Grad. R. R. 3
B
2779
•W 42
AN INTRODUCTIONS
MICAL PHILOSO

中
​│
ÂÂÂÂÂ ÂÂ
THE
PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY
OF
PROFESSOR GEORGE S. MORRIS,
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY,
1870-1889.
Presented to the University of Michigan.
Grad. R. RE
B
2779
W-2.
гро
THE
CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Я.
G. §. Morris
м
so.1.168%.
THE CRITICAL
PHILOSOPHY OF KANT:
BEING
61313
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE
"CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON."
refred
Egles
BY
ARCHIBALD WEIR, B.A.
1 =
As the world has never been, and, no doubt, never will be, without a system
of metaphysics of one kind or another, it is the highest and weightiest concern
of philosophy to render it powerless for harm, by closing up the sources of
error."-KAnt.
LONDON:
W. SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & ALLEN,
PATERNOSTER SQUARE.
1881.
J
!
:
Butler & Tanner,
The Selwood Printing Works,
Frome, and London.
KUKLAA 14
****
nba
PREFACE.
WHILST preparing a small book to serve as an intro-
duction to the study of modern philosophy, I neces-
sarily found it incumbent on me to write a chapter
giving a brief but intelligible account of the Critical
Philosophy of Kant. But when I attempted to per-
form this part of my work I encountered obstacles
which seemed insuperable in the present state of our
Kantian literature. For my limits were narrow, and
yet it was imperative that my readers should obtain
a competent acquaintance with this speculation. To
refer to any works now extant would have been a
contradiction of my purpose, in that my introductory
efforts would have simply amounted to an indication
of the works to whose comprehension it was my object
to lead the student. Nevertheless, I wrote what I
conceived to be wanted for an introduction to the study
of Kant, but the result was far too extensive to form
a chapter in a work of the moderate compass which I
contemplated. Convinced, however, that something
of the sort is required, I have determined to publish
it alone quite independently of my main plan.
vi
PREFACE.
I am well aware of the difficulties attending any
attempt to make Kant's philosophy, and indeed any
philosophy worthy of the name, easy to beginners
with brevity, and I cannot expect to have avoided them
all; but their nature is so palpable that it is as need-
less for me to enumerate them as it is for me to do
more than remind my reader of the indulgence which
their existence entitles me to.
From the beginning the purpose of this brief ex-
position has been kept in view, to wit, a preliminary
aid not only to the "Critique of Pure Reason" but also
to the English writings on the same. My obligations
therefore are especially great to Professor Edward
Caird's "Critical Account of the Philosophy of Kant,”
so great that it would be difficult to express them at all
adequately. But perhaps it may be sufficient to say
that, considering the place which Professor Caird's
book has taken in our philosophical literature, unless
the acknowledgments due to it from a work of this
kind were excessive, its production would have little
relevancy.
My references are made to Professor Meiklejohn's
translation of the "Critique."
*
ENFIELD, April, 1881.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
1
HISTORICAL RETROSPECT
CHAPTER II.
KANT AND TRANSCENDENTALISM
15
CHAPTER III.
THE TRANSCENDENTAL ESTHETIC:
1. THE ARGUMENT
2. TRANSITION TO TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC
CHAPTER IV.
THE CATEGORIES, AND THEIR TRANSCENDENTAL DE-
DUCTION:
1. THE CATEGORIES FOUND
2. THE CATEGORIES TRANSCENDENTALLY DEDUCED
33
37
41
49
CHAPTER V.
SCHEMATISM:
AND THE PRINCIPLES
OF THE PURE
UNDERSTANDING
1. SCHEMATISM AND SCHEMATA
2. PRINCIPLES
62
•
29
64
67
viii
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VI.
PAGE
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC:
1. THE LOGIC OF ILLUSION
79
2. THE IDEAS OF REASON
82
3. CRITICISM OF RATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
AND
OF
RATIONAL COSMOLOGY
4. CRITICISM OF RATIONAL THEOLOGY
5. CONCLUDING REMARKS
87
98
107
THE CRITICAL
PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
CHAPTER I.
HISTORICAL RETROSPECT.
In the fulness of time the Thought of our era
asserted its rightful autonomy and emancipated itself
from the timorous coddling of its foster nurse Dog-
matics. In the place of the Church and Aristotle the
absolute doubt of Descartes obtained the intellectual
supremacy. Aware that an entirely new beginning
had to be made, philosophy repudiated the past as a
tale of sophistries and illusions, and, true to itself,
assumed the position of utter scepticism. But only
provisionally. Descartes found in self-consciousness
a fact which forced scepticism to eat its own words:
to say that I doubt everything, even my own existence,
is to assert that I think the doubt; and from this fact
he tried to establish the validity of the rest of what
we least hesitate to call knowledge. Unfortunately
this movement of his was incompatible with the
B
2
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
original sceptical rigour. To the question, how can
there be any correspondence between the individual
and the universal? how can there be any commerce
between two such heterogeneous existences as mind
and matter? how can we have any confidence in the
result of such commerce? he could only oppose an
appeal to the veracity of God. Yet the question is a
crucial one, and its solution is imperative.
In the absence of knowledge innate in the mind,
all our knowledge is derived from the outside world.
Unless therefore this can be shown to be legitimately
and correctly obtained, all human beliefs, hopes and
fears depending thereon will be vain. Now it is the
business of philosophy to account for the grounds of
our beliefs, and thus it must be occupied with the first
principles of empirical cognition, and with our innate
mental equipment, if we have any. The latter point
first recommends itself to consideration on the score
of its priority, and Descartes appeared to follow the
logical order of truth in commencing with it. But
history was to show that it was difficult to retain any
such division, and that, if the distinction were retained,
yet experience generally furnished the text in order of
exposition; in any case, the relation subsisting
between subject and object always proved to be at
once the deepest and most pressing problem for
subsequent speculation. This problem indeed has
possessed this character at all times, as it ever must
till solved, and its discussion is even now of supreme in-
terest. Here however we desire only to give a rapid
HISTORICAL RETROSPECT.
3
sketch of its history, from its statement by Descartes
up to the time when our writer received it.
The inadequacy of Descartes' explanation soon
appeared in the endeavours of his followers. The
somewhat imposing appeal to the veracity of God, (the
proof of whose existence nevertheless depended on our
possession of a certain non-empirical idea,) had to be
converted ere long into the invocation of a perpetual.
miracle. Occasionalism¹ was the only detailed expres-
sion possible of Descartes' doctrine, and this was as
good as a confession that the doctrine did no more
than restate the difficulty.
John Locke it was, however, whom tradition credits
with the decisive attack on Cartesian thought. There
seems now to be no doubt that the "Essay concerning
Human Understanding" might well have been provoked
by the theories current among Locke's countrymen,
if we are unwilling to be satisfied with Locke's own
profession of its origin, and that if its polemic was
directed solely against Descartes much injustice was
done in the statement of his views. Nevertheless, it is
from this Englishman that history traces that antagon-
istic line of thought which ran its course for a time
independently of its continental precursor, till the two
converged at the point to which we are moving.
.
¹ Arnold Geulinx was the most thoroughgoing exponent of
this theory. According to it, on every occasion (hence the
name) of the exercise of our will, God caused a corresponding
movement in our corporeal members; similarly, on every
occasion of the affection of our organs of sense, God caused a
corresponding cognition in the mind.
4
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
L
The thesis which Locke sought to maintain, and in
somewise to develop, was the empirical origin of all
our ideas. The antithesis which he aimed at subvert-
ing was the innate and non-empirical origin of the
most fundamental of the same. Our attention here
must be turned to what he understood to be the
experience which produced these important results.
In one word, he conceived it to be Sensation. From
sensation he believed that all our ideas might origin-
ate, and to show how this came about the constructive
portion of his book was written. He supposed that
the mind was primarily a blank, a tabula rasa, on
which matter acted through the senses. Further, the
mind was presumed to be able to work up these im-
pressions into a stock of ideas, all of which, however
irreducible they might appear, were accordingly trace-
able to sensible impressions. The impressing matter
was identified with the primary qualities of objects,
viz. extension and resistance; while colour, etc., as
secondary qualities, were supposed to be but modes of
the affection of this matter. Thus all our knowledge
resulted from sensation, itself the affection of matter
on our minds.
In this theory there were two heterogeneous ele-
ments united in a mechanical fashion. Mental affec-
tions, sensations, a subjective element, on the one
hand; matter in space affecting the organs of sense,
an objective element, on the other. The first repre-
sented the particular aspect of knowledge, the second
the universal aspect. Both are indispensable, and
HISTORICAL RETROSPECT.
5
10
Locke did well to neglect neither, though he failed
to relate them organically. The sequel, however,
manifested the fault. As was inevitable, since their
combination was quite external, one element was
emphasised by Locke's successors to the exclusion
of the other. Cruder thinkers, delighting in some-
thing tangible, seized upon the materialistic side of
the theory; but subtler minds, determined to make
no assumptions, concentrated their attention on the
subjective aspect, and refused to think of anything
which they could not feel as their own sensation.
The two parties came into collision, and the more
conscientious investigators came off the victors.
The French encyclopædists and their rough and
ready enlightenment do not concern our purpose here
(unless we notice their relation to that sentence of
Kant's which we have taken for a motto), nor indeed
do any of those writers who espoused the cause of
materialism. We only mention this section in refer-
ence to their threatening attitude, which called forth
the examination of their central tenet by Berkeley.
This writer asked pertinently enough what matter is,
and how it served as the prius of sensations. Re-
fusing to make the illegitimate assumption of an inde-
pendent spatial world with minds and matter moving
about in it, he demanded the reduction of Locke's
doctrines to their lowest terms. Propounding for the
first time that theory of vision which, with some ad-
ditions, is now generally held by scientific men, he
converted our perceptions of an external world into
6
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
sensations and inferences derived therefrom. In thus
doing, the subjective element in Locke's theory ren-
dered the objective one needless and, in fact, contra-
dictory. The fratricide was logically justifiable, and
in spite of coxcombs' grins and the protests of common
sense the independent existence of matter became
untenable on the then received principles.
This exclusively subjective view of knowing and
being greatly changed the character of the current
sensationalism. The chaos of sense could never again
be turned into our cosmos by reference to an objective
order. Unless philosophy somehow shifted its position,
order and objectivity would have to be derived from
subjective sensation, and the individual would become
the measure of the universe. The truth of our experi-
ence from this point of view could only be determined
by discovering the cause of the individual's sensations
and the secret of their cohesion into a world. Yet
this could only be properly done by reference to other
sensations, themselves requiring explanation, unless
something else were called in to fill up the gap. As
is well known, Berkeley filled up the void to his own
satisfaction by the introduction of the Great Spirit,
and deftly replaced the matter he dreaded by the
God he served. But a hypothesis is unable to quiet
curiosity allied with acuteness and unscrupulousness.
A man of this stamp was alone required, to test still
further the intrinsic value of sensation; and before
long such a man was found.
David Hume had no prepossessions or tendencies to
HISTORICAL RETROSPECT.
7
prevent him from taking an impartial view of the state
of philosophy. He was a man of letters, with the
talents and the will to take things as they were and sift
them. Pursuant to his calling, he candidly examined
our experience on the principles of sensationalism. In
his writings for the first time appeared an indication
of the real worth of sensation, freed from all assump-
tions covert or otherwise, as the ground of our know-
ledge; and the real worth proved to be only capable
of supporting scepticism.
Hume's earlier "Treatise" was more thorough than
attractive of popularity, and subsequently he gave a
more exoteric exposition of his speculations in his
Essays. Of course the first work is the one by which
he ought to be judged; but the later redaction, with its
main theme, is the force which the history of philo-
sophy especially takes cognisance of in its narrative.
Causation was its chief topic, a relation on which
depends the entire security of what we think to be
knowledge. Unless we can be assured of necessary
sequence as a law of our experience, all that we think
to be knowledge becomes contingent and valueless for
reason. Accordingly, on the hypothesis that know-
ledge is secure, the adequacy of sensation on this point
may serve as an indication of its adequacy on others.
Conversely, supposing that sensationalism is a true
philosophy, its verdict on causation will serve as an
indication of the security of what we call knowledge.
Hume himself supposed that sensationalism was a true
philosophy; and having determined that causation was
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
merely contingent sequence, that belief in it was solely
due to habit and to an irrational propensity to feign,
we have no difficulty in understanding how he came
to his conclusion of scepticism. The way by which
he arrived at this verdict respecting causation is no
less obvious. Sense in its ultimate nature is only a
flux of momentary stimulations, and contains in itself
no other order or coherence than what is involved in
this definition. The sensation of the moment therefore
is the only thing of which we can be sure, and any
such conception as that of necessary sequence is
entirely meaningless. Knowledge in any sense of the
term becomes impossible; at most we can attain to
probability, for any extension of inference from the
momentary sensation must be precarious. Such is
the worth of knowledge in general; for the nature
of the subject cannot escape the same contingency
which has overtaken the object. We are but bundles
of ideas, and personality is a manifest fiction. Both
subject and object are thus the fabrications of our
fancy from a sense phantasmagoria, and neither can
be appealed to for help against the disheartening
conclusions of scepticism.¹
¹ In this statement I have drawn on the "Treatise,” and have
not confined myself to the " Essays." The sequel will justify
this deviation from historical tradition. It is not sufficient to
attribute Kant's awakening from his "dogmatic slumber" to
the "Inquiry's" denial of a causal nexus between things, for a
proper understanding of the "Critique's " argument. Whatever
be the precise personal relation between Hume and Kant, it is
necessary to bear in mind from the first the truth respecting
HISTORICAL RETROSPECT.
9
Mr. Lewes pronounces this scepticism to be the
terminal morass of all consistent metaphysics, and
forgets to consider whether after all it be not due
to want of sufficient care in the use of that potent
instrument, analysis, of whose possible misuse he was
himself so well aware. A similar opinion has always
pervaded our indigenous thought, and common sense
and surreptitious assumptions have saved it from
wanting plausibility. But the question as to the
legitimacy of taking sense by itself as the sole factor
in experience was asked in another country, and de-
cided in the negative. This country was Germany,
whence all philosophy other than suicidal comes to
us.
Meanwhile, speculation had not been confined to
England. A very different line of thought had also
worked itself out on the continent. Descartes had
despaired of finding any prime certainty except in the
individual's thought, and had set the fashion of look-
ing therein for first principles. Just as sensation in
England usurped reality, so therefore thought arro-
the ultimate nature of sense indicated in the former's earlier
work. Otherwise Kant's reasoning can have little cogency,
since it is based on a similar but consistent view of sense, and
would be off the point if it were admitted that sense alone
could make a thing at all. But of this we shall have to speak
again very soon. The student who fails to find satisfaction in
Professor Huxley's uncritical dogmatism (Hume: English Men
of Letters series) must consult Professor Green's "Introduc-
tion to Hume," for a thorough comprehension of the merits
of this sensational scepticism.
10
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
gated to itself the criterion of truth abroad. But
inasmuch as this thought was that of the individual
no less than sensation was, similar difficulties were
involved respecting the relation existing between sub-
ject and object. We cannot therefore wonder at the
opinions of a mind trained in this school, of too un-
settled life to permit sustained and coherent inquiry
yet too great to be completely blinded by narrow and
partial views, if they present to the superficial observer
a somewhat grotesque appearance. Such was the
case with the author of the System of Monads and
the Pre-established Harmony; and it is therefore not
improbable that these apparently curious inventions
may be the imperfect expression of what is intrin-
sically profound.
Spinoza, that man of peace and sincerity who is
receiving among ourselves his meed of admiration
in these days of bustle and chicanery, whatever doubt
there may be concerning his speculative pedigree,
certainly appreciated the difficulties of individualism
and sought to correct them by his universalism. But
in thus doing he completely lost sight of the in-
dividualising aspect of the problem, which is as
important as the other, so much so that the question.
of perception never appears with him;¹ and this is
66
¹ Mr. Pollock justly remarks, as Lessing had done before,
that on Spinoza's principles this problem vanishes. Cf.
'Spinoza, his Life and Philosophy," p. 213, and Mr. Sime's
'Lessing," vol. ii. p. 297. Nevertheless, it is of questionable
advantage to a system to cut a knot without trying to untie it,
at least for the sake of other people. Since writing this
CC
HISTORICAL RETROSPECT.
11
at once the source of his religious grandeur and his
matter of fact weakness. Whereas Leibnitz, on the
contrary, by no means less jealous of the truth than
his opponent Locke, was impelled to the endeavour to
combine the particular and the universal, and, failing
a symmetrical combination, to avoid neglecting either
aspect of the truth at any cost. This makes us regret
the less the small immediate effect of the "Ethica" com-
pared with the popularity of the Leibnitzian philosophy,
albeit this popularity was retained only by an eviscer-
ating adaptation to vulgar tastes. Still, be the cause
of the nugatory influence of Spinoza on the course of
philosophy for so long a time what it may, it is certain
that the dogmatism of Leibnitz was more calculated to
urge to fruitful effort than the dogmatism of Spinoza.
Conformably to these anticipations we find that the
monadology of Leibnitz is not the fanciful theory it
looks to be. It is in point of fact, as we have said,
the forcible combination of different indispensable
aspects of the truth. And what Lessing has said
about Leibnitz (and it cannot be too often quoted for
his interpretation) is the explanation of this appear-
ance on the one hand and of this real significance on
the other.
1
"Leibnitz's ¹ ideas of truth," said Lessing
to Jacobi, "were so formed that he could not bear to
remark I am glad to be able to refer the reader for a definite
statement of this defect in Spinoza's philosophy to Mr.
Gurney's able examination of Monism in Mind, April 1881.
1 This translation is taken from Mr. Sime's "Lessing,"
vol. ii. p. 298.
·
12
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
see too narrow limits set to it. From this mode of
thought many of his statements have flowed, and it is
often hard for the most acute student to discover his
real opinion. For that very reason I think so highly
of him; I mean, on account of this great manner
of thinking, not on account of this or that opinion
which he appeared to hold or even actually held."
And so from the theory of monads we may extract if
we choose an indication of what an adequate philosophy
ought to be, even if we do not find therein the philo-
sophy itself. Every existence was a monad, and every
monad was a self-contained existence, indeterminate
from without; and yet this infinite multitude of monads
formed a cosmos, through a pre-established harmony.
Once for all the tenour of their lives had been so
planned and contrived that they should work inde-
pendently but harmoniously together, as clocks wound
up and set in unison. They were without extension,
but were points of force, and thus spatial difficulties
were avoided. In this way the individual was not
separated from the universal, for in its life omniscience
could have seen reflected the universe, so intimately
had its life been previously related to the rest of
existence. The universal too was not sacrificed to
the particular, for each individual was created accord-
ing to its relationship to the universal, and only existed
for it. Thus perception was but the occurrence in due
time of a change in the monad corresponding to other
changes without. In itself it was a kind of thought,
confused thought, and required intellection to clear it
HISTORICAL RETROSPECT.
13
into true knowledge. Thought was the real, in short,
and must be at once universal and particular: a great
truth, fit to be the guiding idea of an adequate philo-
sophy, and not to be contemned because it was ex-
pressed in this case at the expense of the creation of a
Great Monad to whom all difficulties were consigned.
Suggestive as this quaint speculation is, the fol-
lowers of Leibnitz altogether failed to appreciate
their master's "great manner of thinking." The
philosophy of Wolff, his most celebrated disciple,
made, we are told, no attempt to reconcile differences
or to fill up lacunce. Rather, the range of the monad
became shut into the isolation of the atom. It aimed
only at the formal explication of what was implied in
the individual's thought, but the explication partook
of disintegration more than of explanation. Later on
we shall meet with some of this school's special doc-
trines in connection with Kant's criticism of meta-
physics; here, however, we need only notice the fruit-
lessness of mere formal analysis. Thought is living
and organically constituted; to treat it therefore as
a thing belonging to the individual, to be dissected
and separated into pieces for its better comprehension,
is to destroy all life that it possesses. The vitality of
the individual's thought consists in its relation to
a world. What wonder then that the Wolffian philo-
sophy, seeking the truth by analysing the subject's
thought only as it pertained to the subject, and look-
ing therein for the secret as if total disintegration
could reveal the truth of an organism, failed to pro-
14
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
vide men with a living and sufficient account of them-
selves and the universe? Thus it came to pass that
thought fell a victim to the same tendency as sensuous
experience had done. Whilst experience, decomposed
into momentary feelings, vanished in a flux, thought,
mechanically dissected, fell into lifeless formulæ.
Happily, however, the points of truth recognised by
Leibnitz could not be permanently disregarded. The
great manner of thinking of another man prevented
this misfortune. The import of his message, at times
falteringly expressed, history has not yet fairly de-
termined; yet this man, his doctrines and their signifi-
cance, do next follow in the movement of history, and
thus we have been brought to the point we desired.
CHAPTER II.
KANT AND TRANSCENDENTALISM.
WE reached in our retrospect the point where our
serious business commences; and, in truth, this point
is thus characterized as serious for us, no less by the
fact that we live in a certain epoch of thought than by
the aim which these few pages happen to have in view.
For pre-eminently the greatest philosopher of our
speculative era is Immanuel Kant. Although his great
work was published in 1781, and the revolution he
effected followed closely on the effort of his thought,
yet at this moment he is as great a thinker as he has
ever been since the world first comprehended the drift
of his inquiries.¹ Between then and now, it is true,
an extraordinary outburst of speculative activity has
manifested itself and again disappeared. The inter-
vening century has seen the glory and disrepute of
absolutism. Pretensions once welcomed as grand are
now seldom countenanced, and never encouraged. But
even if the student do chance to find in any of these
¹ In this connection the following note may be quoted from
the Academy for April 23rd, 1881:-"We read in the Index
that in America, as well as in Germany, it is proposed to hold
a centennial celebration this year of the publication of Kant's
Kritik der Reinen Vernunft.'"
15
16
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
attempts doctrines adequate or helpful to his wants,
he must nevertheless have first assimilated the thoughts
of the great thinker of Königsberg before he can have
worked his way up to an eminence whence he could
fairly estimate the merits of his choice. On the other
hand, however, if these supervening growths are elimi-
nated from serious consideration as so much sterile
ingenuity, even then the would-be philosopher must
reckon with Kant before he can pursue his way with
ease and profit. So profoundly did Kant treat the
problems of philosophy, even as they appear to us at
this day.
•
But in point of fact it would seem, from recent
movements in some quarters, that the value of Kant's
work lies not only in its offer of a vantage ground or
a propedeutic, but in the intrinsic worth of its own
results. "No fact in the recent history of speculation
seems of more importance in itself, or of greater signi-
ficance for the future, than the revived study of the
Kantian philosophy." Such is the opening sentence
of Professor Adamson's instructive lectures, and his
ensuing pages tender ample reasons for the announce-
ment. Characterizing very briefly the influences work-
ing to this event, he says: "The return to Kant on
the part of English philosophy is but the logical
result to which penetrating criticism or the natural
development of its principles must inevitably lead;
whereas in Germany the movement has been chiefly
due to the pressure of speculative difficulties on
scientific thinkers, who have felt the necessity for a
KANT AND TRANSCENDENTALISM.
17
thorough investigation of the principles on which
scientific cognition rests." For immediate proof of
these assertions the reader must be referred to Pro-
fessor Adamson's little book, since it is hardly worth
while to transcribe his account of the merely statistical
evidence, and the logical reasons for Kant's relation to
contemporary thought perforce require some insight
into Kant's speculations to be appreciated, as well as
an acquaintance with the present scientific position;
information to be only obtained from Professor Adam-
son's special treatment of the question, or any other
means affording a reliable knowledge of the Kantian
philosophy and the radical tendencies of scientific
thought. But the prima facie facts are fully sufficient
to persuade any one about to study philosophy to
qualify himself for efficient work by an inspection of
this system, be it for the sake of positive knowledge,
of a preliminary training, or of a stepping stone. And
2
1 "On the Philosophy of Kant," by Robert Adamson:
pp. 1, 2. These lectures give a singularly succinct and lucid
view of Kant's philosophy as a whole, in relation to the
present speculative situation.
2 For a vigorous criticism of scientific method and doctrines,
see Mr. Balfour's "Defence of Philosophic Doubt”; and for a
thorough examination of the common metaphysics of science
see also "Modern Realism Examined," by the late Mr. Her-
bert. The former is the work of an acute, though not very
sympathetic, critic; the latter is that of a philosopher, but
not, I think, of a very profound one. The times too are not
yet sufficiently advanced to render a perusal of J. Grote's con-
scientious writing in his prolix "Exploratio Philosophica
anything but instructive.
C
18
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
it is in the hope of doing something towards facili-
tating this, as well as to give to the general reader
a brief account of the "Critique of Pure Reason,"
that the following pages are written.
Kant united in himself the two partial and conflict-
ing tendencies of thought which prevailed, as we have
seen, the one in Germany, the other in England, at
his time. The academic routine of his youth acquainted
him with the claims of thought as then advanced. The
philosophy of Wolff then reigned supreme in the
schools. By his own exertions Kant ascertained its
vanity; and it is interesting to follow the course of
his opinions in this respect, a movement admirably
traced by Professor Caird, till he had determined that
formal logic could never by itself be productive of
anything, and that experience must furnish the
material of knowledge. But when English sensation-
alism appeared to be the last and true alternative,
his study of Hume apprised him of its inability to
support the fabric of our experience as we conceive
it to be. Hence he was especially qualified to effect
a signal advance in the treatment of philosophy's
problem.
This advance necessitated a change of position, and
we cannot do better then indicate at the very outset
the nature of this change, for by this means the reader
will be the more prepared for comprehending the
aspect which the problem at first presented to Kant.
Convinced that philosophy up to that time had failed,
he suspected that its subject matter might have been
KANT AND TRANSCENDENTALISM.
19
wrongly stated.
To quote again his oft-repeated
description of his innovation, he proposed to do "just
what Copernicus did in attempting to explain the
celestial movements. When he found that he could
make no progress by assuming that all the heavenly
bodies moved round the spectator, he reversed the
process, and tried the experiment of assuming that
the spectator revolved, while the stars remained at
rest." ("Critique," p. xxix.) As Copernicus reversed
with success the standpoint of the Ptolemaic system,
so Kant hoped to succeed in solving the questions
of metaphysic by abjuring both the individual's ideas
and sensations as the ultimate truth of reality, and
by assuming that, instead of the mind being formed
by experience, the mind itself should form received
experience according to its own laws. Thus the com-
parison with Copernicus was literally correct; but if
Kant achieved all that he laid claim to, the comparison
might be legitimately extended far beyond these limits.
As Tycho Brahe collected facts, as Kepler discovered
his three laws, so did Kant get together facts and
arrive at subsidiary truths in his pre-critical medita-
tions. And as Newton by the help of his prede-
cessors arrived at his grand truth of the formula of
gravitation, so Kant after his prolonged inquiries
arrived at the central point of all knowledge (as he
maintained) in his synthetic unity of apperception or
self-consciousness. But this is anticipating; let us
1
¹ And indeed it would seem that Kant himself was willing
to claim a Newtonian relationship to metaphysic.
20
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
notice a little more closely Kant's method before we
proceed to consider its doctrinal results.
The failure of philosophy hitherto caused Kant to
suspect that a change of position was necessary.
Pure thought, as till then conceived, he had found
to be barren, and only capable of analysing what
had been already given. This might be useful,
but it could neither give knowledge nor account
for it. Sensation also he had found to consist ulti-
mately of a flux of momentary feelings, of perishing
existences, one past before another was present, the
present only existing and perishing as soon as it
existed. This Hume had exhibited; and he had
accordingly declared all knowledge derived from such
a source to be precarious. But in mere consistency
he should have driven his sceptical criticism to a far
more destructive issue. Our knowledge cannot by
any means be derived from such fleeting unrelated
points alone. Of this Kant became aware, and thus
learnt that it was impossible to account for the most
simple of our experiences on such principles. Our
knowledge, so far as it confessedly goes, is of a world
in one space, in one time, organically constituted by
interdependent relations: this world is real and differ-
ent from what is only imaginary: our experiences of it
are referred to permanent objects; and on reflection,
as in scientific procedure, we are forced to think of
it as containing one same sum of matter, and as
possessing various other indispensable characteristics.
Such being the indubitable fact, it is plain that sense
KANT AND TRANSCENDENTALISM.
21
alone is quite insufficient for an explanation of it.
Nay, not only is sense powerless to account for a
cosmos, but it is incapable of accounting for any de-
finite experience at all. The perishing existences of
sense are intrinsically incognisable, for they are ever
fleeting and never last long enough to become appre-
ciable or to constitute an object. Kant, we have said,
was aware of this impotence. Tradition tells that he
got disabused of his beliefs in sensation by meeting
with Hume's attack on causation. With this point in
view we recurred in the last chapter to Hume in con-
nection with causation alone. Nevertheless, although
the tradition is founded on Kant's own words, there is
much reason for us to believe that its report is more
or less incomplete; at any rate, we should make a
grievous error if we imagined that Kant's real diffi-
culties regarding sense merely amounted to a mis-
giving about necessary causation. In truth his whole
work would be meaningless, and his words would be
empty, if sense were supposed capable of giving a
single definite experience. And this will become
patent in the sequel. But here we must ask what is
the implication contained in this fluxional nature of
sense, what can we infer from this on the one hand,
and our experience as it is on the other?
We must suppose with Kant, for an experiment if
for nothing else, that in our experience thought con-
tributes sundry relations coordinating the data of
sense, subject to which all our empirical knowledge
must be received. Now if this prove to be the case,
22
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
these indispensable elements will be forms of syn-
thesis or relation; and since experience is impossible
without them, they will be a priori or prior to experi-
ence itself. Kant calls such a priori elements trans-
cendental; and it is the business of a transcendental
philosophy to give a complete and systematic account
of them.
Kant himself does not propose to construct a system
of transcendental philosophy, for this would include
in its systematic exposition an account of our ana-
lytic a priori, as well as of our synthetic a priori,
knowledge (that is, an account not only of the
main synthetic elements in knowledge, but also of
the detailed deductions from them); and this would
be a task too great for the limits of a single essay.
But he aims at a transcendental criticism of pure
reason, which will bring to light all the a priori
principles of synthesis which serve as the ground plan
of experience.
Concerning the method of a critique of this kind,
we may be sure that it must not proceed at haphazard.
To ensure freedom from error and omission, the
critique must be guided by some systematising idea.
Now "reason is, in regard to the principles of cogni-
tion, a perfectly distinct, independent unity, in which,
as in an organized body, every member exists for the
sake of the others, and all for the sake of each, so that
no principle can be viewed with safety in one relation-
ship, unless it is at the same time viewed in relation
to the total use of pure reason. ("Critique,” p.
KANT AND TRANSCENDENTALISM.
23
xxxii.)¹ That of an organism then is the idea which
the "Critique of Pure Reason" should follow. It
should proceed so that the whole organic process of
knowledge may be laid bare, so that each distinguished
element may be explained by its function in the whole,
and so that the whole may be ever in view lest any
element should escape.
Concerning the results we may expect, it may be
fairly supposed that when the critique's task has been
performed we shall be in a position to make sundry
judgments which must hold good for all experience,
because otherwise experience would be impossible for
us. Having detected the conditions of experience, we
may deduce the various modes according to which they
will condition experience. Thus equipped we shall
be able to predict in certain respects the nature of
experience. These judgments will be a priori, and, in
Kantian terminology, synthetic: synthetic, that is,
not in its former sense of acting as a bond or relation,
but synthetic in the sense of adding to our knowledge.
In this context, therefore, synthetic a priori judg-
ments mean judgments increasing our knowledge an-
tecedent to actual experience, e.g. mathematical judg-
ments. We can now see why so much importance is
attached to the question, How are synthetic judgments
a priori possible? Kant contends that such are cer-
1 In a separate work, written as a popular explanation of
the "Critique," "Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysic,"
Kant expresses the same opinion even more strongly. See
Professor Mahaffy's translation, p. 13.
24
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
tainly made both in mathematics and physics, and
concludes that an explanation of their possibility will
afford a good insight into the process by which ex-
perience, bound to conform to them, comes about.
Significant as this question clearly is, it is after all
subsidiary to the wider question, What are the a
priori forms of synthesis (relations) involved in ex-
perience? And this question again, on the supposition
that sense alone is incognisable, is equivalent to the
question, How is knowledge possible? The answer
to the wider query will solve by implication the first
one, for when the nature of the forms of synthesis has
been determined it will become obvious how by their
means judgments may be made anticipating necessary
characteristics of experience. We may hope then to
find out from our criticism something about pure
mathematics and pure physics. Moreover, we may
hope to arrive at an estimate of the position which
metaphysics should occupy; having discovered the
functions and capacities of reason, we shall be able to
decide on its competency for apprehending the uncon-
ditioned. In this way past failures may be explained,
and a more secure, though possibly a more defensive,
attitude may be found for the future.
These formally prescribed aims and method of
Kant's transcendentalism promise fair. Not only may
we feel safe from one-sided partial views, which must
inevitably lead to absurdities and sterilities, but we
may feel assured that an answer will be obtained to
the questionings of the speculative spirit. The same
KANT AND TRANSCENDENTALISM.
25
reason that asks the question must also be able to
answer it to the extent that it has been asked. Trans-
cendental criticism alone is required to teach reason
to what extent its questions and answers reach. The
same criticism will also teach the worth and relation-
ship of the several elements that compose our real
experience. In short, criticism will provide us with
an adequate philosophy.
It has been incidentally hinted that this criticism.
will be a process of distinction. But let not the
unenviable associations attach themselves to this term
which rightly belong to the scholastic distinguo.
Transcendental distinctions are made with a view to
showing the elements of knowledge in their intimate
connection and coherence in thought as a whole; but
the device of scholasticism was one of total separation
for the better perpetration of quibbles and incon-
gruities. Yet it is not impossible that the mere
assertion of the possibility of distinguishing elements
in the organic whole of reason may suggest difficulties.
It may be contended, as Mr. Balfour has so energeti-
cally done, that thoughts only exist as they are
1
In a chapter (which had been previously published in
Mind), attacking transcendentalism in his "Defence of Philo-
sophic Doubt." Professor Caird briefly replied to this attack
in Mind for Jan. 1879, and Professor John Watson contributed
a paper on the same subject to the same periodical for
Jan. 1881. Mr. Balfour answered Professor Caird in the same
number, and Professor Watson in that for April 1881. The
latter controversy does not appear to be a very profitable
one, through a vacillation in Professor Watson's paper which
26
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
thought, that is, as we are aware of them. It may be
maintained that it is futile to talk about any thoughts
or thought-elements which are not explicitly recog-
nised, that "it is plain that so long as a thought is
implicit it does not exist." In this case of course the
method of transcendentalism would be vain, it would
be absurd to try to see into what by the hypothesis
can be known only as it appears outside. But it is
not at once evident that thought may be entirely
identified with awareness. In point of fact the identi-
fication is quite arbitrary. And when we reflect on
confuses the discussion of the point at issue, a vacilla-
tion however for which Kant himself is partly responsible.
The vacillation is respecting the facts from which trans-
cendentalism starts. In truth, these facts must be immediate
experiences, such as a perception of a coloured object. From
these must be elucidated the principles involved in experience
and which transcendentalism expounds as a system of know-
ledge. But Kant sometimes speaks as if special sciences
could stand as basal facts as indisputably as immediate expe-
rience. It is uncertain how far he was aware of Hume's scep-
tical suggestions; but it is plain that if the "Critique" started
on such a wide assumption, little would remain for it to prove
positively, and that most of Kant's labour would be superfluous.
Therefore it is hard to understand Professor Watson's impa-
tience with Mr. Balfour's scepticism, and harder still his different
professions of the proper starting point for transcendentalism.
Kant's utterances about the cognisability of the manifold of
sense make it manifest also that he regarded immediate per-
ceptions as the ultimate data for criticism to proceed from,
in spite of his remarks about the de facto existence of sciences.
The real crux is that concerning the possibility of under-
thinking our admitted experience, and this Mr. Balfour fairly
enough handles from his point of view.
KANT AND TRANSCENDENTALISM.
27
the concave implied in the convex, on discreteness
linked to continuity, on one end inseparable from
another end, and the like, we must confess that the
arbitrary identification seems to militate against plain
facts. We must answer as Hegel, somewhat unwar-
rantably and not a little flippantly, once answered
Kant himself on the limitation of our thought. Scho-
lasticus refused to venture into the water until he
had learnt to swim; and those who insist upon starting
with a preconception of the nature of thought, and
determine what they can know and cannot know
before they have tried to know, are no less timid and
illogical. The truth is, we must look before we can
make up our minds respecting what we can see. Now
this is just the business of philosophy, or at any rate
of transcendentalism, to look and see for itself what
it can see involved in the truth of our experience.
We are self-conscious beings and can to some extent
return upon our thought; we must therefore suspend
our judgment concerning what we can see till we have
tried the experiment.
Transcendentalism then is not antecedently chime-
rical. It will endeavour to see for itself the elements
of thought in their organic combination and functional
capacity in the production of experience. The success
of its endeavour can only be determined by the result.
But how these elements will be brought to light we
cannot be expected to announce beforehand. Yet it
is to be presumed that bare perception, however acute,
is not to be implicitly trusted. Not only must the
28
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
They
elements be seen, they must be understood.
must be viewed in their complete determination, in
their precise situation and office in relation to the rest
of the whole.
From a passage of Kant already quoted, it would
seem that the "Critique" would certainly not neglect
this precaution. Nevertheless, such neglect is only
too apparent. For Kant has a touchstone for the
detection of the transcendental elements, and at times.
speaks as if it were infallible. True, the touchstone
is a good one and, if thoroughly free from alloy, would
be unerring. But where can we find immediately
and without previous examination anything free from
alloy, either in things of the mind or in things of the
world? To Kant his criterion is immediately certain.
He obtains it by the application of the ideas of uni-
versality and necessity. From the mere contingent
repetition of experiences it would be impossible to
conclude what is universal and necessary, and therefore
whatever is of this character must be a priori. "Em-
pirical universality is therefore only an arbitrary ex-
tension of validity, from that which may be predicated
of a proposition valid in most cases, to that which is
asserted of a proposition which holds good in all; as,
for example, in the affirmation 'all bodies are heavy.'
When on the contrary strict universality characterizes
a judgment, it necessarily indicates another peculiar
source of knowledge, namely a faculty of cognition
a priori. Necessity and universality therefore are
infallible tests for distinguishing pure from empirical
KANT AND TRANSCENDENTALISM.
29
knowledge, and are inseparably connected with each
other." ("Critique," p. 3.) To this argument we may
assent with the tacit reservation, if the tests can be
applied. Now the endless controversy respecting
what is universal and necessary shows that their
application is difficult. By themselves, universality
and necessity form a very precarious basis of proof.
Such judgments may be made most unwarrantably,
and there is no protection from arbitrary assertion and
subjective caprice. Therefore their evidence should
be accepted only provisionally till it has been confirmed
by a more thorough comprehension of the attested
element. Such a confirmation Kant calls a trans-
cendental deduction. In short, the first criterion is.
but a guide and one of problematical accuracy; a
transcendental deduction is the real means by which
the truth of its indications must be established.
From these considerations we learn that if Kant
uses necessity and universality as if they were self
sufficient conductors, we must regard his behaviour as
provisional, and forbear disputing his conclusions on
those grounds alone. We must wait till we are in a
position to contemplate the whole of his scheme of
knowledge and the entire coherence of its parts, before
we can finally pronounce judgment. As a matter of
fact Kant does not by any means fulfil all the require-
ments of a deduction of his doctrines. This will appear
as we go on. Now, however, we are only concerned
with preparing ourselves for their proper study.
In addition to these prefatory remarks, a word must
30
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
!
be said respecting Kant's actual expository procedure.
The "Critique of Pure Reason" was the hasty expres-
sion of years of sustained thought. But though hasty,
Kant was anxious that it should omit nothing that
was of value. The book was therefore most inelegantly
written. Yet this was not its only fault. Conscious
that none but thinkers would notice investigations like
his, Kant took no pains to render the comprehension
of his views easy, but was willing to leave his readers
to make out his whole meaning by pondering over the
complete work and interpreting one portion by the
light of another. This was due to his writing hastily,
or as it came most easily to him. Naturally it reflected.
in a manner the history of his long meditations; the
commencement speaking in the tone of one just awake,
and betraying no sign of the coming qualifications
necessitated by the revelations of longer watching.
Beginning from the same point of view as that assumed
by the ordinary consciousness, and adopting the usual
distinction of subject and object, the "Critique" starts
from the opposition of the individual to the objective
world. Then as the different a priori factors in ex-
perience are discovered, they are picked up as bits
externally united to the main scheme of knowledge;
and not till later does their organic coherence, such as
it is, appear. Meanwhile the original distinction be-
tween subject and object has been much modified, and
the careless reader feels at a loss how to interpret the
whole consistently, difficulties being multiplied by
Kant's own apparent forgetfulness of the significance
KANT AND TRANSCENDENTALISM.
31
of his argumentation. This faultiness was inevitable
to Kant's way of leading the reader along the same
path he had himself trod; but the nature of his theme
also involves difficulties peculiar to itself; exposition
is linear, and adequate thought on such a subject is
spherical. To express spherical thought by means of
linear exposition necessarily tends to confusion, and
the consciousness of this undesirable contingency
caused Kant to strive especially after definiteness, (a
definiteness the more ensnaring to him after his early
Wolffian training,) and to follow the idea of a machine
rather than that of an organism in his method of ex-
position. Add to this the invention of a new termi-
nology,¹ and it would seem that in every way this
¹ Nevertheless, let not the laborious student pity himself as
a victim, or exalt himself as a hero. Kant himself tells us in
the "Prolegomena " to consider that every one is not bound to
study metaphysic and that some minds, otherwise able, cannot
succeed in such investigations, and should accordingly apply
their talents to other subjects. Sages of all times have
wondered at Wisdom's retirement; those of the Hebrews
""
especially. Spinoza concludes his "Ethica with the re-
flection that a proper comprehension of the nature of self,
God, and the world sane arduum debet esse, quod adeo raro
reperitur. Qui enim posset fieri, si salus in promptu esset et
sine magno labore reperiri posset, ut ab omnibus fere
negligeretur? Sed omnia præclara tam difficilia, quam rara
sunt." The perspicuous Hume warns his readers at the
commencement of his "Treatise" that "if truth be at all
within the reach of human capacity, 'tis certain it must lie
very deep and abstruse,” and opines that there would be a
strong presumption against a philosophy if it were so very
easy and obvious. The student therefore may be expected
32
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
better way of philosophising was rendered as difficult
as possible both to its expounder and his pupils.
strenuous exertion if his
He consciously chooses an
commiseration for his self-
to have prepared himself for
inquiries are to be of any avail.
arduous study and can claim no
imposed toil, or admiration for following the bent of his
idiosyncrasy; and the addition of literary and formal diffi-
culties is nothing more than a natural implication in a
recondite subject.
CHAPTER III.
THE TRANSCENDENTAL ÆSTHETIC.
1.
KANT, we have said, starts from the position of the
ordinary consciousness, and at first adopts the dualistic
view of mind and matter in all its starkness. Ac-
cordingly he commences the treatment of his problem
by inquiring into the relation existing between the
individual mind and the objective world in space. In
other words, he begins with external sense intuition.
But along with this form of sense intuition he also
brought under consideration internal sense intuition.
For it was a cardinal doctrine of his that the mind
never beheld its own ultimate reality by mere intro-
spection, but that it could only experience its phe-
nomenal changes in a manner analogous to its experi-
ence of external sensation. He therefore thought that
these two kinds of experience, outer sense and inner
sense, might be classed together, being both species
of sensation. For these reasons the first part of the
"Critique" seeks for a priori conditions of inner and
outer sense. This quest for transcendental elements
of a sensuous significance is accordingly called the
Transcendental Esthetic.
33
D
34
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Now what are the universal and necessary conditions
of external intuition? Think everything away, ab-
stract all that is variable and unnecessary from the
outside world, and what remains? Pure space alone
retains its persistence in thought. Conversely, think
of what you will in the outside world, and it must be
as situated somewhere in the same space.
Similarly, look within. Whatever is perceived there
is conditioned by time. No feeling or idea can exist
except at some moment of time; to be perceived, every
feeling must occupy some appreciable time; what is
perceived can be known only as change, and change
can only happen in time. In this case both kinds of
sense participate in the conditioning element: internal
sense directly does; external sense indirectly. For
although time is not to be seen running in the outside
world, we cannot perceive this world unless our per-
ceptions are cognised as ours in time, precisely as
internal perceptions are, according to what has been
just said.
:
Space and time therefore are a priori forms of per-
ception the former peculiar to external sense, the
latter common to both kinds of intuition. Yet we
must not think of these conditions of our sensibility
as forms of receptivity by themselves. Space and
time only exist in perception itself, and are nothing
except as functional. Their priority is an ideal priority;
they are logically prior to, but historically coincident
with, experience itself. As regards their real worth,
they are empirically real, real so far as our experience
THE TRANSCENDENTAL ESTHETIC.
35
is concerned, since all our experience must conform
to them. But, as they are not things in themselves,
they cannot have an independent reality in the trans-
cendental sense of the word. Therefore space and
time, though empirically real, are transcendentally
ideal.¹
The a priori nature of space and time further appears
from the following considerations. If they are not
a priori, they must be ideas possessed of an ineradi-
cable persistence which had been formed from a vast
quantity of temporal and spatial experience. But this
cannot be; for no experience is possible without them,
and to extract them from experience is a manifest
hysteron-proteron. Again, unless they are a priori,
how could the mathematical sciences possess their
apodeictic certainty? Kant holds that mathematics
are synthetic, and are not be reduced to identical pro-
positions, augmenting our knowledge and not merely
explicating it. By their means we confidently predict
how certain phenomena will be apprehended by us.
¹ The reader may be interested to know that the propounder
of this theory of space and time is also celebrated for anticipat-
ing Laplace in the suggestion of that theory, respecting the
origin of our planetary system, which goes by the name of
the nebular hypothesis. Scientific thinkers seem to be no
less unanimous in their approval of this doctrine than they
are in their contempt for metaphysic. Yet the same mind
was capable of originating the one, and feeling the need of
and toiling at the other. For an account of Kant's work in
astronomy, see the memoir prefixed to Mr. Abbott's “Kant's
Theory of Ethics."
36
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
How could this be, unless they were founded on a priori
conditions of perception, and drew their conclusions
from intuited figures and series under these conditions,
which accordingly afforded an indication of how objects
must appear under these conditions? No such con-
fidence would be justifiable if they were founded on
contingent experience. Any other theory then could
afford no safe basis for mathematics, and to be in-
telligible would have to appropriate surreptitiously the
very thing it seeks to explain.¹
¹ Besides referring to the association school of psychologists,
we may call the attention of the reader to another view to
which these remarks apply. The late Professor Ueberweg in
his "System of Logic and History of Logical Doctrines," now
translated into English, seeks to found perception on an in-
telligible basis. Like Trendelenburg, he objects to Kant's
assignment of space and time to the subject, holding that space
and time are independent realities. He supports his thesis
by arguing (§§ 41-44) that "as our corporeal phenomena are
to our mental reality, so other corporeal phenomena are to a
strange mental reality (here accordingly presupposed)," and
that from this reasoning we may arrive at a valid knowledge of
"the co-existence and co-operation of a multiplicity of powers,"
which "
necessarily involve some real order of coherence and
succession," in other words, "some real existence in space and
in time," which cannot be different to the space and time of
sense. The reader will perceive that this argument assumes
the point in question from the first, in the term "corporeal."
Professor Ueberweg adduces additional evidence from
psychical-physiological facts and the like, but a hypothesis
which is virtually a petitio principii cannot be rendered
luminous by any amount of considerations which themselves
are full of the petitory vice, and as to proof the hypothesis is
still as much a hypothesis at the end as it was at the begin-
THE TRANSCENDENTAL ESTHETIC..
37
In the dualism between subject and object, two of
the chief apparent factors of the latter have now been
transferred to the former. Yet we must not be in-
duced to treat objective experience as an illusion.
Rather, only on these terms can we have confidence
in its reality such as it essentially is, only on these
terms can we be certain that all our experience and
that of all similar intelligences must be thus condi-
tioned and so far real. Still, in this transference of
these universal forms from the object to the subject it
is clear that the object has been converted from a
thing-in-itself into a phenomenon or appearance. The
object, whatever it be, can only be apprehended in
space and time, forms of our sensibility, and must
therefore be in itself quite different to what we per-
ceive. To this extent the object can only be phe-
nomenal, though phenomenally real; it can only appear,
but must always appear, under certain conditions.
2.
The reader who has appreciated the true method of
transcendentalism will not fail to notice that the doc-
trine of the Æsthetic, as above summarised, is far from
satisfying all requirements. We have seen that a
really valid theory of the scheme of knowledge is only
possible if, in addition to possessing apparent uni-
versality and necessity, the distinguished elements are
ning. It is fitting only to notice this one point here, but the
reader will doubtless find for himself further matter for reflec-
tion in Professor Ueberweg's learned contention.
38
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
shown to perform certain definite functions, and to be
so related that without the co-operation of all there
could be no knowledge whatever. In short, the
theory must be spherically thought out, however the
exigencies of exposition may necessitate a linear state-
ment. Now this is as yet wanting for space and time.
Their true relationship to the rest of thought and know-
ledge has not been even mooted; they have been
taken up as they first came to the hand of the in-
vestigator, and their nature has been determined from
their most obvious characteristics. Indeed, from
Kant's distinction of them as perceptions from con-
ceptions one might be tempted to think that any con-
nection between them and the rest of thought was
impossible. It is clear that, whatever elements are
subsequently brought to light, those on the subject
side must be derived from the understanding; for no
more forms of perception are forthcoming. Now the
property of the understanding is conceptions, which
are fixed abstract ideas under which may be subsumed
species and individuals. Perceptions, on the other
hand, present an indefinite possibility of knowledge;
they are capable of an endless specification and
analysis. To this latter belong space and time. We
can never exhaust their potentialities; they are no
abstract conceptions capable of holding any number
of individuals and powerless to create, but they are
perceptions whose specific character we can never suf-
ficiently learn. This disparity between space and time,
as we have them, and conceptions, which we may find,
THE TRANSCENDENTAL ÆSTHETIC.
39
threatens to prevent their organic union in the scheme
of knowledge. At the best, it would seem that the
two can only be juxtaposited in meaningless connec-
tion; anyhow a proper transcendental deduction of
space and time would be precluded.
We must call to mind, however, what has been said
concerning Kant's method of exposition. It may be
that the isolation of space and time is an expository
artifice. Perhaps, after all, their connection with the
rest of the elements in the process of knowledge may
appear, though on this point I warn the reader not to
be too sanguine. Nevertheless, we may be certain
that knowledge does not arise from the inexplicable
action of unseen objects on subjects + space and time.
Sense alone is a manifold, a multiplicity of chaotic un-
connected moments; and Kant had this fact in view, as
we have said, in the construction of his theory of know-
ledge. Thus he could not have wished his readers to
remain under the impression that his scheme of ex-
perience simply consisted of a sensuous chaos emptied
into a couple of quanta like space and time.¹ Agree-
1 This is a proper place to enter a caveat against a very pos-
sible misapprehension. The reader will have observed a super-
ficial resemblance between Kant's view of the ultimate nature
of sense and the doctrines of science. Both theories resolve
sense into units: the former takes sense to be a mere manifold
of stimulations; the latter finds sensation to be presumably
compounded of neurotic units consequent on external physical
action, undulatory or chemical. Yet are they essentially dif-
ferent. For whilst the first is out of space and time, the
second is unintelligible save on the prior assumption of space
40
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
ably with this surmise we find him changing his point
of view very considerably, other factors in experience
are discovered, and accordingly we must reserve our
judgment on the doctrines of the Esthetic till we
have seen them in connection with the rest of the
results of the "Critique." These coming qualifications
we now pass on to in the Transcendental Analytic.
and time, to say nothing of other implied factors. Thus their
assimilation is impossible, although the attempt has been made
to reconcile the Kantian ding an sich with the units of science.
(See Adamson's Lectures, p. 77 and p. 167, for strictures on
this theory. Mr. Spencer too, though strongly supporting the
theory of the primordial unit, § 60, "Principles of Psychology,"
points out, § 62, the incongruity existing between an oscillating
molecule and a unit of feeling.)
1
CHAPTER IV.
THE CATEGORIES, AND THEIR TRANS-
CENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
1.
By themselves space and time cannot make know-
ledge out of sense data, but only render such a fabri-
cation possible. They are but possibilities of the re-
presentation of objects; unable to arrest the flux of
sense and form it into an orderly experience, they yet
provide conditions under which such co-ordination be-
comes possible. Some other agency therefore must
be found working along with them to make even the
illusion of what we think knowledge possible; the
fact of order in the minutest detail of our experience
implies the presence of other factors. Let us therefore
begin our next advance by asking ourselves what are
the most general features of what we mean by know-
ledge. Now when we say that we know anything, in
contradistinction to fancying or imagining it, we mean
that what we think or perceive is real. What then is
done when our thoughts and perceptions are received
as real? The reality of the former we take to consist
in its conformity to possible perceptions, and so per-
41
:
42
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
ception contains in itself the criterion of reality. A
perception is taken to be real when it is judged to be
due to an object. "When we say that a perception
refers to an object, we mean that under certain con-
ditions 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” (Caird, p. 283).
On this view of reality hang all our transcendentalism
and its prophets. Its importance is so great that I
must cite at length its positive justification by the
same eminent expositor. "In all cases we can trans-
cend the immediate sensation, and refer it to an object,
only in so far as we connect its content with the con-
tent of other sensations. If it were otherwise, refer-
ence to an object would mean merely reference to an
unknowable something; and even if that were pos-
sible, it would be no gain for knowledge. 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 from, yet relate it to, other sensa-
tions: 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." The justification has brought
with it an explanation, an explanation which gives the
clue to those other a priori elements which co-operate
in the formation of real experience.
CATEGORIES, AND THEIR TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION.
43
"To explain the fact of experience, we must con-
ceive the understanding as combining the matter of
sense, which in itself is an unconnected manifold, by
means of certain conceptions, which we may indiffer-
ently 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 sensation 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." (Caird, p. 284.)
If this account of reality be correct, it is very clear
that our next movement must be towards the under-
standing. We must extract from it these forms of
synthesis, and then we shall be in possession of other
elements of experience, to wit, those which combine
and arrange in the formal possibilities, space and
time, the chaos of sense. And when this is done
we shall be able to predict with certainty the nature of
experience to the extent of these general principles,
since unless it conformed to them sense would remain
unknown.
The search for these forms of synthesis is an im-
portant one therefore, and should be pursued with
every care. In accordance with our idea of the
organic unity of thought, it will be necessary to find
them all in their purity and primitiveness, and when
found they must be shown to be indispensable factors
in experience and essentially related to one another in
the organic totality. Only in this way can we be sure
44
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
that nothing has been omitted or slurred over, and
that what have been found are correctly estimated.
But such a result would be worth trouble. As we
have just said, the a priori general laws of science
would be manifested, and in default of some other
source of knowledge we should not only become aware
of the significance of this empirical knowledge, but of
knowledge in general, and should be able to discover
in this way our proper attitude towards the great
questions beyond experience, concerning the destiny of
man and the universe.
Such a quest however does not appear to have
occasioned much trouble to Kant. He wanted a
system of the judgments by which the manifold of
sense was brought under conceptions and thought as
objective experience. Now the faculty of judgment
is the understanding, and all of us know something
already about its functions in one respect. Formal
logic treats of the pure functions of the understanding,
apart from the matter on which they are exercised,
and expounds the nature of the understanding and the
methods of its procedure in simple reasoning. From
this point of view the understanding needs no further
investigation. The received formal logic is the only
science that is really complete, and it has been thus
adult ever since its birth. If therefore formal logic is
in any way connected with this other kind of logic,
whose judgments realize objectively the data of sense,
we may expect considerable aid in our search. This
logic which we seek for may be aptly termed trans-
CATEGORIES, AND THEIR TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION. 45
cendental logic, since it will give an account of the
transcendental judgments in experience.
Now Kant believed that he did find ready to his
hand a guide to transcendental logic in formal logic.
It must be borne in mind that in emancipating him-
self from the Wolffian philosophy he had come to the
conclusion that formal logic was only analytic and was
incapable of doing more than explicating what had
been implicitly given. It is plain that there must be
a great difference between this analytical instrument
and the synthetic agency whereby sense becomes in-
telligibly combined. It was possible to have main-
tained, and it can well be maintained now, that no
such difference really exists, that thought never moves
analytically, but that all thought, quá thought, is
synthetic. But Kant did not entertain any such
opinion either in the Wolffian or Hegelian sense, and
yet regarded formal logic as the guiding thread to
transcendental logic. He was led to connect the two
logics in this manner by reflecting that transcendental
logic was in fact not only a list of conceptions which
the understanding possessed and superimposed on the
manifold of sense, but that in truth it constituted the
understanding itself. For the understanding is the
faculty of judgment, certainly in the analytical fashion
of formal logic; but inasmuch as no analysis can take
place without previous synthesis, it is evident that
analytical judgments must have been preceded by
synthetical judgments, and their interdependence
must be so close that, in a sense, the two may be said
46
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
to be different movements of the same thing, identical
in short, and together to constitute the understanding.
The understanding must in mere coherence contribute
both; and thus every form of synthetic judgment
must originate from the understanding and make a
correlate to every form of analytic judgment. Con-
versely, every form of analytic judgment will possess
a synthetic correlate, and thus if we know the former
we may ascertain the latter.
Formal logic, as it left Aristotle's hand, was to
Kant a perfect science, and he took without question
its received classification of judgments. Accordingly
from Aristotle's list he felt himself warranted to draw
up the table of synthetical judgments (or categories
in his nomenclature); and this table would be ex-
haustive and not redundant. Formal logic had, he
presumed, missed no form of judgment, and had
brought them all down to their lowest terms, else two
thousand years must have detected the irregularity.
So instead of discovering and working out his trans-
cendental logic by means of some supreme idea, Kant
in the end took up the old formal logic just as it was,
and straightway derived the categories from it, leaving
both to rest all claims to accuracy on prescriptive
right. Yet the question must arise whether this logic.
was so complete as to justify this implicit trust in it
as a guiding thread. In point of fact, Kant had some
difficulty in getting all he wanted out of the old logic
as it was, and was forced to introduce some distinc-
tions material to transcendental logic, as he said,
CATEGORIES, AND THEIR TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION. 47
though of no significance to formal. But these points
are proper to more mature study than ours.
To secure clearness, we have continued in the above
to maintain the opposition of the two logics in words.
But what we have been expounding is in truth only a
part of transcendental logic, that part occupied with
the discovery of the categories, and is technically
termed the transcendental analytic. "That part of
transcendental logic, which treats of the elements of
pure cognition of the understanding and of the princi-
ples without which no object at all can be thought, is
transcendental analytic" ("Critique," 53). After-
wards we shall come to another division of trans-
cendental logic, also with its counterpart in formal
logic, but this may be left till then; for the present
we need only guard against confusing the terminology
in this division.
In order that the reader may not be compelled to
refer to the text of the "Critique" for the table or
categories I insert here the list with their typical
judgments.
Judgments.
I. QUANTITY.
Universal.
Particular
Singular
II. QUALITY.
Affirmative.
Negative
Infinite
•
Categories.
Unity.
•
Plurality.
Totality.
Mathematical.
Reality.
Negation.
Limitation.
48
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
III. RELATION.
Categorical.
Hypothetical.
Disjunctive.
IV. MODALITY.
. Of Inherence and Sub-
sistence.
Of Causality and De-
pendence.
Of Community (reci-
procity between the
agent and patient).
Problematical . . Possibility.-Impossi-
Assertorial
bility.
Existence. Non-exist-
ence.
Apodeictical . . . Necessity.-Contin-
gence.
"This then is a catalogue of all the originally pure
conceptions of the synthesis which the understanding
contains a priori, and these conceptions alone entitle
it to be called a pure understanding; inasmuch as
only by them it can render the manifold of intuition
conceivable, in other words, think an object of intui-
tion. This division is made systematically [?] from a
common principle, namely, the faculty of judgment
(which is just the same as the power of thought), and
has not arisen rhapsodically from a search at hap-
hazard after pure conceptions, respecting the full
number of which we could never be certain, inasmuch
as we employ induction alone in our search, without
considering that in this way we can never understand
wherefore precisely these conceptions, and none others,
abide in the pure understanding. ("Critique" p. 64.)
Dynamical.
CATEGORIES, AND THEIR TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION. 49
2.
Hitherto Kant has only employed in his investiga-
tion into the pure forms of synthesis of the under-
standing the ordinary logic as a guiding thread, and
this logic only as a guiding thread and not as a proof
in the sense that a transcendental criticism requires.
Now therefore we come to by far the most difficult
part of his work, that part occupied with the deduc-
tion of the categories, or the proof of their validity,
indispensableness, and scope. So far the question of
fact has only been treated, now the question of right
has to be discussed. "Teachers of jurisprudence,
when speaking of rights and claims, distinguish in
a cause the question of right (quid juris) from the
question of fact (quid facti); and while they demand
proof of both, they give to the proof of the former,
which goes to establish right or claim in law, the
name of deduction." ("Critique,” p. 71.)
First then, supposing the categories are legitimately
derived conceptions, how are they related to sense and
possible knowledge? It might be that not only did
they arrange the data of sense, but also that in them-
selves they possessed a substantial content, and might
thus by their own agency originate supra-sensuous
knowledge. On this point Kant is quite decided.
He is convinced that just as sense is meaningless
unless brought under conceptions, so are conceptions
void of significance unless filled with sense. Sense
alone is incognisable, because of its fleeting chaotic
E
50
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
nature; conceptions alone are unrealizable, because
they are merely general ideas. Therefore "thoughts
without content of perceptions are empty, perceptions
without conceptions are blind." In respect of sense,
this is clear enough after what has gone before; but
as regards conceptions, this peculiarity of theirs will
be made more manifest by a remark on what we mean
by our experiences. Our experiences are only of
some specified thing or other, and although from
their situation we may feel ourselves warranted to
draw certain general conclusions from these specific
experiences, these conclusions obtain all their contained
truth from the experiences themselves. These specific
experiences are possible only from the co-operation of
sensuous particulars and general conceptions. But
inasmuch as experiences must be specific, the general
conceptions cannot be experienced unless sensuously
particularised. And general conceptions can be
particularised only by sense; otherwise they are
incapable of specific content, and thus their meaning
extends no farther than sensuous experience.
This much for the extent of application possible to
the categories. A wider view of experience will
bring us to a point whence we may contemplate the
deduction itself of these conceptions. Our space will
be well employed by quoting the description of Pro-
fessor Caird in the following passage: "Experience is
always, even to the ordinary consciousness, a system;
a system, it may be, only in its most general out-
lines, but still so far systematic. Even when the sense
CATEGORIES, AND THEIR TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION. 51
of law and order is most defective, common experience
is to this extent organized, that all objects are repre-
sented 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 objects of experience, on the other hand, pre-
supposition 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
It is evident that, in that case, there would be
a complete break of connection between the two suc-
cessive series of experiences which are referred to the
two different selves, and that no bridge could be
thrown from one to the other.
The identity
of the self is, in fact, but the subjective counterpart of
the unity of the world as one whole,
space and one time." (Caird, p. 333.)
dividual regards himself as one of the objects of this
world, occupying a place in its system, and receiving
from this world experiences in accordance with its
systematic character.
same.
existing in one
Again, the in-
The question arises now, how much of this system
can the individual, as an individual, know? And
52
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
secondly, where does his knowledge cease of this
world, which he is already conscious of as a systematic
whole? Kant takes up both sides of the question, and
aims at vindicating the knowledge of the individual so
far as it goes, and fixing the limit to his experience
which is imposed on his self-consciousness.
Kant in his second edition of the "Critique" en-
deavoured to expand and supplement his first one, and
offered another form of the deduction of the cate-
gories. Both deductions come to the same thing;
but as the first one possesses value as an additional
help to beginners, a glance must be bestowed on that
before we proceed to the officially final exposition.
This form takes the "path of ascent," and beginning
with mere sense endeavours to show that only on the
Kantian theory of knowledge is its cognition explic-
able. As long as sense is nothing more than a flux, as
long as one unit has to die before another lives, so long
the momentary unconnected stimulation has to take
the place of experience. And this is as good as saying
that there is no experience whatever. For momentary
unconnected stimulations, incapable by themselves of
relation and distinction, are to thinking beings as good
as nothing. Only when the flux is arrested and
referred to an enduring self, can anything thinkable
as an experience be obtained. This self, however,
must be out of time; in other words, must be enduring
and not flowing with the moments of time in all their
1 The translation of this deduction is to be found in Appen-
dix A to Professor Mahaffy's translation of the "Prolegomena."
CATEGORIES, AND THEIR TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION. 53
discreteness. This self Kant calls the transcendental
unity of apperception. It is never cognisable, but, as
its name explains, it is an enduring point, inferred to
exist necessarily behind the field of phenomena, and it
is self-conscious, so that taking up the fleeting moments.
of sense and combining them, it refers them to itself as
its own experience of a world in which it lives. Now
it is plain that, for this to be done, fleeting sense must
be combined, must be grasped in a synthesis; and in
order to manage this we must presume the activity of
the imagination, which retains one unit of sense till
others come to permit the completion of the perception.
This faculty, therefore, has to reproduce the moment-
ary sense stimuli, and present the past and present
together, thus converting perishing existences into
some kind of appreciable total. This much imagination
can do, but no more, and indeed scarcely this.
can do no more than just allow the association of
sensations anyhow and without order; in fact, it is
but a possibility of association, if association as we
must understand it presupposes some kind of affinity
and arrangement. Much more is required to convert
sense into objects. Not only must the sense stimuli
be retained alongside of one another, but they must be
rendered objective. This requirement, as we have
seen, involves in the end simply definite relationship
and interconnection in the world, and constant refer-
ence to an identical self. And to provide this, no
accidental association as that of bare imagination will
suffice, but the synthesis of the imagination must be
It
54
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
conditioned by certain definite rules of the understand-
ing; and these rules will be the categories. In short,
by means of the categories the ego brings the data of
sense under general conceptions, thus bringing out of
chaos the phenomenal order and regularity of nature ;
and in virtue of the ego's self-consciousness the cate-
gorised sense is apprehended as part of the world of
which the self is another part, and this implies that
this part of the world would be apprehended in like
manner as an object by all similar intelligences, that is,
it is objective experience and not subjective illusion.
We
e now move on to the account of the deduction
of the second edition. In this the order of procedure
is inverted. Instead of beginning with the fleeting
incognisable data of sense, it is assumed that sense
is somehow given, and the question arises, how come
these sensuous perceptions to be apprehended as
objective experience? Now the manifold of sense
is incapable of objective relation without the spon-
taneity of the understanding. In itself, sense possesses
no power of synthesis or relation, but requires the
activity of the subject to convert it into definitely
related objective experience. The condition however
involved in synthesis brings us at once to the com-
mencement of the process of knowledge from the point
of view of the second edition. Synthesis requires
the identity of the self, to which the ever-changing
manifold may be referred in the certain fixed forms.
"The I think' must accompany all my representa-
tions, for otherwise something would be represented
<
CATEGORIES, AND THEIR TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION. 55
""
in me which could not be thought; in other words,
the representation would either be impossible, or at
least be, in relation to me, nothing." ("Critique,'
p. 81.) Kant thus maintains that there must be a per-
manent subject as a basis for all our mental operations;
not only just for remembering and expecting specific
experiences, but for the bare possibility of acquiring
a single experience, and consistently argues that the
ego must remain identical to admit the apprehension
of a diversified manifold as a perception of its own.
But it must not be supposed that we are conscious
of this self in its repose, and independently of its
activity. The ego never sees its self. Nevertheless
the identity of the ego. is an indispensable condition in
all experience; but inasmuch as this condition, self-
consciousness, attends experience alone, self-conscious-
ness is in some way the product of the process of
experience. Now the manifold of sense evidently
cannot provide a permanent subject. Therefore it must
be found in the activity of the subject; in other words,
self-consciousness is possible only through synthesis,
which synthesis refers itself back to its transcendental
unity.
Again, it is by synthesis that our perceptions are
referred to objects, as in the investigation for the cate-
gories was established. Moreover, we are conscious
of self only in contradistinction from objects. Qur
understanding is not intuitive, that is, it does not
provide the material for its own activity, but depends
on external intuition for the evolution of its potential
56
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
self-consciousness in the activity of synthesis. In
short, it is synthesis of the sensuous manifold which
coincidently posits subject and object, the self and the
world. And as our knowledge presupposes one self, so
it presupposes one world, and the two unities are twin
products of the understanding's synthetic activity.
It is of consequence not to forget at this point that
in Kant's view the manifold of sense is an indispensable
factor in objective experience, and that this manifold
is given externally. Thus the development of subject.
and object is, from another point of view, dependent
on the operation of a ding an sich, or thing-in-itself,
independent of either subject or object as we know
them. The evolution of subject and object, however,
modifies it to an extent which renders it unknowable
in its self, and it never reaches us as anything more
than the unknown, unaccountable, cause of the de-
veloped phenomenon. It is necessary to keep in mind
the opposition between these two views. Kant always
entertains both, and is ready to take either point of
view; and to forget this would occasion much con-
fusion in following him.
The next thing is to determine the nature of this
synthesis which we have just been talking about.
Synthesis means subsumption under conceptions, and
to determine the nature of a synthesis it is necessary
to determine the nature of the conceptions and their
manner of subsumption. These conceptions are, says
Kant, the categories. If we revert once more to
judgment, we shall see how this is the case.
When we

CATEGORIES, AND THEIR TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION. 57
judge we do not affirm an accidental and subjective
association, but in subsuming a subject under a pre-
dicate in a judgment we affirm a unity of perceptions
objectively valid and true for all similar intelligences in
like situations. And this is just what synthesis does.
It too subsumes the manifold under conceptions, and
affirms a unity between them valid for all similar
intelligences, thus determining it as objects in an
objective world. Calling to remembrance the affinity
between these transcendental judgments and those of
formal logic, we see how we can find the forms of this
synthesis. From the table of formal logical judgments
there may be derived the table of the functions of
synthesis of the understanding, and these are the cate-
gories themselves. And therefore the synthesis, which
evolves the subject and object by the help of the ding
an sich, is completely described in the table of cate-
gories.
As regards the determination of sense by the
categories, we are prepared for its explanation by our
remarks on the first edition deduction. The imagina-
tion intervenes between them, and by its agency it
becomes possible for the data of sense to be arrested,
collected from fleeting continuity, and combined
according to the rules of the understanding. Not that
the imagination is to be regarded as a new faculty
invented to meet the emergencies of a mediation
beween thought and sense; it is not a thing by itself,
even to Kant, and this will appear more palpably in
the sequel.
58
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
Finally, our experience could only be as it is if it
was determined by the categories as functions of unity
belonging to the transcendental unity of apperception.
All our experience, all objects, are situated in many
cases somewhere, and always in some portion of time.
Now this peculiarity cannot be due to the imagination,
which is an irresponsible possibility; neither can it
be due to space and time themselves, for they are but
individual perceptions, though pure, and are not sys-
tematising unities. But it must be due to the unity
of our transcendental self. "The unity of space and
time can consist in nothing else than the reference of
their manifold to the one transcendental self, and the
manifold of perception cannot be brought in relation
to this unity of self, or determined as objective, except
through the categories. Hence the forms of synthesis.
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.'
(Caird, p. 366.)
"
The result of this deduction, as touching the sound-
ness of Kant's own theory, rests of course on its own
truth and calls for no comment in a brief exposition of
the "Critique"; but as touching practical conclusions
the result is twofold, as we have anticipated. First,
our knowledge, so far as it goes, is valid for us and all
similar intelligences; it is subject to a certain process
by which alone we can acquire experience, and thus
we may have perfect confidence in our knowledge as
long as it is confined to experience. Further, by in-
CATEGORIES, AND THEIR TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION. 59
vestigating the a priori conditions of our experience in
the forms of pure perception, i.e. in mathematics, and
by examining our faculty of cognition by criticism, we
may be able to anticipate to a certain extent the na-
ture of our experience.¹ Secondly, of things-in-them-
selves, freed from the conditions of thought, we can
know nothing; to know is to think, to think is to
condition, and every attempt to know the unconditioned
destroys forthwith its unconditioned nature and hides.
it from our view. This limitation, to be hereafter more
fully expounded in the Dialectic, is immovable. But
the deduction permits our self-consciousness to con-
tinue indefinitely to realize itself in sensuous experi-
ence, although the supra-sensible is relegated to the
unknowable.
The unknowableness of noumena, or things-in-
themselves, suggests to us a question respecting the
manner of our cognisance of a very important nou-
menon, to wit, self. In the course of the above we
omitted a digression on this point, for the sake of con-
tinuity. In opposition to other thinkers, and systems
of psychology in general up to his time, Kant denies
that we
can perceive the true unity of self.
exists only as the transcendental subject, necessarily
involved in our systematic experience, but empirically
unknown. To assert experience of it is to confound
CC
Self
¹ Kant has deduced, from the principles expounded in the
Critique of Pure Reason," the universal laws of physics in
his treatise, "The Metaphysical Principles of Natural
Science."
60
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
common inner sense with self-consciousness. Because
we can perceive an inner experience it does not follow
that we can perceive the inner self. Although we are
undoubtedly conscious of self, it is not after the
analogy of an inner experience, and to identify the
two in any way is sheer confusion of thought. Our
self-consciousness exists only in distinction from an
objective world (not, be it noted, an external spatial
world only, but a world which is cognised as objective
in contradistinction to the cognising subject), and the
objectivity of this world is the result of the synthetic
activity of the unity of apperception. Therefore the
consciousness of self is also the result of this self's
activity in its synthetic apprehension of a sensuous
manifold. And it is by means of the imagination that
we become conscious at pleasure of ourselves as objects.
in a world. Through it the synthetic activity of the
understanding is called into play, object and subject
are posited, let the affection be what you will, of inner
sense or outer sense, and thus we become conscious of
self in distinction from not-self. But this conscious-
ness is no more than a mere thought, the trans-
cendental subject remains hidden, if indeed as Kant
asserts there be one at all, and we become aware of
ourselves as simply existing from the synthetic activity
itself. And what our perception must always be, in
truth, is some phenomenal sensuous state, depending
on the activity of thought and the form of sense,
coincidently correlated with a subject. The true
self must be out of time and space; but a perception.
CATEGORIES, AND THEIR TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION. 61
must be in one or both, and therefore to perceive self
is impossible.
I hope that this compression of Kant's doctrine has
not rendered it too
too obscure. This part of the
"Critique" is notoriously difficult, and any expansion
of this account, to be of any use, would require some
little space. Moreover, a detailed exposition may be
confidently sought for in Professor Caird's book, to
which I am perhaps more indebted in this part than in
any other.
?
CHAPTER V.
SCHEMATISM, AND THE PRINCIPLES OF THE
PURE UNDERSTANDING.
WHEN the Esthetic was engaging our attention, we
observed the disparity existing between the pure forms
of perception (time and space) and the pure forms of
the understanding. During our progress from that
point, the attentive reader may have noticed for him-
self the introduction of a clue to the reconciliation of
perceptions with conceptions. The imagination has
been found to be the faculty required for the arrest of
sense and the possibility of its combination by the
categories. And when this much had been settled, it
may have almost seemed as if there was nothing more
to be done in the matter. True, time and space would
not have been transcendentally deduced in the highest
sense of the term. They would still have retained
their unaccountable character and only a de facto
existence. Necessary they would be, as things happen
to be, but wherefore this necessity would not appear.
But waiving in their favour the stringencies of trans-
cendental rigour, the fact that the imagination is
apparently sensuous, and yet has commerce with the
conceptions of the understanding, may have seemed to
62
A
SCHEMATISM, AND THE PRINCIPLES.
63
have promised relief from further trouble on that score.
The mediation, such as it is, would be certainly
mechanical, and the imagination would rank no higher
than a tertium quid called in from without. But, in
point of fact, as we warned the reader in the begin-
ning, Kant always proceeds as if a machine was his
guiding idea. And now we may frankly add, what-
ever the shock may be to the reader's lofty ideal of a
transcendental criticism, and whatever may have been
Kant's real intentions, that this desire for obtaining
perspicuity in arrangement, this forced concession
from spherical thought to linear exposition, completely
defeated itself and led Kant into the perpetration of
genuine mechanical iniquities, till it sometimes seems as
if the conception of an organism was as effete a supersti-
tion as it now is to the method of molecular physics, so
that bewilderment possesses the intelligent student in-
stead of light. When we have discharged our duty in
thus describing Kant's actual procedure in contradis-
tinction to what he ought to have done, the reader will
probably feel that in truth the tertium quid has solved
the opposition between perception and conception as
far as Kant's "Critique" is concerned, and that his
labours are at an end regarding this point, although the
philosophy he desiderates requires something higher
and more profound. If he does think this, we can only
excuse ourselves again on the ground of duty and tell
him that he is greatly mistaken. For the invocation
of imagination does not complete the explanation, even
on the Kantian method in its actual operation.
64
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
1.
Just as our sensibility and understanding are re-
stricted to rules, it may be that the synthetic process
in the imagination is likewise subject to rules. Now
since these rules would presumably be of importance
in determining the final product, experience, for they
would evidently acquaint us with a priori laws more
akin to experience, and therefore more available for
concrete application, (because the abstractness of con-
ceptions would be tempered by their connection with
the forms of sense,) it is obligatory on a criticism
which aspires to adequacy to discover if possible the
presence and nature of any such rules. It is this
quest in which we now proceed to follow Kant.
Of the two pure forms of perception, time alone is
common to all experience. In point of fact, spatial
cognition is secondary to temporal, for, so to speak,
it has to be translated through time. If therefore
any rules are found obtaining between the categories
and the forms of sense, the principal interest will
attend those respecting the determination of time by
the understanding. There must be a process of deter-
mination subsisting between the two, and this process
Kant calls “schematism," and the rules themselves
schemata. Our object therefore will be to understand
the schematism of the categories, and to discover the
schemata.
Now schematism, since it is the mediation between
sense and understanding, must be partly sensuous and
SCHEMATISM, AND THE PRINCIPLES.
65
partly intellectual. These requisites are provided by
imagination. In fact, "the schema is, in itself, always
a mere product of imagination" ("Critique," p. 109).
Evidently, therefore, imagination demands more atten-
tion from us than we have hitherto bestowed upon it,
and Kant assigns to it a very important function.
The bone of contention between Nominalists and
Realists he hands over to the imagination. In it we
possess the general ideas through which much of our
reasoning is done, and which we can concretely realize
at pleasure. For example, in it I possess the idea of
dog in general. By means of this I can ratiocinate
with confidence, for through it I am conscious that I
could construct a dog in particular. In short, in the
imagination there is a power by which abstract in-
determinate concepts are formed, and become applic-
able at pleasure to concrete realizations. The attribu-
tion to the imagination of this power of possessing
concepts involves the attribution of another kind of
concepts.
Supposing, as we must, that schematism does take
place, and takes place according to rules, the schemata
will be rules of a precisely similar character to these
general ideas. By means of them the understanding
becomes related to time and space. They will be
general rules according to which time and space are
related to the understanding, so that particular experi-
ences will have to be so far formed in obedience to
them. Thus the schema is neither an intuition nor an
image, but a general rule obtaining between intuition
F
J
66
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
and understanding (just as the idea of dog in general
obtains between my mind and particular dogs), accord-
ing to which all cognitions must be apprehended.
And these rules are not the categories, which are the
understanding itself, but rules obtaining between the
categories and sense, and so are other than the cate-
gories, though partaking of their abstract nature as
well as of the special character of sense. The nature
of these schemata will perhaps however become
clearer after they have been enumerated.
The categories under the head of quantity are
schematised by number. Both in time and space all
objects are quanta; and these quanta are formed by
the successive addition of homogeneous units: in other
words, number is the schema of quantity.
The categories under quality are reality, negation,
and limitation. Now reality is the presence, negation
the absence, of content in time. And this content
must be sensuous. Sensation may be more or less
intense in degree, from infinity to nothing, without
reference to the length of time it occupies. Yet it
must be in time. Degree therefore is the schema of
quality.
Substance
The schemata of relation are as follows.
is schematised as that which remains permanent through
all change, and its schema is thus the "substratum of
the empirical determination of time." Causality is
schematised as invariable sequence, or "the succession
of the manifold, in so far as that succession is subjected
to a rule." And reciprocity, or "the reciprocal causality
SCHEMATISM, AND THE PRINCIPLES.
67
as in-
of substances. in respect of their accidents,"
variable coexistence, or coexistence according to a
universal rule.
Modality contains possibility, actuality, and neces-
sity. The first is schematised simply as freedom from
contradiction in existence so far as time is concerned;
actuality as existence at some definite time; and
necessity as existence at all times.
Schematism therefore is really the restriction laid
upon the categories by the form of inner sense, and
the schemata are the specific restrictions themselves.
"Schemata are nothing but a priori determinations of
time according to rules; and these, in regard to all
possible objects, following the arrangement of the
categories, relate to the series in time, the content in
time, the order in time, and finally to the complex or
totality in time." And these "schemata of the pure
conceptions of the understanding are the true and
only conditions whereby our understanding receives
an application to objects, and consequently signifi-
cance ("Critique," p. 112). Accordingly, these
schemata indicate a priori conditions of possible
objects, in other words, a priori laws of nature.
""
2.
The schematism of the categories has treated of
the sensuous conditions under which alone the pure
conceptions of the understanding can be employed in
the production of experience. Now we come "to
treat of those synthetical judgments which are derived
68
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
a priori from pure conceptions of the understanding
under those conditions, and which lie a priori at the
foundation of all other cognitions, that is to say," we
come to "treat of the principles of the pure under-
standing." ("Critique," p. 106.) The Principles then
will be the subject of this section. And inasmuch as
they are synthetical judgments derived directly from
the operation of the categories on the forms of sense,
their practical interest greatly exceeds that of the
schemata. The schemata only indicated the rules to
which all possible objects must conform; the prin-
ciples lay down the judgments themselves proceeding
from these rules, and applicable to every day experi-
ence, by which perception is invested with a signifi-
cance without which our ordinary thinking process,
and therefore scientific method, would be devoid of
foundation. Corresponding therefore to each cate-
gory and schema there will be a principle, their
resultant, whose empirical importance will demand,
in some cases, care on the student's part, and excuse
for obscuring anxiety on Kant's.
The list of the categories, as the reader will have
noticed, was divided into two groups. The first
group, comprising those under Quantity and Quality,
was marked off as mathematical; the second group,
comprising those under Relation and Modality, was
distinguished as dynamical. Whilst engaged with
their discovery, it did not seem expedient to notice
Kant's incidental remarks concerning the peculiarities
of his table of categories. But now we must call
SCHEMATISM, AND THE PRINCIPLES.
69
attention to this natural grouping and Kant's obser-
vation thereon. He said that the first group related
"to objects of intuition-pure as well as empirical;
the second, to the existence of these objects, either
in relation to one another, or to the understanding."
("Critique," p. 67.) This distinction becomes material
when applied to the principles. Briefly, it comes to
this. The mathematical principles are those controll-
ing the imagination (here literally) of objects in space
and time, irrespective of their existence. The dyna-
mical ones are those determining objects as existent,
or in certain definite relations to the rest of the
world. In other words, the two groups deal respect-
ively with possibility for imagination and posited
existence.
Taking them in their order, the mathematical prin-
ciples are: I. Axioms of Intuition; II. Anticipations
of Perception. The first is that: "All intuitions are
extensive quantities." This follows from the fact that
all objects must be represented in time and space.
These are extensive quanta, of one and three dimen-
sions respectively; therefore, all perceptions are ex-
tensive quanta also. The second is that: "In all
phenomena the real, that which is an object of sensa-
tion, has intensive quantity, that is, has a degree."
This is proved by the necessity of time for the
matter of all phenomena to appear in; and on this
account the sensation must be conceived to have de-
veloped intensively from nothing to what it is in time,
and therefore to have degree.
70
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
The practical application of both principles con-
sists in their justification of mathematics. But of the
second one even more may be added, to wit, the im-
possibility of proving the existence of a vacuum.
For
a vacuum, with no intensive quantity in it, would be
inconsistent with the a priori conditions of experience,
and therefore can never be perceived. And it is not
legitimate to argue from variations in the intensity of
our perceptions to absolute non-existence of the matter,
since we cannot tell whether the variations may not
be due to the variations of the matter itself in its
qualitative intensity. So much for the mathematical
principles.
The dynamical principles will detain us somewhat
longer; but this we need not regret, for the first class
refers to points of especial interest for these times.
Their greater importance is due to the fact that they
deal with the conditions of knowledge and existence
for us, and not with the conditions of imagination;
thus they are more likely to excite controversy and
provoke sceptical attacks, whilst some of them, or at
any rate their theses, are indispensable for the rele-
vancy of scientific doctrines. The two classes are:
III. The Analogies of Experience; and IV. The Pos-
tulates of Empirical Thought.
The first analogy, for here it is worth while to
draw out each one belonging to the three categories,
is the principle of the permanence of substance, and
runs thus: "In all changes of phenomena, substance is
permanent, and the quantum thereof in nature is neither
SCHEMATISM, AND THE PRINCIPLES.
71
increased or diminished." Its proof may be epitomised
thus. All experience is varying in one time. Unless
the unity of time were presupposed, change could not
be experienced. But time in itself cannot be an ob-
ject of perception, but is a mere form given to the
relations of perception, which presupposes that they
are otherwise related. Therefore this unity must be
sought for elsewhere.
time, so all changes must be in one permanent object.
The conception of the permanence of the object is im-
plied in all determination of its changes." (Caird, p.
454.) And therefore the principle of the permanence
of substance is necessary for all experience.
"As all times are in one
Mr. Balfour carps at the pretended cogency of this
argument because, as he says, Kant himself has given
us the means of avoiding the transcendental necessity.
Although it is contended that the experience of change
is impossible without a permanent substratum, Kant
remarks that: " employing an expression which seems
somewhat paradoxical, we may say that 'only the per-
manent (substance) is subject to change; the mutable
suffers no change, but rather alternation, that is, when
certain determinations cease, others begin."" ("Cri-
tique,” p. 140.) Now it is no part of mine to en-
deavour to maintain the integrity of Kant's argument,
but I must ask the reader to peruse carefully this
passage and its context before he concedes to Mr.
Balfour that it is virtually a surrender of the main
argument, in that alternation is admitted as a possible
experience and therefore, it is to be presumed, as a
•
72
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
possible substitute for change in a permanent sub-
stratum, thus overthrowing the transcendental ne-
cessity. It will appear to him, as I think, that Kant
was here abstracting from the substratum, and was
referring to its varying determinations alone, in calling
them the mutable and the alternating, and never in-
tended it to be thought that either the mutable or
the alternating ever really existed even for us by itself,
and were other than the varying determinations of
substance. The observation may have been un-
necessary, but this is no reason for lightly attribut-
ing to any writer, and to Kant least of all, such
self-stultification as this would amount to, and which
after all could be easily suggested by an emphasis on
the definite article before "mutable" and neglect of
the context.
As a consequence of this analogy, it follows that
the creation and annihilation of substance are im-
possible for experience, and unthinkable in themselves.
The law of causality is the subject of the second
analogy. Its thesis is that: "All changes take place ac-
cording to the law of the connection of cause and effect."
The proof of this, as expounded by Kant. himself, is
so confused and misleading that it will be better to
neglect the original entirely, until its genuine import
has been learnt from other sources. In fact, if we
strictly adhered to Kant's own words we should have
to accept two contradictory arguments without any
means of reconciling them. So we will be content
here with that one which the followers of Kant's way
SCHEMATISM, AND THE PRINCIPLES.
73
of thinking believe to be sound, and this may be
summarised in the following manner.¹
on.
As in the first analogy, the proof depends on the
judgment of sequence. The sequence of perceptions
involves the relation of the first to the second and so
And this relation must be precisely that of the
moments of time to one another, viz. the first must pre-
cede the second and not vice versa. We might think
then that in sequence events were simply related by
being dated in connection with the moments of time
as they occurred in time. But this cannot be. Time
per se is incognisable and not a thing by itself, and
therefore cannot serve as the index of sequence. It
follows then that events must be directly related to
one another in an irreversible order, in other words,
as cause and effect. The understanding therefore
can only apprehend sequence through the schema of
invariable succession according to a rule, and this is
just the principle of causality. Otherwise, cognition
would be impossible, since sequence requires an irre-
versible order like the moments of time, but which
order time itself cannot give, and which the under-
standing, appropriately schematised, can only provide
by means of the causal judgment. In fact, our uni-
verse as it rests between the unity of self-conscious-
ness and the thing-in-itself, is necessarily of such a
nature that "the subsequent state of the world is the
effect of the previous state."
¹ Professor Adamson has bestowed special attention on Kant's
view of causality. See "On the Philosophy of Kant," p. 56.
74
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
¡
What significance this view may have for science
and its laws of nature we must decline to consider
here. As it stands, it is clear that scientific laws can
get little or no help from it, unless it is established
that there are ascertainable threads running through
the phases of cosmic succession, and. that in these
threads like events do occur, to be followed by like
consequents. Science herself can never do more than
throw an air of probability on such a conjecture; but
we may permit ourselves to indicate, though with
some scruple regarding the integrity of our limits,
that this analogy gives a clue to the process of our
thought which may possibly be applied with success
to the clearing up of scientific method. We must bear
in mind that, according to Kant's general argumenta-
tion, the universe, as we know it, is in its general
features a product of thought, and to this extent may
be investigated a priori. It is not unlikely, therefore,
that thought in a more extended analysis may find in
itself the truth, more and more detailed and intimate,
of the world; that this extension may be found finally
to issue in our ordinary scientific procedure; that, in
fact, science may prove to be the realization to itself
of thought which constitutes the world; that, in fine,
pure thought will find its correlate, or rather identity,
in the universe; and that thus from this analogy the
justification might move on to the establishment of
present empirical laws on a rational basis through
their traceable connection with its thesis. Be it
understood however that these words, liable as they
SCHEMATISM, AND THE PRINCIPLES.
75
are to misconstruction, do not suggest any theory for
constructing science a priori, or for re-thinking the
thoughts of the Creator, but merely indicate a move-
ment from the doctrine of this principle to our actual
scientific procedure, whereby our empirical generalisa-
tions might be supported by a manifest and valid con-
nection with our transcendental necessity. And this,
we mean to hint, can only be done by a logic which
manifests the universe in all its complexity as thought
and the knowledge thereof as thought's self-realization.
But we feel that we have strayed, and must return
to our business.
Our exposition of Kant's doctrine on this point has
been necessarily curtailed. It does not pretend to ex-
pound him literally; such I think would be impossible,
if we desired to preserve our respect for him. But the
above gives the argument to be extracted from his
writings on this point which his abler expounders
undertake to maintain or think to tend to edification.
:
Its
The third analogy treats of reciprocity.
thesis is "All substances, in so far as they can be
perceived in space at the same time, exist in a state of
complete reciprocity of action." The proof resembles the
above, mutatis mutandis, that is, space is introduced
in the place of time. Professor Caird's account of it
is so appropriate for our present purpose that we quote
it entire. "We cannot represent objects as co-exist-
ing, 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
76
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
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 deter-
mining each other. Hence, only in so far as phe-
nomena 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" (p. 456).
After what has been said on the preceding analogies,
nothing can be required to be added to this exposition
of the last one. And so we turn to the principles
under the head of modality.
""
The postulates of empirical thought are: 1.
"That which agrees with the formal conditions (in-
tuition and conception) of experience is possible.'
2. "That which coheres with the material conditions
of experience (sensation) is real." 3. "That whose
coherence with the real is determined according to
universal conditions of experience is (exists) neces-
sary. The following remarks of Kant sufficiently
manifest their significance. 'The categories of
modality possess this peculiarity, that they do not in
the least determine the object, or enlarge the con-
ception to which they are annexed as predicates, but
only express its relation to the faculty of cognition.
Hereby the object itself is not more definitely
""
SCHEMATISM, AND THE PRINCIPLES.
77
determined in thought, but the question is only in
what relation it, including all its determinations, stands
to the understanding and its employment in experi-
ence, to the empirical faculty of judgment, and to the
reason in its application to experience. For this very
reason, too, the categories of modality are nothing
more than explanations of the conceptions of possi-
bility, reality, and necessity, as employed in experience,
and at the same time, restrictions of all the categories
to empirical use alone, not authorising the transcend-
ental employment of them." ("Critique," p. 161–2.)
Our knowledge of Kant's thought already obtained,
and the coming extension of it in the Dialectic, render
any commentary on these points of possibility, reality,
and necessity quite superfluous. We will note, how-
ever, that it is in this connection that Kant introduces
his formal refutation of idealism, that is, of the pro-
blematical idealism of Descartes. In it he combats the
doctrine that external objects as determined in space.
are indirectly known, but asserts that the knowledge
of them is even prior to that of internal phenomena.
The coherence of the reasoning of the refutation with
the rest of Kant's argumentation is, to say the least,
very doubtful; and as in truth a survey of his
Critique" is quite complete without it, there is no
occasion for us to perplex ourselves with it.¹
((
1 For the critical exposition of this point see Caird's
Philosophy of Kant," p. 475, and Adamson's "Lectures,"
p. 66.
As these pages are going to press I have become
acquainted with Professor Watson's new book, "Kant and his
78
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
+
This really concludes the Transcendental Analytic.
We have now rapidly exhibited the elements of Kant's
logic of truth. We have seen him start from the
standpoint of the ordinary consciousness, we have
followed him with long strides as he detected first the
pure forms of sense intuition, then in his quest for
the pure forms of synthesis in the understanding, in
his transcendental deduction of them when found and
demonstration that they were functions of unity be-
longing to the transcendental ego, and in his recogni-
tion of the office of the imagination and its schematic
forms. Finally, we have arrived with him at the
principles, and have discretely acquainted ourselves
with his proofs of these necessary elements in all
experience. And this has brought us to the end of
the logic of truth. The process of thought thus ex-
hibited is that which Kant believes to make truth for
us from incognisable sense, and apart from which
nothing whatever can be known by us.
So far as
this is correct, Kant has a good right to call it the
logic of truth, and in some sense a philosophy. Yet
the student's labour has not herewith ended.
English Critics," in which this discussion is renewed in re-
lation to recent controversy on the subject. In the same
work a more literal interpretation is given of Kant's proof
of causation than that adopted above, and may be profitably
consulted by readers interested in Kantian exegesis; see
especially p. 214 ff.
#
CHAPTER VI.
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.
1.
t"སྡུ
29
In the course of the foregoing part of the "Critique
we have been incessantly reminded that each of the
elements therein distinguished is meaningless unless
connected with the rest of the factors in experience,
including the manifold of sense. In fact, the utmost
that we can know, according to the doctrine of the
Analytic, is what we might sensuously perceive if only
our organs of perception were fine enough, and which
we become cognisant of by inference from facts that
we have perceived. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable
peculiarity of the human spirit that it refuses to be
confined in its activity to the acquisition of mere
sensuous experience and inferences of a similar nature.
On the contrary, the ablest minds have devoted them-
selves to the study of the supra-sensible, and the most
vulgar souls are not destitute of some theory or other
respecting the unseen and unfelt. It is useless, there-
fore, or at any rate not very persuasive, to point to
our logic of truth and stigmatise all that does not
precisely conform to it as idle dreaming. The facts
of the case are such that he who fashions a logic of

79
80
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT,
truth limited to the empirical must be ready with a
logic of illusion to account for man's persistent devia-
tion from the world of experience. Error is as integral
a part of this world as truth, and demands as justly
an explanation. And accordingly this duty Kant saw
to be no less incumbent on him than the construction
of his logic of truth. The execution of the one is
equally characteristic of him as that of the other. In-
deed he is quite as celebrated for the one achievement
as he is for the other; one class of thinkers honouring
him for his explorations into the logic of truth, another
class for his iconoclastic zeal in his logic of illusion.
We have surveyed the first; we now come to its suc-
cessor, and happily the difficulty of its consideration
will prove to be less severe than that of the task which
has hitherto occupied us.
In preparation for the logic of illusion, the Trans-
cendental Dialectic, Kant towards the end of the
Analytic discusses the status of supra-sensible know-
ledge. The very slightest philosophy has at all times
been sufficient to convince men with a turn for reflec-
tion that our experience is phenomenal, that what
appears to us is only appearance, and that the real
thing in itself, the basis and cause of the appearance,
is unperceived by us and unperceivable, since we can
only perceive what appears. Thus has been instituted
the contrast between our unsubstantial world of
phenomena, the transient existence of the worldling,
and the real unseen world of noumena, the true reward
of the pious and the thoughtful. To such a point has
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.
81
the contrast been extended, that to die for the one has
been pronounced to be life for the other. Yet if our
logic of truth is correct, not only must such notions.
be erroneous, but it seems hard to account for the
existence of such an idea as this one of noumenon.
Certainly it cannot be due to any of the elements
which the logic of truth has brought to light; but
nevertheless, though thus denied universality and
necessity, it has at times been a widely prevalent
tenet. The Analytic has proved that this idea cannot
be apprehended under the categories, for these are im-
palpable if void of sense, and a noumenon is essentially
non-sensuous, even if no other characteristic can be
given of it than this negative one. Still, alike to the
vulgar and the thinker, the philosopher and the re-
ligionist, such an idea has always seemed intelligible
if not quite correct. The fact is, says Kant, that the
notion entirely proceeds from a confusion of thought;
and he professes to place his finger on the point of
transposition and indicate the source of the whole
delusion. His words are: "Apperception, and with
it thought, precedes 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
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 perception."
sense.
G
82
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
(Caird, p. 500; "Critique," p. 207.) Kant concludes
therefore that the idea of noumenon is entirely illusive,
and is generated by an excusable equivoque, the more
excusable because, as he points out, it calls attention
to the limitation of our experience.
The worth of this explanation is not a question to
detain us here. We must hasten on to the Trans-
cendental Dialectic itself. This being Kant's logic of
illusion has for its object to trace the consequences
resulting from this pseud-idea of noumenon, to grapple
with it in its systematised and developed forms, and
to define precisely its true value and transcendental
function after its pretensions have been exhibited
and eviscerated.
2.
These fallacious developments are the property
of what is called metaphysic. Metaphysic aims at a
knowledge, and claims not a little, of what is beneath
and beyond the sensible, in short, of noumena. The
Dialectic will therefore be a criticism of the various
branches of metaphysic, which criticism, to be relevant
and effective, must also make manifest the source of
all this illusive thinking and its true significance.
Now just as the ordinary logic served as a guiding
thread to the logic of truth, so we may hope that it
will give the clue to that illusive movement of thought
which brings man into this region of noumena
metaphysic. This surmise we shall find to be correct,
and the prosecution of our investigation need suffer
or
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.
83
no delay. Logic treats not only of apprehension and
judgment, but also of reasoning. Reasoning is medi-
ate inference, the movement from one term to another
by means of a third one. This third term acts as a
principle, under which the others are subsumed and so
connected. This in its turn is also liable to be sub-
sumed under a higher principle, and so on in a series
of prosyllogisms till a supreme principle is reached.
In default of this, reason urges to the questionable
satisfaction of an infinite regress. As this is the
scheme of formal ratiocination, so it is the plan of the
growth of real knowledge. We can never be con-
tent with a fixed proposition founded on contingent
experience. We are ever anxious to pass on from one
proposition to another in a series of prosyllogisms,
searching for the ground of the last and again for the
ground of this. And this onward tendency is not the
syllogistic craze of a monomaniac. Reason has a
vague but sure belief in an existent goal to which she
presses; her strivings have definite objects in view,
intangible though they be; her efforts are not aimless :
in short, she is guided by ideas. These ideas at which
reason aims we may slightly characterize beforehand.
First, they will be such as to afford to the categories
of the understanding an all-embracing unity. Of the
categories themselves, that of reciprocity is the high-
est; but this entirely fails to satisfy the desire for
unity which moves reason. Reciprocal determination
is merely a relation subsisting between co-existing
objects, and in no way approaches that ideal eminence
!
84
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
from which the universe might be gathered up into
one or two formulæ. But reason aims at some
supreme unifying principle, combining the forms of
the understanding much as they combine the mani-
fold of sense, where its regressive urgencies may
cease. And, secondly, these ideas must be ideas of
the unconditioned. If they were not such, but were
themselves conditioned, reason would fail to find
therein rest, but would forthwith struggle on after the
next condition, and so on for ever. The unconditioned
therefore is the object of reason. Again, inasmuch as
a movement from conditioned to unconditioned cannot
be due to mere analysis, since from the conditioned
analysis can only extract a condition of the same
limited nature and not an unconditioned condition,
it follows that synthesis will be required to attain to
the unconditioned, that reason must introduce some-
thing additional from somewhere or other; and, fur-
ther, since this something cannot possibly be derived
from experience, this synthesis must be transcendent
(not transcendental), must be due to that which trans-
cends experience; in short, a synthesis of pure
thought must be implied in the movement of reason.
which attains its final object. The inspiring ideas of
reason will therefore be unifying, will be uncondi-
tioned, and will be pure.
We must now inquire what these pure ideas are.
Kant again has recourse to formal logic, and finds that
to each of the forms of the syllogism there must cor-
respond an idea. "To the number of modes of relation

THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.
85
which the understanding cogitates by means of the
categories, the number of pure rational conceptions will
correspond. We must therefore seek for, first, an
unconditioned of the categorical synthesis in a subject ;
secondly, of the hypothetical synthesis of the members
of a series; thirdly, of the disjunctive synthesis of
parts in a system. There are exactly the same number
of modes of syllogisms, each of which proceeds through
prosyllogisms to the unconditioned: one to the subject
which cannot be employed as a predicate, another to the
pre-supposition which supposes nothing higher than
itself, and the third to an aggregate of the members of
the complete division of a conception." ("Critique,"
p. 226; cf. Caird, p. 523.) Hence from the categorical,
hypothetical, and disjunctive syllogisms we may arrive
at a complete enumeration of the pure ideas. Moreover,
a similar result may be secured by referring to the three
supposed metaphysical sciences, (then of some repute,
but not much heard of since,) which take the most
general aspects of existence for their themes. Cor-
responding to the idea of the categorical syllogism,
rational psychology treated of the unconditioned sub-
ject of all our thought and feeling; rational cosmology
of the unconditioned unity of cosmic existence, to the
same end as that indicated by the hypothetical syl-
logism; and lastly, after the last syllogism, rational
theology of the Unconditioned Being in whom alone
the others have their being. Self, the world, and God,
in their essence and unity are then the ideas of reason.
Whatever is may be referred to one of these existences,
•
86
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
and reason therefore endeavours to gather up existence
under these ideas; and by investigating the ideas
themselves metaphysic strives to obtain a knowledge
of all that most deeply touches man's thought and
destiny.
Now if the Analytic has given us a complete and
accurate description of our knowledge as it is, and
its possible extension, it is clear that these metaphysical
sciences are vain and baseless. To make objects of
knowledge of pure ideas is impossible for an intelli-
gence such as we are said to possess. Our knowledge
is confined to the empirical, and non-empirical objects,
even if they existed, are as good as nothing to us.
Nevertheless, we cannot summarily dismiss these ideas
from all further serious consideration on account of
their nonconformity to empirical conditions. They
exist, in their number and in their nature, to some
extent at least, necessarily from the rules of our
intelligence. Thus they are transcendental, and as
such must meet with their due at the hands of a trans-
cendental criticism. It may be that, though to posit
them as objects of knowledge is an error, yet their
true functions may be discoverable and well worth
investigating. This we must therefore try to do.
But first the pretensions of their scientific develop-
ments must be examined. In this way we shall be
sure to miss nothing that can be said in their favour;
and at the same time it is not unlikely that their true
value may appear, and what transcendental necessity
they possess may be incidentally exhibited. Kant
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.
87
Our
therefore subjects in turn rational psychology, cos-
mology, and theology to a critical examination.
business now is to follow him, as far as we can, in this
investigation.
""
3.
To begin with rational psychology. This must not
be confounded with empirical psychology, which studies
the nature and relations of so-called states of con-
sciousness, and whose data are mental phenomena qua
phenomena, calling in all available anatomical and
physiological knowledge to co-operate with introspec-
tion in its investigation into the mental life. Rational
psychology, on the contrary, is thoroughly metaphysical
and has nothing to do with what is empirical. It is
concerned with the nature and existence of the soul,
the subject of all our thought and experience, the "I
think in its simplicity apart from every passing state,
and the a priori conclusions to be derived from this
transcendental unity. The gist of its method con-
sisted, according to Kant, in concluding, "from the
transcendental conception of the subject which contains
no manifold, the absolute unity of the subject itself,
of which I cannot in this manner attain to a concep-
tion" ("Critique," p. 236). This dialectical argu-
ment he calls a paralogism, and he devotes a chapter
to the exposure of the paralogisms of rational psy-
chology. But since the ulterior conclusions arrived at
on the assumption that the "I think
وو
may be
88
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
determined by the categories are not of much interest
to us here, and since it would therefore betray us into
too great elaboration to enumerate them with Kant's ·
exposure of their latent paralogisms, we must be con-
tent with a general indication of their fallacious nature.
This can be best obtained by quoting the following
passage from Professor Caird, which must be quite
clear to the reader after what has been said respecting
the transcendental ego at the end of the deduction
of the categories: "The supposed science of rational
psychology is based on a confusion between the trans-
cendental subject and the object of inner sense, and
upon a transference to the latter, as real predicates,
of the logical characteristics which belong to the
former. The syllogisms of rational psychology are
therefore paralogisms (sophismata figurae dictionis), in
which the middle term is taken in two different senses;
what is asserted in the major of objects of possible
perception, being applied in the minor to the trans-
cendental subject, which is not and cannot be an object
of any perception. In this way the categories, which
can be applied only to the former, are transferred to
the latter, and the universal conditions, under which
objects are thought, are turned into universal predi-
cates of thinking beings as objects." (P. 541.) Ac-
cordingly no such science as rational psychology is
possible. No answer can be given to its questions,
for the questions treat of that which cannot be known
and only arise from sheer confusion of thought. A
flat denial that the subject can be made an object of
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.
89
thought is the only way of meeting its assertions, un-
less of course we choose to follow Kant in pointing out
in detail the fallacy lurking in its main doctrines. The
psychological idea, therefore, provides no basis for the
construction of an a priori science, but it is of a regu-
lative use in giving unity to our knowledge of inner
phenomena; and this is its true transcendental value.
Rational cosmology calls for more attention. In
certain respects its case differs remarkably from that of
rational psychology. For whilst the latter is simply a
onesided illusion, and merely requires light to dis-
sipate it, the problems of cosmology are started by
the dominant tendency of thought and result in pairs
of antithetical solutions. The cosmological ideas,
pursuant to reason's demands, are of course the un-
conditioned conditions of the world in one space and
time. It so happens that each class of the categories
initiates one form of the unconditioned. For each
category, in so far as it is generative of a serial move-
ment, tends to a terminus, and it thus turns out that
there are only four cosmological ideas, corresponding
with the four titles of the categories. Now, as we
shall find, these ideas eventually take the form of
dilemmas, each horn of which is apparently equally
eligible; and reason gives us no criterion to aid us
in the choice of one alternative rather than another.
Kant therefore decides that the only chance of a re-
conciliation lies in a free and unrestrained conflict be-
tween them; and this he proceeds to arrange forthwith.
We too will, thanks to his care, become spectators of
90
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
:
the fray, and as each duel comes on we shall see what
manner of combatants are engaged.¹
The first antinomy (for such is Kant's name for
these conflicts) springs from quantity. All phenomena
are extensive magnitudes either in respect of space or
time, and thus the question is provoked: What is the
last. conditioning phenomenon in time and in space?
and if there is no last, what is the sum of the series.
composing the cosmic totality? In answer to this,
the thesis may be maintained that "the world has
a beginning in time, and is also limited in regard to
space." To prove this, it may be said that if the world
had no beginning in time, then at any given moment
we must say that an eternity has elapsed, and this is
the same thing as saying that what can never be com-
pleted has been completed, which is absurd. Again,
if the world has no limit in space, it must be an infinite
given total: but a total, not given within certain limits
of an intuition, cannot be given except by the com-
pleted successive addition of its parts; and if the total
be infinite, the addition could never be completed,
and thus this denial also ends in an absurdity. There-
fore the thesis has been established.
But the antithesis to this may be maintained with
equal cogency. It may as reasonably be contended
that "the world has no beginning, and no limits in
1 If this abridgment of the antinomies appear to the
reader over curt, he may consult the original without fear.
As usual, Professor Caird's exposition is as perspicuous as it
is adequate.
•
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.
91
space, but is, in relation both to time and space, in-
finite." For if the world had a beginning, it must
have begun in an empty time, in other words, at a
time when there was no reason for it to be rather
than not to be, and therefore could never have come
into being at all. Similarly, limitation in space means
limitation by space; but space is merely the possibility
of external phenomena, and therefore cannot serve as
a thing by itself to limit the world. In both respects,
therefore, the world cannot be limited.
Under the title of quality comes the question re-
specting the intensive quantity of the matter of phe-
nomena. It is required to reach an ultimate constitu-
ent of this matter, or, if this does not exist, the sum of
the infinite series of parts within parts composing it.
The thesis, which first claims our attention, is that
'Every composite substance in the world consists of
simple parts; and there exists nothing that is not
either itself simple, or composed of simple parts." In
proof of this it may be argued that, if there were no
simple parts, then composition must itself be a sub-
stantial existence: but composition is merely a rela-
tion; therefore, simple parts must exist and constitute
aggregates.¹ This argument is a curious deviation
1 Professor Caird remarks in a note on this antinomy,
"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.'
92
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
from the line pursued in the first antinomy; the pecu-
liarity is due to the hold which the Leibnitzian doctrines
still retained on Kant.
The antithesis is no less urgent. It is clear that
"no composite thing in the world consists of simple
parts; and there does not exist in the world any
simple substance." For inasmuch as space is made
up of spaces and not of simple parts, therefore things
in space cannot be made up of simple parts; and from
the nature of the necessary manifold, it also follows
that nothing either external or internal can be per-
ceived as simple, because it must be manifold, and it
is not legitimate to reason about things except as they
may be perceived, as phenomena.
The causal series is the theme of relation, and thus
the third antinomy is brought about by the demand
for a first uncaused cause, or, in default of this, for
the sum of the infinite series of causes.
On the one
hand it is asserted that "Causality according to
the laws of nature, is not the only causality operating
to originate the phenomena of the world; a causality
of freedom is also necessary to account fully for these
phenomena." Since the law of causality postulates a
sufficient a priori determined cause for every event,
and since the causal series merely traces a regressive
movement indefinitely extensible, it follows that, to
save the law of causality from contradiction, there
must exist an absolute spontaneity of cause originating
causal series of phenomena.
On the other hand it is retorted that "there is no
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.
93
such thing as freedom, but everything in the world
happens solely according to the laws of nature." In
the light of the law of causality, a first uncaused cause
is a contradiction in terms. It is contradictory to the
law of causality to suppose a cause not itself causally
determined; it is "destructive of the possibility of
the unity of experience, and consequently a mere
fiction of thought." Freedom therefore is as unsatis-
factory as an infinite regress.
The last antinomy is about the existence of a neces-
sary Being. According to the categories of modality
all phenomena are either contingent or only hypothe-
tically necessary. We must therefore find a necessary
Being to substantiate the hypothesis, or sum up the
series of contingent phenomena into a necessary aggre-
gate. Taking the first alternative, we propound the
thesis: "There exists either in, or in connection with
the world, either as a part of it, or as the cause of it, an
absolutely necessary Being." For the contingent pre-
supposes the necessary as its ground of existence, and
therefore phenomena must be grounded on a necessary
Being. But this necessary Being must be in the world;
otherwise it could have no commerce with its temporal
phases. Therefore there must be in the world a ne-
cessary Being.
""
The antithesis contends that "an absolutely neces-
sary Being does not exist, either in the world, or out
of it, as its cause. For if the contrary were correct,
as regards necessary existence in the world, then "first,
there must either be in the series of cosmical changes
94
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
a beginning, which is unconditionally necessary, and
therefore uncaused, which is at variance with the
dynamical law of the determination of all phenomena
in time; or secondly, the series itself is without begin-
ning, and although contingent and conditioned in all
its parts, is nevertheless absolutely necessary and un-
conditioned as a whole-which is self-contradictory.
For the existence of an aggregate cannot be necessary,
if no single part of it possesses necessary existence.'
("Critique,” p. 284.) And, on the other hand, the
contrary cannot be true as regards a necessary Being
out of the world, for a similar reason to that given in the
thesis, viz. because it could have no commerce with
the world save in time, and this would bring it into
the world. Therefore there is no necessary Being in
the world.
""
Having arranged this conflict of assertions, Kant
goes on to consider critically the situation, and begins
with the following prefatory remark. "We have thus
completely before us the dialectical procedure of the
cosmological ideas. No possible experience can pre-
sent us with an object adequate to them in extent.
Nay, more, reason itself cannot cogitate them as ac-
cording with the general laws of experience. And yet
they are not arbitrary fictions of thought. On the
contrary, reason, in its uninterrupted progress in the
empirical synthesis, is necessarily conducted to them,
when it endeavours to free from all conditions and to
comprehend in its unconditioned totality, that which
can only be determined conditionally in accordance

THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.
95
with the laws of experience. These dialectical pro-
positions are so many attempts to solve four natural
and unavoidable problems of reason. There are
neither more, nor can there be less, than this number,
because there are no other series of synthetical hypo-
theses, limiting a priori the empirical synthesis."
("Critique,” p. 290.) Criticism must tell the secret
of all this confusion.
But, before we proceed to this, it is interesting to
observe that the theses of the antinomies constitute
one form of dogmatic philosophy, while the antitheses
constitute an antagonistic form. While the former is
calculated to edify the moral and religious conscious-
ness, the latter recommends itself to the restlessness
and enterprise of the scientific mind. While the one
expounds definite and eternal truths, the other,
always with one foot in the air," simply consists
in a possibility of strenuous exertion. Thus both
illustrate dominant tendencies of the human spirit;
and though both are fallacious if taken absolutely,
it may be that some sort of compromise may be
ultimately effected between them.
<<
After what has been said in a previous page on
phenomena and noumena, it is not hard to see that an
amphiboly is the source of our antinomian dogmatics.
From the fact that all phenomena are conditioned, it
is concluded that the unconditioned is necessarily im-
plied. But, in truth, this is reasoning as if phenomena
were noumena, or at any rate might be treated as
such. In point of fact, however, a phenomenon is
96
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
only as it appears, and does not logically involve the
unconditioned. All we can say is that a regressive
movement is demanded for the better comprehension
of phenomena, but we have no right whatever to
understand more than this from their conditioned
nature. Slipping from the conception of conditioned
phenomena into the conception of conditioned noumena.
is then the cause of these cosmological antinomies.
Thus, in regard of the ideas issuing from the mathe-
matical categories, neither thesis or antithesis is true.
For instance, space is neither finite or infinite, but
indefinitely extensible: that is, our perception of space
is of such a character that it may be indefinitely
extended, but we are not warranted to affirm a limit
or assert its infinity as if it were a thing-in-itself.
But the dynamical categories generate ideas which do
not result in such hopeless antinomies as the mathe-
matical. The falsity of the mathematical ideas is
irredeemable, and there is nothing to be done for them
except to point out where they err. The dynamical
categories, however, are to this extent peculiar; they
do not treat of homogeneous elements, but of possibly
heterogeneous terms. Thus it is possible that while
the thesis may apply to the noumenal world, the
antithesis may apply to the phenomenal world. It
may be quite true that there is no free cause in the
phenomenal world, yet there may be a free cause in
the noumenal world. But this is altogether uncertain
on these principles. Both are untrue if taken abso-
lutely as regards our world as it is, but it will be
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.
97
possible to assent to the demonstration of free causes
and necessary beings if such demonstration proceeds
on noumenal principles, which noumenal principles,
though discredited by the "Critique of Pure Reason,"
Kant takes care to observe may be reinstated on
practical grounds.¹
We are now in a position to estimate the precise
value of the cosmological ideas. Constitutive they
are not in any sense. In no way can they be said to
co-operate as integral factors in the formation of our
knowledge. At the outset we saw that they would.
have to be synthetic and pure if they were to compass
their end, and since then no such claim has been
established for them. So they cannot add anything
to our knowledge. But like the psychological idea
they are regulative, that is, they are guiding ideas
for the extension of our empirical knowledge. The
antinomies resulted from taking the onward move-
ment of reason for a movement towards an already
determined end. Now the movement cannot be ex-
plained away; the notion of the end, therefore, as we
have shown, is the real mistake. Conversely, the
movement is the genuine characteristic of reason, the
true function reason performs in knowledge. In
short, these cosmological ideas of reason are regula-
tive; they direct and stimulate inquiry, and lead the
understanding to its fuller realization within the
1 For this part of Kant's speculations see the translations
given in Mr. Abbott's "Kant's Theory of Ethics," and the ex-
position in Professor Adamson's book.
H
98
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
bounds of experience by means of an indefinitely
extensible advance, just as the psychological idea
focuses our knowledge of internal phenomena.
4.
In the last section we have followed Kant's deriva-
tion and criticism of the ideas proceeding from
reason's treatment of the subject and object respect-
ively. Now we come to his criticism of rational
theology, or the idea of the Being in whom the two
other worlds exist. This idea, as will be remembered,
was also assigned to the movement of reason; cor-
responding to the disjunctive form of the syllogism, it
was pronounced to be the idea of the unconditioned
aggregate of the members of a complete division of a
conception. Since this relation to formal logic is not
at once so obvious as in the case of psychology and
cosmology, a word or two is necessary to explain the
technical derivation. When we know an object as
existent, we determine it as related to the whole of
existence. Involved in an existential judgment is a
reference to the totality of being, and only so far as
we are guided by such an idea do our judgments
obtain objective validity. The reference or relation to
this idea must be positive or negative; either the
object is positively related to every possible predicate,
or it is negatively so. Thus the "either
or
""
of the disjunctive syllogism precisely typifies the kind
of determination which an object involves in relation
•
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.
99
to the total of existence, when it is judged to be
existent.¹
2
But this total is after all but an idea. Yet inasmuch
as we do not conceive the extension of our knowledge
to be a process of creation, but to be the discovery of
the already determined relations between the object
and the total of existence, we conceive this idea of
totality to be a thing-in-itself and, naturally, the
ground of all things. Hypostatising this idea we
arrive at a notion of a Supreme Being, and thus from
the ideal of pure reason get to the conception of the
God of theology. This realization of a guiding idea is
of course quite a delusion, and by this time we know
pretty well what Kant's verdict will be on such a
proceeding. To him the step is perfectly un-
authorised. But conformably to his usual tactics he
goes on to add that: "It is not sufficient to circum-
scribe the procedure and the dialectic of reason; we
¹ Compare the following passage from Prof. Jevons. "The
criterion of false reasoning, as we shall find, is that it involves
self-contradiction, the affirmation and denying of the same
statement. We might represent the object of all reasoning as
the separation of the consistent and possible from the incon-
sistent and impossible; and we cannot make any statement
except a truism without implying that certain combinations
of terms are contradictory and excluded from thought. To
assert that all 'A's are B's' is equivalent to the assertion that
'A's which are not B's cannot exist.”—The Principles of
Science: a treatise on Logic and Scientific Method: 3rd ed.,
p. 32.
2 Here we see the transcendental value of the theological
idea, its true function in the process of knowledge.
100
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
must also endeavour to discover the sources of this
dialectic, that we may have it in our power to give a
rational explanation of this illusion, as a phenomenon
of the human mind.
The question hence
arises: how happens it that reason regards the possi-
bility of all things as deduced from a single possibility,
that, to wit, of the highest reality, and presupposes
this as existing in an individual and primal Being?"
("Critique," p. 358.) The answer has been already
given. Sensuous objects are given to us, and yet
become objects to us only through their determination
in relation to a totality, and by a natural illusion this
ideal totality is taken for a given reality.
This sum
total of all reality is hypostatised "by changing the
distributive unity of the empirical exercise of the
understanding into the collective unity of an empirical
whole, a dialectical illusion, and by cogitating this
whole or sum of experience as an individual thing,
containing in itself all empirical reality," which whole
is then "substituted for our notion of a thing which
stands at the head of the possibility of all things.'
("Critique," 359.) So much for the general character
of the theological illusion; now for its scientific ex-
pression.
"There are only three modes of proving the exist-
ence of a Deity, on the grounds of speculative reason.
All the paths conducting to this end begin either
from determinate experience and the peculiar con-
stitution of the world of sense, and rise, according to
the laws of causality, from it to the highest cause.
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.
101
existing apart from the world; or from a purely inde-
terminate experience, that is, some empirical existence;
or abstraction is. made of all experience, and the
existence of a supreme cause is concluded from a
priori conceptions alone. The first is the physico-
theological argument, the second the cosmological, the
third the ontological. More there are not, and more
there cannot be.
As regards the order in
which we must discuss these arguments, it will be
exactly the reverse of that in which reason, in the
progress of its development, attains to them, the
order in which they are placed above. For it will be
made manifest to the reader that, although experience
presents the occasion and the starting point, it is the
transcendental idea of reason which guides it in its
pilgrimage, and is the goal of all its struggles."
("Critique,” 363–4.)
We begin therefore with the examination of the
ontological argument. The idea of God includes His
existence; therefore, says this argument, He exists;
in other words, we cannot think of Him except as
existing, therefore He must exist. To illustrate this,
such a conception as that of a triangle was frequently
adduced, and just as three angles were seen to be
necessarily involved in its conception, so, it was
contended, existence was involved in the conception
of God. True for both of them, replies Kant, if they
existed; but the necessity of a judgment is quite
independent of the necessity of a thing, and thus the
very point at issue is avoided by the argument. A
•
102
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
triangle may not exist, and so may not God. But
perhaps it is maintained, "that there is one and only
one conception, in which the non-being or annihilation
of the object is self-contradictory, and this is the
conception of an ens realissimum. 1 It possesses, it is
said, all reality, and it is considered justifiable to
admit the possibility of such a being. Now the
notion of all reality embraces in it that of existence;
the notion of existence lies therefore in the conception
of this possible thing" ("Critique," 366). Here the
copula is confounded with the verb of existence. Now
the synthetic sense of the latter cannot be extracted
from the analytic sense of the former; and thus to
argue from the connection between a thought subject
1 The connection between God and the ens realissimum is
in this way. God is conceived to be a necessary Being.
Now, starting from our ordinary experience, we never arrive
at anything absolutely necessary, but only hypothetically so
on the existence of something else. And so we might go on
for ever.
But it is clear that if we could gather up the
conditions of all that is possible, we should get that which
was necessary in itself, because no conditions of its existence
would be left out of account. This is the conception of the
ens realissimum. And thus if we wanted to give the most
probable definition of God, the necessary Being, we should
refer to the ens realissimum as being the most appropriate
and inclusive conception. The ens realissimum and the
necessary Being might be used then as convertible terms,
unless indeed the necessary Being were shown to partake of
finitude, which is not inconceivable. Such a possibility,
however, effectually prevents any demonstrative identification
of the ens realissimum with the necessary Being.
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.
103
and a thought predicate to the absolute position of
both, when both may be suppressed without contradic-
tion, is absurd, and therefore existence is not involved
in the conception of the ens realissimum. In short,
from a mere conception existence cannot be deduced.
The ontological argument is an invention entirely
due to the subtlety of the schools; but the cosmo-
logical argument, formally starting from experience,
promises a far more tangible result. "It is framed in
the following manner: If some thing exists, an abso-
lutely necessary being must likewise exist. Now I, at
least, exist. Consequently, there exists an absolutely
necessary being." ("Critique," 371.) In point of fact,
however, this argument when turned to theological
purposes contains the weakness of the ontological
one with faults peculiar to itself. It makes an illegiti-
mate extension of the category of cause (which is only
of empirical validity) from experience to things-in-
themselves, when it asserts that the existence of
something must be grounded on a necessary being;
it converts a mere idea into an object of knowledge.
Then when it proceeds to identify the necessary being,
thus obtained, with the ens realissimum (or God), the
ontological fallacy is repeated; for in reasoning that
the conception of the ens realissimum is the only con-
ception by and in which we can cogitate a necessary
being, we must presume that the two-the conception
and the being-are convertible, and the ontological
argument might then as well support the whole thesis
and expiate the fallacy alone.
104
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
We now come to the stock argument of popular
theology. "If, then, neither a pure conception nor
the general experience of an existing being can pro-
vide a sufficient basis for the proof of the existence of
the Deity, we can make the attempt by the only
other mode, that of grounding our argument upon a
determinate experience of the phenomena of the present
world, their constitution and disposition, and discover
whether we can thus attain to a sound conviction of
the existence of a Supreme Being. This argument
we shall term the physico-theological argument."
("Critique," 381.) "The chief momenta in the
physico-theological argument are as follows: 1. We
observe in the world manifest signs of an arrangement
full of purpose, executed with great wisdom, and
existing in a whole of a content indescribably various,
and of an extent without limits. 2. This arrangement
of means and ends is entirely foreign to the things
existing in the world; it belongs to them merely as a
contingent attribute; in other words, the nature of
different things could not of itself, whatever means were
employed, harmoniously tend towards certain purposes,
were they not chosen and directed for these purposes
by a rational and disposing principle, in accordance
with certain fundamental ideas. 3. There exists,
therefore, a sublime and wise cause (or several), which
is not merely a blind, all-powerful nature, producing
the beings and events which fill the world in an
unconscious fecundity, but a free and intelligent cause
of the world. 4. The unity of this cause may be
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.
105
inferred from the unity of the reciprocal relations
existing between the parts of the world, as portions of
an artistic edifice, an inference which all our observa-
tion favours, and all principles of analogy support."
("Critique," 384.)
Now the above argument depends on the con-
tingency of the form, but not of the matter, of the
world, in reasoning from the analogy of human art.
But at the most this can only demonstrate the exist-
ence of an architect of the world, and not a creator of
the world.¹ It is therefore quite insufficient to prove
the existence of an all-sufficient being. And even
then the architect can only be credited with powers
proportionate to his work. Now unless the idea of God.
is defined by absolute totality, the conception of Him
cannot be determinate, since otherwise we should but
speak of Him relatively to our own empirical notions.
But it is manifestly illegitimate to conclude, from our
knowledge of the world, to perfect wisdom or any other
totality. Therefore of the architect a God can never
be made. And if a leap is made from the architect to
a necessary being, then the defects of the cosmological
argument are introduced; and if, further, from the
¹This concession waives the objection that any such relation
is an illegitimate application of the category of cause. Kant
is probably referring to this in his remark that it is “ a con-
clusion which would perhaps be found incapable of standing
the test of subtle transcendental criticism," when it is de-
clared that "the internal possibility of this freely-acting nature
(which is the source of all art, and perhaps also of human
reason) is derivable from another and superhuman art."
106
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
necessary being the ens realissimum were deduced,
then the fallacy of the ontological argument would be
committed. "The physico-theologians have therefore
no reason to regard with such contempt the trans-
cendental mode of argument, and to look down upon it,
with the conceit of clear-sighted observers of nature,
as the brain-cobweb of obscure speculatists. For if
they reflect upon and examine their own arguments,
they will find that, after following for some time the
path of nature and experience, and discovering them-
selves no nearer their object, they suddenly leave this
path and pass into the region of pure possibility,
where they hope to reach, upon the wings of ideas,
what had eluded all their empirical investigations."
("Critique," 386.)
Our
A speculative theology then is impossible.
investigations have found no room for it, and have
exhibited the vanity of its fallacious attempts.
Yet
room has been left for a proof of the existence of God
by the practical reason. It may be that the moral law
presupposes a Deity; and in that case our criticism
avails nothing against it. But this belongs to another
sphere of thought.
"The result of all the dialectical attempts of pure
reason not only confirms the truth of what we have
already proved in our Transcendental Analytic, namely,
that all influences which would lead us beyond the
limits of experience are fallacious and groundless,
but it at the same time teaches us this important
lesson, that human reason has a natural inclination
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.
107
to overstep these limits, and that transcendental ideas
are as much the natural property of the reason as
categories are of the understanding. There exists
this difference, however, that while the categories
never mislead us, outward objects being always in
perfect harmony therewith, ideas are the parents of
irresistible illusions, the severest and most subtle.
criticism being required to save us from the fallacies
which they induce." ("Critique," 394.)¹ Incidentally,
through our summary of this criticism, we have noticed
the real worth of these ideas. They are regulative, and
not constitutive. They introduce life and unity into
our knowledge, but do not stand for any real objects.
5.
With the Transcendental Dialectic ends the Doctrine
of Elements, and with this the critical examination of
pure reason. The Doctrine of Method adds nothing
more to this aspect of Kant's speculations, and, for
the rest, touches only his practical philosophy."
¹ It has seemed undesirable to pursue Kant's further de-
termination of the function and worth of these ideas in this
summary: but the curious reader will find much valuable
instruction on this point in the books of Professors Caird and
Adamson.
2 In concluding my exposition here I have restricted the
title of Critical Philosophy from conventional reasons only,
and would be sorry to have it inferred that I acquiesce in
the contrast between the criticism of this "Critique" and the
dogmatism of Kant's subsequent writings.
108
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
On looking back, we can, without any very deep
scrutiny, detect sundry points wherein the require-
ments of transcendentalism are ignored. We have
already noted the want of a proper deduction of space
and time. The thing-in-itself is likewise left in a
problematical position. Why the forms of perception
are just what they are it is impossible to tell, and
things in themselves are unknown and unknowable.
How then can we be certain that we have rightly
understood their nature? The unsatisfactory relation
of these to the rest of the scheme of knowledge is
sufficient to cast suspicion on the professed integrity
of the whole; a suspicion which is confirmed by the
very evident want of coherence among the categories.
In tracing them back to the basis of their functional
activity, nothing more than a hint, a hint not
sufficiently prominent to warrant its introduction into
our text, has been given respecting their inner con-
nection and relationship, and to the last their detailed
enumeration retains a fortuitous appearance. Yet
Kant himself has taught us that contingent dis-
coveries of this kind are useless, or at any rate incon-
clusive for an adequate philosophy.
The Dialectic criticises relevantly enough what it does
criticise, but the speculative status of its subjects is
never considered from any other point of view than that
sanctioned by the logic of truth in its crudest inter-
pretation. When however doubt is cast upon the
adequacy of this logic, it becomes an obvious step to
question the relevancy of the criticism which it sup-
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.
109
ports, and to dispute the applicability of a dualistic
method to our highest and most intimate spheres of
thought. With the dark sayings of the religionist
and the mystic in our ears, of Paul and Boehme, we
can only allow the results of the Dialectic their final
claims on sufferance, and must hesitate before we decide
that the speculative reason is altogether incapable of
coping with the ultimate mystery of things.
Nevertheless, we do but poorly appreciate the
significance of Kant's innovation if we think of its
failings alone. We have seen him work his way from
individualism to a higher point of view, within sight
of an eminence whence the dualism of subject and
object would be resolved into an all-embracing unity.
First bringing over to the subject side time and
space as forms of perception, then discovering in
the subject's understanding the forms of thought
which constitute our world, and then connecting these
forms together as functions of a hidden unity (no
longer the subject in its original literal sense),
nothing but the influence of old habituations could
have hidden from him the anomalous character of the
ding an sich to which he held so firmly. The inevit-
1
¹My remarks respecting Kant's thing-in-itself are entirely
confined to his doctrines in the "Critique of Pure Reason."
Of course they do not contemplate his later views in the two
succeeding critiques. Whatever these may amount to, it is
nevertheless necessary to emphasise the unsatisfactory
position of the thing-in-itself in this his first and most im-
portant work, both for the sake of present safety and future
enlightenment.
110
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
able suggestion that all knowledge is a self-contained
system seems so irresistible, the elimination of an
unaccountable matter looks so probable, the need for
coherence and interdependence is so imperative, the
antagonism between thought and being becomes so
transparent, that it appears at first strange that Kant
did not cast about for some idea to guide him in
thinking out more continuously the movement of
synthetic thought whereby the old opposition of mind
and matter might be entirely robbed of its destructive
influence, in its comprehension in a higher unity.
Thus he led up to a radically new way of regarding
the problem of philosophy, yet persistently retained,
with little modification, the old statement of it from
which he started.
Still we are not rashly to blame him on this ac-
count. When Hegel sneers at him for refusing to enter
the water because he had not learnt to swim, ani-
madverting on his conduct in proposing to find the
limits of our possible knowledge before he had really
made the effort to think the Absolute, we cannot
but recognise great unfairness in this and much
similar usage.
Kant did try to think out the
movement of spirit whereby our world is what it is,
as the foregoing has amply shown; but it was im-
possible for the first man to do more than break the
ground in this direction. Indeed it is wonderful that
he did so much. Thought is a cryptograph, and a
very recondite one too. A single philosopher, of the
greatest power, could not distinguish and elucidate all
· THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC.
111
its intricacies at once. It is probable that different
aspects, elements, and relations may be brought to
light at different periods in the history of philosophy,
but it is not likely that any such radical movement
will ever come to pass again as that originated by
Kant. Gradually mankind may come to read more
clearly the enigma of the world-idea, but to Kant will
be due the credit of first providing the means of
making any progress whatever. He himself, we have
said, did not truly comprehend the effect of his invest-
igations. With great toil he worked out each point
as it appeared to him, but the windings of his road
hid from him the direction which he had been pursu-
ing. While he has given us a clue to the solution of
the dualism between subject and object, between God
and the world, his "Critique of Pure Reason" often
assumes a tone respecting the ineffaceable distinction
between the mind and its experience, and the limits
of our possible knowledge, which resembles both in
word and propriety the language of Locke's essay.
Nevertheless his effort was a genuine one and worthy
of all admiration and respect, and a splendid repre-
sentative of that great manner of thinking of which
Leibnitz had been the last exponent.
But our task is neither to criticise nor systematise,
and what it was has been performed, however imper-
fectly. By this time the reader can judge for himself
whether there is much to be done in this line of inquiry,
and can determine on his own responsibility whether it
is worth while to study Kant more closely, or whether
112
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF KANT.
the better plan will be to proceed directly to succeed-
ing systems, or whether it is the part of a wise man
to relinquish for good all such speculations. But what
we said at first will be found correct; that, be the
decision what it may, Kant must be either consulted
as a sage or reckoned with as a foe. Whether the
reader derive benefit from the former course or fare
successfully in the latter one, the time spent will not
be wasted; in any case we may wish him prosperity,
for with exposition we have done and with indoctrina-
tion we do not deal.
Butler & Tanner, The Selwood Printing Works, Frome, and London.
*
J
1/2