To follow Mr. Sidgwick through sundry criticisms of like kind, which may be similarly met, would take more space than I can here afford. I must restrict myself now to the alleged “fundamental incoherence” of which he thinks these inconsistencies are signs. I refer to that reconciliation of Realism and Idealism considered by him as an impossible compromise. A difficulty is habitually felt in accepting a coalition after long conflict. Whoever has espoused one of two antagonist views, and, in defending it, has gained a certain comprehension of the opposite view, becomes accustomed to regard these as the only alternatives, and is puzzled by an hypothesis which is at once both and neither. Yet, since it turns out in nearly all cases that, of conflicting doctrines, each contains an element of truth, and that controversy ends by combination of their respective half-truths, there is _a priori_ probability on the side of an hypothesis which qualifies Realism by Idealism. Mr. Sidgwick expresses his astonishment, or rather bespeaks that of his readers, because, while I accept Idealistic criticisms, I nevertheless defend the fundamental intuition of Common Sense; and, as he puts it, “fires his [my] argument full in the face of Kant, Mill, and ‘metaphysicians’ generally.” “He tells us that ‘metaphysicians’ illegitimately assume that ‘beliefs reached through complex intellectual processes,’ are more valid than ‘beliefs reached through simple intellectual processes;’ that the common language they use refuses to express their hypotheses, and thus their reasoning inevitably implies the common notions which they repudiate; that the belief of Realism has the advantage of ‘priority,’ ‘simplicity,’ ‘distinctness.’ {243} But surely this prior, simple, distinctly affirmed belief is that of what Mr. Spencer terms ‘crude Realism’, the belief that the non-ego is _per se_ extended, solid, even coloured (if not resonant and odorous). This is what common language implies; and the argument by which Mr. Spencer proves the relativity of feelings and relations, still more the subtle and complicated analysis by which he resolves our notion of extension into an aggregate of feelings and transitions of feeling, lead us away from our original simple belief—that (_e.g._) the green grass we see exists out of consciousness as we see it—just as much as the reasonings of Idealism, Scepticism, or Kantism.”