136 Herbert spencer 



of any external body ' contains no element, relation, or law 

 that is like any element, relation, or law ' in sucli external 

 body. Thus the universe as we know it disappears not 

 merely from our gaze but from our every thought. Not only 

 the song of the nightingale, the brilliancy of the diamond, 

 the perfume of the rose, and the savour of the peach lose for 

 us all objective reality — these we might spare and live — but 

 the solidity of the very ground we tread on, nay, even the 

 coherence and integrity of our own material frame, dissolve 

 from us, and leave us vaguely floating in an insensible ocean 

 of unknowable potentiality. And this is Realism; this is 

 what is justified to us by being primitive, simplie, and distinct, 

 as being prior to idealism, ' everywhere and always, in child, 

 in savage, in rustic, in the metaphysician himself.' ^ 



Mr. Spencer may well call this ' Transfigured Realism.' If 

 he were to invite hungry men to a feast, and, having dis- 

 coursed to them on the digestibility of sauces and meats, the 

 relations of appetite, digestion, nutrition, were afterwards to 

 lead them into a room garnished with tables of the chemical 

 formulae of animal substances, the disappointment of his 

 guests would hardly be less great than that of many readers 

 who, having read his arguments from priority, simplicity, and 

 distinctness, come finally upon ' transfigured realism ' as the 

 result. We are, of course, quite aware of the distinctions 

 drawn by Mr. Spencer between what he calls crude realism 

 and the realism adopted by him, but whether or not his 

 metaphysical position be tenable, we are quite certain it can- 

 not be defended by arguments which are vahd only to sup- 

 port that duahsm, that distinctness yet true correspondence 

 between matter and mind, which has been, and ever will be, 

 the natural and practically ineradicable, spontaneous convic- 

 tion of mankind. 



Mr. Spencer would probably have avoided this and other 



^ Psychology^ vol. ii. p. 374. 



