s
anything real independently of the mind, and if so, what. In doing this
it inquires not only what common sense means by its object-world clothed
in its variegated garment of secondary qualities, its beauty, and so on,
but also what physical science means by its cosmic mechanism of sensible
and extra-sensible matter in motion: whether there is any kind of
objective reality belonging to the latter which does not also belong to
the former; and how the two worlds are related one to another. That is
to say, he asks whether the bodies in space assumed to exist by the
physicist as the antecedent conditions of particular sensations and
percepts are independent of mind and perception generally.[152]

In doing all this, philosophy is theoretically free to upset as much of
popular belief of the persistent kind as it likes. Nor can science find
fault with it so long as it keeps to its own sphere, and does not
directly contradict any truth which science, by the methods proper to
it, is able to establish. Thus, for example, if philosophy finds that
there is nothing real independently of mind, science will be satisfied
so long as it finds a meaning for its assumed entities, such as space,
external things, and physical causes.[153]

The student of philosophy need not be told that these imposing-looking
problems respecting cognition, making, up what the Germans call the
"Theory of Cognition," and the cognate problem respecting the nature of
reality, are still a long way from being settled. To-day, as in the days
of Plato and Aristotle, are argued, in slightly altered forms, the vexed
questions, What is true cognition? Is it a mere efflux from sensation,
a passive conformity of representation to sensation (sensualism or
empiricism)? or is it, on the other hand, a construction of active
thought, involving certain necessary forms of intelligence (rationalism
or intuitivism)?

Again, how are we to shape to ourselves real objective existence? Is it
something wholly independent of the mind (realism)? and if so, is this
known to be what we--meaning here common people and men of science
alike--represent it as being (natural realism), or something different
(transfigured realism)? Or is it, on the contrary, something involving
mind (idealism)? and if so, is it a strictly phenomenal distinction
within our conscious experience (empirical idealism, phenomenalism), or
one of the two poles of subject and object constituted by every act of
though