signify more knowledge than we have attained; and that, of such knowledge, it may signify just so much as our immediate purpose requires. We may, for instance, use the word red only as the sign of knowledge derived from the experience of one thing that produces the sensation, and from want of experience; or by choice, we may exclude from the meaning of the word the varieties of red derived from a wider experience, for which, by the custom of speech, the word may be the sign. We may use the word man, through ignorance or by choice, only to signify our knowledge of what a man is, distinctly from a boy or a woman. We may use the word John, by necessity or choice, to signify no more knowledge of him than the slightest acquaintance gives to any person; and not even so much knowledge as this, but only the knowledge that John exists or has existed as an individual person. We may use the word proud or pride, only as the sign of knowledge derived from the single action of one single person toward another; and not include under it that wider knowledge which greater experience brings. In all these instances, (and all single words would but multiply the instances,) the sign is legitimately used, provided our knowledge and the sign are coextensive, and we do not confuse our natural understanding by using the sign to supply the place of knowledge.

8. But thirdly we have to consider that all our knowledge is not gained by our own experience: we depend, as a race, in a very great degree on the experience of others, and take our knowledge, in large proportion, on credit. Hence we embrace, as our own knowledge, all the credible parts of past history; all that is reported to us of credible present history; nay, all the facts of experimental science, which others and not ourselves have arrived at, and which we may have never witnessed, but believe to be.

9. And while, with the assistance of a carefully applied logic, we are becoming, by experience, and by fairly received testimony, better and better acquainted with the real world, there is an ideal world, always enlarging, which we have to keep clearly understood in its relation to the other. Our senses, after having been operated upon by the things fitted to affect them, are not quiescent even when the things are no longer present: the nerves of those senses work internally, though the outward organs are not impressed, and the things

re-appear, but in such a manner that we cannot fail to distinguish them from the realities, unless in a state of sleep when the realities are quite absent, or in certain states of disease which preternaturally affect the nerves of those senses. Supposing, then, a healthy waking state of the faculties, we have to keep our knowledge of the one world clear from any confusion which must arise from mingling the things of the other as a part of it; and this point being secured, we find that as transcripts of the things of the real world, those of the ideal materially assist the understanding in the inductive part of learning.

Note to the previous Section.

Do we

The ideal world here spoken of, does not consist of the ideas of Platonic philosophy; these, under our own point of view, we have to speak of in the next section; it is a transcript of the outward world as it has reached the understanding through the senses. But the character of this ideal world must depend on the senses through which it has been received. We commonly mean by it a transcript of the visual world. Now this it cannot be to one born blind, or so early deprived of sight as to be equally circumstanced. Yet such a one, (witness Blacklock the blind poet of Scotland,) has an ideal world as complete, apparently, even for poetry, as the ideal world of him who enjoys the full sense of vision. not attribute to Sight, as the inlet of the ideal world spoken of, a greater instrumentality in the reception of our earliest knowledge than it can fairly claim ? I have before me what I consider a most able philosophical treatise communicated by the author, of whom I know nothing beyond the favour of his gift sent without date or mention of residence, the title of which is," The Principles of Geometrical Demonstration deduced from the original Conceptions of Space and Form: by H. Wedgwood, M.A. late Fellow of Chr. Coll. Camb. ;" (Taylor and Walton, 1844 ;) in following out which deduction, the author shows, that not our visual, but our tactual impressions, are the early inlet of all the fundamental knowledge placed within the reach of our species.

10. In pursuing the theory of inductive logic, we next find, that beyond the things of sense and the ideal things that reflect them, there are things, the pure abstract stores of the understanding, in following the relations of which, the understanding enjoys a peculiar triumph, as moving in a world entirely its own. These things are properly called transcendental or metaphysical, because they transcend real and ideal things,because they lie beyond the bounds of nature. Every single

* Μετὰ beyond,φύσις nature. It is doubtful, however, whether the term Metaphysics was at first meant to be understood as here explained.

word whatever has its immediate correspondence with such a thing, and only through the medium here indicated has it a correspondence with the things of sense: that is to say, knowledge itself is always metaphysical, though the things we first know, are always things physical. The knowledge, for instance, which we have of red is not, itself, either the real or the ideal sensation of red, but something above or beyond it: the knowledge which we have of John is not John himself, and it transcends, or is abstract from, our actual perception of him, and from any idea, that is, image of him which we distinctly form; since in either of these cases, John must be perceived or conceived sitting, standing, lying, or walking, sick or well, older or younger; while the knowledge we have of John, though it includes all these circumstances as they have arisen in our experience, is nevertheless separate from them, since to know John, is to know him distinctly from and beyond those variable circumstances, and from and beyond every other variable circumstance that has arisen in our experience, or may arise: tthe knowledge which we

*Not distinguishing between these is the fundamental error of the Sensationalists. Mr. James Mill, who is one of them, lays it down as a fact that to be in pain and to be conscious of pain, is one and the same thing it seems so indeed, because, in the recollected experience of : every one of us, they always come together. But if any one had existed in a single continued state of pain from the moment when sensitive being commenced,―(it may seem strange to say, but philosophical reflection will show it to be true,) he would be in what we call pain, yet would not know what it was; which is only another way of saying, he would not be conscious of it. If further words could make plainer, what perhaps is beyond the reach of an understanding that requires more than a few minutes reflection to embrace it,-we might say that one unchanging state of existence such as we have supposed, would not be a state that happens to the person,-it would be his very existence, his very self. We know or are conscious of pain, because we know what is not pain, what is relief from pain, what is pleasure. So we know pleasure because we know pain; we know good because we know evil, and evil because we know good.

†The following passage from Dr. Whately's Logic, is to the same purpose. "When we are speaking of an individual, it is usually an abstract notion that we form; e. g. Suppose we are speaking (in 1847) of the present King of the French; he must actually be either in Paris or elsewhere; sitting, standing, or in some other posture; and in such and such a dress, &c. We abstract from the separable accidents what we consider essential to the individual, thus forming an abstract notion of the individual." (Book II. Chap. V. § 2.)

have of man transcends, in like manner, the perception or conception of any man in particular; and the knowledge we include under the word proud or pride is knowledge abstracted or separated from any other knowledge we entertain of the persons who are proud. Now though all knowledge is originally derived from the things of sense, and is of value to us here only in proportion as it is re-applicable to them; yet we have the power, as we advance in knowledge, to dismiss the real and ideal things from which it is derived, and to begin with the knowledge, abstract from the things, as the ground of a higher kind of knowledge; a knowledge which is often distinctly called Science. Thus, for instance, without any regard to the real or ideal points, or straight lines, or circles, that originally suggested our knowledge, we can take the knowledge as the ground of knowledge to spring from it: in which proceeding, the point is not something we can see or feel, or imagine we can see or feel; the straight line is not something straight relatively to something that we can see or feel to be crooked; the circle is not the circle of the sun or of the full moon: but the point, the straight line, the circle, is separate from the times and the things that first made us know what a point is, what a straight line is, what a circle is.

Note to Section 10.

In a foregoing note (the former foot note above) we attempted a stand against the Sensationalists. We may now attempt one against the Idealists, in order, if possible, to keep the medium in which the truth is generally found. The philosophers last named inculcate, after their own manner, the old Platonic doctrine of ideas which exist originally in the mind, and give form and consistency to all the things of sense. This is an extreme, which, inasmuch as it is unproved and unprovable, our slow steps cannot reach. Neither can we see any necessity for supposing these ideas; while we admit, on the other hand, against the Sensationalists, that the things of sense could give us nothing but sensations, if there existed not a distinct power, or distinct powers, through which we have knowledge also; that is, through which we are aware how the things producing sensation, stand related to ourselves, and (still with relation to ourselves) stand related to each other. We admit, (with an eminent English Idealist,) that sensations are not TRANSformed into ideas; (See Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Aphorisms concerning Ideas ;) and we admit, (stipulating for our own mode of interpretation,) that they are INformed, namely, that they are received by the understanding in order to take the character of knowledge; our objection to the theory of ideas as a mode of accounting for the fact, being this, that, inasmuch as it is a gratuitous doctrine, it

carries mystery with it, such as, we think, must leave good common sense unsatisfied, while it has a prestige for minds that love the marvellous. In short, we admit thus much, and no more,-1 -that the things of sense are adapted to reach man's intellect through his senses, and that his intellect is adapted to receive them; that is, to be aware of the relations in which they stand to each other, but always with a regard to himself, created as he is to understand them in an appointed way: a statement which will appear the more reasonable, by reflecting that among these things he is placed, and among these only, during his present state of existence.

But, say the Idealists, there are ideas that form the things of sense, for which we in vain seek the originals in the outward world. Let us take one of these ideas to serve for the rest, and see how, with our views, we can explain its existence ;-let it be the idea (as it is called) of a straight line. Now, we admit that there is no line in nature which we can prove to be straight, nay that there is no line in nature which probably is straight, and consequently that no idea, in our sense of the word idea, namely, a mental transcript of the outward thing, reflects to us that which is certainly straight. Whence, then, do we obtain the knowledge of what it is to be straight, independently of these physical conditions;—whence, in other words, do we get at the metaphysical straight line? We answer, that the fact is sufficiently interpreted when we admit, what surely cannot be denied, that all knowledge is abstract, and consequently free from physical conditions. And our knowledge of the special fact before us thus begins-we have before us a line which is sensibly crooked, and another which, relatively to the former, is straight. Our original knowledge of the straight, is therefore the relatively straight. But this original knowledge becomes an abstraction by merely setting aside all the particular instances which led to it: and then our knowledge is expressed by this definition, that a straight line is a line which is not crooked. In this way, though our knowledge began with the relatively straight, we are able to speak of what is straight absolutely; but we speak of it in words only the thing itself is unknown, either as existing, or possible to exist. How, again say the Idealists, could you speak of the absolutely straight, unless the previous idea (in their sense of idea) existed in the mind? We answer, that we are able to do so, by a repetition of the process which has just been indicated. To the human understanding nothing absolute exists in reality, but the relatively absolute. But the abstraction of that knowledge exists. In calling this abstraction an idea, Kant and the other Idealists dwell upon the fact, and make much out of the fact, that it lies beyond the limits of time and space. This of course we do not deny. We object only to the mystery of their explanation. Let it be admitted that a metaphysical straight line exists only in our knowledge of what a straight line is, namely, a line that is not crooked: to such knowledge it matters not whether the thing exists or not. The knowledge, however, is re-applicable to every line which is straight to our senses, that is, relatively straight: if it were not so re-applicable, it would be an empty abstraction, of no use but to darken understanding with the appearance of knowledge.