On the face of it the anomaly seems great; but I should have thought that after reading the chapter on “Transfigured Realism,” a critic of Mr. Sidgwick’s acuteness would have seen the solution of it. He has overlooked an essential distinction. All which my argument implies is that the direct intuition of Realism must be held of superior authority to the arguments of Anti-Realism, _where their deliverances cannot be reconciled_. The one point on which their deliverances cannot be reconciled, is the existence of an objective reality. But while, against this intuition of Realism, I hold the arguments of Anti-Realism to be powerless, because they cannot be carried on without postulating that which they end by denying; yet, having admitted objective existence as a necessary postulate, it is possible to make valid criticisms upon all those judgments which Crude Realism joins with this primordial judgment: it is possible to show that a transfigured interpretation of properties and relations, is more tenable than the original interpretation. To elucidate the matter, let us take the most familiar case in which the indirect judgments of Reason correct the direct judgments of Common Sense. The direct judgment of Common Sense is that the Sun moves round the Earth. In course of time, Reason, finding some facts at variance with this, begins to doubt; and, eventually, hits upon an hypothesis which explains the anomalies, but which denies this apparently-certain _dictum_ of Common Sense. What is the reconciliation? It consists in showing {244} to Common Sense that the new interpretation equally well corresponds with direct intuition, while it avoids all the difficulties. Common Sense is reminded that the apparent motion of an object may be due either to its actual motion or to the motion of the observer; and that there are terrestrial experiences in which the observer thinks an object he looks at is moving, when the motion is in himself. Extending the conception thus given, Reason shows that if the Earth revolves on its axis, there will result that apparent motion of the Sun which Common Sense interpreted into an actual motion of the Sun; and the common-sense observer thereupon becomes able to think of sunrise and sunset as due to his position as spectator on a vast revolving globe. Now if the astronomer, setting out by recognizing these celestial appearances, and proceeding to evolve the various anomalies following from the common-sense interpretation of them, had drawn the conclusion that there externally exist no Sun and no motion at all, he would have done what Idealists do; and his arguments would have been equally powerless against the intuition of Common Sense. But he does nothing of the kind. He accepts the intuition of Common Sense respecting the reality of the Sun and of the motion; but replaces the old interpretation of the motion by a new interpretation reconcilable with all the facts.