negatives."I have understanding as well as you; I am not inferior to you; yea, who knoweth not such things as these?" So Job, on one occasion, replied to his friends when they had been presenting some important truths for his consideration. So, with the facts and truths with which we have been dealing, what attentive person may not know them? Even our most materialistic friends may easily know them. Men's consciousness is far superior to their lives, if they will only bring it into right focus. Indeed, it would appear that the things easily understoodthough not easily done, make up, perhaps, all the overwhelming interests of life. Human Nature is rich both in sublime affirmatives and terrific negatives.1 They are the divinest utterances we know. Given each man doing his simple duty to the best of his knowledge and ability, and we have the terrestrial Paradise.

Caution as to the use of Consciousness.-But here let me repeat my warning as to the method of using consciousness. A telescope telescoped is of little use. A kind of white blur is all that you can see through it even in daylight. But draw it out, and the distant landscape. begins to acquire shape; and finally, when you have rightly focussed your instrument upon its object, you see it imaged in clearly defined beauty. So with consciousness. The individual consciousness telescoped does not see much, but focus it properly, either on the objective or the subjective Universe, and you can bring great things within clear vision.2

1 Such writers as the author of the Riddles of the Sphinx should bethink themselves of those sublime affirmatives and terrific negatives. The author of that work in particular, seems to be in a raging delirium. He appears to think that "knowledge is impossible" (p. 85), and then ventures to state the opinion! Seeing that human intelligence announces so much to us that we must accept as true, agnosticism should not be taken up as a cult,— it should not be carried too far, or it, too, becomes ridiculous.

2 I make this caveat because some philosophers (e.g. Mr. Leslie Stephen in The English Utilitarians) seem to suppose that consciousness is no consciousness unless it immediately sees everything at a glance! Now this

Conclusion as to the Known.

It is to be noted, then, and tenaciously held, that all those propositions with which we have been dealing, express well-known truths-not merely grand and high-sounding fictions, but, actually, plain incontestable truths of adamantine firmness, and of supernal and infernal significance. So that finite though

we be, and unfit to grapple with infinite questions, we yet know many things which are apparently of boundless importance. The number of propositions in which all sane men are agreed-the number of large propositions in which pure intelligence forces them to agree, is quite wonderful. Such propositions are so numerous and powerful and farreaching as to annul and subvert in thought all systems of philosophy and theology save one-namely, the catholic and divine system of common sense. All sane men are agreed that the testimonies of our faculties, whether as to first principle or fact, when taken in their integrity and rightly interpreted, are to be trusted, and that we cannot with impunity refuse to trust them. The world cannot proceed to business but upon this basis. It must be taken that all men agree with us-whatever they may protest to the contrary, in so far as they calculate as we calculate, and do as we do. This one consideration nullifies and reduces all the pyrrhonistic, idealistic, and materialistic systems of speculation to absurdity. All men are agreed

should not be expected. All that we can rightly expect is that it shall be fit for its purpose by the exercise of due effort and care; applying it first to simple things and then passing on to the complex and more difficult; just as the arithmetician begins with simple addition, passes on to the more difficult, and then perhaps up to the most complex calculations. And we find that consciousness in its various powers, is fit for this task according to the intellectual calibre of the individual; for it is also to be noted that intellects, like guns, are not all of the same calibre. The acute Machiavelli noted three degrees in the intellectual endowments of mankind. "One man," he said, "understands things by means of his own natural endowments; another, when they are explained to him; a third (the dunce) can neither understand them by himself nor when they are explained by others." The Prince, c. 22.

that Hegel and his boots are diverse entities and cannot conceivably be monified idealistically. This one consideration nullifies all the monistic systems on the idealistic side. All men are agreed that a brick and the thought of it, are facts which cannot conceivably be monified on the materialistic side. This one consideration destroys in thought, all the systems of pantheism and materialism. In such instances as I have adduced, the facts of each case are utterly opposed to Spinoza, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Hegel therefore judgment must go against them quoad their peculiar systems in every sane court under the sun or above it. In the speculations especially attached to their respective names, Spinoza, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Hegel are utterly opposed to what I have called the Dogmas of Nature; and the Dogmas of Nature are so clear and irresistible that they overwhelm and render ridiculous every system of speculation that rises up against them. Thus whilst striving with all our might to root out and pull down and destroy falsehood, we may yet strongly build up and establish the truth.

In closing this section, let me earnestly repeat the wise words of the Chinese philosopher-" A knowledge of our own ignorance is a proof of our superiority, but ignorance of our own knowledge is nothing less than a mental malady, which like all other maladies will be best escaped by those who have a dread of the sufferings it will give rise to."

(B) THE KNOWABLE

Recapitulation.-Be it reiterated that consciousness is the only possible Basis and Criterion of our knowledge. In all thought this basis and criterion (a consciousness, a thinking subject) are presupposed. The interpretation which the thinking subject places upon itself and the Universe, the observations which it makes, and the cogitations which it draws from its own experiences,

make up the sum of science, or known truth-which has been defined as "the accordance of a cognition with its object." 1

The opponents of Common Sense are wholly "in the air"; they have no point d'appui,-no fulcrum on which to pivot their lever. Nor is there any such fulcrum to be found outside of the Common Sense. This is absolute.

Just as a circus clown or acrobat cannot get on with his tricks and buffooneries without a basis of solid earth to perform upon, so even a clown or an acrobat in metaphysics or in any other kind of science, is unable to get on with his speculative buffooneries without presupposing the existence of the thinking subject together with the validity of the mental fact and law which his hypothesis denies. All these persons seem to be ignorant not only of their ignorance but of their knowledge. They are continually at war with their own natural and inexpugnable presuppositions.

The most sceptical philosopher in the world knows as well as any policeman, not to venture out into the streets without his breeches. He is as firmly convinced of the difference between a sound breakfast egg and a "political egg as any cook that ever broiled over a grill. He cannot for the life of him imagine anything more absolutely real than either the political or the breakfast egg..

It is these anti-Common-Sense men of all schools who bring contempt and ridicule and neglect and defiance against philosophy and theology, and render them worse than barren. Pity it is, says Carlyle, that all metaphysics have "hitherto proved so inexpressibly unproductive. The secret of man's being is still the Sphinx's secret: a riddle that he cannot rede, and for ignorance of which he suffers death, the worst death, a spiritual." 2 The great offence

1 Kant: Critique of Pure Reason, p. 50.

2 Sartor Resartus, Bk. i. c. 8.

of the metaphysicians and theologians against sense and decency is that in their ignorance they are continually opposing themselves to, and trying to get behind or below Nature, like the Indian geniuses who set the world upon the back of a great elephant, and stood the elephant upon the back of a great tortoise! True philosophy recognises no school but Nature; no teacher but the Common Sense of mankind. For example, "That which constitutes the reality of Mechanics is that the science is founded on some general facts furnished by observation, of which we can give no explanation whatever.”1

Conformity with Nature is the test of truth.-Here let me make a protest against all system-building apart from Nature. All "systems All "systems" of philosophy opposed to fact may be forgotten with great advantage. The best parts even of many respectable writers are the detached strong and lucid thoughts which they utter in forgetfulness of their particular systems-the detached strong and lucid thoughts which they sometimes utter from their hearts in simple, spontaneous, loving sincerity. Many good men, even, go entirely wrong when they begin to build systems. The only system worth speaking about, is the system of Nature, which, I apprehend, will, in the last resort, be found to be the system of God. Let that alone be our system. Let us be anxious only to know what Nature says about things, and regard with contempt whatever any school may say about them in opposition to Nature. What Nature herself does say, must, in all conceivable cases, be the test of truth. Find out the last word that Nature utters on any subject, and you have sounded the depths of your knowledge concerning it.

1 Comte: Positive Philosophy, vol. i. p. 107. It is a pity that he did not see the necessity of applying the same method to mental science. Herein lies the fatal weakness of Positivism: it neglects the first requisitions of Common Sense concerning itself—rejects the most positive of all intellectual demands-in short, commits dialectical and intellectual suicide.