“Plato was distinguished from all previous philosophers by the prominence which he gave to the doctrine of innate ideas. Now, the current opinion in this country certainly is, that these innate ideas were a sort of sublime phantasm blown to the winds by John Locke and the inductive philosophy of external facts which has been achieving such conquests in the modern world from the time of Bacon downwards. But the fact is, that the doctrine of innate ideas, as taught by Plato, never was touched either by Locke or Bacon; and never can be touched in substantials by any thinker who believes that he has thoughts, and that these thoughts have their roots in a simple sovereign and plastic principle which he calls his soul. No doubt there are some pleasant imaginations floating with irridescent colours round the borderland of this Platonic philosophy, which may be blown to the wind by the puff of any cheek, without special inflation from Locke or Bacon. When the great thinker, for instance, pushes his argument for the independence of mind so far as to seem to assert, in positive terms, the existence of ideas in the human soul in ready-made panoply transferred from a previous state of existence into the present, this must be regarded as a trick of the poet immanent in the philosopher, ever ready to mistake a beautiful analogy for a substantial argument. Wordsworth, as a philosophic poet, was certainly more at liberty to illustrate this pleasant fancy than Plato as a practical philosopher.[26] Reminiscence, as explained by Socrates in the Menon and elsewhere, is not a fact, if the word be taken in its natural and obvious sense; it is not true that a person studying mathematics, for instance, when the truth of any profound relation of quantity or number flashes upon his mind, is recollecting anything that he ever knew before in a previous state of existence; the simple fact is, that he recognises the evolution of this truth from other truths of which he finds himself in possession, as a consequence that cannot be avoided when once his mind is set to work in a certain direction. As certainly as a sportsman’s dog will raise game when it comes near the spot where the bird is lying, and the scent begins to tell on his eager organ, so certainly will an idea lurking in a man’s mind be hunted out into startled consciousness by a Socratic questioner. But the simile limps, like all similes, in one point: the hidden idea is not lying in the soul, like the bird in the heather, ready-made; it must be shaped, moulded, and evolved, by a long and sometimes a very painful process. All that we can legitimately say, therefore, is, that there lies in every normal human soul the dormant capacity of acknowledging every necessary truth; and that this capacity is not borrowed from without. In this sense, and this sense only, are innate ideas true; and in this sense, unquestionably, they are very far removed from what may be called a reminiscence.”
The Sabbath for Professional Men.
Sir Joshua Reynolds used to say, “he will never make a painter who looks for the Sunday with pleasure for an idle day;” and Sir Joshua’s journals afford indisputable proofs that it was his habit to receive sitters on Sundays as well as on other days. This was naturally displeasing to Dr. Johnson; and we are told by Boswell, that he (Johnson) made three requests of Sir Joshua, a short time before his death: one was to forgive him thirty pounds which he had borrowed of him; another was, that Sir Joshua would carefully read the Scriptures; and lastly, that he would abstain from using his pencil on the Sabbath-day: to all of these requests Reynolds gave a willing assent, and kept his word.
The lax practice of working on the Sabbath is, we fear, too common. That it is a short-sighted practice there can be no doubt. With respect to it, the Hon. B. F. Butler, of New York, recently made the following statement:
“If I may be permitted to refer to my own experience, I can truly say that, although often severely pressed, and sometimes for years together, by professional occupations and official duties, I cannot call to mind more than half a dozen cases during the twenty-seven years which have elapsed since my admission to the Bar, in which I have found it necessary to devote any portion of the Sabbath to professional or official studies or labours. Of these instances only two, I believe, occurred during my connexion with the Government at Washington, one of which was a case of mercy as well as of necessity, and neither of which prevented my regular attendance at the house of God. The course I have pursued has sometimes compelled me to rise on the ensuing day somewhat earlier than my wont; but an occasional inconvenience of this kind is of small account when compared with the preservation of a useful habit. I am therefore able to testify that it is not necessary to the ordinary duties of professional life, that men should encroach upon the Sabbath; and that the cases of necessity or of mercy, in which professional labour can be required on that day, are few and far between.”
“In the Beginning.”
That the vast and unknown Antiquity of the Earth, compared with the 6000 years of its supposed existence is but as yesterday, is the first great startling fact which the researches of Geology have brought to light within the last thirty years. “With rare exceptions,” says Archdeacon Pratt, “this is become, like the motion of the earth, the universal creed. The prejudice of long-standing interpretation and ignorance of the records which the earth carries in its own bosom regarding its past history, had shut up us and our forefathers for ages, in the notion that the heavens and the earth were but six days older than the human race. But science reveals new phenomena, opens up new ideas, and creates new demands. The torch of nature and reason sheds its light upon the letter of Scripture.”
The Rev. Dr. Chalmers was the first to supply this new reading in his Natural Theology, vol. i. p. 251, as follows:—“Between the initial act and the details of Genesis, the world, for aught we know, might have been the theatre of many revolutions, the traces of which geology may still investigate, and to which she, in fact, has confidently appealed as the vestiges of so many continents that have now passed away.”
“In the beginning God created the heaven and earth; the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep,” is seen to refer to the first calling of matter into existence, and to a state of emptiness and waste into which the earth long after fell, ere God prepared it as the residence of the most perfect of His creatures.