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Volume IV. opens with a general sketch of the state of philosophy at the end of the seventeenth century. Bayle is the first conspicuous name in the ensuing age: an excellent biography of him is given; and the more original of his dialectic excursions are brought into notice. Something is said of Newton, but his metaphysical declarations are very few and ill-argued. Leibnitz occupies much space: in mathematics he was the rival and in metaphysics the superior of Newton; yet his system has many weak sides. Locke follows, and is analyzed at great extent: his doctrine that there are no innate ideas is combated; and a great philanthropic value is assigned to his Letters on Toleration. Algernon Sydney's theory of government is examined; and next, with unwelcome anachronism, that of Harrington. Puffendorf, Tschirnhausen, Thomasius, and Wolf, then appear in procession, followed by the minor names of Budde, Gundling, Glafey, and Ridiger.

Of the fifth volume the first chapter is allotted to Baumgarten, the father of æsthetic philosophy, to Meier, Crusius, and Darjes. A separate chapter contemplates Crousaz and Creuz, and an entire section is bestowed on Berkeley, much of whose sophistry is ably exposed. Hume occurs next, and his Treatise of Human Nature is epitomized with care, as well as his maturer essays. Then follow Reid, Beattie, and Oswald, his antagonists; and some importance is attached to the arguments of Reid. Hartley and Search are next appretiated, considerably below their English standard of reputation. Mandeville is highly praised. Shaftesbury, Chesterfield, Addison, Steele, Pope, and Bolingbroke, are reviewed in one chapter, as if they had invented little, and only served to circulate in the genteel world the opinions of thinking men, To Hutcheson's system a distinct segment is allotted. Then comes a chapter concerning Wollaston, Clarke, Price, Ferguson, Home, Macaulay-Graham, and Stewart; and it is observed that Price's Review of the principal Questions in Morals has influenced Professor Kant's doctrine in that department. A long section is exclusively consecrated to the metaphysical works of Priestley, especially to his Examination of Reid's Inquiry and to his Disquisitions on Matter and Spirit. In noticing the antagonists of Priestley, mention is made of Mr. John Palmer of Islington, who wrote in defence of the (moral) liberty of man, against the necessarians; and of him it is (p. 582.) erroneously said that he was exiled to Botanybay; whereas it was the Reverend T. Fyshe Palmer who fell a victim to the intolerance of the Pitt and Melville administration. The whole controversy is recorded with almost exces

sive detail; and the extreme want of candour is lamented with which Priestley appretiated Hume.

Theories of Political Economy are treated in a separate section, and a copious epitome is given of the principal appertaining essays of Hume, and of the entire works of Adam Smith and Steuart. It is of little importance here to dwell on books so well known, but it is gratifying to observe the attention paid on the Continent to eminent English writers.

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The sixth and concluding volume is to us the most valuable in this entire series; because it contains an account of many recent continental philosophers, whose arguments have as yet scarcely penetrated into this country. It is introduced by a general sketch of the eighteenth century, and dwells in the opening chapter on the works of Condillac, Helvetius, Holbach, Robinet, Bonnet, Montesquieu, Burlamaqui, Vattel, and Réal. A certain order of topics, rather than of time, induces M. BUHLE to groupe his writers in a manner somewhat unfavourable to a detection of the historic filiation of ideas and systems; and thus, though Hartley had previously been examined, Hartley was indebted to Condillac for some trains of argument which are first reported here. A diffuse but accurate analysis is given of the Systême de la Nature, a work here ascribed to Baron Holbach; and to which M. BUHLE assigns the highest rank among the metaphysical writings of the French, for closeness and consistency of reasoning, and for spirited eloquence of compilation, He justly observes, however, that it neither supplies nor suggests a satisfactory answer to the argument from design in favour of a Providence; or, as it is here perhaps better named, to the argument from the harmony of the universe. Indeed, throughout the Systême de la Nature runs an artful suppression of the counter-arguments, many of which must have been well known to the author, and, if not known to him from reading, would have occurred to a mind so abundant in dialectic resource. It may be suspected, therefore, that this work is not the duction of one individual, but that some zealous advocate, Lagrange perhaps, was employed to separate from the manuscripts of a more impartial thinker those one-side reasonings, which are so brilliantly stated in this celebrated declamation. Paley's Natural Theology forms an excellent antidote.

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The history of French philosophy is continued in the ensuing twentieth chapter, by epitomizing the metaphysical works of D'Argens, La Mettrie, Maupertuis, Rousseau, Voltaire, D'Alembert, and Diderot; in which a preference of attention is given to Maupertuis.

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Chapter xxi. contains a view of philosophy in Germany from the middle of the eighteenth century to the time of Kant. The writings of Mendelsohn, Sulzer, Eberhard, Plattner, Tetens, and Feder, are successively characterized; and, as they are less known in England than the French writers, it may be welcome to abstract something from this section:

• Mendelsohn was born at Dessau, in 1729, of poor Jew-parents, and studied early at Berlin the antient languages and rabbinical writers. Placed at fourteen years of age in a commercial situation, he had not ample leisure: but he still gave much attention to literature, and had the good fortune to become acquainted with Lessing and Nicolai. The former was kind to him, gave him gratuitous instructions in Greek, and enabled him to construe Plato. Mendelsohn continued patiently to cultivate trade, as far as this was necessary for his maintenance: but he also assisted in a Review called Letters of Literature, which Nicolai printed, and occasionally set forth publications more original. He died in 1785. His works consist of, 1. Letters on the Sensations, 1755. 2. Phædon, 1776; an imitation of Plato's dialogues, in which the original arguments are modernized and strengthened: it has been well translated into English by Mr. Cullen. 3. Jerusalem, 1783: a defence of tolerating Jews. 4. Morning Hours, 1786: lectures on truth, appearance, and error, principally directed to prove the being of a God. 5. Some translations from the Jewish Scriptures, accompanied by a liberal commentary, and a number of private letters chiefly relative to the opinions of Lessing. A mildness of manner, a cordial charity of feeling, and a purity of intention, assimilate him as a moralist with Dr. Price.

'John George Sulzer, a friend of Mendelsohn, was born at Winterthur, in Swisserland, studied theology at Zurich, and obtained in 1741 the situation of preacher, which he resigned in order to undertake a preceptorship in a distinguished family; and he afterward became Intendant at Magdeburg. In 1747, he was invited as mathematical professor to the Joachimsthal college at Berlin, where he became a member of the Academy. A short time before his death, being troubled with heim-weh, an eager desire of again seeing his native country, he returned to Swisserland, published his tour, and died in 1779. His principal work is a Theory of the Fine Arts, digested into a dictionary, which appeared in 1774. He also wrote an elementary Compendium of Knowlege, which was much used in schools, but has been superseded; and Miscellaneous Philosophical Essays, in which the immortality of the soul, the reasoning faculty, the being of a God, and the nature of ideas, are discussed.

John Augustus Eberhard, a preacher at Charlottenburg, near Berlin, published an Apology for Socrates, which defends the charitable doctrine that heathens will be saved. He became professor of philosophy at Halle, and printed in 1776 a Theory of Thought and Sensation, and a Discourse on Truth and Error.

'Ernest Plattner, professor of physiology at Leipzig, is known by three good works, intitled Philosophic Aphorisms, New Anthropology

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for Physicians, and Physiological Questions: but his style is somewhat incoherent.

John Nicholas Tetens, originally professor of philosophy at Kiel, became privy counsellor at Copenhagen, and published an Analysis of the thinking Faculty, under the title of Philosophic Essays on Human Developement, 1777. He first introduced several of those technical terms which have been adopted by the school of Kant, such as receptivity and spontaneity.

John George Henry Feder was professor of Greek and Hebrew at Coburg; was afterward invited to Göttingen, where he lectured many years, and attached every body to him by his amenity, affability, and comprehension of knowlege; and finally accepted at Hanover the direction of the college of St. George. His earliest work was The new Emilius, an elegant and interesting critical theory of education. A Manual of Logic and Metaphysics followed, which displays the eclectic philosopher: but, as no eclectic philosophy can cohere, or be throughout consistent with itself, so it never lasts; and Feder, whenever he republished his Manual, which went through many editions, was found to have changed vast segments of his opinions.

• Herman Samuel Reimarus, born at Hamburg in 1694, became master of the gymnasium in that town, where he died in 1765. His works on the Instincts of Animals, and on Natural Theology, have left profound traces in the schools of philosophy.

John Henry Lambert was born in 1728 at Muhlhausen. His father, a French refugee, could ill afford him an education: but he acquired learning enough to be employed as preceptor to the sons of M. de Salis, whom he accompanied to college, and in their travels. This connection led to higher patronage, and he obtained from Frederic the Great the place of surveyor of the buildings at Berlin. He published a good book on logic, intitled Neues Organon; became a member of the Prussian academy; and died in 1777. His work had great influence in preparing the Kantian system of philosophy.

John Bernard Basedow, the son of a barber, was born at Hamburg in 1725; was brought up in the free school there; was sent to college; changed more than once his place of study; was ordained minister; became an Unitarian; and at last obtained the foundation of a new academy at Dessau, called the Philanthropinum, of which he was named principal. He was a somewhat turbulent innovator, loved wine and tobacco too well, and died in 1785. He wrote Philalethic, a work on the religion of reason: a Theoretic System of sound Education, which vehemently enforces gymnastic exercises; and many other tracts. "Naturam sequere ducem" was his favourite motto: -his pursuits in literature much resembled those of Dr. Priestley.

To the Philalethie of Basedow, John Christian Lossius opposed a book intitled Physical Causes of Truth, which has made a permanent impression.'

At length M. BUHLE attains his fifth and concluding section, which is exclusively devoted to the history of the Critical Philosophy

Philosophy and to the exposition of the system of Kant; whose book is here translated almost entire into French. The German title Kritik der reinen Vernunft may be rendered Criterion of pure Reason. As the work still exerts in Germany a diffusive influence, and has swallowed up the systems of preceding speculators, we shall enter into some detail of its

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Kant has taken Sextus Empiricus for his guide or model, and begins his introduction by dividing knowlege into pure and empirical; meaning by pure knowlege that which we obtain from our ideas, and by empirical knowlege that which we obtain from our sensations. Thus Sextus Empiricus opposes eμeva, or internal perceptions, to pavoueva, or external impressions: but he does not, like Kant, claim for that knowlege, which the mind acquires by contemplating itself, a superiority over that which it derives from experience. On the contrary, as all empirical knowlege implies a comparison of the fantasy, or representation, with the fact, and all ideal consciousness implies the absence and partial oblivion of its archetype, this knowlege at best resembles the speculation of a dream. The real topic of Kant, therefore, is to find the Criterion of ideal Inferences.

After an introduction, which absurdly ranks pure knowlege (we take the ill-chosen epithet in his own sense) with real knowlege, Kant proceeds to the definition of the word space; and this he maintains to be an instinctive or à priori idea. The word space belongs to that class of words which the grammarians call privatives: it is a positive expression for a negative quantity: it is the antithetic idea to matter: but it is only an idea, and has no exterior, or, as the Kantians say, no objective reality. (The word subjective is continually used for interior, and the word objective for exterior, by these barbarous jargon-mongers.) He next takes in hand the word time, maintaining that this also is a pure intuition; and he then says that space and time are forms of our perception. Now, if every thing exists in space and time, and if space and time exist only in idea, every thing exists only in idea. say the objectors. Kant answers: (p. 449.) No doubt, bodies considered as absolute things are different from and independent of us; under this relation, the manner in which they exist is absolutely inconceivable to us: but, in order that they should appear to us, 'we must necessarily represent them to ourselves in space and time. The manner in which the thing becomes a phænomenon, or appearance, is explicable only subjectively, not objectively.' Such is the unmeaning assemblage of words which this writer holds out as philosophy.

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