Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/386

Rh else, nothing either more or less. The problem is to make me not only feel but think this sensation, and to think it without getting out of sensation, i.e., without getting into the region of ideas; for I wish to show that it is impossible for me to do this, and thus by a reductio ad absurdum to prove the necessity of ideas. I think the sensation then, the sensation of light and the bright object before me. Now what has taken place here different from mere feeling? This has taken place: in thinking the sensation, I think that it is, and that the bright object is. Perhaps I think of more than this, but this, at least, is what I think. I repeat it: I think that the sensation is, and that the object is. In thinking them at all, I must think that they are. But you will very likely say, What is there here more than mere feeling? When a man feels a pain, does he not feel that it is? I answer that it may do very well in ordinary language, to say of a man in pain that he feels that it is, but such a statement (viewed philosophically) is exceedingly incorrect The precise statement is this, that the man merely feels the pain; he thinks or knows that it is (you will understand this more clearly immediately). I again affirm that in thinking the sensation (as an act distinct from merely feeling it), I think that it is. That is my first step in thinking it; that is the least which I do. We have now to ask what is involved in thinking that the sensation is. There is this involved in it, that I transcend or go beyond the sensation, and