Page:The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885).djvu/328

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All theories, all hypotheses as to the external world, ought to face this fact of thought. If the history of popular speculation on these topics could be written, how much of cowardice and shuffling would be found in the behavior of the natural mind before the question: “How dost thou know of an external reality?” Instead of simply and plainly answering: “I mean by the external world in the first place something that I accept or demand, that I posit, postulate, actively construct on the basis of sense-data,” the natural man gives us all kinds of vague compromise answers: “I believe in the external reality with a reasonable degree of confidence; the experience of mankind renders the existence of external reality ever more and more probable; the Creator cannot have intended to deceive us; it is unnatural to doubt as to external reality; only young people and fantastic persons doubt the existence of the external world; no man in his senses doubts the external reality of the world; science would be impossible were there no external world; morality is undermined by doubts as to the external world; the immovable confidence that we all have in the principle of causality implies the fixity of our belief in an external cause of our sensations.” Where shall these endless turnings and twistings have an end? The habits of the law-courts as condensed into “rules of evidence,” the traditional rules of debate, the fashion of appealing to the “good sense” of honorable gentlemen opposite, the motives of shame and fear, the dread of being called “fantastical,” Philistine desire to think with the majority, Philistine