Empirical Idealism 225 



consciousness, apart from a thinking mind, is a contradiction 

 in terms. I conceive that this reasoning is irrefragable. And 

 therefore, if I were obliged to choose between absolute ma- 

 terialism and absolute idealism, I should feel compelled to 

 accept the latter alternative. Indeed, upon this point Locke 

 does, practically, go as far in the direction of idealism as 

 Berkeley, when he admits that the 'simple ideas which we 

 receive from sensation and reflection are the boundaries of our 

 thoughts, beyond which the mind, whatever efforts it would 

 make, is not able to advance one jot.' " 



Ivocke went further, and Huxley agreed with him. 

 He declared that the mind cannot " make any dis- 

 coveries when it would pry into the nature and hidden 

 cause of these ideas." We must, in fact, definitely 

 reject what we know as matter as the absolute reality 

 of the universe, for it becomes verj^ plain that what we 

 call matter we know merely as affections of our own 

 consciousness. In a sense, then, so far as it is opposed 

 to materialism, idealism, according to Huxlej', must 

 be the philosophical position of a scientific man. But 

 the idealism is not the absolute idealism of Berkeley, 

 as we have no logical right to den}- or to affirm the 

 existence of absolute matter or of absolute mind. The 

 real truth of the philosophy of science lies in a separa- 

 tion between metaphysical theor}' and actual ptirstiits. 

 In ultimate philosophical tlieor\' it is impossible to rest 

 content with a plain natural conception of the universe. 

 When any conception of matter, or of its aiFections, is 

 pushed as far as analysis can take us, what we know 

 resolves itself into affections of mind, into what with- 

 out metaphysical finesse may be called ideas. But this 

 empirical idealism mtist be taken positively as being 

 merely the limits of our knowledge, and it must carry 

 with it neither an iindtie exaltation of mind nor an 



undue depreciation of matter. 

 15 



