probably be, to desire the footman to shew me out. Now, the present inquiry I regard as no less unjustifiable, and relating to private concerns; and, therefore, I think every one bound, when so questioned, always, whether he is the author or not, to meet the inquiry with a rebuke. Hoping that my conjecture is right, of the letter's being a forgery, I remain,' &c. In any case, however, in which a refusal to answer does not convey any information, the best way, perhaps, of meeting impertinent inquiries, is by saying, 'Can you keep a secret?' and when the other answers that he can, you may reply, 'Well, so can I.'

In 1859, Dr Whately continued this light labour of annotation, selecting for his second subject, Paley's Moral Philosophy. This afforded a much less varied field for remark and illustration than Bacon's Essays, but it was one as congenial to the taste and studies of the commentator. The low ground or fallacy upon which Paley built his ethical system-namely, that self-interest is the rule of virtue-has been often attacked, and is again assailed by Dr Whately. 'Men,' says the commentator, 'never do, and apparently never did, account any conduct virtuous which they believe to have proceeded entirely from calculations of selfinterest, even though the external act itself be such as they conceive would have been done by a virtuous man.' Paley's fault as a moralist, as Dr Whately remarks, is chiefly one of omission, and it is probable that this argument of self-interest appears much stronger to the reader than it did to the author, who aimed only at popular leading definitions. Even in this case, he includes the future world in his view of self-interest. The following is Dr Whately's note on a subject concerning which Paley talked loosely and suffered accordingly:

[Subscription to Articles of Religion.]

It is undoubtedly a great evil, on many accounts, to have articles and other formularies unnecessarily rigid and exclusive. But something of the nature of a test, framed by the rulers of a church, is indispensable; and the pretensions sometimes put forth of dispensing with everything of the kind are altogether delusive. To have (as some have wildly proposed) no test or terms of communion at all, would be to renounce entirely the character of a Christian church; since, of such a body, it is plain that a Jew, a polytheist, or an atheist might, quite as consistently as a Christian, be a member, or even a governor. And to have (as some have as wildly proposed) no test but the very words of Scripture, would be scarcely less extravagant, since there is no one professing Christianity who does not maintain that his sentiments are in accordance with the true meaning of Scripture, however absurd or pernicious those sentiments may really be; for it is notorious that Scripture itself is at least as liable as human formularies (and, indeed, more so) to have forced interpretations put on its language.

Accordingly, there is no Christian community which does not, in some way or other, apply some other test besides the very words of Scripture. Some churches, indeed, do not reduce any such tests to writing, or express it in any fixed form, so as to enable every one to know beforehand precisely how much he will be required to bind himself to. But, nevertheless, those churches do apply a test, and very often a much more stringent, elaborate, and minute test than our Liturgy and Articles. In such communities, the candidatepastor of a congregation is not, to be sure, called on to subscribe in writing a definite Confession of Faith, drawn up by learned and pious persons after mature deliberation, and publicly set forth by common authority;

but he is called upon to converse with the leading members of the congregation, and satisfy them as to the soundness of his views; not, of course, by merely repeating texts of Scripture--which a man of any views might do, and do honestly-but by explaining the sense in which he understands the Scriptures. Thus, instead of subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles, he subscribes the sentiments of the leading members, for the time being, of that particular congregation over which he is to be placed as teacher.

And thus it is that tests of some kind or other, written or unwritten-that is, transmitted by oral tradition-fixed for the whole body, or variable according to the discretion of particular governors, are, and must be, used in every Christian Church. Now the legitimate object of such formularies is equally defeated by making them standards for the interpretation of Scripture, or by making what we take to be the sense of Scripture the standard for interpreting them.

For the object of the church in imposing these formularies is to ascertain whether the result of our inquiries into the sense of Scripture has been the same as hers; and this object is equally defeated by our forcing the church's words to square with our notion of the sense of Scripture, or by forcing our notion of the sense of Scripture into accordance with the declarations of the

church.

[Science and Scripture.]

Some persons have imagined that we are bound to take our notions of astronomy, and of all other physical sciences, from the Bible. And accordingly, when astronomers discovered and proved that the earth turns round on its axis, and that the sun does not move round the earth, some cried out against this as profane, because Scripture speaks of the sun's rising and setting. And this probably led some astronomers to reject the Bible, because they were taught that if they received that as a divine revelation, they must disbelieve truths which they had demonstrated. So, also, some have thought themselves bound to believe, if they receive Scripture at all, that the earth, and all the plants and animals that ever existed on it, must have been created within six days, of exactly the same length as our present days. And this, even before the sun, by which we measure our days, is recorded to have been created. Hence the discoveries made by geologists, which seem to prove that the earth and various races of animals must have existed a very long time before man existed, have been represented as completely inconsistent with any belief in Scripture.

We may not stop to discuss the various objections-some of them more or less plausible, and others very weak-that have been brought-on grounds of science, or supposed science-against the Mosaic accounts of the creation, of the state of the early world, and of the flood, and to bring forward the several answers that have been given to those objections. But it is important to lay down the PRINCIPLE on which either the Bible or any other writing or speech ought to be studied and understood-namely, with a reference to the object proposed by the writer or speaker.

For example, if we bid any one proceed in a straight line from one place to another, and to take care to arrive before the sun goes down, he will rightly and fully understand us, in reference to the practical object which alone we had in view. Now, we know that there cannot really be a straight line on the surface of the earth; and that the sun does not really go down, only one portion of the earth is turned away from it. But whether the other party knows all this or not, matters nothing to our present object, which was not to teach him mathematics or astronomy, but to make him conform to our directions, which are equally intelligible to the learned and the unlearned.

Now, the object of the Scripture revelation is to

teach men, not astronomy or geology, or any other physical science, but religion. Its design was to inform men, not in what manner the world was made, but WHO made it, and to lead them to worship Him, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, instead of worshipping His creatures, the heavens and earth themselves, as gods; which is what the ancient heathen actually did. Although, therefore, Scripture gives very scanty and imperfect information respecting the earth and the heavenly bodies, and speaks of them in the language and according to the notions of the people of a rude age, still it fully effects the object for which it was given, when it teaches that the heavens and the earth are not gods to be worshipped, but that God created the heavens and the earth,' and that it is He who made the various tribes of animals, and also man. But as for astronomy, and geology, and other sciences, men were left, when once sufficiently civilised to be capable of improving themselves, to make discoveries in them by the exercise of their own faculties.

[Irony.]

It is in some respects a recommendation of this method, and in others an objection to it, that the sophistry of an adversary will often be exposed by it in a ludicrous point of view; and this even when no such effect is designed; the very essence of jest being its mimic sophistry. This will often give additional force to the argument by the vivid impression which ludicrous images produce; but, again, it will not unfrequently have this disadvantage, that weak men, perceiving the wit, are apt to conclude that nothing but wit is designed, and lose sight perhaps of a solid and convincing argument, which they regard as no more than a good joke. Having been warned that 'ridicule is not the test of truth,' and that wisdom and wit' are not the same thing, they distrust everything that can possibly be regarded as witty; not having judgment to perceive the combination, when it occurs, of wit with sound reasoning. The ivy-wreath completely conceals from their view the point of the Thyrsus: and, moreover, if such a mode of argument be employed on serious subjects, the weak brethren' are sometimes scandalised by what appears to them a profanation; not having discernment to perceive when it is that the ridicule does, and when it does not, affect the solemn subject itself. But for the respect paid to Holy Writ, the taunt of Elijah against the prophets of Baal would probably appear to such persons irreverent. And the caution now implied will appear the more important when it is considered how large a majority they are who, in this point, come under the description of 'weak brethren.' He that can laugh at what is ludicrous, and at the same time preserve a clear discernment of sound and unsound reasoning, is no ordinary man.

eve.

and moisture to the seed of the mind, which would else rot and perish. In all processes of mental evolution the objects of the senses must stimulate the mind; and the mind must in turn assimilate and digest the food which it thus receives from without. Method, therefore, must result from the due mean or balance between our passive impressions and the mind's reaction on them. So in the healthful state of the human body, waking aud sleeping, rest and labour, reciprocally succeed each other, and mutually contribute to liveliness, and activity, and strength. There are certain stores proper, and, as it were, indigenous to the mind-such as the ideas of number and figure, and the logical forms and combinations of conception or thought. The mind that is rich and exuberant in this intellectual wealth is apt, like a miser, to dwell upon the vain contemplation of its riches, is disposed to generalise and methodise to excess, ever philosophising, and never descending to action; spreading its wings high in the air above some beloved spot, but never flying far and wide over earth and sea, to seek food, or to enjoy the endless beauties of nature; the fresh morning, and the warm noon, and the dewy On the other hand, still less is to be expected, toward the methodising of science, from the man who flutters about in blindness like the bat; or is carried hither and thither, like the turtle sleeping on the wave, and fancying, because he moves, that he is in progress. * * It is not solely in the formation of the human understanding, and in the constructions of science and literature, that the employment of method is indispens ably necessary; but its importance is equally felt, and equally acknowledged, in the whole business and economy of active and domestic life. From the cottager's hearth or the workshop of the artisan, to the palace or the arsenal, the first merit-that which admits neither substitute nor equivalent—is, that everything is in its place. Where this charm is wanting, every other merit either loses its name, or becomes an additional ground of accusation and regret. Of one, by whom it is eminently possessed, we say proverbially, that he is like clock-work. The resemblance extends beyond the point of regularity, and yet falls far short of the truth. Both do, indeed, at once divide and announce the silent and otherwise indistinguishable lapse of time; but the man of methodical industry and honourable pursuits does more; he realises its ideal divisions, and gives a character and individuality to its moments. If the idle are described as killing time, he may be justly said to call it into life and moral being, while he makes it the distinct object not only of the consciousness, but of the conscience. He organises the hours, and gives them a soul; and to that, the very essence of which is to fleet and to have been, he communicates an imperishable and a spiritual nature. Of the good and faithful servant, whose energies, thus directed, are thus methodised, it is less truly affirmed that he lives in time, than that time lives in him. His days, months, and years, as the stops and punctual marks in the records of duties performed, will survive the wreck of worlds, and remain extant when time itself shall be no more.

The following is from Coleridge's Literary Remains:

[Definition of Poetry.]

Poetry is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement or communication of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure. This definition is useful; but as it would include novels and other works of fiction, which yet we do not call poems, there must be some additional character by which poetry is not only divided from opposites, but likewise distinguished from disparate, though similar, modes of composition. Now,

how is this to be effected? In animated prose, the beauties of nature, and the passions and accidents of human nature, are often expressed in that natural language which the contemplation of them would suggest to a pure and benevolent mind; yet still neither we nor the writers call such a work a poem, though no work could deserve that name which did not include all this, together with something else. What is this? It is that pleasurable emotion, that peculiar state and degree of excitement, which arises in the poet himself in the act of composition; and in order to understand this, we must combine a more than ordinary sympathy with the objects, emotions, or incidents contemplated by the poet, consequent on a more than common sensibility, with a more than ordinary activity of the mind in respect of the fancy and the imagination. Hence is produced a more vivid reflection of the truths of nature and of the human heart, united with a constant activity modifying and correcting these truths by that sort of pleasurable emotion, which the exertion of all our faculties gives in a certain degree, but which can only be felt in perfection under the full play of those powers of mind, which are spontaneous rather than voluntary, and in which the effort required bears no proportion to the activity enjoyed. This is the state which permits the production of a highly pleasurable whole, of which each part shall also communicate for itself a distinct and conscious pleasure; and hence arises the definition, which, I trust, is now intelligible, that poetry, or rather a poem, is a species of composition, opposed to science, as having intellectual pleasure for its object, and as attaining its end by the use of language natural to us in a state of excitement, but distinguished from other species of composition, not excluded by the former criterion, by permitting a pleasure from the whole consistent with a consciousness of pleasure from the component parts; and the perfection of which is, to communicate from each part the greatest immediate pleasure compatible with the largest sum of pleasure on the whole. This, of course, will vary with the different modes of poetry; and that splendour of particular lines, which would be worthy of admiration in an impassioned elegy, or a short indignant satire, would be a blemish and vile taste in a tragedy or an epic poem.

*

It is remarkable, by the way, that Milton, in three incidental words, has implied all. Speaking of poetry, he says, as in a parenthesis, which is simple, sensuous, passionate.' For the first condition, simplicity -while, on the one hand, it distinguishes poetry from the arduous processes of science, labouring towards an end not yet arrived at, and supposes a smooth and finished road, on which the reader is to walk onward easily, with streams murmuring by his side, and trees, and flowers, and human dwellings to make his journey as delightful as the object of it is desirable, instead of having to toil with the pioneers, and painfully make the road on which others are to travel-precludes, on the other hand, every affectation and morbid peculiarity; the second condition, sensuousness, insures that framework of objectivity, that definiteness and articulation of imagery, and that modification of the images them selves, without which poetry becomes flattened into mere didactics of practice, or evaporated into a hazy, unthoughtful day-dreaming; and the third condition, passion, provides that neither thought nor imagery shall be simply objective, but that the passio vera of humanity shall warm and animate both.

SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON.

This eminent metaphysician sustained, until a very recent period, the fame of the Scottish colleges for the study of the human mind. He was a native of Glasgow, son of Dr Hamilton, Professor of Anatomy. He was, like Mr J. G. Lockhart, sent to Oxford on the Snell Foundation,

and during his academical career was distinguished for the extent and accuracy of his knowledge. He afterwards studied law, and was called to the bar in 1813. In 1821, he was appointed Professor of Universal History in the University of Edinburgh, and in 1836, Professor of Logic and Metaphysics. The latter chair he retained until his death, May 6, 1856, at which time he had reached the age of sixty-eight. Sir William was regarded as the most profound philosophical scholar of his day-a man of immense erudition and attainments. His principal works were contributions to the Edinburgh Review, which he collected and published in 1852, in a large volume, entitled Discussions on Philosophy and Literature, Education and University Reform. He edited the works of Dr Thomas Reid, 1846, adding preface, notes, and supplementary dissertations; and at the time of his death, was engaged on the works of Professor Dugald Stewart. He contemplated a memoir of Stewart, but did not live to accomplish the task. This, however, has since been done by one of his pupils, MR William Hamilton's essays are those against phreJOHN VEITCH, 1858. The most celebrated of Sir nology, on Cousin and the philosophy of the logic. His philosophy,' says a Scottish metaphysiunconditioned, on perception, and on Whately and cian in the North British Review, 'is a determined recoil against the method and systems of Mylne and Brown, the two professors who, in Hamilton's younger years, were exercising the greatest influence on the opinions of Scottish students. So far as he felt attractions, they were towards Reid, the great metaphysician of his native college; Aristotle, the favourite at Oxford, where he completed his education; and Kant, whose sun was rising from the German Ocean on Britain, and this, in spite of all opposing clouds, about the time when Hamilton was forming his philosophic creed. Professor Ferrier thinks that the "dedication of his powers to the service of Reid" was the "one mistake in his career;" to us it appears that it must rather have been the means of saving one possessed of so speculative a spirit from numberless aberrations. But Kant exercised as great an influence over Hamilton as even Reid did. His whole philosophy turns round those topics which are discussed in the Kritick of Pure Reason, and he can never get out of those "forms" in which Kant sets all our ideas so methodically, nor lose sight of those terrible antinomies, or contradictions of reason, which Kant expounded in order to shew that the laws of reason can have no application to objects, and which Hegel gloried in, and was employing as the ground-principle of his speculations, at the very time when Hamilton aspired to be a philosopher. From Kant he got the principle that the mind begins with phenomena and builds thereon by forms or laws of thought; and it was as he pondered on the Sphinx enigmas of Kant and Hegel, that he evolved his famous axiom about all positive thought lying in the proper conditioning of one or other of two contradictory propositions, one of which, by the rule of excluded middle, must be true. His pupils have ever since been standing before this Sphinx proposing, under terrible threats, its supposed contradictions, and are wondering whether their master has resolved the riddle.' To those who delight in the shadowy tribes of mind,' must be left the determination of the questio vexata. The general reader will find many acute and suggestive remarks in Sir William's essays on education, logic, and the influence of mathematical studies. Against the latter, as a mental exercise, he waged incessant war.

[On Mathematics.]

Some knowledge of their object-matter and method is requisite to the philosopher; but their study should be followed out temperately, and with due caution. A mathematician in contingent matter is like an owl in daylight. Here, the wren pecks at the bird of Pallas, without anxiety for beak or talon; and there, the feeblest reasoner feels no inferiority to the strongest calculator. It is true, no doubt, that a power of mathematical and a power of philosophical, of general logic, may sometimes be combined; but the individual who unites both, reasons well out of necessary matter, from a still resisting vigour of intellect, and in spite, not in consequence, of his geometric or algebraic dexterity. He is naturally strong-not a mere cipherer, a mere demonstrator; and this is the explanation why Mr De Morgan, among other mathematicians, so often argues right. Still, had Mr De Morgan been less of a mathematician, he might have been more of a philosopher; and be it remembered that mathematics and dram-drinking tell, especially in the long-run. For a season, I admit Toby Philpot may be the champion of England; and Warburton testifies, 'It is a thing notorious that the oldest mathematician in England is the

worst reasoner in it.'

Sir William's favourite study of logic has been well treated in An Introduction to Logical Science, by PROFESSOR SPALDING of St Andrews, which forms an excellent text-book as to the progress of the science, 1858. Mr Spalding is also author of Italy and the Italians, an historical and literary summary, 1845, and The History of English Literature, 1853, a very carefully and ably written little manual. Another Professor of St Andrews, MR JAMES FERRIER (who possesses the chair of Moral Philosophy and Political Economy), has published Institules of Metaphysics, the Theory of Knowing and Being, 1854.

JOHN STUART MILL.

This gentleman (son of the late historian of British India, ante page 520) has professed to supersede the Baconian principle of induction, without which, according to Reid, experience is as blind as a mole.' In 1846, Mr Mill published A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation, two volumes. He is author, also, of Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy, 1844, and The Principles of Political Economy, two volumes, 1848. The metaphysical opinions of Mr Mill have warped his judgment as to the Baconian system, but he expounds his views with clearness and candour, and is a profound as well as independent thinker. This was still further evinced in his recent work On Liberty, 1859, in which he describes and denounces that strong permanent leaven of intolerance which at all times abides in the middle classes of this country,' and which, he thinks, subjects society to an intolerable tyranny.

[Social Intolerance.]

Though we do not inflict so much evil on those who think differently from us as it was formerly our custom to do, it may be that we do ourselves as much evil as ever by our treatment of them. Socrates was put to death, but the Socratic philosophy rose like the sun in heaven, and spread its illumination over the whole intellectual firmament. Christians were cast to the lions, but the Christian Church grew up a stately and spreading tree, overtopping the older and less vigorous growths, and

stifling them by its shade. Our merely social intolerance kills no one, roots out no opinions, but induces men to disguise them, or to abstain from any active effort for their diffusion. With us, heretical opinions do not perceptibly gain or even lose ground in each decade or generation. They never blaze out far and wide, but continue to smoulder in the narrow circles of thinking and studious persons, among whom they originate, without ever lighting up the general affairs of mankind with either a true or a deceptive light.** A convenient plan for having peace in the intellectual world, and keeping all things going on therein very much as they do already. But the price paid for this sort of intellectual pacification is the sacrifice of the entire moral courage of the human mind. A state of things in which a large portion of the most active and inquiring intellects find it advisable to keep the genuine principles and grounds of their convictions within their own breasts, and attempt, in what they address to the public, to fit as much as they can of their own conclusions to premises which they have internally renounced, cannot send forth the open, fearless characters, and logical consistent intellects who once adorned the thinking world.

The sort of men who can be looked for under it are

either mere conformers to commonplace or time-servers for truth, whose arguments on all great subjects are meant for their hearers, and are not those which have convinced themselves. Those who avoid this alternative do so by narrowing their thoughts and interest to things which can be spoken of without venturing within the region of principles-that is, to small practical matters which would come right of themselves if but the minds of mankind were strengthened and enlarged, and which will never be made effectually right until then-while that which would strengthen and enlarge men's minds, free and daring speculation on the highest subjects, is abandoned.

[On the Laws against Intemperance.]

Under the name of preventing intemperance, the people of one English colony, and of nearly half the United States, have been interdicted by law from making any use whatever of fermented drinks, except for medical purposes; for prohibition of their sale is, in fact, as it is intended to be, prohibition of their use. And though the impracticability of executing the law has caused its repeal in several of the states which had adopted it, including the one from which it derives its name, an attempt has notwithstanding been commenced, and is prosecuted with considerable zeal by many of the professed philanthropists, to agitate for a similar law in this country. The association, or 'Alliance,' as it terms itself, which has been formed for this purpose, has acquired some notoriety through the publicity given to a correspondence between its secretary and one of the very few English public men who hold that a politician's opinions ought to be founded on principles. Lord Stanley's share in this correspondence is calculated to strengthen the hopes already built on him, by those who know how rare such qualities as are manifested in some of his public appearances, unhappily are among those who figure in political life. The organ of the Alliance, who would deeply deplore the recognition of any principle which could be wrested to justify bigotry and persecution,' undertakes to point out the broad and impassable barrier' which divides such principles from those of the association. All matters relating to thought, opinion, conscience, appear to me,' he says, be without the sphere of legislation; all pertaining to social act, habit, relation, subject only to a discretionary power vested in the state itself, and not in the individual to be within it.' No mention is made of a third class, different from either of these-namely, acts and habits which are not social, but individual—although it is to this class, surely, that the act of drinking fermented

'to