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By Root 3052 0

ever did read, through his weighty {134} volumes, we are in hopes that some may feel grateful to us, if in short space we give them an expository and critical account of his philosophy, with a special facing towards the philosophy which has been introduced among us by the British section of the nescient school of Comte.

Hume begins thus his famous "Treatise of Human Nature:" "All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which I call and . The difference betwixt them consists in the degrees of force and liveliness with which they strike upon the mind, and make their way into our thought or consciousness. Those perceptions which enter with most force and violence, we may name , and under this name I comprehend all our sensations, passions, and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul. By , I mean the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning; such, for instance, are all the perceptions excited by the present discourse, excepting only those which arise from the sight and touch, and excepting the immediate pleasure or uneasiness it may occasion." He tells us, that, in the use of terms, " I rather restore the word to its original sense, from which Mr. Locke had perverted it, in making it stand for all our perceptions." This theory is certainly very simple, but surely it is lamentably scanty. It will not do to place under the same bead, and call by the one name of , two such things as the affections of the senses on the one hand, and the mental emotions of hope, fear, joy, and sorrow, on the other. Nor can we allow him to describe all our sense-perceptions by the vague name of impressions. What is meant by impressions? If the word bas any proper meaning, it must signify that there is something impressing, without which there would be no impression, and also something impressed. If Hume admits all this to be in the impression we ask him to go on with us to inquire what is in the thing impressed and in the thing that impresses, and we are at once in the region of existences, internal and external. " I never," he says, " catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception." His very language contradicts itself. He talks of catching . What is this that he catches? But he may say it is only a perception. I reply that there is more. We never observe {135} a perception alone. We always observe self as perceiving. It is true that I never can catch myself at any time without a perception; but it is quite as certain, and we have the same evidence for it, that we never observe a perception except when we observe self perceiving. Let us unfold what is in this self, and we shall find that it no way resembles an impression, like that left by a seal upon wax.[36] In regard to certain of our perceptions, those through the senses, we observe not only the self perceiving, but an object perceived.

He now explains the way in which appear. By memory the impressions come forth in their original order and position as ideas. This is a defective account of memory, consciousness being the witness. In memory, we have not only a reproduction of a sensation, or, it may be, a mental affection, we recognize it as . Of all this we have as clear evidence as we have of the presence of the idea.[37] In imagination the ideas are more strong and lively, and are transposed and changed. This, he says, is effected by an associating quality; and he here develops his account of the laws of association, which has been so commended. But the truth is, his views on this subject, so far from being an advance on those of Hutcheson, are rather a retrogression: they are certainly far behind those of his contemporary Turnbull. He seems to confine the operation of association to the exercise of imagination: he does not see that our very memories are regulated by the same principle; nay, he allows that the imagination can join two ideas without