382 



ON THE HYPOTHESIS 



Sense school. For we have not only common sense, instinct,* instinctive 

 prescience,! and instinctive propensity ;| but dictates of nature,^ dictates of 

 internal sensation,|| simple notions, and ultimate la\vs,lf judgment and belief 

 furnished by the senses,** inductive principle,!! constitution of human na- 

 ture,|| common understanding-,^5» moral sense,|||| moral principle,lPF sug- 

 gestions,*** and, finally, inspiration: thus putting this imaginary power, if 

 not in the place of a Bible, upon an equality with it. 



The " original and natural judgments" of this faculty, says Dr. Reid, are 

 the INSPIRATION OF THE ALMIGHTY : "they serve to direct us in the common 

 affairs of life, where our reasoning faculty would leave us in the dark. They 

 are a part of our constitution: and all the discoveries of our reason are 

 grounded upon them. They make up the common sense of mankind, and 

 what is manifestly contrary to any of those first principles is what we call 

 absurd."!!! 



Now, what is to be collected from all this pompous heraldry of high- 

 sounding names, so totally inconsistent with the precision of an exact 

 science ; and which certainly would not have been allowed had this school 

 been able to settle among themselves, or to communicate to the public, a 

 clear idea of the seat, nature, or attributes of the new and, as I trust to prove, 

 imaginary faculty it thus ventures to introduce ; and which, after all, is only 



* Beattie, part i. ch. ii. p. 28, stereotype edit. Stewart's Essays, vol. i. p. 66. 87, 88. 589. 



t Reid's inquiry, cli. vi. lect. xxiv. p. 441. J Beattie on Truth, part i. ch. iii. lect. vii. p. 63. 



§ Ibid, pan i. cli. ii. p. 28. 32. || Ibid. p. 31. ir Stewart's Essays, vol. i. essay iii. p. 123. 



** Reid's Inquiry, cli. vir. p. 481. ft tbid. ch. vi. lect. xxiv. p. 442. 



Stewart, essay i. ch. i. p. 7. Reid, p. 391. Principles of the Constitution, Beattie, part i. ch. ii.p. 29. 

 Orii^inal PriMci|)les of the Constitution, Reid, Inq. ch. vi. lect. xxiv. p. 42d. 441. 

 Reid, ch. vi. lect. xx. p. 380. 



nil Stewart, essay i. ch. iv. p. 44; a phrase of Shaftesbury, and adopted from him by Hufcheson. 



TITT Beattie, part i. cii. ii. p. 29. Ibid, essay ii. ch. ii. p. 90. Reid, ch. vi. lect. ii. p. 157. 



ttt Reid, ch. vii. p. 482. In treating of the subject of instinct I had occasion to notice that Dr. Hancock, 

 in a recent work of much moral excellence, has taken the same generalized view of those various powers, 

 and has directly resolved the whole into an immediate and continual flow of divine inspiration through 

 the agency of the Holy Spirit; so tiiat the lowest animal, in its instincts, and the most gifted saint, in his 

 special ilhimination, are supplied from one and the same intellectual fountain. And hence, in Dr. Han- 

 cock's view, this is a power or energy wliich not only serves "to direct us in the common affaiis of life, 

 vsrhere our reasoning faculty would leave us in the dark," but to enlighten us in the sublime mysteries of 

 spiritual truth. " In the same manner as the Divine Being has scattered the seeds of plants and vege- 

 tables in the body of the earth, so he has implanted a portion of his own incorruptible seed, or of that 

 which in Scripture language is called 'the seed of the kingdom,' in the soul of every individual of the 

 human race." Essay on Instinct, p. 459. And hence, iliough Dr. Hancock is obliged to "admit that 

 there are no innate ideas, according to the strict meaning of the term, and no formally inscribed truths like 

 establislied propositions to be discovered iij early life, — yet it is fair to presume that the rudiments or inhe- 

 Tent propensities leading to mental and corporeal perfection are still essentially in existence. Hence, 

 because we cannot discover in the infant mind the manifest signs of an original innate truth or concep- 

 tion that there is a God, and the simple [uopositions relative to moral and religious duty, we are not to 

 conclude that it has no tendency to develope these notions." — Ibid, p 314, 315. 



We have here a clear example of the difficulty of keeping an hypothesis within due limits that has no 

 fixed principles to be built upon. So far, however, as these writers appeal to Scripture in support of their 

 doctrine of a moral sense, or instinctive love of virtue, propensity to moral right, internal light or innate 

 idea of God, they seem to be opposed by eveiy page to wiiich they refer. For wiiatever man may become 

 by a gradual cultivation of his mental powers, or by immediate irradiation from heaven, we are expressly 

 told, what, indeed, we have sufficient proofs of if we look around us, atid especially into savage tribes, 

 that by nature liis " heart is desperately wicked ;" that shortly after the fall, God beiield that " the wicked- 

 ness of man was great on the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil 

 continually ;" that "in the flesh dvvelleth no good thii!g;" that men by nature are imder " the dominion 

 of sin,"— whose power is so srreat as to constitute, as it were, a " law in the members," — and a law so 

 active and hostile to every good principle as to be for ever " warring aaainst the law of the mind" when 

 enlightened by a divine revelation, and even gifted, as St. Paul was, when he wrote this of liimself, as well 

 as of others, with the power of the Hnly Spirit. And it is hr;nce, St. Paul tells us farther, that mankind, in 

 their natural state, instead of being children of light, with innate tendencies or propensities to good, have 

 a heart at " enmity against God;" and "are children of wrath." While instead of referring us to any 

 kind of praecognita, inbred notions, or instinctive suggestions, in proof of the existence and attributes of a 

 Deity, St. Paul, like Locke, sends us to the works of nature and of providence; to the world without 

 instead of to tlie world within us; and to the exercise of our own senses in relation to them: "for the 

 invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by thk 

 THINGS THAT ARE MADE, fivcu his ETERNAL POWER and GODHEAD." And ihese proofs are so manifest, 

 and the duties they enjoin so easily deducible, as to form a law of natuie, " a law unto themselves," in 

 the minds of those who attend to thetn, and have no revealed law, — a conscience of what is right and 

 wrong; so as to leave the whole world, as he farther adds, " without excuse," for not acquiring this 

 knowledge, and this natural law. It is to the same book of nature, and for the same purpose, that the 

 Psalmist leads himself in Ps. viii. 3—" When I consider the heavens, the work of thy hands : the moon 

 and the stars which thou hast ordained ;" and to which he leads every one else, in Ps. xix. 1—3. And to 

 what but the same divine yet external proof does our Saviour lead us in Matt. vi. 28 — "Considkr the 

 lilies of the field, how they grow," &.C., as well as in numerous other places ?— external objects generally 

 forming a text to the divine comment of him who " spake as never man spake." 



