10 BEING AND FACULTIES OF MAN. 



5th. By this positive and actual contact the existence of 

 the physical or material world is, by contact, known and 

 demonstrated to the immaterial and metaphysical. Hence 



The inferences that the existence of Matter and of 

 Reality cannot be demonstrated are reduced to ab- 

 surdity, for 



First. Consciousness, though not material, is a BEALITY 

 and is the great primary perceptive faculty of man. 



Note. As such it claims the primary place in the 

 preceding table occupied by the false proposition, that 

 ' nothing but matter can touch or be touched ;' the re- 

 maining four propositions of the table following it in 

 logical sequence, and demonstrating that, 

 6th. The primary reality of Consciousness is capable of 

 knowing and demonstrating to itself the existence of Matter by 

 touch, as well as its own metaphysical or immaterial existence 

 and reality by its Consciousness of such existence and reality. 



Hence Epicurus, Bishop Berkeley, David Hume, and 

 their respective disciples are all in error, though it must 

 be borne in mind that to Bishop Berkeley is due the 

 honour of refuting the materialists and laying down the 

 second proposition in the preceding table, which forms 

 the groundwork of their refutation; but it is the third 

 proposition of that table, founded on the second, which 

 really contains the refutation expressly of their proposition 

 by demonstrating that something besides matter can touch 

 and be touched, and that consciousness of touch is the actual 

 contact of the physical and metaphysical. 



But now let us consider some further facts connected 

 with Consciousness this great primary perceptive faculty 

 of our being ; for all our physical senses and faculties are 

 mere vehicles and channels of its action, and without it 

 the eye, however perfect, is blind, the ear deaf, the touch, 

 smell and taste all alike powerless and incapable of vital 

 action ; for it is only when our Consciousness is present in 



