OF COMMON SExNSE. 429 



aur notions or simple apprehensions. It represents our senses as having 

 no other office but that of furnishing the mind with notions or simple ap- 

 prehensions of things ; and makes our judgment and belief concerning 

 those things to be acquired by comparing our notions together, and per- 

 ceiving their agreements or disagreements. We have shown, on the con- 

 trary, that EVEiiY OPERATION OF THE SENSES, iu its Very nature, imphes 

 JUDGMENT or BELIEF as woU as simple apprehension.* 



Yet, in a third passage, he tells us still more openly, that common sense 

 belongs neither to the mind nor to the corporeal senses, but is " a part 



OF human NATURE WHICH HATH NEVER BEEN EXPLAINED !"t 



Dr. Beattie, on the contrary, who assigns to the phrase Common Sense 

 a much more scholastic import than Dr. Reid appears to have intended, 

 expressly asserts that Common Sense, as he uiiderstands it, signifies " that 

 POWER OF THE MIND which pcrccives truth or commands behef, not by 

 progressive argumentation, but by an instantaneous and instinctive im- 

 pulse J or, as he says on another occasion, "it is instinct and not 

 REAS0N."§ While Mr. Stewart, stiil more decisively, declares it to be the 

 COMMON REASON of mankind ;|| in express contradiction, however, to Dr. 

 Reid, who as positively declares the principles of Common Sense to con- 

 sist of those principles which we are under a necessity of taking for 

 granted, without being able to give a reason for them."1I 



Now, whether this third principle reside in the senses or in the mind, so 

 long as it resides in either of them, and constitutes a part of either of them, 

 the argument which they call their experimentiim crucis falls instantly to 

 the ground ; for the ideas to which it gives rise must be sensitive or mental 

 ideas, or, in other words, ideas of sensation or of reflexion. 



Dr. Beattie's expression of instinctive impulse resulting from a power 

 of the mind^ is still more objectionable ; for instinct is not a power of the 

 mind, but a power meant to supply the place of a mind where no mind is 

 present, or in energy : and always acting most strikingly where there is least 

 intelligence, as in the lowest ranks of animals : and perhaps still more ob- 

 viously in plants. This is to confound endowments instead of to discrimi- 

 nate them. Nor is there less confusion in Dr. Reid's account of the 

 matter ; which is, " that every operation of the senses implies judgment 

 and belief, as well as simple apprehension : for this is to transfer the 

 mind itself from the brain to the senses, as well as to make a like transfer 

 of the principle of common sense to the same organs : it is to produce a 

 chaos in the constitution of man, by jumbling every faculty into an inter- 

 ference with every faculty. And yet upon this very doctrine he stakes the 

 whole truth or falsehood of his theory ; and Mr. Stewart abets him in the 

 same appeal. 



It is amusing, indeed, to run over the names, titles, or distinctive marks 

 assigned to their newly discovered principle by the leaders of the Common 

 Sense school. For we have not only common sense, instinct, It instinctive 

 prescienceJJ and instinctive propensity ;§§ but dictates *of nature,|||l dic- 

 tates of internal sensation, 'iF^ simple notions, and ultimate laws,*** judg- 

 ment and belief furnished by the senses,!!! inductive principle,!^! consti- 



* Inquiry, ch. vii. p. 480. t Ibid. ch. v. lect. iii. p. 115. edit. 1785. 



I On Truth, part i. ch. i. p. 11. § Id. part ii. ch. i. jj Essay ii. p. 60. 



TT Inquiry, p. 52. ** Stewart's Essays, vol. i. p. 548. 



Tt Beattie, part i. ch. ii. p. 28. stereotype edit. Stewart's Essays, vol. i. pp. 66. 87, 88. 589. 



XX lleid's Inquiry, ch. vi. lect. xxiv. p. 441. 



§§ Beattie on Truth, parti, ch. iii. lect. vii. p. 63. Ibid, part i. ch. ii. pp. 28. 32, 



HIT Ibid, p, 31. Stewart's Essays, vol. i. essay iii. p. 123;; 



ttt Reid's Inquiry, ch. vii. p. 481. l\l Ibid. ch. vi. lect. xxiv. p. 442. 



