Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/126

116 particular antecedent. If the external cause or object be absent, the consequent feeling, direct or indirect, which we term perception, will not be induced, precisely as any other feeling will not arise without its peculiar antecedent. The relation of cause and effect, in short, is exactly the same in perception as in all the other mental phenomena, a relation of invariable sequence of one change after another change."

This doctrine, which explains the phenomena of perception by placing them under the law of causality, is maintained, we believe, in one form or another, by every philosopher who has theorised on the subject, from Aristotle, down through his scholastic followers, past the occasionalists and pre-established harmonists, and onwards to Dr Brown, who is merely to be considered as one of its most explicit expounders. One and all of them assume that the