Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/462

452 perception, and a fact or existence in nature corresponding to the two syllables matter. The word "perception" is merely part of a word which, for convenience sake, is allowed to represent the whole word; and so is the word "matter." The word "perception-of-matter" is always the one total word, the word to the mind, and the existence which this word denotes is a totally objective existence.

But in these remarks we are reiterating (we hope, however, that we are also enforcing) our previous arguments No power of the mind can divide into two facts, or two existences, or two thoughts, that one prominent fact which stands forth in its integrity as the perception-of-matter. Despite, then, the misleading construction of language, despite the plausible artifices of psychology, we must just accept this fact as we find it; that is, we must accept it indissoluble and entire, and we must keep it indissoluble and entire. We have seen what psychology brought us to by tampering with it, under the pretence of a spurious, because impracticable analysis.

We proceed to exhibit the grounds upon which the metaphysician claims for the perception of matter a totally objective existence. The question may be stated thus: Where are we to place this datum? in our minds or out of our minds? We cannot place part of it in our own minds and part of it out of our minds, for it has been proved to be not subject to partition. Wherever we place it, then, there must we place it whole and undivided. Has the