ll please to remark, that we are very far from desiring
him to accept this last solution at our bidding. Our method, we trust, is
any thing but dogmatical. We merely say, that _if_ this can be shown to be
the case, then the demonstration which we are in the course of unfolding,
will hardly fail to recommend itself to his acceptance. Whether or not it
is the case, can only be established by an appeal to our experience.

We ask, then--does experience inform us, or does she not, that the sphere
of sense falls within, and very considerably within, itself? But here it
will be asked--what meaning do we attach to the expression, that sense
falls within its own sphere? These words, then, we must first of all
explain. Every thing which is apprehended as a sensation--such as colour,
figure, hardness, and so forth--falls within the sentient sphere. To be a
sensation, and to fall within the sphere of sense, are identical and
convertible terms. When, therefore, it is asked--does the sphere of sense
ever fall within itself? this is equivalent to asking--do the senses
themselves ever become sensations? Is that which apprehends sensations
ever itself apprehended as a sensation? Can the senses he seized on within
the limits of the very circle which they prescribe? If they cannot, then
it must be admitted that the sphere of sense never falls within itself,
and consequently that an objective reality--_i.e._ a reality extrinsic to
that sphere--can never be predicated or secured for any part of its
contents. But we conceive that only one rational answer can be returned to
this question. Does not experience teach us, that much if not the whole of
our sentient nature becomes itself in turn a series of sensations? Does
not the sight--that power which contains the whole visible space, and
embraces distances which no astronomer can compute--does it not abjure its
high prerogative, and take rank within the sphere of sense--itself a
sensation--when revealed to us in the solid atom we call the eye? Here it
is the touch which brings the sight within, and very far within, the
sphere of vision. But somewhat less directly, and by the aid of the
imagination, the sight operates the same introtraction (pardon the coinage)
upon itself. It ebbs inwards, so to speak, from all the contents that were
given in what may be called its primary sphere. It represents itself, in
its organ, as a minute visual sensation, out of, and beyond which, are
left lying the great