iv DESCARTES' DISCOURSE ox METHOD 193 



with the offer. The only freedom I care about is 

 the freedom to do right ; the freedom to do wrong 

 I am ready to part with on the cheapest terms to 

 any one who will take it of me. But when the 

 Materialists stray beyond the borders of their 

 path and begin to talk about there being nothing 

 else in the universe but Matter and Force and 

 Necessary Laws, and all the rest of their " grena- 

 diers," I decline to follow them. I go back to the 

 point from which we started, and to the other 

 path of Descartes. I remind you that we have 

 already seen clearly and distinctly, and in a 

 manner which admits of no doubt, that all our 

 knowledge is a knowledge of states of consciousness. 

 "Matter" and " Force" are, as far as we can know, 

 mere names for certain forms of consciousness. 

 " Necessary " means that of which we cannot con- 

 ceive the contrary. " Law " means a rule which 

 we have always found to hold good, and which we 

 expect always will hold good. Thus it is an 

 indisputable truth that what we call the material 

 world is only known to us under the forms of the 

 ideal world ; and, as Descartes tells us, our know- 

 ledge of the soul 1 is more intimate and certain 

 than our knowledge of the body. If I say that 

 impenetrability is a property of matter, all that I 

 can really mean is that the consciousness I call 

 extension, and the consciousness I call resistance, 



1 Taken as the sum of states of consciousness of the individual. 

 [1892.] 



VOL. I. O 



