SCIENCE 389 



2. We can know nothing but appearances, i.e., 

 phenomena. 



3. We cannot emerge from the sphere of objectivity 

 and attain any knowledge of things objective. 



Now of course anything which is "known to us" 

 cannot at the same time be " unknown to us" and so 

 far our knowledge may be said to affect the thing we 

 know. But this is trivial. Our " knowing " or " not 

 knowing'"' any object, is apart from some act which 

 may be the result of such knowledge a mere accident 

 of that object's existence, which is not otherwise affected 

 thereby. 



But indeed the system of the "relativity of know- 

 ledge" really refutes itself. For every system of 

 knowledge must start with the assumption, implied or 

 expressed, that something is true, or known so to be. 

 By the teachers of the doctrine of the "relativity of 

 knowledge," it is taught that the doctrine of the rela- 

 tivity of knowledge is thus true. But if we cannot 

 know that anything corresponds with external reality, if 

 nothing we can assert has more than a relative and 

 phenomenal value, then this character must also apper- 

 tain to the doctrine of the " relativity of knowledge " 

 itself. Either, then, this system of philosophy is itself _ 

 merely relative and phenomenal, and so cannot be known 

 to be true, or else it is absolutely true, and can be known 

 so to be. But it must be merely relative and pheno- 

 menal, if everything known by man is such. Its value 

 then can be only relative and phenomenal, therefore it 

 cannot be known to correspond with external reality, 

 and cannot be asserted to be true. If anybody asserts 

 that we can know the system of the relativity of know- 

 ledge to be true, he thereby asserts that it is false to say 

 that all our knowledge is only relative. In asserting 



