pomp of words, that reason, the supreme eternal reason, is the sun of their intellectual world, in the light of which they see intelligible objects, just as sensible objects are seen in that of the material sun. On such bold presumptions they proceed, and whither may they not, whither have they not been carried by them? The farther they go, the more their imaginary light fails them. But they cease not to flatter themselves: and while they expect at every moment, as it were, the dawn of a new day, they fall into the shades of night. "Ubi cœlum condidit umbrâ Jupiter, et rebus nox abstulit atra colorem." Now since metaphysical divines have wandered thus so many thousand years in imaginary light and real darkness, they are not surely the guides we should choose to follow. That a degree of knowledge to which I cannot attain is therefore unattainable by them, it would be impertinent to conclude. But I may conclude, reasonably and modestly, that a kind of knowledge, whose objects lie above the reach of humanity, cannot be attained by human creatures, unless they are assisted by supernatural powers, which is a supposition out of the present case. I could not have discovered, as Newton did, that universal law of corporeal nature which he has demonstrated. But farther than that he could go, no more than I, nor discover that action of the first cause by which this law was imposed on all bodies, and is maintained in them. It is the kind, not the de gree gree of knowledge that is concerned, and to be compared. Let us return, therefore, out of this scene of illusion into that of human knowledge; nor flutter, as Hobbes expresses himself, like birds at the window, while we remain enclosed. We may be the better contented to confine our inquiries to the limits God has prescribed to them, since we may find within those limits abundant matter of real use and ornament to employ the studious labours of mankind. Experimental knowledge of body and mind is the fund our reason should cultivate: and the first is a fund that philosophers will never exhaust. In this part, let deficiencies be noted. There are, there can be no excesses and as to the excesses that have been and are to be noted in the other, they are excesses of assuming and reasoning, not of experiment and observation. The phænomena of the human mind are few, and on those few a multitude of hypotheses has been raised, concerning mind in general, and soul and spirit. So that in this part, the improvement of real knowledge must be made by contraction, and not by amplification. I will presume to say, that if our Bacon had thought and writ as freely on this as he did on many other parts of science, his famous work, which has contributed so much, would have contributed more, to the advancement of real knowledge, and would have deserved it's title better. Men might have learned to consider body more, instead of doubting whether it exists; and to consider their own minds more, from which alone they they can acquire any ideas at all of mind; instead of dreaming, like Malebranche, that they interrogate the divine Logos. What right the first observers of nature and instructors of mankind had to the title of sages we cannot say. It was due, perhaps, more to the ignorance of the scholars, than to the knowledge of the masters. But this we may venture to affirm, that their right to that appellation could not be worse founded than the right of all their successors to be called lovers of wisdom. There is an anecdote related by Tully, in his fifth Tusculan, and mentioned, I think, by Diogenes Laertius, which is much to our present purpose: or at least the tale is pretty enough to deserve to be told. The prince of the Phliasians having heard and admired the Samian, asked him, what his profession was. He answered, that he was a philosopher, and he explained himself thus: He said, that the life of man seemed to him to resemble the great assembly or fair of Greece, that was held at Olympia, where some resorted to acquire honour by exercising themselves in the public games, and others wealth by traffic; while another sort of men came for a much better reason, to see and to observe whatever passed. Thus, he said, some men come into the world to seek glory, and some wealth; while a few, despising both, observe and study nature: and these are lovers of wisdom. We might be induced by this tale to think, that Pythagoras confined himself within the bounds of real knowledge, if we did not know, by a multi tude tude of other anecdotes, and by the scraps of his doctrine that have come down to us, how far he rambled out of them. He had been bred in schools where the distinction between human and divine knowledge and wisdom, to one of which we may attain, but not to the other, was so little made, that by aiming at the last, they missed, in many respects, even the former. To observe the constitution and order of things, in the physical and moral systems to which we belong, to form general ideas, notions, axioms, and rules on these particulars, and to apply them back again to human action and human use, constitutes knowledge and the result of the whole is wisdom, hu\man knowledge, and human wisdom. But there are men, and there were such in the days of Pythagoras, who talk of wisdom as if it was not the the result of any procedure of this kind, but a superior principle antecedent to it, independent of human knowledge, and the influences whereof descend on the human mind from above, as Christian theology teaches us that grace and faith are bestowed on us. According to such philosophers as these, men of great authority in our learned world, we must date the progress of knowledge and wisdom from Adam, who was the wisest of men, if it be no blunder to say so, before the fall, and the first and greatest philosopher after it. I will not mispend any time in collecting the puerilities and profanations that have fallen from the pens of rabbins and ancient and modern doctors of the Christian church. church. It will be enough, and in truth more than the subject deserves, to take notice, that we give credit to these writers, we must believe, that wisdom was infused into the mind of Adam by God, and that he came out of the hands of his Creator with all the perfections of which his nature was susceptible: and of what perfections was not that nature susceptible, while he enjoyed the vision of God, and while the Supreme Wisdom, that is God himself, " for the Word is God," was pleased to converse with him, and was delighted in his company *? He had not only innate wisdom, but innate language too; for Adam and Eve discoursed together in Hebrew as soon as they were created. Even after the fall, Adam preserved all the knowledge and wisdom whereof he was in possession, though more obscurely than before; because he had no longer the same immediate and intimate communication with the Supreme Intelligence. It should seem, too, that he transmitted some faint glimmerings of these original illuminations to all his posterity. Plato imagined, after more ancient philosophers, that every man is born with a certain reminiscence, and that when we seem to be taught, we are only put in mind of what we knew in a former state. Now who can tell how high this reminiscence began, and through how many former states it may have been continued? Several Christian divines * ludens in orbe terrarum; & deliciæ meæ, esse cum filiis hominum. Prov. c. 8, v. 31. |