only for what is essentially connected with the objection which has given rise to these remarks.

46.

"That any man" (says Dr Priestley)

"should imagine

"that a peculiar instinctive principle was necessary to explain our giving credit to the relations of others, appears "to me, who have been used to see things in a different light, very extraordinary; and yet this doctrine is advan"ced by Dr Reid, and adopted by Dr Beattie. But really" (he adds) what the former says in favour of it, is hardly deserving of the slightest notice*."

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The passage quoted by Dr Priestley, in justification of this very peremptory decision, is as follows: "If credulity "were the effect of reasoning and experience, it must grow

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up and gather strength in the same proportion as reason " and experience do. But if it is the gift of nature, it will "be the strongest in childhood, and limited and restrained

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by experience; and the most superficial view of human "life shews that this last is the case, and not the first."

To my own judgment, this argument of Dr Reid's, when connected with the excellent illustrations which accompany it, carries complete conviction; and I am confirmed in my

* Examination of Reid's Inquiry, &c. p. 82.

opinion by finding, that Mr Smith (a writer inferior to none in acuteness, and strongly disposed by the peculiar bent of his genius, to simplify, as far as possible, the Philosophy of Human Nature) has, in the latest edition of his Theory of Moral Sentiments, acquiesced in this very conclusion; urging in support of it the same reasoning which Dr Priestley affects to estimate so lightly. There seems to be in young chil"dren an instinctive disposition to believe whatever they are "told. Nature seems to have judged it necessary for their

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preservation that they should, for some time at least, put implicit confidence in those to whom the care of their childhood, and of the earliest and most necessary part of their education, is entrusted. Their credulity, accordingly, is excessive, and it requires long and much experience "of the falsehood of mankind to reduce them to a reason"able degree of diffidence and distrust *."—That Mr Smith's opinion also coincided with Dr Reid's, in what he has stated concerning the principle of Veracity, appears evidently from the remarks which immediately follow the passage just quoted.—But I must not add to the length of this memoir by unnecessary citations.

Another instinctive principle mentioned by Reid, is “our belief of the continuance of the present course of nature."

* Smith's Theory, last edit. Part VII. sect. 4.

-"All our knowledge of nature" (he observes)

beyond

"our original perceptions, is got by experience, and consists " in the interpretation of natural signs. The appearance of "the sign is followed by the belief of the thing signified.

Upon this principle of our constitution, not only acquired perception, but also inductive reasoning, and all reasoning "from analogy, is grounded; and, therefore, for want of a "better name, we shall beg leave to call it the inductive principle. It is from the force of this principle that we immediately assent to that axiom, upon which all our knowledge of nature is built, that effects of the same kind must "have the same cause. Take away the light of this induc“tive principle, and experience is as blind as a mole. She

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may indeed feel what is present, and what immediately "touches her, but she sees nothing that is either before or behind, upon the right hand or upon the left, future or past."

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On this doctrine, likewse, the same critic has expressed himself with much severity; calling it "a mere quibble;" and adding, "Every step that I take among this writer's sophisms, raises my astonishment higher than before." In this, however, as in many other instances, he has been led to censure Dr Reid, not because he was able to see farther than his antagonist, but because he did not see quite so far. Turgot, in an article inserted in the French Encyclopédie, and

Condorcet, in a discourse prefixed to one of his mathematical publications*, have, both of them, stated the fact with a true philosophical precision; and, after doing so, have deduced from it an inference, not only the same in substance with that of Dr Reid, but almost expressed in the same form of words.

In these references, as well as in that already made to Mr Smith's Theory, I would not be understood to lay any undue stress on authority, in a philosophical argument. I wish only, by contrasting the modesty and caution resulting from habits of profound thought, with that theoretical intrepidity which a blindness to insuperable difficulties has a tendency to inspire, to invite those whose prejudices against this part of Reid's system rest chiefly on the great names to which they conceive it to be hostile, to re-examine it with a little more attention, before they pronounce finally on its merits.

The prejudices which are apt to occur against a mode of philosophizing, so mortifying to scholastic arrogance, are encouraged greatly by that natural disposition, to refer particular facts to general laws, which is the foundation of all scientific arrangement; a principle of the utmost import

* Essai sur l'application de l'analyse à la probabilité des decisions rendues a la pluralité des voix. Paris 1785.

ance to our intellectual constitution, but which requires the guidance of a sound and experienced understanding to accomplish the purposes for which it was destined. They are encouraged also, in no inconsiderable degree, by the acknowledged success of Mathematicians, in raising, on the basis of a few simple data, the most magnificent, and at the same time the most solid, fabric of science, of which human genius can boast. The absurd references which Logicians are accustomed to make to Euclid's Elements of Geometry, as a model which cannot be too studiously copied, both in Physics and in Morals, have contributed, in this, as in a variety of other instances, to mislead philosophers from the study of facts, into the false refinements of hypothetical theory.

On these misapplications of Mathematical Method to sciences which rest ultimately on experiment and observation, I shall take another opportunity of offering some strictures. At present, it is sufficient to remark the peculiar nature of the truths about which pure or abstract mathematics are conversant. As these truths have all a necessary connection with each other (all of them resting ultimately on those definitions or hypotheses which are the principles of our reasoning), the beauty of the science cannot fail to increase in proportion to the simplicity of the data, compared with the incalculable variety of consequences which they involve: And to the simplifications and generalizations of