The Divine Lamp

Article 5. Objection Urged By Reid Against Locke.
115. Reid, then, perceived that the system of Locke was defective, and although he did not clearly see in what the defect consisted, he was nevertheless in a position to urge some weighty objections against it.
He presented the whole problem of the origin of ideas in the following form: “Does simple apprehension of things precede the judgment which affirms their existence, as Locke and his followers maintain, or, is the simple apprehension preceded by this judgment?”
of these two alternatives, he declared for the second.
“It is acknowledged by all,” he says, “that sensation must go before memory and imagination; and hence it necessarily follows that apprehension, accompanied with belief and knowledge, must go before simple apprehension, at least in the matter we are speaking of. So that here, instead of saying that the belief or knowledge is got by putting together and comparing the simple apprehensions, we ought rather to say that the simple apprehension is performed by resolving and analysing a NATURAL AND ORIGINAL JUDGMENT.” (Reid: An Inquiry, &c., chap 2. sec. 4.)
Article 6. Reid Places Judgment Before Ideas.
116. Certainly in the words just quoted there is a flash of light.
Dr. Reid see quite clearly that the supposition of his adversaries, that man acquires in the first place the simple apprehension of things, and then, through comparisons and judgments, the persuasion of their real existence, is inadmissible.
His adversaries, on the other hand, saw not less clearly that it is impossible for a man to be intimately persuaded that a certain thing exists, without affirming its existence y a judgment. But they saw, at the same time, that no man can make a judgment if he is supposed to be wholly devoid of ideas. They imagined, therefore, that the persuasion of the existence of the things perceived was not contemporaneous with the perception itself, but followed afterwards, when man, having already perceived the things, is in possession of their ideas, and can compare these together, and through this comparison make the judgment affirmatory of the real existence of things, and thus have the persuasion in question.
But to Dr. Reid this “appears to be all fiction,” prompted by the love of system, and “without any foundation in nature.”
In his opinion, an unprejudiced observation of the facts as it really takes place, will show that we perceive external things by means of our senses, and that thereupon we instantly make “A NATURAL AND ORIGINAL JUDGMENT” which persuades us of the real existence of those things. The perception having thus been formed, we, by an act of abstraction, separate the things from their real existence, present as well as past, and contemplate them purely in that manner which is called simple apprehension, or the concept of a thing divested of the persuasion and thought of its real existence.