OF COMMON SENSE. 



423 



m the latter case, no resemblance of reality, and consequently no resem- 

 blance whatever. The resemblance is in respect to the reality of the 

 qualities perceived : it is simply a resemblance of reality : here it begins 

 and here it ends. But the adverse commentators before us contend that 

 it neither begins nor ends here ; and that the word resemblance must 

 necessarily import an actual and material resemblance, — a corporeal copy 

 or image ; and that consequently the class of ideas referred to must ne- 

 cessarily be material and corporeal things. So that it is not allowable 

 to any man to say, that truth resembles a rock, unless he means, and is 

 prepared to prove, that truth is a hard, stony mass of matter, jutting into 

 the sea, and fatal to ships that dash against it. 



But many of Mr. Locke's own followers are said to have understood 

 him in this sense. Not, however, in regard to this distinction : though I 

 am ready to admit that many of those who have pretended to be his fol- 

 lowers have misunderstood him upon the subject of ideas generally, and 

 have affirmed, in direct opposition to his own words that, in the Essay on 

 Human Understanding, all our ideas of sensation are supposed to be 

 sensible representations or pictures of tlie objects apprehended by the 

 senses. This observation particularly applies to Locke's French com- 

 mentators and followers, Condillac, Turgot, Helvetius, Diderot, D'Alem- 

 bert, Condorcet, Destutt- Tracy, and Degerando ; concerning whom 

 Professor Stewart has made the following just remark ; that while these 

 ingenious men have laid hold eagerly of this common principle of rea- 

 soning, and have vied with each other in extolling Locke for the sagacity 

 which he has displayed in unfolding it, hardly two of them can be named 

 who have understood it precisely in the sense annexed to it by the author. 

 What is still more remarkable, the praise of Locke has been loudest from 

 those who seem to have taken the least pains to ascertain the import of 

 his conclusions.""^ 



The term object Mr. Locke has occasionally used in an equally figu- 

 rative sense. Thus book ii. chap. i. sect. 24. : In time," says he, " the 

 mind comes to reflect on its own operations about the ideas got by sensa- 

 tion ; and thereby stores itself with anew set of ideas^ which I call ideas 

 of reflection. These are the impressions that are made on our senses by 

 OUTWARD OBJECTS that are extrinsical to the mind, and its own operations 

 proceeding from powers intrinsical and proper in itself ; which when re- 

 flected on by itself, becoming also objects of its coutensplation, are, as I 

 have said, the originals of all knowledge." 



No words can more clearly prove that Locke regarded ideas of sensa- 

 tion as impressions made by external objects, and not as objects them- 

 selves ; and ideas of reflection as operations of the mind, and no more 

 objects, hterally so considered, than in the preceding case. And hence, 

 when, towards the close of the above passage, he appHes the term objects 

 to these operations, he can only in fairness be supposed to do it in a figurative 

 sense : in which sense, indeed, he applies the same term to ideas of all 

 kinds in another place, where he explains an idea to be whatsoever is 

 the object of the understandmg when a man ihiuks." And yet he has 

 been accused, by the School of (Jomm n Sense, of using the term lite- 

 rally ; and it is to Doctor Reid," says Mr. Stewart. that we cac the 

 important remark that all these notions (images, phantasms, &:c.) are 

 wholly hypothetical ;"f and that .we have no ground for supposing that in 



* Essays, vol. i. f>. 102. ' ' t Eletn. ch. iii. § ii. Feavne's Essay, p. 2S, 



