from their adoption, will be attended to in a subsequent part of this sketch."

During the last age, several detached parts of the philosophy of mind have been illustrated in a manner greatly superior to the attempts at explanation made in former periods. Perhaps there is no subject to which this remark more forcibly applies than to the great question of Liberty and Necessity, which, through so many successive ages, has served to puzzle the acutest metaphysicians. Never, probably, was any point more largely, ably, and profoundly discussed. The writings of LEIBNITZ, COLLINS, HUME, HARTLEY, PRIESTLEY, and BELSHAM, on the side of moral necessity; and of CLARKE, BUTLER, REID, BEATTIE, DE LUC, GREGORY, and HORSLEY, in favour of liberty, are well known, and form very important materials in the metaphysical history of the age. But the greatest work which the century produced on this subject, and certainly among the ablest ever written on any department of philosophy, is that by the celebrated American Divine, Mr. JONATHAN EdWARDS, for some time President of the College of New-Jersey. This gentleman wrote on the side of moral necessity, or against the self-determining power of the will; and investigated the subject with a degree of originality, acuteness, depth, precision, and force of argument, which the accurate reader cannot contemplate but with astonishment, It will not be said that he has brought to an issue a controversy, which will probably last as long as men exist on earth; but that he has thrown much new light on the subject will be questioned by none; and that he has approached as near to a de

y Some further remarks on this delusive system will also be found under the head of Education, in the present volume. But in the third division of the work, in which it is proposed to take a view of the moral principles and establishments of the eighteenth century, a more particular consideration of it will be attempted.

monstration, that the doctrine of moral necessity (as explained and guarded by him) is the only scriptural and philosophical doctrine on this subject, as the nature of such inquiries admits, is certainly the opinion of some of the best judges in every part of the literary world. The extremes to which the system of the venerable President has been carried by several subsequent writers, and the consequences deduced from it, were far from being recognized by him; and with respect to some of them, they are, beyond all doubt, illegitimately drawn.

It is worthy of remark, that our great countryman, Mr. EDWARDS, appears to have been the first Calvinist who avowed his belief so fully and thoroughly in the doctrine of moral necessity as his book indicates. Though all Calvinistic writers before his time were characterized by a firm adherence to the doctrine of Predestination; yet they seem, for the most part, to have adopted a kind of middle course between his creed and that of the Arminian contingency. The penetrating and comprehensive mind of EDWARDS went further; demonstrated that this middle ground was untenable, and presented a more clear and satisfactory view of the doctrines of free grace, when contemplated through the medium of his main doctrine, than had ever before been given."

That class of philosophers who taught that the soul was material, were, until the eighteenth century, generally ranked among infidels, and in most

2 Soon after the publication of President EDWARDS's celebrated work on the Will, he received the thanks of several Professors of the Universities of Holland, and of other gentlemen of distinction, in various parts of Europe, for having, in their opinion, thrown more light on the subject than all preceding writers. This publication has long been considered and quoted as a standard work on the side of this question which it is designed to defend.

• See his Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will, &c. passim.

instances, really deserved this character. Hence a materialist has been commonly considered as a denomination tantamount to a charge of atheism itself, or at least of criminal indifference to religion. The Christian world, accustomed to connect this tenet with such heresies as those of SPINOZA, HOBBES, COLLINS, and others, of a similar character, naturally concluded, that a belief in immaterialism necessarily flowed from a belief in Christianity. The last age is distinguished by the adoption of this anti-christian error, by some who profess to embrace the Christian faith. Among these the most conspicuous and active is Dr. PRIESTLEY," who maintains that "man does not consist of two substances essentially different from each other; but that the conscious and thinking principle, or what we generally term the soul, is merely a property resulting from a peculiar organical structure of the brain." On this principle he attempts to show that the idea of the natural immortality of the soul is wholly fallacious; that the properties of sensation and thought, and of course all the distinguishing characteristics of the thinking part of our nature, must be extinguished by the dissolution of the organized mass in which they exist; and therefore that the only reason which men have to expect a state of consciousness or enjoyment hereafter, is derived from the scripture doctrine of the resurrection. In former parts of this work the services of Dr. PRIESTLEY in the physical sciences have been mentioned with high respect, and with frequently repeated tributes of applause. It is to be regretted that so much of what he has written on the philosophy of mind, and almost the whole of his writings on the subject of theology, should be so radically erroneous, and so subversive

b Disquisitions concerning Matter and Spirit, and Correspondence betweed PRICE and PRIESTLEY.

of all the interests of evangelical truth and prac tical piety.

The controversy respecting the immateriality of the soul between Dr. CLARKE and Mr. COLLINS, and many years afterwards between Dr. PRICE and Dr. PRIESTLEY, forms a very important part of the metaphysical history of the period in which they lived; and probably furnishes some of the most luminous views of this interesting controversy that were ever presented to the world. Some of the immaterialists of this age, such as Dr. CLARKE, Dr. PRICE, and others, maintained, that the mind has one property, viz. extension, in common with matter, and, consequently, that it occupies space, and has a proper locality, or, as the schoolmen express it, ubiety; while others, such as Dr. WATTS, perhaps more consistently and philosophically supposed, that mind has no common property with matter; that it is inextended, does not occupy space, and has no proper locality.

d

The celebrated dispute between the Nominalists and Realists, which perplexed the schoolmen for so many ages, and which all their acuteness was not able to terminate, was carried on with great warmth, under different names, and with some

c See Correspondence between PRICE and PRIESTLEY; and also Elements of the Philosophy of Mind, by T. BELSHAM.

d The Realists followed the doctrine of ARISTOTLE with respect to uni persal ideas. They taught that previous to, and independent on matter, there were no universal ideas or essences; but that the ideas or exemplars, which the Platonists supposed to have existed in the Divine mind, and to have been the models of all created beings, had been eternally impressed. upon matter, and were coeval with, and inherent in, their objects. On the other hand, the Nominalists, who embraced the doctrine of ZENO and the Stoics, insisted, in opposition both to the Aristotelians and Platonists, that these pretended universals had neither form nor essence, and were no more than mere terms, or nominal representations of their particular objects. The doctrine of ARISTOTLE chiefly prevailed until the eleventh century, when ROSCELINUS embraced the Stoical system, and founded the sect of the Nominalists, whose opinions were propagated with great success by ABELARD. These two sects frequently disputed and divided into inferior parties among themselves.

new modifications, through the whole of the last century. And though still far from being con cluded, yet probably there was never so much light thrown on the question in any preceding period. Of those who maintained the doctrine of the Realists, it is believed that Mr. HARRIS, Dr. PRICE, and Lord MONBODDO were among the most eminent; while the system of the Nominalists was espoused and defended, with great ingenuity, by Bishop BERKELEY, Mr. HUME, Dr. CAMPBELL, Professor STEWART, and many others. Mr. LOCKE, Dr. REID, and a few more under the name of Conceptualists, adopted a kind of middle course between these far-famed disputants.

Besides the writers on the general philosophy of mind, or on particular parts of this science, whose names have been mentioned in the foregoing pages, a number of others are entitled to notice in the metaphysical history of the last age, as having either written professedly on the subject, or interwoven much matter relating to the philosophy of mind in the discussion of theological, moral, and literary subjects. Among these Bishop BUTLER, Dr. HUTCHESON, Mr. GROVE, Dr. CAMPBELL, Dr. A. SMITH, Mr. TUCKER, and Mr. ALLISON, of Great-Britain; BEAUSOBRE, CONDILLAC, and many more, of France; LOSSIUS, TETENS, FEDER, KRUGER, and MENDLESSHOм, of Germany; CROUZAZ, LE CLERC, BONNET, and several others, of Geneva; and a much longer list which might

e See The Light of Nature Pursued, by EDWARD SEARCH, Esq. 7 vols. 8vo. 1768, 1778. The real author of this work was ABRAHAM TUCKER, Esquire. It contains much new, curious and highly interesting dicussion on metaphysical and moral subjects. Of Mr. TUCKER, Dr. PALEY, in the preface to his Moral and Political Philosophy, speaks in the following terms: "I have found in this writer more original thinking and observation upon the several subjects that he has taken in hand, than in any other, not to say, than in all others put together. His talent for illustration is unrivalled. But his thoughts are diffused through a long, various, and irregu lar work."