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of Cromwell's army, and gained numerous victories on the chess-board. His majesty was deeply absorbed in a game of chess, in which he was likely to be the victor, when the messenger arrived with the news that the Scotch had sold him to his enemies for a specified sum, and that he was to be delivered up to Cromwell's army in a few days.

In short, not one of the great thinkers of England, or, indeed, of any other country, has been addicted to chess. Pitt, Fox, Burke, Sheridan, Addison, Grattan, and Peel, had each their faults; nearly all were occasionally intemperate, but none were so foolish as to devote the fine powers nature had given them to the mimic conflicts of the chess-board. Cowper, the poet, was assured by some friends, while subject to those fits of insanity that embittered the later years of his life, that he would derive much benefit from the game, if he would study it carefully. His reply is worthy of his genius. As it is also worthy the attention of all who have any doubt of the pernicious influence of chess-playing, we transcribe the following lines from his highly graphic and truthful description:

"Who, then, that has a mind well strung and tuned
To contemplation, and within his reach

A scene so friendly to his favourite task,
Would waste attention at the chequered board,
His host of wooden warriors to and fro

Marching and countermarching, with an eye
As fixed as marble, with a forehead ridged
And furrowed into storms, and with a hand
Trembling, as if eternity were hung

In balance on his conduct of a pin!"

It will be admitted we have shown, in this brief and rapid sketch, that the greatest philosophers, historians, poets, satirists, and thinkers in general, ancient and modern, have been opposed to chess playing. They have opposed the practice because they knew how much precious time it would consume, altogether independently of its pernicious influence in producing other vicious habits; and we are glad to add that they have not done

so in vain.

In proof of this it would be almost sufficient to ask what nations pay most attention to chess at the present day? Is it the English, the French, or the Germans? Certainly not. It is the Turks and the Russians. This is no mere assertion; it is a fact with which every one who has travelled is familiar, and which all can ascertain

by very little research and inquiry. The lower orders of the Turks or Russians are not content to play discreetly in their tents, but in every large Turkish and Russian city groups of them eagerly pressing around the chess-board may be seen in almost every back street and dirty lane, often completely blocking up the passage, so that the police have to interfere. Many of the butchers, shoemakers, and hod-carriers who form these motley groups, whether at Constantinople or Moscow, understand the game much more thoroughly than those who practise at our readingrooms, libraries, and even colleges.

Now, are the Turks and the Russians the two nations whose manners and customs, above all others, we should imitate? Does it become us to revive what Italians, Spanish, French, and English rejected many centuries ago as incompatible with the cultivation of the intellect and the acquisition and diffusion of knowledge? In every country the game will always be played to a greater or less extent by a certain class. There is no reason why it should not be played in this country as well as elsewhere by the idle and thoughtless. We would not write one. line to prevent this, being quite aware that we might as well try to prove that no American citizen, native or naturalized, should ever again get intoxicated, swear, or chew tobacco, after a particular date.

What we protest against is the false and ridiculous pretension that the game of chess is aristocratic and classical, and consequently that it may be encouraged, if not directly taught even in our colleges. We are well aware that no college worthy of the name admits the chess-board as belonging to its curriculum; none do so that are of a higher grade than second or third rate boys' schools, which call themselves colleges, the same as it is the fashion at the present day for the most ignorant hod-carrier one meets to call himself a gentleman.

It is very safe to conclude that professors who encourage chess-playing, or any other species of gambling, which serves at best as an introduction to the bar-room, are not educated themselves, but that conscious of their ignorance and inability, they try to render themselves popular with the boys by pandering to their gambling propensities. We would not have such professors kicked and buffeted to death like the suitors of Penelope, nor would we have them tossed in a blanket like Sancho Panza, but we would certainly have their establishments shunned by all parents who set any value on the education of their sons.

ART. IV. 1. The Lectures of Sir William Hamilton. London. 2. The Metaphysics of Aristotle.

3. Essay on the Intellectual Faculties of Man. REID. 4. Leçons sur la philosophie Kant. COUSIN.

5. Essai sur l'origine des Connaissances Humaines. CONDILLAC.

EVERY one asks, what is pure reason? Most men put the question as Pilate asked of Jesus, "What is truth?" and turn away, not pausing for an answer. Of those who inquire earnestly, and with a sincere desire to receive a true answer, very few obtain what they desire. It is easy for one who is affluent of words, and gifted with a fruitful and discursive imagination, to essay an answer to this or any other conceivable question; to veil undefined ideas under the showy folds of gorgeous imagery, to dazzle the fancy with brilliant generalities, or confound the judgment under a mass of inconsequent aphorisms. To such intellectual pyrotechnics, flashing upon us, like mimic sunlight, from the illuminati of our American Orient, we are all accustomed; yet many, it must be confessed, would prefer to all this the pure radiance of simple truth. When the writer was a lad, he was one evening holding a light for a man who was performing a piece of difficult work. Finding that the light was not held in a proper position, the workman said:"Hold the light so that you can see my work, and then I shall be able to see it." With a similar idea in mind, the present purpose of the writer is, to define pure reason, as it appears to his own mental perception; and enable the reader to view the subject in the same light with himself, and from the same stand-point. If the reader shall think that the argument wants lucidness, it is hoped that he will not deny to it the merit of compactness, as well as brevity; and if he shall be inclined to complain that the style of the discussion is wanting in grace and vivacity, the only apology is, that a severe simplicity of style is most appropriate to discussions of this character.

Whoever attentively studies the operations of the human mind, especially while it is employed in attempts to solve the recondite problems of the higher philosophies, will not fail to encounter the often mooted question, whether the mind is really endowed with such a faculty as that called pure reason, whereby the quality of truth may be determined perceptively, and independently

of the reasoning process termed ratiocination. This question is only to be properly determined by considering maturely the nature of the mental faculties, their capabilities, and in what manner their operations are performed, and from these premises deducing the principles and laws in conformity with which their functions are exercised.

The task before us will be rendered comparatively easy, if we first consider that there is an analogy between the perceptive faculties and those which are called conceptive, and that what is commonly termed conception is only another name for perception, though of another kind from that which is peculiar to our organs of sense; that, while we have organs by which we perceive the existence and qualities of those external objects which are material, we have, also, faculties by which we perceive the existence and qualities of entities that are immaterial, yet equally actual with those that are palpable to our physical senses. That we have spiritual faculties of simple perception, will appear probable to all. We are conscious that our minds take cognizance not only of thought and affection in the abstract, but of particular thoughts and affections; and although we know them to be only immaterial entities, we never doubt the reality of their existence, any more than we doubt the existence of material objects.

Carrying this analogy one grade further, we are aware that for every external physical sense there are in the world of matter corresponding entities, and it follows, if the analogy holds good, that for every spiritual sense there are corresponding immaterial entities. The deduction to be drawn from this statement will be perceived to be of the utmost consequence, when we consider what are the faculties of the human mind and the subjects of which they are capable of taking cognizance. We know that thoughts, affections, moral qualities, and ideas, are entities, and we know this only by a direct mental perception, entirely distinct from that we have of material entities and their qualities; and that it is just as impossible for us to perceive the former by means of sight, hearing, or feeling, as it is for our moral perceptions to discover to us material objects and their properties. It is, therefore, by our internal consciousness that we discover the actual existence and different functions of these two kinds of perception. There is, common to our faculties of perception, by which we take cognizance of things material and of those that are immaterial, an instinct of activity, by which they seek for objects upon which to

act. Where this instinct manifests itself with extraordinary energy, if the faculty is one of the class which we designate as knowing faculties, we call it curiosity, or thirst for knowledge: or, if it be of the class of affectional faculties, we call it sensibility, or feeling, and by so doing recognize its analogy to the faculties of the physical senses.

In addition to the power of perception, all these faculties of the mind have a function of rumination, by which, dwelling upon and digesting ideas in the mind, as substances are macerated and digested in the alembic of the chemist, from the bringing together of several ideas a new and composite idea is produced, somewhat analogous to the tertium quid of the chemists. This function of the mental faculties is called reflection.

One faculty of the mind perceives causes and effects, or the relation of causation: this is, pre-eminently, the reasoning faculty. It is well to consider carefully_the nature of this faculty, for on it, and its functional office, the whole argument hinges. Causation has been loosely defined as an order of sequence. To determine the fallacy in this definition it is only necessary to consider a single cause and its sequences; and if any of these sequences have direct and positive relation to this cause and other sequences have not, but are dependent on other causes, wholly or in part, then the consequences of an action are not always necessarily caused by it. Undoubtedly, effects are sequents of causes. A man may plunge his hand into a heated liquid, and it shall be burned; again, a man may perform the same act, but no burning of the hand results. În the first case, it would commonly be said the burning was the effect of thrusting the hand into the heated mass; but the second sequence proves that the alleged cause was inadequate to the effect, but that the burning was the result of the action of the hot mass upon the flesh of the hand, which, in the second instance, was prevented by covering the hand with a substance which hindered the caloric of the fluid from acting on the hand. Here we see that the cause of an effect must have a certain positive relation to it, in the very nature of things, and that without this relation a sequence may be entirely fortuitous. If we see a fox cross the road, and presently a hound follows in the same direction, we say that the fox runs because the dog is pursuing him; but if a hound crosses the road, and presently a fox follows, we instantly perceive that the sequence is fortuitous, and that, in the

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