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DAVID ANDERSON-BERRY, M.D., LL.D., ETC., ON 



Mr. W. HoSTE said : I do not wish to make our lecturer responsible 

 for Kant, but could he give a little light on the quotation on p. 16, 

 where the philosopher is made to affirm that noumena are the 

 equivalent of " what appears to be the world without," and pheno- 

 mena that of " the world within " ? To one's lay mind this seems 

 upside down, but I suppose the conclusions of an idealist would 

 naturally appear so to an ordinary humdrum realist. On the 

 previous page our lecturer speaks of " perceived form, extension, 

 colour" as phenomena, and then in the next sentence of '* the 

 phenomena of feeling, willing, knowing," but surely this makes 

 noumena and phenomena identical. How can " feeling, wiUing, 

 knowing," be properly classed at all as phenomena ? 



Then I noted, on top of p. 15, that Reason is placed among the 

 primary faculties of the Mind, and " Judgment or logical faculty," 

 on p. 18, among the secondary ones. From the description at the 

 hands of the lecturer it is not quite clear to my mind how they 

 differ. 



With reference to the lecturer's remark on p. 22, " Colour 

 cannot attach to a feeling," of course one is in complete agreement ; 

 but is it not remarkable how in a popular sense colour is associated 

 so closely with feeling ? For instance, pink attaches to optimism : 

 we see things through rose spectacles ; green with jealousy ; black, 

 of course, with gloom and sadness, though in China white is, we are 

 told, the mourning colour, perhaps out of compliment to the con- 

 ventional virtues of the defunct. Then grey is synonymous with 

 monotony : we talk of a grey existence. Bright yellow is said to 

 favour cheerfulness, and we are advised to paper our rooms in schemes 

 of yellow if depression is to be avoided. And then there is the expe- 

 rience, unfortunately not uncommon — owing, I suppose, to ugly wall- 

 papers and other things — of being "in the blues." Why " blues " rather 

 than greens or reds ? Red, by the way, has another association. When 

 a man sees "red," he is not supposed to be good company. How 

 are we to account for the fact that colours and conditions of feeling 

 are so closely linked in the popular mind ? The reference on p. 18 to 

 metaphysics, reminds me in passing of the hon mot of a witty French- 

 man I once heard in a hall on the Grand Boulevard in Paris. " When 

 a man's audience," he said, " does not understand what he is driving 

 at, that is philosophy ; when he doesn't understand himself, that 

 is metaphysics." 



