considered as one of them, being one of those that make a principal ingredient in our complex ideas of substances.’—Essay on Human Understanding, vol. i. p. 234. That is to say, in other words, the idea of power, though confessedly complex, according to Mr. Locke, as depending on the changes we observe produced by one thing on another, is to pass for a simple idea, because it has as good a right to this denomination as other complex ideas, which are usually classed as simple ones. It is thus that the inquiring mind seems to be always hovering on the brink of truth: but timidity, or indolence, or prejudice, makes us shrink back, unwilling to trust ourselves to the fathomless abyss. I have thus given the best account which it is in my power to give of the understanding, as that conscious, comprehensive principle, which is the source not only of judgment and reasoning, but which is implied in every possible idea of the mind, or conception even of sensible objects. Every such object, it has been shewn, is made up of a number of individual impressions, yet how these perfectly detached, and desultory impressions should of themselves contain or produce a knowledge of their relations to each other, of their order, number, likeness, distances, limits, &c. by which alone they can be connected into one whole—without being first communicated to the same conscious principle of thought, to one diffusive, and yet self-centered intellect, one undivided active spirit, co-extended with the object, and yet ever present to itself, that ‘Thrills in each nerve, and lives along the line,’ it is difficult to imagine. There is no idea that is not evolved from this coinstantaneous power in the mind. The activity which Shakespeare ascribes to _Ariel_ is not greater than that which is necessary to the production of the meanest thought. ‘Jove’s light’nings more momentary and sight-outrunning are not!’ AN ENGLISH METAPHYSICIAN. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED (ON ABSTRACTION) _The Morning Chronicle._] [_April 8, 1814._