OR, THE HISTORY OF AN INDIVIDUAL MIND: INTENDED AS A GUIDE FOR THE INTELI.ECT THROUGH BY A FELLOW OF A COLLEGE. Omnis boni principium intellectus cogitabundus.-VETUS AUCTOR. Necessario enim requiritur ut melior ac perfectior intellectûs humani usus atque So build we up the being that we are; VOL. I. LONDON: CHARLES KNIGHT AND CO., LUDGATE STREET. 1837. 483. INTRODUCTION. It is curious to observe the prefatory addresses of most young Authors. It should seem that they are abashed at their own appearance; frightened at the shadows that they cast before them. They are aware of the multitude of books already written upon their subject, and of the weariness of flesh. consequently inflicted upon readers. They profess doubt and distrustfulness. The task is probably beyond their power,-nevertheless they presume to hope, they have been cheered by the approval of certain friends, therefore they crave permission,and so on, through half a score unmeaning pages, sounding all the while the very base string of humility, deprecating censoriousness, and humbling themselves that they may be exalted. But why, if their hopes were really so like despair, and their chief object barely to escape censure, why not remain quiet? "Silence," the Greek proverb tells us, "is sure of her reward; seldom does she repent herself." But, in my judgment, all this profession of humility is a very bad practice. The man who proposes himself as a teacher of the public is better and more beseemingly fitted with the dignity of the master than with the deferential lowliness of the disciple. Accordingly, I shall make no apology for my attempt; though, doubtless, if it be a sin in authorship to deal in old wares, I am the most offending soul that ever lived. Of all subjects in the world, that of B the mind and its attributes is the most hacknied. Metaphysics are as stale as mythology, as flat and weary to the reader, and far more unprofitable to the bookseller. We need not wonder at the superfetation: it could hardly be otherwise, if we look to the character of the subject—a subject, in its importance and direct relation to our welfare, second only to religion, and, moreover, intimately allied to it. We cannot, therefore, marvel at the preference, but it is the preference of it solely, and not its prosecution, that has done honour to the discernment of philosophers. We have a world of treatises about it, but little or nothing, in my judgment, to the point or purpose of it. With all that has been said and written, the very source itself, the fountain head, so far from being exhausted, has scarcely been opened or even touched. The people concerned about it have been digging, and boring, and excavating, till they have choked it up, instead of clearing it for a free course. The subject is literally a subject still, overlaid by heaps of comment, and hard to be extricated from them into light. There has been a prodigious deal of labour without effect, of hurry without expedition, satiety without satisfaction. In general, no precise issue has been proposed; consequently, all the stir that has been made through the long, intricate passages, and in the dark corners of metaphysics, has been effectual only to raise the dust, and with it to blind the eyes of the inquirers, instead of clearing it away. True it is ancient, and learned, and venerable dust, and therefore, from those very qualities, so much the darker and more obscuring. Such a statement will appear strange to the uninitiated. I will endeavour to explain the facts upon which it is principally founded. The books and treatises now extant upon the mind, have been written professedly, for the most part, not so much to point out the means of its improvement, as to describe its actual conditions, its qualities, faculties, and operations; to show it as it is, rather than as it might bein its fixedness, rather than in its development-not as it learns, but as it works; in other words, to illustrate the science of metaphysics. Now this undoubtedly is a subject of much interest and curiosity; and its study, when cautiously prosecuted, may be useful in strengthening the judgment, sharpening the discriminative power, and quickening the general intellect. But the use is mainly in the prosecution, the results here, as in mathematics, are comparatively of little worth. It is of small importance to us that we should be acquainted with the nature and the various modifications of judgment, memory, and reflection, if we possess not the very faculties themselves. If the instrument be hung out of our reach, it is in vain, or nearly so, that we may be told of its uses and its properties. No one can become a painter merely by listening to a description of the works of Raphael or Rubens. The creative faculty is from within. So much for the study of metaphysics. We may say of it, what Butler has said of another pretended science, "All the rhetorician's rules Are but the naming of his tools." Then, as for the books and methods intended for the improvement of the mind, and not merely for its description and nomenclature, they are numerous enough, in all conscience, but none of them effectual for my purpose. They are almost wholly institutional,-subservient, that is, to the processes of alien education— |