Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/237

APPEARANCES AND REALITY. I. THE distinction between ' reality ' and appearance, between what a thing really is and what it appears to be, is fundamental to our ordinary consciousness. Hence it is natural to make use of the distinction in metaphysics, and the result is a tendency to maintain one of two theories. According to the first theory, we know things only as they appear to us, and not as they are in themselves. In particular things are not really spatial or temporal, but only appear so to us ; space and time are only the appearances of a non-spatial reality. According to the second theory, we know only ' phenomena ' or 1 appearances,' certain elements within our own minds ; reality proper is beyond the mind and is not known at all. This view sometimes, as in Kant, tries to treat the appearances as being objects in space and time. We know them but not the thing in itself. These positions may be said to differ in degree of scepticism. The former allows that reality is presented to us in perception, but insists that its nature becomes distorted in the process. The latter denies that reality is presented to us at all and substitutes for it another object, viz., ' appearances '. Further these positions are not always distinguished. Kant, for instance, states his view sometimes in the form ' we only know things as they appear to us,' sometimes in the form ' we only know phenomena,' and he fails to notice that the two statements are different. The truth is that the first theory is a half-way house to the second. We are forced to go from the first to the second to gain some object of which it can be said that we know in the proper sense not only that it is but what it is. But for all that the second theory is the more sceptical, because it leaves the real object wholly unknown and regards knowledge as about something else. In both cases the result is reached by the use of the common distinction between reality and appearance. The distinction re- lates primarily to objects of vision, and therefore the justification of its use in the theory of knowledge requires analysis of its nature in its original application. Only such an analysis will reveal the true nature of the distinction, and consequently the legitimacy of the theory of knowledge built upon it. It will here be contended (1) That it is a certain analysis of the distinction which leads to the first theory and thence to the second.