I am raised to the rank of a being who lives in all the plenitude of life." To this parade of language, of which, in abridging the verbal amplitude, we have retained all the reasoning, we must do the justice of saying, that we have seldom seen an objection more magnificently evaded. The position which was intended to be proved has, indeed, been assumed in every sentence; but it has been assumed with such just regard to the principles of harmonics, that, after more than two pages of majesty and melody, we feel something like the remorse of ingratitude, in reverting to the original question. The question was, whether the feeling of self, in all its modifications, be not an illusion like that of the phenomenal world? and we are told, that because man is destined to act, and his action is the immediate result of his will, and of his will he is conscious; there are therefore self, and will, and action. Had M. Villers merely said, that because we are conscious of self, self exists; though we should perhaps have denied the agreement of the position with his general scepticism, we should at least have acknowledged ils force as felt by ourselves. But when he contends that the mere combination of a series of feelings, which all equally depend on the truth of the question itself, as being all equally real, or equally phenomenal, is a proof of the reality of the feelings combined, we are less disposed to be merciful to inconsistency, and must require from him who considers consciousness as a thing to be proved, some mode of reconciling the belief of the reality of a combination of feelings, with the previous ignorance of their reality, as separate. It is not because man is an active being that he has objective certainty of himself: for the same certainty is equally felt in the most passive of our sensations; and, in truth, we know that we act, only because we have taken for granted that which is considered as proved by action. Our will, before the experience of action, is to our consciousness a passive feeling, and our knowledge of the action is transcendentally less certain, because it can be acquired only from the phenomenal world of space and time, in which the changes produced by our action take place. Even though the explanation were in all its other circumstances just, how many forms of intelligence and sensibility does it consider as realities! The destiny of man, the development of his being, the system of things created by himself, the succession of his will and action, have no meaning, unless we admit time, and causation, and number, and the categories of modality; so that the highest of all realities, the elevating sublimities of our being, are only the illusions of unsubstantial forms, which are at once the cause and the effect of every certainty we feel. The doctrines of practical reason are four; the liberty of will, the obligation to virtue, our existence in a future state, and our responsibility to a supreme Creator and Judge. On all these subjects, the transcendentalist has more than usual inconsistency. He declares that they are not objects to be known or proved in the strict sense of the terms. He rejoices that he knows nothing of them. "He would even fear to know any thing of his duties, of God, and of his soul; convinced that if they were objects of his knowledge, they must be in themselves illusions, phenomena purely human of his mode of seeing and conceiving." P. 360. Nothing, therefore, is more How unfortunate is it for a person, who looks forward with such fear to the knowledge of his duties, that he should afterwards be obliged (though, we make no doubt, with great reluctance) to confess, that they are now irresistibly established by the most rigid proofs!" avec une rigueur de méthode et de preuves, qui ne laissent nul recours raisonnable à l'opiniâtreté qui ne veut pas être convaincu." P. 388. evident than that the forms of cognition are not justly applicable to objects which belong not to cognition: such an application would be an amphiboly, or a paralogism, or an error of perhaps still longer name; yet there is not an idea of practical reason in which the forms of our knowledge are not involved. Freedom of will implies number, because there is choice; it implies existence, and possibility, and causation, because there is power; it implies time, because there is the succession of will and action it is therefore an error to say that the will is free. But though the application of the categories were allowable, the feeling supposed does not justify the assertion. Consciousness informs us only of the present, or, if memory too may be included, of that which is really past. It does not inform us of that which might have been the past. Thus it tells us that we did will a particular action; or, that we do will a particular action; or, from that law by which we infer the future from the past, that if we shall will a particular action, the action will ensue. But it is conjecture, and not consciousness, which tells us, that the circumstances of the past having been the same, we might have chosen a different action. It is not enough, therefore, for Kant to say that we have freedom of will, because we are conscious of the power of willing; for the most rigid necessarian does not deny that power. He contends for it even more earnestly than the defender of what has been called its freedom: for action, as far as it is not governed by the motive decisions of reason, resembles more the convulsions of the morbid body than the graceful and spontaneous movements of the healthy limb. Of moral duty it may be said, in like manner, that transcendentally it cannot exist. The voice of conscience, commanding to certain actions, implies succession, causation, existence, and other forms which are applicable only by an error of philosophising. We have, in certain cases, the feeling of duty; but we have also, in certain cases, the feeling of external independent space. Of this latter, it is at least equally difficult to divest ourselves; and we are convinced that in the mind of others, if of others we may be allowed to speak objectively, the feeling of duty can as readily be laid aside as that of external things. The liveliness of conviction, the universality, every circumstance is the same. But there is no really existing space it is therefore probable, that the voice of conscience is in like manner an illusion. Such appears to us the reasoning of the rigid transcendentalist. But the disciple of Kant, less consistent, admits and rejects with equal readiness where the evidence of both is the same. Nor is the confessed illusion merely of equal strength of evidence: the belief of it seems absolutely necessary to the existence of duty. What room is there for the exertion of virtue, where other beings cannot be known to us as objects? We surely cannot increase the happiness of him of whose desires we are ignorant, nor relieve a misery which exists but in our own forms of thought. In the maxims which are given to us as a summary of virtue, we observe no peculiar merit; and on the transcendental theory of morality, which supposes it to be a voice within us independent of experience in its origin, and incapable of being aided by any maxims, or stilled by any of the seductions of life, the parade of precept seems to have very little meaning. *This species of strict confutation, ex concessis, will not appear unmerciful to those who have observed the lavish use which the transcendentalists themselves have made of arguments of a similar kind. The only difference is, that we argue from the principles of him whom we oppose and that they conceive they have triumphed, when they have merely shown the inconsistency their own opinions with those of any other theorist. It is not more absurd to command a human being to invest his external sensations with space, than to command him to listen to sounds which are ever speaking to his heart, and from which it is impossible for him, in any situation, to withhold his attention. If any new duty could be taught by it, a maxim might be of value. But duty can receive no addition, since it is wholly independent of experience. It cannot be taught; for we teach only that which can be known: and duty is merely felt. If, however, maxims be of importance, the negative part of the first should certainly have been omitted: for, though it be perhaps better, upon the whole, that we should consider every thinking being as an end in himself, so far as not to injure him for the good of another, there are innumerable situations in common life in which an individual may be employed, without injury, but at the same time without reference to himself, for the good of a third person. Even where himself is the great object, it is surely no want of virtue to consider him also as a mean, in the good which our action, with respect to him, may produce to others. The beautiful progression of good, by which a virtuous action is diffused in its effects over a multitude of unknown beings, is at once a delightful contemplation and a powerful excitement to the benevolent mind. Had the first liberators of an injured country, if we may be allowed to take a melancholy example from the recent events of our own time, foreseen a period of future invasion of its rights, and trusted, in rousing their little band, that their example might, after many ages, inspirit their descendants to a similar resistance of oppression; we surely cannot think that their zeal would have been less ardent, or that, as an object of our interest, it would excite feelings of less virtuous sublimity. The second maxim, when stripped of the mysterious majesty of its terms, is only the common doctrine of utility; but with an expression so very complicated and artificial that it loses all the effect of a proverb, for which alone such maxims are valuable. An universal law of nature is not an object apprehensible by the multitude. It might have been more simply, and therefore better stated,-Do that which it would be of advantage, upon the whole, that every one should in a similar situation imitate. Even this, however, is without that quick-felt application to self, which is of such power in the proverbial Christian maxim, and which much more than compensates the cases to which that maxim is inapplicable. The belief of the reality of a future state forms a very inconsistent part of a theory which denies the actual succession of time: nor, omitting this fundamental objection, do we understand the poetry with which the state of future being is described. The mind cannot quit the phenomenal world, unless it cease to exist with all its necessary and independent forms. Though around it (for we have yet no noumenal language) be a system of things in themselves, there is a subject, as well as objects; and this subject cannot fail to modify the external influences. Our knowledge of external things must be combined, as at present, of objective and subjective elements; and the world may change its laws, but in all its changes it must to us be phenomenal. In reviewing the Transcendental theism, we own that it is very difficult for us to restrain that feeling of the ludicrous, which, on a system so respectable, in its celebrity at least, we are unwilling to indulge. An absolute unity, which is neither one, nor more than one, a creator of all things without causation or priority, a judge of the past without succession of VOL. III. 11 time, a being who does not exist, are so utterly inconceivable by us, that if theism depend on the conception of them, we must overcome the strongest reluctance of our nature, and be atheists, when the most delightful of our feelings has ceased to be possible. The animadversions we have made on the Transcendental theory have, we trust, justified our assertion, that its originality consists merely in intermingling, as parts of one system, without regard to its general harmony, the practical belief which the sceptic has always felt, with the tenets which he speculatively avows. The critical philosophy has not connected these discordant opinions; it has merely placed them together; and, when thus exhibited, we do not feel more strongly the possibility of their coalescence. It is acknowledged by M. Villers, that Kant is thoroughly acquainted with the metaphysical writings of every country in Europe; and we think we trace in him a peculiar acquaintance with those of our own language. The egotism of Berkeley and Hume is largely incorporated in his system, and combined with the opposing tenets of the school of Dr. Reid. If, to the common sense of that school, we add the innate susceptibilities of Leibnitz, and the denial by Hume of necessary connexion in causation, and of the reality of external perception, we bring before us the theory of cognition of Kant. But the force of common sense, and of the distinction of innate ideas, is invalidated by the denial of the reality of our external knowledge; and the denial of the reality of our perception of objects in space, is invalidated by the adoption of the principle of common sense.+ ON REID'S SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY, AND DUGALD In proceeding to the consideration of Mr. Stewart's observations on the spirit and scope of Dr. Reid's philosophy, we feel ourselves divided between a suspicion of the author's partiality to the memory and the tenets of his venerable instructor, and an unfeigned deference and respect for every thing that Mr. Stewart may deliver upon a subject which he has studied so profoundly. We hope that no one will suspect us of any design to insinuate that Mr. Stewart has represented the doctrines of Dr. Reid in any other light than that in which they really appeared to him: but it is not always easy to point out the imperfections of a system to which the mind has been long habituated; and in criticising the works of a departed friend, we neither * M. Villers adds, in a note, as if astonished at the fact, that it was for denying the existence of God that Fichte was declared an atheist by the theologians of Dresden. P. 341. This able review of the Philosophy of Kant was written by Dr. Brown, late Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. Several other valuable articles were contributed to the early Numbers of the E. Review by that eminent metaphysician; amongst others may be mentioned a severe critique, in Vol. ii. p. 147., on the work of Villers upon the subject of Phrenology -a science to the doctrines of which Dr. Brown, in the latter part of his life, became more favourable. I have transcribed some interesting particulars of Dr. Brown's short-lived connexion with the E. Review, from the account of his Life and Writings, edited by the Rev. David Welsh; a production in which the impartiality of the biographer is no less conspicuous than the sincerity and gratitude of the friend. See Appendix. Account of the Life and Writings of Thomas Reid, D.D., F.R.S. Edinburgh, late Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow. By Dugald Stewart. F.R.S. Edinburgh. Read at different Meetings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Svo. p. 225. Edinburgh and London, 1803.—Vol. iii. page 272. January, 1803. expect nor wish for that severe impartiality which may be exacted as a duty from a stranger. Although it is impossible, therefore, to entertain greater respect for any names than we do for those that are united in the title of this work, we must be permitted to say, that there are several things with which we cannot agree, both in the system of Dr. Reid, and in Mr. Stewart's elucidation and defence of it. The present section begins with a remark, the justice of which we are not at all disposed to controvert, that the distinguishing feature of Dr. Reid's philosophy is the systematical steadiness with which he has adhered to the course of correct observation, and the admirable self-command by which he has confined himself to the clear statement of the facts he has collected. Mr. Stewart, however, follows up this observation with a warm encomium on the inductive philosophy of Lord Bacon, and a copious and eloquent exposition of the incalculable utility and advantage that may be expected from applying to the science of mind those sound rules of experimental philosophy that have undoubtedly guided us to all the splendid improvements in modern physics. From the time, indeed, that Mr. Hume published his treatise of human nature, down to the latest speculations of Condorcet and Mr. Stewart, we have observed this to be a favourite topic with all metaphysical writers, and that those who have differed in almost every thing else have agreed in magnifying the importance of such enquiries, and in predicting the approach of some striking improvement in the manner of conducting them." Now, in these speculations, we cannot help suspecting that those philosophers have been misled in a considerable degree by a false analogy, and that their zeal for the promotion of their favourite studies has led them to form expectations somewhat sanguine and extravagant, both as to their substantial utility and as to the possibility of their ultimate improvement. In reality, it does not appear to us that any great advancement in our knowledge of the operations of mind is to be expected from any improvement in the plan of investigation, or that the condition of mankind is likely to derive any great benefit from the cultivation of this interesting but abstracted study. Inductive philosophy, or that which proceeds upon the careful observation of facts, may be applied to two different classes of phenomena. The first are those that can be made the subject of proper experiment, where the substances are actually in our power, and the judgment and artifice of the enquirer can be effectually employed to arrange and combine them in such way as to disclose their most hidden properties and relations. The other class of phenomena are those that occur in substances that are placed ltogether beyond our reach, the order and succession of which we are generally unable to control, and as to which we can do little more than collect and record the laws by which they appear to be governed. These substances are not the subject of experiment, but of observation; and the *The opinions maintained in this Essay, on the comparative unimportance of metaphysical nquiries, elicited a clever reply from Dugald Stewart, in the Preliminary Dissertation to his Philosophical Essays. The Edinburgh Reviewers, in their beautiful critique on that masterly work, took occasion to reiterate their sentiments, and to defend them with that plausibility of arment and felicity of expression which are distinguishing characteristics of the eminent critic to whom the article has been ascribed. A writer in the Quarterly Review, of first-rate talent, ntered the field of controversy, and combated, with consummate skill, the positions of his northern ontemporary, which, he conceived, were calculated to undervalue the importance and to disourage the study of mental science.-See Vol. vi. of the Q. Review, page 5. A part of the rticle here alluded to is embodied in the Appendix to this volume. |