A very interesting tendency to clothe the articulations of thought with the immediacy of perception is exhibited in _mysticism_, which attributes the highest cognitive power to an experience that transcends thought, an ineffable insight that is the occasional reward of thought and virtuous living. This theory would seem to owe its great vigor to the fact that it promises to unite the universality of the rational object with the vivid presence of the empirical object, though it sacrifices the definite content of both. The mystic, empiricist, and rationalist are in these several ways led to revise their metaphysics upon the basis of their epistemology, or to define reality in terms dictated by the means of knowing it.
[Sidenote: The Relation of Knowledge to its Object According to Realism, and the Representative Theory.]
§ 69. But within the general field of epistemology there has arisen another issue of even greater significance in its bearing upon metaphysics. The first issue, as we have seen, has reference to the criterion of knowledge, to the possibility of arriving at certainty about reality, and the choice of means to that end. A second question arises, concerning _the relation between the knowledge and its object or that which is known_. This problem does not at first appear as an epistemological difficulty, but is due to the emphasis which the moral and religious interests of men give to the conception of the self. My knowing is a part of me, a function of that soul whose welfare and eternal happiness I am seeking to secure. Indeed, my knowing is, so the wise men have always taught, the greatest of my prerogatives. Wisdom appertains to the philosopher, as folly to the fool. But though my knowledge be a part of me, and in me, the same cannot, lightly at any rate, be said of what I know. It would seem that I must distinguish between the knowledge, which is my act or state, an event in my life, and the known, which is object, and belongs to the context of the outer world. _The object of knowledge_ would then be quite _independent of the circumstance that I know it_. This theory has acquired the name of _realism_,[173:16] and is evidently as close to common sense as any epistemological doctrine can be said to be. If the knowledge consists in some sign or symbol which in my mind stands for the object, but is quite other than the object, realism is given the form known as the _representative theory_. This theory is due to a radical distinction between the inner world of consciousness and the outer world of things, whereby in knowledge the outer object requires a substitute that is qualified to belong to the inner world. Where, on the other hand, no specific and exclusive nature is attributed to the inner world, realism may flourish without the representative theory. In such a case the object would be regarded as itself capable of entering into any number of individual experiences or of remaining outside them all, and without on either account forfeiting its identity. This view was taken for granted by Plato, but is elaborately defended in our own day. During the intervening period epistemology has been largely occupied with difficulties inherent in the representative theory, and from that discussion there has emerged the theory of _idealism_,[175:17] the great rival theory to that of realism.