old, which suits his theory. In the absence of statistics, he makes out quite a plausible case for the gradual decrease of population in Europe, in Asia, and in America in recent centuries. He was right, of course,

in seeking to test his theories by facts; but his prejudice in favour of the ancient world overpowers his judgment; and it is almost touching to notice how incapable he was, in the absence of trustworthy data, in his ignorance of natural science, and above all in his credulity, to separate truth from falsehood. At the present day, his sketch of the history of man, with its miscellany of anecdotes, may minister to the amusement of the curious; and it may serve also to mark the distance which we have travelled in anthropology in the course of a century.

Theology is described as the summit of philosophy. Through a knowledge of self and of the world, the human mind is able to gain a knowledge of the being and attributes of a Supreme Being. As already indicated, Theism is connected by Monboddo with his theory of mind as the motive power of matter. Nature, or the animating principle diffused through all inorganic and organic things, works always towards an end, but yet without knowledge of an end. There must, therefore, be a higher power which proposes that end and directs the operations of nature. Nothing can exist without a cause, and it is no less certain that there must be a first cause, self-existent, necessary and eternal. This cause must be mind, since mind is the cause of all motion and the only efficient cause. Retaining the old distinction between efficient and material cause, Monboddo maintains that the unformed matter on

which the first cause operates has existed from all eternity; it is, as he expresses it, "an eternal production of an eternal cause." Unless a distinction be admitted between mind as the moving power and matter as that which is moved, "the system of Theism cannot be established on solid philosophical principles." The attributes of God may be discovered through a knowledge of ourselves and of His works. The perfection of the universe as an ordered system shows it to be a work of supreme intelligence, and the goodness of God is shown in the production of a world answering the end for which it was intended, and in its administration. Natural evils are explained as proceeding from the fixed laws of nature, and inseparable from a system; and moral evil as arising from the gift of free will to man, and from his erroneous judgments of what is good or ill. Man and the lower animals enjoy all the happiness of which their nature is capable, and thus Providence is vindicated. The main idea, in this Theodicy, is that the universe must be believed to be a rational system, though we are unable to comprehend it in all its particulars.

His

This abstract, though not exhaustive, may give a fair idea of a writer who has endured some wrong at the hands of his fellow-countrymen. It is to be regretted that he attached so much importance to the principle that body must be moved by mind. denial of a vis insita brought him into collision with the Newtonian theory, which he criticises as containing the doctrine that, after a first impulse, bodies have continued to move mechanically. With Baxter and others, he imposes an arbitrary disability on matter,

and brings in the activity of mind to help him out of the difficulty. His hypothesis of an elemental mind. animating all matter is arrived at by analogy from voluntary motion. But it is a mistake to suppose that, when changes take place in the organism in response to volition, the human mind adds anything to the store of energy which is perpetually conserved throughout the material world. With the failure of the supposed analogy, the argument for the elemental mind is swept away. Nor is Monboddo's assertion of inferior minds, diffused through the universe, of so much importance as he imagines to his doctrine of Theism. The hypothesis of such animating principles does not of itself warrant the transition to a Supreme Power; it may even be said that the motive power attached, under the name of mind, to every particle of matter, precludes, rather than necessitates, a reference to a supreme mind as the source of motion. Thus, in his Theistic proof, Monboddo is obliged to fall back on the familiar arguments of design and of the insufficiency of finite causes to explain the origin of things. It is unfortunate also that, in asserting the gradual ascent of man from the animal stage, he leant on evidence which is absolutely worthless, and rode to death his hobby of the physical degeneracy of civilised man as compared with the noble savage. By such eccentricities as these, he gave himself away to the Philistines.

But after allowing for all peculiarities, a great deal is left to command our respect. It is much that he was able to enter as he did into the deeper meaning of ancient philosophy. And his Antient Metaphysics

In

is especially interesting as supplying a link between that philosophy and the newer thought that reality, as known to us, depends on a priori elements or regulative principles which the mind itself contributes or discerns, no less than on the materials of sense. some respects this position was held more intelligently by Monboddo than by any of his Scottish contemporaries. From these, in his own estimation, and in the eyes of many, he stood aloof. But, after all, the

he stood aloof.

He was at one

likeness overpowers the difference. with them in his rejection of empiricism and the scepticism to which it had led. Like them, he maintained the dualism of mind and matter. And his great aim, like theirs, was to establish the supremacy of mind in the universe, and to reaffirm a reasonable faith in God, in freedom, and in immortality. His enthusiastic admiration for Greek philosophy did not prevent him from being, in these respects, a product of his country and of his time.

CHAPTER XI.

ADAM FERGUSON-(1723-1816).

AMONG Scottish professors of philosophy there is no more picturesque figure than that of Adam Ferguson. Ardent, resolute, and eloquent, he was the first to confer lustre on the chair of moral philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. His experience of life in varied aspects, his knowledge of history, and his admiration for the ethical systems of antiquity, coloured his thought, and led him to rely more on an extended survey of human nature than on psychological analysis. Though his writings are neglected now, he was unquestionably one of the leaders of thought in the Scottish metropolis, and his lectures were attended by men of note as well as by University students.

Ferguson was the son of the parish minister of Logierait, in Perthshire, a man, says Dr. Carlyle, of good connections, and a Highland pride and spirit. After graduating at St. Andrews, he began his theological course in Edinburgh, among his friends and fellow-pupils being Robertson, John Home, Blair, and