But Mr. Balfour has acted like the French in 1870:  he has gone to war without any ordnance maps, and without having surveyed the scene of the campaign.  No human being holds the opinions he speaks of as ‘Naturalism.’  He is a good debater.  He knows the value of a word.  The word ‘Naturalism’ has a bad sound and unpleasant associations.  It would tell against us in the House of Commons, and so it will with his readers.  ‘Naturalism’ contrasts with ‘supernaturalism.’  He has not only attacked us for what we don’t hold, but he has been good enough to draw out a catechism for ’us wicked people,’ to teach us what we must hold.”

[It was rather difficult to get him to particulars, but we did so by degrees.  He said], “Balfour uses the word phenomena as applying simply to the outer world and not to the inner world.  The only people his attack would hold good of would be the Comtists, who deny that psychology is a science.  They may be left out of account.  They advocate the crudest eighteenth-century materialism.  All the empiricists, from Locke onwards, make the observation of the phenomena of the mind itself quite separate from the study of mere sensation.  No man in his senses supposes that the sense of beauty, or the religious feelings [this with a courteous bow to a priest who was present], or the sense of moral obligation, are to be accounted for in terms of sensation, or come to us through sensation.” [I said that, as I understood it, I did not think Mr. Balfour supposed they would acknowledge the position he ascribed to them, and that one of his complaints was that they did not work out their premises to their logical conclusions.  I added that so far as one of Mr. Balfour’s chief points was concerned—­the existence of the external world—­Mill was almost the only man on their side in this century who had faced the problem frankly, and he had been driven to say that all men can know is that there are “permanent possibilities of sensation.”  He did not seem inclined to pursue the question of an external world, but said that though Mill’s “Logic” was very good, empiricists were not bound by all his theories.

He characterised the book as a very good and even brilliant piece of work from a literary point of view; but as a helpful contribution to the great controversy, the most disappointing he had ever read.  I said, “There has been no adverse criticism of it yet.”  He answered with emphasis], “No!  But there soon will be.” ["From you?” I asked.] “I let out no secrets,” [was the reply.

He then talked with great admiration and affection of Mr. Balfour’s brother, Francis.  His early death, and W.K.  Clifford’s (Huxley said), had been the greatest loss to science—­not only in England, but in the world—­in our time.] “Half a dozen of us old fogies could have been better spared.” [He remembered Frank Balfour as a boy at [Harrow] and saw his unusual talent there.] “Then my friend, Michael Foster, took him up at Cambridge, and found out that he had real genius for biology.  I used to say there was science in the blood, but this new book of his brother’s,” [he added, smiling], “shows I was wrong.”