PRACTICAL REMARKS BASED ON THE FOREGOING THEORY.

11. The use of words to fix our knowledge, and carry it onward to further knowledge, is the true process of inductive logic; but it too often happens that words are used to hide the want of knowledge not only from others, but even from the thinker himself. The education which is conducted through the medium of books, makes a young person familiar with words, far more rapidly than he can become acquainted with things: nor would there be mischief in this, if he were aware of his real ignorance,—if he regarded the words which he hears, or reads, or repeats by rote, as signs, to a very great extent, not of what he yet knows, but of what he has to learn. The danger is, that he will deceive both himself and others, by mistaking his familiarity with the signs of knowledge, for the knowledge itself. Nor can anything be said to warn him against this error, which has not often been said before,-the common sense of mankind, independently of theory, having prescribed to the young student, from time immemorial, the duty of asking himself what meaning he has with every word he uses, or professes to understand; and the necessity of betaking himself to the ordinary ways of learning, when his knowledge falls short of his language. One powerful method of bringing him to a consciousness of his deficiencies in the inductive process of logic, will be, to require from him proofs of his knowledge in deductive essays or themes; the nature and methods of which are to be spoken of hereafter. These essays, it is expected, will be an occasion of frequently sending him back to the inductive process, to supply what has been unconsciously omitted. In the meantime, he may be saved from a great deal of fruitless use of words, by attention to the following considerations:

12. All unrevealed knowledge springs originally from the things of sense; and though in its nature abstract from those things, its truth or reality can be tested only by its re-applicability to those things. By our own experience (meaning of course the experience of our kind) we can know nothing beyond these things; and though it is the height of presumption to believe that nothing beyond our experience remains to be known, yet it is almost equal presumption to pretend that we do or can of ourselves know more, Into such presumption,

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however, we are often led, by the empty abstractions which language generates. Language enables us to talk and even think with little knowledge, with less knowledge, and even beyond this, with no knowledge at all. The error, in any its degrees, arises out of the power of abstracting knowledge from realities; and, in its extreme, it will always be found to consist in using a sign where nothing at all is signified, except our inability to carry our knowledge further. We must go back to our previous theory in order to make this general caution properly understood.

13. In the metaphysics of quantity, we are saved from wandering among proofless abstractions, by the constant applicability of those abstractions to the things of sense; and during the progress of our learning, we are, at every step, reminded of the connection between the two,-for instance, between the metaphysical point, or line, or circle, and every real point, line, or circle,—by the sensible or ideal representation we carry with us.

14. So likewise in making red, or John, or man, the subject of our thoughts,—although each word corresponds immediately with an abstraction, yet we are saved from inutility of thought, by the constant re-occurrence to our senses of the individual things from which our knowledge is derived, and to which the word is immediately re-applicable, so as to prevent the danger of supposing we know what we are partially or wholly ignorant of.

15. Such, however, is the mechanism of language, that a word may not only signify the abstract knowledge of a real thing, or real things, (and this is what every word must signify if it signifies anything, because knowledge is by its nature abstract from the thing known,) but the word, before it descends to the real thing or things, may be the name of an abstraction, which abstraction, if it means anything, means the knowledge of the real things which suggested it. Let the following be our example of the manner in which this double abstraction takes place. Suppose the word Proud to have been originally a proper name applied to an individual from his known character:-no delusion of thought is likely to arise while the word is so applied and understood:--Suppose, in the second place, that the word is used adjectively before the proper name of another person, as proud John in which

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application the word indicates that John and the former person are understood to agree in character: again, no delusion of thought is likely to arise; for though we may, for a moment, have understood, under the word proud, something separate from John, yet the grammatical form of the word will have prevented our resting in that separate meaning beyond the first moment: on the junction of the two words, we understand them as one name for one thing, and are in no danger of confounding the metaphysical separation and distinctness, with a real distinctness,-of supposing, for an instant, because proud and John are two words, that John is resolvable into two correspondent things, But when, without any change in the logical import, we change the grammatical function of the word,-when instead of proud we say pride, we take the word away from that which would realize its meaning. and render it not merely the sign of abstract knowledge, but the name of an abstraction, and we have, in consequence, to descend a step lower before we get to the realities which that abstraction includes, or ought to include, as the things known by it. Now, the danger is, that the thinker or reasoner may never have begun with, or may never go back to take, this lower step; that he may discourse to himself or others concerning pride,—“passion, or apathy, or glory, or shame,"―without knowing by experience precisely what he means; in which case, his discourse must be "vain wisdom all, and false philosophy." *

16. It is further to be remembered, by way of caution, that the forms of language into which abstract names are joined, contribute in no small degree to a delusive use of words in the acquirement of knowledge. We speak, for instance, of the pride of John, or John's pride; of pride belonging to John, or John possessing pride, in phrases of the same form as when

* Others apart (other devils) sat on a hill retired,
In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
Of Providence, Foreknowledge, Will, and Fate,
Fixed-fate, Free-will, Foreknowledge-absolute,
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost:
Of Good and Evil much they argued then,
Of Happiness and final Misery,

Passion, and Apathy, and Glory, and Shame;
Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy!

Par. Lost, B. II.

we say the brother of John, or John's brother; of houses belonging to John, or John possessing houses. It cannot but be evident that such similarity of phrase must have the effect of misleading a thinker, who trusts to the forms of language, and is not in the habit of considering the things to which those forms are applied. In the instances before us, we have to remember, that there is no such real thing as pride distinct from John, and persons like John in character; but that there are such real things as the brother of John, and the houses belonging to John, distinct from John himself: that is to say, pride is a thing metaphysical or abstract, but John's brother, and John's houses, are realities.

17. Suppose, in the next place, that there is nothing within the reach of our human powers to which a word or phrase is applicable, the proper interpretation of such word or phrase when attempted to be so applied, is, that it stands as the sign of our ignorance. When we say infinite or endless space, infinite or endless time, all we know or can know of those things, is, space endless relatively to ourselves, time endless relatively to ourselves: what time or space may be beyond our experience of what it has been, and what it continues to be, we know not: we can take the known portions of time or of space, and think of such portions as still going on; but this is time or space unended, and not endless, unless, as before said, we understand endless to mean relatively to ourselves; that is, only so far as our race can have experience. The same reasoning belongs to such words as absolute, perfect, complete: we know nothing, and can know nothing but the relatively absolute, the relatively perfect, the relatively complete. We are justified, nevertheless, in applying these words to the Divine Being; but let it be remembered that when so employed they do not bring the nature of that Being within the reach of our faculties: they say, if they say anything, that however well we may understand what it is to be absolute and perfect when things of sense are in question, we apply the words in reverence only, without pretence to knowledge, when we apply them to God:* we use them as signs that represent what in merely human science, is unknown and unknowable; and so * See Whately's Logic (Ambiguity of 66 same "-Logomachy, &c. Book IV. c. v. § 1) in confirmation of this point of view.

used, they are serviceable elements in the structure of human language. This indeed is the only way in which empty abstractions, that is, abstractions which throw realities quite out of question, can be legitimately used: and our system of inductive logic having reached this point, makes no pretence to go beyond it.

Note to Section 17.

And just where we leave off, METAPHYSICS, in their usual form and purpose, begin; especially the Metaphysics of Germany. The strength of the systems which arise in that country of interminable speculation, consists in their being unprovable: for how shall we set about disproving that, which, as it lies beyond the reach of proof, is equally beyond the reach of contradiction. The German philosophers employ the abstractions, all of which are obtained originally from the things of sense, to interpret things which lie completely beyond our present state of existence. So employed and so applied, they are hypotheses; and if it were possible to establish them by inductive proofs, we might accept them on credit till the proofs were added. But the proofs are impossible, and the demand is preposterous that we shall accept mere supposition for science. Call these systems romances, and we may dip into them, perhaps, without danger. That they are nothing more, is evidenced by the fact, that one of them is no sooner promulgated, than it gives occasion to another to dispute its pretension, Kant is succeeded by Fichte, Fichte by Schelling, Schelling by Hegel a kaleidoscope has not more shapes for the eye, than metaphysics for the German mind. The mischief is, that these systems pretend to be more than romances: they pretend to carry the human intellect into the impenetrable unknown which everywhere surrounds us. A lively faith can irradiate this unknown with a light from itself, and take away all its gloom, without pretending to see into it with the eyes of human reason: but these metaphysical romancers come with false lights, offering what they call science in place of faith. " To-morrow," Fichte is reported to have said, in the adjournment of the next point of his lecture, "to-morrow we shall create God." Had his pretence been only to offer a romance, the announcement, though profane, would have been harmless; for who, as he proceeded, would have been ready to say, "I believe in Fichte, the maker of God ?"

RECAPITULATION OF DISTINCTIONS AND DIFFERENCES.

18. All knowledge is abstract, that is, separate, and of a different nature, from the things that originally suggest it. These things are real things, the things of sense; and the way in which we unavoidably understand them, is, that they exist distinctly from oneself. But beside real things, there are things ideal, and things metaphysical, which become the subjects of knowledge.

19. Ideal things are those which we imagine to exist dis