Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/287

such faculties; but they are mere metaphysical chimeras of a most deceptive character, and it is high time that they should be blotted from the pages of speculation. If, in talking of these faculties, we merely meant to say that man is able to see and hear, we should find no fault with them. But they impose upon us by deceiving us into the notion that we can think what it is not possible for us to think, namely, perceptions without their objects—vision without light, and hearing without sound. Consider, for example, what is meant by the faculty of hearing. There is meant by it—is there not?—a power or capacity of hearing, which remains dormant and inert until excited by the presence of sound; and which, while existing in that state, can be conceived without any conception being formed of its object. But, in thinking this faculty, are we not obliged to think it as something which would be excited by sound, if sound were present to arouse it; and in order to think of what is embodied in the words, "would be excited by sound," are we not constrained to think sound itself, and to think it in the very same moment, and in the very same thought, in which we think the faculty that apprehends it? In other words, in order to think the faculty, are we not forced to have recourse to the notion of the very object which we professed to have left out of our account in framing our conception of the faculty? Most assuredly, the faculty and the object exist in an ideal unity, which cannot be dissolved by any exertion of thought.