dh. v.] THE TWO METHODS. 99 



premises, it proclaims the conclusions as true, forgetting that 

 the premises need testing as much as the inferences. It is 

 ever on its guard against fallacies of ratiocination, but ev°v 

 unprotected against fallacies of observation. If a conclusion 

 is " involved in the idea," according to the current phrase, it 

 assumes without challenge that it is also conformable 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. 1 



" There is one basis of science," says Descartes, " one test 

 and rule of truth, namely, that whatever is clearly and dis- 

 tinctly conceived is true." Schelling tells us : " It is a fun- 

 damental belief that not only do things exist independently 

 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 Phredo : " It 

 seemed to me, therefore, that I ought to have recourse to 

 reasons, and in them to contemplate the truth of things. 

 Thus always adducing the reason which I judge to be 

 strongest, I pronounce that to be true which appears to me 

 to accord with it ; those which do not accord with it, I deny 

 to be true." And in the Eepublic, he tells us : " Whenever 

 a person strives by the help of dialectics to start in pursuit 



1 The illustrations given in the following paragraph maybe found, along with 

 others, in Mr. Lewes's excellent work on Aristotle, pp. 79-81, 103, 104. 



H 2 



