ing their states, while they, in turn, re-act upon the Will, modifying and limiting its control. In the first instance, knowledge is direct and immediate. In the second, through a consciousness of sensations, we learn the correlation between those objects and our sensibility. In the last, through a consciousness of the nisuses of our Will, and an experience of their results, we learn the correlation between these substances and our voluntary powers. In all instances, however, whether our knowledge is direct or indirect, it is alike real and absolute. In respect to the manner in which, when certain conditions are fulfilled, we know these objects, the only answer that philosophy gives or demands, is this: Such is the correlation between the nature of the knowing faculty and that of the objects of knowledge.

Theory Verified.

It is a sufficient verification of the theory above announced, that it is a statement of the case, as it presents itself to the universal Intelligence—that it is encumbered with no difficulties which are not involved in every theory of a different kind which has hitherto been presented, and is entirely free from those difficulties which are perfectly fatal to those theories. Every individual believes, that he knows the external world as correlated to the threefold departments of our nature under consideration, and in accordance with the principles above stated. Every theory also must rest, in the last analysis, in respect to the mode of knowledge, upon this one principle, The mind knows, because it is a faculty of knowledge. The difficulties which all theories, contradictory to that above announced, involve, are these: either they do not present the facts or conditions of knowledge, or the manner of knowing, as they are given in the universal Intelligence.

Theories of External Perception formed by Philosophers. Theories differing from that above announced, formed by philosophers, to explain the manner in which Mind perceives external objects, divide themselves into two classes :-those which admit that our knowledge of such objects is real, and those which maintain that that knowledge is not real; that all we can know of such objects is our own manner of conceiving of them.

The former theories all agree in this, that we do not know external objects directly, but through certain images exist

ing between the objects and the faculty of knowledge. "To all of them," says Mr. Dugald Stewart, "I apprehend the two following remarks will be found applicable: First, that in the formation of them, their authors have been influenced by some general maxims of philosophizing, borrowed from physics; and, secondly, that they have been influenced by an indistinct, but deep-rooted conviction of the immateriality of the soul; which, although not precise enough to point out to them the absurdity of attempting to illustrate its operations by the analogy of matter, was yet sufficiently strong to induce them to keep the absurdity of their theories as far as possible out of view, by allusions to those physical facts, in which the distinctive properties of matter are the least grossly and palpably exposed to our observation. To the former of these circumstances is to be ascribed the general principle upon which all the known theories of perception proceed that in order to explain the intercourse between the mind and distant objects, it is necessary to suppose the existence of something intermediate, by which its perceptions are produced; to the latter, the various metaphorical expressions of ideas, species, forms, shadows, phantasms, images; which, while they amused the fancy with some remote analogies to the objects of our senses, did not directly revolt our reason." Very little, in addition to the observations above cited, need be said upon these theories. They all agree in leaving totally unexplained the very difficulties which they profess to explain, to wit, How can the mind perceive an object out of itself, and at a distance from itself? The image between the mind and the object, is as really distinct from the mind, and as really removed from it, though at a less distance, as the object itself. Perception of the intermediate image is just as difficult of explanation, and as truly needs another intermediate image, as perception of the object.

Of the theories last named, some affirm that there are no objects external to the mind; that what we have postulated as the qualities of objects external to us, are nothing but our own mental states, states of which we are conscious. This is the theory of Coleridge, and of modern Transcendentalists. Others maintain the reality of mind, on the one hand, and of something not mind on the other. They deny, however, that the latter can be to the former, in any sense, an object of knowledge. When this unknown something, having neither extension nor form, and existing neither in time nor

ing their states, while they, in turn, re-act upon the Will, modifying and limiting its control. In the first instance, knowledge is direct and immediate. In the second, through a consciousness of sensations, we learn the correlation between those objects and our sensibility. In the last, through a consciousness of the nisuses of cur Will, and an experience of their results, we learn the correlation between these substances and our voluntary powers. In all instances, however, whether our knowledge is direct or indirect, it is alike real and absolute. In respect to the manner in which, when certain conditions are fulfilled, we know these objects, the only answer that philosophy gives or demands, is this: Such is the correlation between the nature of the knowing faculty and that of the objects of knowledge.

Theory Verified.

It is a sufficient verification of the theory above announced, that it is a statement of the case, as it presents itself to the universal Intelligence-that it is encumbered with no difficulties which are not involved in every theory of a different kind which has hitherto been presented, and is entirely free from those difficulties which are perfectly fatal to those theories. Every individual believes, that he knows the external world as correlated to the threefold departments of our nature under consideration, and in accordance with the principles above stated. Every theory also must rest, in the last analysis, in respect to the mode of knowledge, upon this one principle, The mind knows, because it is a faculty of knowledge. The difficulties which all theories, contradictory to that above announced, involve, are these: either they do not present the facts or conditions of knowledge, or the manner of knowing, as they are given in the universal Intelligence.

Theories of External Perception formed by Philosophers.

Theories differing from that above announced, formed by philosophers, to explain the manner in which Mind perceives external objects, divide themselves into two classes :-those which admit that our knowledge of such objects is real, and those which maintain that that knowledge is not real; that all we can know of such objects is our own manner of conceiving of them.

The former theories all agree in this, that we do not know external objects directly, but through certain images exist

Reasons for these Theories.

Among the reasons given for these theories, the most important, and all that I now need to notice, are the following:

1. They explain the possibility of knowledge. Of all things real to us, as objects of knowledge, we have a direct and immediate Consciousness. All objects of knowledge, therefore, are brought within the sphere of direct mental vision. The possibility of perception is thus fully demonstrated.

2. These theories render the reality and certainty of knowledge self-evident. If nothing exists in the object, but what our Intelligence has put there, our knowledge of the object must be real, certain, and absolute. If, for example, nothing exists in a contribution box but what I have put there, and I know what I have put into it, then my knowledge of what the box contains is real and absolute. So when I contemplate an object which my Intelligence has postulated as external to myself, if that object is in reality nothing but a pure creation of my Intelligence, and contains nothing but what the same Intelligence has put into it, how demonstrably manifest it is, that my knowledge of the object is real and absolute.

Objections to these Theories.

But while these theories apparently, at first thought, commend themselves to our minds, as explaining things which would otherwise be wholly inexplicable to us, they are at once, in our Intelligence, met with difficulties perfectly insurmountable.

1. They leave totally unexplained the same mystery hanging over the subject which they profess to explain, that hung over it before, to wit, the possibility of knowledge. The distance between the subject and object of knowledge is, to be sure, greatly abridged; inasmuch as all things are brought under the immediate vision of Consciousness itself. A theory, however, which is valid as an explication of the possisibility of knowledge, must explain the possibility, not of one, but of all kinds of knowledge. Now the theories under consideration, explain, in a certain form, the possibility of what is called external perception. But they leave wholly unexplained the possibility of knowledge of another kind, the

possibility of which needs to be explained, just as much as that of the former, to wit, the possibility of knowledge by Consciousness. Suppose an explication of the possibility of a knowledge of our own mental states be demanded, what answer can be given, but that which is rejected as valid, in regard to the possibility of external perception-to wit, that Consciousness, relatively to mental states, is a faculty, and the states themselves are objects of perception, or knowledge? Now this explication, the only one possible, in the case under consideration, and indeed in any case whatever, is equally valid, as an explanation of the possibility of external perception. We have only to postulate the Intelligence as a faculty, and external substances as objects of perception, and the possibility of such knowledge is just as manifest as knowledge by Consciousness, or through any other function of the Intelligence.

2. These theories leave another mystery, still more inexplicable, hanging over the question in respect to the possibilily of knowledge, to wit, how can the Intelligence postulate a purely mental affection as exclusively the quality of an external object? In other words, how can the Intelligence give a phenomenon as pertaining, an object wholly distinct from and independent of the precipient subject, which, after all, is nothing but a phenomenon of that subject? Above all, how can the Intelligence first give an affection purely subjective, as a quality exclusively objective, and afterwards give the same quality as exclusively subjective, and that without the possibility, as Colerigde acknowledges, of considering it, as anything but objective? All these contradictions take place in the interior of our Intelligence, in respect to external perception, according to the theories under considerationcontradictions perfectly equivalent to the declaration, that the same thing, at the same time, is, and is not. Should it be said, that this process is possible to the Intelligence, because, that such is its nature, the same explanation renders equally explicable, the possibility of external perception as maintained in this Treatise, a fact denied exclusively on the ground of its inexplicability.

3. The explication which these theories give of the fact of perception, is, in reality, the destruction of the fact, and not its explication at all. In the Intelligence, there appears a perception of an external object. Philosophy is called upon for an explanation of the fact. The fact to be explained is