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acquire the rough estimate as well, implying as it does so much less than the numerous associations that distinguish degrees.

It is farther urged against the doctrine of acquirement, that the associated things should be able to reproduce one another reciprocally. Tactual and locomotive perceptions ought to suggest their visual signs as efficiently as the inverse operation; that is, in putting forth our hand in the dark to touch a thing, there ought to flash upon us the visible remembrance of its distance; which, it is alleged, is not the case. So, walking a few steps in the dark should give us the visual sensations corresponding to the interval passed over.

It may be replied, that we have in both cases a visual estimate of distance, just as accurate as our estimate of movement or locomotion from visible signs. When we walk six paces in the dark, retreating from a wall, we can then, and do, think of the visual distance of the wall at six yards; every pace that we take suggests the retreating figure of the wall; and if our estimate is not perfectly accurate, neither is our estimate of real distance, judged by its signs, always accurate.

12. III.-Observations made upon persons born blind, and after a lapse of years made to see, are affirmed to be in favour of the instinctive origin of the perceptions.

The first and best known of these cases, a youth couched by Cheselden (Phil. Trans. 1728), has, until lately, been considered as confirmatory of Berkeley's doctrine. But the recent opponents of Berkeley have endeavoured to give it a different turn, as well as to explain the other cases in their view. It is admitted, however, that the observers were not sufficiently aware of the points to be noted in order to settle this question. Two patients are quoted by Mr. Bailey, who could distinguish by the unassisted eye whether an object was brought nearer or carried farther from them. But in neither case, were the circumstances of the experiment such as to prove the fact.

Cheselden's patient said that 'all objects seemed to touch his eyes,' which is not compatible with his seeing things at a distance, and some things farther off than others. A similar remark was made by other patients, and although laborious attempts are made to explain away the effect of the observation (see Abbot's 'Sight and Touch,' chap. x.), the necessity of such attempts is fatal to the decisiveness of such cases as proofs of intuitive perception.

13. IV. The case of the lower animals is adduced as presenting an instinct such as is contended for, which would at least show that the fact is one within the compass of nature.

The power of many animals to direct their movements, almost immediately after birth, seems established by a large mass of concurrent observations. For example, the moment the chicken has broken the shell, it will dart at and catch a spider. Sir Joseph Banks said he had seen a chicken catch at a fly whilst the

shell stuck in its tail.' Many similar facts have been related over and over again by veracious witnesses. Such powers obviously imply an intuitive measure of distance, and a farther instinctive power of directing the movements in exact accordance therewith. On these facts, it is open to the adherents of Berkeley's theory to make the following comments.

(1) There does not exist a body of careful and adequate observations upon the early movements of animals. It is not enough that even a competent observer makes an occasional observation of this nature; it is essential that a course of many hundred observations should be made on each separate species, varying the circumstances, in every possible way, so as to ascertain the usual order of proceeding in the species generally, and all the conditions and limitations of the aptitudes alleged. We know enough to pronounce such facts as the above, respecting the chick, to be extreme and exceptional instances; usually a certain time (two or three days) elapses ere the chick can peck at seeds of corn; and the nature of its operations during that interval, as well as the character of the first attempts, should receive the most careful scrutiny by different observers. There is satisfactory evidence that these animals do possess, at a remarkably early period, a power of precise adjustment of their moving organs to external objects; but it is not proved that this power is complete at the instant of birth in any single species.

(2) As regards the bearing upon the Theory of Vision in man, these observations have the fatal weakness of proving too much. They prove that animals have not only the power of seeing distance, but the power of appreciating its exact amount, and the still farther power of graduating their own movements in exact correspondence with the distance measured. They include both the gift that we are alleged to have by nature, and two other aptitudes that in us are acquired. This enormous disparity reduces the force of the analogy to almost nothing. A natural endowment that goes the length of a precise muscular adjustment adapted to each varying distance, so far transcends the utmost that can be affirmed of our primitive stock of visual perceptions, as to amount to a new and distinct attribute, presupposing a totally different organization.

14. V.-The observations on infants are held as favouring the instinctive perception of distance.

It is not alleged that infants at birth exhibit any symptoms of this knowledge, like the animals just quoted, but that they show it before they have developed the powers of touch and locomotion requisite for actual distances. The infant is said to have the power of bringing its hand accurately to its mouth about the eleventh week, while the power of touching and handling has made very little progress at the end of six months. Yet, by this time, the child knows the difference between a friend and a stranger, and throws itself out in the direction of the one, and

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turns away from the other; it also knows when it is moved towards the object it likes, and makes no attempt to seize a thing until it is brought quite close. Of course, locomotion has not yet begun.

We have given by anticipation the only answer to these facts, supposing them accurately stated (which is doubtful). The earliest associations of visible appearances with actual trials of distance and real magnitude are not made by the hand, or by the child's own locomotion, but by its movements as carried from place to place; and until some one can show that it can have no adequate consciousness of these movements, at the same time that it is conscious of the changes of the retinal magnitude of the things about it, the Berkleian theory is not affected by the facts in question.

15. It has been suggested, as a third alternative in this dispute, that there may be a hereditary or transmitted experience of the connexion between the visible signs and the locomotive measure of distance.

This view belongs to what is called the Development hypothesis. If there be such a thing as the transmission of acquired powers to posterity, it may operate in the present instance. Facts are adduced (by Darwin, Spencer, and others) to show that this transmission is possible, although the utmost extent of it would appear to be but small for one or a few generations. Still, it is argued that, if there be any experience likely to impress itself on the organization permanently, it would be an experience so incessant as the connexion of the visible signs with the locomotive estimate of distance.

It may be remarked, with reference to this hypothesis, that, whatever be the case with certain of the lower animals, the hereditary transmission has not operated to confer the instinct upon man (unless the opposition to Berkeley be successful, which is not admitted). Hereditary experience may have predisposed the nervous system to fall in more rapidly into the connexions required. This is what no Berkeleian is in a position to deny, while it might ease the difficulty suggested by the great strength and maturity of the acquisitions at the earliest period of our. recollections.

PERCEPTION OF A MATERIAL WORLD.

1. All Perception or Knowledge implies mind.

To perceive is an act of mind; whatever we may suppose the thing perceived to be, we cannot abstract it from the percipient mind. To perceive a tree is a mental act; the tree is known as perceived, and not in any other way. There is no such thing known as a tree wholly detached from perception; and we can speak only of what we know.

2. The Perception of Matter points to a fundamental distinction in our experience. We are in one condition, or attitude, of mind when surveying a tree or a mountain, and in a totally different condition or attitude when luxuriating in warmth, or when suffering from toothache.

The difference here indicated is the greatest contrast within our experience. It is expressed by Matter and Mind (in a narrow sense), External and Internal, Object and Subject.

3. The distinction between the attitude of material perception and the subjective consciousness has been commonly stated, by supposing a material world, in the first instance, detached from perception, and, afterwards, coming into perception, by operating upon the mind. This view involves a contradiction.

The prevailing doctrine is that a tree is something in itself apart from all perception; that, by its luminous emanations, it impresses our mind and is then perceived; the perception being an effect, and the unperceived tree the cause. But the tree is known only through perception; what it may be anterior to, or independent of, perception, we cannot tell; we can think of it as perceived, but not as unperceived. There is a manifest contradiction in the supposition; we are required at the same moment to perceive the thing and not to perceive it. We know the touch of iron, but we cannot know the touch apart from the touch.

4. Assuming the Perception of Matter to be a fact that cannot be disengaged from the mind, we may analyze the distinction between it and the modes of subjective consciousness, into three main particulars.

I. The perception of Matter, or the Object consciousness, is connected with the putting forth of Muscular Energy, as opposed to Passive Feeling.

The fundamental properties of the material or object world are Force or Resistance, and Extension,-the Mechanical and the Mathematical properties. These have sometimes been called the primary qualities of matter. The modes of Extension are called, by Hamilton, primary qualities, and the modes of Resistance or Force, secundo-primary.

Now, it has been formerly seen (MUSCULAR FEELINGS) that, in experiencing resistance, and in perceiving extension, our moving energies are called into play. The exertion of our

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own muscular power is the fact constituting the property called resistance. Of matter as independent of our feeling ⚫ of resistance, we can have no conception; the rising up of this feeling within us amounts to everything that we mean by resisting matter. We are not at liberty to say, without incurring contradiction, that our feeling of expended energy is one thing, and a resisting material world another and a different thing; that other and different thing is by us wholly unthinkable.

On the other hand, in purely passive feeling, as in those of our sensations that do not call forth our muscular energies, we are not perceiving matter, we are in a state of subject consciousness. The feeling of warmth, as in the bath, is an example. If we deliver ourselves wholly to the pleasure of the warmth, we are in a truly subject attitude, we are in noways cognizant of a material world. All our senses may yield similar experiences, if we resign ourselves to their purely sensible or passive side; if we are absorbed with a relish without moving the masticating organs, or with an odour, without snuffing it, or moving up to it. In pure soft touch, we approach to the subject attitude; but there are few exercises of touch entirely separated from muscular effect. On the same conditions, sounds might be a purely subject experience. Lastly, it is just possible, although difficult, to make light a subject experience; mere formless radiance would be an approach to it; the recognition of form or boundary introduces an object property, embodied in ocular movements.

The qualities of matter affecting our senses on their purely passive side-their special or characteristic sensibility-are called the secondary qualities of matter-Taste, Odour, Touch proper (soft touch, &c.), Sound, and Colour.

The distinction of Primary and Secondary qualities is made chiefly with reference to Perception. The primary, on the common theory, are those of pure and independent matter, matter per se; the secondary are tinged or coloured by the percipient mind.

We have thus, in putting forth energy, a mode of consciousness belonging to the object side; and in passive feeling, a mode of consciousness belonging to the subject side.

5. II. Our object experience farther consists of the uniform connexion of Definite Feelings with Definite Energies.