SENSORY AND RATIONAL DISCRIMINATION 137 



itself power of insight, as earlier it made use of 

 sense, the rational life unfolds, obtaining by its 

 exercise enlarged visions of existence. Not easily 

 can we describe the very varied exercises of the 

 rational soul, citizen of a kingdom other than the 

 material world. It is vain to speak of ideation, as if 

 the alphabet of speech were enough to construct a 

 science of thought. The famous term need not be 

 cancelled and cast away, it may readily find applica 

 tion ; but it is too narrow to express the activity of 

 the rational life. Ideation is too slight a term to 

 contain even the primary conditions of human 

 thought, a term expressive rather of the slighter 

 exercise of the reason than of its grander efforts; 

 suggestive of the gathering of broken pieces of 

 information, rather than of the free movements of a 

 life daily gathering its reward, in fuller understanding 

 of the orderly system of existence. 



Thinkers of quite opposite schools are agreed 

 that there is no possible science of Nature which 

 does not distinguish between the material and the 

 spiritual, between that which is known by sense, and 

 that which is known in consciousness. Nature s 

 testimony admits of no doubt as to the reality of 

 these separate spheres. There is little need for 

 calling a multitude of witnesses, but they are within 

 call in any number. Thus, G. H. Lewes has said : 

 The sensible comprises but a small portion of that 

 external order which is believed to exist. 1 Hence, 

 he proceeds to distinguish the sensible world, the 

 extra-sensible world, and the supra-sensible world. 

 Take, on the other hand, the characteristics of the 

 1 Problems of Life, vol. i. p. 253. 



