382 ON THE HYPOTHESIS 



Sense school. For we have not only common sense, instinct,* instinctive 

 prescience,! and instinctive propensity;! but dictates of nature,^ dictates of 

 internal sensation,|| simple notions, and ultimate laws,]f judgment and belief 

 furnished by the senses,** inductive principle,!! constitution of human na- 

 ture,JJ common understanding,^ moral sense,|||| moral principle,lfif sug- 

 gestions,*** and, finally, inspiration : thus putting this imaginary power, if 

 not in the place of a Bible, upon an equality with it. 



The "original and natural judgments" of this faculty, says Dr. Reid, are 

 the INSPIRATION OF THE ALMIGHTY: " they serve to direct us in the common 

 affairs of life, where our reasoning faculty would leave us in the dark. They 

 are a part of our constitution : and all the discoveries of our reason are 

 grounded upon them. They make up the common sense of mankind, and 

 what is manifestly contrary to any of those first principles is what we call 



absurd."ftt 



Now, what is to be collected from all this pompous heraldry of high- 

 sounding names, so totally inconsistent with the precision of an exact 

 science ; and which certainly would not have been allowed had this school 

 been able to settle among themselves, or to communicate to the public, a 

 clear idea of the seat, nature, or attributes of the new and, as I trust to prove, 

 imaginary faculty it thus ventures to introduce; and which, after all, is only 



* Beanie, part i. cli. ii. p. 28, stereotype edit. Stewart's Essays, vol. i. p. 66. 87, 88. 589. 



t Reid's Inquiry, ch. vi. lect. xxiv. p. 441. J Beatlie on Truth, part i. clu iii. lect. vii. p. 63. 



Il)id. part i. Ml. ii. p. 28. 32. || Ibid. p. 31. IT Stewart's Essays, vol. i. essay iii. p. 123. 



** Reid's Inquiry, ch. vii. p. 481. ft Ibid. ch. vi. lect. xxiv. p. 442. 



It Stewart, essay i. ch. i. p. 7. Reid, p. 391. Principles of the Constitution, Beattie, part i. ch. ii.p. 29. 

 Original Principles of the Constitution, Reid, Inq. ch. vi. lect. xxiv. p. 42d. 441. 

 i Reid, ch. vi. lect. xx. p. 380. 

 Stewart, essay i. ch. iv. p. 44 ; a phrase of Shaftesbury, and adopted from him by Hutcheson. 



fir Beattie, part i. ch. ii. p. 29. *** Ibid, essay ii. ch. ii. p. 96. Reid, ch. vi. lect. ii. p. 157. 



ttf Reid, ch. vii. p. 482. In treating of the subject of instinct I had occasion to notice that Dr. Hancock, 

 in a recent work of much moral excellence, has taken the same generalized view of those various powers, 

 and has directly resolved the whole into an immediate and continual flow of divine inspiration through 

 the auency of the Holy Spirit; so that the lowest animal, in its instincts, and the most gifted saint, in his 

 special illumination, are supplied from one and the same intellectual fountain. And hence, in Dr. Han- 

 cock's view, this is a power or energy which not only serves "to direct us in the COMMON affairs of life, 

 wliere our reasoning faculty would leave us in The dark," but to enlighten us in the sublime mysteries of 

 spiritual truth. " In the same manner as the Divine Bein<; has scattered the seeds of plants and vege- 

 tables in the body of the earth, so he has implanted a portion of his own incorruptible see.d, or of that 

 which in Scripture language is called ' the seed of the kingdom,' in the soul of every individual of the 

 human race." Essay on Instinct, p. 459. And hence, though Dr. Hancock is obliged to "admit that 

 there are no innate ideas, according to the strict meaning of the term, and no formally inscribed iruilis like 

 established propositions to be discovered in early life, yet it is fair to presume that the rudiments or inhe- 

 rent propensities leading to mental and corporeal perfection are still essentially in existence. Hence; 

 because we cannot discover in the infant mind the manifest signs of an original innate truth or concep- 

 tion that there is a God, and the simple propositions relative to moral and religious duty, we are not to 

 conclude that it has no tendency to develops these notions." Ibid. p. 314, 315. 



We have here a clear example of the difficulty of keeping an hypothesis within due limits that has no 

 fixed principles to be built upon. So far, however, as these writers appeal to Scripture in support of their 

 doctrine of a moral sense, or instinctive love of virtue, propensity to moral right, internal liht or innate 

 idea of God, they seem to be opposed by every page to which they refer. For whatever man may become 

 bv a gradual cultivation of his mental powers, or by immediate irradiation from heaven, we are expressly 

 told, what, indeed, we have sufficient proofs of if we look around us, and especially into savage tribes, 

 that by nature his " heart is desperately wicked ;" that shortly after the fall, God beheld th;U " the wicked- 

 ness of man was great, on the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil 

 continually ;" that "in the flesh dwelleth no good thing;" that men by nature are under " the dominion 

 of sin," whose power is so greut as to constitute, as it were, a " LAW in the members," and a law so 

 active and hostile to every good principle as to be for ever " warring against the law of the mind" when 

 enlightened by a divine revelation, and even uifted, as St. Paul was, when he wrote this of himself, as well 

 as of others, with the power of the Holy Spirit. Arid it is hence, St. Paul tells us farther, that mankind, in 

 their natural state, instead of being children of light, with innate tendencies or propensities to good, have 

 a heart at " enmity against God ;" and " are children of wrath." While instead of referring us to any 

 kind of prscoirnita, inbred notions, or instinctive suggestions, in proof of the existence and attributes of a 

 Deity, St. Paul, like Locke, sends us to tlte works of nature and of providence; to the world ivitkout 

 instead of to the world within us; and to the exercrseof our own senses in relation to them: "for the 

 invisible things of God from the creation of the world ARE CLEARLY SKKN, being understood by THK 

 THINGS THAT ARE MADE, even hi* ETERNAL POWER and GODHEAD." And these proofs are so manifest, 

 and the duties they enjoin so easily deducihle, as to form a law of nature, " a law unto themselves," in 



tie minds ol those who attend to them, and have no revealed law, a conscience of what is riirht arid 



; so as to leave the whole world, as he farther adds, " without excuse," for not acquiring this 



Knowledge, and this natural law. ft is to the same BOOK or NATURE, and for the same purpose, that the 



almist leads himself in Ps. viii. 3-" When I consider the heavens, the work of thy hands : the moon 



in stnrs which thon hast ordained ;" and to which he leads every one else, in Ps. xix. 1-3. And to 



on> M in , e<liV ', ne yet external P mof dr)es ourSfivioiir lead us in Matt. vi. 28-" CONSIDER the 



icld, how they grow," &c., as well as in numerous other places ?-external objects geneially 



forming n text to the divine comment of him who " spake as never man spake." 



