Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/274

264 and objects as they are in our perceptions of them; in other words, between real objects and our perceptions of objects. For, unless we made a discrimination between these two classes, we could have no ground for saying that the former were the causes of the latter.

Now, when any distinction is established, the tendency of the understanding is to render it as definite, complete, and absolute as it admits of being made. And, with regard to the present distinction, the understanding was certainly not idle. It took especial pains to render this distinction real and precise; and, by doing so, it prepared a building-ground for the various philosophical fabrics that were to follow for many generations. It taught that the object in itself must be considered something which stood quite aloof from our perception of it, that our perception of the object must be considered something of which the real object formed no part. Had it been otherwise, the understanding would have pronounced the discrimination illogical, and consequently null and void.

It was this procedure of the understanding with respect to the above-mentioned distinction which led to the universal adoption of a representative theory of perception. We are far from thinking that any of its authors adopted or promulgated this doctrine under that gross form of it against which Dr Reid and other philosophers have directed their shafts; under the form, namely, which holds that outward