hing more is required to
establish their perfect identity. The analysis of the fact which we call
the perception of matter, is unquestionably the groundwork and pervading
principle of the theory of a representative perception, whatever form of
expression this scheme may at any time have assumed.

_Secondly_, Did Dr Reid go to work analytically in his treatment of the
perception of matter? Undoubtedly he did. He followed the ordinary
psychological practice. He regarded the _datum_ as divisible into
perception and matter. The perception he held to be an act, if not a
modification, of our minds; the matter, he regarded as something which
existed out of the mind and irrespective of all perception. Right or
wrong, he resolved, or conceived that he had resolved, the perception of
matter into its constituent elements--these being a mental operation on
the one hand, and a material existence on the other. In short, however
ambiguous many of Dr Reid's principles may be, there can be no doubt
that he founded his doctrine of perception on an analysis of the given
fact with which he had to deal. He says, indeed, but little about this
analysis, so completely does he take it for granted. He accepted, as a
thing of course, the notorious distinction between the perception of
matter and matter itself: and, in doing so, he merely followed the
example of all preceding psychologists.

These two points being established,--_first_, that the theory of
representationism necessarily arises out of an analysis of the
perception of matter; and _secondly_, that Reid analysed or accepted the
analysis of this fact,--it follows as a necessary consequence, that
Reid, so far from having overthrown the representative theory, was
himself a representationist. His analysis gave him more than he
bargained for. He wished to obtain only one, that is, only a proximate
object in perception; but his analysis necessarily gave him two: it gave
him a remote as well as a proximate object. The mental mode or operation
which he calls the perception of matter, and which he distinguishes from
matter itself, this, in his philosophy, is the proximate object of
consciousness, and is precisely equivalent to the species, phantasms,
representations of the older psychology; the real existence, matter
itself, which he distinguishes from the perception of it, this is the
remote object of the mind, and is precisely equivalent to the mediate or
represented object of the older psych