'Moreover, the contention must be true, and must form the true basis of idealism. For the driving force of idealism is furnished by the question, 'How can the mind and reality come into the relation which we call knowledge?' This question is unanswerable so long as reality is thought to stand in no essential relation to the knowing mind. Consequently, in the end, knowledge and reality must be considered inseparable. Again, even if it be conceded that the mind in some way gains access to an independent reality, it is impossible to hold that the mind can really know it. For the reality cannot in the relation of knowledge be what it is apart from this relation. It must become in some way modified or altered in the process. Hence the mind cannot on this view know the reality as it is. On the other hand, if the reality is essentially relative to a knower, the knower knows it as it is, for what it is is what it is in this relation.'
The fundamental objection, however, to this line of thought is that it contradicts the very nature of knowledge. Knowledge unconditionally presupposes that the reality known exists independently of the knowledge of it, and that we know it as it exists in this independence. It is simply _impossible_ to think that any reality depends upon our knowledge of it, or upon any knowledge of it. If there is to be knowledge, there must first _be_ something to be known. In other words, knowledge is essentially discovery, or the finding of what already is. If a reality could only be or come to be in virtue of some activity or process on the part of the mind, that activity or process would not be 'knowing', but 'making' or 'creating', and to make and to know must in the end be admitted to be mutually exclusive.[1]
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.