420 



ON THE HYPOTHESIS 



have remarked in many of the opposers of Mr. Locke, who seem to be 

 afraid of fettering themselves with definite ferms or definite ideas. This 

 looseness may be convenient in many cases, but it always betrays weak- 

 ness or imprecision. In the mouth of the Platonists and Peripatetics of 

 ancient Greece, we distinctly know that the term phaenomena denoted the 

 archetypes of the one, or the phantasms of the other. We understand it 

 with equal clearness as made use of, though in very different senses, by 

 Leibnitz in reference to his system of pre-established harmony, and by 

 Professor Robson, in reference to that of Boscovich. But when M. 

 Magendie, or Mr. Lawrence, tells us that " human intelligence," which 

 is the phrase of the former, in the passage just quoted, or " life," which 

 is that of the latter, is a composition or assemblage of PHiENOMENA,-— a 

 "RESULT OF the ACTION of an Organ," — we have no distinct notion 

 whatever put before us. The " purposes," or " properties," or "func- 

 tions," or whatever it is they intend under the name of phaenomena, 

 certainly do not seem to be strictly material in themselves, though we are 

 told they are, in some way or other, the product of a material organ : but 

 whether they be the phantasms of the Greek schools, the visions of Male- 

 branche or Berkeley, the mathematical points of Boscovich, the appari- 

 tions or appearances of the Common-Sense hypothesis, — whether they 

 be a name or a thing, any thing or nothing, the writers themselves having 

 given us no clue to determine, and perhaps have hardly determined for 

 themselves. 



We have thus travelled over a wide extent of ground, but have not yet 

 quite reached our journey's end. It still remains to us to examine the 

 popular hypothesis of the present day, put forth from the north, under the 

 captivating title of the System of Common Sense ; produced undoubtedly 

 from the best motives, and offered as an universal and infallible specific 

 for all the wounds and weaknesses we may have incurred in our en- 

 counters with the preceding combatants. 



Tlie consideration of this shall form the subject of our ensuing lecture ; 

 and I shall afterwards, by your permission, follow up the whole by sub- 

 mitting a few general observations on the entire subject, and endeavour to 

 collect for your use, from the wide and tangled wilderness in which we 

 have been beating, the few flowers and the httle fruit that may be honestly 

 worth the trouble of preservation. 



LECTURE VI. 



ON T^E hypothesis OF COMMON SENSE. 



It must be obvious, I think, to every one who has attentively watched 

 the origin and progress of those extraordinary and chimerical opinions 

 through which we have lately been wading, and which have been dressed 

 up by philosophers of the rarest endowments and deepest learning, into a 

 show of systems and theories, that the grand cause o^ their absurdities is 

 attributable to the imperfect knowledge we possess respecting the nature 

 and quahties of matter, and the nature and quahties of those perceptions 



