XXXV.—Observations on the Speculations of Dr Brown and other recent Metaphysicians, regarding the Exercise of the Senses

Extract

In offering to this Society a few remarks which have occurred to me on this fundamental department of Mental Physiology, I beg in the first place to explain, that my reason for doing so is merely this, that in consequence of certain unguarded expressions, and, as I think, hasty reflections, the opinions of Dr Brown, and likewise of Sir James Mackintosh, and of Lord Jeffrey, and other more recent writers on this subject, have been supposed to be irreconcileably at variance with those of Dr Reid and Mr Stewart; i. e., with those which are usually called the leading doctrines, or essential characteristics, of the Scotch School of Metaphysics, in this fundamental department of the science. And when such difference of opinion is believed to exist among men of generally acknowledged talent, who have studied this subject, and nothing like an experimentum crucis can be pointed out, to compel us to adopt one opinion and reject another,—the natural inference is, that there is something in the study itself, which renders it unfit for scientific inquiry,—that what is called the study of the Mental Faculties granted to our species is, in fact, only a record of the vacillations of human fancy and ingenuity, in the invention and demolition of hypotheses,—and that the subject is one on which it is in vain for our minds to dwell, with any hope of applying the principles of Inductive Science, and acquiring any insight into the laws of Nature, regulating the phenomena presented by the last and greatest of her works, similar to that which is the object and the reward of all other scientific inquiries.