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142 be Solipsism at the best; indeed, it is Hume, not Berkeley, that is in this sense an idealist of the purest water, and Hume is not so much as a Solipsist. It might easily be shown that epistemological Idealism inevitably conducts us in consistency to scepticism of the Humian or an essentially similar type. Where a so-called Idealism fails to reach this goal, it is in virtue of the realistic elements which it inconsistently adopts into its system. Such a line of argument would form a convincing proof from history of the distinction on which I am insisting between epistemology and metaphysics. For scepticism is, of course, so far from being allied to metaphysical Idealism that it would rather require to be bracketed with materialism. Though, of course, not dogmatic like the latter, it ranks with it as a philosophy of despair. If epistemological Idealism is thus twin brother of Scepticism, it is plain, on the other hand, from what I have said, that a thinker may be, epistemologically, a strenuous Realist, and at the same time an Idealist in the broad metaphysical sense of the term. He is such an Idealist if he recognizes that all the real individuals whose trans-subjective existence he maintains are "moments in the being" of an intelligently directed Life. Indeed, as has been hinted, it is only in virtue of epistemological Realism that we can avoid Scepticism and so much as begin our journey towards metaphysical Idealism.

It follows, therefore, that nothing can be more essential to clear thinking than to keep these two sets of questions apart; yet I am afraid that they are constantly interchanged. In particular it seems to me that this is the case with many of the English thinkers, who profess a general allegiance to Kant or Hegel. The English neo-Hegelians convey the impression that in order to reach a metaphysical, or, as they call it, a spiritual, Idealism, it is at least necessary to deny the reality of " things-in-themselves." Metaphysically they mean by this, as I perfectly well understand, that the external world is not to be taken as an independent fact, existing, so to speak, on its own account, and having only accidental relations with the rest of the universe. The universe is once for all a whole, and the external world, as the Hegelians put it, is essentially related to