Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/131

Rh from which we may perceive at a glance both what we ought to avoid and what we ought to follow. On the one hand, realising the true facts, we can avoid the fate of those who expended their labour on a wrong question; and, on the other hand, hitting the right question, we can also avoid the fate of those who wrecked its solution upon false facts. We can now steer equally clear of the Scylla of an irrelevant problem, and the Charybdis of fictitious facts. Perception is, as we have seen, a synthesis of two facts, sensation, namely, and consciousness, or the realisation of self in conjunction with the sensation experienced. The former of these is possessed in common by men and by animals; but the latter is peculiar to man, and constitutes his differential quality, and is, therefore, the sole and proper fact to which our attention ought to direct itself when contemplating the phenomena of perception.