] The question on the order of
the day was the nature of sensation. Claparede pronounced for the
absolute subjectivity of all experience--in other words, for pure
idealism--which is amusing, from a naturalist. According to him the
_ego_ alone exists, and the universe is but a projection of the _ego_, a
phantasmagoria which we ourselves create without suspecting it,
believing all the time that we are lookers-on. It is our nouemenon which
objectifies itself as phenomenon. The _ego_, according to him, is a
radiating force which, modified without knowing what it is that modifies
it, imagines it, by virtue of the principle of causality--that is to
say, produces the great illusion of the objective world in order so to
explain itself. Our waking life, therefore, is but a more connected
dream. The self is an unknown which gives birth to an infinite number of
unknowns, by a fatality of its nature. Science is summed up in the
consciousness that nothing exists but consciousness. In other words, the
intelligent issues from the unintelligible in order to return to it, or
rather the ego explains itself by the hypothesis of the _non-ego_, while
in reality it is but a dream, dreaming itself. We might say with
Scarron:
"Et je vis l'ombre d'un esprit
Qui tracait l'ombre d'um systeme
Avec l'ombre de l'ombre meme.
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