CHAP. I.] THE STARTING-POINT. 19 



that everything on this subject which can be either said or 

 thought is necessarily and inevitably fundamentally untrue. 

 In other words, Nescients are thus again reduced to absolute 

 scepticism by another road ; and, indeed, that inevitable gulf 

 yawns to receive them by whatever path they seek to escape 

 from their position, save and except that one road which, they 

 refuse to follow, and to follow which is to vindicate the truth 

 and validity of human reason. Thus I venture to think the 

 real scope and meaning of the philosophy of nescience may be 

 made plain. Denying the necessary validity and objective 

 truth of our cognitions of &quot;self&quot; and &quot;not-self/ Nescients 

 may logically be reduced to one present thought, and ren 

 dered incapable, logically, of attack or defence, uncertain 

 whether reason and memory may not be the most baseless of 

 chimeras, their whole life &quot;a dream within a dream,&quot; or even 

 their very consciousness the sport of a deceptive and malig 

 nant demon. Such indeed is, I venture to believe, the 

 necessary ultimate outcome of the philosophy of all those 

 who, following the example of Descartes, abandon the high 

 road of philosophy, properly so called, for the lonely by-paths 

 of individual eccentricity. Let them grant, on the other 

 hand, that our spontaneous belief in our own existence is the 

 perception of a real, objective truth, which is made evident 

 to our minds by its own intrinsic light, and the silly 

 cavils which &quot; common sense &quot; justly despises are at once 

 annihilated. 



The value, then, of the nescient philosophic doubts, as put 

 forth by Professor Huxley and his school, may, I venture to 

 think, be shown to be nil first, because they are not real 

 doubts, but merely verbal ones ; and, secondly, because they 

 contradict the primary and fundamental dicta of consciousness 

 itself. 



Something further, however, may yet be urged. 



Even what is called &quot; necessary truth &quot; is, in fact, conceded 

 by some Agnostics ;* and they would generally admit that 



* It admits of &quot; no doubt that all our knowledge is a knowledge of states of 

 consciousness.&quot; Professor Huxley : Lay Sermons, p. 373. 



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