a(j^ ON IlLMAN UNDERSTANDING. 



His writings are to be reckoned among the few books that have beeo 

 productive of real utility to mankind."* 



To take this v^ork as a text-book, of which, however, it is well worthy, 

 would require a long life instead of a short lecture : and I shall, hence, beg 

 leave to submit to you only a very brief summary of the more important 

 part of its system and of the more prominent opinions it inculcates, espe- 

 cially in respect to the powers and process of the mind in acquiring 

 knowledge. I'he work consists of four divisions, the first of which, how- 

 ever, is merely introductory, and intended to clear the ground of that 

 multitude of strong and deep-rooted weeds at which we have already 

 glanced, and which, under the scholastic name o£ prwcogniia, innate ideas, 

 maxims, and dictates, or innate speculative and practical principles, pre- 

 vented the growth of a better harvest ; and, to a certain extent, superseded 

 the necessity of reason, education, and revelation, of national institutions 

 and Bible societies ; by teaching that a true and correct notion of God, 

 of self or consciousness, of virtue and vice, and consequently of religious 

 and moral duties, is imprinted by nature on the mind of every man ; and 

 that we cannot transgress the law thus originally implanted within us with- 

 out exposing ourselves to the lash of our own consciences. Discarding 

 for ever all this jargon of the schools, the Essay before us proceeds in its 

 three remaining parts to treat of ideas, which, in the popular, and not the 

 scholastic sense of the term, are the elements of knowledge ; of words, 

 which are the signs of ideas, and consequently the circulating medium of 

 knowledge ; and of knowledge itself, which is the subject proposed and 

 the great end to be acquired. 



The whole of the preceding rubbish, then, being in this manner cleared 

 away, the elaborate author proceeds to represent to us the body and mind 

 as equally at birth a tabula rasa, or unwritten sheet of paper, as consisting 

 equally of a blank or vacuity of impressions, but as equally capable of 

 acquiring impressions by the operation of external objects, and equally 

 and most skilfully endowed with distinct powers or faculties for this pur- 

 pose ; those of the body being the external senses of sight, hearing, smell, 

 taste, and touch ; and those of the mind the internal senses of perception, 

 reason, judgment, imagination, and memory, j 



It is possible that a few slight impressions may be produced a short 

 time antecedently to birth ; and it is certain that various instinctive ten- 

 dencies, which, however, have no connexion with the mind, are more 

 perfect, because more needful, at the period of birth than ever afterwards ; 

 and we have also frequent proofs of an hereditary or accidental predis- 

 position towards particular subjects. But the fundamental doctrine before 

 us is by no means aifected by such collateral circumstances ; to the cor- 

 rectness of which our most eminent logicians of later times have given 

 their entire suffrage. Thus Bishop Butler, and it is not necessary to go 

 farther than this eminent casuist : — " In these respects," meaning those 

 before us, " mankind is left by nature an unformed, unfin,ished creature, 

 utterly deficient and unqualified before the acquirement of knowledge, 

 experience, and habits, for that mature state of life which was the end of 

 his creation, considering him as related only to this world. The faculty 

 of reason is the candle of the Lord within us ; though it can afford no 



♦ Essay on Truth, Part ii. ch. ii. § 2. 



t An abstract of this view of Mr. Locke's system, abbreviated for the occasion, the Author 

 found himself called upon to introduce into his Study of Medicine.— Vol. ir. p. 50— &5, 2d 

 .«dit. 1825. 



