philosophers. The often-quoted passage of Locke, in which the operations of thought are compared to the productions of art, furnishes in this respect, when understood in its proper latitude, an unexceptionable description of the respective provinces of the intuitive and discursive faculties. "It is not in the power of the most exalted wit, or enlarged understanding, by any quickness or variety of thought, to invent or frame one new simple idea in the mind. The dominion of man, in this little world of his own understanding, being much the same as it is in the great world of visible things; wherein his power, however managed by art and skill, reaches no farther than to compound or divide the materials that are made to his hand; but can do nothing towards the making the least particle of new matter, or destroying one atom of what is already in being." The Ideas of Sensation and Ideas of Reflection of the same philosopher, however unfortunate may be the original choice of terms, and however inconsistent their subsequent employment, point correctly enough to the two great sources of external and internal intuition. A further step in accuracy is gained in the Im

f Reflection, in consistency with etymology and practice, ought to have been limited to the operations of thought; in which sense we can reflect upon sensible objects as upon all other things. Locke only escapes from Reid's criticism on this point, by using reflection improperly, as Stewart has observed, as synonymous with [internal] consciousness.

pressions and Ideas of Hume, though the distinction loses most of its value in his hands, by the absurd ground of distinction which he has laid down between them, and by the unfortunate metaphor which declares every idea to be an image of an impression. Kant, who took up the discussion where Hume left it, with the advantage of a new philosophical language, unencumbered with the associations of earlier systems, is the earliest philosopher whose writings have disentangled the confusion universally following on the use of the term idea, and exhibited this most important distinction with any degree of accuracy and precision 1. It is one of the most

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According to Hume, Ideas and Impressions differ from each other only in their different degrees of force and vivacity; and Belief he defines as a lively idea associated with a present impression;" a doctrine which almost justifies the sarcastic application of Reid," it will follow, that the idea of a lion is a lion of less strength and vivacity. And hence may arise a very important question, whether the idea of a lion may not tear in pieces and devour the ideas of sheep, oxen, and horses, and even of men, women, and children."

In this respect, nothing can be more unfair than Stewart's sneers at the obscurity and new technical language of Kant. The philosophical terms of English and French writers are derived from the same source and subject to the same varieties of application. The purism of German writers has given to all subsequent thinkers the inestimable advantage of contemplating the same thoughts under a new phraseology, and with new associations of etymology and metaphor; an advantage which no one has appreciated more highly, or explained more happily, than Stewart himself, on another

valuable principles of the Critical Philosophy, that the understanding has no power of intuition; a principle which does not, however, necessitate the adoption of the Kantian division of the mental faculties, nor even the determination of the question, whether the mind possesses numerically distinct faculties at all. It simply means, that the act of Thought cannot create its own object; that, being mediate and representative, it requires to be based on an immediate and presentative fact of consciousness.

It cannot therefore be maintained that the senses are the sole criteria of truth and of reality, unless we assume, in defiance of all consciousness, that there exist no immediate mental phenomena, but those communicated by sensation. Any one presentation is as true and as real as any other. Falsehood and unreality can only begin with thought. The immediate judgment of presentation, that I am at this moment conscious of a certain object, is equally true as regards any class of presentations. Unreality, in this case, can only consist in the distinctness of one class of presentations from another, which latter we have arbitrarily selected as the test of reality; and falsehood, in the assertion of the identity of distinct classes, or occasion. As it is impossible to comply exactly with the precept of Locke, to judge of ideas in themselves, their names being wholly laid aside, the next best course is, to examine them, as far as possible, through the medium of two independent languages.

But such a

of the distinctness of identical ones. selection or assertion involves an act of thought; it is a judgment concerning intuitions as classified under certain concepts. If I choose arbitrarily to select the senses as the sole test of reality, the phantasms of imagination are so far unreal; but their unreality implies no more than that they are not perceived by the senses. If I say, "a centaur exists as an image in my mind, therefore it exists in nature," the assertion is false, because, by an act of thought, I judge that to be an object of possible sense, which is only given to me as an object of imagination: its reality in relation to the latter faculty remains undisturbed.

This view of the reality of all presentations, as such, could not indeed be consistently held by the advocates of a representative theory of perception. If, in all intuition, I am immediately conscious only of certain ideas or modifications of my own mind, I am reduced to the alternative, either of disbelieving the existence of an external world altogether, or of drawing a distinction between such ideas as are representative and indicate the existence of objects without my mind, and such as are purely imaginary and have no objective reality correspondingi. The former will then be distinguished as real, the latter as unreal presentations. But if, in perception, I am immediately and presentatively conscious of a non-ego, (and such is the soundest

i See Locke, Essay, b. iv. ch. 4. §. 3-12.

view, both in common sense and in philosophy,) the representative idea and its supposed claim to superior reality vanishes altogether. Every presentation is real in itself, some as immediately informing me of the existence of states of my own mind, others as immediately informing me of the existence of objects without; and my judgment about each is equally true, when I assert it to be what it is, and equally false, when I assert it to be what it is not. In this respect, the philosophers of the school of Common Sense have not always consistently adhered to their fundamental principle, in the distinction which they have drawn between perception and imagination *.

But though it is not true that the whole matter of knowledge is furnished by the senses, it cannot be denied that it is entirely furnished by the presentative faculties. And this And this may throw some light on a distinction, concerning which there frequently exists considerable confusion, the distinction between what are, vaguely enough, termed positive and negative ideas'. A positive intuition is one

* See Reid, Inquiry, ch. ii. §. 3, and the antagonist remarks of Stewart, Elements, vol. i. ch. 3. Both discussions might have been cleared of some confusion, by determining accurately what is meant by reality in presentations.

1 A pupil of mine once asserted to me, on the authority of another tutor, that voluntary action was a negative idea, meaning the absence of restraint. If his arms had been strapped tight to his sides from the day of his birth, he would have had a negative idea only of the voluntary motion of the limb.