m be done, should we employ
very much the same phraseology. We answer, then, that here, too, there are
just four conceivable ways in which this question can be met.

1. The man of common sense, (so called,) who aspires to be somewhat of a
philosopher, will face the question boldly, and will say, "I feel that
colour and hardness, for instance, lie entirely within the sphere of sense,
and are mere modifications of my subjective nature. At the same time, feel
that colour and hardness constitute a real object, which exists out of the
sphere of sense, independently of me and all my modifications. _How_ this
should be, I know not; I merely state the fact as I imagine myself to find
it. The _modus_ is beyond my comprehension." This man belongs to the
school of Natural Realists. If he merely affirmed or postulated a miracle
in what he uttered, we should have little to say against him, (for the
whole process of sensation is indeed miraculous.) But he postulates more
than a miracle; he postulates a contradiction, in the very contemplation
of which our reason is unhinged.

2. Another man will deny that our sensations ever transcend the sphere of
sense, or attain a real objective existence. "Colour, hardness, figure,
and so forth," he will say, "are generated within the sphere of sense, in
obedience to its own original laws. They form integral parts of the sphere;
and he who endeavours to construe them to his own mind as embodied in
extrinsic independent existences, must for ever be foiled in the attempt."
This man declines giving any answer to the problem. We ask, _how_ can our
sensations be embodied in distinct permanent realities? And he replies,
that they never are and never can be so embodied. This man is an
Idealist--or as we would term him, (to distinguish him from another
species about to be mentioned, of the same genus,) an _Acosmical_ idealist;
that is, an Idealist who absolutely denies the existence of an independent
material world.

3. A third man will postulate as the cause of our sensations of hardness,
colour, &c., a transcendent something, of which he knows nothing, except
that he feigns and fables it as lying external to the sphere of sense: and
then, by referring our sensations to this unknown cause, he will obtain
for them, not certainly the externality desiderated, but a
_quasi-externality_, which he palms off upon himself and us as the best
that can be supplied. This man is _Cosmothetical_ Idealist: that is, a