pendent on our own system, that a great part of it would not be knowledge perhaps, but er ror in any other. They who held, as I learn from doctor CuDWORTH that fome philofophers did hold, that "fenfible ideas, and phantafms "are impressed on the foul, as on a dead thing," maintained, no doubt, a great abfurdity. ARISTOTLE'S opinion was more conformable to univerfal experience; for he afferted, according to SEXTUS EMPIRICUS, that fenfe was like the inftrument, and intellect like the artificer; that fenfe was first in the order of mental operations, but that intellect was first in dignity. Now this comparison is just enough. We have internal as well as external fenfe, mental as well as corporeal faculties, and active as well as paffive powers, if you will allow paffivity, as well as activity, to be included in the idea of power. But then, as our senses are few, incapable of giving us much information, and capable of giving it falsely, unlefs we are on our guard against their deceptions; fo the faculties of our mind are weak, and their progress towards knowledgę not only flow, but fo confined, that they are not able to carry it to the full extent of the ideas, about which they are converfant, and which they have all contributed to frame. We must conceive, as well as we can, the knowledge of the Supreme Being to be im mediate, and absolute. Knowledge in us is mediate by the intervention of ideas, not only as far as fenfible objects are concerned, and that goes a great way; but in the whole. It is fuch know

ledge

ledge as we are fitted by the organization of our bodies, and the constitution of our minds, to ac quire. It is fuch as refults from the relation established between them and the system to which they belong. It is knowledge for us. It is, in one word, human; and, relatively to us, when rightly pursued, real knowledge.

GENERAL ideas, or notions, fuch as the mind frames by it's innate powers, fuch as are faid to be architypes, and to refer to nothing befides themselves, may feem to be materials of axiomatical, scientifical, and, in a word, of abfolute, real knowledge. But even this boasted knowledge is very precarious. These ideas, or notions, are not taken with exactnefs from the nature of things on many occafions; and the fame affections, and imperfections of the mind, that corrupt the first, corrupt the fubfequent operations of it. Ideas or notions are ill abstracted firft, and ill compared afterwards. The more complex, the more obfcure they are; and the more important, the more liable they are likewise to be abused by prejudices and habits that infect the mind, and put a wrong biafs on it. But further; our progreffion in this knowledge, fuch as it is, stops always very fhort of our aim. We foon want ideas, or want means of comparing those we have, and it is in vain that we struggle to get forward. It is in vain that we endeavour to force that barrier, which God has opposed to our insatiable curiosity. To what purpose, indeed, should we force

it,

it, if that was in our power, fince we have reafon to acknowledge, with the utmoft gratitude to the author of our nature, that every thing ne ceffary to our well-being in the ftate wherein he has placed us, lies on the human fide of this barrier; within that extent, I mean, where the operations of our minds are performed with ease and vigor, and are attended with the certainty of knowledge, or the sufficient probability of opinion? Not only unattainable," but difficult, very often, is a term fynonymous to unneceffary; as we might prove, I think, by fome examples drawn even from mathematical knowledge. In fhort, the profound meditations of philofophers, which we are fo apt to admire before we have thought for ourselves, have as much regard paid to them as they deferve, when they are made the amufements of men of fenfe and leifure; when they are used as exercife, without any other aim than to invigorate, and strengthen the mind, and prepare it for fomething it for fomething more conducive to our happinefs, and therefore more properly our business,

"The good, the juft, the meet, the wholefome rules Of temperance. and aught that may improve The moral life."*

This fhort account of human ideas, and human knowledge, no part of which can be applied, without blafphemy and abfurdity, to the Supreme

JOHN PHILLIPS."

Being, nor be denied, without folly and effrons tery, of the human, is fufficient, I fuppofe, to constitute another difference between God's manner of knowing and ours; a difference arifing from thofe imperfections and limitations of which every man is conscious.

But it is now time to afk, what then is the precise notion we are to entertain of the human mind? Shall we continue to think with some philofophers antient and modern, that the soul, the rational foul, for they have given us more than one, is a fpiritual and divine fubftance, " furnished with "forms, and ideas to conceive all things by, and printed over with the feeds of universal know'ledge, tho' the active energies of it are fatally "united to fome local motions in the body, and concurrently produced with them by reason "of the magical union between the foul and the body?" Shall we fay too that from this union all the imperfections of the human mind proceed and that the perfection of our nature is, to be quite abstracted from fenfation, like the Janguis, or illuminated faints of the Indoftan, whom BERNIER mentions? Shall we endeavour, like these philofophers, by intenseness of thought, by fasting, and other aufterities, to rife up to the contemplation of the divinity, whom they affure that they fee like a white, lively, ineffable light? Or fhall we soften these pretenfions a little, and embrace the fyftem of a modern philofopher*, who affirms

* MALBRANCHE

that

that God is the place of ideas, as space is of body, and that, this all-perfect mind containing the ideas of all created things, it is in God alone that we perceive every thing exterior to the foul? Shall we affume, like another philofopher+, that our ideas are the only real fenfible things; that we have no reason to imagine there are any fubftances, but active thinking substances; and that it is abfurd to ascribe power to bodies, or to fuppofe any power but active power, any agent but fpirit, or any actions of spirit without volition?

WHO does not fee all this to be as inconceivable, as that which it pretends to explain? Have the authors of fuch fyftems, from PLATO down to that fine writer MALBRANCHE, or to that fublime genius, and good man, the bishop of CLOYNE, Contributed to make us better acquainted with ourselves? I think not. They have done all, that human capacity can do, in a wrong method; but all they have done has been to vend us poetry for philofophy, and to multiply fyftems of imagination. They have reasoned about the human mind a priori, have affumed that they know the nature of it, and have employed much wit, and eloquence to account for all the phaenomena of it upon these affumptions. But the nature of it is as much unknown as ever; and we muft despair of having any real knowledge at all about it, unless we will content ourselves with that which is to be acquired a posteriori. The + BERKELEY..