Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/342

332 his own native powers, a knowledge for which he is wholly indebted to his brother the toucher.

Now Mr Bailey views the doctrine in a totally different light. According to him Berkeley's doctrine is, that not only the tangible outness of objects, or their distance from the eye, is not immediately perceived by sight, but that not even their visible outness or their distance from one another is so perceived. He thinks that, according to Berkeley, the latter kind of outness is suggested by certain "internal feelings"—Heaven knows what they are!—no less than the former. He does not see that this "internal feeling," as he calls it, is itself the very sensation of visible outness as above explained. He seems to think that, according to Berkeley, the eye does not even see visible things to be out of one another—out of our visible bodies for example; but that the disintrication of them is accomplished by a process of suggestion. No wonder that he made dreadful havoc with the Bishop's doctrine of association. The following is his statement of that doctrine:—

"Outness is not immediately perceived by sight, but only suggested to our thoughts by certain visible ideas and sensations attending vision. Berkeley (he continues) thus in fact represents the visual perception of objects as external, to be an instance of the association of ideas. If, however, he had dearly analysed the process in question, he would have perceived the fallacy into which he had fallen. It is impossible that the law of mind, by which one thing