The problem of responsibility is here as complicated as that of the prince-bishop, who swore as a prince and not as a bishop. “But, highness, if the prince is damned, what will become of the bishop?” said the peasant. [54] “Lay Sermons, Essays and Reviews,” p. 355. [55] “Essai de Psychologie,” chap. xxvii. [56] In justice to Reid, however, it should be stated that the chapters on sensation in the “Essays on the Intellectual Powers” (1785) exhibit a great improvement. He is, in fact, in advance of his commentator, as the note to Essay II. chap. ii. p. 248 of Hamilton’s edition shows. [57] Haller, amplifying Descartes, writes in the “Primæ Lineæ,” CCCLXVI.—“Non est adeo obscurum sensum omnem oriri ab objecti sensibilis impressione in nervum quemcumque corporis humani, et eamdem per eum nervum ad cerebrum pervenientem tunc demum representari animæ, quando cerebrum adtigit. Ut etiam hoc falsum sit animam inproximo per sensoria nervorumque ramos sentire.”... DLVII.—“Dum ergo sentimus quinque diversissima entia conjunguntur: corpus quod sentimus: organi sensorii adfectio ab eo corpore: cerebri adfectio a sensorii percussione nata: in anima nata mutatio: animæ denique conscientia et sensationis adperceptio.” Nevertheless, Sir William Hamilton gravely informs his hearers:—“We have no more right to deny that the mind feels at the finger points, as consciousness assures us, than to assert that it thinks exclusively in the brain.”—“Lecture on Metaphysics and Logic,” ii. p. 128. “We have no reason whatever to doubt the report of consciousness, that we actually perceive at the external point of sensation, and that we perceive the material reality.”—_Ibid._ p. 129. [58] “Observations on Man,” vol. i. p. 11. [59] _Ibid._ p. 8. The speculations of Bonnet are remarkably similar to those of Hartley; and they appear to have originated independently, though the “Essai de Psychologie” (1754) is of five years’ later date than the “Observations on Man” (1749). [60] “An Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense,” chap. ii. § 2. Reid affirms that “it is genius, and not the want of it, that adulterates philosophy, and fills it with error and false theory;” and no doubt his own lucubrations are free from the smallest taint of the impurity to which he objects. But, for want of something more than that sort of “common sense,” which is very common and a little dull, the contemner of genius did not notice that the admission here made knocks so big a hole in the bottom of “common sense philosophy,” that nothing can save it from foundering in the dreaded abyss of Idealism. [61] The following diagrammatic scheme may help to elucidate the theory of sensation:—