Nay, we are apt to be so far misled as to think that we should thoroughly comprehend the nature and properties of the instrument of ratiocination, before we proceed to the use of it. We must do this, it is thought, else we do not begin at the beginning— though in fact this were just such a beginning as that of the labourer who should imagine that ere he enters with the spade in his hand on the work of digging, he must first have computed the powers of its wedge, or ascertained the specific weight and cohesion of its materials. There is upon an infinity of subjects, much intellectual labour that may be most prosperously gone through, without any anterior examination on our part of the intellectual faculty. Our disposition in many a question is to move a previous question which must be first settled, ere we hold ourselves in a condition for starting fair with the one immediately before us. The English again, to borrow another phrase from their own parliamentary language, are for proceeding to the order of the day. And they are not deceived in the result-just because nature has not deceived them, nor has she given original principles to her children for the purpose of leading them astray. They are like men set forth on the survey of a landscape, and who proceed immediately to the business of seeing-whereas the others, ere they shall have any dealing with the objects of vision, must have settled their account with the instrument of vision so that while the former are looking broadly and confidently outwards on the scene o observation, the latter are speculating on the organ and its retina, or have their thoughts intently fastened on that point whence the optic nerve issues from its primitive obscurity among the convolutions of the brain. Now this is what our friends in the south seem to have no patience for. Their characteristic is not subtlety of discrimination on the powers and principles of the mind-but often admirable soundness and sagacity in the direct application of their powers to the practical object of coming to a right judgment on all important questions. Dr. Paley stands forth in full dimensions as an exemplar of this class. Strong and healthful in his faculties, he turns them to the immediate business before him, without one reflex look at the faculties themselves. He bestows on the argument of Hume a few touches of his sagacity-but soon flings it as if in distaste or intolerance away from him. We hold this to have been the general reception of it in our sister kingdom-and while taken up in grave and philosophic style by Campbell and Brown and Murray and Cook and Somerville and the Edinburgh Reviewers, it seems to have made comparatively little impression on the best authors of England on Penrose for example, who bestows on it but slight and cursory notice, and Le Bas* who almost thinks it enough to have barely characterized it as a wretched fallacy. 20. Paley concludes his preparatory considerations to his book on the Evidences with the following short practical answer to Hume's essay "But the short consideration which, inde The valuable contributions, which Penrose and Le Bas have made to the argument from iniracles, will be noticed afterwards. pendently of every other, convinces me that there is no solid foundation in Mr. Hume's conclusion is the following. When a theorem is proposed to a mathematician, the first thing he does with it is to try it upon a simple case; and if it produce a false result, he is sure that there must be some mistake in the demonstration. Now to proceed in this way with what may be called Mr. Hume's theorem: If twelve men whose probity and good sense I had long known, should seriously and circumstantially relate to me an account of a miracle wrought before their eyes, and in which it was impossible that they should be deceived; if the governor of the country, hearing a rumour of this account, should call these men into his presence, and offer them a short proposal, either to confess the imposture, or submit to be tied up to a gibbet; if they should refuse with one voice to acknowledge that there existed any falsehood or imposture in the case; if this threat were communicated to them separately, yet with no different effect; if it was at last executed; if I myself saw them, one after another, consenting to be racked, burnt or strangled rather than give up, the truth of their account; still, if Mr. Hume's rule be my guide, I am not to believe them. Now I undertake to say that there is not a sceptic in the world who would not believe them; or who would defend such incredulity." There is something nationally characteristic, in their respective treatments of the same subject, by the Scottish Hume and the English Paley. It exhibits a contest between sound sense and subtle metaphysics. Paley, is quite right in his concluding deliverance. The falsehood of the twelve men, in the circumstances and with the characteristics which he ascribes to them, would be more improbable than all the miracles put together of the New Testament. It is a correct judgment that he gives; but he declines to state the principles of the judgment. Nor is it necessary in ten thousand instances that a man should be able to assign the principles of his judgment, in order to make that judgment a sound and unexceptionable one. There is many a right intellectual process undergone by those, who never once reflect upon the process nor attempt the description of it. The direct process is one thing; the reflex view of it is another. Paley sees most instantly and vividly the falsehood of Hume's theorem in a particular case, and this satisfies him of a mistake in the demonstration. But this is a different thing from undertaking to show the fallacy of the demonstration on its own general principles as different as were the refutation of a mathematical proposition by the measurement of a figure constructed in the terms of that. proposition, from the general and logical refutation of it grounded on the import of the terms themselves. This is certainly a desirable thing to be done; and all we have to say at present is, that this is what Paley has failed to accomplish. CHAPTER II. On Man's instinctive Belief in the Constancy 1. WHEN a child strikes a table for the first time with a spoon, its delight in the consequent noise is not more obvious, than the confidence wherewith it anticipates a repetition of the noise on a repetition of the stroke. That the same antecedent should be followed by the same consequent does not appear to be the lesson of a protracted experience. The anticipation of a similar result from a similar conjunction of circumstances appears to be as strong in infancy as in manhood. We hold it to be not an acquired but an original faith, because we perceive it in full operation as far back as we can observe in the history of a human creature. We are not sensible of a period in the history of our own mind when this lesson had yet to be learned-neither can we perceive any indication in the youngest children, that they are destitute of this faith, or that they have yet subsequently to acquire it. Therefore we call it an instinctive faith-not the fruit of observation or experience, however much these may afterwards confirm it; so as to verify the glorious conclusion of an unfailing harmony between the actual truth of things, and the implanted tendencies of that intellect which the Creator hath given us. 2. It is a frequent and perhaps a natural impres r |