"but its Associate appears with it." His reason for dwelling on these, he tells us expressly, is, "that those who "have children, or the charge of their education, may "think it worth their while diligently to watch, and care"fully to prevent the undue connection of ideas in the "minds of young people. This (he adds) is the time "most susceptible of lasting impressions; and though "those relating to the health of the body are, by discreet "people, minded and fenced against; yet I am apt to "doubt, that those which relate more peculiarly to the "mind, and terminate in the understanding, or passions, "have been much less heeded than the thing deserves; 64 nay, those relating purely to the understanding have, "as I suspect, been by most men wholly overlooked."

From these quotations, it is evident that Mr. Locke meant to comprehend, under the association of ideas, those Associations alone, which, for the sake of distinction, I have characterized, in my former work, by the epithet casual. To such as arise out of the nature and condition of Man (and which, in the following Essays, I generally denominate Universal Associations), Mr Locke gives the title of Natural Connections; observing, with regard to them, that "it is the office and excellency of "reason to trace them, and to hold them together in "union." If his language on this head had been more closely imitated by his successors, many of the errors and false refinements would have been avoided, into which they have fallen. Mr Hume was one of the first who deviated from it, by the enlarged sense in which he used Association in his writings; comprehending under that term, all the various connections or affinities among our ideas, natural as well as casual; and even going so far as

to anticipate Hartley's conclusions, by representing "the principle of union and cohesion among our simple “ideas as a kind of attraction, of as universal application " in the Mental world as in the Natural."* As it is now, however, too late to remonstrate against this unfortunate innovation, all that remains for us is to limit the meaning of Association, where there is any danger of ambiguity, by two such qualifying adjectives as I have already mentioned. I have, accordingly, in these Essays, employed the word in the same general acceptation with Mr. Hume, as it seems to me to be that which is most agreeable to present use, and consequently the most likely to present itself to the generality of my readers; guarding them, at the same time, as far as possible, against confounding the two very different classes of connections, to which he applies indiscriminately this common title. As for the latitude of Hartley's phraseology, it is altogether incompatible with precise notions of our intellectual operations, or with any thing approaching to logical reasoning concerning the Human Mind;-two circumstances which have probably contributed not a little to the popularity of his book, among a very numerous class of inquirers.

For my own part, notwithstanding the ridicule to which may expose myself, by the timidity of my researches, it shall ever be my study and my pride, to follow the footsteps of those faithful interpreters of nature, who, disclaiming all pretensions to conjectural sagacity, aspire to nothing higher, than to rise slowly from particular facts to general laws. I trust, therefore, that while, in this respect, I propose to myself the example of the Newtonian

Treatise of Human Nature, Vol. I. p. 30.

C

School, I shall be pardoned for discovering some solicitude, on the other hand, to separate the Philosophy of the Human Mind from those frivolous branches of scholastic learning with which it is commonly classed in the public opinion. With this view, I have elsewhere endeavoured to explain, as clearly as I could, what I conceive to be its proper object and province; but some additional illustrations, of a historical nature, may perhaps contribute to place my argument in a stronger light than it is possible to do by any abstract reasoning.

IV. It is a circumstance not a little remarkable, that the Philosophy of the Mind, although in later times considered as a subject of purely metaphysical research, was classed among the branches of physical science, in the ancient enumeration of the objects of human knowledge. In estimating the merit of those who first proposed this arrangement, something, I suspect, may be fairly ascribed to accident; but that the arrangement is in itself agreeable to the views of the most enlightened and refined logic, appears indisputably from this obvious consideration, that the words Matter and Mind express the two great departments of nature which fall under our notice; and that, in the study of both, the only progress we are able to make, is by an accurate examination of particular phenomena, and a cautious reference of these to the general laws or rules under which they are comprehended. Accordingly, some modern writers, of the first eminence, have given their decided sanction to this old and almost forgotten classification, in preference to that which has obtained universally in modern Europe.

"The ancient Greek philosophy" (says Mr. Smith) "was divided into three great branches; physics, or na

"tural philosophy; ethics, or moral philosophy; and "logic."-This general division" (he adds) "seems "perfectly agreeable to the nature of things." Mr. Smith afterwards observes, "that as the human mind, in what"ever its essence may be supposed to consist, is a part, "of the great system of the universe, and a part, too, productive of the most important effects, whatever was "taught in the ancient schools of Greece, concerning its "nature, made a part of the system of Physics."*

Mr. Locke, too, in the concluding chapter of his Essay, proposes, as what seemed to him the most general, as well as natural division of the objects of our understanding, an arrangement coinciding exactly with that of the ancients, as explained by Mr. Smith in the foregoing passage. To the first branch of science he gives the name of Quinn; to the second that of Пgaxт; to the third, that of EnμEITINй, or Aoyin; adding, with respect to the word qurinn, (or natural philosophy) that he employs it to comprehend, not merely the knowledge of matter and body, but also of spirits; the end of this branch being bare speculative truth, and consequently every subject belonging to it, which affords a field of speculative study to the human faculties.

To these authorities may be added that of Dr. Campbell, who, after remarking, that "experience is the prin'cipal organ of truth in all the branches of physiology,"

intimates,

"that he employs this term to comprehend not merely natural history, astronomy, geography, mechan❝ics, optics, hydrostatics, meteorology, medicine, chemis"try, but also natural theology and psychology, which"

* Wealth of Nations, Vol. III. pp. 163, 166, 9th edit.

(he observes), "have been, in his opinion, most unnaturally "disjoined from physiology by philosophers."-" Spirit (he adds), "which here comprises only the Supreme "Being and the human Soul, is surely as much included "under the notion of natural object, as body is; and is "knowable to the philosopher purely in the same way, "by observation and experience."*

In what manner the philosophy of the human mind came to be considered as a branch of metaphysics, and to be classed with the frivolous sciences which are commonly included under the same name, is well known to all who are conversant with literary history. It may be proper, however, to mention here, for the information of some of my readers, that the word Metaphysics is of no older date than the publication of Aristotle's works by Andronicus of Rhodes, one of the learned men into whose hands the manuscripts of that philosopher fell, after they were brought by Sylla from Athens to Rome. To fourteen books in these manuscripts, which had no distinguishing title, Andronicus is said to have prefixed the words, Τα μετα τὰ φυσικα, either to denote the place which they occupied in Aristotle's own arrangement, (im

τα

* Philosophy of Rhetoric, Vol. I. p. 143 (1st edit.)-It were to be wished, that Locke and Campbell, in the passages quoted above, had made use of the word mind instead of spirit, which seems to imply a hypothesis concerning the nature or essence of the sentient or thinking principle, altogether unconnected with our conclusions concerning its phenomena and their general laws. For the same reason, I am disposed to object to the words Pneumatology and Psychology; the former of which was introduced by the schoolmen; and the latter, which appears to me equally exceptionable, has been sanctioned by the authority of some late writers of considerable note; in particular of Dr. Campbell, and of Dr. Beattie.