Page:Appearance and Reality (1916).djvu/146

 more preposterous inconsistencies than are perhaps to be found in any other attempt at metaphysics. As a working point of view, directed and confined to the ascertainment of some special branch of truth, Phenomenalism is of course useful and is indeed quite necessary. And the metaphysician who attacks it when following its own business, is likely to fare badly. But when Phenomenalism loses its head and, becoming blatant, steps forward as a theory of first principles, then it is really not respectable. The best that can be said of its pretensions is that they are ridiculous.