OUR CONTROVERSY WITH HIM.

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Stewart has there taken occasion to make a formal reply to some of our hasty speculations, and has done us the honour of embodying several of our transitory pages in this enduring volume. If we were at liberty to yield to the common weaknesses of authors, we should probably be tempted to defend ourselves in a long dissertation; but we know too well what is due to our readers and to the public, to think of engaging any considerable share of their attention with a controversy which may be considered in some measure as personal to ourselves; and therefore, however honourable we think it, to be thus singled out for equal combat by such an antagonist, we shall put what we have to say into the shortest possible compass.

The observations to which Mr. Stewart has here condescended to reply, occur in an early number of our publication, and were intended to show, that as mind was not the proper subject of Experiment, but of Observation, so there could be no very close analogy between the rules of metaphysical investigation, and the most approved methods of inquiry as to those physical substances which are subject to our disposal and control;that as all the facts with regard to mind must be derived from previous and universal Consciousness, it was difficult to see how any arrangement of them could add to our substantial knowledge; and that there was, therefore, no reason either to expect Discoveries in this branch of science, or to look to it for any real augmentation of our Power.

With regard to Perception and the other primary functions of mind, it was observed, that this doctrine seemed to hold without any limitation; and as to the Associating principle, while it was admitted that the case was somewhat different, it was observed, that all men were in reality aware of its existence, and acted upon it on all important occasions, though they might never have made its laws a subject of reflection, nor ever stated its general phenomena in the form of an abstract proposition.

To all this Mr. Stewart proceeds to answer, by ob

650 STEWART

OBSERVATION AND EXPERIMENT.

serving, that the distinction between experiment and observation is really of no importance whatever, in reference to this argument; because the facts disclosed by experiment are merely phenomena that are observed: and the inferences and generalisations that are deduced from the observation of spontaneous phenomena, are just of the same sort with those that are inferred from experiment, and afford equally certain grounds of conclusion, provided they be sufficiently numerous and consistent. The justice of the last proposition, we do not mean to dispute; and assuredly, if any thing inconsistent with it is to be found in our former speculations, it must have arisen from that haste and inadvertence which, we make no doubt, have often betrayed us into still greater errors. But it is very far from following from this, that there is not a material difference between experiment and observation; or that the philosophy of mind is not necessarily restrained within very narrow limits, in consequence of that distinction. Substances which are in our power, are the objects of experiment; those which are not in our power, of observation only. With regard to the former, it is obvious, that, by well-contrived experiments, we may discover many things that could never be disclosed by any length of observation. With regard to the latter, an attentive observer may, indeed, see more in them than strikes the eye of a careless spectator: But he can see nothing that may not be seen by every body; and, in cases where the appearances are very few, or very interesting, the chance is, that he does see nothing more—and that all that is left to philosophy is, to distinguish them into classes, and to fit them with appropriate appellations. Now, Mind, we humbly conceive, considered as a subject of investigation, is the subject of observation only; and is known nearly as well by all men, as by those who have most diligently studied its phenomena. "We cannot decompose our sensations," we formerly observed, "in a crucible, nor divide our perceptions with a prism." The metaphor was something violent; but, the meaning obviously was, that we cannot subject those faculties to any analogous pro

REPLY TO HIS OBJECTIONS.

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cesses; nor discover more of their nature than consciousness has taught all the beings who possess them. Is it a satisfactory answer, then, for Mr. Stewart, to say, that we may analyze them by reflection and attention, and other instruments better suited than prisms or crucibles, to the intellectual laboratory which furnishes their materials? Our reply is, that we cannot analyze them at all; and can never know more of them than has always been known to all to whom they had been imparted; and that, for this plain reason, that the truth of every thing that is said with regard to the mind, can be determined by an appeal to consciousness alone, and would not be even intelligible, if it informed men of any thing that they did not previously feel to be true.

With regard to the actual experiments to which Mr. Stewart alludes, as having helped to explain the means by which the eye judges of distances and magnitudes, these, we must observe, are, according to our conception, very clearly experiments, not upon mind, but upon matter: and are only entitled to that name at all, in so far as they are carried on by means of the power we possess of disposing certain pieces of matter in certain masses and intervals. Strictly considered, they are optical experiments on the effects produced by distance on the light reflected from known bodies; and are nearly akin to experiments on the effects produced on such reflected rays by the interposition of media of different refracting powers, whether in the shape of prisms, or in any other shape. At all events, they certainly are not investigations carried on solely by attending to the subjects of our Consciousness; which is Mr. Stewart's own definition of the business of the philosophy of mind.

In answer to our remark, that "no metaphysician expects, by analysis, to discover a new power, or to excite a new sensation in the mind, as the chemist discovers a new earth or a new metal," Mr. Stewart is pleased to observe

That it is no more applicable to the anatomy of the mind, than to the anatomy of the body. After all the researches of physiologists on this last subject, both in the way of observation and of experiment, no

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FALSE ANALOGY OF ANATOMY.

discovery has yet been made of a new organ, either of power or of pleasure, or even of the means of adding a cubit to the human stature; but it does not therefore follow that these researches are useless. By enlarging his knowledge of his own internal structure, they increase the power of man, in that way in which alone they profess to increase it. They furnish him with resources for remedying many of the accidents to which his health and his life are liable; for recovering, in some cases, those active powers which disease has destroyed or impaired; and, in others, by giving sight to the blind, and hearing to the deaf, for awakening powers of perception which were dormant before. Nor must we overlook what they have contributed, in conjunction with the arts of the optician and of the mechanist, to extend the sphere of those senses, and to prolong their duration.' · Prelim. Diss., p. xlvi., xlvii.

Now, ingenious and elegant as this parallel must be admitted to be, we cannot help regarding it as utterly fallacious for this simple reason that the business of anatomy is to lay open, with the knife, the secrets of that internal structure, which could never otherwise be apparent to the keenest eye; while the metaphysical inquirer can disclose nothing of which all his pupils are not previously aware. There is no opaque skin, in short, on the mind, to conceal its interior mechanism; nor does the metaphysican, when he appeals to the consciousness of all thinking beings for the truth of his classifications, perform any thing at all analogous to the dissector, when he removes those outer integuments, and reveals the wonders of the inward organisation of our frame. His statements do not receive their proof from the previous, though perhaps undigested knowledge of his hearers, but from the actual revelation which he makes to their senses; and his services would evidently be more akin to those of the metaphysican, if, instead of actually disclosing what was not previously known, or suspected to exist, he had only drawn the attention of an incurious generation to the fact that they had each ten fingers and ten toes, or that most of them had thirtytwo teeth, distinguishable into masticators and incisors.

When, from these, and some other considerations, we had ventured to infer, that the knowledge derived from mere observation could scarcely make any addition to our power, Mr. Stewart refers triumphantly to the in

NO PARALLEL IN ASTRONOMY.

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stance of astronomy; and, taking it almost for granted, that all the discoveries in that science have been made by observation alone, directs the attention of his readers to the innumerable applications which may be made of it, to purposes of unquestioned utility.

"In compensation," he observes, " for the inability of the astronomer to control those movements of which he studies the laws, he may boast, as I already hinted, of the immense accession of a more useful power which his discoveries have added to the human race, on the surface of their own planet. It would be endless to enumerate all the practical uses to which his labours are subservient. It is sufficient for me to repeat an old, but very striking reflection, that the only accurate knowledge which Man yet possesses of the surface of the earth, has been derived from the previous knowledge he had acquired of the phenomena of the stars. Is it possible to produce a more apposite, or a more undeniable proof of the universality of Bacon's maxim, that knowledge is power,' than a fact which demonstrates the essential aid which man has derived, in asserting his dominion over this lower world, from a branch of science which seems, at first view, fitted only to gratify a speculative curiosity; and which, in its infancy, served to amuse the leisure of the Chaldean shepherd?”. Prelim. Diss., p. xxxviii., xxxix.

To this we have to answer, in the first place, that astronomical science has not been perfected by observation alone; but that all the elements which have imparted to it the certainty, the simplicity, and the sublimity which it actually possesses, have been derived from experiments made upon substances in the power of their contrivers;

from experiments performed with small pieces of matter, on the laws of projectile motion- the velocities of falling bodies and on centrifugal and centripetal forces. The knowledge of those laws, like all other valuable knowledge, was obtained by experiment only; and their application to the movements of the heavenly bodies was one of those splendid generalisations, which derive their chief merit from those inherent imperfections of observation by which they were rendered ne

cessary.

But, in the second place, we must observe, that, even holding astronomy to be a science of mere observation, the power which Mr. Stewart says we have obtained by means of it, is confessedly a power, not over the sub