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"Suppose the total object to be twelve, that the external reality constitutes six, the material sense three, and the mind three; this may enable you to form some conjecture of the nature of the object of perception."

Is there any good ground for the very general and very stubborn conviction that the mind cannot, by way of direct apprehension, act on anything external to itself; or are Reid and Hamilton right in regarding this as a pure assumption?

It is very difficult and very important, in a discussion of this character, to be aware of the physical images which cling to our words and mislead the thought by material analogies. In and out, where it is and where it is not, are expressions applicable to matter rather than to mind, and we must not confound the intellect even with its instruments, the brain and the nervous system. The effects which take place in these are one thing, and what enters consciousness as a purely spiritual product, an inner experience, is quite another. The connection between the two, an affection of the organ of sense and an affection of the mind, is unknown, and for the present at least insoluble. They are as wide apart in kind as any two known things can be, since the one is physical and the other spiritual, classes of phenomena for which we have found no common term. There seems some plausibility in the notion of external perception, when we contemplate the organism of any one sense, as that of the eye. The light enters. A sensible, visible effect visible to another eye is evoked on the retina. To this compound effect to which two agencies are contributing, the eye and the light, it may seem reasonable to regard the nerve as sensitive, and therefore to suppose it to take cognizance of the immediate presence of a foreign agent. If, then, we could identify the perception of the mind with this condition of its organ, there would