Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/81

 such ideas are caused by ulterior objects is itself only another idea. Idealism is quite impossible of refutation, for even if there were things-in-themselves, we should still be idealists, as we cannot possibly know anything about them. And just as we believe that things outside of us happen apart from anything that we do, so no less may our conception of them arise in us without our having anything to do with it. As we know, it is without any co-operation of our own that we have become what we are. The reason why so many men have no consciousness of this is that with the word “appearance” they couple an extremely defective ideathe idea, namely, of dreaming and having visions. The latter, to be sure, are a species of appearance, but they do not exhaust the genus. It is here unquestionably that the misapprehension lies. The first thing to do, therefore, is to decide how we are to understand the word “appearance.” Appearances are of several kinds; but none of them clearly show that they originate from without the mind. Nay, what is without? what are objects præter nos ? What does the preposition præter imply? It is a merely human invention; a name to signify a difference from other things that we do not designate as præter nos. Sensations one and all of them. For us to recognize things exterior to the mind would be contradictory; for outside of himself a man cannot possibly go. When we think that we are looking at objects, we merely see ourselves. We can know nothing in the world except the changes taking