THE RELATIVITY OF KNOWLEDGE 



conclusion which requires considerable effort to 

 understand in all its implications ; and for this 

 reason, as well as on account of its supreme 

 importance, it will be desirable briefly to illus- 

 trate it from yet another point of view. We 

 shall be assisted in comprehending the general 

 truth by a set of considerations which show 

 that, although our internal feelings or states of 

 consciousness are constantly produced by exter- 

 nal agents, yet we have no warrant whatever 

 for assuming that the external agent in any way 

 resembles the internal feeling. For instance, 

 although the feelings of redness and resistance 

 are caused by agencies without us, we have no 

 warrant for assuming that the external cause of 

 redness resembles the feeling of redness, or that 

 the external cause of resistance resembles the 

 feeling of resistance. In other words, we know 

 redness and resistance only as phenomena, only 

 as modifications of consciousness ; and although 

 we are compelled to refer these phenomena to 

 causes which exist externally and which would 

 still exist if there were no minds to be affected 

 by them, we are nevertheless unable to assert 

 that these external causes — the real things cor- 

 responding to the phenomena of redness and 



Philosophy was written, includes the '* Theory of Know- 

 ledge " in *' Psychology." Since the more recent develop- 

 ments of Empirical Psychology, this usage is no longer so 

 common.] 



23 



