526 PROFESSOR ALISON ON THE BELIEF 
not that the actual shapes of things are delineated in the brain, or upon the 
mind, but only that impressions of some kind or other are conveyed to the mind 
by means of the organs of sense, and their corresponding nerves, and that between 
those impressions and the sensations existing in the mind, there is a real and 
necessary, though at present an unknown connection.” 
On this passage, Mr Stewart observes, “ To those who have perused the 
metaphysical writings of BerKeLEy and of Hump, the foregoing passage cannot 
fail to appear much too ludicrous to deserve a serious answer. Where did he 
learn that the philosophers who have happened to call ideas the images of 
external things, employed this term as a figurative expression ?” 
He then contrasts it with some of the expressions of Locke and of Hung, 
which I have already quoted, and afterwards proceeds to shew, that it is utterly 
inconsistent with the following passage in a subsequent work of Dr PriestLEy 
himself,—* Whatever ideas are in themselves, they are evidently produced by 
external objects, and must therefore correspond to them ; and since many of the objects 
or archetypes of ideas are divisible, it necessarily follows, that the ideas themselves 
are divisible also. The idea of a man, for instance, could in no sense correspond 
to a man, which is the archetype of it, and therefore could not be the idea of a man, 
if it did not consist of the ideas of his head, arms, trunk, legs, &c. Jt therefore 
consists of parts, and is consequently divisible. And how is it possible that a thing 
(be the nature of it what it may) that is divisible, should be contained in a sub- 
stance, be the nature of it likewise what it may, that is indivisible.” Ifthe 
‘* archetype of ideas have extension, the ideas ewpressive of them must have ex- 
tension likewise; and therefore the mind in which they exist, whether it be 
material or immaterial, must have extension also.” 
“ No form of words,” says Mr Stewart, “ could have conveyed a more un- 
qualified sanction than he has here given to the old hypothesis concerning Ideas, 
—a hypothesis which he had before asserted to have been never considered by 
any philosopher but as a figurative mode of expression; and which, when viewed 
in the light of a theory, he had represented as an absurdity too palpable to deserve 
a serious refutation.” —(Phil. Essays, p. 554.) 
Mr Stewart afterwards refers, in the same work, to the passages which I 
shall presently quote from Dr Re, as containing the true statement of his reply 
to the sceptical argument of BerKeLey and Hume; founded, as he believed it to 
be, on the language of Locke, and of what have since been termed the Sensa- 
tional School of Metaphysicians; and farther refers to several prior authors, par- 
ticularly Baxter in this country, and D’ALEmBerT in France, as having stated 
and pointed out the importance of the same principle that Rep did, but without 
illustrating it sufficiently—(See Phil. Essays, Notes and Mlustrations, p. 55.) 
I cannot conceive that Dr Brown should have made the statements which I 
have quoted, and which Sir Jamzs MacxinTosu and others have approved, as to 
5 oi » ol, I tie 
