434 



ON THE HYPOTHESIS 



given by the excellent Bishop Butler, and how perfectly in unison with the 

 language of Mr. Locke. That which renders being," says he, ''capa- 

 ble of moral government, is their having a moral nature and moral faculties 

 of perception and action. Brute creatures are impressed and actuated by 

 various instincts and propensions : so also are we. But additional to this 

 we have a capacity of reflectiing upon actions and characters, and 

 making them an object to our thought; and on our doing this, we na- 

 turally and unavoidably approve some actions, and disapprove others, as 

 vicious and of ill-desert. It is manifest that a great part of common lan- 

 guage and of common behaviour over the world is formed upon the sup- 

 position of SUCH A MORAL FACULTr ; whether called conscience, moral 

 reason, moral sense, or divine reason ; whether considered as a sentiment 

 of the understanding or as a perception of the heart, or which seems the 

 truth, as including both."^ Here we have laid down a firm and impreg- 

 nable basis : it is the capacity of reflection : an arrival at the intrinsic 

 nature of natural and moral good, and natural and moral evil, through the 

 operation of our own reason : that faculty of reason, which the same dis- 

 tinguished writer, instead of despising or undervaluing, expressly calls in 

 another place, after Solomon, the candle of the Lord but which he 

 adds, ''can afford no light where it does not shine, nor judge where it 

 has no principles to judge upon."t 



With this remark, i feel that I might safely drop this part of the argu- 

 ment : but as I have referred Mr. Stewart to his own description of the 

 blind and deaf boy, in refutation of his view of the powers and duties of 

 the external senses, I will, in like manner, refer Dr. Reid to Dr. Reid him- 

 self in refutation of the doctrine immediately before us, that every thing 

 exists precisely as it appears to exist. In page 173 of his chapter on the 

 fjuality of colours, he tells us that the colour oi^ the body is in the body it- 

 self — a scarlet rose being as much a scarlet in the dark as in the day ; but 

 that the apparition or appearance oi" the colour is in the eye or the mind. But 

 when he tells us this, does he not tell us in as plain terms as can be used, 

 that the object and its apparition or appearance are in a state of separation 

 from each other ? that they are two distinct things, and exist in two distinct 

 places ? and consequently that, instead of every thing being as it seems 

 TO BE, nothing has a being either as it seems to be, or where it seems to 

 be ? Nay, does he not, in spite of himself, adopt the very doctrine of 

 Aristotle and Des Cartes, both of Vi^hom held the same tenet ? the former^ 

 indeed, calling this separate apparition ?^ phantasm., which is a mere change 

 of the Latin term apparition into a Greek word.| 



But where, let me again ask, is the residence, and what is the nature of 

 this many-titled faculty, wliich is neither sense nor mind ; and is thus capable 

 of discerning what neither sense nor mind can comprehend ? Every other 

 principle or faculty has its peculiar seat, and we know how to track it to 



* Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed: Dissert, ii. of the Nature of Virtue, 

 t Ibid, part ii. Conclusion. 



X "The scarlet-rose which is before me is still a scarlet-rose when 1 shut my e3'-es, and 

 was so at midnight when no eyes saw it. The colour remains when the appearance ceases : 

 it remains the same when the aj>}iearancp changes. To a person in the jaundice it has still 

 another appearance: but he is easily convinced that the change is in his eye, and not in the 

 colour of the object. When a coloured body 2<! presented, there is a certain apparition fo 

 the eye or to the mind, which we hfive called the appearance of colour. Mr. Locke calls 

 it an idea, and, indeed, it may be called so with the greatest projvriety. Hence, the appear- 

 ance is, in the imagination, so closely united with a quality called a scarlet colour, that they 

 are apt to be mistaken for one a d the same thing, although tbey are in reality so different 

 and so unlike, that one is an idea i,i the mind, the other is a quality of body." — Inquiry. 

 &c. ch. vi. lect. iv. pp. 172, 173. 175. edit. ir. Lond. 1785. 



