6o The Concept of Method 



perhaps unconsciously in the student of philosophy, but accepted 

 as quite obvious and necessary by the so-called common sense 

 man. 



Let us take first of all this latter outlook upon the world, be- 

 cause it is one that appeals to the great majority of people in their 

 everyday life, and because it has formed a kind of starting-point 

 for many philosophers who have sought to do away with the 

 separation, so blatant and obvious, between the man who thinks 

 and works, and the things he thinks about or works with. Then 

 we shall be in a better position to consider the manner in which 

 the philosopher has attacked the problem and to see that, after 

 all, he has in many cases only refined it, or at best cleared away 

 certain difficulties and has gone a few steps toward the result, 

 but has still left the dualism existent in some part of his experi- 

 ence, for Dualism is the Hydra of philosophy. 



The average person of common sense, who is not deaf or 

 blind, looks upon the world as something solid and enduring, 

 shot through with varying colours and full of sound, and cap- 

 able of more or less permanent modification by creatures like 

 himself: this he knows for he has daily and hourly proof of it. 

 The paper upon which he writes was white but is through his 

 agency rapidly becoming scrawled over with irregular black 

 marks ; the sunlight striking through the window creeps across 

 the fioor ; the horses passing in the street resound upon the hard 

 pavement, giving one a comfortable sense of solidity and of 

 permanence ; and so on, from breakfast to bedtime, the world is 

 there, in some way stable and enduring in spite of the changing 

 seasons and the vicissitudes of men. 



It is through this sense of the existence of the world as he 

 knows it that the average man is led unconsciously into the 

 mazes of Dualism. He exists because he thinks and feels and 

 acts ; the street exists because he sees it, hears its noises, and if 

 need be he can go out and walk upon the pavement or test the con- 

 sistency of its surface ; and yonder hill exists because he sees it, 

 and knows that he has but to go and walk thither for his feet 

 to feel its upward slope. But the other side — does it exist? 

 What ground has the common-sense man for affirming its exist- 

 ence? Have we here a subtle form of Bacon's per enumerationem 

 Hmplicem? An absurd question, thinks he: a hill must have an- 



