be equally dreaded, and that is the introduction of superficial metaphysics furtively, by those who would gain your confidence by telling you that they avoid metaphysics. If we are to have metaphysics, let them avow that they are metaphysics, and let the investigation be conducted scientifically and systematically. By all means let us have clear metaphysics, just as we would wish to have clear mathematics and clear physics. But clearness to the extent of transparency is of no value, provided it be attained, as in the case of the French sensational school, only by omitting all that is high or deep in man's nature. I certainly do not look on Mr. Mill as a superficial writer. On the contrary, on subjects on which he has not been led to follow Mr. James Mill or M. Comte, his thoughts are commonly as solid and weighty as they are clearly expressed. But, speaking exclusively of his philosophy of first principles, I believe he is getting so ready an acceptance among many for his metaphysical theories, mainly because, like Hobbes and Condillac, he possesses a delusive simplicity which does not account for, but simply overlooks, the distinguishing properties of our mental nature.

CHAPTER II.

THE METHOD OF INVESTIGATION.

COUSIN brings it as a charge against Locke,

M. on

that in his Essay on the Human Understanding, he treats of the origin of ideas before inquiring into their nature. Locke thus announces his method: "1st. I shall inquire into the original of those ideas, notions, or whatever else you please to call them, which a man observes, and is conscious to himself he has in his mind, and the ways whereby the understanding comes to be furnished with them." (Introd. s. 3.) Upon this, his French critic remarks that there are here "two radical errors in regard to method: 1st. Locke treats of the origin of ideas before having sufficiently studied these ideas. 2dly. He does more, he not only puts the question of the origin of ideas before that of the inventory of ideas, but he entirely neglects this last question." (Lectures on Locke, ii.) M. Cousin seems to lay down an important principle here, and to be so far justified in blaming the English philosopher for neglecting it. In order to be able to settle the very difficult question of the origin of our ideas, we must begin, and, I

believe, end, with a careful inspection of their precise nature. In the very passage in which Locke proclaims his mode of procedure, he speaks of inquiring into the original of those ideas which a man "observes, and is conscious to himself." The observation by consciousness should certainly precede any attempt to furnish a theoretical decomposition of ideas. I am convinced that in the construction of his theory, that all our ideas are derived from sensation and reflection, Locke did not patiently and comprehensively contemplate all that is in certain of the deepest and most characteristic ideas of the human mind. I do not ground this charge so much on the fact that he treats, in the First Book, of the Origin of Ideas, before coming, in the Second Book, to discuss the Nature of Ideas, as on the circumstance that in the Second Book he is obliged to overlook some of the profoundest properties of our ideas, in order to make them fit into his preconceived system. But we find Mr. Mill justifying Locke, and condemning Cousin. "I accept the question as M. Cousin states it, and I contend that no attempt to determine what are the direct revelations of consciousness can be successful or entitled to regard, unless preceded by what M. Cousin says ought to follow it, - an inquiry into the origin of our acquired ideas." (Exam. p. 145.)

Mr. Mill at this place examines Sir W. Hamilton's constant appeals to consciousness. Sir William would often settle by consciousness alone questions which I

suspect must be solved by a more complicated and difficult process. It is thus, for instance, - that is, by an appeal to consciousness, that he would de

termine that we know immediately an external or material world. In language often of terrible severity, he charges Brown, and nearly all philosophers, with disregarding consciousness: "But it is thus manifestly the common interest of every scheme of philosophy to preserve intact the integrity of consciousness. Almost every scheme of philosophy is only another mode in which this integrity has been violated." (Metaphysics, vol. i. p. 283.) Mr. Mill shows successfully (as I think) that the question between Hamilton and his opponents is often not one of the testimony of consciousness, but of the interpretation of consciousness: We have it not in our power to ascertain, by any direct process, what consciousness told us at the time when its revelations were in their primitive purity. It only offers itself to our inspection as it exists now, when these original revelations are overlaid and buried under a mountainous heap of acquired notions and perceptions." (pp. 145, 146.) Mr. Mill then goes on to explain his own method, which he calls the Psychological: "And here emerges the distinction between two different methods of studying the problems of metaphysics, forming the radical difference between the two great schools into which metaphysicians are fundamentally divided. One of these I shall

call for distinction the Introspective method, the other the Psychological." He rejects the Introspective method: "Introspection can show us a present belief or conviction, attended with a greater or less difficulty in accommodating the thoughts to a different view of the subject; but that this belief or conviction or knowledge, if we call it so, is intuitive, no mere introspection can ever show." He therefore resorts to the other method: "Being unable to examine the actual contents of our consciousness until our earliest, which are necessarily our most firmly knit associations, those which are most intimately interwoven with the original data of consciousness, are fully formed, we cannot study the original elements of mind in the facts of our present consciousness. Those original elements can only come to light as residual phenomena, by a previous study of the modes of generation of the mental facts which are confessedly not original, a study sufficiently thorough to enable us to apply its results to the convictions, beliefs, or supposed intuitions which seem to be original, and determine whether some of them may not have been generated in the same modes, so early as to have become inseparable from our consciousness before the time at which memory commences. This mode of ascertaining the original elements of mind I call Psychological, as distinguished from the simply Introspective mode." (pp. 147, 148.) These quotations furnish a sufficiently clear view of his account