very nearly simulated by colours on canvass. The looking-glass still more distinctly proves how deceptive is sight when unverified by touch. And the frequent cases in which we misinterpret the impressions made on our eyes, and think we see something which we do not see, further shake our faith in vision. So that the implication of uncertainty has infected the very word _appearance_. Hence, Philosophy, by giving it an extended meaning, leads us to think of all our senses as deceiving us in the same way that the eyes do; and so makes us feel ourselves floating in a world of phantasms. Had _phenomenon_ and _appearance_ no such misleading associations, little, if any, of this mental confusion would result. Or did we in place of them use the term _effect_, which is equally applicable to all impressions produced on consciousness through any of the senses, and which carries with it in thought the necessary correlative _cause_, with which it is equally real, we should be in little danger of falling into the insanities of idealism. Such danger as there might still remain, would disappear on making a further verbal correction. At present, the confusion resulting from the above misinterpretation, is made greater by an antithetical misinterpretation. We increase the seeming unreality of that phenomenal existence which we can alone know, by contrasting it with a noumenal existence which we imagine would, if we could know it, be more truly real to us. But we delude ourselves with a verbal fiction. What is the meaning of the word _real_? This is the question which underlies every metaphysical inquiry; and the neglect of it is the remaining cause of the chronic antagonisms of metaphysicians. In the interpretation put on the word _real_, the discussions of philosophy retain one element of the vulgar conception of things, while they reject all its other elements; and create confusion by the inconsistency. The peasant, on contemplating an object, does not regard that which he contemplates as something in himself, but believes the thing of which he is conscious to be the external object—imagines that his consciousness extends to the very place where the object lies: to him the appearance and the reality are one and the same thing. The metaphysician, however, is convinced that consciousness cannot embrace the reality, but only the appearance of it; and so he transfers the appearance into consciousness and leaves the reality outside. This reality left outside of consciousness, he continues to think of much in the same way as the ignorant man thinks of the appearance. Though the reality is asserted to be out of consciousness, yet the _realness_ ascribed to it is constantly spoken of as though it were a knowledge possessed apart from consciousness. It seems to be forgotten that the conception of reality can be nothing more than some mode of consciousness; and that the question to be considered is—What is the relation between this mode and other modes?