different visible object to that which was presented to us when we set out. On what known principle of association, he triumphantly asks, can the locomotive experience be connected with the visible object of which we were conscious when we set out, but which immediately after disappeared?

If Mr. Abbott would only suppose the journey to be performed in the reverse order-away from the tangible object, instead of towards it his difficulty might be relieved. But we are not to think of human beings constantly employed in comparing locomotive experience with visual after this odd fashion. As already explained, we are early provided with the visible signs which measure short, real distances, and we gradually apply these to other and longer ones, so that, without any special experience in each case, we are able to judge, approximately at least, from the sign alone, in a very large number of new cases. Mr. Abbott informs us that, as he understands the Berkleian theory, the most certain and philosophical method of learning to estimate distance, would be "by simply marching, and observing the sensations, visual and muscular" (!) He is right when he adds that "this is decidedly contradicted by experience." He might as well say that the best way of carrying on a long train of reasoning is to abolish the use of symbols, and to realize mentally the full meaning and implied relations of each word in the train, in the very act of using it.

Mr. Abbott appears not to have considered the nature of the mental phenomena called symbolical conceptions, if we may judge from the sort of experimentum crucis which he proposes, when he treats of the "imagination" of distance (p. 29). "Is distance," he asks, "suggested in the imagination as an object of sight, or of touch, or of the locomotive faculty? . . . All will doubtless agree that what we imagine is the sight of the distance, not any (tactual) feeling or effort." And he concludes from this that we originally see distance, rejecting as "an utter absurdity" the supposition that an original tactual perception thus gives way, in an unheard-of manner, to a mere mental representation, and that only a secondary suggestion of an original perception. As we have already said, the Berkleian theory does not assume any such immediate perception, tactual or visible; but at any rate, this "unheard-of absurdity" is daily illustrated in all languages, in which the artificial symbol is habitually substituted for a meaning which is often inconceivable. We are daily substituting symbols for their significations in our imagination; and if we did not do so language would be comparatively useless, and reasoning could not be carried on. That we naturally imagine distances in and through their visible signs, and not in their own original tactual and locomotive nature-a fact in analogy

with what we are familiar with in all languages-is rather a confirmation of the theory that when we are said to be seeing distances we are actually reading them.

None of the phenomena mentioned by Mr. Abbott are inconsistent with the hypothesis that the two worlds of sight and touch are gradually connected in all minds by mental association, through laws which immediately express the will of the Supreme Cause that sights should be the signs of feelings. The difficulty in thus accounting for our readiness and ability to infer particular successions of feelings, by means of particular visible signs, seems to us to lie not in their original incapacity for being associated, or in any lack of the usual conditions of mental association, but rather in the wonderful speed and perfection of the result. All men learn the language of vision so early and so well that it may seem almost necessary to refer the lesson to an original instinct, which, in the case of this particular language, connects the sign with what it signifies. That is to say, it may be plausibly enough argued, and from Berkeley's own point of view, that God not only speaks this language to us, but teaches each man to understand it, after he has experienced tactual extension. The essence of the Berkleian theory is that vision is a language, not that we gain possession of its meaning in a particular manner; though the experimental, as distinguished from the instinctive, mode of beginning to know what it means, is no doubt maintained by him.

How we at first reach that knowledge of the meaning of what we see, which is so indispensable in every waking hour, is a profound question, which carries the inquirer into the heart of the theory of induction. Is all inference about matters of fact originally mental association; or, on the contrary, are we originally endowed with instincts which incline us to connect together dissimilar phenomena, and enable us to form propositions about them? Do we learn nature's language from the very beginning for ourselves, through processes of association which can be distinctly traced; or, are the initial steps the result, not of merely associative experience, but of inborn instincts? This question is not directly and immediately involved in the theory of Berkeley, and we shall not pursue it here.

The real turning-point in the controversy about that theory has not been reached by Mr. Abbott, nor as far as we know by any of his critical predecessors. We shall try to indicate it in the briefest possible manner.

Berkeley's theory of vision explains so far the connexion of the two worlds of sight and touch, as being not common qualities of the same substance, but heterogeneous phenomena which are symbolically associated. Now what is the ultimate reason of this association or synthesis?

Because they are "the same extended thing," is the confused popular answer. Because they are the common attributes of an unknown material substance, is the common philosophical answer. Because the Supreme Governor is constantly associating them, as sign and thing signified, for the regulation of our lives, is the answer which forms Berkeley's theory of vision. Are what we see and touch necessarily united in an unknown and inconceivable substance, or are they freely united by the Divine Will and according to the Divine Ideas? Is Mind, or is it not, immediately speaking to our eyes whenever we use them? This is really the profound question on which the truth or falsehood of Berkeley's theory of vision turns at last; and this question involves his philosophy as a whole, and the determination of the ultimate problem in all speculation.

It is more reasonable, Berkeley would say, to suppose that the union is the immediate expression of Supreme Mind, in analogy with our own, than to refer it to "material substance"-a mere name, into which we can throw no conception at all. We can conceive other minds, and we know what it is to be spoken to by another person; but we have no experience, and can have no conception of insensible material objects, which exist when they are not known, and which identify what in consciousness is heterogeneous. In the constant relation between sights and feelings, we have phenomena exactly analogous to what we have when another person is speaking to us. phenomena accordingly afford us the same proof that the whole world of visible sense is grounded in mind, and as it were personated, which we have that the audible or visible words or actions of our fellow-men are so.

These

"Nothing," says Alciphron (who personates the Atheist), "nothing so much convinces me of the existence of another person as his talking to me. It is my hearing you talk that, in strict and philosophical truth, is to me the best argument for your being. And this is a peculiar argument inapplicable to your purpose; for you will not, I suppose, pretend that God speaks to man in the same clear and sensible manner that one man doth to another. . . . Euph. This is really and in truth my opinion; and it should be yours, too, if you are consistent with yourself, and abide by your own definition of language. . . . (An account of the arbitrary but constant relation of visual signs to their real or tactual meaning is given in the preceding part of the Dialogue.) In consequence of your own sentiments and concessions, you have as much reason to think the Universal Agent or God speaks to your eyes, as you can have for thinking any particular person speaks to your ears. . . . You stare, it seems, to find that God is not far from any one of us,' and that' in Him we live and move and have our being.' You who in the beginning of this morning's conference thought it strange

that God should leave himself without a witness, do now think it strange that the witness should be so full and clear. Alc. I must own I do. . . . I never imagined it could be pretended, that we saw God with our fleshly eyes as plain as we see any human person whatsoever, and that he daily speaks to our senses in a manifest and clear dialect. Crito. This language (of vision) hath a necessary connexion with knowledge and wisdom and goodness. It is equivalent to a constant creation, betokening an immediate act of power and providence. . . . The instantaneous production and reproduction of so many signs combined, dissolved, transposed, diversified, and adapted to such an endless variety of purposes, ever shifting with the occasions suited to them, doth set forth and testify the immediate operation of a Spirit or thinking being. . . . This visual language proves not a Creator merely, but a provident Governor, actually and intimately present and attentive to all our interests and motions, who watches over our conduct, and takes care of our minutest actions and designs, throughout the whole course of our lives, informing, admonishing, and directing incessantly, in a most evident and sensible manner. .. Euph. But it seems to require intense thought to be able to unravel a prejudice that has been so long forming, to get over the vulgar errors of ideas common to both senses, and to distinguish between the objects of sight and touch. . . . And yet this I believe is possible, and might seem worth the pains of a little thinking, especially to those men whose proper employment and profession it is to think, and unravel prejudices, and confute mistakes."—(Dialogue IV.)

In the closing years of his life Berkeley constructed a "Siris" or chain, which connects the deepest mysteries of life with the vulgar phenomena of tar-water.. In reality if not in name, he was engaged in his argumentative youth, as well as in his contemplative old age, in the construction of a "Siris," by which the familiar sights of daily life are connected with the deepest problems of meditation, and which constantly reminds us that we are living and moving in a world of wonders. We have ascended on this chain up to that last link which unites it to the throne of the Supreme Eternal Governor. Shall we now descend, and find in all our future experience the old familiar visual sense charged with a new power of exciting us to the contemplation of the highest things invisible, as the result of the reasoning to which Berkeley's subtle metaphysical observation has given rise? Berkeley, through Baxter, Hume, and Reid, first awakened Scotch thought. Perhaps he is destined also to revive it when it is ready to slumber, or to recall it to what is real when it is wasting among verbal abstractions.

ART. VIII-Enoch Arden, etc. By ALFRED TENNYSON, D.C.L., Poet-Laureate. London: Moxon, 1864.

"WHATEVER withdraws us from the power of the senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, and the future predominat over the present, advances us in the scale of human beings." To render us this service is the peculiar and noble privilege of poetry. For though that art has been truly said to have the creation of intellectual pleasure for its chief object; yet all poetry worthy of the name achieves something beyond and better than this--it purifies and exalts, not less than it pleases. It is, therefore, with more than the expectation of mere enjoyment that we welcome a new volume from the foremost of our living poets.

Mr. Tennyson is now beyond criticism in one sense of the word. Whether or no he has attained "the wise indifference of the wise," he has assuredly won for himself a place in literature against which no critical assaults could much prevail, and the honour and dignity of which no critical praise could much enhance. But to criticise, in the true sense of the term, is not to dispense loftily praise or blame-often on no sounder principle than that on which was based the dislike entertained towards Dr. Fell. Real criticism loves not fault-finding, neither does it yield to the self-indulgence of indiscriminate praise; it rests upon a regard for truth, and a desire to appreciate justly. It is in such a spirit that we would approach the volume before us; seeking to discover what stage it marks in the development of the poet; endeavouring to estimate what it adds to the debt the world already owes him.

It has been remarked, not unfrequently, that Mr. Tennyson's early poems were, as a rule, wanting in human interest. Some -like the Mermaid and the Dying Swan-were uninteresting owing to unreality of subject; others again-the Margarets and Lilians and Adelines, were uninteresting owing to unreality or insufficiency of treatment. There was in these

first efforts no attempt to portray life; no study of the motives and interests of life, or of the sources of action; no story, little real emotion. There is not even distinct representation of nature. There is sweetness of music, and painting rich in colour; but the tones are like the murmur of a brook, speaking of many things, yet of nothing clearly; and the lines are confused with the mirage of unreality which hangs over the whole. These, however, were but prolusions: the poet was "mewing his mighty youth." It was not long before he beat his deeper music out. In the words of his ablest critic: "With the publication of the Third Series, in 1842, Mr. Tennyson ap