representation, is less exposed to criticism than the theological idealism of Berkeley, which reposes on the first. Did Brown not mistake his doctrine, Reid was certainly absurd in thinking, that a refutation of idealism is involved in his refutation of the common theory of perception. So far from blaming Brown, on this supposition, for denying to Reid the single merit which that philosopher thought peculiarly his own; we only reproach him for leaving to Reid and to himself any possible mode of resisting the idealist at all. It was a monstrous error to reverse Reid's doctrine of perception; it is perhaps a greater, not to see that this reversal stultifies the argument from common sense; and that so far "from proceeding on safe ground" in an appeal to our original beliefs, Reid would have employed, as Brown has actually done, a weapon harmless to the sceptic, but mortal to himself.

The belief, says Dr. Brown, in the existence of an external world is irresistible, therefore it is true. On his doctrine of perception, which he attributes also to Reid, this inference is however incompetent, because on that doctrine he cannot fulfil the condition which the argument implies. "I cannot but believe that material things exists :—I cannot but believe that the material reality is the object immediately known in perception. The former of these beliefs, explicitly argues Dr. Brown, in defending his system against the sceptic, because irresistible, is true. The latter of these beliefs, implicitly argues Dr. Brown, in establishing his system itself, though irresistible, is false. And here not only are two primitive beliefs supposed to be repugnant, and consciousness therefore delusive; the very belief which is assumed as true, exists in fact only through the other, which, ex hypothesi, is false. Both in reality are one.' * Kant, in whose doctrine as in Brown's the object of perception constitutes only a subjective phenomenon, was too acute not to discern that, on this hypothesis, philosophy could not, without contradiction, appeal to the evidence of our elementary faiths." Allowing idealism," he says, "to be as dangerous as it truly is, it would still remain a scandal to philosophy and human reason in general, to be compelled to accept the existence of external things on the testimony of mere belief."+

* This reasoning can only be invalidated either, 1. By disproving the belief itself of the knowledge, as a fact; or, 2. By disproving its attribute of originality. The latter is impossible; and if possible would also annihilate the originality of the belief of the existence, which is supposed. The former alternative is ridiculous. That we are naturally determined to believe the object known in perception to be the external existence itself, and that it is only in consequence of a supposed philosophical necessity we subsequently endeavour, by an artificial abstraction, to discriminate these, is admitted even by those psychologists, whose doctrine is thereby placed in overt contradiction to our original beliefs. Though perhaps superfluous to allege authorities in suport of such a point, we refer, however, to the following, which happen to occur to our recollection.-DESCARTES, De Pass. art. 26.-MALEBRANCHE, Rech. 1. iii. c. 1-BERKELEY, Works. i. p. 216., and quoted by Reid, Ess. I. P. p. 165.-HUME, Treat. H. N. i. pp. 330. 338. 353. 358. 361, 369., orig. ed.-Essays, ii. pp. 154. 157. ed. 1788.-As not generally accessible, we translate the following extracts:-SCHELLING (Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur. Einl. p. xix. 1st ed.)— When (in perception) I represent an object, object and representation are one and the same. And simply in this our inability to discriminate the object from the representation during the act, hes the conviction which the cominon sense of mankind (gemeine verstand) has of the reality of external things, although these become known to it only through representations." (See also P. xxvi.)-We cannot recover, at the moment, a passage, to the same effect, in Kant; but the ensuing is the testimony of an eminent disciple.-TENNEMANN (Gesch. d. Phil. II. p. 294.) speaking of Plato: "The illusion that things in themselves are cognizable, is so natural, that we need not marvel if even philosophers have not been able to emancipate themselves from the prejudice. The common sense of mankind (gemeine menschenverstand), which remains steadfast within the sphere of experience, recognises no distinction hetween things in themselves [unknown reality existing and phenomena representation, object known]; and the philosophising reason commences therewith its attempt to investigate the foundations of this knowledge, and to recall itself into system."-See also JACOBI's David Hume, passim, (Werke, ii.) and his Alluwills Briefsammlung, (Werke, ii. etc.) Reid has been already quoted.

+ Cr. d. r. V-Vorr. p. xxxix. Kant's marvellous acuteness did not, however, enable him to bestow on his "Only possible demonstration of the reality of an external world” (ibid. p. 275.

But Reid is not, like Brown, felo de se in his reasoning from our natural beliefs; and on his genuine doctrine of perception, the argument has a very different tendency. Reid asserts that his doctrine of perception is itself a confutation of the ideal system; and so it truly is. For it at once denies to the sceptic and idealist the premises of their conclusion; and restores to the realist, in its omnipotence, the argument of common sense. The sceptic and idealist can only found on the admission, that the object known is not convertible with the reality existing; and, at the same time, this admission, by placing the facts of consciousness in mutual contradiction, denies its postulate to the argument from our beliefs. Reid's analysis therefore in its result, that we have, as we believe we have, an immediate knowledge of the material reality, accomplished every thing at once.

Dr. Brown is not, however, more erroneous in thinking that the argument from common sense could be employed by him, than in supposing that its legitimacy was admitted by Hume. So little did he suspect the futility, in his own hands, of this proof, he only regards it as superfluous as opposed to that philosopher, who, he thinks, in allowing the belief in the existence of matter to be irresistible, allows it to be true. (Lect. xxviii.) Dr. Brown has committed, perhaps, more important mistakes than this, in regard to scepticism and to Hume;-none certainly more fundamental. Hume is converted into a dogmatist; the essence of scepticism is misconceived.

On the hypothesis that our natural beliefs are fallacious," it is not for the Pyrrhonist to reject, but to establish their authenticity; and so far from the admission of their strength being a surrender of his doubt,, the very triumph of scepticism consists in proving them to be irresistible. By what demonstration is the foundation of all certainty and knowledge so effectually subverted, as by showing that the principles, which reason constrains us speculatively to admit, are contradictory of the facts, which our instincts compel us practically to believe? Our intellectual nature is thus seen to be divided against itself; consciousness stands self-convicted of delusion. "Surely we have eaten the fruit of lies!"

This is the scope of the "Essay on the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy," from which Dr. Brown quotes. In that essay, previous to his quotation, Hume shows, on the admission of philosophers, that our belief in the knowledge of material things, as impossible, is false; and on this admission, he had irresistibly established the speculative absurdity of our belief in the existence of an external world. In the passage, on the contrary, which Dr. Brown partially extracts, he is showing that this idealism, which in theory must be admitted, is in application impossible. Speculation and practice, nature and philosophy; sense and reason, belief and knowledge, thus placed in mutual antithesis, give, as their result, the uncertainty of

etc.) even a logical necessity; nor prevent his transcendental, from being apodeietically resolved (by Jacoby and Fitche) into absolute, idealism. In this argument, indeed, he collects more in the conclusion, than was contained in the antecedents; and reaches it by a double saltus, overleaping the foundations both of the egoistical and mystical idealists.-Though Kant, in the passage quoted above and in other places, apparently abuses the common sense of mankind, and altogether rejects it as a metaphysical principle of truth; he at last, however, found it necessary (in order to save philosophy from the annihilating energy of his Speculative Reason) to rest on that very principle of an ultimate belief, which he had originally spurned as a basis even of a material reality-the reality of all the sublimest objects of our interest-God, Free Will, Immortality, &c. His Practical Reason, as far as it extends, is in truth only another (and not even a better) term for Common Sense. Fichte, too, escaped the admitted nihilism of his speculative philosophy, only by a similar inconsequence in his practical.-(See his Bestimmung des Menschen.) Naturam expellas furca, &c.

every principle; and the assertion of this uncertainty is-Scepticism. This result is declared even in the sentence, with the preliminary clause of which Dr. Brown abruptly terminates his quotation.

But allowing Dr. Brown to be correct in transmuting the sceptical nihilist into a dogmatic realist; he would still be wrong (on the supposition that Hume admitted the truth of a belief to be convertible with its invincibility) in conceiving, on the one hand, that Hume could ever acquiesce in the same inconsequent conclusion with himself; or, on the other, that he himself could, without an abandonment of his system, acquiesce in the legitimate conclusion. On this supposition, Hume could only have arrived at a similar result with Reid; there is no tenable medium between the natural realism of the one, and the sceptical nihilism of the other.-"Do you follow," says Hume in the same essay, "the instincts and propensities of nature in assenting to the veracity of sense?"-I do, says Dr. Brown. (Lect. p. 176. alibi.)—" But these," coutinues Hume, "led you to believe that the very perception or sensible image is the external object. Do you disclaim this principle in order to embrace a more rational opinion, that the perceptions are only representations of something external?"-It is the vital principle of my system, says Brown, that the mind knows nothing beyond its own states (Lect. passim); philosophical suicide is not my choice; I must recall my admission, and give the lie to this natural belief.- You here," proceeds Hume, "depart from your natural propensities and more obvious sentiments; and yet are not able to satisfy your reason, which can never find any convincing argument from experience to prove, that the perceptions are connected with any external objects."-I allow, says Brown, that the existence of an external world cannot be proved by reasoning, and that the sceptical argument admits of no logical reply. (Lect. p. 175.)— But (we may suppose Hume to conclude) as you truly maintain that the confutation of scepticism can be attempted only in two ways (ibid.);-either by showing that its arguments are inconclusive, or by opposing to them, as paramount, the evidence of our natural beliefs;—and as you now, voluntarily or by compulsion, abandon both, you are confessedly reduced to the dilemma, either of acquiescing in the conclusion of the sceptic, or of refusing your assent upon no ground whatever.-Pyrrhonism or absurdity? -choose your horn.

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Were the scepticism into which Dr. Brown's philosophy is thus analysed confined to the negation of matter, the result would be comparatively unimportant. The transcendent reality of an outer world, considered absolutely, is to us a matter of supreme indifference. It is not the idealism itself that we must deplore, but the mendacity of consciousness which it involves. Conciousness once convicted of falsehood, an unconditional scepticism, in regard to the character of our intellectual being, is the melancholy but only rational result. Any conclusion may now with impunity be drawn against the hopes and dignity of human nature. Our Personality, our Immateriality, our Liberty, have no longer an argument for their defence. "Man is the dream of a shadow;" God is the dream of that dream. Dr. Brown, after the best philosophers, rests the proof of our personal identity and of our mental individuality on the ground of beliefs, which, as intuitive, universal, immediate, and irresistible," he, not unjustly, regards as "the internal and never ceasing voice of our Creator-revelations from on high, omnipotent (and veracious) as their author." To him this argument is however incompetent, as contradictory.

What we know of self or person, we know only as given in consciousness. In our perceptive consciousness there is revealed as an ultimate fact a self and not-self; each given as independent-each known only in antithesis to the other. No belief is more intuitive, universal, immediate, or irresistible," than that this antithesis is real and known to be real; no belief therefore is more true. If the antithesis be illusive, self and not-self, subject and object, I and Thou, are distinctions without a difference; and consciousness, so far from being "the internal voice of our Creator," is shown to be, like Satan, "a liar from the beginning." The reality of this antithesis, in different parts of his philosophy, Dr. Brown affirms and denies. In establishing his theory of perception, he articulately denies that mind is conscious of aught beyond itself; virtually asserts that what is there given in consciousness,as not-self is only a phenomenal illusion-a modification of self, which our consciousness determines us to believe is the quality of something numerically and substantially different.

"Ille ego sum sensi, sed me mea fallit imago."

After this implication in one part of his system that our belief in the distinction of self and not-self is nothing more than the deception of a lying consciousness; it is startling to find him, in another, appealing to the beliefs of this same consciousness as to "revelations from on high;' nay, in an especial manner alleging "as the voice of our Creator," this very faith in the distinction of self and not-self, through the fallacy of which, and of which alone, he had elsewhere argued consciousness of falsehood.

On the veracity of this mendacious belief, Dr. Brown establishes his proof of our personal identity. (Lect. xii.-xv.) Touching the object of perception, when its evidence is inconvenient, this belief is quietly passed over as incompetent to distinguish not-self from self; in the question regarding our personal identity, where its testimony is convenient, it is clamorously cited as an inspired witness, exclusively competent to distinguish self from not-self. Yet why, if, in the one case, it mistook self for not-self, it may not, in the other, mistake not-self for self, would appear a problem not of the easiest solution.

The same belief, with the same inconsistency, is again called in to prove the individuality of mind. (Lect. xcvi.) But if we are fallaciously determined in perception, to believe what is supposed indivisible, identical, and one, to be plural and different and incompatible, (self-self+not-self); how, on the authority of the same treacherous conviction, dare we maintain, that the phenomenal unity of consciousness affords a guarantee of the real simplicity of the thinking principle? The materialist may now contend, without fear of contradiction, that self is only an illusive phenomenon ; that our consecutive identity is that of the Delphic ship, and our present unity merely that of a system of co-ordinate activities. To explain the phenomenon, he has only to suppose, as certain theorists have lately done, an organ to tell the lie of our personality; and to quote as authority for the lie itself, the perfidy of consciousness, on which the theory of a representative perception is founded.

On the hypothesis of a representative perception, there is, in fact, no salvation from materialism on the one side, short of idealism on the other. Our knowledge of mind and matter, as substances, is merely relative; they are known to us only in their qualities; and we can justify the postulation of two different substances, exclusively on the supposition of the incompa

Is this sup

tibility of the double series of phenomena to coinhere in one. position disproved?-the presumption against dualism is again decisive. Entities are not to be multiplied without necessity; a plurality of principles is not to be assumed where the phenomena can be explained by one. In Brown's theory of perception, he abolishes the incompatibility of the two series; and his argument, as a dualist, for an immaterial principle of thought, proceeds on the ground that this incompatibility subsists. Lect. xvci. pp. 646, 647.) This philosopher denies us an immediate knowledge of aught beyond the accidents of mind. The accidents which we refer to body, as known to us, are only states or modifications of the percipient subject itself; in other words, the qualities we call material, are known by us to exist only as they are known by us to inhere in the same substance as the qualities we denominate mental. There is an apparent antithesis, but a real identity. On this doctrine, the hypothesis of a double principle, losing its necessity, becomes philosophically absurd; and, on the law of parsimony, a psychological unitarianism is established. To the argument that the qualities of the objects are so repugnant to the qualities of the subjects of perception, that they cannot be supposed the accidents of the same substances, the unitarian-whether materialist, idealist, or absolutist-has only to reply, that so far from the attributes of the object being exclusive of the attributes of the subject, in this act, that the hypothetical dualist himself establishes, as the fundamental axiom of his philosophy of mind, that the object known is universally identical with the subject knowing. The materialist may now derive the subject from the object; the idealist derive the object from the subject; the absolutist sublimate both into indifference, nay, the nihilist subvert the substantial reality of either;-the hypothetical realist, so far from being able to resist the conclusion of any, in fact, accords their resumptive premises to all.

The same contradiction would, in like manner invalidate every presumption in favour of our liberty of will. But as Dr. Brown, throughout his scheme of ethics, advances no argument in support of this condition of our moral being, which his philosophy otherwise tends to render impossible, we shall say nothing of this consequence of hypothetical realism.

So much for the system which, its author imagines, "allows to the sceptic no resting-place for his foot,-no fulchrum for the instrument he uses;" so much for the doctrine which Brown would substitute for Reid's; -nay, which he even supposes Reid himself to have maintained.

"Scilicet hoc totum falsa ratione receptum est !” *

The very limited space necessarily assigned in this work to reviews of a metaphysical character, has prevented me from including the following, which I had abridged for selection. Examination of Belsham's System of Ethics, Vol. i. page 475.- Review of Drummond's Academical Questions, Vol. ii. page 163.-Strictures on the Metaphysical Opinions of Dr. Priestley, Vol. ix. page 153.-Critiques on Beattie's Essay on Truth, Vol. x. page 171.-Gambier's Introduction to the Study of Moral Evidence, Vol. xii. page 202 - Forsyth's Principles of Moral Science, Vol. vii, page 413.-Degerando's work on the Origin of Ideas, Vol. v. page 318; and Knight's Enquiry into the Principles of Taste, Vol. vii. page 295. Of the Essays on Phrenology, I intended to give the last, published in Vol. xliv. page 253., which occasioned a controversy between the Editor and Mr. Combe. I find, however, that I have not room for it without rejecting other matter of more general interest. The writings of Doctors Gall and Spurzheim attracted the attention of the E. Review when the science of phrenology was in its infancy; and it must be admitted, that whatever talent may have been exhibited in the abusive attacks made upon it by the writers in that work, they have not examined its principles and pretensions with that candour and dignity which should characterise philosophical discussion. Those who are interested in the controversy are referred to Vol. ii. page 147., Vol. xxiv. page 439; and Vol. xxv. page 227.