 It should be stressed that Poincaré does not deny that there is reality outside relations; but he does deny that this reality is knowable. Note also that Poincaré does not use the expression ‘things in themselves’ (choses en soi) but the expression ‘things themselves’ (chose elles-memes). Elsewhere he talks about the “nature of things” or “real objects”. It is quite clear that he wanted to draw a distinction between how things are—what their nature is—and how they are related to each other (and to us qua knowers). A plausible way to draw this distinction is to differentiate between the intrinsic and perhaps fully qualitative properties of things—what he plausibly calls ‘nature’ of things—and their relations. The former are unknowable, whereas the latter are  knowable.[3]