Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/449

Rh man says that a shower of rain (No. 1) is followed by a refreshed vegetation (No. 2), he must have observed both No. 1 and No. 2, and he must have observed them as two separate things. Had he never observed anything but No. 2 (the refreshed vegetation), he might form what conjectures he pleased in regard to its antecedent, but he never could lay it down as an observed fact, that this antecedent was a shower of rain. In the same way, when a man affirms it to be a fact of observation (as Dr Reid does, according to Stewart), that material objects are followed by perceptions, it is absolutely necessary for the credit of his statement that he should have observed this to be the case; that he should have observed material objects before they were followed by perceptions; that he should have observed the antecedent separate from the consequent: otherwise his statement, instead of being complimented as a plain statement of fact, must be condemned as a tortuous statement of hypothesis. Unless he has observed No. 1 and No. 2 in sequence, he is not entitled to declare that this is an observed sequence. Now, did Reid, or did any man, ever observe matter anterior to his perception of it? Had Reid a faculty which enabled him to catch matter before it had passed into perception? Did he ever observe it, as Hudibras says, "undressed"? Mr Stewart implies that he had such a faculty. But the notion is preposterous. No man can observe matter prior to his perception of it; for his observation of it