somewhere mentions, to the honour of his father, that he sold part of his estate to enable himself (his eldest son) to pursue his studies at the University of Groningen. The constant influx of information and of liberality from abroad, which was thus kept up in Scotland in consequence of the ancient habits and manners of the people, may help to account for the sudden burst of genius, which to a foreigner must seem to have sprung up in this country by a sort of enchantment, soon after the Rebellion of 1745. The great step then made was in the art of English composition. In the mathematical sciences, where the graces of writing have no place, Scotland in proportion to the number of its inhabitants, was never, from the time of Neper, left behind by any country in Europe; nor ought it to be forgotten, that the philosophy of Newton was publicly taught by David Gregory at Edinburgh, and by his brother James Gregory at St. Andrew's, before it was able to supplant the vortices of Descartes in that very university of which Newton was a member.1 The case was similar in every other liberal pursuit, where an ignorance of the delicacies of the English tongue was not an insuperable bar to distinction. Even in the study of eloquence, as far as it was attainable in their own vernacular idiom, some of the Scottish pleaders, about the era when the two kingdoms were united, seem ambitiously, and not altogether unsuccessfully, to have formed themselves upon models, which, in modern times, it has been commonly supposed to be more safe to admire than to imitate. Of the progress made in this part of the island in Metaphysical and Ethical Studies, at a period long prior to that which is commonly considered as the commencement of our literary history, I shall afterwards have occasion to speak. At present, I shall only observe, that it was in the Scottish universities that the philosophy of Locke, as well as that of Newton, was first adopted as a branch of academical education. NOTE T, p. 220. Extract of a letter from M. Allamand to Mr. Gibbon.-See Gibbon's Miscellaneous Works. "Vous avez sans doute raison de dire que les propositions évidentes dont il s'agit, ne sont pas de simples idées, mais des jugemens. Mais ayez aussi la complaisance de reconnoître que M. Locke les alléguant en exemple d'idées qui passent pour innées, et qui ne le sont pas selon lui, s'il y a ici de la méprise, c'est lui qu'il For this we have the authority of Whiston, the immediate successor of Sir Isaac Newton in the Lucasian Professorship at Cambridge; and of Dr. Reid, who was a nephew of the two Gregorys. "Mr. Gregory had already caused several of his scholars to keep Acts, as we call them, upon several branches of the Newtonian Philosophy; while we at Cambridge, poor wretches, were ignominiously studying the fictitious hypotheses of the Cartesians."-Whiston's Memoirs of his own Life. "I have by me," says Dr. Reid, "a Thesis printed at Edinburgh, 1690, by James Gregory, who was at that time Professor of Philosophy at St. Andrew's, containing twenty-five positions; the first three relating to logic, and the abuse of it in the Aristotelian and Cartesian philosophy. The remaining twenty-two positions are a compend of Newton's Principia. This Thesis, as was the custom at that time in the Scottish Universities, was to be defended in a public disputation, by the candidates, previous to their taking their degree "-Hutton's Mathematical Dictionary—Supplement by Dr. Reid to the article Gregory. See a splendid eulogium in the Latin language, by Sir George Mackenzie, on the most distinguished pleaders of his time at the Scottish bar. Every allowance being made for the flattering touches of a friendly hand, his portraits can scarcely be supposed not to have borne a strong and characteristical resemblance to the originals from which they were copied. faut relever la-dessus, et non pas moi, qui n'avois autre chose à faire qu'à réfuter sa manière de raisonner contre l'innéité de ces idées ou jugemens là. D'ailleurs, Monsieur, vous remarquerez, s'il vous plait, que dans cette dispute il s'agit en effet, de savoir si certaines vérités évidentes et communes, et non pas seulement certaines idées simples, sont innées ou non. Ceux qui affirment, ne donnent guère pour exemple d'idées simples qui le soyent, que celles de Dieu, de l'unité, et de l'existence; les autres exemples sont pris de propositions complètes, que vous appellez jugemens. "Mais, dites vous, y aura-t-il donc des jugemens innés? Le jugement est il autre chose qu'un acte de nos facultés intellectuelles dans la comparaison des idées? Le jugement sur les vérités évidentes, n'est il pas une simple vue de ces vérités là, un simple coup-d'œil que l'esprit jette sur elles? J'accorde tout cela. Et de grace, qu'est ce qu'idée ? N'est ce pas vue, ou coup-d'œil, si vous voulez? Ceux qui définissent l'idée autrement, ne s'éloignent-ils pas visiblement du sens et de l'intention du mot? Dire que les idées sont les espèces des choses imprimées dans l'esprit, comme l'image de l'objet sensible est tracée dans l'œil, n'est ce pas jargonner plutôt que définir? Or c'est la faute, qu'ont fait tous les métaphysiciens, et quoique M. Locke l'ait bien sentie, il a mieux aimé se fächer contre eux, et tirer contre les girouettes de la place, que s'appliquer à démêler ce galimatias. Que n'a-t-il dit, non seulement il n'y a point d'idées innées dans le sens de ces Messieurs; mais il n'y a point d'idées du tout dans ce sens là; toute idée est un acte, une vue, un coup-d'œil de l'esprit. Dès lors demander s'il y a des idées innées, c'est demander s'il y a certaines vérités si évidentes et si communes que tout esprit non stupide puisse naturellement, sans culture et sans maître, sans discussion, sans raisonnement, les reconnoître d'un coup-d'œil, et souvent même sans s'apercevoir qu'on jette ce coup d'œil. L'affirmative me paroit incontestable, et selon moi, la question est vuidée par là. "Maintenant prenez garde, Monsieur, que cette manière d'entendre l'affaire, va au but des partisans des idées innées, tout comme la leur; et par la même contredit M. Locke dans le sien. Car pourquoi voudroit-on qu'il y a eu des idées innées? C'est pour en opposer la certitude et l'évidence au doute universel des sceptiques, qui est ruiné d'un seul coup, s'il y a des vérités dont la vue soit nécessaire et naturelle à l'homme. Or vous sentez, Monsieur, que je puis leur dire cela dans ma façon d'expliquer la chose, tout aussi bien que les partisans ordinaires des idées innées dans la leur. Et voilà ce que semble incommoder un peu M. Locke, qui, sans se déclarer Pyrrhonien, laisse apercevoir un peu trop de foible pour le Pyrrhonisme, et a beaucoup contribué à le nourrir dans ce siècle. A force de vouloir marquer les bornes de nos connoissances, ce qui étoit fort nécessaire, il a quelquefois tout mis en bornes." NOTE U, p. 222. "A decisive proof of this is afforded by the allusions to Locke's doctrines in the dramatic pieces then in possession of the French stage," &c. In a comedy of Destouches, (entitled La Fausse Agnes,) which must have been written long before the period in question,' the heroine, a lively and accomplished 1 This little piece was first published in 1757. three years after the author's death, which took place in 1754, in the seventy-fourth year of his But we are told by D'Alembert, that from age. girl, supposed to be just arrived from Paris at her father's house in Poitou, is in- NOTE X, p. 227. "Descartes asserted," says a very zealous Lockist, M. de Voltaire, "that the soul, at its coming into the body, is informed with the whole series of metaphysical notions; knowing God, infinite space, possessing all abstract ideas; in a word, completely endued with the most sublime lights, which it unhappily forgets at its issuing from the womb. "With regard to myself," continues the same writer, "I am as little inclined as Locke could be to fancy that, some weeks after I was conceived, I was a very learned soul; knowing at that time a thousand things which I forgot at my birth; the age of sixty, he had renounced, from sentiments of piety, all thoughts of writing for the stage. (Eloge de Destouches.) This carries the date of all his dramatic works, at least as far back as 1740. As for Destouches's own familiarity with the writings of Locke, it is easily ac counted for by his residence in England from www.w and possessing, when in the womb, (though to no manner of purpose,) knowledge which I lost the instant I had occasion for it; and which I have never since been able to recover perfectly."-Letters concerning the English Nation. Letter 13. Whatever inferences may be deducible from some of Descartes's expressions, or from the comments on these expressions by some who assumed the title of Cartesians, I never can persuade myself that the system of innate ideas, as conceived and adopted by him, was meant to give any sanction to the absurdities here treated by Voltaire with such just contempt. In no part of Descartes's works, as far as I have been able to discover, is the slightest ground given for this extraordinary account of his opinions. Nor was Descartes the first person who introduced this language. Long before the date of his works it was in common use in England, and is to be found in a Poem of Sir John Davis, published four years before Descartes was born. (See sect. xxvi. of The Immortality of the Soul.) The title of this section expressly asserts, That there are innate ideas in the soul. In one of Descartes's letters, he enters into some explanations with respect to this part of his philosophy, which he complains had been very grossly misunderstood or misrepresented. To the following passage I have no doubt that Locke himself would have subscribed. It strikes myself as so very remarkable, that, in order to attract to it the attention of my readers, I shall submit it to their consideration in an English translation. "When I said that the idea of God is innate in us, I never meant more than this, that Nature has endowed us with a faculty by which we may know God; but I have never either said or thought that such ideas had an actual existence, or even that they were species distinct from the faculty of thinking. I will even go farther, and assert that nobody has kept at a greater distance than myself from all this trash of scholastic entities, insomuch that I could not help smiling when I read the numerous arguments which Regius has so industriously collected to shew that infants have no actual knowledge of God while they remain in the womb Although the idea of God is so imprinted on our minds, that every person has within himself the faculty of knowing him, it does not follow that there may not have been various individuals who have passed through life without ever making this idea a distinct object of apprehension; and, in truth, they who think they have an idea of a plurality of Gods, have no idea of God whatsoever."-Cartesii Epist. Pars i. Epist. xcix. [* In another letter, Descartes says still more explicitly—“Licet idea Dei sit menti humanæ ita impressa, ut nemo non habeat in se facultatem illum cognoscendi, tamen fieri potest ut plurimi nunquam sibi hanc ideam distincte repræsentarint; et revera ii qui putant se habere multorum Deorum ideam, nequaquam habent ideam Dei.”—(Ibid. Epist. cxvii.) And in another work-" Idea est ipsa res cogitata, quatenus est objectiva in intellectu." By way of comment on this, Descartes tells us afterwards, in reply to a difficulty started by one of his correspondents, "ubi advertendum, me loqui de Idea quæ nunquam ut extra intellectum, et ratione cujus esse objectivi non aliud significet, quam esse in intellectu co modo quo objecta in illo esse solent.”— Responsio ad primas objectiones in Meditationes Cartesii. In this instance, the distinction between subjective and objective seems to be * Restored.-Ed. merely grammatical, analogous to that between the verb and noun, when we make use of such a circumlocution as thinking and thought.] After reading this passage from Descartes, may I request of my readers to look back to the extracts, in the beginning of this note, from Voltaire's letters? A remark of Montesquieu, occasioned by some strictures hazarded by this lively but very superficial philosopher on the Spirit of Laws, is more peculiarly applicable to him when he ventures to pronounce judgment on metaphysical writers: "Quant à Voltaire, il a trop d'esprit pour m'entendre; tous les livres qu'il lit, il les fait, après quoi il approuve ou critique ce qu'il a fait."—(Lettre à M. l'Abbé de Guasco.) The remark is applicable to other critics as well as to Voltaire. The prevailing misapprehensions with respect to this and some other principles of the Cartesian metaphysics, can only be accounted for by supposing that the opinions of Descartes have been more frequently judged of from the glosses of his followers than from his own works. It seems to have never been sufficiently known to his adversaries, either in France or in England, that, after his philosophy had become fashionable in Holland, a number of Dutch divines, whose opinions differed very widely from his, found it convenient to shelter their own errors under his established name; and that some of them went so far as to avail themselves of his authority in propagating tenets directly opposite to his declared sentiments. Hence a distinction of the Cartesians into the genuine and the pseudo-Cartesians; and hence an inconsistency in their representations of the metaphysical ideas of their master, which can only be cleared up by a reference (seldom thought of) to his own very concise and perspicuous text. (Fabricii, Bib. Gr. lib. iii. cap. vi. p. 183. Heinecc. El. Hist. Phil. & cx.) Many of the objections commonly urged against the innate ideas of Descartes are much more applicable to the innate ideas of Leibnitz, whose language concerning them is infinitely more hypothetical and unphilosophical; and sometimes approaches nearly to the enthusiastic theology of Plato and of Cudworth. Nothing in the works of Descartes bears any resemblance, in point of extravagance, to what follows: "Pulcherrima multa sunt Platonis dogmata, . . . esse in divina mente mundum intelligibilem, quem ego quoque vocare soleo regionem idearum ; objectum sapientiæ esse và övtws övr«, substantias nempe simplices, quæ a me monades appellantur, et semel existentes semper perstant, gara dixTixà Tñs Cwñs, id est, Deum et Animas, et harum potissimas mentes, producta a Deo simulacra divinitatis. Porro quævis mens, ut recte Plotinus, quendam in se mundum intelligibilem continet, imo mea sententia et hunc ipsum sensibilem sibi repræsentat. . . . Sunt in nobis semina eorum, quæ discimus, ideæ nempe, et quæ inde nascuntur, æternæ veritates. . . . Longe ergo præferendæ sunt Platonis notitia innata, quas reminiscentiæ nomine velavit, tabulæ rasa Aristotelis et Lockii, aliorumque recentiorum, qui ižwrsgizás philosophantur.”—Leib. Opera, tom. ii. p. 223. Wild and visionary, however, as the foregoing propositions are, if the names of Gassendi and of Hobbes had been substituted instead of those of Aristotle and of Locke, I should have been disposed to subscribe implicitly to the judgment pronounced in the concluding sentence. The metaphysics of Plato, along with a considerable alloy of poetical fiction, has at least the merit of containing a large admixture of important and of ennobling truth; while that of Gassendi and of Hobbes, besides its inconsistency with facts attested, every moment, by our own |