because the mental impression is obviously very
different from the transmutation objectively regarded. But this is to
confound the ideal with the subjective, which latter term is that
properly applicable both to the sensible impression and to purely mental
activity. The primary qualities, being the general laws or forms of
organic Energy-transmutation, are in a higher sense ideal, for they are
the necessary conditions under which both sense-presentation and
ideative representation proceed. Whilst, therefore, as Kant maintained,
they are the _a priori_ element in perception, they at the same time
constitute the laws which regulate all Energy-transmutation within our
experience both organic and extra-organic.

We hold, therefore, to the Platonic doctrine that whilst, on the one
hand, the sensible is only an object of thought in so far as it partakes
of the intelligible, on the other hand the idea is not only a type for
the individual mind, but is partaker also of the laws which penetrate
the system of things. Idealism as a Philosophy, in denying the validity
of any reference of the content of the Presentment to a further
existence outside of the subjective experience, has induced that wider
use of the term idea which applies it to the whole actuality of
experience in its subjective aspect. With the advance of Philosophy we
must revert to that more ancient use of the term idea which confines
its extension into the realm of the perceptual to those elements of the
sensible presentation which can be reproduced by the conceptual activity
of the subject, and which in asserting, for instance, the ideality of
Space, reminds us at the same time that Ideality implies not merely
subjectivity, but the expression or representation also of some aspect
of those laws which regulate the system of Reality.

But is not common sense right, after all? Do I really mean to say that
tables, chairs, houses, mountains--the whole world of my Presentment,
are to be regarded as shrivelled up and located in my brain, or in the
energetic correlative of my brain? Is the whole Universe, as known to me
or conceived by me, contained within a minute portion of itself--the
brain? Now Science does say something very like this, and the logical
difficulties of the position are very pressing. But they cannot be got
over by attempting to revert to common sense, because to assert that all
my conceived Universe is immediately perceived by me as it exists, would
s