terms. According to that doctrine all general reasoning is hypothetical, that is, proceeds upon hypotheses or fictions of the mind, just as much as mathematical reasoning; and even the differences which he so ostentatiously displays between mathematical and other general reasoning all resolve themselves into the greater imperfections of ordinary language. We are sorry to be obliged, in this place, to content ourselves with assertion; but we do not conceive it would be difficult to prove what we have asserted, had we left ourselves room.

From the chapter on the Aristotelian logic we are reluctantly compelled entirely to abstain; not that the observations appear to us to be exempt from error; but as, even where just they are not very important, nor where they are mistaken can far mislead, the demand for criticism on them is the less urgent.

The fourth, or concluding chapter is in no ordinary degree instructive. It is on the method of inquiry pursued in the experimental or inductive philosophy. On this subject, none of the peculiar doctrines of Mr. Stewart's philosophical system come into play. He has formed very just and enlightened views on the real business of philosophy, and expresses them with that beauty and eloquence for which he is so remarkable. Mr. Stewart has not performed what still remains to be performed, and what it would be so eminently useful to have peformed; he has not exhibited an accurate map of the inductive process, and still less has he given, what is yet so great a desideratum in logic, a complete system of rules, as complete, for example, as those which Aristotle provided for the business of syllogistic reasoning, to direct the inquirer in the great business of interpreting nature, and adding to the stock of human instruments and powers. He has contented himself with some general observations, with some remarks on the distinction between experience and analogy, on the use and abuse of hypotheses, which may be very serviceably employed as anticipations for planning a train of experiments; he has also inserted some observations on the words induction and analogy as used in mathematics, and on certain misapplications of the words experience and induction in the phraseology of modern science, more especially those applications in politics, where the word experience, so often expressive of a single fact ill understood, is employed to discredit, under the term theory, conclusions founded upon the most enlarged induction; and finally he proceeds to a train of reflections on the speculation concerning final causes. On this concluding topic he has come out with opinions which lead to consequences so important that, great as is the length to which we have already extended this article, we cannot forbear giving hints at least of a few objections to which they appear to us to lie exposed. Before proceeding to these criticisms, we

VOL. VI. NO. XI.

may, however remark, that Mr. Stewart appears to us to have accomplished, in this part of his undertaking, the purpose at which he aimed; which was not the highest service remaining to be performed, but only, as he himself expresses it, "to concentrate, and to reflect back on the philosophy of the mind, whatever scattered lights he had been able to collect from the experimental researches to which that philosophy has given birth-aiming, at the same time (and he hopes not altogether without success), to give somewhat more of precision to the technical phraseology of the Baconian school, and of correctness to their metaphysical ideas."

The study of final causes bears a reference to that part of his subject in which the mention of it is here introduced, only in so far as it may occasionally serve as a guide in the investigation of physical laws; and he shows, by several well chosen instances, that the consideration of the uses to which things may be subservient, has not unfrequently led to important discoveries. He observes, accordingly, that philosophers have run into two opposite errors. In the first place, they have been led astray from the consideration of physical or efficient causes, by the search after final causes, in which, after discovery of them, they have rested, as a satisfactory account of the phenomenon the cause of which it was their intention to explore. In the second place, other philosophers, among whom particularly Des Cartes, and the majority of French philosophers, may be enumerated, observing the error of the first mentioned class of inquirers, have entirely discarded final causes from the field of philosophical inquiry. The truth, however, is that all the caution which on this head it was neces sary for any body to receive was so very slight, and the words necessary to convey it were so very few, that it requires the supposition of another motive to account for a whole section, consist ing of two parts assigned to the doctrine of final causes, in a chapter appropriated to the explanation of the experimental or inductive mode of philosophizing.

Accordingly we find, that the author has taken this oppor tunity of producing to us a part of his opinions, on the two great subjects of morality, and the fundamental principle of natural religion.

Those inquirers into the subject of ethics, who have referred the origin of moral distinctions to the perception of utility, have confounded, he says, the final with the efficient cause. Because all the virtues may be useful, it by no means follows that they were originally recommended by their utility. If we proceed to inquire, What, then, is it, by which they are thus recommended? Mr. Stewart does not speak very explicitly; but if his language means any thing at all, it means only this, that we must betake ourselves, once more, to the never-failing resource of instinct.

Here indeed Mr. Stewart does not call it instinct. But he calls it the internal monitor, which completely answers to the description of instinct, and which, if it is not regard to utility, can be nothing else than instinct.

We are persuaded that Mr. Stewart never wilfully misrepre sents an opinion from which he dissents; but he so completely misconceives, in this case, the ground of a most important system of opinions, on a subject which he professes to have profoundly studied, that we cannot help suspecting him of an extraordinary degree of partiality to his own preconceived notions; and that he hardly regards a set of opinions, differing from those which he has espoused, as worthy of a portion of his attention sufficient to enable him to understand them. The great authors who have represented utility as the principle of moral distinctions, have not founded this conclusion upon the mere discovery that virtues are useful; which is necessary to justify the criticism of Mr. Stewart. They have proceeded on a plan exactly conformable to that which is pointed out by Sir Isaac Newton, as the only true mode of philosophizing. That man pursues happiness, they say, and flies from misery, in other words seeks pleasure, and avoids pain, is a known and acknowledged fact. This fact, they continue, we assert to be completely sufficient to account for all the moral phenomena of human life. We classify these phenomena, and we show that into this fact they all resolve themselves, in the most satisfactory manner. The conclusion is, therefore, established; unless our antagonists shall either show that our principle does not account for the phenomena, or that there is some other known and acknowledged fact which accounts for them in a more satisfactory manner.

Mr. Stewart completely fails in his attempt to show that the fact to which the appeal is made does not account for the phenomena. And instead of pointing out any known and acknow ledged fact in human nature which accounts for them better, he supposes an occult quality, or what is equivalent to an occult quality, an instinct; a blind, unaccountable propensity to ap prove or disapprove, which has no dependence either upon reason or experience.

- Mr. Stewart attempts to prove that the principle of utility will not account for the moral phenomena of human life, by asserting that individuals would err in the application of it. Can Mr. Stewart point out any other principle, in the application of which they are less likely to err? Is that instinct of his, to which we are so fondly referred, a principle of this description? It is the nature of an instinct to be, in each individual, that which it is; without any dependence whatsoever on that which

it may be in any other individual. If instinct be the ground of moral action, it must be so, as much in any one man, as in any other. If any man, therefore, has an instinct to steal, or to murder (and Dr. Spurzheim affirms that there are many instances of both, some very remarkable ones of which he produces), it is in these men as decidedly moral, upon the principles of Mr. Stewart, to steal and to murder, as it is, in other men, to abstain from these acts. Mr. Stewart will no doubt affirm that no man can have these instincts; but this will only be to produce what the philosophers of the school to which he belongs appear to have a powerful instinct to produce, that is, his own assertion instead of proof.

It is very remarkable that of the two philosophers who have to a far greater extent, than any other inquirers, traced the moral phenomena of human life to the principle of utility, Helvetius and our countryman, Mr. Bentham, Mr. Stewart, in his enumeration of the patrons of the system, has made no mention whatsoever. This can hardly have been ignorance, or inadvertence which is a kind of ignorance; and yet there is no other motive to assign, but one too unworthy to be admitted for

a moment.

These philosophers have very satisfactorily shown, tó whatever extent, their philosophy, in other respects, may be wrong (for we beg it may be well remembered, that throughout the whole of this article we are only exhibiting opinions, advocating none), that the very principle of human nature to which they refer, the pursuit, by each individual, of his own happiness-most completely obviates all the dangers which Mr. Stewart holds up, as involving the refutation of the system.

As soon as each individual perceives, that the pursuit of his own happiness is so liable to be thwarted by other individuals in the pursuit of theirs, one of the first results to which that very pursuit conducts them, is a general compromise. Allow me so much uninterrupted scope in the pursuit of my happiness, and I will allow you so much uninterrupted scope in the pursuit of yours. In this very compromise, according to the philosophers above mentioned, will be found the origin of all the more important virtues; and also of government itself, which is only instituted for the purpose of ensuring by force the more exact performance of some of its most essential conditions.

We hope it is unnecessary, here (for we are totally deprived of space to introduce the developement), to show in what manner, upon this foundation, they maintain that a moral voice arises among the people, every man approving of those acts which it is his interest that every other man should perform towards himself

as one of the community, and disapproving of those which it is his interest they should not perform; praising the one set of acts, blaming the other; loving in some degree the men who perform the one; hating in some degree the men who perform the other. From this origin it is abundantly plain in what manner one set of acts, and one set of men, come to be established in the mind as objects of approbation and love; another set of acts and another set of men, as objects of disapprobation and hatred.

They contend, that it is only necessary to appeal to the fact that the approbation and love, the disapprobation and hatred of his fellow creatures, operate powerfully upon the mind of man, and constitute one of the most prolific of all his motives of action. We are sure it will not be useless to remind Mr. Stewart, that a great philosopher to whose opinions he is in the habit of paying a singular deference, Dr. Adam Smith, accounts only for the origin of moral distinctions, by this approbation and love, this disapprobation and hatred, without appearing to have any clear conceptions of the source from which they are derived.

Mr. Stewart supposes, or seems to suppose, that according to the system of utility, "the conduct of man would be left to be regulated by no other principle than the private opinion of each individual concerning the expediency of his own actions." To how shallow a consideration of the subject this reflection is owing, appears from what has just been said, that the doctrine of utility, in this respect, coincides with that of Dr. Smith, to which Mr. Stewart never ascribed any such consequence. Every man's private interpretation of the rule of right is restrained by two powerful considerations; the approbation and love, the disapprobation and hatred, of mankind, which may be called the popular or moral sanction; and the punishments and rewards distributed by government, which may be called the political, including the legal sanction. We challenge Mr. Stewart to show that there is any other sanction, if you allow the right of private judgment in religion, which regulates the private interpretation of the rule of right, upon any supposition with respect to the origin of the notions of right and wrong which it is in his power

to form.

We take notice of what Mr. Stewart, though he professes to waive the question, as not belonging to his subject, nevertheless advances, in the use of the doctrine of final causes, in laying a foundation for the truths of religion; because it appears to us that his doctrine places the evidence for the being of a God upon a foundation which cannot fail to alarm in the highest degree the friends of religion. On this subject Mr. Stewart, according to his usual method, escapes from difficulties by feigning not to perceive them. Dr. Johnson performed a great service to religion