The question whether any reality exists independently of the knowledge of it may be approached thus. The standpoint of the preceding criticism of Kant may be described as that of the plain man. It is the view that the mind comes by a temporal process to apprehend or to know a spatial world which exists independently of it or of any other mind, and that the mind knows it as it exists in the independence. 'Now this view,' it may be replied, 'is exposed to at least one fatal objection. It presupposes the possibility of knowing the thing in itself, i. e. something which exists independently of the mind which comes to know it. Whatever is true, this is not. Whatever be the criticism to which Kant's doctrine is exposed in detail, it contains one inexpugnable thesis, viz. that the thing in itself cannot be known. Unless the physical world stands in essential relation to the mind, it is impossible to understand how it can be known. This position being unassailable, any criticism of an idealistic theory must be compatible with it, and therefore confined to details. Moreover, Kant's view can be transformed into one which will defy criticism. Its unsatisfactory character lies in the fact that in regarding the physical world as dependent on the mind, it really alters the character of the world by reducing the world to a succession of 'appearances' which, as such, can only be mental, i. e. can only belong to the mind's own being. Bodies, as being really appearances in the mind, are regarded as on the level of transitory mental occurrences, and as thereby at least resembling feelings and sensations. This consequence, however, can be avoided by maintaining that the real truth after which Kant was groping was that knower and known form an inseparable unity, and that, therefore, any reality which is not itself a knower, or the knowing of a knower, presupposes a mind which knows it. In that case nothing is suggested as to the special nature of the reality known, and, in particular, it is not implied to be a transitory element of the mind's own being. The contention merely attributes to any reality, conceived to have the special nature ordinarily attributed to it, the additional characteristic that it is known. Consequently, on this view, the physical world can retain the permanence ordinarily attributed to it. To the objection that, at any rate, _our_ knowledge is transitory, and that if the world is relative to it the world also must be transitory, it may be replied--though with some sense of uneasiness--that the world must be considered relative not to us as knowers, but to a knower who knows always and completely, and whose knowing is in some way identical with ours. Further, the view so transformed has two other advantages. In the first place, it renders it possible to dispense with what has been called the Mrs. Harris of philosophy, the thing in itself. As Kant states his position, the thing in itself must be retained, for it is impossible to believe that