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and also to the relations of the outer circle. This circle turns, in its divisions, on the force given to intuitive ideas.

By realism we mean what is sometimes termed natural realism. It is the realism of Reid and Hamilton. Each act of perception is said to include, as an indivisible constituent, the direct knowledge of both matter and mind. Materialism is the identification of matter and mind as two forms of the same experience; this is the method of M. Taine. Idealism is the absorption of all being into processes of mind, after the manner of Fichte and Hegel. Nihilism is the denial of all knowledge, phenominal and constructive. The impressions we call knowledge are merely impressions afloat with other impressions, reflections in a stream which may disappear at any moment.

Constructive realism is realism reached as the result of the combined action of our perceptions, intuitions and judgments. It is the realism offered in this work. Constructive materialism is the materialism of Spencer. It gathers the constructive laws of thought from the phenomena known as physical, and builds the universe, both physical and intellectual, by means of them. It affirms nothing as to ultimate, substantial being; but phenominal being it puts exclusively under the laws of matter. Constructive idealism declares that all the forms of knowledge are purely mental, and cannot be said to be forms of matter. Thus matter, when its existence is allowed, is not known under its own types. Substantially and phenominally it is hidden from us. Constructive idealism rests chiefly on the works of Kant.

A measure of agnosticism is involved in opposite directions in both constructive materialism and constructive idealism. When these two incapacities are united, we have agnosticism; and agnosticism may easily lapse into nihilism the antithetical point to realism. Hume is the best exponent