Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/336

 322 J. S. MACKENZIE : subjective world of our direct experience. This is practic- ally what is said by all dualists ; and our new realists say it in their own particular fashion perhaps the best fashion. But such a view has plausibility only if we can maintain the sharp distinction between our consciousness in itself and that of which we are conscious ; and this, as we indicated at the very outset, seems to be impossible. - Now, there is, I think, only one other view that is open to us ; and that is the view to which I have been seeking to lead up, viz., that we are justified in affirming a world of meaning, but that it is a world that can only be interpreted in relation to con- scious experience. This seems to me to be in the end the only view that is really intelligible. Indeed, as far as I can see, our new realists do not even set up any definite alternative to this idealistic position. Mr. Moore professes to give us a refutation of idealism ; but what he really gives is a refutation of scepticism i.e., a refutation of the view that esse is percipi. His only argu- ments against idealism appear to be (1) that it can only be proved by means of the doctrine that esse is percipi ; and that, apart from this, it is a mere assumption ; (2) that it is paradoxical, involving the rejection of some inevitable beliefs of common sense. As regards the first of these, I have already urged that, so far from resting on esse is percipi, idealism rests rather on the rejection of this dogma. But, in order to meet Mr. Moore's point more completely, it is right that I should try to explain in what way I suppose an idealistic view of the world to be established. In a certain sense, I am very ready to admit that the truth of idealism is incapable of proof. No ultimate pre- supposition of thought can be proved, in the sense of being deduced from something more ultimate and evident than itself ; and the general nature of our universe seems to me to be such a presupposition. We evidently cannot rest it on anything like the ' cogito ergo sum ' or the ' clear and distinct ideas ' of Descartes ; nor, I fancy, can we establish it in any other way ' after the fashion of geometry '. Now it is a proof of this sort that Mr. Moore appears to desiderate ; and in this sense I am perfectly willing to allow that no proof is forthcoming. But many things that most of us ac- cept with considerable assurance are in the same position. Most of us believe that sugar is sweet, and that Shakespeare is a great poet ; and few of us would feel any stronger con- viction on these points if they could be set out in the form of a mathematical deduction. But, you may say, a philo-