Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/355

IV. ON PRESERVING APPEARANCES. BY F. C. S. SCHILLER. THE aim of this paper is to examine the nature and scope of the familiar antithesis between/' appearance " and "reality," the vogue of which I cannot but regard as the chief con- structive result of the work of the greatest of English sceptics, Mr. F. H. Bradley. In Oxford at all events, this antithesis has been an immense success. It is ever hovering on the tongue alike of tutor and of tiro in philosophical discussion, and provides them with a universal solution for the most refractory of facts. It seems to have become the magic master-key which opens and closes every door, the all-accommodating receptacle into which every mystery may be made to enter and to disappear, in short it is just now the greatest of the catchwords wherewith we conjure reason into topsyturvydom and common sense out of its senses. If its Olympian author ever deigned to look upon the struggles and contentions of lesser and lower mortals, he would doubt- less be vastly amused to see what an Alpha and Omega of Philosophy had sprung invulnerable from his subtle brain. But being myself immersed in the struggle of teaching and having a certain responsibility in seeing to it that what is called thought involves thinking and affords proper training in mental precision and clearness, I find that this antithesis has become to me a considerable nuisance, and also, it must be confessed, a bit of a bore. I propose, therefore, to probe into it a little, and to examine its pretensions, with a view to seeing whether the relation of "appearance" to "reality" cannot be put on a different and, to me, more satisfactory footing. I. I must begin however by raising a very general, and, I think, very fundamental, objection to Mr. Bradley's method of constructing the wonderful edifice of his metaphysics. I