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1847.] the belief in question be not the fact, what has hitherto prevented scepticism from putting a final extinguisher on Reid's appeal by proving that no such belief exists? A very sufficient reason has prevented scepticism from doing this, from explicitly extinguishing the appeal. There is a division of labour in speculation as well as in other pursuits. It is the sceptic's business simply to deny the existence of the belief: it is no part of his business to exhibit the grounds of his denial. We have explained these grounds; but were the sceptic to do this, he would be travelling out of his vocation. Observe how the case stands. The reason why matter per se is not and cannot be believed in, is because it is impossible for thought to disengage matter from perception, and consequently it is impossible for thought to believe in the disengaged existence of matter. The matter to be believed in is not disengaged from the perception, consequently it cannot be believed to be disengaged from the perception. But unless it be believed to be disengaged from the perception, it cannot be believed to exist per se. In short, as we have already said, the impossibility of complying with the condition of the belief is the ground on which the sceptic denies the existence of the belief. But the sceptic is himself debarred from producing these grounds. Why? Because their exhibition would be tantamount to a rejection of the principle which he has accepted at the hands of the orthodox and dogmatic psychologist. That principle is the analysis so often spoken of—the separation, namely, of the perception of matter into perception and matter per se. The sceptic accepts this analysis. His business is simply to accept, not to discover or scrutinise principles. Having accepted the analysis, he then denies that any belief attaches to the existence of matter per se. In this he is quite right. But he cannot, consistently with his calling, exhibit the ground of his denial; for this ground is, as we have shown, the impossibility of performing the analysis, of effecting the requisite disengagement. But the sceptic has accepted the analysis, has admitted the disengagement. He therefore cannot now retract: and he has no wish to retract. His special mission, his only object, is to confound the principle which he has accepted by means of the reaction of its consequences. The inevitable consequence which ensues when the analysis of the perception of matter is admitted is the extinction of all belief in the existence of matter. The analysis gives us a kind of matter to believe in to which no belief corresponds. The sceptic is content with pronouncing this to be the fact without going into its reason. It is not his business to correct, by a direct exposure, the error of the principle which the dogmatist lays down, and which he accepts. The analysis is the psychologist's affair; let him look to it. Were the sceptic to make it his, he would emerge from the sceptical crisis, and pass into a new stage of speculation. He, indeed, subverts it indirectly by a reductio ad absurdum. But he does not say that he subverts it; he leaves the orthodox proposer of the principle to find that out.

Reid totally misconceived the nature of scepticism and idealism in their bearings on this problem. He regarded them as habits of thought, as dispositions of mind peculiar to certain individuals of vexatious character and unsound principles, instead of viewing them as catholic eras in the development of all genuine speculative thinking. In his eyes they were subjective crotchets limited to some, and not objective crises common to all who think. He made personal matters of them, a thing not to be endured. For instance, in dealing with Hume, he conceived that the scepticism which confronted him in the pages of that great genius was Hume's scepticism, and was not the scepticism of human nature at large—was not his own scepticism just as much as it was Hume's. His soul, so he thought, was free from the obnoxious flaw, merely because his anatomy, shallower than Hume's, refused to lay it bare. With such views it was impossible for Reid to eliminate scepticism and idealism from philosophy. These foes are the foes of each man's own house and heart, and