Unfortunately, as I think, the opponents of Hume have {143} not always met him at the proper point.They have allowed him that we have no original knowledge of power in the objects, and having given this entrance to the sceptic, they find great difficulty in resisting his farther ravages.
Sometimes they have endeavored to discover a <nexus> of some kind <between> the cause and its effect, but have always failed to tell what the bond is.Causation is not to be regarded as a <connection between> cause and effect, but a power in the object, that is, substance (or objects and substances), acting as the cause to produce the effect.Kant labored to oppose the scepticism of the Scotchman by supposing that the mind, by its own forms, bound together events in its contemplation of them.But when he allowed that the power was not in the objects, he introduced a more subtle and perilous scepticism than that which he sought to overthrow.We avoid this subjective idealism by insisting that it is on the bare contemplation of a thing becoming, and not by the mere association of ideas and custom (which may aid), that we declare that it must have had a cause.
He is now prepared to discuss two questions: "Why we attribute a continued existence to objects even when they are not present to the senses, and why we suppose them to have an existence distinct from the mind and perception?" He shows, as to the first, the senses give us nothing but a present perception; and, as to the second, that our perceptions being of ourselves, can never give us the least intimation of any thing beyond.He dwells in the usual manner on the acknowledged unreality of what have been called the secondary qualities of matter, and as we naturally look upon the primary qualities, such as motion and solidity, and the secondary qualities, such as colors, sound, heat and cold, as alike real, so we must philosophically consider them as alike unreal.After the manner of the times, he rejects the notion that we can immediately perceive our bodily frame, and not mere impressions, and that we can know both the" objects and ourselves." But whence, it is asked, the coherence and constancy of certain impressions? He accounts for it on the principle that the thought, according to the laws of association, slides from one impression to others with which it has been joined, and reckons them the same, and mistakes the succession of images for an identity of objects.{144}
The result reached by him is," All our distinct perceptions are distinct existences," and ,the mind never perceives any real connection among distinct existences.""What we call mind is nothing but a heap or collection of different impressions united together by certain relations, and supposed, though falsely, to be endowed with a perfect simplicity and identity." He gives the same account of what we call matter.He shows that having nothing but impressions, we can never, on the mere ground of a conjunction which we have never witnessed, argue from our perceptions to the existence of external continued objects;and he proves (very conclusively, I think, on his assumption), that we could never have any reason to infer that the supposed objects resemble our sensations. He now draws his sceptical conclusion: " There is a direct and total opposition betwixt our reason and our senses, or, more properly speaking, betwixt those conclusions which we form from cause and effect, and those that persuade us of the continued and independent existence of body.When we reason from cause and effect, we conclude that neither color, sound, taste, nor smell have a continued and independent existence.When we exclude these sensible qualities, there remains nothing in the universe which has such an existence."The question is: How is such a scepticism to be met?
Reid opposed it by showing that the sensation leads us intuitively to believe in the existence of the external thing, and that the states of self, known by consciousness, imply a thinking substance.{145} The more correct statement seems to me to be, that we know at once the external objects; that intuitively we know our own frame and objects affecting it; that we are conscious, not of states arguing a self, but of self in a certain state; and that, on comparing a former self recalled by memory and a present self known by consciousness, we declare them to be the same.Kant certainly did not meet the scepticism of Hume in a wise or in an effective manner, when he supposed that the unity was given to the scattered phenomena by forms in the mind.
It is clear that all the usual psychological arguments for the immateriality and immortality of the soul are cut up and destroyed by this theory.We cannot speak of the soul as either material or spiritual, for we know nothing either of matter or spirit except as momentary impressions.The identity which we ascribe to the mind of man is only a fictitious one." Identity is nothing really belonging to these different perceptions, but is merely a quality which we attribute to them because of the union of their ideas in the imagination, when we reflect upon them.