SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE METHODS 



formable to fact. That I may not be supposed 

 to be caricaturing instead of describing the only 

 method which can enable us to stir one step in 

 ontological speculation, let me cite some of the 

 canons of that method, as enunciated by its 

 most illustrious masters.^ 



" There is one basis of science," says Des- 

 cartes, " one test and rule of truth, namely, that 

 whatever is clearly and distinctly conceived is 

 true." Schelling tells us : " It is a fundamental 

 belief that not only do things exist independ- 

 ently of us, but that our ideas so completely 

 correspond with them that there is nothing in 

 the things which is not in our ideas." And 

 now let us hear Hegel : " What is Truth ? In 

 ordinary language we name the concordance of 

 an object with our conception of it, truth. In 

 philosophical language, on the contrary, truth 

 is the concordance of the meaning with itself." 

 Or, as one of Hegel's followers expresses it, in 

 more characteristic terminology : " Since the 

 Whole is ideally in the Mind, the I has only 

 to yield itself to its I-hood, in order to see the 

 Absolute in itself as there immediately given.*' 

 To the same effect says Plato, in the "Phaedo: " 

 "It seemed to me, therefore, that I ought to 

 have recourse to reasons and in them to con- 



^ The illustrations given in the following paragraph may be 

 found, along with others, in Mr. Lewes' s excellent work od 

 Aristotle, pp. 79-81, 103, 104. 



