Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/530

520 world of imagination, and I address myself to him with a view of ascertaining what kind or degree of faith he must necessarily attach to the reality of the pictures that come before him. We shall suppose that these representations are very vivid, but that in the formation of them he does not exert any power of will; that they come and go like images in a dream or in a waking reverie, independently of all control. We shall suppose then, as in the former case, that a representation of St Paul's Cathedral arises before this man's imagination, and that the question, Do you believe that this object is a real object, that it really exists? is put to him. The man would be perplexed just as much as the other individual was, and his answer would be of precisely the same character. He would not, strictly speaking, know what belief meant, because he would have no notion of unbelief, the law of contrast between the real and the unreal, between imagination and perception, being altogether absent from his mind. But he would simply say, There the object is, I have it vividly before me, I apprehend it distinctly; and in speaking thus he would show that he had just as little doubt and just as vital a belief in the existence of the object, as the other man had who was limited to the exercise of external perception.

5. In both of these cases, then, the belief in the real existence of the objects would be unhesitating and profound. The man of perception