dern illusions of animal magnetism, is supposed to exempt its recipient from the ordinary condition of humanity, and to invest him with supernatural powers.

But the spirit of Oriental institutions was unfriendly to the vigorous expansion of thought. In all ages of the world, Asia has been deprived of the light of freedom, and has in consequence incurred the doom of absolute sterility in the higher fruits of moral and mental culture. We find this fair and fertile portion of the earth's surface, in the very dawn of traditional history, darkened by the shade of colossal and uncontrolled monarchies, which, wanting stability, the only element that can render autocratic power endurable, gave way, after longer or shorter intervals, to successive waves of Nomadic conquest. We find religion administered by an exclusive and hereditary caste, and, as the necessary consequence of such monopoly, confined to mere ritual observances, and lending its sanction to the most irrational superstitions; and we find a universal debasement of the intellect and of the heart, evidenced and perpetuated by the fatal prevalence of polygamy. Such influences could not but arrest the developement and spread of speculative truth; and it was therefore only the germs of a higher philosophy, that could be borne from the East to the fresh and vigorous soil of Greece.

All the elements of the Hellenic civilisation were propitious to the culture of science. The freedom of political institutions; the absence of an hereditary priesthood; the singleness and sanctity of the domestic relations; and the physical gifts of soil and climate, conspired to stimulate the free and bold developement of thought. There appears reason to believe that the religious mysteries were in Greece the earliest instruments of a higher culture. Professor Heeren is of opinion that their main object was to preserve the symbolic sense of the Theogony, which was effaced in the popular religion ;-to record and to teach what the Gods originally were, of what natural powers and objects the representatives ;-in short, that they constituted the true esoteric parts of polytheism. But our knowledge of the philosophical truths typified in the mysteries, notwithstanding the profound researches of St Croix, of Warburton, and of Ouwaroff, scarcely passes the degree of learned conjecture; and it is in the Ionian and Pythagorean schools that we must look for the first distinct traces of Grecian philosophy. These two schools, consequently, are the earliest representatives of M. Cousin's systems of Sensation and Idealism. In Greece, as elsewhere, the phenomena of external nature were the first to arrest investigation; and the earliest schools of philosophy were schools rather of physical than of mental science. Within the limits of physical knowledge there are, how

ever, two distinct modes of contemplating the phenomena of the external world, either in themselves, simply as objects of sense, or in their relations. Thales, and the founders of the Ionian school, contemplated nature under the first aspect, and therefore laid the basis of a system of pure physics. Pythagoras studied mainly the relations of phenomena, and was thus guided to the sciences of geometry and of number, which are closely allied to Idealism.

But these were only preludes to the developement, in Athens, of a new and more exalted philosophical spirit, which, disdaining the limited sphere of external nature, devoted itself to the higher provinces of mind, of moral feeling, and of the duties and social relations of man. Socrates was the leader of this great intellectual movement. There is, perhaps, no enquiry in the history of ancient letters more shrouded in uncertainty than the real character of this remarkable person, and the causes of the mighty influence he exerted upon his own and after times. His appearances as interlocutor in the Dialogues of Plato certainly fail to carry with them the impressive conviction of marked intellectual supremacy. The catechistic process of argument which he employs is tediously and needlessly minute; and the conclusions finally elicited by it are too unimportant to reward so operose a mode of deduction. The sources of his influence are to be sought rather in the practical tendencies of his philosophy; in the purity and elevation of his moral precepts; in his firm conviction of the Divine government ; and of the immortality of the sentient principle, and its continued existence in a state, where it will be freed from all restraints to the full unfolding of its capabilities.

It is in the works of Plato and Aristotle that the vigorous maturity of Grecian philosophy manifests itself; and we again discover the two fundamental systems of dogmatic philosophy as fully unfolded as the Socratic sobriety and caution would permit. Neither of those sagacious thinkers has himself overstepped the limits of legitimate generalization; but their disciples have been tempted to pass the frontier, to which the great masters had so closely approached. Indeed the Platonic philosophy is almost a system of pure spiritualism. General ideas constitute the main object of contemplation; they are the principles of all definitions and all judgments. They are not derived from the senses, which are the sources only of the variable and the particular. They appertain, therefore, to mind itself, or rather to reason, of which they are the proper objects. But though conceptions of reason, they are not constituted or created by reason, but have an independent self-existence, and are therefore justly termed adn auтa na avтa, and regarded as attributes of the divine reason. Abstraction is hence

the essential process and principle of the Platonic philosophy. Classification, on the contrary, is the prominent feature of the Aristotelian. Three classes of truths are admitted by Aristotle ; those obtained by demonstration,-general or intuitive truths, which have their source in reason, and particular truths, which flow from sensible experience. M. Cousin does not, therefore, contend for more than a tendency to the doctrine of Sensation in the writings of Aristotle himself; but he discovers unequivocal evidences of that exclusive system in the opinions of Dicearchus and other philosophers of the Aristotelian school.

The Middle Ages constitute the next great era in the progress of intellectual science. This period, long regarded as one of mental sterility and darkness, has been elevated, by a more exact and enlightened criticism, to its just rank in the history of knowledge. It is now generally admitted that all the fruits of human intelligence,--the institutions of civil and social polity, no less than the discoveries of scientific truth,-can only be matured and perfected in a succession of ages; and that it is vain and unphilosophical to expect in an age of preparatory twilight, fruits that can only be ripened by the full light of knowledge and refinement. The long interval from the overthrow of the Roman civilisation to the revival of letters, is mainly characterised by the absolute reign of ecclesiastical authority. In common with all earthly powers, and even with royalty itself, philosophy was compelled to bow before the altar, and was indeed solely employed in the defence of a subtle and mystical theology. The scholastic logic was involved in the fall of the priestly domination, which it had laboured to sustain. An intermediate age of transition succeeded; in which the various systems of ancient wisdom, and especially the Platonic philosophy, enforced by the zeal and learning of Ficino, and of the two Picas of Mirandola, became prevalent in Italy, and were gradually extended to Transalpine nations. The seventeenth century is the age of modern philosophy, properly so called-a philosophy, equally independent of ecclesiastical control, and of classical antiquity. But our limits compel us to pass over an epoch rendered illustrious by the names of Bacon and Descartes, and to confine our observations on the philosophy of the succeeding century, which forms M. Cousin's principal object, to his account of Locke.

In those portions of the history of speculative science, that have already passed under review, we have rarely discovered perfect examples of the four archetypes, to which M. Cousin would refer all systems of mental philosophy. On the contrary, it has appeared that those highly gifted individuals who have appeared at long intervals in the history of our race, as the creators of new systems,

are rarely to be numbered among the supporters of a limited and exclusive dogmatism. Thus in India, Capila, the representative of M. Cousin's first system, inculcates the immateriality and eternity of the sentient principle; and in Greece, Aristotle, the alleged founder of the same school, admits into his system general truths, or intuitions of pure reason, which are the very foundations of the ideal philosophy. Nor is even Plato to be regarded as a pure spiritualist, since he does not disavow the existence of an external world, or reject the evidences of sensible experience. The historical prototypes of M. Cousin's systems are to be discovered, if anywhere, in the works of disciples, who have misconceived, or overcharged, the opinions of their masters. It is only by similar misapprehension, or by the skilful alternation of the processes of pruning and extension, that the thoughts of the great masters themselves can be adapted to the arbitrary forms of this artificial rangement.

In M. Cousin's view of Locke's philosophical opinions, a devoted attachment to system, and a tendency to sacrifice to it historical correctness, visibly betray themselves. His first and prominent object is to contract the comprehensive doctrines inculcated by Locke within the narrow limits of his class of Sensation. He asserts, that it is an incontestable fact that Locke is the parent of the philosophy of sensation of the eighteenth century; its chief, its acknowledged master-in date, as in ge'nius, the first metaphysician of that school.' How completely discordant such doctrines are with those professed by Locke, must be evident from even a superficial examination of his great work. At the opening of the second book, Locke distinctly announces that there are two fountains of knowledge-Sensation and Reflection. The other fountain, from which experience furnisheth the understanding with ideas, is the perception of the operations of our own mind within us, which operations, when the soul comes to reflect on and consider, do 'furnish the understanding with another set of ideas, which 'could not be had from things without.' Nor has Locke confined himself to this preliminary announcement of the twofold origin of ideas. He proceeds, in the sixth chapter, to enumerate some of the simple ideas of reflection; and in the seventh, to treat of simple ideas derived both from sensation and reflection. In the ninth chapter he speaks of perception as the first and simplest idea we have from reflection. The abstract notions of space, duration, infinity, number, and their various modes, are all shown to be derived from one or other of these two channels, or from their combination. Though he denies the existence of innate ideas, and of innate speculative principles, Locke distinctly recognises original

faculties, and active powers of mind, wholly independent of experience; and he has received into his system a multitude of ideas, obtained by these powers, either operating on the materials supplied by sense, or contemplating their own acts and capabilities, and consequently owing no exclusive parentage to Sensation. In placing Locke at the head of the 'école sensualiste,' it is thus obvious that M. Cousin has wholly misapprehended the purport and spirit of the philosophical system which he undertakes to subvert.

This error is by no means peculiar to M. Cousin. It is entertained by the majority of continental critics. Under this false impression, La Harpe has styled Condillac the first disciple of Locke; and the Encyclopedistes imagined that they were enforcing Locke's metaphysical tenets, when they_advocated the theory of Sensation. Condorcet asserts that Locke was the first who proved that all our ideas are compounded of sensations; and Frederic Schlegel, under the same conviction, has charged the philosophy of Locke with an inevitable tendency to materialism and atheism, and with being essentially identical in principle with that of Hobbes. M. de Barante, in his analysis of the doctrines of the Encyclopédie, has attempted to trace their origin to the philosophie superficielle de Locke,' which he comprehends with them in one general sentence of condemnation. It cannot fail to excite much surprise in this country, that the principles of a system, which constitutes so prominent an era in the intellectual progress of mankind;—which, during the lifetime of the author, became the subject of much controversy and critical scrutiny both at home and abroad; and which, moreover, was first communicated to the learned world in a foreign language, and through the medium of the widely diffused journal of Le Clerc,-should have been so essentially misconceived, not only by adversaries, but by those who believed themselves to be the disciples of Locke. It may be suspected that many of his continental critics have derived their knowledge of his philosophy from the works of foreign disciples, who have deviated widely from the principles taught by their master. M. Cousin has evidently collected the materials of his survey from an examination of the writings of Locke himself. He has noticed the frequent inconsistencies arising from Locke's desultory and illogical style, and has acknowledged the consequent propriety of observing limitations in criticism, which he has, however, in practice, not unfrequently overstepped. In such instances of loosely worded and contradictory statements, it was clearly incumbent on a faithful critic to collect the author's meaning from an exact collation of detached passages and probable senses.

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