expound received metaphysics, have comprised First Principles in their course of philosophy; but as I have barely met with any of their writings, I must confess such an ignorance of them, as not even to know how far I am either adopting, or evading their phraseology, in discussing the same subjects. Mine, however, cannot be wrong, since the term “first principles,” that I have chosen, is one of familiar popular use; so that were this mode of speech, as indeed it is, peculiarly liable to ambiguity, it would, for that very reason, be preferable to any other, till such time as that ambiguity should have been explained, and the wrong thinking, of which it might have been the source, exposed and obviated. Not till this had been done would it be time to inquire whether the current metaphysics had invented any intrinsically better ways of speaking on these topics, for though the veriest tyro in such investigations would be justified in objecting to some of its technicalities, such as the invention of the word free-will, for instance, for the same reason that a beginner in zoology might object, were such an attempt ever made, to the introduction of the word sphynx or griffin into that branch of inquiry, there can be no doubt that other of its speculations are more happily conceived. Hence I suppose it would be a decided mistake to imagine, for example, that no trouve whatever is to be elicited from the obscurities of Kant, but on the other hand, one must as much take care to entertain sober conjectures of the possible value of such unsunned treasures, as to keep in mind that quackery may be not unqualified with some merit, and I might surmise that it was perhaps in virtue of his fabulous expectations in this direction, that Coleridge could not execute his long-meditated plan of elucidating that writer; or rather, perhaps—to speak more curtly—a spirit more differing from that which compounded the amalgam, was necessary to resolve and detect it.

According to this estimate of the value of our achieved studies, it would be expectable, in regard to my present topic, that almost all the materials for right conclusions on it must be extant somewhere or other in our books, no great amount of ability being required to turn them to proper account: an easily suppliable desideratum being thus left unsupplied, the public indifference manifested thereby would seem to bear the ascription of our unsatisfactory metaphysics to the fault, however apportioned between the many and the few, not of the intellect, but of the reason.

Indeed, it is held as a pretty general rule, that where there is want of reform, there is want of reason; and Bacon, by implication, thought the rule here applicable, when, in defending his “new philosophy” from the charge of arrogance, he apologised by saying that a “cripple in the right road would make better progress than a racehorse in the wrong.” That is, he claimed for himself, as he was bound logically to do, the plain good sense of directing his supposably humble faculties with an obvious regard to the end he proposed and professed, and he was ready to concede to his competitors all kinds of superiority but this.

The same simplicity characterises the reforming animus of the other great patriarch of “the new philosophy,” in its sister branch. The still debated point between the school of Locke and the old philosophy was, and is, of such a form as may be figured by the following hypothetical, and it may be, well-founded statement. Locke seems to have battled mainly for the principle that ideas that every one allows to be inferences, should be acknowledged by philosophy to be such, while the adherents of the old ideas maintained, in opposition to him, that ideas that every one allows to be inferences, should not be acknowledged by philosophy to be such. Or, in other words, Locke aimed to realise a certain first principle of reason, which I shall have hereafter to consider, which stands thus:—“That which it is,” while his opponents withstood this innovating pretension, finding it fatal to their doctrine. If the reader is somewhat startled at the statement I have just made, I will remind him that it amounts to nothing more than saying that in the contest between the new and the old philosophy, reason is entirely and absolutely on the side of the former, an assertion which, of course, I must both think admits of being substantiated, and must take myself, in some degree, to be able to aid in its being so.

The existing quarrel between the two philosophies might, perhaps, be personified through the medium of a principal champion on each side. For the new ideas I could only choose Locke, since he is admitted to have had no equally eminent successor; for the old I would choose M. Cousin, both on account of his superior merit and popularity, and also of his having made Locke the subject of some elaborate strictures that I happen to have read. On these, when they come again to hand, I should perhaps have something to remark; meanwhile I must content myself with addressing myself to one of them in the following manner:—

In antiquity and the middle ages, the schoolmaster and the philosopher were one and the same individual. The new philosophy was the first to separate these two departments; perceiving that the communication of truth is a distinct office from its investigation, and that that difference of office in each case necessitates a corresponding difference in the public, that is the proper object of its exercise. Since, moreover, society may be discriminated into two sorts of mind, admitting of being pictured as the childish and the adults, it is evident that the instructor must find his audience more especially in the former, while the investigator of truth must appeal exclusively to the latter. This he must needs do, to whichever of the sciences he ministers; and not only so, but he must more particularly address himself to a small and select portion of this itself selecter class, constitute them the witnesses and judges of his proceedings, and perceive that both his success in philosophy and the acknowledgment of it can only be founded first and foremost on their approbation. As even in jockeyism and prize-fighting, there are “the knowing ones,” similar referees are, by the nature of things, required for the flourishing estate of any science; and evidently in proportion as they might be incompetent to such an office, false or imperfect science must be the result.

Locke, acting on this instinctive view, communicated to the public certain observations he had made in mental philosophy, and entitled his work, An Essay on the Human Understanding. He properly called it an essay, because a person who simply aims to investigate truth, undertakes to do his best in the way of trial, endeavor, and experiment, in such sort as to make the word essay appropriate to what he does. The word moreover implies that the thing done, though it is the writer’s best, is liable to be incomplete, comparatively imperfect, and, indeed, in the more difficult questions of philosophy, as well as in the less advanced stages of philosophising, is sure to be so. Locke accordingly, having had his attention struck with certain phenomena of the human mind, told the public just what he had observed, and nothing else. Among the observations that he thus imparted, was the process through which the mind seems to go in arriving at the sum of its ideas, and especially the points from which it seems to start in this process.

M. Cousin, having apparently no conception of a way of acting so proper to legitimate inquiry, and having himself written a Course of Philosophy, evidently thinks Locke ought to have done the same; for he says that Locke is erroneous in the method of his philosophy, that he begins at the wrong end, that instead of having told us as he has how the ideas arise in the mind, he ought to have told us what the ideas are, instead of describing their origin to have described their actuality, to have given a list of the faculties of the mind, and so on. Which is just the same thing as saying that a traveller who publishes his explorations in America, ought instead to have gone to China.

I shall have to make some objections to Locke, but they will be of a nature exactly contrary to those of which he is usually made the subject. Instead of accusing his principles I shall have to impute to him the not sufficiently carrying them out; a fault due to his position as an early reformer, and perfectly consistent with his high character as such.

I have the more reason to note this distinction between M. Cousin’s department and the function exercised by Locke, because I am forced myself to take the benefit of it. Want of erudition would form very vulnerable points, were I to be judged by the former standard. In the little I have yet put forth on the subject of First Principles, I already find two or three errors of that sort, which a greater amount of reading would no doubt have enabled me to escape. My present letter may close with some correction of one of these.

Preliminary, I will venture to call “That which is is,” a first principle of reason, and “Two and two make four,” one of its derivatives, leaving this topic for future explanation, and then proceed thus:—When in my last letter I represented first principles as bounding the horizon of human knowledge, I left it to be inferred that both the kinds of “first principles” I had mentioned were thus describable in common. I find, however, that this metaphysical character belongs exclusively to first principles of sensuous experience, and no more belongs to first principles of reason than to first principles of grammar, or to first principles of rhetoric. That is, first principles of reason are merely the result of one of those analytical inquiries in which we arrive at something absolutely simple, and must there stop, just as in the science of numbers we may thus arrive at unity.

Having long ago defined First Principles of sensuous experience, I find there is a difficulty attached to the other kind of first principles derived from the various use of the word reason—which I will say betrayed me into a wrong inference in the concluding paragraph of my last letter.

Locke, in the 17th chapter of his fourth book, confesses that this word, in the proper use of the English language, is liable to bear several senses. Due discrimination in such a case, and a cautious avoidance of the dangers to which philosophy is exposed, and has so amply incurred, from this kind of source might, above all, have been, expected from Locke, since he was the first who inculcated it, and is generally remarkable for the observance of his own precepts in this matter. Hence the charge I have now got to bring against him is a little surprising.

Indeed, it might be asserted that his position and circumstances do not seem very readily to bear the entire responsibility of some of his proceedings. Perhaps he might be characterised as a writer of somewhat humorous idiosyncracy in respect to tendency to fixed ideas. His lapses, indeed, are not many, but they are highly significant, as I shall have occasion in more than one instance to show, and among these must evidently be reckoned that I am now going to notice, since it imports the wrong definition of a word of such cardinal meaning.

In defining the word reason, in its proper and specific sense wherein it is used to denote a certain well-known quality of the human mind—that is, as approvedly ascertained and appreciated under this name, as are certain weights and measures under those of pound, gallon, or mile, he assigns a meaning to it that comes short of the proportions thus justly prefigured as belonging to it. He confounds reason with reasoning—that is, he emerges the entire faculty or modus operandi, to which we give the name of reason, in that partial exercise of its function to which we give the name of reasoning. He says that, in matters of certainty, such as the proof of any of Euclid’s theorems, the acts by which the mind ascertains the fit coherence of the several links in the chain of reasoning are acts of reason. Granted.

Also, that in weighing probabilities, a similar coherence is similarly verified by reason. Granted—with liberty of comment that these arts of reason, in either of the two cases have, by the approved practice of language, received the name of reasoning.

But he further signifies—that is, he does not expressly affirm, but, with equivalent certification, he implicitly asserts, and inferentially states that, in examining such a proposition as the following:—“What is, is” (an examination to which confessedly no reasoning is attached), the act by which the mind assents to the truth of this statement is not to be described as an act of reason. He adopts a different phraseology, and calls it intuition.

Observe, my objection is not that he invests the idea with this new name, but that he disparages its old one. I do not object to your calling a spade a shovel, under a certain view of its use, but it remains still necessary that you should admit that a spade is, in the full sense of the word, a spade.

Indeed, I will incidentally remark that I suspect the word “intuition” has been a very good addition to our vocabulary, and I suppose its proper import might be represented as follows:—Reason has two modes of his exercise, the one is called reasoning, and the other intuition. Intuition is the decision of reason on one single point; reasoning—a word proper to demonstrative truth—seems to be nothing more than intuition looking not merely at one point, but at several points successively. So that intuition and reasoning would constitute the self-same function of reason, and the difference in their meanings would be solely owing to the difference in the circumstances under which that function is exercised.

Observe, that I am here only venturing to speculate, and am now returning from that digression.

Whether or not Locke is herein psychologically consistent with himself; whether, indeed, his real theory is not that which I have just conjecturally intimated, is another question, which I shall defer to a future occasion; but whether or not he herein opposes the ordinary, prevailing, and inveterate use of language, which is what I am charging him with doing, and whether or not he has justifiable ground for this innovation which I am denying that he has, are points that must be tried by the ordeal of these three considerations. How are we accustomed to speak? How are we accustomed to write? and what sort of a call for changing our customs in either of these particulars is that which constitutes a genuine call to do so?

In regard to the first of these tests, the literature of all sects and parties has been accustomed to assert that, both in matters of science and of worldly business, reason is the judge of all truth whatever, without exception.

Locke, on the other hand, informs us that reason is the judge of demonstrative truth, of logical truth, of casuistical truth, and of lawyers’ truth, and of these kinds of truth alone, but is not the judge of intuitive or self-evident truth. Our writers would tell us that to deny “what is, is” to be a true statement, would be an offence against reason; but we learn from Locke that reason has no cognisance in this matter, but intuition only has, and consequently that the wrong committed would not be against reason, but against intuition.

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