THE WOELD-E^EKGY 



But such one-sided view could not but be confronted 

 by its opposite that is, by objective idealism* Naturally, 

 too, the latter is marked by distrust of the ' ' human intel- 

 lect " and its powers. "Speculation" is regarded as idle 

 and mischievous. If one is ever to put himself in posses- 

 sion of the truth, he must abandon the absurd effort to 

 find it in the empty depths of his own consciousness, and 

 must turn his attention to the real objective world. It is 

 in the world of nature alone that one can hope to find 

 continuity, consistency, truth. Here the "ideal" is that 

 of an outside, solid, material world. It is of a world 

 already given, but given one knows not how. 



Doubtless the investigator in this field would prefer to 

 be known as a realist; and indeed the "speculations" 

 that inevitably force themselves into formulation here as 

 elsewhere do lead up to a very lofty phase of idealism 

 which has been named (by Herbert Spencer) "trans- 

 figured realism.'' And yet this transfigured realism is 

 itself a speculative or ideal representation of the object- 

 ive world, as that world is conceived to be in its essence. 



Finally, there comes a third idealist and appeals in 

 turn to each of the other two. To the subjective ideal- 

 ist he says: "You have abandoned reason and in its 

 place have substituted caprice. You are right in declar- 

 ing that thought is all one can know; but radically wrong 



*The reader familiar with the history of philosophy will notice the 

 difference between the use here made of these terms and that given them in 

 Germany in the early part of the present century. At the same time I cannot 

 but think that the crude form of subjective idealism specially referred to in 

 the text is in reality nothing more nor less than the initial aspect of what in 

 its subtler form develops into such theories as that of Berkeley; or even, in 

 another direction, into theories like that of Fichte. It is scarcely necessary 

 to add that the " objective idealism " here referred to is that (apparently for 

 the most part unconscious) aspect of idealism involved in the current move- 

 ment in natural science. 



