Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/130

120 as distinguished from the fact of sensation, passion, &c.; and have they thus grappled with the true question at issue? We answer: That if they have, then have they grossly falsified the facts of the case. For it is not the fact that the consciousness of sensation is "induced, either directly or indirectly, by its external cause," or by any cause whatsoever. Sensation, no doubt, is induced by its external cause, but consciousness is altogether exempt from the law of causality, as we shall very shortly prove by a reference to experience itself. In fine, then, the dilemma to which Dr Brown, and, we believe, all other theorists on the subject of perception, may be reduced, stands thus: Are they, primo loco, right in their facts? then they are wrong in the question they take up. Or, secundo loco, do they hit the right question? then they falsify, ab initio, the facts upon which its solution depends. In other words, in so far as their statement of facts is true, they take up a wrong question, inasmuch as they explain to us the origin of our sensations when they ought to be explaining to us the origin of our consciousness of sensations, or the notion of self which accompanies them. Or, again, supposing that they take up the right question; then their statement of facts is false, inasmuch as their assumption that our consciousness of sensation falls under the law of causality is totally unfounded, and may be disproved by an appeal to a stricter and more accurate observation.

The erection of this dilemma places us on a