Page:Appearance and Reality (1916).djvu/150

 so, other troubles vex us. Either our Thing has qualities, or it has not. If it has them, then within itself the same puzzles break out which we intended to leave behind,—to make a prey of phenomena and to rest contented with their ruin. So we must correct ourselves and assert that the Thing is unqualified. But, if so, we are destroyed with no less certainty. For a Thing without qualities is clearly not real. It is mere Being, or mere Nothing, according as you take it simply for what it is, or consider also that which it means to be. Such an abstraction is palpably of no use to us.

And, if we regard the situation from the side of phenomena, it is not more encouraging. We must take appearances in connection with reality, or not. In the former case, they are not rendered one whit less confused. They offer precisely the old jungle in which no way could be found, and which is not cleared by mere attribution to a Thing in itself. But, if we deny the connection of phenomena with the Real, our condition is not improved. Either we possess now two realms of confusion and disorder, existing side by side, or the one above the other. And, in this case, the “other world” of the Thing in itself only serves to reduplicate all that troubles us here. Or, on the other hand, if we suppose the Thing to be unqualified, it still gives us no assistance. Everything in our concrete world remains the same, and the separate existence somewhere of this wretched abstraction serves us only as a poor and irrelevant excuse for neglecting our own concerns.

And I will allow myself to dwell on this last feature of the case. The appearances after all, being what we experience, must be what matters for us. They are surely the one thing which, from the nature of the case, can possess human value. Surely, the moment we understand what we mean by our words, the Thing in itself becomes utterly