pass over into him. At no point can the real world, as it were, force an entrance into the closed sphere of the ideal; nor does that sphere open at any point to receive into itself the smallest atom of the real world, quâ real, though it has room within itself ideally for the whole universe of God.
A critical Realism must start then with the acknowledgment of this fact. This is the truth which both Locke and Kant had got firm hold of. It is the basis of Locke's hypothetical Dualism, and, so far as our present argument is concerned, Kant's relativistic phenomenalism with its inferential background of things-in-themselves is substantially a similar theory with the sceptical suggestions of Lockianism unfortunately emphasized. From Locke and Kant as centres the epistemological speculations of modern philosophy may be conveniently viewed. Now, unquestionably, the transcendence of the real does give scepticism its opportunity. Scepticism takes up its position in the gap thus apparently made between the ideal and the real, and asks how we know that we know the real things, what assurance have we that the world of real things is as it appears to us to be, nay, in the last resort, what assurance have we that there is a world of real things at all. This sceptical insinuation requires to be fairly met, for, however little it avails to shake our practical certainty, the theoretic possibility of such a doubt lies in the very nature of the case. So long as the knower and that which he knows are not identical, so long is it possible that his knowledge may not be true, i.e. may not correctly render the nature of what is. Hence a succession of attempts to dispense with the otherness or transcendency of the object known. Thus we find Berkeley inveighing against this "groundless and absurd notion" as "the very root of scepticism."[1] The arguments used by sceptics in all ages, he says, depend on the supposition of external objects.[2] The temptation accordingly is to abolish the independent world of real existences altogether, and to manipulate our perceptions or ideas in such a way as to make them stand in its place. This is the plan we find adopted by Berkeley partially, and in more thorough-going fashion by Hume. Berkeley and Hume have
