What so-called uncon scious in * of book. Thus we affirm that we have three orders faculties one intellectual-by which we apprehend such ideas as "goodness," "truth," etc.; another sensuous— by which we entertain feelings and associate them together in groups; and, thirdly, an unconscious vital power-by which life is mainly sustained, and by which vital processes take place on the receipt of unfelt impressions, and may, by their accumulation or prolongation, come to excite our "feelings." Indeed, the area of our consciousness is a very restricted area compared with the area of our organic vitality, by which expression we mean the total sum of the unfelt active processes and powers of our living body. Every conscious act in us is the result of a greater or less number of such unconscious vital processes, and if this is the case, then the act of perception must be the result of a number of such unconscious processes. We not only admit this, but we affirm it. But so to affirm is a very different thing from saying that a perception is an unconscious inference. That process in us which has been mistaken for "unconscious inference," in reality consists ference" is. of such unconscious vital processes, together with the association of images in the imagination. We may know this from the fact that a mere animal can so associate together the sight of changes of relative position between itself and another creature as practically to apprehend either that its prey is escaping or that an enemy is approaching, as the case may be. Such merely sensuous associations of images exist in us as well as in the lower animals, and underlie our intellectual perceptions and inferences. Reflection enables us to apprehend these various, at first unnoticed, mental elements, and thus to distinguish between (1) an association of images, (2) a perception, and (3) an inference. Thus signs of relative changes of place impressed on our senses by objects, awaken in our intellect the idea and perception of a moving body, though they may not enable us to determine where the motion is, without a further examination or even without a real process of inference. We have a notable instance of the employment of such a process, in the belief once enter*See below, chap. xiv. tained about the motion of the sun. That belief makes us aware of a process of inference which was and is often overlooked, but which can be clearly seen on reflection to have been an inference, as it is not "motion," but "change in relative position," which our senses can alone perceive.* But it is the less necessary to accept the contradictory notion that a "perception" is an "unconscious inference," because we may and we do obtain a reflective assurance of the truth of our perceptions without employing inference. No one can deny but that a distinction is to be drawn between "attention" and "inference," and we may gain an increased or absolute certainty for our perceptions by acts of "attention," quite without the employment of "inference." The reader will, we think, admit that he can perceive an object-say a horse or a tree-consciously, but without any particular attention, and that he is also capable of looking at it attentively and making sure that it is a horse or a tree, yet without using any process of inference. He can Perception thus "make sure" by merely tightening, as it were, his attention. sensuous grasp of the object, and carefully focussing his sense perceptions. Let the reader here call to mind how he has sometimes, if not often, thus made sure of some object by looking at it attentively in a sudden and spontaneous manner, and quite without any deliberate attention-without saying to himself mentally, "I will look carefully and make sure." This action, so common amongst men, is also common amongst animals, which can evidently so associate images as to seem to us, at first sight, to draw inferences-though all such actions on their part are explicable (as are many of our own) by the mental association of habitual co-existences and sequences of sense impressions. They also may perceive an object indistinctly and inattentively, or they may tighten their sensuous grasp of it and watch it. We likewise have such merely sensuous perceptions, and such sensuous associations simulating inference. But over and above these, we have intellectual perceptions and true inferences. Our intellect, then, can, as before said, perceive *See below, chap. x. certified by objects either directly and inattentively, or directly and attentively, and no doubt our attentive perception is aided by sensuous association. But since we have consciousness to go by, it would be absurd to call any action inferential, which is neither consciously perceived to be inferential when performed, nor seen, on subsequent reflection, to have really had that character. In perception, then, we both can and do gain an immediate assurance, and also (ie. by attention) gain an augmented assurance, that the truth of any given perception needs no further proof, but is quite certain, and this without using any process of inference. Thus perception is not a process of inference from known signs to a before unknown notion of an object, but is a spontaneous, unconscious interpretation of signs (which themselves are not distinctly adverted to), by a natural activity and power of the mind-a power the action of which is rapidly perfected by exercise. A recognition of the fact that we have a direct and immediate knowledge of objects which are made present to the mind through our sensations, constitutes the key of the position of that realistic system of belief which is common to all men except the minute minority of idealistic philosophers. The assertions of realism are assertions both. made to us spontaneously by our own minds, and also reaffirmed by our minds when we carefully reflect on the subject. They are assertions which justify the natural beliefs of ordinary men, and are the indispensable supports of the assumptions upon which the whole fabric of physical science reposes. For these reasons realism has a strong claim on our acceptance, provided that the opposite system cannot bring forward any unanswerable objections to it. It remains, then, for us to consider one after another in the next chapter, the objections which idealists have brought forward against those natural convictions of mankind, the validity of which we confidently affirm. CHAPTER X. OBJECTIONS. An analysis of certain of our ideas refutes the fundamental idealist objection. All the other objections of idealists are insufficient to show that we cannot truly apprehend even the secondary qualities of bodies, although how such knowledge, or how any knowledge is possible, is an inscrutable mystery. The fundamental objection-Primary and secondary qualities-The common belief-Perceptions, ideas, and sensations-The idea of force-Simple and compound feelings-Imagination and conception -The intellect as a factor-Its declarations about qualities-Objections as to colours and sounds-Effects of bodily injuries on our perceptions-So-called deceptions of the senses-Dreaming and waking-The possible deceitfulness of our faculties -Our perceptions even of secondary qualities cannot be proved mendacious— The process of perceiving the unimaginable, inscrutable. mental THE objections brought by idealists against the common The funda belief in the existence of a world independently of the objection. mind, all rest on one fundamental assertion which may be expressed as follows: "All knowledge consists of impressions (or sensations) and of faint reproductions of the same, called 'ideas.'" Ideas are thus represented as being nothing but "faint revivals of sensations and of feelings of relation between sensations." Thus, do what we may, we can-according to idealists-arrive at nothing but our own subjective affections, together with, at the most, the inference that there exists some unknown external cause which gives rise to our feelings and ideas. Now, this fundamental assertion we have encountered point blank in the preceding chapter. We have done our H Primary and secondary qualities. + best to show that the things which men know directly and immediately, are not so many "bundles of feelings," but external objects themselves, made directly present to the mind through the feelings they exeite. If we have succeeded in this endeavour, then, the one support upon which all the objections raised by idealists rest having been shown to be untenable, we might, perhaps, spare ourselves and our readers any detailed consideration of the objections themselves. Nevertheless, we think it better to distinctly, if briefly, review them, in order to remove, as completely as we can, misunderstandings which might otherwise impede us in our treatment of those questions concerning man and the world he inhabits, which will occupy us in succeeding sections of this book. Now, idealists, in support of their fundamental assertions, appeal to what they deem the evident impossibility of our having any real knowledge of what are called the "secondary qualities" of bodies-that is, their colours, sounds, odours, and tastes-other than our own feelings respecting them. In so far as people think otherwise, they are declared to be demonstrably in error. But if they manifestly err in this matter, and if secondary qualities have no existence except in the feelings of those who feel them, then, say they, we need not be surprised if the "primary qualities" of bodies-that is, their extension, solidity, shape, number, motion, force, etc.-turn out to be in the same case, and are (as they say they are) also reducible to groups of feelings variously combined. And idealists are right in this, for if we could not directly know things themselves, but only the impressions made upon us by them, then it would also be true that what we call "primary qualities" might be reduced to groups of feelings, and that our ideas of extension, solidity, motion, etc., might really be nothing more than certain groups of those muscular feelings and feelings of effort and resistance, which have been made use of by us in acquiring such ideas. In spite, however, of this likeness between these two sets of qualities as regards the validity of our beliefs concerning them, men feel very differently in their regard. In the first place, the colours which objects exhibit can only be |