392 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Part VII, "General Analysis"). And yet Professor Birks tacitly 

 makes me responsible for the incongruities which result from uniting 

 this theory with the opposed theory. 



From this sample of critical truthfulness let us pass now to a sam- 

 ple of critical acumen. 



In arguing against Hamilton and Mansell in 26, I have said : " It 

 is rigorously impossible to conceive that our knowledge is a knowledge 

 of appearances only, without at the same time conceiving a reality of 

 which they are appearances ; for appearance without reality is un- 

 thinkable." On page 121 of his work. Professor Birks, quoting the 

 last five words of this sentence, continues, " This is true, when once 

 'the conception of distance has been gained by actual experience." 

 And he then proceeds to comment upon visual impressions, illusive 

 and other. Again, on page 135, when criticising my argument con- 

 cerning the indestructibility of matter. Professor Birks says : " Mat- 

 ter, as knowable, is declared to be not the unseen reality, but the sen- 

 sible appearances, or phenomenal matter alone. Phenomenal matter, 

 it appears from daily and hourly experience, appears and disappears, 

 perishes and is new-created continually. . . . The cloud vanishes, the 

 star sets, or a mist blots it out, the droj) evaporates, the ship melts into 

 the yeast of waves, the candle is burned away and comes to an end. 

 The substance may last in another form, but the phenomenon or ap- 

 pearance is gone. . . . Thus, by the theory, of Matter, the Noumenon, 

 we know nothing, and therefore can not know that it is indestructible. 

 Of Matter, the Phenomenon, we may know much. And one main 

 thing we know of it, proved by hourly experience, is that it both may 

 be and continually is destroyed. For an appearance is destroyed and 

 perishes, when it ceases to appear." In which sentences, as in all 

 accompanying sentences covering several pages, the implication is that 

 Professor Birks identifies appearance in the philosophical sense with 

 appearance in the popular sense ! Everywhere his expressions and 

 arguments make manifest the fact that Professor Birks thinks the 

 meaning of phenomenon in metaphysical discussion is no wider than 

 that implied by its derivation something visible ! Sounds, smells, 

 tastes are in his view not phenomena ; nor are touches, pressures, 

 tensions. And hence it results that since when a pound of salt is dis- 

 solved in water it ceases to be visible, its existence, phenomenally 

 considered, ends : its continued power of affecting our senses by its 

 weight, to the same extent as before the solution, not being considered 

 as a phenomenal manifestation of its existence ! 



In 46, when commenting on the mental confusion which meta- 

 physical discussions often produce, I have ascribed this in part to the 

 misleading connotations of the words "appearance" and "phenom- 

 enon " ; and after illustrating this have said : " So that the implica- 

 tion of uncertainty has infected the very word appearance. Hence, 

 philosophy, by giving it an extended meaning, leads us to think of all 



