Note (return) — MR BAILEY'S REPLY TO AN ARTICLE IN BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

It must, however, be admitted that Mr Bailey has much to justify him in his opinion that extension must be apprehended either as plane or as solid. None of Berkeley's followers, we believe, have ever dreamt of conceiving it otherwise, and finding in their master's work the negation of solid extension specially insisted on, they leapt to the conclusion that the bishop admitted the original perception of plane extension. But Berkeley makes no such admission. He places the perception of plane extension on precisely the same footing with that of solid extension. "We see planes," says he, "in the same way that we see solids."35 And the wisdom of the averment is obvious; for the affirmation of plane extension involves the negation of solid extension, but this negation involves the conception (visually derived) of solid extension; but the admission of that conception, so derived, would be fatal to the Berkeleian theory. Therefore its author wisely avoids the danger by holding, that in vision we have merely the perception of what the Germans would call the Auseinanderseyn, that is, the asunderness, of things—a perception which implies no judgment as to whether the things are secerned in plane or in protensive space.