Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/467

Rh metaphysical doctrine of perception so truly valuable. This doctrine is valuable chiefly on account of the indestructible foundation which it affords to the a priori argument in favour of the existence of God. The substance of the argument is this: Matter is the perception of matter. The perception of matter does not belong to man; it is no state of the human mind, man merely participates in it. But it must belong to some mind, for perceptions without an intelligence in which they inhere are inconceivable and contradictory. They must therefore be the property of the Divine mind; states of the everlasting intellect; ideas of the Lord and Ruler of all things, and which come before us as realities, so forcibly do they contrast themselves with the evanescent and irregular ideas of our feeble understandings. We must, however, beware, above all things, of regarding these Divine ideas as mere ideas. An idea, as usually understood, is that from which all reality has been abstracted; but the perception of matter is a Divine idea, from which the reality has not been abstracted, and from which it cannot be abstracted.

But what, it will be asked, what becomes of the senses if this doctrine be admitted? What is their use and office? Just the same as before, only with this difference, that whereas the psychological doctrine teaches that the exercise of the senses is the condition upon which we are permitted to apprehend objective material things, the metaphysical doctrine teaches that the exercise of the senses is