This relativity of things to thought has, not unnaturally, suggested the idea that the objects of our knowledge are different from objects as they are.  “That the real nature of things is very different from what we make of them, that thought and thing are divorced, that there is a fundamental antithesis between them,” is, as Hegel said, “the hinge on which modern philosophy turns.”  Educated opinion in our day has lost its naive trust in itself.  “The natural belief of man, it is true, ever gives the lie” to the doctrine that we do not know things.  “In common life,” adds Hegel, “we reflect without particularly noting that this is the process of arriving at the truth, and we think without hesitation and in the firm belief that thought coincides with things."[A] But, as soon as attention is directed to the process of thinking, and to the way in which the process affects our consciousness of the object, it is at once concluded that thought will never reach reality, that things are not given to us as they are, but distorted by the medium of sense and our intelligence, through which they pass.  The doctrine of the relativity of knowledge is thus very generally regarded as equivalent to the doctrine that there is no true knowledge whatsoever.  We know only phenomena, or appearances; and it is these, and not veritable facts, that we systematize into sciences.  “We can arrange the appearances—­the shadows of our cave—­and that, for the practical purposes of the cave, is all that we require."[B] Not even “earth’s least atom” can ever be known to us as it really is; it is for us, at the best,

[Footnote A:  Wallace’s Translation of Hegel’s Logic, p. 36.]

[Footnote B:  Caird’s Comte.]

  “An atom with some certain properties
  Known about, thought of as occasion needs."[C]

[Footnote C:  A Bean-Stripe.]

In this general distrust of knowledge, however, there are, as might be expected, many different degrees.  Its origin in modern times was, no doubt, the doctrine of Kant.  “This divorce of thing and thought,” says Hegel, “is mainly the work of the critical philosophy and runs counter to the conviction of all previous ages.”  And the completeness of the divorce corresponds, with tolerable accuracy, to the degree in which the critical philosophy has been understood; for Kant’s writings, like those of all great thinkers, are capable of many interpretations, varying in depth with the intelligence of the interpreters.

The most common and general form of this view of the limitation of the human intelligence is that which places the objects of religious faith beyond the reach of human knowledge.  We find traces of it in much of the popular theology of our day.  The great facts of religion are often spoken of as lying in an extra-natural sphere, beyond experience, into which men cannot enter by the native right of reason.  It is asserted that the finite cannot know the infinite,