Elements of the philosophy of the human mind. By Dugald Stewart. Rev. and abridged, with critical and explanatory notes, for the use of colleges and schools. By Francis Bowen ...

REASON. 397
ern skeptics has been more particularly directed? If I be not
deceived, these truths are still more intimately connected witih
the operations of the reasoning faculty than has been generally
imagined; not as the principles (apxat) from which our reasonings set out, and on which they ultimately depend; but as the necessary conditions on which every step of the deduction tacitly
proceeds; or rather (if I may use the expression) as essential
elements which enter into the composition of reason itsetf
2. In this last remark, I have anticipated, in some measure,
what I had to state with respect to the second coincidence
allhded to, between mathematical axioms and the other propositions which I comprehended under the general title of ifundamental laws of human belief. As the truth of axioms is virtually presupposed, or implied, in the successive steps of every
demonstration, so, in every step of our reasonings concerning othe
order of nature, we proceed on the supposition, that the laws by
which it is regulated, will continue uniform as in time past;
and that the material universe has an existence independent of
our perceptions. I need scarcely add, that, in all our reasonings
whatever, whether they relate to necessary or to contingent
truths, our own personal identity, and the evidence of memory,
are virtually taken for granted. These different truths all agree
in this, that they are essentially involved in the exercise of our
rational powers; although, in themselves, they furnish no principles or data by which the sphere of our knowledge can, by an
ingenuity, be enlarged. They agree, further, in being tacitly
acknowledged by all men, learned or ignorant, without any formal
enunciation in words, or even any conscious exercise of reflection. It is only at that period of our intellectual progress, when
scientific arrangements and metaphysical refinements begin to
be introduced, that they become objects of attention to the
mind, and assume the form of propositions.
Objections to the phrase, principles of common sense. - To
the class of truths which I have here called laws of belief, or
elements of reason, the title of principles of common sense was
long ago given by Father Buffier, whose language and doctrine
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