It is not difficult to see that idealism and positivism differ much 

 in their aims. There is an even greater difference, however, be- 

 tween idealism and the New Realism, as it has been called. But 

 here the contrast moves upon a different plane. It is based mainly 

 upon the question of knowledge, and the crux of the situation lies 

 in the distinction between the different conceptions held by each as 

 to the relation of mind to its object. It is an old, old problem, one 

 that has vexed mankind for centuries, and one which, if it is to be 

 solved, must be approached by a path different from that which has 

 generally been followed. It has been seen how idealism, in pretty 

 close line after all with Berkeley, still claims that esse est percipi. 

 The percipi of more recent idealists, however, must be extended to 

 include all the activities of reason or spirit. Objects exist because 

 there is mind. As T. H. Green, one of the recent Hegelian idealists 

 would say, It is the spiritual principle in knowledge and the 

 spiritual principle in nature by which knowledge and nature are 

 made possible. 1 



Now realism, whether English or American, is opposed to any 

 such theory. Professor S. Alexander of Manchester University, in 

 advancing his anti-idealistic doctrine says, "What is certain is that 

 he who has any experience experiences two things. One is the ob- 

 ject he is concerned with, and that is not his mind; the other is his 

 act of experiencing, which ... he comes to know as an act of that 



continuous tissue of mental events which is called his mind 



When I am judging, I am together with some real, i.e., non-mental 

 connection of things, some fact of the world. Strip your mind of 

 the prepossession that what you apprehend must be something 

 dependent on your mind, . . . and you see that to have an experience 

 is the compresence of the two things named". 2 "The table and I 

 are together in precisely the same sense as the table and chair are 

 together. . . Instead of the chair there happens to be I, who am a 

 mass of experiencings. My perception of the table is thus the fact 

 that there is a thing which can perceive and a thing which so pro- 

 vokes it as to perceive in a manner appropriate for perceiving a 

 table." 3 



1 T. H. Green: Prol. to Ethics. Cf. Bk. I, Ch. I. 



2 Mind, N. S. 21 (1912), P. 2. 



3 Ibid. P. 3. 



128 



