a remedy. Men could not rest in a state of permanent scepticism, in a world utterly incapable of being rationally explained. Even the propounder of the theories allowed this to be true; and as for others, they felt that they were rational beings, and this signified that there was system in the world.
A champion arose when things were at their worst in Thomas Reid, the founder, or at least the chiefest ornament, of the so-called Scottish School of Philosophy. He it was who set himself to add the principle of the coherence of the Universe, and the consequent possibility of establishing Faith once more in the world. Reid, to begin with, instead of looking at Hume's results as serious, regarded them as necessarily absurd. He started a new theory of his own, the theory of Immediate Perception, which signified that we are able immediately to apprehend—not ideas only, but the Truth. And how, we may ask, can this be done?
It had been pointed out first of all that sensations as understood by Locke—that is, the relations so called by Locke—might be separated from sensation in itself; in fact, that these first pertained to mind. Hence we have a dualistic system given us to start with, and the question is how the two sides are to be connected? What does this theory of Immediate Perception, which Reid puts forward as the solution, mean? Is it just a mechanical union of two antitheses, or is it something more?
As to this last, perhaps the real answer would be that it both is, and is not. That is, the philosophy of Reid would seem still dualistic in its nature; it certainly implies the mechanical contact of two confronting substances whose independence is vigorously maintained,
