self, 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.

In the second edition, (1771) speaking of those writers of genius, to
whom he would send the student away from the metaphysicians, he confined
himself to Shakespeare, Bacon, Montesquieu, and Rousseau. Few will think
that other names might not well have replaced the last of these. In the
fourth edition, we