had very little influence on the practical belief of mankind? And degrading as the picture is which such systems exhibit of the weakness of human reason, it is at least a subject of satisfaction to perceive, that the two great master minds of antiquity, Aristotle and Plato, never cherished those low and debasing views of the Divinity which inferior teachers ventured to inculcate. With that humility which never fails to accompany talent of the highest order, they both express themselves unable to penetrate the darkness and difficulty which involves such questions as those respecting the divine essence and the nature of the soul; and Plato more than once recommends prayer to the Deity, that the understanding may be strengthened and enlightened *.

G.

This must be the feeling of every man conversant with metaphysical systems. If we trace the history of philosophical speculation from its commencement to the present hour, we shall

k Plato, Timæus, p. 22. Aristot. de Anima, lib. i.

1 Φιλοσοφία γάρ τοί ἐστιν, ὦ Σώκρατες, χαρίεν, ἄν τις αὐτοῦ μετρίως ἅψηται ἐν τῇ ἡλικίᾳ· ἐὰν δὲ περαιτέρω τοῦ δέοντος ἐνδιατρίψῃ, διαφθορὰ Tay ȧvoρúπwy. Gorgias, Bekker, pars ii. vol. i. p. 83. These words, originally used by Plato with a different object in view, will apply to the present question.

observe the same forms of atheism and pantheism. reviving in different ages, and supported and combated by nearly the same arguments. It would seem as if speculation on its wildest wing was still condemned to soar within prescribed limits, and to pursue the same circling flight. The most subtle and profound thinkers have arrived at little certainty upon subjects of abstract reasoning. Nor are the wild and dangerous theories that have sometimes been adopted, to be attributed to pure malice and malignity, at enmity with the good of mankind, but to a restless desire of knowledge upon questions in which knowledge in our present state can never be attained, and to a spirit of intellectual ambition which allows of no limitation to the exercise of human thought. Hence it is that ancients and moderns, deists, atheists, and Christians, men of immoral and moral life, of pious and impious feelings, have built up philosophical systems equally unintelligible. And some of these have been established upon principles of which it would be very difficult to shew the fallacy, yet upon which no man, not even the inventor of the system, would or could act for a single moment. In seeking to become more, we pay the penalty of our folly, and become less than man. Hume declared that he was afraid to think, on account of the conclusions to which he might

come, and the barriers of separation he might create between himself and the rest of mankind. This feeling should have taught him that the pursuit of truth, properly conducted, could never lead to such a separation, and that there was other and stronger evidence than abstract reasoning alonem. Reid was unable to refute Berkeley's principles, till he appealed to the common belief and conduct of mankind. And as a rule for our own decision in judging of the conviction of a writer, when his philosophy is opposed to his common feelings and language ", it will be much safer to depend upon the latter, than upon inferences from his metaphysical creedo. Anaxagoras is said to have maintained that snow was black, in order to preserve his consistency as a

m Qui nondum ea, quæ multis post annis tractari cœpissent, physica didicissent, tantum sibi persuaserant quantum natura admonente cognoverant. Hæc ita sentimus natura duce, nulla ratione nullaque doctrina. Cic. Tusc. Quæst. lib. i. cap. 13.

Πᾶν γὰρ ὅπερ ἴσμεν κρειττὶν ἢ κατ ̓ ἀποδείξιν τοῦτο κατὰ κοινὴν ἔννοιαν oper. Origen de Anima, p. 618. ed. Paris. 1618.

La Nature confond les Pyrrhoniens, et la raison confond les dogmatistes. Pensées de Pascal, art. I.

n I do not wish by this statement to set up feeling in religion above reason, but above metaphysical and abstract reasoning. In an argument of reason our natural feelings and desires, together with conscience, should form a part of it.

Anaxagoras nivem nigram dixit esse; ferres me si ego idem dicerem? Cicero Academ. Quæst. lib. iv. cap. 23.

reasoner; but who will imagine that he was sincere?

The following brief sketch of the moral systems supported by Aristotle and Plato may be of service in determining the question whether the ancients generally believed that truth and utility did not coincide. Notwithstanding the subtlety of their speculative discussions, in which the distinctions and divisions are often merely verbal, it was evidently the object of both philosophers to elevate, and as far as possible perfect, the mind and faculties of man. They both maintained that the happiness which nature had taught the desires of the soul to aim at, as its ultimate end and object, would consist in the perception of truth. Plato considered this truth to be altogether intellectual and speculative. Hence it is that he enjoins the purest moral precepts; the entire subjugation, or rather annihilation of the passions P, not because moral virtue was a direct means to happiness, but because the purification of the soul was necessary to the perception of intellectual truth, in which alone human felicity would be found. For the same reason he commands the extinction of imagination also 9; it is a faculty which cheats and deludes us with the image of P Vid. Phædo, passim. 4 Republic, book iii. x.

truth instead of the reality. Poetry and painting and all the fine arts are to be banished, as obscuring and impeding the exercise of reason in aspiring after its substantial good. But though our nature while on earth, by thus endeavouring to destroy passion and imagination, might make gradual progress towards the enjoyment of happiness and the perception of truth, their full perfection could never be attained till the soul was emancipated from the body, when the shadow of knowledge would be changed into the substance, and we should see essential truth as it really is, uniform, unchangeable, and eternal.

Aristotle, on the contrary, does not consider intellectual truth alone as the only knowledge to which the human faculties are to be trained and directed. Regarding man as a being possessed of passion, imagination, and reason, he provides for the due exercise and perfection of them all. Truth with him is not one and indivisible, but distinguished into truth in morals, truth in the fine arts, and truth in questions of science and wisdom, purely abstract and speculative. These different kinds of knowledge are not inseparably united and confounded". He who possesses that moral perfection which teaches him to think, feel, and act on all occasions as becomes a virtuous

r Aristot. Ethics, lib. iii. iv. v. vi.