nature of the Hottentot, and the human nature of a Newton, there is a distance of many centuries. More over, nature, the outward material universe, has a growth, is successively ameliorated, so that it is ever exerting a kindlier influence on human organism, and therefore on human character. The history of these successive ameliorations, or the history of nature, is then essential to a complete system of mental philosophy.

4. INSPIRATION. We have no confidence in the philosopher who believes himself able to explain the phenomena of human life, whether in space or time, without assuming the special intervention of Providence. "There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding." The acorn must be quickened and fed by foreign influences, or it grows not into the oak; so man must be quickened by the spirit of God, and fed by divine revelations. Through the aid of Providential men, prophets, Messiahs, and God's Only Begotten Son, the human soul has been quickened into life, human nature redeemed, and humanity advanced by the infusion into its life, successively, of new and higher manifestations of life. The modifications and growth of human nature, effected by these supernatural communications, must be studied in order to have a complete knowledge of the actual, concrete, living man, as we find him to-day, in the bosom of Christian Civilisation.

Here is the vast field which he who would give us a psychology worthy of the name, must cultivate; and he who has not cultivated it long and assiduously, has no right to call himself a philosopher. To become even tolerably acquainted with this vast range of studies will require more than ten years devoted exclusively to the study of the phenomena of one's own mind.

AFTER having dwelt so long on the general method and design of this new system of philosophy, it cannot be necessary to spend much time in disposing of its details. These are at best of moderate value, rarely new, and when new, just as rarely true. The author does not appear to have sufficient acquaintance with the thoughts of others, to be able to form any tolerable appreciation of his own. His

reading is very far from having brought him up to the present state of metaphysical science, even in this country and England, to say nothing of France and Germany. In running over the whole work, we have found nothing worthy of special commendation, unless it be a single remark respecting what he makes the third division of the mental phenomena. He divides the mental phenomena into three classes :

1. Cognitive Ideas;
2. Sentient Ideas;

3. Active Operations.

In this third division he includes the unconscious, the spontaneous operations of the mind, as well as the phenomena of the will proper, which are operations performed with consciousness, and reflection, and which are all that Upham and some of the Germans include under the third division. Dr. Schmucker is more correct than they; for I am active in as true and high a sense in my unconscious operations, as in what are properly called my volitions. If this were not so, moral character could attach only to those acts which are performed after deliberation, which is not true. The real moral character of the man is determined, almost solely, by his spontaneous operations, the unconscious motions of his soul. So far, then, we find Dr. Schmucker in the right.

But we do not accept the terminology of this classification. What is the meaning of cognitive Ideas? Surely, not ideas that know; why not then say simply cognitions, the only proper word in our language for what Dr. Schmucker probably means. Sentient Ideas certainly are not ideas that feel. Then they are simply sensations, sentiments or feelings. But who before, ever dreamed of calling a sensation, sentiment, or feeling, an idea? Locke uses the term idea, to express the objects about which the mind in its operations is immediately conversant. We do not accept this use of the term, the most favorable to Dr. Schmucker of any authorized use he can find; but even according to this use, the feeling is never an idea, because the moment it becomes an object with which the mind is conversant, it has ceased to be a feeling, and become merely the memory of a feeling. Then, again, what is the use of saying active ope

rations? Just as if there could be any operations that were not active, or did not imply activity on the part of their subject, or the operator.

Again, we protest against Dr. Schmucker's use of the word idea in general. The terminology of a science is not, we own, of the highest, but it is of some importance; and it is desirable that it should be as uniform as possible. For ourselves, we are no friends to neologism, either in the coinage of new words, or new senses to old words. It is rarely necessary to introduce a new term into our philosophical language, and the only novelty allowable in the use of an old term is its restriction as much as possible to its primitive, radical meaning. This radical meaning, guard against it ever so carefully, will always accompany the use of the word, and mislead both writer and reader, when it is not the exact meaning intended. The nearer we keep to the etymological meaning of a term, the more distinctly we express that meaning, the more just and proper will be our use of the term. Every language, too, has a genius of its own, and certain indestructible laws, which can never be offended or transgressed with impunity. There is no wisdom in the common sneers against a studied nicety in the use of words; and he who seeks to express his ideas in terms which are, as he would say, free, general, and familiar, will find, if he reflects, that his objections to this nicety arose from the very great vagueness and looseness of his thoughts. The term idea was originally used in philosophy to designate that objective reality we take cognizance of in all our mental operations, which transcends what are called sensible objects, though never seen but in connexion with them. This objective reality was originally termed idea by Plato, because he held it to be an image of the Logos, or Divine Mind. Now this conception of image goes, and always will go, with this word idea. It is impossible to get rid of it, because it is the radical, the primitive sense of the word. When, then, we call our notions of the objects of time and space, ideas, as does Dr. Schmucker, we shall always, whether we so intend or not, teach that by idea we understand that the mental phenomenon we so name, is in some sort a representative or im

age, of the object concerned. Thus, the idea of a book will be the image of a book in the mind; the idea of a horse will be a little picture or likeness of a horse; the wound by a sword will cause pain, which pain will give us an idea, that is, a mental image, or copy of the sword. This is precisely Dr. Schmucker's own philosophy, with this exception, that he does not contend that the idea is an image or likeness of the object, but merely a representation of it.

Accept this, call our notions, representations, and then say, with Dr. Schmucker, that the immediate objects of the mind are not the entities themselves, but their mental representatives, and you have the very idealism which Berkely deduced from Locke's philosophy, and which Reid spent so much time, and not without success, in overthrowing. Since Dr. Reid's Inquiry, it has not been allowable to talk of mental representatives, or ideas, as objects of the mind, separate from the external realities themselves. The mind does not hold communion with the external world through the medium of ideas, but converses directly with it; and what Dr. Schmucker calls ideas or representations of that world, are merely the notions we ob tain by conversing with it, the form our thoughts assume, when we think it. By his use of the term idea, be revives an old error, long since exploded, and for which we had supposed no new champion would ever be found.

Moreover, we object to the principle on which Dr. Schmucker makes his classification of the mental phenome na. "The proper materials of this science, doubtless are," he says, "not the supposed faculties, of which we know nothing directly but the known phenomena of the mind." It is true we know nothing directly of ourselves or our faculties; but who ever contended that we do not know ourselves, or our faculties, as well as the effect of the exercise of these faculties, indirectly, by studying the phenomena of life? If we can know nothing of our faculties, what is the use of trying to obey the injunction, "Know thyself"? But we do know ourselves; that is, indirectly, so far as realized in the phenomena of life. In every act of life, of which we are conscious, we recog nize always ourselves as the subject;

in cognition the subject that knows; in feeling the subject that feels; in love the subject that loves; in action, the subject or agent that acts. In every phenomenon we recognize, back of the phenomenon, the subject of the phenomenon, that which manifests itself in the phenomenon, the being, cause, or agency producing the phenomenon. Thus, in every one of the mental phenomena, we recognize, in addition, if we may so speak, to the phenomenon itself, the invariable, persisting subject of the phenomenon. This subject is always our self, the ME. The power of the ME, (what I mean when I say, I am, I think, I love, &c.,) to exhibit, produce, or cause this phenomenon, or more accurately to manifest itself in it, is precisely what we mean by the term faculty.

Now, if we can know nothing of the faculties of the ME, how can we classify its phenomena ? What will be the basis of our classification? If we cannot know the fact that we have the faculty of knowing, we can know nothing at all; and then how can we call a portion of our mental phenomena, cognitions, or "cognitive ideas"? When we assert that a portion of our mental phenomena are cognitions, do we not thereby assert that we have the power to know, and, therefore, that we have the faculty of intelligence? The same questions may be asked in reference to what Dr. Schmucker calls "sentient ideas" and "active operations; "that is, feelings and operations. Can a phenomenon be known to be an operation, without the recognition of that which is the operator? Is it not the perception in the phenomenon of the operator, that leads us and enables us to call it an operation?

Dr. Schmucker must pardon us for asking, if he has ever read Plato? We presume that he has not, and we therefore recommend him to do it forthwith, or at least some portions of Plato; and without referring him to any difficult portions, we would mention the Hippias, which is on the Beautiful. From that he may learn that to be able to call a particular thing beautiful, we must needs know that by virtue of which it is beautiful; that to be able to say of this or that act, it is just, wise, or virtuous, we must be able to conceive of justice, wisdom, and virtue. He who knows not the general, (the

genus), cannot know the special and the individual. We know only by ascending from individuals to species and genera. Thus, we know an individual to be a man only by virtue of our ability to detect in him the genus, the race, humanity or human nature; for in affirming him to be a man we affirm him to partake of this race, that is, of humanity, human nature. It is only by our power of perceiving genera and species, what Plato would call, and what we ought to call, the power of perceiving ideas, that we can know at all, that we can say of this individual he is a man, it is a horse, an ox, or a dog. Our modern metaphysicians who neglect the study of the ancients, show more self-reliance than true wisdom. In all that belongs to pure metaphysics, so far as the science concerns or rests on abstract principles, powers, or reasoning, no additions have been made since the time of Plato and Aristotle, unless Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, and Cousin's Reduction of the Categories, be exceptions. Our advance on the ancients is no doubt great, but it does not consist in the fact that we surpass them in our knowledge of the conditions of knowledge, of first principles of science, or in the strength, sublety, or soundness of our reasoning; but in a wider range of observation, in a richer experience, and a more thorough knowledge of life. Descartes in his doctrine of Innate Ideas, or more properly innate capacities or faculties, Reid, in his constituent principles of human nature, or first principles of human belief, virtually, even Kant in his Categories, and Cousin avowedly in his Absolute Ideas, have done nothing but reproduce, and, in our judgment, not in improved forms, Plato's doctrine of ideas, which asserts in all cases the reality of genera, ideas, or objects transcending time and space, and of our power to perceive them, as the absolutely indispensable conditions of all science. Against this doctrine we find the old Epicureans, and Skeptics, the Nominalists, among the Scholastics, Bacon, Hobbes, Gassendi, Locke, Condillac, Hume, and Dr. Schmucker, among the moderns; although this must not be said of Bacon and Locke without some important reservations, owing to the fact that they were both as men and as practical philosophers,