DOCTBINE OF SENSITIVE PERCEPTION. 291 



are directed towards it. Do we perceive it ? In the proper sense 

 of the term, assuredly not — that is, if perception he an immediate 

 cognition. The hook is not in presentation to the mind ; and there- 

 fore any knowledge of it to which we attain is of necessity got 

 mediately, as the result of the immediate cognition of some other 

 ohject or objects lying within the reach of consciousness. Sir W. 

 Hamilton, by denying that distant objects are perceived, escapes the 

 charge of suicidal inconsistency to which his predecessor is exposed. 

 According to his doctrine, the sun is not perceived in the firmament ; 

 its presence there is only known mediately and inferentially. David 

 did not perceive Goliah when he was in the act of slinging the stone 

 at his forehead ; he merely guessed, as our American neighbours 

 would say, founding on some particular consciousness of which he 

 was the subject, that the giant was before him. 



It will be obvious from the statement made, that sensation is the 

 condition sine qua non of perception For what is perception ? It 

 is the immediate knowledge of relations under which the organism 

 exists, to itself, or to something extraorganic. But these relations 

 are apprehended only in and along with organic affections. Let 

 no organic affections be cognized — in other words, let there 

 be no sensation — and the organism is no longer known at all ; 

 a fortiori its relations remain unknown. Perception therefore 

 implies sensation as its indispensible condition. Yet it must 

 not be supposed that, as Reid affirms, the one precedes the other 

 in time. A sensation (Reid tells us) is first experienced; and 

 and thereupon a conception of the external object which was con- 

 cerned in originating it, together with an irresistible belief of the 

 existence of the object, are instinctively suggested to, or inspired 

 in, the mind. The conception and belief, forming the constituent 

 elements of the perception, are suggested to, or inspired in the mind, 

 on occasion of the sensation ; so that the perception is subsequent, 

 by however brief a period, to the sensation. In opposition to this, it 

 is a perfectly essential part of the doctrine of Sir W. Hamilton, 

 that though sensation must, indeed, as a conditio sine qua non of 

 perception, be antecedent to it in the order of nature, the two are 

 inseparable in time. The relations of extension which we apprehend 

 in our body, when we perceive, are apprehended not after, but in and 

 along with organic affections. It hardly requires to be added, that 

 Hamilton's principles are diametrically opposed to those statements 

 also of Dr. Reid, which represent the connection between sensation 

 and perception (like that imagined by Reid to subsist betwixt our 

 organic states and our sensations,) as arbitrary, and which affirm that 



