either matter or thought-our idea of it being too obscure to justify us in pronouncing as to the question of species. Yet as he admits that we have an obscure idea of substance, we think he might have admitted that we have an obscure idea of its species, rather than maintain such paradoxical opinions; not to say, that Locke does in fact admit species of substance, since he admits that God is not material-and that the world is. And yet (as we have already remarked) it was really modesty, though it may be deemed a very superfluous modesty, which made him defend his paradox; the spirit which made him thus irrationally cautious, we may approve, though we may lament its application. On the other hand, the adventurous Leibnitz, though in the right as regards this particular speculation, defends his opinion by an assertion equally gratuitous unless, indeed, the exception he makes reduces it to a truism. He says, with Locke, that though we must believe many things which we cannot comprehend, yet that 'dans l'ordre de la nature (les miracles mis a part), il n'est pas arbitraire à Dieu de donner indifféremment aux substances telles ou telles qualités; et il ne leur en donnera jamais que celles, qui leur seront naturelles, c'est à dire, qui pourront être derivé de leur nature comme des modifications explicables. Ainsi on peut juger, que la nature n'aura pas naturellement l'attraction;'* and he, therefore, classes gravitation, as a property of matter, with those occult qualities to which as a Deus ex machinâ, the anicent philosophers resorted when any phenomenon knocked at their door, and asked for an explanation !

As to Locke's notions of 'personal identity' we give him up to the full severity of M. Cousin's strictures, who

* Nouveaux Essais. Avant-propos, p. 21.

assuredly does not spare him. We have nothing to say for our great metaphysician here. That personal identity is dependent on consciousness, so that if a man loses that, temporarily or permanently he is temporarily or permanently not the same person; that he loses it when asleep, or drunk, or in a delirium, or in consequence of a bad memory; all this is so strangely paradoxical, so opposed to the most intimate convictions of mankind, that it never has been nor is likely to be received by any who are not already 'beside themselves;' and yet it necessarily follows from Locke's theory. But on this we need not dwell.

Is it to Locke's disproportionate estimate of the external influences which modify the intellect, that we must attribute a propensity, not only in his essay, but in his work on 'Education,' to ignore, or at least undervalue, the peculiarities of internal structure in the individual mind? It would seem as if that same tendency which, as regards the generic characteristics of the human intellect, prevented a due appreciation of its internal powers of shaping and moulding the materials of knowledge, of transforming and reacting upon them,-similarly led him to under-estimate the original varieties of different minds. That old expression of the tabula rasa seems to have haunted him where the 'veined marble' of Leibnitz would assuredly have been a happier metaphor. From some expressions in the Treatise on Education,' one would almost imagine him to have thought that the specific differences of mind were of comparatively little moment; and that nearly all that distinguishes one mind from another is attributable to education. He could scarcely have thought so, yet his language is as follows:-'I think I may say that of all the men we meet with, nine parts of them are what they are by their edu

cation. It is that which makes the great difference in mankind.'

Facts we think, on the contrary, make it pretty obvious, that as man, in general, becomes what he is as much by the fundamental laws of thought, as by exposure to the outward conditions which are indispensable to any thought at all, so in the varieties of the species, each man becomes what he is, quite as much by the individual peculiarities of his mind (for probably no two minds are more alike than any two faces), as by the culture to which he may be submitted. We have much sincere respect for the schoolmaster, and believe that he can do very great things, but do not quite believe in his omnipotence, or that he can obliterate any of the differences between a genius and a blockhead. We have a suspicion that though a Milton or a Napoleon might have cut poor figures if born and bred peasants, yet that it does not follow that ordinary peasants need but to be duly cultivated to turn them into Miltons or Napoleons. 'Elle fait danser l'ours,' say Helvetius, of education; but we doubt if it can be said, 'Elle fait penser l'âne.' 'I imagine,' says Locke, 'the minds of children are as easily turned this or that way as water itself.' On this Hallam justly remarks, Those who are conversant with children on a large scale will, I believe, unanimously deny this levelling efficacy of tuition. The variety of characters even in children of the same family, where the domestic associations of infancy have run in the same trains, and where many physical congenialities may produce, and ordinarily do produce, a moral resemblance, is of sufficiently frequent occurrence to prove that in human beings there are intrinsic dissimilitudes, which no education can essentially overcome.'

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But whatever excess of influence Locke may have attributed to education, he at least does not suppose it would work the miracles which both Bacon and Descartes venture to promise from their methods of philosophising.' It is curious that all three alike seem chargeable with this fault of overlooking the radical and enormous inequalities of different minds. It cannot well be said that knowing man better than they knew men, and modestly judging others by themselves, they thought the interval between themselves and their fellows less than it was; for all of them were well acquainted with the world two of them profoundly. It is an error to which philosophers are very generally liable in favour of 'Rules,' and especially when the rules are their own. Bacon says, 'Our method of scientific discovery almost equalises intellects, and does not leave much to their peculiar excellence, since it accomplishes every thing by means of most sure rules and demonstrations ;' and he hence compares the process of discovery by his system to describing a circle by compasses, in which it does not much matter whether the hand be skilful or not. Nor is Descartes less confident. Now throughout this treatise we shall endeavour to trace with accuracy, and to smooth, the road which may conduct man to the discovery of truth, so that the most ordinary mind, provided it is profoundly penetrated with this method, shall see that truth is no more denied to it than to any other, and that if it is ignorant of anything, it is from no want either of sense or capacity.'t

Yet is it a magnanimous trait thus to hope well for humanity! And so vast no doubt is the effect of

* Nov. Org. lib. i. Aphor. cxxii.

† Règles pour la Direction de l'Esprit, p. 248.

education and training, especially in relation to the moral habits of mankind, that we can readily excuse the language of hyperbole. The tendency, at all events, of such lofty confidence, is to make men aspire high for themselves, if they will not be wanting to their own powers, and to stimulate them to do their best for those whose education is committed to them. In his 'Conduct of the Understanding,' Locke inculcates similar inspiriting maxims, but with a more frank admission of the disparity and diversity in different minds.

The chapter on 'Power' is one of the most comprehensive and original in the Essay,' but one also that has led to abundant doubts as to which side Locke takes in the great controversy to which it principally relates.

At the commencement of this chapter Locke traces the origin of the idea of 'Power' to the consciousness of the phenomena of Will, and thinks that this gives us the clearest idea of the notion of Power; which, however, he elsewhere says, may be deduced from the observed changes which take place in the external world, and the succession among its phenomena: 'But if from the impulse bodies are supposed to make one upon another, any one thinks he has a clear idea of power, it serves as well to my purpose, sensation being one of those ways whereby the mind comes by its ideas only I thought it worth while to consider here by the way whether the mind doth not receive its idea of active power clearer from reflection on its own operations, than it doth from any external sensation.'

It certainly does seem odd to say this 'by the way,' and to say nothing of the better account of the origin of our notion of 'Cause' and Power in the chapter