ical and positive, because he assumed the psychological and
not the metaphysical doctrine of perception as the basis of his
arguments. He did not regard the perception of matter as absolutely
primary and simple; but in common with all psychologists, he conceived
that it admitted of being resolved into a mental condition, and a
material reality; and the consequence was, that he fell into the very
errors which it was the professed business of his life to denounce and
exterminate. How this catastrophe came about we shall endeavour shortly
to explain.

Reid's leading design was to overthrow scepticism and idealism. In
furtherance of this intention, he proposed to himself the accomplishment
of two subsidiary ends,--the refutation of what is called the ideal or
representative theory of perception, and the substitution of a doctrine
of intuitive perception in its room. He takes, and he usually gets,
credit for having accomplished both of these objects. But if it be true
that the representative theory is but the inevitable development of the
doctrine which treats the perception of matter analytically, and if it
be true that Reid adopts this latter doctrine, it is obvious that his
claims cannot be admitted without a very considerable deduction. That
both of these things are true may be established, we think, beyond the
possibility of a doubt.

In the first place, then, we have to show that the theory of a
representative perception (which Reid is supposed to have overthrown) is
identical with the doctrine which treats the perception of matter
analytically;--and, in the second, we have to show that Reid himself
followed the analytic or psychological procedure in his treatment of
this fact, and founded upon the analysis his own doctrine of perception.

_First_, The representative theory is that doctrine of perception which
teaches that, in our intercourse with the external universe, we are not
immediately cognisant of real objects themselves, but only of certain
mental transcripts or images of them, which, in the language of the
different philosophical schools, were termed ideas, representations,
phantasms, or species. According to this doctrine we are cognisant of
real things, not in and through themselves, but in and through these
species or representations. The representations are the immediate or
proximate, the real things are the mediate or remote, objects of the
mind. The existence of the former is a matter of knowledge, th