creases our interest in the thought or sentiment uttered, and turns, if I may so speak, prose into poetry. The ideal spirit may be an incentive to glorious enterprise; it steeps the country before us— mountain, vale, sea, and island-in sunlight, and thus allures us to explore it. It is especially elevating when it takes a moral direction, when it places before us a high model to which we ever look, and to which we would become assimilated, and sets us forth amidst sacrifices made, to accomplish some high end, reaching forth far in time or into eternity. Still, it is of the utmost moment that the person steadily draw the distinction between our knowledge of the object and the light in which we view it. Without this, the unrestrained spirit will be apt to break forth into extravagance, which will end in a collapse and a reaction; foolish hopes will be excited which can never be gratified, and when this comes to be realized, the issue must be the blackest disappointment, not unfrequently ennui, apathy, and chagrin,—at times sourness, bitterness, or despair.

While we can with truth say so much of the ideal spirit, I can bestow no such commendation on idealism as a philosophic system, that is the system which would raise our associated sentiments to the rank of cognitions. I allow that it is vastly superior to sensationalism, which acknowledges only the visible and the tangible; but, in making this allowance, it is proper to add that, on the principle that extremes meet, it sometimes happens that there are persons at one and the same time sensationalists and idealists, believing only in the physical, and yet not believing the physical to be real.' But, speaking of idealism in itself, it is an unphilosophic system, and, in the end, has a dangerous tendency. Its radical vice lies in maintaining that certain things, which we intuitively know or believe to be real, are not real. I say, certain things; for were it to deny that all things are real, it would be scepticism. Idealism draws back from such an issue with shuddering. But, affirming the reality of certain objects, with palpable inconsistency it will not admit the existence of other objects equally guaranteed by our constitution. This inconsistency will pursue the system remorselessly as an avenger. Idealism com

I See a review of Mr. Mill, infra, sect. vii. p. 345.

monly begins by declaring that external objects have no such reality as we suppose them to have, and then it is driven or led in the next age, or in the pages of the next speculator, to avow that they have no reality at all. At this stage it will still make lofty pretentions to a realism founded, not on the external phenomenon, but on the internal idea. But the logical necessity speedily chases the system from this refuge, and constrains the succeeding speculator to admit that self is not as it seems, or that it exists only as it is felt, or when it is felt; and the terrible consequence cannot be avoided, that we cannot know whether there be objects before us or no, or whether there be an eye or a mind to perceive them. There is no way of avoiding this black and blank scepticism but by standing up for the trustworthiness of all our original intuitions, and formally maintaining that there is a reality wherever our intuitions declare that there is.

The idealist has indeed a truth, which he weaves into the body of his system, but that truth is misapprehended and perverted. There are impressions and inferences ever mingling, naturally or inadvertently, lawfully or unlawfully, with our knowledge; and he confounds these, when it is his business, as a professed philosopher, to distinguish them in theory-as men of common sense ever distinguish them in practice. His system is not clearness, but confusion. He has dived below the surface, but has not, after all, gone down to the bottom so as to see all, and his view of the deep is more obscure than if he had remained above. Amazed or enraptured with the discovery of certain facts immediately below that which is patent to the vulgar eye, he looks on them as the main or sole facts, and henceforth overlooks all the superficial ones, forgetting that it is true in philosophy, as in geology, that the rock strata which jut out into the most prominent peaks are those which, if we follow them, dive down into the deepest interior. He has sought to attain a higher position, but has stopped halfway, and his views, after all, are not so clear as those obtained further down, and they are certainly much more confusing than those which he might have had, had he reached the clear height above all dimming influence; they are at best like those which the traveller gets on cloudy days when he has climbed a certain

elevation up the Alps, and, in the midway mists, catches occasional glimpses of the green valleys below him, and of the imposing mountain-tops and sky yet far above him.

SEC. III.-ON SCEPTICISM.

Scepticism may assume a variety of forms, which, however, differ only in some being more thorough-going than others, some denying the veracity of certain of our cognitions, others denying the trustworthiness of all. Like most kinds of folly, it commonly does not reach its last stage at once, but advances step by step. Some philosopher of eminence sets aside one of our intuitions, and then an advancing thinker, impelled by logical consistency, or by the sharpness of his mind, or by levity, or wantonness, or by the love of paradox or of notoriety, shows how, on the same ground, we may deny them all. It was thus that Berkeley, in denying the substantial existence of body, prepared the way for Hume, who denied the substantial existence of spirit; and thus that Kant, in affirming that space and time had no existence out of the mind, opened a path for Fichte, when he declared that the external object in space might also be the creation of the mind; and for Schelling and Hegel when they made mind and matter, Creator and creature, all and alike ideal.' I have already discussed scepticism disguised as idealism; I am now to offer a few remarks on an avowed scepticism.

Let us understand precisely how far a sceptic may go. In doing so it is essential to remember the distinction between the spontaneous and reflex use of our intuitions. Under the first of these aspects they not only claim authority, they secure practical concurrence and obedience. Every man knows that he has a bodily frame, and believes that it exists in space, and that if he would go in the nearest way to a given point, he must walk in a straight

1 Thus Sir W. Hamilton says (Metaph. Lect.): "Suppose that the total object of consciousness in perception=12; and suppose that the external reality contributes 6, the material 3, and the mind 3; this may enable you to form some rude conjecture of the object of perception." Surely there is a wide door here opened to idealism, and no means left of checking its entrance. For we are not told how to distinguish between what is got from without, and what is given from within. See the consequences infra, in Supplem. sect. vi. and viii., pp. 344, 348.

line. Doubt and denial are possible only in regard to the reflex statement of intuitive principles. Every man is in fact convinced that he has a solid bodily frame, and that the nearest way to a particular place is a straight line; but it is possible for him, if he chooses, to deny the propositions in which these truths are conveyed; it is quite competent for him speculatively to assert that he has not a body, and that the shortest road to a given point is a crooked line.

And this leads me to point out in what respect scepticism may be allowable, and wherein it may even be beneficial. The dogmatist often lays down and employs for purposes lawful and unlawful, principles represented as indisputable, which have not the sanction of our constitution, or which may be expressed in a form only partially or approximately correct. Great interests may often be involved in having these principles doubted or disputed. Without this we may find, before we are aware of it, great moral or religious truths assaulted or undermined; or we may set up for defence of the citadel of truth a crazy and insecure turret, which is a positive weakness, and which, as it falls, may give an easier inlet to the enemy. This, then, is the special mission of the sceptic: it is to lay a restraint on the dogmatist; at times, if need be, to assail or to lash him. It would be wrong to deny that the scepticism of Hume has cleared the philosophic atmosphere of many weakening and deleterious influences which had been gathering for centuries. The great sin of scepticism lies in this, that it attacks indiscriminately the good and the evil, and would destroy both as by a consuming fire. But surely there may be a means of securing all the good ends which scepticism has produced, without the accompanying destruction of the good, Socrates seems to me to have succeeded in this, when he attacked the pretentious systems of his age, at the same time that he held resolutely by every great moral and spiritual truth. Let it be admitted that our spontaneous convictions guarantee a truth, but let it be avowed at the same time that any given philosophic expression of them is fallible, and may be doubted, disputed, and denied. Let it be understood, as to every philosophic principle proffered, that we are entitled, nay, in duty bound, to examine it

before we assent to it, and that the burden of establishing that it is a thorough transcript of the law in the mind lies on him who employs it. By this simple rule, rigidly enforced and scrupulously followed, we might have all the benefits which have arisen from the siftings of scepticisms, without its fearful throes, and its slaughters-terrible as those of a battle-field-of noble credences and inspiring hopes.

But what are we to do with the sceptic, that is, with one who speculatively denies intuitive truth?

1. There are some things which we ought not to do with him. We should not waste our precious feeling in professing to sympathize with him, as if he were practically troubled with doubts as to the existence of himself, or his friends, or his enemies, or his food, or his money, or his earthly interests; for in respect of all these he is quite as firm a believer as the man who comes to convince him with an apparatus of argument. Nor need we be at the trouble of appointing a guard to watch him lest he run against a carriage, or step into a river, or fall over a precipice. For whatever he may profess to us or to himself, he believes in the existence of the carriage, the river, and the precipice, and has a salutary awe of their perilous power. Nor would there be any propriety in declaring him mad, and sending him to Bedlam, for he only pretends to have lost his senses, or rather, never to have had them, and in his simulation has over-acted his part, and gone beyond the madman, who never sets himself against intuitive truth.'

2. There are some things which we cannot do with the sceptic, and therefore should not attempt to do. We cannot answer him by argument, that is, mediate proof; for this, if followed sufficiently far back, will conduct us to a principle which cannot be proven, and which therefore the sceptic will deny. It can scarcely be regarded as a complete refutation to demonstrate that his sceptical

1 M. Morel was asked to examine a prisoner who pretended to be deranged, and asked him how old he was; to which the prisoner replied, “245 francs, 35 centimes, 124 carriages," etc. To the same question, more distinctly asked, he replied, "5 mètres, 75 centimètres." When asked how long he had been deranged, he answered, "Cats, always cats." M. Morel at once proclaimed his madness to be simulated, and states, "In their extreme aberrations, in their most furious delirium, madmen do not confound what it is impossible for the most extravagant logic to confound." (See Psychological Journal, October, 1857