PHENOMENON AND NOUMENON 



regard as the inevitable implication of the ob- 

 served facts, he is silent. And his silence, as 

 well as his assertion, is strictly in harmony with 

 the spirit of Positivism. 



The distinction, then, between Idealism and 

 Positivism may betaken to be this. The former 

 asserts that the unknowable objective reality is 

 a mere figment of the imagination, while the 

 latter refrains from making any assertion with 

 reference to it. The former, therefore, tacitly 

 violates the doctrine of relativity by assuming 

 that the possibilities of our thinking are to be 

 taken as the measure of the possibilities of ex- 

 istence — the latter perceives that such an asr 

 sumption is illegitimate, but seeks to escape the 

 difficulty by ignoring the question at issue. In 

 other words, while unwilling to contravene the 

 doctrine of relativity upon which it professes to 

 found itself, it is yet content to state but half 

 the doctrine. 



Bearing this in mind, we may return to the 

 argument, which will now be understood as di- 

 rected against the position which Idealism and 

 Positivism hold in common. And we may ob- 

 serve, first, that the very sentence just quoted 

 from Mr. Mill affords a most excellent illustra- 

 tion of the impossibility of stating either the 

 position of Idealism or that of Positivism with- 

 out implying the existence of that objective 

 reality which the former would impugn and 

 121 



