Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/373

Rh Mr Bailey's fundamental and reiterated objection to Berkeley's theory is, that it requires us to hold that conceptions or past impressions derived from one sense (the touch) are not merely recalled when another sense (the sight) executes its functions, but are themselves absolutely converted into the present intuitions of that other sense. In his own words ('Review,' p. 69), the theory is said to require "a transmutation of the conceptions derived from touch into the perceptions of sight." "According to Berkeley," says he ('Review,' p. 22), "an internal feeling (i.e., a visual sensation) and an external sensation (i.e., a tactual sensation) having been experienced at the same time: the internal feeling, when it afterwards occurs, not only suggests the idea, but, by doing so, suggests the idea, or, if I may use the figure, infuses the perception of its own externality. Berkeley thus attributes to suggestion an effect contrary to its nature, which, as in the case of language, is simply to revive in our conception what has been previously perceived by the sense."

Now, this objection would be altogether insurmountable if it were true, or if it were a part of Berkeley's doctrine, that the sight has no original intuition of space or of the reciprocal outness of its objects—in other words, of colours out of colours; for it being admitted that the sight has ultimately such a perception, it would be incumbent on the Berkeleian to show how conceptions derived from another sense, or how perceptions belonging to