diffused throughout the civilized world the love of civil liberty-the spirit of toleration and charity in religious differences-the disposition to reject whatever is obscure, fantastic, or hypothetical in speculation to reduce verbal disputes to their proper value-to abandon problems which admit of no solution-to distrust whatever cannot be clearly expressed to render theory the simple expression of facts-and to prefer those studies which most directly contribute to human happiness. If Bacon first discovered the rules by which knowledge is improved, Locke has most contributed to make mankind at large observe them. He has done most, though often by remedies of silent and almost insensible operation, to cure the distempers which obstructed the operation of these rules, and thus led to that general diffusion of a healthy and vigorous understanding which is at once the greatest of all improvements, and the instrument by which all other improvements must be accomplished. He has left to posterity the instructive example of a prudent Reformer, and of a philosophy temperate as well as liberal, which spares the feelings of the good, and avoids direct hostility with obstinate formidable prejudice. If Locke made few discoveries, Socrates made none. Yet both did more for the improvement of the understanding, and not less for the progress of knowledge, than the authors of the 'most brilliant discoveries. Mr. Locke will ever be regarded as one of the greatest ornaments of the English nation, and the most distant posterity will speak of him in the language addressed to him by the poet (Gray).

"O decus Anglicæ certe, O lux altera gentis !"*

*Ed. Rev.,' Oct., 1821, p. 243.

66 IT may

CHAPTER IV.

LOCKE'S METHOD.

be said that Locke created the science of Metaphysics," says D'Alembert, "in somewhat the same way as Newton created Physics.

To understand the soul, its ideas, and its affections, he did not study books; they would have misdirected him; he was content to descend within himself, and after having, so to speak, contemplated himself a long while, he presented in his Essay' the mirror in which he had seen himself. In one word, he reduced Metaphysics to that which it ought to be, viz. the experimental physics of the mind."

This is great praise, and from a high authority, but we suspect that it can only be received with some qualification. Locke made no grand discovery, equal to Newton's, which changed the face of science. He was not even the first to turn his glance inwards. Descartes and Hobbes had been before him.

Yet Locke had his Method; a Method peculiarly his own. Others before him had cast a hasty glance inwards, and dogmatised upon what they saw. He was the first to watch patiently the

*En un mot, il réduisit la métaphysique à ce qu'elle doit être, en effet, la physique expérimentale de l'âme.”Discours Prelim. de l'Encyclopédie.

operations of his mind, that, watching, he might surprise the evanescent thoughts, and steal from them the secret of their combinations. He is the

founder of Modern Psychology. By him the questions of Philosophy are boldly and scientifically reduced to the primary question of the limits of human understanding. By him is begun the history of the development and combination of our thoughts. Others had contented themselves with the thoughts as they found them; Locke sedulously inquired into the origin of all our thoughts.

M. Victor Cousin, who, as the type of a rhetorician, is in constant antagonism to the clear and analytical Locke, makes it an especial grievance that Locke and his school have considered the question respecting the origin of ideas as fundamental. "It is from Locke," he continues, "that has been borrowed the custom of referring to savages and children, upon whom observation is so difficult; for the one class we must trust to the reports of travellers, often prejudiced and ignorant of the language of the country visited; for the other class (children), we are reduced to very equivocal signs.'

Really we cannot see how Locke should avoid referring to savages and children, if he wanted to collect facts concerning the origin of ideas; this is inseparable from the psychological Method. Perhaps no source of error has been more abundant than the obstinacy with which men have in all times looked upon their indissoluble associations as irresistible truths-as primary and universal

*Histoire de la Philos.,' 17 leçon.

truths. A little analysis-a little observation of minds removed from the influences which fostered those associations, would prove that those associations were not universal truths, but simply associations. It is because men have analysed the cultivated mind that they have been led to false results; had they compared their analysis with that of an uncultivated mind, they might have gained some insight. Locke saw clearly enough that the philosophers were wrong in method as well as in object. He saw that no advance could be made by dogmatising upon loose data. He saw, moreover, that philosophers were accustomed to consider their minds as types of the human mind; whereas their minds being filled with false notions, and warped by prejudices, could in nowise be taken as types, for even granting that the majority of their notions were true, yet these true notions were not portions of the furniture of universal minds. He sought for illustrations from such minds as had not been so warped.

What was Locke's object? He has told us :"To inquire into the original, certainty, and extent of human knowledge." He was led to this by a conversation with some friends, in which disputes growing warm, “after we had puzzled ourselves awhile, without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course; and that before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own

*This will be more fully discussed hereafter. See Epoch viii. chap. v.

abilities, and see what objects our understandings were or were not fitted to deal with."

The plan he himself laid down is as follows:

66 First, I shall inquire into the original of those ideas, notions, or whatever else you please to call them, which a man observes and is conscious to himself he has in his mind; and the ways whereby the understanding comes to be furnished with them.

"Secondly, I shall endeavour to show what knowledge the understanding hath by those ideas; and the certainty, evidence, and extent of it.

66

Thirdly, I shall make some inquiry into the nature and grounds of faith or opinion; whereby I mean that assent which we give to any proposition as true, of whose truth we have yet no certain knowledge; and we shall have occasion to examine the reasons and degrees of assent."

We may here see decisively settled the foolish question so often raised respecting the importance of Locke's Inquiry into Innate Ideas. "For

Locke and for his school," says M. Cousin, justly, "the study of understanding is the study of Ideas; hence the recent celebrated name of Ideology for the designation of the science of mind."

Indeed, as we have shown, the origin of Ideas was the most important of all questions; upon it rested the whole problem of Philosophy.

Locke has given us a few indications of the state of opinion respecting Innate Ideas, which it is worth while collecting. "I have been told that a short epitome of this treatise which was printed in 1688 was condemned by some without reading, because innate ideas were denied in it, they too hastily concluding that if innate ideas were not

VOL. III.

K