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and I have also shown that many systems of idealism that are said to be purely speculative have a thoroughly practical value. But it is important to consider other aspects of the subject since it is only by extreme persistence that one is able to avoid all misconception.

To declare that the world is made known by its presence to the mind is of course very different from the assertion that the world is existent only in the mind. What is present in the mind is an exceedingly elusive flux of ever-changing states. One cannot even know one's self except by analytically and synthetically passing beyond the merely given stream of consciousness. If the world of nature is at last fairly well known by means of ideas it is not until these ideas have been evolved into a system. The mere sense of acquaintance with the world counts for very little. Everybody is in process of wresting from the world its meaning by the aid of ideas. To grasp the truth of idealism is in the first place simply to attain a knowledge of facts. A man scarcely begins to know what a fact is until he learns that he is an idealist. It is not argument that makes a man an idealist. We are all idealists now. To awaken to the fact is by no means to lose anything. The world of nature is not proved one whit less real by the discovery that for man it has no existence apart from conscious experience.