Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 1 - Institutes of Metaphysic (1875 ed.).djvu/514

486PROP. IX.———— they were proceeding, and would have suspended their inquiry into the origin of our knowledge until the state of the fact as to its actual nature had been determined. But no such result ensued. Philosophers still busied themselves about its causes; and in order to salve the scepticism which his own reform had provoked, Des Cartes came to the rescue of the material universe armed with these two arguments: first, that matter, although not the cause, is nevertheless the occasion, of our perceptions. It affords the occasions on which the Deity (the efficient cause and true source of all our knowledge) calls up in our minds the appropriate presentations. This is the Cartesian doctrine of occasional, as distinguished from efficient, causes. And secondly, he argues that the Deity, from whom can proceed no fallacious beliefs, has implanted within us a conviction of the independent existence of material things. To which arguments the answer is, that if our perceptions are originated by the Divine Power, it is more probable that they are called into being directly, and not through the circuitous process alleged by the Cartesians, in which certain material existences, of which we know nothing, are supposed to serve as the occasions on which the Deity is pleased to bring about in our minds certain corresponding representations; and, secondly, that it is not true that any man really believes in the existence of material things out of all relation