1852,

His à priori System.

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this construction of the universe hardly more difficult than that of expounding it in such a way as, while conveying the truth,' should not strike any body's imagination with excess of wonder,' -truly a feat which we should think impossible—‘nor be repugnant to received opinions,' — a feat at least equally so. Hard fate of the philosopher! to be obliged to reduce chaos to order, and yet never shock the chaos of received opinions.* Yet he meditates still more difficult things. He says (Epist. 67.):—

'Two or three months ago, I pitched myself into the depths of space-me in cœlum penitissime conjeci- and after I had satisfied myself as to the nature of the heavens, and the more conspicuous stars, and as to many other things which a few years ago I should have despaired of, I am now grown so audacious that I am going to investigate the cause of the position of every fixed star.'

In another letter, written about the same time, he condescends to remark that the subject of comets especially does demand a considerable amount of observations, and suggests that if a number of amateurs would furnish them, for the behoof of the deductive philosopher, as the data of his reasonings, it might be of admirable consequence.† In the same letter he exhibits a trait of despondency very unusual with him. He almost despairs (though he says he cannot refrain from allowing his mind to pursue the theme) of ascertaining the reasons for the position of every fixed star.' Reflecting on the (even now somewhat imperfect!) condition of sidereal astronomy, the reader will not wonder that Descartes had not quite exhausted this immeasurable subject; but we must regret it the more as he somewhat darkly observes, though, as other letters show, no believer in astrology, that the knowledge of this order of the stars is the key and foundation of the profoundest and most perfect science

'Res mille simul considerandæ veniunt, ut modum inveniam quo verum dicendo, nullius imaginationem percellam, et opiniones jam receptos non impugnem.'

† Sir John Herschel enforces a somewhat similar suggestion of Lalande, in his admirable treatise on Astronomy. (Ch. xii. on 'Sidereal Astronomy.") It is well that the suggestion should be made, and if acted upon with conscientious diligence, might lead to important results. But we fear that little value can be attached to mere amateur efforts in any department of science. If observations and experiments are made with the requisite tact, care, and accuracy, then the observers must be, on that subject, philosophers, and cease to be amateurs; if not, by misleading into error they will be apt, as we say of slovenly servants, to make more work than they save; at all events, their work requires to be done over again, and the practical philo sopher is just where he was.

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' which men can attain respecting the material universe; because ' in virtue of it all the forms and essences of terrene bodies may be known à priori; whereas without that knowledge we must 'be contented to conjecture them à posteriori and in their effects;'

a dictum of à priori philosophy, which the reader must take for granted: though we certainly think that when man has discovered the reasons for the position of every fixed star (though not because he has done so), he will very probably be also in possession of those other mysteries, of which it is to be the key.

Amidst the natural insufficiencies and errors of Descartes' account of the modes in which the universe may be supposed to have been evolved, the idea of that evolution itself as a methodical progression- a development from the operation of vast mechanical, chemical, and other laws, in virtue of which the heavens and the earth naturally assumed their present form, is a conception the probability of which modern science is confirming; nor must the merit of entertaining it be grudgingly denied to Descartes, scanty and jejune as is the apparatus of causes by which he accounts for the all but infinite effects. It is an idea, however, which he timidly disclaims as the true theory of the subject; and affirms that he only thinks every thing might have been produced in such a course of development. We shall nevertheless concede him the honour he is anxious to divest himself of; for it is pretty certain that he is here merely fencing. His dread of the odium and persecution attendant upon alleged heterodoxy is constantly impelling him to say that he reasons ex hypothesi, when we can yet see that he believes the hypothesis to be fact. However, his words are, 'I ' do not wish it to be inferred from my reasonings, that the world has been created in the mode I have explained; for it is much more probable that God made it from the beginning such as it was to be.'

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So confident is the tone in which Descartes speaks of his à priori system, of the possible construction of a universe on his principles; so firm is his tread over what he deems a 'pavement of adamant,' that we can hardly divest ourselves of the belief that he would have been willing to stand a test to which few even of the most sanguine of the children of philosophy would venture to submit. We have sometimes thought that if the Supreme were pleased to delegate for awhile his omnipotence to some archangel, instructed to furnish the human fabricators of his universe with the elements of their hypotheses, (atoms and forces and combinations of these according to their own definition,) on condition of their attempting to realise their conceptions,-most of them would, at last, shrink from the proffer, lest the ignominy of

The favorite games of the erry Cartesions, than grazing the first princiques of their master, his entire philosophy, physical as well as metaphysical, flows by mid defaction, is wand caled in the somewhat reñions pulverçcial nobe, “A Torre 'to the Work of Cantece The truth is, thus in his physical theories Descartes invived a new principle just whenever be thought proper. Yea Babs rely dugaan Eoge, thinks that Descarves, inving seen that the true theory of the

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universe was a problem of dynamics, a preparé Newton; il a 'fait peutêtre plus que Newton.' From this it might be supposed higher merit to see that there is a problem to be solved than to solve it!

But we must now proceed, as we proposed, to offer a few remarks on some of the principal points of the Cartesian philosophy. And first of innate ideas.'

as

One of the most voluminous, yet least satisfactory controversies ever carried on among men, is that respecting the origin of human knowledge and the genesis of our ideas. It is whimsical, at first sight, that men should be more agreed about the deductions and results derived from their first principles than about the origin of the first principles themselves; that the house should be apparently stronger-though not really stronger than the foundations. But it is for the usual reason; the foundations are out of sight. Men certainly believe that two and two make four; and that two straight lines will not inclose a space; but whether these things be generalisations from experience,' or assume the shape of axioms soon as the very terms are propounded and understood) in virtue of the very constitution of the mind itself, we see by the differences of opinion between even such men as Dr. Whewell and Mr. John Mill, that men are not agreed. That there is a material world, they are pretty unanimous; but why they think so, the most acute of them are still puzzled to say; they are also tolerably agreed that there is a God, but whence that idea is collected, or at all events whence it may be most unexceptionably and summarily inferred; whether it does not anticipate all demonstration; and if not, how it may be best demonstrated, as to all this, metaphysicians are perpetually wrangling. In brief, in relation to much of philosophy, mankind seem exactly in the contrary position to that in which Epictetus represents them. The most important TOTOs in 'philosophy,' says he, is that which respects the application of theorems, as for example, that we must not lie; the second, • the demonstration of this; as for example, why we ought not to lie; and the third, the force of the demonstration itself;' or the wherefore of the why, as we may express it. • But now,' continues he, wholly forsaking the first, we addict ourselves • almost exclusively to the last; thus we lie fast enough; but how it may be demonstrated that we ought not to lie, we have at our fingers' ends.' It is just the contrary, with the greater part of the primary truths which we have above enumerated; they are embraced, but the grounds of them are disputed. It is

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1852.

Necessary and contingent Truths.

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quite true that philosophers are as willing as ever to busy themselves supremely about the why, and the why of the wherefore; but, it appears, without the same success; for whereas, we all believe and act on the belief that two and two make four, that there is a material world, and so forth, philosophers have not the why and the wherefore quite so much at their command.

Steady indeed must be the hand, bright the lamp, and keen the eye, which ventures to explore those depths of our nature in which our ideas originate. The stream of knowledge, however bright it sparkles at last in the sun, has its font in a dark mountain cave, and issues to the day through many a secret winding channel. Long before men are in a condition to investigate this obscure subject, to analyse the sources of their knowledge, ― the process (the result of many conditions) has been completed, and the products have become hopelessly complicated. The mind constituted so and so, having its own laws and conditions of thought independently of experience, but also subjected to inevitable conditions of development from that experience, without which it would never develope at all, has been so perpetually and so equally under the influence of both sets of conditions, and that at periods long anterior to the dawn of reflection, that it is now no longer possible to ascertain with exact precision what is due to one and what to the other. If we could separate the two classes of influence, or rather if we could calculate not only their combined action, but their perpetual interaction; if, as mathematicians say, we could have one element vary and the other remain constant, and then the second vary, and the first remain constant, we should be able to see what is the effect of each in the total result. But this is impossible, and hence the difficulty. As Descartes has observed in the first sentence of his Principia,' in language which reminds one strongly of many passages in the Novum Organum,''Since we were all once children, and in that condition formed 'various judgments concerning external objects, before we had 'arrived at the entire use of our reason, we are misled, by many prejudices, from the knowledge of the truth; from which 'prejudices it does not seem possible that we should be liberated, except by endeavouring to doubt, once for all in our lives, of all those things in which we may discover only the smallest suspicion of uncertainty.' The evil is more apparent than the remedy.

That there are the two above-mentioned distinct sets of conditions essential to the genesis and formation of our ideas, is now admitted with tolerable unanimity by philosophers; they, for the most part, alike maintain that the mind is originally