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There is really nothing in these boasts about the exact sciences. We have no such sciences, and every scientific man knows that there is not a single department of science, so called, the principles of which are ascertained and fixed. The most that can be said is, that we have investigated some few departments of nature, and ascertained a few facts, which are indeed facts, and such as we are able to apply to practical purposes. The Inductive Method has, then, by no means wrought such mighty wonders even in physical science; while its application to metaphysics and theology has made confusion worse confounded, as Bacon himself told us would be the effect, if so applied. He denied its applicability save to physical science; and, if he had denied its applicability even to this, and contended for its legitimacy only in the practice of the law, he would have been nearer yet to the truth. Yet we deny not the Inductive Method, when enlightened by a profound philosophy. It contains a truth, but a truth not to be perceived and comprehended on the threshold of the temple of science, but only after we have entered and sacrificed in the innermost sanctuary.

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Bacon, we repeat, has left an influence, but no sysSome have charged him with being the father of modern Sensualism; but he has contributed to Sensualism only indirectly. He does not discuss the question of method from the psychological point of view, and he was himself a believer in an order of facts not reducible to sensation. Yet, by recommending the Inductive Method, and denying its validity when applied to any other phenomena than those of the sensible world, his influence has been exerted almost wholly in the direction of Sensualism. So far as we can class him at all, then, we must class him with the Sensual school. This is his place, so far as he has a place in the history of modern science. Yet, in point of fact, though it is the fashion to attribute almost every thing to him that is good in the modern intellectual world, we do not believe his influence has been great, and we are sure that it has been almost wholly overrated. He has left no school; he has had no disciples.

Hobbes followed Bacon in the order of time, and has been called his disciple; for what reason we cannot discover. No two men were ever more unlike. Hobbes is, in our judgment, much the superior man of the two, considered either morally or intellectually. He in part appertains to Philosophy, though we class his system with the doctrines of Science, for the reason, that he takes his point of departure in psychology, and with Sensualism; for he recognizes in the soul no cognitive faculty but that which he terms sense. His genius, however, is mathematical; and, if he had started with Cogito, ergo sum, instead of Sentio, ergo sum, he would have stood on the same line with Descartes, but have surpassed him in the reach of his thought, and the firmness of his logic. At bottom, he has a much more philosophic mind than Descartes, and, paradoxical as some will hold it, a much more generous love for mankind. Hobbes is a true Englishman; and, therefore, must needs profess one doctrine, and practise another. If he loves mankind, he must in doctrine atone for his philanthropy, by maintaining the duty to hate them; if he hates them, he must be eloquent in praise of universal benevolence. Confide with your whole heart in an Englishman or an American, unless he preaches philanthropy. When he once mounts that for his hobby, look well to your locks and keys. Nevertheless, the obloquy showered upon Hobbes, for his moral and political doctrines, has deprived him of his true place as the representative of the Anglo-Saxon mind, and made it unnecessary to dwell upon his doctrines.

Hobbes was succeeded by John Locke, who, as every body knows, is regarded as the English Philosopher. We regard Locke as inferior in almost every point of view to Hobbes; but, as it is through him that Hobbes lives, and speaks, and acts on the Anglo-Saxon race, it is in him Hobbism is to be studied and appreciated. Locke is veritably a disciple of Hobbes, and the "Essay on the Human Understanding" is little more than Hobbes diluted, or a sort of Hobbes "made easy"; or, as we may say, Hobbes made palatable. and fit to be served up to respectable people.

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Locke, absorbing, as he does,, his master, is the greatest name we meet among the English psychologists. We say psychologists, for Locke is never a philosopher. Ás a philosopher, England has a whole army of great names which must take precedence of his. sustain no comparison with such men as Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, Stillingfleet, Butler, and hardly any with such men as Clarke, Wollaston, and, in a later age, Dr. Richard Price. In genuine Philosophy, Cudworth is the greatest name we are acquainted with among Englishmen. But Philosophy is not now our subject; we are concerned only with doctrines of Science. Locke's system is nothing but a doctrine of Science. His problem is purely the scientific problem. He would, first of all, study the understanding, investigate and determine the powers of the human soul, to know to what objects they are, or are not, applicable. What he proposed, first of all, was what Kant afterwards called a Critic of the Pure Reason. But, bred to the profession of medicine, he approaches his subject as a physiologist, and restricts himself to dissection and the investigation of functions. He asks, like Descartes, Can I know? How can I I know that I know? He undertakes to answer this question by a direct investigation of the functions of the understanding. His point of departure, then, is in the subject; and his system, whatever it be, must therefore come under the general head of Egoïsm. His real answer is, as we saw in the Article on Berkeley, in our number for January, the answer of the Sensualists. It is true that he does not, officially, like his successor, Condillac, annihilate the me, and reduce the subject to mere sensation; but he makes all our knowledge begin in sensation, and sensation is with him the simple capacity of receiving impressions of external objects. The root of all science is in sensation. His formula is really, Sentio, ergo sum, I feel, therefore I am; and, when transferred to the object, it is, Sentio, ergo est, I feel it, therefore it is.

Unquestionably, Locke does not confine, officially,

the objects of science to objects which are perceptible by external sense. He admits and contends for quite another world, but he recognizes in the soul no innate capacity to seize intuitively this other world, nor a capacity to detect it in the sensible phenomena; he attains to it solely by reflection; that is, dialectically. He concludes from the sensible world to the non-sensible. Thus, God is inferred from the phenomena of nature, immortality from the phenomena of the soul, and the promises to be read in the Bible. So that all in his system which transcends pure sensation, and the consciousness thereof, is merely logic, and not science. Certainly it is not we who condemn dialectics, or affirm that what is logically true can ever be without scientific validity; but from pure sensation we cannot logically conclude to any thing, either in the direction of the subject or in that of the object, beyond sensation. Now, in Locke's premises, unquestionably, as a matter of fact, there is, besides sensation, both subject and object; but officially, under the point of view of his system, there is nothing but the sensation itself. Sensation is nothing but a mode or affection of the subject,

is the subject, in fact. Now, from this it is impossible to conclude to any existence but that of the sensation itself. Hence, all our knowledge is necessarily restricted to what Hume would call momentary "Impressions." And this is what Berkeley and Hume, coming after Locke, and adopting his premises, but with superior sagacity, and greater logical acumen, have easily demonstrated.

Berkeley and Hume have thus done for Locke what Malebranche had done for Descartes. They demonstrate the utter inadequacy of Sensualism as a doctrine of Science, as he had demonstrated the utter inadequacy of Intellectualism. We can arrive at knowledge, by starting from I feel, no better than we can by starting from I think. This is precisely where the question of Science stood, when Kant came with his Critic of Pure Reason. Intellectualism had been convicted of impotence in Malebranche, who, as we have seen, sought ref

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uge in his theory of Vision in God; Sensualism having been convicted of impotence in Berkeley, who took refuge in an analogous theory, and in Hume, who took refuge nowhere, but remained floating as a mere bubble on the ocean of universal doubt and nescience, - what was to be done? Was all to end here? Is science impossible? Is it possible? If so, on what conditions? Kant's problem, we see, then, was precisely the problem with which Descartes commenced, and which he trenched, rather than solved, by his famous enthymeme, Cogito, ergo sum; and precisely the problem with which Locke also commenced, and which he had undertaken, but failed, to solve by sensation and reflection. There is, then, nothing new or original in Kant's undertaking. He undertook to solve the problem all psychologists had been trying to solve since the revolt against the Schoolmen. His originality is not in his problem, but in his mode of handling it. He has always before his eyes, on the one hand, the sad result of Intellectualism; on the other, the equally sad result of Sensualism; and, without affirming or denying either, he enters into a criticism of both, in order to determine whether we have a right either to affirm or to deny.

We see, now, the problem of the Critik der reinen Vernunft. What is Kant's solution of this problem? What is the method by which he obtains his solution? What is its positive value? What contribution has it made to our doctrines of Science? These questions

will open up the whole subject of the Critical Philosophy, and will enable us, if answered, to comprehend and appreciate it. But we have detained our readers so long with these preliminary remarks, designed to prepare the way for the exposition and appreciation of Kant's Critik, that we must reserve the direct consideration of the work itself to our number for July.

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