The Problem of Epistemology

The Problem of Epistemology
Author(s): Andrew Seth

Source: The Philosophical Review , Sep., 1892, Vol. 1, No. 5 (Sep., 1892), pp. 504-517
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review
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THE PROBLEM OF EPISTEMOLOGY.1
THE problem of epistemology arises from the very nature

of knowledge. Knowledge implies a reference to that
which is known, and which is therefore to be distinguished from
the knowledge itself considered subjectively as an act or process
of the being who knows. What is known, the object of knowl-
edge, may be styled most generally Reality. Knowledge bears
in its heart, in its very notion, this reference to a reality distinct
from itself. No idealist will deny, at all events, that knowledge
seems to us to carry this reference with it. Hume himself
speaks of it as "the universal and primary opinion of all men,"
it is " a natural instinct or presupposition," 2 so that if its valid-
ity is not accepted, the illusion will at least require explanation.
Knowledge as knowledge points beyond itself to a reality whose
representation or symbol it is. This holds true, as a careful
analysis would show, even in what is called self-knowledge, the
reflective knowledge of one's own states, in which the act of
knowledge and the object known might seem to fall together.
But, without insisting at the outset on this refinement, let us
take the general or typical case, in which the knowledge is
knowledge of beings other than ourselves, a knowledge of the
facts of the world around us. Here the very function of knowl-
edge, as ordinarily understood, is to disclose to one being the
nature of beings and things with which he is in relation, but
which are different; i~e. numerically and existentially distinct
from himself. One being or individual cannot go out of him-
self, so far as his being or existence is concerned. He is and
remains himself so long as he exists at all. But though every
individual, qua existent, remains thus anchored upon himself -
rooted to his own centre, to the locus, as it were, assigned him
1 This article connects itself with the previous paper on " Psychology, Episte
mology, and Metaphysics," which appeared in the second number of this journal.
2 Enquiry, section 12.
504

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THE PROBLEM OF EPISTEMOLOGY. 505
in the process of the universal life -yet by the influence of

other realities upon him and the response of his own being to
these influences, - in other words, by means of his own sub-
jective states, and without therefore performing the impossible
feat of stepping out of himself,- he becomes aware of other
existences, or, as we say, he comes to know that other beings
or things exist besides himself, and also what their nature is.
This knowledge, as knowledge, is necessarily subjective, for no
being can be present in existence within another being. In
existence things necessarily remain apart or distinct: we can
know things, therefore, only by report, only by their effect
upon us.
That, then, is the problem or crux of knowledge which has
vexed philosophers. Knowledge is necessarily subjective, so far
as it is state or process of the knowing being; but it as neces-
sarily involves an objective reference. If it is not an illusion
altogether, it is a knowledge of realities which are trans-sub-
jective or extra-conscious; i.e. which exist beyond and inde-
pendently of the consciousness of the individual knowing them.
But all through the modern period philosophers have been turn-
ing the subjectivity of knowledge against its objectivity, and in
the last resort converting the very notion of knowledge into an
argument against the possibility of knowledge. If they have
not gone to this extreme length, the possibility of real knowl-
edge has been an ever present difficulty to modern thought,- a
difficulty that has seemed to grow greater instead of less in the
hands of successive thinkers, till it may be said since the time
of Hume and Kant to have been the main subject of philosoph-
ical debate. Now, it can scarcely be doubted that in this respect
philosophy has largely created the difficulties which it finds so
hard to surmount, but at the same time we cannot wonder at or
regret the time and labor expended on this question; for it is
the business of philosophy to doubt wherever doubt is possible,
and to probe its own doubts to the bottom, in order to discover
whether they are really fatal to the faith we repose in the act of
knowledge. A theory of knowledge or a philosophy of belief is
a necessary preliminary of all scientific and metaphysical inquiry.

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506 THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [VOL. I.
In endeavoring to establish such a theory, we must start from

the ordinary consciousness. What does the plain man believe
about perception and the real world of physical things? He
believes that his senses, especially sight and touch, put him in
immediate relation with real things. He has only to open his
eyes or to stretch out his hand, and he is face to face or in
actual contact with the realities themselves. The objects which
he perceives are not dependent upon his perceiving them, which
is a purely accidental fact both in their life-history and in his.
Just as he himself existed as a real being before the act of per-
ception, so they existed independently before he turned his eyes
upon them, and they continue to exist after his vision is averted.
He believes, in short, that he sees and touches the real thing as
that exists in itself independent of perception. He draws no
distinction between the existence of the thing in itself and its
existence for him in the moment of perception. The appear-
ance is the reality. "The vulgar," as Hume says, "confound
perceptions and objects, and attribute a distinct continued exist-
ence to the very things they feel or see." 1 " 'Tis certain," he
says again, "that almost all mankind, and even philosophers
themselves, for the greatest part of their lives, take their per-
ceptions to be their only objects, and suppose that the very
being, which is intimately present to the mind, is the real body
or material existence. 'Tis also certain that this very percep-
tion or object is supposed to have a continued, uninterrupted
being, and neither to be annihilated by our absence nor to be
brought into existence by our presence." 2
No doubt this is, as Hume says, the belief of " the vulgar";
it is what Mr. Spencer calls Crude, and what other writers call
naive or uncritical Realism. As such, it contains much that is
untenable, and much that requires more careful sifting and
definition. But what we have to note is that it is a primary,
instinctive, and irresistible belief of all mankind, nay of the
whole animal creation. Hume himself characterizes Realism
as "a natural instinct or prepossession" which operates " with-
out any reasoning or even almost before the use of reason."3
1Treatise, Part IV. section 2. 2 Ibid. 3 Enquiry, section 12.

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No. 5-] THE PROBLEM OF EPISTEMOLOGY. 507
Even the sceptic, he says again, "must assent to the principle

concerning the existence of body, though he cannot pretend
by any arguments of philosophy to maintain its veracity.
Nature has not left this to his choice, and has doubtless
esteemed it an affair of too great importance to be trusted
to our uncertain reasonings and speculations." 1 It may be
matter for consideration at a later stage whether the mere fact
of this universal, primary, and ineradicable belief is not itself an
element in the problem; except on the hypothesis of universal
irrationality may it not be argued that the provision of nature
in this respect is hardly likely to be a carefully organized
deception ? But here, we are merely concerned with the fact of
what Mr. Spencer calls the priority of Realism. It cannot be
too strongly insisted that in this respect Realism holds the field.
As Mr. Spencer puts it, " I see no alternative but to affirm that
the thing primarily known, is not that a sensation has been
experienced, but that there exists an outer object." 2 Mr.
Spencer's position here is not essentially different from that of
Reid when he insists in opposition to Hume that we do not
start with ideas or, as Hume calls them, perceptions -unrelated
mental states -but with judgments. Judgment, he argues,
is the primitive act of mind and a knowledge of sensations per se
is only reached at a much later stage " by resolving and analyz-
ing a natural and original judgment." As I put it on a previous
occasion, " we do not begin by studying the contents of our own
minds and afterwards proceed by inference to realities beyond.
We are never restricted to our own ideas, as ideas; from the
first dawn of knowledge we treat the subjective excitation as
the symbol or revealer to us of a real world." 3
Mr. Spencer, in the chapter from which I have quoted,4 gives
an admirable exposure of the fallacy which underlies the oppo-
site view. " The error has been in confounding two quite
distinct things, - having a sensation, and being conscious of
having a sensation." Certainly, sensations must be given as
I Treatise, Part IV. section 2. 2 Principles of Psychology, Vol. IL. p. 369.

$ Scottish Philosophy, p. 103 (2d ed.).
4 Principles of Psychology, Part VII. chap. 6.

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the conditions of perception or knowledge; they are unquestion-

ably the immediate data upon which the perceptive judgment
reposes. Mr. Spencer, it is true, guided by his idea of evolu-
tion, projects his imagination into "the dark backward and
abysm of time " and seems to teach that " the simple conscious-
ness of sensation, uncomplicated by any consciousness of sub-
ject or object, is primordial," and that, as he puts it, "through
immeasurably long and complex differentiations and integra-
tions of such primordial sensations and derived ideas, there
develops a consciousness of self and a correlative not-self."
But, as he adds, "it is one thing to say that in such a creature
the sensations are the things originally given, and it is quite
another thing to say these sensations can be known as sensa-
tions by such a creature." Such an argument "identifies two
things which are at the very opposite extremes of the process
of mental evolution." It is, in fact, only the psychologist who
in his reflective analysis is conscious of sensations as sensations
distinguished from and referred to their external causes. And
we have here an example of what Professor James has dubbed
"the psychologist's fallacy par excellence," - the confusion by
the psychologist of his own standpoint with that of the mental
fact about which he is making his report. Mr. Spencer lays
his finger most effectively upon the fallacy in the present case.
But for myself, I question whether he does not go too far in
admitting an undifferentiated sensuous consciousness as the
primordial fact in the evolutionary process. It is in vain that
we project our imaginations towards such a hypothetical begin-
ning: it has nothing in common with what we understand by
knowledge, and is therefore perfectly unrealizable by us. Being
thus totally heterogeneous, it cannot form a step on the road to
knowledge: I mean that it does not in any sense pave the way
for it or render the emergence of cognition easier to conceive.
Whether we interpolate this hypothetical sensuous conscious-
ness as a time-prius or not, the appearance of perception or
cognitive consciousness -the consciousness we know-remains
equally an unexplained beginning, an absolute peLrd/3aut9
axxo 7yEv0q.

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No. 5.] THE PROBLEM OF EPISTEMOLOGY. 509
It is not an essential point in our present argument, but I am

disposed to question whether any animal consciousness can be
fairly described as a "simple consciousness of sensation," that
is to say, a state of pure internality, of diffused inward feeling,
without a germinal consciousness of distinction between the feel-
ing self and its surroundings. There is no question here of the
developed or reflected consciousness of Ego and non-Egfo, but
only of that animal awareness of objective facts which is seen
in reaction upon stimuli and in purposive adaptation of act to
circumstance. It is in action that we have the surest clew to
the early stages of the animal and the human consciousness.
Knowledge in such creatures exists simply in a practical refer-
ence. Consciousness would be a useless luxury unless as put-
ting them in relation to the surrounding world and enabling
them to adapt their actions to its varying stimuli. In point of
fact, this practical consciousness, so far as we can judge, accom-
panies animal life from the outset. At least we cannot even
imagine a consciousness without the objective reference; i.e.
without a felt distinction between the feeling subject and an
object which it feels - something different, of whose presence
to it it is aware. Once more let it be repeated, we are not
speaking of the reflective realization of those distinctions which
comes so much later which comes to the non-human animal
not at all, and to human beings only intermittently; we are
speaking of the instinctive or direct consciousness which all
living creatures possess (in greater or less degree) for the
practical ends of living, to enable them to respond to external
stimulus and to adapt themselves to their surroundings. Put
on this broad ground, it may be said that the reaction of the
sensitive organism is the practical recognition of an indepen-
dent object, -it is the first or earliest form which that rec-
ognition takes. Further, there seems no reason to doubt that
it is the contrast of activity and passivity, - of resistance
encountered and instinctive effort put forth against the resist-
ance, to which may be added the contrast of want and satisfac-
tion, of restless craving and the stilling of appetite by its
appropriate gratification, -it is these contrasts which awaken

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and intensify the distinction between the sensitive subject and

objects independent of itself. The infant whose pains of depri-
vation are ended by the presentation of the mother's breast,
the snail which puts forth its horns and comes in contact with
an object in its path,1 are alike in a fair way towards realizing
the existence of independent objects. It may be taken as pretty
generally acknowledged that the consciousness of independent
externality is given chiefly in the sense of effort and the phe-
nomena of resisted energy. Here we see the category of cau-
sality, as it were, alive before us in instinctive action. Hence,
as Mr. Spencer says, "the root-conception of existence beyond
consciousness becomes that of resistance plus some force which
the resistance measures." 2 Of such a simple quasi-reflex char-
acter are the experiences which "yield subject and object as
independent existences." 3 We do not require to go for them
to the rational consciousness of man. In reacting upon a
stimulus, the sensitive subject projects or reflects its feeling
out, interprets it as the sign of an independent somewhat.
In this sense we may agree with Mr. Spencer that "the Realis-
tic interpretation of our states of consciousness" is "deep as
the very structure of the nervous system, and cannot for an
instant be actually expelled" ; 4or, as Professor Laurie puts it,
the affirmation of independent externality is a necessary reflex
movement of sense. "By a reflex action of consciousness things
are constituted objects and external. This movement, more-
over, lies in the heart of consciousness; and through it alone
is consciousness possible." 5
This being so, then -Realism being incontestably prior
philosophical reflection supervenes, and subjects this primitive
and instinctive consciousness to a sceptical criticism, which
aims either at establishing some form of Idealism or at reduc-
ing us to complete Scepticism. This criticism, as already
remarked, is both salutary and necessary; for if Realism is
I An example of Professor Laurie's.

2 Principles of Psychology, Part VII. chap. i8.
8 Ibid., chap. I3. Ibid., chap. I4.
5 Metaphysica Nova et Vetusta, p. 74 (2d ed.).

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No. So] THE PROBLEM OF EPISTEMOLOGY. 5 I
to justify. itself it must do so at the bar of Reason: it cannot

save itself by a mere appeal to instinctive or unreasoned belief,
especially when that belief may be seen at a glance to involve
a number of unscientific and untenable assertions. Reflective
criticism brings to light important and undeniable distinctions
which are ignored in the primitive realistic beliefs of the race.
The philosophical thinker will avail himself gladly of these
distinctions to purge the crude or instinctive doctrine of the
unscientific elements which bring it into discredit, while at
the same time he endeavors, in view of this idealistic criticism,
to state in an unexceptionable form the indestructible elements
of truth which he believes the original belief to contain. In
regard to this indestructible basis of truth he must meet the
criticisms of the idealist by showing that Idealism as an epis-
temological doctrine oniy exists as a criticism of Realism, and
derives any plausibility it possesses from the surreptitious or
unobserved importation into its statement of our ineradicable
realistic assumptions. Were it not for these assumptions the
idealistic theory could not be stated in words. Idealism is
really an attempt to obliterate the distinction between knowing
and being, which it finds established in common belief and in
the realistic theories. The gist of epistemological Idealism is
that the knowing is the thing known; that being known to
different consciousnesses is the only being or existence of the
object; that cognitive states of a number of conscious beings
exist, but that the "it," the object which we ordinarily suppose
these cognitive states to refer to - which we suppose to be
known by means of these cognitive states- is nothing beyond
the cognitive states themselves.' Now on such a theory it is
pretty evident that the distinction of Knowing and Being, of
independent subject and object, would never have arisen, and
would not have required therefore to be explained away.
Hence, it may be repeated, Idealism exists only as a criticism
of Realism. When developed itself as a substantive theory,
it leads to a view of existence which is a reductio ad absurdum
1 Obviously on such a hypothesis the designation " cognitive " applied to the states
is no longer appropriate, since they have ceased to be the instruments of knowledge.

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of the doctrine in question. By such a line of argument Real-

ism is left in possession of the field, and a critical or carefully
guarded Realism is established as the only satisfactory, indeed
the only sane, theory of knowledge.
The considerations on which a sceptical idealism, or an ideal-
istic skepticism, founds are sufficiently obvious, and by no
means profound. As Hume puts it, the "universal and pri-
mary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slzghktest philos-
ophy." 1 Possibly, therefore (to adapt Bacon's maxim), if a little
philosophy inclines men's minds to idealism, depth in philos-
ophy may bring them back to Realism. "The slightest philos-
ophy teaches us," Hume proceeds, "that nothing can ever be
present to the mind but an image or perception, and that the
senses are only the inlets through which these images are
conveyed, without being able to produce any immediate inter-
course between the mind and the object." In other words, and
to put it more modernly, the special arguments by which
idealism is enforced are drawn from the physiology of the
sense-organs. The general position on which it rests is that,
physiologically, knowledge has for its immediate conditions
certain processes in every organism, and, psychologically,
knowledge consists of certain subjective experiences in me
(whatever that may precisely mean, some denying the me and
asserting simply the subjective experiences as such). As
Hume says, we never get "any immediate intercourse between
the mind and the object." Consciousness, as such, is shut up
to its own contents or constituents. What transcends con-
sciousness, i.e. any existence which is other than consciousness
cannot be in consciousness; albeit the ordinary naive idea
seems to be that consciousness, as it were, goes out of itself,
and actually lays hold of things, or throws its net over them.
In literal fact, however, this is not so. The psychical experi-
ences which constitute knowledge are one thing, and, according
to the doctrine of a Realism that understands itself, the thing
known is another. Their distinction is undeniable, though an
ill-advised Realism and an all-advised Idealism alike try to
1 Enquiry, section I2.

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No. 5.] THE PROBLEM OF EPISTEMOLOGY. 5 I 3
undermine it or to explain it away. In fact, as we saw at the

outset of this paper, the distinction may be said to be involved
in the very nature or notion of knowledge. Knowledge means
nothing if it does not mean the relation of two factors, knowl-
edge of an object by a subject. But knowledge is not an
entity stretching across, as it were, from subject to object, and
uniting them; still less is knowledge the one reality of which
subject and object are two sides or aspects. Knowledge is an
activity, an activo-passive experience of the subject, whereby
it becomes aware of what is not itself. The cognitive state is
thus related psychologically to the subject whose state it is, and
epistemologically to the object of which it is the knowledge.
Epistemologically there is a union of subject and object:
the knower and what he knows are in a sense, as Aristotle
says, one. But ontologically, or as a matter of existence, they
remain distinct - the one here and the other there - and
nothing avails to bridge this chasm. The chasm, it is true, is
not an absolute one, otherwise knowledge would be forever
impossible. Across the inane there is no bridge. Both sub-
ject and object are members of one world. That may be taken
as the ultimate and unavoidable presupposition. But separa-
tion and difference are the very conditions of knowledge; if
it were not for the difference where would be the need of
knowledge ? Each thing would actually be everything else, or
rather "each" would be an impossible conception. The 0/c
7ravTa of Anaxagoras would be realized in a more intimate
and literal sense than its author ever imagined; all things
would be together, an indistinguishable conglomerate of mutual
interpenetration. It is individuation, distinctness in existence,
that calls for knowledge and gives it scope. Feelings, images,
ideas, beliefs, volitions- these are the components of conscious-
ness, they have an existence of their own, but it is a mode
of existence generically distinct from that we attribute to things
as real beings, whether material or spiritual. By means of
certain of these conscious facts - those called cognitive - the
being in whom they occur believes that he is made aware of the
existence, nature, and actions of existences other than himself.

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514 THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [VOL. 1.
But he cannot by any possibility step out of himself and pass

over into these other existences, or draw them into himself.
In this respect Matthew Arnold's lines are as true as they are
poignantly beautiful : -
Yes! in the sea of life enisled,

With echoing straits between us thrown,
Dotting the shoreless watery wild,
We mortal millions live alone.
The islands feel the enclasping flow,
And then their endless bounds they know.
But, as I have said, to wish to overpass these limits is to

rebel against the very nature of selfhood, and epistemologically
to kick against the very notion of knowledge. That very self
which is a principle of isolation in existence is the principle on
which all communion, all fellowship rests, alike in knowing and
in feeling. But knowledge is not a fusion of knower and known,
nor is it all explained by being regarded as a kind of physical
continuity or immediate contact between the knowing subject
and the object known. Though science may prove all percep-
tion to be dependent on the existence of a physical medium
between the object perceived and the sense-organs, thus
reducing all the senses to varieties of touch, the psychical facts
which result are yet totally different, and as it were apart from
the series of physical movements from which they result.
Physical nearness or remoteness does not affect the epistemo-
logical question. The table which is in immediate contact with
my organism is as completely and inexorably outside the world
of my consciousness as the most distant "star and system"
visible upon the bosom of the night. Though I press my hand
against it, it is no more present in consciousness than is the
friend on the other side of the globe whose image rises at the
moment in my mind. There are in fact two worlds, and to that
fundamental antithesis we return. To the one world belong, in
Berkeley's language though not in Berkeley's sense, all the choir
of heaven and furniture of the earth, to the other the thoughts
and feelings of the individual who is consciously aware of this
system of things in which he himself draws his breath and has

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his place. To use the well-worn words, there is the macrocosm

and there is the microcosm. Ontologically or metaphysically,
the microcosm must necessarily be viewed as a dependent part
or function of the mighty whole; but epistemologically the
microcosm rounds itself off within itself, and constitutes in
perfect strictness a little world of its own. The world of con-
sciousness, on the one hand, and the (so far hypothetical) world
of real things, on the other, are two mutually exclusive spheres.
No member of the real sphere can intrude itself into the con-
scious sphere, nor can consciousness go out into the real sphere
and as it were lay hold with hands upon a real object. The two
worlds are, to this extent and in this sense, totally disparate.
As soon as this is clearly recognized - and as Hume says, no
very profound philosophical reflection is needed to reach this
stage - it becomes evident that Realism cannot be maintained
as a philosophical hypothesis in the uncritical form which it
assumes in the mind of the plain man. And so far as the Real-
ism of Scottish philosophy is merely an uncritical reassertion of
our primitive beliefs, it is not to be wondered at that succeeding
philosophers have so frequently treated their speculations as a
negligible quantity. Immediacy must be given up before any
tenable theory of perception and any philosophical doctrine of
Realism can be established. The truth of the idealistic con-
tentions must be acknowledged. It must be granted that in
passing from the real to the ideal there is a solution of conti-
nuity, a leap, a passage from one world to another. The world
of real things is transcendent with reference to the world of
consciousness; the world of objects (as we customarily, though
ambiguously speak of it) is trans-subjective or extra-conscious.
In other words, it falls absolutely outside of, or beyond, the little
world of consciousness, and the conscious being cannot in the
nature of things overleap or transcend itself. The knowledge
which we call most immediate or direct is only relatively so; so
far as it is knowledge, it is mediate, or the result of a process.
Knowledge puts a man in relation with things through the
medium of his perceptions, but his perceptions are not the
things; he does not pass over into the things, nor do the things

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5I6 THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW. [VOL. I.
pass over into him. At no point can the real world, as it were,
force an entrance into the closed sphere of the ideal; nor does
that sphere open at any point to receive into itself the smallest
atom of the real world, qucd real, though it has room within itself
ideally for the whole universe of God.
A critical Realism must start then with the acknowledgment
of this fact. This is the truth which both Locke and Kant had
got firm hold of. It is the basis of Locke's hypothetical Dual-
ism, and, so far as our present argument ig concerned, Kant's
relativistic phenomenalism with its inferential background of
things-in-themselves is substantially a similar theory with the
sceptical suggestions of Lockianism unfortunately emphasized.
From Locke and Kant as centres the epistemological specula-
tions of modern philosophy may be conveniently viewed. Now,
unquestionably, the transcendence of the real does give scep-
ticism its opportunity. Scepticism takes up its position in the
gap thus apparently made between the ideal and the real, and
asks how we know that we know the real things, what assur-
ance have we that the world of real things is as it appears to
us to be, nay, in the last resort, what assurance have we that
there is a world of real things at all. This sceptical insinua-
tion requires to be fairly met, for, however little it avails to
shake our practical certainty, the theoretic possibility of such
a doubt lies in the very nature of the case. So long as the
knower and that which he knows are not identical, so long is it
possible that his knowledge may not be true, i.e. may not cor-
rectly render the nature of what is. Hence a succession of
attempts to dispense with the otherness or transcendency of the
object known. Thus we find Berkeley inveighing against this
"groundless and absurd notion " as "' the very root of scep-
ticism." I The arguments used by sceptics in all ages, he says,
depend on the supposition of external objects.2 The temptation
accordingly is to abolish the independent world of real exist-
ences altogether, and to manipulate our perceptions or ideas
in such a way as to make them stand in its place. This is
the plan we find adopted by Berkeley partially, and in more
thorough-going fashion by Hume. Berkeley and Hume have
1 Principles of Human Knowledge, section 86. 2 ibid., section 87.

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been modernized by Mill. It was this sceptical development of

Locke's "way of ideas" that drove some Scotch philosophers
to seek refuge in the theory or no theory of Immediate Percep-
tion. By thus putting the mind with its nose up against things
(to use a homely but graphic phrase of Von Hartmann's) they
sought to cut off the very possibility of doubt. But this is to
cut the Gordian knot in an inadmissible way. The doubt has
been raised and is plainly possible. This is fully admitted and
stated with admirable clearness by Hamilton, even while insist-
ing most strenuously upon the testimony of consciousness to a
duality of existence. "The facts of consciousness," he says,
" are to be considered in two points of view, either as evi-
dencing their own ideal or phenomenal existence, or as evidenc-
ing the objective existence of something else beyond them. A
belief in the former is not identical with a belief in the latter.
The one cannot, the other may possibly be refused. In the
case of a common witness we cannot doubt the fact of his testi-
mony as emitted, but we can always doubt the truth of that
which his testimony avers. So it is with consciousness." I
Hence to shout Immediate Perception is no reply. It is to
seek an imaginary security by shutting one's eyes to the danger,
instead of boldly facing it. A more legitimate method is to
show the inadequacy of the idealistic substitutes for a trans-
subjective real world, to show, as I said before, that it is only
in virtue of their borrowings from Realism that they can be
stated and discussed. This indirect proof, proceeding by the
exclusion of other possible theories, is declared by Hartmann2
to be the only way in which a critical Realism can be firmly
established; or, to put it otherwise, the doubt must be redargued
by showing its ultimate scope. This is to a certain extent what
Reid does, and it is in his criticisms of the ideal theory con-
ceived in this spirit, and not in his dogmatic assertion of imme-
diate perception, that we must recognize his philosophical merit
and his philosophical importance. ANDREW SETH.

UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH.
1 Lectures on Metaphysics, I. p. 271.

2 See his Kritische Grund/egung des transcenden/alen Realismus, and his Grun
problem der Erkenntniss/keorie, passim.

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The Problem of Epistemology

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