changes, by domestication, into power; and from directing in the discrimination and appraisal of the product, becomes influencive in the production. To admire on principle, is the only way to imitate without loss of originality.

It has been already hinted, that metaphysics and psychology have long been my hobby-horse. But to have a hobby-horse, and be vain of it, are so commonly found together, that they pass almost for the same. I trust, therefore, that there will be more good humour than contempt, in the smile with which the reader chastises my self-complacency, if I confess myself uncertain, whether the satisfaction from the perception of a truth new to myself, may not have been rendered more poignant, by the conceit that it would be equally so to the public. There was a time, certainly, in which I took some little credit to myself, in the belief that I had been the first of my countrymen who had pointed out the diverse meaning of which the two terms were capable, and analyzed the faculties to which they should be appropriated. Mr. W. Taylor's recent volumes of synonymes, I have not yet seen ;* but his specification of the terms in question, has been clearly shown to be both insufficient and erroneous by Mr. Wordsworth, in the preface added to

* I ought to have added, with the exception of a single sheet which I accidentally met with at the printer's. Even from this scanty specimen, I found it impossible to doubt the talent, or not to admire the ingenuity of the author. That his distinctions were, for the greater part, unsatisfactory to my mind, proves nothing against their accuracy, but it may possibly be serviceable to him in case of a second edition, if I take this opportunity of suggesting the query, whether he may not have been occasionally misled, by having assumed, as to me he appeared to have done, the non-existence of any absolute synonymes in our language? Now, I cannot but think, that there are many which remain for our posterity to distinguish and appropriate, and which I regard as so much reversionary wealth in our mother tongue. When two distinct meanings are confounded under one or more words, (and such must be the case, as sure as our knowledge is progressive, and, of course, imperfect) erroneous consequences will be drawn, and what is true in one sense of the word, will be affirmed as true in toto. Men of research, startled by the consequences, seek in the things themselves (whether in or out of the mind) for a knowledge of the fact, and having discovered the difference, remove the equivocation either by the substitution of a new word, or by the appropriation of one of the two or more words, that had before been used promiscuously. When this distinction has been so naturalized and of such general currency that the language itself does, as it were, think for us, (like the sliding rule which is the mechanic's safe substitute for arithmetical knowledge,) we then say, that it is evident to common sense. Common sense, therefore, differs in different ages. What was born and christened in the schools, passess by degrees into the world at large, and becomes the property of the market and the tea-table. At least, I can discover no other meaning of the term common sense, if it is to convey any specific difference from sense and jugment in genere, and where it is not used scholastically for the universal reason. Thus, in the reign of Charles II., the philosophic world was called to arms by the moral sophisms of Hobbs, and the ablest writers exerted themselves in the detection of an error which a school-boy would now be able to confute by the mere recollection, that compulsion and obligation conveyed two ideas perfectly disparate, and that what appertained to the one had been falsely transferred to the other, by a mere confusion of terms.

the late collection of his "Lyrical Ballads and other poems." The explanation which Mr. Wordsworth has himself given, will be found to differ from mine, chiefly, perhaps, as our objects are different. It could scarcely, indeed, happen otherwise, from the advantage I have enjoyed of frequent conversation with him on a subject to which a poem of his own first directed my attention, and my conclusions concerning which, he had made more lucid to myself by many happy instances drawn from the operation of natural objects on the mind. But it was Mr. Wordsworth's purpose to consider the influences of fancy and imagination as they are manifested in poetry, and, from the different effects, to conclude their diversity in kind; while it is my object to investigate the seminal principle, and then, from the kind, to deduce the degree. My friend has drawn a masterly sketch of the branches, with their poetic fruitage. I wish to add the trunk, and even the roots, as far as they lift themselves above ground, and are visible to the naked eye of our common consciousness.

Yet, even in this attempt, I am aware that I shall be obliged to draw more largely on the reader's attention, than so immethodical a miscellany can authorize; when in such a work (the Ecclesiastical Policy) of such a mind as Hooker's, the judicious author, though no less admirable for the perspicuity than for the port and dignity of his language; and though he wrote for men of learning in a learned age, saw, nevertheless, occasion to anticipate and guard against "complaints of obscurity," as often as he was to trace his subject "to the highest well-spring and fountain." Which, (continues he,) "because men are not accustomed to, the pains we take are more needful, a great deal, than acceptable; and the matters we handle seem, by reason of newness, (till the mind grow better acquainted with them,) dark and intricate." I would gladly, therefore, spare both myself and others this labour, if I knew how without it to present an intelligible statement of my poetic creed; not as my opinions, which weigh for nothing, but as deductions from established premises, conveyed in such a form as is calculated either to effect a fundamental conviction, or to receive a fundamental confutation. If I may dare once more adopt the words of Hooker, "they, unto whom we shall seem tedious, are in no wise injured by us, because it is in their own hands to spare that labour, which they are not willing to endure." Those at least, let me be

permitted to add, who have taken so much pains to render me ridiculous for a perversion of taste, and have supported the charge by attributing strange notions to me on no other authority than their own conjectures, owe it to themselves, as well as to me, not to refuse their attention to my own statement of the theory, which I do acknowledge; or shrink from the trouble of examining the grounds on which I rest it, or the arguments which I offer in its justification.

CHAPTER V.

On the law of association-Its history traced from Aristotle to Hartley.

THERE have been men in all ages, who have been impelled, as by an instinct, to propose their own nature as a problem, and who devote their attempts to its solution. The first step was to construct a table of distinctions, which they seem to have formed on the principle of the absence or presence of the WIll. Our various sensations, perceptions and movements, were classed as active or passive, or as media partaking of both. A still finer distinction was soon established between the voluntary and the spontaneous. In our perceptions we seem to ourselves merely passive to an external power, whether as a mirror reflecting the landscape, or as a blank canvas on which some unknown hand paints it. For it is worthy of notice, that the latter, or the system of idealism, may be traced to sources equally remote with the former, or materialism; and Berkeley can boast an ancestry at least as venerable as Gassendi or Hobbs. These conjectures, however, concerning the mode in which our perceptions originated, could not alter the natural difference in things and thoughts. In the former, the cause appeared wholly external; while in the latter, sometimes our will interfered as the producing or determining cause, and sometimes our nature seemed to act by a mechanism of its own, without any conscious effort of the will, or even against it. Our inward experiences were thus arranged in three separate classes, the passive sense, or what the school-men call the merely receptive quality of the mind; the voluntary; and the spontaneous, which holds the middle place between both. But it is not in human nature to meditate on any mode of action, without inquiring after the law that governs and in the explanation of the spontaneous movements of our being, the metaphysician took the lead of the anatomist and natural philosopher. In Egypt, Palestine, Greece, and India, the analysis of the mind had reached its noon and manhood, while experimental research was still in its dawn and infancy. For many, very many centuries, it has been difficult to advance a new truth, or even a new error, in the philosophy of the intellect or morals.

it;

With regard, however, to the laws that direct the spontaneous movements of thought, and the principle of their intellectual mechanism, there exists, it has been asserted, an important exception, most honourable to the moderns, and in the merit of which our own country claims the largest share. Sir James Mackintosh (who, amid the variety of his talents and attainments, is not of less repute for the depth and accuracy of his philosophical inquiries, than for the eloquence with which he is said to render their most difficult results perspicuous, and the driest attractive,) affirmed, in the lectures delivered by him at Lincoln's Inn Hall, that the law of association, as established in the contemporaneity of the original impressions, formed the basis of all true psychology; and any ontological or metaphysical science, not contained in such (i. e. empirical) psychology, was but a web of abstractions and generalizations. Of this prolific truth, of this great fundamental law, he declared HOBBS to have been the original discoverer, while its full application to the whole intellectual system we owe to David Hartley; who stood in the same relation to Hobbs, as Newton to Kepler; the law of association being that to the mind, which gravitation is

to matter.

Of the former clause in this assertion, as it respects the comparative merits of the ancient metaphysicians, including their commentators, the school men, and of the modern French and British philosophers, from Hobbs to Hume, Hartley and Condillac, this is not the place to speak. So wide indeed is the chasm between this gentleman's philosophical creed and mine, that so far from being able to join hands, we could scarce make our voices intelligible to each other and to bridge it over, would require more time, skill and power, than I believe myself to possess. But the latter clause involves for the greater part a mere question of fact and history, and the accuracy of the statement is to be tried by documents rather than reasoning.

First, then, I deny Hobbs's claim in toto: for he had been anticipated by Des Cartes, whose work "De Methodo" preceded Hobbs's "De Natura Humana," by more than a year. But what is of much more importance, Hobbs builds nothing on the principle which he had announced. He does not even announce it, as differing in any respect from the general laws of material motion and impact: nor was it, indeed, possible for him so to do, compatibly