58 THE GROUNDWORK OF SCIENCE

or odorous, or brilliant, or melodious, as the case may be ;

and, with the aid of the scalpel and the microscope, we may

investigate the material conditions of such sensations. But

how such conditions can give rise to the feelings themselves

is a mystery which defies our utmost efforts to penetrate.

Yet, because we cannot discover this, we never doubt our

sensations or the fact that we feel them ; and we have as

little reason to doubt our intellectual intuitions or the facts we

know as made evident to our intellect through our feelings.

By our recognition of this direct intellectual intuition of

the existence and, in part, the nature of things around

us, science and its progress can be both understood and

advanced without the denial of one single fact for which

Idealism vouches. Its affirmations are justified while its

negations can by such recognition be shown to be un-

reasonable though explicable, and almost necessary upon

that conception of the nature of ideas which Idealism adopts,

and the insecure basis upon which it builds.

By its affirmations, our feelings are correctly described,

but its great fault is its non-appreciation of the profound

difference which exists between them and our ideas, and

its consequent practical negation of the higher source of

all our knowledge. That the affirmations of Idealism are

justified is unquestionable. Idealists rightly affirm that,

as we have before pointed out,* we can know nothing

without the aid of our sensations, that a plexus of our

own feelings accompanies every one. of our perceptions,

and that not even our most abstract ideas are destitute

of such accompaniments. In our first chapter we en-

deavoured at some length to make clear the profound

distinction which exists between " feelings," however com-

plexly associated together, and intellectual conceptions,

and a similar distinction exists between (i) the associated

* See ante, p. 9.

or odorous, or brilliant, or melodious, as the case may be ;

and, with the aid of the scalpel and the microscope, we may

investigate the material conditions of such sensations. But

how such conditions can give rise to the feelings themselves

is a mystery which defies our utmost efforts to penetrate.

Yet, because we cannot discover this, we never doubt our

sensations or the fact that we feel them ; and we have as

little reason to doubt our intellectual intuitions or the facts we

know as made evident to our intellect through our feelings.

By our recognition of this direct intellectual intuition of

the existence and, in part, the nature of things around

us, science and its progress can be both understood and

advanced without the denial of one single fact for which

Idealism vouches. Its affirmations are justified while its

negations can by such recognition be shown to be un-

reasonable though explicable, and almost necessary upon

that conception of the nature of ideas which Idealism adopts,

and the insecure basis upon which it builds.

By its affirmations, our feelings are correctly described,

but its great fault is its non-appreciation of the profound

difference which exists between them and our ideas, and

its consequent practical negation of the higher source of

all our knowledge. That the affirmations of Idealism are

justified is unquestionable. Idealists rightly affirm that,

as we have before pointed out,* we can know nothing

without the aid of our sensations, that a plexus of our

own feelings accompanies every one. of our perceptions,

and that not even our most abstract ideas are destitute

of such accompaniments. In our first chapter we en-

deavoured at some length to make clear the profound

distinction which exists between " feelings," however com-

plexly associated together, and intellectual conceptions,

and a similar distinction exists between (i) the associated

* See ante, p. 9.