Consciousness then ceases to be passive sense
or idle ideation and becomes belief and intelligence. Then the essences
which form the "content of consciousness" may be vivified and trippingly
run over, like the syllables of a familiar word, in the active recognition
of things and people and of all the ominous or pliable forces of nature.
For essences, being eternal and non-existent in themselves, cannot come to
consciousness by their own initiative, but only as occasion and the subtle
movements of the soul may evoke their forms; so that the fact that they
are given to consciousness has a natural status and setting in the
material world, and is part of the same natural event as the movement of
the soul and body which supports that consciousness.
There is therefore no need of refuting idealism, which is an honest
examination of conscience in a reflective mind. Refutations and proofs
depend on pregnant meanings assigned to terms, meanings first rendered
explicit and unambiguous by those very proofs or refutations. On any
different acceptation of those terms, these proofs and refutations fall
to the ground; and it remains a question for good sense, not for logic at
all, how far the terms in either case describe anything existent. If by
"knowledge" we understand intuition of essences, idealism follows; but it
follows only in respect to essences given in intuition: nothing follows
concerning the seat, origin, conditions, or symptomatic value of such
intuition, nor even that such intuition ever actually occurs.
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