68 The Scientific Method. 



ignorant the only ignorant man is the corpse. But ideal- 

 ism, as we find it, always professes to believe in external 

 reality, at least in the form of other human consciousnesses 

 or of an infinite consciousness, on the sole warrant of some 

 alleged inference, postulate, assumption, deduction of reason, 

 or act of faith. All these, however, it holds to fall far short 

 of knowledge ; and knowledge, the supreme ground of certi- 

 tude, it finds exclusively in self-knowledge in that imme- 

 diate self-consciousness which can never know anything be- 

 yond itself. 



Now, since no form of philosophy has ever maintained 

 that the individual does not know his own conscious states, 

 it is clear as day that the only distinctive principle of ideal- 

 ism is a merely negative one, and lies nowhere but in its ab- 

 solute assertion that the individual can never know an ex- 

 ternal world. Further, since all self-consciousness or self- 

 knowledge is simply self-observation, and since, therefore, 

 observation alone is knowledge, as distinguished from infer- 

 ence, assumption, postulation, deduction, or faith, it follows 

 that the whole essence of idealism is summed up in this 

 short and perfectly intelligible statement the individual 

 can never observe an external world. The whole activity 

 of idealism has been an attempt, forever hopeless as it ^, to 

 reconcile this statement with the fact of universal human 

 knowledge. 



For it is precisely at this point that idealism comes into 

 deadly collision with science and the scientific method. The 

 whole essence of science is summed up in this equally short 

 and intelligible statement maw, both individual and ge- 

 neric, can and does observe an external world. Idealism 

 declares that such observation is impossible, and therefore 

 can not be actual; science declares that such observation 

 is actual, and therefore must be possible. Idealism, culmi- 

 nating in the Kantian theory of knowledge, declares that 

 man has no faculty by which he can observe an external 

 world, and therefore knows none ; science, culminating in 

 the scientific method, declares that man already knows an 

 external world, and therefore must have some faculty by 

 which he can observe it. This is the exact issue between 

 the two, and it turns on the essential nature of knowledge 

 and ignorance. Is knowledge nothing but thought, con- 

 sciousness, self-observation? Or is it at once both self- 

 observation and world-observion ? Is ignorance nothing 

 but mere ceasing to think ? Or is it ceasing to think ac- 



