added, in the 6th chapter, some valuable remarks on the means of improving our reasoning faculties.

ADAM FERGUSON.

Doctor Ferguson's "Principles of Moral and Political Science" contain but few remarks on metaphysical subjects. The mind is viewed through the medium of our moral and social faculties and feelings. The author adopts the theory of Locke, modified by Reid's ideas of the origin of our perceptive knowledge.

The whole of human knowledge may be referred to four sources; consciousness, perception, testimony, and inference. The two first are primary and immediate; and the two last secondary and derived.*

The author enters into a consideration of the powers or faculties of observation, memory, imagination, and abstraction; but there is not much that is original, either in arrangement or in matter.t

LORD MON BODDO.

James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, belongs to a class of metaphysicians somewhat different to that

* Principles of Morals, &c. Vol. 1. p. 77.

"Il n'est pas possible non plus de prendre au sérieux l'ouvrage tant vanté de Ferguson sur la Société Civile, ouvrage sans aucun caractère, où règne un ton de moralité fort estimable, mais où la faiblesse des idées le dispute à celle de l'érudition.”—(Cousin, Histoire de la Philosophie, 11me leçon.)

with which we have associated him. He published his "Origin and Progress of Language,” in 1773 ; and his "Ancient Metaphysics," in 6 volumes 4to, in 1778.

There is an immense body of learning concentrated in these bulky volumes; but it is of such a kind as not to prove of much interest or utility in this historical Treatise. We must therefore refer the reader to the works themselves. We shall barely remark, that the general tone of the philosophical sentiments displayed in the "Origin of Languages," approaches to that of the ancient Epicureans. In the "Ancient Metaphysics," we have the most extravagant and enthusiastic admiration of the philosophy of the sages of Greece; as well as of everything connected with the arts of painting, sculpture, architecture, music, poetry, oratory, and polite literature generally. The work is full of eccentric notions.

CHAPTER XIX.

EMMANUEL KANT.

WE come to another land-mark in the philosophy of mind, striking and interesting in its outline and figure. Like some bold and fantastic headland on a flat and monotonous coast, it rears its rugged head to the sky, and at once inspires the speculative mariner with hope, and admonishes him of danger.

On this occasion a few digressive remarks are requisite. In our historical progress, if we have not been successful in imparting much that is instructive and interesting to the reader, we have at least been able to keep up an intercourse with him, through the medium of our mother tongue. We trust, considering the nature of our subject, that we have not palled his ear with uncouth terms, nor drawn too liberally upon his admiration by a formidable array of pompous and erudite phrases. Our greatest ambition has been to make ourselves

readily understood; and to endeavour to carry out, in the use of language, the common but useful maxim, “of doing at Rome as they do at Rome."

We shall now, however, have to move in another direction, and assume another character. The intercourse with the reader will be partially interrupted by the employment of terms and technical phrases to which he is a stranger. We shall appear stiff and formal in his eyes. There will be an air of oracular profundity in every thing we utter. The mysticism of the East will seem to fall upon us; we shall be enveloped with the robes of the Alexandrian Platonists, and express ourselves with all the solemn grandeur of Cabalistic abstruseness. We shall for a season assume the grotesque habiliments of a masquerade, a situation by no means comfortable to the lovers of ease and simplicity. But we have a task to perform, and we cannot execute it unless we comply with certain conditions. The German philosophers have long disdained to speak as other men speak. We have had no trouble to decipher the language of the French, the Italian, the Spanish, and the Flemish; but when we come to the German metaphysician, we find him bristling with such an array of forms and technicalities of speech, as renders him unapproachable, unless we comply with his own terms. We must attempt to think as he thinks, and speak as he speaks, or there is no good to be done with him. He has a way of his own, with which "strangers intermeddle not."

We regret this partial estrangement between the

reader and ourselves. We have always considered the curse upon our progenitors at the tower of Babel to be the severest ever uttered; but we never open a book on German metaphysics, that this truth does not flash vividly before our minds with an additional glare. It is not, however, agreeable to philosophical etiquette to be cynical or uncharitable. We have great and illustrious names before us, and we shall pay them every degree of respect and homage. We shall endeavour to cultivate a becoming frame of mind and temper, for the duties we have to perform. We shall never think of the declaration of a late eminent French diplomatist, "that words were given not to express, but to conceal, men's thoughts;" nor of the coarse saying of Swift, "stir a puddle hole, and it will appear as deep as the sea;" no; our minds shall cherish no such sentiments. Patience must be our motto; and if the reader will only exercise it, and keep up a little extra attention, we promise him that he will obtain glimpses here and there, over a wild and novel region, which will gratify the love of adventure, if it do nothing more.

Kant's "Kritik der Reinen Vernunft," or "Critique of Pure Reason," was published in 1781, when the author was in his fifty-seventh year; just one year older than Locke was, when his immortal "Essay" made its appearance. The "Critique" was not favourably received on its first publication; in fact, we are told by the biographers of Kant, that there were very few copies of it sold for the first six years, and that the printer was just upon the point of