X.] SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS. 247 



the mind. And it is not a little curious to observe 

 that those who most loudly profess to abstain from 

 such commodities are, all the while, unconscious con- 

 sumers, on a great scale, of one or other of their mul- 

 titudinous disguises or adulterations. With mouths 

 full of the particular kind of heavily buttered toast 

 which they affect, they inveigh against the eating of 

 plain bread. In truth, the attempt to nourish the 

 human intellect upon a diet which contains no meta- 

 physics is about as hopeful as that of certain Eastern 

 sages to nourish their bodies without destroying life. 

 Everybody has heard the story of the pitiless micro- 

 scopist, who ruined the peace of mind of one of these 

 mild enthusiasts by showing him the animals moving 

 in a drop of the water with which, in the innocency 

 of his heart, he slaked his thirst ; and the unsuspect- 

 ing devotee of plain common sense may look for as 

 unexpected a shock when the magnifier of severe 

 logic reveals the germs, if not the full-grown shapes, 

 of lively metaphysical postulates rampant amidst his 

 most positive and matter-of-fact notions. 



By way of escape from the metaphysical Will-o'- 

 the-wisps generated in the marshes of literature and 

 theology, the serious student is sometimes bidden to 

 betake himself to the solid ground of physical science. 

 But the fish of immortal memory, who threw himself 

 out of the frying-pan into the fire, was not more ill 

 advised than the man who seeks sanctuary from philo- 

 sophical persecution within the walls of the observa- 

 tory or of the laboratory. It is said that " metaphysics " 

 owe their name to the fact that, in Aristotle's works, 



