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between what Kant calls analytic and synthetic judgments. The question is put, "Is there not a difference between the evidence of some first principles and others?" and he answers, "There are various differences. This seems to be one, that, in some first principles, the predicate of the proposition is evidently contained in the subject, as in this, two and three are equal to five, a man has flesh and blood; for, in these and the like self-evident principles, the subject includes the predicate in the very notion of it. There are other first principles in which the predicate is not contained in the notion of the subject, as when we affirm that a thing which begins to exist must have a cause." This last is an example of what Kant calls synthetic judgments a priori. Reid, however, has not laid hold of the distinction so firmly as Kant, nor did he see its importance, and elaborate it so fully as the great German metaphysician. It is interesting to notice these correspondences between the Scottish and German opponents of Hume. {225}

I do not mean to dwell on the remaining portion of the essays, which contain many sound remarks, but little that is fresh and novel.

. This essay has nothing worthy of comment, except a vigorous attempt to show, as against Locke, that morality is not capable of demonstration.

. He argues that "it implies an original faculty, and that it is in the moral and intellectual perfections of mind, and in its active powers, that beauty originally dwells." In a letter to Rev. Archibald Alison, he claims: " I am proud to think that I first, in clear and explicit terms, and in the cool blood of a philosopher, maintained that all the beauty and sublimity of objects of sense is derived from the expression they exhibit of things intellectual, which alone have original beauty." (p. 89.) Possibly this may be a pretty close approximation to the truth. It seems to me to be a more just and enlightened view than that presented by Alison, and those Scotch metaphysicians who refer beauty to the association of ideas capable of raising feeling.

. He argues resolutely, that we have an idea of active power, and examines the doctrines of Locke and Hume. It does not appear to him that there can be active power " in a subject which has no thought, no understanding, no will." He maintains that natural philosophy, even if brought to perfection, " does not discover the efficient cause of any one phenomenon in nature." He draws the distinction between efficient and physical causes. " A physical cause is not an agent. It does not act, but is acted on, and is passive as to its effect." (P. 74.) He holds that it is the business of natural philosophy, to discover physical cause. On this, Cousin remarks that " to pretend that all cause is necessarily endowed with will and thought, is to deny all natural cause." The human race believes in the reality of natural causes: it believes that the fire burns, that the fire is the cause of pain which we feel, &c.; and, at the same time, according as it reflects, it attaches all natural causes to their common and supreme principle." When we discover a true physical cause, say that oxygen and hydrogen when joined in certain proportions, produce water, intuitive reason leads to believe that there is property, that is power, in the object; that the physical cause is truly {226} an efficient cause; and that the effect follows from a power in the agents.

. He is a strenuous advocate of free-will. " Every man is conscious of a power to determine in things which he conceives to depend on his determination." He draws the distinction between desire and will. " The distinction is, that what we will must be an action, and our own action: what we desire may not be our own action; it may be no action at all. The following statement is taken from the manuscripts: "I grant that all rational beings are influenced, and ought to be influenced, by motives. But the relation between a motive and the action is of a very different nature