Dr. Reid represents Mr. Locke as giving an influence in favor of the idealism of Berkeley, by resting our belief in the existence of matter upon argument. So far from this, he places our knowledge of material objects, upon the immediate evidence of the senses. "It is the actual receiving of ideas from without, that gives us notice of the existence of other things; and makes us know, that something doth exist, at that time, without us." "I think no body can, in earnest, be so sceptical, as to be uncertain of the things which he sees and feels." Then he adds: "But besides the assurance we have from our senses themselves, that they do not err in the information they give us, of the existence without us, when they are affected by them, we are farther confirmed in this assurance, by other concurrent reasons." B. IV. ch. ii. § 2, 3. These "concurrent reasons," Dr. Reid seems to represent, as the only foundation upon which Mr. Locke rests our knowledge of material objects.

The idealism of Locke will be overthrown, when it can be proved, that we have no objects of our thoughts; that whenever we think, we are thinking about nothing. The idealism of the Peripatetic school is something widely different. Locke appears to have been willing to leave it as he found it; referring to it incidentally, in a few passages only. It is evident, that he was not much enamored with it. He speaks of "those places which brought the Peripatetic philosophy into their schools, where it continued many ages, without teaching the world any thing but the art of wrangling." B. IV. ch. vii. § 11. The idealism of Locke is the fact, that when we think we are conscious of thinking about something, and this something, whatever it may be,-substance, quality, or action, real or imaginary, he calls an idea. The idealism of the Peripatetics, and schoolmen, is the hypothesis, that there are images in the brain, or at the mind, which are the means of thought.

One of the grossest of all the perversions of the principles and language of Locke, is the theory brought forward by Condillac and his followers, in France, denominated the sensual system. These philosophers have reversed the argument of Berkeley; proceeding, however, on his principle of the resemblance between our ideas and the objects of sense. He takes for granted the acts of the mind; and arrives at the conclusion, that we can have no knowledge of any thing which does not resemble these. They take for granted the qualities of matter; and consider all our thoughts and feelings as resembling these. They represent all the operations of the understanding, not only as originating in sensation, but as being themselves transformed sensations, copies, or relics of sensation. They ascribe all our knowledge to this single source. It is truly marvelous, that any one who had read the Essay of Locke, ever so superficially, should venture to claim him, as furnishing the basis of a theory like this. His whole work is constructed upon the plan of deriving all our knowledge from two distinct sources, sensation and reflection. This is the prominent feature of the book. After disposing of the subject of innate ideas, and expressing his belief, that all our knowledge is acquired; he enters upon a formal statement of the distinction between the two methods by which thoughts are introduced into our minds. As Dugald Stewart observes: "Through the whole of his Essay, he uniformly represents sensation and reflection, as radically distinct sources of knowledge." Even Cousin asserts, that "Locke admits two distinct sources of ideas; he does not confound the operations of the soul with sensations." p. 35. "By reflection," says Locke, “ I would be understood to mean, that notice which the mind takes of its own operations;" evidently including, under the term notice, not only consciousnes, as defined by logicians, but also attention, contemplation, and memory. We firmly protest against the practice, countenanced even by Cousin, of confounding two systems, differing so widely from each other, as those of Locke, and of the French materialists, by giving them the common appellation of sensualism. Locke's derives only a part of our knowledge from sensation. Does any philosophy do less than this? We agree with Mr. Locke, in the leading principle of his system, that although we have innate capacities, and a faculty of intuitively perceiving truth, yet we have no evidence, that any of our knowledge is innate, that is, imprinted on the mind at the first moment of our existence; but that, so far as we have the means of knowing, the materials of our intellectual furniture are all acquired; and that, with the exception of immediate inspiration, they are acquired by experience, by external and internal observation. But we are not prepared to follow, when he pushes his theory to the extreme which he does, in some passages of his work, of considering all our ideas as either objects of sensation, or objects of consciousness; either external material things, or operations of our own minds. These unquestionably furnish by far the greater portion of the materials of our knowledge, but not absolutely all. To give, at present, but a single example of an object of thought, which is neither material nor mental. Time is not an object of sense. We can neither see it, nor hear it, nor taste it. Nor is it, in our apprehension, an operation of the mind, a thought, a feeling, or a volition. Still it may be true, that even this is first introduced to our notice by means of sensation and reflection. In this qualified sense, then, we would be understood to adopt Mr. Locke's fundamental principle, that although all the materials of thinking are not strictly objects of perception or of consciousness, yet, so far as we are able to observe, they are brought before the mind by means of sensation and reflection.

To come more directly to the work of Cousin. After a few complimentary observations on the independent spirit of investigation which characterizes the philosophy of Locke and his followers, he proceeds to remark on the method on which the Essay on the Understanding is constructed. p. 8. This he approves, so far at least as this, that it begins not with ontology, the essence of the mind, but with psychology, the phenomena of the understanding: mistaking, however, as we apprehend, Mr. Locke's definition of idea; supposing him to use the word to express thought itself, and not the object of thought. p. 14. He then proposes a subdivision of mental phenomena, into the actual and the primitive.

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This is not all. Within these limits there is ground likewise for two distinct orders of investigation.

We may investigate by internal observation the ideas which are in the human understanding as it is now developed in the present state of things. The object, in this case, is to collect the phenomena of the understanding as they are given in consciousness, and to state accurately their differences and resemblances, so as to arrive at length at a good classification of all these phenomena.

This done, you will know the understanding as it is at present. But has it always been what it is at present? Since the day when its opperations began, has it not undergone many changes? These phenomena, whose characters you have with so much penetration and fidelity analyzed and reproduced, have they always been what they are and what they now appear to you? May they not have had at their birth certain characters which have disappeared, or have wanted at the outset certain characters which they have since acquired? This is a point to be examined. Hence the important question of the origin of ideas, or the primitive characters of the phenomena of the understanding.

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The question of the present state of our ideas, and that of their origin, are then two distinct questions, and both of them are necessary to constitute a complete psychology. In so far as psychology has not surveyed and exhausted these two orders of researches, it is unacquainted with the phenomena of the understanding; for it has not apprehended them under all their aspects. It remains to see with which we should commence. Shall we begin by investigating the actual characters of our ideas, or by investigating their origin? For as to the process of their generation and the passage from their primitive to their present state, it is clear that we can know nothing of it, till after we have exactly recognized and determined both the one and the other state. But which of these two shall we study first?

Shall we begin, for example, with the question of the origin of ideas? It is, without doubt, a point extremely curious and extremely important. Man aspires to penetrate the origin of every thing, and particularly of the phenomena that pass within him. He cannot rest satisfied without having gained this. The question concerning the origin of ideas is undeniably in the human mind; it has then its place and its claim in science. It must come up at some time, but should it come up the first? In the first place it is full of obscurity. The mind is a river which we cannot easily ascend. Its source, like that of the Nile, is a mystery. How, indeed, shall we catch the fugitive phenomena, by which the birth and first springing up of thought is marked? Is it by memory? But you have forgotten what passed within you then; you did not even remark it. Life and thought then go on without our heeding the manner in which we think and live; and memory yields not up the deposit that was never intrusted to it. Will you consult others? They are in the same perplexity with yourself. Will you make the infant mind your study? But who will unfold what passes beneath the veil of infant thought? The attempt to do it readily conducts to conjectures, to hypotheses. But is it thus you would begin an experimental science? It is evident, that if you start with this question concerning the origin of ideas, you start with precisely the most difficult question.

Wisdom, then, good sense and logic demand, that omitting provisionally the question of the origin of ideas, we should be content first to observe the ideas as they now are, the characters which the phenomena of intelligence actually have at present in the consciousness." pp. 16, 17, 18, 19.

Cousin objects to the method of Locke, that it inverts the proper order of investigation; that it commences with the more difficult problem, the origin of our ideas, and postpones or even omits the characters and classification of our mental operations, what may be properly called the statistics of psychology. p. 20. There is some weight in these observations. Yet, as Locke did not profess to furnish a complete system of mental philosophy, he had a right to select his own topics for discussion; and he has actually interwoven many observations on the nature of our ideas, with his inquiries concerning their origin. According to Cousin, the position of Locke, which has been the occasion of the " theory of sensation transformed, of sensation, as the sole and single principle of all operations of the mind," is this, that among the several mental faculties, the one which is first called into exercise, is that of perception. p. 37. Yet Cousin himself admits, that the first materials of our knowledge are derived from the external world. pp. 133, 182. So far as this position furnishes, to the sensual school of France, an apology for leaning on Locke for support, let them avail themselves of it. But let them not make him responsible for a doctrine diametrically opposed to the fundamental principle of his system. M. Cousin, in attempting to show the insufficiency of Mr. Locke's theory to account for the origin of all our knowledge, adduces our idea of space. Is this an object of sense? Can we see it, or taste it, or feel it? We may see or feel the boundaries of certain portions of space, marked out by

visible or tangible objects. But this is not making space itself an object of our senses. Nothing can act upon these but matter, or, as Mr. Locke calls it, body.

According to Locke himself, the idea of space, and the idea of body, are totally distinct. To establish this distinction, and place it in clearer light, let us now notice the different characters which these two ideas present.

You have an idea of a body. You believe that it exists. But is it possible to suppose, and could you suppose, that such a body did not exist? I would ask you, can you not suppose this book to be destroyed? Undoubtedly. Can you not also suppose the whole world to be destroyed, and no body to be actually existing? Unquestionably you can.

For you, constituted as you are, the supposition of the non-existence of bodies involves no contradiction. And what do we term the idea of a thing which we conceive as possibly non-existent? It is termed a contingent and relative idea. But if you should suppose the book destroyed, the world destroyed, all matter destroyed, could you suppose space destroyed? Can you suppose, that if there were no body existent, there would then no longer remain any space for the bodies which might come into existence? You are not able to make the supposition. Though it is in the power of the human mind, to suppose the non-existence of body, it is not in its power to suppose the non-existence of space. The idea of space is then necessary and absolute. You have, then, two characteristics perfectly distinct, by which the ideas of body and of space are separated. p. 44.

If Mr. Locke's theory be taken in its extreme dimensions, as affirming, that all the materials of our knowledge are objects of sense, or of consciousness, it is contradicted by the fact, that space is neither an object of sense, nor a mental operation. But does it follow, that our idea of space is not first introduced into the mind by means of sensation? If we rightly understand M. Cousin, he admits, that our idea of body is introduced by sensation, and that this necessarily brings with it the idea of space.

There are two sorts of origin. There are, in the assemblage of human intellections, two orders of relations which it is important clearly to distinguish.

Two ideas being given, we may inquire whether the one does not suppose the other; whether the one being admitted, we must not admit the other likewise, or be guilty of a paralogism. This is the logical order of ideas.

If we regard the question of the origin of ideas under this point of view, let us see what result it will give in respect to the particular inquiry before us.

The idea of body and the idea of space being given, which supposes the other? Which is the logical condition of the admission of the other? Evidently the idea of space is the logical condition of the admission of the idea of body. In fact, take any body you please, and you cannot