Scepticism and Reasonable Doubt. The British Naturalist Tradition in Wilkins, Hume, Reid and Newman (review)

312 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 27:2 APRIL 198 9 of the history of this idea, and especially of Rousseau's acquaintance with the Malebranchian tradition, obviates at least one serious misunderstanding of this fundamental notion: that there is a necessary conflict between the general will and the citizen's individual will. The real conflict is between the general will and the particular will of the individual considered apart from his membership in the political community . There is, and always must be, an inseparable connection between the general will and the citizen's individual will, particularisme--and not individuality--being the enemy of sound political institutions. Since it was Malebranche, even more than Montesquieu, who dealt fully with the question of generality, particularity, individuality and will, Professor Riley affirms that "there is a sense in which he was Rousseau's predecessor." Thanks to Malebranche, a "ready-made notion of non-particular, non-willful will was available to Rousseau, who completed Montesquieu's conversion of the general will of God into the general will of the citizen" (25o). Professor Riley concludes that by turning away from theology Rousseau "wanted to endow human beings with a will, a really efficacious power, that could then be subjected to the generalising influence of civic education" (254). In spite of the impossibility of giving a precise analysis and definition of the will, it remained, in Rousseau's view, an essential part of human nature and enabled man to identify himself with various aspects of generality and order--religious, scientific, political and psychological . In this respect the Malebranchian tradition, which Patrick Riley has examined so carefully, must be related to other influences tending in the same direction--like those of Plato (indicated on ~57), deism and Newtonian science (to mention only a few). Nevertheless, this is an important book which will be of great value to all who are interested in the history of ideas in France. RONALD GRIMSLEY UniversityofBristol M. Jamie Ferreira. Scepticismand Reasonable Doubt. The British Naturalist Tradition in Wilkins, Hume, Reid and Newman. New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1986. Pp. xii + 255. $39.95Ferreira 's book develops (and criticizes) themes initially stated in Henry G. Van Leeuwen's The Problemof Certaintyin English Thought, z63o-i 69o (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963). That book explored a response to scepticism developed by Chillingworth , Tillotson, and Wilkins and ended with Locke's account of knowledge and certainty. The major theme of that study and of Ferreira's is that scepticism can be countered with the doctrine of reasonable doubt--that there is a continuum of certainty ranging from probability to knowledge and that so long as there is no reasonable doubt one can claim certainty of what is believed. Ferreira's book explores the development of the theory of reasonable doubt through Hume, Reid, and Newman and shows how they related scepticism, action, and belief. BOOK REVIEWS 313 Ferreira introduces Wilkins' principle of reasonable doubt as a "threshold" concept . Once evidence has been accumulated to the point where there is no reasonable doubt of a proposition's truth--moral certainty---one has crossed a threshold which gives certainty equivalent to that of scientific knowledge. She acknowledges that there are good reasons for interpreting Locke as a part of the earlier tradition but cites textual evidence in Locke and contends that Hume, Reid and Newman so interpret Locke that it is "possible" that he may be viewed as departing from the earlier tradition. For Locke there is no continuum but a radical discontinuity between probability and knowledge. This means, she contends, that Locke can at best provide a practical but not a philosophical response to scepticism. Ferreira identifies her interpretation of the response to scepticism by Wilkins, Hume, Reid and Newman as "naturalist" in that it makes an appeal to human nature, the law of the mind, or what we as humans say and do. This naturalist appeal is not merely a practical response to scepticism but provides a theoretical basis for one's claims to certainty. Against writers who interpret Hume as saying that scepticism is mitigated by the psychological principle that belief is unavoidable---one is unable to doubt--and that...