334 IDEALISM AND COMMON SENSE 



other minds that have perceptions similar to those which occur in 

 my mind, there is no reason to doubt that there are bodies, that 

 there is a something, a reality, external to those minds, which 

 causes the similarity of feeling. That something is what common 

 sense, which postulates other minds, designates as " matter." It 

 follows, that, though the coherence which common sense has 

 bestowed on my feelings is (regarded as nothing more than 

 coherence) very real, and though it lingers when I think as an 

 idealist, yet, beyond the satisfaction it affords me, it has no value 

 to me (as an idealist) ; for, as far as I know, it is founded on 

 illusion. Idealism, then, leads to a cul-de-sac, from which there is 

 no escape ; and the thoroughgoing and consistent idealist has no 

 right to proceed beyond a wondering and bewildered contemplation 

 of his own feelings. 



565. But there are no thorough-going and consistent idealists. 

 There never have been any. All idealists have thought more or 

 less coherently, and have failed to note that, if common sense is 

 based on illusion, coherent thinking is based on it also. Very 

 certainly, notwithstanding ardent effort, / am no consistent idealist. 

 I find that I constantly act under an intense common-sense 

 conviction that I am a material item in a material world, which 

 contains many similar items. As it is with me, so I suppose it is 

 with these other items, these other men. Now and then, though 

 seldom, a rare individual may think for a little space in futile 

 idealistic terms terms which, as we see, have become possible to 

 him only because common sense has previously trained his thinking 

 powers. But ever his mind tends to swing back to the common 

 sense that has become engrained in his nature. Therefore he 

 makes provision for his family, and performs other altruistic 

 actions, engages in politics, distinguishes between immaterial 

 minds and material brains, is pleased or vexed with his friends, 

 speaks to other people, and writes books for them to read even, it 

 may be, books which demonstrate more or less logically and con- 

 clusively that neither they nor the books have any known existence. 

 As Clifford, who declared, " I do believe that you are conscious in 

 the same way as I am ; and once that is conceded, the whole 

 idealist theory falls to pieces," x but who, nevertheless, wrote and 

 lectured at great length as an idealist, said very properly, "A true 

 idealism does not want to be stated, and conversely, an idealism 

 that requires to be stated must have something wrong about it." 2 



1 Lectures and Essays, Letter to Sir F. Pollock, p. 33. 



2 Lectures and Essays, Philosophy of the Pure Sciences, p. 209. 



