THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 291 



to the innate and the a priori was felt to be oppo 

 sition to the deification of hereditary prejudice and 

 to the reception of ideas without examination or 

 criticism. Personal contact with reality through 

 sensation seemed to be the only safeguard from 

 opinions which, while masquerading in the guise of 

 absolute and eternal truth, were in reality but the 

 prejudices of the past become so ingrained as to 

 insist upon being standards of truth and action. 



Positively as well as negatively, the sensational 

 ists have felt themselves to represent the side of 

 progress. In its supposed eternal character, a 

 general notion stands ready made, fixed forever, 

 without reference to time, without the possibility 

 of change or diversity. As distinct from this, the 

 sensation represents the never-failing eruption of 

 the new. It is the novel, the unexpected, that 

 which cannot be reasoned out in eternal formula, 

 but must be hit upon in the ever-changing flow of 

 our experience. It thus represents stimulation, 

 excitation, momentum onwards. It gives a con 

 stant protest against the assumption of any theory 

 or belief to possess finality; and it supplies the 

 ever-renewed presentation of material out of which 

 to build up new objects and new laws. 



The sensationalist appears to have a good case. 

 He stands for vividness and definiteness against 

 abstraction ; for the engagement of the individual 

 in experience as against the remote and general 



