Page:The Distinction between Mind and Its Objects.djvu/63

 the suggestion as far as he is concerned. For it consists in pointing out that we are convinced of the existence of other centres of experience on the same grounds and with the same right as of our own.

But you believe, it may be rejoined (see citation above from p. 60), that there is a science prior to all others, even to Logic, which has for its task to show the possibility of knowing. T. H. Green seems to have anticipated this suggestion, and it will be worth while to consider it under his guidance. And then, after this most imperfect study of the point, space will compel me to break off.

Green certainly regarded it as coming within his task to answer the question "how knowledge is possible." This, he pointed out, "is not to be confused with a question on which metaphysicians are sometimes supposed to waste their time. "Is knowledge possible?" "Metaphysics is no such superfluous labour." It is, he continues, a theory of the system of things which (system) renders it possible for things to be accounted for on the supposition of their relation to each other. He contrasts this enquiry in the main with psychology and plainly also with any theory of knowledge which is possible without a theory of the thing known. It is the same distinction which Mr. Bradley implies in his reference, which I always took to be contemptuous, to "