for them, and recommends them to his choice, is not genius, but a minute and feeble understanding; capable indeed of being made, by long practice, expert in the ma- nagement of words; but which never did, and never will, qualify any man for the difcovery or illuf- "tration of fentiment. For what is genius? What, but found judg- ment, fenfibility of heart, and a talent for accurate and extenfive obfervation? And will found judg- ment prepare a man for being im- pofed on by words? Will fenfibi- lity of heart render him infenfible to his own feelings, and inatten- tive to thofe of other men? Will a talent for accurate and extenfive obfervation make him ignorant of the real phenomena of nature; and confequently incapable of detecting what is falfe or equivocal in the reprefentation of facts? And yet, when facts are fairly and fully re- prefented; when human fatiments are ftrongly felt, and perfpicuoufly defcribed; and when the meaning of words is afcertained, and the fame word hath always the fame idea annexed to it-there is an end of metaphyfic.
A body is neither vigorous nor beautiful, in which the fize of fome members is above, and that of others below, their due propor- tion every part must have its proper fize and ftrength, otherwife the refult of the whole will be de- formity and weakness. Neither is real genius confiftent with a dif- proportionate ftrength of the rea- foning powers above thofe of tafte and imagination. Thofe minds in whom all the faculties are united in their due proportion, are far fuperior to the puerilities of meta- phyfical fcepticism. They truft
to their own feelings, which are frong and decifive, and leave no room for hesitation or doubts about
their authenticity. They fee through moral fubjects at one glance; and what they fay, carries both the heart and the understanding along with it. When one has long drudg ed in the dull and unprofitable pages of metaphyfic, how pleafing the tranfition to a moral writer of true genius! Would you know what that genius is, and where it may be found? Go to Shakespeare, to Bacon, to Montefquieu, to Rouffeau; and when you have slu- died them, return, if you can, to Hume and Hobbes, and Male- branche, and Leibnitz, and Spi- nofa. If, while you learned wif- dom from the former, your heart exulted within you, and rejoiced to contemplate the fublime and fuccefsful efforts of human intel- lect; perhaps it may now be of ufe as a leffon of humility, to have re- courfe to the latter; and, for a while, to behold the picture of a foul wandering from thought to thought, without knowing where to fix; and from a total want of feeling, or a total ignorance of what it feels, mistaking names for things, verbal diftinctions and analogies for real difference and fimilitude, and the obfcure infi- nuations of a bewildered under- ftanding, puzzled with words, and perverted with theory, for the fen- timents of nature, and the dictates of reafon. A metaphyfician, ex- ploring the receffes of the human heart, hath just such a chance for finding the truth, as a man with microfcopic eyes would have for finding the road. The latter might amufe himfelf with contemplating the various mineral strata that are
diffufed along the expanfion of a needle's point, but of the face of nature he could make nothing: he would ftart back with horror from the caverns yawning between the mountainous grains of fand that lie before him; but the real gulf or mountain he could not fee
Is the futility of metaphyfical fyftems exaggerated beyond the truth by this allufion? Tell me, then, in which of those fyftems I fhall find fuch a defcription of the foul of man, as would enable me to know what it is. A great and excellent author obferves, that if all human things were to perifh, except the works of Shakespeare, it might ftill be known from them what fort of creature man was *: A fentiment nobly imagined, and as just as it is fublime! Can the fame thing be faid with truth of any one, or of all the metaphyfical treatises that have been written on the nature of man? If an inhabi- tant of another planet were to read The Treatife of Human Nature, what notions of human nature could he gather from it? That man muft believe one thing by instinct, and muft alfo believe the contrary by reafon :-That the univerfe is no- thing but a heap of perceptions, unperceived by any fubftance: That this univerfe, for any thing man knows to the contrary, might have made itself, that is, exifted before it exifted; as we have no reason to believe that it proceeded from any caufe, notwithstanding it may have had a beginning:
That though a man could bring himself to believe, yea, and have reafon to believe, that every thing in the univerfe proceeds from fome caufe, yet it would be unreafon- able for him to believe, that the univerfe itself proceeds from a caufe:-That the foul of man is not the fame this moment it was the laft; that we know not what it is; that it is not one but many things; and that it is nothing at all; and yet, that in this foul is the agency of all the caufes that operate throughout the fenfible creation ;-and yet, that in this foul there is neither power nor agen cy, nor any idea of either :—That if thieves, cheats, and cut-throats, deferve to be hanged, cripples, idiots, and diseased perfons fhould not be permitted to live; because the imperfections of the latter, and the faults of the former, are on the very fame footing, both being dif approved by thofe who contemplate them: - That the perfection of human knowledge is to doubt :- That man ought to believe no- thing, and yet that man's belief ought to be influenced and deter- mined by certain principles :- That we ought to doubt of every thing, yea of our doubts them- felves; and therefore the utmoft that philofophy can do, is to give a doubtful folution of doubtful doubts f-That nature continually impofes on us, and continually counteracts herself, by giving us fagacity to detect the impofture:
That we are neceffarily and un- avoidably determined to act and
Lord Lyttelton's Dialogues of the Dead.
+ Strange as this expreffion may feem, it is not without a precedent. The fourth fection of Mr. Hume's Effays on the Human Understanding is called Sceptical doubts concerning the operations of the understanding; and the fifth lection bears this title, Sceptical folution of thefe doubts.
think in certain cafes after a cer- tain manner, but that we ought not to fubmit to this unavoidable neceffity; and that they are fools who do fo:-That man, in all his perceptions, actions, and volitions, is a mere paffive machine, and has no feparate existence of his own, be- ing entirely made up of other things, of the existence of which, how- ever, he is by no means certain; and yet, that the nature of all things depends fo much upon man, that two and two could not be equal to four, nor fire produce heat, nor the fun light, without an ex- prefs act of the human understand- ing:-That none of our actions are in our power; that we ought to exercise power over our actions; and that there is no fuch thing as power:-That body and motion may be regarded as the caufe of thought; and that body does not exift:-That the universe exifts in the mind; and that the mind does not exift:That the human un- derstanding acting alone, doth en- tirely fubvert itself, and prove by argument, that by argument no- thing can be proved.Thefe are a few of the many fublime myfteries brought to light by this great phi- lofopher. But thefe, however they may illuminate our terreftrial liter- ati, would convey no information to the planetary ranger, except perhaps, that the fage metaphyfi- cian knew nothing of his fubject.
What a frange detail! does not the reader exclaim? Can it be, that any man fhould ever bring himself to think, or imagine that he could bring others to think, fo abfurdly! What a tafte, what a heart must he poffefs, whofe de- light it is, to reprefent nature as a chaos, and man as a monster; to
fearch for deformity and confufion, where others rejoice in the percep- tion of order and beauty; and to feek to imbitter the happiest mo- ments of human life, namely, thofe we employ in contemplating the works of creation, and adoring their Author, by this fuggeftion, equally falfe and malevolent, that the moral, as well as material world, is nothing but darknets, diffonance, and perplexity!
"Where all life dies, death lives, and nature breeds
Perverse, all monstrous, all pro- digious things,
"Abominable, unutterable, and worfe
Than fables yet have feign'd, or fear conceiv'd!”
Were this fyftem a true one, we fhould be little obliged to him who gives it to the public; for we could hardly imagine a greater misfor- tune than fuch a caft of under- ftanding as would make us believe it. But, founded as it is, in words mifunderstood, and facts mifrepre- fented;-fupported, as it is, by fophiftry fo egregious, and often fo puerile, that we can hardly con- ceive how even the author himself fhould be impofed upon by it ;— furely he who attempts to obtrude it on the weak and unwary, muft have fomething in his disposition, which to a man of a good heart, or good taste, can never be the object of envy.
We are told, that the end of fcepticifm, as it was taught by Pyrrho, Sextus Empiricus, and other ancients, was to obtain in- difturbance. I know not whether this be the end our modern fceptics have in view; if it is, the means
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