wm: • X i ■ . • ' \ \ "V ✓ 4- / V im V , .V * ' Y ' ' | \ ’ i if*;t < i,VI, *> m THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY / BT JAMES McCOSH, D.D., LL.D., D.L. President op Princeton College Author op “Intuitions of the Mind,” “Laws of Discursive Thought” (A Treatise on Logic), “Emotions,” &c. NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1884 Copyright, 1884, by CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS. TROW'S PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY, NEW YORK. CONTENTS INTRODUCTORY. page Influence of Locke in Eighteenth Century, . . 1 Reaction in Middle of that Century, ... 2 Need Now of a Reaction Against Kant, . . . 3-6 OBJECTIONS TO HIS CRITICAL METHOD, . . . 6-12 OBJECTIONS TO HIS PHENOMENAL THEORY OF KNOW¬ LEDGE, . . . . . 12-18 OBJECTIONS TO HIS DOCTRINE OF THE MIND IMPOS¬ ING FORMS ON OBJECTS, . . 19-25 KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC, .... 26-31 Self-Consciousness, . 26-27 Space and Time, . 27-31 HIS TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC, .... 31-37 His Categories, . 32-36 HIS TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC, .... 37-43 The Ideas of Pure Reason, . 38 Substance, Paralogisms, . 39 Interdependence, Antinomies, . 40-42 God, The Theistic Arguments, . 42-43 IV CONTENTS. THE PRACTICAL REASON, . 43-46 The Categorical Imperative, Immortality and God, . 43 KRITIK OF THE JUDGING FACULTY, .... 46-47 COMPARISON WITH SCOTTISH SCHOOL, . . . 47-50 What View Should be Taken by British and American Youth, . 50-52 HIS IDEALISM, . 53-55 HIS AGNOSTICISM, . 55 Back to Kant, . 56-58 Taking What is Good in our Higher Philosophies, . 58-60 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE, -i O 4/ *r~Y V- , V In this work, which is a criticism of Kant’s Philosophy, there is no need of giving a detailed account of his life. The biographies of him are now numerous and accessible.1 He was born at Konigsberg, in Eastern Prussia, toward the Polish border, April 22, 1724. His father, a saddler, was of Scotch descent from some emigrant, who had gone over to Memel, probably from Forfarshire, on the east coast of Scotland, where I have noticed the name Cant (changed in German into Kant), often occurring on tomb¬ stones in the parish church-yards, and in old records some of which show that there were Cants engaged in the work¬ ing of leather. His mother, whom he unfortunately lost at the age of thirteen, was a woman of fervent piety, and the family attended a church where the evangelical faith was preached. At the age of sixteen he entered the uni¬ versity of his native town, and for six years he was em¬ ployed in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in going over the branches belonging to the Department of Philosophy. His father having died in 1746 he was thrown on his own resources, and had a hard enough struggle. For a time he was tutor in a private family and from 1765 to 1770 he was Privat-Docent in the University of Konigsberg, where he taught Logic, Ethics, and Physical Geography, in the last of which he always felt a special interest. He early showed a taste and talent for mathematics and physics, but 1 We have a clear account of Kant’s simple and retired Life in Wal¬ lace’s “ Kant,” in Philosophic Classics ; a graphic account in Sterling’s lext-Book to Kant; and a full account in Stuckenberg’s Life of Im¬ manuel Kant. iv BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.. in the end philosophy became his favorite study. In the years from 1160-65 he became acquainted with the phi¬ losophy of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and Hume, and this gave a new turn to his thoughts. From 1162 to 1165 he published a number of import¬ ant works : — The false subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures', An attempt to introduce into Philosophy the Conception of Negative Quantities ; Only Possible Argu¬ ment for demonstrating God’s Excellence ; Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime ; and In¬ quiry into the Clearness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morals. During this period he anticipated Laplace in his famous theory of the formation of worlds from star-dust. In 1110 he was made full professor, with a salary in the end of about a hundred pounds sterling, and henceforth he devoted himself to the teaching of logic and metaphysics, and the construction of his philosophic system. His in¬ troductory lecture was on The Form and Principles of the Sense World , and the World Intellectual. In 1181, at the mature age of 51, he published his great work, The Kritik of Pure Peason , in which his avowed aim was a search for the proper method of metaphysics. The book laid hold at once on certain thinking minds, and has ever since had a powerful influence on thought. A second edi¬ tion was demanded in 1181, and in it he labored particu¬ larly in a new Preface to deliver his system from misap¬ prehensions and answer objections. In 1185, he published The Foundation for the Metar physic of Ethics ; and The Metaphysical Rudiments of Natural Philosophy ; in 1188, The Kritik of the Practical Reason , and in 1190 The Kritik of the Judgment , in his old age, Religion within the Boundaries of Pure Reason. His biographers all describe his person and his simple BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. V bachelor habits. He was scarcely five feet in height, and, strange as it may seem, had a very small brain. Every morning about five minutes before five his servant Lampe, an old soldier, entered his confined and darkened bedroom with the cry, “ It is time,” and his master rose immediately and took a cup of tea and a pipe of tobacco. Till seven he prepared his lecture and delivered it between seven and nine. For the rest of the forenoon he gave himself to his literary work, in which he wrote laboriously, and read the works he could procure in that remote city. At a quarter to one, he called out, “ It is three quarters,” and sat down to a simple meal with a little liquor, and always with a few, from two to six, invited guests. The dinner, with the conversation, which ranged over almost every subject except metaphysics, lasted till four, when he went out to his constitutional walk, still shown to all who visit Konigs- berg. In this walk he commonly distributed alms to some beggars who waited for him. Returning to his room, he revolved his philosophy in his mind till about half-past nine, when he retired to his couch, covering his head with the blankets, and taking pains to breathe only through his nose, which he thought prolonged fife. In all his writings he takes an attitude of profound rev¬ erence toward religion and its fundamental truths, of God, good, and immortality. After the spirit of his age, he was a rationalist, subjecting all the doctrines of religion to the dictates of reason. He does not seem to have gone to the worship of God in any church. He was annoyed in his declining life by Fichte, who had been at one time his pupil, carrying out the principles which his master had laid down to prove idealism. As his years advanced his faculties began to decay, and he scarcely understood the system which he had so carefully elaborated. He died February 12, 1804. A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY.1 Locke was the most influential metaphysician of last cen¬ tury ; Kant is the most influential metaphysician of this. Locke’s great work, “An Essay on Human Understand- ing,” published in 1690, came into notice immediately. The age was ripe for it. Younger men, rejoicing in the advance of physical science, were becoming wearied of the logical forms of the schoolmen which had kept their hold till the close of the sixteenth century, and of the abstract metaphysical discussions which still prevailed in the seven¬ teenth century. Locke met the want of his age. His fresh ob¬ servational spirit, his shrewdness and sagacity, his independ¬ ence, and his very phraseology, which carefully avoided all 1 1 Lad an article in the Princeton Review Nov. 1878, entitled A Criti¬ cism of the Critical Philosophy. Prof. Sidgwick has stolen my brand by giving the same title to his very acute articles in Mind, beginning 1883. I am quite willing that he should use the title, and I refer to his employment of it simply in order to claim that I have a right to my own property which I acquired by a prior possession. Kant seems to me to have reached the climax of his influence at his centenary in 1881. These papers of Dr. Sidgwick’s are an indication that Kant will now have to undergo a searching criticism, such as Locke was subjected to, at the end of last century and the beginning of this. It is clear that Dr. Stirling is about to start a rebellion against Kant in favor of realism. I may be allowed to express a hope that Dr. Sidg¬ wick and his friend Mr. Balfour having filled the air with doubts and difficulties, will now show as much acuteness in defending truth as they have done in opposing error. Unless they do so the tendency of their philosophy, following the spirit of the times, will be toward an agnosticism which they do not mean to support. 2 A CKITICISM OF THE CEITICAL PHILOSOPHY. hack and technical phrases, recommended him to the rising generation. He called attention to internal facts, even as Bacon and Newton had to external; and if he did not himself notice and unfold all the delicate operations of our wondrous nature, he showed men where to find them. But philosophy, like faith — as the great Teacher said, like phys¬ ical science — as Bacon showed, is to be tried by (not valued for) its fruits. The influence exerted by him has been and is of a healthy character. But there were serious over¬ sights and even fatal errors in his principles; and these came out to view in the systems which claimed to proceed from him — in the sensationalism of Condillac, the idealism of Berkeley, and the scepticism of Hume. By the second half of the eighteenth century thought¬ ful minds began to see the need of a reaction against the extreme experientialism which had culminated in the Scot¬ tish sceptic ; and there appeared two great defenders of fundamental truth — Beid in Scotland (1764) reaching in his influence over his own country, over France, and over the United States ; and Kant in Germany (1781) laying firm hold of his own land, and then passing over into France, Britain, and America, and latterly penetrating into Scandinavia, Greece, Italy, and Spain. Kant’s power, like Locke’s, has been on the whole for good. He has estab¬ lished fundamental mental and moral principles, which are seen to be fixed forever. He has taken us up into a region of grand ideals, where poetry, led by Schiller and Goethe, has revelled ever since. But there were mistakes in the philosophy of Kant as well as in that of Locke. These have come out like the dark shadow of an eclipse in the idealism_ of Fichte, the speculative web woven by Hegel, and in the relativity ancT nescience theories elaborated by f£amilton and applied by Hgrbert. .Spencer. Our errors as well as our sins wdll find us out. Providence allows specu- LOCKE AND KANT. 3 a lative mistakes to go on to a reduciio ad dbsurdum , and t the exposure corrects them. There is need of a rebellion i against Kaut’j? despotic authority; or rather of a candid and careful examination of his peculiar tenets, with the view of retaining what is true and expelling what is false. This is the more needed, as all the agnostics and the materialistic psychologists when pushed fall back on Kant. Prof. Ma- haffy acknowledges,1 “Of late the Darwinists, the great apostles of positivism, and the deadly enemies of metaphys¬ ics, have declared that he alone of the philosophers is worthy of study, and to him alone was vouchsafed a fore- h glimpse of true science.” I believe that we can not meet the prevailing doctrine of agnostics till we expel Kant’s nescient theory of knowledge, and that it is as necessary in this century to be rid of the Forms of Kant as it was in the last of the Ideas of Locke, both being officious inter¬ meddlers, coming between us and things. I wish it to he understood that I do not mean to dispar¬ age the great German metaphysician. I place him on the same high level as Plato and Aristotle in ancient times, and as Bacon and Descartes, Locke and Leibnitz, Reid and Hamilton in modern times. His logical power of ordination 1 1 may mention that in an article in the Princeton Review for Janu¬ ary, 1878, I ventured on a short criticism of Kant. It was meant to be a challenge. It called forth an able champion in Prof. Mahaffy, who wrote a criticism in the same Review for July, 1878, to which I replied in an article for November, 1878, referred to in last note. I am not to carry on the controversy in this paper, hut I may occasion¬ ally use the remarks I then made. Dr. Mahaffy has studied Kant pro¬ foundly, and has written valuable fragmentary volumes which I hope he may complete, and thus give us fully his view of the Critical Philosophy. The University of Dublin, of which he is so distin¬ guished a membef, having for nearly a century and a half followed Locke, seems in this last age to have gone over to Locke’s great rival, Immanuel Kant. 4 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. and division is not surpassed by that of Saint Thomas, the Angelical Doctor, or the greatest of the schoolmen. He did immeasurable good by counteracting the sensationalism which was coming in like a flood in France under the in¬ fluence of Condillac, of Yoltaire, and the encyclopedists. He accomplished this in the right manner (so far) by show¬ ing that there are other and deeper principles in the mind than sensations and transformed sensations. He did a like service to philosophy by resisting the undermining process of Hume, who proposed to carry out to its legitimate con¬ sequences the experimental method of Locke, and landed in scepticism. He effected this by showing that there are in the mind,' profound laws, _or forms, which are prior to experience and independent of it. He carries out his prin¬ ciples in a proper way and proposes to give us an inventory of what is d jpriori in the mind: “For this science (of metaphysics) is nothing more than an inventory of all that is given by pure reason, systematically arranged ” (First Preface).1 These dicta of reason had been appealed to constantly by the school of dogmatists, but there had been no careful inquiry into their nature, and their mode of operation. Kant did great good by attempting an arrange¬ ment of them — though I believe the system which he con¬ structed was far from being successful. He introduced clearness and definiteness into metaphysics by drawing the famous distinction — of which there had been previously only vague anticipations — between analytic and synthetic judgments, the former simply evolving in the proposition what is involved in the subject, as when we say that “ an island is surrounded with water,” and the latter involving something more, as when we say, “ Sicily is an island in the 1 Except when stated otherwise I use Meiklejohn’s Translation in Bohn’s Library. EXCELLENCES OE KANT. 5 Mediterranean.” Farther on I may have something to say about these synthetic judgments ; but I think he is right in maintaining that the problem of the possibility and exist¬ ence of metaphysics depends on the circumstance that there is in the mind a capacity of pronouncing judgments em¬ bracing more than is in the subject, and that there are such judgments a priori , as that every effect has a cause. His classification in the categories of the relations which the mind can discover is taken largely from Aristotle and the scholastic logicians, and contains a considerable amount of truth, and should be carefully weighed by all who would construct a logic. He has laid a deep and immovable foundation for ethics in the Practical Reason, and his phrase, “ the Categorical Imperative,” has always appeared to me to be the most expressive ever employed to designate the office of the con¬ science. We should also be grateful to him for his defence of the freedom of the will. These are only the chief of the high excellences which I find in the Kantian philos¬ ophy which sets before youth a high ideal, intellectual and moral. The grand principles which he has expounded and defended must have a place (it may be a somewhat differ¬ ent place from that which he has allotted to them) in every system of high philosophy. But, while he has thus been powerfully promoting the cause of truth, it may be doubted whether he has given the correct account of fundamental principles. Fie was more distinguished as a logical thinker and systematizer than a careful observer of what actually passes in the mind. His system, as a whole, seems to me not to be a natural one — that is, according to nature — but an artificial one, con¬ structed by a powerful intellect. He has shown amazing dexterity and skill in forming his system, in supporting it by buttresses where it is weak, and defending it against 6 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. attacks. He has certainly raised a massive structure, with imposing bulwarks ; but, in these times, people trust more in earthworks than in stone castles, which are exposed to attack from their height ; and I believe the time is at hand when we shall have a philosophy of a lowlier but surer kind, based on the facts of our mental nature, carefully observed. In the examination which I am to undertake I am not to proceed on any disputed points in Kant’s writings. I look only to the broad features of his philosophy, as seen both by those who approve of and those who oppose him. My criticisms are all advanced on what is admitted by all his disciples and interpreters. I do not mean to inquire whether, as some maintain, there is an inconsistency between the Preface to the second edition and the first edition ; or what he means by the “ I think ” which he represents as run¬ ning through all the exercises of the a priori reason, and what we are to understand by the schematismus and the “ a priori imagination^ On some of these points I have views which I may intimate as I advance. But there are others far better fitted than I am to discuss these subjects, and my criticism does not apply to any controverted doc¬ trine. My objections are directed against deeper and more essential parts of his philosophy on which all are agreed as to his meaning. I object to three fundamental positions of Kant. I. I OBJECT TO HIS CRITICAL METHOD. It seems that in the school of Wolff, in which he was trained, he was led, first, to favor the Dogmatic method of Descartes and Leibnitz. But the inquiring spirit of the I OBJECT TO HIS CRITICAL METHOD. 7 times and liis own reflection convinced him that this method was very unsatisfactory, as each man or school had set out with his or its own dogma, and people were now unwilling to accept, on any authority, dogmas which had not been sifted by an accredited test. Following the manner of the matter-of-fact age, he then turned to the “ empiricism,” as he calls it, of the “ celebrated Locke.” Hut he drew back when he saw what consequences were drawn from it by Hume.1 Dissatisfied with these methods, he elaborated, expounded, and illustrated a method of his own — the Criti¬ cal Method. There may be a legitimate use of each of these methods if it is kept within proper limits. All inquirers have to assume something, which may be called a dogma ; but they must be ready to show grounds for making the assumption. A narrow empiricism may miss, as certainly Locke did, some of the deepest principles of the mind ; may not notice first or intuitive principles. There is need of a criticism to dis¬ tinguish things which are apt to be confounded in hasty assumptions and generalizations. But surely the true method in all sciences which have to do with facts, as I hold that all the mental sciences have, is the inductive, care being taken to understand and properly use it. The agent, the instrument, the eye, the sense employed in the induction of the facts, is self-consciousness. By it we notice the operations of the mind, directly those of our own minds, and indirectly those of others as exhibited in their words, writings, and deeds. What we thus notice is 1 It does not appear that Kant ever read TIume’s first and greatest work, The Treatise of Human Nature ; but he was acquainted in a translation with the Enquiry into the Human Understanding, which was a second form of the first, and translated into German by Sulzer, 1755, and also with a translation of some of the Essays into which Hume broke down his greater works. 8 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. singular and concrete, like the facts perceived by the external senses. But we may proceed to abstract and generalize upon what we observe, and in this way discover laws which are to be regarded as the laws of our mental nature. In pursuing the methods we find laws or principles which are funda¬ mental and necessary. Aristotle called them first truths ; others have called them by other names : Kant designates them as d priori principles, and represents them as pro¬ nouncing synthetic judgments a priori. I hold that they perceive objects and truths directly and immediately, and hence may be called intuitions. They act prior to our ob¬ servation of them ; they act whether we observe them or not. It is the business of the metaphysician to look at their working, to determine their exact nature, their rule of action, and the authority which they claim. His inspec¬ tion of them does not make them operate, or determine their mode of operation. He can watch them because they act and as they act, and his special business is to determine their laws. When he has done so he has found a meta¬ physical, what indeed may be regarded as a philosophical, principle. A system or systematized arrangement of such principles constitutes metaphysics or mental philosophy. Kant was altogether right in saying that the end aimed at in metaphysics is to furnish an “ inventory ” or “ com¬ pendium ” of a priori principles. But he proceeded to at¬ tain this end in a wrong way — by the method of Criticism. Surely criticism must proceed on acknowledged rules or, tests. On what principles does Kant’s criticism proceed ? Kant answers, u Pure speculative reason has this peculiar¬ ity, that in choosing the various objects of thought it is able to define the limits of its own faculties, and even to give a complete enumeration of the possible modes of pro¬ posing problems to itself, and thus to stretch out the entire system of metaphysics ” (Pref. to 2d Edition). But must I OBJECT TO HIS CKITICAL METHOD. 9 therepnot in that case be a prior criticism of reason to find ont whether it can do this ? And must not this criticism imply a previous one from higher principles ad infinitum f Certain it is that from the time of Kant we have had a succession of critical philosophies, each professing to go deeper down than its predecessors, or to overtop them. Fortunately — I should rather say wisely — Kant takes the forms of common logic, which are so well founded, as his criticising principles, and has thus secured valuable truth and much systematic consistency ; only, these forms have helped to keep him from realities. Professor Mahaffy asks with amazement whether we are to accept without criticism the saws of the common people, or the dogmas of speculators — no one of whom agrees with his neighbor. To this I reply that it has always been under¬ stood that there is criticism in the inductive method. Ba¬ con would have us begin induction with the “ necessary rejections and exclusions.” Whately and logicians gener¬ ally speak of the necessity of “ analysis,” and Whewell en¬ joins “ the decomposition of facts.” But this analysis, or criticism, if you choose to call it so, must be applied to facts, in the case of mental science as made known by in¬ ternal observation. It must aim at separating the complex¬ ity of facts as they present themselves, and this in order to discover the law of each of the elements, and to keep us from making assertions of one of these which are true only of another, and of the whole what are true only of some of the parts. Our aim in metaphysics is to discover what truths are intuitively known, and for this purpose we must distinguish them from their concomitants, in particular from all mere contingent or empirical truths. All pro¬ fessed metaphysical principles are attempted generalizations of our intuitive perceptions and judgments. But these generalizations are in the first instance apt to be crude, by 10 A CRITICISM OP THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. \ reason of mixing np other things with primitive intuitions. Even in more advanced stages of philosophy metaphysi¬ cians are apt to lay down imperfect and mutilated princi¬ ples to support their theories. There is therefore need of a criticism to distinguish things that differ, but which are mixed together in experience, or are put in one category by system builders. But in our examination we are not to put ourselves above the facts. We must be at special pains not to override or mutilate them, still less to twist or tor- ture them. Our single aim should be to apprehend and express them accurately, and to apply them only to the objects | on which they bear. Kant speaks (Pref. to 2d Edition) of ! “ purifying the d priori principles by criticism whereas the proper office of the metaphysician is simply to discover j what they are, and to formulate them without addition or diminution. It is not to be understood that our observation of them, of : these first principles, gives them their being, and still less that it gives them their authority. Our notice of them does not give them existence. We notice them because they exist. By observation we can discover that they exist, and find the extent and limits of their jurisdiction and authority. Truth is truth, whether we observe it or no. Still, obser¬ vation has its place, and without a very careful induction, j metaphysics are sure to be nothing else than a system of arbitrary dogmas. The induction does not give them their title. They have their authority in themselves, but obser¬ vation makes their title known to us. Kant is constantly asserting that metaphysics are independent of the teaching of experience, and that they must not call in experience. They are independent of experience as that mountain is independent of my eye. Still, it is only by my eye that I can see the mountain. 1 A metaphysical philosophy can be constructed only by / ( I OBJECT TO HIS CRITICAL METHOD. 11 a j the induction of the operations of our intuitions. We can t J give the marks and tests of these intuitions. Their prima- i j ry and essential character is not necessity, as Leibnitz held ; i j nor necessity and universality, as Kant maintained ; but 1 sej£sjd4©»ee : they look immediately on things, and con- ' tain their evidence within themselves. Being so, they be- j come necessary, that is, have a necessity of conviction, which is the secondary test, and universal— that is, enter- ( tained by all men, which is their tertiary corroboration, f |j After, but not till after, having discovered and co-ordi- ji' nated intuitive principles, we may then, if we are deter- 1 mined, inquire whether they are to be trusted. Such an / P investigation can not, I fear, be very fruit-bearing; the result must be mainly negative. It is an attempt to dig [ beneath the ground on which the building rests, to fly ! above air* Still, by such a process we may be able to show that our intuitions confirm each other, and thus yield not a primary, but a secondary or reflected, evidence of their trustworthiness. It can also be shown that they do 1 not contradict each other ; that there is nothing in them to countenance the alleged antinomies of Kant, Hegel, Ham¬ ilton, or Spencer, all of which are contradictions, not in things or our intuitive convictions, but simply in the mu¬ tilated propositions drawn out by these men. But in the first and last resort we are to rest on the circumstance that these first principles are of the nature of intuitions looking directly on things. As this is the first, so it is also the strongest evidence that the mind can have. It is the strong¬ est which it can conceive itself to have. When it has this it is always satisfied, and it does not seek anything more ; and if more be offered, it will be felt to be a superfluity, and if it be pressed, it will be apt to resent it as insult. 12 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. II. J OBJECT TO KANTS PHENOMENAL THEORY OF PRIMITIVE KNOWLEDGE. Hume opens his Treatise of Human Nature : “ All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which I call impressions and ideas.” The difference between these consists in the greater live¬ liness of the impressions. Under impressions he includes such heterogeneous mental states as sensations, perceptions, emotions, and I should suppose resolutions. Under ideas he has memory, imagination (often as lively as sensation), judgment, reasoning, moral convictions, all massed together. Kant’s aim was to meet the great sceptic. In doing so he wished to make as few assumptions as possible. Let us assume, he virtually says, what no one can deny. Hume had said, “ As long as we confine our speculations to the appearances of objects to our senses, without entering into disquisitions concerning their real nature and operations, we are safe from all difficulties.” At this point Kant starts : Let us assume the existence of appearances — Hume’s very words ; of Erssheinungen, of Eindriicke — that is, impressions. This is his first and perhaps his greatest mistake. Kant, as it appears to me, should have met Hume’s very first positions. The mind does not begin with impressions. The word is vague, and in every way objectionable. It signifies a mark made by a harder body, say a seal, upon a softer body, say wax. Taken literally, it implies two bodies — one impressing, the other impressed ; applied meta¬ phorically, it indicates a body to impress and a mind im¬ pressed. As applied to our perceptions by consciousness, say of self as thinking, and our purely mental acts, as our I OBJECT TO HIS PHENOMENAL THEORY. 13 idea of moral good, it has and can have no meaning for there is nothing without impressing, and the operation has nothing whatever of the nature of an impression. Kant should have met these primary positions. But he concedes them. In doing so he has broken down his walls of defence, t and admitted the horse fashioned by the deceit of the 7 enemy, and is never able to expel him or counteract the j evil which he works. An impression, if it means any thing, means a thing im- pressed. An appearance, if we understand it, means a j thing appearing, and it seems to imply a being to whom it appears. An impression without a thing impressed is an i abstraction from a thing impressed. An appearance is an abstraction from a thing appearing. As all abstractions imply a concrete thing from which they are taken, so all appearances imply a thing known as appearing. In physics a phenomenon means a thing, a reality presented to be referred to a law. 1 I It has been commonly allowed, since the days of Locke that man’s two original inlets of knowledge are sensation or sense-perception, and reflection or self-consciousness. Kant speaks everywhere of an outer and an inner sense. Kow, I hold that by both of these we know things. By sense-perception we know our bodies and bodies beyond them; and Kant says correctly, “Extension and impen¬ etrability together constitute our conception of matter” (Trans., p. 379). There may be disputes difficult to settle— as what are our original and what our acquired sense- perceptions, whether of our bodily frame or of it with objects affecting it ; but our acquired imply original per¬ ceptions, and^both in the first instance and in the last resort contemplate objects as extended, and exercising some sort of energy. It is, if possible, still more emphatically true that self-consciousness reveals not mere appearance, but self as a thing, say as thinking or feeling. 14 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. But what, it may he asked, is the proof of this ? To this I answer, first, as an argumentum ad homvnem , that we have the same proof of it as we have of the impression, of the presentation, of the phenomenon. Whatever those who hold these slippery theories appeal to, I also appeal to ; and I am sure that the tribunal must decide in my be- j half. I have the same evidence of the existence of a thing 1 impressed as I have of the impression, of the thing appear¬ ing as I have of the appearance. But secondly, and posi¬ tively, the position I hold can stand the tests of intuition. It is self-evident ; we perceive the very things, say the nos¬ trils as affected, or self as reasoning. We do not need me¬ diate proof ; we have immediate. It is also necessary : I can not be made to believe otherwise that I do not exist, or | that there is no body resisting my energy. It is, farther, universal, as admitting no exceptions, and as being held by all men, young and old, savage and civilized. It can thus stand the tests used by Kant, which are the two last. Let us now turn to the account given by Kant. Ac¬ cording to him, we know mere appearance ; and his defini¬ tion is, “ the undetermined object of an empirical intuition is called an appearance or phenomenon.” Speaking of the rainbow, “not only are the rain-drops mere phenomena, but even their circular form, nay, the space itself through which they fall, is nothing in itself, but both are mere modifications or fundamental dispositions of our sensuous intuition, while the transcendental object remains for us utterly unknown ” (Trans., p. 38). This is his account not merely of material objects, but of space, time, and self. “ Time and space, with all phenomena therein, are not in themselves things. They are nothing but representations, and can not exist out of and apart from the mind. Kay, the sensuous internal intuition of the mind (as the object of consciousness), the determination of which is represented :] I I l 1 I OBJECT TO HIS PHENOMENAL THEORY. 15 by the succession of different states in time, is not the real proper self as it exists in itself, not the transcendental sub¬ ject, but only a phenomenon which is presented to the sen¬ sibility of this, to us, unknown being ” (Trans., p. 307). Professor Mahaffy calls on me to define what I mean by thing. I answer that it is one of those simple objects which according to all logicians can not be logically de¬ fined ; not because we do not know it, but because we know it at once, and can not find anything simpler or clearer by which to explain it. All that we can do posi¬ tively is to say that %t is what we know it to be ; or to ex¬ press it in synonymous phrases, and call it a being or an existence. But we may, as logicians allow in such cases, lay down some negative propositions to face misapprehen¬ sions, and to distinguish it from other things with which it may be confounded. 1. A! is not an abstract or general knowledge, say of a to ok or essence or being; or of a quality, say form or thought ; or of a maxim, say that a property implies a substance. Our primary knowledge is in no sense a science, which is knowledge systematized. But the knowledge thus arranged is real knowledge, and be¬ cause it is so, science is to be regarded as dealing with reali¬ ties, and gives no sanction to agnostics or nihilism. 2. This thing is not a mere appearance. What appears may be known very vaguely — it may be a cloud, a shadow, or the image of a tree in a river. Still it is a reality — that is, a real thing ; it consists of drops of moisture, of a surface deprived of light, or of a reflection. 3. Man’s primary perception is not of a relation between objects, but of ob¬ jects themselves. When I see a round body I see it as a round body. I may also be conscious of myself as per¬ ceiving it. Having these two objects I may discover a re¬ lation between them, and find that the round body affects me. But I first know the round body and the self, and as ex- 16 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. i sting independent of each other. The round body maybe seen by others as well as me, and the self may next instant be contemplating a square body. Holding by these posi¬ tions we are delivered from both the phenomenal and rela¬ tive theories of knowledge of body and mind, and find that we have real things, between winch we may discover relations which are also real. A relation without things ( has always appeared to me to be like a bridge with nothing j to lean on at either end. The thing which I thus posit is, I admit, not the same as that of which Kant speaks. We are told that Kant had two kinds of sensible knowledge — things as phenomena, and things per se. I have been asserting that we know more than phenomena. I allow that what I assume is not the thing in itself — the Ding an sich, as Kant expresses it ; the thing per se, as Mahaffy translates it. I confess that I do not understand what is meant to be denoted by this phrase, which seems to me to be of a misleading character, j as seeming to have a profound meaning when it has no meaning at all. If I have the thing, I do not care about j having the in itself, as an addition — if, indeed, it be an ad- dition. It is enough for me that I know the thing,dlm very thing, and I may wish to know more of the thing ; ? and this I may be able to do, but only by making additions in the same way as I have acquired my primary knowl¬ edge. As to the thing in itself, it always reminds of the whale that swallowed itself. I do believe that Kant, like Locke, wished to be a real¬ ist, but both had great difficulty in getting a footing on terra firma / Locke by making the mind perceive only ideas, and Kant because he made it perceive phenomena, which are only a more fugitive form of ideas. He opposes ideal¬ ism, and maintains that the internal implies the existence of the external — by a very doubtful argument, as it appears to I OBJECT TO HIS PHENOMENAL THEORY, 17 me, unless we give the internal the power of knowing the external. He is quite sure that there is a thing, a Ding •an sich. But then he admits that we can never reach it, can never catch it. The thing does exist, hut then it is a thing unknown and unknowable, and we land ourselves in contradiction if we suppose that we know it. Kant is thus the true founder and Hamilton the supporter (both without meaning it), and Herbert Spencer the builder of the doc¬ trine of nescience or agnostics, underlying so much of the philosophic and physical speculation of the present day. We can avoid these consequences only by making the mind begin with a reality. If we do not begin with it we can not end with it. H we do not assume it we can not in¬ fer it. “ How can we reason but from what we know \ ” And if there be not knowledge and fact in the premises, we can not, as Kant knew well, have it in the conclusion without a gross paralogism. Kant holds that the mind has the power of Perception, of Anschauung. But let us carefully note what this Per¬ ception is. He argues that there is a thing, a thing in itself without the mind, but this is unknown and unknow¬ able, and is known simply by what it produces in the mind. In the perception itself there is both an a priori and an a posteriori element — a sensation of color, or feel¬ ing, or taste caused from without, but perceived under the form of space m the mind, hi ow all these are in the mind itself. I may quote from The Reproduction in the Text- Booh to Kant by Dr. Stirling, who surely understands his author : “We know only our own affections. What we call things are only these affections themselves variously combined, manipulated, and placed.” “All our knowl¬ edge consists of two factors and both are subjective.” “ We have always to recollect that what we call things are but aggregates of our own sensations and nothing really 18 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. without.” This is true even of space and time. “ Whether we look on space or time, it is only our own states we knoT A in either” (p. 42). This seems to me to be a very artificial u and altogether a very unnatural account of perception — a If, / process of which we are all conscious. It certainly takes j , external things and issues logi- |jj ' altogether from us away cally in agnosticism. I am aware that in maintaining the reality of things within and without we have to draw certain distinctions. There is the distinction between our original and acquired perceptions. It is only in the first of these that we know the thing directly ; the others we know only by a process of gathered experience in which error may creep in. We now know approximately what are our original perceptions by the various senses. By the eye we know primarily only* a colored surface. By the muscular sense we know bodies as solid or impenetrable. By the senses of taste, smell, and feeling we seem to know only our organism as affected. These distinctions were unknown to Kant and his imme¬ diate followers, and have only been revealed to us by the experiments wrought on the senses, such as those of Chisel- den and Franz, showing that we do not know distance by the eye. It may be noticed, also, that in the school of Kant there is not so much attention paid as in the school of Locke and Beid to the distinction often ill-expressed between the Pri¬ mary and Secondary Qualities of Matter. The Primary are such as extension and potency, found in all bodies, whereas the Secondary are organic affections, such as colors, heat, sounds, tastes, implying an external cause. Thus heat is felt as an affection of the bodily frame, but it has a cause in molecular motion. Carrying these distinctions with us, we can and should maintain that in our original sense-per¬ ceptions we know matter and its primary qualities directly and immediately. THE MIND IMPOSING FOEMS. 19 in. OBJECT TO KANTS IDEAL DOCTRINE OF THE MIND IMPOSING FORMS ON THINGS AP¬ PEARING. This error connects itself with the previous ones. Man upposed to perceive not things, but appearances, and he is in forms to give unity to scattered appearances. These forms are void in themselves ; they need a content, and they are applicable to objects of possible experience, but to noth¬ ing else. The language is meant to express a truth, but it fails to do so. Would it be correct to represent the law of gravitation, as a form, void in itself, and capable of being applied to matter and its molecules ? The correct statement lis that gravitation is a property of matter. In like manner, the original endowments of mind are powers in the mind itself, enabling us to know things. Kant maintains that it must either be the external that 'determines the internal, or the internal that determines the external. The experientialist makes the external determine the internal, makes the mind simply reflect what passes be¬ fore it. Kant maintains in opposition that the internal de¬ termines the external, and he would thus raise a breakwater in the' mind itself against materialism and scepticism. But purely the natural and rational supposition is that the inter¬ nal perceives (not creates) the external, and it should be iadded, the internal also. The primitive intellectual exer¬ cises of the mind are perceptions looking at things. By sense-perception we perceive external objects in our body or beyond it as they are presented to us, and we know them Ls extended and resisting our energy. By self-consciousness we know self as thinking, imagining, hating, or loving. These exercises are all singular, but we can generalize them 20 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. and thus discover the laws of our perceptions — be it c served, perceptions of things, and not impressions or a pearances — and these form an important department metaphysic, which becomes a positive department of til science, and not a mere police, as Kant would make it preserve us from error. We have here in the mind p ciples which, looking to things, give us fundamental tru But Kant gives to these principles not a mere percept but a formative power. Our intuitions are not per< tions, looking at things and the relations of things, but l moulds imposing on phenomena what is not in the phe-l nomena. Our primary knowledge thus consists of two ele¬ ments, one d posteriori from experience, the other d prion from the stores of the mind. This may be the appropriate place at which to call atten tion to the phrases d priori and d posteriori , so constantly employed in all philosophic works. In the philosophy of, Aristotle, by proceeding d priori is meant going from cause to effect or from antecedent to consequent ; by d posteriori , arguing from effect to cause or from consequent to antecedent. Hume occasionally uses the phrases, bul gives them a somewhat different signification. By d priori he designates what is known, independent of experience ; by d posteriori , what is gathered by experience. It is ir this sense the terms are used by Kant, and in all the phi¬ losophies that have ramified from, or been influenced by him. These phrases are so universally used that we can no' discard them. But in employing them let us understand what is meant by them. We are not to interpret them as implying that there is 'knowledge or notions in the mind prior to experience. Hor are we to use them as implying that the mind in its perceptions gives to the object a qual¬ ity not in the thing as known. By d priori we denote principles which are in the very THE MIND IMPOSING FORMS. 21 | nature and constitution of tlie mind '—to use language fa¬ vored by Butler and the Scottish school. But in some con¬ nections the phrase is liable to be misunderstood, and may / lead into serious error. It' may mean that we are entitled to start with a favorite principle without previously in¬ quiring whether it has a place in the mind, and what is its precise place ; and then rear upon it or by it a huge super¬ structure. I use the phrase as one universally adopted, but I employ it only as I explain it. I denote by it those prin¬ ciples, intellectual and moral, which act in the mmd natu¬ rally and necessarily. But I do not allow that we can use them in constructing systems till we have first carefully in¬ ducted them. I believe in a priori laws operating spon¬ taneously in the mind, but I do not believe in an & prior i science constructed by man. There is a sense indeed in which there may be an a priori science — that is, a science composed of the d priori principles in the mind. _ But then they have to be discovered in order to form a science, and their precise nature and mode of operation determined by a \posteriori inspection. Like the Scottish school, I am suspi¬ cious of the lofty systems of ancient, mediaeval, and modem times which have been fashioned by human ingenuity. Acting on this principle, I reject, with the majority o Sinking people, and with metaphysicians themselves more ;han half the metaphysics that have been constructed. At ;imes I am grateful when I discover a native principle voven into these webs, only considerably twisted. In re¬ jecting these speculations I am not to be charged with rejecting d priori truths in the mind. I am simply scepti¬ cal of the use that has been made of them by the mgenui y of man. With me, philosophy consists in a body of first ’Thev are the Regulative Principles spoken of under the Three- fold Aspect of Intuition .« the opening of No. V. of thin Serie,. 22 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. principles in the mind, carefully observed and expressed. This may be as firm and sure as any system of natur?1, science^ *\ But in employing them, let us understand what we mean by them. We are not to understand them as implying that there is knowledge or notions in the mind prior to ex¬ perience. They are to be understood as simply denoting that these laws are in the mind prior to any exercise of them! and regulating our exercises, intellectual and moral, and guaranteeing great fundamental truths. Of this description is the law in our mind which leads us to decide that an ef¬ fect proceeds from a cause. Here I may remark that there is an ambiguity in the term 1 experience,’ which has seldom been noticed. It may denote an individual experience or it may signify a gathered experience or induction. In the former sense, everything! which passes through the mind is an experience — say the experience of ourselves in pain or of ourselves as knowing and deciding. In this sense every exercise of intuition or of d priori reason is an experience. These individual ex-/ periences, it is evident, do not reveal anything beyond themselves. But'* when we talk of experience making known truth we mean a gathered experience or an induc¬ tive process leading to a law. It is in this latter sense that we draw the distinction between truth discovered a priori and truth discovered by experience or a posteriori — the better phrase would be ‘ inductive experience.’ He admits that there is an a posteriori matter furnished by the senses. I confess I have had a difficulty in finding what this a posteriori matter is. In the Introduction he tells us what belongs to “ sensuous experience,” — “ color, hard¬ ness or softness, weight, impenetrability, etc.” In the open¬ ing of the Transcendental ^Esthetic he gives us as belong¬ ing to sensation, “impenetrability, hardness, color,” etc. It THE MIND IMPOSING POEMS. 23 /tic is rather strange to find impenetrability here, as it implies both extension and force, which, in his system, are supposed ? be imposed d priori by the mind itself. This shows in ,/hat difficulties he is when he would refer some percep- ions to sensation or experience and others to forms in the mind. But while he holds that we get so much from sensation and experience, he maintains that we have a more import¬ ant a priori element imposed as a form on objects. Phe¬ nomena present themselves through the senses as manifold and scattered. I perceive a rose to have unconnected phe¬ nomena, as particles, colors, odors, shapes, and the mind combines them into a unity of object. Now, we have to Imeet Kant at this second point as we have met him at the /first. I have been arguing that the mind begins with the 1 knowledge of things existing ; and I now affirm that this knowledge is of things in the concrete, of substances with their properties, of body as at once having form and color, of this stone at one and the same time with the form of a cross and of a brown color. The unity is not given to it by the mind, it is in the object, say the rose or stone ; but is perceived at once by the senses. At this point he intro¬ duces his first ideal element and in doing so he gives an en¬ tirely erroneous view of what the senses disclose. He carried this distinction into every exercise of the senses, there being always an d posteriori part but a more pow¬ erful d priori element imparted by the mind. He uses this latter part as a rock to beat back the waves of scepticism. But in all this, he has, in fact, allowed the entrance of a more subtle scepticism than that of Hume. In all cases the subjective joins on to the objective, and we can not tell what the object as a thing is as distinguished from the sub¬ ject. For if the formative mind may add one thing, why not two, or ten, or a hundred, till we know not what reality is left us ? 24 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. Thus we have a door opened for the entrance at one anc the same time of idealism and agnosticism; both of thee have, in fact, come in. We have an ideal element contri uted by the mind, an element giving no objective reali; and an empirical element, implying it may be a reality, which, however, must forever remain unknown. We shall see that higher minds, such as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, used the ideal factor and raised imposing structures, of which we are not sure whether they are solid mountains or cloudland. While more earthly minds took the other fac¬ tor and drove it to an agnosticism which seeks a basis in materialism, Hume said that “if we carry our inquiry be¬ yond the appearances of objects to the senses, I am afraid that most of our conclusions will be full of scepticism and uncertainty.” But we have seen that when we make what are commonly regarded as things to be mere appearances, we are certainly landed in these issues with nothing left to deliver us from them. I have already referred to the distinction between ana¬ lytic and synthetic judgments, and to the circumstance that metaphysics consist in synthetic judgments d priori. I maintain that metaphysics have to look first to things be¬ fore they compare things, and have to treat of primitive cognitions before they treat of primitive judgments. But so far as judgments are concerned, the distinction is a valid and an important one. But Kant’s account is not accurate. 1 There are undoubtedly synthetic judgments d priori. But what is their nature ? They are not judgments apart from things, they are judgments about things; that two straight lines can not enclose a space is such a judgment, but it is a judgment about lines. From what we know about straight lines, we perceive and are sure and decide that they can not enclose a space. The same is true of the innumerable other primitive synthetic judgments. Such THE HIND IMPOSING FORMS. 25 ,re those we pronounce in regard to space and number and ime, as that two straight lines which have gone on for an nch without coming nearer each other will go on forever is straight lines without being nearer ; that equals added ';o equals must be equals, and that time is continuous and uas no breaks in it ; we perceive these propositions to be true from the nature of the things as known to us. Such are all mathematical axioms, and all deep ethical maxims, such as that we should keep our word. In order to prevent his philosophy from rising into total -dealism, he is forever telling us that the forms which he Calls in have a meaning only as applied to objects of pos¬ sible experience. Here, as in so many other cases in Ivant’s philosophy, there is truth involved, but it is not accurately expressed. What propriety would there be in saying that gravitation has a meaning only when applied to objects of possible experience ? The true statement is that gravita¬ tion is a law of all material things. So we would say of the primitive judgment of causation that every effect has a cause ; that it is not a judgment applicable to all objects of possible experience, but to all objects known to us as real. I am now to apply these principles in the examination f Kant’s “ Kritik of Pure Reason” in detail, simply avoiding those topics in which his meaning is disputed. The forms which the mind is supposed to superinduce on objects fall into three classes : I. In .Esthetic, that is, the senses, the Forms of Space and Time. II., In Analytic, the Categories of Quantity, Quality, Relation, Modality, each including three subdivisions, in all twelve ; and III. In Dialectic, the three Ideas of Substance, Interdependence of Phenomena, and God. 26 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. \ Transcendental ^Esthetic. In treating of the doctrine that the mind knows onb appearances, I have indicated my objections to Kant’, account of the senses. It keeps us away altogether fron things which it is the very object of the senses to makt known to us. He maintains resolutely that there is a work existing external to the mind, but on his principles there can be no evidences of this. He left himself no means oi meeting his quondam pupil Fichte, when he argued thaj the mind which could create space and time might alsC create the objects in space and time ; that the mind which could give extension to this ball might give it everything else which it has. This external thing is represented, quite inconsistently with his theory, to be unknown and unknow able. If an appeal be made to sense and experience to tes tify that the external thing exists, these will testify farther, that we know something of it — in fact, we know it to exist because we know so far what it is. He tells us that “all intuition possible to us is sensuous” (Trans., p. 90). The word “ sensuous ” is apt to leave a bad impression, and has, in fact, left such an impression, as it seems to represent all intuition as being of the externa senses. But he evidently means to include in the phrase ot internal sense or self-consciousness. Both these senses pei ceive only phenomena. Even self-consciousness gives uf nothing more. u The subject intuites itself, not as it woule represent itself immediately and spontaneously, but accord ing to the manner in which the mind is internally affected consequently as it appears, and not as it is ” (Trans., p. 41). I may give another passage or two as translated by Mr.,' Mahaffy : “ The internal sense by which the mind intuites' its own internal states gives us no intuition of the soul as an object.” “ Our self-consciousness does not present to us i i V TRANSCENDENTAL .ESTHETIC. 27 *he ego any more distinctly than our external intuition does co us foreign bodies ; we know both only as phenomena.” He does not seem to ascribe much to this internal intuition. f‘ The notion of personality though d priori is not an intu¬ ition at all,” but “ a logical supposition of thought.” At this point, that is, at his account of our internal intuition, our higher British and American metaphysicians are most inclined to leave him. Kant’s whole account of self-consciousness is complicated and confused. Dr. Stirling, in his Reproduction , in ex¬ plaining Kantism, tells us “ that inner sense is, as a sense, to be strictly distinguished from self-consciousness or the perception of the ego. The contents of the former are all the transient states of the empirical subject when under sentient feeling; whereas those of the latter are but the simple I, a mere intellectual act ; the bare thought, I, I, I, or I that am here and now thinking ( das ‘ ich denke .’ )” We shall see as we advance that he brings in an “ I think,” which gives a unity to all our thinking. All these are un¬ natural and perverted accounts of the one thing, self-con¬ sciousness, or the internal sense. It is the power which perceives — that is, knows — self in its present state. It runs through all our states, giving us a continuous self, and the various states of self, say, as thinking or willing. Kant argues that in getting rid of many appearances about what is revealed by the senses, such as color, odor, feeling, we can never put away or get rid of space in the external, or time in the internal sense. These he represents as forms imposed by the mind ; space being the form of material, and time of mental phenomena. There is some little foundation of truth in all this, but the statement is, after all, utterly perverse, and it is made to give currency to error. Certainly space is involved in all the exercises of the external senses ; but this, properly interpreted, means 28 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. simply that we know matter as extended. It is true that time is bound up with the exercise of the internal sense, or self-consciousness, hut by this we are simply to under¬ stand that all events are remembered in time. It does not follow that they are creations of the mind, or that they are properly represented when they are spoken of as forms im¬ posed on phenomena. It is not true that extension and duration are superimposed on objects; they are in the. very nature of the objects and events as made known to us. There are other things besides space and time that we can not be rid of in thought, as we contemplate things per¬ ceived. For example, we know both matter and mind as having being. The old Eleatics were right in giving to ov a deep place in their philosophy, though they erred in mak¬ ing so many affirmations about so simple a thing. I believe farther that we know all objects disclosed by the senses as having power, as acting and being acted on. I think we might farther represent them as in a sense having inde¬ pendence and permanence, that is, they are not created by our minds as we observe objects, nor do they cease to exist when we cease to notice them. They exist independent of us, and whether we notice them or not. They are as much entitled to be called forms as space and time. Being, po¬ tency, permanence, are not d priori forms imposed on sub¬ stances ; they are in the substances. Just as little is exten¬ sion added to matter or duration added to events ; they are in matter and discerned to be in matter or mind. Kant represents space and time as having an existence, but it is merely a subjective existence, that is, in the mind as contemplating objects and events. But I affirm that in¬ tuitively and necessarily all men look on them as existing, and as existing independently of our noticing them. I am quite as sure of the reality of space and time in¬ dependent of my mind as of the objects in space and TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC. 29 time. By making space and time merely subjective, Kant introduced an ideal element into bis philosophy which he could never expel. We have only to carry out the same principle a step farther to be landed m the thorough idealism of Fichte, and make the mind create the objects in space and the occurrences in time. Then when men come to perceive that an ideal existence is no existence, but merely an imaginary or ghostly existence, the creed they adopt will be nescience. We find extremes meeting m the present day in a pretentious idealism joined with a deadly ^ButwhTt is space ? and what is time? The answer is, that we can not explain them so as to make them conceiv¬ able to one who did not already know them. But we all know them in the concrete in objects and events, and we are sure that they are what we know them to be. We do not need any explanations as to what they are, we perceive them directly, and are satisfied without feeling it necessary to put any farther questions. From what we know we can make many affirmations regarding them. The axioms and demonstrations of mathe¬ matics proceed upon them. The Kantians labor to show that they can explain by their forms the certainty and the necessity of mathematical truths, which are just the evolu- tion of what the mind imposes on appearances. Kant found that he could not trace out and learn the proper les of an isosceles triangle from what he saw m it, or from mere thinking about it, but rather from what he had added ™ 2 in his own mind d priori, and had them rep- resentedby a construction. He also found that all the safe Zriori knowledge he could obtain about it was mere y the necessary consequence of what he had introduced mo it according to his own concepts’ (Mahaffiy s Cnt. Phil for English Readers, p. 12). But surely this leaves it 30 A CKITICISM OF THE CBITICAL PHILOSOPHY. utterly uncertain whether what we thus bring out of our minds can be asserted of veritable things ; whether, so far as things are concerned, we can say that the angles of a triangle must be equal to two right angles ; or whether par¬ allel lines can not meet. We have a much simpler and more rational way of accounting for the apodictic certainty of mathematics. We perceive lines and surfaces as reali¬ ties ; we agree to look solely to the length of lines and the length and breadth of surfaces ; and as we do so we dis¬ cover that they have certain properties involved in their very nature, and that the three angles of a triangle are together equal to two right angles, and that parallel lines can not meet. The properties of the ellipse, as demon¬ strated by Apollonius, were ready to be applied to the planetary bodies when Kepler showed that they moved in elliptic orbits. On the other hand, we may put many questions regarding space and time which we can not an¬ swer. Affirmations are often made of them which are altogether meaningless, and which we can neither prove or disprove. There may be assertions made in regard to them which are contradictory, and this not because there is any¬ thing inconsistent in the things themselves, but because we make rash statements which contradict each other. While we have a knowledge of space and time we should allow that this is somewhat indefinite. We know them as realities ; but do we ever know them apart from other things ? We know this body as occupying space, we know this event as occurring in time, and we know the space and time to be realities quite as much as the body and the event is ; but do we ever know space and time as separate things, or capable of a distinct and independent existence — as a tree is distinct from an animal ? Space and time look as if somehow or other — we may not be able to tell how — they were always connected with something else, as if they were TEANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC. 31 lependent on something else for their manifestation. I believe them to be dependent on God, who inhabits all space and all time. In following our intuitive convictions as to space and time, we are constrained to regard both as having no limits. This gives rise to a difficulty which Kant has powerfully pressed. It seems to make two infinites, that of space and time, each embracing all things, while we are also con¬ strained to believe in a third infinite, in God the Almighty, che Eternal. But there is a misapprehension involved in this objection. We do not hold that space and time are nfinites ; infinity is merely an attribute of both. We do lot say of their infinity that it embraces all things — we vould never propose to make the infinity of space embrace norality. When we say that space is infinite we mean imply that there are no limits to its extension. There is lot even an apparent inconsistency between this and the infinity of time and the infinity of God. It can not be iroven that the infinity of space or time is inconsistent |vith the infinity of God ; more probably they are em- iraced in His infinity. Transcendental Analytic. We now rise from the Senses to the Understanding, der V'erstand, from Intuitions to Notions or Conceptions. The understanding pronounces judgments. He gives an inven¬ tory of these judgments and calls them Categories. The phrase is taken from Aristotle, who has ten Categories, being the heads under which our predications regarding things may be ranged. The aim of Kant, as has been shown again md again, is somewhat different : it is to give us the forms yhich the mind imposes on our intuitions or perceptions in ;;he judgments which it pronounces. They are four in number, each subdivided into three, in all twelve. 32 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. I. Quantity. Unity. II. Quality. Reality. Negation. Limitation. Plurality. Totality. III. Relation. IV. Modality. Possibility and Impossibility. Existence and Non-existence. I Necessity and Contingence. Inherence and Subsistence. Causality and Dependence. Reciprocity of Agent and Patient. There has been an immense amount of discussion in Germany about these categories. The first two of the f oui ' are evidently taken from Logic, of which Kant was pro fessor, and are found in all treatises of formal logic. Tin remarks of Kant upon them have helped to make th< ordinary logic more clear, consistent, and philosophical They are represented as mathematical, whereas the othe two are dynamical and certainly imply ideas of being, o force and causation. These last are metaphysical rathe: than logical and do not now appear in the treatises o> formal logic which treat of the laws of discursive thought It appears to me that Kant should here have given u not the forms of logic, but the relations which the min< can discover. It is the province of the psychologica faculty of judgment to discover relations. This was per ceived by Locke, who gave an excellent classification of tin relations, making them, however, relations between idea which we are capable of discerning, and not things. Hum- also gives the mind a power of discovering relations, anc gives a good enumeration of them, endeavoring all the time to explain them away by showing that the relations arme sort .ot causation, which may differ, however, in every different kind o Thpse mav be so stated as to be contradictory. But our con victions in themselves involve no contradiction ; it that they do by the law of contradiction, which is that A _ Not A ” “ There is some sort of causation even 1 J > Sftta wih is free- no one can show that toe two propostttons are contradictory. Fourth Antinomy. There exists in the world, or in An absolutely necessaj bang connection with it, as a part or as doe. not exist, ettemftew the cause of it, an absolutely nec- or out of .1, as the cause essary being. world- , Our reason seems to say that time and space must have ever existed either by reason or experience intuitions will show A little patient investigation ol our actual uih 42 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. that all these contradictions, of which the Kantians and Hegelians make so much, are not in our constitutions but in the ingenious struc¬ tures fashioned by metaphysicians to support their theories. It is often urged as a powerful argument in favor of Kant’s phe¬ nomenal theory that it enables us to see that there may be no inconsist¬ ency between the universal reign of causality and the freedom of the will ; for both are to be regarded as laws of the phenomenal and not the real world. But all this shows, not that the will is free in the real world, but merely that it may be free ; while we are obliged to look upon it as not free in this world of appearances in which we live. It is surely much more satisfactory to show that in the real world it is free and that it can not be proven that there is a contradiction between this fact and the law of causation properly explained. The Theistic Arguments. — He has a well-known three¬ fold classification of them : the Ontological, the Cosmolog¬ ical, and the Pliysico-Theological. I have no partiality for the first two. The first is, that from the idea of the perfect in the mind we may argue the existence of a perfect being. I am not sure that the idea of the perfect implies the exist¬ ence of a corresponding being, though it prepares us for receiving the evidence and enables us to clothe the Divine Being shown on other grounds to exist, with perfection. In regard to the second, which infers from the bare existence of a thing that it has a cause, I am not prepared, from the bare existence of a handful of sand, or a piece of clay, to argue that it must have had a Divine Cause. But I hold that the third, more frequently called the Teleological, the argument from design, is conclusive if properly stated. Kant can not ac¬ knowledge its validity, simply because it implies the prin¬ ciple of cause and effect, which he regards as applying only to appearances, and having merely a subjective value. But when we hold that the things in the world are real, and discover so wonderful an adjustment among them to pro¬ duce a good end, say of rays of light, muscles, coats and humors, cones and nerves to enable us to see, then we are entitled to argue a real cause in a designer, whom the idea THE PRACTICAL REASON. 43 of the perfect in the mind constrains us to clothe with infinity. The objection taken to all this, is that from a finite effect, say of a wonderful combination of tilings to accomplish an end, we can not argue an infinite cause. I believe no man ever said that we can. All that the design proves is a de¬ signer, and it is from the idea of the infinite in the mind that we clothe him with infinity, just as it is from our moral nature, as Kant admits, that we clothe him with moral perfection. The Practical Reason. The part of the Kantian philosophy which is the strong¬ est and healthiest is the ethical. No writer in ancient or modern times has stood up more resolutely for an inde¬ pendent morality. There may, he thinks, be legitimate disputes as to what things are, and the speculative reason may lead to illusions, but the moral power comes in to save us from scepticism. He finds here a moral reason by which the good is perceived, not as a phenomenon by superimposed forms, but directly. This reason takes the form of a Categorical Imperative, which seems to me a most admirable designation, bringing into view at one and the same time the affirmative and obligatory character of mo¬ rality. The law which it sanctions is a modification of the supreme ethical law laid down by our Lord, and is ! Act according to a rule applicable to all intelligences. This implies that man is free and responsible, and as a corol¬ lary, that he is responsible, that there is a judgment day and a future life, and a God to guarantee the whole. Mo¬ rality, immortality, and God are thus indissolubly bound together. I confess I should like to have this whole connected ar¬ gument expressed in language not involving any peculiarly 44 a criticism: of the critical philosophy. Kantian phraseology and principles. In particular, great good would be done by a psychological account of the Practical Reason, and by an explanation and defence of the precise nexus between the moral law and the existence of God. This is eminently needed in the present day, when the common sentiment is sensitively averse to the nomen¬ clature and abstractions of high metaphysical philosophy. It was argued at an early date after the publication of Kant’s great work, that if the speculative reason may de¬ ceive by leading us into illusions, the moral reason may do the same. I believe that the phenomenal and illusory prin¬ ciples of the Kritik of the Pure Reason, if carried out in a Kritik of the Practical Reason would undermine morality. It seems to me very clear that we must proceed on the same principles in expounding intelligence and truth as we do in defending morality. I am _ convinced that the prin¬ ciples of his ethics, if carried into the region of the specu¬ lative reason, would establish positive truth, without illu¬ sions of any kind. Surely the Practical Reason, according to Kant, has a power of intuition: it at once perceives moral good. I think that on like evidence he should have called in, and appealed to, certain intuitions of intelligence which look at things and guarantee reality. Had he done so, we should have had as firm a foundation for truth as he has furnished for morality. I believe that Kant has substantially established his moral positions. - They can not be assailed, except on grounds which Kant himself unfortunately furnished. Kant admitted, in fact argued, that the speculative reason led to illusions, indeed to contradictions, on the supposition that we know things, and then brought in the moral reason to bring us back to truth and certainty. The nsk m all such procedure is, that those led into the slough may be caught there and go no farther. For if the speculative THE PRACTICAL REASON". 45 reason may gender illusions, what reason have we for think¬ ing that the practical reason gives us only truth ? I do not admire the wisdom of those who first make men infidels in order to shut them into truth— as they feel the blankness of nihilism. It was in mockery that Hume, after showing that reason leads into contradictions, allowed religious men to appeal to faith. There was far less shrewdness shown by those philosophers in the age following, who, after allowing that the intellect leads to scepticism, fell back with Jacobi and Rousseau (who was a favorite with Kant) on an ill-defined faith or feeling. The pursuing hound which had caught and tom to pieces the understanding, having tasted blood, became more infuriated, and went on to attack and devour the belief or sentiment. It is of vast moment, both logi¬ cally and practically, to uphold the reason in discovering truth, if we would defend the reason in discovering the good] I deny that the reason ever lands us in contradic¬ tions or leads into error or even illusion. In the antinomies the mistakes are all in our own statements, and not in the dictates of our nature. The intellect does not lead to all truth, but if properly guided it conducts to a certain amount of truth, clear, well established, and sure. Begin¬ ning with realities, it adds to these indefinitely by induc¬ tion and by thought. The speculative reason properly employed, so far from conflicting with and weakening moral reason, confirms and strengthens it. Proceeding in our inductive method, with criticism merely as a subordinate means, we keep clear of that heresy into which the Kantians have fallen of making a schism in the body — which in this case is not the church, but the mind. I can not allow that one part or organ of our nature leads to error, and another to truth. I hope we have done with that style of sentiment, so common an age 46 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. or two ago, which lamented in so weakly a manner, often with a vast amount of affectation, that reason led to scepti¬ cism, from which we are saved by faith, and which was greatly strengthened by Kant’s doctrine of the practical reason coming in to counteract the illusion of the speculative reason. The account I have given above makes every part of our nature correspond to and conspire with every other. It does more— it makes every faculty of the mind yield its testimony to its Divine author. The understanding collat¬ ing the facts in nature and observing the collocations therein, and proceeding on its own inherent law of cause and effect, which I represent as having an objective value, furnishes the argument from design for God’s existence. Then our moral nature comes in, and reveals a law above us and binding on us, and clothes the intelligence which we have discovered with love. I admit that the finite works of God do not prove God to be infinite. I repeat, no one ever said that they did. But this circumstance has made Kant and his school insist that thereby the theistic argument is made in¬ valid. But as we call in our moral nature to clothe God with rectitude, so we call in that idea of the infinite, the perfect, which the mind has, and which was fondly dwelt on by Anselm, Descartes, and Leibnitz, to clothe him with infinity. Our nature is thus a harmoniously constructed instrument, raising a hymn to its Creator. The Kkjtik of the Judging Faculty. Kant brings in this power (Urtheilskraft) in a very awk¬ ward manner. He had previously spoken of Judgment in the ordinary logical sense, and shown that it is regulated by Categories. He now brings in an entirely different kind of Judgment. Its office is to mediate between the Keason and the Understanding, as if they had had a quar¬ rel. It is brought in to fill up a gap, not in the mind, but COMPARED WITH SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY. 47 in his system, which had overlooked certain very prominent exercises of the soul. It is one of the abutments which he is ever adding to enable him to give a place to all the men¬ tal phenomena and to support his edifice. In this work he treats of Final Cause and Beauty in nature. He advances some views as true as they are beautiful. I do not mean to criticise his theories, as they form no essential part of his philosophy. He follows his old tendencies and makes final cause and beauty to be imposed on objects by the mind. The true account is that they imply qualities in the objects which the mind perceives.1 Having taken this general critical survey of the philoso¬ phy of Kant, it may serve a good purpose to compare and contrast it with the Scottish. Sir James Mackintosh and Dr. Chalmers, who were trained in the Scottish school, upon becoming somewhat acquainted in mature life with the German system, were greatly interested to notice the points of resemblance between the two philosophies. The two — the Scotch and the German — agree, and they differ. Each has a fitting representative : the one in Thomas Reid and the other in Immanuel Kant. The one was a careful observer, guided by common sense — with the meaning of good sense — suspicious of high speculations as sure to have error lurking in them, and shrinking from extreme posi¬ tions ; the other was a powerful logician, a great organizer and systematizer, following his principles to their conse¬ quences, which he was ever ready to accept, avow, and pro¬ claim. The two have very important points of agreement. Reid and Kant both lived to oppose Hume, the great scep¬ tic, or, as he would be called in the present day, agnostic. 1 1 may state that I have expounded my views of Final Cause in No. II. of this Series, and of Beauty in The Emotions, B. III., c. 8. 48 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. Both met him by calling in great mental principles, which reveal and guarantee truth, which can never be set aside, and which have foundations deep as the universe. Both appeal to reason, which Reid called reason in the first de¬ gree, and the other pure reason. The one presents this reason to us under the name of common sense — that is, the powers of intelligence common to all men ; the other, as principles necessary and universal. The one pointed to laws, native and fundamental ; the other, to forms in the mind. The one carefully observed these by consciousness, and sought to unfold their nature ; the other determined their existence by a criticism, and professes to give an in¬ ventory of them. All students should note these agree¬ ments as confirmatory of the truth in both. The Scotch and German people do so far agree, while they also differ. Both have a considerable amount of broad sense, and, I may add, of humor ; but the Scotch have greater clearness of thinking, and the Germans of at¬ tractive idealism. Scotland and Germany, in the opinion of foreigners, are not very far distant from each other. But between them there roars an ocean which is often very stormy. I proceed to specify the differences of the two philosophies. First, they differ in their Method. The Scotch follows the Inductive Method as I have endeavored to explain it. The German has created and carried out the Critical Method, which has never been very clearly explained and examined. It maintains that things are not to be accepted as they appear ; they are to be searched and sifted. Bure reason, according to Kant, can criticise itself. But every criticism ought to have some principles on which it pro¬ ceeds. Kant, a professor of Logic, fortunately adopted the forms of Logic which I can show had been carefully in¬ ducted by Aristotle, and hence has reached much truth. COMP ABED WITH SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY. 49 Others have adopted other principles, and have reached very different conclusions. The philosophies that have fol¬ lowed that of Kant in Germany have been a series of criti¬ cisms, each speculator setting out with his own favorite principle, — say with the universal ego, or intuition, or iden¬ tity, or the absolute, — and, carrying it out to its conse¬ quences, it has become so inextricably entangled, that the cry among young men is, “ Out of this forest, and back to the clearer ground occupied by Kant.” The Scottish phi¬ losophy has not been able to form such lofty speculations as the Germans, but the soberer inductions it has made may contain quite as much truth. Secondly, the one starts with facts, internal and external, revealed by the senses, inner and outer. It does not pro¬ fess to prove these by mediate reasoning : it assumes them, and shows that it is entitled to assume them ; it declares them to be self-evident. The other, the German school, starts with phenomena — not meaning facts to be explained (as physicists understand the phrase), but appearances. The phrase was subtilely introduced by Hume, and was unfor¬ tunately accepted by Kant. Let us, he said, or at least thought, accept, what Hume grants, phenomena, and guard the truth by mental forms — forms of sense, understanding, and reason. Our knowledge of bodies and their actions, our knowledge even of our minds and their operations, is phenomenal. Having assumed only phenomena, he never could rise to anything else. Having only phenomena in his premises he never could reach realities in his conclu¬ sions except by a palpable paralogism, which he himself saw and acknowledged. We human beings are phenomena in a world of phenomena. This doctrine has culminated in the unknown and unknowable of Herbert Spencer, im¬ plying no doubt a known, but which never can be known by us. We all know that Locke, though himself a most 50 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. determined realist, laid down principles which led logically to the idealism of Berkeley. In like manner, Kant, though certainly no agnostic, has laid down a principle in his phe¬ nomenal theory which has terminated logically in agnosti¬ cism. We meet all this by showing that appearances properly understood are things appearing, and not appear¬ ances without things. Thirdly, the two differ in that the one supposes that our perceptive powers reveal to us things as they are, whereas the other supposes that they add to things. According to Beid and the Scottish school, our consciousness and our senses look at once on real things ; not discovering all that is in them, hut perceiving them under the aspect in which they are presented — say this table as a colored surface perceived by a perceiving mind. Ac¬ cording to Kant and the German school, the mind adds to the things by its own forms. Kant said we perceive ap¬ pearances under the forms of space and time superimposed by the mind, and judge by categories, and reach higher truth by ideas of pure reason, all of them subjective. Fichte gave consistency to the whole by making these same forms create things. Our thinking youth in the English and French speaking countries having no very influential philosophy at this present time, and no names to rule them, are taking long¬ ing looks towards Germany. When circumstances admit, they go a year or two to a German university — to Berlin or to Leipsic. There they get into a labyrinth of showy and binding forms, and have to go on in the paths opened to them. They return with an imposing nomenclature, and clothed with an armor formidable as the panoply of the middle ages. They write papers and deliver lectures which are read and listened to with the profoundest rever¬ ence — some, however, doubting whether all these distinctions VIEW TO BE TAKEN OF IT. 51 are as correct as they are subtle, whether these speculations are as sound as they are imposing. All students may get immeasurable good from the study of the German philoso¬ phy. I encourage my students to go to Germany for a time to study. But let them meanwhile maintaiu their in¬ dependence. They may be the better of a clew to help them out of the labyrinth when they are wandering. The children of Israel got vast good in the wilderness as they wandered : saw wonders in the pillar of cloud and fire, in the waters issuing from the rock, and the manna on the ground ; but they longed all the while to get into a land of rest, with green fields and living rivers. We may all get incalculable good from German speculation, but let us bring it all to the standard of consciousness and of fact, which alone can give us security and rest. I am quite aware that a large body of speculators will look down with contempt on the sober views I have been expounding, and not think it worth their while to examine them. Metaphysical youths from Britain and America, who have passed a year or two at a German university, and have there been listening to lectures in which the speak¬ er passed along so easily, and without allowing a word of cross-examination, such phrases as subject and. object, form and matter, a priori and a posteriori , real and ideal, phenomenon and noumenon, will wonder that any one should be satisfied to stay on such low ground as I have done, while they themselves are on such elevated heights. But I can bear their superciliousness without losing my temper, and I make no other retort than that of Kant on one occasion, “that their master is milking the he-goat while they are holding the sieve.” I am sure that the agnostics, whether of the philosophical or physiological schools, will resent my attempt to give knowledge so firm a foundation. I may not have influence myself to stop 52 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. the crowd which is moving on so exultingly ; I may be thrown down by the advancing cavalcade ; but I am sure I see the right road to which men will have to return sooner or later ;&and I am satisfied if only I have opened a gate ready for those who come to discover that the end of their present broad path is darkness and nihilism. Some good ends may be served by explaining here those correlative phrases which are passed on so readily in Ger¬ man metaphysics, but under which the errors I have been exposing lurk. IBy Read is meant a thing existing 5 by Ideal what is created by the mind. Subject signifies the mind contemplating a thing ; Object a thing contemplated. This distinction does not imply that the subject adds to the object what is not in it. When the two phrases are together they should be used as correlative. In common language the phrase Object is often employed to denote a thing, whether it be contemplated by the mind or not. In this latter sense subject does not imply an object, nor ob¬ ject a subject. Phenomenon in science means a fact to be explained. In German philosophy it means a mere ap¬ pearance which is an abstraction. The mind is conscious not of an appearance, but of a thing appearing. By Nou- menon is meant a thing known or apprehended, which Kant regards as unknowable by human intelligence. But in our realistic philosophy we claim to know things which in that sense are noumena. By d Priori is meant the regulative principles which are in the mind prior to expe rience ; but this does not imply that there are ideas in the mind prior to experience. By d Posteriori is signified truth obtained by a gathered or inductive (not an indi¬ vidual) experience. Form and Matter are such metaphor¬ ical phrases that they might be expediently abandoned in philosophy. By Form, in German metaphysics is denoted something imposed by the mind on things ; by Matter the HIS IDEALISM. 53 things, commonly unknown, on which the Form is im¬ posed. If the terms are to be retained, by Form should be meant the law by which things act, Matter the things as obeying the law. All these phrases as commonly used in metaphysics have an ideal tendency. IDEALISM in thought and language runs through and through the philosophy of Kant. It appears first in making the mind give a unity to the manifold perceived by the senses, say to a stone, whereas the unity is in the stone itself. Secondly, it supposes space and time not to be things, but to be forms superinduced on things. Thirdly, the relations between objects are imposed on them by the Categories of the understanding. Fourthly, substance, interdependence of things, and God himself are regarded as ideas without a real objective existence. Fifthly, Final cause and beauty are a mere halo cast around things by the imagination. It has been shown again and again how, according to the doctrine of development, which can be traced in the history of philosophy as well as in the natural sciences, Fichte was evolved from Kant, and Schelling from Fichte, and Hegel from Schelling. Kant made the mind create space and time, and all the forms imposed on things ; Fichte, who was a pupil of Kant at one time, following out his principles, made the mind also — greatly to the annoyance of Kant, who disowned his disciple — to create the things in space and time. It was felt that Fichte’s egoistic theory left out one side of the actual world, and many rejoiced that Schelling took up the other side, making the two halves one in a doctrine of absolute identity. In the con¬ struction of his theory, he and those swayed by him (for example, Principal Shairp) pointed out many beautiful cor¬ respondences between the subjective mind and the actual world. But the system of Schelling was so evidently vision¬ ary, and apparently pantheistic, that a demand was made to 54 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. have it shown that the prevailing idealism has a ground in reason ; and this was the work of Hegel. At more than one period of my life I have toiled hard to master the system of Hegel. But I have failed, and am willing to acknowledge it. On a very few occasions I have ventured to criticise the great thinker — as he is reckoned ; but I was told instantly that I did not understand him, and I was restrained from prosecuting the controversy by the possibility that this might be true. It was at one time re¬ ported that Hegel had said, that “ no man understands me but one, and he does not understand me.” This is now denied. But as it is said of Shakespeare’s pictures of Henry Y. and the English kings, that if not true they might have been true ; so it may be, that if this story about Hegel is not true it might have been true. His system seems to me to be beyond measure unnatural, and artificial. His constant threefold divisions which in the end he iden¬ tifies with the threefold distinctions of the Divine nature, might be carried on as far as speculative intellect sees fit to prosecute it, but with no correspondence in things external or internal. Ho two of his followers understand him alike, and each charges his neighbor with misinterpreting him. Scarcely any of them do now profess to believe in his system throughout ; but they adhere to his dialectic method and expect that what he has left incomplete may be fin¬ ished by themselves or others. To me a number of his favorite maxims, as that Being and Hot Being are identical, that Being and Thinking are the same, and that contra¬ dictories may be true, seem to me to be a reductio ad dbsurdum of the whole system. It has been my aim in this paper to undermine the Kantian principles on which the whole fabric has been reared. I am aware that many revel with intense pleasure in idealism. I believe that all minds may be elevated by cer- AGNOSTICISM. 55 tain forms of it. The great constellation of genius — in¬ cluding Herder, Schiller, and Goethe, with those poets influenced by them in Great Britain, which appeared at the end of last century and the beginning of this, got a portion of their light and power from the subjective German philosophy. But to keep ourselves steady in the flight of the imagination, let us have a clear per¬ ception of the difference between the ideal and the real. When we rise to the ideal let it ever be from the real, to which we should always return for stability and rest. It is good for us to ascend from time to time our great moun¬ tains, and we may thereby get life and health as well as a larger prospect ; but it might not be so good always to dwell on these heights which may become over-stimulating and dizzying. The mind has the capacity of imagination, which is a very lofty one, but it has also a power of judgment, meant to steady the flights of the fancy. We all wish to see pictures of high ideal scenes, but we do not regard these as realities — we distinguish between portraits and historical paintings. Let us clearly see that poetry is not philosophy. AGNOSTICISM. — It is proverbial that extremes meet — just as West and East meet at lines on our globe. Strange as it may seem, while there is idealism throughout Kant, ag¬ nosticism has also its roots deep in his philosophy. It maintains resolutely — I believe without sufficient proof — that there are things, but it makes them unknown and un¬ knowable. Its very idealism, regarded as a philosophy, favors nescience. It makes a large portion of what we naturally believe, to be phenomenal and illusory. Follow¬ ing it out logically, people argue that if the mind can add one qualify to things out of its own stores, it may add ten or a hundred, till at last we can not tell what is in things, or whether there are any things. Hence we find all the 56 A CEITICISM OF THE CKITICAL PHILOSOPHY. positivists and agnostics, and even the materialists of the day, when pressed by their adversaries falling back on the forms and ideas of Kant. “Back to Kant” is the cry in our day of the younger German school, re-echoed by the speculative youths of Eng¬ land and America. The cry is a healthy symptom on the part of those who utter it. It shows that they are becom¬ ing somewhat anxious as to where recent speculation is leading them ; as to whether it is carrying them up into an ethereal region where they have difficulty in standing or breathing, or dragging them down into a swamp where the air is malarial and lethal. Yes, I say, “Back to Kant,” who was a wiser man, and held more truth than those who have been following out his principles. But when we go back to Kant, let it not be to take his fundamental positions on trust. In par¬ ticular, we should, I think, in the exercise of our criticism abandon his critical method. If this is not done we shall have — as we have had for the last hundred years — a succes¬ sion of systems, each laying hold of and devouring its pred¬ ecessor. We may cut down the tree to its roots, but if we allow the roots to remain, a new tree, or new trees of the same kind, will spring up. How often have we had a new philosophic treatise opening with the statement : “ At this point Kant has not followed certain principles to their logical consequences ; let us do this for him.” Or, “ Here is a principle which Kant has overlooked; let us introduce it and build it into the system.” For the present there is a reaction against the building of new systems of philosophy. The world has become weary of them. The tendency now rather is, in the lec¬ tures of the German universities, and in the books written in the English language, to give us histories of the opinions held in the past ; and we have thereby been gamers, as at- BACK TO KANT. 57 tention has been called to the truth to be found in all our higher philosophies from the time of Plato and Aristotle in ancient times, and that of Descartes and Locke in later times ; and at the same time to the errors both of an ex¬ travagant dogmatism and of a low empiricism, which it is hoped may be kept from ever appearing again by the way in which they have been exposed. Yes, “ Back to Kant,” but do not stop there. Back to Reid with Hamilton, back to Locke, back to Leibnitz, back to Descartes, back to Bacon, back to Saint Thomas and Abe¬ lard, back to Augustine, back to Marcus Aurelius, back to Ci¬ cero, back to Aristotle, back to Plato. All these have taught much truth ; let us covet the best gifts and accept them wher¬ ever they are offered: in ancient Greece and Rome, in Germany, in France and Italy, in Great Britain and Amer¬ ica. Here the method of induction with criticism may guide us in the selection — may give us the magnet where¬ with to draw out the genuine steel from the dross mixture. “ Back to Kant,” but back beyond him to what he looked . to, or should have looked to, and by which his views and ours are to be tested, to the facts of our mental nature.* 1 1 I should be sorry to find our young American thinkers spending their whole time and strength in expounding Kant or Hegel. Depend upon it, the German philosophy will not be transplanted into America and grow healthily till there is a change to suit it to the climate. By all means let us welcome the German philosophy into this country, as we do the German emigrants ; hut these emigrants when they come have to learn our language and accommodate themselves to our laws and customs. Let us subject its philosophy to a like process. Let it be the same with the Scottish philosophy : let us take all that is good in it and nothing else, and what is good in it is its method. I have rather been advising our young men not to seek to transplant the German philosophy entire into America. But as little do I wish them to transplant the Scottish philosophy. It is time that America had a philosophy of its own. It is now getting a literature of its own, a poetry of its own, schools of painting of its own ; let it also have a 58 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. Of the existing philosophies the German is at this present time the most powerful. If the others, if the Scottish, the English, the French, are to regain their in¬ fluence, they will have to strike out some new courses fitted to raise enthusiasm, and hold out hope of discovery to encourage research. They may study the dependence of mind on body, and thereby connect their inquiries with the science of the day. They may also apply psy¬ chology to the art of education, and show how the mind is to be trained. But whatever else they do, they must take up and enter into the spirit and life of those great ques¬ tions which have been discussed in philosophy since re¬ flective thought began. It is because they have done this, that the philosophy of Kant and the Germans has been found so attractive to inquiring youths. Let us notice and ponder the grand truths which have thus been brought before us, but let it be to give a clear account of then- nature and separate them from the error with which they have been combined. Let us believe and acknowledge philosophy of its own. It should not seek, indeed, to he independent of European thought. The people, whether they will or not, whether they acknowledge it or no, are evidently the descendants of Europeans, to whom they owe much. They have come from various countries, but on coming here they take a character of their own. So let it he with our philosophy. It may he a Scoto-German- American school. It might take the method of the Scotch, the high truths of the Ger¬ man, and combine them by the practical invention of the Americans. But no : let it in fact, in name and profession, he an independent school. As becometh the country, it may take, not a monarchical form under one sovereign, like the European systems, let it rather he a re¬ publican institution, with separate states and a central unity. To accomplish this, let it not he contented with the streams which have lost their coolness from the long course pursued and become polluted by earthly ingredients, but go at once to the fountain, the mind itself, which is as fresh as it ever was, and as open to us as it was to Plato and Aristotle, to Locke and Reid, to Kant and Hamilton. THE TEUTH IN ALL PHILOSOPHIES. 59 with Plato, that there is a grand, indeed a divine Idea, formed in our minds after the image of God and pervading all nature ; but let that idea be carefully examined and its forms exactly determined ; and it is for inductive science, and not speculation, to ascertain what are the laws and types which represent it in nature. We should hold with Aristotle that there are formal and final as well as material and efficient causes in our world ; but it is for careful observa¬ tion to find out the nature and relation of these, and to show how matter and force are made to work for order and for special ends. We may be as sure as Anselm and Descartes, that in the mind there is the germ of the idea of the infinite and the perfect ; but we should claim the right to show what the idea is, so as to keep men from drawing ex¬ travagant inferences from it. Let us see as Leibnitz did a pre-established harmony in nature ; but we may argue that it consists not in things acting independently of each other, but in their being made to act on and with each other. We can not err in attaching as much importance to experience as Locke did ; but let us maintain all the while that observation shows us principles in the mind prior to all experience. We should be grateful to the Scot¬ tish school for using principles of common sense and fun¬ damental laws of belief ; but we should require them to show how these are related to experience. We may allow to Kant his forms, his categories, and his ideas ; but let us determine their nature by induction when it may be fonnd that they do not superinduce qualities on things, but simply enable us to perceive what is in things. I believe with Schelling in intuition (Anschauung) ; but it is an intuition looking to realities. We may be constrained to hold with Hegel that there is an absolute ; and yet hold firmly that our knowledge is after all finite, and insist that the doctrine be so enunciated that it does not lead to pantheism. We 60 A CRITICISM OF THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY. should reject a sensationalism which derives all our ideas from the senses, and a materialism which develops mind out of molecules ; and yet be very anxious that the physi¬ ology of the nerves and brain should aid us in finding out the way in which the powers of the mind operate. I turn away with detestation from the pessimism of Schopenhauer and Yon Hartmann; but they have done good by calling the attention of academic men to the existence of evil, to remove which is an end worthy of the labors and suffer¬ ings of the Son of God. We may believe with Herbert Spencer that there is a vast unknown above, beneath, and around us ; but we may rejoice all the while in a light shining in the darkness. Let us receive with gratitude the whole cabinet of gems which our higher poets have left as a rich inheritance ; but before they can constitute a philos¬ ophy they must be cut and set by a skilful hand ; and this must be done as carefully as it is with diamonds, and all to show forth more fully their form and beauty. i i ' • / ; *■ hs. ■ */,T mjfli