culties remain unchanged, upon the supposition of either theory being true. Nor ought the question respecting the independent existence of a material world, if rightly stated, in any manner to influence our practical conduct: for a material world is nothing to us except as it is perceived or felt, and our perceptions and feelings are a plain matter of fact, which no speculations can alter. This leads us to notice a pretty general mistake respecting Berkeley's opinions, for which Mr. Hume is principally responsible, and which Mr. Stewart, with equal justice and candour, endeavours to remove. We cannot

explain it better than by his own words,

"It is well known, to all who have the slightest acquajn, tance with the history of philosophy, that, among the va rious topics on which the ancient sceptics exercise their ingenuity, the question concerning the existence of the material world was always a favourite subject of disputation. Some doubts on the same point occur even in the writings of philosophers whose general leaning seems to have been to the opposite extreme of dogmatism. Plato himself has given them some countenance, by hinting it as a thing not quite impossible, that human life is a continued sleep, and that all our thoughts are only dreams. This scepticism proceeds on principles totally different from the doctrine of Berkeley; who asserts, with the most dogmatical confidence, that the existence of matter is impossible, and that the very supposition of it is absurd.

The existence of bodies out of a mind perceiving them ( he tells us, explicitly,) is not only impossible, and a contradiction in terms; but were it possible, and even real, it were impossible we should ever know it.'

"With respect to Mr. Hume, who is generally con

sidered as an advocate for Berkeley's system, the remark s which I have offered on the latter writer must be understood with great limitations. For although his fundamental principles lead necessarily to Berkeley's conclusion, and although he has frequently drawn from them this conclusion himself, yet on other occasions he relapses into the language of doubt, and only speaks of the existence of a material world, as of a thing of which we have not satisfactory evidence. The truth is, that whereas Berkeley was sincerely and bonú fide an idealist, Hume's leading object in his metaphysical writings plainly was to inculcate an universal scepticism. In this respect, the real scope of his arguments has, I think, been misunderstood by most, if not all, of his opponents. It evidently was not, as they seem to have supposed, to exalt reasoning in preference to our instinctive principles of belief; but, by illustrating the contradictory conclusions to which our different faculties lead, to involve the whole subject in the same suspicious darkness. In other words, his aim was, not to interrogate nature with a view to the discovery of truth, but, by a cross examination of nature, to involve her in such contradictions as might set aside the whole of her evidence as good for nothing.

"With respect to Berkeley, on the other hand, it appears from his writings, not only that he considered his scheme of idealism as resting on demonstrative proof, but as more agreeable to the common apprehensions of mankind, than the prevailing theories of philosophers, concerning the independent existence of the material world"."

Nothing can be more complete than this vindication of Berkeley from the ordinary charge of scepticism. We hope, too, that those who have been

* Essay II. chap. i.

accustomed to admire Mr. Hume's genius and acuteness, will learn to receive his opinions on moral and religious subjects with some hesitation, when they see what are the sentiments entertained of his metataphysical writings by so high an authority as Mr. Stewart. We do not exact of every philosophical writer, that he should depreciate Mr. Hume; but we certainly think it indicates great manliness and integrity of understanding in Mr. Stewart, to have exposed with so much courage, and with so much truth, the pernicious aims of his celebrated countryman. We can forgive a Scotchman for admiring Mr. Hume: what then must be our feelings towards one who can condemn him?

Mr. Stewart has vindicated Berkeley in the above extract, with great success, against a misconception which has pretty generally prevailed; but we think he has himself given some countenance to another. He appears to consider the metaphysical opinions of that writer as built upon Mr. Locke's theory of ideas, and consequently as standing or falling with it. Berkeley, however, would, we are persuaded, have strenuously denied both the fact and the inference. He adopted the language then in use among metaphysicians, for the sake of reasoning with them; and was content to consider ideas as images, that he might shew, from the tenets avowed by Mr. Locke's scholars, that the conclusions of their master were erroneous. But the truth or inaccuracy of Berkeley's opinions does not at all rest

on the particular meaning affixed to the word idea; his arguments remaining precisely of the same value whether we retain that word, or substitute, as he frequently does, the words sensation, notion, or impression, in the room of it.

Besides the schools of Locke, Berkeley, and Reid, there is one other, and only one, of British growth; the school of materialism; to which Mr. Stewart has devoted a separate essay. But before we give an account of this, it is necessary to stop for a moment at his third essay, respecting the philosophical systems which prevailed in France during the latter part of the eighteenth century.

"The account given by Locke," says Mr. Stewart," of the origin of our ideas, which furnished the chief subject of one of the foregoing essays, has for many years past been adopted implicitly, and almost universally, as a fundamental and unquestionable truth; by the philosophers of France. It was early sanctioned in that country by the authority of Fontanelle, whose mind was probably prepared for its reception by some similar discussions in the works of Gassendi. At a later period, it acquired much additional celebrity from the vague and exaggerated encomiums of Voltaire; and it has since been assumed as the common basis of their respective conclusions concerning the history of the human understanding, by Condillac, Turgot, Helvetius, Diderot, D'Alembert, Condorcet, Destrutt, Tracy, De Gerando, and many other

writers of the highest reputation, at complete variance with each other in the general spirit of their philosophical systems*.

"But although all these ingenious men have laid hold eagerly of this common principle of reasoning, and have vied with each other in extolling Locke for the sagacity which he has displayed in unfolding it, hardly two of them can be named, who have understood it exactly in the same sense; and perhaps not one who has understood it precisely in the sense annexed to it by the author. What is still more remarkable, the praise of Locke has been loudest from those who seem to have taken the least pains, to ascertain the import of his conclusions." pp. 101-103.

What Mr. Stewart considers, in the above extract, as a remarkable circumstance, admits, we believe, of an explanation sufficiently simple and satisfactory, The French philosophers, who, during the latter part of the eighteenth century, exerted themselves to enlighten their own countrymen and the world on the subject of religion, had some favourite topics of speculation. Among these, none appears to have been thought more generally agreeable, than the question of the mortality of the soul; or, rather, of man, whatever materials compose him. Condorcet informs us, that the great.Voltaire, though he be

• Tous les philosophes Francois de ce siécle ont fait gloire de se ranger au nombre des disciples de Locke, et d'admettre ses principes.-De Gerando de la Generation des Connoissances Humaines, p. 81.