ON ANCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. 



ideas that originate from itself as in those that originate from the senses. 

 And in the case of its being conscious of an imperfect or indistinct idea, 

 excited by one of the senses, what is the step it pursues ? That which n 

 uniformly pursues in every other case of imperfect knowledge : it calls in 

 the aid of an intermediate idea by the exercise of another sense that is 

 more closely connected or more clearly agrees with the idea that raises the 

 question, and the faculty of the judgment determines, as in every other 

 case. And here the knowledge, as I have already hinted at on a former 

 occasion, loses indeed its intuitive character, and assumes, for the most 

 part, the demonstrative. 



It was impossible, therefore, for Des Cartes to obtain any proofs what- 

 ever ; and it being the very preamble of his system that his doubts should 

 remain unless he could remove them by proofs, the only device that 

 seemed to afford him a loop-hole to escape from his dilemma, was an 

 appeal to the veracity of the Creator. God, he asserted, has imprinted 

 on the mind innate ideas of himself and of an external world ; and though 

 the senses offer no demonstration of such a world, it is completely fur- 

 nished to us by these internal ideas : the senses, indeed, may deceive, 

 but God can be no deceiver. And hence what appears to exist around 

 us does exist. 



The existence of an external world, therefore, in the Cartesian phi- 

 losophy is doubtful, so far as depends upon the senses ; for the testimony 

 they offer is in itself doubtful. And hence it is not upon the evidence of 

 our eyes and our hands, and our taste, smell, and hearing, that we are to 

 beheve that there is any body or any thing without us, but on the truth of 

 those innate ideas of a something without us which are supposed to be 

 imprinted on the mind, in connexion with the veracity of the Creator who 

 has imprinted them. 



But here another stumbling-block occurred to the progress of our phi- 

 losophical castle-builder ; and that was, the difficulty of determining, in 

 regard to the number and extent of these innate ideas. His friends Gas- 

 sendi and Hobbes openly denied that there were any such ideas whatever, 

 and put him upon his proofs, by which the whole system would be to be 

 commenced again from its foundation ; while Malebranche, one of the 

 most zealous of all the disciples of Des Cartes, at the same time that he 

 contended for the general doctrine of innate ideas, confessed that he had 

 some doubts whether they extended, to the existence of the world without 

 us, or to any thing but a knowledge of God and of our own being. 



Although, in his opinion, M. Des Cartes has proved the existence of 

 body by the strongest arguments that reason alone can furnish, andlfcrgu- 

 ments which he seems to suppose unexceptionable ; yet he does not admit 

 that they amount to a full demonstration of the existence of matter. In 

 philosophy, says he, we ought to maintain our liberty as long as we can, 

 and to believe nothing but what evidence compels us to believe. To be fully 

 convinced of the existence of bodies it is necessary that we have it demon- 

 strated to us, not only that there is a God, and that he is no deceiver, but 

 also that God has assured us that he has actually created such bodies ; and 

 this, continues Malebranche, ''1 do not find proved in the works of M. 

 Des Cartes. The faith obliges us to believe that bodies exist, but as to 

 the evidence of this truth, it certainly is not complete ; and it is also cer- 

 tain that we are not invincibly determined to believe that any thing exists 

 but God and our own mind. It is true that we have an extreme pro- 

 pensity to believe that we are surrounded with corporeal beings : so far 



