would transverse vibrations of any rapidity produce Heat through the retina. Analysis may some day, and perhaps that day is not very distant, reduce the diversities of Feeling to quantitative diversities in the neural excitation, so that characteristic numbers of neural units will be assigned to special sensations, no less than to their stimuli. But even after identifying Heat and Light as quantitative varieties of the same Ether, or simply as modes of motion, and completing this by identifying their corresponding feelings as quantitative varieties of the same neural excitation, also modes of motion, Analysis will give only the weaver's side of the tapestry, the blind man's conception of light, and will need its complement of Synthesis. (Comp. RULE XII.)

33. But the different reaction of the sensitive organs which creates the difference between the two radiants we name Heat and Light is not the only factor involved in the greeting of the spirit. There is the further co-operation of Thought. The phenomena are not only felt, they are reflected on. Our perceptions are extended and modified by conceptions, so that we not only see the visible effects of Heat and Light on other bodies besides our own, but we have a mental vision of invisible effects, and judge that these things are all that their appearances connote. To the mind of a philosopher every fact of color is a complex of visible and invisible facts, which differs from what it is in the mind of a child or a peasant, as the idea of a lily in the mind of a botanist differs from that in the mind of a savage. Enough allowance is not made for this vast modifying influence over our ordinary perceptions, this exaltation of actual sight by spiritual insight; and the consequence of this neglect is that we

*

The phrase "spiritual insight" will not be misunderstood as imply ing agreement with the hypothesis of a Spirit, any more than the phrase 'psychical phenomena " implies an acceptance of a Psyche. I use it to

frequently confound the product of pure conception with the product of direct perception, and suppose we see what in truth we only think. To the "personal equation" must be added the "spiritual equation."

34. We have already seen how knowledge is composed of Feeling and Thought, and that Existence necessarily presents a real and an ideal aspect to Experience. There is thus a logical truth and a real truth. The validity of each within its own province is unaffected by any contradiction from the other. But the guidance of the one is in Speculation, whereas the guidance of the other is in Action. When we say that an image or an idea has ideal existence, we mean that it is a mental phenomenon having its place among others, with relations which determine its significance in the course of Thought; but although it has its place there, we do not for a moment suppose that it has a place in the real world, that it is capable of being manipulated, capable of exciting various feelings in us, or of being placed in relation with various senses. dagger which hovered before Macbeth's imagination could not be clutched by his hand like the one he drew; it could not be used to kill Duncan; the "gouts of blood" upon its "blade and dudgeon" no eye but his own could see. The dagger appeared to Macbeth; and this ideal existence was a fact, in spite of its being contradictory of every real test.

The

mark a distinction, not, as the spiritualists use it, to connote an entity. Luther said he saw no reason why the Devil should have all the best tunes for his service; nor need we allow our opponents to have all the good phrases; and as Seneca in one of his letters describes himself entering the enemy's camp, not in desertion, but in search (soleo et in aliena castra transire, non tanquam transfuga, sed tanquam explorator), so may we pass over the enemy's lines in search of arms. "Spirit" is a very good word to contrast with matter and motion; but it is metaphorical, and so is "insight" metaphorical.

CHAPTER II.

IS AND APPEARS.

35. AT the close of the last chapter we came upon a topic which has been incessantly agitated in the schools, and which leads right into the heart of the problem of Certitude. To know things as they are, apart from their appearances, is considered the grand desideratum. While in one sense the distinction is of obvious validity, in the sense in which Metaphysic commonly understands it, nothing can be more illusory. The great majority of philosophers declare that since knowledge is necessarily relative, we must be forever shut out from a knowledge of things as they are. We cannot, it is said, "penetrate the real nature of things," their intimate structure is screened from us. We can only know how they affect

us.

Behind this world of Phenomena there is an impenetrable world of Noumena. Behind this apparent existence there is a hidden existence, of which the varied phenomena are but fleeting manifestations. Things in themselves are necessarily different from Things in relation to us. *

*It is against this traditional opinion that Goethe energetically protests in the well-known lines:

"In's Innere der Natur dringt kein erschaffner Geist,

Zu glücklich, wenn er nur die äussere Schale weist.

Das hör' ich sechzig Jahre wiederholen,

Und fluche drauf, aber verstohlen,

Natur hat weder Kern noch Schale,

Alles ist sie mit einem Male."

36. The answer to this sceptical difficulty may be given both from the conclusions of Philosophy and the conclusions of Common Sense. The first show how Things are congeries of Feelings, certain groups of neural units being fixed in names; and although these neural units and their groups are themselves determined by external no less than internal conditions, they never lose their character of Feeling. In this sense, therefore, it is obvious that the Things we feel are our feelings; they are objective as the Felt, subjective as the Feeling. Nor does the view of Common Sense differ from this, since all men irresistibly accept the phenomena presented to them as presentations of reality. They believe the things are what they are felt to be; that its color, no less than its form, is a part and parcel of the flower; that the stone is hard when it is felt so. And when this First Notion is rectified by Science,* and an insight into psychological processes teaches us that knowledge is a product of two factors, the organism and the medium, the knowing mind and the object known, we come round to the startingpoint, and still say that to know a thing as it appears is to know it as it is under the objective and subjective conditions of its appearance.

A thing, being a group of relations, varies under varying relations. Obviously this changing group will not be the same throughout the changes, but it is here and there precisely what it appears here and there; the manifestation changes with the conditions. A word has no meaning, does not exist as a word, except in relation: the And Hegel, who cites these lines, has expressed the same view: "Es ist der gewöhnliche Irrthum der Reflexion, das Wesen, als das bloss Innere zu nehmen. Wenn es bloss so genommen wird, so ist auch diese Betrachtung eine ganz äusserliche, und jenes Wesen die leere äusserliche Abstraktion." Encyklopädie, § 140.

* On First Notions replaced by Theoretic Conceptions, see PROBLEM IV. § 23.

meaning lies in the context. So with the sensibles, which are the signs of things.

What the popular distinction between a thing and its appearance truly indicates is, that we regard the thing as the group of all its known relations, and its appearances or manifestations, here and there, as specifications of one or more of these relations; when we say the stone appears large or small, gray or hard, cold or rough, but that it is far more than these, we might equally well say the stone is these in these relations.

37. The famous distinction, therefore, between is and appears, is either a logical artifice or a speculative illusion. The logical artifice points to the distinction between general relations and particular relations. The speculative illusion assumes that the knowledge of things, being only of appearances, can never be a knowledge of things as they are in their inmost nature. The ontologists, believing in the reality of this distinction, but unwilling to accept the sceptical conclusion, waste their energy in the pursuit of this phantom Existence, the Noumenon lying" behind the field of phenomena." Starting from the phenomenon, which is the given product of two factors (on their own admission), they attempt the feat of determining what this product would be were one of the factors removed, which can only mean how it would then appear to them. Our utter inability to form a conception of the aspects which known objects would present to a new sense, ought long ago to have shown the inanity of speculating about the aspects of things in relations not sensible, and ought to have closed forever the disputes about the Suprasensible. The logical distinction between the inward essence and the outward appearance is simply this: the Thing considered outwardly, i. e. in its presentation to Sense, is the Thing in definite relations; but besides this, we conceive the Thing as capable of other relations which