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ment of marble. Thus are ideas and truths innate in us."

This is an ingenious statement of the theory: unfortunately for it, the very existence of these veins in the marble is an assumption, and an assumption not made for the facilitating of inquiry, but simply for the proof of the theory assumed: it is an hypothesis framed for the sake of explaining -what? the hypothesis itself! Ideas are first assumed to be innate; to prove this assumption, another assumption-the existence of innate ideas -is made; and the theory is complete.

The real force of Leibnitz' theory lies in his distinction between contingent and accessary truths, and in his position that experience alone could never furnish us with necessary truths. The examination of this we must delay till we come to Kant.

A brief view of the celebrated scheme of Preestablished Harmony will be all that is necessary to complete what we have here to say of Leibnitz.

It was in those days an axiom universally admitted that "Like could only act upon Like." The question then arose: how does body act upon mind; how does mind act upon body? The two were utterly unlike: how could they act upon each other? In other words: how is Perception possible?

All the ordinary explanations of Perception were miserable failures. If the mind perceived copies of things, how are these copies transmitted? Effluvia, eidola, images, motions in spirits, &c., were not only hypotheses, but hypotheses which bore no examination: they did not get rid of the difficulty of two unlike substances acting upon each other.

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Leibnitz therefore framed this hypothesis ::-The human mind and the human body are two independent but corresponding machines. They are so adjusted that, like two unconnected clocks constructed so as that at the same instant one should strike the hour and the other point it. "I cannot help coming to this notion," he says, that God created the soul in such a manner at first, that it should represent within itself all the simultaneous changes in the body; and that he has made the body also in such a manner as that it must of itself do what the soul wills: so that the laws which make the thoughts of the soul follow each other in regular succession, must produce images which shall be coincident with the impressions made by external objects upon our organs of sense; while the laws by which the motions of the body follow each other are likewise so coincident with the thoughts of the soul as to give to our volitions and actions the very same appearance as if the latter were really the natural and the necessary consequence of the former."

This hypothesis has been much ridiculed by those unaware of the difficulties it was framed to explain. It was so repugnant, however, to all ordinary views, that it gained few, if any, ad

herents.

The best edition of Leibnitz's works is that by Erdmann-Leibnitii Opera Philosophica: Berlin, 1839. The Nouveaux Essais are there for the second time published (the first was in Raspe's edition, Leipsic, 1765); and they have been since republished in a cheap and convenient form by M. Jacques: Paris, 1845.

CHAPTER IX.

SUMMARY OF THE THIRD EPOCH.

THE result of the speculations we have been considering-speculations begun by Gassendi and Hobbes, and further developed by Locke-was to settle, for a long while, the dispute respecting Experience, and to give therefore a new direction to inquiry.

It was considered as established that we could have no knowledge not derived from experience:

That experience was of two kinds, viz., of external objects and of internal operations; therefore there were two distinct sources-sensation and reflection:

That all knowledge could only consist in the agreement or disagreement of our ideas:

Finally, that we could never know things in themselves, but only things as they affect us; in other words, we could only know our ideas.

To this had Locke brought philosophy, which, rightly interpreted, was a denial of all philosophya demonstration of its impossibility; but this interpretation he did not put upon his doctrines. That remained for Hume. Locke's system produced three distinct systems: Berkeley's idealism, Hume's scepticism, and Condillac's sensualism. These it is now our task to exhibit historically.

END OF VOL. III.

ERRATA IN VOLS. I. AND II.

VOL. I.

Page 17, line 2, for 'attraction is the square,' read' attraction is inversely as the square,' &c. Page 74, line 5, read anthropomorphism.'

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VOL. II.'

Page 87, line 3 from bottom, for åyevvnon read èyyevvnen. Page 118. The ten categories in the translation have been displaced from their order by the word substance having fallen out, and having been placed last instead of first. They should run thus: substance, quantity, quality,' and So on. The mistake only occurs in some copies issued before it was discovered.

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APPENDIX

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The passages from the Gorgias' are not strictly to be called translations. They are taken from the analyses of Plato from dialogues mentioned vol. i. p. 9.

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The passage from the Ion' is from Shelley's translation.

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