At last in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, the taste for polite literature revived in Italy, and the bold reformers in Germany endeavored to correct the errors and corruption of religion. Luther perceived the connexion of philosophy and religion, and declared, that it would be impossible to reform the church without entirely abolishing the canons and decretals, and with them the scholastic theology, philosophy and logic, and without instituting others in their stead. Luther, Paracelsus, Ramus and Gassendi were eminent demolishers of the Aristotelian philosophy.

After the revival of letters and restoration of sciences, Bacon, Descartes and Leibnitz were eminent in philosophy. Bacon be came the great reformer and founder of true philosophy. He established observation and induction as the basis of knowledge, whilst the essentials of Descartes' philosophy, like those of many predecessors, were thought, and the knowledge obtained by thought. Leibnitz, like Plato, never arranged his philosophy methodically, yet he admitted two kinds of perceptions: one without and the other with consciousness; farther, he considered the knowledge procured by the senses as individual, accidental and changeable, but that obtained by thinking and reasoning as general, necessary and positive. According to Leibnitz the reasoning power is endowed with principles, all phenomena are intellectual, and there is a harmony pre-established between the knowledge à priori and external sensations. The latter only quicken the former. Phrenology denies the established harmony of Leibnitz between innate ideas and external sensations; it considers sensations and ideas as acquired, and admits only innate dispositions to acquire sensations and ideas. Yet it admits also a kind of pre-established harmony, concerning existence, between the special powers and the object of their satisfaction. Wherever there is a power, it finds an object. This has been the cause, that many philosophers have derived the powers from their objects of satisfaction. There are objects to be perceived; these were said to be the cause of the perceptive power, whilst the power of perceiving and the object of being perceived exist separately and are only calculated for each other.

There may, however, be many objectivities which man cannot percieve for want of special powers.

Hobbes was persecuted for his theological and political heresies, and therefore his views of philosophy were neglected, though Locke borrowed from him some of his most important observations on the association of ideas. According to Malebranche, God is wherever there is mind, and God is the medium of sensation. Malebranche furnishes to Locke his notions on habits and genius, to Hartley his theory on vibrations, and to Berkley the ancient theory of Pyrrho, viz. that the material objects have no other existence than in the mind.

Locke's philosophy became the basis of the greater number of philosophical opinions in England and France. He denied the innate ideas and innate principles of morality, and maintained with Aristotle that all knowledge begins with experience, or that all primary notions begin with sensation. According to him, the mind begins with external sensations, and then by means of its perception, retention, contemplation, comparison, reflection, or by its faculties of composing and abstracting, it executes all the particular operations of thinking and volition. In his system even the feelings and moral principles result mediately from the understanding.

Locke has some merit; he is a great lover of truth, and his work contains many judicious remarks brought together from various quarters, and he has greatly contributed to do away the rubbish of a learned jargon about the innate ideas and Platonic mysticism, But there is a want of originality, consistency and precision in his work. He is a wordy commentator of Bacon, Hobbes and Malebranche. The besetting sin of all his compositions is diffuseness and indistinctness.-Hobbes had compared the mind with a slate, Locke compared it with a white paper. This prepared the errors of Condillac, who gave all to the senses; and to those of Dr. Hartley who explained the operations of the mind by vibrations, and who thought that all the most complex ideas arise from sen

* Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius fuerit in sensu.

sation, and that reflection is not a distinct source, as Mr. Locke makes it.'

I think with Dugald Stewart that the work of Locke has been more applauded than studied. The French writers, particularly Voltaire, have most contributed to his celebrity. Voltaire said that Locke alone had developed the human understanding, and he calls him the Hercules of metaphysicians; yet the French did not understand the basis of Locke's philosophy, when they maintained that he denied the innate dispositions of the mind, and when they confounded Condillac's philosophy with that of Locke.

Among the Scotch philosophers the most remarkable are, Hume, who not only confined all knowledge to mere experience, but also denied the necessity of causation ;-Dr. Reid, who speaks of intellectual and active powers of man ;-Dugald Stewart, who deserves more credit for his style than for his ideas;—and Dr. Th. Brown.

The principal modern schools of philosophy in Germany, are the critical philosophy, the transcendental idealism, and the philosophy of nature. Kant, the founder of the critical philosophy, distinguished two kinds of knowledge, one experimental (Kritik der reinen Vernunft,) and another founded on belief (Kritik der practischen Vernunft.) He maintained that the first kind is only relative, subjective, or phenomenal, or that we know only the relation of the subject to the object; that we do not know either the subject or the object in itself, but both in their mutual relations only, and that this relation constitutes their reality to us. The subject ae conceived endowed with particular categories which are applied to the object; whatever is general and necessary in knowledge belonged to the subject, while the particular and variable is the attribute of the object. Hence all experimental knowledge is founded upon dualism; upon the union of the subject and object; for, even the categories, though inherent in the subject, and con ceived by the mind from within, acquire objective reality only by their application to the object. Kant, though he considered both subject and object, had, however, the subject more in mind than the object. He reduced all categories or forms, according to

which the mind acquires experimental knowledge, to four kindsto quantity, quality, relation, and modality; of these the two first concern objects in general, and the two last the relations of objects to each other and to our understanding. Thus Kant admits notions independent of experience, as conceptions of space, time, cause, and others; and considers these conceptions, not as the result of external impressions, but of the faculties of the subject: they exist from within, and by their means we are acquainted with the objects. Our notions of morality, of God, and of immortality, are not experimental, but belong to the practical understanding, and originate a priori. Liberty is a postulatum.

Fichte went farther, and taught the system of transcendental idealism, according to which all certainty and reality is confined to the subject, who has knowledge only of his own modifications, and by means of abstraction and reflection, arrives at intellectual intuition.

The philosophy of nature of Schelling rejects subject and object, makes no abstraction or reflection, but begins with intellectual intuition, and professes to know objects immediately in themselves. It does not consider the objects as existing but as originating; it constructs them speculatively a priori. Absolute liberty and existence without qualities, are the basis of this system.

As the philosophy of Locke has hitherto prevailed in England, as it has given occasion to that of Condillac, and as the system of Dr. Th. Brown admits more fundamental powers of the mind than any former philosophy, I shall compare them with phrenology.

I agree with both authors in placing truth above any other consideration, and in maintaining that we cannot examine the mind in itself, but are confined to the contemplation of the mental phe

nomena.

Locke and Brown consider the functions of the external senses as dependent on the nervous system, but the other mental operations as independent of organization; whilst phrenology proves that every mental phenomenon depends on some bodily condition or organ, after the example of the external senses.

Locke admits in the mind understanding and will;-Dr. Brown, intellect and emotions. The subdivision of understanding by Locke is into perception, retention or memory, contemplation or judgment and imagination; and that of will into various degrees, from simple desire to passion. The subdivision of intellect by Th. Brown is, 1st, into simple suggestions, including every association of ideas, conception, memory, imagination, habit, and all conceptions and feelings of the past; and 2d, into relative suggestions of coexistence or of succession; the former of which include the suggestions of resemblance or difference, of position, of degree, of proportion, and of the relation which the whole bears to its parts; and of which the second comprehends judgment, reason and abstraction. His subdivision of emotions is into immediate, retrospective and prospective. He admits a greater number of primitive emotions independent of intellect, and in this respect he comes nearer phrenology than any other philosopher; he also calls the division of Locke into understanding and will, illogical. Thus in the great division of the mental phenomena he agrees with phrenology, which positively has the priority over him. But Dr. Brown's subdivisions of the mental phenomena are very different from the phrenological analysis and classification. Farther, Dr. Brown considers the various emotions of the mind independently of brain. His philosophy therefore coincides with phrenology only in the first principle, viz. in admitting mental phenomena different from the intellectual states of mind; but his philosophy can never be confounded with phrenology.

Locke denied the innate ideas and the innate moral principles. I agree with him in that respect, but he admits only innate dispositions for ideas, and derives the moral principles from them, whilst I admit also innate moral dispositions, which are as essential to the conception of moral principles as the innate intellectual dispositions to the formation of ideas.

The reason why Locke denied the innate maxims of morality, viz. because certain children or adults and certain nations are without them or possess them variously modified, is not at all valuable,