Per*cep"tion (?), n. [L.
perceptio: cf. F. perception. See Perceive.]
1. The act of perceiving; cognizance by the
senses or intellect; apperhension by the bodily organs, or by the
mind, of what is presented to them; discernment; apperhension;
cognition.
2. (Metaph.) The faculty of perceiving;
the faculty, or peculiar part, of man's constitution by which he has
knowledge through the medium or instrumentality of the bodily organs;
the act of apperhending material objects or qualities through the
senses; -- distinguished from conception. Sir W.
Hamilton.
Matter hath no life nor perception, and is not
conscious of its own existence.
Bentley.
3. The quality, state, or capability, of being
affected by something external; sensation; sensibility.
[Obs.]
This experiment discovereth perception in
plants.
Bacon.
4. An idea; a notion. [Obs.] Sir M.
Hale.
&fist; "The word perception is, in the language of
philosophers previous to Reid, used in a very extensive signification.
By Descartes, Malebranche, Locke, Leibnitz, and others, it is employed
in a sense almost as unexclusive as consciousness, in its
widest signification. By Reid this word was limited to our faculty
acquisitive of knowledge, and to that branch of this faculty whereby,
through the senses, we obtain a knowledge of the external world. But
his limitation did not stop here. In the act of external perception he
distinguished two elements, to which he gave the names of
perception and sensation. He ought perhaps to have
called these perception proper and sensation proper,
when employed in his special meaning." Sir W. Hamilton.
