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INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC.
PROP. XXII.————
human intelligence is provided, or than any of the other laws to which human intelligence is subject."
The chief point to be attended to in it.11. This counter-proposition expresses the loose opinion of ordinary thinking in regard to the superior claims of the senses to rank as necessary principles of cognition—an inadvertency which psychology has done little or nothing to correct. The chief circumstance to be attended to in connection with it is, that it records with approval an omission which has been exceedingly prejudicial to the interests of philosophy—the omission, namely, to signalise the distinction between the necessary and the contingent laws of cognition.
The cause of the errors of representationism pointed out.12. Much of the perplexity and inconclusiveness of speculative thinking is to be attributed to the want of this analysis. To this cause the errors of representationism[1] and the insufficiency of Berkeleianism are mainly to be ascribed. It was formerly remarked (Prop. XI. Obs. 10) that the doctrine of a representative perception is an obscure anticipation of the great law of all reason, which- ↑ In case any of our readers should be in doubt as to what is exactly meant by "representationism" it may be remarked, that this is the doctrine which holds that we are cognisant of external objects only in or through some subjective medium, called indifferently by the name of ideas, images, or species,—in other words, that we are cognisant of things only in, or along with, our own perceptions of them; an undeniable truth, in spite of the exertions which Dr Reid made to overthrow it (See Prop. XI. Obs. 9.)
