formal logic than any work published since the days of Kant. These discussions will be looked at by writers on logic in all coming ages.

In parting with this great man, now gone from our world, it is most satisfactory to notice what was the professed aim of all his philosophy, it was to point out the limits to human thought, and thereby to teach man the lesson of intellectual humility. It is instructive to find that this has been the aim of not a few of the most profound philosophers with which our world has been honored. The truth is, it is always the smallest minds which are most apt to be swollen with the wind engendered by their own vanity. The intellects which have gone out with greatest power to the farthest limits are those which feel most keenly the barriers by which man's capacity is bounded. The minds that have set out on the widest excursions, and which have taken the boldest flights, are those which know best that there is a wider region beyond, which is altogether inaccessible to man. It was the peculiarly wise man of the Hebrews who said, "No man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end." The Greek sage by emphasis declared that if he excelled others it was only in this, that he knew that he knew nothing. It was the avowed object of the sagacious Locke to teach man the length of his tether, which, we may remark, those feel most who attempt to get away from it. Reid labored to restrain the pride of philosophy, and to bring men back to a common sense in respect of which the peasant and philosopher are alike. It was the design of Kant's great work to show how little the speculative reason can accomplish. And now we have Sir William Hamilton showing within what narrow limits the thought of man is restrained; and the metaphysician, par excellence, of Oxford has, in the Bampton lectures, employed this philosophy to lay a restraint on the rational theology of Britain, and the speculative theology which is coming like a fog from the German Ocean. It is pleasant to think that Sir William Hamilton ever professed to bow with reverence before the revelations of the Bible, and takes delight in stating it to be the result of all his investigations, "that no difficulty emerges in theology which had not previously emerged in philosophy." In one of the letters which the author

of this article has had from him he proceeds on the great Bible doctrines of grace; and from all I know of him personally, I am prepared to believe in the account which I have heard from what I reckon competent authority, that the prayer which came from him at his dying hour was, "God be merciful to me, a sinner." It is most instructive to perceive the publican and the philosopher thus made to stand on the same level before the all-righteous Judge.

LVIII. THE METAPHYSICS OF THE FUTURE.

WHAT are we to make in these times of metaphysics? It is quite clear that this kind of investigation has lost, I suspect for ever, the position once allowed it, when it stood at the head of all secular knowledge, and claimed to be equal, or all but equal, in rank to theology itself. "Time was," says Kant, "when she was the queen of all the sciences; and if we take the will for the deed, she certainly deserves, so far as regards the high importance of her object-matter, this title of honor. Now it is the fashion to heap contempt and scorn upon her; and the matron mourns forlorn and forsaken like Hecuba." Some seem inclined to treat her very much as they treat those de jure sovereigns wandering over Europe whom no country will take as de facto sovereigns, — that is, they give her all outward honor, but no authority; others are prepared to set aside her claims very summarily. The multitudes who set value on nothing but what can be counted in money never allow themselves to speak of metaphysics except with a sneer. The everincreasing number of persons who read, but who are indisposed to think, complain that philosophy is not so interesting as the new novel, or the pictorial history, which is quite as exciting and quite as untrue as the novel. The physicist, who has kept a register of the heat of the atmosphere at nine o'clock in the morning for the last five years, and the naturalist, who has discovered a plant or insect, distinguished from all hitherto known species by an additional spot, cannot conceal their contempt for a department of inquiry which deals with objects which can neither be seen nor handled, neither weighed nor measured.

In the face of all this scorn I boldly affirm that mental philosophy is not exploded, and that it never will be exploded. Whatever men may profess or affect, they cannot, in fact, do without it. It often happens that a profession of contempt for all metaphysics, as being futile and unintelligible, is often an introduction to a discussion which is metaphysical without the parties knowing it (just as the person in the French play had spoken prose all his life without being aware of it); and of such metaphysics it will commonly be found that they are futile and unintelligible enough. Often is Aristotle denounced in language borrowed from himself, and the schoolmen are disparaged by those who are all the while using distinctions which they have cut with sharp chisel in the rock, never to be effaced. There are persons speaking with contempt of Plato, Descartes, Locke, and all the metaphysicians, who are taking advantage of the great truths which they have discovered. Perhaps these individuals are telling you very solemnly that they prefer the practical to the theoretical, or that they care little for the form if they have the matter, and are profoundly ignorant that they are all the while using distinctions introduced by the Stagyrite, and elaborated into their present shape by the scholastics. But surely, they will tell you, the discovery of a new species of an old genus is a more important event than all your philosophic discoveries; and they will be surprised to learn that we owe the introduction of the phrases genus and species to Plato or to Socrates. Or perhaps they boast that they can have ideas without the aid of the philosophers, forgetting that Plato gave us the word idea, while Descartes and Locke brought it to its present signification. "Ah, but," says our novel reader, eager to discover whether the heroine so sad and forlorn in the second volume is to fall in with her lover, and be married to him before the close of the third, "metaphysics are associated in my mind with a dreary desert without and a headache within ;" and is quite unaware that he is able so to express himself, because philosophers have explained that ideas are associated. I could easily show that in our very sermons from the pulpit, and orations in the senate, and pleadings at the bar, principles are ever and anon appealed to which have come from the heads of our deepest thinkers in ages long gone by, and who may now be forgotten by all but a few anti

quarians in philosophy. Our very natural science, in the hands of such men as Faraday and Mayer, is ever touching on the borders of metaphysics, and compelling our physicists to rest on certain fundamental convictions as to extension and force. The truth is, in very proportion as material science advances, do thinking minds feel the need of something to go down deeper and mount up higher than the senses can do; of some means of settling those questions which the mind. is ever putting in regard to the soul, and the relation of the universe to God; and of a foundation on which the understanding can ultimately and confidently repose.

II. Metaphysics may have now to take a new start by taking advantage of physiological research. The Scottish school has never been slow to profit by the discoveries of science as to the brain, the nerves, the senses. From the first, and all along, they embraced and used all that was established in regard to the eye not being originally percipient of distance, to the difference of the nerves of sensation and motion, and to the reflex system in the human body; and they set themselves against premature and rash hypotheses by Hartley, by Erasmus Darwin, and by the phrenologists. But physiology in its natural and necessary progress is coming nearer and closer to the line which divides mind from matter, and in these circumstances mental science has both to watch and profit by the investigations which are being so diligently pursued.

First, metaphysics must restrain the rash inferences of mere physiologists, as Reid did the vibration theory of Hartley, as Brown did the hypotheses of Darwin as to life, and as Hamilton did the pretended science of craniology. They must make the whole educated community know, believe, and realize, that such physical actions as attraction, repulsion, and motion are one set of phenomena, and perception, reasoning, desire, and moral discernment another and a very different set of phenomena. We can trace so far into the brain what takes place when the mother sees her son thrown out from a boat on the wild waves; we can follow the rays of light through the eye on to the retina, to the sensorium, possibly on to the gray matter in the periphery of the brain; and in the end physiology may throw some light on the whole cerebral action. But in the end, as at the beginning, we are in the domain of matter and

motion; we have only the same action as takes place in the brain of the dog as it looks on. But when the mother's affection rises up, when she forgets herself in thinking of her boy, when she uses expedients for rescuing him, when she resolves to plunge into the water and buffets the billows till she clasps her boy and lavishes her affection on him, we are in a region beyond that reached by the physiologist, —a region which I believe he can never reach; and it is of importance to tell him so. But the psychologist can reach that region by consciousness, and ought diligently to explore it. Whatever be the pretensions it makes, physiology has hitherto thrown little light on purely mental phenomena, and none whatever on higher mental action, such as ratiocination, the idea of the good, and resistance to temptation.

Secondly, the metaphysician must enter the physiological field. He must, if he can, conduct researches ; he must at least master the ascertained facts. He must not give up the study of the nervous system and brain to those who cannot comprehend any thing beyond what can be made patent to the senses or disclosed to the microscope. I do cherish the hope that physiological psychology may in the end be rewarded by valuable discoveries. Light may be thrown on purely mental action by the fact that sensory action travels to the brain at the rate of 144.32 feet in the second, and from the brain at the rate of 108.24; that the movement is slowest in the case of the sense of sight and quickest in touch; and by what is alleged by Donders that a thought requires of a second. There are mental actions which cannot well be explained by mental laws, such as the rise of certain states and the association of certain states; the rise, for instance, and the association of cheerful thoughts in the time of health, and of gloomy thoughts when we are laboring under derangement of the stomach. There may here be latent processes which do not fall under consciousness, but may be detected by the microscope or chemical analysis. By such researches the results reached by the psychologist may be so far modified on the one hand and considerably widened on the other. But all such investigations should be conducted by those who can understand and appreciate the peculiar nature of mental phenomena, and allow them their full and legitimate space. No physiologist can talk of,