8 BEING AND FACULTIES OF MAN. 



we might not embarrass the general reader with tediously 

 protracted sophistries, nor foul his free and healthy mind 

 with subordinate and disingenuous controversies intensely 

 unworthy of his attention. Truth is not so dark when 

 candour comes to deal with it as these eubtle and merely 

 technical philosophers would make it ; for the whole truth 

 of their philosophy depends, not upon the facts, but on the 

 accuracy or inaccuracy of the terms or language in which 

 they have expressed themselves ; and it is only necessary 

 to state their propositions in detail to show in how many 

 parts the chain of logic is broken and fragmentary, and 

 the reasoning inconsecutive, because they have assumed 

 their language to be perfect ! 



Let us take then the proposition, ' nothing but matter 

 can touch or be touched,' and, following it, the proposition 

 by which it is so obviously refuted, that ' feeling, or the 

 sense or consciousness of touch, is not material, nor an 

 attribute of matter.' From this latter proposition, which 

 is obviously correct and irrefutable, the next proposition 

 is said to be drawn, that as our feelings or sensations are 

 not material, and as it is from these feelings or sensations 

 that all our knowledge of what is external to us is derived, 

 and we are conscious of nothing but them, therefore we 

 have no knowledge of matter or external nature, and the 

 existence of matter is not, and cannot be demonstrated. 

 This inference is certainly very plausible, but it is not 

 warranted by the antecedent proposition on which it pro- 

 fesses to be based, and without which it has no foundation. 

 An intermediate link of the logical chain has been dropped 

 in arriving at it, and when that link is replaced it will be 

 found fatal to this last over-drawn inference, for it does not 

 bridge the leap between it and its antecedent, but carries the 

 current of deduction and truth off in a totally different direc- 

 tion. While it is quite true that feeling, or the sense or con- 

 sciousness of touch, is not material, nor an attribute of 



