Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/587

SCOTUS XOVANTICUS'S METAPHYSICA NOVA ET FETUS TA. 575 and corresponds to the highest development of what is generally spoken of loosely as Sensation. It is, or may be supposed to be, " the mental condition of the higher animals . Hume's world of custom-woven impressions is such a world as would be given by Attuition. In such a state, the subject is wholly passive, but objects register themselves, as it were, upon it. For Attuition does not give a mere chaotic manifold, as Kant sometimes says of Sensation; it is denned on p. 11 as " the reflex co-ordination of the elements or units of sensation into an image or synopsis ". It is " the sensation of objects as mutually exclusive as being not only outside the receptive or conscious subject, but also out- side each other ". It corresponds, therefore, most closely to Kant's Judgment of Perception the uncategorised perception which commentators have found so hard to reconcile with other parts of his system. Perception, as understood by the author, is the one essential step beyond this, which constitutes the self- conscious individual. " A Force advances out of what has been hitherto mere receptive attuitional individuality, and prehends or seizes the presentation, holding it close to itself and contemplat- ing it. This Force is Will." So far as the matter of the pre- sentation goes, nothing is added in the passage from Attuition to Perception ; nor, on this side of the subject, is any new " sub- stance " foisted upon us. There is a difference of attitude ; Will takes possession of the object by which the attuitive sub- ject was previously possessed. Nevertheless, as the author puts it, in a way that recalls Ferrier, " the whole process is essentially a movement from that which was not to that which is ". Only it is useless to try to explain what the animal consciousness is, or what the Self or Ego is ; "all that can be done is to watch the latter in the throes of birth and name what we see ". It is, as has been indicated, the result of an act us pur us a "wholly inexplicable spontaneity " which may be called Will. Will forms, therefore, according to the author, the root and essence of Eeason ; and he frequently uses the compound form " Will- Reason " to express his position. There follows upon this an analysis of the act of perception, undertaken with the view of proving that " the whole vast fabric of Eeason is nothing save Percipience when truly seen into". In this elementary act, in other words, the constant dialectic movement of reason may be easily discerned. Besides the kinetic initiation of Will and the consequent relation of the object to the unity of consciousness, and in addition to the affirmation of the externality and independence of the object (a sense of which we have already seen to be present in attuition) there are here enumerated as the constitutive moments of Eeason the familiar laws of Excluded Middle, Contradiction, Sufficient Eeason, and Identity. They are mentioned in this order because all perception is determination through negation. " The simple perception ' A is A ' is mediated, and so necessitated through the