IDEAOLOGY. 
any other limb, when severed from the 
body, it would be the same self that was 
just before concerned for the whole. And 
if it were possible for the same man to have 
a distinct incommunicable consciousness at 
different times, he would, without doubt, 
at different times make different persons; 
which we see is the sense of mankind as to 
madmen, for human laws do not punish the 
madman for the sober man’s actions, nor 
the sober man for what the madman did, 
thereby considering them as two persons. 
IDEAOLOGY. The philosophy of the 
human mind. We are conscious of our 
own existence ; and in this consciousness 
we perceive a certain variety or successive 
change, which we distinguish by the name 
of thought. It seems as if it would be a 
vain attempt to investigate by what physi- 
cal operations the proceedings of the mind 
may be caused, supported, or governed. 
The primary objects of thought arc derived 
from our sensations or perceptions. We 
can form no conception of any subject of 
thought which shall not be referable to the 
senses. During the actual time of sensa- 
tion we suppose ourselves to be operated 
upon, by some beings or objects which con- 
stitute no part of ourselves ; and we do npt 
hesitate to infer from those sensations, that 
an external universe does actually subsist. 
Berkeley, Hume, and others, have made 
this a subject of question ; and it must be 
confessed, that we have no absolute proof 
respecting it. From the certainty, how- 
ever, that we ourselves do not cause the 
changes which produce sensation in us, we 
are irresistibly impelled to an affirmative 
decision of this question ; which after all 
seems neither important nor useful, more 
especially whqn we consider that the same 
uncertainty pervades all our researches 
whenever we refine so far as to treat of sub- 
jects which are not referable to cause and 
effect. 
In many instances, the sensations we ex- 
perience afford some resemblance of the ob- 
jects which cause them, as in the figures of 
bodies; but in others, it is probable that no 
such resemblance exists, as in colours, 
sounds, &c. A distinction has therefore 
very properly been made, between that 
which is perceived, and the cause , of the 
perception ; and, moreover, as we find that 
effects, similar to our antecedent percep- 
tions, may and do take place, though the 
organs of sense are not then acted upon, 
we make a further distinction between 
VOL. III. 
these last, and the perceptions themselves. 
We call them ideas. They not only resem- 
ble the perceptions, as individually consi- 
dered, but likewise make their appearance 
in the same arrangement or order of recur- 
rence. We think we perform a positive 
act, in many instances, in bringing them for- 
ward, which we call an act of the memory, 
or recollection ; and their coiicomitant ap- 
pearance, or the succession of ideas by re- 
collection, in the similarity or the order of 
the sensations, has been called the associa- 
tion of ideas. The same term is likewise 
applied, when we speak of the recur- 
rence, in idea, of an entire contempora- 
neous sensation, in consequence of part of 
it being brought forward in the memory. 
Much discussion has taken place among 
philosophers, respecting the origin and na- 
ture of our ideas ; in which it must be con- 
fessed that a mis-application of terms, a 
confusion of intellectual research, with an 
admixture of theological notions, and seve- 
ral other causes, have united to render a 
plain subject considerably obscure, even in 
the bands of men of much talent and acute- 
ness. In particular, it has been a sub- 
ject of controversy, whether man pos- 
sesses innate ideas. If an idea be the re- 
collected picture of a sensation, we must 
surely date the possession of ideas from the 
earliest period of the existence of an ani- 
mal ; and it seems absurd to deny to the 
embryo, before birth, a consciousness of the 
voluntary power it exerts in muscular mo- 
tion, or a power of feeling, and perhaps of 
being affected by sounds : — but without in- 
dulging any wildness of conjecture, are w-e 
not compelled, — when we see an animal in 
the first hour after its birth, seek the breast 
by the act of smelling, follow a visible object 
with its eyes, and alter the adjustment of 
their axis according to the distance of that 
object; when the same infant being set 
upon its feet, immediately and correctly 
makes the motion of jumping, — are we n«t 
compelled to admit, as incomparably the 
greater probability, that these powers have 
subsisted, though not exercised, in the foe- 
tal state, rather than that they should have 
been created at the instant of its birth? 
This then is our situation witli regard to in- 
nate ideas, and it would be a contradiction 
in terms to speak of innate notions or prin- 
ciples. Those deductions of fitness to an end 
or purpose, which constitute principle, cer- 
tainly cannot be made till after the requi- 
site propositions have been presented oi- 
ls n 
