60 
POPULAE SCIENCE REVIEW. 
conservative restraining element in the politics of the world of 
reason. I shall aim, nevertheless, to sustain the principle of 
the perfectible form of thought, as at once the most advan- 
tageous and the most endurable. 
I begin at once, then, by admitting phenomena. From the 
first of man until now, as we know him, there have been 
opened to him an ever-recurring series of phenomena, provable 
by a ready reference to experience, but which are not rendered 
so familiar to him by their frequent repetition as to lose their 
novelty in their repetition. 
The phenomena are all of the senses ; necessarily so, because 
every recognised phenomenon is sensual, in the completed 
meaning of that term. The universe enters into the man by 
the doors for its entrance, and according to the capacity of the 
man he becomes homogeneous with the universe so long as 
he lives in it : that is to say, so long as he is in the condition 
to receive it. 
Of the man we know something ; of the universe we know 
little. There may be in it motions, or material forms in 
motion, which are not at all times present, which are not per- 
ceived equally at any time, and which, on the fixed principle, 
are as real as common things ; one only singular, in fact, from 
being uncommon, and in not being accounted for, when recog- 
nised, by an immediate and obvious explanation. As the 
phenomena, however, are all sensual, so they are developed 
according to the working value of the senses, if I may so express 
myself. The ear is the most ready organ concerned ’ in the 
recognition of occult phenomena ; it hears sounds the mind 
does not appreciate the soiu’ce of. The eye is the next 
susceptible organ ; it sees forms and shapes for which the 
mind finds no ready explanation. The tactile sense, and even 
the common sensitive surfaces, come under influence ; they 
appreciate blasts or blows or heats or colds, the causes of which 
are incomprehensible. Less frequently the olfactory sense is 
invaded, and conveys impressions of odours agreeable or loath- 
some, of which the mind can form no instant estimate whence 
they came or wherefore. 
All, in a word, that is surprisingly phenomenal is by a sur- 
prise through a sense, and it increases in wonder as it includes 
the work of the greatest number of senses. That ghost of 
Hamlet’s father seen only, were but half enough ; heard only, 
but half enough. Seen and heard, it is the less a ghost, the 
more a wonder. 
I, for one, do not consider it at all a remarkable circum- 
stance that the fixed ideal as to the cause of obscure phenomena 
should be that of an outward or external reality appealing to 
the mental organs through the sensual. It is the common 
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