nce "as it is revealed
to us," and in shutting us up to the latter, he seems to rob us even of
the modicum of externality that he has granted us.

I have already mentioned Herbert Spencer (section 50) as a man not
without sympathy for the attempt to rehabilitate the external world.
He is very severe with the "insanities" of idealism. He is not willing
even to take the first step toward it.

He writes:[1] "The postulate with which metaphysical reasoning sets out
is that we are primarily conscious only of our sensations--that we
certainly know we have these, and that if there be anything beyond
these serving as cause for them, it can be known only by inference from
them.

"I shall give much surprise to the metaphysical reader if I call in
question this postulate; and the surprise will rise into astonishment
if I distinctly deny it. Yet I must do this. Limiting the proposition
to those epiperipheral feelings produced in us by external objects (for
these are alone in question), I see no alternative but to affirm that
the thing primarily known is not that a sensation has been experienced,
but that there exists an outer object."

According to this, the outer object is not known through an inference;
it is known directly. But do not be in haste to class Spencer with the
plain man, or with Reid. Listen to a citation once before made
(section 22), but worth repeating in this connection: "When we are
taught that a piece of matter, regarded by us as existing externally,
cannot be really known, but that we can know only certain impressions
produced on us, we are yet, by the relativity of thought, compelled to
think of these in relation to a cause--the notion of a real existence
which generated these impressions becomes nascent. If it be proved
that every notion of a real existence which we can frame is
inconsistent with itself,--that matter, however conceived by us, cannot
be matter as it actually is,--our conception, though transfigured, is
not destroyed: there remains the sense of reality, dissociated as far
as possible from those special forms under which it was before
represented in thought."

It is interesting to place the two extracts side by side. In the one,
we are told that we do not know external objects by an inference from
our sensations; in the other we are taught that the piece of matter
which we regard as existing externally cannot be really known; that we
can know only certain impressions produced on us