ascertain, but the nature of which no knowledge can alter and no explanation elucidate.

Kant thought he had made a great discovery in the method of treating these subjects when he proposed, instead of tracing the effects of objects on the mind, to reverse the process, by tracing the operation of the mind on objects - an operation which never happens to take place comparing his procedure to that of Copernicus when putting aside the hypothesis that the whole heavens revolve round the motionless earth, that celebrated astronomer set himself to try what results would be obtained by supposing the heavens to be stationary and the earth to revolve on its axis.

The German metaphysician, nevertheless, flattered himself with a comparison which he was not entitled to draw.

The single point of analogy between the two cases certainly not a very extraordinary one—is, that in both there was a change, or an alleged change, in method; and this single point is nothing compared with the concomitant discrepancy in every respect besides. Copernicus abandoned a cumbrous, complicated, and false hypothesis for a simple and true theory, beautifully consistent with all known phenomena; while Kant dismissed a simple and true mode of viewing his subject for an arbitrary supposition, not only without any foundation in facts, but absolutely opposed to them.

LETTER XXI.

IDEAS.

Ir scarcely needs stating, except by way of introduction to what follows, that as there are no independent entities called ideas or images in perception, so there are none in conception.

In the act of conceiving or recollecting an object in its absence, or when it no longer exists, there is obviously nothing but the concipient being affected in a particular way; there is by the supposition no external object before him, and there is no independent image, or form, or phantasm, present to his consciousness. It is simply the man mentally acting or mentally affected.

Thus the acts called respectively perception and conception agree in the negative circumstance, that in neither of them is there any independent entity called an idea or representation; but at the same time they differ in this, that there is in conception, or rather conception itself is, a state of mind corresponding to the term idea or representation, while in perception there is nothing at all to which the term idea or representation can be applied.

The false hypothesis, however, of there being

ideas in perception may have sprung out of the undeniable fact that there are ideas in conception.

As when we turn away from looking at a tree, we are conscious of an idea or image of it remaining, although the tree is no longer in sight, it may have easily occurred to any one that, since the idea of the tree must have been generated while the object was present, the said idea must have then existed in the mind; hence, it may be argued, it is by means of ideas that external objects are perceived, or, what amounts to the same thing, it is the ideas which are perceived and not the objects.

Such a train of loose reasoning would be most likely to occur to those who maintained that the ideas we have, when thinking of external objects, are entities substantially distinct from the mind. On that hypothesis the reflex deduction I have supposed would have much plausibility. Nothing would seem more reasonable than that such independent existences, if they had place in conception, should have previously had place in perception.

But, putting aside separate entities, and taking only the admitted fact that we have ideas of objects in their absence, although such ideas are purely mental modifications, a similar train of thought might be suggested; a reflex transfer of ideas, so to speak, might be made from conception to perception, and what is true of the former ascribed to the latter.

Whether, nevertheless, the doctrine of ideas in perception is ascribable to this origin or not, its utter groundlessness is plain, and the truth remains unaffected that ideas have nothing to do with the perception of external objects-bear no part in the process-but are mental phenomena which take place in the absence of the objects which they represent.

This last expression indicates their essential character. In every possible case ideas are representative; i. e. they are invariably representations of some objects which we have formerly perceived, or some internal affections or operations which we have formerly experienced.

They correspond to real objects or events formerly present to the mind, as portraits correspond to their originals. Hume and other metaphysicians, obliged to resort to terms borrowed from material operations, call them copies; others again, in certain cases, call them images; and Mr. Stewart, as we have denominates them transcripts. As in many seen, cases this and similar phraseology may not seem appropriate, it will be needful to enter into some explanations in reference to it, and to my own occasional employment of it, as well as to the more comprehensive term idea.

To avoid repetition and prolixity, philosophers are apt, in the discussion of these subjects, to consider chiefly visible objects, and their mental representations, which may very properly be

termed images. This I myself have done in the preceding speculations, and I may find it convenient to continue to do it in the sequel; but the remarks throughout are just as applicable, mutatis mutandis, to the representations of emotions and intellectual operations, and also of what we perceive through the other organs of sense, as of what we perceive through the organ of vision. The term images is, indeed, not appropriate to the former. We cannot well speak of the image of an emotion such as grief, nor of that of a musical note, or of a fragrant smell; and even to speak of copies in such cases seems harsh: but we can conceive or recollect the emotion, the note, and the smell with as much distinctness, if not vividness, as we can call to mind an extended object; and usage allows us in each of these cases to apply the word idea. Every one, I presume, can do as I can, who have no particular musical aptitude, namely, go over a favourite air or tune in his own mind as perfectly as he can picture to himself the countenance of a favourite friend, or the forms and colours of a familiar scene; and if any one resembles the poet Wordsworth in not being able to do this, he can at all events mentally repeat the first stanza of Gray's "Elegy in a Country Church Yard," or the opening of Goldsmith's "Deserted Village," or the concluding lines of Campbell's "Pleasures of Hope," or some other celebrated fragment of verse. No recollections, indeed, can be more perfect