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Rh sort of compounded sensation; but this judgment leads us into no error with respect to philosophical truth. The moment we exercise our reason, we see the fact in its true light, and can account completely for that illusive appearance which it presents to the imagination.”

Not satisfied, however, with this solution of the difficulty, or rather perhaps apprehensive that it might not appear quite satisfactory to some others, he has called in to his assistance the doctrine of original sin; asserting, that all the mistaken judgments which our constitution leads us to form concerning external objects and their qualities, are the consequences of the fall of our first parents; since which adventure (as it is somewhat irreverently called by Dr Beattie), it requires the constant vigilance of reason to guard against the numberless tricks and impostures practised upon us by our external senses. In another passage, Malebranche observes very beautifully (though not very consistently with his theological argument on the same.point), that our senses being given us for the preservation of our bodies, it was requisite for our well-being, that we should judge as we do of sensible qualities. “In the case of the sensations of pain and of heat, it was much more advantageous that we should seem to feel them in those parts of the body which are immediately affected by them, than that we should associate them with the external objects by which they are occasioned; because pain and heat, having the power to injure our members, it was necessary that we should be warned in what place to apply the remedy; whereas colours not being likely, in ordinary cases, to hurt the eye, it would have been superfluous for us to know that they are painted on the retina. On the contrary, as they are only useful to us, from the information they convey with respect to things external, it was essential that we should be so formed as to attach them to the corresponding objects on which they depend.