be defined as the science' of all that we know, feel, remember and believe: inasmuch as our knowledge, sensations, memory and faith constitute the universe considered relatively to human identity. Logic, or the science of words must no longer be confounded with metaphysics or the science of facts. Words are the instruments of mind whose capacities it becomes the Metaphysician accurately to know, but they are not mind, nor are they portions of mind. The discoveries of Horne Tooke in philology do not, as he has asserted, throw light upon Metaphysics, they only render the instruments requ[is]ite to its perception more exact and accurate.

Aristotle and his followers, Locke and most of the modern Philosophers gave Logic the name of Metaphysics. Nor have those who are accustomed to profess the greatest veneration for the inductive system of Lord Bacon adhered with sufficient scrupulousness to its regulations. They have professed indeed (and who have not professed?) to deduce their conclusions from indisputable facts. How came many of those facts to be called indisputable? What sanctioning correspondence unites a concatenation of syllogisms? Their promises of deducing all systems from facts has too often been performed by appealing in favour of these pretended realities to the obstinate preconceptions of the multitude; or by the most preposterous mistake of a name for a thing. They...

1 Cancelled reading, The sense in which the word Metaphysics will be employed in the following pages is: See definition given in foot-note, p. 287.

2 The words the science of are here cancelled in the MS.

PROSE-VOL. II.

3 Cancelled reading, Locke and the disciples of his...

Cancelled reading, What are

those.

5 Cancelled reading, connexion. The word profession is struck out in favour of promises.

U

The science of mind possesses eminent advantages over every other with regard to the certainty of the conclusions which it affords. It requires indeed for its entire developement no more than a minute and accurate attention to facts. Every student may refer to the testimonials' which be bears within himself to ascertain the authorities upon which any assertion rests. It requires no more than attention to perceive perfect sincerity in the relation of what is perceived, and care to distinguish the arbitrary marks by which are designated

We are ourselves the depositaries of the evidence of the subject which we consider."

*

* Fabulosissima quæque portenta quam hæc omnia sine Numine fieri.

1 In the MS. authorities was originally written here.

The continuous fragment here breaks off at the beginning of a page. On the next page some headings of the subject are indicated by the inscription of the words Infancy Childhood Youth

Manhood

Old Age

cujusvis religionis alius crediderim [SHELLEY'S NOTE.]

The first of these sections appears to have been begun; but all we have of it, or all Mrs. Shelley gave us of it, is the fragment headed "CATALOGUE OF THE PHENOMENA OF DREAMS," p. 295. That, as well as those headed "DIFFICULTY OF ANALYSING THE HUMAN MIND" and 66 HOW THE ANALYSIS SHOULD BE CARRIED ON" are from Mrs. Shelley's edition.

III.

DIFFICULTY OF ANALYSING THE HUMAN MIND.

If it were possible that a person should give a faithful history of his being, from the earliest epochs of his recollection, a picture would be presented such as the world has never contemplated before. A mirror would be held

up to all men in which they might behold their own recollections, and, in dim perspective, their shadowy hopes and fears, all that they dare not, or that daring and desiring, they could not expose to the open eyes of day. But thought can with difficulty visit the intricate and winding chambers which it inhabits. It is like a river whose rapid and perpetual stream flows outwards;—like one in dread who speeds through the recesses of some haunted pile, and dares not look behind. The caverns of the mind are obscure, and shadowy; or pervaded with a lustre, beautifully bright indeed, but shining not beyond their portals. If it were possible to be where we have been, vitally and indeed-if, at the moment of our pre

sence there, we could define the results of our experience,

if the passage from sensation to reflection—from a state of passive perception to voluntary contemplation, were not so dizzying and so tumultuous, this attempt would be less difficult.

IV.

HOW THE ANALYSIS SHOULD BE CARRIED ON.

MOST of the errors of philosophers have arisen from considering the human being in a point of view too detailed and circumscribed. He is not a moral, and an intellectual, -but also, and pre-eminently, an imaginative being. His own mind is his law; his own mind is all things to him. If we would arrive at any knowledge which should be serviceable from the practical conclusions to which it leads, we ought to consider the mind of man and the universe as the great whole on which to exercise our speculations. Here, above all, verbal disputes ought to be laid aside, though this has long been their chosen field of battle. It imports little to inquire whether thought be distinct from the objects of thought. The use of the words external and internal, as applied to the establishment of this distinction, has been the symbol and the source of much dispute. This is merely an affair of words, and as the dispute