The Scientific Method. 71 



tion of positive observation to convert a possible fact into a 

 known fact. The scientific method nevei infers one fact 

 from another fact, except as a simple hypothesis. If it sus- 

 pects the existence of a hitherto undiscovered fact, it de- 

 vises and makes a new observation, and accepts or rejects 

 the new fact according as it is verified or not verified by the 

 new observation, The logic of knowledge permits no other 

 course. Now, idealism professes to infer an external world, 

 spiritual if not material, from merely internal conscious 

 states, while yet it denies that this new fact can ever be 

 verified by observation. It is this acceptance of an unveri- 

 fied inference as a satisfactory proof, this treatment of a 

 mere hypothesis as an established fact, this rejection of 

 every observation which could prove, establish, or verify, 

 that renders idealism hopelessly illogical and unscientific, 

 and its method thoroughly irrational in the eyes of all who 

 value either logic or science. In truth, this professed infer- 

 ence of outside consciousnesses is as clear a case as was ever 

 seen of a thoroughly naive and uncritical realism. Strip it 

 of its borrowed peacock plumes of idealistic phraseology, and 

 we see at once that familiar old bird, the jackdaw of com- 

 mon sense. In short, the idealistic principle is suicidally 

 self-contradictory, unless carried out boldly into solipsism, 

 while the realistic inference is no rational ground of belief, 

 unless supplemented and verified by that world-observation 

 which idealism groundlessly declares impossible. The sci- 

 entific method, which no more begins with a " mere fact " 

 than idealism itself does, but which is wise enough to take 

 the whole of the fact instead of mistaking, as idealism does, 

 the half for the whole, begins with the primal fact of world- 

 observation, and uses inference, hypothesis, all free intel- 

 lectual activity, as a mere means to fresh world-observation 

 in the final fact of verification. Such, and such alone, is 

 the method by which all knowledge of the world, including 

 our own knowledge of ourselves as part of the world, has 

 ever been or ever will be won. Idealism garbles the great 

 world-fact, throws away all knowledge of it that comes to 

 us from without, and limits us strictly to that which we 

 originate by our own thought-activity within ; but, instead 

 of adhering to the logic of this idealistic principle and de- 

 claring that the individual is himself the whole universe 

 which he thus actively creates within his own being, it fal- 

 ters, fears, and, contrary to its own testimony, admits that, 

 after all, we are in vital relation with at least a spiritual 



