350 



ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 



represents it to be an extended substance, without any other quality, and 

 embracing- space as a part of itself. Now, if such an idea appertained naturally 

 to him, it must, in like manner, appertain naturally to every one. Let me, 

 then, ask the audience I have the honour of addressing-, whether the same 

 notion has ever presented itself, as it necessarily ought to have done, to the 

 minds of every one or of any one before me ] and whether they seriously 

 believe that space is a part of matter? So far from it, that I much question 

 whether even the meaning- of the position is universally understood ; while, 

 with respect to those by whom it is understood, 1 have a shrewd suspicion 

 it is not assented to; and that they would even apprehend some trick had 

 been played upon them if they should find it in their minds. The good 

 father Malebranche, as excellent a Cartesian as ever lived, and who possessed 

 withal quite mysticism enough to have succeeded Plato, upon his death, and 

 turned Xenocrates out of the chair, suspected that tricks like these are per- 

 petually played upon us. For he openly tells us, in his Recherche de la V^rit^, 

 that ever since the fall, Satan has been making- such sad work with our 

 senses, both external and internal, that we can only rectify ourselves by a 

 vigorous determination to doubt of every thing, after the tried and approved 

 Cartesian recipe : and if a man, says he, has only learned to doubt, let him 

 not imagine that he has made an inconsiderable progress. And for this pur- 

 pose, he recommends retirement from tlie world, a solitary cell, and a long 

 course of penitence and water-gruel : after which our innate ideas, he tells 

 us, will rise up before us at a glance : our senses, which were at first as honest 

 faculties as one could desire to be acquainted with, till debauched in their 

 adventure with original sin, will no longer be able to cheat us, we shall see 

 into the whole process of transubstantiation, and though we behold nothing 

 in matter, we shall behold all things in God. 



It may, perhaps, be conceived that I treat the subject before us somewhat 

 too flippantly or too cavalierly. It is not, however, the subject before lis 

 that I thus treat, but the hypothesis ; and, in truth, it is the only mode in 

 which I feel myself able to treat it at all ; for I could as soon be serious over 

 the "Loves of the Plants," or " The Battle of the Frogs." And I must here 

 venture to extend the remark a little farther, and to add, that there is but one 

 hypothesis amid all those that yet remain to be examined, that I shall be able 

 to treat in any other manner ; for, excepting in this one, there is not a whit 

 of superiority that I can discover in any of them ; and the one I refer to, 

 though I admit its imperfections in various points, is that of our own en- 

 lightened countryman, Mr. Locke. I may, perhaps, be laughed at in my 

 turn, and certainly should be so if I were as far over the Tweed as over the 

 Thames, and be told that I am at least half a century behind the times. Yet, 

 by your permission, I shall dare the laugh, and endeavour, at least, to put 

 merriment against merriment; and shall leave it to yourselves to determine, 

 after a full and impartial he?ring, who has the best claim to be pleasant. So 

 that the study of metaphysics may not, perhaps, appear quite so gloomy and 

 repugnant as the writings of some philosophers would represent it. If it 

 have its gravity, it may also be found to have its gayety as well ; and to 

 prove that there is no science in which it better becomes us to adopt the 

 maxim of the poet, and to 



Laugh where we may, be serious where we caiij 

 Bui vindicate the ways of God to man. 



