Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/125



enter at length into a discussion concerning the multifarious theories that have been propounded respecting the fact of perception would be an endless and unnecessary labour. But as the problem we are about to be engaged with has much in common with these speculations, and as its solution has been retarded by the assumption of various false facts which have invariably been permitted to mingle with them, we must, in a few words, strike at the root of these spurious facts, and, employing a more accurate observation, we will then bring forward, purified from all irrelevant admixture, that great question of psychology, How, or in what circumstances, does Consciousness come into operation?

"Perception," says Dr Brown, "is a state of mind which is induced directly or indirectly by its external cause, as any other feeling is induced by its