Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/426

416 perfect identity. The analysis of the fact which we call the perception of matter, is unquestionably the groundwork and pervading principle of the theory of a representative perception, whatever form of expression this scheme may at any time have assumed.

Secondly, Did Dr Reid go to work analytically in his treatment of the perception of matter? Undoubtedly he did. He followed the ordinary psychological practice. He regarded the datum as divisible into perception and matter. The perception he held to be an act, if not a modification of our minds; the matter he regarded as something which existed out of the mind and irrespective of all perception. Right or wrong, he resolved, or conceived that he had resolved, the perception of matter into its constituent elements, these being a mental operation on the one hand and a material existence on the other. In short, however ambiguous many of Dr Reid's principles may be, there can be no doubt that he founded his doctrine of perception on an analysis of the given fact with which he had to deal. He says, indeed, but little about this analysis, so completely does he take it for granted. He accepted, as a thing of course, the notorious distinction between the perception of matter and matter itself; and, in doing so, he merely followed the example of all preceding psychologists.

These two points being established—first, that the theory of representationism necessarily arises out of an analysis of the perception of matter; and, secondly,