other hand, who
takes Reid's own ground, may regard the statement only as a useful
challenge to further inquiry. The analysis hitherto given may be
insufficient, but where Reid has failed, other inquirers may be more
successful. As soon, in fact, as we apply the psychological method, and
regard the 'philosophy of mind' as an 'inductive science,' it is
perilous, if not absolutely inconsistent, to discover 'intuitions' which
will take us beyond experience. The line of defence against empiricism
can only be provisional and temporary. In his main results, indeed, Reid
had the advantage of being on the side of 'common sense.' Everybody was
already convinced that there were sticks and stones, and everybody is
prepared to hear that their belief is approved by philosophy. But a
difficulty arises when a similar method is applied to a doctrine
sincerely disputed. To the statement, 'this is a necessary belief,' it
is a sufficient answer to reply, 'I don't believe it,' In that case, an
intuition merely amounts to a dogmatic assumption that I am infallible,
and must be supported by showing its connection with beliefs really
universal and admittedly necessary.

Dugald Stewart followed Reid upon this main question, and with less
force and originality represents the same point of view. He accepts
Reid's view of the two co-ordinate departments of knowledge; the science
of which mind, and the science of which body, is the object. Philosophy
is not a 'theory of knowledge' or of the universe; but, as it was then
called, 'a philosophy of the human mind.' 'Philosophy' is founded upon
inductive psychology; and it only becomes philosophy in a wider sense in
so far as we discover that as a fact we have certain fundamental
beliefs, which are thus given by experience, though they take us in a
sense beyond experience. Jeffrey, reviewing Stewart's life of Reid, in
the _Edinburgh Review_ of 1804, makes a significant inference from this.
Bacon's method, he said, had succeeded in the physical sciences, because
there we could apply experiment. But experiment is impossible in the
science of mind; and therefore philosophy will never be anything but a
plaything or a useful variety of gymnastic. Stewart replied at some
length in his _Essays_,[168] fully accepting the general conception, but
arguing that the experimental method was applicable to the science of
mind. Jeffrey observes that it was now admitted that the 'profoundest
reasonings' had brought us