
ATTENDING THE EXERCISE OF THE SENSES. 527 
the language of Hume and others having been merely metaphorical,—and should 
have pronounced, on that ground, the claim of Dr Rem to a refutation of their 
scepticism to have been inadmissible, without making the least reference to Mr 
Stew art’s answer to the very same objection when made by PrizstLey, and with- 
out mentioning the passages in Rerp and other authors to which Mr Stewart had 
referred, as the true exposition of this argument,—ifhe had read or reflected on those 
passages in Mr Srewart’s writings; and yet they were published in his Philosophi- 
cal Essays in the summer of 1810, 7. ¢., some months before the first course of lec- 
tures which Dr Brown delivered as Professor of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh. 
But those who are aware of the peculiar sensitiveness of Dr Brown’s physical con- 
stitution, of the painful effort which he made to prepare his lectures for that first 
course, and of his unwillingness at any subsequent time to revert to that part 
of his subject, on which indeed his lectures subsequently underwent only verbal 
alterations, will feel no difficulty in understanding, that one of Mr Srewarr’s 
__ essays (the second in the volume of Philosophical Essays published in 1810), and 
the notes to it, may either not have been read, or read so hastily as to have been 
speedily forgotten by Dr Brown, and never recurred to his mind when he was 
either revising his lectures, or preparing the short abstract of this portion of 
them which was published only a few months before his death. 
It is only doing justice to the candour and discernment of the late Dr WELsu 
to observe, that in stating, in his life of Dr Brown, the argument drawn from what 
he considered to be only the metaphorical use of the term Idea, in opposition to 
Dr Reiw’s argument, he took notice of what he termed “the defence of Rzm’s 
views, contained, as if by anticipation, in Mr Srewart’s Philosophical Essays,’”— 
i. é., contained in a work published before Dr Brown’s lectures containing that 
argument were delivered, if not before they were written. It was perhaps un- 
fortunate that Dr Weisu merely referred to Mr Stewart's argument, and to 
some of the extracts from former authors by which it was supported, without 
quoting them, or expressing any opinion of his own on the subject. (See Life of 
Dr Brown, p. 259.) And it is still more unfortunate that Mr Stewart him- 
self, in the essay in question, and the notes to it, although he refers to the pas- 
sages in Rerp’s writings, which I shall presently quote, as containing the true 
statement of his argument, did not quote any of his words. 
IV. But farther, keeping always in mind that Dr Rem’s avowed object was, 
not to prove by reasoning the existence of the material world (which he expressly 
avowed to be impossible), but only to confute the argument which represented 
that belief as an absurdity, I would observe that it was quite a misconception 
to suppose, as both Dr Brown and Lord Jerrrey did, that “the destruction of 
the Ideal Theory” was what constituted “the confutation of the reasoning of 
BerkeELeY and Hume.” Dr Rew was perfectly aware that the word Idea, in that 
