$2 General Notes. 
of other men, or he must believe in the Hegelian aphorism, “ Exis- 
tence and non-existence are identical.” Some idealists adopt the 
one, and others the other of these two horns of the dilemma. 
But the difficulty is immensely increased when we contemplate 
the mental lives of the lower animals, with their varied sense organs 
and media of contact with the so-called material world. We can 
readily imagine the limitations under which many of them exist 
through their structural deficiencies ; but we cannot so well imagine, 
though we are compelled to believe in the wonderful acuteness of 
the perception, and the to us incomprehensible peculiarity of sensa- 
tion, produced by the various special organs of sense with which 
many of them are furnished. Think of the tactile sensibility to 
slight movements of the water possessed by the blindfish of the 
Mammoth Cave. Think of the sense impressions of which we know 
nothing conveyed by the antenne of insects. Think especially of the 
“ other world than ours,” in which many of the Mammalia live, in 
consequence of the high development of the olfactory sense. We 
can easily perceive the result of the idealistic reasoning on the part 
of the inferior animals, were they capable of it. To many of them 
mankind would not exist; to others the sun would be a fiction. 
Those to whom low tones are imperceptible, would deny the existence 
of the only vibrations that some other species is adapted to hear. 
The idealistic position which denies the existence of matter, results 
from a process of cancellation of the objective universe bit by bit. 
One animal after another, and one sense after another, are proven 
fallible, and so the entire objective superstructure disappears. The 
realist, on the other hand, adds together all the phenomena derived 
from all the senses of all conscious beings, thus getting a positive 
result, where the idealist gets a negative one, Which is the more 
rational of the two methods? The actual result to thought is, that 
we learn the insufficiency of each and every sense, but not its impo- 
tency, We are instructed that our true policy is to use our senses 
to the best purpose, and to add to their number, so that the defect of 
our knowledge may be remedied, and our mental vision enlarge 
more and more. And this is the mission of science. 
But all knowledge, we are told, is relative, and that of the absolute _ 
reality we can learn nothing, This doctrine does not necessarily — 
involve idealism, but it is necessarily held by consistent idealists. 
One can believe in a material universe and still hold that we do not 
know it absolutely or even truly, And as “ weareall poor creatures, 
many of us are prone to repeat “ great is the doctrine” of the Rela- 
tivity of Knowledge! And the scientist echoes, but in a different 
spirit, great is the doctrine of the Relativity of Knowledge ; ye 
great is our Ignorance! Great is our ignorance indeed, but not 
“ great is Ignorance!” The scientist does not worship ignorance ; he 
worships knowledge, and his occupation is to increase knowledge. 
To the responsive intellect and enterprising spirit, the knowledge of 
our ignorance is the stimulus to unceasing labor, To men of amore — 
