CHAPTER IV.

SECOND ATTITUDE OF THOUGHT TO OBJECTIVITY.

I. _Empiricism._

37.] Under these circumstances a double want began to be felt. Partly

it was the need of a concrete subject-matter, as a counterpoise to the

abstract theories of the understanding, which is unable to advance

unaided from its generalities to specialisation and determination.

Partly, too, it was the demand for something fixed and secure, so as

to exclude the possibility of proving anything and everything in the

sphere, and according to the method, of the finite formulae of thought.

Such was the genesis of Empirical philosophy, which abandons the search

for truth in thought itself, and goes to fetch it from Experience, the

outward and the inward present.

The rise of Empiricism is due to the need thus stated of concrete

contents, and a firm footing--needs which the abstract metaphysic of

the understanding failed to satisfy. Now by concreteness of contents

it is meant that we must know the objects of consciousness as

intrinsically determinate and as the unity of distinct characteristics.

But, as we have already seen, this is by no means the case with the

metaphysic of understanding, if it conform to its principle. With the

mere understanding, thinking is limited to the form of an abstract

universal, and can never advance to the particularisation of this

universal. Thus we find the metaphysicians engaged in an attempt to

elicit by the instrumentality of thought, what was the essence or

fundamental attribute of the Soul The Soul, they said, is simple.

The simplicity thus ascribed to the Soul meant a mere and utter

simplicity, from which difference is excluded: difference, or in other

words composition, being made the fundamental attribute of body, or

of matter in general. Clearly, in simplicity of this narrow type we

have a very shallow category, quite incapable of embracing the wealth

of the soul or of the mind. When it thus appeared that abstract

metaphysical thinking was inadequate, it was felt that resource must be

had to empirical psychology. The same happened in the case of Rational

Physics. The current phrases there were, for instance, that space is

infinite, that Nature makes no leap, &c. Evidently this phraseology was

wholly unsatisfactory in presence of the plenitude and life of nature.

38.] To some extent this source from which Empiricism draws is common

to it with metaphysic. It is in our materialised conceptions, _i.e._

in facts which emanate, in the first instance, from experience,

that metaphysic also finds the guarantee for the correctness of its

definitions (including both its initial assumptions and its more

detailed body of doctrine). But, on the other hand, it must be noted

that the single sensation is not the same thing as experience, and

that the Empirical School elevates the facts included under sensation,

feeling, and perception into the form of general ideas, propositions or

laws. This, however, it does with the reservation that these general

principles (such as force), are to have no further import or validity

of their own beyond that taken from the sense-impression, and that

no connexion shall be deemed legitimate except what can be shown to

exist in phenomena. And on the subjective side Empirical cognition has

its stable footing in the fact that in a sensation consciousness is

directly present and certain of itself.

In Empiricism lies the great principle that whatever is true must

be in the actual world and present to sensation. This principle

contradicts that 'ought to be' on the strength of which 'reflection'

is vain enough to treat the actual present with scorn and to point to

a scene beyond--a scene which is assumed to have place and being only

in the understanding of those who talk of it. No less than Empiricism,

philosophy (§ 7) recognises only what is, and has nothing to do with

what merely ought to be and what is thus confessed not to exist. On the

subjective side, too, it is right to notice the valuable principle of

freedom involved in Empiricism. For the main lesson of Empiricism is

that man must see for himself and feel that he is present in every fact

of knowledge which he has to accept.

When it is carried out to its legitimate consequences,

Empiricism--being in its facts limited to the finite sphere--denies the

super-sensible in general, or at least any knowledge of it which would

define its nature; it leaves thought no powers except abstraction and

formal universality and identity. But there is a fundamental delusion

in all scientific empiricism. It employs the metaphysical categories of

matter, force, those of one, many, generality, infinity, &c.; following

the clue given by these categories it proceeds to draw conclusions, and

in so doing pre-supposes and applies the syllogistic form. And all the

while it is unaware that it contains metaphysics--in wielding which, it

makes use of those categories and their combinations in a style utterly

thoughtless and uncritical.

* * * * *

From Empiricism came the cry: 'Stop roaming in empty abstractions, keep

your eyes open, lay hold on man and nature as they are here before

you, enjoy the present moment.' Nobody can deny that there is a good

deal of truth in these words. The every-day world, what is here and

now, was a good exchange for the futile other-world--for the mirages

and the chimeras of the abstract understanding. And thus was acquired

an infinite principle,--that solid footing so much missed in the old

metaphysic. Finite principles are the most that the understanding

can pick out--and these being essentially unstable and tottering,

the structure they supported must collapse with a crash. Always the

instinct of reason was to find an infinite principle. As yet, the

time had not come for finding it in thought. Hence, this instinct

seized upon the present, the Here, the This,--where doubtless there is

implicit infinite form, but not in the genuine existence of that form.

The external world is the truth, if it could but know it: for the truth

is actual and must exist. The infinite principle, the self-centred

truth, therefore, is in the world for reason to discover: though it

exists in an individual and sensible shape, and not in its truth.

Besides, this school makes sense-perception the form in which fact

is to be apprehended: and in this consists the defect of Empiricism.

Sense-perception as such is always individual, always transient: not

indeed that the process of knowledge stops short at sensation: on the

contrary, it proceeds to find out the universal and permanent element

in the individual apprehended by sense. This is the process leading

from simple perception to experience.

In order to form experiences, Empiricism makes especial use of the

form of Analysis. In the impression of sense we have a concrete of

many elements, the several attributes of which we are expected to

peel off one by one, like the coats of an onion. In thus dismembering

the thing, it is understood that we disintegrate and take to pieces

these attributes which have coalesced, and add nothing but our own

act of disintegration. Yet analysis is the process from the immediacy

of sensation to thought: those attributes, which the object analysed

contains in union, acquire the form of universality by being separated.

Empiricism therefore labours under a delusion, if it supposes that,

while analysing the objects, it leaves them as they were: it really

transforms the concrete into an abstract. And as a consequence of this

change the living thing is killed: life can exist only in the concrete

and one. Not that we can do without this division, if it be our

intention to comprehend. Mind itself is an inherent division. The error

lies in forgetting that this is only one-half of the process, and that

the main point is the re-union of what has been parted. And it is where

analysis never gets beyond the stage of partition that the words of the

poet are true:

_'Encheiresin Naturae_ nennt's die Chemie,

Spottet ihrer Selbst, und weiss nicht, wie:

Hat die Teile in Ihrer Hand

Fehlt leider nur das geistige Band.'

Analysis starts from the concrete; and the possession of this material

gives it a considerable advantage over the abstract thinking of the

old metaphysics. It establishes the differences in things: and this is

very important: but these very differences are nothing after all but

abstract attributes, _e.g._ thoughts. These thoughts, it is assumed,

contain the real essence of the objects; and thus once more we see the

axiom of bygone metaphysics reappear, that the truth of things lies in

thought.

Let us next compare the empirical theory with that of metaphysics in

the matter of their respective contents. We find the latter, as already

stated, taking for its theme the universal objects of the reason, viz.

God, the Soul, and the World: and these themes, accepted from popular

conception, it was the problem of philosophy to reduce into the form

of thoughts. Another specimen of the same method was the Scholastic

philosophy, the theme pre-supposed by which was formed by the dogmas

of the Christian Church: and it aimed at fixing their meaning and

giving them a systematic arrangement through thought.--The facts on

which Empiricism is based are of entirely different kind. They are

the sensible facts of nature and the facts of the finite mind. In

other words, Empiricism deals with a finite material--and the old

metaphysicians had an infinite,--though, let us add, they made this

infinite content finite by the finite form of the understanding. The

same finitude of form reappears in Empiricism--but here the facts are

finite also. To this exigent, then, both modes of philosophising have

the same method; both proceed from data or assumptions, which they

accept as ultimate. Generally speaking, Empiricism finds the truth in

the outward world; and even if it allow a super-sensible world, it

holds knowledge of that world to be impossible, and would restrict us

to the province of sense-perception. This doctrine when systematically

carried out produces what has been latterly termed Materialism.

Materialism of this stamp looks upon matter, _quâ_ matter, as the

genuine objective world. But with matter we are at once introduced

to an abstraction, which as such cannot be perceived: and it may be

maintained that there is no matter, because, as it exists, it is always

something definite and concrete. Yet the abstraction we term matter is

supposed to lie at the basis of the whole world of sense, and expresses

the sense-world in its simplest terms as out-and-out individualisation,

and hence a congeries of points in mutual exclusion. So long then as

this sensible sphere is and continues to be for Empiricism a mere

datum, we have a doctrine of bondage: for we become free, when we

are confronted by no absolutely alien world, but depend upon a fact

which we ourselves are. Consistently with the empirical point of view,

besides, reason and unreason can only be subjective: in other words,

we must take what is given just as it is, and we have no right to ask

whether and to what extent it is rational in its own nature.

39.] Touching this principle it has been justly observed that in

what we call Experience, as distinct from mere single perception of

single facts, there are two elements. The one is the matter, infinite

in its multiplicity, and as it stands a mere set of singulars: the

other is the form, the characteristics of universality and necessity.

Mere experience no doubt offers many, perhaps innumerable cases of

similar perceptions: but, after all, no multitude, however great,

can be the same thing as universality. Similarly, mere experience

affords perceptions of changes succeeding each other and of objects in

juxtaposition; but it presents no necessary connexion. If perception,

therefore, is to maintain its claim to be the sole basis of what

men hold for truth, universality and necessity appear something

illegitimate: they become an accident of our minds, a mere custom, the

content of which might be otherwise constituted than it is.

It is an important corollary of this theory, that on this empirical

mode of treatment legal and ethical principles and laws, as well as the

truths of religion, are exhibited as the work of chance, and stripped

of their objective character and inner truth.

The scepticism of Hume, to which this conclusion was chiefly due,

should be clearly marked off from Greek scepticism. Hume assumes the

truth of the empirical element, feeling and sensation, and proceeds to

challenge universal principles and laws, because they have no warranty

from sense-perception. So far was ancient scepticism from making

feeling and sensation the canon of truth, that it turned against the

deliverances of sense first of all. (On Modern Scepticism as compared

with Ancient, see Schelling and Hegel's Critical Journal of Philosophy:

1802, vol. I. i.)

II. _The Critical Philosophy._

40.] In common with Empiricism the Critical Philosophy assumes that

experience affords the one sole foundation for cognitions; which

however it does not allow to rank as truths, but only as knowledge of

phenomena.

The Critical theory starts originally from the distinction of elements

presented in the analysis of experience, viz. the matter of sense, and

its universal relations. Taking into account Hume's criticism on this

distinction as given in the preceding section, viz. that sensation

does not explicitly apprehend more than an individual or more than a

mere event, it insists at the same time on the _fact_ that universality

and necessity are seen to perform a function equally essential in

constituting what is called experience. This element, not being derived

from the empirical facts as such, must belong to the spontaneity of

thought; in other words, it is _a priori._ The Categories or Notions

of the Understanding constitute the _objectivity_ of experiential

cognitions. In every case they involve a connective reference, and

hence through their means are formed synthetic judgments _a priori,_

that is, primary and underivative connexions of opposites.

Even Hume's scepticism does not deny that the characteristics of

universality and necessity are found in cognition. And even in Kant

this fact remains a presupposition after all; it may be said, to use

the ordinary phraseology of the sciences, that Kant did no more than

offer another _explanation_ of the fact.

41.] The Critical Philosophy proceeds to test the value of the

categories employed in metaphysic, as well as in other sciences

and in ordinary conception. This scrutiny however is not directed

to the content of these categories, nor does it inquire into the

exact relation they bear to one another: but simply considers them

as affected by the contrast between subjective and objective. The

contrast, as we are to understand it here, bears upon the distinction

(see preceding §) of the two elements in experience. The name of

objectivity is here given to the element of universality and necessity,

_i.e._ to the categories themselves, or what is called the _a priori_

constituent. The Critical Philosophy however widened the contrast in

such away, that the subjectivity comes to embrace the _ensemble_ of

experience, including both of the aforesaid elements; and nothing

remains on the other side but the 'thing-in-itself.'

The special forms of the _a priori_ element, in other words, of

thought, which in spite of its objectivity is looked upon as a purely

subjective act, present themselves as follows in a systematic order

which, it may be remarked, is solely based upon psychological and

historical grounds.

* * * * *

(1) A very important step was undoubtedly made, when the terms of the

old metaphysic were subjected to scrutiny. The plain thinker pursued

his unsuspecting way in those categories which had offered themselves

naturally. It never occurred to him to ask to what extent these

categories had a value and authority of their own. If, as has been

said, it is characteristic of free thought to allow no assumptions to

pass unquestioned, the old metaphysicians were not free thinkers. They

accepted their categories as they were, without further trouble, as an

_a priori_ datum, not yet tested by reflection. The Critical philosophy

reversed this. Kant undertook to examine how far the forms of thought

were capable of leading to the knowledge of truth. In particular he

demanded a criticism of the faculty of cognition as preliminary to

its exercise. That is a fair demand, if it mean that even the forms

of thought must be made an object of investigation. Unfortunately

there soon creeps in the misconception of already knowing before _you_

know,--the error of refusing to enter the water until you have learnt

to swim. True, indeed, the forms of thought should be subjected to a

scrutiny before they are used: yet what is this scrutiny but _ipso

facto_ a cognition? So that what we want is to combine in our process

of inquiry the action of the forms of thought with a criticism of

them. The forms of thought must be studied in their essential nature

and complete development: they are at once the object of research and

the action of that object. Hence they examine themselves: in their own

action they must determine their limits, and point out their defects.

This is that action of thought, which will hereafter be specially

considered under the name of Dialectic, and regarding which we need

only at the outset observe that, instead of being brought to bear upon

the categories from without, it is immanent in their own action.

We may therefore state the first point in Kant's philosophy as follows:

Thought must itself investigate its own capacity of knowledge. People

in the present day have got over Kant and his philosophy: everybody

wants to get further. But there are two ways of going further--a

back-, ward and a forward. The light of criticism soon shows that many

of our modern essays in philosophy are mere repetitions of the old

metaphysical method, an endless and uncritical thinking in a groove

determined by the natural bent of each man's mind.

(2) Kant's examination of the categories suffers from the grave defect

of viewing them, not absolutely and for their own sake, but in order to

see whether they are _subjective_ or _objective._ In the language of

common life we mean by objective what exists outside of us and reaches

us from without by means of sensation. What Kant did, was to deny that

the categories, such as cause and effect, were, in this sense of the

word, objective, or given in sensation, and to maintain on the contrary

that they belonged to our own thought itself, to the spontaneity of

thought. To that extent therefore, they were subjective. And yet in

spite of this, Kant gives the name objective to what is thought, to the

universal and necessary, while he describes as subjective whatever is

merely felt. This arrangement apparently reverses the first-mentioned

use of the word, and has caused Kant to be charged with confusing

language. But the charge is unfair if we more narrowly consider the

facts of the case. The vulgar believe that the objects of perception

which confront them, such as an individual animal, or a single star,

are independent and permanent existences, compared with which, thoughts

are unsubstantial and dependent on something else. In fact however

the perceptions of sense are the properly dependent and secondary

feature, while the thoughts are really independent and primary. This

being so, Kant gave the title objective to the intellectual factor, to

the universal and necessary: and he was quite justified in so doing.

Our sensations on the other hand are subjective; for sensations lack

stability in their own nature, and are no less fleeting and evanescent

than thought is permanent and self-subsisting. At the present day, the

special line of distinction established by Kant between the subjective

and objective is adopted by the phraseology of the educated world. Thus

the criticism of a work of art ought, it is said, to be not subjective,

but objective; in other words, instead of springing from the particular

and accidental feeling or temper of the moment, it should keep its eye

on those general points of view which the laws of art establish. In

the same acceptation we can distinguish in any scientific pursuit the

objective and the subjective interest of the investigation.

But after all, objectivity of thought, in Kant's sense, is again to

a certain extent subjective. Thoughts, according to Kant, although

universal and necessary categories, are _only our_ thoughts--separated

by an impassable gulf from the thing, as it exists apart from our

knowledge. But the true, objectivity of thinking means that the

thoughts, far from being merely ours, must at the same time be the real

essence of the things, and of whatever is an object to us.

Objective and subjective are convenient expressions in current use,

the employment of which may easily lead to confusion. Up to this

point, the discussion has shown three meanings of objectivity. First,

it means what has external existence, in distinction from which the

subjective is what is only supposed, dreamed, &c. Secondly, it has

the meaning, attached to it by Kant, of the universal and necessary,

as distinguished from the particular, subjective and occasional

element which belongs to our sensations. Thirdly, as has been just

explained, it means the thought-apprehended essence of the existing

thing, in contradistinction from what is merely _our_ thought, and what

consequently is still separated from the thing itself, as it exists in

independent essence.

42.] (a) The Theoretical Faculty.--Cognition _quâ_ cognition.

The specific ground of the categories is declared by the Critical

system to lie in the primary identity of the 'I' in thought,--what

Kant calls the 'transcendental unity of self-consciousness.'

The impressions from feeling and perception are, if we look to

their contents, a multiplicity or miscellany of elements: and the

multiplicity is equally conspicuous in their form. For sense is marked

by a mutual exclusion of members; and that under two aspects, namely

space and time, which, being the forms, that is to say, the universal

type of perception, are themselves _a priori._ This congeries,

afforded by sensation and perception, must however be reduced to an

identity or primary synthesis. To accomplish this the 'I' brings it in

relation to itself and unites it there in _one_ consciousness which

Kant calls 'pure apperception.' The specific modes in which the Ego

refers to itself the multiplicity of sense are the pure concepts of the

understanding, the Categories.

Kant, it is well known, did not put himself to much trouble in

discovering the categories. 'I,' the unity of self-consciousness,

being quite abstract and completely indeterminate, the question

arises, how are we to get at the specialised forms of the 'I,' the

categories? Fortunately, the common logic offers to our hand an

empirical classification of the kinds of _judgment._ Now, to judge

is the same as to _think_ of a determinate object. Hence the various

modes of judgment, as enumerated to our hand, provide us with the

several categories of thought. To the philosophy of Fichte belongs

the great merit of having called attention to the need of exhibiting

the _necessity_ of these categories and giving a genuine _deduction_

of them. Fichte ought to have produced at least one effect on the

method of logic. One might have expected that the general laws of

thought, the usual stock-in-trade of logicians, or the classification

of notions, judgments, and syllogisms, would be no longer taken merely

from observation and so only empirically treated, but be deduced from

thought itself. If thought is to be capable of proving anything at all,

if logic must insist upon the necessity of proofs, and if it proposes

to teach the theory of demonstration, its first care should be to give

a reason for its own subject-matter, and to see that it is necessary.

(i) Kant therefore holds that the categories have their source in the

'Ego,' and that the 'Ego' consequently supplies the characteristics

of universality and necessity. If we observe what we have before us

primarily, we may describe it as a congeries or diversity: and in the

categories we find the simple points or units, to which this congeries

is made to converge. The world of sense is a scene of mutual exclusion:

its being is outside itself. That is the fundamental feature of the

sensible. 'Now' has no meaning except in reference to a before and a

hereafter. Red, in the same way, only subsists by being opposed to

yellow and blue. Now this other thing is outside the sensible; which

latter is, only in so far as it is not the other, and only in so far

as that other is. But thought, or the 'Ego,' occupies a position the

very reverse of the sensible, with its mutual exclusions, and its

being outside itself. The 'I' is the primary identity--at one with

itself and all at home in itself. The word 'I' expresses the mere act

of bringing-to-bear-upon-self: and whatever is placed in this unit or

focus, is affected _by_ it and transformed into it. The 'I' is as it

were the crucible and the fire which consumes the loose plurality of

sense and reduces it to unity. This is the process which Kant calls

pure apperception in distinction from the common apperception, to

which the plurality it receives is a plurality still; whereas pure

apperception is rather an act by which the 'I' makes the materials

'mine.'

This view has at least the merit of giving a correct expression to the

nature of all consciousness. The tendency of all man's endeavours is to

understand the world, to appropriate and subdue it to himself: and to

this end the positive reality of the world must be as it were crushed

and pounded, in other words, idealised. At the same time we must note

that it is not the mere act of _our_ personal self-consciousness, which

introduces an absolute unity into the variety of sense. Rather, this

identity is itself the absolute. The absolute is, as it were, so kind

as to leave individual things to their own enjoyment, and it again

drives them back to the absolute unity.

(2) Expressions like 'transcendental unity of self-consciousness' have

an ugly look about them, and suggest a monster in the background:

but their meaning is not so abstruse as it looks. Kant's meaning of

transcendental may be gathered by the way he distinguishes it from

transcendent. The _transcendent_ may be said to be what steps out

beyond the categories of the understanding: a sense in which the term

is first employed in mathematics. Thus in geometry you are told to

conceive the circumference of a circle as formed of an infinite number

of infinitely small straight lines. In other words, characteristics

which the understanding holds to be totally different, the straight

line and the curve, are expressly invested with identity. Another

transcendent of the same kind is the self-consciousness which is

identical with itself and infinite in itself, as distinguished from

the ordinary consciousness which derives its form and tone from finite

materials. That unity of self-consciousness, however, Kant called

_transcendental_ only; and he meant thereby that the unity was only in

our minds and did not attach to the objects apart from our knowledge of

them.

(3) To regard the categories as subjective only, _i.e._ as a part

of ourselves, must seem very odd to the natural mind; and no doubt

there is something queer about it. It is quite true however that the

categories are not contained in the sensation as it is given us. When,

for instance, we look at a piece of sugar, we find it is hard, white,

sweet, &c. All these properties we say are united in one object. Now

it is this unity that is not found in the sensation. The same thing

happens if we conceive two events to stand in the relation of cause

and effect. The senses only inform us of the two several occurrences

which follow each other in time. But that the one is cause, the other

effect,--in other words, the causal nexus between the two,--is not

perceived by sense; it is only evident to thought. Still, though the

categories, such as unity, or cause and effect, are strictly the

property of thought, it by no means follows that they must be ours

merely and not also characteristics of the objects. Kant however

confines them to the subject-mind, and his philosophy may be styled

subjective idealism: for he holds that both the form and the matter of

knowledge are supplied by the Ego--or knowing subject--the form by our

intellectual, the matter by our sentient ego.

So far as regards the content of this subjective idealism, not a word

need be wasted. It might perhaps at first sight be imagined, that

objects would lose their reality when their unity was transferred to

the subject. But neither we nor the objects would have anything to gain

by the mere fact that they possessed being. The main point is not,

that they are, but what they are, and whether or not their content

is true. It does no good to the things to say merely that they have

being. What has being, will also cease to be when time creeps over it.

It might also be alleged that subjective idealism tended to promote

self-conceit. But surely if a man's world be the sum of his sensible

perceptions, he has no reason to be vain of such a world. Laying aside

therefore as unimportant this distinction between subjective and

objective, we are chiefly interested in knowing what a thing is: _i.e._

its content, which is no more objective than it is subjective. If mere

existence be enough to make objectivity, even a crime is objective: but

it is an existence which is nullity at the core, as is definitely made

apparent when the day of punishment comes.

43.] The Categories may be viewed in two aspects. On the one hand it

is by their instrumentality that the mere perception of sense rises to

objectivity and experience. On the other hand these notions are unities

in our consciousness merely: they are consequently conditioned by the

material given to them, and having nothing of their own they can be

applied to use only within the range of experience. But the other

constituent of experience, the impressions of feeling and perception,

is not one whit less subjective than the categories.

To assert that the categories taken by themselves are empty can

scarcely be right, seeing that they have a content, at all events, in

the special stamp and significance which they possess. Of course the

content of the categories is not perceptible to the senses, nor is it

in time and space: but that is rather a merit than a defect. A glimpse

of this meaning of _content_ may be observed to affect our ordinary

thinking. _A_ book or a speech for example is said to have a great

deal in it, to be full of content, in proportion to the greater number

of thoughts and general results to be found in it: whilst, on the

contrary, we should never say that any book, _e.g._ novel, had much in

it, because it included a great number of single incidents, situations,

and the like. Even the popular voice thus recognises that something

more than the facts of sense is needed to make a work pregnant with

matter. And what is this additional desideratum but thoughts, or in the

first instance the categories? And yet it is not altogether wrong, it

should be added, to call the categories of themselves empty, if it be

meant that they and the logical Idea, of which they are the members, do

not constitute the whole of philosophy, but necessarily lead onwards in

due progress to the real departments of Nature and Mind. Only let the

progress not be misunderstood. The logical Ideal does not thereby come

into possession of a content originally foreign to it: but by its own

native action is specialised and developed to Nature and Mind.

44.] It follows that the categories are no fit terms to express

the Absolute--the Absolute not being given in perception;--and

Understanding, or knowledge by means of the categories, is consequently

incapable of knowing the Things-in-themselves.

The Thing-in-itself (and under 'thing' is embraced even Mind and God)

expresses the object when we leave out of sight all that consciousness

makes of it, all its emotional aspects, and all specific thoughts

of it. It is easy to see what is left,--utter abstraction, total

emptiness, only described still as an 'other-world'--the negative of

every image, feeling, and definite thought. Nor does it require much

penetration to see that this _caput mortuum_ is still only a product

of thought, such as accrues when thought is carried on to abstraction

unalloyed: that it is the work of the empty 'Ego,' which makes an

object out of this empty self-identity of its own. The _negative_

characteristic which this abstract identity receives as an _object,_ is

also enumerated among the categories of Kant, and is no less familiar

than the empty identity aforesaid. Hence one can only read with

surprise the perpetual remark that we do not know the Thing-in-itself.

On the contrary there is nothing we can know so easily.

45.] It is Reason, the faculty of the Unconditioned, which discovers

the conditioned nature of the knowledge comprised in experience. What

is thus called the object of Reason, the Infinite or Unconditioned,

is nothing but self-sameness, or the primary identity of the 'Ego'

in thought (mentioned in § 42). Reason itself is the name given to

the abstract 'Ego' or thought, which makes this pure identity its aim

or object (cf. note to the preceding §). Now this identity, having

no definite attribute at all, can receive no illumination from the

truths of experience, for the reason that these refer always to

definite facts. Such is the sort of Unconditioned that is supposed to

be the absolute truth of Reason,--what is termed the _Idea;_ whilst

the cognitions of experience are reduced to the level of untruth and

declared to be appearances.

Kant was the first definitely to signalise the distinction between

Reason and Understanding. The object of the former, as he applied the

term, was the infinite and unconditioned, of the latter the finite

and conditioned. Kant did valuable service when he enforced the finite

character of the cognitions of the understanding founded merely upon

experience, and stamped their contents with the name of appearance.

But his mistake was to stop at the purely negative point of view, and

to limit the unconditionality of Reason to an abstract self-sameness

without any shade of distinction. It degrades Reason to a finite and

conditioned thing, to identify it with a mere stepping beyond the

finite and conditioned range of understanding. The real infinite,

far from being a mere transcendence of the finite, always involves

the absorption of the finite into its own fuller nature. In the same

way Kant restored the Idea to its proper dignity: vindicating it for

Reason, as a thing distinct from abstract analytic determinations or

from the merely sensible conceptions which usually appropriate to

themselves the name of ideas. But as respects the Idea also, he never

got beyond its negative aspect, as what ought to be but is not.

The view that the objects of immediate consciousness, which constitute

the body of experience, are mere appearances (phenomena), was another

important result of the Kantian philosophy. Common Sense, that mixture

of sense and understanding, believes the objects of which it has

knowledge to be severally independent and self-supporting; and when

it becomes evident that they tend towards and limit one another, the

interdependence of one upon another is reckoned something foreign to

them and to their true nature. The very opposite is the truth. The

things immediately known are mere appearances--in other words, the

ground of their being is not in themselves but in something else.

But then comes the important step of defining what this something

else is. According to Kant, the things that we know about are _to us_

appearances only, and we can never know their essential nature, which

belongs to another world we cannot approach. Plain minds have not

unreasonably taken exception to this subjective idealism, with its

reduction of the facts of consciousness to a purely personal world,

created by ourselves alone. For the true statement of the case is

rather as follows. The things of which we have direct consciousness

are mere phenomena, not for us only, but in their own nature; and the

true and proper case of these things, finite as they are, is to have

their existence founded not in themselves but in the universal divine

Idea. This view of things, it is true, is as idealist as Kant's;

but in contradistinction to the subjective idealism of the Critical

philosophy should be termed absolute idealism. Absolute idealism,

however, though it is far in advance of vulgar realism, is by no means

merely restricted to philosophy. It lies at the root of all religion;

for religion too believes the actual world we see, the sum total of

existence, to be created and governed by God.

46.] But it is not enough simply to indicate the existence of the

object of Reason. Curiosity impels us to seek for knowledge of this

identity, this empty thing-in-itself. Now _knowledge_ means such

an acquaintance with the object as apprehends its distinct and

special subject-matter. But such subject-matter involves a complex

inter-connexion in the object itself, and supplies a ground of

connexion with many other objects. In the present case, to express the

nature of the features of the Infinite or Thing-in-itself, Reason would

have nothing except the categories: and in any endeavour so to employ

them Reason becomes over-soaring or 'transcendent.'

Here begins the second stage of the Criticism of Reason--which, as

an independent piece of work, is more valuable than the first. The

first part, as has been explained above, teaches that the categories

originate in the unity of self-consciousness; that any knowledge which

is gained by their means has nothing objective in it, and that the

very objectivity claimed for them is only subjective. So far as this

goes, the Kantian Criticism presents that 'common' type of idealism

known as Subjective Idealism. It asks no questions about the meaning

or scope of the categories, but simply considers the abstract form of

subjectivity and objectivity, and that even in such a partial way, that

the former aspect, that of subjectivity, is retained as a final and

purely affirmative term of thought. In the second part, however, when

Kant examines the _application,_ as it is called, which Reason makes

of the categories in order to know its objects, the content of the

categories, at least in some points of view, comes in for discussion:

or, at any rate, an opportunity presented itself for a discussion of

the question. It is worth while to see what decision Kant arrives at on

the subject of metaphysic, as this application of the categories to the

unconditioned is called. His method of procedure we shall here briefly

state and criticise.

47.] (a) The first of the unconditioned entities which Kant examines

is the Soul (see above, § 34). 'In my consciousness,' he says, 'I

always find that I (1) am the determining subject: (2) am singular, or

abstractly simple: (3) am identical, or one and the same, in all the

variety of what I am conscious of: (4) distinguish myself as thinking

from all the things outside me.'

Now the method of the old metaphysic, as Kant correctly states it,

consisted in substituting for these statements of experience the

corresponding categories or metaphysical terms. Thus arise these four

new propositions: _(a)_ the Soul is a substance: _(b)_ it is a simple

substance: _(c)_ it is numerically identical at the various periods of

existence: _(d)_ it stands in relation to space.

Kant discusses this translation, and draws attention to the Paralogism

or mistake of confounding one kind of truth with another. He points out

that empirical attributes have here been replaced by categories: and

shows that we are not entitled to argue from the former to the latter,

or to put the latter in place of the former.

This criticism obviously but repeats the observation of Hume

(§ 39) that the categories as a whole,--ideas of universality

and necessity,--are entirely absent from sensation; and that the

empirical fact both in form and contents differs from its intellectual

formulation.

If the purely empirical fact were held to constitute the credentials

of the thought, then no doubt it would be indispensable to be able

precisely to identify the 'idea' in the 'impression.'

And in order to make out, in his criticism of the metaphysical

psychology, that the soul cannot be described as substantial, simple,

self-same, and as maintaining its independence in intercourse with

the material world, Kant argues from the single ground, that the

several attributes of the soul, which consciousness lets us feel in

_experience,_ are not exactly the same attributes as result from the

action of _thought_ thereon. But we have seen above, that according

to Kant all knowledge, even experience, consists in thinking our

impressions--in other words, in transforming into intellectual

categories the attributes primarily belonging to sensation.

Unquestionably one good result of the Kantian criticism was that

it emancipated mental philosophy from the 'soul-thing,' from the

categories, and, consequently, from questions about the simplicity,

complexity, materiality, &c. of the soul. But even for the common sense

of ordinary men, the true point of view, from which the inadmissibility

of these forms best appears, will be, not that they are thoughts, but

that thoughts of such a stamp neither can nor do contain truth.

If thought and phenomenon do not perfectly correspond to one another,

we are free at least to choose which of the two shall be held the

defaulter. The Kantian idealism, where it touches on the world of

Reason, throws the blame on the thoughts; saying that the thoughts are

defective, as not being exactly fitted to the sensations and to a mode

of mind wholly restricted within the range of sensation, in which as

such there are no traces of the presence of these thoughts. But as to

the actual content of the thought, no question is raised.

Paralogisms are a species of unsound syllogism, the especial vice of

which consists in employing one and the same word in the two premisses

with a different meaning. According to Kant the method adopted by the

rational psychology of the old metaphysicians, when they assumed that

the qualities of the phenomenal soul, as given in experience, formed

part of its own real essence, was based upon such a Paralogism. Nor

can it be denied that predicates like simplicity, permanence, &c, are

inapplicable to the soul. But their unfitness is not due to the ground

assigned by Kant, that Reason, by applying them, would exceed its

appointed bounds. The true ground is that this style of abstract terms

is not good enough for the soul, which is very; much more than a mere

simple or unchangeable sort of thing. And thus, for example, while the

soul may be admitted to be simple self-sameness, it is at the same time

active and institutes distinctions in its own nature. But whatever

is merely or abstractly simple is as such also a mere dead thing. By

his polemic against the metaphysic of the past Kant discarded those

predicates from the soul or mind. He did well; but when he came to

state his reasons, his failure is apparent.

48.] (ß) The second unconditioned object is the World (§ 35). In the

attempt which reason makes to comprehend the unconditioned nature of

the World, it falls into what are called Antinomies. In other words

it maintains two opposite propositions about the same object, and in

such a way that each of them has to be maintained with equal necessity.

From this it follows that the body of cosmical fact, the specific

statements descriptive of which run into contradiction, cannot be a

self-subsistent reality, but only an appearance. The explanation

offered by Kant alleges that the contradiction does not affect the

object in its own proper essence, but attaches only to the Reason which

seeks to comprehend it.

In this way the suggestion was broached that the contradiction is

occasioned by the subject-matter itself, or by the intrinsic quality

of the categories. And to offer the idea that the contradiction

introduced into the world of Reason by the categories of Understanding

is inevitable and essential, was to make one of the most important

steps in the progress of Modern Philosophy. But the more important the

issue thus raised the more trivial was the solution. Its only motive

was an excess of tenderness for the things of the world. The blemish

of contradiction, it seems, could not be allowed to mar the essence of

the world: but there could be no objection to attach it to the thinking

Reason, to the essence of mind. Probably nobody will feel disposed to

deny that the phenomenal world presents contradictions to the observing

mind; meaning by 'phenomenal' the world as it presents itself to the

senses and understanding, to the subjective mind. But if a comparison

is instituted between the essence of the world and the essence of the

mind, it does seem strange to hear how calmly and confidently the

modest dogma has been advanced by one, and repeated by others, that

thought or Reason, and not the World, is the seat of contradiction.

It is no escape to turn round and explain that Reason falls into

contradiction only by applying the categories. For this application

of the categories is maintained to be necessary, and Reason is not

supposed to be equipped with any other forms but the categories for

the purpose of cognition. But cognition is determining and determinate

thinking: so that, if Reason be mere empty indeterminate thinking, it

thinks nothing. And if in the end Reason be reduced to mere identity

without diversity (see next §), it will in the end also win a happy

release from contradiction at the slight sacrifice of all its facts and

contents.

It may also be noted that his failure to make a more thorough study

of Antinomy was one of the reasons why Kant enumerated only _four_

Antinomies. These four attracted his notice, because, as may be seen

in his discussion of the so-called Paralogisms of Reason, he assumed

the list of the categories as a basis of his argument. Employing

what has subsequently become a favourite fashion, he simply put the

object under a rubric otherwise ready to hand, instead of deducing

its characteristics from its notion. Further deficiencies in the

treatment of the Antinomies I have pointed out, as occasion offered,

in my 'Science of Logic' Here it will be sufficient to say that

the Antinomies are not confined to the four special objects taken

from Cosmology: they appear in all objects of every kind, in all

conceptions, notions and Ideas. To be aware of this and to know objects

in this property of theirs, makes a vital part in a philosophical

theory. For the property thus indicated is what we shall afterwards

describe as the Dialectical influence in logic.

* * * * *

The principles of the metaphysical philosophy gave rise to the belief

that, when cognition lapsed into contradictions, it was a mere

accidental aberration, due to some subjective mistake in argument

and inference. According to Kant, however, thought has a natural

tendency to issue in contradictions or antinomies, whenever it seeks

to apprehend the infinite. We have in the latter part of the above

paragraph referred to the philosophical importance of the antinomies of

reason, and shown how the recognition of their existence helped largely

to get rid of the rigid dogmatism of the metaphysic of understanding,

and to direct attention to the Dialectical movement of thought. But

here too Kant, as we must add, never got beyond the negative result

that the thing-in-itself is unknowable, and never penetrated to the

discovery of what the antinomies really and positively mean. That true

and positive meaning of the antinomies is this: that every actual

thing involves a coexistence of opposed, elements. Consequently to

know, or, in other words, to comprehend an object is equivalent to

being conscious of it as a concrete unity of opposed determinations.

The old. metaphysic, as we have already seen, when it studied the

objects of which it sought a metaphysical knowledge, went to work by

applying categories abstractly and to the exclusion of their opposites.

Kant, on the other hand, tried to prove that the statements, issuing

through this method, could be met by other statements of contrary

import with equal warrant and equal necessity. In the enumeration of

these antinomies he narrowed his ground to the cosmology of the old

metaphysical system, and in his discussion made out four antinomies, a

number which rests upon the list of the categories. The first antinomy

is on the question: Whether we are or are not to think the world

limited in space and time. In the second antinomy we have a discussion

of the dilemma: Matter must be conceived either as endlessly divisible,

or as consisting of atoms. The third antinomy bears upon the antithesis

of freedom and necessity, to such extent as it is embraced in the

question, Whether everything in the world must be supposed subject to

the condition of causality, or if we can also assume free beings, in

other words, absolute initial points of action, in the world. Finally,

the fourth antinomy is the dilemma: Either the world as a whole has a

cause or it is uncaused.

The method which Kant follows in discussing these antinomies is as

follows. He puts the two propositions implied in the dilemma over

against each other as thesis and antithesis, and seeks to prove both:

that is to say he tries to exhibit them as inevitably issuing from

reflection on the question. He particularly protests against the charge

of being a special pleader and of grounding his reasoning on illusions.

Speaking honestly, however, the arguments which Kant offers for his

thesis and antithesis are mere shams of demonstration. The thing to

be proved is invariably implied in the assumption he starts from, and

the speciousness of his proofs is only due to his prolix and apagogic

mode of procedure. Yet it was, and still is, a great achievement for

the Critical philosophy, when it exhibited these antinomies: for

in this way it gave some expression (at first certainly subjective

and unexplained) to the actual unity of those categories which are

kept persistently separate by the understanding. The first of the

cosmological antinomies, for example, implies a recognition of the

doctrine that space and time present a discrete as well as a continuous

aspect: whereas the old metaphysic, laying exclusive emphasis on the

continuity, had been led to treat the world as unlimited in space

and time. It is quite correct to say that we can go beyond every

_definite_ space and beyond every _definite_ time: but it is no less

correct that space and time are real and actual only when they are

defined or specialised into 'here' and 'now,'--a specialisation which

is involved in the very notion of them. The same observations apply to

the rest of the antinomies. Take, for example, the antinomy of freedom

and necessity. The main gist of itis that freedom and necessity as

understood by abstract thinkers are not independently real, as these

thinkers suppose, but merely ideal factors (moments) of the true

freedom and the true necessity, and that to abstract and isolate either

conception is to make it false.

49.] (y) The third object of the Reason is God (§36): He also must

be known and defined in terms of thought. But in comparison with

an unalloyed identity, every defining term as such seems to the

understanding to be only a limit and a negation: every reality

accordingly must be taken as limitless, _i.e._ undefined. Accordingly

God, when He is defined to be the sum of all realities, the most real

of beings, turns into a _mere abstract._ And the only term under which

that most real of real, things can be defined is that of Being--itself

the height of abstraction. These are the two elements, abstract

identity, on one hand, which is spoken of in this place as the notion;

and Being on the other,--which Reason seeks to unify. And their union

is the _Ideal_ of Reason.

50.] To carry out this unification two ways or two forms are

admissible. Either we may begin with Being and proceed to the

_abstraction_ of Thought: or the movement may begin with the

abstraction and end in Being.

We shall, in the first place, start from Being. But Being, in its

natural aspect, presents itself to view as a Being of infinite variety,

a World in all its plenitude. And this world may be regarded in two

ways: first, as a collection of innumerable unconnected facts; and

second, as a collection of innumerable facts in mutual relation,

giving evidence of design. The first aspect is emphasised in the

Cosmological proof: the latter in the proofs of Natural Theology.

Suppose now that this fulness of being passes under the agency of

thought. Then it is stripped of its isolation and unconnectedness, and

viewed as a universal and absolutely necessary being which determines

itself and acts by general purposes or laws. And this necessary and

self-determined being, different from the being at the commencement, is

God.

The main force of Kant's criticism on this process attacks it for being

a syllogising, _i.e._ a transition. Perceptions, and that aggregate

of perceptions we call the world, exhibit as they stand no traces of

that universality which they afterwards receive from the purifying act

of thought. The empirical conception of the world therefore gives no

warrant for the idea of universality. And so any attempt on the part

of thought to ascend from the empirical conception of the world to

God is checked by the argument of Hume (as in the paralogisms, § 47),

according to which we have no right to think sensations, that is, to

elicit universality and necessity from them.

Man is essentially a thinker: and therefore sound Common Sense, as well

as Philosophy, will not yield up their right of rising to God from

and out of the empirical view of the world. The only basis on which

this rise is possible is the thinking study of the world, not the bare

sensuous, animal, attuition of it. Thought and thought alone has eyes

for the essence, substance, universal power, and ultimate design of the

world. And what men call the proofs of God's existence are, rightly

understood, ways of describing and analysing the native course of the

mind, the course of _thought_ thinking the _data_ of the senses. The

rise of thought beyond the world of sense, its passage from the finite

to the infinite, the leap into the super-sensible which it takes when

it snaps asunder the chain of sense, all this transition is thought and

nothing but thought. Say there is no such passage, and you say there is

to be no thinking. And in sooth, animals make no such transition. They

never get further than sensation and the perception of the senses, and

in consequence they have no religion.

Both on general grounds, and in the particular case, there are two

remarks to be made upon the criticism of this exaltation in thought.

The first remark deals with the question of form. When the exaltation

is exhibited in a syllogistic process, in the shape of what we call

_proofs_ of the being of God, these reasonings cannot but start from

some sort of theory of the world, which makes it an aggregate either

of contingent facts or of final causes and relations involving design.

The merely syllogistic thinker may deem this starting-point a solid

basis and suppose that it remains throughout in the same empirical

light, left at last as it was at the first. In this case, the bearing

of the beginning upon the conclusion to which it leads has a purely

affirmative aspect, as if we were only reasoning from one thing which

_is_ and continues to _be,_ to another thing which in like manner

is. But the great error is to restrict our notions of the nature

of thought to its form in understanding alone. To think think the

phenomenal world rather, means to re-cast its form, and transmute it

into a universal. And thus the action-of-thought, has also, _negative_

effect upon its basis: and the matter of sensation, when it receives

the stamp of universality, at once loses its first and phenomenal

shape. By the removal and negation of the shell, the kernel within the

sense; v percept is brought to the light (§§ 13 and 23). And it is

because they do not, with sufficient prominence, express the negative

features implied in the exaltation of the mind from the world to God,

that the metaphysical proofs of the being of a God are defective

interpretations and descriptions of the process. If the world is only a

sum of incidents, it follows that it is also deciduous and phenomenal,

in _esse_ and _posse_ null. That upward spring of the mind signifies,

that the being which the world has is only a semblance, no real being,

no absolute truth; it signifies that, beyond and above that appearance,

truth abides in God, so that true being is another name for God. The

process of exaltation might thus appear to be transition and to involve

a means, but it is not a whit less true, that every trace of transition

and means is absorbed; since the world, which might have seemed to be

the means of reaching God, is explained to be a nullity. Unless the

being of the world is nullified, the _point d'appui_ for the exaltation

is lost. In this way the apparent means vanishes, and the process

of derivation is cancelled in the very act by which it proceeds. It

is the affirmative aspect of this relation, as supposed to subsist

between two things, either of which _is_ as much as the other, which

Jacobi mainly has in his eye when he attacks the demonstrations of the

understanding. Justly censuring them for seeking conditions (_i.e._

the world) for the unconditioned, he remarks that the Infinite or

God must on such a method be presented as dependent and derivative.

But that elevation, as it takes place in the mind, serves to correct

this semblance: in fact, it has no other meaning than to correct that

semblance. Jacobi, however, failed to recognise the genuine nature of

essential thought--by which it cancels the mediation in the very act of

mediating; and consequently, his objection, though it tells against the

merely 'reflective' understanding, is false when applied to thought as

a whole, and in particular to reasonable thought.

To explain what we mean by the neglect of the negative factor in

thought, we may refer by way of illustration to the charges of

Pantheism and Atheism brought against the doctrines of Spinoza. The

absolute Substance of Spinoza certainly falls short of absolute spirit,

and it is a right and proper requirement that God should be defined

as absolute spirit. But when the definition in Spinoza is said to

identify the world with God, and to confound God with nature and the

finite world, it is implied that the finite world possesses a genuine

actuality and affirmative reality. If this assumption be admitted, of

course a union of God with the world renders God completely finite,

and degrades Him to the bare finite and adventitious congeries of

existence. But there are two objections to be noted. In the first place

Spinoza does not define God as the unity of God with the world, but as

the union of thought with extension, that is, with the material world.

And secondly, even if we accept this awkward popular statement as to

this unity, it would still be true that the system of Spinoza was not

Atheism but Acosmism, defining the world to be an appearance lacking in

true reality. A philosophy, which affirms that God and God-alone is,

should not be stigmatised as atheistic, when even those nations which

worship the ape, the cow, or images of stone and brass, are credited

with some religion. But as things stand the imagination of ordinary men

feels a vehement reluctance to surrender its dearest conviction, that

this aggregate of finitude, which it calls a world, has actual reality;

and to hold that there is no world is a way of thinking they are fain

to believe impossible, or at least much less possible than to entertain

the idea that there is no God. Human nature, not much to its credit, is

more ready to believe that a system denies God, than that it denies the

world. A denial of God seems so much more intelligible than a denial of

the world.

The second remark bears on the criticism of the material propositions

to which that elevation in thought in the first instance leads. If

these propositions have for their predicate such terms as substance of

the world, its necessary essence, cause which regulates and directs it

according to design, they are certainly inadequate to express what is

or ought to be understood by God. Yet apart from the trick of adopting

a preliminary popular conception of God, and criticising a result by

this assumed standard, it is certain that these characteristics have

great value, and are necessary factors in the idea of God. But if we

wish in this way to bring before thought the genuine idea of God,

and give its true value and expression to the central truth, we must

be careful not to start from a subordinate level of facts. To speak

of the 'merely contingent' things of the world is a very inadequate

description of the premisses. The organic structures, and the evidence

they afford of mutual adaptation, belong to a higher province, the

province of animated nature. But even without taking into consideration

the possible blemish which the study of animated nature and of the

other teleological aspects of existing things may contract from the

pettiness of the final causes, and from puerile instances of them and

their bearings, merely animated nature is, at the best, incapable of

supplying the material for a truthful expression to the idea of God.

God is more than life: He is Spirit. And therefore if the thought of

the Absolute takes a starting-point for its rise, and desires to take

the nearest, the most true and adequate starting-point will be found in

the nature of spirit alone.

51.] The other way of unification by which to realise the Ideal of

Reason is to set out from the _abstractum_ of Thought and seek to

characterise it: for which purpose Being is the only available term.

This is the method of the Ontological proof. The opposition, here

presented from a merely subjective point of view, lies between Thought

and Being; whereas in the first way of junction, being is common to the

two sides of the antithesis, and the contrast lies only between its

individualisation and universality. Understanding meets this second way

with what is implicitly the same objection, as it made to the first.

It denied that the empirical involves the universal: so it denies that

the universal involves the specialisation, which specialisation in this

instance is being. In other words it says: Being cannot be deduced from

the notion by any analysis.

The uniformly favourable reception and acceptance which attended

Kant's criticism of the Ontological proof was undoubtedly due to the

illustration which he made use of. To explain the difference between

thought and being, he took the instance of a hundred sovereigns,

which, for anything it matters to the notion, are the same hundred

whether they are real or only possible, though the difference of the

two cases is very perceptible in their effect on a man's purse. Nothing

can be more obvious than that anything we only think or conceive is not

on that account actual: that mental representation, and even notional

comprehension, always falls short of being. Still it may not unfairly

be styled a barbarism in language, when the name of notion is given

to things like a hundred sovereigns. And, putting that mistake aside,

those who perpetually urge against the philosophic Idea the difference

between Being and Thought, might have admitted that philosophers

were not wholly ignorant of the fact. Can there be any proposition

more trite than this? But after all, it is well to remember, when we

speak of God, that we have an object of another kind than any hundred

sovereigns, and unlike any one particular notion, representation, or

however else it may be styled. It is in fact this and this alone which

marks everything finite:--its being in time and space is discrepant

from its notion. God, on the contrary, expressly has to be what can

only be 'thought as existing'; His notion involves being. It is this

unity of the notion and being that constitutes the notion of God.

If this were all, we should have only a formal expression of the divine

nature which would not really go beyond a statement of the nature of

the notion itself. And that the notion, in its most abstract terms,

involves being is plain. For the notion, whatever other determination

it may receive, is at least reference back on itself, which results

by abolishing the intermediation, and thus is immediate. And what is

that reference to self, but being? Certainly it would be strange if the

notion, the very inmost of mind, if even the 'Ego,' or above all, the

concrete totality we call God, were not rich enough to include so poor

a category as being, the very poorest and most abstract of all. For,

if we look at the thought it holds, nothing can be more insignificant

than being. And yet there may be something still more insignificant

than being,--that which at first sight is perhaps supposed to _be,_ an

external and sensible existence, like that of the paper lying before

me. However, in this matter, nobody proposes to speak of the sensible

existence of a limited and perishable thing. Besides, the petty

stricture of the _Kritik_ that 'thought and being are different' can at

most molest the path of the human mind from the thought of God to the

certainty that He _is_: it cannot take it away. It is this process of

transition, depending on the absolute inseparability of the _thought_

of God from His being, for which its proper authority has been

re-vindicated in the theory of faith or immediate knowledge,--whereof

hereafter.

52.] In this way thought, at its highest pitch, has to go outside for

any determinateness: and although it is continually termed Reason, is

out-and-out abstract thinking. And the result of all is that Reason

supplies nothing beyond the formal unity required to simplify and

systematise experiences; it is a _canon,_ not an _organon_ of truth,

and can furnish only a _criticism_ of knowledge, not a _doctrine_ of

the infinite. In its final analysis this criticism is summed up in the

assertion that in strictness thought is only the indeterminate unity

and the action of this indeterminate unity.

Kant undoubtedly held reason to be the faculty of the

unconditioned; but if reason be reduced to abstract identity

only, it by implication renounces its unconditionality and is

in reality no better than empty understanding. For reason is

unconditioned, only in so far as its character and quality are not

due to an extraneous and foreign content, only in so far as it

is self-characterising, and thus, in point of content, is its own

master. Kant, however, expressly explains that the action of reason

consists solely in applying the categories to systematise the

matter given by perception, _e._ to place it in an outside order,

under the guidance of the principle of non-contradiction.

53.] (b) The Practical Reason is understood by Kant to mean a

_thinking_ Will, _i.e._ a Will that determines itself on universal

principles. Its office is to give objective, imperative laws of

freedom,--laws, that is, which state what ought to happen. The warrant

for thus assuming thought to be an activity which makes itself felt

objectively, that is, to be really a Reason, is the alleged possibility

of proving practical freedom by experience, that is, of showing it in

the phenomenon of self-consciousness. This experience in consciousness

is at once met by all that the Necessitarian produces from contrary

experience, particularly by the sceptical induction (employed amongst

others by Hume) from the endless diversity of what men regard as right

and duty,--_i.e._ from the diversity apparent in those professedly

objective laws of freedom.

54.] What, then, is to serve as the law which the Practical

Reason embraces and obeys, and as the criterion in its act of

self-determination? There is no rule at hand but the same abstract

identity of understanding as before: There must be no contradiction in

the act of self-determination. Hence the Practical Reason never shakes

off the formalism which is represented as the climax of the Theoretical

Reason.

But this Practical Reason does not confine the universal principle of

the Good to its own inward regulation: it first becomes _practical,_

in the true sense of the word, when it insists on the Good being

manifested in the world with an outward objectivity, and requires that

the thought shall be objective throughout, and not merely subjective.

We shall speak of this postulate of the Practical Reason afterwards.

The free self-determination which Kant denied to the speculative,

he has expressly vindicated for the practical reason. To many minds

this particular aspect of the Kantian philosophy made it welcome;

and that for good reasons. To estimate rightly what we owe to

Kant in the matter, we ought to set before our minds the form of

practical philosophy and in particular of 'moral philosophy,' which

prevailed in his time. It may be generally described as a system

of Eudaemonism, which, when asked what man's chief end ought to

be, replied Happiness. And by happiness Eudaemonism understood the

satisfaction of the private appetites, wishes and wants of the

man: thus raising the contingent and particular into a principle

for the will and its actualisation. To this Eudaemonism, which was

destitute of stability and consistency, and which left the 'door

and gate' wide open for every whim and caprice, Kant opposed the

practical reason, and thus emphasised the need for a principle

of will which should be universal and lay the same obligation

on all. The theoretical reason, as has been made evident in the

preceding paragraphs, is identified by Kant with the negative

faculty of the infinite; and as it has no positive content of its

own, it is restricted to the function of detecting the finitude of

experiential knowledge. To the practical reason, on the contrary,

he has expressly allowed a positive infinity, by ascribing to the

will the power of modifying itself in universal modes, _i.e._ by

thought. Such a power the will undoubtedly has: and it is well

to remember that man is free only in so far as he possesses it

and avails himself of it in his conduct. But a recognition of the

existence of this power is not enough and does not avail to tell

us what are the contents of the will or practical reason. Hence to

say, that a man must make the Good the content of his will, raises

the question, what that content is, and what are the means of

ascertaining what good is. Nor does one get over the difficulty by

the principle that the will must be consistent with itself, or by

the precept to do duty for the sake of duty.

55.] (c) The Reflective Power of Judgment is invested by Kant

with the function of an Intuitive Understanding. That is to say,

whereas the particulars had hitherto appeared, so far as the universal

or abstract identity was concerned, adventitious and incapable of

being deduced from it, the _Intuitive_ Understanding apprehends the

particulars as moulded and formed by the universal itself. Experience

presents such universalised particulars in the products of Art and of

_organic_ nature.

The capital feature in Kant's Criticism of the Judgment is, that in

it he gave a representation and a name, if not even an intellectual

expression, to the Idea. Such a representation, as an Intuitive

Understanding, or an inner adaptation, suggests a universal which

is at the same time apprehended as essentially a concrete unity, It

is in these aperçus alone that the Kantian philosophy rises to the

speculative height. Schiller, and others, have found in the idea of

artistic beauty, where thought and sensuous conception have grown

together into one, a way of escape from the abstract and separatist

understanding. Others have found the same relief in the perception

and consciousness of life and of living things, whether that life

be natural or intellectual.--The work of Art, as well as the living

individual, is, it must be owned, of limited content. But in the

postulated harmony of nature (or necessity) and free purpose,--in the

final purpose of the world conceived as realised, Kant has put before

us the Idea, comprehensive even in its content. Yet what may be called

the laziness of thought, when dealing with this supreme Idea, finds a

too easy mode of evasion in the 'ought to be': instead of the actual

realisation of the ultimate end, it clings hard to the disjunction

of the notion from reality. Yet if thought will not _think_ the ideal

realised, the senses and the intuition can at any rate _see_ it in the

present reality of living organisms and of the beautiful in Art. And

consequently Kant's remarks on these objects were well adapted to lead

the mind on to grasp and think the concrete Idea.

56.] We are thus led to conceive a different relation between the

universal of understanding and the particular of perception, than that

on which the theory of the Theoretical and Practical Reason is founded.

But while this is so, it is not supplemented by a recognition that the

former is the genuine relation and the very truth. Instead of that,

the unity (of universal with particular) is accepted only as it exists

in finite phenomena, and is adduced only as a fact of experience.

Such experience, at first only personal, may come from two sources.

It may spring from Genius, the faculty which produces 'aesthetic

ideas'; meaning by aesthetic ideas, the picture-thoughts of the free

imagination which subserve an idea and suggest thoughts, although their

content is not expressed in a notional form, and even admits of no

such expression. It may also be due to Taste, the feeling of congruity

between the free play of intuition or imagination and the uniformity of

understanding.

57.] The principle by which the Reflective faculty of Judgment

regulates and arranges the products of animated nature is described

as the End or final cause,--the notion in action, the universal at

once determining and determinate in itself. At the same time Kant is

careful to discard the conception of external or finite adaptation, in

which the End is only an adventitious form for the means and material

in which it is realised. In the living organism, on the contrary, the

final cause is a moulding principle and an energy immanent in the

matter, and every member is in its turn a means as well as an end.

58.] Such an Idea evidently radically transforms the relation which the

understanding institutes between means and ends, between subjectivity

and objectivity. And yet in the face of this unification, the End or

design is subsequently explained to be a cause which exists and acts

subjectively, _i.e._ as our idea only: and teleology is accordingly

explained to be only a principle of criticism, purely personal to _our_

understanding.

After the Critical philosophy had settled that Reason can know

phenomena only, there would still have been an option for animated

nature between two equally subjective modes of thought. Even according

to Kant's own exposition, there would have been an obligation to admit,

in the case of natural productions, a knowledge not confined to the

categories of quality, cause and effect, composition, constituents,

and so on. The principle of inward adaptation or design, had it been

kept to and carried out in scientific application, would have led to a

different and a higher method of observing nature.

59.] If we adopt this principle, the Idea, when all limitations were

removed from it, would appear as follows. The universality moulded by

Reason, and described as the absolute and final end or the Good, would

be realised in the world, and realised moreover by means of a third

thing, the power which proposes this End as well as realises it,--that

is, God. Thus in Him, who is the absolute truth, those oppositions of

universal and individual, subjective and objective, are solved and

explained to be neither self-subsistent nor true.

80.] But Good,--which is thus put forward as the final cause of the

world,--has been already described as only _our_ good, the moral law

of _our_ Practical Reason. This being so, the unity in question

goes no further than make the state of the world and the course of

its events harmonise with our moral standards.[1] Besides, even with

this limitation, the final cause, or Good, is a vague abstraction,

and the same vagueness attaches to what is to be Duty. But, further,

this harmony is met by the revival and re-assertion of the antithesis,

which it by its own principle had nullified. The harmony is then

described as merely subjective, something which merely ought to be,

and which at the same time is not real,--a mere article of faith,

possessing a subjective certainty, but without truth, or that

objectivity which is proper to the Idea. This contradiction may seem

to be disguised by adjourning the realisation of the Idea to a future,

to a _time_ when the Idea will also be. But a sensuous condition like

time is the reverse of a reconciliation of the discrepancy; and an

infinite progression--which is the corresponding image adopted by the

understanding--on the very face of it only repeats and re-enacts the

contradiction.

A general remark may still be offered on the result to which the

Critical philosophy led as to the nature of knowledge; a result

which has grown one of the current 'idols' or axiomatic beliefs of

the day. In every dualistic system, and especially in that of Kant,

the fundamental defect makes itself visible in the inconsistency of

unifying at one moment, what a moment before had been explained to

be independent and therefore incapable of unification. And then, at

the very moment after unification has been alleged to be the truth,

we suddenly come upon the doctrine that the two elements, which, in

their true status of unification, had been refused all independent

subsistence, are only true and actual in their state of separation.

Philosophising of this kind wants the little penetration needed to

discover, that this shuffling only evidences how unsatisfactory each

one of the two terms is. And it fails simply because it is incapable

of bringing two thoughts together. (And in point of form there are

never more than two.) It argues an utter want of consistency to say,

on the one hand, that the understanding only knows phenomena, and, on

the other, assert the absolute character of this knowledge, by such

statements as 'Cognition can go no further'; 'Here is the _natural_ and

absolute limit of human knowledge.' But 'natural' is the wrong word

here. The things of nature are limited and are natural things only to

such extent as they are not aware of their universal limit, or to such

extent as their mode or quality is a limit from our point of view,

and not from their own. No one knows, or even feels, that anything

is a limit or defect, until he is at the same time above and beyond

it. Living beings, for example, possess the privilege of pain which

is denied to the inanimate: even with living beings, a single mode or

quality passes into the feeling of a negative. For living beings as

such possess within them a universal vitality, which overpasses and

includes the single mode; and thus, as they maintain themselves in

the negative of themselves, they feel the contradiction to _exist_

within them. But the contradiction is within them, only in so far as

one and the same subject includes both the universality of their sense

of life, and the individual mode which is in negation with it. This

illustration will show how a limit or imperfection in knowledge comes

to be termed a limit or imperfection, only when it is compared with the

actually-present Idea of the universal, of a total and perfect. A very

little consideration might show, that to call a thing finite or limited

proves by implication the very presence of the infinite and unlimited,

and that our knowledge of a limit can only be when the unlimited is _on

this side_ in consciousness.

The result however of Kant's view of cognition suggests a second

remark. The philosophy of Kant could have no influence on the method of

the sciences. It leaves the categories and method of ordinary knowledge

quite unmolested. Occasionally, it may be, in the first sections of a

scientific work of that period, we find propositions borrowed from the

Kantian philosophy: but the course of the treatise renders it apparent

that these propositions were superfluous decoration, and that the few

first pages might have been omitted without producing the least change

in the empirical contents.[2]

We may next institute a comparison of Kant with the metaphysics of the

empirical school. Natural plain Empiricism, though it unquestionably

insists most upon sensuous perception, still allows a super-sensible

world or spiritual reality, whatever may be its structure and

constitution, and whether derived from intellect, or from imagination,

&c. So far as form goes, the facts of this super-sensible world rest on

the authority of mind, in the same way as the other facts, embraced

in empirical knowledge, rest on the authority of external perception.

But when Empiricism becomes reflective and logically consistent, it

turns its arms against this dualism in the ultimate and highest species

of fact; it denies the independence of the thinking principle and of

a spiritual world which developes itself in thought. Materialism or

Naturalism, therefore, is the consistent and thorough-going system

of Empiricism. In direct opposition to such an Empiricism, Kant

asserts the principle of thought and freedom, and attaches himself

to the first-mentioned form of empirical doctrine, the general

principles of which he never departed from. There is a dualism in

his philosophy also. On one side stands the world of sensation, and

of the understanding which reflects upon it. This world, it is true,

he alleges to be a world of appearances. But that is only a title

or formal description; for the source, the facts, and the modes of

observation continue quite the same as in Empiricism. On the other side

and independent stands a self-apprehending thought, the principle of

freedom, which Kant has in common with ordinary and bygone metaphysic,

but emptied of all that it held, and without his being able to infuse

into it anything new. For, in the Critical doctrine, thought, or, as it

is there called, Reason, is divested of every specific form, and thus

bereft of all authority. The main effect of the Kantian philosophy has

been to revive the consciousness of Reason, or the absolute inwardness

of thought. Its abstractness indeed prevented that inwardness from

developing into anything, or from originating any special forms,

whether cognitive principles or moral laws; but nevertheless it

absolutely refused to accept or indulge anything possessing the

character of an externality. Henceforth the principle of the

independence of Reason, or of its absolute self-subsistence, is made

a general principle of philosophy, as well as a foregone conclusion of

the time.

(1) The Critical philosophy has one great negative merit. It has

brought home the conviction that the categories of understanding are

finite in their range, and that any cognitive process confined within

their pale falls short of the truth. But Kant had only a sight of

half the truth. He explained the finite nature of the categories to

mean that they were subjective only, valid only for our thought, from

which the thing-in-itself was divided by an impassable gulf. In fact,

however, it is not because they are subjective, that the categories are

finite: they are finite by their very nature, and it is on their own

selves that it is requisite to exhibit their finitude. Kant however

holds that what we think is false, because it is we who think it. A

further deficiency in the system is that it gives only an historical

description of thought, and a mere enumeration of the factors of

consciousness. The enumeration is in the main correct: but not a word

touches upon the necessity of what is thus empirically colligated. The

observations, made on the various stages of consciousness, culminate

in the summary statement, that the content of all we are acquainted

with is only an appearance. And as it is true at least that all finite

thinking is concerned with appearances, so far the conclusion is

justified. This stage of 'appearance' however--the phenomenal world--is

not the terminus of thought: there is another and a higher region. But

that region was to the Kantian philosophy an inaccessible 'other world.'

(2) After all it was only formally, that the Kantian system established

the principle that thought is spontaneous and self-determining. Into

details of the manner and the extent of this self-determination of

thought, Kant never went. It was Fichte who first noticed the omission;

and who, after he had called attention to the want of a deduction for

the categories, endeavoured really to supply something of the kind.

With Fichte, the 'Ego' is the starting-point in the philosophical

development: and the outcome of its action is supposed to be visible

in the categories. But in Fichte the 'Ego' is not really presented

as a free, spontaneous energy; it is supposed to receive its first

excitation by a shock or impulse from without. Against this shock

the 'Ego' will, it is assumed, react, and only through this reaction

does it first become conscious of itself. Meanwhile, the nature of

the impulse remains a stranger beyond our pale: and the 'Ego,' with

something else always confronting it, is weighted with a condition.

Fichte, in consequence, never advanced beyond Kant's conclusion, that

the finite only is knowable, while the infinite transcends the range

of thought. What Kant calls the thing-by-itself, Fichte calls the

impulse from without--that abstraction of something else than 'I,' not

otherwise describable or definable than as the negative or non-Ego in

general. The 'I' is thus looked at as standing in essential relation

with the not-I, through which its act of self-determination is first

awakened. And in this manner the 'I' is but the continuous act of

self-liberation from this impulse, never gaining a real freedom,

because with the surcease of the impulse the 'I,' whose being is

its action, would also cease to be. Nor is the content produced by

the action of the 'I' at all different from the ordinary content of

experience, except by the supplementary remark, that this content is

mere appearance.

[1] Even Hermann's 'Handbook of Prosody' begins with paragraphs of

Kantian philosophy. In § 8 it is argued that a law of rhythm must be

(1) objective, (a) formal, and (3) determined _à priori._ With these

requirements and with the principles of Causality and Reciprocity which

follow later, it were well to compare the treatment of the various

measures, upon which those formal principles do not exercise the

slightest influence.

[2] In Kant's own words (Criticism of the Power of Judgment, p. 427):

'Final Cause is merely a notion of our practical reason. It cannot

be deduced from any data of experience as a theoretical criterion of

nature, nor can it be applied to know nature. No employment of this

notion is possible except solely for the practical reason, by moral

laws. The final purpose of the Creation is that constitution of the

world which harmonises with that to which alone we can give definite

expression on universal principles, viz. the final purpose of our pure

practical reason, and with that in so far as it means to be practical.'