CHAP. III.] THE EXTERNAL WORLD. 77 



bmtes is revealed to man by his sensible experiences 

 (feelings), and corresponding faint feelings (pliautasmata) 

 are, in this life, the conditions of it-i reproduction or presence 

 in thought. But because we cannot think without phantas- 

 mata it dues not follow that those phantasmata THEMSELVES 

 are all our thoughts in each case. Consider the idea ex 

 pressed by the term &quot; any man !&quot; How can the phantasm 

 be all the meaning of the term in such a case ? 



Mr. Spencer always treats the mere means and occasions of 

 intellectual action as intellectual action itself, owing Mr. spencer s 



&quot; &quot; confusion of 



to his fundamental confusion of thought with feel- the intellect 



with the sen- 

 ing, which leads him to such nonsense as speculating s^ ^; 



as to an oyster s conception of time and space ! He activity. 

 indeed approaches the truth, but then stops short of it. It 

 is certainly most true that it requires but a little change to 

 transform his system (in spite of its generally very different 

 spirit) into scholasticism. His fundamental error is not 

 seeing that imagination and sensible phantasmata suggest to 

 our intellect truths beyond images, not therefore adequately 

 expressible by words though conveyed by words with prac 

 tical efficacy to other minds. Meanings beyond the words 

 themselves, and still more beyond their more ancient mean 

 ings, are continually suggested by language. Who, when he 

 hears of the &quot; spirit of Shakespeare,&quot; thinks of the pulmonary 

 exhalation from his lungs ? So such words as &quot; substance,&quot; 

 &quot;cause,&quot; are symbols, and suggest images through which the 

 intellect understands what is hyper-sensible, and by such 

 language conveys it to other minds. Men who do not really 

 so understand them have either a mind which is imperfectly 

 developed or are otherwise abnormally constituted. 



Mr. Lewes s position is somewhat singular. He altogether 

 dissents from and protests against Mr. Spencer s Mr.Lewes s 

 Transfigured Kealism, and maintains that &quot;feel- p 

 ings &quot; are the very &quot; things in themselves,&quot; as also that we 

 have not, and cannot have, knowledge of anything but feel 

 ings. Thus he seems a pure idealist, while yet, at the same 

 time, he protests against idealism. In part, however, his 



