"The admixture of the relative element not only does not take away the absolute character of the remainder, but does not even (if our author is right) prevent us from recognising it. The confusion, according to him, is not inextricable. It is for us to 'analyse and distinguish what elements' in an 'act of knowledge' are contributed by the object, and what by our organs, or by the mind. We may neglect to do this, and as far as the mind's share is concerned, we can only do it by the help of philosophy; but it is a task to which, in his opinion, philosophy is equal. By thus stripping off such of the elements in our apparent cognitions of things as are but cognitions of something in us, and consequently relative, we may succeed in uncovering the pure nucleus, the direct intuitions of things in themselves; as we correct the observed positions of the heavenly bodies by allowing for the error due to the refracting influence of the atmospheric medium, an influence which does not alter the facts, but only our perception of them." Surely Mr. Mill here demands much more of philosophy than Sir W. Hamilton deems it capable of accomplishing. Why may not Hamilton, like Kant, distinguish between the permanent and necessary, and the variable and contingent--in other words, between the subjective and the objective elements of consciousness, without therefore obtaining a "direct intuition of things in themselves?" Why may he not distinguish between space and time as the forms of our sensitive cognitions, and the things perceived in space and time, which constitute the matter of the same cognitions, without thereby having an intuition, on the one hand, of pure space and time with nothing in them, or on the other, of things in themselves out of space and time? If certain elements are always present in perception, while certain others change with every act, I may surely infer that the one is due to the permanent subject, the other to the variable object, without thereby knowing what each would be if it could be discerned apart from the other. "A direct intuition of things in themselves," according to Kant and Hamilton, is an intuition of things out of space and time. Does Mr. Mill suppose that any natural Realist professes to have such an intuition? The same error of supposing that a doctrine of relativity is necessarily a doctrine of Idealism, that "matter known only in relation to us" can mean nothing more than "matter known only through the mental impressions of which it is the unknown cause,"[AC] runs through the whole of Mr. Mill's argument against this portion of Sir W. Hamilton's teaching. That argument, though repeated in various forms, may be briefly summed up in one thesis; namely, that the doctrine that our knowledge of matter is wholly relative is incompatible with the distinction, which Hamilton expressly makes, between the primary and secondary qualities of body.