His own definition might have been enough to satisfy him that it was something very harmless about which he had so much alarmed himself. Still he proceeds to impute to it I know not what mischief; till at last, in a paroxysm of indignation, he exclaims, "Exult, O metaphysic, at the consummation of thy glories. More thou canst not hope, more thou canst not desire. Fall down, ye mortals, and acknowledge the stupendous blessing." About Aristotle himself, he is scarce in less perplexity. He sets out by defining truth according to Aristotle's description of it in these fourteen dreaded books of his metaphysics. Again he tells us, "he is most admired by those who best understand him;" and once more refers us to these fourteen books. But afterwards it would seem as if he had not himself read them; for speaking of _metaphysics_, he calls it that which Aristotle is said to have called theology, and the first philosophy: whereas Aristotle has explicitly called it so in these fourteen books;[3] and when he is recommending the study of the ancients, he adds; "Of Aristotle, I say nothing. We are assured by those who have read his works, that no one ever understood human nature better than he." What are we to infer from this, but that he had not himself read them? For his distinction between common sense and reason, on which all his theory depends, he sends the reader to the fourth book of Aristotle's Metaphysics, and to the first of his latter Analytics; and yet somewhere else he speaks of these as the most worthless of Aristotle's writings. As for Plato, who on such a subject might have come in for some consideration, we are told that he was as much a rhetorician as a philosopher; and this, I think, is nearly all we hear of him. Beattie is among the philosophers what the Quaker is among religious sectaries. The [Greek: koinos nous], or common sense, is the spirit whose illapses he sits down and waits for, and by whose whispers alone he expects to be made wise. It has sometimes prompted him well; for there are admirable passages in the Essay. The whole train of his argument, or rather his invective, in the second part, against the sceptics, is irresistible. Scalda ogni fredda lingua ardente voglia, E di sterili fa l'alme feconde. Ne mai deriva altronde Soave finme d'eloquenza rara.--_Celio Magno_. "What comes from the heart, that alone goes to the heart," says a great writer of our own day;[4] and there are few instances of this more convincing than the vehemence with which Beattie dissipates the reveries of Berkeley, and refutes the absurdities of Hume.