our present state, but not without a certain purification of mind, and abstraction from the objects of sense. Such, as far as I am able to comprehend, were the sublime notions of Plato, and probably of Pythagoras.

The philosophers of the Alexandrian school, commonly called the latter Platonists, seem to have adopted the same system; but with this difference, that they made the eternal ideas not to be a principle distinct from the Deity, but to be in the divine intellect, as the objects of those conceptions which the divine mind must from all eternity have had, not only of every thing which he has made, but of every possible existence, and of all the relations of things: By a proper purification and abstraction from the objects of sense, we may be in some measure united to the Deity, and in the eternal light be enabled to discern the most sublime intellectual truths. These Platonic notions, grafted upon Christianity, probably gave rise to the sect called Mystics, which, though in its spirit and principles extremely opposite to the Peripatetic, yet was never extinguished, but subsists to this day.

Many of the fathers of the Christian church have a tincture of the tenets of the Alexandrian school; among others St. Augustine. But it does not appear, as far as I know, that either Plato, or the latter Platonists, or St. Augustine, or the Mystics, thought that we perceive the objects of sense in the divine ideas. They had too mean a notion of our perception of sensible objects to ascribe to it so high an origin. This theory, therefore, of our perceiving the objects of sense in the ideas of the Deity, I take to be the invention of Father Malebranche himself. He indeed brings many passages of St. Augustine to countenance it, and seems very desirous to have that Father of his party. But in those passages, though the Father speaks in a very high strain of God's being the light of our minds, of our being illuminated immediately by the eternal light, and uses other similar expressions; yet he seems to apply those expressions only to our illumination in moral and divine things, and not to the perception of objects by the senses. Mr. Bayle imagines that some traces of this opinion of Malebranche are to be found in Amelius the Platonist, and even in Democritus ; but his authorities seem to be strained.

Malebranche, with a very penetrating genius, entered into a more minute examination of the powers of the human mind than any one before him. He had the advantage of the discoveries made by Des Cartes, whom he followed without selfish attachment.

He lays it down as a principle admitted by all philosophers, and which could not be called in question, that we do not perceive external objects immediately, but by means of images or ideas of them present to the mind. "I suppose," says he, "that every one will grant that we perceive not the objects that are without us immediately, and of themselves. We see the sun, the stars, and an infinity of objects without us; and it is not at all likely that the soul sallies out of the body, and, as it were, takes a walk through the heavens to contemplate all those objects: She sees them not, therefore, by themselves; and the immediate object of the mind, when it sees the sun, for example, is not the sun, but something which is intimately united to the soul; and it is that which I call an idea: So that by the word idea, I understand nothing else here but that which is the immediate object, or nearest to the mind, when we perceive any object. It ought to be carefully observed that, in order to the mind's perceiving any object, it is absolutely necessary that the idea of that object be actually present to it. Of this it is not possible to doubt. The things which the soul perceives are of two kinds. They are either in the soul, or they are without the

soul Those that are in the soul are its own thoughts, that is to say, all its different modifications. The soul has no need of ideas for perceiving these things. But with regard to things without the soul, we cannot perceive them but by means of ideas.

Having laid this foundation, as a principle which was common to all philosophers, and which admits of no doubt, he proceeds to enumerate all the possible ways by which the ideas of sensible objects may be presented to the mind: Either, first, they come from the bodies which we perceive; or, secondly, the soul has the power of producing them in itself; or, thirdly, they are produced by the Deity, either in our creation, or occasionally as there is use for them; or, fourthly, the soul has in itself virtually and eminently, as the schools speak, all the perfections which it perceives in bodies; or, fifthly, the soul is united with a being possessed of all perfection, who has in himself the ideas of all created things.

This he takes to be a complete enumeration of all the possible ways in which the ideas of external objects may be presented to our minds. He employs a whole chapter upon each; refuting the four first, and confirming the last by various arguments. The Deity, being always present to our minds in a more intimate manner than any other being, may, upon occasion of the impressions made on our bodies, discover to us, as far as he thinks proper, and according to fixed laws, his own ideas of the object; and thus we see all things in God, or in the divine ideas.

However visionary this system may appear on a superficial view, yet when we consider, that he agreed with the whole tribe of philosophers in conceiving ideas to be the immediate objects of perception, and that he found insuperable difficulties, and even absurdities, in every other hypothesis concerning them, it will not appear so wonderful that a man of very great genius should fall into this; and probably it pleased so devout a man the more, that it sets in the most striking light our dependence upon God, and his continual presence with us.

He distinguished, more accurately than any philosopher had done before, the objects which we perceive from the sensations in our own minds, which, by the laws of nature, always accompany the perception of the object. As in many things, so particularly in this, he has great merit; for this, I apprehend, is a key that opens the way to a right understanding both of our external senses, and of other powers of the mind. The vulgar confound sensation with other powers of the mind, and with their objects, because the purposes of life do not make a distinction necessary. The confounding of these in common language has led philosophers, in one period, to make those things external which really are sensations in our own minds; and, in another period, running, as is usual, into the contrary extreme, to make every thing almost to be a sensation or feeling in our minds.

It is obvious, that the system of Malebranche leaves no evidence of the existence of a material world, from what we perceive by our senses; for the divine ideas, which are the objects immediately perceived, were the same before the world was created. Malebranche was too acute not to discern this consequence of his system, and too candid not to acknowledge it: He fairly owns it, and endeavours to make advantage of it, resting the complete evidence we have of the existence of matter upon the authority of revelation. He shows, that the arguments brought by Des Cartes to prove the existence of a material world, though as good as any that reason could furnish, are not perfectly conclusive; and though he acknowledges, with Des Cartes, that we feel a strong propensity to believe the existence of a material world, yet he thinks this is not sufficient; and that to yield to

such propensities without evidence, is to expose ourselves to perpetual delusion. He thinks, therefore, that the only convincing evidence we have of the existence of a material world is, that we are assured by revelation that God created the heavens and the earth, and that the Word was made flesh He is sensible of the ridicule to which so strange an opinion may expose him among those who are guided by prejudice; but, for the sake of truth, he is willing to bear it. But no author, not even Bishop Berkeley, hath shown more clearly, that, either upon his own system, or upon the common principles of philosophers with regard to ideas, we have no evidence left, either from reason or from our senses, of the existence of a material world. It is no more than justice to Father Malebranche to acknowledge that Bishop Berkeley's arguments are to be found in him in their whole force.

Mr. Norris, an English divine, espoused the system of Malebranche in his Essay towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intellectual World, published in two volumes 8vo. anno 1701. This author has made a feeble effort to supply a defect which is to be found not in Malebranche only, but in almost all the authors who have treated of ideas; I mean, to prove their existence. He has employed a whole chapter to prove that material things cannot be an immediate object of perception. His arguments are these: 1st, They are without the mind, and, therefore, there can be no union between the object and the perception. 2dly, They are disproportioned to the mind, and removed from it by the whole diameter of being. 3dly, Because, if material objects were immediate objects of perception, there could be no physical science: things necessary and immutable being the only objects of science. 4thly, If material things were perceived by themselves, they would be a true light to our minds, as being the intelligible form of our understandings, and consequently perfective of them, and indeed superior to them.

Malebranche's system was adopted by many devout people in France of both sexes; but it seems to have had no great currency in other countries. Mr. Locke wrote a small tract against it, which is found among his posthumous works: But whether it was written in haste, or after the vigour of his understanding was impaired by age, there is less of strength and solidity in it than in most of his writings. The most formidable antagonist Malebranche met with was in his own country; Antony Arnauld, doctor of the Sorbonne, and one of the acutest writers the Jansenists have to boast of, though that sect has produced many. Malebranche was a Jesuit, and the antipathy between the Jesuits and Jansenists left him no room to expect quarter from his learned antagonist. Those who choose to see this system attacked on the one hand, and defended on the other, with subtilty of argument and elegance of expression, and on the part of Arnauld with much wit and humour, may find satisfaction by reading Malebranche's Inquiry after Truth; Arnauld's book of True and False Ideas; Malebranche's defence; and some subsequent replies and defences. In controversies of this kind, the assailant commonly has the advantage, if they are not unequally matched; for it is easier to overturn all the theories of philosophers upon this subject, than to defend any one of them. Mr. Bayle makes a very just remark upon this controversy, that the arguments of Mr. Arnauld against the system of Malebranche were often unanswerable, but they were capable of being retorted against his own system; and his ingenious antagonist knew well how to use this defence.

CHAPTER VIII.

OF THE COMMON THEORY OF PERCEPTION, AND OF THE SENTIMENTS OF THE PERIPATETICS, AND OF DES CARTES.

THIS theory in general is, that we perceive external objects only by certain images which are in our minds, or in the sensorium to which the mind is immediately present. Philosophers, in different ages, have differed both in the names they have given to those images, and in their notions concerning them. It would be a laborious task to enumerate all their variations, and perhaps would not requite the labour. I shall only give a sketch of the principal differences with regard to their names and their nature.

By Aristotle and the Peripatetics, the images presented to our senses were called sensible species or forms; those presented to the memory or imagination were called phantasms; and those presented to the intellect were called intelligible species; and they thought, that there can be no perception, no imagination, no intellection, without species or phantasms. What the ancient philosophers called species, sensible and intelligible, and phantasms, in later times, and especially since the time of Des Cartes, came to be called by the common name of ideas. The Cartesians divided our ideas into three classes, those of sensation, of imagination, and of pure intellection. Of the objects of sensation and imagination, they thought the images are in the brain; but of objects that are incorporeal, the images are in the understanding, or pure intellect.

Mr. Locke, taking the word idea in the same sense as Des Cartes had done before him, to signify whatever is meant by phantasm, notion, or species, divides ideas into those of sensation, and those of reflection; meaning by the first, the ideas of all corporeal objects, whether perceived, remembered, or imagined; by the second, the ideas of the powers and operations of our minds. What Mr. Locke calls ideas, Mr. Hume divides into two distinct kinds, impressions and ideas. The difference betwixt these, he says, consists in the degrees of force and liveliness with which they strike upon the mind. Under impressions he comprehends all our sensations, passions, and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul. By ideas he means the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning.

Dr. Hartley gives the same meaning to ideas as Mr. Hume does, and what Mr. Hume calls impressions he calls sensations; conceiving our sensations to be occasioned by vibrations of the infinitesimal particles of the brain, and ideas by miniature vibrations or vibratiuncles. Such differences we find among philosophers, with regard to the name of those internal images of objects of sense which they hold to be the immediate objects of perception.

We shall next give a short detail of the sentiments of the Peripatetics and Cartesians, of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, concerning them.

Aristotle seems to have thought that the soul consists of two parts, or, rather, that we have two souls, the animal and the rational; or, as he calls them, the soul and the intellect. To the first belong the senses, memory, and imagination; to the last judgment, opinion, belief, and reasoning. The first we have in common with brute animals; the last is peculiar to man. The animal soul he held to be a certain form of the body, which is inseparable from it, and perishes at death. To this soul the senses belong: and he defines a sense to be that which is capable of receiving the sensible forms or species of objects, without any of the matter of them; as wax re

ceives the form of the seal without any of the matter of it. The forms of sound, of colour, of taste, and of other sensible qualities, are in like manner received by the senses.

It seems to be a necessary consequence of Aristotle's doctrine, that bodies. are constantly sending forth, in all directions, as many different kinds of forms without matter, as they have different sensible qualities; for the forms of colour must enter by the eye, the forms of sound by the ear, and so of the other senses. This accordingly was maintained by the followers of Aristotle, though not, as far as I know, expressly mentioned by himself. They disputed concerning the nature of those forms, or species, whether they were real beings or non-entities; and some held them to be of an intermediate nature between the two. The whole doctrine of the peripatetics and schoolmen concerning forms, substantial and accidental, and concerning the transmission of sensible species from objects of sense to the mind, if it be at all intelligible, is so far above my comprehension, that I should perhaps do it injustice, by entering into it more minutely. Malebranche, in his Recherche de la Verité, has employed a chapter to show, that material objects do not send forth sensible species of their several sensible qualities.

The great revolution which Des Cartes produced in philosophy, was the effect of a superiority of genius, aided by the circumstances of the times. Men had, for more than a thousand years, looked up to Aristotle as an oracle in philosophy. His authority was the test of truth. The small remains of the Platonic system were confined to a few Mystics, whose principles and manner of life drew little attention. The feeble attempts of Ramus, and of some others, to make improvements in the system had little effect. The peripatetic doctrines were so interwoven with the whole system of scholastic theology, that to dissent from Aristotle was to alarm the church. The most useful and intelligible parts even of Aristotle's writings were neglected, and philosophy was become an art of speaking learnedly, and disputing subtilely, without producing any invention of use in human life. It was fruitful of words, but barren of works, and admirably contrived for drawing a veil over human ignorance, and putting a stop to the progress of knowledge, by filling men with a conceit that they knew every thing. It was very fruitful also in controversies; but for the most part they were controversies about words or about things of no moment, or things above the reach of the human faculties; and the issue of them was what might be expected, that the contending parties fought, without gaining or losing an inch of ground, till they were weary of the dispute, or their attention was called off to some other subject.

Such was the philosophy of the schools of Europe, during many ages of darkness and barbarism that succeeded the decline of the Roman empire; so that there was great need of a reformation in philosophy as well as in religion. The light began to dawn at last; a spirit of inquiry sprang up, and men got the courage to doubt of the dogmas of Aristotle, as well as of the decrees of popes. The most important step in the reformation of religion was to destroy the claim of infallibility, which hindered men from using their judgment in matters of religion: and the most important step in the reformation of philosophy was to destroy the authority, of which Aristotle had so long had peaceable possession. The last had been attempted by Lord Bacon and others, with no less zeal than the first by Luther and Calvin.

Des Cartes knew well the defects of the prevailing system, which had begun to lose its authority. His genius enabled him, and his spirit prompted him, to attempt a new one. He had applied much to the mathe

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