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phenomena, and the mind rapidly learns to distinguish those inwardly dependent on its own action, from those dependent outwardly on foreign agents. This class it can not, from its own constitution, leave without this causal reference and exposition.

The confusion which sometimes overtakes the mind in perception, illustrates its method of education, and the manner in which it is commenced. A pressure is felt across the forehead, as if the band placed upon it had been drawn too tightly. We cannot tell with certainty whether the impression is due to this cause, or to the astringency of a fluid with which the fillet was saturated. We test the point by raising the hand, and determining whether or not mechanical force is present. In the absence of this, we refer the feeling to the condition of the nerves. Again, we seem to hear a sound, as the anxious parent the crying of her child. She cannot at once decide whether the impression was the suggestion of her own thought, or the actual effect of the supposed cause. The attention is more carefully directed, the phenomena that enter the mind from without being discriminated from the mere play of fancy; and by this more complete separation of its own action from the action of other agents the point is settled.

Lesson 23 - 5. The doctrine of direct perception - p.94

5. It has been thought, and much has been made of this point, that a denial of direct perception is an impeachment of the veracity of our faculties, or, as it is expressed by Hamilton and others, of consciousness; and that the way is thus logically opened to universal scepticism. Idealism is certainly not a denial of the facts of consciousness. Perception as a fact of mind, is accepted, and the first exception taken is as to what perception is, what it gives us. Now the veracity of consciousness is only involved in the mere fact of perception, the mere rehearsal and acceptance of its mental phenomena, not at all in the