Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/324

314 objections and misconstructions. The realist may laugh it to scorn by saying, "Then, I suppose, there are no trees and no houses when there is no man's mind either seeing or thinking of them!" But broaden the basis of the idealistic principle, and see how innocuous this objection falls to the ground; affirm that in the case of every phenomenon, that is, even in the case of the phenomenon of the absence of all phenomena, a subject-mind must be thought of as incarnated with the phenomenon, and the cavil is at once obviated and disarmed. The realist expects the idealist, in virtue of his principle, taken in its narrower significance, to admit that when the percipient neither sees, nor thinks of seeing, trees and houses, there would be no such thing as these objects. But the idealist, instructed by his principle in its wider significance, replies, "No, my good sir; no-trees and no-houses (i.e., space empty of trees and houses) is a phenomenon, just as much as trees and houses themselves are phenomena; and as such it can no more exist without being seen or thought of as seen than any other phenomenon can. Therefore, if I were to admit that, in the total absence and oblivion of the percipient there would be no-trees and no-houses in a particular place, I should be guilty of the very error I am most anxious to avoid, and which it is the aim of my whole system to guard people against committing; I should merely be substituting other phenomena in lieu of those which had disappeared, I should merely be placing the phenomenon of