James Frederick Ferrier

“ For if we say, with dogmatic Realism, that an outward world does exist independent of our perception of it, this implies that we are able to separate, in thought, external objects and our perceptions of them. But such a separation we have shown to be impossible and inconceivable. And if, on the other hand, we say, with dogmatic Idealism, that an outward world does not exist independent of our perceptions of it, and that we are conscious only of these perceptions, this involves us in exactly the same perplexity. ”

“ Attempt this in every possible way, then reflect for a moment; and as sure as you are a living and percipient being, you will find that, in all your efforts to think of light, you invariably begin and end in thinking of the seeing of light. You think of light by and through the thought of seeing, and you can think of it in no other way. By no exertion of the mind can you separate these two. They are not two, but one. The objective light, therefore, when thought, ceases to be purely objective; it becomes both subjective and objective, both light and seeing in one. ”

“ Having seen, then, that the objective (the sum of which is the whole external universe) necessarily becomes when thought, both the objective and subjective in one, we now turn to the other side of the question, and we ask whether the subjective (the sum of which is the whole mind of man) does not also necessarily convert itself, when conceived, into the subjective and the objective in one. ”

“ The great endeavour of philosophy, in all ages, has been to explain the nature of the connection which subsists between the mind of man and the external universe; but it is to speculation of a very late date that we owe the only approach that has been made to a satisfactory solution of this problem. In the following remarks on the state of modern speculation, we shall attempt to unfold this explanation, for it forms, we think, the very pith of the highest philosophy of recent times. ”

“ The consideration of these two senses, sight and hearing, with their appropriate objects, light and sound, sufficiently explains and illustrates our point. For what holds good with regard to them, holds equally good with regard to all our other perceptions. The moment the objective part of any one of them is thought, we are immediately constrained by a law of our nature which we cannot transgress, to conceive as one with it the subjective part of the perception. We think objective weight only by thinking the feeling of weight. ”

“ It will be seen that the question is resolved, not so much by having any positive answer given to it, as by being itself made to assume a totally new aspect. We shall find, upon reflection, that it is not what, at first sight, and on a superficial view, we imagined it to be. A change will come over the whole spirit of the question. Facts will arise, forcing it into a new form, even in spite of our efforts to keep it in its old shape. ”

“ In other words, in order to think the faculty, are we not forced to have recourse to the notion of the very object which we professed to have left out of our account in framing our conception of the faculty? Most assuredly, the faculty and the object exist in an ideal unity, which cannot be dissolved by any exertion of thought.
Again, perhaps you will maintain that the faculty of hearing may be thought of as something which exists anterior to the existence or application of sound ”

“ In treating of mind and matter and their connection, the old philosophy is like a chemistry which resolves a neutral salt into an acid and an alkali, and is then unable to show how these two separate existences may be brought together. The new philosophy is like a chemistry which admits, at the outset, the analysis of the former chemistry, but which then shows that the acid is again both an acid and an alkali in one ”

“ It gives us but one-half of the truth. We deny that it is an absolute, final, and permanent distinction; and we shall show that, if by one law of intelligence we constantly separate the subject and the object, so by another law we as constantly blend them into one. If by one principle of our nature we are continually forced to make this separation, we are just as continually forced, by another principle of our nature, to repair it. ”

“ Scepticism assumed various modifications, but the chief guise in which it sought to outrage the convictions of mankind was, by first admitting the reality of an external world, and then by proving that this world could not correspond with our perceptions of it. ”

“ In attempting, then, to interpret the spirit of this new philosophy, we commence by remarking that the distinction which lay at the foundation of all the older philosophies is not to be rejected and set aside altogether. Unless we made some sort of discrimination between our perceptions and outward objects, no consciousness or knowledge would be possible. This principle is one of the laws of human thought, one of the first conditions of intelligence. ”

“ And we have been thus particular in stating this principle, and in enumerating a few of its consequences, because it is by the discovery of a law directly opposed to it that the great thinkers of modern times have revolutionised the whole of philosophy, and escaped the calamitous conclusions into which former systems were precipitated. In the olden days of speculation, this distinction was rendered real and absolute by the logical understanding. The objective and the subjective of human knowledge (i.e., the reality and our perception of it) were permanently severed from one another ”

“ But, in thinking this faculty, are we not obliged to think it as something which would be excited by sound, if sound were present to arouse it; and in order to think of what is embodied in the words, "would be excited by sound," are we not constrained to think sound itself, and to think it in the very same moment, and in the very same thought, in which we think the faculty that apprehends it? ”

“ We have confined our discussion to the settlement of the preliminaries of one great question. We think, however, that we have indicated the true foundations upon which modern philosophy must build, that we have described the vital crisis in which speculative thought is at present labouring, while old things are passing away, and all things are becoming new. ”

“ Idealism did not care to conciliate common sense; but it maintained that if we must have recourse to an hypothesis to explain the origin of our perceptions, it would be a simpler one to say that they arose in conformity with the original laws of our constitution, or simply because it was the will of our Creator that they should arise in the way they do. ”

“ Reader! put no faith in those who preach to you about the limited nature of the human faculties, and of the things which lie beyond their bounds. For one instance in which this kind of modesty keeps people right in speculative matters, there are a thousand in which it puts them wrong ”

“ In our present inquiry, we shall restrict ourselves to the consideration of the great change which the question regarding man's intercourse with the external world has undergone, in consequence of this discovery ”