Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/329

Rh All that we deny is the distinction between the primary and the secondary qualities, between the noumena and the phenomena; and we deny this distinction, because we deny the existence of the faculty (the faculty of abstraction) by means of which we are supposed to be capable of making it. This certainly is no denial, but rather an affirmation, of the primary qualities of real objective existence, and it places us upon the secure and impregnable ground of real objective idealism, a system in which knowledge and existence are identical and convertible ideas.

We shall now proceed to make a few remarks on the work which stands at the head of the present article, Mr Bailey's 'Review of Berkeley's Theory of Vision,' in which he endeavours "to show the unsoundness of that celebrated speculation."

Mr Bailey is favourably known to the literary portion of the community as the author of some ingenious 'Essays on the Formation and Publication of Opinions,' and he is doubtless a very clever man. But in the work before us, we must say that he has undertaken a task far beyond his powers, and that he has most signally failed, not because these powers are in themselves feeble, but because they have been misdirected against a monument—ære perennius—of solid and everlasting truth. The ability displayed in the execution of his work is immeasurably greater than the success with which it has been crowned.

Therefore, when we say that, in our opinion, Mr