Locke. According to the Scottish philosopher's opinion, all our ideas or knowledge may be divided into two grand branches; namely, impressions and ideas. Impressions embrace all our sensations from our external senses; and ideas comprehend all those thoughts which relate to the higher functions of the mind, as remembering, imagining, reasoning, &c. These superior ideas or notions, he maintains, are copies of our impressions; and the terms we employ in denoting them are the only objects or signs with which a philosopher has anything to do in the consideration of them.

Bishop Berkeley had just preceded Hume, and aimed at showing that we had no good grounds for supposing there was any such thing as matter, apart from the sensations which it produced in us. Hume conceived that the Bishop had stopped short in his route, and that he ought to have applied the same principles of reasoning to mind also. Hume says of Berkeley, "Most of the writings of that very ingenious philosopher form the best lessons of scepticism which are to be found either among the ancient or modern philosophers, Bayle not excepted. He professes in his title-page (and undoubtedly with great truth) to have composed his book against the Sceptics as well as against the Atheists and Free-thinkers. But that all his arguments, though otherwise intended, are in reality merely sceptical, appears from this, that they admit of no answer, and produce no conviction."

Berkeley maintained we had no experience of an external universe, save from our perceptions; and

Hume, following the same mode of reasoning, says we can have no idea of mind either, but from our own conception or ideas of it. Everything, in the way of knowledge, of which we can boast, is comprised in impressions and ideas; and these do not furnish us with a knowledge of anything we may call mind, beyond a mere succession of them.

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These opinions of Hume's excited great attention among philosophers in all parts of Europe. Many severely condemned them, and considered them not only foolish, but destructive to all rational ideas of morality and religion. His scepticism became a standing topic for ridicule and banter. Nothing but impressions and ideas in nature" had a startling sound to philosophic ears. But his scepticism was not, in this part of his system, of such an absolute description as is commonly imagined; in fact, the real difference between himself and his antagonists was more apparent than real; more in verbal phraseology than in principle. He had to make such qualifications of his views as brought him fully within the threshold of orthodoxy and commonsense. His language is very striking. "Nature," says he, "by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has determined us to judge as well as to breathe and feel; nor can we any more forbear viewing certain objects in a stronger and fuller light upon account of their customary connection with a present impression, than we can hinder ourselves from thinking as long as we are awake, or seeing the surrounding bodies when we turn our eyes towards them in broad sunshine. Whoever

has taken the pains to refute the cavils of this total scepticism, has really disputed without an antagonist, and endeavoured by arguments to establish a faculty which nature has antecedently implanted in the mind, and rendered unavoidable." Again, "If belief were a simple act of the thought, without any peculiar manner of conception, or the addition of force or vivacity, it must infallibly destroy itself, and in every case terminate in a total suspension of judgment. But as experience will sufficiently convince any one that although he finds no error in my arguments, yet he still continues to believe and think and reason as usual, he may safely conclude that his reasoning and belief is some sensation or peculiar manner of conception, which it is impossible for mere ideas and reflection to destroy.

....Thus the sceptic still continues to reason and believe, even though he asserts that he cannot defend his reason by reason; and by the same rule he must assent to the principle concerning the existence of body, though he cannot pretend by any arguments of philosophy to maintain its veracity. Nature has not left this to his choice, and has doubtless esteemed it an affair of too great importance to be trusted to our uncertain reasonings and speculations. We may well ask, what causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? but it is in vain to ask whether there be body or not; that is a point which we must take for granted in all our reasonings.'

* Treatise on Human Nature, Part 4.

These qualifications and confessions bring him to the same point as his adversaries; he must acknowledge the existence and supremacy of those "fundamental principles of belief," which have, ever since his day, been put forward as a check against the licentiousness of his scepticism.*

The most important part of Mr. Hume's philosophical theory is that which relates to cause and effect. This is especially worthy of notice, for the momentous consequences involved in it. He maintains that all the reasonings of Hobbes, Dr. Clarke, and Locke, to prove the proposition that

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every effect must have a cause," are completely fallacious and absurd; or to use his own words, "that every demonstration which has been produced for the necessity of a cause to every new existence, is fallacious and sophistical." The principle of his theory is contained in these few words; "One event follows another; but we never observe any tie between them. They seem conjoined, but never connected. And as we can have no idea of any thing which never appeared to our outward sense or inward sentiment, the necessary conclusion seems to be that we have no idea of power at all; and that words of this kind are absolutely without any meaning, when employed either in philosophical reason

*Sir James Mackintosh relates that he once observed to the late Dr. Ihomas Brown, of Edinburgh, that he thought Reid and Hume differed more in words than opinion; and that Brown answered, " Yes, Reid bawled out, We must believe in an outward world; but added in a whisper, We can give no reason for our belief. Hume cries out, We can give no reason for such a notion; and whispers, I own we cannot get rid off it.”

ings or in common life."* In the course of his reasonings on this subject, he endeavours to show that all physical causes and effects are known to us merely as antecedents and consequents; or that one event follows or goes before another. "When we look about us towards external objects, and consider the operations of causes, we are never able in a single instance to discover any power or necessary connection, any quality which binds the effect to the cause, and renders the one an infallible consequence of the other. We only find that the one does actually in fact follow the other. The impulse of one billiard-ball is attended with motion in the second. This is the whole that appears to the outward senses. The mind feels no sentiment or inward impression from this succession of objects; consequently, there is not, in any single instance of cause and effect, any thing which can suggest the idea of power or necessary connection."+

The author seems to have considered this theory of causation as of a very startling nature; for he tells us, "I am sensible that, of all the paradoxes which I have had, or shall hereafter have, occasion to advance in the course of this treatise, the present is the most violent."

The theory is specious, but that is all that can be said of it. There is more involved in our ideas of cause and effect, than mere sequences; there is the idea of power; and in reference to mental operations, that of intelligence and will besides.