your directions. One of them, the little hunch-backed tailor of P—tt—n, with the handsome daughter, whose husband ran away from her and went to sea, was ordered to make a pair of brown or snuff-coloured breeches for my friend C—— L——;—instead of which the pragmatical old gentleman (having an opinion of his own) brought him home a pair of ‘lively Lincoln-green,’ in which I remember he rode in triumph in Johnny Tremain’s cross-country caravan through Newberry, and entered Oxford, ‘fearing no colours,’ the abstract idea of the jest of the thing prevailing in his mind (as it always does) over the sense of personal dignity. If a stranger comes to live among country people, they have a bad opinion of him at first; and all he can do to overcome their dislike, only confirms them in it. It is in vain to attempt to conciliate them: the more you strive to persuade them that you mean them no harm, the more they are determined not to be convinced. They attribute any civility or kindness you shew them to a design to cajole them. They are not to be taken in by appearances. They are _feræ naturæ_, and not to be tamed by art. In proportion as you give them no cause of offence, they summon their whole stock of prejudice, impudence, and cunning, to aid their tottering opinion; and hate you the more for the injustice they seem to do you. They had rather you did them an injury that they might keep their original opinion of you. If there is the smallest circumstance or insinuation to your prejudice, their rancour against you, and self-complacency in their own sagacity, eagerly seizes hold of it; fans their suspicions into a flame, and breaks out into open insult and all the triumph of brutal derision. On the contrary, if they find you, after all, a quiet, inoffensive person, they think you a fool, and so have you that way. Used to contempt, they have not much respect to spare for other people. Finding themselves none the better for them, they have not much faith in your demonstrations of good-will towards them. Prepared for repulses and hard treatment, the expression of their gratitude is not very spontaneous or sincere.—An aged Sybil of this place, having gone to a lady, who had just settled here, with a doleful tale of distress, and an empty bottle, received a shilling instead of having her bottle replenished with liquor; when being met on her return by one of her gossips coming on the same errand, and being asked her success, she held up her empty bottle in sign of scorn, saying, ‘Look here!’ Such is the _beau ideal_ of unsophisticated human nature in her obscure retreats, about which there have been so many ‘songs of delight and rustical roundelays.’ Is it strange that these people who know nothing, hate all that they do not understand? Their rudeness, intolerance, and conceit, are in exact proportion to their ignorance: for as they never saw or scarcely heard of any thing out of their own village, every thing else appears to them odd and unaccountable, and they cannot suspect that their own notions are wrong, when they are totally unacquainted with any others. We naturally despise whatever baffles our comprehension, and dislike what contradicts our prejudices, till we are taught better by a liberal course of study; but these people are no better taught than fed. It is a rule which they act upon as self-evident, and from which you will not get them to flinch in a hurry—to scout every proceeding which differs from their own, and to consider every person, of whose birth, parentage, and education, they do not know the several particulars, as a suspicious character. They have no knowledge of literature or the fine arts; which, if once banished from the city and the court, would soon ‘be trampled in the mire under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.’ A mischievous wag of the present day undertook to read some pastoral and lyrical effusions, (remarkable for their simplicity) to a collection of Cumberland peasants, to see if they would recognise the sentiments put into their mouths; and they only (which was what he expected) laughed at him for his pains. ‘The spinsters and the knitters in the sun, and the free maids that weave their thread with bones,’ may indeed relieve the welcome pedlar of his wares, his laces, his true love-knots, or penny-Ballads, but they will have nothing to say to the Lyrical ballads, nor will the united counties of Westmorland, Cumberland, and Durham, subscribe to lighten the London warehouses of a single copy of the _Excursion_. The hewers of wood and drawers of water know nothing of poetry, and they hate the very look of a poet. They like a painter as little. An artist who was making a sketch of a fine old yew tree in a romantic situation, was asked by a _knowing hand_, if he could tell how many foot of timber it contained? _Falstaff_ asks as a question not to be answered—‘May I not take mine ease at mine inn?’ But this was in East-Cheap. I cannot do so in the country; for while I am writing this, I hear a fellow disputing in the kitchen, whether a person ought to live (as he expresses it) by pen and ink; and the landlord the other day (in order, I suppose, the better to prepare himself for such controversies) asked me if I had any object in reading through all those books which I had brought with me, meaning a few odd volumes of old plays and novels. The people born here cannot tell how an author gets his living or passes his time; and would fain hunt him out of the place as they do a strange dog, or as they formerly did a conjuror or a witch. Ask the first country clown you meet, if he ever heard of Shakespear or Newton, and he will stare in your face: and I remember our laughing a good deal at W——’s old Molly, who had never heard of the French Revolution, ten years after it happened. Oh worse than Gothic ignorance! They have no books, nor ever feel the want of them. How indeed should they?[33] They have no works of poetry or fiction, to ‘fleet the golden time carelessly;’ but they do not therefore want for fabulous resources. Necessity is the mother of invention; and their talent for lying and scandal is nourished by the very lack of materials.[34] They live not by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of their mouths. They are employed, like the Athenians of old, in hearing or telling some new thing. The draw-well is the source from which they pump up idle rumours, and the blacksmith’s shop is the place at which they forge the proofs, and turn them to shape, ‘giving to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.’ They lie like devils through thick and thin. They tell and believe all incredible things; and the greater the improbability, the more readily and greedily is it swallowed, for it imposes more on the imagination. _To elevate and surprise_ is the great rule for producing a theatrical or pastoral effect. People in a state of nature believe any thing for want of something to divert the mind, as they plot mischief for want of better employment. Credulity and imposture are two of the strongest propensities of the human mind. Men are as prone to deceive themselves as others, without any other temptation than the exercise it affords to the imagination. It is a false test of historical evidence, that it is necessary to assign a motive why men should consent to be dupes or undertake to be cheats. Curiosity is the source of superstition; for we must have objects to occupy the attention, and fill up the craving void of knowledge; and in the absence of truth, falsehood is called in to supply its place, and with the gross and ignorant, supplies it much better. To ask why the untutored savage believes every marvellous story that is told him, in the dearth of all real knowledge, is to ask why he slakes his thirst at the first fountain that he meets, or devours the prey he has just taken. With all their tendency to bigotry and superstition, country people have scarcely any idea of religion. They have as little divine as human learning. The Bible is the only book they have, but that they do not read, except with spectacles, when they grow old and half-blind. They are to a man and woman of _Mrs. Quickly’s_ opinion—‘But I told him a’ should not think of God yet.’ They go to church, to be sure, as a matter of course, and from not knowing what else to do with themselves on Sundays; but they never think of what they hear, from one week’s end to another. Heaven and Hell are out-of-the-way places, not accessible to the apprehensions of those whose ideas cannot get beyond the parish where they were born; and their joys or sorrows indifferent to an imagination, taken up with the wants of the belly. An old woman, who lived in a cottage by herself, on hearing the account of the Crucifixion, said it was a sad thing, but she hoped it was not true, as it happened so far off and such a long time ago. A servant girl, hearing a Sermon read in which there was a striking account of the Resurrection and the Day of Judgment, was very much alarmed, and said she hoped it would not be in her time. The Decalogue has no terrors, and the Book of Revelations no charms for them. They will be damned, but they will steal and lie, and bear false witness against each other; or if they do not, it is the fear of being hanged, or whipped, or summoned before the Justice of the Peace, and not of being called to account in another world, that prevents them. They are of the earth, earthy. They take thought only for the morrow; or rather, conform to the text—‘Sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.’ There is not a greater mistake, or a more wilful fallacy, than the common observation, that the lower orders are kept in order (and can only be so) by their faith in religion. They have no more belief in it practically than most of their betters, who propose to keep them in order by it, have speculatively. The ignorant and destitute are restrained from certain things by the fear of the law, or of what will be said of them by their neighbours; and as to other things which are denounced by Scripture, but to which no penalty attaches here, they think if they have a mind to do them, and chuse to go to hell for it, they have a right to do so. That is their phrase. It is nobody’s business but their own. It is (generally speaking) the absence of temptation or opportunity, and not an excess of religious apprehension, that keeps them within the pale of salvation. Their self-will balances their fear of the Devil, and when it comes to the push, the present motive turns the scale, and the flesh proves too hard for the spirit. Burns’s old man in the _Cottar’s Saturday Night_ must pass for a very poetical character, at least in this part of the country. We see constant accounts in the papers, in the case of malefactors that have come to an untimely end, that it was owing in the first instance to the want of religion, to the habit of swearing and Sabbath-breach. The same account would hold equally true of those who are not hanged: for if all but the godly and sober among the lower classes came to the gallows, the population would soon be thinned to a surprising degree. ‘’Twould thin the land Such numbers to string on Tyburn tree.’ As to the regular church-going peasantry, there can be no great difference as to religious light and feelings between them and their forefathers in the time of Popery, when the service was performed in Latin, as it is at present in most foreign countries. The only religious people (except as a matter of outward shew and ceremony) are sectaries; for the instant religion becomes a subject for serious thought and private reflection, it produces differences of opinion, which branch out into as many speculative fancies and forms of worship, as there are differences of temper or accidents of education.[35] This, however, is the exception, not the rule, in the present state of things—now that zeal is no longer kindled at the fires of persecution, and that Acts of Uniformity no longer throw the whole country into a ferment of opposition. The missionaries and fanatics sometimes indeed set up a methodist chapel, where the staid inhabitants go in an evening to spite the parson of the parish, or to while away an hour or so; or perhaps a melancholy mechanic has a serious call and holds forth, or a pining spinster, moved by the spirit to listen to him— ‘Anon as patient as the female dove, The whilst her golden couplets are disclos’d, Awhile sits drooping:’ but the younger and healthier sort make a sport of it as of any other fantastical innovation; throw owls and skeletons of kites and carrion crows into the place of worship; and make a violent noise all the time the parson is preaching, to drown the nasal twang of evangelical glad-tidings, and the comfortable groans of the faithful.—All this while there is no end of the bastard-getting and swearing: and a girl, after having had three or four children by the same man, or by different men (as it happens), and who is as big as she can tumble again, is at length asked in church, without much scandal or offence to the community. It is a new topic for the village, and is excused on that account. It is, besides, an evidence quashed; and whatever others may take it into their heads to do, she need not talk. Liberality flourishes; a good example is set; and the species is propagated with as little trouble and formality as possible. The parson gets something by the christening, and the apothecary has a finger in the pie. This is a state of things which ought to be reformed—but how or when? MR. MACREADY’S MACBETH. _The Examiner._] [_June 25, 1820._ Mr. Macready’s _Macbeth_, which he had for his benefit, and which he has played once or twice since, is a judicious and spirited performance. But we are not in the number of those who think it his finest character. Sensibility, not imagination, is his _forte_. Natural expression, human feeling, seems to woo him like a bride; but the _ideal_ and preternatural beckon him only at a distance and mock his embraces. He sees no dim, portentous visions in his mind’s eye; his acting has no shadowy landscape back-ground to surround it; he is not waited on by spirits of the deep or of the air; neither fate nor metaphysical aid are in league with him; he is prompter to himself, and treads within the circle of the human heart. The machinery in _Macbeth_ is so far lost upon him: there is no secret correspondence between him and the Weird Sisters. The poet has put a fruitless sceptre in his hand,—a curtain is between him and the ‘air-drawn dagger with its gouts of blood’; he does not cower under the traditions of the age, or startle at ‘thick-coming fancies.’ He is more like a man debating the reality, or questioning the power of the grotesque and unimaginable forms that hover round him, than one hurried away by his credulous hopes, or shrinking from intolerable fears. There is not a weight of superstitious terror loading the atmosphere and hanging over the stage when Mr. Macready plays the part. He has cast the cumbrous slough of Gothic tragedy, and comes out a mere modern, agitated by common means and intelligible motives. The preternatural agency is no more than an accompaniment, the pretended occasion, not the indispensable and all-powerful cause. It appears to us then, that this excellent and able actor, _struck short_ of the higher and imaginative part of the character, and consequently was deficient in the human passion, which is the mighty appendage to it. We thought Mr. Macready in a manner conscious of this want of entire possession of the character. He was looking out for new readings, transposing attitudes and stage effects, trying substitutes and experiments, studying passages instead of reciting them, rehearsing _Macbeth_, not _being_ it. His performance of it was critical and fastidious: you would say that he was considering how he should act the part, so as to avoid certain errors or produce certain effects—not that he ever flung himself into the subject, and swam to shore, safe from carping objection, and above the reach of all praise. Mr. Macready does not often imitate other actors, but he endeavours not to imitate them, and that’s almost as bad. He should think of nothing but his part, and rely on nothing but his own powers. Singularity is not excellence. If to follow in the track of others shews a servile genius and pitiful ambition, neither is it right to go out of the strait road merely because others travel in it—‘but still to follow nature is the rule’—John Kemble was the best _Macbeth_ (upon the whole) that we have seen. There was a stiff, horror-stricken stateliness in his person and manner, like a man bearing up against supernal influences; and a bewildered distraction, a perplexity and at the same time a rigidity of purpose, like one who had been stunned by a blow from fate. Mr. Kean is great only in one scene, that after the murder of _Duncan_; his acting also consists only in the direct embodying of human passion, and is entirely ‘docked and curtailed’ of the sweeping train of poetical imagination. On the evening we saw Mr. Macready’s _Macbeth_ Mrs. Faucit played _Lady Macbeth_, and acted up to that arduous part with great spirit and self-possession; and Mr. Terry was the representative of _Macduff_. The only fault of this gentleman’s acting is its slowness. The words fall from his lips, like pendent drops from icicles. A speech, as he gives it, is equal to ‘twa lang Scotch miles.’ This not only causes a stagnation and heaviness in the sentiments, but often cuts the sense in two. Thus in the exclamation which _Macduff_ utters on hearing of the slaughter of his children, ‘Oh Hell-Kite, all?’ Mr. Terry paused at the hyphen, as if to take time to think, and by this means made it like an apostrophe to ‘Hell,’ adding the other syllable of the word, which determined the meaning and direction of his thoughts, afterwards. Mr. Egerton as usual played _Banquo_, and makes as solid a Ghost as we would wish to encounter of a winter’s eve. David Rizzio we have not been able to get a peep at: but a friend whispered us that it was poor, and we see it is praised in the _New Times_! On Friday Miss Stephens had a bumper for her benefit. The entertainments were the _Lord of the Manor_, a Concert, and the _Libertine_. In the first, Mr. Duruset from indisposition, and after making one feeble effort, omitted the songs, by the indulgence of the audience; after that, we do not see why he should be required to go through the rest of the part, for he has not ‘a speaking face.’ Jones’s _Mr. Contrast_ is a striking, fulsome fop. But he makes foppery not only an object of laughter, but of disgust; and perhaps this is going beyond the mark intended. We would recommend to our readers to go and see Mr. Liston’s _Moll Flagon_ by all means. It is irresistible. We may say of it with the poet— ‘Let those laugh now who never laugh’d before, And those who still have laugh’d now laugh the more.’ Mrs. Salmon’s singing in the Concert was ‘d’une pathétique à faire fendre les rochers,’—and Miss Stephens’s Echo song seemed sung by a Spirit or an enchantress. We were glad to hear it, for we have an attachment to Miss Stephens on account of ‘auld lang syne’ (we like old friendships better than new), and do not wish that little murmuring syren Miss Tree to wean us from our old and artless favourite.—Those were happy days when first Miss Stephens began to sing! When she came out in _Mandane_, in _Polly_, and in _Rosetta_ in _Love in a Village_! She came upon us by surprise, but it was to delight and charm us. There was a new sound in the air, like the voice of Spring; it was as if Music had become young again, and was resolved to try the power of her softest, simplest, sweetest notes. Love and Hope listened, as her clear, liquid throat poured its delicious warblings on the ear, and at the close of every strain, still called on Echo to prolong the sound. They were the sweetest notes we ever heard, and almost the last we ever heard with pleasure! For since then, other events not to be named lightly here, but ‘thoughts of which can never from the heart’—‘with other notes than to the Orphean lyre,’ have stopped our ears to the voice of the charmer. But since the voice of Liberty has risen once more in Spain, its grave and its birth place, and like a babbling hound has wakened the echos in Galicia, in the Asturias, in Castile and Leon, and Estremadura, why, we feel as if we ‘had three ears again’ and the heart to use them, and as if we could once more write with the same feelings (the tightness removed from the breast, and the pains smoothed from the brow) as we did when we gave the account of Miss Stephens’s first appearance in the _Beggar’s Opera_. Life might then indeed ‘know the return of spring,’—and end, as it began, with faith in human kind!— GUY FAUX _The Examiner._] [_November 11, 1821._ Guy Faux is made into the figure of a scare-crow, a fifth of November bugbear, in our history. Now that Mr. Hogg’s _Jacobite Relics_ have dissipated the remains of an undue horror at Popery, it may seem the time to undertake the defence of so illustrious a character, who has hitherto been the victim of party-prejudice and national spite. Guy Faux was a Popish Priest in the reign of James I., and for his unsuccessful attempt to set fire to the House of Lords, and blow up the English Monarchy, the Protestant Religion, and himself, at one stroke, has had the honour to be annually paraded through the streets, and burnt in effigy in every town and village in England from that time to this—that is, for the space of two hundred years and upwards. It is sometimes doubtful, indeed, from the coincidence of dates and other circumstances, whether this annual ceremony, accompanied as it is with the ringing of bells, the firing of guns, and the preaching of sermons, is intended more to revive the formidable memory of ‘poor Guy,’ or in celebration of the glorious landing of William III., who came to deliver us from Popery and Slavery a hundred years afterwards—two things which Mr. Hogg treats as mere _bagatelles_ in his _Jacobite Relics_, though they do not appear so in the History of England; and to which the same writer assures us, as an agreeable piece of court-news that the present Family are by no means averse in their hearts! Guy Faux was a fanatic, but he was no hypocrite. He ranks among _good haters_. He was cruel, bloody-minded, reckless of all considerations but those of an infuriated and bigotted faith; but he was a true son of the Catholic Church, a martyr and a confessor, for all that. He who can prevail upon himself to devote his life for a cause, however we may condemn his opinions or abhor his actions, vouches at least for the honesty of his principles and the disinterestedness of his motives. He may be guilty of the worst practices, but he is capable of the greatest. He is no longer a slave, but free. The contempt of death is the beginning of virtue. The hero of the Gun-Powder Plot was, if you will, a fool, a madman, an assassin; call him what names you please: still he was neither knave nor coward. He did not propose to blow up the Parliament and come off, scot-free, himself: he shewed that he valued his own life no more than theirs in such a cause—where the integrity of the Catholic faith and the salvation of perhaps millions of souls was at stake. He did not call it a murder, but a sacrifice which he was about to achieve: he was armed with the Holy Spirit and with fire: he was the Church’s chosen servant and her blessed martyr. He comforted himself as ‘the best of cut-throats.’ How many wretches are there that would have undertaken to do what he intended for a sum of money, if they could have got off with impunity! How few are there who would have put themselves in Guy Faux’s situation to save the universe! Yet in the latter case we affect to be thrown into greater consternation than at the most unredeemed acts of villany, as if the absolute disinterestedness of the motive doubled the horror of the deed! The cowardice and selfishness of mankind are in fact shocked at the consequences to themselves (if such examples are held up for imitation,) and they make a fearful outcry against the violation of every principle of morality, lest they too should be called on for any such tremendous sacrifices—lest they in their turn should have to go on the forlorn hope of extra-official duty. _Charity begins at home_, is a maxim that prevails as well in the courts of conscience as in those of prudence. We would be thought to shudder at the consequences of crime to others, while we tremble for them to ourselves. We talk of the dark and cowardly assassin; and this is well, when an individual shrinks from the face of an enemy, and purchases his own safety by striking a blow in the dark: but how the charge of cowardly can be applied to the public assassin, who, in the very act of destroying another, lays down his life as a pledge and forfeit of his sincerity and boldness, I am at a loss to devise. There may be barbarous prejudice, rooted hatred, unprincipled treachery, in such an act; but he who resolves to take all the danger and odium upon himself, can no more be branded with cowardice, than Regulus devoting himself for his country, or Codrus leaping into the fiery gulf. A wily Father Inquisitor, coolly and with plenary authority condemning hundreds of helpless and unoffending victims to the flames or to the horrors of a living tomb, while he himself would not suffer a hair of his head to be hurt, is to me a character without any qualifying trait in it. Again; the Spanish conqueror and hero, the favourite of his monarch, who enticed thirty thousand poor Mexicans into a large open building, under promise of strict faith and cordial good-will, and then set fire to it, making sport of the cries and agonies of these deluded creatures, is an instance of uniting the most hardened cruelty with the most heartless selfishness. His plea was keeping no faith with heretics: this was Guy Faux’s too; but I am sure at least that the latter kept faith with himself: he was in earnest in his professions. _His_ was not gay, wanton, unfeeling depravity; he did not murder in sport; it was serious work that he had taken in hand. To see this arch-bigot, this heart-whole traitor, this pale miner in the infernal regions, skulking in his retreat with his cloak and dark lanthorn, moving cautiously about among his barrels of gunpowder, loaded with death, but not yet ripe for destruction, regardless of the lives of others, and more than indifferent to his own, presents a picture of the strange infatuation of the human understanding, but not of the depravity of the human will, without an equal. There were thousands of pious Papists privy to and ready to applaud the deed when done:—there was no one but our old fifth-of-November friend, who still flutters in rags and straw on the occasion, that had the courage to attempt it. In him stern duty and unshaken faith prevailed over natural frailty. A man to undertake and contemplate with gloomy delight this desperate task, could not certainly in the first instance, be a man of tender sensibility, or over-liable to ‘the compunctious visitings of nature’; but he would so far only be on a level with many others, and he would be distinguished from them by a high principle of enthusiasm, and a disinterested zeal for truth. Greater love than this has no one, that he shall give up his life for the truth. We have no Guy Fauxes now:—not that we have not numbers in whom ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ We talk indeed of flinging the keys of the House of Commons into the Thames, by way of a little unmeaning splutter, and a little courting of popularity and persecution; but to fling ourselves into the gap, and blow up the system and our own bodies to atoms at once, upon an abstract principle of right, does not suit the _radical_ scepticism of the age! I like the spirit of martyrdom, I confess: I envy an age that had virtue enough in it to produce the mischievous fanaticism of a Guy Faux. A man’s marching up to a masked-battery for the sake of company, is nothing: but a man’s going resolutely to the stake rather than surrender his opinion, is a serious matter. It shews that in the public mind and feeling there is something better than life; that there is a belief of something in the universe and the order of nature, to which it is worth while to sacrifice this poor brief span of existence. To have an object always in view dearer to one than one’s-self, to cling to a principle in contempt of danger, of interest, of the opinion of the world,—this is the true _ideal_, the high and heroic state of man. It is in fact to have a standard of absolute and implicit faith in the mind, that admits neither of compromise, degree, nor exception. The path of duty is one, the grounds of encouragement are fixed and invariable. Perhaps it is hardly possible to have such a standard, but where the certain prospect of another world absolves us from a miserly compact with this, and the contemplation of infinity forms an habitual counterpoise to the illusions of time and sense. An object of the highest conceivable greatness leads to unmingled devotion: the belief in eternal truth embodies itself on practical principles of strict rectitude, or of obstinate, but noble-minded error. There was an instance that happened a little before the time of Guy Faux, which, in a different way, has something of the same character, with a more pleasing conclusion. I mean the story of Margaret Lambrun; and as it is but little known, I shall here relate it as I find it:— ‘Margaret Lambrun was a Scotchwoman, and one of the retinue of Mary Queen of Scots; as was also her husband, who dying of grief for the tragical end of that princess, his wife took up a resolution of revenging the death of both upon Queen Elizabeth. For that purpose she put on a man’s habit; and assuming the name of Anthony Sparke, repaired to the Court of the Queen of England, always carrying with her a brace of pistols, one to kill Elizabeth, and the other to shoot herself, in order to avoid the hands of justice; but her design happened to miscarry by an accident, which saved the Queen’s life. One day, as she was pushing through the crowd to come up to her Majesty, who was then walking in her garden, she chanced to drop one of the pistols. This being seen by the guards, she was seized in order to be sent immediately to prison; but the Queen, not suspecting her to be one of her own sex, had a mind first to examine her. Accordingly, demanding her name, country, and quality, Margaret replied with an unmoved steadiness,—“Madam, though I appear in this habit, I am a woman; my name is Margaret Lambrun; I was several years in the service of Queen Mary, my mistress, whom you have so unjustly put to death; and by her death you have also caused that of my husband, who died of grief to see so innocent a queen perish so iniquitously. Now, as I had the greatest love and affection for both these persons, I resolved at the peril of my life to revenge their death by killing you, who are the cause of both.”—The Queen pardoned her, and granted her a safe conduct till she should be set upon the coast of France.’ Fanaticism expires with philosophy, and heroism with refinement. There can be no mixture of scepticism in the one, nor any distraction of interest in the other. That blind attachment to individuals or to principles, which is necessary to make us stake our all upon a single die, wears out with the progress of society. Sandt—(the last of that school)—was a religious fanatic—a reader of the book of Maccabees, a repeater of the story of Jael and Sisera, a chaunter of the song of Deborah. What lighted up the dungeon-gloom in which Guy Faux buried himself alive? The face of Heaven open to receive him. What cheered his undivided solitude? The full assembly of Just Men made perfect, the Glorious Company of Apostles, the Noble Army of Martyrs, the expecting Conclave of Sainted Popes, of Canonized Priests and Cardinals. What nerved his steady hand, and prepared it, with temperate, even pulse, to apply the fatal spark? The Hand of the Most High stretched out to meet him and to welcome him into the abodes of the blest—‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!’ In his face we see an anticipated triumph that ‘no dim doubts alloy’; he hears with no mortal ears the recording angels ‘quiring to the young-eyed cherubim’; a light flashes round him, a beatific vision, from the wings of the Shining Ones: he sits, wreathed and radiant, in the real presence! What need he fear what men can do unto him? To a hope like his, swallowed up in fruition, the shock that is soon to shatter his mortal frame plays harmless as the summer-lightning: the flames that threaten to envelope him are the wedding-garment of the Spouse. ‘This night thou shalt sup with me in Paradise’—rings in his sleepless ears. On this rock he builds his faith, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it!—Guy Faux (poor wretch!) was as sure within himself of the reward of his crime in the eternal salvation of his soul, as of his intention to commit it: he no more doubted of another world than he doubted of his own existence. A question whether his whole creed might not be a delusion had never once crossed his mind. How should it? He had never once heard it called in question. He believed in it as he believed in all he had ever seen or heard, or thought or felt, or been told by others—he believed in a future state as he believed in this, with his senses and his understanding, and with all his heart. Poor Guy—that miserable fifth-of-November scare-crow, that stuffed straw figure, flaunting its own periodical disgrace—never once dreamt (oh! glorious inheritance!) that he should die like a dog. Otherwise, James and his parliament would have been in no jeopardy from him. He was not a person of that refinement. He thought for certain that he would go to Heaven or Hell; and he played a bold, but (as he fancied) a sure game, for the former. With such objects at stake, and with his own blinded reason, and a stifled conscience, and implicit faith, and vowed obedience, and holy Mother Church on his side, and a fixed hatred of heresy and of all that belonged to it, as of a strange birth in nature, that made his flesh creep and his brain reel, and a disregard of his own person, as ‘dross compared to the glory hereafter to be revealed,’ he acted up to his belief: the man was what he preached to others to be—no better, no worse. Without this belief supporting him, what would he have been? Like the wretched straw figure, the automaton we see representing him, ‘disembowelled of his natural entrails, without a real heart of flesh and blood beating in his bosom,’ a modern time-server, an unimpassioned slave, a canting Jesuit, a petty, cautious, meddling priest, a safe, underhand persecutor, an anonymous slanderer, a cringing sycophant, promoting his own interest by taking the bread out of honest mouths, a mercenary malignant coward, a Clerical Magistrate, a Quarterly Reviewer, a Member of the Constitutional Association, the concealed Editor of _Blackwood’s Magazine_! THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED _The Examiner._] [_November 18, 1821._ The diffusion of knowledge, of inquiry, of doubt (or what Lord Bacon calls ‘the infinite agitation of wit’) puts an end to ‘the soul of goodness’ that there is in bigotry and superstition, and should to its evil spirit at the same time. There is nothing so intolerable as the union (which we see so common in modern times) of religious hypocrisy with literary scepticism. The real bigot is a respectable as well as enviable character. Not so the affected one. Downright, rooted, rancorous prejudices are honest, hearty, wholesome things. They keep the mind _in breath_. Not so the whining, hollow, designing cant, which echoes without feeling them. The barbarous cruelties of savage tribes are partly atoned for by the keen appetite for revenge in which they originate: but we do not extend the same excuse to those who poison for hire. The fires of Smithfield were kindled by a zeal that burnt as bright and fierce as they. Our contemporaries who are in the habit of throwing firebrands and death, do it without malice; and laugh at those who do not understand the jest. The multiplication of sects dissipates and tames down the rage of martyrdom. The first grand defection indeed from an established and universal faith, creates a shock and is assailed with a violence proportioned to the firmness with which the parent-belief has been rooted in the public mind: but the subsequent ramification of different schisms and modes of faith from the first enormous heresy, tires out and neutralises the spirit of both persecution and fanaticism. Religious controversy is a war of words, and no longer a war of extermination. There may be the same heart-burnings, the same jealousies of difference of opinion; but they do not lead to the same fatal catastrophes or the same heroic sacrifices. We cannot burn or hang one another for differing from the Catholic faith as a crime of the most dreadful import, when hardly any two men can be found to agree in the interpretation of the same text. All opinions, by constant collision and attrition, become, if not equally probable, equally familiar. Men’s minds are slowly weaned from blind idolatrous bigotry and intolerant zeal, by the continually increasing number of points of controversy and the frequency of dispute. Then comes the general question as to the grounds and reasonableness of the doctrines of religion itself; and a sceptical, dispassionate, Epicurean work, like _Bayle’s Dictionary_ or _Hume’s Essays_, gives the finishing blow to what little remains of dogmatical faith in established systems. After that, a zealot is another name for an imposter. The reasons for belief may be as good or stronger than ever; but the belief itself, as it is more rational, is less gross and headstrong. The closest deductions of the understanding do not act like an instinct, or warrant a mortal antipathy; and let the philosophical believer’s convictions be what they will, he cannot affect an ignorance that it is possible for others to differ with him. A violent and overstrained affectation of Orthodoxy is, after a certain time, a sure sign of insincerity: the only zeal that can claim to be ‘according to knowledge,’ is refined, calm, and considerate. I do not speak of this sort of mitigated, sceptical, liberalised, enlightened belief, as ‘a consummation devoutly to be wished:’ (in my own particular, I would rather have held opinion with Guy Faux, and have gone or sent others to the Devil for that opinion)—I speak of the common course of human affairs. I remember once observing to Wilkie, the celebrated artist, that Dr. Chalmers (his old friend and schoolfellow) had started an objection to the Christian religion, in order to have the credit of answering it. The Scottish Teniers said, that if the answer was a good one, he thought him right in bringing forward the objection. I did not think this remark savoured of the acuteness one would expect from such a man as Wilkie, and only said, I apprehended those opinions were the strongest which had been never called in question. _Reasoning is not believing_—whatever _seeing_ may be, according to the proverb. A devoted and incorrigible attachment to individuals, as well as to doctrines, is weakened by the progress of knowledge and civilization. A spirit of scepticism, of inquiry, of comparison, is introduced there too, by the course of reading, observation, and reflection, which strikes at the root of our disproportionate idolatry. Margaret Lambrun did not think there was such another woman in the world as her mistress, Queen Mary; nor could she, after her death, see any thing in it worth living for. Had she had access to a modern circulating library, she would have read of a hundred such heroines, all peerless alike; and would have consoled herself for the death of them all, one after another, pretty much in the same manner. Margaret was not one of those who argue, according to Mr. Burke’s improved political catechism, that ‘a king is but a king; a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal; and that not an animal of the highest order.’ She had more respect of persons than this. The truth is, she had never seen such another woman as her mistress, and she had no means, by books or otherwise, of forming an idea of any thing but what she saw. In that isolated state of society, people grew together like trees, and clung round the strongest for support, ‘as the vine curls its tendrils.’ They became devoted to others with the same violence of attachment as they were to themselves. Novels, plays, magazines, treatises of philosophy, Monthly Museums, and _Belles Assemblées_, did not fly in numbers about the country and ‘through the airy region stream so bright,’ as to blot out the impression of all real forms. The effects of habit, of sense, of service, of affection, did not find an ideal level in general literature and artificial models. The heart made its election once, and was fixed till death: the eyes doated on fancied perfection, and were divorced from every other object afterwards. There was not the same communication of ideas; there was not the same change of place or acquaintance. The prejudices of rank, of custom, strengthened the bias of individual admiration; and it is no wonder, where all these circumstances were combined, that the presence of a person, whom we had loved and served, became a feeling, an appetite, and a passion in the mind, almost necessary to existence. The taking our idol away (and by cruel and treacherous means) would be taking away the prop that sustained life, and on which all the pride of the affections leant. Its loss would be the loss of another self; and a double loss of this kind (as in the instance alluded to) could seek for no solace but in the death of her who had caused it. Where the mind had become rivetted to a certain object, where it had embarked its all in the sacred cause of friendship and inviolable fidelity, it would be in vain to offer the consolations of philosophy when the heart owned none. Other scenes, new friends, fresh engagements, might be proper for others; but Margaret Lambrun’s wounded spirit could find no relief but in looking forward to a full revenge for a murdered mistress and husband. You might as well think of wedding the soul to another body, as of inspiring her with other hopes and thoughts than those which she had lost for ever:—she could not live without those whom she had loved so well and long, and she was ready to die for them. Life becomes indifferent to a mind haunted by a passion of this sort. Death is not then a choice, but rather a necessity. We cannot live, and have the desire nearest to our souls. To play the hero, it is only necessary to be wound up to such an unavoidable interest in any thing, as reflection, prudence, natural instinct, have no power over. To be a hero, is, in other words, to lose the sense of our personal identity in some object dearer to us than ourselves. He may purchase any thing he pleases, who is ready to part with his life for it. Wherever there is a passion or belief strong enough to blind us to consequences, there the mind is capable of any sacrifice and of any undertaking. The heroical is the fanaticism of common life: it is the contempt of danger, of pain, of death, in the pursuit of a favourite idea. The rule of honour, as of conscience, is to contemplate things in the abstract, and never as affecting or reacting upon yourself; the hero is an instrument in the hands of fate, as is himself impassive to its blows. A man in a passion, or who is worked up to a certain pitch of enthusiasm, minds nothing else. The fear of death, the love of self, is but an idea or motive with a certain habitual strength. Raise any other idea or feeling to a greater habitual or momentary height, and it will supplant or overrule the first. Courage is sometimes the effect of despair. Women, in a fit of romance, or on some sudden emergency, have been known to perform feats of heroic daring, from which men of the stoutest nerves might shrink with dismay. Maternal tenderness is heroic. Affection of any kind, that doats upon a particular object, and absorbs every other consideration in that, is in its nature heroic.[36] Passion is the great ingredient in heroism. He who stops to reflect, to balance one thing against another, is a coward. The better part of valour is indiscretion. All passion is a short-lived madness, or state of intoxication, in which some present impulse or prevailing idea gets uncontrouled possession of the mind, and lords it there at will. A man may be (almost literally) drunk with choler, with love, with jealousy, with revenge, as he may with wine or strong drink. Any of these will overpower his reason and senses, and put him beyond himself. The master-feeling will prevail, whatever it is, and when it once gets the upper hand, will rage the more violently in proportion to the obstacles it has to encounter. Women who associate with robbers are cruel, as soon as they get over their first repugnance: some of the bravest officers have been the greatest Martinets. A man who is afraid of a blow, or tender of his person, will yet, on being struck, feel nothing but the mortification of the affront, and the fear of discomfiture. The pain that is inflicted, after his blood is once up, will only aggravate his resentment, and be diverted from the channels of fear into those of rage and shame. He whose will is roused and holds out in this way, whose tenaciousness of purpose and inflammability of spirit are proof against the extremity of pain, of fatigue, and disaster, is said to have _pluck_. So a man may not be able to reason himself into coolness at the commencement of a battle; but a ball whizzing near him does it, by abstracting his imagination from a thousand idle fears, and fixing it on his immediate situation and duty. The novice in an engagement, that before was motionless with apprehension or trembling like a leaf, after being hit, loses the sense of possible contingencies in the grief of his wound, and fights like a devil incarnate. He is thenceforward too busy to think of himself. He rushes fearlessly on danger and on death. A man in a battle is indeed emphatically _beside himself_. He ‘bears a charmed life,’ that in fancy disarms cannon-balls and bullets of their power to hurt. They are mere names and apparitions from which astonishment and necessity have taken out the sting: the sense of feeling is seared and dead for the time to ‘all mortal consequences.’ The mind is sublimated to a disregard of whatever can happen, and tempted to rush without provocation on its fate, purely out of bravado, and as the triumph of its paramount feeling, an exasperation of its temporary insanity. Courage is in many such cases only a violent effort to shake off fear, a determination of the imagination to seize on any object that may divert its present dread. A soldier is a perfect hero but that he is a mere machine. He is drilled into disinterestedness, and beaten into courage. He is a very patriotic and romantic automaton. He has lost all regard for himself and concern for others. His life, his limbs, his soul and body, are obedient only to the word of command. ‘Set duty in one eye and death in the other, and he can look on death indifferently.’ ‘Set but a Scotsman on a hill, Say such is royal George’s will, And there’s the foe: His only thought is how to kill Twa’ at a blow.’—_Burns._ They then go at it with bayonets fixed, eyes inflamed, and tongues lolling out with heat and rage, like wild beasts or mad dogs panting for blood, and from the madman to Mr. Wordsworth’s ‘happy warrior’ there is but one step.—The true hero devotes himself in the same way, but he does it of his own accord, and from an inward sentiment. The service on which he is bound is perfect freedom. He is not a machine, but a free agent. He knows his cue without a prompter. Not servile duty— ‘Within his bosom reigns another lord, Honour, sole judge and umpire of itself.’ THE SAME SUBJECT CONCLUDED _The Examiner_] [_November 25, 1821._ Thus a knight-errant going on adventures, and following out the fine idea of love and gallantry in his own mind, without once thinking of himself but as a vessel dedicated to virtue and honour, is one of the most enviable fictions in the whole world. Don Quixote, in the midst of its comic irony, is the finest serious developement to be found of this character. The account of the Cid, the famous Spanish hero, of which Mr. Southey has given an admirable prose-translation where scarcely a word could be changed or transposed without injuring the force and clear simplicity of the antique style he has adopted, abounds with instances to the same purpose. His taking back the lion to its den, his bringing his father ‘the herb that would cure him,’ his enemy’s head, and his manner of reclaiming a recreant knight from his cowardice by heaping the rewards and distinctions of courage upon him, are some of those that I remember as the most striking. Perhaps the reader may not have the book by him; yet they are worth turning to, both for the sentiment and the expression. The first then in order is the following:— ‘At this time it came to pass that there was strife between Count Don Gomez the Lord of Gormaz, and Diego Laynez the father of Rodrigo (the Cid); and the Count insulted Diego and gave him a blow. Now Diego was a man in years, and his strength had passed from him, so that he could not take vengeance, and he retired to his home to dwell there in solitude and lament over his dishonour. And he took no pleasure in his food, neither could he sleep by night, nor would he lift up his eyes from the ground, nor stir out of his house, nor commune with his friends, but turned from them in silence as if the breath of his shame would taint them. Rodrigo was yet but a youth, and the Count was a mighty man in arms, one who gave his voice first in the Cortez, and was held to be the best in the war, and so powerful, that he had a thousand friends among the mountains. Howbeit, all these things appeared as nothing to Rodrigo, when he thought of the wrong done to his father, the first which had ever been offered to the blood of Layn Calvo. He asked nothing but justice of Heaven, and of man he asked only a fair field; and his father seeing of how good heart he was, gave him his sword and his blessing. The sword had been the Sword of Mudarra in former times, and when Rodrigo held its cross in its hand, he thought within himself that his arm was not weaker than Mudarra’s. And he went out and defied the Count and slew him, and smote off his head, and carried it home to his father. The old man was sitting at table, the food lying before him untasted, when Rodrigo returned, and pointing to the head which hung from the horse’s collar, dropping blood, he bade him look up, for there was the herb which would restore to him his appetite; the tongue, quoth he, which insulted[37] you, is no longer a tongue, and the hand which wronged you is no longer a hand. And the old man arose and embraced his son and placed him above him at the table; saying that he who brought home that head should be the head of the house of Layn Calvo.’—_Chronicle of the Cid_, _p. 4_. The next is of Martin Pelaez, whom the Cid made of a notable coward a redoubtable hero:— ‘Here the history relates, that at this time Martin Pelaez the Asturian came with a convoy of laden beasts, carrying provision to the hosts of the Cid; and as he passed near the town, the Moors sallied out in great numbers against him; but he, though he had few with him, defended the convoy right well, and did great hurt to the Moors, slaying many of them, and drove them into the town. This Martin Pelaez, who is here spoken of, did the Cid make a right good knight of a coward, as ye shall hear. When the Cid first began to lay siege to the City of Valencia, this Martin Pelaez came unto him: he was a knight, a native of Santillance in Asturias, a hidalgo, great of body and strong of limb, a well-made man and of goodly semblance, but withal a right coward at heart, which he had shown in many places where he was among feats of arms. And the Cid was sorry when he came unto him, though he would not let him perceive this; for he knew he was not fit to be of his company. Howbeit, he thought that since he was come, he would make him brave whether he would or not. And when the Cid began to war upon the town, and sent parties against it twice and thrice a day, as ye have heard, for the Cid was always upon the alert, there was fighting and tourneying every day. One day it fell out that the Cid and his kinsmen and friends and vassals were engaged in a great encounter, and this Martin Pelaez was well armed; and when he saw that the Moors and Christians were at it, he fled and betook himself to his lodging, and there hid himself till the Cid returned to dinner. And the Cid saw what Martin Pelaez did, and when he had conquered the Moors, he returned to his lodging to dinner. Now it was the custom of the Cid to eat at a high table, seated on his bench at the head. And Don Alvar Fannez and Pero Bermudez and other precious knights ate in another part, at high tables full honourably, and none other knights whatsoever dared to take their seats with them, unless they were such as deserved to be there; and the others who were not so approved in arms ate upon _estradas_, at tables with cushions. This was the order in the house of the Cid, and every one knew the place where he was to sit at meat, and every one strove all he could to gain the honour of sitting to eat at the table of Don Alvar Fannez and his companions, by strenuously behaving himself in all feats of arms; and thus the honour of the Cid was advanced. This Martin Pelaez, thinking that none had seen his badness, washed his hands in turn with the other knights, and would have taken his place among them. And the Cid went unto him and took him by the hand and said, You are not such a one as deserves to sit with these, for they are worth more than you or than me, but I will have you with me; and he seated him with himself at table. And he, for lack of understanding, thought that the Cid did this to honour him above all the others. On the morrow the Cid and his company rode towards Valencia, and the Moors came out to the tourney; and Martin Pelaez went out well armed, and was among the foremost who charged the Moors, and when he was in among them he turned the reins, and went back to his lodging; and the Cid took heed to all that he did, and saw that though he had done badly, he had done better than the first day. And when the Cid had driven the Moors into the town, he returned to his lodging, and as he sate down to meat, he took this Martin Pelaez by the hand, and seated him with himself, and bade him eat with him in the same dish, for he had deserved more that day than he had the first. And the knight gave heed to that saying, and was abashed; howbeit, he did as the Cid commanded him: and after he had dined, he went to his lodging and began to think upon what the Cid had said unto him, and perceived that he had seen all the baseness which he had done; and then he understood that for this cause he would not let him sit at board with the other knights who were precious in arms, but had seated him with himself, more to affront him than to do him honour, for there were other knights there better than he, and he did not show them that honour. Then resolved he in his heart to do better than he had done hitherto. Another day the Cid and his company and Martin Pelaez rode towards Valencia, and the Moors came out to the tourney full resolutely, and Martin Pelaez was among the first, and charged them right boldly; and he smote down and slew presently a good knight, and he lost there all the bad fear which he had had, and was that day one of the best knights there: and as long as the tourney lasted, there he remained fighting and slaying and overthrowing the Moors, till they were driven within the gates, in such manner that the Moors marvelled at him, and asked where that Devil came from, for they had never seen him before. And the Cid was in a place where he could see all that was going on, and he gave good heed to him, and had great pleasure in beholding him, to see how well he had forgotten the great fear which he was wont to have. And when the Moors were shut up within the town, the Cid and all his people returned to their lodging, and Martin Pelaez full leisurely and quietly went to his lodging also, like a good knight. And when it was the hour of eating, the Cid waited for Martin Pelaez, and when he came and they had washed, the Cid took him by the hand, and said, My friend, you are not such a one as deserves to sit with me henceforth, but sit you here with Don Alvar Fannez, and with these other good knights, for the good feats which you have done this day have made you a companion for them; and from the day forward he was placed in the company of the good.’—p. 199. * * * * * ‘There was a lion in the house of the Cid, who had grown a large one, and strong, and was full nimble; three men had the keeping of this lion, and they kept him in a den which was in a courtyard, high up in the palace; and when they cleansed the court, they were wont to shut him up in his den, and afterwards to open the door that he might come out and eat: the Cid kept him for his pastime, that he might take pleasure with him when he was minded so to do. Now it was the custom of the Cid to dine every day with his company, and after he had dined, he was wont to sleep awhile upon his seat. And one day when he had dined, there came a man and told him that a great fleet was arrived in the port of Valencia, wherein there was a great power of the Moors, whom King Bucar had brought over, the sons of the Miramamolin of Morocco. And when the Cid heard this, his heart rejoiced and he was glad, for it was nigh three years since he had had a battle with the Moors. Incontinently he ordered a signal to be made, that all the honourable men who were in the city should assemble together. And when they were all assembled in the Alcazar, and his sons-in-law with them, the Cid told them the news, and took counsel with them in what manner they should go out against this great power of the Moors. And when they had taken counsel, the Cid went to sleep upon his seat, and the Infantes and the others sate playing at tables and chess. Now at this time the men who were keepers of the lion were cleaning out the court, and when they heard the cry that the Moors were coming, they opened the den, and came down into the palace where the Cid was, and left the door of the court open. And when the lion had ate his meat, and saw that the door was open, he went out of the court and came down into the palace even into the hall where they all were: and when they who were there saw him, there was a great stir among them: but the Infantes of Carrion showed greater cowardice than all the rest. Ferrando Gonzalez having no shame, neither for the Cid nor for the others who were present, crept under the seat whereon the Cid was sleeping, and in his haste he burst his mantle and his doublet also at the shoulders. And Diego Gonzalez, the other, ran to a postern door, crying, I shall never see Carrion again! This door opened upon a courtyard, where there was a wine-press, and he jumped out, and by reason of the great height could not keep his feet, but fell among the lees and defiled himself therewith. And all the others who were in the hall wrapt their cloaks around their arms, and stood round about the seat whereon the Cid was sleeping, that they might defend him. The noise which they made awakened the Cid, and he saw the lion coming towards him, and he lifted up his hand and said, What is this!... and the lion hearing his voice stood still: and he rose up and took him by the mane, as if he had been a gentle mastiff, and led him back to the court where he was before, and ordered his keepers to look better to him for the time to come. And when he had done this, he returned to the hall and took his seat again; and all they who beheld it were greatly astonished.’—p. 251. The presence of mind, the manly confidence, the faith in virtue, the lofty bearing and picturesque circumstances in all these stories, are as fine as any thing can well be imagined.—The last of them puts me in mind, that that heroic little gentleman, Mr. Kean, who is a Cid too in his way, keeps a lion ‘for his pastime, that he may take pleasure with him when he is minded so to do.’ It is, to be sure, an American lion, a puma, a sort of a great dog. But still it shews the nature of the man, and the spirited turn of his genius. Courage is the great secret of his success. His acting is, if not classical, heroical. To dare and to do are with him the same thing. ‘Masterless passion sways him to the mood of what it likes or loaths.’ He may be sometimes wrong, but he is decidedly wrong, and does not betray himself by paltry doubts and fears. He takes the lion by the mane. He gains all by hazarding all. He throws himself into the breach, and fights his way through as well as he can. He leaves all to his feelings, and goes where they lead him; and he finds his account in this method, and brings rich ventures home. In reading the foregoing accounts of the Spanish author, it seems that in those times killing was no murder. Slaughter was the order of the day. The blood of Moors and Christians flows through the page as so much water. The proverb uppermost in their minds was, that a man could die but once, and the inference seemed to be, the sooner the better. In these more secure and civilized times (individually and as far as it depends upon ourselves) we are more chary of our lives. We are (ordinarily) placed out of the reach of ‘the shot of accident and dart of chance’; and grow indolent, tender, and effeminate in our notions and habits. Books do not make men valiant,—not even the reading the chronicle of the Cid. The police look after all breaches of the peace and resorts of suspicious characters, so that we need not buckle on our armour to go to the succour of distressed damsels, or to give battle to giants and enchanters. Instead of killing some fourteen before breakfast, like _Hotspur_, we are contented to read of these things in the newspapers, or to see them performed on the stage. We enjoy all the dramatic interest of such scenes, without the tragic results. Regnault de St. Jean Angely rode like a madman through the streets of Paris, when from the barricades he saw the Prussians advancing. We love, fight, and are slain by proxy—live over the adventures of a hundred heroes and die their deaths—and the next day are as well as ever, and ready to begin again. This is a gaining concern, and an improvement on the old-fashioned way of risking life and limb in good earnest, as a cure for _ennui_. It is a bad speculation to come to an untimely end by way of killing time. Now, like the heroic personages in _Tom Thumb_, we spread a white pocket-handkerchief to prepare our final catastrophe, and act the _sentiment_ of death with all the impunity to be desired. Men, the more they cultivate their intellect, become more careful of their persons. They would like to think, to read, to dream on for ever, without being liable to any worldly annoyance. ‘Be mine to read eternal new romances, of Marivaux and Crebillon,’ cries the insatiable adept in this school. Art is long, and they think it hard that life should be so short. Their existence has been chiefly theatrical, ideal, a tragedy rehearsed in print—why should it receive its _denouement_ in their proper persons, in _corpore vili_?—In another point of view, sedentary, studious people live in a world of thought—in a world out of themselves—and are not very well prepared to scuffle in this. They lose the sense of personal honour on questions of more general interest, and are not inclined to individual sacrifices that can be of no service to the cause of letters. They do not see how any speculative truth can be proved by their being run through the body; nor does your giving them the lie alter the state of any one of the great leading questions in policy, morals, or criticism. Philosophers might claim the privileges of divines for many good reasons; among these, according to Spenser, exemption from worldly care and peril was not the least in monkish lore: ‘From worldly care himself he did esloine, And greatly shunned manly exercise: For every work he challenged essoine, For contemplation-sake.’ Mental courage is the only courage I pretend to. I dare venture an opinion where few else would, particularly if I think it right. I have retracted few of my positions. Whether this arises from obstinacy or strength, or indifference to the opinions of others, I know not. In little else I have the spirit of martyrdom: but I would give up any thing sooner than an abstract proposition. CHARACTER OF MR. CANNING _The Examiner._] [_July 11, 1824._ Mr. Canning was the cleverest boy at Eton: he is, perhaps, the cleverest man in the House of Commons. It is, however, in the sense in which, according to Mr. Wordsworth, ‘the child is father to the man.’ He has grown up entirely out of what he then was. He has merely ingrafted a set of Parliamentary phrases and the technicalities of debate on the themes and school-exercises he was set to compose when a boy. Nor has he ever escaped from the trammels imposed on youthful genius: he has never assumed a manly independence of mind. He has been all his life in the habit of getting up a speech at the nod of a Minister, as he used to get up a thesis under the direction of his school-master. The _matter_ is nothing; the only question is, how he shall express himself. The consequence has been as might be expected. Not being at liberty to chuse his own side of the question, nor to look abroad into the world for original (but perhaps unwelcome) observations, nor to follow up a strict chain of reasoning into its unavoidable consequences, the whole force of his mind has been exhausted in an attention to the ornaments of style and to an agreeable and imposing selection of topics. It is his business and his inclination to embellish what is trite, to gloss over what is true, to vamp up some feeble sophism, to spread the colours of a meretricious fancy over the unexpected exposure of some dark intrigue, some glaring iniquity— ‘Like as the sun-burnt Indians do array Their tawny bodies in their proudest plight With painted plumes in goodly order dight: · · · · · As those same plumes, so seemed he vain and light, That by his gait might easily appear; For still he fared as dancing in delight, And in his hands a windy fan did bear, That in the idle air he moved still here and there.’ SPENSER. His reasoning is a tissue of glittering sophistry; his language is a _cento_ of florid common-places. The smooth monotony of his style is indeed as much borrowed, is as little his own, as the courtly and often fulsome strain of his sentiments. He has no steady principles, no strong passions, nothing original, masculine, or striking in thought or expression. There is a feeble, diffuse, showy, Asiatic redundancy in all his speeches—something vapid, something second-hand in the whole cast of his mind. The light that proceeds from it gleams from the mouldering materials of corruption: the flowers that are seen there, gay and flaunting, bloom over the grave of humanity!—Mr. Canning never, by any chance, reminds one of the poet or the philosopher, of the admirer of nature, or even the man of the world—he is a mere House-of-Commons man, or, since he was transferred there from College, appears never to have seen or thought of any other place. He may be said to have passed his life in making and learning to make speeches. All other objects and pursuits seem to have been quite lost upon him. He has overlooked the ordinary objects of nature, the familiar interests of human life, as beneath his notice.[38] There is no allusion in any of his speeches to anything passing out of the House, or not to be found in the classics. Their tone is quite Parliamentary—his is the Delphin edition of Nature. Not an image has struck his eye, not an incident has touched his heart, any farther than it could be got up for rhetorical and stage effect. This has an ill effect upon his speeches:—it gives them that shining and bloated appearance which is the result of the confined and heated atmosphere of the House. They have the look of exotics, of artificial, hot-house plants. Their glossiness, their luxuriance, and gorgeousness of colour are greater than their strength or _stamina_: they are forced, not lasting, nor will they bear transplanting from the rank and noxious soil in which they grow. Or rather, perhaps, they bear the same relation to eloquence that artificial flowers do to real ones—alike, yet not the same, without vital heat or the power of reproduction, printed, passionless, specious mockeries. They are, in fact, not the growth of truth, of nature, and feeling, but of state policy, of art, and practice. To deny that Mr. Canning has arrived to a great perfection (perhaps the greatest) in the manufacture of these sort of _common-places_, elegant, but somewhat tarnished, imposing, but not solid, would, we think, show a want of candour: to affirm that he has ever done anything more (in his serious attempts) would, we think, show an equal want of taste and understanding.[39] The way in which Mr. Canning gets up the staple-commodity of his speeches appears to be this. He hears an observation on the excellence of the English Constitution, or on the dangers of Reform and the fickleness and headstrong humours of the people, dropped by some Member of the House, or he meets with it in an old Debate in the time of Sir Robert Walpole, or in Paley’s Moral and Political Philosophy, which our accomplished scholar read, of course, as the established text-book at the University. He turns it in his mind: by dint of memory and ingenuity he illustrates it by the application of some well-known and well-authenticated simile at hand, such as ‘the vessel of the state,’ ‘the torrent of popular fury,’ ‘the precipice of reform,’ ‘the thunderbolt of war,’ ‘the smile of peace,’ &c. He improves the hint by the help of a little play upon words and upon an idle fancy into an allegory, he hooks this on to a verbal inference, which takes you by surprise, equally from the novelty of the premises and the flatness of the conclusion, refers to a passage in Cicero in support of his argument, quotes his authority, relieves exhausted attention by a sounding passage from Virgil, ‘like the morn risen on mid-noon,’ and launches the whole freight of wisdom, wit, learning, and fancy, on the floor of St. Stephen’s Chapel, where it floats and glitters amidst the mingled curiosity and admiration of both sides of the House— ‘Scylla heard, And fell Charybdis murmur’d soft applause.’ Beneath the broad and gilded chandelier that throws its light upon ‘the nation’s Great Divan,’ Mr. Canning piles the lofty harangue, high over-arched with metaphor, dazzling with epithets, sparkling with jests—take it out of doors, or examine it by the light of common sense, and it is no more than a paltry string of sophisms, of trite truisms, and sorry buffooneries. There is also a House-of-Commons jargon as well as a scholastic pedantry in this gentleman’s style of oratory, which is very displeasing to all but professional ears. ‘The Honourable and Learned Gentleman,’ and ‘his Honourable and Gallant Friend,’ are trolled over the tongue of the Honourable Speaker, ‘loud as a trumpet with a silver sound,’ and fill up the pauses of the sense or the gaps in the logic with a degree of burlesque self-complacency and pompous inanity. Mr. Canning speaks by rote; and if the words he utters become the mouth and round a period well, he cares little how cheaply he comes by them, or how dear they cost the country! Such mechanic helps to style and technical flourishes and trappings of upstart self-importance are, however, unworthy of the meanest underling of office. There is, notwithstanding, a facility, a brilliancy, and an elegance in Mr. Canning’s general style, always graceful, never abrupt, never meagre, never dry, copious without confusion, dignified without stiffness, perspicuous yet remote from common life, that must excite surprise in an _extempore_ speaker. Mr. Canning, we apprehend, is _not_ an _extempore_ speaker. He only makes set speeches on set occasions. He indeed hooks them in as answers to some one that has gone before him in the debate, by taking up and commenting on a single sentence or so, but he immediately recurs to some old and favourite topic, launches into the middle of the stream, or mounts upon the _high horse_, and rides it to the end of the chapter. He never (that we are aware of) grappled with a powerful antagonist, overthrew him on the spot, or contested the point with him foot to foot. Mr. Canning’s replies are _evasions_. He indeed made a capital and very deservedly admired reply to Sir John Coxe Hippesley; but Sir John had given notice of all his motions a month beforehand, and Mr. Canning had only to lie in ambush for him with a whole magazine of facts, arguments, alliterations, quotations, jests, and squibs, prepared ready to explode and blow him up into the air in an instant. In this manner he contrives to slip into the debate and speak to the question, as if he had lately entered the House and heard the arguments on the other side stated for the first time in his life. He has conned his speeches over for a week or a month previously, but he gives these premeditated effusions the effect of witty impromptus—the spontaneous ebullitions of the laughter or indignation or lofty enthusiasm of the moment. His manner tells this. It is that of a person trying to recollect a speech, and reciting it from beginning to end with studied gesture, and in an emphatic but monotonous and somewhat affected tone of voice, rather than of a person uttering words and thoughts that have occurred to him for the first time, and hurried away by an involuntary impulse, speaking with more or less hesitation, faster or slower, and with more or less passion, according as the occasion requires. Mr. Canning is a _conventional_ speaker; he is an _optional_ politician. He has a ready and splendid assortment of arguments upon all ordinary questions: he takes that side or view of a question that is dictated by his vanity, his interest, or his habits, and endeavours to make the best he can of it. Truth, liberty, justice, humanity, war or peace, civilization or barbarism, are things of little consequence, except for him to make speeches upon them. He thinks ‘the worse the better reason,’ if he can only make it appear so to others; and in the attempt to confound and mislead, he is greatly assisted by really perceiving no difference himself. It is not what a thing is, but what he can say about it, that is ever uppermost in his mind; and why should he be squeamish or have any particular choice, since his words are all equally fine, and delivered with equal volubility of tongue! His balanced periods are the scale ‘that makes these odds all even.’ Our Orator does not confine himself to any one view of a subject. He does not blind himself by any dull prejudice: he does not tie himself down to any pedantic rules or abstract principle. He does not listen implicitly to common sense, nor does he follow the independent dictates of his own judgment. No, he picks and chuses among all these, as best suits his purpose. He plucks out the grey hairs of a question, and then again the black. He shifts his position; it is a _ride-and-tie_ system with him. He mounts sometimes behind prejudice, and sometimes behind reason. He is now with the wise, and then again with the vulgar. He drivels, or he raves. He is now wedded to antiquity, anon there is no innovation too startling for him. At one time he is literal, at another visionary and romantic. At one time the honour of the country sways him, at another its interest. One moment he is all for liberty, and the next for slavery. First we are to hold the balance of Europe, and to dictate and domineer over the whole world; and then we are to creep into our shells and draw in our horns; one moment resembling Don Quixote, and the next playing the part of Sancho Panza! And why not? All these are topics, are _cues_ used in the game of politics, are colours in the changeable coat of party, are dilemmas in casuistry, are pretexts in diplomacy; and Mr. Canning has them all at his fingers’ ends. What is there then to prevent his using any of them as he pleases? Nothing in the world but feeling or principle; and as Mr. Canning is not withheld by these from running his heedless career, the application of his ingenuity and eloquence in all such cases is perfectly arbitrary, ‘quite _optional_,’ as Mr. Liston expresses it. A wise man would have some settled opinion, a good man would wish well to some cause, a modest man would be afraid to act without feeling sure of his ground, or to show an utter disregard of right or wrong. Mr. Canning has the luckless ambition to play off the tricks of a political rope-dancer, and he chuses to do it on the nerves of humanity! He has called out for war during thirty years without ceasing, ‘like importunate Guinea fowls, one note day and night;’ he has made the House and the country ring with his vain clamour, and now for the first time he is silent, ‘quite chopfallen.’ Like _Bottom_ in the play, ‘he aggravates his voice like a sucking-dove;’ ‘he roars you an ’twere any nightingale!’ After the failure of Buonaparte’s Russian expedition, Mr. Canning exclaimed exultingly, and with a daring enthusiasm that seemed to come from the heart, that ‘he rejoiced that barbarism had been the first to resist invasion, since it showed that the love of national independence was an instinctive principle in every country, superior even to the love of liberty.’ This plea served its turn at the time, and we heard no more of it last year when the French invaded Spain. In the war to restore Ferdinand, Mr. Canning echoed with lungs of brass the roar of ‘the universal Spanish nation,’ and the words Liberty and Humanity hung like music on his tongue; but when the feeble Monarch was restored, and trod upon the necks of those who had restored him, and threw down the mock-scaffold of the Constitution that had raised him once more to the throne, we heard no more of ‘the universal Spanish nation,’ of Liberty and Humanity. When the speeches of Mr. Canning and the Manifestos of his friends had raised the power of France to a gigantic height that hung like a precipice over our heads, we were to go on, and fight out the battle of liberty and independence, though ‘we buried ourselves under the ruins of the civilized world.’ When a monstrous claim that threatens the liberty and existence of the civilized world is openly set up and acted upon, and a word from Mr. Canning would arrest its progress in the direction in which it is moving with obscene, ghastly, bloodstained strides, he courteously and with great condescension reminds his hearers of ‘the inimitable satire of Cervantes,’ that there is a proverbial expression borrowed from it, and that the epithet _Quixotic_ would be eminently applicable to the conduct of Great Britain if she interfered in the affairs of the continent at the present juncture. And yet there are persons who persist in believing that Mr. Canning is any thing more than a pivot on whose oily hinges state policy turns easily at this moment, unheard, unseen, and that he has views and feelings of his own that are a pledge for his integrity. If all this were fickleness, caprice, forgetfulness, accident, folly, it would be well or would not much signify; we should stand a chance of sometimes being right, sometimes wrong; or if the ostensible motives were the real ones, they would balance one another. At one time we should be giving a _lift_ to liberty, at another we should be advancing our own interests: now we should be generous to others, then we should be just to ourselves, but always we should be doing something or other fit to be done and to be named, and acting up to one or other of Mr. Canning’s fine pleas of religion, morality, or social order. Is that the case? Nothing was said for twenty years about the restoration of the Bourbons as the object of the war. Who doubts it now? This cause skulked behind the throne, and was not let out in any of Mr. Canning’s speeches. The cloven foot was concealed by so much flaunting oratory, by so many different facings and piebald patch-work liveries of ruinous policy or perfidious principle, as not to be suspected. This is what makes such persons as Mr. Canning dangerous. Clever men are the tools with which bad men work. The march of sophistry is devious: the march of power is one. Its means, its tools, its pretexts are various, and borrowed like the hues of the camelion from any object that happens to be at hand: its object is ever the same, and deadly as the serpent’s fang. It moves on to its end with crested majesty, erect, silent, with eyes sunk and fixed, undiverted by fear, unabashed by shame, and puny orators and patriot mountebanks play tricks before it to amuse the crowd, till it crushes the world in its monstrous folds. There is one word about which nothing has been said all this while in accounting for Mr. Canning’s versatility of mind and vast resources in reasoning—it is the word, _Legitimacy_. It is the key with which you ‘pluck out the heart of his mystery.’ It is the touchstone by which all his other eloquence is to be tried, and made good or found wanting. It is the casting-weight in the scale of sound policy, or that makes humanity and liberty kick the beam. It is the secret of the Ayes and Noes: it accounts for the Majorities and Minorities. It weighs down all other considerations, hides all flaws, makes up for all deficiencies, removes all obstacles, is the crown of success, and makes defeat glorious. It has all the power of the Crown on its side, and all the madness of the people. All Mr. Canning’s speeches are but so many different _periphrases_ for this one word—_Legitimacy_. It is the foundation of his magnanimity and the source of his pusillanimity. It is the watch-word equally of his oratory or his silence. It is the principle of his interference and of his forbearance. It makes him move forward, or retreat, or stand still. With this word rounded closely in his ear, and with fifty evasions for it in his mouth, he advances boldly to ‘the deliverance of mankind’—into the hands of legitimate kings, but can do nothing to deliver them out of their power. When the liberty and independence of mankind can be construed to mean the cause of kings and the doctrine of divine right, Mr. Canning is a virago on the side of humanity—when they mean the cause of the people and the reducing of arbitrary power within the limits of constitutional law, his patriotism and humanity flag, and he is ‘Of his port as meek as is a maid!’ This word makes his tropes and figures expand and blaze out like phosphorus, or ‘freezes his spirits up like fish in a pond.’ It smites with its petrific mace, it deadens with its torpedo touch, the Minister, the Parliament, the people, and makes this vast, free, enlightened, and enterprising country a body without a soul, an inert mass, like the hulks of our men of war, which Mr. Canning saw and described so well at Plymouth. It is the same word, that announcing the profanation of ‘the golden round that binds the hollow temples of a king’ by unhallowed hands, would fill their sails, and hurl their thunders on rebel shores. It denounces war, it whispers peace. It is echoed by the groans of the nations, is sanctified by their blood, bought with their treasure. It is this that fills the time-rent towers of the Inquisition with tears and piercing cries; and owing to this, Manzotti shrieks in Italian dungeons, while Mr. Canning soothes the House of Commons with the soft accents of liberty and peace! In fine, Mr. Canning’s success as an orator, and the space he occupies in the public mind, are strong indications of the Genius of the Age, in which words have obtained a mastery over things, ‘and to call evil good and good evil,’ is thought the mark of a superior and happy spirit. An accomplished statesman in our day is one who extols the Constitution and violates it—who talks about religion and social order, and means slavery and superstition. The Whigs are always reminding the reigning family of _the principles that raised them to the throne_—the Tories labour as hard to substitute those _that will keep them there_. There is a dilemma here, which is not easily got over; and to solve the difficulty and reconcile the contradiction, was the great problem of the late King’s reign. The doubtful lubricity of Mr. Canning’s style was one of the rollers by which the transition was effected, and Legitimacy shown to be a middle term between _divine right_ and _the choice of the people_, compatible with both, and convertible into either, at the discretion of the Crown, or pleasure of the speaker. Mr. Canning does not disgrace his pretensions on other questions. He is a sophist by profession, a palliator of every powerful and profitable abuse. His shuffling, trifling speeches on Reform are well-known. He sometimes adds the petulance of the school-boy to his stock of worn-out invention; though his unfeeling taunt on the ‘revered and ruptured Ogden,’ met with a reception which will make him cautious how he tampers again with human infirmity and individual suffering, as the subject of ribald jests and profligate alliteration. The thing in which Mr. Canning excels most is wit; and his wit is confined to parody. The _Rejected Addresses_ have been much and deservedly admired; but we do not think the parodies in them, however ingenious or ludicrous, are to be compared with those in the ‘_Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin_,’ and some of the very best of these are by Mr. Canning. Among others are, we believe, the _German Play_, and the imitation of Mr. Southey’s _Sapphics_. Much as we admire, we do not wonder at Mr. Canning’s excellence in this department. Real, original wit, he has none; for that implies sense and feeling, and an insight into the real differences of things; but from a want of sympathy with anything but forms and _common-places_, he can easily let down the sense of others so as to make _nonsense_ of it. He has no enthusiasm or sensibility to make him overlook the meanness of a subject, or a little irregularity in the treatment of it, from the interest it excites: to a mind like his, the serious and affecting is a kind of natural burlesque. It is a matter of course for him to be struck with the absurdity of the romantic or singular in any way, to whom every thing out of the beaten track is absurd; and ‘to turn what is serious into farce’ by transferring the same expressions to perfectly indifferent and therefore contemptible subjects. To make any description or sentiment ludicrous, it is only necessary to take away all feeling from it: the ludicrous is ready-made to Mr. Canning’s hands. The poetry, the heart-felt interest of every thing escapes through his apprehension, like a snake out of its skin, and leaves the slough of parody behind it. Any thing more light or worthless cannot well be imagined.[40] THE DANDY SCHOOL. _The Examiner._] [_November 18, 1827._ Vivian Grey is dedicated to the Best and Greatest of men, as if the Illustrious Person who will take this compliment to himself approved of the sentiments contained in it. Are ushers odious to the Best and Greatest of men? Does he hate the great mass of his subjects, and scorn all those beyond Temple-bar? Is he King only of the Dandies, and Monarch of the West? We scarcely believe it. This volume with its impertinent dedication is no more expressive of the sentiments of his heart than the _Austrian Catechism_, dedicated in like manner, would be characteristic of the principles of his reign. Oh! Mr. Grey, you should have been more humble—you should have inscribed your work to the best-dressed Man in his Majesty’s dominions—or to Jack Ketch. It was formerly understood to be the business of literature to enlarge the bounds of knowledge and feeling; to direct the mind’s eye beyond the present moment and the present object; to plunge us in the world of romance, to connect different languages, manners, times together; to wean us from the grossness of sense, the illusions of self-love;—by the aid of imagination, to place us in the situations of others and enable us to feel an interest in all that strikes them; and to make books the faithful witnesses and interpreters of nature and the human heart. Of late, instead of this liberal and useful tendency, it has taken a narrower and more superficial tone. All that we learn from it is the servility, egotism, and upstart pretensions of the writers. Instead of transporting you to faery-land or into the _middle ages_, you take a turn down Bond Street or go through the mazes of the dance at Almack’s. You have no new inlet to thought or feeling opened to you; but the passing object, the topic of the day (however insipid or repulsive) is served up to you with a self-sufficient air, as if you had not already had enough of it. You dip into an Essay or a Novel, and may fancy yourself reading a collection of quack or fashionable advertisements:—Macassar Oil, Eau de Cologne, Hock and Seltzer Water, Otto of Roses, _Pomade Divine_ glance through the page in inextricable confusion, and make your head giddy. Far from extending your sympathies, they are narrowed to a single point, the admiration of the folly, caprice, insolence, and affectation of a certain class;—so that with the exception of people who ride in their carriages, you are taught to look down upon the rest of the species with indifference, abhorrence, or contempt. A school-master in a black coat is a monster—a tradesman and his wife who eat cold mutton and pickled cabbage are wretches to be hunted out of society. That is the end and moral of it: it is part and parcel of a system. The _Dandy School_ give the finishing touch to the principles of paternal government. First comes the political sycophant, and makes the people over to their rulers as a property in perpetuity; but then they are to be handled tenderly, and need not complain, since the sovereign is the father of his people, and we are to be all one family of love. So says the _Austrian Catechism_. Then comes the literary sycophant to finish what the other had begun; and the poor fools of people having been caught in the trap of plausible professions, he takes off the mask of _paternity_, treats them as of a different species instead of members of the same family, loads them with obloquy and insult, and laughs at the very idea of any fellow feeling with or consideration towards them, as the height of bad taste, weakness, and vulgarity. So say Mr. Theodore Hook and the author of _Vivian Grey_. So says not Sir Walter. Ever while you live, go to a man of genius in preference to a dunce; for let his prejudices or his party be what they may, there is still a saving grace about him, for he himself has something else to trust to besides his subserviency to greatness to raise him from insignificance. He takes you and places you in a cottage or a cavern, and makes you feel the deepest interest in it, for you feel all that its inmates feel. The _Dandy School_ tell you all that a dandy would feel in such circumstances, viz. that he was not in a drawing-room or at Long’s. Or if he does forfeit his character for a moment, he at most brings himself to patronise humanity, condescends to the accidents of common life, touches the pathetic with his pen as if it were with a pair of tongs, and while he just deigns to notice the existence or endure the infirmities of his fellow-creatures, indemnifies his vanity by snatching a conscious glance at his own person and perfections. Whatever is going on, he himself is the hero of the scene; the distress (however excruciating) derives its chief claim to attention from the singular circumstance of his being present; and he manages the whole like a piece of private theatricals with an air of the most absolute _nonchalance_ and decorum. The WHOLE DUTY OF MAN is turned into a butt and bye-word, or like Mr. Martin’s bill for humanity to animals, is a pure voluntary, a caprice of effeminate sensibility: the great business of life is a kind of masquerade or melo-drame got up for effect and by particular desire of the Great. We soon grow tired of nature so treated, and are glad to turn to the follies and fopperies of high life, into which the writer enters with more relish, and where he finds himself more at home. So Mr. Croker (in his place in the House of Commons) does not know where Bloomsbury Square is: thus affecting to level all the houses in the metropolis that are not at the court-end, and leaving them tenantless by a paltry sneer, as if a plague had visited them. It is no wonder that his _protégés_ and understrappers out of doors should echo this official impertinence—draw the line still closer between the East and West-end—arrest a stray sentiment at the corner of a street, relegate elegance to a fashionable square—annihilate all other enjoyments, all other pretensions but those of their employers—reduce the bulk of mankind to a cypher, and make all but a few pampered favourites of fortune dissatisfied with themselves and contemptible to one another. The reader’s mind is so varnished over with affectation that not an avenue to truth or feeling is left open, and it is stifled for want of breath. Send these people across the Channel who make such a fuss about the East and West-end, and no one can find out the difference.[41] The English are not a nation of _dandies_; nor can John Bull afford (whatever the panders to fashion and admirers of courtly graces may say to the contrary) to rest all his pretensions upon that. He must descend to a broader and more manly level to keep his ground at all. Those who would persuade him to build up his fame on frogged coats or on the embellishments of a snuff-box, he should scatter with one loud roar of indignation and trample into the earth like grasshoppers, as making not only a beast but an ass of him. A writer of this accomplished stamp, comes forward to tell you, not how his hero feels on any occasion, for he is above that, but how he was dressed, and makes him a mere lay-figure of fashion with a few pert, current phrases in his mouth. The Sir Sedley Clarendels and Meadowses of a former age are become the real fine gentlemen of this. Then he gives you the address of his heroine’s milliner, lest any shocking surmise should arise in your mind of the possibility of her dealing with a person of less approved taste, and also informs you that the quality eat fish with silver forks. This is all he knows about the matter: is this all they feel? The fact is new to him: it is old to them. It is so new to him and he is so delighted with it, that provided a few select persons eat fish with silver forks, he considers it a circumstance of no consequence if a whole country starves: but these privileged persons are not surely thinking all the time and every day of their lives of that which Mr. Theodore Hook has never forgotten since he first witnessed it, viz. that _they eat their fish with a silver fork_. What then are they thinking of in their intervals of leisure—what are their feelings that _we_ can be supposed to know nothing of? Will Mr. Theodore Hook, who is ‘comforted with their bright radiance, though not in their sphere,’ condescend to give us a glimpse of these, that we may admire their real elegance and refinement as much as he does a frogged coat or silver fork? It is cruel in him not to do so. ‘The _court_, as well as we, may chide him for it.’ He once criticised a city feast with great minuteness and bitterness, in which (as it appears) the side-board is ill-arranged, the footman makes a blunder, the cook has sent up a dish too little or too highly seasoned. Something is wanting, as Mr. Hook insinuates is necessarily the case whenever people in the neighbourhood of Russell square give dinners. But that something is not the manners or conversation of gentlemen—this never enters his head—but something that the butler, the cook or the valet of people of fashion could have remedied quite as well (to say the least) as their masters. It is here the cloven foot, the under-bred tone, the undue admiration of external circumstances breaks out and betrays the writer. Mr. Hook has a fellow-feeling with low life or rather with vulgarity aping gentility, but he has never got beyond the outside of what he calls _good society_. He can lay the cloth or play the buffoon after dinner—but that is the utmost he can pretend to. We have in _Sayings and Doings_ and in _Vivian Grey_ abundance of Lady Marys and Lady Dorothys, but they are titles without characters, or the blank is filled up with the most trite impertinence. So a young linen-draper or attorney’s clerk from the country, who had gained a thirty thousand pound prize in the lottery and wished to set up for a fine gentleman, might learn from these Novels what hotel to put up at, what watering place to go to, what hatter, hosier, tailor, shoemaker, _friseur_ to employ, what part of the town he should be seen in, what theatre he might frequent; but how to behave, speak, look, feel and think in his new and more aspiring character he would not find the most distant hint in the gross caricatures or flimsy sketches of the most mechanical and shallow of all schools. It is really as if, in lieu of our royal and fashionable ‘Society of Authors,’ a deputation of tailors, cooks, lacqueys, had taken possession of Parnassus, and had appointed some Abigail out of place perpetual Secretary. The Congreves, Wycherleys, and Vanbrughs of former days gave us some taste of gentility and courtly refinement in their plays: enchanted us with their _Millamants_, or made us bow with respect to their _Lord Townleys_. It would seem that the race of these is over, or that our modern scribes have not had access to them on a proper footing—that is, not for their talents or conversation, but as mountebanks or political drudges. At first it appears strange that persons of so low a station in life should be seized with such a rage to inveigh against themselves, and make us despise all but a few arrogant people, who pay them ill for what they do. But this is the natural process of servility, and we see all valets and hangers-on of the Great do the same thing. The powdered footman looks down on the rabble that dog his master’s coach as beneath his notice. He feels the one little above him, and the other (by consequence) infinitely below him. Authors at present would be thought gentlemen, as gentlemen have a fancy to turn authors. The first thing a _dandy scribbler_ does is to let us know he is dressed in the height of the fashion (otherwise we might imagine him some miserable garretteer, distinguished only by his poverty and learning)—and the next thing he does is to make a supercilious allusion to some one who is not so well dressed as himself. He then proceeds to give us a sparkling account of his Champagne and of his box at the Opera. A newspaper hack of this description also takes care to inform us that the people at the Opera in general, the Mr. Smiths and the Mr. Browns, are not good enough for him, and that he shall wait to begin his critical lucubrations, till the stars of fashion meet there in crowds and constellations! At present, it should seem that a seat on Parnassus conveys a title to a box at the Opera, and that Helicon no longer runs water but champagne. Literature, so far from supplying us with intellectual resources to counterbalance immediate privations, is made an instrument to add to our impatience and irritability under them, and to nourish our feverish, childish admiration of external show and grandeur. This rage for fashion and for fashionable writing seems becoming universal, and some stop must be put to it, unless it cures itself by its own excessive folly and insipidity. It is well that the Editor of the _John Bull_ wrote the _Sayings and Doings_. It solves the problem with how small a quantity of wit a person without character or principle may set up for a political mouthpiece. Nothing but the dullness of the one could account for the impudence and the effect of the other. No one who could write a line of wit or sense could bring himself from any inducement to repeat the same nickname, the same stale jest, for weeks and months together. If the Editor of the _John Bull_ had any resources in himself beyond the most vulgar _slang_ and hackneyed abuse, if he had any sense of shame at resorting to the same wretched pun or more wretched calumny, week after week, as he is paid for it, he would be unfit for his task: he would no longer be the complete and unequivocal organ of the dulness, prejudices, malice, and callous insensibility of his party. No argument tells with a minister of State like calling a man a Jacobin and a Reformer for the fortieth time: the sleek Divine chuckles at a dirty allusion for the fortieth time with unabated glee. Mr. Hook, among wits, might be called _the parson’s nose_: or perhaps the title of Mr. Vivacity Dull would suit him as well. What a dearth of invention, what a want of interest, what a fuss about nothing, what a dreary monotony, what a pert _slipslop_ jargon runs through the whole series of the author’s tales! But what a persevering, unabashed confidence, what a broad-shouldered self-complacency, what robust health, what unrelenting nerves he must possess to inflict them on his readers! Not one ray, not one line—but all the refuse of the _Green-room_, the locomotions of a booth at a fair, the humours of a Margate hoy, the grimace of a jack-pudding, the sentimentalities and hashed-up scandal of a lady’s maid, the noise and hurry of a chaise and four, the _ennui_ and vacancy of a return post-chaise! The smart _improvisatori_ turns out the most wearisome of interminable writers. At a moment’s warning he can supply something that is worth nothing, and in ten times the space he can spin out ten times the quantity of the same poor trash. Would the public read _Sayings and Doings_? Would Mr. Colburn print them? No, but they are known to be the work of the Editor of the _John Bull_, of that great and anonymous abstract of wit, taste, and patriotism, who, like a Ministerial trull, calls after you in the street, dubs Mr. Waithman Lord Waithman, cries _Humbug_ whenever humanity is mentioned; invades the peace of private life, out of regard to religion and social order; cuts a throat out of good-nature, and laughs at it; and claps his Majesty familiarly on the shoulder, as the best of Kings! Do you wonder at the face, the gravity, the impenetrable assurance required to do all this, and to do it not once, but once a week? Read _Sayings and Doings_, and the wonder ceases; you see it is because he can do nothing else! He will feel obliged to us for this character: his patrons were beginning to forget his qualifications. ACTORS AND THE PUBLIC _The Examiner._] [_March 16, 1828._ We once happened to be present, and indeed to assist in the following conversation between a young lady and an elderly gentleman pretty much of our own standing in such matters. ‘I believe, papa, grand-papa did not think so highly of Mr. Garrick as most people did?’ ‘Why, my dear, your grand-papa was not one of those who liked to differ very openly with the world; but he had an opinion of his own, which he imparted only to a few particular friends. He really thought Mr. Garrick was a quack, a better sort of Barthelemy-fair actor. He used to say (for he was a man that knew the world) ‘that the real secret of Mr. Garrick’s success was, that his friend Bate Dudley had puffed him into notice, as he afterwards did the Prince of Wales.’ We on this observed, in our individual capacity, that at least the dispenser of popularity had been more successful in the one case than in the other. ‘I believe, papa, you yourself were never a great admirer of Mrs. Siddons?’ ‘Why no, my dear, one does not like to say those things, but she always appeared to me one of the great impositions on the world. There was nothing in her, a mere tragedy-queen.’—‘Pray, ma’am, have you read Sir Walter’s last novel?’—‘Why no, I really cannot say I have. I have tried to get through one or two, but I find them so dry I have given up the attempt. I like “Sayings and Doings” much better. Pray, sir, can you tell me the name of the author?’ ‘Mr. Theodore Hook.’—‘Bless me, what a pretty name; I wish papa would invite him to dinner.’—Here we have the genealogy of modern taste. ’Fore gad, they were all in a story—three generations in succession thinking nothing of Garrick, Mrs. Siddons, and the author of ‘Waverley,’ and preferring Mr. Theodore Hook before the quintessence of truth and nature. And such is the opinion of nine-tenths of the world, if we could get at their real thoughts. The vulgar in their inmost souls admire nothing but the vulgar; the common-place admire nothing but the common-place; the superficial nothing but the superficial. How should it be otherwise? The rest is cant and affectation: and as to those who know better and have pretensions themselves, they are actuated by envy and malice, or some preconceived theory of their own. Instead of a great actor, for instance, they are looking for a hat and feather, are disappointed at not finding what they fondly expect, and more disappointed still at coming in collision with a power that shocks all their previous sympathies, rules, and definitions. Let a great man ‘fall into misfortune’ (like _Captain Macheath_) and then you discover the real dispositions of the reading, seeing, believing, loving public towards their pretended idol. See how they set upon him the moment he is down, how they watch for the smallest slip, the first pretext to pick a quarrel with him, how slow they are to acknowledge worth, how they never forgive an error, how they trample upon and tear ‘to tatters, to very rags,’ the common frailties, how they overlook and malign the transcendant excellence which they can neither reach nor find a substitute for! Who has praised Sir Walter, who has not had a _fling_ at him, since he lost all that he was worth? Oh! if he would but write the ‘Life of George IV.!’ Who that had felt Kean’s immeasurable superiority in _Othello_, was not glad to see him brought to the ordinary level in a vulgar _crim. con_? No: a man of true genius and common observation, instead of being disappointed at not carrying the prize by acclamation, and exciting gratitude equal to the pleasure he gives, ought to be thankful that he is not hooted from the stage, and torn in pieces by the rabble, as soon as he quits his lair of solitary obscurity. Every man of that sort is assuredly looked upon by the vulgar as having dealings with the devil, because they do not see ‘the spells, the mighty magic he hath used’ and they would make an _auto-da-fé_ of him if they durst, as they formerly burnt a witch! They contrive to torture him enough, as it is. What was it made men burn astrologers and alchemists in former times, but the sense of power and knowledge which the illiterate hind did not possess? Are the _reading_ different from the _unreading_ public? Believe it not. But this power was supposed to be exercised for evil purposes, whereas genius has a beneficial influence. _That_ doubles the obligation, and fixes the ingratitude. The critical public view the appearance of an original mind with the sidelong glances and the _doux yeux_ with which the animals at Exeter-’Change regard the strange visitants; but if any one trusting to the amiable looks and playful gambols of the one or the other opens the door of his own folly to let them out, he will soon see how it will fare with him. There are a million of people in this single metropolis, each of whom would willingly stand on the pedestal which you occupy. Will they forgive you for thrusting them from their place, or not triumph if they see you totter? Beware how you climb the slippery ascent; do not neglect your footing when you are there. Such is the natural feeling; and then comes the philosophical critic, and tells you with a face of lead and brass that ‘no more indulgence is to be shewn to the indiscretions of a man of genius than to any other!’ What! you make him drunk and mad with applause and then blame him for not being sober, you lift him to a pinnacle, and then say he is not to be giddy, you own he is to be a creature of impulse, and yet you would regulate him like a machine, you expect him to be all fire and air, to wing the empyrean, and to take you with him, and yet you would have him a muck-worm crawling the earth! But it is a Scotch critic who says this—let us pass on. If an actor is indeed six feet high, with a face like a pasteboard mask, he may pass in the crowd and will have the mob on his side; but if he can only boast ‘The fiery soul, that working out its way, Fretted the pigmy body to decay, And o’er informed the tenement of clay’— he stands in equal peril of the unthinking many, and the fastidious few. Or, if an actress is a foreigner, she may escape ‘the envy of less happier lands,’ and be encouraged as a luxury for the great—be wafted to us on a name, and take back with her our sighs and tears. Yet how frail is the tenure of fashion! Where is Madame Catalani now? Where does the siren’s voice flutter in the sunshine of her smiles?— It was some time since we had seen Mr. Kean’s _Shylock_. Fourteen years ago we were desired to go and see a young actor from the country attempt the part at Drury-lane; and, as was expected, add another to the list of failures. When we got there, there were about fifty people in the pit, and there was that sense of previous damnation which a thin house inspires. When the new candidate came on, there was a lightness in his step, an airy buoyancy and self-possession different from the sullen, dogged, _gaol-delivery_ look of the traditional _Shylocks_ of the stage. A vague expectation was excited, and all went on well; but it was not till he came to the part, when leaning on his staff, he tells the tale of Jacob and his flock with the garrulous ease of old age and an animation of spirit, that seems borne back to the olden time, and to the privileged example in which he exults, that it was plain that a man of genius had lighted on the stage. To those who had the spirit and candour to hail the lucky omen, the recollection of that moment of startling, yet welcome surprise, will always be a proud and satisfactory one. We wished to see after a lapse of time and other changes, whether this first impression would still keep ‘true touch,’ and we find no difference. Besides the excellence of the impassioned parts of Mr. Kean’s acting, there is a flexibility and indefiniteness of outline about it, like a figure with a landscape back-ground—he is in Venice with his money-bags, his daughter and his injuries, but his thoughts take wing to the East, his voice swells and deepens at the mention of his sacred tribe and ancient law, and he dwells delighted on any digression to distant times and places, as a relief to his vindictive and rooted purposes. Of all Mr. Kean’s performances, we think this the most faultless and least _mannered_, always excepting his _Othello_, which is equally perfect and twenty times more powerful. Mr. Kean succeeded so well in this part in which he came out, that with the diffidence of the abilities of others so natural to us, it was concluded by the managers he could do nothing else, and he was kept in it so long that he had nearly failed in _Richard_, till the dying scene bore down all opposition by a withering spell, and as if a preternatural being had visibly taken possession of his form, and made the enthusiasm the greater from the uncertainty that had before prevailed. The _Sir Giles Overreach_ stamped him with the players and the town, and _Othello_ with the critics. He who has done a single thing that others never forget, and feel ennobled whenever they think of, need not regret his having been, and may throw aside this fleshly coil, like any other worn-out part, grateful and contented! FRENCH PLAYS _The Examiner._] [_March 23, 1828._ Monsieur Perlet is certainly a pearl of an actor. He does every part well, and every part varied from another. He is, however, a jewel set in lead: the rest of the company to which he belongs are but indifferent. He is exactly what a London _star_, engaged for a few nights to gratify the ‘upturned eyes of wondering audiences,’ is in a tattered troop of country-actors. Those who fancy that they see here a thorough sample of French acting, the _elite_ of the capital of civilised society, are mistaken; and we perhaps should not undeceive them, but that we can assure them that they have a pleasure to come, something to look forward to, and something to look back upon, and which (we believe) can be found only at Paris. Oh! Paris, thou hast the Louvre, the garden of the Thuilleries, and the _Thêatre Français_; Madame Pasta we share by turns with you, as the sun sheds its light on either world—the rest is barbarous and common. A friend of ours once received a letter from a friend of his, dated ROME, with three marks of admiration after it, which he answered by writing LONDON, with four marks of admiration after it: ‘and why shouldn’t he, since we had St. Paul’s, the Cartoons, the Elgin Marbles, and the Bridges?’ As to the three first, they were not ours; and as to the fourth, the reasoning puts me a little in mind of Sir William Curtis’s, who remarked that ‘it was very good of God, that wherever there was a great city, he had made a river by the side of it!’ There was another proud distinction, which our patriotic friend did not enumerate, though it was a thumping make-weight in the scale, and might have claimed a fifth mark of admiration, which was, that he himself was there. This is the triumphant argument in every Englishman’s imagination,—wherever he is, is the centre of gravity; whatever he calls his own, is the standard of excellence. It is our desire to shake off this feeling as much as possible that makes us frequent the theatre at the English Opera-house, and try (all we can) to ‘leave our country and ourselves’ at the door. Why in truth should an English Nobleman be convinced in himself and speak upon that conviction in his place in Parliament, that because he keeps a French cook, the French have no genius for anything but cookery? Or why, my dear Madam, should you have taken it in your head, that because you wear a French bonnet, there is nothing in Paris but milliners’ girls who are no better than they should be? Nay, that is what you really imagine, however you may deny it—but be assured, good, gentle, honest, reflecting reader of either sex, who feel your own existence so solid that every thing else is a fable to it, or your own virtue so clear that everything else is a spot to it, that there are things out of England besides what are imported into it—that French women not only make caps and bonnets, but wear them with a peculiar grace; that they have eyes glancing from under them full of fire and discretion; that they do not make a false step at every turn, though they do not walk like Englishwomen, that is, as if their limbs were an incumbrance to them; that the Chamber of Deputies think your Lordship’s speeches dry and tasteless, for want of a little French seasoning; that there are cities not built of bricks, faces not made of dough, a language that has a meaning though it is not ours, and virtue that is neither a statue nor a mask! For instance, we think good-manners is one part of ethics, and we do wish _en passant_ that our fine gentlemen at the play would not loll on their seats, whistle, and thrust their sticks nearly in your face to show their superiority to the vulgar; and that those of the other sex, who are admitted on their good behaviour could be prevailed on not to talk and laugh so loud, not to nod or wink, not to slap their acquaintance on the back, or shut the doors with such violence after them, to attract admirers and shew an independent spirit. Strange that the English notion of independence consists in giving offence to and displaying your contempt for others! They order these things better in France, where they consult decency of appearance at least, and Venus is a prude in public—not a hoyden or a bully! ‘Our Cupid is a blackguard boy, That thrusts his link in every face.’ This brings us back to the French Theatre. As we do not approve every thing foreign or French, we are more bound to acknowledge and do justice to what we do like. _Imprimis_, we abhor French pictures. In the second place, we tolerate French tragedy. Thirdly, we adore French comedy. The characteristic of this in its best state, and as compared with our utmost efforts in the same line, is, that it is equally perfect throughout; and as that great philosopher of idleness (Mr. Coleridge) once wisely and wittily observed, ‘there is something in the idea of perfection exceedingly satisfactory to the mind of man.’ It is not as with us at present (it was not always so—or is it the haze of time, the tints of youth that made the difference?) where the most we can expect is one or two actors of disproportioned excellence, and all the others merely to fill the stage; but there all are in their place, and all are first-rate. Oh! it is a fine thing to see one of Moliere’s comedies acted (as they should be) at the _Thêatre Français_, with the sense of every pregnant line fully understood and developed, with the passion and character delineated to the life, every situation painted, and every shade and difference of absurdity hit off and realised; and not only this, but the whole so managed, with such studious attention to the public and respect to the art, that not the least bit of costume is out of place, and (what is more important) that every part is filled by an actor or actress not only who comprehends and enters into the spirit of it, but who seems made for it in person, gesture and features, as if they had been cast in a dramatic mould, or kept in a glass-case for that purpose from the first representation to the present day. Thus the long, nasal speeches are delivered by an actor with the prominent, pasteboard nose and arched eyebrows of the Oratory, and whose unusual height and shambling figure serve him as it were for a rostrum; the poetical dedicator in the _Misanthrope_ has sparkling eyes and teeth, smiling delighted on his patron and himself; the confidante of _Celimene_, in the same piece, is slender, fragile, timid in appearance, a contrast to the firm precision and maturer _enbon-point_ of Mademoiselle Mars; Orgon has a little, round, dimpled, credulous face, and easy contented corpulence; the _Tartuffe_ has the sneaking sanctity of a monk and the grin of a monkey. Thus you have not only the poet’s verse exactly expressed and recited; but you have, in addition, the natural history of the part, the drapery, the grouping. The age of Louis XIV. revives again in all its masqued splendour; the folding-doors are thrown open, and you see men and women playing the fool deliciously, ‘new manners and the pomp of elder days,’ court-airs, court-dresses, the strut, the shrug, the bow, the curtsey, the paint, the powder, the patches, the perfume, the laced ruffles, the diamond buckle, the hoop-petticoat. Happy time! Enviable time to think of! When vanity and folly expanded in full bloom, and were spread out ostentatiously like the figures in a gaudy tapestry, instead of being folded up and thrust into a corner by the hand of a cynic and austere philosophy; when personal appearance and amorous intrigue were all in all; when a marquis stalked the God of his own idolatry, and _Madame la Marquise_ was held for something divine by _Monsieur Jourdain_; when the whole creation was supposed to be concentred in the fantastic circle of lords and ladies, and the universal, the abstract, and the critical were held in the utter contempt which they deserve—and which they receive at the hands both of the ignorant and the adept! Nothing that we know of is a specific for conjuring up this shadow of the past, and making you (if you are in the mood) feel like a great booby school-boy, with a large _bouquet_ at your breast, or an antiquated fop with a bag-wig and sword—but sitting at the _Thêatre Français_ with Mademoiselle Mars and the whole _corps dramatique_ drawn up on the stage. Then you have the very thing before you: it glitters in your eyes; it tingles in your ears, it sinks into the heart, and makes warm tears roll down the cheek of those, who have ever felt either what the present or the past is! It is said to be an ill wind that blows nobody good; and probably we owe it to the very exclusion of French players from general society, and their being compelled in self-defence to devote themselves wholly to their profession, that they keep up this sort of traditional copy of the manners, peculiarities, and tone of another age, ‘unmixed with baser matter.’ We could wish that a certain happy-spirited writer (who first gave the true _pine-apple_ flavour to theatrical criticism, making it a pleasant mixture of sharp and sweet) would resume the subject of the age of Charles II. (our nearest approach to that of Louis XIV.) and as he has shocked the upstart petulance of _Some of his Contemporaries_, restore in his inimitable careless manner the wit and graces of a former period. We expected to have seen Monsieur Perlet on Thursday evening in the _Bourgeois Gentilhomme_; and to make sure of the ground, had read three acts in the morning with great care and an anticipated relish of the acting. We were therefore disappointed; and the reader must accept of a rhapsody in lieu of a criticism. We think it bad policy to have many new pieces; for the English part of the audience in general require to peruse the text beforehand in order to follow the performance. We like to know exactly what we are about; and it is both a pride and a pleasure to have an excuse for rubbing up our acquaintance with an old and esteemed author. The universality of the French language is not an unalloyed advantage to them: it saves the trouble of learning any other, but the necessity of acquiring a new language is like the necessity of acquiring a new sense. It is an increase of knowledge and liberality. We are proud of understanding their authors. Why do they despise ours? Because they are ignorant of them. If they had known what ‘stuff’ we are made of, very likely we should not have beaten them. M. Perlet played the part of a strolling comedian in the new piece of the _Landau_, and eats and drinks in an admirable _bravura_ style at a gentleman’s house on the road, where he passes himself off as a great man, and with that lively absorption in the present enjoyment and disregard of the consequences of his imposture, which are, we suspect, national traits. In the _Landes_ which followed, he was equally happy in a poor, frightened servant, and expressed the surprises of fear and the tricks and disjointed pantomime antics, to which it resorted to screen itself, with admirable quaintness and drollery. The swagger and self-possession of the one character was totally opposed to the imbecility and helplessness of the other. Madame Falcoz made her first appearance in the _Tyran Domestique_ as _Madame Valmont_. She is an elegant woman and an interesting actress, though with too much appearance of _still-life_. This is not the case with Madame Daudel. She has all the vivacity and bustle of a chambermaid. She ought always to come in with a broom in her hand; or rather, it is quite unnecessary. FRENCH PLAYS—(_Continued_) _The Examiner._] [_March 30, 1828._ We exhausted that subject last week, and were complimented upon it, which we took ill. Probably advisable to be ill this week, to let our absence be felt, or to make up with scraps and quotation. To transcribe four different accounts of the _Tartuffe_, Sir Walter Scott’s, Mr. Leigh Hunt’s, Monsieur Perlet’s, and one of our own, and to make it understood that the last is the best. To remark that Monsieur Perlet, ‘that soul of pleasure and that life of whim,’ is a provoking actor—for there is no fault to be found with him, and to give the reader an idea of his peculiar excellence is next to impossible. Whatever he does, his ease, self-possession, and spirit are the same. To make it a rule not to tell any one who asks me the plot of the _Ecole des Maris_, but to tell it myself. Borrowers of plots are like borrowers of snuff:—every one his own _box-keeper_. (_Ha, ha, ha!_) The laugh here comes from a friend of ours to whom we read this, and who kept repeating the whole evening—‘Every man his own box-keeper.’ (_Ha, ha, ha!_) Very well indeed. _Sganarelle_ and _Ariste_ are two brothers, both of them in years, who have two wards, _Isabelle_ and _Leonore_, whom they propose to marry. _Sganarelle_ is an old blockhead, who brings up his intended bride with the greatest severity, and will let her see no plays, go to no balls, receive no visits, lest it should corrupt her manners or divert her affection from him. He is very angry at his brother _Ariste_, who gives full liberty to his mistress _Leonore_, and contends that bars, bolts, female Arguses, and ill-humour are not the way to make women in love with virtue, or to prevent their inclination from wandering. _Sganarelle_ laughs at him, but he turns out a true prophet. _Isabelle_, not thinking the _disagreeable_ the most _agreeable_ thing in the world, meets with a lover (_Valere_) more to her mind than her guardian. And here begins the interest of the plot. Having no other mode of communication, she sends _Sganarelle_ to him, to let him know that she is apprized of the state of his affections, and to beg him not to persecute her with his amorous thoughts, if he has any regard for her honour or peace of mind. He understands the hint, and sends the supposed husband away, delighted with his confusion and repulse, who has no sooner returned to his intended, than she desires him to go back with a letter, which _Ariste_ has just had the assurance to send her in his absence, full of his absurd passion. This _Sganarelle_ consents to do, but proposes to open the letter first, which she will not allow him to do, saying it would betray curiosity to break the seal, and no woman of virtue should feel even a wish to know the improper sentiments entertained towards her. Her guardian delivers the letter with an air of triumph and pity for his rival, which _Valere_ reads, and finds it a frank and passionate declaration of _Isabelle’s_ attachment to him. Not satisfied with this, she informs _Sganarelle_ that he has a design to carry her off by force, who goes to reproach him with the baseness of his conduct and the pretended terror and uneasiness of his ward. _Valere_ affirming that _Sganarelle_ has no authority to bring him these disdainful messages from the lady, _Sganarelle_ brings them together in his presence, when an admirable scene of _double-entendre_ follows: _Isabelle_ declaring that she sees two objects before her, one which she adores, the other which she abhors, _Sganarelle_ taking to himself the preference which is intended for _Valere_, and the latter rapturously kissing her hand behind his back, while her guardian affectionately embraces her. But in recompense for her fondness, he proposes to marry her the next day instead of at the end of eight days; and this driving _Isabelle_ to despair, she takes the resolution to quit the house in the middle of the night, but is met by her guardian, who asking the meaning of this nocturnal expedition, she tells him that her sister has come to her house, violently in love with _Valere_, whom she is going in search of, to console her; but _Sganarelle_ not being satisfied with this assignation, will not allow her to remain, and presently after turns his own bride out of doors, thinking it to be his brother’s ward _Leonore_, and goes with great glee to inform _Ariste_ of the adventure, and to lecture him on the difference of their schemes of female education. In the meantime _Leonore_ comes in from a ball, is scandalized at the story that she hears told of her; and the Notary that _Sganarelle_ had sent for to witness her elopement and the treachery of _Valere_, having married him to _Isabelle_, she comes out from his house, and explains the whole mystery to the delight of every one but _Sganarelle_.—The plot is charming, and the style is profuse of sense and wit; but there is this remark to be made here, as on other of Moliere’s plays, that however elegant, ingenious, or natural, the scene must be laid in France, that the whole passes under that empire of words, which is confined to her airy limits, and that there is a credulous and unqualified assent to verbal professions necessary to carry on the plot, which can be found nowhere but in France. This comedy was correctly but somewhat faintly represented. Mademoiselle Falcoz, who played _Isabelle_, was dressed as we have an idea servants were formerly dressed, with a full handkerchief and a black silk apron. Perhaps it was the costume of young ladies at that period; but we suspect that this is carrying literal correctness too far, where it shocks instead of assisting the imagination, and instructing us at the expense of our amusement, which is against the law of dramatic propriety. If the play was not done quite as it might be, it received a brilliant comment from the looks of some of the audience: and as the stage is a mirror to nature, so these are a mirror to the stage itself. Bright eyes! Laughing lips! Tell-tale eyebrows! spare us or we retire incontinently from the French play,—‘To the woods, to the waves, to the winds we’ll complain’ of your inexorable cruelty and endless persecution! THE THEATRES AND PASSION-WEEK _The Examiner._] [_April 6, 1828._ This being _Passion-week_, there was no play. ‘Because thou art virtuous, shall we not have cakes and ale?’ In truth, however, we have no objection to this alternation of festivity and mourning: it mimics the order of the natural world. We require a truce with pleasure as well as pain, to enable us to endure the one or to enjoy the other: and we must put a stop at some period or other to the whirl of dissipation, unless we would grow quite stupid or giddy. One week out of the fifty-two, in which the theatres shut their doors in your face, in which the play-bills do not flaunt on either side of the way, and you are not followed through the streets while the letter-bell is ringing in your ears, with the importunate repetition of ‘A Bill for Covent Garden or Drury Lane,’ is not amiss or out of reason; and the cry of ‘Hot-cross buns’ fills up the vacancy, and dallies with the interval of suspense not disagreeably. There is a large class of persons who only go to the play during Easter: it is hard if we cannot stay away from it during Passion-week. Our expectations and satisfaction are enhanced by the short restraint put upon them, and outward prevarication with our scruples. Without a little spice of hypocrisy or gravity the world would lose its savour: and by the periodical mark of reprobation thus set upon it, the play becomes a sort of pleasant sin all the rest of the year. As for the holiday-folks, Passion-week is to them a kind of bleak desert, beyond which they behold the land of promise,—a _ha-ha_, or line of circumvallation round the enchanted castle of Pleasure, over which they rush to storm the citadel with double eagerness and obstreperous glee, escaping from the formal gloom of Ash-Wednesday and Good-Friday, into the bright radiance of Easter-Sunday, as from the grave to a bridal, and ‘seizing their pleasures ‘With rough strife, Thorough the iron gates of life.’ We do not think the flutter of hope, the sparkle of joy, in the young or old adventurers, on these occasions of mirth and licence, would be complete, were it not for the sense of general restraint and privation which precedes them, and makes the release from the dead pause, the involuntary self-denial of the past week, a more precious achievement to all parties concerned. At least, this inference is pretty plainly discernible in the smiling looks and uneasy delight of the truant visitors in the boxes, and the noise and uproar of the overflowing galleries. To those who object to the disorderly interruptions of the latter, and consider the being present at an Easter-play as vulgar on that account, it may be proper to observe that there is no part of an audience so quiet and attentive as the galleries after the curtain once draws up, if it is not the fault of the actors or the author, who do not make themselves heard or understood so far; and again, we conceive it might be of service to dramatic writers sometimes to hazard their persons or compromise their dignity in the gallery, to see what impression their scenes make on hearts fresh from nature’s mint, instead of stationing themselves in the dress-boxes, to overhear polite whispers, or moulding their features in the glass of newspaper criticism the next day. The tears shed in silence by these untutored spectators, the breath held in, the convulsive sob, the eager gaze, the glance of delight, would afford better hints and lessons how to revive the spirit and the pathos of the primitive stage, than any instructions derived from drivelling Jerdan or from ranting Croly—nay, than from our own columns, the only ones, as modest Mr. Blackwood would say, worthy of the least attention in such matters. As to the players themselves, we do not know how Passion-week sits upon them. One would think it would be welcome to them as a break in the routine of business, as a pause in the wear-and-tear of life: but there is no saying. For they are so ‘stretched upon the rack of ecstasy,’ that almost any respite from it may be scarcely endurable. The public eye, the public voice, becomes a part of a man’s self, which he can hardly do without, even for an instant. The player out of his part is like the dram-drinker without his dram, the snuff-taker without his box. What organ is so sensitive as that of vanity? What thirst so insatiable, so incessant, as that of praise? The meagre days of Lent, one would argue previously, would be ‘gaudy-days’ to his Majesty’s servants, the drudges of public recreation,—snatched from the town, and given to retirement and oblivion,—brief interval to allay the feverish irritation of popular applause, to soothe the smart of mortification and disappointment. But no! the successful candidate thinks every moment lost in which he is robbed of the need of admiration; the unsuccessful is impatient to retrieve some error, to convince the public of theirs:—the hopeless performer thinks it better to be hissed than not noticed at all. Even the scene-shifters and candle-snuffers (to talk in the old style) fancy themselves, in a full house and busy night, persons of importance; and when left to themselves, must feel like fish out of water:—nothing else but the want of the customary excitement could probably enable actors to repeat their parts night after night: they stagger through them like drunken men. Many of the most fortunate seem uneasy, listless, and dissatisfied, when off the stage, because they do not see a thousand faces beaming with delight, because they do not hear at every step the shouts of Gods and men. Why do they not resort to Bartholomew-fair, where they may act every half-hour during the day, and not get a wink of sleep at night for the noise of cymbals and rattles? This is as if a man could never be easy unless he saw his person reflected in a thousand mirrors, or heard every word he utters repeated by a hundred echoes. Contempt, poverty, pain, want, and ‘all the natural ills that flesh is heir to,’ are preferable to this attainment of all that can be desired, and the craving after more. The lady in _Love’s Labour Lost_ condemns her lover _Biron_, for his excess of levity, ‘to jest a twelvemonth in an hospital.’ For ourselves, we would impose it as a useful penance on those who are spoiled by the admiration of friends, to take the stage to the _Land’s End_, and return by themselves, so as to breathe for a few days out of the atmosphere of habitual adulation; and as to actors (who are anything more than _walking gentlemen_) we think they should be bound over never to sing a song, or tell a story in private. Their theatrical pulse is already at a hundred, without shining in company. Those who have nothing to say but ‘what is set down for them,’ stand the best chance for repose and moderation, and are also likely to make the best actors. An actor has not to study his own part, but somebody else’s, as a painter should not be taken up with himself, but his sitters. The account of the death of the late Mr. Conway, the actor, came this week—a week of dole. It was melancholy enough, and must have occasioned regret to some who had at any time commented freely on his acting. Yet the original cause of it was not his fault, nor that of the critics—but rather of those who pushed him forward to run the gauntlet of public opinion, and attract a little momentary wonder and curiosity, without his being prepared to stand the trial, or meet the consequences. Popular favourites are too much like the innocent victims of superstition, led out, garlanded with flowers, to slaughter and to sacrifice. This was, we think, the case with Mr. Conway. He was a man of fine personal appearance, of modesty, and merit; but his more than usual height, and the disproportion between the shewiness of his figure and his genius for the drama (though he was by no means devoid of passion or talent) which at first made crowds of idle people run to look at and applaud him, afterwards subjected him to unavoidable, though in one sense (and such he felt it) unjust satire. It cannot be denied that he played _Jaffier_, for instance, with considerable force and feeling; and had he been of the ordinary stature (which is as necessary on the stage as in a group of statuary) he would have been highly respectable in that and other parts requiring a certain mixture of tenderness and vehemence. As it was, those who had at first extolled him to the skies, now swelled the cry against him; and the honey of adulation was naturally turned into gall and bitterness. Young, enthusiastic, and sincere, he attributed to malice and rooted enmity what was owing to accident, and the caprice and levity of the world, who keep up the sense of self-importance and excitement, by loading their thoughtless favourite with caresses one moment, and treating him with every mark of obloquy the next. Poor Conway was not prepared for this; he thought their admiration of him lasting and invaluable, their desertion wounded him to the quick. He did not know that the town was a hardened jilt, whose fondness or aversion are equally suspicious. He retired from the conflict, but bore with him the sense of ill-treatment which he had not knowingly merited, of disappointed hopes, which only the waters of oblivion could wash out, and which should deter others from encountering the same risk, who are not sure of the victory, or are not armed with fortitude equally proof against the homage or insults of mankind. Mr. Conway in his manners was mild and unaffected, spirited in his conduct, and if not a scholar, was distinguished by a love for reading and study. CHARLES KEAN _The Examiner._] [_April 13, 1828._ We went on Monday to see young Mr. Kean in _Lovers’ Vows_, with the intention of expressing an opinion; but we have nothing to add in the way of criticism to what we have already said. We will however in so delicate a matter venture on two general remarks for our own satisfaction, and we should hope for that of others. The first is, it appears to us clear that Mr. Kean, _jun._, will never make so great an actor as his father; and if not, he had better rest contented with his father’s fame. The Marquis of Douro does not, we daresay, think of fighting the battle of Waterloo over again: why then should the son of Mr. Kean wish to lay up any hard-earned and doubtful theatrical laurels of his own? The crammed pit of Covent-Garden is his Mount St. Jean: the third act of _Othello_ should be his escutcheon and his hereditary coat-of-arms. A pettifogging, cringing lawyer, a leader of a gang of ruffians, is made a lord, and ennobles a race of ciphers: if this is right, then why should not a man of genius reflect some of his glory on those next to him, and leave the dower of his great name to his immediate posterity? Because the gratitude of the public is insincere, and nobility a mere state-trick. It is not sentiment, but servility, that inclines us to pay respect to a long line of nobles or of princes. Take from the Marquis of Douro his estate of Strathfieldsay, and in a few years he might be in the King’s Bench, and the _Times_ newspaper would not subscribe five pounds to help him out. If Mr. Kean had left a hundred thousand pounds behind him, his son might have sat for a close borough, or have made a ‘vulgar’ Minister of State. We _do_ think there should be some distinctive mark, some ribbon of a Legion of Honour, with the smallest possible reversion of independence, some Tyburn ticket of merit, reserved for the sons of the Muses and the bastards of fortune, to exempt them alike from starving and the office of serving the public (which is much the same thing) for three generations. People talk of birth as necessary to honour and to power: did not the popes, the sons of peasants or of nobody, set their feet upon the necks of monarchs? People talk of the upstart pretensions of authors and men of intellect in modern times: did not the priest (the learned men of their day) come in as the first estate between heaven and the nobles? Why then taunt the flame of genius with being earth-born? It is the dotage of a prejudice to do so. We repeat, the sons of celebrated men are hardly off: the example of their parents (together with necessity) urges them to do something: that very example, from being too near, and almost seeming to save them the trouble of exertion, precludes the possibility of success. Even where the genius might be the same, the imitation and also the habitual idea of doing something extraordinary without knowing what, is prejudicial, if not fatal; and if they wish to turn out anything, they should strike into a path the opposite of what is always before them. Young Kean perhaps would shine as a University-wrangler, or a conveyancer under the bar; and the son of a philosopher should go to court! Again, Mr. Kean is said by his friends to be a promising young actor. We have nothing to say to that; but we will tell him one thing, there is no such person as a promising actor. It is here, as in all similar pursuits, performance or nothing. We do not say no great actor improves, but no actor becomes great by improvement. The sun is seen as soon as it appears above the horizon: there is the same glory round its rising and its setting: so may it always be with the sun of genius, which is the lamp of the world! Garrick fell as it were from the clouds: Mr. Kean’s father rose at once from obscurity. The late Mr. Kemble was the only actor that we remember to have attained to the first rank by gradual advances; and he was sustained in his progress by great stateliness of manner and advantages of person. In general, those who are always improving on themselves, are surpassed by others, and complain that, as they are about to seize the wreath of fame, it is snatched from them by some bolder and more fortunate hand. We do not presume to sit on Mr. Kean’s _quantum meruit_—we will not—but if he is not likely to become a first-rate actor, his name forbids him to be aught less. If he knows our tone in speaking when we are serious or merely splenetic, he will know that these remarks are dictated by anything but a feeling hostile to him. A new melo-dramatic entertainment succeeded, called _The Dumb Savoyard and his Monkey_. The story is in few words, as follows: The _Count Maldecini_ having been condemned to die (we know not why—for these inventions plunge us at once _in medias res_) his wife accompanied by their little child appears suddenly on the stage with a pardon for him. The ferryman at Ober Wesel, however, refuses to carry her up the river, as the hour is too late; and she is in despair, when the Savoyard, with the assistance of his monkey, undertakes to convey her to the place of destination. They arrive safely at the Falls of the Grenfells, near the salt-mine, in which her husband is confined, when they are attacked by a band of robbers who take a number of valuable ornaments from her, and among the rest the morocco-case, containing her husband’s pardon; but this, at her passionate and distracted entreaty, the chief restores in a fit of generosity, and with an appropriate speech for a German robber. Meantime, the monkey contrives to pick the pardon out of the case, and hide it in a crevice of the rock, on the top of which he sits grinning, the demon of mischief and meddlesomeness. When the _Countess_ arrives at the prison, she accordingly misses what she had built all her hopes upon, but she deceives the jailor and escapes with her husband, also by the aid of the Savoyard and the dextrous _Marmozette_. They are pursued and overtaken just at the very spot where the precious document had been lost; and as the Count is about to be shot, in conformity to his sentence, which he reads and very sentimentally and loyally approves, the monkey betrays the hiding-place of the pardon, which the frantic _Countess_ eagerly rescues from his grasp, and the whole ends happily. Mrs. W. West played the heroine, and looked forlorn and interesting. Mrs. Barrymore was _Pipino_, the Dumb Savoyard, and made a very pretty boy. As to the nimble _Marmozette_ (Master Wieland), if it depended on us, we would make him skip. Our old acquaintance _Jocko_ has left a numerous progeny behind him, and we are afraid we shall never see the end of the breed. Why, in the midst of the beautiful and enchanting scenery on the banks of the Rhine (so admirably represented in this piece) must we have an artificial monster staring us in the face like an ugly looking-glass the whole time. We have no patience on this point. We never could bear to see that branch of the species on or off the stage, and would shoot them like the man in Candide, even at a risk of similar consequences. We have no need of a menagerie in a play-house; the money taken at the door on such occasions should be a deodand to the proprietors of Exeter-’Change. We wish the _Times_, in its gravity, would take up the subject, and with its leaden mace drive these _lusus naturæ_ and nauseous _double-entendres_ from the scene.—We did not recover our equanimity till Miss Foote, as _Meggy Macgilpin_, and her pretty Highland dress, put us into good humour; and O’Keefe’s song of _Twang twang darillo_, between Gatty and Russell, scattered every particle of bile in a roar of laughter. COVENT-GARDEN. The holiday attraction of the week has been a melodrama called _Tuckitomba_, said to be founded on a fact which happened in Jamaica fifty years ago. The interest turns on a black sorceress who steals her master’s child out of revenge, on an old pirate (_Tuckitomba_) who runs away with a mulatto-girl for love, and on the blowing up of the vessel in which they set sail for Africa, by the carelessness of a tailor on board (Blanchard) who sets fire to the powder-magazine with the contents of his tobacco-pipe. There was a great deal of bustle, and a want of interest in this piece. The prominent trait was the acting of Keeley, who is called ‘for shortness’ Goliah. This gentleman really answers to _Falstaff’s_ description of ‘a man made after supper of a cheese-paring.’ He is a shred of comedy; a pocket-Liston. He is great in little parts, and makes an amusing approach to a nonentity.—The Minor Theatres have each had their novelties during the week, and been tolerably successful. The critics are divided on the temper and behaviour of John Bull at this season. Some say he was lumpish and leaden at Drury-Lane on Monday, others, that he was in all his glory at Covent-Garden on the same evening. It is from seeing the confusion and uncertainty that prevail in the most authentic reports that we propose shortly to publish two _Examiners_ a week, to set the town right in these and such-like particulars, and to save them the trouble of consulting the daily papers altogether. As to John’s behaviour, pleased or sulky, drunk or sober, we never could see any difference in it. Where we were, a man stood up on a bench in the pit, and another insisting on his getting down, and on his refusal threatening to call him out the next day, the first made answer—‘Aye, if your master will let you!’—‘Master! what do you mean by that? I have no master: I come and go where I please!’ The women now interfered, and one of them clapped her handkerchief to her husband’s mouth to prevent further disagreeables. All an Englishman’s ideas are modifications of his will; and it is strange that with all his boasted independence and equality, he thinks he has a right to insult every one who is not a better man than himself. The reason is, he has no respect for himself, nor consequently for others, except for some external advantage of wealth or situation; and his ill-humour can only be bribed to keep the peace by his self-interest. ‘Vice to be hated needs but to be seen:‘—we are sure that this at least may be said of ill-manners. Turn we from them to the French play, where the object is to enjoy the scene, to be pleased with yourself, and not to insult your neighbours, or inquire which is master and which is man. There have been several _debûts_, all very creditable and successful, Monsieur Berteche, Madame Beaufre, and Mademoiselle Irma. We saw the former (who is of the Mademoiselle Mars school, and whose tongue runs faster than a race-horse) in the _Ecole des Veillards_ with Monsieur Perlet, who plays the jealous husband with great point and spirit: but shall we add, that in the passionate parts, he does not _let out_ enough, there is an interdicted and internal manner, a fidgetty and confined air, which is probably owing to the subordinate parts in which he usually acts. In this comedy, a gentleman pulls off his coat on the stage, which is with us an indecorum, except in farce. We mention this to show the difference of feeling in such matters. We missed Perlet in the _Cheats of Scapin_: he always contrives to _cheat_ us of our favourite Moliere. But we had a full taste of him in the _Anglaises pour rire_. And these are our fair country-women—so they sit, speak, walk, sing, and dance, in the eyes of foreigners! No, it is Monsieur Pelissie and Monsieur Perlet—but very like! SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. _The Examiner._] [_April 27, 1828._ The last week or two has been rich in theatricals; Miss Stephens in _Love in a Village_, where the scene opens with those two young beauties sitting in a bower of roses like a flower stuck in the stomacher of beauty, and where that unconscious siren ‘warbles her native wood-notes wild’ with such simplicity and sweetness; Charles Kemble in the _Inconstant_, who in one glorious scene plays tragedy and comedy to the life, and in one short moment tastes the ‘fierce extremes’ of pleasure and agony, of life and death; and _Othello_, with bumpers and three times three; to say nothing of Madame Vestris in the _Invincibles_, and Mr. John Reeve in the immortal _Major Sturgeon_. Why then did we take no notice of them? Notice we have taken, but it has been with ‘our mind’s eye,’ in ‘our heart’s core.’ Ill will it fare with us, when we do not cast a sidelong glance at those pregnant abridgments, the play-bills, and when their flaunting contents, that unfold to us the map of our life, no longer excite a smile or a sigh. Any one who pleases may then write our epitaph, though it will not be worth writing. At such a season, for instance, we saw Mrs. Siddons in such a part for the first time; in such another, Kemble walked with regal air across the stage, and his stately brow needed no diadem to set it off; in such a character Bannister was in all his glory; in that, Suett vented his resistless folly; here, Munden went the whole length of his face; here, Lewis was all life and air; here, Jack Palmer was great indeed; here, King was bitter in _Touchstone_, and Miss Pope romantic in _Audrey_; then, Mrs. Goodall played the part of _Rosalind_, and tripped in becoming page’s attire through the forest of Ardennes (days and years long past!); here, Dignum warbled as _Amiens_ (before we had heard of the peace of Amiens); and here, Mrs