Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/330

320 Bailey's work has been anything but successful in its main object, we can at the same time conscientiously recommend a careful perusal of it to those who are interested in the studies of which it treats. Its chief merit appears to us to consist in this, that it indicates with sufficient clearness the difference between the entire views advocated by Berkeley himself on the subject of vision, and the partial views which it has suited the purposes or the ability of his more timid but less cautious followers to adopt. We shall immediately have occasion to speak of the respects in which the disciples have deserted the principles of the master; but let us first of all state the precise question at issue. There is not much fault to be found with the terms in which Mr Bailey has stated it, and therefore we cannot do better than make use of his words.

"Outness," says he, p. 13, "distance, real magnitude, and real figure, are not perceived (according to Berkeley's theory) immediately by sight, but, in the first place, by the sense of feeling or touch; and it is from experience alone that our visual sensations come to suggest to us these exclusively tangible properties. We, in fact, see originally nothing but various coloured appearances, which are felt as internal sensations; and we learn that they are external, and also what distances, real magnitudes, and real figures these coloured appearances indicate, just as we learn to interpret the meaning of the written characters of a language. Thus a being gifted with