SECT. II.-Collateral Branches of the Eclectic Philosophy . SECT. I.—On the Tendencies of Modern Sensationalism SECT. II.—On the Tendencies of Modern Idealism 1. In science . 2. In legislation 3. In religion INTRODUCTION. SECT. I.-Philosophy explained. EVERYTHING that is brought into existence must have a final cause. The final cause of man's intellectual faculties is to know, and the material of knowledge is truth. The search after truth, therefore, is the natural sphere of our mental activity, and philosophy (which is the name we give to this process when it is carried on with intelligence and design) is at once a real want, and a necessary product of the human mind. The process of knowing, however, is a very gradual one. The infant mind appears first to exist in a state of bare receptivity. The first intellectual impulse that manifests itself, is simply the desire of receiving impressions, which pour in upon it from every side, with the greatest possible intensity. As the mind develops, these impressions are remembered, compared, and classified; so that, on our emerging from the cloud of our infancy, we find that we have been spontaneously active in gaining an extensive acquaintance with the phenomena of what we term the external world. This spontaneous activity, therefore, we find has even thus early given us a practical knowledge of outward things, in many of the relations which they hold to ourselves and to each other; and the result of advancing years and continued experience is, in ordinary cases, simply to afford us the means of a wider observation, of a more extensive comparison, and of a more complete classification of them. This knowledge of phenomena (of things as they seem) is sufficient for all the practical wants of human life; and the mass of mankind are content to confine their observation to them alone, without any inquiry respecting their real nature, the mode of their subsistence, or the medium by which the mind perceives them. The life of men, therefore, who are thus conversant about phenomena only, we term spontaneous. Their mind, stimulated by the external world, exercises its faculties without being reflectively conscious of a single mental operation; impressions and ideas exist, but it is never asked how, or why, they exist; mental operations are carried on, but it is never surmised in what manner they are carried on; knowledge is gained, but no inquiry is raised about the grounds or certainty of it; thought, in a word, goes forth, but it never returns to render account of itself, or to inquire how it has been produced, or how far it is of any value, as being an accurate reflection of the truth of things as they are. Whilst, however, the spontaneous life has ever been that of the mass of mankind, there always have been minds that could not content themselves with knowing only the world of outward phenomena. Their mental activity having first gone forth to grasp the varied forms of the outward world, returned back, when it had accomplished this purpose, to inquire how the process had been managed, what were the powers of mind employed, and what confidence there is to be placed in the result. This process is what is properly termed reflection; and the reflective life, accordingly, is that which attempts to render a true account of the spontaneous life of man. The first man that reflected was the first speculative philosopher,-the first time that ever thought returned to inquire into itself and arrest its own trains, was the commencement of intellectual philosophy; and once commenced, it was inevitable that philosophy should continue as long as a problem was left in the mental or moral world to be solved. The primary efforts of reason to get at the ground principles of human knowledge were naturally weak and imperfect; but as reflection progressed the path became clearer, until some one individual of more than ordinary reflective power arrived, as he considered, at a solution of the main problems of human life, and sent it forth as such into the world. This was |