e are rapidly approaching, purely
negative. We do know to a certain extent what qualities of objects are
not. We know that they are not and cannot be in the least like the
sensations which we call by the same names. We know that what we call
the whiteness and coldness of snow or the hardness and weight of marble,
can no more resemble the feelings we receive from looking at or handling
snow or marble than the mental exaltation produced within us on hearing
one of Bach's fugues is like the organ on which, or the organist by
whom, it is played. We know that of the pictures which our senses form
for us not one can possibly be a correct likeness. We know that what we
fancy we see in matter we do not see; that what we seem to feel we do
not feel; that the apparent structure and composition of matter cannot
therefore possibly be real. To this conviction we are irresistibly drawn
by a chain of idealistic reasoning of which Descartes forged the first
link, and every link of which will stand the severest strain. But if
this be the teaching of an idealism occupying as its base the only
morsel of solid ground to be found in the mental universe, what scrap of
footing is there left for an antagonistic materialism purporting to rest
on what we can see and feel of a structure and composition which, as we
have just satisfied ourselves, we cannot see or feel at all?

As plainly then as one half of Descartes' philosophy is materialistic,
so plainly, that half, instead of a necessary outgrowth and exact
correlative of the other or idealistic moiety is, on the contrary, the
latter's diametrical and implacable opponent. As plainly, therefore, as
the one is true, must the other be false, and Cartesian idealism, in so
far as its character has been exhibited above, has, I submit, been
demonstrated to be true. The greater the pity that it was not brought to
maturity by its author. In enumerating its first principles, Descartes,
as I must once again observe, was forming a logical basis whereon a
comprehensive and consistent conception of an external universe might
forthwith have been securely deposited, had he not unluckily, instead of
himself proceeding to build on his own foundations, with congruous
materials, left them free for others to build upon with gold, silver,
precious stones, wood, hay, or stubble, as chance might determine. May
I, without presumption, hazard a conjecture as to the sort of fabric
that might have arisen, if he had steadi