254 SENSATION AND THE SENSIFEROUS ORGANS. 



most loudly profess to abstain from such commodities 

 are, all the while, unconscious consumers, on a great 

 scale, of one or other of their multitudinous 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 metaphysics 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 microscopist, 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 unsuspecting 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 ths 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 observatory 

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

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



