and not to the mind which has been so constructed as to be the recipient of that evidence. It is thus that physical science may, up to its proudest altitudes, have become the mental acquirement of him who has never once cast a regard on the mental physiology-and we should be doing what is preposterous, we should be inverting the experimental order of things, did we insist that the scholar should have a clear insight into the machinery of his intellectual powers, ere we asked him to set that machinery a-going, or by a busy forth-putting of these powers to attain a clear insight upon the other departments of human contemplation.

12. Men judged well and reasoned well on a thousand objects of contemplation, long before the mental acts of judging and reasoning became the objects of contemplation themselves. When these in their turn became the distinct objects of thought, they underwent the same treatment as all the other objects of thought do when treated philosophically -that is, they were grouped and classified according to their resemblances into the various modes of ratiocination. Still the soundness of all the different reasonings was felt, long before that Logic*

* But we must here warn the reader against the error of confounding, in whole or in part, the sciences either of logic or of ethics with the science of the mental physiology. It is true, that one might reason well on any specific object of thought, anterior to the study of logic. But it is as true, that one might study and acquire logic, anterior to and apart from his study of the mental physiology. The acts of reasoning and judging, viewed as mental acts or phenomena, are objects of the latter science; but these form the objects of an inquiry altogether different from the question that respects the goodness of the rea sonings or of the judgments a question which it is the office of logic to decide.

had pronounced upon it. It was not logic that first authorized the reasonings-but logic went forth, as it were, on the previous confident reasonings of men, just as the philosophic inquirer goes forth among those phenomena which constitute the materials of a science, and groupes or arranges them according to their common observed qualities. We dispute not the use of logic-for the study of it implies, first attention to the actual specimens or examples of valid argumentation-and then a recognition by the mind of what that is which constitutes its validity-and we cannot well be so engaged without becoming more expert both in the practice of reasoning and in the detection of any flaw or infirmity in the process. All we affirm is, that good and bad reasoning were felt to be such, before that any reflex cognizance was taken of them. It is not by an antecedent prescription of logic that men defer to the authority of proofsbut it is out of antecedently felt and recognised proofs that the prescriptions of logic are framed. It was not necessary first to devise a right system of logic, that from it men might learn to reason conclusively and well-but this system is constructed upon an after survey of thcse good and conclusive reasonings, which, anterior to its guidance, had come forth on the field of human observation. The completion of a right system of logic is therefore not indispensable to the practice of sound reasoning, either in the business of life or in the sciencesneither does it follow that an erroneous system would materially hinder the work of prosperous investigation, in any quarter to which the intel

lect of man might betake itself. The class of the logicians might differ among themselves; or collectively they might fail in adjusting and building up a sound theory out of those existing materials, which, in the shape of sound judgments and sound reasonings, have been produced or are being produced every day by every other class of inquirers. So that apart from logic, and even in the midst of confusion and contrariety amongst the masters in the science, the general mind of society might be proceeding rightly onward, and multiplying the known truths of all the other sciences; and that whether they are truths which lie at a great depth and are fetched upward as it were by an act of shrewd intuition, or lie at a great distance and are reached forward by a consecutive train of argument. Each process may be most correctly done by the immediate agent, whether or not it be correctly described by the logician who is looking over him.

13. It should be remarked however that even in the study of universal Logic, the mind is not at all times studying itself. It is not necessarily looking inwards, when attending either to the modes or to the principles of reasoning. It, for example, lays confident hold on the truth of the axiom that every event must have a cause; or, proceeding on the constancy of nature, that a like result is always to be anticipated in like circumstances-and in so doing it may be looking objectively and not subjectively. We are not to confound the act of the mind in judging with the thing that the mind judges It is a mistake that the science of mental

of.

physiology envelopes, as it were, the sciences of Logic and Ethics. The science of the mental physiology takes cognizance of the various states of the mind as phenomena, and groupes them into laws or classes according to their observed resemblances. But this is a different employment from that of estimating either what is sound in morals or sound in reasoning. The question, what are the states of emotion or the intellectual states whereof the mind is susceptible, is another question altogether from what that is which constitutes the right and wrong in character, or what that is which constitutes the right and wrong in argument. Mental physiology has been too much blended with the sciences of Ethics and Logic, so as to be regarded in some degree as identical studies. They are not so. It is only when the first principles whether of Logic or of Ethics are controverted, that we are thrown back as it were on our own minds, to take a view there, of what the laws are, whether of human feeling or of human thought. When there is a denial of first principles, this is the only way left to us, of meeting either the moral or the intellectual scepticism. We have no other resource than simply to state the mind's original and instinctive and withal resistless tendencies, whether in matters of belief or in matters of sentiment. It is at this part only of a logical or ethical discussion, that the constitution of the mind comes into notice as a direct object of contemplation. There is a certain obstinate scepticism which cannot be reasoned against, and which can be contravened in no other way, than by an affirmation of the mind's instinctive

confidence in those principles which constitute both the basis and the cement of all reasoning.

14. It is of importance to remark how confidently, and withal how correctly these first principles of belief were proceeded on, ere they were adverted to as parts of the mind's constitution. The phenomena of belief are antecedent to any notice or knowledge on our part of the laws or the principles of belief. Men achieved the intellectual process legitimately, ere the legitimacy of the process was traced or recognised. From the beginning of the world man's faith in the constancy of nature was as vigorously in operation as now— and, for many ages before that it was announced as one of the instincts of the human understanding, did it serve for man's practical guidance both in the business of life, and in the prosecution of all the sciences. And what is true of the infancy of the species is also true of the infancy of each individual. It is with his rational as with his

animal economy. Each goeth on prosperously and well, without any reflex view of the operations of either. It would appear that from the very outset of the education of the senses, there are certain original principles of belief which are in most efficient play; and the practical result of it is the infant's sound education. The following are the admirable observations of Dr. Thomas Brown on the habitudes and powers of the little reasoner -and we bring them forward that we may discriminate more clearly between a mental process as done by one individual, and the same process as described by another individual who is looking over