nd he that sees
not in them a difference of _substance_, sees it nowhere: to him all
natures are one; and that one, an absurd supposition.

15. In favour of what is urged by the phrenologists, it may perhaps be
admitted, as a natural law, that, "If a picture of a visible object be
formed upon the retina, and the impression be communicated, by the nerves,
to the brain, the _result_ will be an act of perception."--_Wayland's Moral
Science_, p. 4. But it does not follow, nor did the writer of this sentence
believe, that perception is a mere act or attribute of the organized matter
of the brain. A material object can only occasion in our sensible organs a
corporeal motion, which has not in it the nature of thought or perception;
and upon what principle of causation, shall a man believe, in respect to
vision, that the thing which he sees, is more properly the cause of the
idea conceived of it, than is the light by which he beholds it, or the mind
in which that idea is formed? Lord Kames avers, that, "Colour, which
appears to the eye as spread upon a substance, has no existence but in the
mind of the spectator."--_Elements of Criticism_, i, 178. And Cicero placed
the perception, not only of colour, but of taste, of sound, of smell, and
of touch, in the mind, rather than in the senses. "Illud est album, hoc
dulce, canorum illud, hoc bene olens, hoc asperum: animo jam haec tenemus
comprehensa, non sensibus."--_Ciceronis Acad._ Lib. ii, 7. Dr. Beattie,
however, says: "Colours inhere not in the coloured body, but in the light
that falls upon it; * * * and the word _colour_ denotes, an external thing,
and never a sensation of the mind."--_Moral Science_, i, 54. Here is some
difference of opinion; but however the thing may be, it does not affect my
argument; which is, that to perceive or think is an act or attribute of our
immaterial substance or nature, and not to be supposed the effect either of
the objects perceived or of our own corporeal organization.

16. Divine wisdom has established the senses as the avenues through which
our minds shall receive notices of the forms and qualities of external
things; but the sublime conception of the ancients, that these forms and
qualities had an abstract preexistence in the divine mind, is a common
doctrine of many English authors, as Milton, Cowper, Akenside, and others.
For example: "Now if _Ens primum_ be the cause of _entia a primo_, then he
hath the idea of them in him: for he made the