It is incumbent therefore on us to ask if an elementary feeling is equal to the double burden put upon it by this theory of being the real universe of things and of creating the human intelligence. In answering this question we must be careful to divest feelings beforehand of any characteristics which they only possess as gathered up into the unity of a self, for at the stage in which we are considering reality selves have not yet arisen. It is hard to conceive what is left of feeling after these characteristics have been removed, nor does introspection help us here, for, as Clifford very truly says, the fundamental deliverance of consciousness affirms its own complexity and it seems impossible, as I am at present constituted, to have only one absolutely simple feeling at a time. Elementary feelings however could hardly constitute the cosmos without they follow one another, coexist, and connect themselves together in their groupings according to certain laws, i. e. by some inherent necessity always take up the same attitudes toward each other, and this much Clifford assumes that they do. Yet these assumptions will not bear examination. Let us examine first the postulate that feelings follow in a fixed order; call them _a_ _b_ _c_ _d_, _b_ succeeds _a_ and precedes _c_ and it makes a difference, which comes after or before the other. Now being absolute feelings, not only is _a_ past and non-existent before _b_ begins to be, so _b_ before _c_, but each is in turn the entire reality and there is no consciousness before which they pass in procession. The real would thus fall into disconnected and mutually indifferent moments _a_ _b_ _c_ _d_; and as each of these in turn exhausts reality and is also unconscious of what goes before and after, there would be no real succession at all. In a real succession it makes a difference whether _b_ comes before _or_ after _a_, but in the case we suppose it could make no difference. In truth there can be no relation of before and after between two terms except for a self, which takes note of the one disappearing and of the other appearing; and whenever we speak of things following one another we tacitly presuppose a self before whom the procession passes. It is even more difficult to understand how elementary feelings can be grouped and complicated in a fixed order of coexistence. Mind has not yet emerged, so we must suppose that the grouping takes place in space. In that case one feeling must be right or left, above or below another. The futility of such speculation will come home to anyone who will try to realise how a feeling of smell can be above or below one of taste.