ON MIND AS UNKNOWABLE 



mind is known to us as Deity might be conceived 

 as known to Himself. Furthermore, if mind itself 

 be not occult, hidden, unknowable, but, on the 

 contrary, the only entity that is directly and es- 

 sentially known, there cannot be anything inex- 

 plicable in its characters in any circumstances. 

 The phenomena which so many keen thinkers are 

 studying to-day must be not only fictitious, but 

 factitious ; indeed, the term phenomena cannot be 

 used of mind ; for a phenomenon is an appearance, 

 which implies a reality of which it is the appearance, 

 whereas the essentia, or substance, of mind is a thing 

 given in all its operations. The idea is the only 

 reality, and, in so far, reality is known to us. So 

 they say. 



On the contrary, it may be shown, by the same 

 analytical methods as have disintegrated dog- 

 matic materialism, and with equal facility and 

 certainty, that dogmatic idealism is merely the 

 converse expression of the same error. The ma- 

 terialist thinks, or thought, that matter, as he 

 conceived it, is not phenomenal, but veritable 

 reality, and very easily knowable reality at that. 

 The idealist, for his part, thinks that ideas, or 

 various states of his consciousness, are not phenom- 

 enal, but noumenal, real, essential, substantial, in 

 the proper, undegraded meaning of those fine 

 terms; and, like the materialist, he thinks that 

 this reality is not only knowable, but very easily 

 knowable. Indeed, no other knowledge so easy 

 can be conceived. And just as materialism pro- 

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