APPEARANCES AND REALITY. 227 as they are in themselves, and those belonging to them as pre- -sented to us. And we know only the latter. The falsity of the theory should now be obvious. (1) Even if we allow the distinction between the attributes of things as they are in themselves and their attributes for us, we are obliged to allow that we know the general nature of the former. Accordingly we must know not only the detailed nature of the attributes for us but also the general nature of the real attributes. (2) The distinction just referred to is wholly false. There is no such thing as an attribute of a thing as presented to us. All attri- butes used in stating how things look are primarily applicable to things as they are. The theory takes a distinction of detail and converts it into one of general structure. And the preceding .analysis, if successful, shows that the distinction between reality and appearance presupposes that we at least know the general nature of reality. (3) It has been pointed out that to distinguish between reality and appearance, we must be aware of and understand a special spatial relation in which we stand to objects as observers. Such a presupposition is excluded where the problem is the purely general one of the relation of reality in general to us as percipients. It should now be possible to formulate more clearly what con- stitutes (1) the plausibility of the theory in question, and (2) the wrong step in the argument leading to it. The plausibility is due to the real fact that in making use of perception to judge of the nature of an object, we have to take into account the special relation of the object to the perceiving subject, and that consequently we must discount what we should judge it to be, if we relied on the verdict of immediate perception. This suggests that in knowing generally, we must discount an /element which belongs to objects only in appearance through their relation to a perceiving subject, i.e., that relation to a percipient affects for the percipient the general nature of reality as well as its details. The mistake in argument arises from a mis-statement of the real fact. ' The moon looks as large as the sun ' is taken to mean ' while I do not believe it is as large, I perceive it to be as large, i.e., for my perception it is as large'. The distinction between what a thing looks and what it is has to be stated, and it is stated by saying that for perception it is one thing, while in itself it is -another. Then perception being the only means of access to the thing, it follows that we only know the thing as it is for perception. But (1) the statement that something is so ' for perception ' is vicious in principle. An assertion claims to be the recognition of objective fact, i.e., of what is. If the words ' for perception ' are signifi- cant, they constitute a restriction ; they must mean ' only for percep- tion '. But the assertion that something is so only for perception is a contradiction in terms. For perception is perception of what is ; it involves judgment and its formula is, ' we perceive something
