  A REPLY TO THE ESSAY ON POPULATIONThomas Robert Malthus’s (1766–1834) Essay on the Principle of Population as it affects the Future Improvement of Society was published anonymously in 1798. The second edition ‘very much enlarged’ appeared with the author’s name in a large 4to volume in 1803. For a sketch of Malthus’s life and doctrine and of the Malthusian controversy, see Sir Leslie Stephen’s The English Utilitarians, II. 137–185 and 238–259. The references in the following notes are to the second (1803) edition of the Essay. Cf. Hazlitt’s essay on Malthus in The Spirit of the Age, ante, pp. 287–298, and the last five essays in Political Essays, vol. III. pp. 356–385. A paper by De Quincey, entitled ‘Malthus,’ in the London Magazine for Oct. 1823, led to a brief controversy between De Quincey and Hazlitt, the particulars of which will be found in De Quincey’s Works (ed. Masson), IX. pp. 3, 20–31. Hazlitt’s Reply to Malthus was reviewed in the Edinburgh Review for August 1810 (vol. xvi. p. 464), or rather, as Hazlitt complains, the title of his Reply was prefixed to an article in the Edinburgh ‘as a pretence for making a formal eulogy’ on Malthus’s work. Hazlitt thereupon wrote the following letter to Cobbett’s Political Register (Nov. 24, 1810, vol. xviii. p. 1014) under the heading ‘Mr. Malthus and the Edinburgh Reviewers’:— ‘Sir,—The title-page of a pamphlet which I published some time ago, and part of which appeared in the Political Register in answer to the Essay on Population, having been lately prefixed to an article in the Edinburgh Review as a pretence for making a formal eulogy on that work, I take the liberty to request your insertion of a few queries, which may perhaps bring the dispute between Mr. Malthus’s admirers and his opponents, to some sort of issue. It will, however, first of all be proper to say something of the article in the Review. The writer of the article accuses the ‘anonymous’ writer of the reply to the Essay, of misrepresenting and misunderstanding his author, and undertakes to give a statement of the real principles of Mr. Malthus’s work. He at the same time informs us for whom this statement is intended, namely, for those who are not likely even to read the work itself, and who take their opinions on all subjects moral, political, and religious, from the periodical reports of the Edinburgh Review. For my own part, what I have to say will be addressed to those who have read Mr. Malthus’s work, and who may be disposed to form some opinion of their own on the subject.—The most remarkable circumstance in the Review is, that it is a complete confession of the force of the arguments which have been brought against the Essay. The defence here set up of it may indeed be regarded as the euthanasia of that performance. For in what does this defence consist but in an adoption, point by point, of the principal objections and limitation, which have been offered to Mr. Malthus’s system; and which being thus ingeniously applied to gloss its defects, the Reviewer charges those who had pointed them out with misrepresenting and vilifying the author? In fact, the advocates of this celebrated work do not at present defend its doctrines, but deny them. The only resource left them is that of screening its The queries which follow were with a few alterations republished by Hazlitt in The Examiner (Oct. 29, 1815—The Round Table, No. 23) and in Political Essays (vol. III. pp. 381–5). The alterations are almost entirely confined to the omission of all reference to the Edinburgh Review, for which Hazlitt himself had begun to write in 1814. The letter concludes as follows: ‘The drift of these questions, is, I believe, sufficiently obvious and direct; but if they should not be thought clear enough in themselves, I am ready to add a suitable commentary to them, by collating a convenient number of passages from the Essay, the Reply, and the Review.’
2. Among the former are Hume, Wallace, Smith, and Price; among the latter are the Economists, Montesquieu, Franklin, Sir James Steuart, Arthur Young, Mr. Townshend, Plato, and Aristotle. 3. I beg leave to refer the reader to some letters which appeared on this subject, in the Monthly Magazine, written by a well informed and ingenious man, who had too much good sense and firmness to be carried away by the tide of vulgar prejudice. 4. Yet it is extraordinary that with all their wisdom and virtue they would not be able to take any steps to prevent this distress. This is a species of fascination, of which it is difficult to form any conception. 5. The prevalence of this check may be estimated by the general proportion of virtue and happiness in the world, for if there had been no such check there could have been nothing but vice and misery. 6. In the second edition, it says, moral restraint, vice or misery. What are we to think of a man who writes a book to prove that vice and misery are the only security for the happiness of the human race, and then writes another to say, that vice and folly are not the only security, but that our only resource must be either in vice and folly, or in wisdom and virtue? This is like making a white skin part of the definition of a man, and defending it by saying that they are all white, except those who are black or tawny. 7. I here follow the text of Mr. Malthus, who takes great pains to give a striking description of the savage tribes, as a pleasing contrast, no doubt, to the elegancies and comforts of polished life. Mr. Malthus’s extreme sensibility to the grossness and inconveniences of the savage state, may be construed into refinement and delicacy. But it does not strike me so. There is something in this mis-placed and selfish fastidiousness, that shocks me more than the objects of it. It does not lead to compassion but to hatred. We strive to get rid of our uneasiness, by hardening ourselves towards the objects which occasion it, and lose the passive feelings of disgust excited in us by others in the active desire to inflict pain upon them. Aversion too easily changes into malice. Mr. Malthus seems fond of indulging this feeling against all those who have not the same advantages as himself. With a pious gratitude he seems fond of repeating to himself, ‘I am not as this poor Hottentot.’ He then gives you his bill of fare, which is none of the most delicate, without omitting a single article, and by shrugging up his shoulders, making wry mouths at him, and fairly turning your stomach, excites in you the same loathing and abhorrence of this poor creature that he takes delight in feeling himself. ‘Your very nice people have the nastiest imaginations.’ He triumphs over the calamities and degradation of his fellow-creatures. He lays open all the sores and blotches of humanity with the same calmness and alacrity as a hospital surgeon does those of a diseased body. He turns the world into a charnel-house. Through a dreary space of 300 ‘chill and comfortless’ pages, he ransacks all quarters of the globe only ‘to present a speaking picture of hunger and nakedness, in quest of objects best suited to his feelings, in anxious search of calamities most akin to his invalid imagination,’ and eagerly gropes into every hole and corner of wretchedness to collect evidence in support of his grand misery-scheme, as at the time of an election, you see the city-candidates sneaking into the dirty alleys, and putrid cellars of Shoreditch or Whitechapel, and the candidates for Westminster into those of St. Giles’s, canvassing for votes, their patriotic zeal prevailing over their sense of dignity, and sense of smell. 8. I mention these names because it is always customary to mention them in speaking on this subject: and there are some readers who are more impressed with a thing, the oftener it is repeated. 9. I here leave out of the question, as not essential to it, the effect of sudden rises or falls, and other accidental variations in the produce of a country which cannot be foreseen or provided against, on the state of population. 10. I find there is here some transposition of names and circumstances, but it does not much matter. 11. I am happy to find that a philosophical work, like Mr. Malthus’s, has got a good deal into the hands of young ladies of a liberal education and an inquisitive turn of mind. The question is no doubt highly interesting; and the author has thrown over it a warmth of colouring, that can hardly fail to please. Even Miss Howe was fond of ardours. 12. I have here purposely left an opening for Mr. Malthus’s ingenuity. He will I hope take the hint and write another quarto volume to prove by anatomical and medical inquiries into the state of all countries, beginning at the north and ending at the south pole, that there is the same variation in the quantity and kind of food required by the human stomach in different climates and countries, as there is in the quantity of sexual indulgence. 13. Such a change would not require the perfect subjugation, or rather annihilation of these passions, or perfect virtue, in the literal sense, as Mr. Malthus seems to imply in a late publication—which I have not read. It might as well be pretended that no man could ever keep his fingers off bank-notes, or pay his debts, who was not perfectly honest. In neither case is there required any thing more than such a superiority in one set for motives over another, from pride, habit, example, opinion, &c. as just to incline the balance. The gentlemen of the society of Lloyd’s fund would no doubt scorn to touch a shilling of the money entrusted to their care: yet we should hardly conclude from hence that they are all of them persons of perfectly disinterested characters, and altogether indifferent to money-matters. The Turks, it is said, who are very far from the character of perfection, leave their goods for sale on an open stall, and the buyer comes and takes what he wants, and leaves the money on the stall. Men are not governed by extreme motives. If perfect virtue were necessary to common honesty, fair dealing, and propriety of conduct, there would be nothing but swindlers and black-guards in the world. Men steer clear of the law not so much through fear, as because it stamps the public opinion. It is a positive thing. If men could make up their minds as decidedly about the general characters and conduct of individuals without, as they do with, the rough rebuke of the law to sharpen their moral sense (to which by the bye Mr. Godwin’s plan of plain speaking would contribute not a little) this would go a great way towards rendering a system of equality practicable. But I meddle with these questions only as things of idle speculation. Jactet se in aulis, &c. 14. See also other passages giving an account of the state of population in Africa, &c. which will be found at the end. 15. This is a work which I would recommend to every reader of whatever party, not only for the knowledge it contains, but for the purity, simplicity, and noble dignity of the style. It smacks of the old Roman elevation. 16. I should like to know whether Mr. Malthus would go so far as to say that all the wars and rebellions occasioned by religion, that all the plots, assassinations, burnings, massacres, the persecutions, feuds, animosities, hatreds and jealousy of different sects, that the cruelty, bigotry, the pernicious customs, and abominable practices of the Pagan and other superstitions, such as human sacrifices, &c. whether all those mischiefs and enormities of which religion has been made a tool, whether the martyrdom of the first christians, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the fires of Smithfield, the expeditions to the holy land, the Gunpowder Plot, the Inquisition, the long Parliament, the Reformation and the Revolution,—Popery, Protestantism, monks, eremites, and friars, with all their trumpery’ were the offspring of the principle of population. 17. See the extracts from Davenant, Montague, and Bolingbroke. 18. See the ingenious and elegant defence of the Slave-Trade, attributed in the newspapers to his Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence. There is a magnanimity and noble ingenuousness in the avowal of such a sentiment, which can only be expected from those, who from the elevated superiority of their situation can look down with contempt on the opinion of mankind, and the vulgar notions of decency and order. 19. Mr. Malthus, for what reason I know not, in his account of the state of population in the different countries of modern Europe, has declined giving any account of the state of population in Italy. 20. Among other instances it is mentioned, that every vassal was obliged to give the first night of his bride to the lord of the manor, if he demanded it. It is hard to be sure for a man to be cuckolded the very first night of his marriage. But even at present, though the formality of the thing is abolished, there are very few husbands who are not tolerably certain of being cuckolded by the first lord, or duke, who thinks it worth his while to attempt it. It is some consolation to us poor devils of authors, that we have no chance of getting a wife who is at all likely to meet with any such distinction. But if I were a snug tradesman or city-merchant, and had bargained for a sweet girl whose smile was Elysium, whose air was enchantment, and her looks all love,—I should be terribly afraid of the cocked hats at the opera. I should tremble at every coronet coach that passed the door, and should run mad at the sight of a prince’s feather. 21. Even this is making a very large concession to Mr. Malthus. The real points to be given are the possible power of productiveness in the earth and the necessary tendency of population to increase. 22. Fletcher of Saltoun. 23. Spelman’s Glossary. 24. Have Dryden’s Fables, the New Eloise, or the Memoirs of Fanny Hill never added any thing to the pressure of the principle of population, without any reference to the parish registers of deaths and marriages? 25. Mr. M. always translates the word misere or want misery, and has adopted it as the burthen of his song. He has made a very significant use of this equivoque in many parts of his work. 26. The engrafting of trees might be mentioned as an instance in point. 27. Dr. Paley, of whose depth or originality I have in general but a slender opinion, has made one very shrewd and effectual observation in reply to Hume’s argument upon miracles; which is, that according to Hume’s reasoning, miracles must be equally inadmissible and improbable, whether we believe in a superintending Providence or not. There must therefore be some fallacy in an argument, which completely sets aside so material a consideration. I would recommend this answer, which I think a true and philosophical one, to Mr. Malthus’s attention, as it may perhaps lead him ‘to new-model some of his arguments’ about experience. 28. It is to no purpose to object, that they would hinder the poor from increasing in proportion. This would be merely a negative check,—preventing the increase on one side, but setting no bounds to it on the other. Besides, not having the poor to work for them, they must work for themselves. Neither can it be said that property is a fluctuating thing, that changes hands, and passes from the rich to the poor and from the poor back again to the rich, still keeping up the same inequality; for the greatest wealth would soon be melted down by the principle of population, and it is only by the accumulation and transmission of property in regular descents that any great inequality can subsist. Mr. Malthus wishes to preserve the balance of society by hindering the poor from marrying; perhaps it would be preserved as effectually by forcing the rich to marry. 29. Thus the shop-keeper cannot in general be supposed to be actuated by any fear of want. His exertions are animated entirely by the prospect of gain, or advantage. Yet how trifling are his profits compared with those of the merchant. This however does not abate his diligence. It may be said that the advantage is as great to him. That is, it is the greatest in his power to make; which is the very thing I mean to say. In fact we are wound up to a certain pitch of resolution and activity almost as mechanically as we wind up a clock. 30. The immediate rise in the price of manufactured articles upon any rise in the price of labour is either a foolish impatience of loss, or a trick to make the labourer refund his own earnings by paying more for what he wants himself, and by being pigeoned by others that they may be able to pay the additional price. It has nothing to do with a fair and liberal determination to raise the price of labour, which of itself, and if not immediately counteracted by the power and artifices of the rich must always tend to the benefit of the labouring part of the community. 31. This is something like Mr. Godwin’s saying, he does not regard a new-born infant with any peculiar complacency. They both differ from the founder of the Christian religion, who has said, Bring unto me little children. But modern philosophers scorn to pin their faith on musty sayings. 32. But a moment ago the subject was involved in the most profound obscurity, and great advantages were expected from the manner in which Mr. Malthus was to bring it home to each man’s comprehension. In the passage immediately following the above, our author quotes Dr. Paley’s Moral Philosophy, and as he often refers to this work, I shall here take the liberty of entering my protest against it. It is a school in which a man learns to tamper with his own mind, and will become any thing sooner than an honest man. It is a directory, shewing him how to disguise and palliate his real motives (however unworthy) by metaphysical subterfuges, and where to look for every infirmity which can beset him, with its appropriate apology, taken from the common topics of religion and morality. All that is good in Paley is taken from Tucker; and even his morality is not the most bracing that can be imagined. 33. Now Lord Colchester. 34. Lord Bacon’s Advancement of Learning. 35. Shaftesbury made this an objection to Christianity, which was answered by Foster, Leland, and other eminent divines, on the ground that Christianity had a higher object in view, namely, general philanthropy. 36. Mr. Fuseli used to object to this striking delineation a want of historical correctness, inasmuch as the animating principle of the true chivalrous character was the sense of honour, not the mere regard to, or saving of, appearances. This, we think, must be an hypercriticism, from all we remember of books of chivalry and heroes of romance. 37. We had forgotten the tragedies of Antonio and Ferdinand. Peace be with their manes! 38. To be sure, it was redeemed by a high respect and by some magnificent compliments. Once in particular, at his own table, after a good deal of badinage and cross-questioning about his being the author of the Reply to Judge Eyre’s Charge, on Mr. Godwin’s acknowledging that he was, Mr. Tooke said, ‘Come here then,’—and when his guest went round to his chair, he took his hand, and pressed it to his lips, saying—‘I can do no less for the hand that saved my life!‘ 39. Mr. Coleridge named his eldest son (the writer of some beautiful Sonnets) after Hartley, and the second after Berkeley. The third was called Derwent, after the river of that name. Nothing can be more characteristic of his mind than this circumstance. All his ideas indeed are like a river, flowing on for ever, and still murmuring as it flows, discharging its waters and still replenished— ‘And so by many winding nooks it strays, With willing sport to the wild ocean!’ 40. We remember finding the volume in the orchard at Burford-bridge near Boxhill, and passing a whole and very delightful morning in reading it, without quitting the shade of an apple-tree. We have not been able to pay Mr. Irving’s book the same compliment of reading it at a sitting. 41. ‘They receive him like a virgin at the Magdalen, Go thou and do likewise’—Junius. 42. This work is not without merit in the details and examples of English construction. But its fault even in that part is that he confounds the genius of the English language, making it periphrastic and literal, instead of elliptical and idiomatic. According to Mr. Murray, hardly any of our best writers ever wrote a word of English. 43. At least, with only one change in the genitive case. 44. No! For we met with a young lady who kept a circulating library and a milliner’s shop, in a watering-place in the country, who, when we inquired for the Scotch Novels, spoke indifferently about them, said they were ‘so dry she could hardly get through them,’ and recommended us to read Agnes. We never thought of it before; but we would venture to lay a wager that there are many other young ladies in the same situation, and who think ‘Old Mortality’ ‘dry.’ 45. Just as Cobbett is a matter-of-fact reasoner. 46. St. Ronan’s Well. 47. Perhaps the finest scene in all these novels, is that where the Dominie meets his pupil, Miss Lucy, the morning after her brother’s arrival. 48. ‘And here we cannot but think it necessary to offer some better proof than the incidents of an idle tale, to vindicate the melancholy representation of manners which has been just laid before the reader. It is grievous to think that those valiant Barons, to whose stand against the crown the liberties of England were indebted for their existence, should themselves have been such dreadful oppressors, and capable of excesses, contrary not only to the laws of England, but to those of nature and humanity. But alas! we have only to extract from the industrious Henry one of those numerous passages which he has collected from contemporary historians, to prove that fiction itself can hardly reach the dark reality of the horrors of the period. ‘The description given by the author of the Saxon Chronicle of the cruelties exercised in the reign of King Stephen by the great barons and lords of castles, who were all Normans, affords a strong proof of the excesses of which they were capable when their passions were inflamed. “They grievously oppressed the poor people by building castles; and when they were built, they filled them with wicked men or rather devils, who seized both men and women who they imagined had any money, threw them into prison, and put them to more cruel tortures than the martyrs ever endured. They suffocated some in mud, and suspended others by the feet, or the head, or the thumbs, kindling fires below them. They squeezed the heads of some with knotted cords till they pierced their brains, while they threw others into dungeons swarming with serpents, snakes, and toads.” But it would be cruel to put the reader to the pain of perusing the remainder of the description.’—Henry’s Hist. edit. 1805, vol. vii. p. 346. 49. This Essay was written just before Lord Byron’s death. 50. .sp 1 ‘Don Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero My Leipsic, and my Mont St. Jean seems Cain.’ Don Juan, Canto xi. 51. This censure applies to the first Cantos of Don Juan much more than to the last. It has been called a Tristram Shandy in rhyme: it is rather a poem written about itself. 52. The late Rev. Joseph Fawcett, of Walthamstow. 53. At the time when the VindiciÆ GallicÆ first made its appearance, as a reply to the Reflections on the French Revolution, it was cried up by the partisans of the new school, as a work superior in the charms of composition to its redoubted rival: in acuteness, depth, and soundness of reasoning, of course there was supposed to be no comparison. 54. What an awkward bedfellow for a tuft of violets! 55. .sp 1 ‘How oft, O Dart! what time the faithful pair Walk’d forth, the fragrant hour of eve to share, On thy romantic banks, have my wild strains (Not yet forgot amidst my native plains) While thou hast sweetly gurgled down the vale, Filled up the pause of love’s delightful tale! While, ever as she read, the conscious maid, By faultering voice and downcast looks betray’d, Would blushing on her lover’s neck recline, And with her finger—point the tenderest line!’ MÆviad, pp. 194, 202. Yet the author assures us just before, that in these ‘wild strains’ ‘all was plain.’ ‘Even then (admire, John Bell! my simple ways) No heaven and hell danced madly through my lays, No oaths, no execrations; all was plain; Yet trust me, while thy ever jingling train Chime their sonorous woes with frigid art, And shock the reason and revolt the heart; My hopes and fears, in nature’s language drest, Awakened love in many a gentle breast.’ Ibid., v. 185–92. If any one else had composed these ‘wild strains,’ in which ‘all is plain,’ Mr. Gifford would have accused them of three things. ‘1. Downright nonsense. 2. Downright frigidity. 3. Downright doggrel;’ and proceeded to anatomise them very cordially in his way. As it is, he is thrilled with a very pleasing horror at his former scenes of tenderness, and ‘gasps at the recollection’ ‘of watery Aquarius!’ he! jam satis est! ‘Why rack a grub—a butterfly upon a wheel?‘ 56. Mr. Merry was even with our author in personality of abuse. See his Lines on the Story of the Ape that was given in charge to the ex-tutor. 57. The style of philosophical criticism, which has been the boast of the Edinburgh Review, was first introduced into the Monthly Review about the year 1796, in a series of articles by Mr. William Taylor, of Norwich. 58. Mr. Brougham is not a Scotchman literally, but by adoption. 59. After all, the best as well as most amusing comment on the character just described was that made by Sheridan, who being picked up in no very creditable plight by the watch, and asked rather roughly who he was, made answer—‘I am Mr. Wilberforce!’ The guardians of the night conducted him home with all the honours due to Grace and Nature. 60. The late Lord Chancellor Thurlow used to say that Cobbett was the only writer that deserved the name of a political reasoner. 61. Mr. Cobbett speaks almost as well as he writes. The only time I ever saw him he seemed to me a very pleasant man—easy of access, affable, clear-headed, simple and mild in his manner, deliberate and unruffled in his speech, though some of his expressions were not very qualified. His figure is tall and portly: he has a good sensible face—rather full, with little grey eyes, a hard, square forehead, a ruddy complexion, with hair grey or powdered; and had on a scarlet broad-cloth waistcoat, with the flaps of the pockets hanging down, as was the custom for gentlemen-farmers in the last century, or as we see it in the pictures of Members of Parliament in the reign of George I. I certainly did not think less favourably of him for seeing him. 62. .sp 1 Like angels’ visits, short and far between’— Blair’s Grave. 63. Is not this word, which occurs in the last line but one, (as well as before) an instance of that repetition, which we so often meet with in the most correct and elegant writers? 64. Compare his songs with Burns’s. 65. .sp 1 ‘There was a little man, and he had a little soul, And he said, Little soul, let us try,’ &c. Parody on ‘There was a little man, and he had a little gun.— One should think this exquisite ridicule of a pedantic effusion might have silenced for ever the automaton that delivered it: but the official personage in question at the close of the Session addressed an extra-official congratulation to the Prince Regent on a bill that had not passed—as if to repeat and insist upon our errors were to justify them. 66. The description of sports in the forest: ‘To see the sun to bed and to arise, Like some hot amourist with glowing eyes,’ &c. 67. These persons who have been so long on the rack of incomprehensible theories and captious disputes, whose minds have been stretched on the Procrustes’ bed of metaphysical systems, till they have acquired a horror of any thing like common sense or familiar expression, put me in mind of what is said of those who have been really put to the rack: they can bear their unnatural distorted state tolerably well; it is the return of sense and motion which is death to them. 68. How difficult do we find it, to believe that a person is telling us a falsehood, while we are with him, though we may at the same time be thoroughly convinced that this is the case. 69. In this age of solid reason, it is always necessary to refer to particular examples, as it was formerly necessary to explain all hard words to the ladies. Condillac, in his Logic, that favourite manual of the modern sciolist, with admirable clearness proves, that our idea of virtue is a sensible image; because virtue implies a law, and that law must be written in a book, which must consist of letters, or figures of a certain shape, colour, and dimensions, which are real things, the objects of sense: that we are therefore right in asserting virtue to have a real existence, namely on paper, and in supposing that we have some idea of it, that is, as consisting of the letters of the alphabet. Mr. Horne Tooke, a man of wonderful wit, knowledge, and acuteness, but who, with my consent, shall not be empanelled as a juror to decide upon any question of abstruse reasoning, has endeavoured to explain away the whole meaning of language, by doing away its habitual or customary meaning, by denying that words have any meaning but what is derived to them from the umbilical root which first unites them to matter; and by making it out, that our thoughts having no life or motion in them, but as they are dragged about mechanically by words, are ‘just such shard-born beetle things’ ‘As only buz to heav’n on ev’ning wings; Strike in the dark, offending but by chance; .tb They know not beings, and but bear a name.’ Mr. Tooke’s description of the formation of language 70. See his account of the terminations head and ness, or nez. in their hands, or you would fancy that our author had lately been at the Promontory of noses. Andrew Paraeus, on the solution of noses, was a novice to him. I am a little uneasy at this scheme of reducing all our ideas to points and solid substances. It is like the project to the philosopher, who contended that all the solid matter in the universe might be contained in a nutshell. This is ticklish ground to tread upon. At this rate, and if the proportion holds, each man will hardly have a single particle of understanding left to his share; and in two large quarto volumes, there may not perhaps be three grains of solid sense. Mr. Tooke, as a man of wit, may naturally wish to turn every thing to point. But this method will not hold in metaphysics: it is necessary to spin the thread of our ideas a little finer, and to take up with the flimsy texture of mental appearances. It is not easy to philosophize in solid epigrams, or explain abstruse questions by the tagging of points. I do not, however, mean to object to Mr. Tooke’s etymological system as an actual history of language, but to that superficial gloss of philosophy which is spread over it, and to the whole of his logic: I might instance in the axiom, on which the whole turns, that ‘it is as absurd to talk of a complex idea as of a complex star.’ Now this and such like phrases had better have been left out: it is a good antithesis, but it is nothing more. Or if it had been put into the mouth of Sir Francis, who is a young man of lively parts, and then gravely answered by Mr. Tooke, it would have been all very well. But as it stands, it is injurious to the interests of philosophy, and an affront to common sense. Hartley proceeded a good way in making a dissected map of the brain; and did all he could to prove the human soul to consist of a white curd. After all, he was forced to confess, that it was impossible to get at the mind itself; and he was obliged to rest satisfied with having spent many years, and wasted immense ingenuity, in ‘vicariously torturing and defacing’ its nearest representative in matter. He was too great a man not to perceive the impossibility of ever reconciling matter and motion with the nature of thought; and he therefore left his system imperfect. But it fell into good hands, and soon had all its deficiencies supplied, and its doubts cleared up, to the entire satisfaction and admiration of all the dull, the superficial, and the ignorant. 71. Essay on Human Action. 72. There is one argument in defence of Old Age, in Cicero, which is so exquisitely put, that nothing can surpass it: it is a perfect bon bouche for a metaphysician. It is where some one objects to old age, that the old man, whatever comforts he may enjoy, cannot hope to live long, which the young man at least expects to do. To which is answered: So much the better; the one has already done what the other only hopes to do: the old man has already lived long: the young man only hopes that he may. A man would be happy a whole day after having such a thought as this. 73. Mr. Tooke has fallen into the same mistake with which he reproaches preceding writers, that of supposing the different sorts of words to be the measure of the different sorts of things. He has only reversed their inference: for as the old grammarians, who admitted more different sorts of words, contended for more differences of things, so Mr. Tooke, who admits of fewer sorts of words, argues that there can be only as many different ideas or things, as are expressed by the different parts of speech. Thus, if substantives and adjectives do not represent substance and quality, there can be no such difference in nature, or in the human understanding. This we conceive to be a piece of as false philosophy, as if we were to affirm that there can be no difference between blue or yellow, because they are both adjectives, or between light and sound, because they are both substantives. Mr. Tooke’s whole object is to show that the different parts of speech do not relate to the differences in ideas or things, and yet he would make the difference in the one, the test of the difference in the other. As to all that he has said of abstraction, and the real or physical meaning of words, we believe that we do not understand him; for, as far as we do, his facts and cases seem to us to prove the very reverse of his conclusions. So he has brought 2000 instances of the meaning of words to demonstrate that we have no abstract ideas, not one of which 2000 meanings is any thing else but an abstract idea. Logic and metaphysics are the weak sides of his reasoning. But he has rendered essential services to grammar, which cannot be overlooked or forgotten. 74. ‘A fellow of no mark nor likelihood,’ Henry IV., Part I., Act III. Scene 2. TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
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