OF COMMON SENSE, 



421 



which material objects produce in the mind, through the medium of the 

 external senses. 



These perceptions, however accounted for, and whatever they have been 

 supposed to consist in, have in most ancient, and in all modern schools 

 been equally denoiQinated ideas ; and hence ^eashave sometimes implied 

 modifications, so to speak, of pure intelligence, which was the opinion of 

 Plato and of Berkeley ; of immaterial apparitions or phantasms, which 

 was that of Aristotle, and in a certain sense may perhaps be said to have 

 been that of Hume ; of real species or material miages, which was that 

 of Epicurus, of Sir Kenelm Digby,* and many other schoolmen of the 

 middle of the seventeenth century ; of mere notional resemblances, which 

 was that of Des Cartes ; and of whatever it was the ultimate intention of 

 any of these scholastic terms to signify, whether phantasm, notion, or 

 species ; whatever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks, 

 or the mind can be employed about when thinking, which was that of 

 Locke, and is the fair import of the word in popular speech. 



It is possible, moreover, that this indiscriminate use of the same term 

 to express different apprehensions, and particularly in modern times, has 

 contributed to many of the errors which are peculiarly chargeable to the 

 metaphysical writers of modern times. But this opmirn has been carried 

 much farther by Dr. Reid, who has persuaded himself that the word idea 

 has been the rock on which all the metaphysical systematizers, from the 

 time of Aristotle to his own era, have shipwrecked themselves ; and hence, 

 having determined to oppose the absurdities of his own Countryman Mr. 

 Hume, by the introduction of a new hypothesis, he thought the better 

 way would be to clear the ground on every side, by an equal excommu- 

 nication of this mischievous term, and of every system into which it had 

 ever found an entrance ; whence all the authors of such systems, what- 

 ever may have been their views or principles in other respects, he has 

 lumped together by the common napie of Idealists. 



The motive of Dr. Reid was pure and praiseworthy ; he entered the 

 arena with great and splendid talents ; and soon found himself powerfully 

 abtetted by his friends Dr. Adam Smith, Dr. Beattie, Lord Karnes, Dr. 

 Campbell, and Mr. Dugald Steward : but it must be obvious to every 

 one, that in the execution of his motive he has carried his resentment to 

 a strange and somewhat ludicrous extreme. Idea is a word sufficiently 

 harmless in itself, and even his own friends have not chosen to follow 

 him in his Quixotic warfare against it ; and have consequently continued 

 to use it, in spite of his outlawry and proscription : ,while to arrange 

 under the same banner every one who has employed this term, and to im- 

 pute the same dangerous tendency to every hypothesis in which it is to 

 be met with, is to make the wearing of a blue or a chocolate coat a sure 

 sign of treason, and to assert that every man who is found thus habited 

 deserves hanging. 



Mr, Locke distinctly tells us, that he uses the term idea in its popular 

 sense, and only in its popular sense. But he uses it, and that is enough : 

 the mischief is in the word itself. It has, however, been attempted to be 

 proved that he has not always known the sense in which he did use it ; 

 and that he has sometimes employed it in a popular and sometimes in a 

 scholastic import, as denoting that certain ideas are not mere notional 



*He was warmly opposed by Alexander Ross, of Hiidibrastic memory, who was a staunch 

 Aristotelian, and, consequently, denied the materiality of ideas. See Ross's argaraent in. 

 Professor Stewart's Essays, vol, i, p. 556, 4to. 



