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arise from this latitude in the use of the term; provided only it be always confined to those ultimate laws of belief, which, although they form the first elements of human reason, cannot with propriety be ranked among the principles from which any of our scientific conclusions are deduced.

Corresponding to the extension which some late writ ers have given to axioms, is that of the province which they have assigned to intuition; a term which has been applied, by Dr Beattie and others, not only to the power by which we perceive the truth of the axioms of geometry, but to that by which we recognize the authority of the fundamental laws of belief, when we hear them enunciated in language. My only objection to this use of the word is, that it is a departure from common practice; according to which, if I be not mistaken, the proper objects of intuition are propositions analogous to the axioms prefixed to Euclid's Elements. In some other respects, this innovation might perhaps be regarded as an improvement on the very limited and imperfect vocabulary of which we are able to avail ourselves in our present discussions *.

According to Locke, we have the knowledge of our own existence by intuition; of the existence of God by demonstration; and of other things by sensation. Book iv. Chap. 9. § 2.

This use of the word intuition seems to be somewhat arbitrary. The reality of our own existence is a truth which bears as little analogy to the axioms of mathematics, as any other primary truth whatever. If the province of intuition, therefore, be extended as far as it has been carried by Locke in the foregoing sentence, it will not be easy to give a good reason why it should not be enlarged a little farther. The words intuition and demonstration, it must not be forgotten, have, both of them, an etymological reference to the sense of seeing; and when we wish to express, in the strongest terms, the most complete

To the class of truths which I have here called laws of belief, or elements of reason, the title of principles of common sense was long ago given by Father Buffier, whose language and doctrine concerning them bears a very striking resemblance to those of some of our later Scotish logicians. This, at least, strikes me as the meaning which these writers in general annex to the phrase; although all of them have frequently employed it with a far greater degree of latitude. When thus limited in its acceptation, it is obviously liable, in point of scientific accuracy, to two very strong objections, both of which have been already sufficiently illustrated. The first is, that it applies the appellation of principles to laws of belief from which no inference can be deduced; the second, that it refers the origin of these laws to common sense *.-Nor is this phraseology more agreeable to popular use than to logical precision. If we were to suppose an individual, whose conduct betrayed a disbelief of his own existence, or of his own identity, or of the reality of surrounding objects, it would by no means amount to an adequate description of his condition to say, that he was destitute of common sense. We should at once pronounce him to be destitute of reason, and would no longer consider him as a fit subject of discipline or of punishment. The former expression, indeed, would only imply that he was apt to fall into absurdi

evidence which can be set before the mind, we compare it to the light of noon-day;-in other words, we compare it to what Mr Locke here attempts to degrade, by calling it the evidence of sensation.

• See the preceding part of this section, with respect to the word principle; and the Account of Reid's Life, for some remarks on the proper meaning of the phrase common

sense.

ties and improprieties in the common concerns of life. To denominate, therefore, such laws of belief as we have now been considering, constituent elements of human reason, while it seems quite unexceptionable in point of technical distinctness, cannot be justly censured as the slightest deviation from our habitual forms of speech. On the same grounds, it may be fairly questioned, whether the word reason would not, on some occasions, be the best substitute which our language affords for intuition, in that enlarged acceptation which has been given to it of late. If not quite so definite and precise as might be wished, it would be at least employed in one of those significations in which it is already familiar to every ear; whereas the meaning of intuition, when used for the same purpose, is stretched very far beyond its ordinary limits. And in cases of this sort, where we have to choose between two terms, neither of which is altogether unexceptionable, it will be found much safer to trust to the context for restricting, in the reader's mind, what is too general, than for enlarging what use has accustomed us to interpret in a sense too narrow.

I must add, too, in opposition to the high authorities of Dr Johnson and Dr Beattie*, that, for many years past, reason

• Dr Johnson's definition of Reason was before quoted. The following is that given by Dr Beattie :

"Reason is used by those who are most accurate in distinguishing, to signify that power of the human mind by which we draw inferences, or by which we are convinced, "that a relation belongs to two ideas, on account of our having found that these ideas "bear certain relations to other ideas. In a word, it is that faculty which enables us, "from relations or ideas that are known, to investigate such as are unknown, and with

has been very seldom used by philosophical writers, or indeed by correct writers of any description, as synonymous with the power of reasoning. To appeal to the light of human reason from the reasonings of the schools, is surely an expression to which no good objection can be made, on the score either of vagueness or of novelty. Nor has the etymological affinity between these two words the slightest tendency to throw any obscurity on the foregoing expression. On the contrary, this affinity may be of use in some of our future arguments, by keeping constantly in view the close and inseparable connection which will be afterwards shown to exist between the two different intellectual operations which are thus brought into immediate contrast.

The remarks which I have stated in the two preceding sec tions, comprehend every thing of essential importance which I have to offer on this article of logic. But the space which it has occupied for nearly half a century, in some of the most noted philosophical works which have appeared in Scotland, lays me under the necessity, before entering on a new topic, of introducing, in this place, a few critical strictures on the doctrines of my predecessors.

"out which we never could proceed in the discovery of truth a single step beyond first "principles or intuitive axioms."-Essay on Truth, Part I. Chap. i.

SECTION III.

Continuation of the Subject.-Critical Remarks on some late Controversies to which it has given rise.-Of the Appeals which Dr Reid and some other Modern Writers have made, in their Philosophical Discussions, to Common Sense, as a Criterion of

Truth.

I OBSERVED, in a former part of this work, that Dr Reid acknowledges the Berkeleian system to be a logical consequence of the opinions universally admitted by the learned at the time when Berkeley wrote. In the earlier part of his own life, accordingly, he informs us, that he was actually a convert to the scheme of immaterialism; a scheme which he probably considered as of a perfectly inoffensive tendency, as long as he conceived the existence of the material world to be the only point in dispute. Finding, however, from Mr Hume's writings, that, along with this paradox, the ideal theory necessarily involved various other consequences of a very different nature, he was led to a careful examination of the data on which it rested; when he had the satisfaction to discover that its only foundation was a hypothesis, unsupported by any evidence whatever but the authority of the schools *.

It was not, therefore, (as has very generally been imagined by the followers of Berkeley) from any apprehension of danger in his argument against the existence of matter, that Reid was induced to call in question the ideal theory; but because he

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