knowing being, and when knowledge began to be; or else there has been also a knowing being from eternity. If it be said, there was a time when no being had any knowledge, when that eternal being was void of all understanding; I reply, that then it was impossible there should ever have been any knowledge it being as impossible that things wholly void of knowledge, and operating blindly, and without any perception, should produce a knowing being, as it is impossible that a triangle should make itself three angles bigger than two right ones. For it is as repugnant to the idea of senseless matter, that it should put into itself sense, perception, and knowledge, as it is repugnant to the idea of a triangle, that it should put into itself greater angles than two right ones.

"Thus from the consideration of ourselves, and what we infallibly find in our own constitutions, our reason leads us to the knowledge of this certain and evident truth, that there is an eternal, most powerful, and most knowing being; which whether any one will please to call God, it matters not. The thing is evident, and from this idea duly considered, will easily be deduced all those other attributes, which we ought to ascribe to this eternal being. If, nevertheless, any one should be found so senselessly arrogant as to suppose man alone knowing and wise, but yet the product of mere ignorance and chance; and that all the rest of the

universe acted only by that blind haphazard, I shall leave with him that very rational and emphatical rebuke of Tully, to be considered at his leisure: What can be more sillily arrogant and misbecoming, than for a man to think that he has a mind and understanding in him, but yet in all the universe beside there is no such thing? or that those things, which with the utmost stretch of his reason he can scarce comprehend should be moved and managed without any reason at all.""

"From what has been said, it is plain to me, we have a more certain knowledge of the existence of a God, than of any thing our senses have not immediately discovered to us. Nay, I presume I may say, that we more certainly know that there is a God, than that there is any thing else without us. When I say we know, I mean there is such a knowledge within our reach, which we cannot miss, if we will but apply our minds to that, as we do to several other inquiries."

Much has, at different times, been written on the style of the Essay on the Human Understanding. According to Dugald Stewart, it resembles that of a well-educated man of the world, rather than of a

De Legib. lib. ii. Cicero's words are:-"Quid est enim verius, quam neminem esse oportere tam stulte arrogantem, ut in se mentem et rationem putet inesse, in cœlo mundoque non putet? Aut ea quæ vix summa ingenii ratione comprehendat, nulla ratione moveri putet?"

recluse student," who had made an object of the art of composition;" from which it may be inferred that, with Locke, the art of composition had not formed an object of study. But, whoever shall duly consider his remarks on Particles, in the seventh chapter of the third book, will certainly conclude that no recluse student could ever attach more importance than he did to style. What his opinion was of the language in use among men of the world, he has also taken care, in many places, to express; more particularly in book the third, chapter the eleventh, where, contending for the proper use of words he says, "This exactness is absolutely necessary in inquiries after philosophical knowledge, and in controversies about truth; and though it would be well, too, if it extended itself to common conversation and the ordinary affairs of life, yet I think that is scarce to be expected." Farther on he observes, "that propriety of speech is that which gives our thoughts entrance into other men's minds with the greatest ease and advantage;" and to this he is careful to add, that "the proper signification and use of terms is best to be learned from those, who, in their writings and discourses, appear to have had the clearest notions, and applied their terms with the exactest choice and fitness." From which it seems evident that the art of composition commanded no inconsiderable portion of his attention; so that if, after all, his

style resemble that of a well-educated man of the world, who had never regarded language with a rhetorician's eyes, it must be concluded that the care and pains he bestowed on this part of his studies was utterly thrown away.

Walter Savage Landor, himself a writer remarkable for the vigour and originality of his language, runs, in speaking of Locke, into the opposite extreme, giving his style the preference in comparison with that of Plato. But this decision is still more paradoxical than Dugald Stewart's. Of all prose authors, Plato is perhaps the one who has most excelled in the management of language, which he has invested with every beauty, of which it appears to be susceptible in unmetrical composition; his style successively adapting itself with equal facility to the highest flights of the imagination, the most abstruse inquiries in metaphysics, and the liveliest and homeliest sallies of familiar badinage. If we can conceive Shakespeare's language applied to philosophical investigations in all its poetical fervour, power, and flexibility, but divested of its quaintness, it might give us some idea, though still but a faint one, of the splendour and inexhaustible variety of Plato, which to those who can be delighted with intellectual beauty, render the study of his writings a passion and a luxury. To pretend to discover all these excellencies in the style of Locke would be absurd affectation. It has

however great beauties; and of these not the least is that admirable perspicuity,-in Aristotle's opinion the chiefest excellency of language,—which almost always enables us rapidly to seize his meaning, even in those passages where the nature of the subject might have appeared to excuse some degree of obscurity. There is besides in most of his compositions, a masculine strength, an earnestness, a warmth,—distinct from the warmth of passion,— arising evidently from the force of his convictions, from the intimate persuasion that what he advances is based on truth; and the combination of these qualities, united with the grandeur and importance of the ideas, rises, in many parts of the Essay, into a noble eloquence, still more strikingly perceptible in the "Conduct of the Understanding," and the vehement refutations of error in the "Treatise on Government." At the same time it must not be dissembled that the construction of his sentences is often destitute of all grace; and that the prejudice against figurative language, which at one time possessed him, led too frequently to the employment of a bald unvivified form of expression, wholly incommensurate to the magnitude of his ideas. From this charge Lord Bacon himself,-next to Milton the most figurature prose writer in our language, is not wholly free, as any one who reads the History of Henry VII. and several of his other works, will perceive. But the defect is more ap