time of Des Cartes, had called ideas, this author distinguishes into two kinds-to wit, impressions and ideas; comprehending under the first, all our sensations, passions, and emotions; and under the last, the faint images of these, when we remember or imagine them. [186]

He sets out with this, as a principle that needed no proof, and of which therefore he offers none-that all the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into these two kinds, impressions and ideas.

As this proposition is the foundation upon which the whole of Mr Hume's system rests, and from which it is raised with great acuteness indeed, and ingenuity, it were to be wished that he had told us upon what authority this fundamental proposition rests. But we are left to guess, whether it is held forth as a first principle, which has its evidence in itself; or whether it is to be received upon the authority of philosophers. Mr Locke had taught us, that all the immediate objects of human knowledge are ideas in the mind. Bishop Berkeley, proceeding upon this foundation, demonstrated, very easily, that there is no material world. And he thought that, for the purposes both of philosophy and religion, we should find no loss, but great benefit, in the want of it. But the Bishop, as became his order, was unwilling to give up the world of spirits. He saw very well, that ideas are as unfit to represent spirits as they are to represent bodies. Perhaps he saw that, if we perceive only the ideas of spirits, we shall find the same difficulty in inferring their real existence from the existence of their ideas, as we find in inferring the existence of matter from the idea of it; and, therefore, while he gives up the material world in favour of the system of ideas, he gives up one-half of that system in favour of the world of spirits; and maintains that we can, without ideas, think, and speak, and reason, intelligibly about spirits, and what belongs to them.

Mr Hume shews no such partiality in favour of the world of spirits. He adopts the theory of ideas in its full extent; and, in consequence, shews that there is neither matter nor mind in the universe; nothing but impressions and ideas. What we call a body, is only a bundle of sensations; and what we call the mind is only a bundle of thoughts, passions, and emotions, without any subject. [187]

Some ages hence, it will perhaps be looked upon as a curious anecdote, that two philosophers of the eighteenth century, of very distinguished rank, were led, by a philosophical hypothesis, one, to disbelieve the existence of matter, and the other, to disbelieve the existence both of matter and of mind. Such an anecdote may not be uninstructive, if it prove a warning to

philosophers to beware of hypotheses, especially when they lead to conclusions which contradict the principles upon which all men of common sense must act in common life.

The Egoists, whom we mentioned before, were left far behind by Mr Hume; for they believed their own existence, and perhaps also the existence of a Deity. But Mr Hume's system does not even leave him a self to claim the property of his impressions and ideas.

A system of consequences, however absurd, acutely and justly drawn from a few principles, in very abstract matters, is of real utility in science, and may be made subservient to real knowledge. This merit Mr Hume's metaphysical writings have in a great degree.

We had occasion before to observe, that, since the time of Des Cartes, philosophers, in treating of the powers of the mind, have, in many instances, confounded things which the common sense of mankind has always led them to distinguish, and which have different names in all languages. Thus, in the perception of an external object, all languages distinguish three things-the mind that perceives, the operation of that mind, which is called perception, and the object perceived. Nothing appears more evident to a mind untutored by philosophy, than that these three are distinct things, which, though related, ought never to be confounded. [188] The structure of all languages supposes this distinction, and is built upon it. Philosophers have introduced a fourth thing in this process, which they call the idea of the object, which is supposed to be an image, or representative of the object, and is said to be the immediate object. The vulgar know nothing about this idea; it is a creature of philosophy,introduced to account for and explain the manner of our perceiving external objects.

In supplement to note § at p 269, supra, in regard to the pretended sect of Egoists, there is to be added the following notices, which I did not recol

lect till after that note was set:

Wolf, (Psychologia Rationalis, § 38,) after dividing Idealists into Egoists and Pluralists, says, inter alia, of the former Fuit paucis at hinc annis assecla quidam Malebranchii, Parisiis qui Egoismum professus est (quod miruin mihi videtur) asseclas et ipse nactus est." In his Vernuenftige Gedanken von Gott,

&c., c. 1, 42, he also mentions this allersellsamste

Secte. There is also an oration by Christopher Matthacus Pfaff, the Chancellor of Tuebingen"De Egoismo, nova philosophica haeresi," in 1722which I have not seen. Thus, what I formerly ha zarded, is still farther confirmed. All is vague and contradictory hearsay in regard to the Egoists. The land; the Germans in France; and they are variously French place them in Scotland; the Scotch in Hol stated as the immediate disciples of Des Cartes,

Malebranche, Spinoza. There is certainly no reason why an Egoistical Idealism should not have been explicitly promulgated before Fichte, (whose doctrine, however, is not the same;) but I have, as yet, seen no satisfactory grounds on which it can be shewn that this had actually been done.-H. + See Notes B and C.-H.

It is pleasant to observe that, while philosophers, for more than a century, have been labouring, by means of ideas, to explain perception and the other operations of the mind, those ideas have by degrees usurped the place of perception, object, and even of the mind itself, and have supplanted those very things they were brought to explain. Des Cartes reduced all the operations of the understanding to perception; and what can be more natural to those who believe that they are only different modes of perceiving ideas in our own minds? Locke confounds ideas sometimes with the perception of an external object, sometimes with the external object itself. In Berkeley's system, the idea is the only object, and yet is often confounded with the perception of it. But, in Hume's, the idea or the impression, which is only a more lively idea, is mind, perception, and object, all in one: so that, by the term perception, in Mr Hume's system, we must understand the mind itself, all its operations, both of understanding and will, and all the objects of these operations. Perception taken in this sense he divides into our more lively perceptions, which he calls impressions, and the less lively, which he calls ideas. To prevent repetition, I must here refer the reader to some remarks made upon this division, Essay I. chap. 1, in the explication there given of the words, perceive, object, impression. [pp. 222, 223, 226.] Philosophers have differed very much with regard to the origin of our ideas, or the sources whence they are derived. The Peripatetics held that all knowledge is derived originally from the senses; and this ancient doctrine seems to be revived by some late French philosophers, and by Dr Hartley and Dr Priestley among the British. [189] Des Cartes maintained, that many of our ideas are innate. Locke opposed the doctrine of innate ideas with much zeal, and employs the whole first book of his Essay against it. But he admits two different sources of ideas. the operations of our external senses, which he calls sensation, by which we get all our ideas of body, and its attributes; and reflection upon the operations of our minds, by which we get the ideas of everything be

• Mr Stewart (Elem. III. Addenda to vol I. p. 43) seems to think that the word impression was first introduced as a technical term, into the philo. sophy of mind, by Hume. This is not altogether correct. For, besides the instances which Mr Stewart himself adduces, of the illustration attempted, of the phænomena of memory from the analogy of an im press and a trace, words corresponding to impression were among the ancients familiarly applied to the processes of external perception, imagination, &c., in the Atomistic, the Platonic, the Aristotelian, and the Stoical philosophies; while, among modern psycholo gists, (as Des Cartes and Gassendi,) the term was like. wise in common use-H.

†This is an incorrect, at least a too unqualified, statement.-H.

longing to the mind. The main design of the second book of Locke's " Essay," is to shew, that all our simple ideas, without exception, are derived from the one or the other, or both of these sources. In doing this, the author is led into some paradoxes, although, in general, he is not fond of paradoxes: And had he foreseen all the consequences that may be drawn from his account of the origin of our ideas, he would probably have examined it more carefully.

Mr Hume adopts Locke's account of the origin of our ideas; and from that principle infers, that we have no idea of substance, corporeal or spiritual, no idea of power, no other idea of a cause, but that it is something antecedent, and constantly conjoined to that which we call its effect; and, in a word, that we can have no idea of anything but our sensations, and the operations of mind we are conscious of.

This author leaves no power to the mind in framing its ideas and impressions; and, no wonder, since he holds that we have no idea of power; and the mind is nothing but that succession of impressions and ideas of which we are intimately conscious.

He thinks, therefore, that our impressions arise from unknown causes, and that the impressions are the causes of their corresponding ideas. By this he means no more but that they always go before the ideas; for this is all that is necessary to constitute the relation of cause and effect. [190]

As to the order and succession of our ideas, he holds it to be determined by three laws of attraction or association, which he takes to be original properties of the ideas, by which they attract, as it were, or associate themselves with other ideas which either resemble them, or which have been contiguous to them in time and place, or to which they have the relations of cause and effect.

We may here observe, by the way, that the last of these three laws seems to be included in the second, since causation, according to him, implies no more than contiguity in time and place.†

At any rate, according to Locke, all our knowledge is a derivation from experience.-H.

Mr Hume says-" I do not find that any philo. sopher has attempted to enumerate or class all the principles of Association; a subject, however, that seems to me very worthy of curiosity. To me there appears to be only three principles of connection among ideas: Resemblance-Contiguity in time or place-Cause and Effect."-Essays, vol. ii., p. 24Aristotle, and, after him, many other philosophers, had, however, done this, and with even greater success than Hume himself. Aristotle's reduction is to the four following heads-Proximity in time-Contiguity in place-Resemblance-Contrast. This is more correct than Hume's; for Hume's second head ought to be divided into two; while our connecting any particular events in the relation of cause and effect, is itself the result of their observed proximity in time and contiguity in place; nay, to custom and this empirical connection (as observed by Reid) does

perception, memory, and imagination, to be various modifications of the mind, they mean no more but that these are things which can only exist in the mind as their subject. We express the same thing, by calling them various modes of thinking, or various operations of the mind.

CHAPTER XIII.

OF THE SENTIMENTS OF ANTHONY ARNAULD.

In this sketch of the opinions of philosophers concerning ideas, we must not omit Anthony Arnauld, doctor of the Sorbonne, who, in the year 1683, published his book "Of True and False Ideas," in opposition to the system of Malebranche before mentioned. It is only about ten years since I could find this book, and I believe it is rare. [191]

Though Arnauld wrote before Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, I have reserved to the last place some account of his sentiments, because it seems difficult to determine whether he adopted the common theory of ideas, or whether he is singular in rejecting it altogether as a fiction of philosophers.

The controversy between Malebranche and Arnauld necessarily led them to consider what kind of things ideas are-a point upon which other philosophers had very generally been silent. Both of them professed the doctrine universally received: that we perceive not material things immediately that it is their ideas that are the immediate objects of our thought—and that it is in the idea of everything that we perceive its properties.

It is necessary to premise that both these authors use the word perception, as Des Cartes had done before them, to signify every operation of the understand. ing."To think, to know, to perceive, are the same thing," says Mr Arnauld, chap. v. def. 2. It is likewise to be observed, that the various operations of the mind are by both called modifications of the mind. Perhaps they were led into this phrase by the Cartesian doctrine, that the essence of the mind consists in thinking, as that of body consists in extension. I apprehend,

Hume himself endeavour to reduce the principle of Causality altogether.-H.

The treatises of Arnauld in his controversy with Malebranche, are to be found in the thirty-eighth volume of his collected works in 4to.-H.

↑ Every apprehensive, or strictly cognitive operation of the understanding.-H.

The things which the mind perceives, says Malebranche, are of two kinds. They are either in the mind itself, or they are external to it. The things in the mind, are all its different modifications, its sensations, its imaginations, its pure intellections, its passions and affections. These are immediately perceived; we are con scious of them, and have no need of ideas to represent them to us. [192]

Things external to the mind, are either corporeal or spiritual. With regard to the last, he thinks it possible that, in another state, spirits may be an immediate object of our understandings, and so be perceived without ideas; that there may be such an union of spirits as that they may immediately perceive each other, and communicate their thoughts mutually, without signs and without ideas.

But, leaving this as a problematical point, he holds it to be undeniable, that material things cannot be perceived immediately, but only by the mediation of ideas. He thought it likewise undeniable, that the idea must be immediately present to the mind, that it must touch the soul as it were, and modify its perception of the object.

From these principles we must necessarily conclude, either that the idea is some modification of the human mind, or that it must be an idea in the Divine Mind, which is always intimately present with our minds. The matter being brought to this alternative, Malebranche considers first all the possible ways such a modification may be produced in our mind as that we call an idea of a material object, taking it for granted always, that it must be an object perceived, and something different from the act of the mind in perceiving it. He finds insuperable objections against every hypothesis of such ideas being produced in our minds; and therefore concludes, that the immediate objects of perception are the ideas of the Divine Mind.

Against this system Arnauld wrote his book " Of True and False Ideas." He does not object to the alternative mentioned by Malebranche; but he maintains, that ideas are modifications of our minds. And, finding no other modification of the

Modes, or modifications of mind, in the Cartesian school, mean merely what some recent philosophers express by states of mind and include both the active and passive phænomena of the conscious sub. ject. The terms were used by Des Cartes as well as by his disciples.-H.

This, I think, indeed, was to attack the system of Malebranche upon its weak side, and where, at the same time, an attack was least expected. Philosophers had been so unanimous in maintaining that we do not perceive external objects immediately, but by certain representative images of them called ideas, that Malebranche might well think his system secure upon that quarter, and that the only question to be determined was, in what subject those ideas are placed, whether in the human or in the divine mind?

But, says Mr Arnauld, those ideas are mere chimeras-fictions of philosophers; there are no such beings in nature; and, therefore, it is to no purpose to inquire whether they are in the divine or in the human mind. The only true and real ideas are our perceptions, which are acknowledged by all philosophers, and by Malebranche himself, to be acts or modifications of our own minds. He does not say that the fictitious ideas were a fiction of Malebranche. He acknowledges that they had been very generally maintained by the scholastic philosophers, and points out, very judiciously, the prejudices that had led them into the belief of such ideas.

Of all the powers of our mind, the

• Arnauld did not allow that perceptions and ideas are really or numerically distinguished-i e., as one thing from another thing; not even that they are modally distinguished-i e, as a thing from its mode. He maintained that they are really identical, and only rationally discriminated as viewed in different relations; the indivisible mental modification being called a perception, by reference to the mind or thinking subject-an idea, by reference to the mediate object or thing thought. Arnauld everywhere avows that he denies ideas only as existences distinct from the act itself of perception.-See Oeuvres, t. xxxvii. pp. 187, 198, 199, 389.-H.

+Arnauld does not assert against Malebranche, "that we perceive external objects immediately"-that is, in themselves, and as existing. He was too accu. rate for this. By an immediate cognition, Reid means merely the negation of the intermediation of any third thing between the reality perceived and the percipient mind.-H.

Idea was not the word by which representative images, distinct from the percipient act, had been commonly called; nor were philosophers at all unanimous in the admission of such vicarious objects.See Notes G, L, M, N, O, &c.-H.

That is, Perceptions, (the cognitive acts,) but not Ideas, (the immediate objects of those acts.) The latter were not acknowledged by Malebranche and all philosophers to be mere acts or modifications of our own minds.-H.

But by a different name.-H.

best understood, and their objects are the most familiar. Hence we measure other powers by them, and transfer to other powers the language which properly belongs to them. The objects of sense must be present to the sense, or within its sphere, in order to their being perceived. Hence, by analogy, we are led to say of everything when we think of it, that it is present to the mind, or in the mind. [194] But this presence is metaphorical, or analogical only; and Arnauld calls it objective presence, to distinguish it from that local presence which is required in objects that are perceived by sense. But both being called by the same name, they are confounded together, and those things that belong only to real or local presence, are attributed to the metaphorical.

We are likewise accustomed to see objects by their images in a mirror, or in water; and hence are led, by analogy, to think that objects may be presented to the memory or imagination in some similar manner, by images, which philosopher have called ideas.

By such prejudices and analogies, Arnauld conceives, men have been led to believe that the objects of memory and imagination must be presented to the mind by images or ideas; and the philosophers have been more carried away by these prejudices than even the vulgar, because the use made of this theory was to explain and account for the various operations of the mind-a matter in which the vulgar take no concern.

He thinks, however, that Des Cartes had got the better of these prejudices, and that he uses the word idea as signifying the same thing with perception, and is, therefore, surprised that a disciple of Des Cartes, and one who was so great an admirer of him as Malebranche was, should be carried away by them. It is strange, indeed, that the two most eminent disciples of Des Cartes and his contemporaries should differ so essentially with regard to his doctrine concerning ideas.+

I shall not attempt to give the reader an account of the continuation of this controversy between those two acute philosophers, in the subsequent defences and replies; because I have not access to see them. After much reasoning, and some animosity, each

I am convinced that in this interpretation of Des Cartes' doctrine, Arnauld is right; for Des Cartes defines mental ideas-those, to wit, of which we are conscious-to be "Cogitationes prout sunt tanquam imagines-that is, thoughts considered in their representative capacity; nor is there any passage to be found in the writings of this philosopher, which, if properly understood, warrants the conclusion, that, by ideas in the mind, he meant aught distinct from the cognitive The double use of the term idea by Des Cartes has, however, led Reid and others into a miscon ception on this point. Sce Note N.-H.

act.

Reid's own doctrine is far more ambiguous.-H.

continued in his own opinion, and left his antagonist where he found him. [195] Malebranche's opinion of our seeing all things in God, soon died away of itself; and Arnauld's notion of ideas seems to have been less regarded than it deserved, by the philosophers that came after him ;* perhaps for this reason, among others, that it seemed to be, in some sort, given up by himself, in his attempting to reconcile it to the common doctrine concerning ideas.

From the account I have given, one would be apt to conclude that Arnauld totally denied the existence of ideas, in the philosophical sense of that word, and that he adopted the notion of the vulgar, who acknowledge no object of perception but the external object. But he seems very unwilling to deviate so far from the common track, and, what he had given up with one hand, he takes back with the other.

For, first, Having defined ideas to be the same thing with perceptions, he adds this qualification to his definition :-"I do not here consider whether there are other things that may be called ideas; but it is certain there are ideas taken in this sense. I believe, indeed, there is no philosopher who does not, on some occasions, use the word idea in this popular sense.

The opinion of Arnauld in regard to the nature of ideas was by no means overlooked by subsequent philosophers. It is found fully detailed in almost every systematic course or compend of philosophy, which appeared for a long time after its first promul. gation, and in many of these it is the doctrine recommended as the true. Arnauld's was indeed the

opinion which latterly prevailed in the Cartesian school. From this it passed into other schools. Leib. nitz, like Arnauld, regarded Ideas, Notions, Representations, as mere modifications of the mind, (what by his disciples, were called material ideas, like the cerebral ideas of Des Cartes, are out of the question,)

and no cruder opinion than this has ever subse quently found a looting in any of the German systems.

"I don't know," says Mr Stewart," of any author who, prior to Dr Reid, has expressed himself on this subject with so much justness and precision as Father Buffier, in the following passage of his Treatise on First Truths:'

"If we confine ourselves to what is intelligible in our observations on ideas, we will say, they are no thing, but mere modifications of the mind as a thinking being. They are called ideas with regard to the object represented; and perceptions with regard to the faculty representing. It is manifest that our ideas, considered in this sense, are not more distinguished than motion is from a body moved, '—(P. 311, English Translation.)”—Elem. iii. Add. to vol. i. P. 10.

In this passage, Buffier only repeats the doctrine of Arnauld, in Arnauld's own words.

Dr Thomas Brown, on the other hand, has endeavoured to shew that this doctrine, (which he identifies with Reid's,) had been long the catholic opinion; and that Reid, in his attack on the Ideal system, only refuted what had been already almost universally exploded. In this attempt he is, however, singularly unfortunate; for, with the exception of Crousaz, all the examples he adduces to evince the prevalence of Arnauld's doctrine are only so many mistakes, so many instances, in fact, which might be alleged in confirmation of the very opposite conclusion. See Edinburgh Review, vol. lii., p. 181–

196-H.

+See following note.-H.

Secondly, He supports this popular sense of the word by the authority of Des Cartes, who, in his demonstration of the existence of God, from the idea of him in our minds, defines an idea thus :-" By the word idea, I understand that form of any thought, by the immediate perception of which I am conscious of that thought; so that I can express nothing by words, with understanding, without being certain that there is in my mind the idea of that which is expressed by the words." This definition seems, indeed, to be of the same import with that which is given by Arnauld. But Des Cartes adds a qualification to it, which Arnauld, in quoting it, omits; and which shews that Des Cartes meant to limit his definition to the idea then treated of—that is, to the idea of the Deity; and that there are other ideas to which this definition does not apply. [196] For he adds:-" And thus I give the name of idea, not solely to the images painted in the phantasy; nay, in this place, I do not at all give the name of ideas to those images, in so far as they are painted in the corporeal phantasy that is in some part of the brain, but only in so far as they inform the mind, turning its attention to that part of the brain."*

Thirdly, Arnauld has employed the whole of his sixth chapter, to shew that these ways of speaking, common among philosophersto wit, that we perceive not things immediately; that it is their ideas that are the immediate objects of our thoughts; that it is in the idea of everything that we perceive its properties-are not to be rejected, but are true when rightly understood. He labours to reconcile these expressions to his own definition of ideas, by observing, that every perception and every thought is necessarily conscious of itself, and reflects upon itself; and that, by this consciousness and reflection, it is its own immediate object. Whence he infers, that the idea that is, the perception is the immediate object of perception.

This looks like a weak attempt to reconcile two inconsistent doctrines by one who wishes to hold both. It is true, that consciousness always goes along with percep tion; but they are different operations of the mind, and they have their different objects. Consciousness is not perception, nor is the object of consciousness the object of perception. The same may be sad of

• Des Cartes here refers to the other meaning which he gives to the term idea-that is, to denote the material motion, the organic affection of the brain, of which the mind is not conscious. On Reid's mis. apprehension of the Cartesian doctrine touching this matter, see Note N.-H.

+Arnauld's attempt is neither weak nor inconsist. ent. He had, in fact, a clearer view of the condi. tions of the problem than Reid himself, who has, in fact, confounded two opposite doctrines. See Note C.

-H.

On Reid's error in reducing consciousness to a special faculty, see Note H.-H.