Even the sceptic, he says again, "must assent to the principle concerning the existence of body, though he cannot pretend by any arguments of philosophy to maintain its veracity. Nature has not left this to his choice, and has doubtless esteemed it an affair of too great importance to be trusted to our uncertain reasonings and speculations."[1] It may be matter for consideration at a later stage whether the mere fact of this universal, primary, and ineradicable belief is not itself an element in the problem; except on the hypothesis of universal irrationality may it not be argued that the provision of nature in this respect is hardly likely to be a carefully organized deception? But here, we are merely concerned with the fact of what Mr. Spencer calls the priority of Realism. It cannot be too strongly insisted that in this respect Realism holds the field. As Mr. Spencer puts it, "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."[2] Mr. Spencer's position here is not essentially different from that of Reid when he insists in opposition to Hume that we do not start with ideas or, as Hume calls them, perceptions — unrelated mental states — but with judgments. Judgment, he argues, is the primitive act of mind and a knowledge of sensations per se is only reached at a much later stage" by resolving and analyzing a natural and original judgment." As I put it on a previous occasion, "we do not begin by studying the contents of our own minds and afterwards proceed by inference to realities beyond. We are never restricted to our own ideas, as ideas; from the first dawn of knowledge we treat the subjective excitation as the symbol or revealer to us of a real world."[3]
Mr. Spencer, in the chapter from which I have quoted,[4] gives an admirable exposure of the fallacy which underlies the opposite view. "The error has been in confounding two quite distinct things, — having a sensation, and being conscious of having a sensation." Certainly, sensations must be given as
