64 NAMES AND PROPOSITIONS. 



substratum ; and its attributes (as they expressed themselves) 

 inhered, literally stuck, in it. To this substratum the name 

 Matter is usually given in philosophical discussions. It was 

 soon, however, acknowledged by all who reflected on the sub- 

 ject, that the existence of matter cannot be proved by extrinsic 

 evidence. The answer, therefore, now usually made to Berkeley 

 and his followers, is, that the belief is intuitive ; that mankind, 

 in all ages, have felt themselves compelled, by a necessity of 

 their nature, to refer their sensations to an external cause: 

 that even those who deny it in theory, yield to the necessity in 

 practice, and both in speech, thought, and feeling, do, equally 

 with the vulgar, acknowledge their sensations to be the effects 

 of something external to them : this knowledge, therefore, it 

 is affirmed, is as evidently intuitive as our knowledge of our 

 sensations themselves is intuitive. And here the question 

 merges in the fundamental problem of metaphysics properly 

 so called ; to which science we leave it. 



But although the extreme doctrine of the Idealist meta- 

 physicians, that objects are nothing but our sensations and 

 the laws which connect them, has not been generally adopted 

 by subsequent thinkers ; the point of most real importance is 

 one on which those metaphysicians are now very generally 

 considered to have made out their case : viz., that all we know 

 of objects is the sensations which they give us, and the order 

 of the occurrence of those sensations. Kant himself, on this 

 point, is as explicit as Berkeley or Locke. However firmly 

 convinced that there exists an universe of " Things in them- 

 selves," totally distinct from the universe of phenomena, or of 

 things as they appear to our senses ; and even when bringing 

 into use a technical expression (Noumenori) to denote what 

 the thing is in itself, as contrasted with the representation of 

 it in our minds ; he allows that this representation (the matter 

 of which, he says, consists of our sensations, though the form 

 is given by the laws of the mind itself) is all we know of the 

 object: and that the real nature of the Thing is, and by the 

 constitution of our faculties ever must remain, at least in the 

 present state of existence, an impenetrable mystery to us. 

 " Of things absolutely or in themselves/' says Sir William 



