Metaphysics Author:John Miller Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Definition, therefore, like thought itself, is rather a hint than a direct translation of the reality. CHAPTER XVIII. THE LAWS OF PERCEPTION. If conscio... more »usness, though a separate idea, is not so separate an act as to forbid the thought that there is nothing consciously in the mind but Perception, the Laws of Perception can give us no trouble as separate consciousnesses, or indeed by any separate claim whatever. The Laws of Perception are the mere order of being perceived that is found by observation in the perceptions themselves. I am conscious that perception is incessant; but when I say I am conscious of that law, I do not mean that I am conscious of the law at all as I am conscious of the perception; I do not mean that there are two things in the current, perceptions and laws of perception, which I see jostling each other as coordinate phenomena. I only mean, I see perceptions. And I am conscious of the law that they are incessant, only as another way of saying that I am conscious of perceptions always; which is really, that I am conscious of perception, and just conscious of it all the time. Now I do not aver that my being conscious of perception always is in such a sense no different phenomenon from perception as to be involved in perception. On the contrary it is an inexplicable law. There is no reason in the act why it should be always our act, i. e. why it should continue unceasingly. Yet though not involved as consciousness for example is in the very act of perception, in such a sense.as that perceptionmight not occur without it, yet it is involved in the act of perception in such a sense as that it is no separate object of consciousness, and is in fact the mere peculiarity of perception that it is seen to be consciously incessant. The Laws of Perception ...« less