Two thousand years after Plato, Mr Locke, who studied the operations of the human mind so much, and with so great success, represents our manner of perceiving external objects, by a similitude very much resembling that of the cave. "Methinks," says he, “the understanding is not much unlike a closet wholly shut from light, with only some little opening left, to let in external visible resemblances or ideas of things without. Would the pictures coming into such a dark room but stay there, and lie so orderly as to be found upon occasion, it would very much resemble the understanding of a man, in reference to all objects of sight, and the ideas of them." [117]

Plato's subterranean cave, and Mr Locke's dark closet, may be applied with ease to all the systems of perception that have been invented for they all suppose that we perceive not external objects immediately, and that the immediate objects of perception are only certain shadows of the external objects. Those shadows or images, which we immediately perceive, were by the ancients called species, forms, phantasms. Since the time of Des Cartes, they have commonly been called ideas, and by Mr Hume, impressions. But all philosophers, from Plato to Mr Hume, agree in this, That we do not perceive external objects immediately, and that the immediate object of perception must be some image present to the mind. So far there ap

Stoical doctrine of the passivity of mind in this process, he proceeds :

"Mens est efficiens magis
Longe causa potentior,
Quam quæ materiæ modo
Impressas patitur notas.
Præcedit tamen excitans
Ac vires animi movens
Vivo in corpore passio,
Cum vel lux oculos ferit,
Vel vox auribus instrepit:
Tum mentis vigor excitus
Quas intus species tenet,
Ad motus similes vocans,
Notis applicat exteris,
Introrsumque reconditis
Formis miscet imagines."

I cannot now do more than indicate the contrast

of this doctrine to the Peripatetic (I do not say Aristotelian) theory, and its approximation to the Carte.

sian and Leibnitzian hypotheses; which, however, both attempt to explain, what the Platonic did nothow the mind, ez hypothesi, above all physical influence, is determined, on the presence of the unknown reality within the sphere of sense, to call into consciousness the representation through which that reality is made known to us. I may add, that not mere y the Platonists, but some of the older Peripatetics held that the soul virtually contained within it. self representative forms, which were only excited by the external reality; as Theophrastus and Themistius, to say nothing of the Platonizing Porphyry, Simplicius and Ammonius Hermiæ; and the same opinion, adopted probably from the latter, by his puril, the Arabian Adelandus, subsequently be came even the common doctrine of the Moorish Aristotelians,

I shall afterwards have occasion to notice that Bacon has also wrested Plato's similitude of the cave from its genuine signification.-H.

This is not correct. There were philosophers

pears an unanimity, rarely to be found among philosophers on such abstruse points.

If it should be asked, Whether, according to the opinion of philosophers, we perceive the images or ideas only, and infer the existence and qualities of the external object from what we perceive in the image; or, whether we really perceive the external object as well as its image?-the answer to this question is not quite obvious.+

On the one hand, philosophers, if we except Berkeley and Hume, believe the existence of external objects of sense, and call them objects of perception, though not immediate objects. But what they mean by a mediate object of perception I do not find clearly explained: whether they suit their language to popular opinion, and mean that we perceive external objects in that figurative sense in which we say that we perceive an absent friend when we look on his picture; or whether they mean that, really, and without a figure, we perceive both the external object and its idea in the mind. If the last be their meaning, it would follow that, in every instance of perception, there is a double object perceived: [118] that I perceive, for instance, one sun in the heavens, and another in my own mind.‡ But I do not find that they affirm this; and, as it contradicts the experience of all mankind, I will not impute it to them.

It seems, therefore, that their opinion is, That we do not really perceive the external object, but the internal only; and that, when they speak of perceiving external objects, they mean it only in a popular or in a figurative sense, as above explained. Several reasons lead me to think this to be the opinion of philosophers, beside what is mentioned above. First, If we do really perceive the external object itself, there seems to be no necessity, no use, for an image of it. Secondly, Since the time of Des Cartes, philosophers have very generally thought that the existence of external objects of sense requires proof, and can only be proved from the existence of their ideas. Thirdly, The way in which philosophers speak of ideas, seems to imply that they are the only objects of perception.

who held a purer and preciser doctrine of immediate perception than Reid himself contemplated.-H.

*Reid himself, like the philosophers in general, really holds, that we do not perceive external things immediately, if he does not allow us a consciousness of the non-ego. It matters not whether the external reality be represented in a tertium quid, or in a mo. dification of the mind itself; in either case, it is not known in itself, but in something numerically dif ferent.-H.

+ Nothing can be clearer than would be this answer. -In perception, the external reality, (the mediate object) is only known to us in and through the im. mediate object, i. e., the representation of which we are conscious. As existing, and beyond the sphere of consciousness, the external reality is unknown.--H.

"Et solem geminum et duplices se ostendere Thebas!"-H,

Having endeavoured to explain what is common to philosophers in accounting for our perception of external objects, we shall give some detail of their differences.

The ideas by which we perceive external objects, are said by some to be the ideas of the Deity; but it has been more generally thought, that every man's ideas are proper to himself, and are either in his mind, or in his sensorium, where the mind is iminediately present. The first is the theory of Malebranche; the second we shall call the common theory.

With regard to that of Malebranche, it seems to have some affinity with the Platonic notion of ideas,* but is not the same. Plato believed that there are three eternal | first principles, from which all things have their origin-matter, ideas, and an efficient cause. Matter is that of which all things are made, which, by all the ancient philosophers, was conceived to be eternal. [119] Ideas are forms without matter of every kind of things which can exist; which forms were also conceived by Plato to be eternal and immutable, and to be the models or patterns by which the efficient cause-that is, the Deity-formed every part of this universe. These ideas were conceived to be the sole objects of science, and indeed of all true knowledge. While we are imprisoned in the body, we are prone to give attention to the objects of sense only; but these being individual things, and in a constant fluctuation, being indeed shadows rather than realities, cannot be the object of real knowledge. All science is employed not about individual things, but about things universal and abstract from matter. Truth is eternal and immutable, and therefore must have for its object eternal and immutable ideas; these we are capable of contemplating in some degree even in our present state, but not without a certain purification of mind, and abstraction from the objects of sense. Such, as far as I am able to comprehend, were the sublime notions of Plato, and probably of Pythagoras.

The philosophers of the Alexandrian school, commonly called the latter Platonists, seem to have adopted the same system; but with this difference, that they made the eternal ideas not to be a principle distinct from the Deity, but to be in the divine intellect, as the objects of those conceptions which the divine mind must, from all eternity, have had, not only of every

The Platonic theory of Ideas has nothing to do with a doctrine of sensitive perception; and its intro. duction into the question is only pregnant with con. fusion; while, in regard to sensitive perception, the peculiar hypothesis of Malebranche, is in fact not only not similar to, but much farther removed from, the Platonic than the common Cartesian theory, and the Leibnitzian.-H.

thing which he has made, but of every possible existence, and of all the relations of things. By a proper purification and abstraction from the objects of sense, we may be in some measure united to the Deity, and, in the eternal light, be enabled to discern the most sublime intellectual truths.

These Platonic notions, grafted upon Christianity, probably gave rise to the sect called Mystics, which, though in its spirit and principles extremely opposite to the Peripatetic, yet was never extinguished, but subsists to this day. [120]

Many of the Fathers of the Christian church have a tincture of the tenets of the Alexandrian school; among others, St Augustine. But it does not appear, as far as I know, that either Plato, or the latter Platonists, or St Augustine, or the Mystics, thought that we perceive the objects of sense in the divine ideas. They had too mean a notion of our perception of sensible objects to ascribe to it so high an origin. This theory, therefore, of our perceiving the objects of sense in the ideas of the Deity, I take to be the invention of Father Malebranche himself. He, indeed, brings many passages of St Augustine to countenance it, and seems very desirous to have that Father of his party. But in those passages, though the Father speaks in a very high strain of God's being the light of our minds, of our being illuminated immediately by the eternal light, and uses other similar expressions; yet he seems to apply those expressions only to our illumination in moral and divine things, and not to the perception of objects by the senses. Mr Bayle imagines that some traces of this opinion of Malebranche are to be found in Amelius the Platonist, and even in Democritus; but his authorities seem to be strained.†

Malebranche, with a very penetrating genius, entered into a more minute examination of the powers of the human mind, than any one before him. He had the advantage of the discoveries made by Des Cartes, whom he followed without slavish attach

And this, though Aristotle asserts the contrary, was perhaps also the doctrine of Plato.-H.

†The theory of Malebranche has been vainly sought for in the Bible, the Platonists, and the Fathers. It is, in fact, more clearly enounced in Homer than in any of these graver sources.

Τοῖος γὰς νέος ἐσὶν ἐπιχθονίων ἀνθρώπων,
Οἷον ἐπ' μας άγῃσι τατὲς ἀνδρῶν τε θεών τε.
But for anticipations, see Note P.-H.

every one will grant that we perceive not the objects that are without us immediately, and of themselves. We see the sun, the stars, and an infinity of objects without us; and it is not at all likely that the soul sallies out of the body, and, as it were, takes a walk through the heavens, to contemplate all those objects. [121] She sees them not, therefore, by themselves; and the immediate object of the mind, when it sees the sun, for example, is not the sun, but something which is intimately united to the soul; and it is that which I call an idea. So that by the word idea, I understand nothing else here but that which is the immediate object, or nearest to the mind, when we perceive+ any object. It ought to be carefully observed, that, in order to the mind's perceiving any object, it is absolutely necessary that the idea of that object be actually present to it. Of this it is not possible to doubt.

The things which the soul perceives are of two kinds. They are either in the soul, or they are without the soul. Those that are in the soul are its own thoughts-that is to say, all its different modifications. [For by these words-thought, manner of think ing, or modification of the soul, I understand in general whatever cannot be in the mind without the mind perceiving it, as its proper sensations, its imaginations, its pure intellections, or simply its conceptions, its passions even, and its natural inclinations.]S The soul has no need of ideas for perceiving these things. But with regard to things without the soul, we cannot perceive them but by means of ideas."¶¶

Having laid this foundation, as a principle common to all philosophers, and which admits of no doubt, he proceeds to enumerate all the possible ways by which the ideas of sensible objects may be presented to the mind: Either, first, they come from the bodies which we perceive; or, secondly, the soul has the power of producing them in itself;†† or, thirdly, they are produced by the

-H.

• Rather in or by themselves (par eux mêmes.) That is, in the language of philosophers before Reid, where we have the apprehensive cognition or consciousness of any object."-H.

Des

In this definition, all philosophers concur. Cartes, Locke, &c., give it in almost the same terms. -H.

I have inserted this sentence, omitted by Reid, from the original, in order to shew in how exten sive a meaning the term thought was used in the Cartesian school. See Cartesii Princ., P. I., § 9.-H.

Hence the distinction precisely taken by Male. branche of Idea (idée) and Feeling, (sentiment,) cor. responding in principle to our Perception of the primary, and our Sensation of the secondary qualities. -H.

De la Recherche de la Verité. Liv. III., Partie i, ch. 1. H.

The common Peripatetic doctrine, &c-H. ++ Malebranche refers, I presume, to the opinions of certain Cartesians. See Gassendi Opera, iii. p. 321. -H.

Deity, either in our creation, or occasionally, as there is use for them; or, fourthly, the soul has in itself virtually and eminently, as the schools speak, all the perfections which it perceives in bodies;† or, fifthly, the soul is united with a Being possessed of all perfection, who has in himself the ideas of all created things.

This he takes to be a complete enumerations of all the possible ways in which the ideas of external objects may be presented to our minds. He employs a whole chapter upon each; refuting the four first, and confirming the last by various arguments. The Deity, being always present to our minds in a more intimate manner than any other being, may, upon occasion of the impressions made on our bodies, discover to us, as far as he thinks proper, and according to fixed laws, his own ideas of the object; and thus we see all things in God, or in the divine ideas. [122]

However visionary this system may appear on a superficial view, yet, when we consider that he agreed with the whole tribe of philosophers in conceiving ideas to be the immediate objects of perception, and that he found insuperable difficulties, and even absurdities, in every other hypothesis concerning them, it will not appear so wonderful that a man of very great genius should fall into this; and, probably, it pleased so devout a man the more, that it sets, in the most striking light, our dependence upon God, and his continual presence with us.

He distinguished, more accurately than any philosopher had done before, the objects which we perceive from the sensations in our own minds, which, by the laws of Nature, always accompany the perception of the object. As in many things, so particularly in this, he has great merit. For this, I apprehend, is a key that opens the way to a right understanding, both of our external senses and of other powers of the mind. The vulgar confound sensation with other powers of the mind, and with their objects, because the purposes of life do not make a distinction necessary. The confounding of these in common language, has led philosophers, in one period, to make those things external which really are sensations in our own minds; and, in another period, running, as is usual, into the con

Opinions analogous to the second or third, were held by the Platonists, by some of the Greek, and by many of the Arabian Aristotelians. See above, p. 262, note -H.

+Something similar to this is hazarded by Des Cartes in his Third " Meditation," which it is likely that Malebranche had in his eye.-H.

It should have been noticed that the Malebranch. ian philosophy is fundamentally Cartesian, and that, after De la Forge and Geulinx, the doctrine of Divine Assistance, implicitly maintained by Des Cartes, was most ably developed by Malebranche, to whom it owes, indeed, a principal share of its cel brity.-H.

trary extreme, to make everything almost to be a sensation or feeling in our minds. It is obvious that the system of Malebranche leaves no evidence of the existence of a material world, from what we perceive by our senses; for the divine ideas, which are the objects immediately perceived, were the same before the world was created. Malebranche was too acute not to discern this consequence of his system, and too candid not to acknowledge it. [123] He fairly owns it, and endeavours to make advantage of it, resting the complete evidence we have of the existence of matter upon the authority of revelation. He shews that the arguments brought by Des Cartes to prove the existence of a material world, though as good as any that reason could furnish, are not perfectly conclusive; and, though he acknowledges with Des Cartes that we feel a strong propensity to believe the existence of a material world, yet he thinks this is not sufficient; and that to yield to such propensities without evidence, is to expose ourselves to perpetual delusion. He thinks, therefore, that the only convincing evidence we have of the existence of a material world is, that we are assured by revelation that God created the heavens and the earth, and that the Word was made flesh. He is sensible of the ridicule to which so strange an opinion may expose him among those who are guided by prejudice; but, for the sake of truth, he is willing to bear it. But no author, not even Bishop Berkeley, hath shewn more clearly, that, either upon his own system, or upon the common principles of philosophers with regard to ideas, we have no evidence left, either from reason or from our senses, of the existence of a material world. It is no more than justice to Father Malebranche, to acknowledge that Bishop Berkeley's arguments are to be found in him in their whole force.

Mr Norris, an English divine, espoused the system of Malebranche, in his "Essay towards the Theory of the Ideal or Intellectual World," published in two volumes 8°, anno 1701. This author has made a feeble effort to supply a defect which is to be found not in Malebranche only, but in almost all the authors who have treated of ideas-I mean, to prove their existence.* He has employed a whole chapter to prove that material things cannot be an immediate object of perception. His arguments are these: 1st. They are without the mind, and, therefore there can be no union between the object and the perception. 2dly, They are disproportioned to the mind, and removed

*This is incorrect. In almost every system of the Aristotelico-scholastic philosophy, the attempt is made to prove the existence of Species; nor is Reid's assertion true even of ideas in the Cartesian philosophy. In fact, Norris's arguments are all old and commonplace.-H.

from it by the whole diameter of being. 3dly, Because, if material objects were immediate objects of perception, there could be no physical science; things necessary and immutable being the only objects of science. [124] 4thly, If material things were perceived by themselves, they would be a true light to our minds, as being the intelligible form of our understandings, and consequently perfective of them, and, indeed, superior to them.

Malebranche's system was adopted by many devout people in France of both sexes; but it seems to have had no great currency in other countries. Mr Locke wrote a small tract against it, which is found among his posthumous works:* but, whether it was written in haste, or after the vigour of his understanding was impaired by age, there is less of strength and solidity in it than in most of his writings. The most formidable antagonist Malebranche met with was in his own countryAntony Arnauld, doctor of the Sorbonne, and one of the acutest writers the Jansenists have to boast of, though that sect has produced many. Malebranche was a Jesuit, and the antipathy between the Jesuits and Jansenists left him no room to expect quarter from his learned antagonist.+ Those who choose to see this system attacked on the one hand, and defended on the other, with subtilty of argument and elegance of expression, and on the part of Arnauld with much wit and humour, may find satisfaction by reading Malebranche's "Enquiry after Truth;” Arnauld's book “Of True and False Ideas;" Malebranche's "Defence;" and some subsequent replies and defences. In controversies of this kind, the assailant commonly has the advantage, if they are not unequally matched; for it is easier to overturn all the theories of philosophers upon this subject, than to defend any one of them. Mr Bayle makes a very just remark upon this controversy-that the arguments of Mr Arnauld against the system of Malebranche, were often unanswerable, but

In answer to Locke's" Examination of P. Malebranche's Opinion," Leibnitz wrote "Remarks," which are to be found among his posthumous works, published by Raspe.-H.

+Malebranche was not a Jesuit, but a Priest of the Oratory; and so little was he either a favourer or favourite of the Jesuits, that, by the Pere de Valois, he was accused of heresy, by the Pere Hardouin, of Atheism. The endeavours of the Jesuits in France to prohibit the introduction of every form of the Cartesian doctrine into the public seminaries of education, are well known. Malebranche and Arnauld were therefore not opposed as Jesuit and Jansenist, and it should likewise be remembered that they were both Cartesians.-H.

↑ Independently of his principal hypothesis altogether, the works of Malebranche deserve the most attentive study, both on account of the many ad mirable thoughts and observations with which they abound, and because they are among the few consummate models of philosophical eloquence-H.