PROP. XXI.————
The difficulty is, not to know it, but to know that we know it.8. No effort, then, is required to compass the known absolute; but some effort is required to know that we are compassing it. This is a case in which the student of philosophy is not called upon to do something, but simply to know that he is already doing it. In our ordinary moods, we always mistake the relative for the absolute, and suppose, for example, that the trees which we are looking at are known absolutely, or out of relation to ourselves. Then, again, when misled by psychology, we are extremely apt to mistake the absolute for the relative, and to suppose that the trees and ourselves together are known merely relatively. After the numerous explanations, however, which have been given, it is conceived that the reader should now have no difficulty in understanding that what he apprehends is always the synthesis of himself and things (object-plus-subject), and that this is the absolute in his cognition, because he knows it without necessarily knowing anything else at the same time.
Refutation of the relationist doctrine.9. The causes which have misled the upholders of a merely relative cognition are not difficult to assign. They saw that material, or other, objects could be known only in relation to the ego; and also that the ego could be known only in relation to some thing or thought; and hence they concluded that our knowledge both of ourselves and