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given by the excellent Bishop Butler, and how perfectly in unison with -language of Mr. Locke. "That which renders being," says he, "capable of moral government, is their having a moral nature and moral faculties of perception and action. Brute creatures are impressed and actuated by various instincts and propensions: so also are we. But additional to this we have A CAPACITY OF REFLECTING upon actions and characters, and making them an object to our thought; and ON OUR DOING THIS, we o turally and unavoidably approve some actions, and disapprove others, s vicious and of ill-desert. It is manifest that a great part of common language and of common behaviour over the world is formed upon the supposition of SUCH A MORAL FACULTY; whether called conscience, moral reason, moral sense, or divine reason; whether considered as a sentiment of the understanding or as a perception of the heart, or which seems the truth, as including both."* Here we have laid down a firm and impregnable basis: it is the capacity of reflection: an arrival at the intrinsic nature of natural and moral good, and natural and moral evil, through the operation of our own reason: that faculty of reason, which the same de tinguished writer, instead of despising or undervaluing, expressly calls in another place, after Solomon, "the candle of the Lord;" but which be adds, can afford no light where it does not shine, nor judge where it has no principles to judge upon."t

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With this remark, I feel that I might safely drop this part of the argument but as I have referred Mr. Stewart to his own description of the blind and deaf boy, in refutation of his view of the powers and duties of the external senses, I will, in like manner, refer Dr. Reid to Dr. Reid himself in refutation of the doctrine immediately before us, that every thing exists precisely as it appears to exist. In page 173 of his chapter on the quality of colours, he tells us that the colour of the body is in the body itself-a scarlet rose being as much a scarlet in the dark as in the day; but that the apparition or appearance of the colour is in the eye or the mind. But when he tells us this, does he not tell us in as plain terms as can be used, that the object and its apparition or appearance are in a state of separation from each other? that they are two distinct things, and exist in two distinct places? and consequently that, instead of every thing BEING AS IT SEEMS TO BE, nothing has a being either as it seems to be, or where it seems to be? Nay, does he not, in spite of himself, adopt the very doctrine of Aristotle and Des Cartes, both of whom held the same tenet? the former, indeed, calling this separate apparition a phantasm, which is a mere change of the Latin term apparition into a Greek word.‡

But where, let me again ask, is the residence, and what is the nature of this many-titled faculty, which is neither sense nor mind; and is thus capable of discerning what neither sense nor mind can comprehend? Every other principle or faculty has its peculiar seat, and we know how to track it to

Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed: Dissert. ii. of the Nature of Virtue.
Ibid. part ii. Conclusion.

"The scarlet-rose which is before me is still a scarlet-rose when I shut my eyes, and was so at midnight when no eyes saw it. The colour remains when the appearance ceases: it remains the same when the appearance changes. To a person in the jaundice it has still another appearance: but he is easily convinced that the change is in his eye, and not in the colour of the object. When a coloured body is presented, there is a certain APPARITION to the eye or to the mind, which we have called the appearance of colour. Mr. Locke calls it an idea, and, indeed, it may be called so with the greatest propriety. Hence, the appearance is, in the imagination, so closely united with a quality called a scarlet colour, that they are apt to be mistaken for one and the same thing, although they are in reality so different and so unlike, that one is an idea in the mind, the other is a quality of body."-Inquiry, &c. ch. vi. lect. iv. pp. 172, 173. 175. edit. iv. Lond. 1785.

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Instinct is the operation of the power of organized life by the → of certain natural laws, directing it to the perfection of the indiand wherever organized life is to be found there is instinct. n exists in the muscular fibre; sensation in nervous cords; intelliin the gland of the brain; for there is its seat, whatever may be nce. But where is the seat, and what is the nature of this new Me? Is it capable of a separate existence? Does it expire with y? Or does it accompany and still direct the soul after death? are important questions; what is the answer to them? Or is there er to be found than that of Dr. Reid already noticed?" Common 3 a part of human nature which hath never been explained."* what, after all, is it designed to teach us? What is the number e precise character of those primary maxims, or instinctive notions, ral dictates, or inspired truths, or whatsoever else they may be called, form the sum of its communication? How are we to know what nuine and infallible first principle from what has the mere semblance and is spurious? Are the founders of the system agreed upon bject among themselves? If so, they are far more fortunate than urtesians upon the first principles, the xova Evvotal of their own

If they be not, their foundation slips from them in a moment, I is wild and visionary; and every one may find a first principle in is own fancy may suggest, or his own inclination lead him to. Yet ave no proof that any such convention has ever been settled; nor ay individual been bold enough to furnish a catalogue from the rery of his own endowment.

few words, the whole of this hypothesis is nothing more than an pt to revive the Cartesian scheme, so far as relates to, perhaps, the obnoxious part of it, the doctrine of innate ideas, but to revive it another name. Beattie and Stewart have in fact indirectly admits much, though neither of them have chosen to avow the design ly. The worst and most dangerous part of Mr. Locke's system, in pinion of Dr. Beattie, is his first book-that very book in which this ine meets with its death blow. While Mr. Stewart, notwithstanding contempt with which he professes to treat this fanciful tenet of innate s, asserts almost immediately afterwards, that his chief objection to it sists in its name, and the absurdities that have been connected with and adds, that "perhaps he might even venture to say," if separated these, it would agree in substance with the conclusion he had been mpting to establish.‡

t was my intention to have pursued this hypothesis in another direction, to have pointed out its decisive tendency to an encouragement of menindolence and immorality; a tendency, however, akogether unperved by the uncorrupt and honourable minds of its justly eminent lead. But our time has already expired, and I must leave it to yourselves calculate at home, what must be the necessary result of a theory, proed it could ever be seriously embraced upon an extensive scale, that ches, on the one hand, that intelligence is subordinate to instinct, and

Inquiry, ch. v. sect. iii. p. 115.

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Essay iii. p. 120.

Perhaps I might even venture to say that, were the ambiguous and obnoxious epithet ate laid aside, and all the absurdities discarded which are connected either with the Plaic, with the Scholastic, or with the Cartesian hypothesis, concerning the nature of ideas, last theory ("the antiquated theory of innate ideas," as he has just above called it, and which he here refers,) would agree in substance with the conclusion which I have been empting to establish by an induction of facts."-Phil. Essay iii. p. 120. 4to. 1810,

that our truest knowledge is that which is afforded by the dien ture, without trouble or exertion; and on the other, that or is identical with our instinctive propensities; and that the em our nature is an infallible guide, and can never lead us ans. 1 chievous, but unquestionably unforeseen tendency of the ther mon sense, I must leave you to follow up at your leisure: el quit this subject without once more adverting to the total m theory, in accomplishing the chief point for which it was dev-1 that of engaging us to believe, in opposition to the philos of the Bishop of Cloyne and Mr. Hume, as well as of the e not only that the external world has a substantive existenc substantively exists in every respect as it APPEARS to exist. observed, that while Dr. Berkeley was contending metaph have no proof of a material world, because we have no p thing but the existence of our own minds and ideas, M. B contending physically that we have no proof that matter co the qualities which it APPEARS to contain; that whatever the FORMS of bodies may present to us, it has in itself no such p they seem to exhibit; that the whole visible creation is nothing a collection of indivisible, unextended atoms, or mere mathem whose only attributes are certain powers of attraction and rep consequently that every thing we behold is A MERE PHENOVEE APPARITION, and nothing more.

Now, meaning to oppose this doctrine, and every doctrine d import, could it be supposed possible, if the fact did not stare face from his own writings, that Dr. Reid would after all a tend, not indeed for the same but for a parallel tenet, za almost in the same terms? Could it be supposed that ca as we have already seen he has told us, that every object in A TION; that the object is one thing and its APPARITION anthr object is IN ONE PLACE and its apparition IN ANOTHER; and that 18. the mind nor the eye behold the object itself, but only its APPART APPEARANCE, its PHANTASM or PHENOMENON?

But I have to draw still more largely upon your astonishmen yet remains for me to inform you, that Mr. Dugald Stewart, who regarded as the key-stone of Dr. Reid's system, and the che whose writings has been to proscribe the hypothesis of Berkeley, self fallen, not unintentionally, as Dr. Reid seems to have done, b and avowedly, into a modification of Boscovich's hypothesis even brought forward its more prominent principles as necess adopt his own terms, " to complete Dr. Reid's speculations. bours, indeed, to prove, that the two hypotheses, of Berkeley covich, have no resemblance or connexion with each other; an ready to admit, that in some respects there is a difference, since vich allows us a visionary material world, a world of appariti orderly phænomena, in the language of Leibnitz phenomenes bes

while Berkeley allows us no material world whatever; though b

has his world of phænomena: but I must contend that they st

intents and purposes, alike in their opposition to that tenet, whe the leading feature of Reid's theory to establish,-I mean that w

an internal principle, that proves to us that the world around us is

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Fow but a solid REALITY, and that every thing actually is as it apɔ be. So that the theory before us, even in the hands of its and principal supporter, has strikingly failed in the object for it was devised; and, for all the purposes in question, the former ust as well have continued in the profession of Bishop Berkeley's les, as have deserted them, and set up a new scheme for himself. er these circumstances I must leave it to the enlightened audience me, to choose out of these different hypotheses as they may think For myself I freely confess, that I have no ambition to soar into gher rank and the infallible knowledge of an instinctive creature, ill modestly content myself with the humbler character of a rational elligent being, still steadily steering by the lowly but sober lamps of on, a Newton, a Locke, a Butler, a Price, and a Paley, instead of captivated by the beautiful and brilliant, but vacillating and illusive, ations of these northern lights.

LECTURE VII.

ON HUMAN HAPPINESS.

has required, I apprehend, but a very slight attention to the course idy we have lately been following up, to be convinced of the truth e remark with which we opened the series,-I mean, that the subject oposed to discuss is, of all subjects whatever that relate to human 7, the most difficult and intractable. And absurd and visionary as

been many of the opinions, which it has brought before us, let us, in lusion, check all undue levity, by recollecting that they are the abties and visions of the first philosophers and sages of their respective ds; of the wisest, and, with a few exceptions, of the best of man; to whom, in most other respects, we ought to bow with implicit age, and who have only foundered from too daring a spirit of adven, and amidst rocks and shoals which laugh at the experience of the

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or myself, I freely confess to you, that my own hopes of success are very humble. I have done my best, however, to render the subject inigible; and if in the progress of it I should also have betrayed dreams I absurdities, I have only to entreat that they may be visited with the dour which I have endeavoured to extend to others; fully aware that ablest arguments I have been able to submit are not fitted, if I may opt the eloquent words of Mr. Burke, "to abide the test of a captious troversy, but of a sober, and even forgiving examination; that they not armed at all points for battle, but dressed to visit those who are lling to give a peaceful entrance to truth."

There is one point, however, and the most important point we have ntemplated, in which all the different schools seem to be agreed,—I ean, that of moral distinctions. Whatever may be the roads the dif rent travellers have lighted upon, whether short or circuitous, smooth or tangled, they all at last find themselves, in this respect, arrive at the me central spot; and coincide in prescribing the same rules of duty, enining the same conduct, and, with a few exceptions, delivering the same eterminations. No philosopher in the world has ever dreamed of con

founding virtue with vice, or of writing a treatise on the benefit of committing crimes. Let us search where we will, we shall find that there is a something in human nature, when once emerged from the barbarisme savage life, that leads the learned and the unlearned to approve the one and to condemn the other, even where their own conduct is involved the condemnation.

And what is this something in human nature that conducts to so gem ral a conclusion. A set or system of innate ideas and first principles. replies one class of philosophers; a moral instinct or impulse of commot sense, replies another class; the intrinsic loveliness and beauty of virtue itself, replies a third; because the attributes of virtue are useful and agreeable either to ourselves or to others, replies a fourth; because it conducts to human happiness, replies a fifth; and because it is the will of God, replies a sixth.

But while all thus agree in the conclusion, the question that leads to it still returns upon us: What proof have we of the existence of such innate ideas or instinctive impulse; of the intrinsic beauty of virtue; that it is useful to us, productive of our happiness, or that it is the will of God it should be cultivated; or rather, what proof have we that the original position is true, and that there is a something in human nature in general which induces us to prefer virtue to vice.

The original position is true, but the reasons urged in support of it are neither equally true nor equally adequate, even where they are true.

It is not true that we have either innate ideas or moral instincts that impel us to a love of virtue; for in such cases the most savage tribes among mankind would be the most virtuous; their præcognita, or innate ideas, being but little disturbed by foreign ideas, acquired by education or extensive commerce with the world; and their moral instincts as little disturbed by foreign habits acquired from the same causes.

There has often arisen in the mind an unaccountable whim, of supposing that a savage life, or state of nature, is the best and purest mode of human existence; and novellists, poets, and sometimes even philosophers, have equally ranted upon the paucity of its wants, the simplicity of its pursuits, the solidity of its pleasures, and the strength and constancy of its attachments. It is here, we have been told, that the human soul developes its proper energies, and displays itself in all its native benevolence and dig nity here all things belong equally to every one; the only law is the will of the individual, the only feeling a sublime, unselfish philanthropy. This whim became epidemic in France about the beginning of the French Revolution, and was, in fact, the monster mania that led to it. And the contagion, not long afterwards began to show itself among many individuals of our own country, who, in the height of their phrenzy, laboured earnestly to promote the same kind of trials among ourselves that our neighbours were actually exhibiting. The history is fresh in the minds of every one, and it is not necessary to pursue it. It is sufficient to observe, that it led in a short time to consequences so mischievous as to work their own cure; and to afford another living proof of the fact I endeavoured pointedly to establish in a late lecture, that barbarism, vice, and misery are, by an immutable law of nature, the inseparable associates of each other.* Throw your eyes to whatever part of the globe or to whatever history of mankind you please, and you will find it so without an excep

* Ser. II. Lect. XIII.

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