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nature, in abundance, that which can only be ideally appre- 
hended. Of this description, above all, is apparently space 
itself, which is a specimen, on the largest scale and in a most 
significant way, of a realized abstraction. In the same cate- 
gory we are disposed also to class all concrete relations, as of 
order in succession and co-existence, symmetry, and the like. 
These, we assume, can not be said to be introduced into 
nature by the intelligence of the observer, for they would 
exist — such is our necessary conviction — even though no 
rational being, such as man, were in existence to observe 
them. What was a priori anticipated seems thus to be a 
posteriori confirmed, in so far at least as it regards what may 
be termed the passive existence of the ideal in the real. Our 
present, immediate concern is to see whether the ideal — 
thought — is also actively present in the real, as a principle 
underlying and controlling it — more especially in the form of 
final cause. 
The question is a metaphysical one, in so far as it relates to 
our judgment of the real constitutive nature of the so-called 
“ real ” objects in the world, or of the world in general ; and it 
is a logical one, or a question belonging to the theory of cog- 
nition, in so far as it is connected -with the complex of propo- 
sitions which we are compelled to hold as true regarding the 
conditions and forms of human knowledge. The answer to 
the metaphysical question will depend upon the answer to the 
logical one, to which latter, therefore, we may at once address 
ourselves, by way of introduction to the former. 
Human knowledge is, conceivably, either of the real or of the 
phenomenal. It is also direct or indirect. These two divi- 
sions are not coincident, and each covers an important dis- 
tinction. 
As to the first : the distinction between real and pheno- 
menal needs to be carefully stated, by definition of the terms 
employed, since it is by no means an obviously fundamental 
one. All that is, appears; strictly speaking, we know only 
how the object known appears to us, and in this sense it may 
be said that all our knowledge is of the phenomenal. (And 
this suggests the still more profound sense in which it may bo 
said that all our knowledge rests in the last analysis on faith. 
Credo, ut intelligam.) But the (conscious or unconscious) 
employment of the appropriate logical processes leads us 
nevertheless to distinguish between the real and the pheno- 
menal, and to recognize in the distinction the expression of a 
fundamental verity. By knowledge of the real 1 mean know- 
ledge of the essential, constitutive nature of the object of 
knowledge, of the true, noumenal cause, or metaphysical 
