The Scottish Philosophy [126]
uses it to signify " the images of external things in the mind." " There is a third sense in which he uses the word not unfrequently,-to signify objects of thought that are not in the mind, but external." " Thus we see that the word idea has three different meanings in the `Essay;' and the author seems to have used it sometimes in one, sometimes in another, without being aware of any change in the meaning. The reader slides easily into the same fallacy, that meaning occurring most readily to his mind which gives the best sense to what he reads." It is specially true of Locke what Reid affirms generally: "The way in which philosophers speak of ideas seems to imply that they are the only objects of perception " (P. 263).
The service which Reid has done to philosophy by banishing these intermediaries between perception and its external object cannot be over-estimated. He has also been successful in proving that it cannot be by a process of reasoning that we reach the conception of, and belief in, the existence of body. There is nothing in any organic affection of the nerves or brain, nothing in the sensation in the mind, to entitle us to believe in an extended resisting object. He also deserves great credit for showing so clearly that the conceptions of the qualities of matter are not to be supposed to have a resemblance to the qualities themselves. Locke acknowledges as to the secondary qualities of matter that the ideas are not to be regarded as being like them; but he still talked of ideas of the primary qualities as being resemblances. This may have been little else than loose language on the part of Locke, to indicate that there was a correspondence or relation of some kind; but it was desirable to correct it, as it was fitted to convey a very erroneous impression. In a later age, Hamilton exposed thoroughly the more general error, that like can only influence like, and that like can only be known by like. It is disheartening to think how much of the energy of our greatest thinkers has {211}been spent in correcting errors which other great thinkers have introduced. It looks as if it were only by a continued struggle that truth is to gain a victory over error.
He has not been so Successful in establishing a doctrine of his own as in opposing the errors of others. But his view of perception, whether we approve of it or not, can be understood by us. He maintains that there is first a sensation in the mind, and that this sensation suggests a perception. The word to denote the rise of a thought in the mind, was employed by earlier philosophers, but was adopted by Reid from Berkeley, who again took it from Locke. Reid maintains that there are natural suggestions; particularly that sensation suggests the notion of present existence, and the belief that what we perceive or feel does now exist; that memory suggests the notion of past existence, and the belief that what we remember did exist in time past; and that our sensations and thoughts do also suggest the notion of a mind, and the belief of its existence and of its relation to our thoughts. By a like natural principle it is, that a beginning of existence, or any change in nature, suggests to us the notion of a cause and compels our belief in its existence.... And, in like manner, certain sensations of touch, by the constitution of our nature, suggest to us extension, solidity, and motion." (" Works," p.111.) Closely connected or rather identical with this theory of suggestion is his doctrine of natural language and signs, -- a phraseology also taken from Berkeley. He maintains that there are natural signs, " which, though we never had any notion or conception of the thing signified, do suggest it, or conjure it up, as it were by a natural kind of magic, and at once give us a conception and create a belief in it." He calls " our sensations signs of external objects." The operations are represented by him as " simple and original, and therefore inexplicable, acts of the mind."
The whole account seems to me unsatisfactory, nearly as much so
The service which Reid has done to philosophy by banishing these intermediaries between perception and its external object cannot be over-estimated. He has also been successful in proving that it cannot be by a process of reasoning that we reach the conception of, and belief in, the existence of body. There is nothing in any organic affection of the nerves or brain, nothing in the sensation in the mind, to entitle us to believe in an extended resisting object. He also deserves great credit for showing so clearly that the conceptions of the qualities of matter are not to be supposed to have a resemblance to the qualities themselves. Locke acknowledges as to the secondary qualities of matter that the ideas are not to be regarded as being like them; but he still talked of ideas of the primary qualities as being resemblances. This may have been little else than loose language on the part of Locke, to indicate that there was a correspondence or relation of some kind; but it was desirable to correct it, as it was fitted to convey a very erroneous impression. In a later age, Hamilton exposed thoroughly the more general error, that like can only influence like, and that like can only be known by like. It is disheartening to think how much of the energy of our greatest thinkers has {211}been spent in correcting errors which other great thinkers have introduced. It looks as if it were only by a continued struggle that truth is to gain a victory over error.
He has not been so Successful in establishing a doctrine of his own as in opposing the errors of others. But his view of perception, whether we approve of it or not, can be understood by us. He maintains that there is first a sensation in the mind, and that this sensation suggests a perception. The word
The whole account seems to me unsatisfactory, nearly as much so