Page:Appearance and Reality (1916).djvu/35

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between them. This is a problem to be handled later (Chapter iv.), and I will only remark here that its result is fatal to materialism. And, (b) in the second place, the relation of the primary qualities to the secondary—in which class feeling and thought have presumably to be placed—seems wholly unintelligible. For nothing is actually removed from existence by being labelled “appearance.” What appears is there, and must be dealt with; but materialism has no rational way of dealing with appearance. Appearance must belong, and yet cannot belong, to the extended. It neither is able to fall somewhere apart, since there is no other real place; nor ought it, since, if so, the relation would vanish and appearance would cease to be derivative. But, on the other side, if it belongs in any sense to the reality, how can it be shown not to infect that with its own unreal character? Or we may urge that matter must cease to be itself, if qualified essentially by all that is secondary. But, taken otherwise, it has become itself but one out of two elements, and is not the reality.

And, (c) thirdly, the line of reasoning which showed that secondary qualities are not real, has equal force as applied to primary. The extended comes to us only by relation to an organ; and, whether the organ is touch or is sight or muscle-feeling—or whatever else it may be—makes no difference to the argument. For, in any case, the thing is perceived by us through an affection of our body, and never without that. And our body itself is no exception, for we perceive that, as extended, solely by the action of one part upon another percipient part. That we have no miraculous intuition of our body as spatial reality is perfectly certain. But, if so, the extended thing will have its quality only when perceived by something else; and the percipient something else is again in the same case. Nothing, in short, proves extended except in relation