—From the tone of X.'s inquiry into the meaning of this antithesis, it is tolerably plain that no answer will make him confess that it is intelligible; yet it was familiar in the best times of our philosophical literature, and the words, according to this, their philosophical opposition, occur in Johnson's Dictionary. I think it is desirable to avoid this phraseology, but the meaning of it may be made clear enough to any one who wishes to understand it. The object on which man employs his senses or his thoughts, are distinct enough from the man himself, the subject in which the senses and the thoughts exist. Several years ago an Edinburgh Reviewer complained that Germans, and Germanized Englishmen, were beginning to use objective and subjective for external and internal. This is a sort of rough approximation to the meaning of the terms. But perhaps the distinction is better illustrated by examples. We call Homer an objective, Lucan a subjective, poet, because the former tells his story about external objects and wants, interposing little which belongs to himself. Lucan, on the other hand, is perpetually introducing reflections arising from the internal character of his own mind. Objective truth is language which agrees with the facts, correctness. Subjective truth is language which agrees with the convictions of the speaker, veracity.
Perhaps X. will allow me to ask in turn, what is "a physical ignoramus," the character in which he begs some of your intelligent readers to enlighten him.
I have said above that I think this mode of expressing the antithesis better avoided; I will state why. It puts the man who thinks, and the objects about which he thinks, side by side, as if they were alike and co-ordinate. It implies the view of some one who can look at both of them; whereas, the thing to be implied is the opposition between being looked at and looking. Hence subjective is a bad word; a man is not, in ordinary language, the subject of his own senses or of his own thoughts, merely because they are in him. The antithesis would be better expressed in many cases, by the words objective and mental, or objective and cogitative. But different words would be eligible in different cases.
W. W.
Plant in Texas (Vol. iv., pp. 208. 332.).
—In turning over some papers I found the following paragraph:
"Major Alvord has discovered a singular plant of the Western Prairies, said to possess the peculiarity of pointing north and south, and to which he has given the name of Silphium Laciniatum. No trace of iron has been discovered in the plant; but, as it is full of resinous matter, Major Alvord suggests that its polarity may be due to electric currents."
JOHN C. WHISTAIR.
Lord Say and Printing (Vol. iv., p. 344.).
—In Milman's edition of Gibbon's Autobiography, there occurs a passage respecting his ancestor, Lord Treasurer Say, from which it appears that the great historian doubted the accuracy of Shakspeare's allusion (which he quotes). I have not the book with me, or I would refer MR. FRAZER to the page. I think Gibbon would not have rested content with a mere assertion of his opinion, if a fact so creditable to his ancestor's understanding were capable of proof.