Page:The World and the Individual, First Series (1899).djvu/84

Rh of the foregoing popular conceptions, according to which whatever is real thereby renders ideas about itself either true or false. In brief, then, the present ontological definition is a Synthesis of the three popular conceptions, with stress laid upon the second, that is, upon the idea that the real, as such, is behind or beyond the merely immediate facts of our experience.

As to its relation to that warfare of thought and immediacy in our passing finite moments of consciousness, to that disquieting conflict of which I before spoke, — our present form of the ontological predicate defines the Other precisely as a realm wholly other than the inner states whereby we know it. What is, is thus independent of our inner conflict, just because this realm of true Being is wholly sundered from the defects of our imperfect apprehension. The Real is that which you would know if you should wholly escape from the limits imposed upon you by the merely inner life of your consciousness. As monks forsake the world to win an abstract peace, so Realism bids you forsake what depends upon your mere finite inner apprehension, if you want to get at the independent truth. As to the way of escape, as to how to forsake the inner conflict, and to find the independent reality, — that, indeed, is another matter. We are here concerned only with the realistic definition of the Real, not with the realistic Theory of Knowledge. A realist may or may not believe that he can thus escape. What interests us here is that he believes that he ought to escape if he is ever to know the final truth.

But I must still explain a little the sort of indepen-