OF COMMON SENSE. 



375 



of a new hypothesis, he thought the better way would be to clear the ground 

 on every side, by an equal excommunication of this mischievous term, and 

 of every system into which it had ever found an entrance ; whence all the 

 authors of such systems, whatever may have been their views or principles 

 in other respects, he has lumped together by the common name of Idealists. 



The motive of Dr. Reid was pure and praiseworthy : he entered the arena 

 with great and splendid talents ; and soon found himself powerfully abetted 

 by his friends, Dr. Adam Smith, Dr. Beattie, Lord Kames, Dr. Campbell, and 

 Mr. Dugald Stewart: but it must be obvious to every one, that in the execu- 

 tion of his motive he has carried his resentment to a strange and somewhat 

 ludicrous extreme. Idea is a word sufficiently harmless in itself, and even 

 his own friends have not chosen to follow him in his Quixotic M'^arfare against 

 it ; and have, consequently, continued to use it, in spite of his outlawry and pro- 

 scription : while to arrange under the same banner every one who has employed 

 this term, and to impute the same dangerous tendency to every hypothesis 

 in which it is to be met with, is to make the wearing of a blue or a chocolate 

 coat a sure sign of treason, and to assert that every man who is found thus 

 habited deserves hanging. 



Mr. Locke distinctly tells us, that he uses the term idea in its popular sense, 

 and only in its popular sense. But he uses it, and that is enough: — the mis- 

 chief is in the word itself. It has, liowever, been attempted to be proved that 

 he has not always known the sense in which he did use it ; and that he has 

 sometimes employed it in a popular and sometimes in a scholastic import, as 

 denoting that certain ideas are not mere notional perceptions, but material 

 images or copies of the objects which they indicate, by which means he has 

 given a strong handle to such materialists, or favourers of materialism, as Hart- 

 ley, Priestley, and Darwin : while, by his striking away from bodies all their 

 secondary qualities, as taste, smell, sound, and colour, he has given a similar 

 handle to such immaterialists as Berkeley and Hume. 



Now, it is not often that a theory is accused of leaning north and south at 

 the same time ; and whenever it can be so accused, the charge is perhaps 

 the highest compliment that can be paid to it, as proving its uprightness and 

 freedom from bias. But it was absolutely necessary for the success of the 

 new hypothesis that the Essay on Human Understanding should be demon- 

 strated to be radically erroneous, and particularly to have some connexion in 

 the way of causation with what may be called the physical speculations of 

 the day, whether of materialism or of immaterialism : since so long as this 

 remained firm, so long as the system maintained its ground, the immortal 

 edifice proposed to be erected — monumentum are perennius — could find no 

 place for a foundation ; and on this account, and, so far as I can learn, on this 

 account alone, the name of Locke has been placed among " the most cele- 

 brated promoters of modern skepticism though it is admitted that nothing 

 was farther from his intention. 



It is hence requisite, before we enter upon a survey of this new hypothesis, 

 to inquire how far the objections which were offered against Mr. Locke's 

 theory are founded in fact. I have already mentioned two of the more pro- 

 minent, and I shall have occasion to mention two others immediately. 



We are told, in the first place, that Mr. Locke has not used the term idea in 

 all instances in one and the same signification; and that while it sometimes 

 imports something separate from body, it sometimes imports a modification 

 of body itself. 



But this is egregiously to mistake his meaning, and to charge him with a 

 confusion of conception which only belongs to the person who can thus 

 interpret him. Des Cartes, after most of the Greek philosophers, had asserted, 

 that our ideas are in some way or other exact images of the objects presented 

 to the senses : Mr. Locke, in opposition to this assertion, contended, that so 

 far from being exact images they have not the smallest resemblance to them 

 in any respect, with the exception of those ideas that represent the real or 

 primary qualities of bodies, or such as belong to bodies intrinsically; and 



♦ Beattie on Truth : compare part ii. ch. li. § 1, 2, with the opening of part ii. ch. ii. $3. 



