ON ANCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. 



m 



LECTURE V. 



ON ANCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. 



From a system that is simple, intelligible, and satisfactory, adapted to the 

 condition of man, and pregnant with useful instruction, we have now to turn 

 our attention to a variety of hypotheses, that are scarcely in any instance 

 worthy of the name of systems, and which it is difficult to describe otherwise 

 than by reversing- the terms we have just employed, and characterizing them 

 as complicated, unintelligible, unsatisfactory ; as not adapted to the con- 

 dition of man, and barren of useful instruction. 



It is a distinguishing and praiseworthy feature in the Essay on Human 

 Understanding, that it confines itself to the subject of human understanding 

 alone, and that, in delineating tlie operations of the mind, it neither enters 

 into the question of the substance of mind, or the substance of matter; nei- 

 ther amuses us with speculations how external objects communicate with 

 the senses, or the senses with the mental organ. It builds altogether upon 

 the sure foundation of the simple fact, that the senses are influenced, and that 

 they influence the mind; and as, in the former case, it calls the cause of this 

 influence external objects, so in the latter case it calls the effects it produces 

 internal ideas. Of the nature of these objects it says little, but of their sub- 

 stantive existence; of the nature of these ideas it says little, but of their truth 

 or exact correspondence with the objects that excite them ; its general view 

 of the subject being reducil^le to the two following propositions : — 



First, that as objects are perceivable at a distance, and bodies cannot act 

 where they are not, it is evident that something must proceed from them to 

 produce impulse upon the senses, and that the motion hereby excited must be 

 thence continued by the nerves, or connecting chain, to the brain or seat of 

 sensation, so as to produce in our minds the particular ideas we have of 

 them.* 



And, secondly, that the ideas thus produced, so far from being images or 

 pictures of the objects they represent, have no kind of resemblance to them, 

 except so far as relates to their real qualities of solidity, extension, figure, 

 motion, or rest, and number.f 



Thus far, and thus far only, does the author of the Essay on Human Under- 

 standing indulge in a digression into physical science; and even for this he 

 feels it necessary to ofter an apology to his reader: "I hope," says he, " I 

 shall be pardoned this little excursion into natural philosophy, it being neces- 

 sary in our present inquiry."! 



For myself, I am glad he did not proceed farther, and should have been 

 still more satisfied if he had not proceeded even so far; for the subject 

 proves itself, even in his hands, to be inexplicable; and if he be here found 

 to evince some degree of obscurity, it is only, perhaps, because it is not pos- 

 sible to avoid it. Of the primary or real qualities of bodies, as he denomi- 

 nates them, we know but little ; and it is probable, that Mr. Locke has enu- 

 merated one or two under this head that do not properly belong to the list. 

 And although it is not difficult to determine his meaning where he asserts 

 that their ideas resemble them, as being drawn from patterns existing in the 

 bodies themselves, the sense of the passage has been very generally mis- 

 taken, and opinions have hence been ascribed to him which are contrary to 

 the whole tenor of his system. In consequence of being real representa- 

 tives of real qualities, they resemble them in respect to realitv. And this, I 

 think, seems to be what Mr. Locke intended to express upon this subject ; 

 though he does not discover his usual clearness as to what he designed to 

 convey by the term resemblance. This view, however, will he still more 

 obvious by comparing the seventh, ninth, and twenty-third sections of the 



* Essay on Hum. Underst. book ii. ch. viii. $ 12. lb. ^ 15. J lb. $ 22. 



