ing involves every portion of human knowledge in doubt, instead of persuading any one to follow his conclusions, does little more than controvert his own principles by a "reductio ad absurdum." The real effect is not to make us doubt the validity of our knowledge, but to shake our confidence in the philosophical, or rather unphilosophical axioms, by means of which such results could be obtained. "Universal scepticism," says Sir James Mackintosh, "involves a contradiction in terms. It is a belief that there can be no belief. It is an attempt of the mind to act without its structure, and by other laws than those to which its nature has subjected its operations. To reason without assenting to the principles on which reasoning is founded, is not unlike an effort to feel without nerves or to move without muscles. No man can be allowed to be an opponent in reasoning who does not set out with admitting all the principles, without the admission of which it is impossible to reason. It is, indeed, a puerile, nay, in the eye of wisdom, a childish play, to attempt either to establish or confute principles by argument, which every step of that argument must presuppose. The only difference between the two cases is, that he who tries to prove them, can do so only by taking them for granted; and that he who attempts to impugn them, falls at the very first step into a contradiction, from which he never can rise."

1 See "Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Science." Art. Hume.

Of the English mysticism, to which the last century gave rise, we can give but little account, inasmuch as it flowed more into the channel of religious than of philosophical speculation. The school of Swedenborg made some advancement in our own country, as it did in other parts of Europe, and numbered a few cultivated minds amongst its supporters. But the middle of the seventeenth century was the period in which the community began to be aroused from its religious lethargy to a new life and energy; and whatever tendency there might have been to seek for truth in the deeper feelings of our spiritual nature, it all flowed into the stream of religious excitement, which then became so much. broader and deeper than it had been for ages before. The belief in Divine influence strongly characterised that movement, and the habit of looking within and reading the heart's religious experience was constantly encouraged; so that an element was at work, more or less, throughout the whole of society, that necessarily took the place of those inward impulses, which, if not placed under the guidance of Christianity, would, in all human probability, have developed themselves in the rise of philosophical mysticism.

Here, then, we close what is more directly the historical portion of our subject. We have traced the progress of sensationalism and idealism up to the age in which we live, and seen the different forms of scepticism and mysticism to which their

mutual contests have given rise.

Our next, and still more important task will be, to exhibit in its various movements the advancement which the human reason has made during that half of the nineteenth century, which has now arrived almost at its termination.

PART II.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.

BEFORE we proceed onwards with our history, and bring it over the threshold of the present century, we must make a brief pause, in order to take a compendious view of the ground we have now hastily travelled over, and to collect together the results, which may have been gathered up on the way. Looking at the philosophy of modern times in connexion with that which for almost two thousand years had preceded it, we see it bearing the marks of an independence which, since the days of Plato and Aristotle, had been altogether unknown. The scholastic ages in particular were marked by a wellnigh slavish deference to authority, an authority which was balanced with some degree of equality between Aristotle on the one hand, and the Pope on the other. Philosophy during this period was content, not only to be held in leading-strings, but to be nurtured and instructed by dogmatic theology,

as an obedient child by its parent or guardian. It was, at present, timid in all its movements, feeble in its efforts, and felt so much the need of extraneous support, that it willingly allowed, and even sanctioned, an appeal to those masters, who, the one in the ancient the other in the modern world, had succeeded in gaining the confidence, and then in subduing the reason of mankind.

The Reformation was a revolt against authority; it presented the spectacle of the human reason once more asserting its independence, and indignantly bursting the chains by which it had so long been bound; for whether we regard the movements which then took place in the religious, the political, or the philosophical world, they are all alike characterised by the same determination to shake off the trammels of servitude, to which the will of humanity had during many past ages submitted. It was the sixteenth century which witnessed the main heat of the battle of reform; then it was that events which had long been brooding over society came to their crisis; then that authorities which had before been only doubted were openly disavowed; then that the first overthrow of intel lectual and spiritual despotism was both given and received.

The seventeenth century presented another new page in the history of mankind. The arm of Bacon had given the first fatal stroke to the authority of Aristotle, and had stripped the laurels from the brows of the hitherto invincible heroes, who had