"For, first, let a brute and a man at the same time be made spectators of one and the same artificial statue, picture, or landscape; here the brute will passively receive all that is impressed from the outward object upon sense by local motion, as well as the man, all the several colors and figures of it; and yet the man will presently perceive something in this statue or picture, which the brute takes no notice of at all, viz. beauty, and pulchritude, and symmetry, besides the liveliness of the effigies and portraiture. The eye of the brute being every jot as good a glass or mirror, and perhaps endued with a more perspicacious sense or power of passive perception, than that of a man.

"Or again, let both a man and a brute at the same time hear the same musical airs, the brute will only be sensible of noise and sounds; but the man will also perceive harmony in them, and be very much delighted with it; nay, even enthusiastically transported by it. Wherefore the brute perceiving all the sounds as well as the man, but nothing of the harmony, the difference must needs arise from some inward active principle or anticipation in the man, which the brute hath not."

§. 171. Further remarks of the same writer on this subject.

"But I shall yet further illustrate this business, (says this learned writer near the conclusion of the same chapter,) that the mind may actively comprehend more in the outward objects of sense, and by occasion of them, than is passively received and impressed from them, by another instance. Suppose a learned written or printed volume held before the eye of a brute-creature or illiterate person; either of them will passively receive all that is impressed upon sense from those delineations; to whom there will be nothing but several scrawls or lines of ink drawn upon white paper. But if a man, that hath inward anticipations of learning in him, look upon them, he will immediately have another comprehension of them than that of sense, and a strange scene of thoughts presently represented to his mind from them; he will see heaven, earth, sun, moon and stars, comets, meteors, elements, in those inky delineations; he will read profound theorems of philosophy, geometry, astronomy in them, learn a

great deal of new knowledge from them that he never understood before, and thereby justly admire the wisdom of the composer of them. Not that all this was passively stamped upon his soul by sense from those characters; (for sense, as I said before, can perceive nothing here but inky scrawls, and the intelligent reader will many times correct his copy, finding erratas in it ;) but because his mind was before furnished with certain inward anticipations, that such characters signify the elements of certain sounds, those sounds, certain notions or cogitations of the mind; and because he hath an active power of exciting any such cogitations within himself, he reads, in those sensible delineations, the passive stamps or prints of another man's wisdom or knowledge upon them, and also learns knowledge and instruction from them, not as infused into his mind from those sensible characters, but by reason of those hints and significations thereby proposed to it, accidentally kindled, awakened, and excited in it; for all, but the phantasms of black inky strokes and figures, arises from the inward activity of his own mind. Wherefore this instance in itself shows, how the activity of the mind may comprehend more in and from sensible objects, than is passively imprinted by them upon sense.

"But now, in the room of this artificial book in volumes, let us substitute the book of nature, the whole visible and material universe, printed all over with the passive characters and impressions of divine wisdom and goodness, but legible only to an intellectual eye; for to the sense both of man and brute, there appears nothing else in it but as in the other, so many inky scrawls, i. e. nothing but figures and colors; but the mind and intellect, which hath an inward and active participation of the same divine wisdom that made it; and being printed all over with the same archetypal seal, upon occasion of those sensible delineations represented to it, and taking notice of whatsoever is cognate to it, exerting its own inward activity from thence, will not only have a wonderful scene and large prospect of other thoughts laid open before it, and variety of knowledge, logical, mathematical, metaphysical, moral, displayed; but also clearly read the divine wis

dom and goodness in every page of this great volume, as it were written in large and legible characters."*

§. 172. Writers who have objected to the doctrine of an internal source of knowledge.

But it ought not to pass unnoticed, that there have been writers who have objected to the doctrine of an internal source of knowledge in distinction from that knowledge, which is outward, and is dependent, not only for its occasion, but for its very nature, on the senses. It was the opinion, among others, of Mr. Hobbes, who preceded Locke, and was not without merit as a metaphysician, that all our knowledge might be traced to the senses, and that of course no other origin of it need be sought. "The original of all thoughts, (says that writer, Leviathan, CH. I,) is that, which we call SENSE. There is no conception in a man's mind, which hath not at first, totally, or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense." This was the opinion also of his contemporary, Gassendi, who was his particular friend and correspondent; and at a still later period, of Condillac. The latter supported his views at length, and with much ingenuity, particularly, in his Treatise on Sensations.

These writers appear to have maintained, as a general statement, that we have no simple ideas, but such as existin the mind directly by means of the senses. As they further

Many other writers, as Stewart, Degerando, Brown, Coleridge, and Cousin, advocate this general doctrine. Kant himself, whatever obscurity may rest on other articles of his metaphysics, is clear upon this. He evidently gives us to understand, that the mental operations themselves, although the senses are the first occasions of those operations, furnish a new set of notions, which cannot directly be traced to any thing external.

-Der Zeit nach geht also keine Erkenntniss in uns vor der Erfahrung vorher, und mit dieser fangt alle an. Wenn aber gleich alle unsere Erkenntniss mit der Erfahrung anhebt, so entspringt sie darum doch nicht eben alle aus der Erfahrung. Denn es könne wohl seyn, dass selbst unsere Erfahrungserkenntniss ein Zusammengesetztes aus dem sey, was wir durch Eindrücke empfangen, und dem, was unser eigenes Erkenntnissvermögen, (durch sinnliche Eindrücke bloss veranlasst,) aus sich selbst her1 giebt, welchen Zusatz wir von jenem Grundstoffe nickt eher unterscheiden, als bis lange Uebung uns darauf aufmerksam, und zur Absonderung Hesselben geschikt gemacht hat. Kant's Critik der reinen Vernunft, Einleitung, I.

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maintained, that those of a complex nature are composed, not merely virtually but literally, of such as are simple, they consequently consider them in the light of combined and transformed sensations. Such appears to be the general outline of their doctrine, although it has its obscurities and perplexities, as might be expected in consequence of being essentially ill-founded." If we consider, (says Condillac,) that to remember, to compare, to judge, to distinguish, to imagine, to be astonished, to have abstract ideas, to have ideas of number and duration, to know truths, whether general or particular, are but so many modes of being attentive; that to have passions, to love, to hate, to hope, to fear, to will, are but so many different modes of desire; and that attention, in the one case, and desire, in the other case, of which all these feelings are modes, are themselves, in their origin, nothing more than modes of sensation, we cannot but conclude that SENSATION involves in itself all the faculties of the soul."*

This sentence in its evident meaning, and as it is understood both by its author and his commentators, is clearly at variance with the doctrine of Locke, and entirely cuts off what has been variously termed the internal, reflex, or subjective source of our knowledge. According to the doctrine of Hobbes and Condillac every thing may be traced back to the senses, not merely as its occasion, but as its direct or at least its essential cause; every thing becomes tangible and material; we are utterly unable to form a conception even of the invisible and glorious Deity, except under such an appearance, as the imagination, dealing with sensible images alone, can picture forth from the gross and limited materials of the earth. And in the same way every other idea, however spiritual and whatever it may relate to, must be capable of being followed back to some archetype in outward, material existences. The mind may separate, and modify, and combine sensible ideas or images, but can never get above them; there is a portion of earthliness in every possible thought. It must, therefore, be obvious, that the tendency of this system is to degrade the mind; not only, to limit the range, but to depress the character of its powers. It Traité des Sensations, Pt. I, CH. 7, §. 2.

may be said, however, that the propriety of receiving it does not depend so much upon its tendency, as upon the direct evidence, which may be brought in its support, in which it is found to be utterly deficient.

§. 178. Knowledge begins in the senses, but has internal accessions.

In order to have a clear understanding of the particular topic before us, let us briefly advert to certain general views already more or less attended to, having a connection with it. In making the human soul a subject of inquiry, it is an obvious consideration, that a distinction may be drawn between the soul, contemplated in itself, and its acts, or states, or the knowledge which it possesses. The inquiry, therefore, naturally arises, Under what circumstances the acquisition of knowledge begins?

Now this is the very question, which has already been considered; nor can it be deemed necessary to repeat here the considerations, which have been brought up in reference to it. It is enough to express our continued reliance on the general experience and testimony of mankind, so far as it is possible to ascertain them on a subject of so much difficulty, that the beginnings of thought and knowledge are immediately subsequent to certain affections of those bodily organs, which we call the SENSES. In other words, were it not for impressions on the senses, which may be traced to objects external to them, our mental capabilities, whatever they may be, would in all probability have remained folded up, and have never been redeemed from a state of fruitless inaction.

Hence the process, which is implied in the perception of external things, or what is commonly termed by Mr. Locke sensation, may justly be considered the OCCASION or the introductory step to all our knowledge. But it does not follow from this, nor is it by any means true, that the whole amount of it in its ultimate progress is to be ascribed directly to the same source. All that can be said with truth, is, that the mind receives the earliest part of its ideas by means of the senses, and that, in consequence of having received these elementary thoughts, all its powers become rapidly and fully operative.