6 Philosophy of the Human Mind. 



questions which had tortured the wits of former 

 metaphysicians. 6 



From the date of this great man's work, the old 

 Ontology and Logic have declined. The philosophy 

 of mind has assumed a more simple, popular, and 

 intelligible aspect. And although it has been since 

 made to appear probable, that some of the doc- 

 trines which he taught are erroneous, especially 

 the theory of perception, which he adopted from 

 his predecessors; yet that he contributed more than 

 any other individual of modern times to develope 

 the nature and operations of the human mind, and 

 to introduce a more rational and correct mode of 

 philosophising on this subject than had before pre- 

 vailed, seems to be generally admitted. 



Not long before Mr. Locke published his cele- 

 brated Essay, Father Malebranche, a learned 

 and acute metaphysician of France, in a work en- 

 titled Recherche de la Verite, or Inquiry after 

 Truth, published a doctrine which soon led to sin- 

 gular consequences. He laid it down as a prin- 

 ciple, which, indeed, had then been admitted by 

 all preceding^ philosophers, that we do not per- 

 ceive external objects immediately, but by means 

 of images, or ideas of them present to the mind, 

 In order to account for the production of these 

 ideas in the mind, he maintained that the soul of 

 man is united with a being possessed of all perfec- 

 tion, who has in himself the ideas of every created 

 being; and therefore that we see all things in God. 

 Malebranche was sensible that this system left 

 no evidence of the existence of a material world; 

 for if the mind sees all things in God; or if the 

 Divine ideas alone are perceived by us, we cannot 

 be certain that the various forms of matter around 

 us exist, since the ideas in the Eternal Mind were 



b See Essay on the Human Understandings passim; and Reid's Essays on. 

 •the Intellectual Powers of 'Man , vol, i. Essay %. chap. is. 



