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While these idols of the den maintain their authority, the cultivation of the philosophical spirit is impossible; or rather, it is in a renunciation of this idolatry that the philosophical spirit essentially consists. It was accordingly in this great school of the learned world, that the characters of Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, and Locke were formed; the four individuals who have contributed the most to diffuse the philosophical spirit over Europe. The remark applies more peculiarly to Bacon, who first pointed out the inconveniences to be apprehended from a minute and mechanical subdivision of literary labour; and anticipated the advantages to be expected from the institution of learned academies, in enlarging the field of scientific curiosity, and the correspondent grasp of the emancipated inind. For accomplishing this object, what means so effectual as habits of daily intercourse with men whose pursuits are different from our own; and that expanded knowledge, both of man and of nature, of which such an intercourse must necessarily be productive!

Another event which operated still more forcibly and universally on the intellectual character of our countrymen, was the civil war which began in 1640, and which ultimately terminated in the usurpation of Cromwell. It is observed by Mr. Hume, that "the prevalence of democratical principles, under the Commonwealth, engaged the country gentlemen to bind their sons apprentices to merchants; and that commerce has ever since been more honourable in England, than in any other European Kingdom."1 "The higher and the lower ranks (as a later writer has remarked) were thus brought closer together, and all of them inspired with an activity and vigour that, in former ages, had no example."2

To this combination of the pursuits of trade, with the advantages of a liberal education, may be ascribed the great multitude of ingenious and enlightened speculations on commerce, and on the other branches of national industry, which issued from the press, in the short interval between the Restoration

1 History of England, chap. Ixii.

Chalmers's Political Estimate, &c. (London, 1804,) p. 44.

and the Revolution; an interval during which the sudden and immense extension of the trade of England, and the corresponding rise of the commercial interest, must have presented a spectacle peculiarly calculated to awaken the curiosity of inquisitive observers. It is a very remarkable circumstance with respect to these economical researches, which now engage so much of the attention both of statesmen and of philosophers, that they are altogether of modern origin. "There is scarcely," says Mr. Hume, "any ancient writer on politics who has made mention of trade; nor was it ever considered as an affair of state till the seventeenth century." -The work of the celebrated John de Witt, entitled, "The true interest and political maxims of the Republic of Holland and West Friesland," is the earliest publication of any note in which commerce is treated of as an object of national and political concern, in opposition to the partial interests of corporations and of monopolists.

Of the English publications to which I have just alluded, the greater part consists of anonymous pamphlets, now only to be met with in the collections of the curious. A few bear the names of eminent English merchants. I shall have occasion to refer to them more particularly afterwards, when I come to speak of the writings of Smith, Quesnay, and Turgot. At present, I shall only observe, that, in these fugitive and now neglected tracts, are to be found the first rudiments of that science of Political Economy which is justly considered as the boast of the present age; and which, although the aid of learning and philosophy was necessary to rear it to maturity, may be justly said to have had its cradle in the Royal Exchange of London.

Mr. Locke was one of the first retired theorists (and this singular feature in his history has not been sufficiently attended to by his biographers) who condescended to treat of trade as an object of liberal study. Notwithstanding the manifold errors into which he fell in the course of his reasonings concerning it, it may be fairly questioned, if he has anywhere else given greater proofs, either of the vigour or of the originality of his Essay of Civil Liberty.

VOL. I.

genius. But the name of Locke reminds me, that it is now time to interrupt these national details; and to turn our attention to the progress of science on the Continent, since the times of Bodinus and of Campanella.

SECT. II.-PROGRESS OF PHILOSOPHY IN FRANCE DURING THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

MONTAIGNE-CHARRON-LA ROCHEFOUCAUld.

Ar the head of the French writers who contributed, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, to turn the thoughts of their countrymen to subjects connected with the Philosophy of Mind, Montaigne may, I apprehend, be justly placed. Properly speaking, he belongs to a period somewhat earlier; but his tone of thinking and of writing classes him much more naturally with his successors, than with any French author who had appeared before him.1

In assigning to Montaigne so distinguished a rank in the history of modern philosophy, I need scarcely say, that I leave entirely out of the account what constitutes (and justly constitutes) to the generality of readers the principal charm of his Essays; the good nature, humanity, and unaffected sensibility, which so irresistibly attach us to his character,-lending, it must be owned, but too often, a fascination to his talk, when he cannot be recommended as the safest of companions. Nor do I lay much stress on the inviting frankness and vivacity with which he unbosoms himself about all his domestic habits and concerns; and which render his book so expressive a portrait, not only of the author, but of the Gascon country-gentleman, two hundred years ago. I have in view chiefly the minuteness and good faith of his details concerning his own personal qualities, both intellectual and moral. The only study which seems ever to have engaged his attention was that of man; and for this he was singularly fitted, by a rare combination of that talent for observation which belongs to men of the world,

1 Montaigne was born in 1533, and died in 1592.

with those habits of abstracted reflection, which men of the world have commonly so little disposition to cultivate. "I study myself," says he, "more than any other subject. This is my metaphysic; this my natural philosophy." He has accordingly produced a work, unique in its kind; valuable, in an eminent degree, as an authentic record of many interesting facts relative to human nature; but more valuable by far, as holding up a mirror in which every individual, if he does not see his own image, will at least occasionally perceive so many traits of resemblance to it, as can scarcely fail to invite his curiosity to a more careful review of himself. In this respect, Montaigne's writings may be regarded in the light of what painters call studies; in other words, of those slight sketches which were originally designed for the improvement or amusement of the artist; but which, on that account, are the more likely to be useful in developing the germs of similar endowments in others.

Without a union of these two powers, (reflection and observation,) the study of Man can never be successfully prosecuted. It is only by retiring within ourselves that we can obtain a key to the characters of others; and it is only by observing and comparing the characters of others that we can thoroughly understand and appreciate our own.

After all, however, it may be fairly questioned, notwithstanding the scrupulous fidelity with which Montaigne has endeavoured to delineate his own portrait, if he has been always sufficiently aware of the secret folds and reduplications of the human heart. That he was by no means exempted from the common delusions of self-love and self-deceit, has been fully evinced in a very acute, though somewhat uncharitable, section of the Port-Royal logic; but this consideration, so far from diminishing the value of his Essays, is one of the most instructive lessons they afford to those who, after the example of the author, may undertake the salutary but humiliating task of self-examination.

As Montaigne's scientific knowledge was, according to his Essays, Book iii. chap. xiii.

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own account, "very vague and imperfect," and his booklearning rather sententious and gossiping than comprehensive and systematical, it would be unreasonable to expect, in his philosophical arguments, much either of depth or of solidity.2 The sentiments he hazards are to be regarded but as the impressions of the moment; consisting chiefly of the more obvious doubts and difficulties which, on all metaphysical and moral questions, are apt to present themselves to a speculative mind, when it first attempts to dig below the surface of common opinions. In reading Montaigne, accordingly, what chiefly strikes us, is not the novelty or the refinement of his ideas, but the liveliness and felicity with which we see embodied in words the previous wanderings of our own imaginations. It is probably owing to this circumstance, rather than to any direct plagiarism, that his Essays appear to contain the germs of so many of the paradoxical theories which, in later times, Helvetius and others have laboured to systematize and to support with the

1 Book i. chap. xxv.

2 Montaigne's education, however, had not been neglected by his father. On the contrary, he tells us himself, that "George Buchanan, the great poet of Scotland, and Marcus Antonius Muretus, the best orator of his time, were among the number of his domestic preceptors."- Buchanan," he adds, "when I saw him afterwards in the retinue of the late Mareschal de Brissac, told me, that he was about to write a treatise on the education of children, and that he would take the model of it from mine."-Book i. chap.

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the imagination of a slow fire, burning pincers, or the wheel. And, I know not, in the meantime, whether we do not drive them to despair, &c."-Book ii. chap. xxvii. Compare this with the passage quoted from Buchanan, p. 62.

The remark of Montaigne on Substitutions or Entails, savours also of Buchanan's principles. "In general, the most judicious distribution of our estates, when we come to die, is, in my opinion, to leave them to be disposed of according to the custom of the country. We are too fond of masculine substitutions, and ridiculously think to make our names thereby last to eternity."—Book ii. chap. viii. The following is Buchanan's reflection on the vanity and shortsightedness of those princes who have laboured to establish a perpetuity of their race and name. "Adversus naturam rerum certamen sibi et rem maxime fluxam et fragilem, omniumque casuum momentis obnoxiam, æternitate, quam ipsi nec habent nec habere possunt, donare contendunt."]

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