instant ago--that the act which we are performing one minute is continued
by us in the next--and also supplies abundant proof that the perceptions of
other men are, speaking generally, the same or nearly the same with our
own. After having slowly and laboriously in the course of ages gained a
conception of a whole and parts, of the constitution of the mind, of the
relation of man to God and nature, imperfect indeed, but the best we can,
we are asked to return again to the 'beggarly elements' of ancient
scepticism, and acknowledge only atoms and sensations devoid of life or
unity. Why should we not go a step further still and doubt the existence
of the senses of all things? We are but 'such stuff as dreams are made
of;' for we have left ourselves no instruments of thought by which we can
distinguish man from the animals, or conceive of the existence even of a
mollusc. And observe, this extreme scepticism has been allowed to spring
up among us, not, like the ancient scepticism, in an age when nature and
language really seemed to be full of illusions, but in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, when men walk in the daylight of inductive science.

The attractiveness of such speculations arises out of their true nature not
being perceived. They are veiled in graceful language; they are not pushed
to extremes; they stop where the human mind is disposed also to stop--short
of a manifest absurdity. Their inconsistency is not observed by their
authors or by mankind in general, who are equally inconsistent themselves.
They leave on the mind a pleasing sense of wonder and novelty: in youth
they seem to have a natural affinity to one class of persons as poetry has
to another; but in later life either we drift back into common sense, or we
make them the starting-points of a higher philosophy.

We are often told that we should enquire into all things before we accept
them;--with what limitations is this true? For we cannot use our senses
without admitting that we have them, or think without presupposing that