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 ...

REAS ON. 403
right to admission among the incontrovertible maxims of science? And might not the popular cavils against the supposition of the earth's motion, which so long obstructed the progress of the Copernican system have been legitimately opposed,
as a reply of paramount authority, to all the scientific reasonings by which it was supported?
Criteria of First Truths.- It is much to be wished that this
objection, of which Dr. Reid could not fail to be fully aware,
had been more particularly examined and discussed in some of
his publications, than he seems to have thought necessary.
From different parts of his works, however, various important
hints towards a satisfactory answer to it might be easily collected. At present, I shall only remark, that although universality of belief is one of the tests by which, according to him, a
principle of common sense is characterized, it is not the only
test which he represents as essential. Long before his time,
Father Buffier, in his excellent treatise on First Truths, had
laid great stress on two other circumstances, as criteria to be
attended to on such occasions; and although I do not recollect
any passage in Reid where they are so explicitly stated, yet the
general spirit of his reasonings plainly shows, that he had them
constantly in view, in all the practical applications of his doe.
trine. The first criterion mentioned by Buffier is, " That thd
truths assumed as maxims of common sense should be such, that
it is impossible for any disputant either to defend or to attack
them, but by means of propositions which are neither more manifest nor more certain than the propositions in question." The
lect," says Lord Bacon, "is not dry light; but it receives diverse stains
and hues from the will and the affections, and thus creates such sciences
as it longs for; for it readily believes what it wishes to be true." And
again, "It is wrong to say, that the senses are the proper measures of
things; for all our perceptions, whether of sense or of the intellect, conform
rather to the nature of the observer, than to the nature of the thing observed. The human mind is like a mirror imperfectly polished and inaccurately shaped, which imparts its own qualities to the objects reflected
in it, distorting and staining them." —NVov. Organzurn, Aph. XLI. and
XLIX. paraphrased.]