Ordinary folk may perhaps be somewhat slow to derive from this compromising theory all the comfort which its author deems it capable of affording. Most of us may, probably, be inclined to think that we might as well have been left to fret in the frying-pan of materialism as be cast headlong into idealistic fire, to no better end than that of being there fused body and soul together, and sublimated into inapprehensible nothingness. Our immediate concern, however, is not with the pleasantness of the theory, but with its truth; in proceeding to test which we shall probably find that there is as little warrant for idealising matter after this fashion as we have already seen that there is for materialising mind. The originator of the theory about to be examined, or rather, perhaps, of a somewhat different theory out of which this has been developed--not to say perverted--may, without much inaccuracy, be pronounced to be Descartes. He it was who, perceiving that we are surrounded on all sides by illusions of all sorts, that not only is there no authority or testimony implicitly to be depended on, but that our senses likewise often play the traitor, and that we can never be perfectly sure whether we are really seeing, hearing, or feeling, or merely thinking or dreaming that we see, hear, or feel, and looking anxiously around for one single point at least on which complete confidence might be placed, discovered such a point in thought. Whatever else we may doubt about, we cannot, he justly argued, doubt that there are thoughts. If it were possible to doubt this, our very doubt would be thought, constituting and presenting as evidence the very existence doubted of. Our thoughts, then, are unquestionably real existences. They may be delusive, but they cannot possibly be fictitious.