James Frederick Ferrier

“ If you have yielded yourselves up to such trains of thought, and if you have not been impressed every instant with a conviction of their unreality, with a belief in the non-existence of all that came before you, then I conceive that you had a virtual and a vital, though not a very distinct or conscious, belief in the existence and in the reality of the objects in the contemplation of which you were absorbed. ”

“ For if the law of contrast between perception and imagination be entirely inoperative, as it often is, it is certain that we have no positive or conscious disbelief in the existence of these objects; and, having no disbelief in their reality, I think we are entitled to say, without stretching the doctrine too far, that we actually believe in their existence, and in their real presence to the mind, though this belief is but momentary, and is constantly broken in upon by the operation of the law of contrast between perception and imagination. ”

“ In the second place, I now turn to the man whom we supposed to be living exclusively in the world of imagination, and I address myself to him with a view of ascertaining what kind or degree of faith he must necessarily attach to the reality of the pictures that come before him. We shall suppose that these representations are very vivid, but that in the formation of them he does not exert any power of will; that they come and go like images in a dream or in a waking reverie, independently of all control. ”