Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/535

Rh belief that its objects exist. Mr Stewart says that the exercise of the imagination is always accompanied with this belief. But it appears to me that this is the case only when there is a total suspension of all contrast between perception and imagination. You cannot bring about this suspension by any voluntary effort, but I think you may without difficulty catch yourselves in cases where it has been spontaneously suspended; those cases, I mean, which are called Reverie. Then ask yourselves whether, when you were plunged in your reverie, you positively disbelieved in the existence of the objects that were passing before you. If you find, as I think you will find, that you did not positively disbelieve in that existence, then you must virtually have believed in it. This is what I understand Mr Stewart to contend for; and I think that his somewhat singular opinion may be explained and upheld in a satisfactory manner by means of the absence or suspension of the law of contrast between perception and imagination, a law the presence of which destroys our waking dreams, and teaches us that the world of perception is more real than the world of imagination. We may sum up these observations, then, by remarking that both of our philosophers are right in their opinions on this subject, although their opinions are opposed to each other; that Mr Stewart appears to be right in maintaining that imagined objects are always believed to have a real existence, that is, they are always believed to have a real existence so