It is important also to note that the real does not forfeit its reality to our apprehension when and because it takes up its abode in us: goodness does not cease to be good because we do it, nor truth cease to be truth because we know it. It does not follow that because the ideal cannot be fully realised, it cannot be realised at all. On the contrary, the conviction that it cannot be completely attained is itself the guarantee that it can be attained partially. Yet it has been assumed that if a thing is apprehended by us it cannot be real, that real knowledge begins just where our knowledge ends, that the further we push our knowledge forward the further real knowledge recedes from our view. On this assumption is built the theory of the Unknowable, the theory that whatever is known to man is a state of man's consciousness; that states of consciousness are subjective, are merely the appearances of things, not the things themselves; that the real things, the things themselves, are unknowable; their appearances alone can be known to man; therefore the real is for ever unknowable. "The reality existing behind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown."[4] Consequently, inferences about the Real are valueless and futile. By way of compensation, however, our knowledge of the unreal is, on this theory, varied and extensive: it includes, for instance, the theory of evolution and the whole of science. But the assumption which leads to this strange conclusion is opposed to the facts. The fact, as we have contended, is that the real in consciousness is continuous with the real beyond consciousness, and is apprehended, at the moment of apprehension, as being thus continuous, and is not reached by any process of inference. The real is not a matter of inference, but of apprehension. Its existence cannot be deduced from anything else; it is that from which all conclusions must be deduced. I cannot prove that a thing is real any more than I can prove that I have toothache. There is no need. FOOTNOTES: [4] HERBERT SPENCER, _First Principles_, ch. iv. § 22, p. 69. V. THE REAL