have actually done, and the whole burden of guilt comes and can come to the human mind only in connection with a clear and well-defined consciousness that each step in the descent was one of choice. No reasoning has ever been able to break down in the minds of men the axiom of morals, that responsibleness is measured by ability. The strength of this common consciousness is also clearly seen in the reluctance with which the philosophy of necessity approaches its own conclusions; the subtle phraseology with which it seeks to modify or partially conceal its results; its efforts to restore, or seem to restore, with one hand, what it has destroyed with the other; the pertinacity with which it insists on a valid, vital distinction between inabilities, when it can no longer mark that distinction; and the tenacity with which it clings to those technical terms, which afford a thin haze in which to shelter the naked idea. No less is it seen in the firmness with which the opposing philosophy has held to its convictions, though sadly worsted in the argument, and utterly unable to explain its conceptions. Our definition is also justified, when we look at the objects between which man in his free action is called to elect. They are not the same in kind, and therefore admit of no comparison in degree. An object of appetite, making its appeal through the sense, and the law of right, through the reason, cannot be brought to the same scale of measurement, and thus be found the one to overlap the other. Heat,. in its degrees, cannot be flung into the balance against weight and its degrees. Certainly, these are not more distinct in kind, more incommensurable, than are gratification and right. Nor can these two, gratification and right, be resolved into happiness, and thus applied to a common scale. Right can never be so resolved; and he who does right on the ground of the pleasure secured, has not yet done right. Two objects, wholly distinct, without the possibility of comparison in degree, exclude necessity as springing from the presence of motives, and leave election possible. The expression, "The strongest motive controls the will," may be either a mere truism, meaning nothing more than that the will is governed by the motive by which it actually is governed, or it may be an effort to assign a definite power to VOL. LXXXIV. - NO. 175. 33

motives, and thus, by a surreptitious introduction of the idea of force into the realm of freedom, to render a comparison in degree possible. The moment we accept the effort as legitimate, the whole field is abandoned, and all sinks back into necessity.

Comparisons drawn from the external world, having ever in them the antagonistic connections of necessity, will not only fail to enlighten, but must necessarily mislead us in our discussions upon freedom; but there are analogies drawn from a higher source, which, if they do not illustrate a free will, yet show the necessity of the conception, and prove that it shares its most perplexing difficulties with other generally admitted ideas. Man can never attribute to God any freedom higher and purer in kind than that which he first finds in himself. It is solely because the image of God is within us, that we are able to find and comprehend the substantial being of God without us. The moment that we deny freedom to ourselves on the ground of any impossibility in the conception, that moment we deny it to God, and heaven and earth at once sink into the unmeasured, uncontrolled stream of causation. There is no more any supernatural. In destroying himself, man wrecks the whole universe. It remains no longer the offspring and the theatre of self-guiding action; but a deluge of physical causes, rushing down through the infinity of the past, sweeps over and swallows up all its outposts and battlements. Freedom lost and consistency maintained, there will remain above the flood not a single mountain-top on which the temple or city of our God might rest. If this all-consuming idea of causation is to eat like a worm into the heart of our free philosophy, then we shall find in time or space no position or barrier which we may make good against it. As we travel back along the line of events, searching for some ultimate point, some first fountain from which the phenomenal universe has been poured forth, we shall have everywhere beneath our feet the same conditions that we now have,— force, pressed on and pressing onward. Cause beneath us, cause behind us, cause before us, every point precisely analogous to every other point in the dreary waste of causa

tion, we shall strive in vain to stop; our weariness will be our only evidence that we have reached our journey's end. To assume a first cause is both an assumption and a misnomer; an assumption, because it is the arbitrary suspension of a process which, to be consistent with itself, ought to go on for ever; the same impulse that compels me to seek a cause for one cause, should compel me to seek a cause for every other cause; a misnomer, since, while the term is retained, one half the idea it should cover is cast away. It is not less essential to the complete conception that it be caused, than that it be a cause, that it receive force, than that it impart it. There is nothing of origination in the idea of causation with which Logic deals. Beginning, creation, is, to her, thin air, out of which she can make nothing, on which she can construct nothing. Put the chasm where you will on the last of her veritable causes, she will stand astonished, impotent, and angered. The whole process, then, by which we reach and retain the idea of a Creator, is in direct contravention and hostility to all merely logical methods; and the act of the mind by which we refuse to seek a cause for the one great Creator is precisely analogous to that by which we refuse to run over and destroy our idea of freedom by our idea of force. The same analogy may also be seen in some of the attributes we assign to God. We feel it no absurdity to say of him, He is ubiquitous; yet a very little explanation may make this attribute seem to the mere understanding both impossible and absurd. The truth is, our reason is able to give us ideas beyond the measurement of merely logical processes.

In the work some of whose prominent ideas have now been partially discussed, there are to be found, scattered with a liberal hand, those fresh, vigorous, and suggestive thoughts which open to the mind new fields, quicken its action, and connect and consolidate its fragmentary knowledge. In this respect, we doubt whether it has its equal. But the synthetical and originating power of the author seems to surpass his analytical capacity. Taken as a complete compend of the science of the mind designed for students, it lacks that clear and careful treatment of the parts which would make

it, not an outline, but an adequate physical chart, of the region surveyed. Thus, Association is confined to three pages, Memory and Conception each to two pages, and Abstraction to one.

The works of Dr. Hickok have not everywhere received that candid and cheerful appreciation which would naturally flow from a full insight into their merits. This is owing, we think, in great part, to the style in which they are written. He does not merely employ technical terms, - these belong to all scientific productions, and, when clearly defined and accurately employed, are very far from leading to obscurity, -but his whole form of thought and mode of expression are generally more or less, and at times extremely, technical and artificial. One needs to read his books through, before the mind is placed in such sympathy with the mind of the author, its method of operation and expression, as clearly and readily to apprehend his full idea. This is true of those accustomed to metaphysical research; much more must it be true of those undisciplined in that direction. This apparent unintelligibleness, which has withheld the meaning from the hasty, the careless, and the lazy reader, has repelled many; and none but the craving appetite has been quickened and satisfied. The newspaper criticism on the author's Rational Psychology, that it could be read as well backwards as forwards, has found many willing to shield their indolence by ridicule. In this respect, the work before us deserves, and will encounter, some criticism, especially as designed for a class of persons to whom no unnecessary and fastidious difficulty should be presented. Of the technical method, which pervades not words, but sentences, the following may be given as illustrations.

"This identification of the reciprocal modifications, of both the recipient organ and that which has been received, is precisely what is meant by sensation."

"Shape is given limit in extent, and tone is given limit in intensity; and as thus limited, we may apply to both shape and tone a common term expressive of the limitation, and call it form. The living feeling will thus always be expressed in some pure form.”

All the passages in connection with the above require a

certain quick sympathy with the methods of the author for their ready and perfect apprehension. In no department of composition should style be so simply and solely a medium. for thought, as in the productions of philosophy. Its foremost excellence, therefore, must be that transparency which interposes no obstacle, which conceals and alters nothing.

Poetry, burdened with no search, exulting in the tread of her imagery as it comes echoing forth in her metre, may seek the mystic light which half gives, half conceals her passion; but Science must ever walk straight onward with her lamp in her hand. The telescope with which we search out obscure and complicated phenomena should possess that perfect symmetry and adjustment of lenses which distorts not the object, nor converts into shades and colors the pure beam of light along which the revelation comes. All imperfection here is so much added to our labor, - so much subtracted from our success. A definite purpose inspires and quickens our efforts, and that which is not an instrument is an obstacle.

ART. V.- Modern Painters. Of Many Things. By JOHN RUSKIN, M. A. Vol. III. New York: Wiley and Halsted. 1856.

THERE is perhaps no writer to whom America is more indebted than to John Ruskin. We have, on the one side, a materialism which tends to check the development of our higher nature; and, on the other, a spiritualism which would cast aside all outward form. Here, more than anywhere else, is needed the mediation of beauty, by which spirit and matter are blended into a living unity; by which the material loses its grossness, and the spiritual its vagueness. Works of art are too rare among us to exert a deep influence, and we are doubly grateful, therefore, to any one who will open our eyes to the beauty of the sky above us, and of the grass which we trample under our feet. We know of no