IDEALISM VERSUS MATERIALISM. 



269 



outside ourselves is such a fact, irresistibly attested 

 by feeling, and one which does not require further 

 proof. In this respect it is exactly on a par with the 

 existence of one's self. No man can prove his own 

 existence ; and, we may add, no- sane man wants to. 

 The correlative facts of the existence of Self and 

 Not- Self are certified by the same evidence, the 

 irresistible affirmation of feeling, and their supreme 

 certainty cannot be touched, and much less shaken, 

 by any idealist argument. 



§ 15. Was Idealism, then, merely an unprofitable 

 sophism — merely a troublesome quibble which ob- 

 structed our path ? By no means : we may learn 

 much from the difficulty to which it drew attention. 

 In the first place, it brought out clearly the impor- 

 tant distinction, which we had already anticipated 

 in our account of Space and Time, of phenomenal 

 and ultimate reality, and our answer depended on 

 the distinction between them. What was reasserted 

 against subjective idealism was the existence of 

 ultimate reality, but we refrained from identifying 

 this with phenomenal reality. We did not commit 

 ourselves to the assertion of the absolute reality of 

 every stick and every stone exacdy as we now be- 

 hold it. The world, as it now appears to us, may 

 be but the subjective reflexion of the ultimate 

 reality, and thus idealism would be true, at least 

 of our phenomenal world. 



And, secondly, Idealism supplies the antidote to 

 the materialism which regards consciousness as an 

 accident without which the world is quite capable of 

 existing. 



Idealism and Materialism, starting from opposite 



the chief characteristics of self-evidence, and becomes simply a 

 lax statement of the rival theory. 



