CHAP. III.] THE EXTEENAL WOULD. 59 



Here, then, we are led to infer that the common belief 

 is valid, and that space, time, figure, number, extension, 

 motion, &c., 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 reality what it appears, 

 or that the objective connexions amongst these properties 

 are what they seem to us to be, or that * &quot; what we are con 

 scious of as properties of matter, even down to its weight 

 and resistance, are but subjective affections produced by 

 objective agencies which are unknown and unknowable.&quot; 



Yet this is the outcome actually arrived at by our author 

 a result which to most will appear little distin- Outcome 

 guished from scepticism, since it is admitted by nt - 

 him to agree with idealism and scepticism in affirming that 

 the subjective modification of consciousness in the perception 

 of any external body &quot; contains no element, relation, or law 

 that is like any element, relation, or law,&quot; in such external body. 



Thus the universe, as we know it, disappears not merely 

 from our gaze, but from our very 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, simple, and 

 distinct, as being prior to idealism, &quot; everywhere and always, 

 in child, in savage, in rustic, in the metaphysician himself.&quot; t 



Mr. Spencer may well call this &quot; Transfigured Realism.&quot; 

 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, and nutrition, then led them 

 into a room not furnished with tables supporting the meats 



* Psychology, vol. ii. p. 493. 

 f Op. cit. vol. ii. p. 374. 



