wrong, good and evil.-The decisions of the understanding, it must be owned, with respect to moral truth, differ from those which relate to a mathematical theorem, or to the result of a chemical experiment, inasmuch as they are always accompanied with some feeling or emotion of the heart; but on an accurate analysis of this compounded sentiment,* it will be found, that it is the intellectual judgment which is the ground-work of the feeling, and not the feeling of the judgment. Nor is the language which I have adopted, in preference to that of Locke, with respect to the origin of our moral notions, sanctioned merely by popular authority. It coincides exactly with the mode of speaking employed by the soundest philosophers of antiquity. In Plato's Theætetus, Socrates observes, "that it cannot be any of the powers of sense that compares the perceptions of all the senses, and apprehends the general affections of things;" asserting, in opposition to Protagoras, that this power is reason, or the governing principle of the mind."-To illustrate what he means by the general affections of things, he mentions, as examples, identity, number, similitude, dissimilitude, equality, inequality, xalov xai aioxgov ;-an enumeration which is of itself sufλὸν και αἰσχρὸν ficient to show, how very nearly his view of this subject approached to the conclusions which I have been endeavouring to establish concerning the origin of our knowledge. The sentence which immediately follows could not have been more pointedly expressed, if the author had been combating the doctrine of a moral sense, as explained by Dr. Hutcheson: "It seems to me, that for acquiring these notions, there is not appointed any distinct or appropriate organ; but that the mind derives them from the same powers by which it is enabled to contemplate and to investigate truth." I See Note (D.) †See upon this subject Cudworth's Immutable Morality, p. 100, et seq. and Price's Review, &c. p. 50, 2d Edit. Η Μοι δοκεῖ ΟΥΔ ̓ ΕΙΝΑΙ ΤΟΙΟΥΤΟΝ ΟΥΔΕΝ ΤΟΥΤΟΙΣ ΟΡΓΑΝΟΝ ΙΔΙΟΝ, ἀλλ ̓ αὐτὴ δι' αὐτῆς ἡ ψυχὴ τὰ κοινά μοι φαίνεται περὶ πάντων ἐπισκοπεῖν. Όμως δὲ τοσοῦτόν γὲ προβεβήκαμεν, ὥστε μὴ ζητεῖν αὐτὴν (ἐπιστήμην) ἐν αἰσθήσει τοπαράπαν, ἀλλ' ἐν ἐκείνῳ τῷ ὀνόματι, ὅ,τι ποτ ̓ ἔχει ἡ ψυχὴ ὅταν, αὐτὴ καθ ̓ αὑτὴν πραγματεύηται περὶ ΤΑ ΟΝΤ.Α. The discussion into which we have been thus led almost insensibly, about the ethical scepticism which seems naturally to result from Locke's account of the origin of our ideas, while it serves to demonstrate how intimate the connexion is between those questions in the science of mind, which, on a superficial view, may be supposed to be altogether independent of each other, will, I hope, suggest an apology for the length of some of my arguments upon scholastic questions, apparently foreign to every purpose of practical utility. I must, more especially, request, that this consideration may be attended to, when I so often recur in these pages to the paradox of Hume and Berkeley concerning the existence of the material world. It is not that I regard this theory of idealism, when considered by itself, as an error of any serious moment; but because an examination of it affords, in my opinion, the most palpable and direct means of exploding that principle of Locke, to which the most serious of Mr. Hume's sceptical conclusions, as well as this comparatively inoffensive tenet, may be traced as to their common root. In offering this apology, I would not be understood to magnify, beyond their just value, the inquiries in which we have been now engaged, or those which are immediately to follow. Their utility is altogether accidental; arising, not from the positive accession they bring to our stock of scientific truths, but from the pernicious tendency of the doctrines to which they are opposed. On this occasion, therefore, I am perfectly willing to acquiesce in the estimate formed by Mr. Tucker of the limited importance of metaphysical studies; however much I may The reproduction of the same philosophical doctrines, in different ages, in consequence of a recurrence of similar circumstances, has been often remarked as a curious fact in the history of the human mind. In the case now before us, the expressions which Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates, can be accounted for only by the wonderful similarity between the doctrines of Protagoras and those of some modern sceptics. "Nothing," according to Protagoras, "is true or false, any more than sweet or sour in itself, but relatively to the perceiving mind."-" Man is the measure of all things; and every thing is that, and no other, which to every one it seems to be; so that there can be nothing true, nothing existent, distinct from the mind's own perceptions." This last maxim, indeed, is mentioned as the fundamental principle of the theory of this ancient sceptic. Πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἄνθροπων. Μέτρον ἕκαστον ἡμῶν εἶναι νῶν τε ὄντων καὶ μή. Τα φαινόμενα ἑκάστῳ, zavia xaì ɛivai. Plato, Thatet. be inclined to dispute the universality of its application to all the different branches of the intellectual philosophy. Indeed, I shall esteem myself fortunate (considering the magnitude of the errors which I have been attempting to correct) if I shall be found to have merited, in any degree, the praise of that humble usefulness which he has so beautifully described in the following words: "The science of abstruse learning, when completely attained, is like Achilles's spear, that healed the wounds it had made before. It casts no additional light upon the paths of life, but disperses the clouds with which it had overspread them; it advances not the traveller one step on his journey, but conducts him back again to the spot from whence he had wandered." * * Light of Nature Pursued, Introd, xxxiii. (London, 1768.) ESSAY SECOND. ON THE IDEALISM OF BERKELEY. CHAPTER FIRST. ON SOME PREVAILING MISTAKES WITH RESPECT TO THE IMPORT AND AIM OF THE BERKELEIAN SYSTEM. It is not my intention, in this essay, to enter at all into the argument with respect to the truth of the Berkeleian theory; but only to correct some mistakes concerning the nature and scope of that speculation, which have misled many of its partizans as well as of its opponants. Of these mistakes there are two which more particularly deserve our attention. The one confounds the scheme of idealism with those sceptical doctrines, which represent the existence of the material world as a thing which is doubtful: the other confounds it with the physical theory of Boscovich, which, while it disputes the correctness of the commonly received opinions about some of the qualities of matter, leaves altogether untouched the metaphysical question, whether matter possesses an independent existence, or not? 1. It is well known to all who have the slightest acquaintance with the history of philosophy, that, among the various topics on which the ancient sceptics exercised their ingenuity, the question concerning the existence of the material world was always a favorite subject of disputation. Some doubts on the same point occur even in the writings of philosophers, whose general leaning seems to have been to the opposite extreme of dogmatism. Plato himself has given them some countenance, by hinting it as a thing not quite impossible, that human life is a continued sleep, and that all our thoughts are only dreams.* This scepticism (which I am inclined to think most persons have occasionally experienced in their early years †) proceeds on principles totally different from the doctrine of Berkeley, who asserts, with the most dogmatical confidence, that the existence of matter is impossible, and that the very supposition of it is absurd. "The existence of bodies out of a mind perceiving them," he tells us explicitly, "is not only impossible, and a contradiction in terms; but were it possible, and even real, it were impossible we should ever know it." The attempt of Berkeley to disprove the existence of the material world, took its rise from the attempt of Descartes to demonstrate the truth of the contrary proposition. Both undertakings were equally unphilosophical; for, to argue in favor of any of the fundamental laws of human belief is not less absurd than to call them in question. In this argument, however, it must be granted, that Berkeley had the advantage; the conclusion which he formed being unavoidable, if the common principles be admitted on which they both proceeded. † It was reserved for Dr. Reid to show, that these principles are not only unsupported by any proof, but contrary to incontestable facts; nay, that they are utterly inconceivable from the manifest inconsistencies and absurdities which they involve.§ All this he has placed in so clear and strong a light, that Dr. Priestley, the most acute of his antagonists, has found nothing to object to his argument, but that it is directed against a phantom of his own creation, and that the opinions which he combats were never seriously maintained by any philosophers, ancient or modern.|| With respect to Mr. Hume, who is commonly considered as an advocate for Berkeley's system, the remarks which I have offered on the latter writer must be understood with great limitations. For, although his fundamental principles lead necessarily to Berkeley's Τί ἄν τις ἔχοι τεκμήριον ἀποδεῖξαι, εἴ τις ἐροῖτο, νῦν οὕτως ἐν τῷ παρόντι, πότερον καθεύδομεν, καὶ πάντα ἃ διανούμεθα ὀνειρώττομεν, &c. &c. t "We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life || Note (G.) + Note (E.) |