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INSTITUTES OF METAPHYSIC.
PROP. IX.————
the same time. If that position could be made good, it would at once establish both the independent existence of matter, and a doctrine of intuitive perception. But the position is one which runs counter to every law of human knowledge, both contingent and necessary. Whenever we know material things, we are cognisant of our own senses (sight or touch, &c.) as well: it thus runs counter to the contingent laws. Again, whenever we know material things, we know ourselves as well: it thus runs counter to the necessary laws. This doctrine of intuitive perception, therefore, is a theory which sets at defiance every law of intelligence, and which consequently fails to overtake either of the aims which its author had in view.
His character as a philsopher18. But Dr Reid, honest man, must not be dealt with too severely. With vastly good intentions, and very excellent abilities for everything except philosophy, he had no speculative genius whatever—positively an anti-speculative turn of mind, which, with a mixture of shrewdness and naïveté altogether incomparable, he was pleased to term "common sense;" thereby proposing as arbiter in the controversies in which he was engaged, an authority which the learned could not well decline, and which the vulgar would very readily defer to. There was good policy in this appeal. The standard of the exact reason did not quite suit him, neither was