The question, then, which we have to refer to our natural belief, and abide the answer whatever it may be, is this:--Is the perception of matter (taken in its integrity, as it must be taken,) is it a modification of the human mind, or is it not? We answer unhesitatingly for ourselves, that _our_ belief is, that it is not. This "confession of faith" saves us from the imputation of subjective idealism, and we care not what other kind of idealism we are charged with. We can think of no sort of evidence to prove that the perception of matter is a modification of the human mind, or that the human mind is its proper and exclusive abode: and all our belief sets in towards the opposite conclusion. Our primitive conviction, when we do nothing to pervert it, is that the perception of matter is not, either wholly, or in part, a condition of the human soul; is not bounded in any direction by the narrow limits of our intellectual span, but that it "dwells apart," a mighty and independent system, a city fitted up and upheld by the everlasting God. Who told us that we were placed in a world composed of matter, which gives rise to our subsequent internal perceptions of it, and not that we were let down at once into a universe composed of external perceptions of matter, that were there beforehand and from all eternity--and in which we, the creatures of a day, are merely allowed to participate by the gracious Power to whom they really appertain? We, perversely philosophising, told ourselves the former of these alternatives; but our better nature, the convictions that we have received from God himself, assure us that the latter of them is the truth. The latter is by far the simpler, as well as by far the sublimer doctrine. But it is not on the authority either of its simplicity or its sublimity, that we venture to propound it--it is on account of its perfect consonance, both with the primitive convictions of our unsophisticated common sense, and with the more delicate and complex evidence of our speculative reason.
When a man consults his own nature, in an impartial spirit, he inevitably finds that his genuine belief in the existence of matter is not a belief in the independent existence of matter _per se_--but is a belief in the independent existence of the perception of matter which he is for the time participating in. The very last thing which he naturally believes in, is, that the perception is a state of his own mind, and that the matter is something different from it, and exists apart _in naturâ rerum_. He they _say_ that he believes this, but he never does really believe it. At any rate, he believes in the _first_ place that they exist _together_, wherever they exist. The perception which a man has of a sheet of paper, does not come before him as something distinct from the sheet of paper itself. The two are identical: they are indivisible: they are not two, but one. The only question then is, whether the perception of a sheet of paper (taken as it must be in its indissoluble totality) is a state of the man's own mind--or is no such state. And, in settlement of this question, there cannot be a doubt that he believes in the _second_ place, that the perception of a sheet of paper is not a modification of his own mind, but is an objective thing which exists altogether independent of him, and one which would still exist, although he, and all other created beings were annihilated. All that he believes to be his (or subjective) is _his participation in_ the perception of this object. In a word, it is the perception of matter, and not matter _per se_, which is the _kind_ of matter, in the independent and permanent existence of which man rests and reposes his belief. There is no truth or satisfaction to be found in any other doctrine.