" I can conceive," fays our profound philofopher, "that a man must be neceffarily interested in his own actual feelings, whatever these may be, merely because he feels them. He cannot help receiving pain from what gives him pain, or pleasure from what gives him pleasure. But I cannot conceive how he can have the fame neceffary, abfolute intereft in whatever relates to bimfelf, or in his own pleafures and pains, generally Speaking, whether he feels them or not. If it were poffible for a man's particular fucceffive interefts to be all bound up in one general feeling of felf-intereft, as they are all comprehended under the fame word felf, or if a man on the rack really felt no more than he must have done from the apprehenfion of the fame punishment a year before, there would be fome foundation for this reafoning, which fuppofes the mind to have the fame abfolute intereft in its own feelings both past, present, and to come." Pp. 5, 6, 7

Pray, good Sir, is not the dread of the rack at the diftance of a year an actual feeling, and may not that feeling prevent a man from gratifying fome other feeeling, which prompts him to the immediate commiffion of fome heinous crime? Nay, may not the dread of the tooth-ach, which has been formerly felt, be a fufficient motive to induce a man to fubmit to the very painful feeling of having a decayed tooth extracted, even at a time when from that tooth he feels ne pain? yes; fuch motives may influence the mind, but they derive all their influence from mere prejudice! It is indeed infifted on

"that Íshall have a real fenfible intereft in my own fu ture feelings, which I cannot poflibly have in thofe of others. I must therefore, as the fame individual, have the fame necefïary intereft in them at prefent. This may either proceed on the fuppofition of the abfolute metaphyfical identity of my individual being, fo that whatever can be affirmed of that principle at any time, must be strictly and logically true of it at all times, which is a.. wild and abfurd notion; or it may refer to fome other lefs ftrict connection between my prefent and future felf; in confequence of which I am confidered as the fame being, the different events and impreffions of my life conftituting one regular fucceffion of confcious feelings." P. 10.

It would indeed be a wild and abfurd notion to fuppofe, that whatever can be affirmed of any being at one time, muft be logically and ftrictly true of it at all times; that the prefent author, for instance, because he once wrote a foolish book, which, under pretence of vindicating the natural difintereftednefs of the human mind, aims at fapping the foundations of all religion, muft therefore have been perpetually employed in writing

writing fuch books from the hour of his birth, and will con tinue to write fuch books through the boundless ages of eternity; but we fufpect his to be the only head into which fuch a notion as this ever found its way, even for the purpose of having its abfurdity expofed. Bishop Butler, whom he can occafionally quote with refpect, has treated the fubject of perfonal identity with the hand of a mafter; and to his differtation on that fubject*, we refer the reader for a complete proof, that the living individual being, which each man calls himself, has hitherto remained unchanged, and must for ever remain unchanged, unlefs it be annihilated by the power of the Creator; and that any decay of memory or perception experienced by old or difeafed perfons is occafioned by no change of the living being, but by a decay of the brain or fome other corporeal organ. Our author, however, affirms with great confidence,

"that perfonal identity neither does, nor can imply any pofitive communication between a man's future and prefent felf, that it does not give him a mechanical intereft in his future being, and that man, when he acts, is always abfolutely independent of uninfluenced by the feelings of the being for whom he acts, whèi ther this be himself, or another!" P. 20.

This ridiculous affertion may be fafely trufted to the judgement of every reader; but it is worth while to call fome attention to the phrase mechanical intereft, which we fufpect the author would find fome difficulty in explaining, were he called upon for an explanation; though we have not the smallest doubt of its having been employed with a direct perception of its ambiguity. Of difquifitions of this nature, precife language will not anfwer the purpose. A man enjoying the pleafures of the table has an intereft in that enjoyment; but it is not a mechanical intereft, whatever be the meaning of that phrafe. What he eats and drinks makes indeed a mechanical impreffion on his tongue and palate; but his tongue and palate are only the organs of fenfe, and by no means the fentient being which alone is capable of either enjoyment or fuffering. When this author fhall explain to us by what law of mechanifm fenfation is excited in the mind, by an impreffion made on the organs of fenfe, we shall probably be able to fay whether a man has at present any mechanical intereft in his future being;

* Generally published as an appendix to the Analogy of Re. ligion,

But till this fhall be done, we may take the liberty to confider the phrase as unmeaning jargon; though it is incontrovertible that we have an intereft of fome kind in our future being, and that every man of common sense knows why he has it. The author's object in advancing thefe paradoxes appears in the following extract. After raving about a kind of uninterrupted confcioufnefs, which, by annihilating time, might indeed make a man continue the fame individual being, he fays of himself, that without fuch consciousness collecting and uniting the different fucceffive moments of his being in one general feeling of felf-intereft, he cannot to any moral or practical purpose be the fame being.

"Natural impoffibilities cannot be made to give way to a mere courtesy of expreffion." But I know that I fhall become that being." Then my intereft in it is founded in that knowledge, and not on an event, which not only is not felt by my mind, but is itfelf yet to come, viz. the tranfition of my present into my future being. How does it fignify to me what I fhall here after feel, or how can it influence my prefent conduct, or how ought it to do so, but because, and in as far as, I have fome idea of it beforehand? The injury that I may do to my future interest will not certainly, by any kind of reaction, return to punish me for my neglect of my own happiness. In this fenfe, I am always free from the confequences of my actions.-The interefts of the being who acts, and of the being who fuffers, are never one." P. 30.

Surely the reader will not expect us to enter feriously into argument with the man, who talks of one being be coming another being; of confcioufnefs being transferred from ne being to another, and even to many beings; who, in direct contradiction to univerfal experience affirms, that the interests of the being who acts, and of the being who fuffers, are never one; and who affures us (p. 97), that all individuals are aggregates. Such raving may be dignified with the appellation of philofophy; but as we have the author's example for not " giving way to a courtesy of expreffion," we fhall not hesitate to fay, that it more nearly relembles the ravings of Bedlam than the sober language of a school of science,

*Did the author, when he wrote this, recollect that St. Paul has faid, that the good things which God hath prepared for thofe that love him are fuch as eye hath not feen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive. Probably he did.

But

But if a man does not continue for two moments the fame individual being, what reafon can he have for acting on any occafion? To this queftion we shall state the author's anfwer in his own words:

"The fcheme, of which I have here endeavoured to trace the general outline, differs from the common method of accounting for the origin of our affections in this, that it fuppofes what is perfonal or felfifb in our affections to be the growth of time and babit, and the principle of a difinterested love of good as such, or for its own fake, without any regard to perfonal distinctions to be the foundation of all the rest. In this fenfe, felf-love is in its origin a perfectly difinterefted, or, if I may fo fay, imperfonal feeling. The reafon why a child firft diftinctly wills or purfues his own good is not because it is his, but because it is good." P. 33.

This method of accounting for the affections, though not perhaps wholly new, is indeed different from that by which they are commonly accounted for; but we cannot adopt till we be made to understand what is meant by good as fb, and are favoured with fome proof that a child purfue is own good, not because it is his, but because it is good in itfelf. A quantity of opium, which would poifon a man in health, has been often the means of preferving the life of another when adminiftered to him in a paroxyfm of pain. To the one man therefore it is evil, and to the other good; but whether is it good or evil, as fuch, "without regard to perfonal diftin&tions ?" It is certainly neither the one nor. the other; and the very queftion is an abfurdity. That which would poifon nine-tenths of mankind cannot, in itfelf, be univerfally good; nor can that be in itself univer-' fally evil, which is neceffary to preferve the lives of the other tenth. Good in the abftract, or good in itfelf, without any refpect to fentient beings, is a phrafe without meaning. The author concludes this precious difquifition with an account of a very fapient foliloquy, in which he says that

"he was led on by fome means or other to confider the question--whether it could properly be faid to be an act of virtue in any one to facrifice his own final happiness to that of any other perfon or number of perfons, if it were poffible for the one ever to be made the price of the other.

"Suppofe it were my own cafe-that it were in my power to fave twenty other perfons by voluntarily confenting to fuffer for them; why fhould I not do a generous thing, and never trouble myself about what might be the confequence to myself the Lord knows when?" P. 134.

In confidering this queftion he labours very fuccefsfully to "darken counfel by words without knowledge," by talking of continued confcioufnefs; by fuppofing that his own consciousness may be transferred to fome other being; by contending that his own felf may be multiplied in (into) as many different beings, as the Deity may think proper to endue with the fame confciousness; and by affirming it to be plain, that this confcious being, after being entirely deftroyed, may be renewed again, or multiplied into a great number of beings; but he gives no direct anfwer to the question. For this we

are forry, becaufe his anfwer, though it could not have altered our opinion of his theory, might have enabled us to difcover whether he has really adopted that theory himfelf, or written his book only to bewilder the unthinking part of mankind, and to make the remainder ftare!

In his remarks on the fyftems of Hartley and Helvetius, this author is more fuccefsful than in eftablishing the theory which he has adopted for his own. In Hartley's work there is much that is excellent; but it cannot be denied that there is likewife much that is fanciful, and not a little that teems with abfurdity. That the exercife of the mental powers depends upon the fate of the brain is incontrovertible; but when Hartley infers from this fact, that this exercife is itself nothing more than certain quiverings of the brain; that ideas are real impreffions made in different regions of the brain, where they remain unfeen till they be called into view, and brought together by fuch quivering; and that judgment, reafoning, and volition are mere vibrations or quiverings of the brain, which bring together or separate ideas, which were affociated in their first imprefGons, he talks nonfenfe and falfehood. This part of his fyftem the prefent author has accordingly been able to demolish; but he has failed completely in his attempt to refute that part of the theory, in which Hartley and his followers, or rather Locke and his followers (among whom Hartley himself must be included) have, by means of the unquestionable fact, commonly called the affociation of ideas, traced the focial affections from felf-love. He feems, indeed, not to underftand the doctrine of affociation, which he would do well to ftudy in the writings of Locke, and Gay, and Law, and Stewart of Edinburgh, as well as in the work of Hartley; where, however, are thrown out many va luable hints, which a fober inquirer, biaffed by no favourite hypothefis, might certainly turn to a good ac

count.

BRIT, CRIT, VOL. XXVI11. Nov, 1805.