Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/215

196 such total independence. The Real, he will now admit, is not logically or in its true essence wholly indifferent to whether anybody knows it or not. It is only practically, or relatively, independent. If you still speak of it then as the relatively independent member of the relation, you must indeed, now and henceforth, say that the Real is essentially such that, under conditions, it would become knowable and known. This, the essential preparedness of Reality for knowledge, does, therefore, result from the foregoing criticism of Realism. In the light, then, of this consequence, we must proceed. This essential relation of Reality to knowledge already constitutes a part or an aspect of any real Being, even before it becomes known. Even the meteors, wandering there in interplanetary space, unseen, are already such that, if they were to become incandescent by entering our atmosphere, they would become visible to an eye that chanced to look their way. And knowledge comes to pass when things that possess reality apart from knowledge come to influence, as a consequence of the general laws governing interaction, the conscious states of knowing Beings. So at least a Realism, revised in the light of the foregoing, will next be led to maintain.

Such Realism may proceed as follows: “Perception, as a kind of knowledge, results when a real object, in accordance of course with its previous nature, causes impressions in a percipient. But of course no object is wholly indifferent to the effects that it causes. The incandescent meteor changes its physical and chemical properties, even at the moment when it becomes