Note 33 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTORY
Reading edition
Gassendi would allow both the assertions, namely—(1) Reality is wider than Thought; (2) Thought is wider than Reality. The former is correct, because knowledge is a relation, and there is no a priori reason why all the existent should be in that relation. Since the relation does not constitute the being of anything, that may be which is not thus related; in other words, the knowable may include the unknown (not unknowable) as well as the known. The latter is also correct, because we may outrun our data and assert our subjective (imaginative) constructions as real.