analyze our perceptions, the more doubtful it seems to us. Consciousness gives us as its object in perception the synthesis of mind and matter. It never gives us the one without the other, or rather, to speak more correctly, it never gives us either the ego per se or the non-ego per se.

Hamilton admits this to be true. How, then, can he speak of a material object as a datum of consciousness? Matter is not by itself ever a datum of consciousness when consciousness is honestly analyzed. How much is subjective, and how much is objective, in a given cognition is not a question to be solved by assumption, but by analysis.

Secondly, the material world, per se, in its essence, Hamilton admits to be entirely unknown, and unknowable by us. If this expression has any meaning at all, it must lead to the fact that the existence of the material world is an inference; is the result of a process of reasoning. Why should this process of reasoning not be open to the criticism of the sceptic? The belief in the existence of the material world as something external to ourselves cannot be ultimate if the material world per se is unknown. And, if it is derivative, the process by which it is reached, and the ultimate datum on which it is based, should be known.

Professor Ferrier, whose treatment of speculative questions is the latest and, as we think, the highest form of Scottish thought, deals fully with this question of perception in the phase of it we are now considering.

"When we perceive an object," he asks, "What is the whole given fact before us? In stating it we must not consult elegance of expression: the whole given fact is this. We apprehend the perception of an object. The fact before us is comprehended wholly in that statement, but in nothing short of it. . . . This fact metaphysic analyzes into a subjective and an objective

factor, giving to the human mind that part of the datum which belongs to the human mind, and withholding from the human mind that part of the datum to which it has no proper or exclusive claim.

"But at what point in the datum does metaphysic insert the dissecting knife, or introduce the solvent which is to effect the proposed dualization? At a very different point from that at which psychology inserts her ineffectual fire.' Psychology cuts down between 'perception' and 'matter,' making the former subjective, and the latter objective. Metaphysic cuts down between our apprehension' and 'the perception of matter,' making the latter the perception of matter,' totally objective, and the former, our apprehension,' alone subjective. Admitting, then, that the total fact we have to deal with is this, our apprehension of the perception of matter,' the difference of treatment which this fact experiences at the hand of psychology and metaphysic is this-they both divide the fact; but psychology divides it as follows: Our apprehension of the perception of-that is, the subjective part of the datum, the part that belongs to the human mind; 'matter per se' is the objective part of the datum: the part of the datum which exists independently of the human mind. Metaphysic divides at a different point. Our apprehension of:' this, according to metaphysic, is the subjective part of the process, it is all which can, with any propriety, be attributed to the human mind; 'the perception of matter:' this is the objective part of the datum, the part of it which exists independently of the human mind, and to the possession of which the human mind has no proper claim, no title at all."

In Ferrier's view, "perceived matter" is the only external world revealed as a datum of consciousness, that alone is what common sense, rightly interpreted and correctly applied, vouches for as existent. Professor Ferrier continues:

is a modification of the human mind, or that the human mind is its proper and exclusive abode; and all our belief sets in towards the opposite conclusion. Our primitive conviction, when we do nothing to pervert it, is that the perception of matter is not, either wholly or in part, a condition of the human soul; is not bounded in any direction by the narrow limits of our intellectual span; but that it dwells apart, a mighty and independent system, a city fitted up and upheld by the everlasting God. Who told us that we were placed in a world composed of matter which gives rise to our subsequent internal perception of it, and not that we were let down at once into a universe composed of external perceptions of matter that were there beforehand and from all

eternity, and in which we, the creatures of a day, are merely allowed to participate by the gracious power to whom they really appertain? We, perversely philosophizing, told ourselves the former

of these alternatives; but our better nature, the convictions that we have received from God himself, assure us

that the latter of them is the truth. The latter is by far the simpler as well as by far the sublimer doctrine. But it is not on the authority either of its simplicity or its sublimity that we venture to propound it; it is on account of its perfect consistency with the primitive convictions of our unsophisticated common sense, and with the more delicate and complex evidence of our speculative reason."

In his next edition, if he should have occasion to issue one, we hope to find this aspect of the Scottish philosophy treated fully by Dr. McCosh, or at all events not passed over in silence. This is the philosophy of Berkeley when his works are rightly understood, and of Malebranche. It is the true philosophy of common sense; the only one which is impregnable alike by the visionary on the one side, and the positivist on the other.

THE quotations above given are amongst those poetical gems which, with a wide currency, have attained something like the oracular weight of proverbs. It seems to be taken for granted that, because they are pretty and striking, they must also be true, and, because poets and lovers have so frequently borne impassioned testimony to the universal potency of love, the whole world is bound to accept, without reservation, the dictum of these necessarily biassed judges. That love should be the staple subject and chief motive power in the majority of imaginative works has become so established a rule, that we are fain to regard it as if resting on some law of nature. No such law, however, exists; there is no necessary alliance between love and fiction; and the sweeping sentiments of Scott and Coleridge, however beautiful as poetry, and appropriate to the supposed utterers of them, can find no confirmation in facts. Love (using that term in the restricted sense commonly employed in poetry and

COLERIDGE.

romance) certainly does not now rule either the court or the camp; nor, if we consult the sober records of history in lieu of the glowing pictures of chivalric fable, can we find that it did so in former times. Setting aside the fact that, in saying "heaven is love," the poet changes the subject of his proposition altogether, and speaks of that which is very different from the merely human attachment previously referred to," the grove" is the only portion of the wide domain claimed for love which can with truth be conceded. The lines of Coleridge, expressing the same doctrine still more comprehensively, deserve a proportionately emphatic denial, if considered as a declaratory assertion.

There is, indeed, a striking contrast when we turn from the representations of the poet and romancer, and note how very small and unimportant a part love plays in real life. Man is a being of such complex nature, that it would be difficult to say what particular passion is to be considered the mainspring

of the majority of his actions. But decidedly there are a great number of very influential "thoughts and passions, and delights," in which love has no part or connection; and others that, so far from "feeding his sacred flame," seem far more likely to disturb or quench it. Of most of the large and important interests of the world love forms no element, either active or passive. Even in the pursuit of those arts which appeal to the imagination and absorb the soul, love is not (as has oft been represented) the most effectual inspirer. Some of the Some of the greatest and most widely-appreciated literary achievements have been wholly or mainly independent of love-interest or love-inspiration. Religious fervour, zeal for liberty, admiration of abstract virtue, philanthropy, desire to search the heart of man, and contemplation of the beauties and splendours of the outward world,-all these prove to be motives as capable of firing and exalting the imagination as the more directly personal stimulus of love. Indeed, the latter, while it gives eloquence on the tender themes connected with itself, is rather a detriment to conceptions of sublimity and grandeur. short, to come back to our former proposition," the grove" is the extent of love's dominion, and it is just because it is there most at home that it is less fitted to rule any other part of the real or ideal world.

In

Love is a word of many meanings, and the one species of it to which fiction generally refers is, however potent a passion, of brief duration. The period of courtship is strictly finite; life is not one long St. Valentine's Day. Love is but an episode in a man's career. It belongs usually to only one of his Seven Ages," and even then has

to do with only one side of his nature, and that is not the side which he shows to the world, or by which his character and worth in the world are estimated. But it has been said that though love is with man "a thing apart," yet "'tis woman's whole existence." The kernel of truth in this poetical nutshell probably amounts to no more than that the custom of the world holds it most fit that the emotional element of woman's nature should be more cultivated and considered than all others, and that her thoughts and energies are most suitably and naturally centred upon the allied subjects of courtship and marriage. Whether a change in education and social condition, by making women more independent, would reduce the imaginary or practical importance of this one theme of contemplation, cannot now be decided. But in fiction and poetry we are so seldom allowed to catch even a glimpse of the female character, except under the influence of that particular passion, or others closely connected with it, that we have almost come to regard it as woman's normal condition.

In a recent article in this magazine bearing upon this subject, many sentiments are expressed with which the present writer cordially agrees, and the following thought had very frequently passed through his mind: "A time may come when some original genius shall discover a mode of treating other passions besides that of love, so as to invest them with some of that catholic interest hitherto engrossed by love alone."*

Why, indeed, should love (and that only one kind of love) be, or seem to be, of such catholic interest?" Why, amidst all the

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variety of exciting subjects with which the events and conditions of human life abounds, should such a paramount place be accorded to that one emotion? Why should it be necessary to the frame and fabric of every story that there should be a young man and a young woman, possessing such and such attributes (and those attributes are precisely the same in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred), who, after, so to speak, dodging each other through a complicated maze of variously-thwarted affection, should meet together at last in the central bower of roses, under the auspices of Cupid and Hymen? "They lived happy ever afterwards," says the old fairy-tale formula. And what then? Why should the whole world be concerned in the pre-nuptial troubles and joys of two (very often) uninteresting and commonplace young people? To one who is himself, or herself, in love, nothing surely can be more "flat, stale, and unprofitable" than the fanciful record of the loves of some other persons who never existed. It must be like the description of an ideal banquet to those who have a real banquet before them. And to those whose days of wooing are long past and dimmed in remembrance, or to the unfavoured beings (so much pitied by poets) who know what it is "never to have loved at all," the profusion of tremors and blisses and dainty love-talk must be simply "words, words, words," and nothing more. To whom, then, and why, should love be so absorbingly interesting? If we cannot at once reply to this, we can easily see why it is that it became the pet theme of fictionwriters. Their art requires that both the masculine and feminine character should be depicted, not only separately but in conjunction, and love is the motive which most readily effects this purpose. A passion including so many varieties and

shades of feeling and so easily intertwined, for good or evil, with other passions and interests, affords a handy groundwork or main-thread for any imaginative fabric. But this, though it explains the predominance of love in fiction, does not disprove what I have advanced as to its subordination in real life, nor prevents the possibility of some other chief motive power being as effectually applied to the machinery of romance.

In real life there is not only no communion of interest, but an actual antagonism, between love and the world. Love is, after all, but an extended or duplex selfishness, a selfishness shared by two persons, who draw a cordon round their hearts from which all others are excluded.

"And what unto them is the world beside,

With all its change of time and tide?"

In return, the world, the hard, prosaic world, whatever poets may assert, does not regard Dan Cupid as a potent monarch, to be respectfully approached, but rather as a mischievous urchin whose pranks deserve ridicule, if not castigation. Lovers, instead of being treated as the favoured courtiers of a mighty ruler, are considered as a species of mild monomaniacs, whose rhapsodical ravings and temporary unfitness for all matter-of-fact duties render them a decided nuisance to unenamoured friends. They are the butt for all the satiric arrows of the unsympathizing and the prosaic. I wonder not that love shrinks from the vulgar gaze into the sequestered grove, where only the roses and the nightingales can listen to its raptures. For my part, whenever I stumble perchance upon a pair of sweethearts at their trysting-place in some quiet twilit lane, I treat them with all consideration, passing