Locke has put into her mouth is mere stammering, and is, in my opinion, as contemptible as the matter which be has made her utter.Mr.Hobbes I am not so well acquainted with; but as be is of the same heresy, that is, one of those who pretend to philosophize, without the assistance of the ancients, I suppose he has succeeded as ill.As for myself, I am meditating great things in the literary way, but I am not sure that Iwill ever execute any thing.I have one work in view, which I think would not make a bad second part, if it were executed, to your I Hermes,'-- I mean a work showing the origin and progress of this most wonderful of all the arts of man, the art of speech.What set me upon this train of thinking was the study of some most barbarous and imperfect languages, spoken in America, from grammars and dictionaries which I had {250} out of the King's Library, when I was last at Paris.Besides the curiosity of seeing the process of so wonderful an art, in tracing the progress of language, you at the same time trace the progress of the human understanding, and I think I have already collected materials from which a very good history of the human mind might be formed,-- better, at least, than that which Mr.Locke has given us.This, if I had leisure, Iwould make part of a much greater work which I project, viz., a History of fan; in which I would propose to trace him through the several stages of his existence;for there is a progression of our species from a state little better than mere brutality to that most perfect state you describe in ancient Greece, which is really amazing, and peculiar to our species.But the business of a laborious profession will, I'm afraid, prevent me from executing this, and several other projects which Ihave had in my head.But with respect to you, being now eased of the care of public affairs, the world will certainly exact from you an account of your leisure;especially as you have given them such pledges of your capacity to instruct and entertain them.You have done enough upon grammar.But I would have you do something upon logic, to show an ignorant age that the greatest discovery in science ever made by any one man is the discovery of the Syllogism by Aristotle."
He has two great philosophic works.The first is "Ancient Metaphysics, or the Science of Universals; with an Appendix containing an Examination of the Principles of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy." It is in six quarto volumes, averaging four hundred pages each.He treats first of metaphysics and then of man.The proper subject of metaphysics is " mind pure and separate from all matter." In nature, all is either body or mind or their accidents.There is not in the universe, so far as our knowledge extends, any body without mind; they are never separated in the material world." What is moved I call body, what moves is called mind." " Under mind in this definition I include, 1st, the rational and intellectual; 2d, the animal life; 3d, the principle in the vegetable by which it is nourished, grows, and produces its like, and which, therefore, is commonly called the vegetable life; and 4th, the motive principle, which I understand to be in all bodies, even such as are thought to be inanimate." He says the Greek word denotes the three first kinds; the fourth, the motive, is not commonly in Greek called , but Aristotle says it is .He makes moving or producing motion an essential property of mind.In respect of quality, motion applies to mind as well as {251} body.By motion the whole business of nature above, below, and round about us is carried on." It is impossible that any thing can be generated, come to maturity, or be extinguished without passing from one state to another.Now that passage is motion." He proves the immateriality of mind in general, (1)from the nature of motion, (2) from the nature of body, (3)from the nature of mind.He establishes the two first <a priori>, and the third by a demonstration <ex absurdo>.He has then <a posteriori> proof." Sensation cannot be produced by a material cause; reasoning and consciousness far less."Coming to minds, he adopts the Aristotelean distinction between the gnostic and orective powers.The gnostic powers are sense, phantasy, and comparison.In sense, the mind is not conversant with the visible object itself, but with the image or , as the Epicureans called it, thrown off from the object.The essential distinction between sense and phantasia is, that what we perceive by the sense is present and operating upon the sense, whereas the object of the imagination is not present.Phantasy is only of sensible objects.Memory is only of ideas, and belongs exclusively to man." Brutes have no idea of time, or of first and last.
Phantasy serves to them the purpose of memory." The object is painted on the brute's phantasia, but without any perception of the time when he first saw it.Sense and phantasy perceive particular things, -- comparison, generals or ideas.He thinks that brutes possess the comparative faculty, and that here the mind of the brute acts without the assistance of the body.As to will, he reckons " all will as free, and, at the same time, it is necessary; but of a necessity very different from material or physical." Much of this psychology is avowedly taken from Aristotle, but at the same time exhibits traces of shrewdness and independence, and, it has to be added, of eccentricity.
He criticises Locke's theory of the origin of ideas.He acknowledges no innate ideas, if we mean ideas present to the mind, and contemplated before they are excited by objects; but they are there though "latent and unproductive," and are there even before our existence in this world.Nature, however, has so ordained it, that they can only be excited by the impulse of objects upon our organs of sense." It should be noticed here, that notwithstanding the prominence given to it by {252} Locke, Lord Monboddo has no recognition of reflection or consciousness as a separate source of ideas.