Of these, I and III seem to be epistemological, while II is psychological, and IV plainly metaphysical. Mr. Ritchie does not seem to distinguish II from III, attributes his answer to III without more ado to IV, and refers to I only at the end, by way of meeting a logical objection to his view of IV. This confusion is shown also in his method of proof. His real purpose is to establish certain metaphysical views as to the nature of ultimate reality, but he treats his subject for the most part, as if it were an epistemological inquiry into the criteria of reality, and when, after establishing his metaphysical view of reality to his satisfaction, he is confronted (p. 281) by the logical impossibility of identifying thought with its object, he suddenly throws us back upon the primary subjectivity of all experience. And all this without a hint of a μεταβάσις εἰς ἆλλο γένος. The connection is no doubt clear enough to Mr. Ritchie's mind, if, as must be supposed, he follows T. H. Green in his fearful and wonderful leap from the fact that all phenomena appear to some individual self to the conclusion that they are, therefore, appearances to a universal self; but he might at least have warned us that his opponents have repeatedly declared their inability to compass such saltatory exercises, and regard the two halves of the argument as belonging respectively to epistemology and to metaphysics, and the transition from the one to the other as a paralogism.
If, however, we refuse to take this Greenian salto mortale, it is evident that the first question must be settled before any of the rest can arise at all. For, as Professor Seth has so well pointed out, realism and idealism mean very different things according as they are taken in an epistemological or a metaphysical sense, and "it is possible to be epistemologically a strenuous realist and an idealist in the metaphysical sense of the term" (Philosophical Review, p. 142). Nay, "it is only in virtue of epistemological realism that we can avoid scepticism, and so much as begin our journey towards metaphysical idealism." If, then, epistemological idealism is solipsism and "twin brother to scepticism," it must be surmounted before the nature of reality can be discussed. If it is not surmounted—cadit quaestio—it becomes futile to discuss whether the real is one or many, whether its criterion is consistency or what, if there is no objectivity at all. Mr. Ritchie has, of course, a perfect right to call a halt here, and to refuse to discuss anything further until his opponents have successfully emerged from the clutches of subjective realism. But once they have been permitted to escape, once he has conceded the objectivity of the phenomena which form the content of consciousness, he is not entitled to revert to the prior question. In other words, the discussion of the question—What is reality?—presupposes a settlement of the question—Is there reality?—in the affirmative. It is only when reality has been
