with an extrinsic existence, must end in the discomfiture
of him who makes the attempt." This man declines giving any answer to the
problem. We ask him _how_ X Y and can be projected beyond the circle
without transgressing its limits; and he answers that they never are, and
never can be so projected.

3. A third man will postulate as the cause of X Y Z a transcendent
X Y Z--that is, a cause lying external to the sphere; and by referring the
former to the latter, he will obtain for X Y X, not certainly a real
externality, which is the thing wanted, but a _quasi-externality_, with
which, as the best that is to be had, he will in all probability rest
contented. "X Y and Z," he will say, "are projected, _as it were_, out of
the circle." This answer leaves the question as much unsolved as ever. Or,

4. A fourth man (and we beg the reader's attention to this man's answer,
for it forms the fulcrum or cardinal point on which our whole
demonstration turns)--a fourth man will say, "If the circle could only be
brought _within itself_, so--

[Illustration]

then the difficulty would disappear--the problem would be completely
solved. X Y Z must now of necessity fall as extrinsic to the circle A; and
this, too, (which is the material part of the solution,) without the
limits of the circle A being overstepped."

Perhaps this may appear very like quibbling; perhaps it may be regarded as
a very absurd solution--a very shallow evasion of the difficulty.
Nevertheless, shallow or quibbling as it may seem, we venture to predict,
that when the breath of life shall have been breathed into the bones of
the above dead illustration, this last answer will be found to afford a
most exact picture and explanation of the matter we have to deal with. Let
our illustration, then, stand forth as a living process. The large circle
A we shall call our whole sphere of sense, in so far as it deals with
objective existence--and X Y Z shall be certain sensations of colour,
figure, weight, hardness, and so forth, comprehended within it. The
question then is--how can these sensations, without being ejected from the
sphere of sense within which they lie, assume the status and the character
of real independent existences? How can they be objects, and yet remain
sensations?

Nothing will be lost on the score of distinctness, if we retrace, in the
living sense, the footprints we have already trod in explicating the
inanimate illustration. Neither will any har