CHAPTER VIII THE INDIVIDUAL IS THE CHIEF AND ULTIMATE WITNESS OF TRUTH HAVING re-tested the principle that consciousness is and must be the basis of Philosophy and found it unshakable, we have now to re-affirm that the individual is the unit and exponent of consciousness: which is to say that the individual must be to himself the ultimate authority for all basal truth. To you, either as a philosopher or a layman, no other person than yourself can possibly be an ultimate authority. Another philosopher may indeed lead or direct you to scientific truth, or help you to unfold it; but in yourself you must find the chief witness of the truth-in your own eyes, your own understanding, your own heart. Within yourself, I say, this witness is to be found independently of all philosophers and philosophies. Until you do find it, you remain unenfranchised of philosophy and manhood. You can only be a freeman in the noble guild of true philosophers in so far as you know, or are trying to know, things through your own testimony and judgment. Until then, you are not fit to enter even the scullery of the guild. Until then, you can only be regarded as an old-clothes man in philosophy-a dealer in ancient and unwholesome wardrobes. From this point of view a very large number of our philosophers and clergymen are but old-clothes men— dealers in ancient but unwholesome philosophical and theological wardrobes. Montaigne on the subject.-I think that the authority and importance of the individual is becoming more and more recognised. Even a Montaigne, living in the ages of irrational dogma, could see that a man's self was his best witness for anything. "There's not SO sure a testimony," said he, as every man is to himself.” 1— "It is at the expense of our liberty and the honour of our courage that we disown our thoughts and seek subterfuge in falsehoods to make us friends. We give ourselves the lie to excuse the lie we give to others. You are not to consider if your word or action may admit of another interpretation; it is your own true and sincere interpretation that you are thenceforward to maintain, whatever it cost you. Men speak to your virtue and conscience" (they should do so at all events) "which are not things to be disguised. Let us leave these pitiful ways and expedients to the chicanery of the Courts of Law."2 Descartes." All his life, Descartes asserted it to be a first principle that nothing could be called knowledge which a man did not know for himself." "3 Hobbes." Natural sense and imagination," says Hobbes, "are not subject to absurdity. Nature itself cannot err." Rather, you proceed to err the moment you deviate from Nature. "As men abound in copiousness of language, so they become more wise or more mad than ordinary. For words are wise men's counters; they do but reckon with them; but they are the money of fools that value them by the authority of an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other doctor whatsoever, if but a man." 4 The more a man says on the strength of mere external "authority," the more nonsense will he be likely to speak. 1 Essays, vol. ii. p. 407. 3 Mahaffy's Life of Descartes, p. 143. 2 Ib. vol. iii. p. 311. 4 English Works, vol. iii. p. 25. It is also to be borne in mind thatas Sir Walter Scott says, "Words are the common pay which fools accept at the hands of knaves." Locke.-Locke's opinion was equally decided:-" It is an idle and useless thing to make it our business to study what have been other men's sentiments where reason only is the judge. I can no more know by another man's understanding than I can see by another man's eyes."1 Reid.-Reid wrote to Lord Kames-"I detest all systems that depreciate human nature. .. Were it not that we sometimes see extremes meet, I should think it very strange to see Atheists and high-shod divines contending, as it were, who should most blacken and degrade human nature." 2 Hutcheson. So Hutcheson :-"We know the pride of schoolmen and many ecclesiastics; how it galls their insolent vanity that any man should assume to himself to be wiser than they in tenets of religion by differing from them." 3 He holds that the right of private judgment is inalienable.4 Fielding." Well," says Squire Western, after hearing the reverend and learned gentlemen, Messrs. Thwackem and Square discussing the theological and legal aspects of one of Mr. Thomas Jones's juvenile delinquencies, “Well," says the Squire, in a mingled spirit of joviality and disgust, "if it be nullus bonus, let us drink about, and talk a little of the state of the nation, or some such discourse that we all understand; for I am sure I don't understand a word of (what you have been talking about). It may be learning and sense for aught I know, but you shall never persuade me into it. You have neither of you mentioned a word of that poor lad who deserves to be commended: to venture to break his neck to oblige my girl was a generous-spirited action. I have learning 1 A. Campbell Fraser's Life of Locke, pp. 47, 89–90. 2 Works, p. 52. 3 A System of Moral Philosophy, vol. i. p. 167. Ib. p. 262. Notice how this principle paralyses all anti-rational dogma. enough to see that. . . . I shall love the boy for it the longest day I have to live."1 The natural sense even of a drunken Squire Western is better than all the pedantry of our Thwackems and Squares. The wisdom of all the Church Councils that ever sat, cannot be permitted to take the place of our natural private intelligence. Kant." Nature," says Kant truly, "is not chargeable with any partial distribution of her gifts in those matters which concern all men without distinction. In respect to the essential ends of human nature, we cannot advance further with the help of the highest philosophy than under the guidance which Nature has vouchsafed to the meanest understanding." The majority of scholars "remain in a state of pupilage all their lives," through lack of self-study and self-reliance. A man of this kind has formed his mind on that of another, "but the imitative faculty is not productive. His knowledge has not been drawn from Reason. He has learned this or that philosophy, and is merely a plaster cast of a living man." 2 So, Fichte in lucid moments "Each individual in society ought to act from his own free choice, from his own mature and settled conviction." It is of all things most ignoble when a man "gives himself up to others, and relies upon them rather than upon himself." 3 Hamilton." I would earnestly impress upon you," said Sir W. Hamilton to his students, "Take nothing upon trust that can possibly admit of doubt, and which you are able to verify for yourselves." It is golden counsel. Until you, personally, have intellectually masticated and digested a doctrine it cannot yield either strength or sustenance to your intellectual being: you do but stand in relation to it as the ass to its burden. To express it 1 Tom Jones, Bk. iv. c. iv. 2 Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 503, 506. 3 Popular Works, pp. 192, 263. in another way:-No conviction can be had of things, either human or divine, but from one's own soul. The highest service that can be rendered to us even by a sage, is to rouse and help us to obtain personal convictions. Until men begin to understand and act upon this great truth, they remain like Samson "Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves." Leigh Hunt.-"Let us neither be alarmed by the name of Philosophy because it has been degraded by little men," wrote Leigh Hunt, "nor overawed because it has been rendered arduous by great. Let us regard it in its original and etymological sense, as a love of wisdom. The essence of Philosophy is the cultivation of common reason," "1i.e. the common reason of everybody,-which is the truth of the matter. Madame Varnhagen von Ense admirably said or wrote -"Original, I grant, every man might be, and must be, if men did not almost always admit mere undigested hearsays into their head, and fling them out again undigested." A hideous characteristic, this, of mankind at large, and the very special curse of all the schools. She continues" Whoever honestly questions himself, and faithfully answers, is busied continually with all that presents itself in life; and is incessantly inventing, had the thing been invented never so long before. Honesty belongs as a first condition to good thinking "—let all the philosophers take note; "and there are almost ast few absolute dunces as geniuses. Genuine dunces would always be original; but there are none of them genuine." An appalling truth this-our very dunces not genuine! They have almost always understanding enough to be dishonest." "2 Get rid of dishonesty, and what blessings shall flow in upon society at large! 1 Preface to the Examiner. Carlyle: Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, vol. iv. p. 111. |