INTRODUCTORY LECTURE TO THE COURSE ON MENTAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY. THE traditionary notices of ancient civilization, both in India and in Greece, prove that the earliest curiosity of human reason directs itself, not to the acquisition of that detailed and concrete knowledge most within the reach of its infant power, but to the determination of vast questions, lying altogether beyond the region of experience, and unapproachable except by the most practised faculties of thought. In his first meditations, man appears to have conceived of the outward universe and of himself, not as subjects of analysis, but as two related wholes, and to have aspired boldly and at once to ascertain their mutual position. The dim consciousness that his nature is a meeting point of Free-will and Necessity, a power in itself, environed by more tremendous powers; the feeling that with his animal or sentient life was united a diviner principle of thought;-the spectacle of mechanical order in the material phenomena of nature, and of moral order in the societies of men, stimulated his spirit of speculation, and set before him the great problems of life,— its origin, its mystery, its destination. Wondering guesses, suggested by physical analogies, at the contents of distant space and the events of a past eternity; methods of illustration, proposing to derive spirit from matter, and the harmony of nature from the abstract relations of number and form; a reverential confusion between the human and the divine; with a profound sentiment of the sacredness of law and polity,were the first results of the contemplative exercise of reason. From this chaotic mass of thought, physical science slowly disengaged itself in something like a distinct shape; but with much more rapidity and clearness intellectual science was evolved. The prevailing ingredients, indeed, in all primitive philosophy are furnished by humanity, rather than by the surrounding creation; and its first earnest efforts are an obscure and groping advance towards a science of human nature. Nor can we wonder that, to the Greeks at least, man appeared pre-eminently the most worthy object to engage their meditations; for never, perhaps, was human nature exhibited in so glorious a form, combining so much physical beauty with vividness of perception and versatility of mental power, as in Greece. Fair as was the climate of that land, man was yet the spectacle most admirable there; and for the same reason that Eve, when gazing on the lake of Eden, saw nothing but her own loveliness, though all Paradise was reflected from its bosom, did the human mind in Greece, when bending over the depths of philosphy, feel its eye arrested by the incomparable image of itself. In the youthful mind of individuals, as of nations, the same origin of the philosophical tendency may be traced. A deep curiosity respecting the great problem of Free-will is usually, I believe, the first symptom of speculative activity of intellect; a confident solution of it, the first triumphant enterprise; a relapse into the consciousness of its mystery, the first sign of a more comprehensive wisdom. Sir James Mackintosh, describing the impression produced upon him at the age of fourteen, by Bishop Burnet's commentary on the 17th article of the English church-that which regards predestination— remarks, that "Theological controversy has been the general inducement of individuals and nations to engage in metaphy sical speculation."* And it is easy to discover what were the particular questions in theology which, in Mackintosh's own case, excited the disposition to metaphysical inquiry, when we learn that his constant antagonist in argument, though brother in affection, was Robert Hall; and that the positions which they discussed together, night after night, and month after month, were furnished by Butler's Analogy, and Edwards on the Will. It is probable, that, in the secret history of every noble and inquisitive mind, there is a passage darkened by the awful shadow of this conception of Necessity; and it is certain, that, in the open conflict of debate, there is no question which has so long served to train and sharpen the weapons of dialectic skill. If it be true, as Dugald Stewart affirms, that one who has never doubted the existence of matter, may be assured that he has little capacity for purely metaphysical investigation; it is no less certain, that he who has never been troubled by alarms for his free-will, can have little aptitude for research, either speculative or moral. These higher problems of life, however, though, from their connection with our affections and our faith, they may be the natural incentives, cannot be made the scientific commencement, to a systematic philosophy of man. They are not to be mastered by the rude and undisciplined earnestness of a reason, ignorant as yet of its own resources, of the worth of its own methods, and the legitimate range of its own powers. Experience, spreading out before us the ontological discussions of the school-men,-monuments of wasted labor and futile ingenuity,-warns us that if the profounder perplexities of speculative reason are ever to be resolved, it can only be by men thoroughly acquainted with the facts and laws of their own intellectual and moral being; and that to expect any triumph of science over the spiritual mysteries of nature by self-poised reasonings, having no origin in psychological analysis and induction, is as absurd as to look to the +Ibid. p. 14. Note. * Life of Mackintosh, vol. i. p. 4. fancies of cosmogonists for a discovery of the structure and dynamics of the heavens. That the vital root of all philosophy lies in self-knowledge is a truth which Socrates was the first to expound;-a truth suggested, indeed, by the inscription on the Delphic temple-" Know thyself," but, as conceived by him, imparting to the words so new and profound a significance, as to justify the oracle in pronouncing the interpreter the wisest of men. "For a man to be unacquainted with himself, and in matters of which he is ignorant to conjecture, and then mistake his conjectures for information, Socrates," we are assured by one of his disciples, "conceived to be only one remove from madness;" nor will any one think this condemnation too severe, who calls to mind the dreary controversies of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,battles always of words, rarely of thoughts, sometimes of fists and clubs, in which "angelic" or "irrefragable doctors" engaged the cathedral schools and universities of Europe, respecting qualities and quiddities, entities and hæcceities, chimeras in vacuo, and angels on a needle's point. Wonderful avidity of intellectual appetite, that could continue to relish even this spurious fruit of the tree of knowledge, turned thus into dry ashes to the taste! It is singular that the disciples of Aristotle should thus deplorably exemplify the violation of the precepts of Socrates; and that, in passionate admiration of the pupil, they should fall so directly under the rebuke of the master's oracle and instructor. The frivolous subtleties of the scholastic age would never have exposed philosophy to contempt, if the rule of the Athenian sage had been comprehended and applied,—if it had been remembered that the mind is the instrument by which all reasonings and judgments are performed, and that, till its capacities are investigated and determined, no quest after truth can be well ordered. Who will venture to say how many vain disputes have arisen from confounding abstract ideas with objective * Xen. Mem. III. ix. 6. |