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112 crets to that obscurity in which they ever did, and ever will remain.” When the justness of this remark shall be as universally acknowledged in the science of Mind as it now is in Natural Philosophy, we may reasonably expect that an end will be put to those idle controversies which have so long diverted the attention of metaphysicians from the proper objects of their studies.

The text of Scripture, prefixed by Dr Reid as a motto to his Inquiry, conveys, in a few words, the result of his own modest and truly philosophical speculations on the origin of our knowledge, and expresses this result in terms strictly analogous to those in which Newton speaks of the law of gravitation:—“The inspiration of the Almighty hath given them understanding.” Let our researches concerning the development of the Mind, and the occasions on which its various notions are first formed, be carried back ever so far towards the commencement of its history, in this humble confession of human ignorance they must terminate at last.

I have dwelt thus long on the writings of Gassendi, much less from my own idea of their merits, than out of respect to an author, in whose footsteps Locke has frequently condescended to tread. The epigrammatic encomium bestowed on him by Gibbon, who calls him “le meilleur philosophe des litterateurs, et le meilleur litterateur des philosophes,” appears to me quite extravagant. His learning, indeed, was at once vast and accurate; and, as a philosopher, he is justly entitled to the praise of being one of the first who entered thoroughly into the spirit of the Baconian logic. But his inventive powers, which were probably not of the highest order, seem to have been either dissipated amidst the multiplicity of his literary pursuits, or laid asleep by his indefatigable labours, as a Commentator and a Compiler. From a writer of this class, new lights were not to be expected in the study of the human Mind; and accordingly, here he has done little or nothing, but to revive and to repeat over the doctrines of the old Epicureans. His works amount to six large volumes in folio; but the substance of them might be compressed into a much smaller compass, without any diminution of their value.

In one respect Gassendi had certainly a great advantage over his antagonist—the good humour which never forsook him in the heat of a philosophical argument. The comparative indifference with which he regarded most of the points at issue between them, was perhaps the chief cause of that command of temper so uniformly displayed in all his controver-