THE PHENOMENAL AND THE TRUE. 181 



bondage upon it if they are avoided or falsely 

 conceived. Accepting the idea of a deadness in 

 Man, and a true or spiritual life in Nature, new 

 sources of light opened upon me, and my path 

 seemed to grow clear in almost all directions. 



And I have thus briefly indicated the line of 

 thought which led me to it, because I find it at 

 once the fruit and the seed of the scientific know- 

 ledge of Nature. Even a slight understanding of 

 the true order of physical phenomena, and of the 

 significance of the physical laws, is sufficient to 

 conduct us to it ; from that point it becomes our 

 guide. I shall therefore endeavour to place it in 

 a little clearer light. 



The assertion that our knowledge or perception 

 is not of the essence of things, but of something 

 merely phenomenal or relative, translated into 

 more ordinary language, means that we are feeling 

 things to exist which do not exist.* 



* Thus, to illustrate the proposition, Kant takes a rose, and says 

 of it " The rose is not a thing in itself, but a mere phenomenon." 

 But it is evidently the rose and nothing else that we feel as the 

 thing. 



