PHENOMENON AND NOUMENON 



coextensive but identical with the possibilities 

 of things; and thus destroy the doctrine of re- 

 lativity with which we started. The post-Kan- 

 tian idealism may therefore be described as a 

 linear series of corollaries, the last of which 

 destroys the axiom upon which the first of the 

 series rests. 



A similar suicide must be the fate of any 

 doctrine of idealism. We often hear it said that 

 Berkeley's clear scientific reasoning has never 

 been, and can never be, refuted. This is to a 

 certain extent true. What never has been, and 

 never can be refuted, is the clear scientific rea- 

 soning by which Berkeley proves that we cannot 

 know the objective reality. What can be, and 

 has already been refuted, is the unphilosophic 

 inference that there is no objective reality. Reid, 

 with his so-called " Common-Sense Philoso- 

 phy," failed because he attacked the scientific 

 doctrine instead of the unphilosophic inference. 

 Out of sheer fright at what he considered the 

 conspicuous absurdity of Berkeley's position, 

 Reid maintained that we do know objects per 

 se ; that in every act of perception the objec- 

 tive reality is immediately given in conscious- 

 ness. Reid laid great stress upon Locke's dis- 

 tinction, useful in some respects, between the 

 primary and secondary qualities of matter, and 

 held that we know the first in themselves, al- 

 though we know the second only in their effects 



113 



