Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/284

274 imposition upon ourselves. For this light, which is modestly talked of as something which lies, or may lie, altogether out of the sphere of the subjective, will be found, upon reflection, to be conceived only by thinking back, and blending inseparably with it the very subjective (i.e., the seeing) from which it had been supposed possible for thought to divorce it.

Precisely the same thing holds good in the case of sound and hearing. Sound is here the objective, and hearing the subjective; but the objective cannot be conceived, unless we comprehend both the subjective and it in one and the same conception. It is true that sounds may occur (thunder, for instance, in lofty regions of the sky) which are never heard; but we maintain that, in thinking such sounds, we necessarily think the hearing of them; in other words, we think that we would have heard them, had we been near enough to the spot where they occurred, which is exactly the same thing as imagining ourselves, or some other percipient being, present at that spot. We establish an ideal union between them and hearing. In respect to thought, they are as nothing unless thought of as heard. Thus only do we, or can we, conceive them. Whenever, therefore, the objective is here thought of, the same ideal and indissoluble union ensues between it and the subjective, which we endeavoured to show took place between light and vision, whenever the objective of that perception was thought of.

The consideration of these two senses, sight and