of the doctrine in question. By such a line of argument Realism is left in possession of the field, and a critical or carefully guarded Realism is established as the only satisfactory, indeed the only sane, theory of knowledge.
The considerations on which a sceptical idealism, or an idealistic scepticism, founds are sufficiently obvious, and by no means profound. As Hume puts it, the " universal and primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy."[1] Possibly, therefore (to adapt Bacon's maxim), if a little philosophy inclines men's minds to idealism, depth in philosophy may bring them back to Realism. "The slightest philosophy teaches us," Hume proceeds, "that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception, and that the senses are only the inlets through which these images are conveyed, without being able to produce any immediate intercourse between the mind and the object." In other words, and to put it more modernly, the special arguments by which idealism is enforced are drawn from the physiology of the sense-organs. The general position on which it rests is that, physiologically, knowledge has for its immediate conditions certain processes in every organism, and, psychologically, knowledge consists of certain subjective experiences in me (whatever that may precisely mean, some denying the me and asserting simply the subjective experiences as such). As Hume says, we never get "any immediate intercourse between the mind and the object." Consciousness, as such, is shut up to its own contents or constituents. What transcends consciousness, i.e. any existence which is other than consciousness cannot be in consciousness; albeit the ordinary naïve idea seems to be that consciousness, as it were, goes out of itself, and actually lays hold of things, or throws its net over them. In literal fact, however, this is not so. The psychical experiences which constitute knowledge are one thing, and, according to the doctrine of a Realism that understands itself, the thing known is another. Their distinction is undeniable, though an ill-advised Realism and an all-advised Idealism alike try to
- ↑ Enquiry, section 12.
