grasps or falsely reports, finds mysterious or regards as clear and certain, — as really independent realities as if they were “things in themselves.” Only, in the case of these types of objects, however hard the individual object may be to know with assurance, the type of object itself seems in one respect knowable enough. For it is no “thing in itself.” It is explicitly an object in so far as it either is or may be the content or the existence of some experience. The problem therefore arises: “Can other types of objects than these be defined or accepted?” The ordinary realist says. Yes. For the idealist, all depends upon confining his real objects to the objects of the foregoing types, in so far as, after criticism, these types can all be reduced to his own sort of rational unity, and the relative independence of their objects can be explained accordingly.
But let the realist now continue his parable. Other sorts of “independent” objects there are and must be, he declares. Why? First, to follow one type of Realism, because we “immediately know” that there are such transcendent objects independent of all consciousness. But, so one replies, how can consciousness immediately know what is by hypothesis immediately determined as not present to consciousness, namely, precisely the independent aspect of the object, or the fact that if the consciousness were not, the object would still be as it is? “I see immediately in front of me that there is something behind my back.” “I feel immediately that if I did not feel, there would still be something there to feel.” No; immediate knowledge is of what is felt, not of what is not felt.
