the Cartesian sense of the term. Reduced to the function of thought solely-that is to say, of conceiving man would in no way distinguish an idea from its reality.1

M. Dauriac then institutes a comparison between the real as given in perception and dreaming. The result is that these do not differ essentially; they only differ in certain extrinsic modifications. The phenomenon is not the antipodes of the real, any more than hallucination is the antipodes of perception. We experience a hallucination, and we take no account of it. There appears to our vision, for example, a person who has been dead for years. In place of acting towards him or speaking to him as if he were alive, we remain quiet, "waiting until the true sensations superimpose themselves on the false sensations, and progressively efface them. Unless deprived of reason, the man under hallucination does not regulate his conduct on the imaginary perceptions, but beyond this—that he does not draw from them any conclusion translatable into acts, and that he leaves his perceptions properly called to determine in part the course Croyance et Réalité, p. 208.

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of his daily life-all other difference between his perceptions and his hallucinations disappears on examination. For all hallucination is not necessarily individual; sometimes it is collective. . . . Our perceptions become motives or bases of inference, our hallucinations never, save when reason abandons us. This difference is our work; it is only imposed upon us if we consent to it. We may not consent to it; the sceptics are proof of this. If duty demands it, it is absolutely necessary to consent-in other words, to treat appearance as an objective reality." 1

On this it may be asked, Is it true that, as a universal rule, we act only on perceptions and not on hallucinations? And when we do act on hallucination, is it not true that we do so because we take it for perception—that is, for something of a wholly different nature?

Then we may further ask, Why is it reasonable to act on perceptions, and not on hallucinations, if, in their nature and essence, they are the same? Unless there is a difference in them as they exist subjectively, what reasonable ground would there be in our choosing to act on the one

1 Croyance et Réalité, pp. 212, 213.

and remain passive under the other? This extrinsic difference can have no foundation whatever in reason.

When M. Dauriac tells us so persistently that the sceptic and dogmatist start from a common basis of phenomenal reality, he forgets that there may be-are-different interpretations of the nature of this appearance, apart altogether from any question as to its objective, permanent, independent existence. What it is now and here is as much a question, and a question giving rise to fundamental difference of opinion, as any question as to its continuous reality out of perception. The quid does not apply merely to the latter question; it is first to be asked in regard to the former point.

M. Dauriac's position seems to be

1. That there is no permanent persistence of things independent of our own—or one analogous. This only means substituting for our personality, destroyed, another personality; it is to put one spirit in the place of another spirit. The world evanishes the moment all consciousness evanishes. If God, who makes, be not there, if God have not delegated the oversight to some created spirit,

things are no longer sensible forms, no longer objects to be perceived. Thus the persistence of external things, their objective permanence, continues to rest uncertain.

2. The objective and substantial permanence of thinking subjects, souls, also fails of proof.

3. Phenomena neighboured by other phenomena-that is, all. Hence hallucination and perception are not (speculatively) distinguishable.

He is opposed to idealism and a fortiori scepticism; not less to substantialism and a fortiori monism. His position has some approximation to that of Leibniz. But Leibniz was monist in spite of his monadism, and Leibniz was substantialist, and he professes not to be so.

What precisely is the phenomenalism he espouses or professes to hold?

In common usage the term phenomenon means an anomaly-something abnormal or extraordinary. But originally and etymologically phenomenon means what happens, passes, takes place; and hence it is partially at least identical with what exists. Phenomenon becomes the substitute for the terms reality, existence.

The philosophers, however, speak of pheno

mena as not-being; phenomena are said to be the contrary of being. But if phenomena are not, it is necessary to dissociate from them the notions of reality, existence, fact, occurrence. Phenomenon is taken as synonymous with appearance, and a world of appearances is synonymous with a world of phantoms. Hence it is considered as identical with not-being-as opposed to reality. Appearance is instantaneous-at least not durable. It is fugitive, a shade, a thing we can see, not touch-almost nothing. Hence phenomenon so regarded.

But phenomenon is particular, concrete; it authenticates and describes itself; it is object of perception and memory. It is accompanied with certain characters which concur to isolate it, by abstraction, from other phenomena contiguous and successive, and almost to confer on it an individuality. How then is it regarded as a simulacrum of being? 1

Duration does not affect the reality or the nature of a phenomenon. The sudden fugitive flash on the night is as real in the second it occupies as if it remained an hour. All notions