e the other is agnostic, providing only
for the knowledge of a world of appearance, an improper knowledge that
is in fact not knowledge at all.

But realism is not necessarily dualistic, since it requires only that
being shall not be dependent upon being known. Furthermore, since
empiricism is congenial to naturalism, it is an easy step to say that
nature is directly known in perception. This first takes the form of
positivism, or the theory that only such nature as can be directly known
can be really known. But this agnostic provision for an unknown world
beyond, inevitably falls away and leaves _reality as that which is
directly known, but not conditioned by knowledge_. Again the term
_experience_ is the most useful, and provides a common ground for
_idealistic realism_ with _realistic idealism_. A new epistemological
movement makes this conception of experience its starting-point. What is
known as the _immanence philosophy_ defines reality as experience, and
means by experience the subject matter of all knowledge--not defined as
such, but regarded as capable of being such. Experience is conceived to
be _both in and out_ of selves, cognition being but one of the special
systems into which experience may enter.[413:12]

[Sidenote: The Interpretation of Tradition as the Basis for a New
Construction.]

Sect. 208. Does this eclecticism of the age open any philosophical
prospect? Is it more than a general compromise--a confession of failure
on the part of each and every radical and clear-cut doctrine of
metaphysics and epistemology? There is no final answer to such a
question short of an independent construction, and such procedure would
exceed the scope of the present discussion. But there is an evident
interpretation of tradition that suggests a possible basis for such
construction.

[Sidenote: The Truth of the Physical System, but Failure of Attempt to
Reduce All Experience to it.]

Sect. 209. Suppose it to be granted that the categories of nature are
quite self-sufficient. This would mean that there might conceivably be a
strictly physical order, governed only by mechanical principles, and by
the more general logical and mathematical principles. The body of
physical science so extended as to include such general conceptions as
identity, difference, number, quality, space, and time, is the account
of such an order. This order need have no value, and need not be known.
But reality as a whole is evidently not such a