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SCIENTIA
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2798
.C13
A CRITICAL ACCOUNT OF
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
PUBLISHed by
JAMES MACLEHOSE, GLASGOW.
MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON.
London,
Cambridge,
Edinburgh,
Dublin, .
•
Hamilton, Adams and Co.
Macmillan and Co.
David Douglas.
W. H. Smith and Son.

LIBRARY
BSITY
A CRITICAL ACCOUNT
OF THE
PHILOSOPHY OF KANT,
WITH AN HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.
BY
M.A.,
EDWARD CAIRD, M. A.,
PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW,
LATE FELLOW AND TUTOR OF MERTON college, oxford.

GLASGOW:
JAMES MACLEHOSE, ST. VINCENT STREET,
Publisher to the University.
1877.
All rights reserved.
Dedicated
To the Memory of
George Rankine Luke,
Late Senior Student and Tutor of Christ Church,
Oxford.
Io veggio ben che giammai non si sazia
Nostro intelletto, se'l Ver non lo illustra,
Di fuor dal qual nessun vero si spazia.
Posasi in esso, come fera in lustra,
Tosto che giunto l'ha; e giugner puollo;
Se non, ciascun disio sarebbe frustra.
Nasce per quello, a guisa di rampollo,
Appiè del vero il dubbio; ed è natura
Ch'al sommo pinge noi di collo in collo.
Dante, Paradiso, iv. 123-32.
PREFACE.
THE object of this work is to explain the Critical
Philosophy in its relation to the general develop-
ment of Philosophy, and especially to the stages
of that development which immediately preceded
it. I have therefore found it necessary to give a
short account of the tendencies and methods of the
three great modern schools of speculation, which
were founded by Des Cartes, by Locke, and by
Leibnitz. The influence of Des Cartes and
Spinoza upon Kant was remote and indirect ;
that of Locke and Hume on the one hand, and
of Leibnitz and Wolff on the other, was direct
and immediate. As regards the philosophy of
Locke and Hume, the exhaustive work of Mr.
Green made it unnecessary for me to enter into
much detail. As regards the philosophy of Leib-
nitz, there is, so far as I know, no satisfactory
account or criticism of it in the English language:
1 For a fuller account of the Cartesian school, the author may
refer to his article on "Cartesianism" in the Encyclopædia Britannica.
1
viii
PREFACE.
and for that reason, as well as because the con-
nexion of his speculations with those of Kant has
not received so much attention, I have given more
space to the examination of that author.
It was originally my intention to give a general
account of the development of the philosophy of
Kant, without specially examining his different
works, or following minutely his own division of the
subject. But I soon found that, especially in the
case of the Critique of Pure Reason, it was almost
impossible to separate the substance of the Critical
Philosophy from Kant's mode of exhibiting it. The
Critique, besides, has become the subject of so
much controversy, that any account of its doctrines
requires a running commentary on the text to
justify it. For these reasons, as well as for the
convenience of students, I have thought it advis-
able, in the first place, to state what I believed
to be the meaning of each considerable section
of the Critique, and then to add such comments
and criticisms as seemed to be necessary.
some few cases, where it would have involved
unnecessary repetition, I have not rigidly adhered
to this method of separating explanation from
criticism; but, in these cases, I think the distinc-
tion has been sufficiently indicated to save the
reader from any confusion.
In
The number of works on the Critique, by German
PREFACE.
ix
writers, has of late been very great, and I cannot
pretend to have read all of them; but I wish to ex-
press special obligations to Professor Bona Meyer
(Kant's Psychologie), to Dr. H. Cohen (Kant's
Theorie der Erfahrung), to Dr. E. Arnoldt (Kant's
transcendentale Idealität des Raumes und der Zeit),
and to Dr. Hölder (Kantische Erkenntnisslehre). In
revising my account of the pre-critical works of
Kant, I have derived considerable assistance from
Dr. Paulsen (Versuch einer Entwicklungs-Geschichte
der Kantischen Erkenntnisslehre). I have also
consulted with advantage the writings of Drs.
Liebmann, Grapengiesser, Von Hartmann, Thiele,
and others. On the whole, I owe most to the
writings of Kant's immediate successors, especially
to Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Jacobi, Maimon, and
Schopenhauer. I am obliged to content myself
with this general acknowledgment of my debts,
for, in most cases, I find it all but impossible to
trace the special obligations which I owe to
numerous books read during my study of Kant.
I am responsible for my own translations, but, for
the convenience of English readers, I have added
references to Professor Meiklejohn's translation of
the Critique, and Professor Mahaffy's translation of
the Prolegomena (in the third volume of his Kant's
Critical Philosophy for English Readers). I have
also referred to Professor Mahaffy's translations of
Χ
PREFACE.
those passages from the first edition of the Critique
which do not appear in the second edition (included
in the same volume of his book)."
1
I hope at some future time to complete the
general plan of this work in another volume on the
Ethical and Esthetical works of Kant, especially
the Critique of Practical Reason, and the Critique
of Judgment.
¹ There is no small difficulty in the exact rendering of Kantian
terms. Anschauung I always translate by 'Perception,' and Begriff by
'Conception.' For Vorstellung I have reluctantly chosen ‘Idea' as the
nearest equivalent, following the use or abuse of that word which
Locke has rendered general among English writers. The disadvantage
of this is, that 'Idea' is used by Kant himself in a narrower sense;
but I think the context will, in every case, make it sufficiently clear
which sense is intended. I cannot reconcile myself to the usual tran-
slation, 'Representation,' which is both awkward and misleading.
Mr. Monck has written a short Introduction to the Critical Philo-
sophy, which will be found useful by those who are commencing the
study of the Critique.
UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW,
April, 1877.
·
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER I.
THE CRITICAL PROBLEM.
The Necessity of Criticism-The Rise of Criticism-Kant's Statement of
the Problem-The Age of Criticism,
CHAPTER II.
. Pages 1-10
THE CRITICAL SPIRIT IN ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL
PHILOSOPHY.
Greek Philosophy not Individualistic, nor, in the full sense, Critical—
The Dogmatic Individualism of the Stoics and Epicureans-The Sceptic
Philosophy also Dogmatic-Leading Idea of the Neoplatonic Age, and
its Relation to Criticism-Christian Form of the Idea-Struggle of
Faith and Reason in the Early Church-The Scholastic Philosophy and
its Effect upon Christian Doctrine,
11-26
CHAPTER III.
THE FIRST PERIOD OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY-DESCARTES
AND SPINOZA.
Mediæval Dualism-The Renaissance and the Reformation-Empiricism
common to Luther and Bacon-Need of Philosophy to justify Expe-
rience The Method of Descartes-His First Principle-Conflict of
Dualism and Pantheism-Argument for the Being of God-Pantheism
the Necessary Result of Cartesianism-The Letter and the Spirit of
Spinoza-His Opposition of Reason to Imagination-Nature of Absolute
Knowledge-Defects of his Logic-His Relation to Subsequent Indivi-
dualism,
27-51
xii
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV.
THE SECOND PERIOD OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY-LOCKE,
BERKELEY, AND HUME.
Causes of the Revival of Individualism—Growth of a Secular Spirit—
Limitation of Knowledge to the Finite-Locke's Moderation-His
Compromise between Materialism and Sensationalism-Causes of its
Failure-Berkeley's Short Method with the Materialists-His Com-
promise between Sensationalism and Idealism-Method of Hume-He
seeks only to explain the Illusion of Knowledge-His Assumption of
Natural Relations-His Explanation of Identity and Causality-The
Essays and the Treatise-Self-contradiction of Hume,
52-71
CHAPTER V.
THE SECOND PERIOD OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY-LEIBNITZ.
Locke and Leibnitz-Monadism not Pure Individualism-The Monad
really excludes, and ideally includes, the Universe-The Pre-estab-
lished Harmony-In God Ideality and Reality are one-Difference of
Spirits from other Monads--Conflict of Monadism and Pantheism in
Leibnitz-His Failure to find a Principle of Reconciliation between
them-Time and Space phenomenally real, yet in harmony with
Absolute Reality-Subjective Source of the Ideas of Time and Space-
The Differences of Monads merely quantitative-Difficulty of applying
the Idea of the Monad to Animals, and Impossibility of applying it to
Inorganic Matter-The Doctrine of the Phenomenalism of Matter the
Result of a Compromise-The Distinctions of Necessary and Contingent
Truth, and of the Principles of Identity and Sufficient Reason—Diffi-
culties arising out of these Distinctions-Summary of the Contradic-
tions of Monadism,
72-108
CHAPTER VI.
THE SECOND PERIOD OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY-THE
WOLFFIAN PHILOSOPHY.
Rationalism of Wolff, and his Contest with the Pietists-His Method only
in appearance synthetic-Emptiness of his Distinction of a priori and
a posteriori-His Absolute Separation of Affirmation and Negation,
and its Effects-He expunges the Speculative Element in the Leib-
nitzian Philosophy-His Theology—Correspondence in the Results of
the English and the German Individualism,
109-121
CONTENTS.
xiii
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
PART FIRST.
THE PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
Kant's Education-The Continuity of his Intellectual Development-Sum-
mary of the Points in which he diverged from the Wolffian Philosophy
during the Pre-critical Period-The First Trace of the Distinction of
Analytic and Synthetic in the Nova Dilucidatio (1775)-Confusion of
the Regressive Movement of Science with Logical Analysis-His De-
monstration that Logic is purely analytic (1762)-Distinction of the
Synthetic (and Arbitrary) Method of Mathematics, from the Analytic
Method of Philosophy-Synthesis of Causality empirical (1763)—Kant
not yet influenced by Hume-Existential Propositions synthetical,
and not demonstrable a priori, except in the case of God-The Dreams
of a Ghostseer and the Dreams of Metaphysic (1766)-Metaphysic+
defined as the Science of the Limits of Thought-Kant at the
Point of View of Locke-His Opposition to Wolffian Individualism,
and Assertion of the Reality of Relations of Substances-Monadologia
Physica (1755)-Relation of his Essay on the Sole Possible Proof
of the Being of God (1763) to the Pantheism of Spinoza-Revival
of Universalism in relation to the Idea of Space (1768)- Question
of a priori Synthesis suggested by Hume-The Dissertation (1770)——
Difference of the a priori of Conception and the a priori of Percep-
tion, and their Union in Knowledge-Relation of Idea of God and
the Conceptions of Substance, Causality, and Reciprocity to Know-
ledge-Limitation of Knowledge to Experience by reason of the Forms
of Sense-Relation of the Dissertation and the Critique-The Intelli-
gence still supposed to apprehend Things in themselves, and the Unity
of Experience still found in the Consciousness of God, and not in Self-
consciousness-Transition to the Critique,
122 181
PART SECOND.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
CHAPTER 1.
THE PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE, AND KANT'S
PRELIMINARY STATEMENT OF IT.
First Appearance of the Critical Point of View in Letter to Dr. Herz (1772)
-Rejection of the Deus ex Machina-How is Knowledge possible on the
Basis of Dualism?-Necessity of Criticism in relation both to Empirical
and to Metaphysical Truth-Distinction and Connexion of the Analytic
xiv
CONTENTS:
and the Dialectic-Relation of Criticism to the Philosophies of Leib-
nitz and Locke respectively-Difference of the Methods of Reid and
Kant-Possibility of Knowing the Existence of Things in themselves,
or the Limits of Knowledge-Necessity of a priori Synthesis for
Knowledge of Objects, and of a System of Synthesis for Knowledge
of a World of Objects-Does Kaut's Idea of Experience vary?-State-
ments of Kant in the Introductions to the Critique, and to the
Prolegomena, and in Prefaces to First and Second Editions of Critique,
especially on the subject of Pure and Empirical Synthesis-Their
Inexactness according to Kant's own Principles-The Object of the
Critique,
182-221
CHAPTER II.
UNDERSTANDING AND SENSE.
Relation of the Esthetic and the Analytic-First Form of the Opposition of
Understanding and Sense--Second Form of it-Kant adopts the former
in the Esthetic-His View of Formal Logic-Contrast of Perception
and Conception-Two Senses of Synthesis in Kant,
222-231
CHAPTER III.
ARGUMENT OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
Possibility of a priori Perception-Metaphysical and Transcendental Expo-
sitions of Space and Time as the Forms of Perception-Transcendental
Ideality and Empirical Reality-Contrast of this Doctrine with the
Theories of Clarke and Leibnitz-Transcendental Idealism the only
Vindication of Geometry, and the only Security against Dialectical
Illusion-Objections and Answers,
232-253
CHAPTER IV.
CRITICISM OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
The Argument of the Esthetic falls short of a Complete Transcendental
Deduction-Trendelenburg's Objection to it rests on a Misunderstanding
-Impossibility of combining Transcendental with Empirical Reality—
Ambiguity of the terms Subjective and Objective in Kant-Relation of
the theories of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume to Transcendental Idealism
-Change of Kant's Point of View in passing to the Analytic-Sense
gives not a Kind, but an Element of Knowledge-Ambiguity of the
Assertion that Sensation is of the Individual-Can the Forms of Sense
alone give Objectivity to Sensations ?-Experience is a Process, and
an Endless Process, of Synthesis-From this View of it spring the
Problems of the Analytic and Dialectic respectively,
254-275
CONTENTS.
XI
CHAPTER V.
GENERAL VIEW OF THE ANALYTIC.
The Two Factors in Knowledge-Relation of Synthesis and Objectivity—
What can Sense give us?— First View of the Contrast of Reality and
Appearance-Second View of it—Thought involved in the Simplest
Perception-The Transcendental Object-Determination of Objects by
the Forms of Synthesis-Theory of Association, and Assumptions in-
volved in it—The Three Questions of the Analytic,
276-287
CHAPTER VI.
THE TWO LOGICS, AND THE DISCOVERY OF THE
CATEGORIES.
Difference of Formal and Transcendental Logic-Three Parts in each--
Analytic of Conceptions-Guiding Thread to the Discovery of the
Categories-General Ideas as Rules for Specification-Are the Logical
Forms of Judgment a System?-Validity of the Distinction of Form
and Matter-Formal Judgment no Judgment-Consequences of the
Separation of Affirmation and Negation, Identity and Difference-
Want of Correspondence between the Categories and the Forms of
Judgment— Completeness of the List of Categories—Are all Categories
deducible from those given by Kant?-Are Kant's Categories not
deducible from each other?-The Distinction of the Law of Thought
in itself from the Law of Thought in application to Objects untenable
-Kant's Explanations of the Relations of the Categories in the Second
Edition of the Critique, and in the Prolegomena---His Inconsistency as
to the Relation of the Two Logics,
288-318
CHAPTER VII.
KANT'S PRELIMINARY STATEMENT OF THE OBJECT OF
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
Confusion of Abstract and Concrete Unity-Objective Application of the
Categories dependent on their being Conditions of the Possibility of
Experience-Independence of Perception and Conception-Change of
the Form of Kant's Problem as we advance in the Critique-Ambi-
guity of the Words, Object, and Determination—Does Knowledge
begin with the Universal or the Individual ?—Ambiguity of the Ques-
tion, and its Influence on Kant,
319-331
xvi
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VIII.
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES AS
STATED BY KANT.
Object of Transcendental Deduction-Experience a System-Self as રી
Universal Subject, and also an Individual Object of Experience-Two-
fold Problem thence arising-Connexion of the Vindication and the
Limitation of Knowledge-Deduction of the First Edition--Syntheses
of Apprehension, of Reproduction, and of Recognition-The Categories
and their Relation to the Transcendental Apperception-Deduction of
the Second Edition--Sense incapable of Synthesis-Synthesis presup-
poses the Identity of the Self, yet the Consciousness of Self is possible
only through Synthesis--Objects determined as such by means
of Conceptions-The Categories are the Conceptions necessary—
Ambiguity in Kant's View of Judgment as expressing the Objec-
tive Consciousness-Distinction, in the Prolegomena, of Judgments
of Perception and Judgments of Experience-Result of the First Part
of the Deduction-The Categories have Objective Validity only in
Relation to Matter given under the Forms of Time and Space-Deter-
mination of Inner Sense by the Categories, and the Function of the
Imagination in Knowledge—The Nature of our Consciousness of Self
as an Object of Experience-The Determination of Objects as in Time
and Space implies the Categories-Result of the Deduction in vindi-
cating and limiting Knowledge,
332-369
CHAPTER IX.
CRITICISM OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
In what Sense does Kant conceive the Factors of Experience to imply each
other?-Kant's Analysis interferes with his Synthesis of these Factors-
The Transcendental Method not Psychological, though it has Psycho-
logical Elements in it-Relation of the Identity of Thought to the
Difference of Sense-The Categories differentiate the former, and
integrate the latter Their Number and Nature not determined by the
Idea of Self-consciousness-They are not necessarily related to the
Manifold of Sense, or, at least, of our Sense-Kant's Assertion that
Subject and Object, as known, only exist in the Process of Knowledge
or Experience-His Nearest Approximation to Berkeley-Can anything,
strictly speaking, be given in Sense?-Kant's Distinction between what
is Implicit and what is Explicit in the Empirical Consciousness-The
Transcendental Problem is logically prior to all the other Problems of
Philosophy Does Kant rise to the Idea of a Unity that transcends the
Differences of the Faculties, and if so, is this Unity to be found in the
Imagination or in the Apperception ?-He ends with a Circle of
Elements that reciprocally presuppose each other-Opposition between
Phenomenalism and Transcendentalism-General Character of the
Transcendental Method,
370-405
CONTENTS.
xvii
CHAPTER X.
THE SCHEMATISM OF THE CATEGORIES.
Agreement and Difference of Logical and Transcendental Judgment—The
Nature of the Schema, and its Difference from the Image-The Schemata
of the different Categories-Principles of Analytic and Synthetic Judg-
ment-The latter implies the Form of Inner Sense, but not the former
-Comparison of Logical and Transcendental Judgment misleading-
Imagination as mediating between Understanding and Sense-Objec-
tion to any Absolute Division of the Faculties-Kant's Treatment of
Inner Sense inconsistent with the Transcendental Method-Kant's
Treatment of the Opposition of Mind and Matter compared with that
of Earlier Philosophers-Ultimate Consequences deducible from the
Transcendental View of this Opposition-Mind is not a Pure Activity
and Identity, nor Matter purely passive and self-external, and their Dif-
ference is transcended by the Unity of Experience-Special Criticisms
on the Schemata of Quality and Quantity, .
CHAPTER XI.
THE PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING.
406-436
Relation of Imagination to Knowledge-Freedom of the Imagination due to
Abstraction-Difference of Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Synthesis
-Kant's Deduction of the Mathematical Principles, and his Disproof
of the Existence of a Vacuum as an Object of Experience-Time and
Space only Forms of the Relations of Objects-Intensive and Extensive
Quantity imply each other-Impossibility of Maxima and Minima of
Quantity-Criticism of Kant's View of the Vacuum of the Atomists-
Deduction of the Dynamical Principles-Refutation of different Forms
of the Association Theory-The Analogies of Experience-Schopen-
hauer's Objection to the Deduction of Causality-The Judgment of
Sequence implies the Judgment of Causality-The Analogies of Expe-
rience correspond to three Stages in the Development of Science-Is
there any Higher Category than Reciprocity? Is Knowledge Limited
by Imagination ?-Postulates of Empirical Thought-The Possible
and the Actual-The Distinction of a priori and a posteriori not
absolute,
437-472
CHAPTER XII.
KANT'S GENERAL VIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL SCIENCES.
General Idea of Nature-Are all Objects similarly related to Intelligence?
-Contrast of Psychology and Physics-Refutation of Cartesian
Idealism--The Principle of Substance does not apply to the Soul-
Kant's View of Psychology-All Knowledge in a sense Self-knowledge
Higher Categories necessary for Biology and Psychology-Kant's
Four Orders of Science--The Metaphysic of Physics,
473-495
xviii
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE DISTINCTION OF PHENOMENA AND NOUMENA, AND
THE AMPHIBOLY OF THE REFLECTIVE CONCEPTIONS.
The Idea of the Noumenon-Is it derived from Sense or Understanding or
Pure Apperception?-Two Species of Noumena--Possibility of Knowing
the Limits of Knowledge-The Conception of the Noumenon implies
an Unattainable Ideal of Knowledge-Kant's View of Leibnitz-He
holds that, if by Pure Thought we could know Objects, Monadism
would be True Philosophy-He accepts the Logical, though not the
Metaphysical Principles of Leibnitz-He turns Logic against Experi-
ence, and Experience against Logic-The Four Categories of Re-
flexion,
496-513
CHAPTER XIV.
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. THE NATURE AND
ORIGIN OF THE IDEAS OF REASON.
Philosophical Positivism must be based on Criticism-Connexion of the
Objects of the Three Metaphysical Sciences with Theoretical and Prac-
tical Interests—Is Reason a Source of a priori Conceptions of Objects ?
-The Faculty of Principles-Principles of Law and Principles of
Knowledge-Possibility and Nature of the latter-The Correspondence
of the Ideas with the Kinds of Syllogism, and with the most general
Relations of Thought and Experience-Criticism of Kant's Deduction
of the Ideas from the Forms of Syllogism-Their Relation to the
Analytic-Regressive Method of the Critique-Sense in which Experi-
ence is Phenomenal-Relation of the Ideas to each other-Different
Kinds of Sophistry in the Three Metaphysical Sciences, 514-536
CHAPTER XV.
▸
THE TRANSCENDENTAL PARALOGISM OF RATIONAL
PSYCHOLOGY.
Rational Psychology to be developed purely out of the Proposition: I think
-Objections to the Determination of the Ego by the Categories-Dis-
tinction of the Objective Self from the Transcendental Subject-Sense
in which alone the Categories can be applied to the latter-The Four
Paralogisms-Difference of the First and Second Edition as to the
Fourth Paralogism-Relation of Transcendental Idealism to Materialism
-Kant turns the Wolffian Distinction of Rational and Empirical
Psychology against the former-Conflict in Kant between the Unity
and the Dualism of Knowledge--The Vicious Circle of Self-conscious-
ness-Relation of Kant to the Ancient Sceptics-His Ideal of Know-
ledge self-contradictory-That the Soul cannot be brought under the
Categories does not prove it Unknowable-Kant's Application of the
Category of Intensive Quantity to it-The True Rational Psychology
is Transcendental Logic,
537-560
CONTENTS.
xix
CHAPTER XVI.
RATIONAL COSMOLOGY AS EXPLAINED AND CRITICISED
BY KANT.
Peculiarity of the Problems of Rational Cosmology-The Four Antinomies
-The Understanding and the Reason at cross purposes-Proof that
the Four Antinomies are dogmatically insoluble-The Collected Theses
and Antitheses form two Opposite Systems of Metaphysics-The Cause
of the Antinomies must be discoverable-Possibility of a Critical
Solution of them-Both Systems of Metaphysic rest on a Confusion of
Phenomena and Noumena-In the Mathematical Antinomies both
Thesis and Antithesis are false, in the Dynamical Antinomies both may
be regarded as true-The Empirical and the Intelligible Characters—
Summary of Kant's Conclusions,
561-589
•
CHAPTER XVII.
CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN DOCTRINE AS TO THE NATURE,
ORIGIN, AND SOLUTION OF THE ANTINOMIES OF
RATIONAL COSMOLOGY.
Reason necessarily produces Antinomies-Examples from Casuistry, and
from the History of Philosophy-Unity and Implicit Contradiction of
the Common Consciousness: Explicit Contradiction and One-sided
Dogmatism or Scepticism of Reflexion-Protests of Common Sense
and Empiricism-Kant's Position-Criticism of Kant's Solutions of
the Mathematical and Dynamical Antinomics-The latter solved
imperfectly by a Dualism, perfectly by a higher Category-Why did •
Kant not advance to this higher Category? The Two Kinds of
Antinomy and this higher Category form Three Stages in the Develop-
ment of Thought-Relapse of Kant into Subjective Idealism in the
Sixth Section of the Chapter on the Antinomies,
590-622
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE IDEAL OF REASON AND THE CRITICISM OF RATIONAL
THEOLOGY.
Origin of the Idea of God in the Transcendental Principle of the Complete
Determination of Objects-The Anticipated Totality of Experience
taken as a thing in itself, hypostatised, and personified-General
Character of the Argument for the Being of God-Kant's Objections to
the Ontological, Cosmological, and Physico-theological Arguments—
Criticism of Kant's Account of the Three Elements that enter into the Idea
of God, i.e., the Ideas of Completed Experience, of an ens realissimum
or Unity of all Positive Predicates, and of an Absolute Self-con-
sciousness or Perceptive Understanding—Kant wavers between the
First and Second Ideas, and rejects the last-Connexion of this with
XX
CONTENTS.
his Criticism of the Ontological Argument--Kant's Criticism good only
as against the Syllogistic Form of the Argument, not as against the
Idea of an Ultimate Unity of Thought and Existence-Criticism of
the Cosmological and Physico-theological Argument-Correspondence
of these Arguments with Christianity, Pantheism, and Monotheism
respectively,
623-652
CHAPTER XIX.
THE REGULATIVE USE OF THE IDEAS OF REASON.
The Three Logical and Transcendental Principles of Homogeneity, Specifica-
tion, and Affinity or Continuity-They cannot be realised in Experience,
yet Experience arises out of the Effort to realise them-Their
Correspondence with the Three Ideas of Reason-The Use of these
Ideas is Heuristic not Ostensive-Examination of Kant's Three
Doctrines, of the Necessity of Ideas for Experience, of the Inadequacy
of Experience to Ideas, and of the Impossibility of determining Things
→in themselves by their Means-Ultimate Dualism of Perception and
Conception-Thought can solve the Problems of Experience, but not its
own Problem--Summary of Results, and Conclusion,
653-670
INDEX,
671-673
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTER I.
THE CRITICAL PROBLEM.
of Criti-
"THIS age may be best characterised as the age Necessity
of criticism—a criticism to which everything cism.
must submit. Religion, on the ground of its sanc-
tity, and law, on the ground of its majesty, often
resist this sifting of their claims. But in so doing,
they inevitably awake a not unjust suspicion that
their claims are ill-founded, and they can no longer
expect the unfeigned homage paid by reason to that
which has shown itself able to stand the test of free
enquiry."
In these words Kant expresses the thought that
underlies and animates all his work. Philosophy
has to retrace the path of the ordinary consciousness
even in its highest manifestations in religion and
morality, to analyse the process by which all our
positive beliefs and institutions were created, and to
criticise that process. The result of that criticism
may be either the justification, the condemnation, or
the modification of the ordinary consciousness.
A
It
2
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
:
may be the discovery that reason was at the making
of our world, that the conceptions of the natural and
spiritual universe which we find in common sense,
and in that extension and correction of common
sense which we call science, are capable of rational
explanation and justification. It may show that the
historical movement which has built up our social
organization, and through it by custom and teaching
has formed our moral and intellectual life, is no
mere series of contingencies, but a course of de-
velopment whose law and necessity are derived from
the nature of reason itself. Or, on the other hand,
it may show, as Hume thought he had shown, that
the most fixed beliefs of the common understand-
ing disappear before the analysis that detects their
origin that there is no necessity, nothing but
accident, in the combinations of thought that con-
stitute them, and that science is but an extension
or systematic development of the groundless assump-
tions and unjustifiable inferences of the common
understanding. It may teach us to regard our
moral life with all that it depends on, as the result
of a succession of historical accidents, or, what is
the same thing, of a merely external necessity, down
to the last accident or necessity by which we were
born in a particular time to breathe a particular
spiritual atmosphere. But whatever be the result,
whether it be or be not possible to vindicate to
awakened and conscious reason the result of its own
unconscious education,-of one thing Kant warns
us, viz., that we cannot safely shrink from the test-
ing process. The question here is of such a nature
that, when once asked, it must be answered in one
way or another. If the individual has separated
I.
3
INTRODUCTION.
鲁
​himself from his 'spiritual substance' in the com-
mon beliefs of his time and place, if he has begun
to question the necessity of that view of the world
of which he finds himself possessed, he has under-
gone an experience from the effects of which he
can never escape. That harmony with himself,
that spiritual security and innocence, which meant
simply that his self-consciousness was inseparable
from his consciousness of the general life in which
he had a part, is incapable of being restored to him
who has become conscious of the distinction. Nor
can we bring back that fulness and energy of spiri-
tual life, which were enjoyed so long as the age
of faith' lasted, by a mere resolve to ignore the
question that has disturbed us. To say with Reid
that common sense gives us certain beliefs which are
not to be questioned, and to point to an agreement
of all unsophisticated minds in holding these beliefs,
is only to point back to the state we have lost, and
to tell us that it is the most desirable state. It
does not alter the fact that the individual reason
has questioned these beliefs, and that the question
has not been answered: in other words, the divin
which the reason of the individual has discovered
between itself and that with which it formerly iden-
tified itself, has not been reconciled. So, when
Jacobi declares that the recognition of any differ-
ence between the mind and its object is fatal to
faith, and that we cannot apprehend God by the
finite or reflective consciousness, but must apprehend
him by a consciousness which is in identity with its
object, he is merely telling us to forget the difference
we have discovered in order to enjoy the unity.
Or, again, when the Protestant who has separated
4
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
himself from the Catholic church, and learnt to re-
gard it as a merely external authority, finds one
belief after another showing itself to be equally ex-
ternal, until at last, it may be, all objective dogmas
and institutions lose their hold on him, it is vain to
ask him simply to reverse the process, to abstract
from the differences he has discerned, forget the gulf
that has opened up between himself and his beliefs,
and without any intellectual mediation, by a mere
transcendent act of will, annihilate the division that
disturbs his spiritual life. Such a tour de force,
whether it be performed in the interests of common
sense, of science, or of religion, in the interest of our
belief in the external world or in the interest of our
belief in God, or in some special form of Christian
doctrine, or in an infallible church, must be ineffec-
tual to attain the result aimed at. The wounds of
reason can only be healed by reason. The faith
which is the result of a mere act of will betrays
its origin by its restless, dissatisfied, and arbitrary
character. It is haunted and driven into fanaticism
by the sense of an unsolved contradiction. When
forced to defend itself, it often has recourse itself to
the weapons of scepticism, which are fatal to the
defender as well as to the enemy. It attempts to
rest philosophical or religious truth on the proved
incapacity of the human mind for the knowledge of
either. It is like anything rather than the original
simplicity and peace of the unreflecting conscious-
ness, whose unity with itself has not yet been dis-
turbed. The first faith does not exclude reason,
for reason is not yet opposed to it, not yet distin-
guished from it. In submitting to it, therefore, the
spirit is not subjecting itself to any external power.
I.
5
INTRODUCTION.
The second faith is the despairing effort of self-
preservation, that abandons one element, the free
movement of reason, in order to preserve the other
element, the matter of belief. But with its separa-
tion from the form of reason, the matter loses its
meaning and value, its educating and its inspiring
power. Let the content or substance of our beliefs
be ever so reasonable, yet, if they be presented, not
as reason, but rather as unreason, they cease to be
the truth that makes man free. Whenever the
truths, upon which the moral order of life is based,
come to be regarded as something given entirely
from without, and which human consciousness can
neither test nor verify for itself, faith and obedience
lose their sincerity and become degraded into poli-
tical expedients. The State becomes a government
obeyed for fear of anarchy; the Creed, a doctrine
believed for fear of scepticism. Spiritual life dies
out, because the link is destroyed that connected
the elements of truth with each other and with the
spirit of man.
Criticism.
Our first certitude of things is immediate and The rise of
uncritical. We find ourselves assured of the exis-
tence and nature of ourselves, of the world, and of
God, without any consciousness of the logical rela-
tion of the elements thus bound together in our
thought. The world spiritual and natural in which
we live seems to be given along with the conscious-
ness of self as a separate individual existence in that
world. We do not ask how it is that the universal
and individual consciousness are bound together;
how it is that we as individuals do yet in thought
transcend the limits of our sensible individuality,
and look at ourselves as we look at other objects,
6
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
as parts of one universe. The universal point of
view from which, as thinking beings, we regard the
world, and the individual limitations under which
thought is developed and realised in us as sensitive
organisms, are somehow united together without any
distinct consciousness of the difficulty involved in this
unity of the individual and the universal life. The
terms are implicitly reconciled, and their difference
and opposition dissolved without their being separ-
ately recognised or even named. But the progress
of intellectual life inevitably brings with it a distur-
bance of this simple consciousness, a separation and
opposition of the individual and the universal, of
thought and things; a division of the consciousness
of self from the consciousness of the world, and of
both from the consciousness of God. Doubt and
reflection rend the 'seamless garment' of thought,
and things that seemed before to be essentially
interwoven within each other, now appear as irre-
concilable opposites. When this point is reached,
it is vain to oppose a faith, which is a mere assertion
of unity, to the sceptical proof of difference. The
sceptic himself professes such a faith, and points to
our assertion as an acknowledgment of his victory.
What is necessary is, that the immediate and un-
reasoned synthesis of our first consciousness should
give place to mediate or reasoned synthesis, that
the link that binds the opposed elements of truth
should be found, that the apparent contradiction
between the form of thought and the matter of it,
between the individual consciousness and the objec-
tive reality, should be dissolved and transcended,
and that without denying its relative validity and
importance. The reconciliation of the mind with
L
1-
INTRODUCTION.
itself, the faith which is also reason, cannot be
attained till we get beyond the point of view, in
which such contradictions seem absolute, and get
beyond it, not by suppressing one of the alterna-
tives, but by discovering the unity of principle that
explains their difference.
statement
blem.
Now this is the problem which Kant proposed to Kant's
himself as the problem of criticism. It is immedi- of the pro-
ately connected with the question which he presents
to us at the beginning of the Critique of Pure
Reason-"How
"How are synthetic a priori judgments
possible?" For the meaning of this question, as
we shall see, is simply this-How can the indivi-
dual mind get beyond itself? how can we know?
I can well understand (Kant seems to argue) how
analytic propositions are possible; how the mind,
when it has once possessed itself of certain concep-
tions, can analyse them, or break them up into their
parts. But in so doing it is merely dealing with
itself: how can it go on to add to its own concep-
tions of objects? How can the mind throw a bridge
between itself and objective reality? how can it
form a new synthesis and bind elements together
which are not already given to it in combination,
with the assurance that they are so combined in the
objective world? We find as a matter of fact that
it has actually done so, for we are continually
making judgments in relation to objects, and in
these judgments binding together ideas that by no
means imply each other, or can be got by mere
analysis from each other. But what is the value
of this process? How is what we call experience
possible? What validity can be ascribed to our
knowledge of objects when, on the very assumption
со
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
The age of
Criticism.
that they are objects, the impossibility of know-
ledge seems to be involved? It is the office of
criticism to discover the value of knowledge by
scrutinising its genesis. If we can trace the pro-
cess whereby knowledge is attained, we shall be
able to see on what it rests, and thereby to deter-
mine its validity, and the limit of its validity-to
determine whether it is trustworthy in regard to all
the objects it seems to disclose to us, or only in
relation to some of these, and not to others. For
it is possible that the result may not be the same
in all branches of human thought, that, for instance,
mathematics and physics may be capable of justifi-
cation before the bar of reason, but not metaphysics
or theology. In any case, it is evident that, until
we have thus tested our knowledge, and seen by
what title we possess it, our possession must be
precarious and liable to the inroads of scepticism.
On the other hand, whenever we are able to vindi-
cate our knowledge by connecting its objects with
the very nature of reason itself, we shall have secure
and certain ground on which to build the edifice of
science.
Kant called his own age the age of criticism.
It would be nearer the truth to call it the age of
criticism par excellence. It was only in Kant's
time that the problem of knowledge took the de-
finite form just described; it was only in his time
that the subjective and objective were distinctly
separated from, and opposed to, each other, and
that therefore the extent of the difficulty and the
conditions of its solution were clearly discerned.
Yet, in a sense, Kant's problem is simply the oldest
of all problems, and the age of criticism begins with
I.
9
INTRODUCTION.
ODUCTION
philosophy itself. Philosophy, in its very dawn,
presupposes a disturbance of the unity of man's life,
a division and discord between the individual and
his world, a spiritual revolt against custom, tradi-
tion, and opinion, and an attempt to test them by
a new standard. Philosophy is nothing if not
critical;' it is an analysis of all things with a view
to a higher synthesis which shall no longer be in-
stinctive or habitual, but rational. It begins in
doubt and wonder, which disturb the peace of ignor-
ance, and its goal is the peace of knowledge. But
at first, and in the earlier philosophies, there is an
imperfect analysis, and therefore in them there can
be only an imperfect synthesis. The difficulty can-
not be solved, because it has not been fathomed.
The apparent failure of philosophy in spite of real
progress is explained, when we observe that the
progress is not simply towards better answers to
the question asked, but quite as much towards the
deepening and enlarging of the question. For until
the seeming contradiction has been stretched to the
utmost, it cannot be reconciled; until the problem
has been stated in its most dangerous form, all
solutions of it must be partial and inadequate.
They must leave after all an inexplicable surd, like
the matter of Aristotle, which simply indicates a
place left vacant by the logic of the system.
Kant prepared the way for a better philosophy than
that of his predecessors, it was because he took up
the problem at a more advanced stage after the
failure of the individualism of Locke and Leibnitz,
as well as of the universalism of Spinoza. He asked
at first sight a harder question, but it turned out to
be a question that could be answered.
If
10
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
!
To show more clearly the nature of this question,
a short sketch of the history of philosophy seems to
be necessary; a sketch which may be very vague
and general in relation to the earlier period, but
which must become more definite and detailed as
we approach the time of Kant himself.
11
CHAPTER II.
THE CRITICAL SPIRIT IN ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL
PHILOSOPHY.
THE philosophy of Greece does not correspond to Greek
philosophy
dualistic.
Kant's idea of criticism, mainly because it does not indivi-
not give to the individual, as such, that independent
position, that right of private judgment which has
been claimed for him in modern times. The con-
ception that the individual is a law to himself, and
that no doctrine can claim to be admitted, no rule
to be obeyed by him, except on the evidence of
his own consciousness, would have seemed to the
Greek philosophers to involve intellectual and moral
anarchy.
If their speculation was itself an assertion
of man's spiritual freedom, yet with them it was an
unconscious assertion of it. If they appealed from
the senses and the imagination to the reason, yet
they did not regard man as essentially rational
and hence their claim for the rights of reason was
not a claim for the rights of man. A philosophy
that conceives of reason as the special faculty of
the Greek as distinguished from the barbarian, of
the philosopher as distinguished from the crowd,
and not as that consciousness of self which makes
12
المسر
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Individual-
ism of
us men, can only emancipate the man of culture.
Its ideal life is not possible for all; it is attainable
in its perfection only by the philosopher, it is not
altogether beyond the reach of the statesman, but
it gradually disappears as we descend to the popu-
lace, who are the mere instruments of a happiness
they cannot partake. In such a philosophy the
claim of the individual to find in his own conscious-
ness the touchstone of truth is not recognised, and
therefore the difficulty that arises when that claim
is recognised, cannot be felt. It is not till reason
has been distinctly defined as self-conscious and
individual, that it becomes hard to see how it
can also be universal, how it can transcend the
individuality of the subject so as to apprehend the
objective reality of things.
This critical difficulty appears for the first time
Stoics and in the post-Aristotelian philosophers, and it is this
Epicureans which gives them their peculiarly modern aspect.
is dog-
matic.
The problem of the criterion of truth, which was
the subject of so much controversy to the Stoics,
Epicureans, and Sceptics, is simply the problem of
knowledge in the form which it necessarily takes
in all individualistic speculation. Such speculation
necessarily starts with the assumption of a dualism
between knowing and being, between the "me" and
the "not me," without any attempt to explain the
nature and origin of this dualism. It presupposes a
world of reality independent of the thinking sub-
ject, and asks how the thinking subject, confined as
he is to his own thoughts and feelings, can ever
come to know it. As thus stated the problem is
an insoluble one, and the 'post-Aristotelian schools
can hardly be said even to have made a serious
+
II.
13
INTRODUCTION.
effort to solve it. The Stoics, whose criterion of
truth, when we examine the meaning of their vari-
ous utterances, turns out to be but the formal self-
identity of thought, or the logical laws of identity
and contradiction, ignored or suppressed the diffi-
culty altogether. Their assertion that "the rational
is the real" was empty and valueless, for to them
the rational meant only the self-consistent. Their
principle was not, in Kant's language, a principle of
synthesis, and therefore it could not enable them to
show that anything in particular exists or does not
exist. On the other hand, the Epicureans, whose
criterion of truth was sensation, were from the first
involved in the contradiction of seeking the objec-
tive in that which is essentially subjective, the uni-
versal in that which is essentially individual. The
very problem as to the possibility of knowing the
objective world, must lose its meaning, if immediate
sensation be not interpreted as having relation to
something different from, and more permanent than
itself. And if it be so interpreted, the criterion of
truth cannot be the mere isolated sensation as such.
The atomic theory of Epicurus betrays undisguisedly
the fatal defect that clings to all similar attempts
to base knowledge on simple feeling. Sensation-
alism at once necessitates and renders impossible a
materialistic explanation of the universe. It neces-
sitates materialism, for it must explain sensations
as impressions made by a material object; and it
renders it impossible, for the impressions in them-
selves can tell us nothing of the object that pro-
duces them. Thus, the individualistic schools of
later antiquity failed to apprehend, much more to
solve, the difficulties of the problem they had set
14
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
And there-
fore easily
before them; the Epicureans, because by their cri-
terion it was impossible to explain how the indi-
vidual should go beyond his own individuality at
all; and the Stoics, because the universality of
reason--i.e., its independence of the feelings of the
individual subject was conceived by them in a
merely formal and negative way, and their criterion
of truth was at best a criterion of logical self-con-
sistency.
The Sceptics made short work with the opposite
refuted by dogmatisms of the Stoics and Epicureans.
Sceptics.
They
had in fact, merely to show that they were dog-
matisms; or, in other words, that they were based
on principles that were only assumptions. Taking
their stand on the same opposition between the
world and the individual consciousness which Stoics
and Epicureans had presupposed, they needed
simply to point out that, on this presupposition,
the problem is absolutely insoluble except by a
'leap in the dark.' The objection which Berkeley
afterwards pressed against the materialists, they
pressed against both schools equally, that our con-
sciousness cannot go beyond itself to apprehend that
of which, according to the very idea of it, we are
not conscious. On the one side is the object, on
the other the individual mind. How can conscious-
ness bridge the gulf between itself and that which
is not itself? how can it be one of the terms, and at
the same time the unity that includes them both?
Tecum habita et noris quam sit tibi curta supellex.
We cannot leap off our own shadow. All questions
as to objective truth and reality, as such, must be
rejected by the mind that would confine itself within
the limits of certitude, and avoid arbitrary hypo-
II.
15
INTRODUCTION.
thesis. Peace is to be found, not where the Stoics
and Epicureans sought it, in conforming ourselves
to a law of nature without us, of which we know
nothing; but in conforming ourselves to the nature
within us, in the self-centred life that makes itself
independent of everything but the individuality in
which it is imprisoned.
also a dog-
The victory of the Sceptic seems complete so long Scepticism
as we regard his reasoning simply as an argumen- matism.
tum ad homines, as a weapon of polemic against the
Stoics and Epicureans. He needs in fact only to
point out that those who begin, as they begin, by
assuming an absolute dualism between the self-con-
sciousness of the individual and the world, can
never find any logical way of transition from the
one to the other. When, however, we ask him to
prove either this presupposed dualism, or the logical
possibility of his own position, we soon discover that
scepticism, in destroying every dogmatism, destroys
itself. If we cannot know a world which is not
ourselves, we cannot know that it exists; and if we
do not know that it exists, then the very division
between knowing and being disappears. The whole
force of the sceptic assertion that we know appear-
ance and not reality, depends on the assumption
that there is a reality distinct from appearance.
Carry out the argument of scepticism to its legiti-
mate conclusion in the denial of any object distinct
from the states of the subject, and the ignorance
disappears along with the knowledge. In short,
the distinction of subject and object must be as-
sumed ere the limitation of the subject to the
phenomena of his own consciousness can have any
meaning. Appearance and reality do not need to
16
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
be reconciled unless they have first been separated;
and the sceptic has first to justify the division of the
terms ere he can make it the ground of his scepti-
cism. On the other hand, if it be dogmatism to
assert anything positive, the self-concentration of
the sceptic in opposition to dogmatism becomes at
a certain point, as Bacon remarked, itself a dog-
matism. The negation of the reality of the object
involves the assertion of a standard of reality in the
mind of the subject. For how does the sceptic
maintain his thesis that we know only appearance ?
It is by showing that, in regard to every question,
two opposite views may be supported with equal
force of reason. If thought and perception appre-
hend reality, they must, it is assumed, apprehend
something permanent, self-consistent, and identical;
what they do apprehend is changeable, self-contra-
dictory, and without definite quality, therefore they
apprehend only appearance. Thus the sceptic has
an idea of truth and knowledge, with which he
compares our actual conceptions of things and finds
them wanting. The necessity of reason to assert
itself is revealed even in his denial of reason. It is
vain for him to declare that he does not dogmatise
even about the incomprehensibility of things, and
that his philosophy is "like a medicine that purges
out itself along with the disease." He cannot doubt
his own doubt ad infinitum; his negation of the
particular rests on the assertion of the universal.
The very logic by which he overthrows the dogmas
of philosophy, implies that the mind possesses in
itself the form and idea of truth. His deepest
doubt reveals a certitude that transcends and em-
braces it.
II.
17
INTRODUCTION.
17
platonic
When we try to trace the effect of this experience The Neo-
on the philosophies or theosophies that close the period.
record of Greek speculation, we are somewhat em-
barrassed by the increasing imperfection of logical
method and form, that characterises the transition
period between the isolated national civilisation of
the ancient world, and the universal culture of
Christendom. It was
a time when men were
troubled with thoughts beyond the reaches of their
souls, when Eastern and Western ideas met toge-
ther, and the synthesis between them was per-
formed rather by the heart than the head. In the
absence of any clear principle of unity, of any logic
adequate to the task of defining the different ele-
ments, and bringing them into intelligible relation
to each other, imagination had to supply the defects
of reason.
A literature grew up in which the
language of symbol and metaphor was strangely
blended and confused with the language of abstract
thought. Such a literature, full of suggestive mat-
ter, yet utterly crude and almost barbarous in re-
spect of scientific form, it is not easy to interpret,
without finding either too much or too little meaning
in it. Still, we cannot mistake its general bearing
and fundamental thought, illustrated as it is by the
contemporaneous development of Christian doctrine,
and this is all that is necessary for our purpose.
idea.
That thought is the thought of a reconciliation of Its leading
the dualism which in various forms, and finally in
the form of the dualism of subject and object, had
been the presupposition of all Greek philosophy,
and had reached its inevitable result in Scepticism.
Scepticism had however more than a merely nega-
tive value. In a sense in which the Sceptics did
B
18
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
L
not apply the metaphor, it purged out itself along
with the disease. In other words, it suggested that
the dualism of matter and form, being and knowing,
subject and object, is not absolute; that the thinking
subject, as such, transcends the distinction of himself
from the object, and that, on the other hand, the
object is essentially spiritual. Hence philosophy
becomes religious; its problem is no longer to find
a bridge between the individual mind and the world,
but rather between man and God. The terms set
in opposition are the infinite and the finite, and all
the speculation of the time is engaged with these
two questions: how shall the infinite become finite,
or reveal itself in the finite, and how shall the
finite consistently with its finite nature rise to the
infinite? There is a certain family resemblance in
all the various forms which the doctrine of recon-
ciliation takes. On the one side, God, the universal
Being, is regarded as not abiding in himself, but, in
some way, going out of himself, and by the necessity
of his own nature giving rise to the finite. On the
other side, the finite is no longer supposed to be
limited to itself; even in the sense of its own weak-
ness, its own nothingness, it has an implicit con-
sciousness of its relation to the infinite, and in some
way, whether by moral or intellectual development,
or by a mystic ecstacy, it is supposed to be capable
of passing beyond its own limits to partake in the
life of God. Thus the process of the infinite out of
itself into the finite, is met by the process of the
finite into the infinite. Each side of the antagonism
loses its absolute fixity, and comes into relation with
the other, or even passes into unity with the other;
yet each side still maintains its self-identity in the
+
II.
19
INTRODUCTION.
process of self-surrender, or rather, the highest
manifestation of the life of each is just this process
of self-surrender to the other. The idea of the
Logos, the unity that expresses itself in difference,
and the idea of atonement, of the return of the
differences into unity, rule the spirit of the age, and
in all its religious or philosophical systems, both
ideas are represented in one form or another.
it to
It is unnecessary to enter into any detailed ac- Relation of
count of the particular forms in which these ideas Criticism.
were expressed by different Neoplatonic or Gnostic
writers. These were often arbitrary and fantastic
enough, but they should not hide from us the im-
portance of the ideas themselves-ideas without
which the modern spirit of liberty, and the modern
spirit of criticism could not have existed. For it
is the conviction, latent or expressed, that in the
consciousness of self he has the ultimate test of
truth, or, in other words, that there is no absolute
dualism between himself and the world, that has
given to the individual in modern times the courage
to challenge all forms of authority, whether practical
or speculative, whether in religion, in politics, or in
science. It is this that has inspired him with the
sense of absolute rights and claims, and thereby
emancipated him from those great social powers by
which, in earlier times, his life was absorbed, and
from which, at all times, he derives the culture of
his higher nature. Nay, it is this also that has set
him in a free attitude towards his immediate con-
sciousness of outward nature, and so provoked that
spirit of investigation out of which modern science
has sprung.
A religion which should penetrate
mankind with this conviction, a religion in other
20
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
ལ་ ་ ཅ་
Christian
form of the
idea.
words founded on the idea of the unity of the human
and the divine, was necessary to produce, as in its
ultimate development it must produce, an age of
criticism.
Jesus is not merely the
Christianity was not in the beginning a philoso-
phical theory, it was the life of Christ. But this
life stood in essential connection with the thoughts
and wants of the time. Christ laid hold of the
spirits of men with irresistible force, just because
the whole religious life of the time was connected
with the effort to bring the infinite and finite, the
divine and the human together, to conceive God
as revealing himself, man as transcending himself.
And, on the other hand, this thought could not but
react on the idea of Christ as it was received in the
Church, and assist in its development. Already,
in the earlier writings of St. Paul, that idea has lost
its peculiarly Jewish form.
Messiah of the Jews, but has become the Christ of
mankind. And in the later epistles which, whether
Pauline or not, contain the immediate and necessary
development of Pauline doctrine, Christ's universal
position towards man is directly combined with the
idea that he is the Logos of God, the express image
of his person.
It was impossible for Christianity,
born so late in the world's history, to rest for more
than a moment in the simple form of intuitive feel-
ing and implicit faith; it was already becoming a
doctrine even in the minds of its very first believers.
And the rapid formulating of the creed of the
Church in regard to the nature of God, showed how
pressing was the intellectual necessity, by which the
Christian consciousness was driven to make clear and
explicit its answer to the great question of the time.
II.
21
INTRODUCTION.
of Faith
in the early
Yet the intellect thus awakened was but ill Struggle
equipped for the task of apprehending and analys- and Reason
ing the fact of Christianity, or of discovering the Church.
unity of principle that bound together all its differ-
ent elements. The proper age of Greek philosophy
had passed, and the metaphysical and logical con-
ceptions it had elaborated and stored up, mainly in
the works of Plato and Aristotle, were inadequate,
even if their full meaning had been apprehended, to
explain the meaning of the new phenomena of the
religious life. The dualism, that underlay Greek
speculation, had so impregnated its philosophical
language, as to make it unfit for the consistent
expression of the idea of reconciliation. When, for
example, we examine the metaphysics of Plotinus,
we find that his logical and strictly scientific lan-
guage is always dualistic, and that whenever he
attempts to express the unity of the elements dis-
tinguished, his style at once becomes metaphorical
and pictorial. And when we follow the develop-
ment of Christian doctrine in the earlier centuries,
the same conflict of form and matter presents itself.
The history of dogma is a continual war of logic
against the spirit of Christianity, a continual re-
assertion of the completeness of Christianity against
a one-sided logic. Heresy lays hold alternately of
that element in Christianity which is kindred to
Monotheism, and of that element which is kindred
to Pantheism, and the unity of truth is in danger of
being lost, because no mode of expression can be
devised, in which it may appear consistent with
itself. The church, swaying now to one side and
now to another, arrests the controversy at a certain
stage only by the arbitrary anathema sit, of her
22
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
!་་འམ་་
.
successive councils. In the dogmas thus fixed and
declared, we may find a certain balance maintained
between the opposite tendencies that divide the
Christian world. Yet we cannot attribute this bal-
ance to any clear philosophic consciousness of a
unity of principle in Christianity, which permeates
and reconciles the difference of its elements. We
must attribute it simply to the healthy instinct of
Christendom, that repelled any attempt to mutilate
its life. When Gibbon sarcastically says, that the
most irrational solution of a difficulty was sure to be
adopted by the church, he is not far from the truth.
By any logic then used, Arianism or Sabellianism,
Docetism or Eutychianism, were more reasonable
than the dogmas which were erected as barriers
against them. But in the struggle of different ten-
dencies, the balance was held by the general sym-
pathy or feeling of Christian men, who refused to
give up any element of the faith because they were
unable to reconcile it with the rest, and who ac-
cepted contradictions rather than an incomplete
Christianity. While, therefore, minds in which
the logical was stronger than the spiritual interest
followed out opposite lines of thought to their result,
· and were thus forced to sacrifice one or other aspect
of their religion to a theoretical unity and self-con-
sistency, the general judgment of the church insisted
on combining the strongest statements on one side
with the strongest statements on the other, without
any attempt at logical reconciliation. With all the
appearance of intellectual activity in the earlier
centuries of the Christian era, during which the
framework of dogma was being put together, the
result was the suppression and not the satisfaction
II.
23
INTRODUCTION.
of the questions of the intellect. The different
articles laid down by the councils were but succes-
sive boundary marks, showing the extent of the
territory won by faith from reason.
That very
:
doctrine of the union of human and divine, which
might have been expected to free the mind of man,
seemed to be turned into a means of fettering and
enslaving him. Christianity had to be received and
felt, it had to penetrate the life of man, and remould
the social order, ere it could be understood and
criticised and the momentary silencing of a philo-
sophy whose method was inadequate, was necessary
to the development of philosophy itself. Thus the
growth of dogma gradually limited, and finally
overpowered, the energy of thought. When the
predominant influence passed from the Greek to the
Latin church, heresy all but died out, and in the
silence of criticism the church devoted itself ex-
clusively to its practical task of converting and
civilising that chaotic mass of barbarians out of
which the modern nations of Europe were to
spring.
Scholastic
phy.
The first clear, though feeble, assertion of the The
claims of reason, as distinct from faith, was made Philoso-
by the scholastic philosophy. The scholastics were
far from rebelling against the dogmatic system of
the church. On the contrary, they started with the
acknowledgment of it as absolutely complete and
certain, independently of any movement of thought.
In their well known motto Credo ut intelligam, they
intended to lay down the rule of implicit faith in
respect to those principles, which constituted the
premises of all reasoning on moral and religious
subjects, and they vindicated the rights of reason
24
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Effect of
the
only as the ancilla fidei, whose function it was to
analyse and interpret the doctrine first received on
authority. The purely external and unquestioning
reception of the matter of belief was the first point;
but this receptive attitude toward the teaching of
the Church was not conceived to be inconsistent
with a subsequent process of logical development,
by which its bearing on all disputed questions was
to be determined, and its utmost consequences to
be brought to light. Yet even for this process an
external guide was sought and found in Aristotle,
who was regarded as the author of a kind of
logical revelation, and whose categories and meta-
physical principles were assumed to be absolute
criteria of truth, applicable equally to all things
human and divine. Scholasticism was no free re-
flection, it was rather the application of a method
received on authority to a matter received on author-
ity; it was criticism of a kind, but a criticism that
derived its principle and method, as well as the
object to which it was applied, from an external
source.
The result of the Scholastic method was neces-
Scholastic sarily the reverse of its intention. It was supposed,
ism. by those who first applied it, to be a purely formal
Rational-
process of analysis and ratiocination, which would
elicit the full meaning of the dogma, without in the
slightest degree modifying or changing it. But a
method always involves a principle, and a change of
form is impossible without a change of matter.
The categories used to develop and systematise
Christian doctrine, inevitably altered its essential
character. What seemed most to protect the dogma
of the Church from depravation, really left it with-
II.
25
INTRODUCTION.
out defence against the scholastic rationalism. Just
because it was received as an external tradition, it
was exposed to the utmost distortion from the logical
principle applied to it. Just because he accepted
his creed from the church with implicit faith, the
Scholastic was unprepared to reject, and ready to
admit, any strange or even absurd consequence that
could with apparent conclusiveness be deduced from
it. He sometimes showed in close connection the
extreme of slavish submission to authority, and the
extreme of rationalistic license. His criticism was
lawless and capricious, because there was no subjec-
tive check of the spirit upon it, but only the check
of a dead external letter. In an earlier period the
Christian consciousness had overruled and over-
mastered logic, and expressed itself in its com-
pleteness in the doctrine in spite of all formal
contradictions. But now the reverse took place.
Logic seized upon a doctrine which had become an
external tradition, and finding it no longer protected.
by a living Christian consciousness, it gradually
disintegrated and dissolved it. The Aristotelian
philosophy was essentially dualistic, and when its
categories and principles were applied in undoubting
confidence to a religion which is the implicit nega-
tion of all dualism, their effect was not to explain it,
but to explain it away. An infinity of subtle dis-
tinctions and artificial divisions was the necessary
result of an essential contradiction between form
and matter, which they disguised but could not
remove. The Scholastics did for Christian doctrine
what, at a later time, the Casuists did for Christian
morality; they gradually buried it under an artificial
system, in which all trace of unity of principle was
26
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
lost. As by the multitude of casuistical rules, the
law of duty was made capricious and uncertain ;
so in the multitude of scholastic reasons, nothing
could be seen to be Christian. or rational. The
scholastic interpretation of theology ended in separ-
ating theology from all real interests, even from
the interest of the religious life. It was a gigantic
illustration of the truth, which is almost a truism,
that reason can be limited only by itself, and that,
when it accepts a belief as something purely ex-
ternal and resting on an external authority, it
becomes at once lifeless and capricious, without law
and without liberty. Scholasticism had completed
its work when, by a process of exhaustion, it proved
the emptiness and unreality of that transcendent
region in which life and light had been sought by
mediæval thought, and thus prepared the way for
the reconciliation of faith with reason, of religion
with human life. Out of this reconciliation, and
the more perfect emancipation of the individual
reason which it brought with it, arose the modern
philosophy.
27
CHAPTER III.
THE FIRST PERIOD OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY-
DESCARTES AND SPINOZA.
CHRISTIANITY, as we have seen, implicitly Medieval
contained in it the idea of a reconciliation of
the ancient dualism. By it the opposition of matter
and form, which was insoluble to Plato and Aris-
totle, and the opposition of subject and object, which
was insoluble to the Stoics and Epicureans, were
alike transcended. When God was conceived as
self-revealing, he required no foreign matter upon
which he might act, and in which he might realise
his will. When the external object was conceived
as spiritual, or as the revelation of spirit, it could
no longer be regarded as something entirely foreign
to, and hidden from, the thought of man..
unity in both cases embraced the difference, and
made its terms transparent to each other. But this
idea of unity and reconciliation was in the first
instance presented in an abstract and undeveloped
form. It was at first confined to the church, and
did not penetrate the world; it became the source
and spring of religious life, but cast no new light
upon nature or politics. And just because it did
The
Dualism.
28
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
The Re-
naissance
formation.
not yet cast any light upon them, or connect itself
with them, it deprived them of all import and value
for the spirit of man. Hence the very doctrine of
reconciliation itself gave rise to a new opposition
between the world and the church, the secular and
the sacred, nature and spirit. The general idea of
the reconciliation of the divine and the human was
set against all particular illustrations or manifesta-
tions of it. The spirit of modern science, which
finds the simplest phenomenon interesting, because
it sees law and order everywhere, and the spirit of
modern poetry, to which nature is the transparent
vesture of divinity, were equally alien to the media-
val mind. Nature was condemned as unholy, the
present world and its interests were treated as essen-
tially evil, the realisation of the spiritual kingdom
was deferred to the future life. No scientific curi-
osity as to nature and human nature could live,
except in a few rare minds, when earth was regarded
as the "ante-room of heaven," when the spiritual
order was not conceived as revealing itself in the
natural order, but as continually interfering with
it and miraculously overturning it. Science and
philosophy were all but swallowed up by theology:
and theology, thus divorced from the other inter-
ests of man's life, ended by divorcing itself even from
the interests of religion.
The Renaissance and the Reformation mark the
and the Re- return to experience. They showed that the doc-
trine of reconciliation was at last passing from the
abstract to the concrete. They were closely
related to each other, though sometimes accident-
ally opposed. The Renaissance was the revindica-
tion of nature and human nature, the reassertion of
III.
29
INTRODUCTION.
finite interests.
was but one indication of the awakened thirst for
a wider experience, to fill up the void left by an
endless and purposeless dialectic, that had in it no
principle of development. But, in the first instance,
it seemed that this new spirit was essentially secular,
that it was opposed not only to theology but also
to religion, and that in exalting the human, it
depressed the divine. It was Luther's task to show
that this was not so-to vindicate religion, on the
new ground, as a fact of experience, for the evidence
of which man did not need to look to the authority
of a divinely commissioned church, but only to his
own consciousness. Luther could adopt the scholastic
motto Credo ut intelligam, but he gave it a new
meaning. With him it meant, not 'I accept my
creed from authority, that I may afterwards develop
its logical meaning and results,' but 'I feel that I
may know.' It meant, not that the church must
speak before the individual, but that the heart of
the individual must speak before his intellect, that
religious experience is necessary to him, who would
understand the nature of religion. But this experi-
ence is possible to every one. The key of knowledge
is not in the exclusive possession of any church, any
more than it is the reward of any special training
of the schools. In this sense the Reformers main-
tained, that every one has the right, or rather, the
duty of private judgment. The Protestant, if he did
not accept the maxim Pectus theologum facit, was at
least obliged to hold, that the cultivated intelligence
of the theologian could only evolve, and make articu-
late, the secret logic of the religious sentiment; that
his only function was to justify the process, by which
Its revival of ancient literature
;
30
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Empiri-
cism com-
mon to
Luther and
Bacon.
Christianity influenced the souls of men, by bringing
that process to clear self-consciousness.
This return to experience is the point of union
between the revivers of learning and the Reformers.
The explanation of what is within the range of
human consciousness by that which is supposed to
be utterly beyond it, is the one thing they are agreed
in rejecting. Luther condemns an authoritative
church, as standing between the soul and God, in the
same spirit in which Bacon afterwards condemned
the abstractions of scholastic philosophy as standing
between the human mind and nature. Both demand
the direct contact of subject and object; both are
equally convinced that, by means of this contact, the
harmony and unity of the two may be attained
without any need of a mediator.
In both cases,
indeed, a process is held to be necessary: a process,
whereby in the one case the natural man, to whom
the life of Christ is an external fact, is to be con-
verted and changed into the spiritual man, to whom
the belief in Christ is one with the consciousness of
himself; and a process in the other case, whereby
the student of nature is to free his mind from all
presuppositions and prejudices, and make himself, in
Bacon's language, into a pure mirror of the external
universe. But in the one case, as in the other, the
process is one which is to be carried on from begin-
ning to end in the mind and experience of the in-
dividual himself, and which involves no dependence
on an external authority. The circle is complete
within the range of human thought and perception.
The living experience is its own sufficient evidence.
The assertion, therefore, of experience in opposition
to medieval dualism, involved the principle, that the
III.
31
INTRODUCTION
truth can be mediated to the spirit of man only by
the movement of that spirit. This movement may in
one point of view be described as the self-surrender
of the individual mind to a truth, which is independent
of it. "Into the kingdom of man which is based on
science, as into the kingdom of heaven, we can enter
only sub persona infantis," * giving up all subjective
idols and preconceived opinions, and simply receiving
the truth as it is presented to us from without. Yet,
on the other hand, this simplicity of reception does
not in either case imply a mere passivity of thought.
On the contrary, our first apprehension of things is
farthest from the truth, and an acquiescence in im-
mediate appearance is denounced, by both Luther
and Bacon, as the great hindrance of true religion
and true science. In both cases there is a method,
a definite course of activity, through which the in-
dividual mind must pass, ere it can reach the truth
and become identified therewith, so as to find the
evidence for it in itself. By this course of activity
the object ceases to be, what it is in the first appre-
hension of it, a merely external object: it comes to
be seen in its principle, or cause, or law, and there-
fore, as, in some sense, one with the thought that
apprehends it. Hence, what, in one point of view,
is a change of the subject, is, in another point of
view a change of the object. The sacrifice of mere
subjective presuppositions or idols of the mind, with
a view to the simple reception of the truth of
nature, may also be regarded as the finding of mind
in nature. The surrender of reason to the teaching
of Christ is, in another point of view, the discovery
of reason in Christianity.
=
"Novum Organum," I, § 68.
32
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
*.
Need of
Philosophy
Experi-
ence.
At the same time, it is to be noticed, that this
to justify conception of the unity of thought with its object,
which is involved in the Lutheran idea of religion,
and in the empiricism of Bacon, was not brought
by either of them to clear and explicit consciousness.
Bacon, while he describes the method of physical
inquiry, and lays down the principles by which it is
to be guided, has no thought of connecting his prin-
ciples or his method with the nature of mind itself.
He always speaks as if facts were given through
sense without any aid from reason, and as if every
contribution of reason to the data of sense must
necessarily involve a distortion of these data. His
image of the mind as a mirror seemed to him a
sufficient account of its relation to the world, and
freed him in his own eyes from the necessity of
attributing any constitutive power to thought.
And Luther, while he allows that the truth must
be spiritually discerned, thinks of the conversion
whereby it comes to be so discerned, as a state pro-
duced in the individual soul by an influence under
which it is purely passive. It is therefore fair to
say of both, that, though they virtually asserted the
unity of truth with the mind that apprehends it,
they were content to feel this unity without attempt-
ing to understand it. The implicit reason of the
mind's assent to truth was not by them made ex-
plicit. How the individual, as such, can transcend
his individuality, how his assurance of that which
is not himself can be vindicated, how he can be an
exclusive and finite being, and yet in thought can
overpass his limits, and regard both himself and all
other things from a universal point of view, as if
he were a spectator of all time and existence,' are
III.
33
INTRODUCTION.
questions which they did not ask. Ultimately, both
Bacon and Luther rested on an immediate certitude
of feeling. As the one felt that he was dealing with
reality when he was dealing with the external world,
so the other felt that he was dealing with reality
when he was dealing with God. And the steps
taken in both cases to develop this knowledge, and
to raise it from the form in which the object is
something merely external, into that form in which
its law or principle is apprehended, were justified
simply by their result. As a matter of fact, nature
ceases to be a mere external existence for us,
when we have discovered its laws. As a matter
of fact, God ceases to be a mere blank name for
the absolute power and unity that embraces all
things, when we receive into our minds the Chris-
tian idea of his nature. But still, even after this
process, self, the world, and God have the aspect of
three elements, which we find together in our minds,
but which are connected by no necessary relations,
or at least by relations, which are felt only, and not
understood. Hence this immediate and unreflected
consciousness in all its forms is still exposed to the
shocks of doubt, a doubt that may assail even the
reality of its objects. The consciousness of self may
be turned against the consciousness of an external
world; or the consciousness of an external world
against the consciousness of self, so long as they
are not seen to be necessary to each other. Or,
again, the finite consciousness may be opposed to
the consciousness of the infinite, and either may be
used to suppress the other. The Spinozistic Pan-
theism, that reduces the world and the finite spirit
to an illusion, is but the opposite counterpart of
C
34
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
The Pro-
blem of
Philo-
sophy.
the Positivist denial of the possibility of knowing
God.
So soon as such doubts arise, the empirical method
ceases to be sufficient, and philosophy becomes a
necessity. For the empirical method must presup-
pose its objects as given, and given independently
of each other. It must take God for granted, if it
is not to treat the religious sentiment as an illusion.
It must take the external world for granted, else it
has no fact before it for science to examine. Philo-
sophy, on the other hand, seeks to draw the lines
that connect all these objects in one system of
belief, and to show the impossibility of admitting
one of them without, in some sense, admitting all.
Its aim is to undermine and cut away every stand-
ing ground for scepticism, by showing the reciprocal
implication of all the principles, on which the world
as an intelligible world must rest. It must there-
fore distinguish itself from the ordinary opinion or
common sense of men by two marks: it must raise
into clear consciousness what is latent in common
sense, the laws and the principles that underlie our
common experience and knowledge; and, secondly,
it must bring its thoughts together, and discover
their mutual relation, instead of passing from the
one to the other and forgetting each in turn. For
the consciousness that dwells in parts and not in
the whole, can never estimate the parts properly; or
rather, each part is to it for the moment as if it
were the whole. Thus the different elements of
truth stand each by its own isolated weight; they
do not support, and it is well if they are not even
turned against, each other. But the ultimate test
of each truth, a test which at the same time fixes
III.
35
INTRODUCTION.
the limit of its validity, lies in the exhibition of its
relation to other truths in a system. Thus philo-
sophy is a kind of reasoning in a circle; but this is
no argument against it, for it is the circle beyond
which nothing lies. The ultimate unity of know-
ledge must be that, in which all the elements of
knowledge are reflected into each other, in which
the parts cannot be apprehended except as merging
themselves in the whole; and the whole cannot be
apprehended except as necessarily differentiating
itself to the parts. That there is no vanity or pre-
sumption in the attempt to reach such a unity, but
that, on the contrary, the idea of it is involved in
the very nature of reason, and that our whole intel-
lectual life is an effort to realise and develop it, we
shall afterwards attempt to show.
method of
DESCARTES was the first modern who realised the The
extent of the problem of philosophy-the first who Descartes.
exter
took his stand with confidence on the ground of
criticism prepared by Christianity. His aim was,
in the first place, to bring into clear and distinct
consciousness each of the elements that go to make
up the world of experience, in order that, in the
second place, he might discover the inner link of
connection that binds all these elements together.
These two processes constitute his method. He V
begins with analysis, abstraction, distinction, setting)
each element by itself, and fixing it with the utmost
definiteness in its separate nature. He ends with
synthesis, relation, unity-showing, or at least at-
tempting to show, that the elements thus rent from
each other are necessarily connected together. He
divides in order to unite; but what he divides is in
appearance a congeries or aggregate of opinions and
36
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
His first
facts without any necessary relation or affinity; and
the unity he seeks, is a unity of system, in which
each part necessarily determines, and is determined
by, the rest. In other words, he breaks up the
synthesis of ordinary thought, in order to become
conscious of its combining principle, and in order
to distinguish the elements that are connected by
necessity of reason, from those that are connected
by mere arbitrary association. This at least is his
general aim and intention, however imperfectly he
is able to realise it. His merit is to have shown
the nature of the problem of modern philosophy.
That the first attempt to solve that problem was
insufficient and crude, is no more than might have
been expected.
Generally speaking, the error of Descartes lay in
this, that the spirit of abstraction and distinction
was too strong in him. The first movement of
thought, by which the elements were set free from
each other, carried him so far, that he was unable
to reconnect them by any but external and acci-
dental bonds. The division and independence of the
parts was conceived so absolutely, that it became
impossible to bind them again in unity of the whole,
or possible only by suppressing their separate exis
tence altogether. Just because he starts with an
absolute dualism, his thought in the end can find no
resting-place short of Spinozism,
He begins, where the Sceptics ended, with a
Principle. doubt that tries to make itself absolute: De omni-
bus dubitandum est. Examining the beliefs of the
ordinary consciousness-the beliefs of which he is
possessed without the aid of philosophy-he finds
that they form an incongruous mass of opinions,
III.
37
INTRODUCTION.
collected without method, arranged without system.
They have been acquired by no conscious intellec-
tual process, whereby thought and reality have been
mediated with each other, and therefore we can have
no certainty as to their truth, or as to their relation
to each other. In order to attain such certainty,
we must first, by doubt and abstraction, free our
consciousness from the successive strata of opinion
and prejudice by which it has been overlaid. When
we have thus taken up the attitude of criticism, the
first thing that becomes doubtful and uncertain, is
the secondary or 'properly sensible' qualities of
matter. For these, as we find, are not fixed pro-
perties of any object, but are constantly changing
with its relations to other objects, and to the sen-
sitive subject. What remains as the reality of the
object, when we abstract from all these changeable
qualities, is a something whose only qualities are
extension and capacity of motion; and therefore for
the truth of things external we must go to mathe-
matical science. But the possibility of doubt re-
mains. Even the truths of mathematics may be
supposed to be illusions, without objective reality.
As we can imagine that there is some malevolent
spirit playing upon our minds and feeding us with
lies, we must surrender as doubtful all objective
judgments as to the external world, and concentrate
ourselves upon our own minds. Even here we have
not reached the limit of doubt, for, apart from any
reference to an object, we find in our minds various
states, which we call by the different names of
feeling, willing, perceiving, imagining, &c. These,
however, are modes of consciousness, and not con-
sciousness itself, and it is therefore possible to
38
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT
L.
Conflict of
Dualism
theism.
abstract even from them. Whatever I can think
away, Descartes argues, is not me: and I seek to
be with myself, that I may know how much I have
in myself without borrowing from any foreign source.
His method of doubt is a method of abstraction, by
which he first reduces the external object to exten-
sion and the subject to pure self-consciousness, and
then, by a second step, concentrates the thinking
being upon itself by negation of the external object.
Thus he reaches his first principle. The thinking
substance asserts its existence even in the very act
by which it denies everything else. Its self-affirma-
tion is involved in the very possibility of doubt, and
cannot itself therefore be the object of doubt. What
we can doubt is what we can separate from the self-
affirming Ego, which is as it asserts itself, and
asserts itself as it is. But the end of doubt is the
beginning of knowledge, and in the cogito ergo sum
we have a first unity of thought and being, out of
which a complete reconciliation of them may spring.
But here comes the difficulty. If consciousness
and Pan is to find in itself the principle of all knowledge, it
must transcend its own individuality. A purely
individual consciousness, as the history of subjective
idealism was subsequently to prove, would be for
ever shut up within itself. Now the absolute oppo-
sition, which Descartes has established between the
subject and the external object, seems to make the
transition from the one to the other impossible.
Reducing all the qualities of the object to bare
extension and all the qualities of the subject to bare
thought, Descartes treated as illusory all phenomena
that lie in the interval between the mechanical and
the mental. To him mind is a thinking substance,
III.
39
INTRODUCTION.
a pure activity, which abides in itself and is moved
only by itself; matter is an extended substance, a
pure passivity, absolutely self-external, and moved
only from without. A gulf is thus opened up be-
tween the inward and the outward, which cannot be
bridged, unless thought should become extended, or
matter should think; and to Descartes the one
alternative seemed as absurd as the other. But
knowledge is impossible, unless thought can cross
this gulf, unless it can apprehend at once the self
and the not-self. There must be some point of
view from which the dualism ceases to be absolute,
if the individual mind is not for ever to be impris-
oned in itself.
Descartes' solution of the difficulty is, in effect,
that there is a unity beyond the difference, and that
this unity is to be found in thought. But he ex-
presses this idea in a naive, imperfect, and even
self-contradictory manner. He finds in his mind
the consciousness of the infinite; nay, this conscious-
ness is not only in the mind, but it is necessary to
the mind. It is the very idea that makes the human
mind what it is. “Let us never imagine," he argues
in the Third Meditation, "that the conception of the
infinite is got merely by negation of the finite, just
as we conceive rest to be the negation of movement,
and darkness to be the negation of light. On the
contrary, we obviously think of the infinite substance
as having more reality in it than the finite sub-
stance; nay, it may even be said that our conscious-
ness of the infinite is in some sense prior to our
consciousness of the finite; or, in other words, that
our consciousness of God is prior to our consciousness
of self. For how could we doubt or desire, how
W!!
40
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
His argu-
ments for
of God.
could we be conscious that anything is wanting to
us, and that we are not altogether perfect, if we had
not in ourselves the idea of a perfect being, in com-
parison with whom we recognise the defects of our
nature."
'The consciousness of a limit implies the con-
the Being sciousness of something beyond it.' If Descartes
had followed out this line of thought, he might have
seen that the dualism of mind and matter is not
absolute, and that thought transcends the distinction
while it recognises it. But this is not his way of
reasoning. In his view, the idea of the infinite, like
every other idea, is distinct and separate from its
reality; his argument is only that there can be no
adequate cause of such an idea in our minds, except
the infinite itself: an argument which can have no
weight, unless we already presuppose that very con-
nection of the subjective with the objective, which
has to be proved. Or, again, he argues that the
conception of God as the perfect Being implies his
existence, as the conception of a triangle implies its
having its angles equal to two right angles; from
which it would follow, not that God exists, but only
that if he exists, he exists by the necessity of his
nature, and not by an external necessity, like finite
things. In both forms of the argument there is a
salto mortale from thought to existence, from the
finite to the infinite, which is immediately followed
by another salto mortale from the existence of God
to the existence of the external world. The reality
of matter is proved by the truthfulness of God: for
if God is truthful, our clear and distinct ideas cannot
deceive us, but must have realities correspondent
with them. Hence our purely mathematical idea
III.
41
INTRODUCTION.
of matter, as it is clear and distinct, represents the
reality of the external world. But why, we may
ask, should God's truth be pledged for the existence
of a matter independent of, and corresponding to, the
thought of matter, if, as spiritual beings, we never
can have to do with anything but thought? Obvi
ously the truthfulness of God is brought in as a
Deus ex machina, to represent that unity of the
object with the subject, which is wanting to the
philosophy, and which, indeed, is rendered impossible
by its absolute dualism.
Pantheism
of the
Abstrac-
This general view of the Cartesian philosophy may the neces
be sufficient to show by what merely external bonds sary result
of ratiocination its different elements are united method of
together. But this is not all. Descartes, though tion.
he starts with the strongest assertion of the claims of
the individual consciousness, adopts a method and a
principle that are fatal to all such claims. When,
indeed, he asserts that nothing should be accepted
as true except that which is clearly and distinctly
apprehended, in other words, that which is thought,
and not merely felt or imagined, he seems at first to
be only maintaining the essential presupposition of
all philosophy and science that the world is an
intelligible system, and therefore capable of being
understood and explained. But, when we look
nearer, we see, that in opposing thought to sense and
imagination, he really means to oppose the abstract
to the concrete, the universal to the particular.
The clearness he seeks is the clearness that belongs
to that which is simple, to that which is without
difference or complexity. To get rid of the indis-
tinctness of sense and imagination, is with him to
reduce matter and mind to their abstract essence-
42
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
matter to a purely passive substance with the one
attribute of extension, and mind to a purely active
substance with the one attribute of thought. All
other elements in our ordinary conceptions of both
are to be explained away. But thought, if it is to
seek for the reality of things in the simple and
the abstract, cannot stop at this point. If the dif-
ferences within the outer world, and the differences
within the inner world are to be explained away,
should we not on the same principle explain away
the very difference between the outer and inner.
Descartes is driven by the necessary logic of his
thought to conceive all limits and differences as
purely privative-i.e., as mere absence or defect of
existence. The Infinite alone is affirmative or
positive Being, the unity of all affirmations; the
finite, so far as it is, is one with the infinite; it is
only distinguished from it so far as it is not. It is
but a single step from this to the Pantheistic denial
of the reality of the finite; for if the limit of the finite
is nothing real, but only an absence of reality, then
the finite, as such, has no independent or individual
existence; its apparent independence and individu-
ality is but an illusion of sense or imagination. And
then what becomes of the absolute certainty of self-)
consciousness, the cogito ergo sum, upon which all
truth was supposed to be based. Descartes shows
his embarrassment when he declares that the con
sciousness of God or of the infinite is, 'in a manner,'
or 'in a sense,' prior to the consciousness of self—i.e., X
prior to his own first principle: and again, when he
tells us that the finite substances, matter and finite
mind, are not called substances in the same sense in
which the term is applied to the infinite Being. But
con-
III.
43
INTRODUCTION.
then what is the sense or manner in question?
There is no answer in Descartes. If the infinite
contains all positive reality in itself, and if in the
finite, as such, there is no reality, then the sub-
stantial existence of the ego, and non-ego must be
equally illusory.. The absolute unity swallows up
all differences in itself, and cannot reproduce them;
and for the finite consciousness there is no way to
truth, except to abstract from itself as well as every
other limited existence. The logical and necessary
outcome of the philosophy of Descartes is therefore
the philosophy of Spinoza.
Letter of
SPINOZA has been called an atheist, not without Spirit and
reason, if we look at his system from the outside Spinoza.
and in its ultimate logical results. But if we look
at it in its inner motive and in the dialectic of its
development, he is more truly described by Hegel
as an Akosmist, or by Novalis as a God-intoxicated
man. In him the tendency to unity, to the infinite,
to religion, overbalanced itself, till, by mere excess it
seemed to be changed into its own opposite. For
the assertion of the infinite as the only reality in
opposition to the finite, when carried to its utmost
logical consequence, reduces the infinite itself to an
empty form. The God who does not reveal himself
in the world, or in the consciousness of man, neces-
sarily ceases to be a living God. But this is not
the spirit of Spinoza; it is only the dead ultimate
result of an imperfect logic, that confuses an abstract
with a concrete unity-a unity of all things in which
their differences are suppressed or neglected, with
unity of system in which all difference and multi-
plicity are subordinated to one principle. We do
not need to read much of Spinoza to see that he
44
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Spinoza's.
opposition
to Imagin-
knows the distinction between these two kinds of)
unity, and that he aims at the latter. But in spite
of himself the movement of his thought, the dialectic
he inherited from Descartes, inevitably carries him
toward the former.
To Spinoza the great defect of human thought is
of Reason its abstractness, by which he means, not that it deals
ation. with ideas got by abstraction or generalization, but
that the views it takes are partial and imperfect;
that it separates things from that necessary relation
to other things, which is the condition of their exis-
tence. Because of this defect, it gives individual
and independent reality to things, that can exist
only as links in a series, or elements of a greater
whole. It substantiates accidents, and treats the
finite as if it were infinite. Thus, sense perceives,
and imagination enables us to represent, dependent
and limited existences apart from their conditions,
as if they were independent and complete in them-
selves. On the other hand, the pure intelligence
corrects this tendency to fragmentary views of
things. It forces us to connect things together, to
see each object as related to all other objects in the
world, and so, finally, to regard the universe, not
as an aggregate of isolated contingencies, but as a
necessary unity. "The less the mind understands
and the more it perceives, the greater is its power
of fiction and fantasy; while the more it under-
stands, the narrower are the limits set to that
power." With widening knowledge the range of
the possible, of the accidental, is gradually dimin-
ished, till finally all things, being seen sub specie
æternitatis, or in their relation to God, are seen to
* De Intellectus Emendatione, ch. 8.
*
III.
45
INTRODUCTION.
be necessary. Thus the progress of the mind toward
truth is a progress from the abstract and general to
the concrete and definite: from perception and ima-
gination, which apprehend things in their isolation
and particularity, to reason, which sees them through
the idea of the whole to which they belong.
Absolute
ledge.
But this suggests a new question. How are we Nature of
to attain the apprehension of things in their unity? Know-
Ought we simply to proceed from part to part, con-
tinually correcting the imperfection of our know-
ledge, by taking into account the relations of what
we have known before, to new objects as they come
within our ken? Or is it possible for us to rise at
once to the idea of an all-embracing unity, by which
all the parts of the system of things are predeter-
mined? Can we, in other words, transcend the
finite and apprehend the infinite, or must we pro-
ceed from finite to finite without end? Can we see
the world sub specie æternitatis, or can we see it
only in the form of time, in which we always find
condition beyond condition, cause beyond cause, and
never reach the unconditioned, the causa sui? This
is a dilemma which Spinoza was the first to state
clearly and distinctly, and which, as we shall see,
was revived by Kant after it had been forgotten
through an age of Individualism. In the treatise
De Emendatione Intellectus, he enumerates the de-
fects of a knowledge that is limited to the finite.
Such knowledge never reaches a final explanation of
anything. It sends the mind backward through a
series of events in time, upon none of which it can
rest as the first event. Or it sends it outwards
through space on every side for a complete view of
conditioning circumstances, which the very nature of
46
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
"It is impos-
”*
space makes it impossible to attain.
sible for human weakness to complete the series of
individual and changeable things, both on account
of their multitude, which transcends all number,
and on account of the infinity of circumstances in
connection with any one thing, each of which may
be the cause of its existence or non-existence.' In
reasoning from effect to cause we always end in the
unknown, because we can never reach an ultimate
fact. Or again, seeking to avoid this result, we fall
into a kind of explanation that is just a repetition.
in abstract language of the fact to be explained.
Thus 'because we feel a particular body and nothing
else, we conclude that the soul is united to a body,
and that this union is the cause of the sensation, but
of the nature of that union we can, in this way,
understand nothing absolutely. The union, in fact,
is just the sensation, and nothing else.' + The object,
after such explanation, still remains an external fact,
the real reason of which is unknown, or, in the lan-
guage of Spinoza, the essence,' or definition we
have given of it, does not involve its existence.
'The essences of individual things are, however, not
to be discovered by looking at the series or order of
their existence; for in this way we can only get
external marks or relations, or in short, attendant
circumstances, but not the explanation of the things
in themselves. For such explanation we must look
to that which is eternal and unchanging, in which,
as in tables of stone, we find inscribed the laws
according to which all individual things are pro-
duced and ordered; nay, these changeable indivi-
duals are so intimately, and in their essence depen-
6
6
* De Intellectus Emendatione, ch. 14.
† Id., ch. 4.
III.
47
INTRODUCTION.
dent on those things which are eternal, that apart
from them the former can neither exist nor be
conceived. Wherefore these eternal and unchang-
ing things, though they be individual, yet on
account of their omnipresence and far-stretching
power, have the value of universals or generic de-
finitions of the things that are changeable. In
them, therefore, we shall find the proximate causes
of all things.'*
Spinoza, then, holds that there are certain first
truths or principles, at once of thought and exis-
tence, through which everything is, and is known.
Rejecting the Cartesian distinction of the princi-
pium essendi from the principium cognoscendi, he
maintains that our science can be adequate only
when it follows the order of the genesis of things.
'In order that our mind may be a true reflection of
the order of nature, it ought to develop all its ideas
from that idea which corresponds to the spring and
origin of all nature, and make it the spring and
origin of all other ideas.'t His philosophy, theref
fore, begins with the idea of God as the sub-
stance of all things, as the infinite unity, which
is necessarily presupposed in all consciousness of
finitude and difference. From this he proceeds
to the first great difference of thought and ex-
tension, under which this unity reveals itself to
the human mind. From thought and extension
again he descends to finite individuals, which, seen
in their true nature, from the universal or divine
point of view, are but modes of the infinite substance
and may at pleasure be regarded either under the
form of thought or under the form of extension.

* De Intellectus Emendatione, ch. 14.
+ Id., ch. 7.
48
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Defect of
Spinoza's
Logic.
ས་ག
Without following any further the development
of this system, it will be sufficient for our present
purpose, to mark the point at which its logic is
defective. Like Descartes, Spinoza seeks to begin
at the beginning, with the idea which is the presup-
position of all other ideas, and which itself presup-
poses nothing quod per se concipitur; and this idea
is by him immediately identified with the existence
which is the condition of all other existence, quod in
se est. This primal unity we think, whenever we
abstract from all that is finite, even from our indi-
vidual selves; for every limited existence implies a
negation, and the positive is presupposed in the
negative. Any definite figure we draw, implies
infinite space from which it is cut off; any finite
consciousness of self, is possible only by the limita-
tion of a consciousness that goes beyond the finite.
Further, if we admit with Descartes that the ex-
tended substance and the thinking substance may
each be conceived per se, we must at the same time
assert that the difference of the two is merely rela-
tive to our thought that they are but two forms in
which the one infinite substance is expressed to us.
It is therefore only in the presupposed existence of
the modes, that there lies any necessity for the sub-
stance to be expressed in attributes at all. In itself
it has no necessity of self-revelation in attributes or
modes. It is logically the end of everything, the
beginning of nothing: if we advance beyond it, it
can only be by empirically assuming something out-
side of it, to which it stands in relation. By his
principle, that "determination is negation," Spinoza
is driven, in spite of himself, to dissolve everything
in the dead abstraction of substance, in a pure iden

III.
49
INTRODUCTION.

tity that has no difference in itself, and from which
no difference can by any possibility be evolved. He
defines substance, indeed, not only negatively as the
Being which is absolutely indeterminate, but also
positively, as the Being that "consists of an infinity
of attributes." The former is the definition which
presents itself to him when he thinks of it as the
end, the latter when he thinks of it as the beginning,
of all thought and existence; but these two aspects
of substance are simply put side by side without
mediation, for the substance is not to him a unity
that explains or expresses itself in the difference of
mind and matter, but simply the common element in
both. Still less is there any logical transition from
the attributes to the modes. Philosophy having
reached the absolute, must fold its hands and rest
if it attempt to do more, it can only take up again
empirically the distinctions which it let drop in its
upward course of abstraction. Spinoza's manner of
seeing things sub specie æternitatis does not trans-
form the character of his view of them as things of
time. It is like a Sunday confession that the inter-
ests of the world are nought, while we treat them as
absolute realities all the other days of the week.
contradic-
Spinoza may be condemned out of his own lips. His self-
His most prominent idea was the idea of unity, and tion.
yet he is an absolute dualist. He asserted that the
highest good is the knowledge of the union which
the mind has with all nature;' yet such union and
such knowledge are on his principles impossible.
The identity of thought and being, as he conceives
it, is an identity of two elements, which are not seen
to have any necessary relation to each other. Even
in the definition of substance, as id quod in se est, et
D
50
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
His rela-
tion to
subse-
quent
Indivi-
dualism.
per se concipitur, there is no connection between the
two members. Hence the proof of the being of
God, as stated by Spinoza, has the same defect that
lay in the statement of Descartes. He assumes the
unity of thought and being, while he knows them
only in their difference. If the separate attributes
are like parallel lines that never meet, how, through
mere thought, which is but a mode of one of them,
can we apprehend their unity? The individual
mind, according to Spinoza, is capable of appre-
hending not only itself, but also the absolute sub-
stance. Nay, it cannot know itself without knowing
God; and as knowing and being are the same thing
differently expressed, it thus becomes one with God,
without ceasing to be self-conscious and individual.
Yet, on the other hand, it is but a mode of the
attributes, and its independent existence rests on a
mere negation in other words, it has no independent
existence, and its knowledge of itself as individual is
an illusion, a defect of the knowledge of God. The
individuality of the finite spirit is thus justified while
it is condemned, and condemned while it is justified.
Spinoza calls on the individual to live not in himself,
but in the life of God; but the individual upon whom
such a demand may be made, cannot be merely a
passing mode of the infinite. If God is necessary to
him, yet, on the other side, he is necessary to God.
The development of Spinoza's thought thus pointed
to a new philosophy, a philosophy which should
transcend the absolute dualism of Descartes, and, at
the same time, should revive his individualism in a
higher form. The rapid absorption of the finite in
the infinite, which was the necessary result of Car-
tesianism, showed that in Cartesianism the finite

III.
51
INTRODUCTION.
consciousness had not received its due. And till
it had received its due, its reconciliation with the
consciousness of the infinite must be inadequate and
unsatisfactory. There was a necessity for a fuller
assertion of the rights of the individual, and the
completeness and independence of his life. But to
make this possible the individual must no longer be
regarded as a mere thinking subject, standing face to
face with a world entirely alien to thought. It is a
general characteristic of all the writers of the second
period of modern philosophy, that they deny or ex-
plain away that opposition of subject and object,
which Descartes and Spinoza had regarded as ab-
solute, and that, in one way or another, they attempt
to bring the two terms into harmony, or even
identity, with each other. As a consequence of this,
the individual, feeling himself, even in his finitude,
the complete possessor of his own world of sense or
thought, is led to minimise or even deny his relation
to the infinite. The finite consciousness is rounded
into a complete whole, with no division in it, which
it needs a Cartesian Deus ex machina to reconcile: it
becomes securus adversus Deos, and the divine begins
to appear visionary or transcendent. Not till in-
dividualism had thus developed its utmost results,
did the reaction come. It was at the end of its
reign, and in opposition to the last representative of
its tendencies, that Kant developed his philosophy.
His partial return to the universalism of Descartes
and Spinoza was mediated by an exhaustive study
of the opposed individualisms of Germany and Eng-
land.
52
CHAPTER IV.
Causes of
of Indivi-
dualism.
SECOND PERIOD OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY THE
INDIVIDUALISM OF LOCKE, BERKELEY, HUME.
the revival CARTESIANISM was, as we have seen, the
philosophical counterpart of the Protestant Re-
formation, which, for the first time, gave its due
importance to the subjective and individualistic
aspect of Christianity. But both in its religious
and in its philosophical form Individualism was
but a moment of transition. In Protestantism the
individual no sooner found himself freed from the
authority of the Church, than he sought to escape
every appearance of subjective caprice, by denying
the independence of the human spirit, and reducing
it into the passive vessel of divine grace. And in
the Cartesian philosophy the doubt by which the
consciousness of self was set in opposition to the
consciousness of the object, was immediately cor-
rected by the thought, that the consciousness of
self is secondary to the consciousness of God.
But the subjective element, once admitted, could
not be satisfied without a fuller recognition. The
Reformers might try to silence the anarchy of
private judgment by insisting on the necessity of
&
INTRODUCTION.
53
conversion and faith, and by exaggerating the pas-
sivity of the soul in the apprehension of truth.
But they had appealed to the individual reason,
and to the individual reason they were bound to
go. When the first terror of emancipated reason
at its own boldness had passed away, it was in-
evitable that the feeling of independence should
grow and assert itself. Even extreme doctrines
of grace contained the means of their own correc-
tion, for, if they annihilated human reason and will
before God, they at the same time brought God
nearer to man. Calvinism, nay, even Spinozism, had
in it the germ of a new individualism. The idea
that our highest self-consciousness is but God's
consciousness of himself in us, with which Spinoza
concluded his Ethics, leads to a conception of the
finite as standing not merely in a negative, but also
in a positive relation to the infinite. The spirit in
which, as well as to which God speaks, cannot be
like a mere vehicle or instrument, which is so much
better suited to its purpose the nearer it is to
absolute passivity. Only freedom can express or
apprehend freedom. It is not in the silence of the
reason and the slavery of the will, but where thought
and action are most spontaneous and self-determined,
that we are to seek the point of union between the
finite spirit and the infinite.
growth of
spirit.
This reassertion of the rights of the finite and The
individual consciousness coincides with the great a secular
development of the secular spirit, which marks the
end of the seventeenth, and beginning of the
eighteenth, century. Even the earliest Reformers,
though they had approximated to Spinozism in their
view of religion, had utterly broken away from
54
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Limitation
of Know-
ledge to
the finite.
that asceticism which contemns human and finite
interests as such. Luther defended the life of the
family and the state, not as something to be toler-
ated in concession to human weakness, but as the
highest moral life, and as the proper expression of
the religious principle. In so doing, he was in
harmony with those leaders of the Renaissance,
who were reviving the study of literature, and
directing the curiosity of man to himself and the
world in which he lives. The Puritan jealousy of
art and science, the withdrawal of some Protestant
sects from political life, and their maintenance of the
mediæval division between the Church and the
world, were narrownesses which might be excused
by the prevalence of the opposite narrowness of the
positive and worldly spirit, but they could not be
justified on the principles of Protestantism. It
might be rational to condemn, or to justify, the
secular life,—to treat it altogether as the negation,
or altogether as the expression, of the religious
principle, but it could not be rational to draw a
completely arbitrary line between one set of secular
interests and another. Like the arbitrary line,
drawn by Bacon and others, between the things of
reason and the things of faith, such a distinction
might serve a momentary purpose, but it involved,
nevertheless, a logical inconsistency. No one can
divide the world between Cæsar and God, if the
two jurisdictions are conceived as independent and
inconsistent. The attempt to do so must end in
claiming all for Cæsar or all for God.
In the beginning of the eighteenth century the
tendency was to extend Cæsar's claim to everything,
or at least to everything that has reality or interest
IV.
55
INTRODUCTION.
for man.
If the finite was not all, it seemed at
least to become more and more certain, that it could
not be transcended by human thought.
"Know well thyself, presume not God to scan,
The proper study of mankind is man."
The divine, the infinite, was being gradually emptied
of all positive meaning, and reduced into the spectral
shape of an Être Suprême. All the real contents of
science, all the real interests of life were separated
from it, and connected with the finite consciousness.
God was relegated beyond the world of experience
as the unknown, and, it soon began to be said, the
unknowable. Even religious men seemed to admit
this conclusion when they took refuge in mysticism,
and directed their main attention, not to the objec-
tive doctrines of Christianity, but to the detail of
subjective experience. The individual was becoming
to himself the beginning and end of all truth and
knowledge; he could not, it was argued, transcend
his own limits as an individual; if there was a
truth that could not be brought within those limits,
it must be for him as good as nothing.
Of this tendency, the principal philosophical Locke.
representative is LOCKE. In his writings we find
an Individualism that has lost its first sanguine
hopes, and become conscious of its limitations.
The tone of Descartes is self-confident: “What
is truth must show itself true to me." The tone
of Locke is cautious and distrustful: "I must
take care to assert nothing as truth which cannot
show itself true to me. I, as an individual, am
fixed and determined as the subject of knowledge,
and it is impossible that I should know the finite
56
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
1
object in itself, much less the infinite. I can only
know either of these indirectly, in so far as they
come within the range of my consciousness, in so
far as they are represented in my sensations and
my thoughts. The one thing necessary to make my
steps towards knowledge secure, is that I should
keep steadily within this limit." It is in this spirit
that Locke speaks in the first book of his
66 I
essay :
thought that the first step towards satisfying several
enquiries the mind of man was very apt to run into,
was to take a view of our own understanding,
examine our own powers, and see to what things
they were adapted. Till that was done, I suspected
we began at the wrong end, and in vain sought for
satisfaction in a quiet and sure possession of truths
that most concerned us, whilst we let loose our
thoughts into the vast ocean of being, as if all that
boundless extent were the natural and undoubted
possession of our understanding, wherein was nothing
exempt from its decisions or that escaped its com-
prehension. Thus men, extending their enquiries
beyond their capacities, and letting their thoughts
wander into those depths where they can find no
sure footing, it is no wonder that they raise questions
and multiply disputes, which, never coming to any
clear resolution, are proper only to continue and
increase their doubts, and to confirm them at last
in perfect scepticism. Whereas, were the capaci-
ties of our understandings well considered, the extent
of our knowledge once discovered, and the horizon
found which sets the bounds between the enlightened
and dark parts of things, between what is and what
is not comprehensible by us, men would perhaps
with less scruple acquiesce in the avowed ignorance
IV.
57
INTRODUCTION.
of the one, and employ their thoughts and discourse
with more advantage and satisfaction in the other." *
promise
Material-
Sensation-
In these words Locke clearly indicates his indivi- His com-
dualistic point of view. The mind is to him a dark between
room, into which light is streaming through a narrow ism and
window, and only so much of the outside can be seen alism.
as the window permits. We are in communica-
tion through the senses with an external world, a
world wider than our own souls, yet we are only in
broken and imperfect communication with it. In
regard to the extent of the information which we
thus acquire, Locke is not consistent with himself.
Sometimes he speaks of sense, as affording us a real
knowledge of objects, which are independent of
sensation: sometimes he speaks of it as a mere
mental affection which reports nothing and is related*
to nothing but itself. In so far as the former view
prevails, the external world is brought within the
compass of the individual mind: the immediate data
of sense are supposed to furnish all the matter of
thought and the process of knowledge is simply a
process of abstraction and analysis by which we
break up the concrete unity of individual objects into
its constituent parts. In so far as the later view
prevails, the external world is excluded from the
direct vision of the mind; what is immediately given
as real, is only a series of momentary sensations
without relation to each other or to any permanent
object and the process of thought by which know-
ledge is acquired, consists in putting together these
simple elements, and so forming various complex
ideas or judgments. But, as all these combinations
are artificial, as they are the 'work of the mind,' and
* Locke's Essay, I., i., § 7.
58
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Its failure.
not what is immediately given in sensation, they
cannot claim to represent anything objective and
real. The theory which spreads its influence over
most of the Essay on the Human Understanding is
a curious compromise between these two views.
Solidity and extension, the primary qualities of
matter, are supposed to be given through the sen-
sation of touch, and given as objective, i.e., as in
things, and not merely in the mind; while the
secondary qualities are considered to be merely
subjective appearances, dependent on the peculiar
nature of the sensitive organism. This view ulti-
mately rests on the metaphor contained in the
phrase 'mental impression.' The sensations, espe-
cially the sensation of touch, are conceived as
carrying with them a theory of their own cause, or
a reference to a reality which is distinct from the
mind, and which operates on it just as one piece of
matter operates on another. The language of Locke
is, therefore, perpetually embarrassed by the dil-
emma, which yet he never brings to clear conscious-
ness, that, as distinct from the mind and not an idea,
the object is beyond knowledge: and yet that, as act-
ing on the senses by physical impact, it is known to
possess at least the qualities of extension and solidity.
And the two views are but awkwardly combined
together in the theory, that the real nature of the
object consists in the constitution of its insensible
parts, but that that constitution can never be known,
or at least fully known.
Those who wish to follow the thought of Locke
through all its various windings, may be referred to
the exhaustive analysis of Mr. Green in his Intro-
duction to Hume. For our present purpose we need
IV.
59
INTRODUCTION.
only observe that there are two fixed points between
which the thought of Locke moves, or rather
oscillates. On the one hand, he thinks of a world
in space, of which the mind of the individual, en-
closed in a particular body, forms a part. On the
other hand, he thinks of the individual mind as
having no necessary or direct relation to this world,
but as dealing with it indirectly through its own
sensations, which are its immediate objects. And
the great defect of his philosophy, the defect which
ultimately led to the development of a more con-
sistent sensationalism by Berkeley and Hume, is,
that these two different points of view cannot be
reconciled, or even combined. If we begin with the
individual mind, we are forced to conceive its know-
ledge as limited to the simple ideas of its own
sensations and actions, and the various complex
ideas which may be got by combining these simple
ideas. In this view, objective reality, or things in
themselves, lie altogether beyond the possibility of
knowledge. If we begin, on the other hand, with
the idea of a world, which immediately acts on the
mind of the individual through the senses, we
assume a knowledge of things in themselves,
independent of the sensations of the individual, and
explain by this means these very sensations them-
selves. In this case, in addition to the difficulties
which, on individualistic principles, beset any onto-
logical theory whatever, we have to encounter the
double difficulty of a materialistic ontology. For
even if we admit that things in themselves can
be known, and known to be material, the relation
of the physical impression which the material object
makes to the thought which is its consequent,
60
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
remains utterly unintelligible. When, indeed, in his
fourth book, Locke speaks of our mathematical
ideas as archetypes of reality, he suggests a third
alternative, which might have freed him at once
from both difficulties, and even have enabled him
to forestall the leading ideas of the Critique of
Pure Reason. But we cannot attach much weight
to a thought which is stated with some ambiguity,
and of whose import Locke himself shows no
consciousness. If, therefore, we pass over this
undeveloped hint, the philosophy of Locke reduces
itself to an attempted synthesis of two contradictory
theories. For one of two things is inevitable.
Either consciousness must be conceived as transcend-
ing the individuality of the human animal, as em-
bracing in one thought the duality of subject and
object, which then can have no existence in them-
selves apart from the unity in which they are
known. In this way we may save, if not the
ontology of Locke, at least some kind of ontology
at the expense of his psychology. Or if, on the
other hand, the individual consciousness is not to
be conceived as transcending itself, then we must
be in earnest about its limits. We must give up
all pretence of knowing things in themselves, or
construing out of our own affections a reality not
included in them. We must surrender all that part
of Locke's philosophy which deals with things as
opposed to ideas, with real material substance
defined by the primary qualities, as opposed to the
secondary qualities which exist only in the mind.
It is impossible to preserve both the sensationalist
view of the development of knowledge, and the
materialistic account of the origin of sensation.
IV.
61
INTRODUCTION.
The unstable equilibrium between two irreconcile-
able tendencies which Locke maintained, was
inevitably disturbed in the works of his followers,
and that by the natural development of his own
theories.
method
Material-
His greatest disciple, BERKELEY, had no hesitation Berkeley's
in preferring a sensationalist theory of knowing with the
to a materialistic theory of being: indeed, the ists.
former recommended itself to him mainly as a
weapon against the latter. That the esse of things
was only their percipi, seemed to him a welcome
doctrine, just because it erased the distinction
between primary and secondary qualities. For this
at once made it impossible to explain sensation
by the mechanical action of extended and solid
substances on the organs of sense, and took away
all ground for a suspicion, which such an explan-
ation could not but suggest to Locke, that the
mind itself was material. Berkeley, no doubt,
thought that if he could rid the world of material
substance, he would thus establish the absolute
reality of spirit. He did not observe that the
weapon he had so hastily taken up was double-
edged, and that in rejecting Locke's materialistic
ontology, he was rejecting all ontology whatever
and reducing reality to a series of feelings, which by
this reduction were emptied of all intelligible mean-
ing. If the esse of things is their percipi, it cer-
tainly follows that there is no existence of matter
apart from the sensations of touch and sight.
what will these sensations be to us, if, on the same
principle, we withdraw from them all the mental
additions, all the constructive interpretation, by
which they are changed into perceptions of an
But
62
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
1
"
"A con-
-
The'
objective world? Where, among the mere isolated
feelings that come and vanish with every moment,
shall we find that permanent objective order, which,
according to Berkeley himself, is the revelation of
God? Or how, without bringing in conceptions of
relations, not given in the sensations themselves,
can we bind these sensations together, and refer
them to a permanent self? If the Baconian rule
of taking facts as they are, be interpreted on the
hypothesis, that pure sensations are the only facts,
then reality is something, which we may feel, but
of which we can neither think nor speak.
sistent sensationalism must be speechless."
truth is, that Berkeley's polemic against matter
confuses two things which are distinct from, and
even opposed to, each other, the denial of the
existence of an object in itself without relation
to any subject, and the denial of the existence
of an object distinct from sensation.
So long as
he is arguing that the mind can apprehend
nothing but ideas, and that an object which is
not an idea is an absurdity, he is irresistible; be-
cause we suppose him to be maintaining only the
self-evident proposition, that consciousness cannot
get out of itself; in other words, that thought
cannot apprehend that, of which the one determin-
ation is, that it is not a thought. But when ideas
are interpreted as mere feelings that exist only in
being felt, we discern at once that the system
before us is not an Idealism, which finds the
ultimate reality of things in spirit, but a Sen-
sationalism, which begins by denying, not merely
the existence of matter in itself, but of matter
* Green's Introduction to Hume, § 45,
IV.
63
INTRODUCTION.
also as the necessary object of spirit, and which
must end in denying the existence of spirit it-
self.
promise
one between
Sensation-
Idealism.
Berkeley, as is shown by the commonplace book His com-
which Professor Fraser has published, was at
time far on the road to such a conclusion. He alism and
had already denied the existence of thinking, as well
as of material substance, and declared that "the
very existence of ideas constitutes the soul." He
partly recovered himself, however, and brought back
under the name of "notions" what he had rejected
as "ideas." At the period when his first book was
written he had become conscious that some per-
manent reality is needed, to take the place of matter
in the object, and to bind the succession of sensa-
tions into the unity of one life in the subject.
Although, therefore, he begins by denying that
we have the power of forming abstract ideas, on
the ground that nothing but the particular can be
given in immediate perception, he thinks himself at
liberty to admit that we have not an idea, but a
"notion" of spirit whose esse is "not percipi, but
percipere." Asserting that the only object of an
idea is the idea itself, he yet holds that our
ideas carry with them a necessary reference, on
the one hand to the mind as their perceiving
subject, and on the other hand to God as their
producing cause. Ere the second edition of his
Principles was published, he had further discovered
that, to be intelligible objects, sensations or "ideas'
must be related to each other, and accordingly he
asserts that we have not only "notions of spirits,"
but also "notions of the relations and habitudes
between things," and in the same passage he tells us
+
64
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Method of
Hume.
that relations "include an act of the mind.
"*
Yet
from this he did not think of drawing any inference
to correct his former view of reality as consisting
merely in the series of passive sensations or in-
voluntary feelings. And while he spoke of such
feelings or ideas as the language through which God
manifests himself to us, he did not see that in
attributing to the mind the power of reading this
language-i. e., of knowing, through sensation, not
merely finite objects, but the infinite spirit, he was
admitting that our thought is in the highest sense
constructive. He was, in fact, claiming for man the
knowledge of the infinite, at the same time that he
pretended to restrict him to the apprehension of the
states of his own individual consciousness. The
omissions and additions in the later editions of his
works, and the vaguely adumbrated idealism of the
Siris, may show that he was gradually becoming con-
scious of the imperfection of his first theory, and feeling
after the higher theory that the real is, as Mr. Green
says, "not percipi, but intelligi." + But there is no-
thing to show that he ever discovered the wide dis-
tinction that separates the one theory from the other.
HUME was the first writer who distinctly realized
the limits within which a sensationalist individual-
ism is confined, and also the first who carried out,
with something like fidelity, that substitution of
psychology for ontology, which his predecessors had
been more ready to prescribe than to practice. The
philosophy of Locke and Berkeley had been devel-
oped partly from the point of view of an individual
mind, whose immediate knowledge was confined to
its own feelings, but partly also from the universal
*Principles, § 142.
+ Green's Introduction, § 183.
.
IV.
65
INTRODUCTION.
point of view of a spectator, who could observe
both the mind and its object, first in their separate-
ness, and then in their action upon each other.
Seeing clearly the inconsistency of this double
procedure, Hume made at least a vigorous effort to
avoid it, and to confine himself to the observation
of his own consciousness. While his predecessors
virtually ascribe to the mind a certain constitutive
activity, he treats thought as dependent upon sensa-¡
tion, not only for its materials, but also for the
legitimate combination of those materials. His first
principle of method is that every idea, simple or
complex, must be tested by comparison with the
impression from which it is supposed to be derived.
If, in this comparison, it is found. there is something
in the idea that is not in the sensation, such sur-
plusage or 'extra-belief' must be regarded as the
result of arbitrary association. The sound kernel of
knowledge is that which is immediately given in
the pure impressions of the sensitive subject.
Whatever goes beyond these elementary facts of
experience may be practically useful, but cannot
have, strictly speaking, the value of knowledge.
knowledge.
It is obvious that with this abandonment of He seeks to
explain the
the ontological side of the theory of Locke and illusion of
Berkeley, the problem to be solved takes a new
shape. The mind ex hypothesi can know nothing
but its own states. The question, therefore, is not
how we are to know a world, that exists indepen-
dently of the sensations through which we know
it, but simply how a series of isolated and transi-
tory sensations should ever come to have for us the
appearance of a connected world of objects. Grant!
ing Berkeley's principle that the percipi is the
F
66
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
His as-
sumption
relations.
esse, Hume sees that it is not the esse, as it is
understood by common sense and by science. An
object that exists when it is not perceived, a mind
that is more than a series of perceptions, are things
with reference to which we cannot ask how they
exist, but only how they come to be supposed to
exist. By the terms of the problem he has set
before himself, Hume has therefore two difficulties
to encounter. In the first place, he has to explain
how isolated and transitory feelings can be in any
way related or combined with each other. And,
in the second place, he has to explain, how com-
binations of impressions and ideas in certain cases
come to be regarded as real and objective exis-)
tences independent of the mind.
Locke had solved the former of these problems
of natural by the theory, that while the mind receives its first
materials from sensation and reflection, it is pos-
sessed of a power of combining them in various
ways into complex ideas. This power, indeed, he
regards as merely formal, as adding nothing, or
at least not legitimately adding anything, to the
matter of the ideas combined. But he who grants
to the mind any activity at all, must ultimately
be driven to concede to it a more than formal
activity. A power that combines given matter must
act on some principle or rule. It must bring with
it forms of unity, types of combination, and thus it
must alter and add to the matter it combines. The
mind is not a mere casket into which ideas can be
thrown like stones, and in which they can be held
together by an external limit. If it combines the
isolated impressions made upon it, it must find in
itself the norm or principle of unity upon which it
IV.
67
INTRODUCTION.
works. And it becomes by no means easy to recon-
cile this activity of the mind in combining and
compounding the ideas it has received, with its
supposed passivity in their reception. Perceiving •
this difficulty, Hume is interested to show that the
mind is passive, not merely in regard to isolated
impressions, but also in regard to the modes in which
they are related and connected with each other.
Therefore, he represents it, not as actively dealing
with given materials in order to put them together,
but as finding already in the very data of sensation,
certain "natural relations," by reason of which
the one calls up or "introduces" the other. With-
out certain associative principles, he confesses that
even the appearance of knowledge would be impos-
sible. "Were ideas entirely loose and uncon-
nected, chance alone would jo them, and 'tis
impossible the
same simple ideas should fall
regularly into complex ones (as they commonly
do) without some bond of union among them,
some associating quality, by which one naturally
introduces another." * These "natural relations
are, as we find, resemblance and contiguity (includ-
ing under the latter co-existence both in time and
space), and sequence.† In other words, Hume holds
that a merely sensitive consciousness is able to set
its feelings before it as definite objects, and to pro-
nounce that they resemble or do not resemble each
other: and he maintains that it is able to represent
these feelings, not merely as events in time, but also
as quantities or extended things in space. It is only
* Treatise on Human Nature, Book I., 1, § 4.
وو
+ Hume says causation, which, however, is afterwards interpreted as
sequence.
68
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANI.
His ex-
planation
and Causa-
"'*
""
on the presupposition of these natural relations, as
subjective principles of association, that Hume after-
wards explains, or rather explains away, the objective
principles of identity and causation. What, then,
is his conception of a purely sensitive consciousness?
It is "a bundle of perceptions that succeed each
other with inconceivable rapidity, and are in per-
petual flux or movement. Yet this "bundle
is supposed to be conscious of itself as an order of
succession in time, and also as an order of co-exis-
tence in space; and in both orders it can separate
the parts from the whole, and compare them with
each other. When we put the case thus plainly, it
becomes obvious that Hume puts into the sensi-
tive consciousness a content only possible to thought,
in order afterwards to treat thought as illusory,
whenever it go beyond the range of sensation.
He maintains that the ideas of quantity and
quality, time and space, are all derivable from pure
feeling, are all the legitimate possessions of a mind
that knows of no reality but its own sensitive states;
but he maintains this only with a view ultimately
to discredit every assertion of such reality, whether
the object asserted be spiritual or material, an ex-
tended or a thinking substance.
The conceptions of identity and causation are, as
of Identity Hume recognises, the foundations of the objective
tion. consciousness, of the consciousness of things as
distinguished from impressions and ideas. For it
is only in so far as the series of transitory feel-
ings is interpreted by these categories, that there
can exist for us a permanent self and a permanent
world of objects, determined by universal laws in
* Treatise on Human Nature, Book I., 4, § 6.
ปี
IV.
69
INTRODUCTION.
But,
the coexistence and succession of their states.
according to Hume's fundamental principle, such a
consciousness must be illusory. He seeks, there-
fore, not to explain or justify these categories, but
to explain them away: in other words, to show
that what is legitimate in them can be reduced
to the "natural relations," and that whatever goes
beyond these is the effect of an irrational " pro-
pensity" of our minds "to feign" something that
has no basis in reality. This task he has, however,
made easy for himself by giving an account of the
natural relations that presupposes the very categories
in question. Thus, in discussing the conception of
identity, Hume omits to explain how a series of
sensations can be conceived either as constituting,
or as referring themselves to, a single object that
"remains the same with itself" through all its
different appearances. Generally, indeed, he speaks
as if such sameness were immediately perceived by
sense, and as if the only difficulty lay in our belief
of the continued existence of the object when it is
not perceived. Even if we correct this oversight
by the aid of other passages in which the serial or
discontinuous nature of our consciousness is more
distinctly recognised, the account of the matter we
extract from Hume is not much more satisfactory.
The mind "naturally" relates impressions that are
successive in time, especially if they resemble each
other, and this relation, as it renders easy the
transition of thought from the one to the other,
makes us feel as if there was no transition at all.
Hence we come to believe in the identity of the
successive impressions, or, what is treated as the
same thing, the identity of their object. Again,
70
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
""
when the series of like impressions is interrupted
and after a time renewed, the same ease of transition
leads to the identification of the later with the
earlier impression or object, and the prolongation
of its existence during the interval when it is not
perceived, is only a last fiction of the imagination
necessary to make the others self-consistent. The
law of causality is explained in a similar way.
Mind or imagination has a certain inexplicable
"tendency to go on in the line in which it has
been put.'
Hence every time that two impres-
sions occur in sequence, there is a certain at-
traction established between them. And this
attraction grows with repetition, till the impulse to
connect them becomes irresistible, and we cannot
have the one impression without the idea of its
usual companion being suggested. Moreover,
impressions are distinguished from ideas only by
their superior liveliness, and by close association
with an impression, an idea acquires so much of
this liveliness that it also appears to be real.
Hence, in this case, we not only think of the
sequent impression or object, but we believe that
it will come in other words, we relate the two
impressions to each other as cause and effect.
The Essays The reasoning of the Essays is substantially
and the
Treatise.
similar to that of the Treatise. The main differences
are that (1) the discussion relates almost entirely
to the origin of the idea of causation to the
exclusion of the idea of identity, which plays so
great a part in the earlier work: and (2) that the
distinction between impressions and objects is
altogether neglected, or at least thrown into the
shade. Thus sense is supposed to present to us
IV.
71
INTRODUCTION.
a world of objects whose phases succeed each other
in a certain order, and the only question discussed
is whether the succession has in it objectively the
necessity expressed in the idea of cause, or whether
that idea merely represents an inseparable associa-
tion produced by frequent experience of sequence.
refutes
It is not necessary for us to follow Mr. Green in Hume
his exhaustive examination of Hume's reasoning, himself.
especially as we shall have to return to the subject
in considering Kant's reply. Here it is sufficient)
to repeat that the plausibility of Hume's sceptical
treatment of the objective or thinking consciousness,
really depends on his extravagant concessions to
the subjective or sensitive consciousness. His
disproof of the validity of the categories of identity
and causation presupposes an experience which
would not be possible without these very cate-
gories. If he had strictly confined himself, as
he professes, to the sensitive consciousness, he
would have been unable, by his own confession, to
explain even the semblance or illusion of knowledge.
But a principle that is fatal even to the illusion of
knowledge, refutes itself. The suspicion, which
Hume would cast upon knowledge, is turned against
his sensationalist explanation of it. If the founda-
tion which he lays, be not the foundation on which
experience and science are based, his scepticism
does not affect them, but only his own false theory
of their origin. And then the self-annihilation of
Individualism in its sensationalist form prepares the
way for a more adequate philosophy.
Is such a more adequate philosophy to be found
in the idealistic individualism of Leibnitz?
72
CHAPTER V.
THE IDEALISTIC INDIVIDUALISM OF LEIBNITZ.
Leibnitz.
Locke and THE philosophy of Locke, as we have seen, was
vexed with a dualism which ultimately was fatal
to it. Locke professed to explain the world purely
from the point of view of individual consciousness.
Yet, constrained by the nature of thought, which
refuses to be limited by the distinction it has itself
made between subject and object, he added to his
sensationalist explanation of knowledge, as a mental
state of the individual, a materialistic explanation of
it as a relation of the individual mind to the exter-
nal world. The subsequent history of Locke's school
showed that these elements were incongruous: and
while his English followers carried out his sensation-
alism to its logical result in the sceptical severance
of thought and being, and the negation of all onto-
logy, his French disciples took hold of the other side
of his doctrine-his theory of the mechanical action
of matter on mind—and, by the necessary develop-
ment of it, were soon landed in a bare and simple
Materialism. Meantime, the hints, contained in the
fourth book of the Essay, of that higher truth which
can alone reconcile the psychological with the onto-
INTRODUCTION.
73
logical theory of knowledge, remained unnoticed, or,
under the influence of a one-sided logic, were ex-
pelled from the systems alike of materialists and
sensationalists. These hints were, however, recog-
nised and welcomed by one who was not Locke's
disciple, but his critic and opponent, the "author of
the Pre-established Harmony."
not pure
dualism.
LEIBNITZ, like Locke, was deeply influenced by the Monadism
individualistic spirit of his time, and, as we shall see, Indivi
he never completely escaped from it. But the study
of authors like Spinoza, in whose works the opposite
side of the truth finds an exaggerated expression,
soon drew him out of the Atomism to which he was
first inclined. He saw the necessity of combining |
two things which had fallen asunder with Locke—
ontology and psychology. He saw that, if the possi-
bility of knowledge is to be maintained, the ordo ad
individuum must be brought into relation with the
ordo ad universum. Hence, while constructing an
individualistic system, he at the same time endea-
voured to conceive the individual mind as capable
of transcending itself, and entering into communion
with the universe of which it is a part. It is only
when we keep in mind the influence of these
opposite motives on the philosophy of Leibnitz, that
we are able to understand the peculiar complexion
of his doctrine of Monads- a doctrine which
might otherwise appear to us, under our changed
conditions of thought, as a kind of philosophical
romance, or fairy tale of speculation. Possessed
with the ideas at once of the individuality and
the universality of existence, he steers a difficult
course between two opposite currents of speculation,
and solves the difficulty by declaring that while the
74
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
monads or individual substances are really separated
from each other, yet ideally they are all related to,
and imply, each other. Each monad really excludes,
ideally includes, the whole universe; it is indepen-
dent of the world, just because in a manner it
it
contains the world in itself.
The Monad In regard to the first of these two points, Leibnitz
excludes, maintains, like the Atomists, that the reality of the
really
complex and composite things that we see around
us, must consist in the simple and divisible sub-
stances they contain. "There can be nothing real
or substantial in the collection, unless the units be
substantial."* But material atoms do not supply
us with the substantial unity required.
"As ex-
tended, they must have parts, and the invincible
attachment of one part to another, even if that were
conceivable, would not annihilate their diversity.
The true atoms must be atoms of substance, that is,
real units without parts, in order that we may find
in them the primary sources of activity, and the first
principles of the composition of things; or, if we
look at them from the other side, the last elements
that can be reached by analysis. They may be
termed metaphysical points, or points of force, and
they have a kind of life and perception in them.
They differ from physical points in being indivisible,
not merely in appearance, but in reality; and from
mathematical points, in being not modal, but real.Ӡ
Their unity and simplicity excludes all influence from
without. "They have no windows through which
anything might come into them or go out of them."‡
Hence they cannot begin but by creation, or perish
but by annihilation; and their life is absolutely self-
* Erdmann's Leibnitz, p. 714. + Id., p. 126. ‡ Id., p. 705.
V.
75
INTRODUCTION.
determined except in relation to God. Each is a
little world developing under its own laws, "as if
there were nothing in existence but God and
itself." *
""
""
""
verse.
In regard to the other side of the nature of Andideally
includes,
the monad-its ideal inclusion of the world— the uni-
Leibnitz tells us that each monad "expresses or
"represents the whole universe. Often he ex-
presses this relation of the monad by the word
perception, adding, however, that he does not use it
in the sense in which it is exclusively applied to
a thinking or sentient subject. "Perceptio nihil
aliud est quam multorum in uno expressio.' His
meaning may best be indicated by saying that
each individual is so related, though only ideally
related, to all the other individuals, that if we could
understand it fully, we should understand the whole
universe. "As the world is a plenum where every
body acts upon every other body with more or less
intensity according to the distance, so each monad
is a living mirror, gifted with an internal activity,
whereby it represents the whole universe according
to its particular point of view, and in such a way
that its ideal universe has all the regularity of the
real one." + The last part of the sentence must
be taken as explaining the first part of it; for as the
monads are absolutely exclusive of each other, all
apparent relation must be explained as ideal cor-
respondence or harmony.
"God has created the
soul and every other real unity, in such a way
that everything is evolved for it out of its own
substance, with perfect spontaneity on its part,
yet with perfect conformity to things external." +
+ Id., 127.
Erdmann's Leibnitz, p. 127.
+ Id., 714.
76
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
The Pre-
established
66
Every spirit" (and the same is true as Leibnitz's
view of every monad) "being like a separate world,
sufficient for itself, independent of every other crea-
ture, enveloping the infinite, expressing the universe,
is as durable, as self-subsistent, and as absolute as
the universe itself."*
The idea of the monad, then, combines at once
Harmony. absolute exclusion and absolute inclusion of the
universe; and the contradiction between these two
aspects of it is avoided by the exclusion being de-
clared to be real, and the inclusion ideal. The
monad expresses a universe which it is not; it is,
to use Leibnitz's constant image, a mirror, and not
that which is reflected or represented in the mirror.
And, if we ask how the reflection either is, or is
known to be conformable to the reality, he answers
by his well-known theory of "Pre-established
Harmony." The monads have been so constituted
from the beginning that the life of each runs parallel
with the life of all the other monads, and each in its
successive states represents the universe in its order
and development. Thus, in place of the continual
miracle of the system of occasional causes, Leibnitz
substitutes his one all-embracing miracle whereby
the future history of itself, and, through itself, of all
other things and beings, is concentrated or gathered
up, in potentiality, in the first constitution of each
individual substance. The one system equally with
the other involves the denial of any real relations
between substances, and is therefore forced to
explain their ideal relativity by an external and
artificial arrangement of God. Yet this great gulf
fixed between the real and the ideal, seems to
* Erdmann's Leibnitz, p. 128.
V.
77
INTRODUCTION.
disappear when we look at the inner nature of the
monad itself as it is defined by Leibnitz. For if the
monad is essentially a representative activity, and
exists only in representing other monads, there can be
no absolute division between its real and ideal sides.
Each monad, as it exists in representing and being
represented by the others, acts and is acted upon by
them. Each is in itself but a repetition of the same
world from a different point of view, and there is no
world but in these different representations. Each
finds its reality in its ideality-its individuality in
its relation to the whole universe. What, then, is
the object of absolutely separating two elements that
necessitate and imply each other, only in order to
combine them again by an artificial expedient like
the Pre-established Harmony?
""
ideality
are one.
•
The bearing of this question becomes clearer if we In God
look at the monads in their relation to God, who and reality
establishes and maintains, and, we might almost say,
who is the harmony. “Dieu seul fait la liaison et
communication des substances. As each monad is
confined to itself, we can know the harmony of exis-
tence with our perceptions only through our know-
ledge of God. Yet it would seem that the know-
ledge of God cannot be attained by a being who is
an individual substance, unless he transcends the
limits of his individuality-i. e., unless he
unless he goes
beyond representations or perceptions, which are
merely modifications of his own being, and rises to a
representation or perception which includes existence
in itself. And this, indeed, is implicitly acknow-
ledged by Leibnitz when he defines God as the
Being, the possibility or thought of whom involves
his existence. In saying that the thinking monad
78
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Difference
of Spirits
can rise to the knowledge of God, Leibnitz is ad-
mitting that it at least is not limited by the division
which he elsewhere treats as absolute, between,
thought and reality. In the idea of God, in fact,
there is a necessary unity of the same two elements
which in the idea of the world of finite monads
are set in absolute opposition to each other. But,
then, these two ideas the idea of the unity of
being and thought in God, and the idea of their
distinction in the world-should be brought together
and united with each other. They are, indeed, not
two ideas, but two aspects of one idea. To appre-
hend myself as one in a world of individuals, from
which I am necessarily distinguished, is possible only
in so far as I relate both myself and them to a unity
which transcends the distinction. I cannot have the
consciousness of self except through the conscious-
ness of the not-self; nor can I have the consciousness
of the two as distinct and opposed except in relation
to their unity. In this sense the thinking monad
cannot exclude the world without including it; if it
"represents" the world, and knows that it represents
it, it at the same time represents God, the absolute
unity of thought and existence. Hence, the in-
dividuality and universality of the monad, or its
relation to itself and its relation to the world, which
Leibnitz separates so absolutely from each other,
are opposed yet complementary truths. It is, there-
fore, superfluous to construct an artificial harmony
between two factors of reality which cannot be
given in their distinction without also being given
in their unity.
Leibnitz himself is not altogether without this
Monads. thought, though in its expression he is not able to
from other
V.
79
INTRODUCTION.
""
rise above the language of figure and metaphor. He
repeatedly points out that the spirit-monad-the
monad that has consciousness of itself, (or, in his lan-
guage, that has not only perception but apperception)
holds a very different position in the universe from
other individual substances. Thus we find him
saying that while all substances express the universe,
yet the other substances express rather the world
than God, spirits express rather God than the
world. "The difference between those monads which
express the world with consciousness, and those
which express it unintelligently, is as great as the
difference between a mirror and one who sees. In
one passage he goes so far as to declare that the
other monads have only a metaphysical, not a moral
or spiritual individuality; for it is memory or the
consciousness of self that constitutes personality, and
makes a being responsible and capable of reward
and punishment. Without such continued self-
consciousness, indeed, the mere permanence of sub-
stance is nothing more to the individual than if a
new substance had been created. "If an individual
were made king of China on condition of forgetting
all that he had been, would it not be to all practical
intent and purpose the same thing as if he had been
annihilated and a king of China created at the same
time in his place?" *
""*
scend the
Monad.
If Leibnitz had clearly followed out the view They tran-
expressed in such passages, it would have carried idea of the
him beyond his monadism or ideal atomism on the
one side, and beyond his idea of pre-established
harmony on the other. For if it be true that mere
continuity of existence is not enough to constitute
* Discours de la Metaphysique, §§ 34-5.
1
80
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
individuality, without personality or self-conscious-
ness, then it is impossible to rest on the bare
idea of the monad, as that which underlies and
explains everything. Or, if we do, we must define
the monad, not merely as a substance, but as a
subject: we must say that the only true monad,
the only independent and individual being, is a
conscious self, and that all other substances are
essentially related to, and dependent on the system
of which they form a part. But, then, if self-con-
sciousness, in which alone the idea of individuality
or of the monad is perfectly realized, represents
rather God than the world, or, in other words,
involves in it the idea of a unity that transcends
the distinction of the individual and the world,
there can be no absolute opposition between indi-
viduality and universality. Individuality in its
highest form is not merely negative and exclusive,
but also positive and inclusive; it is not merely the
consciousness of a self in opposition to other things
and beings, but also the consciousness of a self in
relation to, and unity with them. Hence the idea
of the monad must be modified and transformed.
Exclusive individuality cannot be the highest cate-
gory for those who see that the only being who
is really individual is also universal; or that the
being in whom alone a distinct personal life is
realised, is also the being that is least confined with-
in the limits of its separate existence. Leibnitz
himself, whenever he speaks of the relation of spirits
to God and to each other, forgets the idea of har-
mony, and exchanges it for the idea of a communion
or continuity of life, in which the differences of indi-
viduals are absorbed. Thus in the Monadology, after
V.
81
INTRODUCTION.
speaking, in words similar to those already quoted,
of spirits as representing not only the world but
God, he proceeds to say "It is this that makes
spirits capable of entering into a kind of society with
God, so that he holds towards them, not merely,
as towards the other creatures, the relation of an
inventor to the works he has produced, but also
the relation of a king to his subjects, or of a father
to his children. And from this we may easily
gather that the assembly of all spirits must consti-
tute the city of God-i.e., the most perfect state
that can exist under the most perfect of monarchs.
And this city of God, this truly universal monarchy,
is a moral world within the material world, the
highest and divinest of God's works, and that in
which his glory consists. For he would have no
glory if his greatness and goodness were not
admired by spirits: nay, it is in reference to this
community alone that he can properly be said to
have goodness at all, though his wisdom and power
are manifested everywhere." With passages like
these, in which the community of all spiritual beings
is insisted on, and contrasted with the merely exter-
nal relations of material objects, it is not easy to
combine the idea of the repellent individuality of
the monads and their artificial harmony. A spirit
is not, strictly speaking, a monad at all, or if he is
to be so regarded, we must free Monadism from the
slough of ordinary Atomism, which, with Leibnitz,
it never completely cast off.
Monadism
theism in
The same difficulty recurs in another form, when Conflict of
we try to combine the independence of the monads and Pan-
with their absolute dependence upon God. It seems Leibnitz.
necessary that one or the other of them should be
F
82
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
sacrificed; and, in fact, Leibnitz sacrifices each of
them alternately. Where the independence and
"*
دو
self-determination of the finite monads is to be
emphasised, God sinks into a mere name for the
harmony: where the substantiality of God, as the
"highest monad," is insisted on, the finite monads
become mere modes of his existence. Leibnitz
generally starts with the former aspect of things.
"Omne individuum tota sua entitate individuatur, is
the thesis of his first essay, and the key-note of his
speculation and, like Aristotle, he combines the
conceptions of individuality and activity. It is in
the spontaneity and self-determination of the monads
that he finds his defence against Pantheism. "When
we take away all active force from things," he de-
clares, “it becomes impossible to distinguish them
from the divine substance, or to escape from falling
into Spinozism. In other words, the activity of
a substance consists in differentiating itself from
other substances; and conversely, where there is
no difference, there is no activity, and hence no
substance or individuality. This is the meaning
of the celebrated "identity of indiscernibles," which
Leibnitz frequently supports by inadequate empirical
illustrations (such as, e. g., the impossibility of find
ing two leaves alike), but which, in its proper sense,
is the necessary corollary of Monadism. Yet, on
the other hand, in spite of this strong assertion that
the finite individual as such is a real substance,
an independent activity, Leibnitz no sooner begins
to speak of the nature of the "highest monad" than
he comes under the yoke of that abstract logic which
found its legitimate outcome in Spinozism. Admit-
* Erdmann's Leibnitz, p. 161.
V.
83
INTRODUCTION.
ting the principle that determination is negative and
merely negative, he was driven, like Spinoza, to
seek for positive reality in the indeterminate. For
if God be the absolute affirmation without negation,
and if other beings are distinguished from him only
by negations, it is a necessary consequence that their
limited existence is only a part of his infinity. Their
independence is an illusion from which we have to
abstract when we seek to determine the absolute
reality. And along with the idea of limit, the
idea of individuality must also disappear. If there
be no determination at all, there can be no self!
determination. God and man equally cease to be'
monads or subjects, and become mere substances.
The Spinozistic difficulty as to the possibility of the
absolute substance differentiating itself into attributes
and modes, or giving rise even to the phenomenal
illusion of a finite world, returns upon Leibnitz, and
while, in the Theodicy, he contends that evil is the
necessary result of the finitude of the creatures, by
the same reasoning he makes it impossible to ac-
count for the existence of finite creatures at all. It
may be true that, if the finite is to exist, certain
evils must result, even in the best of all possible
worlds. But why should a finite world exist,
when by it nothing can be added to the absolute
reality of God, when it is not necessary to God, and
when there is no difference between it and God
except through the presence of negations. "It is
yet unknown to men," Leibnitz says on one occasion,
"what is the reason of the incompossibility of differ-
ent things" (i.e., the impossibility of different things
existing together), "or how it is that the natures of
different things can be opposed to each other, seeing
84
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
He fails to
combine
ality and
that all purely positive terms seem to be compat-
ible."* The logic of this passage involves a dilemma
that is fatal to Leibnitz's favourite conception of the
Divine Being as selecting out of all possible worlds
the one that contains the greatest amount of good,
with the smallest amount of evil. If there be any
positive existences which are incompossible—i. e.,
which cannot be combined without opposition and
conflict, and if, for that reason, the best of all possible
worlds, the world that has the greatest sum or reality
of good in it, must contain also a certain amount
of evil, then it is obvious that all positive existence
cannot be combined in God, who is affirmation with-
out negation, good without evil. If, on the other
hand, all positive existence is compossible, and is
actually combined in God without negation or evil,
why should they not also be combined without
negation or evil in the best of all possible worlds?
If there be no negation or evil involved in the union
of all positive reality in God, then evil is not a
sine qua non of good, and God will not admit it in
his world if negation and evil is involved in the
union of all possible reality, then how can we
exclude it from the divine nature itself?
The explanation of these contradictions is simply
Individu- that Leibnitz did not see how universality or
Relativity. relativity to other beings could be reconciled with
the notion of the individual substance. But the self-
determination of the monad, as has been already
shown, implicitly contains in it a positive as well as
a negative relation to that which is different from
itself. Following out this idea, we are able to do
justice to the independence of the individual, with-
* Erdmann's Leibnitz, p. 99.
V.
85
INTRODUCTION.
out thereby cutting him off from all connexion with
the world. We are able to think of God, not as
the absolute substance that leaves room for no other
existence than itself, but as the absolute subject,
the self-determined individual, who, just because
he is self-determined or self-revealing, manifests
himself in and to a world of beings that partake
of his own nature. And, on the other hand, we
are able to think of the finite individual, and especi-
ally of the self-conscious subject, as self-determined
and "a little universe" in himself, without shutting
him up in a world of mere representations, where he
comes in contact with nothing really different from
himself. But, as Leibnitz failed to apprehend this
idea, and as he imagined that he could defend the
substantiality of the monad only by denying all
real relations between it and everything else, he
was forced to recur to the Cartesian method of
abstraction, in order to connect the monads with
each other and with God. He did not observe
that this way of abstraction necessarily leads to
Spinozism, and connects the individuals together only
by denying to them any real individuality. The
imperfection of the monadism of Leibnitz is thus
shown by the fact that he has to supplement it
out of a system based on principles contradictory to
his own.
The result is a continual crossing of
inconsistent lines of thought, veiled only by the
use of figurative and popular expressions which
suggest, alternately, the pantheistic and the indi-
vidualistic idea, without bringing them to any rude
collision. When we read that "God alone is the
primitive unity or simple originative substance, of
which all the creative or derivative monads are the
X
86
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Hence he
is obliged
Space and
Matter as
only phe-
real.
productions, born, as it were, of the continual ful-
gurations of divinity from moment to moment," we
are easily carried along the stream of metaphor,
and do not stop to think that such language derives
its power from combining two different conceptions
of the relation of God to the world, which are never
by Leibnitz reconciled.
The contradiction which we have here discovered
to explain in the fundamental conceptions of Leibnitz neces-
sarily runs through all his speculations: for at
nomenally every point the unity or continuity of existence is
broken by the isolation of the monad, and has to be
restored by some logical tour de force. One of the
most important illustrations of this is to be found
in his treatment of the ideas of space and extended
matter. Not unfrequently he introduces his theory
of monadism by the argument that there must be
simple substances since there are composite things,
for the composite is only an aggregate of simple
units. The statement is, as Leibnitz puts it, self-
evident, or even tautological: for what is called
composite is by that very name defined as a mere
aggregate. But Leibnitz supposes that he has thus
shown the impossibility of all real continuity, i.e., of
all complexity that does not end with indivisible
units. Hence he denies the reality of space and
extended substance. For the extended, as such, is
infinitely divisible; you never can find in space a
unit which may not again be treated as an ag-
gregate. The Atomists attempting to reach an
individual, fell into the contradiction of supposing
the existence of something extended which yet was
without parts. But their failure shows us at once
the necessity of seeking a real unit, and the im-
V.
INTRODUCTION.
87
possibility of finding it in space. The real units or
monads must therefore be unextended; hence they
can have only internal determinations or, in other
words, perceptions, and their relations to one an-
other must be limited to correspondence in these
perceptions. There is therefore no existence except
the existence of monads, and the conceptions of
space and extended substance are confused ideas.
The reality of extended substance can be found only
in the aggregation of monads, the reality of space
can be found only in the relation of these monads
to each other, a relation which is, of course, purely
ideal. And the same reasoning may be also applied
to time. To get at the truth in the former case, we
must modify our conception of extended substance,
i. e., substance continued through the difference of
space, by the denial of any real continuity or relation
between monads. To get at the truth in the latter
case, we must take into account that the monad
never changes into anything else, and that its
present state virtually contains all its past and all
its future. But, though time and space are thus
ideal and not real, though they are mere relations,
and relations not clearly conceived, yet this must not
be taken to imply that things apprehended under
the conditions of time and space are merely sub-
jective or illusory appearances. They are, indeed,
phenomena, not things in themselves, but they are
real phenomena; they have a coherence and con-
nection which raises them above the level of illusions
or dreams: or, at least, there is a method and order
in these dreams which enables us from the past to fore-
tell the future. "We can never," he says, "de-
monstrate the existence of material bodies, and there
88
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Yet this
phenomen-
al is in har-
mony with
absolute
reality.
is nothing against the notion that the things out-
wardly presented to us are well-ordered dreams
(somnia bene ordinata), which are by us judged to
be true, and which are indeed for us as good as true,
because they agree with each other. Nor can we
attach much weight to the argument that this would
make God a deceiver; for, when we assume any-
thing without proof, we are not deceived by God,
but by our own judgment. And what if it should
be the case that our nature is not capable of the
truth? Surely in that case we should not have to
blame, but to thank God, if he made appearances,
since it was impossible that they should agree with
reality, to agree at least with each other; and so
bestowed on us a knowledge which, for all the pur-
poses of life, was equivalent to the knowledge of
reality."* The ideality of time and space, in fact,
involves the ideality of motion, of all external
phenomena, and even of the law of causation itself,
by which they appear to determine each other in
succession or co-existence; for monads are only
determined internally. But yet, not only are these
. phenomena coherent with each other, but their
coherence corresponds perfectly to the real connec-
tion of the states of things, though that is ruled
by an altogether different law-the law, not of
efficient, but of final causation. In other words,
the monads are all determined from within, but
their self-determination corresponds exactly with
the apparent determination from without which
takes place in phenomena, under conditions of time
and space.
"Les âmes agissent selon les loix des
causes finales par appétitions, fins et moyens. Les
* Erdmann's Leibnitz, p. 144.
V.
89
INTRODUCTION.
99%
corps agissent selon les loix des causes efficientes,
ou des mouvements; et les deux règnes, celui des
causes efficientes, et celui des causes finales, sont
harmoniques entre eux. They are harmonious,
because the latter is the reality of which the former
is the phenomenon, though Leibnitz often speaks
as if they were two separate kingdoms of reality.
The phenomenal world is only the real world pre-
sented in a certain confusion or distortion, which,
however, follows a regular law of change, as it trans-
mutes the purely internal connexion of states in the
self-evolving monad into a regular external con-
nexion of things in space and time. And, as
indicated in the passage above quoted, it is owing to
the limits of our finite natures that we cannot fully
represent the order and connexion of the world of
monads, except in this confused and imperfect form.
source of
Space and
But this raises another question. How can Subjective
monads, or individual substances, be thus limited the ideas of
in the form of their knowledge? To understand Time.
this, we must remember that though Leibnitz re-
presents the monads as spontaneous and self-
determined in all their perceptions, he yet holds.
that God alone is actus purus. In every other
monad there is a passive element, a prima ma-
teria, a limit; and its absolute spontaneity means
only that the limit is not external, not imposed
by the influence of anything else, but simply by its
own original constitution. Now, as the activity
of the monad is representative or perceptive, this
limit takes the form of a certain confusion in its
perceptions. In regard to the nature of this confu-
sion, Leibnitz tells us, first, that it is that which
* Monadologie, § 79.
90
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
makes us feel and imagine, as distinguished from that
which makes us think; and, secondly, that it is that
which makes us represent the world as an order of
things in time and space, and not as a multitude of
isolated monads. As to the first of these points,
he frequently remarks, that our sensible perceptions
are not simple, as Locke had supposed, but really
involve an infinite complexity. Their apparent
simplicity arises only from the want of analysis.
The infinity of the world lies implicitly in sense, and
the work of thought is just to evolve and disentangle
it. As to the second point, he tells us that matter is
not extension, but extensionis exigentia, or, in other
words, it is that which necessitates our conceiving a
multitude of co-existent monads as extended sub-
stance. These two points are closely connected
together; we conceive things as partes extra partes
in space, just because they are present to us in sense,
in a confusion or complexity which we can never
analyse. Thus the prima materia, the limit or
confusion of our ideas, is the reason of the secunda
materia that seems to belong to things as pheno-
mena realia. The secunda materia, or matter in the
ordinary sense of the word, has no real existence in
itself, but only in the monads that constitute it. At
the same time, as we have seen, this matter, though
only phenomenally real, is a definite object of know-
ledge in its order of space and time; and, indeed, it
is only as material, and in this order, that the greater
part of the world can be explained by us. Leibnitz
is, therefore, as zealous as Bacon in excluding the
idea of final cause from physics, and in demanding
that all the particular phenomena of nature should
be accounted for mechanically, though he thinks that
V.
91
INTRODUCTION.
the general laws of mechanics may be deduced from
the principium melioris.
ences of
merely
tive.
These two doctrines of Leibnitz-that sense is The differ-
confused thought, and that existence if space and Monads
time is a phenomenon reale-have a special impor- quantita-
tance when viewed in relation to the ideas of Kant.
Before criticising them, however, we may complete
the general outline of the Leibnitzian philosophy, by
giving a brief account of his view of the kingdom of
monads as a graduated scale of being. The doctrine
that sense is confused thought becomes in the hands
of Leibnitz a means of reducing the qualitative dif-
ferences of things into mere differences of quantity
All monads are with him perceptive beings, distin
guished from each other only by the clearness or
confusion of their perceptions, and thus the scale of
being extends downwards, without a break, from
spirits who apprehend the world in the light of
thought, to animals who apprehend it only in the
obscurity of sensation; and from these again down
to monads, whose perceptions are too confused to be
classed even with those of sense. The following
passage from the Monadologie will be sufficient to
show the method in which Leibnitz seeks to oblit-
erate any absolute line of distinction between the
various stages of existence.
"The passing state of the monad which envelopes
and represents a multitude of things in the unity of
the simple substance, is what is called perception,
which must be carefully distinguished from apper-
ception, or consciousness.
The action of the
internal principle that causes the change or passage
of the monad from one state to another, may be
named appetite. . . . Now, if we call everything
2/

92
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
a soul which has perceptions and appetites in the
sense just explained, all the simple substances or
monads may be called souls. But as sensation is
something more than simple perception, it is better
to give the general name of monads or entelechies,
to those simple substances that have only percep-
tion; and to reserve the name of soul for those
whose perception is more distinct, and is accom-
panied by memory. To illustrate this, I may appeal
to our own experience, for we ourselves sometimes
fall into a state in which we remember nothing
and have no distinct perception, as when we faint
away, or are immersed in profound slumber without
a dream. In this state the soul does not visibly
differ from a simple monad, though, as it revives, it
shows itself to be much more. Are we, then, to say
that, in such a state, the simple substance is without
any perceptions? That is impossible for reasons
already given. But when there are a great multi-
tude of little perceptions, none of them vivid or
distinct, we become stunned, as when we turn round
and round in the same direction for many times, we
get giddy and faint so as to lose the power of dis-
tinguishing anything. And death may produce
•
Hence
this state in animals for a time.
we see that if in our perceptions there were no-
thing distinct, nothing, so to speak, standing in
higher relief, or more strongly tasted than other
things, we should always be in a stunned condi-
tion, and this is the state of monads wholly naked.
But nature has taken care to give distinct and
outstanding perceptions to the animals by fur-
nishing them with organs which gather into
themselves several rays of light, or several undu-
V.
93
INTRODUCTION.
lations of air, to make them more efficacious by
their union."*
We cannot set much value upon these illustrations
(for they are no more), except as they show how
Leibnitz endeavoured to find unity through all the
differences of things, and to minimise the division
between the conscious and the sentient, between the
sentient and that which is without sensation. The
idea of development is nowhere in Leibnitz applied
to nature as a whole, yet we may gather from
various passages that he was only restrained by
theological difficulties from asserting, that differ-
ences in the scale of being are merely differences in
the stage of evolution which various monads have
attained. And, indeed, no other doctrine is consis-
tent with his assertion that each monad "represents,"
or contains implicitly in its perception, the whole
universe.
of applying
the Monad
But this doctrine of the qualitative similarity of Difficulty
all individual substances gives rise to another diffi- the idea of
culty when we try to apply the idea of the monad to to animals.
all the different objects that are brought under it.
A monad is a completely self-determined existence
that excludes all relations to other things, just
because it is itself a "little world" in which they are
all ideally represented. But how can we ascribe
such completeness of existence to beings that have
only sensitive consciousness? In a certain sense
we may regard a self-conscious being as complete in
himself, for such a being is not limited to his own
sentient individuality. Of him, therefore, it may be
said that in all his knowledge he only knows himself,
and in all his action he only acts upon himself.
* Monadologie, §§ 14, 15, 19-21, 24, 25.
To
94
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
him there is nothing absolutely external; he takes
the life of the world into his own life; and just for
that very reason he may be regarded as self-sufficient,
as a "little world" in himself. But how are we to
apply this conception to a purely sentient being? A
being without self-consciousness is, as Leibnitz him-
self says, without knowledge of those necessary truths
which form "the soul and connective principles" of
our perceptions, and alone enable us to discern the
universal in the particular the laws of a world in
the phenomena of sensitive experience. For it,
therefore, no universe exists, and all that even
Leibnitz ventures to say of it is, that it is a
"mirror" of the universe, that "in the least of
substances eyes as piercing as those of God could
read the whole sequence of things in the universe."
But this means not that it is a whole in itself,
but simply that it cannot be interpreted except in
relation to the whole, of which it is a part. The
centre, in reference to which it becomes completely
intelligible, is not, as with the thinking being, found
within itself-the ordo ad individuum and the
ordo ad universum do not with it coincide. And
when we go lower than the organic world, we
applying find it still more difficult to find individuals that
inorganic correspond to the description of the monad. The
organised living being has still an ideal centre to
which the various phenomena of its life may be
referred, and in reference to which it may be treated
as a complete whole in itself, a "little world" which
is a copy of the great one. But, with life and
organism, the individuality of nature, in the proper
sense of the word, ceases. Leibnitz, indeed, evades
the difficulty by declaring that nature is organic
Impossi-
bility of
it to
matter.
V.
95
INTRODUCTION
throughout, and that it contains an "actual infinity"
of organisms within organisms. The difference of
natural from artificial machines is, he says, that "the
machines of nature are machines in their smallest
""*
parts. But this simply shows that his principles
force him to deny the reality of the inorganic. Such
a notion as that of matter, which is infinitely divisible
and continuous, which is not made up of indivisible
units, and whose units are necessarily related to each
other, will not fit into his theory. He is, therefore,
obliged to supplement his doctrine that existence
is essentially individual, by the doctrine that ex-
tended substance is, as such, phenomenal, and that
time, space, and motion, are confused ideas—i. e.,
ideas imperfectly representing their objects. In
other words, he attempts to see in every existence
a microcosm or self-determined whole, after the
analogy of the ego, and, when this expedient utterly
fails him, when any existence by the very notion of
it involves relativity and continuity, he takes refuge
in the denial of its objective reality.
trine, that
pheno-
compro-
between
dualism
In thus dealing with the continuity and divisi- The doc-
bility of matter, Leibnitz betrays the fundamental matter is
inconsistency of his system. Drawn one way by his menal, a
individualistic psychology, and another way by his mise
idealistic ontology, he ends in a compromise that Indivi-
is in harmony with neither. His individualism and
would lead him to assert that the mind can ap-
prehend nothing but its own perceptions.
pure individuality of the monad, if taken literally,
imprisons it within itself, and the universe can exist
to it only in the painting on the walls of its prison.
But the logical development of this view would have
* Erdmann's Leibnitz, p. 126.
The
Idealism.
96
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
excluded all reference of its perceptions to any
object, and therefore all possibility of knowledge.
To avoid this consequence, therefore, the thinking
monad must be made more than a monad. Its per-
ceptions, we are told, pass at one point into reality ;
it has one immediate external object, viz., God,* the
thought of whom at once involves his existence.
And it is a conclusion from the goodness of God,
that the other perceptions also represent reality.
The reality which is thus represented cannot, how-
ever, be the existence of extended substances or
things in space. For things in space have no indi-
visible unity they have no internal relations that
can be distinguished from their external relations.
To admit their real existence, therefore, would
be to surrender monadism. They can be nothing
more than coherent phenomena - phenomena
which, as they have a definite order and con-
nexion, point to a reality, but to which no reality
exactly corresponds. It is obvious that we have
here a repetition of the inconsequence of Berkeley
when he first denies the reality of material substance,
because we cannot through ideas know any object
but the ideas themselves; and then asserts that
through the same ideas we know God and other
spiritual beings. Leibnitz does not hesitate to
admit that we have the knowledge of God, though
he is an external object, and though he is a being
whose thought is creative-i. e., a being who is not
shut up in himself like a monad, but has external
relations. Further, Leibnitz does not hesitate to
admit, that we have knowledge of other spiritual
beings, and of beings which have sensation, or even
* Erdmann's Leibnitz, p. 222.
V.
97
INTRODUCTION.
life of all beings, in short, who can in any way be
brought under the definition of monads. It is only
when he comes to matter in space, to mere extended
substance in which external and internal relations
are no longer distinguishable or separable, that he
finds an insuperable difficulty. It is only then that
he affirms the object, because of its continuity, to
be necessarily phenomenal, and to have no reality
except in the units or monads which it contains.
But, if the continuity of the monads, or their rela-
tivity to each other, be once admitted, as it is by
Leibnitz, when he combines the individuality of the
thinking monad with its necessary relation to God,
and again when he combines the individuality of
God with his necessary relation to the world of
created monads, then it seems absurd to hesitate
about space and extended substance, on the ground
that the idea of continuity is involved in them, or,
in other words, that we can find in them no absolute
units that exclude all relation. It is true that the
conception of the world as a world in space, is only
an imperfect and abstract conception of it. Its im-
perfection, however, lies, as will be shown in the
sequel, not in its implying the continuity of things,
as well as their individuality, but in this, that these
two elements of the conception are not yet recon-
ciled with each other. But, with Leibnitz, the doc-
trine of the phenomenal character of space, is not
based on the idea that it is an imperfect form of
expression for the individuality and relativity of
things, but on the false theory that they have no
relativity at all-a theory which, nevertheless, is
practically abandoned by Leibnitz himself, as it must
be abandoned by every one who takes the step from
G
98
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Inconsis-
tency in
tion be-
truth.
thought to existence.
For individualism, by the
necessity of the case, is suicidal, and the mind of a
pure monad could never ascertain the truth even of
monadism. When Leibnitz asserted against Locke
that all knowledge rests on principles which, as
universal, are independent of the experience of this
or that individual, when he taught that it is the
constitutive activity of thought through which alone
there exists to us any unity or connexion of things,
he, in effect, pronounced his own condemnation.
This last remark leads us, finally, to notice a
his distinc- point which is of great importance in tracing the
tween con- connexion of the Leibnitzian with the Kantian
tingent and
necessary system. Leibnitz, as we have seen, sought to ex-
plain away the differences in the perceptions of
monads, or at least to treat them as merely quan-
titative, as differences of degree and not of kind.
In this view sensation is but confused thought, and
thought is but distinct sensation. Yet, whenever
he passes to the more exact consideration of the
nature of the two, he finds not, as we might
expect, a fluctuating boundary, but a marked
division between them. He draws a wide dis-f
tinction between contingent and necessary truth,
between truths of fact, and truths of reason.
latter, he thinks, can always be carried back
by analysis to self-evident principles, and, indeed,
to identical propositions; the former are incapable
of such final resolution. "I use two principles,"
he says,
"in demonstration; one of them is the
principle that whatever contains a contradiction
is false; the other is that for every truth which
is not an identical proposition, a reason
can be
given. In other words, the notion of the predicate
The
V.
gg
INTRODUCTION.
is always explicitly or implicitly contained in the
notion of the subject, and this is the case, not less in
contingent than in necessary truth. The distinction
between necessary and contingent truth very closely
resembles the distinction between commensurable
and incommensurable numbers. Just as we can
always find a common measure for commensurable
numbers, so we can always demonstrate necessary
truths-i. e., we can always carry them back to
identical propositions. On the other hand, just as
the analysis of a ratio of incommensurables produces
an infinite series, so contingent truths require an
infinite analysis which only God can complete.
Wherefore it is by him alone that they are known
with certainty and a priori; for though a reason
can always be found for the state that succeeds in
the state that precedes, yet this reason requires
another reason, and so on ad infinitum. And this
progress ad infinitum takes, in our knowledge, the
place of a sufficient reason, which can only be found
outside of the series in God, on whom all its parts,
prior and posterior, depend, far more than they de-
pend upon each other. For when a truth is incap-
able of final analysis, and cannot be demonstrated
from its own reasons, but derives its final reason
and certitude from the divine mind alone, it is not
necessary. Such are all those I call truths of fact,
and this is the root of their contingency, which I
doubt whether any one hitherto has explained."*
In his answer to Locke, Leibnitz gives a psycho-
logical explanation of this distinction, in which he
sometime approaches very closely to the Kantian
theory. The world of sense is a world of confused
* Erdmann's Leibnitz, p. 83.
100
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
An
ideas, between which the mind can see no relations.
Why two merely sensible qualities should be found
together, we cannot tell. Hence purely sentient
beings can never rise to the apprehension of general
truth or science. They are confined to the particular,
and when they combine ideas it is merely by arbi-
trary association. 'The animals are pure empirics,
and only guide themselves by examples. Their
consecution of ideas is but a shadow of reasoning;
that is to say, it is only a connexion of imagination
and a transition from one image to another.
object similar to one that has presented itself before
makes them expect that which formerly was per-
ceived in connection with it, as if things were con-
nected in reality, because their images are connected
in the memory.
"Out of this mere particularity, the
mind of man is lifted by the eternal truths which form
its own essence, which are necessarily combined with
its consciousness of self, and which form the connec-
tive elements of all thought. "General principles
enter into our thoughts, and are their soul and uniting
principle. They are necessary to thinking, as the
muscles and tendons are necessary for walking. The
mind rests on these principles at every moment,
though it is not easy for it to disentangle them, or
to represent them distinctly and separately, for that
requires a close attention to its own operations,
and few people are capable of such attention.” †
Hence the mere sensations which in themselves
would give us no conception of objective reality,
acquire objective meaning when connected together
by means of these principles. "The true criterion of
reality in relation to the objects of sense is the inter-
+ Id., p. 211, p.
* Erdmann's Leibnitz, p. 195,
V.
101
INTRODUCTION.
dependence of phenomena-i.e., the connection of
events that happen in different times and places, and
in the experience of different men, who themselves
are very important phenomena to each other in this
regard. And the interdependence of phenomena,
which guarantees the truths of fact in relation to
the sensible objects external to us, is verified by
means of the truths of reason, as the appearances
of Optics are explained by Geometry."*
Yet we
must remember that this kind of knowledge is very
imperfect, for it is not based on clear and intelligible
relations of thought: its matter, if not its form, is
derived from the confused ideas of sense; and we
can never be certain that it has a higher value than
a self-consistent dream. "It must be allowed,” he
says, in the immediate context, "that this know-
ledge is not of the highest degree of certainty.
The truth of our own existence, and of the cause of
phenomena, is of quite another nature, as it has
relation to substances" (or things in themselves).
Leibnitz, therefore, in spite of his assertion that
sensation is confused thought, seems to hold that,
for us at least, there is an absolute limit that pre-
vents the confusion from ever being disentangled.
Truth of fact and truth of reason are for him two
species that cannot be reduced to one, though he
seems indistinctly to see what Kant afterwards
demonstrated, that there is no truth of fact without
truth of reason. It is not merely that truth first
comes to us in the complication and confusion of
sense, before it is evolved and made distinct by
the analysis of reason, but that, between the know-
ledge of phenomena and the knowledge of things in
* Erdmann's Leibnitz, p. 344, p.
102
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
If suffi-
cient
reason is
reducible
to iden-
tity, there
is no ex-
planation
of differ-
ences.
themselves, there is supposed to be an impassable
gulf. The phenomena of sense are incapable of
analysis, and therefore incapable of being fully
explained or accounted for. They must have some
sufficient reason, but that reason is unknown to us,
and unknowable or what is the same thing, a suffi-
cient reason for them can be found only in the will
of God.
But this suggests a difficulty in the interpretation
of the principle of sufficient reason.
In the passage
above quoted, the difference between it and the
principle of identity and contradiction is reduced to
a minimum. Whenever we cannot immediately and
intuitively discern that a predicate is identical with
or contained in the notion of its subject, we are
obliged to seek a reason for connecting them. But
this is ascribed merely to the confusion of our
ideas. If we could analyse fully the idea we have
of any individual thing, we should find in it an
adequate explanation of all its qualities. Hence, in
his letters to Arnauld, Leibnitz declares that a com-
plete analysis of the idea of any man would enable
us not only to discover his general character, but
also to predict all the events of his life; nay, more,
as each monad is a mirror of the whole system of
which he forms a part, the analysis of the idea of
one man would be sufficient to make manifest to
us the nature and history of the whole universe.
Now, Leibnitz recognises no difference between
what is contained explicitly in the idea of a thing,
and what is involved or implied in it as part of a
system, except the difference of greater or less
distinctness (as, indeed, on the theory of Monadism,
it was impossible for him to recognise any other
V.
103
INTROD
INTRODUCTION.
difference). To attain the goal of science, therefore,
would be to reduce all truth to identical propo
sitions; and it is only the imperfection of our
faculties that makes it impossible for us ever to
attain this goal in reference to so-called contingent
truth or truth of fact-i.e., truth that is known to
us through the instrumentality, and therefore in
the confusion, of sense. But again, from a logical
theory, which thus makes the principle of identity
the highest principle of truth, there is but a single
step to the metaphysical result of Pantheism, the
absorption of all difference in an original unity of
substance. To
To say that truth in its highest form is
an identical proposition, and that all propositions
not identical involve a certain degree of confusion of
thought, is to repeat in other words the doctrine of
Spinoza, that all appearance of difference and deter-
mination is but the necessary illusion of a finite
consciousness.
there are
two first
principles.
Leibnitz, however, never comes in sight of this If it is not,
result without an instant recoil. Accordingly we
find, in other parts of his works, a second interpreta-
tion of the principle of sufficient reason, which raises
it from a secondary form of the principle of analysis
into a co-ordinate and independent principle of syn-
thesis. In other words, he explains it as a prin-
ciple that enables us, not to detect identity under
all appearance of difference, but rather to discover
an identity that is the source and explanation of
real difference. Unfortunately this new meaning is
gained for the principle of sufficient reason at the ex-
pense of the general unity of the system. In answer
to the frequent accusations of fatalism brought against
him, Leibnitz makes a distinction between what he
104
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
calls metaphysical and moral necessity-i. e., be
tween the necessity of that which we cannot think
otherwise, because its denial would involve a con-
tradiction, and the necessity of that which we can
think otherwise, but which must be as it is, because
it is for the best. The former necessity fixes the
bounds of possibility, and is a limit even to the
power of God, who cannot make that exist, the
existence of which involves a contradiction. The
latter necessity fixes the content of reality, and
depends on the goodness of God, who, because of
his goodness, must create, and when he creates,
must produce the 'best of all possible worlds.' The
former necessity is ultimately reducible to the prin-
ciple of identity, the latter to the principium melioris,
which is now identified with the principle of suffi-
cient reason. These two necessities are quite dis-
tinct, and even, in a certain degree, opposed to each
other; for the existence of evil is explained by the
theory that it is not possible for a finite world to be
perfectly and simply good, without admixture of
evil. According to the principium melioris, the
highest sum of good, or, what is the same thing, of
positive reality, must be realised in the world, but
according to the principle of identity, it cannot be
realised without the admission of the negative
element, or, what is the same thing, of evil.
have already shown that Leibnitz is inconsistent
with his own logical principles, when he asserts that
evil is necessary to the greatest sum of good, the
positive to the negative; and, indeed, it is abun-
dantly evident that the principle of identity, to
which all metaphysical necessity is reduced, does
not involve, but rather precludes, such a union of

I
V.
105
INTRODUCTION.
opposites. Yet it is on this supposition, and on the
consequent collision of the co-equal principles of
metaphysical and moral truth, that Leibnitz relies to
'justify the ways of God to man,' and to save his
own philosophy from the gulf of Pantheism. But
to set up two first principles is really to put the
problem to be solved for its own solution. The
question is just this, how the two aspects of truth
are to be united. It is a remnant of the false
scholastic method, to suppose that all that is neces-
to solve a vital difficulty, is a mere 'distinguo,'
by which separate spheres are assigned to each of
the conflicting elements.
sary
tradictions
ism.
We have now gone over the main applications of The con-
the Monadism of Leibnitz, and may sum up the of Monad-
contradictions which it involves. Leibnitz seems to
advance beyond the Individualism of Locke, when
he conceives the monad as perceptive of the whole
world; yet he admits an absolute division be-
tween the perceptions of the monads and the
reality they represent, which is equally inconsistent
with the possibility of knowledge. He declares
that each individual monad is an active and self-
determined unity; yet he admits the Spinozistic
principle that determination is negation, which,
logically carried out, reduces the individuality
both of the finite and of the infinite to an illusion.
He denies the reality of space and extended sub-
stance, because continuity and real relativity is
contrary to the definition of the monad; yet he
admits real relations between the finite and
the infinite monad. Unable to rest on the pure
abstract idea of individuality, he introduces the
opposite idea of universality or community, but
106
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
he introduces it in a hesitating and inconsistent
way, or substitutes for it the conception of an
external harmony. Lastly, he seems to rise above
that scholastic logic that admits only an analytic
movement of thought, when he adds to the
principle of identity the co-ordinate principle of
sufficient reason. But on looking more closely, we
find that he denies to pure thought any synthetic
movement, and that he regards the principle of
sufficient reason only as an imperfect form of the
principle of identity—a form which it takes in its
application to the 'confused' ideas of sense. And
if, in other parts of his writings, he treats the two
principles as independent, he brings them together
only by means of an awkward compromise.
Now, all these collisions of thought, between the
real isolation and ideal communion of the monads,
between the self-determination of the individual
and his finitude, between the assertion of the com-
munion of monads and the denial of the reality
of space on the ground of its continuity, between
the principle of analysis and the principle of syn-
thesis, show that the unity of the philosophy of
Leibnitz is superficial and external. And this is, in
fact, unconsciously confessed by Leibnitz himself in
his constant recurrence to the idea of harmony; for
it is only things that are independent and external
to each other that require to be harmonized. The
value of his philosophy, therefore, consists rather in
the multiplicity of elements which he tries to com-
bine, than in the untempered mortar with which he
binds them together. He is continually speaking
of method, yet the great defect of his philosophy is
his loose and unmethodical way of treating each
V.
107
INTRODUCTION.
point by itself, without reference to the whole of
which it forms a part. We have to gather his
system out of many occasional writings, none of
which gives us a complete view of it, and his largest
work, the Theodicy, is confessedly popular rather
than scientific. His logic is inadequate to the mat-
ter to which it is applied, and though he speaks of a
new calculus of thought, he seems to have sought
for it in the wrong direction—not in a transforma-
tion of the old logic, but in a mere addition to it.
The analytic method of the schools remains for him
a fixed and certain presupposition, and though
the speculative force of his thought often breaks
through its rules, yet he shrinks from bringing
together into one view the different aspects of
truth, and he is fertile in ingenious distinctions,
to prevent them from conflicting with each other.
Hence, as he never presses differences to the point
of contradiction, so he is never able to reconcile
them, except in an external way. He shuns that
collision of opposites out of which the light of truth
springs; and his harmonies heal the hurt' of philo-
sophy 'slightly,' because he has never fathomed its
depth. The union of reality and ideality, of the
finite and the infinite, of efficient and final causes,
of the principle of identity and the principle of suffi-
cient reason, is never completely achieved, Each
of them is supposed to have its special province;
none of them is taken for an ultimate principle;
yet no other principle of unity is discovered by
which the bounds of the respective provinces may
be fixed.
Wolff ex-
aggerates
Perhaps we may best characterise the philosophy the defects
of Leibnitz as Reason speaking in the language of nitz.
of Leib-
し
​108
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
the Understanding. For according to a common
use of terms, it is the understanding that fixes
abstractions in their separation from each other,
while it is reason that brings the abstract ele-
ments together, and discovers their uniting prin-
ciple. A "harmony," therefore, is what seems to
come nearest to the satisfaction of the claims of
reason without undue offence to the understanding.
In such a compromise, however, the substantial
victory is left in the hands of the understanding:
its abstractions are treated as complete and inde-
pendent realities, while their unity is reduced to a
shadow. And it is only what was to be expected,
that in the development of the philosophy even the
shadow should disappear. The Wolffian school,
with its superficial clearness of dogmatism, and its
revived scholastic method, was related to Leibnitz
as Berkeley and Hume were related to Locke. It
purged the Leibnitzian philosophy of its inconsis-
tencies and extravagancies; but, by the same pro-
cess, it expelled all the higher speculative elements
of that philosophy, and reduced it to a collection of
nominal definitions.
109
CHAPTER VI.
THE WOLFFIAN PHILOSOPHY.
THE system of Wolff has now ceased to have The
Rational-
Wolff.
much importance, except as the immediate ism of
antecedent of the Critical Philosophy, and as the
school in which the author of the Critical Philo-
sophy was trained. It may be fairly described as an
unconscious revival of Scholasticism, in which the
authority of the common consciousness comes in the
place of the authority of the church. It professed,
indeed, to be something quite different from this.
It professed to emancipate thought from all pre-
suppositions and hypotheses, and to carry it back to
first principles. Philosophy was to aim at knowing
all things which are known by common sense or
the special sciences, but knowing them by a better
method, and in the unity of a system.
In fact,
however, it borrowed almost all its matter from
the ordinary consciousness, whose presuppositions it
never questioned; and whatever it had of specula-
tion was inherited from the idealistic individualism
of Leibnitz; though Wolff took care to omit most
of those hints of higher truth by which his master
had modified the narrow self-consistency of his sys-
110
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
tem. The more excellent way of philosophy was,
to Wolff, simply the way of analysis; the higher
light, the Aufklärung, which he introduced into the
thought of his time, was got simply by dissecting
it. No man ever had a fuller conviction that the
secret of things was to be found by taking them to
pieces; and when he "had the fragments in his
hand," no man ever thought less of any "spiritual
bond" which might have disappeared in the process
of disintegration. Possessed by a noble faith in the
virtue and necessity of bringing all things to the
test of clear consciousness, and an inveterate distrust
of everything that refused to be brought to that
test, he never questioned the sufficiency of the for-
mal methods he employed. The one hindrance to
spiritual progress was confusion,
was confusion, and the one
remedy was "victorious analysis." To him the
real thing, the thing in itself, was that which re-
mains after dissection has been pushed to the last
point, to which the knife of the anatomist, or the
critical intellect of the philosopher, can go.
Such being his general view of things, it is not
surprising that Wolff's life should have been a con-
tinual war with those who represented the religious
feelings of the time, or that the progress of his school
should have awakened a pietistic protest against
philosophy, as essentially the "wisdom of this world."
Unable to meet the destructive logic of Wolff by
any better logic of their own, those who clung to
that unity of life, which he "murdered to dissect,"
were driven to reject logic altogether, and to
appeal, like Jacobi at a later time, from the head
to the heart. Again, as in the middle ages, ration-
alism found its natural complement in mysticism,
VI.
111
INTRODUCTION.
and the conflict, by exposing the defects of both, did
much to prepare the way for a higher philosophy,
which should be rational, without being merely
analytic and formal. It would be difficult to exag-
gerate the emptiness of this philosophy of the
Aufklärung, its want of speculative insight, its
persistent tendency to explain away all real
difficulties, its external and mechanical way of
dealing with ideas. All these defects flowed directly
and necessarily from the nature of its method. Yet,
on the other hand, it is absurd to fall into the
error of its immediate opponents, and to forget the
debt we owe to men, who, after all, were genuine
children of light, struggling for the rights of
reason with the best weapons they possessed.
Their vigorous assertion of the claims of philo-
sophy, their persistent resolve to leave nothing in
confused complexity, but to separate and distinctly
determine every fibre of thought by itself, their
careful mapping out of the intellectual kingdom in
all its parts, was the necessary preparation for an era
of fruitful speculation. And he who asks whether
these dry bones can live, may be fairly directed to
the later German philosophy.
method
appearance
To the details of the Wolffian philosophy we shall His
have to refer so often in considering the criticism only in
of Kant, that it may suffice here to indicate its synthetic.
general character. Wolff begins with the simplest
and most general conceptions, and proceeds from
these to the more complex and determinate. But in
this process, from the abstract to the concrete, there
is no real evolution of thought. It is not that the
more abstract and general idea when analysed shows
its imperfection, and so forces thought to go beyond
112
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Emptiness
of his
It is
it to something more complex and concrete.
simply that Wolff compares the general idea with
another more complex and concrete idea which he
"finds in his mind," and discovers that the former is,
or is not, contained in the latter. Thus, there is no
necessary sequence either in the movement of thought
from one category to another within the sphere of onto-
logy or philosophia prima; or again, in the application
of these categories to the three great departments
of concrete philosophy-psychology, cosmology, and
theology. There is simply a continuous, though not
quite regular, descent from the general to the par-
ticular, in which every step involves a new appeal to
common consciousness and experience. The appear-
ance of a development of the complex out of the
simple is quite illusory. Really the complex is
supposed to be given in all its complexity from the
first, and all that is done is to show by analysis that
it contains the simple.
When the movement of reason is thus conceived
distinction as purely formal and analytic, the question at once
of a priori
and a
posteriori.
arises as to the source from which the matter of
thought is derived. Wolff adopted the Leibnitzian
view that all truth is evolved from within, and that
there is only a quantitative difference of greater or
less clearness between the apprehensions of sense and
those of reason. But this did not hinder him, any
more than it hindered Leibnitz, from drawing a
marked line of division between a priori and a pos-
teriori evidence, between truth of reason and truth
of fact; nay, he went so far beyond Leibnitz as to
divide every science into an empirical and a rational
part. At the same time he lost hold of the sole ground
on which, on Leibnitzian principles, this distinction
VI.
113
INTRODUCTION.
could be defended, when he attempted to prove
that the principle of sufficient reason is a form of
the principle of identity. For this was to deprive
thought of every originative or synthetic principle,
and to reduce it to mere analysis. It is true we do
not find this inference drawn by Wolff; on the con-
trary, he always speaks as if there were a distinct
class of a priori truths. But in practice there is no
real difference in his treatment of the rational and
the empirical. In both cases a conception is supposed
to be given in inner or outer experience: we find it
in our minds or we apprehend it by our senses, and
analysis makes it yield up its contents. It was re-
served for Kant to show that the distinction between
priori and a posteriori is perfectly futile, so long
as it is not proved that thought by its own activity
produces new matter, or at least adds something to
the matter given to it from without.
His abso-
lute
Negation,
results.
It is worth while to look for a moment at the way He spa-
in which Wolff reduces the law of sufficient reason ration of
into a form of the law of identity, both because we tion and
perceive here the прŵтоν eûos of all his logic, and and its
because we shall afterwards have to contrast with it
the reverse process by which Kant restores life to
the synthetic principles. Wolff starts with two
definitions" nihilum est cui nulla respondet notio,"
and "aliquid est cui notio aliqua respondet;" hence
something and nothing are contradictories between
which there is no middle term. No repetition of
nothings can make them equivalent to something, or,
in other words, ex nihilo nihil fit; which is simply the
converse of the proposition that there is a positive
reason for everything. It is evident at once that this
argument rests on that absolute separation of affirma-
H
114
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANŤ.

tion and negation, of which we have seen the neces
sary result in Spinozism. Strictly taken, it involves
the consequence, not only that nothing can come of
nothing, but that there is no "becoming" or change
at all. Nay, even the very conceptions of something
and nothing are on these terms impossible. Wolff's
own definition of "nothing," id cui nulla respondet
notio, would be enough to refute him, for it is a
definition of the indefinable; and as the definition of
"something" has significance only by contrast with
this, it also must be unmeaning. The principle that'
the purely affirmative alone can be known, is in direct
contradiction with the first movement of thought by
which positive and negative are distinguished from
and related to each other; and as Wolff does not
yet think of the subterfuge that these opposites are
bound together merely in our thought but not in
existence, the inconsistency is obvious and glaring.
Understood in this way, the logical principle of
identity becomes the very extreme of absurdity, for
that union of positive and negative which we find
even in the very simplest conceptions, the conceptions
of something and nothing, or being and not being, of
course meets us in a more formidable shape at every
step of our onward progress. If Wolff had logically
carried out his principle he could not have advanced
at all; and while he does advance in the way already
described, by taking up at every step new conceptions
which he finds in the mind or gets from experience,
he continually gets rid of difficulties by the same
easy method which he had applied to the idea of
becoming. In other words, he accepts each idea as
it is given in the common consciousness, but deforms
it by eliminating, or at least ignoring, all its negative
VI.
115
INTRODUCTION.
elements, and thus reduces it to a collection, more or
less numerous, of affirmative predicates, each of which
is fixed and isolated from the rest, though they may
be externally combined as predicates of one com-
mon subject. His individualistic speculation not
only sets every subject by itself without relation
to the others, but it even isolates every predicate.
Thus all the relations of ideas and things are
reduced to the external relation of logical quan-
tity. One subject may have a greater, another
a less number of qualities: one quality may be
possessed by a greater, another by a less, number of
subjects: but qualities and subjects alike are fixed
and definite units without movement or transition
between them. Such a logic gives an artificial
simplicity to thought, simply because it isolates
everything; because it gives to every individual and
to every abstraction a factitious independence and
self-sufficiency. It is the legitimate result of the
Leibnitzian rejection of the idea of continuity; but
it is Leibnitz with the speculative element left out-
Leibnitz reduced to tautology by the omission of all
those parts of his philosophy, in which he breaks
through the limits of bare Nominalism. In the same
spirit Wolff, while accepting the doctrine of the
individuality of monads, rejects the idea of their His
perceptive or representative character, which was reduced
the Leibnitzian expression for their relation or con- Atoms.
nexion with the general system of things. But with
this change Monadism degenerates into something
not very different from Atomism, and the unity of
the world comes to be regarded simply as an external
and mechanical composition of unrelated elements.
The human soul, indeed, is still said to be a vis

Monads
almost to
116
CHAP
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
representativa universi; but the pre-established
harmony is seldom treated as anything more than a
harmony of soul and body, and those hints of the
higher nature of the spirit as 'representative rather
of God than the world,' which we find in Leibnitz,
not only remain undeveloped, but seem to be utterly
forgotten. "The mind of Leibnitz was such," said
Lessing to Jacobi, "that he could never bear that
truth should be confined within too narrow limits.
It is for this I value him—that is, for his
great manner of thinking, and not for this or that
opinion which he seemed to hold, or even which he
really held."* It is just this 'great manner of think-
ing,' that breaks through the limits of systematic
consistency, that 'strikes fire from every pebble,'
and sees the whole in every part, which was entirely
wanting to Wolff. His clear understanding, on the
contrary, apprehends every part by itself, as if it
were a whole; and when he combines his thoughts,
it is not that by their own movement that they pass
into each other, but that, by an external movement
of intellect, they are put together like the pieces of a
machine. With Leibnitz, the 'harmony' is ever on
the point of passing into a self-differentiating, self-
integrating unity of relative elements; with Wolff
it is a mere Teleology, by which things which
have no inner relation are fitted together to
secure an end which is entirely foreign to them.
For to him there seems to be no transition or
mean between absolute identity and absolute dif-
ference. If a predicate is not completely contained
in the notion of a subject, it has no connexion
with it. If two subjects are different they are
* Jacobi, Werke, B. IV., p. 63.
VI.
117
INTRODUCTIONCTION.
.
independent, and capable only of an external com-
bination.
theology.
We have seen how this manner of reasoning His
disturbs Wolff's view of the first and simplest con-
ceptions of ontology, the conceptions of 'something,'
'nothing,' and 'becoming.' The same distortion
meets us again at the last point to which his specu-
lation reaches-his conception of the relation of all
individual substances to God. The contradiction
between the finite and the infinite, which was im-
plicit in Leibnitz, becomes explicit in Wolff. The
purely individual, unlimited nature of the simple
substance cannot be attributed to God. God, there-
fore, cannot be a substance in the same sense as the
finite individual, nor can we attribute to him any
predicate of the finite individual, even his activity,
except per eminentiam. "Hence we see why the
Scholastics said that God was super prædicamenta,
and why it is difficult to imagine any higher genus
under which he and his creatures should be brought
as species; and we see also why we should not be
troubled about such hyper-transcendent concep-
tions." *
But this is just what we do not see, for we
are here brought face to face with a difficulty which
cannot be solved in terms of the Wolffio-Leibnitzian
philosophy. If God and man are individual sub
stances, according to the exclusive and repellant
conception of individuality given by that philosophy,
then there is no room in the universe for both.
God is reduced to a mere name for the harmony, or
man to a mode of the divine Being. It is only so
far as individuality is conceived as at the same time
universality—i.e., as admitting a positive as well as
* Wolff, Ontologia, § 847.
118
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Correspon-
dence in
of the
English
and the
German
Individu-
alism.
a negative relation to other beings-that we can
reconcile the two, that we can admit the unity of
the finite and the infinite without the annihilation
of either. This, however, is a conception entirely
beyond Wolff's horizon; he is therefore in a strait
between Atomism and Spinozism, and really com-
bines in his system the errors of both. He admits
Atomism so far as to make it impossible to account
for any unity of existence or even of knowledge; he
admits Spinozism so far as to leave no room for
individuality either in man or in God. And if these
two phases of his speculation do not lead to a mani-
fest contradiction, it is only because they alternate,
and are never brought face to face with each other.
As is not unfrequently the case with writers who
make, like Wolff, an almost obtrusive display of
clearness and logical precision, what we find when
we penetrate below the surface is a 'nest of contra-
dictions.'
When we look back on the review we have now
the result concluded, of the individualistic philosophies, we find
a certain parallelism in the fate of the two great
schools of England and Germany, though the one
seems to end in a dogmatism, and the other in a
scepticism. Locke and Leibnitz equally profess to
base their philosophies upon the individual con-
sciousness, the former, however, looking for know-
ledge and reality mainly to the passivity of sensa-
tion, the latter mainly to the activity of thought.
Both introduce a consciousness of the universal, a
conception of the world in ordine ad universum,
of which they can give no consistent account. In
both cases the development of the system frees it
from an element which is in contradiction with its
VI.
119
INTRODUCTION.
first principle, and, at the same time, shows the
insufficiency of that principle to account for real
knowledge. The result of Hume was to show that,
taken by themselves, the mere sensations or impres-
sions of the individual cannot relate themselves to,
or connect themselves with, each other, and that
therefore they can never be referred to objects more
permanent than themselves, so as to give rise to
knowledge, or even the illusion of knowledge.
Leibnitz might seem to have protected his philo-
sophy from such an ineffectual end, when he
pointed out how the activity of the intelligence
contains in itself certain forms of thought, which
give order and unity to the matter of sense. But,
as he regarded this activity of thought as purely
subjective and individual, as dealing merely with
mental representations and not with objects; so he
tended, as we have seen, to reduce it to a purely
formal and analytic process. For if we exclude all
objective reference of our ideas, all that seems left
is to compare them together, and determine their
agreement or difference. Synthesis and objective'
reference, as Kant was to show, necessarily go to-
gether; and when the latter is denied, it is
inevitable that the former should soon be denied
also. This, which is merely a tendency in Leib-
nitz, a tendency produced by the necessary logic
of his principles working against his better mind,
is fully developed in Wolff, with whom the activ-
ity of thought loses all content and reality, all
principle of progress, and becomes an empty revolu-
tion upon itself. Extremes meet, and the ultimate
result of Wolff has only a nominal difference from
the ultimate result of Hume. If the scepticism
120
CHAP.
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
of the latter dissolved reality into an unconnected
flux of sensations, the dogmatism of the former re-
duced it to an endless tautology of thought, abiding
with itself, and never going out of itself. Whether
we ask the question, 'what is the subject in itself?'◄
or the question, 'what is the object in itself?' we
must in both cases get an unmeaning answer. The
subject in itself is the formal self-identity of thought
without difference, the object in itself is the mere
difference of sensation without unity or relativity.
But pure identity or pure difference, pure subjec-
tivity or pure objectivity, come very much to the
same thing. A merely logical philosophy may die
of inanition, and a merely sensational philosophy of
paralysis; but the nature of the disease that killed
it matters little to the corpse. But while Hume
found the ultimate reality in the single sensation,
the 'minimum sensibile,' of which nothing can be
known or said, and while Wolff's idea of truth was a
mere formal identity, which is absolutely meaning-
less, except in relation to some given difference, it
was the merit of Kant to see that these two factors
of knowledge have meaning only in their unity, and
that conceptions without perceptions are empty,
and perceptions without conceptions are blind.' By
this essential insight he was led to a new integration
of thought, by which Locke and Leibnitz were
reduced into elements of a higher unity. The result
was a last form of Individualism, which was, at
least potentially, something more than an Individualf
ism. So much has this fertile idea changed the
aspect of the intellectual world, that there is not a
single problem of philosophy that does not meet us
with a new face; and it is perhaps not unfair to say,
VI.
121
INTRODUCTION.
that the speculations of all those, who have not
learned the lesson of Kant, are beside the point.
In the following pages we have to show by what
course of intellectual development Kant was brought
to that view of the relations of thought and reality
which gave a new beginning to philosophy, and how
far, and with what success, he developed it.
123
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
PART FIRST.
THE PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
education.
KANT was the son of an humble tradesman in Kant's
the city of Königsberg. His father was of
Scottish descent; and perhaps it may be more than
an inspiration of national vanity that makes us see
some traces of the Scotsman in the combination of
moral intensity with sobriety of understanding which
formed the basis of his character. The influence of
his home, and of his early training in a school pre-
sided over by a clergyman who was a leader among
the Pietists (tetrica illa quidem, sed utilis tamen nec
pænitenda fanaticorum disciplina),' did much to deve-
lope the first of these characteristics. "The religious
ideas of those times," Kant wrote at a later period,
"and the prevalent notions of virtue and piety could
hardly be said to be either clear or satisfactory, yet
the root of the matter was in them. Say what you
will of Pietism, no one can deny the real worth of
the characters which it formed; they possessed the
highest that man can possess a peace, a cheer-
fulness, an inner harmony with self, which was
1
¹ Ruhnken's Letter in Schubert's Life of Kant, p. 21.
.
124
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
disturbed by no passion.
I yet remember what
happened on one occasion, when difficulties arose
between the trades of the leather-cutters and the
saddlers with reference to their respective rights.
My father's interests were seriously affected by the
contest; yet even in domestic conversation, the
difference was discussed by my parents with such
toleration and indulgence towards the opposite party,
and such fixed trust in Providence, that, boy as I
then was, the memory of it will never leave me."1
Kant was intended by his parents for the Church,
and was sent to the university with that object; but
the wider interests of science and philosophy which
there opened upon him soon made him prefer the
career of a teacher. He was instructed, as a matter
of course, in the Wolffian philosophy, which then
reigned supreme in all the universities of Germany.
But at this time he seems to have given most of his
thoughts to mathematical and physical science. His
earliest work, published at the end of his university
curriculum, in his twenty-third year, is a half phy-
sical, half metaphysical essay on the idea of force.
After nine years, which he spent as a tutor in various
noble families, he returned to the university as a
privat-docent; and among the various papers which
he published during the next six years, there is only
one that is not on a physical subject. The most
important of his works in this period is a Natural
History and Theory of the Heavens, in which he
extends Newton's mechanical theory of the actual
planetary system, to explain also the genesis of that
system, and anticipates many of the ideas which
were afterwards developed by Laplace. After 1762,
1 Schubert's Life, p. 16,
I.
125
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
his thoughts took a more definite direction towards
philosophy, which occupied him in the main, though
not exclusively, for the rest of his life.
tinuity of
lectual
ment.
When Kant says that Hume first awoke him out The con-
of his 'dogmatic slumber,' he must not be under- his intel-
stood too literally. So far as his published writings develop-
enable us to trace his mental development, he never
was a contented disciple of the Wolffian dogmatism,
nor did he ever break away from it by any sudden
revolution of opinion. Even in his student days, he
had detected the weak and unsatisfactory character
of the prevailing philosophy.
"Our metaphysic,"
"" 1
he says in his first work, "is like many other
sciences, only on the threshold of profound know-
ledge; God knows when it will step over the
threshold. It is not difficult to see its weakness in
many of the things which it undertakes; we find
only too often that prejudice is the main strength of
its arguments. But it was not in Kant's nature
at once to break with the system whose weakness
he had detected, or as a Lessing or a Herder
might have done, to rid himself of it at a stroke
by a pointed epigram. His work was a work of
patient mining, of experiment after experiment,
criticism upon criticism; nor did he ever leave
any question till it was thoroughly exhausted.
And it was just because his method was thus
exhaustive that the revolution of thought produced
by it was so great and irreversible. What Kant
has done no one need do over again. "Kant, the
destroyer of the old metaphysic," says Rosenkranz,
"at the end of the century seemed to his contem-
poraries a giant of intellectual force, and already in
1 Werke, V., p. 35.
1
126
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
1786, was described by Mendelssohn, as the great
Iconoclast (den alles Zermalmenden). But this great
revolutionary spirit appears to have formed itself in
the most peaceful continuity, and with the softest
gradation of progress." The negative in Kant is
always accompanied by the positive. At each step
some new insight into the defects of previous philo-
sophy calls forth an effort to remedy it. One after
another, the leading ideas of the Criticism of Pure
Reason are put in the place of their equivalents,
until finally, in the year 1770, when Kant was
elected professor of philosophy, he unfolded in his
inaugural discourse the leading thought, out of
which, by ten years' additional labour, his great work
was developed. The steps of this progress must now
be traced.
Wolff's philosophy had vindicated the rights of
reason to penetrate into every subject, to analyse
and dissect all man's beliefs, whether sacred or
profane. This claim was the more readily admitted,
because the demand for freedom of thought was
accompanied by the utmost doctrinal orthodoxy.
To Wolff and his immediate followers the method
he adopted seemed the most effectual means of
establishing the truths, not only of natural religion,
but also of Christianity. In fact, as it was merely a
formal method, a method of analysis, it was in-
different to any special content, and might be
applied to prove or disprove anything. It was a
mill that ground any one's corn. All depended
upon the presuppositions with which each particular
writer started. Yet in the long run its action was
decidedly negative or sceptical. For the analytic
1 Werke, XII., p. 121.
Ì.
127
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
spirit, that seeks the reality of things in their dis-
severed elements apart from the bond that connects
them together, is sure ultimately to banish all con-
sciousness of the life and unity of the whole.
Standing in a merely external relation to the matter
of belief, binding its parts together or separating
them at pleasure, thought gradually loses hold of
any objective reality that stands above it and limits
it. It learns to sport with truth, and may even
seek to assert itself against truth. It is thus that the
consciousness of spiritual freedom, when it is merely
formal, i.e., when it has not in itself any definite
contents, becomes lawless and revolutionary. He
who believes only in that which finds evidence in
the activity of his own intelligence, and who finds in
that activity the evidence of nothing in particular,
is devoted at once by his trust in himself, and by his
inward barrenness, to the work of destruction. The
spirit of the Encyclopedists, as it passed into Ger-
many, found the place swept and garnished by
the Wolffian philosophy. Its opponents indeed
appealed to feeling, in order to raise a temporary
bulwark against thought; and a Protestantism,
whose deep subjective apprehension of Christianity
was revived by the influence of Pietism, was able
for the time to respond to the appeal. But a per-
manent resistance can be made to thought only by
thought itself. The French exaltation of Reason as
a negative and dissolving force, before which all
positive elements of belief, all established systems
of morality and religion, all traditions and institu-
tions of the past must melt away, could only be met
by a deeper insight into that positive and consti-
tutive power of reason, in virtue of which it is
128
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
}
Kant's
gradual
progress
from the
to the
Critical
philo-
sophy.
itself the author of an ordered world of thought
and action.
In tracing the history of Kant's progress towards
the Criticism of Pure Reason, we must always
Wolffian keep in view the merits and defects of the philo-
sophy from which he started. Now, in the first
place, the Wolffian philosophy had asserted the
rights of reason, the reality of knowledge, and,
consequently, by implication, the ultimate unity of
knowing and being; but, on the other hand, by
reducing thought to a purely formal activity, by
denying to it any criterion of truth except the
logical laws of identity and contradiction, it prac-
tically made reason dependent for all its contents on
something else than itself. In the second place, it
had asserted the absolute independence of individual
substances in such a sense as to exclude all real
relations between them: and, as a necessary conse-
quence, in such a sense as entirely to separate
thought and perception, viewed as modifications of
the individual mind, from the objects to which they
refer. It thus produced a cosmology, which ap-
proximated closely to atomism, and a psychology,
which could only by sophistry be distinguished from
subjective idealism, or, as Wolff calls it, egoism.
Lastly, its treatment of the relations of the finite
and the infinite had issued in inevitable self-con-
tradiction. It conceived God as an exclusive and
individual substance, the first of monads, and also
as a universal being, who transcends all the limits
of individuality: yet, at the same time, it estab-
lished such an opposition between the individual
and the universal, as to make it impossible to assert
the reality of God without denying the substantial
I.,
129
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
reality of all that is finite, or to assert the reality of
the finite without denying God.
Now, on all these points we shall find Kant, in
his pre-critical period, gradually advancing to a more
consistent view. (1.) In opposition to the Formal-
ism of Wolff, he asserted, at as early a period as
the year 1763, that, while pure thought in itself is
analytic, or ruled by the law of identity, knowledge
necessarily involves synthesis. And this synthesis,
which he at first conceived to be either empirical,
or, as in the case of mathematics, arbitrary, he
ultimately discovered to involve a necessary a pri-
ori movement both of perception and conception.
(2.) In opposition to the Individualism of Wolff,
and the pre-established Harmony, Kant asserted
that there are real relations between individual
substances. These relations were not, in the first
instance, conceived by him to be involved in the
nature of the individual substances themselves, but
only to be determined in them by the power of
God, who made them parts of one universe. In
the year 1768, however, Kant had come to perceive
that things in space are bound together by relations
which are due to the nature of space itself, relations
which are prior to, and presupposed in, their indivi-
dual existence. From this point of view, therefore,
the relativity of things in the world of experience is
not an accident, but something that belonged to them
by the same necessity as their individuality. Lastly,
Kant modified the Leibnitzian Individualism by
the idea of an original Unity, which precedes and
determines all things, both in reality and in know-
ledge. This idea was, indeed, obscured in his
mind during a period in which he devoted him-
I
130
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Anticipa-
tions of
the dis-
tinction of
analytic
and syn-
thetic
judgment
in his
earlier
writings.
self to the empirical philosophy of England, but it
reappears in his latest practical work in a slightly
altered form. It is, however, only in the Critique
that the unity of knowledge altogether frees itself
from its first pantheistic form, and becomes the
unity of Apperception,' or self-consciousness. Such
are the most important points in the early develop-
ment of Kant's speculation. The remainder of this
chapter shall be devoted to a more detailed consi-
deration of them.
1
In the new exposition of the principles of meta-
physics with which Kant, in 1755, commenced his
career as a teacher of philosophy, he shows himself
still, on the whole, a disciple of Wolff. Yet it is
noticeable that he controverts the Wolffian reduction
of the principle of sufficient reason to the principle
of identity. He allows that such a reduction may
be possible in regard to the ratio cognoscendi, or
ratio consequenter determinans, but not in regard to
the ratio fiendi, or ratio antecedenter determinans.
In other words, we can reason from effect to cause,
from the particular case to the general rule implied
in it, by pure analysis; but we cannot so reason
from the general to the particular, from the cause to
the effect, for in this case we are adding to the
subject predicates, which are not involved in our
previous conception of it. Or at least we can reason
thus only in the case of God, for God is the only
Being 'whose existence is prior to, or, if you
prefer it, identical with His possibility.' In every
1 Werke, I., p. 18.
2
2 Cf. Werke, I., p. 19. Qui hæc qualiacunque nostra examinaverit,
videbit me rationem veritatis a ratione actualitatis sollicite distinguere.
In priori solum de ea praedicati positione agitur, quæ efficitur per
I.
131
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
other case we can reason upwards by identity, but
not downwards. Thus, to take Kant's example, the
eclipses of Jupiter may be the means of our discovery
of the rate of the propagation of light; but no one
would say that these eclipses are the real reason of
the rate being such as it is. On the contrary, the
phenomena of these eclipses could only be what they
are on the presupposition of the actual constitution
of light. But if we adopted the Cartesian theory,
that the reason of the propagation of light lies in the
definite elasticity of the globes of ether, and if we
were able on this basis to calculate the rate of its
propagation, we should be tracing it to its real reason,
or its ratio antecedenter determinans. In the one
case we should be saying simply that a predicate is
true of a given subject, because it is contained in the
idea of that subject. In the other case we should
be uniting to the notion of the subject a predicate
not contained in it, and therefore we should have to
ask, what element must be added to the notion of
the subject, in order to connect the new predicate
with it, and exclude the opposite predicate.
notionum, quæ subjecto, vel absolute, vel in nexu spectato, involvuntur,
cum prædicato identitatem, et praedicatum, quod jam adhæret sub-
jecto, tantum detegitur. In posteriori circa ea quæ inesse ponuntur
examinatur, non utrum, sed unde, existentia ipsorum determinata sit; si
nihil adest quod excludat oppositum, praeter absolutam rei illius positi-
onem, per se et absolute necessario existere statuenda est ; si vero contin-
genter existere sumitur, adsint necesse est alia, quae ita non aliter de-
terminando, existentiæ oppositum jam antecedenter excludunt. Note the
distinction between the ratio identica of God's existence and the
ratio genetica of the existence of finite beings. This passage does not
seem to have been considered sufficiently by those who deny that the
germ of the distinction of analytic and synthetic judgment is found in
this early treatise. Note also in Proposition XIII. the distinction
between that which individual substances are in themselves as individuals,
and their combination through their dependence on a common principle.
132
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Confusion
of the
movement
of Science
with
formal
analysis.
The principal criticism to be made on this view
regressive is, that it confuses the regressive process whereby
science discovers the universal from the particular
with mere formal analysis. But does the scientific
man discover a general law by mere analysis of the
facts which he uses it to explain? Is the law of the
propagation of light to be reached by mere analysis
of what is logically involved in the eclipse of the
satellites of Jupiter? Is, in short, a general law
nothing but a common quality which we discover in
a number of individuals? To say so is to reduce
science to a mere useless process of ascending logical
'trees of Porphyry' in order to come down again.
After the law of the propagation of light has been
discovered, it will form part of our conception of an
eclipse, and can be found by analysis of that concep-
tion, but not till then. Such analysis presupposes
synthesis; and though the conception, that makes
synthesis possible, may be suggested by what we
already know of the objects, it cannot be found
by simple logical analysis of the notion of these
objects. Only if our first knowledge of an object
in perception contained already all the elements of
complete science, could we be justified in regarding
the process, whereby we advance from fact to law,
as purely analytic. The fall of an apple, or the
revolutions of a planet, may presuppose gravita-
tion, but no mere dissection of the ideas of the
former could give us the idea of the latter. Only
in the synthetic mind of a Newton, that saw the
whole in every part, could the unity spring out
of the diversities of motion in celestial and terres-
trial bodies. But when the universal law had been
thus discovered, it immediately transformed those
I.
133
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
first imperfect conceptions of the particulars, on
which the discovery itself was based. Thus the
analytic process of science is also synthetic: it
not only connects facts together by finding a com-
mon principle in all their apparent difference and
contradiction, but, by throwing the light of this
principle upon them, it alters the aspect of the facts.
Kant, however, governed as he was by the Leib-
nitzian theory—that the confused ideas of sensation
contain in themselves a complete representation of
their objects, and that all that science can do is to
make these ideas clear and distinct-was unable to
see the difference between the so-called analysis of
science and the formal analysis of logic. But when
the regressive process is thus misconceived, the pro-
gressive process cannot be properly understood: when
thought is supposed to rise to the universal by a
mere abstraction, that separates it from the par-
ticulars, with which it is externally united, it
must, by a parity of reasoning, be supposed to
proceed from the universal to the particulars only
by externally adding on the marks, which have
been dropped on the way upwards. Kant, there-
fore, in this early treatise, is still in his ideas of
method substantially at one with Wolff. Yet he
is already seeking for something better. And
when he adopted the distinction of Crusius be-
tween the real reason or cause of things, and
the ideal reason or cause of our knowledge,
and suggested that the former involves synthesis,
though the latter does not, he was already indi-
cating the direction of his subsequent investigations
into the nature and relations of analysis and syn-
thesis.
134
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
He dis-
covers that
In a series of treatises, which mark the years.
all logical 1762-3, and of which it is not easy to determine the
processes
are ana-
lytic.
And that
the only
precise order, Kant follows out with great keenness
the distinction between the connexion of thoughts,
as it is determined by formal logic and the connexion
of things. In the essay On the false subtilty of the
syllogistic figures, he takes the first step by pointing
out the limits of the movement of pure thought. All
the syllogistic processes are, he argues, reducible to
analysis, though this is somewhat concealed by the
artificial complexity of the logical theory of figures.
The first figure is the only one which fully expresses
all that it implies, and so exhibits the movement
of thought in its simplicity; for the evidence of
the other figures rests on the possibility of reduc-
ing them to the first, by the conversion of one or
both of their premises. The sole principles of syllo-
gism are these two :-Nota notæ est nota rei ipsius,
and Repugnans notæ repugnat rei ipsi:-and these
are themselves only corollaries of the laws of iden-
tity and contradiction, which are the principles of
affirmative and negative judgment. Hence there is
no ground for saying that reason, the faculty of syl-
logising, is different and distinct from understanding
the faculty of judging. Syllogism is just the activity
of thought whereby a judgment is made complete,
as judgment is the activity of thought whereby a
conception is made distinct. The whole process is
discerned to be a process of pure analysis, whenever
we free it from the useless subtilties that hide its
real character.
When Kant had reached this view of Logic, and
possible of the relations of thought which it analyses and
a priori
synthesis explains, it could scarcely escape his notice that
I.
135
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD..
synthesis
If of mathe-
matics,
arbitrary.
there was something essentially unsound in the is the
elaborate demonstrations of the Wolffians.
thought proceeds by mere identity, and cannot by which is
all its activity get more out of conceptions than is
already given in them, then the method of beginning
with a few simple definitions and axioms, and pre-
tending to deduce everything from them, must be an
inversion of the proper method of philosophy. How
can the pyramid of knowledge be balanced on its
summit? How, by mere analysis, is so much to
be got out of so little? This problem was specially
brought under Kant's attention in the subject set
for a prize essay by the Berlin Academy in the
year 1762: "Are the truths of Metaphysics suscep-
tible of the same evidence as the truths of Mathe-
matics, and what is the nature of their certitude?"
In discussing this question, Kant comes to the
conclusion, that the example of mathematics has
been the great snare of previous philosophy. The
brilliant success of mathematical methods within
their own sphere, had naturally led Des Cartes and
Spinoza, Leibnitz and Wolff, to suppose that the
same apparatus of definitions and postulates, and
axioms and demonstrations, might be applied with
equally great results in another department. But,
as Bishop Warburton remarks, "nothing could be
more fatal to philosophy, than the imitation of the
method of mathematics." For the business of
Mathematics is, not to analyse given conceptions,
but by arbitrary synthesis to produce new concep-
tions that are not given. The few conceptions,
which it presupposes, the conceptions of quantity
and space, it does not need to analyse: it simply
takes them as they are given in the common con-
136
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
sciousness.
On the other hand, its own special
objects are produced by the very act of mind that
defines them; that is, we produce them by putting
together given elements in an arbitrarily determined
way. Hence we can be quite sure, that there is
nothing in these objects, except what is involved in
their definition. The definition of a circle is just a
prescription of the process whereby the figure, to
which we attach the name of circle, may be drawn:
the circle is not given as an object before the defini-
tion, but comes into existence with it. Further, when
we observe the nature of mathematical deduction,
we find that, though the truths established by it are
universal, they are always exhibited in an individual
concrete instance, which is brought before the eyes,
or, at least, before the imagination. Thus, to prove
that space is infinitely divisible, the mathematician
draws two parallel lines, and one cutting them at
right angles; then from a point in one of the parallel
lines, he draws lines, passing through the perpen-
dicular, to various points in the other parallel line;
and from the infinity of the number of possible
sections of the perpendicular in this one instance, he
discovers the infinite divisibility of space. But in
philosophy, we must proceed in a quite different
way. There we have not to produce an object by
arbitrary synthesis, but to discover what it really
is, not to add new elements to that which is given,
but in simply to find what elements are contained
in it. Clear definition, therefore, is rather the
highest end at which the philosopher has to aim,
than the first point from which he starts. And it is
far from easy for him to see things exactly as they
are given, and to be sure that, in defining them, he
I.
137
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
has omitted nothing. Most philosophers have
sinned both by arbitrary combination of things,
which are given separately, and by arbitrary
separation of things, which may, for aught we
know, be necessarily combined. The fanciful syn-
thesis that produced the Leibnitzian conception
of the slumbering monad, is equally groundless
with the rash dogmatism of others about the
possibility of a soul without a body. Again, as
another point of difference between the philosopher
and the mathematician, we must remember that the
sign which the former has to express his general
conception, is not an individual instance, in which
its nature is fully represented, but simply a word,
an arbitrary mark which, in itself, exhibits to us
nothing of the meaning of the conception it expresses.
He is forced to deal with his conceptions in abstracto,
without being able to 'envisage' them in concreto,
and so to verify or correct them by the congruity or
incongruity of their signs. From all this it follows,
that (philosophy cannot imitate the methods of
mathematics. It must proceed by way of analysis, The
not by synthesis: and, indeed, it must often be philosophy
content with an analysis, which is far from com- fore, ana-
plete. What it should copy is not the method of
mathematics, but "the method which Newton intro-
duced with so great profit into natural science.
According to that method, it is the duty of the
physicist to seek, by means of sure experiences,
(aided, of course, by geometry,) the rules, according
to which certain natural phenomena take place.
For, even though we may not be able to see the
first grounds of these phenomena in the nature of
bodies, yet it is certain that they operate in the way
4
method of
is, there-
lytic.
A
138
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
determined; and it is an explanation of the com-
plexity of natural events, when we clearly show that
they fall under well-attested rules. In like manner,
in Metaphysic, we ought to seek by sure inward
experiences, i.e., in the immediate evidence of con-
sciousness, those marks which are contained in our
conception of any general property of things: and
then, though we may not know all that is essential
to the constitution of the things in question, yet we
may safely avail ourselves of our knowledge so far as
it goes, as a sufficient basis for many inferences about
them." 1
So far, then, is it from being the case,
that we can proceed from a few simple notions to
demonstrate everything, that we must rather allow
that philosophy has many starting points, or in
other words, that there is an indefinite number of
material truths, which cannot be proved, and which
we must simply take as they are given. And if
there is room to hope, that some day we may
reverse our steps, and proceed as in mathematics
from the simple to the complex, yet we must allow
that that day is still a long way off. "We are still
very far from the time, when it will be possible to
proceed synthetically in Metaphysic; only when
analysis has helped us to perfectly clear and distinct
conceptions, will synthesis be able, as in Mathe-
matics, to subsume the complexities of knowledge
under its simplest principles."³ "Metaphysic is
undoubtedly the most difficult of sciences; but it is
a science that has not yet come into existence." 4
2
If we compare this view of science with that
which is expressed in Kant's first treatise, we see
that he has made a considerable step toward the
1 I., p. 92. 2 I., p. 103. 3 I., p. 97. 4 I., p. 88.
I.
139
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
critical point of view. Here, as there, the re-
gressive movement of science is conceived to be a
process of logical analysis, guided solely by the law
of identity and it is under this presupposition,
that Kant calls upon philosophy to imitate the
method of science. But of the progressive, or
synthetic, movement of thought, as it appears in
Mathematics, a new idea is presented to us. In
that science, it is shown, that there is a spontaneous,
or, to use a later expression of Kant's, a constructive,
movement of thought. In Mathematics, reason can
advance from the simple to the complex, adding at
every step new elements to its first conceptions,
simply because it arbitrarily constructs its objects
while it defines them. It has not yet occurred
to Kant to explain the objective validity of
mathematics by the doctrine that Time and
Space are the forms of perception. He is, there-
fore, obliged to treat mathematics, very much as
Locke had treated it, as a system of mere 'ideas,'
with which the real world happens to correspond.
In the other sciences, however, in which we deal
directly with the real world, he can admit no such
arbitrary and artificial process of synthesis. There
we must take things just as we find them, and all
that science or philosophy can do is just to analyse
what is given. There the utmost limit of know-
ledge will be reached, when, by careful analysis of
experience, we have arrived at certain primary
conceptions or indemonstrable material principles of
truth. From these, indeed, by aid of the formal
principles of identity and contradiction, we can again
descend to particulars. But the whole process in
both ways will be purely analytic.
}
140
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Whence,
then,
first syn-
thesis?
This last statement is of no small importance in
comes the relation to the judgment of the Kantian philosophy.
For when Kant had thus distinguished the formal
from the material principles of knowledge, or, in
other words, the process of analysis from the matter
to be analysed, he could scarcely avoid asking him-
self, whence this matter is derived. To analyse is
to sever elements from each other, but before they
can be severed, they must have been united.
Analysis presupposes synthesis; and Kant could
not long be content with the Wolffian doctrine, that
all synthesis is confusion, and that to reach truth
is simply to analyse our conceptions. Yet if he
denied that doctrine, what account was he to give
of the combination of elements in experience?
The precise point at which this difficulty began
to trouble Kant may be determined almost with
certainty, if we compare his essay On the false
subtilty of the Syllogistic Figures with a remarkable
treatise published not more than a year afterwards,
entitled An attempt to introduce the idea of negative
quantity into philosophy. In the former of these
works, Kant, as we have seen, reduces all logical
operations to analysis. Yet, in spite of this, he
declares that in the power of performing such oper-
ations lies the distinction between merely sentient
beings like the animals, and intelligent beings like
men. The animals, he says, have no distinct con-
ceptions, or, in other words, make no judgments,
and in this lies their inferiority. It might seem,
indeed, that the ox has a clear representation of
the door of its stall, and can, therefore, use that
representation as a means of giving distinctness to
its conception of the stall: just as a man selects
I.
141
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
a particular attribute of an object, and makes it the
predicate of a judgment concerning the object.
But this is not the case. For it is one thing to
have before the mind a clear image of that which
is an attribute or mark of a thing, and it is quite
another thing to discern it as a mark of the thing,
i. e., to separate the two ideas and refer them to
each other, as in the judgment, 'This door belongs
to this stall.' It is one thing to distinguish
objects, it is another thing to know the distinction
of objects. Positive and negative judgment, there-
fore, imply something more than the association
or dissociation of one feeling from another. And
to determine the distinction between men and
animals, therefore, we have only to discover what
power it is that makes judgment possible to us.
"My present opinion is, that that power or
capacity is nothing but the faculty of inner sense,
i. e., the mind's faculty of making its own ideas
into the object of its thoughts."1
given: for
thought
discover
sons, posi-
negative.
This deliverance of Kant is worthy of notice It must be
because of the contradiction which it involves, by mere
and the relation of that contradiction to his we cannot
subsequent views. At the very moment in which real rea-
he reduces the act of judgment to mere analysis, tive and
he still speaks of it as the distinctive act of
intelligence in contrast with sense, as the in-
tellectual act whereby mere sensations are turned
into objects of thought. But it is obvious that
both of these propositions cannot be true. If
the objective consciousness is produced by the
faculty of judging, then judgment must not
merely analyse the presentations of sense, but
1 ¹ I., p. 73.
142
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
must add something to them. If, on the other
hand, judgment is an analytic process, which
can add nothing to the matter to which it is
applied, then something more than judgment is
necessary to turn subjective feelings into the
knowledge of objects. Accordingly, in the Attempt
to introduce the idea of negative quantity into
philosophy, we find Kant maintaining that there
is a marked contrast between the logical rela-
tions of ideas, and the real relations of things,
and that we must necessarily go beyond the
former in order to attain a knowledge of the
latter. For, he argues, the logical method of
dealing with ideas according to the rules of
identity, only enables us to understand how a
consequence should follow from a reason, when
the conception of the former is contained in the
conception of the latter, and "can be got from it
by mere analysis." "In this way," he adds, "neces-
sity is a reason for unchangeableness, composition
is a reason for divisibility, and infinity a reason for
omniscience. In all these cases I can clearly under-
stand the connection of reason and consequent, for
the consequent is identical with a part of the con-
ception of the reason. But how one thing should
arise out of another, and when it is not connected
with it, according to the rule of identity, this is
the point which I should much like to have
explained to me. To understand the logical
reason of a thing is only to understand that a thing
remains itself; to understand the real
the real reason
is to understand that, because one thing exists,
something quite different comes into being. And
"1
¹ I., p. 157.
I.
143
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
there is a parallel difficulty in the case of real
as distinguished from logical opposition; for, to
understand logical opposition, is simply to
derstand (what is involved in the law of con-
tradiction), that we cannot at once assert and
deny a predicate of one and the same subject.
But it is quite a different thing to say, that
the assertion of one predicate involves the denial
of another predicate, which is not its contra-
dictory. "I understand, e.g., how, when I assert
that God is infinite, I am forced to deny that
he is mortal; for his mortality would contradict
his infinity. But how it is, that by the motion
of one body, the motion of another body should
be stopped, is quite another question. For we
cannot say, that the motion of one body is the
contradictory, or logical negative, of the motion
of the other." 1 In the case of the negative
consequence, therefore, we have the same difficulty
as in the case of the positive consequence; and, as
of the latter we can only say, that it is not ex-
plained by the logical law of identity, so of the
former we can only say, that it is not explained
by the law of contradiction. "I have carefully
considered the nature of our knowledge as it is
expressed in judgments as to reasons and conse-
quents; and I shall take a fitting opportunity
to communicate the results of my enquiries. But
the sum and substance of what I have to say
is, that the relation of a real reason to its posi-
tive or negative consequent, cannot be expressed
by a judgment, but only by a conception. And
though, by analysis, we may reduce such concep-
¹ I., p. 159.
1
144
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Was Kant
at this
1
tions to simpler conceptions of real reasons, yet,
in the end, all our knowledge of this relation
must terminate in simple, and irresolvable, con-
ceptions of real reasons or causes, whose connection
with their consequents cannot be further ex-
plained." In other words, Kant holds that reasons
and consequents are given in connection with each
other, and that we must take them as they are
given, without any explanation whatever. The
formal or analytic activity of thought, the principle
of judgment, does not enable us to trace any
connection between cause and effect, for they are
neither identical nor contradictory. We must,
therefore, fall back on an original unity of con-
ception, a nexus in the matter of thought as it
is given in experience, which it is impossible for
thought itself, governed as it is by the law of
identity, either to explain, or to explain away.
In this essay Kant seems to approximate so
time influ- closely to the ideas, and even to the language,
Hume? of Hume, that some writers have supposed that,
enced by
at this time, he had already come under the
influence of the Scottish philosopher, and been
awakened by him from his 'dogmatic slumber.'
But, in the first place, it is to be noticed, that
Kant has not yet reached Hume's conclusion,
that no necessary connection of ideas can be given
in experience. All he says is, that such connec-
tion or synthesis must be given in some way, and
ere it can be known, and that it cannot be
demonstrated by any analysis of ideas. And,
in the second place, even so far as his conclu-
sion is the same with Hume's, it is reached by a
¹ I., p. 160.
I.
145
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
different road; viz., by considering, not what can
and what cannot be got out of sensations, the
supposed matter of knowledge, but, what
can
:
and what cannot be got
be got out of the logical
form of thought. It is noticeable, as con-
firming this, that Kant's treatise is mainly
occupied, not with the question of causation, but
with the question of the difference between logical
and real negation. It had been a presupposition
of the Leibnitzian, as of the Cartesian, philosophy,
that there can be no opposition between positive
realities, but only between reality and nonentity;
or, to express the same idea from the subjective
side, that affirmation cannot be inconsistent with
affirmation, but only with negation. But Kant
attempts to show, that this arises from a confusion
of the negative of pure thought, which simply
takes away a predicate without putting anything
in its place, with the absence of a quality from a Difference
real subject, which may be a mere defect or want, logical re-
but is as likely to be produced by positive forces
that counterbalance each other, as, e. g., rest is the
effect of moving forces, which are equal and
opposite. Following out this thought in another
treatise, which was written about the same time, on
the Only possible ground of proof for the Being of
God, he argues that though all reality must come
from God, it is not accordant with reason to say
that all reality must exist in God. "Philosophers
have been wont to attribute all reality to God, or
the necessary Being, because they did not observe
that it is impossible for all kinds of reality to con-
sist together in one subject, as its attribute. Thus
the impenetrability of matter, its extension, etc.,
K
of real and
pugnancy.
146
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
By mere
analysis it
29 1
cannot be the properties of a being that has under-
standing and will." The definition of God, as the
omnitudo realitatis, was only admitted because it
was supposed that "reality can never be contradic-
tory to reality, because both are true affirmatives.
But, though I allow that there is here no logical
contradiction, yet this does not exclude real repug-
nancy." Such real repugnancy we must exclude
from the nature of God (who is, therefore, not the
sum of reality): but we must admit that it exists
between many things in the world of experience.
From this it appears that Kant had already dis-
covered the error committed by previous philosophy
in its absolute separation of affirmation and nega-
tion. In relation to pure thought, indeed, he still
maintains their separation. Thought of itself cannot
go beyond the limits which are marked for it by the
laws of identity and contradiction; it cannot combine
with each other elements that are opposite or even
different. It can never pass from the affirmation of
one thing to the affirmation of any other thing. It
might seem that it could pass from the affirmation
of one thing to the negation of ar.other; but even
this is excluded, as a confusion of real opposition
with contradiction. It follows, therefore, that
wherever there is a synthetic movement of any
kind, positive or negative, we must go beyond
thought, and look to that which is given in
experience.
In the same treatise, Kant made another step
towards his complete emancipation from the Wolffian
pass from dogmatism, when he denied that any analysis of our
is impos-
sible to
thought to
existence.
1 I., pp. 188-9.-Cf. Paulsen: Versuch einer Entwicklungs-Geschichte
der Kantischen Erkennstnisslehre, pp. 64-5.
I.
147
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
(6
thoughts can ever assure us of the reality of their
objects. Being, or Existence, he says (in language
afterwards repeated in the Critique) is no possible
predicate of anything. It is not part of the content
of any conception. "Take any subject you please,
say, Julius Cæsar. Gather into the conception of
him all his thinkable predicates, those of time and
place not excepted, and you will soon understand
that, though you have given him all these attri-
butes, you have still left it undetermined, whether
he exists or does not exist." Where, in our
ordinary manner of speech, existence appears as
a predicate, we must understand it as a predicate
not of the thing itself, but of the thought of the
thing. When, e. g., we say, that the sea-unicorn¹
exists, but not the land-unicorn, this means only,
that the conception of the former is an empirical
conception, a conception of something that actually
exists. In order, therefore, to show the truth of
such a proposition, we have not to examine what is
contained in the conception of the subject, (in which
we could find only predicates of possibility,) but we
have to inquire into the origin of that conception.
The question, in short, is whether we have got the
conception by seeing the animal, or by information
from others who had seen it. If, then, we were
studying perfect accuracy of language, it would be
better for us to say, not, 'The sea-unicorn is an existent
animal,' but 'An existent marine animal has all the
predicates I unite in the conception of a unicorn.'" 2
Hence, the Cartesian argument for the being of God
must be pronounced invalid. We can no more say,
that a perfect Being exists, because the idea of per-
Ti. e., the narwhal. 2 I., pp. 171-2.
148
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Wolffian
definition
of exis-
tence or
reality.
fection includes existence, than we can say that a per-
fect horse exists for the same reason. The utmost
that can be said is, that, if we think of a perfect
being, we must think of him as existing, but not
that he actually exists. Being is a simple idea,
which we cannot easily define. When used as the
copula, it involves the relative position or assertion
of something, i.e., the position or assertion of a pre-
dicate in relation to a subject. But, when it is
itself used as a predicate, it means the absolute
position of a thing, i.e., its assertion simply in rela-
tion to itself; or, to put it in another way, Being does
not supply a predicate for any subject, but rather
a subject to which predicates may be attached.
When, therefore, we ask for a proof of the being of
God, we are not asking for a middle term by which
we may show that the predicate of being can be
attached to God, but we are seeking a proof that
something given as existing has all the predicates
gathered into the idea of God.
The result of these considerations is, that all the
Wolffian explanations of the idea of existence, or
reality, must be rejected as inadequate, or even
positively erroneous. The definition given of it by
Wolff himself, as the "complement of possibility,"
is inadequate, as it does not tell us what has to be
added to possibility in order to constitute reality.
Baumgarten, one of his most eminent followers,
explained, that the possibility of a thing was its
logical essence or definition, with the properties
deducible therefrom; while the complement"
necessary for reality, consisted of all the accidental
predicates, which might belong to the thing, but
which are not included in the essence. But this is
I.
149
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
absurd; for we may determine all the predicates of
an object, both necessary and accidental, without
passing beyond possibility. Nay, we may even say,
that in order to be possible, an object must be com-
pletely and individually determined: for a possible
man must be of a certain age, stature, figure, &c.,
and a man in the abstract is not possible. Equally
absurd is the view of Crusius, that it is the deter-
minations of time and place that make the difference
between possibility and reality. For, not to mention
that this would involve the questionable principle,
that all that exists is limited by conditions of time
and space, it is clear that we can think of possible,
as well as of actual, time and place. The true dis-
tinction of the real from the possible is found, not
in the matter or extent of knowledge, but in the
manner of knowing. In the case of all beings ex-
cept God (whose existence is proved by Kant in a
manner of which we shall have to speak afterwards),
the distinction is simply that the actual is given in
experience and the possible is not.
Empiri
We see, then, that in the treatises of the year 1763, Kant an
Kant lays bare a twofold defect in the analytic cist.
method of the Wolffians, which nevertheless he
still maintains to be the only method for pure
thought. In the first place that method does not
explain synthesis, and especially the synthesis in-
volved in the idea of cause; and in the second
place, it does not justify the transition from the
subjective to the objective, from thought to real-
ity. The close connection of these two points,
upon which Kant afterwards insisted so much, is
not yet traced; but in both cases he refers us gen-
erally to experience. It is experience that enables
150
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Meta-
physic
to Sweden-
system of
ghosts.
us to connect things with their real causes, as it
is experience that enables us to connect thought
with reality. Mere thought, as it never passes
beyond what is contained in the conceptions with
which it starts, so it never enables us to assert their
agreement with objects. Only in the case of mathe-
matics is a synthetic procedure allowed to thought,
and this synthesis is at the same time declared to be
arbitrary. In other words, thought in mathematics
has to do only with its own constructions, which
have no reality except in the mind that produces
them. How such constructions of the imagination,
-for they can be nothing more should yet be the
source of real knowledge, is a problem which Kant
does not yet consider.
It is, however, in an essay of the year 1766, on
compared the Dreams of a Ghost Seer illustrated by the Dreams
borg's of Metaphysic, that Kant first explicitly and openly
declares war upon the old philosophy, and joins
himself to the Empiricists. In examining the
Arcana Calestia he was struck with the symmetry
and self-consistency of the fanciful system of the
spiritual world constructed by the imagination of
Swedenborg, and with its similarity to the artificial
harmonies of the Wolffio-Leibnitzian philosophy.
Both seemed to him equally plausible and satisfac-
tory, if we are to take self-consistency as a sufficient
evidence of truth; both equally unreal and baseless,
if we demand any other evidence. Both are to be
traced to the workings of an intellectus sibi permissus,
a reason that follows every hint of suggestion with-
out rigid self-criticism or demand for verification.
"Many conceptions," he says, "arise in our minds
from some obscure suggestion of experience, and are
I.
151
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
"" 1
developed to inference after inference by a secret
logic, without any clear consciousness either of the
experience that suggests or the reason that develops
them. These conceptions of which there are no
small number-may be called subreptive. Some of
them are mere illusions of the imagination, others
again have a true objective meaning, for inferences
of which we are not distinctly conscious are not
therefore erroneous. But they all require to be
analysed, and traced back to their origin, ere we can
be sure of them. Until those beliefs that have grown
up
in the dark recesses of the soul have been thus
brought out into the light of conscious reason, we
can have no confidence in its validity. And very
often there is a certain reluctance to such a critical
operation, especially in the case of conceptions that
have grown with our growth, and become, as it
were, an essential part of our habits of thought.
Hence it is that the profound philosopher so often
"becomes a sophist to defend the illusions of his
youth."
If a spirit or ghost be defined, according to the
common notions on the subject, as a being that can
be present in a portion of space without manifest-
ing that quality of resistance or solidity which distin-
guishes material objects, no one can say that such a
being is impossible. We have no knowledge of the
conditions on which the possibility of substances with
the quality of solidity depends, though experience
shows us that they exist: therefore we can have no
a priori reason to deny the possibility of substances
without that quality. Arguments for the existence
of such substances have been drawn from the nature
1 VII., p. 36.
152
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Both sys-
of thought as implying a simplicity and self-determi-
nation in the spiritual substance altogether inconsis-
tent with the nature of matter; for the qualities of
extension and solidity seem to imply complexity and
determination from without. On this basis an elabo-
rate system like that of Swedenborg or Leibnitz may
easily be constructed. According to such a system we
may suppose, if we like, that there are two worlds:
a world of matter ruled by physical laws of attrac-
tion and repulsion, by which all things are connected
together, and a world of spirits, which also we may
suppose to be held in perfect communion with each
other through the agency of moral laws. How these
two sets of laws can meet in the individual life of
a substance, which is both material and spiritual,
may be a mystery. But we may suppose that the
ordinary consciousness of man, though indistinctly
influenced by the laws of that higher world to which
as a spirit he belongs, directly brings him into relation
only with the world of matter. It is consistent also
with such a system to allow that individuals of ab.
normal powers, or ordinary individuals in abnormal
states of mind, may rise to a consciousness of their
spiritual relations. We may expect, however, that
in passing into, and combining with, the ordinary
consciousness, such relations will be distorted by the
imagination. By these principles we may explain
the phenomena of spiritual appearances, giving due
importance to the numerous witnesses for such phe-
nomena, and keeping at the same time the due
amount of scepticism warranted by the varying
and doubtful accounts of these witnesses.
But when we look a little closer at this symmetrical
usually scheme, new doubts and difficulties spring up. "When
tems are
I.
153
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
by their
tency, but
test is the
of experi-
we are awake," it has been said, "we live in a world tested only
that is common to all; when we dream, we live each self-consis-
in a world of his own." This world of our own may the true
be constructed for the intellect or for the senses; in connexion
both cases it is removed from the ordinary tests of ence.
experience; it is not part of that order and connexion
of things which is present to our waking conscious-
ness. Its only test is self-consistency, and this test
may be equally satisfied by many different systems
of speculation and superstition-by a world of Swe-
denborgian ghosts alike with a world of Leibnitzian
monads. When, however, we ask what experience
can be appealed to in support of either, and when
we find that there is little or nothing of the sort,
except some visual appearances which are presented
in peculiar states of the body to many men, and
which, to certain peculiarly constituted men, are
frequent, or even constant, is it not necessary to
ask, in the first place, whether these are the sole
hypotheses on which such appearances can be ex-
plained? Is it not possible that they may be due to
some disorder in the bodily functions, and especially
in the organ of vision, rather than to the influence of
real spiritual beings upon us? In that case, the
true method of dealing with ghost-seeing would be
medicinal. It is not, however, necessary positively
to assert this; enough is gained when we can balance
a purely physical theory against a spiritual or
spiritualistic one, and thus free our minds from the
bias which our hopes or wishes give to the latter.
We cannot absolutely deny, but as little can we
assert, the reality of ghosts, for we cannot know
anything about them. In like manner we cannot
absolutely deny the doctrine of monads with their
154
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
purely individual and spiritual existence out of space
and time and their inner harmony, but we have no
evidence for it. The latter is, indeed, if anything
less worthy of attention than the former, for "we may
learn something from illusory experience, but scarcely
anything from illusory reasoning." But from the
nature of the case we are able to assert that it is not
possible for our conception of such imaginary beings
to rise from the region of opinion into the region of
knowledge. "This may seem rather a bold statement
to make, when we find it impossible either by observa-
tion or reasoning to exhaust, or at least to know that
we have exhausted, the nature of any object of sense,
be it even a grain of sand, or a drop of water; so
immeasurable to a limited understanding like man's
is the complexity which nature presents even in its
smallest parts. But it is quite different with the
doctrine of philosophy in regard to spiritual beings.
That doctrine can be completed, though only in a
negative way. In other words, we can fix with
certainty the limit of our knowledge, and convince
ourselves that the various natural phenomena of life,
and the laws of the phenomena, are all that we are
allowed to ascertain; but that the principle of this
life, the spiritual principle, which we suspect beneath
the natural, cannot be made the object of positive
thought, seeing we find no data for such thought in
all our sensations. We are driven, therefore, to call
in the help of negatives to aid us in thinking of that,
which is so widely different from all that is sensible;
although the possibility of such negative thought
rests neither on experience nor on reasoning, but
solely on a fiction of the imagination. But to such
fictions reason is obliged to have recourse, in default
I.
155
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
of any other means to determine its object. On this
footing Pneumatology can be nothing more than a
doctrine of our necessary ignorance of a certain pro-
blematical class of beings, and, if it confine itself to
this, there is nothing to hinder it from solving the
problem which is set before it."1
physic
become
of the
thought.
Towards the end of the essay, Kant enforces this Meta-
last idea that the main end of philosophy is to define should
the limits of human thought, in a passage which is the science
worth quoting, because of the relation it bears to his limits of
subsequent speculations. 'Metaphysic," he says,
"of which it is my fate to be a lover, although I can
boast of few of her favours, has two kinds of advan-
tages to bestow upon us. The first of these is to solve
the problems which reason suggests when it looks
into the hidden nature of things. But here too often,
as in the present instance, the result of enquiry dis-
appoints the hopes that inspired it,
Ter frustra comprensa manus, effugit imago
Par levibus ventis volucrique simillima somno.
The other advantage of Metaphysic is more certain,
as it corresponds better with the nature of the human
mind. It is to enable us to perceive whether the
problem is capable of being solved from the data
that are within our reach: or, in other words, to
determine what relation that problem has to the
empirical conceptions on which all our judgments
must be based. In this point of view, metaphysic
is the science of the limits of human reason; and
since in a small territory we frequently come upon
boundaries, and it is always of more importance to
know well our actual possessions, and to assert our
1 VII., pp. 77-78.
156
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Knowledge
rests on
facts.
ownership of them, than blindly to seek after new
conquests, we may declare this to be at once the
least known, and the most important, use of the
science, as it is certainly a use, which only long
effort and experience has discovered. In this essay
I have not pretended to determine these limits.
accurately, but only to indicate them, so far as is
necessary to bring the reflecting reader to the con-
clusion that he may safely spare himself the useless
trouble of investigation, in a case where the data
would have to be sought in another world from that
which is present to his senses." 1
The importance of this negative use of meta-
ultimate physic, Kant proceeds to say, lies in the fact that
it is only the known impossibility of gaining any-
thing by attempting to go beyond the limit, which
will induce men to confine themselves within it.
"So long as it is thought possible to reach that
distant goal of knowledge, so long it is vain for a
wise simplicity to protest that we can do very well
without it. The pleasure of widening knowledge
readily takes the appearance of duty, and the deli-
berate self-restraint of reason seems a simplicity, not
of wisdom, but of stupidity, that sets itself against
the elevation of our nature. The questions of the
nature of spirit, of freedom and predestination, of the
future state, &c., at once set in motion all the
powers
of the understanding, and draw men by their impor-
tance into a rivalry of speculation, that invents and
determines, dogmatises and controverts, with every
new semblance of insight. But if such enquiries
end in a philosophy that examines its own procedure,
and takes cognisance, not only of objects, but also of
1 ¹ VII., pp. 98-9.
I.
157
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
their relation to the mind of man, the limits are
drawn closer, and the boundary-stones are laid which
will henceforth prevent speculation passing beyond
its proper sphere. It needs some philosophy to
discover the difficulties that surround many concep-
tions, which are treated by the ordinary conscious-
ness as easy and simple. A little more philosophy
drives away the illusion of knowledge to a still
greater distance, and persuades us that such objects
lie entirely beyond the horizon of man's intelligence.
In regard to the relations of cause and effect, sub-
stance and action, philosophy is useful at the begin-
ning to disentangle the complex phenomena, and
reduce them to simpler ideas. But when, finally,
we arrive at the fundamental relations of phe-
nomena, the business of philosophy is ended. As
it is impossible by reason to discover how any-
thing can be a cause, or have a force in it, these
relations must be taken purely from experience.
For our rule of reason proceeds only by compari-
son, according to the laws of identity and contra-
diction. In so far, indeed, as anything is a cause,
it posits something different from itself as an effect,
and, therefore, something its connection with which
cannot be explained by logical agreement. But,
on the other hand, there is no logical contradiction
involved in our refusing to regard anything as a
cause; for it is not self-contradictory, when one thing
is posited, to remove or deny anything else. Hence
the fundamental notions of things as causes, as also
those of forces and actions, are quite arbitrary when
not taken from experience, and can neither be proved
nor disproved. I know quite well that thought and
will move my body, but I can never by analysis
158
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Kant at
the point
Locke.
reduce this phenomenon, as a simple experience, to
any other experience, and, therefore, though I can
know its reality, I cannot understand it. That
my will should move my arm is not to me more
intelligible than that it should hold back the sun in
its course; the difference is only that I experience
the former, but that the latter has never come under
the observation of my senses. And so of spirits
and their relations we can say nothing, not because
they are unintelligible, for gravitation is quite as
unintelligible, but because such relations cannot be
verified by experience.
The essay which we have thus epitomised exhibits
of view of Kant as a thoroughgoing adherent of the empirical
philosophy. It shows that he had already derived
from empiricism his deep conviction of the limited
character of human knowledge, and that, like Locke,
he was ready to confine philosophy to the work of
determining what these limits are. Yet it also
shows that he had not yet passed through that great
crisis of thought, which he called afterwards his
' awakening from dogmatic slumbers.' This 'awak-
ening' he always ascribed to the influence of Hume's
observation, that the nexus of cause and effect is not
given in sensitive experience, and that, indeed, no
necessary principle of synthesis can be so given. But
from the passage just quoted we see that the problem
had not yet taken this shape for Kant. On the con-
trary, he distinctly states that the ultimate synthesis,
the fundamental relations that underlie all know-
ledge, are given in experience, and that all the mind
can do is by analysis to break up the complexity of
empirical facts, and so detect these relations in their
simplest forms. The point, therefore, that Kant has
I.
159
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
reached may be thus defined:-He has discovered
the necessity of synthesis for knowledge. He has
discovered that this synthesis is not possible through
the mere logical manipulation of ideas, which can
make their content clear and distinct, but which
cannot add to it. If, however, these two proposi-
tions be true, if synthesis is necessary and thought
cannot produce it, it must be given in sensational
experience prior to thought. Kant is thus drawn
into a position very much resembling that of Locke:
he adopts the sensational principle without any con-
sciousness of the difficulties that arise when that
principle is developed to its logical results. It was
only after he had been a disciple of this philosophy
for a considerable period, that Hume made him
aware of these difficulties, and showed him that this
path of speculation also, like the Wolffianism of his
earlier days, ended in nothing. Then at last, by the
shock of this discovery, he was forced to seek a new
basis for philosophy, and to construct a theory which
should avoid at once the emptiness of the Wolffian
dogmatism, which he had found out for himself, and
the self-contradiction of the Lockian empiricism, of
which Hume had made him conscious. For this
work he was specially fitted, just because, in his own
mental history, he had passed through all the phases
of the two great speculative systems, which he
sought at once to unite and to transcend.


early op-
Wolffian
alism.
Before, however, we can estimate aright the con- Kant's
flict of thought out of which the Critical philosophy position to
was born, we must retrace our steps to notice a second Individu-
line of speculation which runs through all the earlier
writings of its author. Kant never thoroughly ac-
cepted the Individualism of Wolff. In the Diluci-
160
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Reality of
the rela-
tions of
substances.
datio Nova, his earliest philosophical work, he already
objects to the pre-established harmony, and asserts
the reality of the relations of substances. There is,
he argues, a commercium between all individual
things, which, though not logically implied in
their very existence, is yet coeval with that
existence, and has its source in the same principle.
"Est realis substantiarum in se invicem facta actio,
seu commercium per causas vero efficientes, quo-
niam idem quod existentiam rerum stabilit princi-
pium, ipsas huic legi alligatas exhibet." If it were
not so, it would be impossible to conceive of indivi-
dual things, as all, notwithstanding their individu-
ality, contained in one space, and constituting one
world for space is a relation of substances, which
is not already implied in their mere existence.
"Since, therefore," he argues, "the existence of
substances is plainly insufficient to account for their
mutual connexion and reciprocal influence, and an
external nexus of things independent implies a com-
mon cause, through which their existence is deter-
mined with relation to each other; and since, with-
out such a common principle, no general bond of
union can be conceived, we have here a most evident
proof of the existence of God, and indeed of one
God-a proof which is far more convincing than the
common argument ex contingentia mundi.”¹
The importance of this divergence from the strict
Leibnitzian theory will be appreciated by those who
have considered the consequences that flow from
the denial of the real action of individual substances
on each other. Leibnitz had argued that, because
substances are individual, there can be no real rela-
¹ I., p. 42.
I.
161
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
tion between them. Kant, on the other hand, argues
that, because all individual substances are parts of
one world, therefore they have real relations to each
other. At the same time, while he thus recoils from
the extreme of Individualism, he does not altogether
renounce the individualistic point of view. While
individual substances are conceived by him as hav-
ing real relations, yet these relations are not neces-
sary properties, but only separable accidents of them;
in other words, the relations are not deducible from
the definition of the substances themselves. Hence,
God is still introduced by Kant (as by previous
philosophers) as a Deus ex machina, or external
synthetic principle, to bind together things which
are not in themselves related. The two aspects of
substances—their individuality, and their community
or relativity are not directly connected with each
other; they are only indirectly connected, through
their common origin in God, who has created the
substances, and bound them together in one uni-
verse.
to combine
physical
Leibnitz
ton.
In the Monadologia Physica,' written about the Attempt
same time, Kant follows out the same idea into its the
physical application, seeking to unite the theories theories of
of Newton and Leibnitz, and to vindicate at once and New-
the individuality and the relativity of the substances
that constitute the material universe. The monads
are, as Leibnitz had maintained, not atoms, but points
of force, and therefore, taken separately, they are not
in
space, which is merely a form of relation between.
substances. Yet we must not, on the other hand,
think of them as having only negative relations to
each other, or as purely repulsive forces; but also,
i V., p. 255.
L
162
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Relation
of Kant to
Spinoza.
The argu-
ment for
the being
of God.
:
according to the principles of Newton, as positively
related, or as attractive forces. For substances, which
were merely repulsive forces, would at once isolate
themselves from each other, and dissolve all continu-
ity. They could never unite so as to form one world.
No universe, no connected system of things, could
ever be made up out of such individuals. The
units, therefore, in the system of things, must be
conceived as centres, at once of attraction and of
repulsion as at once excluding, and combining
themselves with, all the other units of the system.
The repulsive force is, indeed, the primary element
in their constitution-it is that by which they are
individualised; but the attractive force is also neces-
sary to them, for it is that by reason of which they
all form parts of one universe. Kant, like Leibnitz,
starts with the individuality of things, as their
primary reality; but he does not, like Leibnitz,
deny their relativity, or consider it as purely ideal.
It is to him a secondary, but not a confused or im-
perfect, conception.
The characteristic work of Kant was the recon-
ciliation of differences: on the one hand, the recon-
ciliation of the two forms of Individualism, which
has prevailed during the second period of European
philosophy; on the other hand, the reconciliation of
the Individualism of this second period with the
Universalism of the first. It is, therefore, not un-
worthy of notice, that, in his earliest writings, he
had already modified the individualistic principles of
Wolff by introducing an element borrowed from, or
at least, akin to, the earlier philosophy of Spinoza.
Rejecting the Cartesian argument from the thought
of God to His existence, he yet repeats that argu-
I.
163
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
ment in a form that better expresses its true mean-
ing. In the Dilucidatio Nova, he argues that as all
determination presupposes something to be deter-
mined, so all finite existence presupposes the infinite.
In this one case, the transition from thought to
existence, from possibility to reality, does not involve
a paralogism; for here we are dealing with the matter
of all thought, the Being "cujus existentia prævertit
ipsam, et ipsius, et omnium rerum possibilitatem." ¹
This argument has been usually treated by com-
mentators on Kant as a remnant of that schol-
astic Wolffian method, which he was afterwards
to overthrow; but we have seen, in considering the
philosophy of Spinoza, that it conceals under a
defective form the assertion of the universality of
mind. To say that reason sees all things in
their truth through the idea of God was, in Spinoza's
language, to say that reason apprehends the world,
not in ordine ad individuum, but in ordine ad uni-
versum. The defect of the Spinozistic philosophy
lay, not in his assertion of this doctrine, but in the
false conception of the relation of infinite and finite,
universal and individual, with which he accompanied
it. When, therefore, Kant revived the Spinozistic
view, and declared that the idea of God is the pre-
supposition of all things, he was taking the first step
towards the recovery of a truth which had been
hidden during the era of Individualism. Yet Kant
was never merely reactionary. From the first he
aimed at a compromise, in which the one-sided-
ness of both the earlier systems should be avoided,
and the truth, which each contained, should be pre-
served. As we proceed we shall see how time and
1
¹ I., p. 14.
164
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Revival of
the Uni-
versal in
reflection gradually brought each of these elements of
his philosophy to a better expression, and turned the
compromise into a more perfect unity.
In the second period of Kant's mental history, as
is shown by his treatise on the Only possible basis of
the proof of the being of a God, he still retained this
conception of God as the ultimate matter or real
ground of the possibility of all things, as the prin-
ciple of unity through which all things finite are,
and are known. But at this time the a priori prin-
ciple of synthesis was gradually losing credit in his
eyes, and Empiricism was taking its place. He had
clearly proved that the movement of pure thought,
as it is analysed by logic, cannot add to knowledge,
and the only alternative seemed to be that all such
additions should be made by sense. Not only the
elements of truth, therefore, but even the combina-
tion of these elements, must be given in sensible ex-
perience. Philosophy must renounce all a priori
speculation, and become a doctrine of the limits of
the human understanding, teaching it to seek the
universal in the particular, and only there. She must
content herself with the task of guarding the frontier
of experience, and saying to all who attempt to over-
pass it,
"Thus far, and no farther." It is with this
thought that Kant, in words we have already quoted,
concludes his comparison of the dreams of Sweden-
borg with the speculations of Leibnitz. The visions
of philosophy are lofty, but in a resolute critical
spirit, though with a lurking regret, he declares that
they are nothing but visions.
If, however, Kant ever lost sight of a Universal,
the form of that is prior to the particulars and conditions them,
it was for no long period. Up to 1763 he had still
the idea of
Space.
I.
165
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
maintained that the idea of God is the precondition
of all thought and being. And if, as the empirical
philosophy of England gained a hold upon him, that
idea gave place to a more consistent Individualism,
yet already, in 1768, the Universal appears in a new
form. In a short essay on The first ground for the
distinction of regions in space, Kant maintains that
the idea of space in general is not acquired, either by
a consideration of the common element in particular
spaces, or by a combination of particular spaces into
a collective whole, but that, on the contrary, the idea
of the one absolute space is presupposed in the de-
termination of all particular spaces, and things in
space. In asserting this doctrine, Kant, in prin-
ciple, declares war against both the great forms of
Individualism: for Individualism cannot regard the
whole as prior to the parts. To Locke as to Leib-
nitz, space is an idea of the relations of objects, and,
therefore, logically posterior to the ideas of the objects
themselves. But Kant here contends that when we
examine carefully the 'judgments of perception"¹ re-
garding the extension of objects, we find in them "an
evident proof that absolute space has a reality of its
own, independent of the existence of all matter, and is
itself the first ground of the possibility of matter as
a complex or divisible substance." 2 In other words,
we cannot determine matter as extended, or as having
its parts definitely situated in regard to each other,
except in relation to absolute space, as a unity in
which every particular extension is included. "The
determinations of space are not consequences, but
reasons, of the positions of different parts of matter
in relation to each other.” ³
1 ¹ V., p. 294.
2 V., p. 294.
3 V., p. 301.
166
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Argument
for the
Space to
objects in
Space.
The argument is as follows:--Space has three
priority of dimensions, and in it, therefore, we can draw three
planes, cutting each other at right angles. "And as
we know through our senses what is without us,
only in so far as it stands in immediate connection
with ourselves, so it is in the relation of three such
planes to our body, that we find the first ground for
a definition of the different regions in space.
"" 1 The
plane at right angles to our body we call horizontal,
and, by relation to it, we distinguish the regions
which we call 'above' and 'below.' The other
planes enable us to distinguish the regions 'before'
and behind,' 'right' and 'left.' In these distinc-
tions we find a means for determining differences
which we can define in no other way. Thus a screw
that turns to the right, and one that turns to the
left, may absolutely correspond in all their parts, but
they cannot be substituted for each other, nor placed
so as to coincide. The right and the left hand, or
again the body and its image in the mirror, are
other instances of objects, which, though perfectly
corresponding with each other in all their parts, and
in all the relations of their parts, yet cannot occupy
the same space: they are what we
gruent counterparts' of each other.
noticed that, in this distinction,
implied a relation of the parts of the body, not to
each other, but to space. The order of the parts in
any complex body might be inverted without making
the least change in their relations to each other, or
to the body as a whole. The right is not distin-
guished from the left hand, except in relation to the
space it occupies. And so in like manner, the whole
¹.V., p. 295.
may call 'incon-
Now, it is to be
there is always
I.
167
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
order of the heavenly bodies might be inverted
without any change so far as their relations to each
other are concerned: the difference would be only in
their relation to absolute space. While, therefore,
we cannot immediately perceive absolute space, we
perceive distinctions of body which presuppose it,
and which could not exist without it. "Space is
not itself an object of external perception, but it is a
fundamental conception, which first makes all such
perception possible. Nothing, therefore, in the form
of a material object, which is connected with its
relation to pure space, is discerned by us, except
through a comparison of it with other material
objects."1
tion of
synthesis
by Hume.
We have now before us a tolerably complete view The ques-
of the different forces, which were contending in the a priori
mind of Kant, prior to the time when the writings suggested
of Hume began to exercise an important influence
on the course of his speculations: and by comparing
the essay we have just considered, with one that
followed it two years afterwards, on The form and
principles of the sensible and intelligible world, we
are able to form a conception of that crisis, which
Kant called his "awakening from dogmatic slum-
bers."
He had arrived at the conviction that absolute
space is an idea which is not given in outward
experience, yet which is the very condition of its
possibility. Hence he could no longer conceive
material substances as monads or exclusive indivi-
duals. The unity of such substances as in one space is
given before their isolated existence, and they must
therefore conform to the nature of space. Hence,
1 V., p. 301.
****
168
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
also, the synthesis of geometry, which, at an earlier
period, Kant had treated as an arbitrary process of
construction, acquires a real and objective value. The
science which deals with the determination of all the
different possible figures in space, is at the same
time dealing with the determination of all possible
outward objects. Here, therefore, we have a prin-
ciple that determines how things must be connected
or related, before they are actually given in sense, à
principle of synthesis that is not derived from expe-
rience, but from the mind itself.
But can any principle of synthesis be given in
experience? This, as I have said before, was the
far-reaching doubt which Hume's essays awoke in
the mind of Kant. Hume's demonstration, that one
particular link of thought, the link of cause and
effect, was not so given, reached Kant just at the
time when he was prepared for it by his own mental
development, and when he was certain to univer-
salise the principle it contained. Kant had proved
to his own satisfaction that thought in itself could
afford no principle of synthesis, and had consequently
assumed that that principle must be found in experi-
ence.
In one case, however, he had now discovered
that it is not so found. The synthesis of mathematics,
which at first he had conceived to be arbitrary, he
now saw to be based on an idea, which is presup-
posed in experience, and which therefore cannot be
derived from it. If, then, the synthesis of causation
also is denied to have an empirical ground, what
follows? Is it not clear that Empiricism must be
altogether rejected as an explanation of knowledge?
Take away from experience the ideas of time, space,
causation, and the like, and what remains? Only
་
I.
169
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
a series of sensations without connexion, and there-
fore without intelligible meaning. If, therefore,
there is connection and intelligible meaning in the
empirical consciousness; if it sets before us a world
of definitely related objects, the reason must be
found in the a priori forms by which the matter of
causation is organised and combined. And it will be
the business of philosophy to discover and enumerate
the a priori elements of knowledge, and to determine
their relations to each other.
between
his and the
a priori
thought.
In the dissertation On the form and principles of Difference
the sensible and intelligible world, Kant attempts the
a priori
this task. The materials he had before him for of Space
and Time,
executing it were twofold: on the one hand,
own recent discoveries in relation to space and time, of pure
and on the other hand, the metaphysical principles
of his earlier works in relation to the causation and
reciprocity of substances-the modified Leibnitzian
doctrine of the Dilucidatio nova. When, however,
he tried to combine these two elements, it became
obvious to him that they were of a different and
even discordant nature. The individualistic meta-
physic of the arlier treatises, modified as it was, did
not harmonise with the view of outward experience
expressed in the treatise On the first ground for the
distinctions of regions in space. The conception of
God, and again the conceptions of substance, cause
and reciprocity, are 'general ideas,' but they are not
universals in the same sense as the idea of space.
For it is to Kant, as we have seen, a fixed
maxim that thought of itself cannot go beyond
analysis, or add to the ideas which it apprehends.
In other words, it is absolutely bound by the
laws of identity and contradiction, and therefore
170
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Concep-
tion and
Percep-
tion.
it cannot proceed from a conception to any other
conception which is not either contained in itself, or
else its logical contradictory. In consistency with
this logic, the general idea of God, as Omnitudo
realitatis, cannot of itself lead us to any particular
predicates, either of God himself or of the world, to
which he is supposed to give its unity. The Spinoz-
istic unity is not pregnant with any differences.
And on the same principle, no general notion can be
regarded as in any sense determining the particulars,
that are subsumed under it, or as giving us the
slightest clue to what they will be. If, therefore, we
suppose with Kant, that the mind brings to experi-
ence the conception of a general unity of all things,
in other words, the idea of God; and again, concep-
tions of the special unities or connections of things,
such as causation, reciprocity, etc., yet such concep-
tions will not enable us to anticipate the particular
elements of experience. They are not in this sense
synthetic. On the other hand, the ideas of Space
and Time do enable us to anticipate the particulars
included under them. They are not merely genera
under which we can subsume particular things, but
they are themselves principles that determine their
own specification. And it is because of this, that
they furnish the bases for the a priori science of
mathematics, a science which, though constructive
and synthetic, is yet objectively real: i.e., a science
which enables us to make judgments, which are
empirically true, though not derived from experi-
ence.
The consideration of this difference led Kant to a
result which had the greatest influence on all his
subsequent speculations. It made him draw his
I.
171
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
well-known distinction between Conceptions and
Perceptions, and also it made him rank Time and
Space among the latter, and not among the former.
A conception with Kant is always an abstract idea,
fixed and definite, and made up, if it is complex, of
a certain number of marks or subordinate conceptions
into which we may analyse it, but to the number of
which we cannot add by mere thinking. It is always
a genus, under which we may bring species, and
individuals, but is neither itself an individual, nor
does it contain individual parts in it. A percep-
tion, on the other hand, is never fixed or definite
in the number of its marks; it contains in itself a
potential infinity, which analysis cannot exhaust; it
is a continual source of new synthetic judgments,
and it presents to us an individual whole, capable
indefinitely of division into parts which may them-
selves be regarded as individuals. Now, Space, as
we have already seen, possesses this character, and,
therefore, we must class it, along with the kindred
notion of Time, as a perception. They are, indeed,
a priori perceptions-perceptions that are not given
in sense, but belong to the mind itself. This, however,
does not prevent their being objectively real, like the
other perceptions, for space is the condition of all
external experience, and, therefore, of all objects
presented in that experience, and time holds a
similar position in regard to all experience whatever,
whether external or internal.
they to be
know-
But here a new difficulty arises. If our knowledge How are
is made up of two constituents differing so widely united in
as conception and perception, what are we to think ledge?
of its value? Must not this essential dualism in
our knowing faculties throw discredit on all their
1
172
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
The gene-
ral con-
experience
is depen-
dent on
the idea
of God,
products? Is not experience made up of elements
like oil and vinegar, that ever repel each other?
Or, if a unity is achieved, must it not be by one of
the elements gaining the mastery over the other?
and, in that case, which of them is the preponderant
element? Are we to say that the world as it is to
conception is the real world, and that the world of
perception is illusory? Or does perception appre-
hend the reality of things, and does conception deal
merely with abstractions?
It is this difficulty with which we find Kant wrest-
nexion of ling in the beginning of his dissertation. On the one
hand he already partially discerns, (what he after-
wards came to see more clearly,) that no knowledge is
possible without connective conceptions, like those of
cause and reciprocity. At least if, as he seems still
cause, and to admit, objects can be known without the aid of
city. such conceptions, yet without them they cannot be
combined together and known as parts of one world.
and the
concep-
tions of
substance,
recipro-
1
"Space is but the
universal co-ordina-
The mere form of outward perception is not sufficient
to supply a bond of union between the different
objects perceived. It is not enough to say, that
everything must be somewhere, and that, therefore,
the unity of space is in itself a nexus between all
things that are contained in it.
intuitively given possibility of a
tion of things in one universe. Hence we cannot
by its means determine the principle of that very
correlation of all substances which, as intuitively
apprehended in perception, we call space."1 In
other words, the perception of things as in one
space, presupposes the unity of the world, and the
mutual relation of all things in it. It is, indeed,
¹ I., p. 326, De Mundi sensibilis etc., § 16.
I.
173
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
But the
matter of
must be
but the form or aspect taken by the co-ordination of
things in relation to our sense. But to produce this
co-ordination two things are necessary in the first
place, all the manifold objects presented in sense
must be referred to a principle of community, a
principium commercii (which in this essay is still
found in the idea of God); and, in the second place,
this principle must be conceived as realising itself
in a reciprocity of causation, by which all these
objects act or react on each other. Only in so
far as these conceptions, the conception of God and
the conceptions of substance and reciprocity, guide
us in organising our experience, can that expe-
rience represent to us the order of the universe
with all its parts embraced in one space. On the particular
other hand, while conceptions are thus necessary, experience
they are not in themselves sufficient for knowledge given in
or experiences. For they are general and abstract, under its
and they can be individualised or realised only
through the perceptions of sense.
"Without per-
ceptions," as Kant afterwards expressed it, "con-
ceptions are empty." The pattern of the world,
which our understandings carry in themselves, is
only an abstract and general sketch, which depends
upon sense for the filling up of its outlines. It is a
simple, fixed, and definite thing, to which new ele-
ments cannot be added, by development from within,
but only by its application to the formal or material
perceptions which are given from without. In a
sense these sources are sufficient, as indeed they are
unlimited; no mind can ever exhaust either the formal
determination of space or time, or the material data
of sensation. But if it be asked, whether the filling
up corresponds with the outline, whether perception
sense, and
forms.
174
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
corresponds with the requirements of thought, the
answer cannot be so satisfactory. The world as we
can, and, indeed, must think of it, is not the world as it
is given in perception under conditions of time and
space. For we can never have any object presented
to us without thinking of it as part of a whole, which
is not itself a part of anything, i.e., we must think
of everything that exists as part of one universe.
And, on the other hand, we can never have any
object presented to us which we do not conceive as
either itself simple, or made up of simple parts, i.e., we
must think of everything that exists as an individual
substance, or an aggregate of individual substances.
We must so think, for we can never rest satisfied in
synthesis with anything short of an absolute whole,
or in analysis with anything short of a simple
part. Yet these ideas of the universe, and of the
simple individual substances which we cannot avoid
thinking, can never be realised by us in perception.
The world we perceive is one in which every part is
capable of further division, and every whole of further
addition. It is a world in which we can never reach
either an absolute beginning, or an absolute end; in
which the regressive process of division, and the pro-
gressive process of composition, are equally un-
limited. And the reason of this lies in the very
nature of our sensitive perception of objects; for we
cannot perceive objects except under conditions of
space and time; and in space and time it is impos-
sible to reach either a maximum or a minimum.
The problem set by thought to perception is one
which perception from its very nature can never
solve.¹
1 I., p. 302, De Mundi sensibilis etc., § 1.
1.
175
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
objects of
ence are
pheno-
But this inadequacy must mean one of two things. Hence the
It must mean, either that the demand of intelligence our experi-
is irrational, or that sense does not apprehend the merely
reality of things. To adopt the former alternative menal.
would involve absolute scepticism; nor is it neces-
sary to adopt it. For sense, though it is inadequate
to reason, does not contradict it. It only seems to
do so when we confuse the impossibility of perceiving
or picturing an object to ourselves with the impossi-
bility of thinking it. But, what intelligence appre-
hends in the abstract, cannot always be perceived or
represented in the concrete, in accordance with the
laws of our sensitive faculty: quas mens ab intellectu
acceptas fert ideas abstractas, illas in concreto exsequi,
et in Intuitus commutare sæpenumero non potest.¹
This defect in our mode of apprehending things
in the concrete, does not affect the certainty of the
general truths apprehended by intelligence. On the
contrary, the defect of our sensitive modes of per-
ception is shown by their incongruity with these
general truths. It is this that enables us to see that
things of sense are merely phenomenal, while intelli-
gence alone apprehends things in their reality. Yet,
on the other hand, the antithesis of phenomenal and
real must not be pushed too far. The discordance
of an experience, which is conditioned by time and
space, with the ultimate principles of intelligence,
may show that it is not absolute knowledge, but
should not lead us to suppose that it is mere illusion.
Sense changes the impressions it receives, but it
changes them in a regular and uniform manner,
according to forms that are universal. And the
application of conceptions of the understanding to
¹ I., p. 305, De Mundi sensibilis etc., § 1.
176
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Relation of
the Disser-
tation
and the
Critique.
The intel-
ligence is
conceived
the matter so formed, produces a systematic and
self-consistent result. If, therefore, the world of
experience is a world which has no existence except
to beings who have forms of sense like ours, yet it is
a world that exists to all such beings. All men have
a community, not only of intelligence, but of sense,
and experience remains, for all practical purposes,
quite as much a reality, as it could be on any other
theory.
It is unnecessary to follow Kant into the further
development of his theory. The account given of
the forms of inner and outer sense, is substantially
identical with the account of the Critique, and need
not, therefore, be anticipated. What has been
already said is sufficient to show the importance of
the dissertation On the form and principles of the
sensible and intelligible world in relation to the
history of Kant's mental development. It is in this
work that we first hear of understanding and sense, as
co-equal, yet heterogeneous, sources of knowledge:
the former supplying the connective principles, the
latter the particular contents, of experience. In it
also time and space are for the first time definitely
assigned to sense, as its constitutive forms.
while in these respects Kant seems already to have
reached the critical point of view, there are also
some important differences which deserve attention,
as they help to account for many peculiarities in the
language, and perhaps also in the matter of his later
philosophy.
Yet
(1.) In the first place, then, we have to observe,
to appre- that, while Kant already regards the objects of
they are in sense as phenomenal, he allows that the objects of
selves. intelligence (under which name he includes the
things as
them-
I.
177
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
two faculties afterwards distinguished as reason
and understanding) are absolutely real. The con-
ceptions of substance, cause, and reciprocity, which
in the Critique were to be reduced into mere
forms of the human experience, are still treated
as having a universal value. The general idea
of the world, evolved by the understanding, the
idea of an order of individual substances, con-
tingent in their nature, and interdependent in
the succession of their states, is still supposed
to correspond to the real order of things in
themselves, though the special form, which this
order takes in perception, is ascribed to the limited
nature of our sense. It had not yet occurred to
Kant, that the forms of understanding, by which
the matter of sense is combined together into
that systematic unity of knowledge which we call
experience, are themselves also subjective, or due
to the peculiar constitution of the human mind.
Hence the contrast between intelligence as deal-
ing with reality, and sense as dealing with appear-
ance, is yet unbroken. Quum itaque, quodcunque
in cognitione est sensitivi, pendeat a speciali indole
subjecti, quatenus a præsentia objectorum hujus
vel alius modificationis capax est, quæ, pro varie-
tate subjectorum, in diversis potest esse diversa ;
quæcunque autem cognitio a tali conditione subjec-
tiva exemta est, non nisi objectum respiciat, patet
sensitive cogitata esse rerum repræsentationes, uti
apparent, intellectualia autem sicuti sunt.¹ We
shall see in the sequel, that some of the peculiar
difficulties of the Critique arise from Kant's effort to
preserve the contrast between the phenomena and
¹ I., p. 309, De Mundi etc., § -!.
1
M
178
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
And the
unity of
experience
God, and
not yet in
the Self.
things in themselves, after the opposition between
intelligence and sense has been removed, or at least
has assumed a totally different aspect.
(2.) Closely connected with this, but still more
is found in important, is the difference between the view of the
Dissertation and the Critique as to the ultimate
principle of unity in knowledge. That unity which
in the Dissertation is still traced back to the idea
of God, in the Critique is derived from the con-
sciousness of self. The truth is, that at the point
we have reached, that great revolution of thought,
which first gave due importance to the subject as
distinguished from the object of knowledge, in
Kant's mind, was only half accomplished. He had
not yet clearly asked himself the important question
to which I have before referred-the question, how
man as an individual can know a world in which he
is but a part; or, in other words, what nature he
must have in order to be not only an object, but also
a subject, of knowledge? For if man is simply an
individual, like other individuals, he cannot know
anything but his own thoughts and sensations. All
knowledge presupposes that its subject can transcend
the position which belongs to him purely as an
individual, and can look at himself and all other
objects as part of a universal order. This Kant
had discerned, and therefore, even in his earliest
treatise, he regards God as the presupposition at
once of all being and of all knowledge. We cannot,
he argues, know the world as a systematic com-
bination of individual substances which, in spite of
their individuality, are mutually interdependent,
except so far as we refer them to a common cause
in God. In other words, the individuality of things
I.
179
PRE-CRITICAL. PERIOD.
and their relativity go together, both in existence
and in knowledge, so that we cannot apprehend
anything as a substance without apprehending it as
connected with all other substances in one world.
But as these two aspects of things are held to be quite
independent of each other, so their unity appears
only as the result of the will of God which has com-
bined with the existence of each individual a relation
to all the others. The mind, therefore, that appre-
hends other things than itself, must apprehend them
through the idea of God. Thus the idea of God is
the central conception of the intelligible world. And
inasmuch as the sensible world is only the intelligible
world as it is apprehended under the conditions of
our sense, this idea also underlies the unity and
universality of space and time. When we refer a
sensation to an external object in space, and so deter-
mine it in relation to all space, we are simply referring
it to the unity of all things, in the form which that
unity necessarily takes to our sense.
Hence space
may be called omnipræsentia phenomenon, and time
æternitas phenomenon, and we 'see all things in God,'
though not as they are in God. In a note to the
fourth section of his Dissertation, Kant suggests
this inference from the principles he has laid down;
but he immediately shrinks from its boldness and
apparent mysticism. It was, in fact, a necessary
consequence of the individualistic element which
still survived in Kant's philosophy, that the objec-
tivity of knowledge could be saved only by a
miracle. But Kant has no sooner seen the neces-
sity for a Deus ex machina to complete his theory,
than he feels that he is on unsafe ground, and
:
1
180
PART
THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Transition
to the
Critical
point of
view.
begins to look for something more rational and in-
telligible.¹
In this enquiry, two alternatives lay before him.
On the one hand, he might have renounced the indivi-
dualistic prejudice altogether; he might have opened
up the question as to the nature of thought and its
relation to the thinking subject. He might have
enquired whether thought can be considered as the
property of an individual as such, in the same sense
as the colour of a stone or the chemical constitution
of a plant. Or, on the other hand, taking thought
still as the property of the individual thing that
thinks, he might have narrowed his view of know-
ledge to correspond with this conception. It is this
latter alternative that Kant at first seems to choose
in the Critique of Pure Reason. Hence, as we shall
find, his first step is to renounce the knowledge of
things in themselves altogether, and to deny that the
forms of the understanding are of any use, except in
arranging the matter of sense. His next step is to
refer the unity, presupposed in all experience, not to
the idea of God, who in himself is beyond our ap-
prehension, but to the consciousness of self, the
((
thing that thinks." Yet in spite of this apparently
individualistic starting-point, the Critique turns out
in its result to be the refutation of Individualism.
For the consciousness of self is conceived as the
ground of the knowledge of a world, which, though
phenomenal, is the same for all men. Nay, in the
sequel, it is conceived as the ground of our know-
ledge, not only of the world of phenomena, but of its
limits; and hence of, at least, the existence of an
intelligible world beyond it, a world of which the
1 De Mundi sensibilis etc., § 22, Scholion I., p. 330.
I.
181
PRE-CRITICAL PERIOD.
moral law forces us to regard ourselves and all other
intelligent beings as the inhabitants. Thus, though
himself still embarrassed by individualistic scruples,
Kant lifts us gradually beyond the atmosphere of
individualism, and
prepares the way for the recogni-
tion of the essential unity of thought and being, the
individual and the universal. That this is the result
of Kant's speculation in the Critique of Pure Reason,
it will be one of the main objects of the following
chapters to show.
182
:
1
PART SECOND.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
pearance
of Criti-
cism.
CHAPTER I.
THE PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON.
KANT'S PREFACES AND INTRODUCTIONS.
First ap. WE have now traced Kant's progress toward
Criticism up to the point marked by the
dissertation On the form and principles of the
sensible and intelligible world. In that dissertation
we still find a curious combination of the modified
Wolffian metaphysic of his earlier works, with the
Critical view of the forms of perception. The doc-
trine that sense is inadequate to intelligence, and
that, consequently, human knowledge, in its par-
ticular determination of things, can never be brought
into harmony with the general idea by which it is
guided and stimulated, is stated in the Dissertation,
very much in the same way as in the Critique.
But the Dissertation still treats the understand-
ing as a faculty which apprehends things as they
are in themselves, and it evades the question of
the possibility of knowledge (as Des Cartes and
Leibnitz had evaded it), by the interposition of
PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE.
183
1
God between the individual mind and its object.
Indications, however, are not wanting, that Kant
already shrank from this solution of the difficulty;
and, in a letter on the subject, he even tells Lam-
bert to neglect those sections of the Dissertation
which deal with the form and principles of the
intelligible world: for, although they had been
introduced for the sake of completeness, he was
sensible that they required careful reconsideration.
And in less than two years after the publication
of the Dissertation, he had utterly abandoned the
ideas expressed in this part of it, and had
thereby placed himself at the point of view from
which the Critique of Pure Reason was written.
In a remarkable letter to Dr. Marcus Herz,
dated the 21st February, 1772, Kant announced
that he had had before him for some time the
plan of a work, to be called The Limits of Sense
and Reason; but that, in attempting to realise it,
he had discovered, that an essential point had
been hitherto overlooked in all his own meta-
physical speculations, as well as in those of all
previous philosophers. "For," he goes on, "I put
this question to myself, On what ground rests the
relation of that in us, which we call an idea, to the
object? If all that the idea contains is simply the Problem
mode in which the subject is affected by the object, relation of
we may easily understand how it should correspond subject in
to that object as an effect to its cause, and how, ence.
therefore, this determination of our mind should be
an idea of something, or, in other words, should
have an object. Hence it is intelligible that our
ideas, so far as they are passive, or sensuous affec-
¹ I., p. 360.
of the
object to
experi-
184
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
tions, should have a relation to objects, and, in this
way, that principles borrowed from the nature of
our soul should, nevertheless, apply to all things
that are presented in sense. Or, again, if that
which is called an idea in us, were in relation to the
object an activity—that is to say, if the object itself
were produced by the idea, (as it is sometimes sup-
posed that the ideas in the Divine Mind are the
archetypes of things,) then, in this way also, the con-
formity of ideas with objects might be understood.
We can therefore discern at least the possibility
of two kinds of intelligence, an intellectus arche-
typus, whose perception should itself be the ground
of the existence of things; and an intellectus ectypus,
which should be confined to the analysis of data
supplied entirely from the impressions of sense.
But our intelligence does not fall under either
description. It is not (if we leave moral ends out of
account) the cause of the objects it apprehends, nor
are these objects the causes of its conceptions. The
pure notions of the understanding cannot be ab-
stracted from the feelings of sense, nor are they
merely the expression of the character of our sen-
sitive receptivity. They have their sources, indeed,
in the nature of the soul; but they are neither the
result of the action of the object upon it, nor do
they produce the object. In my Dissertation I was
content to explain their nature in a negative way,
and to say only that they are not modifications of
the soul produced by the object. But now I must
ask in what other way an idea is possible, which
refers to an object, without being the effect of an
impression from it? I formerly ventured to say,
that the ideas of sense represent things as they
I.
185
PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE.
appear, while the conceptions of the understanding
represent things as they are.
But how can the
pro-
ideas of these things be given to us, if not by the
manner in which they affect us? Or, if they are
based on our own inner activity, whence comes their
agreement with objects which yet are not their
ducts? How can pure reason lay down axioms
about things without any experience of them? In
mathematics, the difficulty is not great, because
objects are only capable of being, or being repre-
sented as, quantities, in so far as we produce the
ideas of them by repeating a unit for a number of
times. The mind is active in generating quantity,
and therefore we can see how the principles of
quantity should be determined a priori; but when
we ask how the understanding, purely a priori, can
form the conception of things in their qualitative
relations, or lay down real principles about their
possibility, which are not derived from experience,
but to which experience must exactly conform-we
ask a question over which the greatest obscurity has
hitherto rested."
of the
machina.
"Plato assumed a prenatal, Malebranche a Rejection
present, intuition of the divine Being, as the source Deus ex
of the pure notions and principles of the under-
standing; and various Moralists have adopted a
similar hypothesis to account for our primary
ideas of moral law. Crusius, on the other hand,
spoke of certain rules of judgment and conception,
which God has implanted in the human soul in
exact conformity with the constitution of things.
The former writers, therefore, based their systems.
on a supernatural influence, the latter on an intel-
lectual pre-established harmony. But such a Deus
186
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
How is
knowledge
the basis of
ex machina is the most extravagant resource to
which a philosopher can betake himself in ex-
plaining the origin and value of our knowledge:
for it not only involves a palpable case of reasoning
in a circle, but also stimulates and encourages all
the whims of pious fancy, and all the dreams of
baseless speculation."
"While in this way I was searching out the
sources of intellectual knowledge, without which we
cannot determine the nature and limits of Meta-
physic, I succeeded in making a distinct division
of the parts of this science; and I sought further
to gather Transcendental Philosophy, or, in other
words, all the notions of pure understanding into
a certain number of Categories. Nor did I follow
the manner of Aristotle, who simply set them down
one after another, as they occurred to him, in his
ten Predicaments, but I aimed at a systematic
classification, determined by a few fundamental
principles. Without, however,
Without, however, going into any
further detail, I may say that the essential part
of my task is now done, and that I am in a position
to lay before the public a Criticism of Pure Reason,
which explains the nature both of theoretical and
practical truth, in so far as it is derived purely
from the Understanding; and I expect to complete
and publish the first part of this system, containing
an account of the sources of Metaphysic, its methods
and limits, within about three months."1
It took eight years of additional labour before
possible on the promise of Kant could be fulfilled, but this
Dualism? passage is of itself enough to prove that he had
already broken the last threads that bound him to
1 I., p. 25.
I.
187
PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE.
the philosophy of his youth, and was working on
the lines of the Critique of Pure Reason. He
had discovered that the universal position, which
was asserted for thought by the Leibnitzian philo-
sophy, was reached by the assumption of a Deus
ex machina. For by that philosophy, subject and
object were first set in opposition to each other
as exclusive and independent individuals, and
then, at a turn of the hand, the idea of God
was brought in to bridge over the gulf between
them. But thus, as it seemed to Kant, the ulti-
mate principle of truth was placed in that which
most of all stood in need of proof, and the know-
ledge of objects was based on a conception which
presupposed that knowledge in its highest form.
His first step, therefore, was to demand that the
limits of individuality should be honestly accepted,
and not broken through by any arbitrary assump-
tion. Taking his stand on the ordinary dualism of
subject and object, and admitting that consciousness
cannot immediately deal with anything but its own
states, he asks how, on these terms, knowledge is
possible. We can conceive its possibility, he an-
swers, in two ways: viz., by supposing that in
knowledge the mind is either wholly passive, or
wholly active; that, on the one hand, it makes no
contribution to the matter it knows, or that, on
the other hand, the act of knowing creates the
object known. But, in the present case, both
these alternatives must be excluded: the former,
because (as the Analytic was to show in detail);
it is impossible to conceive knowledge as an effect
passively received; the latter, because the products
of our understanding are merely general notions,
188
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
which require to be specialised, and so referred to
objects, by means of the matter of sense. If, how-
ever, we thus refuse to accept either horn of the
dilemma, it becomes impossible to vindicate know-
ledge in the sense in which it has hitherto been
asserted. Of the external object in itself, the
assumed cause of sensation, or of God, who, by
some philosophers, was put in its place, we can
know nothing for direct contact with anything
else than our own states of consciousness is ex-
cluded in the only two ways in which it could
take place. If, therefore, there exists for us an
objective world which we can know, it must be of
a different character: it must be a world whose
centre and principle of unity is to be found, not
without but within, not in the idea of God, but in
the consciousness of self. Only if the consciousness
of self contains or manifests itself in universal concep-
tions which enable us to determine our sensations in
relation to a world of objects, can we have any
Separation knowledge that deserves the name.
The pheno-
and Dialec menal objectivity, however, that can be reached
through the determination of sense by thought, must
be carefully distinguished from that real objectivity,
which philosophy had formerly pretended to dis-
cover. The intelligence, in order to vindicate its
rightful claims, must renounce its false pretensions,
Hence the introduction of the idea of Criticism,
which appears for the first time in the above letter,
and which involves a distinction of the sound part
of our knowledge from the unsound. The negative
and the positive side of the truth are henceforth,
with Kant, inseparably connected together, and a
theory of the limits of human knowledge has become
of Analytic
tic.
I.
189
PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE.
a necessary part of the theory of its nature. And,
whereas, in the Dissertation, we have only the
general opposition of Sense and Intelligence, in the
Critique a further division is found necessary be-
tween the Reason and the Understanding. Conse-
quently, the Analytic, showing the nature of that
knowledge of phenomena which is attainable, must
be followed by the Dialectic, to explain and account
for that natural illusion, which makes us suppose we
possess, or have within our reach, the unattainable
knowledge of absolute reality.
sity of
both in
meta-
and empir-
The object, then, which Kant proposes to himself, The neces-
is a criticism of human knowledge, with the view of Criticism,
determining its nature and limits. Such a criticism relation to
he declares to be necessary for two reasons. The physical
first of these is the failure of philosophy to arrive cal truth.
at any definite or permanent conclusions in re-
gard to those subjects, which above all others we
must desire to understand. The past history of
human thought shows that there are certain things
which mankind have been continually endeavouring
to comprehend, certain questions which they have
never been content to leave unanswered. It shows
also that the answers to these questions have
varied with every new system of philosophy. It
shows that every theory that has gained a tem-
porary authority, has ultimately led to absurd or
contradictory results, and has perished at its own
hands, or at the hands of some opposite dog-
matism which it called into existence. Yet the
scepticism resulting from the failure of dogmatic
philosophy has never been more than a temporary
halting-place in the history of opinion. It has never
induced mankind to set aside such problems as
190
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
absurd, or, for any considerable period, arrested
the effort to solve them. Nor is this to be won-
dered at. It is vain to strive after an artificial
indifference towards enquiries whose object can
never be indifferent to the nature of man." It
seems as hard for a moral and religious being like
man to be content with knowledge of the things
apprehended by sense, and to renounce all enquiry
into the being of God, human freedom, and the
relation of the order of the world to that freedom,
as it is by all his efforts to attain any satisfaction
in regard to them. Whence comes this ever-re-
curring question as to that which is beyond sense
and experience, and why, since we are able to ask,
are we not able to answer it? Why is it that
other sciences progress, but that metaphysics is ever
beginning again? What is the necessity that ex-
plains the continual repetition of a hitherto ineffec-
tual effort,—that explains both why it is repeated
and why it has been as yet ineffectual?
The necessity of such an enquiry is felt still
more keenly when, in the second place, we consider
how naturally, almost inevitably, we are led, in the
extension of our empirical knowledge, to speculate
about that which is beyond experience. For the
acquisition of experience itself is impossible with-
out the use of certain metaphysical, i.e., non-
empirical, principles, such as the principle of
causality. Yet let us once admit the use of such
principles, and we are imperceptibly led on from
one point to another, till we find ourselves carried
beyond the regions of experience altogether. Our
rational nature drives us to seek for a unity beyond
difference, for an ultimate truth, for a first condition
I.
191
PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE.
or cause, and will not allow us to be satisfied with
anything short of this. "Every road leads to the
end of the world." Thus he who connects one event
with another by means of the principle of causality,
cannot but seek for the cause of the cause, and again
for the cause of that: nor can he rest in his enquiry
till he is able either to complete the infinite series,
or to find a first cause in which the series terminates.
But to do either, he must pass beyond the region
where experience is possible, and make assumptions
which experience can never test or verify. If he be
tempted notwithstanding to advance, he finds at first.
an easy and unrestricted course of speculation opened
to him. For "he who goes beyond the sphere of
experience, is safe from being contradicted by ex-
perience, and if he only avoids contradicting himself,
he need not fear any other refutation." But ulti-
mately, as the past history of philosophy proves, he
finds that what is easily asserted can as easily be
denied; and that he has entered upon a vague
region of opinion, where every dogmatism is waited
on by an opposite dogmatism, and both by a scep-
ticism.¹
and Dia-
necessary
ments of
It appears, then, that the interests of empirical, Analytic
and of metaphysical knowledge, are necessarily lectic
bound together, and that we cannot discuss the comple-
nature and vindicate the claims of the former each other.
without explaining both its connexion with, and
its difference from, the latter. It is natural that
the relative importance of these two parts of the
Critique should be differently estimated by different
persons. To some, as to most of Kant's cotempo-
raries, the negative or dialectical side of his work
¹ Introduction to Critique, 1, 2, cf. I., p. 492.
L
น
192
CHAP.
CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Relation of
Criticism
to the
Leibnitz-
ian and
Lockian
philoso-
phies.
seemed most important, as their main interests lay
in the region of metaphysics. Others again have
given great, and even exclusive, prominence to his
defence of physics and mathematics against scepti-
cism, and among these we may reckon some of the
best of the recent commentators on the Critique.
But to Kant himself the two parts were the necessary
complements of each other, and if he sometimes
seemed to lay greater weight on the one than on the
other, it was only because, like a good general, he
carried all his forces for the moment to the point of
attack.1
The same result will be reached if we consider
that the Kantian philosophy arose out of the union
of two opposite systems, which it at once refuted,
united, and transcended. Kant's position had there-
fore to be fortified, on the one side against Leibnitz
and Wolff, and on the other side against Locke and
Hume. In relation to the former, Kant had to
show that no Deus ex machina is provided to carry
our minds across the gulf that separates them from
things in themselves. He had to show that the
knowledge of absolute reality is impossible, and at
the same time to explain the strange fact that we
1
¹ Compare, in illustration of this fluctuation, the often-quoted note
to the Preface of the Treatise on the Metaphysical basis of Physics
(V., p. 313), with the explanation of it given at the end of the Essay on
the use of Teleological principles in Philosophy (VI., p. 389). Paulsen
(p. 209) calls attention to these passages in support of his view, that the
Analytic was in Kant's eyes the most important part of his work,
although in his later years he sometimes allowed his own judgment on
this point to be warped by the opinion of his cotemporaries. My view
is, that Kant could not weigh the relative importance of what were
to him necessarily interdependent parts of one whole, and that some
vivacious expressions are to be explained simply by the nature of the
attacks he was from time to time repelling.
I.
193
PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE.
are driven so constantly, and, as it would seem, in-
evitably, to seek after it, or even to assume that we
have it. So far Kant goes with the English empirical
school; but at this point he turns round to ask how,
in consistency with these admissions, the facts of our
ordinary consciousness and experience are to be ex-
plained in other words, how the conscious subject
can know anything else but himself, and his own
states of mind. In one sense he cannot, i.e., he
cannot know that which is not brought within the
range of consciousness. But this negative conclusion
leads necessarily to the revival of the problem of know-
ledge in a new form. Knowledge of reality outside of,
and independent of, consciousness being impossible,
what is the meaning of the distinction that we actually
make between reality and illusion, between know-
ledge and imagination, between what seems and what
is? Grant to Berkeley that the object as given is
merely a sensation, and the question immediately
presents itself, how sensations should be represented
as objects? If what we have thought of as without
consciousness, is really within it, still the opposition
of without and within, of object and subject, of being
and thought within consciousness, remains to be
accounted for. If both factors, as they are now sup-
posed to do, fall within consciousness, consciousness
itself must explain its own dualism. Both the con-
sciousness of the world without us, and the conscious-
ness of the individual self as an objective existence to
be ranked along with others in that world, want ex-
planation: an explanation which cannot be found in
any immediate contact with things in themselves (for
things in themselves cannot get over into our minds
any more than our minds can transcend themselves
N
194
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Difference
of the
methods
and Kant.
of Reid
to get to them), and which, therefore, must be found
either in mere sensations, or in mere thoughts, or in
some combination of the two.
6
We may illustrate the view taken by Kant by
comparing it with that of Reid and his followers.
Reid, like Kant, sought to maintain the possibility
of knowledge against the so-called Idealism of
Berkeley, and the Scepticism of Hume; but his
method of doing so was very different. It con-
sisted simply in denying the representative view of
knowledge altogether, and asserting that the im-
mediate objects of the mind in perceptions are not
ideas, but things. This assertion might have an in-
telligible meaning from the point of view of an
Idealism, to which the distinction of ideas and
things was not an absolute one; but from the
point of view of Natural Dualism,' as it has been
called, in which the absoluteness of that distinc-
tion is maintained, it is simply irrational and
incomprehensible. It is an assertion which is
necessarily retracted in detail by Reid himself,
whenever he comes to deal with perception as in-
volving a relation between the object and the mind.
To hold that consciousness can apprehend things in
themselves, was, after Berkeley, a logical impos-
sibility. Yet this is necessarily the meaning we
must give to Reid's declaration that the objects of
perception are not ideas but things, seeing we cannot
attribute to him a denial of the existence of things in
themselves apart from their relation to thought. His
appeal to common sense was therefore little more
than a claim to assert without argument a doctrine
which had been proved untenable, and which con-
tained in it a manifest contradiction. For it is
I.
195
PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE.
nothing less than a contradiction to maintain the
reality of knowledge without abandoning that dual-
ism of thought and things which had necessarily led
the followers of Locke to the denial of its possibility.
Kant, in vindicating knowledge, took an altogether
different course. Admitting that we cannot appre-
hend absolute reality or know things in themselves
out of relation to consciousness, and thus withdrawing
from the ground proved untenable by Berkeley and
Hume, he seeks to show that there is real knowledge
within this limit; that if all the objects of our thought
are, in a sense, subjective, i.e., relative to our senses
and to our understanding, yet this does not make
them cease to be definite and knowable objects
connected together in the order and system of one
world. They may be merely phenomenal, but they
are phenomenally real. And the mind can find in
them an endlessly fruitful field of enquiry, even
though it is for ever shut out from absolute reality.
Kant still
existence
in them-
Before, however, going on to show how Kant Why does
vindicates the claims of phenomena to be treated as admit the
realities, we must turn aside to notice an objection of things
that may naturally be suggested by what has just selves?
been said. What place, it may be asked, is left for
the Dialectic at all, if things in themselves are
utterly beyond our knowledge? If we do not, in
some measure, know what they are, how do we
know even that they exist? It is intelligible how
Kant, on the basis of that dualism with which he
started, should have declared that what we know is
not a thing in itself, not an object of which the one
determination is that it is not in consciousness. But
should he not have carried his logic a little farther,
and maintained that such an object is a mere fiction
196
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP
Can we
know the
our know-
ledge?
of abstraction? To attempt to conceive an object
divested of every relation to the subject,-is it not
as vain a piece of logical trifling, as if we should set
ourselves to think the idea of a father without a
son? And might we not as reasonably argue that
human reason is limited, because we fail in the im-
possible effort of abstraction in the latter case as in
the former? Instead, therefore, of saying, that we
know phenomena, and not things in themselves,
should we not rather dismiss the conception of
things in themselves altogether, and say simply that
all reality is relative to consciousness?
Such an objection could not altogether escape
limits of Kant, and when he is brought face to face with
it, he tells us that the conception of the thing in
itself is a 'problematical conception,' which cannot be
verified, at least by the speculative reason; or that it
merely indicates the limits of our knowledge with-
out throwing light on anything beyond these limits.
In this way the issue is changed from the subject to
the object, and the question comes to be, not how
can we know things in themselves, but how can we
know the limits of our own knowledge? Ere reason
can thus criticise itself, it must in some way or
degree be able to emancipate itself from its own
limits. It must have some ideal of knowledge, by
comparison with which it perceives the defects of
its actual knowledge. It is easy to illustrate the
proposition that to know a limit as such is to be in
some sense beyond it. If I throw a stone as far as
possible, I can criticise my throw, because I see
beyond the point I have reached. If I try to dis-
tinguish a distant object, I can discern the imper-
fection of my view of it, because I know that the
I.
197
PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE.
If even
object must be defined beyond what I see.
I task my power of thinking to the utmost, and fail
to discover the solution of a geometrical problem, I
can recognise that this inability is subjective and
individual, because I can still, to some extent, dis-
cern the possibility and conditions of its solution: in
other words, there is still a position beyond the limit,
which in thought I can take up, and from which
I can criticise myself, and become conscious of my
own defect. But how is it possible for me, as a
thinking being, to criticise thought and intelligence
in themselves, so as to discern their absolute limits?
from what point of view can I see those limits?
The criticism of thought is still thought: whatever
height we ascend, this atmosphere is still about us.
On the other hand, while thought in general cannot
be criticised by itself, while the assumption of the
ultimate identity of thought and being is unavoid-
able, particular forms of thought can undoubtedly be
criticised, in so far as thought can transcend these
forms. The criticism of pure reason is possible, if
there is a higher point of view secured for us by
the very nature of intelligence, from which we may
overlook and criticise the ordinary consciousness, or
as Kant calls it, experience. It is the aim of the
Dialectic to show that this is the case; that there
are certain ideas of reason, which are regulative of
all our empirical knowledge, and which also limit
it; and yet, at the same time, that the higher reali-
ties to which these ideas point by contrast, are
beyond our knowledge. How far the conception of
such a subjective ideal of knowledge, which has no
reality necessarily corresponding to it, is a tenable
one, we shall have afterwards to consider.
198
THE CRITICİSM OF PURE REASON.
CHAP.
The ob-
jects of
not given,
but deter
mined as
such by
the mind.
Reserving, then, for the present, all questions in
experience relation to things in themselves, we turn with Kant
to the more fruitful field of phenomena, the world
within consciousness. And here the chief thing to
be explained is, how mere phenomena can present
to us the aspect of a world at all. In other words,
how can our sensations or ideas, the states of our own
consciousness, be represented as an objective system
of things, bound together into a whole by definite
laws? Whence comes the permanence and reality we
attribute to phenomena, if they are nothing but the
ever-changing ideas or representations of our minds?
Whence comes that connection according to univer-
sal laws independent of the accidental associations
of the individual, which we ascribe to the objects of
experience, if they have no existence except in the
mind that apprehends them? The secret of the
objectivity of phenomena, and their connection as
parts of one world, must obviously be sought, not
without but within, not in what is simply given to
the mind, but in what is produced by it. What
comes from without is at the most a sensation or
impression, which is itself but a passing phase of
our inner life, and has no reference to anything but
itself, no connection with other sensations, and no
relation to an object as such. If out of such sensa-
tions a world of objects is made, it must be made by
some mental activity. In order, therefore, to account
for the world of experience, the world we know, or
seem to know, both in our ordinary consciousness
and in science, and to account for it without denying
its phenomenal character, we must change our point
of view. As Copernicus found that the apparent
motions of the stars, which he could not explain so
I.
199
PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE.
long as he regarded them as moving, and himself
as at rest, became clear and simple so soon as he
conceived himself to be moving, and the heavens at
rest, so it is here. We cannot find an explanation of
the peculiarities of our objective consciousness in
the things that produce impressions on our senses,
for these things are unknown to us: nor, in the bare
impressions themselves, which are but momentary
states of our subjectivity: we must seek it, there-
fore, in the a priori conditions of perception and
thought, in an activity by which the mind trans-
forms, or rather, in strictness of language, forms its
impressions.
synthesis
for know-
ledge,
Now what is this activity? Kant's answer is, that 4 priori
it is synthesis. Mere impressions are isolated and necessary
unconnected. They have no relation to each other,
and hence no relation to any object more permanent
than themselves. Only so far as we relate them to
each other, recognise them as repetitions of each
other, and connect them with each other in definite
and unchanging ways, can the shifting phases of
our sentient life be to us the representation of a
world of objects, which we distinguish from our-
selves, yet conceive to be permanent with the
permanence of the self. Nay, it is only in so
far as we thus determine the data of sense, that
we can exist for ourselves as permanent individual
objects among the other objects of the world.
Synthesis is necessary for objectivity, and as there
can be no synthesis without some link of connection
by which the different elements are brought together,
so the activity of the mind must bring with it cer-
tain principles of relation, under which the mani-
fold of sense must be brought, and to which it must
200
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
And a
system of
necessary
for the
conform. Nothing can supply the place of a neces-
sity from without but a necessity from within. By
an object we mean something which, in the con-
nexion of its elements, is fixed independently of the
impressions or ideas of the individual, and which
determines, and is not determined by them. And
this independence, as in the case of phenomena it
cannot be accounted for by the presence of the
object apart from the activity of our thought, so it
must be explained by the fact that in that activity
-i.e., in uniting a multiplicity of sensations in the
conception of an object, the mind is bound down, or
binds itself down, to certain definite ways of opera-
tion. It is therefore the aim of the Critique to
detect the forms of synthesis which are necessarily
implied in experience, and to show that they are
so implied. This is the idea expressed by the
epithet 'transcendental,' which Kant so often applies
to his philosophy. A transcendental criticism has
not simply to seek out and determine our a priori
ideas, nor has it, on the other hand, to examine
generally the bases of our knowledge of objects. It
has to deal with "our a priori ideas in so far as
they form a ground of the knowledge of objects";"
to discover and verify that part of knowledge or
experience, which is derived purely from the mind
itself.
But further, as the world of experience is a world
synthesis of objects which are all united in one space and one
time, there must be a unity of principle in the mind
of a world that gives connexion and system to the objects of
its knowledge. It will not therefore be sufficient to
give a number of isolated rules for a priori synthesis
knowledge
of objects.
1
Critique, Introduction, § 7: Tr., p. 16.
I.
201
PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE.
without showing their connexion with each other,
for in that case we could never be sure that our
catalogue was complete. We must develope our
criticism systematically upon one principle. We
must not only discover "the general ground of the
possibility of a priori synthetic judgments, but also
determine the special conditions of each different
kind of these judgments: we must mark out and
define this whole department of knowledge, and that
not only in a general sketch or description, but in
an organic system of conceptions showing specifically
their sources and divisions, their extent and limits."
And this task, as Kant thinks, will not involve
much prolixity; for that which is universal and
necessary must be derived from the nature of mind
itself, and we do not therefore require to examine
the "nature of things, which is inexhaustible, but
only the intelligence," which is limited and definite.
"Reason constitutes a sphere so completely separ-
ated from all others, and so thoroughly united within
itself, that we cannot intermeddle with any part
without touching all the others, or settle a single
point without determining for everything its place
and relation to everything else. Outside of this
sphere, there lies nothing that could better our
judgment in regard to what lies within it; and
within it, every element is dependent for its
value and use in its relation to all the rest.
And as in the structure of an organised body,
the meaning and purpose of each member can
only be deduced from the idea of the whole, so
it may be safely said of such a criticism that it
is not to be depended on, unless it has been
brought to absolute and exhaustive completeness,
202
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Does Kant
vary in
his idea
of experi-
ence?
and that it has done nothing unless it has done
everything."
"" 1
Kant then seeks to show that there is a certain
defined plan or scheme, a system of synthesis, as we
may call it, involved in the nature of the human
mind, in its consciousness of self, and the modes or
forms of its conception or perception; an a priori
system to which all experience conforms, because it
is only by virtue of it that there is such a thing as
experience at all. Not as if this system were prior
in time to experience; for though all 'does not spring
out of experience,' there can be no doubt that for us
'all begins with experience.' The powers of the
mind can only be known in their exercise, and they
do not exercise themselves on themselves, but only
on the matter of sensation. But the very idea of
experience involves that something more than that
matter is needed to constitute it, to determine the
fleeting sensation in relation to objects, and to unite
these objects as parts of one world. And by careful
analysis we may detect both the special connective
notions and laws, and the general principle that
binds them all together, and determines their rela-
tion to each other.
It has sometimes been objected to Kant (and the
objection has been repeated by two of his most recent
interpreters),² that his idea of experience is some-
what vague and shifting, and that it is put some-
times for the ordinary consciousness or common-sense
view of things, and sometimes for the developed con-
sciousness of science. Between these, it is urged,
there is an essential distinction, for it is only
1 Prolegomena, Introduction, III., p. 13: Tr., p. 13.
2 Paulsen, p. 175. Hölder, Darstellung der Kantischen Erkenntnisslehre,
p. 31.
I.
203
PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE.
science that regards the world as a system gov-
erned by general laws, while the ordinary opinion
of men, so far from being imbued with this idea,
is constantly in rebellion against it. The answer
is, that though Kant certainly did not overlook
the inconsequences, or over-estimate the value of
common sense, yet he clearly recognised that the
distinction between it and science is a vanishing one;
or, in other words, that the same principles which
underlie the ordinary consciousness of the world,
when carried a little further, enable us to correct it,
and raise it into science. The simplest human con-
sciousness contains more than sensation, it contains a
reference of sensation to objects; the simplest human
consciousness also contains some conception of the
unity of all objects in one world, (were it but that it
represents them all as existing in one space and one
time.) And it is a necessary part of Kant's argument
to show that between this first form of experience
and the most developed scientific view of the world
there is only a distinction of degree, The mind that
has explicitly done so much, has implicitly done much
more. If the common consciousness understood
itself, it would be the scientific consciousness, and
the inconsistencies of the former with the latter are
also inconsistencies with itself. The intelligence car-
ries in itself principles by means of which it construes
the matter of sense; to use Kant's own metaphor, it
is like the reader of unpointed Hebrew, who supplies
for himself the vowels by means of which alone the
consonants can be raised into expressive sound. The
pure consonant no one has ever uttered; the pure
sensation can be brought in no relation to intelligence.
But while matter altogether unformed is a mere
204
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF pure reASON.
1
abstraction, like the Aristotelian #pŵη λŋ, the
ὕλη,
process of forming is one that may be at very dif
ferent stages in different minds. Hence, as we shall
see, Kant admits a certain relative contrast between
judgments of sensible perception (Wahrnehmung)
and judgments of experience, though he would have
been the last to maintain, and indeed it would have
destroyed all his own work to maintain, that there are,
strictly speaking, any judgments of perception at all.¹
The scientific man proceeds from an experience, which
is already to a certain extent organised, to an ex-
perience more completely organised, but he cannot
deal with completely inorganic sensation, and in all
the advance of knowledge he can only seek for a
more thorough application of the principles implied
in ordinary experience. This, indeed, is just the
truth that underlies his continual assertion of facts
against arbitrary hypothesis. When Galileo let
balls of a particular weight, which he had selected,
roll down an inclined plane; or Torricelli made the
air carry a weight which he had previously deter-
mined to be equal to a certain volume of water; or
when, in later times, Stahl changed metals into lime,
and lime again into metals by withdrawing and re-
storing certain elements of their composition, new
light was thrown upon scientific enquiry. For hence-
forth men of science comprehended that reason has
insight only into that which she herself produces on
her own plan, and that she must, according to fixed
laws, anticipate nature with principles of judgment,
and compel it to answer her questions, or not let her-
self be drawn by it as it were in leading strings; for
observations made on no previously fixed plan will
66
1 Cf. the discussion of this point in chapter 8th, seq.
I.
205
PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE.
never meet together in the discovery of a necessary
law, which is the only thing that gives satisfaction
to reason. In order to be instructed by nature, the
intelligence must go to it not as a scholar who accepts
everything the master says, but as a judge who
compels the witnesses to answer his own questions.
It must therefore bring with it, on the one hand, its
own principles, according to which alone concordant
phenomena can be admitted as laws of nature, and,
on the other hand, the experiment which it has in-
vented according to these principles. Therefore even
the science of Physics entirely owes the advantageous
revolution through which it has passed to the happy
thought that we must not indeed imagine laws for
nature, but make that which reason itself puts into
nature our guide to discover that which can be learnt
only from nature, and which reason in itself is
powerless to teach."1 It is therefore the same
secret plan and principle, involved in the very
nature of human intelligence which unconsciously
guides all minds in the first production of experi-
ence, and which also, with more or less clearness of
consciousness, has lighted every great man of science
to the knowledge of nature's law; and it is this that
Kant proposes to discover and verify in his trans-
cendental criticism.
statements
troduction
We have now so far explained the object of the Are Kant's
Critique as to make it easy to understand how Kant in the In-
comes to attach such importance to the question of exact?
the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments. But
Kant's own statements on the subject in his intro-
duction to the Critique and the Prolegomena are so
important, and they have given rise to so many
¹ Preface to Second Edition, p. 668: Tr., p. 27.
206
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Analysis
and Syn-
thesis.
serious misunderstandings, that it is necessary for
us to give some more definite account of them. In
these preliminary statements, Kant is anxious rather
to explain what he means by a priori synthesis, and
to illustrate its importance from different sciences,
than to show that it lies at the root of all knowledge.
Hence he does not hesitate, for the present, to speak
of empirical synthesis as if it were entirely inde-
pendent of a priori synthesis, and to treat the
necessity and universality of a judgment as in itself
a sufficient evidence that it has not been derived
from experience. But if we take such statements
as conveying the whole truth of the matter, we
make the Critique a sealed book to ourselves, and
we empty the 'transcendental Deduction,' which
contains its central idea, of all serious meaning.
is therefore essential to remove such an obstacle at
the outset, by giving a detailed account of Kant's
argument as nearly as possible in his own words,
adding at the end such criticisms as seem to be
necessary to show its bearing, and the limitations
with which it must be understood.
It
Kant begins with a contrast-with which we have
already become familiar in considering his earlier
works the contrast of analysis and synthesis. The
great question of philosophy, he tells us, has been
long obscured by the confusion of these two pro-
cesses, or by the supposition that mere analysis
of our thoughts can add to our knowledge. It
must be admitted that we make a great formal
improvement in our knowledge by dissecting the
conceptions of things we have already acquired.
But it was a mistake, though a natural mistake, in
Wolff to suppose that the logical process can add to
I.
207
PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE.
3uས་j་ཀ བས་
the contents of thought. It was indeed a mistake
which was fruitful of other mistakes.
For just
because he did not observe the wide gulf that
separates such formal improvements of thinking
from real advances in the knowledge of things, he
insensibly let the legitimate process by which ex-
perience is analysed, pass into the illegitimate pro-
cess by which experience is transcended. Our first
step therefore must be to make this distinction as
clear as possible.
There is undoubtedly one sense in which we can
advance our knowledge, a priori, without aid from
perception or experience. We can analyse the con-
ceptions we already possess, we can separate all the
elements of a complete conception from each other,
and thus we can come to think distinctly and articu-
lately what before we thought confusedly and indis-
tinctly. This is an advance in knowledge, but it is
only a formal and not a material advance. It adds
nothing to the content of our thinking. The new
judgments which it enables us to make are all
explicative or analytic. They are no real addition
to our knowledge; they only show that we have
become clearly conscious of what we knew before
Thus we may take the conception of body, and make
it the subject of a judgment: "All bodies are
extended," or "all bodies are heavy." Are these
analytic or synthetic judgments? To determine
this, we have only to consider whether the predi-
cates of extension or weight were before included in
our conception of body, and whether we arrived at
these predicates by a simple consideration and
analysis of that conception; or whether, on the
other hand, we had to seek for the predicate beyond
208
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Empirical
and
synthesis.
the mere conception of the subject. If the former
be the case, we have a merely analytic, if the latter,
a synthetic, judgment.
Now it is obvious that when we make such
judgments, in which we pass beyond the conception
of the subject, we require something else than that
conception to enable us to make them. No alchemy
of reason will enable us to extract from a conception
what is not contained in it. If, e.g., the predicate
"heavy" is not involved in our conception of 'body,'
we shall never be able to make the judgment, “all
bodies are heavy," unless we have something else
than the mere conception to assist us. In every case
of synthetic or ampliative judgment, therefore, there
is a third something, a mean or middle term of
transition, that enables us to get beyond our pre-
vious conception of the subject, and connect a new
predicate with it. Conception A does not contain
conception B: therefore, to make the judgment
A is B possible, we need a third something, X, to
be the middle term. And without such assistance,
we should never be able to make any progress in
knowledge.
thetic judgments.
Now, in the case of empirical truth, it is
easy to
a priori see what enables the understanding to make syn-
The third something or X
here is simply "complete experience" of the objects
which we think under the conception, e.g., our
conception of body contains the predicate of exten-
sion and impenetrability, but it does not contain the
predicate of weight. But then we are not confined
to our conception. The conception is only an imper-
fect representation of body as it is presented in per-
ception, or, in other words, it contains only a part of
I.
209
PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE.
the attributes so presented. Therefore, the "complete
experience" of body will enable me to amplify my
conception, and to predicate of it not only extension
and impenetrability, which are already involved in
our conception of it, but also weight, which is not so
involved. A conception, in fact, corresponds to an
object which has been perceived, and imperfectly
represents that object. And a renewed act of per-
ception enables us to supply this defect of the con-
ception, to add to its context, and make it a more
perfect representation of the object.
But it is not so easy to see how synthetic proposi-
tions should be possible in cases where we cannot thus
appeal to experience. Take the proposition: "every-
thing that happens has a cause. The predicate
""
here cannot be said to be involved in the notion of
the subject. Under the conception of "something
that happens," I think indeed of an event in time,
which is therefore preceded by another time, etc.;
and I can, by consideration of this conception,
make several analytical judgments. But I can
by no means extract from it the conception of a
cause. Where then do I get the middle term
that enables me to reach beyond the conception
of something that happens, and connects with it
the entirely different conception of a cause?
this case, it cannot be experience. For experience
would never enable me to express my judgment
universally, or to say, "everything that happens
has a cause." The utmost which experience can at-
tain to is frequency or generality, never universality
or necessity. Experience may enable me to think
something as true or false, but it cannot oblige me
to think it, or make it impossible for me to think
Q
In
FU
210
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Synthetic
a priori
in Mathe-
matics,
Physics,
physics.
the opposite. Universality and necessity of judg-
ments show that they are not based on experience,
but on a priori conditions, i. e., that they are based
on the nature of the mind, and not of the things by
which it is impressed. Either such judgments are
invalid, and their necessity and universality is a
delusion: or, they imply an a priori synthesis ;
i. e., a synthesis which has not experience or sen-
sation for its middle term. But, if so, the question
recurs, what is the middle term, the X, by help of
which the mind connects this new predicate with
the notion of the subject? In other words, what is
it that makes a synthetic a priori judgment pos-
sible?
The importance of this question will be more
judgments clearly seen if we take a glance over those sciences
that are supposed to furnish us with our most certain
and Meta- knowledge: for all these sciences contain judgments
which are expressed with universality and necessity.
And if this universality and necessity is not a delu-
sion, if such judgments are not mere provisional
expressions of past experience, but real anticipations
of what will always hold good, then we must con-
clude that an a priori synthesis, or an addition to
our knowledge without sensuous experience, is not
impossible. And this opens up before us the possi-
bility that we may be able to pass beyond the limits
of experience altogether, and know that which can
never be presented in it,-unless we find that there
is something in the very essential nature of our
a priori synthesis which prevents such an extension
of it beyond empirical limits. Now, it cannot be
denied that there are such synthetical judgments in
mathematics. In fact, all mathematical judgments
I.
211
PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE.
are synthetic, or if analytic judgments are made in
mathematics, they are quite subordinate in import-
ance: they serve only to complete the methodical
statement of the logical chain of proof, and never
supply the principle on which it rests. All mathe-
matical judgments, except these, are synthetic, and
synthetic a priori, since they are at once universal
and necessary. If we take even the simplest ex-
ample from arithmetic, e.g., 7 + 5 = 12, we find that
the bare conceptions of 7+ 5 are not sufficient by
analysis to give us the conception of 12. We need a
third something to carry us from the former to the
latter; and that something is in this case a perception
that corresponds to one of the numbers, e.g., 7 points
or 5 fingers. Say I take the number 7, and call to
my aid the perception of 5 fingers; I then proceed to
number the units which were united in the concep-
tion of 5, and add them successively to 7, and thus I
see the number 12 generated, as it were, before my
eyes. Yet, as this synthesis is expressed with
absolute necessity, it cannot derive its form from
the particular perceptions, the five fingers, through
which we discern its truth. Otherwise, we should
have a necessary and universal truth of experience
based on
one instance. Again, take the propo-
sition that the straight line is the shortest distance
between two given points. This is a judgment
that involves synthesis, i.e., a judgment we could
not make without going beyond the conception of
straightness; for it is impossible to extract any-
thing about smallness or greatness of quantity
out of that conception. And the synthesis is a
priori; for the instant it is apprehended, it carries
with it the conviction of its universality and neces-
212
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Traces of
the dis-
previous
philoso-
sity. But, secondly, physical science contains among
its principles many judgments that are synthetic
a priori. The judgment, e.g., that, in all changes
of the material world, the quantity of matter
remains unchanged, or the judgment that, in the
communication of motion, action and reaction must
be equal to each other, may be taken as examples.
They are a priori, for they are seen to be necessary
and universal, so soon as they are thoroughly under-
stood, and no proof of them can be derived from
experience, which does not really presuppose them.
Yet they are synthetic; for, to take the first of
them, the notion of matter does not involve the
notion of permanence, but only of the occupation of
space; and in order to think it as permanent, we
must go beyond the notion of matter, and add
to it a predicate which is not included in it.
Lastly, if these most certain kinds of our knowledge,
the best ascertained sciences of empirical reality,
contain a priori synthesis, it can scarcely be neces-
sary for us to prove that metaphysics, if meta-
physics is possible, requires such synthesis. The
difference in this case is, that the knowledge re-
quired is not only beyond what can be got by
experience, but it even relates to objects which can
never be empirically presented to us at all-objects,
the very existence of which has to be demonstrated
by an a priori synthesis.
These instances will make clear the great im-
tinction in portance of the question we have raised, and of
the distinction presupposed in it. The distinction
especially between analytic and synthetic, and the distinction
between synthetic a priori and synthetic a posteriori,
are at the foundation of all sound philosophy, and
phies,
in Hume.
I.
213
PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE.
the neglect of them explains why the greatest efforts
have failed to produce a system that could resist
attack. Leibnitz and Wolff ignored the distinction
altogether, and consequently produced a dogmatic
philosophy, which substituted the analytic explana-
tion of our thoughts for the proof of the reality of
objects corresponding to them. Locke had a passing
glimpse of it, but he did not use it to any purpose.
Hume came nearest to it when he pointed out that
the principle of causality takes us beyond the im-
pressions of sense, and what is immediately given in
them. But, as he supposed this to be the only case
of such transcending of sense, he was led rather to
question the validity of the principle of causality,
and to explain it away, than to investigate the con-
ditions under which in general it is possible to go
beyond these impressions.
"Since the Essays of Locke and Leibnitz, or
rather since the very dawn of metaphysical science,
no event has happened that might more powerfully
have influenced its fate than the attack which Hume
made upon it. For if he did not himself carry light
into this department of knowledge, he at least
struck a spark, from which light might have been
kindled, if it had fallen on an inflammable substance,
and its first radiance had been carefully fostered."
"Hume started mainly from a single, but very
important, notion of Metaphysics, the notion of the
connexion of cause and effect (including the subor-
dinate conceptions of action and power). He put
reason, that claims to be the parent of this concep-
tion, to the question regarding it. He asked with
what right it could assert that there is anything in
the world possessed of such a nature that, whenever
214
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
it is posited, something quite different must also be
posited. For that is what is involved in the notion
of a cause. He then proved irresistibly, that it is
entirely impossible for reason, a priori and from the
mere analysis of conceptions, to arrive at the idea of
such a necessary connexion between two independent
things. It seemed to him impossible to understand
how, because something exists, it is necessary that
something quite different should exist, or to discover
from what source, before the perception of the things
connected, we could get the conception of such a con-
nexion. And from this he concluded, that reason is
entirely self-deceived in claiming for its offspring a
conception which is really a bastard child begotten by
experience upon imagination. For it is imagination
that brings certain data, received from experience,
under a law of association, and substitutes the sub-
jective necessity-i.e., the custom thereby produced,
for an objective necessity of reason. And thus he
arrived at the result that reason has no power to
think such necessary connection of independent
things even in general, and that all pretended
a priori knowledge is nothing but common experi-
ence, passing itself off with a false stamp of neces-
sity, or, what comes to the same thing, that there is
no such thing as metaphysics, and can be none." 1
This conclusion of Hume was too hasty, and it is
probable that he would have hesitated to draw it, if
he had considered the question in its universality,
and had seen that the rejection of a priori synthesis
involves far more than the principle of causality, and
that especially the logical consequence of it must be
the denial of validity to the most evident and certain
1 Proleg., Introd., p. 6: Tr., p. 5.
I
I.
215
PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE.
Still, he
of sciences—the science of mathematics.¹
did raise in this particular case the great question of
the possibility of synthetic judgments, and his scep-
ticism was a challenge to all the metaphysicians of
the time to vindicate the claims of their science.
sophy of
sense
the pro-
It was a challenge, however, to which they made The philo-
no satisfactory reply. Hume's immediate opponents common
-Reid, Oswald, Beattie, and Priestley-were so far evades
from giving one, that they altogether mistook the blem.
point of his reasonings, and with great vehemence of
language, set about proving the validity of the con-
ception of cause, from the point of view of common
sense. "The question, however, was not whether
this conception is useful, or even indispensable, for
the knowledge of Nature, for that Hume had never
denied, but whether its truth is independent of
experience, and whether it has, as on that supposi-
tion it may be supposed to have, an application
which is not confined to the objects of experience.
This it was that they had to prove, and to call in
common sense as an oracle, in order to cut the knot
philosophy was unable to untie, was to appeal to the
vulgar on a question of science. "Hume, I should
think, had as good a claim to the possession of sound
common sense as Beattie, and he possessed besides
that, to which Beattie had no claim, to wit, that
critical reason which keeps the common under-
"}
1 Did Hume consider mathematical truth to be analytical? Kant
thinks that he must have done so; but from the well-known contrast of
' relations of ideas' and 'matters of fact,' we should rather conclude
that, in the Essays, he had fallen back on the opinion of Locke, that
such truth is merely ideal. In the Treatise he, more consistently, treats
mathematical truth as derived from the analysis of sensible experience,
and he is therefore forced to deny its exactness. See Green's Introduc-
tion, § 274. There is no proof that Kaut had ever read the Treatise.
216
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Kant gene-
ralises, in
order to
solve, it.
standing in check, and prevents it intruding into
speculative matters, or assuming to decide where
these are in question. For common sense has no
power of justifying its own principles, and it does
not remain good sense, unless it keeps to its own
sphere. Hammer and chisel are very good instru-
ments for carpenters' work, but we must use the
needle for engraving. And so the speculative and
the ordinary understanding have each their own
place and use the latter in deciding on matters of
experience, and the former in metaphysic, where we
have to make universal judgments based on pure
conceptions.'
22 1
Kant, when he was awakened by Hume from
his 'dogmatic slumber,' proceeded to deal with the
question in an altogether different way. Seeing the
nature of the question raised by Hume, viz., whether
Reason by itself and independently of experience
has any synthetic power, i.e., any power of connect-
ing things together by means of conceptions not
given to it in experience, he gave to that question
the necessary generality. He asked whether there
are any other cases besides the case of causality in-
volving a synthetic movement of thought, and he set
himself to discover them, and make a complete list of
them. Whatever principles of connection involve uni-
versality and necessity, these, he said to himself, cannot
be legitimately derived from experience. Guided by
this rule, he discovered, as has been already shown,
that Geometry, Physics, and Metaphysics all contain
such principles. He saw, therefore, that if with
Hume we declare that a priori synthesis is impos-
sible, and that the appearance of it only arises from
1 Prolegomena, p. 8: Tr. p. 7.
i

I.
217
PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE.
our mistaking a subjective necessity based on cus-
tom for an objective necessity of reason, we must
necessarily go much farther than Hume did, and
we must deny the validity not only of Metaphy-
sics, but also of Mathematics, and of the a priori
part of Physics. On Hume's principles we must
reject not only the science that pretends to speak of
what lies beyond experience, but also what has been
hitherto supposed to be our most exact and certain
knowledge in regard to things within the sphere of
experience. The question of the possibility of a
priori synthetic propositions is not therefore a ques-
tion of Metaphysic alone, but breaks up into three
questions, each of which has a special importance.
How is pure Mathematics possible? How is
pure Physics possible? and, lastly, how is Meta-
physic possible? It is, however, to be remembered
that as to the last question our position is somewhat
different from that in which we stand in regard to
the other two. For of Mathematics and Physics
there can be no proper doubt that they are possible
sciences seeing they actually exist. They are con-
nected and self-consistent systems of truth in regard
to the objects of experience, whose possibility is
proved by their actuality; and hence the only ques-
tion with respect to them seems to be how they are
possible. But the progress of Metaphysic has
hitherto been so unsatisfactory, and its successive
systems so unproductive of definite results, that its
very existence as a science may be questioned.
Hence, before we ask how it is possible, it seems
in the first place necessary that we should prove
that it is possible. But this is not altogether so.
For there is a sense in which no one can deny
·
218
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Imperfec-
tions of
troductory
statement.
the existence of Metaphysic. No one can deny
that human reason is continually driven, and that
not only by mere vanity, but by its own essential
needs to raise questions which find no answer in
experience. In this way every one necessarily be-
comes a metaphysician so soon as the speculative
instinct has been awakened in him. Thus it is in any
case a legitimate enquiry, how Metaphysic is possible
as a natural tendency of the mind. Nor can we stop
short here: for we cannot really determine the subjec-
tive necessity without determining also the objective
validity of metaphysic. Either, therefore, we shall
succeed in solving its problems, or, failing this, we
must be able to show that the mind is incompetent
to solve them. Thus, either in knowledge or in
clear consciousness of the grounds of our ignorance,
we shall find a satisfactory conclusion of our re-
searches.¹
•
We have now before us Kant's account of the
Kant's in- objects of criticism as it is presented in the Prole-
gomena and in the introduction to the second edition
of the Critique. It agrees substantially with the
results we had previously derived from a general
view of the whole work. There are, however, two
important points of difference to which we must
advert. In the first place, Kant does not clearly
explain the relation in which a priori and a pos-
teriori synthesis stand to each other. On the
contrary, he speaks of them as if they were co-
ordinate and independent species of the same genus.
Hence, for all that is said in these sections, we might
imagine him to be maintaining the old Wolffian idea
that there is a rational or a priori part, as well as an
¹ Introduction to Critique, § 6: Tr., p. 12.
1.
219
PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE.
empirical or a posteriori part, in every science. But
this is merely a preliminary, and therefore inexact,
statement of the Kantian view, for if the Critique
proves anything, it is that there is no experience
without a priori synthesis. It is a frequent, we
might say an invariable, characteristic of Kant's
method of exposition, that he first treats as entirely
separate things what he afterwards shows to be
merely elements or factors of a unity. His intention,
no doubt, was to give clearness to each part by
taking it by itself, before he considered it in its
relation to the other parts. But the result is, that
he often seems to be reasoning in a circle, when he
is really advancing from an external and fragmen-
tary view of a subject to the apprehension of it in
its essential unity as a whole.
And so it is here. For, in the second place, so
long as a priori truth and a posteriori truth are
regarded as separate and independent parts of
knowledge, so long the only proof that judg-
ments are a priori, or not derived from experi-
ence, must be found in the fact, that they are
universal and necessary. But a reference to the
mere feeling of necessity that accompanies a judg-
ment, seems to be a very insufficient way of meeting
the scepticism of Hume, who has the ready answer,
that the necessity is merely subjective, and pro-
duced by custom. Kant indeed says, that Hume
would have hesitated to carry out his principle if he
had seen its application to mathematics. But why
not? In the earlier treatise, which Kant does not
seem to have studied, Hume had actually attempted
to reduce mathematical truth within the limits of
sensational experience. The impossibility of getting
220
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
The
Critique
not meta-
but tran
physical,
scenden-
tal.
rid of a priori judgments, or explaining away their
necessity, really rested for Kant, not merely on the
nature of these judgments in themselves, but on
their relation to all knowledge. The very founda-
tion of Hume's argument is destroyed when it is
shown that for us, as thinking beings, there could
be no knowledge or experience whatever, except
through these very necessary principles, which he
seeks to explain away. For no custom or associa-
tion, based on a repetition of experiences, could be
the source of the very principles on which experience
rests. And it is to this view of the subject that
Kant directs us, when he asks the significant ques-
tion, "Whence could experience itself derive its
certitude, if all the rules on which it proceeds were
themselves also empirical and contingent?" ¹
To sum up what has been said, the Critique is, in
Kant's language, not metaphysical, but transcen-
dental, although it must necessarily be, to a certain
extent, metaphysical, in order that it may be able
to solve the transcendental problem. In simpler
words, Kant seeks to discover our a priori ideas,
not for their own sake, but as the ground of our
knowledge of objects. He endeavours to show that
knowledge is possible only through a priori synthe-
sis, and to determine the nature and limit of this
synthesis. By means of the criteria of necessity and
universality, (though these alone, as we shall see,
are by no means sufficient for the purpose,) he finds
out the a priori elements of conception and percep-
tion. This forms the first part of his work, or, in
his own phraseology, the metaphysical exposition
and deduction of these elements. But this dis-
1 Introduction, § 2: Tr., p. 3.
I.
221
PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE.
covery has to him no value for itself apart from
the transcendental deduction, by which it is proved
that just these and no other a priori ideas are the
foundation of all our knowledge, and that, in their
connection with each other, and with the conscious-
ness of self, they constitute that systematic unity
of intelligence which seems to reflect, because it is
itself the creative source of the objective unity of
the world.
222
CHAPTER II.
UNDERSTANDING AND SENSE.
tion
The rela-IN the preceding chapter we have explained Kant's
Esthetic reasons for making a distinction between what
Analytic. he designates the Dialectic on the one hand, and the
and
Esthetic and Analytic on the other; but we have
still to examine his reason for separating the Æs-
thetic from the Analytic. It is his view that
the organic plan of experience is derived from
the mind; but that in that organic plan there
are two parts, a part due to the activity of the
understanding, which binds together the uncon-
nected data of sense, and a part due to the form
of sense, i.e., to the manner in which our sen-
suous nature modifies the impressions it receives.
Further, it is just because of this modification by
the forms of sense that sensations, which in them-
selves are transitory and unrelated existences,
become, not indeed actually related, but capable
of being related to each other by the understanding,
and so made into parts of a connected experience.
Experience, then, even in its a priori part, even in
the organic plan which it owes to the intelligence, is
made up of two factors or elements, one of which is
UNDERSTANDING AND SENSE.
223
1
contributed by understanding, and the other by
sense. "It is possible that these two great branches
of the tree of knowledge spring from one common
root, but that root is hidden from us." The dif-
ference is for us an irreducible one, and indeed, as
we shall see, it is just because it is irreducible that
Kant holds human knowledge to be confined to the
phenomenal. It is therefore necessary that we
should clearly apprehend his reason for referring
knowledge to two such disparate sources.
of the op-
Sense and
In the account of the pre-critical development of First form
Kant's ideas, we have already shown what was the position of
first form which this distinction took in his mind. Under-
standing.
It was a form which is sufficiently familiar to us in
exoteric discourses,' as one of the commonplaces of
the popular logic and psychology. According to
this view, objects are supposed to be presented to
us through sense in their complete individuality
and determination, while to the understanding is
left the formal business of abstraction and genera-
lisation, by which single qualities or attributes are
separated from the rest, and made the basis of
classification. Besides this formal office, understand-
ing is asserted by some, and denied by others, to be
itself the source of certain general notions, such as
those of cause, substance, &c. In both its real and
formal use, however, the objects of the understand-
ing are supposed to be 'general ideas,' and the only
use of these ideas, whether derived from the intel-
ligence itself, or got by analysis of the objects of
sense, is to determine the individuals which fall.
under them, and connect them together into classes.
There are, therefore, according to this view, two
¹ Introduction, § 7 : Tr., p. 18.
224
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Second
form of it.
Kant
adopts the
former
in the
distinct kinds of knowledge, knowledge of the uni-
versal, and knowledge of the particular, and the only
question to dispute is, whether the former is merely
an abstract repetition of the latter, or whether it also
contains elements that are peculiar to itself.
It is a very different theory, however, that sug-
gests itself when we begin to reflect on the real
nature of the data of sense. For then it appears
that if we abstract from all the work of intelli-
gence, there can be no such thing as a perception
of an individual object. Sense of itself cannot de-
termine an individual as such; its data are a series
of isolated feelings that have no connexion with
each other, and no relation to any object more per-
manent than themselves. And the conceptions of
the understanding, the conceptions of cause, sub-
stance, &c., must be used to bind together the
manifold elements of sensation ere any intelligible
reality, any object capable of being known, can exist
for us.
From this point of view, therefore, we can
no longer talk of perception as giving one kind of
knowledge, and conception another, for both elements
are necessary, and either, severed from the other,
loses all its significance. 'Conceptions without per-
ceptions are empty; perception without conception
is blind.' They are factors, and not species of know-
ledge, and therefore cannot be understood except in
their unity.
Now, it is to be observed that, in the Esthetic,
Kant adopts the former view of the distinction of
Esthetic. perception and conception, reserving the correction
of it by the latter for the Analytic. While, there-
fore, he seems in the Esthetic to be abstracting
from all that is not given in sense, he is not really
III.
235
ARGUMENT OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
of the train of our perceptions and feelings without
dating it, or placing it in a certain relation to other
states of the self in time. Lastly, as we cannot
perceive space as in time, or time as in space, so we
cannot confuse, but must necessarily distinguish the
inner and the outer life. Yet as our perceptions of
outer things are at the same time represented as
states of our consciousness, they fall indirectly under
the form of inner sense.
theories
nature of
Space and
Now, what are Time and Space? Are they sub- Different
stances? Are they qualities or relations of things of the
that would exist in themselves whether they were per-pace
ceived by us or no? Or, finally, are they conditions
or forms of our perceptions of things, i.e., are they
ways in which we are obliged to regard things
because of the character of our perceiving faculty?
What has been already said points to the last answer
as the true one; but in order to arrive at a satisfac-
tory settlement of the question, we must give both a
metaphysical and transcendental exposition of space
and time. In other words, we must first show from
a consideration of their nature, that they are a priori,
and what kind of a priori; and then, in the second
place, we must prove that the view of them we have
thus obtained is the only view that is consistent
with their relation to objective knowledge or ex-
perience.
Time are
The metaphysical exposition involves two main Space and
questions, first, whether space and time are a priori a priori.
or a posteriori, involved in the nature of the subject)
or resulting from impression made upon it from with-
out} and, secondly, whether they are conceptions or
perceptions, (products of understanding or (of sense,
Now to answer the first of these questions, we have
236
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
to consider (1) that the ideas of time and space are
logically prior to experience. For experience must be
internal or external, of the inner or the outer world.
But to perceive anything externally is to perceive it
as standing in a relation of externality to something
else, either as out of me, i.e., occupying a different
part of space from that which my body occupies; or
out of other things, i.e., occupying a different part of
space from them. But such localisation of objects
with reference to each other presupposes space in
which the localisation is made. Again, to perceive
anything internally, is to perceive it in time. For I
cannot determine anything as a state of my mind,
unless I relate it to, yet distinguish it from, other
states of my consciousness, as preceding or following
them; in other words, I must date it in relation to
the other states. But this, again, presupposes time
as that in which the states are arranged in definite
connexion with each other. (It is to be observed
in passing that Kant is not here contending that
the forms of perception are in time prior to any
other perceptions; in fact, to do so would have
been absurd for any one who held time itself to be a
form of perception. What he means is simply that
the perception of objects as in time and space, from
the mere logical relations of the ideas, implies and
presupposes time and space themselves. Kant is
probably thinking of Leibnitz, as well as of Hume;
for, to both, time and space were relations of objects,
which presupposed the objects related; and what
he says is simply that the truth is just the reverse
of this. Space and time are the presupposition of
all determinations of objects in inner and outer
experience, and cannot therefore be secondary to,
II.
229
UNDERSTANDING AND SENSE.
ledge, which we may call its differentiation and its
integration. In other words, we have to ask, in the
first place, how new matter of thought is added to,
or springs out of, that which is already known; and
we have to ask, in the second place, how these new
elements are combined into a unity of thought with
those that were apprehended before. There can be
no progress in knowledge without both of these
processes. If there be no differentiation, if no new
elements are presented for our apprehension, it is
obvious that thought must remain inert, or at best
must circle round itself in monotonous tautology
without any movement of advance. And it is
equally clear that if there be merely a continuous
series of new feelings or ideas which are never bound
together in one consciousness with those that pre-
sented themselves before, there can be no real pro-
gress, but only change and alteration. For progress
of knowledge it is required that at every step
onwards the mind should return upon its own unity.
The movement of intelligence must be at once
differentiating and integrating, or, if we prefer it,
inductive and deductive. Nor is it possible to
apprehend one of these movements in its true
character except in immediate connexion with, and
relation to, the other. Now, in order to simplify the
subject, Kant attempts, in the first instance, to treat
these processes separately; and what is perhaps
more confusing, he uses for each severally as well as
for their combination the same term 'synthesis.' In
the Esthetic, where he is dwelling on the part which
sense has in experience, he tells us that pure thought
is merely analytic, and that for synthesis we need
perceptions :-meaning, of course, that perception
230
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
alone can give us new content for thought, new
matter to apprehend in other words, that pure
thought cannot differentiate itself. In the Analytic,
on the other hand, where he is dwelling on the
element contributed by the understanding, he tells
us with equal decision that, while perception can set
before us a manifold content for apprehension, it
cannot enable us to bind it together into the unity
of an object, and that synthesis "is the one thing
that can never be given through objects, but must
be effected by the subject for himself, for it is essen-
tially an act of his spontaneity:"1 in other words,
perception cannot integrate itself. The common
point in both these senses of the word synthesis is,
that they are both opposed to analysis, which,
according to Kant, proceeds by me" identity, and
therefore does not enable us either o combine what
is given in separation, or to add any new elements
of difference to those that are known already, but
only to break up into its parts a whole that was
formerly compounded of these very parts. In both
kinds of synthesis, therefore, there is an advance
made in knowledge, whereas in pure analysis there
is no advance.
Now, as we have already said, these two processes
of differentiation and integration cannot properly be
separated. The difference and the unity of thought
are so related that one cannot be truly apprehended
except in relation to the other. When Kant, there-
fore, pretends to sever them, and to set before us
perception without conception, it is only that he
neglects for the moment the element that is due to
conception, not that he really gets rid of it. To get
1 Transc. Deduction, § 15, p. 731 : Tr., p. 80.
ARGUMENT OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
233
tions shall be? To ask this question is the same
thing as to ask, whether there are any of our per-
ceptions, or any elements of our perceptions, that are
independent of sensation? For in sensation we are
passive-we wait for something to affect us-and in
the mere constitution of our sense as capable of
affection, there is, so far as we can see, no necessity
for its being affected. We cannot anticipate any-
thing that depends on the actual affection of our
sensibility, nor can we, when affected, assert that we
shall be affected again in the same way. Whenever
therefore we can make any universal assertions as to
objects presented through sense, whenever we can
say of such objects that they must be such and such,
our assertions must, it seems, be based on the very
nature of our own sensibility, and not on the nature
of the objects affecting it. For such knowledge is
in the widest sense anticipatory, it is knowledge,
not of what is given or has been given, but know-
ledge of what must always be given. Therefore, if
such knowledge exists, it is necessarily knowledge
based on the constitution or form of sense.
Time.
Now, even when we eliminate from our idea of Space and
an object all general conceptions, such as the con-
ceptions of cause or substance, and when we regard
it simply as an object of perception, it still preserves
a certain determination that does not belong to any
mere sensation or feeling. For an object of per-
ception is one which is presented to us as here in a
particular part of space, and now at a particular
point of time; or, at least, if it be merely a state of
our consciousness, as now at a particular part of time
—that is, it is determined in space and time, or at
least in time, with reference to other objects. And
234
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
these determinations, as will be manifest when we
examine their nature, are not derived from any sen-
sation, though they immediately attach themselves
to all the objects of sense as such. If perception be
the faculty that apprehends the individual, it neces-
sarily apprehends it as occupying a definite position
of space, when it is an external object; and whether
it be an external object or a state of the mind, it
apprehends it as occupying a definite time. Yet time
and space are not given in sensation. They are not
the sensational matter of perception, but something
that "makes it possible for us to represent all parts
of that matter as arranged in certain relations to each
other;" and this we may fairly call the form of
perception.¹
Now, as we have already observed, there are two
ways in which the manifold matter given by the
different senses is arranged. On the one hand, it
is arranged as in an external world, a world which
is different from the mind that thinks it, and is sup-
posed to exist independently of the train of our
thoughts or perceptions. Such a world is a world in
space. On the other hand, the matter of sense is
arranged as in an inner world, as occupying a certain
place in the series of states that constitute our inner
life. Such a world is a world in time. Time and
space are therefore respectively the forms of inner
and outer perception. We cannot perceive anything
as existing without us, i.e., independent of the train
of perceptions, feelings, etc., which constitute our life
without localising it, i.e., putting it in a certain
relation of externality to other things in space; nor
can we perceive anything as within us as forming part
¹ Esthetic, § 1: Tr., p. 21,
II.
231
UNDERSTANDING AND SENSE.
rid of it would be to represent to the mind a mere
manifold without unity, which is obviously an im-
possible feat. He is obliged, therefore, to assume
for the moment, subject to subsequent correction,"
that sense presents us with individual objects as
such, and that the understanding, on the other hand,
is simply the faculty of the Universal-i.e., that its
function is to connect together individual objects by
means of general conceptions, got either from the
analysis of these individuals, or drawn by the under-
standing from itself. That experience or knowledge
of objects is impossible without conception, he does
not yet maintain. Rather he allows, in the mean-
time, that it is possible, and on that hypothesis he
shows that it presupposes certain a priori forms by
which the matter of sense is determined in all our
perceptions. The examination of the soundness of
the hypothesis itself is reserved for the Analytic.²
1 Which correction is given, § 26, note, p. 753: Tr., p. 98.
2 There is still a third sense that might be given to the contrast of
Sense and Understanding: they might be regarded as different stages
in the development of knowledge. But this we do not yet need to
consider.
•
*
232
CHAPTER III.
THE ARGUMENT OF THE ESTHETIC.
Are there
any a
priori per-
ceptions?
6
KEEPING in view the explanations of the
previous chapter, let us now see how Kant
deals with knowledge in so far as it is given
through sense. To understand his argument, it
must be remembered, in the first place, that the
question he tries to answer relates to the possibility
of the attainment of knowledge by beings who are
confined to their own minds, and who can know
nothing, strictly speaking, but their own ideas,' the
modes of their own consciousness; and in the second
place, that he seeks to show that this possibility
is dependent on another-viz., the possibility of
synthetic a priori judgments. An objective con-
sciousness is possible for us, only if we can go beyond
our immediate impressions, and determine them by
universal principles of relation derived from our own
minds.
·
Are there, then, any such universal principles of
relation that determine us in the perception, as dis-
tinguished from the conception, of objects? Does
the mind bring with it to perception any constitutive
forms that enable us to anticipate what its percep-
II.
225
UNDERSTANDING AND SENSE.
doing so. His elimination of the elements, contri
buted by the understanding, is necessarily imperfect,
so long as he permits himself to conceive of sense as
a source, not only of sensations, but of perceptions,
as presenting to us not merely a 'manifold' of
isolated feelings, but individual objects determined
in time and space, as well as time and space them-
selves as objects. Here, therefore, as in many
other places, we find Kant making his way into the
subject by aid of the ordinary modes of representing
it, though the result of his speculation is to take him
beyond those modes. It has been a source of con-
fusion to many of Kant's readers, and at times,
perhaps, even to Kant himself, that the language of
the earlier part of his work is not reformed in view
of the conclusions which he ultimately reaches. In
explanation, we may remember that the theory of
the Esthetic was developed at a time when the
ideas of the Analytic had not yet been fully
matured. Afterwards Kant satisfied himself with
simply indicating that the Esthetic must be cor-
rected in accordance with these conceptions, and,
with this general caution, left the student to follow
the same course of development and self-criticism
through which he himself had passed.
of Logic.
Kant, then, takes his stand for the present on the His view
common opposition of perception to conception, as
that of the individual to the general; he assumes
also that the ordinary Logic gives a sufficiently
accurate account of the relation of the one to the
other. Logic, indeed, is to him the one branch of
intellectual science which is in a satisfactory state,
and has been so almost from the time when it was
completed, as if at a stroke, by Aristotle. He often
P
226 THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
CHAP.
returns to the contrast between the security and per-
manence of its doctrines, and the uncertainty and con-
tinual variations of Metaphysic. "Logic," he says,
"had attained the certain movement of a science in
the earliest times, as we may see from the fact that,
since Aristotle, it has never been forced to make a
single step backwards, unless we find such a regress
in the clearing away of one or two useless subtleties,
and the more accurate expression of a few of its
definitions things which we may regard rather as
improvements in the elegance of its form than as
adding substantially to its certitude as a science. It
is noticeable also that, to the present day, it has not
been able to take a single step forwards, which
seems to show that it came from its author's hand
completed and perfect. For, if some moderns have
thought to extend the sphere of Logic by bringing
in chapters from Psychology about the various
faculties of the mind, and chapters from Metaphysic
about the origin of knowledge, and the different
degrees of certitude with which we apprehend
different objects or again, chapters from Anthro-
pology about the causes and cures of prejudice,
they have merely shown their ignorance of the
peculiar nature of the science with which they were
dealing. We do not add to the sciences, we rather
deform them when we let their distinctive bounds be
lost. And the limits of Logic are accurately deter-
mined, when we define it as the science which treats
of the formal laws of all thought, without regard to
its object or its origin, whether empirical or a priori,
and also without regard to the accidental or natural
hindrances which it encounters in our own minds." 1
:
¹ Preface, 2nd Edition, p. 64: Tr. p. 24.
II.
227
UNDERSTANDING AND SENSE.
This view of the certainty and completeness of Logic
within its own sphere, was ever present to Kant,
and we shall see in the sequel that he returns to
it again and again as a secure starting-point for his
speculations.
perception
ception.
Now, the theory of formal Logic lends itself most Contrast of
naturally---so much we may say at the outset to and con-
the first of the two views of knowledge which we
have mentioned. At least, if formal Logic gives
a sufficient account of every possible process of
thought, as many Logicians have maintained, then
thought is confined entirely to the task of analysis,
without the possibility of synthesis. Its products
are merely partial conceptions of objects that must
be previously given to it as wholes, and if we ask
how the wholes are given, the answer naturally is,
that they are given through perception. Perception,
therefore, can alone give value to conception, for it
is only through perceptions that the conceptions can
be related to objects. From these conclusions flow
a number of characteristics by which perception and
conception are distinguished from each other. A
conception is always general, never individual: it
may be complex, but it is at least definite and
limited: it may have an indefinite number of
individuals under it, but it cannot have more than a
definite number of marks in it: hence it is always
possible to analyse it completely, or reduce it to the
simple parts of which it is composed. On the other
hand, perception is always individual, and its com-
plexity is such that we can never completely analyse
it; it has a certain potential infinity, if we may use
the expression, which can never be exhausted. A
perception, therefore, can never be changed into a
228
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Two senses
of synthesis
in Kant.
99 1
conception. Logicians tell us that we can never find
an infima species, or define the individual. "For if
we have a conception that we immediately apply to
the individual, there may still be specific differences
present in the individual perceived, which we either
do not remark, or which we leave out of account.'
Hence perception continually enables us to add to
our conception of its object, while thought only
elicits or evolves into clear consciousness the differ-
ences of the matter given to it, and can add no new
element to that which is given.
In the Esthetic, as I have already said, Kant
proceeds on this view. He points out, indeed, that
there are conceptions, such as those of substance and
cause, which the mind does not get by analysis of
the individual objects given in perception, but of
which it is itself the source. But he does not tell
us, as he afterwards tells us in the Analytic, that
sense only presents to us a mere "manifold," which
requires to be bound together in the unity of a con-
ception ere it can be apprehended as an object.
the contrary, he for the present takes this unity as a
part of what is given in sense. He maintains, in
short, the ordinary contrast between the generality
of the conception and the individuality of the
perception, and it is on this basis that he discusses
the question as to the nature of the ideas of Time
and Space.
On
The import of these remarks, and the relation of
the Esthetic to the Analytic, may perhaps be made
clearer by an anticipatory explanation of the different
senses in which Kant uses the word 'synthesis.'
There are two things to be accounted for in know-
1 Kant's Logic, § 11; III., pp. 277-9.
III.
237
ARGUMENT OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
or dependent on, the apprehension of these ob-
jects.¹
1
But (2) may not time and space be prior to the
apprehension of objects, and yet, as Hume main-
tained, derived from sensation? May they not be
the first ideas got from sensation? To this Kant
answers, that such a derivation of time and space is
impossible, because they are not only prior to all
experience, but also inseparable from our intelli-
gence. We cannot in thought abolish either the one
or the other, though we may think away all objects
existing in either. We can conceive space emptied
of objects, but we cannot conceive of the non-
existence of space: we can conceive that nothing
should occur, but we cannot conceive of the non-
existence of time. Time and space, therefore, are
a priori--i.e., they are grounded on the nature of
our faculties, and not in the nature of the objects,
that may be presented through them. (Here again
we must remark that Kant does not mean that space
and time could have been apprehended without any
experience, which indeed it is essential to his posi-
tion to deny. But he means that space and time
belong to that 'organic plan,' as we have called it,
¹ It is because he misses the exact point which Kant is here proving,
that Ueberweg accuses Kant of reasoning in a circle. Kant is not yet
proving the a priori nature of space and time, or he is proving it only
on the hypothesis (to be further verified in the next paragraph) that
time and space are not sensations. Cf. Cohen (p. 7), whose statement
here is very good, though it perhaps adds a little to that which Kant
has distinctly expressed. It is true, as Hölder (p. 11) observes, that
Kant states the first point as if he were proving already, not only
priority, but also a-priority, when he says that "Space is no empirical
conception abstracted from outer experience." But the proof is incom-
plete, unless we exclude the idea that time and space are given in
sensation, and this no doubt is the reason why Kant adds the second
argument.
238
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Space and
Time are
percep-
tions, not
concep-
tions.
of experience, which is involved in the nature of our
intelligence. This he proves by the fact that while
we can think away all objects and events, space and
time still persist, and will not be suppressed even in
thought. Kant was afterwards to show more fully,
that all the parts in the a priori plan of experience
are so related to each other, that we cannot suppress
any one of them without suppressing them all. It
is true that he shows also at the same time, that the
consciousness of objects as such, though not of any
particular object, is a part of this plan; which would
involve a limitation of the above statement that we
can think away all objects. We must, however,
remember that Kant is still arguing on the supposi-
tion that objects can be given as such in sense per-
ception apart from any activity of conception.)
But if space and time are elements contributed by
the mind itself, it still remains to be determined to
what faculty of mind we are to attribute them. Are
they perceptions, or conceptions? That they are the
former is proved (3) by their individuality and (4)
by their infinity. If space (and what we say of
space holds good of time also) were a conception, it
must be general, and not individual, abstract, and not
concrete. To take the first, (3) space is not general,
for, if so, it would express only the common element
in all spaces.; or if we conceived it as a whole, it
would be a collective, and not an individual, whole.
But we do not arrive at the idea of space either by
generalisation from, or by combination of, particular
spaces: on the contrary, we determine particular
spaces by cutting off portions from the one all-
embracing space. Space, therefore, is an individual
whole, which is ideally prior to its parts, and is pre
iii.
239
ARGUMENT OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
supposed in them. But an individual can be given
only in perception; and in this case, in a priori per-
ception. An a priori perception, therefore, is the
basis of all our conceptions, not only of space as a
whole, but also of every particular space: for we do
not get our conception of lines and figures in space
by analysis of our perceptions of objects, but by an
ideal movement of construction, in which we our-
selves draw limits and construct figures in it.
Lastly (4), Space is not abstract but concrete; for
it is 'represented as an infinite whole.' The moment
we apprehend space as an object, it is determined
for us as a quantity which has no limit, and the
content of which we can never exhaust. We can go
on ad infinitum to determine parts and relations in
it, just as we go on adding to our conception of an
object of sense by closer inspection of it. Now
"such limitlessness of progress can only be given
in perception: for no mere conception of relations
could carry with it such a principle of their in-
finity." For, as we have remarked before, in
a conception, the parts are always definite and
limited in number. We may think of it as a genus
that comprehends an infinity of species and indi-
viduals under it; but we cannot think of it as con-
taining an infinite number of conceptions in it. It is
no infinite storehouse from which you may always
get new materials. Only perception, which presents
objects to us in their concrete individuality, can
open up an unlimited possibility of their continuous
determination.2
"" 1
1 This expression is from the first edition of the Critique, p. 36.
2 In the last two paragraphs I have somewhat expanded Kant's
statement, but not, I think, added anything not involved in it. The
240
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
What is
meant by
forms of
percep-
tion?
The tran-
scendental
The metaphysical exposition of space and time
has brought us to the conclusion that they are
priori perceptions which we cannot suppress even
in thought, and which are the forms of all other
perceptions. Were it not that the point has often
been misunderstood, it would seem unnecessary to
explain that form does not here mean a receptacle
into which certain things, which have previously a
definite character of their own, are introduced, and
by which that character is in some degree changed.
We may indeed call them changed, if we look to
what they would be to merely sensitive beings who
had no such forms of sense; but we must remember
that sensations as such have no character for an
intelligeace. They are in themselves formless, and
they cannot become objects either of inner or outer
experience till they are formed. Whether anything
more than these forms of perception is required to
make them into such objects, Kant does not yet
consider.
6
In the transcendental' exposition, Kant reaches
exposition. the culminating point of his argument, and shows
what is the special value for knowledge of the a
priori forms of perception. In it he seeks to prove
(1) that there is a great department of science which
is based on these ideas of space and time; and (2)
that his own theory of the nature of these ideas
explains, and is the only theory that explains, the
contrast between the perception, in which the individual is given in its
complete determinateness, and the conception, which is made up of a
definite number of marks, is assumed throughout. Yet Kant can
scarcely avoid indicating that the individual is so determined only by a
progressive process, and that the completeness of its determination is a
merely ideal presupposition. But we cannot as yet stop to explain the
nature of this process, nor its presupposed infinity of progress.
III.
241
ARGUMENT OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
possibility of such science. As to the first point, it
is almost self-evident that the mathematical sciences
start from the ideas of space and time. "Geometry
has for its basis the pure perception of space; even
Arithmetic produces its conceptions of number by
the successive addition of units in time; and, at
any rate, no one will deny that pure Mechanics would
be unable to produce its conceptions of motion except
by means of the idea of time." But though based
on the ideas of space and time, these sciences are not
developed by mere analysis of these ideas. They
are, on the contrary, the products of a long process
of synthesis, by which new elements have been, and
are constantly being, added to the ideas from which
these sciences started. But this synthesis is possible
only on the supposition that time and space are per-
ceptions of sense, to which, therefore, we can return
again and again to add to our conceptions, just as we
return to look at an object in order to add to the con-
ception carried away from our previous perception of
it.
Again, this synthesis is a priori, for if it were
a posteriori we could not explain the necessity and
universality that attaches to it. Lastly, space and
time are not only a priori perceptions, but they are
the very forms of all perception. For if they were
not, how could sciences based upon them add to our
knowledge of the objects of perception? How other-
wise were it possible that subjective ideas, ideas that
have no root in actual experience, but only in the
constitution of the faculties of perception, should
yet be objective in their application-i.e., so re-
lated to experience that whatever is demonstrated
1
Proleg., § 10, p. 38: Tr., p. 45. 'Even Arithmetic'i.e., Arith-
metic abstract though it is.
Q
242
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
complete
•
of them holds good of all empirical objects? The
Mathematician, taking his start from the pure per-
ceptions of space and time, goes on freely construct-
ing figures in space without any reference to experi-
ence, and demonstrating the properties of such
figures. And he is sure that, not only the special
figures he uses in his diagram, or the figures he
constructs in his imagination, will have these pro-
perties, but that he has been, by this purely a priori
process, discovering universal truths of experience.
Thus, he anticipates empirical perception in his pure
perception, and that with apodeictic certainty. How
can this be? How can any one perceive a priori?
Obviously only if time and space, on the pure per-
ception of which he basis his results, are the forms
of all sensible perceptions. Otherwise we might
indeed imagine Geometry as a complex and self-
consistent system of ideas, but it would be a mere
elaborate piece of fancy, a creation of imagination
without any objective validity. But if these are the
forms under which we necessarily perceive inward
and outward phenomena, then it is obvious that these
phenomena must agree with the forms, and not
only with them, but also with all the results of
mathematical and mechanical sciences, in so far as
these results are based on them.
It is not a (In this 'transcendental exposition' one point
deduction seems to be wanting which Kant includes in the
and Space. idea of a 'transcendental deduction.'. It is proved
of Time
that the objective validity of mathematics presup-
poses that time and space are the forms of sense;
but it is not yet proved that it is only through
a priori synthesis according to such forms that there
can exist for us an objective world of experience at
III.
243
ARGUMENT OF THE ÆSTHETIC
all. Yet the full meaning of the Kantian principle
cannot be seen, nor Hume's derivation of necessity
from empirical association precluded, till it has been
shown that there is no experience of objects, and
indeed that no objects of experience are possible,
except through such synthesis. But as Kant still
goes upon the supposition that time and space can
be given as objects in mere sense, he does not
yet find it necessary to deny that other objects
may be given as such in sensation, subject only
to the conditions of space and time.
The correc-
tion in both cases comes in the Analytic. It is
desirable for us, however, to keep this in mind,
as otherwise the full bearing of the Esthetic cannot
be seen.)
with Time and
real empiri-
Space are
cally real,
and tran-
any scenden
We are now able to answer the question
which we started: Time and space are not
things or objective realities, neither are they
qualities, relations, or determinations of such things. tally ideal.
'For neither absolute nor relative determinations of
things can be perceived in anticipation of the exist-
ence of the things to which they belong.' Until
something actually affects us, and so is presented to
the mind, there is nothing to know, no object for
knowledge; and what is known in anticipation of
such affection, cannot be more than the consti-
tution of the subject. Space, therefore, is simply
the form of external sense, and hence the formal
condition of all external phenomena. Time, in like
manner, is simply the form of internal sense, and
hence the form of all phenomena whatever: imme-
diately of internal phenomena, but mediately also of
external phenomena: for, as already indicated, all
our perceptions, whether their objects be internal
244
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
or external, come, as determinations or states of our
mind, under the inner sense, and are subjected
to its conditions. But, while we say that time
and space are the conditions of phenomena, as
they are presented to our mind through sense,
we must always remember that they tell us
nothing of the nature of things in themselves. If
we abstract altogether from our faculties of percep-
tion and their peculiarities, time and space are
nothing. They are but subjective conditions of
human perception, and human perception is always
sensuous. They tell us, therefore, nothing of what
things are, independently of our senses. Hence
we cannot say that all things are in time and
space, but only that all phenomena are in time,
and all external phenomena in space.
We hold,
therefore, that time and space are empirically
real, i. e., that they have objective validity in
relation to things as objects of sensuous experience,
but we hold, at the same time, that they are
transcendentally ideal, i. e., that they have no objec-
tive validity, no validity in relation to things in
themselves as they are regarded by reason, apart
from the constitution of the sensibility through
which they are apprehended.
Finally, it is to be observed, that time and space
are the only perceptions we have that are thus
subjective in their origin, and objective in their
validity, the only perceptions that are a priori,
and yet empirically real. We must not, therefore,
think of illustrating the ideality of space and time
by the subjective character of other determinations
of objects derived from sense, such as those of
colour, taste, and smell. Such determinations are
III.
245
ARGUMENT OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
subjective, but they have no ideality. They are
merely subjective sensations and not perceptions.
The colour of a ribbon, the taste of a wine, the
smell of a rose, are not objective determinations
of the ribbon, the wine, and the rose, regarded
even as phenomena: but they are due to the
special character and state of sense in the subject
that perceives them. They may be different in
different persons, or in the same persons at different
times. They do not, if we may use the expression,
belong to the phenomena in themselves, but are
accidentally added as effects of our particular
organisation in its connection with them. They
are not a priori perceptions, but dependent on
actual sensation. Hence, apart from experience,
we cannot anticipate the character of any taste,.
or smell, or colour. But space and time are pure
forms of perception, which contain in themselves.
nothing of sensational impressions, nothing that
is empirical; and hence we represent, and must be
able to represent, to ourselves all their possible
determinations, without any aid from experience.¹
of this
with the
of Clarke
and Leib-
nitz.
This doctrine of the empirical reality and trans- Contrast
cendental ideality of space and time may be con- doctrine
firmed by contrasting it with the only two other theories
possible doctrines as to their nature the doctrine
maintained by English philosophers like Clarke, and
the doctrine maintained by the school of Leibnitz.
The former of these is the doctrine generally sup-
ported by mathematical physicists, that space and
time exist in reality independent of anything else.
In this doctrine we are obliged to burden ourselves
with the idea of two eternal and infinite existences,
Kritik, p. 48: Tr., p. 35.
1
246
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
which properly are not real things, but mere forms
of the relations of things; and which, though thus
their sole meaning and purport is to contain
things, have an existence independent of them. For
space and time, if we abstract from their special
determination by objects, are mere potentialities or
possibilities of relations. Space is the possibility of
an order of coexistence which is involved in the
constitution of an outer sense. Time is the possi-
bility of an order of succession and coexistence
which is involved in the constitution of inner sense.
If, then, we translate such forms of relation into
objective realities, we are immediately involved in
great difficulty. We need not wonder that the 'good
Berkeley' was driven to treat matter as an illusion
because he conceived it to be conditioned by such a
self-contradictory existence as a transcendentally real
or objective space. Nay, if we adopted his premises,
we should be driven to carry his argument a step
farther. For the same principle would lead us to
treat our own existence also as illusory, since it is
conditioned by so contradictory a thing as a
transcendentally real or objective time. What
recommended this theory to men like Newton and
Clarke was that it justified the application of
mathematical doctrine to the objects of experience.
But this advantage brings with it an insoluble
difficulty in regard to all other objects that are
beyond the range of experience. If time and space
be real things and real conditions of all other
things, they must be conditions of the super-sensible
as well as of the sensible. And then we fall into
the "
dangerous dilemma" spoken of by Berkeley,
of thinking "either that space is God, or that there
III.
247
ARGUMENT OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
is something besides God which is eternal, un-
created, infinite, indivisible, immutable."¹ Theo-
logians tell us that the perceptions of God are not
limited by conditions of time and space. But
why should they not be so limited if time and
space are real existences, and the conditions of all
things? God must know things under their real
conditions. If time and space be real, they must
be conditions at once of the divine existence and
the divine knowledge. Other difficulties will be
noticed when we come to consider the antinomy
between the conception of the world as an absolute
whole, as it presents itself to reason, and the
conception of the world as an existence in space and
time, as it is given in experience.2
The other theory, maintained by Leibnitz, and
adopted for the most part by the metaphysical
physicists, is that time and space are only confused
ideas of the relations of things in co-existence and
succession. Such ideas must of course be derived
from experience, and cannot be prior to it, for it is
impossible that we should empirically know the re-
lations of things unless we first know the things to
which these relations attach themselves. They must
be simply the results of abstraction, represented by
imagination in a generality, which arises from the
omission of the limiting conditions under which
they are presented in experience. This view has
one recommendation in its favour. It enables us to
understand why the conditions of time and space
¹ Principles of Human Knowledge, § 117. Kritik, p. 719: Tr., p. 42.
Cf. p. 47: Tr., p. 34.
2 As illustrating these remarks, it is worth while to compare the
controversy between Leibnitz and Clarke. Erdmann's Leibnitz, p. 746.
248
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Transcen-
dental
Idealism
alone
truth of
should be limited to phenomena, and should have
no validity in relation to things that cannot be pre-
sented in experience. But, at the same time that
it explains the limitation of the truth of Mathematics
to objects of experience, it takes away all explanation
of the a priori synthesis which that science involves.
For if mathematical judgments are empirical, how
can they be made in anticipation of experience, and
with a necessity and universality which experience
could never justify? and how should the things of
experience necessarily conform to the conditions
thus determined? Thus the positive argument for
our view is strengthened by a negative argument
which shows the impossibility of explaining the facts
by any other view. And not only can we repel the
objection of those who maintain that the doctrine
of the ideality of space and time reduces all things
to illusion, but we may boldly turn the tables on
them. For the only other theories of time and
space that have been or can be proposed, end in
turning the most evident of sciences, Mathematics,
into a mere arbitrary product of imagination, or save
its truth at the expense of raising time and space
into absolute conditions of things, and thereby
ultimately, as Berkeley feared, putting matter in
place of God.
"So far is it from being the case that my doctrine
of the ideality of space and time turns the whole
saves the world of sense into an illusion, that rather it is the
Geometry, only means of justifying the application to real ob-
jects of one of the most important bodies of truth-
viz., that which is contained in the a priori science of
Mathematics. It is the only doctrine which pre-
vents all mathematical science from being regarded
III.
249
ARGUMENT OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
as mere illusion. For how, except on my theory,
could it be shown that the perceptions of time and
space, borrowed as they are from no experience,
and presented a priori in our minds, are more than
arbitrary creations of imagination or chimeras of the
brain, to which no object corresponds, or at least,
adequately corresponds, and that consequently Gec-
metry, which is founded on such perceptions, is not
a science of illusion? When, however, it is ob-
served that the objects of sense are mere pheno-
mena, the validity of mathematical truth in relation
to all such objects becomes at once obvious and un-
questionable."
secures us
illusions
physic.
"Again, it is so far from being the case that my And
philosophy, when it treats all that is presented by against the
sense as phenomenal, must needs turn all the truth of Meta-
of experience into mere illusion, that, rather it is the
only means of obviating that transcendental illusion
by which hitherto Metaphysic has been deceived
and misled into a childish hunt after bubbles. For
so long as philosophy mistook phenomena, which are
merely relative to the mind, for things in themselves,
so long it was obliged to extend the conditions of
the former to the latter, and thereby it fell into
those remarkable self-contradictions of Reason which
are exposed in the Dialectic, and which disappear at
once before the single remark that judgments based
on conditions of phenomena hold good so long as
they are applied within the limits of experience, but
that when they are carried beyond those limits they
become transcendent and produce nothing but mere
illusion." 1
The only method, then, by which we can steer
¹ Proleg., Part I., Remark 3, p. 49 : Tr., p. 59.
1
250
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
our course safely between the opposite dangers that
beset us, is that which we have already described.
The a priori doctrines based on the perceptions of
time and space are not illusory, because phenomena
are more than mere contingent affections of the
subject, though less than things in themselves.
They are more than mere contingent affections of
the subject, because they are subjected to certain
necessary conditions that belong to the very nature
of his faculties, and not to the nature of the things
presented to him. But it was natural that those
who were repelled by the notion of the transcen-
dental reality of space and time, and who did not
see how to prove their phenomenal or empirical
reality, should be led to treat phenomena as mere
subjective appearances or illusions. For he who
looks for absolute objectivity or transcendental
reality in what is merely phenomenal, will soon be
led to regard the phenomenal as illusory. Seeking
a higher reality or objectivity in experience than is
to be found there, he will neglect the reality that
is to be found, or he will take what he does find
to be purely subjective in both senses of the word;
the empirical will be to him the affection of the
subject and nothing more. But he who understands
that phenomena, as perceived, are more than sensa-
tions--who understands, in short, that they are
perceived under conditions of space and time, and
subject to all the universal or necessary laws, which
mathematics discovers to be involved in these condi-
tions, will see already (what will become clearer
afterwards, when we have considered the intellectual
as well as the sensational conditions of experience,)
that the relativity of phenomena to the faculties of
:
III.
251
ARGUMENT OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
the subject does not necessarily imply that they are
merely subjective.
Space
criteria of
reality.
"Time and space, with all that they contain, are Time and
not things in themselves, or properties of things in become
themselves, but merely their appearance to the sub- empirical
ject. So far I go along with the Idealists. But
they, and specially Berkeley, regarded space and all
its determinations as empirically given-i. e., as
known through sense on the same terms as the
phenomena in space. I, however, take my stand at
the outset on this, that space (and time also, which
Berkeley overlooked), with all their determinations,
can become known to us a priori, because they are
the pure forms of sensibility that make all its per-
ceptions, and hence all phenomenal appearances
possible. Now, as there can be no truth without
necessary and universal laws as its criteria, it follows
that experience, as with Berkeley it rested on no
a priori principles, could have no criteria of its
truth. Whereas with me, time and space (in com-
bination with the pure conceptions of the under-
standing) prescribe their laws a priori to all possible
experience, and thus furnish a secure criterion by
which we can distinguish truth or experience from
mere subjective illusion.'
This doctrine would have met with less opposition Objections
had it been confined to the outer sense only, and its ideality of
form of Space. More objections suggest themselves
to its application to the inner sense, and its form of
Time. Two especially are mentioned by Kant in
the Esthetic.
"" 1
The first is the objection of Lambert, that the
¹ Proleg. Append., pp. 154-5. Kant here states the point alluded to
in p. 242 as wanting to the transcendental exposition.
to the
Time.
252
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
denial of the absolute reality of Time involves the
denial of the reality of change. But, he argues, the
reality of change cannot be doubted, for even though
an Idealist should deny all outward phenomena and
their change, he must at least admit that there is a
continual change in the states of his own mind. Now
change presupposes time, therefore time must be real.
To this Kant has a ready answer that time is real, i.e.,
real as the form of all internal perception. But this
implies only empirical reality, i.e., only reality for
the objects of sense in relation to the mind. Nor,
indeed, is it denied, that there is a deeper and
absolute reality behind that phenomenal appearance
we call change. But all that we can say about it is,
that if we ourselves, or any other being, were to per-
ceive in its absolute reality that which now presents
itself to us under the aspect of a change, i.e., if we
should perceive it apart from the conditions of sense-
perception, we should perceive something not in
time, and therefore not changing. But what that
something is we do not know.'
1
The other objection, which indeed has been partly
hinted at in the statement of this one, is more
important. It is that Time is the form of the inner
life. Now it is supposed by Des Cartes and others
that, while external things are known by us medi-
ately, the states of consciousness that constitute our
inner life are immediately present to us. Hence,
while they would readily admit the ideality of space
as the form of external perception, they would be
inclined to maintain the reality of time as the form
of internal perception. But all this rests on a mis-
take as to the nature of our self-knowledge. The
1 ¹ Kritik, p. 45: Tr., p. 32.
III.
253
ARGUMENT OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
states of our mind are really known to us in the
same way as are facts of the external world, i.e., as
phenomena, and not as things in themselves. In the
former case, as in the latter, nothing is an object of
thought to us except so far as it is given in sense.
The inner world which we know, is like the outer,
phenomenal, not noumenal. The pure consciousness
of self indeed is independent of sense, but that con-
sciousness only tells us that we are, and not what we
are. But of this distinction we shall speak more fitly
afterwards. Here it is only mentioned to preclude
the possibility of a confusion between the phenomenal
and the real.
The conclusion of the Esthetic, then, is that Space
and Time are pure perceptions, and the forms of all
our perceptions, that therefore they explain to us
the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments in
regard to all objects of experience, but that such
judgments can have no validity in relation to objects
not given in Experience.
254
CHAPTER IV.
General
argument
of the
Esthetic.
CRITICISM OF THE ESTHETIC.
THUS far we have followed Kant's own exposition,
only attempting to give greater clearness and
closer connexion to the expression where that seemed
possible. Kant's early training in the Wolffian
school had developed in him a scholastic tendency to
an unnecessary minuteness of division, which some-
times interferes with our apprehension of the unity
of his thought; and there is some advantage
gained simply by freeing his argument from the
artificial breaks in its continuity. It now remains
for us, in the first place, to defend the theory from
misunderstanding where it has been and is most
liable to be misunderstood; and in the second place,
to show wherein it is defective,—which will natur-
ally lead us to enquire how far the defect is supplied
in the Analytic.
The whole argument of both these parts of the
Critique turns upon two relations-the relation of
conception and perception, and the relation of object
and subject. In discussing the former relation,
Kant thinks mainly of Leibnitz and Wolff; in dis-
cussing the latter relation, mainly of Berkeley and
CRITICISM OF THE ESTHETIC.
255
Hume.
The sketch of his mental development
which we have given, may serve to explain how the
critical philosophy was developed out of the conflict
with these two schools. That conflict had two
distinct stages for Kant's struggle with the German
dogmatism was well-nigh over ere his struggle with
the sensationalist scepticism of this country had begun.
In other words, he had come to the conclusion that
thought cannot add to our knowledge, but can only
analyse the data of perception, and that perception
alone sets us face to face with the individual reality
in all its determinations, before he had been
awakened by Hume from his 'dogmatic slumbers,'
and taught to ask the question, How am I, an in-
dividual subject, through my own sensation, the
passing state of my own consciousness, to apprehend
objective reality? Now, the Critique follows in its
arrangement the order of Kant's intellectual pro-
gress, and therefore it is only in the Analytic that we
reach the peculiar critical point of view, while the
Esthetic represents, at least in its main outlines, the
ideas of a time when Kant did not yet doubt that
sense of itself enables us, and that it alone enables
us, to acquire and increase our knowledge of objects.
At that time the only question that could arise, was
in relation to the kind of perception through which
in different cases objective reality is presented to us;
and it was assumed that, if there is any a priori
element in knowledge, it must necessarily be an
a priori perception. Accordingly, in the essay On
the ground of the distinction of regions in Space, we
found Kant already maintaining in substance, if not
in exact words, that besides the sensible perceptions
there is an idea of space, which is the a priori form
256
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
6
of external perception.¹ Now, as we have already
seen, the Esthetic proceeds upon this view. It does
not yet question the fact that objects can be pre-
sented to us in sense without aid from the under-
standing it seeks only to show that the perceptions
of time and space are logically prior to the percep-
tions of objects, and that they cannot be empirically
given. We may therefore sum up its argument
thus: We can have knowledge of objects only in
inner or outer experience that is to say, only when
we represent them as determined in space and time.
Space and time, therefore, are presupposed in the
knowledge of objects; and if they were empirical
perceptions, they would need to be prior in time to
all others. But the determinations of objects
cannot be empirically given before the objects them-
selves are given ;' therefore the priority of space and
time must be taken as an ideal priority—that is,
priority of mental forms or conditions of perception.
This view is confirmed by the fact that when in
thought we separate time and space from the objects
of sense, and consider them for themselves, we are
able by their means alone to make many necessary
judgments concerning the things of experience: thus,
even in time, anticipating the particular data of ex-
perience. Nay, we are able to construct whole
sciences, which, though based purely on this abstract
representation of time and space before the inward
eye, yet furnish us with the most certain and exact
knowledge of empirical objects.
1 "Der absolute Raum kein Gegenstand der aussern Empfindung,
sondern ein Grundbegriff ist, der alle dieselbe erst möglich macht.”
V., p. 301. The terms are not yet used exactly, but the idea is
there.
V.
257
CRITICISM OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
short of a
argument It falls
Transcen- Transcen-
dental
Such a Deduction.
We have already pointed out how this
falls short of that which Kant calls a
dental Deduction" of space and time.
Deduction must seek, not merely to prove that time
and space are a priori conditions of the knowledge
of objects, and sources of necessary truths in relation
to them; but, also, that it is only through these
conditions that objects as such exist for us at all.
But to carry out this argument it would have been
necessary to break down the presupposition of the
Esthetic, that individual objects are given to us as
such through sense, and this Kant refuses, as yet, to
do. He mentions, indeed, the distinction of sensa-
tion and perception, but he refers them both to the
receptivity of sense, and he takes, as yet, no notice of
the activities of imagination and understanding, which
are implied in the transition from the one to the
other. When, however, we have once realised that
what is given in sense is, strictly speaking, not per-
ception, not the idea of the individual object as such,
but simply sensation; and that sensations are 'perish-
ing existences' without relation to anything but
themselves, the problem of the a priori conditions of
knowledge takes a new meaning. We have then to
find in the necessary principles of sense and under-
standing, not merely one kind of knowledge which
precedes and qualifies all other kinds, but the ulti-
mate reason why there exists for us such a thing as
knowledge, or an object of knowledge at all.
reply to
The Esthetic, then, is to a certain extent accom- Hence its
modated to the popular point of view, according to Hume is
which sense presents objects to us, and understanding plete.
¹ And it is for this reason, perhaps, that he calls it only a 'transcen-
dental exposition.'
R
incom-
258
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Contro-
versy as to
the tran-
scendental
Time and
Space.
analyses them. If this be not kept in view, or if
this part of Kant's work be taken as expressing
his ultimate thought about space and time, many
misunderstandings are likely to arise. Thus, the
possibility of explaining the a priori conditions of
experience as results of experience, is absolutely
precluded only when it is shown that it is through
these a priori conditions alone that any experience
of objects is possible. Hume is not fully answered
till it is proved that sensation affords him no
standing-ground whatever, apart from the a priori
conditions of perception, from which to explain these
conditions; for the necessity of the a priori judg-
ments, based on the ideas of time and space, may
still be construed as a subjective result of association,
so long as it is not shown that such necessities are
the only ground for objective judgments. But when
it is proved that such necessity alone makes know-
ledge possible, the scepticism that would explain it
away may easily be shown to be suicidal.
Again, so long as the objectivity of experience is
not shown to be based on the a priori principles of
reality of sense and understanding, so long the full meaning
and necessity of Kant's assertion that time and
space are determinations of phenomena, and not of
things in themselves, cannot be appreciated. Em-
pirical reality cannot be clearly understood as abso-
lutely excluding transcendental reality, till it is
proved that transcendentally ideal principles alone
can be the source and justification of empirical
reality. This may be illustrated by reference to
a controversy which has excited much interest in
Germany. In his Historical Contributions to Philo-
sophy, Trendelenburg made a plausible criticism on
IV.
259
CRITICISM OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
the doctrine of the Esthetic. Kant, he said, had
confined himself to a choice between two alterna-
tives in a case where three views were possible.
He had asserted that space and time must be either
purely subjective or purely objective. And when
he had proved to himself, by the necessity and uni-
versality of mathematical judgments, that they are
subjective, he at once concluded that they are not
objective: or, what is the same thing, that their
objective value extends merely to phenomena. But
why should they not be both subjective and objec-
tive? Why should they not be a priori possessions
of the mind, and yet at the same time elements of
knowledge, not merely of phenomena, but of things
in themselves? Kant's dilemma is defective, as it
does not cover the whole field of possibility.
view of
as resting
a priori
determin-
ation
of Time
and Space.
Now, it is possible to meet this argument even Kant's
from the point of view of the Esthetic alone, and to objectivity
show that it involves a complete misconception as to on the
Kant's attitude towards the problem of knowledge
but the answer becomes much clearer if we antici-
pate the point of view of the Analytic. Kant, as
we have already said, met the difficulty into which
philosophy had been brought by Berkeley and
Hume, not like the Scottish school, by a simple
re-assertion of the ordinary common-sense belief in
the real existence of the things we perceive, but by
admitting the impossibility of our knowing any
absolute objectivity, yet at the same time setting
up a new relative objectivity within the circle to
which knowledge is thus confined. Things in them-
selves are, ex vi termini, not our ideas; they are, at
the most, the unknown causes of these ideas. They
cannot be presented to us at all, for their qualities
260
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Impossi-
bility of
transcen-
with em-
reality.
66
cannot pass over into our minds:" or even, if
we admit such a possibility, they can be presented
to us only through sensations. But sensations are
fleeting states of consciousness, which, taken by
themselves, have no reference to each other, or to
anything more permanent than themselves. If sen-
sations, therefore, are so interpreted, that they give
rise to that knowledge of an objective world we
call experience, it must be by the aid of principles
of synthesis, which the mind itself brings with it.
Now, these mental principles are, as will be after-
wards shown, simply principles of the determination
of objects in space and time. Hence the necessary
judgments of mathematics, and all necessary judg-
ments based on the ideas of space and time, are
criteria of objective reality: that is to say, we deter-
mine the content of our perceptions as objective in
virtue of their conformity to such necessary judg-
ments, and would not determine it as objective, if it
did not so conform. Objectivity, in short, in the
only sense in which it can be predicated of pheno-
mena, is just this conformity.¹
Now, when Trendelenburg asks whether space
combining and time may not be 'both subjective and objective,
dental this is equivalent, in Kantian phrase, to the ques-
pirical tion, whether space and time may not be both
empirically and transcendentally real. Can we sup-
pose for a moment, in consistency with Kantian
principles, that the objective world of phenomena,
which for us is developed out of sensation, by means
of the a priori principles of understanding applied
to the forms of sense, is also a world of things in
1
¹ Prolegomena, Appendix, pp. 154-5, quoted in the last chapter,
p. 251.
IV.
261
CRITICISM OF THE ESTHETIC.
themselves, that exists without any relation to our
understanding or our sense at all? Is it possible
that the object which we determine for ourselves in
consciousness, exactly corresponds to an object which
exists independent of our determination out of con-
sciousness? The absurdity of such a supposition,
on Kantian principles, is obvious. Setting aside an
absolute Idealism, which would deny the dualism of
thought and being, and thus get rid of things in
themselves altogether, we can give meaning to the
assertion, that empiric reality may also be transcen-
dental reality, only by reviving the old hypothesis
of pre-established harmony: and we do not need to
know much of Kant to understand what he would
think of that kind of explanation. In fact, he has
told us explicitly what he thinks of it. "I would
like," he says, "to know what I should need to
assert in order to avoid the idealising of space. I
would need to say, not only that the idea of
space completely corresponds with the relation
which our sensibility has to objects, which is what I
have said, but that it is in all points like the objects
themselves. But this is an assertion to which I can
attach no meaning whatever, any more than I attach
meaning to the assertion, that the sensation of red-
ness is like that quality of cinnabar which excites the
sensation in me."1
6
meaning of
object in
The third course' of Trendelenburg was, there- Double
fore, not overlooked by Kant: it was excluded subject and
by the necessity of his logic. To Kant, and all Kant.
who like Kant, hold to the existence of things
in themselves, the empirically real must be trans-
cendentally ideal, and conversely the transcendent-
Prolegomena, § 13, Note 2: Tr., p. 56.
262
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Relation
of the
English
school to
transcen-
dental
Idealism.
ally real must be empirically ideal. For if the
external object is external, in the sense of Des
Cartes, as being out of thought or consciousness,
then it cannot be known, or it can be known
only by a miracle. On the other hand, if the
external object is an object we can know, it
must be within consciousness: and within conscious-
ness an object can exist for us only through the
determination of the matter of sense by a priori
principles of understanding. From this point of
view, therefore, Kant makes a double distinction
between objective and subjective. The absolutely
or merely objective is the thing in itself; the
absolutely or merely subjective is sensation, the
isolated and momentary affection of the subject
as such. But neither of these can explain know-
ledge and experience, for an object must relate
itself to the subject ere it can be known; and
a mere subjective sensation must be referred to an
object ere its content can be anything whatever for
intelligence. But the mere subjectivity of sensation
disappears in so far as its content is determined
in time and space by means of the necessary
principles of understanding and imagination that
are implied in this determination. In space and
time, therefore, we have a subjective which is
empirically objective (just because it is a necessary
condition of perception involved in the very consti-
tution of the subject), but which cannot be conceived
as objective in any other sense.
If we look back at the course of English philo-
sophy from this point of view, we can see how Kant
must necessarily have regarded it. Locke, in so far
as he maintained the objective reality of the primary
IV.
263
CRITICISM OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
qualities of matter, had taught that space at least is
at once empirically and transcendentally real. To
Berkeley, it became obvious that transcendental
reality, or "matter in itself," cannot be known by
us, and that our object is an object in consciousness.
To him, therefore, the only reality was empirical
reality. As, however, he went on to say that the
esse of things is their percipi, or that the object is
simply the sensation, he left no room for any
transcendental ideality, and Hume had little diffi-
culty in showing that on Berkeley's principles even
empirical reality must disappear. (To Hume himself
there was nothing left but an empirical ideality—an
illusion of knowledge produced by the association of
sensational elements, which in themselves had no
connexion with each other, and therefore no relation
to any object. Kant, on the other hand, shows that
without the transcendental ideality of space and time
not even the illusion of knowledge can be explained,
and that if such ideality be admitted, it carries with
it the admission of the other principles, and particu-
larly the principle of causality, against which Hume
had directed his scepticism. Kant, therefore, may
be said to return to the position from which Ber-
keley had been logically dislodged by Hume. Yet
he feels himself at liberty to speak of Berkeley as
one who confused reality with illusion: a judgment
which is not strictly correct, if it be meant that
Berkeley did not recognise the distinction; but which
is defensible on the ground that he had no right on
his own principles to recognise it. On the other
hand, the doctrine of Locke and of common sense,
that empirical or transcendental reality are identi-
cal, or even in harmony with each other, is to Kant
264
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Change of
Kant's
point of
view in
an utter absurdity. To maintain it is indeed logi-
cally impossible without a complete renunciation of
that absolute Dualism which he inherited from his
predecessors, and which he had "never once thought
of questioning."
"" 1
In what has been said, we have already partially
anticipated the change of our point of view which
Analytic. becomes necessary as we pass from the Esthetic to
the Analytic. But this change we must now con-
sider more definitely. "Objects are given in per-
ception,”—what does Kant mean by this? Accord-
ing to the ordinary psychological view, it would
mean that the individual object, in its complete
determinateness as an individual, is presented to us
in sense without any activity of thought, and that
all that thought can do is to dissect or analyse it.
And at first sight there is much in Kant's language
that might lead us to attribute this view to him; it
is in fact the provisional hypothesis from which he
starts. In the earlier treatise, of which the Esthetic
is for the most part a reproduction, all doubt seems
to be removed by the direct assertion of the passivity
of the mind in perception.
"The perception of our
intelligence," Kant there says, "is always passive,
and therefore it is possible only in so far as some-
thing is able to affect our senses. By this it is dis-
tinguished from the divine perception, which, being
the cause and not the effect of its objects, is arche-
typal and perfectly intellectual "2-i. e., it has the
activity which in our case belongs only to thought.
1 Proleg., § 13, Remark 3, p. 51: Tr., p. 61. In one sense this is not
quite true, for Kant did speak of the thing in itself as problematical, at
least to the speculative reason: but it is true that he never questioned
the general point of view of Dualism. But of this afterwards.
2 De Mundi, &c., § 10; I., p. 314.
IV.
265
CRITICISM OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
In the Esthetic itself, the word 'passive' is not
used, but 'receptive' seems to convey the same
meaning, used as it always is in direct contrast with
the 'spontaneity' of Understanding: and the whole
line of argument by which it is proved that time
and space are perceptions, not conceptions, is most
naturally taken in the same way. Yet we must
note that there are occasional expressions that pre-
pare us for another theory. Attention is drawn to
the distinction between sensation and perception,
though both are attributed to sense. Sensation is
said to be 'the effect of an object on the mind in so
far as we are affected by it,' while perception is said
to refer to an object.¹ The same unexplained differ-
ence appears in the definition of space as "the formal
capacity of the subject to be affected by objects, and
to acquire thereby the immediate idea or perception
of them,”² and again “in the definition of sense as the
capacity of acquiring ideas through the manner in
which we are affected by objects.":
gives not
is a kind,
but an
a element of
know-
Now, this distinction is explained so soon as we Sense
turn to the Analytic. There we learn that what
attributable to sense is only an element and not
kind of knowledge, and that sensation or perception ledge.
does not refer itself to objects, but is only so referred
by the understanding. Nay, "perceptions without
1 It is noticeable that in the Esthetic Kant avoids, as far as possible,
all expressions about perception that imply activity, though he intro-
duces them freely elsewhere. Thus we hear nothing of the a priori
construction of figures in perception by Geometry. Also in the second
edition, Kant deliberately removed the remarkable expressions quoted
p. 239, about the 'endless progress in the perception' of space. He
probably meant the reader so far to take the perception as something
purely given.
2 Transc. Exposition of Space, p. 713: Tr., p. 25.
3 Esthetic, § 1, p. 31: Tr., 21.
266
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
thought" would produce in us no knowledge what-
ever; they would be "for us, as thinking beings, as
good as nothing." If we were merely sensitive
creatures," a Gewühl, or chaos of appearances,
would fill our minds, without giving rise to any
distinct apprehension of objects, such as we mean
by the term experience."¹ Perhaps the clearest
passage that we can quote, to show that perception
in itself did not, in Kant's view, constitute anything
like knowledge, is from his letter to Dr. Herz, in
which he is defending himself against some objec-
tions of Maimon. There he says, that, without
conceptions of the understanding, "all the data of
sense would give me no idea of objects, nay, would
not even enable me to attain to that unity of con-
sciousness which is necessary for the knowledge of
myself as an object of inner sense. I should not be
capable even of knowing that I have these sensa-
tions, and consequently, for me, as an intelligent
being, they would be absolutely nothing at all. It
is true that if I make myself in thought into a mere
animal, I can conceive these sensible ideas as carry-
ing on their regular play in my soul, seeing that
they might still be bound together by an empirical
law of association, and so have influence upon feeling
and desire. This I can conceive, if I suppose myself
to be conscious of every single idea of sense, but not
conscious, by means of the synthetic unity of apper-
ception, of the relation of these isolated ideas to the
unity of the conception of their objects; but then I
should not through these ideas have knowledge of
anything, even of my own state." 2
1 Deduction (1st edition), part 2, § 4, p. 102: Tr. p. 203.
2 XI., p. 57.
IV.
267
CRITICISM OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
Here, then, we have a view of the data of sense
very different from that which we have hitherto had
before us. According to this view, sense appre-
hends, not the individual object, but isolated and
transitory feelings unconnected with each other, and
unrelated to anything more stable than themselves.
But out of such mere isolated units of sensation no
knowledge can be got. They cannot be determined
even as isolated units, as 'here,' and 'now' present
to the individual consciousness. For, in order to be
determined as 'here' they must be referred to an
object, and that object must be determined in rela-
tion to space and the other objects in space. And
in order to be determined as 'now,' they must be
referred to the individual self as a permanent sub-
ject whose states have a definite relation to each
other in time.¹
1
assertion,
sen-
sation is of
dual.
There is a certain illusion of thought into which Ambiguity
we very easily fall when considering this subject. that
It is not incorrect to say that sensation is of the the indivi-
individual object at a particular moment of time,
and a particular point of space: αἰσθάνεται τόδε τι καὶ
ποῦ καὶ νῦν. But this may be understood in two
ways. It may be understood as meaning that, to
us who look upon the sensitive consciousness from
without, who regard the sensitive being as an
individual object, related to all other objects in
space, and determined by them in its successive
consciousness-to us it is manifest that sensation
must always be of an individual thing, at one par-
ticular moment, and in one particular place. Or it
1 It is a question we shall afterwards have to answer, whether pure
sense, as such, can supply even an element of knowledge. But this
point we need not at present consider.
268
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Can the
forms of
sense
themselves
tivity to
may be understood as meaning that the mere sen-
sitive consciousness itself apprehends the object as
an individual object, determined in space and time.
If we adopt the former explanation, the words
quoted from Aristotle express what are the limits
of the individual sensitive consciousness, as these are
understood by beings who are not themselves merely
sensitive, but who judge of that which is imme-
diately given in sense by relation to that which is
not so given. But if we adopt the latter explana-
tion, we really make sense transcend its own limits,
and criticise itself, and we confuse the order of the
world to thought, the ordo ad universum, with the
order of the world to sense, the ordo ad indi-
viduum.
But, it may be said, does not Kant himself tell us
that time and space are the forms of sense, and
give objec- does not this imply that sensations as they are
sensations? received arrange themselves with reference to each
other in an order of coexistence and succession in one
space and one time? And is it not most natural to
interpret expressions like those quoted above as
meaning, that the one thing necessary to turn sensa-
tions into perceptions is just the form of receptivity
itself? In this way a connexion of perceptions
would be established in sense itself prior to any
activity of the understanding. This difficulty must
be met at the outset : for, if we do not preclude any
such interpretation, the argument of Kant against
Hume will lose all its force. The point of that
argument is, that Hume, in assuming that objects
or sensations are known as succeeding each other in
time, has already assumed that law of causality
which he pretends by this means to explain away.
IV.
269
CRITICISM OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
An actual connexion of perceptions in relations of
time and space is what is meant by experience, and
if so much were supposed to be already given in
sense, there would scarcely be any need for an inter-
vention of the understanding to give us more.
1
We have, therefore, to observe that what Kant
says is not, that the forms of sense arrange its mat-
ter, but simply that they "make it possible for the
manifold of phenomena to be arranged in certain
relations." So space is called "the possibility of
things being beside each other (Möglichkeit des
Beisammenseins)," i. e., it is not a ready-made whole
in which things can be placed, but a form necessarily
given to a certain relation which is otherwise deter-
mined. When I refer the content of my sensations.
to an external object, I necessarily represent each
object as out of or beside some other object to which
I relate it, and this implies that I place them both
in space but space is itself no principle of localisa-
tion, as is shown by the fact that I cannot localise
an object with reference to space itself, but only to
another object. The synthesis of the understanding
is necessary to actualise space. The isolated data of
sense must be connected in a particular way in the
conception of an object or objects, in order that they
may be referred to space, though, when this connexion
is established, the object or objects must be referred to
space. Space, indeed, when thus actualised is "repre-
sented as an infinite given whole," in which everything
is included, but this only means that everything in
space is determined as part of a certain series of
experiences which, by successive synthesis, I can
carry on as far as I please, and which I know
¹ Esthetic, § 1, p. 32: Tr. p. 22.
270
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
beforehand to be interminable.¹
Really space can
never be given as a whole, for difference is essen-
tial to it, and the moment we conceive any space
as a unit, we are forced to relate it to another space
beyond it. Hence Kant rejects the view of the
mathematical physicists, that space is a real thing
that includes all other things. If space were a real
thing, the relations of objects included in it to each
other would be fixed by their relation to space itself:
but, on the contrary, it is only when objects are de-
termined as related to each other in certain definite
ways that we find ourselves obliged to refer them to
space. Space, therefore, is simply the condition
under which a certain relation or connected arrange-
ment of phenomena is possible, but does not of itself
constitute any relation of things. And it is referred
to sense, and not to the understanding, because,
like sensation, it is a mere possibility which waits
for the understanding to determine it as actual.2
When we have got thus far, we see that in the
Esthetic Kant has allowed himself to speak of that
as actualised in sense-perception, which he after-
wards confesses to be for sense a mere possibility.
If we reduce sense to what really belongs to it, all
V that is left is a mere manifold, a series of transitory
sensations without relation to each other, and hence,
without relation to any object, but which yet have a
certain condition attached to them that makes their
content capable of being arranged by an intelligence
in a world of objects in time and space. Unless,
however, such an intelligence is brought to bear
¹Cf. Metaph. Anfangsgr. d. Naturwissenschaft, I. 1, Remark 2;
V., p. 322.
2 Cf. Letter to Dr. Herz; XI., p. 29.
IV.
271
CRITICISM OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
upon the sensations, so as to retain and connect them
with each other, this possibility can never become
actuality. Even the forms of time and space, if we
regard them in themselves, are but forms of differ-
ence, or rather, of differentiation, which have no
meaning except in relation to the integration of
thought. Or, to put the same idea in Kantian
language, they are but forms of the manifold as
such, and the manifold, out of relation to unity, is
"for a thinking being as good as nothing."
ence is
cess of
that synthesis,
We endless
and (2) an
process.
As we enter on the study of the Analytic, there- Experi-
fore, we have to strip perception of its borrowed (1) a pro-
attributes: we have to consider in the doing,
which the Esthetic generally regards as done.
have to ask how the fleeting sensations can be
arrested in their flux, and connected together so as
to become perceptions of objects, whether in inner
or outer experience: or, in other words, how a sentient
subject, who is also intelligent, must determine his
feelings by thought, before he can represent himself
as one individual in a world of individuals, all of
which are included in one space and one time, and
have their successive and coexistent phases definitely
determined in relation to each other. In the Esthetic
all this was simply supposed to be given in sense.
The perception was there regarded as setting us face
to face with the individual in his complete, not to
Jay infinite, determination, which no conception can
ever fully represent. Now, however, we have to
recognise, that the idea of the individual is the
result of a process which is ever going on in experi-
ence, and that the infinity which is attributed to it
merely means that we know the process can never
be completed. This has been already shown in the
272
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
case of space, but it is equally true of time, and of.
every object of experience, known under conditions
of space and time. That space, as an object of per-
ception, is represented as an infinite whole, means
only, that so soon as we represent any part of space,
we must represent another space beyond it, and so
we discern that we can never have experience of an
end to space. We can never actually perceive the
infinity of space, yet when we perceive space, i. e.,
when we represent it as an object, we are obliged to
represent it as an actual infinite. The first percep-
tion of space in short involves the determination of
it as infinitely extensible, and infinitely divisible,
and whenever we regard it as an object existing
apart from our determination or knowledge of it, we
have no resource but to regard it as infinitely
extended and infinitely divided. From the same
point of view, we must also think of it as having
already determined in it, all that Geometry by its
progressive construction evolves out of it. And the
same principle applies to empirical objects, and is
the true interpretation of the logical axiom that we
can never 'define the individual.' Whenever we
refer any of our sensations to an object, or in other
words, whenever we perceive an empirical object, we
necessarily regard that object as absolutely deter-
minate, i. e., negatively or positively determined in
relation to all other objects, though we do not, of
course, actually apprehend all this determination.
In perception, in short, we are progressively deter-
mining an object which essentially differs from an
object of conception in this, that it is presupposed to
be infinite, because known to be inexhaustible. We
must, however, distinguish between the process of
IV.
273
CRITICISM OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
perception or experience and its object. The object,
in being determined as such, is fixed as a centre for
a progressive determination which can find no limit
except in an absolute whole of knowledge, a whole
which is supposed to be completed in the object,
while to us it is incapable of completion. Thus
the object as the goal of knowledge is the com-
pletely determined individual. But the perception
or experience of the object is an endless process of
specification, which, beginning with the most gene-
ral and vague determinations, e.g., with the simple
reference of a sensation to an object in general,
goes on to determine that object in all its parti-
cular relations, and could only end with a perfect
individualisation by which that object would be at
once distinguished from, and related to, the whole
universe.
view of it
problems
Analytic
Dialectic
tively.
In this progressive perception and determination From this
of objects, however, there are two things to be con- spring the
sidered; one is the idea of Totality which guides it, of the
and is, in fact, its moving principle; the other is and the
the actual process by which additions are made to respec-
knowledge. What is the meaning and validity of
this end which we are always pursuing, yet
never attain, which is necessary to us as the spur of
all effort and curiosity, yet which seems to hide
itself from us whenever we turn the eye directly
upon it, which is the necessary presupposition of
all our knowledge, yet which, so far as we can see,
it is impossible to verify? This is a question which
we must defer for the present, and which can only be
considered fully in the Dialectic. For the present we
are concerned only with the actual process by which
knowledge is generated and increased. And as we
S
274
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
have seen that sensations are but an unconnected
manifold, so it is obvious that the first thing we
want is a connecting principle or principles. Sense
in itself is endless dispersion, or differentiation with-
out integration; it is an explanation, therefore, at
most, of continual change, but not of progress; for
it does not bind together the phases through which
it passes in reference to a permanent unity; and
hence it can never generate what we call know-
ledge or experience. Even the a priori forms of
Time and Space, as forms of sense, are not in
themselves principles of connection, they rather
offer a manifold of elements capable of being
connected; nor does it make any difference that
they offer those elements a priori. In the case
of the pure and empirical conceptions alike, we
must look to the understanding as the principle
of synthesis, the source of the connective concep-
tions by which both the a priori and the a pos-
teriori manifold of sense are connected together,
and, by means of this connection, determined as
objective.
Here, then, we are brought to the verge of the
Analytic. We have found that it is necessary to
consider sense as giving us less than we at first-
attributed to it, and therefore we must now attribute
more to the understanding. Sense does not set
before us the individual object as such, but merely
the unconnected material out of which the individual
object may be made by a combining process. The
understanding, therefore, can no longer be confined
to the formal business of analysing the perceptions;
it must supply the principles of unity that are
necessary for their production. Or, in other words,
IV.
275
CRITICISM OF THE ÆSTHETIC.
if sense is synthetic only in the sense of supplying
continually new elements to add to our previous
conceptions of things, the understanding must be
synthetic in the other sense of supplying the
principles, whereby the new elements are bound
together in one experience, or, what is the same
thing, in the experience of one world.
1
276
CHAPTER V.
GENERAL VIEW OF THE ANALYTIC.
The two
know-
ledge.
factors of KANT, as we have shown in the last chapter,
was obliged to make a new beginning in the
Analytic. He had hitherto treated perception as a
kind of knowledge: he now treats it as merely an
element of knowledge, which is incomplete and
meaningless in itself. He therefore states at the
outset, what he has afterwards to exhibit in detail,
that knowledge is the product of two factors, which
are contributed by sense and understanding respec-
tively, and neither of which is in itself sufficient for
the result. "There are two sources in the mind
from which all our knowledge is derived. The first
is our capacity of having mental representations
awakened in us (our passive receptivity of impres-
sions). The second is our faculty of knowing an
object by means of these impressions (our spon-
taneity in originating conceptions). By the former
an object is presented to us, by the latter the object
is thought in relation to the idea thus awakened in
the mind; or, in other words, an idea, which is in
itself a mere modification of consciousness, is re-
ferred to an object. Perceptions and conceptions,
A
GENERAL VIEW OF THE ANALYTIC.
277
therefore, contribute the elements of all our know-
ledge; and neither conceptions without perceptions,
nor perceptions without conceptions, can give know-
ledge.
If the receptivity of our mind—
i.e., its capacity of having ideas awakened in it when
it is in any way affected-be named sense, the
faculty by which we ourselves produce ideas, or the
spontaneity of knowledge is what is called under-
standing. We are so constituted that perception
with us can never be other than sensible; in other
words, it tells us nothing except the manner in
which we are affected by objects. On the other
hand, the faculty of thinking the object of sensible
perception is understanding. Neither of these
faculties of ours has any preference over the other.
Without sensibility, no object could be given to us,
without understanding, no object could be thought.
Thoughts without content of perceptions are empty,
perceptions without conceptions are blind. Hence
it is as necessary to make our conceptions sensible--
i.e., to find an object for them in perception, as it is
to make our perceptions intelligible-i. e., to bring
them under conceptions. Nor is it possible for these
two faculties to exchange their functions. Under-
standing can no more perceive anything than the
senses can think anything. Knowledge can only
come of the union of the two; yet we must not on
that account confuse the two distinct elements: nay,
we have every reason carefully to separate and dis-
tinguish them."1
of thought
This Kantian language is liable to be misunder- Relation
stood, if we do not carefully observe the double (synthesis)
force of the word 'object.' When Kant says that tivity.
1 ¹ Kritik, p. 56: Tr., p. 45.
and objec-
278
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
What can
sense give
us?
First
answer
to this
question.
"through sensibility objects are given to us," he
does not mean that they are given to us as objects.
He only means that there are mental modifications
produced in us, by synthesis of which the under-
standing can determine an object. But he thinks of
the manifold of sense as the result of an object, a
thing in itself, affecting the sensibility; and on the
other hand, he treats the object, which the under-
standing determines through synthesis of the mani-
fold given in sense, as identical with, or, at any rate,
phenomenal of, the object that affects sense.
out considering at present how far he is justified in
this mode of conception, it may be observed that
his meaning here would have been less ambiguous if
he had simply said that there is a 'manifold' given
in sense, which the synthesis of the understanding
enables us to determine as objective. For when
Kant says that, 'through understanding objects are
thought,' he means 'thought as objects.'
With-
To understand the subsequent reasoning then, we
must clearly realise what, in Kant's view, sense can
give us, and what it cannot give us. It can give
us subjective appearances' and not objects; it can
give us an unconnected 'manifold,' but not the syn-
thesis that binds it into one object. Objectivity and
synthesis are the contributions of the understanding,
and the first point necessary is to see how these two
things are related to each other.
Now if for a moment we attend only to the first
of these characteristics of sense, as Kant sometimes
allows himself to do, if we remember only that it
sets appearances before us, and not objects, it seems
reasonable to say that there can be no doubt of the
subjective reality of the phenomena that are pre-
V.
279
GENERAL VIEW OF THE ANALYTIC.
sented to us by sense, whatever doubt there may be
about their objective reality. There can be no doubt
that appearances appear, that mental representations
are in our minds, or are presented to us in sense.
So long as we conceive such phenomena as a mere
phantasmagoria passing before our mental vision,
and do not ask any question, or make any assertion,
as to their correspondence with any object beyond
themselves, so long, it would seem, we cannot be
deceived. Thus "the senses set the planets before
us, now as moving onward in their course, and again
as turning back, and in this there is neither truth
nor falsehood, so long as we are content to regard it
all as mere appearance, and to make no judgment in
regard to the objective movements."1 The question
of truth or reality only arises when we go beyond
the appearances, and make a judgment in which
they are referred to an object. So long as the mind
passively apprehends that which is presented to it, so
long it cannot err; for as yet there is to it no distinc-
tion between appearance and reality, and therefore
no possibility of mistaking the one for the other.
To render such mistake possible, the mind must be
active; it must go beyond what is immediately
given in sense, and refer it to some object, which
perception may represent, but which it does not
exhaust, and with which, therefore, it is not imme-
diately identical. This object we do not need here
to determine, except by saying that it is some-
thing which is independent of the individual sensa-
tion or perception of it, something which exists
apart from its appearance. The immediate percep-
tion must be referred to something not perceived,
¹ Proleg., Part I., Rem. 3., p. 41: Tr., p. 57.
1
280
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Second and
corrected
answer.
No appear-
ance
without
reality.
must be compared with it, asserted to agree or not
agree with it, ere we can pronounce that it is
either true or false, that it gives or does not give
knowledge. For the attainment of knowledge,
therefore, sense, as the mere receptivity of the
mind, is not enough; knowledge implies the dis-
tinction of reality from illusion, and that again
requires a spontaneity of the mind or judgment
which goes beyond what is immediately given, and
refers it to what is not given.
But when we consider the matter more carefully,
we see that the statement above quoted is not strictly
accurate. To say that the planets appear to our
senses at one time to be receding, and at another
time to be advancing in their course, is already to
attribute too much to sense. He who can make
such a statement has before his mind, not merely an
unconnected 'manifold' of sensation, but a connected
system of phenomena. He stands at a point of
view at which he could not be placed by mere sense
without acts of judgment at the point of view
of the objective consciousness. The contents of
visual sensation are represented by him as an
order of heavenly bodies moving in space, and are
thus bound up, according to definite principles of
synthesis, with his other experiences of the ex-
ternal world. No doubt, after this synthetic pro-
cess is completed, a doubt may arise in his mind
as to the objective value of its result. He may
then doubt whether certain movements are real or
apparent, whether certain phenomena, which he had
interpreted as movements of the planets, are not
rather to be explained in some other way, e.g., as
movements of the spectator, or even as due to the
V.
281
GENERAL VIEW OF THE ANALYTIC.
diseased state of his eyes. But, in all such doubt, he
still presupposes the general reality of the objective
consciousness, and merely hesitates about the place
of certain phenomena in it. He doubts only
whether, in his first synthesis, he has put certain
data of sense in their proper relation to certain
other data of sense. The question is one touching
the particular, not the universal: it relates, strictly
speaking, not to the reality of the facts, but only to
their position in the context of experience. While,
therefore, it is true that appearance is not reality,
we must remember that there is for a thinking con-
sciousness no possible return to the unorganised data
of sensation, the mere 'appearances of sense' as such.
We cannot, in strict accuracy, imagine a previous
state in which things are presented to us as 'appear-
ances,' before they are determined as real: for the
determination of them as in some sense real, is
presupposed in their determination as appearances.
To doubt whether experience deceives us, we must
already have determined it as experience. An illu-
sion is but a reality referred to the wrong place in
the context of experience.
thought is
in the
percep-
The result of these remarks is, that the judgment, Hence
whereby the data of sense are referred to objective involved
reality, must be traced back to a much earlier point simplest
in the genesis of experience than that to which tion.
Kant, in the passage above quoted, has traced it.
For whenever we connect a sensation with anything
else than itself, we make such a judgment. When-
ever we refer a sensation to an external thing
which we know by means of it, or to the subject
of which it is a state: whenever even we speak of it
as a definite sensation, which can be recognised as the
282
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
The tran-
same, and distinguished from others on its re-
currence, we have lifted the sensation out of its
simple singularity, and given it a general determina-
tion which is independent of its particular existence.
We have, in other words, turned it into the predi-
cate of a judgment regarding something more
permanent than itself, and hereby given it a value
for knowledge which in itself it had not. By such
judgment it becomes, so to speak, attached to a
fixed nucleus, through which it may be gradually
connected with many other elements of knowledge,
instead of simply passing away to give place to
other equally transitory sensations. For the object
in the most general sense is that fixed centre of
progressive determination, by relation to which the
data of sense alone acquire a definite meaning, and
so become capable of being combined in the unity
of one experience with other data of sense ad in-
finitum.
Now what is this object, to which, in perception,
object gets the content of sensation is referred? If we take
scendental
a meaning
through
forms of
synthesis.
for us only the given object by itself in its abstraction as
simply meaning something, which is not itself
apprehended by sense, but to which the perception
of sense is judged to correspond, we find ourselves
in a difficulty. For it would seem that all we can
know of such an object is, that it is not a perception,
and "outside of our knowledge we can find nothing
to set over against our knowledge as corresponding
with it." The object, in this sense, is merely an
unknown quantity, an x of which we
can say
nothing. An object out of relation to our percep-
tion has as little value for knowledge as a mere
sensation without relation to any object. The mere
V.
283
GENERAL VIEW OF THE ANALYTIC.
:
1
generality of the one would be as empty and un-
meaning as the mere singularity of the other. The
object, in any sense in which it has a value for
knowledge, must be something which in one way or
other determines the sensations referred to it. Now
"we find that our thought of the relation of our
knowledge to its object carries with it something of
necessity the object, to wit, is viewed as that
which hinders our experiences from coming to us at
hap-hazard, or in any way we please, and binds
them down beforehand to a certain definite course :
for all our ideas which are supposed to refer to any
one object must, in reference to it, harmonise with
each other-i. e. they must have that unity which
the conception of an object implies." In other
words, there is no possibility of fixing the data of
sense in reference to the mere abstract idea of an
object in general, except in so far as we fix them
in reference to each other. Objective reference of
perception is impossible without synthesis of percep-
tions, and is, in fact, only another aspect of the same
thing. When we say that a perception refers to an
object, we mean that under certain conditions the
same perception might always be had; that, in other
words, certain data of sense are fixed in reference to
the other data, or have a certain definite place in the
content of experience. In all cases we can tran-
scend the immediate sensation, and refer it to an
object, only in so far as we connect its content with
the content of other sensations. If it were other-
wise, reference to an object would mean merely
reference to an unknowable something; and even
if that were possible, it would be no gain for know-
¹ Analytic (First Edition), II., 2, 3, p. 97: Tr., p. 199.
284
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
ledge. Now if this be so, if definite connection of the
data of sense and objectivity are only two different
aspects of the same thing: if we cannot think of a
sensation as a fixed and definite thing or quality of a
thing, except so far as we distinguish it from, yet
relate it to other sensations: then it is obvious that
all knowledge depends on the mind bringing with it
principles of combination, in conformity with which
the content of sensation is referred to objects. To
explain the fact of experience, we must conceive the
understanding as combining the matter of sense,
which in itself is an unconnected manifold, by means
of certain conceptions, which we may indifferently
call 'forms of synthesis,' or 'conceptions of objects in
general,' according to the aspect in which we choose
to regard them. Only in so far as the flux of sen-
sation is arrested, and the retained content of it is
organically connected by means of such conceptions,
can such a thing as knowledge or experience come
into existence.
Let us gather up the results of our investiga-
tion, so far as it has gone. Immediate perception
(sensation) gives us no knowledge, except when
we refer it to something not immediately per-
ceived, for it is only in this reference that a per-
ception can be said either to present us with truth
or falsehood, either to lead or to mislead us: and
this something is, of course, the object which the
perception is conceived to represent. But the mere
thought of an object in itself would be nothing: it
would be a mere unknown quantity with which no
perception could be compared. An assertion that a
perception is objective, means therefore that it is
connected with other perceptions, and it means
V.
285
GENERAL VIEW OF THE ANALYTIC.
further that this connection is regulated by a
universal law, which is independent of any par-
ticular experience. Now, the conception of this
universal law, as it cannot be got from sense, must
be got from the understanding. The understanding
alone can enable us to go beyond what is given in
sense, and to regard the perceptions of sense as
objective, for it alone can give us the conception
of a fixed or universal law in conformity with which
they can be interpreted as objective.
tion suffi-
this syn-
thesis?
It may be said that, after all, this conception of Is associa
objective law and order is itself a result of associa- cient for
tion, that the subjective necessity of thinking one
idea after another, which it has frequently followed
in previous experience, from the constraint it puts
on the imagination, itself gives rise to the idea of an
objective connection-i.e., a connection independent
of our thoughts. But this, as will be afterwards
shown more fully, is inconceivable. For a law of
empirical association of objects known as such,
already presupposes a consciousness that has gone
beyond immediate sensation, and the association of
sensations. It presupposes a consciousness to which
sensations are already perceptions of objects, and
therefore any attempt to conceive of such a con-
sciousness as the result of association, necessarily
involves a petitio principii. Before perceptions can
be associated in the sense required, they must cease
to be transitory states of feeling, they must be fixed
and defined as objects which have the permanence
of the consciousness to which they are objects, and
they must therefore stand in a fixed relation to, and
connection with, all other objects of that conscious-
ness.
In other words, they must be already con-
286
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Assump-
tions in-
volved in
the theory
of associa
tion.
nected according to a fixed law of objective relation,
ere they can be associated with each other according
to any subjective law.
The possibility of the explanation of the objective
consciousness by means of association rests mainly
on an individualistic assumption, which we shall find
Kant assailing in many parts of the Critique, the
assumption, viz., that in the beginning of experience,
the individual has to deal with his own perceptions or
sensations, determined as his own, and that gradually
and by inference he arrives at the consciousness of
the existence of other beings than himself; that, in
short, we begin with inner experience as such, and
that the only difficulty of philosophy is to discover
how we can legitimately add outer experience to it.
Against this view, Kant maintains, in the first
place, that inner experience can only come into
existence by the same process as outer experience,
by the determination of the matter of sense by
thought. For it is one thing to have sensations, it
is altogether another thing to determine them as
my sensations-i.e., to make them into objects and
represent them as states of this individual subject.
The mere stream of sensitive states, or the combina-
tion of them by an empiric law of association, is as
inadequate to explain the consciousness of ourselves
as objects, as it is to explain the consciousness of any
other objects. In the one case as in the other,
knowledge of objects as such can only be produced
by the application of universal principles of synthesis
to the manifold of sense. In the second place, as we
shall see, Kant maintains that not only is inner
experience produced in the same way as outer
experience, but also that it is secondary and depen-
V.
287
GENERAL VIEW OF THE ANALYTIC.
dent upon outer experience, so that we can only
have consciousness of our own inner states as such
in contrast with, and relation to, a world of external
objects. On both these grounds, he altogether
rejects, so far as experience is concerned, the in-
dividualistic point of view, and thus deprives the
associative psychology of that empirical basis, which
it needs in order to explain the remainder of ex-
perience.
questions
Analytic.
The above remarks may be sufficient to prepare the Three
way for the discussion of the problem of the Analy- of the
tic. The solution of that problem has three stages
which are closely connected, but which for the sake of
clearness it is necessary to separate from each other.
In the first place, assuming that certain pure con-
ceptions supplied by the understanding are necessary
for knowledge or experience, Kant seeks to dis-
cover what and how many they are.
This we may
call, in correspondence with the language used in
the Esthetic, the metaphysical part of the problem.'
In the next place he has to show that these a priori
conceptions are objectively valid, i. e., that experi-
ence is possible through them and only through
them. This is the object of the Transcendental De-
duction. Lastly, he has to determine the mode in
which those conceptions are applied to the matter of
sense through its forms, and what is the content and
compass of the a priori knowledge which is thus
produced. This involves the discussion of the Prin-
ciples of the Pure Understanding.
¹ The expression, 'Metaphysical Deduction,' is used in this sense in
§ 26 of the Transcendental Deduction, p. 752: Tr., p. 77,
288
CHAPTER VI.
Difference
of formal
and tran-
scendental
Logic.
THE TWO LOGICS-THE DISCOVERY OF THE CATEGORIES.
WE have already spoken of Kant's opinion of the
ancient Logic. It is to him the type of a
perfect science, and a science completed almost at a
stroke by its founder. The effect of this opinion on
the structure of the Critique is great. Again and
again, in the course of it, do we find Kant returning
to the Aristotelian Logic, and taking it as a safe point
of departure, from which he may prosecute further in-
vestigations into the nature of knowledge. Thus, at
the beginning of the Analytic, he draws a parallel be-
tween it and the new transcendental Logic which he
is setting himself to construct. Pure general Logic,
he tells us, is a science that deals only with the form
of thought. It analyses the process of thinking, so
far as that process is the same for all ideas or con-
ceptions, without regard to their source and nature,
and hence without regard to their value as a means
to the knowledge of objects. It is purely analytic,
and its highest principle is the principle of identity
and contradiction. But we can imagine another
kind of Logic, not only of thought, but of knowledge,
which should inquire, not merely how the mind re-
DISCOVERY OF THE CATEGORIES.
289
•
lates its ideas to each other, but how it relates them
to objects, which should be not merely analytic, but
also synthetic, and which should furnish a criterion,
not merely of consistency, but also of truth. A
criterion of all truth, indeed, is impossible, for by a
criterion we mean something more general than that
to which it is applied. But no general principle can
enable us to determine the particular matter of
knowledge. A Logic that should supply such a
criterion would be all science. But if there be a
part of our knowledge which is due to the mind
itself, and if we can, up to a certain point, determine
objects a priori, then a Logic that should contain
this part of knowledge would furnish a general cri-
terion of truth." For it would not merely enable us
to lay down the negative conditions of knowledge,
which is all that formal Logic pretends to do, but it
would also enable us, up to a certain point, to deter-
mine its positive contents. It would give us, in fact,
a general knowledge of what all objects of knowledge
must be, whatever more they may be besides. We
may call this proposed science, transcendental Logic,
for transcendental is the word by which we have
learnt to distinguish a priori ideas so far as they
have an objective meaning, or, in other words, so far
as they enable us to know objects. Such a Logic
will, in one point of view, be narrower in its scope
than pure general Logic, in so far as it will reject
from its consideration all conceptions of a posteriori
origin; but, in another point of view, it will be
wider, for it will have to do not only with ideas, but
with objects.
Three parts
Now, as there are three divisions of pure general in each of
Logic, which deal respectively with apprehension, Logics.
T
these
290
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
with judgment, and with reasoning, may we not
expect that the transcendental Logic will have three
corresponding parts? Kant answers that there
really is something to correspond to each. Know-
ledge, being essentially the reference of our ideas to
objects, involves an act of judgment, in which this
reference is made. But, to make this possible, we
must first have conceptions of objects to which the
ideas got from perception may be referred. Accord-
ingly, the first question which the transcendental
Logic has to answer is, What are the conceptions
of objects in general derived from the understanding?
And the second question naturally follows, What
are the principles of judgment to which we attain,
when the perceptions, and especially the a priori
perceptions, are determined by these conceptions?
The transcendental Analytic therefore divides itself
naturally into two parts-the Analytic of conceptions,
and the Analytic of principles, which correspond re-
spectively to the parts of the general Logic treating
of apprehension and judgment. And, finally, as we
proceed in general Logic from the immediate con-
nection of perceptions in judgment to their mediate
connection in syllogism, so in transcendental Logic
we must ask, whether there are not certain highest
principles of connection among judgments which
give unity and system to all our knowledge. This is
the question considered in the Dialectic. There is
therefore throughout a parallelism between the two
Logics, though, as we shall see, the Dialectic turns
out to be no theory of knowledge, but rather a
theory of its limits, and an explanation of the illusions
by which we seem able to transcend these limits.
It is important to keep this parallelism continually
VI.
291
DISCOVERY OF THE CATEGORIES.
before us; for it was ever in Kant's mind, it was, as
he tells us, the guiding thread that led him to his
discoveries, and very often it explains peculiarities
in his mode of statement that are explicable in no
other way.
Concep-
First, then, we have the Analytic of Conceptions, Analytic of
or, in other words, the discovery and verification tions.
of the pure conceptions of objects due to the
understanding.
Supposing that there are such conceptions in the
mind, how shall we find them out? For we want a
list, and that an exhaustive list of them. Such a
list must contain nothing empirical and nothing
that is due to sense, whether pure or empirical,
and must exclude even the pure perceptions of
time and space. It must contain only funda-
mental or root conceptions: for we do not wish
to mix up anything secondary or derivative or
complex with that which is simple and primary.
Lastly, while it thus excludes everything but the
pure a priori conceptions of the understanding, the
conceptions in which lie the possibility of all syn-
thesis, and hence of all knowledge of objects, it must
include all those conceptions, or, in other words, it must
embrace the whole content of the pure understanding.
To secure such completeness, it will not be sufficient to
take up pure conceptions one after another, as they
present themselves in the analysis of ordinary experi-
ence. For then we could never be sure that further
analysis of experience would not yield other concep-
tions, in addition to those we had already discovered.
"We can never be certain of the scientific complete-
ness of the Transcendental Logic, so long as it pre-
sents the aspect of a mere aggregate of conceptions
292
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
The guid-
ing thread
tentatively brought together. Such certainty is
attainable only if we are able to start with an idea
of the whole of a priori knowledge derived from the
mind, or if from that idea we determine the division
and articulation of all its constitutive parts. For
then only can we have that combination of all the
parts in the unity of a system, which is the test of
exhaustive completeness."
"" 1
Now, where are we to find this idea of the whole?
to the dis- To answer this question we only need to recollect
covery of
the pure
concep-
tions.
that what we are seeking to discover is not merely
certain conceptions which the understanding has, but
rather conceptions which the understanding is-con-
ceptions that, strictly speaking, constitute the under-
standing. We are seeking, in short, to analyse the
faculty of understanding.
But we have already seen what is the characteristic
activity of the understanding. Its business is to
judge or subsume different conceptions or perceptions,
under more general conceptions that connect them
together. Now, if we suppose, as is usually sup-
posed, that sense presents us in perception with the
ideas of things in their concrete individuality, this
work of the understanding can be performed by
mere analysis. Given the ideas of a number of
individual objects as such, we can easily connect
them together by abstraction and generalization.
We only need, in short, to compare the individuals, to
observe their common elements, abstract from their
differences, and so combine them under generic names.
And this process we may repeat again and again till
we arrive at a unity of all things in the abstract
conception of an object in general. But then we
¹ Transe. Logic, 1st part, p. 66 : Tr., p. 54.
VI.
293
DISCOVERY OF THE CATEGORIES.
have to consider that sense does not, in the first
instance, and by its own power, give us such ideas
as we have here supposed, the ideas of individual
objects in their complete determination as indivi-
duals. On the contrary, what sense, strictly speak-
ing gives us is simply an unconnected manifold; and
before the conception of an individual as a concrete
unity could be arrived at, the isolated perceptions of
sense must have been brought to ether and united
with each other. Hence, before the analysis with
which the ordinary Logic deals, and the secondary
synthesis to which that analysis leads, there must
be a primary synthesis. And as the understanding
cannot derive the principles of this primary synthesis
from the elements to be combined, it must find those
principles in itself. It follows then that the under-
standing has in itself a priori forms of synthesis, or,
what we have seen to be the same thing, conceptions
of objects in general, which are its instruments in
giving unity to sense experience. These a priori
conceptions are the rules which it follows in putting
together the manifold data of perception with a view
to knowledge; and except so far as the data of per-
ception are arranged according to these rules, they
are 'blind,' and cannot give to us any knowledge of
objects. "They are to us as thinking beings abso-
lutely nothing."
ceptions,
are the
forms of
Now, we can easily see how a general idea may The con-
furnish a rule for the synthesis of the elements to which
which it is applied. Our conception of a triangle primary
serves for a rule or limiting condition, under which synthesis,
we bring together the elements of every triangular deter-
figure and our conception of the decadic system of the logical
numbers serves for a rule, under which by addition judgment,
are already
mined by
analysis of
294
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
we produce particular numbers. Or, again, our
conception of matter as extended and impenetrable
serves for a rule, subject to which we put together
the elements in our idea of every particular body.
But all these relatively general conceptions as
rules of synthesis, are subject to a highest and most
general set of rules which are found in the pure
conceptions of the understanding. For, whatever be
the object of thought, its manifold must be put
together in conformity with the rules of synthesis
which flow from the conceptions of objects in general.
And this, as appears by what has been said, is the
same thing as to say, that its manifold must be put
together according to rules involved in the very
nature of the understanding, as the faculty of
judging.
What then are the conceptions involved in the
very process of judgment? or by what conceptions
can that process be supposed of itself to produce
unity in our ideas? This is the meaning of Kant's
enquiry, 'What are the functions of unity in judg-
ment?' If we can give a complete enumeration of
these functions of unity, which are implied in the
nature of judgment, and which therefore by the
very act of judgment must be added to the data
on which it is exercised, we shall have a com-
plete list of the a priori conceptions of the under-
standing.
Now ordinary Logic has already prepared the way
for the answer to this question by its determination
of the forms of judgment. For, in the first place, it
defines judgment as "the idea of the unity of the
consciousness of different ideas," or, "the idea of the
relation of different ideas as united in one concep-
VI.
295
DISCOVERY OF THE CATEGORIES.
1
tion." Further, it distinguishes in judgment the
matter of the ideas connected, from the form of unity
superinduced on that matter, i.e., "the determination
of the manner in which different ideas are brought
into the unity of one consciousness."2 And abstract-
ing from the matter, Logic directs our attention to
the form of thought, and shows that all judgments
are determined in four ways: in quantity, quality,
relation, and modality, and that under each of these
points of view there are three kinds of judgment.
In all this formal Logic has to do only with what
we have spoken of above as the judgments whose
synthesis is based on analysis. For a judgment is
formally right when its predicate is contained in the
conception of the subject; formally wrong when it
is not. But then, as we have just seen, such
analysis presupposes another synthesis, and there-
fore presupposes certain original forms of synthesis
or combination, which are the limits of analysis. For
however far we may carry our analysis, there is a
point beyond which it cannot be carried without
destroying the very conception analysed, and hence
destroying the judgment itself. When we come to
this point, therefore, we strike upon the essential
forms of connection involved in the very act of
judgment; and these, which are the last presup-
positions of the analysis, the last binding elements
which analysis must respect, if it would not by its
very excess annihilate itself, must be the first prin-
ciples of synthesis, or the primary rules according to
which the elements of thought are put together.
If, therefore, we may suppose that formal Logic
has duly and sufficiently enumerated the forms of
Kant's Logic, § 17; III., p. 282.
2 Id. § 18.
1
296
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
General
ideas as
specifica-
tion.
judgment, viewed as an act of analysis, we may be
sure that it has at the same time pointed out the
conceptions that guide us in our primary synthesis,
in our first putting together the elements of our
knowledge of objects. That beyond which we can-
not go without annihilating thought itself, must be
of the very essence of thought. When we deter-
mine it, we have determined at the same time the
first lines of the foundation upon which all know-
ledge must be built.
Kant's view, then, may be thus explained. The
rules for beginning of knowledge implies certain general
principles which are progressively specified. The
general conception I already have of any object
is a guide to me in putting together the particular
elements of perception by which that conception is
further determined. Thus, having the conception
of matter as extended, I go on to put together on
this basis the various elements presented to me by
touch, taste, &c., in conformity with this original
conception. Every general idea, in fact, is a rule
for the synthesis of the particular subsumed under
it. And ultimately all combination of different
elements (and there is no knowledge without com-
bination of the different elements) must rest on the
conception or conceptions of objects in general. For
only as subsumed under these conceptions, or as
specifying and further determining them, can any
special object be known. These are the ultimate
principles of the unity of judgment. If we desire
to express it so, we may call them the first predicates
of all objects of thought. But it would be less mis-
leading to say that they give the first definition of
the subject to which all other determinations must
VI.
297
DISCOVERY OF THE CATEGORIES.
be attached as predicates. For only as referred to
a transcendental object can any datum of sense
have a meaning for us; and the categories are
the predicates by which that object is first defined,
and the presuppositions of all further definition of
it. In fact, apart from the categories, the transcen-
dental object is a mere x, which has no relation
to perception. These first predicates therefore re-
main when we abstract from all that is empirical.
They are the last in analysis, as they are the first
in synthesis. Kant has a good right to say that if,
and so far as Logicians have fully and exhaustively
pointed out the functions of unity in analytic judg-
ments, they have at the same time given us a direct
clue to the first principles of experience.
logical
tion of the
judgment
as a sys-
But this immediately raises the question, whether Can the
the Logicians have really done so, and whether they enumera
have done it so systematically that we are at liberty forms of
to start from their work as unquestionably perfect. be taken
Kant at the outset had set up a high standard for tem?
himself; he had demanded that the completeness of
the list of a priori conceptions should be shown by
their systematic unity-a unity in which the idea of
the whole should determine at once the number and
relation of the parts. But, in the end, he assumes
that the 'logical system' is perfect, and that all that
is necessary is to build a 'transcendental system
upon it. He points out, it is true, the unity in
which we are to seek for system, but he does not
show how the diversity of elements springs from that
unity. He says that as thinking is judging, all the
categories must be involved in the activity of judg-
ment; but if he had fulfilled his promise, he must
Proleg., part 2nd, § 24; III., p. 68: Tr., p. 81.
7
> 1
298
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Validity
of the
of form
and
matter.
have shown us from the very nature of the synthesis
of judgment that these and no other categories are
involved in it. This, however, he is so far from
doing that he actually denies that it can be done.
"Of the peculiarity of our understanding by reason
of which it can produce unity of apperception only
by means of the categories, and by just this number
of them, we can give no account any more than we
can account for our having just these and no other
functions for our judgments; or for time and space
being the only forms under which perception is
possible to us." 1
The objection, therefore, which
Kant brings against Aristotle is an objection which
can be justly urged against himself that he picked
up his categories without principle, or rather without
developing his principle. He pointed out the activ-
ity of thought in which the categories are involved,
but, without further attempt to prove them, he
simply adopts them on the authority of Aristotelian
Logic. His warrant for doing so lies mainly, it
would seem, in that Logic having lasted without
change since the time of Aristotle; and on this
warrant he does not hesitate to speak with the
greatest confidence as to the completeness of his
enumeration.
The first point that calls for criticism is the dis-
distinction tinction of form and matter. Why should quantity,
quality, relation, and modality be referred to the
former and not to the latter? The matter of general
Logic, as we have seen, consists in the ideas which
in the judgment are combined in a unity of conscious-
ness.' The form is the manner in which they are
combined.' But it is difficult to see how a division of
1
6
Kritik, § 21, p. 744: Tr., p. 89.
VI.
299
DISCOVERY OF THE CATEGORIES.
conceptions can be based on this distinction. Every
conception of an object, as Kant himself has shown,
determines the manner and way' in which the
different elements of that which is subsumed under
it shall be combined. Every higher conception may
thus in relation to the lower be regarded as form,
and every lower in relation to the higher as matter.
If, on the other hand, it be said that logic has to do
only with the necessary form of judgment, this
necessary form can only mean the minimum of
generic unity, which must still be left when we
distinguish different elements of a conception, and
yet relate them to each other in a judgment. But
what is this minimum? On what principle can we
say that it contains all that Kant asserts to belong
to it, and no more? In reference to this question,
it is interesting to observe how the idea of limit-
ing Logic to the form of thought has worked itself
out in the history of the science. The inevitable
result of the search for bare form without matter
has been to eliminate one element after another
till the judgment disappears in the expression of
bare identity. First, modality is excluded, be-
cause analytic judgments are always necessary, and
with any other connection of conceptions than that
which is mediated by analysis formal Logic has
nothing to do. In the next place, the various
relations expressed in the categorical, hypothetical,
and disjunctive judgments are reduced to the
single relation of containing and contained quan-
tity. Then Sir W. Hamilton proposes that the
predicate should be quantified, on the principle that
what is implicit in thought should be made explicit
in Logic. The predicate being quantified, and the
300
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
The formal
judgment
is no
judgment
at all.
judgment thus reduced to an equation, the next step
is that it should be numbered. Mr. Jevons¹ goes a
step farther, and argues that if the predicate is to be
quantified on the ground that what is implicit in
thought should be made explicit by Logic, then it
should be qualified by the subject, because in the
judgment it is implicitly limited thereby. Thus the
formula of the judgment will be, not A=B,
6
A some B, but A=AB; or, not All men are
mortal,' or 'All men are some mortals,' but 'All men
are mortal men.' There thus remains but a single step
to be taken to bring formal Logic to the euthanasia
of pure form, viz., that the subject should also be
qualified by the predicate. The judgment would
then take the form, AB AB, or Men mortal are
mortal men,' and would pass into the tautological
expression of an identity.
The truth, then, is that the elimination of matter
from the judgment can only stop when the form has
been reduced to a simple identity. A tautological
judgment is the only pure analytic judgment, and
a tautological judgment is, strictly speaking, no
judgment at all. It is a judgment that is never
made. Identity has no significance except in
relation to difference. Even where there is an
appearance of a simple identical judgment there is
always an implied nuance of difference between the
subject and the predicate. A man's a man for a'
that.' In the purest analytic judgments which we
can make there is always a synthesis of differences.
Kant indeed says that the judgment: 'All bodies
are extended,' is an analytic judgment, because the
quality of extension is already contained in the con-
¹ Principles of Science, I., ch. 3.
1
VI.
301
DISCOVERY OF THE CATEGORIES.
ception of body. He forgets, however, that on the
supposition that extension had already been thought
as the property of all bodies, there would be no mean-
ing in this judgment, unless bodies had other quali-
ties than extension, qualities in which they differ/
What we have in this judgment is therefore only the
inverted expression of a synthesis of extension with
other qualities, with which in all the different objects
called bodies it is associated, and it is this implied
synthesis that gives meaning and interest to the
judgment. The so-called analytic judgment, when
it goes beyond tautology, is simply the reversed
synthetic judgment-the synthesis with the subject
put for predicate. The object of making the judg-
ment, All bodies are extended,' is to determine
part of what has the predicate of extension as body,
not simply to analyse the conception of body.
Thought must proceed synthetically from the less to
the more determinate, and it is only in appearance
that it ever proceeds otherwise.
quence of
ation of
affirma-
tion and
identity
ence.
Another aspect of the objection against formal Conse-
Logic is suggested by the last paragraph, namely, the separ
that it separates conceptions which have no
meaning except in relation to each other. Gov- negation,
erned mainly by a physical analogy, and regard- and differ-
ing conceptions as quantities that include or
exclude each other, it severs identity from dif-
ference, and affirmation from negation. Thus it
treats the affirmative and the negative judgment
as two distinct and independent acts, which have
no necessary relation to each other. But in so far
as this division is insisted on, both judgments lose
all their significance. The affirmative, because it is
not also negative, reduces itself to tautology, i.e., the
302 THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
CHAP.
assertion of sameness without any reference to dif-
ferences; and in like manner the negative, because
it is not also affirmative, reduces itself to an opposi-
tion of conceptions which have no connecting link,
i.e., the assertion of difference without reference to
any identity. But mere difference and mere identity
are equally unmeaning. It is equally unmeaning to
say, 'The soul is the soul,' or to say, 'The soul is
not a horse.' But according to the ordinary logical
explanation of judgment, which Kant adopts, thought
proceeds in this unmeaning way. The affirmative.
judgment proceeds by mere identity, or only
declares that a thing is itself;
a thing is itself; the negative
judgment proceeds by mere opposition, or merely
declares the absence of one predicate without imply-
ing the presence of another. When, for instance, it
is said that the whole sphere of reality may be
divided in relation to any predicate, in what is called
dichotomy by contradiction, e.g., that everything
must either be red, or not red,' it is obvious that this
gives a meaning to the negative judgment according
to which it simply removes the positive judgment
without putting anything in its place. According
to this doctrine, in saying 'The soul is not red,'
we do not assert that it is any other colour. The
negative is supposed to take away not only the
species red, but also the genus coloured object, and
even the idea of an object at all. But it may be safely
asserted that such negative judgments are never made,
except by way of a logical experiment, any more than
positive judgments are ever made, which are merely
tautological. In practice, the negative is always a
definite negative, a negation which involves an affir-
mation, and so adds to the determination of its
VI.
303
DISCOVERY OF THE CATEGORIES.
subject, just as the positive is always a definite
positive, an affirmation which involves a negation,
and so excludes something not hitherto excluded
from that subject. When we say 'The soul is not
material,' we are already thinking of the soul as an
object belonging to a genus which is now further to
be divided or determined, and therefore if we deny
that it belongs to one species of that genus, wc
imply that it belongs to some of the other possible
species. Further, these other species are already, to
a certain extent, determined, when we compare the
possibilities left open by the genus with the principle
of division implied in the determination of the first
species. When it is said, 'This triangle is not right
angled,' we have already, in the generic idea and the
specific difference, the materials of determining the
other species in which it must be included (it being
assumed that it is a triangle we are dealing with).
And the same is the case even where the principle
of division is of a more empirical character. I cannot
say,
This stone is not red,' without having some
idea of the class coloured objects, and of the dif
ferent possibilities of colour it includes. The subject
in all cases carries with it a certain determined
sense. It is so far determined as to bring it under Judgment
some genus, and the judgment gives a further synthetic.
determination by asserting or denying a possible
species. If the judgment were not made under
conditions of a presupposed generic determination,
then there would be no principle under which the
predicate could be selected, out of the infinity of
possible predicates, to be affirmed or denied. It
would be as natural to say, 'The soul is a bird, or
not a bird,' as to say, 'It is material, or not
always
304
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Another
attempt of
Kant to
distinguish
from tran-
Logic.
material.' It does not occur to us to make such
ridiculous judgments, simply because we start with
a so far determined subject. On the other hand,
the subject is never so far determined as to
exclude the doubt whether the predicate does or
does not belong to it for otherwise, there would
be no ground for making positive or negative judg
ments at all. We make judgments because a pre-
dicate suggests itself as possible, i. e., as consistent
with the generic determination of the subject. It
is, however, a natural illusion that leads us to
suppose that we make analytic judgments. The
subject in the judgment, 'The soul is not mate-
rial,' seems to be more specific than the predicate.
But this is merely seeming. The judgment would
not be made if it were not that the soul is as yet
known only as substance in general.
We con-
ceive it indeed as an object, and therefore as
something that is in itself completely determined
apart from our knowledge; but for us its determi-
nation has not gone so far as to determine its
materiality or immateriality.
Now, if this be the case, if it be true that the
real movement of thought is always determinant
formal or synthetic, however it may appear otherwise,
scendental we at once get rid of the division between general
and transcendental Logic, between the Logic of
thought in itself and the Logic of thought in rela-
tion to objects. And we shall see afterwards that
this brings with it very important results in regard
to Kant's whole view of knowledge.
Here we
need only show the failure of another attempt he
1 Except, of course, in the case mentioned before of an inverted
expression of synthesis.
VI.
305
DISCOVERY OF THE CATEGORIES.
((
makes to justify his distinction of the categories
as such from the forms of judgment on which
they are founded. The categories, he tells us, are
conceptions of an object in general, whereby its
perception is regarded as determined in relation to
one of the logical functions for judgment." For, he
argues, if I take the two ideas 'body' and 'divisible'
and bring them into the relation expressed by the cate-
gorical judgment, it does not matter, so far as formal
Logic is concerned, which of the two I take as predi-
cate, and which as subject. I may say either, 'All
bodies are divisible,' or, 'Some divisibles are bodies.'
But when I subsume body under the category of
substance, it is then determined that the percep-
tion of it in experience shall always be taken as
subject, and never as predicate. It would appear
then that, in Kant's opinion, the form of judgment
is fixed when we give it an objective meaning, but not
fixed when we take it as mere thought. But this
simply means that formal Logic is, in this passage,
supposed by him to abstract from certain relations
of thought, and so leave the judgment undetermined
in respect of these, while from other more general
relations it does not abstract. Hence, the predicate
may be more general than the subject, but cannot
be less so and the more general term, if taken in
its full extension, must be the predicate, but as it
need not be so taken, the order of the terms is indeter-
minate and conversion is allowable. This, however,
is only to say that formal Logic attends to the quan-
tity of our conceptions, but leaves them indetermin-
ate in respect of relation. But why should quantity
be considered by Logic any more than relation?
1 Part 2, § 14, p. 729: Tr., p. 679.
U
306
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
The Cate-
gories,
do not cor-
If the principle of judgment is the law of identity
and contradiction, the only judgments that can be
justified are the judgment in which subject and
predicate are the same, and the judgment in which
they are entirely different; and these, as has been
shown, are not judgments at all. As, however,
it is impossible to separate the form from the matter
of knowledge, formal Logic is driven upon a curious
dilemma. It has to choose between the alternatives
of vanishing into nothing, and of including every-
thing. If it is to give all the principles of synthesis in
judgment, its principles are infinite in number, since
any conception may be the ground of a synthesis,
and, therefore, of the analysis corresponding. And,
on the other hand, if it is to give only principles
of analysis that are not principles of synthesis,
it can discover no such principles at all. The only
distinct line that can possibly be drawn between
the formal and the material, must be drawn by
considering all that is implied in thinking objects in
general as opposed to any particular objects. If
Logic has any sphere of its own at all, its business
must be to consider what are the general conditions
of thought and experience, as opposed to the con-
ditions of thinking this or that particular object.
But then the table of a priori conceptions of objects
in general will rather determine, than be determined
by, the table of the functions of unity in judgment.
Kant's determination of the categories is got by con-
after all, sidering what are the various forms of judgment under
each of the four heads distinguished by logicians-
logical quantity, quality, relation, and modality. He observes,
judgment. however, that some distinctions are of importance to
respond
with the
forms of
transcendental Logic, which formal Logic for its own
VI.
307
DISCOVERY OF THE CATEGORIES.
purposes can afford to neglect. Hence in quality
he adds the infinite judgment to the positive and
negative, and in quantity the singular to the uni-
versal and particular. Formal Logic does not need
to distinguish the singular from the universal judg
ment, because, in both, the subject in the whole of
its extension is included in the predicate. Nor need
it regard the infinite or limitative judgment as
distinct from the affirmative, for it has only to do
with the affirmative or negative character of the
judgment, and not with the character of the predi-
cates which in it are asserted or denied. But transcen-
dental Logic must take account of these distinctions,
for it has to estimate the objective value of the
judgments in question, i.e., the value of the know-
ledge contained in them. Thus Kant has some
difficulty ere he can get out of the formal judgment
his full tale of categories, even in the case of quality
and quantity. But he has still more trouble in the
case of relation. For as formal Logic, in the limi-
tation usually given to it, excludes all relations
except those of extension and comprehension, the
different forms of the categorical, hypothetical, and
disjunctive judgments can have for it no special sig-
nificance. All that it has to do with, is simply the
relation of genus and species. When therefore Kant
attempts to get out of these forms, as understood by
Logic, the categories of substance, cause, and recipro-
city, we are sensible of a considerable hiatus in the
deduction; and by some of his efforts at explanation,
Kant shows that he was sensible of this defect
himself. Take, e.g., the category of reciprocity: in
following Kant's reasoning we are forced to convert a
generic whole, which is simply the abstraction of a
308
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Kant's
possible
common element in its parts, into the notion of a
concrete or individual whole, the idea of which deter-
mines the parts, and their relation to each other. We
can take any abstraction as a whole in the former
sense, and we can divide it, in dichotomy per contra-
dictionem, in reference to any other abstraction. We
can say, e.g., 'All men are red, or not red;' but in
this case there is no necessity that the genus should
include both species, nor does each species determine
the others through the idea of the whole. And the
same remarks may be applied to the relations of
substance and accident, and of cause and effect.
The mere conception of the relation of subject and
predicate in the categorical, or of reason and conse-
quent in the hypothetical judgment, cannot give us
these categories, unless we interpret these judgments
in a different way from that in which formal logic
interprets them. If the judgment be limited to the
ideas of comprehension and extension, as it has been
by formal logicians, no alchemy will get cause or
substance out of it. Either, therefore, Kant has
limited Logic too narrowly or these categories must
be rejected.
The best answer that can be made to this criticism
answer to is, that Kant did not simply identify the categories
tion. as such with the forms of judgment. On the con-
this objec-
trary, he always maintained that, as mere forms of
judgment, these a priori conceptions have not that
objective meaning which they gain from their appli-
cation to the matter of sense. It may, therefore,
be argued, that ere we can say anything as to
the correspondence of the two lists, we must have
considered the process by which the one is translated
into the other, the logical into the transcendental.
VI.
309
DISCOVERY OF THE CATEGORIES.
This, however, does not completely meet the objec-
tion. For, if it be true that some of the pure con-
ceptions have no distinct meaning in formal Logic,
then the 'guiding thread,' by means of which the
categories were discovered, is lost. The 'logical sys-
tem,' on which the 'transcendental system' was
reared, disappears, and we are left to judge of the
latter by its own merits.
list of
categories
from those
Kant?
Let us, then, look at the list of categories itself, Complete-
without reference to anything else. Is it complete, categories.
and what are the relations of its parts? To the first (1) Are all
question Kant answers, that the list contains, not all deducible
the a priori conceptions of the understanding, but given by
all the fundamental or root conceptions. In this
two things are involved. It is involved, on the one
hand, that the categories enumerated are not deduci-
ble from each other, and on the other hand, that all
the other a priori conceptions are capable of being
deduced from them. But, as to the latter of these
points, it is to be observed that Kant has nowhere
attempted to give such a deduction, though he often
speaks of it as an easy task for any one who has
before him the Wolffian handbooks of Ontology.
"If any one takes the trouble to enumerate the Pre-
dicables, which he may easily derive from a good
Ontology (e. g., Baumgarten's), and to arrange
them in classes under the Categories, not forgetting
to analyse them as completely as possible, he will,
by this procedure, produce a purely analytic section
of Metaphysic, which will not contain a single syn-
thetic proposition. This might be treated as a
Propedeutic to synthetic philosophy, and its
definiteness and completeness would not only
make it very useful for this purpose, but its syste-
310
CHAP
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
(2.) Are
they not
from each
matic character would even give it a kind of
beauty."1
With regard to the other and more important point,
deducible the relation of the categories to each other, it has
other? already been said that Kant, on his own showing,
had no right to be satisfied with the completeness of
his list till he had deduced the fourfold division of
classes of categories, and again, the threefold sub-
division of these classes from the very idea of judg-
ment. And, indeed, notwithstanding his denial of
the possibility of such a deduction, he really
himself makes some attempt to supply it, or at
least to give a reason for the threefold division
of the categories. For, in various places of his
works, he points out relations between the cate-
gories.2 Thus, in the introduction to the Critique
of Judgment, he says: "It has been made a difficulty
by some that my divisions in pure philosophy are
almost always threefold. But this lies in the nature
of the case. For if an a priori division is to be
made, it must be either analytical, according to the
principle of contradiction, and then it is always a
Dichotomy: or synthetical: and, if in this case it is
to be based on a priori conceptions (not as in
mathematics on perceptions), then, according to that
which is required for synthetic unity in general,
the division must be Trichotomy; for it must be a
division that includes, first, a condition, secondly, a
conditioned, and thirdly, a conception springing out
of the union of these two."
remark in the second edition
¹ Proleg., § 39, note, p. 92: Tr., p. 111.
This is illustrated in a
of the Critique, where
2 Proleg, 1. c.; Kritik, § 11, p. 722: Tr., p. 69. Kritik der Urtheilskraft,
Einleitung, § 9, p. 39.
VI.
311
DISCOVERY OF THE CATEGORIES.
he says, "Universality or Totality is just multipli-
city regarded as Unity: Limitation is just Reality
combined with Negation. Community is just the
Causality of Substances in reciprocal determination of
each other; finally, Necessity is but Existence given
through Possibility itself. Yet we are not to suppose
that therefore the third category is merely deduced,
and not a fundamental conception of pure reason.
For the combination of the first and second concep-
tions to produce the third requires a special act of
understanding, which is not identical with that in-
volved in the first and second. Thus, the concep-
tion of a number, which belongs to the category of
totality" (i.e., involves the return out of multiplicity
into unity), "is not always possible where the
notions of unity and multiplicity are given (e. g., in
the idea of the infinite), and again, though I com-
bine the conception of a cause and that of a sub-
stance, this does not at once enable me to under-
stand what is involved in influence, i.e., how a sub-
stance can be cause of anything in another substance.
Hence it is clear that a special act of understanding
is required for this third category: and so it is also
in all the other instances."
cannot, by
confession,
pared to
Now it may be remarked, that the idea ex- Analysis
pressed in the first of these passages, the idea that Kant's
there is a necessary distinction between analytical be com-
and synthetical division, is in direct and manifest synthesis.
contradiction with the principle of Kant's attempt to
get the 'transcendental' out of the 'logical' system.
If analytic division is always dichotomy, then for
formal Logic there is never any third category, and
it can give us no 'guiding thread' to the discovery
of a list whose essential feature is triplicity. Kant,
312
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
The law of
pure
thought
in fact, here opposes, while elsewhere he connects,
the two Logics. And, in so doing, he returns to a
view of the subject which he had early developed in
his treatise on negative quantity, and which was
never quite absent from his mind.¹ There we found
him arguing that there is an essential distinction
between Logic and experience, between the law of
the agreement or contradiction of conceptions, the
positive and negative movement of pure thought,
and the law of the connection or opposition of real
things (positive or negative causation). We can under-
stand by pure thought why it is that a thing remains
what it is, why A is A: but we cannot understand
why one thing should be the cause of another thing
different from it. We can understand by pure
thought why a thing should exclude its own nega-
tion or absence, but we cannot understand why it
should be a negative cause, why it should neutralise
something different from itself. A synthetic move-
ment, either positive or negative, is to Kant a
movement which our understanding cannot com-
prehend through the analogy of its own pure
action, but which implies something given from
without. Thought, in other words, cannot differen-
tiate itself: its differentiation must come from some
other source. And long before Kant had com-
menced the writing of the Critique, it had become
obvious to him that the differentiation must come
from the perception.
Now, in speaking a few pages back of formal Logic,
we have suggested another solution of the difficulty
tially dif- which never seems to occur to Kant; the solution,
from the viz., that pure thought is not, as he imagines,
not essen-
ferent
.
1 Cf. ante, p. 140.
VI.
313
DISCOVERY OF THE CATEGORIES.
thought in
mination
analytic, or governed by the laws of identity and con- law of
tradiction, in the sense in which these laws are the deter-
commonly understood. We have pointed out that of objects.
in fact there is no movement of thought simply by
identity or simply by difference, but always by both
at once. Thought always proceeds from the less to
the more determinate, and, in doing so, it cannot de-
termine any object positively without determining it
negatively; or determine it negatively without de-
termining it positively. The subject being already
so far defined, as belonging to a particular genus, the
assertion that it does not belong to one of the
species, involves already the assertion that it
belongs to one of the other species; and as
these species cannot be conceived except in rela-
tion to, and in contradistinction from, each other,
the negative of one species already gives us a con-
ception of the other or others (more or less accurate
according to the value of the principium divisionis).
Positive and negative determination are thus cor-
relative, or, in the words of Spinoza, "Determinatio
est negatio," which may be translated, affirmation is
negation, or, determination is affirmation and neg-
ation at once. But if this be the case, the idea of
the discordance of the Logic of thought (formal
Logic) and the Logic of reality is a fiction, and the
problem of their reconciliation is a self-made
difficulty. If the logical determination of a con-
ception implies its relation to its negative or opposite,
then there is no difficulty in thinking of a reality
in which opposites imply each other; the difficulty
would be in thinking anything else. There is no
ground for distinguishing logical from real position,
or logical from real negation; for position and
314
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Kant's
approxi-
this view.
negation are not separated from each other in
thought any more than they are separated in reality.
¹
mere
In the passages just quoted, it seems at the
mation to first glance as if Kant was admitting part of what
has just been stated; at least if he does not admit
that analytical thought is no thought at all, he
admits that thought has another species which is not
analytic but synthetic, a synthesis based on pure
conceptions; and this is in other words to admit
that thought can differentiate itself, and return out
of difference into unity. And to this synthesis he
attributes the origin of the third category in each
class. A step farther would have led him to the
conclusion that, in Quality, affirmation without nega-
tion, or negation without affirmation, are
abstractions, and that all judgment is really governed
by the category of limitation; and in like manner
that in Quantity, unity without plurality, or plurality
without unity, are but abstractions, and all judgment
is really governed by the category of totality. If
Kant had carried out this line of thought, he would
necessarily have rid himself of any absolute dis-
tinction between analysis and synthesis: he would
have merged formal in transcendental Logic, and he
would have seen that the Triplicity, which he regards
as the peculiarity of synthetic thought, is the
characteristic of all thought. Nor would he then
have supposed that it is necessary for thought to go
beyond itself, in order to become synthetic. We
have, however, always to keep before us, that when
Kant speaks of synthesis out of pure conceptions,'
he must be understood as speaking by way of
anticipation; for such synthesis in his view is pos-
6
¹ Cf. ante, p. 310.
VI.
315
DISCOVERY OF THE CATEGORIES.
sible only by reflection of the perception on the concep-
tion; or, in other words, thought becomes synthetic
only in relation to a given difference. In itself the
understanding is tautological; it cannot create a
manifold; but when the manifold has been presented
to it, its tautology turns into synthesis or combina-
tion. We shall have to return to this point in ex-
plaining the transcendental deduction. For the
present it is sufficient to notice that Triplicity is
determined by Kant as flowing from the nature of
synthesis, and that this is what really explains his
introduction of the third category, which, as he him-
self admits in certain cases, has no right to a place
in the theory of judgment as treated by formal
logic.
tion of the
tion of the
It may be remarked, further, that in certain Explana-
remarks introduced into the Prolegomena, and into classifica-
the second edition of the Critique, there are traces categories.
of an attempt to explain also the classification
of the categories. In the first-named work ¹ he
observes that the categories of quality and quan-
tity are not doubled like those of relation and
modality, in the former of which each category
brings along with it its correlate, in the latter its
opposite. In the Critique he says that the first
two classes of categories have to do with the
objects of perception, while the last two refer to
the existence of these objects, either in relation
to each other, or to the mind. The former he
therefore calls mathematical, and the latter dyna-
mical categories: and he seems to connect the
special significance of these two species of cate-
2
¹ Proleg., § 39, p. 92: Tr., p. 111.
2 Kritik, § 11, p. 73: Tr., p. 67.
316
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
gories with the fact that the latter have, and
the former have not, correlates or opposites,
when he says that "this distinction must have a
ground in the nature of the understanding." The
distinction on Kant's own showing is really not so
wide as it appears, if, in all cases, the first and
second categories are related as condition and condi-
tioned, and the third is their unity. There is an
implicit correlation even between the first and the
second of the categories of quantity and quality respec-
tively. So far as the difference exists, it serves to
point to the truth that the dynamical categories in
general are related to the mathematical as the
second category in each class is related to the first:
and this again seems to suggest that there should be
a third class of categories in which difference returns
with unity. This, however, is going beyond our
record. Kant does not anywhere apply to the gene-
ral classes of categories the principle that the cate-
gories are related as thesis, antithesis, and synthesis:
and, indeed, it would have been impossible for him
to do so without admitting as a class of categories
what he only admits as ideas of reason. For if the
first or mathematical class of categories, the cate-
gories of quantity or quality, give us the simplest
conceptions of things in which they are referred only
to themselves, or in which their relativity is latent ;
and if the second or dynamical class of categories give
us conceptions of things according to which they are
distinguished from, yet essentially related to each
other; the third class of categories would, according
to the general analogy, express the return out of
relativity or opposition. It would give us con-
ceptions of things as final causes, unities of ideal
VI.
317
DISCOVERY OF THE CATEGORIES.
differences, or identities which, through their differ-
ences, return upon themselves. 1
tency of
view of
tion of the
We must not, however, introduce into Kant the Inconsis-
ideas of later philosophy, even when we cannot but Kant's
see that the germ of such ideas is in him. All that the rela-
need be said here is, that the 'artige Bemerkungen' two Logics.
of the second edition seem clearly to show that Kant
was striving after some better derivation of the cate-
gories from the nature of judgment than was to be
found in that simple reference to the logical forms
of judgment with which he had satisfied himself in
the first edition. Having observed that the third
category does not properly belong to the analytic
judgment, the judgment as it is treated by general
logic, he was led to look on the act of synthesis as
itself supplying the idea out of which the system of
categories was to be developed and explained. But,
though he had thus detected the imperfection of the
source from which he derived his list, and had sup-
plemented its defects from another source, he never
got rid of the fiction that had been his first stepping-
stone to the truth. The completeness of the list of
categories, the 'transcendental system,' to the last
rested, or seemed to rest, on the completeness of
that 'logical system,' to which, nevertheless, it did not
exactly correspond and the idea of synthesis, out of
which a better system might have been developed,
was never applied but as a corrective. That the
list thus obtained is imperfect, we need not wonder;
we should rather wonder that so good a result was
attained on such a method. Here, as in many other
places in Kant, we find that his thought is really
¹ We shall have something more to say in chapter 11th about the
distinction of the mathematical from the dynamical categories.
318
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
guided by a principle which goes beyond his ex-
pressed logic; and it is this characteristic that has
made his writings so fertile of suggestion for specu-
lations that go far beyond the limits within which
he confined himself. His list of categories, with
their threefold division, corresponding, as he himself
tells us, to the three movements in the synthetic
judgment, has a lasting value as the first attempt to
analyse the synthetic movement of pure thought,
and its merit is not really lessened by his inconsist-
ent denial that pure thought has any synthetic
movement at all. The demand for a complete and
connected system of categories, a system implied in
the synthetic process by which the dispersed data of
sense are elevated into an organised whole of experi-
ence, was of itself enough to make an era in the
history of philosophy, even if the attempt to supply
what was wanting had been less successful.
The bearing of these remarks, however, cannot be
fully understood until we have considered the 'tran-
scendental deduction of the categories,' in which, on
the one hand, they are traced back to the unity
of self-consciousness, and, on the other hand, they
are shown in their relation to the matter of sense,
and the system of experience, which, by their means,
is produced out of that matter.
319
CHAPTER VII.
KANT'S PRELIMINARY STATEMENT OF THE OBJECT OF
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.

of abstract
crete
IF there be any truth in the view taken in the last Confusion
chapter of the difference between the so-called and con-
analytic or formal, and the synthetic or real judg- unity.
ment, Kant's attempt to make the former a
stepping-stone to the latter, or to find any kind of
identity in the two processes, must lead to confusion
and even contradiction. Analysis, as Kant himself
tells us, is simply going back on the path which the
mind has already travelled, proceeding from the
more to the less determinate; while synthesis is ad-
vancing on a new path, or proceeding from the less
to the more determinate. But Kant, fixing his eye
on the one point that generalising means combining,
overlooks the fact that the combination of species
under an abstract genus is just the reverse process
to the combination of parts in a concrete or indi-
vidual whole; or, at least, if we cannot suppose him
to be blind to so simple a logical distinction, he
makes the comprehension of his reasoning difficult,
by the way in which he uses the former to illustrate
the latter. The key to this strange confusion of
320
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Are the
categories
of objec-
tive appli-
cation?
things essentially different will easily be found, if
we remember that Kant always starts with the com-
mon opposition of perception and conception, as par-
ticular and general, but gradually as he goes on
substitutes for it his own new sense of the terms,
according to which perception must be taken to
mean unconnected 'manifold,' and conception to
mean 'binding or synthetic principle.' But this will
become clearer when we have examined the general
remarks by which Kant introduces his 'transcen-
dental deduction.'
Assuming, then, that the list of a priori conceptions
is legitimately derived from the analysis of judgment,
Kant asks how he is to deduce or justify them in
their objective application. In other words, he asks
what value they have for knowledge. Are they
merely subjective, or are they also objective, and if
so, in what sense? Are they objective in the same
way as the forms of space and time, i.e., are they
empirically real, or may they also be applied to
things in themselves? This is the same doubt
which we encountered in the Esthetic in regard
to the a priori perceptions of space and time,
but it meets us here in a more dangerous form.
For the a priori perceptions, though sources of
universal and necessary propositions in relation to
the things of experience, would not in themselves
give rise to questions in relation to that which
is beyond experience. But the categories, being
conceptions of objects in general, do not carry with
them their limitation to the field of experience, and
therefore directly suggest questions regarding that
which is beyond it. For if we have general concep-
tions which are independent of sensible experience,
VII.
321
OBJECT OF THE DEDUCTION.
it is not at once obvious that the knowledge we get
by the use of these conceptions should be confined
to the objects given by sense. And not only so, but
the mind which is possessed of such conceptions is
inevitably driven to consider whether the forms of
time and space also, inasmuch as they give rise to
necessary and universal perceptions, may not apply
to objects in general, irrespective of sensible
experience.
must be the
of experi-
There is, then, a twofold question before us: can If so, they
the a priori conceptions enable us to know objects, conditions
and if so, what kind of objects do they enable us to ence.
know? But the answer is simple. "There are
only two cases in which it is possible that a concep-
tion that adds to the idea of an object should corre-
spond with that object, so that they may necessarily
refer to each other, and in a manner coincide.
Either the object must make the conception possible,
or the conception must make the object possible.
If the former be the case, the relation of conception
and object is empirical, and the conception cannot
anticipate the object. This is the case with pheno-
mena in regard to everything in them that is due to
sensation. If the latter be the case, then as (apart
from the causality of conceptions through the will,
of which we are not speaking) a conception cannot
in itself produce its object as an existing thing, there
is only one way in which the a priori determina-
tion of objects by means of conception is possible.
The conception, to wit, must be the condition under
which the object can be known as an object. It has
been already shown that the condition under which
alone objects can be perceived is an a priori form in
the mind. Now the question is whether there are
X
322
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
་་་་
not also anticipatory a priori conceptions in which
lie the conditions, not indeed of the perception of
objects, but of their being thought as objects. If
there are such conceptions, then all empiric know-
ledge of objects must necessarily be in conformity
with them, since, except through them, nothing
could be presented in experience as an object. Now
experience always contains, besides the perception
of sense, a conception of an object that is given, or
appears, in the conception. Hence, at the basis of
all empirical knowledge, there must lie conceptions
of objects in general as a priori conditions of its
possibility, and the objective validity of the cate-
gories as a priori conceptions rests on the fact that
they are the conditions required." 1
"1
Kant's argument then is simply this: If the ab-
stract conceptions are to be held to give us know-
ledge of objects, either objects, as they are presented
to the mind, must bring these conceptions with
them as a part of their content, or the mind must
itself produce the conceptions, and so far produce
the objects that are presented to it. But the former
alternative is excluded: for sense presents to us only
a manifold matter, and this manifold matter does
not contain in itself the conception of an object. So
far as sense goes, one perception or sensation follows
another without any reference to a permanent object.
The conception of an object, therefore, cannot be
produced by the object as affecting sense, for sense
cannot recognise it as an object. It remains that
the mind should itself supply the conceptions of
objects. But this does not mean that the mind
actually produces its own objects. To suppose so
¹ Kritik, § 14, p. 88: Tr., p. 77.
VII.
323
OBJECT OF THE DEDUCTION.
would be to suppose that not only the conceptions of
objects in general, but the particular determinations
of objects were produced by thought. It would be
to suppose the existence in us of an understanding
which discharged also the office of sense, i.e., of a
perceptive, or, as it might also be called, a creative
understanding. Our understanding, however, is
confined to the general and abstract, and depends
for the particular upon sense. And, therefore,
when we say that it is the understanding which
makes the objects possible, this can only mean that
the general conceptions of objects, which the under-
standing supplies, are conditions under which the
matter of sense is objectified, or referred to objects.
On the other hand, as the conceptions so supplied by
understanding are only general ideas, as they do not
specify themselves, but depend for their specification
on the matter of sense, so they have no significance
or value apart from this matter. They are, apart
from this matter, mere forms. They have, as Kant
says, no objective significance.
pendence
tion and
tion.
On these two poles, then, rests the deduction or Interde-
justification of the categories, and, at the same time, of percep-
the limit of that justification! On the one hand, it concep-
rests on the sensuousness of all perception, and its
inability to supply us with the conception of an
object, and, on the other hand, on the generality of
the pure conceptions of the understanding, and their
inability to specify or particularise themselves; for
this is what Kant means by saying that the under-
standing “cannot create its own objects as to their
existence." Obviously, if perceptions be unable to
determine themselves as objects, there is a place left
open in experience for the pure conceptions. On
7
324
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
3
Kant's
problem
we ad-
vance.
the other hand, if the pure conceptions, as being
merely general conceptions of objects, cannot deter-
mine or specify themselves apart from perceptions,
then they have no value except in relation to such
perceptions. In other words, the only conceptions
which have any value or objective validity are those
that are the conditions of the possibility of experience.
"That a conception should be produced completely
a priori, and should have relation to an object,
without being either a condition of the possibility
of experience, or derived from such experience, is
impossible and contradictory. For, as no perception
would correspond to it, it would have no content
(i.e., no specialising matter). Perceptions constitute
the whole field of possible experience, and an a
priori conception, which had no relation to such per-
ceptions, would be only the logical form for a con-
ception : it would not be a conception of anything."1
The great difficulty of following Kant through
this reasoning is, that the conclusion seems to take
away all meaning from the question put at the
outset. At first we are asked to consider whether
the object makes the conception, or the conception
the object possible. But in order to think this
alternative, we must suppose that empirical objects
are given to us from without, and that a priori
objects are determined from within. We find, how-
ever, that no object is given to us, but only a 'mani-
fold' or sensational matter, which, through the syn-
thesis of the understanding, is referred to objects.
The statement of the alternative must therefore be
altered, and we must ask whether the conception is
one that is constitutive of the objective conscious-
¹ Deduction (first edition), § 2, p. 20: Tr., p. 191.
VII.
325
OBJECT OF THE DEDUCTION.
ness in general, or one that is derived from sensa-
tion, when sensations are interpreted by that objec-
tive consciousness. For it is the understanding that
produces the conceptions of objects in general,
without which the matter of sense would never be
more than mere transitory feelings, referred neither
to permanent self, nor a permanent not-self. It is,
therefore, only after the understanding has consti-
tuted for us an objective consciousness, a consciousness
in which there is a permanent self, and a permanent
not-self, that the question of the objective or subjec-
tive origin of a conception can properly arise.
Hence we might say that it is the understanding,
and not sense alone that presents objects to us, and
that sense merely enables us to add new determina-
tions to them when so presented. But, to put it in
this way, might suggest the idea that the objective
consciousness exists by the mere act of the understand-
ing, prior to anything being given in sense: whereas
it is an essential part of Kant's doctrine, that the
understanding does not act of itself, does not of itself
develop its categories, and by means of them pro-
duce an objective consciousness, but that the objec-
tive consciousness can only be evolved in the
individual in relation to his particular sensations.
The conceptions of the understanding are merely Conse-
forms of synthesis, which have no significance, except biguity of
when the manifold' or unconnected elements of object.
sense are given to be brought under them. Hence
Kant tells us that "objects in their existence" are
given only through sense.. Yet through sense they
are not given as objects, and if existence means
anything more than momentary sensation, they are
not given as existent. What Kant means to say
(
quent am-
the word
326
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
is, that the element of sensation is essential, as
well as the element of conception: but just as he
allows himself to use the word synthesis, at one
time for the function of sense, and at another time
for the function of understanding: so it is with
the word 'object.'
object.' It seems to be employed to
designate the element which, on any occasion, is
regarded as wanting in order to complete the idea of
experience. Hence the puzzling logomachy that
arises when we bring Kant's thoughts and expres-
sions together. The categories, which are concep-
tions of objects in general, are declared to be referred
to objects only through perception, while it is just
these very conceptions which make us conceive per-
ceptions as objective, i. e., as representative of a
reality more permanent than themselves. Thus it
is said both that perceptions apart from the concep-
tions of the understanding have no objective validity
or reference to objects, and that the conceptions only
refer to objects through the perceptions. Both the
emptiness' of mere conception, and the 'blindness
of mere perception, are expressed as want of objec-
tivity or reality. In the former case, the object
means that which is actually felt or given in sensa-
tion, or perception, as opposed to that which is
merely thought or imagined. In the latter case, it
means that which is regarded as independent of its
being felt, not indeed in the sense of being incapable
of being felt, but in the sense of its being referred to
consciousness in general, and so conceived to be in-
dependent of the sensation of the individual subject.
Combining the two elements, we might say, with
Kant, that the object is that which is given in indi-
vidual sensation, yet thought or judged to be inde-
VII.
327
OBJECT OF THE DEDUCTION.
+
ナ
​pendent of individual sensation. But then we must
be careful to remember that it is not the object, but
merely the sensation that is given. We cannot say
the objects are there with perception, but are
thought as objects, or are there for us only in con-
ception; for it is the very essence of the Kantian
idealism that objects are not there till they are
thought, except in the sense, which itself involves a
new difficulty, that perceptions are the result of an
affection by the unknown thing in itself. Kant, in
short, identifies the object in the sense of the un-
known cause of sensation with the object which we
find in sensation, in so far as we determine it by
thought, and he declares that the latter must be
conceived as phenomenal of the former.
an
word deter-
The same or similar ambiguities are found in And of the
Kant's use of the word 'determine.' On the one mination.
hand, thought is said to determine perception, which
otherwise is "for us, as thinking beings, as good as
nothing" yet, on the other hand, perception is
said to determine thought, as it gives specification
to the general conception of an object supplied by
thought. In the one case, perception is conceived
as presenting to us
indefinite something,
which waits for thought to fix and define it. In
the other case, thought itself is the universal
which perception specifies. This ambiguity might
possibly be explained by saying that perception in
itself would be nothing for us as thinking beings, if
thought did not bring with it conceptions of objects
in general: but that it becomes something as referred
to, and specifying such general conceptions. But
the key to this difficulty, as well as to the corre-
sponding difficulties in relation to the word 'object,'
328
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Does
knowledge
the uni-
versal or
with the
is to be found in Kant's comparison and confusion of
the two Logics, of which I have spoken in the pre-
ceding chapter.
So long as we look at the question from the point
begin with of view of the ordinary analytic Logic, it seems
necessary to suppose that it is perception that de-
individual? termines or specifies the general conceptions of the
understanding, as it presents to us the individuals
that may be subsumed under them: nor does it
seem to make any difference, that these conceptions
are conceptions of objects in general. From this
point of view it is natural for Kant to say, that "all
judgments are functions of unity among our ideas,
in which, in place of the immediate idea of a thing,
a higher or more general idea that embraces this
and various others under it, is used to determine the
object, and thus a number of possible cognitions are
brought together into one:"¹ and to regard the con-
ceptions of objects in general, as only the highest of
all the conceptions that give unity to knowledge.
But this mode of connecting together ideas by
higher and higher conceptions, by which, as Kant
supposes, unity is given to knowledge, ceases to
have the value thus attributed to it, so soon as we
recognise that objects are not first given in their
complete determination as individual objects, and
then found by abstraction and generalisation to
have common properties; but that, on the contrary,
the first determination of objects is general, and that
the advance of knowledge is a process of specifica-
tion and determination, whose goal is the completely
determined individual. If that goal were attained,
there would be little or no meaning in reversing the
p. 69: Tr., p. 57.
VII.
329
OBJECT OF THE DEDUCTION.
process, and returning to the general conception to
connect the individuals, which, by the process of
specification, we have separated. The reason that it
appears otherwise, lies in a certain confusion of
thought, which has already been partly explained,
but on which we may add a few words.
terminus
For
of the
and its in-
Kant.
Our first determination of objects is, in one point Ambiguity
of view, the most general and abstract, in another question,
point of view, it is the most purely individual deter- fluence on
mination of them; and the progress of knowledge,
therefore, may be regarded either as a progress to
greater generality or greater specification. The in-
dividual may be taken as either the
as either the
a quo,' or the 'terminus ad quem' of science.
the beginning of knowledge is the reference of a
sensation to an object, of which it is interpreted as
the quality. This object is determined merely as
object in general: it is like all other objects, yet it
is conceived as completely individual and independ-
ent. The simple quality attributed to it, is conceived
as belonging to it in itself, apart from all relation
to other objects. In the advance of knowledge,
however, this simple individual object becomes pro-
gressively defined and determined. And not only is
quality added to quality in an indefinite series, but
its isolation is taken from the object. It is found
that qualities are but relations in disguise, and that,
therefore, completely to define the object in itself, is
the same thing as to put it in relation to all other ob-
jects. Perfectly to individualise the object is to dis-
cover the laws that bind it to all other objects, and,
therefore, complete knowledge of one thing, know-
ledge of it in its completely determined individuality,
would be the knowledge of the whole universe in its
330
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
unity, the idea of the whole that explains the differ-
ences and relations of all the parts. Thus it would
appear that knowledge does not proceed from the
individual to the universal, according to the usual
conception, but that, beginning with that which we
may describe either as the abstract individual, or as
the abstract universal, it ends with what we may
describe as either as the concrete individual, or the
concrete universal. It is simply because the con-
crete universal, the universal as a principle of unity,
has been confused with the abstract universal, or
common element: and again, because the completely
determined individual, which is determined through
its relation to all things, has been confused with the
mere singular unrelated atom: that science has been
supposed to begin with the individual, and end with
the universal, and that its process has been confused
with a process of abstracting and generalising. So here,
when Kant tells us that the only business of judg-
ment is to unite individuals or species by bringing
them under higher conceptions, he omits to notice
that, unless the higher conception be one that de-
termines the individual or species in a new relation
not involved in our previous conception of them,
it is a judgment not worth making, and one that
would never actually be made, except as a logical
experiment. Thus he hides from us the true rela-
tion between the different judgments he is compar-
ing; between the judgments by which the objective
consciousness is first constituted, and the other
judgments by which it is developed. And, in
consequence, he is led to treat the categories as
if they were the first predicates of judgment in
which perceptions are the subjects, whereas, if we
VII.
331
OBJECT OF THE DEDUCTION.
wish to express their meaning in relation to expe-
rience, it would be better to say that they supply
the first determinations of the subject, in relation to
which alone perceptions have any meaning for us;
or, to put it in another way, in relation to which
alone sensations become perceptions. The analogy
drawn between the analytic and the synthetic judg
ment, and between the categories and other predi-
cates, rather obscures than illustrates Kant's mean-
ing. For we cannot think of the perception as
subject of a judgment, without thinking of it as
already determined, and only receiving additional
determination from the predicate, and thus we are
inevitably led to give to the sensation or perception
before thought, a character which it has only in and
for thought, and to lose sight of the fact that the
perception in itself is 'blind.' Whether Kant him-
self did not sometimes lose sight of that fact, we
shall afterwards have occasion to consider.
332
CHAPTER VIII.
Object of
the tran-
scendental
Deduction.
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES.
WE now come to the most difficult, but at the
same time the most important, part of the
Critique of Kant-that in which he gives us his
analysis of knowledge, separating and naming one
by one each of its factors, and showing that it is
only by the united action of them all that the world
of experience, the world of space and time in which
we live, comes to be to us what in our ordinary
consciousness it is. Unless this chapter be clearly
understood, an intelligent apprehension of the other
parts of the Critique is impossible. Its difficulty
arises partly from a certain defect in Kant's theory,
of which we shall afterwards speak; but it is mainly
due to the fact that the processes of analysis and
synthesis, the process of separating knowledge into
its elements, and the process of reconstructing it out
of its elements, somewhat interfere with each other.
The very distinctness with which the different ele-
ments of experience are marked off from each other,
is apt to give them for our thought a certain false
substantiality and independence, which afterwards
hinders us from understanding their interdependent
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
333
unity. To obviate this difficulty, it may be useful
to take a general view of the whole argument before
we follow Kant into its details.
is a sys-
We must first realise what the problem is. Ex- Experience
perience is always, even to the ordinary conscious- tem.
ness, a system—a system, it may be, only in its most
general outlines, but still so far systematic. Even
when the sense of law and order is most defective,
common experience is to this extent organised, that
all objects are represented as existing in one space-
arranged, that is, with reference to each other, in
definite relations, which correspond to the relations
of different parts of space; and that all events are
represented as taking place in one time--arranged
with reference to each other in definite relations,
which correspond to the relations of different parts
of time. Further, while the unity of space and
time is thus presupposed as conditioning all the ob-
jects of experience, on the other hand, presupposition
is also made, tacitly if not explicitly, of the identity
of the self which is the subject of it. Any one may see
this, if he will only attempt to make the contrary
supposition that the self to which all his experiences.
are referred does not continue the same. It is evi-
dent that, in that case, there would be a complete
break of connection between the two successive
series of experiences which were referred to the two
different selves, and that no bridge could be thrown
from the one to the other. The life before and after
the division of the self, could not form parts of one
experience, and the objects known would belong to
two distinct worlds (as some have imagined that we
live in different worlds when we sleep and when we
wake). The identity of the self is, in fact, but the
334
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
The sub-
ject is also,
vidual, one
of the
objects of
experi-
ence.
Twofold
problem
arising
from this.
subjective counterpart of the unity of the world as
one whole, existing in one space and one time.
But further, notwithstanding the general corre-
as an indi- spondence of the self and the world, we find that, in
ordinary experience, the individual does not regard
himself simply as a universal subject, but also as
one of the objects of experience-an object both of
outer and inner sense-as one individual
-as one individual among the
many individuals he knows; and in this point of
view he finds himself limited by conditions of
space and time, so that his immediate knowledge
and action seem to be always confined to a par-
ticular moment of time and a particular part of
space, which he respectively calls 'now' and
'here.' Now, this view of experience suggests a
special difficulty, and a difficulty which has two
aspects, according as we choose to regard it from the
point of view of the universal or the individual self.
Taking our stand at the latter point of view (as was
generally done by the English philosophers), the
question is, how an individual, as such, can be a
subject of knowledge, seeing he can have no direct
experience of anything outside of his own sensations
and ideas. For, even granting that objects exist
outside of the subject, they cannot themselves 'pass
over into his mind.' All they can do is to affect
him, and produce a series of sensations, or states of
feeling. And these affections could not give rise to
any knowledge of the objects that produce them;
nay, they could not even determine themselves as
the sensations of an individual, received at parti-
cular moments of time, or in particular parts of
Ere the individual can know himself as an
space.
individual, he must transcend himself, and relate
VIII.
335
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
himself to a world without him; ere he can recog-
nise his sensations as of the here and now, he must
relate the moment and the place to all time and all
space. It is obvious, therefore, that in the indivi-
dual who knows himself as an individual, limited by
conditions of space and time, there must be in some
sense a universal consciousness-a consciousness in
general-to which the consciousness that belongs to
him as an individual is related, and by which it is
interpreted. If it were otherwise, the latter could
not have any definite meaning-could not give rise
to any ideas of objects, or even of itself as an object.
The universal consciousness must determine the par-
ticular contents of my sensitive consciousness, ere
I can know myself as an individual standing in
definite relation to other individuals, and having
perception of them under definite conditions of time
and space. The problem, therefore, on this side of
it is, to determine what a merely sensitive being
needs to convert a series of sensations into such a
consciousness of the world as we actually possess.
In the other aspect of it, the difficulty would take
a somewhat different shape. Taking our stand upon
the universal consciousness of self, which is the
counterpart of our consciousness of the world, we
should have to ask how such a general conscious-
ness can individualise itself, as it actually has done
in us-in other words, how the knowing subject
can be an individual object of knowledge? How is it
possible that I, as a thinking intelligence (and there-
fore, as such, universal and indifferently related to
all objects of knowledge) can yet be so definitely
related to one of these objects, that I can even iden-
tify myself with it to the exclusion of all the others?
336
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
The vindi-
cation and
of know-
ledge go
together.
Here the problem is inverted; and whereas in the
former case we had to look to thought for the means
of emancipating sense from its limit, now we have to
look to sense for the means of restricting and limit-
ing thought. And the possibility of such restriction
can be admitted only if we are able here to repeat,
in regard to the understanding, what we formerly
said in regard to sense.
Just as in that case we
maintained that knowledge could not be derived
from sense except through an intelligence which is
universal; so here we must be able to show that our
knowledge could not be such as it is, unless the
universal intelligence were limited in its activity by
relation to a sense, which is by its essential forms
confined to the particular; or, more accurately,
limited to the determination of an inner sense, in
relation to an outer sense. How can we explain that
we should be conscious of limits, except by the uni-
versality of thought; yet, on the other hand, how
can we explain that we should be conscious of limits,
except through the particularity of sense?
Kant's deduction, then, has two sides or aspects
limitation in which it may be regarded, and is actually re-
garded by himself. On the one side, it looks toward
the vindication, and on the other side toward the
limitation of knowledge. Knowledge is impossible
without the unity and universality of the under-
standing this is the answer with which Kant meets
the scepticism of Hume. Knowledge is impossible
except through the particular data of sense, and
under the conditions of space and time with their
inexhaustible difference: this is the objection which
he opposes to the dogmatism of Wolff. Neither of
these aspects of truth is to him more important than
VIII.
337
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
the other, but they gain prominence alternately
according to the point of view from which he hap-
pens to be approaching the subject. In the deduc-
tion of the first edition of the Critique, he follows
mainly the 'path of ascent,' and beginning with the
manifold of sense, he ends with the unity of pure
self-consciousness: in the deduction of the second
edition, he follows the 'path of descent,' and be-
ginning with the identity of self, he ends with the
manifold of sense, as it is given under the conditions
space and time.
and time. But in both, the general drift of
the argument is the same. In both, Kant seeks to
of
prove that experience is possible only through a
certain combination of elements, none of which
could be separated from the others, or changed, if
the result was to be what it is. As, however, there
are certain points which are more fully explained in
each, and as Kant even suggests that they should be
used as complementary, we shall first give a short
sketch of the argument of the first edition, before
explaining that of the second in more detail.
¡
of the first
of the
The substance of the argument is contained in the Deduction
following words: "The consciousness of ourselves edition
which we have, according to the determinations of Critique.
our state in inner sensuous perception, is merely
empirical, always changeable; hence we commonly
call it inner sense or empirical apperception. From
it we could not possibly get the idea of a standing or
permanent self amid the flux of inner phenomena.
For that which must always be represented as numeri-
cally identical, cannot be determined as such through
empirical data. Only a condition, which precedes
all experience, and makes it possible, can give force
to such a transcendental presupposition." "Now
Y
338
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
sensitive
being
know?
no knowledge, and no connexion or unity of the
different parts of knowledge, can possibly be realised
in us, without that unity of consciousness which
precedes all data of perception, and in reference to
which alone we can represent any object as such.
This pure unchangeable consciousness, I will call
the Transcendental Apperception.
The
numerical unity of the apperception, therefore, is the
basis of all conceptions, just as the manifoldness of
space and time is the basis of all the perceptions of
And this transcendental unity of appercep-
tion it is, that produces out of all possible pheno-
mena that can exist together in our experience a
systematic connexion according to laws."
sense.
1
How can a The question is, what is necessary to elevate a
merely sensitive consciousness (if, indeed, you can
call it a consciousness) into an experience such as
ours? How can the idea of a world of objects, all
related to each other, at least through the one space
and time in which they are included, be evolved out
of the fleeting states of one sensitive individual, who
is at the same time determined as himself but one
of the objects in that world? While the fleeting
stream of sensation flows on, never two moments the
same, how can the elements brought successively
into consciousness be retained, lifted out of their
isolation, and made permanent elements in a syste-
matic unity of experience, which is ever becoming
fuller and more definite? The answer of Kant is,
that this is possible only if the empirical conscious-
ness-the apperception by the individual of his own
states in time, is continually related to, and inter-
preted by, a transcendental apperception, .e., a con-
Kritik (2nd edition), p. 99: Tr., 201.
1
VIII.
339
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
sciousness which is out of time, and which, therefore,
transforms mere transitory sensations into objects
that have a character independent of the imme-
diate perception of them. This Kant attempts to
show by beginning with sense, and adding on one
condition after another, as it is proved to be neces-
sary for the objective consciousness or experience,
till, finally, he reaches the consciousness of the
identity of self as the first condition of all know-
ledge. The following is an outline of the argument.
of (1) syn-
apprehen-
percep-
synthesis
duction in
in imagina-
tion; and
thesis of
tion in
tion.
How can we know objects? Ere we can perceive Necessity
any individual object as such, we must have a thesis of
manifold before us, and we must combine this mani- sion in
fold into a unity. But to distinguish the elements tion; (2)
of the manifold, means in the case of a successive of repro-
consciousness like ours, to distinguish the times
which the manifold is given (for 'as contained in a (3) syn-
single moment that which is presented to the mind recogni-
can be only a simple unit'); and to combine the concep-
elements thus distinguished, means to reproduce the
past sensations, and associate them with that which
is present. To account for knowledge, therefore,
we must admit also the agency of a reproductive
and associative faculty of imagination; otherwise
the data of sense will perish as they arise, and no
unity of an object will ever be presented to our
minds. But even this is not enough. Association
cannot generate the objective consciousness: for the
subjective combination of ideas in the individual
consciousness already implies their objective deter-
mination. In order to produce the effect required,
1
Kant holds that consciousness, so far as it is passive, is serial, and
that a number of different elements can be united in one consciousness
only by synthesis, i. e., spontaneity.
340
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
the elements associated must be definite, and
'definite' means 'defined in relation to each other.'
When we speak of associating sensations, we mean
by a sensation a certain state of the subject that has
a general character, by which it is distinguished
from other sensations, and can be recognised as the
same on its recurrence. In other words, the as-
sociated sensation must be represented, not as it
is to mere sense, but as it is when determined
by the consciousness of an intelligent being-i.e.,
it must be represented as an object which has a
definite relation to other objects. And this is
simply to say that the elements associated have an
objective affinity, which is prior to their subjective
association. If we could suppose the elements of
knowledge to be given, without any definite relation
to each other, we might suppose that, by a law of
association, they were afterwards combined with
each other (though their combination in that case
would be quite accidental). But the elements of
knowledge cannot be given in the character which
they have to a thinking subject, except in so far as
they are already related. In the consciousness of
such a subject, therefore, the reproductive synthesis
of imagination is chained down to certain definite
conditions by the understanding: or, in other words,
we can combine the manifold of sense in an object
of thought, only in so far as we bring that manifold
under some general principle of relation. Such a
general principle of relation is supplied by a concep-
tion. When we bring the data of sense under a
conception, we take them out of their mere singu-
larity as feelings of the sensitive subject, and repre-
sent them as parts of an image or picture, which is
VIII.
341
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
put together according to a general rule, independent
of the momentary sensitive state of that subject.
And it is just this that we mean by reference to an
object: for an object is that which is independent of
the perception through which it is given. Thus "we
think of a triangle as an object, only when we are
conscious of combining three straight lines accord-
ing to a rule, in conformity with which such a
perception might always be set before our minds."
ness,
mate con-
by means
experience
ised, are
gories.
"All knowledge, then, requires a conception, The ulti-
however imperfect and obscure it may be, and this ceptions,
conception is always a general idea, which serves of which
as a rule to the particular."1 The recognition of is organ-
data of sense as objective is the recognition that the cate-
they fall under such a rule. The virtue of this
process of determination by conceptions, lies in
the fact that, by means of it, the data of sense
are taken out of their mere singularity as feel-
ings, and made elements in a universal conscious-
in 'consciousness in general;' or, to put the
same thing in another way, they are related to a
consciousness, which the individual has, not as a
mere individual, but as a universal subject of know-
ledge. It is, in fact, only in relation to such a
consciousness that any individual can know himself
or any other individual object as such, for only in
that relation can an object be at once distinguished
from, and yet connected with, other individual
objects. Now we have said that such relation is
produced by the data of sense being brought under
conceptions. These conceptions may, to a certain
extent, be empirical, and in that case they will always
be uncertain, and may even be arbitrary and factiti-
¹p. 98: Tr., p. 199
342
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
2
ous (as when a man imagines that he sees a ghost).
But there is a limit to this. For, in the first place,
there are certain primary conditions of the represen-
tation of objects, to which even the imaginary con-
struction of objects, must submit:¹ and, in the second
place, all real objects must find a place in the context
of one experience: for, as it is one self to which
all objects are related, so the world to which all
objects are referred is one world. The synthesis,
which has connected any particular data of sense
under a conception of an object may, therefore, be
tested by considering whether the object so deter-
mined can be connected with all other objects as
part of one experience, or of one world. But this
implies that the transcendental apperception is not
merely a consciousness of the self as an absolute
unity, but rather the consciousness of an activity of
synthesis which contains in itself certain a priori
conceptions, and which uses these conceptions as
rules to produce connexion, and therefore objectivity
in the manifold of sense. In other words, the Ego
manifests, and is conscious of itself as an under-
standing and this understanding is not merely a
faculty of generalising, but contains in itself, or,
if we like, is constituted by, certain general con-
ceptions which are principles of relation for all the
manifold of sense. And we have before seen that
these conceptions are the categories. It is by the
aid of the categories, therefore, that we "ourselves
bring into phenomena that order and regularity
which we express by the word nature, nor should
we ever be able to find order and regularity in the
world, if we ourselves, or the very constitution of
* Dynamical principles.
¹ Mathematical principles.
2
VIII.
343
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
our own intelligence, had not originally put it there.
For this unity of nature presents itself as a neces-
sary unity, i. e., as a unity of the combination of all
phenomena, of which we are certain prior to all ex-
perience. How, indeed, should we ever be able even
to enter upon the process of combining all phenomena
into a unity which is determined a priori, unless there
were, in the original principles by which our faculty
of knowing is constituted, certain grounds of this
a priori unity, which, though subjective, have an
objective value, as the source of the possibility of
knowing any object of experience as such?"1
of the
edition
into two
This short. epitome of the deduction of the first Deduction
edition will become clearer after we have considered second
the deduction of the second edition. In the latter, divided
some points, particularly the relation of the cate- parts.
gories to the 'Transcendental Apperception,' are
more fully explained, and some new questions are
started in regard to the connexion of consciousness
in general with the consciousness of the individual
self. For these reasons, and because of the great
importance of the subject in relation to the rest of
the Critique, we shall give a detailed account of this
deduction, so as to show the relation of all its
parts, and we shall reserve all criticisms, which are
not necessary for the explanation of Kant's meaning,
for another chapter.
The deduction of the categories, then, as it
appears in the second edition, is divided into two
parts. In the first part, Kant abstracts from the
fact that the manifold of sense is presented to us
under the forms of time and space, and simply as-
sumes that a manifold is somehow given: and on this
¹ p. 112: Tr., p. 215.
344
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Sense in-
capable of
basis he shows that the objective consciousness or
experience is possible only by means of the cate-
gories, as the forms through which the unity of self-
consciousness is brought in relation to the matter of
sense.
In the second part he goes on to show that
to produce such an experience as ours, the categories
must be applied to the manifold under the forms of
time and space, and he is thus led to consider the
imagination as the faculty that intermediates be-
tween understanding and sense.
In the first place, then, we start with the question,
synthesis. What beyond perceptions of sense is required for
knowledge or experience? The manifold that is in
our ideas can be presented in sense, if we regard
sense as merely receptive of impressions. Further,
in receiving impressions, sense may modify them by
its own forms. But there is one thing that is impos-
sible for sense, and that is to combine the manifold
matter so presented. As merely receptive of im-
pressions, sense cannot bind them together. To
bring about that result it is necessary that the mind,
which receives impressions in their isolated multi-
plicity, should react upon them. For synthesis, not
only the receptivity of sense, but also the spontaneity
of the understanding is required. Wherever, as in all
our ideas of objects, there is a combination of mani-
fold and different elements, there there is an act of
synthesis by the understanding. "We can represent
nothing as combined in the object, unless by our own
mental activity we have combined it; and of all our
ideas, synthesis is the only one that cannot be given
or impressed upon us from without, but must be
produced by the self-activity of the subject." Wher-
ever we find unity in difference, or the combination
VIII.
345
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
of various elements under one conception, there we
trace the activity of the understanding. If there is
room for analysis, there must previously have been
synthesis. If the understanding has not previously
bound elements together into a unity, it can find
nothing to separate or dissect. At the beginning of
knowledge, therefore, we find a synthesis, and for
that synthesis the understanding must find the
binding conceptions in itself.
under-
poses
the self.
But synthesis presupposes an identity or absolute Synthesis
unity in relation to which it is made necessary. standing
What is manifold does not in itself necessitate presup-
synthesis. It is only in so far as manifold elements identity of
have, in spite of their difference, to be thought in
relation to that which is numerically one and simple,
that they require to be bound together under a unity
of conception. Thus in a sensitive being which is
the subject of many different impressions, these im-
pressions will either remain isolated, or, if they be
united and combined so as to qualify each other (as
they must be if referred to one object, or one world
of objects), then this implies their being put in rela-
tion to an identical consciousness, a unity in conscious-
ness that through all its differences remains the
same. Thus the synthesis of perceptions, as referring
to one object, implies the possibility of an identical
consciousness of self as having these perceptions.
"It must be possible for the 'I think' to accompany
all my ideas, perceptions, &c., for otherwise these
ideas would be something in me which I could not
think, i.e., they would be either impossible, or, for
me at least, as good as non-existent." To set any-
thing before me as an object is, potentially at least,
1 ¹ p. 732: Tr., p. 81.
1
346
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Yet the
conscious-
identical
sible only
through
synthesis.
to relate all its elements to the same self-a self to
which also all other objects are related. An idea I
could not so relate, I could not be conscious of as my
idea, i.e., I could not be conscious of it at all. Here,
then, is one point of community between all the
different elements presented to me through sense.
To be, or represent, objects to me, they must in spite
of their manifoldness and difference be so presented
that they can be related to one self. They must,
in short, conform to the conditions under which they
can stand together in one general self-consciousness.
On the other hand, while synthesis involves a
ness of the reference to the identical self, it must not be sup-
self is pos- posed that the consciousness of this self is indepen-
dent of the activity of synthesis. On the contrary,
we can be conscious of the identity of the self
only in so far as we are conscious of the syn-
thetic activity of the understanding. In what
other way indeed could we explain such a con-
sciousness? It would be absurd to suppose that
the consciousness of self is contained in the mere
perceptions, which are essentially manifold and
unconnected. An empiric consciousness made up
of mere sense perceptions would be scattered and
broken up among them: it would have no reference
to any identity of the subject. Nor can we explain
that identity by saying that the consciousness of
self is a common element in all our different percep-
tions; for in order to see the identity of a common
element in different perceptions, I must bring them
together in relation to one self. The discernment of
a common element in different conceptions or percep-
tions, in fact, doubly presupposes the unity of self-
consciousness. For, in the first place, a common
VIII.
347
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
element is an element which, by an act of synthesis,
has formerly been bound up with other elements not
common to the different objects compared, from which
by the act of analysis it is separated; and, in the
second place, as has already been indicated, these
different cases must be synthetically brought together
in one consciousness, in order that the common ele-
ment may be observed in them. But then, if such an
explanation be excluded, if we cannot in any way
extract the consciousness of self from that which the
mind receives, we must derive it from what it does.
And the consciousness of the identity of self must be
generated by an activity of synthesis which extends
to all its perceptions and ideas. The consciousness
of self, therefore, as one in all the manifoldness and
difference of its perceptions, involves the combination
of all these perceptions into a system in which all
the parts are definitely related to each other, and
unless I could refer all my perceptions to such a sys-
tematic unity, to which I can always assume that
they will conform, I should have a many-coloured
ever-changing self,' lost in the multiplicity of these
perceptions, or, in other words, I should not be con-
scious of a self at all.
From this reasoning we may conclude that,
though the principle of the necessary unity of
apperception is in itself an identical or analytical
proposition, it implies a synthesis.' In other words,
the proposition 'I am I,' or 'II,' which expresses
=
the bare consciousness of self, is a tautology: but at
the same time it expresses a consciousness, which
can only be realized through the presentation of many
different elements in perception, and the integration
1 ¹ p. 734: Tr., p. 83.
1
348
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Objects de-
termined
synthesis
by means
of concep-
tions.
<
or synthesis of those differences. I cannot say I am
I,' unless I can connect all my different perceptions, or
bring them under a unity of conception. Hence, the
consciousness of self is possible only to one who re-
fers all his perceptions, in spite of their difference and
variety, to the unity of one objective consciousness.¹
This last expression brings us a step farther in the
as such in argument. The connection of perceptions in one
consciousness in virtue of which I am conscious of
the identity of self, is, we have just asserted, equiva-
lent to their reference to objects, and indeed to one
world of objects. For what is implied in the refer-
ence of a perception to an object? It implies simply
that the manifold elements in it are combined in
one consciousness; and this combination in one con-
sciousness is possible only in so far as we bring the
elements of the manifold under one conception. It
is the definite relation or connection given to those
elements by bringing them under one conception,
that enables us to refer them to a real unity, which
is distinct from our perceptions, and which is con-
ceived as determining and not as determined by
them. To take an example: how am I to know
any object in space, say, a line? Obviously I must
apprehend the manifold of space by ideally travers-
ing it; but is this all? Certainly not; for if I forgot
one element as I passed on to another, or if I did
not definitely bind them together in my thought, I
should have no object before me. I must therefore,
in my apprehension of the manifold, be guided by
some principle or law of connexion in order that I
may bring any definite thing before my mind.
mind.
"I
1 The subject can be conscious of itself only in relation to an object
which it at once excludes and determines.
VIII.
349
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
must draw the line, and produce a distinct combina-
tion of the given manifold, so that the unity of this
act is at the same time the unity of consciousness
(in the conception of a line); thus alone can an
object (here a definite space) be known." But, as we
saw before, that the consciousness of the identity of
the self was dependent on the synthetic activity of
thought through which the manifold was brought
together in one consciousness, so now we see that
this synthesis is the same movement of thought by
which all objects are determined as objects. Nay,
we may go farther than this; for as we are con-
scious of one self only by means of conceptions, so
ultimately we must represent all objects as forming
a unity under one all-embracing conception, or we
must conceive all objects as belonging to one world.
For only through the consciousness of all objects as
one, i.e., as one world, can we be conscious that it is
one and the same self that apprehends all objects alike.
manifold
always be
ternally.
Our self-consciousness, then, is determined in rela- But the
tion to consciousness of the object, and this con- must
sciousness of the object involves synthesis of the given ex-
given manifold of sense.
The manifold, however,
must be given. The notion of the ego indeed is a
pure thought independent of sense, but it could not
be realised in an actual self-consciousness except in
relation to the given manifold of sense.
Its pure
identity contains in it no difference, and therefore
would not of itself make possible a judgment, in
which the difference was transcended. If indeed we
had an understanding which generated as well as
connected the manifold, which was a source of differ-
entiation as well as integration--which, in other words,
¹ p. 736 Tr., p. 85.
1
350
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
created its own object-then by such an understand-
ing, self-consciousness could be realised without any
matter being presented to it from without for syn-
thesis. But our understanding is not of that char-
acter. Its pure simplicity is incapable of creating
differences. In order to be differentiated, even so far
as is necessary for the analytical judgment of self-
identity, its pure light must be broken by a foreign
object. Its power is simply this, that it can integrate
given differences, can gather the manifold externally
presented into the consciousness of one objective
world, and that in relation to, yet distinction from,
this world, it can accomplish the consciousness of self.
Nor again can we explain this objective consciousness
by association. Association is so far from explaining
the objective consciousness, that it must itself seek
explanation from it. The association theory cannot
be expressed except in terms of that very conscious-
ness it would account for. When we say the object
A is connected with B in our minds, because it has
frequently been associated with it in experience, we
are but subsuming a particular relation between our-
selves as sensitive objects, and other objects under
the general principles of the objective consciousness.
Nor does it make any difference if instead of speak-
ing of objects, we say that we connect together the
sensations that have frequently gone together in our
past experience. For sensations identified as the
same in repeated recurrence, are already objects.
They are at least conceived as definite states of the
sensitive subject, and this determination of them
involves already those principles for which the asso-
ciation theory seeks to account. Hence, as Kant
puts it, the subjective or empiric unity of conscious-
VIII.
351
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
ness is derived from objective unity under given
conditions in concreto. Our accidental associations
presuppose the objective consciousness, but cannot
be used as the explanation of it.
categories
are the
concep-
required.
The only point that remains is to prove that the The
list of categories derived from the forms of judgment
corresponds to the principles of objective synthesis tions
of which we have just been speaking. But this
correspondence may be seen at once, if we consider
what is the essential nature of the judgment. "I
have never," Kant writes, "been satisfied with the
explanation of judgment given usually by Logicians,
that it is the conception of a relation between two
conceptions. I will not raise the objection that this
explanation is defective, as adapted only to categori-
cal, and not to hypothetical and disjunctive judgments
(which latter express a relation not of conceptions
but of judgments): though this oversight leads to
much confusion in the treatment of Logic. But I
must note that it tells us nothing definite about the
relation in question. When, however, I investigate
more accurately the relation of the given elements of
knowledge in a judgment, and distinguish them from
relations of association, established by reproductive
imagination-relations which have merely subjective
validity-I find that a judgment is nothing but
the mode in which we bring given conceptions to
objective unity of apperception. And this is just
what is implied in the use of the verb of existence as
the copula. That verb, in fact, distinguishes the
objective unity of given ideas from their subjective
unity for it indicates that they are related to the
original apperception and its necessary unity, and that
even where the judgment itself is empirical, and
352
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
therefore accidental. Thus, by the judgment: Bodies
are heavy, I do not mean to assert that the conceptions
of body and weight are necessarily combined in the
empirical perception of them. But what I do mean
is, that they are combined with each other by means
of the necessary unity of apperception in the synthesis
of perceptions, i.e., that they are combined according
to those principles of objective determination under
which all our ideas must come, if knowledge is to be
derived from them. Only by subsumption under
such principles can the relation of two conceptions
be made such that it admits of being expressed in a
judgment, i.e., a relation that is objectively valid:
whereas a relation of conceptions determined by the
laws of association, could have only subjective validity.
For by principles of empirical association, I could only
be enabled to say that, when I carry a body, I feel a
pressure of weight-but not to say that it, the body,
is heavy. For this would be equivalent to saying
that these two conceptions are bound together in the
"object-i.e., altogether apart from the state of the
subject; and not merely that the subject has per-
ceived them together, however often it may be." 1
The general meaning of this is obvious after what
has been said. A judgment in which two notions
are bound together, asserts more than the connection
of these two notions by association; it asserts that
they are bound together in the object—bound toge-
ther, that is, not by the accidental perception of them
together or successively, so that one suggests the
other, but by a law that determines the perception,
and is prior to it. This, indeed, does not mean that
there is anything in the nature of the perceptions,
1 Deduction, § 19: Tr., p. 86.
VIII.
353
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
e.g., of extended body and weight, that forces us to
think of the one as the necessary accompaniment
of the other. But it means that, when we bind
them together in the manner expressed in judg
ment, we must have brought them under a prin-
ciple of necessary connection. If weight and ex-
tended body are not necessarily connected, their
relation cannot be expressed in a judgment; if their
relation is expressed in a judgment, it is asserted to
be universal and necessary. Otherwise I should
merely be entitled to say, 'These things have gone
together in my experience hitherto;' but not that
they necessarily go together; which is what I do
assert, when I say, 'Bodies are heavy.' Schopen-
hauer objects to this illustration of Kant, that even
to say,
"When I carry a body, I feel weight,' is to
make an objective judgment as to my sensitive ex-
periences. This is true, and might be admitted by
Kant himself without inconsistency. And it calls
our attention to an ambiguity in Kant's exposition
of his principles both in the Critique and Prolego-
mena which it is worth while to clear up before we
proceed farther.
in Kant's
judgment
sing the
conscious-
ness.
If I say, 'When I carry a body, I feel weight,' it Ambiguity
would be natural to understand me as stating some- view of
thing about my own sensitive experience, to which I as expres-
do not venture to assert that the experience of others objective
will conform. My assertion is not therefore equiva-
lent to the proposition, 'Bodies have weight,' which
implies that the fact is one which is common to the
experience of all sensitive beings. But still, in so
far as I am asserting that the connection holds
and will always hold good for me, I am making a
universal judgment in relation to a particular object,
Z
354
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Kant's dis-
tinction of
of percep-
judgments
ence,
main-
tained.
viz., my own sensitive constitution. Nay, even if I
be understood merely to say that such is now the
relation of perceptions in my experience, I am still
judging and speaking of myself as a sensitive subject
with a definite succession or co-existence of percep-
tions in my inner life. The truth is, that whenever
we determine a perception as a state of the subject,
no less than when we determine it as a quality of an
object, we make a judgment concerning it, and relate
it to the transcendental unity of apperception. Even
to say, 'Such is my association,' is to go beyond
association. Kant contradicts himself when he ex-
presses in a judgment, what on his own theory
cannot be expressed in a judgment at all. Associa-
tion brings up one idea after another, but does
not itself give ground for the judgment: 'I associate
A with B': for this involves that A and B are
each fixed as definite objects of thought, and so
definitely related to each other and to the self.
What has now been said throws some light on
judgments Kant's treatment of this subject in the Prolegomena.
tion, and For there we find him distinguishing two kinds of
of experi- judgments; judgments of perception, and judgments
cannot be of experience. The former are judgments which
merely express a connection of individual experience,
and which, therefore, give rise only to a subjective ·
association of ideas. The latter are judgments in
which the connection is determined by one of the
categories, and which therefore express an objective
relation of things; or, what is the same thing, a
relation valid not for the individual subject only,
but for all perceiving subjects.
In the passage
above quoted from the Critique, we find Kant using
the categorical form of judgments in contrast with
•
VIII.
355
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
the hypothetical as indicating that the relation in
question is determined by the category of causality;
and this in spite of the fact that the category
of causality is got from consideration of the hypo-
thetical judgment. 'When the sun shines, the stone
becomes warm,' is thus a mere judgment of percep-
tion, which becomes a judgment of experience in the
form, ‘The sun warms the stone.' But, in the first
place, even allowing that the former of these judg-
ments is a mere judgment of perception, it is so only
as respects the special synthesis expressed in it; or,
in other words, it presupposes many judgments of
experience, by which the manifold of sense was com-
bined into the conceptions of the sun on the one
side, and the warm stone on the other. For these
are presupposed as objects, and the only question
is as to the objectivity (or universality) of the con-
nection between them. In the second place, accord-
ing to Kant's own doctrine as stated in the same
passage, the judgment in all its forms expresses
objective, and not merely subjective, connection.
Strictly speaking, there is no judgment of per-
ception possible, for perception does not make judg-
ments. We can indeed explain how Kant is led
to this mode of statement in the Prolegomena,
seeing that there he is treating of the possibility
of experience in the organised form which it takes
in the empirical sciences. He therefore puts the
question to himself like an experimental physicist,
who, in trying to distinguish the phenomena that
are really connected with each other among the
many that appear to be connected, does not need
to take special note of the fact that the experience
with which he begins is already organised. Such
356
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Result of
the first
Deduction.
an inquirer, whose main interest is directed simply
to distinguish real from apparent connection, might,
in Kant's language, be said to be distinguishing
judgments of perception from judgments of expe-
rience. But he would be more accurately said to
be criticising the immediate judgments of ordinary
experience, or examining whether the relations ex-
pressed in them were real, i. e., whether they
should have been expressed in judgments at all.
Still it must be remembered that even the ex-
planation of a connection of ideas as a mere
subjective connection of association, is, in its way,
a reference of that connection to the objective
consciousness; for the sensitive subject is itself one
of the objects of experience, which is definitely
related to other objects. In fact, the question before
the scientific man is not, strictly speaking, whether
two things are connected in experience and conscious-
ness in general, or merely in my consciousness,'
but in what connection of experience they come-
not whether the connection is real or unreal, but to
what order of reality it belongs.
We now proceed with Kant¹ to gather up the
part of the result of the first part of the Deduction. Without
synthesis, no knowledge of objects can be derived
from the manifold of sense, and synthesis is possible
only as a relation of the manifold to the unity of
the self. On the other hand, the consciousness of an
identical self is only a consciousness of the continu-
ity, or unity with itself, of the activity of synthesis
whereby all perceptions are combined in one objective
consciousness. Thus, out of synthesis comes the
consciousness at once of the object and the subject
¹ p. 740: Tr., p. 88.
1
VIII.
357
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
in strict correlativity, and it becomes of the utmost
importance to determine what are the forms of
synthesis. This question, however, is at once an-
swered, when we see that synthesis in the sense
required, or objective synthesis, and judgment are
the same thing. When we judge we affirm an objec-
tive unity of perceptions, i.e., a unity which is uni-
versally valid irrespective of individual experience,
which gives the rule to that experience, but does
not take its rule from it. Therefore the catego-
ries, which are deduced from the table of functions
of unity in judgment, must be just the forms of
synthesis we require.
So far, however, we have only taken into consi-
deration the manifold of perception generally; and
we have seen that it is through the categories that
any such manifold becomes organised into knowledge
of objects distinct from and related to the self. We
have now to see how this applies to the manifold as
it is actually given to us in our experience under the
special forms of time and space.
We have therefore
to show first, that the categories get all their signi-
ficance from their application to this particular mani-
fold; and then, secondly, that their application to
this manifold is implied in the determination of the
objects of our knowledge, as they are actually deter-
mined in experience.
gories have
validity
relation to
In regard to the first of these points, it seems The cate-
sufficient to say what has already been indicated, objective
that the categories would have no use except in rela- only in
tion to a sensuously given manifold, and that such a matter
manifold is given us only under these special forms. under the
A perceptive understanding would need no categories
to bind together the manifold of its perception with a
given
forms of
space and
time.
358
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
view to its being brought in relation to the unity
of the self. To such an understanding the differ-
ences would spring at once out of the unity; and
it would not therefore require any artificial bond
to bring the differences back into the unity. Such
an understanding would immediately through the
difference of its object return upon itself. But if the
manifold be given apart from the self, a synthesis is
necessary to make possible the consciousness of self
in spite of the difference, by uniting the manifold
in the conception of an object. This is the use,
and the only use of the categories as means of
synthesis of the manifold of sense. Now this
manifold of sense is either formal or material. In
so far as it is formal, or given in pure perception,
in so far it is possible for us to fill the categories
with content a priori, and so to have a priori
knowledge of objects. And this knowledge by
determination of the forms of sense according to
the categories, is what we have in Mathematics.
Yet even this can only by anticipation be called
knowledge for the form of sense, taken by itself,
is not knowledge, but merely the possibility of
knowledge. Whether there is anything correspon-
ding to this form, whether, that is, there shall ever be
an actual perception, is not to be known a priori,
but only when we have the perception. Hence the
science that arises from the application of the
categories to the forms of sense, is merely provisional
and problematical. It is science, only if there be
matter given in accordance with these forms and
conditions. The categories therefore have no value
for knowledge except in application to objects of
experience, i.e., to matter given in actual percep-
VIII.
359
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
tion, and according to the forms of our percep-
tion.¹
1
greater
of the
does not
extend our
knowledge.
It is true indeed that the categories are not in Hence the
themselves bound by the last of these limitations. generality
For, while they have no value or use, except in re- categories
lation to a manifold of sense, yet this manifold need
not have been given under the forms of space and time.
As pure notions of the understanding, they have no
limitation to any special matter or form of sense.
And, just as we can conceive that there might be
other senses than those we have, so we can conceive
that there might be other forms of sense than space
and time. But this is a bare supposition: and since,
as a matter of fact, we have no other senses, and no
other forms of space, it is no real addition to our
knowledge to say that, for aught we know, there
might be others. This possibility of a sensuous per-
ception of another kind than our own, is, in fact,
nearly as barren as the possibility before mentioned,
of a perception altogether non-sensuous, and purely
intellectual. To the latter we can apply only nega-
tive predicates: we can deny that it will be limited
by time and space: we can deny that it will be de-
termined by the categories: for, as already said, the
categories would have no application, except to a
sensuously given object. Of the former we can say,
that if matter of sense were given, the synthesis of
that matter whereby knowledge was derived from it,
must be guided by the categories. But this does
not help us much for when we separate the cate-
gories from their relation to sense, they sink back
into mere functions of unity in possible judgments,
and lose all objective significance.¹
1 p. 743: Tr., p. 90.
360
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Determin-
ation of the
form of
inner sense
by the
categories.
The func-
tion of the
When we have thus realised that the only matter
for the categories to determine is that which is given
under the forms of our sense, it is no longer difficult
to see what use must be made of the categories in
order to produce our actual experience. The tran-
scendental apperception acting through the catego-
ries, must determine sense, and particularly inner
sense, in its form of time; or, regarding it from the
other point of view, the categories must be restricted
by the form of inner sense ere they can be applied
to its matter. In this way we can explain both the
nature and the limitations of our experience.
For
the form of inner sense, and hence of all sensible
perceptions, is time: therefore the manifold matter
of sense can be determined only in so far as the form
of time is determined. Accordingly we must sup-
pose that the categories determine a priori the
ways in which the manifold of sense must be put
together in time, in order to constitute the objective
consciousness, or, in other words, to make experience
possible.¹
But this determination of the manifold of inner
imagina- sense by the categories implies a faculty of mind by
knowledge. which the categories, which, in themselves, are
tion in
mere forms of analysis,—become filled with content
or difference. The pure synthesis of the under-
standing taken by itself is on the point of laps-
ing into the mere tautology of the analytic judgment,
but by reference to the form of sense, its concep-
tions get a really synthetic meaning, and become
principles of relation and connection in the manifold
matter of sense. The synthesis intellectualis is thus
There are some ambiguities in this statement which will be ex-
plained in the next two chapters.
VIII.
361
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
imperfect, except as the basis of the synthesis
speciosa. The former has reference to a manifold of
sensuous perception in general: the latter has special
application to the manifold as given under the a
priori form of our sense. We may call it the
transcendental synthesis of imagination: for the
imagination is that 'faculty by which we set an
object before the inward eye without its actual
presence.'¹ But we must observe that in this exer-
cise of it, the imagination is not merely repro-
ductive, but productive; i.e., it does not merely re-
vive an original formerly given in sense (for the
categories can never be so given), but gives sensu-
ous form to that which in itself is a pure con-
ception of the understanding. And, whereas the
reproductive imagination, in combining the elements
of its pictures, is guided by empirical laws of
association, the productive imagination, as it gives
sensuous embodiment or expression to the cate-
gories, proceeds on necessary and universal principles.
It is thus the mediator between understanding
and sense.
It is sensuous, in so far as it makes us
perceive or 'envisage' its object, and all perception
is sensuous. But it is intellectual, in so far as its
synthesis is an exercise of the spontaneity, and not
of the receptivity, of the mind, which gives deter-
mination to its object, and does not, like sense,
receive determination from without. It is, in
short, a faculty of determining sense a priori
according to the categories; or, without speaking of
a separate faculty, we may say simply that the syn-
thesis of the imagination is an effect of understand-
ing upon sense, and thus the first application, and
¹ p. 746: Tr., p. 93.
362
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Digression
upon the
ness of self
as one of
the objects
ence.
the ground of all other applications'¹ of the concep-
tions of the former to the perceptions of the latter.
Before going farther, we may observe that the
conscious consideration of this process of imaginative synthesis
enables us to understand how our individual self
of experi- can be to us a mere object of experience like
other objects, and to distinguish between it and the
transcendental self, which is the unity presupposed
in all knowledge. The latter is a bare thought, by
which no object can be determined, though, on the
other hand, no object can be determined as such
except in relation to it. The former is one of the
objects of experience, which we can know only
under conditions of the form of sense. This, indeed,
is at variance with what has been taught by
previous philosophers like Des Cartes, who supposed
that we are immediately and directly objects to our-
selves, while other things can become objects to us
only mediately or indirectly. But this opinion rests
on a confusion of the faculty of apperception with
the inner sense, which it is essential to the Critique
to distinguish. For, as we have seen, the con-
sciousness of self is realised only through the
synthesis of the understanding, i.e., we are con-
scious of ourselves only in the activity of thought,
whereby we bind together the manifold matter
of sense and this activity can, by no means,
provide out of itself a manifold matter to combine,
neither can it take the given manifold into itself in
such a way as to destroy all trace of its foreign
origin. In other words, it cannot differentiate its
2
1 p. 746: Tr., p. 93.
2 This seems to me to be the meaning of the phrase, "to bind together
the manifold of its own perception " (p. 747: Tr., p. 94).
VIII.
363
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
6
own simple identity, nor, when the manifold,' as
Kant calls it, is supplied by sense, can it afterwards
discover in that manifold any essential relation to
the form of synthesis by which it is combined. It
remains, then, that all our knowledge of self, so far
as it refers to the pure subject which is the ultimate
unity of all thought, is confined to the mere conscious-
ness that we exist: and that all self-knowledge beyond
this is merely knowledge of the phenomenal self, i.e.,
it is modified by the form of inner sense through which
we apprehend it. This will be seen if we consider the
way in which we apprehend our inner life as a con-
tinuity of consciousness determined in time. For we
do so only by affecting ourselves, or, in other words,
only in that determination of our successive conscious-
ness in conformity with the categories, of which we
have just spoken. Such an affection of ourselves
indeed is implied in all knowledge: for all knowledge
implies that a determination of sensibility from within
by the understanding should come to meet its ante-
cedent determination from without. In order to
combine the successively given manifold in the con-
sciousness of an object, we must picture to ourselves,
by a continuous act or ideal movement of imagination,
the conception under which we subsume it. For, to
apprehend an object as such, is to combine the ele-
ments of it as definitely related in one whole: it is
to bring them into a unity of conception; and this
unity of conception can only be applied to the differ-
ent elements united, in so far as we realise or
envisage it by a constructive act of imagination. Thus,
to represent anything as an object in space, we
must, in a continuous synthesis of imagination, con-
struct its figure. To think of space itself as an
?
361
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
object, we must make a construction that exhibits
its dimensions, by representing three lines drawn at
right angles to each other. Nay, even to think of
time itself as an object, we must do something
similar. We must ideally draw a line, and then
abstracting from the result of this process, we must
think of the continuous synthesis of the manifold in
it, whereby we go on adding new elements, and bind
them to those represented before. Now, the consci-
ousness of our own existence which we get, in so far
as we oppose this constructive movement of thought
to objects in space which we construct, in other words,
the consciousness of our own existence as determined
in time, is of the same kind with the consciousness of
those other objects; i. e., it is merely phenomenal.
This is evident, because it is only in relation to those
objects that we have this consciousness: it is evident
also from the simple fact that it is only by a line in
space that we can fix in one image the flowing unity
of time. The self we know as an object is, therefore,
merely phenomenal; it is not an objective presenta-
tion of the self presupposed in all thought.
an internal object that exists for us, not in the pure
thought of self, but only through the consciousness
of that determination of sensibility by thought,
through which external objects are made out of
sensations. Behind the consciousness of ourselves
under the form of time lies the transcendental sub-
ject, just as behind the consciousness of objects in
space lies the transcendental object: but these are
merely thoughts. The object we know is the pheno-
menal object, which we know only as we are affected
from without, and the subject we know is the pheno-
menal subject, which we know only as we affect our.
It is
VIII.
365
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
selves, or, in other words, as the transcendental sub-
ject affects the inner sense. Nor is there any real
difficulty in supposing that we affect ourselves.
Every act of attention illustrates such self-affection.
For, in the act of attention, we begin with some
conception of an object, and what we do is simply to
determine our inner sense to represent or envisage it
in inward perception, in accordance with the rule of
connection involved in the conception. ¹
1
mination
in space
implies the
To return to our argument, which this digression The deter-
about the phenomenal or particular self has inter- of objects
rupted, we have seen that the categories can only and time
become the means of the determination of objects, in categories.
so far as by imagination they are used to determine
the forms of sense, and, in the first instance, the form of
inner sense. Now, we are not yet here considering the
mode of this imaginative envisagement of the cate-
gories: we are simply seeking to show that all possible
objects of our sense are actually determined as such
by the categories. This will become obvious if we
consider that to determine the objects of our senses
as such, is to determine objects as in space and time,
which are not only forms of perception, but also them-
selves perceptions of individual objects. For this
means to put together the manifold of these objects
in conformity with the unity of space and time, i.e.,
as it must be put together, if there be only one time
and one space, and if the manifold of all objects has
to be united in the same way as the manifold of time
¹Cf. p. 303 (1st Edition): Tr., p. 253. We are thus conscious of our-
selves as a transcendental subject (that we are), because we distinguish
our own activity from the matter on which it is exerted but we are
conscious of ourselves as a phenomenal subject (what we are) only under
form of time as distinguished from space.
366
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
and space is united. But the unity of space and time
can consist in nothing else than the reference of their
manifold to the one transcendental self, and the mani-
fold of perception cannot be brought in relation to
this unity of self, or determined as objective, except
through the categories. Hence the forms of synthe-
sis of the manifold of objects in general, in relation
to the unity of self-consciousness, are necessarily also
the forms of synthesis of the manifold of our sense
in time and space.
It is easy to show by instances that the con-
formity of the objective synthesis to the unity of
space and time is equivalent to its conformity to the
categories. “When, by apperception of the manifold
of sense, i.e., by gathering it together in relation to
the unity of self, I represent a house as an object,
I presuppose the unity of space, and of all external
sensuous perception; and I make, as it were, a draw-
ing of its shape in conformity with this synthetic unity.
But, if I abstract from the form of space, I find the
same synthetic unity in the understanding in the
form of a category: the category, namely, which is
involved in all combination of homogeneous parts in
one perception, the category of quantity."
"Again,
to take another example, when I perceive the freez-
ing of water, I apprehend two states (of fluidity and
solidity), as standing in a relation of time to each
other. But I necessarily represent the manifold as
synthetically united in time, which, as an inner per-
ception, is the presupposition of all other perceptions;
for, unless time itself were a definite succession, no
determinate relation of sequence could be presented
in perception. But, again, if I abstract from the
form of time, and regard this synthetic unity sim-
VIII.
367
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
ply as a condition under which the manifold of
perception in general may be combined, I find in it
the category of causality: and it is by the application
of this category to my sensibility that I determine
the relations of all that happens in time. Hence the
perception of such an event, and therefore the event
itself as a possible object of perception, stands under
the conception of the relation of cause and effect." ¹
the Deduc-
(1.) the
tion of ex-
This concludes the Deduction, the results of which Result of
we may now briefly sum up. It is proved that tion in
objects can only be determined as such by synthesis vindica-
tion, (2.)
of their manifold in relation to an identical self. the limita-
It is proved that the forms of this synthesis perience.
are the categories. It is proved that, while
these forms have no
necessary relation to a
manifold given under the special forms of our
sense, yet they are the means of giving objective
unity to the manifold so given; and that it is
through the application of these forms alone, that
the world can be represented by us as a connected
system in one space and one time. Hence, if we
examine how a manifold of sense, given under the
a priori forms of time and space, must be deter-
mined in conformity with the categories, we may
fairly expect to discover in our own minds the laws
of nature. Nor is this really so strange as it ap-
pears at first sight; for all it means is, that there
nature, as a system, would not exist for us at all,
unless the manifold elements presented in sense were
capable of being combined in accordance with the
laws of our intelligence.
1 p. 743: Tr., p. 99. This last part of the Deduction anticipates much
that is not fully explained till we reach the Principles of the pure under-
standing.
368
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
On the other hand, we must remember that there
are two great limitations of this a priori knowledge.
In the first place, as will be afterwards shown more
fully, it is limited to the phenomenal world of expe-
rience. The nature to which our understanding can
prescribe the law, is not the nature of things in
themselves, but of things as they are for us with our
peculiar forms of perception and conception. And,
in the second place, even within the range of experi-
ence, our a priori knowledge only extends to the
most general laws of nature-the laws that are in-
volved in the very existence of nature, i.e., an order
of phenomena in time and space determined by
laws. All particular laws of nature stand under
these general laws, but the former cannot be deter-
mined from the latter. It is impossible, therefore,
to anticipate on a priori principles the particular
data of experience.
Finally, we must again point out that this is the
only way of explaining the agreement of the concep-
tions of our understanding with experience. For, as
we have seen, there are only two possible alterna-
tives either experience must make the conceptions
possible, or the conceptions must make experience
possible; and as the former alternative is excluded
by the nature of experience (which, as we have shown,
must be based on that which is not itself empirical),
the latter must be the truth. If any one seeks to
evade this conclusion by some hybrid scheme of
pre-established harmony between the conceptions
implanted in us by the Creator and the objects
without us, it need only be observed, that the
necessity which belongs to the principles based on
these conceptions—and which must belong to them,
VIII.
369
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
if they are to perform their office-for ever pre-
cludes the verification of such a hypothesis. For,
if we supposed that there was merely an accidental
coincidence between the conceptions in our minds,
and external things, the necessity of the judgments
in question could not be explained. And, without
such necessity, there would be no basis for experi-
ence at all.
2 A
370
CHAPTER IX.
CRITICISM OF THE DEDUCTION.
In what THE aim of the Deduction was, in the first in-
stance, to vindicate the categories as a system
the factors
in experi-
cach
other?
ence imply of a priori conceptions necessary to organise the mani-
fold of sense. As a matter of fact, however, it equally
treats of the necessity of the manifold of sense, as
given under the forms of time and space, to realise,
or give real meaning to, the categories. It sets
experience before us as a whole of independent parts
which can be distinguished, though not separated,
or which, if separated, lose the value which they
have in the unity of experience. What, then, is the
nature of this mutual implication of the elements of
experience? We might conceive it in two different
ways. We might conceive experience as being
ideally distinguishable into elements, which yet are
correlative with, or implied in, each other, and which,
therefore, are as inseparable, even in thought, as an
outside is from an inside, or the quality of having its
angles equal to the right angles from a triangle.
Or we might conceive it as a result, which cannot be
attained except by certain definite means, just as a
house cannot be built without materials of various
.
CRITICISM OF THE DEDUCTION.
371
kinds, which have no previous affinity for each other,
though they are all necessary in view of the builder's
purpose. Now little consideration is necessary to
show that it is rather on the latter than on the
former analogy, that Kant's proof of unity of experi-
ence is constructed. He regards the different ele-
ments as reciprocally presupposing each other, but
he does not regard this reciprocal presupposition
as resulting from the nature of the elements them-
selves. They must all be combined if there is to be
such a thing as empirical knowledge, but, we are
distinctly told, they have in themselves, apart for
this purpose, no necessary connection with each
other. Their union is a necessity imposed from
without. The elements must all be present,
because a given result has to be produced, but they
are not treated as factors of a relation, which
lose their meaning when taken away from each
other, and from the unity of one definite whole.
In this way, the identical self, the categories, time
and space, and the manifold of sense, appear as
independent things, and Kant seems to construct
experience, as a watchmaker constructs a watch, out
of pre-existing parts. Yet, when we come to the
end, and look back on the whole process of his reason-
ing, it seems impossible to avoid the suspicion, that
he has proved the unity of experience in a higher
sense than he intended, and that, in fact, he has re-
futed the presupposition of the existence of inde-
pendent parts in knowledge, with which he began.
If this suspicion should be verified, it will follow that
there is a certain inevitable mis-statement involved
1
1 This contrast, however, must be modified by what is said in the
sequel.
372
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Kant's
analysis
with his
of these
factors.
in Kant's method of proceeding from the parts to the
whole for, if at the outset, we treat the elements of
knowledge as if they were independent wholes, the
real whole, when it is reached, must take to us the
appearance of an artificial and external combin-
ation. And, to correct this mis-statement, it would
be necessary to do what Kant never did: to reverse
our steps, and consider how the parts or factors of
knowledge are determined, when we regard them
from the point of view of their unity.
In a sense, analysis and abstraction constitute an
interferes important and even a necessary step toward the truth.
synthesis It is only when we sever the elements of knowledge
from each other by analysis, that we can distinctly
see the link of connection that binds them together.
It is only when we isolate and fix in abstrac-
tion the correlated parts of the organic whole of
truth, that we become clearly conscious that they
are correlated. Synthesis in the highest sense is
possible, only when analysis has done its perfect
work. When, therefore, Kant starts by considering
the elements of experience apart from their unity,
and when the result of his reasoning is to show that
they can only be understood in their unity, he is
simply following that necessary process of self-
correction, by which thought always advances from a
less adequate to a more adequate view of its object.
We begin in knowledge with a part, though this
involves a false conception of the part as if it were a
whole but the effort to combine this part with other
parts gives rise to a contradiction, which cannot
cease till the abstraction of our first conception is
corrected, or, in other words, till the parts are
deprived of their false independence, and defined
IX.
373
CRITICISM OF THE DEDUCTION.
anew as elements in a greater whole. This is the
true synthetic logic which guides Kant's thought.
It is good logic, though the conclusion may be said
to contradict the premises. It is, in fact, the logic
by which every great scientific discovery is made:
for, in every such discovery, a certain provisional con-
ception of facts becomes the means for the discovery
of some general principle which alters that very con-
ception. Unfortunately, however, Kant, though he
really proceeds on this method, does not understand
his own procedure. Often he makes as if he were con-
structing experience out of elements prior to experi-
ence, while he is really showing the elements of it
to be so correlated, that the abstraction by which we
isolate them necessarily destroys itself. And there
is an unsolved contradiction between his result and
his starting-point, because he never revised his first
conception of the different faculties or elements of
knowledge in the light of that unity which it was
the final result of his work to demonstrate.
带
​scendental
not psy-
It has been a matter of controversy whether The tran-
Kant's method is psychological or metaphysical. The method is
answer is, that there is a delusive appearance of chological.
psychology in it. In asking how far that which we
call experience can be produced out of sense and
understanding, with their respective forms, Kant
seemed to take the position of a spectator, whose
mind, of course, had been already developed, and who
was watching the growth of another mind out of its
elements. He seemed to forget for the moment
that it was his own mind he was examining; and,
therefore, he gave to a process which is really the
exhibition of the necessary relations of all the ele-
ments of developed knowledge, the false appearance
374
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
sp
of an observation of the genesis of knowledge.
1
Thus he gave occasion to the misunderstanding of
Fries and his followers, who reduced the Criticism of
Pure Reason to empirical Psychology. But, apart
from other objections to such a view of it, which
will be mentioned afterwards, observation of the
genesis of knowledge or, what is the same thing,
observation by the mind of its own genesis, is the
crowning absurdity of speculation: for there is no-
thing to observe, unless the observer puts his own
developed consciousness in the place of the undevel-
oped consciousness he is observing. And if he does
thus introduce his developed consciousness, all he
can possibly examine is the reciprocal dependence of
its elements. He cannot possibly trace back know-
ledge to faculties or elements, which have a char-
acter independent of their relation in knowledge.
We have no standing ground outside of the universe
of thought, from which we can determine the factors
that produce it. The mind is its own place,' its
place includes everything knowable, and, therefore,
as no one did more than Kant to show, it is impos-
sible to explain it by going out of itself. Even if,
per impossible, we could regard the mind or know-
ledge as developed out of pre-existing elements,
these would be unknowable in themselves: they
would be knowable only as they appeared as ele-
ments, in relation to each other, within the unity of
thought. If, therefore, Kant had sought to find a
key to the unity in the difference of knowledge, in-
stead of finding a key to its difference in its unity,
he would have disregarded the very limits of know-
ledge laid down by himself. He would have been
1 Green's Introduction to Hume, § 9.
(
7
IX.
375
CRITICISM OF THE DEDUCTION.
pretending to know things in themselves. The real
force of his argument is seen when we regard it not
in its psychological, but in its metaphysical, or, to
use his own expression, transcendental aspect; not as
an account of pre-existing faculties, to which the
genesis of knowledge is traced back, but as a de-
monstration of the necessary factors or elements
which, in the unity of actual knowledge, imply each
other. But Kant's continually repeated expression
'conditions of possible experience,' may very easily
suggest the false idea of going back from the result
to conditions, which exist before it, and have a char-
acter independent of it, rather than the true idea of
resolving a complex whole into the elements which,
by their necessary inter-dependence, constitute it,
and which, apart from the whole, have no determin-
ate character at all.
psycholo-
ments
with it.
The truth is, that the view which Kant adopts is a But it has
compromise between the psychological and the tran- gical ele-
scendental. Knowledge or experience is to Kant a mingled
systematic whole, an organic unity that "can grow
only from within (per intussusceptionem), but cannot
increase by external additions (per appositionem).
It is thus like an animal body, the growth of which
does not add any new limb, but, without changing
their proportions, makes each for its special purpose
stronger and more energetic." It is, moreover, an
'architectonic unity,' i. e., it is based on an idea of
pure reason, which determines the place and relation
of all its parts. In conformity with this view, Kant
generally recognises that the elements of knowledge
can be contemplated only as elements or factors of a
whole; yet he sees no such necessary relation be-
¹ p. 642: Tr., p. 504.
1
376
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
tween them, that they must be united with one
another in just this whole. For, in the first place,
he puts a wide gulf of division between the a priori
and the a posteriori parts of knowledge, i.e., between
the organic plan of knowledge which is derived from
the nature of the intelligence itself, and the particular
contents of experience with which it is filled up.
There must, indeed, be an empirical manifold of sense
to fill up the plan, else there would be no knowledge;
but what that content shall be, remains, so far as we
can see, accidental. In the next place, even the
a priori plan of experience is not homogeneous, for
there is in it an element contributed by the under-
standing, and also an element due to sense; nor has
the former any necessary relation to the latter,
though both are necessary to the plan, and neither
could exist alone. Even if we go farther into detail,
we still find the same imperfect connection or inte-
gration of the elements of experience.
For Kant
tells us that there is nothing in the transcendental
apperception which absolutely determines the number
and nature of the categories, and nothing in sense
which absolutely determines the number and nature
of the forms of perception. The apperception and the
understanding, the imagination and sense, thus fall
asunder; and, although none of them could exist
alone, there is still an admitted possibility that each
of them might be an elernent in a different whole. The
transcendental apperception depends on synthesis, but
not on just these forms of synthesis. The synthesis
requires a given manifold, but the manifold need not
be given under just these forms of perception; and
though the forms would be nothing without particular
contents, the contents, for all that we can see, might
IX.
377
CRITICISM OF THE DEDUCTION.
be altogether different. Kant therefore, as we have
said, makes a compromise between the psychological
and the metaphysical view of the unity of human
knowledge. He goes so far with the metaphysician as
to deny, that we can examine the parts of knowledge
as things in themselves, out of relation to the whole
in which they are combined; and he goes so far with
the psychologist as to admit, that the whole is not
in every part in such a manner as to exclude the
possibility of its being bound up with other parts in
another whole. The unity of knowledge is to him,
after all, only a generic unity, which does not contain
the principle of its own specification, though it marks
out the sphere within which all the species must
fall.
of the
difference
In the light of these remarks we may now proceed Relation
to consider the different transitions of the Deduction. identity of
thought
Kant starts with the opposition of the pure intel- and the
ligence, expressing itself in the bare thought of self, of sense.
or the judgment I am,' to the given manifold of
sense. The self, as we think it, is represented by
him as a pure unity apart from its relation to the
matter of sense; and the matter of sense as in itself
manifold. Yet this qualification of the matter and
form, the difference and the unity, apart from each
other, is immediately retracted. In pure thought
we do not get beyond the judgment 'I am I;' the
judgment as analysed by formal logic: nay, it
appears we do not even get so far: we cannot make
the judgment of self-identity except through the
synthesis of differences, which are supposed to be
given from without. And, on the other hand,
Kant has no sooner said that every perception 'con-
tains a manifold in itself,' than he goes on to show
378
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
that this manifold 'cannot be represented as such,'
except through a process, which involves the synthesis
of its differences in an object related to, yet distin-
guished from, the self. In fact, if we characterise the
subject as a bare unit of identity, the object as bare
difference, it is obvious that each of them is an
abstraction, which cannot be thought except in unity
with the other, and to which it is as absurd to attri-
bute independent existence as to suppose one end of
a stick existing without another end. If we could
conceive thought as existing by itself, its activity
would be a pure tautology, a movement by identity
and by identity alone. If it could be conscious of
itself, it would be limited to an eternal 'I am I.'
On the other hand, if we could conceive sense ex-
isting by itself, it would simply be a flux of
differences without relation, a manifold whose ele-
ments never qualified each other. If it could, per
impossibile, be active and so conscious of itself, its
language would be an eternal 'I am not I.' But
in such absolute separation it is impossible for
either thought to know, or for the manifold to be
an object of knowledge. Each must be apprehended
in relation to the other. The only possibility of
knowledge is that the identity of thought and the
difference of sense should be brought together and
reflected on each other. Thought in itself has no
possibility of differentiation, nor sense of integration.
A mere identity would not be conscious of itself
except in relation to a given difference, and a mere
difference could not be known except in relation to
an identity. As has been shown before, the judg-
ment: 'A is A,' has no meaning, and indeed it is a
judgment that could not be made, except in reference
IX.
379
CRITICISM OF THE DEDUCTION.
to a presupposed distinction; and in like manner, a
negative judgment, while it asserts a distinction, must
have reference to a presupposed unity. Absolutely
isolate identity from diversity, and you annihilate
both. Accordingly, when Kant thinks of under-
standing as in itself tautological, and of sense as
merely an organ of difference, he is obliged to deny
consciousness to both. Consciousness and self-con-
sciousness can only arise by relating the two to
each other, i.e., through synthesis. The analytic
judgment of self-consciousness, 'I am I,' cannot be
made except through the synthetic judgment, where-
by the manifold of sense is united in the conception
of one object. Synthesis puts the one self in relation
to the manifold sensible as subject to object, and
makes possible the apprehension of each by means
of the other. For synthesis, like sense, involves dif
ferentiation, yet integrates the differences, which for
mere sense is impossible: and it involves integration
like thought, but is an integration of differences
which the pure understanding cannot originate for
itself.
gories dif-
pure
and inte-
manifold
Now, this is just what is implied in Kant's next The cate
step, by which he puts the categories between the ferentiate
pure Ego and the manifold, as the necessary media thought,
by which alone the former can become a real self- grate the
consciousness, and the latter an object of knowledge. of sense.
But according to his usual analytic mode of concep-
tion, the categories appear only as a third something
which binds together elements not themselves essen-
tially related. Pure unity or absolute identity, he
argues, has no possible relation to mere difference,
and the bare thought of self can be no principle of
synthesis in a given manifold. The unity of thought
380
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
must differentiate itself in order to supply conceptions
that make possible the combination of the manifold,
and also the relating of that manifold, as an object, to
the conscious self. The categories are thus repre-
sented as instruments wherewith the understanding
is armed for the apprehension of the manifold; or
for the conversion of the crude matter of sense into
an intelligible world of experience. Why the un-
derstanding has precisely these categories and no
others, Kant declares it impossible for us to per-
ceive; all he attempts is to show that it is necessary
for the understanding in some way to differentiate
itself into categories, ere it can put itself in any rela-
tion to the manifold, or even attain to self conscious-
ness. Yet he reduces this differentiating power as far
as possible, when he points to the analytic judgment
as bringing with it certain forms of thought.
Another thought lies very near, if it is not expressed
in so many words by Kant, the thought, viz., that the
analytic judgment of self-consciousness contains in
itself all the forms by which the manifold may be
synthetically combined and so determined as objec-
tive. And it is only natural that we should find
these forms to have quite a different significance,
when we regard them as principles of synthesis of
the manifold of sense, from that which they have
when we regard them merely as expressions of the
unity of thought with itself.
We have then, when we go thus far along with
Kant, a conception of three elements which pre-
suppose and are presupposed by each other. The
manifold of sense is presupposed as matter for syn-
thesis under the categories: the synthesis under the
categories is presupposed in the analytic judgment
IX.
381
CRITICISM OF THE DEDUCTION.
of self-consciousness: and the analytic judgment
itself supplies the categories which are the forms of
synthesis of the manifold of sense.
are not
a conceived
mined in
as deter-
number
and nature
sciousness.
But yet, in spite of this general relativity of the Yet they
different elements, their unity is not conceived as
necessary unity. For (1) the categories, though they
are "species of the synthetical unity of apperception by the idea
of the manifold given in perception,"¹ do not seem to of self-con-
be determined in number and character by their
genus, the unity of apperception itself; and, (2), there
is no necessary connexion between the conceptions or
forms of synthesis and the particular manifold of
perception, which has to be synthetically combined,
although apart from it these conceptions sink into
mere functions of unity in the analytic judgment.
In other words, thought in itself is tautology, and
is only drawn out of tautology by relation to a
manifold.
Now, in regard to the first of these points enough
has been said in the seventh chapter. It was there
pointed out that Kant's assertion, that the number
and relation of the categories are determined a priori
by the very idea of judgment, comes into direct
collision with his other assertion, that we cannot
know why the categories are just what they are and
of the number they are. The former assertion is
not, indeed, fully verified, for Kant's derivation of
the transcendental from the logical system, and his
attempt to vindicate the threefold division of the
categories from the idea of synthesis, cannot be con-
sidered sufficient for the purpose. Still if it be true,
as he declares, that the consciousness of self is one
with the consciousness of synthesis, that synthesis is
¹ I., p. 502.
382
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Nor are
they sup-
judgment, and that out of the very idea of judgment
as the activity of the understanding, we can deter-
mine the whole system of a priori conceptions,
then the transcendental unity of apperception
and the categories cannot be treated as two separ-
able elements, nor even as two elements, which,
though not separable for us, may be separable for
some other intelligence. Rather, we must regard
them as different aspects of the same thing, or, to
speak more correctly, as factors in a unity, of which
we can say nothing whatever if we do not relate
them to each other. And thus even the possibility
of thinking either of them as elements in a different
whole is altogether excluded.
In regard to the second point also, a good deal has
posed to be been said in the seventh chapter. The absolute
necessarily
related to separation of conceptions and perceptions stands and
the mani-
fold of
sense.
falls with the idea that thought in itself is purely
analytic, or, rather, tautological, i.e., ruled by the
laws of identity or contradiction as understood by
formal Logic. If there be no such thought, if the
relation to difference is essentially bound up with all
affirmative, and the relation to identity with all
negative judgment, and if, therefore, all thought is
at once differentiating and integrating, analytic and
synthetic, then the understanding and sense cannot
be opposed to each other in the way in which Kant
opposes them. We may indeed say, if we like, that
pure thought is not synthetic in itself; but then we
must also say that it is not possible for thought to
abide in itself; that it is its very nature to relate
itself to the difference or manifold of perception, and
that it is only by a false abstraction that we can
contemplate it as an independent thing, which has a
IX.
383
CRITICISM OF THE DEDUCTION.
law of its own action different from the law by which
it is governed in its relation to perception. Or, to
put the same idea in another way, if we can separate
conception from perception, understanding from sense,
our abstraction can have value and meaning only in
so far as it enables us to discern in pure thought that
same movement, by which thought ultimately breaks
through its own limits, and so relates itself to per-
ception. If our analysis of pure thought does not
enable us to discover anything but abstract identity
or abstract difference, it will be no preparation for
the consideration of thought in its application to the
matter of perception. A Logic built on such a founda-
tion will be no guide to the sciences of nature and
spirit, indeed it will be nothing more than a scholastic
trifling with abstractions. The Logic that has a real
value must be a Logic that treats the understanding as
a synthetic principle, a principle which differentiates
itself into a multitude of categories, and which becomes
conscious of its unity or identity only through this
differentiation. Kant himself acknowledges that an
understanding which had no difference in itself, an
understanding without categories, could not relate
itself to any manifold or difference given from with-
out; and though he makes this differentiation in its
turn dependent on relation to the given manifold,
the value of the admission remains the same; for
the idea of an understanding in itself, unrelated to a
manifold, is a mere abstraction, and the only under-
standing we can possibly examine, or even think of,
is an understanding that has a manifold within it,
and so stands in relation to a manifold without it.
These considerations may enable us to criticise the
comparison which Kant draws between a perceptive
384 THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
or intuitive understanding and an understanding like
ours which is merely discursive. A perceptive
understanding would not be dependent upon a given
manifold, but would create the manifold it appre-
hended it would not therefore need categories as
instruments by which to produce synthetical unity
in the manifold, and thus to attain to consciousness at
once of the object and of itself. Kant contrasts such
an intelligence with our intelligence simply because,
as we have seen, he regards the reciprocal de-
pendence of the apperception, the categories and the
manifold of sense, as a general, and not as a particu-
lar, dependence-i.e., as a dependence of elements
which yet are separable from this particular whole.
Hence he thinks himself at liberty to imagine a
consciousness of self, which should not have just these
categories as the forms of its relation to the manifold.
But if the consciousness of self is correlative with the
consciousness of a manifold object, and if the cate-
gories are the necessary forms of synthesis by which
this correlation is determined, then it is obvious that
we must take Kant's assertion, that, "Of any other
understanding than ours we have not the slightest
conception," more literally than he intended. For
there is no intelligible meaning in supposing a rela-
tive to exist without its correlative. Either, there-
fore, a perceptive intelligence is impossible, or our
intelligence must be regarded as perceptive.¹
1 It is to be observed that Kant is not always quite at one with him-
self as to the limitation of the categories to matter given in sensuous
perception. Cf. I., p. 503; Proleg., § 34. In the former of these pas-
sages Kant's language is, at least, ambiguous. In the latter, and in
the others quoted by Thiele (Intellectualle Anschauung, p. 23), it is
not necessarily implied that the categories would apply to an object
of intellectual perception, but only that we have no such object given
IX.
385
CRITICISM OF THE DEDUCTION.
least, to
fold of our
If there is any objection to this view, it must be Not, at
based on the ground of the special limitations of our the mani-
perception, and Kant, indeed, maintains that while sense.
our perception is limited to the forms of space and
time, we can at least conceive of a perception which
should not be so limited. In other words, the forms
of synthesis, while they carry with them relation to
a manifold, do not carry with them relation to just
such a manifold as this. Therefore, though it were
granted that the consciousness of self is possible
only through a synthesis of the manifold under the
categories—even then Kant maintains that this
synthesis need not determine objects in space and
time. Thus the consciousness of unity or identity
with itself, which the mind has through its syn-
thesis of the manifold, may be correlative with a
consciousness of objects as such; but it does not
involve an objective consciousness like ours, a con-
sciousness of objects as in space, or a consciousness
of the individual self as determined in time.
of the
to the pro
ancient
modern
Now, it may throw some light on this question if Relation
we observe, that while, in the first part of the Deduc- Deduction
tion, Kant had revived, under a subjective form of blems of
expression, the problem of ancient philosophy; in and
the second part of it, he is dealing with the peculiar philosophy
problem of modern philosophy. When he discussed tively.
the possibility of the synthesis by the understanding
of the manifold of sense, he was simply asking, with
Plato and Aristotle, how the one can be combined
to us to which we might apply them, even if they were applicable. Kant,
it may be remarked, never clearly realises to himself whether he means
by the perceptive understanding a unity which transcends the differ-
ence of sense and understanding, or merely a unity in which that
difference-even as a relative difference-does not exist, though his
language, on the whole, suggests the latter alternative.
respec-
2 B
386 THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
with the many; and when he goes on to consider
how the categories can be applied to a manifold
given under the forms of space and time, he is asking,
with Descartes, how mind can relate itself to matter.
And the transition from the one problem to the
other is just an instance of that necessary evolution
of thought, by which the more abstract problem or
opposition generally yields to the more concrete and
complex. Having proved that the consciousness of
the identity of the subject is impossible except in
relation to the manifold of the object, Kant neces-
sarily proceeds to consider the unity of the one
and the many in the two opposite forms in which
it now appears-on the one hand, as a mind or know-
ing subject that, in all the manifoldness of its percep-
tions, preserves its unity with itself: and, on the other
hand, as matter or known object, which, through all
the relation and connexion of its parts, still preserves
its manifoldness or difference. Descartes took up
the same problem, at the beginning of modern philo-
sophy, without any thought of the process whereby
it had been developed into its modern form. Mind
and matter were to him substances with qualities,
which
were, in
every respect, contrasted and opposed.
Matter was essentially extended or spatial, that is
to say, self-external or made up of partes extra par-
tes, so that no simple unit could ever be found in it,
and no limit of its extension could ever be reached;
for its essential and inseparable attribute was spatial
extension, and no one can think of a space that does
not contain spaces, or that is not itself contained in
another space.
Viewed, therefore, in abstraction
from any subject (or, in Kantian language, as a
thing in itself), matter was necessarily conceived as
IX.
387
CRITICISM OF THE DEDUCTION.
at once infinitely extended and infinitely divided.
On the other hand, the mind was conceived as
absolutely simple and single, as that which, in spite
of the variety of its states, is always in itself, so that
no difference can break its unity. Between two such
opposites finally there could be no link of connexion,
and a deus ex machina was therefore found necessary
to harmonise the one with the other.
matter are
opposites
in one con-
or experi-
Now Kant supplies the key to this difficulty, when Mind and
he points out that the opposition between mind and correlative
matter is not an opposition between consciousness embraced
and something else than consciousness, but an opposi-sciousness
tion between two factors of consciousness. The unity ence.
of experience embraces both the inner and the outer
life. Matter in space is not that which is out of
mind, for of things in themselves we can have no
knowledge. Consciousness in general must be re-
garded as transcending the distinction of the world
within and the world without, at the very moment
when it establishes that distinction. To this it only
requires to be added that inner and outer, mind and
matter in the Cartesian sense, are correlative oppos-
ites that imply each other. The absolutely simple
self, and the infinitely extended and the infinitely
divided world of matter, which Descartes considered
it impossible to unite, it is really impossible to
separate. He and his followers were vainly seek-
ing for a link to connect two things, which can
only be defined in relation to each other, and
which, except in this correlation, can have no ex-
istence. For an Ego not in relation to a spatial
world, or a spatial world not in relation to an Ego,
are simply abstractions, to which no definite meaning
can be attached. Consciousness can only embrace
388
CHAP.
1HE CRITICISM OF PURE reason.
Kant's
assertion
and sub-
ject, as
known,
only exist
process of
in the
know-
ledge.
either as it embraces both. It cannot gather itself
on the one side into the absolute unity of a self,
except as it excludes, while it relates itself to, the
absolute diversity of a world in space. The reality
of both is therefore to be sought, not by taking each
by itself as an independent object of knowledge, but
by considering both in the unity of the process where-
by they are determined in opposition, yet in relation,
to each other.
Now whenever we thus realise the dualism of
that object mind and matter as a dualism of elements which in
consciousness are determined only in relation to each
other, we get a new insight into Kant's analysis of
experience. Regarding both as factors in experience,
which are only as they are known, Kant argues that
the absolute unity of the one and the infinite exten-
sion and division of the other, must be understood in
a limited sense. All that the infinite extension and
division of matter in space means is, that an experi-
ence of an absolute limit to extension or division is
impossible: if, therefore, we abstract from the relation
of the objects to the unity of the self in the actual
process of experience, we can put no limits either to
its extension or its division. And all that is meant
by the absolute unity or simplicity of mind is, that an
experience of a break in the unity of the self, the sub-
ject to which all knowledge is referred, is impossible;
and that, if you abstract from its relation to the
manifoldness of the object, you must conceive the
soul as an absolutely simple unit. But both elements,
thus abstracted from, are necessary to all experience,
and you cannot take away either without annihilating
the whole. Yet at the same time, by what Kant
calls a necessary illusion, the source of which he
IX.
389
CRITICISM OF THE DEDUCTION.
seeks in the Dialectic, we are obliged to regard the
subject and object of experience as existing apart
from the process of experience itself, and as having
in themselves, before or apart from experience, all the
qualities which, in the process of experience, we
determine to be in them. Matter therefore, because,
in experience, we cannot come to an end of its exten-
sion or division, appears as the infinitely extended
and divided object; and mind, because, in experience,
we cannot but refer all diversity to its absolute unity,
appears as absolutely indivisible and unextended.
Thus we refer experience, on one side, to a transcen-
dental object, and, on the other side, to a transcen-
dental subject, which are quite distinct from the
process through which they are known: and because
of this necessary separation of the subject and of the
object from the unity of experience, the qualities
of both receive a false interpretation. In experience
the unity of the self and the infinity of the object exist
only in continual 'becoming,' in the differentiating and
integrating process of synthesis; but when we take
them out of the process, and regard them as fixed
realities or substances, which exist apart from their
being known, we necessarily attribute to the former
an absolute simplicity which can never belong to any
self-conscious subject of experience, since experience
knows identity only in relation to difference; and we
necessarily attribute to the latter an infinity of differ-
ence which also can never belong to any object of
experience, for experience knows difference only in
relation to identity. Experience is a process by
which object and subject are progressively defined in
relation to each other. The flowing stream of mere
sensation becomes intelligible, as it is referred on the
390
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
one side to a world in space, and on the other to a
self: and the result of this reference is simply the
growing consciousness of each of these objects. We
are wont to regard our experience as the result of
the action and reaction of the two independent things,
mind and matter; but we should on the contrary,
according to Kant, rather regard these two indepen-
dent things as the results of experience, which exist
only in, and for, the consciousness that organises the
matter of sense by means of categories. The esse of
object and subject is merely their intelligi, and what
gives reality to this intelligi is simply the sensational
manifold, which is taken up into it. The reference
to object and subject is indeed necessary, for mere
sensation has in itself no value for knowledge yet,
on the other hand, the supposition that either exists,
at least in the form in which it is known to us,¹
apart from the process whereby the sensible manifold
is referred to them, is an illusion, and an illusion
which, though necessary, yet leads to all kinds of
contradictions and absurdities when it is treated as
truth. All that is true is, that there are certain
forms of synthesis by which, in the progress of
individual experience, we and all beings like us
organise the matter of sense, and thereby produce
for ourselves the connexion of an inner and an
outer life; but if we attempt to assert anything
either of ourselves or of any other being, except
as parts of the context of this experience, we tran-
scend the limits of knowledge. The predicates we
give to objects of experience are only valid within
the sphere of experience, and outside of that sphere
1 Kant, of course, does not deny, but rather asserts, the mere exis-
tence of subject and object as things in themselves.
IX.
391
CRITICISM OF THE DEDUCTION.
we can say nothing either of these or any other
objects.
1
His near-
imation
ley.
It is obvious that here Kant comes very close to est approx-
Berkeley, who found the esse of things, not in their to Berke-
intelligi, but in their percipi. For, in this doctrine,
it is necessarily involved, that reality (as we know
reality) lies, not in the objects to which, in the
course of experience, we refer our perceptions, but
simply in the stream of momentary perceptions
themselves, as they occur. The reference to objects
has value, in short, only as it enables us to connect
these perceptions, and so recal past or anticipate future
perceptions. To say
To say that space is infinite merely
means that I, in the course of my experience, can
never possibly perceive an end of it; to say that the
moon has inhabitants means only that, under certain
circumstances, I would have certain perceptions ;
even to say that I existed yesterday, or will exist
to-morrow, merely means that a certain unbroken
connexion of experience, related to one consciousness
of self, connects certain perceptions together. The
reality, in short, lies in the individual perceptions,
and ultimately we must say in the individual sensa-
tions, and not in the universal, the self or the ob-
ject, which make these perceptions or sensations
intelligible. But to say this is to say, that the only
reality which can ever be present to us in experience
is, by the very process of knowing it, changed into
illusion. For the sensitive consciousness has a
value for knowledge only as it is interpreted in re-
lation to the transcendental object and subject as reali-
ties independent of it; yet, according to the view just
stated, this interpretation is essentially illusory,
1 ¹ p. 388: Tr., p. 307.
392
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Can
anything,
strictly
speaking,
be given
in sense?
except so far as it enables us to predict the contents
of the sensitive consciousness itself. 1
We see thus that Kant is 'in a strait betwixt
two.' His limitation of knowledge to phenomena
implicitly involves the doctrine that the ultimate
reality is perception or even sensation. Yet, at the
same time, he maintains that sensation as such is
nothing for knowledge, and that experience involves
reference of the transitory sensation to a permanent
object and subject, each of which is conceived as a
real existence independent of the perception through
which it is known. This, however, would be an exist-
ence not experienced: and Kant, therefore, holds it
to be no existence at all, except as a remembered
or anticipated experience. But if water chokes us,
what shall we drink?" The very process of knowledge
is a process of illusion. It is a process of the organisa-
tion of sensations by reference to an object and a
subject which (at least as they are determined in
this process) have no reality. Being is thus absol-
utely separated from knowing: for the very process
of knowledge is a reference of Being to that which
is not, or, at least, is not as it is known. The
shade of Berkeley is surely avenged on the philoso-
pher who declares that knowledge, inasmuch as it
necessarily transcends sensation, necessarily refers
to the unreal.
There are, however, some criticisms on the Kan-
tian conclusions which are suggested even by the
course of his own argument in favour of them. In
1 Note that, from another point of view, Kant leads us to the con-
clusion that the reality (transcendental reality) is only in the subject
and object, as things in themselves, of which, however, we know nothing,
except that they exist: but of this afterwards.
IX.
393
CRITICISM OF THE DEDUCTION.
the first place, it is an error, on Kant's own showing,
to think of knowledge as made up of an element given
by sense, and an element which arises from the deter-
mination of sense by the understanding. The plausi-
bility of such a conception arises altogether from a
confusion between sense, as it supplies a factor in
the intelligible world, and sense, as it might be for a
purely sensitive being to whom there was no intelli-
gible world at all. In the latter meaning, sense is
indeed prior to conception in the individual life: but
it is also and equally prior to perception. Implicitly
sense may be said to be both perception and concep-
tion it is the germ from which in the development
of the individual they may both spring: but explicitly
it is as little the one as it is the other. Hence the
idea that there is something given in sense which is
afterwards determined by thought, must be aban-
doned by the transcendental Idealist; for nothing can
be given as an element of that consciousness of the
world which we as thinking beings have, except
so far as it is determined. The dualism of per-
ception and conception, which arises within that
consciousness, is not an absolute dualism, but the
dualism of two elements which spring from one
source, and which are moulded from the first, in
relation to each other, by one principle. The idea
of an element in knowledge which is simply 'given,'
is to Kant the source of endless perplexities.
Sometimes this element almost disappears, and
Kant recognises that, as 'given,' it is for a think-
ing being as good as nothing.' At other times
he speaks of it as if, as 'given,' it were already
determined as a 'manifold,' and even as a manifold
6
in time and space. He never seems clearly to
394
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Kant's dis-
tinction
between
what is
and what is
in the
conscious-
ness.
realise, what, nevertheless, his own reasoning more
than anything else has enabled us to see, that,
though there may be something 'given' in the sense
that the individual subject is sensitive before it is
conscious, yet that, as merely 'given,' it never passes
the portals of the intelligible world. The waking of
self-consciousness from the sleep of sense is an absol-
ute new beginning, and nothing can come within the
'crystal sphere' of intelligence, except as it is
determined by intelligence. What sense is to sense
is nothing for thought. What sense is to thought,
it is as determined by thought. There can, there-
fore, be no 'reality' in sensation to which the world
of thought can be referred; nor can the idea of
object and subject, which are necessarily involved in
all rational experience, be considered as in them-
selves unreal, while the particular perceptions, which
become 'blind' and unintelligible the moment we
withdraw these conceptions from them, are considered
to be real.
While, however, we criticise Kant's assertion that,
by sensation, as such, apart from thought, any ele-
implicit ment of experience is given, we must remember that
explicit the same objection does not apply to another mode
empirical of statement which he often uses. Kant not un-
frequently calls our attention to the fact that experi-
ence, in its first forms, involves elements of which
the individual is imperfectly conscious.
Thus,
in the Deduction of the first edition, he says that
knowledge requires a 'unity of consciousness, in
which the manifold as successively perceived, is
bound together into one idea,' that "this conscious-
ness may be but weak, so that we become aware of
it only in the result produced, and not in the act of
IX.
395
CRITICISM OF THE DEDUCTION.
"1
producing it but that, nevertheless, this unity of
consciousness must always be present, though it has
not clearness sufficient to make it stand out,' or
distinguish itself from the other elements of the idea
in question. The same view is suggested by Kant's
frequent reference to imagination as a blind faculty
of synthesis, a faculty that acts upon principles of
which it is unconscious (i. e., which it does not dis-
tinguish from the product of its constructions), while
it is, at the same time, declared to be the office of the
understanding "to bring the synthesis of imagina-
tion to conceptions:" i. e., to bring to clear conscious-
ness the conceptions which underlie the activity of
the imagination, and are the guiding principles of
that activity. Lastly, the same view is involved
in Kant's mode of speaking of the pure appercep-
tion. The 'I think,' he declares, "must be capa-
ble of accompanying all my ideas, for otherwise
something would be presented in my mind which
could not be thought: and that is the same thing
as to say, that the idea would be either impossible,
or, at least, it would be nothing for me." So also in
the parallel passage in the Deduction of the first edi-
tion, he says: "All ideas have a necessary reference
to a possible empirical consciousness, for, if they had
not such reference, it would be impossible to become
conscious of them, and this would be equivalent to
saying that they did not exist. But again, all
empirical consciousness has a necessary reference to
a transcendental consciousness (prior to all experi-
ence), i. e., to the consciousness of myself as the
original apperception. It is, therefore, absolutely
2
1 Deduction (1st Edition), p. 97: Tr., p. 198.
2 p. 106, note: Tr., p. 208.
396
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
necessary that in my knowledge all consciousness
should be bound together in one consciousness (of
myself).
The mere idea 'I,' in reference
to all other ideas (whose collective unity it makes
possible), is the transcendental consciousness. This
idea may be clear (empiric consciousness) or obscure.
This we do not need to consider at present, nor even
indeed whether it actually exists at all: but the
possibility of the logical form of all knowledge rests
necessarily on the reference of it to this apperception
as a faculty." In other words, Kant is here exam-
ining what elements are involved in knowledge, and
therefore does not need to consider how far the clear
consciousness of them is developed in the individual,
nor indeed whether the individual ever actually de-
velops that consciousness at all. The individual (the
sensitive being who becomes the subject of know-
ledge) may be at different stages on the way to clear
self-consciousness. He
He may be sensitive with merely
the dawning of consciousness; he may be conscious
of objects, but not distinctly self-conscious: or, he
may be clearly conscious of the identity of self in
relation to the objects. All this does not concern
us when we are treating of the conditions of the
possibility of knowledge. Thus we can imagine him
to have many perceptions which he has not distinctly
combined with the idea of the self: or we may even
suppose him (like children in the earliest period of
their life) not to have risen to the idea of self at all,
to the separation of the Ego from the act whereby
the object is determined. But we cannot imagine
him to have in his consciousness any ideas that are
incapable of being combined with the idea of self:
for such ideas would be ideas incapable of being
IX.
397
CRITICISM OF THE DEDUCTION.
thought, incapable of forming part of the intelligible
contents of consciousness: they would be, for us, as
thinking beings, 'as good as nothing.' Though,
therefore, we can think of an experience in which all
the elements which the critical philosopher distin-
guishes are not consciously or separately present to
the individual, we cannot think of an experience
which does not imply them all. There can be no
contents of consciousness which are not capable of
being combined with the pure consciousness of self:
or, to express the same thing subjectively, we may
think of consciousness without distinct self-consci-
ousness, but we must think of it as determined in
relation to the faculty of self-consciousness.' We
cannot in any way determine the elements or fac-
tors of self-consciousness and experience, unless we
think of them in that character which they have
as elements or factors. Hence we cannot explain
self-consciousness by reference to consciousness, or
consciousness by reference to sensation; but, on the
contrary, we are obliged to regard the
pre-determined in relation to the first. Just as the
conception of the understanding may underlie and
govern the synthesis of imagination long before
it becomes itself a special object of thought, so the
unity of the self is the principle of all experience,
though it is only the eye of criticism that de-
tects it.
1
•
last two as
scendental
To do justice to Kant's transcendental Deduc- The tran-
tion, we must further observe that he is not try- problem is
ing to determine the elements which require to first pro-
really the
blem of
philo-
¹ Some of the points mentioned in this paragraph have been suggested sophy.
by Thiele's treatise (Intellectuelle Anschauung, § 13), which reached
me only as these sheets were passing through the press.
398
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
be added to the experience of a sentient being in order
to raise it into the experience of a rational being.
Such a question would carry us entirely away
from the transcendental point of view. The condi-
tions, whatever they may be, under which a rational
consciousness or experience is developed in a sentient
being, do not affect the nature of experience itself.
It does not cease to be true that all knowledge, and,
therefore, all objects of knowledge are related to the
consciousness of self, however that consciousness may
come into existence in the individual. It does not
cease to be true that the consciousness of self is
the necessary correlate of the consciousness of a
material world, whatever may be the process through
which sensation passes into perception. Nor can it
be truly said that the latter question is prior to the
former. To proceed from sense to consciousness,
and to explain consciousness by sense, is a gigantic
hysteron-proteron; for it is only in relation to con-
sciousness that sense, like every other object, becomes
intelligible. And in the same way, to explain time
and space psychologically or physiologically, is to
explain them by phenomena which are known only
under conditions of time and space. The 'physio-
logist of mind' who asserts that mind is essentially a
function of the material organism, may be fairly met
by the objection of Kant that his explanation is trans-
cendent. To go beyond the intelligence to explain
the intelligence, is to cut away the ground on which
we ourselves are standing. So, again, when the
psychologist applies the law of association to the
genesis of mind, he is obliged to presuppose a fixed
and definite world of objects acting under conditions
of space and time upon the sensitive subject, in
IX.
399
CRITICISM OF THE DEDUCTION.
order by this means to explain how the ideas of the
world and of himself may be awakened in that sub-
ject. And this is to suppose that the world exists,
as it can exist only to mind, before the process
whereby associations are produced. The necessity,
which is at the basis of our consciousness of ob-
jects, is thus interpreted as the result of the repeated
actions of these objects upon the subject; or, in
other words, the theory is stated in terms of the
consciousness it pretends to explain. Nor is the
theory improved, as an ultimate explanation of the
intelligence and the intelligible world, when the
process of association is protracted, as it is by Mr.
Spenser and others, through an indefinite series
of generations, or even when the present con-
sciousness of men is regarded as the result of a
gradual adaptation of a race of the animals to its
circumstances, and which has been going on for
millions of ages. If it were proved to-morrow that
man is developed from an Ascidian ancestor, it would
still remain certain that the consciousness which makes
us men, is independent of time and development; and
the Darwinian theory, like every other intelligible
view of things, presupposes time and space, and all
the forms of thought that are necessary to an
intelligible experience.
rise to the
unity that
itself
From what has been said, it is sufficiently evident Does Kant
that experience cannot be regarded as the product idea of a
of two different faculties by one of which is sup- manifests
plied the general, by the other the particular, by through
one the unity, by the other the diversity of know- ferences
ledge, any more than it can be regarded as the faculties?
product of the action and reaction of two things
called mind and matter. It must rather be con-
all the dif-
of the
400
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
sidered as a process which, though it involves the
determination of subject and object, understanding
and sense, in opposition to each other, yet in this
opposition and difference manifests only one principle.
How far is this idea of a unity that transcends all the
differences of experience to be found in Kant? The
nearest thing to it is the 'Transcendental synthesis
of imagination;' for imagination, in his view, stands
between sense and understanding, and partakes of
the nature of both, being reproductive in relation to
the former, and productive in relation to the latter:
having the integrating office of the one as well as the
differentiating office of the other. But if we are
tempted to think of imagination as the unity of
the two other faculties, we are speedily checked by
Kant's intimation that productive imagination is only
the effect of the understanding upon sense,'¹ and,
therefore, presupposes both. Nor does it make the
matter any clearer when we combine this with what
is said in the Deduction of the first edition, that
"the unity of apperception in relation to the syn-
thesis of the imagination is the understanding;" so
that imagination and understanding necessarily pre-
suppose each other. Driven from this we are, there-
fore, forced to seek the ultimate unity of thought in
the transcendental apperception. And this, indeed,
is the view to which Kant's language most naturally
leads us. For, we must remember, that while the Ego
is but one term in the opposition of subject and
object, it is the term to which spontaneity or activity
is attributed, and which, therefore, is conceived as
transcending the difference between itself and the
other term. The Ego takes up the given matter
1 ¹ p. 746: Tr., p. 93.
2 p. 108: Tr., p. 208.
IX.
401
CRITICISM OF THE DEDUCTION.
C
of sense and subjects it to its own unity, and it
is only as it does so that it becomes conscious of
that matter as an object. Yet, on the other hand,
we must also remember that this pure activity is
identified with the abstract Ego, the thing that
thinks,' and thus with the subject, as it is opposed to
the object of knowledge. The judgment, 'I am' is
said to be given only through the judgment, 'I think,'
and the judgment 'I think' must always take the
form, 'I think something': it implies, therefore, an
'indeterminate perception,' as well as the pure in-
tellectual idea of the Ego.¹ Self-consciousness is the
correlate of the consciousness of the object, and the
object must be empirically given. Thus the simplest
self-assertion of the Ego contains an empirical element.
The judgment 'I am' may be analytic, but it
implies a synthesis, for which the matter is given
from without. It is only as acted on that the mind
can act, and, therefore, the assertion of its pure spon-
taneity, as well as of the pure passivity of the sense,
is in effect retracted, and thus we have in know-
ledge merely a case of action and reaction, in which
the Ego is passive as well as active. Or, in other
words, the Ego does not transcend the difference
between itself and its object.
ends with
elements
suppose
What, therefore, we find in Kant's deduction is a No; he
circle of elements which reciprocally presuppose each a circle of
other, and each of which appears alternately as con- that pre-
dition and conditioned, while the unity, which is each other.
everywhere implied in this circle reasoning, is
nowhere distinctly expressed. The want of it, how-
ever, is shown by the continual effort at mediation,
which is visible throughout the discussion. Two
1 p. 798, note: Tr., p. 249.
20
402
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Opposition
between
Pheno-
menalism
scenden-
talism.
elements, not seen to be correlative, necessarily re-
quire a third something to bind them together.
Thus the categories are media, which connect the
apperception with the schemata of imagination; the
schemata of imagination are media, which connect the
categories with the manifold of sense; and the mani-
fold of sense and the apperception in their turn ap-
pear alternately as media, whereby the unity of
thought is developed into the categories, or the cate-
gories are applied to the objects of experience. Thus
the unity of knowledge, the unity of the intelligence
and of its objects, continually eludes Kant's grasp,
though he is continually seeking it; and the reason
is, that at every step he starts from a presupposed
difference.
The truth is, that there is a necessary collision
between Kant's Phenomenalism and his Transcen-
and Tran- dentalism. The doctrine that the objects of our
knowledge are merely phenomenal, rests, in part at
least, on the idea that the elements of knowledge
are not necessarily related to each other, or, in other
words, that they have a meaning apart from the
unity of experience. Kant may declare that "per-
ceptions are blind, and conceptions are empty," when
they are not brought into connection with each
other; yet his method continually leads him to treat
both as having, prior to the synthesis by which they
become elements in experience, a definite character
of their own, which is only modified, but not sup-
pressed, by their being brought into relation with
each other. This definite character, however, must
belong to them as things in themselves, and can
be known to belong to them only by an intelli-
gence that transcends experience. Kant, therefore,
IX.
403
CRITICISM OF THE DEDUCTION.
is logically obliged to desert the transcendental
point of view; for he must cease to look at ex-
perience from the point of view of its own unity,
and suppose himself to apprehend the faculties in
their noumenal reality as things in themselves, ere
he can, at least on this ground, condemn experi-
ence as phenomenal. On the other hand, just in
so far as he adheres to the transcendental point
of view, he is obliged to regard everything that
comes within the range of experience as a rela-
tive element, which has no meaning, or 'is for us
as thinking beings as good as nothing,' when we
absolutely sever it from the other elements. It is
impossible to bring these two views into harmony
with each other: it is impossible to regard experi-
ence from the inside, as a circle of elements that re-
ciprocally presuppose each other, and at the same
time, to break through the circle and look upon it
from the outside, as a combination of elements that
are separable from, and indifferent to, each other.
Yet Kant's position is incapable of being stated
without alternately taking each of these courses.
We cannot vindicate the forms of sense, the cate-
gories, the apperception, etc., except on the ground
that no knowledge is possible which does not imply
them all, and that each implies all the others. On
the other hand, we cannot assert that knowledge is
merely of phenomena in Kant's sense, except in so
far as we regard each in turn as separable from the
rest, and especially the matter and forms of sense as
separable from, and even opposed to, the categories
of the understanding. But we cannot maintain this
independent position for the understanding, unless
we suppose that thought has a different law or prin-
404
THE CRITICISM OF PURE reason. CHAP.
*
General
bearing of
scendental
method.
ciple of movement in itself from that which governs
it in its application to the matter of sense, which, as
we have seen, is a false assumption. And we cannot
maintain it for sense, unless we suppose that sense
can 'give' something for knowledge, independent of
thought, which, by Kant's own confession, is also a
false assumption.
If, then, we exclude all such attempts to look at
the tran- knowledge from the outside, and keep strictly to
the transcendental point of view, the argument of
the deduction may be thus stated." A self-conscious
being, ex vi termini, is one who can return upon the
history of his thought. His consciousness of him-
self and the world contains a multitude of elements
which he can distinguish from each other, and re-
gard each for itself. Thus he can sever subject from
object, conception from perception, and one element
of conception from another, till he reaches the sim-
plest fibre of thought that lies at the basis of all our
experience. But the best result of this process must
be to show, that these elements require each other,
and that, wherever we begin, we are driven on
by necessary filiation from one element to another,
till we restore again in a higher form, and with
clearer consciousness of its nature, the whole with
which we started. This really is the meaning of
Kant's proof that the possibility of experience rests
on certain conditions." He who denies the truth of
this or that experience must base his scepticism on
experience in general: and again, he who doubts
experience in general, must base his scepticism on
the elements of experience, which he maintains have
been illegitimately combined. But let him take his
stand where he will, it may be shown that he cannot
៦.
IX.
405
CRITICISM OF THE DEDUCTION.
maintain his position without advancing cannot
assert what he does assert without asserting more,
inasmuch as that which he admits contains implicitly
all that he denies. Is it that, like Hume, he admits
the reality of sensation in order to disprove the real-
ity of experience? Then it may be shown that sen-
sation, as such, is 'for us as thinking beings nothing
at all,' unless it is determined by the forms of sense
and the categories. Is it that, like Leibnitz, he
maintains the reality of the object of thought as
opposed to the object of perception? Then it may
be shown that relation of the subject to a world in
space and time, is essential even to pure self-con-
sciousness. Is it, lastly, that he admits the reality
of objects in space and time in order to deny
casual or necessary relations between them? Then
it can be shown that implicitly relations of causal-
ity and dependence are involved in the relations of
things as in space and time. Scepticism is thus ex-
cluded, simply because not a foot of ground is left on
which it could take its stand to deny the reality of
knowledge. It cannot prove the illusiveness of
knowledge except by steps which involve that it is
not illusive.
We have now explained the general nature of the
transcendental deduction, and its application to the
different elements of experience so far as that seems
to be possible at this stage of the argument. There
are, however, certain points in the deduction, parti-
cularly in relation to the application of the categories
to the form of inner sense, which cannot be made fully
intelligible till we have considered what Kant calls
the schematism of the categories: i. e., the place of
the imagination in knowledge.
406
CHAPTER X.
Agreement
THE SCHEMATISM OF THE CATEGORIES.
and differ SUPPOSING it to be granted that the categories
are the forms of synthesis by which experience
ence of the
logical and
transcen-
dental
is made possible, can we say anything more about
judgment. the way in which they are applied to the matter of
sense? According to his invariable method, Kant
seeks in ordinary Logic a 'guiding thread' to the
discovery of this new element in the transcendental
Logic. The problem is, to subsume our experiences
under the categories, or, in other words, to use the
rules supplied by the pure understanding so as to
make judgments about our particular experiences.
Now, generally speaking, no rules can be given for
an act of judgment. It seems, indeed, even absurd
to ask for rules for an act which is itself the ap-
plication of rules; for we might just as well ask
for rules for the application of these, and so on
ad infinitum. Judgment is a matter of mother
wit, which we may discipline and draw out by
means of examples, but which no learning can either
supply or enable us to dispense with. There is,
however, Kant argues, a peculiarity about the tran-
scendental judgment, which makes it possible for us
·
SCHEMATISM OF THE CATEGORIES.
407
to lay down rules for it. For in this case we know
a priori, not only the rules, but also, within certain
limits, the cases to which they have to be applied.
We know, in short, that objects corresponding to
the categories can be presented to us only under
certain conditions, and therefore we can apply the
categories as rules to these conditions; and thus,
up to a certain point, determine what the nature
of the objects must be. We know that the simple
unity of self can be brought into relation with
the manifold only in a successive perception of
it, and that therefore 'time must be contained in
every empiric representation of the manifold.'
Hence we know that a determination of time must
be involved in every determination of an object, and
that the categories cannot determine the manifold
matter of sense as objective, unless they also deter-
mine it in certain ways in relation to time,¹
How, then, can the categories be translated into Schema-
determinations of time, and under what form do
they reappear when so translated? This is what
Kant calls the Schematism of the Categories. To
ask how the categories are schematised, is simply to
ask how they are applied to the form of inner sense,
that through it they may be applied to the matter
of all sense. For, as a category is a pure conception,
it is not in conformity with the perceptions of sense,
and we need, therefore, a third something, a medi-
ating link, to enable us to apply it to them. Such a
mediating link, however, is found in the form of inner
sense, which, like the category, is pure and a priori,
and, like the perception, is sensuous. If, there-
fore, we are able to reflect a category into time,
¹ p. 118: Tr., p. 104.
1
tis..
:
408
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
X. Difference
of schema
it will then become easy to subsume phenomena
under it.
To understand the nature of this process, we must
and image. consider what an important part imagination plays
in all knowledge. Imagination is not merely a
faculty of artistic invention; on the contrary, its
agency is employed in every case, in which we make
use of general notions to determine anything what-
ever. When, e. g., I think of the dog, I have not
before my mind the image of any particular dog, but
only a general idea, in which I abstract from time
and place, as well as from all the other specialties of
determination that must belong to such an image.
Yet, at the same time, I do not think of the general
idea in itself altogether without relation to such cir-
cumstances. I think of it rather as a rule, according
to which I could draw an image if required; and
thus it brings with it an inchoate activity of imagin-
ation, which yet does not go so far as actually to pro-
duce any definite picture. Now, this general power
of imagination, by which it puts conceptions into re-
lation with the general conditions of time and space,
under which they must be realised and represented,
without actually realising or 'envisaging' them in any
one image, is what Kant calls its power of schema-
tising. "The schema in itself is nothing but a
product of imagination; but since in it the synthesis
of imagination does not go so far as to produce any
single perception (or the perception of any single
object), but only so far as to give unity to the deter-
mination of the sensibility, it is carefully to be dis-
tinguished from an image. Thus, when I put five
points in a row, one after the other, I get an image
of the number five. But if I think of a number in
делази
X.
409
SCHEMATISM OF THE CATEGORIES.
general, which may be anything between five and a
hundred, I merely represent to myself a method by
which I could produce the image of any number,
rather than actually produce the image of one definite
number; and hence it is that the schema is often
confused with the conception, while the image never
is so confused."1
schema.
To understand this clearly we must remember Use of the
that, in Kant's view, a conception is a fixed abstrac-
tion which may be simple or complex, but which, in
all cases, is definite and unchangeable. We may
discover by analysis the number of marks contained
in it, but we cannot add to that number unless we
bring in the new elements from without. It has no
principle of movement or growth in itself. As gene-
ral, it is indeterminate, and does not contain in itself
the conditions of its own possibility. We can, in-
deed, see whether it is logically possible-whether
it contains contradictory elements or not. But
whether it is really possible-whether it could be
presented as an object under conditions of time
and space-we do not see from itself. Hence, we
can say little or nothing about it, if we do not
relate it to, at least, the general conditions, under
which it might be presented in experience. Now
imagination gives to the abstract conception a
kind of life which it has not in itself, simply by
bringing it into relation with the general condi-
tions of space and time. It is this schematic
power of imagination which makes mathematics
possible; for we could discover nothing about the
properties of a triangle without drawing it, yet as
little could we discover anything, if we were limited
1 ¹ p. 124; Tr., p. 109.
х
410
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
in our thought to the particular triangle we draw.
We need for mathematical reasoning more than the
conception, yet less than the image; we need, in short,
the schema. And this is equally true of empirical
conceptions. The definite number of marks combined
in the conception of a dog corresponds to an infinite
number of possible images. In order to make any
use of my conception, e.g., to subsume any parti-
cular object of experience under it, I must, so to
speak, project my conception into space, and make
it a rule or principle of determination for my percep-
tive or representative faculty. Only thus, in the
meeting of a productive effort of imagination, where-
by a conception is schematised, with the reproductive
effort whereby the manifold is gathered into one
image, can an individual be brought under a general
conception. "This schematism of our understand-
ing, in view of phenomena and their mere form, is a
hidden art in the depths of the human soul, whose
true masterpieces it is hard for us to detect or
explain," It is sufficient here to note that it is this
hidden art which makes it possible for us to relate
our general ideas to the particulars that fall under
them, and, on the other hand, to generalise our
knowledge without losing ourselves in vague ab-
stractions.
I
Schematism, then, is a process common to all our
thought, a process without which all our use of general
ideas would be futile. It is a process, therefore,
to which the categories, like all other general ideas,
must be subjected, ere they can have any objective
application. But in the case of the categories there
is this peculiarity that the schema is not an inchoate
1 p. 125: Tr., p. 109.
X.
411
SCHEMATISM OF THE CATEGORIES.
image; for a category is a conception which never can
be brought into any image. The schematism of the
categories is merely the general determination of
X
sense through its form, according to conceptions,
which must take place before any object can be
known as an object.
the schema
tity.
Now, taking the categories successively under the Number
heads of quantity, quality, relation, and modality, we of Quan-
have to ask how they must be schematised in order
to be applied to the manifold of our sense. And
first of quantity. The objects of outer sense are all
quanta, in so far as they occupy space, and so also are
the objects of inner sense, in so far as they occupy
time. Hence, in space and time we have pure images
of quanta in the former case of quanta of outer sense,
in the latter case of quanta of inner sense (and it
must be remembered that all objects whatever are,
in one aspect of them, quanta of inner sense). But,
then, we can only produce the image of time, or
(what is the same thing, since time is only a form
of perception), we can only produce time, by that
synthesis of homogeneous units which we call num-
bering. In other words, we can represent a suc-
cession in time only by distinguishing parts in a
continuity of homogeneous perception, and relating
them to each other as the units in numbers are
Number, therefore, is the schema of
related.
quantity.
schema of
In the next place, how is quality to be schema- Degree the
tised in relation to time? Quality contains the Quality.
categories of reality, negation, and limitation, and it
is obvious that we must represent the positive or
real as a time that is occupied, and the negative or
unreal as a time that is empty. In relation to the
412
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Schemata
of Rela-
tion.
Schemata
of Modal-
ity.
inner life, fulness or emptiness means the pre-
sence or absence of a state of feeling or sensation.
Further, each such sensation must be represented as
having a particular degree of intensity, i.e., we can-
not regard it as a simple unit, but must think of it
as occupying a place in the scale of being between
nothing and infinity, or, in other words, as a mag-
nitude which has grown up from nothing by a con-
tinuous process, and which can disappear only by
a similar continuous process of decline. This is in-
volved in the mere fact that it is felt in time, and
without reference to the extent of time which it
occupies. The schema of quality therefore is degree.
The translation of the other categories is simpler.
Substance, as a pure conception, is that which is
always subject, and never predicate. It is schema-
tised as that which remains permanent through all
change, as the "substratum of the empirical deter-
mination of time." So again, causality, which, as a
pure conception, expresses the relation of reason and
consequent, becomes schematised as invariable
sequence. A cause is that which something else
follows in time according to a universal rule. And
reciprocity, which, as a pure conception, is but the
relation of parts or species in a generic whole, be-
comes in like manner invariable coexistence, or co-
existence according to a universal rule.
66
The schematism of the categories of modality is
equally easy. Possibility which, taken logically, is
mere non-contradiction, is schematised as agree-
ment of the different elements gathered together in
the conception of an object with the conditions of
time in general." That an object is possible means
merely that there is nothing in the nature of time to
X.
413
SCHEMATISM OF THE CATEGORIES.
prevent its existence; as, e.g., from the nature of time
itself contradictory predicates cannot belong to a sub-
ject at the same time, but they may at different times.
Actuality is schematised as existence at a definite
time, and necessity as existence at all times.
Schematism is, then, but an a priori determination
of the manifold as given in time, according to the
categories, or to look at it from the other side, it is
a restriction of the categories, in conformity with
the form of our inner sense. Thus restricted, they
obviously apply only to phenomena. This, however,
does not imply that, apart from this restriction, they
enable us to know things as they are in themselves :
for, apart from this restriction, the categories are
mere functions of unity in the formal or analytic
judgment.
But how does this schematising of the categories
give them an objective signification even in relation
to phenomena? The full answer can only be given
in the following chapter which explains the prin-
ciples of the pure understanding, and the necessity
of their application in order to the constitution of
experience. But it may make the meaning of the
schematism clearer if we give here a general idea
of it.
诺
​it
ciples of
and syn-
We must, in the first place, remember that ana- The prin-
lysis and subjectivity on the one hand, and synthesis analysis
and objectivity on the other hand, go together in thesis.
Kant's mind. To go beyond the conceptions we at
any time possess, to do more than analyse them, is
to go beyond ourselves: it is to apprehend in percep-
tion an object in which the qualities, which we have
already combined in our conception, are united with
other qualities. It is to combine our conceptions
414
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
The latter
implies
the form
of inner
sense.
with new perceptions, in order that we may add to
these conceptions. Thought, as it abides in itself, is
analytic: to be synthetic it requires a third some-
thing, by which the old may be mediated with the
new. The formal judgment is in its essence tauto-
logical it is governed by the law of identity and
contradiction. Sometimes this law is so stated
that its pure analytical meaning is concealed. "It
is impossible that a thing should be, and not be
at the same time," is not the pure expression of
the principle of contradiction, because it brings in
a reference to the nature of time, which permits
contradictory predicates to exist in a subject suc-
cessively, though not in coexistence.
As a mere
logical principle, the law of contradiction must ab-
stract from conditions of time. Its true form, there-
fore, is that "No subject can have a predicate that
contradicts it." For to say: A man cannot be
learned and unlearned at the same time,' we must
know something not only of the nature of the sub-
ject, but also of the nature of existence in time. But
to say,
'No unlearned man is learned,' we need only
know the meaning of the subject.¹
Now this consideration already prepares us to see
that when the categories, which are merely the
functions of unity in the formal judgment, are re-
flected into time, they may become synthetic princi-
ples of knowledge. Time furnishes a 'third some-
thing,' through which the forms of analytic unity
with their merely transparent difference (a difference
that in itself vanishes in tautology), become forms of
synthetic unity, i.e., of a unity with a real difference
in it. Hence the schematism of the categories, the
¹ p. 133: Tr., p. 116.
1
2
X.
415
SCHEMATISM OF THE CATEGORIES.
translation of them into time-determinations, is no
mere idle play of the imagination. It is the trans-
lation of the categories into the sole form in which
they can furnish principles for the determination of
objects. For time is the form of all perception, and,
therefore, when we determine what is true of an
object as represented under conditions of time, we
are determining what is true of all objects of experi-
ence whatever. As, therefore, the law of identity
and contradiction is the highest principle of all ana-
lytic judgment, so the highest principle of all syn-
thetical judgment is, that "every object stands
under the necessary conditions of the synthetic unity
of the manifold of perception in a possible experi-
ence." And these necessary conditions are just the
principles of judgment which arise from the applica-
tion of the categories to a matter given under the
form of time.
son of
transcen-
judgment
ing.
The first difficulty that is presented by the sec- Compari-
tions of the Critique, of which we have just given an logical and
account, is one that arises from Kant's persistent dental
attempt to connect the transcendental with the logi- is mislead-
cal judgment. In the logical judgment, an object
already determined is brought under a general
conception which is part of its determination. Hence
when Kant speaks of phenomena as subsumed under
the categories, which are conceptions of objects in
general, we are apt to forget that phenomena are
determined as objects only by means of the cate-
gories, and that prior to this so-called subsumption,
they do not exist for us as objects at all. In fact,
as has been said in an earlier chapter, it would have
been less misleading if Kant had spoken of the
416
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
categories, not as predicates to be attached to the
matter of sense given under the forms of time and
space, but, as first determinations of the subject, to
which the determinations of time and space, as well
as all other determinations, have to be attached as
predicates. Kant's own assertion that "perceptions
without conceptions are blind," involves that in the
categories we have the ideal nucleus, around which
all experience must be organised, and without which
there would be no intelligible experience whatever.
The reasons why this form of statement did not
commend itself to him, are, however, not difficult to
understand. Partly it was that he looked to the
individual life in which it is undoubtedly true that
sensation precedes thought: and did not sufficiently
keep before him the fact that sensation as such
sensation as it precedes thought-furnishes no ele-
ment of experience. Or, to state the same thing in
another way, in the unity of sensation the two ele-
ments of perception and conception are yet undis-
tinguished, and we have as little and as much right
to say that mere sense conceives as that it perceives.
The main reason, however, why Kant feared to
speak of the conceptions of the understanding as
ideally prior to all perception, lay in his conviction
that these conceptions become conceptions of objects
only in relation to a given manifold of perception :
and that, taken in themselves, they have a purely
formal value as functions of unity in the analytic
judgment. But this is a point on which we have
already spoken. In one sense we may admit, and
even go beyond, Kant's doctrine. If the abstraction
of the categories from the unity of experience means
the conception of them as related to nothing but
X.
417
SCHEMATISM OF THE CATEGORIES.
of imagi-
mediate
under-
and sense.
themselves, it is true that ultimately such abstrac-
tion must empty the categories of all meaning, even
of that meaning which Kant still leaves to them.
All abstraction of parts or elements in our experi-
ence from the unity of the whole, valuable and useful
as such abstraction may be, involves a certain inac-
curacy, a certain imperfection in our conception of the
elements thus abstracted. And, if we insist on this
inaccuracy, and pursue it to its ultimate consequences,
we necessarily deprive the elements in question of all
meaning and value. This, in fact, is the Nemesis
that overtook the Wolffian school, and the dread of
it, as a kind of horror vacui, was never absent from
the mind of Kant. Unfortunately this dread did not Necessity
lead him to doubt the sufficiency of the received nation to
Logic as an account of the movement of pure thought, between
but only to insist that, in knowledge, the movement standing
of pure thought must be supplemented from another
Hence, he never ceases to maintain that
the understanding in itself is purely analytic and
subjective, and that its conceptions acquire a syn-
thetic and objective meaning only when related to
the perceptions of sense. But thought, thus de-
prived of all real movement or progress within itself,
can have no movement out of itself. Its relation to
perception must be merely external: i.e., it must be
mediated by something else than itself. Imagination,
therefore, appears as a Deus ex machina, a mediating
power, interposing between perception and concep-
tion, sense, and understanding, and connecting them
with each other. Thus, on the one hand, imagination
gives life or synthetic movement to the dead abstract
conception, by putting it in relation to the movement
of sense; and, on the other hand, it stays the flux of
source.
2 D
418
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Objection
to any
absolute
division
of the
faculties.
sensations, by bringing them under the categories, and
so putting them in relation to the permanent unity of
intelligence. But the power which thus relates the
two elements of knowledge, must stand above their
difference, and include them both in itself; and, from
this point of view, imagination seems to be a name
for the intelligence as a whole, while sense and un-
derstanding sink into mere abstractions, or elements
which have existence only in the unity of the whole.
This, however, is an idea, which, though involved in
Kant's words, is never clearly expressed by him, still
less followed out to its necessary consequences. On
the contrary, as we have pointed out at the end of
the preceding chapter, Kant speaks of imagination,
not as the unity of the two other elements, but as a
'third something' which stands between them, and
relates them to each other.
These contradictions were inevitable, because Kant
never clearly saw, that what we call separate facul-
ties, are either different elements in the unity of
knowledge, or, if we take a more concrete view,
different stages in the process of knowledge, and that
therefore they cannot, consistently with the unity of
intelligence, be regarded as differing from each other
in their essential principle and character. The mind
cannot be conceived as an assemblage of independent
powers, which act and react on each other, and
express the result of their reciprocal determination
in the judgments of experience. Nor can it be
regarded as a manufactory divided into departments,
each of which is engaged in a separate process, and
completes its labours on the common material, ere it
is handed on to the next department. Yet, if we dis-
card such analogies, we must discard with them the
X.
419
SCHEMATISM OF THE CATEGORIES.
ascription of independent substantiality to each of the
different phases of intellectual life. Nor can we, like
Kant, imagine that the function of one part of the
mind is purely differentiating, of another purely
integrating, and that a third partakes of both
characters, and, therefore, is able to mediate between
the other two. It would be fatal to the possibility of
knowledge, because fatal to the unity of intelligence,
to admit that the faculties into which we ideally
divide the mind are ruled by essentially different
laws; or that the law that regulates their inde-
pendent or individual action is not the same as
that which regulates their combined action in the
production of knowledge or experience. If the under-
standing had no synthetic movement in itself, it could
never receive such synthetic movement from the
imagination, and its schemata. If perception were
essentially different from pure thought, it could derive
no rules from thought, even through the mediation of
imagination. When, therefore, Kant says that we
cannot think of objects, or, in other words, cannot
think synthetically, except so far as we schematise our
thoughts, we may admit the truth of this assertion if
it be understood merely to mean that the mind can-
not rest in pure thought, but is driven, by the very
nature of thought itself, to realise or 'envisage' its
conceptions under the conditions of space and time.
But when he goes on to explain that pure thought
is merely analytic, and, therefore, has in itself no
necessary relation to perception, or, indeed, to any-
thing but itself, and that it is only the imagination
which takes up the abstract conceptions produced by
thought, and, by an external process, connects them
with the form of perception, then we must withhold
420
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Kant's
treatment
of inner
sense
incor sis-
our assent; and that on two grounds. In the first
place, as we have seen, thought, even in itself, is syn-
thetic, or has in it a movement towards difference as
well as a movement towards identity; and, in the
second place, thought cannot abide in itself, but
necessarily relates itself to perception. That we feel
the need of "envisaging" our conceptions, or of
representing their objects to ourselves under con-
ditions of time and space, is an obvious fact. And
the explanation of it is to be found in the principle
stated in the last chapter, that pure thought, or, more
definitely, abstract self-consciousness finds its neces-
sary correlate in an external world in space and time.
Pure thought, in other words, is an abstraction, which,
when isolated from the unity of experience to which
it belongs, ultimately becomes dialectical, or self-con-
tradictory, and so forces us to retract our abstraction.
The nisus, or living tendency of thought, from the
universal to the particular, is not to be explained by
saying that imagination fastens an external schema
upon the universal; it is to be explained from the
nature of the universal itself, and the internal necessity
by which it is driven to develope or particularise itself.
The pure unity of intelligence must go out of itself,
must lose itself, in order, in the highest sense, to find
itself. It must differentiate itself in order to reach a
true integration. It must be present to itself, in the
first instance, as an external object, or world of objects,
in order that, out of this difference and externality, it
may rise to the consciousness of self and the compre-
hension of its own unity.
If now we turn from this general view of the
relations of thought and imagination to consider
Kant's doctrine of schematism, we are met by another
X.
421
SCHEMATISM OF THE CATEGORIES.
the tran-
method.
difficulty. There are two forms of sense, space and tent with
time, but Kant, for the most part, confines himself to scendental
the form of inner sense. His ground for this almost
exclusive attention to time is, that inner sense is
that through which all the manifold of sense is given,
and that, therefore, a determination of its form by the
categories is presupposed in all other determination
of objects. In other words, all determination of
objects by the categories must be, in the first instance,
time-determinations. Plausible, however, as this
doctrine at first appears to be, it is an example of that
μετάβασις ἐς ἄλλο γένος—which was pointed out in the last
chapter. In passing from conception to imagination,
Kant suddenly sinks from the transcendental to the
ordinary psychological point of view.
This may
readily be seen if we examine one or two of the
passages in which the position of the inner sense in
experience is explained.
(6
Because," says Kant in the Deduction, 1 "there
is a certain form of sensible perception, which exists
in the mind a priori, as a form of its receptivity,
therefore the understanding as a spontaneity can
determine the inner sense, through the diversity of
the data of perception, in conformity with the syn-
thetical unity of apperception." There seem to be
only two possible interpretations of this passage, and
both of them alike are excluded by the principles
of Kant. Does it mean that perceptions, after they
have been given under the form of inner sense, i.e.,
as successive in time, are then determined by the
understanding in relation to objects? This can
scarcely be Kant's meaning, for, in his view, the
determination of our inner states in time is already
the empirical determination of self as an object, and
1 ¹ p. 745: Tr., p. 92.
422
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
he elsewhere argues that such a consciousness of self
is possible only in relation to predetermined objects
in space. Indeed, to admit that the consciousness
of our perceptions as such was prior to consciousness
of objects in space, would have involved a return to
the dualism (and problematical idealism) of Des
Cartes, which makes the
the external object a
thing in itself, external to consciousness. But, if we
exclude this interpretation, then the only alternative
is to understand Kant as meaning, that our sensitive
perception actually is successive, but that it is
through the determination of this successive con-
sciousness by the categories that we know all ob-
jects, even the successive consciousness itself. On
this construction, however, Kant would be speaking
of the sensitive self, not as a phenomenon, but, as a
thing in itself, and yet, at the same time, as con-
ditioned by time, which is merely a form of pheno-
menal reality. The truth is, that no consistent
meaning can be given to the passage: all that it
shows is, that Kant is divided between two irrecon-
cileable lines of thought. If we look at knowledge
from the outside, in the method of Locke, we may
suppose that the only question is, how a world of
objects in space are to become known to a simple
self, to which, because of this simplicity, they can be
presented only in a succession of sensations or percep-
tions: and the answer from this point of view natur-
ally is, that such a world can become known to such
a self, only if the elements successively given are syn-
thetically combined by means of the categories. But
it is not difficult to see that here, from the Kantian
point of view, both the question and the answer are
transcendent. For they both involve the doctrine
X.
423
SCHEMATISM OF THE CATEGORIES.
that the world is in space, and that the sensations of
the individual are successive, apart from their being
known as such. And such a separation of the esse
from the intelligi is, on Kantian principles, inadmis-
sible. On the other hand, if we look at knowledge
from the inside, i.e., from the transcendental point of
view, we cannot put the determination of our inner
sense in time before the determination of objects in
space. "We can think of time," Kant himself tells
us, "only in the following way, viz., by drawing a
straight line (which we take as the outward image
of time) and fixing our attention entirely on the act
of synthesis, whereby we successively determine our
inner sense, and so on the succession in our deter-
mination of it." This means that in the explicit
determination of a line in space, there is an implicit
determination of our perception of it in time, which
only needs to be made explicit, to enable us to attain
consciousness of our inner states as determined in
time. But it involves also, that the explicit con-
sciousness of the succession of our states of mind
in time, is logically dependent on the consciousness
of objects in space. It was the supposition that
the reverse is true, and that "outer sense is the
object of inner sense," which gave rise to the
errors of Schopenhauer, and to his somewhat vul-
gar misinterpretation of the motives of Kant for
the changes made in the second edition of the
Critique. We shall have to return to this subject in
a subsequent chapter. For the present, it is suffi-
cient to point out that Kant is unfaithful to his own
principles, if he speaks of sensations, either as
actually successive, apart from their being known as
¹ Deduction, § 24, p. 748 : Tr., p. 94.
424
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Kant's
treatment
position of
successive, or as known as successive, prior to their
reference to external objects. For, in the former
case, he is treating phenomena as things in them-
selves, and in the latter case, he is taking the inner
life out of its relation to the outer life in the unity
of experience.
The key to the difficulty, as we have already in-
of the op- dicated, is to be found in that excess of abstraction
by which Kant isolates the elements of experience.
compared The first form in which the relation between subject
of previous and object presents itself to Kant, is substantially
matter
and mind
with that
philoso-
phers.
identical with the Cartesian dualism, in which the
terms of mind and matter are set in an abstract
antagonism to each other, that seems to make all
mediation impossible. According to this view, the
subject is an absolutely simple self, purely active,
but in its activity ever abiding within itself, de-
termining itself and nothing else than itself; while
the object is matter: infinitely divided,-i.e., infin-
itely complex or self-external, and purely passive
or determined from without. Kant adopts this
abstract opposition, but expresses it in a subjective
way, so that with him the extreme terms are the
Ego, which is active but confined to a purely
analytic activity, and the matter of sense which is
essentially complex or manifold without unity, and
which is given altogether independently of any ac-
tivity of the Ego. Starting with this dualism, Kant
cannot account for experience, except by supposing
that, while the manifold elements of sense are neces-
sarily given in succession to the simple self, they are
synthetically brought together and determined as
objects in relation to the consciousness of all through
the categories. Thus the categories and the form of
X.
425
SCHEMATISM OF THE CATEGORIES.
inner sense are the media between the apperception
and the given manifold of external sense, or what
from this point of view is the same thing, the ex-
ternal world (for the external world in its abstraction
as manifold and self-external, can scarcely be distin-
guished from the manifold of sense taken without rela-
tion to any unity). When, however, we consider all
this on the transcendental method, i.e., when we regard
knowledge from the point of view of its own unity,
and not from the external point of view of one who
puts together parts that exist, and are known, inde-
pendently of each other, we must give an altogether
different explanation of it. What we must then
say is, that pure matter on the one side, and pure
apperception on the other, are mere abstractions, i.e.,
that they are not the subject and object of actual
experience. The subject of our experience is not a
bare unity which abides in itself without relation to
an external world: the object of our experience is
not a matter which is absolutely complex and pas-
sive. Indeed, such a subject and such an object
are inconceivable, as is shown by the fate of the
philosophies that adopted this extreme of dualism.
The Cartesians found it impossible to restore the
unity of knowledge, except by the Deus ex machina
of Occasionalism; while the philosophers of the next
generation evaded the difficulty by the more sum-
mary process of denying the reality of one of the
opposed terms. Thus Spinoza, in one of his letters,
questions the Cartesian view of the absolute pas-
sivity of matter, ¹ and Leibnitz, following out the
same line of thought, maintains that all real sub-
1
¹ Letter 70. In the Ethics, on the other hand, the Cartesian view
seems still to be accepted by Spinoza.
426
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON:
Ultimate
conse-
the tran-
view of it.
stances are active and self-determined. On the other
hand, Locke adopts the opposite course of assimilat-
ing mind to matter, and his followers try to explain
knowledge on the hypothesis that thought as well as
matter is passive, or subjected to laws that do not
spring from its own nature.
In
Kant, as we have seen, returns to the dualism of
quences of Des Cartes, with two important differences.
scendental the first place, he generally expresses it in a sub-
jective way, as an opposition of factors in know-
ledge, rather than of elements in existence: and,
in the second place, he sees the necessity of a
mediation between the factors, which shall not be
a mere Deus ex machina, but shall be implied in
the very nature of the factors themselves. Hence,
the dualistic statement with which he begins is
modified and corrected as he goes on. If it is said
at first that sense is a receptivity, and that the mat-
ter it receives is manifold without unity, a flux of
differences without synthesis, it is subsequently ex-
plained that sensible perception involves a reproduc-
tive synthesis of the imagination.¹ If, at first, un-
derstanding is defined as a pure spontaneity, which
in all its movement never goes beyond its own
identity, it is immediately added that analysis pre-
supposes synthesis, and that the pure conception
must be schematised by the productive imagination.
In this way, understanding ceases to be a merely
analytic activity, which produces only formal judg-
ments, and sense ceases to be a mere passivity,
through which an unconnected manifold is given:
they become names for the two opposite moments,
or phases of the differentiating and integrating
1 Deduction (1st Edition), p. 109, note: Tr., p. 211.
X.
427
SCHEMATISM OF THE CATEGORIES.
:
movement of thought. If, therefore, we bring to a
focus all Kant's different utterances on the subject,
and allow for that which is due to his dualistic
starting-point and further, if we hold consistently
to the transcendental point of view, and refuse to
determine the elements of knowledge apart from the
unity of knowledge; we must necessarily admit, not
only that understanding and perception, mind and
matter, are correlative, but also that the intelligence
transcends the distinction of these different powers.
or objects. And it is only the converse of this to
say, that these powers and objects have no existence
apart from the process whereby they are related, or
relate themselves to each other. Mind exists only
in the process whereby it goes out its own unity to
relate itself to, and express itself in, a material
world. The material world exists only in so far (if
we may use the expression), as it goes into itself, or
sublates its own self-externality, and so, finally re-
lates itself to, or becomes conscious of itself, in mind.
Or, to gather up the whole process of being and
knowing in one formula, the universe is the process
whereby spirit externalises itself, or manifests itself
in an external world, that out of this externality, by
a movement at once positive and negative, it may
rise to the highest consciousness of itself. These
words will naturally seem to be the wild dreams of
an idealism that has lost its grasp of facts, so long as
we do not see that they are the necessary result of a
philosophy that refuses to treat mere abstractions—
the abstraction of a mind out of relation to any ob-
ject, and the abstraction of an object out of relation
to mind—as independent and complete realities.
In truth they only express that unity between the
428
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
intelligence and its objects, which is presupposed
in all experience or knowledge whatever, and which
all science and philosophy is a more or less successful
attempt to realise. To apprehend this truth is not
to leave the solid ground of fact and experience for
an airy region of speculation, but, simply, to cor-
rect the abstractions of common sense, which, in its
ordinary conception of fact and experience, forgets
the most important element present in it, viz., the
intelligence itself.
Kant, as has been said, generally expresses this
opposition in a subjective way, as an opposition
between various faculties of the mind, rather than as
an opposition of mind and matter. But he cannot
altogether avoid the latter form of expression, and it
is on his own principles equally admissible; for the
opposition of mind and matter is only an opposition
of terms, both of which are included in the unity of
experience. And as we have already seen, he was led
by the logical necessities of his position, necessities
of which, perhaps, he was himself not fully con-
scious, to maintain two points which are closely
connected with each other, and in which his doctrine
contrasts with all previous philosophy. The first is,
that mind and matter are in relative opposition to
each other, and not simply identical, as it was, at
least, the tendency of the schools of Locke and Leib-
nitz to assert. The second is, that they are not in
absolute opposition, as was maintained by Des Cartes,
but that consciousness, while it distinguishes mind or
inner experience from matter or outer experience, at
the same time transcends the distinction; or, in other
words, that the distinction is not a distinction of
consciousness from something else than conscious-
X.
429
SCHEMATISM OF THE CATEGORIES.
ness, but a distinction of two factors which in con-
sciousness are necessarily combined.
to this
is not pure
and self-
With regard to the first of these points, we have According
only to observe how Kant deals with the conceptions view, mind
of mind and matter respectively. In his view of activity
mind he holds a middle course between the school identity,
of Des Cartes and the school of Locke; and main-
tains that it is neither a pure self-consciousness,
an activity without passivity or dependence on any-
thing else than itself, nor a tabula rasa, which is
recipient of impressions from without, and which
gradually has associations of ideas determined in it
by the objective connexion of these impressions. In
the abstract, indeed, mind may be described as pure
self-consciousness, but it cannot realise itself except
in the consciousness of an individual self, whose
states are determined in time; and this inner time-
determination again depends on the consciousness
of an external world of objects. In other words,
the consciousness of the self as an object in time
implies the consciousness of a material world, in
opposition, yet in relation to which, the inner life
of the subject is determined; but neither the indi-
vidual self nor the external world could be made ob-
jects of knowledge, except by a transcendental apper-
ception which determines each in relation to the other.
For it is this apperception-this pure self-conscious-
ness, realising itself in the individual, that alone can
determine the individual and the world as acting
and reacting on each other. In like manner, in his And mat-
conception of the external object or matter, Kant pure pas-
attempts to avoid the one-sidedness of Des Cartes, self-exter-
who held it to be purely passive, and infinitely
extended and divided (or essentially self-external,)
ter, not
sivity and
nality.
430
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
and the opposite one-sidedness of Leibnitz, who
denied that it is extended or passive at all except to
the confused apprehensions of our sense. In the
treatise On the Metaphysical Basis of Physics, there-
fore, he maintains, that matter is essentially active
(or, what is the same thing when we are speaking
of an object of experience, that we have experience
of it only as active); but that its activity is motion,
which implies relation to, and determination by,
something external. Force, therefore, is essential
to it, and it is moved by its own inherent forces;
yet, at the same time, diversity or manifoldness
of parts is equally essential to it, and its forces
always involve relations between different parts.
Matter, therefore, is self-external, and all its parts ex-
clude and repel each other; yet, on the other
hand, this repulsion cannot be conceived as abso-
lute, or as a repulsion which destroys all relation
between the parts; and, therefore, all the parts
necessarily attract each other or tend to combine and
overcome their reciprocal externality. On this con-
struction of matter something further will be said in
the twelfth chapter: for the present it is sufficient to
observe that the mutual attraction which is ascribed
to the parts of matter, notwithstanding their ex-
ternality and mutual repulsion, is just the counterpart
of the doctrine that mind can be conscious of itself
as an object only in so far as it determines itself in
time in relation to the external object in space. On
both sides Kant is breaking through the abstract
antagonism of the elements of experience, and show-
ing that each of them, inner and outer experience,
contains in itself that which explicitly is the special
characteristic of its opposite. Mind is essentially
X.
431
SCHEMATISM OF THE CATEGORIES.
self-determining, yet it is presented to us, or realises
itself in experience, only in a process in which it is
determined by, or in relation to, something else than
itself. Matter is essentially self-external or deter-
mined by another, yet it also is an object of ex-
perience; and, as a necessary consequence, it realises
itself, only in a process by which it negates, or, if we
use the expression, sublates its own complexity or
externality. Universal attraction is thus the first
step in that process of nature, whereby, in the end, it
rises to the consciousness of itself in man.
matter as
factors in
of experi-
ence.
And this leads naturally to the second point, that Mind and
the two factors thus conceived no longer need a Deus necessary
ex machina to bring them together, or combine them the unity
in one experience. Each, in fact, is but the necessary
counterpart of the other, and can only be understood
as in movement toward the other: and the ascending
scale of the forces of nature exhibits only the necessary
steps in the process, whereby thought comes to the
consciousness of itself. This is the real meaning of
that mediation between the categories and the mani-
fold of sense which is ascribed to the imagination.
The form of inner sense is the medium through which
the two extremes are brought together, only in the
sense, that it is as in time, and, therefore, as changing,
that the external object becomes intelligible; while
matter, as merely self-external and inert, according
to the ideas of Des Cartes, would have been an
insoluble problem to thought, inasmuch as the intelli-
gence could not find itself in an object which had no
trace of its own unity. On the other hand, when we
represent the mind, not as a bare unit, or an activity
confined to pure analysis, but as synthetic, we, at
the same time, make it intelligible that the process
432 THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
CHAP.
by which it comes to the consciousness of itself,
should involve a relation to a world in space, and
also that, in this process, the mind itself should be
represented as an object under the form of time,
while yet, as the universal subject of knowledge,
it is not in time. If, on the other hand, the mind
were conceived as in itself purely analytic, we could
not understand how it could relate itself to an objec-
tive world at all, and to explain the possibility of
knowledge, we should be reduced to the desperate
resource of a pre-established harmony. Kant does
not, indeed, combine his theories of knowing and
being as we have just done, still less does he bring
together his construction of matter and his transcen-
dental account of mind: on the contrary, he generally
regards the elements of experience as definable apart
from their unity, and reaches that unity only by piec-
ing them together. Yet the results we have just
stated have been reached simply by following out
Kant's transcendental method, and by persistently
regarding all his different utterances from the tran-
scendental point of view.
Having thus considered the general theory of
schematism, we have now only to make a few re-
marks on the special schemata of the different cate-
Criticism gories as they are given by Kant.
of the
schema of 1. Kant's assertion that number is the schema of
quantity.
quantity does not quite agree with his general ac-
count of the relation of conceptions to their sche-
mata. For a schema, according to that account, is
something that comes into existence when we change
a pure category into a determination of time. But
this seems to imply that the category and time are
first given separately, and then afterwards reflected
X.
433
SCHEMATISM OF THE CATEGORIES.
6
on each other. But how is it possible that the idea
of number (as the schema by which the manifold of
sense, given under conditions of time, is brought
under the category of quantity) should be produced
in this fashion? Kant himself says that time itself
is produced when the manifold is brought together
in a synthesis of units, which are represented as
homogeneous-i.e., in a synthesis which, when we
consider it abstractly,' is number. In other words,
number as well as quantity is a category, which is
involved in the perception of time as an object. In
another place he tells us that "phenomena cannot be
apprehended except by that synthesis of the manifold
whereby the image of a definite space and time are
produced." Can we then suppose that time and space
in general are first given, and that number is after-
wards generated in the determination of particular
times and spaces? Such is the solution suggested
by the Esthetic, when it speaks of time and space as
being "represented as infinite given wholes." But
that expression finds its justification only in the
spirit of accommodation that pervades the Esthetic.
The infinity of space and time is not, according to
the doctrines of the Dialectic, a datum of sense prior
to the synthesis of the understanding, by which the
images of particular times and spaces are generated,
but simply that extension of the synthetic process to
the unconditioned, which is due to pure Reason.
Space and time, therefore, are apprehended as ob-
jects by means of a successive synthesis, which,
"when we represent it as in its generality, gives us
the conception of the understanding;" and in this
case the conception is not merely quantity but
1 ¹ p. 67: Tr., 63.
2 E
434
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Criticism
of the
number. Hence we cannot conceive time or space as
perceptions through which quantity is schematised
as number, but, on the contrary, we must regard
number itself as ideally prior to time and space, in the
same sense in which pure apperception and the cate-
gories in general are prior to time and space, and in
which time and space are ideally prior to the deter-
mination of objects as existing in particular times
and spaces.
6
"
2. On the Schematism of Quality as degree we
schema of have also a criticism to make. That in phenomena,'
quality.
says Kant, which corresponds to the sensation, is
the transcendental matter of all objects as things in
themselves (their reality). Now, every sensation
has a degree or quantity, whereby it may occupy the
same time (i.e., the inner sense view of the same
idea of an object), with more or less completeness.'
Many critics of Kant, like Schopenhauer,¹ have
taken offence at this sudden introduction, among the
a priori principles, of an observation which appears
to be derived from empirical Psychology. The key
to this apparent inconsequence, however, is found in
what we have said, in this and the previous chapter,
about Kant's lapse from the transcendental to the
psychological point of view. Kant, in this place,
does not ask himself the transcendental question
What are the elements that imply each other in our
experience, in our consciousness of the world and of
ourselves? He asks himself only, how such ex-
perience is to be acquired by a presupposed indi-
vidual subject. And to this question the answer
naturally is, that it is acquired by such a subject
through the sensations, which constitute the matter
¹ Die Welt als Wille, etc., p. 530 (2nd edition).
X.
435
SCHEMATISM OF THE CATEGORIES.
of all his knowledge. The transcendental question,
however, is not whether my sensations are essential
to the development of knowledge in me as an indi-
vidual subject (which no one would be prepared to
deny), but whether the knowledge of my sensations,
as such, logically precedes the knowledge of all other
objects, and furnishes the sole immediate 'reality'
to which that knowledge refers. And to this ques-
tion we must answer, that the 'real' is not given as
such in sensation, that our sensations are only 'real'
to us as other objects are real-i.e., in so far as they
are determined, in relation to other sensations, as
parts of the context of an inner experience, which
again is itself determined in relation to, and contrast
with, an outer experience. We are therefore driven
back upon the dilemma mentioned in a previous
page. If sensations, as such, can be described as the
'real' element in all knowledge, then we must either
maintain, that the individual subject and his sensa-
tions have, as things in themselves, the same nature
which they have as objects of our knowledge, which,
on Kantian principles, is an absurdity; or we must
maintain that in experience my sensations are
known as mine prior to their reference to any other
object than me, i.e., that I know myself as a pheno-
menal object before I know any other phenomenal
objects and this also, on Kantian principles, is an
absurdity. The legitimate consequence of the trans-
cendental view of knowledge, on the contrary, is,
that my sensations, as known, are just as real and
just as unreal as any other object of experience
(transcendentally unreal, phenomenally real). For
it is only through the understanding that they are
determined as inner experiences, or indeed as objects
436 THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
at all; and till they have been so determined, no
question can be raised as to their reality or unreality.
The schematism of the category of quality might
therefore be illustrated just as well from external as
internal experience, from the relative intensity of the
properties of objects as from that of the sensations of
the subject.¹
1
It is to be observed, also, that it can only be
illustrated from either. The remark made about
number, the schema of quantity, applies also to
degree, the schema of quality. We cannot suppose
that there is a manifold determined as in space and
time on the one side, and the category of quality on
the other; and that the schema of degree arises out
of the reflexion of the one upon the other. The de-
termination of objects in time and space presupposes
a synthesis, which, taken in abstracto, is the concep-
tion of degree. Degree, therefore, has quite as much
right to be placed among the categories as quality.
Both, like quantity and number, are conceptions
which may by abstraction be severed from the unity
of experience, and both are more general than, and
therefore presupposed in, the perceptions of time and
space as well as of objects in time and space.
The examination of the schemata of the remain-
ing categories of relation and modality, may be
reserved with advantage for the next chapter.
1 On this point more will be said in the next chapter.
437
CHAPTER XI.
THE PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING.
IN N his remarks on the list of the categories, Kant
had distinguished quantity and quality as the
mathematical, relation and modality as the dynam-
ical, conceptions of pure understanding. The former
he had said, "relate to the objects of perception,
whether pure or empirical; the latter to the existence
of these objects in relation to each other, and to the
understanding." This distinction is now transferred
to the Principles of Pure Understanding, and it
therefore becomes important to determine its exact
meaning.
.
imagina-
know-
The distinction, as drawn by Kant, may be Relation of
stated as follows. It is possible to represent or tion and
imagine objects without determining them as exis- ledge.
tent. Every effort of productive imagination, every
geometrical, every poetical construction is of this
character. For in all such cases we put together
the elements of a picture or representation of an
object in conformity with the idea we have formed
of it, irrespective altogether of its reality. Free,
however, as is the working of the imagination,
there are certain conditions which it is bound to
respect. For to represent an object is to 'en-
438
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
visage' it in time and space, and therefore in
conformity with the conditions of time and space.
In other words, we must put together its mani-
fold as the manifold of time and space themselves
are put together. On the other hand, to deter-
mine an object as existing is not only to picture
it, but to know it; i.e., it is not only to combine
its manifold in conformity with the conditions of
representation in space and time, but to combine
it with all other objects and events in one context
of experience. The object, as known, is therefore
subjected to a number of conditions, besides those
to which it is subjected, as merely imagined: in
other words, the conditions of mere imagination
are more general than the conditions of know-
ledge. We can imagine what we do not, or even
cannot, know, but we can never know what we can-
not imagine. For if an object could not even be
represented as possible in consistency with the nature
of time and space, it is absurd to suppose that it
could be known to exist. For example, we can never
know the existence of two pieces of matter in the
same space, or the union of youth and age in the same
person and at the same time. But we can easily ima-
gine many things that are utterly impossible-e.g., a
man with a horse's head, a candle blazing in vacuo,
a nymph changed into a fountain, &c.¹ For the im-
possibility of these things does not arise from the
existence of time and space, which are the conditions
of all representation of objects, and imagination does
not need to respect anything else.
¹p. 760: Tr., p. 122, note: cf. Spinoza, De Intell. Emend., ch. 8. The
validity of this idea of Kant, that imagination limits knowledge, will
be considered at the end of the chapter.
XI. PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING. 439
dom of
tion due to
tion.
It may further illustrate Kant's meaning if we The free-
say that imagination, like the pure understanding, is imagina-
a faculty which requires abstraction in order to its its abstrac-
exercise. To deal freely with the pure conceptions of
the understanding, and determine their relation to
the mind and to each other, we must break up the
unity of experience, and distinguish these conceptions
from the other elements of that unity. So, in like
manner, it is possible for us to abstract from all that
connexion of objects with each other in the context
of experience, in virtue of which alone we say that
they exist or are actual objects, and to attend merely
to the general conditions under which they must be
represented in space and time. This abstraction,
indeed, does not go so far as the abstraction of the
pure understanding, but it is the source of all that
power of dealing freely, or even arbitrarily, with the
data of experience-separating and reconciling them
at pleasure, under the guidance of any inspiring
principle or idea-which is the distinguishing gift of
imaginative natures, and which must be possessed
in some measure by every one who has any spiritual
freedom at all. At the same time, we have to
remember the danger that accompanies this gift.
Imagination is abstraction; like all abstraction, it
ultimately involves a contradiction, so that, if carried
to its utmost consequences, it is self-destructive. It
rends certain elements of truth or reality from the
connexion which alone gives them meaning, and
even makes them possible. And, though this may
be necessary as a step to higher knowledge, yet it
may easily become a source of delusion, if we do not
remember that the highest value of all analysis is
only to prepare the way for synthesis. Hence the
440
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Difference
of homo-
geneous
and hetero-
geneous
synthesis.
mere vagaries of a fancy, which respects absolutely
nothing but the conditions of pictorial representation
in time and space, and pleases itself with impossible
combinations of all things in heaven and earth, have,
even in poetry, a very limited value, and the highest
efforts of poetical imagination are those, the result of
which approximates most nearly to the reconstruc-
tion of experience; which, in fact, take almost no
other liberty with reality than that which is re-
quired to bring the long drama of life within the
limits necessary for the exhibition of its ideal mean-
ing.
Connected with this is another point of contrast
between the mathematical and the dynamical princi-
ples. The mathematical principles are, Kant tells us,
principles of "a synthesis of homogeneous elements,
which do not necessarily belong to each other." They
are, in other words, principles of quantitative syn-
thesis; and there is nothing in the nature of quantity
which forces us either to go on to, or to stop at, any
particular number or degree. On the contrary, the very
conception of quantity implies that it can be increased
or diminished without limit. All that is determined
by these principles, therefore, is, not that you must
combine any element with any other, but that, if you
do so, you must do it in a particular way. On the
other hand, the dynamical principles are principles
of the "synthesis of heterogeneous elements, which
necessarily belong to each other." The elements
brought together in such a synthesis are comple-
mentary, elements which, therefore, it is impossible
to separate from each other. And, indeed, as
we are obliged to bring all the data of percep-
tion under dynamical principles of synthesis-i.e.,
XI. PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING. 441
to conceive them as all necessary to each other, we
can never stop combining till we have reached an
absolute whole of experience; which means, as we
shall afterwards see, that we can never stop combin-
ing at all. This exactly agrees with what has just
been said of the freedom of imagination and the
limitation of knowledge. Any one thing, regarded as
part of the context of experience—or, what is the same
thing, as part of the one world of experience-stands
in necessary relation to all the other parts of it and
to the mind: and it is just the office of the dynamical
principles to determine things in this necessary rela-
tion. When, therefore, thought regards objects and
events from this point of view, as parts necessarily
related to other parts in the unity of experience, it
has no liberty, it cannot represent them to be other
than they actually are. But the office of the mathe-
matical principles is merely to determine the condi-
tions under which any object taken by itself, and
without relation to the others, may be represented
in space and time; and therefore, so far as these
principles are concerned, we are at liberty to abstract
from any other relations of the object save those of
time and space. Thus we can easily imagine or pic-
ture a house without picturing anything else. The
picture is self-consistent, and its parts are related
to each other like the parts in space; we do not
need to concern ourselves about the other conditions
necessary to its existence, such as, for instance, the
ground on which it must stand, the materials of
which it must be built, and the law of their relations
to each other and to the external world in general.
At the same time, we know that this picture is an
abstraction, and that the object pictured is impos-
.
442
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Kant's
deduction
of the
mathema-
ciples.
sible, unless it can find a place in the context of our
experience.¹
The two mathematical principles are principles
which justify us in applying Mathematics to experi-
tical prin- ence, because they determine all phenomena as ex-
tensive and intensive quanta. The first, the 'prin-
ciple of the axioms of perfection,' is, that "all
phenomena, as perceived, are extensive quanta." The
second, the 'principle of the anticipations of sensuous
apprehension,' is, that "in all phenomena, the Real,
which is the object of sensation, has intensive
quantity, or degree;" in other words, that all pheno-
mena, as given in sense, are intensive quanta. The
first of these principles is proved by the fact that
phenomena can be represented, or made objects of
consciousness, only "by the same synthesis which.
produces the representation of a definite time or
space.". It is, in short, in time and space, that all
objects and events must be represented as such; and
therefore, the manifold of these objects must be com-
bined in the same way as the manifold of space and
time. But space and time are necessarily represented
as extensive quanta, i.e., by the synthesis of homo-
geneous units; therefore, the manifold of objects and
events must also be bound together as extensive
quanta. The second mathematical principle is proved
from the fact, that, in all phenomena, there is a
matter derived from sense: and that this matter can
come into our consciousness only under conditions
of time, i.e., "by a synthesis of its production as a
quantum," which is subjected to the form of time.
1
[
¹ Cf. Spinoza, 1. c. In the above account of Kant's doctrine I have
been obliged to introduce more of my own interpretation than usual:
I could not otherwise get a distinct meaning out of Kant's words.
XI. PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING. 443
Even therefore, when we abstract from all extensive
quantity, and take the sensation of the moment by
itself, we can determine it as a phenomenon in time
only in so far as we represent it as an intensive quan-
tum; i. e., a quantum which has grown up out of
nothing by a continuous process in time, and which,
therefore, is divisible into a number, and indeed, into
an infinite number, of degrees.
tains a
to be in-
strable.
Now, if it be true that the matter of sensation He main-
must have intensive quantity, it is obvious that all vacuum
objects must have intensive quantity; for all objects demon-
have a sensible matter, and there can be no experi-
ence of empty space or empty time. Hence, also,
the Atomistic doctrine of the existence of a vacuum,
rests on a pure assumption. Proof of a vacuum is,
Kant argues, impossible: for, if possible, it must be
based either on experience or on some inference of
experience. Now (1), there can be no actual experi-
ence of a vacuum, for it would be an experience of a
pure form of sense without any matter; but, though
the sensations that constitute the matter of sense
may vary greatly in intensity, they can never be
wholly absent without the annihilation of experience.
Nor (2), can a vacuum be inferred from experience,
for it is not legitimate to argue from intensive to
extensive quantity. Vacant space, in short, could
be inferred only from the fact that sensation is less
intense at one moment than at another. But what
hinders us from supposing that space may be filled
with matter varying in its qualitative intensity,
without absolute vacuum anywhere?¹
1
In the argument of Kant which we have epitom-
ised in the last two paragraphs, two assertions are
1 p. 150: Tr., p. 130.
444
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Time and
space are
of the
relations
of objects.
bound up together. The first is, that we cannot
represent quantity without quality, or time and
space without something existing or occurring; and
the second is, that, though a priori we know nothing
of the qualities of this something, we know that these
qualities, whatever they are, must have intensive as
well as extensive quantity. On each of these points
a little explanation may be useful.
1. Time and space are forms of the relations of
only forms objects. Space has no meaning except as that in
which objects are represented as existing, and exist-
ing in a certain relation of position to other objects.
Time has no meaning except as that in which events
are represented as occurring, and occurring in a
certain relation of co-existence and sequence to other
events. Hence Kant calls space the 'potentiality
of juxtaposition.' But the potential, though it may
be distinguished from the actual, cannot be regarded
except as a moment in it. We cannot have an
experience of empty time or empty space, apart from
an experience of objects and events in them. When,
indeed, we have had experience of objects and events
under these forms, we can by abstraction separate the
forms from the objects, and regard them by them-
selves as if they were objects. Nay, we can deter-
mine them in this abstraction by an a priori synthesis,
and so construct the mathematical sciences.
even in this abstraction of the imagination, as we
may call it, we are unable to deal with time, space,
and quantity purely in themselves. Quantity always
is quantity of something; and even Arithmetic and
Algebra, which deal with quanta in their utmost
abstraction, are obliged to use symbols and thus to
represent the other element from which abstraction
But
XI.
PRINCIPLES OF PURE ÛNDERSTANDING. 445
is made.
So space and time, without objects or
events, are abstractions which cannot be represented
or 'envisaged,' much less known."
6
1
In Kant's statement of this idea, however, we are
somewhat confused by the irrelevant consideration
that all experience has a matter, and that that matter
is supplied by sense. 'In all phenomena the real is
the object of sensation.' Strictly taken, this carries
us back to the Berkeleian doctrine that the ´esse' of
things is their 'percipi,' especially when we find
Kant also saying that sensation is the element which
constitutes the transcendental matter of all objects
as things in themselves.' From the transcendental
point of view, however, we have nothing to do with
the conditions under which knowledge is developed in
the individual sentient subject, but solely with the
conditions under which all objects are represented.
So far as sensations are represented as objects, they
must, no doubt, be represented as events in time,
and thus they may be considered as the real subjects
of time-relations like any other events. But to
speak of sensations apart from the conditions under
which they, like all other events, are represented or
known, is to desert the transcendental point of view
and to confuse sensation with the consciousness of
sensation as an object or event in time.
and exten-
tity imply
2. But in the second place, Kant goes on to main- Intensive
tain that we cannot represent any objects except as sive quan-
having intensive as well as extensive quantity. We each other.
may, indeed, abstract from extension, and exclude one
kind of quantitative determination; but then we must
1 This contradicts what Kant says in the Metaphysical Exposition of
space and time (cf. p. 237), but it agrees with what has been said of the
Imagination at the beginning of this chapter.
446
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
immediately think of intensity, and so bring in another
kind of quantitative determination. For if we exclude
both kinds of quantitative determination, we can no
longer represent the object as a phenomenon in
time or space at all. If we do not regard a pheno-
menon as having a multiplicity of parts within it,
and so as an extensive quantity, we must regard it
as a unity, which is, at the same time, determined as
a multiplicity through its relation to other pheno-
mena without it, and so as an intensive quantity.
To this it only requires to be added that intensive
and extensive determination imply each other, and
that all quanta may be regarded in both ways.
Kant, indeed, seems to regard the pure quanta of space
and time as merely extensive, because there is no
possibility of accumulation of space in one space, or
of times in one time. But this is to forget that
space and time are continua, which are not made up
of simple parts; and that, therefore, whenever we
regard a time or a space as a unit in relation to other
times and spaces, we must regard it as an intensive
quantum; i.e., as a quantum which has its determina-
tion as quantum only in relation to other quanta
without it. This may be illustrated by our use of
the term degree in relation to the circle; for the
degree is a quantum which has its determination only
in relation to the other degrees. There are not,
therefore, two quantities, one of which belongs to
time and space and the other to things in time and
space; but the quantitative nature of each is capable
of being stated in both ways; or rather, it has these
two sides, and every quantity is both extensive and
intensive. In intensive quantity the difference (which
yet essentially belongs to it as a quantity), is regarded
XI. PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING. 447
as external, and the unity is made prominent; in
extensive quantity, the unity (which is also essential)
is regarded as external, and the difference is made
prominent; but neither the one nor the other moment
can be wanting.¹
bility of
minima of
Now, if all phenomena, as in space and time, are Impossi
intensive and extensive quanta, they cannot be re- maxima or
presented as minima or maxima, either in degree or quantity.
in extension: for quanta, as such, can always be in-
creased or diminished, and there is no such thing as
a greatest possible, or a least possible, quantity. Thus,
to take first extensive quantity, we cannot determine
any phenomenon in space or time as a maximum of
extension, i.e., as filling all space or all time. All
spatially or temporarily determined phenomena are
necessarily represented as in space, and in time, and
an experience of a limit of space or time would con-
tradict the very ideas of space and time as quanta.
On the other hand, we cannot determine any pheno-
menon in space and time as a minimum of extension,
i.e., as filling only an indivisible moment or point:
for, points in space, and moments in time, are only
limits. Time, as Aristotle pointed out, is not made
up of Nows, nor space of Heres. Again, in regard to
intensive quantity, or degree, we cannot determine any
phenomenon in space and time as having either a
maximum or minimum of intensity: for such absolute
intensity would exclude all relation of the pheno-
menon to other phenomena; it would be a Now
which had no relation to past or future, a Here
which had no relation to other places, i.e., it would
be inconsistent with the very idea of space and time,
1 Cf. Hegel, Logik, I., p. 248. Stirling's Secret of Hegel, vol. II.,
p. 311. Aristotle's Physics, book iv.
448
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Criticism
of Kant's
vacuum
of the
Atomists.
and of quantity itself. In the same way, a pheno-
menon that had a minimum of intensity, would be a
phenomenon incapable of being put in relation to
other phenomena: it would be a Now that was
absolutely lost in the past and the future; a Here
that was indistinguishable from other spaces, i.e., it
would not be determined as in space and time at
all. Another way of stating the same thing is to
say, that a maximum of intensity would be an inten-
sity in which all extension was absorbed, and a
minimum intensity would be an intensity which
was lost in extension. And conversely, a maximum
extension would be an extension without reference
to intensity, and a minimum extension would be an
extension absorbed in intensity. It is, therefore,
only in their relation to, and their determination by
each other, that either intensive or extensive quan-
tity has any meaning.
These considerations lead us to a different view of
view of the the argument against the Atomists from that which
Kant presents to us. As he states it, it seems to
be an argument only against their vacuum, but, in
truth, it is an argument equally against their
plenum. According to their doctrine, the princi-
ples of nature are atoms and the void-absolute
plena, or impenetrable and indivisible substances on
the one side, and a pure vacuum, absolutely pene-
trable and divisible, on the other. Thus the atoms
are maxima of intensity, and minima of extension,
while the void is minimum of intensity, and maxi-
mum of extension. The mistake of the Atomists,
therefore, lies not in arguing from intensity to exten-
sion; for these, as Kant himself shows, reciprocally
imply each other: but rather, in overlooking the re-
XI. PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING. 449
lativity of the quantitative determination of things,
for both atoms and the void are represented as
quanta, though they contradict the very idea of
quantity, as that which has no limit either of increase
or diminution.
The result, then, of Kant's arguments as to the
mathematical principles is, that all representation of
things as in time and space, involves a double quan-
titative determination of them. And this implies
that they cannot be maxima or minima; for, from the
very nature of quantity, absolute maxima or minima
are incapable of being represented, much less ex-
perienced or known. The known must be capable
of being imagined, the imagined must be in space
and time, and that which is in space and time must
be quantitatively determined according to both the
forms of quantity.
proof of
mical
We now proceed to consider the dynamical princi- Kant's
ples, or the conditions of knowledge, as distinct from the dyna-
the conditions of imagination. Imagination differs principles.
from knowledge, as has been said, by its abstraction.
We can represent that to exist which does not exist,
and that to happen which does not happen, only so
long as we abstract from that unity of experience, in
which all objects and events are necessarily included.
When, however, we consider that every object must
exist in a definite part of the one space, and that
every event must occur at a definite moment of the
one time, we see that, in Spinoza's language, the
sphere of imagination is narrowed as the sphere of
knowledge is widened. And while, by the abstraction
of the imagination, we can leave out of account the
particular context of experience in which any object
occurs, we cannot imagine that it should not have a
2 F
450
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
The Ana-
logies of
experi-
ence.
particular place in that context: and, as our know-
ledge of that context increases, the limits of possi-
bility are more and more accurately determined, till
at last every object must be conceived as either
necessary or impossible. Apart from the abstrac-
tion of imagination, in short, the only possible is the
actual, and that which is not actual is impossible.
These considerations as to modality will, however,
be better understood, after we have seen what is
meant by the determination of any object as actual,
i.e., after we have explained the Analogies of experi-
ence. To determine any object or event as actual
is, according to Kant, to give it a definite place in
the context of one experience, or, what is the same
thing, to determine it in one space and one time in
relation to all other objects and events. Now, on
what does this empirical consciousness of the world
as one system of objects and events depend? Kant
answers that it depends on the application of the
three schematised categories of substance, causality,
and reciprocity. Under the limitation of their sche-
mata, these categories give rise to three principles of
judgment: first, the principle "that there is a sub-
stance in phenomena, which remains permanent
through all their changes, and the quantity of which
is never increased or diminished;" secondly, the
principle, "that all changes take place according to
the law of the connexion of cause and effect," in
other words, "that everything that happens presup-
poses something else on which it follows according
to a universal rule;" and thirdly, the principle "that
all substances, in so far as they are coexistent (in
space), are in complete reciprocity," in other words,
are in continuous action and reaction on each other
XI. PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING. 451
according to a universal rule. These principles are
proved on the transcendental method, by showing that
without them could be no empirical consciousness of
the world as an objective unity in space and time.
They cannot be derived from experience, for they
are necessary to experience. Hume had main-
tained that the principle of causality is simply the
general expression of a subjective habit of mind.
which is due to the repeated experience of sequence.
The post hoc is the reality which, by an illusion
of the imagination, is turned into the propter hoc.
Kant answers that the experience of the post hoc
is itself impossible, except to a mind that connects
phenomena as cause and effect. And he adds that
there are two other principles, implied in the objec-
tive consciousness of things in space and time, which
cannot be referred to association-viz., the prin-
ciples of substance and reciprocity. Our conviction
that, amid all changes of state, there is in objects
something which remains identical with itself, and
which can neither increase nor diminish, cannot be
explained by the fact that we have repeated or con-
tinuous experience of the same perception or object;
for an object or perception can be recognised as the
same in its recurrent appearance, only by a consci-
ousness that organises its experience according to
the principle of substance. Nor can the repeated co-
existence of objects in one space be the ground on
which we base our belief that they are reciprocally
necessary to each other; for it is only a mind, which
organises its perceptions according to the principle of
reciprocity, that can determine objects as coexistent.
Thus the permanent identity of objects, and the
determination of their coexistent and successive
452
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Refutation
of different
forms of
the asso-
ciation
theory.
states by the principles of causality and reciprocity,
are presupposed in, and cannot be derived from,
the experience of things as determined in space
and time. Or time and space are forms that
may be given to the relations of phenomena, when
these phenomena are otherwise determined as be-
longing to the context of one experience, but they
cannot themselves be the source of such determina-
tion.
There are two different points of view, from which
attempts have been made to explain away the
principles of judgment, as the results of association.
Some theorists endeavour to go back all the way
to pure sense, and to trace all the categories and
principles of understanding to sensation and the
association of sensations. To such writers Kant's
answer is, that sensations, as such, are nothing for
thought. And, indeed, it has always proved im-
possible for a sensationalist philosophy consistently
to keep to this point of view. Inevitably, with
more or less consciousness, the sensationalist as-
sumes that sensation, for the merely sensitive sub-
ject, is already determined in some of the ways,
in which it is determined for the thinking subject.
And the simplest relations, which it seems natural to
attribute to the sensible, as such, are those of space
and time. Accordingly, in his earlier work with
some disguise, and in his later work with scarcely
any disguise at all, Hume assumes a consciousness of
coexistence and sequence as included among the
data of sense. All he seeks to prove is, that the
causal judgment is an illegitimate extension of the
judgment of mere sequence, and the judgment of
substance an illegitimate extension of the judgment
XI. PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING. 453
per-
of sameness or similarity in different successive
ceptions. To this modified Sensationalism Kant's
answer is, that there can be no consciousness of the
sameness of perceptions or of objects perceived in
different times, which does not presuppose the per-
manent identity of substance, no consciousness of
the succession of events, which does not imply a
causal law of invariable sequence, and no conscious-
ness of their simultaneity, which does not presuppose
reciprocity, or, what is the same thing, a causal law
of invariable coexistence.
ciple of
Substance.
To begin with substance. Experience is a know- The prin-
ledge of objects, all whose successive phases are
connected together as events in one time. If this
unity of time, as that in which all changes occur,
were not presupposed, there could be no idea of
change at all. A consciousness of time, as some-
thing not itself changing, is the necessary correlate
of a consciousness of change or succession in time.
But time in itself cannot be an object of percep-
tion; nor is it a general idea given along with
each perception; for then we should be able to date
a perception in reference to absolute time, and that
without relating it to any other perceptions. But,
on the contrary, it is only as we connect a percep-
tion with other perceptions, that we can represent it
as in time at all. Time, in other words, is a mere
form given to the relations of perceptions, which
pre-
supposes that they are otherwise related. We can
connect events as in time, only in so far as we relate
them to each other in the same way that the
moments of time are related, and there must, there-
fore, be some determination given to objects as in
time, which corresponds with unity or self-identity
454
СНАР.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASÓN.
The prin-
""1
""
of time itself. As all times are in one time, so all
changes must be in one permanent object. The
conception of the permanence of the object is implied
in all determination of its changes. Change
involves, that one mode of existence follows another
mode of existence in an object recognised as the
same. Therefore a thing which changes, changes only
in its states or accidents, not in its substance; and, to
use an expression only apparently paradoxical, only
the permanent changes, while that which has nothing
abiding in it cannot suffer change." An experience
of absolute annihilation or creation of an object
coming into existence from nothing, or an object
ceasing to be--is impossible; for it would be an
experience of two events, so absolutely separated
from each other, that they could not even be referred
to one time; in other words, they could not be re-
garded as belonging to one world of experience.
And as it is on the synthesis of phenomena that the
consciousness of the identity of self depends, there
could not be one consciousness of self in a being that
had two such experiences. We cannot, indeed, assert
that the creation or annihilation of substance is an
impossibility, but we must assert that it is an im-
possible experience. It is absurd, therefore, to explain
the idea of substance as a result of the empirical con-
sciousness of the similarity of successive or recurrent
perceptions; for the consciousness of such recurrence
or continuity of perception already involves that
these perceptions are determined in relation to a
permanent identity.
In the second place, Kant argues that the judg-
Causality. ment of sequence cannot be made except on the
ciple of
¹ p. 160: Tr., p. 140. .
XI. PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING. 455
presupposition of the judgment of causality. For
time is a mere form of the relation of things, and
cannot be perceived by itself. Only when we have
connected events with each other, can we think of
them as in time. And this connexion must be such,
that the different elements of the manifold of the
events are determined in relation to each other in
the same way as the different moments in time are
determined in relation to each other. But it is
obvious that the moments of time are so determined
in relation to each other, that we can only put them
into one order, i.e., that we can proceed from the pre-
vious to the subsequent moment, but not vice versa.
Now, if objects or events cannot be dated in relation
to time, but only in relation to each other, it follows
that they cannot be represented as in time at all,
unless their manifold is combined in a synthesis which
has an irreversible order; or, in other words, unless
they are so related according to a universal rule, that
when one thing is posited, something else must
necessarily be posited in consequence.
In every
representation of events as in time, this presupposi-
tion is implied; and the denial of causality necessarily
involves the denial of all succession in time.
ciple of
city.
The same argument may be applied to coexistence The prin-
in space, and the principle of reciprocity. We can- Recipro-
not represent objects as coexisting, by a direct
reference of them to space; for space is not perceived
by itself, and objects are perceived as in space only
when they are related to each other, as the parts of
space are related. The relation of spaces must
therefore be perceived in objects, if these objects are
to be perceived as in space. But the parts of space
are necessarily represented as reciprocally determin-
456
CHAP
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Schopen-
hauer's
to the de-
Causality.
ing each other. Hence, only in so far as phenomena
are represented as reciprocally determining each
other, can they be referred to objects in space. The
same necessity, therefore, with which each space
is represented as determined by all other spaces,
must be found in the relations of objects, for only
as it is found in the relations of objects, can it
be found in the relations of the spaces which they
occupy.
This is Kant's general argument.
There are,
objection however, a few inconsistent or ambiguous statements
duction of introduced into it, and especially into that part which
refers to the principle of causality, which must be
examined, before we can fully justify the above inter-
pretation of it. Thus at the beginning of his dis-
cussion of the second Analogy of experience, Kant
distinguishes two cases-the case of such an object
as a house, where the sequence of our perceptions is
reversible; and the case of a boat sailing down a
river, where it is irreversible. We can begin
either with the top or the bottom of the house, but
we cannot see the movements of the boat except in
one order. In the latter case, therefore, as Kant
argues, we give to our perception of succession an
objective value, but in the former case we regard it
as merely subjective; or, what is the same thing, in
the latter case we bring the sequence in our percep-
tions under the category of causality, and in the former
case we do not. Now it is evident that if this were
the only proof for the transcendental necessity of
the principle of causality, we could have a judgment
of sequence (viz., in our own perceptions), which was
not a judgment of causality, and thus Kant's argument
against Hume would lose all its force. But Kant
XI. PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING. 457
pure
either forgets, or abstracts for the moment from the
fact, that whether we say the sequence is due (as in
the case of the house) to the movement of our organs
of sense, or whether we say that it is due to the
movements of the object perceived (as in the case of
the boat)—in both cases we make a judgment of
objective sequence. And if it be true that we can
date events in time only in so far as we can put them
in causal relation to each other, in both cases alike
there must be a judgment of causality. Kant, in
fact, has here made the inconsistent admission that
one kind of sequence can be determined without any
help from the principle of causality. But if we could
determine one kind of sequence without reference to
causality, it would be difficult to prove that causality
is necessary to determine any other kind of sequence.
Kant's argument can be valid only if it is made
universal, i.e., if it is shown that all judgments of
sequence are implicitly judgments of causality. And
the remark, mutatis mutandis, holds good of judg-
ments of reciprocity and co-existence.
Schopenhauer,¹ who has pointed out the inconsis-
tency of Kant's statement, that we can have a
judgment of sequence which is not objective, also
denies the Kantian doctrine that objective sequence
implies causality. It is, he argues, absurd to say
that sequence is equivalent to causality, for in that
case we should never recognise any sequence except
between cause and effect. But night and day have
followed each other constantly from the beginning of
the world, without any one being tempted to find
¹ See also an able essay by Dr. Hutchison Stirling, which appeared
in 1871 I think, in the Fortnightly Review, entitled, “Kant refuted by
dint of muscle."
458
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
CHAP.
The judg-
ment of
sequence
implies the
of causal-
the cause of the one in the other. There would
have been no meaning in Hume's argument that the
only objective reality in causality is sequence, if there
were nothing more in the idea of cause than is
already expressed in sequence. All scientific
attempts to discover the cause of any phenomena,
imply a distinction between the specific cause of that
particular phenomenon, and the other things that
existed before it.
To this objection of Schopenhauer we may answer,
that the judgment of causality indeed expresses more
judgment than the judgment of sequence expresses, but not
ity more than it implies. Our first unscientific view of
the world contains already the idea of its unity,
and of the correlation of all its parts, but this idea
is still undeveloped and obscure. Common sense
at first represents the universe as a collection of
individual things, whose only connexion is that
they are all included in one space, and as a contin-
uous series of events, whose only connexion is that
they all happen in one time. The unity of space
and time thus seems to establish no necessary re-
lations between the objects which exist and the
events which occur in them. The relations of sequence
and coexistence are relations of mere externality,
relations which leave the things related absolutely
indifferent to each other. Hence the consciousness
of such relations between things and events is quite
compatible with the absence of all explicit recognition
of law or order in the universe. When things are
conceived merely as existing side by side in different
spaces out of each other, when events are conceived
merely as happening in different times after each
other, the play of chance and arbitrary will seems to
XI.
PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING. 459
be unlimited. The wildest superstition, and the
greatest feebleness of the scientific spirit, is consistent
with a consciousness that does not go beyond the
unity of space and time. Yet in spite of all this,
Kant is not wrong in saying that he who knows the
world as one world, in which every object and event
is determined in space and time in relation to every
other object and event, has already implicitly recog-
nised that it is a system of substances, which recip-
rocally determine each other, and whose coexistent
and successive states, therefore, are necessarily con-
nected as parts of one experience. In other words,
we cannot realise or become clearly conscious of that
which is involved in the former without asserting
the latter view of things. We cannot like Hume
set succession against causality, for so soon as we
bring to conceptions,'¹ or, in other words, to clear
consciousness, the synthesis by which two events are
determined in time in relation to each other, we see
that it contains or involves the category of causality.
For the relation of one moment to another is such,
that the apprehension of one moment is the condition
of the apprehension of the next; and therefore, in
attributing succession to things, we are already
attributing to them necessary sequence.2 To find
the particular for this universal, the special threads
of causality which connect the sequent states of
objects, is of course a matter of careful observa-
tion and experiment. But in asserting sequence, we
have by implication asserted, that the threads are
there; and the denial that any subsequent state of
the world was the effect of the previous state, would
6
1p. 77: Tr., p. 63.
* Since events are not dated in relation to time itself.
460 THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Kant's
statement
three
of experi-
ence.
be equivalent to a denial that it is subsequent, and so,
ultimately, to a denial of the validity of empirical
consciousness of the world in time. In like manner,
the assertion that objects coexist in space, is impli-
citly the assertion that they determine each other as
the parts of space determine each other; and therefore
we cannot deny reciprocity without being ultimately
forced to deny coexistence in space.
Another point, which seems to require more atten-
about the tion than Kant has given to it, is the relation between
Analogies the three Analogies of experience. Are they principles
entirely independent of each other, or are they neces-
sarily connected as different aspects of one principle?
Sometimes, especially in his earlier essay On the idea of
negative quantity, Kant seems to oppose the principle
of causality to the principle of substance, as synthesis
to analysis. I can well understand, he there declares,
how a thing should remain what it is, by the rule
of identity but I find it difficult to see how it
can be, that when one thing is posited, another
and quite different thing should appear as its con-
sequent. In this point of view the principle of
identity, which rules formal Logic, is identified with
the principle of substance, as it was by Jacobi when
he said, that the only logical system of philosophy is
pantheism. In the Critique, however, Kant recog-
nises that the principle of substance in its application
to phenomena in time is synthetic: i.e., it is syn-
thetic to assert identity or permanence of that, which is
at the same time recognised as having difference and
change in it. But if this be so, then it is obvious
that, in their synthetic meaning, the principles of
causality and substance are inseparable from each
other, or, in other words, that they are different
XI.
PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING. 461
momenta of one thought. Lastly, in his remarks
on the list of categories, Kant speaks of the concep-
tion of reciprocity as combining in it the conceptions
of substance and causality, but he does not make
any use of this idea in treating of the analysis of
experience. In other words, he does not attempt to
show how the three principles grow out of each
other. The subject is too extensive to be discussed
here, but we cannot dismiss it without one or two
remarks.
respond to
stages in
opment of
The principles of substance, causality, and recip- They cor
rocity may be regarded as marking three successive three
stages in the development of science. The begin- the devel-
ning of science was the search for a substratum of science.
things, a unity in all difference, a permanent in all
change. The one remains, the many change and
pass,' was the doctrine in which early speculation
found most satisfaction. And as thought, at every
stage of its progress, strives to make itself self-
consistent, so it was natural that in this connexion
it should also be asserted that all difference and
change are illusory appearances. Understood in
this sense, the principle: Ex nihilo nihil fit, involved
a pantheistic denial of all change and development.
Everything, on this view, necessarily remains in its
simple identity with itself. As, however, the prin-
ciple of substance has no meaning except as the
discovery of identity beneath difference, so the sub-
stance, which is not causal, which does not in some
way differentiate itself, is soon perceived to be no
explanation of anything. Science cannot long rest
content to conceive the substance of things as a
substratum, an unchangeable something, which
underlies the process of change: it must inevitably
462
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Is there a
higher
category
than re-
ciprocity?
advance to the conception of it as manifesting itself
i.e., its identity, in difference and change. The per-
manent in things need not lie, as the Atomists
supposed, in certain definite properties of them, which
remain fixed while all their other properties change.
All the properties of matter change in one point
of view, and remain fixed in another. For what re-
mains is not the definite size, shape, weight of objects,
but only certain relations, or laws of the connexion
of objects, which maintain themselves through all
the variation of their qualities, and which cannot
be defined except in relation to that variation. Such
considerations lead us to a conception of cause which
includes substance, and is already in germ reciprocity.
The law, which is the permanent element in all
change, cannot itself be defined, except as a relation
of substances or elements, which, though distin-
guished from each other, yet show what they are
only in their relations. A law must state not merely
that something goes before and something follows:
it must also state that this result is produced by at
least two bodies, two elements, or, it may be, two
forces, acting and reacting on each other. The idea,
therefore, which underlies causality, and to which
we are necessarily led when causality is fully ex-
plained, is the idea of different substances, or sub-
stantial unities of some kind, which act and react on
each other. Under this category of reciprocity we
conceive the world as at once continuous and dis-
crete: as a collection of individuals, each of which
manifests its own nature in its acts, while yet each
can only act as it is acted on by the others.
It may be said that this view of things (which is
the highest scientific conception of them admissible
XI. PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING. 463
on Kantian principles) is self-contradictory, in so far
as it combines the idea, that everything is determined
by itself, with the idea that everything is determined
by other things. And this is quite true. There is a
contradiction in the category of reciprocity which
prevents us from resting in it as the ultimate cate-
gory of things. Reason cannot find satisfaction in
a circle reasoning any more than in an infinite series
of reasons; and while causality, if received as the
ultimate category, would lead us to the latter result,
reciprocity would lead us to the former. Yet, though
every imperfect category thus breaks down at last in
contradiction, this does not take away its relative
value in the scientific explanation of the world.
"It is," says Professor Flint, only meagre and
pragmatical historians, or rather historical logicians,
who affirm rigidly and invariably that A is the cause
of B, and B of C, and C of D, &c. Whenever there
is an organism like the living body, the mind of man,
or even a society, wherever there is correlation of
parts and functions, wherever there is action and
reaction, the singular linear series of causes and
effects is not found. A is the cause of B, and B of
A, inconsistent as it may sound, is often a truer
formula than A is the cause of B, and B of C, con-
sistent as it may seem to be." 1 Whether this
'inconsistency' can be remedied--whether it is not
the indication that we can, and must, seek for a
still higher category, under which we may recon-
cile the unity and difference of things, instead of
alternately presupposing the one or the other, is a
question which properly belongs to the Dialectic.
For the present we would simply notice that the
¹ Philosophy of History, I., p. 28.
464
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Is know-
ledge
imagina-
tion?
category of action and reaction is the highest we
can reach, so long as we start with a given and
unexplained difference, and seek only to find a
mediation between its terms, without regarding the
difference of the terms as itself the expression of one
principle. It is the highest category of the finite as
such, and it may be said, moreover, that it is that
category in which the best scientific thought of our
time in every department, (and not merely in those
departments mentioned by Professor Flint) seems to
find satisfaction. If, however, our knowledge does
not contain in it an inherent contradiction which can
never be solved, if it is true, as we have often
argued, that there can be nothing absolutely given
in knowledge, but that reason can only deal with
that which is determined by itself, then we must
regard such a category as merely a temporary and
imperfect halting-place of thought, when it has not
yet reached its ultimate unity with its object and
with itself.
The question whether our knowledge can be
limited by raised into a higher form than that in which it is
determined by the principles of causality and recip-
rocity, is only another form of the question whether
the intelligence of man is limited, as Kant main-
tains, by his imagination. If we can know that,
and only that, which we can represent under the
forms of space and time, then reciprocity is the
highest category of science. For what is essential
to such representation is, that the objects or events
represented should be thought as external and indif-
ferent to each other, or rather that they should not
be thought as essentially related to each other. The
thought of their relativity may, indeed, come in as a
XI. PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING. 465
secondary or modifying element, but it must not be
carried so far as to destroy the independence of the
parts related.¹ Now imagination, as it bodies forth
to itself the relations of different objects in space, even
when it represents them as acting and reacting on each
other, still presupposes in them a certain indifference
or independence, which prevents their existence
from being exhausted in their relations. Or, to put
the same thing in another way, the parts it com-
prises are externally put together, and their unity in
one whole is a secondary and subordinate aspect of
them. In order to imagine anything, we must keep
asunder the elements of its existence, we must
separate its individuality from its continuity or rela-
tivity, and the highest categories which we can apply,
consistently with this abstraction, are the categories
of causality and reciprocity. Whenever we go be-
yond this point of view, whenever we apply the ideas
of final cause, of development, or of self-determina-
tion, whenever we conceive any object as self-dif-
ferentiating, yet, through its differences, returning
upon itself, we transcend the sphere of imagina-
tion, the sphere of the representation of things
as in space and time. Such intimate union of in-
dividuality and relativity may be thought, but it
cannot be pictured or 'envisaged' in sensuous objec-
tivity. If, therefore, science is limited by imagina-
tion, as Kant would teach us, it is obvious that it is
impossible for it to employ such categories, and any
objects that require such categories to determine
them, are beyond the strict pale of science. The
¹ In the ideas of space and time (cf. ante, p. 97), the elements of con-
tinuity or relativity and individuality fall asunder. This point will
meet us again in discussing the Antinomies.
2 G
466
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
The postu-
lates of
thought.
effect of this conclusion on Kant's general view of
the sciences will be seen in the next chapter. Its
ultimate result is the denial, in the Dialectic, of the
possibility of knowledge of the soul, the world, and
God.
The object of the 'Postulates of Empirical
empirical Thought' is mainly to call attention to the distinc-
tion between the 'given' element of knowledge, and
that which is due to the spontaneity of thought.
The first postulate is, "That which agrees with the
formal conditions of experience (both of perception
and conception) is possible." Possibility can be pre-
dicated of the categories, because they are condi-
tions of the determination of objects as such. It
can be predicated also of the forms of perception, and
of the products of the constructive synthesis of
mathematics, in so far as they are based on these
forms, because we cannot have any experience
except under them. But beyond this, we can know
nothing about the possibility of any object, except so
far as it is actual. Now, according to the second
postulate, "What is connected with the material
conditions of experience is actual." In other words,
to know the actuality of any object, we require
either sensible perception of it, or, at least, the con-
nexion of it, according to the Analogies of experience,
with something else which is sensibly perceived.
For it is only through these principles that we
arrive at any conclusions as to the existence of any
thing, which is not immediately given in sense.
these, and especially in the principle of causality, we
have a guiding thread, by which we are often able,
from actual perceptions, to conclude to the existence
of something in the chain of possible perception, of
In
XI. PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING. 467
1
which we have not, and of which possibly, according
to the constitution of our organs, we never can have,
actual perception, e.g., a magnetic fluid pervading
all bodies. We conclude, in such cases, from
our actual experiences, and the laws of their
connexion, that, if our organs were fine enough, they
would perceive something. This, however, is the
limit of the a priori extension of our knowledge.
"If we do not begin with experience, or if we do not
proceed in our investigations according to the strict
laws of the empirical connexion of phenomena, it is
vain for us to attempt to discover the existence of
anything whatever." The third postulate: "That
the connexion of which with actuality is determined
according to the universal conditions of experience,
is necessary," only repeats, what has been already
anticipated, viz., that no object of sense, and
hence for us no object whatever, can be known.
purely a priori. The highest necessity our experi-
ence can reach is, that a thing should be known
relatively a priori, i.e., known as necessary in
relation to something else already known to exist.
Necessity of existence, therefore, can never be in-
ferred directly from conceptions, but only "from the
connexion of that which is inferred, with that which
has been perceived." Nor can any inference enable
us to determine the existence of any new substance.
For every such inference must rest upon the law of
causality, which determines nothing but relations
between the states or accidents of substances. On
the other hand, relatively, we may assert the neces-
sity of all states of substances, since all such states
are bound up in causal connexion with other states,
1 p. 189: Tr., p. 166.
468
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Is the pos-
sible wider
actual?
and the principle that 'everything that happens is
hypothetically necessary,' is a principle, without
which nature itself would not exist for us. While,
therefore, in virtue of the law of causality, we can as-
sert that there is a necessity in nature (in mundo non
datur casus), we may equally assert that this neces-
sity is not a blind but a conditioned, and, therefore,
intelligible necessity (in mundo non datur fatum).
Both these laws result from the dynamical princi-
ples, and if we combine them with the mathematical
principles already examined, we may add two other
laws of equal certainty, the law that there is a con-
tinuity in the series of phenomena (in mundo non
datur saltus); and the law that no experience can be
such as to prove a vacuum (in mundo non datur
hiatus). "Finally, these laws may all be gathered
up into the one proposition, that nothing can be
admitted in empirical synthesis, which could be a
hindrance to the understanding in establishing the
continuous connexion of phenomena in one expe-
rience."1
The above account of the principles of modality is
than the enough to show the vanity of all the discussions of
philosophers on the question, whether the field of
the possible is wider than the field of the actual or
the necessary. For whenever we go beyond the
mere form of experience, we can determine that any-
thing is possible, only in so far as we determine that
it is actual, and this again implies that it is hypo-
thetically necessary. The predicates of possibility,
actuality, and necessity, in short, add nothing to the
content of any conception, but only indicate its rela-
tion to our faculty of knowledge. And it is for this
1 p. 191 Tr., p. 171.
XI. PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING. 469
reason that, by a mathematical analogy, they have
been called postulates.
sition be-
priori and
not abso-
admis-
We have already said so much about the supposed The oppo-
absolute division, which Kant here asserts, between tween a
the a posteriori and the a priori element in know- a posteriori
ledge, that it seems unnecessary to add anything lute, ac-
cording to
further. As self-consciousness is conceived to have Kant's own
merely accidental and external relations to the cate- sions.
gories, and the categories to have merely accidental
and external relations to the a priori forms of
sense, so, finally, the general schema of nature is
conceived to be accidentally and externally combined
with the particular matter of experience. In fact, it
is this last point, the opposition between the necessity
of thought and the contingency of fact, which gives
plausibility to Kant's view of knowledge as a com-
posite result of elements not in themselves related to
each other. Nothing seems clearer to common sense
than the accidental character of the contents which,
in experience, are brought under the necessary laws
of thought. The principle of causality may be
necessary, but, as Hume asked, what discoverable
relation except sequence is there between the par-
ticulars it binds together? The contingency of the
particular laws of nature and experience is the best
available proof that they are merely given,' or,
what is the same thing, that the mind is passive in
regard to them.
6
The progress of Kant's own argument has, how-
ever, itself enabled us to transcend this point of
view. It has enabled us not only to discern a
relativity between the general elements of experience,
but also to see that no element in experience can be
purely given, purely a posteriori. The form of the
470
CHAP.
THE CRITİCİSM ÒF PURE REASON.
CRITIC
mind already belongs to everything which is an object
to the mind, and the apparent contingency of the
elements of experience to the eye of common sense,
shows only that the relations of these elements
are as yet determined merely as relations of time
and space.
But the determination of things as in
space and time, as Kant has shown in the chapter of
his work we have just examined, implicitly contains
in it a determination not only by the categories of
quantity and quality, but also by the categories of
cause, substance, and reciprocity, i.e., it involves a
higher synthesis than it expresses. This synthesis is
evolved or made explicit by science, when it discovers
the laws of nature. It is true, indeed, that even the
synthesis of science leaves an element of accident in
the relations of objects to each other and to the mind.
But the question immediately arises whether the
intelligence can rest content with such a result, or
whether the effort to find the unity of thought in
things, which has led it beyond the ordinary con-
sciousness, must not be repeated till the difference and
contingency is completely overcome. It has some-
times been treated as an absurdity to assert that
necessities of thought should be of gradual discovery;
but, properly understood, there is no absurdity in the
matter. If it is not absurd that men should reason
without being logicians, neither is it absurd that the
growth of experience should be guided by laws and
principles, which are beyond the consciousness of the
individual, though implied in that consciousness. It
was Kant's work to disclose some of these principles, to
show, in fact, that the common consciousness of things
as in space and time is dependent for its possibility
on principles which are not expressed in it, but which
XI.
PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING. 471
are first explicitly stated and consistently applied by
science. But
But may not the same process be repeated
with reference to the ordinary scientific consciousness?
May it not be shown that science itself implies
principles other than those of which it is distinctly
aware, or those which Kant's analysis of it has
disclosed? Is it possible to maintain the absolute-
ness of Kant's distinction between the a priori and
the a posteriori elements of knowledge, between the
organic plan of experience, which is due to our mental
constitution, and the matter of sense, which is organ-
ised by means of that plan? If experience cannot be
conceived as a compound of the purely intelligible
and the utterly unintelligible, it seems necessary that
the distinction between a priori and a posteriori should
disappear from a higher point of view; or should be
used to indicate a difference not of the kinds, but of
the stages, of knowledge. On this supposition every-
thing will at first be a posteriori, in the sense that,
in the beginning of knowledge, the world appears to
be a combination of things and events which have
no relation to each other or to the mind. And
everything at last must become a priori, in the sense
that perfect knowledge would see all things in
relation to each other and to the mind. This goal
of knowledge, indeed, may be distant, but it is essen-
tially involved in the very nature of knowledge.
And it may be shown that there is a contradiction
in treating the common scientific point of view as
absolute; since it could not be attained except by
the tacit assumption of an idea of truth, which yet
cannot be realised in it.
These thoughts, however, anticipate in some degree
the argument of the Dialectic, which we have yet
472
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
to examine.
The next chapter will prepare the
way for that argument, by considering Kant's view
of experience in its application to the different
sciences. If we find that his idea of knowledge,
based as it is on the absolute distinction of the a
priori and a posteriori elements of knowledge, is not
wide enough even for empirical science, we shall be
less disposed to admit its sufficiency, when it is used
to prove the impossibility of a science which goes
beyond experience. And, perhaps, it may even be
shown that we cannot explain phenomena except
on principles which break down the absolute wall
of division between the phenomenal and the
noumenal.
?
473
CHAPTER XII.
KANT'S GENERAL VIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL SCIENCES.
idea of
nature.
IN the last chapter we have considered the prin- The gene-
ciples on which phenomena are determined as
objects of experience under conditions of space and
time. Taking these principles together, we reach the
general idea of nature as a system of substances,
whose quantum of reality always remains the same,
but which, by action and reaction upon each other,
are constantly changing their states according to
universal laws. And the proof of this idea of nature
is not dogmatic but transcendental, i.e., it is proved
that without it there could exist for us no nature
and no experience at all. These principles, in short,
are the general laws, which form the definition of
nature, and which apply indifferently to all objects
of experience whatever.
natural
similarly
the intelli-
But now we have to consider another question. Are all
Do these general laws contain all that, from a tran- objects
scendental point of view, we can discover about the related to
objects of experience? When we go beyond these laws, gence?
is our intelligence equally and indifferently related
to all objects of experience, or does it stand in special
relations to particular objects? Are internal and ex-
474
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
contrasted
Physics.
ternal phenomena, are the phenomena of the organic
and the inorganic world to be treated on exactly
the same principles, or are any of them intelligible
in a higher sense than the others? Do Psychology
and Mechanics, Chemistry and Biology, stand all on
the same level as sciences? or, if not, which of them
has the preference? On these questions Kant touches
in various places in the Critique, especially where he
distinguishes between the sciences that have to do
with the objects of outer sense and the science of the
object of inner sense, but he' discusses them more
fully in his treatise On the metaphysical basis of
Physics and on the Critique of Judgment. Before
going farther it will be desirable to gather, from these
various sources, his general view of the relations of
the sciences.
"When we
Psychology Already, in the first edition of the Critique, Kant
with observes that Psychology is not capable of the same
kind of scientific treatment as Physics.
compare Psychology," he says, "as the Physiology
of the inner sense, with Physics as the object of outer
sense, we find that, altogether irrespective of their
empirical contents, there is a remarkable distinction
between them. For, while much knowledge can be
drawn by a priori synthesis from the conception of
an extended and impenetrable thing, no knowledge
whatever can be drawn a priori from the conception
of a thinking being. Both, indeed, are phenomena,
but the phenomenon of outer sense, as occupying
space, has in it something standing and permanent,
which takes the place of a substance in relation to
its changeable phases: it, therefore, is an object which
can be synthetically determined. On the other
hand, time, which is the sole form of inner sense, has
XII.
VIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL SCIENCES. 475
in it nothing permanent: and, therefore, in pheno-
mena, which merely occupy time, we find a change
of determinations, but no determinable object. For
in that which we call the soul, all is in perpetual
flux, and nothing is permanent, except (if you will
have it so) the pure Ego, which seems to represent,
or rather we should say, to indicate a simple object,
because it is without content or multiplicity. But
this Ego could not be the source of rational know-
ledge of the nature of a thinking being, unless it were
a pure perception; for only a pure perception can
enable us to make synthetic a priori judgments. Now,
the Ego is neither a perception, nor the conception of
any object, but simply the form of consciousness,
which may accompany both perception and concep-
tion, and by its presence make them instrumental to
the knowledge of objects."¹
2
argument
Cartesian
In a passage introduced, in the second edition of Kant's
the Critique, into the deduction of the Postulates of against the
Empirical Thought, the idea here expressed that the Idealism.
phenomena of the soul have in them nothing per-
manent, is made the basis of an argument against the
problematical Idealism of Des Cartes. Des Cartes
had maintained that the object of inner sense is known
immediately and therefore with absolute certainty,
while the object of outer sense is known mediately,
by inference, and therefore doubtfully. To this,
Kant answers, not only that both objects are equally
phenomenal, but also that the knowledge of external
phenomena, as determined in space, is prior to the
knowledge of internal phenomena, as determined in
time. For, to be conscious of oneself as determined
in time, is to be conscious of a series of inner states
p. 773: Tr., p. 166.
1
¹ p. 305; Tr., p. 253.
2
476
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Insuffi-
ciency of
ment.
which continually change. But, by the first Analogy
of experience, it is impossible to be conscious of
change except in relation to something permanent,
which is determined as a substance. Now, no such
permanent can be found in the states of the mind,
which are always changing; nor can it be found in
the pure subject, the unity of apperception, which is
the general presupposition of the determination of all
objects alike. But the object of outer sense has a
permanent manifold of partes extra partes, none of
which can be annihilated, and therefore, in relation
to it, the manifold of inner sense can be determined
as changing. In other words, we can be conscious
of our mental states as determined in time, only in
relation to an object in space.¹
This argument rests on the principle of substance,
the argu- yet when we consider it closely, it is inconsistent with
Kantian deduction of that principle. In that de-
duction it was shown, that we can know change only
as change in a permanent substance, and that an
experience of absolute change, i.e., change not in a
permanent substance, but of the substance itself, was
impossible. Here, however, it is maintained that
the phenomenal self, the object of inner sense, because
it has no permanent in itself, can be known as chang-
ing only in relation to the permanent of outer sense.
If, however, no object can be determined in time,
except so far as its changes are the changes of a
permanent substance or substratum, then an object,
which has no such permanent in itself cannot be
determined in time, and that is equivalent to saying
that it cannot be determined as an object at all. For
it cannot be brought under the category of substance,
1 ¹ p. 772: Tr., p. 166; cf. p. 685: Tr., p. xl. (Preface to 2nd Edition.)
XII. VIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL SCIENCES.
477
·
and, as the other categories presuppose substance, its
changes cannot be determined by the principles of
causality and reciprocity. Either therefore the ap-
plication of these principles is not necessary to
determine an object of experience, or, if they
are, then the object of inner sense, the pheno-
menal self, cannot be determined as an object of
experience.
does not
the soul.
In effect, though not very decidedly, Kant adopts The prin-
ciple of
the latter alternative. In his treatise On the meta- substance
physical basis of Physics, he deduces the mechanical apply to
law, that the quantum of matter cannot be increased
or diminished, from the principle of substance, and at
the same time denies that we can discover
any similar
law of the phenomena of inner experience. "As the
object of inner sense does not consist of parts which
are external to each other, and as, therefore, its parts
are not substances, its increase or diminution is possi-
ble consistently with the principle of substance.
Thus the clearness of ideas in my soul, and so also
my faculty of apperception, have a degree, which may
become greater or less, without any substance need-
ing to come into existence or cease to exist. But as,
in the gradual diminution of this faculty of apper-
ception, it must at last entirely disappear, the sub-
stance of the soul, in spite of its simplicity, may in
this way be exposed to extinction, an extinction,
however which will take place, not by division or
separation of the composite being in which it in-
heres, but by gradual process of decay." To say
this, however, is to say that there is no permanent
object of inner experience to which the category
of substance can be applied. What here takes
[
1 Metaph. Anfangsgr., iii. 2: p. 407. Cf. Kritik, p.
478
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Kant's
view of
Psycho-
logy as a
science.
the place of a substance is simply the pure Ego,
which cannot be brought under this or any other
category.
The consequences arising from this view of the
soul as an object of knowledge are exhibited in
another passage of the same treatise, where Kant
tells us that empirical Psychology cannot be regarded
as a science in the proper sense of the term.
It can-
not claim to rank as an exact science like Physics,
"for Mathematics is not applicable to the phenomena
of inner sense and their laws. The only ground on
which such an application of Mathematics could be
considered possible, lies in the continuity of the series
of changes through which our consciousness passes.
But the knowledge of mind which we might acquire
by regarding it in this point of view, would bear the
same proportion to our mathematical knowledge of
matter, which the doctrine of the qualities of a straight
line bears to the whole of Geometry. For the pure
inner perception, in which the phenomena of the soul
have to be construed, is time; and time has only one
dimension. Nor again can Psychology be compared
even to a systematic art of analysis, or experimental
doctrine such as we have in Chemistry, for the mani-
fold elements of inner observation cannot be separated,
or can only be ideally separated from each other:
nor can they be kept in isolation and combined
at pleasure like the chemical elements; still less
can we subject another thinking being to the
experiments necessary for science. Moreover, when
we observe, our observation changes the state
of the observed object. Psychology, therefore, can
never be more than a natural history, or a toler-
ably systematic account of the inner sense; but it
XII.
479
VIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL SCIENCES.
cannot be either an exact or an experimental science
of it." 1
The truth is, that Psychology has no very distinct
place in the Kantian system of knowledge. It does
not treat of the universal principles of knowledge,
for these, as Kant showed, are prior to the know-
ledge of any particular object, and hence they have
as much and as little right to be introduced into
Physics as into Psychology. Properly they belong to
the science of transcendental Logic, which is neither
the one nor the other. On the other hand, if Psy-
chology be regarded as dealing with the object of
inner sense as distinguished from the objects of outer
sense, it is neither an exact nor an empirical science.
For it does not admit of mathematical treatment,2
nor can its object be determined by the categories,
which are necessary to the determination of all em-
pirical objects. That there may be objects which can
be known as such, though they cannot be adequately
determined by the categories of substance, causal-
ity, and reciprocity, is not yet recognised by Kant.
Hence Psychology is left in a somewhat indefinite
position, as it has to do with an object which is
indicated or pointed. out" by the pure Ego of ap-
perception, but not presented to us in any perception
which can be brought under the category of sub-
stance. It belongs to a region of opinion, or at best
of empirical generalisation which can never be defin-
itely occupied by science.
The Kantian difficulty in relation to Psychology
has two sources. It springs, in the first place, from
¹ Metaph. Anfangsgr., Vorrede, p. 310.
2 It would be out of place to do more here than allude to the Her-
bertian attempts to construct a mathematical Psychology.
480
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Is pure in-
ward obser-
sible?
the opposition of inner and outer sense, and in the
second place, from the idea that all science is based
on the application of the categories of relation.
1
In the first place, it is the Kantian view that the
vation post soul is observed only under conditions of time, while
all other objects are observed also under conditions
of space. Hence these objects are within the sphere
to which Mathematics can be applied, or even if, as
in the case of Chemistry, no quantitatively deter-
mined law (e.g., no law of the attraction and repul-
sion of their parts, which determines their other
qualities) can be discovered, so as to make such
application of Mathematics possible, still these parts
are fixed and definite, and can be empirically deter-
mined, or separated and combined with each other
at pleasure, without loss of their identity. On the
other hand, the mere states of the conscious subject
are evanescent and indefinite, and when we wish to
examine any one of them, it disappears among the
- others in such a way that we can no longer definitely
recognise or recover it.
Now, on this point, as is often the case, we can
answer Kant, only by carrying his own criticisms a
little farther, and denying altogether the possibility
of pure inward observation. The inner life cannot
be set on one side and the outer life on the other
side, as objects to be observed apart from each other.
If we attempt to examine our inner being by itself
as a subject of sensations and feelings, we find nothing
to observe, for we can only make our individuality
an intelligible object in so far as we can conceive it
as related under conditions of space and time to other
objects. Pure inner observation would be the obser-
¹ Anfangsgr., Vorrede, 1.c.
1
XII. VIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL SCIENCES.
481
vation of an abstraction which has no independent
existence. We should not be conscious of a self at
all except in relation to, and in distinction from,
other objects; for self-consciousness grows along
with the consciousness of the world, and the riches
of the inner and the outer life are two opposite
aspects of the same thing. The narrow range of
knowledge and action, within which the savage is
confined, is the counterpart of his inward poverty
of spirit; and the enlarged consciousness of his own
life, which the civilized man possesses, may also be
expressed by saying that the world for him has
become greater and wider. It is absurd, therefore,
to oppose to each other two elements of reality which
cannot be separated; or to suppose that one of these
can be made the object of observation apart from the
other.
which all
is self-
ledge.
It is, however, easy to see what it is that leads to Sense in
the common mistake that Psychology must be based knowledge
on internal, and the other sciences on external know-
observation. It is plausible to say that we must
look inwards to know the soul and outwards to know
the body. But the plausibility of this assertion is
due to a double oversight. On the one hand it is
forgotten that the knowledge of outward objects is
the determination of them by the forms of conscious-
ness in general, i.e., by their reference to the Ego, as
the universal subject of knowledge; on the other hand
it is forgotten that the knowledge of ourselves as
objects is mediated by the knowledge of other objects,
and especially of other spiritual beings. On the
former of these points we may remark that if it be
true that it is only through our own minds that we
know the minds of others, in the same sense it is also
2 H
482
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
true that it is only through our own minds that we
know material objects. Kant, indeed, on one occa-
sion, mentions it as a point of distinction between
Psychology and the other sciences, that we can know
other self-conscious beings only in so far as we put
ourselves in their place, and, as it were, transfer to
them our own Ego. "I cannot," he says, "get any
idea of a thinking being from external experience
but only from self-consciousness. Such objects are,
therefore, nothing more than the transference of this
my consciousness of myself to other things, which
only in this way can be represented as thinking
beings." But the truth is that no object whatever
can be made intelligible to us except by the same
transference to them of some form of consciousness.
For what are the categories through which objects.
are determined as such? Kant himself called them
'species of the synthetic unity of apperception,' and
thereby in effect admitted that all determination of
objects as such may, in another point of view,
regarded as the discovery of one of the forms of self-
consciousness in them. In other words, the process
by which we determine material objects as such, and
the process by which we determine spiritual objects
as such, are identical, except that in the latter case
the category or species of the unity of apperception,
which we must use to determine the object, is a
higher one.
But if in the latter case we have to use
self-consciousness itself as the category by which
we can make the object intelligible to ourselves,
whereas in the former case, we can make the object
sufficiently intelligible by means of such conceptions
as causality and reciprocity; yet it must be con-
1 ¹ p. 279; Tr., p. 240.
be
XII. VIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL SCIENCES.
483
sidered that causality and reciprocity are contained
in, though they do not fully exhaust, the idea of self-
consciousness. They are implicitly, what it is ex-
plicitly: they are in germ, what it is in full develop-
ment Substance, causality, and reciprocity are only
imperfect expressions of that conception of unity in
difference, which, in a higher form, appears as the
idea of final cause, and which ultimately reveals
itself as the idea of self-consciousness. In determin-
ing inorganic objects, we may not find it necessary to
use any but the first order of categories; when we
come to the organic world we require, as Kant him-
self maintains, the second order: and when we reach
the spiritual world, we can accomplish our purpose
of making it intelligible with nothing less than the
third. But this difference is not an absolute one;
the categories are not to be put side by side, as
independent and unrelated conceptions, any more
than the inorganic, the organic, and the spiritual
worlds. As spirit gathers up into itself and trans-
cends both mechanism and life, so the category of
self-consciousness is the ultimate truth of that which
is partially expressed in efficient and final causality.
As the ancient philosopher said, ὅμοιον ὁμοίῳ αἰσθάνεται:
by that in us which is kindred with the material,
we know material objects without us, and by that in
us which is spiritual we know spiritual objects
without us.
logy does
with the
inner seuse
And this leads us to say, in the second place, that Psycho-
outward and inward experience cannot be separated not deal
from each other. Still less can we say that Psycho- object of
logy rests on the latter and Physics on the former. as opposed
If 'consciousness in general,' to use the language of sense.
Kant, is the presupposition of everything, yet, the
to outer

·
CHAP.
484
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
first is also the last, and the self-conscious being,
as Psychology regards him, is the highest natural
being, the being in whom nature transcends itself.
Nature becomes self-conscious in man: and we
cannot understand man, if we isolate him from
Nature. The inorganic and organic world is the
presupposition of the life of spiritual beings, and that
life cannot be made completely intelligible except in
relation to the necessary conditions of its develop-
ment. What we call the outward world and oppose
to our own inner experience, is thus a necessary part
of that experience. Further, even viewing spiritual
life in itself, we cannot isolate inner from outer ex-
perience, since the riches of the individual spirit con-
sist mainly in the depth and extent of its relations to
other spirits. A self-conscious being, isolated from
his fellows, existing alone in an unconscious world, is
a figment of abstraction. Such a being, if we could
conceive him to exist, would be only potentially self-
conscious: i.e., he would have no inner life to analyse
or contrast with the outer life. All inner life, in
short, may be described as a returning upon self out
of an outer life, to which indeed it is opposed, but
which also it presupposes. In this sense there is
truth in Kant's assertion, that the consciousness of
the individual self as an object is posterior to the
consciousness of the external world. But in so far
as he separates the one from the other as objects of
observation, or assigns any especial content of science
to the one or the other exclusively, he is the victim
of a confusion of thought, which his own work did
much to dispel. He is in fact turning a distinction
between two elements which enter into all know-
ledge, into a distinction between different kinds of
XII. VIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL SCIENCES. 485
knowledge; and the consequence is, that he is obliged
to deprive Psychology, thus reduced to the self-ob-
servation of the individual, of its proper place in the
system of the sciences.
mission
categories
sary for
and Psy-
The correction of this error may, as we have said, Kant's ad-
be derived from Kant himself. When in the Critique that higher
of Judgment he maintains that the phenomena of life are neces-
cannot be made intelligible, unless we suppose that Biology
an intelligence like our own, acting with definite chology.
design, has produced them, he practically admits
that the categories, by which one order of existence
is empirically determined, are inadequate to another
order of existence. It is true, that he also declares
that this conception of design, which we apply to the
organic world, has only a subjective value in relation
to the organisation of our knowledge, and not an
objective value as teaching us what things are, and
that, consequently, the only valid determination of
living beings as objects, is their determination by the
principles of substance, causality, and reciprocity. In
the same spirit, and with a similar qualification, he
admits that the phenomena of mind can be under-
stood only by the aid of the idea of self-conscious-
ness. In a passage already quoted, he says that we
can represent a thinking being as an object only in
so far as we transfer our own consciousness of self to
him, and immediately adds that, in this transference,
the proposition 'I think' is taken problematically,
not as containing a perception of an existent object
(as in the cogito ergo sum of Des Cartes), but merely
as a possible hypothesis, in order to see what quali-
ties are deducible from it.¹ But with this qualifica-
tion, which we shall not discuss at present, Kant
1 p. 279: Tr., p. 240.
486 THE CRİTİČISM OF PURE ŘEASON. CHAP.
maintains that living beings, and still more, con-
scious beings, are objects which we cannot suffi-
ciently determine by the application of the general
principles of pure understanding, or, in other words,
by the schematised categories of substance, causality
and reciprocity. We may indeed begin to determine
them by these categories, in so far as they have an
external existence, and stand in definite relation to
other objects in space and time. But there is a rela-
tion between the parts of a living being, which can
only be expressed by the category of finality, or in
other words, by saying that every part is both cause
and effect of every other part. We therefore cannot
treat Biology purely as an experimental science like
Chemistry for a living being is no compound, the
parts of which can be definitely determined prior
to, and apart from, their relations to each other.
Nor can the action and reaction of the animal and
its environment be reduced under the categories of
causality and reciprocity. Still less can we apply
such a method of explanation to spiritual life. We
cannot divide the soul into independent parts, cor-
responding to parts of the body, and explain the
phenomena of conscious life by their action and
reaction; for, to do this would be to neglect the
essential fact of the unity of self-consciousness.
Mind, in a higher sense than even life, is whole in
every part. Nor, again, is it possible fully to
explain any of its phenomena by an action or re-
action between the conscious self and the body, or
between the mind and the outer world; for nothing
exists for the self except as it is apprehended by the
self, and self-consciousness is a unity which tran-
scends the distinction between itself and the world.
XII.
487
VIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL SCIENCES.
The thinking being as such cannot be regarded as
external to the objects to which he is related, in the
same way as, e.g., one stone is external to another.
Hence the categories which imply such externality
and difference are inadequate to the relations of
mind, and may often rather obscure the facts of its
development than throw light upon them. Thus
those who treat the will and the motives as if the
former was a weight and the latter a lever, place
a sufficiently clear picture before the imagination ;
but they explain the action of a spiritual being only
by omitting the very fact to be explained. But this
circumstance should not lead us, as it leads Kant,
to doubt whether Psychology can be raised into a
science at all: it should only enable us to see to
what kind of science it belongs. For it is an alto-
gether false assumption that the range of science is
limited to those things which can be adequately
determined by the principles of causality and reci-
procity.
four orders
We are now in a position to answer the question Kant's
stated at the beginning of this chapter. Kant distin- of science.
guishes four orders of science. The first place must
be given to Physics, in so far as it is capable of
being treated mathematically. Next come the ex-
perimental sciences, of which Kant takes Chemistry
as the example-sciences treating of objects, whose
qualities are the result of the combination or separ-
ation of definite parts, and which therefore are ade-
quately determined by the categories of causality and
reciprocity. The third place belongs to Biology,
which requires the aid of the problematical conception
of final cause: and the last, to Psychology, which, as it
is founded in pure internal observation and incapable
488
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Metaphy-
sic of
Physics.
of being determined by the Analogies of experience,
scarcely deserves the name of science at all. Of the
last two something has been said, and more will have
to be said in connexion with the Critique of Judg-
ment; and the second requires no special treatment.
The first is discussed by Kant in his treatise on the
Metaphysical basis of Physics, of which a very short
sketch may be here introduced to complete the
account of the Kantian organisation of science.¹
Kant starts with the principle that the a priori
determination of objects is confined within the same
limits as the application of Mathematics. This
principle is an immediate consequence of the Kantian
view of experience. For things are capable of being
mathematically treated only in so far as they are
capable of a priori construction, i.e., in so far as their
connexions and relations can be represented in a priori
perception. Now, the fundamental determination of
that which is the object of external sense must,
according to Kant, be motion; for by motion alone
can the external sense be affected.2 Taking therefore
from experience the fact that there is something which
is moveable in space and which occupies it, the Meta-
physic of Physics has to determine under what con-
ditions the conception of this object must be con-
structed or represented in space and time; for these are,
of course, the a priori forms under which all objects
of outer sense must be represented. To discover these
conditions, we must consider the conception of matter
1 We shall have to return to this subject for another purpose in the
second volume. I have translated the title of Kant's work Metaphy-
sical basis of Physics, though Kant's word is 'Naturwissenschaft,' which
is more general; but, as we have seen, the former name sufficiently
indicates the contents of the treatise.
2. Metaph. Anfangsgr., p. 317.
XII. VIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL SCIENCES.
489
as determined by the four species of categories in
relation to the pure forms of perception.
deter-
Quantity.
1. Matter, quantitatively defined, is 'the moveable Matter as
in space.' In this point of view it is the object of a mined in
science we may call Phoronomy. But motion, like
space, is essentially relative; if motion, or at least, if
motion in a straight line, takes place in any space,
we may indifferently consider it as a motion of the
body, or as an opposite motion of the space; and as
we can never reach a space, which is not contained in
space, there is no rest, which, in reference to an
including space, may not be interpreted as motion
and again, in reference to another space including
that, as rest, and so on ad infinitum. Absolute
motion and absolute rest, therefore, like absolute
space, cannot be objects of experience. In other
words, we can never speak of one body as either in
motion or at rest, but only of different bodies as in
motion and at rest relatively to each other, in so
far as the distance between them changes or remains
the same. From this we see how it is possible to
construct or represent the combination of different
motions. We cannot add motion to motion in one
body, except by representing one of the motions as
taking place in the body itself, and the other in the
space it occupies. And this holds good whether the
motions are in the same or a different direction.
deter-
Quality.
2. Matter, as qualitatively defined, is 'that which Matter as
occupies space.' In this point of view it is con- mined in
sidered by Dynamics. But the occupation of space
by a body means the exclusion of other bodies from
that space: hence it implies a moving force, and, in
the first instance, a repulsive or expansive force.
This is the affirmative or positive side of the existence
490
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
of matter; but as, according to the principle of the
Anticipations of perception, affirmation cannot be ab-
solute, and every property of an object of experience
must be regarded as having a certain limit of degree,
so the intensity of this force must always be regarded
as something between nothing and infinity--as some-
thing which never can be altogether annihilated,
yet always can be transcended by a greater force.
Matter is, therefore, originally elastic, and though it
can always be pressed into a smaller space by the
application of a greater force, it can never be pene-
trated or destroyed. On the other hand, the repul-
sive or expansive force, though it be the fundamental
characteristic of matter, cannot be the only force in
it. For a matter determined only by such a force
would not occupy space; being purely expansive, it
could not limit itself, and as it could not be limited
by mere space, it must, therefore, disperse itself ad
infinitum. For the possibility of matter, therefore, as
occupying space, another force must be assumed, a
force which, as the negative or opposite of repulsive
force, is attractive. The existence of matter is
possible only as these two forces limit, and are limited
by each other. For it is to be observed that matter,
moved solely by an attractive force, would not occupy
space any more than matter moved solely by a
repulsive force. If the latter would disperse itself
ad infinitum, the former would vanish in a mathe-
matical point. Only by the interaction of the two, is
matter, as that which occupies space, possible. The
law of that interaction, however, is a matter to be
determined by observation and experiment. The
Newtonian law of the increase of attractive force,
inversely as the square of the distance, requires to
XII.
VIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL SCIENCES. 491
be supplemented by some general law of repul-
sion.
deter-
Relation.
3. Matter, as determined by the categories of Matter as
relation, is 'the moveable, in so far as it has mov- mined in
ing force.' In this point of view it is considered by
Mechanics. In Mechanics, the quantum of motion is
estimated not by velocity merely, as in Phoronomy, but
by velocity multiplied into mass. From the applica-
tion of the three Analogies of experience to matter
thus conceived, we get the three laws of Mechanics
(1), that the quantity of matter always remains the
same; (2), that all change of matter requires an
external cause (or, in other words, that a body
remains in its state of motion or rest, if it is not
made to change it by an external cause); (3), that
in all communication of motion, action and reaction
are equal. According to this law we must dismiss
all ideas of vis inertiæ, as a resistent force, which is
not also an active force and as motion is relative, a
body can never move another body, which relatively
to it is at rest. When, therefore, we consider the
bodies merely in relation to each other we must dis-
tribute the quantity of motion equally between
them. And as in Mechanics, quantity of motion is
estimated by mass multiplied into velocity, we must
conceive of the velocity of each body as being in-
versely as its mass.
deter-
Modality.
4. Finally, we come to modality. Matter is an Matter as
object of experience only through motion, and the mined in
application of the postulates of empirical thought to
it, in this point of view, enables us to lay down the
following principles: (1) The motion of a body in a
straight line in an empirical space is possible, for it
may be indifferently attributed either to the body or
21
492
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Difficulties
in Kant's
construc-
tion of
matter.
the space; and the motion of a body in relation to
no other body or empirical space outside of it, i.e., its
absolute motion, is impossible. (2.) The circular
movement of a body in relation to the space around
it is an actual predicate of it, and the opposite motion
of the surrounding space is a mere illusion. For a
circular motion, as being the continual change of
direction, requires by the second mechanical law a
new force to produce it at every moment. (3.)
Lastly, By the third mechanical law, to the motion
of a body whereby it moves another, the opposite
motion of that other is necessary.
On the ideas of the Metaphysical basis of Physics
we shall only make two remarks. The first is,
that Kant does not in any way attempt to show
how the idea of matter is derived from experience,
except by saying that it is by motion alone that outer
sense can be affected. Now if this means, as it seems X
to mean, that our organs of sense need to be stimu-
lated by the external motion of their object, the fact,
however true, is obviously irrelevant as an explana-
tion of the origin of our conception of matter. For
ere we can think of the organs of sense and of other
objects as acting on them, we must already possess
that conception. It is possible that Kant meant
merely that the perception of motion is the first
empirical element given under the form of outer
sense.¹ In that case we have merely the general
difficulty of combining the empirical with the a priori
element, a difficulty on which enough has been already
said. In the second place, we have to notice that,
¹ The true answer to this question from the transcendental point of
view has been already indicated, so far as is necessary for our purpose,
in Chapter X., p. 430.
XII. VIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL SCIENCES. 493
while Kant here suggests a construction of matter
out of two opposite forces, he does not put these
opposite forces on the same level. The repulsive
force belongs to the definition of matter; the attrac-
tive is said to be necessary to its possibility, but not
primarily to belong to its definition. This seems to be
a distinction without a difference; for if a definition
is to exclude what is necessary to the possibility of
the thing defined, (and necessary not because of any
external condition, but from the very nature of the
thing itself,) what can be its value? The truth seems
to be, that here, as in an earlier treatise on the same
subject to which we have before referred, the indivi-
dualistic principles of the Wolffian philosophy in
which Kant was first trained, partially maintain
themselves against his maturer thought. The monad
of Leibnitz was really exclusive of, and only ideally
related to the other monads : Kant makes both the
exclusion and the relation, both the repulsion and
the attraction, real. But he still conceives the former
as the primary determination of matter, and the latter
as secondary.¹
tance of
a dualism
of forces in
matter.
That matter, conceived as a subject of force, must Impor
be resolved into a duality of forces, is a thought which the idea of
had great influence on subsequent philosophy. It
was a fatal blow, whose efforts have not yet been
fully seen, to all Atomistic theories, and indeed to
all theories which explain away attraction or re-
duce it into a form of repulsion. When it has
been recognised that repulsion on the one side pre-
supposes attraction on the other: that in short
attraction can only be conceived as acting against
¹Cf. Hegel, Logik, i., p. 192, which passage contains an elaborate
criticism of Kant's ideas. Cf. also ante, p. 161.
494
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Kant's
general
sciences.
repulsion, and repulsion as acting against attraction:
it may easily be inferred that these two opposites are
no real independent entities, but factors of a higher
unity, which are only by abstraction separated from
each other. In reality, one force cannot be conceived
without the other, and therefore the truth is the
unity, which manifests itself in these opposite forms.
The development or defence of this thesis would
however be out of place here, where we wish only to
show the general bearings of Kant's metaphysic of
nature.
We may now sum up the results arrived at in this
view of the chapter, in relation to the system of the empirical
sciences. In Kant's view the name of science, in its
highest sense, can be given only to Mathematics, and
the pure part of Physics. Experimental Physics and
Chemistry, may claim the same title in a lower sense,
in so far as they are capable of being brought under
the Analogies of experience. Biology is science, in
so far as it is capable of being brought under the
same principles: but in so far as we need the proble-
matical conception of final causes in order to inves-
tigate the phenomena of life, we introduce into these
phenomena a mode of thought which it is impossible
to verify. It may be necessary for us thus to
represent the living being, but we cannot say that
it is necessary for the living being to be as we
represent it; for we can never justify, from the
transcendental point of view, the application of the
category of final causality, as we can justify the ap-
plication of the categories of substance, causality and
reciprocity. Lastly, Empirical Psychology, in so far
as it deals with an object known only under the form
of inner sense, and therefore with an object incapable
XII. VIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL SCIENCES.
495
of being identified as a substance, or of having its states
determined in relation to each other by the categories
of causality or reciprocity, is excluded from the strict
pale of science. Besides the general limitation of
science to the sphere of experience, there is therefore,
in Kant's view, a special limitation of it to the object
of outer sense; and even to the phenomena of the
inorganic world; a limitation, it may be remarked,
which is a necessary consequence of the doctrine that
experience is limited by imagination. At the same
time, we must remember, that, besides the empirical
sciences, there is another department of knowledge
fully entitled to the name of science, and which
Kant distinguishes from them as 'the science of the
Empirical,' or, in other words, the science of Trans-
cendental Logic, which deals with the universal
conditions under which all objects of Experience are
known.
496
CHAPTER XIII.
DISTINCTION OF PHENOMENA AND NOUMENA, AND THE
AMPHIBOLY OF THE REFLECTIVE CONCEPTIONS.
The idea
of the
Noume-
non.
Does it
originate
in sense?
AS
S Kant approaches the end of the Analytic, the
question of the nature of knowledge passes into
the question of the limitation of knowledge. Thus
the two chapters, On the ground of the distinction of
Phenomena and Noumena, and On the Amphiboly of
Reflexion, in which he shows the impossibility of
´any knowledge of objects not presented as experi-
ence, prepare the way for the Dialectic, in which he
discusses the sources of the illusory appearance of
such knowledge.
Whence comes the idea of a Noumenon? Certainly
not from perception, for perceptions in themselves
cannot suggest the idea of an object which, ex hypo-
thesi, is not perceived. The Esthetic showed that
perception takes place under certain forms, which
are at once a priori and objective, i.e., which belong
to the mind itself and not to the matter of the affec-
tions that come to it from without, yet which are
objectively valid, because they are forms under
which that matter is necessarily represented in being
referred to objects. And to this, in the Analytic, it
PHENOMENA AND NOUMENA.
497
was added that the very reference to objects, which
is implied in the translation of sensations into per-
ceptions, is possible only by means of the categories.
As, therefore, it is through the understanding that
we know even phenomenal objects as such, so it would
seem that we must look to the same faculty for the
revelation of any objects that are not phenomenal, if
such revelation be possible.
Under-
But, it must now be asked, can we get the idea of or in the
a Noumenon from the understanding with its cate- standing?
gories? And again, the answer must be negative.
The categories, apart from the perceptions, have no
'objective significance;' they are forms through which
the perceptions may be thought as objective, but they
do not in themselves enable us to determine any
object as such. If we abstract from the reference
to possible experience, we can say nothing about the
possibility of objects corresponding to the categories,
and hence we cannot by their means make any syn-
thetic judgments regarding objects that are beyond
the sphere of experience.
Or in the
Appercep-
Lastly, we possess the idea of an object in general, transcen
but this will not answer the purpose; it is too in- dental
definite to be in itself the knowledge of anything, tion?
being merely an x, which correlates with the unity of
self-consciousness. It is but a unity in the manifold
which corresponds with the unity of the Ego that
apprehends it. And this abstractum is realised and
determined only by the application of the categories
to the matter of sense. In itself it is but the idea
of a sensuous object in general.
species of
Noumena.
Thus at first sight it would seem that neither in The two
sense, nor in understanding, nor in the pure apper-
ception, have we any ground for the conception of a
2 I
498
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
noumenon, or for the distinction of it from pheno-
mena. It is necessary, however, as Kant urges, to
distinguish two senses of the word noumenon-a neg-
ative and a positive sense. In a negative sense, a
noumenon would be an object not given in sensuous
perception; in a positive sense, a noumenon would
be an object given in a non-sensuous, ï.e., an in-
tellectual perception. Now a noumenon, in the latter
sense, is utterly beyond our reach. We are so far
from being able to comprehend its possibility that
we cannot even form to ourselves any idea of the
faculty to which alone it could be presented; we
cannot picture to ourselves a perceptive understand-
ing. But the conception of a noumenon in the
negative sense is still possible to us, and, indeed, it
is forced upon us by the criticism of our powers of
perception and understanding. "The conception of
a noumenon, i.e., of a thing which is to be thought
not as an object of sense, but as a thing in itself
(the object of understanding only), is not self-contra-
dictory; for we cannot say that sense is the only
possible mode of perception. Nay, this conception
is even necessary to prevent us from extending
sensuous perception to things in themselves, and so
to limit the objective validity of the knowledge
derived from sense. We give the name of noumena
to all objects, to which sensuous perception does not
extend, just for the purpose of showing that such
knowledge is not all that understanding can think.
Yet in the end we have to acknowledge, that we
cannot understand even the possibility of such
noumena, and that the sphere of knowledge, which
we thus reserve beyond the region of phenomena, is
for us quite empty. In short, we have an under-
XIII.
499
PHENOMENA AND NOUMENA.
1
standing that problematically extends beyond the
phenomenal; but no perception, and not even the
conception of a possible perception of objects beyond
the sphere of sense, on which the understanding
might be used assertorially." Thus "understand-
ing limits the sensibility without extending its
own sphere. It warns sense not to presume to
speak of things in themselves, but only of pheno-
mena; and, in so doing, it sets before itself a
thing in itself, but only as a transcendental object,
which is the cause of phenomena, and not itself a
phenomenon, and which, therefore, can be thought
neither as quantity nor as reality, nor as substance,
etc., (because all these conceptions require sensuous
forms, in which alone they determine objects for us).
Of this transcendental object we are unable to say
whether it is in ourselves or out of us, whether it
would be annihilated with our sensibility, or would
continue to exist even if we no longer perceived it.
If we choose to call it a noumenon, in order to show
that we do not represent it as sensuous, we are at
liberty to do so. But, as we cannot apply to it any
one of the categories, the conception of it is for us
empty and meaningless, except in so far as it calls
our attention to the limits of our sensuous experience,
by marking off a vacant space which we cannot fill
up by the aid, either of possible experience, or of the
pure understanding.' The misunderstanding, by
which we are tempted to treat noumena as positively
determined objects, is caused by the fact that the
conditions of the objective determination of percep-
tions are prior to, or presupposed in, actual percep-
tions. Apperception, and with it thought, precedes
2 p. 234: Tr., p. 206.
"
¹p. 210: Tr., p. 187.
" 2
500
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
How can
we know
of know-
ledge?
any possible definite arrangement of our ideas.
Hence we think of an object in general and give it a
sensuous determination, but at the same time we
distinguish the object, taken in abstracto, from the
particular mode in which we apprehend it by sense.
And though it be true that such bare thought is
but a logical form without content, yet in this case
it seems to be a mode in which the object exists
in itself, apart from the limits of our sense percep-
tion.” 1
So far we have simply given Kant's view, as he
the limits presents it to us; but when we examine it closely,
we find ourselves involved in no small difficulty.
The question is-how are we able to discern the
limited nature of our experience? How, if we are
confined to phenomena, can we discern them to be
phenomena, seeing that this implies a contrast with
noumena, which, ex hypothesi, we cannot know?
Kant answers that the noumenon is for us purely a
limitative conception (Grenz-begriff), and denotes
a merely problematical extension of reality beyond
the sphere of phenomena. There are certain among
the conditions of our experience, which make it im-
possible that we should conceive the objects of such
experience to be absolute realities. But our know-
ledge of absolute reality is purely of a negative
character, and the assertion of the distinction of
noumena from phenomena is justifiable, only when it
is taken as another way of expressing the conscious-
ness of our own limitations.2
Difference
in the
answers
derived
from the
Esthetic
and the
Analytic.
One great difficulty in understanding Kant's mean-
ing arises from the fact that the opposition of pheno-
mena and noumena seems to be based on dis-
1
¹ p. 235: Tr., p. 207.
2 Cf. Proleg., § 59, etc.
XIII.
501
PHENOMENA AND NOUMENA.
tinct and even opposite grounds in the Analytic
and the Esthetic. In the Esthetic, Kant presup-
poses the existence of things in themselves as affect-
ing us, and argues that there are certain elements in
our knowledge, which could not be introduced into
the mind by means of these affections, but must be
due to the forms of its own sensibility, viz., the forms
of space and time. For these forms are the ground
of universal and necessary judgments, which relate
by anticipation to all the objects of experience, and
which, therefore, cannot themselves be derived from
experience. And as these are the forms of all per-
ception, so, for this very reason, no perception can
present to us things as they are. If perception were
of things in themselves, it must be altogether empiri-
cal; as it is a priori, it can only be a perception of
phenomena.¹
Now this reasoning seems conclusive just because
the Esthetic presupposes an opposition between the
mind and things in themselves, and inquires only how
the latter can be presented to the former through its
own affections and sensations. It presupposes in fact a
dualism between the subject and the object, a dualism
which it is left for the understanding to establish.
But the Analytic teaches us that the understanding
is incapable of establishing any such dualism. The
understanding enables us, not to refer sensations to
noumenal objects that produce them, but simply to
combine the manifold of sense in accordance with
conceptions, and so to determine phenomenal objects
for these conceptions. Hence it does not suggest
any contrast between these objects and a higher
noumenal reality. Nor is it possible in the Analytic
1 Cf. Prolegomena, § 11: Tr., p. 46.
502
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
to repeat the argument used in the Esthetic in
reference to the forms of sense, and to say that
because the principles of the understanding are uni-
versal and necessary, therefore they are due to the
mind and not to things; for it is just these universal
and necessary principles that enable us to determine
objects as such. On the contrary, the argument be-
comes inverted. Knowledge must now be proved to be
phenomenal because we have not a perceptive under-
standing, i.e., because the universal and necessary
principles of the understanding are applied to a con-
tingent matter, to a matter which has no necessary
connexion with them. In other words, the proof of
the phenomenal character of the objects of our ex-
perience must now be found, not in the fact that we
can partially anticipate experience by universal and
necessary judgments, but in the opposite fact that
there is a part of knowledge which we cannot so
anticipate.¹ In the Esthetic the argument is that,
if we know things in themselves, our knowledge
must be purely empirical: from the point of view of
the Analytic, the argument must be that, if we
knew things in themselves, our knowledge would
be purely a priori. These two views are so far
in agreement, as absolute empiricism and absolute
a priori knowledge would both imply an identity
of subject and object; in the one case, the mind
would be completely lost in things, in the other, it
would create its own object. But as on the former
alternative there would be no mind at all, it is the
latter alternative only that we need consider.
¹ If the categories are said not to be applicable to the thing in
itself, it is because they are supposed to be separable from the Apper-
ception; cf. ante., p. 384.
XIII.
503
PHENOMENA AND NOUMENA.
ception of
non im-
unattain-
of know-
Now, from this point of view, it becomes obvious The con-
that the conception of a noumenon can arise only in an a Noume-
intelligence that possesses an ideal of knowledge, plies an
to which its actual knowledge does not correspond. able ideal
And this ideal cannot be presented to it either by sense, ledge.
or by the understanding, as these have been hitherto
analysed by Kant. It is only in so far as the intelli-
gence, in applying the categories and by their means
organising experience, is at the same time guided by
an idea of truth, to which this process and its results
do not completely correspond, that it can become con-
scious of the distinction of phenomena and noumena.
And such an idea, according to the Kantian division
of the faculties, can be derived only from the reason.
Kant, therefore, in bringing the question of the limit
of knowledge into the Analytic, anticipates the
natural course of his argument, and seems to give to
the understanding more than its due. We may,
may, how-
ever, explain the apparent error in this way. In the
Deduction of the Categories, Kant was already
obliged to refer to the unity of apperception, as the
source of all the categories, and at the same time
to observe that none of the categories completely
corresponds to that unity, seeing that they all imply
a given difference.¹ Out of this observation arose the
idea of a perceptive understanding, which should
have no need of categories to apprehend the differ-
ence of the object, seeing that all the manifold which
it apprehended would be developed from itself. The
idea of a unity of thought that transcends all differ-
ence, or absorbs all difference into itself, is in fact
already interwoven with the whole of Kant's argu-
¹ The analytic unity of apperception implies, but is essentially distinct
from, the synthetic unity.
504
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Kant's
view of the
errors of
Leibnitz.
If by pure
thought
we can
know
objects,
ments, and without it his continual assertion of the
defects of our knowledge would have no meaning.
Yet it is not less true that such an idea finds its
proper place and explanation, if anywhere, only in
the Dialectic.
The origin of the Kantian doctrine of the limita-
tion of our knowledge is made somewhat clearer by
the Appendix to the Analytic, in which he criticises the
Leibnitzian Monadism. The error of Leibnitz, ac-
cording to Kant, was two-fold; he supposed (1) that
knowledge is possible by means of conception without
perception, and he supposed (2) that the objects of
knowledge are things in themselves, and not merely
phenomena. These two mistakes spring from one
source; for, unless Leibnitz had held that the under-
standing can determine objects without aid from
sense, he could not possibly have maintained that its
objects are things in themselves. It is because the
understanding is in itself merely analytic, or at best
produces out of itself only a few general conceptions,
that Kant denies to it any relation to objects,
except in so far as it uses its conceptions to bind
together the scattered manifold of sense.
Its objects
are held to be phenomena, and phenomena only, just
because it has no power of specifying the pure gener-
ality of its own conceptions, or because it is, in Kantian
language, a discursive and not a perceptive under-
standing.
Now if, like Leibnitz, we held conceptions to be
in themselves objectively valid, we should have a
Monadism right to transfer to objects whatever is true of the
corresponding conceptions. Whatever relations,
therefore, we discovered in conceptions as such, these
we might at once attribute to the objects of these
is true
Philoso-
phy.
XIII.
505
AMPHIBOLY OF REFLEXION.
conceptions. On this hypothesis we should at once
be able to lay down certain a priori principles in
regard to the connexion of objects and also of the
elements in the conception of any one object. In
the first place, we should assert the 'identity of in-
discernibles,' that is, the principle, that objects in
which there are no distinguishable elements are
numerically identical with each other. In the second
place, we should assert that qualities, essentially
opposed to each other, cannot exist in one object;
inasmuch as position and negation cannot logically be
united in one conception. In the third place, as the
thought of an object begins with the determination
of what it is in itself, and proceeds logically from
this to the discovery of its relations, we should assert
that every real object has an inner nature, which is
independent of, and prior to, its relation to other
beings. Lastly, as the matter of conceptions, that is,
the elements combined together in them, must logi-
cally be determined before we proceed to ascertain
the manner of their combination, we should assert
that the matter of things is prior to their form.
It was on these principles that Leibnitz developed
his system of Monadism, and pre-established Har-
mony. Hence he maintained, first, that the world
is a collection of individual substances, each of which
has a special distinguishing character that makes it
unlike any other substance :--secondly, that there is
no real opposition between, or in, substances; for
though finite substances have a limit or negative
side to their existence, this is merely a want or ab-
sence of something present elsewhere, and involves
no positive conflict of elements :-thirdly, that each
of the individual substances has an inner nature in-
506
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON
But the
necessity
tion dis-
whole sys-
tem.
dependent of and prior to its relation to the other;
and that, as all the qualities by which we distinguish
material substances, even those of impenetrability
and extension, are mere external relations, so there
must be, in every such substance, either thought or
something analogous to thought; for only mind has
an inner nature, and to whatever we attribute an
inner nature, we must, for that reason, attribute
something like a mind: lastly, that the connexion
of substances must be taken as a form, which is
superinduced on an independently given matter.
Hence he conceived time and space as forms of
relation, which are posterior to, and dependent on,
substances in time and space, and "the peculiar
value which each of these seems to have indepen-
dent of and prior to things," has to be explained
away, as due to the confusion or obscurity of our
conceptions.
Now all this erroneous system arises simply from
the neglect of the true conditions of objective know-
ledge. "Leibnitz intellectualised perception just
as Locke sensualised the conceptions of the under-
standing." Hence he did not understand either the
limitation of our knowledge to phenomena, or the
conditions to which, by this limitation, it is sub-
jected.
But from the point of view of the Critique of Pure
of percep- Reason, it is easy to overturn every one of these
proves the principles. For (1) indistinguishable conceptions do
not necessarily imply identical objects. Ere we can
say that two objects are identical, we must know
whether they are presented to us at the same time,
and in the same place. As all parts of space and
time are alike, so in space and time there may exist
XIII.
507
AMPHIBOLY OF REFLEXION.
any number of like objects, provided they do not
occupy one place at one time. (2) Logical negation
and affirmation cannot go together, and hence if we
follow the laws of pure thought-the laws, that is,
of identity and contradiction-it is impossible for any
opposition to exist in or between realities.¹ But the
same thing does not hold good of phenomena. It is
possible, e.g., for a planet to have both a centrifugal
and a centripetal tendency impressed on it at once,
or for a stone to be driven at once toward the west
and toward the east by contrary forces; and the
zero, which is the result in such a case, must be
regarded, not as a mere privation or non-existence,
but as a counterpoise of opposites,-in which there
is more reality than in one simple unimpeded, and
therefore manifested, tendency. (3) While external
relations of things as determined by pure thought
would imply and presuppose an inner nature be-
longing to the thing itself, (for how can we think
of relations without presupposing things related?)
the case is different with phenomena. For these
are presented to us only under certain a priori
conditions of their relation or connexion with each
other, and they have, properly speaking, no exis-
tence in themselves, apart from their relations.
Thus the very properties of phenomena, which
constitute the substance or substratum of all their
determination, are repulsive and attractive forces
and therefore nothing but relations. Lastly, the
logical law that we must have a determinable matter
before we can determine it by a form: in other words,
that we must have two conceptions given before we
can determine their relation in a judgment, cannot be
¹ Cf. ante, p. 145. .
508
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Kant ac
cepts the
logical,
while he
meta-
principles
of Leib-
nitz.
applied to the phenomenal objects of experience.
For we cannot reduce time and space into relations
of previously given objects, without explaining away
their essential character, or reducing them, as Leibnitz
did, into confused and obscure ideas.
6
The philosophy of Leibnitz, therefore, is to Kant
the type of a pure philosophy of the understanding,
which bases itself on the conception of individual
existence without any regard to the conditions of
perception. And the office of Transcendental Re-
flexion' is to detect the consequent Amphiboly,' or
substitution of the unknowable objectivity of things
in themselves for the knowable objectivity of phe-
nomena. This office it discharges by directing
attention to the faculties through which objects are
known, and by showing that, in the supposed know-
ledge of things in themselves, there is wanting one
of the essential constituents of objective truth. When
we realise the mere generality of conceptions, as such,
and the necessity of sense in order to individualise
them, we cannot but discern that the Leibnitzian
mode of philosophising ends in nothing.
Now, in all this reasoning, it is to be observed that,
Kant adopts the principles of Leibnitz in their logical,
rejects the while he rejects them in their real bearing. If pure
physical, thought could apprehend objects, it is admitted that
it must apprehend them in this way. And, on the
other hand, if things in themselves could be objects
of knowledge, it is admitted that they must be deter-
mined according to these principles. Thought in itself,
therefore, must apprehend its objects by an affirmation
which is independent of negation, in an identity which
has no relation to difference; it must apprehend their
inner nature prior to their relations, and their matter
XIII.
509
AMPHIBOLY OF REFLEXION.
prior to their form. If we do not thus apprehend ob-
jects, it is because, in our experience, pure thought does
not abide in itself, but is put in relation to a foreign
element derived from another source. The pure white
beam of the light of intelligence is broken, in our
experience, on the manifold of sense, and thus the
object which we apprehend acquires a character alto-
gether different from that which the understanding
of itself would give it. Affirmation and negation,
identity and difference, inner and outer, matter and
form, cease to be separated from each other, not
because their own essential nature, as conceptions,
involves their unity with each other, but by an
external necessity, which is due to the dependence
of conception on perception. And, again, it is
because of this external though necessary com-
bination of disparate elements in our knowledge,
that we are obliged to regard its objects as only
phenomena.
Logic
Experi-
Experience
Logic.
A careful consideration of these statements of Kant turns
Kant seems to show that they imply two inconsistent against
points of view. Pure thought, it is maintained, fails ence, and
to determine objects as such. Why? Because it against
is in itself analytic, and can only determine a given
matter. Something else, therefore, is required for
knowledge; and yet, just because of this something
else, our knowledge is denied to be absolute know-
ledge. Surely this is to play fast and loose with the
limits of experience, and to exalt the understanding
into the absolute rule of knowledge, at the very
moment when it is also denied that it can be a source
of knowledge at all. Either knowledge is possible to
thought in itself and by its own laws; or, if it is not
thus possible, then the presence of the other element,
510
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
He is still
influenced
by the
Wolffian
Philo-
sophy.
which is necessary for knowledge, cannot make the
knowledge phenomenal. It is not admissible at
once to deny knowledge to be of things in them-
selves because it is not pure thought, and to deny
pure thought in itself to be capable of any know-
ledge. Yet Kant does both. He criticises pure
thought—as pure thought was conceived by himself
as well as by his Leibnitzian and Wolffian pre-
decessors by a standard derived from experience;
and then, by a sudden change of front, he criticises
the unity of experience by means of an ideal derived
from pure thought.
It throws much light on the Critique, to reflect
that as is manifest through the whole course of his
development-the mind of Kant was to the last deeply
impregnated with the modes of thought which it was
his business to combat. "He expressed, in the lan-
guage of Dogmatism, a philosophy, whose object was
radically to destroy all Dogmatism," and he did so
just because he had never entirely freed himself from
the prejudices of the system which he destroyed.
He was the discoverer of a new Logic which repre-
sents the real synthetic movement of thought; yet
he introduced it, as it were, with an apology, as
something which is forced upon us by reason of the
limitations of the human understanding. The pro-
cess of the old Logic, he seemed to think, could
alone reveal the absolute truth of things to us, if by
us absolute truth were attainable. But, unfortun-
ately, truth is not thus attainable, and therefore the
strict law of pure thought must bend to the exi-
gencies of a mind which cannot act except on a
foreign matter, though this limitation deprives it of
the power of knowing anything but phenomena.
XIII.
511
AMPHIBOLY OF REFLEXION.
Even when Kant is recognising the emptiness of the
thought which separates the positive from the nega-
tive, identity from difference, he is still unable to
free himself from the prejudice, that such thought
alone is in perfect harmony with itself and with
truth.
Again, Kant was the founder of a new philosophy,
which was fatal to the Leibnitzian, as well as to the
Lockian, Individualism, just because he recognised
that time and space are logically prior to things in
time and space.
For thus he broke down the oppo-
sition between the individual and the universal, be-
tween the thing in itself and its relations.¹ But this
doctrine, again, he confines to phenomena, and he
still upholds the absolute separation of inner and
outer, form and matter, as implied in the necessary
law of pure intelligence. Thought, if determined by
the law of understanding in itself—or, what is the
same thing, by the understanding dealing with things
in themselves would begin with the determination
of things as individual substances, and proceed to
the determination of their relations. It is only in
dealing with things given in perception, that it is
forced to proceed in the opposite way, and to pre-
suppose the universal form of the relations of things,
ere it can deal with the things themselves. Yet this
necessity, again, makes it impossible for it to appre-
hend any reality which is other than phenomenal.
The power of an early accepted mode of thought even
over a mind that is striving to free itself from it, was
never more remarkably illustrated than in the admis-
sion of Kant, that, if any knowledge of things in
themselves were possible, the philosophy of Leibnitz
1 Cf. ante, p. 165.
512
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
The four
categories
of Re-
flexion.
would contain it. When we have examined the
Dialectic, it will probably become clear that without
this inconsistent doctrine, at once of the emptiness
and of the absoluteness, of the individualistic Logic
and Psychology, the whole position taken up in
the Critique both in relation to experience and
to that which is beyond experience, becomes un-
tenable.
1
Before leaving this subject, it may be worth while
to consider why it is that Kant supposes 'transcen-
dental Reflexion' to be confined to these four points
of view. "Reflexion," he says, "has nothing to
do with objects, nor is it its aim directly to acquire
conceptions of them. It is the state of mind in
which we set ourselves to find out the subjective
conditions under which we can acquire such concep-
tions. For it is only by the consciousness of the
relations of given representations to our different
sources of knowledge that we can determine aright
their relation to each other." It is, however, not
easy to see why many other categories, such as sub-
stance and accident, or possibility and reality, might
not be introduced in this connexion. The scholastic
mode of thought which Kant is describing, and, in
relation to phenomena, assailing, affects all the cate-
gories that express relation or reflexion. It was the
error of the schoolmen, inherited by Wolff and even
by Leibnitz, to treat whatever elements of thought are
distinguishable as separate realities to divide part
and whole, cause and effect, &c., from each other,
and regard them as independent of each other. And
it would not be difficult to show, in the manner of
Kant, that the comparison of conceptions in reference
1 ¹ p. 24: Tr., p. 190.
XIII.
513
AMPHIBOLY OF REFLEXION.
to every one of the categories of reflexion would fall
out differently, according as we did or did not
abstract from the conditions of time and space.
Kant's selection is suggested partly by Leibnitz and
partly by the four heads of his own categories, but
he gives us no direct statement of the principle by
which he was guided.
2 K
514
CHAPTER XIV.
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. THE NATURE AND
ORIGIN OF THE IDEAS OF REASON.
Philoso-
phical
Positivism
must be
based on
Criticism.
WE
E now reach the proper region of Metaphysic,
the region of ideas in the highest sense of the
word. Kant's treatment of this part of science has
no less originality than his views on the basis of
Physics and Mathematics. The conclusions he
reaches, indeed, are among the commonplaces of
what, in a wider sense, we may call modern
Positivism. But no one, except Kant, has sought
to find the ultimate ground for these conclusions in
the very nature of experience; no one, except Kant,
has endeavoured to account for the power of non-
empirical ideas over the human mind in spite of their
asserted emptiness and baselessness, or to show what
use they have in the organisation of knowledge. But
a philosophical Positivism, if it is to rest on anything
deeper than a general assertion of the failure of all
past attempts to construct philosophy, must be based
on some such reasonings as those which are contained
in the Kantian Dialectic. In this chapter we shall
first, according to our usual method, give an account
of Kant's argument, and then add what criticisms
seem to be necessary.
THE IDEAS OF REASON.
515
The objects of Metaphysic are of the highest
interest to man, but the foregoing enquiries seem to
show that those objects are quite beyond his reach.
If knowledge is experience, and all the objects of
experience must be given through sense, it is obvious
that God, the Universe in its totality, and the Soul,
cannot be known. For, whatever be their nature,
they are not objects which are capable of being pre-
sented through sense.
of the ob-
the meta-
sciences
retical and
interests.
We cannot, however, be content with this merely Connection
negative conclusion. For it is, at least, certain that jects of
we think of these objects as if they were real. There physical
are even three so-called sciences which pretend to with theo-
deal with them--viz., Rational Psychology, Cosmo practical
logy, and Theology. Now are they merely
themes of scientific speculation; they are closely
bound up with all the great interests of our
life, both theoretical and practical. Of their rela-
tion to practical life we need not speak here, fur-
ther than to notice that morality presupposes the
three ideas of God, Freedom, and Immortality;
and that these again involve a belief in, if not a
knowledge of, the objects of the three metaphysi-
cal sciences. On the other hand, their theoretical
value will be seen, if we consider that all science
necessarily aims at unity and system. Science
necessarily seeks to find one principle in all the
multiplicity of phenomena, and one system in all the
apparent confusion of the world; how, then, can it
avoid postulating an object in correspondence with
its endeavours? Is it not this postulate which, with
more or less distinctness of consciousness, gives rise
to all scientific curiosity? If it be the aim of rational
Psychology to determine the soul or subject of
516
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Is reason a
source of
a priori
concep-
tions?
thought, through all the multiplicity of its faculties
and states, as a simple unity; if it be the aim of
rational Cosmology to gather all the variety of
objects of experience into the complete system of one
universe; and if it be the aim of rational Theology
to find an absolute unity of all things, a unity which
explains and subordinates all differences, even the
difference of subject and object; then it would seem
that these different branches of Metaphysic are only
attempting to realise and define the objects which
all science presupposes, and without which its efforts
would be meaningless.
If, therefore, notwithstanding all this, we hold to
our previous conclusion, that none but empirical
objects can be known, and that metaphysical science
is illusory, we must be prepared to explain more
fully the nature of an illusion, which is so closely
connected with all our intellectual and practical life.
For this, whatever its source, is at least a persistent
illusion, an illusion which does not cease with ex-
planation, any more than the moon ceases to appear
enlarged as it approaches the horizon, when we have
discovered that the causes of that appearance are
subjective. In both cases, therefore, we must trace
back the illusion to something in the very nature of
our faculties of knowledge and in both cases a
true theory or explanation, though it cannot take
away the illusory appearance, will prevent it from
deceiving us.¹
As in our search for the categories, we may best
enter on the discussion of this subject through the
gate of the ordinary Logic. Logic speaks not only
of apprehension and judgment, but also of a process.
¹p. 241: Tr., p. 211.
XIV.
517
THE IDEAS OF REASON.
and a faculty which we have not yet considered, the
process of reasoning and the faculty of reason.
Accordingly we have now to enquire, whether this
faculty is merely logical and formal, or whether it is
not also the source of certain a priori conceptions of
objects. For, as in the case of the understanding, it
is possible that the formal use of reason may guide
us to the discovery of its real use.
faculty of
Now reasoning is the process of mediate inference, It is the
i.e., inference through a middle term. In a syllogism, principles.
there is, first, a general rule apprehended by the
understanding; secondly, the subsumption of a con-
ception under the condition of this rule by judgment;
and lastly—what is the peculiar work of reason-the
determination of this conception by the predicate of
the rule. In other words, a syllogism is a judgment
made by means of the subsumption of its condition
(the middle term) under a rule. The problem of
reason in its logical use is always to connect a given
predicate with a given subject, and the major of the
syllogism supplies the rule by which this connection
may be made. Or, starting from the conception of
a subject, reason seeks, by analysis of it, to find some
more general conception by means of which it may
be brought under a rule: nor is its work com-
pletely finished, till it finds the most general con-
dition, under which such determination is possible.
"The proposition 'Caius is mortal,' might be got by
us out of experience, by means of the understanding.
But, as a rational being, I seek for a conception con-
taining the condition under which the predicate is
connected with the subject, and this I find in the
conception of man. Then having subsumed this
condition, taken in all its extent, under the rule (All
518
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
What are
principles
in the
highest
sense of
the word?
men are mortal), I determine the subject (Caius)
accordingly." The major proposition or rule may, of
course, be subjected to the same process, and this
may be repeated again and again in a series of pro-
syllogisms, till we arrive at the first absolute and
sufficient condition for the application of the predicate
to the subject. Now, this is just saying, that the
aim of reason is to find a principle, by which the
combinations of our thought may be explained, and
that it can only be satisfied with a first principle.
Reason is, therefore, the faculty of principles, or the
faculty that gives unity to knowledge by means of
principles. And if it has any real use, if there are
any a priori conceptions of objects involved in the
very nature of reason, we may expect that these
conceptions will furnish the first principles of all our
knowledge.¹
1
For the purpose of formal Logic, any general pro-
position, inasmuch as it can be made the major of a
syllogism, may serve as a principle. But, in the
narrower and proper sense of the word, we can give
the name of principle only to a proposition, which
forms an absolute beginning for knowledge-which
does not depend on any other proposition, and on
which all other propositions depend. Now no em-
pirical generalisation can have this character, for in
no empirical generalisation is the subject necessarily,
and therefore immediately, connected with the pre-
dicate. It is always a fair question to ask, why a
particular predicate is connected with a particular
subject, so long as it is connected with it empirically,
and not contained in it; and the answer to such a
question must be given in a series of prosyllogisms,
¹ p. 243 etc.: Tr., p. 213.
XIV.
519
THE IDEAS OF REASON.
by which the cause of the connection is assigned,
and the cause of that cause ad infinitum. Besides,
all such propositions relating to matters of fact, pre-
suppose what we have hitherto called the a priori
principles of the understanding, and, for that reason,
cannot themselves be regarded as principles.
1
principles
Under-
principles
highest
Can we then regard even the principles of the Are the
understanding, as principles of knowledge in this of the
highest sense? ¹ This also is impossible, if we standing
have rightly defined their nature in the Analytic. in the
For the principles of the understanding are not the sense?
pure categories, which in themselves have no objec-
tive meaning. It is only when we subsume the pure
forms of perception under them, that the categories
become principles of a priori synthesis and conditions
of possible experience. As, then, it is only in rela-
tion to a given matter, that the understanding is syn-
thetic, so its principles cannot be regarded as first
principles of synthesis, or absolute starting-points for
knowledge. Its synthesis always has a presupposi-
tion. When, e.g., we say 'Everything that happens
has a cause,' the conception of what happens does
not in itself involve the conception of a cause; but
the principle of causality shows how we may attain a
definite empirical apprehension of that which happens,
i.e., by considering it as an effect. But the necessity
of a conception, with a view to empirical knowledge
is a different thing from the immediate necessity of a
principle, which rests entirely upon itself.
of law are
It appears, then, that what is necessary to con- Principles
stitute a first principle is, that it should be a syn- attainable.
1 In German Kant is able to use the two words 'Principien' and
‘Grundsätze' to distinguish the principles of reason and of under-
standing.
520 THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
thetical proposition based on a pure conception. Of
the meaning and use of such a principle, we may
find an illustration in the codification of the law. For
the aim of codification is to simplify legislation, and
legislation can only be simplified by reducing the
endless multiplicity of civil statutes to a unity of
principle. Now this is quite a possible thing, since
the laws of civil society are, in their idea, only the
limitation of the freedom of each member of society
to conditions which make it consistent with the free-
dom of all the members. These laws, therefore,
relate to that which is essentially the product of
our own activity. In the region of practice, human
reason has true causality, and ideas are efficient
causes of existences in harmony with them.
Here, therefore, truth is to be discovered not by
looking to what is, but to what ought to be.
"The
Platonic Republic has often been contemned as an
empty dream and Brucker especially finds a peculiar
absurdity in the Platonic assertion, that no prince
could rule well if he did not guide himself by ideas.
But a constitution of the greatest possible human
freedom, a constitution that only determines the
conditions, under which the freedom of each can
subsist consistently with the freedom of all, (which
must not be confounded with a constitution on the
greatest happiness principle, for that could only
exist as a result of the other), is at least a necessary
idea of reason, and it must always be present to the
true legislator, not only in the first sketch of his
constitution, but in all the particular laws of his
state. In considering such an idea, we must, in the
first instance, abstract from all present hindrances
to its realisation-hindrances which may perhaps
XIV.
521
THE IDEAS OF REASON.
spring, not so much from the inevitable limits of
humanity, as from the neglect of true ideas in legis-
lation. For nothing can be more harmful and un-
worthy of a philosopher, than the vulgar spirit of
deference to so-called adverse experience, when, in
truth, this experience would never have existed, if
at the proper time the regulations of civil society
had been modelled upon the ideas of reason.
1
can we
principles
ledge?
But while we may reasonably seek in our own But how
reason for ideas which shall form objective principles have first
of morality and law, it is quite another thing to seek of know-
there for principles of knowledge, i.e., for principles
which have their origin purely in the mind, and yet
enable us to know objects not produced by the mind.
Such an attempt seems, indeed, to carry absurdity on
the face of it. How out of pure thought are we to
know things given independently of pure thought?
The knowledge we get from the pure understanding
is not analogous to this, for, though its principles of
synthesis precede experience, they are justified not
irom themselves, but as the grounds of the possibility
of experience. Here, however, what is required is
a knowledge of objects by a synthesis of pure
thought, which is neither derived from experience
nor presupposed in it, and, indeed, which neither is,
nor can be, realised in experience.
istics of
ciples re-
However this question may be determined, (and it Character-
is the object of the Dialectic to consider it), we can now the prin-
lay down certain characters which must belong to the quired.
ideas of reason: we can see what is the kind of know-
ledge to which reason points, and which is needed to
satisfy it. In the first place, it is a knowledge which
is related to the knowledge we get through the
¹ p. 255: Tr., p. 222.
1
522
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
understanding, in somewhat the same way as the prin-
ciples of the understanding are related to the manifold
of sense.
For just as the understanding gives unity
to the perceptions by bringing them under its rules,
so reason seeks to give unity to the rules of the un-
derstanding by bringing them under principles. It
seeks, in short, to give complete unity and universal-
ity to the work of the understanding. Hence it does
not relate itself immediately to the perceptions of
sense. It presupposes the work of the understanding,
and would not be possible apart from that work, but
it sets before the understanding an ideal of complete-
ness, and unity, which the understanding itself could
never suggest.¹
In the second place, the unity and universality to
which reason points is nothing less than the Uncon-
ditioned. For reason goes back by prosyllogisms
from condition to condition, and can never find rest
in anything but an absolute first principle, or a con-
dition which has itself no previous condition. Thus
even in its logical use, reason seeks for the uncondi-
tioned to complete and give unity to its knowledge
of the conditioned. And if, in its transcendental use,
it is the source of certain peculiar conceptions, which
have objective value, these conceptions must be ideas
of the unconditioned. In other words, if we assert
that reason supplies out of itself a knowledge of the
things which are its objects, we mean simply that,
wherever the conditioned is given, there reason itself
supplies the whole series of its conditions. And this
is equivalent to saying that reason gives the uncondi-
tioned for all conditioned existence presented to us
in experience.
1
¹ p. 248: Tr., p. 217.
XIV.
523
THE IDEAS OF REASON.
Now this step from conditioned to unconditioned
implies a pure a priori synthesis. For, though from
the conception of the conditioned, we may by ana-
lysis derive the conception of a condition, we cannot
derive from it the conception of the unconditioned,
except by synthesis. And this synthesis is transcen-
dent-i.e., it is a synthesis which cannot be repre-
sented as a phenomenon, or verified in sensuous
experience. For experience by its very nature, is
of the conditioned; it is a knowledge of objects
through principles which determine phenomena only
in relation to each other-i.e., as conditioned by each
other. The objects of reason are, therefore, objects
of pure thought.
ideas cor-
the kinds
gism.
Now what are the ideas of reason? We have The three
already mentioned them as the subjects of the three respond to
metaphysical sciences-Rational Psychology, Cosmo- of syllo-
logy, and Theology. And we are brought to the
same result by a consideration of the different forms of
syllogism--the categorical, the hypothetical, and the
disjunctive. For if we follow the regressive move-
ment of reason according to these three forms, we are
led by it to three forms of the unconditioned, "the
unconditioned of the categorical synthesis in a subject;
the unconditioned of the hypothetical synthesis of
the members of a series; and the unconditioned of the
disjunctive synthesis of parts in a systematic whole."¹
In other words, the series of prosyllogisms ends in
the idea of a subject which is no longer a predicate,
in the idea of a presupposition, which has itself
no presupposition, or in the idea of an aggregate
of the members of a division, in which no new
member is required to complete the extension of
¹ p. 260: Tr., p. 226.
1
524
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
They also
correspond
general
thought
and expe-
rience.
the conception. Looking, therefore, to the move-
ment of reason toward these three goals of thought,
we see that there are three ideas of the uncon-
ditioned, which are set before reason by its very
nature, if not as determinate objects, yet at least as
problems which it must seek to solve. And thus
we are driven by reason to ask, whether there really
are unconditioned objects, determined in these three
ways, or whether our tendency to seek such uncon-
ditioned objects has its use merely "in giving such
direction to the understanding as may enable it at
once to extend its researches to the utmost, and
maintain the greatest unity and harmony with itself.”
If we have here a set of insoluble problems, mere
questions without possible answers, the questions are
at least not arbitrary, but forced on us by the natural
exercise of our rational powers. And, therefore, the
decision that they are insoluble, and that these ideas
have no objective value,—if that should be the deci-
sion to which we are led,-will only enable us to see
more clearly their value as ideals, or guiding principles
of science.
The three ideas of reason correspond to the three
to the most most general relations of our thoughts or ideas to
relations of existence. All our ideas refer, on the one hand, to a
subject, and on the other hand to objects; and these
objects again may be regarded in two points of view,
either as phenomena or as things in themselves. If,
then, the three orders of syllogism have a reference
to the three forms of the unconditioned which are
implied in all knowledge, it is obvious that they must
bring us to an absolute subject, as the unity presup-
posed in all thought-to an absolute unity and com-
plete synthesis of all the conditions of phenomena
XIV.
525
THE IDEAS OF REASON.
and to an absolute unity of the conditions of all ob-
jects of thought whatever. But the thinking being,
thus regarded as the absolute or unconditioned sub-
ject, is the object of the so-called science of Rational
Psychology; the complete unity of all phenomena,
or things in space and time, is the object of the science
of Rational Cosmology: and the absolute reality,
the ens entium, or reality that includes and tran-
scends all other realities is the object of the science
of Rational Theology. If, therefore, reason is able
to solve all the problems which it suggests, it will
enable us to establish all these sciences on a firm
basis; or if not, to find the key to the difficulties
which render them impossible.
In Kant's introduction to the Dialectic, which we
have thus summarised, there are two points which
seem to call for criticism. First, there is Kant's
view of reason as a separate faculty; secondly, there
is his way of showing that there are just three ideas
of reason.
of the
of the
the forms
gism.
Kant takes up reason as a separate faculty, as he Criticism
had taken up understanding and sense. He makes deduction
no attempt, at least in the first instance, to connect ideas from
it with the results previously attained in the Analy- of syllo-
tic. He observes that the ordinary Logic deals with
the three processes of Conception, Judgment, and
Reasoning; and, as he had discovered that the first
two of these processes have a real as well as a
formal aspect, so he now asks whether the same
thing does not hold good also in the case of the
third. Is reason, like understanding, the source
of certain a priori conceptions of objects, or is it
1 p. 269: Tr., p. 233
526
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
merely a faculty of mediate inference? This question
Kant does not as yet answer, but he points out that,
if there are ideas of reason, they must be ideas of
the unconditioned. For, as it is the essential busi-
ness of reason, in its logical sense, to find the highest
condition under which any given judgment is true,
so, in its transcendental use, (if it has such a use,) it
must be the source of certain ideas of the ultimate
or unconditioned conditions of things. And as such
ultimate conditions can never be realised or presented
in sense, so reason must in this case be synthetic :
and synthetic-not merely, like the understanding,
in reference to a given manifold of sense, but out of
pure thought. For if pure thought is not capable
of synthesis, then the claim of reason to be the
source of ideas of objects must be invalid, and it
must content itself with the humbler task of direct-
ing and stimulating the development of empirical
knowledge.
So far the guiding thread, which discloses to us the
faculty and the ideas of reason, is simply the fact of
Logic-the fact that we not only conceive and judge,
but also reason, and that our reasonings take certain
syllogistic forms. But, what was before said in re-
lation to the formal or analytic judgment holds
good also in relation to the formal syllogism; pure
analysis is impossible; or, if it is possible, it satis-
fies none of the demands of reason. The abstract
universal, which we reach merely by letting drop
some of the marks of the particulars that fall under
it, is no principle for the explanation of these par-
ticulars; it is a unity of genus which does not afford
any ground for the difference of its species. The uni-
versal of science cannot be a mere highest abstraction;
XIV.
527
THE IDEAS OF REASON.
it must be a concrete universal, a universal which is not
reached by emptying the particular of its contents, but
which adds to those contents. And philosophy, when
it seeks the highest unity, is not in search of a mere
phantom of pure being, but of a unity, which neces-
sarily manifests itself in, and explains all the differ-
cnces of thought and things. Here, therefore, in
the case of the reason, as in the case of the under-
standing, we are rather embarrassed than assisted
by the comparison of the formal process of analysis
with a process which is essentially its very opposite
-which aims, indeed, like it, at universality, but
at a universality which is identical with the most
determinate individuality. The guiding thread of
Logic guides, if at all, in the wrong direction.
And we shall best understand the real purport of
Kant's argument if we free ourselves altogether from
its influence.
deduction
ideas, and
their rela
tion to the
Analytic.
There is, however, a deeper, and more real con- The true
nexion of the understanding and reason, of the Ana- of the
lytic and Dialectic, and one which has no reference to
formal Logic. For, in the first place (as is shown in the
previous chapter), that conception of the limit of know-
ledge, which is constantly insisted on throughout the
Analytic, already implies the ideas of reason. If there
were no mental necessity forcing us to seek a further
determination of objects than that which is attained
by the understanding through the application of its
categories to the matter of experience, we could have
no consciousness of the limited character of the know-
ledge derived from that process. The consciousness
of a limit is dependent on the tendency to go be-
yond it; and noumena must be present, as at least
possible objects, ere phenomena can be recognised as
528
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
merely phenomena. Whence arises our dissatisfac-
tion with the determination of phenomena under
such forms as those of substance, cause, and recip-
rocity? It arises partly, as Kant himself shows, from
the fact that the synthesis expressed in the categories
is inadequate to the demands of intelligence. We
have an idea of a higher unity than can be conceived,
e.g., under the category of causality, with its neces-
sary opposition of the cause and the effect which it
relates to each other; and therefore we are driven on
to seek the cause of the cause, and the cause of that
again, ad infinitum. This very infinite regress, in
short, is the search for a higher unity, the idea of
which must be present to the mind from the first.
In so far, therefore, as the conception of the limita-
tion or imperfection of empirical knowledge, and the
recognition of its phenomenal character is introduced
into the Analytic, in so far we have in it already the
idea of reason, at least in its negative aspect.
But, in the second place, this is not all. The
ideas of reason are present in experience, not only in
a negative but in a positive way.
The Deduction of
the categories showed that the determination of the
world of experience, as such, implies certain pre-
suppositions which are nothing less than these ideas.
Were it not for reason, the motive and principle of
the use of the understanding in experience would be
wanting. For why should we apply the categories?
Because, answers Kant, without their application ex-
perience would be impossible, or perceptions could not
be determined as objects. And why again should
perceptions be determined as objects? Because we
can only be conscious of the identity of self, and
hence of a self at all, as opposed, yet in relation to, a
XIV.
529
THE IDEAS OF REASON.
world of objects determined in one time and one space
under the categories. Underlying experience, there-
fore, or presupposed in it, is the consciousness of
subject and object, self and world, each fixed in its
unity with itself and its distinction from the other,
and both again related to the higher unity of con-
sciousness in which they are contained. Now, these
are just the three ideas of the Soul, the World, and
God, as Kant explains them in the Dialectic. All
these ideas, therefore, are implied in the constitution
of experience, though it is also true that experience
cannot be made adequate to them. The understand-
ing is but an expression and an imperfect expression
of the reason; and the peculiar doctrine of Kant is
simply, that reason, though conscious of this imper-
fection, is yet unable to express itself in any better
way.
Critique
in its
We may here introduce a general remark as to The
Kant's method, which partly explains the differences regressive
of the point of view taken up in the different parts of method.
his work. The Critique of Pure Reason is regressive
rather than progressive in the development of its
thought. The Esthetic finds its ground and presup-
position in the Analytic, and that again in the Dialectic.
Nay, we may say that the Dialectic, in its turn, finds
its presupposition in the Critique of Practical Reason.
The consequence of this is that the language of the
earlier parts of the work must be regarded as, to a
certain extent, inaccurate, or, at least, ambiguous.
Ideas which are explained only in the later chapters
have to be used in the earlier chapters where their
true meaning is yet obscure. And when so used,
such ideas must often be regarded simply as sym-
bols, which represent something not yet determined.
2 L
530
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Hence arises a peculiar difficulty of the Critique; for
these symbols are likely, in the first instance, to be
taken by us literally, in their most obvious sense: and
even when this error is corrected, it is often doubtful
whether the explanation afterwards given justifies
the previous use of the symbol. Thus when
Kant tells us, in the Metaphysic of Ethics, that
the "conception of an intelligible world is merely
a point of view beyond the phenomenal which
reason is obliged to occupy in order to think
itself as practical," it is not easy to see how far, on
this understanding, we can justify the use of the
thing in itself made in the earlier part of the Critique
of Pure Reason. Kant never reversed his steps, or
reconstructed the Critique on the basis of the ideas
ultimately reached; but it was a true speculative
instinct that led Fichte to perceive that the prin-
ciple on which the whole system depends is found
in the Practical Reason, and therefore to remould
the Kantian system from that point of view, how-
ever little we can attribute to Kant the results
which Fichte by this process reached. Be this as
it may, there can be no doubt that the Dialectic,
which is the last in order of the parts of the
Critique, first clearly expresses the central idea of
the Critique, and explains the relations of two things
which in Kant always go together, viz., the nature
of our knowledge and its limitation to phenomena.
For, while it is reason that makes the under-
standing determine the sensibility so as to produce
experience, it is also reason that forces us to re-
gard the experience so acquired as merely pheno-
menal.
¹ VIII., p. 93: Metaph. der Sitten.
XIV.
531
THE IDEAS OF REASON.
which ex-
may be
to be phe-
In one sense we may fully admit Kant's conclu- Sense in
sion that empirical knowledge is phenomenal, and perience
that the very impulse of reason, which produces admitted
experience, also drives us beyond it. It is because nomenal.
the self-conscious intelligence seeks its own unity or
identity in all things, that we have the desire to know
objects, as it is also the more or less perfect recogni-
tion of this unity in them that constitutes knowledge.
In ordinary experience, and in science in the narrower
sense, knowledge, as Kant showed, consists in the
application of the categories of quantity, quality,
substance, cause, or, at highest, reciprocity. But
such categories contain a contradiction which they do
not solve, or, to put the same thing in another way,
they do not completely bring the differences of things
under the unity of the mind. The very necessity,
which forces us to make the world intelligible to our-
selves by the application of such categories, again
turns the resulting knowledge for us into a problem,
which must be solved by the application of higher
categories. Hence the knowledge of empirical
objects cannot be separated from the conviction of
their phenomenal character; or, at least, its develop-
ment must in time lead to such a conviction, since the
light, that enables us to see them, enables us, and
indeed forces us, to see beyond them. In saying
this, however, we must, at the same time, guard
against a misunderstanding to which Kant has given
some occasion. Kant maintains that the pheno-
menal is not the illusory; but, as he refuses to admit
any definite relation between phenomena and things
in themselves, the reality which he leaves to the
former cannot mean much more than what Leibnitz
expressed when he said, that the external world
532
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
might be a self-consistent and well-ordered dream.
It is, however, impossible to admit that intelligence
can discover its object to be phenomenal without
discovering anything more; that it can condemn
its own knowledge without the possibility of going
beyond this negation. The consciousness of imper-
fection is itself the germ of perfection. An intelli-
gence cannot discern any limit which it cannot pass ;)
pass;)
it must already have some idea of absolute know-
ledge ere it can perceive its actual knowledge to
be relative. It is irrational, as was shown in the
previous chapter, to set up, as a standard for know-
ledge, any mental law or logical requirement, which,
at the same time, is confessed to have no objective
validity. Either, therefore, we must treat the move-
ment of thought, which seems to drive us beyond the
empirical, as absolutely illusory (though even then
we must find some explanation for it); or, we must
allow, that the negative consciousness of the pheno-
menal as such, implicitly contains in it a positive
consciousness of the noumenal. In other words, the
distinction of phenomena and noumena is a distinc-
tion, not of two totally different genera of objects, or
even of two unconnected views of the same objects,
like the attributes of Spinoza, but simply of two
stages in the development of knowledge. The phe-
nomenon is the object, as it is to the common con-
sciousness, or even to science—which, though it
apprehends the laws of things, does not connect these
laws with the highest principle; or which, though it
applies categories to objects, yet does not bring them
under the highest category. The noumenon is the
object seen, as philosophy endeavours to see it, in the
light of the highest principle, and in perfect unity
XIV.
533
THE IDEAS OF REASON.
with all other things and with the mind. In tran-
scending the empirical consciousness, philosophy does
not abandon experience, or translate itself into an
altogether different region. Rather, it presupposes
experience, and only carries its incomplete synthesis
to a higher unity; or to put the same thing in other
words, it seeks to correct the abstractness, which
belongs to the empirical consciousness, even in its
highest form, by regarding its objects, not only in
their relations to each other, but also to the intelli-
gence which they presuppose, and through which
they must ultimately be explained.
ideas of
their rela-
each other.
The ideas of reason, according to Kant, are three The three
in number, but he already indicates, what will be- reason in
come clearer in the sequel, that these ideas are not tion to
entirely independent of each other. 'The most
general relations that can exist in our thoughts are,
first, the relation to the subject: second, the relation
to objects, either as phenomena, or as objects of
thought in general. Taking into account this last
subdivision, therefore, the conceivable relations of
our thoughts are altogether three in number. First,
the relation to the subject; second, the relation to
the manifold of the object as a phenomenon; third,
the relation to all things in general." According
to this division, both the second and the third idea
have to do with objects, though the second has to do
with them as phenomena; and the third, as things in
themselves. If, however, we remember that things
in themselves are properly the objects of a perceptive
understanding, or creative intelligence, in which
thought and perception, object and subject are abso-
lutely united, it becomes obvious that the third idea
p. 268; Tr., p. 232.
1
1
534
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
is really the synthesis of the other two; it is the idea,
not of an absolute object, but of an absolute subject-
object, as later philosophy expressed it. That Kant
saw this is proved, not only by his treatment of the
idea of God, of which we shall have to speak after-
wards, but also by his assertion that the three ideas.
are related as the terms in a syllogism. "It is to
be observed" he says, "that the three transcendental
ideas have a certain unity or connexion with each
other, and that, by means of them, pure reason is able
to combine all its knowledge into a system. To pro-
ceed from the knowledge of self to the knowledge of
the world, and then through it to the knowledge of
the Supreme Being, is so natural that it seems to
resemble the logical march of reason from premises
to conclusion. Now whether the explanation of this
is to be found in a latent tie of relationship, like that
which in other cases connects the transcendental and
logical movement of thought, is a question that must
wait for its answer till the examination of these ideas
is concluded. All we could aim at in this prelimi-
nary chapter was, to rescue the transcendental ideas
from the ambiguous position which they occupied so
long as they were mixed up with the conceptions of
the understanding, to exhibit their origin, and as a
consequence, the definiteness of their number, (which
cannot be possibly more or less than three) and, by
showing their systematic connexion with each other,
to mark off and limit the peculiar sphere of pure
reason.” 1
The triplicity of the ideas of reason is in
fact but highest instance of that threefold movement
which Kant had before discerned in the categories,
and which he declared to be characteristic of all
¹ p. 271 : Tr., p. 234.
XIV.
535
THE IDEAS OF REASON.
synthetic thought. And the logical syllogism has
claim to the importance which Kant attaches to it
only so far as it is one expression of this move-
ment.
kinds of
connected
three
giving rise
three
meta-
sciences.
The three ideas of reason are presupposed in all Different
experience, but the question of the Dialectic is, sophistry
whether they can be treated as giving us knowledge with the
of real objects: i.e., whether by them we can deter- ideas, and
mine the nature of the soul, the world, and God in to the
themselves, and so find a basis for the sciences of so-called
Rational Psychology, Cosmology, and Theology, physical
Kant's view, which will be examined in the following
three chapters, is that this is impossible, and that each
of the pretended sciences involves some form of so-
phistical reasoning. The general description of this
sophistry is that an idea, which has a validity only in
relation to experience, is separated from this its
empirical use, and regarded as itself determining an
object for thought. There are, however, special
peculiarities in each of the several cases, which
make it necessary to consider them separately.
"There are three kinds of dialectical syllogisms of
reason, as there are three ideas of reason, to which,
as conclusions, these syllogisms bring us. In the
syllogism of the first class, I argue from the tran-
scendental conception of the subject" (involved in
all experience) "in which there is nothing of dif-
ference or multiplicity, to the absolute unity of
the subject itself; though of the subject in itself,
apart from its relation of experience, I have no
conception whatever. This dialectical syllogism I
shall call the transcendental Paralogism. In the
second class of sophistical syllogisms, I start with the
transcendental conception of the absolute totality of
536
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
the series of conditions for a given phenomenon, and
infer from it the unconditioned synthetic unity of the
series, and as, in this case, there are always two
possible ways in which this unconditioned unity may
be determined, each of which involves a contradiction,
I reason from the self-contradiction of one of these
ways of conception to the truth of the other—not
observing that the argument may be retorted with
equal effect. The state of reason produced by these
dialectical arguments, I shall call the Antinomy of
pure reason. In the third class of sophistical syllo-
gisms, I reason from the totality of the conditions
under which I think of objects as such, after they
have been given to me in sense, to the absolute
synthetic unity of all the conditions of the possibility
of things in general," (whether they are given in
sense or not). "In other words, I reason from things
which I do not and cannot know by means of the
mere transcendental conception I have of them,"
(but only when this conception is applied to the
matter of sense), "to a Being of all Beings, an
ens entium, whom I do not know, even in a tran-
scendental conception, and of whose unconditioned
necessity I can form no idea whatever. This dia-
lectical syllogism I shall call the Ideal of pure
Reason."i
1
¹ p. 274 : Tr., p. 236. The above translation is something of a para-
phrase, as Kant's meaning is very concisely expressed.
537
CHAPTER XV.
THE TRANSCENDENTAL PARALOGISM OF RATIONAL
PSYCHOLOGY.
view of
subject
ject.
IT
T has been already shown that the unity of self-con- Kant's
sciousness underlies all experience. The 'I think' the Ego as
is the "vehicle of all conceptions, and so of the trans- and as ob-
cendental conceptions along with the rest." It is
not put in the list of these conceptions, simply because
it expresses the 'qualitative unity,' which is the pre-
supposition of all thinking. We cannot treat it as
one of the conceptions of the understanding, since "it
only serves to express that all thinking is conscious
thinking." But then, it is to be observed, that the
Ego appears, not only as the presupposition of all
thought and experience, but also in another character,
as one particular object of experience as the object
of inner, as opposed to outer, sense, of Psychology
as opposed to physical science. It might seem,
therefore, that we have here an object which, unlike
other objects, requires no perception to determine it,
but is known purely a priori, through transcendental
apperception.
Admitting, however, such an a priori Psychology Rational
to be possible, we must observe what is its sole basis logy must
Psycho-
538
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
be devel-
of the one
proposi-
tion, 'I
think.'
and subject matter. It must be entirely founded on
the simple proposition I think,' without any addi-
tional datum of any kind. For anything more would
require experience, and "if a single observation of my
inner state were introduced among the grounds of
this science, it would cease to be a rational, and
become an empirical, Psychology." Rational Psy-
chology, accordingly, takes the bare Ego of transcen-
dental apperception as something given, and proceeds
to determine it by the categories in the following
fashion. In the first place, the consciousness of self
is an underlying substratum, a permanent presupposi-
tion, of all thought and experience; therefore, we
must determine the soul as a substance. In the
second place, the thought of self is the unity to
which all the manifold of experience is referred, and
through which it is known: if it were itself mani-
fold, knowledge would be impossible; therefore the
soul is a simple substance. In the third place, the
Ego is necessarily represented as the same at dif-
ferent times; for if it were not, then no unity of
experience, no connexion of thought would be pos-
sible; therefore the soul is numerically one. And
lastly, I cannot think myself, except as having an
existence distinct from the objects in space which I
know; therefore the soul is an actual object which has
relation to possible objects in space. Having thus
determined the soul or self according to the classes
of categories, as a substance, simple, numerically one,
and existent in itself in relation to possible objects in
space, we can infer from these predicates all the
other asserted results of rational Psychology. For
as the thinking substance is never apprehended by
external sense, it is immaterial; as it is a simple, and
xv. KANT'S VIEW OF RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 539
therefore indivisible, substance, it is incorruptible;
as it is an intellectual and self-identical substance,
it is personal; and taking all these characters
together, it is spiritual. "Its relation to objects
in space gives us the conception of its commercium
with bodies," in which communion it is a principle
of life, and when we limit this view of it by the
consideration of its spirituality, we infer that it is
immortal.
1
to the de-
tion of the
Ego by the
categories.
Now, in order to determine the value of the science Objections
thus built up, we must first of all criticise that applica- termina-
tion of the categories to the pure Ego on which it
is founded. Can we properly subsume under the
pure conception of the understanding, that unity of
self-consciousness, which is presupposed in them as
it is presupposed in all experience and thought?
Can we bring the source of the categories under the
categories? "By the 'I' or 'he' or 'it,' the thing
that thinks," says Kant, "is expressed nothing but
a transcendental subject of thought (=x), which
is known only through the thoughts which are its
predicates, and of which apart from these we can
have no conception." "Hence, when we attempt
to think this Ego as an object, we find ourselves
involved in a vicious circle: for we must always
employ the idea of it, in order to make any judg
ment regarding it." And this is an "inconvenience
or awkwardness" (Unbequemlichkeit), which we can-
not escape, just because the unity of the Ego is not
any one special object, but the universal presupposi-
tion or form of the thought of all objects. How,
then, is it possible for us to determine it, as we do
other objects?
1 ¹ p. 278: Tr., p. 239.
540
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Distinction
of the
self from
sal subject.
It may throw some light on this question from
objective another side, if we consider what that Ego is, which
the univer- we know as object. The transcendental unity of self-
consciousness is one thing, and the unity of my con-
sciousness of my individual self, as an object whose
states stand in a certain definite relation of succession
to each other in time, is another. The latter is the
objective, but phenomenal, self, which we distin-
guish from other objects of experience; the former is
the unity of thought presupposed in all experience.
Further even the pure unity of thought can be
actualised only in the relation to sense.
We may
admit that the consciousness expressed in the pro-
position, I think,' does not itself imply the deter-
mination of the manifold of inner sense in time, but
it certainly implies at least an 'indeterminate em-
piric perception,' which, in that proposition, is referred
to the self. "Observe that by calling the 'I think
an empiric proposition, I do not mean that the ‘I'
in it is an empirical idea, for, on the contrary, it is
purely intellectual. But I do mean that, without
some empirical idea, which supplies the matter for
thought, the judgment 'I think' could not be made;
though the empirical element is but the condition of
the application or exercise of a purely intellectual
faculty.
The tran-
scendental
subject
cannot be
made an
object.
If this be so, it follows that the Ego in itself is no
independent object of thought. To treat it as such
is to treat an element in experience, in abstraction
from the other elements that are necessary to it, as
a separate existence. It is, in Spinozistic languagė,
to elevate an abstraction into a res completa. "With
a view to determine the conditions of the possibility
1 ¹ p. 798: Tr., p. 249, note.
xv. KANT'S VIEW OF RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 541
of experience, I abstract from all actual experience,
and think of myself merely as a knowing subject.
But this does not authorise me to conclude, that I
can be conscious of my own existence apart from
experience and from the empiric conditions of that
existence. To do so is to confound the possible
abstraction from my empirically determined existence,
with an imaginary consciousness of the possibility of
the separate existence of my thinking self. It is to
take the thought of the unity of consciousness, which,
as the mere form of knowledge, is presupposed in all
determination of objects, for the knowledge of the
substantiality of myself as a transcendental subject.¹
The truth, therefore, is, that of the Ego in itself,
apart from its relation to experience, we know
nothing, and that, even in experience, the Ego
appears not as itself an object, but as the logical
unity, to which a thing must be related, ere we
can think it as an object. And the supposed
science of Rational Psychology is based on a con-
fusion between the transcendental subject and the
object of inner sense, and upon a transference to the
latter, as real predicates, of the logical character-
istics which belong to the former. The syllogisms
of Rational Psychology are, therefore, Paralogisms
(sophismata figuræ dictionis), in which the middle
term is taken in two different senses: what is as-
serted in the major of objects of possible perception,
being applied in the minor to the transcendental
subject, which is not, and cannot be an object of
any perception. In this
In this way the categories, which
can be applied only to the former, are transferred to
the latter, and the universal conditions, under which
1
p. 801 Tr., p. 251.
542
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Sense in
which the
categories
may be
applied to
the pure
subject.
Substan-
tiality of
the Ego.
objects are thought, are turned into universal predi-
cates of thinking beings as objects.
"It
Now in regard to the universality of the predicates
which we apply to thinking beings, two things must
be admitted: in the first place, that we necessarily
conceive ourselves as pure subjects, abstractly simple
and identical with ourselves through all changes of
our states, and distinct from the external objects
presented to us; and in the second place, that we
necessarily conceive of all other thinking beings as
having a consciousness of themselves and other
objects, of the same character as our own.
is at first sight strange that the condition under
which I think, and which therefore is merely an
attribute of my subject, should be assumed to hold
good universally of all beings that think, and thus
that a proposition, which appears to be merely em-
pirical, should have universality and necessity attri-
buted to it." But this is explained by the fact that
it is only through self-consciousness and not through
outer experience, that we can have any conception
of a thinking being at all. We cannot represent such
a being except by transferring to him the conscious-
ness we have of ourselves with all its conditions.
But this transference does not enable us to know
him as an object in this pure self-consciousness,
any more than it enables us to know ourselves as
objects.
1
We are now in a position to see the real value of
the four fundamental propositions of Rational Psy-
chology. In the first place, it is undoubtedly true
that in all experience I think myself as subject and
never as predicate; and, therefore, it seems natural
1 Cf. ante, p. 482.
'xv. KANT'S VIEW OF RATIONAL PSYCHOLOG Y. 543
that I should regard myself as a substance, in which
my thoughts, feelings, etc., inhere as accidents. But
this means nothing more than the analytical judg-
ment that all my thoughts and experience are mine,
or that, so long as I think, so long my consciousness
of myself is the correlate of all my consciousness of
objects. I cannot, from such a use of the category
of substance, draw any inference as to the permanence
of myself as a thinking being beyond the moment of
my thinking: I can only say that, while I think I
am obliged to refer all my thoughts to one self. In
order, however, to draw any such inference from the
category of substance, as I feel entitled to do when
I apply it to external objects, it would be necessary
for me to have some "standing and permanent" per-
ception of self to subsume under the category. But
I find, on the contrary, that there is no permanent
perception of the object of inner sense, and no per-
ception of anything within me, that I can represent
as permanent, such as there is in the case of matter.
In the second place, I am conscious of myself as Its simpli-
singular or simple, as having no manifoldness or differ-
ence in me. And from this it is natural to infer the
simplicity of my being. For thought is not, it may
be argued, like an effect which "can be produced
by the concurrent action of many independent sub-
stances, as the motion of a body is the united motion
of all its parts. If a composite substance could
think, each part of it would contain a part of the
thought, and only all the parts taken together would
contain the whole thought." But this is absurd:
there could be no thought at all, unless the different
elements were gathered together in reference to a
subject, which, as thinking, is a simple unity. Now,
city.
544
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Its iden-
tity.
Its actual-
ity in re-
lation to
possible
this argument is good so far as it goes, but all that
it proves is, not that I must be absolutely simple,
but that knowledge is impossible unless I can think
myself as simple. Consciousness itself, for all we can
see, may be an effect which is one in itself, though
many things unite to produce it. We cannot argue
from the simplicity of the consciousness of self to the
simplicity of the self. Further, even if we granted
the simplicity of man's soul, the common argument
from simplicity to incorruptibility would not hold
good. For consciousness has not extensive, but only
intensive quantity, or degree of vividness, and a les-
sening of this quantity, or diminution in the degree
of vividness, does not involve that annihilation of
substance which would be involved in the diminution
of the quantity of matter in space. We may, there-
fore, think of consciousness as gradually diminishing
in intensive quantity till it disappears altogether,
though, so long as it exists, it must be simple in
quality.¹
In the third place, what we have said of the
simplicity also applies to the numerical oneness or
identity of the soul at different times. We must
think of the self as remaining the same through all
change of its states. But just as a motion passes
from one billiard ball to another without ceasing to be
the same motion, so consciousness may pass through
many substances without losing its self-identity.
Lastly, we undoubtedly do distinguish ourselves
from external objects in space (as, indeed, it is neces-
objects in sary to think objects as in space to enable us to dis-
tinguish ourselves from them). But if, on this
ground, we go on to assert that the subject has an
space.
¹ Cf. ante, p. 477.
xv. KANT'S VIEW OF RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 545
existence in itself independent of these objects, we
are shooting beyond the mark. "Whether this
consciousness of myself is even possible without
external things, through which ideas are given to
me, or, in other words, whether I could exist as a
thinking being, without being a man, is utterly
beyond my knowledge." One thing is clear, that
the consciousness of self, as it appears in us, is, in all
its characters, dependent on something else for its
realisation. I cannot be conscious of myself as sub-
ject except in relation to an object; as simple, except
in relation to a manifold which I synthetically unite;
as self-identical, except in relation to many things
successively apprehended; and so also I cannot be
conscious of myself as distinct from and independent
of all that is external and material, except by means
of the relation in which I stand to that which is
external and material. Hence, I cannot be sure,
that that, to which consciousness negatively relates
itself, is not a necessary condition of consciousness.
The consciousness of the simplicity, self-identity, and
independence of the Ego, is in our case mediated by
a consciousness of the object under the form of ex-
ternal perception; but whether this mediation is
necessary, or whether self-consciousness is possible
without it, we cannot tell. And still less can we tell
how the self which underlies consciousness, and the
thing in itself which underlies the determined object,
are related to each other.
form of the
Paralogism
I have given in the last paragraph the general Different
bearing of Kant's discussion of the fourth Paralogism, fourth
but it is necessary to observe, that both the statement in the first
and the treatment of it are different in the first and editions
second editions of the Critique. In the first edition Critique.
and second
of the
2 M
546
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
First edi-
tion-Ex-
internal
equally
imme-
diate.
the Paralogism is, that external phenomena, as
they are known indirectly, as inferred causes of our
ideas, and not directly like our ideas themselves, are
doubtful or problematic existences. In the second
edition, the Paralogism is more strictly confined to
the object of Psychology, and its purport is, that the
existence of the self is independent of external
phenomena, since we are conscious of ourselves as
distinct from them.
وو
Hence, in the first edition, Kant's answer to the
ternal and Paralogism is to show that we have no more right
experience to deny the reality of external than of internal ex-
perience, since both are equally phenomenal, and
both are equally immediate. At the root of the
Cartesian Idealism, he finds a confusion between two
senses of the word external. If "the external'
means that which is out of consciousness, that which
is not an object of experience, then it is the un-
knowable, the thing in itself. But if it means that
which is in space, that which is the object of external
experience, then it is knowable, and, indeed, equally
knowable with the object of internal experience.
Now, Des Cartes did not make this distinction; in
other words, he confused the thing in space with the
thing in itself. Hence he could not admit the pos-
sibility of any direct knowledge of the external
object, and was forced to treat even its existence as
doubtful. The transcendental Realist necessarily
turns into the empirical Idealist. If I suppose that
things in space are out of me, in the same way in
which they are out of each other, I cannot suppose
them to be brought into relation to me except by a
doubtful inference. But if I realise that
But if I realise that space and
it all that contains are but perceptions of my mind,
xv. KANT'S VIEW OF RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 547
ness,
then the externality of things ceases to have the
meaning of outness with reference to the mind. Only
material bodies can be out of each other, and space
with all the objects which it contains is in me, quite
as much as time and all the changes of my state that
take place in it. The phenomena of outer and those
of inner sense are equally phenomena of conscious-
and equally removed from things in themselves.
The only difference is, that the perceptions of outer
sense, "as they represent objects in space, have
an illusory appearance of detaching themselves from
the mind and hovering without it, though space,
in which they are perceived, is after all only an
idea to which no counterpart can possibly be found
outside of the soul." And instead of saying that
things in space, as such, are independent of us, we
should rather say that, as in space, (which is only
the form of our perception). they cannot be in-
dependent of us, and, conversely, that if there
be things independent of us, they cannot be in
space.
edition-
sciousness
on external
ence.
In the second Edition, the question raised relates Second
more definitely to the subject of Rational Psycho- Self-con-
logy. Can we conceive of a self-consciousness con- dependent
fined to pure thought, or, at least, a self-consciousness experi-
without external perceptions? In the argument
against Idealism, Kant had maintained that the
knowledge of the phenomenal self through internal
sense presupposes the knowledge of other objects
through external sense. Here he goes a step farther,
and questions the possibility of even a pure con-
sciousness of self without external perception. The
thought of the pure Ego is, indeed, a priori, but it is
p. 307 (1st edit,)
548
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Danger of
Material-
not for us in our present state of being realised in an
actual 'I think,' except in relation to a manifold,
determined by synthesis as objective. And as the
consciousness of the internal object is posterior to the
consciousness of the external object, so it would seem
that there can be no self-consciousness except in rela-
tion to the consciousness of external objects. How,
then, can we regard the idea of a separation between
the self and these objects, or the idea of the absolute
independence of the soul in relation to matter except
as a problematic conception of something which
experience can never either verify or disprove? We
cannot say that the self may not exist and be
conscious under other conditions, but neither can we
base any argument for this on the fact that we are
conscious of ourselves as distinct from material
objects. For distinction is still relation, and it may
be necessary relation.
External perception, then, may be necessary to the
ism avert realisation of self-consciousness; or if we like to put
transcen- it in that
it in that way, matter may be necessary to mind.
Idealism. At the same time, the very process by which we
ed by
dental
have arrived at this result secures us against the
dangers supposed to lie in it. It secures us from
Materialism by showing that matter, like space, which
is the necessary form of its perception, is pheno-
menal, and that, therefore, no explanation of mind
that resolves it into matter is possible. For such
explanation would be the explanation of mind by one
of its perceptions. If, on the other hand, Materialism
be taken as meaning, not that matter, as we know it,
-matter as an external phenomenon under the form of
space, is the cause of mind, but that the unknown
thing in itself, which underlies external phenomena, is
xv. KANT'S VIEW OF RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. 549
the cause of mind, it is a theory which we can neither
accept nor reject, because it has no intelligible mean-
ing.¹ The very statement of such a doctrine takes us
beyond the limits of the knowable, and its accept-
ance would have no dangerous results, and, indeed,
no results whatever. Materialism is dangerous only
when it takes matter, as we know matter under the
form of space, for a thing in itself, and asserts it, in
this sense, to be the cause of mind. But transcen-
dental philosophy, while it refuses any spiritualistic
answer to the questions of rational Psychology in
relation to the nature and destiny of man, is also an
immoveable safeguard against the theory which is
opposed to Spiritualism. It shows, in short, the
irrationality both of materialism and of spiritualism,
and thus by sweeping away all speculative solutions
of the difficulty, it secures to the moral consciousness
of men a free space for its assertion of man's higher
nature.
In this section of the Critique there are two things
that seem to call for special remark. The first is
Kant's criticism of the metaphysical psychology of
the Wolffian school, and the second is the self-con-
sistency of Kant's own position.
shows that
fian dis-
between
In the Wolffian philosophy a broad line of distinc- Kant
tion was drawn between the rational and the empiri- the Wolf-
cal, and Kant's refutation of that philosophy consists tinction
mainly in holding it to this distinction. If the soul rational
is to be known in itself, it must be known by pure pirical
thought, abstracting from all that is empirical.
if we abstract from every element which is due
and em-
Psychology
to the
But is fatal
to former.
¹ A distinction, which casts some light upon the soi-disant materialism
of Professor Tyndall.
550 THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
CHAP.
experience, all that is left is the 'I think' of con-
sciousness, and all rational Psychology must be built
on that one datum. Nay, even this 'I think,' in the
sense in which it includes 'I am,' is, in one aspect of
it, an empirical proposition. It already, in the
simplest expression of it, implies a reference to the
manifold of sense. The conscious Ego cannot deter-
mine itself as simple, except by abstraction of the
unity of the self from the manifold, which is synthe-
tically combined in relation to it. It cannot determine
itself as identical in different times, except in so far as
it brings together the changes and differences in its
states into the unity of one experience of objects.
It cannot be conscious of itself as an independent
being existing in itself, except in relation to an
external world. But if thus even the pure self-
consciousness can be apprehended only in relation to
something that is not itself; if the Ego cannot compass
self-consciousness, or, at any rate, does not compass
self-consciousness except through this other element;
then it cannot know itself in its absolute reality as a
thing in itself. The transcendental apperception is
not empirical, but it implies a relation to the empiri-
cal. It is simply a name for the unity of our con-
sciousness of the empirical, and to treat it as an
object known like other objects is to treat an ab-
straction as a reality. The self which we know as
an object is not the pure subject, but the object of
inner sense.
Kant, therefore, admits the Wolffian distinction of
empirical and rational, of a posteriori and a priori;
he admits, further, that being in itself, if it be known
at all, must be known a priori; but then he turns
round, and declares that nothing can be so known by
XV.
EXAMINATION OF THE KANTIAN VIEW. 551
us, and that the empirical is always an element of
our knowledge. Even the pure self-consciousness is
only one element in experience, or rather a condition
of its possibility, and if we take it by itself apart
from the matter of sense, what we have in it is not
the reality of the soul or mind, as it exists apart from
sense, but a mere abstraction, which can exist only
in connexion with other elements of the whole from
which we abstract it.
flict in
tween the
the dual-
Know-
But here, again, we come upon the old difficulty The con-
that embarrasses Kant's thoughts at every step, and Kant be-
reappears always as the inexplicable surd of his unity and
philosophy. Every assertion of the possibility of ism in
knowledge of mind in itself, or of matter in itself, ledge.
is met by Kant with the demonstration that mind
and matter are but elements in the unity of experi-
ence, and so known only in relation. Yet, on the
other hand, the assumption that they are unrelated
things, which, if known truly, would be known apart
from this relation, is still retained from the Wolffian
Metaphysic. The phantom of an existing thing in
itself remains, while the known thing in itself is.
rejected. Yet even the thing in itself does not
always retain its fixed position in relation to know-
ledge. For while it generally appears to be equi-
valent to the abstraction of a mind without an object,
or an object without a mind, it is also referred to as
the object of a perceptive understanding, i.e., the
absolute unity of subject and object. From the
former point of view, the great hindrance to know-
ledge is, that we cannot apprehend things apart from
their relations; from the latter point of view, the
great hindrance to knowledge is, that we cannot
apprehend them in their complete relativity. Kant,
552 THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
The
vicious
self-con-
therefore, at one time, as in the present chapter,
criticises the dualism of knowledge from the point of
view of its unity, and at another time, as in his
examination of the ontological argument for the being
of God, he criticises the unity of knowledge from the
point of view of its dualism. To the philosopher
who claims to know the Ego, or their object, in
themselves, he points out that they are only known
in relation to each other; while to the philosopher,
who tries to discover identity in their difference, he
points out that they are two, and not one. Percep-
tion and conception are necessary to each other, and,
apart from each other, they have no intelligible
meaning; yet there is a great gulf fixed between
them, which there is no possibility of bridging over
or filling up. The two points of view which thus
alternate in Kant's thought, can be made consistent
only if we conceive thought as at once integrating
and differentiating; necessarily implying duality,
yet, with equal necessity, implying a unity that
manifests itself in, and returns upon itself through,
the difference.
In the chapter before us, the relativity of our
circle' of consciousness of the Ego to the other elements of
sciousness. experience, is supposed to prove that, as known, it
is not, and cannot be, a thing in itself. Kant's
tics. tendency to oppose relativity to reality reaches its
Kant and
the an-
cient Scep-
climax in the assertion, that the Ego cannot be
known as it really is, because it must be known
in relation to itself. It stands, so to speak, in its
own way, for we must use it as a subject in order to
know it as an object. In speaking of this awkward-
ness,' Kant seems to have in his mind a double con-
trast; on the one hand a contrast between the con-
XV.
EXAMINATION OF THE KANTIAN VIEW. 553
(
sciousness of the mind by itself and its consciousness
of other objects; and, on the other hand, a contrast
between a knowledge in which there is distinction
of subject and object, and a knowledge in which that
distinction does not exist. Other things are known
as objects in relation to the subject, but the subject
is only known in relation to itself, and this, as Kant
asserts, involves a 'vicious circle.' The answer is,
that this circle' of self-consciousness which is here
treated as a reason for ignorance, is the reason for
knowledge. It is just because all things are relative
to self-consciousness, but self-consciousness only rela-
tive to itself, that there is such a thing as knowledge
at all. If the mind were referable to another princi-
ple than itself, then knowledge would be impossible;
for the knowledge of things must mean that the
mind finds itself in them, or that, in some way, the
difference between them and the mind is dissolved.
Kant's reasoning is very like that of the ancient
Sceptics, who maintained that knowledge is impos-
sible, because the mind has only the choice between
three courses, all equally fatal to knowledge. It
must either (1) start with a first principle, which,
because it is a first principle, is necessarily an
assumption; or (2) it must go on seeking reason
for reason ad infinitum, though an infinite series of
reasons is equivalent to no reason at all; or (3) it.
must find the reason for A in B, and then again
the reason for B in A, in which case it reasons in a
circle. The answer is, that the only principle with
which thought starts, is its own nature, and that this
is no mere assumption, because an assumption is an
arbitrarily chosen alternative, and in this case there
is no alternative and therefore no arbitrary choice.
554 THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Thought in its universality and its ultimate identity
with Being, is presupposed in every alternative that
is capable of being expressed or conceived; and there
is therefore no possible standing ground for scepticism
within the intelligible world. Again, thought is no
simple first principle, because it is a unity that in-
volves a difference of elements, each of which may
be proved through its relation to the other. The
very idea of self-consciousness involves a distinction
of object and subject which is again sublated or dis-
solved by the correlativity or implicit identity of the
self knowing with the self known. It is in a sense a
circle; but all the progress of reason consists simply
in bringing what is, or appears to be, without this
circle, within it; or what is the same thing from the
opposite side, in developing the formal intelligence
of the individual, till his self-consciousness becomes
one with his consciousness of the world. Knowledge
in the highest sense consists in the mind finding
itself in things, that is, in making all the distinctions
of things as transparent, as much the manifestation
of an identity, as is the distinction between the sub-
jective and objective self in self-consciousness. An
endless regress from reason to reason is no explana-
tion of the world which satisfies the intelligence ;
what does satisfy it is the discovery of laws, or,
in other words, of the necessary correlativity of
those very things, which at first appeared inde-
pendent of, and indifferent to, each other; for every
such law is a manifestation of a unity in objects,
which corresponds to the unity of consciousness
with itself. Nor can there be any final rest for
thought until the last dualism is removed in the dis-
covery of a highest law,—a law which shall explain
XV.
EXAMINATION OF THE KANTIAN VIEW. 555
and bring back to unity even the difference of mind
itself from the object of its knowledge.
ideal of
self-con-
The view of the logical movement of pure thought Kant's
which Kant inherited from preceding Logicians, led knowledge
him to a very different conclusion. If knowledge tradictory.
was to be absolute, it seemed to him that it must
not reach identity through difference, but be abso-
lutely without difference. Each object, to be appre-
hended in its reality, must be apprehended apart
from all relation to other objects. Hence, it is
regarded as a hindrance to the knowledge of things
in themselves, that we must know them through our
own faculties of conception and perception nay,
even the relativity of consciousness to itself, as it
implies a duality of knowing and known, is supposed
to prevent us from knowing the real self. It is not
difficult to see that this mode of reasoning implies
an ideal of knowledge which is self-contradictory,
which, indeed, is the very negation of knowledge:
for knowledge implies a difference, a relation, which
may, indeed, be transcended, and brought back into
unity, but which cannot be simply denied. We
cannot know, unless we distinguish the self from,
and relate it to, the object; yet this distinction is
here supposed to make knowledge impossible. It
is obvious that Kant thus turns the idea of con-
sciousness against itself. His argument implies
that the true knowledge would be identical with
its object, in such wise as to leave no room for a
distinction, even the distinction of consciousness.
It would be unity without difference, subject with-
out object, affirmation without negation. It would
be pure being in the abstract without knowing, or
what is the same thing, it would be an intelligence
556
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
That the
soul cannot
under the
gories does
it unknow-
able.
that knew nothing. Surely it is evident, that it
is no weakness of the human mind, that prevents
it from having a consciousness such as this, a con-
sciousness which annihilates the very idea of con-
sciousness. Rather it is its strength, that will not
let it rest in any such abstraction. But Kant, under
the dominion of a method which he derived from the
very school he was assailing, confounds the concrete
unity of thought, in which differences are dissolved,
with a mere unit, the abstraction of an element,
which cannot be thought at all except in relation to
other elements; and then makes this very inability
to think the unthinkable a reason for asserting the
limitation of our knowledge, and the merely pheno-
menal character of its object. It is because of this
confusion, that the idea of a perceptive understand-
ing remains with him an empty possibility. For if
he had once distinctly realised, that the true ideal
of knowledge is not the extinction, but the recon-
ciliation, of the differences and contradictions into
which we are brought by the understanding, he
would not so easily have convinced himself that the
ideal is unattainable.
If the soul, as the subject of thought, is to be
be brought known at all, it must, Kant argues, be brought
four cate under such categories as substance, numerical unity,
not prove simplicity, &c.; but these categories are not applic-
able to it, except as expressing its relation to a
phenomenal or given object in experience, and there-
fore they cannot tell us what the mind is in itself.
Kant never thinks of questioning the proposition
that, if we could know the soul, we must know it by
the application of such categories; on the contrary, he
maintains that, as we cannot know it thus, we cannot
XV.
EXAMINATION OF THE KANTIAN VIEW. 557
know it at all. Yet the real effect of his argument
is to show that the Wolffian method, as well as the
Wolffian results, was empty and absurd, and that
rational Psychology was throughout a misinterpreta-
tion of the consciousness it proposed to explain. We
necessarily think of self as the subject of all our
thoughts, but this does not mean that there is a
substratum or substance in us which is separate from
all our thought and experience. We necessarily
think of the subject as a unity in relation to all the
manifold of the objects we know, but this does not
mean that that subject is an abstractly simple entity,
which has no difference or multiplicity in itself.
We think of it as one amid all the changes of its
successive states, but this does not mean that it is
an arithmetical unchangeable unit, without growth
or development. We think of it, lastly, as distinct
from the external world in space which it knows,
but this does not mean that there could be such a
thing as a pure spirit, that did not manifest itself in,
or in relation to, a world in space and time. The
error of Wolff, therefore, lies, not in his attempt
to apprehend the mind as it is really, or in itself,
but in his attempt to determine it by categories that
are altogether inadequate to its nature. The first
condition, indeed, for determining the intelligence as
it is, is to transcend such categories as abstract
unity, simplicity, or substance. If the question be
whether the mind is simple or complex, substantial
or accidental, the true answer is, 'neither the one
nor the other,' or, if you prefer it, both the one and
the other.' In other words, the sphere of thought,
in which we can choose between such alternatives,
is not the sphere of thought to which Psychology
558 THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
CHAP.
Kant's ap-
plication
of the
category of
quantity
to it.
belongs. Such categories may be of use in the
region of Mechanics or Chemistry, but they are not
adequate to life, and still less to consciousness. We
cannot understand either, unless we have risen above
even such categories as causality and reciprocity to
the idea of a unity which through difference returns
upon itself.¹
1
The same considerations enable us also to correct
Kant's criticism of the argument (used among others
intensive by Mendelssohn), from the simplicity to the inde-
structibility of the soul. Kant points out that what
is simple, as having no extensive quantity, may yet
be complex, if we take into consideration intensive
quantity or degree, and that what has intensive
quantity may vanish away, not by the abstraction of
parts, but by gradual lowering of its intensity. The
simplicity of the consciousness of self does not
exclude varying degrees of vividness, and it is easy
to imagine that this variation may end in its dying
out altogether. All that need be said of this objec-
tion is that it is as good as the argument against
which it is directed; for that argument was based
on the supposition that the soul has the sim-
plicity of an atom or indivisible material element.
The proper criticism, however, is that of Hegel, that
quantitative complexity or simplicity, whether in
the form of intension or extension, are inadequate
categories, from which no conclusions of value can
be drawn as to the nature of the soul. Its simplicity
and unity is of a kind that does not exclude, and
cannot be opposed to complexity and diversity. And
it would be as legitimate to argue that, because of
the manifold powers of the soul, it is divisible and
¹ Cf. ante, p. 485,
XV. EXAMINATION OF THE KANTIAN VIEW. 559
destructible, as to argue that, because of its oneness,
it is indestructible. The question belongs to another
sphere of thought altogether, and no valuable result
can be gained by dragging it down into the region of
external quantitative relations.¹
Rational
logy is
dental
From a slightly different point of view we may The true
answer the assertion of Kant that there is no such Psycho-
science as rational Psychology, by saying that there is transcen-
such a science, and that Kant in his Critique has given Logic.
the first outline of it. For rational Psychology, ac-
cording to him, deals with the transcendental subject,
and therefore with the conditions of thought which are
prior to all experience-in other words, with the idea
of knowledge in general, apart from the determination
of any particular object, external or internal. The
effect of Kant's Critique, properly understood, is to
vindicate as transcendental Logic, what he repudiates,
and justly repudiates, as Psychology. The examina-
tion of self-consciousness in general, as the pre-
condition of all knowledge, of the categories, in
which it expresses itself, and by which it organises
experience, and of the ideas of reason, by which it
gives the last unity to experience, and rises to that
which is beyond experience--all this is falsely con-
ceived when it is placed in the sphere of Psychology.
For it is an examination of ideas and conceptions,
which underlie all knowledge, and not an examination
of mind in its relation to, and distinction from, matter.
No doubt, the movement from the lower categories
to the higher, the logical movement from the cate-
gories of quantity and quality to the categories of
cause and substance, and from these again to the ideas
of final cause and of self-consciousness itself, has a
Cf. Hegel, Werke, III, p. 251.
560
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
"
<
certain parallelism with the outward development of
the sciences, from Mechanics to Biology, and from
Biology to Psychology. It has already been re-
marked that categories which are useful in a lower
sphere, say in the sphere of Mechanics and Chemistry,
cease to be adequate in the sciences of Psychology
and Ethics. The mind comprehends things by draw-
ing from its own unity all the conceptions that are
necessary for the understanding of them, till at last
in the sciences of spirit it returns upon itself, or has
to use the conception of itself as the category,
whereby it explains the object (an idea which Kant
naively expresses when he says that we can only
think of self-conscious beings in so far as we transfer
our own consciousness to them'). But this fact that
the mind is the brief abstract' of all that it can
know, does not make it less necessary to draw a
clear line between Logic, i.e., transcendental Logic,
and Psychology; or make it less of a 'paralogism' to
treat Psychology as the basis of all science. To do
so is to put the complex before the simple, and to
mistake the ultimate unity, with which knowledge
must end, for the primitive unity, with which it
must begin. The Kantian Logic, no doubt, still has
a psychological aspect, for though the Critique deals
not with mind as the internal, in opposition to the
external, object, but with the 'organic plan' of expe-
rience, which consciousness in general brings with it,
yet it opposes the objects of experience as phenomena
of our minds to things in themselves. But, with this
exception, (which disappears with the false assumption
of things in themselves), the Kantian Critique is so far
from being Psychology that it is the first conclusive
refutation of the psychological view of knowledge.
561
CHAPTER XVI.
RATIONAL COSMOLOGY, AS EXPLAINED AND CRITICISED
BY KANT.
of the pro-
Rational
logy.
RATIONAL Cosmology deals with the idea of the Peculiarity
world as a totality of phenomena in one time and blems of
space. In this world, as transcendental Logic has Cosmo-
shown, every phenomenon is determined in relation
to other phenomena. It is determined in time, by
relation to preceding and coexisting phenomena; in
space, by relation to coexisting phenomena; and
except through such relations it could not be deter-
mined as an object at all. Yet such determination
of phenomenon by phenomenon is never complete
and final; for the determining phenomenon requires
to be determined by another phenomenon, and that
by another, and so on ad infinitum. If, then,
reason demands a complete and final determination
of objects in the phenomenal world, it demands
something which, in this region of knowledge at
least, can never be attained. For here every answer
gives birth to a new question, and no conclusive
answer can ever be given. Now that reason does
make such a demand, has already been shown. The
hypothetical syllogism of formal Logic put us on
2 N
562
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
The four
Antino-
mies.
the track of an idea of reason which should express
the completion of the empirical regress, and so
enable us to comprehend the world of phenomena
as a whole, bounded and limited only by itself.
Now the peculiarity of the problems of reason
which are connected with this idea is, that they
immediately take the form of dilemmas. They offer
us a choice of alternatives, in one or other of
which, according to the law of excluded middle, truth
must lie. The unconditioned totality of pheno-
menal synthesis' must consist either in a finite or
infinite series, in a series which has, or one which
has not, a beginning. In the former case, we shall
reach totality by discovering the unconditioned con-
dition which forms the first member of the series;
in the latter case, we shall reach totality by sum-
ming up the series of conditions, which, as infinite,
is unconditioned.
Let us, then, taking those in each class of cate-
gories that give rise to a series, consider what are
the different forms of dilemma that arise when we
follow the regressive movement of reason from the
conditioned to the unconditioned. In the first place,
phenomena are extensive magnitudes, whether we
regard them as in space or as in time. Now,
phenomena as in time constitute a series; for
a time is determined as such only by relation to
a preceding time; and (as time is not perceived by
itself) a phenomenon in time is determined as such
only by relation to a preceding phenomenon. But
totality in the synthesis of phenomena in time cannot
be attained, except by tracing them back to a first
phenomenon, which is determined in time in relation
to no previous phenomenon; or, if this is impos-
·
XVI. KANT'S VIEW OF RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 563
sible, by summing up the infinite series of times
and phenomena in them. And the same, mutatis
mutandis, holds good of objects in space; for though.
space itself is not serial, the synthesis, by which we
determine phenomena in space, is serial. We can de-
termine one space only by relation to another space,
and that again by relation to another beyond it; and
so also (as space is not perceived by itself), we can
determine a phenomenon as in space only by refer-
ence to another, and so on ad infinitum.
totality of synthesis, therefore, we must be able
either to reach a last phenomenon in space, or else
to sum up the infinite series of space and phenomena
in them.
For
In the second place, matter, or the object of ex-
ternal perception has intensive quantity; in other
words, it is never simple or indivisible; for every
space is made up of spaces, and every spatial phen-
omenon, therefore, must be regarded as made up of
parts, which are the conditions of its existence as a
whole. Hence we cannot complete our knowledge
of any external object unless we divide it into its
ultimate parts, and enumerate them all. But to do
this would imply that we are able, either to reach
simple and indivisible parts, or to sum up an infinite
series of parts within parts.
In the third place, under the head of Relation,
all phenomena, as objects in time, are determined as
effects of causes, which, in their turn, are effects of
other causes; and the totality of synthesis, accord-
ing to the category of causality, cannot be attained
unless we are able either to reach a cause which is
not an effect, a causa sui, or to sum up an infinite
series of causes.
564
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
They all
contain
the same
dilemma.
Lastly, under the head of Modality, we have seen
that all phenomena, as objects, are in themselves
contingent, or only hypothetically necessary, i.e.,
necessary on the presupposition of the existence of
something else: we cannot, therefore, reach the
unconditioned totality of synthesis, unless we are
able either to discover an existence which contains
the conditions of its possibility in itself, i. e., an
absolutely necessary Being, or to sum up an infinite
series of phenomena, which are contingent in them-
selves, but necessary in relation to each other.¹
1
In all these cases we start with given phenomena,
and seek for the complete conditions of their possi-
bility; and in all, reason may be satisfied, either
with an absolute beginning, or a completed infinite
series. "In the latter case, the series is without
limit a parte priori, yet given as a whole, though the
regress in it is never completed, and can only be
called potentially infinite. In the former case, there
is a first in the series. If we look to quantity in
time, this first is a world-beginning; if to quantity
in space, it is a world-limit. If we look to quality,
it is a simple and indivisible part; if we look to
causality, it is an absolute self-activity or freedom;
if we look to modality, it is an absolute necessity of
Nature."
Now these problems are not arbitrary; they are
forced upon us by the nature of reason itself. If
there is an illusion in the dilemmas upon which
they drive us, it is at least a natural illusion. We
cannot avoid asking the questions, for on our asking
them depends all the movement of our reason;
and when we ask them, we seem inevitably to be
1 p. 330: Tr., 260.
xv1. KANT'S VIEW OF RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 565
forced to accept one or other of the alternative
answers.
the Anti-
impossible,
Under-
must an-
questions
Yet even prior to any minute examination of the Solution of
reasoning by which they are supported, we may see nomies
that both the alternative solutions of the problems of because
reason must be illusory. For the questions asked standing
by reason must be answered, if answered at all, by swer the
the understanding, which alone enables us to deter- of Reason.
mine any object as such; and yet no synthesis of
the manifold by the principles of the understanding
can possibly be adequate to the absolute unity and
totality of reason. There is a hopeless see-saw
between the two faculties; for if we adopt such a
conception of the Unconditioned as alone is adequate
to the idea of reason, we find it is too great for the
synthesis of the understanding; and if we adopt
such a conception of it as can be definitely appre-
hended by understanding, we find that it is too
small for reason. The understanding cannot deter-
mine an object absolutely but only by relation to
another object; hence it is impossible for it to rest
in the conception of an absolute beginning; yet it is
equally unable to embrace in its synthesis a series
which has no beginning. The consequence, there-
fore, is that, in all metaphysical conflicts, the victory
remains with the attacking party, and reason fluctu-
ates between two alternatives so related, that the
negation of the one seems necessarily to involve
the assertion of the other, while yet either, taken
by itself, involves an absurdity. The strength of
Scepticism has always lain in the exhibition of this
apparent self-contradiction of reason, according to
which everything, which can be asserted, can, with
equal reason, be denied: its weakness has lain in its
566
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
The three
problems
in relation
to the An-
tinomies.
incapacity for explaining the meaning of this self-
contradiction. Yet if it be not explained, Scepticism
destroys itself; for, like every other rational system,
or doctrine, Scepticism presupposes the general
petence of that intelligence, whose deliverances in
certain specific instance it refutes. If reason were
utterly incompetent, it could not determine even
its own incompetence. Criticism, on the other
hand, while it shows the origin and necessity of
the problems of Metaphysics, seeks to vindicate
the trustworthiness of reason and at the same time
to limit it; or, in other words, to prove the sub-
jective, at the same time that it denies the objective,
validity of the ideas of reason. In order to do so
much as this, however, it must solve three problems.
In the first place, it must discover the nature and
of Dialectic extent of the antinomies of reason, and must show
that they are dogmatically insoluble; or, in other
words, that, whichever of the alternative solutions
we adopt, we are led into absurdity and contradic-
tion. In the second place, it must account for these
antinomies, from the nature and relations of our facul-
ties. And, lastly, it must show what is the use of
the ideas of reason, supposing it to be proved that
they do not enable us to determine any object that
is beyond the limits of experience. For we cannot
vindicate the intelligence or avoid the absurdity of
absolute scepticism, if we find nothing but illusion
in those ideas to which we are driven by the
necessity of reason itself. No satisfactory result,
therefore, will be achieved till we discover the
positive meaning and value of these ideas, if not
as adding to the amount of human knowledge,
then at least as necessary to give aim and direc-
XVI. KANT'S VIEW OF RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 567
tion to its progress and systematic unity to its
results.¹
the Anti-
dogmati-
cally in-
soluble.
The first of these problems has already been par- Proof that
tially solved. For we have shown that antinomies nomies are
arise in connexion with the extension, or elevation to
the unconditioned, of those categories which produce a
series, and we have indicated in general what are
the problems of rational Cosmology that spring out
of this process. All that remains under this head is
to show in detail the nature of the arguments by
which the thesis and antithesis of each of these anti-
nomies are supported.
nomy.
The first Antinomy relates to the limitation of the First Anti-
world in time and space. The thesis is, that “the
world had a beginning in time, and is also limited in
space." For this it may be argued, in regard to
time, that, if there were no beginning of the world,
then, at any given point of time, we must say that
an eternity has passed, i.e., that an infinite series,
which, ex vi termini, cannot be completed, has
actually been completed. Again, if the world has
no limits in space, it must be an infinite given whole.
But a quantum can only be given by the successive
synthesis of its parts; and if the whole be infinite,
as in the case supposed, the synthesis cannot be com-
pleted except in an infinite time, i.e., it can never be
completed. Hence the denial of either member of
the thesis involves an absurdity.
(
For the antithesis, that the world had no begin-
ning in time, and is unlimited in space,' it may be
argued that, if the world had a beginning, there must
have been a time when it was not. But nothing
can begin to be in empty time; for "no moment of
1 ¹ p. 334: Tr., p. 263.
568 THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
CHAP.
empty time has in it a distinctive condition, by reason
of which a thing should be rather than not be." In
other words, a relation of an event to empty time,
by which its date should be determined, is impos-
sible; for the time of one event can only be deter-
mined in relation to the time of another that
precedes it. In like manner, to say that the world
is limited in space, is to say that there is empty
space beyond it by which its limit is determined.
But a spatial relation, which is not a relation of
objects in space, but a relation of objects to space, is
impossible. Space, in fact, is nothing but 'the pos-
sibility of external phenomena.' Empirical per-
ception is not compounded of phenomena and space'
as separate elements: for space is a mere form of
the relations of possible objects, and not itself an
object to which other objects are related. Hence
the denial of either member of the antithesis involves
an absurdity.
66
"}
Here, then, is an absolute Antinomy of reason,
demonstrated apogogically on both sides. On the
one side it is argued, that if the world is determined
as having no limits in time or space, it must be so
determined by an endless synthesis, which yet is
completed; and, on the other side, that if the world
is determined as having limits, then empty space and
empty time must be regarded as actual existences,
which limit other objects, and not as mere forms of
the perception of objects. In other words, pheno-
menal objects in time and space are always related
to a 'beyond,' which itself must consist of phenomenal
objects; yet an endless series of phenomenal objects
is impossible. Reduced to its essentials, therefore,
the reasoning is, that we necessarily determine the
Xv1. KANT'S VIEW OF RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 569
*
world in space and time as limited in extension, yet
with equal necessity we remove the limit, and relate
it to something beyond, which, in its turn, must be
determined as limited, and related to something
beyond, and so on, ad infinitum.
Antinomy.
The second Antinomy relates to the divisibility The second
of matter. For the thesis, 'that every composite
substance in the world consists of simple parts, and
that there exists nothing which is not either itself
simple, or composed of simple parts,' it may be
argued, that, if there be no simple parts, then you
cannot annihilate all composition even in thought.
But composition is, by the very idea of it, an
accidental relation—a relation which you can an-
nihilate without annihilating the substances com-
pounded. Infinite dividedness, therefore, or com-
position which is not of simple parts, cannot be
admitted by any one who holds that there is a sub-
stantial reality in things beneath their accidents.
Therefore the denial of the thesis involves an absur-
dity.1
For the antithesis, 'that no composite thing con-
sists of simple parts, and that there does not exist in
the world any simple substance,' it may be argued,
that simple parts could not exist in space, for every
space is made up, not of simple parts, but of spaces.
As, therefore, we cannot get rid of composition in
space, so we cannot get rid of it in any external
object. Nay, we cannot get rid of it in any object
at all, either external or internal; for such an object
¹ Kant's statement of this argument is very obscure. It is unravelled
by Hegel (Werke, vol. III., p. 208). Hegel remarks that the word
composite' is not in its proper place here: for it is merely tautology to
say that the composite, as such, is made up of simple parts. What
Kant means is rather the 'continuous.'
570
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
The third
Antinomy.
must needs be presented to us in a perception that
does not contain a manifold; and this is impossible.
The supposition that the Ego is such an object has
been sufficiently refuted in the preceding chapter.
Hence the denial of the antithesis involves an ab-
surdity.
Here, then, is a second Antinomy of reason proved
apogogically. The sum of the argument for the
thesis is, that an infinitely composite substance is a
contradiction; for it would be a substance entirely
made up of external and accidental relations. And
the sum of the argument for the antithesis is, that
no object of experience, as such, can be simple. It is
noticeable that the argument for the thesis is not, in
this case, derived from the impossibility of completing
an infinite series by division (as in the first Antinomy
it was derived from the impossibility of completing
an infinite series by composition), but from the meta-
physical conception of the individual substance or
monad, which Kant had inherited from the school of
Leibnitz. This inconsistency is another proof how
deeply the mind of Kant had been impressed with
the Individualism of his predecessors. If Kant, in
dealing with the second Antinomy, had gone on the
same principle as in dealing with the first Antinomy,
the essentials of the reasoning would have been, that
we necessarily determine the object in space as
limited in division, and so as simple, yet with equal
necessity we remove this limit, and regard it again
as complex, and so on ad infinitum.
The third Antinomy relates to the possibility of a
first, or free, causality. The thesis is, that "causality,
according to the laws of nature, is not the sole causality
from which the phenomena of the world as a whole
XVI. KANT'S VIEW OF RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 571
are deducible, but that it is necessary for their ex-
planation also to assume a causality by freedom." For
this assumption, it may be argued, that, according to
the laws of nature, we must seek for the cause of a
change in some change that has gone before it; for
if the cause were not a change, but something per-
manent, then the effect likewise would be always in
existence, or would not be a change. According to
the same principle we must seek the cause of the
causal change in another change, and so on ad
infinitum. If, therefore, all happens according to
the laws of nature, the cause of phenomena is always
a subaltern, and, therefore, never a first cause: or
there is never a sufficient cause for the events that
happen. And this contradicts the law of causality
itself. There must, therefore, be a cause not accord-
ing to the laws of nature, but according to freedom,
if the law of causality is absolute: or, the denial of
the thesis involves an absurdity.
But
For the antithesis, that "there is no such thing
as freedom, but that everything happens purely
according to the laws of nature," it is argued that, if
a free causality exists, it must be conceived, not only
as beginning the series of causes and effects, but also
as determining itself to begin it, i.e., "it must make an
absolute beginning, and nothing must precede it or
determine its action according to definite laws.
every beginning to act presupposes a state of the not
yet acting cause, and a dynamic first beginning pre-
supposes a state which has no connexion of causality
with the previous state of the same cause, i.e., that
follows in no way from it." But this is inconsistent
with the law of causality; it would, in fact, be the
negation of the unity of nature; for "nature and
572
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
The fourth
Antinomy.
""
transcendental freedom are related to each other as
law and lawlessness. The denial of the antithesis,
therefore, involves an absurdity.
The sum of the argument for the thesis then is,
that there is a spontaneity or free causality, because
without it the law of causality comes into contradic-
tion with itself, since, in that case, no sufficient cause
can ever be given for anything; and the sum of the
argument for the antithesis is, that there is no free
causality, because, if it existed, it would be uncaused,
and so would contradict the law of causality. Thus
the principle of causality at once posits an absolute
beginning, and yet negatives an absolute beginning,
and the alternate position and negation leads to an
infinite series.
The fourth Antinomy relates to the possibility of a
necessary Being. For the thesis, which declares
that "there is a necessary being belonging to the
world, either as its part or its cause," it is argued,
that the world of experience, being a world in time,
contains a series of changes, each of which is hypo-
thetically necessary, or, in other words, made
necessary by a condition that precedes it. Whatever
is thus conditioned, however, presupposes a complete
series of conditions up to that which is unconditioned,
or absolutely necessary. There is, therefore, an
absolutely necessary being implied in all change.
And this necessary being belongs to the world of
experience, and is not outside of it. For the
beginning of a series of changes in time cannot be
determined, except in relation to something that has
preceded it in time, or has existed in the world of
experience at a time when it did not exist. To go
out of the world of experience would involve a μerá-
XVI. KANT'S VIEW OF RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 573
βασις ἐς ἄλλο γένος, and would lead to a different kind of
necessity from that which is wanted.
For our
argument is from the contingent to the necessary.
Now the contingent, in the sense in which that word
is applied to objects of experience, means that which
has a cause in something other than itself, something
which existed previously. But the contingent in the
pure conception of it (which, of course, abstracts from
the conditions of experience) is that of which the
opposite is not self-contradictory. And we can never
say that what is contingent in the one sense is contin-
gent in the other. Hence, when we argue from the
contingent of experience to the necessary, we must
argue to a being who is necessary in an empirical
sense, a necessary being in the world, and not out of
it. The denial of the thesis, therefore, involves an
absurdity.
For the antithesis, that "there is no necessary
being either in the world or out of it," it is argued
that, in the first place, such a necessary being cannot
be in the world. For if so, then there must be an
unconditionally necessary, i.e., an uncaused, beginning
of the series of cosmical changes, or if not, then the
infinite series of changes, each of which is contingent,
must, as a whole, be absolutely necessary. But the
former supposition is inconsistent with the dynamic
law of the determination of all phenomena in time,
and the latter is absurd in itself; for a multitude of
things taken together cannot be necessary, if no
one of them possesses necessary existence in
itself. In the second place, the necessary being
cannot be out of the world; for, as the first mem-
ber of the series of causes of phenomena, the
causality of the necessary being must lie in time.
574 THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
CHAP.
The col-
lected
The denial of the antithesis, therefore, involves an
absurdity.
The parallelism between thesis and antithesis
would have been more complete, if Kant had not
introduced under the former the proof that the
necessary being must be in the world. Overlooking
this irregularity, the sum of the argument for the
thesis is, that there must be a necessary being either
in or out of the world, because the contingent pre-
supposes the necessary; and the sum of the argu-
ment for the antithesis is, that there can be a
necessary being neither in nor out of the world: not
in the world, because no being in the world can be
necessary; and not out of the world, because no
necessary being out of the world could be causally
related to the contingent in the world. In short,
we necessarily explain the contingent by the neces-
sary, but every necessity we can reach is only
hypothetical, i.e., contingent.
These, then, are the four antinomies of rational
theses form cosmology. They are no more and no fewer, because
the number of the categories which give rise to a series
the collect are just so many. It is noticeable, however, that the
one system
of philo-
sophy, and
ed anti-
theses
another.
solutions given of these different problems are not
unconnected, but that all the theses naturally gather
themselves into one system of philosophy, and all the
antitheses into another and opposite system. The
same tone of mind, the same general interests, specu-
lative and practical, which lead us to accept the thesis
or the antithesis respectively in one case, lead us to
accept it in all the other cases. In this way there
arises, on the one side, a system of 'Dogmatism of
pure reason,' and, on the other side, a system of
Empiricism, which often slides into a dogmatic
xvi. KANT'S VIEW OF RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 575
Materialism. And, if for the moment we abstract
from the question of the truth of these rival systems,
it is easy to see that, for the maintenance of both,
there are powerful motives, springing out of the most
pressing needs and tendencies of our moral and in-
tellectual nature. To believe that the world is not
eternal and infinite, but that it had a beginning
and has a limit to its extension in space; that
everything is not divisible and transitory, but that
there exists an indissoluble unity of substance, if
nowhere else, at least in the self-conscious intel-
ligence; that a spiritual being is a free causality,
and not like other things bound in the chains of
nature and fate, and that the order of nature is not
the ultimate fact to which our thoughts are limited,
but that beyond the contingent world there is a
necessary Being, who is its first cause all this gives
support to our moral and religious life, as well as
satisfaction to our highest intellectual cravings. If
our view were limited to the phenomena of sensible
experience, we could not believe in a God, or a higher
destiny for ourselves: if we conceived the law of
nature to be the ultimate truth of things, we could
not hold to the absoluteness of the imperative of
duty; our deepest moral experiences of repentance
and change of character must be regarded as illusory,
and, at the same time, the architectonic impulse of
reason, which seeks to refer all science to one prin-
ciple, must remain unsatisfied. On the other hand,
Empiricism, when it bids us seek empirical conditions
for every conditioned event or existence, when it
refuses to admit the conceptions of an indivisible
existence, a free causality, and a necessary Being, has
this great recommendation, that it "keeps the under-
576
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
The cause
of the An-
the nature
of our
faculties,
must be
discover-
able.
standing to its own sphere, the sphere of possible
experience, by the discovery of whose laws alone it
can extend without limit its certain and definite
knowledge." So long as Empiricism takes its prin-
ciples in this sense, as warnings not to quit the region
within which definite knowledge is possible, it is
strong and, indeed, unassailable. Its danger lies in
this, that it is apt to become dogmatic in its turn,
and to assert that no other region exists. And, when
it does so, it not only sets itself in opposition to the
moral and religious consciousness of men, but also
lays itself open to the same objections which it brings
against its adversary. For, as we have seen, the
assertions, that the world is without beginning or
limit, and that there is no simple substance, no free
causality, and no necessary being, are not less.
groundless and self-contradictory than the counter-
assertions of the dogmatism of pure reason.¹
We seem then to stand in this peculiar position
nomies, in that there are certain questions, which we are driven
by our very nature to ask, and to answer in one of
two ways. But if we answer them in one way, we
come into collision with the principles which underlie
our moral and religious life, and even with the highest
ideal of our intelligence; and if we answer them in the
other way, we confuse our understanding by mixing
dreams with realities, things which we cannot, with
things which we can, verify; and we are diverted from
investigations that can be pursued indefinitely with
ever-increasing profit, to a fruitless effort after that
which always eludes us. Since, then, interests which
we cannot surrender are ranged on each side of this
necessary but insoluble problem, it behoves us to
1 ¹ p. 367: Tr., p. 290.
XVI. KANT'S VIEW OF RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 577
consider, whether we cannot throw light upon it by a
discovery of the very source of the problem in the
nature of our intellectual faculties.
"1
Now, in the first place, it may safely be asserted
a priori that it is not impossible in this case to dis-
cover the cause of the difficulty. For this is one of
these departments of knowledge in which we must
be able to answer every question we are able to ask.
"The answer must come from the same sources out
of which the question itself arose." In the explana-
tion of the phenomena of nature, this is not the case;
there our knowledge is often insufficient to solve
the problems suggested by the phenomena we have
observed. But in Ethics no problem can be insolu-
ble; we must be able to discern what is right and
wrong, for right and wrong involve responsibility,
and there can be no responsibility except where there
is knowledge. And so also in transcendental philo-
sophy, the conception, which causes us to ask the
question, must enable us to answer it, seeing that the
object is presented only through that very conception.
The idea which reason gives us of the object is in
fact our only reason for saying that the object exists,
and therefore all possible questions as to the nature
of the object are merely questions as to the contents
of the idea. Hence there is no presumption in our
pretending to solve the problem, nor can we escape
from the obligation of solving it by alleging the
limits of our intelligence.
To the questions of Rational Psychology we gave
no answer, for no answer was the answer. The
problem was to determine the transcendental subject
as an object or thing in itself, and all that could be said
¹p. 378: Tr., p. 298.
20
578
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
by way of solution was that the transcendental subject
cannot be determined as an object at all. But the
case is different with the questions of Rational Cos-
mology; for here we have to do with ideas, of which
both the object and the empirical synthesis required
for its conception are given; and the questions which
the reason suggests relate only to the continuation
and completion of this synthesis so as to embrace an
absolute totality. In other words, the ideas in ques-
tion do not relate to a thing in itself, which, as such,
cannot be known at all, but to the objects of expe-
rience, which can be and are known. Only we must
observe that the question is not, what can be given
in concreto in experience, but only what lies in the
idea itself, for the empirical synthesis can only
approximate to the idea (but never enable us to
'envisage' it in an object). "All the questions of
rational Cosmology, in short, must be capable of
being answered out of the idea alone; for the idea
is a mere product of reason, which consequently
cannot disclaim the obligation to answer questions
about it, or ascribe the difficulty to the unknown
object." In other words, understanding presents us
with an object in relation to other objects, through
the synthesis of the empirically given manifold, and
reason suggests the idea of a world, an absolute
totality of objects, determined by such synthesis.
And as this idea relates to experience alone, and yet
no object adequate to it can be given in experience,
reason must determine out of itself alone its objective
meaning and value. We cannot, therefore, take
refuge in assertions of our ignorance, as if the idea
had an object independent of itself. The object can
¹p. 279: Tr., p. 300.
1
XVI. KANT'S VIEW OF RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 579
be presented to us, if at all, only through the idea;
and if it be found that the idea is inadequate
to determine the object, then it is also inadequate
to tell us that there is any object at all. Thus
the question will be solved critically, by the dis-
covery that the idea has only a subjective value,
if it cannot be solved dogmatically, by the determina-
tion of the object in question. But in any case,
critically or dogmatically, reason must answer all its
own questions.
solution of
nomies.
Now the consideration of the Antinomies has Impossi-
bility of
shown the impossibility of a dogmatic answer; it has dogmatic
shown us in all the cases that, if we suppose the the Anti-
question settled in one way, the empirical regress
necessary to realise the idea of the unconditioned is
too large to be accomplished by the understanding
in its empirical synthesis: and that if we determine
it in the other way, the empirical regress accomplished
by the understanding is too small for the idea of
reason. In other words, when we determined the
question one way, we were obliged to think of an
infinite series as completely given, i.e., of a finite
infinite; and when we determined it the other way,
we were obliged to think of a finite beyond which
nothing could be given, i.e., of an infinite finite. If
then experience, which alone can give reality to any
conception, altogether fails to realise this idea, it
follows that it is nothing but an idea, i.e., a thought
without an object; and we must seek for its meaning
and value somewhere else than in such an object.
bility of a
solution of
On the other hand, Transcendental Idealism offers And possi-
us a clear critical solution of the difficulty, enabling critical
us to detect the illusion, which has led to the objec- them.
¹ p. 384: Tr., p. 303.
1
580
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
tive interpretation of the cosmological ideas, and at
the same time to see their real subjective value. For
it directs our attention to the fact, that the objects
which we know in experience, are merely phenomenal,
i.e., that they have no existence in themselves, apart
from our empirical knowledge of them. If this be
true, it is obviously absurd to speak of such objects
as having attributes, which, by their very nature,
cannot be experienced. Space and time are mere
forms of our perception, and we can say nothing
whatever as to the presence or absence, in objects in
space and time, of qualities that could not possibly
be perceived. The questions of rational Cosmology
cannot be answered, because they cannot rationally
be asked. Thus, e.g., it is only in a confusion between
phenomena and things in themselves, that any one
can ever raise, or discuss, the problem, whether the
world is finite or infinite in extension. Properly
speaking, it is neither the one or the other; for the
world, as an object of experience, can never be deter-
mined either way. We speak, indeed, of a pheno-
menon as having attributes of its own: but this does
not mean that it has any predicates in itself apart
from our perceptions of it; it means merely, that
we (and all beings like us) under certain conditions
have certain experiences.
"That there may be
inhabitants in the moon, though no man has ever
observed them, must certainly be admitted, but this
means only that in the possible progress of experience
we might come upon them: for everything is real
that stands in one context with a perception, accord-
ing to the laws by which in experience we proceed
from one perception to another." But to say that a
thing is real in the sense that it might be perceived,
XVI. KANT'S VIEW OF RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 581
and to say that it exists apart from all perception,
are quite different things. "To call a phenomenon
a real thing before it is perceived, either means that,
in the progress of experience, we must come upon
such a perception, or it means nothing at all." It
may indeed be said that our sensibility is a receptivity,
and that, when it gives us ideas, we must explain
those ideas by a non-sensuous or intelligible cause
that affects us; but of this cause we know nothing.
We cannot perceive it as an object, and when we call
it the transcendental object, this is merely "that we
may have something that corresponds (as an activity)
to the sensibility as a receptivity." To this trans-
cendental object we may, if we will, ascribe all the
compass and connexion of our possible perceptions,
and we may speak of it as given in itself before all
experience. "Thus we may say that the real things
of past time are given in the transcendental object of
experience, but for us they are objects and realities
of past time only in so far as we represent to our-
selves, that a regressive series of perceptions would
lead to them as conditions of the perceptions of the
present moment." And in like manner, when we
speak of things existing, which we have not perceived,
we can only mean that they are contained in a part
of experience to which we may advance from the
point we have already reached. "It is all one to
say that, in empirical progress through space, I would
come upon stars which are a hundred miles farther
off than the farthest I see, and to say that such stars
may exist in the spaces of the universe, though no
man has perceived or even will perceive them."¹
1 p. 388: Tr., p. 307. Cf. ante, p. 391; see also the criticism of this
passage at the end of next chapter.
582
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Both sys-
tems of
Rational
Cosmology
rest on a
mena with
things in
selves.
Now as this is the case, and as the objects of ex-
perience exist only in our experience of them, it is
confusion easy to see that both the rival systems of Rational
of pheno Cosmology rest upon an illusion. For they both
proceed upon the principle that, the conditioned being
given, the whole series of conditions up to the un-
conditioned is given; and therefore they seek by
means of the conditioned, to determine what the
unconditioned is. Now this would be a correct pro-
cedure, if the things of experience had a nature,
which was independent of our experience of them;
for, in that case, we, who apprehend the conditioned
as such, must necessarily apprehend that by which
it is conditioned. But a phenomenon is nothing,
apart from the perception of it. When we appre-
hend it as conditioned, this only means that, as an
empirical object, it is connected, according to neces-
sary laws of the understanding, with other perceptions.
Nor can we know with what other perceptions it is
connected, except in so far as these perceptions are
actually given in sense. When, therefore, we have
determined an empirical object as conditioned, (and
of necessity we must thus determine it), all that
by this means we know is a phenomenon, and
the law of its connexion with other phenomena.
But while we are thus enabled to seek out
these other phenomena, and have, moreover, in the
Analogy of experience a criterion, by which we may
recognise them when we find them, we cannot deter-
mine a priori what they are. On the other hand, we
do know a priori, that in this process of connecting
phenomenon with phenomenon, we never can come to
an ultimate object, an object which has no further
relation or condition. Consequently, so long as we
XVI. KANT'S VIEW OF RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 583
speak of phenomena, we cannot say that the condi-
tioned being given, the unconditioned is given with
it; but only that the conditioned being given, the
unconditioned is set before us as a problem to be
solved. The illusion of rational Cosmology is that
it takes the problem for its own solution. It is true
that the mere conceptions of the conditioned and the
unconditioned are necessarily related to each other,
and we cannot have the one without suggestion of
the other; but this does not by any means imply that,
when we know the conditioned, we immediately know
the whole series of its conditions, and so the uncon-
ditioned. For here the conditioned, as an object
of knowledge, is not a mere conception, but an ex-
perience; i.e., a perception determined by a concep-
tion. If then we argue from the conditioned, which
is given empirically, to the unconditioned, which is
not so given, we are committing a sophisma figuræ
dictionis; we are taking the conditioned in two
senses. In the major, when we say: 'The conditioned
implies the unconditioned,' we mean the mere con-
ception of the conditioned; but in the minor, when
we say: This phenomenon is conditioned,' we
mean the conception as applied to an empirically
given matter. The merely formal or logical princi-
ple, that the premises are presupposed in the con-
clusion, in which abstraction is made of all time-
conditions, is thus changed into the material principle
that one phenomenon in time being given, the totality
of the regressive synthesis of phenomena is given
along with it.¹
1
We see, then, that the real solution of the Antino-
mies of rational Cosmology is, that the quarrel
¹ p. 393: Tr., 310.
584
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
The func-
tions of
the tran-
scendental
ideas in
relation to
experi-
ence.
is about nothing; for it is about the objects of ex-
perience, viewed as if they were altogether indepen-
dent of experience. In spite of the apparent contra-
diction of the thesis and antithesis, they may be,
and indeed are, both untrue; for the condition is
absent, under which alone either predicate can be
applied to the subject. If it be said that either a
body smells well, or it does not smell well, it may be
answered that there is a third possibility, viz., that it
does not smell at all. So here; when it is said that
the world is either finitely or infinitely extended in
space, it
may be answered that it is neither the one
nor the other, for both alternatives presuppose a
world in itself, independent of our perception. But
the world in itself is nothing; it is neither finitely nor
infinitely extended, for it exists only in an ex-
perience which never is completed. At any point
the regress is finite, but at no point is it terminated.¹
We have now answered two of the questions which
we proposed to ourselves; we have discussed the
nature and extent of the Antinomies of Reason, and
we have traced them back to their origin in the
nature of our faculties. It remains for us to con-
sider the third question,-what is the function of the
transcendental Ideas out of which the Antinomies
spring, or what particular purpose do they fulfil in the
organisation of knowledge,-seeing that they do not
enable us to determine the nature either of pheno-
mena, or of things in themselves. And to this,
after what has been said, the answer is not difficult.
"The principle of reason, properly speaking, is a
mere rule which commands a continual regress in the
1 This however does not, as we shall immediately see, exclude a
slightly different view in regard to the dynamical antinomies.
xvI. KANT'S VIEW OF RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 585
series of the conditions of given phenomena, and
never allows that regress to stop at any point, as if
it had there reached the unconditioned." It is no
constitutive but only a regulative principle. It does
not enable us to anticipate what will be discovered
in experience, but merely directs us continually to
widen and extend our experience to the utmost. It
does not tell us "what the object is, but simply how
the empirical regress is to be carried out so as to
arrive at the complete conception of the object."
Mathe-
Antino-
theses and
are false.
We may now proceed in the light of what has been In the
said to solve the Antinomies of Reason. As regards matical
the first two Antinomies, which relate to ideas of a mies, both
Mathematical Transcendent, we need only repeat antitheses
that both alternatives are false. The world has not
a limit in time or space, nor is it given as unlimited;
but the empirical regress finds at no point an absolute
terminus. In other words, space and time, and the
world in space and time, are to be regarded not as
infinitely or finitely extended, but as infinitely (or, as
Kant puts it, indefinitely ¹) extensible. Again, space
and matter in it are not to be regarded as actually
¹ In the eighth section of the chapter on the Antinomy of Reason, Kant
considers the use of the terms ad infinitum and ad indefinitum. The
former, he says, may always be used in case of progress, as in producing a
straight line, as in progress it is not required that the members should be
given, but only capable of being given. In the case of regress he makes
a distinction; we may say that a piece of matter is divisible ad infini-
tum, for here the whole to be divided is given, but of the regress to a
beginning of the world in time, or a limit of it in space, we should say
that it is ad indefinitum, for though another member of the series is
always possible, and, therefore, we are entitled to seek for it, we cannot
say that we must be able to find it. This distinction does not seem to
have any rational basis, for, on Kant's theory of experience, the parts of
a definite space are not actually in it as parts prior to division, any more
than all previous times are actually in the present. And the potential
existence is the same in both cases.
586
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Dynamical
Antino-
mies, both
may be
regarded
as true.
divided into a finite or infinite number of parts, but
But in the as infinitely divisible. As regards the last two Anti-
nomies, which deal with a Dynamical Transcendent,
we may also say that both alternatives are false, if
they be taken as relating to the world of experience.
For it is certain that a free cause and a necessary
being cannot be given in experience, and it is equally
certain that an infinite series of causes or hypothe-
tical necessities cannot be so given. In this sense,
therefore, the solution of these Antinomies must be
the same as that of the others; the series of condi-
tions is infinitely extensible, but not infinitely ex-
tended. But there is a peculiarity of the dynamical
principles, to which we formerly referred for a
different purpose,¹ and which distinguishes them, in
this reference, from the mathematical principles.
The peculiarity is, that they express a synthesis of
elements, which are not necessarily homogeneous.
The mathematical synthesis necessarily proceeds from
parts in space to parts in space, from events in time
to events in time. Hence, when, by the aid of such
synthesis we seek to pass from the conditioned to
the unconditioned, we must take the unconditioned
as homogeneous with the conditioned. We must
explain a quantitative finite by a quantitative in-
finite. And thus we are entangled in an insoluble
contradiction; for we are driven to put under
the conditions of experience that which cannot be
made an object of experience. In this case it is
evident that every possible answer to the questions
of the reason must be equally false. But in the
case of the dynamical principles, we may escape
from such a dilemma, because the terms connected
1 Cf. ante, p. 440.
2 p. 407 Tr., p. 322.
XVI. KANT'S VIEW OF RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 587
by these principles may be heterogeneous. The
elements related as cause and effect, necessary and
contingent, need not, so far as they are determined by
these categories, have any similarity. Hence, when
we pass by the aid of these categories from the condi-
tioned to the unconditioned, we do not necessarily
regard the former as in any way like the latter. While,
therefore, in the former case, we had to look for the
unconditioned in the sphere and under the conditions
of experience, and were, therefore, necessarily forced
to contradict ourselves; here we have an alternative,
for we may look for the unconditioned either within
or without the world of experience. And thus it
becomes possible to suppose that the thesis and
antithesis are both true in different senses: the one
as referring to the relations of phenomena within the
world of experience, and the other as referring to
the relation of the phenomenal to the noumenal
or intelligible world. Here, therefore, we may
regard both thesis and antithesis as true. The
antithesis, that there is no free cause, and no neces- The intel-
ligible and
sary Being, is true of the phenomenal world, in the the empiri
sense that the empirical regress can never bring us ters.
to a cause which is not an effect, or a necessity which
is more than hypothetical. And yet the thesis, that
there is a free causality and a necessary Being, may
also be true, in the sense that the phenomenal world
is a result of the activity of one or more free causali-
ties in the intelligible world, and that beneath the play
of contingency in the former, there is an absolutely
necessary Being in the latter. It is to be observed,
however, that we do not here attempt to prove the
existence of a necessary Being or of a free causality,
but merely to leave room for them in case they should
cal charac-
588
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Summary
of Kant's
conclu-
sions.
be otherwise proved. If it can be demonstrated or
made probable on other, as, for example, on moral,
grounds that there is an intelligible world, of absolute
freedom or of absolute necessity, we have shown that
no objection to its existence can be based on the prin-
ciples of causality and necessity. For these principles,
in the sense in which they are inconsistent with such
forms of the unconditioned, apply only to the world
of experience. They are principles, whereby pheno-
mena in the visible world are related to each other,
but they cannot be used as arguments against a
theory of the relation of the intelligible world to the
phenomenal. And it may quite well be the case, that
the phenomena of the sensible world, which, as
phenomena, form part of the context of experience,
and have to be explained in one way in relation to
other phenomena, may have to be explained in a
quite different way, when we consider their relation
to the intelligible world. The principle of causality
may, therefore, be used in two senses; in one sense,
as applied to phenomena, and as determining the
relations of these phenomena in time; and in another
sense, as applied to the connexion of phenomena with
things in themselves, which are not in time at
all. For the positive proof of such a connexion
we must, however, refer to another place. Here it
is sufficient to have pointed out the possibility of it,
or, in other words, the possibility that phenomena,
and especially the phenomena produced by the action
of moral beings, have an intelligible, as well as an
empirical, character.¹
The general result of this chapter on the Cosmo-
logical Ideas is :—that, as ideas of the totality of
1 ¹ p. 418: Tr., p. 330.
Xv1. KANT'S VIEW OF RATIONAL COSMOLOGY. 589
the world of phenomena, they have no objective value,
because the phenomenal world exists only in a
sensible experience in which totality can never be
given; that both the opposite systems of philo-
sophy, which attempt to construe this totality,
end in contradiction, because they both regard ob-
jects, which have only an empirical reality, as things
in themselves; that, in the case of the Mathematical
Ideas, there is no escape from contradiction except
in this insight into the falsity of both alternatives;
while, in the case of the dynamical Ideas, it is pos-
sible to reach a somewhat more satisfactory result,
by referring the predicates of the Thesis to the
object, as noumenon, and those of the Antithesis to
the same object, as phenomenon; and, lastly, that in
relation to our knowledge of the world of experience,
all four Ideas have merely a regulative, and not a
constitutive, value; that is, they enable us to set up
certain subjective rules, by which the greatest possible
extension may be given to our empirical knowledge,
but they do not supply objective principles, by which
the nature, either of the objects of experience, or of
things in themselves, may be determined.
590
CHAPTER XVII.
CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN DOCTRINE
AS ΤΟ THE
NATURE, ORIGIN, AND SOLUTION OF THE ANTINOMIES
OF REASON.
AS S the preceding chapter has shown, Kant holds
that reason is in itself antinomical, i.e., that
it comes into contradiction with itself by a necessary
illusion, an illusion the cause of which is not to be
found in accidental circumstances, but in its own
nature. He holds, however, that reason thus con-
tradicts itself only in one province of Metaphysics,
the province of Rational Cosmology; while in the
provinces of Rational Psychology and Theology,
it is free, not indeed from illusion, but from this
particular kind of illusion. Lastly, he holds that
Transcendental Idealism, though it cannot remove
the illusion, can yet explain it, and therefore saves
us from being misled by it. For Transcendental
Idealism supplies the only possible solution of the
antinomies, and discovers a true subjective meaning
for those ideas, which, in their objective application,
lead only to absurdity and self-contradiction.
We have, therefore, to consider these three ques-
tions:-First, Does reason naturally and neces-
CRITICISM OF KANT'S ANTINOMIES.
591
sarily produce antinomies? secondly, Does it produce
them only in one sphere, or in all spheres of its
activity? and, thirdly, Are its antinomies, in all cases,
or in any case, insoluble?
necessarily
Antino-
Now, that reason in its progress towards truth, Reason
naturally and necessarily developes antinomies, produces
i.e., contradictions, or, at least, apparent contra- mies.
dictions can scarcely be denied. Every complex
thought contains an opposition to be reconciled, a
difference whose terms have to be mediated with
each other. The aim of philosophy and science is
always to find some kind of unity, where at first
there appears to be only diversity, or even incon-
sistency; it is to find the one in the many, identity
of substance under difference of accidents, identity
of force under difference of forms, identity of law
under difference of phenomenal appearances. And
this aim presupposes in all cases a consciousness
of multiplicity and diversity, as that which needs.
explanation, and which, unless it gets explanation,
tends to become absolute contradiction. Reflexion
awakens with the sense of the implicit contradiction
which is contained in difference. Every one, how-
ever little he may have considered the philosophical
problem of identity, has felt the practical difficulty
of recognising an individual, formerly known, not-
withstanding the changes that time has produced;
and when, in spite of these changes, the individual
is recognised as the same, the recognition implies an
attempt, however imperfect, to explain the difference
in consistency with the sameness. There is, no
doubt, a great difference in import between this
simple difficulty and the ultimate question of philo-
sophy, the question as to the unity of all things
592
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Example
from
and of the mind that knows them; but the two
questions are fundamentally of the same character,
and the former, in the development of thought,
naturally leads to the latter. Ever the problem of
thought is to reconcile differences, to find harmony
in apparent opposition and contradiction; and that
which constitutes the impulse after knowledge is the
never-ceasing unrest of thought, till it discovers its
own unity in all that it apprehends.
Every difference is a possible contradiction, and
To illustrate this
Casuistry. therefore requires explanation.
principle, we may refer to the supposed science of
Casuistry. The aim of the casuist was to develope
a complete, and universally applicable, system of
morality, on the basis of a number of commandments,
each of which was supposed to be of absolute author-
ity. It was soon found, however, that in their par-
ticular development these general commandments
came into collision with each other; in other words,
that cases were continually arising, which were cap-
able of being subsumed under two or more com-
mandments, and therefore of being determined in
opposite ways. The casuist was constrained, there-
fore, to invent expedients to explain away this oppo-
sition, and to preserve an apparent absoluteness for
each of those laws, which, in reality, he was obliged
to treat as relative, and limited in their application.
At first sight there is no opposition between the
command, 'Thou shalt not kill,' and the command,
Thou shalt not steal.' So long as
So long as we regard
these rules in the abstract, they stand side by side,
independent of, and indifferent to each other. But
the attempt to apply them to particular cases soon
discloses their divergence. If one man regards all
(
XVII.
593
CRITICISM OF KANT'S ANTINOMIES.
things as subordinate to the sacredness of human
life, and another regards all things as subordinate
to the inviolability of property, the two will arrive
at very different practical results. In morality there
can be only one absolute principle; and if there be
ten commandments, or more than one commandment,
we must either treat one of them as that to which
the rest are subordinate, or seek for some principle
superior to all, and of which they are only the par-
tial expressions.
(
from
philo-
And the same thing holds good of every difference Example
that can be presented to thought. When we say, Greek
like Xenophanes, 'looking up to the expanse of sophy.
heaven,' that the universe is one, and when, again,
we speak of the endless multiplicity and diversity of
the forms of existence, we may simply be giving
expression to the different aspects of things which
strike us at different times and in different tempers
of mind. But the inevitable progress of thought
brings the assertion of 'the One' into collision with
the assertion of the Many'; and then we have only
the alternative, to sacrifice one of these assertions to
the other, or to treat both as imperfect expressions of
some higher principle. If we accept the former alter-
native, we must explain away, either the multiplicity,
or the unity of things; we must either say with the
Eleatics, that the one only seems to be many through
the delusion of sense, or with the Ionics, that the
unity of the world is merely an illusion of abstract
thought. If we accept the latter alternative, and
refuse to limit ourselves to either of these one-sided
theories, then we must ask, with Plato and Aristotle,
whether there is not a point of view from which
unity and multiplicity can be reconciled, or from
2 P
594
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Example
from
Mediæval
philo-
sophy.
Common
sense solves
problems
which difference can be regarded as the necessary
expression of identity.
Again, to take one more example, the medieval
controversy of Nominalism and Realism related to
two aspects of things which do not in the first instance.
present themselves as contradictory, but only as
different. So long as they do not bring their thoughts
together, men may be content to say that things are
individual, though they have universal attributes, or
are related to each other by universal laws. But as
soon as reflexion awakens, they are driven to ask,
whether it is in the universal principle or law that
we are to seek the permanent reality, of which the
individual is only a transitory and limited manifesta-
tion; or whether on the other hand it is the indi-
vidual alone which really exists, and the universal is
merely a name. And when these two views of things
have thus developed out of difference into contradic-
tion, it is obvious either that one of them must be
adopted to the exclusion of the other; or, if both are
to be retained, that they must be degraded from their
position as absolute principles, and treated as one-
sided and abstract elements of a truth which embraces
and transcends them both. From such a point of
view, it would appear that it is equally absurd and
contradictory to say that individuals alone exist, and
that the universal is a mere abstraction, and to
say that universals alone exist, while the individual
is a mere appearance; since in truth, the universal
exists only as it individualises itself, and the indi-
vidual exists only to manifest or realise the uni-
versal.
Generally, then, we may say that every difference
is an implicit contradiction, which in the progress of
XVII.
595
CRITICISM OF KANT'S ANTINOMIES.
being con-
thought sooner or later becomes an explicit con- without
tradiction, and that, on penalty of universal scepticism, scious of
this explicit contradiction must be solved or recon-
ciled by the discovery of a more comprehensive prin-
ciple; for if thought cannot make itself self-consistent,
it must ultimately fall into despair of itself and
of truth. In our ordinary consciousness of the world
indeed, this necessity is hidden; many differences of
thought sleep together in unbroken harmony without
ever coming into active collision. Common sense
cuts many a knot without even being conscious of it.
In morality, e.g., it sees no difficulty in admitting the
commands: 'Thou shalt not kill,' and 'Thou shalt
not steal,' as equally absolute; and it avoids any
practical collision between the two simply by apply-
ing one principle at one time, and another at another.
Thus, while it solves the problem of ethics, it often
conceals from itself even the fact that there was
a problem to be solved; like the judge, who pro-
fesses to be a mere interpreter of the law, while
he is really adding to it. Were it not, indeed, for
this healthful unconsciousness with which, at first,
we take different aspects of things into our minds
without being conscious of the contradictions or diffi-
culties involved in them, the first steps of knowledge
would be embarrassed by an anticipation of its ulti-
mate problems. But on the other hand, it is certain
that the problems are there, that with time and
reflexion the contradictions must ripen, and that in
one way or other they must be solved. And the
whole history of intellectual progress is just the
history of the development of a consciousness of
difference into a consciousness of contradiction, and
again of a consciousness of contradiction into a con-
596
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
First stage
of thought,
in which
the reflec-
tive sense
of contra-
diction is
not yet de-
veloped.
sciousness of the higher principle in the light of
which the contradiction disappears.
If this be true, it follows, that Antinomy is not
merely the accidental product of a false negative
dialectic, as has been generally supposed, nor, as
is supposed by Kant, an essential phenomenon of
the intelligence merely in its application to one set
of problems. On the contrary, it is the necessary law
of thought in itself, from which it cannot in any
region escape. The first stage of intelligence, the
stage of common sense, is one in which there is an
undeveloped consciousness of the unity of thought
with itself through all the diversity of its application,
and an equally undeveloped consciousness of the
discordance and opposition of the different aspects
of things which are gathered together in knowledge.
The contradiction of objects with each other and with
the thought that apprehends them, is not yet per-
ceived, and hence the reconciliation is not wanted.
The identity is felt through the diversity, the diver-
sity through the identity, and no more is required.
At times indeed, one aspect of things is more pro-
minent than another. Religious emotion lifts man
above the divided and fragmentary existence in which,
in his secular life, he usually dwells, and makes vividly
present to him a unity, which in general is but
shadowy and uncertain. But he passes through
the one state of consciousness after the other,
without bringing them into contact or considering
whether they are consistent or inconsistent.¹ For
1
¹ Cf. Spinoza, Eth. 11., Schol. 10. "Thus while men are contem-
plating finite things they think of nothing less than of the divine nature;
and again when they turn to consider the divine nature, they think of
nothing less than of the fictions, on which they have formerly built up the
XVII. CRITICISM OF KANT'S ANTINOMIES.
597
many, indeed, there never is any conscious discord,
and hence there never is any effort after inward
harmony. But even where the intellectual impulse
is feeble, the moral difficulties of life are constantly
tending to awake in us a sense of the differences
and oppositions that exist in thought and things.
And as the mind cannot abjure its faith in itself,
it is forced by the necessity of its own development
upon a choice between different elements of its life,
which seem at first to contradict and exclude each
other.
stage of
in which
tion be-
conscious,
to one-
matism.
With this choice begins the second stage of culture. Second
Conscious of discord with itself, the mind now takes thought,
refuge in a philosophy of the understanding which contradic-
treats elements of the truth as the whole truth, and comes
raises abstractions into independent entities; which and leads
sacrifices experience to self-consistency, and truth to sided Dog-
system. Such a mode of thought breaks up the
unity of man's natural and spiritual life, and offers
him only the choice between its disjecta membra. It
expresses itself in a one-sided Realism or an equally
one-sided Nominalism, an Idealism or a Materialism,
a Pantheism or an Individualism, a Stoicism or an
Epicureanism, whose meaning lies mainly in its
opposition to the alternative system. Against test of
such philosophies of the understanding the
mon consciousness is always ready to
and to re-assert the validity of both the
which are thus opposed to each other. But common tual
sense can only cut by faith the knots which its logic
is unable to untie. If it upholds the completeness of
truth against the abstract unity of Dogmatism, or
knowledge of finite things.
The pro-
common
sense
against
com-
protest, Dogma-
elements tism and
Hence it is not wonderful that
they are always contradicting themselves."
Scepticism
ineffec-
598
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
the negations of Scepticism, yet it does nothing to
improve the method of the former, or to solve the
difficulties raised by the latter. With the school of
Reid, it sets immediate feeling and perception against
demonstration, and maintains that there are certain
data of outward or of inward experience, which have
only to be accepted in implicit faith. With Bacon,
it contends that thought is not adequate to the
subtlety and variety of nature, and preaches
a return to observation and fact.
It calls upon
science to take nature and consciousness as they
present themselves, and not to thrust any of the idols
of the mind between it and the world it seeks to
understand. Such protests undoubtedly have a
certain practical value in awaking a consciousness of
the imperfection of those one-sided systems, which
make things plain by the simple process of leaving
out the difficulty. But they do not themselves con-
tain any solution of that difficulty. To return to
experience and fact, if we take the words strictly, is
as impossible as to return to the innocence of the
child, or rather to the animal's unconsciousness of
evil. To take feelings and impressions as they come
without allowing any determination of them by
thought, is not a course possible to a thinking
being, and if it were possible, it would not be know-
ledge. And to do as common sense. does, to
accept difference and opposition side by side with
a general consciousness of the unity of the mind and
the world, is not possible to one whose attention has
been directed to the discordance between these differ-
ent elements. Bacon, when he tells us to hold to facts
and neglect the mind's anticipation of unity, falls
into an error, the opposite of that of the schoolman
XVII.
599
CRITICISM OF KANT'S ANTINOMIES.
who bids us hold to general principles and neglect
the facts. If the latter would imprison us in
one-sided and abstract views of things, the former
would make us sit down contented with an incoherent
picture of the world, without any attempt to make it
coherent. Bacon and his more modern successors
are, in practice, very far from such a result, but
logically they commit themselves to it.
If they
had examined more deeply the nature of knowledge,
they would have seen, that the very enquiries of
science presuppose that difference is in itself a pro-
blem, i.e., that the mind cannot rest in difference as an
ultimate fact, but necessarily presumes that it can be
either explained or explained away. No rational
curiosity could exist, unless a contradiction was felt to
exist between the mind's unity and the difference
of its objects, or, in other words, between the form
of knowledge, and the contents with which it is filled.
And every step in the progress of science and philo-
sophy, every endeavour to mediate and reconcile
this antagonism, presupposes the goal of an absolute
unity, in which alone the intelligence can find rest
and satisfaction.
critical
explains
of his
mies.
Kant, to a certain extent, occupies the same ground Kant's
with Bacon. Like Bacon, he holds that there is an position
opposition between the unity of the mind and the the nature
multiplicity of the matter which it apprehends, though Antino-
he is inclined rather to say that nature and experience
are inadequate to the unity of mind, than to say that
the mind is inadequate to the subtlety of nature.
Knowledge, in his view, can exist only in so far as
these opposites are reconciled to each other. Experi-
ence cannot be mere reception of a given matter; it
is possible only if the matter of sense be determined in
600
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Origin of
the Mathe-
matical
Antino-
mies.
relation to the unity of self-consciousness, through the
synthesis of the categories. As, however, the two
elements in knowledge, its form and its matter, are
heterogeneous, so their combination must give rise
to insoluble contradiction. And this explains why
Kant finds the antinomies just where he actually
finds them. Pure thought in his view is not antino-
mical; on the contrary, it is analytical, or even tau-
tological; but it necessarily becomes antinomical, when
it is related or applied to the manifold of phenomena.
The demand of reason for unity is the very source of
experience, yet it is a demand which can never be
completely satisfied in experience. Experience is
thus an infinite series of attempts of the mind to
solve a problem, which, from the very nature of the
terms, can never be solved. The ideas of reason at
once make necessary that continuous effort, out of
which all our empirical knowledge springs, and
point to a goal, which that kind of knowledge can
never attain. For the abstract unity of the pure
Ego can never be realised in an object, which is
essentially manifold and different. The mind can
never find itself in the world of space and time
which it apprehends.
The Mathematical Antinomies, with which Kant
begins, arise out of the conception of the world in time
and space as an object; and they are due to the con-
tradictory nature of the elements involved in the ideas
of time and space themselves. Thus space is necessarily
conceived as a unity-as in continuity with itself; yet,
on the other hand, it involves externality, and must
therefore be conceived as manifold or discrete. In
other words, a space, when we conceive it as a unit,
has no other attribute except that of being external
XVII.
601
CRITICISM OF KANT'S ANTINOMIES.
to another space; it is essentially a relation, and one
space would be an absurdity: it would be a relation
without terms. Yet on the other hand, all space
must be conceived as one for two separate spaces,
not included in one universal space, would be terms
without a relation. Space, in short, as the abstraction
of externality, cannot be a unity; while yet, when
conceived as an object in relation to the unity of apper-
ception, it must be a unity. And the two moments
of continuity and discretion, which are equally neces-
sary, seem to contradict or exclude each other.
of Kant's
solution of
the Anti-
nomies of
Space.
Kant's solution of this difficulty is, that objects in Criticism
space are merely objects of experience, and that there-
fore we cannot speak either of them, or of space, as
actually having in them any qualities, which are not
given in experience. Now space and the world in
space, as they are given in experience, are only finitely
extended, and finitely divided; yet at the same time,
by reason of the necessity of reason, which forces us to
determine all things in relation to the unconditioned,
they are conceived both as infinitely extensible, and
infinitely divisible. But while there would be a con-
tradiction between infinite and finite extent, or infinite.
and finite dividedness, there is no contradiction
between finite extent and infinite extensibleness, or
between finite division and infinite divisibility.
Now, with a slight alteration, we may admit this
solution as valid. Space in itself, and the external
world in itself, is only the abstraction of an element
in experience, and contradictions must arise, whenever
we treat abstractions, or in other words, elements
of reality, as res completae or whole realities. Now,
when we think of a spatial world as unrelated to
thought, we are obliged to conceive it as complete
602
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
and whole in itself, and therefore as infinite in exten-
sion and division. But the truth of the matter is
that this abstraction is false, and that the world in
space, as that which is essentially self-external, finds
its necessary counterpart in the unity of mind, as
that which is essentially in itself.¹ The antinomy of
space proves that space is necessarily related to some-
thing else than itself, and cannot be made intelligible
except in this relation. To put the same thing in
another way :—The world in our first imperfect con-
ception of it, is merely a collection of individual things
and beings; and each of these, as individual, is a
whole in itself; yet each again is externally related
to all the others, and so constitutes one whole with
them. Space is itself but the utmost abstraction of
this way of viewing things, in which their indivi-
duality and their community or relativity are put
side by side, without any mediation or connexion.
Both elements of the idea are essential, yet the one
seems to contradict the other. The reconciliation of
the seeming contradiction, however, is to be found
not in the idea of space itself, but in the further
development of the opposite and necessarily re-
lated conceptions of individuality, and community,
which here appear in their simplest, therefore ap-
parently irreconcileable, forms. It is, indeed, true,
as Kant says, that, at first, we necessarily think
things as in space; but though we begin with space,
we do not end there: and the solution of the difficul-
ties that belong to this first form of perception' is
to be found by a deeper comprehension of the
elements that are contained in it, and their relations
to each other; for it is quite false to suppose with
(
¹ Cf. ante., p. 287: also p. 426.
XVII.
603
CRITICISM OF KANT''S ANTINOMIES.
Kant, that we must take space merely as a form of
perception, and that it cannot be resolved into its
elements, and brought into a higher unity of thought.
It is a perception only so long as we are content
to perceive and imagine, without thinking or know-
ing it.
of Kant's
time, solution of
the Anti-
Kant nomy of
Time.
The same remarks, mutatis mutandis, apply to Criticism
the antinomy of Time. Has the world in
or time itself a beginning, or has it not?
answers as before, that the empirical regress is always
finite in extent, yet indefinitely extensible, and that
any question as to time or things in time, apart from
this regress, is meaningless. Time is only a form of
perception, or of phenomena as given in perception,
and, in terms of it, we cannot answer any question
about things in themselves, simply because the ques-
tion itself is irrational. This answer might be taken
in a higher sense than Kant intended, as meaning that
things, regarded simply as in time, are not seen in
their truth. Space is the abstraction of self-exter-
nality, and, therefore, gives rise to a contradiction
between the independence of things in it, and their
essential relativity, or continuity; and time only con-
tains the same elements, viewed as passing into each
other. 'Time,' says Hegel, 'is the first negation of
space:" by which is meant that, while the externality
of things is not denied when we conceive them as in
time, their indifference or permanence in this exter-
nality is denied. Finite things are first represented
as indifferent to each other, and so as in space; but
the relation of externality, as it is still a relation,
implies the negation of indifference. To exist in
space, is for things to relate themselves to each
¹ Encyclopädie, §§ 257-8.
1
604
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
The Dyna-
mical prin-
ciples take
other, and so to lose their separate individuality:
and hence things in space are necessarily also in
time. Their existence is but the process, whereby,
as separate or limited substances, they cease to be or
pass out of themselves; and time is but the abstrac-
tion of this process. Hence arise the Antinomies of
Time, that so early drew the attention of the dialec-
tic Zeno. 'The flying arrow rests :' it at once is, and
is not, in the place through which it passes. The
moments of time are external to each other, yet they
exist only as they pass into each other; and thus
time contains the two moments of continuous self-
identity, and absolute change. Moreover these
moments appear in abstract, and therefore apparently
irreconcileable, opposition to each other; and, as is
always the result in such cases, they give rise to an
infinite series. Hence, we no sooner consider a
time as one, than we are obliged to relate it to
a time before or after it, and again we are obliged
to regard these two times as one, and so on ad infini-
tum. No solution of this antinomy can be found in
terms of time itself, or without reducing time to a
moment in a higher conception, in which the ele-
ments of self-identity and relativity find a better
reconciliation than they do in time.
Is such a reconciliation to be found in the applica-
us beyond tion of the category of Causality to things in time?
the con-
tradiction
involved
in the
Mathema-
tical.
In a former chapter it was shown that, what in one
point of view is the application of that category to
phenomena in time, in another point of view is
simply the development into clear consciousness of
what is already involved in the determination of
them as in time. The category is implicitly con-
1 Cf. ante, p. 458.
XVII.
605
CRITICISM OF KANT'S ANTINOMIES.
tained in that to which it appears to be externally
applied. And the same was also proved to hold
good of the category of Reciprocity, which Kant, con-
strained by the external principle of symmetry he had
adopted, here leaves out of account. In determining
successive phenomena as causally related, and co-
existing phenomena as reciprocally dependent, we
bring together the two moments of unity and diver-
sity, individuality and universality, continuity and
discreteness, in a way in which they are not united
when we conceive phenomena merely as coexisting
in space or successive in time. By the use of these
categories, therefore, we make a step towards the
solution of the contradiction which is involved in
the conception of things as in time and space. Or,
looking at the same thing in another point of
view, by the conception of the phenomenal as a
systematic unity of mutually determining parts, we
have brought it nearer to the unity of mind, or
enabled mind to find an analogue of itself in the
object. But we have yet only made the first step in
this direction. The idea of the world as a system of
causal substances is, in Hegelian phrase, only the
first negation of the idea of it as a mere aggregate of
phenomena, bound to each other only by the ex-
ternal relations of time and space. The dynamical
synthesis transcends the mathematical synthesis, in
so far as it determines the separate phenomena, as,
at the same time, necessarily related to each other.
But it still leaves these phenomena a nature of their
own, apart from the synthetic principle of their rela-
tions. The particular manifold is still empirically
given; the particular laws of nature, which specify
the general principles of understanding, are not
606
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
For they
evade con-
developed out of these principles. Hence the mind's
presumption of unity is not yet justified, or reason
does not yet find itself, but only an analogue of itself, in
the object. The contradiction which lies in the deter-
mination of the world as one world, while yet each part
is exclusively and negatively related to all the others,
is not yet overcome, and the result, of course, is an
Antinomy, and the infinite series which necessarily
springs out of Antinomy.
Kant, however, mentions an important difference
tradiction between the dynamical and the mathematical prin-
ciples, namely, that they make possible a transition
from phenomena to things in themselves.
by a dual-
ism.
In seeking the unconditioned for a quantitative
conditioned, we were forced to seek it in the region
of quantity; hence there was necessarily an absolute
contradiction between the thing sought and the
region wherein it had to be sought. A quantitative
unconditioned is an absolute contradiction—it is a
quantum which is no quantum; and, therefore, both
the alternatives in the Antinomy had to be pro-
nounced false. But in seeking the unconditioned for
the conditioned, according to the dynamical prin-
ciples, we are not confined to an unconditioned which
is homogeneous with the conditioned. We may con-
nect the phenomenal conditioned with a noumenal
unconditioned; and then, however little we may be
able to determine what this unconditioned positively
is, there will, at least, be no contradiction involved
in the mere conception of it. Nay, as Kant shows,
the principle of causality itself presupposes a higher
cause than can be found in the infinite series of
phenomenal antecedents. For as that principle,
in its empirical application, does not determine
XVII. CRITICISM OF KANT'S ANTINOMIES.
607
what particular phenomena shall be connected as
cause and effect, the causality of the cause itself
requires explanation. Thus, as applied to pheno-
mena, the principle contradicts itself; it gives for
events or effects a reason which is no reason, a cause
which is no cause. The true cause must be the
cause of the infinite series, or of the combination
of its elements with each other, and not merely a
member of the series; it must be a causa sui, or
otherwise it will involve a repetition of the very ques-
tion to which it pretends to give an answer. Now, this
reasoning of Kant points to the truth, that the demand
for a causal explanation of things is, in its ultimate
meaning, the demand for a unity which shall at once
determine and transcend the difference of cause and
effect. The same principle which forces us to seek for
an impossible unconditioned in time now forces us
ultimately to seek for an unconditioned unity out of
time, a unity from which the whole series of states,
and even the fact that there is such a series, (even
the existence of time itself) shall be explained.
Thus, in asking for the complete cause of a pheno-
menon, we are, in effect, asking for nothing less than
an absolute determination of it in relation to the
whole universe.
Causality
passes into
law, and
into the
This may be made clearer by a consideration of The idea of
the scientific use of the conception of causality. In in science
seeking for causes, we are, according to Kant, seeking the idea of
for invariable antecedents. Yet we commonly call from that
gravitation the cause of the phenomena of the idea of the
heavens. Now, gravitation is not the invariable
antecedent of these phenomena, it is the simple
expression of that relation of bodies in space, which
enables us to connect all their successive states, and
causa sui.
608
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
$
a
even to prophesy what at any time that state will be
from what it now is. But if'cause' mean that which
enables us to account for a thing, gravitation is more
fitly so named than any mere antecedent pheno-
menon. It may, indeed, be objected, that gravitation
does not enable us completely to account for any
definite position of a material body relatively to other
bodies, unless we know their previous position; it is
not a principle of the creation or first determination of
matter, but it presupposes it as already given. And
so far we may say that gravitation is not the complete
cause of anything, since there is always something
left over, which that law does not explain, and for
which, therefore, we have to seek a further cause.
Hence the ultimate problem of science must be to
find a principle which determines the existence as
well as the relations of the objects subjected to it;
and which is not simply, like gravitation, the general
expression of some of these relations. And this
requirement evidently will not be satisfied unless we
can explain the form of time itself, and so transcend
it wholly, as we already partly transcended it, when we
discover a law, like that of gravitation, which is
independent of time. Kant, then, is right in saying
that the category of cause points to a noumenal
self-determined Being, a causa sui, which cannot be
presented in experience under the form of time. Or,
if we like to put it so, the category of cause is one of
those which suggest a doubt as to the world of time,
a doubt whether the determination of things, as in
time, is a complete explanation of them. It suggests
a dualism between phenomena and things in them-
selves, between time and eternity. It thus enables
us not merely to combine phenomena with each other,
XVII.
609
CRITICISM OF KANT'S ANTINOMIES.
but also to make transition from them to the nou-
mena, although the transition is as yet merely nega-
tive, i.e., it enables us to define noumena merely as
not phenomena, or, what is the same thing, it enables
us only to see that phenomena do not explain them-
selves.
gory of
Causality
lation of
to nou-
The defect, however, which attaches to all transi- The cate-
tions from the conditioned to the unconditioned, in so adequate
far as they are made by means of the principle of to the re-
causality, lies in the nature of the category of cause phenomena
itself. Not only does that category lead to contra- mena.
diction in its application to experience-it is contra-
dictory in itself. It presupposes what it denies, and
denies what it presupposes. It implies a dualism,
which it at the same time leads us to reject. For
we necessarily think of causality, at least in the first
instance, as a relation of things which involve, but
are not identical with, each other: or, in other words,
causality repels from each other the two things which
it connects. Accordingly, when we relate the pheno-
menal to the noumenal world, as effect to cause, we, at
the same time, separate them from each other; and thus
the principle of causality suggests the idea of two
different worlds which condition each other. But,
on the other hand, the idea of the existence of two
separate worlds which condition each other comes
into collision with the very conception of cause,
according to which it is the complete explanation of
its effect; and in this point of view we have again to
regard the cause, not as exteriorly related to the
effect, but as identical with it, or as containing it in
itself. Hence we are obliged to think of the pheno-
menal not as another world than the noumenal, but
as the same world, only in a different relation. In
2 Q
610
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
other words, what to us is the phenomenal is in
reality the noumenal; or the noumenal is just the
truth of the phenomenal. In the section on the
'empirical and intelligible characters' of things,
Kant wavers between these two views. At times
he seems to treat the intelligible world as the whole
reality of the phenomenal, while at other times he
regards the former as different from the latter, though
connected with it by the causal relation. It is im-
possible for him to avoid a certain hesitation on this
point. He cannot suppose the noumenal to be a
only reality, for even if the phenomenal world were
reduced to a mere illusion of our minds, the question
would still remain, why the illusion should exist.
The noumenal or intelligible must contain in it a
necessity for the existence of the phenomenal world :
or in other words, the intelligible world, merely as
the intelligible world, does not contain all reality in
itself without the phenomenal. To Kant, however,
the phenomenal and noumenal worlds are separated
by a great gulf; the self-determination that belongs
to the latter seems to him the direct negation of
that determination by another, which is characteristic
of the former; they are opposed "as lawlessness to
law." 1
Hence they can be related only externally,
and that in spite of the fact that, by the very defini-
tion of the unconditioned, there can be nothing to
which it is externally related. The source of the
antinomy lies really in the inadequacy of the category
of causality to the object to which it is applied, and
indeed in its inadequacy even to itself. F'or, like
quantity, like the ideas of time and space, causality
contains in itself, even apart from its application,
1 ¹ p. 355: Tr., p. 279.
XVII. CRITICISM OF KANT'S ANTINOMIES.
611
a contradiction, which cannot be solved except by
advancing to a higher category. In applying it,
therefore, we fluctuate between two thoughts or
terms which are never perfectly united-at one time
speaking of the cause and the effect as absolutely iden-
tical, and at another time as absolutely different from
each other. The cause, in fact, both is and is not
one with its effect, according to the way in which we
regard it. But the solution of the antinomy is to be
found only in another category, in which the elements
of identity and difference are more perfectly recon-
ciled with each other, a category which is imper-
fectly expressed even as self-determination, or
causa sui.
negates
changes
higher
The category of Causality, then, is a category of But it
the finite, a category adequate only to phenomena in itself, and
time as such, yet its application to such phenomena thus into a
implies an effort of thought to take from them that category.
isolated and independent character, which they have
when merely determined as in time. It, therefore,
involves at once the admission and the denial of
their isolated and independent character. And it is
quite consistent with the general law of our intellectual
progress, that we should thus advance in knowledge by
the aid of a conception, which itself must ultimately be
rejected, or at least transformed. The search for the
explanation of things must begin with certain ideas
of them, which furnish the premises of all our
reasoning, but the conclusion we reach reacts upon
the premises. So here, the attempt to find the
causes or reasons of things begins by taking them as
independent substances, yet as finite and determined
by each other in time and space; but the mind cannot
reach a final solution of the problem thus set before
612
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
CHAP.
Because he
denied the
of pure
Kant did
not ad-
vance to
category.
it until it ceases to regard them as merely indepen-
dent and external substances. Hence in the transi-
tion which it mediates from the conditioned to the
unconditioned, the category of causality itself dis-
appears, or it reappears after this transition in
another and higher form. And to continue still to
apply it to the unconditioned, is to fall into the contra-
diction of assigning conditions for the unconditioned.
The negative relation of thought to its starting-point
must be observed, if we would not continue to de-
mand a kind of explanation which is rendered im-
possible by the very nature of the region into which
we have passed. If we persist in such a demand,
the inevitable result must be an antinomy like the
present, in which the principle of causality at once
excludes the idea of self-determination, and makes
it impossible for us to find a satisfactory explanation
of things in anything else.
This advance from the category of causality to a
synthesis higher category was impossible to Kant, just because,
thought, according to his fundamental principles, the intelli-
gence of man is not synthetic except in relation to given
this higher matter; in other words, it cannot create matter out of
itself, or produce out of its own unity the different ele-
ments which it binds together. In itself it is not syn-
thetic, because it is not antithetic; it is ruled simply
by the law of identity, because it evolves no difference
out of itself. It is not even self-conscious, except in
relation to a given difference or manifold; and, if it
does not determine itself without an external stimulus,
still less does it determine anything else. The idea
of freedom or self-determination is, therefore, an
empty one; it finds nothing to subsume, even in
self-consciousness, at least so far as speculative
XVII.
613
CRITICISM OF KANT'S ANTINOMIES.
reason goes.
In answer to this, however, we need
only repeat what has been said already, that the
result of Kant's own argument is to prove (1) that
thought is synthetic in itself, and (2) that it is
only on the supposition that thought is synthetic in
itself, that it can be synthetic in relation to any
given matter of experience.
(1) Thought is synthetic in itself. Purely analytical Thought
thought would be tautology, that is, it would be no in itself.
thought at all. Even if we confine ourselves to the
purest conceptions of the understanding, we have in
them always a unity of moments, none of which can
be apprehended in itself without relation to the
others. To follow Kant's own list of categories, it is
impossible to conceive an affirmation which does not
involve a negation, and through that negation deter-
mine or limit its subject. It is impossible to conceive
an abstract unity, which is not relative to and does
not contain in it a multiplicity, and which, therefore,
is not in some sense a totality. And the same is
sufficiently obvious in the case of all the other cate-
gories of Kant's list. It is impossible to lay hold of
any thought without discovering this movement of
differentiation and integration in it, and it is only by
a violent abstraction that we can hinder our minds
from being involved in the movement, and carried
along by the necessity, which makes a thought dis-
play to us all that is in it. 'Ideas are living things,
and have hands and feet.' And to adopt the usual
logical resource of distinction, and to say that the
movement is in our minds, but that there is no
such movement in objective reality, e.g., to say
that in reality the positive is separated from the
negative, though not separated from it in our
614 THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
CHAP.
Only if
synthetic
in itself
can it be
in relation
to any-
thing else.
thoughts, is merely to put two difficulties in place
of one.
Yet, at
The highest category of pure thought, and that to
which all the others point as their source, is the idea
of self-consciousness itself, with its necessary yet
transparent difference. In Kant's strange inversion
of the truth, this, which is the form of all knowledge,
is itself, as we have seen, treated as an obstruc-
tion to knowledge.¹ Such is his devotion to for-
mal identity as the absolute law of thought, that
he regards the intelligence as itself unintelligible,
because it does not conform to that law.
the same time, this very unity of self-consciousness is
made the condition and presupposition of all know-
ledge, and the categories are regarded as the sub-
ordinate forms in which this unity must express itself
in order to the production of experience. To know,
in other words, is for the intelligence to find itself in
its object, yet it can never perfectly find itself in the
object, and least of all when the object is the intelli-
gence itself.
itself. Such is the result to which Kant is
inevitably brought by his assertion, that thought in
itself is not synthetic.
But (2) it is only as thought is synthetic in itself
that it can be synthetic in relation to anything else.
synthetic The same necessity by which thought in itself advances
from one category to another, till it finds its culmina-
tion in the idea of self-consciousness, is also the
necessity by which it necessarily goes out of itself, or
conceives self-consciousness in necessary opposition,
yet necessary relation, to the world in space and
time. And if by a violent abstraction we separate
these elements from each other, they immediately
¹ Cf. ante, p. 552.
XVII.
615
CRITICISM OF KANT'S ANTINOMIES.
become self-contradictory. There is no need, there-
fore, to seek for an artificial bond between elements
which imply each other. The external world, which
we at first regard like Des Cartes, as that which is
outside of the intelligence, is the necessary correlative
or counterpart of the intelligence, and in the discovery
of its laws we are taking the necessary course by which
alone we can come to the knowledge of ourselves.
does not
substitu-
a priori
for em-
sciences.
What causes this view to be rejected with such This view
decision by Kant, and by most men of science, is the involve the
supposition that it involves the substitution of a tion of
priori speculation for the investigation of nature. speculation
Whatever the mind has in itself, it is supposed to be pirical
capable of knowing by mere self-observation. But as
the brooding of thought on itself never unlocks any
of the secrets of nature, the necessity for a painful
and laborious interrogation of nature ere it will
reveal its laws, is regarded as proving that these
laws have no relation, or only an accidental relation
to the laws of thought and the mental unity that
underlies them. Or if, as by Kant, it is admitted
that the most general laws of nature are, at the same
time, necessities of thought, yet it is contended that
its particular laws are to us accidental, and, there-
fore, independent of the mind by which they are
known. But if it be true that the unity and
totality of synthesis, which Kant treats as a postu-
lated, but unattainable, end or ideal of knowledge, is
simply the assumption by the intelligence of its own
unity with itself under every difference which it
apprehends; and if this assumption is one which the
intelligence must make, even in its first step toward
knowledge-even in the determination of objects as in
space and time-then there can be no absolute divi-
616
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
sion between the a priori and the a posteriori. The
a posteriori, in fact, is nothing but the object in which
the mind has not yet found its own unity. Science, in
all its work of observation and experiment, has for its
end just this—to break through the husk under which
the external world hides from us its affinity with
thought. Perception with its determination of ob-
jects in space and time, is itself the first stage of this
process of transformation, though much more must
be done than is involved in mere perception, before
the relation of the object to thought can be fully dis-
cerned. By patient investigation the object must be
resolved into its constitutive relations, and the law,
which is hidden under the apparent arbitrariness and
accident of its phenomenal existence, must be brought
to light. Still the difficulty and laboriousness of this
process does not make the end less certain, inasmuch
as it is presupposed in the whole process, and is,
in fact, merely the idea of knowledge itself. For, as
has been said before, every difference, and above all,
the difference between the form and matter of thought,
involves a contradiction which, if insoluble, must be
fatal to knowledge itself. There cannot be an
irreducible dualism between the intelligence and
the world as the object of intelligence; for such
dualism would involve a universal scepticism, which,
as such, is self-contradictory. The utmost that
could in any case be said is, that for a particular
difference of elements (which, as a difference of
elements in one system of thought or experience,
we must assume to be merely relative), we are not
able, in the present stage of knowledge, to discover
the underlying unity. To say that there is such a
unity is merely to assume that there is such a thing
XVII.
617
CRITICISM OF KANT'S ANTINOMIES.
as knowledge or truth, and this is already assumed
even in the statement of the difference and the diffi-
culty in question. To say, on the other hand, that
this unity can never be known, can at most be
only the subjective assertion of an individual that
he does not know it. But to say with Kant that
knowledge is made up of two elements which are
both essential, and of which the one is known only
in and through the other, and at the same time to
maintain that these two elements are independent and
irreducible to a unity, is to combine in one word the as-
sertion of absolute knowledge and absolute ignorance.
stages in
gress of
from the
tioned to
ditioned.
The view of the progress of thought from the con- Three
ditioned to the unconditioned which we have given the pro-
may be summed up thus :-In all its stages thought thought
is a process from unity to difference, and from differ- condi-
ence back again to a higher or more concrete unity. the uncon-
In the first stage of empirical knowledge the unity
is not yet separated from the difference, but rather
merged in it. This is the stage of perception, the
stage in which the principles applied are merely
what Kant calls the mathematical principles. Now,
in this stage, and just because of the immediate com-
bination of identity and difference, the antinomies
and contradictions that arise appear to be absolute,
and both thesis and antithesis must be pronounced
false. Thus the same objects in space have to be
regarded as independent totalities, and yet parts of a
greater whole; or, again, as individuals, and yet
infinitely divided. Hence, in so far as this deter-
mination of them is regarded as ultimate or absolute,
there is no escape from contradiction. A partial
deliverance from this dialectical difficulty is attained
in the second stage of thought, where the reflective
618
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
or dynamical principles come into play. For now the
unity may be sought, not in the difference, but
beyond it. Being has now for us two sides-it is
not only phenomenal, but noumenal; and the diffi-
culty, which lay in the double conception of the
same thing, is partially obviated by the dualism,
which gives the thing two separate forms of existence.
It seems possible, therefore, to escape contradiction
by referring one of the predicates of things to their
absolute reality, as it is apprehended in pure thought,
and the other to their appearance, as it is presented
in perception. But the difficulty thus evaded only
returns in another form when we ask what is the
relation of these two forms of existence. After all,
it is only one universe we know, and only one mind
that apprehends it; and there must be a point of
contact between two spheres of reality, which both
belong to the former, and are apprehended by the
latter. Nor can we escape the difficulty by saying
that the noumenal alone is real, and the phenomenal
is but appearance. For even an appearance is in
some sense a reality and requires explanation. The
noumenal, must, therefore, be conceived as going out
of itself, or necessarily manifesting itself a pheno-
menon; and the phenomenon must be capable of
being seen, sub specie aeternitatis, as identical with
the noumenon. Or, again, to look at the same thing
in its subjective aspect, understanding and sense
cannot be absolutely separated, for they are referred
to one self; and this implies that there is a point of
view from which their difference dissolves itself—a
point of view from which perception is seen as a
form of thought, or thought as necessarily manifest-
ing itself in perception. The Kantian supposition
XVII. CRITICISM OF KANT'S ANTINOMIES.
619
of a subjective irreconcileable difference of faculties
in one mind, like the Spinozistic supposition of an
objective irreconcileable difference of attributes in
one substance, is untenable. But, then, the only
other possible view is, that perception is the necessary
counterpart of thought; or, what is the same thing
from the other side, that the world in space and time
is the necessary counterpart of the intelligence. The
intelligence, indeed, finds the world at first as a
foreign and strange existence, with which it seems
to have no relation, or only a relation of opposition.
But science, while thus, in the first instance, it
seems to involve a renunciation of self, a self-sur-
render of the intelligence to the object, yet in the
long run must bring the intelligence back to itself,
as the unity which necessarily manifests itself in
the world, in order that through the world it may
attain a higher self-consciousness. This last thought,
however, carries us up into the sphere of that which
Kant calls the Ideal of Reason. For the ideal of
reason is just the perceptive understanding, or the
unity of being and thought, and in this ideal, if
anywhere, must lie the solution of the antinomies.
Kant into
Idealism
sixth sec-
tion of this
chapter.
Before going on to consider this ideal, we must Relapse of
again call attention to a point in Kant's discussion of subjective
the antinomies, which has caused some difficulty. in the
In the section on 'Transcendental Idealism as a key
to the solution of the pure Cosmological Dialectic,'
Kant speaks of the non-existence of the objects of
experience almost in the very language of Berkeley.
Everything we say about the things of experience
must, he maintains, relate to our past, present, or
future experience of them. If, therefore, we speak
of any attribute of a thing which is not actually
620
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
", 1
perceived in it, we can only mean that at some
point in the context of experience it has been, or will
be, perceived. "That the moon may have inhabi-
tants, though no man has observed them, must be
admitted, but this only means that, in the possible
advance of experience, we might come upon them.
Now such language has an intelligible meaning
in the mouth of Berkeley, to whom the substantiality
of the individual soul was not a matter of doubt, and
who applied his idealism merely to the external
world; but what can it mean to Kant? With Kant
the Ego, as an actual self-consciousness determined
in time, presupposes a world determined in space.
Hence, if we assert that the world does not exist, except
in experience, we must equally assert that the indi-
vidual self does not exist except in experience. From
this point of view it is as reasonable to say that I
exist only in perceiving the object, as to say that the
object only exists in my perception of it. To say,
therefore, that any quality or object not actually
perceived must be referred to the continued existence
of the self as perceiving, has as much and no more
meaning than to say that it must be referred to the con-
tinued existence of the object perceived. And inas-
much as neither a self nor an object would exist for the
being that was confined to that which is immediately
given in sense, the legitimate result of identification
of reality with perception would be to deny reality
to both subject and object. If we go beyond the
sensation of the moment, we must treat the external
object as real for the same reason that we treat the
self as real. But Kant's language suggests the idea
that, while the object has an existence beyond the
1
¹ p. 389: Tr., p. 308.
2
2 Cf. ante, p. 391.
XVII. CRITICISM OF KANT'S ANTINOMIES.
621
moment only in relation to the future experience of
the subject, the subject on the other hand has an
existence beyond the moment apart from its relation
to the object, i.e., it suggests that very Berkeleian
theory which he himself has proved to be impos-
sible.
The truth seems to be that Kant never quite freed
himself from the traces of his early Individualism,
although in the second edition of the Critique, par-
ticularly in his criticism of Idealism, he took several
new steps in that direction. Schopenhauer, unable
to conceive of any Idealism that goes beyond
Berkeley, regards this simply as an inconsistency,
and indeed as a relapse into a kind of common sense
Realism which Kant himself had utterly disproved.
But it is really an advance of Kant toward a more
complete Idealism, an advance which was necessitated
by the principles Kant himself had laid down, even
in his first edition. For there he had already main-
tained that outer and inner experience stand on the
same level. The defect of Kant is, not that he falls
back from the Idealism of the first edition, but rather
that, in deserting it, he does not go far enough, but
still leaves a colour of plausibility to the Berkeleian
identification of reality with the perceptions or sen-
sations of the individual subject. For, when once it
had been shown that we do not know external objects
merely by inference, but that the outer world is an
immediate object of experience in the same sense in
which the individual self is an immediate object of
experience, the only object which it still remains
possible to contrast with our experience is the empty
thing in itself. And this is simply the abstraction
of an object in general, which has no meaning except
622
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
in relation to a subject. Hence the assertion, that
the things of experience exist only as we know them,
is either untrue or unmeaning. For, if it is intended
to convey the idea that these things exist only in the
perceptions of individuals, and at the moment of their
perception of them, it is untrue. And if it is in-
tended to convey the idea that they do not exist
except in relation to thought or self-consciousness,
there is no force in the word 'only.' For there is
no other reality.
623
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE IDEAL OF REASON, AND THE CRITICISM OF RATIONAL
THEOLOGY.
HAVING considered the subjective unity of self-
consciousness, and the objective unity of the
world, as objects of reason, Kant now proceeds to
consider an idea which implies the synthesis of these
two terms: the Idea of God. In his criticism of
Rational Cosmology, he had taken his stand on the
formal unity of thought with itself, and had argued,
that, though the unity of thought is at the basis of
all determination of the manifold of sense in experi-
ence, yet that determination can never be ade-
quate to it. For such a return of the differences of
the world into unity would imply the determination
of the world as a whole; and the world in time and
space can never be determined as a whole. Now,
in the criticism of Rational Theology, it only remains
for Kant to show that this dualism of subject and
object can never be overcome, that there is no way
in which thought can, out of itself alone, determine
any object as such, without the aid of the given
manifold of sense, and on the other hand, no way in
which it can rise from the conditioned empirical
624
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Origin of
the idea of
objects to an object free from empirical conditions,
and adequate to the unity of thought.
The subject naturally divides itself into two parts.
In the first place, Kant considers the nature and
origin of the Ideal of pure reason, or, in other words,
the Idea of God; and in the second place, he ex-
amines the arguments by which Rational Theology
has attempted to prove the existence of a Being
corresponding to that Idea.
1. How do we obtain the Idea of God? The
God in the logical law of excluded middle enables us to say that
dental every predicate must be either affirmed or denied of
transcen-
principle of
determina-
complete every subject. We can always lay down with cer-
tion. tainty that 'A is or is not B,' whatever A or B may
mean. But such a dichotomy has nothing to do with
the question of the reality or unreality of the thing,
which is the subject of predication. The proposition :
'A is B,' may be true or false; it tells us nothing
in either case as to the existence or non-existence of
A, but only what is contained in the conception of
it. But beyond this mere formal principle of deter-
minability there is a 'transcendental principle of
complete determination.' In other words we have a
right to speak not only of conceptions, but of things,
and we are able a priori, not merely to say what is
included in the given conception of a thing, but to
declare that the thing itself must be determined,
positively or negatively, in relation to every possible
predicate. "And this assertion involves more than
the principle of contradiction, for it is an assertion
not merely in regard to the relation of two contradic-
tory predicates, but in regard to the relation of the
thing in question to the sum of possibility, as the
sum total of all the predicates of things." "It, in
XVIII.
625
THE IDEAL OF REASON.
fact, involves that, in order to know anything com-
pletely, I must know all that is possible, and deter-
mine the object by this knowledge, either affirma-
tively or negatively." We cannot think of anything
as existing without putting it into relation to a whole
that includes not merely all that is actually given, but
all that can be given. For we have in reason an idea
of the complete determination of objects as such; and
though we see that this idea can never be realised in
experience, yet we are obliged by it to think of every
object of experience as perfectly and individually
determined.
ed deter-
of objects
to the
realitatis.
To put this in a slightly different way, knowledge Anticipat-
is always the result of a process of specification or mination
determination. To set any object before our minds, in relation
is to determine it by predicates, which at first may omnitudo
be vague and general, but which must gradually
become more definite and specific. It is to com-
mence a process, which can only come to an abso-
lute end, when we have determined the object
in relation to everything else, and so completely
individualised it. This end or goal is, however,
anticipated from the very beginning of knowledge;
for, as soon
soon as we have determined an object
as such, we have determined it as an individual,
a centre of relations with the whole world. And as
our knowledge extends, we do not suppose ourselves
to be creating the object, but only to be discovering
what it is. In other words, we assume that the
thing is completely determined in itself, before the
mental process by which we determine it, has com-
menced. Our first determination of things, therefore,
brings them into relation with an idea of completed
1 448: Tr., 353.
2 R
626
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
The omni-
tudo reali-
as a thing
in itself,
which is
the cause
of all
reality.
knowledge, which experience can never enlarge. Our
knowledge grows as a smaller circle within a larger
one, to which it gradually approximates, but which
it never reaches; and the growth of the smaller circle
is always guided and stimulated by a general idea of
the larger. In this way, through the idea of totality,
the positive and negative judgments acquire a tran-
scendental, and cease to have merely a logical mean-
ing. They come to express not merely agreement
and opposition in conceptions, but existence and non-
existence in things. The totality of possible pre-
dicates means the whole of existence, while the nega-
tive predicates merely express the absence of elements
of that whole. Hence the number of positive pre-
dicates, by which a thing is determined, indicates the
amount of existence it contains; or, in other words,
its positive relation to the presupposed whole of
existence.
Now this whole of existence, (omnitudo realitatis)
tatis, taken which is presupposed in the determination of all
objects, is naturally and almost inevitably taken as
a thing in itself, which is the condition of every thing
else. And "the manifold nature of things is only
an infinitely various manner of limiting the concep-
tion of the highest reality, which is their common
substratum, just as all figures are possible only as
modes of limiting infinite space." We cannot, how-
ever, say that the ens realissimum is a mere aggregate
of all the different individuals, which are determined
by limitation of it. On the contrary, they presup-
pose it, and it must therefore be taken, like infinite
space prior to division by finite figures, as simple and
individual. Nor again can we suppose that finite
things are divisions or parts of the ens realissimum ;
XVIII.
627
THE IDEAL OF REASON.
for that would be to introduce limitation, and so nega-
tion or non-existence, into that which is purely affirma-
tive, or positively existent. We must, therefore,
suppose that the highest reality is the ground of the
possibility of all finite things, and that they are not
limits of it, but merely of its complete result or product.
And thus the characteristics that belong to the world
of sense, and to sense itself as finite, are not parts of
the idea of the ens realissimum, though they may be
regarded as belonging to the series of its effects.
"If thus we hypostatise this idea of the ens realissi-
mum, and follow it up to its legitimate development,
we arrive at the conception of a Being who is indi-
vidual, simple, all-sufficient, eternal: in short, at the
idea of a Being whom we can determine in his un-
conditioned perfection under every category. We
arrive, in fact, at the idea of God in a transcendental
sense, and thus the ideal of pure reason becomes the
object of a Rational Theology.
When, however, we proceed to construct such a The use-
Theology, we are forgetting the nature of the idea
in question, and the necessary conditions of its use. in experi-
It is true that in the determination of things, as they fused with
are given in experience, we always presuppose the tence of
conception of their complete determination in relation sponding
to the totality of possible experience. But we are
not on that ground to suppose that this conception
represents any objective reality. The things known
in experience have no existence out of the experience
in which they are known; and, from the nature of
experience, their determination can never reach total-
ity. A totality of all experience, and a determination
of any individual thing in relation to that totality, is
¹ p. p. 453: Tr., p. 351.
1
"" 1
fulness
of the
conception
ence con-
the exis-
a corre-
object.
628
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
General
character
of the
proofs of
of God.
impossible; though it is the ideal of such a totality
which stimulates all our successive efforts to combine
our experiences. But when we suppose that this ideal
represents an actual object which is capable of being
determined, we are transgressing the limits of its
proper use in three ways. In the first place, we are
turning an idea, which is the presupposition of experi-
ence, but can never be realised in it, into an actual
object. In the second place, we are turning the ideal
unity of experience into a real unity of things in
themselves. And in the third place, we are turning the
distributive conception of a totality into the individual
conception of one Being, who includes all reality in
himself. In short, we first realise what is merely an
ideal of experience, then we treat this realised ideal
of experience as an idea of the unity of all things in
themselves, and lastly, we regard this unity as separate
from, yet presupposed in all things; we conceive it as
an individual, and, indeed, as a personal God.¹
1
From this point of view we are prepared to criti-
cise the different supposed proofs of the Being of
the being God. In general we may say that they are all based
on the connexion which is supposed to exist between
two conceptions, the conception of an ens realissimum,
and the conception of a necessary Being. A neces-
sary Being is the presupposition to which we are led
by a natural and inevitable tendency of our reason.
Following this natural dialectic, we begin, not
with mere conceptions, but with common experience,
seeking a basis for thought in actual existence.
this ground sinks beneath us if it does not rest on
the immoveable rock of necessity. And necessity
itself would require something else to rest on, if
(6
1 ¹ p. 455 Tr., p. 359.
But
XVIII.
629
THE IDEAL OF REASON.
there were any empty space beyond or beneath it, if
it did not fill all things so as to leave no room for a
question as to its cause." Where, then, are we to
find the conception of a Being whom we can thus
determine as absolutely necessary? Understanding,
when it looks about for such a conception, finds none
that answers its purpose, none that has not in it
something discordant with the idea of absolute
necessity except the idea of the ens realissimum.
For as the ens realissimum contains in it the condi-
tion of all that is possible, it requires itself no
preceding condition, and is incapable of any.
We cannot, indeed, say that only such a Being is
absolutely necessary, for there is no contradiction
in supposing a limited being to be necessary; but we
can say that only the ens realissimum, only a Being
which contains all reality in itself, can be seen from
the very idea of it to be necessary. If, therefore, we
were obliged to make up our mind one way or
another as to the nature of necessary Being, we should
inevitably decide that it is the ens realissimum.
if we are not obliged to make up our mind, (and
apart from practical considerations, which we have not
here to consider, there seems to be no such obliga-
tion), the fact that necessity might be possibly con-
joined with finitude is enough to weaken the force
of any argument which identifies the necessary Being
with the ens realissimum.
But
of
This and other logical defects attaching to the The three
arguments for the Being of God will, however, become argument.
obvious if we examine them in detail. "There
are only three modes of proving the existence of a
Deity on grounds of speculative reason.
We may
p. 456: Tr., p. 360.
630
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. СНАР.
Objections
to the On-
tological
argument.
start from determinate experience and the peculiar
constitution of the world of sense, and rise from this,
according to the principle of causality, to a highest
Being," who, in his works, manifests his character.
We may start again from indeterminate experience,
from the mere existence of some empirically known
object, and conclude therefrom the existence of a first
cause or necessary Being. Or, lastly, we may ab-
stract from all experience, and deduce the existence
of God from the a priori idea of him. The first is
the Physico-theological, the second the Cosmological,
and the third the Ontological argument. This is the
natural order in which these arguments appear in the
development of reason. But it is better to discuss
them in the reverse order, because, as will soon
appear, that is the order in which they logically pre-
suppose each other.
The first argument is that because the idea of God
includes existence, therefore he necessarily exists.
It may
be differently stated, according as the idea of
perfection, or the idea of omnitudo realitatis, is made
the middle term, but in both cases the essential
point is, that what must be thought as existing,
necessarily exists.
Now, in the first place, if we look at this argument
from the point of view of formal Logic, it is obvious
that, provided we avoid self-contradiction, we may
include in a conception which we make the subject
of a judgment, any marks or predicates we please,
and existence may be one of these predicates.
Further, if we have thus included existence in the
conception of the subject, we can, of course, extract it
again from that conception by analysis. If our con-
ception of God includes existence, it would be con-
XVIII.
631
THE IDEAL OF REASON.
tradictory to predicate non-existence of him, just as
it would be contradictory to assert that a triangle
has not three angles. But in all such cases it is to
be observed that the predicate is asserted only on
condition of the assertion of the subject. If a triangle
exists, it cannot but have three angles; and so if God
exist, he is, in the case supposed, a necessary
Being, i.e., he exists by the necessity of his nature.
There is a contradiction in supposing the existence of
a triangle without three angles, or the existence
of a God who is not necessarily existent. There is a
contradiction, in other words, in supposing the exist-
ence of the subject without the predicate; but there
is no contradiction in supposing that both are non-
existent, or denied together. There may be no such
thing as a triangle, why should there be such a Being
as God?
case.
concep-
tions are
fore imply
This objection could be met only by showing that Existential
there are subjects which we cannot think away, synthetic,
cannot suppose to be non-existent, whose existence is and there-
presupposed in the thought of them. And this perception.
accordingly is what has been asserted in the present
It has been said that God is just the one sub-
ject, whom it is a contradiction to suppose non-
existent. But then on what ground can this assertion
be made? Is it not a contradiction to include
existence in the mere conception of anything? Does
such an inclusion not involve a confusion of the
copula, which expresses the position of a predicate in
relation to a subject, with the verb of existence, which
expresses the absolute position of the subject itself?
In the former sense, it is the expression of analysis,
in the latter, of synthesis; for existential propositions
are all synthetic. Such propositions add something to
632
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Objections
to the
logical
the thought of the subject, and cannot express simply
what is included in that thought. It is a contradic-
tion, therefore, to put into the thought of the subject
the very predicate by which it is determined as exist-
ing not merely in thought. In one sense, indeed,
existential propositions are not synthetic, for they do
not add to the contents of the conception of the sub-
ject. There is no more in the thought of a hundred
actual, than there is in the thought of a hundred
possible, dollars. But they are synthetic in the sense
that something is added in the predicate, which is not
included in the thought of the subject. I am in a
different position as thinking from that in which I
am as possessing a hundred dollars; for, in the one
case, the object is merely an object of thought, in
the other it is presented in sensible experience.
To say that a thing exists, is to say that it is given
through sense, and under the conditions of experi-
ence. Therefore, no proof based on conception can
ever give us a right to say that anything exists.
(2.) The Ontological argument, with its strange
Cosmo- attempt to extract being out of thought, would,
argument. probably, never have been invented but for its con-
nexion with a second proof, which we have now to
examine. The Cosmological argument takes its start,
not from the conception of God, but from the con-
tingent objects of experience. Contingent things
exist at least, I exist and as they are not self-
caused, nor can be explained as an infinite series, it is
inferred that a necessary Being must exist. Further,
this necessary Being must be the ens realissimum, the
Being that includes all reality, for such a Being alone
rests on itself, or has all the conditions of its exist-
ence in itself. At least we can think of no other
XVIII.
633
THE IDEAL OF REASON.
Being the conception of whom contains the marks
of necessary existence.
The Cosmological argument is usually considered
to be entirely independent of the Ontological, and
to be superior to the latter, in so far as it starts
with an existence of which we have experience, and
not with a mere thought. Really, however, it has
all the defects of the Ontological argument, with
additional weaknesses of its own. It is, indeed, a nest
of dialectical assumptions. In the first place, it
makes a transition from the things of experience to
the things in themselves, and that by means of the
category of cause, which applies only in relation to
the former. In the second place, it takes an idea of
absolute necessity, which is merely an ideal for
empirical synthesis (though an ideal which empirical
synthesis can never reach), as itself an object of
knowledge. And, lastly, it involves or presupposes
the Ontological argument; for we cannot argue from
the conception of the necessary Being to that of the
ens realissimum, unless the two conceptions are con-
vertible; and if they are convertible, the Cosmo-
logical argument becomes unnecessary; for the Being
of God is already proved from the definition of God.
to the
theological
We come lastly to the Physico-theological argu- Objections
ment, the argument from design. This argument Physico-
has a high popular value, as elevating our view of argument.
nature, and bringing it into accordance with the
moral feelings of men; yet regarded simply as an
argument, it is even more defective than those
we have already examined. "The essential points of
the argument are as follows:-(1) In the world we
find everywhere clear signs of an order which can only
spring from design--an order realised with the great-
1
634
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
est wisdom, and in a whole, which is indescribably
varied in content, and in extent infinite. (2) This
purposeful order is not necessary to the mere exist-
ence of the things of this world taken in themselves;
on the contrary, it is a foreign attribute accidentally
attached to them. The various objects of nature
might have existed without co-operating to produce
any definite end, if they had not been selected and
arranged in relation to that end by a rational
principle under the guidance of certain ideas. (3)
There exists, therefore, a sublime and wise cause
(if not more than one), and this cause is not to be
found in the productive energy of an all-powerful,
but blindly working Nature, but in the freedom of an
intelligent agent. (4) The unity of this cause may
be inferred from the unity of the parts of the world
in their reciprocal relations as members of an artfully
compacted structure-inferred with certainty, so far
as our observation goes, and beyond that with a pro-
bability based on the most obvious application of the
principle of analogy.
"" 1
Now, it is evident, in the first place, that this
argument involves the transference, to the relation
between God and the world, of ideas borrowed
from human art. Art deals with a material
possessing qualities and laws of its own, and it
makes use of these qualities and laws for the
production of a result to which they have no
necessary relation. Thus the architect, in build-
ing his house, takes advantage of the weight
and other qualities of the stones; but there is
nothing in these qualities which makes it necessary
that the house should be built; they have only an
¹ p. 486: Tr., p. 384.
1
XVIII.
635
THE IDEAL OF REASON.
accidental relation to the end for which they are
used. In like manner, in the argument from design,
we are obliged to think of God as dealing with
materials which have nothing in their own nature
to make it necessary that a world regulated by
ends of the highest goodness should be produced out
of them. Hence the idea we reach is that of a
world-architect, who is limited by the character of
the material he uses, rather than the idea of a world-
creator, for whom the means can have no existence
apart from the end. But surely the latter alone is
the true conception. How can the divine Being be
conceived as creating a nature which has no refer-
ence to his purposes, in order that afterwards he may,
by skilful arrangements, subject it to his purposes?
In the second place, supposing this objection
waived, how can we vindicate an argument from
finite order and good to infinite wisdom and good-
ness? The idea of God has no definiteness, unless
we define it by the category of totality. For to
speak of him as a being of very great power, or
wisdom, or goodness, is to define him not in himself,
but by relation to the mind of the observer, and the
standard which that mind brings with it. And such
relative greatness may indicate the lowness of the
standard quite as much as the loftiness of the object
judged by it. Hence God is nothing definite, if he
is not all. But on the other hand, such totality is
beyond the reach of our thought or experience. We
cannot say what is "the relation of the greatness of
the world, as we have observed it, to perfect wisdom,
or what is the relation of the unity of the world, as
we have observed it, to absolute unity."¹ In other
¹p. 489: Tr., p. 386.
636
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Negative
result of
words, we can never reach totality by an empirical
process, though it is only from totality that we could
get any definite idea of God.
There is only one way in which it is possible to
supply this defect in our argument, and to justify the
leap from empirical multiplicity to totality--that is,
by showing that the contingent implies the necessary
Being, and that the necessary Being, as such, includes
in himself all reality actual and possible. But, thus
stated, the argument loses its independent value, and
depends for its validity on the two preceding argu-
ments. In other words, it has in it, besides its own
especial defects, the defects both of the Ontological
and Cosmological arguments.
The result of this criticism of the three arguments
the criti- is, that there is no possibility of a speculative use of
cism of
Rational
Theology.
It leaves
still room
reason in the sphere of Theology. We are thus
involved in a dilemma from which there is no escape.
On the one hand, the very nature of the idea of
God as the omnitudo realitatis, shows us that he can
be known only through pure conceptions. Yet, on
the other hand, through mere conceptions no existence
can be known as such. It is the Ontological argu-
ment alone which is conformable to the idea of God;
it is the Cosmological and Physico-theological argu-
ments alone from which existence could be proved.
Either, therefore, God must be thought as existing,
and then he is not known as ens realissimum, i.e.,
not as God; or he must be thought as ens realissimum,
and then he cannot be proved to exist.
Since then it is impossible speculatively to prove
for a Mord the existence of God, the utmost which, in this
Theology. sphere, we can attempt, is to free the idea of him
from any anthropomorphic or empirical element,
XVIII.
637
THE IDEAL OF REASON.
and to show that the proof of his non-existence,
equally with the proof of his existence, is beyond the
power of human reason This merely negative atti-
tude of thought, however, leaves the way open for
obtaining an assurance of God's existence in another
manner, namely, through the practical reason. For
if the absolute law of our moral life presupposes or
postulates the existence of God as an absolute intel-
ligence, then the pure Ideal of reason, the conception
which includes and crowns all human knowledge, will
be shown to be objectively real; and Criticism, which
silences the voice of speculative reason, will have
precluded every objection on its part. The practical
reason will thus give assertorial value to the pro-
blematical results of theory; and we shall find that
which Archimedes did not find, a fixed point on
which reason can set its lever-resting it as we do,
not on a present or a future world, but on the idea
of freedom.”1
Following the analysis we have given of this
section of the Critique, we have to consider two
points: First, Kant's account of the Idea of God;
and, Secondly, his criticism of the arguments for the
Being of God.
view of the
in relation
ence.
The Idea of God is, according to Kant, the Idea of Kant's
the absolute Totality of Experience, represented as an idea of God
individual, and indeed a personal, Being. As every to experi-
object of perception or experience must be determined
in relation to our consciousness of self, so the ideas of
space and time as wholes are presupposed in the deter-
mination of any particular space and time, and the idea
of the world as a whole in the determination of any
¹ I., p. 638.
638
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Three
elements,
special object in that world. In this sense the idea of
the whole of experience precedes and conditions the
apprehension of the parts. But, on the other hand,
it is to be remembered that in experience this idea
of the whole can never be realised; for its realisation.
would imply that the presupposed unity of thought,
the unity of self-consciousness, should itself be dis-
covered to be the principle from which all the multi-
plicity of experience comes; or, in other words, that
the multiplicity of the world in time and space should
be discovered to be but the necessary manifestation
of the unity of consciousness. But this mode of
bringing back multiplicity to unity is, in Kant's view,
absolutely precluded by the nature of experience
and of time and space as its conditions. A totality
of time and space is impossible; therefore the very
conception of the multiplicity of phenomena as con-
ditioned by time and space makes it impossible to
determine the world of phenomena as a whole, or to
find the unity of self-consciousness. Hence the
supposed idea of God is but the idea of a totality
presupposed in experience, but which experience can
never attain; it is the idea of an absolute synthesis
of thought and things which can never be realised, so
long as the things which we know are given under
the forms of sensible perception. It could be realised
only by a perceptive understanding, by an intelli-
gence in which the opposition of sense and under-
standing did not exist, and in which the difference of
the latter and the identity of the former were sub-
sumed under a higher unity.
From this point of view Kant accounts for the
according illusion on which rational Theology rests. The
to Kant,
combine to beginning of the illusion is, that the ideal, by which
XVIII.
639
THE IDEAL OF REASON.
the idea
(1) The
with of God:-
next idea of
which experi-
pure
to
completed
ence; (2.)
idea
The inity of
it all positive
predicates;
idea of an
self-con-
sciousness.
the intelligence is stimulated and guided in deter- produce
mining the objects of experience, is confused
an actually experienced object. This object is
treated as a thing in itself, an ens realissimum,
includes all reality; and, as it is known by
thought, we seem to be authorised to apply
the principles of identity and contradiction, and (3) The
that, not merely in a logical, but in a transcen- absolute
dental sense. Kant, as we have seen in a pre-
vious chapter, did not object to the Leibnitzian
view of the determination of things by pure
thought, but only denied that such determination
could ever produce knowledge. He admits, there-
fore, that the absolute reality, if determined at all,
must be determined only by pure affirmation, with-
out any negation, and that all negative predicates
must be regarded as expressing only the absence of
the corresponding positive predicates. According
to this principle, the infinite is to be represented
simply by negating, or removing the limit from
all finite existences, or in Cartesian language, by
taking the affirmative predicates of the finite sensu
eminentiori. Lastly, this omnitudo realitatis is
conceived as an individual subject, which is not,
however, like the human subject, limited by an
object given to it from without, but which creates
its own object, or in whose consciousness of self
the existence of the object is at the same time given;
it is, in the language of later philosophy, an absolute
subject-object.
The idea of God, therefore, arises out of the union
or confusion of three elements, which are clearly
distinguishable from each other: (1) the idea of
completed experience; (2) the idea of the unity of
640 THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
CHAP.
If we ex-
clude the
second
idea,
logical
impossi-
bility, the
first be-
comes
with the
third.
all positive predicates; and (3) the idea of the
absolute subject-object, or perceptive understand-
ing. The first of these, taken by itself, is an ideal,
which can never be completely realised, though it is
always being partially realised, in experience; the
second, taken by itself, is a subjective and merely
logical form of thought, of whose objective reality
or even possibility, we can say nothing; the third
is the idea of an intelligence which transcends the
dualism between the logical and real which belongs
to our intelligence; but of its existence or its con-
ditions, we know, and can know, nothing.
After what has been said elsewhere, we do not
need to add much in criticism of the second of
which is a these ideas of Kant. If we deny that there is any
purely analytic movement of thought, which con-
trasts with its synthetic movement in relation to
identified given matter of sense, we must equally reject the
Spinozistic conception of a unity of all affirmative
predicates. In abstracting from the negative deter-
mination of things, we at the same time abstract
from their affirmative determination; and the ulti-
mate result at which, by this negative process, we
arrive, is the mere blank notion of Being-i.e., not
the absolute fulness of existence, but the absolute
void. The scepticism, therefore, which Kant directs
against this conception as an object of knowledge,
only needs to be turned against it as an object of
pure thought.
When we have got rid of this logical spectre, and
have discovered that thought is always synthetic as
well as analytic, negative as well as positive, the
two remaining ideas, the idea of completed experi-
ence, and the idea of the absolute subject-object,
XVIII.
641
THE IDEAL OF REASON.
begin to approximate to each other. For if thought
is not absolutely opposed to perception, as analysis
to synthesis, then the forms of time and space and
the categories cease to be heterogeneous, and the
ground of the absolute opposition between pheno-
mena and noumena is taken away. In other words,
we no longer find that insoluble contradiction be-
tween form and matter within experience, which
forced Kant to look for the unity of the two alto-
gether outside of experience. On the contrary, we
now discern that, even in experience, thought tran-
scends the dualism which it creates between subject
and object, between itself and things; though it is true
that the complete reconciliation of these opposites can
be achieved only in the whole process of the develop-
ment of science and philosophy. While Kant,
therefore, is right in regarding all our experience as
springing from an ideal which is implied, but not real-
ised, in it, he is wrong in regarding this first presup-
position as a mere idea that cannot be realised.
what cannot be realised cannot be even so much as an
ideal. To suppose that all experience is an effort after
that, which the very nature of experience precludes us
from attaining, is a conception which contains an
absolute contradiction. It is possible, indeed, to
suppose that, merely in terms of ordinary experience,
the ultimate problem of experience cannot be solved,
and that it is necessary for that solution to rise to
higher categories than those of causality and
reciprocity; but it is not possible to think that
there is any absolute hindrance to the solution of a
problem which is involved in the very idea of know-
ledge, and of the intelligence itself. We may turn
against Kant his own remark, that if the questions
For
2 S
642
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Kant
balances
the first
and second
of these
ideas
of reason could not be answered, they could not be
asked. The problem itself is the beginning of
the solution. One insoluble contradiction would
logically involve absolute scepticism, for it would
throw a doubt on the very principle out of which
all knowledge springs; knowledge, therefore, cannot
be vindicated, even as the knowledge of phenomenal
appearance, if it is absolutely severed from the
knowledge of the noumenal reality.
Kant conceals the contradiction involved in his
view of knowledge by what is really a see-saw.
He balances against each other the first and the
against second of the three conceptions which have just
so as to ex- been mentioned in such a way as to exclude the
each other,
clude the
third.
The Onto-
logical
(
third. He admits the conception of a unity of all
affirmatives, so far as to condemn the world of
experience as merely phenomenal, because it involves
real oppositions. He admits the conception of the
unity of all experience through all its differences and
oppositions, so far as to condemn the logical idea as
merely subjective and empty,' because its movement
is by mere identity. And while he thus alternates
between the merely logical and the merely empirical,
he never rises to a higher idea of unity; or if he does
rise to it, and even goes so far as to name it 'perceptive
understanding,' it is only to reject it again, because
it does not contain the two previous ideas in their
separation and opposition to each other. His criti-
cism of the arguments for the Being of God (which
are really different forms of expression for the tran-
sition to this higher idea of unity) is therefore little
more than a reassertion of the fundamental dualism
which pervades every part of the Critique.
To the Ontological argument, which in his view is
XVIII.
643
THE IDEAL OF REASON.
is dis-
Kant, if it
as an
syllogism.
presupposed in all the others, and which asserts an argument
ultimate unity of thought and being, he opposes proved by
simply the assertion of their difference. A hundred be taken
dollars in thought are not a hundred dollars in the ordinary
pocket. Being is not a proper predicate of a concep-
tion, for it expresses that which is not in conception
merely but also in perception, and it is absurd to
make into a part of our thought of an object the very
predicate, of which the essential meaning is that the
object is not merely a thought.
it be taken
sing the
unity of
and being.
does Kant
In answer to this, we might repeat all that has But not if
already been said about the unity which is presup- as expres-
posed in all the difference of knowledge, and is at the ultimate
same time the predetermined end to which it points. thought
But it may be more useful here to show how Kant's How far
own criticism has modified the natural sense of the go in this
direction?
opposition of thought and things, of knowing and
being. If we were allowed to interpret his words
as meaning that thought presents to us merely what
is in our own mind, and perception that which is
without our mind (and this is the sense in which
such an assertion is often taken), there would be
little difficulty. But this interpretation would
imply an individualistic theory like that of Locke
-a theory which the Critique has utterly under-
mined. In what sense, then, does perception, as
opposed to thought, present us with objective
existence? According to Kant, it is by the appli-
cation of the categories that the manifold of sense
is determined in relation to objects; though, on the
other hand, it is also true that the manifold of sense
is necessary, ere the categories can get a synthetic,
and therefore objective, value. Hence, according to
Kant's own showing, the opposition of subject and
644
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
object exists only in the mutual determination
of the form of thought and the matter of percep-
tion by each other, and we have no right to consider
the one as exclusively subjective and the other as
exclusively objective. Existence is not something
given in perception alone, but only in perception as
determined by thought. It is not, as with Locke,
equivalent to that which is not thought. It is only
the objective as opposed to the subjective element
of consciousness;it is therefore one of the two terms
which in thought are necessarily opposed, yet at
the same time necessarily related to each other; or, in
other words, thought transcends the distinction which
it makes between itself and existence. If, however,
we surrender the absolute opposition of thought and
existence, and confine ourselves to the opposition of
thought and perception, (which alone can be admitted
from the Kantian point of view), we fall into another
difficulty; for of perception as absolutely isolated from
thought, nothing can be said. It is not in this sense
a part of the intelligible world. Thus the opposition
between thought and perception disappears by the
extinction of its terms, or at least of one of its terms.
Either, therefore, we must regard the opposition of
thought and perception, or of thought and existence,
from the point of view of the unity of experience,
and then there is no dualism between thought and
that which we oppose to it, which thought itself does
not transcend; or we must conceive of that opposition
as an opposition between the unity of experience and
something not yet determined by it (call it sensation
or a thing in itself, or what we please), and then of
this other element we can say nothing, not even that
it exists.
XVIII.
645
THE IDEAL OF REASON.
This criticism of Kant's argument does not affect
it as an argumentum ad hominem against the rational
Theology of his immediate predecessors. A philoso-
pher, who takes his start with God as a given subject
and, by the mere analysis of the conception of God,
attempts to prove his existence, might as naturally
think to pay his debts by including the notion of
existence in his thought of a hundred dollars. But
it is quite a different thing, if we regard that argu-
ment as pointing to the ultimate unity of thought
and Being, which is at once the presupposition and
the end of all knowledge. Taken in this sense,
the argument is but one example of the princi-
ple that abstract or imperfect conceptions of reality
give rise to contradictions, and so force us to put
them in relation to the other conceptions which com-
plement and complete them. For pure thought
cannot be conceived as dwelling in itself, but only as
relating itself to existence, to a world in time and
space; and it is only (1) through the opposition be-
tween itself and such a world, and (2) through the
transcendence of that opposition, that it can come to
the full consciousness of itself. In the language of
Theology, the Ontological argument expresses the
doctrine that God as a spirit is necessarily self-reveal-
ing in and to the world.
Kant's ob-
tell against
rather than
the two
The other arguments properly express the same So also
transition from the other side that of the world; jections
and to Kant's treatment of them, therefore, the the form
same criticism may be applied. Good as argu- essence of
menta ad hominem, his objections do not touch the other argu-
validity of the process of thought whereby the mind
rises from the finite to the infinite. In other words,
the Wolffian form of the cosmological and physico-
ments.
646 THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
CHAP.
The true
logic of the
of thought
to infinite
as well as
positive.
theological arguments disappears before Kant's ob-
jection, but not the transition of thought, which is
imperfectly expressed in these arguments.
It is true, for instance, that the ordinary syllogistic
movement argument from the world to God has the fatal defect
from finite of putting more in the conclusion than is contained
is negative in the premises. It is a pyramid of reasoning that
rests not on its base, but on its apex; for while it may
be true that the world is, because God is, we cannot
say conversely that God is, because the world is.
According to the rules of syllogism, even when aided
by the principle of causality, we can only argue from
the finite to the finite, from the world to the world,
and not from the finite to the infinite, or from the world
to God. This would be a fatal objection to the argu-
ment, if the analytic syllogism with its movement by
identity, were the only movement of thought; if there
were no such thing as a synthesis, by which an imper-
fect and inadequate idea could lead to one more perfect
and adequate; if thought were always related posi-
tively, and never also negatively, to its starting
point. Kant himself, however, is not altogether with-
out the idea of another kind of argument than the syl-
logistic. In a remarkable passage already quoted, he
tells us that the intelligence at first takes its stand
upon the reality of experience, and that it is because
this ground sinks beneath us, i.e., because experience
itself qualifies its object as contingent, that we are
forced to look deeper for a necessary Being, to
give to the contingent a reality which it has not in
itself.¹ Now this account of the mental process only
needs to be developed and freed from Kantian pre-
suppositions, to become a true account of the imman-
¹ Ante, p. 628.
XVIII.
647
THE IDEAL OF REASON.
ent logic of Religion, the logic that underlies the
elevation of human thought from the finite to the in-
finite. It is a logic not reducible to syllogistic rule,
because it is synthetic and not merely analytic, be-
cause it involves difference, as well as identity,
because it has a negative as well as a positive side.
Why do we seek in things, in the world, and in our-
selves, a truth, a reality, which we do not find in their
immediate aspect as phenomena of the sensible world?
It is because the sensible world as such is inconsis-
tent with itself, and thus points to a higher reality.
We believe in the infinite, not because of
what the finite is, but quite as much because of
what the finite is not; and our first idea of the
former is, therefore, simply that it is the negation
of the latter. All religion springs out of the
sense of the nothingness, unreality, transitoriness-
in other words, of the essentially negative character
of the finite world. Yet this negative relation of the
mind to the finite is at the same time its first posi-
tive relation to the infinite. 'We are near waking
when we dream that we dream,' and the conscious-
ness of a limit is already at least the germinal con-
sciousness of that which is beyond it. The extreme
of despair and doubt can only exist as the obverse of
the highest certitude, and is in fact necessary to it.
tive
Cosmo-
we side of the
con- logical
argument.
Now the cosmological argument represents this The nega-
transition in the simplest aspect; but if
take it in its positive form ("Because the
tingent is, therefore the necessary being is"), without
also observing that it might with at least equal force
be expressed negatively ("Because the contingent
is not, therefore the necessary being is"), it is
exposed to all the objections of Kant.
To argue
648
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
:
Its
positive
side.
positively from the contingency of the world to the
existence of a necessary being, which is external to it
and related to it only as cause to effect, is to reduce
the necessary being to another contingent. For if
the world is determined only as an effect, and is
conditioned by its cause, the necessary being is at the
same time determined only as a cause, and is condi-
tioned by his effect. The transition from the contin-
gent to the necessary, from the finite to the infinite,
however, is one which 'sublates,' or forces us to give
a new meaning to, the category by means of which the
transition is made.¹ The first becomes last, and the
last becomes first, and the finite, so far as it is
regarded as still having some kind of reality, is only a
mode of the infinite. This is the conscious logic of
systems like that of Spinoza, as it is the unconscious
logic of all those religions which have a Pantheistic
basis. In such philosophical and religious systems
the fundamental thought is, that the world of finite
beings is nothing, and that God is all in all:' the high-
est reality is determined solely by abstraction from the
finite, and all the difference and change of the pheno-
menal world is lost or absorbed in the idea of an
absolute substance, of whom we can say nothing, ex-
cept that He or It is.
(
And in this, indeed, lies the imperfection of
argument a contingentia mundi, as well as of the
Pantheistic idea of God to which it leads. It reaches
the Infinite only by negation of the finite: hence its
infinite has no positive determination except through
the finite. Further, if, according to this logic, all
finite existence is equally lost in God, yet it is also
true that all finite existence equally comes from God.
¹ Ante, p. 609.
1
XVIII.
649
THE IDEAL OF REASON.
Hence it is, that Pantheism as a religion so easily as-
sociates itself with Polytheism, and the adoration of
an ineffable Being who cannot be brought under any
predicate whatever, passes at a stroke into a wayward
idolatry that deifies anything and everything. The
Being of whom we only know that He is, is yet
"As full and perfect in a hair as heart."
The distance of the finite from the infinite annihi-
lates all distinctions, and all things and beings are
equally near to the Absolute and equally far from it.
Everything, as apart from God, is denied, yet every-
thing, in God, is reaffirmed, and the pure abstraction
of Being sinks, as in the popular religion of India,
into an endless confusion of deities without definite
character or relations to each other.
a higher
argument,
and a
"higher
God.
But the lesson to be learnt from this imperfec- It points to
tion of the cosmological argument and of the religion kind of
that corresponds to it, is not simply, as Kant argues,
that it is invalid, but that we cannot stop short with idea of
it. The idea of God as merely the infinite, or merely
the necessary Being, is unsatisfactory, even self-
contradictory, and that in the same way as the argu-
ment which leads us to this idea of him; but the
discernment of its imperfection prepares the way
for a better argument and a higher idea. What
Kant refutes therefore is not the idea of God, the
idea of a unity to which the finite and contingent
are to be referred, but this form of the idea.
sico-theo-
argument,
That the physico-theological argument grows out The Phy-
of the cosmological is shown by the actual develop- logical
ment of Greek philosophy. Absolute necessity is and its
one with freedom, for it is the necessity of self- the mono-
determination. The unity of the Eleatics and the idea.
relation to
theistic
650
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
fate of Heraclitus grows into the self-determining
reason of Anaxagoras. The idea of final cause
which rules the Aristotelian philosophy is also
the idea which underlies all monotheistic religions.
Under that idea the world is reduced into a mere
matter, in which God executes his purposes.
As a
syllogistic argument, indeed, the argument from
design is open to all the objections which Kant,
following Hume, brings against it. The externality
of the matter on which God acts makes God finite,
and the notion of creation introduced by the Jewish
religion cuts the knot instead of untying it. Further,
as Kant argues, the designs which are executed in
the world are finite; we cannot conclude from them
to infinite, but only to very great wisdom and power.
Or, to look at the objection from the other side :
there is no definite connexion between the particular
designs realised in the world and the nature of God.
In the Aristotelian philosophy this defect is shown
by the irreconcileable opposition between the pure
self-consciousness of God and the finite world, which
yet is declared to exist only through the divine
energy. In monotheistic religions the same defect
is shown in the assertion of arbitrary will as the
source of all created existence. It is of God's 'mere
good pleasure' that all things are and subsist. The
imperfection of the argument from final causes and
the imperfection of monotheistic religions are there-
fore one and
and the
the same thing; and it gives
rise to objections which are fatal to this par-
ticular way of conceiving that absolute unity which
we call God. As, however, we cannot, without self-
contradiction, avoid the assertion of the absolute unity
in one form or other, as that unity, in fact, is pre-
XVIII.
651
THE IDEAL OF REASON.
supposed in all thought and experience, no objec-
tions can force us to surrender the idea of God itself,
though they may force us to give a new form to that
idea. As the cosmological argument implicitly con-
tained the physico-theological, so the physico-
theological argument contains the ontological. Abso-
lute necessity was seen by Greek philosophy to be
equivalent to freedom; absolute freedom again, in
its turn, is found to be not mere arbitrary self-deter-
mination or will, but self-revealing spirit. Or, what
is the same thing, Pantheism and Monotheism are
necessary stages, through which human thought
passes on its way to Christianity.
from the
Physico-
Onto-
argument.
To understand this, we have only to consider that Transition
the very defects which Kant finds in the argument theological
from design, and consequently in the idea of God as to the
a designer, are remedied when we apply to the logical
divine nature this higher category. God is the
unity of intelligence, conceived as necessarily related
to, or manifested in, a world in space and time, yet
through that world returning upon itself. In other
words, the ontological argument-the argument from
thought to being-when relieved of its imperfect
syllogistic and therefore analytic form, is simply
the expression of that highest unity of thought and
being, which all knowledge presupposes as its be-
ginning and seeks as its end. Idealism, in the
sense that all things and beings constitute a system
of relations which finds its unity in mind, that
every intelligence contains in it the form of the
universe, and that therefore all knowledge is but
the discovery of that which is already our own—
but the awaking of a self-consciousness, which is at
the same time a consciousness of God-this Idealism
652
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Result
of Kant's
criticisms.
is the real meaning of the ontological argument and
the only meaning in which it is defensible. It is,
in fact to repeat what has already been said—
simply that idea which Kant constantly rejects, but
to which he ever returns, the idea of a perceptive
understanding.
The above paragraphs very shortly summarise an
argument which it would require a complete treatise
on Natural Theology to develope. But enough has
been said to exhibit Kant's position in relation to
previous as well as to subsequent philosophy. Kant's
criticisms of the arguments for the being of God
form an era in the history of philosophical Theology,
just because they finally explode the method of dog-
matism, and enable us to see what is the only point
of view from which such a Theology is possible.
His aim throughout is to show that the only unity
of thought and being which can be known is the
unity of experience, and that this therefore is
the only realisation of that ideal to which men
have generally given the name of God; or, at
least, the only realisation of it, cognisable by the
speculative reason. After what Kant has said,
it is vain to repeat the old arguments in the
old form. The only question that can now be put
is, whether the unity of experience which he recog-
nises does not itself implicitly contain that very idea
of God as a perceptive understanding, which he
rejects; whether, in fact, the legitimate development
of Criticism, involving as it does the final rejection
of the thing in itself,' does not at once carry us
onward from Transcendental to Absolute Idealism.
'
653
CHAPTER XIX.
THE REGULATIVE USE OF THE IDEAS OF REASON.
IN
of the
Reason in
experi-
N various parts of the Dialectic, and particularly Function
in the discussion of the Antinomies, Kant points ideas of
out that the Ideas of reason, though they do not give relation to
us any knowledge of things in themselves, yet have an ence.
important function in relation to experience. But in
a special section at the close he endeavours to put
this truth in a clearer light, and to determine more
precisely the office of reason in the production and
organisation of empirical knowledge. To this sec-
tion, which sums up briefly the general lesson of the
Critique, we must now devote a little attention.
Kant begins by saying that "everything that is
grounded in the very nature of our mental powers,
must have a meaning and purpose which is in har-
mony with the proper use of these powers."1 And
reason with its ideas cannot be an exception to this
rule. Now, reason, as we have seen, never deals
directly with objects as they are given in perception;
but only indirectly as they are determined by the
understanding. Its only function is to give direc-
tion and systematic unity to the work of the under-
1 p. 499: Tr., p. 394.
654
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
The prin-
ciple of
eity.
standing. It brings with it an ideal of Unity in
Totality, Totality in Unity, which it seeks to
realise in knowledge; but the only weapons it can
use for this purpose are conceptions and perceptions.
The great aim of Criticism, therefore, is to prevent
us from mistaking this idea, which is merely a prin-
ciple of the organisation of experience, for an actual
object beyond experience. "The transcendental
ideas have no constitutive, but only a regulative
use; in other words, their use is to direct all the
operations of the understanding to one end, or point
of union. This point is indeed a mere idea, or focus
imaginarius, since it lies beyond the sphere of
experience, and the conceptions of the understand-
ing do not find their source in it; yet it serves to
give to these conceptions the greatest possible unity
combined with the most extended application.” 1
This will be seen more clearly if we consider the
different forms in which this idea presents itself
to us.
Now, in the first place, all our empirical investi-
Homogen- gations are stimulated and directed by the search for
unity. The logical rule, Entia non sunt multipli-
canda præter necessitatem, seems indeed at first to
be a mere principle of economy or conciseness: but
when we consider things more closely, we find that
there is a transcendental principle of reason under-
lying it. By the very nature of our intelligence,
difference and multiplicity are a problem to us; and
all our attempts to explain phenomena have relation
to a projected or assumed unity of principle beneath
them, however little we may be able to determine
the value of this unity in particular cases. Hence it
} p. 501: Tr., p. 395.
XIX. REGULATIVE USE OF IDEAS OF REASON. 655
is that in Psychology we can never satisfy ourselves
with the reference of the different activities of
thought to so many different faculties, but are ever
driven to seek for some fundamental power of which
these supposed faculties are but the different forms
or manifestations. Hence it is also that in Phy-
sics and Chemistry we are ever seeking for some
fundamental element or force, which underlies and
explains the difference of substances and the variety
of their changes. In setting this ideal before us,
reason does not beg the question, for it does not
determine what kind or degree of unity is to be
found in experience: but it certainly commands us to
seek for unity; and from the duty which it thus
imposes on us, no amount of unsuccessful effort can
ever release us. Dependent as our reason is upon
experience for all the materials with which it deals,
it cannot pretend to arrive at any result by its own
pure energy yet, on the other hand, it can never
admit that in all the apparent diversity of nature,
there is any absolute and insoluble difference of
principle, however little it may be able to say what
is the nature of the one principle after which it seeks.
To renounce the search for unity would be for reason
to renounce itself.
ciple of
tion.
But in the second place, the tendency to general- The prin-
isation and identity is balanced by another tendency Specifica-
to specification and distinction. This second ten-
dency is necessary in order to check that levity and
superficiality of thought which prematurely snatches
at an abstract and empty generic unity, without
having regard to the multiplicity of species and
individuals included under it. And if the former,
which we may term the idealistic tendency, is neces-
656
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
But
sary to prompt men to the explanation of Nature,
the latter, which may be designated the empirical
tendency, is necessary to prevent facts from being
explained away, and to bring into prominence the
diversity which often underlies the superficial iden-
tity of things called by one name. Logicians,
accordingly, are wont to lay down the rule, that
Entium varietates non temere esse minuendas.
"this logical law also would be without meaning
or application, if it did not rest in a transcendental
principle of specification, a principle which does not
indeed involve the assertion of an actual infinity
in the objects of our knowledge,
but which
nevertheless lays upon our understanding the obli-
gation to seek under every species for lower species,
under every
difference for still finer points of distinc-
tion." 1
And the deduction or justification of this
principle is simply this; that conception can never be
adequate to perception, though it must continually
strive to make itself so. We can never define the
individual, yet the individual is the end, which in
all definition we strive to reach. "The knowledge
of phenomena in their complete determination
(which is possible only through the understanding)
demands an endless progress in the specification of
our conception of them, and in this progress differ-
ences always remain behind, from which, in defin-
ing the species, and still more the genus, we were
obliged to abstract." 2 The individual object of
perception, like the form of perception, has always a
'principle of infinity' in it: and just as we can never
admit that any division of space is final, i.e., is a
division into indivisible units, so we can never admit
2 p. 510: Tr., p. 402.
1
p. 509: Tr., p. 402.
XIX.
REGULATIVE USE OF IDEAS OF REASON. 657
that by any number of qualitative determinations,
the whole content of any individual thing can be
exhausted.
ciple of
Lastly, to complete the systematic unity, we The prin-
must add to these two laws the law of Affinity. Affinity.
This law commands us to avoid all violent leaps,
alike in specification and generalisation, and to
bind together without any break of continuity the
highest unity with the lowest difference. As we can
never admit that there is any generic difference
which may not be embraced in a higher unity, nor,
on the other hand, that there is any infima species
which cannot be further divided; so we cannot
admit any immediate transition from the one to the
other. It is a logical rule always to look for links of
connexion or intermediate steps by which the path
of integration or differentiation may be made more
smooth and easy. And this logical rule also rests on
a transcendental principle, which, though not derived
from experience, guides us in the investigation of all
empirical objects. As a matter of fact, indeed, we
often find breaks in the chain of natural species,
which our experience does not enable us to fill up :
but we cannot admit such lacunæ as final, and we
are forced by the command of reason to seek for an
order or continuous scale of forms, which shall
bind them all together in one system, and exhibit
the place of each in relation to all the rest.
If we place these three principles in the order
of their empirical application, we must begin with
Multiplicity, proceed next to Affinity, and end with
Unity. Reason presupposes the empirical know-
ledge of the understanding, and seeks to give unity
to that knowledge by means of ideas which go far
2 T
658
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
These prin-
ciples do
beyond experience. Now, the affinity of the mani-
fold, (as that which, in spite of its differences, falls
under a principle of unity,) relates not merely to the
things of experience, but still more to their qualities
and forces. Thus, e.g., by a first approximation of
experience, we determine the orbits of the planets as
circular; and when, by subsequent observation, we
discern movements inconsistent with a circular orbit,
we proceed (according to the principle of Affinity) to
invent suppositions which involve the continuous
variation of the circular form through an infinite
number of degrees. In other words, we suppose the
planets to approximate more or less in their orbits
to the circle, and therefore to describe an ellipse.
The paths of the comets are still more eccentric, as
they do not, so far as our observation goes, return on
their own course: but even these we bring within
the compass of the same genus, by supposing that
their orbit is parabolic: for a parabola is but an
ellipse with the major axis lengthened ad infinitum.
Thus guided by the principle of affinity, we keep
hold, in our observations, of a generic unity under
all differences of orbit; and hence it is, that in the
end we are able to trace all the various movements
back to one common cause, viz., gravitation. And
from this point again, we extend our conquests
through the realm of nature, and endeavour to ex-
plain by the same principle all its varieties and
apparent deviations from rule.'
"" 1
The three principles of Homogeneity, of Specifica-
not enable tion, and of Continuity or Affinity, as is now suffi-
ciently evident, have a peculiar position in our intel-
organise lectual constitution. Their use and value is that they
us to know
objects,
but only to
our experi-
ence,
1 ¹ p. 514: Tr., p. 406.
XIX.
REGULATIVE USE OF IDEAS OF REASON. 659
enable us to organise our experience; whilst, on the
other hand, experience could not exist except in
the effort to realise them. Yet, in experience, they
cannot be realised. "The empirical use of the reason
stands in an asymptotical relation to these ideas, i.e.,
it can approximate to them, but it can never reach
them." Neither in experience nor beyond experience
have these ideas an objective or constitutive value:—
not beyond it, for, when we abstract from experience,
we abstract, at the same time, from all the conditions
of understanding and sense, under which alone we
can determine an object as such; and not in it,
because an absolute unity, a complete totality of
difference, and a perfect continuity of unity and
difference, are all equally impossible as objects of
experience. It remains, therefore, that these prin-
ciples must be considered to be purely regulative,
and that if we refer them to objects, these objects
must be regarded as of a purely ideal character.
To put the same thing in another way, it is use-
ful, and, indeed, necessary for the development of
experience that we should proceed as if the ideas
of reason were ideas of objects. We cannot, in-
deed, properly speaking, schematise them and sub-
ject them to determination by the categories; for
there can be no schema of the unconditioned. Still
we can think of a maximum of homogeneity, speci-
fication, or affinity; and this is so far analogous to
a schema that we can apply the categories to it.
Yet we must always remember that this progress
is illegitimate if regarded as determining objects
for these ideas; and legitimate only in so far as
it puts us in the right attitude of mind for deter-
mining other objects, viz., the objects of experience.
660
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
Their rela-
tion to the
three
meta-
ideas.
The ideas of reason, therefore, form "merely the
problematical foundation of the connexion which the
mind introduces among the phenomena of the sensi-
ble world," and in their application reason is
"occupied, not with any object, but with itself."
Now, the objects which reason, by means of its
ideas, is supposed to be able to determine, are the
physical soul, the world, and God; and these it has been our
object in the previous chapters of the Dialectic to
examine. We have seen the futility of the three
supposed sciences of Rational Psychology, Cosmo-
logy, and Theology. We have seen that the trans-
cendental ideas do not enable us to determine any real
objects. Yet this does not hinder us from acknow-
ledging their value as setting before us ideal objects,
and so enabling us "to produce systematic unity in
the empirical employment of our intelligence." We
cannot determine the soul as a pure self-identical
unity, but this does not make it less necessary to
"connect all the phenomena, all the actions and feel-
ing presented to us in inner experience, as if the soul
were a simple substance, which maintains (through
life at least) its personal identity, though its states
are constantly changing." We cannot determine
the world of experience as an infinite whole; nay,
many things make us regard it as really dependent
and finite; but this does not make it less necessary,
in the sphere of Cosmology, to trace back the
phenomena both of internal and external experience,
from condition to condition, as if they belonged to a
chain which was itself infinite." We cannot deter-
mine God as an absolute intelligence; but this does
not make it less necessary, in the sphere of Theology,
"1
1 ¹ p. 540: Tr., p. 427.
XIX.
REGULATIVE USE OF IDEAS OF REASON. 661
to "regard the whole system of possible experience
as forming an absolute, but, at the same time, a
purely dependent and conditioned unity, which has
its highest, all-sufficient ground in a self-subsistent,
unconditioned, and creative reason." For it is by
setting before itself such an ideal object, and by
treating all the phenomena of the world of experience
'as if they drew their origin from such an archetype,
that reason is enabled to give the greatest unity,
extent, and system to our knowledge. We must,
however, distinguish most carefully between the
problematical assumption of the existence of these
objects, with a view to the organisation of our ex-
perience, and the simple assertion of their reality.
"I may have sufficient grounds to assume, in a rela-
tive point of view (suppositio relativa), what I have
no right to assume absolutely.”¹ The consciousness
of the limits of experience goes along with and implies
the consciousness of that which is beyond experience,
and we cannot really apprehend the meaning of the
phenomenal without thinking of it as standing in
relation to the noumenal. But when we attempt to
determine this relation, we can only represent it by
means of analogies which we borrow from the rela-
tions of empirical objects to each other. We are
obliged to conceive the relation of mind to its
states on the analogy of the relation of a substance
to its accidents; we are obliged to conceive of
the relation of the phenomenal world to the nou-
menal, on the analogy of the relation of a pheno-
menal cause to effect; and when we attempt to
conceive of the whole finite world in relation to the
unity which gives it systematic connexion, we have
1 p. 524: Tr., p. 414.
662
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
Ignava
ratio and
perversa
ratio.
no other analogy by which to represent this relation,
except that which is derived from the relation of
an intelligent being to the effects which he pro-
duces, when he subordinates all his actions to one
idea or purpose.
At the same time, while we
must use such analogies, we ought always to be
aware that they are nothing more than analogies.
"It must, e.g., be perfectly indifferent to us whether
it is asserted, that divine wisdom has disposed all
things in conformity with the highest aims, or that
the idea of supreme wisdom is a regulative principle
in the investigation of nature, and at the same time,
a principle which gives systematic unity to nature
according to general laws, even in those cases in which
we are not able to detect any manifestation of that
unity. In other words, it must be quite indifferent to us
whether we say God in his wisdom has willed it to
be so, or Nature has wisely arranged it."¹
To sum
up the whole matter in a word, the ideas of reason
are 'heuristic, not ostensive': they enable us to ask
a question, not to give the answer. To adopt any
other view, and to suppose that, by means of the
transcendental ideas, we can have knowledge of real
objects, is to put reason to sleep, or to turn its activity
in a wrong direction. The dogmatist, who thinks
that by pure a priori speculation, he is able to
demonstrate the unity and immateriality of the soul,
or the origin of all things in a supreme intelligence,
is apt to lose all interest in empirical research into
those phenomena of the inner or the outer life,
through which alone the soul and God are revealed
to our knowledge. Or, if he interests himself in
either, it is not with a view to question experience
¹ p. 540: Tr., p. 427.
1
XIX.
REGULATIVE USE OF IDEAS OF REASON. 663
according to the a priori principles of intelligence, but
rather with a view to distort empirical facts till they
correspond with the results of his a priori reasonings.
By the external system of Teleology, which he thus
imposes upon nature, he prevents himself from dis-
covering the real nature of its unity, and his whole
argument is a vicious circle, which assumes the very
thing it professes to prove. In order to overthrow
such artificial theories it is only necessary to point out,
that the idea of final causality—the idea of nature as
a system ordered by a supreme intelligence-though
it inevitably springs out of the relation of mind to
its object, and though it points to the true goal of
science-the only goal in which thought can find an
ultimate satisfaction-is merely an idea. The matter
to which this idea has to be applied is so far from
having any necessary relation to the idea, that we
cannot be sure of its realisation even in a single
instance, however manifestly that instance may pre-
sent the features of design. For it is not safe to
argue, that because a purpose is realised in certain
phenomena, therefore the phenomena existed in
order to realise it. All that we can say is, that
from the nature of intelligence, this is the natural
aim and end of all its efforts after knowledge. "The
greatest systematic unity, and consequently the
teleological unity of all things, is the idea upon which
is based the most extensive use of human reason.'
""
three
points of
in relation
In this last section of the Dialectic, Kant expresses, The thre
perhaps with more definiteness and completeness than Criticism
anywhere else, his peculiar view of the position of to the
reason in relation to knowledge or experience. Very Reason.
few, if any, of Kant's successors have preserved that
Ideas of
664
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
The third
principle,
is an im-
perfect
synthesis
of the
other two.
exact balance between trust and distrust of reason,
which is characteristic of the Critique, and which con-
stitutes its main difficulty. Almost every subsequent
writer, who has not gone beyond Kant in the direction
of Idealism, has fallen back on a much simpler com-
bination of scepticism and empiricism, and has treated
the ideas of reason as mere Idola, that stand between
the mind and truth. But Kant lays equal weight
on all these three points; first, on the necessity of the
ideas to direct and systematise experience; secondly,
on their uselessness to determine the nature of things
in themselves; and lastly, on the inadequacy of
experience for their realisation. Especially in this
section, which contains the final result of the Dialec-
tic, Kant is solicitous to maintain himself on the
exact razor-edge of critical orthodoxy, and he
scarcely ever mentions one of these points without
immediately modifying his statement by a reference
to the other two.
--
At the point which we have now reached, little
with Kant, more need be said in illustration or criticism of the
three principles of Homogeneity, Specification, and
Affinity. The first principle, it is obvious, expresses
the necessity to experience of the pure unity of
thought; the second expresses the equal necessity of
the manifold of perception; while the third expresses
the necessity of a combination of these two elements
in spite of their essential opposition. No experience
is possible, unless both are present, yet their perfect
synthesis is impossible. Hence, (1) as there can be
no conception without perception, it is impossible to
determine even the thinking subject, much less any
other object, as a pure or absolute unity. And (2)
as there can be no perception without conception, it
XIX. REGULATIVE USE OF IDEAS OF REASON. 665
is equally impossible to determine the world of objects
as a complete or absolute diversity. Lastly, while
experience is nothing but a search for the unity of
intelligence through all the manifoldness or diversity
of the world of experience, it is a search for that
which, from the very nature of experience, can never
be found. Experience is thus a unity of elements or
factors, which for ever attract, yet for ever repel,
each other. No experience could exist except through
their synthesis; yet this synthesis is accomplished
only in an infinite series of approximations to an ideal,
which is incapable of realisation.
The only difficulty in understanding Kant's mean-
ing at this point, is one which arises from his not trac-
ing very clearly the connexion of the three principles
of Homogeneity, Specification, and Affinity with the
three ideas of the Soul, the World, and God. The
Principle of Affinity, or Continuity, indeed, seems,
in the first instance, to suggest to Kant only the quan-
titative conception of a series of intermediate stages,
a continuum formarum, by which the whole scale of
being, from the highest genus to the lowest species,
might be filled up. We must, however, remember
that the tendency to look for intermediate links is
only one form of the general necessity of intelli-
gence, to seek for its own unity in all its objects.
When this is understood, it becomes obvious that the
teleological explanation of the universe is only a
higher manifestation of the principle of affinity.
Kant does not here identify the teleological idea with
the idea of a perceptive understanding, which is
elsewhere¹ taken as its equivalent. But this identi-
fication is implied in his assertion that the end of
1 As in the Critique of Judgment.
666
CHAP.
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
The op-
position
tion and
Supreme Intelligence can be nothing but the "realisa-
tion of its own ideas of Unity and Harmony;" i.e.,
of itself. The result of the whole argument there-
fore is, that the idea of a perceptive understanding
is the necessary ideal of all intelligence, the goal
of all science though, from the nature of the case,
the reality of experience can never correspond
to it.
The ultimate decision therefore as to the truth of
of percep- the Kantian Criticism of Pure Reason, must turn
conception upon the opposition of perception and conception, as
problem of factors which reciprocally imply, and yet exclude,
insoluble. each other. If thought in constituting knowledge
makes the
knowledge
or experience has to deal with something foreign to
itself, something of an essentially different character
from pure thought, there seems to be no escape from
the Kantian paradox. Knowledge, in that case,
must involve at once the assertion and the denial of
unity of thought; it must be a continuous effort after
the solution of an insoluble problem. It may, indeed,
as Kant maintains, solve by the way many other
problems; but its own problem, the problem which
is involved in the very idea of knowledge, it cannot
solve. It is a physician that can heal everyone's
wound but its own. The answer of experience has
no direct relation to the question of thought, though
without the question of thought, there would be no
answer of experience. When there is something
incommensurable in two quantitative terms, that
have to be brought into relation with each other, the
only possible result is an infinite series; and, for
similar reasons, the combination of thought and
perception in experience can never give a final answer
in terms of thought.
XIX. REGULATIVE USE OF IDEAS OF REASON. 667
an opposi-
contradic-
But how is such an opposition in the factors of But such
knowledge possible? How, in other words, can tion is self-
anything come within consciousness which is essen- tory.
tially different from consciousness? How can we
think that which, ex hypothesi, is unthinkable?
How can any object, any manifold, anything defin-
able or nameable, be presented to a conscious being,
whose thought does not transcend the distinction be-
tween itself and that object? Those who maintain the
Kantian dualism must show its possibility, and must
answer, in some way, the many objections which
have presented themselves in the course of our
examination of it. They must maintain the Kantian
distinction between the laws of pure thought and
the laws of thought in the determination of objects.
They must explain how thought can discern its own
absolute limits without emancipating itself from
them how it can know the phenomenal as such,
without a glimpse of the noumenon. For, unless
they are able to do all this, they must admit that
the Kantian philosophy is only the first stage,
though of course a necessary stage, in the transition
of philosophy to higher forms of Idealism. In so
far, indeed, as Kant sought in the Critique to show
the necessity of thought, of the conceptions of the
understanding and the ideas of reason, to the consti-
tution and organisation of experience, his work was
successful at least his reasoning has never been
refuted. But when he limited his recognition of
thought to the sphere of experience, he was, as we
have endeavoured to show, still hampered by logical
and metaphysical traditions, derived from those very
predecessors whom he was assailing. The analytical
Logic of the schools still holds its place in the
668
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON. CHAP.
The results
of the
Critique, alongside of the transcendental Logic of
synthesis, which must ultimately be fatal to it. The
sceptical prejudices of Empiricism are still strong
enough to force a compromise upon the very criti-
cism that destroyed the empirical philosophy. The
Individualisms of Locke and Leibnitz cast a shadow
over the book which has absolutely annihilated In-
dividualism. But it is perhaps just because Kant's
mind was deeply impregnated with the ideas from
which it was his work to liberate the philosophy of
his time, and because he had to struggle with them
at
every stage, not only in others, but even in him-
self, that the Critique of Pure Reason is the safest
and surest guide into the new region of thought,
which it first opened up. A certain reluctance is
necessary to complete and conclusive energy, and no
one ever was a great innovator (ein alles Zermal-
mender) whose mind was not imbued and penetrated
with the spirit of the past.
It may be useful to sum up in a few words the
Critique. argument which we have now completed.' It has
been our aim to show that the result of Kant's
Critique is, in the first place, to destroy the one-
sided Individualism which prevailed during the
second period of the history of Modern Philosophy;
or perhaps we should rather say, to correct and
transform that Individualism, by the aid of ideas
ultimately derived from the equally one-sided Univer-
salism of the first period. Thus Kant endeavoured to
1 I have not thought it necessary in this volume to say anything about
that part of the Critique which Kant calls the Doctrine of Method ';
for the subjects there discussed either have been already anticipated, or
they involve questions connected with Kant's practical philosophy.
XIX.
REGULATIVE USE OF IDEAS OF REASON. 669
show that consciousness transcends the opposition of
self and not-self; or, what is the same thing, that self-
consciousness contains the unity to which, not merely
the phenomena of inner experience, but also the phe-
nomena of outer experience, are referred. In order
to maintain this position, however, he was obliged,
in the second place, to show that the understanding
is not purely analytic, but that it is the source of
certain conceptions, which, in their application to
the perceptions of sense, are principles of a priori
synthesis. These principles are of objective validity,
because they are the principles which constitute the
objective consciousness; or, to express the same
thing from the opposite point of view, we know
objects because, in so far as their most general
determinations are concerned, we produce the objects
we know. On the other hand, the effect of Kant's
reassertion of the synthetic principle in thought was
to some extent neutralised by his denial that
thought is in itself synthetic. For, if pure thought
in itself is not synthetic but analytic, it follows
necessarily that the ideal of knowledge derived from
pure thought, and the reality which is known by the
application of the pure thought to the form and the
matter of sensuous experience, are at variance with
each other. Hence, in the third place, Kant main-
tains that the universality of consciousness is limited
to experience, and that there is an impassable gulf
between things as they are known, and things as
they are in themselves. In this volume, however,
we have attempted to show that Kant was justified
in his assertion of the reality, but not in his asser-
tion of the limitation, of knowledge: that thought
is synthetic not only in its application to a matter
670
THE CRITICISM OF PURE REASON.
given from without, but in itself; and that, conse-
quently, there is no ideal of knowledge, which it is
impossible, from the very nature of knowledge, to
realise. Thus, the thing in itself, which Kant had
reduced to a phantom, is banished from the intel-
ligible world,¹ and the consciousness of man finds no
limit in itself to preclude it from the knowledge of its
object. The division between thought and the reality
which thought seeks to apprehend, is not an absolute
dualism, but only that separation which precedes and
makes possible a higher kind of union. The labour
and pain of experience, of science, and of philosophy,
are not wasted in a vain effort after the unattainable;
nor are we, as Kant supposes, tempted to pursue a
lower good, by the illusive hope of something better.
Rather we should say that every step of spiritual
progress implies the end, and is, in a sense, the
anticipated fruition of it. Slow as is the advance of
knowledge, the hope by which it is moved is nothing
less than certainty, for it is a faith bound up with
the very idea of knowledge, and the consciousness of
self.
Jacobi wittily remarks that Kant's thing in itself "as in itself real,
but unknown and unknowable by us, enjoys a position of otium cum
dignitate,” which is the next thing to non-existence. Werke, III., p. 74.
671
INDEX.
ABSTRACTION, method of, 41, 48, 83, |
132; danger of excessive, 372,
416.
Actuality and possibility, 466, 492,
544.
Esthetic, propaedeutic to criticism,
224, 255.
Affinity, 340; principle of, 657.
Critique of Pure Reason, its problem,
182, 667; Differences of the 1st
and 2nd edition, 239, 265, 310,
337, 475, 545, 621.
Coexistence, 67, 412, 455.
Common sense, 591; philosophy of,
194, 215, 598.
Conception, see Understanding.
Affirmation and negation, 48, 83, Constitutive and regulative use of
113, 145, 301, 639.
Analogies of experience, 450.
Analysis, 134, 206, 301; cf. Syn-
thesis.
Analytic, its relation to Esthetic,
222, 264; to Dialectic, 191, 527.
Anticipations of sensible perception,
442.
Antinomies, 562 seq.; criticism of,
591 seq.
Appearance and reality, 278.
Apperception, 91, 338, 345, 377, 400,
477, 482, 537.
A priori and a posteriori, 98, 112,
169, 198, 208, 218, 257, 321, 469.
Archetypal and ectypal intelligence,
184.
Aristotle, 11, 24; his logic, 225, 288;
his categories, 298.
Association, theory of, 65, 198, 243,
285, 349, 356, 397, 450.
Atomic philosophy, 73, 448, 493.
Attraction, 161, 430, 490.
Axioms of perception, 442.
BACON, 30, 598.
Berkeley, 61, 193, 263, 391, 619.
Biology, 486.
ideas, 653.
Continuity, 468, 657.
Contradiction, 505, 590 seq.; law of,
302, 413.
Cosmological argument, 632, 647.
Cosmology, rational, 112, 561 seq.
DEDUCTION, metaphysical and tran-
scendental, 242, 257, 287, 319 seq.
Degree, 411, 434, 442; applied to
inner experience, 477, 558.
Des Cartes, 35, 386, 424, 475, 546.
Design, 104, 485; argument from,
633, 649.
Deus ex machina, 179, 185, 192.
Dialectic, 191, 273, 290, 471, 496,
514 seq.
Difference, given in sense, 229, 343,
377, 393; category of, 301, 505;
problem of, 591.
Disjunctive judgment, 299; syllo-
gism, 523.
Divisibility, 386, 424, 448, 569, 601.
Dualism, 12, 25, 39, 178, 193, 666.
Dynamics, 489.
Dynamical principles, 315, 436, 604.
EPICUREAN philosophy, 12.
Experience, 149, 188, 202, 220.
CATEGORICAL judgment, 299; syl- Extension, 386, 424, 445, 488, 601.
logism, 523.
Category, 295, 309, 351.
Casuistry, 592.
Causality, 68, 142, 454, 570, 586,
604.
Chemistry, 478.
Christianity, 20, 645, 651.
FICHTE, 530.
Final cause, 104, 316, 465, 485, 611,
633, 649, 662.
Finite and infinite, 39, 48, 75, 83,
196, 500, 666.
Form and matter of thought, 298.
672
INDEX.
Freedom and necessity, 570, 587, | Matter, 86, 161, 165, 422, 488.
608, 627.
GENERAL ideas, 171, 227, 238, 293, 323.
Geometry, 211, 241, 442.
God, pantheistic idea of, 40, 43, 81,
85, 163, 648; monotheistic idea of,
649; Christian idea of, 18, 27, 77,
645, 651; origin of the idea, 78,
624, 639; its relation to experience,
661.
Mechanics, 491.
Mendelssohn, 550.
Metaphysic, 155, 186, 210, 220, 235,
488, 514.
Modality, 295, 412, 466, 491, 544.
Monad, 73, 504.
Monotheism, 649.
NATURE, 367, 470.
Necessary Being, 572, 628, 632, 647;
truth, 209, 219.
HARMONY, pre-established, 76, 108, Necessity and possibility, 468.
129, 160, 185, 261, 368.
Hegel, 447, 569, 603, 605.
Homogeneity, 653, 664.
Hume, 120; Kant's relation to,
144, 167, 213, 263, 452, 649.
Hypothetical judgment, 299; syl-
logism, 523.
IDEALITY, transcendental, 244, 258.
Idealism of Berkeley, 61, 193, 251,
263, 391, 621; of Des Cartes, 252,
475, 546.
Ideas of reason, 514; regulative use
of, 652.
Identity of object, 68, 454; of self,
345, 388; see Difference.
Imagination, 41, 44; its relation to
knowledge, 360, 400, 407, 417, 437,
464, 659.
Impression, 64, 264.
Individual and universal, 79, 328;
given in perception, 223, 267.
Individualism, 12, 52, 73, 129, 180,
192, 334, 667.
Induction, 132, 329.
Infinite, see Finite.
Inner sense, 234, 337, 362, 421, 478.
JACOBI, 3, 670.
Judgment, form of, 294; logical and
transcendental, 406; principle of
analytic and synthetic, 413.
LAW, principles of, 519.
Leibnitz, 72; Wolf's relation to, 116;
Kant's relation to, 192, 504.
Limits of knowledge, 54, 155, 196,
503, 524, 659, 668.
Locke, 55, 159, 192, 262.
Logic, formal and transcendental, 98,
134, 225, 288, 318, 351, 413, 516,
525, 559, 653.
MAIMON, 266.
Materialism, 13, 57, 548, 574.
Mathematical principles,315,437,600.
Mathematics, 135, 210, 241, 442,
478, 488.
Negation, see Affirmation.
Neoplatonic philosophy, 17.
Newton, 161, 488.
Noumenon, 87, 176, 187, 273, 402,
496, 522, 642.
OBJECT, transcendental and empirical,
178, 183, 193, 248, 282, 321, 325,
348, 499, 581.
Omnitudo realitatis, 625, 639.
Ontology, Wolff's, 112.
Ontological argument, 630, 644,
650.
Outer sense, 165, 234, 269, 363, 477,
546.
PANTHEISM, 38, 47, 81, 117, 648.
Paralogism of rational psychology,
537.
Perception, see Sense.
Phenomena, see Noumena.
Philosophy, its relation to experience,
32; see Metaphysic.
Physics, a priori part of, 210, 474,
488, 561.
Physico-theological argument, 633,
649.
Plato, 11, 385, 520, 593.
Positivism, basis of philosophical,
514.
Possible, see Modality.
Postulates of empirical thought, 466.
Prolegomena, 205, 213, 251, 279,
353.
Psychological method, not the method
of the Critique, 193, 373, 403, 421,
559.
Psychology rational and empirical,
112, 362, 474, 537.
QUALITY, schema of, 299, 411, 434.
Quantity, schema of, 299, 305, 411,
432; intensive and extensive, 442;
antinomies of, 567, 600.
REALITY, transcendental and em-
pirical, 243, 258; given in sense,
65, 223, 264, 442; see Omnitudo.
INDEX.
673
Reason, 177, 189, 271, 290, 503, 514
seq.
Reciprocity, 160, 173, 307, 401, 412,
455, 463.
Recognition, synthesis of, 339.
Reflexion, amphiboly of, 504.
Regulative use of ideas of reason,
652.
Reid and Kant, 194, 215; his appeal
to common sense, 3, 598.
Relation, categories of, 68, 299.
Relations, Hume's natural,
66;
Leibnitz's denial of real, 74; Kant's
compromise, 161, 511, 570.
Repulsion, 161, 430, 489.
Resemblance, 67, 505.
SCEPTICISM, 15, 71, 405, 553, 595,
667.
to
Schematism of the categories, 406
seq.; of the ideas of reason, 659.
Scholastic philosophy, 23; Wolff's
relation to, 109.
Schopenhauer's criticisms of Kant,
353, 456.
Self-consciousness in relation
knowledge, 36, 85, 178, 337, 345,
401, 547; see Psychology, Apper-
ception, Subject.
Sensationalism, 57, 159, 392.
Sense as a source of knowledge, 63,
89, 170, 222, 232, 265, 276, 336,
344, 353, 392, 417, 501, 664.
Space, 67, 86, 165, 233, 267, 504;
relation to time, 423, 475; princi-
ples that determine objects in, 442,
488; antinomies of, 567, 603.
Spinoza, 43, 83, 162, 425, 648.
Stoics, 12.
Subject, transcendental and em-
pirical, 85, 178, 266, 334, 345,
362, 377, 395, 401, 421, 445, 474,
537.
Substance, 42, 68, 74, 159, 172, 453,
461, 476, 542.
|
Swedenborg and Kant, 150.
Syllogism, 140, 289, 516, 525.
Synthesis, a priori and a posteriori,
7, 66, 100, 111, 134, 146, 167, 199;
two senses of, 228; its relation to
knowledge, 271, 282, 293, 339;
of understanding, 344, 377, 413;
homogeneous and heterogeneous,
440; of reason, 519.
System of knowledge, 172, 200, 333;
its dependence on ideas of reason,
652, 664; of the categories, 297,
310.
TELEOLOGY, see Design.
Theology, see God.
Thing in itself, see Noumenon.
Time, 67, 86, 169, 233, 267, 357, 421,
444, 474; antinomy of, 567, 603.
Transcendent, 212, 514.
Transcendental problem and method,
200, 220, 240, 257, 287, 373, 397,
402, 421, 426, 469, 516, 527, 579,
621, 652; see Apperception, Subject,
Object, Reality, Ideality, Logic.
UNCONDITIONED, 522.
Understanding, its relation to sense,
170, 222, 238, 269, 276, 281, 323,
344, 393, 417, 504; categories of,
291; law of pure, 312; principles
of pure, 437; relation to reason,
521, 555, 565, 653, 666.
Unity of knowledge, 175, 334, 399,
659; see System.
Universal, abstract and concrete, 48,
80, 132, 328; necessary for know-
ledge, 163, 165, 175, 220, 271, 334,
668.
VACUUM, as an object of experience,
448.
WOLFF, 109; relation to Kant, 129,
509, 549.
Printed at the University Press,
BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE, 153 WEST NILE STREET, GLASGOW.
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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
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