ch. iv.] PHENOMENON AND NOUMENON. 87 



is changed, and something which causes the changes. There 

 can be no impressions unless there exist a something which 

 is impressed and a something which impresses. Take away 

 from the argument all the terms which relate to real exis- 

 tence, and the argument becomes nonsense. The Sceptic, 

 like the Idealist, cannot stir a step without admitting that 

 real existence which he is striving to deny. Abolish object 

 and subject, and the states of consciousness vanish also. 

 Abolish the noumenon, and the phenomenon is by the same 

 act annihilated. 



Thus our ineradicable belief in the absolute existence of 

 Something which underlies and determines the series of 

 changes which constitutes our consciousness, rests upon the 

 strongest of foundations, — upon the unthinkableness of its 

 negation. Thus it becomes apparent that the arguments of 

 the Idealists and the Sceptics " consist of a series of dependent 

 propositions, no one of which possesses greater certainty than 

 the single proposition to be disproved." Without postulating 

 Absolute Being — existence independent of the conditions of 

 the process of knowing — we can frame no theory whatever, 

 either of internal or of external phenomena. And since, as 

 I have already observed, what we mean by reality is " inex- 

 pugnable persistence in consciousness," it follows that Abso- 

 lute Being is the Beality of Bealities, and that we are justified 

 in ever tacitly regarding it as such. 



But now, what do we mean by this affirmation of absolute 

 reality independent of the conditions of the process of know- 

 ing ? Do we mean to recur to the style of thinking in vogue 

 anterior to Berkeley, and affirm, in language savouring 

 strongly of scholasticism, that beneath the phenomena which 

 we call subjective there is an occult substratum Mind, and 

 beneath the phenomena which we call objective there is an 

 occult substratum Matter ? Our conclusion cannot be stated in 

 any such form, and we need have no hesitation in acknow- 

 ledging our debt of gratitude to Berkeley for having swept 



