of life and how he was employed; his doctrines or opinions; and the circumstances and manner of his death. Both in the Life of Lucretius and the copious notes, Mr. Good makes a variety of criticisms both on the matter and manner of Lucretius; compares him with other poets and philosophers, and shews when they imitated, coincided with him, or followed him. In the execution of this design he displays a very extensive acquaintance with literature and philosophy both ancient and modern. He quotes with entire approbation the following criticism on Lucretius, as a poet, by Mr. Hume: "Pope and Lucretius seem to lie in the two greatest extremes of refinement and simplicity, in which a poet can indulge himself without being guilty of any blameable excess. All this interval may be filled with poets, who may differ from each other, but may be equally admirable,' each in his peculiar style and manner. Corneille and Congreve, who carry their wit and refinement somewhat farther than Mr. Pope, and Sophocles and Terence, who are more simple than Lucretius, seem to have gone out of that medium in which the most perfect productions are found, and to be guilty of some excess in these opposite characters. Of all the great poets, they lie nearest the centre, and are the farthest removed from both the extremities." Mr. Good, having amassed together the scattered fragments that relate to the Life of Lucretius, added some memoirs of other illustrious Epicureans who were his cotemporaries and friends, and attentively. considered the doctrines they professed, gives a brief sketch of the alternate support and opposition experienced by this celebrated school in subsequent æras. Every school of philosophy among the Greeks pre-supposed the eternal existence of matter. Upon the form, or mode however, of its original existence, and the process by which it acquired its present form and organization, they differed very materially: some maintain ing that every thing has existed from everlasting as it appears at present; and others that the visible world has had a beginning. The espousers of the doctrine that the form, though not the matter, of the visible world has had a beginning, have spread into different sects, of which the chief are the Pythagoric, the Platonic or Academic, and the Atomic. Mr. Good having given a general sketch of the two former, in many points nearly allied, proceeds to take a view of the last, the Atomic, embraced and improved by Epicurus, and his disciple Lucretius, his present subject. Our biographer and critic having traced the history of Atomic phi losophy, from the times of Epicurus to the beginning of the last century, says, "the dialectics of the schools had yielded to the novum organum of the immortal Bacon; Syllogistic Logomachies to an attentive examination of nature; the Epicurism of Gassendi was embraced by the most eminent modern philosophers, and at last appears to have obtained an eternal triumph, &c. "It is useless to pursue this history any further: the systems which have have since been started in opposition to the Atomic, however splendid and fashionable for the moment, have already flitted away, or have no prospect of obtaining any permanency. Of these, the principal is that of the Idealists, of whom the chief leaders were Berkely and Hume. The former, dissatisfied with Locke's explanation of the mode by which sensation is communicated to the mind, incapable of tracing the connexion between external objects and the mind itself, and consequently the exist ence of an external world, boldly denied such an existence, and maintain. ed that sensations and ideas were mere modifications of the soul, concatenated by a system of laws immutable and universal; whence the existence and necessary connexion of cause and effect, the proof of identity, and the demonstration of an intelligent Creator. The system of Hume was founded upon that of Berkely; but, instead of restraining, it extended it to a still more extravagant length. Hume, in imitation of Berkely, contended that the external world was incapable of proof; that the mind or soul was nothing more than a consciousness of existence, and that such consciousness depended alone on a succession of ideas produced either by sensations or impressions: but he maintained exclusively that he could no more trace any necessary catenation between such ideas or sensations, between one event and another, than he could trace the existence of external objects. Facts, he admitted, conjoined with facts, but are not necessarily connected with each other; and hence to assert that such connexion was produced by a system of operative laws, was, in his opinion, to presume, but by no means to reason. Upon this theory, therefore, there is nothing existing in all nature but impressions and sensations, and the ideas thence resulting ;-there is no such thing as causation, no proof of identity, none of a God. Yet it would be injustice to assert, that Mr. Hume hence denied the being of a God; on the contrary, he admitted it, and pretended to found his belief of such a Being on a kind of innate impression, though he would not allow it the name of an innate idea, a sort of moral sentiment, as developed by Hutchinson. "The ideal system has been opposed with no small degree of success by two others derived from very different premises, yet each highly in genious, and in many respects incontrovertible: the one invented by Dr. Hartley, and founded on the doctrine of vibration and the association of ideas; the other by Dr. Beattie and Dr. Reid, and which appeals to the decisions of common sense." Mr. Good, in placing the name of Beattie before that of Reid, appears to have conceived that he was prior to Dr. Reid in maintaining the system of what has been called the common sense philosophy. The case is the reverse-the same sceptical arguments that have been urged by Bishop Berkeley and Mr. Hume, were thrown out by the ancients, as appears from Plato and his commentators, and from Cicero; all of whom considered them as idle dreams, from which men were soon recovered by the force of nature, who, by the concession, and in the language, of Mr. Hume, "will always maintain her rights." Now nothing more than this is contended for by the school just mentioned We believe because we must believe, say they, though we cannot tell why: for they, in reality, say nothing more when they are at the greatest greatest pains to shew that such is the constitution of human nature. It would be easy to illustrate the truth of what we have here affirmed by a number of quotations. We shall, however, confine ourselves to one before us, which, indeed Mr. Good has noticed, though not on the present occasion, yet afterwards in a note on book i. of Lucretius ver. 423-6. "Corpus enim per se communis dedicat esse "That there is BODY, ev'ry sense we boast - Perplex'd and hopeless must still wander on, This translation is neither literal nor quite accurate. It is indeed extremely difficult, and almost impossible to translate a didactic poem, on such a subject into English verse corresponding with the original. However the point in hand is, not the merits of the translator, but the antiquity of an appeal to sensus communis*, common sense, common not only to every sense, or all sensation, but to the sense or sensation of all men. On this passage our commentator makes the following observation: "this axiom of the necessity of trusting to the external senses, and the superiority of their evidence over evidence of every kind, forms the foundation of the philosophy of Dr. Beattie, Dr. Reid, and other pillars of the Reflective School,' of Scotland, as they lately seemed desirous of calling themselves; in opposition to the Analogical School, which, generally speaking, might embrace almost all philosophers but themselves." Here again, Mr. Good ushers in the venerable name of Dr. Reid, by the prior mention of that of Dr. Beattie. It is rather surprizing that Mr. Good, on the subject of Dr. Reid's philosophy, and the expulsion of all analogical reasoning from inquiries into the principles and conduct of the human mind, does not once mention the name of Mr. Stewart, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, and Author of Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind: who exhibits the principles maintained by Reid with the utmost precision of thought and felicity of expression; and, while he seems to carry the expulsion of reasoning from analogy to the very verge of sceptical consequences, by a happy application of the Baconian method of investigation, by literary experience, or hypotheses examined, chastized, and, tried by induction, has, established certain truths, or There was a Dr. Oswald, a Scotch Clergyman, who wrote and pub.. lished An Appeal to Common Sense; in behalf of religion, of religion both natural and revealed. This book forms an 8vo. volume, and was published in Edinburgh in 1766. discoveries, discoveries, in the furniture and economy of the human mind, not a little curious and important. Mr. Stewart takes Dr. Reid for a guide only as far as he appears to be guided by truth and nature. Into these he carries on his inquiries beyond the line where his friend leaves him, guided by the unerring methods of experimental philosophy, that seeks not to penetrate into efficient causes, or perhaps rather, the great efficient cause, but to mark the natural order of events, or the process according to which one phenomenon in the economy or conduct of the mind succeeds another. We have also some observations to make on what our translator and commentator says of Dr. Hartley, whose system founded on the doctrine of vibration, and the association of ideas, as well as that of Dr. Reid, he considers as "highly ingenious, and in many respects incontrovertible." There is certainly something very pleasing in Dr. Hartley's Theory, very flattering to the imagination, self-love, and self-conceit. Numbers comprehend, or think they comprehend, Hartley's Theory, that never had patience or power to study any other. It is not every one who can fully comprehend Des Cartes, Malbranche, Locke, Berkely, or Reid, but every one, though unaccustomed to reason, professes at once to understand and to be satisfied too with Hartley. Hartley is the favourite with all who are incapable of profound inquiry, and who wish to become and to be thought philosophers without any trouble. According to Hartley, vibration and the association of ideas are sufficient to account for all the phenomena of the human mind, and even the foundation of every rule of morality. He talks accordingly of the seats of our ideas, the different parts of the brain, the communication of thought by impulse, &c. But every impression or idea is produced in such a manner as to affect, or be perceived, or received, not by distinct parts of the brain, but by the whole of that organ at once, or in immediate succession. In consciousness too, or the operations of our own mind, we sometimes even feel that our whole brain, not any particular portion, morsel, or atom of it, is affected. The cerebellum, or whatever be the organ, or region, or sphere, of sentiency, is employed or occupied, and wholly employed or occupied, for the time of their reception and existence, by a thousand different impressions. The mere circumstance of local situation is insufficient to account for that complete distinctness, of which such vast and almost infinite variety of our impressions and ideas is capable. To suppose that local distinction has any place in the operations of the human mind, is liker the ravings of a madman, than the deductions of sober and sound philosophy. In Hartley's philosophy we see not any cause existing in nature and adequate to the effect, no more reason why one thing should follow another, than that something else is conjured up between them that has as little apparent connexion with either, as one of the phenomena accounted for has with the other. Of all the whirligigs that ever entered into the pericraniums of speculators, this of reducing the mind to a piece of clock-work, and net-work, is the NO. XCVIII. VOL. XXIV. Cc wildest wildest and most extravagant. Therefore, in criticising the writings of Mr. Good, we cannot but condemn his criticism of Dr. Hartley. Every one has heard of the philosophy of Professor Kant: but we have never yet met with any one who could say that he completely comprehended it. As Mr. Good has given a more intelligible sketch of that perplexed and occult system than we have ever met with, and as it is not very long, we shall extract it in this place: perhaps it may be acceptable to some of our readers, as it has been to us. "These responsive theories, however, originating in our own country, have not satisfied the metaphysicians of the Continent; and, in reality, being principally directed to our own. meridian, they do not embrace all the objectionable points presented by continental hypotheses which have obtained eelebrity enough to require notice. M. Kant has hence advanced a new system, which has the boast of being of universal applica tion, and in every respect underived from antecedent philosophers: but as this is a system rather intellectual than material, it by no means falls within the scope of the present lucubration to analyze it. It affects, in a greater degree than any other theory whatever, to take nothing for granted, and to trace all ideas and cognition to their earliest source; yet, with a singular sort of contradiction, it commences with pre-suppos ing the existence of certain first principles and an external world. It is strangely obscured, moreover, by the perplexity and abstruseness of its vocabulary, its author not only having invented a host of new terms, but too generally appropriated to those in common use a sense foreign to that in which they are daily employed upon other, or even similar occasions so that the proselyte has not only the task of learning a new language before he can be initiated into the Kantian philosophy, but of unlearning that which it has cost him years, perhaps, to acquire. It is on this account that M. Kieseweter, as well as several other disciples of the professor, have attempted to re-model its nomenclature, to render his conceptions less obscure and recondite, and to present the whole theory in a form more abridged and systematic. At the present moment, nothing in Germany is so fashionable as the study of the Transcendental Philosophy, or Criticism of pure Reason, as its inventor has chosen to denominate it; but many, who have studied it, are dissatisfied with it already, and appear to be aiming at an erection of different schools out of its ruins. Its chief antagonists for this purpose are M. M. Jacobi and Reinhold, and an anonymous author, who signs himself nesidemus, all of whom seem equally sensible of its insufficiency, and have hence attempted to connect it with some other theory. Jacobi, like Leibnitz, whose system in many respects he avowedly prefers to the Kantian, is a professed Platonist, and on this account is for connecting the Transcendental Philosophy with Platonism: Enesidemus, as his fictitious name imports, is a Sceptic, and he, on the contrary, is for conciliating it with the philosophy of Pyrrho: while Reinhold, who has invented a sort of theory of his own, which is denominated Elementary Philosophy, makes it his object to form a junction between the Transcendental and the Elementary. After all, however, Kantism itself, notwithstanding its proud boast of perfect independence and originality, seems, in many respects, to be little more than a kind of |