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It is, then, by an outward movement of the mind, that matter is known, and this is not perception but inference, the interpretation of sensations. Through the notions of existence and causation and space, the mind establishes the external world. Sensations, till interpreted and expounded by judgment, are the crudest possible conditions of knowledge.

If it be said, that the act of perception itself is the result of an outward, not an inward movement, that it takes place at the exterior tip of the nerve, and not as the consequence of physical effects traced to the nerve centres; we say, that the mind must either pass perceptively beyond the sensational organ, or the perceptive act is still within the human body, and thus removed from the object perceived. Moreover such a theory neglects the obvious ministration to perception of all the chain of nervous influences passing inward. If these are means to sensation, they must intervene between the presence of the object and the perception of it. The inscrutable transition from a nervous state to a feeling is the last result of the inner current. Of an outer nervous current, there is no proof. The mind has no further perceptive connection with the object than that in which these several conditions of the organ intervene between the mind and the object. The last nervous condition remaining, the sensation remains.

Lesson 115 - 4. Idealism Excellences Defects - p.447

4. The last system of which we shall speak, is idealism. Idealism has peculiar excellences and defects. It seizes the most fundamental element of the universe, and evolves all else with consistent logic from it. It does not humble mind under the laws of matter, but makes it the source and law of all things. As all known existences must in some way enter consciousness, or be productive of phenomena there, it is evident that idealism has no occasion to lose or overlook any part of knowledge. Neglecting that inferential action of the mind by which it recognizes the