58 SCEPTICISM. 



impossibility of knowledge, Scepticism may adopt 

 several modes of procedure, of which only those can 

 be at once disposed of which involve a denial of the 

 laws of thought. The most common form, perhaps, 

 is the ancient scepticism based on the " relativity of 

 knowledge," i.e., on the distinction of phenomena 

 and the real nature of things, which denies that we 

 can know aught, because we cannot know things "as 

 they really are." This scepticism is merely a re- 

 appearance of Agnosticism, extended and enlarged, 

 if not improved, and directed not merely against 

 metaphysics, but against the whole of knowledge. 

 And as such it has been .already refuted in the last 

 chapter (§ 22). Here it need merely be character- 

 ized as a gratuitous prejudice, since it has no positive 

 ground for assuming these unknowable things-in- 

 themselves. If no argument can directly refute it, 

 neither can any argument establish it. But the onus 

 probandi surely lies on those who attack, and not on 

 those who assert the existence of knowledge. And, 

 as has been shown, if such a world of things- in- 

 themselves existed, we could never know of its 

 existence (chap. ii. \ 6). It is a gross abuse, there- 

 fore, to invent a transcendent world of unknowable 

 things-in-themselves, merely in order to cast a slur 

 on knowledge, to convict it of incapacity, merely 

 because it cannot transcend itself. 



§ 3. Scepticism is on firmer ground when it 

 becomes immanent instead of transcendent, and 

 asserts not that there may be something behind 

 appearances, but that appearances are inherently 

 conflicting, and that knowledge is impossible, be- 

 cause this conflict within constiousness and between 

 its data can never be resolved. If the constituent 

 elements of consciousness are essentially disparate 



