X.] SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS. 273 



elements of positive, unquestionable knowledge. We 

 call a large section of these sensations and their 

 relations matter and motion ; the rest we term mind 

 and thinking; and experience shows that there is a 

 certain constant order of succession between some of 

 the former and some of the latter. 



This is all that just metaphysical criticism leaves 

 of the idols set up by the spurious metaphysics of 

 vulgar common sense. It is consistent either with 

 pure Materialism, or with pure Idealism, but it is 

 neither. For the Idealist, not content with declaring 

 the truth that our knowledge is limited to facts of 

 consciousness, affirms the wholly unprovable proposi- 

 tion that nothing exists beyond these and the substance 

 of mind. And, on the other hand, the Materialist, 

 holding by the truth that, for anything that appears 

 to the contrary, material phenomena are the causes of 

 mental phenomena, asserts his unprovable dogma, that 

 material phenomena and the substance of matter are 

 the sole primary existences. 



Strike out the propositions about which neither 

 controversialist does or can know anything, and there 

 is nothing left for them to quarrel about. Make a 

 desert of the Unknowable, and the divine Astrsea of 

 philosophic peace will commence her blessed reign. 



