Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/367

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article in blackwood's magazine.
357

the organism or the mind. But Mr Bailey makes no such representation of the theory, and the whole argument which pervades the chapter in which the first question is discussed, is founded on the negation of any such extension. All visible extension, he tells us, must, in his opinion, be either plane or solid. Now he will scarcely maintain that he regarded Berkeley as holding that we perceive solid extension within the organism of the eye. Neither does he admit that, according to Berkeley, and in reference to this first question, plane extension is perceived within the organism of the eye. For when he proceeds to the discussion of the second of the two questions, he remarks that "we must, at this stage of the argument, consider the theory under examination, as representing that we see all things originally in the same plane;"[1] obviously implying that he had not as yet considered the theory as representing that we see things originally in the same plane: in other words, plainly admitting that, in his treatment of the first question, he had not regarded the theory as representing that we see things originally under the category of extension at all.

But if any more direct evidence on this point were wanted, it is to be found in the section of his work which treats of "the perception of figure." In the chapter in which he discusses the first of the two questions, he constantly speaks of Berkeley's

  1. 'Review of Berkeley's Theory,' p. 35.