Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/529

Rh disbelief dwells, I conceive that a vital, though it may be an obscure belief, is always present.

In the first place, then, let us consider more particularly the case of the man limited to perception; and for simplicity's sake, let us suppose him limited to the perceptions of sight. An object is before him, St Paul's Cathedral; he sees it. Now, suppose we ask him whether he believes in the existence of this object, whether he believes it to be real? To this query it is plain that he could return no answer which would properly meet the question. For before a man can say that he believes a thing to be real, he must be able to conceive something unreal; but this is what the person under consideration is, according to the supposition, unable to do. But, nevertheless, his very perplexity and his inability to understand and answer the question as we could answer it, would prove that he virtually believed in the existence of the object with a most unhesitating faith. He would say simply: There St Paul's is; I see it. If you choose to call that statement a belief on my part that it is a real object, I have no objection to your doing so, only it appears to me to be a circuitous mode of stating a very simple truth. I hold that this man's belief would be all the more vital and profound because he would not, properly speaking, know what belief meant.

4. In the second place, I now turn to the man whom we supposed to be living exclusively in the