 But appearances are not objects. When two lines appear to converge, there is, we might say, an appearance of convergence here, but we should not understand this as the two lines presenting a appearance that is convergent. Appearances can be neither convergent, nor divergent; and they cannot be parallel either. More generally, spatial properties cannot be properties of appearances, since no appearance can be great or small, square or round, bent or straight. Prichard therefore thinks of the noun ‘appearance’ is a source of confusion, because it leads us to think of appearances as objects with their own ‘phenomenal’ properties, and thereby to ascribe to them properties that really belong (or perhaps only appear to belong) to the object that so appears. Having fallen victim to this mistake, we then make the further mistake of supposing that we can never cognize objects as they are, but only as they appear to be, and we understand this last as cognition of the appearances rather than of the objects. But an object can of course be the way it appears to be, and when it is, its so appearing makes it possible for us to know that it is so. So in knowing how things appear we sometimes know how they are – indeed, how they are ‘in themselves’.