GLANVILL, or Glanvil, Joseph, was born at Plymouth in 1636. He received his education in the university of Oxford, and, in 1666, obtained the cure of Abbey-church at Bath; in 1678, he became prebend of the church of Worcester, and died at Bath on the 16th of November 1680, in the forty-fourth year of his age. This writer, the first who, in England, presented philosophical scepticism under a systematic form, deserves more marked attention than has hitherto been accorded to him; nor can we observe without surprise that Brucker has not given him any place in his Critical History of Philosophy. There are two kinds of scepticism, essentially distinct; one which, by professing absolute doubt, tends to condemn human reason to a mortal lethargy; and another which, producing only a relative doubt, serves rather to excite reason, by a wise distrust of itself, to more severe and rigid examination. The first is only an arm of destruction; the second is an instrument of censure and probation. It was this latter kind of scepticism to which Glanvil wished to give systematic preparation, by tracing out an intermediate path between that dogmatism which blindly affirms every thing, and Pyrrhonism, which denies every thing in a manner equally blind, Two parties then existed in England; one of which abused the name of philosophy, in order to accredit atheism, and the other abused the name of religion, in order to justify superstition. Glanvil deplored this double aberration; he felt that philosophy itself required a reform, and he laboured to prepare rather than to produce it himself. It is in this light, and from this point of view, that his writings should be studied and judged. Of these, the two principal, both in English, are, first, The Vanity of Dogmatising, or Confidence in Opinions, manifested in a Discourse of the shortness and uncertainty of our knowledge of its principles, with Reflections on Peripateticism, and an Apology for Philosophy, 1661, in 8vo; and, secondly, Scepsis Scientifica, or confessed Ignorance the way to Science, an essay on the vanity of dogmatising, and confident opinion, London, 1665, in 4to. The latter of these works procured him the honour of being admitted a member of the Royal Society of London. Montaigne and Charron appear to have served as his guides, and he has borrowed much from both; he reviewed the principal objects of human knowledge, and endeavoured to show, in regard to each of these, the weakness and impotence of reason. The peripatetic doctrine, and the system of Descartes, which he appears to have especially had it in view to combat, themselves furnished him with arms; and in the rapid advancement of physical science at this period, he also endeavours to discover grounds for rendering more sensible our ignorance in the study of nature. Hobbes is the frequent object of his criticism. In general he seeks to prevent the abuse of rational speculations; and it is only in the observations to which they have led that he seeks for considerations fitted to inspire the distrust which he inculcates. His views respecting the sources of human error are presented with much perspicuity and method, often with striking novelty. The manner in which he treats the great question of causation is the more remarkable, because it appears to have opened the way to Hume in an investigation which has· produced one of the greatest revolutions which philosophy has experienced in our time. According to him, we know only that things occur, and succeed one another, not how they are produced; we see their relation of coincidence, but not the tie which connects them; and hence the relation of the effect to the cause is, as far as we are concerned, a fact, and not a veritable law. Glanvil compares dogmatism to a narrow prison, in which the human mind is confined, and beyond the walls of which it cannot extend its view. The offspring of ignorance and of pride, dogmatism is, according to him, the father of errors; and scepticism is called in to apply a remedy, not by employing negations as arbitrary, but by weighing with impartiality the proofs. Doctrine like this was, however, liable to be mistaken or misrepresented; and we need not wonder, therefore, that, at the period when Glanvil wrote, he was considered by the greater number of readers as an absolute sceptic, and treated as such. The partisans of the prevailing systems regarded with more aversion the men who provoked discussion, than they did those persons who rejected their doctrines without examination. Hence Glanvil was very warmly attacked; but he justified himself in his answer to one of his opponents, which is subjoined to his Scepsis Scientifìca ; ami he also undertook the defence of philosophy, conceiving that this belonged of right to those who desired to bring her back to her proper and legitimate sphere. It is singular enough, however, though by no means without example, that this writer, who had not only shown, but even exaggerated, the infirmity of human reason, paid himself a strange tribute to its weakness; for, after having combated scientific dogmatism, he not only yielded to vulgar superstitions, but actually endeavoured to accredit them in his Philosophical Considerations concerning the existence of Sorcerers and Sorcery, published in 1666, in 4to. The story of the pretended drum, which was said to have been heard every night in the house of an inhabitant of Wiltshire (Mr Mum· pesson), a story which made much noise in the year 1663, and which is supposed to have furnished Addison with the idea of his comedy of the Drum, appears to have given occasion to this work. It might have been imagined that [7:10:534]guch a tale would have been treated with derision by Glanvil, and that the philosopher could have had no other , object than to turn into ridicule the credulity of his country. For such a supposition, however, there seems to be little or no room, and, in point of fact, this production gave rise to a controversy, which only terminated with the life of Glanvil. At his death he left a piece entitled Saddu-cismus Triumphans, which was printed in 1681, 8vo, reprinted with some additions in 1682, and translated into German in 1701. He had there collected twenty-six relations or stories of the same description as that of the Drum, in order to establish, by a series of facts, the opinion which he had expressed in his Philosophical Considerations. Glanvil supported a much more honourable cause when he undertook the defence of the Royal Society of London, under the title of Plus ultra, or the Progress and Advancement of Science since the time of Aristotle, 1658, in 12mo. His object was to refute a foolish ecclesiastic who had alleged that Aristotle possessed individually more knowledge than could be found in the Royal Society, or even in all the men of the seventeenth century. By this production he drew upon himself a violent antagonist in the person of one Stubbe, a physician at Warwick; but, after an animated dispute, the doctor, by some mischance, lost his life, and his generous antagonist, in a funeral sermon which he preached on the occasion, pronounced an eulogium on his memory. Besides the works already noticed, Glanvil wrote, 1. Lux Orientalis, 1662; 2. Philosophia Pia, or Discourse on the Religious Character, and the Tendency of Experimental Philosophy; 3. Essays on several important subjects in Philosophy and Religion, 1676, in 4to; 4. An Essay concerning Preaching; and 5. Sermons. After his death in 1681, there were published sermons and other posthumous works in one volume 4to. The style of Glanvil is clear, easy, and animated; and to the student of the philosophy of the human mind his works are full of instruction. (a.)