362 



ON ANCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. 



eighth chapter of his second book, in which he asserts, that the SEcoNDARy 

 qualities of bodies, as they are usually called, and which he contrasts with the 

 PRIMARY before us, have no real existence in their respective bodies, and are 

 nothing- more than powers instead of qualities. And hence, while the ideas 

 of the PRIMARY qualities of bodies are real representatives of real qualities, 

 and to this extent resemble them, the ideas of their secondary qualities are 

 only real representatives of ostensible or imaginary qualities, in regard, at 

 least, to the subjects to which they appear to belong, and, consequently, have 

 NO resemblance to them whatever. 



What, however, Locke thus modestly glanced at, others, with all the con- 

 fidence of the Greek philosophers, have boldly plunged into; and the conse- 

 quence has been, that they have met with the very same success as the 

 Greek philosophers, and revived the very same errors : — some having been 

 bewildered into a disbelief of the soul, others into a disbelief of the body, and 

 others again, still more whimsically, into a disbelief of both soul and body at 

 the same time ; contending not only that there is no such thing as a world 

 about them, but no such thing as themselves, except at the very moment they 

 start either this or any other idea of equal brilliance. 



We have already seen, that the ideas of the mind have no resemblance 

 whatever to the external objects by which they are produced ; unless in the 

 case of the primary qualities of bodies, in which, as just observed, the term 

 resemblance may be applied in a figurative sense, the only sense, as I shall 

 show more fully hereafter, in which it was ever employed by Mr. Locke. 



This is a fact so clear as to be admitted by almost every school of philo- 

 sophy. " Between an external object and an idea or thought of the mind," 

 observes Dr. Beattie, " there is not, there cannot possibly be, any resem- 

 blance."* So, in continuation, " a graia of sand and the globe of the earth; 

 a burning coal and a lump of ice ; a drop of ink and a sheet of white paper, 

 resemble each other in behig extended, solid, figured, coloured, and divisible; 

 but a thought or idea has no extension, solidity, figure, colour, or divisibility : 

 so that no two external objects can be so unlike, as an external object, and 

 (what philosophers call) the idea of it." To the same eff'ect Dr. Potterfield : 

 " How body acts upon mind, or mind upon body, I know not ; but this I am 

 very certain of, that nothing can act or be acted upon where it is not; and 

 therefore our mind can never perceive any thing but its own modifications, 

 and the various states of the sensorium to which it is present. So that it is 

 not the external sun and moon which are in the heavens that our mind per- 

 ceives, but only their image or representation impressed on the sensorium. 

 How the soul of a seeing man sees those images, or how it receives those 

 ideas from such agitations in the sensorium, I know not. But I am sure it 

 can never perceive the external bodies themselves, to which it is not present." 



Now allowing this fact, it follows, of inevitable necessity, that the mind 

 does not of itself perceive an external world, even any thing resembling an 

 external world ; and we must take both its existence and the nature of its 

 existence upon the evidence of our external senses. Such an authority may 

 perhaps seem tolerably sufficient to most of my audience ; and I trust I shall 

 be able to prove, before we conclude, that the external senses are as honest 

 and as competent witnesses as any court of judicature can reasonably desire. 

 But it has somehow or other happened, as we have already seen, that there 

 have been a few wise and grave men, and of great learning, talents, and moral 

 excellence, in different periods of the world, who have had a strange suspi- 

 cion of their competency : and have hunted up facts and arguments to prove 

 that their evidence is not worth a straw ; that, in some cases, they have 

 shown themselves egregious fools, and in others arrant cheats ; that the testi- 

 mony of one sense often opposes the testimony of another sense; that what 

 appears smooth to the eye appears rough to the touch; that we cannot always 

 distinguish a green from a blue colour ; and that we sometimes feel great awe 

 and solemnity beneath a deep and growing sound, which we at first take to 



* On Truth, part ii. ch. ii. p. 165. 



