“The world,” _Schopenhauer_ is convinced, “is the projection of my idea.... No truth is more certain, more independent of all others, less in need of proof, than this, that all there is to be known, hence the whole world, is an object only in relation to a subject, a vision of the beholder; in a word, the projection of my own idea. Hence the subject is the bearer of the world” (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, I, §§ 1-2). “It is evidently true that knowledge cannot go beyond our consciousness, and hence the existence of things outside of our sphere of consciousness must, to say the least, remain problematical” (Der Gegenstand der Erkenntniss, 1892, p. 2). In like manner _O. Liebmann_ says: “We can never go beyond our individual sphere of ideas (projection of our ideas), even though we apprehend what is independent of us, still the absolute reality of it is known to us only as our own idea” (Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit, 1900, p. 28). Therefore “the contrast between ‘I’ and the world,” says _E. Mach_, “between feeling or apprehension and the reality, falls away” (Die Analysis der Empfindungen, 2d ed., 1900, p. 9). And a disciple of _Mach_ says: “It is important to hold fast to the idea that a self-existent, divine Truth, independent of the subject, objectively binding, enthroned, so to say, above men and gods, is meaningless.... Such a Truth is nonsense” (_H. Kleinpeter_, Kantstudien, VIII, 1903, p. 314). None of these representatives of worldly wisdom are able to fulfil the first duty of the wise man: “Live according to what you teach.” Even the sceptic _Hume_ has to admit that in the common affairs of life he feels himself compelled of necessity to talk and act like other people. Subjectivism is really nothing but _scepticism_, for it eliminates the knowableness of objective truth. But it is a masked—if you will, a reformed—scepticism. Cognition is given another purpose; its task is not at all, so it is said, to reproduce or assimilate a world distinct from itself, but to create its own contents. The very nature of cognition is reversed. The Autonomy of Reason. It was _Kant_, the herald of a new era in philosophy, who gave to this gradually maturing subjectivism its scientific form and basis. At the same time he gave prominence to that element of subjectivism which seems to give justification to freedom of thought, to wit, autonomism, the creative power of the intellect which makes its own laws. Independence of reason and free thought have become catchwords since _Kant’s_ time. They are a precious ingredient of the autonomy of modern man.