THE PROBLEM OF EPISTEMOLOGY.[1]
THE problem of epistemology arises from the very nature of knowledge. Knowledge implies a reference to that which is known, and which is therefore to be distinguished from the knowledge itself considered subjectively as an act or process of the being who knows. What is known, the object of knowledge, may be styled most generally Reality. Knowledge bears in its heart, in its very notion, this reference to a reality distinct from itself. No idealist will deny, at all events, that knowledge seems to us to carry this reference with it. Hume himself speaks of it as "the universal and primary opinion of all men," it is "a natural instinct or presupposition,"[2] 2 so that if its validity is not accepted, the illusion will at least require explanation. Knowledge as knowledge points beyond itself to a reality whose representation or symbol it is. This holds true, as a careful analysis would show, even in what is called self-knowledge, the reflective knowledge of one's own states, in which the act of knowledge and the object known might seem to fall together. But, without insisting at the outset on this refinement, let us take the general or typical case, in which the knowledge is knowledge of beings other than ourselves, a knowledge of the facts of the world around us. Here the very function of knowledge, as ordinarily understood, is to disclose to one being the nature of beings and things with which he is in relation, but which are different; i.e. numerically and existentially distinct from himself. One being or individual cannot go out of himself, so far as his being or existence is concerned. He is and remains himself so long as he exists at all. But though every individual, qua existent, remains thus anchored upon himself — rooted to his own centre, to the locus, as it were, assigned him
