Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/127

108 upon tacitly admitting, or on occasion vigorously asserting that “whether or no” this or that observer, or this or that pupil at school, or a given doubter in faith, or a particular philosophical thinker, knows certain facts, those facts, whether physical or mental, whether God, or matter, or moonbeams, are what they are? This “whether or no” of ordinary common sense seems to be simply crystallized in a technically abstract expression in the fundamental definition of systematic realism as so far stated. On the other hand, so soon as one undertakes to formulate an exact account of the way in which Being is independent of knowledge, one discovers that nothing seems harder to carry out to its ultimate logical consequences than the definition of precisely that type of independence which is here in mind. Common sense knows, in the ordinary world of experience, very various grades and instances of relative independence amongst objects; but common sense also knows that often empirical objects which have been called mutually and even totally independent turn out to be, in other aspects, very closely linked. Yet the independence which Realism has in mind as characterizing the ultimate Being of things, must be something of a very fundamental and exact meaning and consequence. For it defines just what gives to things their whole Reality. Nevertheless realistic systems usually find it very much easier to assert or tacitly to assume the general definition of independent being just stated, than to give any precise account of the logical consequences to which the definition leads. As soon, however, as these consequences themselves are directly faced, they often become fairly