power of the pen to give most people clear and welldefined thoughts.

We may particularise as especially worthy of attention, Archbishop Whately's observations on the different periods of life at which different men attain their mental maturity (pp. 403-4); on the license of counsel in pleading a client's cause (pp. 509-12); on the necessity of the forms and ceremonies of etiquette, even among the closest friends (p. 479); and upon the causes of sudden popularity (pp. 500-2). Students will find some valuable advice at pp. 460-1; and young preachers at pp. 323-4. Those persons who pretend an entire contempt for worldly wealth, either because the grapes hang beyond their reach, or from envy of people who are more fortunate, may turn with advantage to pp. 350-1. Those amiable individuals who are wont to express their satisfaction that such an acquaintance has met with some disappointment, because it will do him good, are referred to the Archbishop's keen and just remark upon such as bestow posthumous praise upon a man whom they reviled and calumniated during his life, and may profitably consider whether the real motive from which they speak is not highly analogous :

It may fairly be suspected that the one circumstance respecting him which they secretly dwell on with the most satisfaction, though they do not mention it, is that he is dead; and that they delight in bestowing their posthumous honours on him, chiefly because they are posthumous ; according to the concluding couplet in the Verses on the Death of Dean Swift:'And since you dread no further lashes,

Methinks you may forgive his ashes.'—(p. 19.)

We must draw our remarks to a close. We feel how imperfect an idea we have given of Archbishop Whately's Annotations,-of their range, their cogency, their wisdom, their experience, their practical instruction, their wit, their eloquence. The extracts we have quoted are like a sheaf of wheat brought from a field of a hundred acres; but we trust our readers may be induced to study the book for themselves.

40

II.

RECENT METAPHYSICAL WORKS-LEWES, MAURICE,

*

FLEMING.

WE

E do not think, judging from the contempt in which Mr. Lewes holds the Scotch philosophical school, that he would concur in the common opinion that the Scotch are a metaphysical race. But we believe

that Mr. Lewes would admit that a certain Scotch blacksmith, mentioned in Dr. Fleming's book, succeeded in expressing in a pithy sentence the opinion as to metaphysical science which is accepted by the mass of mankind:

'Twa folk,' said he, ‘disputin' thegither; he that's listenin' doesna ken what he that's speakin' means; and he that's speakin' doesna ken what he means himsel',—that's metaphysics."

* The Biographical History of Philosophy, from its Origin in Greece down to the Present Day. By George Henry Lewes. London: 1857.

Encyclopædia Metropolitana: Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy. Part I. Ancient Philosophy: Part II. Philosophy of the First Six Centuries: Part III. Mediæval Philosophy. By Frederick Denison Maurice, M.A. London and Glasgow: 1854-1857.

The Vocabulary of Philosophy; Mental, Moral, and Metaphysical: with Quotations and References, for the use of Students. By William Fleming, D.D., Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow London and Glasgow: 1857.

The popular impression of metaphysics is of something excessively uninteresting; utterly away from all bearing on practical life, and for the most part quite unintelligible. The unintelligibility, so far as it exists, is mainly the fault of the authors who have written upon metaphysical subjects: the want of interest and of practical concern is chargeable, we fear, upon the branch of science itself. Very acute, very profound, and very subtle thought is of course more difficult to follow, than it is to take in and apprehend such a proposition as that the day is rainy, or that two and two make four; and it is natural enough for ignorant persons to consider the difficulty of apprehending any thought as the measure of its subtlety, profundity, or acuteness; and to think that the harder they find it to understand what an author would be at, the greater philosopher that author must be. It is but carrying out this notion to its legitimate conclusion, when many people judge, that if they find it utterly impossible to understand an author, it must be because he possesses powers greatly superior to those bestowed upon one whom they understand throughout, or by occasional glimpses. But we believe that in almost every instance in which men and women of ordinary intelligence and education find it difficult to make out an author's meaning, the fault lies entirely with the author himself. Either he himself has no clear notion of what he wishes to say, or he wants the power of saying it in intelligible words. In the case of metaphysical writings, we find many proofs that both these evils exist. Many metaphysical writers, it is evident, are groping their way through their subject as they

proceed they have no defined notion in their mind: they do not know what they want to express, and it is not at all surprising that they do not succeed in expressing it. An author will generally present his thoughts to other minds, somewhat less sharply outlined than they exist in his own mind. And as if the essential difficulty of apprehending the impalpable and evanescent entities with which the metaphysician deals were not sufficient, many metaphysicians have employed a terminology so odd, affected, and unnatural, and a general style so intricate and involved, that it is not to be wondered at if the great majority of readers throw aside their works in disgust. There has been of late years a healthy reaction from that blind admiration which for a time followed the intellectual children of the mist.' The Archbishop of Dublin, in the preface to his recent edition of Bacon's Essays, has remarked with his usual force and felicity upon the utterly undeserved influence which German theology and metaphysics for a considerable period exercised, and in some measure do still exercise, over many in this country ;- —an influence

founded mainly upon the belief that whatever is abstruse and recondite must be abstruse and recondite wisdom. It is not too much to say, that if many of the young persons who regard German thinking as much more profound than English, understood the true meaning (so far as there is any) of what they admire, they would discover that it consists partly of what is undoubtedly true but perfectly trivial; and in greater part of what is flagrantly and absurdly false.