re is no space, save what the mind creates for, and out of
itself. Our man of simple apprehension, much bewildered, not at all
convinced, breaks from the chain of sophistry, opens wide his eyes, and
declares after all that "seeing is believing."

We think so too.

On this subject of _perception_ it is well known that Reid and Stewart,
refusing to be drawn into any hypothesis or unsatisfactory analysis,
contented themselves with stating, in the preciser language of the
schools, the _fact_ as it appears to the plain unsophisticated observer.
Reid's explanations are unfortunately mingled up with his controversy
against the old hypothesis of _ideas_ or _images_ of things perceived in
the mind--an hypothesis combated by him with unnecessary vehemence--but
this detracts little from their substantive correctness or utility. This
strange notion of images emanating from the external object, entering
the mind, and being there perceived, was, after all, in its origin,
rather a physical than a metaphysical hypothesis. The ancient speculator
upon the causes of things felt, as we feel at this moment, the necessity
for some medium of communication between the eye and the distant object,
and not having detected this medium in the light which traverses or
fills the space between them, he had recourse to this clumsy invention
of _images_ or _species_ raying out from the surfaces of things. At the
time when Reid wrote, this hypothesis, in its crude form, cannot be said
to have existed; but it had left its traces in the philosophical
language of the period, and there was certainly a vague notion prevalent
that the idea of an object was a _tertium quid_, a something that was
neither the mind nor the object.

We will quote the statement which Dugald Stewart makes of Reid's
doctrine of perception. As he himself adopts the statement, it will
embrace at once the opinion of both these philosophers:--

"To what, may it be asked, does this statement (of Reid's) amount?
Merely to this, that the mind is so formed that certain impressions
produced on our organs of sense by external objects, are followed by
correspondent sensations, and that these sensations (which have no more
resemblance to the qualities of matter, than the words of a language
have to the things they denote) are followed by a perception of the
existence and qualities of the bodies by which the impressions are made;
that all the steps of this progress are equally incomprehensible;