Page:Philosophical Review Volume 1.djvu/521

Rh 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 subjective 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 necessarily involves an objective reference. If it is not an illusion altogether, it is a knowledge of realities which are trans-subjective or extra-conscious; i.e. which exist beyond and independently of the consciousness of the individual knowing them. But all through the modern period philosophers have been turning 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 knowledge 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 philosophical 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.