This presupposition that what is known exists independently of being known is quite general, and applies to feeling and sensation just as much as to parts of the physical world. It must in the end be conceded of a toothache as much as of a stone that it exists independently of the knowledge of it. There must be a pain to be attended to or noticed, which exists independently of our attention or notice. The true reason for asserting feeling and sensation to be dependent on the mind is that they presuppose not a knowing, but a feeling and a sentient subject respectively. Again, it is equally presupposed that knowing in no way alters or modifies the thing known. We can no more think that in apprehending a reality we do not apprehend it as it is apart from our knowledge of it, than we can think that its existence depends upon our knowledge of it. Hence, if 'things in themselves' means 'things existing independently of the knowledge of them', knowledge is essentially of 'things in themselves'. It is, therefore, unnecessary to consider whether idealism is assisted by the supposition of a non-finite knowing mind, correlated with reality as a whole. For reality must equally be independent of it. Consequently, if the issue between idealism and realism is whether the physical world is or is not dependent on the mind, it cannot turn upon a dependence in respect of knowledge. That the issue does not turn upon knowledge is confirmed by our instinctive procedure when we are asked whether the various realities which we suppose ourselves to know depend upon the mind. Our natural procedure is not to treat them simply as realities and to ask whether, as realities, they involve a mind to know them, but to treat them as realities of the particular kind to which they belong, and to consider relation to the mind of some kind other than that of knowledge. We should say, for instance, that a toothache or an emotion, as being a feeling, presupposes a mind capable of feeling, whose feeling it is; for if the mind be thought of as withdrawn, the pain or the feeling must also be thought of as withdrawn. We should say that an act of thinking presupposes a mind which thinks. We should, however, naturally deny that an act of thinking or knowing, in order to be, presupposes that it is known either by the thinker whose act it is, or by any other mind. In other words, we should say that knowing presupposes a mind, not as something which _knows_ the knowing, but as something which _does_ the knowing. Again, we should naturally say that the shape or the weight of a stone is _not_ dependent on the mind which perceives the stone. The shape, we should say, would disappear with the disappearance of the stone, but would not disappear with the disappearance of the mind which perceives the stone. Again, we should assert that the stone itself, so far from depending on the mind which perceives it, has an independent being of its own. We might, of