tion as a metaphysician were to be founded wholly on this or other positive doctrines maintained by him, and not on the acuteness with which, in many brilliant exercises of sceptical subtlety, he has exhibited what he wishes to be considered as errors in the systems of popular and scientific faith. p. 338.

Before dismissing our author, we shall venture to offer one or two strictures on the leading doctrine and definition in his book.

We apprehend that both himself and Mr. Hume have overlooked an essential element which enters into our idea of a cause, and which, if introduced into their definition, would at least have made it more easily comprehended and received. A cause, Dr. Brown defines to be, that which immediately precedes any change, &c. This definition involves only immedi ate succession, or proximity in time. Is not contiguity in place equally a part of our notion of causation? Must not the antecedent in our idea be locally present with the consequent? It is an axiom, which, at its very first announcement, every body,-child-peasant-philosopher-believes and acknowledges, that no power can act where it is not present. It is true we have an idea of remote causes, as well as proximate causes. But every remote cause is always supposed to act upon something immediately near, and then that something to act upon another as immediately near it, and so on, till we arrive in idea to the proximate cause, which, to produce the last effect, is believed to be near it, even to immediate contiguity. We think that the omission of this idea has led Dr. Brown as well as Mr. Hume into considerable embarrassment, when they came to apply their principle to the innumerable coexisting sequences of phenomena, which at every moment are taking place throughout nature. They have both left that point in an unsatisfactory state, Mr. Hume to Dr. Brown, and Dr. Brown to us. If nothing more than immediate precession in time is admitted into our idea of causation, then, why is not the acorn, which is planted at the same time with the cherry-stone, regarded as the cause of the fruittree, as much as it is of the oak? Admit into your definition the necessary circumstance of immediate contiguity in place, as well as immediate precession in time, and you escape from this objection. We are aware that Dr. Brown has in a manner provided against it by a somewhat cumbrous and not

very easily comprehended paraphrase. After beginning his definition, by declaring a cause to be that which immediately precedes any change, he adds, and which, existing at any time in similar circumstances, has been always, and will be always, immediately followed by a similar change. We would not exclude this portion of the definition, but would only submit, whether the introduction of contiguity of place as well as proximity in time would not have imparted to the definition more precision, universality, and tangibility.

That this circumstance of immediate contact always forms part of our strict and simple notion of causation, the more we reflect upon it, the more we are inclined to believe. We wish, therefore, that Dr. Brown had called in this idea,* and wrought it up throughout his treatise in his own admirable manner. It is possible, that in so wishing, we do not look round and through the subject with the comprehensive survey of thorough-going theorists. Yet we cannot but think, that the proposed improvement would have materially assisted him in keeping his main object in view, and prevented many laborious circumlocutions in fortifying his positions against a throng of difficulties and objections, that perpetually arose upon him as he advanced.

Our author in the definition before us, seems to us to have revealed just so much of the truth, as is conveyed in telling a man in what parallel of latitude his ship is sailing on the ocean. Had he brought in the circumstance of contiguity in place, we think that this would have been like drawing his line of longitude; it would have reduced the difficulty to a specific certain point, and given to our floating, mysterious idea of a cause a fixed, intelligible, and definite relation. Observe too, that the obnoxious notion of an invisible link would be equally excluded by this as by the other form.

What then would be our definition ? A cause is that which immediately precedes and is immediately present at any change. If very hardly pushed, we might call in the closing phraseology of our author's definition. Yet we think we could do without it.

Will our readers briefly analyse this our definition along

* When our author speaks of the term bond of connexion as being adopted to express proximity in time, it is remarkable that he did not perceive how much more appropriate it is to imply proximity in place. See page 407.

with us? Think of any change, any phenomenon whatever. Think now of an object or event which is in so close a proximity to it as to exclude the contact of every thing else existing. If this object or event exist in this closest contiguity immediately previous to the change; what else is your idea of a cause?

We had intended to couple with this article a Sketch of a System of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, Part First, comprehending the Physiology of the Mind.' This work constitutes the outlines of a part of Dr. Brown's Lectures, and was printed last year for the use of his pupils. But had time and the length of the foregoing article permitted us to notice this original and curious volume, an advertisement in England, announcing, as we have been informed, the publication of the author's Lectures at large in four volumes, would have induced us to postpone our design.

ART. XXIII.-Ensayo de la historia Civil del Paraguay, Buenos-Ayres, y Tucuman, escrita por el doctor D. Gregorio Funes, dean de la Santa Iglesia Catedral de Cordova.-Tom. 3. 8vo. Buenos-Ayres, 1816-1817.

CAUSES, into which we have not time now to enter much in detail, have prevented the momentous drama performing in South America from engaging its due share of the public interest in this country. It might have been thought that, to us at least in the United States, few subjects of a political nature would have awakened a wider sympathy, than the character and probable results of the contests for independence in the South. But it must not be forgotten that the practical statesman has very little concern with those feelings and associations, which belong, in a considerable degree, to the region of sentiment. That Buenos Ayres and Mexico are a part of our continent may suggest fine themes for general declamation and poetry is true; but if, notwithstanding this, our political and commercial relations with them are insignificant, compared with those we stand in with the European states; if it is of far more importance to us to command the respect of those, who bear sway on the banks of the Thames or of the Neva, than to be hailed as brethren along all the banks of the Amazon and the La Plata; and

as to the mere point of geographical proximity, if it would be easier, as we imagine is the fact, to sail from New York and make the grand tour of all the courts of Europe and return to the Narrows, than to make a similar tour by land to our sister states in South America, then all the appeals resting on the community of the American name, or the partnership of one continent are fallacious. Europe and Asia are also one continent; and the Russian emperor's heart appears to be open to all that tender interest in the oriental world, which this fact must naturally excite. He would fain have his banners floating on the towers of Tefliz, and we question not he feels grieved to think that the great wall of China should sunder those, who inhabit the same hemisphere. The British sovereigns of India feel this tender sentiment; and are rejoiced to find that there is a practicable pass through the defi.es of the Himala. Had not such a pass been discovered, we doubt not their India boards and their governors general would have imitated the example of the illustrious Prussian explorer of the Andes, who wept when he heard that the summits of Bunderpouch overtopped the heights of Chimborazo;-a geographical question by the way which we regard as far from settled.

The truth is, that the policy, which has been at various times most powerfully recommended in the United States, of a vigorous inteference on our part, in the South American contest, is a policy highly anti-republican; a policy which has wasted Europe from the middle ages to the present day. We have no concern with South America: we have no sympathy, we can have no well founded political sympathy with them. We are sprung from different stocks, we speak different languages, we have been brought up in different social and moral schools, we have been governed by different codes of law, we profess radically different forms of religion. Should we espouse their cause, they would borrow our money and grant commissions to our privateers, and possibly extend some privileges to our trade, if the fear of the English, which bringeth a snare, did not prevent this. But they would not act in our spirit, they would not follow our advice, they could not imitate our example. Not all the treaties we could make, nor the commissioners we could send out, nor the money we could lend them, would transform their Pueyrredons and their Artigases, into Adamses or Franklins or their

Bolivars into Washingtons. The state of society and of life among them forbids our feeling a sympathy with them. How can our thrifty regular merchants sympathize with a people, who send the letter post down the river, on the back of a swimmer? how can our industrious frugal yeomen ympathise with a people that sit on horseback to fish? how can our mild and merciful people, who went through their revolution without shedding a drop of civil blood, sympathize with a people, that are hanging and shooting each other in their streets, with every fluctuation of their ill organized and exasperated factions? It does not yet appear that there exist in any of those provinces the materials and elements of a good national character; of a character to justify our purting our own interests at hazard, by interfering in their present contests. We know not in fact whence such materials and elements could come. Certainly not from Spain and Portugal, the nations of Europe, that have sunk most into arrears, in the great account of humanity, and who have been labouring with causes of degeneracy too powerful and too active at home, to allow them to send out any life and character to their distant provinces. And if the elements of a good national character were not likely to be imported from the mother country, what one propitious circumstance has there been for forming it on the spot? The various tyrannies, political, feudal, and ecclesiastical of Europe, are the auspices under which these provinces have grown up; and in many of them the seductions of equatorial and tropical climates, and the possession of the mines of the precious metals have come in aid of human oppression, to insure the degeneracy of the inhabitants. We are not fond of deducing practical results from theoretical causes, apparently visionary, however obvious and marked the coincidence, which seems to authorize the deduction; but we hold it to be a maxim clearly established in the history of the world, that none but the temperate climates, and the climates which produce and retain the European complexion of skin in its various shades, admit of the highest degrees of national character. In no Asiatic region, that falls without this condition and in no African one, has any thing like a free populace discovered itself, in any permanent civilized organization, at any period. Flashes of genius appear in these regions, particularly in those where the nomadic life prevails; powerful individual

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