ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, 



LECTURE IV. 



{The same subject continued.) 



In our preceding study we commenced a general survey ot' the chief 

 opinions and hypotheses that have been urged in different periods upon 

 the important subject of Human Understanding ; and, opening our career 

 with the Greek schools, we closed it with that of Des Cartes. 



Des Cartes, who was born in 1596, was for nearly a century the Aris- 

 totle of his age ; and although from his very outset he was opposed by 

 his contemporaries and literary friends Gassendi and Hobbes, he obtained 

 a complete triumph, and steadily supported his ascendant, till the physical 

 philosophy of Newton, and the metaphysical of Locke, threw an eclipse 

 over his glory, from which he has now no chance of ever recovering. 



Nothing, however, can prove more effectually the influence which 

 fashion operates upon philosophy as well as upon dress, than a glance at 

 the very opposite characters by whom the Cartesian system was at one 

 and the same time principally professed and defended — Malebranche and 

 Spinosa, Leibnitz and Bayle. It would, perhaps, be impossible, were we 

 to range through the whole scope of philosophical or even of literary 

 biography, to collect a more motley or heterogeneous group ; the four 

 elements of hot, cold, moist, and dry, cannot possibly present a stronger 

 contrast ; a mystical Catholic, a Jewish materialist, a speculative but 

 steady Lutheran, and an universal skeptic. 



It was only, however, for want of a simpler and more rational system, 

 that Des Cartes continued so long and so extensively to govern the meta- 

 physical taste of the day. That system was at length given to the world 

 by Mr. Locke, and the " Principia PiiiLosoriii^" fell prostrate before 

 the Essay concerning Human Understanding. " 



This imperishable work made its first appearance in 1689 : it may, per- 

 haps, be somewhat too long ; it may occasionally embrace subjects which 

 are not necessarily connected with it ; its terms may not always be precise, 

 nor its opinions in every instance correct ; but it discovers intrinsic and 

 most convincing evidence that the man who WTote it must have had a head 

 peculiarly clear and a heart peculiarly sound. It is strictly original in its 

 matter, highly important in its subject, luminous and forcible in its argu- 

 ment, perspicuous in its style, and comprehensive in its scope. It steers 

 equally clear of all former systems : we have nothing of the mystical arche- 

 types of Plato, the incoporeal phantasms of Aristotle, or the material 

 species of Epicurus ; we are equally without the intelligible world of the 

 Greek schools, and the innate ideas of Des Cartes. Passing by all which, 

 from actual experience and observation it delineates the features, and de- 

 scribes the operations of the human mind, with a degree of precision and 

 minuteness which have never been exhibited either before or since.* 

 " Nothing," says Dr. Beattie, and I readily avail myself of the acknow- 

 ledgment of an honest and enlightened antagonist, was further from the 

 intention of Locke, than to encourage verbal controversy, or to advance 

 doctrines favourable to skepticism. To do good to mankind by enforcing 

 virtue, illustrating truth, and vindicating liberty, was his sincere purpose. 



* Stud of Med. Vol. iii. p. 49. 2d edit 

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