believe that it is the external object which we immediately perceive, and not a representative image of it only. It is for this reason that they look upon it as perfect lunacy to call in question the existence of external objects."-"The vulgar are firmly persuaded that the very identical objects which they perceive, continue to exist when they do not perceive them: and are no less firmly persuaded, that when ten men look at the sun or the moon they all see the same individual object." Speaking of Berkeley,— "The vulgar opinion he reduces to this, that the very things which we perceive by our senses do really exist. This he grants.”3—“It is, therefore, acknowledged by this philosopher to be a natural instinct or prepossession, an universal and primary opinion of all men, that the objects which we immediately perceive by our senses are not images in our minds, but external objects, and that their existence is independent of us and our perception."4 In the fourth place, all philosophers agree that consciousness has an immediate knowledge, and affords an absolute certainty of the reality, of its object. Reid, as we have seen, limits the name of consciousness to self-consciousness, that is, to the immediate knowledge we possess of the modifications of self; whereas, he makes perception the faculty by which we are immediately cognizant of the qualities of the not-self. In these circumstances, if Reid either, 1°, Maintain, that his immediate perception of external things is convertible with their reality; or, 2°, Assert, that, in his doctrine of perception, the external reality stands to the percipient mind face to face, in the same immediacy of relation which the idea holds in the representative theory of the philosophers; or, 3°, Declare the identity of his own opinion with the vulgar belief, as thus expounded by himself and the philosophers; or, 4°, Declare, that his Perception affords us equal evidence of the existence of external phænomena, as his Consciousness affords us of the existence of internal;-in all and each of these suppositions, he would unambiguously declare himself a natural realist, and evince that his doctrine of perception is one not of a mediate or representative, but of an immediate or intuitive knowledge. And he does all four. The first and second. "We have before examined the reasons given by philosophers to prove that ideas, and not external objects, are the immediate objects of perception. We shall only here observe, that if external objects be perceived immediately" [and 1 Works, p. 274. - Ed. 3 Works, p. 284.- ED. 4 Ibid., p. 299.- ED. he had just before asserted for the hundredth time that they were so perceived], "we have the same reason to believe their existence as philosophers have to believe the existence of ideas, while they hold them to be the immediate objects of perception."1 The third. Speaking of the perception of the external world, "We have here a remarkable conflict between two contradictory opinions, wherein all mankind are engaged. On the one side, stand all the vulgar, who are unpractised in philosophical researches, and guided by the uncorrupted primary instincts of nature. On the other side, stand all the philosophers, ancient and modern; every man, without exception, who reflects. In this division, to my great humiliation, I find myself classed with the vulgar." "2 The fourth.-"Philosophers sometimes say that we perceive ideas, sometimes that we are conscious of them. I can have no doubt of the existence of anything which I either perceive, or of which I am conscious; but I cannot find that I either perceive ideas or am conscious of them." Various other proofs of the same conclusion could be adduced; these, for brevity, we omit. General conclusion, and caution. On these grounds, therefore, I am confident that Reid's doctrine of Perception must be pronounced a doctrine of Intuition, and not of Representation; and though, as I have shown you, there are certainly some plausible arguments which might be alleged in support of the opposite conclusion; still, these are greatly overbalanced by stronger positive proofs, and by the general analogy of his philosophy. And here I would impress upon you an important lesson. That Reid, a distinguished philosopher, and even the founder of an illustrious school, could be so greatly misconceived, as that an eminent disciple of that school itself should actually reverse the fundamental principle of his doctrine, this may excite your wonder, but it ought not to move you to disparage either the talent of the philosopher misconceived, or of the philosopher misconceiving. It ought, however, to prove to you the permanent importance, not only in speculation, but in practice, of precise thinking. You ought never to rest content, so long as there is aught vague or indefinite in your reasonings, so long as you have not analyzed every notion into its elements, and excluded the possibility of all lurking ambiguity in your expressions. One great, perhaps the one greatest advantage, resulting 1 Works, p. 446. Cf. pp. 263, 272. — Ed. 2 Works, p. 302.- ED. 3 Works, p. 373.- ED. from the cultivation of Philosophy, is the habit it induces of vigorous thought, that is, of allowing nothing to pass without a searching examination, either in your own speculations, or in those of others. We may never, perhaps, arrive at truth, but we can always avoid self-contradiction. LECTURE XXIV. THE PRESENTATIVE FACULTY. I. PERCEPTION. THE DISTINCTION OF PERCEPTION PROPER FROM SENSATION PROPER. Recapitulation. IN my last Lecture, having concluded the review of Reid's Historical Account of Opinions on Perception, and of Brown's attack upon that account, I proceeded to the question,- Is Reid's own doctrine of perception a scheme of Natural Realism, that is, did he accept in its integrity the datum of consciousness, that we are immediately cognitive both of the phænomena of matter and of the phænomena of mind; or did he, like Brown, and the greater number of more recent philosophers, as Brown assumes, hold only the finer form of the representative hypothesis, which supposes that, in perception, the external reality is not the immediate object of consciousness, but that the ego is only determined in some unknown manner to represent the non-ego, which representation, though only a modification of mind or self, we are compelled, by an illusion of our nature, to mistake for a modification of matter, or not-self? I stated to you how, on the determination of this question, depended nearly the whole of Reid's philosophical reputation; his philosophy professes to subvert the foundations of idealism and skepticism, and it is as having accomplished what he thus attempted, that any principal or peculiar glory can be awarded to him. But if all he did was merely to explode the cruder hypothesis of representation, and to adopt in its place the finer, - why, in the first place, so far from depriving idealism and skepticism of all basis, he only placed them on one firmer and more secure; and, in the second, so far from originating a new opinion, he could only have added one to a class of philosophers, who, after the time of Arnauld, were continually on the increase, and who, among the contemporaries of Reid himself, certainly constituted the majority. His philosophy would thus be at once only a silly blunder; its pretence to originality only a proclamation of ignorance; and so far from being an honor to the nation from which it arose, and by whom it was respected, it would, in fact, be a scandal and a reproach to the philosophy of any country in which it met with any milder treatment than derision. Previously, however, to the determination of this question, it was necessary to place before you, more distinctly than had hitherto been done, the distinction of Mediate or Representative from Immediate or Intuitive knowledge, a distinction which, though overlooked, or even abolished, in the modern systems of philosophy, is, both in itself and in its consequences, of the highest importance in psychology. Throwing out of view, as a now exploded hypothesis, the cruder doctrine of representation, — that, namely, which supposes the immediate, or representative object to be something different from a mere modification of mind,from the mere energy of cognitions, — I articulately displayed to you these two kinds of knowledge in their contrasts and correlations. They are thus defined. Intuitive or immediate knowledge is that in which there is only one object, and in which that object is known in itself, or as existing. Representative or mediate knowledge, on the contrary, is that in which there are two objects, an immediate and a mediate object; - the immediate object or that known in itself, being a mere subjective or mental mode relative to and representing a reality beyond the sphere of consciousness; the mediate object is that reality, thus supposed and represented. As an act of representative knowledge involves an intuitive cognition, I took a special example of such an act. I supposed that we called up to our minds the image of the High Church. Now, here the immediate object, -the object of consciousness, is the mental image of that edifice. This we know, and know not as an absolute object, but as a mental object relative to a material object which it represents; which material object, in itself, is, at present, beyond the reach of our faculties of immediate. knowledge, and is, therefore, only mediately known in its representation. You must observe that the mental image,— the immediate object, is not really different from the cognitive act of imagination itself. In an act of mediate or representative knowledge, the cognition and the immediate object are really an identical modification, the cognition and the object, the imagination and the image, being nothing more than the mental representation, -the mental reference itself. The indivisible modification is distinguished by two names, because it involves a relation between two terms (the two terms being the mind knowing and the thing represented), and may, consequently, be viewed in more proximate |