cal, positive and creative in itself, and capable of certainty without reference to experiment.' Logic, though it teach nothing of itself, yet as it depends immediately on the laws of our intellect, is in its principles incontestible, though not in the application of those principles. The principles therefore are innate, the application experimental. For want of a sufficient attention to Kant's distinctive line between innate faculties and external knowledge, he has been accused unjustly of maintaining that men could know a thing before they had learnt it. He departs, however, in fact, much less from Locke than is imagined; and the question on which they differ may be resolved into this:--whether the common modes of perception be the prism through which we contemplate objects, or the features in which all objects agree; and whether our notions of these modes be intuitive or acquired by abstraction.

The same observation may be extended to his moral philosophy. Instead of supposing that a knowledge of good and evil, a belief in the immortality of the soul, and the freedom of human agency are derived from comparison and observation of external objects and sensations, he ascribes to the soul a consciousness of its own destiny and duties, which though it be only called into action by external sensation, has yet an instinctive power of determining whether these sensations be good or evil, and which is therefore as much an innate sense of the intellect as sight or feeling are antecedent to all experience of inherent qualities of the body. To this quality of the soul, which, as it is uniform in all men, must therefore be unerring, he refers (as to the only competent judge) all those questions in which, according to his system, as they transcend all bodily experience, ratiocination must be vain; and Madame de Staël very eloquently expatiates on the noble self-denial of a philosopher, whe 'forbids to the science which he himself professes an entrance into the sanctuary, and who uses all the force of abstraction to prove that there are regions in which abstraction has no place.' It was, doubtless, any thing rather than indifference to the cause of natural religion which induced the philosopher of Konigsberg to leave the arguments for and against its principles in an equilibrium whose scale was to be turned by sentiment only; but for our own parts, we confess, we have no such cowardly distrust of the powers and principles of analogy, as to doubt that the visible and tangible world affords in all its phenomena sufficient evidence that what we see and feel are not the bounds of nature; that some cause distinct from matter must be inferred from the existence of those effects which material organization is incompetent to produce; and that the principles of mutual preservation may guide in some degree both men and meaner animals to the knowledge of their relative duties. How far the soul may be capable of appreciating primitive truths without the aid of external sensation, or how small a quantity of the latter may suffice to communicate their outlines, we shall not take upon ourselves to say, nor do we perceive how, in the present state of human existence, the question is to be satisfactorily determined. Locke, indeed, whom our author has on this point ably refuted in the second chapter of the present volume, was wrong in supposing that any society of human beings can be found by whom these sacred truths are unfelt or unknown; but it may still remain a question, and fortunately for human nature it is a question of curiosity only, whether this universal agreement on certain points of opinion and duty, be the effect of principles engraven on the soul, or events so disposed by nature as to produce on every soul the same impressions; whether they are the fruit, in short, of uniform instinct or uniform experience. It is not too much, perhaps, to say that no truths can be named which may not have been acquired by the latter, since no sentient being can be produced divested of external sensation. The deaf and dumb boy brought forward by Madame de Staël, had at least his eyes and fingers to guide him to truth; and those thoughtless persons whom she instances as knowing their duty by instinct, are probably in some measure indebted to an education which was, we presume, carried on through the medium of external sensations. We all know where Ensign Northerton retained the marks of Corderius; and it may admit of a doubt whether the κοιναι εννοιαι of no small proportion of the world have not been originally traced in bloody characters on the same honourable tablet. To education indeed, and to that universal tradition which has in every country guided education, the universal knowledge of man's duties and destiny may be boldly referred by those who regard the inferences of experience, or the workings of sentiment as the auxiliaries, but not the parents of religious knowledge; who believe that the Almighty has on certain occasions revealed himself and his will not only to the soul, but to the bodily senses of his creatures; and that all the traces of transcendental truths which the human race have retained, are derived by tradition or historical testimony from that time when the maker of the world was also its instructor.

Nor is the liberty of man in reality more endangered than the distinction between good and evil, by those who refer all knowledge to external impressions. If the sceptic urge, that while the choice' is determined by external impression, the human will and human actions must follow the course of events; the answer will be, that events are so ordered that, in point of fact, no situation can be found where a rational being has it not in his power to choose between more objects of pursuit than one. It is of little consequence to urge that the course of events may enslave or blindfold us, while Providence

:

Providence has so disposed that course, that his creatures are under no circumstances deprived of light or liberty.

As to the motives of human actions, and what is called by its enemies and its indiscreet admirers the selfish system, which Kant ably impugned, and which Madame de Staël has chastised through many pages of indignant eloquence; it is a dispute about words, and words only, which never would have arisen except from the poverty of human language, and the confusion of ideas excited by applying the same terms to the coarsest and the most exalted sensations of our nature. We all of us sufficiently understand what is meant by disinterested benevolence, disinterested advice, disinterested service: we apply this term to such actions as are intended at least to make others happy without any further reference to ourselves; and it is something very like sophistry to say that a man acts consequence of a hope which he himself does not feel.

in

It may be said, indeed, that the sight of others in distress is painful, and that we seek our own ease by relieving them; and it is most true that compassion, love, and gratitude are in themselves painful or oppressive sensations which we are prompted to get rid of or lighten by the actions or expressions which naturally give them vent. But where no other gratification or ease is expected than that which spontaneously flows from the happiness of another, we are willing to give the name of disinterested virtue to such conduct and such only; because, though virtue may be said to be its own reward, the idea of the reward and the virtuous action are so inseparably blended, that we cannot think of the one without the other, and are in fact too much engrossed with the happiness of our fellow-creatures to have time to feel our own. But no action will be called disinterested which has not a reference to some other sentient being: that virtue which respects ourselves must necessarily depend on a wise and useful calculation of consequences; and so singularly are we constituted, that this calculation can only have a negative power on the impulses which arise in our hearts whether virtuous or vicious. Calculation can no more make a man a philanthrophist than it can give him a good appetite. A view of the consequences of vice may enable us to resist temptation, but will not render us actively virtuous; and even Religion, whose motives of action have been sometimes too rashly resolved into hope and fear, would very little deserve the thanks of the universe, if her influence extended no further, or if that character which a belief in her doctrines generates were not a love of God and gratitude to him which prompts the Christian to give up all for his sake. The active virtues, it should not be forgotten, are passions, not principles; and though ease be the consequence of complying with their dictates, the absence of the passion itself is undoubtedly

VOL. X. NO. XX.

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undoubtedly not painful, nor should we despise the man who wanted it as foolish, but as unfeeling and unprofitable to society. That the pleasure arising from such stimuli is greater than the calm which belongs to their non-existence; and that it is therefore wise to acquire or strengthen the benevolent passions by the same process as that by which other passions are acquired or strengthened, is a very different proposition; and, if this were not, as it generally is, done for us in our childhood, it is thus far only, and at the very threshold of virtue and piety, that a prudential or selfish motive can be addressed to teach us, in the sentiments of Aristotle, 'to find a pleasure in those pursuits where it is for the interest of mankind, as well as for our own happiness, that we should find it.' It seems then to us equally unphilosophical to assert that self lurks at the bottom of every virtuous action, when the habit of virtue is acquired, or to deny that our own hopes and fears are the only principles which can be addressed in order to the acquisition of such a habit. It is certainly unfortunate for the patrons of an innate moral sense, that children are, till taught the contrary, uniformly selfish; and that it is by praise, by punishment and reward, that we train them up to actions and habits at first of apparent, but at length no doubt of real and genuine disinterestedness. Self is the leading-string to virtue, but if virtue be not crippled, she will by degrees be able to go alone; fear and hope are the schoolmasters, but love is the science which they teach, and though happiness follows love, yet love is too much occupied with her own pursuits to attend to the services of her handmaid.

On the question of expediency as a guide to duty, Kant pursues a line of morality sufficiently severe and positive. As the sense of duty is according to him innate and definite and unalterable, he conceives that it can want no interpreter; and he is so far from allowing that we may do evil that good may come, or, what is nearly the same, that good and evil are only good or evil with a reference to their consequences, that he would not allow a man to tell a falsehood, even to save his friend from the hands of a ruffian. Jacobi, one of the most illustrious of Teutonic metaphysicians, who, before the appearance of Kant's work, had combated the **selfish system, runs into an extreme directly contrary; and while he admits an innate moral sense, differing only from that of Kant, as being blended with a visionary sort of religious feeling, he denies the existence of any fixed or definite rule, by which this interpreter of God in the heart of man is bound. He claims for the conscience in the full prerogative of royalty a dispensing power over all established law, and commits in every case the reins of the con duct to an impulse which cannot err, because it is the voice of God himself in the heart. There are many circumstances in this theory theory which wonderfully suit the German character, and which have produced very singular fruits. In England it is not likely to be so prosperous, nor can any better antidote be given than the following excellent observations of Madame de Staël.

'Jacobi est si bien guidé par ses propres sentiments, qu'il n'a peutêtre pas assez réfléchi aux conséquences de cette morale pour le commun des hommes. Car, que répondre à ceux qui prétendroient, en s'écartant du devoir, qu'ils obéissent aux mouvements de leur conscience? Sans doute on pourra découvrir qu'ils sont hypocrites en parlant ainsi; mais on leur a fourni l'argument qui peut servir à les justifier, quoi qu'ils fassent; et c'est beaucoup pour les hommes d'avoir des phrases à dire en faveur de leur conduite: ils s'en servent d'abord pour tromper les autres, et finissent par se tromper eux-mêmes.

' Dira-t-on que cette doctrine indépendante ne peut convenir qu'aux caractères vraiment vertueux? Il ne doit point y avoir de privilèges même pour la vertu ; car du moment qu'elle en désire, il est probable qu'elle n'en mérite plus. Une égalité sublime règne dans l'empire du devoir, et il se passe quelque chose au fond du cœur humain qui donne à chaque homme, quand il le veut sincèrement, les moyens d'accomplir tout ce que l'enthousiasme inspire, sans sortir des bornes de la loi chrétienne qui est aussi l'œuvre d'un saint enthousiasme.'-pp. 221,

222.

It would indeed be preposterous, if it were not unfortunately so common, to observe the propensity of mankind to establish some certain criterion or foundation of morality, in the assumed existence of innate principles, or the blind guidance of temporary feeling, while they studiously withdraw their attention from so obvious a source of human obligation as the revealed will of a superior and a benefactor.

We have no room to follow Madame de Staël in her view of the principles adopted by Kant's successors, Fichte and Schelling, who have torn their master's mantle asunder, and set up each of them for himself with an opposite corner of his system. Nor can we accompany her through those effects on the national character of Germany which she deduces from the peculiarities of ideal philosophy, For ourselves, indeed, we are apt to suspect that the prevalence of a peculiar system of reasoning is the symptom, not the cause of such or such national character, and the phenomena which our author notices in the modern Teutonic character she had previously much better accounted for from the circumstances of their society and political situation.

The natural philosophers of Germany are too well known to need commendation; but Madame de Stael is by far too indulgent to such ignorant and interested quacks as the eraniologist Dr. Gall, and the magnetist De Mainadue, if she regard them in any other light than impostors. What she says however of the science, which

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