maelstrom where so many philosophical reputations have gone down. Schools. If, however, the language of Descartes might be held Alarm of the ambiguous with respect to one particular doctrine, the tendency of his whole philosophy was sufficiently intelligible. In our own University a heavy blow was inflicted upon the endless and word-splitting definitions of the schools. The barren employment on which for twenty centuries the human intellect had expended its highest powers, could no longer maintain its ground under the brief but luminous exposure of the logical error which it involved. The absurdity of seeking to define words expressive of notions too simple for analysis, when placed in so clear a light, struck dismay into skilful logomachists, who "-could distinguish and divide A hair 'twixt south and south-west side." Othello's occupation, if not gone, seemed likely to lose a large amount of both profit and prestige. In the posthumous dialogue, entitled, A Search after Truth, the author has distinctly shown how clearly he recognised both the bearings of the principle he had laid down, and the objections that his opponents would seek to raise against it'. "It is objected by one of the interlocutors, as it had actually been by Gassendi, that to prove his existence by the act of thinking, he should first know what existence and what thought is. 'I agree with you,' the representative of Descartes replies, 'that it is necessary to know what doubt is, and what thought is, before we can be fully persuaded of this reasoning-I doubt, therefore I am—or, what is the same-I think, therefore I am. But do not imagine that for this purpose you must torture your mind 1 Hallam's Literature of Europe, II. 453. to find out the next genus, or the essential differences, as the logicians talk, and so compose a regular definition. Leave this to such as teach or dispute in the schools. But whoever will examine things by himself, and judge of them according to his understanding, cannot be so senseless as not to see clearly, when he pays attention, what doubting, thinking, being, are, or to have any need to learn their distinctions." " "Mr Locke," says Stewart, "claims this improvement as entirely his own; but the merit of it unquestionably belongs to Descartes, although it must be owned that he has not always sufficiently attended to it in his researches1." To enumerate the many services rendered by Descartes to metaphysical science is beyond our present purpose. Of these none was more valuable than the resuscitation of the distinction between the primary and secondary qualities of matter, a distinction which he was the first of modern philosophers to recall to notice, and which Locke, whose obligations to the Cartesian philosophy were more numerous than he cared to acknowledge, afterwards reproduced. The reader familiar with the leading points at issue between the metaphysicians of modern times, will not fail to recognise the important aid thus afforded to the prosecution of philosophical analysis. The vagaries of the philosopher have often done more to win the attention of his contemporaries than his real merits. It was one of Descartes' most singular notions, contradictory too, as it would seem, of his main theory respecting the intercourse of mind and matter, that he asserted the seat of the soul to be the pineal gland. This notion, along with his theory of the immateriality of the soul, excited considerable discussion in the Universities, 1 Dugald Stewart's Dissertation. and Matthew Prior, in his poem entitled Alma', ridiculed The philosophy long afterwards the arguments of its defenders. "Here Matthew said, Alma in verse, in prose the mind, And yet slap-dash is all again In every sinew, nerve, and vein; Runs here and there like Hamlet's ghost, They say (for in good truth they speak With small respect of that old Greek) That putting all his words together 'Tis three blue beans in one blue bladder. Alma, they strenuously maintain, Sits cock-horse on her throne, the brain, And from that seat of thought dispenses Her sovereign pleasure to the senses.' We shall hereafter have occasion to show in what opinion the philosophy of Descartes was held in our University as its principles became more fully understood. We have, in the present chapter, dealt rather with its general effects on English thought as a new and important element in the disturbing forces of the time. Revolutionary as were its teachings, they have earned alike the 1 Written during Prior's confinement when awaiting his trial as a political offender, 1715-1717. Alma, poetical Italian for Anima,—the Progress of the Mind being the subject of the poem. Prior, who was a Fellow of St John's, seems to have studied the Cartesian philosophy : "Burn Mat's Descartes and Aristotle." Alma, Canto III. Professor Playfair is of opinion that the Cartesian philosophy kept its ground at Cambridge for more than thirty years after the publication of Newton's discoveries in 1687. Mus. Crit. Vol. II. 515. 2 Aristotle. satirized by Prior. Hobbes. gratitude of the metaphysician and the man of science. Much that was most valuable in them passed almost unrecognised into the writings of Locke, of Hume, and even of Berkeley, and the spirit of the founder still exercised a potent spell when his name was almost forgotten. His crowning service to the cause of philosophy was, in the language of Dugald Stewart, "the paramount and indisputable authority which, in all our reasonings concerning the human mind, it ascribes to the evidence of consciousness." "La question," says M. Cousin, "à l'ordre du jour au commencement du dix-septième siècle était celle de la certitude, de l'évidence; celle-là, Descartes l'a profondément traitée, et il l'a resolue à jamais." While the rival philosophies of Bacon and Descartes were thus stirring Europe, another great thinker had arisen, whose influence on the opinions of his own countrymen has been little inferior to theirs. We need scarcely say we allude to Hobbes. It was not as a mathematician or a man of science that the philosopher of Malmesbury left the impress of his thought upon the age. In the former capacity his pretensions were such as excited well-deserved ridicule; and it is certain that he very imperfectly appreciated the comprehensive spirit of the Baconian philosophy; but as a moralist, and a writer on the principles of government, he propounded opinions, of which some were too absurd for refutation, others such as few would readily adopt, but many were destined to largely join in moulding the habits of thought of succeeding generations. As the founder of the English school of Utilitarianism and the teacher of Locke, Paley, Bentham, and Mill, it would be difficult to overrate the influence of Hobbes, whether upon the graduates of our University or upon our countrymen at large. CHAPTER V. THE CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS. WHILE the Cartesian philosophy was thus spreading on the Continent and in England, a fresh source of intellectual activity was developing itself in that very remarkable school, which, confined chiefly to our own University, exercised, during a considerable part of the century, no small influence over her most studious and thoughtful minds. At first sight it would seem singular that there should be any sympathy whatever between a school of thought which was little more than a re-construction out of the philosophy of the past,—of that section of ancient philosophy moreover of which most modern thinkers are apt to speak with least tolerance,—and a system professedly hostile to all earlier modes of speculation, and which aimed at effecting a total revolution in the whole domain of philosophic research. Beyond the essentially subjective cha- Neo-Platoracter which belonged alike to the philosophy of Descartes and that of Henry More, there would appear indeed to have been little in common save dissatisfaction with the existing state of things. The Platonism of the seventeenth century was not simply a revival of a past school of thought, but it was also an avowed declaration against Calvinistic doctrines and Aristotelian dogmas. More has sufficiently indicated this fact in his own narrative of himself. "But neither there" (at school), says he, "nor yet anywhere nism. |