be ear-witnesses: And yet undoubtedly, according to the common judgment of mankind, the love of praise is more peculiarly the mark of a liberal and elevated spirit in cases where the gratification it seeks has nothing to recommend it to those whose ruling passions are interest or the love of flattery. It is precisely for the same reason that the love of posthumous fame is strongest in the noblest and most exalted characters. If self-love were really the sole motive in all our actions, Wollaston's reasoning would prove clearly the absurdity of any concern about our memory. "Such a concern" (as Dr. Hutcheson observes) "no selfish being, who had the modelling of his own nature, would choose to implant in himself. But, since we have not this power, we must be contented to be thus outwitted by nature into a public interest against our will."

(From Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers.)

THE USE AND ABUSE OF GENERAL PRINCIPLES IN POLITICS

BEFORE proceeding farther, it is necessary for me to premise that it is chiefly in compliance with common language and common prejudices, that I am sometimes led, in the following observations, to contrast theory with experience. In the proper sense of the word theory, it is so far from standing in opposition to experience that it implies a knowledge of principles, of which the most extensive experience alone could put us in possession. Prior to the time of Lord Bacon, indeed, an acquaintance with facts was not considered as essential to the formation of theories; and from these ages has descended to us an indiscriminate prejudice against general principles, even in those cases in which they have been fairly obtained in the way of induction.

But not to dispute about words; there are plainly two sets of political reasoners; one of which consider the actual institutions of mankind as the only safe foundation for our conclusions, and think every plan of legislation chimerical, which is not copied from one which has already been realised: while the other apprehend that, in many cases, we from the known principles of human particular circumstances of the times.

may reason safely a priori nature, combined with the The former are commonly

understood as contending for experience in opposition to theory; the latter are accused of trusting to theory unsupported by experience but it ought to be remembered, that the political theorist, if he proceeds cautiously and philosophically, founds his conclusions ultimately on experience, no less than the political empiric; as the astronomer who predicts an eclipse from his knowledge of the principles of the science, rests his expectation of the event on facts which have been previously ascertained by observation, no less than if he inferred it, without any reasoning, from his knowledge of a cycle.

There is, indeed a certain degree of practical skill which habits of business alone can give, and without which the most enlightened politician must always appear to disadvantage when he attempts to carry his plans into execution. And, as this skill is often (in consequence of the ambiguity of language) denoted by the word experience, while it is seldom possessed by those men, who have most carefully studied the theory of legislation, it has been very generally concluded, that politics is merely a matter of routine, in which philosophy is rather an obstacle to success. The statesman who has been formed among official details, is compared to the practical engineer; the speculative legislator to the theoretical mechanician who has passed his life among books and diagrams. In order to ascertain how far this opinion is just, it may be of use to compare the art of legislation with those practical applications of mechanical principles, by which the opposers of political theories have so often endeavoured to illustrate their reasonings.

In the first place, then, it may be remarked that the errors to which we are liable, in the use of general mechanical principles, are owing, in most instances, to the effect which habits of abstraction are apt to have, in withdrawing the attention from those applications of our knowledge, by which alone we can learn to correct the imperfections of theory. Such errors, therefore, are in a peculiar degree, incident to men who have been led by natural taste, or by early habits, to prefer the speculations of the closet, to the bustle of active life, and to the fatigue of minute and circumstantial observation.

In politics, too, one species of principles is often misapplied from an inattention to circumstances; those which are deduced from a few examples of particular governments, and which are occasionally quoted as universal political axioms, which every

wise legislator ought to assume as the groundwork of his reasonings. But this abuse of general principles should by no means be ascribed, like the absurdities of the speculative mechanician, to over-refinement, and love of theory; for it arises from weaknesses, which philosophy alone can remedy; an unenlightened veneration for maxims which are supposed to have the sanction of time in their favour, and a passive acquiescence in received opinions. There is another class of principles, from which political conclusions have sometimes been deduced; and which, notwithstanding the common prejudice against them, are a much surer foundation for our reasonings: I allude, at present, to those principles which we obtain from an examination of the human constitution, and of the general laws which regulate the course of human affairs; principles which are certainly the result of a much more extensive induction, than any of the inferences that can be drawn from the history of actual establishments.

In applying, indeed, such principles to practice, it is necessary (as well as in mechanics) to pay attention to the peculiarities of the case but it is by no means necessary to pay the same scrupulous attention to minute circumstances, which is essential in the mechanical arts, or in the management of private business. There is even a danger of dwelling too much on details, and of rendering the mind incapable of those abstract and comprehensive views of human affairs, which can alone furnish the statesman with fixed and certain maxims for the regulation of his conduct.

(From Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind.)

THE IMAGINATION IN SCIENCE

THESE objections apply in common to Bacon and D'Alembert. That which follows has a particular reference to a passage already cited from the latter, where, by some false refinements concerning the nature and functions of imagination, he has rendered the classification of his predecessor incomparably more indistinct and illogical than it seemed to be before.

That all the creations, or new combinations of imagination, imply the previous process of decomposition or analysis, is abundantly manifest; and therefore, without departing from the common and popular use of language, it may undoubtedly be

said, that the faculty of abstraction is not less essential to the poet, than to the geometer and the metaphysician. But this is not the doctrine of D'Alembert. On the contrary, he affirms that metaphysics and geometry are, of all the sciences connected with reason, those in which imagination has the greatest share, an assertion which, it will not be disputed, has at first sight somewhat of the air of a paradox, and which, on closer examination, will, I apprehend, be found altogether inconsistent with fact. If indeed D'Alembert had, in this instance, used (as some writers have done) the word imagination as synonymous with invention, I should not have thought it worth while (at least as far as the geometer is concerned) to dispute his proposition. But that this was not the meaning annexed to it by the author, appears from a subsequent clause, where he tells us that the most refined operations of reason, consisting in the creation of generals which do not fall under the cognisance of our senses, naturally lead to the exercise of imagination. His doctrine, therefore, goes to the identification of imagination with abstraction; two faculties so very different in the direction which they give to our thoughts, that (according to his own acknowledgment) the man who is habitually occupied in exerting the one, seldom fails to impair both his capacity and his relish for the exercise of the other.

This identification of two faculties, so strongly contrasted in their characteristical features, was least of all to be expected from a logician, who had previously limited the province of imagination to the imitation of material objects; a limitation, it may be remarked in passing, which is neither sanctioned by common use, nor by just views of the philosophy of the mind. Upon what ground can it be alleged that Milton's portrait of Satan's intellectual and moral character was not the offspring of the same creative faculty which gave birth to his garden of Eden? After such a definition, however, it is difficult to conceive how so very acute a writer should have referred to imagination the abstractions of the geometer and of the metaphysician; and still more, that he should have attempted to justify this reference by observing that these abstractions do not fall under the cognisance of the My own opinion is, that in the composition of the whole passage he had a view to the unexpected parallel between Homer and Archimedes, with which he meant, at the close, to surprise his readers.

senses.

If the foregoing strictures be well-founded, it seems to follow,

not only that the attempt of Bacon and of D'Alembert to classify the sciences and arts according to a logical division of our faculties, is altogether unsatisfactory; but that every future attempt of the same kind may be expected to be liable to similar objections. In studying, indeed, the theory of the mind, it is necessary to push our analysis as far as the nature of the subject admits of it; and, wherever the thing is possible, to examine its constituent principles separately and apart from each other: but this consideration itself, when combined with what was before stated on the endless variety of forms in which they may be blended together in our various intellectual pursuits, is sufficient to show how ill-adapted such an analysis must for ever remain to serve as the basis of an encyclopædic distribution.

The circumstance to which this part of Bacon's philosophy is chiefly indebted for its popularity, is the specious simplicity and comprehensiveness of the distribution itself;—not the soundness of the logical views by which it was suggested. That all our intellectual pursuits may be referred to one or other of these three heads, history, philosophy, and poetry, may undoubtedly be said with considerable plausibility; the word history being understood to comprehend all our knowledge of particular facts and particular events; the word philosophy, all the general conclusions or laws inferred from these particulars by induction; and the word poetry, all the arts addressed to the imagination. Not that the enumeration, even with the help of this comment, can be considered as complete, for (to pass over entirely the other objections already stated) under which of these three heads shall we arrange the various branches of pure mathematics?

Are we therefore to conclude that the magnificent design, conceived by Bacon, of enumerating, defining, and classifying the multifarious objects of human knowledge (a design, on the successful accomplishment of which he himself believed that the advancement of the sciences essentially depended),—are we to conclude that this design was nothing more than the abortive offspring of a warm imagination, unsusceptible of any useful application to enlighten the mind, or to accelerate its progress? My own idea is widely different. The design was, in every respect, worthy of the sublime genius by which it was formed. Nor does it follow, because the execution was imperfect, that the attempt has been attended with no advantage. At the period when Bacon wrote, it was of much more consequence to exhibit to the