Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/468

458 the condition upon which we are permitted to apprehend or participate in the objective perception of material things. There is no real difficulty in the question just raised; and therefore, with this explanatory hint, we leave it, our space being exhausted.

Anticipations of this doctrine are to be found in the writings of every great metaphysician, of every man that ever speculated. It is announced in the speculations of Malebranche, still more explicitly in those of Berkeley; but though it forms the substance of their systems, from foundation-stone to pinnacle, it is not proclaimed with sufficiently unequivocal distinctness by either of these two great philosophers. Malebranche made the perception of matter totally objective, and vested the perception in the Divine mind, as we do. But he erred in this respect: having made the perception of matter altogether objective, he analysed it in its objectivity into perception (idée) and matter per se. We should rather say that he attempted to do this; and of course he failed, for the thing, as we have shown, is absolutely impossible. Berkeley made no such attempt. He regarded the perception of matter as not only totally objective, but as absolutely indivisible; and therefore we are disposed to regard him as the greatest metaphysician of his own country (we do not mean Ireland; but England, Scotland, and Ireland), at the very least

When this elaborate edition of Reid's Works shall be completed, shall have received its last consummate polish from the hand of its accomplished