D'Alembert said, "began with doubting everything, and ended in believing that he had left nothing unexplained."

How, then, did Des Cartes essay to lay the foundation of knowledge? By reflection, he finds a basis for certainty in the fact of thought itself; in the fact of the very doubt that perplexes. him. For, to doubt is to exist; therefore, the doubt reveals in consciousness both thinking and existence. This fundamental truth Des Cartes thus expressed: Cogito, ergo sum. Thus far, his philosophy is purely subjective. As yet, the operations of his mindhis mere thinking implying his existence is all that he can hold true. Like all modern philosophers prior to Reid, he held that the mind possesses no immediate knowledge of anything but its own modifications, which the mind mistakes for external. reality. How then, inquires Des Cartes, can it be known that external things exist, when the mind has no immediate knowledge of their existence? Des Cartes must, ex hypothesi, find in the mind itself some media of proof for external existence. Searching, therefore, in his mind, he finds the idea of God-a perfect intelligence, eternal, infinite-necessary. This idea, he argues, must have an adequatercause, which can only be a corresponding being;, for it cannot be the product of the finite mind. Having thus established the existence of God, he deduces therefrom the existence of the outward world. If God be veracious, he argues, it follows that he who is the author of the sensible existences, is the author of the appearances which induce us to believe their existence, and that he would not exhibit these appearances as a snare and illusion; consequently what appears to exist does exist, and God himself is the guarantor that it is no illusion.

Now, this argument is wholly invalid. Indeed, it proves that God is the author of illusion. It cannot be denied, that we believe that the very objects which we perceive exist; and not that there is something representative of them which alone is perceived, and suggests their existence. We believe in the existence, of things because we believe that we know them as existing. Now, Des Cartes, by his own theory, was deceived in the belief that we see things existing, God, therefore, is the author of illusion; and if the author of this deception, the conclusion is the very reverse of that drawn by Des Cartes. But his reasoning involves a further fallacy. It assumes, that God is veracious. How is this known? It can only be known by our faculties of knowing. But the argument assumes that our faculties are not trustworthy, because we believe that we see things existing, and it is not so. Therefore, we are not sure of the existence of God; for it rests upon our mendacious faculties.

Des Cartes, therefore, never got beyond his cogito, ergo sum. This is both the beginning and the end of his philosophy. The only important truth which he signalized is, That the ultimate organ

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of science consists in an appeal to the facts of consciousness. But this truth he arbitrarily limits to self-consciousness, and as arbitrarily applies it to the outward world, through the false assumption of an innate idea of God; thus creating or assuming a chasm where none exists, and bridging it over with a figment of his imagination. His denial of the contemporaneousness of the knowledge of one's self and of the outward world, at once ignored. the possibility of any knowledge.at all of external nature, and put the mind on that track of preposterous speculation of endeavouring to bridge the imaginary chasm between the subjective and the objective, which could only, from such a starting-point, end in the identification of the last with the first; and thus commute the subjective with the objective, to a degree of extravagance that would make Bacon smile at the smallness of the same error in the ancient philosophy, which his whole method was designed to counteract. In the philosophy of Des Cartes, in fact, begun that exaltation of human reason, which, in the philosophy of Schelling and Hegel, ended in the dethronement of God and the inauguration of man to the sceptre of omniscience.

The extraordinary influence which the philosophy of Des Cartes has exerted on modern speculation is, therefore, in our judgment, to be attributed, rather to its ministering to a cardinal weakness of the human mind, the tendency to a priori speculation, than to any force of truth in its doctrines or of forecast in its regulative principle of method. This method is an arbitrary formula, as inapplicable in the hunting-ground of investigation as the stereotyped forms of the schoolmen. The provisional doubt, the assumed conviction that truth is possible, and the cogito, ergo sum, as a' direction to the inquirer, are but a beggarly account of empty boxes. It must lead to a priori speculation disjoined from the a posteriori elements of thought, to an unmitigated Idealism or Rationalism. Nothing can show more clearly the bias of Des Cartes towards a demonstrative or rationalistic philosophy, than the fact that, in his attempt to express the simultaneity and identity of the knowing that we think, and the knowing that we exist, that they are but one indivisible deliverance of consciousness, he enunciates it in-a form of expression which indicates a relation of subordination and sequence; cogito, ergo sum. The external expression is certainly an anthymeme with a suppressed major, whatever the internal thought of the thinker was. The expression is certainly not a simple affirmation of the identity of thought and being in the sphere of consciousness, but indicates both the priority of self in consciousness, and that the notion of self and the notion of being are found apart and are conjoined through the higher principle what thinks, is. This bias at the starting-point is impressed on the whole Cartesian philosophy.

In estimating the value of the Cartesian philosophy, two things

have been confounded, which, if not distinguished, must involve us in the most perplexing confusions. By no one have these two things been more signally confounded than by Cousin, the learned and brilliant editor of the works of Des Cartes. Speaking of two little tracts by Des Cartes, he says: "We see in these more unequivocally the main object of Des Cartes, and the spirit of the revolution which has, created modern philosophy, and placed, in the understanding itself the principle of all certainty, the point of departure for all legitimate inquiry." The great error in this passage is the making "the principle of all certainty, the point of departure for all legitimate inquiry." This, is the germinal vice of the Cartesian philosophy. In the regressive analysis, by which we pass backwards to the basis of certainty, we arrive at consciousness as the ultimate arbiter; the last oracle. But, to make this the point of departure, as Des Cartes did, for inquiry into philosophy, is erroneous, and was the great blunder in the Cartesian method. From facts of consciousness, "seeds of truth in the mind," as he called them, Des Cartes even essayed to project the system of the physical universe, and thereby make the physical sciences mere educts of the understanding. He restored the ancient method of reasoning a priori, from causes to effects. Facts of observation must be the starting-point in all philosophy, whether mental or physical. Des Cartes reversed the scholastic propósition, and made it read, Nihil est in sensu, quod non fuit prius in intellectu..

The philosophy of Des Cartes had produced upon the thinking of the succeeding age an impression adverse to the whole Baconian method. It had given an extreme subjective turn to thought. This subjective character would be the point of attack by any one taking the Baconian view of philosophising. Therefore it was that Locke, in the very beginning of his Essay on the Human Understanding, enters upon the question of the origin of our ideas or knowledge. This question involves the problem of the objectivity and subjectivity of knowledge. We think, therefore, that the criticism of Cousin and others, that Locke's, method is entirely wrong, because of his entering upon this question before determining what are the actual products of thought in the maturely developed consciousness, is entirely futile. The origin of our knowledge was the problem lying at the threshold of the issue between the objective method of Bacon and the subjective method of Des Cartes. If all science could be excogitated a priori, out of human reason, with some little resort to external observation, as Des Cartes maintained, then the Baconian method, which placed the possibility of science exclusively in the observation of the invariable coëxistence, and the invariable antecedence and sequence of the phenomena of nature, was a grovelling puerility. How, therefore, could this antagonism between the subjective and the objective methods be

determined, but by considering how far thought is objective, and how far subjective? It is in fact a discussion of method in its ultimate analysis. The discussion of the origin of knowledge was demanded by the polemical conditions of thought at that day. Progress was impossible until the problem was laid open. And however weak Locke's discussion of the doctrine of innate ideas may be, when viewed under the higher light of the present times, it did great good in its day. It gave insight into the problem of subjectivity, in a form that would be appreciated by the largest number of minds, and make them ignore the subjective method. It matters not, therefore, so far as the fortunes of philosophy are concerned, whether Des Cartes or any other philosopher ever held the doctrine of innate ideas in the form in which Locke exhibits it. He chose to exhibit the error of subjectivity in such a form, as that in which according to his judgment, and in this we believe he was right-it presented itself to most thinkers of those times. Indeed, after the most careful consideration of the subject in all its bearings, we cannot but believe that Des Cartes assumed, at least in his philosophy, a doctrine of innate ideas almost precisely such as Locke presents it. It is true, that when Gassendi charged upon him the doctrine, much as Locke afterwards exhibited it, he swallowed half that he had written, and said he only meant by innate ideas, innate faculties. This, however, avails, we. confess, nothing with us; for, in those parts of his method, where he maintains that from a few a priori principles assumed as facts of consciousness, he could evolve by logical deduction what was the mode in which suns, planets, water, light, minerals, plants, animals-the last, however, he admits, require ample experiments must have been, or at least may have been successively constituted, he certainly assumes a psychological basis of thought substantially the same with Locke's doctrine of innate ideas. The order (says Des Cartes) I pursued, was this: First, I endeavoured to discover, in general, the principles or first causes of everything which is or can be in the world, without considering anything for this purpose, except God alone, who has created it, nor deducing these principles from aught else than from certain seeds of truth which exist natur ally in our souls. After that, I examined what would be the first and most ordinary effects which might be deduced from these causes; and it seems to me that I could hence discover heavens, stars, and earth, and even upon that earth, water, air, fire, miner als, and some other things which are the most easy to be known." This is but the general. doctrine of method expounded in the writings of Des, Cartes. The "seeds of truth," existing naturally in the soul, are spoken of by Leibnitz and by Cudworth, both of whom are Idealists, the first much the same as Des Cartes, the latter a little more Platonic; but both maintaining, or at least assuming, a doctrine in its logical import much like the doctrine

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of innate ideas presented by Locke, which, however, be it remembered, Locke ascribes to no one in particular.

We, therefore, dissent from those who think Locke's discussion of innate ideas of little importance in the progress. of philosophy; but, with the qualifications which we have stated, we are ready to admit that Locke's philosophy is weak on its negative side; its hostile discussion of the a priori element of human thought. But on its positive side, its account of the origin of our ideas or knowledge, it is all that could have been expected in his time.

From the fact, that Locke opposed with so much earnestness. the doctrine of innate ideas, he has been represented, by many, as a pure Sensationalist, one who believes that all our knowledge is derived from or through the senses. A more erroneous interpret ation of an author was never recorded in the pages of criticism. The blunder is a marvel of misapprehension. However far Locke's account of the origin of our ideas may fall short of the whole truth, as we readily admit it does, it certainly, in the most explicit manner, maintains that our ideas are derived from two sources, sensation or sensitive perception, and reflection or self-consciousness. "External objects (says Locke) furnish the mind with the ideas of sensible qualities; and the mind furnishes the understanding with the ideas of its own operations. The understanding seems to me not to have the least glimmering of any ideas which it doth not receive from one of these two sources." How criticism has brought itself to interpret this and numberless other passages, in which Locke distinctly and carefully affirms that there are two different sources of our ideas, sensation and reflection, so as to make Locke resolve them into one, is strange enough, and but evinces the perversity of human judgment. And Cousin, with all the light to the contrary, which Dugald Stewart, in his Preliminary Dissertation, had shed upon the question, pronounces Locke a Sensationalist., Enslaved by the spirit of a system which required him to find in Locke the root of the Sensationalism of the eighteenth century, he says: "Locke is the father of the whole Sensualistic school of the eighteenth century. He is incontestably, in time as well as genius, the first metaphysician of this school." The vile Sensualism or Sensationalism of Condillac and Cabanis is thus made a justifiable extension of Locke's philosophy fruit springing legitimately from the germ which Locke planted in the fields of thought. And prone, with a pre-disposition, increased by the heat of progress, to exaggerate every indication of Sensationalism in the writings of Locke, he maintains that Locke makes an interval between the time of acquiring the ideas of sensation and those of reflection; and thus opens the way for the theory of "transformed sensations "of sensation as the sole principle of all the operations of the soul. This is a shallow criticism. The purpose of Locke was to rescue philosophy from subjectivity, and turn