I 



Herbert Spencer 135 



justifies it by an ' argument from simplicity,' which consists 

 of a demonstration that, if our conviction of the world's exist- 

 ence be not an intuition but an inference, then the system of 

 Idealism is an inference indefinitely more cumbrous and com- 

 plex and therefore nwre liable to error. He says : — ^ 



'While the first involves but a single mediate act, the second 

 involves a succession of mediate acts, each of which is itself made up 

 of several mediate acts. Hence, if the one mediate act of Realism is 

 to be imvalidated by the multitudinous acts of Idealism, it must be 

 on the supposition . . . that if there is doubtfulness in a single step 

 of a given kind, there is less doubtfulness in many steps of this kind.' 



Finally, he advances an 'argument from distinctness,' 

 which reposes on the far greater vividness of sensations than 

 of ideas, which, according to Mr. Spencer, are but plexuses of 

 faint sensations. He also ^ opposes thinkers of the schools of 

 Hume, Berkeley, and Kant, and asserts that their very exposi- 

 tions of idealism cannot be made without the use of terms 

 which imply that very realism they deny. Here, then, we 

 are led to infer that the common belief is valid, and that 

 Space, Time, Figure, Number, Extension, Motion, etc., really 

 exist objectively as they are subjectively apprehended. It 

 must be so, since no system can be deemed either primitive, 

 simple, or distinct which asserts that neither extension, nor 

 figure, nor number is in reahty what it appears, or that the 

 objective connections amongst these properties are what they 

 seem to us to be, and that ^ ' what we are conscious of as pro- 

 perties of matter, even down to its weight and resistance, are 

 but subjective affections produced by objective agencies which 

 are unknown and unknowable.' Yet this is the result actually 

 arrived at by our author — a result which to most wiU. appear 

 little distinguished from scepticism, since it is admitted by 

 him to agree with idealism and scepticism in affirming that 

 the subjective modification of consciousness in the perception 



^ Op. ciL,]^. SIS. 2 (^p. («Y., pp. 312-366. ^Op. cit.,^. ^93. 



