Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/328

318. Admitted. But is this idea of something which is not an idea, in any degree less an idea than the other ideas spoken of? We should like to be informed in what respect it is so. Depend upon it, the primary qualities must be held to stand on precisely the same footing as the secondary, in so far as they give us any information respecting real objective existences. In accepting the one class the mind may be passive, and in accepting the other class she may be active; but that distinction will not bring us one hair's-breadth nearer to our mark. If the one class is subjective, so is the other; if the one class is objective, so is the other; and the conciliating truth is, that both classes are at once subjective and objective. In fine, we thus break the neck of the distinction. There is a world as it exists in relation to us: true. And there is the same world as it exists in itself and in non-relation to us: true also. But the world as it exists in relation to us, is just one relation in which the world exists in relation to us; and the world as it exists in itself, and in non-relation to us, is just another relation in which the world exists in relation to us.

Some readers may perhaps imagine that in making this strong statement we are denying the real objective existence, the primary qualities, the noumena, as they are sometimes called, of things. But we are doing no such thing. Such a denial would lead us at once into the clueless labyrinths of subjective idealism, which is a system we altogether repudiate.