custom; but this is a makeshift, not a solution of the
problem, an acknowledgment of the evil, not a cure for it. Further, Hume's
greatness does not consist in the fact that he preached modesty to the
contending parties, that he banished the doubting reason into the study
and restricted life to belief in probabilities, but in the mental strength
which enabled him to endure sharp contradictions, and, instead of an
overhasty and easy reconciliation, to suspend the one impulse until the
other had made its demands thoroughly, completely, and regardlessly heard.
Though he is distinguished from other skeptics by the fact that he not
only shows the fundamental conceptions of our knowledge of nature and the
principles of religion uncertain and erroneous, but finds _necessary_
errors in them and acutely uncovers their origin in the lawful workings
of our inner life, yet his historical influence essentially rests on his
skepticism. In his own country it roused in the "Scottish School" the
reaction of common sense, while in Germany it helped to wake a kindred but
greater spirit from the bonds of his dogmatic slumbers, and to fortify him
for his critical achievements.

(c) %The Scottish School%.--Priestley's associational psychology,
Berkeley's idealism, and Hume's skepticism are legitimate deductions from
Locke's assumption that the immediate objects of thought are not things but
ideas, and that judgment or knowledge arises from the combination of ideas
originally separate. The absurdity of the consequences shows the falsity of
the premises. The true philosophy must not contradict common sense. It
is not correct to look upon the mind as a sheet of white paper on which
experience inscribes single characters, and then to make the understanding
combine these originally disconnected elements into judgments by means of
comparison, and the belief in the existence of the object come in as a
later result added to the ideas by reflection. It is rather true that the
elements discovered by the analysis of the cognitive processes are far from
being the originals from which these arise. It is not isolated ideas that
come first, but judgments, self-evident axioms of the understanding, which
form part of the mental constitution with which God has endowed us; and
sensation is accompanied by an immediate belief in the reality of the
object. Sensation guarantees the presence of an external thing possessing a
certain character, although it is not an