nection with
further 'knowledge,' it has, at any rate, no immediate certainty for
me."--In place of the "immediate certainty" in which the people may
believe in the special case, the philosopher thus finds a series of
metaphysical questions presented to him, veritable conscience questions
of the intellect, to wit: "Whence did I get the notion of 'thinking'?
Why do I believe in cause and effect? What gives me the right to speak
of an 'ego,' and even of an 'ego' as cause, and finally of an 'ego'
as cause of thought?" He who ventures to answer these metaphysical
questions at once by an appeal to a sort of INTUITIVE perception, like
the person who says, "I think, and know that this, at least, is
true, actual, and certain"--will encounter a smile and two notes of
interrogation in a philosopher nowadays. "Sir," the philosopher will
perhaps give him to understand, "it is improbable that you are not
mistaken, but why should it be the truth?"

17. With regard to the superstitions of logicians, I shall never tire
of emphasizing a small, terse fact, which is unwillingly recognized by
these credulous minds--namely, that a thought comes when "it" wishes,
and not when "I" wish; so that it is a PERVERSION of the facts of the
case to say that the subject "I" is the condition of the predicate
"think." ONE thinks; but that this "one" is precisely the famous old
"ego," is, to put it mildly, only a supposition, an assertion, and
assuredly not an "immediate certainty." After all, one has even gone too
far with this "one thinks"--even the "one" contains an INTERPRETATION of
the process, and does not belong to the process itself. One infers here
according to the usual grammatical formula--"To think is an activity;
every activity requires an agency that is active; consequently"... It
was pretty much on the same lines that the older atomism sought, besides
the operating "power," the material particle wherein it resides and out
of which it operates--the atom. More rigorous minds, however, learnt at
last to get along without this "earth-residuum," and perhaps some day we
shall accustom ourselves, even from the logician's point of view, to
get along without the little "one" (to which the worthy old "ego" has
refined itself).

18. It is certainly not the least charm of a theory that it is
refutable; it is precisely thereby that it attracts the more subtle
minds. It seems that the hundred-times-refuted theory of the "free will"
owes its persistenc