EXCURSUS ETHICUS.

Verius cogitatur Deus quam dicitur, et verius est quam cogi. tatur.-AUGUSTINE.

In these two things, viz., an equal indifferency for all truth— I mean the receiving it in the love of it as truth, but not loving it for any other reason before we know it to be true; and in the examination of our principles, and not receiving any for such, nor building on them, until we are fully convinced, as rational creatures, of their solidity, truth, and certainty-consists that freedom of the understanding which is necessary to a rational creature, and without which it is not truly an understanding.

JOHN LOCKE.

EXCURSUS ETHICUS.

WE have named the excellent works at the close

of this paper more with the view of recommending them to the study of such of our readers as may be so inclined, than of reviewing them in the technical sense, still less of going over exactly the same ground which they have already so well occupied and enriched. Our object in selecting their names out of many others, is, that they are good and varied, both as to time, and view, and character, -and also that we may be saved referring to them more particularly.

Our observations shall be of a very miscellaneous and occasional kind-perhaps too much so for the taste or judgment of our readers; but we think that a rambling excursion is a good and wholesome thing, now and then.

System is good, but it is apt to enslave and confine its maker. Method in art is what system is in science; and we, physicians, know, to our sad and

weighty experience, that we are more occupied with doing some one thing, than in knowing many other things. System is to an art, what an external skeleton is to a crab, something it, as well as the crab, must escape from, if it mean to grow bigger: more of a shield and covering than a support and instrument of power. Our skeletons are inside our bodies, and so generally ought our systems to be inside not outside our minds.

Were we, for our own and our readers' satisfaction and entertainment, or for some higher and better end, about to go through a course of reading on the foundation of general morals, in order to deduce from them a code of professional ethics,-to set ourselves to discover the root, and ascend up from it to the timber, the leaves, the fruit, and the flowers— we would not confine ourselves to a stinted browsing in the ample and ancient field-we would, in right of our construction, be omnivorous, trusting to a stout mastication, a strong digestion, an eclectic and vigorous chylopoietic staff of appropriators and scavengers, to our making something of everything. We would not despise good old Plutarch's morals, or anybody else's, because we know chemistry, and many other things, better than he did; nor would we be ashamed to confess that our best morality, and our deepest philosophy of the nature and origin of human duty, of moral good and evil, was summed up in the

golden rules of childhood, 'Love thy neighbour as thyself.' 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them.' Every man is thy neighbour.' 'Love is the fulfilling of the law.' 'Ye owe no man anything, but to love one another.' This is the true birthplace of the word ought, that which we owe to some one, and of duty, that which is due by us; and likewise of moral, that which should be customary, and ethical in the same sense; -the only custom, which it will always be a privilege, as well as a duty to pay-the only debt which must always be running up.

It is worth remembering that names too often become the ghosts of things, and ghosts with a devil or a fool, instead of the original tenant inside. The word manners means literally nothing else, and ought never to be anything else, than the expression, the embodiment, the pleasant flower, of an inward mos or moral state. We may all remember that the Contes Moraux of Marmontel--which were, many of them, anything but moral-were translated so, instead of Tales illustrative of Manners.

To go on with our excursus erraticus.

Were we going to take ourselves and our company into the past, and visit the habitats of the great moralists, and see the country, and make up our minds as to what in it was what, and how much to us it was worth, we would not keep to one line,-we