metaphysic" of Leibnitz has parted with body and extension before it has resolved nature into its elements. The experimental philosophy of Berkeley fails to extract from the phenomena of perception the evidence of a substance different in kind from the self-conscious spirit which perceives them.
Since, as well as before the epoch of Leibnitz and Berkeley, that vast group of phenomena commonly designated material, and which are so nearly connected with life in this "middle state," has occasioned much speculation. The defence of the doctrine of the essential distinction of mind and matter, has hitherto been a characteristic of the national philosophy of Scotland. That philosophy has to encounter the opposition of three contrary idealistic hypotheses, according to one of which all created existence is resolved, with Leibnitz, into spiritual substances of different orders, and material phenomena are regarded as merely resulting from these immaterial elements—according to a second, the material world is conceived as a series of ideas produced immediately and in regular order by God in the minds of men—according to a third, as a group of the phenomena of our own minds, regulated by an unknown principle. The adjustment of the long-agitated controversy about the nature of Matter is of practical importance, chiefly as it is connected with the refutation of scepticism. There surely remains room for a better-defined
