392 



ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 



In like manner, he tells us, that his knowledge of matter is derived 

 from the same unerring source ; that its idea exists within him, and that 

 this idea represents it to be an extended substance, without any other 

 quality, and embracing space as a part of itself. Now, if such an idea ap- 

 pert?iiued naturally to him, it must, in like manner, appertain naturally to 

 every one. Let me, then,^ask the audience I have the honour of address- 

 ing, whether the same notion has ever presented itself, as it necessarily 

 ought to have done, to the minds of every one or of any one before me ? 

 and whether they seriously believe that space is a part of matter ? So 

 far from it, that 1 much question whether even the meaning of the position 

 is universally understood ; while, with respect to those by whom it is un- 

 derstood, I have a shrewd suspicion it is not assented to ; and that they 

 would even apprehend some trick had been played upon them if they should 

 find it in their minds. The good father Malebranche, as excellent a Car- 

 tesian as ever lived, and who possessed withal quite mysticism enough to 

 have succeeded Plato, upon his death, and turned Xenocrates out of the 

 chair, suspected that tricks like these are perpetually played upon us. For 

 he openly tells us, in his Recherche de la Verite^ that ever since the fall 

 Satan has been making such sad work with our senses, both external and 

 internal, that we can only rectify ourselves by a vigorous determination to 

 doubt of every thing, after the tried and approved Cartesian recipe : and 

 if a man, says he, has only learned to doubt, let him not imagine that 

 he has made an inconsiderable progress. And, for this purpose, he recom- 

 mends retirement from the world, a solitary cell, and a long course of peni- 

 tence and water gruel : after which our innate ideas, he tells us, will rise 

 up before us at a glance : our senses, which were at first as honest facul- 

 ties as one could desire to be acquainted with, till debauched in their ad- 

 venture with original sin, will no longer be able to cheat us, we shall see 

 into the whole process of transubstantiation, and though we behold nothing 

 in matter, we shall behold all things in God. 



It may, perhaps, be conceived that I treat the subject before us some- 

 what too flippantly or too cavalierly. It is not, however, the subject be- 

 fore us that I thus treat, but the hypothesis ; and in truth it is the only 

 mode in which I feel myself able to treat it at all ; for I could as soon be 

 serious over the ' Loves of the Plants,' or ' The Battle of the Frogs.* And 

 I must here venture to extend the remark a little further, and to add, that 

 there is but one hypothesis amidst all those that yet remain to be examined, 

 that I shall be able to treat in any other manner ; for, excepting in this one, 

 there is not a whit of superiority that I can discover in any of them ; and 

 the one I refer to, though 1 admit its imperfections in various points, is that 

 of our own enlightened countryman, Mr. Locke. I may, perhaps, be 

 laughed at in my turn, and certainly should be so if I were as far over the 

 Tweed as over the Thames, and be told that I am at least half a century 

 behind the times. Yet, by your permission, I ^hall dare the Jaugh, and. 

 endeavour, at least, to put merriment against merriment ; and shall leave 

 it to yourselves to determine, after a full and impartial hearing, who has the 

 best claim to be pleasant. So that the study of metaphysics may not, 

 perhaps, appear quite so gloomy and repugnant as the writings of some 

 philosophers would represent it. If it have its gravity, it may also be found 

 to have its gayety as well ; and to prove that there is no science in which 

 it better becomes us to adopt the maxim of the poet, and to 



hangh where we may, be serious where we can. 

 B?it vpHJicate the ways of God to man. 



