xiv.] ON DESCARTES* " D1SC0URSK." 329 



put clearly before your minds thus far, is that Descartes, 

 having commenced by declaring doubt to be a duty, 

 found certainty in consciousness alone ; and that the 

 necessary outcome of his views is what may properly be 

 termed. Idealism ; namely, the doctrine that, whatever 

 the universe may be, all we can know of it is the picture 

 presented to us by consciousness. This picture may be 

 a true likeness — though how this can be is inconceiv- 

 able; or it may have no more resemblance to its cause 

 than one of Bach's fugues has to the person who is 

 playing it; or than a r>iece of poetry has to the mouth 

 and lips of a reciter. It is enough for all the practical 

 purposes of human existence if we find that our trust in 

 the representations of consciousness is verified by results ; 

 and that, by their help, we are enabled "to walk sure- 

 footedly in this life/' 



Thus the method, or path which leads to truth, indi- 

 cated by Descartes, takes us straight to the Critical 

 Idealism of his great successor Kant. It is that Idealism 

 which declares the ultimate fact of all knowledge to be a 

 consciousness, or, in other words, a mental phenomenon ; 

 and therefore affirms the highest of all certainties, and 

 indeed the only absolute certainty, to be the existence of 

 mind. But it is also that Idealism which refuses to 

 make any assertions, either positive or negative, as to 

 what lies beyond consciousness. It accuses the subtle 

 Berkeley of stepping beyond the limits of knowledge 

 when he declared that a substance of matter does not 

 exist ; and of illogicality, for not seeing that the ar- 

 guments which lie supposed demolished the existence 

 of matter were equally destructive to the existence 

 of soul. And it refuses to listen to the jargon of 

 more recent days about the " Absolute/' and all the 

 other hypostatized adjectives, the initial letters of 

 the names cf which are generally printed in capital 



