S86 



ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING, 



Alone appeals . The gaudy tram of hues j 

 With their light shades, appropriate thus, alike 

 Perceive we ; tastes appropriate powers possess ; 

 Appropriate, sounds and odours ; and he^ce, tOOj 

 One sense another ne'er can contravene, 

 I^or e'en correct itself ; since, every hour, 

 In every act, each claims an equal faith. 



E'en though the mind no real cause could urge 

 Why what is square when present, when remote 

 Cylindric seems, 'twere dangerous less to adopt 

 A cause unsOund, than rashly yield ^t once 

 All that we grasp of truth and surety most ; 

 Rend all reliance, and root up, forlorn, 

 The first firm principles of life and healths 

 For not alone tails reason, life itself 

 Ends instant, if the senses thou distrust, 

 And dare some dangerous precipice, or aueiit 

 Against warn'd equal, spurning what is safe. 

 Hence all against the senses urg'd is vain ; 

 Mere idle rant, and hollow pomp of words. 



As, in a building, if the first lines err. 

 If aught impede the plummet, or the rule 

 From its just angles deviate but a hair, 

 The total edifice must rise untrue, 

 Recumbent, curv'd, o'erhanging, void of grace, 

 Tumbling or tumbled from this first defect,— 

 So must all reason prove unsound, deduc'd 

 From things created, if the senses err. ♦ 



It is not to be supposed that mankind could consent to be inoculated 

 with this disease to any great extent, or for any considerable period of 

 time ; and hence the chief hypotheses that were countenanced at Rome, 

 and till the dqchne of the Roman empire, were those of Plato, Aristotle, 

 and Epicurus. During the dark ages, Aristotle seems to have held an 

 undivided sovereignty ; and, though his competitors came in for a share of 

 power upon the revival of literature, he still held possession of the ma- 

 jority of the schools,, till, in the middle of the seventeenth century, Des 

 Cartes introduced a new hypothesis, which sef ved as a foundation for most 

 of the systems or speculations which have appeared since. 



With Aristotle and Epicurus Des Cartes contended that the mind per- 

 ceives external objects by images or resemblances presented to it : these 

 images he called, after Plato, ideas ; though he neither acceded to the 

 meaning of this term as given by Plato, nor allowed with Aristotle or 

 Epicurus that they proceed from the objects themselves, and are transmit- ' 

 ted to the mind through the channel of the senses ; so that the precise 

 signification he attached to this term is not clear. With Epicurus he 

 threw away the doctrine of an intellfectuai world ; but contended, in order 

 to supply its place, that the mind has a large stock of ideas of its owii, 

 implanted by the band of nature, and not derived from the world around 

 us : ideas, therefore, that are strictly innate, and may be found on being 

 searched for, though otherwise not necessarily present to the mind's con- 

 templation. Among these the principal are, the idea of thought, or con- 

 sciousness, of God, and of matter ; all which may be fully depended upon 

 as so many established truths : and hence, upon his hypothesis, all real 

 knowledge flows from an internal source, or, in other words, from the mind 

 itself. These ideas can never deceive us. though the senses may da so in 

 their report concerning external objects ; and consequently such ideas are 



* Denique, nihil sciri si quis putat, id quoque nescit 

 An srJri possit, &c- — Lib. iv. 471. 

 Tljft passage is tooiong for quotation, and the reader may easily turn to it at his leisure 



