CHAPTER IV
DOUBTS ABOUT SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS
Do I know, can I know, anything? Would not knowledge be an impossible inclusion of what lies outside? May I not rather renounce all beliefs? If only I could, what peace would descend into my perturbed conscience! The spectacle of other men’s folly continually reawakens in me the suspicion that I too am surely fooled; and the character of the beliefs which force themselves upon me — the fantasticality of space and time, the grotesque medley of nature, the cruel mockery called religion, the sorry history and absurd passions of mankind — all invite me to disown them and to say to what I call the world, “Come now; how do you expect me to believe in you?” At the same time this very incredulity and wonder in me are baseless and without credentials. What right have I to any presumptions as to what would be natural and proper? Is not the most extravagant fact as plausible as any other? Is not the most obvious axiom a wanton dogma? Yet turn whichever way I will, and refine as I may, the pressure of existence, of tyrannical absolute present being, seems to confront me. Something is evidently going on, at least in myself. I feel an instant complex strain of existence, forcing me to say that I think and that I am. Certainly the words I use in such reflection bring many images with them which may possess no truth.
