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'The principles of morals are universal; no nations are so savage, none so barbarous that some glimmering of moral truth, and some sentiment of social duty, are not to be found among them.' It is granted; but the world notwithstanding affords too abundant proof, in the variety of deflections to which conscience is subject,- extending even to the absolute inversion of some moral principles, the transformation of virtues into vices and of vices into virtues, the consecration, among many nations, of the most hideous enormities, that apart from a sedulous and just culture of the moral nature so vaunted, there is scarcely any limit to the degree in which that flexible nature may be bent and perverted by association and habit and early misinstruction. If it is said that there is no nation that has inverted the entire moral code, thus bearing witness to the presence of certain great moral principles and tendencies in the human mind, this is quite true; but it is equally true, first, that neither has there ever been a nation without some species of education, calculated in some degree to develop the moral faculty; since the very circumstances in which the rudest of mankind are placed, their instincts, and their mutual necessities and relations, involve from the earliest periods of childhood an imperfect species of training for the development of the moral sentiments; and, secondly, that notwithstanding all this, the hideous distortions to which moral sentiment is subject, the degree in which so many barbarous nations have hallowed fraud and revenge, and quenched benevolence and compassion, shows that it is hardly possible to affix limits to the extent to which these principles of our nature may be overlaid and disguised.

Once more; the advocate of the same one-sided

philosophy is apt to say, from the unquestionable existence of a religious tendency and a religious faculty in man, that all external revelation is either impossible or superfluous; that each man is an oracle to himself, and in possession of all essential religious truth. What sort of an oracle nature is, if left to itself alone, let the religions which man in all ages has devised and practised, the inveterate superstitions, fanaticism, and cruelty which have darkened the earth, declare!

On the other hand, the advocate of the opposite exaggeration, that is, in favour of man's being principally, if not wholly, the creature of sensible experience, inclines to the contrary and equally pernicious extremes; he suspects in relation to morals, that man is just capable of being any thing that education and arbitrary laws may make him, and that these alone constitute actions right or wrong; in relation to religion, that man is, in like manner, equally susceptible of falsehood and truth, and that the systems he may adopt, apart from their influence on happiness, are about equally worthy of a wise man's attention, that is, not worthy of it at all. And thus, as on the former hypothesis, all religions, from Buddhism to Christianity, are too apt to be regarded as equally sacred, if not equally beneficial, in virtue of their being the product of the religious faculties of man; so, on the latter hypothesis, though men's religions are, it is granted, enormously dif ferent, they are all to be regarded as equally false, (though not equally expedient,) as the mere fabrication of arbitrary associations! Similar errors, (it might easily be shown,) though not equally pernicious, are apt to flow from similar exaggerations in respect to the phenomena of taste; - some folks, on

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the one hand, exaggerating man's original susceptibility to the beautiful, and ignoring the fact, that it is only as it is justly cultivated, that it will be ever worth a farthing; and others affirming that the beautiful is wholly factitious, and that literally and absolutely de gustibus non disputandum.

Only by acknowledging, then, the co-ordinate importance of these two phases of our nature, and even viewing with suspicion any such analysis as would result in the disparagement of either, only by sedulously guarding against extremes on the one side or the other, can philosophy preserve itself from errors far more formidable than any of a merely speculative nature. Just as it is true, that sensation and experience are an essential and inseparable condition, as we are at present constituted, of the evolution of all our latent mental activity, without which the mind itself would practically be dormant, nay, practically be nothing; so it is equally true, that for the just extrication and development of all the more potent and diffusive principles of humanity, (as those which respect religion and morals,) an external culture is indispensable, unspeakably more careful and prolonged than is necessary for eliciting the fundamental notions of magnitude and number.*

The phenomena of sensation disengage some of our elementary cognitions with unfailing uniformity, -the ideas which respect magnitude and number, for example, being uniform in the race; and we may be certain they will be so as long as our eyes and ears have such a marvellous similarity and precision in

*Indeed it requires much caution to form right opinions, and, as Dr. Moore observes, "If ideas were innate, it would save much trouble to many worthy persons." (Sharp's Letters and Essays, p. 145.)

we see

their operations. But the moment we come to activities of a higher order, and which yet, as most philosophers and most men who are not philosophers (a consideration perhaps quite as much to the purpose) agree, are as really characteristic of humanity as any sensations' whatever, we refer to the intuitions of moral and religious truth, that as the variations in the external conditions of development are much wider, so they are connected with an analogous want of uniformity and precision in the extrication of the intuitions themselves. Whatever the sublime possibilities for our nature, they are fulfilled only in compliance with the proper external conditions; in proportion as we remember that if man is half what he is by the internal laws of his being, he is also half what he is by experience and education. If all this were duly felt, we cannot help suspecting that men would not renew age after age this controversy, any more than they would obstinately dispute whether the action of the external light or the structure of a reflecting surface has more to do with the particular colour of an object, since without both the one and the other we should have no colour at all.

Having thus stated our views of the fundamental principles of Locke's philosophy, and our convictions that he was never rightfully claimed by the sensational school, we must proceed to justify our assertion, that he has not met with justice at M. Cousin's hands. We must maintain that M. Cousin not only does not, as he ought to have done, fairly exercise his 'eclectic' faculty, (which, we must frankly say, he has often more strenuously exerted with far less prospect of success,) in endeavouring to collate

apparent ambiguities and inconsistencies, and thus show Locke not to be contradictory where he seems so, but that he often creates contradictions where Locke has left none. We cannot, of course, follow him through the analysis of all the fundamental ideas of Locke's second book, but shall confine ourselves to those we before mentioned.

And, first, with regard to the idea of space, M. Cousin says that Locke must, on his theory, derive it from sensation or reflection; it cannot come from the latter, it therefore must be got from the former. He then represents Locke as so deriving it in his chapter on 'Solidity.' That Locke does so derive historically the idea of space is admitted; but then, says M. Cousin, the idea of space, in the system of Locke, should be reduced and is reduced to that of body.' Now that Locke does not confound the two ideas is evident even from that chapter; but in his subsequent long chapter expressly on 'Space,' he asserts, half a score of times over, the perfect distinction between them.

Two or three examples will be sufficient. He says, 'That men have ideas of space without a body their very disputes about a vacuum plainly demonstrate, as is showed in another place.* Of pure space,

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then, and solidity there are several (amongst which I confess myself one) who persuade themselves they have clear and distinct ideas, and that they can think on space without any thing in it that resists or is protruded by body.† . There are some that would persuade us that body and extension are the same thing.'. . . . He then proceeds expressly to show the contrary; because, 'First, extension includes no soli

* Book ii. ch. 4. § 3.

↑ Ibid. § 5.

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