That Dr Reid was a philosopher of no common rank, every one, who has read his works with attention, and with candour, must admit. It is impossible to deny, that, to great power of patient investigation, in whatever inquiries he undertook, he united great caution, in discriminating the objects of legitimate inquiry, together with considerable acuteness, of the same sage and temperate kind, in the prosecution of such inquiries as appeared to him legitimate. And,—which is a praise, that, unfortunately for mankind, and still more unfortunately for the individual, does not always attend mere intellectual renown,—it is impossible to deny to him the more covetable glory, that his efforts, even when he erred speculatively, had always in view those great interests, to which, and to which alone, philosophy itself is but a secondary consideration,—the primary and essential interests of religion and morality.
These praises are certainly not higher than his merits. But, at the same time, while by philosophers in one part of the island, his merits seem to have been unjustly undervalued, I cannot but think also, that, in his own country, there has been an equal or rather a far greater tendency to over-rate them,—a tendency arising in part from the influence of his academic situation, and his amiable personal character—partly, and in a very high degree, from the general regard for the moral and religious objects which he uniformly had in view, as contrasted with the consequences that are supposed to flow from some of the principles of the philosopher, whose opinions he particularly combated—and partly also, I may add, from the eloquence of his Illustrious Pupil, and Friend, and Biographer, whose understanding, so little liable to be biassed by any prejudices but those of virtue and affectionate friendship, has yet, perhaps, been influenced in some degree by those happy and noble prejudices of the heart, and who, by the persuasive charms both of his Lectures and of his Writings, could not fail to cast, on any system of opinions which he might adopt and exhibit, some splendour of reflection from the brilliancy of his own mind.
The genius of Dr Reid does not appear to me to have been very inventive, nor to have possessed much of that refined and subtile acuteness, which,—capable as it is of being abused,—is yet absolutely necessary to the perfection of metaphysical analysis.
It is chiefly on his opinions, in relation to the subject at present under our view, that his reputation as an original thinker rests. Indeed, it is on these that he has inclined himself to rest it. In a part of a letter to Dr Gregory, preserved in Mr Stewart's Memoir, he considers his confutation of the ideal system of perception, as involving almost every thing which is truly his. “I think there is hardly any thing that can be called mine,” he says, “in the philosophy of mind, which does not follow with ease from the detection of this prejudice.”[107] Yet there are few circumstances, connected with the fortune of modern philosophy, that appear to me more wonderful, than that a mind, like Dr Reid's, so learned in the history of metaphysical science,—and far too honourable to lay claim to praise to which he did not think himself fairly entitled,—should have conceived, that, on the point of which he speaks, any great merit—at least any merit of originality—was justly referable to him particularly. Indeed, the only circumstance, which appears to me more wonderful, is, that the claim thus made by him, should have been so readily and generally admitted.
His supposed confutation of the ideal system is resolvable into two parts—first, his attempt to overthrow what he terms “the common theory” of ideas or images of things in the mind, as the immediate objects of thought—and secondly, the evidence which the simpler theory of perception may be supposed to yield, of the reality of an external world. The latter of these inquiries would, in order, be more appropriate to our late train of speculation; but we cannot understand it fully, without some previous attention to the former.
That Dr Reid did question the theory of ideas or images, as separate existences in the mind, I readily admit; but I cannot allow, that, in doing this, he questioned the common theory. On the contrary, I conceive, that, at the time at which he wrote, the theory had been universally, or at least almost universally, abandoned; and that, though philosophers might have been in the habit of speaking of ideas or images in the mind,—as we continue to speak of them at this moment,—they meant them to denote nothing more then, than we use them to denote now. The phraseology of any system of opinions, which has spread widely, and for a length of time, does not perish with the system itself. It is transmitted from the system which expires, to the system which begins to reign,—very nearly as the same crown and sceptre pass, through a long succession, from monarch to monarch. To tear away our very language, as well as our belief, is more than the boldest introducer of new doctrines can hope to be permitted, for it would be to force our ignorance or errors too glaringly on our view. He finds it easier, to seduce our vanity, by leaving us something which we can still call our own, and which it is not very difficult for him to accommodate to his own views; so that, while he allows us to pronounce the same words, with the same confidence, we are sensible only of what we have gained, and are not painfully reminded of what we have been forced to discard. By this, too, he has the advantage of adding, in some measure, to his own novelties the weight and importance of ancient authority; since the feelings, associated with the name as formerly used, are transferred, secretly and imperceptibly, with the name itself. There is scarcely a term in popular science, which has not gone through various transmutations of this sort. It is not wonderful, therefore, that the phrase image in the mind, which was no metaphor as used by the Peripatetics, should have been retained, in a figurative sense, in metaphysical discussions, long after the authority of Aristotle had ceased, and when one who could maintain, with a square cap on his head, “a thesis on the universal a parti rei,” was no longer, as Voltaire says, “considered as a prodigy.” At the time of Dr Reid's publication, the image in the mind was as truly a mere relic of an obsolete theory of perception, as the rising and setting of the sun were relics of that obsolete astronomy, in which this great luminary was supposed to make his daily journey, round the atom which he enlightened.
Before proceeding to the proof of this assertion, however, with respect to the originality and importance of Dr Reid's remarks on this subject, some previous observations will be necessary.
In the discussions, which, as yet, have engaged our attention, you may, perhaps, have remarked that I have made little, if any, use of the word idea,—a word of very frequent occurrence, in the speculations of philosophers, with respect to the phenomena of perception, and the intellectual phenomena in general. I have avoided it, partly on account of its general ambiguity, but, more especially, with a view to the question at present before us, that, on examining it, you might be as free as possible, from any prejudice, arising from our former applications of the term.
The term, I conceive, though convenient for its brief expression of a variety of phenomena, which might otherwise require a more paraphrastic expression, might yet be omitted altogether, in the metaphysical vocabulary, without any great inconvenience,—certainly without inconvenience, equal to that which arises from the ambiguous use of it, with different senses, by different authors. But, whatever ambiguity it may have had, the notion of it, as an image in the mind separate and distinct from the mind itself, had certainly been given up, long before Dr Reid had published a single remark on the subject. In its present general use, it is applied to many species of the mental phenomena, to our particular sensations or perceptions, simple or complex, to the remembrances of these, either as simple or complex, and to the various compositions or decompositions of these, which result from certain intellectual processes of the mind itself. The presence of certain rays of light, for example, at the retina, is followed by a certain affection of the sensorial organ, which is immediately followed by a certain affection of the sentient mind. This particular affection, which is more strictly and definitely termed the sensation or perception of redness, is likewise sometimes termed, when we speak more in reference to the external light, which causes the sensation, than to ourselves, as sentient of it, an idea of redness; and when, in some train of internal thought, without the renewed presence of the rays, a certain state of the mind arises, different, indeed, from the former, but having a considerable resemblance to it, we term this state the conception or remembrance of redness, or the idea of redness; or, combining this particular idea with others, which have not co-existed with it as a sensation, we form, what we term the complex idea, of a red tree, or a red mountain, or some other of those shadowy forms, over which Fancy, in the moment of creating them, flings, at pleasure, her changeful colouring. An idea, however, in all these applications of the term, whether it be a perception, a remembrance, or one of those complex or abstract varieties of conception, is still nothing more than the mind affected in a certain manner, or, which is the same theory, the mind existing in a certain state. The idea is not distinct from the mind, or separable from it, in any sense, but is truly the mind itself, which in its very belief of external things, is still recognizing one of the many forms of its own existence.
“Qualis Hamadryadum, quondam, si forte sororum