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influence on the whole Logic and Philology of the Association philosophers; the organism of speech requiring, for its due interpretation, to be read downward from its wholes into its parts; and, without this, being hardly capable of construction upwards from the atoms of predication to its life. We cannot at present expand these hints; but they will suffice to show the wide sweep which a fundamental psychological truth or error cannot fail to have, and how the whole configuration of philosophy may be affected by even a slight want of precision in its first lines. Mr. Bain often approaches very near the important principle (as it seems to us) of the Unity of original consciousness; speaking, for instance, of "the concurrence of Sensations in one common stream of consciousness, in the same cerebral highway" (The Senses and the Intellect, p. 359); and in the following passage not only recognising, but enforcing, the necessity of differentiation by change:

"Were it not for the primitive shock that difference gives, there would be no basis for the intellect. All colours would be alike; sounds would not be distinct from touches or smells, and there would be no cognition possible in any sense. The feeling of difference, therefore, is the first step; the impressing of that, under the plastic property of the mind, into an enduring notion is the next. We begin by being alive to the distinctive shocks of red and green, of round and oval, small and large; by and by, we attain to the fixed notion of a rose on its stem; thence we go on combining this with others, until the mind is full of the most variegated trains of imagery. The laws of association follow up, and do not necessarily imply, or contain in themselves, the primordial sense of difference, which is the most rudimentary of all the properties of our intellectual being. Analysis can descend no deeper, explanation can go no farther; we must make a stand upon this, as the preliminary condition of all intelligence, and merely seek to place its character in a clear and certain light." (The Emotions and the Will, p. 626.)

Whilst insisting, however, on the indispensableness of change of impression, Mr. Bain apparently thinks this condition sufficiently provided for by the mere coexistence of sensations through a plurality of Senses; the power of discriminating which he attributes to the Intellect as an ultimate and fundamental prerogative:

"The basis or fundamental peculiarity of the Intellect is discrimination, or the feeling of difference between consecutive, or coexisting impressions. Nothing more fundamental can possibly be assigned as the defining mark of intelligence, and emotion as such does not imply any such property." (The Emotions and the Will, p. 614.)

"Consecutive impressions" involve change; but "coexist

ing impressions" do not: and if the discriminative power is equally related to both, it is not dependent on the occurrence of change. And conversely, if it demand change, it can do nothing with mere coexisting impressions. This last position we believe to be the true one; and we cannot assent to Dugald Stewart's statement: " Although we had never seen but one rose, we might still have been able to attend to its colour, without thinking of its other properties."* Mr. Bain, in concurring with this opinion of Stewart's, and attributing plurality to the original effect of a single object, appears to us to forget his own doctrine as to impossibility of any sense of difference without change, and to let slip a psychological clue already familiar to his hand.

We have lingered near the incunabula of the opposite psychologies in the hope that, by scrutiny of their development at its initial stage, some approximate lines might be found for them to prevent their rapid divergence. The only hope of improved mutual understanding lies at the beginning. To discuss the ulterior questions into which they run is a far easier and more attractive task; but, at the same time, utterly useless, till the logical preliminaries are determined-a mere race from different starting-points over incommensurable fields. The enormous differences which open out as the two methods pursue their way suffice, for those who know them, to throw an interest around the finer distinctions at the commencement. If the dualistic method be admissible, we obtain at the fountain-head, unless our ultimate constitution be unveracious, direct authority for a few primitive cognitions, accurately corresponding with the most rooted and universal beliefs of mankind-viz. the substantial existence of ourselves as knowing Subject, and of the external world as known Object; the reality and infinity of Space as the seat of the latter with its contents, and the reality and infinity of Duration as containing the successions of the former; the origin of all phenomena from a causality not phenomenal. In such judgments, accepted as the inherent postulates of all intelligence, we have a few first truths to render experience possible, and to form a basis for reliable knowledge. If the monistic principle holds, if the only thing accessible to us is our own phenomena, if they are but transformed sensations, if, moreover, they are phenomena of nothing and nobody,-it is idle to speak of cognition at all; there is neither outer world to be known, nor any "we" to know it: the inner history alone is fact; and it can furnish no rational propositions, except about the groupings, the successions, or the resemblances inter se, of the feelings and ideas composing it. Body means the experience * Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, part ii. chap. iv. sect. 1.

of certain muscular sensations; Space, the experience of their absence; Infinity, the conception of their possibility; and what we say of these can be only autobiographical, without validity beyond. Causality denotes the constant priority of one of our states to another. Belief means an association of ideas and feelings, strong enough to stir muscular sensations. Perception is a very misleading word; pretending to refer some sensation to an object that gives it, but properly referring it only to the group that has it. Personality is the sum-total of all the feelings in any one conscious life up to its present moment,-in common language, rather aristocratically limited to human beings; and to say, 'I committed this sin,' is to tack on a new phenomenon at the end of a train and lengthen its thread. There can be no first truths; for we form no judgments till we have got language, and must have the parts of speech before we can predicate any thing; and then any stiff association of ideas, however arbitrary, is ready to set up for self-evidence. The propositions which assume this look are about nothing except empty abstractions of the mind's creation, yielding only an illusory certainty; and it is a rule that a Science, to be demonstrative, must be hypothetical; and, to be pure, its hypotheses must be false. The steadiness with which the thorough-paced Hartleyan walks through these startling paradoxes,-the rigour with which he follows out their lines, with a pleasant sense of beauty and discovery, we cannot but regard as curiously expressive of the mind logical rather than psychological. The skill and ingenuity are often marvellous; but to a very large extent are expended, not in interpreting, so much as in explaining away, your actual consciousness; in converting it into some strange, uncomfortable coin, declared to be its change in full; in apologising for the imperfect evidence of their equivalence, and showing that it could not well be greater, considering all that they have had to go through. Just as Mr. Darwin, on finding fossil species disinclined to help him, fixes on them an ex-parte character, and urges that his genuine witnesses must have disappeared and become indistinguishably worked up into the very grain of the world; so does the Association psychologist feel no discouragement from the refractory look of mental facts as they are, whilst he can plead that the rudimentary forms are compelled by the very hypothesis to vanish, and lie mingled invisibly with the containing strata of the mind. There is obviously a limit beyond which this kind of plea cannot be carried without withdrawing the doctrine it is meant to benefit from all rational test: and the extent to which it is urged, measures the degree in which conjecture takes the place of the vera causa. Now, when it is remembered that almost every one of the distinctively human

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phenomena presents a crux interpretum to this school; that the points at which suspicion of psychological tampering arises include the Ideas of Space and Time, the ground of the Mathematics; of Substance and Causality, implied in Physics; of Personality and Obligation, the conditions of Morals; of Right, the basis of Law; of Beauty, the essence of Art; of Supreme Goodness, the inspiration of Religion; that whilst Memory and Conception and Habit are fairly explained, Belief and Volition are analysed out of their identity; the disproportion becomes striking between the assured value of the doctrine and its cost. At every one of these points, Mr. Bain's exposition has, to our feeling, the liar character of ingenious unreality which is so common in all the later writings of his school, and which so markedly distinguishes the subtle misconstructions of Brown and Mill from the faithful half-analysis of Locke. We find ourselves entangled continually in mere quasi-psychology, which does not in the least speak to any thing within; but shows how, under certain enumerated conditions, an equivalent to the actual state of mind might be produced. This is more especially the case in the second volume, where the author's description of the moral phenomena seems to us to be drawn from some quite imaginary human nature; and to have no relation to the real experiences and faiths of tempted and struggling men. Highly significant of his method in this respect is his habitual discontent with the language in which men have embodied their ethical feeling and thought. The great question of Moral Liberty is got rid of by a wholesale objection to every one of its leading terms: "Freedom" is inappropriate; "Necessity" is an incumbrance; "Self-determination" is a bad name for motive pleasures and pains; "Choice" can mean nothing but the ending of suspense in a single line of activity; and so on. These terms "have weighed like a nightmare upon the investigation of the active region of the mind." Does the suspicion never cross Mr. Bain that to cancel the vocabulary of moral thought and feeling is to discharge the phenomena from his philosophy? We refrain, however, from following him at present into this great field; his elaborate treatment of which would require an independent discussion.

ART. XI.-MR. BRIGHT, PAINTED BY HIMSELF.

Mr. Bright's Speeches. Revised by himself. London: Judd and Glass, 1859.

THE characters of public men are public property; and according as these are pure or corrupt, complete or ragged, grand and lofty or grovelling and ignoble, are they the most precious and productive treasures of a nation, or the saddest and most pestilent of its running sores. If statesmen and publicists-the leaders of action and the leaders of thought-are gifted with the moral and mental grace to see clearly and pursue consistently that course wherein consists a people's true duty, dignity, and grandeur; if keenly cognisant, through understanding and through sympathy, of its impairing weaknesses and its besetting perils, they bind themselves to the noble because thankless task of resisting the one and strengthening the other; if, striving steadily to make its permanent welfare and its better sense always paramount over transient longings and derogatory aberrations, they are content to barter the daily popularity that attends and brightens the career for the tardy veneration that hangs over and sanctifies the tomb,-then they become in very truth the guardian-angels of those whom they govern and illustrate. If, on the contrary, whether from defective culture or a nature inherently limited and barren, they share and represent especially the lower elements of the nation's life and temper; if -it may be from no unworthy motives, but from mere fatal sympathy-they express habitually and by preference chiefly its material interests, its narrower views, its worst moments, its meaner instincts, and its baser passions,-then no enemy from without that ever seized its possessions or assailed its independence has sinned against it or injured it so grievously as they. In men so highly placed nothing can be matter of indifference. For good or for evil they are fearfully influential. Every act and every word has an echo and a range that, if they could realise it, would render their reponsibility almost overwhelming. It is not permitted them to give way to bad passion or bad feeling. To be ignorant, to be untrue, to be intemperate, is immeasurably more culpable because more mischievous in them than in ordinary mortals, and calls for prompter reprobation and severer justice.

Mr. Bright has attained this unpardonable eminence. By linking himself to a great cause, by riding on the wave of a great movement, by untiring energy, by singular eloquence, by remarkable ability and still more remarkable directness of pur

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