EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



Crude realism, however, though it is, always has 

 been, and doubtless will long continue to be, the 

 most widely accepted of all beliefs whatever 

 answering more closely than any other belief ever 

 did to the famous test of being accepted semper, et 

 ubique, et ab omnibus always, everywhere, and by 

 all has nevertheless been found out. It is more 

 certainly untenable, the universal plebiscite not 

 withstanding, than the crassest superstition of the 

 most ignorant age. 



The argument is not that no two people see a 

 table in exactly the same way; for that does not 

 exclude the possibility that at least one person 

 may see it or, at any rate, might be conceived 

 to see it in the right way: steadily and whole, as 

 Matthew Arnold would say. The argument against 

 what Spencer calls crude realism is infinitely more 

 cogent than that. For when, begging the insoluble 

 question as to how it is possible to know at all, we 

 come to ask ourselves what, in point of fact, we 

 actually do know, there can be no doubt about 

 the answer. In feeling and seeing this table, I 

 know merely the occurrence of changes in myself. 

 It is not merely that a different nervous constitu 

 tion might give me a very different idea of the 

 table, though it is obvious that the eye sees only 

 what it brings with it the power of seeing, and 

 that eyes vary. The point is that, no matter 

 what my sensory arrangement be, no matter 

 whether I have a hundred senses for every one I 

 possess now, yet all I know is change in my con- 



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