Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/422

412 between them is this:—psychology regards the perception of matter as susceptible of analytic treatment, and travels, or endeavours to travel, beyond the given fact; metaphysic stops short in the given fact, and there makes a stand, declaring it to be an indissoluble unity. Psychology holds her analysis to be an analysis of things. Metaphysic holds the psychological analysis to be an analysis of sounds, and nothing more. These observations exhibit, in their loftiest generalisation, the two counter doctrines on the subject of perception. We now propose to follow them into their details, for the purpose both of eliciting the truth and of arriving at a correct judgment in regard to the reformation which Dr Reid is supposed to have effected in this department of philosophy.

The psychological or analytic doctrine is the first which we shall discuss, on account of its connection with the investigations of Dr Reid, in regard to whom we may state, beforehand, our conclusion and its wounds, which are these:—that Reid broke down in his philosophy, both polemical and positive, because he assumed the psychological and not the metaphysical doctrine of perception as the basis of his arguments. He did not regard the perception of matter as absolutely primary and simple; but in common with all psychologists, he conceived that it admitted of being resolved into a mental condition and a material reality; and the consequence was, that he fell into the very errors which it was the professed