Page:Philosophical Review Volume 14.djvu/50

34 as they are both of the same nature, we clearly perceive that all our perceptions are dependent on our organs, and the disposition of our nerves and animal spirits. This opinion is confirmed by the seeming encrease and diminution of objects, according to their distance; by the apparent alterations in their figure; by the changes in their color and other qualities from our sickness and distempers; and by an infinite number of other experiments of the same kind; from all which we learn that our sensible perceptions are not possesst of any distinct or independent existence" (p. 498). This inference from the relativity of perceived objects to their subjectivity has been so long and so widely accepted by modern philosophers that it is difficult for its critics to secure an impartial hearing for their objections. And yet there is in the argument an absolutely fatal weakness, a fallacy so obvious that one marvels at the fact that it has ever escaped notice. The fallacy is simply this: The relativity from which objects suffer is a relativity to other objects and not at all to the percipient subject. The color of an object is, as Hume says, seen to be dependent, but it is dependent upon its relation, not to our soul, but to our retina. The size and shape of objects are also dependent and relative, but they are dependent upon, and relative to, the distance and direction from them, not of the mind, but of the physical organism with which the mind is associated. As Hume himself says in the passage just quoted, "We clearly perceive that all our perceptions are dependent on our organs and the disposition of our nerves and animal spirits." He does not hold that perceptions of organs and perceptions of nerves and 'animal spirits' constitute the bundle of perceptions which we call a mind. Why, then, since the two things, sense organs and mind, are different, should he hold that dependence of all immediately perceived objects upon the former implies their dependence upon the latter? What possible justification can there be for arguing from dependence upon physiological objects to dependence upon a psychological subject? On Hume's own premises, an object could hot possibly lose its existence merely by ceasing to be a member of a bundle of percepts, i.e., ceasing to be perceived by a mind, for the conditions of its existence are explicitly stated to lie