OF COMMON SENSE. 



387 



the uncorrupt and honourable minds of its justly eminent leaders. But our 

 time has already expired, and I must leave it to yourselves to calculate at home, 

 what must be the necessary result of a theory, provided it could ever be se- 

 riously embraced upon an extensive scale, that teaches, on the one hand, that 

 intelligence is subordinate to instinct, and that our truest knowledge is that 

 which is afforded by the dictates of nature, without trouble or exertion; and 

 on the other, that our moral sense is identical with our instinctive propensities ; 

 and that the constitution of our nature is an infallible guide, and can never lead 

 us amiss. This mischievous, but unquestionably unforeseen, tendency of the 

 theory of common sense, I must leave you to follow up at your leisure ; but 

 I cannot quit this subject without once more adverting to the total failure of 

 this theory, in accomplishing the chief point for which it was devised, — I 

 mean that of engaging us to believe, in opposition to the philosophical vaga- 

 ries of the Bishop of Cloyne and Mr. Hume, as well as of the earlier idealists, 

 not only that the external w^orld has a substantive existence, but that it sub- 

 stantively exists in every respect as it appears to exist. I have already ob- 

 served, that while Dr. Berkeley was contending, metaphysically, that we have 

 no proof of a material world, because we have no proof of any thing but the 

 existence of our own minds and ideas, M. Boscovich was contending, phy- 

 sically, that we have no proof that matter contains any of the qualities which 

 it APPEARS to contain ; that whatever the ostensible forms of bodies may pre- 

 sent to us, it has in itself no such properties as they ^eemto exhibit ; that the 

 whole visible creation is nothing more than a collection of indivisible, unex- 

 tended atoms, or mere mathematical points, whose only attributes are certain 

 powers of attraction and repulsion, and, consequently, that every thing we 

 behold is a mere phenomenon, — an apparition, and nothing more. 



Now, meaning to oppose this doctrine, and every doctrine of a similar im- 

 port, could it be supposed possible, if the fact did not stare us in the face from 

 his own writings, that Dr. Reid would, after all, avow and contend, not indeed 

 for the same, but for a parallel tenet, and support it almost in the same terms % 

 Could it be supposed that he would tell us, as we have already seen he has 

 told us, that every object has its apparition ; that the object is one thing, and 

 its apparition another ; that the object is in one place and its apparition in 

 another ; and that neither the mind nor the eye behold the object itself, but 

 only its apparition or appearance, its phantasm or phenomenon ] 



But I have to draw still more largely upon your astonishment ; for it yet 

 remains for me to inform you, that Mr. Dugald Stewart, who maybe regarded 

 as the key-stone of Dr. Reid's system, and the chief aim of whose writings 

 has been to proscribe the hypothesis of Berkeley, has himself fallen, not un- 

 intentionally, as Dr. Reid seems to have done, but openly and avowedly, into a 

 modification of Boscovich's hypothesis ; and has even brought forward its 

 more prominent principles, " as necessary," I adopt his own terms, " to com- 

 plete Dr. Reid's speculations."* He labours, indeed, to prove, that the two 

 hj'^potheses of Berkeley and Boscovich have no resemblance or connexion 

 with each other ; and I am ready to admit, that in some respects there is a 

 difference, since Boscovich allows us a visionary material world, a world of 

 apparitions, or orderly phenomena, in the language of Leibnitz, phenomenes 

 bien regies, while Berkeley allows us no material world whatever ; though he, 

 too, has his world of phenomena: but I must contend that they are, to all 

 intents and purposes, alike in their opposition to that tenet, which it is the 

 leading feature of Reid's theory to establish, — I mean that we have an inter- 

 nal principle, that proves to us that the world around us is not a vain show, 

 but a solid reality, and that every thing actually is as it appears to be. So 

 that the theory before us, even in the hands of its founder and principal sup- 

 porter, has strikingly failed in the object for which it was devised ; and, for 

 all the purposes in question, the former might just as well have continued in 

 the profession of Bishop Berkeley's principles, as have deserted them, and 

 get up a new scheme for himself. 



* Essay ii. ch. ii. p. 80, and ronipare with ch. i. p. 62, 63. 

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