of them was also the simplest and the most reasonable, and that it would have been accepted by every one if only it had been last instead of first.  Imagine all your philosophers, ancient and modern, having exhausted their strange systems of force, chance, fate, necessity, atoms, a living world, animated matter, and every variety of materialism.  Then comes the illustrious Clarke who gives light to the world and proclaims the Being of beings and the Giver of things.  What universal admiration, what unanimous applause would have greeted this new system—­a system so great, so illuminating, and so simple.  Other systems are full of absurdities; this system seems to me to contain fewer things which are beyond the understanding of the human mind.  I said to myself, “Every system has its insoluble problems, for the finite mind of man is too small to deal with them; these difficulties are therefore no final arguments, against any system.  But what a difference there is between the direct evidence on which these systems are based!  Should we not prefer that theory which alone explains all the facts, when it is no more difficult than the rest?”

Bearing thus within my heart the love of truth as my only philosophy, and as my only method a clear and simple rule which dispensed with the need for vain and subtle arguments, I returned with the help of this rule to the examination of such knowledge as concerned myself; I was resolved to admit as self-evident all that I could not honestly refuse to believe, and to admit as true all that seemed to follow directly from this; all the rest I determined to leave undecided, neither accepting nor rejecting it, nor yet troubling myself to clear up difficulties which did not lead to any practical ends.

But who am I?  What right have I to decide?  What is it that determines my judgments?  If they are inevitable, if they are the results of the impressions I receive, I am wasting my strength in such inquiries; they would be made or not without any interference of mine.  I must therefore first turn my eyes upon myself to acquaint myself with the instrument I desire to use, and to discover how far it is reliable.

I exist, and I have senses through which I receive impressions.  This is the first truth that strikes me and I am forced to accept it.  Have I any independent knowledge of my existence, or am I only aware of it through my sensations?  This is my first difficulty, and so far I cannot solve it.  For I continually experience sensations, either directly or indirectly through memory, so how can I know if the feeling of self is something beyond these sensations or if it can exist independently of them?

My sensations take place in myself, for they make me aware of my own existence; but their cause is outside me, for they affect me whether I have any reason for them or not, and they are produced or destroyed independently of me.  So I clearly perceive that my sensation, which is within me, and its cause or its object, which is outside me, are different things.