Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/326

316, remains in triumphant possession of the field.

Now we think that this mode of meeting the question respecting mind and matter, and of clearing its difficulties, is infinitely preferable to that resorted to by some philosophers, in which they make a distinction between what they call the primary and what they call the secondary qualities of matter; holding that the latter are purely subjective affections, or impressions existing only in ourselves; and that the former are purely objective elements, constituting the very existence of things. As this is a very prevalent and powerfully supported opinion, we cannot pass it by without some notice. But in our exposure of its futility we shall be very brief. All the secondary qualities, colours, sounds, tastes, smells, heat, hardness, everything, in short, which is an affection of sense, may be generalised at one sweep into our mere knowledge of things. But the primary qualities, which are usually restricted to extension and figure, and which constitute, it is said, the objective or real essence of things, and which are entirely independent of us, into what shall they be generalised? Into what but into this? into the knowledge of something, which exists in things over and above our mere knowledge of things. It is plain enough that we cannot generalise them into pure objective existence in itself; we can only generalise them into a knowledge of pure objective existence. But such a knowledge, that is to say,