Recapitulating this farrago of nonsense on p. 188, he adds a new
difficulty which ought to make him pause in his wild career. "What is
the value of the evidence of the senses if a suggestion can make us see
the hat, but not the man who wears it; or dance half the night with an
imaginary partner? Am I 'I myself, I,' or am I a barrel-organ playing
'God save the Queen,' if the stops are set in the normal fashion, but
the 'Marseillaise' if some cunning hand has altered them without my
knowledge? These are questions which I cannot answer." He cannot answer
a question on which the value of his whole system of physical philosophy
depends; uncertain about his own identity, about the evidence of his
senses, he would make the latter the sole rule and measure of certitude,
and deny to man any higher faculty by which alone he can justify his
trust in his cognitive faculties. Another instance of his absolute
ignorance of common philosophic terminology is when he asserts that
according to theology we know the dogmas of religion by "intuition." [37]
This doctrine rests on Cardinal Newman's celebrated theory of the
"Illative Sense." Surely a moment's reflection on the meaning of words,
not to speak of a slight acquaintance with the book referred to, would
have saved him from confounding two notions so sharply distinguished as
"intuition" and "inference." Again, "There can be no doubt there are men
often of great piety and excellence who have, or fancy they have, a sort
of sixth sense, or, as Cardinal Newman calls it, an 'illative sense,' by
which they see by intuition ... things unprovable or disprovable by
ordinary reason." [38] Can a man who makes such reckless travesties of a
view which he manifestly has never studied, be credited with
intellectual honesty?