Idealism

(i-de'al-izm.) [Fr. idéalisme.] (Philos.) That doctrine which maintains that we are concerned only with ideas, and are ignorant of everything else. Idealists argue that what our senses convey to us is not evidence of an external world, but only of our sensation. Further, that we are utterly ignorant, and must ever remain so, of matter itself, and that it is easier to conceive that God directly causes our sensations, than that they are conveyed to us through the unknown world of matter. [s. 476]