Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/149

No. 2.] a subjective fact, it is said by the Cartesians to have "esse formale seu proprium"; so far as it is taken in its representative capacity, as standing for some object thought, it is said to have an objective or vicarious being — esse objectivum sive vicarium. There is a tendency in the Cartesian school to appropriate the term "idea" in the first or psychological sense, and to use "perception" in the epistemological reference. Perception is certainly a term which should be the exclusive property of the epistemologist; and it is satisfactory, therefore, to note that the most recent psychologists seem inclined to substitute for it the term "presentation." But the term "idea" also, as we have seen, belongs more appropriately to epistemology, and so pre-eminently of course do such terms as "knowledge" and "cognition." As already indicated, the best general psychological equivalent is states of consciousness, mental states, psychical functions.

In accordance with what has been said, Epistemology may be intelligibly described as dealing with the relation of knowledge to reality. Of course, if we take reality in the widest sense, our cognitive states are also part of reality; they also are. The wildest fancy that flits through the mind exists in its own way, fills out its own moment of time, and takes its individual place in the fact-continuum which constitutes the universe. But, as we have seen, this aspect of mental facts may be conveniently neglected, and hence reality in the above phrase comes to be used in a narrower sense. It means not necessarily physical or material realities, but realities which have a different fashion of existence from the fleeting and evanescent mode of psychical states — beings or things which are in some sense permanent and independent, which at all events have a reality different in kind from that of mental states. This reference of ideas to a world of reality beyond themselves is what is meant when knowledge is contrasted with reality, and when question is made of the relation of the one to the other.

This way of putting the epistemological problem may be said to beg the question at issue between Idealism and Realism — inasmuch as the terminology is incompatible with those