MATTER AND "MIND-STUFF" 347 



same law or principle of gravitation. So, also, 

 the same reasons which lead us to scepticism, when 

 followed up, bring us back to common sense." ^ 



But here we may leave the subject, where so 

 many others, like ourselves, have done before. 



To dwell upon these thoughts may give us what 

 Mr. Balfour has described as that " intense intel- 

 lectual gratification" that satisfies our highest 

 nature. The noblest aspirations, the strongest 

 feelings of cosmic emotion of infinitude of thought, 

 alike suggest by the association of ideas that which 

 is permanent and everlasting. Like the loftiest 

 passions which are aroused in the most refined 

 and highly-strung temperaments from the complex 

 sensations, produced by the harmony and rhythm 

 and the majestic combinations of tone of a great 

 orchestra, to which the inmost depths of the soul 

 resounds, the sentiments, passions and emotions akin 

 to eternal love are responded to, though to a far 

 greater degree when in the intellectually intense 

 the unity and relationship of things is once perceived 

 with force, with clearness, and with imagination. 



But, alas ! the object of philosophy after all is to 

 construct the great edifice of human knowledge that 

 we might view it whole. Too careful we cannot be 

 in fixing the practical limitations of that know- 

 ledge and of distinguishing that which is unknow- 

 able to us from that which is unknown or imaginary 



1 The principles are more fully worked out in the Essay on 

 A New Theory of Vision and in a Treatise on the Principles of 

 Human Knowledge. 



