In strictness there is implied in the term conception nothing but the act itself; there must, indeed, have been previously an object discerned, but at the actual moment there is none: it is then, in itself, an absolute unconnected state of mind.

From this it follows that, although in the use of perceptions for objects perceived, we must be on our guard against confounding acts and objects in our inferences, against ascribing to one what is true only of the other, yet a similar caution is not required with the word conceptions, the employment of which can lead to no such confusion. As, nevertheless, when conception is not used to designate a faculty, it is equivalent to idea, and interchangeable with it, I consider the latter term, in virtue of its not being applicable to either faculty or object, to be preferable to the former, and shall accordingly make a freer use of it in the sequel; for, notwithstanding the loose and indeterminate manner in which it has been frequently employed, I think it may be easily limited to a perfectly definite acceptation.

There are other names designating operations of the mind, such as recollection, judgment, belief, cognition, to which some of the preceding remarks, mutatis mutandis, are applicable; but I need not trouble you with bringing them into consideration at present they may possibly rise to the surface hereafter.

LETTER XIII.

THEORIES OF PERCEPTION.

IN glancing over my Table of mental operations and affections, you will perceive that there is ample room for comment and disquisition, besides the explanations I have already offered.

Agreeably, nevertheless, to what I said in my introductory Letter, that it was not my purpose to construct a system embracing an investigation of all the phenomena of mind, but to limit myself as much as possible to such of them as I thought I could elucidate by new considerations, or by putting old facts and arguments into a more definite and forcible shape,-I shall select for discussion, in the sequel, what may be regarded as the principal questions connected with the operations of perceiving and conceiving, without, however, excluding other topics that may incidentally arise.

Lest this should appear a rather narrow field to range in, I would call your attention to the fact, that I have in former works already treated at some length the important processes of believing and reasoning, and if I were to introduce them

here I should be only repeating what I have before advanced.

I may also remark, that the parts of mental philosophy which I have selected for particular consideration in the Letters which are to follow, embrace some of the profoundest problems that have ever been discussed.

After this preamble I proceed to the business before me.

It is singular, and at first sight unaccountable, how it should ever have been propounded, that in the act of perception, as, for example, in looking at a tree, there is an independent image, form, or phantasm, or idea of the tree interposed between the tree itself and the percipient being.

A man has only to look at any object before him, not contenting himself with words, to be satisfied of the non-existence of any such image or idea. To one of untutored and unperverted mind the very suggestion of such a thing would appear absurd. He perceives the external object, and, let him look as intently as he may, he can perceive nothing else. *

Philosophers, however, were not content with simple facts, and a simple statement of these facts.

Amongst other conceits, divers of them appear to have entertained a notion that some such intervenient image or phantasm is requisite for the unmeaning reason, that the immaterial mind cannot come into contact with matter, or have any

is revertheless, the physical retinal
but a foot!

image; no idea, but a

communication with it, except, as several of these philosophers suppose, through a fine, filmy, shadowy, unsubstantial medium, overlooking that it is the business of philosophy at all times to take facts as they are, to regard what is done; not to perplex itself with hypothetical impossibilities. What mind can do, and what matter can do, must be determined by dry facts. The best proof of the practicability of a thing is, that it takes place.

They might have known, by merely opening their eyes, that intelligent beings do see material objects, and that in this simple act they are utterly unconscious of any image, species, idea, representation, or whatever else a metaphysician might choose to call that imaginary entity.

Even philosophers who did not consider any independent entity of this kind to exist, held the kindred doctrine, that there is a purely mental phenomenon, which is the immediate thing perceived, either constituting the object itself, or intervening in some inexplicable way between the external object and the percipient being, so as practically to prevent him from getting at the object, or to keep it aloof from him; an hypothesis, in whatever way it may be put or expressed, that embodies as rank a fiction as the other.

It seems to have been only after a thousand struggles that the simple truth was arrived at, which is not by any means yet universally received as the truth that the perception of external things

through the organs of sense is a direct mental act or phenomenon of consciousness not susceptible of being resolved into anything else.

This notion that we do not perceive external objects themselves, but only the ideas of them, whether such ideas are to be regarded as modifications of consciousness, or as substantially distinct on the one hand from the percipient mind, and on the other from the external object, led philosophers into inevitable self-contradictions.

Locke, for example, in one part of his immortal Essay, is inconsistent enough to maintain that we perceive nothing but our own ideas, and yet that we have a knowledge of external objects, although he is evidently puzzled to explain how this can be. And well he might be puzzled. The doctrine which admits that we have a knowledge of external objects, yet at the same time maintains that we perceive only the ideas of such objects, not the objects themselves, is self-contradictory.

In order that we may be able to know what an idea is as a relative or representative phenomenon, we must know also what it relates to or represents, or, in other words, we must know also its correlative; just as to know what a son or a daughter is, we must know likewise what a parent is.

But if, according to the doctrine under review, we perceive only ideas, we are shut out from the possibility of knowing what the represented objects are; nay, even from the possibility of knowing that