"Can't you?" cried Ellis, "I can! Here he is in a nutshell! Take any statement you like—for example, 'Nothing exists!'—put it into the dialectical machine, turn the handle, and hey presto! out comes the Absolute! The thing's infallible; it does not matter what you put in; you always get out the same identical sausage."
Dennis laughed. "There, Wilson," he said, "I hope you understand now!"
"I can't say I do," replied Wilson, "but I daresay it doesn't much matter."
"Perhaps, then," said Ellis, "you would prefer the Kantian plan."
"What is that?"
"Oh, it's much simpler than the other. You go into your room, lock the door, and close the shutters, excluding all light Then you proceed to invert the mind, so as to relieve it of all its contents; look steadily into the empty vessel, as if it were a well; and at the bottom you will find Truth in the form of a categorical imperative. Or, if you don't like that, there's the method of Fichte. You take an Ego, by preference yourself; convert it into a proposition; negate it, affirm it, negate it again, and so on ad infinitum, until you get out the whole Universe in the likeness of yourself. But that's rather a difficult method; probably you would prefer Spinoza's. You take—"
"No!" cried Dennis, "there I protest! Spinoza is too venerable a name."
"So are they all, all venerable names," said Ellis. "But the question is, to which of them do you swear allegiance? For they all arrive at totally different results."
"I don't know that I swear allegiance to any of them," he replied. "I merely ventured to suggest that it is only by some such method of pure reason that one can ever hope to discover Good."
"You do not profess then," I said, "to have discovered any such method yourself?"