In his reply, Mr Bailey disavows the impeachment _in toto_. He declares
that he never imputed to Berkeley the doctrine, that the eye is not
directly percipient of space in the two dimensions of length and
breadth. "The perception of this kind of distance," says he, "never
formed the subject of controversy with any one ... That we see extension
in two dimensions is admitted by all."--(_Letter_, p. 10.) If it can be
shown that the doctrine which is here stated to be admitted by all
philosophers, is yet expressly controverted by the two metaphysicians
whom Mr Bailey appears to have studied most assiduously, it is, at any
rate, possible that he may have overlooked, in his own writings, the
expression of an opinion which has escaped his penetration in theirs. To
convince himself, then, how much he is mistaken in supposing that the
visual intuition of longitudinal and lateral extension is admitted by
all philosophers, he has but to turn to the works of Dr Brown and the
elder Mill. In arguing that we have no immediate perception of visible
figure, Dr Brown not only virtually, but expressly, asserts that the
sight has no perception of extension in any of its dimensions. Not to
multiply quotations, the following will, no doubt, be received as
sufficient:--"They (i.e. philosophers) have--_I think without sufficient
reason_--universally supposed that the superficial extension of _length
and breadth_ becomes known to us by sight originally."[28] Dr Brown then
proceeds to argue, with what success we are not at present considering,
that our knowledge of extension and figure is derived from another
source than the sense of sight.
[28] Brown's Lectures, Lecture xxviii.
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