uire our
knowledge only through the exercise of our mental faculties; it is not
true that our mental faculties are the only sources of our knowledge,
nor even that, without the concurrence of certain objects, they could
give us any knowledge at all. It is true that there must be a connection
between the subjective and the objective; it is not true that this
connection must be established by _reasoning_, or that we must _prove_
the existence of an external world distinct from the thinking mind,
before we are entitled to believe in it. For a great part of our
knowledge is _presentative_, and we directly perceive the objects of
Nature not less than the phenomena of Consciousness.

When it is said, in the jargon of the modern German philosophy, that
"the Ego has no immediate consciousness of the Non-Ego as existing, but
that the Non-Ego is only represented to us in a modification of the
self-conscious Ego, and is, in fact, only a phenomenon of the Ego,"--a
plain, practical Englishman, little tolerant of these subtle
distinctions, might be ready, if not deterred by the mere sound of the
words, to test them by a particular example. What am I to think, he
might say, of my own father and mother? They are familiarly known to me.
I have seen them, and talked with, them, and loved them as my own soul.
I have hitherto believed that they existed, and that they were really a
father and mother to me. But now I am taught that they are--mere
modifications of my own mind; that they are nothing more than simple
phenomena of the self-conscious Ego; and that, so far from being the
earthly authors of my existence, they are themselves--the creation and
offspring of my own thought. And on what ground am I asked to receive
this astonishing discovery? Why, simply because I can be sure of nothing
but the facts of consciousness. But how are _these facts proved_? They
"need no proof; they are self-evident; they are immediately and
irresistibly believed." Be it so. I can just as little doubt of the
existence of my body, of the distinct personality of my parents, and the
reality of an external universe, as of any fact of consciousness. May it
not be, whether we can explain it or not, that the one set of facts is
as directly _presented_, and needs as little to be _proved_, as the
other?

2. The doctrine of "Identity" constitutes a prominent and indispensable
part of the theory of Idealism, and is the ground-principle of
Philosophical Pantheism. It a