428 



ON THE HYPOTHESIS 



" If," says Dr. Reld, " there are certain principles, as I think there are, 

 which the constitution of our nature leads us to beheve, and which we are 

 •under a necessity to take for granted in the common concerns of life, with- 

 out being able to give a reason for them, these are what we call the prin- 

 ciples of COMMON SEKSE,""^ 



Upon this passage I shall only, for the present, remark, that the new 

 percipient faculty, which it is the object of the Scottish theory to discover 

 to us, is one, as v/e have just been told, that is capable of extending its 

 survey far beyond the common concerns life," and of forming ideas of 

 the mathematical affections of matter ; and consequently that if the prin- 

 ciples of common sense be limited, as they seem to be here, and in my 

 judgment correctly so, to the common concerns of life,' * they can never 

 answer the purpose to which this faculty aspires, and for which it is started 

 in the present hypothesis ; which demands not only a common sense, but 

 a moral and a mathematical sense ; and all essentially distinct from and 

 totally independent of corporeal sensation and mental intelhgence. 



It is much to be regretted, however, and forms an insuperable objection 

 to the whole hypothesis, that its founders have never been able to agree 

 among themselves upon the nature of their new principle. 



" The power or faculty," says Dr. Reid, " by which we acquire these 

 conceptions, (those of extension, motion, and the other attributes of mat- 

 ter,) must be something different from any power of the human mind that 

 hath been explained, since it is neither sensation nor reflection,''''] 



This is loosely written ; for it seems to intimate that there maybe con- 

 ceptions or ideas !n the mind derived from or dependent on itself, which 

 are not conceptions or ideas of reflexion : while the phrase ideas of re- 

 flexion, as employed in Locke's system, embraces ideas of every kind of 

 which the mind is or can be conscious, and which issue from any powers 

 of its own. 



Dugald Stewart gives the same doctrine more correctly as follows, and 

 as a paraphrase upon this very passage : " That we have notions of external 

 qualities which have no resemblance to our sensations^ or to any thing of 

 which the mind is conscious, is therefore a fact of which every man's ex- 

 perience affords the completest evidence, and to which it is not possible 

 to oppose a single objection, but its incompatibility with the common 

 philosophical theories concerning the origin of our knowledge. "J 



But the question still returns, from what source then are these insensi- 

 ble, unintellectual notions derived ? Where is the seat, and what is the 

 meaning of that common Se^se which is to solve every difficulty ? As these 

 philosophers make a boast of their experirnentum crticis^ this is an expe- 

 rimentum crucis in return to them ; nor does there seem to be an individual 

 through the whole school that is able to work out a solution, or to offer 

 any definite idea upon the subject. 



I have already observed upon the looseness of Reid, who, in the passage 

 just quoted, seems still to have a slight inclination to regard this principle 

 of common sense as a power of the mind, and of course as seated in the 

 mental organ ; though a power that has not hitherto been explained. In 

 the following passage he seems to regard it as a power of the extern^f 

 senses, and hence as seated in these senses themselves. 



The account which this system (Hume's) gives of our judgment and 

 belief concerning things, is as far from the truth as the account it gives of 



* Inquiry, p. 52. 



t Reid, ch. v. sect. vii. 



+ Essay, vol. i. p. 549,, 



