171 



The author endeavoured to shew, on the contrary, that the existence 

 and authority of what lleid called Principles of Common Sense, and 

 Stewart called Fundamental Laws of Belief, and Brown called Prin- 

 ciples acquired by Intuition, as ultimate facts in the constitution of the 

 human Mind ; and farther, the necessity of reference to such prin- 

 ciples, in any account that can be given of the information acquired 

 by the Senses, — is admitted by all those authors, and must be re- 

 garded as an established first principle in this science. He stated 

 that the only real addition made to our knowledge of this subject 

 by Dr Brown, consisted in his pointing out the province of the 

 muscular sensations, as distinguished from those produced by im- 

 pressions on the cutaneous nerves, in suggesting to us the notions 

 of the Primary qualities of Matter ; and that his doctrine as to the 

 manner in which the idea of external independent existence is sug- 

 gested to the mind, is substantially the same as that previously pro- 

 posed by Turgot, and adopted by Stewart, and strictly consistent 

 with the statements of Reid. 



He maintained farther, that when Dr Brown and other more re- 

 cent authors, supposed that they had detected an error in the rea- 

 sonings of Reid and Stewart against the scepticism of Berkeley and 

 Hume, they had deceived themselves ; first, Because they stated 

 the object of Reid to be, to prove, by argument, the independent ex- 

 istence of the material world, which he had expressly disclaimed ; 

 secondly. Because they stated the substance of the sceptical argu- 

 ment to be merely the negative proposition, that that independent 

 existence cannot be proved by reasoning ; whereas it was the positive 

 proposition, that the idea of such independent existence involves an 

 absurdity, or contradiction in terms ; and, thirdly, Because they en- 

 tirely overlooked the fact, on which Reid and Stewart relied, as evi- 

 dence that the Perceptions, or notions which the mind forms of the 

 qualities of external objects, can bo referred only to those funda- 

 mental Laws of Belief, which all admit as ultimate facts in this de- 

 partment of science; — viz., the utter dissimilarity of these Perceptions 

 to the Sensations which introduce them into the mind ; from which 

 they argued, not that the objects of Perception have been proved to 

 exist by reasoning, but that there is no more absurdity, or conti*adic- 

 tion in terms, in believing that they exist, than in believing in our 

 own identity, or in the suggestions of Memory. 



Lastly, the author maintained, that when Reid's docirine of Per- 



