There is another consideration (and that probably the principal one) to

be taken into the account in explaining the origin and growth of our

selfish habits, which is perfectly consistent with the foregoing theory,

and evidently arises out of it. There is naturally, then, no essential

difference between the motives by which I am impelled to the pursuit of

my own good or that of others: but though there is not a difference in

kind, there is one in degree. We know better what our own future

feelings will be than what those of others will be in a like case. We

can apply the materials afforded us by experience with less difficulty

and more in a mass in making out the picture of our future pleasures and

pains, without frittering them away or destroying their original

sharpnesses: in a word, we can imagine them more plainly, and must

therefore be more interested in them. This facility in passing from the

recollection of my former impressions to the anticipation of my future

ones makes the transition almost imperceptible, and gives to the latter

an apparent reality and presentness to the imagination, to a degree in

which the feelings of others can scarcely ever be brought home to us. It

is chiefly from this greater readiness and certainty with which we can

look forward into our own minds than out of us into those of other men,

that that strong and uneasy attachment to self, which often comes at

last to overpower every generous feeling, takes its rise; not, as I

think I have shown, from any natural and impenetrable hardness of the

human heart, or necessary absorption of all its thoughts and purposes in

a blind exclusive feeling of self-interest. It confirms this account,

that we constantly are found to feel for others in proportion as we know

from long acquaintance with the turn of their minds, and events of their

lives, ‘the hair-breadth scapes’ of their travelling history, or ‘some

disastrous stroke which their youth suffered,’ what the real nature of

their feelings is; and that we have in general the strongest attachment

to our immediate relatives and friends, who from this intercommunity of

thoughts and feelings may more truly be said to be a part of ourselves

than from even the ties of blood. Moreover, a man must be employed more

usually in providing for his own wants and his own feelings than those

of others. In like manner he is employed in providing for the immediate

welfare of his family and connexions much more than in providing for the

welfare of those who are not bound by any positive ties. And we

accordingly find that the attention, time, and pains bestowed on these

several objects give him a proportionable degree of anxiety about, and

attachment to his own interest, and that of those connected with him;

but it would be absurd to conclude that his affections are therefore

circumscribed by a natural necessity within certain impassable limits,

either in the one case or the other. It should not be forgotten here

that this absurd opinion has been very commonly referred to the effects

of natural affection as it has been called, as well as of self-interest;

parental and filial affection being supposed to be originally implanted

in the mind by the ties of nature, and to move round the centre of

self-interest in an orbit of their own, within the circle of our

families and friends. This general connexion between the habitual

pursuit of any object and our interest in it, will account for the

well-known observation, that the affection of parents to children is the

strongest of all others, frequently overpowering self-love itself. This

fact does not seem easily reconcilable to the doctrine that the social

affections are all of them ultimately to be deduced from association, or

the reputed connexion of immediate selfish gratification with the idea

of some other person. If this were strictly the case we must feel the

strongest attachment to those from whom we had received, instead of

those to whom we had done, the greatest number of kindnesses, or where

the greatest quantity of actual enjoyment had been associated with an

indifferent idea. Junius has remarked that friendship is not conciliated

by the power of conferring benefits, but by the equality with which they

are received and may be returned.

I have hitherto purposely avoided saying any thing on the subject of our

physical appetites and the manner in which they may be thought to affect

the principle of the foregoing reasonings. They evidently seem at first

sight, to contradict the general conclusion which I have endeavoured to

establish, as they all of them tend either exclusively or principally to

the gratification of the individual, and at the same time refer to some

future or imaginary object, as the source of this gratification. The

impulse which they give to the will is mechanical, and yet this impulse,

blind as it is, constantly tends to and coalesces with the pursuit of

some rational end. That is, here is an end aimed at, the desire and

regular pursuit of a known good, and all this produced by motives

evidently mechanical, and which never impel the mind but in a selfish

direction: it makes no difference in the question whether the active

impulse proceed directly from the desire of positive enjoyment, or a

wish to get rid of some positive uneasiness. I should say then that,

setting aside what is of a purely physical nature in the case, the

influence of appetite over our volitions may be accounted for

consistently enough with the foregoing hypothesis, from the natural

effects of a particularly irritable state of bodily feeling, rendering

the idea of that which will heighten and gratify its susceptibility of

pleasurable feeling, or remove some painful feeling, proportionably

vivid, and the object of a more vehement desire than can be excited by

the same idea, when the body is supposed to be in a state of

indifference, or only ordinary sensibility to that particular kind of

gratification. Thus the imaginary desire is sharpened by constantly

receiving supplies of pungency, from the irritation of bodily feeling,

and its direction is at the same time determined according to the bias

of this new impulse; first, indirectly by having the attention fixed on

our own immediate sensation; secondly, because that particular

gratification, the desire of which is increased by the pressure of

physical appetite, must be referred primarily and by way of distinction

to the same being, by whom the want of it is felt, that is, to myself.

As the actual uneasiness which appetite implies can only be excited by

the irritable state of my own body, so neither can the desire of the

correspondent gratification subsist in that intense degree, which

properly constitutes appetite, except when it tends to relieve that very

same uneasiness by which it was excited, as in the case of hunger. There

is in the first place the strong mechanical action of the nervous and

muscular systems co-operating with the rational desire of my own belief,

and forcing it its own way. Secondly, this state of uneasiness grows

more and more violent, the longer the relief which it requires is

withheld from it: hunger takes no denial, it hearkens to no compromise,

is soothed by no flattery, tired out by no delay. It grows more

importunate every moment, its demands become larger the less they are

attended to. The first impulse which the general love of personal ease

receives from bodily pain will give it the advantage over my disposition

to sympathise with others in the same situation with myself, and this

difference will be increasing every moment, till the pain is removed.

Thus, if I at first, either through compassion or by an effort of the

will, am regardless of my own wants, and wholly bent upon satisfying the

more pressing wants of my companions, yet this effort will at length

become too great, and I shall be incapable of attending to any thing but

the violence of my own sensations, or the means of alleviating them. It

would be easy to show from many things that mere appetite (generally, at

least, in reasonable beings) is but the fragment of a self-moving

machine, but a sort of half organ, a subordinate instrument even in the

accomplishment of its own purposes; that it does little or nothing

without the aid of another faculty to inform and direct it. Before the

impulses of appetite can be converted into the regular pursuit of a

given object, they must first be communicated to the understanding, and

modify the will through that. Consequently, as the desire of the

ultimate gratification of the appetite is not the same with the appetite

itself, that is mere physical uneasiness, but an indirect result of its

communication to the thinking or imaginative principle, the influence of

appetite over the will must depend on the extraordinary degree of force

and vividness which it gives to the idea of a particular object; and we

accordingly find that the same cause which irritates the desire of

selfish gratification, increases our sensibility to the same desires and

gratification in others, where they are consistent with our own, and

where the violence of the physical impulse does not overpower every

other consideration.

MADAME DE STAËL’S ACCOUNT OF GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE.

_The Morning Chronicle._] [_Feb. 3, 1814._

The most interesting part of Madame De Staël’s very ingenious and

elegant work on Germany is undoubtedly (to literary readers) that in

which she has sketched with so much intelligence and grace, the present

state of opinions with respect to philosophy and taste in that country.

I have not yet seen any satisfactory abstract of her reasonings on

either of these subjects. The article in _The Edinburgh Review_ touches

but lightly and incidentally on them, from the variety and pressure of

other topics of a more lively and general interest. I shall attempt to

supply this deficiency, and at the same time to offer some farther

thoughts on each subject. The two points on which I wish to enlarge are

the view which Madame De Staël takes of German poetry, as contrasted

with the French, and secondly of the spirit and principles of the German

philosophy, that of Professor Kant, as opposed to the French system of

philosophy which is not indeed peculiar to them as a nation, but common

to the age. I shall begin with the last first, not only because it is

perhaps the most important, but because I think that as the English were

the first to propagate the latter system (for the French have only

adopted it from us, carrying its practical and popular application

farther), we ought not to be the last to disclaim and explode it. It may

not be uninteresting as a branch of national literature, to take a

general view of the rise and progress of their philosophy, before we

come to examine Madame De Staël’s account of the system which Kant has

opposed to it, and to shew in what that system is well-founded, and

where it fails.

According to the prevailing system,—I mean the material or modern

philosophy, as it has been called, all thought is to be resolved into

sensation, all morality into the love of pleasure, and all action into

mechanical impulse. These three propositions taken together, embrace

almost every question relating to the human mind, and in their different

ramifications and intersections form a net, not unlike that used by the

enchanters of old, which, whosoever has once thrown over him, will find

all farther efforts vain, and his attempts to reason freely on any

subject in which his own nature is concerned, baffled and confounded in

every direction.

This system, which first rose at the suggestion of Lord Bacon, on the

ruins of the school-philosophy, has been gradually growing up to its

present height ever since, from a wrong interpretation of the word

_experience_, confining it to a knowledge of things without us; whereas

it in fact includes all knowledge, relating to objects either within or

out of the mind, of which we have any direct and positive evidence. We

only know that we ourselves exist, the most certain of all truths, from

the experience of what passes within ourselves. Strictly speaking, all

other facts of which we are not immediately conscious, are such in a

secondary and subordinate sense only. Physical experience is indeed the

foundation and the test of that part of philosophy which relates to

physical objects: farther, physical analogy is the only rule by which we

can extend and apply our immediate knowledge, or infer the effects to be

produced by the different objects around us. But to say that physical

experiment is either the test, or source, or guide of that other part of

philosophy which relates to our internal perceptions, that we are to

look in external nature for the form, the substance, the colour, the

very life and being of whatever exists in our minds, or that we can only

infer the laws which regulate the phenomena of the mind from those which

regulate the phenomena of matter, is to confound two things entirely

distinct. Our knowledge of mental phenomena from consciousness,

reflection, or observation of their correspondent signs in others is the

true basis of metaphysical inquiry, as the knowledge of _facts_,

commonly so called, is the only solid basis of natural philosophy. To

assert that the operations of the mind and the operations of matter are

in reality the same, so that we should always regard the one as symbols

or exponents of the other, is to assume the very point in dispute, not

only without any evidence, but in defiance of every appearance to the

contrary.

Lord Bacon was undoubtedly a great man, indeed one of the greatest that

have adorned this or any other country. He was a man of a clear and

active spirit, of a most fertile genius, of vast designs, of general

knowledge, and of profound wisdom. He united the powers of imagination

and understanding in a greater degree than almost any other writer. He

was one of the most remarkable instances of those men, who, by the rare

privilege of their nature, are at once poets and philosophers, and see

equally in both worlds—the individual and sensible, and the abstracted

and intelligible forms of things. The Schoolmen and their followers

attended to nothing but names, to essences and species, to laboured

analyses and artificial deductions. They seem to have alike disregarded

all kinds of experience, whether relating to external objects, or to the

observation of our own internal feelings. From the imperfect state of

knowledge, they had not a sufficient number of facts to guide them in

their experimental researches; and intoxicated with the novelty of their

vain distinctions, learnt by rote, they were tempted to despise the

clearest and most obvious suggestions of their own minds. Subtle,

restless, and self-sufficient, they thought that truth was only made to

be disputed about, and existed no where but in their demonstrations and

syllogisms. Hence arose their ‘logomachies’—their everlasting

word-fights, their sharp debates, their captious, bootless

controversies. As Lord Bacon expresses it, ‘they were made fierce with

dark keeping,’ signifying that their angry and unintelligible contests

with one another were owing to their not having any distinct objects to

engage their attention. They built altogether on their own whims and

fancies; and, buoyed up by their specific levity, they mounted in their

airy disputations in endless flights and circles, clamouring like birds

of prey, till they equally lost sight of truth and nature. This great

man, therefore, intended an essential service to philosophy, in wishing

to recall the attention to facts and experience which had been almost

entirely neglected; and thus, by incorporating the abstract with the

concrete, and general reasoning with individual observation, to give to

our conclusions that solidity and firmness which they must otherwise

always want. He did nothing but insist on the necessity of experience,

more particularly in natural science; and from the wider field that is

open to it there, as well as the prodigious success it has met with,

this latter application of the word, in which it is tantamount to

physical experiment, has so far engrossed the whole of our attention,

that mind has, for a good while past, been in some danger of being

overlaid by matter. We run from one error into another, and as we were

wrong at first, so in altering our course, we have passed into the

opposite extreme. We despised experience altogether before: now we would

have nothing but experience, and that of the grossest kind. We have, it

is true, gained much by not consulting the suggestions of our own minds

in questions where they inform us of nothing, namely, on the particular

laws and phenomena of the material world; and we have hastily concluded

(reversing the rule) that the best way to arrive at the knowledge of

ourselves also, was to lay aside the dictates of our own consciousness,

thoughts, and feelings, as deceitful and insufficient guides, though

they are the only means by which we can obtain the least light upon the

subject. We seem to have resigned the natural use of our understandings,

and to have given up our own existence as a nonentity. We look for our

thoughts and the distinguishing properties of our minds in some image of

them in matter as we look to see our faces in a glass. We no longer

decide physical problems by logical dilemmas, but we decide questions of

logic by the evidence of the senses. Instead of putting our reason and

invention to the rack indifferently on all questions, whether we have

any previous knowledge of them or not, we have adopted the easier method

of suspending the use of our faculties altogether, and settling tedious

controversies by means of ‘four champions fierce—hot, cold, moist and

dry,’ who with a few more of the retainers and hangers on of matter

determine all questions relating to the nature of man and the limits of

the human understanding very learnedly. But the laws by which we think,

feel, and act, we must discover in the mind itself, or not at all.

This original bias in favour of mechanical reasoning and physical

analogy was confirmed by the powerful aid of Hobbes, who was, indeed,

the father of the modern philosophy. His strong mind and body appear to

have resisted all impressions, but those which were derived from the

downright blows of matter: all his ideas seemed to lie like substances

in his brain: what was not a solid, tangible, distinct, palpable object,

was to him nothing. The external image pressed so close upon his mind

that it destroyed the power of consciousness, and left no room for

attention to any thing but itself. He was by nature a materialist. Locke

assisted greatly in giving popularity to the same scheme, as well by

espousing the chief of Hobbes’s metaphysical principles as by the

doubtful resistance which he made to the rest. And it has been perfected

and has received its last polish and roundness in the hands of some

French philosophers, as Condillac and others.

The modern metaphysical system assumes as its basis that the operations

of the intellect are only a continuation of the impulses existing in

matter; or that all the thoughts and conceptions of the mind are nothing

more than various modifications of the original impressions of things on

a being endued with sensation or simple perception. This system

considers ideas merely as they are caused by outward impressions acting

on the organs of sense, and excludes the understanding as a distinct

faculty or power from all share in its own operations.

The following is a summary of the general principles of this philosophy

as they are expressly laid down by Hobbes, and by the latest writers of

the French school.

1. That our _ideas_ are copies of the impressions made by external

objects on the senses.

2. That as nothing exists out of the mind but matter and motion, so it

is itself with all its operations nothing but matter and motion.

3. That thoughts are single, or that we can think of only one object at

a time.

4. That we have no general nor abstract ideas.

5. That the only principle of connection between one thought and another

is association, or their previous connection in sense.

6. That reason and understanding depend entirely on the mechanism of

language.

7 and 8. That the sense of pleasure and pain is the sole spring of

action, and self-interest the source and centre of all our affections.

9. That the mind acts from a mechanical or physical necessity, over

which it has no controul, and consequently is not a moral or accountable

agent.—_The manner of reasoning upon this last question is the only

circumstance of importance in which Hobbes differs decidedly from modern

writers._

10. That there is no difference in the natural capacities of men, the

mind being originally passive to all impressions alike, and becoming

whatever it is from circumstances.

Except the first, all of these positions are either denied or doubtfully

admitted by Mr. Locke. It is, however, his admission of the first

principle, which has opened a door directly or indirectly to all the

rest. The system of Kant is a formal and elaborate antithesis to that

which bears the name of Locke, and it is built on ‘the _sublime_

restriction (as Madame de Staël expresses it) added by Leibnitz to the

well-known axiom _nihil in intellectu quod non prius in sensu_—NISI

INTELLECTUS IPSE.’

It is in the manner of proving this restriction, and of explaining this

word, _the intellect_, that the whole question depends, and to this I

shall devote another letter.

AN ENGLISH METAPHYSICIAN.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

_The Morning Chronicle._] [_Feb. 17, 1814._

The principle that _all the ideas, operations, and faculties of the mind

may be traced to, and ultimately accounted for, from simple sensation_,

is all that remains of Mr. Locke’s celebrated Essay, and that to which

it owes its present rank among philosophical productions. His various

attempts to modify this principle, or reconcile it to common notions

have been gradually exploded, and have given place, one by one, to the

more severe and logical deductions of Hobbes from the same general

principle. Mr. Locke took the faculties of the mind as he found them in

himself and others, and instead of levelling the structure, was

contented to place it on a new foundation. By this compromise with

prudence and candour, he prepared the way for the introduction of the

principle, which being once established, very soon overturned all the

trite opinions, and vulgar prejudices, which had been improperly

associated with it. There was in fact, no place for them in the new

system. I confess it strikes some degree of awe into the mind, and makes

it feel, that fame, even the best, is not a substantial thing, but the

uncertain shadow of real excellence, when we reflect that the immortal

renown, which attends the name of Locke as the great luminary of the age

in which he lived, is but a dim and borrowed lustre from the writings of

one, whom he himself calls, and who has been universally considered as

‘a justly decried author.’ The sentence of the poet is as applicable

here as it ever was—

‘Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil,

Nor in the glistering foil

Set off to the world, nor in broad rumour lies;

But lives and spreads aloft by those pure eyes,

And perfect witness of all-judging Jove!’

The great defect with which the Essay on Human Understanding is

chargeable, is that there really is not a word about the understanding

in it, nor any attempt to shew what it is, or whether it is, or is not

any thing, distinct from the faculty of simple perception. The

operations of thinking, comparing, discerning, reasoning, willing, and

the like, which Mr. Locke generally ascribes to it, are the operations

of nothing, or of we know not what. All the force of his mind seems to

have been so bent on exploding innate ideas, and tracing our thoughts to

their external source, that he either forgot, or had not leisure to

examine what the internal principle of all thought is. He took for his

basis a bad simile, namely, that the mind is like a blank sheet of

paper, originally void of all characters, and merely passive to the

impressions made upon it: for this, though true as far as relates to

innate ideas, that is, to any impressions previously existing in the

mind, is not true of the mind itself, or of the manner in which it forms

its ideas of the objects actually impressed upon it. The obvious

tendency of this simile was to convert the understanding into the mere

passive receiver and retainer of physical impressions, a convenient

repository for the straggling images of things, or a sort of empty room

into which ideas are conveyed from without through the doors of the

senses, as you would carry goods into an unfurnished lodging. And hence,

again, it has been found necessary, by subsequent writers, to get rid of

those different faculties and operations, which Mr. Locke elsewhere

supposes to belong to the mind, but which are in truth only compatible

with the active powers, and independent nature of the mind itself. It

was to remedy this deficiency that Leibnitz proposed to add to the maxim

of Locke, _that there is nothing in the understanding which was not

before in the senses_—‘that sublime restriction,’ so much applauded by

Madame de Staël—‘EXCEPT THE UNDERSTANDING ITSELF:’ and it is to the

establishment and development of this distinction, that the whole of the

Kantean philosophy appears to be directed. In what manner, and in what

success (judging from the representations we have received of it)

remains to be shewn.

The account which Madame de Staël has given of this system is full of

the graces of imagination and the charm of sentiment: it passes slightly

over many of the difficulties, and softens the abruptness of the

reasoning by the harmony of the style. It is therefore the most popular

and pleasing account which has been given of the system of the German

Philosopher: but after all, it will be better to take his own statement,

though somewhat ‘harsh and crabbed’ as the most tangible, authentic, and

satisfactory.

‘The following,’ says his translator Willich, ‘are the elements of his

_Critique of Pure Reason_, the first of Kant’s systematical works, and

the most remarkable for profound reasoning and the striking

illustrations, with which it throughout abounds.

‘We are in possession of certain notions _à priori_[8] which are

absolutely independent of all experience, although the objects of

experience correspond with them, and which are distinguished by

necessity, and strict universality. To these are opposed empirical

notions, or such as are only possible _à posteriori_, that is, through

experience. Besides these, we have certain notions, with which no

objects of experience ever correspond, which rise above the world of

sense, and which we consider as the most sublime, such as God, liberty,

immortality. There is always supposed in every empirical notion, or

impression of external objects, a pure perception _à priori_, a form of

the sensitive faculty, _viz._ space and time. This form first renders

every actual appearance of objects possible. By the sensitive faculty we

are able to form perceptions; by the understanding we form general

ideas. By the sensitive faculty we experience impressions, and objects

are given to us; by the understanding we bring representations of these

objects before us: we think of them. Perceptions and general ideas are

the elements of all our knowledge. Without the sensitive faculty, no

object could be given (proposed to) us; without the understanding none

would be thought of by us. These two powers are really distinct from one

another; but neither of the two without the other can produce a

_notion_. In order to obtain a distinct notion of any one thing, we must

present to our general ideas objects in perception, and reduce our

perceptions to, or connect them with, these general ideas. As the

sensitive faculty has its determined forms, so has our understanding

likewise forms _à priori_. These may be properly termed _categories_;

they are pure ideas of the understanding, which relate, _à priori_, to

the objects of perception in general. The objects of experience,

therefore, are in no other way possible; they can in no other way be

thought of by us, and their multiplied diversity can only be reduced to

one act of judgment, or to one act of consciousness, by means of these

categories of sense. Hence, the categories have objective reality. They

are either categories of

1. _Quantity_, as unity, number, totality; or,

2. Of _Quality_, as reality, negation, limitation; or,

3. Of _Relation_, as substance and accident, cause and effect; or,

4. Of _Modality_, as possibility and impossibility, existence and

non-existence, necessity and contingency.

‘The judgment is the capacity of applying the general ideas of the

understanding to the information of experience. The objects of

experience are regulated according to these ideas; and not, _vice

versâ_, our ideas according to the objects.’

Such is the outline of this author’s account of the intellect, which,

after all, appears to be rather dogmatical than demonstrative. He is

much more intent on raising an extensive and magnificent fabric, than on

laying the foundations. Each part does not rest upon its own separate

basis, but, like the workmanship of some lofty arch, is supported and

rivetted to its place by the weight and regular balance of the whole.

Kant does not appear to trouble himself about the evidence of any

particular proposition, but to rely on the conformity and mutual

correspondence of the different parts of his general system, and its

sufficiency, if admitted, to explain all the phenomena of the human

intellect with consistency and accuracy;—in the same manner as the

decypherer infers that he has found the true key of the hieroglyphic

hand-writing, when he is able to solve every difficulty by it. However

profound and comprehensive we may allow the views of human nature

unfolded by this philosopher to be, his method is necessarily defective

in simplicity, clearness, and force. His reasoning is seldom any thing

more than a detailed, paraphrased explanation of his original statement,

instead of being (what it ought to be) an appeal to known facts, or a

deduction from acknowledged principles, or a detection of the

inconsistencies of other writers. The extreme involution and

technicality of his style proceed from the same source; that is, from

the necessity of adapting a conventional language to the artificial and

arbitrary arrangement of his ideas. The whole of Kant’s system is

evidently an elaborate antithesis or contradiction to the modern

philosophy, and yet it is by no means a real approximation to popular

opinion. Its chief object is to oppose certain fundamental principles to

the _empirical_ or mechanical philosophy, and it either rejects or

explains away the more common and established notions, except so far as

they coincide with the rigid theory of the author. He sets out with a

preconceived hypothesis; and all other facts and opinions are made to

bend to a predominant purpose.

The founder of the _transcendental_ philosophy very properly insists on

the distinction between the sensitive and the intellectual faculties,

and makes this division the ground-work of his entire system. He

considers the joint operation of these different powers as necessary to

all our knowledge, and enumerates with scrupulous formality the

different ideas which originate in this complex progress, and points out

the share which each has in each. The author conceives of certain

general ideas, as _substance_ and _accident_, _cause_ and _effect_,

_totality_, _number_, _quantity_, _relation_, _possibility_,

_necessity_, etc. as pure ideas of the understanding; and he classes

_space_ and _time_ as primary forms of the sensitive faculty.[9] All

this may be very true; but the proof may also be required, and it is not

given. Yet modern metaphysicians are not likely, either as sceptical

inquirers after truth, or as lovers of abstruse paradoxes, to be

satisfied with the bare assumption of a common prejudice. They will say,

either that all these ideas have no real existence in the mind, that

they are mere abstract terms which owe their force and validity to the

mechanism of language; or admitting their existence in the mind, they

will contend with Locke, that they are only general, reflex, and

compound ideas, originally derived from sensation. ‘Whence do all the

ideas and operations of the mind proceed?’ _From experience_, is the

answer given by the modern philosophy—_From experience and from the

understanding_, is the answer given by Kant. The former solution has the

advantage of simplicity; and the logical proof is wanting to the latter.

To compare grave things with gay, the display which this celebrated

philosopher makes of his categories, his forms of the sensitive faculty,

his pure ideas, and _à priori_ principles, somewhat resembles the method

taken by Sir Epicure Mammon in _The Alchymist_ to persuade his sceptical

friend that he is about to discover the philosopher’s stone by

overpowering his imagination with the description of the fine things he

will do when he has it:—‘And all this I will do with the stone.’ ‘But

will all this give you the stone?’ says Pertinax Surly, who ‘will not

believe antiquity’ any more than our modern sceptics.

I think that the truth may be got at much more simply, and without all

this parade of words. The business of the mind is twofold—to receive

impressions and to perceive their relations; without which there can be

no ideas. Now the first of these is the office of the senses, and is the

only original function of the mind, according to the prevailing system.

The second is properly the office of the understanding, and is that, the

nature or existence of which is the great point in debate between the

contending parties. The more complex and refined operations of this

faculty, such as judging, reasoning, abstraction, willing, etc. are

either totally denied, or at best resolved into simple ideas of

sensation by modern metaphysical writers. I know of no better way,

therefore, to establish the contrary hypothesis than to take these

simple ideas of the moderns, and shew that they contain the same

necessary principles of the understanding, the same operations of

judging, comparing, distinguishing, abstracting, which they discard with

so much profound contempt, or treat as accidental and artificial results

of some higher faculty. If it can be proved that the understanding, in

the strict and exclusive sense, is necessary to our having any _ideas_

whatever,—that the very terms are synonymous and inseparable—that in the

first original conception of the simplest object of nature there is

implied the same principle, a power of perceiving the relations of

different things, which is only exerted in a more perfect and

comprehensive manner in the most complex and difficult processes of the

human intellect, one would think that there must be an end of the

question.

AN ENGLISH METAPHYSICIAN.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED

_The Morning Chronicle._] [_March 3, 1814._

‘For men to have recourse to subtleties in raising difficulties, and

then to complain that they should be taken off by minutely examining

these subtleties, is a strange kind of proceeding.’

I cannot better explain the modern theory of the understanding (which it

will be the object of this letter to consider) than in the words of one

of the best and ablest commentators of that school, Mr. Horne Tooke.

‘The business of the mind,’ he says ‘appears to me to be very simple. It

extends no farther than to receive impressions, that is, to have

sensations or feelings. What are called its operations are merely the

operations of language. The greatest part of Mr. Locke’s Essay, that is,

all which relates to what he calls _the composition_, _abstraction_,

_complexity_, _generalization_, _relation_, etc. of ideas, does indeed

merely concern language. If he had been sooner aware of the inseparable

connection between words and knowledge, he would not have talked of the

composition of ideas, but would have seen that the only composition was

in the terms, and consequently, that it was as improper to talk of a

complex idea as of a complex star! I will venture to say that it is an

easy matter, upon Mr. Locke’s own principles and a physical

consideration of the senses and the mind, to prove the impossibility of

the composition of ideas, and that they are not ideas, but merely terms,

which are general and abstract.’—Diversions of Purley, Vol. i. p. 39,

51, &c.[10]

Now this is very explicit, and, I also conceive, very logical. For I am

ready to grant that ‘Mr. Locke’s own principles and a physical

consideration of the mind’ do lead to the conclusions here stated; and

it is on that account that I shall attempt to shew that those principles

and the consideration of the mind, as a physical thing, are in

themselves absurd. These writers taking up the principle, that to have

sensations or feelings was the only real faculty of the mind, and

perceiving that the having sensations merely was a different thing from

having an idea or consciousness of their relations (inasmuch as no

sensation as such can include a knowledge of or reference to any other)

have inferred very rationally that all the operations of the mind

founded on a principle of general consciousness or common understanding,

_viz._ _compounding_, _comparing_, _discerning_, _judging_, _reasoning_,

etc. were excluded from their physical theory of sensation, and must be

referred to some trick or deception of the mind, the mechanism of

language or habitual association of ideas. According to this theory,

besides the sensible impressions of individual objects, and their

distinct traces left in the memory—the rest is merely words. In

supposing that we combine these different impressions together, that we

compare different objects, that we reason upon them, it seems we only

deceive ourselves, and mistake a rapid and mechanical transition from

one idea to another for the actual perception of the relations between

them. Thus have these philosophers sacrificed all the known facts and

conscious operations of the mind to a literal deduction from a gross

verbal fallacy. For what are these single objects or individual ideas,

of which the senses are competent to take cognizance, and beyond which

the understanding can never advance a step? Neither more nor less than

complex and general ideas, which imply all the same intellectual

impossibilities of comparing, judging, distinguishing, &c. _i.e._ of

perceiving a number of diversified relations, of connecting the MANY

into the ONE, which are objected to the more deliberate and formal acts

of understanding and reason. The mind, say they, can perceive but one

idea at a time, that is, it may perceive a square or a triangle, but it

cannot compare them together, or perceive their proportions, because to

do this, it must attend to different ideas at once. Yet what is this

individual idea of a square, for instance, but an idea of given lines,

their direction, equality, connection, &c. all which must be combined

together in the mind, before it can possibly form any idea of the

object? Mr. Tooke says, the complexity is in the term. I should say, the

individuality is in the term, that is, in the application of one name to

a collective idea, which superficial reasoners, at once the slaves of

idle paradox and vulgar prejudice, have therefore imagined to be one

thing. The whole error of this system has, indeed, arisen from

considering ideas themselves, or those particular objects, which are

marked by a single name, or strike at once, and in a mass, upon the

senses, as simple things. But there is no one of these particular ideas,

as they are called, which is not an aggregate of many things, or that

can subsist for a moment but in the understanding. By destroying the

composition of ideas, all ideas as well as all combinations of ideas,

would be completely and for ever banished from the mind; which would be

left a mere _tabula rasa_, a blank, indeed, or would at all times

strictly resemble what Mr. Locke describes it to be in its original

state, ‘a dark closet with a little glimmering of light let in through

the loop-holes of the senses.’

Writers, in general, who have maintained the existence of a distinct

faculty besides the senses, have applied themselves to shew that,

besides particular ideas or objects, it was necessary to admit the

understanding to explain the perception of the relations between them.

My purpose is to shew that the same perception of relation, the same

understanding is implied in the very ideas or objects themselves. To

have sensations is not to compare them, that is, sensation and

understanding are not the same thing. To have ideas, it is necessary to

compare our sensations, that is, ideas and understanding are the same

thing.

I can conceive then of a being endued with the power of sensation, so as

to receive the direct impressions of outward objects, and also with

memory, so as to retain them for any length of time, as they were

severally and unconnectedly presented, yet without any signs of

understanding. The state of such a being would be that of animal life,

and something more (with the addition of memory), but it would not

amount to intellect. As this distinction is rather difficult to be

explained, I hope I may be allowed to express it in any way I can, and

without sacrificing to the graces. Suppose a number of animalculæ, as a

heap of mites in a rotten cheese, lying as close together as they

possibly can (though the example should be of something more ‘drossy and

divisible’ of something less reasonable, approaching nearer to pure

sensation than we can conceive of any creature that exercises the

functions of the meanest instinct). No one will contend that in this

heap of living matter there is any idea or intimation of the number,

position, or intricate involutions of that little, lively, restless

tribe. This idea is evidently not contained in any of the parts

separately, nor is it contained in all of them put together. That is,

the aggregate of many actual sensations is, we here plainly see, a

totally different thing from the collective idea, comprehension or

consciousness of those sensations, as connected together into one whole,

or of any of their relations to each other. We may go on multiplying

sensations to the end of time, without ever advancing one step in the

other process, or producing a single thought. But in what, I would ask,

does this supposition differ from that of many distinct particles of

matter, full of animation, tumbling about, and pressing against each

other, in the same brain, except that we make use of this brain as a

common medium to unite their different desultory actions in the same

general principle of thought or consciousness—that is, understanding?

Or, if this comparison should be thought not courtly enough, let us

imagine one of Mrs. Salmon’s full faced, comely wax figures, sitting in

its chair of state, to be suddenly endued with life and physical

organization but nothing more. Such an unaccountable _lusus naturæ_

would answer exactly to the theory of modern metaphysicians, or would be

capable of receiving feelings or impressions by its different organs,

but would be totally void of any reflection upon them. It would be only

a bloated mass of listless sensation, a sordid compound of proud flesh

and irritable humours, a mere animal existence, a living automation,

crawling all over with morbid feelings, but without the least ray of

understanding, or any knowledge of itself or of the things around,

incapable of consistency of character or purpose, of foresight,

deliberation, sympathy, and of all that distinguishes human reason or

dignifies human nature!

Besides actual, sensible impressions, I suppose that there is a common

principle of thought, a superintending faculty, which alone perceives

the relations of things and enables us to comprehend their connections,

forms, and masses. This faculty is properly the understanding, and it is

by means of this faculty that man indeed becomes a reasonable soul.

Without this surrounding and forming power, we could never conceive the

idea of any one object, as of a table or a chair, a blade of grass or a

grain of sand. Every one of these includes a certain configuration,

hardness, colour, size, &c. _i.e._ impressions of different things,

received by different senses, which must be put together by the

understanding before they can be referred to any particular object, or

considered as one idea. Without this faculty, all our ideas would be

necessarily decomposed, and crumbled down into their original elements

and fluxional parts. We could assuredly in this case never connect the

different links in a chain of reasoning together, for the very links of

which this chain must consist would be ground to powder. We could

neither form any comparison between our ideas, nor have any ideas to

compare. There would be an infinite divisibility in the impressions of

the mind, as well as in the parts of material objects. Each separate

impression must remain absolutely simple and distinct, unknown to and

unconscious of the rest, shut up in the narrow cell of its own

individuality. No two of these atomic impressions could ever club

together to form even a sensible point, much less should we be able to

arrive at any of the larger masses or nominal descriptions of things.

The most that sensation could possibly do for us would be to furnish the

mind with ideas of some of those which Mr. Locke calls the simple

qualities of objects, as of colour or pressure, though not as a general

notion or diffused feeling, for it is certain that no one impression

could ever contain more than the tinge of a single ray of light, or the

puncture of a single particle of matter. Perhaps we might in this way be

supposed to possess an infinite number of microscopic impressions and

fractions of ideas, but there being nothing to arrange or bind them

together, the whole would present only a disjointed mass of blind,

unconscious confusion. All nature, all objects, all parts of all

objects, would be equally ‘without form and void.’ _The mind alone is

formative_, to use the expression of Kant; or it is that which by its

pervading and elastic energy unfolds and expands our ideas, that gives

order and consistency to them, that assigns to every part its proper

place, and fixes it there, and that frames the idea of the whole. Or in

other words, it is the understanding alone that perceives relation, but

every object is made up of a bundle of relations. In short, there is no

object or idea which does not consist of a number of parts arranged in a

certain manner, but of this arrangement the parts themselves cannot be

sensible. To make each part conscious of its relation to all the rest is

to suppose an infinite number of intellects instead of one; and to say

that a knowledge or perception of each part separately _without_ a

reference to the rest can produce a conception of the whole, is a

contradiction in terms.

Ideas then are the offspring of the understanding, not of the senses. An

idea necessarily implies, not only a number of distinct positive

impressions, but some bond of union between them, some internal

conscious principle to which they are alike communicated, and which

grasps, overlooks, and comprehends the whole. The idea of a square, for

example, is not the same thing with the compound impression made by the

figure on the senses. For the immediate impression of any one of the

sides cannot, as a mere sensation, be accompanied with an additional

knowledge or reflex image of the remaining three sides, but is a

perfectly distinct, physical thing; neither can the actual coexistence

of all these impressions be accompanied with a consciousness of their

mutual relations to each other, _i.e._ with an idea of the whole,

without supposing some general representative faculty, to which these

distinct impressions are referred.

Otherwise, different impressions made on the same organized or sentient

being would no more produce the slightest continuity of thought or idea

of the same object than different physical impressions conveyed to

different organized beings would produce an immediate consciousness of

these different objects or of the relations between them. If to have

sensations were the same thing as to compare them, then different

persons seeing different objects might without any communication make an

exact comparison between them. If to have the sensible impression of the

different parts of an object were the same thing as to form an idea of

it, then different persons looking at the two halves of any object would

be able to compound an idea of the whole between them, though each of

them was perfectly unconscious of what was passing in the other’s mind.

Unless we suppose some faculty of this sort which opens a direct

communication between our perceptions, so that the same thinking

principle is at the same time cognisant of different impressions, and of

their relations to each other, it seems a thing impossible to conceive

how any comparison can take place between different impressions existing

at the same time, or between our past and present impressions, or ever

to explain what is meant by saying, ‘_I_ perceive such and such objects,

_I_ remember such and such events,’ since these different impressions

are evidently referred to the same conscious being, which very idea of

individuality could never have been so much as conceived of, if there

were no other connection between our perceptions, than that which arises

from the juxtaposition of the particles of matter on which they are

actually impressed, or from ‘a physical consideration of the senses and

the mind.’ The mind in this case consisting of nothing more than a

succession of material points, each part would be sensible of the

corresponding part of any object which might be impressed upon it, but

could certainly know nothing of the impression which was made on any

other part of the same organic substance, except by its communication to

the same general principle of understanding. Ideas would exist in the

mind, like tapestry figures or pictures in a gallery, without a

spectator. On this hypothesis, I perfectly agree with Mr. Horne Tooke,

that it would be as absurd to talk of a complex idea as of a complex

star; for each impression or sensation must be as perfectly distinct

from, and unconnected with the rest, as the stars that compose a

constellation. One idea or impression would have no more connection with

any other, than if it were parcel of another intellect, or floated in

the region of the moon.[11]

It is strange that Mr. Locke should rank among simple ideas that of

number, which he defines to be the idea of unity repeated. But how the

impression of successive or distinct units should ever give the idea of

repetition, unless the former instances are borne in mind, I have not

the slightest conception. There might be an endless transition from one

unit to another, but no addition made or ideal aggregate formed. As well

might we suppose, that a body of an inch diameter, by shifting from

place to place, may enlarge its dimensions to a foot or a mile, as that

a succession of units, perceived separately, should produce the complex

idea of multitude. On the mechanical hypothesis, the mind can receive or

attend to but one impression at a time, and the idea of number would be

too mighty for it. Though Mr. Locke constantly supposes the mind to

perceive relations, and explains its common operations on this

principle, there is but one place in his work in which he seems to have

been upon the point of discovering that this principle lies at the

foundation of, and is absolutely necessary to all our ideas whatever. He

says, in the beginning of his chapter on Power, which he classes among

simple ideas, ‘I confess power includes in it _some kind of relation_ (a

relation to action or change), as, indeed, which of our ideas, of what

kind soever, when attentively considered, does not? For our ideas of

extension, duration, and number, do they not all contain in them a

secret relation of the parts? Figure and motion have something relative

in them much more visibly; and sensible qualities, as colours and

smells, what are they but the powers of different bodies in relation to

our perception? And if considered in the things themselves, do they not

depend on the bulk, figure, texture, and motion of the parts? All which

include some kind of relation in them. Our idea, therefore, of power, I

think, may well have a place amongst other simple ideas, and be

considered as one of them, being one of those that make a principal

ingredient in our complex ideas of substances.’—Essay on Human

Understanding, vol. i. p. 234.

That is to say, in other words, the idea of power, though confessedly

complex, according to Mr. Locke, as depending on the changes we observe

produced by one thing on another, is to pass for a simple idea, because

it has as good a right to this denomination as other complex ideas,

which are usually classed as simple ones. It is thus that the inquiring

mind seems to be always hovering on the brink of truth: but timidity, or

indolence, or prejudice, makes us shrink back, unwilling to trust

ourselves to the fathomless abyss.

I have thus given the best account which it is in my power to give of

the understanding, as that conscious, comprehensive principle, which is

the source not only of judgment and reasoning, but which is implied in

every possible idea of the mind, or conception even of sensible objects.

Every such object, it has been shewn, is made up of a number of

individual impressions, yet how these perfectly detached, and desultory

impressions should of themselves contain or produce a knowledge of their

relations to each other, of their order, number, likeness, distances,

limits, &c. by which alone they can be connected into one whole—without

being first communicated to the same conscious principle of thought, to

one diffusive, and yet self-centered intellect, one undivided active

spirit, co-extended with the object, and yet ever present to itself,

that

‘Thrills in each nerve, and lives along the line,’

it is difficult to imagine. There is no idea that is not evolved from

this coinstantaneous power in the mind. The activity which Shakespeare

ascribes to _Ariel_ is not greater than that which is necessary to the

production of the meanest thought. ‘Jove’s light’nings more momentary

and sight-outrunning are not!’

AN ENGLISH METAPHYSICIAN.

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED (ON ABSTRACTION)

_The Morning Chronicle._] [_April 8, 1814._

I am aware that the long digression on the formation of our ideas, with

which I troubled you in my last, will be looked upon as rhapsody and

extravagance by the strictest sect of those who are called philosophers.

The understanding has been set aside by these ingenious persons as an

awkward incumbrance, since they conceived it practicable to carry on the

whole business of thought and reason by a succession of individual

images and sensible points. The fine network of the mind, the

intellectual cords that bind and hold our scattered perceptions

together, and form the living line of communication between them, are

dissolved and vanish before the clear light of modern metaphysics, as

the gossamer is dissipated by the sun. The adepts in this system smile

at the contradictions involved in the supposition of perceiving the

relations between different things, and say that the common theory of

the understanding leads to the absurdity that the mind may attend to two

ideas at once, which is with them impossible. What I have endeavoured to

establish, is, that if the mind cannot have more than one idea at a

time, it can never have any, since all the ideas we know of consist of

more than one; and though the conviction we have of attending to

different impressions at once, when we compare, distinguish, judge,

reason, &c. has been gratuitously resolved into a deception of the mind,

mistaking a rapid succession of objects for a joint conception of them,

yet it will hardly be pretended that we deceive ourselves in thinking we

have any ideas at all. Whether the advocates for this hypothesis will

sit down contented under the total dissipation of all thought, the utter

privation of all ideas, to which, by their own arguments, they will have

reduced themselves, it remains for them to determine. We have seen that

Mr. Tooke resolves the complexity of our ideas into the complexity of

the terms made use of. How a term can be complex, otherwise than from

the complexity of its meaning, that is, of the idea attached to it, is

by no means easy to understand. Other writers, to avoid the seeming

contradiction of supposing the mind to divide its attention between

different objects, have suggested the instant of its passing from one to

the other as the true point of comparison between them; or that the time

when it had the idea of both together, was the time when it had an idea

of neither. To such absurdities are ingenious men driven by setting up

argument against fact, and denying the most obvious truths for which

they cannot account, like the sophist who denied the existence of

motion, because he could not understand its nature. It might perhaps be

deemed a sufficient answer to those who build systems and lay down

learned propositions on the principle that the mind can comprehend but

one idea at a time, to say that they consequently can have no meaning in

what they write, since when they begin a sentence, they cannot have the

least idea what will be the end of it, and by the time they get there,

must totally forget the beginning.—‘Peace to all such.’[12]

Mr. Horne Tooke justly complains of the uncertainty, confusion, and

laxity of Mr. Locke’s reasoning on the subject of abstract ideas, though

I cannot agree with him that it is therefore ‘very different from that

incomparable author’s usual method of proceeding.’—See Essay on Human

Understanding, vol. ii. p. 15, &c.

I am quite at a loss to determine, from Mr. Locke’s various statements,

whether he really supposed the abstraction to be in the ideas, or merely

in the terms. There is none of this wavering and perplexity in the minds

of his French commentators, none of this suspicion of error, and anxious

desire to correct it; no unforeseen objections arise to stagger their

natural confidence in themselves; it is all the same light, airy,

self-complacency, not a speck is seen to sully the clear sky of their

philosophy, not a wrinkle disturbs the smooth and smiling current of

their thoughts. In the Logic of the Abbé Condillac, that manual of the

modern sciolist, the question of abstract ideas is settled and cleared

from all difficulties, past, present, and to come, with as little

expence of thought, time, and trouble, as possible. The Abbé

demonstrates with ease.

‘But what in truth,’ he asks, ‘is the reality which a general and

abstract idea has in the mind? It is nothing but a name; or if it is any

thing more, it necessarily ceases to be abstract and general. If in

thinking of _a man_ in general I contemplate anything in this word,

besides the mere denomination, it can only be by representing to myself

some one man; and a man can no more be a man in the abstract in my mind

than in nature. Abstract ideas are therefore only denominations. This

confirms what we have already demonstrated, how necessary words are to

us; for if we had no general terms, we should have no abstract ideas; if

we had no abstract ideas, we should have neither _genera_ nor _species_;

and without _genera_ and _species_, we could reason upon nothing. To

speak, to reason, to form general and abstract ideas, are then in fact

the same thing; and this truth, simple as it is, might pass for a

discovery. Certainly, men in general have not even had a notion of

it.’—Logic, p. 136.

Now, in order to prevent these _genera_ and _species_, and all rational

ideas along with them, from being precipitated into the empty abyss of

words prepared for them by these philosophers, it may be proper to ask

one question, viz. if we have no idea of _genera_ and _species_, or of

what different things have in common or alike, that is, if the idea is

nothing but the name, how is it that we know when to apply the same

general name to different particulars, which on this principle can have

nothing left to connect them in the mind? For example, take the words,

_a white horse_. Now, say they, it is the terms which are general or

common, but we have no general or abstract idea corresponding to them.

But if we have no general idea of _white_, nor any general idea of _a

horse_, what have we left to guide us in applying the phrase to any but

the first horse, any more than in applying the terms of an unknown

tongue to their respective objects? In short, what is it that ‘puts the

same common name into a capacity of signifying many particulars,’ but

that common nature or kind which is conceived to belong to them?

Condillac says, that without general terms, there would be no general

ideas; it appears to me, that without general ideas there could be no

general terms. Language without this would be reduced to a heap of

proper names, and we should be as completely at a loss to class any

object generally from its agreement with others, or to say at sight,

this is a man, this is a horse, as to know whether we should call the

first man we accidentally met in the street by the name of John or

Thomas. The very existence of language is alone a sufficient proof of

the power of abstraction in the human mind.

It is so far from being true, according to the modern philosophy, that

we have neither complex nor general ideas, that, I think, it may be

proved to a demonstration that we have and can have no others. I must

premise, however, that I do not believe it possible ever to arrive at

general or abstract ideas by beginning in Mr. Locke’s method with

particular images. This faculty of abstraction is by most writers

considered as a sort of artificial refinement upon our other ideas, as

an excrescence no ways contained in the common impressions of things,

nor necessary to the common purposes of life; and is by Mr. Locke

altogether denied to be among the faculties of brutes. It is described

as the ornament and top-addition of the mind of man, which proceeding

from simple sensations upwards is gradually sublimed into the abstract

notions of things:—

‘So from the root

Springs lighter the green stalk, from thence the leaves

More airy, last the bright consummate flower.’

On the contrary, I conceive that all our notions, from first to last,

are (strictly speaking) general and abstract, not absolute or

particular; and that to have a perfectly distinct idea of any one

individual object or concrete existence, either as to the parts of which

it is composed, or the differences belonging to it, or the circumstances

connected with it, would require an unlimited power of comprehension in

the human mind, which is impossible. All particular things consist of,

and even lead to, an infinite number of other things. Abstraction is

therefore a necessary consequence of the limitation of the comprehensive

faculty, and mixes itself, more or less, with every act of the

understanding, of whatever kind, during every moment of its existence.

The same fallacy has led to the rejection of abstract and general ideas

which has led to the rejection of complex ones, viz. that of supposing

sensible images to be perfectly simple or individual things. But the

truth is, that there is no one idea of an individual object which is any

thing more than a general and imperfect notion of it: for as there is no

such idea which does not relate to a number of complicated impressions

and their connections, so we can conceive the whole of no one object.

Again, there is no idea of a particular quality of any object, which is

perfectly simple and definite, but the result of a number of sensible

impressions of the same sort, classed together by the mind under the

abstract notion of likeness, or of something common between them,

without attending to their difference in other respects.

This view of the subject is not, I confess, very obvious at first sight,

and requires strong and clear proof, but it also admits of it. The only

way to defend our common sense against the sophisms of the moderns is to

retort their own analytical distinctions upon them.

In looking at any object, as at St. James’s Palace, for example, it is

taken for granted that the impression I have of it is a perfectly

distinct, precise, and definite idea, in which abstraction or

generalisation has no concern. Now it appears to me an easy matter to

shew that this sensible image of a particular building is itself but a

vague and confused notion, not one precise, individual impression, or

any number of impressions, distinctly perceived. For I would demand of

any one who thinks his senses furnish him with these infallible and

perfect images of things, free from all contradiction and perplexity,

what is the amount of the knowledge which he has of the object before

him? For instance, is the knowledge which he has that St. James’s Palace

is larger than the houses which are near it, owing to his perceiving,

with a glance of the eye, all the bricks of which the front is composed,

or can he not tell that it contains a number of windows of different

sizes, without distinctly counting them? Let us even suppose that he has

this exact knowledge, yet this will not be enough unless he has also a

distinct perception of the number and size of the panes of glass in each

window, and of every mark, stain, or dent in each brick, otherwise, his

idea of each of these particulars will still be general, and his most

substantial knowledge built on shadows, that is, composed of a number of

parts, of the parts of which he has no knowledge. In the same manner

that I form an idea of St. James’s Palace, I can form an idea of

Pall-Mall, of the adjoining streets, of Westminster, and London, of

Paris, of France, and England, and of the different cities and kingdoms

of the world. At least, I do not see the point of separation in this

progressive scale of our ideas. May I not be able, in looking out of my

window, to distinguish, first, a certain object in the distance, then

that it is a man, then that it is a person whom I know, and all this

before I can distinguish his particular features; and after I can

distinguish those features, what do I know or see of them, except their

general form, expression, and effect? Little or nothing. Let any one,

who is not an artist, or let any one who is, attempt to give an outline

from memory of the features of his most intimate friend, and he will

feel the truth of this remark. Yet though he does not know the exact

turn of any one feature, he will instantly, and without fail, recognise

the person the moment he meets him in the street, and that often, merely

from catching a glimpse of some part of his dress, or from peculiarity

of motion, though he may be quite at a loss to define in what this

peculiarity consists, or to account for its impression on him. We may be

said to have a particular knowledge of things, in proportion to the

number of parts which we distinguish in them. But the real ultimate

foundation of all our knowledge is and must be general, that is, made up

of masses, not of points, a mere confused result of a number of

impressions, not analysed by the mind, since there is no object which

does not consist of an infinite number of parts, and we have not an

infinite number of distinct ideas, answering to them. The knowledge of

every finite being rests in generals, and if we think to exclude all

generality from our ideas of things, as implying a want of perfect truth

and clearness, it will be impossible for the mind to form an idea of any

one object whatever. Let any person try the experiment of counting a

flock of sheep driven fast by him, and he will soon find his imagination

unable to keep pace with the rapid succession of objects, and his idea

of a positive number slide into the general notion of multitude. But

because there are more objects passing before him than he can possibly

count, he will not, therefore, think that there are none, nor will the

word, _flock_, present to his mind a mere name without any idea

corresponding to it. Every act of the attention, every object we see or

think of, offers a proof of the same kind.

These remarks will be found to contain the answer to the common argument

used on this subject, that in thinking of a man in general, we must

always conceive of a man of a particular size and figure. Now if it be

meant that when we pronounce the word _man_, we have either no idea at

all, or a distinct and perfect one of an entire figure of a man with all

its parts and proportions, it would amount to a knowledge, which no

sculptor or painter ever had of any one figure of which he was the most

thorough master, and which he had immediately before him. Or if it be

only meant that we think of a particular height, which must be a

precise, positive, determinate idea, even this supposition may in the

same way be shewn to be exceedingly fallacious, and an inversion of the

natural order of our ideas. For take any given height of a man, whether

tall, short, or middle-sized, and let that height be as visible as you

please, yet the actual height to which it amounts must be made up of the

length of the different parts, the head, the face, the neck, the body,

limbs, &c. all which must be distinctly added together by the mind,

before the sum total which they compose can be pretended to be a

precise, definite, individual idea. In the impression then of a given

visible object, we have only a general idea of something more or less

extended, and never of the precise length itself, for this precise

length (as it is thought to be) is necessarily composed of a number of

subordinate lengths, too many and too minute to be separately attended

to, or jointly conceived by the mind, and at last loses itself in the

infinite divisibility of matter. What sort of absolute certainty can

therefore be found in any such image or ideas, I cannot well conceive:

it seems to me like seeking for distinctness in the dancing of insects

in the evening sun, or for fixedness and rest in the motion of the sea.

All particulars are nothing but generals, more or less defined according

to circumstances, but never perfectly so.

Lastly, as the ideas of sensible objects can only be general notions, so

the ideas of sensible qualities are properly abstract ideas of likeness

or of something common between a number of sensible impressions of the

same class or sort. For example, the idea I have of the whiteness of a

marble statue is not the idea of a point, nor of any number of points,

with all their differences and circumstances, but a relative idea of the

colour of the whole statue. Now in arriving at this general result, or

in classing its sensible impressions together as of the same sort or

quality, the mind certainly is not conscious of every stain in the

colour of the marble, or streak that may happen to vary it, or of its

shape or size, or of every difference of light and shade, arising from

inequality of surface, &c. Yet if the idea falls any thing short of this

minute and absolute knowledge, it can only be an imperfect and abstract

one. The idea of whiteness in the same object (or as a sensible quality)

necessarily implies the same power of _abstracting from particulars_ in

the mind, as the general idea of whiteness taken from different objects,

from a white horse, a white cloud, a white wall, a white lily, or from

all the other white objects I have ever seen. The precise differences of

form, size, and every other actual circumstance in these particular

images, are as little necessary to be attended to in forming the general

idea of whiteness, as the differences of shape, size, and colour in

every particle of the statue of white marble are to the general

impression of colour in the whole object.

I will only add, that the mind has not been fairly dealt with in this

and other questions of the same sort. The difficulties belonging to the

abstraction, complexity, generalization, &c. of our ideas, it is,

perhaps, impossible ever to clear up; but that is no reason why we

should discard these operations from the human mind, any more than we

should deny the existence of motion, of extension, or of curve lines,

because we cannot explain them. Matter alone seems to have the privilege

of presenting difficulties and contradictions at every turn, which pass

current under the name of _facts_: but the moment any thing of this kind

is observed in the understanding, all the petulance of logicians is up

in arms against it. The mind is made the mark on which they vent all the

moods and figures of their impertinence; and metaphysical truth has, in

this respect, fared like the milk-white hind, the emblem of pure faith,

in Dryden’s fable, which ‘had oft been chased—

With Scythian shafts, and many winged wounds

Aimed at her heart, was often forced to fly,

And doomed to death, though fated not to die.’

AN ENGLISH METAPHYSICIAN.

FINE ARTS. BRITISH INSTITUTION

_The Morning Chronicle._] [_February 5, 1814._

The exhibition of this year is, we think, upon the whole, inferior to

the one or two last exhibitions; for though the historical department is

quite as respectably filled, there is not the same proportion of

pleasing representations of common life, and natural scenery. In spite

of certain classical prejudices, we should be sorry to see this which

has been the most successful walk of the modern English school,

neglected for the pursuit of prize-medals and _epic mottos_, which look

well in the catalogue. There is indeed a greater difference between an

historical picture, and a picture of an historical subject, than even

some eminent painters seem to have imagined. But we are, we confess, so

little refined in our taste, as to prefer a good imitation of common

nature to a bad imitation of the highest, or rather to an imitation of

nothing. Many of the pictures exhibited by young artists at this

Institution, have shewn a capacity for correct and happy delineation of

actual objects and domestic incidents, perhaps only inferior to the

master-pieces of the Dutch school, from the use of a less perfect

vehicle, and the want of long practice, steadily and uniformly directed

to the same object. But in the higher, and what is rather affectedly

called the epic style of art,—in giving the movements of the loftier and

more violent passions, this country has not a single painter to boast,

who has made even a faint approach to the excellence of the great

Italian painters. We have indeed a good number of specimens of the

clay-figure, the bones and muscles of the man, the anatomical mechanism,

the regular proportions measured by a two-foot rule—large canvasses

covered with stiff figures arranged in decent order, with the characters

and story correctly expressed by uplifted eyes or hands, according to

old receipt-books for the passions, and with all the hardness and

inflexibility of figures carved in wood, and painted over in good strong

body colours, that look as if some of nature’s journeymen had made them,

and not made them well. But we still want a Prometheus to give life to

the cumbrous mass, to throw an intellectual light over the opaque image,

to embody the inmost refinements of thought to the outward eye, to lay

bare the very soul of passion. That picture is of little comparative

value, which can be completely _translated_ into another language, of

which the description in a common catalogue is as good, and conveys all

that is expressed by the picture itself; for it is the excellence of

every art to give what can be given by no other, in the same degree.

Much less is that picture to be esteemed which only injures and defaces

the idea already existing in the mind’s eye, which does not come up to

the conception which the imagination forms of the subject, and

substitutes a dull reality for high sentiment; for the art is in this

case an incumbrance, not an assistance, and interferes with, instead of

adding to, the stock of our pleasurable sensations. But we should be at

a loss to point out (we will not say any English picture, but certainly)

any English painter, who in heroic and classical composition, has risen

to the height of his subject, and answered the expectation of the

well-informed spectator, or excited the same impression by visible means

as had been excited by words, or by reflection. That this inferiority in

English art is not owing to a deficiency of genius, imagination, or

passion, is proved sufficiently by the works of our poets and dramatic

writers, which, in loftiness and force, are certainly not surpassed by

those of any other nation. But whatever may be the depth of internal

thought and feeling in the English character, it seems to be _more

internal_, and (whether this is owing to climate, habit, or physical

constitution) to have, comparatively, a less immediate and powerful

communication with the organic expression of passion, which exhibits the

thoughts and feelings in the countenance, and furnishes matter for the

historic muse of painting. The English artist is instantly sensible that

the flutter, grimace, and extravagance of the French physiognomy, are

incompatible with high history; and we are at no loss to explain in this

way, that is, from the defect of existing models, why the productions of

the French school are marked with all the affectation of national

caricature, or sink into tame and lifeless imitations of the antique.

May we not account satisfactorily for the general defects of our own

historic productions in a similar way,—from a certain inertness and

constitutional phlegm, which does not habitually impress the workings of

the mind by correspondent traces on the countenance, and which may also

render us less sensible of these outward and visible signs of passion,

even when they are so impressed there? The irregularity of proportion

and want of symmetry in the structure of the national features, though

it certainly enhances the difficulty of infusing natural grace and

grandeur into the works of art, rather accounts for our not having been

able to attain the exquisite refinements of Grecian sculpture, than for

our not having rivalled the Italian painters in expression.

The strongest exception to these general remarks in the present

collection, is certainly _Mr. Bird’s Picture of Job_, surrounded by his

friends. Many of the heads and figures in this very able composition

have a strong and deeply infused tincture of true history. The best of

them are in a mixed style, which reminds us at the same time of Annibal

Caracci, and N. Poussin. The three finest figures are undoubtedly those

of Job, and the man and woman seated on each side of him. The

countenance of Job displays a noble firmness with a mixture of

suppressed feeling, not, perhaps, sufficiently marked for the character

or for the interest of the subject. The full grey drapery which

envelopes his whole figure, has an admirable effect, and seems in a

manner to shroud him from the attacks of external misfortune, in the

consolations of his own mind. The action of the man on his right hand,

pointing with his finger, and indeed the whole figure, are equally

appropriate and striking. The posture of the man leaning on a marble

slab, is also natural and picturesque, though it has too great an

appearance of ease and indifference for the occasion. The drapery of

this last figure is remarkably loose and flimsy, or what the painters,

we believe, call _woolly_. There are several other good heads in the

picture; but both the countenance and attitude of the man behind the

messenger, and the face of the figure between Job and the front figure

in red, are mean and vulgar—mere low life, without sense or dignity. The

expression in the countenance of the messenger, who comes to inform Job

of the last calamity that has befallen him, is neither intelligent nor

beautiful; and the whole of the figure, both by its situation and the

quantity of light thrown upon it, assumes a prominence disproportioned

to its importance, and throws the rest of the composition into a kind of

half back-ground. The story is illustrated (whether with chronological

propriety or not we leave to the critics) by a group of figures just

behind the circle of Job and his friends, carrying off the dead body of

one of his children. The great fault of this picture, which displays

much sense, character, study, and invention, is the heaviness and

monotony of the colour. It is of one uniform leaden tone, as if it had

been smeared over with putty, except where a sudden transition to a

glaring red or yellow, or the introduction of a spotty light, not at all

accounted for, serves, instead of relieving, to add greater weight to

that mechanic gloom, which affects, not the imagination, but the eye. We

think it right to notice a defect which may be more easily remedied by

attention, viz. that the extremities of Mr. Bird’s figures are in

general very ill made out.

Mr. Allston’s large picture of _the dead man restored to life by

touching the bones of Elisha_, deserves great praise both for the choice

and originality of the subject, the judicious arrangement of the general

composition, and the correct drawing and very great knowledge of the

human figure throughout. The figure of the revived soldier in the

foreground is noble and striking; the drapery about him is equally well

imagined and well executed. There is also a very beautiful head of a

young man in a blue drapery with his hands lifted together, and in the

act of attention to another, who is pointing out the miracle, which has

much of the simple dignity and pathos of Raphael. With respect to the

general colour and expression of this picture, we think it has too much

of the look of a French composition. The faces are in the school of Le

Brun’s heads—theoretical diagrams of the passions—not natural and

profound expressions of them; forced and overcharged, without precision

or variety of character. The colouring, too, is without any strongest

contrasts or general gradations, and is half-toned and half-tinted away,

between reddish brown flesh and wan-red drapery, till all effect, union,

and relief, is lost. It would be unjust not to add, that we think Mr.

Allston’s picture demonstrates great talents, great professional

acquirements, and even genius; but we suspect that he has paid too

exclusive an attention to the instrumental and theoretical parts of his

art. The object of art is not merely to display knowledge, but to give

pleasure.

There is a small picture of _Diana bathing_, by this gentleman, which we

think equally admirable for the character and drawing. The knowledge of

the human figure in this pleasing composition might be opposed with

advantage to the utter ignorance of it in some Musidora sketches, in

which the limbs seem to have been kneaded in paste, and are thrown

together like a bundle of drapery.

Of Mr. Hilton’s picture of _Mary Magdalen anointing the feet of our

Saviour_, we have little more to say, than that the figures are much

larger than life, and that, we understand, it has been purchased by the

Institution for 500 guineas.

Mr. West’s picture of _Lot and his Family_ is one of those highly

finished specimens of _metallurgy_ which too often proceed from the

President’s hardware manufactory. As to the subject, we conceive it has

been often enough treated in a country famed for ‘pure religion

breathing household laws.’ We do not mean to lay it down as a rule, that

the sublimity of the execution may not redeem the deformity of the

subject of a composition, as there is a great and acknowledged

difference between Shakspeare and the Newgate Calendar; but this of Mr.

West’s is a mere furniture picture, and offers no palliation from the

genius displayed by the artist. Having touched unawares on this very

delicate subject of the ethics of painting, we shall just notice, that

the picture of ‘Venus weeping over the dead body of Adonis,’ seems to

have been painted _tout expres_, for the purpose of being bought up by

some member of the Society for the Suppression of Vice.

Mr. Turner’s grand landscape of _Apullius_ and _Apullia_ has one

recommendation, which must always enhance the value of this most able

artist’s productions, that the composition is taken _verbatim_ from Lord

Egremont’s picture of ‘Jacob and Laban.’ The beautiful arrangement is

Claude’s; the powerful execution is his own. From this specimen of

parody, and from his never-enough-to-be-admired picture of ‘Mercury and

Herse,’ we could almost wish that this gentleman would always work in

the trammels of Claude or N. Poussin. All the taste and all the

imagination being borrowed, his powers of eye, hand, and memory, are

equal to any thing. In general, his pictures are a waste of morbid

strength. They give pleasure only by the excess of power triumphing over

the barrenness of the subject. The artist delights to go back to the

first chaos of the world, or to that state when the waters were merely

separated from the dry land, and no creeping thing nor herb bearing

fruit was seen upon the face of the land. The figures in the present

picture are execrable. Claude’s are flimsy enough; but these are

impudent and obtrusive vulgarity. The utter want of a capacity to draw a

distinct outline with the force, the depth, the fulness, and precision

of this artist’s eye for colour, is truly astonishing. There is only one

part of the colouring of Mr. Turner’s landscape which did not please us:

it is the blue of the water nearest the foreground, immediately after

the dark brown shadow of the trees.

The picture of the _Favourite Lamb_, by Collins, has exquisite feeling.

The groupe of children surrounding the little victim, and arresting him

in his progress to the butcher’s cart, has a degree of natural pathos

and touching simplicity, which we have never seen surpassed in any

picture of the kind. It may easily draw tears from eyes, at all used to

the melting mood.

THE STAGE.

_The Morning Chronicle_] [_February 24, 1814._

The manner in which Shakespeare’s plays have been generally altered, or

rather mangled, by modern mechanists, is in our opinion a disgrace to

the English Stage. The patch-work _Richard_ which is acted under the

sanction of his name, is a striking example of this remark. The play

itself is undoubtedly one of the finest effusions of Shakespeare’s

genius. It is as truly _Shakespearian_—that is, it has as much of the

author’s mind, of passion, character, and interest, with as little alloy

of the peculiarities of the age, or extraneous matter, as almost any

other of his productions. Wherever Shakespeare relied upon himself, and

did not appeal to the taste of his audience, he outstripped all

competition, and this he did as often as he had a motive in his subject

to do so; he had none in his vanity, or in the affectation of conforming

to certain critical rules. The winds blow as they list; and the golden

tide of passion no sooner rises in his breast, than it swells and bears

down every thing in its mighty course.

The ground-work of the character of _Richard_,—that mixture of

intellectual vigour with moral depravity, in which Shakespeare delighted

to shew his strength,—gave full scope as well as temptation to the

exertion of his genius. The character of his hero is almost everywhere

predominant, and marks its lurid track throughout. The original play is,

however, too long for representation, and there are some few scenes

which might be better spared than preserved and by omitting which, it

would remain a complete whole. The only rule, indeed, for altering

Shakespeare, is to retrench certain passages which may be considered

either as superfluous or obsolete, but not to add or transpose any

thing. The arrangement and developement of the story, and the mutual

contrast and combination of the _dramatis personæ_, are in general as

finely managed as the developement of the characters or the expression

of the passions.

This rule has not been adhered to in the present instance. Some of the

most important and striking passages in the principal character have

been omitted, to make room for tedious and misplaced extracts from other

plays; the only intention of which seems to have been, to make the

character of _Richard_ as odious and disgusting as possible. A bugbear

seems to have been always necessary to the English nation, and—give them

but this to vent their spleen upon—they will, either in matters of taste

or opinion, ‘as tenderly be led by the nose as asses are.’ It is

apparently for no other purpose than to make _Gloucester_ stab _King

Henry_ on the stage, that the fine abrupt introduction of this character

in the opening of the play is lost in the tedious whining morality of

the uxorious King (taken from another play);—we say _tedious_, because

it interrupts the business of the scene, and loses its beauty and effect

by having no intelligible connection with the previous character of the

mild and well-meaning monarch. The passages which Mr. Wroughton has to

recite are in themselves exquisitely pathetic, but they have nothing to

do with the world that _Richard_ has to ‘bustle in.’ In the same spirit

of vulgar caricature is the scene between _Richard_ and _Lady Anne_

(when his wife)—interpolated, merely to gratify this favourite

propensity to disgust and loathing. With the same perverse consistency,

_Richard_, after his last fatal struggle, is raised up by some Galvanic

process, to utter the imprecation, without any motive but pure

malignity, which is so finely put into the mouth of _Northumberland_ on

hearing of _Percy’s_ death. We hope that Mr. Kean, when he acts

_Macbeth_, will die as Shakespeare makes him, and not with four lines of

canting penitence (a common-place against ambition) in his mouth. To

make room for these needless additions and interpolations, many of the

most striking passages in the real play have been omitted by the foppery

and ignorance of the prompt-book critics. We do not mean to insist

merely on passages which are fine as poetry and to the reader, such as

_Clarence’s_ dream, &c. but those which are important to the

developement of the character, and peculiarly adapted for stage effect.

We give the following as instances among many others.

The first is the scene where _Richard_ enters abruptly to the Queen and

her friends, to defend himself:

_Enter_ GLOUCESTER.

_Glo._ They do me wrong, and I will not endure it.

Who are they that complain unto the King,

That I, forsooth, am stern, and love them not?

By holy Paul, they love his Grace but lightly,

That fill his ears with such dissentious rumours;

Because I cannot flatter, and look fair,

Smile in men’s faces, smooth, deceive, and cog,

Duck with French nods and apish courtesy,

I must be held a rancorous enemy.

Cannot a plain man live, and think no harm,

But thus his simple truth must be abused

With silken, sly, insinuating Jacks

_Gray._ To whom in all this presence speaks your Grace?

_Glo._ To thee, that hast nor honesty nor grace;

When have I injured thee? When done thee wrong?

Or thee? or thee? or any of your faction?

A plague upon you all!

What can be more characteristic than the turbulent pretensions to

meekness and simplicity in this address?

Again, the versatility and adroitness of _Richard_ is admirably

described in the following ironical answer to Brakenbury:—

_Brakenbury._ I beseech your graces both to pardon me,

His Majesty hath straitly given in charge,

That no man shall have private conference,

Of what degree soever, with your brother.

_Glo._ E’en so, and please your worship, Brakenbury,

You may partake of any thing we say:

We speak not reason, man—we say the King

Is wise and virtuous, and his noble Queen

Well strook in years, fair, and not jealous.

We say that Shore’s wife hath a pretty foot,

A cherry lip, a passing pleasing tongue:

That the Queen’s kindred are made gentle folks.

How say you, Sir? Can you deny all this?

_Brak._ With this, my Lord, myself have nought to do.

_Glo._ What, fellow, nought to do with Mistress Shore?

I tell you, Sir, he that doth nought with her,

Excepting one, were best to do it secretly alone.

_Brak._ What one, my Lord?

_Glo._ Her husband, knave—wouldst thou betray me?

The feigned reconciliation of Gloucester with the Queen’s kinsmen, is

also a master-piece. One of the finest features in the play, and which

serves to shew, as much as any thing, the deep duplicity of _Richard_,

is the unsuspecting security of _Hastings_, at the very time when the

former is plotting his death.

Perhaps the two most beautiful passages in the original, are the

farewell apostrophe of the _Queen_ to the Tower, where her children are

shut up from her, and _Tyrrel’s_ description of their death. We will

finish our quotations with them:—

_Queen._ Stay, yet look back with me, unto the Tower;

Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes,

Whom envy hath immured within your walls;

Rough cradle for such little pretty ones;

Rude, rugged nurse, old sullen playfellow,

For tender princes!

The other passage is the account of their death by _Tyrrel_:—

Dighton and Forrest, whom I did suborn

To do this piece of ruthless butchery,

Albeit they were flesh’d villains, bloody dogs,

Wept like to children in their death’s sad story:

O thus! quoth Dighton, lay the gentle babes;

Thus, thus! quoth Forrest, girdling one another,

Within their innocent alabaster arms;

Their lips were four red roses on a stalk,

And in that summer-beauty kiss’d each other;

A book of prayers on their pillow lay,

Which once, quoth Forrest, almost changed my mind.

But Oh the Devil!—there the villain stopped:

When Dighton thus told on—we smothered

The most replenished sweet work of nature,

That from the prime creation ere she framed.

These are those wonderful bursts of feeling, done to the very height of

nature which our Shakespeare alone could give. We do not insist on the

repetition of these last passages as proper for the stage; we should

indeed be loth to trust them with almost any actor; but we should wish

them to be retained, at least in preference to the fantoccini exhibition

of the young Princes, bandying childish wit with their uncle.

We have taken the present opportunity to offer these remarks on the

necessity of acting the plays of our great Bard, in spirit and

substance, instead of burlesquing them, because we think the stage has

acquired in Mr. Kean an actor capable of doing singular justice to many

of his finest delineations of character.

FINE ARTS—THE LOUVRE

_The Morning Chronicle_] [_March 24, 1814._

‘If Blücher, if the Cossacks, get to Paris,—to Paris, the seat of

Bonaparte’s pride and insolence,—what mercy will they shew to it, or why

should they shew it any mercy? Will they spare the precious works of

art, to decorate the palace of a monster whom they justly detest? Will

they treat the Thuileries more tenderly than the French Officers, only

eight months ago, openly threatened to treat Berlin? Is Paris,

Bonaparte’s Paris, more sacred than Moscow? or are the slaves of the

Corsican more inviolable than the brave and virtuous citizens of

Hamburgh? No, no; the indignant warriors will cry,—

“Away to Heav’n respective Lenity,

And fire-eyed Fury be my conduct now.”

‘There is no other mode by which the Parisians can disarm the vengeance

which now so closely impends over them, than by disclaiming for ever him

whose crimes have been the just cause of that vengeance. Paris under the

white standard, returning to loyalty and virtue, may be spared by a

generous conqueror;—but Paris, identified with Bonaparte, must partake

all the vindictive sentiments which are attached to that hateful name.

[Yet some time ago this writer assured us that if the French people

identified themselves with Bonaparte, they ought not to be separated

from him.]

‘In what momentous times do we live! Perhaps, the famous city of which

we speak may even now be laid in ashes! Perhaps and more welcome be the

omen, it may have returned to its allegiance, and proclaimed its native

Sovereign, and set a price on the head of that wicked rebel who still

dares to call himself the Emperor of France.’—_Times_, March 17.

‘Nay, if you mouth, I’ll rant as well as you!’

It is a pity to spoil this morsel of Asiatic eloquence, so worthy of the

subject and the sentiments; but the evident meaning of it is, that the

French must expect to do penance in sack-cloth and ashes, or consent to

put on the old livery jackets, made up for them by our army-agents long

ago, and which have unfortunately lain on hand ever since. If so, they

must needs be ‘pigeon-liver’d, and lack gall.’ Yet we hardly know what

to say to the chivalrous and classical politicians of the Stock

Exchange. They are not driven to the extremity of Gothic rage by the

ranking inveteracy, and old unsatisfied grudge of the Pitt-school. Yet

surely no pitiable enthusiast that

‘Scrawls

With desperate charcoal on his darken’d walls,’

can be more incorrigible to reason. They are always setting out on their

way to Paris from Moscow, while the Pitt-school studiously return to

join Lord Hawkesbury in the year 1793, or they think the whole ceremony

incomplete! The treaty of Pilnitz does not stand between our modern

popular incendiaries and their just revenge! They live only in ‘this

present ignorant time!’ They see the white standard of the Bourbons

waving over the walls of Paris, unspotted with the blood of millions of

Frenchmen! They do not seem ever to have known, or (with our

poet-laureat) they forget, that the same standard to which our milky

politicians advise the French people, sick of destruction, and panting

for freedom, to fly for deliverance and repose, is that very standard,

which, for twenty years, hovering round them, now seen like a cloudy

speck in the distance—now spreading out its drooping lilies wide, has

been the cause of that destruction—has robbed them at once of liberty

and of repose!

Moscow is, however, the watch-word of the renegados of _The Times_. It

seems to them just that Paris should be sacrificed to revenge the

setting fire to Moscow by the Russians, and that the monuments of art in

the Louvre ought to be destroyed because they are Bonaparte’s. No; they

are ours as well as his;—they belong to the human race; he cannot

monopolize all genius and all art. But these madmen would, if they

could, blot the Sun out of heaven, because it shines upon France. They

verify the old proverb, ‘Tell me your company, and I’ll tell you your

manners!’ They, no more than their friends the Cossacks, can perceive

any difference between the Kremlin and the Louvre. There is at least one

difference, that the one may be built up again, and the other cannot.

For there, in the Louvre, in Bonaparte’s Louvre, are the precious

monuments of art—the sacred pledges which human genius has given to time

and nature;—there ‘stands the statue that enchants the world;’ there is

the _Apollo_, the _Laocoon_, the _Dying Gladiator_, the _Head of the

Antinous_, _Diana with her Fawn_, and all the glories of the antique

world;—

‘There is old Proteus coming from the sea,

And wreathed Triton blows his winding horn.’

There, too, are the two _St. Jeromes_, Correggio’s and Dominichino’s;

there is Raphael’s _Transfiguration_, the _St. Mark_ of Tintoret, Paul

Veronese’s _Marriage of Cana_, the _Deluge_ of Nicholas Poussin, and

Titian’s _St. Peter Martyr_;—all these, and more than these, of which

the world is scarce worthy. Yet all these amount to nothing in the eyes

of those virtuosos the Cossacks, and their fellow-students of _The

Times_! ‘What’s Hecuba to them, or they to Hecuba?’ But we must be

allowed to see with our own eyes, and to have certain feelings of our

own. We will not be brayed by these quacks _like fools in a mortar_. We

too, as Mr. Burke expresses it, have ‘real feelings of flesh and blood

beating in our bosoms.’ ‘We look up with awe to Kings; with affection to

parliaments; with duty to magistrates; with reverence to priests; and

with respect to nobility.’ But all this is a machine that goes on of

itself, and may be repaired if out of order. We bow willingly to Lords

and Commoners, though we know that ‘breath can make them as a breath has

made.’ Blücher, Wittgenstein, Winzingerode, and Ktzichigoff, are true

heroes; their names become the mouth well, and rouse the ear as the

sound of a trumpet; but they are the heroes of a day, and all that they

have done might be as well done by others to-morrow. But here it is:

once destroy the great monuments of art, and they cannot be replaced.

Those mighty geniuses, who have left their works behind them an

inheritance to mankind, live but once to do honour to themselves and

their nature. ‘But once put out their light, and there is no Promethean

heat that can their light relumine.’ Nor ought it ever to be re-kindled,

to be extinguished a second time by the harpies of the human race. What

have ‘the worshippers of cats and onions’ to do with those triumphs of

human genius, which give the eternal lie to their creed? We would

therefore recommend these accomplished pioneers of civilisation and

social order, after they have done their work at the Louvre, to follow

the river-side, and they will come to a bare inclosure, surrounded by

four low walls. It is the place where the Bastille stood: let them rear

that, and all will be well. And then some whiffling poet who celebrated

the fall of that monument of mild paternal sway—that sacred ark of the

confidence of Kings—that strong bulwark of ‘time-hallowed laws,’ and

precious relic of ‘the good old times,’ in an ode, may hail its

restoration in a sonnet!

WILSON’S LANDSCAPES, AT THE BRITISH INSTITUTION

_The Champion._] [_July 17, 1814._

The landscapes of this celebrated artist may be divided into three

classes;—his Italian landscapes, or imitations of the manner of Claude,

his copies of English scenery, and his historical compositions.

The first of these are, in our opinion, by much the best; and of the

pictures of this class in the present collection, we should, without any

hesitation, give the preference to the _Apollo and the Seasons_, and to

the _Phaeton_. The figures are of course out of the question—(Wilson’s

figures are as uncouth and slovenly as Claude’s are insipid and

finical)—but the landscape in both pictures is delightful. In looking at

them we breath the very air which the scene inspires, and feel the

genius of the place present to us. In the first, there is all the cool

freshness of a misty spring morning: the sky, the water, the dim horizon

all convey the same feeling. The fine grey tone, and varying outline of

the hills, the graceful form of the retiring lake, broken still more by

the hazy shadows of the objects that repose on its bosom; the light

trees that expand their branches in the air, and the dark stone figure

and mouldering temple, that contrast strongly with the broad clear light

of the rising day, give a charm, a truth, a force and harmony to this

landscape, which produce the greater pleasure the longer it is dwelt

on.—The distribution of light and shade resembles the effect of light on

a globe.

The _Phaeton_ has the dazzling fervid appearance of an autumnal evening;

the golden radiance streams in solid masses from behind the flickering

clouds; every object is baked in the sun;—the brown foreground, the

thick foliage of the trees, the streams shrunk and stealing along behind

the dark high banks, combine to produce that richness, and

characteristic propriety of effect, which is to be found only in nature,

or in art derived from the study and imitation of nature. The glowing

splendour of this landscape reminds us of the saying of Wilson, that in

painting such subjects, he endeavoured to give the effect of insects

dancing in the evening sun. His eye seemed formed to drink in the light.

These two pictures, as they have the greatest general effect, are also

more carefully finished in the particular details than the other

pictures in the collection. This circumstance may be worth the attention

of those who are apt to think that strength and slovenliness are the

same thing.

_Cicero at his Villa_ is a clear and beautiful representation of nature.

The sky is admirable for its pure azure tone. Among the less finished

productions of Wilson’s pencil, which display his great knowledge of

perspective, are _A Landscape with figures bathing_, in which the

figures are wonderfully detached from the sea beyond; and _A View in

Italy_, with a lake and a little boat, which appear at an immeasurable

distance below:—the boat is diminished to

‘A buoy almost too small for sight.’

_A View of Ancona_; _Adrian’s Villa at Rome_; a small blue greenish

landscape; _The Lake of Neimi_; a small, richly-coloured landscape of

the banks of a river; and a landscape containing some light and elegant

groups of trees, are masterly and interesting sketches. _A View on the

Tiber_, near Rome, a dark landscape which lies finely open to the sky;

and _A View of Rome_, are successful imitations of N. Poussin. _A View

of Sion House_, which is hung almost out of sight, is remarkable for the

clearness of the perspective, particularly in the distant windings of

the River Thames, and still more so for the parched and droughty

appearance of the whole scene. The air is adust, the grass burned up and

withered: and it seems as if some figures, reposing on the level, smooth

shaven lawn on the river’s side, would be annoyed by the parching heat

of the ground. We consider this landscape, which is an old favourite, as

one of the most striking proofs of Wilson’s genius, as it conveys not

only the image, but the feeling of nature, and excites a new interest

unborrowed from the eye, like the fine glow of a summer’s day. There is

a sketch of the same subject, called _A View on the Thames_.

_A View near Llangollen, North Wales_; _Oakhampton Castle, Devonshire_;

and _The Bridge at Llangollen_, are the principal of Wilson’s English

landscapes. They want almost every thing that ought to recommend them.

The subjects are not fit for the landscape-painter, and there is nothing

in the execution to redeem them. Ill-shaped mountains, or great heaps of

earth, trees that grow against them without character or elegance,

motionless water-falls, a want of relief, of transparency, and

distance,—without the imposing grandeur of real magnitude (which it is

either not within the province of the art to give, or which is certainly

not given here), are the chief features and defects of these

pictures.—The same general objections apply to _Solitude_, and to one or

two pictures near it, which are masses of common-place confusion. In

near scenes, the effect must depend almost entirely on the difference in

the execution, and the details: for the difference of colour alone is

not sufficient to give relief to objects placed at a small distance from

the eye. But in Wilson there are commonly no details; all is loose and

general; and this very circumstance, which assisted him in giving the

massy contrasts of light and shade, deprived his pencil of all force and

precision within a limited space. In general, air is necessary to the

landscape-painter: and for this reason, the lakes of Cumberland and

Westmoreland afford few subjects for landscape-painting. However

stupendous the scenery of that country is, and however powerful and

lasting the impression which it must always make on the imagination, yet

the effect is not produced merely through the eye of the spectator, but

arises chiefly from collateral and associated feelings. There is the

knowledge of the distance from which we have seen the objects, in the

midst of which we are now placed,—the slow, improgressive motion which

we make in traversing them,—the abrupt precipice,—the torrent’s

roar,—the dizzy rapture and boundless expanse of the prospect from the

highest mountains,—the difficulty of their ascent,—their loneliness, and

silence;—in short, there is a constant sense and superstitious awe of

the collective power of matter, of the gigantic and eternal forms of

nature, on which from the beginning of time the hand of man has made no

impression, and which by the lofty reflections they excite in him, give

a sort of intellectual sublimity even to his sense of physical weakness.

But there is little in all these circumstances that can be translated

into the picturesque, which depends not on the objects themselves, so

much as on the symmetry and relation of these objects to one another. In

a picture a mountain shrinks to a molehill, and the lake that expands

its broad bosom to the sky, seems hardly big enough to launch a fleet of

cockle-shells.

Wilson’s historical landscapes, the two _Niobes_, _Celadon and Amelia_,

_Meleager and Atalanta_, do not, in our opinion, deserve the name; that

is, they do not excite feelings corresponding with the scene and story

represented. They neither display true taste nor fine imagination; but

are affected and violent exaggerations of clumsy, common nature. They

are all made up of the same mechanical materials, an overhanging rock,

bare shattered trees, black rolling clouds, and forked lightning. The

scene of _Celadon and Amelia_, though it may be proper for a

thunder-storm, is not a place for lovers to walk in. The _Meleager and

Atalanta_ is remarkable for nothing but a castle at a distance, very

much ‘resembling a goose-pye.’ The figures in the two other pictures are

not like the children of _Niobe_, punished by the Gods, but like a

groupe of rustics, crouching from a hail-storm. In one of these,

however, there is a fine break in the sky worthy of the subject. We

agree with Sir J. Reynolds, that Wilson’s mind was not, like N.

Poussin’s, sufficiently imbued with the knowledge of antiquity to

transport the imagination two thousand years back, to give natural

objects a sympathy with preternatural events, and to inform rocks, and

trees, and mountains with the presence of a God.[13]

The writer of the Preface to the Catalogue of the British Gallery,

says—‘Few artists have excelled Wilson in the tint of air, perhaps the

most difficult point of attainment for the landscape-painter: every

object in his pictures keeps its place, because each is seen through its

proper medium. _This excellence alone_ gives a charm to his pencil, and

by judicious application may be turned to the advantage of the British

artist.’—This praise is equivocal: if it be meant that ‘the tint of air’

is the only excellence of Wilson’s landscapes, the observation is not

true. He had also great truth, harmony, and richness of local colouring:

he had a fine feeling of the proportions and conduct of light and shade;

and, in general, an eye for graceful form, as far as regards the bold

and varying outlines of indefinite objects—as may be seen in his

foregrounds, hills, etc.—where the mind is left to chuse according to an

abstract principle, as it is filled or affected agreeably by certain

combinations,—and is not tied down to an imitation of characteristic and

articulate forms. In his figures, trees, cattle, buildings and in every

thing which has a determinate and regular form, Wilson’s pencil was not

only deficient in accuracy of outline, but even in perspective and

actual relief. His trees, in particular, seem pasted on the canvas, like

botanical specimens.

We shall close these remarks with observing, that we cannot subscribe to

the opinion of those who assert that Wilson was superior to Claude as a

man of genius: nor can we discern any other grounds for this opinion,

than those which lead to the general conclusion, that the more slovenly

the performance, the finer the picture; and that that which is imperfect

is superior to that which is perfect. It might as well be said, that a

sign-painting is better than the reflection of a landscape in a mirror;

and the only objection that can be made in the latter case cannot be

made to the landscapes of Claude, for in them the Graces themselves

have, with their own hands, assisted in disposing and selecting every

object.—Is the general effect in his pictures injured by the details? Is

the truth inconsistent with the beauty of the imitation? Are the scope

and harmony of the whole destroyed by the exquisite delicacy of every

part? Does the perpetual profusion of objects and scenery, all perfect

in themselves, interfere with the simple grandeur, and immense extent of

the whole? Does the precision with which a plant is marked in the

foreground, take away from the air-drawn distinctions of the blue,

glimmering distant horizon? Is there any want of that endless airy

space, where the eye wanders at liberty under the open sky, explores

distant objects, and returns back as from a delightful journey? There is

no comparison between him and Wilson. The landscapes of Claude have all

that is exquisite and refined in art and nature. Every thing is moulded

into grace and harmony; and at the touch of his pencil, shepherds with

their flocks, temples and groves, and winding glades, and scattered

hamlets, rise up in never-ending succession, under the azure sky, and

the resplendent sun, ‘while universal Pan,

‘Knit with the Graces, and the hours in dance

Leads on the eternal spring.’—

There is a fine apostrophe in a sonnet of Michael Angelo’s to the

earliest Poet of Italy:

‘Fain would I to be what our Dante was,

Forego the happiest fortunes of mankind;’

What landscape-painter does not feel this of Claude![14]

ON GAINSBOROUGH’S PICTURES

_The Champion._] [_July 31, 1814._

There is an anecdote connected with the reputation of Gainsborough’s

Pictures, which rests on pretty good authority. Sir Joshua Reynolds, at

one of the Academy dinners, speaking of Gainsborough, said to a friend,

‘He is undoubtedly the best English landscape-painter.’ ‘No,’ said

Wilson, who overheard the conversation, ‘he’s not the best English

landscape-painter, but he is the best portrait-painter in England.’ They

were certainly both wrong; but the story is creditable to the variety of

Gainsborough’s talents.

Of his portraits, in the present collection at the British Gallery, the

only fine one is _A Portrait of a Youth_. This picture is from Lord

Grosvenor’s collection, where it used to look remarkably well, and has

been sometimes mistaken for a Vandyke. There is a spirited glow of youth

about the face, and the attitude is striking and elegant. The drapery of

blue satin is admirably painted. The _Portrait of Garrick_ is

interesting as a piece of biography. He looks much more like a gentleman

than in Reynolds’s tragi-comic representation of him.—There is a

considerable lightness and intelligence in the expression of the face,

and a piercing vivacity about the eyes, to which the attention is

immediately directed. Gainsborough’s own portrait, which has, however,

much truth and character, and makes a fine print, seems to have been

painted with the handle of his brush. There is a portrait of _The Prince

Regent leading a horse_, in which it must be confessed the man has the

advantage of the animal.