. That name, as he
observes, lends itself to an equivocation. Common sense is generally
used as nearly synonymous with 'mother wit,' the average opinion of
fairly intelligent men; and he would prefer to speak of the 'fundamental
laws of belief.'[159] There can, however, be no doubt that the doctrine
derived much of its strength from the apparent confirmation of the
'average opinion' by the 'fundamental laws.' On one side, said Reid, are
all the vulgar; on the other all the philosophers. 'In this division, to
my great humiliation, I find myself classed with the vulgar.'[160] Reid,
in fact, had opposed the theories of Hume and Berkeley because they led
to a paradoxical scepticism. If it be, as Reid held, a legitimate
inference from Berkeley that a man may as well run his head against a
post, there can be no doubt that it is shocking to common sense in every
acceptation of the word. The reasons, however, which Reid and Stewart
alleged for not performing that feat took a special form, which I am
compelled to notice briefly because they set up the mark for the whole
intellectual artillery of the Utilitarians. Reid, in fact, invented what
J. S. Mill called 'intuitions.' To confute intuitionists and get rid of
intuitions was one main purpose of all Mill's speculations. What, then,
is an 'intuition'? To explain that fully it would be necessary to write
once more that history of the philosophical movement from Descartes to
Hume, which has been summarised and elucidated by so many writers that
it should be as plain as the road from St. Paul's to Temple Bar. I am
forced to glance at the position taken by Reid and Stewart because it
has a most important bearing upon the whole Utilitarian scheme. Reid's
main service to philosophy was, in his own opinion,[161] that he refuted
the 'ideal system' of Descartes and his followers. That system, he says,
carried in its womb the monster, scepticism, which came to the birth in
1739,[162] the date of Hume's early _Treatise_. To confute Hume,
therefore, which was Reid's primary object, it was necessary to go back
to Descartes, and to show where he deviated from the right track. In
other words, we must trace the genealogy of 'ideas.' Descartes, as Reid
admitted, had rendered immense services to philosophy. He had exploded
the scholastic system, which had become a mere mass of logomachies and
an incubus upon scientific progress. He had again been the first to
'draw a distinct line between the mater