4S6 



ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF COMMON SENSE. 



that our truest knowledge is that which is afforded by the dictates of na- 

 ture^ without trouble or exertion ; and on the other, that our moral sense 

 is identical with our instinctive propensities ; and that the constitution of 

 our nature is an infallible guide, and can never lead us amiss. This mis- 

 chievous, but unquestionably unforeseen tendency of the theory of com- 

 mon sense, I must leave you to follow up at your leisure ; but 1 cannot 

 quit this subject without once more adverting to the total failure of this 

 theory, in accomplishing the chief point for which it was devised,—-! mean 

 that of engaging us to believe, in opposition to the philosophical vagaries 

 of the Bishop of Cloyne and Mr. Hume, as well as of the earlier idealists, 

 not only that the external world has a substantive existence, but that it 

 substantively exists in every respect as it appears to^exist. I have already 

 observed, that while Dr. Berkeley was contending inetaphysically that we 

 have no proof of a material world, because we have no proof of any 

 thing but the existence of our own minds and ideas, M. Boscovich was 

 contending physically that we have no proof that matter contains any of 

 the qualities which it appears to contain ; that whatever the ostensible 

 FORais of bodies may present to us, it has in itself no such properties as 

 they seem to exhibit ; that the whole visible creation is nothing more than 

 a collection of indivisible, unextended atoms, or mere mathematical points, 

 whose only attributes are certain powers of attraction and repulsion, and 

 consequently that every thing we behold is a mere ph):s:nomenon, — ain' 

 APPARITION, and nothing more. 



Now, meaning to oppose this doctrine, and every doctrine of a similar 

 import, could it be supposed possible, if the fact did not stare us in the 

 face from his own writings, that Dr. Reid would after all avow and con- 

 tend, not indeed for the same but for a parallel tenet, and support it 

 almost in the same terms ? Could it be supposed that he would tell us, 

 as we have already seen he has told us, that every object has its appari- 

 tion ; that the object is one thing and its apparition another ; that the 

 object is IN ONE place and its apparition in another ; and that neither 

 the mind nor the eye behold the object itself, but only its apparition, or 



appearance, its PHANTASM Or PHENOMENON ? 



But 1 have to draw still more largely upon your astonishment ; for it 

 yet remains for me to inform you, that Mr. Dugald Stewart, Vv^ho may be 

 regarded as the key-stone of Dr. Reid's system, and the chief aim of 

 whose writings has been to proscribe the hypothesis of Berkeley, has him- 

 self fallen, not unintentionally, as Dr. Reid seems to have done, but openly 

 and avowedly, into a modification of Boscovich's hypothesis ; and has 

 even brought forward its more prominent principles " as necessary," I 

 adopt his own terms, " to complete Dr. Reid's speculations."* He la- 

 bours, indeed, to prove, that the two hypotheses, of Berkeley and Bos- 

 covich, have no resemblance or connexion with each other ; and I am 

 ready to admit, that in some respects there is a difference, since Bosco- 

 vich allows us a visionary material world, a world of apparitions, or 

 orderly phaenomena, in the language of Leibnitz phenomenes Men regies^ 

 while, Berkeley allows us no material world whatever ; though he, too, 

 has his world of phsenomena : but 1 must contend that they are, to all 

 intents and purposes, ahke in their opposition to that tenet, which it is 

 the leading feature of Reid's theory to establish, — I mean that we have 

 an internal principle, that proves to us that the world around us is not a 



* Essay ii. ch. ii. p. 80.j and compare with ch. i. pp. 62, 63. 



