Philosophy oj the Human Mind. 9 



to demonstrate the non-existence and impossibility 

 of an external world. The arguments which he 

 adduced in support of his cause are the same in 

 substance with those used by Dr. Berkeley, 

 though the author says nothing of the work of 

 that celebrated metaphysician, and does not ap- 

 pear to have seen it. 



There was only one step more which was left 

 for the most daring metaphysical revolutionists to 

 take, viz. to deny the existence of a spiritual as 

 well as of a material world. This step was at 

 length ventured upon by Mr. Hume/ a sceptical 

 metaphysician of Great-Britain, whose acuteness 

 and ingenuity are well known. Adopting Mr. 

 Locke's, and Bishop Berkeley's opinion, that alL 

 the immediate objects of human knowledge are 

 ideas in the mind, he traced the consequences of 

 this principle to their utmost extent, and con- 

 tended that there is neither matter nor mind in 

 the universe ! That what we call body is only an 

 assemblage of sensations; and what we call mind 

 only an assemblage of thoughts, passions, and emo- 

 tions, without any subject. On the opposition in 

 which the doctrines of the Irish Ecclesiastic and the 

 Scottish historian stand to the common sense, and 

 all the spontaneous and the deepest impressions of 

 mankind, it is needless to remark. Their authors 

 were sensible of this, and it is probable did not, 

 in moments of sober reflection, believe their own 

 speculations. Certain it is, they both acknow- 



e The universal scepticism to which the sophistry of Mr. Hume leads, 

 or rather which it directly embraces, cannot, with propriety, be considered 

 here. Nor is it necessary. The extravagance and the mischievous ten- 

 dency, especially of some of his opinions, seem, at present, to be acknowledg- 

 ed by all, excepting the desperate few, who are ready calmly to resign all 

 principle, and all belief. The character of his philosophy, " falsely so 

 called," has been exposed with great beauty of rhetoric, by Dr. BeattiEj, 

 in his Essay on Truth ; and, with great force of reasoning, by Dr. Reid, in 

 his Inquiry into the Hitman Mi"d> and his Essays on the Intellectual and 4ctive 

 Power's of Man. 



VOL. II. C 



