Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/271

 270 CEITICAL NOTICES : for the individual, any the simplest actual sensation must already figure as part of a general system of experience ; but it seems not less plain that from another point of view which is the properly psychological one sensations may and (for purposes of science) must be regarded as unrelated. The organs of the different senses, though all physically connected through the one nervous system, have a relative independence, and may in different de- grees be called separately, or when not separately then at least distinguishably, into play. While passive sensations like light and sound can be had to all intents and purposes wholly apart, it is possible also to get at the elements of what appears, at first, as a unitary sense-experience of the active sort (touch, vision, &c.) because the co-efficients (of passive sensation and so-called mus- cular sense) may be made to vary relatively to one another. Now, unless it be maintained consistently that the psychological inves- tigation of the various kinds of sense- experience has no bearing at all upon a theory of objective perception, there can be no ground for complaint that they are viewed, in the first instance, as far as possible, in isolation. From this ground, we have seen, even Prof. Seth cuts himself off; still more Eeid, who never desired to make any distinction between philosophy and psychology (such as is now from any point of view seen to be necessary), while he was most earnest in his wish to proceed upon a psychological basis. Reid might therefore very well have gone much further than he did in the way of such (psychological) assertion as Prof. Seth shakes his head over at p. 88. He was safe enough against thinking (with Hume) that any manipulation of psychological factors, as such, could of itself, straightway, account for a know- ledge of object. The want of system in Eeid's statement and description of the principles of knowledge is brought clearly into view ; at the same time, nothing is passed over that may help to recover for him the philosophic character which it has been the fashion to deny him since the time of Kant or since Kant's depreciatory opinion of him became known. Specially interesting, in this con- nexion, is the reference to the various passages in the Int<'ll<>ctini.l Powers, where Eeid seeks in the forms of language a clue or more than such a mere " clue " as Kant, in corresponding case, sought from the school-logic to the principles, as he called them, of " common sense ". When the function of language in producing and maintaining community of knowledge among men is once considered, its philosophical import is seen to be of the most pro- found and far-reaching character; and Eeid, with his "common sense," is to be blamed only for allowing the more important use of the word " common '' to be overshadowed by its other implica- tion of ' ordinary ' (as having relation to everyday experience and practice). In making what reference he did to language, he shadowed forth a surer method of philosophical analysis than Kant, with all his more laboured art, was able to devise.