Letter to Sir David Brewster : on his unfounded assignment of Mr. Fearn's moral, in his correspondence with Professor Stewart, on his exterminating general implications of the whole of Mr. Fearn's philosophical labors, in every department, the tendency of which cannot be doubtful, and on his allegation before the British Association, met at Oxford in June 1832 : along with which is given, a refutation of Sir David Brewster's optical attack on the treatise of cerebral vision : the whole comprising a third supplement to that treatise / by John Fearn.

  • Fearn, John, 1768-1837.
Date:
[1832]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Letter to Sir David Brewster : on his unfounded assignment of Mr. Fearn's moral, in his correspondence with Professor Stewart, on his exterminating general implications of the whole of Mr. Fearn's philosophical labors, in every department, the tendency of which cannot be doubtful, and on his allegation before the British Association, met at Oxford in June 1832 : along with which is given, a refutation of Sir David Brewster's optical attack on the treatise of cerebral vision : the whole comprising a third supplement to that treatise / by John Fearn. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    retina are the immediate and the sole objects ” of vision. Thus, the originality of Sir David Brewster’s projected scheme, in so far as regards the ground-work—namely,— our perception of ordinary daily visual objects—belongs undeniably to Mr. Crisp; although the advance which Sir David Brewster proposes,—that of shewing also that our recollected and our imagined visual ideas are nothing but impressions on the retina,—is, so far as I know, his own. It is at any rateplai n, that the unsparing hostility, which he has manifested against my prior labors, is animated by his intended project;—which project is for ever foreclosed if my views of the subject be found tenable. It seems that he and I are at least of one opinion in holding the Scheme of Dr. Reid to be out of the question. But, in the outset here, I remark, upon general ground, that if the assertion of our perceiving objects in the senso- rium be a fallacy, it has at least a world of evidence appa- rently to support it, while the scheme of our perceiving, immediately, objects in external space has revolted the great bulk of philosophers, ancient and modern. But, to affirm that the objects we perceive are neither in external space, nor in the sensorium, but reside in a half-way-house between the sensorium and “ external ” space, appears to me, upon the first proposal, to be out of the pale of all rational conjecture. And here, in the first place, we know, it is not thus in the analogous sense of Touch. For we think we perceive an external body at the end of our Finger; though all phvsiologists, in agreement with Sir Anthony Carlisle, know that we are deceived ; and they also know, certainly, that there is no half-way-house of perception between the point where the external object is in physical contact with the finger and the sensorium or mind. If Sir David Brewster will here insist, that the ]jrojec- tions on the retina are no more a half-way-house between the mind and external objects, than the nervous impressions on the ends of the fingers are between the mind and the