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convictions as to necessary and universal truth. sationalism, followed out logically to its consequences, would represent the mind as incapable of conceiving of a spiritual God, or of being convinced of the indelible distinction between good and evil; and makes it illegiti mate to argue from the effects in the world in favor of the existence of a First Cause.

Locke is ever to be distinguished from those who derive all our ideas from the senses. He takes great pains to show that a vast number of the most important ideas which the mind of man can form are got from reflection on the operations of our own minds. His precise doctrine is that the materials of the ideas which man can entertain come in by two inlets, sensation and reflection; that they are at first perceived by the mind, and then retained; and that they are subsequently turned into a great variety of new shapes by the faculties of discernment, comparison, abstraction, composition, and the power of discovering moral relations. The ideas being thus obtained, he supposes that the mind can perceive agreements and disagreements among them. In particular, it is endowed with a power of intuition, by which it at once perceives the agreement and disagreement of certain ideas, discovers these to be in the very nature of ideas, and necessary. Such being the views of Locke, they are as different from those of the Sensationalists, on the one hand, as they are from those of Descartes, Leibnitz, and Kant on the other. Indeed, the most careless reader cannot go through the Essay on Human Understanding without discovering that, if Locke has a strong sensational, he has also a rational side. He will allow no ideas to be in the mind except those which can be shown to spring from one or other of the inlets, and yet he resolutely maintains that, with these ideas before it, the mind may perceive truth at once; he thinks that morality is capable of demonstration, and in religion he is decidedly rationalistic. So far, it appears to me, we can easily ascertain the views of Locke. It is more difficult to determine how far he supposed the mind to be capable of modifying or adding to the materials derived from the outward and inward senses. It is quite clear that he represents the mind as having the power to perceive and compound and divide these ideas, and discover resemblances and other relations; but there are passages in which, consistently or inconsistently, he speaks of the mind having something

more suggested to it, or superinducing something higher. Locke speaks of certain ideas being "suggested" to the mind by the senses,

a phraseology adopted by Reid and Stewart (Essay, II. vii. 9); and of "relation" as "not contained in the real existence of things, but extraneous and superinduced " (II. xxv. 8).

Confining our attention to the points which are clear, I think we may discover, not certainly such grave errors as in the doctrines of the sensationalists, but still several oversights. First, he overlooks the cognitions and beliefs involved in the exercises with which the mind starts. This has arisen, to a great extent, from his attaching himself to the theory that the mind begins, not with knowledge, but with ideas, which are at first perceived by the mind, and then compared, upon which comparison it is that the mind reaches knowledge. He has never set himself to inquire what is involved in the sensation and reflection which give us our ideas. He takes no notice of intuition enabling us to look directly at the very thing, or of our intuition of extension, or of the cognitive self-consciousness, or of the beliefs gathering round space and time and the infinite. Secondly, he has not given a distinct place and a sufficient prominence to the ideas got from the mind observing certain qualities and relations in objects made known by sensation and reflection. The defects of his system, in not giving an adequate account of our idea of moral good, which he gets from our sensations of pleasure and pain, with a law of God superinduced without so much as his trying to prove how we are bound, on his system, to obey that law was perceived at an early date by British writers, who adhered to him as closely as possible; and Shaftesbury and Hutcheson called in a Moral Sense (as an addition to Locke's outward and inward sense); while Bishop Butler called in conscience, which he characterized as a "principle of reflection." Thirdly, he has not inquired what are the laws involved in the Intuition to which he appeals in the fourth book of his Essay as giving us the most certain of all our knowledge. Had he developed the nature of intuition, and the principles involved, with the same care as he has expounded the experiential element, his system would have been at once and effectually saved from the fearful results in which it issued in France, where his name was used to support doctrines which he would have repudiated with deep indignation. He is right in saying that the mind has not consciously before it in spontaneous action such speculative principles as that “Whatever is is," or moral maxims in a formalized shape; but he has failed to perceive that such principles as these are the rules of

our intuitions, and that they can be discovered by a reflex process of generalization. It is but justice to Locke to say that he acknowledges necessary truth, but it does not form a part of his general theory. His professed followers have abandoned it; and sceptics have shown that he cannot reach it in consistency with his system.

CHAPTER II.

LIMITS TO OUR KNOWLEDGE, IDEAS, AND BELIEFS.

IT is instructive to find that not a few of the most profound philosophers with which our world has been honored have been prone to dwell on the limits to man's capacity. The truth is, it is always the smallest minds which are most apt to be swollen with the wind engendered by their own vanity. The intellects which have gone out with greatest energy to the furthest limits are those which feel most keenly when they strike against the barriers by which human thought is bounded. The minds which have set out on the widest excursions, and which have taken the boldest flights, are those that know best that there is a wider region lying beyond, which is altogether inaccessible to man. It was the peculiarly wise man of the Hebrews who said, "No man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end." The Greek sage by emphasis declared, that, if he excelled others, it was only in this, that he knew nothing. It was the avowed object of the sagacious Locke to teach man the length of his tether, which, we may remark, those feel most who attempt to get away from it. Reid labored to restrain the pride of philosophy, and to bring men back to a common sense, in respect of which the peasant and philosopher are alike. It was the design of Kant's great work to show how little speculative reason can accomplish. In our own day we have had Sir W. Hamilton showing, with unsurpassed logical power, within what narrow bounds the thought of man is restrained.

We have already in our survey gathered the materials for enabling us to settle the general question, in which, however, are several special questions which should be carefully separated :

1. What are the limits to man's power of acquiring knowledge? The answer is, that he cannot know, at least in this world, any substance or separate existence other than those revealed by sense and consciousness. There may be, very probably there are, in the universe, other substances besides matter and spirit, other existences which are not substances, as well as space and time, but these must ever remain unknown to us in this world. Again, he can never know any qualities or relations among the objects thus revealed to the outward and inward sense, except in so far as we have special faculties of knowledge; and the number and the nature of these are to be ascertained by a process of induction, and by no other process either easier or more difficult. This is what has been attempted in this treatise, it may be supposed with only partial success in the execution, but, it is confidently believed, in the right method. A more difficult process need not be resorted to, and would conduct us only into ever-thickening intricacies; and an easier method is not available in the investigation of the facts of nature in this, nor indeed in any other department. After unfolding what seems to be in our primitive cognitions, I gave some account of the primitive faiths which gather round them, and classified the relations which the mind can discover, and unfolded the moral convictions which we are led to form. Such are the limits to man's original capacity, of which there are decisive tests in self-evidence, necessity, and catholicity.

Within these limits man has a wide field in which to expatiate; a field, indeed, which he can never thor