neither matter nor mind. We are not surprised, therefore, that the great Organon of the Positive Philosophy assails this distinction.* Compte is not a whit behind Professor Ferrier in denouncing psychology as "illusory." Extremes meet; Materialists and Idealists are one in obliterating the line of demarcation between mind and matter. If these methods are so far alike, there is little to choose in their respective results. It is of little consequence whether they idealise nature or materialise the soul.

It is to be regretted that Brown, in what appears to us an ungenerous eagerness to disparage Reid's claims to originality has laboured with partial success to envelope this distinction together with the whole doctrine of Sensitive Perception, in confusion. Apparently bent on shewing that Reid had discovered nothing valuable, he toils to shew that we have no direct and immediate knowledge of matter or its primary properties, as without ourselves, and separate from our own sensations. Yet he asserts an intuitive and well-grounded belief of an external world outside of ourselves. It is true indeed that this belief is intuitive and well-grounded. But it could not be so if it were not founded on knowledge. It is, because we cognise matter and its properties as without us, that we believe them to be so. Otherwise such belief would be impossible and inconceivable. The notion of natural beliefs contrary to natural knowledge, or not founded thereon, erects a dualism of intelligence, and guards the integrity of truth, by impeaching the veracity of consciousness, the only witness to the truth in the premises. Such a system opens the road to modern scepticism, idealistic and materialistic.f

Nor do we think that Reid forfeits his title as the discoverer of a solid theory of External Perception, because in some of his arguments and illustrations, which Brown selects for his criticism, he is crude or inconsistent. As well might we say that Fulton or Fitch had no merit as inventors, because in their hands the steamboat was clumsy and rude, in comparison with our present floating palaces. He was the founder of a school in philosophy and psychology, sound, vigorous, and fruitful, while opposing schools have run into endless extravaganzas, and subverted the very foundations of knowledge and belief. It is quite in keeping, that Professor Ferrier should turn off him and his system with a few flippant and cavalier thrusts. Sir William Hamilton, as we have already noted, is ignored altogether by this contemptuous philosopher. He developed Reid's system,

* Mill's Logic; Harper's edition, p. 41.

† See Brown's Lectures on Reid's Theory of Perception and the Primary and Secondary Qualities of Matter; also Hamilton's Review of the Subject in the Article already referred to.

and cleared it of most of its crudities and imperfections. He reduced to its last analysis the testimony of our consciousness to a real external world, and by bringing the idealist to the clear, naked issue of crediting or impeaching this witness, swept away his gossamer refinings, like mist before the sun-beam. Yet we are not sure that he has not himself gone into excessive refining on parts of this subject. That he has elucidated the distinction between the primary and secondary qualities of matter with unexampled power; that he has vindicated the veracity of consciousness, and proved that, as surely as it affirms an ego, it also affirms a non-ego, of which the ego is no part, in a style more masterly and irrefragable than his predecessors, it is no exaggeration to say. It is a praise which cannot justly be denied him. But when he carries his analysis so far as to assert, not only that our first, but our only immediate, knowledge of matter as a non-ego is in our own bodily organism, and that our knowledge of all other matter is mediate and inferential, we think he runs to extremes. * He so far contributes

to the support of scepticism, and the undoing of his own work. This looks like reducing the not-self to a minimum scibile-a mere vanishing point. We see no need of these endless and destructive refinings, which destroy our direct, immediate knowledge of extension, figure, and resistance in the table on which we write, and the floor we tread. If we have no direct knowledge of anything material outside of our own bodies, how can we by inference attach any properties to them, while we do not as yet know that they exist? This process of elimination pares down to the quick. Pressed a little further, it leaves for the residuum of what is knowable without us, the shadow of an image. The more philosophers, even the mightest and soundest, analyse away, under colour of elucidating, the great landmarks, as shewn in revelation or the communis sensus of our race, the less we trust them. Professing themselves to be wise, they become fools. They enter depths, for which human reason has no sounding-line. The more we study Reid's critics in reference to the whole subject of Sensitive Perception, the more we appreciate the solidity of the basis on which he rested it, however crude his development of his theory may be in some particulars. We abide by the moral judgment of our own minds, and all human minds, that we know, and know immediately, not mere ideas of things without us, not mere sensations produced by them, but the things themselves as present to the mind in their apprehended properties. This does not imply that we therefore thus know everything about them. Here, as elsewhere, man's knowledge is not so complete or perfect as to exclude all ignorance, or room for progress. But be his ignorance what *Hamilton's Reid, p. 881.

it may, it does not thence follow that he knows nothing. He knows something in order to be capable of learning more. He may have much to learn in regard to the secondary qualities of body, or the various modifications which the primary may take on. But he knows that bodies exist without himself, that they are extended, figured, solid, mobile. What amount of space any given body fills; what any given optical phenomenon may proceed from, whether from a body of the same form and colour, or its image, or from what peculiar combination of the rays of light; whether a given noise proceeds from the discharge of a cannon or the bursting of a locomotive, and innumerable other questions, mechanical, chemical, physiological, may be originally doubtful, and determinable only after long inquiry. In regard to such subjects many mistakes may occur, which will require to be corrected. And herein the different faculties correct and supplement each other. But that in all cases of touch there is body with its primary qualities; that in vision the rays of light, as reflected and refracted by some body or bodies, are really seen, and much more of the like, no man can bring himself to doubt. Moreover, the senses in correcting, do not invalidate each other. Neither does reason, in correcting, invalidate them. The different faculties in perfecting each other's intelligence at the same time, corroborate their normal accuracy within their appropriate sphere. Given substance in space, or matter, and reason affirms that its primary properties must be, what, through our senses, we perceive them actually to be. Given the fact that the earth recedes from the sun, although to our vision the sun seems to move, yet a thorough analysis of this fact does not subvert, it establishes the accuracy of our vision. For all of motion that vision discerns is the increasing distance between the same objects. Which moves, and which is stationary is a matter of inference to be determined by other data, which, in this case, it required the discoveries of astronomy to furnish; just as when we sit in a rail-car by the side of another, on an adjacent track, motion is often seen, while we feel uncertain for the time, which car moves. This fact of the sun's rising we rarely fail to find impressed into service, as often as we read a sceptical book, which essays to nullify, either the obvious affirmations of Scripture, or of human consciousness. On the score of good taste, at least, it seems entitled to a discharge from further duty in this behalf.

The real identity of Professor Ferrier's scheme with the Pantheistic philosophy is apparent, not only from his general method and results, as already indicated, but from various incidental and collateral developments. Although he claims the merit of originality, this is true, not of any great elements of his theory, but rather of the clearness and systematic order

with which he unfolds them. Thus he pronounces (p. 324) "objects, whatever they may be, the phenomenal in cognition; matter in all its varieties the phenomenal in cognition; the ego, or mind, or subject, the phenomenal in cognition. His fourteenth proposition is, "There is no mere phenomenal in cognition; in other words, the phenomenal by itself is absolutely unknowable and inconceivable," p. 321. Mind and matter then, object and subject, are per se mere phenomena, and as such unknowable. Phenomena of what? Of absolute existence, which is the synthesis of the two. What, then, is this absolute ground of which these are phenomena? What else, surely, than that in which his system avowedly terminates, "a supreme, and infinite, and everlasting mind in synthesis with all things?" And what is this but resolving all things into God and phenomena of God? And what else does Pantheism attempt? Moreover, if it be inquired how this infinite ego becomes the non-ego, Pantheism answers, in coming into consciousness, which necessarily involves distinction, therefore limitation, developing itself, the finite phenomena of man and nature. How does Professor Ferrier stand here? "It (the ego) must know something particular, wherever it has any sort of cognisance,” p. 246. On the other hand, "the ego cannot be known as a particular thing at all, but only as the One Known and the All Known," p. 328. "It is redeemed into the region of the cogitable, by the power of self-determination," p. 252. This is plain enough. Whatever else is meant by it, it implies that the infinite can know itself only in and through the finite. It accordingly must pass into the finite, in passing into consciousness. This is but a Scotch echo from the continent. We do not think the merits of Pantheism, with its ethical and theological consequences, require formal discussion now and here.

Our readers can judge, how we rate Professor Ferrier's lofty pretensions to have laid the foundations of a firm and impregnable theism. No doubt the pantheist is a great theist, even an all-theist. He who should argue that man is rational, because animals are rational, would doubtless do a great work. He would brutify a man quite as much as humanise brutes, by putting them on a level. He alone is a theist who believes in a personal God, Almighty, Eternal, All-wise, All-holy, the Maker and Upholder of all things, whose being is distinct from and independent of all his creatures. To talk of maintaining the existence of God, by identifying the universe with them, is like maintaining the preciousness of diamonds, by arguing that they are only common pebbles. We are tired of this pretentious and magniloquent trifling with the most sacred theme. We advert to it as an illustration of the most dangerous and insidious feature of this fearful system. While denying a personal God, whose

existence is separate from his creatures, it yet holds that all things are divine. It finds God everywhere. Thus it can impose upon the simple and unwary, by simulating, adopting, and even intensifying, all the deepest expressions of Christian truth and piety. We do not accept such aid, or such apologists:

-Danaos et dona ferentes,

We think, moreover, that much of what is plausible in the author's reasonings, is due to certain assumptions which are adroitly inwoven with them. Absolute existence with him, means simply real existence. To hold to the real existence of matter aside from the percipient mind, is according to him to hold to its absolute existence. This he calls materialism. So it would be, if absolute meant here what it usually does-i.e. unconditioned and underived existence. But as it simply means in his use of its real existence, it implies neither materialism, nor any approximation to it. If it did, the whole Christian world, who believe in the real existence of body as such, and of spirit as such, would be materialists. He says, in a note on p. 156, "Here and generally throughout this work, the word 'cognition" signifies the known, the cognitum. This remark is necessary, lest the reader should suppose that it signifies the act rather than the object of knowledge." Yet, although "generally," he does not always thus use it. And he could not so use it at all, except on the assumption of the truth of his system, which makes us capable of knowing only the phenomena of our minds. So he speaks of our knowing our own perceptions and nothing beyond them. Perceptions of what? Of something without or within us? This is the very gist of the whole inquiry, which calls for proof instead of assumption. Such reasoning is not strengthened, however disguised, by the length of the circle that contains it. We will not, however, multiply instances. We have discussed the extraordinary positions of this book at this length, only because the fascinating style, the vigorous thought, the chair which its author occupies, as well as that for which he was a candidate in the Scottish Universities, all conspire to give it significance and influence; of which we have no light indication in the fact that, some time ago, it reached its second edition.

ART. IV.-1. Commentatar über das Buch Hiob, von H. A. HAHN, u. s. w. Berlin, 1850. 8vo. pp. 337.

2. Das Buch Hiob, verdeutscht und erläutert von Lic. KONSTANTIN SCHLOTTMANN. Berlin, 1851. 8vo. pp. 507. 3. The Book of Job; a Translation from the original Hebrew, on the basis of the common and earlier English versions. For the American Bible Union, by THOMAS J. CONANT, D.D,