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was to take care of persons infected with leprosy: in the course of time, it became a military order. The whole body returned with St. Lewis, into Europe, in 1254. Af terwards, it was united in France, with the order of our Lady of Mount Carmel, and in Savoy, with the order of St. Maurice. All these orders displayed heroic acts of valor, in the enterprises of the Crusaders, to recover the Holy Land.

ESSAY

ON

External Perception.

BY J. FEARN, ESQ.

AUTHOR OF

A Review of First Principles of Bishop Berkeley, Dr. Reid, and Professor Stewart.

Also, An Essay on Consciousness.

1815.

ESSAY,

&c. &c.

PROP. I. All knowledge of the external World is by intellect; not by sense.

PERHAPS few processes of mental operation have gained the assent of opposite metaphysical schools more generally, than that of perceiving external things by the senses. Agreeably with this, we find those who are scrupulous to maintain a scientific division of phenomena,-into those of sense-and those of consciousness, nevertheless fall into the common usage, and treat the things of the external world, as objects of sense. Nor do these leave us any room to suppose this an indirect phraseology. On the contrary, we have a well defined doctrine, that perception of external things is original or instinctive—and, especially, that "it is not the effect of reasoning."

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Now if this doctrine (which is no more than a mere statement of what men feel during the fact) were true, so as that experience could not lead to detection of its fallacy, it must follow, that in such perceptions the mind is as inert a receptacle of external impressions, as the grossest materialist can imagine it to be. But we may safely rest, that the contrary is proved by a host of evidences.

Besides what happens to blind men on receiving their sight; and the known exercise of our judgment in ordinary cases of perception; it is admitted, by the Theorists herein opposed, that no single sensation could ever afford us any notion of its external cause; and therefore it must be admitted, that a million of sensa tions (without any exercise of reason) would furnish no more knowledge of their causes, than one sensation.-But our earliest impulses, as well as subsequent ones, strongly excite the exercise of intellect :-and the changes we suffer,-the cross évidence of the different senses, and, above all, the observed motions of things, lead us first to judge, and then to judge quickly,—that their causes are external. Thus, before infancy is past, we become such adepts at knowing things by intellect, upon sensation, that the sensual perception of figure-and the added intellectual conception of externality-become identified, in feeling, as one simple fact: And it is only by referring to other facts, wherein perception of figure stands alone, that we can demonstrate the contrary, and prove beyond dispute, that there is no necessary connexion between perceived figures and conceptions of externalty :—far less is the perceived figure, itself, the external thing.

What a noble view of the Mind does this consideration afford us?-Those, in general, who have rated man at the highest, have been content to claim for intellect its own internal world; and have thought it much to maintain, that perception of moral truth is by reason, and not by sense.-But the great and glorious truth is, that not only moral truth, but physical truth also-Or the discovery and intercourse of the external world, is part of the province of intellect.-Seventy years of successive sensations (without reason) would leave us as ignorant of these, as it found us.

Nothing can be more fatal, than this, to the Hypothesis which resolves all our knowledge into sensation: but, at the same time, nothing can be more fatal to the doctrine of instinctive perception.— Now, being habitually engaged in such inquiries, I feel a responsibility to point at such facts as must be allowed to be plain and demonstrative evidences of the distinct operation, and general province, of intellect, in perceiving the things which surround us.

In the next section we will enter upon the process itself; but previously to this, I must beg to observe, as explanatory of my

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