Email
Print
SharePhilosophy is, in its essence, the quest of reality. In the attempt to determine what is real, one has to choose, in the first instance, between the percipient self and the things that it perceives.
This choice may seem to be purely metaphysical, but sooner or later it becomes a moral choice and one which is decisive of the chooser's destiny. For him who can face the problem steadily there is but one possible solution of it. If we may assume that each term of the given antithesis has some measure of reality, we need be in no doubt as to which is the more real.
The problem solves itself, for the simple reason that the decision as to whether the self or the outward world is real rests with the self. It is I who have to make the choice between myself and the world that surrounds me; and I have to make it to my own satisfaction.
If I invest the outward world with reality of any degree or kind, the fact remains that it is I who am guaranteeing its reality; and, that being so, the question inevitably suggests itself: If the guarantor is metaphysically insolvent, what is the value of his guarantee?
It is sometimes said that the idealist starts with himself, and never gets to the outward world. There are certain dialectical developments of idealism of which this criticism may perhaps hold good; but, as a general criticism of idealism, it is, I think, entirely untrue.
The idealist starts, where every thinker must start, with provisional acceptance of the outward world as well as of the percipient self; but, in the act of guaranteeing its reality, he guarantees a fuller measure and a higher degree of reality to himself. Nor is the value of the latter guarantee impaired by the patent fact that it is illogical to go surety for oneself.
To prove the reality of what alone enables one to prove reality is, for obvious reasons, impossible.
From The Creed of Buddha byEdmond Holmes
