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the same method, a judgment can easily and instantly be constructed.

Perception as perception is distinct from judgment, and may exist without it. There is nothing in the one which necessarily involves the other; though in the rational mind the one gives constant occasion to the other. Moments of perception may be moments in which objects come and go with no thoughtful attention directed to them; they are left to expire in the sensual impression they are for the instant making. In the case of the brute, is not this the habitual attitude of mind, the field of consciousness occupied with sensations with no reflection on them, or interpretation of them? Why speak at all of the power of perception, if, in later analysis, we purpose to resolve it into judgment? What may instantly spring from an act and the act itself are very different.

What also becomes of Hamilton's doctrine, that "perception affords us the knowledge of the non-ego at the point of sense," under this farther assertion, that "consciousness is primarily a judgment or affirmation of existence." Is such a judgment involved in the perception of an object? If so, we have not the doctrine of direct, external, perception, but rather the view given by us of the inferential existence of the outer world. The two views would be identical, save that we do not affirm, that each single perception compels, or in that sense involves, the formal or actual inference to real, outside existence. It only gives a ground or occasion for such conclusion, which may, or may not, in a specific case, be made. If, however, we do perceive simply and purely "the non-ego at the point of sense," then that act of perception or of consciousness is not a judgment, does not include one as its primary element; or the distinction between judgment and perception disappears, and we infer, and do not in the