It is for this reason that I have paid no attention to the hypothesis of the Scotch Doctors, Reid, Beattie and Oswald, and have given no detailed account of Dr. Priestley’s examination of their writings. Indeed the perfect oblivion into which these writers have fallen, and the utter insufficiency of such young gentlemen and lady’s philosophy as they have adopted, has secured them from further animadversion. The facility with which ignorance can refer all difficulties relating to the phenomena of mind, to instinctive principles and common sense, might answer the purpose of popular declamation for a while, but it could not last; and these writers have fallen into merited obscurity, notwithstanding the national prejudice in favour of each other, so prevalent among the Literati of North Britain.
Some passages in Dr. Reid, however ought to exempt him from the contempt which is due to the common system advanced by him and his coadjutors: and his last book on the Active powers of man, is a work of undeniable merit on a very important subject, which has not yet been discussed with half the labour it so eminently deserves. The Synthesis and Analysis of our ideas, the history and process of their formation, and the detail of facts attending and connected with their rise and progress, is comparatively a new subject. Des Cartes, Buffier and Condillac among the French, Locke, Berkeley and Hartley among the English, and Hume, Reid, and Adam Smith among the Scotch, are almost the only authors worth notice who have treated it expressly, and most of them only partially.[74] Something may be found to the purpose in Hobbes, and in the first part of Dr. Priestley’s examination of Reid, Oswald and Beattie, and more in the first volume of Zoonomia, § 14 and 15.[75] The common sense of Dr. Reid and Co. seems to have been employed as the clavis universalis on this subject by Buffier, in his “First Truths.” Hutcheson’s theory of the Moral Sense hardly merits notice, nor does that of Dr. Price promise to add much to the stock of real knowledge. We have had enough (sat superque) of occult principles, innate principles, and instinctive principles, which illustrate nothing, but the ignorance of those who employ them.
[74] Dr. Dugal Stewart in Scotland, and the Revd. Mr. Belsham in England, have published Elements of the Philosophy of the mind, the first inclining to the Scotch School of Metaphysics, the latter to the System of Hartley; both of them of merit in their way, particularly (as I think that of Mr. Belsham).
[75] I cannot help thinking Dr. Darwin’s obligations to Dr. Hartley and Dr. Brown ought to have dictated more acknowledgement than he has condescended to make.
For my own part, I am persuaded that no Theory of the mind can be satisfactory, which is not founded on the history of the Body. I know of no legitimate passport to Metaphysics but Physiology. Hence I cannot estimate highly the writings of the Scotch Metaphysicians. There is one other feature also common to this School, which satisfies me of their incompetence to this subject; their slight notice, and ambiguous approbation of a man so superior as Dr. Hartley, and their utter ignorance or neglect of the theory he has advanced. On every subject relating to the phenomena of mind, Dr. Hartley’s book must be adopted as the ground work of the reasoning, or his principles must be previously and distinctly confuted.[76]
[76] Dr. Reid in his last work has given a critique on Dr. Hartley’s theory without understanding it, or even touching on the important points. That theory in substance is this: an external object (a peach for instance) makes an impression at once, on our organs of feeling, of sight, and of taste. The impression thus made on the extreme end of the appropriate nerve, is propagated by some species of motion along the course of nerve up to the brain, and there, and there only, perceived; for if the nerve be cut, or tied, or palsied, in any part of its course, the impression is not perceived. Motions in the brain thus produced, and perceived, are sensations: similar motions arising, or produced without the impression of an external object, are ideas. These impressions being in the instance given, simultaneous or nearly so, are associated, so that the sensation produced by the sight of a peach, will give rise to motions in the brain similar to those produced at first by the taste and the touch of it: i. e. it will suggest the ideas of taste and touch, and excite the inclination to reach and to eat the object of them. Hence sensations, ideas, and muscular motions are associated together and mutually suggest and give rise to each other. What species of motion it is, with which the nervous system is affected in this process, or whether Sir Isaac Newton’s Æther, or its modern substitute the electric fluid, has any thing to do with it or not, is no essential part of the theory, and may be adopted or rejected without prejudice to the main system. Some kind of motion there manifestly is; I think it demonstrable that it is vibratory; but of whatever kind it be, its existence in the brain is unquestionable; and the association and catenation of individual motions in the brain according to certain laws, is equally so. This is matter of fact, and it was Dr. Reid’s business if he could, to shew that neither the motions, the perceptions, or the associations took place in that organ. The general law is expressed by Hartley Prop. 20. Cor. 7.
The Metaphysics of the present day require also, a more accurate attention to the Theory of Grammar than has hitherto been paid by writers on the subject. Perhaps I do not assert too much in saying that we have had no grammarians worth notice, none who have thrown light on the principles of Grammar, but Locke and Horne Tooke. What dreadful confusion has arisen from treating words denoting what are called abstract ideas, as if they were the exponents of real individual existence? Whereas they are merely signs of artificial classification without any individual archetype. For instance in relation to the present subject, what volumes of laboured and learned trifling have been written on the Will, the Judgment, the Understanding and the other faculties as they are called, of the soul! Yet nothing is more certain than that the will, the judgment, the understanding, &c. have no existence: they are words only, the counters employed in reasoning, convenient signs of arrangement, like the plus the minus and the unknown quantity in Algebra, but no more. The time however is approaching, when Metaphysics will take rank among the Sciences that lay claim, if not to absolute demonstration, yet to an approximation to certainty sufficient for all the purposes of ethical reasoning, and all the practical duties of human life.
ERRATA.
| Page, | Line. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [23] | 10 | from the top, | For deliverery, | read delivery. |
| [84] | 14 | — — | ” Actes, | ” Artes |
| [” ] | ” | — — | ” pecsinit, | ” nec sinit. |
| [90] | bottom line, | ” No. 6, | ” No. 4. | |
| [160] | 2 | — — | ” Bur, | ” But. |
| [172] | 3 | — — | ” Biancount, | ” Liancourt. |
| [188] | 1 | — — | ” determing, | ” determining. |
| [ ” ] | 8 | — — | ” he | ” her. |
| [214] | 1 | — — | For wall, | read well. |
| [218] | 3 | from the bottom | ” immorality, | ” immortality. |
| [229] | 2 | — — | ” 1679, | ” 1767. |
| [269] | 3 | — — | ” fort, | ” forte. |
| [304] | 8 | from the bottom | after, the Author, | ” Dr. Coward. |
| [ ”] | 1 | from the top, | ” predomininates, | ” predominates. |
| [333] | 7 | from the top of the note | for disc, | ” dire. |
| 357 | 12 | from the top | For is, | ” it. |