414 



ON ANCIENT AND MODERN SKEPTICS. 



tied to the honours of the victory, let us vote them our thanks in the 

 aggregate. The only regret (and it is incident to human affairs that in 

 almost every victory there should be a regret) is that in pulling down one 

 hypothesis they should have thought it requisite to build up another, and 

 to give a proof of their own weakness in the midst of their own triumph. 

 But this is a subject which must be reserved for our next lecture. I can- 

 not, however, consent to quit our present connexion with Mr. Hume 

 without adverting to Dr. Beattie's very witty, and I may say, for the most 

 part, logical pleasantry upon the leading principle of Mr. Hume's hypo- 

 thesis, that our impressions and ideas of things only differ in degrees of 

 strength ; the idea being an exact copy of the impression, but only ac- 

 companied with a weaker perception. Upon this proposition Dr. Beattie 

 remarks as follows " When I sit by the fire, I Iiave an impression of 

 heat, and I can form an idea of heat when I am shivering with cold ; in 

 the one case I have a stronger preception of heat, in the other a weaker. 

 Is there any warmth in this idea of heat ? There must, according to this 

 doctrine ; only the warmth of the idea is not quite so strong as that of 

 the impression. For this author repeats it again and again, that ' an idea 

 is by its nature weaker and fainter than an impression, but is in every other 

 respect' (not only similar but) ' the same.'! Nay, he goes further, and 

 says, that " whatever is true of the one must be acknowledged concerning 

 the other ;| and he is so confident of the truth of this maxim, that he 

 makes it one of the pillars of his philosophy. To those who may be in- 

 clined to admit this maxim on his authority, I would propose a few plain 

 questions. Do you feel any, even the least, warmth, in the idea of a 

 bonfire, a burning mountain, or the general conflagration ? Do you feel 

 more real cold in Virgil's Scythian winter, than in Milton's description of 

 the flames of hell ? Do you acknowledge that to be true of the idea of 

 eating, which is certainly true of the impression of it, that it alleviates 

 hunger, fills the belly, and contributes to the support of human life ? If 

 you answer these questions in the negative, you deny one of the funda- 

 mental principles of this philosophy. We have, it is true, a livelier per- 

 ception of a friend when we see him, than when we think of him in his 

 absence. But this is not all : every person of a sound mind knows, that 

 in the one case we believe, and are certain, that the object exists, and is 

 present with us ; in the other we believe, and are certain, that the object 

 is not present : which, however, they must deny, who maintain, that an 

 idea differs from an impression only in being weaker^ and in no other 

 respect whatsoever. 



" That every idea should be a copy and resemblance of the impression 

 whence it is derived ; that, for example, the idea of red should be a red 

 idea ; the idea of a roaring lion a roaring idea ; the idea of an ass, a hairy, 

 long-eared, sluggish idea, patient of labour, and much addicted to thistles ; 

 that the idea of extension should be extended, and that of solidity, solid ; 

 —that a thought of the mind should be endued with all, or any, of the 

 qualities of matter, — is, in my judgment, inconceivable and impossible. 

 Yet our author takes it for granted ; and it is another of his fundamental 

 maxims. Such is the credulity of skepticism !" 



It is a singular coincidence, that while the substantive existence of an 

 external world was thus hotly attacked by metaphysics, the science of 



* Beattie on Truth, part ii. ch. ii. 



t Treatise of Human Nature, vol. i. p. 131. 



t Ibid. p. 41. 



