Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/308

298 was further from his intention than the wish that the world should know the side which, in this controversy, Berkeley had so warmly espoused. Had he furnished this information, he would have frustrated the whole scope of his own observations.

"Men," says Hume, "are carried by a natural instinct or prepossession to repose faith in their senses. When they follow this blind and powerful instinct of nature, they always suppose the very images presented to the senses to be the external objects, and never entertain any suspicion that the one are nothing but representations of the other. But this universal and primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches us that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception. So far, then, we are necessitated by reasoning to contradict or depart from the primary instincts of nature, and to embrace a new system with regard to the evidence of our senses. But here philosophy finds herself extremely embarrassed, when she would justify this new system, and obviate the cavils and objections of the sceptics. She can no longer plead the infallible and irresistible instinct of nature, for that led us to a quite different system, which is acknowledged fallible and even erroneous. And to justify this pretended philosophical system by a chain of clear and convincing argument, or even any appearance of argument, exceeds the power of all human capacity." Then follows the famous sceptical dilemma which was