given intuitively, and sometimes by the exercise of reason, both of which, as I have already shown, are alike mental processes. And Mr. Stewart has hence, as lately noticed, freely denominated it in one place, though in my mind most incongruously with respect to his own system "the common reason of mankind." Its

proper limit is the common concerns of life, and while it confines itself to these it is nearly infallible; for the common constitution of our nature must, in most cases, lead us to one common result. When the legislature of our own country, (in which this principle exists with peculiar force,) appeals to the general voice of the people, it appeals to their common sense. But in doing this, does it appeal to their instinct, or to any other faculty than their common reason; that discursive power, which, by being better exercised here than among other nations, has enriched them with sounder and more general information upon the subject in question?

Common sense, however, must be confined to common subjects. Like the ostrich, it is quick and powerful on the surface, but its wings are not plumed for flight, and it plays a ridiculous part whenever it attempts to soar. When Copernicus, with a trembling hand, first suggested that the sun stands fixed in his place, and all the heavenly bodies move round him, common sense, assuming the philosopher, to which character it has no pretensions, opposed him, and science fell a sacrifice to its conceit. With the same foolish vanity it denied, till laughed out of

its folly by circumnavigation, the existence of antipodes; or that the surface of the earth, which appears to be a plane, could be spherical, and that men and women of our own shape and make could exist on its reverse side, with their feet opposed to our own. When the Dutch ambassador told the king of Siam, who had never seen or heard of such a thing as frost, that the water in his country would sometimes in cold weather be so hard, that men might walk, and bullocks be roasted upon it, his well-known answer was delivered upon the principles of common sense. He spoke from what he had seen, and from what every one had seen around him, and he relied upon the common appearances of nature. "Hitherto," said he, "I have believed the strange things you have told me, because I looked upon you as an honest man; but now I am sure you are a liar." Yet this is the faculty held up in the system before us as a sure and infallible judge, whose office it is to correct the errors of reason, and to prove to us that every thing exists precisely as IT APPEARS TO EXIST.*

* Dr. Beattie has adopted this precise line of reasoning under the influence of his Common Sense principles: and points out, by analogy, that the opinion of the Siamese monarch was founded upon a basis which nothing could shake, or ought to shake; for the only appeal that any opposing evidence could make to him must have been through the medium of his reason, which is a less infallible judge than Common sense, and hence less worthy of attention. "Common sense," says he, "tells me that the ground on which I stand is hard, material, and solid. Now, if my common

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How much clearer, and to the purpose, is the explanation of this subject given by the excellent bishop Butler, and how perfectly in unison with the language of Mr. Locke! "That which renders beings," 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 naturally and unavoidably approve some actions, and disapprove others, as 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 a perception of the heart, or which seems

sense be mistaken, who shall ascertain and correct the mistake? Our reason, it is said. Are then the inferences of reason, in this instance, clearer and more decisive than the dictates of common sense? By no means. I still trust to my common sense as before, and I feel that I must do so. But supposing the inferences of the one faculty as clear and decisive as the dictates of the other; yet who shall assure me that my reason is less liable to mistake than my common sense? In a word, no doctrine ought to be believed as true that EXCEEDS BELIEF AND CONTRADICTS A FIRST PRINCIPLE." On Truth, part i. ch. i.

the truth, as including both."* Here we have laid down a firm and impregnable basis: it is the capacity of reflexion: 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 distinguished writer, instead of despising or undervaluing, expressly calls in another place, after Solomon," the candle of the Lord;" but which he adds, "can afford no light where it does not shine, nor judge where it has no principles to judge upon."+

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

* Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed: Dissert. ii. of the Nature of Virtue.

Ibid. part ii. Conclusion.

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

The scarlet-rose which is before me is still a scarletrose when I shut my eyes, and was so at midnight when no eye 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 the 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. 4. Lond. 1785.