160 satisfaction, the dangers which arise to fish and men from too large liberty, and the various frightful accidents of storm and flood. These things, to the non-metaphysical reader, may serve as an allegory. Metaphysics, according to our notion, is the science that teaches man the length of his tether. Philosophywe use the word with Professor Ferrier and the Germans-is that system of reasoned first truths that teaches the delicate - plumed human soul where and how far it can flap its wings with comfort and prosperity. It teaches a man that he may not fly to the moon; that he cannot know what is not knowable; that he cannot walk before his own nose, or leap out of his own skin. In a word, it is the strict, systematic, scientific statement of the ultimate circumambient and inherent necessities of our nature. Many people have doubted whether such a science be possible; the majority certainly do not see the use of it, even if it were possible; and what is worst of all, very many of those who have attempted to establish it, instead of bringing out any clear and intelligible result, have only succeeded, like the poor fish whom we have symbolised, in raising a commotion among beds of otherwise quiescent mud, and blinding their own eyes with the results of their own impertinent enterprise. But, despite of all such unfortunate issues, man is a restless creature, and must philosophise.* Eyes may be blinded and noses may be broken, but the coast of our limited human thought must be surveyed, and the soundings of our little ocean registered. If it be vain to hope to know everything, it were cowardly to try to know nothing. Wherever there is thought and aspiration, there must be Most metaphysics of some kind. men are content to carry it about terious life-tree, and see how it grows; mailed, heavy-armed soldiers of spe- To those extremely practical and * Πάντες ἄνθρωποι τοῦ ἐιδέναι ὀρέγονται φύσει—the first words of Aristotle's Metaphysics -a commonplace enough, no doubt; but, common as it is, a sufficient statement of the ground why, in all ages, when there is a full and free development of mind, men, in some shape or other-poetry, perhaps, or theology-must at least attempt metaphysics. anything can be accurately characterised. Now, metaphysical investigation requires no plea of utility any more than life, of which, in fact, it is but one among many forms. As the life of a bird consists principally in flying and singing, of a toad in creeping, and of a weasel in running after rats, and an ichneumon in breaking crocodiles' eggs, so the life of certain persons called metaphysicians consists in hunting after first principles; and no person is entitled to question the use of this particular species of activity, any more than to inquire why all foxes should not be bears, or all bears should not be foxes. The good people of Miletus, as Aristotle tells us in the first book of the Politics, used to be very hard on Thales, the grave old water-philosopher, for his strange habits of star-gazing when sensible people were asleep; in astronomy and meteorology they could see no use: but when on a certain occasion, by help of curious meteorological observations, the philosopher had foretold the state of the weather and the prospects of the olive crop-and not only so, but also filled his own pockets and outwitted all the merchants in Ionia by getting the command of the olive market then they doubted no longer the utility of philosophy, and the solid terrestrial value of gazing at the far firmament. But Thales did not for that reason become a merchant. He happened to make money by his meteorology on that occasion; but money was not the thing he cared for-he therefore remained a philosopher as before, thinking nothing of this grand exhibition of the utility of his speculations. He thought that knowledge, and the exercise of our highest faculties, was in itself, and with no ulterior purpose, as worthy an object to be lived for-or say rather as proper a function of living-as gathering olives from green trees, squeezing oil out of them, and exchanging that oil for so many pieces of yellow gold. Nothing indeed could more distinctly show the necessity of metaphysics, than that certain people will put the question what is the use of it. The very putting of this question shows that the persons who put it have formed to themselves no distinct idea of what an end or object is as distinguished from a means, a work as dis tinguished from a tool; are perhaps living altogether at random, or in the daily habit of mistaking a material instrument for a moral purpose, a mere machinery for a manufacture. For if the first result of metaphysical investigation be, as we have just indicated, a merely negative one, to ascertain beyond what limits the human mind cannot go, there comes out also, as the necessary correlative of this, the positive result of how far the human mind can go and ought to go. It is a pettish humour that leads the baffled speculator altogether to despise what appears a merely negative result; no result of a large and well-conducted inquiry is, or can be, merely negative. If you find your north-west passage blocked up with eternal ice, you have at all events sailed over some large space of salt water that is not blocked with ice; you have made your observations on white and red snow, on bears and porpoises, on the northern lights, and on the magnetic pole of the earth. You have, moreover, spurred the enterprise and steeled the hardihood of our British navigators. Though baffled in what you set up as your main end, you have gratified your curiosity in a thousand other points equally interesting-in a large human view, perhaps more so. Your negative result, how far soever beneath the altitude of your anticipation, is certainly a great way above the level of nothing. Be thankful for that. It is amusing among men to observe how many persons in this country, fond of proclaiming their aversion to metaphysics, are found daily in their reasonings to proceed on principles of which metaphysical science supplies the only exact and satisfactory foundation. A painter, for instance, if he be an honest devotee of his art, and no hireling, is dissatisfied when you attempt to break off from the discussion of the merits of some famous work of art, by quoting the vulgar maxim De gustibus non est disputandum, and publicly declaring your belief in Lord Jeffrey's famous heresy, that beauty is a mere matter of association, and has no fixed principles of certitude. He knows by experience, or at least he feels, and has spent his life in the practical carrying out of the contrary. He believes that there are eternal principles of beauty, recognised equally by Praxiteles and Raphael, subject to no innovation, and imperatively commanding assent from every thinker that knows what art means. The belief in these principles, as indeed of all first principles, is essentially metaphysical, can be justified by no science but that which is above and beyond anything that mere external nature and sensuous feeling can witness to-and yet your painter hates metaphysics! So our Protestant theologians, who are eager to build the exquisite architecture of their creeds on "the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible," are continually starting from a foundation which owes any stability it can possibly receive, not to the Bible, but to that substructure of ineradicable convictions and instincts in the mind of man, which it is the business of metaphysics to muster and to marshal. And yet your theologian suspects philosophy! It is in vain, indeed, that the far-spreading, fairblossoming, rich-fruited branches of the great tree of our humanity strive to shake themselves free from the deep earth imbedded root, which, though it lives in darkness, is the great conductor of those vital juices, without which neither branches, nor blossoms, nor fruits can exist. No man is bound to cultivate, but as little is he entitled to despise, metaphysics. If you have no time or no inclination to make a reasoned system of the principles and motives on which you are daily acting, and as a man cannot but act, you have no right to quarrel with those who do so. Such are the general views that strike us with regard to the nature and objects of metaphysical science, and its right to maintain that position which it has always claimed among the liberal arts. We shall now see how Professor Ferrier states his own case. "A system of philosophy is bound by two main requisitions, it ought to be true, and it ought to be reasoned. If a system of philosophy is not true, it will scarcely be convincing; and if it is not reasoned, a man will be as little satisfied with it as a hungry person would be by having his meat served up to him raw. Philosophy, therefore, in its ideal perfection, is a body of reasoned truth. "Of these obligations, the latter is the more stringent: it is more proper that philosophy should be reasoned, than that it should be true; because, while truth may perhaps be unattainable by man, to reason is certainly his province, and within his power. In a case where two objects have to be overtaken, it is more incumbent on us to compass the one to which our faculties are certainly competent, than the other, to which they are perhaps inadequate. "This consideration determines the value of a system of philosophy. A system is of the highest value only when it embraces both these requisitions-that is, when it is both true and reasoned. But a system which is reasoned without being true, is always of higher value than a system which is true without being reasoned. "The latter kind of system is of no value; because philosophy is "the attainment of truth by the way of reason." That is its definition. A system, therefore, which reaches the truth, but not by the way of reason, is not philosophy at all; and has, therefore, no scientific worth. The best that could be said of it would be, that it was better than a system which was neither true nor reasoned. "Again, an unreasoned philosophy, even though true, carries no guarantee of its truth. It may be true, but it cannot be certain; because all certainty depends on rigorous evidence-on strict demonstrative proof. Therefore no certainty can attach to tho conclusions of an unreasoned philosophy. 66 Further, the truths of science, in so far as science is a means of intellectual culture, are of no importance in themselves, or considered apart from each other. It is only the study and apprehension of their vital and organic connection which is valuable in an educational point of view. But an unreasoned body of philosophy, however true and formal it may be, has no living and essential interdependency of parts on parts; and is, therefore, useless as a discipline of the mind, and valueless for purposes of tuition. "On the other hand, a system which is reasoned, but not true, has always some value. It creates reason by exercising it. It is employing the proper means to reach truth, although it may This is Aristotle's well-known definition, in Metaphysics, i. 2:-" "Eziothμn täv πρώτων αρχῶν καὶ αιτιῶν θεωρητική fail to reach it. Even though its parts may not be true, yet if each of them be a step leading to the final catastrophe-a link in an unbroken chain on which the ultimate disclosure hinges-and if each of the parts be introduced merely because it is such a step or link,-in that case it is conceived that the system is not without its use, as affording an invigorating employment to the reasoning powers, and that general satisfaction to the mind which the successful extrication of a plot, whether in science or in romance, never fails to communicate. "Such a system, although it falls short of the definition of philosophy just given, comes nearer to it than the other; because to reach truth, but not by the way of reason, is to violate the definition in its very essence; whereas to miss truth, but by the way of reason, is to comply with the fundamental circumstance If there are other which it prescribes. ways of reaching truth than the road of reason, a system which enters on any of these other paths, whatever else it may be, it is not a system of philosophy in the proper sense of the word." This looks modest enough; but the Professor is by no means destitute of that high confidence in his own system, without which no man will attempt so arduous a work as a reasoned theory of Knowing and Being." Indeed, through the whole body of the work, he may well be charged rather with an over-confidence in his own footing on ground so slippery, than with a deficiency in that decision which is necessary for the pronunciation of a distinct dogma. He tells you, loudly, that he considers himself to have made a great speculative discovery that no man ever made before, unless it were Plato, perhaps, and Bishop Berkeley, and Spinoza; but these three, great as they were, only saw through a glass darkly, whereas Professor Ferrier looks on absolute knowing and being in the face, and, like Diomede, sees clearly all the gods in the battle, because Pallas Athena has blown from his eyes the mist that obscured the vision of all previous champions. This will, no doubt, be an offence to many; and there is a whole army of keen Hamiltonians in this city who will not willingly be reputed blind: but, for our own part, we have a very kindly feeling to any man who is mounted on a hobby, especially a metaphysical hobby; and when he rides so valiantly, and so gracefully too, as Professor Ferrier unquestionably does, instead of curling the critical brow, we are in- "The unreasoned and generally unsatisfactory state of philosophy is to be explained by the circumstance, that no inquirer has ever yet got to the beginning; and this, again, is to be accounted for by a fact for which no man is answer constitution of things-the circumstance, able, but which is inherent in the very namely, that things which are first in the order of nature are last in the order of knowledge. This consideration, while it frees all human beings from any degree of blame, serves to explain why the rudiments of philosophy should still be to seek, and why speculation should have exhibited so many elaborate, although unreasoned and ungrounded, productions, while its very alphabet was in arrear. This view may be the better of some illustration. "First principles of every kind have their influence, and indeed operate largely and powerfully, long before they come to the surface of human thought and are articulately expounded. This is more particularly exemplified in the case of language. The principles of grammar lie at the root of all languages, and preside over their formation. But these principles do their work in the dark. No man's intellect traces their secret operation, while the language is being moulded by their control. Yet the mind of every man, who uses the language with propriety and effect, is imbued with these principles, although he has no knowledge of their existence. Their practice and their influence are felt long before their presence and their existence are perceived. The operative agencies of language are hidden; its growth is imperceptible. 'Crescit occulto, velut arbor, ævo.' Like a tree, unobserved through the solitudes of a thousand years, up grows the mighty stem, and the mighty branches of a magnificent speech. No man saw the seed planted-no eye noticed the infant sprouts no mortal hand watered the nursling of the grove-no register was kept of the gradual widening of its girth, or of the growing circumference of its shade-till, the deciduous dialects of surrounding barbarians dying out, the unexpected bole stands forth in all its magnitude, carrying aloft in its foliage the poetry, the history, and the philosophy of a heroic people, and dropping for ever over the whole civilised world the fruits of Grecian literature and art. "It is always very late in the day before the seminal principles of speech are detected and explained. Indeed, the language which owed to them both birth and growth may have ceased to be a living tongue before these, the regulating elements of its formation, come to light, and are embodied in written grammars. That most elementary species of instruction which we familiarly term the A, B, C, had no express or articulate existence in the minds, or on the lips, of men, until thousands of years after the invention and employment of language; yet these, the vital constituents of all speech, were there from the beginning. "Logic is another instance. Men reasoned, generation after generation, long before they knew a single dialectical rule, or had any notion of the construction of the syllogism. The principles of logic were operative in every ratiocination, yet the reasoner was incognisant of their influence until Aristotle anatomised the process, and gave out the law of thought in its more obvious and ordinary workings. Whether Aristotle's rudiments of logic have not an antecedent rudiments-which time may yet bring to light-is a somewhat unsettled problem in speculation. "The same analogy may be observed, to a large extent, in the formation of our civil laws. The laws which hold society together, operate with the force of instincts, and after the manner of vague traditions, long before they are digested into written tables. The written code does not create the law; it merely gives a distinct promulgation, and a higher degree of authority, to certain floating principles which had operated on people's practice antecedently. Laws, in short, exist, and bind society, long before they exist as established, or even as known laws. They have an occult and implied influence, before they obtain a manifest and systematic form. They come early in the order of nature, but late in the order of knowledge; early in the order of action, but late in the order of thinking; early in the order of practice, but late in the order of theory. "So in regard to philosophy. Its principles, like all other principles-like the elements of every science and of every art-though first in the order of nature, are last in the order of intelligence; only there is this difference between philosophy and all other creations, that its principles, being the earliest birth of time, are therefore among the very last that shall be completely extricated from the masses in which they lie imbedded. They force man's general powers forward into the light; for themselves, they shrink back, and keep aloof from observation. The invariable rule seems to be, that what is earliest in the progress of existence is latest in the progress of discovery - a consideration which might lead us to suppose that all science can advance only by going, in a manner, backwards, or rather by coming round; that the infinite future can alone comprehend or interpret the secrets of the infinite past; and that the apotheosis and final triumph of human reason will be, when, after having traversed the whole cycle of thought, she returns-enriched only with a deeper insight and a clearer consciousness-to be merged in the glorious innocence of her primitive and inspired incunabula. We shall now endeavour to give a short exposition of Professor Ferrier's system, and its relation to those of most note in the speculative world. Concerning "knowing and being," as the two ultimate entities or forms of entity with which the science of first principles has to do, there are four main schemes towards one or |