Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 053.djvu/780

764 Bailey's charge be proved to be the fact, or not?

In discussing the first of the two questions, it was quite possible for Mr Bailey to have represented Berkeley as holding, that visible objects, though not seen to be external to the sight, were yet seen to be out of each other, or laterally extended within the organism or the mind. But Mr Bailey makes no such representation of the theory, and the whole argument which pervades the chapter in which the first question is discussed, is founded on the negation of any such extension. All visible extension, he tells us, must, in his opinion, be either plane or solid. Now he will scarcely maintain that he regarded Berkeley as holding that we perceive solid extension within the organism of the eye. Neither does he admit that, according to Berkeley, and in reference to this first question, plane extension is perceived within the organism of the eye. For when he proceeds to the discussion of the second of the two questions, he remarks that "we must, at this stage of the argument, consider the theory under examination, as representing that we see all things originally in the same plane," obviously implying that he had not as yet considered the theory as representing that we see things originally in the same plane: in other words, plainly admitting that, in his treatment of the first question, he had not regarded the theory as representing that we see things originally under the category of extension at all.

But if any more direct evidence on this point were wanted, it is to be found in the section of his work which treats of "the perception of figure." In the chapter in which he discusses the first of the two questions, he constantly speaks of Berkeley's theory as representing that "our visual sensations, or what we ultimately term visible objects, are originally mere internal feelings." The expression mere internal feelings, however, is ambiguous; for, as we have said, it might still imply that Mr Bailey viewed the theory as representing that there was an extension, or reciprocal outness of objects within the retina. But this doubt is entirely removed by a passage in the section alluded to, which proves that, in Mr Bailey's estimation, these mere internal feelings not only involve no such extension, but that there would be an inconsistency in supposing they did. In this section he brings forward Berkeley's assertion, "that neither solid nor plane figures are immediate objects of sight." He then quotes a passage in which the bishop begs the reader not to stickle too much "about this or that phrase, or manner of expression, but candidly to collect his meaning from the whole sum and tenour of his discourse." And then Mr Bailey goes on to say, "endeavouring, in the spirit here recommended, to collect the author's meaning when he affirms that the figures we see are neither plane nor solid, it appears to me to be a part or consequence of his doctrine already examined, which asserts that visible objects are only internal feelings." We can now be at no loss to understand what Mr Bailey means, and conceives Berkeley to mean, by the expression "mere internal feelings." He evidently means feelings in which no kind of extension whatever is involved: for, in the next page, he informs us that all visual extension, or extended figure, "must be apprehended as either plane or solid, and that it is impossible even to conceive it otherwise." Consequently, if the figures we see are, as Berkeley says, apprehended neither as plane nor as solid, Mr Bailey, entertaining the notions he does on the subject of extension, must regard him as holding that they cannot be apprehended as extended at all—and accordingly such is the express representation he gives of the theory in the passage just quoted, where he says that "the doctrine of Berkeley, which affirms that the figures we see are neither plane nor solid, (that is, are extended in no direction, according to Mr Bailey's ideas of extension,) appears to him to be a part of the doctrine which asserts that visible objects are only internal feelings." Now if that be not teaching, in the plainest terms, that, according to Berkeley, no species of extension is implied in the internal feelings of vision, we know not what language means, and any one thought may be identical with its very opposite.

Here we might let the subject drop,