must be allowed to act somehow upon the sense, though in a different manner from the proper. Comparatively speaking, the proper act primarily, corporeally, and by causing a passion in the sense; the common secondarily, formally, and by eliciting the sense and understanding to energy. But though there lies in the proper more of passivity, in the common more of activity, still the common are, in propriety, objects of sense per se; being neither cognised (as substances) exclusively by the understanding, nor (as is the sweet by vision) accidentally by sense. (Reid's Works, p. 860.) [Here, evidently, it is not fact that prescribes so and so; but just Hamilton that, for his own convenience, says so and so the common sensibles are held or demonstrated to be intellectual, but I, Hamilton, will them to be also sensuous, and accordingly they are also sensuous. It is this wilfulness, however, that has impaled Hamilton on the horns of the dilemma with which the preceding sub-section (2) ends.]

It may appear, not a paradox merely, but a contradiction, to say, that the organism is, at once, within and without the mind ; is at once subjective and objective; is at once ego and non-ego. But so it is; the organism, as animated, as sentient, is necessarily ours, and its affections are only felt as affections of the individual ego. In this respect, and to this extent, our organs are not external to ourselves. But our organism is not merely a sentient subject, it is at the same time an extended, figured, divisible, in a word, a material, subject; and the same sensations, which are reduced to unity in the indivisibility of consciousness, are in the divisible organism recognised as plural and reciprocally external, and, therefore, as extended, figured, divided. (Reid's Works, p. 880, note.)

By a law of our nature, we are not conscious of the existence of our organism (as a body simply), consequently not conscious of any of its primary qualities, unless when we are conscious of it, as modified by a secondary quality, or some other of its affections, as an animated body. But the former consciousness requires the latter only as its negative condi

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tion, and is neither involved in it as a part, nor properly dependent on it as a cause. The object in the one consciousness is also wholly different from the object in the other. In that, it is a contingent passion of the organism, as a constituent of the human self; in this, it is some essential property of the organism, as a portion of the universe of matter, and though apprehended by, not an affection proper to, the conscious self at all. In these circumstances, the secondary quality, say a colour, which the mind apprehends in the organism, is, as a passion of self, recognised to be a subjective object ; whereas the primary quality, extension, or figure, or number, which, when conscious of such affection, the mind therein at the same time apprehends, is, as not a passion of self, but a common property of matter, recognised to be an objective object. (Reid's Works, p. 858, note.)

It is sufficient to establish the simple fact, that we are competent, as consciousness assures us, immediately to apprehend through sense the non-ego in certain limited relations; and it is of no consequence whatever, either to our certainty of the reality of a material world, or to our ultimate knowledge of its properties, whether by this primary apprehension we lay hold, in the first instance, on a larger or a lesser portion of its contents. (Reid's Works, p. 814.) The perception of parts out of parts is not given in the mere affection of colour, but is obtained by a reaction of the mind upon such affection. The secondary quality of colour is, in the strictest sense, a passive affection of the sentient ego.... But the apprehension of extension, figure, divisibility, &c., which, under condition of its being thus affected, simultaneously takes place, is, though necessary, wholly active and purely spiritual. (Reid's Works, p. 858.) [Thus an] Error of the common opinion, that the apprehension through sight of colour, and the apprehension through sight of extension and figure, are as inseparable, identical cognitions of identical objects. (Reid's Works, p. 860.) The observations of Platner, on a person born blind, would prove that sight, not touch, is the sense by which we principally obtain our knowledge of figure, and our empirical knowledge of space. (Reid's Works, p. 125, note.) It is self

evident that, if a thing is to be an object immediately known, it must be known as it exists. Now, a body must exist in some definite part of space-in a certain place; it cannot, therefore, be immediately known as existing, except it be known in its place. But this supposes the mind to be immediately present to it in space. (Reid's Works, p. 302, note.) We are not percipient of distant objects. (Reid's Works, p. 814.) No sense gives us a knowledge of aught but what is in immediate contact with its organ. All else is something over and above perception. . . and only reached by reasoning. (Reid's Works, p. 145, note; 186, note.) The total object of visual perception is the rays and the living organ in reciprocity. (Reid's Works, p. 160, note.)

The object of consciousness in perception is a quality, mode, or phenomenon of an external reality, in immediate relation to our organs. (Reid's Works, p. 818.) A sensation is actually felt there where it is felt to be. . . in the toe, not in the brain. . . . If the mind be conscious of the secondary qualities only at the centre, it cannot be conscious of the primary in their relation to its periphery. (Reid's Works, p. 821. See also p. 882, as quoted previously.) Perception proper is an apprehension of the relations of sensations to each other, primarily in space. (p. 881.) In the consciousness of sensations, relatively localised and reciprocally external, we have a veritable apprehension and consequently an immediate perception, of the affected organism as extended, divided, figured, &c. (p. 884.) Extension is perceived only in apprehending sensations out of sensations-a relation. ... The only object perceived is the organ itself, as modified, or what is in contact with the organ as resisting. The doctrine of a medium is an error. (p. 885.) The mind perceives nothing external to itself, except the affections of the organism as animated, the reciprocal relations of these affections, and the correlative involved in the consciousness of its locomotive energy being resisted. (p. 885.) [From the quotation previously given (p. 860) we see that the object of the sensation is not the object of the perception.]

That through touch, or touch and muscular feeling, or touch and sight, or touch, muscular feeling, and sight,—that through these senses exclusively, we are percipient of extension, &c., I do not admit. On the contrary, I hold that all sensations whatsoever, of which we are conscious, as one out of another, eo ipso, afford us the condition of immediately and necessarily apprehending extension; for in the consciousness itself of such reciprocal outness is actually involved a perception of difference of place in space, and, consequently, of the extended. (p. 861.)

[At p. 876 (Reid's Works) his general doctrine is pretty well stated at full. He enumerates there eight conditions of consciousness and perception. These are, shortly: 1, Attention; 2, discriminated plurality, alteration, difference in objects themselves (with contrast of object and subject); 3, quality; 4, time, involving memory; 5, space, as condition of a discriminated plurality; 6, degree; 7, relation; 8, an assertory judgment, &c.]

The primary qualities are perceived as in our organism. ... Thus a perception of the primary qualities does not, originally and in itself, reveal to us the existence, and qualitative existence, of aught beyond the organism, apprehended by us as extended, figured, divided, &c. ... The primary qualities of things external to our organism we do not perceive, i. e. immediately know. For these we only learn to infer.... This experience [on which knowledge of the external world depends] presupposes, indeed, a notion of space and motion in space. On the doctrine, and in the language, of Reid, our original cognitions of space, motion, &c., are instinctive; a view which is confirmed by the analogy of those of the lower animals which have the power of locomotion at birth. It is truly an idle problem to attempt imagining the steps by which we may be supposed to have acquired the notion of extension; when, in fact, we are unable to imagine to ourselves the possibility of that notion not being always in our possession. [But still he decides] We have, therefore, a twofold cognition of space; a, an

à priori, native imagination of it in general, as a necessary condition of the possibility of thought; and b, under that an à posteriori or adventitious percept of it, &c. (p. 881.)

Though the sensation of our organism as animally affected, is, as it were, the light by which it is exhibited to our perception as a physically extended body; still, if the affection be too strong, the pain or pleasure too intense, the light blinds by its very splendour, and the perception is lost in the sensation. (pp. 862-3.)

The ultimate fibrils are the ultimate units of sensation . . . a nervous point yields a sensation as locally distinct in proportion as it is isolated in its action from every other. (p. 862.) On the smaller size of the papillæ and fibrils of the optic nerve, principally depends the greater power we possess, in the eye, of discriminating one sensation as out of another, consequently of apprehending extension, figure, &c.

[At p. 821, as we saw, Hamilton rules that to restrict the mind to the centre, and exclude it from the periphery, is equivalent to representationism. Now, in a note to p. 861, he withdraws this, and rules that the mind may be confined to the centre without injury to his theory-each nervous filament, however long, may be still viewed as a point. In presence of the decisive distinctness here, we think of the punctual peremptoriness there; and when Hamilton lightly remarks, 'what was said at p. 821 is to be qualified in conformity,' we consider the contrariety, the lightness, the aplomb as all three eminently characteristic.] The diameter of the papillæ of the optic nerve is about the eight or nine thousandth part of an inch; . . . and a stimulus of light, though applied only to part of a papilla, idiopathically affects the whole; ... an object, whose breadth, as reflected to the retina, is not more than the six hundred thousandth or millionth of an inch, is distinctly visible to a good eye. (p. 862.) [Distinction in touch he attributes to the isolated fibrils where distinction is impossible to touch, he is sure that there microscopic anatomy will find an interlacement of fibrils, or an expansion of one.-p. 863.]