shortly after, by Lord Mordaunt, whom he had known in Holland, (now one of William's ministers,) offered to be employed as envoy to one of the great German courts; but refused the appointment, assigning as a reason the weakness of his health, which would not, he said, permit him to drink to excess—a qualification he considered indispensable in an ambassador who would obtain any influence in Germany.

He now published his Essay on the Human Understanding, which during eighteen years had formed his principal occupation: the dedication to the Earl of Pembroke is dated May the 24th, 1689; but a short Abridgement of the work, in French, had appeared in the preceding year. Buhle, therefore, who, in his History of Modern Philosophy, states that the first edition of the Essay was published in 1694, is altogether incorrect; the whole of the first impression having been sold, and a second issued as early as 1693.

As the philosophical spirit exerted, at that period, an active and extensive influence in Europe, it is by no means remarkable that the Essay should have excited much attention. The philosophy it contained was bold and novel, and tended to subvert, in a great measure, the fashionable hypotheses; consequently the alarm was sounded on all sides, and the better to refute his positions, it was attempted to be shown that the most fearful

consequences inevitably flow from the principles he sought to establish. The more charitable were willing to suppose him ignorant of the direct tendencies of his own doctrines; others imagined themselves to have discovered in the whole scope and design of his work, an attempt to advance the cause of irreligion by imperceptibly sapping the foundations of Christianity, and spreading the mists of scepticism over the fountains of all our knowledge. Even among his intimate friends there were those who felt shocked at his denying the existence of innate' ideas. Shaftesbury, author of

By using the term innate in an improper sense, Hume is led to consider our "impressions" innate, and our ideas not so. He bestows the term impression upon 66 Four more lively perceptions: when we hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will;" and then he tells us these impressions are innate—that is, were born with us, and were, consequently, in our minds before we had heard, or seen, or felt, or loved, or hated, or desired, or willed. I must confess I can perceive, in his speculations on the origin of our ideas, none of that subtilty and acuteness for which he has obtained credit; nor can I think him justified in accusing Locke of making use, like the schoolmen, of undefined terms, and drawing out his disputes to a tedious length, without ever touching the point in question. I admit he is sometimes tedious, -and who is not ?-but cannot discover that he is so without ever touching the point in question. On the contrary, it is by touching it too frequently, by viewing it again and again, in various lights, that he seems to become tedious; and every conscientious seeker after truth, by his eagerness to carry conviction into the mind of the reader, is liable to lay himself open to this charge.

the "Characteristics," in England, and Leibnitz, on the Continent, attacked the new philosophy, endeavouring, in different ways, to show its principles to be dangerous or untenable. Stillingfleet, the celebrated Bishop of Worcester, likewise ranged himself among the opponents of Locke, and his death is said to have been hastened by the signal defeat he sustained in the controversy. The same thing is related of Salmasius, against whom Milton directed that vehement burst of eloquence-the Defence of the People of England. But little credit is due to such traditions; and, as a biographer of the poet judiciously observes, our great defenders of freedom can very well dispense with such testimonies in their favour.

To clear the way for the reception of his system, Locke perceived the necessity of demolishing, from the foundations, the doctrine of innate ideas-those koiva evvoiai, on which philosophers had, until then, been accustomed to build so much of their hypotheses. The question, besides its natural difficulty and obscurity, had been surrounded by prejudice with a circumvallation of imaginary dangers to religion; and the fears previously, by well-meaning but unphilosophical persons, entertained, were rather aggravated than diminished, when, on reading the Essay, they discovered the startling novelty of his theory of conscience, morals, virtue and happiness. Besides, from over-eagerness to establish

his views, Locke has too easily admitted the existence of whole nations of atheists; for had he, with his usual accuracy, scrutinized the relations of those travellers upon whose testimony he on these points relied, he would have found them filled with mistakes, arising from the grossest ignorance of the people whose indistinct and uncertain opinions on the most abtruse questions of theology they had undertaken to explain.

However, if in developing his system he sometimes inadvertently availed himself of the support of doubtful or imaginary facts, nothing can be more certain than that he completely succeeded in overthrowing the hypotheses which he combated. Leibnitz, indeed, whose whole life was spent in patching up and contending for extravagant and exploded systems, undertook, as has already been said, the defence of innate ideas; but this did not hinder mankind from perceiving the truths advanced by Locke, though fears were still entertained that many evils of unknown magnitude might thence ensue. Many seemed, in fact, to apprehend that he meditated nothing less than the total subversion of virtue and religion; for ignorance had long identified with the cause of the altar the errors which he laboured to remove. Το obviate, therefore, the prejudices that might arise from this supposition, he was careful to manifest, at every step of the inquiry, his unfeigned, deep

rooted reverence for the things of God; and this feeling, in him, was so habitual, so much a part of the character and constitution of his mind, so indissolubly linked with his earliest and most cherished associations, that he would have found it far more difficult to conceal than to display it. Accordingly, it may with the strictest veracity be said that no philosopher, not even Plato himself, who placed all true happiness in the knowledge of God, was ever more intimately convinced of the truths of religion, or more thoroughly imbued with its divine spirit, than the Author of the Essay on the Human Understanding.

But, had it been otherwise, had he marshalled all the powers of his splendid intellect against Christianity, what other destiny could have awaited him than that which has overtaken so many others? How unworthy, and weak, and vain, are the fears which good men sometimes entertain for their religion! Certain exceptions, indeed, appear to forbid the universal application of what follows; but, upon the whole, it is most true that the religious feeling is as much a part of human nature as reason or imagination. Religion began with the beginning of man in Eden; it has survived the successive revolutions of many thousand years; it has defied persecution; it has triumphed over despotism; it has, in all ages, been the companion of those master-minds, which for their loftiness, and