Here he describes in various phrases the process of perception, or rather non-perception, through the organs of sense; but in all of them there are inconsistency and confusion of thought on the very surface.

He speaks of things as existing, yet tells us that we are incapable of perceiving or knowing them: we know only their phenomena, and they are not that in themselves for which we take them. But (to repeat an argument I have already used), if we are acquainted only with phenomena, how can we speak without self-contradiction of anything else? How can we find out that objects which we cannot know have any existence at all? How can we tell that what we perceive are only phenomena, and not real things, when, to distinguish between phenomena and real things, we must perceive not only the former, but the latter, which, we are told in the same breath, we are incapable of doing? Thus, if you say with Kant, that you perceive only phenomena, you subject yourself to the reply that it is impossible for you to tell that they are not realities, since you have nothing to compare them with; and as it is not worth while contending about a name, you may as well call them realities at

once.

To the assertion that the things which we perceive are not in themselves what we take them to be-in other words, that the realities are unlike their phenomena, which is only the same doc

trine in different phrase-a similar argument applies.

You can tell whether two things are alike or unlike only by perceiving them both, or having a knowledge of both. If you confess that you know nothing at all of one, you are plainly not in a condition to pronounce whether it is like or unlike the other: if you are not acquainted with the original, you cannot judge of the resemblance or want of resemblance in the copy.

Another strange position in the preceding passage is, that "we know nothing but our manner of perceiving objects," which, if not inconsistent with his other assertions, is at least equally self-contradictory. Knowing our manner of perceiving objects implies that we do perceive them, otherwise we assuredly could not know the manner of it. Mark, too, the assertion that, as soon as we remove our subjective quality, the represented object with its properties, is not and cannot be met with anywhere. Met with? By whom? "Meeting with " is the act of a percipient being, and, consequently, the assertion implies that, if we turn away from the object, it straightway becomes imperceptible not only to ourselves, but to any subjective quality" that might go in search of it. On this theory every object would be created afresh in every act of perception, which is carrying the matter farther even than it was carried by Berkeley, who being put to a strait by the suppo

sition that an idea would be annihilated when it
ceased to be perceived by your mind or mine,
adroitly took refuge in the allegation that this by
no means followed, since it might be perceived by
some other mind.

It is worth while to advert more particularly to
the proposition often reiterated by Kant, that we
cannot know things in themselves—a proposition
extensively accepted by modern philosophers. *

This is, in my view, a perfectly unmeaning asser-
tion. We cannot form the slightest conception of
knowing external things, except as we do know
them, i. e. through the organs of sense.
Do you
demur at this? Then be so good as to tell me the
precise signification of knowing things in them-
selves; give me a specimen of that sort of know-
ledge we have not; and point out how you have
gained so curious a piece of transcendental infor-
mation.

No one manifestly is entitled to deny that our
knowledge is of things in themselves, unless he not
only possesses the sort of knowledge which he
denies to others, and has found on comparison
that we― the rest of the human race—have only a
knowledge of things as they are not in themselves,
but actually produces it for our examination. Till
that is done, assertions about knowing things in
themselves must be regarded as utterly without
meaning.

Hobbes, whose doctrine, as we have seen, agrees

with that of Kant, in declaring what we perceive to be nothing but appearances, undertook to furnish the information I have asked for; he attempted to show that things in themselves are motions which give rise to the appearances perceived. His words (to repeat a single sentence of a passage before quoted and criticised) are, "Whatever accidents or qualities our senses make us think there be in the world, they be not there but are seeming and appearances only: the things that really are in the world without us, are those motions by which these seemings are caused."*

This, however, is only removing the phenomena a step back, and would not be accepted by Kant as at all reaching the transcendental objects-the things in themselves, which, according to him, we can never know. The motions in Hobbes's theory, could we follow them with the greatest minuteness, would, as I before remarked, be in their turn nothing but appearances; nor was it possible for either him or Kant to form the faintest conception of any objects or events generically different as wholes, or in their constituent parts from such as we actually observe.

* Here his argument is in effect that, because we can trace motions as concerned in producing the result called perceiving an object, we cannot perceive the object; while the truth is, as I have shown, that the perception of anything is not at all altered by our ignorance or knowledge of the material process through which it is effected.

LETTER XX.

THEORIES OF PERCEPTION CONTINUED.

KANT.

HAVING seen how, in what I have termed his negative doctrine, the German professor teaches that we know only appearances, not things in themselves, and that the real or transcendental objects behind these appearances lie hid under an impenetrable veil, and are not what we take them to be, it is natural for us to inquire into the positive part of the subject, to ask how these appearances arise? How is it that they present themselves before us?

And here we come to the greatest marvel of the whole doctrine: it turns out, after all, that the objects conjectured to lie hid behind the appearances (for conjecture is the only thing possible) do not originate the said appearances, but, that we ourselves in some inexplicable way create the phe-,, where nomena or confer the qualities we perceive.

It is scarcely possible to state such a doctrine except in self-contradictory language; and it will be best, therefore, to keep to the philosopher's own expressions.