ATTENDING THE EXERCISE OF THE SENSES. 523 
which is open to those who cannot reason. He is led to it in the dark, and knows 
not how he comes by it.” ‘The pride of philosophy has led some to invent vain 
theories to account for this knowledge; and others, who see this to be impracti- 
cable, to spurn at a knowledge which they cannot account for, and vainly endeavour 
to throw it off. But the wise and humble will take it as the gift of Heaven, 
and endeavour to make the best use of it.”—(Jdid, p. 330.) 
Consistently with this statement, it is plain that Dr Rer’s object (as ex- 
__ pressly avowed by Mr Stewart, Phil. Essays, p. 551, published in 1810, prior to 
Dr Brown’s first course of Lectures on this subject), in this department of the 
science, could not be to prove by argument the existence of the material world, 
but only to refute the argument against it; and to put our belief in it on the foot- 
; ing of one of those Intuitive principles, the existence of which we have seen that 
Dr Brown fully admitted and illustrated, as being essential to all knowledge and 
all reasoning, and tacitly admitted in all inquiries and all arguments; therefore, 
to put scepticism on this subject on the same footing as that of the “thorough 
and consistent sceptic, who will not believe in the suggestions of his own me- 
mory, or the identity of his own person,” to whom Dr Rem had explicitly 
avowed, that “he had nothing to say ;” and whose scepticism, as we have seen, Dr 
Brown regarded in precisely the same light. 



















II. It was quite a misconception to suppose that the creed of the sceptics of 
those days was merely, as Dr Brown states it, the neg yative proposition that the 
independent existence of the material world cannot be proved by reasoning,—or, 
as he expresses it, “‘ that no argument can be offered to shew, by mere reasoning, 
the existence of external causes for our feelings.” —(Sketch of a System, §c., p. 143.) 
If this had been their principle, the words above quoted prove, that it must have 
commanded the entire acquiescence of Dr Rem. But their creed,—so plausibly 
supported, and so ingeniously deduced from the language of the most esteemed 
_ metaphysicians then generally known, as to havea practical bearing which we can 
hardly realise in this generation,—was the positive proposition, that Reasoning 
compels or necessitates our disbelieving that independent existence, as involving 
an absurdity. ‘ 
The opinion of the ablest judges, says Dr Rem (in his first work, published in 
1764), when speaking of the reasoning of BrerKELEY as to “ the evidence of the 
senses, seems to be, that these arguments neither have been nor can be confuted, 
arid that he has proved by unanswerable arguments, what no man in his senses can 
believe.’ —( Collected Works, p. 101.) 
The object of Hume, says Mr Stewart, obviously was, “to inculcate a uni- 
versal scepticism ; not, as some have supposed, to exalt reasoning, in preference to 
our instinctive principles of belief, but, by illustrating the contradictory conclu- 
sions to which our different faculties lead, to involve the whole subject in the 
