30 LESSONS FKOM N A TURK [CHAP. IT. 



own It might be expected that, in our study of life, we 

 should ascend from a consideration of mere nutrition, growth, 

 and reproduction, through locomotion and feeling, up to the 

 most abstract intellectual action, according 1 

 example left us by Aristotle. 



To be-in with the external world would also be the more 

 reasonable and consistent course, seeing that with each of us, 

 as we develop from earliest infancy, the external becomes 

 noticed by us before the internal, and the consideration o 

 surrounding objects takes up a much larger part of our mental 

 activity than self-contemplation. And such an objective 

 ascending course would indeed be the one here followed were 

 it not for the various cavils against human intelligence which 

 prevail amongst us to-day. But when idealists deny the 

 existence of an external world at all; when sensists proclaim 

 our highest thoughts to be but transformed sensations; 

 when the assertors of absolute identity declare both self and 

 not-self to be modes of an unknowable entity, which is 

 neither, yet both under these conditions our treatment 

 must be modified accordingly. To follow the more natural 

 method would now be to fall into a petitio principii. For 

 it has become necessary first to justify our judgments con 

 cerning our perceptions and our reasonings, and only after 

 this can we logic-ally proceed to investigate the world of 

 objective being around us. As long as the objective validity 

 of subjective conceptions is in dispute, objective truths must 

 not appear first in the field. In a controversy in which 

 &quot; states of consciousness &quot; have become the ultimate criterion, 

 it would be a mistake to begin with considering facts of 

 anatomy and physiology. I fully agree, then, with Mr. 

 Spencer when he says that the metaphysician s first step 

 must be to exclude from his investigation everything objective ; 

 not taking for granted the existence of anything external 

 corresponding to his ideas, until he has ascertained what 

 it is he predicates in calling his ideas true. 



It seems plain that our first duty here is to settle, if 

 we may, an ultimate criterion on a subjective basis, and by 



