THE SENSISM OF KANT.
80. Kant maintained that while in the present life, we have only
sensible intuition; and he considers the possibility of a purely
intellectual intuition, whether for our own or for other minds
doubtful. But as we have seen elsewhere (ch. IX.) that he does not
attribute any value to conceptions separated from intuition, we
infer that he is, notwithstanding his long dissertations upon the
pure understanding, a confirmed sensist; and that the authors of the
_Critic of Pure Reason_, and of the _Treatise on Sensations_, differ
much less than at first sight might be supposed. If our mind has no
other intuition than the sensible, and the conceptions of the pure
understanding are, if they do not include some one of these intuitions,
nothing but empty forms; if when we abstract these intuitions, there
are in the understanding only purely logical functions, which mean
nothing, and in no sense deserve to be called cognitions; it follows
that there is in our mind nothing but sensations, which may be
methodically distributed in conceptions, as if packed away in a kind
of hut, where they are registered and preserved. According to this
philosopher, the understanding is reduced so low, that Condillac
himself might admit it.
81. Indeed, in the system of sensations transformed, the mind is
supposed to possess a transforming force, since otherwise, it would be
impossible to explain all ideological phenomena by mere sensation, and
the very title of the system would be a contradiction. This being so,
would any sensistic scruple have prevented Condillac from admitting
_the synthesis of the imagination_, the relations of all sensible
intuitions to the _unity of apperception_, and finally, a variety of
logical functions, to classify and compare sensible intuitions? So far
is this from being the case, it would seem that the root of all these
doctrines might be found in the system of the French philosopher, whose
fundamental principles, when summed up, amount to this: that nothing
can be seen in the mind besides sensations; but he does not therefore
deny it a force capable of transforming, classifying, and generalizing
them.
82. Here, then, is another check to the originality of the German
philosopher; he has, to combat sensism, said in substance just what,
ages before, all the schools repeated; and now when he undertakes to
follow a new road to the explanation of the purely intellectual order,
he falls into Condillac's system. His empty conceptions, without
meaning, without application, beyond the sensible order, amount to no
more than what Condillac taught when analyzing the generation of ideas,
and showing how they flowed from sensations by means of successive
transformations. Could there be any difficulty, it would be concerning
words, not things: no sensist ought to hesitate accepting whole and
entire the _Critic of Pure Reason_, when once he has seen what
applications the German spiritualist makes of his doctrines. It would
be very desirable for those who insist that the spiritualism of Kant
is decidedly destructive of Condillac's sensism, to weigh well these
observations.