the Parliament is an essential part of the government; but does any man commit his religious interests into the hands of a representative? Every man's soul and conscience must be in his own keeping; and cannot be represented in a council 'any more than at the day of judgement.' What are we to understand by our Lord's direction," Render to Cæsar the "things which are Cæsar's; and to God the things which "are God's?" What are the things which belong to God, if the sole dominion over conscience be not the primary article in the enumeration? Christianity is not a private revelation to governors, with which they are intrusted for the use of their subjects, to measure it out as they may think necessary, and to regulate its institutions as they please; but it is imparted to all men; it creates in all personal responsibility to God; and excludes all interference and restraint on the part of man. To affirm that the Christian religion needs the support of civil power for its preservation and advancement, is to libel it. Its propagation and progress, in the early and best periods of its history, were completely independent on civil governors. If its Author had intended that they should be its conservators, he would have committed it into their hands. What a picture of misery does the fourth century exhibit, when civil power was first associated with the profession of Christianity! Tumult and violence prevailed; the Nicene faith was established by one emperor, and Arianism by another; and war without religion, justice, or humanity, was carried on between brothers, the heads of the respective parties. The established religion of the East was orthodox under Constantine, and heterodox under Constantius. Under Valentinian, the Arians were destroyed in the West; and under Valens, the Nicenian believers were persecuted in the East. Each of these princes acted on the assumption that it is the duty of Christian governors to provide religious instruction for the people; and what could they be expected to provide but their own opinions, which each of them respectively considered as the true doctrine?

If the assumption which we oppose be admitted, that the duty of civil governors extends to religion, it would be impossible, on principles of justice, to change the religious opinions and practice of a nation, where the prince withheld his sanction from the new tenets; and the authors of every reformation were criminal in their attempts to introduce sentiments different from the established sentiments. If, on religious concerns, it be not right for every man, without the interference of civil governors, to think for himself, to declare his opinions without reserve, and to propagate them VOL. III. Ñ. S. K

to the widest extent, by means which exclude violence, the conduct of the first Teachers of the Gospel cannot be justified. Wickliffe and other Reformers are to be condemned. And if the principles which influenced the Puritans to resist the attempts to impose opinions, and rites, and ceremonies, upon their consciences, be not allowed to be just principles, the principles of the first Reformers have been invariably wrong. If the Puritans were not righteous sufferers; Cranmer, and Ridley, and Latimer, were not martyrs.

Other arguments might be advanced in support of our sentiments; but as we deem the reasons we have already stated, amply sufficient, we shall dismiss this subject for the present, referring our readers to Furneaux's Letters to Blackstone, and adding the following anecdote from Mr. Brook's first volume.

It has been said, that the jester whom Henry the Eighth, according to the custom of the times, retained at Court, seeing the King overjoyed, asked the reason; and when told, that it was because his holiness had conferred upon him this new title, (Defender of the faith,) he replied, my good Harry, let thee and me defend each other, and let the faith alone to defend itself.' Introd. p. 2.

(To be continued in our next.)

Art. II. Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind. By Dugald Stewart, Esq. F.R.S. Edin. Honorary Member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburgh, &c. &c. Vol. II. 4to. pp. x. 554. Price 21. 2s. Cadell and Davies, 1814.

THE importance of every study must ultimately be appre

ciated by its practical utility; we are aware, therefore, that that branch of science which is called metaphysics, if it be estimated according to this rule, will, to some persons, appear extremely deficient. The chemical and mechanical philosophers, the astronomer, the optician, even the recluse mathematician, all contribute their share to the comforts of society: but what has the metaphysician to shew in his own behalf? What triumphs brings he home?' It may be answered, that the science is yet in its infancy; that its practical effects are at present in posse, rather than in esse: that good, however, may and must result from the study of the philosophy of the mind, it seems to us absurd to deny. The faculties of the mind require to be educated: it behoves us, therefore, to be well acquainted with them. We perpetually find the mind disordered; and till we acquire more accurate knowledge of its constitution, shall we not be working in the dark in our attempts to cure it?

We are convinced of some truth, of which we wish to convince another. Instead, therefore, of beginning at one point, then suddenly hastening to another that appears more evident, presenting the argument at random in different directions, till it eventually make the desired impression upon the mind of our hearer; instead of all this, would it not be simpler and more natural to render the arguments, which we employ for the con'viction of others, an exact transcript of those trains of inquiry and reasoning, which originally led us to form our opinions?'* And who shall be found capable of this, but he that has been accustomed to attend to the operations of his own mind, and the trains of his own thoughts?

We have so much matter before us, that we can only mention these things. And we must just observe, by the way, in how many instances discoveries, made in the most abstruse and, apparently, the most useless sciences, have issued in practical benefits, of which the discoverer had not the most distant thought, The ancient geometers, for instance, traced the properties of the conic sections, the relations of their lines and angles, purely out of curiosity; and how much would they have been astonished could they have foreseen, that from these properties and relations, Newton was to explain the motions of the celestial bodies! Surely, then, on a subject where good, the most important good, is obviously in view, we may be excused for entering into speculations which, to a man who delights in mere matter-offact, may appear egregiously trifling and absurd.

We shall give one instance in which metaphysics have been applied to a practical purpose. The metaphysician points out the association of ideas in the human mind; that one thought, or recollection, is perpetually introducing another, with which it was, in some way or other, formerly connected, Thus, he remarks, the sight of any known object recalls to the mind its name; the sight of a known hand-writing, the writer; a known voice, the speaker; any other known sound, its cause. On this principle are founded all the systems of artificial memory, which have been published, or which men of letters or of business, have formed for their own private assistance.

We do not intend, at present, to confine ourselves to the volume, the name of which stands at the head of this article ; but to look back to Mr. Stewart's former volume, and from that, and from the writings of Dr. Reid, to give our readers a slight view of what is called the common-sense philosophy.

Before the time of Dr. Reid, it was the received opinion among philosophers, that we perceive nothing immediately; but that when we see any thing, for instance, the midnight heaven stud.

* Stewart, Vol. I. p. 125. .

6

ded with its ten thousand worlds, the immediate object of our perception is an idea in our own minds-an idea of the starry heavens. This the philosophers seldom endeavoured to prove; but they looked upon it as being so obvious, that they took it for granted. When they did attempt to prove it, their argument was of the following kind. The mind must be present to what it sees, hears, &c. and it cannot be supposed that it goes out of the body to every thing it sees and hears. It follows, therefore, that ideas, or images of every thing it perceives, must be presented to it, in what Mr. Locke calls its chamber of presence,' in the brain, or in the sensorium. This reasoning, unfortunately, was never canvassed, and no one thought of doubting the justness of the conclusion. Dr. Reid, alarmed at the deductions which he found drawn, by Berkeley and Hume, according to the strictest logic, from these premises, began at length to question the fashionable doctrine; and he proved, in such a manner, we think, as to set the matter for ever at rest among reasonable people, that the theory of ideas, as adopted to explain the phenomena of perception, wanted both the requisites of Newton's first regula philosophandi: it was not a vera causa,-for nobody could prove the existence of these ideas in the brain, or in the sensorium ;-on the contrary, all physical experience was against their existence: nor was it a cause quæ phænomenis explicandis sufficeret; for, admit ideas, and perception is as difficult to be accounted for as before. It is as easy to conceive how the mind perceives external things, as how it perceives their images in the brain.

The theory of ideas being thus discarded, as a mere hypothesis, unfounded on fact, and serving no purpose, Dr. Reid did not proceed to invent a new hypothesis, and thence deduce his metaphysical doctrines: he went to work more philosophically. He examined attentively the phenomena of mind, and made fact the basis of his opinions.

Of these we are now to give as brief an account as we are able.

"In the gradual progress of man, from infancy to maturity,' remarks Dr. R. there is a certain order in which his faculties are unfolded, and this seems to be the best order we can follow ' in treating of them.

'The external senses appear first.' Sensation, therefore, is the first faculty to be considered.

The senses of a new born infant, it is probable, are weak and

It is hardly necessary to mention, that we are speaking of philosophical ideas. In common language idea means nothing but notion or thought, and, in that sense, no one can doubt of the existence of ideas,

imperfect. Warmth, and the satisfaction of hunger, seem at first to be its only gratifications. In a short time, it distinguishes tastes, and contemplates light with satisfaction, and then colours; afterwards it is pleased with the sound of the human voice; but it seems to be some time before it receives any sensations from smell.

Through the senses we receive all our knowledge of an external world but it is to be remarked, that no sensation can be explained in words. No one could explain what a smell is, to a person who should want the sense of smelling; and the same may be said with regard to tastes, and sounds, and colours. Nor could the sensations attending visible figure, or tangible figure, be explained to a blind man, or a man devoid of the sense of touch that is, though a blind man knows by the touch what a circle is, or what a square is, yet he can have no notion whatever of the appearance which either of them assumes to the eye. And, on the other hand, should a man be born without the sense of touch, though he would, by his sight, know distinctly what a circle is, and what a square is, yet he would know nothing of the sensations produced by the handling of either. The sensations let into the mind through any one sense, are perfectly distinct from those let into it through any other. In fact, since a sensation is nothing but seeing, hearing, &c.; to say that a man, wanting one sense, could yet understand the sensations belonging to it, would be to say, that he could smell, or see, or hear, by some other sense than that of smelling, or seeing, or hearing. This, however, is sufficiently plain.

Of the qualities in bodies producing these sensations in us, some are what Dr. Reid calls occult, and other philosophers, secondary: i. e. qualities of which we know nothing farther than that they do, we know not in what way, produce such sensations in us. No one can define a colour, or a smell, otherwise than as a certain quality of body which produces a certain sensation in us. We can go no farther. There are other qualities of bodies, however, of which we know more; which we can define and make subjects of our reasoning. Such are solidity, extension, figure, and others. The immediate effect, in leed, of any one of these upon the sense is a sensation, which, as we have just observed of all sensations, is not to be explained to any one wanting the appropriate sense. But there is something farther. Having obtained the sensation of figure, for instance, by the eye, we acquire the notion of what it is in body; we define it, and make it an object of the understanding; so that, without possessing our original sensations, a blind man might yet enter into our definition, and make figure equally an object of his understanding. Indeed, by his own sensations of touch, he would himself arrive at a similar definition. And therefore, it has