Take any shape but that, and his firm nerves
Shall never tremble.
Once, indeed, (but it is not till he has reached the third and last division of the essay) he screws up his courage so high as to question it concerning its name; and the result of his inquiry is this: he finds that to fourteen of the books attributed to Aristotle, which it seems had no general title, Andronicus Rhodius, who edited them, prefixed the words, ta meta ta physica, that is, the books placed posterior to the physics; either because, in the order of the former arrangement they happened to be so placed, or because the editor meant that they should be studied, next after the physics. And this, he concludes, is said to be the origin of the word metaphysic. This is not very satisfactory; and if the reader thinks so, he will perhaps, be glad to hear those who, having dealt longer in the black art, are more likely to be conjurors in it. Harris, who had given so many years of his life to the study of Aristotle, tells us, that "Metaphysics are properly conversant about primary and internal causes."[1] "Those things which are first to nature, are not first to man. Nature begins from causes, and thence descends to effects. Human perceptions first open upon effects, and thence by slow degrees ascend to causes."[2]
His own definition might have been enough to satisfy him that it was something very harmless about which he had so much alarmed himself. Still he proceeds to impute to it I know not what mischief; till at last, in a paroxysm of indignation, he exclaims, "Exult, O metaphysic, at the consummation of thy glories. More thou canst not hope, more thou canst not desire. Fall down, ye mortals, and acknowledge the stupendous blessing."
About Aristotle himself, he is scarce in less perplexity. He sets out by defining truth according to Aristotle's description of it in these fourteen dreaded books of his metaphysics. Again he tells us, "he is most admired by those who best understand him;" and once more refers us to these fourteen books. But afterwards it would seem as if he had not himself read them; for speaking of metaphysics, he calls it that which Aristotle is said to have called theology, and the first philosophy: whereas Aristotle has explicitly called it so in these fourteen books;[3] and when he is recommending the study of the ancients, he adds; "Of Aristotle, I say nothing. We are assured by those who have read his works, that no one ever understood human nature better than he." What are we to infer from this, but that he had not himself read them? For his distinction between common sense and reason, on which all his theory depends, he sends the reader to the fourth book of Aristotle's Metaphysics, and to the first of his latter Analytics; and yet somewhere else he speaks of these as the most worthless of Aristotle's writings. As for Plato, who on such a subject might have come in for some consideration, we are told that he was as much a rhetorician as a philosopher; and this, I think, is nearly all we hear of him.
Beattie is among the philosophers what the Quaker is among religious sectaries. The [Greek: koinos nous], or common sense, is the spirit whose illapses he sits down and waits for, and by whose whispers alone he expects to be made wise. It has sometimes prompted him well; for there are admirable passages in the Essay. The whole train of his argument, or rather his invective, in the second part, against the sceptics, is irresistible.
Scalda ogni fredda lingua ardente voglia,
E di sterili fa l'alme feconde.
Ne mai deriva altronde
Soave finme d'eloquenza rara.—Celio Magno.
"What comes from the heart, that alone goes to the heart," says a great writer of our own day;[4] and there are few instances of this more convincing than the vehemence with which Beattie dissipates the reveries of Berkeley, and refutes the absurdities of Hume.
In the second edition, (1771) speaking of those writers of genius, to whom he would send the student away from the metaphysicians, he confined himself to Shakespeare, Bacon, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. Few will think that other names might not well have replaced the last of these. In the fourth edition, we find Johnson added to the list. This compliment met with a handsome requital; for Johnson, soon after, having occasion to speak of Beattie, in his Life of Gray, called him a poet, a philosopher, and a good man.
In his Essay, he comforts himself with the belief "that he had enabled every person of common sense to defeat the more important fallacies of the sceptical metaphysicians, even though he should not possess acuteness, or metaphysical knowledge, sufficient to qualify him for a logical refutation of them." It is lamentable to see at how great a cost to himself he had furnished every person of common sense with these weapons of proof. In a letter to Sir William Forbes, written not long after, he makes the following remarkable confession. "How much my mind has been injured by certain speculations, you will partly guess when I tell you a fact that is now unknown to all the world, that since the Essay on Truth was printed in quarto, in the summer of 1776, I have never dared to read it over. I durst not even read the sheets, and see whether there were any errors in the print, and was obliged to get a friend to do that office for me."
As he proceeded, he seems to have become more afraid of the faculty of reason. In the second edition he had said, "Did not our moral feelings, in concert with what our reason discovers of the Deity, evidence the necessity of a future state, in vain should we pretend to judge rationally of that revelation by which life and immortality have been brought to light." In the edition of 1776, he softened down this assertion so much, as almost to deprive it of meaning. "Did not our moral feelings, in concert with what reason discovers of the Deity, evidence the probability of a future state, and that it is necessary to the full vindication of the divine government, we should be much less qualified than we now are to judge rationally of that revelation by which life and immortality have been brought to light." There was surely nothing, except perhaps the word necessity, that was objectionable in the proposition as it first stood.