The Divine Lamp

Article 2

The System of Reid on the Distinction of the Human Faculties.

104.  The difficulty to be overcome in explaining the origin of ideas did not present itself to Dr. Reid in that generality in which I have endeavored to propose it.  He never had occasion to consider it under so wide an aspect, and this is perhaps the reason why we have not on this subject as much as we might have expected from a philosopher of so solid a mind.

    Nevertheless, he saw it partially, and did is best to solve it in the part which he saw; for it is impossible to answer, as Reid professes to do, the arguments of the Idealists and Skeptics, without entering into that difficulty at least to some extent.

105.  To see in what form the difficulty was viewed by him, we must know what were the opinions he underook to impugn.

    As I have before observed, Condillac, misled by the double meaning attributed by him to the word sensation, maintained that between the object of sense (2) and the object of memory there is no essential difference, the first being a present sensation, and the second a sensation also, but past.  He thus believed that these two faculties could be reduced to one; and not only these, but likewise all the other faculties of the human soul; for, according to him, the objects of them all do not differ essentially, being, as he expresses it, nothing but sensation transformed.

    Locke had known that the object of the memory was not the same as that of sense; and he had therefore made a specific distinction between these two faculties.  For instance, when we remember a rose we smelt yesterday, the object of our memory is not the actual smelling of the rose, but an idea, an exemplar, a phantasm, something, in short, which that sensation had left behind it in our soul.

    Berkeley and Hume, who perfected the erroneous system of Locke in England, as Condillac had done in France, strove likewise to bring the objects of sense and memory to one only; and this by supposing that the objects differed merely in the degree of their vividness.

106.  Singular as it may appear, Dr. Reid, while directing his fine talents to combat the idealism and skepticism of these two philosophers, thought it necessary to abolish the distinction which Locke had made between the objects of sense and ideas (3).  He writes: “In the mean time I beg leave to think with the vulgar that when I remember the smell of the garden rose, that very sensation which I had yesterday, and which has now no more any existence, is the immediate object of my memory; and when I imagine it present, the sensation itself, and not any idea of it, is the object of my immagination” (Inquiry into the Human Mind &c., chap. 2, sec 3.).

107.  Them mind, then, can actually think of a thing which is in no way present to it-i.e. neither through an idea, because Dr. Reid repudiates all ideas, exemplars, or signs whatever of the same; nor through the thing itself, because its presence is excluded by the hypothesis!  How this can be, I am wholly at a loss to comprehend.  Neither do I believe that on this point the vulgar are at one with Dr. Reid.   It seems to me, on the contrary, that when an illiterate man remembers a thing which he has seen or felt, he believes , not,  indeed, that he has before him the actual thing itself, but that he recognizes it as that thing, because he has the idea  of it, and the trace left in his soul (4).

 108.  Nevertheless, although Dr. Reid reduces all the objects of the human faculties to one only, he does not do the same with the faculties themselves; and herein his system differs altogether from that of Condillac.  Let us hear how he continues after the words we quoted above: “But though the object of my sensation, memory, and imagination, be in this case the same, yet these acts or operations of the mind are as different and as easily distinguishable as smell, taste and sound.  I am conscious of a difference in kind between sensation and memory, and between both and imagination” (5).  And elsewhere he says: “If a man should maintain that a circle, a square, and a triangle, differ only in magnitude and not in figure, I believe he would find nobody disposed either to believe him or to argue against him; and yet I do not think it less shocking to common sense to maintain that sensation, memory, and imagination, differ only in degree and not in kind” (Inquiry into the Human Mind &c., chap. 2, sec 5.).

I had intended on posting notes to the above, but due to certain circumstances beyond my control, these will have to wait. 

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