expresses nature.[408:9]

[Sidenote: Summary, and Transition to Epistemology.]

Sect. 204. Such, then, is the contemporary eclecticism as respects the
central problem of metaphysics. There are _naturalistic_ and
_individualistic_ tendencies in _absolutism_; _rationalistic_ and
_ethical_ tendencies in _naturalism_; and finally the independent and
spontaneous movements of _personal idealism_ and _pragmatism_.

Since the rise of the Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy, metaphysics
and epistemology have maintained relations so intimate that the present
state of the former cannot be characterized without some reference to
the present state of the latter. Indeed, the very issues upon which
metaphysicians divide are most commonly those provoked by the problem
of knowledge. The counter-tendencies of naturalism and absolutism are
always connected, and often coincide with, the epistemological
opposition between empiricism, which proclaims perception, and
rationalism, which proclaims reason, to be the proper organ of
knowledge. The other great epistemological controversy does not bear so
direct and simple a relation to the central metaphysical issues, and
must be examined on its own account.

[Sidenote: The Antagonistic Doctrines of Realism and Idealism. Realistic
Tendency in Empirical Idealism.]

Sect. 205. The point of controversy is the dependence or independence of
the object of knowledge on the state of knowledge; idealism maintaining
that reality _is_ the knower or his content of mind, realism, that being
known is a circumstance which appertains to some reality, without being
the indispensable condition of reality as such. Now the sophisticated
thought of the present age exhibits a tendency on the part of these
opposite doctrines to approach and converge. It has been already
remarked that the empirical idealism of the Berkeleyan type could not
avoid transcending itself. Hume, who omitted Berkeley's active spirits,
no longer had any subjective seat or locus for the perceptions to which
Berkeley had reduced the outer world. And perceptions which are not the
states of any subject, retain only their intrinsic character and become
a series of elements. When there is nothing beyond, which appears, and
nothing within to which it appears, there ceases to be any sense in
using such terms as appearance, phenomenon, or impression. The term
sensation is at present employed in the same ill-considered manner. But
empirical idealism h