CHAPTER X

THOMAS REID AND OTHERS

THE most powerful reply to Hume-indeed, the only competent attempt to refute his philosophy as a wholecame from one of a group of scholars in Aberdeen who had formed themselves into a philosophical society. Of this group Thomas Reid, a professor in King's College, was the most notable member, and he was the founder of the school of Scottish philosophy known as the Common Sense school. With him were associated George Campbell and James Beattie, professors (the former afterwards principal) in Marischal College, as well as other men of mark in their day. The earliest contribution to the controversy -Campbell's Dissertation on Miracles (1763)—dealt with a side issue; but it is of interest for its examination of the place of testimony in knowledge; whereas experience (it is argued) leads to general truths and is the foundation of philosophy, testimony is the foundation of history, and it is capable of giving absolute certainty. Campbell's later work, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776), contains much excellent psychology. Beattie's Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (1770) is not a work of originality or of distinction; but it is a vigorous polemic; it brought him great temporary fame, and he has been immortalised by the art of Reynolds as serenely clasping his book whilst Hume and other apostles of error are being hurled into limbo. About the same time James Oswald, a Perthshire clergyman, published An Appeal to Common Sense in behalf of Religion (1766-72). Reid, Beattie, and Oswald were placed together by Priestley for the purpose of his Examination; and the same collocation of names was repeated by Kant; but it is entirely unjust to Reid.

Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense was published in 1764; in the same year he removed to Glasgow to fill the chair vacated by Adam Smith. His later and more elaborate works-Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man and Essays on the Active Powers of Man-appeared in 1785 and 1788 respectively. In his philosophical work Reid has the great merit of going to the root of the matter, and he is perfectly fairminded in his criticism. He admits the validity of Hume's reasonings; he does not appeal to the vulgar against his conclusions; but he follows the argument back to its premisses and tests the truth of these premisses. This is his chief claim to originality. He finds that the sceptical results of Hume are legitimate inferences from 'the ideal theory' which Locke took over from Descartes, and he puts to himself the question, "what evidence have I for this doctrine, that all the objects of my knowledge are ideas in my own mind?" He points out (what is undoubtedly true) that neither Locke nor Berkeley nor Hume produced any evidence for the assumption. They started with the view that the immediate object of knowledge is something in the mind called ideas or (as by Hume) impressions; and they were consequently unable to prove or defend the existence of anything outside the mind and even of mind itself, or to explain the relations required for any knowledge of things. "Ideas," says Reid, "seem to have something in their nature unfriendly to other existences."

'The ideal theory' had made two assumptions which were acknowledged and formulated by Hume1: (1) “ that all our distinct perceptions [i.e., impressions and ideas] are distinct existences "; and (2)" that the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct existences." Hume found himself unable to renounce either of them "; but Reid rejects them both. He maintains that 'the ideal system' went wrong at the outset by assuming 1 See above, p. 179.

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that bare ideas are primary data and that we must first get these and then proceed to make judgments about them. "Nature does not exhibit these elements separate, to be compounded by us." Not the simple idea, but judgment is the unit. The simple apprehension [of the idea] is performed by resolving and analysing a natural and original judgment." This judgment, belief, or knowledge accompanies sensation, and it cannot be defined any more than sensation can1; but "every operation of the senses, in its very nature, implies judgment or belief as well as simple apprehensions2."

This criticism brings out the point that Locke and Hume have mistaken the results of their psychological analysis for primary data of experience, and have thus fallen into the unwarranted assumption that these results -the simple ideas' of Locke, the 'impressions' of Hume-are distinct existences. And there is another ambiguity in the use of the term 'idea' on which Reid. lays stress. It may mean either the operation of the mind. or the object of that operations; and the two meanings are confused by Hume, as indeed his system does not allow of his distinguishing them. Now, it is the idea as object whose existence Reid calls in question. "The ideas," he says, "of whose existence I require the proof, are not the operations of any mind, but supposed objects of those operations4." And he denies the existence of any such "images of external things" in the mind.

Having got rid of the only existences which Hume allowed, Reid is able to re-assert the real existence of mind and external objects, which Hume denied. And it is not mere assertion. He reaches his position by means of a new analysis of relations. These are not got by comparing distinct ideas. "It is not by having first the notions of mind and sensation, and then comparing them together, that we perceive the one to have the relation of a subject 1 Reid's Works, ed. Hamilton, p. 107 a. 2 Ibid. p. 209 a. 3 Ibid. p. 224 a.

4 Ibid. P. 208 b.

or substratum, and the other that of an act or operation: on the contrary, one of the related things-to wit, sensation-suggests to us both the correlate and the relation1." In like manner, sensations suggest qualities existing in external things (without at all resembling these qualities)2. Sensation is different from the "perception of external objects," which it accompanies: regarded by itself, it is an act of mind which has no object distinct from the act3. The perception, on the other hand, is an act of knowledge whose object is the real external thing.

Hume had said that his difficulties would vanish if our perceptions [impressions or ideas] inhered in something simple and individual, or if the mind perceived some real connection among them. And the claim may be made for Reid that he proposed a positive theory of knowledge which gives the required assurance on these points. Reid pointed to certain principles in the constitution of experience, more fundamental than distinct ideas or impressions; but he did not give any thorough account of their nature or of the way in which they determine the structure of knowledge. His terminology is not happy, and his thought is not always clear. The word 'suggests,' for instance, is badly chosen, and to it is largely due the lack of clearness in his doctrine of immediate perception. He is aware of the ambiguity without effectively guarding against it. The word 'gold' suggests a certain substance; in like manner, a sensation of touch suggests hardness.' But there is an important difference between the two 'suggestions': "in the first, the suggestion is the effect of habit and custom; in the second it is not the effect of habit, but of the original constitution of our minds1.” He uses the word suggestion' for the latter process, he because I know not one more proper to express a power of the mind, which seems entirely to have escaped the notice of philosophers, and to which we owe many of

says,

our simple notions which are neither impressions nor ideas, as well as many original principles of belief1."

These principles are to be taken for granted, not because of their acceptance by the vulgar, but because " the constitution of our nature leads us to believe them "; and he calls them "the principles of common sense2." The term 'Common Sense' (from which his philosophy has derived one of its names) has given rise also to serious misunderstandings, for which he is not entirely blameless. Perhaps he laid too great weight on the contention that “all men that have common understanding agree in such principles "a contention which may favour the misleading appeal to general consent. Yet he reached these principles, not by appealing to general consent, but by an analysis of experience; and he puts them forward as "the foundation of all reasoning and of all science3." He did not give them systematic development; but, if we read him sympathetically, we may see that he had hold of a truth of fundamental importance. The isolated impressions or ideas with which Locke and Hume began are fictions; they do not correspond to anything real in experience. The simplest portion of our experience is not separate from its context in this way; it implies a reference to mind and to an objective order, and thus involves the relations which Reid ascribed to 'natural suggestion' or ' common sense.'

The tradition of this type of philosophy-which has come to be known as the Scottish Philosophy'-was carried on in the next generation, and through the period of Bentham's supremacy, by Dugald Stewart. Stewart was born in 1753 and died in 1828; for twenty-five years (1785-1810) he was professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh. His lectures were the most powerful formative influence upon the principles and tastes of a famous generation of literary Scotsmen, and they attracted besides many hearers from England, the continent, and 1 Works, p. 111 b. 2 Ibid. p. 108 b. 3 Ibid. p. 230 b.