should allow that, apart from all that experimental reasoning by which from the observation of what passes with ourselves we make inference as to what passes with others of our kind, we arrive by means of a direct and instinctive perception to the knowledge of the existence of other human minds beside our own-there is no analogy between this case and that of the divine mind as inferred from the effects or the evidences of design in the workmanship of nature. God does not by this workmanship hold himself forth to observers in visible personality as our fellow-creatures do. He has left for our inspection a thousand specimens of skilful and beauteous mechanism; but he has left us to view them as separate from himself. These philosophers would have us to infer a designing God from the works of nature, just as we infer a designing mind in man not from the works of man but from man in the act of working-even as if the divine spirit animated nature in the same manner as the human spirit animates the framework by which it is encompassed. Now the proper analogy is to view a piece of human workmanship, after it is completed and may be seen separately from the man himself; and to compare this with the workmanship of nature viewed separately from God. We take cognizance of the former as the work of man, just because in previous instances we have seen such work achieved by man. This consideration proceeds altogether upon experience; and what we have now to ascertain is, in how far experience warrants us to conclude a designing cause for the workmanship of nature. We hold

that this conclusion too has a strict experience for its basis; and that, notwithstanding that the principle has been given up by Stewart as is evident from his following reply to Hume's argument. "The argument as is manifest proceeds entirely on the supposition that our inferences of design are in every case the result of experience, the contrary of which has been already sufficiently shown --and which indeed (as Dr. Reid has remarked) if it be admitted as a general truth, leads to this conclusion—that no man can have any evidence of the existence of any intelligent being but himself."*

• Stewart's Philosophy of the Moral and Active Powers, Vol. II. p. 25.

In this treatise Mr. Stewart has rather presented the opinions of others, than come forth in propria persona with any sustained pleading of his own; and, as in most of his other performances, instead of grappling with the question, he presents us with the literature of the question-made up of history therefore rather than of argument, and altogether composing but the outline of what had been said or reasoned by other men, though accompanied with a very few slight yet elegant touches from his own hand. We by no means agree with those who think of this interesting personage, that, considering the few substantive additions which he made to philosophy, he therefore as a philosopher had gained an unfair reputation. It is true, he has not added much to the treasures of science; yet, in virtue of a certain halo which by the glow of his eloquence and the purity and nobleness of his sentiments he threw around the cause, he abundantly sustained the honours of it. It reminds us of what is often realized in the higher walks of society, when certain men vastly inferior to others both in family and in fortune, do, in virtue of a certain lofty bearing in which they are upheld by the consciousness of a grace and a dignity that natively belong to them, not usurp the highest place in fashion, but have that place most readily awarded to them by the spontaneous consent and testimony of all. It was thus with Stewart in the world of letters. His rank and reputation there were not owing either to the number or importance of the discoveries achieved by him. But he had what many discoverers have not. He had the sus

11. Let us therefore resume our observations on the strong instinctive confidence of the human mind in the uniformity of nature and thence apply ourselves to the consideration of this seemingly formidable argument.

12. We have already remarked on the perfect agreement which there is between the constancy of nature, and the instinctive belief which men have in that constancy. There seems no necessary connexion between these two things. It might for aught we know have been otherwise. There might have been a tendency in the human mind always to look for the like event in the like circumstances and this anticipation on our part may have been thwarted at every turn by the most capricious and unlooked for evolutions, on the part of the actual world that is around us. Or there might have been the same uniformity that there is in nature now-but no such constitutional propensity with us to count upon that uniformity. In either case we should not have profited by the lessons of experience. The remembrance of the past could have furnished no materials on which to ground or to guide our expectations of the future.

tained and the lofty spirit of a high-toned academic; and never did any child, whether of science or poetry, breathe in an atmosphere more purely ethereal. The je ne scais quoi of manner does not wield a more fascinating power in the circles of fashion, than did the indescribable charm of his rare and elevated genius over our literary circles; and, when we consider the homage of reverence and regard which he drew from general society, we cannot but wish that many successors may arise in his own likeness who might build up an aristocracy of learning, that shall infuse a finer element into the system of life, than any which has ever been distilled upon it from the vulgar aristocracies of wealth or of power.

It is not because of one thing, that nature is constant; but it is because of two things, that nature is constant and that we have been endowed with an irresistible faith in that constancy-it is because of a concurrence in fact between two elements that might have been separated the one from the other, it is because of an adaptation between the mental economy in man and that general economy of things in the midst of which he is placed, that any wisdom at all can be reared on the basis of observation; or that, on the appearances which are before our eyes, we can either reason back to those which have preceded, or forward to those which are hereafter to ensue from them.

13. Our expectation of the constancy of nature in all time coming, because of our experience of that constancy in all past time, is not a deduction of reason—but an immediate and resistless principle of belief in the human constitution. It is no more the fruit of an argumentative process than any sensation or emotion is. That, on the observation of a certain event in given circumstances, there should be a confident anticipation of the same event in the same circumstances this is the assumed principle of many a reasoning; but it is not reasoning which has conducted us thereto. It is an underived and intuitive belief, and not a belief that we reach by a succession of steps and is, as far as we can discern, as strong in infancy as it is in mature and established manhood. It is vain to say that the constancy of nature throughout every former generation of the world, is a reason for the constancy of nature throughout every future gene

ration of it. The two statements are distinct, the one from the other and there is surely no logical necessity why because the first statement is true, the second should be true also. Nevertheless, and without reasoning, we are led from believing by observation in the first, irresistibly to believe by anticipation in the second. There is a harmony, but it is a contingent harmony, between our strong instinctive conviction that it shall be so, and the unfailing universal accomplishment of it. The very strongest among the principles of the human understanding is faithfully responded to by the very surest among the processes of external nature; and this adaptation, due to no will and to no reasoning of ours, yet without which reasoning would be left without a basis-is perhaps the most striking proof which can be given, that man, even when stalking in the pride of his intellectual greatness along the high walk of philosophy, is but the creature of an instinct that should ever be leading him astray-had not God made the laws and the arrangements of his universe to correspond with it.

14. But while we thus advocate the independence of the two laws on each other, that is, of the mental or subjective law of man's instinctive faith in the constancy of nature, on the external or objective law of nature's actual constancy-it should well be understood, that the view we are now to give of Hume's atheistical argument does not rest on any metaphysical theory whatever, as to the origin of this universal belief. Whether it be distinct from experience or the fruit of experience, it is not upon this that we join issue with