THE BELFAST ADDRESS 205 



it is the prolongation of this line by the intellect, beyond 

 the range of the senses, that leads them to the conclusion 

 which Bruno so boldly enunciated. 1 



The "materialism" here professed may be vastly differ- 

 ent from what you suppose, and I therefore crave your 

 gracious patience to the end. "The question of an ex- 

 ternal world," says J. S. Mill, "is the great battleground 

 of metaphysics." a Mr. Mill himself reduces external 

 phenomena to "possibilities of sensation." Kant, as we 

 have seen, made time and space "forms" of our own 

 intuitions. Fichte, having first by the inexorable logic 

 of his understanding proved himself to be a mere link in 

 that chain of eternal causatipn which holds so rigidly in 

 nature, violently broke the chain by making nature, and 

 all that it inherits, an apparition of the mind. 3 And it 

 is by no means easy to combat such notions. For when 

 I say "I see you," and that there is not the least doubt 

 about it, the obvious reply is, that what I am really con- 

 scious of is an affection of my own retina. And if I urge 

 that my sight can be checked by touching you, the retort 

 would be that I am equally transgressing the limits of 

 fact; for what I am really conscious of is, not that you 

 are there, but that the nerves of my hand have undergone 

 a change. All we hear, and see, and touch, and taste, 

 and smell, are, it would be urged, mere variations of our 

 own condition, beyond which, even to the extent of a 

 hair-breadth, we cannot go. That anything answering to 

 our impressions exists outside of ourselves is not a face, 

 but an inference, to which all validity would be denied by 



1 Bruno was a "Pantheist," not an "Atheist" or a "Materialist." 

 * "Examination of Hamilton," p. 154. 

 8 "Bestimmung des Menschen." 



