78 LESSONS FROM NATUEE. [CHAP. III. 



expressions harmonise with that realism which is here main 

 tained, and which places philosophy in harmony with the 

 healthy common sense of mankind. For all that, he is really 

 an idealist, like Berkeley, with the important difference that, 

 instead of a God, he makes the non-ego an inscrutably mys 

 terious something, of which, as far as he has yet explained 

 himself, he declines to assert anything whatever. He says,* 

 &quot; It may sound an extreme paradox to say that things have 

 not separate existence apart from feelings ; but it is a paradox 

 which must be accepted, when we consider that things are 

 what they are in the given relations ; and that in relation to 

 the sensitive organism the so-called thing is what is pre 

 sent in feeling.&quot; Yet he goes on : &quot; This is not a denial of 

 the objective factor the non-ego. It does not assert that 

 the stone lying on the ground is not somewhat more than the 

 feelings of it in you and me ; all that is asserted is, that the 

 somewhat in this relation is what it is felt to be ; and if I 

 am asked what the postulated somewhat is, if not the 

 metaphysical thing in itself? I answer: The somewhat is 

 the abstract possibility of one factor of a product entering 

 into relation with some different factors when it will exist 

 under another form.&quot; But what is a &quot; factor &quot; but that which 

 &quot; does something ?&quot; and that which &quot; does something &quot; must &quot; l&amp;gt;e 

 something.&quot; There must be, then, a real objective existence 

 of some kind external to the subjective factor. What Mr. 

 Lewes must mean is that, apart from the subject, there is an 

 existence forming one factor in every feeling, however diverse 

 these feelings may be, and that the factor of all these different 

 feelings may be one and the same in all cases, or different 

 in each different case. An examination of the positive decla 

 rations of our own reason will, however, I venture to think, 

 make plain that the intellect declares its perception of a 

 stone which is first hot and then cold to be a perception of a 

 real external objective existence, which remains one under 

 these, though successively occasioning these diverse sensa- 



Problems of Life and Mind, vol. ii. p. 438. 



