phrases, what is their mode of operation, what the rule which they follow, and the purpose which they are competent to serve.

As the result, it will appear that there are in the mind such existences and powers as primary perceptions and fundamental laws of belief, but that they are very different in their nature from the account which is often given of them, and that they are by no means fitted to accomplish the ends to which they have been turned in metaphysical and theological speculation. I would as soon believe that there are no such agents as heat, chemical affinity, and electricity in physical nature, as that there are no immediate perceptions and native-born convictions in this mind of ours. I look indeed on the one kind of agents, like the other, to be among the deepest and most potent at work in this world, mental and material; and yet the one class, like the other, while operating every instant on soul or body, are apt to hide themselves from the view. Indeed they discover themselves only by their effects, and their law can be detected only by a careful observation of its actings; and it should be added, that both are capable of evil as well as good, and are to be carefully watched and guarded in the use which is made of them.

The prejudice against native and necessary principles has arisen to a great extent from the extravagant account which has been rendered of them, and from the vain, the ambitious, and often pernicious purposes which they have been made to serve. It is to be hoped, that by a clear determination of their exact nature, and of the rules of their operation, and by a judicious exposition of the method by which alone they can be discovered, and of the restrictions which should be laid on their employment, the feeling against them on the part of so many, philosophers and non-philosophers, may be dispelled; while

at the same time rash speculators are prevented from employing them for the furthering of pretentious ends to which they have no legitimate reference.

The

In inquiring into the evidence of their existence, into the place which they hold in the constitution of the mind, the laws by which they are guided, and the way in which they manifest themselves, I am to proceed throughout in the Method of Induction. I profess to prosecute the investigation in the way of the observation of facts-with an accompanying analysis and co-ordination, but still of facts, which have been carefully observed. It has often been shown that the method of induction admits, mutatis mutandis, of an application to the study of the human mind, as well as to that of the material universe. difference in the application lies mainly in this, that in the one case we use self-consciousness, or the internal sense, whereas in the other we employ the external sense as the organ or instrument. I certainly do not propose to find out the intuitions of the mind by the bodily eye, aided or unaided by the microscope, nor discover their mode of operation by the blowpipe. They are in their nature spiritual, and so sense cannot touch them, nor see them, nor hear them, nor can the telescope in its widest range detect them. Still they are there in our mental nature; there is an eye of wider sweep than the telescope, and more searching than the microscope, ready to be directed towards them. By introspection we may look on them in operation; by abstraction or analysis we may separate the essential peculiarity from the rough concrete presentations; and by generalization, rise to the law which they follow.

But let me not be misunderstood. The method pursued, as it is not on the one hand to be confounded with an ambitious transcendentalism which declines to ask help from observation, so it is as little on the other hand

to be identified with a miserable sensational empiricism. I do not expect to discover what are the native principles of the mind by à priori speculation, but neither do I profess by observation to lay or construct a foundation on which to rear fundamental truth. I am not, therefore, to be lightly charged with a contradiction, as if I resorted to experience for a basis or ground of principles which I represent as original and independent. I employ induction simply as a mean or method of finding laws which are prior to induction, otherwise induction could not find them. Experience is not supposed by me to furnish the ground of necessary truth; all that it can do is to supply the facts which enable us to discover the truth, and that the truth is necessary. I allude to this objection, not with the view of formally meeting it here, but in order to show that it has not been overlooked, and then adjourn the discussion of it to its appropriate place. It will come out, in the course of our survey, that while there are regulative principles in the mind, operating altogether independently of any reflex notice we may take of them, and not depending for their authority on our induction of them, it is at the same time true that they can become known to us as general principles only by inward observation, and can be legitimately employed in philosophic speculation only on the condition of being rigidly inducted. By observation we may rise to the discovery of mental principles which do not in themselves depend on observation, but which have a place in our constitution anterior to our observation of them, and are there, as observation discovers, native, necessary, and universal.

In some respects, it is an unfortunate time for giving forth such a work to the world. Every age, like the seed, is at one and the same time the product of combined influences in the past, and the germ of life for the future.

In this present age, two manner of principles, each of the character of a different parent, are struggling for the mastery; the one earth-born, sensational, empirical, utilitarian, deriving all ideas from the senses, and all knowable truth from man's limited experience, and holding that man can be swayed by no motives of a higher order than the wish to secure pleasure or avoid pain; the other, if not heaven-born, at least cloud-born, being ideal, transcendental, pantheistic, attributing man's loftiest ideas to an inward light, appealing to principles which are discovered without the trouble of observation, and issuing in a belief in the good, instead of a belief in God. Each of these views has its keen partisans, either violently attacking one another, or regarding each other with silent contempt, while the great body of reading men are professedly indifferent,-those who claim to be neutral, however, being all the while unconsciously in the service either of the one or other, commonly of the lower or earthly, just as those who profess to belong neither to God nor Mammon, do in fact belong to Mammon.

What then can be expected of the reception of such a work in such an age? A large body, even of the thinking portion of the community, are prejudiced against all such discussions, as fruitless of good in every circumstance, and in some forms productive of mischief. I suspect the great mass of those who call themselves practical men, and the majority of those addicted to the study of the physical sciences, will be further prepossessed against this treatise as defending a doctrine which they thought had been long ago and for ever exploded by Locke. On the other hand, those most inclined to favour such pursuits are, for the most part, committed and pledged to extreme views, and can scarcely be expected to look with a favourable eye on a work which, professedly built on pure observation, declines to follow any

school, indeed, proclaims that as schools and sects, with their separate standpoints and watchwords, have long ago ceased in physical science, so it is time they should disappear in the field of mental science likewise; that those who prosecute the study, calling no man master, may look, without prepossession, into the volume spread out before them in their own soul, and read it with the eye of consciousness. Nearly all confessed metaphysicians will assert that I am degrading high philosophy in making it submit to the method of induction, and that the restrictions which I would lay upon speculation must deprive it of its most fascinating charms; while hundreds of eager youths, walking hopefully on the high à priori road, and expecting that the next turn-which they already see not far in front-must open on the great ocean of absolute truth, will feel as if they were unmercifully stopped and turned back at the very time when the long looked-for scene was about to burst gloriously on their view.

But regarded under some other aspects, this is an age in which such a work (I would on this account as well as many others it were only worthy of its subject) is especially needed. Every nation awakened to intelligence must have a philosophy of some description. Whatever men may profess or affect, they cannot in fact do without it; and if any age or nation, arrived at civilization, will not form or adopt a high and elevating philosophy, it will assuredly fall under the power of a low and a debasing one. It oftens happens that a profession of contempt for all metaphysics as being futile and unintelligible, is often an introduction to a discussion which is metaphysical without the parties knowing it (as the person in the French play had spoken prose all his life without being aware of it); and of such metaphysics it will commonly be found that they are futile and unintelligible