OF COMMON SENSE. 



381 



But the question still returns, from what source then are these insensible, 

 unintellectual notions derived? Where is the seat, and what is the meaning 

 of that COMMON SENSE which is to solve every difficulty? As these philoso- 

 phers make a boast of their experimentum crucis, this is an experimenium 

 crucis in return to them ; nor does there seem to be an individual through the 

 whole school that is able to work out a solution, or to offer any definite idea 

 upon the subject. 



I have already observed upon the looseness of Reid, who, in the passage 

 just quoted, seems still to have a slight inclination to regard his principle of 

 COMMON SENSE as 3. power of the mind, and of course as seated in the mental 

 organ; though a power that has not hitherto been explained. In the follow- 

 ing passage ne seems to regard it as a power of the external senses, and, 

 hence, as seated in these senses themselves. 



" The account which this system (Hume's) gives of our judgment and 

 belief concerning things, is as far from the truth as the account it gives of 

 our notions or simple apprehensions. It represents our senses as having no 

 other office but that of furnishing the mind with notions or simple apprehen- 

 sions of things ; and makes our judgment and belief concerning those things 

 to be acquired by comparing our notions together, and perceiving their agree- 

 ments or disagreements. We have shown, on the contrary, that every 

 OPERATION OF THE SENSES, lYi its Very naturc, implies judgment or belief as 

 well as simple apprehension."* 



Yet, in a third passage, he tells us still more openly, that common sense 

 belongs neither to the mind nor to the corporeal senses, but is " a part op 



HUMAN NATURE WHICH HATH NEVER BEEN EXPLAINED '."f 



Dr. Beattie, on the contrary, who assigns to the phrase Common Sense a 

 much more scholastic import than Dr. Reid appears to have intended, ex- 

 pressly asserts that common sense, as he understands it, signifies " that 

 POWER OF THE MIND which pcrccivcs truth or commands belief, not by pro- 

 gressive argumentation, but by an instantaneous and instinctive impulse;;^ 

 or, as he says on another occasion, " it is instinct and not reason."^ While 

 Mr. Stewart, still more decisively, declares it to be the common reason of 

 mankind; II in express contradiction, however, to Dr. Reid, who as positively 

 declares the principles of common sense to consist of those principles which 

 we are under a necessity of taking for granted, without being able to give a 



reason FOR THEM."]r 



Now, whether this third principle reside in the senses or in the mind, so 

 long as it resides in either of them, and constitutes a part of either of them, 

 the argument which they call their experimentum crucis falls instantly to the 

 ground ; for the ideas to which it gives rise must be sensitive or mental ideas, 

 or, in other words, ideas of sensation or of reflection. 



Dr. Beattie's expression of instinctive impulse resulting from a power of the 

 mind is still more objectionable ; for instinct is not a power of the mind, but 

 a power meant to supply the place of a mind where no mind is present, or in 

 energy : and always acting most strikingly where there is least intelli- 

 gence, as in the lowest ranks of animals ; and perhaps still more obviously 

 in plants. This is to confound endowments instead of to discriminate them. 

 Nor is there less confusion in Dr. Reid's account of the matter; which is, 

 " that every operation of the senses implies judgment and belief, as well as 

 simple apprehension :" for this is to transfer the mind itself from the brain 

 to the senses, as well as to make a like transfer of the principle of common 

 sense to the same organs : it is to produce a chaos in the constitution of man, 

 by jumbling every faculty into an interference with every faculty. And yet 

 upon this very doctrine he stakes the whole truth or falsehood of his theory; 

 and Mr. Stewart abets him in the same appeal.** 



It is amusing, indeed, to run over the names, titles, or distinctive marks 

 assigned to their newly-discovered principle by the leaders of the Common- 



• Inquiry, ch. vii. p. 480. t Ibid. ch. v. lect. iii. p. 115, edit. 1785. J On Truth, part i. ch. i. p. 11. 

 6 Ibid, pan ii. chi. i. || Essay ii. p. 60. IF Inquiry, p. 52. 



■►-Slewart's Essays, vol. i. p 548. 



