264 



MAN AND THE WORLD. 



by no means anxious to draw. On the contrary, 

 they ' have made every effort to evade it, although 

 their opponents may uncharitably think that their 

 efforts were either unsuccessful, or succeeded only 

 at a disproportionate cost of further absurdities. 

 But that idealists should strain every nerve to 

 escape from the most obvious corollary of their 

 doctrine was but natural. No serious philosopher 

 c^in really hold a doctrine which would hardly be 

 credible even at an advanced stage of insanity, viz., 

 that nothing exists beside himself. Or rather, if 

 he is all that exists, he is certainly insane.^ Sub- 

 jective idealists therefore do not exist outside lunatic 

 asylums and certain histories of philosophy. 



Into the various devices of idealists to avoid sub- 

 jective idealism, it is not necessary to enter, as they 

 mostly consist in appeals to a deus ex mackina, a 

 '* divine mind in which the world exists." But even 

 if it should not be considered derogatory to the 

 divine majesty that a God should be invented to 

 help philosophers out of a difficulty of their own 

 creation, the difficulties that beset the relation of 

 the individual and the "universal" mind are even 

 greater than those of Idealism. 



It will be more profitable, therefore, to analyse 

 the basis of all Idealism, and to consider what it 

 proves, and whether it necessitates the inferences of 

 Idealism. 



§ 13. The primary fact of Idealism is that all 

 things exist in our consciousness — exist as objects 

 of our thoughts, feelings and perceptions ; that 



1 Compare the remark Goethe attributes to the idealist : — 

 " Fiirwahr, wenn ich dies alles bin, 

 So bin ich heute narrisch." 



Faust I. : WaJpurglsnachtstrattm. 



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