424 



ON THE HYPOTHESIS 



any operation of the mind ihere exists in it an object distinct from the 

 mind itself. 



With respect to the division of the qualities of bodies just adverted to, 

 though derived from the views of Sir Isaac Newton, I am ready to admit 

 that it is loose, and in some respects perhaps erroneous. Nor is this to 

 be wondered at ; for I have already had frequent occasions to observe 

 that it is a subject upon which we are totally ignorant ; and that we are 

 rather obhged to suppose, than are capable of proving the existence of 

 even the least controverted primary quahties of bodies, as extension, 

 soHdity, and figure, in order to avoid the falling into the absurdity of 

 disbelieving a jnaterial substrate. But the supporters of the new hypo- 

 thesis have no reason to triumph upon this point, since it is a general 

 doctrine of their creed that all the quahties of matter are equally pri- 

 mary or real ; in the interpretation of which, however, the sentiments 

 of Mr. Stewart are wider from those of Dr. Reid than Dr. Reid's are 

 from Mr. Locke's. 



Nor are they altogether clear from the very same charge here advanced 

 against Mr. Locke : " Professor Stewart in his Elements says, ^ Dr. Reid 

 has justly distinguished the quality of colour from what he calls the ap- 

 pearance of colour, which last can only exist in a mind." And Dr. Reid 

 himself says, ' The name of colour belongs indeed to the cause only, and 

 not to the effect.' " Here, then, we have it unequivocally from Dr. Reid, 

 that colour is aquahty in an external body, — and the sensation occasioned 

 by it in the mind is only the appearance of that external quahty ! ! — Would 

 any one suppose that such doctrme could come from the illustrious de- 

 fender of non-resemblances ? — from the founder of the school which 

 ridicules Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, for supposing that our ideas of 

 primary qualities are resemblances of those qualities ? — What is the op- 

 pearance of any thing but a resemblance of it ? An appearance of any 

 thing means the highest degree of resemblance ; or that precise resem- 

 blance of it which makes it seem to be the thing itself"* Appearance^ 

 in Dr. Reid's sense of the term, is precisely assimilated to the phantasm 

 of Aristotle. 



In reality, neither of these objections against Mr. Locke's theory seem 

 to have weighed very heavy with Dr. Beattie ; whose chief ground of 

 controversy is drawn from another source ; from Locke's having opposed 

 the Cartesian doctrine of innate ideas and principles : or, in other words, 

 from his having opposed M. Des Cartes's gratuitous assertion that infal- 

 lible notions of a God, of matter, of consciousness, or moral right, toge- 

 ther with other notions of a hke kind, are implanted in the mind, and 

 may be found there by any man who will search for them ; thus super- 

 seding the necessity for discipline and education, and putting savages 

 upon a level with theologians and moral philosophers. To confute this 

 absurdity of M. Des Cartes is the direct object of the first book of the 

 Essay on Human Understanding ; and it is this first book," says Dr. 

 Beattie, " which, with submission, I think the worst and most dangerous."! 

 Here again, however, it is altogether unnecessary for me to offer a vindi- 

 cation, for it has been already oflTered by one of the most able supporters 

 of the new system, Mr. Dugald Stewart himself ; who thus observes, as 

 though in direct contradiction to his friend Dr. Beattie ; " the hypothesis of 

 innate ideas thus interpreted (by Des Cartes and Malebranche) scarcely 



* Fearne's Essay on Consciousness, ch. xii. p. 247, 3(1 edit^ 

 ^ Beattie on Truth, part ii. ch. ii. sect. i. § 2. 



