PHENOMENON AND NOUMENON 



from violating the doctrine of relativity, we must 

 state the idealist's premise, but avoid his con- 

 clusion. We admit that " the trees and moun- 

 tains you imagine to exist away from any per- 

 ceiving mind " do not really exist as trees and 

 mountains except in relation to some perceiv- 

 ing mind. We admit that matter does not exist 

 as matter^ save in relation to our intelligence ; 

 since what we mean by matter is a congeries of 

 qualities — weight, resistance, extension, colour, 

 etc. — which have been severally proved to be 

 merely names for divers ways in which our con- 

 sciousness is affected by an unknown external 

 agency. Take away all these qualities, and we 

 freely admit, with the idealist, that the matter is 

 gone ; for by matter we mean, with the idealist, 

 the phenomenal thing which is seen, tasted, and 

 felt. But we nevertheless maintain, in opposi- 

 tion to the idealist, that something is still there, 

 which, to some possible mode of impressibility 

 quite different from conscious intelligence, might 

 manifest itself as something wholly different 

 from, and incomparable with, matter ; but which, 

 to anything that can be called conscious intelli- 

 gence, must manifest itself as matter. We freely 

 admit that what we mean by a tree is merely a 

 congeries of qualities that are visual and tactual, 

 and perhaps odorous, sapid, or sonorous. If we 

 wA-e destitute of sight, touch, smell, taste, hear- 

 ing, and muscular sensibility, all these qualities 

 117 



