as regularly as in a common fiddle, through the whole extent of its diapason; and the orator who understands his art, may be said, without a figure, to play skilfully upon the brains of his auditors. The hypothesis, however, is ingenious and elegant, and has furnished us with a variety of detached hints of great value; but it labours under the following fatal objections: First, the nervous fibres have little or no elasticity belonging to them, less so perhaps than any other animal fibres whatever; and next, while it supposes a soul distinct from the brain, it leaves it no office to perform: for the medullary vibrations are not merely causes of sensations, ideas, and associations, but in fact the sources of reason, belief, imagination, mental passion, and all other intellectual operations whatever.

Admitting, therefore, the full extent of this hypothesis, still it gives us no information about the nature of the mind and its proper functions; and leaves us just as ignorant as ever of the power by which it perceives the qualities of external objects. The difficulty was felt by many of the advocates for the associate system, especially by Priestley and Darwin; and it was no sooner felt than it was courageously attacked, and in their opinion completely overcome. Nothing was clearer to them than that Dr. Hartley had overloaded his system with machinery: that no such thing as a mind was wanting distinct from the brain or sensory itself: that ideas, to adopt the language of Darwin, are the actual contractions, motions, or configurations of the fibres which constitute the immediate organ of sense, and consequently material things;* or, to adopt the language of Priestley, that ideas are just as divisible as the archetypes or external objects that produce them; and, consequently, like other parts of the material frame, may be dissected, dried, pickled, and packed up, like herrings, for home-consumption or exportation, according as the foreign or domestic market may have the largest demand for them. And consequently, also, that the brain or censory, or the train of material ideas that issue from it, is the soul itself; not a fine-spun flimsy immaterial soul or principle of thought, like that of Berkeley or even of Hume, existing unconnectedly in the vast solitude of universal space, but a solid, substantial, alderman-like soul, a real spirit of animation, fond of good cheer and good company; that enters into all the pursuits of the body while alive, and partakes of one common fate in its dissolution.

If there be too much crassitude in this modification of materialism, as has generally been supposed, even by materialists themselves, there is at least something tangible in it: something that we can grasp and cope with, and fix and understand; which is more, I fear, than can be said of those subtle and more complicated modifications of the same substrate, which have somewhat more lately been brought forward in France to supply its place, and which represent the human fabric as a duad, or even a triad of unities, instead of a mixed or simple unity; as a combinationt of a corruptible life within a corruptible life two or three deep, each possessing its own separate faculties or manifestations, but covered with a common outside.

This remark more especially applies to the philosophers of the French school; and particularly to the system of Dumast, as modified by Bichat: under which more finished form man is declared to consist of a pair of lives, each distinct and coexistent, under the names of an organic and an animal life; with two distinct assortments of sensibilities, an unconscious and a conscious. Each of these lives is limited to a separate set of organs, runs its race in parallel steps with the other; commencing coetaneously and perishing at the same moment. This work appeared at the close of the past century; was read and admired by most physiologists; credited by many; and became the popular production of the day. Within ten or twelve years, however, it ran its course, and was as generally either rejected or forgotten even in France; and M. Richerand first, and M. Magendie since, have thought themselves called upon to modify Bichat, in order to render him more palatable, as Bichat had already modified Dumas. Under the last series

Zoon. vol. i. p. 11, edit. 3

Principes de Physiologie, tom. iv. 8vo. Paris, 1800-3

† Study of Med. vol. iv. p 41-45, edit. 2 · Recherches sur la Vie et la Mort, &o

of remodelling, which is that of M. Magendie, we have certainly an im provement, though the machinery is quite as complex. Instead of two distinct lives M. Magendie presents us with two distinct sets or systems of action or relation, each of which has its separate and peculiar functions, a system of nutritive action or relation, and a system of vital. To which is added, by way of appendix, another system, comprising the functions of generation. Here, however, the brain is not only the seat but the organized substance of the mental powers: so that, we are expressly told, a man must be as he is made in his brain, and that education, and even logic itself, is of no use to him. "There are," says M. Magendie, "justly celebrated persons who have thought differently; but they have hereby fallen into grave errors." A Deity, however, is allowed to exist, because, adds the writer, it is comfortable to think that he exists, and on this account the physiologist cannot doubt of his being. "L'intelligence de l'homme," says he," se compose de phénoménes tellement différens de tout ce que présente d'ailleurs la nature, qu'on les rapporte à un être particuliere qu'on regarde comme une emanation de la Divinité. Il est trop consolant de croire à cet être, pour que le physiologiste métte en doute son existence; mais la séverité de langage ou de logique que comporte maintenant la physiologie exige que l'on traite de l'intelligence humaine comme si elle était le résultat de l'action d'un organe. En s'écartant de cette marche, des hommes justement célèbres sont tombés dans des graves erreurs; en la suivant, on a, d'ailleurs, le grand avantage de conserver la même méthode d'étude, et de rendre trés faciles des choses qui sont envisagées généralement comme presqu' au-dessus de l'esprit humain.”—“Il existe une science dont le but est, d'apprendre à raisonner justement: c'est la logique: mais le jugement erroné où l'esprit faux (for judgment, genius, and imagination, and therefore false reasoning, all depend on organization) tiennent à l'organization. Il est impossible de se changer à cet egard; nous restons, tels que la nature nous à faits."†

Dr. Spurzheim has generally been considered, from the concurrent tenor of his doctrines, as belonging to the class of materialists; but this is to mistake his own positive assertion upon the subject, or to conclude in opposition to it. He speaks, indeed, upon this topic with a singular hesitation and reserve, more so, perhaps, than upon any other point whatever; but as far as he chooses to express himself on so abstruse a subject, he regards the soul as a distinct being from the body, and at least intimates that it may be nearer akin to the Deity. Man is with him also possessed of two lives, an AUTOMATIC and ANIMAL: the first produced by organization alone, and destitute of consciousness; the second possessed of consciousness dependent on the soul, and merely manifesting itself by organization. "We do not," says he, attempt to explain how the body and soul are joined together and exercise a mutual influence. We do not examine what the soul can do without the body. Souls, so far as we know, may be united to bodies at the moment of conception or afterward; they may be different in all individuals, or of the same kind in every one; they may be emanations from God, or something essentially different." The mind of this celebrated craniologist seems to be wonderfully skeptical and bewildered upon the subject, and studiously avoids the important question of the capacity of the soul for an independent and future existence; but with the above declaration he cannot well be arranged in the class of materialists.

66

The hypothesis which has lately been started by Mr. Lawrence is altogether of a different kind, and though undoubtedly much simpler than any of the preceding, does not seem to be built on a more stable foundation. According to his view of the subject, organized differs from inorganized matter merely by the addition of certain PROPERTIES which are called vital, as sensibility and irritability. Masses of matter endowed with these new PROPERTIES become organs and systems of organs, constitute an animal frame, and exe

* Précis Elementaire de Physiologie, tom. ii. 8vo. Paris, 1816, 1817. + Précis Elementaire, &c. ut supra, passim.

Physiognomical System, &c. p. 253, 8vo. Lond. 1815 Introduction to Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, &c. 8vo. 1816.

cute distinct sets of PURPOSES or FUNCTIONS; for functions and purposes carried into execution are here synonymous. "Life is the assemblage of ALL the functions (or purposes), and the general result of their exercise.”*

Life, therefore, upon this hypothesis, instead of being a twofold or threefold reality, running in a combined stream, or in parallel lines, has no reality whatever. It has no ESSE or independent existence. It is a mere assemblage of PURPOSES, and accidental or temporary PROPERTIES: a series of phenomena,† as Mr. Lawrence has himself correctly expressed it ;-a name without a thing. "We know not," says he, "the nature of the link that unites these phenomena, though we are sensible that a connexion must exist; and this conviction is sufficient to induce us to give it a NAME, which the VULGAR regard as the sign of a particular principle; though in fact that name can only indicate the ASSEMBLAGE OF THE PHENOMENA which have occasioned its formation."

The human frame is, hence, a barrel-organ, possessing a systematic arrangement of parts, played upon by peculiar powers, and executing particular pieces or purposes; and life is the music produced by the general assemblage or result of the harmonious action. So long as either the vital or mechanical instrument is duly wound up by a regular supply of food, or of the wince, so long the music will continue: but both are worn out by their own action; and when the machine will no longer work, the life has the same close as the music; and in the language of Cornelius Gallus as quoted and appropriated by Leo. X.,

redit in nihilum, quod fuit ante nihil.

There is, however, nothing new either in this hypothesis or in the present explanation of it. It was first started in the days of Aristotle by Aristoxenus, a pupil of his, who was admirably skilled in music, and by profession a physician. It was propounded to the world under the name of the system of HARMONY, either from the author's fondness for music, or from his comparing the human frame to a musical instrument, and his regarding life as the result of all its parts acting in accordance, and producing a general and harmonious effect.

We have already had occasion to notice this hypothesis in a former lecture, and the triumphant objections with which it was met by the Stoics as well as by the Epicureans; as also that it has at times been revived since, and especially by M. Lusac, who extended it to even a wider range: while the same objections remain unanswered to the present hour, and seem to be altogether unanswerable.

There is, moreover, the same looseness in the term PHENOMENA, employed by Mr. Lawrence and the French writers just adverted to, as we have remarked in many of the opposers of Mr. Locke, who seem to be afraid of fettering themselves with definite terms or definite ideas. This looseness may be convenient in many cases, but it always betrays weakness or imprecision. In the mouth of the Platonists and Peripatetics of ancient Greece, we distinctly know that the term phenomena denoted the archetypes of the one, or the phantasms of the other. We understand it with equal clearness as made use of, though in very different senses, by Leibnitz in reference to his system of PRE-ESTABLISHED HARMONY, and by Professor Robson, in reference to that of Boscovich. But when M. Magendie, or Mr. Lawrence, tells us that "human intelligence," which is the phrase of the former, in the passage just quoted, or "life," which is that of the latter, is a comPOSITION OF ASSEMBLAGE of PHENOMENA,-a RESULT OF THE ACTION of an organ,"-we have no distinct notion whatever put before us. The "purposes," or "properties," or "functions," or whatever it is they intend under the name of PHENOMENA, certainly do not seem to be strictly material in themselves, though we are told they are, in some way or other, the product of a material organ: but whether they be the

66

† Ibid. p. 122. Series 1. Lect. ix. on the Principle of Life.

* Introduction to Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, &c. 8vo. p. 120, 1816.
Ibid.
Study of Med. ut supra.

phantasms of the Greek schools, the visions of Malebranche or Berkeley, the mathematical points of Boscovich, the APPARITIONS OF APPEARANCES of the Common-Sense hypothesis,-whether they be a name or a thing, any thing or nothing, the writers themselves have given us no clew to determine, and perhaps have hardly determined for themselves.

We have thus travelled over a wide extent of ground, but have not yet quite reached our journey's end. It still remains to us to examine the popular hypothesis of the present day, put forth from the north, under the captivating title of the System of Common Sense; produced undoubtedly from the best motives, and offered as a universal and infallible specific for all the wounds and weaknesses we may have incurred in our encounters with the preceding combatants.

The consideration of this shall form the subject of our ensuing lecture; and I shall afterward, by your permission, follow up the whole by submitting a few general observations on the entire subject, and endeavour to collect for your use, from the wide and tangled wilderness in which we have been beating, the few flowers and the little fruit that may be honestly worth the trouble of preservation.

LECTURE VI.

ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF COMMON SENSE.

Ir must be obvious, I think, to every one who has attentively watched the origin and progress of those extraordinary and chimerical opinions through which we have lately been wading, and which have been dressed up by phi losophers of the rarest endowments and deepest learning, into a show of systems and theories, that the grand cause of their absurdities is attributable to the imperfect knowledge we possess respecting the nature and qualities of matter, and the nature and qualities of those perceptions which material objects produce in the mind, through the medium of the external senses.

These perceptions, however accounted for, and whatever they have been supposed to consist in, have in most ancient, and in all modern, schools been equally denominated ideas; and hence ideas have sometimes implied modifications, so to speak, of pure intelligence, which was the opinion of Plato and of Berkeley; of immaterial apparitions or phantasms, which was that of Aristotle, and in a certain sense may perhaps be said to have been that of Hume; of real species or material images, which was that of Epicurus, of Sir Kenelm Digby, and many other schoolmen of the middle of the seventeenth century; of mere notional resemblances, which was that of Des Cartes; and of whatever it was the ultimate intention of any of these scholastic terms to signify, whether phantasm, notion, or species; whatever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks, or the mind can be employed about when thinking, which was that of Locke, and is the fair import of the word in popular speech.

It is possible, moreover, that this indiscriminate use of the same term to express different apprehensions, and particularly in modern times, has contributed to many of the errors which are peculiarly chargeable to the metaphysical writers of modern times. But this opinion has been carried much farther by Dr. Reid, who has persuaded himself that the word idea has been the rock on which all the metaphysical systematizers, from the time of Aristotle to his own era, have shipwrecked themselves; and hence, having determined to oppose the absurdities of his own countryman Mr. Hume, by the introduction

He was warmly opposed by Alexander Ross, of Hudibrastic memory, who was a stanch Aristotelian, and, consequently, denied the materiality of ideas. See Ross's argument in Professor Stewart's Essays, voh i. p. 556, 40.

of a new hypothesis, he thought the better way would be to clear the ground on every side, by an equal excommunication of this mischievous term, and of every system into which it had ever found an entrance; whence all the authors of such systems, whatever may have been their views or principles in other respects, he has lumped together by the common name of Idealists. The motive of Dr. Reid was pure and praiseworthy: he entered the arena with great and splendid talents; and soon found himself powerfully abetted by his friends, Dr. Adam Smith, Dr. Beattie, Lord Kames, Dr. Campbell, and Mr. Dugald Stewart: but it must be obvious to every one, that in the execution of his motive he has carried his resentment to a strange and somewhat ludicrous extreme. Idea is a word sufficiently harmless in itself, and even his own friends have not chosen to follow him in his Quixotic warfare against it; and have, consequently, continued to use it, in spite of his outlawry and proscription: while to arrange under the same banner every one who has employed this term, and to impute the same dangerous tendency to every hypothesis in which it is to be met with, is to make the wearing of a blue or a chocolate coat a sure sign of treason, and to assert that every man who is found thus habited deserves hanging.

Mr. Locke distinctly tells us, that he uses the term idea in its popular sense, and only in its popular sense. But he uses it, and that is enough:-the mischief is in the word itself. It has, however, been attempted to be proved that he has not always known the sense in which he did use it; and that he has sometimes employed it in a popular and sometimes in a scholastic import, as denoting that certain ideas are not mere notional perceptions, but material images or copies of the objects which they indicate, by which means he has given a strong handle to such materialists, or favourers of materialism, as Hartley, Priestley, and Darwin: while, by his striking away from bodies all their secondary qualities, as taste, smell, sound, and colour, he has given a similar handle to such immaterialists as Berkeley and Hume.

Now, it is not often that a theory is accused of leaning north and south at the same time; and whenever it can be so accused, the charge is perhaps the highest compliment that can be paid to it, as proving its uprightness and freedom from bias. But it was absolutely necessary for the success of the new hypothesis that the Essay on Human Understanding should be demonstrated to be radically erroneous, and particularly to have some connexion in the way of causation with what may be called the physical speculations of the day, whether of materialism or of immaterialism: since so long as this remained firm, so long as the system maintained its ground, the immortal edifice proposed to be erected-monumentum are perennius-could find no place for a foundation; and on this account, and, so far as I can learn, on this account alone, the name of Locke has been placed among "the most celebrated promoters of modern skepticism ;"* though it is admitted that nothing was farther from his intention.

It is hence requisite, before we enter upon a survey of this new hypothesis, to inquire how far the objections which were offered against Mr. Locke's theory are founded in fact. I have already mentioned two of the more prominent, and I shall have occasion to mention two others immediately.

We are told, in the first place, that Mr. Locke has not used the term idea in all instances in one and the same signification; and that while it sometimes imports something separate from body, it sometimes imports a modification of body itself.

But this is egregiously to mistake his meaning, and to charge him with a confusion of conception which only belongs to the person who can thus interpret him. Des Cartes, after most of the Greek philosophers, had asserted, that our ideas are in some way or other exact images of the objects presented to the senses: Mr. Locke, in opposition to this assertion, contended, that so far from being exact images they have not the smallest resemblance to them in any respect, with the exception of those ideas that represent the real or primary qualities of bodies, or such as belong to bodies intrinsically; and

• Beattie on Truth: compare part ii. ch. ii. 1, 2, with the opening of part ii. ch. ii. §2