Hume certainly succeeded in raising more questions than he succeeded in answering.  We are compelled to admire the wonderful clearness and simplicity of his style, and the acuteness of his intellect, in every chapter.  But we cannot help feeling that he does injustice to the world in which we live, even when we cannot quite see what is wrong.  Does it not seem certain to science and to common sense that there is an order of nature in some sense independent of our perceptions, so that objects may be assumed to exist whether we do or do not perceive them?

When we read Hume we have a sense that we are robbed of our real external world; and his account of the mind makes us feel as a badly tied sheaf of wheat may be conceived to feel—­in danger of falling apart at any moment.  Berkeley we unhesitatingly call an Idealist, but whether we shall apply the name to Hume depends upon the extension we are willing to give to it.  His world is a world of what we may broadly call ideas; but the tendencies of his philosophy have led some to call it a Skepticism.

50.  THE REVOLT OF “COMMON SENSE.”—­Hume’s reasonings were too important to be ignored, and his conclusions too unpalatable to satisfy those who came after him.  It seemed necessary to seek a way of escape out of this world of mere ideas, which appeared to be so unsatisfactory a world.  One of the most famous of such attempts was that made by the Scotchman Thomas Reid (1710-1796).

At one time Reid regarded himself as the disciple of Berkeley, but the consequences which Hume deduced from the principles laid down by the former led Reid to feel that he must build upon some wholly different foundation.  He came to the conclusion that the line of philosophers from Descartes to Hume had made one capital error in assuming “that nothing is perceived but what is in the mind that perceives it.”

Once admit, says Reid, that the mind perceives nothing save ideas, and we must also admit that it is impossible to prove the existence either of an external world or of a mind different from “a bundle of perceptions.”  Hence, Reid maintains that we perceive—­not infer, but perceive—­things external to the mind.  He writes:[2]—­

“Let a man press his hand against the table—­he feels it hard.  But what is the meaning of this?  The meaning undoubtedly is, that he hath a certain feeling of touch, from which he concludes, without any reasoning, or comparing ideas, that there is something external really existing, whose parts stick so firmly together that they cannot be displaced without considerable force.