as correct; and particularly if the substance of what he narrates has been carried down by oral tradition through two or three generations and his work has been kept and referred to as the true statement.

106. Monuments. Monuments may be relied upon when they relate to a grave, public event and are known to have been fashioned at the time of the event to commemorate it—no one venturing to contradict the event or the significance of the commemoration. Should such monuments be discovered to have been constructed long after the time of the fact they are intended to commemorate, they are to be held merely as the opinion of the time at which they were constructed; and this opinion will have to be passed upon under the light of history and oral tradition.

107. Note. In this chapter we have not pretended to discuss the canons of historical criticism. Such discussion would by itself fill a respectable volume. We have wished solely to uphold the possibility of arriving at true thought on the evidence of the credibility of testimony. Thus we have not felt it necessary to refer to certain principles which may serve for the rejection of a narrative, principles which may regard the nature of the events put down, or the capacity of the witnesses as compared with the nature of the events, or the literary methods of the writer. Neither, again, has it entered into our scope to expound the laws which must be applied in the balancing of probabilities or in the making of a choice when confronted by opposing testimonies,

CHAPTER XV. CONCLUSION.

Summary of Method-The two Extremes and the Middle-What is Evident?-A Quiet Process-Sensus Communis.

108. Summary of Method. In the first and second chapters of this book we endeavored to state the problem that is involved in every act of judgment, in every mental conviction: Is the judgment true? Is there an object corresponding to the mental assertion?

In the third chapter we emphasized the difficulty by presenting the conflicting replies volunteered by a number of writers. The selection of writers was made with the view of exhibiting every shade of assertion and denial in opposition to the common-sense verdict of humanity.

For the purpose of avoiding long refutations we tried to find something which all these writers necessarily admitted and upon which we ourselves were necessarily at harmony with all of them. We found our point of agreement in the affirmation of self. In this affirmation we had the recognition of the first fact, self; the acceptance of the first condition necessary for the pursuit of knowledge, namely, the admission of the possibility of knowledge; the recognition of the first principle without which not even the affirmation of self can be sustained, the principle of contradiction which saves us from denying simultaneously what we affirm.

In seeking for the reason why self is affirmed with conviction we found the sole and universal reason to be, that self presents itself to be known, provided with an indubitable testimony to its existence, that is to say, provided with an evidence that cannot be gainsaid. Upon this evidence we affirm the existence of thought as our own; and of pleasure, pain, feelings and emotions as belonging to self.

Upon the very same grounds universally recognized as absolutely necessary and fully sufficient for the affirmation of the reality of self, we affirm the reality of the world of not-self, the reality of the object of each knowing-power. The life of cognition, then, is never a mere seeming to be. It is a veritable knowledge of truth which is objective independently of the cognition. As we affirm self, so do we as inevitabfy affirm the existence of body-belonging-to-self; the existence of matter or body which is not in any way identified with self; and the truth of certain principles or laws which govern the activity of self and of notself. All these things come before us with an evidence as strong as that whereby we are forced to recognize the existence of thought and of the self to which it belongs. Hence, if we admit the reality of our thought and of our self, we must admit the reality of all the rest upon an equally valid testimony, which is its own evidence. By sight and double contact we take in the evidence of the existence and conformation of our own bodies. By all the external senses we are put into communication with an external world and receive its evidence. We shall not come to know all about this external world. But, what matter?

Neither do we know all about thought, nor about anything else that is identified with self. We have not a thoroughly comprehensive knowledge of any object that comes under our observation, be it intellect, thought, self, matter or the qualities of matter. But this is no reason why we should deny the existence of any one of them, or of so much of their nature as may be presented by evidence to even the untutored perception. And evidence unfolds itself and knowledge grows with observation, study, association and instruction.

109. The Two Extremes and the Middle. The idealist, engrossed in the study of thought and of the intellectual ego, fails to give credit to the evidence brought to him through the external senses and treats the material world as though it were as immaterial as his idea of it. He denies, in fact, the certified reality of an outside world of matter, saying that he has no means of getting beyond the fact of his own impressions, that is, beyond the knowledge of the modifications of the conscious ego. Yet, he will admit your existence and mine. Indeed he writes books for us. He admits that each of us is a conscious ego. Now, he can know of the existence of conscious intellectual egos other than himself only after having become aware of the existence of bodies identified with these conscious egos; and he can know of the existence of such bodies in no other way than through the action of his external senses. But accepting the testimony of the senses for the existence of the bodies of other men, he must, if he will be consistent, accept the

same testimony for the reality of the whole external world.

The materialist, on the other hand, is engrossed in the study of matter, in the observation of the material phenomena that present their evidence through the senses. And so much account does he make of this evidence which the idealist denies, that he assumes sensible observation to be the sole test of reality. In other words, he assumes that matter alone exists. Of course he cannot ignore the fact of thought. Hence, to be true to his assumption that matter alone exists, he has next to assume that thought is but a movement of matter, perhaps a vibration of the brain. Thus, as the effort of the idealist is to explain his sensible perception on the basis of pure thought; so the effort of the materialist is to explain pure thought on the basis of sensible perception, or even to reduce all perception to mere vibratory movement of matter.

We admit the evidence that both of them admit. But we avoid their ungrounded assumptions at the start; and we reject their false conclusions at the close. We follow the guidance of nature, which is always consistent. Materialist and idealist, each, from his opposition stand-point, practically repudiates one half of nature because it will not fit his theory. Each constructs a theory from his own opposite halfview of the case, and then fits the theory to the rest of the case. But how? By assuming the rest of the facts to be what they are not: by assuming them to be what they would have to be for the welfare of the preconceived theory. We are told that there is thus an advance towards scientific unity. But that is a