A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason'

by Norman Kemp Smith

INTRODUCTION

I. Transcendental Illusion

Dialectic is a Logic of Illusion.[1367]—The meaning which Kant attaches to the term dialectic has already been considered. The passage above quoted[1368] from his Logic shows the meaning which he supposed the term historically to possess, namely, as being a sophistical art of disputation, presenting false principles in the guise of truth by means of a seeming fulfilment of the demands of strict logical proof. The incorrectness of this historical derivation hardly needs to be pointed out. Kant professes[1369] to be following his contemporaries in thus using the term as a title for the treatment of false reasoning. But even this statement must be challenged. Adickes, after examination of a large number of eighteenth-century text-books, reports[1370] that in the six passages in which alone he has found it to occur it is never so employed. In Meier it is used as a title for the theory of probable reasoning,[1371] and in Baumgarten it occurs only in adjectival form as equivalent to sophistical. This last is the nearest approach to Kant’s definition. All historical considerations may therefore be swept aside. We are concerned only with the specific meaning which Kant thought good to attach to the term. He adapts it in the freest manner to the needs of his system. In A 61 = B 85, as in his Logic, he has defined it in merely negative fashion. He is now careful to specify the more positive aspects of the problems with which it deals. Though definable as the logic of illusion, the deceptive inferences with which it concerns itself are of a quite unique and supremely significant character. They must, as above noted,[1372] be distinguished alike from logical and from empirical illusion. They have their roots in the fundamental needs of the human mind, and the recognition of their illusory character does not render unnecessary either a positive explanation of their occurrence or a Critical valuation of their practical function as regulative ideals.

A 293 = B 349.—Regarding the connection between illusion and error cf. B 69, and above, pp. 148-53.

A 295 = B 352.—Logical, empirical, and transcendental illusion. Cf. above, pp. 13, 427-9, 437.

A 296 = B 352.—Kant here defines the terms transcendental and transcendent in a very unusual manner. The two terms are not, he states, synonymous. The principles of pure understanding are of merely empirical validity, and consequently are not of transcendental employment beyond the limits of experience. A principle is transcendent when it not only removes these limits, but prescribes the overstepping of them.

II. Pure Reason as the Seat of Transcendental Illusion[1373]
(a) Reason in General

Reason, like understanding, is employed in two ways, formal or logical and real. The logical use of Reason consists in mediate inference, the real in the generation of concepts and principles. Reason is thus both a logical and a transcendental faculty, and we may therefore expect that its logical functions will serve as a clue to those that are transcendental. The argument which follows is extremely obscure. It is a foreshadowing in logical terms of a distinction which, as Kant himself indicates, cannot at this stage be adequately stated. The distinction may be extended and paraphrased as follows. Reason, generically taken as including both activities, is the faculty of principles, in distinction from understanding which is the faculty of rules.[1374] Principles, properly so-called, are absolutely a priori. Universals which imply the element of intuition must not, therefore, be ranked as principles in the strict sense. They are more properly to be entitled rules. A true principle is one that affords knowledge of the particulars which come under it, and which does so from its own internal resources, that is to say, through pure concepts. In other words, it yields a priori synthetic knowledge, and yet does so independently of all given experience. Now, as the Analytic has proved, knowledge obtained through understanding, whether in mathematical or in physical science, is never of this character. Its principles, even though originating in pure intuition or in the pure understanding, are valid only as conditions of possible experience, and are applicable only to such objects as can occur in the context of a sense-perception. That is to say, the understanding can never obtain synthetic knowledge through pure concepts. Though, for instance, it prescribes the principle that everything which happens must have a cause, that principle does not establish itself by means of the concepts which it contains, but only as being a presupposition necessary to the possibility of sense-experience. If, then, principles in the strict sense actually exist, they must be due to a faculty distinct from understanding, and will call for a deduction of a different character from that of the categories.

In the last paragraph but one of the section Kant indicates the doctrine which he is foreshadowing. The rules of understanding apply to appearances, prescribing the conditions under which the unity necessary to any and every experience can alone be attained. The principles of Reason do not apply directly to appearances, but only to the understanding, defining the standards to which its activities must conform, if a completely unified experience is to be achieved. Whereas the rules of understanding are the conditions of objective existence in space and time, principles in the strict sense are criteria for the attainment of such absoluteness and totality as will harmonise Reason with itself. Reason, determined by principles which issue from its own inherent nature, prescribes what the actual ought to be; understanding, proceeding from rules which express the conditions of possible experience, can yield knowledge only of what is found to exist in the course of sense-experience. The unity of Reason is Ideal; the unity of understanding is empirical. Principles are due to the self-determination of reason; the rules of understanding express the necessitated determinations of sense. The former demand a more perfect and complete unity than is ever attainable by means of the latter. Two passages from the Lose Blätter will help to define the distinction.

“There is a synthesis prototypon and a synthesis ectypon. The one ... simpliciter, a termino a priori, ... the other secundum quid, a termino a posteriori.... Reason advances from the universal to the particular, the understanding from the particular to the universal.... The first is absolute and belongs to the free or metaphysical, and also to the moral, employment of Reason.”[1375] “The principles of the synthesis of pure Reason are all metaphysical.... [They] are principles of the subjective unity of knowledge through Reason, i.e. of the agreement of Reason with itself.”[1376]

The chief interest of this section lies in its clear indication of the dual standpoint to which Kant is committing himself by the manner in which he formulates this distinction between rules and principles. The indispensableness of the latter, upon which Kant is prepared to insist, points to the Idealist interpretation of their grounds and validity; their derivation from mere concepts, without reference to or basis in experience, must, on the other hand, in view of the teaching of the Analytic, commit Kant to a sceptical treatment of their objective validity. In the above account, suggestions of the Idealist point of view are not entirely absent; but, on the whole, it is the sceptical view that is dominant. The Ideas of Reason can be justified as necessary only for the perfecting of experience, not as conditions of experience as such. They express a subjective interest in the attainment of unity, not conditions of the possibility of objective existence.

”[Civil Laws] are only limitations imposed upon our freedom in order that such freedom may completely harmonise with itself; hence they are directed to something which is entirely our own work, and of which we ourselves, through these concepts, can be the cause. But that objects in themselves, the very nature of things, should stand under principles, and should be determined according to mere concepts, is a demand which, if not impossible, is at least quite contrary to common sense [Widersinnisches].”[1377]

(b) The Logical Use of Reason[1378]

In this subsection Kant introduces the distinction between understanding and judgment which he has sought to justify in A 130 ff. = B 169 ff. By showing that inference determines the relation between a major premiss (due to the understanding) and the condition defined in the minor premiss (due to the faculty of judgment), he professes to obtain justification for classifying the possible forms of reasoning according to the three categories of relation. The general remark is added that the purpose of Reason, in its logical employment as inference, is to obtain the highest possible unity, through subsumption of all multiplicity under the smallest possible number of universals.

(c) The Pure Use of Reason[1379]

Kant here states the alternatives between which the Dialectic has to decide. Is Reason merely formal, arranging given material according to given forms of unity, or is it a source of principles which prescribe higher forms of unity than any revealed by actual experience? Further examination of its formal and logical procedure constrains us, Kant asserts, to adopt the latter position; and at the same time indicates how those principles must be interpreted, namely, as subjective laws that apply not to objects but only to the activities of the understanding.

In the first place, a syllogism is not directly concerned with intuitions, but only with concepts and judgments. This may be taken as indicating that pure Reason relates to objects only mediately by way of understanding and its judgments. The unity which it seeks is higher than that of any possible experience; it is a unity which must be constructed and cannot be given.[1380]

Secondly, Reason in its logical use seeks the universal condition of its judgment; and when such is not found in the major premiss proceeds to its discovery through a regressive series of prosyllogisms. In so doing it is obviously determined by a principle expressive of the peculiar function of Reason in its logical employment, namely, that for the conditioned knowledge of understanding the unconditioned unity in which that knowledge may find completion must be discovered. Such a principle is synthetic, since from analysis of the conception of the conditioned we can discover its relation to a condition, but never its relation to the unconditioned. That is a notion which falls entirely outside the sphere of the understanding, and which therefore demands a separate enquiry. How is the above a priori synthetic principle to be accounted for, if it cannot be traced to understanding? Has it objective, or has it merely subjective validity? And lastly, what further synthetic principles can be based upon it? Such are the questions to which Critical Dialectic must supply an answer. This Dialectic will be composed of two main divisions, the doctrine of “the transcendent concepts of pure Reason” and the doctrine of “transcendent and dialectical inferences of Reason.”

BOOK I
THE CONCEPTS OF PURE REASON[1381]

The distinction here drawn between concepts obtained by reflection and concepts gained by inference is a somewhat misleading mode of stating the fact that, whereas the categories of understanding condition experience and so make possible the unity of consciousness necessary to all reflection, or, in other words, are conditions of the material supplied for inference, the concepts of Reason are Ideal constructions which though in a certain sense resting upon experience none the less transcend it. The function of the Ideas is to organise experience in its totality; that of the categories is to render possible the sense-perceptions constitutive of its content. The former refer to the unconditioned, and though that is a conception under which everything experienced is conceived to fall, it represents a type of knowledge to which no actual experience can ever be adequate.

Conceptus ratiocinati—conceptus ratiocinantes. When such transcendent concepts possess “objective validity,” they are correctly inferred, and may be entitled conceptus ratiocinati. If, on the other hand, they are due to merely sophistical[1382] reasoning, they are purely fictitious, conceptus ratiocinantes. This distinction raises many difficulties. Kant’s intention cannot be to deny that the conceptus ratiocinati are “mere Ideas” (entia rationis)[1383]—for such is his avowed and constant contention—or that the inference to them is dialectical and is based upon a transcendental illusion. Two alternatives are open. He may mean that they are only valid when the results of such inference are Critically reinterpreted, and when the function of the Ideas is realised to be merely regulative; or his intention may be to mark off the Ideas, strictly so-called, which are inevitable and beneficial products of Reason, from the many idle and superfluous inventions of speculative thought. Kant’s concluding remark, that the questions at issue can be adequately discussed only at a later stage, may be taken as in the nature of an apology for the looseness of these preliminary statements, and as a warning to the reader not to insist upon them too absolutely. The participles ratiocinati and ratiocinantes[1384] are of doubtful latinity. The distinction of meaning here imposed upon them has not been traced in any other writer, and is perhaps Kant’s own invention.[1385]

SECTION I
IDEAS IN GENERAL[1386]

Kant connects his use of the term Idea with the meaning in which it is employed by Plato. He urges upon all true lovers of philosophy the imperative need of rescuing from misuse a term so indispensable to mark a distinction more vital than any other to the very existence of the philosophical disciplines.

”[For Plato] Ideas are the archetypes of the things themselves, and not, like the categories, merely keys to possible experiences. In his view they issued from the Supreme Reason, and from that source have come to be shared in by human Reason.... He very well realised that our faculty of knowledge feels a much higher need than merely to spell out appearances according to a synthetic unity, in order to read them as experience. He knew that our Reason naturally exalts itself to forms of knowledge which so far transcend the bounds of experience that no given empirical object can ever coincide with them, but which must none the less be recognised as having their own reality and which are by no means mere fictions of the brain.”[1387]

Plato found these ideas chiefly, though not exclusively, in the practical sphere. When moral standards are in question, experience is the mother of illusion.

“For nothing can be more injurious or more unworthy of a philosopher than the vulgar appeal to so-called adverse experience. Such experience would never have existed at all, if those institutions had been established at the proper time in accordance with Ideas, and if Ideas had not been displaced by crude conceptions which, just because they have been derived from experience, have nullified all good intentions.”[1388]

Even in the natural sphere Ideas which are never themselves adequately embodied in the actual must be postulated in order to account for the actual. Certain forms of existences “are possible only according to Ideas.”

“A plant, an animal, the orderly arrangement of the cosmos—probably, therefore, the entire natural world—clearly show that they are possible only according to Ideas, and that though no single creature in the conditions of its individual existence coincides with the Idea of what is most perfect in its kind—just as little as does any individual man exactly conform to the Idea of humanity, which he actually carries in his soul as the archetype of his actions—yet these Ideas are none the less completely determined in the Supreme Understanding, each as an individual and each as unchangeable, and are the original causes of things. But only the totality of things, in their interconnection as constituting the universe, is completely adequate to the Idea.”[1389]

Though Kant avows the intention of adapting the term Idea freely to the needs of his more Critical standpoint, all these considerations contribute to the rich and varied meanings in which he employs it.

Reflexionen and passages from the Lectures on Metaphysics may be quoted to show the thoroughly Platonic character of Kant’s early use of the term, and to illustrate its gradual adjustment to Critical demands.

“The Idea is the unity of knowledge, through which the manifold either of knowledge or of the object is possible. In the former, the whole of knowledge precedes its parts, the universal precedes the particular; in the latter, knowledge of the objects precedes their possibility, as e.g. in [objects that possess] order and perfection.”[1390] “That an object is possible only through a form of knowledge is a surprising statement; but all teleological relations are possible only through a form of knowledge [i.e. a concept].”[1391] “The Idea is single (individuum), self-sufficient, and eternal. The divinity of our soul is its capacity to form the Idea. The senses give only copies or rather apparentia.”[1392] “As the Understanding of God is the ground of all possibility, archetypes, Ideas, are in God.... The divine Intuitus contains Ideas according to which we ourselves are possible; cognitio divina est cognitio archetypa, and His Ideas are archetypes of things. The [corresponding] forms of knowledge possessed by the human understanding we may also entitle (in a comparative sense) archetypes or Ideas. They are those representations of our understanding which serve for judgment upon things.”[1393] “Idea is the representation of the whole in so far as it necessarily precedes the determination of the parts. It can never be empirically represented, because in experience we proceed from the parts through successive synthesis to the whole. It is the archetype of things, for certain objects are only possible through an Idea. Transcendental Ideas are those in which the absolute whole determines the parts in an aggregate or as series.”[1394] “The pure concepts of Reason have no exemplaria; they are themselves archetypes. But the concepts of our pure Reason have as their archetypes this Reason itself and are therefore subjective, not objective.”[1395] “The transcendental Ideas serve to limit the principles of experience, forbidding their extension to things in themselves, and showing that what is never an object of possible experience is not therefore a non-entity [Unding], and that experience is not adequate either to itself or to Reason, but always refers us further to what is beyond itself.”[1396] “The employment of the concept of understanding was immanent, that of the Ideas as concepts of objects is transcendent. But as regulative principles alike of the completion and of the limitation of our knowledge, they are Critically immanent.”[1397] “The difficulties of metaphysics all arise in connection with the reconciling of empirical principles with Ideas. The possibility of the latter cannot be denied, but neither can they be made empirically intelligible. The Idea is never a conceptus dabilis; it is not an empirically possible conception.”[1398]

Kant[1399] appends the following ‘Stufenleiter’ (ladder-like) arrangement of titles for the various kinds of representation. Representation (Vorstellung) is the term which he substitutes for the Cartesian and Lockian employment of the term idea, now reserved for use in its true Platonic meaning. To entitle such a representation as that of red colour an idea is, in Kant’s view, an intolerable and barbaric procedure; that representation is not even a concept of the understanding.

SECTION II
THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS[1400]

This section completes the metaphysical deduction of the Ideas. In the preceding sections on the logical and on the pure use of Reason, Kant has pointed out that Reason proceeds in accordance with the principle, that for the conditioned knowledge of understanding the unconditioned, in which it finds completion, must be discovered. This principle is synthetic, involving a concept which transcends the understanding; and as Reason in its logical use is merely formal, that concept must be due to Reason in its creative or transcendental activity. In the section before us Kant deduces from the three kinds of syllogism the three possible forms in which such an Idea of Reason can present itself. The deduction is, as already noted, wholly artificial, and masks Kant’s real method of obtaining the Ideas, namely, through combination of the unique concept of the unconditioned with the three categories of relation. The deduction is based upon an extremely ingenious analogy between the logical function of Reason in deductive inference and its transcendental procedure in prescribing the Ideal of unconditioned totality. In the syllogism the predicate of the conclusion is shown to be connected with its subject in accordance with a condition which is stated in its universality in the major premiss. Thus if the conclusion be: Caius is mortal, in constructing the syllogism, required to establish it, we seek for a conception which contains the condition under which the predicate is given—in this case the conception “man”—and we state that condition in its universality: All men are mortal. Under this major premiss is then subsumed Caius, the object dealt with: Caius is a man. And so indirectly, by reference to the universal condition, we obtain the knowledge that Caius is mortal. Universality, antecedently stated, is restricted in the conclusion to a specific object. Now what corresponds in the synthesis of intuition to the universality (universalitas) of a logical premiss is allness (universitas) or totality of conditions. The transcendental concept of Reason, to which the logical procedure is to serve as clue, can therefore be no other than that of the totality of conditions for any given conditioned. And as totality of conditions is equivalent to the unconditioned, this latter must be taken as the fundamental concept of Reason; the unconditioned is conceived as being the ground of the synthesis of everything conditioned. But there are three species of relation, and consequently there are three forms in which the concept of Reason seeks to realise its demand for the unconditioned: (1) through categorical synthesis in one subject, (2) through hypothetical synthesis of the members of a series, and (3) through disjunctive synthesis of the parts in one system. To these three correspond the three species of syllogism, categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive, in each of which thought passes through a regressive series of prosyllogisms back to an unconditioned: the first to a concept which stands for what is always a subject and never a predicate; the second to a presupposition which itself presupposes nothing further; and the third to such an aggregate of the members of the division as will make that division complete. It may be observed that in this proof the threefold specification of the concept of the unconditioned is really obtained directly from the categories of relation, or at least from the judgments of relation, and not from the corresponding species of syllogism.

Totality and unconditionedness, when taken as equivalent, become synonymous with the absolute.[1401] This last term, however, especially when taken as defining possibility and necessity, is ambiguous. The absolutely possible may signify either that which in itself, i.e. so far as regards its internal content, is possible; or else that which is in every respect and in all relations possible. The two meanings have come to be connected largely owing to the fact that the internally impossible is impossible in every respect. Otherwise, however, the two meanings fall completely apart. Absolute necessity and inner necessity are quite diverse in character. We must not, for instance, argue that the opposite of what is absolutely necessary must be inwardly impossible, nor consequently that absolute necessity must in the end reduce to an inner necessity. Examination will show that, in certain types of cases, not the slightest meaning can be attached to the phrase ‘inner necessity.’ As we possess the terms inner and logical to denote the first form of necessity, there is no excuse for employing the term absolute in any but the wider sense. That, Kant holds, is its original and proper meaning. The absolute totality to which the concept of Reason refers is that form of completeness which is in every respect unconditioned.

In A 326 = B 383 Kant’s mode of statement emphasises the connection of the Ideas with the categories of relation. Reason, he claims, “seeks to extend the synthetic unity, which is thought in the category, to the absolutely unconditioned.” Such positive content as the Ideas can possess lies in the experience which they profess to unify; in so far as they transcend experience and point to an Ideal completion that is not empirically attainable, they refer to things of which the understanding can have no concept. It is necessary, however, that they should present themselves in this absolute and transcendent form, since otherwise the understanding would be without stimulus and without guidance. Though mere Ideas, they are neither arbitrary nor superfluous. They regulate the understanding in its empirical pursuit of that systematic unity which it requires for its own satisfaction.

In A 327-8 = B 383-4 one and the same ground is assigned for entitling the Ideas transcendental and also transcendent, namely, that, as they surpass experience, no object capable of being given through the senses corresponds to them. But a difference would none the less seem to be implied in the connotation of the two terms. In being prescribed by the very nature of Reason, they are transcendental; as overstepping the limits of experience, they are transcendent. Kant’s use of the terms subject and object in this passage is also somewhat puzzling. ‘Object’ is employed in the metaphysical sense proper only from the pre-Critical standpoint of the Dissertation, as meaning an existence apprehended through pure thought. The term ‘subject’ receives a correspondingly un-Critical connotation. The further phrase “the merely speculative use of Reason” is somewhat misleading, even though we recognise that for Kant speculative and theoretical are synonymous terms; we should rather expect “Reason in its legitimate or Critical or directive function.” Kant’s intended meaning, however, is sufficiently clear. When we say that a concept of Reason is an Idea merely, we have in mind the degree to which it can be empirically verified. We are asserting that it prescribes an Ideal to which experience may be made to approach, but which it can never attain. It defines “a problem to which there is no solution.” In the practical sphere of morals, on the other hand, the Ideal of Reason must never be so described. Though only partially realisable, it is genuinely actual. Even those actions which imperfectly embody it none the less presuppose it as their indispensable condition. In two respects, therefore, as Kant points out, the statement that the transcendental concepts of Reason are merely Ideas calls for qualification. In the first place they are by no means “superfluous and void.” They supply a canon for the fruitful employment of understanding. And secondly, they may perhaps be found to make possible a transition from natural to moral concepts, and so to bring the Ideas of practical Reason into connection with the principles of speculative thought. The reader may again note the genuinely Platonic character of Kant’s use of the term Idea.

In A 330-1 = B 386-7 Kant returns to the problem of the metaphysical deduction, and analyses the nature of syllogistic reasoning. The analysis differs from that of A 321 ff. = C 377 ff. only in emphasising that when a conclusion is given as valid the totality of the premisses required for its establishment can be postulated as likewise given, and that when completely stated in the implied prosyllogisms the premisses form a regressive series. In this way Kant contrives to bring the logical process into closer connection with the transcendental principle, which he now definitively formulates as follows: When the conditioned is given, the series of conditions up to the unconditioned is likewise given. The series of antecedent conditions may either have a first term or may be incapable of such. In either case it has to be viewed as unconditioned, in the one case in virtue of its unconditioned beginning, in the other in its character as an unending and therefore unlimited series. In one or other form Reason demands that the unconditioned be recognised as underlying and determining everything conditioned.[1402]

class="chead"SECTION III
SYSTEM OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS[1403]

The three Ideas of Reason, as derived from the three kinds of syllogism, are now brought into connection with the three possible relations in which representations are found to stand: first, to the thinking subject; secondly, to objects as appearances; thirdly, to objects of thought in general. Kant argues that the completed totalities towards which Reason strives are likewise three in number. Reason seeks: (1) in regard to the subject known, as constituting the fact of inner experience, a representation of the self or soul that will render completely intelligible what is peculiar to the inner life; (2) in regard to the object known, a conception of the completed totality of the world of phenomena, the cosmos; (3) in regard to the ultimate synthesis of the subject known and the object known, such a conception of all existing things as will render intelligible the co-operation of mind and external nature in one experience. In this way Kant professes to obtain transcendental justification for the threefold division of metaphysical science into rational psychology, rational cosmology, and rational theology. The absolute unity of the thinking subject is dealt with by psychology, the totality of all appearances by cosmology, and the Being, which contains the condition of the possibility of all that can be thought, by theology.

In thus proceeding, Kant is assuming that the concepts of unconditioned substance and of unconditioned necessity can be interpreted only in spiritualist and theological terms.[1404] This assumption stands in direct conflict with what the history of philosophy records. The Absolute has frequently been materialistically defined, and, as Kant himself admits, we cannot prove that the thinking subject may not be naturalistically conditioned. Architectonic is again exercising its baleful influence. That the argument is lacking in cogency is indeed so evident that Kant takes notice of the deficiency,[1405] and promises that it will be remedied in the sequel. This promise he is unable to fulfil. Such further reasons as he is able to offer are of the same external character.[1406]

“Of these transcendental Ideas, strictly speaking, no objective deduction, such as we were able to give of the categories, is possible.”[1407] As Kant indicates by use of the phrase ‘strictly speaking,’ this statement is subject to modification. He himself formulates a transcendental deduction of the Ideas, as principles regulative of experience.[1408] The deduction from the three forms of syllogism, which Kant here entitles subjective, ought properly to be named ‘metaphysical.’[1409]

BOOK II
THE DIALECTICAL INFERENCES OF PURE REASON[1410]

CHAPTER I
THE PARALOGISMS OF PURE REASON[1411]

As rational psychology fails to distinguish between appearances and things in themselves, it identifies mere apperception with inner sense; the self in experiencing the succession of its inner states is supposed to acquire knowledge of its own essential nature. “I, as thinking, am an object of inner sense, and am entitled soul,” in contrast to the body which is an object of outer sense. Empirical psychology deals with the concrete detail of inner experience; rational psychology abstracts from all such special experiences, indeed from everything empirical, professing to establish its doctrine upon the single judgment, “I think.” That judgment has already been investigated in its connection with the problem of the possibility, within the field of experience, of synthetic a priori judgments. It has now to be considered as a possible basis for knowledge of the self as a thinking being (ein denkend Wesen) or soul (Seele).

Following the guiding thread of the table of categories, but placing them in what he regards as being, in this connection, the most convenient order, Kant obtains a “topic” or classification of the possible rubrics for the doctrines of a rational psychology: (1) the soul is substance; (2) is simple; (3) is numerically identical; (4) stands in relation to possible objects in space. Now all those four doctrines are, Kant holds, incapable of demonstration. The proofs propounded by rational psychology are logically imperfect, committing the logical fallacy which is technically named paralogism.[1412] The fallacy is not, however, of merely logical character. Had that been the case, it could never have gained such general currency. Certainly no metaphysical science, widely accepted by profound thinkers, could ever have come to be based upon it. The paralogism is transcendental in character, resting upon a transcendental ground. It represents an illusion which from any non-Critical standpoint is altogether unavoidable. Its dialectic is a natural dialectic, wrongly interpreted by the Schools, but not capriciously invented by them. The key to its proper treatment is first supplied by the results of the transcendental deduction. We are now called upon to apply these results in explanation of the occurrence of the paralogisms, and in judgment upon their false claims. Little that is really new is to be found in this chapter; but many of the established results of the Analytic receive interesting illustration, and are thereby set in a clearer light.

In rational psychology the “I think” is taken in its universal, or to use Kant’s somewhat misleading term, problematic aspect, that is to say, not as a judgment expressive of the self’s own existence but “in its mere possibility,”[1413] as representing the self-consciousness of all possible thinking beings. As we cannot gain a representation of thinking beings through outer experience, we are constrained to think them in terms of our own self-consciousness. The “I think” is thus taken as a universal judgment, expressing what belongs to the conception of thinking being in general. The judgment is so interpreted by rational psychology, “in order to see what predicates applicable to its subject (be that subject actually existent or not) may flow from so simple a judgment.”

In summarising what is directly relevant in the argument of the transcendental deduction, Kant emphasises that the I, as representation, is altogether empty of content.[1414]

“We cannot even say that it is a conception, but only that it is a bare (blosses) consciousness which accompanies all conceptions. Through this I or he or it (the thing) which thinks, nothing further is represented than a transcendental subject of the thoughts = x....”

It is apprehended only in its relation to the thoughts which are its predicates; apart from them we cannot form any conception whatever of it, but can only revolve in a perpetual circle, since any judgment upon it has already made use of its representation.[1415]

The patchwork character of the Critique, the artificial nature of the connections between its various parts, is nowhere more evident than in this section on the Paralogisms. According to the definition given of transcendental illusion, we naturally expect Kant’s argument to show that the Paralogisms rest upon a failure to distinguish between appearance and reality. As a matter of fact, the cause of their fallacy is traced in the first three Paralogisms solely to a failure to distinguish between the logical and the real application of the categories. The argument can indeed be restated so as to agree with the introductory sections of the Dialectic. But Kant’s manner of expounding the Paralogisms shows that this chapter must originally have been written independently of any intention to develop such teaching as that of the sections which in the ultimate arrangement of the Critique are made to lead up to it.[1416]

First Paralogism: of Substantiality.[1417]—Save for the phrase ‘subject in itself,’ there is, in Kant’s comment upon this Paralogism, not a word regarding the necessity of a distinction between appearance and reality, but only an insistence that the “I think” yields no knowledge of the thinking self. Consciousness of the self and knowledge of its underlying substance are by no means identical. The self, so far as it enters into consciousness, is a merely logical subject; the underlying substrate is that to which this self-consciousness and all other thoughts are due. It is in the light of this distinction that Kant discusses the substantiality of the subject. As expressive of the “I think,” the category of substance and attribute can be employed only to define the relation in which consciousness stands to its thoughts; it expresses the merely logical relation of a subject to its predicates. It tells us nothing regarding the nature of the “I,” save only that it is the invariable centre of reference for all thoughts. In order to know the self as substance, and so as capable of persisting throughout all change, and as surviving even the death of the body, we should require to have an intuition of it, and of such intuition there is not the slightest trace in the “I think.” It “signifies a substance only in Idea, not in reality.”[1418] As Kant adds later,[1419] the permanence and self-identity of the representation of the self justifies no argument to the permanence and self-identity of its underlying conditions. Inference from the nature of representation to the nature of the object represented is entirely illegitimate. In the equating of the two, and not, as the introduction to the Dialectic would lead us to expect, in a failure to distinguish appearance from reality, consists the paralogistic fallacy of this first syllogism.

Second Paralogism: of Simplicity.[1420]—We may follow Adickes[1421] in his analysis of A 351-62. (a) The original criticism, parallel to that of the first Paralogism, would seem to be contained in paragraphs five to nine. (b) The opening paragraphs, and (c) the concluding paragraphs, would seem, for reasons stated below, to be independent and later additions.

(a) The argument of the central paragraphs runs almost exactly parallel with the criticism of the first Paralogism, applying the same line of thought, in disproof of the assumed argument for the simplicity of the soul. It may be noted, in passing, that Kant here departs from his table of categories. There is no category of simplicity. The connection which he seeks to establish between the concept of simplicity and the categories of quality is arbitrary. It more naturally connects with the category of unity; but the category of unity is required for the third Paralogism. For explanation of the way in which he equates the concept of simplicity with the category of reality Kant is satisfied to refer the reader to the section on the second antinomy in which this same identification occurs.[1422] Indeed the simplicity here dwelt upon seems hardly distinguishable from substantiality, and therefore it is not surprising that Kant’s criticism of the second Paralogism should be practically identical with that of the first.[1423] Since the “I,” as logical subject of thought, signifies only a something in general, and embodies no insight into the constitution of this something, it is for that reason empty of all content, and consequently simple. “The simplicity of the representation of a subject is not eo ipso a knowledge of the simplicity of the subject itself....” The second Paralogism thus, in Kant’s view, falsely argues from the merely logical unity of the subject in representation to the actual simplicity of the subject in itself.

(b) One reason for regarding the first four paragraphs as a later addition is their opening reference to the introductory sections of the Dialectic, of which this chapter otherwise takes little or no account. This Paralogism is, Kant declares, “the Achilles of all the dialectical inferences in the pure doctrine of the soul,” meaning that it may well seem a quite invulnerable argument.[1424]

“It is no mere sophistical play contrived by a dogmatist in order to impart to his assertions a superficial plausibility (Schein), but an inference which appears to withstand even the keenest scrutiny and the most scrupulously exact investigation.”

The second paragraph is a very pointed restatement of a main supporting argument of this second Paralogism. This argument well deserves the eulogy with which Kant has ushered it in. It is as follows. The unity of consciousness can not be explained as due to the co-operative action of independent substances. Such a merely external effect as that of motion in a material body may be the resultant of the united motions of its parts. But it is otherwise with thought. For should that which thinks be viewed as composite, and the different representations, as, for instance, of the single words of a verse, be conceived as distributed among the several parts, a multiplicity of separate consciousnesses would result, and the single complex consciousness, that of the verse as a whole, would be rendered impossible. Consciousness cannot therefore—such is the argument—inhere in the composite. The soul must be a simple substance.[1425]

As there is no reference in this argument to the “I think,” the criticism cannot be that of the first Paralogism, nor that of the central paragraphs of this second Paralogism. Kant’s reply—as given in the third and fourth paragraphs—is in effect to refer the reader to the results of the Analytic, and is formulated in the manner of his Introduction to the Critique. The principle that multiplicity of representation presupposes absolute unity in the thinking subject can neither be demonstrated analytically from mere concepts, nor derived from experience. Being a synthetic a priori judgment, it can be established only by means of a transcendental deduction. But in that form it will define only a condition required for the possibility of consciousness; it can tell us nothing in regard to the noumenal nature of the thinking being. And, as Kant argues in the third Paralogism,[1426] there may be a possible analogy between thought and motion, though of a different kind from that above suggested.

The entire absence of all connection between the argument of these paragraphs and the argument of those which immediately follow upon them, at least suffices to show that this second Paralogism has not been written as a continuous whole; and taken together with the fact that the problem is here formulated in terms of the Introduction to the Critique, would seem to show that this part of the section is of comparatively late origin.

(c) The concluding paragraphs, which are of considerable intrinsic interest, also reflect an independent line of criticism. As the phrase “the above proposition”[1427] seems to indicate, they were not originally composed in this present connection. They give expression to Kant’s partial agreement with the line of argument followed by the rationalists, but also seek to show that, despite such partial validity, the argument does not lend support to any metaphysical extension of our empirical knowledge. In A 358 we have what may be a reference to the argument of the introductory sections of the Dialectic. The argument under criticism is praised as being “natural and popular,” “occurring even to the least sophisticated understanding,” and as leading it to view the soul as an altogether different existence from the body. The argument is as follows. None of the qualities proper to material existence, such as impenetrability or motion, are to be discovered in our inner experience. Nor can feelings, desires, thoughts, etc., be externally intuited. In view of these differences, we seem justified in asserting that the soul cannot be an appearance in space, and cannot therefore be corporeal. Kant replies by drawing attention to the fundamental Critical distinction between appearances and things in themselves.[1428] If material bodies, as apprehended, were things in themselves, the argument would certainly justify us in refusing to regard the soul and its states as of similar nature. But since, as the Aesthetic has shown, bodies, as known, are mere appearances of outer sense, the real question at issue is not that of the distinction between the soul and bodies in space, but of the distinction between the soul and that something which conditions all outer appearances.

“...this something which underlies the outer appearances and which so affects our sense that it obtains the representations of space, matter, shape, etc., this something, viewed as noumenon (or better, as transcendental object), might yet also at the same time serve as the subject of our thoughts....”[1429]

Thus the argument criticised serves only to enforce the very genuine distinction between inner and outer appearances; it justifies no assertion, either positive or negative, as to the nature of the soul or as to its relation to body in its noumenal aspect. The monadistic, spiritualist theory of material existence remains an open possibility, though only as an hypothesis incapable either of proof or of disproof. We cannot obtain, by way of inference from the character of our apperceptive consciousness, any genuine addition to our speculative insight.

Third Paralogism: of Personality.[1430]—Kant’s criticism again runs parallel with that of the preceding Paralogisms. The fallacy involved is traced to a confusion between the numerical identity of the self in representation and the numerical identity of the subject in itself. The logical subject of knowledge must, as the transcendental deduction has proved, think itself as self-identical throughout all its experiences. This is indeed all that the judgment “I think” expresses. It is mere identity, “I am I.” But from the identity of representation we must not argue to identity of the underlying self. So far as the unity of self-consciousness is concerned, there is nothing to prevent the noumenal conditions of the self from undergoing transformation so complete as to involve the loss of identity, while yet supporting the representation of an identical self.

“Although the dictum of certain ancient Schools, that everything in the world is in a flux and nothing permanent and abiding, cannot be reconciled with the admission of substances, it is not refuted by the unity of self-consciousness. For we are unable from our own consciousness to determine whether, as souls, we are permanent or not. Since we reckon as belonging to our identical self only that of which we are conscious, we must necessarily judge that we are one and the same throughout the whole time of which we are conscious. We cannot, however, claim that such a judgment would be valid from the standpoint of an outside observer. As the only permanent appearance which we meet with in the soul is the representation ‘I’ that accompanies and connects them all, we are unable to prove that this ‘I,’ a mere thought, may not be in the same state of flux as the other thoughts which are connected together by its means.”[1431]

And Kant adds an interesting illustration.[1432]

“An elastic ball which impinges on another similar ball in a straight line communicates to the latter its whole motion, and therefore its whole state (i.e. if we take account only of the positions in space). If, then, in analogy with such bodies, we postulate substances such that the one communicates to the other representations together with the consciousness of them, we can conceive a whole series of substances of which the first transmits its state together with its consciousness to the second, the second its own state with that of the preceding substance to the third, and this in turn the states of all the preceding substances together with its own consciousness and with their consciousness to another. The last substance would then be conscious of all the states of the substances, which had undergone change before its own change, as being its own states, because they would have been transferred to it together with the consciousness of them. And yet it would not have been one and the same person in all these states.”[1433]

The perversely Hegelian character of Caird’s and Watson’s manner of interpreting the Critique is especially evident in their treatment of the Paralogisms. They make not the least mention of this part of Kant’s teaching.

Kant employs a further argument which would seem to show that at the time when these paragraphs were written the general tendency of his thought was predominantly subjectivist in character. There are, he implies, as many different times as there are selves that represent time.[1434] The argument is as follows. As the “I think” is equivalent to “I am I,” we may say either that all time of which I am conscious is in me, or that I am conscious of myself as numerically identical in each and every part of it. In my individual consciousness, therefore, identity of my person is unfailingly present. But an observer, viewing me from the outside,[1435] represents me in the time of his own consciousness; and as the time in which he thus sets me is not that of my own thinking, the self-identity of my consciousness, even if he recognises its existence, does not justify him in inferring the objective permanence of my self.

The two concluding paragraphs seem to have been independently composed.[1436] They contribute nothing of importance.

Fourth Paralogism: of Ideality.[1437]—The main argument of this Paralogism, which contains the first edition refutation of idealism, has already been considered above.[1438] We require, therefore, only to treat of it in its connection with the other Paralogisms, and to note some few minor points that remain for consideration. Its argument differs from that of the other Paralogisms in that the fallacy involved is traced, in agreement with the requirements of the introductory sections of the Dialectic, to a failure to distinguish between appearances and things in themselves. Its connection with the table of categories is extremely artificial. In A 344 = B 402 the category employed is that of possibility, in A 404 and A 344 n. that of existence.[1439] Kant’s attempt to combine the problem here treated with that of the other Paralogisms can only be explained as due to the requirements of his architectonic.[1440] This Paralogism does not concern itself with the nature of the soul. It refers exclusively to the mode of existence to be ascribed to objective appearances. None the less, Kant contrives to bring it within the range of rational psychology in the following manner. He argues[1441] that rational psychologists are one and all adherents of empirical idealism. They confound appearances in space with things in themselves, and therefore assert that our knowledge of their existence is inferential and consequently uncertain. The errors of empirical idealism are thus bound up with the dogmatic assumptions of the rationalist position. They are traceable to its failure to distinguish between appearances and things in themselves. Such dogmatism may take the form of materialism or of ontological dualism, as well as of spiritualism.[1442] All three, in professing to possess knowledge of things in themselves, violate Critical principles. If the chief function of rational psychology consists in securing the conception of the soul against the onslaughts of materialism,[1443] that can be much more effectively attained through transcendental idealism.

“For, on [Critical] teaching, so completely are we freed from the fear that on the removal of matter all thought, and even the very existence of thinking beings, would be destroyed, that on the contrary it is clearly shown that if I remove the thinking subject the whole corporeal world must at once vanish, since it is nothing save appearance in the sensibility of our subject and a species of its representations.”[1444]

We do not, indeed, succeed in proving that the thinking self is in its existence independent of the “transcendental substrate”[1445] of outer appearances. But as both possibilities remain open, the admission of our ignorance leaves us free to look to other than speculative sources for proof of the independent and abiding existence of the self.

Reflection on the Whole of Pure Psychology.[1446]—This section affords Kant the opportunity of discussing certain problems which he desires to deal with, but is unable to introduce under the recognised rubrics of his logical architectonic.[1447] There are, Kant says, three other dialectical questions, essential to the purposes of rational psychology, grounded upon the same transcendental illusion (confusion of appearances with things in themselves), and soluble in similar fashion: (1) as to the possibility of the communion of soul and body, i.e. of the state of the soul during the life of the body; (2) as to the beginning of this association, i.e. of the soul in and before birth; (3) as to the termination of this association, i.e. of the soul in and after the death of the body. Kant treats these three problems from the extreme subjectivist standpoint, inner and outer sense being distinguished and related in the manner peculiar to the first edition. The contrast between mind and body is a difference solely between the appearances of inner and those of outer sense. Both alike exist only in and through the thinking subject, though the latter

“...have this deceptive property that, representing objects in space, they as it were detach themselves from the soul and appear to hover outside it.”[1448]

The problem, therefore, of the association of soul and body, properly understood, is not that of the interaction of the soul with other known substances of an opposite nature, but only

“...how in a thinking subject outer intuition, namely, that of space, with its filling in of figure and motion, is possible. And that is a question which no human being can possibly answer. The gap in our knowledge ... can only be indicated through the ascription of outer appearances to that transcendental object which is the cause of this species of representations, but of which we can have no knowledge whatsoever and of which we shall never acquire any conception.”[1449]

The familiar problem of the association of mind and body is thus due to a transcendental illusion which leads the mind to hypostatise representations, viewing them as independent existences that act upon the senses and generate our subjective states. The motions in space, which are merely the expression in terms of appearance of the influence of the transcendental object upon “our senses,”[1450] are thus wrongly regarded as the causes of our sensations. They themselves are mere representations, and, as Kant implies, are for that reason incapable of acting as causes. In this section, it may be noted in passing, there is not the least trace of the phenomenalist teaching, according to which spatial objects are viewed as acting upon the bodily sense-organs. Kant here denies all interaction of mind and body, and recognises only the interaction of their noumenal conditions. Appearances as such can never have causal efficacy. The position represented is pure subjectivism, and very significantly goes along with Kant’s earlier doctrine of the transcendental object.[1451]

The dogmatic character of the interaction theory appears very clearly, as Kant proceeds to point out, in the objections which have been made to it, whether by those who substitute for it the theories of pre-established harmony and occasionalism, or by those who adopt a sceptical non-committal attitude. Their objections rest upon exactly the same presupposition as the theory which they are attacking. To demonstrate the impossibility of interaction, they must be able to show that the transcendental object is not the cause of outer appearances; and owing to the limitations of our knowledge that is entirely beyond our powers. Failing, however, to draw a distinction between appearances and things in themselves, they have not realised the actual nature of the situation, and accordingly have directed their objections merely to showing that mind and body, taken as independent existences, must not be viewed as capable of interaction.

The Critical standpoint also supplies the proper formulation for the other two problems—a formulation which in itself decides the degree and manner of our possible insight in regard to them. The view that the thinking subject may be capable of thought prior to all association with the body should be stated as asserting

“...that prior to the beginning of that species of sensibility in virtue of which something appears to us in space, those transcendental objects, which in our present state appear to us as bodies, could have been intuited in an entirely different manner.”[1452]

The view that the soul, upon the cessation of all association with the corporeal world, may still continue to think, will similarly consist in the contention

“...that if that species of sensibility, in virtue of which transcendental objects (which in our present state are entirely unknown) appear to us as a material world, should cease, all intuition of them would not for that reason be removed; but that it would still be possible that those same unknown objects should continue to be known [sic] by the thinking subject, though no longer, indeed, in the quality of bodies.”[1453]

Not the least ground, Kant claims, can be discovered by means of speculation in support of such assertions. Even their bare possibility cannot be demonstrated. But it is equally impossible to establish any valid objection to them. Since we cannot pretend to knowledge of things in themselves, a modest acquiescence in the limitations of experience alone becomes us.

The remaining paragraphs (A 396-405) contain nothing that is new. They merely repeat points already more adequately stated. A 401-2, which deals with the nature of apperception and its relation to the categories, has been considered above.[1454] The argument that, as the self must presuppose the thought of itself in knowing anything, it cannot know itself as object, is also commented upon above.[1455]

The statement[1456] that the determining self (the thinking, das Denken) is to be distinguished from the determinable self (the thinking subject) as knowledge from its object, should be interpreted in the light of Kant’s argument in the second and third Paralogisms, that the simplicity and self-identity of the representation of an object must not be taken as knowledge of simplicity or numerical identity in the object represented.

The analysis given in A 402-3 of the fallacy involved in the Paralogisms is, as Adickes has pointed out,[1457] confused and misleading. Kant here declares that in the major premiss of each syllogism the assertion is intended in the merely logical sense, and therefore as applicable only to the subject in representation, but in the minor premiss and conclusion is asserted of the subject as bearer of consciousness, i.e. in itself. But were that so, the minor premiss would be a false assertion, and the false conclusion would not be traceable to logical fallacy. Kant gives the correct statement of his position in B 410-11.[1458] The attempted justification of the fourfold arrangement of the Paralogisms with which the section concludes suffers from the artificiality of Kant’s logical architectonic.

SECOND EDITION STATEMENT OF THE PARALOGISMS[1459]

Except for the introductory paragraphs, which remain unaltered, the chapter is completely recast in the second edition. The treatment of the four Paralogisms which in the first edition occupied thirty-three pages is reduced to five. The problems of the mutual interaction of mind and body, of its prenatal character and of its immortality, the discussion of which in the first edition required some ten pages, are now disposed of in a single paragraph (B 426-7). The remaining twenty-two pages of the new chapter are almost entirely devoted to more or less polemical discussion of criticisms which had been passed upon the first edition. These had been in great part directed against Kant’s doctrine of apperception and of inner sense, and so could fittingly be dealt with in connection with the problems of rational psychology. As Benno Erdmann has suggested,[1460] B 409-14 and 419-21 would seem to be directed against Ulrichs’[1461] Leibnizian position and especially against his metaphysical interpretation of apperception. B 428-30 treats of the difficulties raised by Pistorius[1462] in regard to the existence of the self. B 414-15 is similarly polemical, but in this case Kant cites his opponent, Mendelssohn, by name. Throughout, as in the alterations made in the chapter on Phenomena and Noumena, Kant insists more strongly than in the first edition upon the unknowableness of the self, and on the difference between thought and knowledge. The pure forms of thought are not, Kant now declares, concepts of objects, that is, are not categories,[1463] but “merely logical functions.” Though this involves no essential doctrinal change, it indicates the altered standpoint from which Kant now regards his problem. Its significance has already been dwelt upon.[1464]

In formulating the several arguments of the four Paralogisms, Kant develops and places in the forefront a statement which receives only passing mention in A 352-3, 362, 366-7, 381-2, namely, that the truths contained in the judgments of rational psychology find expression in merely identical (i.e. analytic) propositions. This enables Kant to formulate both the Paralogisms and his criticisms thereof in much briefer and more pointed fashion. In each case the Paralogism, as he shows, substitutes a synthetic a priori judgment, involving an extension of our knowledge and a reference to the noumenal self, for the given judgment which, in so far as it is valid, is always a merely analytic restatement of the purely formal “I think.” From the very start also, Kant introduces the distinctions of his own Critical teaching, especially that between thinking and intuiting, and that between the determining and the determinable self.

First Paralogism.—That the I which thinks must always in thought be viewed as subject and not as mere predicate, is an identical proposition. It must not be taken as meaning that the subject which underlies thought is an abiding substance. This latter proposition is of much wider scope, and would involve such data (in this case entirely lacking) as are required for the establishment of a synthetic a priori judgment.

Second Paralogism.—That the I of apperception and so of all thought is single and cannot be resolved into a multiplicity of subjects, is involved in the very conception of thought, and is therefore an analytic proposition. It must not be interpreted as signifying that the self is a simple substance. For the latter assertion is again a synthetic proposition, and presupposes for its possibility an intuition by the self of its own essential nature. As all our intuitions are merely sensuous, that cannot be looked for in the “I think.”

“It would, indeed, be surprising if what in other cases requires so much labour to discover—namely, what it is, of all that is presented by intuition, that is substance, and further, whether this substance is simple (e.g. in the parts of matter)—should be thus directly given me, as if by revelation, in the poorest of all representations.”[1465]

We may here observe how the practice, adopted by Caird, of translating Anschauung by ‘perception’ has misled him into serious misunderstanding of Kant’s teaching. It has caused him[1466] to interpret Kant as arguing that we have no knowledge of the self because we can have no sensuous perception of it. Kant’s argument rather is that as all human “intuition” is sensuous, we are cut off from all possibility of determining our noumenal nature. We are thrown back upon mere concepts which, as yielding only analytic propositions, cannot extend our insight beyond the limits of sense-experience. The term ‘intuition’ is much broader in meaning than the term ‘perception’; it can also be employed as equivalent to the phrase ‘immediate apprehension.’[1467] The grounds for Kant’s contention that we have no intuition or immediate knowledge of the self are embodied in, and inspire, his doctrine of inner sense.[1468] It may also be noted that in B 412 Kant, speaking of the necessity of intuition for knowledge of the self, uses the unusual phrase ‘a permanent intuition’—a phrase which, so far as I have observed, he nowhere employs in dealing with the intuition that conditions the sense perception of material bodies.[1469] Its employment here may perhaps be due to the fact that its implied reference is not to a given sensuous manifold but to some form of immediate apprehension, capable of revealing the permanent nature of the noumenal self.

Third Paralogism.—That I am identical with myself throughout the consciousness of my manifold experiences, is likewise an analytic proposition obtainable by mere analysis of the “I think.” And since that form of consciousness, as stated in the criticism of the preceding Paralogism, is purely conceptual, containing no element of intuition, no judgment based solely upon it can ever be taken as equivalent to the synthetic proposition that the self, as thinking being, is an identical substance.

Fourth Paralogism.—This Paralogism is somewhat altered. As noted above,[1470] the problem dealt with in the first edition concerns the outer world, and only quite indirectly the nature of the self. In the second edition that argument is restated,[1471] and is more properly located within the Analytic. The argument which now takes its place runs parallel with that of the three preceding Paralogisms. The assertion that I distinguish my own existence as a thinking being from other things outside me, including thereunder my own body, is an analytic proposition, since by other things is meant things which I think as different from myself.

“But I do not thereby learn whether this consciousness of myself would be at all possible apart from things outside me through which representations are given to me, and whether, therefore, I can exist merely as thinking being (i.e. without existing in human form).”

In B 417-18 Kant points out that rational psychology, in asserting that the self can be conscious apart from all consciousness of outer things, commits itself to the acceptance of problematic idealism. If consciousness of outer objects is not necessary to consciousness of self, there can be no valid method of proving their existence. In the fourth Paralogism of the first edition, the inter-dependence of rational psychology and empirical idealism is also dwelt upon, but is there traced to a confusion of appearances with things in themselves.[1472]

B 410-11.—The correct formulation is here given of what in the first edition[1473] is quite incorrectly stated.[1474] A paralogism is a syllogism which errs in logical form (as contrasted with a syllogism erring in matter, i.e. the premisses of which are false). In the paralogisms of Rational Psychology, the logical fallacy committed is that of ambiguous middle, or as Kant names it, the sophisma figurae dictionis. In the major premiss the middle term is used as referring to real existence, in the minor only as expressive of the unity of consciousness.

Refutation of Mendelssohn’s Proof of the Permanence of the Soul.[1475]—Mendelssohn’s argument is that the soul, as it does not consist of parts,[1476] cannot disappear gradually by disintegration into its constituent elements. If, therefore, it perishes, it must pass out of existence suddenly; at one moment it will exist, at the next moment it will be non-existent. But, Mendelssohn maintains, for three closely connected reasons this would seem to be impossible. In the first place, the immediate juxtaposition of directly opposed states is never to be met with in the material world. Complete opposites, such as day and night, waking and sleeping, never follow upon one another abruptly, but only through a series of intermediate states.[1477] Secondly, among the opposites which material processes thus bridge over, the opposition of being and not-being is never to be found. Only by a miracle can a material existence be annihilated.[1478] If, therefore, empirical evidence is to be allowed as relevant, we must not assert of the invisible soul what is never known to befall the material existences of the visible world. Thirdly—the only part of Mendelssohn’s argument which Kant mentions—the sudden cessation of the soul’s existence would also violate the law of the continuity of time.[1479] Between any two moments there is always an intermediate time in which the one moment passes continuously into the other.

Kant’s reply to this third part of Mendelssohn’s argument is that though the soul must not be conceived as perishing suddenly, it may pass out of existence by a continuous diminution through an infinite number of smaller degrees of intensive reality; and in support of this view he maintains the very doubtful position that clearness and obscurity of representation are not features of the contents apprehended, but only of the intensity of the consciousness directed upon them.[1480]

B 417-22.—Kant here points out that rational psychology, as above expounded, proceeds synthetically, starting from the assertion of the substantiality of the soul and proceeding to the proof that its existence is independent of outer things. But it may proceed in the reverse fashion, analytically developing the implications supposed to be involved in the “I think,” viewed as an existential judgment, i.e. as signifying “I exist thinking.” Kant restates the argument in this analytic form in order, as it would seem, to secure the opportunity of replying to those criticisms of his teaching in the first edition which concern his doctrine of apperception and his employment of the categories, especially of the category of existence, in relation to the self. What is new and important in these pages, and also in the connected passages in B 428-30, has been discussed above.[1481]

B 419-20.—After remarking that simplicity or unity is involved in the very possibility of apperception, Kant proceeds to argue that it can never be explained from a strictly materialist standpoint, since nothing that is real in space is ever simple. Points are merely limits, and are not therefore themselves anything that can form part of space. The passage as a whole would seem to be directed against the Leibnizian teaching of Ulrichs.[1482]

B 426-7.—Kant makes a remark to which nothing in his argument yields any real support, namely, that the dialectical illusion in rational psychology is due to the substitution of an Idea of reason for the quite indeterminate concept of a thinking being in general. As is argued below,[1483] the assumption which he is here making that the concept of the self is an a priori and ultimate Idea of pure Reason, cannot be regarded as a genuine part of his Critical teaching.

B 427-8 touches quite briefly upon questions more fully and adequately treated in the first edition. The scanty treatment here accorded to them would seem to indicate, as Benno Erdmann remarks,[1484] that the problem of the interaction of mind and body which so occupied Kant’s mind from 1747 to 1770 has meantime almost entirely lost interest for him. The problem of immortality remains central, but it is now approached from the ethical side.

In B 421 and B 423-6 Kant draws from his criticism of the Paralogisms the final conclusion that the metaphysical problems as to the nature and destiny of the self are essentially practical problems. When approached from a theoretical standpoint, as curious questions to be settled by logical dialectic, their speculative proof

“...so stands upon the point of a hair, that even the schools preserve it from falling only so long as they keep it unceasingly spinning round like a top; even in their own eyes it yields no abiding foundation upon which anything could be built.”[1485] “Rational psychology exists not as doctrine, ... but only as discipline. It sets impassable limits to speculative reason in this field, and thus keeps us, on the one hand, from throwing ourselves into the arms of soulless materialism, or, on the other hand, from losing ourselves in an unsubstantial spiritualism which can have no real meaning for us in this present life. But though it furnishes no positive doctrine, it reminds us that we should regard this refusal of Reason to give satisfying response to our inquisitive probings into what is beyond the limits of this present life as a hint from Reason to divert our self-knowledge from fruitless and extravagant speculation to its fruitful practical employment.”[1486] “The proofs which are serviceable for the world at large preserve their entire value undiminished, and indeed, upon the surrender of these dogmatic pretensions, gain in clearness and in natural force. For Reason is then located in its own peculiar sphere, namely the order of ends, which is also at the same time an order of nature; and since it is in itself a practical faculty which is not bound down to natural conditions, it is justified in extending the order of ends, and therewith our own existence, beyond the limits of experience and of life.”[1487]

Then follows brief indication of the central teaching of the Metaphysics of Ethics and of the two later Critiques. Through moral values that outweigh all considerations of utility and happiness, we become conscious of an inner vocation which inspires feelings of sublimity similar to those which are aroused by contemplation of the starry firmament; and to the verities thus disclosed we can add the less certain but none the less valuable confirmation yielded by natural beauty and design, and by the conformity of nature to our intellectual demands.

“Man’s natural endowments—not merely his talents and the impulses to employ them, but above all else the Moral Law within him—go so far beyond all utility and advantage which he may derive from them in this present life, that he learns thereby to prize the mere consciousness of a righteous will as being, apart from all advantageous consequences, apart even from the shadowy reward of posthumous fame, supreme over all other values; and so feels an inner call to fit himself, by his conduct in this world, and by the sacrifice of many of its advantages, for being a citizen of a better world upon which he lays hold in Idea. This powerful and incontrovertible proof is reinforced by our ever-increasing knowledge of purposiveness in all that we see around us, and by a glimpse of the immensity of creation, and therefore also by the consciousness of a certain illimitableness in the possible extension of our knowledge and of a striving commensurate therewith. All this still remains to us, though we must renounce the hope of ever comprehending, from the mere theoretical knowledge of ourselves, the necessary continuance of our existence.”[1488]

IS THE NOTION OF THE SELF A NECESSARY IDEA OF REASON?

One point of great importance must be dwelt upon before we pass from the Paralogisms. Though the negative consequences which follow from the teaching of the objective deduction are here developed in the most explicit manner, Kant does not within the limits of this chapter, in either edition, make any further reference to the doctrine expounded in the introductory sections of the Dialectic,[1489] viz. that the notion of the self as an immortal being is a necessary Idea of human Reason. The reader is therefore left under the impression that that doctrine is unaffected by the destructive criticism passed upon rational psychology, and that it still survives as an essential tenet of the Critical philosophy. And he is confirmed in this view when he finds the doctrine reappearing in the Appendix to the Dialectic and in the Methodology. The Idea of the self is there represented as performing a quite indispensable, regulative function in the development of the empirical science of psychology. Now it is one thing to maintain the existence of Ideal demands of Reason for unity, system and unconditionedness, and to assert that it is in virtue of these demands that we are led, in the face of immense discouragement and seeming contradictions, to reduce the chance collocations and bewildering complexities of ordinary experience to something more nearly approximating to what Reason prescribes. But it is a very different matter when Kant claims that in any one sphere, such as that of psychology, the unity and the unconditionedness must necessarily be of one predetermined type. He is then injecting into the Ideals that specific guidance which only the detail of experience is really capable of supplying. He is proving false to his own Critical empiricism, in which no function is ascribed to Reason that need in any way conflict with the autonomy of specialist research; and he is also violating his fundamental principle that the a priori can never be other than purely formal. Indeed, when Kant discloses somewhat more in detail what he means by the regulative function of the Idea of the self, the ambiguity of his statements reveals the unconsidered character of this part of his teaching. It is the expression only of a preconception, and has eluded the scrutiny of his Critical method largely because of the protective colouring which its admirable adaptation to the needs of his architectonic confers upon it. If, for instance, we compare the three passages in which it is expounded in the Appendix to the Dialectic, we find that Kant himself alternates between the authoritative prescription to psychology of a spiritualist hypothesis and what in ultimate analysis, when ambiguities of language are discounted, amounts simply to the demand for the greatest possible simplification of its complex phenomena. The passages are as follows.

“In conformity with these Ideas as principles we shall first, in psychology, connect in inner experience all appearances, all actions and receptivity of our mind, as if (als ob) the mind were a simple substance which persists with personal identity (in this life at least), while its states, to which those of the body belong only as outer conditions, are in continual change.”[1490]

“...in the human mind we have sensation, consciousness, imagination, memory, wit, power of discrimination, pleasure, desire, etc. Now, to begin with, a logical maxim requires that we should reduce, so far as may be possible, this seeming diversity, by comparing these with one another and detecting their hidden identity. We have to enquire whether imagination combined with consciousness may not be the same thing as memory, wit, power of discrimination, and perhaps even identical with understanding and Reason. Though logic is not capable of deciding whether a fundamental power actually exists, the Idea of such a power is the problem involved in a systematic representation of the multiplicity of powers. The logical principle of Reason calls upon us to bring about such unity as completely as possible; and the more appearances of this or that power are found to be identical with one another, the more probable it becomes that they are simply different manifestations of one and the same power, which may be entitled, relatively speaking, their fundamental power. The same is done with the other powers. The relatively fundamental powers must in turn be compared with one another, with a view to discovering their harmony, and so bringing them nearer to a single radical, i.e. absolutely fundamental, power. But this unity of Reason is purely hypothetical. We do not assert that such a power must necessarily be met with, but that we must seek it in the interest of Reason, that is, of establishing certain principles for the manifold rules which experience may supply to us. We must endeavour, wherever possible, to bring in this way systematic unity into our knowledge.”[1491]

In the third of the Appendix passages these two views are confusedly combined. Kant is insisting that an Idea never asserts, even as an hypothesis, the existence of a real thing.

”[An Idea] is only the schema of the regulative principle by which Reason, so far as lies in its power, extends systematic unity over the whole field of experience. The first object of such an Idea is the ‘I’ itself, viewed simply as thinking nature or soul. If I am to investigate the properties with which a thinking being exists in itself, I must interrogate experience. I cannot even apply any one of the categories to this object, except in so far as its schema is given in sense intuition. But I never thereby attain to a systematic unity of all appearances of inner sense. Instead, then, of the empirical concept (of that which the soul actually is), which cannot carry us far, Reason takes the concept of the empirical unity of all thought; and by thinking this unity as unconditioned and original, it forms from it a concept of Reason, i.e. the Idea of a simple substance, which, unchangeable in itself (personally identical), stands in association with other real things outside it; in a word, the Idea of a simple self-subsisting intelligence. Yet in so doing it has nothing in view save principles of systematic unity in the explanation of the appearances of the soul. It is endeavouring to represent all determinations as existing in a single subject, all powers, so far as possible, as derived from a single fundamental power, all change as belonging to the states of one and the same permanent being, and all appearances in space as completely different from the actions of thought. The simplicity and other properties of substance are intended to be only the schema of this regulative principle, and are not presupposed as the real ground of the properties of the soul. For these may rest on altogether different grounds of which we can know nothing. The soul in itself could not be known through these assumed predicates, not even if we regarded them as absolutely valid in regard to it. For they constitute a mere Idea which cannot be represented in concreto. Nothing but advantage can result from the psychological Idea thus conceived, if only we take heed that it is not viewed as more than a mere Idea, and that it is therefore taken as valid only in its bearing on the systematic employment of Reason in determining the appearances of our soul. For no empirical laws of bodily appearances, which are of a totally different kind, will then intervene in the explanation of what belongs exclusively to inner sense. No windy hypotheses of generation, extinction, and palingenesis of souls will be permitted. The consideration of this object of inner sense will thus be kept completely pure and unmixed, without employing heterogeneous properties. Also, Reason’s investigations will be directed to reducing the grounds of explanation in this field, so far as may be possible, to a single principle. All this will be best obtained (indeed is obtainable in no other way) through such a schema, viewed as if (als ob) it were a real being. The psychological Idea, moreover, can signify nothing but the schema of a regulative principle. For were I to enquire whether the soul in itself is of spiritual nature, the question would have no meaning. In employing such a concept I not only abstract from corporeal nature, but from nature in general, i.e. from all predicates of a possible experience, and therefore from all conditions for thinking an object for such a concept: yet only as related to an object can it be said to have a meaning.”[1492]

The last passage would seem to indicate that Kant has still another and only partially avowed reason for insisting upon a special and spiritualist Idea, as regulative of empirical psychology. It is necessary, he would seem to argue, in order to mark off the peculiar nature of its subject matter, and to warn us against attempting to explain its phenomena in the mechanistic manner of physical science. But if that is Kant’s intention, he has failed to formulate the position in any really tenable way. It is impossible to maintain, as he here does, that “no empirical laws of bodily appearances [can] intervene in the explanation of what belongs exclusively to inner sense.”[1493] Indeed, in the immediately following sentences, he very clearly indicates how completely such a position conflicts with his own real teaching. To think away the corporeal is to think away all experience. Experience is not dualistically divided into separate worlds. It is one and single, and the principle of causality rules universally throughout, connecting inner experiences of sense, feeling, and desire, with their outer conditions, organic and physical.[1494] Thus Kant’s retention of the Idea of the self is chiefly of interest as revealing the strength and tenacity of his spiritualist leanings. We may judge of the disinterestedness and courage of his thinking by the contrary character of his pre-conceptions. For even when they have been shown to be theoretically indemonstrable, they continue to retain by honorific title the dignity from which they have been deposed. The full force of the objections is none the less recognised.

“The simplicity of substance ... is not presupposed as the real ground of the properties of the soul. For these may rest on altogether different grounds of which we can know nothing.”

That, however, is only Kant’s unbiassed estimate of the theoretical evidence; it is not an expression of his own personal belief.

CHAPTER II
THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON[1495]

This introduction summarises the preceding argument, and distinguishes the new problems of Antinomy from those of the Paralogisms. In rational psychology pure Reason attains, as it were, euthanasia; in the antinomies an entirely different situation is disclosed. For though rational cosmology is able to expound itself in a series of demonstrated theses, its teaching stands in irreconcilable conflict with the actual nature of appearances, as expressed through a series of antitheses which are demonstrable in an equally cogent manner.

SECTION I
SYSTEM OF THE COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS[1496]

The first eight paragraphs of this section are of great textual interest. They must have been written at a time when Kant still intended to expound his entire criticism of metaphysical science in the form of a doctrine of antinomy. For they define the Ideas of Reason as exclusively cosmological,[1497] and give a very different explanation of their origin from that which has been expounded in the preceding chapters. Evidently, therefore, this part of the section must have been written prior to Kant’s formulation of the metaphysical deduction from the three species of syllogism. This is supported by the fact that the argument begins anew, just as if the matter had not previously been discussed; and that, though a new view of the nature of Reason is propounded, there is not the least mention of the more Idealist view which it displaces. Reason, Kant here teaches, is not a faculty separate from the understanding, and does not therefore produce any concept peculiar to itself. Reason is simply a name for the understanding in so far as it acts independently of sensibility, and seeks, by means of its pure forms, in abstraction from all empirical limitations, to grasp the unconditioned. “The transcendental Ideas are in reality nothing but categories extended to the unconditioned.” The intelligible, as thus conceived by the understanding, expresses itself, as he later shows, in a series of theses; while the sensuous expresses its opposite and conflicting character in a series of antitheses.

Yet not all categories yield a concept of the unconditioned. That is possible only to those which concern themselves with a series of members conditioning and conditioned, and in reference to which, therefore, the postulate of an unconditioned would seem to be legitimate, viz.: (1) unconditioned quantity in space and time; (2) unconditioned quality (indivisibility and simplicity) of reality in space (matter); (3) unconditioned causality of appearances; (4) unconditioned necessity of appearances. As this arrangement is determined by the needs of Kant’s architectonic, no detailed comment is here called for. Its consequences we shall have ample opportunity to consider later. As already noted, Kant’s statement in A 414 = B 441, that “the category of substance and accident does not lend itself to a transcendental Idea,” shows very clearly that, at the time when he composed this passage, he had not yet bethought himself of placing a separate and independent Idea at the basis of rational psychology. But as Kant here strives to follow the fourfold arrangement of the categories, the content of these paragraphs must either have been later recast or have been composed in the interval between his discovery of the metaphysical deduction of the categories and his formulation of the corresponding deduction of the Ideas from the three forms of syllogism. It may also be observed that the derivation of the cosmological Idea from the hypothetical syllogism, which embodies only the category of causality, clashes with the above specification of it in terms of all four rubrics of category.

The remaining paragraphs (ninth to thirteenth) of this section must be of later date, as they are developed in view of the independent treatment of the theological Ideal.[1498] (Adickes, in dating the ninth and tenth paragraphs with the preceding instead of with the concluding paragraphs, would seem to have overlooked this fact.) In order to justify the treatment of the Ideas of a first cause and of unconditioned necessity, as cosmological, Kant now asserts that the antinomies concern only appearances—“our [cosmical] Ideas being directed only to what is unconditioned among the appearances,”[1499] and not to noumena.[1500] His explanation of the nature of transcendental illusion, and of the antinomies in particular, as being due to a failure to distinguish between appearance and things in themselves, is thus ruthlessly sacrificed to considerations of architectonic. Kant could not, of course, consistently hold to the position here adopted; but it causes him from time to time, especially in dealing with the third and fourth antinomies, to make statements which tend seriously to obscure the argument and to bewilder the careful reader.

Kant is far from clear as to the relation in which the concepts of the totality of conditions and of the unconditioned stand to one another.[1501] In A 322 = B 379 they would seem to be taken as exactly equivalent concepts. In A 416-17 = B 443-5 they are apparently regarded as distinct, the former only leading up to the latter. But discussion of this important point must meantime be deferred.[1502]

SECTION II
ANTITHETIC OF PURE REASON[1503]

”[Antithetic] is the conflict between two apparently dogmatic judgments [Erkenntnisse] to neither of which can we ascribe any superior claim to acceptance over the other, i.e. by Antithetic I mean a thesis, together with an antithesis.” “Transcendental Antithetic is an investigation of the antinomy of pure Reason, its causes and outcome.”

The very existence of such antinomy presupposes a twofold condition: first, that it does not refer to a gratuitous but to an inevitable problem of human Reason, “one which it must necessarily encounter in its natural progress”; and secondly, that the thesis and the antithesis together generate a “natural and inevitable illusion,” which continues to persist even after its deceptive power has been clearly disclosed. Such conflict is caused by the fact that Reason seeks a unity which transcends the understanding, and which nevertheless is meant to conform to the conditions of the understanding. If the unity is adequate to the demands of Reason, it is too great for the understanding; if it is commensurate with the understanding, it is too small for Reason.[1504] The theses express the higher unity at which Reason aims; the antitheses are the judgments to which the understanding is constrained by the nature of the appearances with which both it and Reason profess to deal. If we hold to Reason, we make assertions contradictory of the appearances; while if we place reliance on the understanding, Reason condemns our conclusions.

This conflict is limited to those few problems above enumerated in which we are called upon to complete a given series.[1505] Since totality, whether in the form of a first beginning of the series or as an actual infinity of the whole series, can never itself be experienced, these are problems in regard to which experience can be of no assistance to us. It can neither confirm nor refute any particular solution. The only possible method of deciding between the competing claims is to watch or even to provoke the conflict, in the hope that we may finally be able to detect some misunderstanding, and so to resolve the conflict to the satisfaction of both the litigants. Such is Kant’s description of what he entitles his “sceptical method.”[1506]

Without here attempting a full discussion of the subject, it seems advisable to point out at the very start what Kant’s exposition seriously obscures, namely, the real character of the evidence upon which the theses and the antitheses respectively rest. The latter are not correctly stated as transcending experience, and as therefore incapable of confirmation by it. The proofs which Kant offers of them are, indeed, of a non-empirical a priori character. They are formulated in terms of the dogmatic rationalism of the Leibnizian position, with a constant appeal to abstract principles. But, as a matter of fact, they can be much more adequately established—in so far as they can be established at all—through analysis of the spatial and temporal conditions of material existence. As space and time are continuous and homogeneous, any assertion which is true of a space or time however small is likewise true of a space or time however large. Any space consists of spaces, and must be regarded as itself part of a larger whole.[1507] Any time consists of parts which are themselves times, and is apprehensible only as following upon preceding times. It is by such considerations as these that we are led to regard the material world as unlimited, as infinitely divisible, and as having no first state.

Kant’s method of demonstrating the theses—that the world is limited, is finitely divisible, and has a first state—is no less misleading. Here again his rationalistic arguments conceal the basis upon which the various theses really rest. Their true determining ground is the demand of Reason for some more satisfactory form of unconditionedness than that which is found in the actual infinite. It is this demand which has led philosophers to look around for proofs in support of the theses, and to elaborate those rationalistic arguments which Kant here reproduces. Thus the grounds of the antitheses are altogether different from those of the theses; and in neither case are they properly represented by the arguments which Kant employs.[1508]

The reasons why Kant in his detailed statement of the antinomies has omitted, or at least subordinated, the above considerations, are complex and various. In the first place, this doctrine of antinomy was in several of its main features already formulated prior to his development of the Critical philosophy. It forms part of his Dissertation of 1770; and at that time Kant was still largely in fundamental sympathy with the Leibnizian ontology. Secondly, Kant is here professing to criticise the science of rational cosmology, and is therefore bound to expound it in more or less current form. And in the third place, he teaches that the antinomies exist as antinomies only when viewed from the false standpoint of dogmatic rationalism. Had he eliminated the rationalistic proofs, the conflict of the antinomies, in its strictly logical form, as the conflict of direct contradictories, would at once have vanished. The general framework of this division of the Dialectic demanded a rationalistic treatment of both theses and antitheses, and Kant believed that the rationalistic proofs which he propounds in their support are unanswerable, so long as the dogmatic standpoint of ordinary consciousness and of Leibnizian ontology is preserved. But even when that important limitation is kept in view, Kant fails to justify this interpretation of the conflict, and we must therefore be prepared to find that his proofs, whether of theses or of antitheses, are in all cases inconclusive. I shall append to each of his arguments a statement of the reasons which constrain us to reject them as unsound. We shall then be in a position to consider his whole doctrine of antinomy in its broader aspects, and in its connection with the teaching of the other main divisions of the Dialectic.

FIRST ANTINOMY

Thesis.—(a) The world has a beginning in time, and (b) is also limited in regard to space.

Thesis a. Proof.—If we assume the opposite, namely, that the world has no beginning in time, and if we define the infinite as that which can never be completed by means of a successive synthesis, we must conclude that the world-series can never complete itself. But the entire series of past events elapses, i.e. completes itself at each moment. It cannot therefore be infinite.

Criticism.—This argument gains its plausibility from the illegitimate use of the term ‘elapse’ (verfliessen) as equivalent to ‘complete itself.’ If it be really correct to define the infinite as that which can never be completed, the conclusion to be drawn is that the temporal series is always actually infinite, and that no point or event in it is nearer to or further from either its beginning or its end.[1509] We may select any point in the series as that from which we propose to begin a regress to the earlier members of the series, but if the series is actually infinite, it will be a regress without possibility of completion, and one therefore which removes all justification for asserting that at the point chosen a series has completed itself. It has no beginning, and has no completion. What it has done at each moment of the past it is still doing at each present moment, namely, coming out of an inexhaustible past and passing into an equally inexhaustible future. Time is by its given nature capable of being interpreted only as actually infinite, alike in its past and in its future. It cannot complete itself any more than it can begin itself. The one would be as gross a violation of its nature as would the other. The present exists only as a species of transition, unique in itself, but analogous in nature to the innumerable other times that constitute time past. It is a transition from the infinite through the infinite to the infinite. That we cannot comprehend how, from an infinitude that has no beginning, the present should ever have been reached, is no sufficient reason for denying what by the very nature of time we are compelled to accept as a correct description of the situation which is being analysed. The actual nature of time is such as to rule out from among the possibilities the thesis which Kant is here professing to be able to establish; time, being such as it actually is, can have no beginning.

What thus holds of time may likewise hold of events in time. If time is actually infinite, no proof can be derived from it in support of the assumption that the world has had a beginning in time.

The phrase “by means of a successive synthesis” gives a needlessly subjectivist colouring to Kant’s method of proof. The antinomy is professedly being stated from the realist standpoint, and ought not therefore to be complicated by any such reference. This objection applies, as we shall find, still more strongly to Kant’s proof of the second part of the thesis. The latter proof depends upon this subjectivist reference; the present proof does not.

Kant limits his problem to the past infinitude of time. The reason for this lies, of course, in the fact that he is concerned with the problem of creation. The limitation is, however, misleading.

Thesis b.—The world is limited in regard to space.

Proof.—Assume the opposite, namely, that the world is an infinite, given whole of coexisting parts. A magnitude not given within the determinate limits of an intuition can only be thought through the synthesis of its parts, and its totality through their completed synthesis. In order, therefore, that we may be able to think as a single whole the world which fills all space, the successive synthesis of the parts of an infinite world must be regarded as completed, i.e. an infinite must be regarded as having elapsed in the enumeration of all coexisting things. This, however, is impossible. An infinite aggregate of actual things cannot therefore be viewed as a given whole, nor as being given as coexistent. Consequently the world of spatial existences must be regarded as finite.

Criticism.—From the impossibility of traversing infinite space in thought by the successive addition of part to part, Kant here argues that “an infinite aggregate of actual things cannot be viewed as a given whole,” and consequently that the world cannot be infinitely extended in space. That is, from a subjective impossibility of apprehension he infers an objective impossibility of existence. But Kant has himself defined the infinite as involving this subjective impossibility; for in the proof of thesis a he has stated that the infinitude of a series consists in the very fact that it can never be completed through successive synthesis. Kant is therefore propounding against the existence of the infinite the very feature which by definition constitutes its infinitude. The implication would seem to be that the concept of the infinite is the concept of that which ex definitione cannot exist, and that there is therefore a contradiction in the very idea of the actual infinite.

Deferring for a moment the further objections to which such procedure lies open, we may observe that Kant, in arguing from a subjective to an objective impossibility, commits the fallacy of ignoratio elenchi. For when the conditions of objective existence are recognised in their distinction from those of mental apprehension, the supposed contradiction vanishes, and the argument ceases to have any cogency. The use of the words ‘given’ and ‘whole’ is misleading. If space is infinite, it is without bounds, and cannot therefore exist as a whole in any usual meaning of that term. For the same reason it must be incapable of being given as a whole. Its infinitude is a presupposition which analysis of actually given portions of it constrains us to postulate, and has to be conceived in terms of the definition employed in thesis a. The given must always be conceived as involving what is not itself given and what is not even capable of complete construction. In terms of this presupposition an actual infinite, not given and not capable of construction, can be represented with entire consistency.

But to return to the main assumption upon which Kant’s proof would seem to rest: it is all-important to observe that Kant does not, either in the Critique or in any other of his writings, assert that the concept of the actual infinite is inherently self-contradictory. This is a matter in regard to which many of Kant’s critics have misrepresented his teaching. Kant’s argument may, as we have just maintained, be found on examination to involve the above assertion; but this, if clearly established, so far from commending the argument to Kant, would have led him to reject it as invalid. The passage in the Dissertation[1510] of 1770, which contains his most definite utterance on this point, represents the view from which he never afterwards departed. It may be quoted in full.

“Those who reject the actual mathematical infinite do so in a very casual manner. For they so construct their definition of the infinite that they are able to extract a contradiction from it. The infinite is described by them as a quantity than which none greater is possible, and the mathematical infinite as a multiplicity—of an assignable unit—than which none greater is possible. Since they thus substitute maximum for infinitum, and a greatest multiplicity is impossible, they easily conclude against this infinite which they have themselves invented. Or, it may be, they entitle an infinite multiplicity an infinite number, and point out that such a phrase is meaningless, as is, indeed, perfectly evident. But again they have fought and overthrown only the figments of their own minds. If, however, they had conceived the mathematical infinite as a quantity which, when related to measure, as its unity, is a multiplicity greater than all number; and if furthermore, they had observed that measurability here denotes only the relation [of the infinite] to the standards of the human intellect, which is not permitted to attain to a definite conception of multiplicity save by the successive addition of unit to unit, nor to the sum-total (which is called number) save by completing this progress in a finite time; they would have perceived clearly that what does not conform to the established law of some subject need not on that account exceed all intellection. An intellect may exist, though not indeed a human intellect, which perceives a multiplicity distinctly in one intuition [uno obtutu] without the successive application of a measure.”

The concluding sentences of this Dissertation passage may be taken as Kant’s own better and abiding judgment in regard to the question before us. We must not argue from the impossibility of mentally traversing the infinite to the impossibility of its existence. Indeed the essentials of the above passage are restated in the ‘Observation’ on this thesis.[1511] Thus the concept of the actual infinite is not only, as a concept, perfectly self-consistent, it is also one which, in view of the nature of time and of space, we are constrained to accept as a correct representation of the actually given. The thesis of this first antinomy runs directly counter to admitted facts. That Kant is here arguing in respect to the world, and not merely in respect to space and time, does not essentially alter the situation. For if space and time are necessarily to be viewed as infinite, there can be no a priori proof—none, at least, of the kind here attempted—that the world-series may not be so likewise.

Antithesis.—(a) The world has no beginning in time; (b) has no limits in space. In both these respects the world is infinite.

In these antitheses Kant assumes that space and time are actually infinite, and from that assumption advances to the proof that this is likewise true of the world in its spatial and temporal aspects. This, by itself, ought to be sufficient evidence that Kant does not regard the actual infinite as an inherently impossible conception. As the antinomies are avowedly formulated from the realist, dogmatic standpoint of ordinary consciousness, Kant is also enabled to assume that if the world begins to be, it must have an antecedent cause determining it to exist at that moment rather than at another.

Antithesis a. Proof.—Let us assume the opposite, namely, that the world has a beginning. It will then be preceded by an empty time in which it was not. But in an empty time no becoming is possible, since in such a time no part possesses over any other any distinguishing condition of existence rather than of non-existence. The world must therefore be infinite as regards past time.

Criticism.—In this argument everything depends upon what is to be meant by the term ‘world.’ If Kant means by it merely the material world, the assumption of its non-existence does not leave only empty time and space. Other kinds of existence may be possible, and in these a sufficient cause of its first beginning may be found. The nature of creative action will remain mysterious and incomprehensible, but that is no sufficient reason for denying its possibility. If, on the other hand, Kant means by the world ‘all that is,’ the assumption of its non-existence is likewise the assumption of the non-existence of all its possible causes. That, however, is for ordinary consciousness a quite impossible assumption, since it runs counter to the causal principle which is taken as universally valid. From this point of view the argument consists in making an impossible assumption, and in then pointing out the impossible consequence which must follow. By such a mode of argument no conclusion can be reached. Kant’s decision ought rather to have been that, as time is actually infinite, the world may be so likewise, but that though reality must in some form be eternally existent, the material world cannot be proved to be so by any a priori proof of the kind here given.

Antithesis b. Proof.—Let us assume the opposite, namely, that the world is finite, existing in an empty limitless space. There will then be not only a relation of things in space, but also of things to space. But as the world is a totality outside of which no object of intuition can be found, the relation of the world to empty space is a relation to no object. Such a relation is nothing. Consequently the opposite holds; the world must be infinitely extended.

Criticism.—That Kant himself felt the inadequacy of this argument, when taken from the dogmatic standpoint, is indicated by the lengthy note which he has appended to it, and which develops his own Critical view of space as not a real independent object, but merely the form of external intuition. From the standpoint of ordinary consciousness space is a self-existent entity, and there is no insuperable difficulty in conceiving a relation as holding between it and its contents. The introduction of the opposed standpoint of the Aesthetic therefore runs directly counter to Kant’s own intention of expounding the antinomies from the dogmatic standpoint which involves this realist view of space, and of showing that they afford, in independence of the arguments of the Aesthetic, an indirect proof of the untenableness of that belief.[1512] The conclusion which ought to have been drawn is analogous to that above suggested for thesis a. As space is actually infinite, the material world may be so likewise; but that it actually is so, cannot be established by an a priori argument of the kind here attempted.

SECOND ANTINOMY

Thesis.—Every composite substance in the world consists of simple parts, and nothing anywhere exists save the simple or what is composed of it.

Proof.—Let us assume the opposite, namely, that substances do not consist of simple parts. If all composition be then removed in thought, no composite part, and (as there are no simple parts) also no simple part, and therefore nothing whatsoever, will remain. Consequently no substance will be given. Either, therefore, it is impossible to remove in thought all composition, or after its removal something that exists without composition, i.e. the simple, must remain. In the former case the composite would not itself consist of substances (with them composition is a merely accidental relation, and they must, as self-persisting beings, be able to exist independently of it). As this contradicts our assumption, only the latter alternative remains, namely, that the substantial compounds in the world consist of simple parts.

Criticism.—Kant here assumes, by his definition of terms, the point which he professes to establish by argument. The substance referred to, though never itself mentioned by name, is extended matter. Kant identifies it with ‘composite substance.’ Substance, he further dogmatically decides, is that which is capable of independent existence, and to which all relations of composition are therefore merely accidental. If these assumptions be granted, it at once follows that composition cannot be essential to matter, and that when all composition is thought away, its reality will be disclosed as consisting in simple parts. Kant, however, makes no attempt to prove that extended matter can be defined in any such terms. From the dogmatic point of view of ordinary consciousness, though not from the sophisticated standpoint of Leibniz, extension is of the very essence of matter; and, as Kant himself believed,[1513] the continuity of extension is such as to exclude all possibility of elimination of the composite. For he maintains that, however far division be carried, the parts remain no less composite than the whole from which the regress has started. On any such view the extended and the composite are not equivalent terms. The opposite of the composite is the simple; the opposite of the extended is the non-extended. Kant is here surreptitiously substituting a Leibnizian metaphysics in place of the empirical reality which is supposed to necessitate the argument.

In the Observation on this thesis Kant shows consciousness of the defects of his argument. It does not apply to space, time, or change.

“We ought not to call space a compositum but a totum, because its parts are possible only in the whole, not the whole through the parts.”[1514]

As Kant further states, he is speaking only of the simples of the Leibnizian system. This thesis is “the dialectical principle of monadology.” Again in the Observation on the antithesis, in commenting on the mathematical proof of the infinite divisibility of matter, Kant even goes so far as to declare that the argument of the thesis is based on an illegitimate substitution of things in themselves, conceived by the pure understanding, for the appearances with which alone the antinomy is concerned.[1515]

“...it is quite futile to attempt to overthrow, by sophistical manipulation of purely discursive concepts, the manifest, demonstrated truth of mathematics.”

Antithesis.—No composite thing in the world consists of simple parts, and there nowhere exists in the world anything simple.

Proof.—Let us assume the opposite, namely, that a composite thing (as substance) consists of simple parts. As all external relation, and therefore all composition of substances, is only possible in space, space must consist of as many parts as there are parts of the composite that occupies it. Space, however, does not consist of simple parts, but of spaces. The simple must therefore occupy a space. Now as everything real which occupies a space contains in itself a manifold of constituents external to one another, and therefore is composite, and as a real composite is not composed of accidents (for without substance accidents could not be outside one another), but of substances, the simple would be a substantial composite, which is self-contradictory.

Criticism.—The Leibnizian standpoint is here completely deserted. Instead of proceeding to demonstrate the direct opposite of the thesis, Kant in this argument deals with the extended bodies of empirical intuition. The proof given ultimately reduces to an argument from the continuous nature of space to the continuous nature of the matter which occupies it. But as the thesis and the antithesis thus refer to different realities, the former to things in themselves conceived by pure understanding, and the latter to the sensuous, no antinomy has been shown to subsist. Antinomy presupposes that both the opposing assertions have the same reference. Kant, as already noted, argues in the Observation to this antithesis that all attempts “made by the monadists” to refute the mathematical proof of the infinite divisibility of matter are quite futile, and are due to their forgetting that in this discussion we are concerned only with appearances.

“The monadists have, indeed, been sufficiently acute to seek to avoid this difficulty by not treating space as a condition of the possibility of the objects of outer intuition (bodies), but by taking these and the dynamical relation of substances as the condition of the possibility of space. But we have a concept of bodies only as appearances, and as such they necessarily presuppose space as the condition of the possibility of all outer appearance.”[1516]

How Kant, after writing these words, should still have left standing the proof which he has given of the thesis may be partially explained as due to the continuing influence of his earlier view,[1517] according to which antinomy represents not a conflict between opposing views of the world of ordinary consciousness, but between the demands of pure thought and the forms of sensuous existence. That older view of antinomy here gains the upper hand, notwithstanding its lack of agreement with the general scheme of the Dialectic.

There is a further inconsistency in Kant’s procedure which may perhaps be taken as indicating the early origin of this portion of the Critique. He presents the mathematical proof of the continuity of matter as conclusive. Yet in the Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science (1786) he most emphatically states that “the infinite divisibility of matter is very far from being proved through proof of the infinite divisibility of space.”[1518]

Russell,[1519] in discussing the thesis and antithesis on their merits, from the point of view of certain present-day mathematical theories, makes the following criticism of Kant’s procedure.

“Here, again, the argument applies to things in space and time, and to all collections, whether existent or not.... And with this extension[1520] the proof of the proposition must, I think, be admitted; only that terms or concepts should be substituted for substances, and that, instead of the argument that relations between substances are accidental (zufällig), we should content ourselves with saying that relations imply terms and complexity implies relations.”

Russell further argues that Kant’s assumption in the antithesis, that “space does not consist of simple parts, but of spaces,” cannot be granted. It

“...involves a covert use of the axiom of finitude, i.e. the axiom that, if a space does consist of points, it must consist of some finite number of points. When once this is denied, we may admit that no finite number of divisions of a space will lead to points, while yet holding every space to be composed of points. A finite space is a whole consisting of simple parts, but not of any finite number of simple parts. Exactly the same thing is true of the stretch between 1 and 2. Thus the antinomy is not specially spatial, and any answer which is applicable in Arithmetic is applicable here also. The thesis, which is an essential postulate of Logic, should be accepted, while the antithesis should be rejected.”

But, as above observed,[1521] those mathematicians who adopt this view so alter the meaning of the term point that it would perhaps be equally true to say that the thesis, as thus interpreted by Russell, coincides with what Kant believes himself to be asserting in the antithesis.

THIRD ANTINOMY

Thesis.—Causality according to the laws of nature is not the only causality from which the appearances of the world can be deduced. There is also required for their explanation another, that of freedom.

Proof.—Let us assume the opposite. In that case everything that happens presupposes a previous state upon which it follows according to a rule. That previous state is itself caused in similar fashion, and so on in infinitum. But if everything thus happens according to the mere laws of nature, there can never be a first beginning, and therefore no completeness of the series on the side of the derivative causes. But the law of nature is that nothing happens without a cause sufficiently determined a priori. If, therefore, all causality is possible only according to the laws of nature, the principle contradicts itself when taken in unlimited universality. Such causality cannot therefore be the sole causality possible. We must admit an absolute spontaneity, whereby a series of appearances, that proceed according to laws of nature, begins by itself.

Criticism.—The vital point of this argument lies in the assertion that the principle of causality calls for a sufficient cause for each event, and that such sufficiency is not to be found in natural causes which are themselves derivative or conditioned. As the antecedent series of causes for an event can never be traced back to a first cause, it can never be completed, and can never, therefore, be sufficient to account for the event under consideration. Either, therefore, the principle of causality contradicts itself, or some form of free self-originative causality must be postulated. This argument cannot be accepted as valid. Each natural cause is sufficient to account for its effect. That is to say, the causation is sufficient at each stage. That the series of antecedent causes cannot be completed is due to its actual infinitude, not to any insufficiency in the causality which it embodies.[1522] To prove his point, Kant would have to show that the conception of the actual infinite is inherently self-contradictory; and that, as we have already noted, he does not mean to assert. His argument here lies open to the same criticism as we have already passed upon his argument in proof of the thesis of the first antinomy.

Antithesis.—There is no freedom; everything in the world proceeds solely in accordance with laws of nature.

Proof.—Let us assume the opposite. Free causality, i.e. the power of absolute origination, presupposes the possibility of a state of the cause which has no causal connection with its preceding state, and which does not follow from it. But this is opposed to the law of causality, and would render unity of experience impossible. Freedom is therefore an empty thought-entity (Gedankending), and is not to be met with in any experience.

Criticism.—We may first observe the strange relation in which the proof of the thesis stands to that of the antithesis. According to the former, freedom must be postulated because otherwise the principle of causality would contradict itself. According to the latter, freedom is impossible, and for the same reason. Now, as Erhardt has pointed out,[1523] a principle cannot be reconciled with itself through the making of an assumption which contradicts it. That would only be the institution of a second contradiction, not the removal of the previous conflict. If the proof of the thesis be correct, that of the antithesis must be false; if the proof of the antithesis be correct, that of the thesis must be invalid. For though the thesis and the antithesis may themselves contradict one another, such conflict must not exist between the grounds upon which they establish themselves. If the reasons cited in their support are contradictory of one another, the total argument is rendered null and void. The supporting proofs being contradictory of one another, nothing whatsoever has been established. There will remain as a pressing and immediate problem the task of distinguishing the truth from among the competing alternatives; and until this has been done, the argument cannot proceed. The assumption of freedom either does or does not contradict the principle of causality. Antinomy is not the simple assertion that both A and not-A are true, but that A and not-A, though contradictory of one another, can both be established by arguments in which such contradiction does not occur.[1524]

The proof given of the thesis would seem, as already noted, to be untenable. The principle of natural causality is not self-contradictory. What now is to be said regarding the proof of the antithesis? If the principle of natural causality be formulated as asserting that every event has an antecedent cause determining it to exist, then certainly free, spontaneous, or self-originating causality is excluded. Here, as in Kant’s proof of the antithesis of the first antinomy, everything depends upon definition of the terms employed. It must be borne in mind that the antinomies are asserted to exist only on the dogmatic level. Critical considerations must not, therefore, be allowed to intervene. Now for ordinary consciousness the concept of causality has a very indefinite meaning, and a very wide application. Causation may be spontaneous as well as mechanical, spiritual as well as material. All possibilities lie open, and no mere reference to the concept of causal dependence suffices to decide between them. Free causality, so far as dogmatic analysis of the causal postulate can show to the contrary, may or may not be possible.[1525] Kant has failed to establish the antithesis save by the surreptitious introduction of conclusions which presuppose the truth of his Critical teaching. This is especially shown in the emphasis laid upon ‘unity of experience.’ The further statement[1526] that freedom means lawlessness is only true if Kant’s teaching is mutilated by reduction merely to its assertion of the objective validity of the mechanistic principles of natural science. Kant is both running with the hare and hunting with the hounds.

Though this antinomy is chiefly concerned with the problem of freedom, i.e. of spontaneous origination within the world, the proof of the thesis refers only to the cosmological problem of a first cause.[1527] The reasons of this oscillation we shall have occasion to consider in dealing with the fourth antinomy. The terms world and nature play the same ambiguous part as in the antithesis of the first antinomy; they tend to be employed in the narrower, mechanistic sense of Kant’s own Critical teaching.

FOURTH ANTINOMY

As the proofs of the thesis and antithesis proceed on lines identical with those of the third antinomy, I shall omit detailed statement of them.[1528] Kant again argues from the fact that every change has a condition which precedes it in time. There is no difference in the proofs themselves, but only in the nature of the inference which they are made to support. In the third antinomy they lead to the assertion and denial of free causality; in the fourth antinomy they lead to the assertion and denial of an absolutely necessary being. The assertion is required in order to save the principle of causality from self-contradiction; the denial is also necessary, and for the same reason. The illegitimacy of this procedure has already been pointed out.[1529] Though the thesis and the antithesis will, if antinomy be assumed to represent an actual conflict, contradict one another, no such conflict is allowable in the grounds which profess to establish them. We must not assert, as argument, that both A and not-A are true.

In the Observation on the antithesis[1530] Kant has himself taken notice of this “strange” situation.

“From the same ground on which, in the thesis, the existence of an original being was inferred, its non-existence is inferred, and that with equal stringency.”

A necessary being is inferred to exist, because the past series of events cannot contain all the conditions of an event, unless the unconditioned is to be found among them. A necessary being is denied to exist, because the series of merely conditioned events contains all the conditions that there are. Kant’s defence of this procedure is as follows:

“Nevertheless, the method of argument in both cases is entirely in conformity even with ordinary human reason, which frequently falls into conflict with itself from considering its object from two different points of view. M. de Mairan[1531] regarded the controversy between two famous astronomers, which arose from a similar difficulty in regard to choice of standpoint, as a sufficiently remarkable phenomenon to justify his writing a special treatise upon it. The one had argued that the moon revolves on its own axis, because it always turns the same side towards the earth. The other drew the opposite conclusion that the moon does not revolve on its own axis, because it always turns the same side towards the earth. Both inferences were correct, according to the point of view which each chose in observing the moon’s motion.”

This example is not really relevant. In spite of Kant’s assertion to the contrary, the point of view is one and the same in thesis and in antithesis. In both cases the absolutely necessary being is viewed as the first of the changes in the world of sense. To maintain that when thus viewed it both is and is not demanded by the law of causality, is as impossible as to assert that in one and the same meaning of our terms the moon both does and does not revolve on its own axis.

That the proofs of the fourth antinomy are identical with those of the third is due to the fact that Kant, under the stress of his architectonic,[1532] is striving to construct four antinomies while only three are really distinguishable. The third and fourth antinomies coincide as formulations of the problem whether or not the conditioned implies, and originates in, the unconditioned. The precise determination of this unconditioned, whether as free causality or as a necessary being, or in any other way, is a further problem, and does not properly fall within the scope of the cosmological inquiries, which are alone in place in this division of the Critique.

The manner in which Kant, in treating of freedom, makes the transition[1533] from the cosmological (or theological) unconditioned to the psychological is significant. The cosmological unconditioned is proved to exist by the argument of the thesis, and its existence is at once interpreted as establishing at least in this one case the actuality of free spontaneous causality. Kant remarks that this

“...transcendental Idea of freedom does not by any means constitute the entire content of the psychological concept of that name, which is mainly empirical, but only that of absolute spontaneity of action.... The necessity of a first beginning, due to freedom, of a series of appearances we have demonstrated only in so far as it is required for the conceivability of an origin of the world.... But as, after all, the power of spontaneously originating a series in time has thus been proved (though not understood), it is now permissible for us to admit within the course of the world different series as capable in their causality of beginning of themselves, and so to attribute to their substances a power of acting from freedom.”

That each such successive series in the world can only have a relatively primary beginning, and must always be preceded by some other state of things, is no sufficient objection to such causality.

“For we are here speaking of an absolutely first beginning not in time, but in causality. If, for instance, I at this moment arise from my chair in complete freedom, without being necessarily determined thereto by the influence of natural causes, a new series, with all its natural consequences in infinitum, has its absolute beginning in this event, although the event itself is only, with regard to time, the continuation of a preceding series.”

Thus Kant’s proof of freedom in the thesis of the third antinomy is merely a corollary from his proof of the existence of a cosmological or theological unconditioned; and further, this freedom is not, like the cosmological unconditioned, proved to exist, but only to be “admissible” as a possibility. Similarly in the antithesis, the only disproof of freedom is the disproof of unconditioned causality in general. The antinomy deals with the general opposition and relation between the contingent and the unconditioned.

It is this same opposition exactly which constitutes the subject-matter of the fourth antinomy. The terms used are different, but their meanings are one and the same. For though Kant substitutes ‘absolutely necessary being’ for ‘unconditioned causality,’ the former is still conceived as belonging to the world of sense, as the unconditioned origin of its changes. And as Kant is careful to add, only the causal, cosmological argument can be employed to establish the existence of an absolutely necessary being; nothing can legitimately be inferred from the mere Idea. The verbal change is consequently verbal only; the argument of the fourth antinomy coincides in result no less than in method of proof with the argument of the third. It is impossible to define the unconditioned in any more specific fashion save by an enquiry which entirely transcends the scope of the argument that Kant is here presenting. Kant’s procedure also lies open to the further objection that the conception of an absolutely necessary being, which he here introduces without preliminary analysis or explanation, is later shown by him[1534] to be devoid of significance. He employs it, but precludes himself from either investigating it or from drawing any serviceable consequences from it. The situation is not without the elements of comedy. In order to seem to mark a real distinction between the fourth and the third antinomies, Kant has perforce to trespass upon the domain of theology; but as he is aware that the trespass is forbidden, he seeks to mitigate the offence by returning from the foray empty-handed. To such unhappy straits is he again reduced by his over-fond devotion to architectonic.

SECTION III
THE INTEREST OF REASON IN THIS SELF-CONFLICT[1535]

This section, though extremely important, requires no lengthy comment. It is lucid and straightforward. It may be summarised as follows. The theses and the antitheses rest upon diverse and conflicting interests. The theses, though expressed in dry formulas, divested of the empirical features through which alone their true grandeur can be displayed, represent the proud pretensions of dogmatic Reason. The antitheses give expression to principles of pure empiricism. The former are supported by interests of a practical and popular character: upon them morals and religion are based. The latter, while conflicting with our spiritual interests, far exceed the theses in their intellectual advantages. This explains

“...the zelotic passion of the one party, and the calm assurance of the other, and why the world hails the one with eager approval, and is implacably prejudiced against the other.”

No legitimate objection could be raised against the principles of the empirical philosopher, if he sought only to rebuke the rashness and presumption of Reason when it boasts of knowledge, and when it represents as speculative insight that which is grounded only in faith.

“But when empiricism itself, as frequently happens, becomes dogmatic ..., and confidently denies whatever lies beyond the sphere of its intuitive knowledge, it betrays the same lack of modesty; and that is all the more reprehensible owing to the irreparable injury which is thereby caused to the practical interests of Reason.”

Each party asserts more than it knows. The one allows our practical interests to delude Reason as to its inherent powers; the other would so extend empirical knowledge as to destroy the validity of our moral principles. Kant regards the opposition as being historically typified by the contrasted systems of Platonism and Epicureanism. It befits us, as self-reflecting beings, to free ourselves, at least provisionally, from the partiality of those divergent interests, and by application of “the sceptical method,” unconcerned about consequences, to penetrate to the primary sources of this perennial conflict. As Kant states in the next section, the conflict is of such a character as to be genuinely resolvable.

This section must have been written, or at least first sketched, at the time when Kant still intended to bring his whole criticism of the metaphysical sciences within the scope of his doctrine of antinomy.[1536]

SECTION IV
OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL PROBLEMS OF PURE REASON, IN SO FAR AS THEY ABSOLUTELY MUST BE CAPABLE OF SOLUTION[1537]

There are sciences the very nature of which requires that every question which can occur in them must be completely answerable from what can be presumed to be known. This is true of the science of ethics. When I ask to what course of action I am committed in moral duty, the question must be answerable in terms of the considerations which have led to its being propounded. For there can be no moral obligation in regard to that of which we cannot have knowledge. We must not plead that the problem is unanswerable; a solution must be found. Kant proceeds to argue that this is no less true of transcendental philosophy.

“...it is unique among speculative sciences in that no question which concerns an object given to pure Reason is insoluble for this same human Reason, and that no excuse of an unavoidable ignorance, or of the unfathomable depth of the problem, can release us from the obligation to answer it thoroughly and completely. That very concept which enables us to ask the question must also qualify us to answer it, since, as in the case of right and wrong, the object is not to be met with outside the concept.”

The third and fourth paragraphs would seem to be later interpolations. The section, like Section III., must have been written at the time when Kant still regarded the doctrine of antinomy as covering the entire field of metaphysics. Transcendental philosophy is identified with cosmology, as dealt with in the antinomies. But in the third paragraph the former is taken as a wider term. Also, in the first two paragraphs the problems of pure Reason are regarded as soluble because their objects are not to be met with outside the concepts of them; whereas in the third paragraph they are viewed as soluble because their object is given empirically. Again, in the second paragraph transcendental philosophy has been taken as unique among speculative [i.e. theoretical] sciences; in the fourth paragraph mathematics is placed alongside it.

Examination of this section as a whole (and the same is true of the immediately following section) justifies the conclusion that at the time when it was written Kant regarded the Ideas of Reason as having a purely and exclusively regulative function, and consequently as exhausting their inherent meaning in their empirical reference. He regards them as entirely lacking in metaphysical significance. They are invented by Reason for Reason’s own satisfaction, and must therefore yield in their internal content the explanation of their existence, and must also supply a complete and thorough answer to all problems which are traceable to them. A dogmatic (i.e. ontological) solution of the antinomies is, as we have already found, impossible; the Critical solution considers the question subjectively,

“...in accordance with the foundation of the knowledge upon which it is based.”[1538] “For your object is only in your brain, and cannot be given outside it; so that you have only to take care to be at one with yourself, and to avoid the amphiboly which transforms your Idea into a supposed representation of an object which is empirically given and therefore to be known according to the laws of experience.”[1539]

Kant’s argument in proof of this purely subjective interpretation of the Ideas consists in showing that they are not presented in any given appearances, and are not even necessary to explain appearances. The unconditioned, whether of quantity, of division, or of origination, has nothing to do with any experience, whether actual or possible.

“You would not, for instance, in any wise be able to explain the appearances of a body better, or even differently, if you assumed that it consists either of simple or of inexhaustibly composite parts; for neither a simple appearance nor an infinite composition can ever come before you. Appearances demand explanation only in so far as the conditions of their explanation are given in perception, [and the unconditioned can never be so given].”[1540]

This standpoint, at once sceptical and empirical, is further developed in the next section.

SECTION V
SCEPTICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE COSMOLOGICAL QUESTIONS[1541]

Applying the “sceptical method,”[1542] Kant argues that even supposing one or other party could conclusively establish itself through final refutation of the other, no advantage of any kind would accrue. The victory would be a fruitless one, and the outcome “mere nonsense.”[1543] The sole validity of the Ideas lies in their empirical reference; and yet that reference is one which proves them to be, when objectively interpreted, entirely meaningless. The cosmological Idea is always either too large or too small for any concept of the understanding. No matter what view is taken, the only possible object (viz. that yielded by experience) will not fit into it. If the world has no beginning, or is infinitely divisible, or has no first cause, the regress transcends all empirical concepts; while if the world has a beginning, is composed of simple parts, and has a first cause, it is too small for the concepts through which alone it can be experienced. In other words, the cosmological Ideas are always either too large or too small for the empirical regress, and therefore stand condemned by sense-experience, which can alone impart relation to an object, i.e. truth and meaning to any concept. For, as Kant explicitly states, we must not reverse this relation and condemn empirical concepts, as being in the one case too small, and in the other case too large for the Idea. Experience, not Ideas, is the criterion alike of reality and of truth.

“The possible empirical concept is, therefore, the standard by which we must judge whether the Idea is mere Idea and thought-entity (Gedankending), or whether it finds its object in the world.”[1544]

When two things are compared, that for the sake of which the other exists is the sole proper standard. We do not say “that a man is too long for his coat, but that the coat is too short for the man.”[1545] We are thus confirmed in the view that the antinomies rest upon a false view of the manner in which the object of the cosmological Ideas can be given; and are set upon the track, followed out in the next section, of the illusion to which they are due.

This reduction of the Ideas to mere thought-entities is one of the two alternative views which, as we have already stated,[1546] compete with one another throughout the entire Dialectic. We may, for instance, compare the above explanation of the conflict between the Ideas and experience with that given in A 422 = B 450. In the latter passage the antinomies are traced to a conflict between Reason and understanding. If the unity is adequate to the demands of Reason, it is too great for the understanding; if it is adequate to the understanding, it is too small for Reason. Kant does not here allow that the claims of Reason are ipso facto condemned through the incapacity of experience to fulfil them. On the contrary, he implies that it is through the Ideas that we come to realise the merely phenomenal character of everything experienced.

Our task, in this Commentary, is only to distinguish the passages in which those two conflicting tendencies appear, and to trace the consequences which follow from Kant’s alternation between them. Discussion of their significance had best be deferred to the close of the Dialectic, where Kant dwells upon the regulative function of Reason. At present we need merely note that the main content of the above sections, in which the sceptical view is expounded, is of early date, prior to the working out of the Paralogisms and of the Ideal.

SECTION VI
TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM AS THE KEY TO THE SOLUTION OF THE COSMOLOGICAL DIALECTIC[1547]

In this section subjectivism is dominant. The type of transcendental idealism expounded is that earlier and less developed form which connects with the doctrine of the transcendental object.[1548] It shows no trace of Kant’s maturer teaching. No distinction is drawn between representation and the objects represented. To the transcendental object, the “purely intelligible cause” of appearances in general, and to it alone, Kant ascribes “the whole extent and connection of our possible perceptions.”[1549] Appearances exist only in the degree to which they are constructed in experience. As they are mere representations, they cannot exist outside the mind. Independently of such construction, they may indeed be said to be given in the transcendental object, but they only become objects to us on the supposition that they can be reached through extension of the series of our actual perceptions. It is in this form alone, as conceived in a regressive series of possible perceptions, and not as having existed in itself, that even the immemorial past course of the world can be represented as real;

“...so that all events which have taken place in the immense periods that have preceded my own existence mean really nothing but the possibility of extending the chain of experience from the present perception back to the conditions which determine it in time.”[1550]

A similar interpretation has to be given to all propositions which assert the present reality of that which has never been actually experienced.

“In outcome it is a matter of indifference whether I say that in the empirical progress in space I can meet with stars a hundred times farther removed than the outermost now perceptible to me, or whether I say that they are perhaps to be met with in cosmical space even though no human being has ever perceived or ever will perceive them. For even if they were given as things in themselves, without relation to possible experience,[1551] they are still nothing for me, and therefore are not objects, save in so far as they are contained in the series of the empirical regress.”[1552]

The distinction between appearances and things in themselves must always, Kant observes, be borne in mind when we are interpreting the meaning of our empirical concepts; and this is especially necessary when those concepts are brought into connection with the cosmological Idea of an unconditioned. The antinomies are due to a failure to appreciate this fundamental distinction, and the key to their solution lies in its recognition.

“It would be an injustice to ascribe to us that long-decried empirical idealism which, while it admits the genuine actuality of space, denies the existence of the extended beings in it....”[1553]

This is in line with the passages from the Prolegomena commented upon above.[1554]

SECTION VII
CRITICAL DECISION OF THE COSMOLOGICAL CONFLICT OF REASON WITH ITSELF[1555]

Kant’s argument is as follows. The antinomies rest upon the principle that if the conditioned be given, the entire series of all its conditions is likewise given. If the objects of the senses were independently real, there would be no escape from this assumption, and the dialectical conflict would consequently be irresolvable. Transcendental idealism, as above stated, reveals a way out of the dilemma. As appearances are merely representations, their antecedent conditions do not exist as appearances, save in the degree in which they are mentally constructed. Though the appearances are given, their empirical conditions are not thereby given. The most that we can say is that a regress to the conditions, i.e. a continued empirical synthesis in that direction, is commanded or required. The cosmological argument can thus be shown to be logically invalid. The syllogism, which it involves, is as follows:

If the conditioned be given, the entire series of all its conditions is likewise given.

The objects of the senses are given.

Therefore the entire series of all their conditions is likewise given.

In the major premiss the concept of the conditioned is employed transcendently (Kant says transcendentally), in the minor empirically. But though the inference thus commits the logical fallacy of sophisma figurae dictionis, the ground of its occurrence, and the reason why it is not at once detected, lie in a natural and inevitable illusion which leads us to accept the sensible world in space as being independently real. Only through Critical investigation can the deceptive power of this illusion be overcome. Owing to its influence, the above fallacy has been committed by dogmatists and empiricists alike. It can be shown that in refuting each other

... “they are really quarrelling about nothing, and that a certain transcendental illusion has caused them to see a reality where none is to be found.”[1556]

The existence of antinomy, Kant further argues, presupposes that theses and antitheses are contradictory opposites, i.e. that no third alternative is possible. When opposed assertions are not contradictories but contraries, the opposition, to use Kant’s terms, is not analytical but dialectical. Both may be false; for the one does not merely contradict the other, but makes, in addition, a further statement on its own account. Now examination of the illusion above described enables us to perceive that the opposites, in reference to which antinomy occurs, are of this dialectical character. Theses and antitheses are alike false. Since the world does not exist as a thing in itself, it exists neither as an infinite whole nor as a finite whole, but only in the degree in which it is constructed in an empirical regress. We must not apply “the Idea of absolute totality, which is valid only as a condition of things in themselves,”[1557] to appearances. (The words which I have italicised mark the emergence of Kant’s non-sceptical, non-empirical view of the nature and function of the Ideas of Reason.) Thus antinomy, rightly understood, does not favour scepticism, but only the “sceptical method,” and indeed yields an indirect proof of the correctness of Critical teaching. This proof may be presented in the form of a dilemma. If the world is a whole existing in itself, it is either finite or infinite. But the former alternative is refuted by the proofs given of the antitheses, and the latter alternative by the proofs of the theses. Therefore the world cannot be a whole existing in itself. From this it follows that appearances are nothing outside our representations; and that is what is asserted in the doctrine of transcendental idealism.

In A 499 = B 527 Kant uses ambiguous language,[1558] which can be interpreted as asserting that in the regress there can be no lack of given conditions. Such a statement would presuppose positive knowledge regarding the unknown transcendental object.[1559] The opposite, more correct, view is given in A 514-15 = B 542-3 and A 517 ff. = B 545 ff., though in the latter passage with a reversion to the above position.[1560]

The earlier manuscripts, which Kant has so far been employing, probably terminate either, as Adickes suggests,[1561] at the end of this section, or at the close of Section VIII., which is of doubtful date. Section IX. is certainly from a later period; it represents a more complex standpoint, in which Reason is no longer viewed as possessing a merely empirical function, and in which consequently the theses and antitheses are no longer indiscriminately denounced as being alike false. Under the influence of his later, more Idealistic preoccupations, Kant so far modifies the above solution as to assert that in the ease of the last two antinomies both theses and antitheses are true, when properly interpreted.

SECTION VIII
THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLE OF PURE REASON IN REGARD TO THE COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS[1562]

The principle of pure Reason, correctly formulated, is that when the conditioned is given a regress upon the totality of its conditions is set as a problem. As such it is valid,

“...not indeed as an axiom ... but as a problem for the understanding ..., leading it to undertake and to continue, according to the completeness in the Idea, the regress in the series of conditions of any given conditioned.”[1563]

It does not anticipate, prior to the regress, what actually exists as object, but only postulates, in the form of a rule, how the understanding ought to proceed. It does not tell us whether or how the unconditioned exists, but how the empirical regress is to be carried out under the guidance of a mere Idea. Such a rule can be regulative only, and the Idea of totality which it contains must never be invested with objective reality. As the absolutely unconditioned can never be met with in experience, we know, indeed, beforehand that in the process of the regress the unconditioned will never be reached. But the duty of seeking it by way of such regress is none the less prescribed.

Kant proceeds to give a somewhat bewildering account of the familiar distinction between progressus in infinitum and progressus in indefinitum, and to draw a very doubtful distinction between the series in division of a given whole and the series in extension of it.[1564] The illustration from the series of human generations is an unfortunate one; the discovery that it began at some one point in the past would not necessarily violate any demand of Reason. Such a series is not comparable with those of space, time, and causality.[1565] The only important result of this digression is the conclusion that whatever demand be made, whether of regress in infinitum or of regress in indefinitum, in neither case can the series of conditions be regarded as being given as infinite in the object.

“The question, therefore, is no longer how great this series of conditions may be in itself, whether finite or infinite, for it is nothing in itself; but how we are to carry out the empirical regress, and how far we should continue it.”[1566]

We have already noted[1567] Kant’s ambiguous suggestion in A 499 = B 527, that in the empirical regress there can be no lack of given conditions. The statement, thus interpreted, is illegitimate. The most that he can claim is that, were further sensations not forthcoming, we should still have to conceive those last obtained as being preceded by empty space and time, and as lacking in any experienced cause. Under such circumstances we should experience neither finitude nor unconditionedness, but only incapacity to find a content suitable to the inexhaustible character of the spatial and temporal conditions of experience, or in satisfaction of our demand for causal antecedents. In A 514-15 = B 542-3 Kant shows consciousness of this difficulty, but in dealing with it adopts a half-way position which still lies open to objection. He recognises that, since no member of a series can be empirically given as absolutely unconditioned, a higher member is always possible, and that the search for it is therefore prescribed; none the less he asserts that in regard to given wholes we are justified in taking up a very different position, namely, that the regress in the series of their internal conditions does not proceed, as in the above case, in indefinitum, but in infinitum, i.e. that in this case more members exist and are empirically given than we can reach through the regress. In given wholes we are commanded to find more members; in serial extension we are justified only in inquiring for more. This half-way position is a makeshift, and is in no respect tenable. The evidence for the infinite extensibility of space and time is as conclusive as for their infinite divisibility. And when we consider sensuous existence under these forms, it is just as possible that the transcendental object may, beyond a certain point, fail to supply material for further division, as that it may fail to yield data for further expansion. What Kant asserts of the latter, that further advance must always remain as a possibility, and for that Reason must always call for the open mind of further inquiry, without any attempted anticipatory assertion either pro or contra, alone represents the true Critical standpoint. The cessation of data may really, however, be due to an increase in the subtlety of the conditioning processes that incapacitates them from acting upon our senses;[1568] by indirect means this disability may be overcome. Reason, in its conception of an unconditioned, prescribes to us a task that is inexhaustible in its demands. We have no right to lay down our intellectual arms before any barrier however baffling, or to despair before any chasm however empty and abrupt.

SECTION IX
THE EMPIRICAL EMPLOYMENT OF THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLE OF REASON IN REGARD TO ALL COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS[1569]

SOLUTION OF THE FIRST AND SECOND ANTINOMIES

Statement.—The fundamental fact upon which, as Kant has already stated, the regulative principle of Reason is based, is that it is impossible to experience an absolute limit. It is always possible that a still higher member of the series may be found; and that being so, it is our duty to search for it. But as we are here dealing with possibilities only, the regress is in indefinitum, not in infinitum.

“...we must seek the concept of the quantity of the world only according to the rule which determines the empirical regress in it. This rule says no more than that however far we may have attained in the series of empirical conditions, we should never assume an absolute limit, but should subordinate every appearance, as conditioned, to another as its condition, and that we must then advance to this condition. This is the regressus in indefinitum, which, as it determines no quantity in the object, is clearly enough distinguishable from the regressus in infinitum.”[1570]

We are acquainted only with the rule, and not with the whole object. Any assertion, therefore, which we can make, must be dictated solely by the rule, and be an expression of it. Neither the thesis nor the antithesis of the first antinomy is valid; there is a third alternative. The sensible world is neither finite nor infinite in extent; it is infinitely extensible, in terms of the rule.

Unfortunately Kant is not content to leave his conclusion in this form. He complicates his argument, and bewilders the reader, by maintaining that this is a virtual acceptance of the antithesis, in that we assert negatively, that an absolute limit in either time or space is empirically impossible;[1571] and affirmatively, that the regress goes on in indefinitum, and consequently has no absolute quantity.

Kant also repeats the argument of the preceding section in regard to given wholes.[1572] When the problem is that of subdivision, the regress starts from a given whole, and therefore from a whole whose conditions (the parts) are given with it. The division is, therefore, in infinitum, and not merely in indefinitum. This does not, however, he argues, mean that the given whole consists of infinitely many parts. For though the parts are contained in the intuition of the whole, yet the whole division arises only through the regress that generates it. It is a quantum continuum, not a quantum discretum.[1573] This argument has been criticised above.[1574] Kant here ignores the possibility that the parts of matter, though extended, may be physically indivisible, or that they may be centres of force which control, but do not occupy, a determinate space.

REMARKS ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE MATHEMATICAL-TRANSCENDENTAL AND THE DYNAMICAL-TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS[1575]

Statement.—Kant again[1576] introduces the distinction between the mathematical and the dynamical. The mathematical Ideas synthesise the homogeneous, the dynamical may connect the heterogeneous. In employing the former we must therefore remain within the phenomenal; through the latter we may be able to transcend it. The way is thus opened for propounding, in regard to the third and fourth antinomies, a solution in which the pretensions of Reason no less than those of understanding may find satisfaction. Whereas both the theses and the antitheses of the first and second antinomies have to be declared false, those of the third and fourth antinomies may both be true—the theses applying to the intelligible realm, and the antitheses to the world of sense.

Comment.—When the distinction between the mathematical and the dynamical is thus extended from the categories to the Ideas, its validity becomes highly doubtful. Space and time are certainly themselves homogeneous, and the categories of quality and quantity, in so far as they are mathematically employed, may perhaps be similarly described. But when the term is still further extended, to cover the pairs of correlative opposites with which the first two antinomies deal, those, namely, between the limited and the unlimited, the simple and the infinitely divisible, Kant would seem to be making a highly artificial distinction. The first two antinomies deal not with space and time as such, but with the sensible world in space and time; and within this sensible world, even in its quantitative aspects, qualitative differences have to be reckoned with. Common sense does, indeed, tend to assume that the unlimited and the simple must, like that which they condition, be in space and time, and so form with the conditioned a homogeneous series. But this assumption ordinary consciousness is equally disposed to make in regard to a first cause and to the unconditionally necessary.

Kant further attempts[1577] to distinguish between the mathematical and the dynamical by asserting that the dynamical antinomies are not concerned with the quantity of their object, but only with its existence. He admits, however, that in all four cases a series arises which is either too large or too small for the understanding; and that being so, in each case the problem arises as to the existence of an unconditioned.

The artificiality of Kant’s distinction becomes clear when we recognise that the opposed solutions, which he gives of the two sets of antinomies, can be mutually interchanged. As the sensible world rests upon intelligible grounds, both the theses and the antitheses of the first two antinomies may be true, the former in the intelligible realm and the latter in the sensuous. Similarly, both the theses and antitheses of the third and fourth antinomies may be false. In the sensible world, about which alone anything can be determined, the series of dynamical conditions forms neither a finite nor an infinite series. There is a third alternative, akin to that of the antitheses, but distinct in character from it, namely, that the series is infinitely extensible. Kant’s differential treatment of the two sets of antinomies is arbitrary, and would seem to be due to his having attempted to superimpose, with the least possible modification, a later solution of the antinomies upon one previously developed. In the earlier view, as we have already had occasion to observe, Reason has a merely empirical application. Its Ideas are taken as existing “only in the brain.” Only their empirical reference can substantiate them, or indeed give them the least significance. And as they are by their very nature incapable of empirical embodiment, all assertions which involve them must necessarily be false. Later, Kant came to regard Reason as having its own independent rights. Encouraged by his successful establishment of the objective validity of the categories, progressively more and more convinced of the importance of the distinction, which that proof reinforced, between appearances and things in themselves, and preoccupied with the problems of the spiritual life, his old-time faith in the absolute claims of pure thought reasserted itself. Through Reason we realise our kinship with noumenal realities, and through its demands the nature of the unconditioned is foreshadowed to the mind. The theses and antitheses, which throughout the entire history of philosophy have competed with one another, may both be true. Their perennial conflict demonstrates the need for some more catholic standpoint from which the two great authorities by which human life is controlled and directed, the intellectual and the moral, may be reconciled. Neither can be made to yield to the other; each is supreme in its own field. The distinction between appearances and things in themselves, recognition of which is the first step towards an adequate theory of knowledge, and without which the nature of the intellectual life remains self-contradictory and incomprehensible, itself affords the means of such a reconciliation. The understanding is the sole key to the world of appearance, the moral imperative to the realm of things in themselves. Reason with its demand for the unconditioned mediates between them, and enables us to realise our dual vocation.

This radical alteration of standpoint was bound to make the employment of manuscript representing the earlier and more sceptical attitude altogether unsatisfactory; and only Kant’s constitutional unwillingness to sacrifice what he had once committed to paper can account for his retention of the older expositions. He allows his previous treatment of the first two antinomies to remain in its sceptical form, and, by means of the distinction between the mathematical and the dynamical, develops his newer, more Idealist view exclusively in reference to the third and fourth antinomies. That it is no less applicable to the others, we have already seen.

Though the Idealist view, as here expounded, may be thus described, relatively to the sceptical view of Reason, as later, that is not to be taken as meaning that it represents the latest stage in the development of Kant’s Critical teaching. It seems to belong to the period prior to that in which the central sections of the Analytic were composed. The evidence[1578] for this consists chiefly in its subjectivist references to the nature of appearances. It would seem to be contemporary with Kant’s doctrine of the transcendental object.

SOLUTION OF THE THIRD ANTINOMY[1579]

Statement.—As appearances are representations only, they must have a ground which is not itself an appearance;[1580] and though the effects of such an intelligible cause appear, and accordingly are determined through other appearances, its causality is not itself similarly conditioned. Both it and its causality lie outside the empirical series; only the effects fall within the realm of experience. And that causality, not being subject to time, does not require to stand under another cause as its effect. In this way Kant derives from his transcendental idealism an explanation of the possibility of an action being at once free and causally determined. This explanation he takes as applying either to a first cause of the whole realm of natural phenomena or to a finite being regarded as a free agent. The proof of the possibility of this metaphysical, or, as Kant entitles it, “transcendental freedom,” removes what has always been the real difficulty that lay in the way of “practical freedom.” The conception of freedom is a transcendental Idea which can neither be derived from experience nor verified by it. It is created by Reason for itself;[1581] and reveals the possibility that in this third antinomy both thesis and antithesis may be true. The alternatives—“every effect must arise from nature,” and “every effect must arise from freedom”—are not exclusive of one another. They may be true of one and the same event in different relations.[1582] The event may be free in reference to its intelligible cause, determined as an existence in space and time. Were appearances things in themselves, freedom and causality would necessarily conflict: by means of the above ontological distinction freedom can be asserted without any diminution in the scope allowed to the causal principle. All events, without a single possible exception, are subject to the law of natural determination; and yet every event may at the same time proceed from a free cause.

POSSIBILITY OF HARMONISING CAUSALITY THROUGH FREEDOM WITH THE UNIVERSAL LAW OF NATURAL NECESSITY[1583]

Statement.—The above conclusion is so seemingly paradoxical that Kant devotes this and the following section to its further elucidation. How can events be both free and determined? The answer lies in recognition of the two-sided character of every natural existence. It is, in one aspect, mere appearance; in another, it has at its foundation a transcendental object. It is an appearance of the latter, and for its complete comprehension this latter must be taken into account. Now there is nothing to prevent us from attributing to the transcendental object a causality which is not phenomenal. Such causality may make the appearance just that appearance which it is. In the world of sense every efficient cause must have a specific empirical character, since only so can it determine one effect rather than another according to the universal and invariable law expressive of its nature. We must similarly allow to the transcendental object an intelligible character, and trace to it all those appearances which as members of the empirical series stand to one another in unbroken causal connection. This transcendental object, owing to its intelligible character, is not in time. Its act does not either arise or perish, and is not, therefore, subject to the law of empirical determination which applies only to the changeable, i.e. to events subsequent upon previous states. Such supersensuous causality can find no place in the series of empirical conditions, and though it can be conceived only in terms of the empirical character which is its outcome, the difference between it and natural causality may be as complete as that which subsists between the transcendental and the empirical objects of knowledge. In its empirical character the action is a part of nature, and enters into a causal nexus which conforms to universal laws.[1584] All its effects are inevitably determined by antecedent natural conditions. In its intelligible character, however, this same active subject must be considered free from all influence of sensibility and from all determination through natural events. In so far as it is a noumenon, there can be no change in it, and therefore nothing which is capable of explanation in terms of natural causes. Even its empirical effects are not traceable to it as events in time. For as events these effects are always the results of antecedent empirical causes. What is alone due to noumenal causality is that empirical character in virtue of which appearances are what they are, and owing to which they stand in specific and necessary causal relations to one another.

“...the empirical character is permanent, while its effects, according to variation in the concomitant, and in part limiting conditions, appear in changeable forms.”[1585]

Empirical causality is itself in its specific nature conditioned by an intelligible cause.[1586]

EXPLANATION OF THE RELATION OF FREEDOM TO NECESSITY OF NATURE[1587]

Statement.—No single appearance can be exempted from the law of natural causality. For it would then be placed outside all possible experience, and would be for us a fiction of the brain, or rather could not be conceived at all. Nothing, therefore, in nature can act freely or spontaneously. But while thus recognising that all events without exception are empirically conditioned, we may, as already pointed out, regard empirical causality as itself an effect of a non-empirical and intelligible power.[1588] In events there may be nothing but nature, and yet nature itself, or perhaps even some of the existences composing it, may rest upon powers of a noumenal order. Kant proceeds to show that such an hypothesis is not only allowable, but is indispensable for understanding the distinguishing features of human life in its practical aspect.

Man is a natural existence, and his activities are subject to empirical laws. Like all other objects of nature, he has an empirical character, and in virtue of it takes his place as an integral part of the system of nature. But man is unique among all natural existences in that he not only knows himself as a sensible existence, but also, through pure apperception, becomes aware of himself as possessing faculties of a strictly intelligible character.[1589] Such are the faculties of understanding and Reason, especially the latter in its practical employment. The “ought” of the moral imperative expresses a kind of necessity and a form of causation which we nowhere find in the world of nature. The understanding can know in nature only what actually is, has been, or will be. Nothing natural can be other than it is in the particular relations in which it is found. Moral action transcends the natural in that it finds its cause, not in an appearance or set of appearances, but in an Ideal of pure Reason. Such action must indeed be possible under natural conditions, but such conditions do not determine its rightness, and consequently cannot determine its causality.

“Reason ... does not here follow the order of things as they present themselves in appearance, but frames to itself with perfect spontaneity an order of its own according to Ideas, to which it adapts the empirical conditions, and according to which it declares actions to be necessary even although they have never yet taken place, and perhaps never will take place. And at the same time it also presupposes that Reason can have causality in regard to all these actions, since otherwise no empirical effects could be expected from its Ideas.”[1590]

If such action of pure Reason be admitted to be possible, it will have to be viewed, purely intelligible though it be, as also possessing an empirical character, i.e. as conforming to the system of nature. Its empirical consequences will be the effects of antecedent appearances, and will empirically determine by natural necessity all subsequent acts. In this empirical character, therefore, there can be no freedom. Were our knowledge of the circumstances sufficiently extensive, every human action, so far as it is appearance, could be predicted and shown to be necessary. How, then, can we talk of actions as free, when from the point of view of appearances they must in all cases be regarded as inevitable? The solution is that which has already been given of the broader issue. The entire empirical character, the whole system of nature, is determined by the intelligible character. And the former results from the latter, not empirically, and therefore not according to any temporal, causal law. It does not arise or begin at a certain time. The intelligible character conditions the empirical series as a series, and not as if it were a first member of it.

“Thus what we have missed in all empirical series is disclosed as possible, namely, that the condition of a successive series of events may itself be empirically unconditioned.”[1591]

The intelligible character lies outside the series of appearances. “Reason is the abiding (beharrliche) condition of all free actions....”[1592] Freedom ought not, therefore, to be conceived only negatively as independence of empirical conditions, but also positively as the power of originating a series of events. The empirical series is in time. Reason, which is its unconditioned condition, admits of nothing antecedent to itself; it knows neither before nor after. The series is the immediate effect of a non-temporal reality.

In illustration of his meaning, not, as he is careful to add, with the profession of thereby confirming its truth, Kant points out that moral judgment upon a vicious action is not determined in view of the inheritance, circumstances and past life of the offender, but is passed just as if he might in each action be supposed to begin, quite by himself, a new series of effects. This, in Kant’s view, shows that practical Reason is regarded as a cause completely capable, independently of all empirical conditions, of determining the act, and that it is present in all the actions of men under all conditions, and is always the same. To explain why the intelligible character should in any specific case produce just this particular empirical character, good or bad,

“...transcends all the powers of our Reason, indeed all its rights of questioning, just as if we were to ask why the transcendental object of our outer sense-intuition yields intuition in space only and no other.”[1593]

In conclusion Kant states that his intention has not been to establish the reality of freedom, not even to prove its possibility. Freedom has been dealt with only as a transcendental Idea; and the only point established is that freedom is, so to speak, a possible possibility, in that it is not contradicted either by experience or by anything that can be proved to be a presupposition of experience.

Comment.—Adequate comment upon this section is difficult for many reasons. The section is full of archaic expressions from the earlier stages of Kant’s Critical teaching. Secondly, the section anticipates a problem which is first adequately dealt with in the second Critique. And lastly, but not least, the discussion of freedom in connection with a cosmological antinomy leads Kant to treat it in the same manner as the general antinomy, and in so doing to ignore the chief difficulty to which human freedom, as an independent problem with its own peculiar difficulties, lies open. For it is comparatively easy to reconcile the universality of the causal principle with the unconditionedness of the transcendental ground upon which nature as a whole is made to rest. It is a very different matter to reconcile the spontaneous origination of particular causal series, or the freedom of particular existences, such as human beings, with the singleness and uniformity of a natural system in which every part is determined by every other. Self-consciousness, with the capacity which it confers of constructing rational ideals, certainly, as Kant rightly contends, creates a situation to which mechanical categories are by no means adequate. But the mere reference to the conceivability of distinct causal series, having each a pure conception as their intelligible ground, does not suffice to meet the fundamental difficulty that, on Kant’s own admission, each such separate series must form an integral part of the unitary system of natural law. In only one passage does Kant even touch upon this difficulty. Speaking[1594] of Reason’s power of originating a series of events, he adds that while nothing begins in Reason itself (as it admits of no conditions antecedent to itself in time), the new series must none the less have a beginning in the natural world. But the proviso, which he at once makes, indicates that he is aware that this statement is untenable. For he adds the qualification that though a beginning of the series, it is never an absolutely first beginning. In other words, it is not a beginning in any real sense of the term. As the argument of his next paragraph shows, it is the entire system of nature, and not any one series within it, which can alone account, in empirical terms, for any one action.

It is open to Kant to argue, as he has already done,[1595] that the transcendental object conditions each separate appearance as well as all appearances in their totality, and that the specific empirical character of each causal series is therefore no less noumenally conditioned than is nature as a whole. But this does not suffice to meet the difficulty—how, if all natural phenomena constitute a single closed system in which everything is determined by everything else, a moral agent, acting spontaneously, can be free to originate a genuinely new series of natural events. We seem constrained to conclude that Kant has failed to sustain his position. A solution is rendered impossible by the very terms in which he formulates the problem. If the spiritual and the natural be opposed to one another as the timeless and the temporal, and if the natural be further viewed as a unitary system, individual moral freedom is no longer defensible. Only the “transcendental freedom” of the cosmological argument can be reckoned as among the open possibilities.

As regards the character of the Critical doctrine which underlies this section, we need only note that the statement in A 546-7 = B 574-5, that man knows himself through pure apperception as “a purely intelligible object,”[1596] does not conform to Kant’s final teaching. The section can be dated through its unwavering adherence to the subjectivist doctrine of the transcendental object.[1597]

SOLUTION OF THE FOURTH ANTINOMY[1598]

Statement.—The above solution is adopted. Both thesis and antithesis may be true, the latter of the world of sense and the former of its non-empirical ground. All things sensible are contingent, but the contingent series in its entirety may nevertheless rest upon an unconditionally necessary being. The unconditioned, since it is outside the series, does not require that any one link in the series should be itself unconditioned. “Reason follows its own course in the empirical, and again a peculiar course in its transcendental use,” i.e. it limits itself by the law of causality in dealing with appearances, lest in losing the thread of the empirical conditions it should fall into idle and empty speculations; while, on the other hand, it limits that law to appearances, lest it should wrongly declare that what is useless for the explanation of appearances is therefore impossible in itself. This does not prove that an absolutely necessary being is really possible, but only that its impossibility must not be concluded from the necessary contingency of all things sensuous.

Comment.—Kant’s method of distinguishing[1599] this conclusion from that of the preceding antinomy is again artificial. “Necessary being” is not in conception more extramundanum than “unconditioned cause.” If Kant’s distinction were valid, the argument of the fourth antinomy would no longer be cosmological; it would coincide with the problem of the Ideal of Pure Reason.

CONCLUDING NOTE ON THE WHOLE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON[1600]

Statement.—When we seek the unconditioned entirely beyond experience, our Ideas cease to be cosmological; they become transcendent. They separate themselves off from all empirical use of the understanding, and create to themselves an object, the material of which is not taken from experience, and which is therefore a mere thing of the mind (blosses Gedankending). None the less the cosmological Idea of the fourth antinomy impels us to take this step. When sensuous appearances, as merely contingent, require us to look for something altogether distinct in nature from them, our only available instruments, in so doing, are those pure concepts of things in general which contingent experience involves. We use them as instruments in such manner as may enable us to form, through analogy, some kind of notion of intelligible things. Taken in abstraction from the forms of sense, they yield that notion of an absolutely necessary Being which is equivalent to the concept of the theological Ideal.

CONCLUDING COMMENT ON KANT’S DOCTRINE OF THE ANTINOMIES

We may now, in conclusion, briefly summarise the results obtained in this chapter. Kant fails to justify the assertion that on the dogmatic level there exist antinomies in which both the contradictory alternatives allow of cogent demonstration. His proofs are in every instance invalid. The real nature of antinomy must, as he himself occasionally intimates, be defined in a very different manner, namely, as a conflict between the demand of Reason for unity and system, and the specific nature of the conditions, especially of the spatial and temporal conditions, under which the sensuous exists. In this wider form it constitutes a genuine problem, which demands for its solution the fundamental Critical distinction between appearances and things-in-themselves, and also a more thoroughgoing discussion than has yet been attempted of the nature of Reason and of the function of its Ideas. It is to these connected questions that Kant devotes his main attention in the remaining portions of the Dialectic, so that in passing to the Ideal of Pure Reason he is not proceeding to the treatment of a new set of problems, but to the restatement and to the more adequate solution of the fundamental conflict between understanding and Reason.

The observations which closed our comment upon the Paralogisms are thus again in order. The teaching of the sections on the Antinomies, no less than that of those on the Paralogisms, is incomplete, and if taken by itself is bound to mislead. The Ideas of an unconditioned self and of an unconditioned ground of nature have thus far been taken as at least conceptually possible, and as signifying what may perhaps be real existences. These Ideas are in certain of the remaining sections of the Dialectic called in question. They are there declared to be without inherent meaning. They are useful fictions—heuristische Fiktionen—and in their psychological nature are simply schemata of regulative principles. Their theoretical significance consists merely in their regulative and limitative functions. They must not be regarded, even hypothetically, as representing real existences. In the practical (i.e. ethical) sphere they do indeed acquire a very different standing. But with that the Critique of Pure Reason is not directly concerned. The reader may therefore be warned not to omit the chapter on the Ideal of Pure Reason, on the supposition that it embodies only a criticism of the Cartesian and teleological proofs of God’s existence. It is an integral part of Critical teaching, and carries Kant’s entire argument forward to its final conclusions. Only in view of the new and deeper considerations, which it brings to light, can his treatment even of the Antinomies be properly understood. Its main opening section (Section II.) is, indeed, among the most scholastically rationalistic in the entire Critique; but in the later sections it unfolds, with a boldness and consistency to which we find no parallel in the treatment of the Paralogisms and of the Antinomies, the full consequences of the more sceptical of Kant’s alternating standpoints. It disintegrates the concepts of the unconditioned, which have hitherto been employed without analysis and without question; and upon their elimination from among the legitimate instruments of Reason, the situation undergoes entire transformation, the two points of view appearing for the first time in the full extent of their divergence and conflict. For Kant’s Idealist view of Reason and of its Ideas still continues to find occasional statement, showing that he has not been able decisively to commit himself to this more sceptical interpretation of the function of Reason; that he is conscious that the Idealist view alone gives adequate expression to certain fundamental considerations which have to be reckoned with; and that unless the two views can in some manner be reconciled with one another, a really definitive and satisfactory solution of the problem has not been reached. When, therefore, we speak of Kant’s final conclusions, we must be taken as referring to the twofold tendencies, sceptical and Idealist, which to the very last persist in competition with one another. The greater adequacy of Kant’s argument in the chapter on the Ideal of Pure Reason and in the important Appendix attached to the Dialectic consists in its forcible and considered exposition of both attitudes. Most of the sections on the Antinomies must, as we have seen, be dated as among the earliest parts of the Critique. Their teaching is correspondingly immature. The chapter on the Ideal and the Appendix, on the other hand, were among the latest to be written, and contain, together with the central portions of the Analytic, our most authoritative exposition of Kant’s Critical principles.

CHAPTER III
THE IDEAL OF PURE REASON

SECTIONS I and II
THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAL[1601]

THE statements of the first section cannot profitably be commented upon at this stage; they are of a merely general character.[1602] I pass at once to Section II., which, as above stated, is quite the most archaic piece of rationalistic argument in the entire Critique. It is not merely Leibnizian, but Wolffian in character. For Kant the Wolffian logic had an old-time flavour and familiarity that rendered it by no means distasteful; and he is here, as it were, recalling, not altogether without sympathy, the lessons of his student years. They enable him to render definite, by way of contrast, the outcome of his own Critical teaching.

As Kant here restates the Wolffian notion of the Ens realissimum in such fashion as is required to make it conform to his deduction of the theological Idea from the disjunctive syllogism, a preliminary statement of the more orthodox formulation will help to set Wolff’s doctrine in a clearer light. In so doing, I shall follow Baumgarten, whose Metaphysica Kant used as a class text-book. Briefly summarised Baumgarten’s statement is as follows.[1603] The Ens perfectissimum is that Being which possesses as many predicates, i.e. perfections, as can possibly exist together in a single thing, and in which every one of its perfections is as great as is anywhere possible. This most perfect Being must be a real Being, and its reality must be the greatest possible. It is that in which the most and the greatest realities are. But all realities are affirmative determinations, and no denial is a reality. Accordingly no reality can contradict another reality, and all realities can exist together in the same thing. The Ens perfectissimum, in possessing all the realities that can exist together, must therefore possess all realities without exception, and every one of them in the highest degree. The notion of an individual existence that is at once perfectissimum and also realissimum is thus determinable by pure Reason from its internal resources. It is the ground and condition of all other existences; all of them arise through limitation of its purely positive nature.

Kant seeks to justify his metaphysical deduction of the Ideal from the disjunctive syllogism, by recasting the above argument in the following manner. Since everything which exists is completely determined, it is subject to the principle of complete determination, according to which one of each of the possible pairs of contradictory predicates must be applicable to it. To be completely determined the thing must be compared with the sum total of all possible predicates. Although this idea of the sum total of all possible predicates, through reference to which alone any concept can be completely determined, seems itself indeterminate, we find nevertheless on closer examination that it individualises itself a priori, transforming itself into the concept of an individual existence that is completely determined by the mere Idea, and which may therefore be called an Ideal of pure Reason. That is proved as follows. No one can definitely think a negation unless he founds it on the opposite affirmation. A man completely blind cannot frame the smallest conception of darkness, because he has none of light. All negations are therefore derivative; it is the realities which contain the material by which a complete determination of anything becomes possible. The source, from which all possible predicates may be derived, can be nothing but the sum total of reality. And this concept of the omnitudo realitatis is the Idea of a Being that is single and individual. As all finite beings derive the material of their possibility from it, they presuppose it, and cannot, therefore, constitute it. They are imperfect copies (ectypa), of which it is the sole Ideal. The Idea is also individual. Out of each possible pair of contradictory predicates, that one which expresses reality belongs to it. By these infinitely numerous positive predicates it is determined to absolute concreteness; and as it therefore possesses all that has reality, not only in nature but in man, it must be conceived as a personal and intelligent Primordial Being. The logical Ideal, thus determining itself completely by its own concept, appears not only as ideal but also as real, not only as logical but also as divine.

Kant so far anticipates his criticism of the ontological argument as to give, in the remaining paragraphs of this second section, a preliminary criticism of this procedure. For the purpose for which the Ideal is postulated, namely, the determination of all finite and therefore limited existences, Reason does not require to presuppose an existence corresponding to it. Its mere Idea will suffice.

“All manifoldness of things is only a correspondingly varied mode of limiting the concept of the highest reality which forms their common substratum, just as all figures are only possible as so many different modes of limiting infinite space.”[1604]

This relation is not, however, that of a real existence to other things but of an Idea to concepts. The Idea is a mere fiction, necessary for comprehending the limited, not a reality that can be asserted, even hypothetically,[1605] as given along with the limited. None the less, owing to a natural transcendental illusion, the mind inevitably tends to hypostatise it, and so generates the object of rational theology.

Comment.—The explanation of this illusion, which Kant proceeds to give in the two concluding paragraphs, is peculiarly confusing. Though the concept of an all-comprehensive reality may, he argues, be required for the definition of sensible objects, such a concept must not for that reason be taken as representing a real existence. The teaching of the section on Amphiboly is here entirely ignored; and the reader is bewildered by the assumption, which Kant apparently makes, that something analogous to the Leibnizian Ideal is a prerequisite of possible experience.

These last remarks indicate the kind of criticism to which the argument of this section lays itself open. In expounding the teaching of the Leibnizian science of rational theology, Kant strives to represent its Ideal as being an inevitable Idea of human Reason; and in order to make this argument at all convincing he is constrained to treat as valid the presupposed ontology, though that has already been shown in the discussion of Amphiboly to be altogether untenable.[1606] Limitation is not merely negative; genuine realities may negate one another. Though the objects of sense presuppose the entire system to which they belong, the form of this presupposition is in no respect analogous to that which Wolff would represent as holding between finite existences and the Ens realissimum. The passage in the Analytic[1607] in which Kant directly controverts the above teaching is as follows:

“The principle, that realities (as pure assertions) never logically contradict each other ... has not the least meaning either in regard to nature or in regard to any thing-in-itself.... Although Herr von Leibniz did not, indeed, announce this proposition with all the pomp of a new principle, he yet made use of it for new assertions, and his followers expressly incorporated it in their Leibnizian-Wolffian system. According to this principle all evils, for instance, are merely consequences of the limitations of created beings, i.e. negations, because negations alone conflict with reality.... Similarly his disciples consider it not only possible, but even natural, to combine all reality, without fear of any conflict, in one being, because the only conflict which they recognise is that of contradiction, whereby the concept of a thing is itself removed. They do not admit the conflict of reciprocal injury in which each of two real grounds destroys the effect of the other—a process which we can represent to ourselves only in terms of conditions presented to us in sensibility.”

Thus the Ideal which Kant here declares to be a necessary Idea of Reason is denounced in the Analytic as based on false principles peculiar to the Leibnizian philosophy, and as “without the least meaning in regard either to nature or to any thing in itself.” The teaching of the Analytic will no more combine with this scholastic rationalism than oil with water. The reader may safely absolve himself from the thankless task of attempting to render Kant’s argumentation in these paragraphs consistent with itself. Fortunately, in the next section, Kant returns to the standpoint proper to the doctrine he is expounding, and lays bare, with remarkable subtlety and in a very convincing manner, the concealed dialectic by which the conclusions of this metaphysical science are really determined.[1608]

SECTION III
THE SPECULATIVE ARGUMENTS IN PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF A SUPREME BEING[1609]

Statement.—Though the Ideal is not arbitrary, but is presupposed in every attempt to define completely a finite concept, Reason would feel hesitation in thus transforming what is merely a logical concept into a Divine Existence, were it not that it is impelled from another direction to derive reality from such a source. All existences known in experience are contingent, and so lead us (owing to the constitution of our Reason) to assume an absolutely necessary Being as their ground and cause. Now when we examine our various concepts, to ascertain which will cover this notion of necessary existence, we find that there is one that possesses outstanding claims, namely, that Idea which contains a therefore for every wherefore, which is in no respect defective, and which does not permit us to postulate any condition. The concepts of the Ideal and of the necessary alone represent the unconditioned; and as they agree in this fundamental respect, they must, we therefore argue, be identical. And to this conclusion we are the more inclined, in that, by thus idealising reality, we are at the same time enabled to realise our Ideal.

This line of argument, which starts from the contingent, is as little valid as that which proceeds directly from the Ideal. But since these arguments express certain tendencies inherent in the human mind, they have a vitality which survives any merely forensic refutation. Though the conclusions to which they lead are false, they are none the less inevitably drawn. Our acceptance of them is due to a transcendental illusion which may be detected as such, but which, like the ingrained illusions of sense-experience, must none the less persist.

The opening paragraph of Section V[1610] is the natural completion of the above analysis. The ontological argument, in starting from the concept of the Ens realissimum, inverts the natural procedure. It is “a merely scholastic innovation,” and would never have been attempted save for the need of finding some necessary Being, to which we may ascend from contingent existence. It maintains that this necessary Being must be unconditioned and a priori certain, and accordingly looks for a concept capable of fulfilling this requirement. Such a concept is supposed to exist in the Idea of an Ens realissimum, and this Idea is therefore used to gain more definite knowledge of that which has been previously and independently recognised, namely, the necessary Being,

“This natural procedure of Reason was concealed from view, and instead of ending with this concept, the attempt was made to begin with it, and so to deduce from it that necessity of existence which it was only fitted to complete. Thus arose the unfortunate ontological proof, which yields satisfaction neither to the natural and healthy understanding nor to the more academic demands of strict proof.”[1611]

To return to Section III.: Kant breaks the continuity of his argument, and anticipates his discussion of the cosmological proof, by stopping to point out the illegitimacy of the assumption which underlies the first step in the above argument, namely, that a limited being cannot be absolutely necessary. Though the concept of a limited being does not contain the unconditioned, that does not prove that its existence is conditioned. Indeed each and every limited being may, for all their concepts show to the contrary, be unconditionally necessary.[1612] The above argument is consequently inconclusive, and cannot be relied on to give us any concept whatever of the qualities of a necessary Being. But this is a merely logical defect, and, as already noted, it is not really upon logical cogency that the persuasive force of the argument depends.

In conclusion Kant points out that there are only three possible kinds of speculative (i.e. theoretical) proofs of the existence of God: (1) from definite experience and the specific nature of the world of sense as revealed in experience; (2) from indefinite experience, i.e. from the fact that any existence at all is empirically given; (3) the non-empirical a priori proof from mere concepts. The first is the physico-theological or teleological argument, the second is the cosmological, and the third is the ontological. Kant finds it advisable to reverse the order of the proofs, and to begin by consideration of the ontological argument. This would seem to indicate that the ‘scholastic innovation’ to which he traces the origin of the ontological proof has more justification than his remarks appear to allow.

SECTION IV
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF AN ONTOLOGICAL PROOF[1613]

Statement.—Hitherto Kant has employed the concept of an absolutely necessary Being without question. He now recognises that the problem, from which we ought to start, is not whether the existence of an absolutely necessary Being can be demonstrated, but whether, and how, such a Being can even be conceived. And upon analysis he discovers that the assumed notion of an absolutely necessary, i.e. unconditioned Being is entirely lacking in intelligible content. For in eliminating all conditioning causes—through which alone the understanding can conceive necessity of existence—we also remove this particular kind of necessity. A verbal definition may, indeed, be given of the Idea, as when we say that it represents something the non-existence of which is impossible. But this yields no insight into the reasons which make its non-existence inconceivable, and such insight is required if anything at all is to be thought in the Idea.

“The expedient of removing all those conditions which the understanding indispensably requires in order to regard something as necessary, simply through the introduction of the word unconditioned, is very far from sufficing to show whether I am still thinking anything, or not rather perhaps nothing at all, in the concept of the unconditionally necessary.”[1614]

The untenableness of the concept has been in large part concealed through a confusion between logical and ontological necessity, that is, between necessity of judgment and necessity of existence. The fact that every proposition of geometry must be regarded as absolutely necessary was supposed to justify this identification. It was not observed that logical necessity refers only to judgments, not to things and their relations, and that the absolute necessity of the judgment holds only upon the assumption that the conditioned necessity of the thing referred to has previously been granted. If there be any such thing as a triangle, the assertion that it has three angles will follow with absolute necessity; but the existence of a triangle or even of space in general is contingent. In other words, the asserted necessity is only a form of logical sequence, not the unconditioned necessity of existence which is supposed to be disclosed in the Idea of Reason. All judgments, so far as they refer to existence, as distinct from mere possibility, are hypothetical, and serve to define a reality that is only contingently given. In adopting this position, Kant is in entire agreement with Hume. The contradictory of a matter of fact is always thinkable. There has, Kant claims, been no more fruitful source of illusion throughout the whole history of philosophy than the belief in an absolute necessity that is purely logical.[1615] In the ontological argument we have the most striking instance of such rationalistic exaggeration of the powers of thought.

Comment.—Had this criticism of the Idea of unconditioned necessity been introduced at an earlier stage in Kant’s argument, much confusion would have been avoided. It involves the thorough revisal of his criticism of the third and fourth antinomies, as well as of the whole account hitherto given of the function of Reason and of its metaphysical dialectic. The principle, that if the conditioned be given, the whole series of conditions up to the unconditioned is likewise given, must no longer be accepted as a basis for argument. Indeed the very terms in which Reason has so far been defined, as the faculty of the unconditioned, become subject to question. In that definition the term unconditioned has tacitly been taken as equivalent to the unconditionally necessary, and on elimination of the element of necessity, it will reduce merely to the concept of totality, which is a pure form of the understanding. Those parts of the Dialectic, which embody the view that Reason is simply the understanding transcendently employed, will thus be confirmed; the alternative view of Reason as a separate faculty will have to be eliminated. But these are questions which Kant himself proceeds to raise and discuss.[1616] Meantime he applies the above results in criticism of the ontological argument.

Statement.—In an identical judgment it is contradictory to reject the predicate while retaining the subject. But there is no contradiction if we reject subject and predicate alike, for nothing is then left that can be contradicted. If we assume that there is a triangle, we are bound to recognise that it has three angles, but there is no contradiction in rejecting the triangle together with its three angles. The same holds true of an absolutely necessary Being. ‘God is omnipotent’ is an identical and therefore necessary judgment. But if we say, ‘There is no God,’ neither the omnipotence nor any other attribute remains; and there is therefore not the least contradiction in saying that God does not exist. The only way of evading this conclusion is to argue that there are subjects which cannot be removed out of existence. That, however, would only be another way of asserting that there exist absolutely necessary subjects, and that is the very assertion which is now in question, and which the ontological argument undertakes to prove. Our sole test of what cannot be removed is the contradiction which would thereby result; and the only possible instance which can be cited is the concept of the Ens realissimum. It remains, therefore, to establish the above criticism for this specific case.

At the start Kant points out that absence of internal contradiction, even if granted, proves only that the Ens realissimum is a logically possible concept (as distinguished from the nihil negativum[1617]); it does not suffice to establish the possibility of the object of the concept. But for the sake of argument Kant allows this initial assumption to pass. The argument to be disproved is that as reality comprehends existence, existence is contained in the concept of Ens realissimum, and cannot therefore be denied of it without removing its internal possibility. The really fundamental assumption of this argument is that existence is capable of being included in the concept of a possible being. If that were so, the assertion of its existence would be an analytic proposition, and the proof could not be challenged. (The assumption is partly concealed by alternation of the terms reality and existence: in their actual employment they are completely synonymous.) As the above assumption thus decides the entire issue, Kant sets himself to establish, in direct opposition to it, the thesis, that every proposition which predicates existence is synthetic, and that in consequence its denial can never involve a logical contradiction. Existence can never form part of the content of a conception, and therefore must not be regarded as a possible predicate. What logically corresponds to it in a judgment is a purely formal factor, namely, the copula. The proposition, ‘God is omnipotent,’ contains two concepts, each of which has its object—God and omnipotence. The word ‘is’ adds no new predicate, but only serves to posit the predicate in its relation to the subject. Similarly, when we take the subject together with all its predicates (including that of omnipotence), and say, ‘God is’ or ‘there is a God,’ we attach no new predicate to the concept of God, but only posit the subject in itself with all its predicates as being an object that stands in relation to our concept. In order that the proposition be true, the content of the object and of the concept must be one and the same. If the object contained more than the concept, the concept would not express the object, and the proposition would assert a relation that does not hold. Or to state the same point in another way, the real must not contain more content than the possible. Otherwise it would not be the possible, but something different from the possible, which would then be taken as existing. A hundred real thalers do not contain the least coin more than a hundred possible thalers. Though my financial position is very differently affected by a hundred real thalers than by the thought of them only, a conceived hundred thalers are not in the least increased through acquiring existence outside my concept.

Kant presents his argument in still another form. If we think in a thing every kind of reality except one, the missing reality is not supplied by my saying that this defective thing exists. On the contrary, it exists with the same defect with which I have thought it. When, therefore, I think a Being as the highest reality, without any defect, the question still remains whether it exists or not. For though, in my concept, nothing may be lacking of the possible real content of a thing in general, something is still lacking in its relation to my whole state of thinking, namely, knowledge of its existence; and such knowledge can never be obtained save in an a posteriori manner. That is owing to the limitations imposed by the conditions of our sense-experience. We never confound the existence of a sensible object with its mere concept. The concept represents something that may or may not exist: to determine existence we must refer to actual experience. As Kant has already stated, the actual is always for us the accidental, and its assertion is therefore synthetic. A possible idea and the idea of a possible thing are quite distinct.[1618] A thing is known to be possible only when presented in some concrete experience, or when, though not actually experienced, it has been proved to be bound up, according to empirical laws, with given perceptions. It is not, therefore, surprising that if we try, as is done in the ontological argument, to think existence through the pure category, we cannot mention a single mark distinguishing it from a merely logical possibility. The concept of a Supreme Being is, in many respects, a valuable Idea, but just because it is an Idea of pure Reason, i.e. a mere Idea, we can no more extend our knowledge of real existence by means of it, than a merchant can better his position by adding a few noughts to his cash account.

There are many points of connection between this section and the first edition Introduction; and in view of these points of contact Adickes has suggested[1619] that the considerations which arose in the examination of the ontological argument may have been what brought Kant to realise that the various problems of the Critique can all be traced to the central problem of a priori synthesis.

SECTION V
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF A COSMOLOGICAL PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD[1620]

Statement.—Kant, as already noted, views the ontological proof as ‘a mere innovation of scholastic wisdom’ which restates, in a quite unnatural form, a line of thought much more adequately expressed in the cosmological proof. To discover the natural dialectic of Reason we must therefore look to this latter form of argument. It is composed of two distinct stages. In the first stage it makes no use of specific experience: if anything is given us as existing, e.g. the self, there must exist an absolutely necessary Being as its cause. Then, in the second stage, it is argued that as such a Being must be altogether outside experience, Reason must leave experience entirely aside, and discover from among pure concepts what properties an absolutely necessary Being ought to possess, i.e. which among all possible things contains in itself the conditions of absolute necessity. The requisite enlightenment is believed by Reason to be derivable only from the concept of an Ens realissimum, and Reason therefore at once concludes that this concept must represent the absolutely necessary Being.

Now in that final conclusion the truth of the ontological argument is assumed. If the concept of a Being of the highest reality is so completely adequate to the concept of necessary existence that they can be regarded as identical, the latter must be capable of being derived from the former, and that is all that is maintained in the ontological proof. To make this point clearer, Kant states it in scholastic form. If the proposition be true, that every absolutely necessary Being is at the same time the most real Being (and this is the nervus probandi of the cosmological proof in so far as it is also theological), it must, like all affirmative propositions, be capable of conversion, at least per accidens. This gives us the proposition that some Entia realissima are at the same time absolutely necessary Beings. One Ens realissimum, however, does not differ from another, and what applies to one applies to all. In this case, therefore, we must employ simple conversion, and say that every Ens realissimum is a necessary Being. Thus the cosmological proof is not only as illusory as the ontological, but also less honest. While pretending to lead us by a new road to a sound conclusion, it brings us back, after a short circuit, into the old path. If the ontological argument is correct, the cosmological is superfluous; and if the ontological is false, the cosmological cannot possibly be true.

But the first stage of the cosmological argument, that by which it is distinguished from the ontological, is itself fallacious. A whole nest of dialectical assumptions lies hidden in its apparently simple and legitimate inference from the contingent to the necessary. To advance from the contingent to the necessary, from the relative to the absolute, from the given to the transcendent, is just as illegitimate as the opposite process of passing from Idea to existence. The necessity of thought, which is in both cases the sole ground of the inference, is found on examination to be of merely subjective character. No less than three false assumptions are involved in this inference. In the first place, the principle that everything must have a cause, which can be proved to be valid only within the world of sense, is here applied to the sensible world as a whole; and is therefore employed in the wider form which coincides with the fundamental principle of the higher faculty of Reason. We assume, that if the conditioned be given, the totality of its conditions up to the unconditioned is given likewise. No such principle can be granted. As it is synthetic, it could be established only as a condition of the possibility of experience. But no such proof is offered: the principle is based upon a purely intellectual concept. Secondly, the inference to a first cause rests on the kindred assumption that an infinite series of empirical causes is impossible. That conclusion can never be drawn, even within the realm of experience. How, then, can we rely upon it in advancing beyond experience? Certainly, no one can prove that the empirical series is infinite, but just as little can we establish the opposite. In discussing the third and fourth antinomies Kant has shown that the existence of a first cause or of an absolutely necessary Being, though possible (or rather, possibly possible), is never demonstrable. Thirdly—as has been shown in A 592-3 = B 620-1—in inferring to an unconditioned cause, it is blindly assumed that the removal of all conditions does not at the same time remove the very concept of necessity. Our only notion of necessity is derived from experience, and therefore depends on those finite conditions which the argument would deny to us. The concept of unconditioned necessity is entirely null and void.

The fourth defect, which Kant enumerates, refers to the second stage of the cosmological argument, and has already been considered. He ought also to have mentioned a still further assumption underlying its first stage, namely, that a concept which represents a limited being, as, for instance, that of matter, cannot represent necessary existence. This also is an assumption which it cannot justify. This objection Kant has himself stated in A 586 = B 614 and A 588 = B 616.[1621]

Comment.—We are apt to overlook the wider sweep which Kant’s criticism takes in this section, owing to his omission to notify the reader that he is here calling in question a principle which he has hitherto been taking for granted, namely, the principle in terms of which he has in the opening sections of the Dialectic defined the faculty of Reason, that if the conditioned be given the totality of conditions up to the unconditioned is given likewise. The first step in his rejection of this principle occurs as merely incidental to his criticism of the ontological argument. It is there shown that the concept of the unconditionally necessary is without meaning. Now, in this present section, he calls in question the principle itself. It must be rejected not only, as stated in the third of the above objections, because the concept of the unconditioned, which tacitly implies the factor of absolute necessity, is without real significance, but also for two further reasons—those above cited in the first and second objections. How very differently the problems of the Dialectic appear, and how very differently the Ideas of Reason have to be regarded, when this principle, and also the concept of the unconditioned of which it is the application, are thus called in question, will be shown in the sequel.

DISCOVERY AND EXPLANATION OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL ILLUSION IN ALL TRANSCENDENTAL PROOFS OF THE EXISTENCE OF A NECESSARY BEING[1622]

Statement.—We do not properly fulfil the task prescribed by Critical teaching in merely disproving the cosmological argument. We must also explain its hold upon the mind. If it is, as Kant insists, more natural to the mind than the ontological, and yet, as we have just seen, is more fallacious; if it has not been invented by philosophers, but is the instinctive reasoning of the natural man, it must rest, like all dialectical illusion, upon a misunderstanding of the legitimate demands of pure Reason. Reason demands the unconditioned, and yet cannot think it.

“Unconditioned necessity, which we so indispensably require as the last bearer of all things, is for human Reason the veritable abyss.... We can neither help thinking, nor can we bear the thought, that a Being—even if it be the one which we represent to ourselves as supreme amongst all Beings—should, as it were, say to itself: ‘I am from eternity to eternity, and outside me there is nothing save what is through my will; but whence am I?’ All support here fails us; and supreme perfection, no less than the least perfection, is unsubstantial and baseless for the merely speculative Reason....”[1623]

We are obliged to think something as necessary for all existence, and yet at the same time are unable to think anything as in itself necessary—God as little as anything else.

The explanation[1624] of this strange fact must be that which follows as a corollary from the limitation of our knowledge to sense-experience, namely, that our concepts of necessity and contingency do not concern things in themselves, and cannot therefore be applied to them in accordance with either of the two possible alternatives. Each alternative must express a subjective principle of Reason; and the two together (that something exists by necessity, and that everything is only contingent) must form complementary rules for the guidance of the understanding. These rules will then be purely heuristic and regulative, relating only to the formal interests of Reason, and may well stand side by side. For the one tells us that we ought to philosophise as if there were a necessary first ground for everything that exists, i.e. that we ought to be always dissatisfied with relativity and contingency, and to seek always for what is unconditionally necessary. The other warns us against regarding any single determination in things (such, for instance, as impenetrability or gravity) as absolutely necessary, and so bids us keep the way always open for further derivation. In other words, Reason guides the understanding by a twofold command. The understanding must derive phenomena and their existence from other phenomena, just as if there were no necessary Being at all; while at the same time it must always strive towards the completeness of that derivation, just as if such a necessary Being were presupposed. It is owing to a transcendental illusion or subreption that we view the latter principle as constitutive, and so think its unity as hypostatised in the form of an Ens realissimum. The falsity of this substitution becomes evident as soon as we consider that unconditioned necessity, as a thing in itself, cannot even be conceived, and that the “Idea” of it cannot, therefore, be ascribed to Reason save as a merely formal principle, regulative of the understanding in its interpretation of given experience.[1625]

Comment.—The reader may observe that, when Kant is developing this sceptical view of the Ideal of Reason, the explanation of dialectical illusion in terms of transcendental idealism falls into the background. The illusion is no longer traced to a confusion between appearances and things in themselves, but to the false interpretation of regulative principles as being constitutive. When it is the cosmological problem with which we are dealing, the two illusions do, indeed, coincide. If we view the objects of sense-experience as things in themselves, we are bound to regard the Ideal completion of the natural sciences as an adequate representation of ultimate reality. But in Rational Theology, which is professedly directed towards the definition of a Being distinct from nature and conditioning all finite existence, it is not failure to distinguish between appearance and things in themselves, but the mistaking of a merely formal Ideal for a representation of reality, that is alone responsible for the conclusions drawn.

In A 617-18 = B 645-6 Kant makes statements which conflict with the teaching of A 586 = B 614 and A 588 = B 616. In the latter passages he has argued that the concept of a limited being may not without specific proof be taken as contradictory of absolute necessity. He now categorically declares that the philosophers of antiquity are in error in regarding matter as primitive and necessary; and the reason which he gives is that the regulative principle of Reason forbids us to view extension and impenetrability, “which together constitute the concept of matter,” as ultimate principles of experience. But obviously Kant is here going further than his regulative principle will justify. It demands only that we should always look for still higher principles of unity, and so keep open the way for possible further derivation; it does not enable us to assert that such will actually be found to exist. Notwithstanding the Ideal demands of the regulative principle, matter may be primordial and necessary, and its properties of extension and impenetrability may not be derivable from anything more ultimate.

In this connection we may raise the more general question, how far the Ideal demand for necessity and unity in knowledge and existence can be concretely pictured. Kant gives a varying answer. Sometimes—when he is emphasising the limitation of our theoretical knowledge to sense-experience—he reduces the speculative Idea of Divine Existence to a purely abstract maxim for the regulation of natural science. When the Ideal occupies the mind on its own account, and so attracts our attention away from our sense-knowledge, it is an unreality, and perverts the understanding; it yields genuine light and leading only as a quite general maxim within the sphere of natural science. From this point of view necessary Being, even as an Ideal, can by no means be identified with a personal God. It signifies only the highest possible system and unity of the endlessly varied natural phenomena in space and time, and can be approximately realised in the most various ways. Its significance is entirely cosmological. It is an Ideal of positive science, and signifies only systematic unity in the object known. In being transformed from a scientific ideal into a subject of theological enquiry, it has inevitably given rise to dialectical illusion. At other times,—when he is concerned to defend the concept of Divine Existence as at least possible, and so to prepare the way for its postulation as implied in the moral law, or when he is seeking, as in the Critique of Judgment, to render comprehensible the complete adaptation of phenomenal nature in its material aspect to the needs of our understanding—Kant insists that we are ultimately compelled, by the nature of our faculties, to conceive the Ideal of Reason as a personal God, as an Intelligence working according to purposes. Only by such a personal God, he maintains, can the demands of Reason be genuinely satisfied.

These two interpretations of the Ideal of Reason are in conflict with one another; and so far as the Critique of Pure Reason is concerned, a very insufficient attempt is made to justify the frequent assertion that the Idea of God is the Ideal of Reason, and not merely one possible, and highly problematic, interpretation of it. If the Idea of God is a necessary Idea, it cannot be adequately expressed through any merely regulative maxim. It demands not only system in knowledge but also perfection in the nature of the known. It is not a merely logical Ideal such as might be satisfied by any rational system, but an Ideal which concerns matter as well as form, man as well as nature, our moral needs as well as our intellectual demands. If Kant is to maintain that the only genuine function of theoretical Reason is to guide the understanding in its scientific application, he is debarred from asserting that a concrete interpretation of its regulative principles is unavoidable. And he is also precluded by his own limitation of all knowledge to sense-experience from seeking to define by any positive predicate the transcendent nature of the thing in itself.

Such justification as Kant can offer in support of his assertion that the Idea of God, of Intelligent Perfection, is an indispensable Idea of human Reason, is chiefly based upon the teleological aspect of nature which is dealt with in the physico-theological proof. Mechanical science implies only the cosmological Idea: teleological unity presupposes the theological Ideal. Further enquiry, then, into the necessity of the Idea of God as a regulative principle, and its dangers as a source of dialectical illusion, we must defer until we have examined the one remaining argument.[1626]

SECTION VI
THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF THE PHYSICO-THEOLOGICAL PROOF[1627]

Statement.—The teleological proof starts from our definite knowledge of the order and constitution of the sensible world. The actual world presents such immeasurable order, variety, fitness, and beauty, that we are led to believe that here at least is sufficient proof of the existence of God. Kant’s attitude towards this argument is at once extremely critical and extremely sympathetic. Though he represents it as the oldest, the clearest, and the most convincing, he is none the less prepared to show that it contains every one of the fallacies involved in the other two proofs, as well as some false assumptions peculiar to itself. It possesses overpowering persuasive force, not because of any inherent logical cogency, but because it so successfully appeals to feeling as to silence the intellect. It would, Kant declares, be not only comfortless, but utterly vain to attempt to diminish its influence.

”[The mind is] aroused from the indecision of all melancholy reflection, as from a dream, by one glance at the wonders of nature and the majesty of the universe....”[1628]

Meantime, however, we are concerned with its merely logical force. We have to decide whether, as theoretical proof, it can claim assent on its own merits, requiring no favour, and no help from any other quarter. On the basis of empirical facts the argument makes the following assertions. (1) There are everywhere in the world clear indications of adaptation to a definite end. (2) As this adaptation cannot be due to the working of blind, mechanical laws, and accordingly cannot be explained as originating in things themselves, it must have been imposed upon them from without; and there must therefore exist, apart from the sensible world, an intelligent Being who has arranged it according to ideas antecedently formed. (3) As there is unity in the reciprocal relations of the parts of the universe as portions of a single edifice, and as the universe is infinite in extent and inexhaustible in variety, its intelligent cause must be single, all-powerful, all-wise, i.e. God.

Now, even granting for the sake of argument the admissibility of these assertions, they enable us to infer only an intelligent author of the purposive form of nature, not of its matter, only an architect who is very much hampered by the inadaptability of the material in which he has to work, not a Creator to whose will everything is due. To prove the contingency of matter itself, we should have to establish the truth of the cosmological proof.

But the assumptions implied even in the demonstration that God exists as a formative power, are by no means beyond dispute. Why may not nature be regarded as giving form to itself by its blindly working forces? Can it really be proved that nature is a work of art that demands an artificer as certainly as does a house, or a ship, or a clock? Kant’s argument is at this point extremely brief, and I shall so far digress from the statement of it, which he here gives, as to supplement it from his other writings. Even so-called dead matter is not merely inert. By its inherent powers of gravity and chemical attraction it spontaneously gives rise to the most wonderful forms. When Clarke and Voltaire, in their first enthusiasm over Newton’s great discovery, asserted that the planetary system must have been divinely created, each planet being launched in the tangent of its orbit by the finger of God, just as a wheel must be fixed into its place by the hand of the mechanician, they under-estimated the organising power of blind inanimate nature. As Kant argued in his early treatise,[1629] the planetary system can quite well have arisen, and, as it would seem, actually has come into existence, through the action of blindly working laws. The mechanical principles which account for its present maintenance will also account for its origin and development. But it is when we turn to animate nature, which is the chief source from which arguments for design are derived, that the insufficiency of the teleological argument becomes most manifest. As Kant points out in the Critique of Judgment, the differentia distinguishing the living from the lifeless, is not so much that it is organised as that it is self-organising. When, therefore, we treat an organism as an analogon of art we completely misrepresent its essential nature.[1630] In regarding it as put together by an external agent we are ignoring its internal self-developing power. As Hume had previously maintained in his Dialogues on Natural Religion,[1631] the facts of the organic world not only agree with the facts of the inorganic world in not supporting the argument of the teleological proof, but are in direct conflict with it.

But to return to Kant’s immediate statement of the argument. Setting the above objection aside, and granting for the present that nature may be regarded as the outcome of an external artificer, we can argue only to a cause adequate to its production, i.e. to an extraordinarily wise and wonderfully powerful Being. Even if we ignore the existence of evil and defect in nature, the step from great power to omnipotence, and from great wisdom to omniscience, is one that can never be justified on empirical grounds.[1632] Since the Ideas of Reason, and above all the completely determined, individual Ideal of Reason, transcend experience, experience can never justify us in inferring their reality. The teleological argument can, indeed, only lead us to the point of admiring the greatness, wisdom, and power of the author of the world. In proceeding further it abandons experience altogether, and reasons, not from particular kinds and excellencies of natural design, but from the contingency of all such adaptation to the existence of a necessary Being, exactly in the manner of the cosmological argument. And it ends by assuming, in agreement with the ontological proof, that the only possible necessary Being is the Ideal of Reason. Thus after committing a number of fallacies on its own account, the teleological argument itself endorses all those that are involved in the more a priori proofs. The teleological argument rests on the cosmological, and the cosmological on the ontological, which therefore would be the only proof possible, were the proof of a completely transcendent proposition ever possible at all. The strange fact that the convincing force of the arguments thus varies inversely with their validity shows, Kant maintains, that we are correct in concluding that they do not really depend upon their logical cogency, and merely express, in abstract terms, beliefs deep-rooted in the human spirit.

SECTION VII
CRITICISM OF ALL THEOLOGY BASED ON SPECULATIVE PRINCIPLES OF REASON[1633]

A 631-3 = B 659-66.—On the distinction between “theist” and “deist,” cf. Encyclopædia Britannica, vii. p. 934:

“The later distinction between ‘theist’ and ‘deist,’ which stamped the latter word as excluding the belief in providence or in the immanence of God, was apparently formulated in the end of the eighteenth century by those rationalists who were aggrieved at being identified with the naturalists.”

A 633-4 = B 661-2.—Kant here does no more than indicate that by way of practical Reason it may be possible to postulate, though not theoretically to comprehend, a Supreme Being. On the distinction between postulates and hypotheses, cf. A 769 ff. = B 797 ff., and below, p. 543 ff. Cf. also p. 571 ff.

A 634 = B 662.—On relative necessity, cf. below, pp. 555, 571 ff.

A 635-9 = B 663-7 only summarises points already treated.

A 639-42 = B 667-70.—Kant concludes by declaring that the Ideal, in addition to its regulative function, possesses two further prerogatives. In the first place, it supplies a standard, in the light of which any knowledge of Divine Existence, acquired from other sources, can be purified and rendered consistent with itself. For it is “an Ideal without a flaw,” the true crown and culmination of the whole of human knowledge.

“If there should be a moral theology ... transcendental theology ... will then prove itself indispensable in determining its concept and in constantly testing Reason which is so often deceived by sensibility, and which is frequently out of harmony with its own Ideas.”[1634]

And secondly, though the Ideal fails to establish itself theoretically, the arguments given in its support suffice to show the quite insufficient foundations upon which all atheistic, deistic, and anthropomorphic philosophies rest.

Comment.—These concluding remarks cannot be accepted as representing Kant’s true teaching. The Ideal, by his own showing, is by no means without a flaw. In so far as it involves the concept of unconditioned necessity, it is meaningless; it is purely logical, and therefore contains no indication of real content; it embodies a false view of the nature of negation, and therefore of the relation of realities to one another. In short, it is constituted in accordance with the false, un-Critical principles of Leibnizian metaphysics, and is found on examination to be non-existent even as a purely mental entity. Reduced to its proper terms, it becomes a mere schema regulative of the understanding in the extension of experience, and does not yield even a negative criterion for the testing of our ideals of Divine Existence. The criterion, which Kant really so employs, is not that of an Ens realissimum, but the concept of an Intuitive Understanding, which, as he has indicated in the chapter on Phenomena and Noumena,[1635] is our most adequate Ideal of completed Perfection. This latter is not itself, however, a spontaneously formed concept of natural Reason, and does not justify the assertion that the Idea of God is a necessary Idea of the human mind. In attempting to defend such a thesis, Kant is unduly influenced by the almost universal acceptance of deistic beliefs in the Europe of his time.[1636] His criticism of the Ideal of Reason and of rational theology is much more destructive, and really allows that theology much less value, even as natural dialectic, than he is willing to admit.[1637] Architectonic forbids that the extreme radical consequences of the teaching of the Analytic should be allowed to show in their full force. These shortcomings are, however, in great part remedied in the elaborate Appendix which Kant has attached to the Dialectic.

APPENDIX TO THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC

THE REGULATIVE EMPLOYMENT OF THE IDEAS OF PURE REASON[1638]

Before we proceed to deal with this Appendix it will be of advantage to consider the section in the Methodology on the Discipline of Pure Reason in regard to Hypotheses.[1639] That section affords a very illuminating introduction to the problems here discussed, and is extremely important for understanding Kant’s view of metaphysical science as yielding either complete certainty or else nothing at all. This is a doctrine which he from time to time suggests, to the considerable bewilderment of the modern reader.[1640] In discussing it he starts from the obvious objection, that though nothing can be known through Reason in its pure a priori employment, metaphysics may yet be possible in an empirical form, as consisting of hypotheses, constructed in conjectural explanation of the facts of experience. Kant replies by defining the conditions under which alone hypotheses can be entertained as such. There must always be something completely certain, and not only invented or merely “opined,” namely, the possibility of the object to which the hypothesis appeals. Once that is proved, it is allowable, on the basis of experience, to form opinions regarding its reality. Then, and only then, can such opinions be entitled hypotheses. Otherwise we are not employing the understanding to explain; we are simply indulging the imagination in its tendency to dream. Now since the categories of the pure understanding do not enable us to invent a priori the concept of a dynamical connection, but only to apprehend it when presented in experience, we cannot by means of these categories invent a single object endowed with a new quality not empirically given; and cannot, therefore, base an hypothesis upon any such conception.

“Thus it is not permissible to invent any new original powers, as, for instance, an understanding capable of intuiting its objects without the aid of senses; or a force of attraction without any contact; or a new kind of substance existing in space and yet not impenetrable. Nor is it legitimate to postulate any other form of communion of substances than that revealed in experience, any presence that is not spatial, any duration that is not temporal. In a word our Reason can employ as conditions of the possibility of things only the conditions of possible experience; it can never, as it were, create concepts of things, independently of those conditions. Such concepts, though not self-contradictory, would be without an object.”[1641]

This does not, however, mean that the concepts of pure Reason can have no valid employment. They are, it is true, Ideas merely, with no object corresponding to them in any experience; but then it is also true that they are not hypotheses, referring to imagined objects, supposed to be possibly real. They are purely problematic. They are heuristic fictions (heuristische Fiktionen), the sole function of which is to serve as principles regulative of the understanding in its systematic employment. Used in any other manner they reduce to the level of merely mental entities (Gedankendinge) whose very possibility is indemonstrable, and which cannot therefore be employed as hypotheses for the explanation of appearances. Given appearances can be accounted for only in terms of laws known to hold among appearances. To explain natural phenomena by a transcendental hypothesis—mental processes by the assumption of the soul as a substantial, simple, spiritual being, or order and design in nature by the assumption of a Divine Author—is never admissible.

“...that would be to explain something, which in terms of known empirical principles we do not understand sufficiently, by something which we do not understand at all.”[1642]

And Kant adds that the wildest hypotheses, if only they are physical, are more tolerable than a hyperphysical one. They at least conform to the conditions under which alone hypothetical explanation as such is allowable. “Outside this field, to form opinions, is merely to play with thoughts....”[1643]

A further condition, required to render an hypothesis acceptable, is its adequacy for determining a priori all the consequences which are actually given. If for that purpose supplementary hypotheses have to be called in, the force of the main assumption is proportionately weakened. Thus we can easily explain natural order and design, if we are allowed to postulate a Divine Author who is absolutely perfect and all-powerful. But that hypothesis lies open to all the objections suggested by defects and evils in nature, and can only be preserved through new hypotheses which modify the main assumption. Similarly the hypothesis of the human soul as an abiding and purely spiritual being, existing in independence of the body, has to be modified to meet the difficulties which arise from the phenomena of growth and decay. But the new hypotheses, then constructed, derive their whole authority from the main hypothesis which they are themselves defending.

Such is Kant’s criticism of metaphysics when its teaching is based on the facts of experience hypothetically interpreted. In regard to transcendent metaphysics, there are, in Kant’s view, only two alternatives.[1644] Either its propositions must be established independently of all experience in purely a priori fashion, and therefore as absolutely certain; or they must consist in hypotheses empirically grounded. The first alternative has in the Analytic and Dialectic been shown to be impossible; the second alternative he rejects for the above reasons.

But this does not close Kant’s treatment of metaphysical hypotheses. He proceeds to develop a doctrine which, in its fearless confidence in the truth of Critical teaching, is the worthy outcome of his abiding belief in the value of a “sceptical method.”[1645] As Reason is by its very nature dialectical, outside opponents are not those from whom we have most to fear. Their objections are really derived from a source which lies in ourselves, and until these have been traced to their origin, and destroyed from the root upwards, we can expect no lasting peace. Our duty, therefore, is to encourage our doubts, until by the very luxuriance of their growth they enable us to discover the hidden roots from which they derive their perennial vitality.

“External tranquillity is a mere illusion. The germ of these objections, which lies in the nature of human Reason, must be rooted out. But how can we uproot it, unless we give it freedom, nay, nourishment, to send out shoots so that it may discover itself to our eyes, and that we may then destroy it together with its root? Therefore think out objections which have never yet occurred to any opponent; lend him, indeed, your weapons, or grant him the most favourable position which he could possibly desire. You have nothing to fear in all this, but much to hope for; you may gain for yourselves a possession which can never again be contested.”[1646]

In this campaign to eradicate doubt by following it out to its furthermost limits, the hypotheses of pure Reason, “leaden weapons though they be, since they are not steeled by any law of experience,” are an indispensable part of our equipment. For though hypotheses are useless for the establishment of metaphysical propositions, they are, Kant teaches, both admirable and valuable for their defence. That is to say, their true metaphysical function is not dogmatic, but polemical. They are weapons of war to which we may legitimately resort for the maintenance of beliefs otherwise established. If, for instance, we have been led to postulate the immaterial, self-subsistent nature of the soul, and are met by the difficulty that experience would seem to prove that both the growth and the decay of our mental powers are due to the body, we can weaken this objection by formulating the hypothesis that the body is not the cause of our thinking, but only a restrictive condition of it, peculiar to our present state, and that, though it furthers our sensuous and animal faculties, it acts as an impediment to our spiritual life. Similarly, to meet the many objections against belief in the eternal existence of a finite being whose birth depends upon contingencies of all kinds, such as the food supply, the whims of government, or even vice, we can adduce the transcendental hypothesis that life has neither beginning in birth nor ending in death, the entire world of sense being but an image due to our present mode of knowledge, an image which like a dream has in itself no objective reality. Such hypotheses are not, indeed, even Ideas of Reason, but simply concepts invented to show that the objections which are raised depend upon the false assumption that the possibilities have been exhausted, and that the mere laws of nature comprehend the whole field of possible existences. These hypotheses at least suffice to reveal the uncertain character of the doubts which assail us in our practical beliefs.

”[Transcendental hypotheses] are nothing but private opinions. Nevertheless, we cannot properly dispense with them as weapons against the misgivings which are apt to occur; they are necessary even to secure our inner tranquillity. We must preserve to them this character, carefully guarding against the assumption of their independent authority or absolute validity, since otherwise they would drown Reason in fictions and delusions.”[1647]

We may now return to A 642-68 = B 670-96. The teaching of this section is extremely self-contradictory, wavering between a subjective and an objective interpretation of the Ideas of Reason. The probable explanation is that Kant is here recasting older material, and leaves standing more of his earlier solutions than is consistent with his final conclusions. We can best approach the discussion by considering Kant’s statements in A 645 = B 673 and in A 650 ff. = B 678 ff. They expound, though unfortunately in the briefest terms, a point of view which Idealism has since adopted as fundamental. Kant himself, very strangely, never develops its consequences at any great length.[1648] The Idea, which Reason follows in the exercise of its sole true function, the systematising of the knowledge supplied by the understanding, is that of a unity in which the thought of the whole precedes the knowledge of its parts, and contains the conditions according to which the place of every part and its relation to the other parts are determined a priori. This Idea specialises itself in various forms, and in all of them directs the understanding to a knowledge that will be that of no mere aggregate but of a genuine system. Such concepts are not derived from nature; we interrogate nature according to them, and consider our knowledge defective so long as it fails to embody them. In A 650 = B 678 Kant further points out that this Idea of Reason does not merely direct the understanding to search for such unity, but also claims for itself objective reality. And he adds,

“...it is difficult to understand how there can be a logical principle by which Reason prescribes the unity of rules, unless we also presuppose a transcendental principle whereby such systematic unity is a priori assumed to be necessarily inherent in the objects.”

For how could we treat diversity in nature as only disguised unity, if we were also free to regard that unity as contrary to the actual nature of the real?

“Reason would then run counter to its own vocation, proposing as its aim an Idea quite inconsistent with the constitution of nature.”[1649]

Nor is our knowledge of the principle merely empirical, deduced from the unity which we find in contingent experience. On the contrary, there is an inherent and necessary law of Reason compelling us, antecedently to all specific experience, to look for such unity.

“...without it we should have no Reason at all, and without Reason no coherent employment of the understanding, and in the absence of this no sufficient criterion of empirical truth. In order, therefore, to secure an empirical criterion we are absolutely compelled to presuppose the systematic unity of nature as objectively valid and necessary.”[1650] “It might be supposed that this is merely an economical contrivance of Reason, seeking to save itself all possible trouble, a hypothetical attempt, which, if it succeeds, will, through the unity thus attained, impart probability to the presumed principle of explanation. But such a selfish purpose can very easily be distinguished from the Idea. For in the latter we presuppose that this unity of Reason is in conformity with nature itself; and that, although we are indeed unable to determine the limits of this unity, Reason does not here beg but command.”[1651]

This last alternative, that Reason is here propounding a tentative hypothesis, in order by trial to discover how far it can be empirically verified—an alternative which Kant in the above passage rejects as unduly subjective, and as consequently failing to recognise the objective claims and a priori authority of the Ideas of Reason,—is yet a view which he himself adopts and indeed develops at considerable length in this same section. This, as already stated, affords evidence of the composite character and varying origins of the material here presented.

The Dissertation of 1770 gives a purely subjectivist interpretation of the regulative principles, among which, from its pre-Critical standpoint, it classes the principle of causality and the principle of the conservation of matter.

”[We adopt principles] which delude the intellect into mistaking them for arguments derived from the object, whereas they are commended to us only by the peculiar nature of the intellect, owing to their convenience for its free and ample employment. They therefore ... rest on subjective grounds ... namely, on the conditions under which it seems easy and expeditious for the intellect to make use of its insight.... These rules of judging, to which we freely submit and to which we adhere as if they were axioms, solely for the reason that were we to depart from them almost no judgment regarding a given object would be permissible to our intellect, I entitle principles of convenience.... [One of these is] the popularly received canon, principia non esse multiplicanda praeter summam necessitatem, to which we yield our adhesion, not because we have insight into causal unity in the world either by reason or by experience, but because we seek it by an impulse of the intellect, which seems to itself to have advanced in the explanation of phenomena only in the degree in which it is granted to it to descend from a single principle to the greatest number of consequences.”[1652]

This, in essentials, is the view which we find developed in A 646-9 = B 674-8. Reason is the faculty of deducing the particular from the general. When the general is admitted only as problematical, as a mere idea, while the particular is certain, we determine the universality of the rule by applying it to the particulars, and then upon confirmation of its validity proceed to draw conclusions regarding cases not actually given. This Kant entitles the hypothetical use of Reason. Reason must never be employed constitutively. It serves only for the introduction, as far as may be found possible, of unity into the particulars of knowledge. It seeks to make the rule approximate to universality.[1653] The unity which it demands

“...is a projected unity, to be regarded not as given in itself, but as a problem only. This unity aids us in discovering a principle for the manifold and special employment of the understanding, drawing its attention to cases which are not given, and thus rendering it more coherent.”[1654]

The unity is merely logical, or rather methodological.[1655] To postulate, in consequence of its serviceableness, real unity in the objects themselves would be to transform it into a transcendental principle of Reason, and to render

“...the systematic unity necessary, not only subjectively and logically, as method, but objectively also.”[1656]

The above paragraphs are intercalated between A 645 = B 673 and A 650-63 = B 678-91, in which, as we have already seen, the directly opposite view is propounded, namely, that such principles are not merely hypothetical, nor merely logical. In all cases they claim reality, and rest upon transcendental principles; they condition the very possibility of experience; and may therefore be asserted to be a priori necessary and to be objectively valid. To quote two additional passages:

“...we can conclude from the universal to the particular, only if universal qualities are ascribed to things as the foundation upon which the particular qualities rest.”[1657] “The foundation of these laws [cf. below, pp. 550-1] is not due to any secret design of making an experiment by putting them forward as merely tentative suggestions.... It is easily seen that they contemplate the parsimony of fundamental causes, the manifoldness of effects, and the consequent affinity of the parts of nature, as being in themselves both rational and natural. Hence these principles carry their recommendation directly in themselves, and not merely as methodological devices.”[1658]

Thus, in direct opposition to the preceding view of Reason’s function as hypothetical, Kant is now prepared to maintain that the maxims of Reason are without meaning and without application save in so far as they can be grounded in a transcendental principle.[1659]

Let us follow Kant’s detailed exposition of this last thesis. The logical maxim, to seek for systematic unity, rests upon the transcendental principle that the apparently infinite variety of nature does not exclude identity of species, that the various species are varieties of a few genera, and these again of still higher genera. This is the scholastic maxim: entia praeter necessitatem non esse multiplicanda. Upon this principle rests the possibility of concepts, and therefore of the understanding itself. It is balanced, however, by a second principle, no less necessary, the transcendental law of specification, namely, that there must be manifoldness and diversity in things, that every genus must specify itself in divergent species, and these again in sub-species. Or as it is expressed in its scholastic form: entium varietates non temere esse minuendas. This principle is equally transcendental. It expresses a condition no less necessary for the possibility of the understanding, and therefore of experience. As the understanding knows all that it knows by concepts only, however far it may carry the division of genera, it can never know by means of pure intuition, but always again by lower concepts. If, therefore, there were no lower concepts, there could be no higher concepts;[1660] the gap existing between individuals and genera could never be bridged; or rather, since neither individuals nor universals could then be apprehended, neither would exist for the mind. As the higher concepts acquire all their content from the lower, they presuppose them for their own existence.

“Every concept may be regarded as a point which, in so far as it represents the standpoint of a spectator, has its own horizon.... This horizon must be capable of containing an infinite number of points, each of which again has its own narrower horizon; that is, every species contains sub-species, according to the principle of specification, and the logical horizon consists exclusively of smaller horizons (sub-species), never of points which possess no extent (individuals).”[1661]

Combining these two principles, that of homogeneity and that of specification, we obtain a third, that of continuity. The logical law of the continuum formarum logicarum presupposes the transcendental law, lex continui in natura. It provides that homogeneity be combined with the greatest possible diversity by prescribing a continuous transition from every species to every other, or in other words by requiring that between any two species or sub-species, however closely related, intermediate species be always regarded as possible. (The paragraph at the end of A 661 = B 689, with its proviso that we cannot make any definite empirical use of this law, is probably of later origin; it connects with the concluding parts of the section.) That this third law is also a priori and transcendental, is shown by the fact that it is not derived from the prior discovery of system in nature, but has itself given rise to the systematised character of our knowledge.[1662]

The psychological, chemical, and astronomical examples which Kant employs to illustrate these laws call for no special comment. They were taken from contemporary science, and in the advance of our knowledge have become more confusing than helpful. The citation in A 646 = B 674 of the concepts of “pure earth, pure water, pure air” as being “concepts of Reason” is especially bewildering. They are, even in the use which Kant himself ascribes to them, simply empirical hypotheses, formulated for the purposes of purely physical explanation; they are in no genuine sense universal, regulative principles.

In passing to A 663-8 = B 691-6 we find still another variation in the substance of Kant’s teaching. He returns, though with a greater maturity of statement, and with a very different and much more satisfactory terminology, to the more sceptical view of A 646-9 = B 674-7.[1663] The interest of the above principles, Kant continues to maintain, lies in their transcendentality. Despite the fact that they are mere Ideas for the guidance of understanding, and can only be approached asymptotically, they are synthetic a priori judgments, and would seem to have an objective, though indeterminate, validity. So far his statements are in line with the preceding paragraphs. But he proceeds to add that this objective validity consists exclusively in their heuristic function. They differ fundamentally from the dynamical, no less than from the mathematical, principles of understanding, in that no schema of sensibility can be assigned to them. In other words, their object can never be exhibited in concreto; it transcends all possible experience. For this reason they are incapable of a transcendental deduction.[1664] They are among the conditions indispensably necessary to the possibility, not of each and every experience, but only of experience as systematised in the interest of Reason. In place of a schema they can possess only what may be called the analogon of a schema, that is, they represent the Idea of a maximum, which the understanding in the subjective interest of Reason—or, otherwise expressed,[1665] in the interest of a certain possible perfection of our knowledge of objects—is called upon to realise as much as possible. Thus they are at once subjective in the source from which they arise, and also indeterminate as to the conditions under which, and the extent to which, they can obtain empirical embodiment. The fact that in this capacity they represent a maximum, does not justify any assertion either as to the degree of unity which experience on detailed investigation will ultimately be found to verify, or as to the noumenal reality by which experience is conditioned.

In A 644-5 = B 672-3 Kant employs certain optical analogies to illustrate the illusion which the Ideas, in the absence of Critical teaching, inevitably generate. When the understanding is regulated by the Idea of a maximum, and seeks to view all the lines of experience as converging upon and pointing to it, it necessarily regards it, focus imaginarius though it be, as actually existing. The illusion, by which objects are seen behind the surface of a mirror, is indispensably necessary if we are to be able to see what lies behind our backs. The transcendental illusion, which confers reality upon the Ideas of Reason, is similarly incidental to the attempt to view experience in its greatest possible extension.

ON THE FINAL PURPOSE OF THE NATURAL DIALECTIC OF HUMAN REASON[1666]

This section is thoroughly unified and consistent in its teaching. Its repetitious character is doubtless due to Kant’s personal difficulty either in definitively accepting or in altogether rejecting the constructive, Idealist interpretation of the function of Reason. He at least succeeds in formulating a view which, while not asserting anything more than is required in the scientific extension of experience, indicates the many possibilities which such experience fails to exclude. As the Ideas of Reason are not merely empty thought-entities (entia rationis ratiocinantis[1667]), but have a certain kind of objective validity (i.e. are entia rationis ratiocinatae[1668]), they demand a transcendental deduction.[1669] What this deduction is, and how it differs from that of the categories, we must now determine. Its discovery will, Kant claims, crown and complete our Critical labours.

Kant begins by drawing a distinction between representing an object absolutely, and representing an object in the Idea.

“In the former case our concepts are employed to determine the object, in the latter case there is in truth only a schema for which no object, not even a hypothetical one, is directly given, and which only enables us to represent to ourselves indirectly other objects in their systematic unity, by means of their relation to this Idea.”[1670]

An Idea is only a schema (Kant in terms of A 655 = B 693 ought rather to have said analogon of a schema) whereby we represent to ourselves, as for instance in the concept of a Highest Intelligence, not an objective reality but only such perfection of Reason as will tend to the greatest possible unity in the empirical employment of understanding.

With this introduction, Kant ushers in his famous “als ob” doctrine. We must view the things of the world as if they derived their existence from a Highest Intelligence. That Idea is heuristic only, not expository. Its purpose is not to enable us to comprehend such a Being, or even to think its existence, but only to show us how we should seek to determine the constitution and connection of the objects of experience. The three transcendental Ideas do not determine an object corresponding to them, but, under the presupposition of such an object in the Idea, lead us to systematic unity of empirical knowledge. When they are thus strictly interpreted as merely regulative of empirical enquiry, they will always endorse experience and never run counter to it. Reason, which seeks completeness of explanation, must therefore always act in accordance with them. Only thereby can experience acquire its fullest possible extension. This is the transcendental deduction of which we are in search. It establishes the indispensableness of the Ideas of Reason for the completion of experience, and their legitimacy as regulative principles.

We may here interrupt Kant’s exposition so far as to point out that this argument does not do justice to the full force of his position. The true Critical contention—and only if we interpret the passage in the light of this contention can the proof be regarded as transcendental in the strict sense—is that the Ideas are necessary to the possibility of each and every experience, involved together with the categories as conditions of the very existence of consciousness. They are not merely regulative, but are regulative of an experience which they also help to make possible.[1671] They express the standards in whose light we condemn all knowledge which does not fulfil them; and we have consequently no option save to endeavour to conform to their demands. In other words, they are not derivative concepts obtained by merely omitting the restrictions essential to our empirical consciousness, but represent a presupposition necessarily involved in all consciousness. Some such restatement of the argument is demanded by the position which Kant has himself outlined in A 645 = B 673 and in A 650 ff. = B 678 ff. Unfortunately he does not return to it. The more sceptical view which he has meantime been developing remains dominant. The deduction is left in this semi-Critical form.

A 672-6 = B 700-4 give a fuller statement of the “als ob” doctrine. In psychology we must proceed as if the mind were a simple substance endowed with personal identity[1672] (in this life at least), not in order to derive explanation of its changing states from the soul so conceived, but to derive them from each other in accordance with the Idea. In cosmology and theology (we may observe the straits to which Kant is reduced in his attempt to distinguish them) we ought to consider all phenomena both in their series and in their totality as if they were due to a highest and all-sufficient unitary ground. In so doing we shall not derive the order and system in the world from the object of the Idea, but only extract from the Idea the rule whereby the understanding attains the greatest possible satisfaction in the connecting of natural causes and effects.

In A 676-7 = B 704-5 Kant resorts to still another distinction—between suppositio relativa and suppositio absoluta. This distinction is suggested by the semi-objectivity of principles that are merely regulative. Though we have to recognise them as necessary, such necessity does not justify the assertion of their independent validity. When we admit a supreme ground as the source of the order and system which the principles demand, we do so only in order to think the universality of the principles with greater definiteness. Such supposition is relative to the needs of Reason in its empirical employment: not absolute, as pointing to the existence of such a being in itself.

“This explains why, in relation to what is given to the senses as existing, we require the Idea of a primordial Being necessary in itself, and yet can never form the slightest concept of it or of its absolute necessity.”[1673]

This last statement leads to the further problem to which Kant here gives his final solution, how if, as has been shown in the Dialectic, the concepts of absolute necessity and of unconditionedness are without meaning, the Ideas of Reason can be entertained at all, even mentally. What is their actual content and how is it possible to conceive them? Kant’s reply is developed in terms of the semi-Critical subjectivist point of view which dominates this section. The Ideas are mere Ideas. They yield not the slightest concept either of the internal possibility or of the necessity of any object corresponding to them. They only seem to do so, owing to a transcendental illusion. On examination we find that the concepts which we employ in thinking them as independently real, are one and all derived from experience. That is to say, we judge of them after the analogy of reality, substance, causality, and necessity in the sensible world.[1674]

”[They are consequently] analoga only of real things, not real things in themselves. We remove from the object of the Idea the conditions which limit the concept of the understanding, but which at the same time alone make it possible for us to have a determinate concept of anything. What we then think is, therefore, a something of which, as it is in itself, we have no concept whatsoever, but which we none the less represent to ourselves as standing in a relation to the sum-total of appearances analogous to that in which appearances stand to one another.”[1675]

They do not carry our knowledge beyond the objects of possible experience, but only extend the empirical unity of experience. They are the schemata of regulative principles. In them Reason is concerned with nothing but its own inherent demands; and as their unity is the unity of a system which is to be sought only in experience,[1676] qualities derived from the sensible world can quite legitimately be employed in their specific determination. They are not inherently dialectical; their demands have the rationality which we have a right to expect in the Ideals of Reason. When Critically examined, they propound no problem which Reason is not in itself entirely competent to solve.[1677] It is to their misemployment that transcendental illusion is due. In the form in which they arise from the natural disposition of our Reason they are good and serviceable.[1678]

To the question what is the most adequate form in which the regulative schema can be represented,[1679] Kant gives an answer which shows how very far he is from regarding the Leibnizian Ens realissimum as the true expression of the Ideal of Reason. It is through the employment of teleological concepts that we can best attain the highest possible form of systematic unity.

“The highest formal unity ... is the purposive unity of things. The speculative [i.e. theoretical] interest of Reason makes it necessary to regard all order in the world as if it had originated in the purpose of a Supreme Reason. Such a principle opens out to our Reason, as applied in the field of experience, altogether new views as to how the things of the world may be connected according to teleological laws, and so enables it to arrive at their greatest systematic unity. The assumption of a Supreme Intelligence, as the one and only cause of the universe, though in the Idea alone, can therefore always benefit Reason and can never injure it.”[1680]

For so long as this assumption is employed only as a regulative principle, even error cannot be really harmful. The worst that can happen is that where we expected a teleological connection, a merely mechanical or physical one is met with. If, on the other hand, we leave the solid ground of experience, and use the assumption to explain what we are unable to account for in empirical terms, we sacrifice all real insight, and confound Reason by transforming a concept, which is anthropomorphically determined for the purposes of empirical orientation, into a means of explaining order as non-natural and as imposed from without on the material basis of things.

This is a point of sufficient importance to call for more detailed statement. Hume in his Dialogues points out that the main defect in the teleological proof of God’s existence is its assumption that order and design are foreign to the inherent constitution of things, and must be of non-natural origin. The argument is therefore weakened by every advance in the natural sciences. It also runs directly counter to the very phenomena, those of animal life, upon which it is chiefly based, since the main characteristic of the organic in its distinction from the inorganic is its inner wealth of productive and reproductive powers. With these criticisms Kant is in entire agreement. From them, in the passage before us, he derives an argument in support of a strictly regulative interpretation of his “als ob” doctrine. The avowed intention of the teleological argument is to prove from nature the existence of an intelligent supreme cause. If therefore its standpoint be held to with more consistency than its own defenders have hitherto shown, it will be found to rest upon the regulative principle, that we must study nature as if an inherent order were native to it, and so seek to approach by degrees, in proportion as such natural unity is empirically discovered, the absolute perfection which inspires our researches. But if we transform our Ideal into an instrument of explanation, beginning with what ought properly to be only our goal, we delude ourselves with the belief that what can only be acquired through the slow and tentative labours of empirical enquiry is already in our possession.

“If I begin with a supreme purposive Being as the ground of all things, the unity of nature is really surrendered, as being quite foreign and accidental to the nature of things, and as not to be known from its own general laws. There thus arises a vicious circle: we are assuming just that very point which is mainly in dispute.”[1681]

Such a method of argument is self-destructive, since if we do not find order and perfection in the nature of things, and therefore in their general and necessary laws, we are not in a position to infer such a Being as the source of all causality.

To the question whether we may not interpret natural order, once it has been discovered by empirical investigation, as due to the divine will, Kant replies that such procedure is allowable only on the condition that it is the same to us whether we say that God has wisely willed it or that nature has wisely arranged it. We may admit the Idea of a Supreme Being only in so far as it is required by Reason as the regulative principle of all investigation of nature;

“...and we cannot, therefore, without contradicting ourselves, ignore the general laws of nature in view of which the Idea was adopted, and look upon the purposiveness of nature as contingent and hyper-physical in its origin. For we were not justified in assuming above nature a Being of those qualities, but only in adopting the Idea of it in order to be able to view the appearances, according to the analogy of a causal determination, as systematically connected with one another.”[1682] “Thus pure Reason, which at first seemed to promise nothing less than the extension of knowledge beyond all limits of experience, contains, if properly understood, nothing but regulative principles....”[1683]

CONCLUDING COMMENT ON THE DIALECTIC

I may now summarise Kant’s answer to the three main questions of the Dialectic: (1) Whether, or in what degree, the so-called Ideas of Reason are concepts due to a faculty altogether distinct from the understanding, and how far, as thus originating in pure Reason, they allow of definition; (2) how far they are capable of a transcendental deduction; (3) what kind of objective validity this deduction proves them to possess.

These questions are closely interconnected; the solution of any one determines the kind of solution to be given to all three. Kant, as we have found, develops his final position through a series of very subtle distinctions by which he contrives to justify and retain, though in a highly modified form, the more crudely stated divisions between Ideas and categories, between Reason and understanding, upon which the initial argument of the Dialectic is based.

The answer amounts in essentials to the conclusion that understanding, in directing itself by means of Ideals, exercises a function so distinct from that whereby it conditions concrete and specific experience, that it may well receive a separate title; that the Ideas in terms of which it constructs these Ideals, though schematic (i.e. sensuous and empirical in content), are not themselves empirical, and so far from being merely extended concepts of understanding, express transcendental conditions upon which all use of the understanding rests.

Now if this position is to be justified, Kant ought to show that the fundamental Idea of Reason, that of the unconditioned, is altogether distinct from any concept of the understanding, and in particular that it must not be identified with the category of totality, nor be viewed as being merely the concept of conditioned existence with its various empirical limitations thought away. Needless to say, Kant does not fulfil these requirements in any consistent manner. The Critique contains the material for a variety of different solutions; it does not definitively commit itself to any one of them.

If the argument of A 650 ff. = B 678 ff. were developed we should be in possession of what may be called the Idealist solution. It would proceed somewhat as follows. Consciousness as such is always the awareness of a whole which precedes and conditions its parts. Such consciousness cannot be accounted for on the assumption that we are first conscious of the conditioned, and then proceed to remove limitations and to form for ourselves, by means of the more positive factors involved in this antecedent consciousness, an Idea of the totality within which the given falls. The Idea of the unconditioned, distinct from all concepts of understanding, is one of the a priori conditions of possible experience, and is capable of a transcendental deduction of equal validity with, and of the same general nature as, that of the categories. It is presupposed in the possibility of our contingently given experience.

As this Idea conditions all subordinate concepts, it cannot be defined in terms of them. That does not, however, deprive it of all meaning; its significance is of a unique kind; it finds expression in those Ideals which, while guiding the mind in the construction of experience, also serve as the criteria through which experience is condemned as only phenomenal.

But this, as we have found, is not a line of argument which Kant has developed in any detail. The passages which point to it occur chiefly in the introductory portions of the Dialectic; in its later sections they are both brief and scanty. When he sets himself, as in the chapter on the Ideal of Pure Reason and in the subsequent Appendix, to define his conclusions, it is a much more empirical, and indeed sceptical, line that he almost invariably follows. There are, he then declares, strictly no pure, a priori Ideas. The supposed Ideas of unconditionedness and of absolute necessity are discovered on examination to be without the least significance for the mind. The Ideas, properly defined, are merely schemata of regulative principles, and their whole content reduces without remainder to such categories as totality, substance, causality, necessity, transcendently applied. As Ideas, they are then without real meaning; but they can be employed by analogy to define an Ideal which serves an indispensable function in the extension of experience. From this point of view, the transcendental deduction of the Ideas is radically distinct from that of the categories. The proof is not that they are necessary for the possibility of experience, but only that they are required for its perfect, or at least more complete, development. And as Kant is unable to prove that such completion is really possible, the objective validity of the Ideas is left open to question. They should be taken only as heuristic principles; the extent of their truth, even in the empirical realm, cannot be determined by the a priori method that is alone proper to a Critique of Pure Reason.

The first view is inspired by the fundamental teaching of the Analytic, and is the only view which will justify Kant in retaining his distinction between appearance and things in themselves. All that is positive in the second view can be combined with the first view; but, on the other hand, the negative implications of the second view are at variance with its own positive teaching. For when the Ideas are regarded as empirical in origin no less than in function, their entire authority is derived from experience, and cannot be regarded as being transcendental in any valid sense of that term. In alternating between these two interpretations of the function of Reason, Kant is wavering between the Idealist and the merely sceptical view of the scope and powers of pure thought. On the Idealist interpretation Reason is a metaphysical faculty, revealing to us the phenomenal character of experience, and outlining possibilities such as may perhaps be established on moral grounds. From the sceptical standpoint, on the other hand, Reason gives expression to what may be only our subjective preference for unity and system in the ordering of experience. According to the one, the criteria of truth and reality are bound up with the Ideas; according to the other, sense-experience is the standard by which the validity even of the Ideas must ultimately be judged. From the fact that Kant should have continued sympathetically to develop two such opposite standpoints, we would seem to be justified in concluding that he discerned, or at least desiderated, some more complete reconciliation of their teaching than he has himself thus far been able to achieve, and that no solution which would either subordinate the Ideal demands of thought, or ignore the gifts of experience, could ever have been definitively accepted by him as satisfactorily meeting the issues at stake. The Idealist solution is that to which his teaching as a whole most decisively points; but he is as conscious of the difficulties which lie in its path as he is personally convinced of its ultimate truth. His continuing appreciation of the value of sceptical teaching is a tacit admission that the Idealist doctrines, in the form which he has so far been able to give to them, are not really adequate to the complexity of the problems. As further confirmation of the tentative character of Kant’s conclusions in the Critique of Pure Reason, we have his own later writings. In the Critique of Judgment, published nine years later, in teaching less sceptical and more constructive, though still delicately balanced between the competing possibilities, and always, therefore, leaving the final decision to moral considerations, Kant ventures upon a restatement of the problems of the Dialectic. To this restatement both of the above tendencies contribute valuable elements.

APPENDIX A[1684]
TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF METHODS

CHAPTER I
THE DISCIPLINE[1685] OF PURE REASON

KANT is neither an intellectualist nor an anti-intellectualist. Reason, the proper duty of which is to prescribe a discipline to all other endeavours, itself requires discipline; and when it is employed in the metaphysical sphere, independently of experience, it demands not merely the correction of single errors, but the eradication of their causes through “a separate negative code,” such as a Critical philosophy can alone supply. In the Transcendental Doctrine of Elements this demand has been met as regards the materials or contents of the Critical system; we are now concerned only with its methods or formal conditions.[1686]

This distinction is highly artificial. As already indicated, it is determined by the requirements of Kant’s architectonic. The entire teaching of the Methodology has already been more or less exhaustively expounded in the earlier divisions of the Critique.

SECTION I
THE DISCIPLINE OF PURE REASON IN ITS DOGMATIC EMPLOYMENT

In dealing with the distinction between mathematical and philosophical knowledge, Kant is here returning to one of the main points of his Introduction to the Critique.[1687] His most exhaustive treatment of it is, however, to be found in a treatise which he wrote as early as 1764, his Enquiry into the Clearness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morals. The continued influence of the teaching of that early work is obvious throughout this section, and largely accounts for the form in which certain of its tenets are propounded.

“...one can say with Bishop Warburton that nothing has been more injurious to philosophy than mathematics, that is, than the imitation of its method in a sphere where it is impossible of application....”[1688]

So far from being identical in general nature, mathematics and philosophy are, Kant declares, fundamentally opposed in all essential features. For it is in their methods, and not merely in their subject-matter, that the essential difference between them is to be found.[1689] Philosophical knowledge can be acquired only through concepts, mathematical knowledge is gained through the construction of concepts.[1690] The one is discursive merely; the other is intuitive. Philosophy can consider the particular only in the general; mathematics studies the general in the particular.[1691] Philosophical concepts, such as those of substance and causality, are, indeed, capable of application in transcendental synthesis, but in this employment they yield only empirical knowledge of the sensuously given; and from empirical concepts the universal and necessary judgments required for the possibility of metaphysical science can never be obtained.

The exactness of mathematics depends on definitions, axioms, and demonstrations, none of which are obtainable in philosophy. To take each in order.

I. Definitions.—To define in the manner prescribed by mathematics is to represent the complete concept of a thing. This is never possible in regard to empirical concepts. We are more certain of their denotation than of their connotation; and though they may be explained, they cannot be defined. Since new observations add or remove predicates, an empirical concept is always liable to modification.

“What useful purpose could be served by defining an empirical concept, such, for instance, as that of water? When we speak of water and its properties, we do not stop short at what is thought in the word water, but proceed to experiments. The word, with the few marks which are attached to it, is more properly to be regarded as merely a designation than as a conception. The so-called definition is nothing more than a determining of the word.”[1692]

Exact definition is equally impossible in regard to a priori forms, such as time or causality. Since they are not framed by the mind, but are given to it, the completeness of our analysis of them can never be guaranteed. Though they are known, they are known only as problems.

“As Augustine has said, ‘I know well what time is, but if any one asks me, I cannot tell.’”[1693]

Mathematical definitions make concepts; philosophical definitions only explain them.[1694] Philosophy cannot, therefore, imitate mathematics by beginning with definitions. In philosophy the incomplete exposition must precede the complete; definitions are the final outcome of our enquiry, and not as in mathematics the only possible beginning of its proofs. Indeed, the mathematical concept may be said to be given by the very process in which it is constructively defined; and, as thus originating in the process of definition, it can never be erroneous.[1695] Philosophy, on the other hand, swarms with faulty definitions, which are none the less serviceable.

“In mathematics definition belongs ad esse, in philosophy ad melius esse. It is desirable to attain it, but often very difficult. Jurists are still without a definition of their concept of Right.”[1696]

II. Axioms.—This paragraph is extremely misleading as a statement of Kant’s view regarding the nature of geometrical axioms. In stating that they are self-evident,[1697] he does not really mean to assert what that phrase usually involves, namely, absolute a priori validity. For Kant the geometrical axioms are merely descriptions of certain de facto properties of the given intuition of space. They have the merely hypothetical validity of all propositions that refer to the contingently given. For even as a pure intuition, space belongs to the realm of the merely factual.[1698] This un-Critical opposition of the self-evidence of geometrical axioms to the synthetic character of such “philosophical” truths as the principle of causality is bound up with Kant’s unreasoned conviction that space in order to be space at all, must be Euclidean.[1699] Kant’s reference in this paragraph to the propositions of arithmetic is equally open to criticism. For though he is more consistent in recognising their synthetic character, he still speaks as if they could be described as self-evident, i.e. as immediately certain. The cause of this inconsistency is, of course, to be found in his intuitional theory of mathematical science. Mathematical propositions are obtained through intuition; those of philosophy call for an elaborate and difficult process of transcendental deduction. When modern mathematical theory rejects this intuitional view, it is really extending to mathematical concepts Kant’s own interpretation of the function of the categories. Concepts condition the possibility of intuitional experience, and find in this conditioning power the ground of their objective validity.[1700] Here, as in the Aesthetic,[1701] Kant fails adequately to distinguish between the problems of pure and applied mathematics.

III. Demonstrations.—Kant again introduces his very unsatisfactory doctrine of the construction of concepts:[1702] and he even goes so far as to maintain, in complete violation of his own doctrine of transcendental deduction, that where there is no intuition, there can be no demonstration. Apodictic propositions, he declares, are either dogmata or mathemata; and the former are beyond the competence of the human mind. But no sooner has he made these statements than he virtually withdraws them by adding that, though apodictic propositions cannot be established directly from concepts, they can be indirectly proved by reference to something purely contingent, namely, possible experience. Thus the principle of causality can be apodictically proved as a condition of possible experience. Though it may not be called a dogma, it can be entitled a principle! In explanation of this distinction, which betrays a lingering regard for the self-evident maxims of rationalistic teaching, Kant adds that the principle of causality, though a principle, has itself to be proved.

“...it has the peculiarity that it first makes possible its own ground of proof, namely, experience....”[1703]

This, as we have noted,[1704] is exactly what mathematical axioms must also be able to do, if they are to establish their objective validity.

SECTION II
THE DISCIPLINE OF PURE REASON IN ITS POLEMICAL EMPLOYMENT

This section contains an admirable defence of the value of scepticism.

“Even poisons have their use. They serve to counteract other poisons generated in our system, and must have a place in every complete pharmacopeia. The objections against the persuasions and complacency of our purely speculative Reason arise from the very nature of Reason itself, and must therefore have their own good use and purpose, which ought not to be disdained. Why has Providence placed many things which are closely bound up with our highest interests so far beyond our reach, that we are only permitted to apprehend them in a manner lacking in clearness and subject to doubt, in such fashion that our enquiring gaze is more excited than satisfied? It is at least doubtful whether it serves any useful purpose, and whether it is not, indeed, perhaps even harmful to venture upon bold interpretations of such uncertain appearances. But there can be no manner of doubt that it is always best to grant Reason complete liberty, both of enquiry and of criticism, so that it may be without hindrance in attending to its own proper interests. These interests are no less furthered by the limitation than by the extension of its speculations; and they will always suffer when outside influences intervene to divert it from its natural path, and to constrain it by what is irrelevant to its own proper ends.”[1705] “Whenever I hear that a writer of real ability has demonstrated away the freedom of the human will, the hope of a future life, and the existence of God, I am eager to read the book, for I expect him by his talents to increase my insight into these matters.”[1706]

SECTION IV[1707]
THE DISCIPLINE OF PURE REASON IN REGARD TO ITS PROOFS[1708]

This section merely restates the general nature and requirements of transcendental proof. The exposition is much less satisfactory than that already given in the Analytic and Dialectic. The only really new factor is the distinction between apagogical and direct proof. The former may produce conviction, but cannot enable us to comprehend the grounds of the truth of our conviction. Also, outside mathematics, it is extremely dangerous to attempt to establish a thesis by showing its contradictory to be impossible.[1709] This is especially true in the sphere of our Critical enquiries, since the chief danger to be guarded against is the confounding of the subjectively necessary with the independently real. In this field of investigation it is never permissible to attempt to justify a synthetic proposition by refuting its opposite. Such seeming proofs can easily be secured, and have been the favourite weapons of dogmatic thinkers.

“Each must defend his position directly, by a legitimate proof that carries with it transcendental deduction of the grounds upon which it is itself made to rest. Only when this has been done, are we in a position to decide how far its claims allow of rational justification. If an opponent relies on subjective grounds, it is an easy matter to refute him. The dogmatist cannot, however, profit by this advantage. His own judgments are, as a rule, no less dependent upon subjective influences; and he can himself in turn be similarly cornered. But if both parties proceed by the direct method, either they will soon discover the difficulty, nay, the impossibility, of showing reason for their assertions, and will be left with no resort save to appeal to some form of prescriptive authority; or the Critique will the more easily discover the illusion to which their dogmatic procedure is due; and pure Reason will be compelled to relinquish its exaggerated pretensions in the realm of speculation, and to withdraw within the limits of its proper territory—that of practical principles.”[1710]

CHAPTER II
THE CANON[1711] OF PURE REASON

SECTION I
THE ULTIMATE END OF THE PURE USE OF OUR REASON[1712]

The problems of the existence of God, the freedom of the will, and the immortality of the soul have, Kant declares, little theoretical interest. For, as he has already argued, even if we were justified in postulating God, freedom, and immortality, they would not enable us to account for the phenomena of sense-experience, the only objects of possible knowledge. But the three problems are also connected with our practical interests, and in that reference they constitute the chief subject of metaphysical enquiry.[1713] The practical is whatever is possible through freedom; and the decision as to what we ought to do is the supreme interest of pure Reason in its highest employment.

“...the ultimate intention of Nature in her wise provision for us has indeed, in the constitution of our Reason, been directed to our moral interests alone.”[1714]

This is the position which Kant endeavours to establish in his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, and in the Critique of Practical Reason. The very brief outline which he here gives of his argument is necessarily incomplete; and is in consequence somewhat misleading. He first disposes of the problem of freedom; and does so in a manner which shows that he had not, when this section was composed, developed his Critical views on the nature of moral freedom. He is for the present content to draw a quite un-Critical distinction between transcendental and practical freedom.[1715] The latter belongs to the will in so far as it is determined by Reason alone, independently of sensuous impulses. Reason prescribes objective laws of freedom, and the will under the influence of these laws overcomes the affections of sense. Such practical freedom can, Kant asserts, be proved by experience to be a natural cause. Transcendental freedom,[1716] on the other hand, i.e. the power of making a new beginning in the series of phenomena, is a problem which can never be empirically solved. It is a purely speculative question with which Reason in its practical employment is not in the least concerned. The canon of pure Reason has therefore to deal only with the two remaining problems, God and immortality. Comment upon these assertions can best be made in connection with the argument of the next section.[1717]

SECTION II
THE IDEAL OF THE HIGHEST GOOD, AS A DETERMINING GROUND OF THE ULTIMATE END OF PURE REASON[1718]

Reason in its speculative employment transcends experience, but solely for the sake of experience. In other words, speculative Reason has a purely empirical function. (This is the explanation of the somewhat paradoxical contention, to which Kant has already committed himself, that the problems of God and immortality, though seemingly speculative in character, really originate in our practical interests.) But pure Reason has also a practical use; and it is in this latter employment that it first discloses the genuinely metaphysical character of its present constitution and ultimate aims. The moral consciousness, in revealing to us an Ideal of absolute value, places in our hands the only available key to the mysteries of existence. As this moral consciousness represents the deepest reality of human life, it may be expected to have greater metaphysical significance than anything else in human experience; and since the ends which it reveals also present themselves as absolute in value, and are indeed the only absolute values of which we can form any conception, this conclusion would seem to be confirmed.

Happiness has natural value; morality, i.e. the being worthy to be happy, has absolute value. The means of attaining the former obtain expression in prudential or pragmatic laws that are empirically grounded. The conditions of the latter are embodied in a categorical imperative of an a priori character. The former advise us how best to satisfy our natural desire for happiness; the latter dictates to us how we must behave in order to deserve happiness.

Kant’s further argument is too condensed to be really clear, and if adequately discussed would carry us quite beyond the legitimate limits of this Commentary. I shall therefore confine myself to a brief and free restatement of his general position. The Critical teaching can be described as resulting in a new interpretation of the function of philosophy.[1719] The task of the philosopher, properly viewed, does not consist in the solution of speculative problems; such problems transcend our human powers. All that philosophy can reasonably attempt is to analyse and define the situations, cognitive and practical, in which, owing to the specific conditions of human existence, we find ourselves to be placed. Upon analysis of the cognitive situation Kant discovers that while all possibilities are open, the theoretical data are never such as to justify ontological assertions.[1720] When, however, he passes to the practical situation, wider horizons, definitely outlined, at once present themselves. The moral consciousness is the key to the meaning of the entire universe as well as of human life. Its values are the sole ultimate values, and enable us to interpret in moral terms (even though we cannot comprehend in any genuinely theoretical fashion) the meaning of the dispensation under which we live. The moral consciousness, like sense-experience, discloses upon examination a systematic unity of presupposed conditions. In the theoretical sphere this unity cannot be proved to be more than a postulated Ideal of empirical experience; and it is an Ideal which, even if granted to have absolute validity, is too indefinite to enable us to assert that ultimate reality is spiritual in character, or is teleologically ordered. The underlying conditions, on the other hand, of practical experience have from the start a purely noumenal reference. They have no other function than to define, in terms of the moral consciousness, the ultimate meaning of reality as a whole. They postulate[1721] a universe in which the values of spiritual experience are supported and conserved.

But the main difference in Kant’s treatment of the two situations, cognitive and practical, only emerges into view when we recognise the differing modes in which the transcendental method of proof is applied in the two cases. The a priori forms of sensibility, understanding, and Reason are proved by reference to possible experience, as being its indispensable conditions. In moral matters, however, we must not appeal to experience. The actual is no test of the Ideal; “what is” is no test of what ought to be. And secondly, the moral law, if valid at all, must apply not merely within the limits of experience, but with absolute universality to all rational beings. The moral law, therefore, can neither be given us in experience, nor be proved as one of the conditions necessary to its possibility. Its validity, in other words, can be established neither through experience nor through theoretical reason.

Though such is Kant’s own method of formulating the issue, it exaggerates the difference of his procedure in the two Critiques, and is very misleading as a statement of his real position. In one passage, in the Critique of Practical Reason,[1722] Kant does, indeed, assert that the moral law requires no deduction. It is, he claims, a fact of which we are a priori conscious: so far from itself requiring proof, it enables us to prove the reality of freedom. Yet in the very same section he argues that the deduction of freedom from the moral law is a credential of the latter, and is a sufficient substitute for all a priori justification. According to the first statement we have an immediate consciousness of the validity of the moral law; according to the second statement the moral law proves itself indirectly, by serving as a principle for the deduction of freedom. The second form of statement alone harmonises with the argument developed in the third section of the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, and more correctly expresses the intention of Kant’s central argument in the Critique of Practical Reason. For the difference between the two transcendental proofs in the two Critiques does not really consist in any diversity of method, but solely in the differing character of the premisses from which each starts. The ambiguity of Kant’s argument in the second Critique seems chiefly to be caused by his failure clearly to recognise that the moral law, though a form of pure Reason, exercises, in the process of its transcendental proof, a function which exactly corresponds to that which is discharged by possible experience in the first Critique. Our consciousness of the moral law is, like sense-experience, a given fact. It is de facto, and cannot be deduced from anything more ultimate than itself.[1723] But as given, it enables us to deduce its transcendental conditions. This does not mean that our immediate consciousness of it as given guarantees its validity. The nature of its validity is established only in the process whereby it reveals its necessary implications. The objects of sense-experience are assumed by ordinary consciousness to be absolutely real; in the process of establishing the transcendental conditions of such experience they are discovered to be merely phenomenal. The pure principles of understanding thus gain objective validity as the conditions of a given experience which reveals only appearances. Ordinary consciousness similarly starts from the assumption of the absolute validity of the moral law. But in this case the consciousness of the law is discovered on examination to be explicable, even as a possibility, only on the assumption that it is due to the autonomous activity of a noumenal being. By its existence it proves the conditions through which alone it is explicable. Its mere existence suffices to prove that its validity is objective in a deeper and truer sense than the principles of understanding. The notion of freedom, and therefore all the connected Ideas of pure Reason, gain noumenal reality as the conditions of a moral consciousness which is incapable of explanation as illusory or even phenomenal. Since the consciousness of the moral law is thus noumenally grounded, it has a validity with which nothing in the phenomenal world can possibly compare. It is the one form in which noumenal reality directly discloses itself to the human mind.[1724]

Obviously the essential crux of Kant’s argument lies in the proof that the moral consciousness is only explicable in this manner, as the self-legislation of a noumenal being. Into the merits of his argument we cannot, however, here enter; and I need only draw attention to the manner in which it conflicts with the statement of the preceding section, that the possibility of transcendental freedom is a purely speculative question with which practical Reason is not concerned. The reality of freedom, as a form of noumenal activity, is the cardinal fact of Kant’s metaphysics of morals. For though our consciousness of the moral law is the ratio cognoscendi of freedom, transcendental freedom is the ratio essendi of the moral law.[1725]

“With this faculty [of practical Reason], transcendental freedom is also established; freedom, namely, in that absolute sense in which speculative Reason required it, in its use of the concept of causality, in order to escape the antinomy into which it inevitably falls, when in the chain of cause and effect it tries to think the unconditioned.... Freedom is the only one of all the Ideas of the speculative Reason of which we know the possibility a priori (without, however, understanding it), because it is the condition of the moral law which we know.”[1726] ”[Freedom] is the only one of all the Ideas of pure Reason whose object is a thing of fact and to be reckoned among the scibilia.”[1727] “It is thus very remarkable that of the three pure rational Ideas, God, freedom, and immortality, that of freedom is the only concept of the supersensible which (by means of the causality that is thought in it) proves its objective reality in nature by means of the effects it can produce there; and thus renders possible the connection of both the others with nature, and of all three with one another so as to form a Religion.... The concept of freedom (as fundamental concept of all unconditioned practical laws) can extend Reason beyond those bounds within which every natural (theoretical) concept must inevitably remain confined.”[1728]

Thus freedom is for Kant a demonstrated fact, and in that respect differs from the Ideas of God and immortality, which are merely problematic conceptions, and which can be postulated only as articles of “practical faith.”

This brings us to the final question, upon what grounds Kant ascribes validity to the Ideas of God and immortality. At this point in his argument Kant introduces the conception of the Summum Bonum. Reason, in prescribing the moral law, prescribes, as the final and complete end of all our actions, the Summum Bonum, i.e. happiness proportioned to moral worth. Owing to the limitations of our faculties, the complete attainment of this supreme end is conceivable by us only on the assumption of a future life wherein perfect worthiness may be attained, and of an omnipotent Divine Being who will apportion happiness in accordance with merit.

”[This Divine Being] must be omnipotent, in order that the whole of nature and its relation to morality ... may be subject to his will; omniscient, that he may know our innermost sentiments and their moral worth; omnipresent, that he may be immediately present for the satisfying of every need which the highest good demands; eternal, that this harmony of nature and freedom may never fail, etc.”[1729]

The moral ideal thus supplies us with a ground[1730] for regarding the universe as systematically ordered according to moral purposes, and also with a principle that enables us to infer the nature and properties of its Supreme Cause. In place of a demonology, which is all that physical theology can establish, we construct upon moral grounds a genuine theology.

The concepts thus obtained are, however, anthropomorphic; and for that reason alone must be denied all speculative value. This is especially evident in regard to the Idea of God. Owing to our incapacity to comprehend how moral merit can condition happiness, we conceive them as externally combined through the intervention of a supreme Judge and Ruler. As Kant indicates,[1731] we must not assert that this represents the actual situation. He himself seems to have inclined to a more mystical interpretation of the universe, conceiving the relation of happiness to virtue as being grounded in a supersensuous but necessary order that may, indeed, be bodied forth in the inadequate symbols of the deistic creed, but which in its true nature transcends our powers of understanding. So far as the Ideas of God and immortality are necessary to define the moral standpoint, they have genuine validity for all moral beings; but if developed on their own account as speculative dogmas, they acquire a definiteness of formulation which is not essential to their moral function, and which lays them open to suspicion even in their legitimate use.

These considerations also indicate Kant’s further reason for entitling the Summum Bonum, God and immortality, Ideas of faith. Though they can be established as presuppositions of the moral situation in which we find ourselves, such demonstration itself rests upon the acceptance of the moral consciousness as possessing a supersensuous sanction; and that in turn is determined by features in the moral situation not deducible from any higher order of considerations.

“Belief in matters of faith is a belief in a pure practical point of view, i.e. a moral faith, which proves nothing for theoretical, pure, rational cognition, but only for that which is practical and directed to the fulfilment of its duties; it in no way extends speculation.... If the supreme principle of all moral laws is a postulate, the possibility of its highest Object ... is thereby postulated along with it.”[1732] “So far, as practical Reason has the right to yield us guidance, we shall not look upon actions as obligatory because they are the commands of God, but shall regard them as divine commands because we have an inward obligation to them.... Moral theology is thus of immanent use only. It enables us to fulfil our vocation in this present world by showing us how to adapt ourselves to the system of all ends, and by warning us against the fanaticism and indeed the impiety of abandoning the guidance of a morally legislative Reason in the right conduct of our lives, in order to derive guidance directly from the Idea of the Supreme Being. For we should then be making a transcendent employment of moral theology; and that, like a transcendent use of pure speculation, must pervert and frustrate the ultimate ends of Reason.”[1733]

SECTION III
OPINING, KNOWING, AND BELIEVING[1734]

Kant first distinguishes between conviction (Ueberzeugung) and persuasion (Ueberredung). A judgment which is objectively grounded, and which is therefore valid for all other rational beings, is affirmed with conviction. When the affirmation is due only to the peculiar character of the subject, the manner in which it is asserted may be entitled persuasion. Persuasion is therefore “a mere illusion.”[1735] Conviction exists in three degrees, opinion, belief, and knowledge. In opinion we are conscious that the judgment is insufficiently grounded, and that our conviction is subjectively incomplete. In belief the subjective conviction is complete, but is recognised as lacking in objective justification. In knowledge the objective grounds and the subjective conviction are alike complete.

After pointing out that opinion is not permissible in judgments of pure Reason,[1736] Kant develops the further distinction between pragmatic or doctrinal belief and moral belief. When a belief is contingent (i.e. is affirmed with the consciousness that on fuller knowledge it may turn out to be false), and yet nevertheless supplies a ground for the employment of means to certain desired ends, it may be called pragmatic belief. Such belief admits of degree, and can be tested by wager or by oath.[1737] What may be called doctrinal belief is analogous in character, and is taken by Kant, in somewhat misleading fashion, as describing our mode of accepting such doctrines as the existence of God and the immortality of the soul.[1738] They are adopted as helpful towards a contingent but important end, the discovery of order in the system of nature. This account of the nature of Ideas is in line with Kant’s early view of them as merely regulative. Taken in connection with his repeated employment of the term ‘moral sentiments’ (moralische Gesinnungen), it tends to prove that this section is early in date of writing.

In moral belief the end, the Summum Bonum, is absolutely necessary, and as there is only one condition under which we can conceive it as being realised, namely, on the assumption of the existence of God and of a future life, the belief in God and immortality possesses the same certainty as the moral sentiments.

“The belief in a God and another world is so interwoven with my moral sentiment that as there is little danger of my losing the latter, there is equally little cause for fear that the former can ever be taken from me.”[1739]

As I have just suggested, this basing of moral belief upon subjective sentiments, which, as Kant very inconsistently proceeds to suggest, may possibly be lacking in certain men, marks this section as being of early origin. But in concluding the section, in reply to the objection that, in thus tracing such articles of faith to our “natural interest” in morality, philosophy admits its powerlessness to advance beyond the ordinary understanding, Kant propounds one of his abiding convictions, namely, that in matters which concern all men without distinction nature is not guilty of any partial distribution of her gifts, and that in regard to the essential ends of human nature the highest philosophy cannot advance beyond what is revealed to the common understanding.[1740] The reverence which Kant ever cherished for the memory of his parents, and for the religion which was so natural to them, must have predisposed him to a recognition of the widespread sources of the spiritual life. But Kant has himself placed on record his sense of the great debt which in this connection he also owed to the teaching of Rousseau.

“I am by disposition an enquirer. I feel the consuming thirst for knowledge, the eager unrest to advance ever further, and the delights of discovery. There was a time when I believed that this is what confers real dignity upon human life, and I despised the common people who know nothing. Rousseau has set me right. This imagined advantage vanishes. I learn to honor men, and should regard myself as of much less use than the common labourer, if I did not believe that my philosophy will restore to all men the common rights of humanity.”[1741]

The sublimity of the starry heavens and the imperative of the moral law are ever present influences on the life of man; and they require for their apprehension no previous initiation through science and philosophy. The naked eye reveals the former; of the latter all men are immediately aware.[1742] In their universal appeal they are of the very substance of human existence. Philosophy may avail to counteract the hindrances which prevent them from exercising their native influence; it cannot be a substitute for the inspiration which they alone can yield.

CHAPTER III
THE ARCHITECTONIC OF PURE REASON[1743]

Adickes[1744] very justly remarks that “this is a section after Kant’s own heart, in which there is presented, almost unsought, the opportunity, which he elsewhere so frequently creates for himself, of indulging in his favourite hobby.” The section is of slight scientific importance, and is chiefly of interest for the light which it casts upon Kant’s personality. Moreover the distinctions which Kant here draws are for the most part not his own philosophical property, but are taken over from the Wolffian system.

The distinctions may be exhibited in tabular form as follows:[1745]

KNOWLEDGE

Kant further distinguishes between the “scholastic” and the “universal” or traditional meaning of the term philosophy.[1749] In the former sense philosophy is viewed from the point of view of its logical perfection, and the philosopher appears as an artist of Reason.[1750] Philosophy in the broader and higher sense is “the science of the relation of all knowledge to the essential ends of human Reason.”[1751] The philosopher then appears as the lawgiver of human Reason. Of the essential ends, the ultimate end is man’s moral destiny; to this the other essential ends of human Reason are subordinate means. For though the legislation of human Reason concerns nature as well as freedom, and has therefore to be dealt with by a philosophy of nature, i.e. of all that is, as well as by a philosophy of morals, i.e. of that which ought to be, the former is subordinate to the latter in the same degree in which in human life knowledge is subordinate to moral action. Whereas speculative metaphysics serves rather to ward off errors than to extend knowledge,[1752] in the metaphysics of morals “all culture [Kultur] of human Reason”[1753] finds its indispensable completion.

Empirical psychology is excluded from the domain of metaphysics. It is destined to form part of a complete system of anthropology, the pendant to the empirical doctrine of nature.[1754]

CHAPTER IV
THE HISTORY OF PURE REASON[1755]

This title, as Kant states, is inserted only to mark the place of the present chapter in a complete system of pure reason. The very cursory outline, which alone Kant here attempts to give, merely repeats the main historical distinctions of which the Critique has made use. The contrast between the sensationalism of Epicurus and the intellectualism of Plato has been developed in A 465 ff. = B 493 ff.[1756] The contrast between Locke and Leibniz is dwelt upon in A 43 ff. = B 60 ff. and A 270 ff. = B 326 ff. Under the title ‘naturalist of pure Reason’ Kant is referring to the ‘common sense’ school, which is typically represented by Beattie.[1757] In his Logic[1758] Kant gives a fuller account of his interpretation of the history of philosophy.

APPENDIX B
A MORE DETAILED STATEMENT OF KANT’S RELATIONS TO HIS PHILOSOPHICAL PREDECESSORS[1759]

The development of philosophy, prior to Kant, had rendered two problems especially prominent—the problem of sense-perception and the problem of judgment. The one raises the question of the interrelation of mind knowing and objects known; the other treats of the connection holding between subject and predicate in the various forms of judgment. The one enquires how it is possible to know reality; the other seeks to determine the criterion of truth. These two problems are, as Kant discovered, inseparable from one another; and the logical is the more fundamental of the two. Indeed it was Hume’s analysis of the judgment involved in the causal principle that enabled Kant to formulate his Critical solution of the problem of perception. In this Appendix I propose to follow these problems as they rise into view in the systems of Descartes and his successors.

Galileo’s revolutionary teaching regarding the nature of motion was the immediate occasion of Descartes’ restatement of the problem of perception. That teaching necessitated an entirely new view of the nature of matter, and consequently of the interrelation of mind and body. Questions never before seriously entertained now became pressing. The solutions had to be as novel as the situation which they were designed to meet.

These new problems arose in the following manner. According to the medieval view, motion may properly be conceived on the analogy of human activity. It comes into being, exhausts itself in exercise, and ceases to be. It is a fleeting activity; only its “material” and “formal” conditions have any permanence of existence. According to Galileo’s teaching, on the other hand, motion is as different from human activity as matter is from mind. It is ingenerable and indestructible. We know it only through the effect which in some incomprehensible fashion it produces in those bodies into which it enters, namely, their translation from one part of space to another. That this translatory motion is called by the same name as the power which generates it, doubtless in some degree accounts for the fact that our understanding of the one tends to conceal from us our entire ignorance of the other.[1760] We have only to reflect, however, in order to realise that motion is completely mysterious in its intrinsic dynamical nature. We cannot, for instance, profess to comprehend, even in the least degree, how motion, though incapable of existing apart from matter, should yet be sufficiently independent to be able to pass from one body to another.

Descartes, following out some of the chief consequences of this new teaching, concluded that matter is passive and inert, that it is distinguished neither by positive nor by negative properties from the space which it fills, and that it is to motion that all the articulated organisation of animate and inanimate nature is due. Descartes failed, indeed, to appreciate the dynamical character of motion, and by constantly speaking as if it were reducible to the translatory motion, in which it manifests itself, he represented it as known in all its essential features. None the less, the rôles previously assigned to matter and motion are, in Descartes’ system, completely reversed. Matter is subordinated to motion as the instrument to the agency by which it is directed and shaped. On the older view, material bodies had, through the possession of formative and vital forces, all manner of intrinsic powers. By the new view these composite and nondescript existences are resolved into two elements, all the properties of which can be quantitatively defined—into a matter which is uniform and homogeneous, and into motion whose sole effect is the translation of bodies in space. Matter is the passive and inert substance out of which motion, by its mere mechanical powers, can produce the whole range of material forms.

This revolutionary change in the physical standpoint involved restatement of the philosophical issues. But the resulting difficulties were found thoroughly baffling. Though Descartes and his successors were willing to adopt any hypothesis, however paradoxical, which the facts might seem to demand, their theories, however modified and restated, led only deeper into a hopeless impasse. The unsolved problems of the Cartesian systems formed the discouraging heritage to which Kant fell heir. If matter is always purely material, and motion is its sole organising power, there can be no real kinship between body and mind. The formative and vital forces, which in the Scholastic philosophy and in popular thought serve to maintain the appearance of continuity between matter and mind, can no longer be credited. Motion, which alone is left to mediate between the opposites, is purely mechanical, and (on Descartes’ view) is entirely lacking in inner or hidden powers. The animal body is exclusively material, and is therefore as incapable of feeling or consciousness as any machine made by human hands. The bodily senses are not ‘sensitive’; the brain cannot think. Mental experiences do, of course, accompany the brain-motions. But why a sensation should thus arise when a particular motion is caused in the brain, or how a mental resolution can be followed by a brain state, are questions to which no satisfactory answer can be given. The mental and the material, the spiritual and the mechanical, fall entirely apart.

The difficulties arising out of this incomprehensibility of the causal interrelations of mind and body are not, however, in themselves a valid argument against a dualistic interpretation of the real. The difficulties of accounting for the causal relation are, in essential respects, equally great even when the interaction is between homogeneous existences. The difficulties are due to the nature of causal action as such, not to the character of the bodies between which it holds. This, indeed, was clearly recognised by Descartes, and was insisted upon by his immediate successors. The transference of motion by impact is no less incomprehensible than the interaction of soul and body. If motion can exist only in matter, there is no possible method of conceiving how it can make the transition from one discrete portion of matter to another. Causal action is thus a problem which no philosophy can pretend to solve, and which every philosophy, whether monistic or dualistic, must recognise as transcending the scope of our present knowledge.

It is in another and more special form that Descartes’ dualism first reveals its fatal defects, namely, in its bearing upon the problem of sense-perception. Descartes can solve the problem of knowledge only by first postulating the doctrine of representative perception. That doctrine is rendered necessary by the dualism of mind and body. Objects can be known only mediately by means of their action upon the sense-organs, and through the sense-organs upon the brain. The resulting brain states are in themselves merely forms of motion. They lead, however, in a manner which Descartes never professes to explain,[1761] to the appearance of sensations in the mental field. Out of these sensations the mind then constructs mental images of the distant bodies; and it is these mental images alone which are directly apprehended. Material bodies are invisible and intangible; they are knowable only through their mental duplicates. Thus, according to the doctrine of representative perception, each mind is segregated in a world apart. It looks out upon a landscape which is as mental and as truly inward as are its feelings and desires. The apparently ultimate relation of mind knowing and object known is rendered complex and problematic through the distinction between mental objects and real things. Mental objects are in all cases images merely. They exist only so long as they are apprehended; and they are numerically and existentially distinct in each individual mind. Real things are not immediately perceived; they are hypothetically inferred. To ordinary consciousness the body which acts on the sense-organ is the object known; when reflective consciousness is philosophically enlightened, the object immediately known is recognised as a merely mental image, and the external object sinks to the level of an assumed cause.

The paradoxical character of this doctrine is accentuated by Galileo’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities.[1762] Those physical processes, which are entitled light and heat, bear no resemblance to the sensations through which they become known. The many-coloured world of ordinary consciousness is an illusory appearance which can exist only in the human mind. We must distinguish between the sensible world which, though purely mental, appears, through an unavoidable illusion, to be externally real, and that very different world of matter and motion which reveals its independent nature only to reflective thinking. In the latter world the rich variety of sensuous appearance can find no place. There remain only the quantitative, mechanical properties of extension, figure and motion; and even these have to be interpreted in the revolutionary fashion of physical science.

The doctrine of representative perception cannot, however, defend successfully the positions which it thus involves. It wavers in unstable equilibrium. The facts, physical and physiological, upon which it is based, are in conflict with the conclusions in which it results. This has been very clearly demonstrated by many writers in recent times.[1763] The conflict manifested itself in the period between Descartes and Kant only through the uneasy questionings of Locke and Berkeley. The problem, fundamental though it be, is almost completely ignored by Spinoza, Leibniz, and Wolff.

Stated in modern terms, the inherently contradictory character of the doctrine consists in its unavoidable alternation between the realist attitude to which it owes its origin, and the idealist conclusion in which it issues. Such oscillation is due to the twofold simultaneous relation in which it regards ideas as standing to the objects that they are supposed to represent. The function of sensations is cognitive; their origin is mechanical. As cognitive they stand to objects in a relation of inclusion; they reveal the objects, reduplicating them in image before the mind. Yet in their origin they are effects, mechanically generated by the action of material bodies upon the sense-organs and brain. As they are effects mechanically generated, there is no guarantee that they resemble their causes; and if we may argue from other forms of mechanical causation, there is little likelihood that they do. They stand to their first causes in a relation of exclusion, separated from them by a large number of varying intermediate processes. There is thus a conflict between the function of sensations and their origin. Their origin in the external objects is supposed to confer upon them a representative power; and yet the very nature of this origin invalidates any such claim.

This irreconcilability of the subjectivist consequences of the doctrine with its realist basis was seized upon by Berkeley. To remove the contradiction, he denied the facts from which the doctrine had been developed. That is to say, starting from its results he disproved its premisses. Arguing from the physical and physiological conditions of perception Descartes had concluded that only sensations can be directly apprehended by the mind. Berkeley starts from this conclusion, and virtually adopts it as an assumption which cannot be questioned, and which does not call for proof. Since, he contends, we know only sensations, the assertion that they are due to material causes is mere hypothesis, and is one for which there may be no valid grounds. As Descartes himself had already suggested, there is a second possible method of interpreting the relevant facts. There may exist an all-powerful Being who produces the sensations in our minds from moment to moment; and provided that they are produced in the same order as now, the whole material world might be annihilated without our being in the least aware that so important an event had taken place. Since we can experience only sensations, any hypothesis which will account for the order of their happening is equally legitimate. The whole question becomes one of relative simplicity in the explanation given. The simpler analysis, other things being equal, must hold the field.

Berkeley reinforces this argument by pointing to the many embarrassing consequences to which Descartes’ dualism must lead. We postulate bodies in order to account for the origin of our sensations, and yet are unable to do so by their means. The dualistic theory creates more difficulties than it solves, without a single counter-advantage, save perhaps—so Berkeley argues—that it seems to harmonise better with the traditional prejudices of the philosophic consciousness.

If we grant Berkeley his premisses, the main lines of his argument are fairly cogent, however unconvincing may be his own positive views. The crux, however, of the Berkeleian idealism lies almost exclusively in the establishment of its fundamental assumption, that only ideas (i.e. images) can be known by the mind. This assumption Berkeley, almost without argument, takes over from his predecessors. It was currently accepted, and from it, therefore, he believed that he could safely argue. It rests, however, upon the assumption of facts which he himself questions. In rejecting the Cartesian dualism he casts down the ladder by which alone it is possible to climb into his position. For save through the facts of physics and physiology there seems to be no possible method of disproving the belief of ordinary consciousness, that in perception we apprehend independent material bodies. And until that belief can be shown to be false and ungrounded, the Berkeleian idealism is without support. It cannot establish the fundamental assumption upon which its entire argument proceeds. Thus, though Berkeley convincingly demonstrates the internal incoherence of the doctrine of representative perception—the inconsistency of its conclusions with the physical and physiological facts upon which alone it can be based—he cannot himself solve the problem in answer to which that doctrine was propounded. His services, like those of so many other reformers, were such as he did not himself foresee. In simplifying the problem, he prepared the way for the more sceptical treatment of its difficult issues by Hume.

At this point, in the philosophy of Hume, the problem of perception comes into the closest possible connection with the logical problem, referred to above. The question, how mind knowing is related to the objects known, is found to depend upon the question, how in certain crucial cases predicates may legitimately be referred to their subject. This logical problem arises in two forms, a narrower and a wider. The narrower issue concerns only the principle of causality. With what right do we assert that every event must have a cause? What is the ground which justifies us in thus predicating of events a causal character? Obviously, this logical question is fundamental, and must be answered before we can hope to solve the more special problem, as to our right to interpret sensations as effects of material bodies. Hume was the first to emphasise the vital interconnection of these two lines of enquiry.

The wider issue is the generating problem of Kant’s Critique: How in a judgment can a predicate be asserted of a subject in which it is not already involved? In other words, what is it that in such a case justifies us in connecting the predicate with the subject? Though this problem was never directly raised by any pre-Kantian thinker, not even by Hume, it is absolutely vital to all the pre-Kantian systems. Thus Descartes’ philosophy is based upon a distinction, nowhere explicitly drawn but everywhere silently assumed, between abstract and fruitful ideas. The former contain just so much content and no more; this content may be explicitly unfolded in a series of judgments, but no addition is thereby made to our knowledge. The latter, on the other hand, are endowed with an extraordinary power of inner growth. To the attentive mind they disclose a marvellous variety of inner meaning. The chief problem of scientific method consists, according to Descartes, in the discovery of these fruitful ideas, and in the separation of them from the irrelevant accompaniments which prevent them from unfolding their inner content. Once they are discovered, the steady progress of knowledge is assured. They are the springs of knowledge, and from them we have only to follow down the widening river of truth.

Descartes professed to give a complete list of the possible fruitful ideas. They are, he claimed, better known than any other concepts. They lie at the basis of all experience, and no one can possibly be ignorant of them; though, owing to their simplicity and omnipresence, their philosophical importance has been overlooked. When, however, Descartes proceeded to classify them, he found that while such ideas as space, triangle, number, motion, contain an inexhaustible content that is progressively unfolded in the mathematical sciences, those ideas, on the other hand, through which we conceive mental existences,—the notions of mind, thought, self—do not by any means prove fruitful upon attentive enquiry. As Malebranche later insisted, we can define mind only in negative terms; its whole meaning is determined through its opposition to the space-world, which alone is truly known. Though it is the function of mind to know, it cannot know itself. And when we remove from our list of ideas those which are not really fruitful, we find that only mathematical concepts remain.[1764] They alone have this apparently miraculous property of inexhaustibly developing before the mind. Scientific knowledge is limited to the material world; and even there, the limits of our mathematical insight are the limits of our knowledge.

Malebranche believed no less thoroughly than Descartes in the asserted power and fruitfulness of mathematical concepts. Under the influence of this belief, he developed, as so many other thinkers from Plato onwards have done, a highly mystical theory of scientific knowledge. It is a revelation of eternal truth, and yet is acquired by inner reflection, not laboriously built up by external observation. It comes by searching of the mind, not by exploration of the outer world. But Malebranche was not content, like Descartes, merely to accept this type of knowledge. He proceeded to account for it in metaphysical terms. The fruitfulness of mathematical ideas is due, he claimed, to the fundamental concept of extension in which they all share. This idea, representing, as it does, an infinite existence, is too great to be contained within the finite mind. Through it the mind is widened to the apprehension of something beyond itself; we know it through consciousness of its archetype in the mind of God. It is the one point at which consciousness transcends its subjective limits. Its fruitfulness is due to, and is the manifestation of, this divine source. The reason why we are condemned to remain ignorant of everything beyond the sphere of quantity is that extension alone holds this unique position. It is the only fruitful idea which the mind possesses, and other concepts, such as triangle, circle, or number, are fruitful only in proportion as they share in it. We can acquire no genuine knowledge even of the nature of the self. Being ignorant of mind, we cannot comprehend the self which is one of its modes. It is as if we sought to comprehend the nature of a triangle, in the absence of any conception of space. Were we in possession of the archetypal idea of mind, we should not only be able to deduce from it those various feelings and emotions which we have already experienced, and those sensations of the secondary qualities which we falsely ascribe to the influence of external objects, but we should also be able to discover by pure contemplation innumerable other emotions and qualities, which entirely transcend our present powers. And all of these would then be experienced in their ideal nature, and not, as now, merely through feeble and confused feeling. If mathematicians destroy their bodily health through absorption in the progressive clarification of the mysteries of space, what might not happen if the archetypal idea of mind were revealed to us? Could we attend to the preservation of a body which would incessantly distract us from the infinite and overwhelming experiences of our divine destiny?

This romantic conception of the possibilities of rational science reveals more clearly than any other Cartesian doctrine the real bearing and perverse character of the rationalistic preconceptions which underlie the Cartesian systems. The Cartesians would fain make rational science, conceived on the analogy of the mathematical disciplines, coextensive with the entire realm of the real. This grotesque enterprise is conceived as abstractly possible even by so cautious a thinker as John Locke. His reason for condemning the physical sciences as logically imperfect is that they fail to conform to this rationalistic ideal. Hence those sentences which sound so strangely in the mouth of Locke, the sensationalist.

“It is the contemplation of our abstract ideas that alone is able to afford us general knowledge.”[1765] “The true method of advancing knowledge is by considering our abstract ideas.”[1766] ”[Did we know the real essence of gold] it would be no more necessary that gold should exist, and that we should make experiments upon it, than it is necessary for the knowing of the properties of a triangle, that a triangle should exist in any matter: the idea in our minds would serve for the one as well as for the other.”[1767] “In the knowledge of bodies, we must be content to glean what we can from particular experiments, since we cannot, from a discovery of their real essences, grasp at a time whole sheaves, and in bundles comprehend the nature and the properties of whole species together.”

Locke’s empirical doctrine of knowledge is thus based upon a rationalistic theory of the real. It is not, he holds, the constitution of reality, but the de facto limitations of our human faculties which make empirical induction the only practicable mode of discovery in natural science. Indeed, Locke gives more extreme expression than even Descartes does, to the mystically conceived mathematical method. Being ignorant of mathematics, and not over well-informed even in the physical sciences, Locke was not checked by any too close acquaintance with the real character and necessary limits of this method; and he accordingly makes statements in that unqualified fashion which seldom fails to betray the writer who is expounding views which he has not developed for himself by first-hand study of the relevant facts.

But though the unique character of mathematical knowledge thus forced itself upon the attention of all the Cartesian thinkers, and in the above manner led even the most level-headed of Descartes’ successors to dream strange dreams, no real attempt was made (save in the neglected writings of Leibniz) to examine, in a sober spirit, the grounds and conditions of its possibility. In the English School, Locke’s eulogy of abstract ideas served only to drive his immediate successors to an opposite extreme. Both Berkeley and Hume attempted to explain away, in an impossible manner, those fundamental differences, which, beyond all questioning, profoundly differentiate mathematical from empirical judgments.[1768] It is not surprising that Kant, who had no direct acquaintance with Hume’s Treatise, should have asserted that had Hume realised the bearing of his main teaching upon the theory of mathematical science, he would have hesitated to draw his sceptical conclusions. Such, however, was not the case. Hume’s theory of mathematical reasoning undoubtedly forms the least satisfactory part of his philosophy. He did, however, perceive the general bearing of his central teaching. It was in large degree his ignorance of the mathematical disciplines that concealed from him the thorough unsatisfactoriness of his general position, and which prevented him from formulating the logical problem in its full scope—the problem, namely, how judgments which make additions to our previous knowledge, and yet do not rest upon mere sensation, are possible. He treated it only as it presents itself in those judgments which involve the concept of causality.[1769] But this analysis of causal judgments awoke Kant from his dogmatic slumber, and so ultimately led to the raising of the logical problem in its widest form:—how synthetic a priori judgments, whether mathematical, physical, or metaphysical, are possible.

Hume discussed the causal problem both in regard to the general principle of causality and in its bearing upon our particular judgments of causal relation. The problems concerned in these two discussions are essentially distinct. The first involves immensely wider issues, and so far as can be judged from the existing circumstantial evidence,[1770] it was this first discussion, not as has been so often assumed by Kant’s commentators the second and more limited problem, which exercised so profound an influence upon Kant at the turning-point of his speculations. In stating it, it will be best to take Hume’s own words.

“To begin with the first question concerning the necessity of a cause: ‘Tis a general maxim in philosophy, that whatever begins to exist, must have a cause of existence. This is commonly taken for granted in all reasonings, without any proof given or demanded. ‘Tis supposed to be founded on intuition, and to be one of those maxims, which though they may be deny’d with the lips, ‘tis impossible for men in their hearts really to doubt of. But if we examine this maxim by the idea of knowledge above explain’d we shall discover in it no mark of any such intuitive certainty; but on the contrary shall find, that ‘tis of a nature quite foreign to that species of conviction.”[1771]

The principle that every event must have a cause, is neither intuitively nor demonstratively certain. So far from there existing a necessary connection between the idea of an event as something happening in time and the idea of a cause, no connection of any kind is discoverable by us. We can conceive an object to be non-existent at this moment, and existent the next, without requiring to conjoin with it the altogether different idea of a productive source.

This had been implicitly recognised by those few philosophers who had attempted to give demonstrations of the principle. By so doing, however, they only reinforce Hume’s contention that it possesses no rational basis. When Hobbes argues that as all the points of time and place in which we can suppose an object to begin to exist, are in themselves equal, there must be some cause determining an event to happen at one moment rather than at another, he is assuming the very principle which he professes to prove. There is no greater difficulty in supposing the time and place to be fixed without a cause, than in supposing the existence to be so determined. If the denial of a cause is not intuitively absurd in the one case, it cannot be so in the other. If the first demands a proof, so likewise must the second. Similarly with the arguments advanced by Locke and Clarke. Locke argues that if anything is produced without a cause, it is produced by nothing, and that that is impossible, since nothing can never be a cause any more than it can be something, or equal to two right angles. Clarke’s contention that if anything were without a cause, it would produce itself, i.e. exist before it existed, is of the same character. These arguments assume the only point which is in question.

“When we exclude all causes we really do exclude them, and neither suppose nothing nor the object itself to be the causes of the existence, and consequently can draw no argument from the absurdity of these suppositions to prove the absurdity of that exclusion.”[1772]

The remaining argument, that every effect must have a cause, since this is implied in the very idea of an effect, is “still more frivolous.”

“Every effect necessarily presupposes a cause; effect being a relative term, of which cause is the correlative. But this does not prove that every being must be preceded by a cause; no more than it follows, because every husband must have a wife, that therefore every man must be married.”[1773]

The far-reaching conclusion, that the principle of causality has no possible rational basis, Hume extends and reinforces through his other doctrines, viz. that synthetic reason[1774] is merely generalised belief, and that belief is in all cases due to the ultimate instincts and propensities which de facto constitute our human nature. The synthetic principles which lie at the basis of our experience are non-rational in character. Each is due to a ‘blind and powerful instinct,’ which, demanding no evidence, and ignoring theoretical inconsistency for the sake of practical convenience, necessitates belief.

“Nature by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity has determined us to judge as well as to breathe and feel.”[1775] “All these operations are a species of natural instincts, which no reasoning or process of the thought and understanding is able either to produce or to prevent.”[1776]

Reason is “nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls.”[1777] It justifies itself by its practical uses, but can afford no standard to which objective reality must conform.

It is from this point of view that Hume states his answer to the problem of perception. Our natural belief in the permanence and identity of objects, as expressed through the principle of substance and attribute, leads us to interpret the objects of sense-perception as independent realities. We interpret our subjective sensations as being qualities of independent substances. Our other natural belief, in the dynamical interdependence of events, as expressed through the principle of causality, leads, however, to the opposite conclusion, that the known objects are merely mental. For by it we are constrained to interpret sensations, not as objective qualities, but only as subjective effects, expressive of the reactions of our psycho-physical organism. The Cartesian problems owe their origin to the mistaken attempt to harmonise, in a theoretical fashion, these two conflicting principles. The conflict is inevitable and the antinomy is insoluble, so long as the two principles are regarded as objectively valid. The only satisfactory solution comes through recognition that reason is unable to account, save in reference to practical ends, even for its own inevitable demands. The principle of substance and attribute and the principle of causality co-operate in rendering possible such organisation of our sense-experience as is required for practical life. But when we carry this organisation further than practical life itself demands, the two principles at once conflict.

Kant shows no interest in this constructive part of Hume’s philosophy; and must, indeed, have been almost entirely ignorant of it, since it finds only very imperfect expression in the Enquiry, and is ignored in Beattie’s Nature of Truth. Accordingly, Kant does not regard Hume as offering a positive explanation of knowledge, but rather as representing the point of view of thoroughgoing scepticism. But even had he been acquainted at first hand with Hume’s Treatise, he would undoubtedly have felt little sympathy with Hume’s naturalistic view of the function of reason. His training in the mathematical sciences would have enabled him to detect the inadequacy of Hume’s treatment of mathematical knowledge, and his strong moral convictions would have led him to rebel against the naturalistic assumptions which underlie Hume’s entire position. The Berkeley-Hume comedy is thus repeated with reversed rôles. Just as Berkeley’s anti-materialistic philosophy was mainly influential as a step towards the naturalism of Hume, and as such still survives in the philosophies of John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Huxley, Mach and Karl Pearson, so in turn Hume’s anti-metaphysical theory of knowledge was destined to be one of the chief contributory sources of the German speculative movement.

We may now turn to Hume’s treatment of the narrower problem—that of justifying our particular causal judgments. Hume’s attitude towards this question is predetermined by the more fundamental argument, above stated, which precedes it in the Treatise, but which is entirely omitted from the corresponding chapters of the Enquiry. As the general principle of causality is of an irrational character, the same must be true of those particular judgments which are based upon it. Much of Hume’s argument on this question is, indeed, merely a restatement of what had already been pointed out by his predecessors. There is no necessary connection discoverable between any cause and its effect. This is especially evident as regards the connection between brain states and mental experiences. No explanation can be given why a motion in the brain should produce sensations in the mind, or why a mental resolution should produce movements in the body. Such sequences may be empirically verified; they cannot be rationally understood. That this likewise holds, though in less obvious fashion, of the causal interrelations of material bodies, had been emphasised by Geulincx, Malebranche, Locke, and Berkeley. The fact that one billiard ball should communicate motion to another by impact is, when examined, found to be no less incomprehensible than the interaction of mind and body. Hume, in the following passage, is only reinforcing this admitted fact, in terms of his own philosophy.

“We fancy that were we brought on a sudden into this world we could at first have inferred that one billiard ball would communicate motion to another upon impulse; and that we needed not to have waited for the event, in order to pronounce with certainty upon it. Such is the influence of custom, that, where it is strongest, it not only covers our natural ignorance, but even conceals itself, and seems not to take place merely because it is found in the highest degree.”[1778]

Nor are we conscious of any causal power within the self. When Berkeley claims that mind has the faculty of producing images at will, he is really ascribing to it creative agency. And such creation, as Malebranche had already pointed out, is not even conceivable.

“I deny that my will produces in me my ideas, for I cannot even conceive how it could produce them, since my will, not being able to act or will without knowledge, presupposes my ideas and does not make them.”[1779] “Is there not here,” Hume asks, “either in a spiritual or material substance, or both, some secret mechanism or structure of parts, upon which the effect depends, and which, being entirely unknown to us, renders the power or energy of the will equally unknown and incomprehensible?”[1780]

But the fact that Hume thus restates conclusions already emphasised by his predecessors will not justify us in contending (as certain historians of philosophy seem inclined to do) that in his treatment of the causal problem he failed to make any important advance upon the teaching of the Occasionalists. Hume was the first to perceive the essential falsity of the Cartesian, rationalistic view of the causal nexus. For Descartes, an effect is that which can be deduced with logical necessity from the concept of its cause. The Occasionalists similarly argued that because natural events can never be deduced from one another they must in all cases be due to supernatural agency; like Descartes, they one and all failed to comprehend that since by an effect we mean that which follows in time upon its cause, and since, therefore, the principle of causality is the law of change, the nature of causality cannot be expressed in logical terms. Hume was the first to appreciate the significance of this fundamental fact; and an entirely new set of problems at once came into view. If causal connection is not, as previous thinkers had believed, logical in character, if it does not signify logical dependence of the so-called effect upon its cause, its true connotation must lie elsewhere; and until this has been traced to its hidden source, any attempted solution of metaphysical problems is certain to involve many false assumptions. The answer that is given to the problem of the origin and content of the causal concept must determine our interpretation alike of sense-experience and of pure thought.

The problem presents on examination, however, a most paradoxical aspect. As Hume has already shown, every effect is an event distinct from its cause, and there is never any connection, beyond that of mere sequence, discoverable between them. We observe only sequence; we assert necessary connection. What, then, is in our minds when this latter assertion is made? And how, if the notion of necessitated connection cannot be gained through observation of the external events, is it acquired by us? Hume again propounds a naturalistic solution. Causation, i.e. necessitated sequence in time, is not in any sense a conception; it is not a comprehended relation between events, but a misunderstood feeling in our minds. We cannot form any, even the most remote, conception of how one event can produce another. Neither imagination nor pure thought, however freely they may act, are capable of inventing any such notion. But nature, by the manner in which it has constituted our minds, deludes us into the belief that we are in actual possession of this idea. The repeated sequence of events, in fixed order, generates in us the feeling of a tendency to pass from the perception or idea of the one to the idea of the other. This feeling, thus generated by custom, and often in somewhat confused fashion combined with the feeling of ‘animal nisus,’ which is experienced in bodily effort, is mistaken by the mind for a definite concept of force, causality, necessary connection. As mere feeling it can afford no insight into the relation holding between events, and as merely subjective can justify no inference in regard to that relation. The terms force, causality, necessitated sequence in time, have a practical value, as names for our instinctive, natural expectations; but when employed as instruments for the theoretical interpretation of experience, they lead us off on a false trail.

This is one of the fundamental points upon which Hume reveals a deeper speculative insight than either Malebranche, Geulincx, or Locke. Though these latter insist upon our ignorance of the relation holding between events, they still assume that causation and natural necessity are concepts which have a quite intelligible meaning; and in consequence they fail to draw the all-important conclusion, that the general principle of causality has neither intuitive nor demonstrative validity. For that is the revolutionary outcome of Hume’s analysis of the notion of necessitated connection. The principle of causality is a synthetic judgment in which no connection is discoverable between its subject and its predicate. That is the reason why it is neither self-evident nor capable of being established upon more ultimate grounds.

As has already been stated, the wider problem concerning the principle of causality is developed only in the Treatise; the problem regarding the concept of causality is discussed both in the Treatise and in the Enquiry. An appreciation of the wider problem is required, however, in order to set this second problem in its true light, for it is only through its connection with the wider issue that Hume’s reduction of the concept of causality to a merely instinctive, non-rational expectation acquires its full significance. Hume’s analysis then amounts, as Kant was the first to realise, to an attack upon the objective validity of all constructive thinking. Not only rationalism, but even such metaphysics as may claim to base its conclusions upon the teaching of experience, is thereby rendered altogether impossible. The issue is crucial, and must be honestly faced, before metaphysical conclusions, no matter what their specific character may be, whether a priori or empirical, can legitimately be drawn. If we may not assert that an event must have some cause, even the right to enquire for a cause must first be justified. And if so fundamental a principle as that of causality is not self-evident, are there any principles which can make this claim?

The account which we have so far given of Hume’s argument covers only that part of it which is directed against the rationalist position, and which was therefore so influential in turning Kant on to the line of his Critical speculations. But Hume attacked with equal vigour the empiricist standpoint; and as this aspect of his teaching, constituting as it did an integral part of Kant’s own philosophy, must undoubtedly have helped to confirm Kant in his early rationalist convictions, we may profitably dwell upon it at some length. In opposition to the empiricists, Hume argues that experience is incapable of justifying any inference in regard to matters of fact. It cannot serve as a basis from which we can inductively extend our knowledge of facts beyond what the senses and memory reveal. Inductive inference, when so employed, necessarily involves a petitio principii; we assume the very point we profess to have proved.

The argument by which Hume establishes this important contention is as follows. All inductive reasoning from experience presupposes the validity of belief in causal connection. For when we have no knowledge of causes, we have no justification for asserting the continuance of uniformities. Now it has been shown that we have no experience of any necessary relation between so-called causes and their effects. The most that experience can supply are sequences which repeat themselves. In regarding the sequences as causal, and so as universally constant, we make an assertion for which experience gives no support, and to which no amount of repeated experience, recalled in memory, can add one jot of real evidence. To argue that because the sequences have remained constant in a great number of repeated experiences, they are therefore more likely to remain constant, is to assume that constancy in the past is a ground for inferring it in the future; and that is the very point which demands proof. In drawing the conclusion we virtually assume that there is a necessary connection, i.e. an absolutely constant relation, between events. But since no single experience of causal sequence affords ground for inferring that the sequence will continue in the future, no number of repeated experiences, recalled in memory, can contribute to the strengthening of the inference. It is meaningless to talk even of likelihood or probability. The fact that the sun has without a single known exception arisen each day in the past does not (if we accept the argument disproving all knowledge of necessary connection) constitute proof that it will rise to-morrow.

“None but a fool or a madman will be unaffected in his expectations or natural beliefs by this constancy, but he is no philosopher who accepts this as in the nature of evidence.”[1781]

Since, for all that we know to the contrary, bodies may change their nature and mode of action at any moment, it is vain to pretend that we are scientifically assured of the future because of the past.

“My practice, you say, refutes my doubts.[1782] But you mistake the purport of my question. As an agent, I am quite satisfied in the point; but as a philosopher, who has some share of curiosity, I will not say scepticism, I want to learn the foundation of this inference. No reading, no enquiry has yet been able to remove my difficulty or give me satisfaction in a matter of such importance. Can I do better than propose the difficulty to the public, even though, perhaps, I have small hopes of obtaining a solution? We shall at least, by this means, be sensible of our ignorance, if we do not augment our knowledge.”[1783]

Kant was the first, after thirty years, to take up this challenge. Experience is no source of evidence until the causal postulate has been independently proved. Only if the principle of causality can be established prior to all specific experience, only if we can predetermine experience as necessarily conforming to it, are empirical arguments valid at all. Hume’s enquiry thus directly leads to the later, no less than to the earlier form of Kant’s epoch-making question.[1784] In its earlier formulation it referred only to a priori judgments; in its wider application it was found to arise with equal cogency in connection with empirical judgments. And as thus extended, it generated the problem: How is sense-experience, regarded as a form of knowledge, possible at all?[1785] By showing that the principle of causality has neither intuitive nor demonstrative validity, Hume cuts the ground from under the rationalists; by showing that sense-experience cannot by itself yield conclusions which are objectively valid, he at the same time destroys the empiricist position. In this latter contention Kant stands in complete agreement with Hume. That the sensuously given is incapable of grounding even probable inferences, is a fundamental presupposition (never discussed, but always explicitly assumed) of the Critical philosophy. It was by challenging the sufficiency of Hume’s other line of argument, that which is directed against the rationalists, that Kant discovered a way of escape from the sceptical dilemma. The conditions of experience can be proved by a transcendental method, which, though a priori in character, does not lie open to Hume’s sceptical objections. Each single experience involves rational principles, and consequently even a single empirical observation may suffice to justify an inductive inference. Experience conforms to the demands of pure a priori thought; and can legitimately be construed in accordance with them.

We may now pass to the philosophy in which Kant was educated. It gave to his thinking that rationalist trend, to which, in spite of all counter-influences, he never ceased to remain true.[1786] It also contributed to his philosophy several of its constructive principles. Only two rationalist systems need be considered, those of Leibniz and of Wolff. Kant, by his own admission,[1787] had been baffled in his attempts (probably not very persevering) to master Spinoza’s philosophy. It was with Wolff’s system that he was most familiar; but both directly and indirectly, both in his early years and in the ’seventies, the incomparably deeper teaching of Leibniz must have exercised upon him a profoundly formative influence. In defining the points of agreement and of difference between Hume and Leibniz,[1788] we have already outlined Leibniz’s general view of the nature and powers of pure thought, and may therefore at once proceed to the relevant detail of his main tenets.

Upon two fundamental points Leibniz stands in opposition to Spinoza. He seeks to maintain the reality of the contingent or accidental. These terms are indeed, as he conceives them, synonymous with the actual. Necessity rules only in the sphere of the possible. Contingency or freedom is the differentiating characteristic of the real. This point of view is bound up with his second contention, namely, that the real is a kingdom of ends. It is through divine choice of the best among the possible worlds that the actual present order has arisen. There are thus two principles which determine the real: the principle of contradiction which legislates with absolute universality, and the principle of the best, or, otherwise formulated, of sufficient reason, which differentiates reality from truth, limiting thought, in order that, without violating logic, it may freely satisfy the moral needs. Leibniz thus vindicates against Spinoza the reality of freedom and the existence of ends.

Though Leibniz agrees with Spinoza that the philosophically perfect method would be to start from an adequate concept of the Divine Being, and to deduce from His attributes the whole nature of finite reality, he regards our concept of God as being too imperfect to allow of such procedure. We are compelled to resort to experience, and by analysis to search out the various concepts which it involves. By the study of these concepts and their interrelations, we determine, in obedience to the law of contradiction, the nature of the possible. The real, in contradistinction from the possible, involves, however, the notion of ends. The existence of these ends can never be determined by logical, but only by moral considerations. The chief problem of philosophical method is, therefore, to discover the exact relation in which the logical and the teleological, the necessary and the contingent, stand to one another.

The absence of contradiction is in itself a sufficient guarantee of possibility, i.e. even of the possibility of real existence. How very far Leibniz is willing to go on this line is shown by his acceptance of the ontological argument. The whole weight of his system rests, indeed, upon this proof. The notion of God is, he maintains, the sole concept which can determine itself in a purely logical manner not only as possible but also as real. If we are to avoid violating the principle of contradiction, the Ens perfectissimum must be regarded as possessing the perfection of real existence. And since God is perfect in moral as in all other attributes, His actions must be in conformity with moral demands. In creating the natural order God must therefore have chosen that combination of possibilities which constitutes the best of all possible worlds. By means of this conceptual bridge we are enabled to pass by pure a priori thinking from the logically possible to the factually real.

Pure logical thinking is thus an instrument whereby ultimate reality can be defined in a valid manner. Pure thought is speculative and metaphysical in its very essence. It uncovers to us what no experience can reveal, the wider universe which exists eternally in the mind of God. Every concept (whether mathematical, dynamical, or moral), provided only that it is not self-contradictory, is an eternal essence, with the intrinsic nature of which even God must reckon in the creation of things. When, therefore, we are determining the unchanging nature of the eternally possible, there is no necessary reference to Divine existence. The purely logical criterion suffices as a test of truth. Every judgment which is made in regard to such concepts must express only what their content involves. All such judgments must be analytic in order to be true.

When, however, we proceed from the possible to the real, that is to say, from the necessary to the contingent, the logical test is no longer sufficient; and only by appeal to the second principle, that of sufficient reason, can judgments about reality be logically justified. Whether or not the principle of sufficient reason is deducible, as Wolff sought to maintain, from the principle of contradiction, is a point of quite secondary importance. That is a question which does not deserve the emphasis which has been laid upon it. What is chiefly important is that for Leibniz, as for Wolff, both principles are principles of analysis. The principle of sufficient reason is not an instrument for determining necessary relations between independent substances. The sufficient ground of a valid predicate must in all cases be found in the concept of the subject to which it is referred. The difference between the two principles lies elsewhere, namely, in the character of the connection established between subject and predicate. In the one case the denial of the proposition involves a direct self-contradiction. In the other the opposite of the judgment is perfectly conceivable; our reason for asserting it is a moral (employing the term in the eighteenth-century sense), not a logical ground. The subject is so constituted, that in the choice of ends, in pursuit of the good, it must by its very nature so behave. The principle of sufficient reason, which represents in our finite knowledge the divine principle of the best, compels us to recognise the predicate as involved in the subject—as involved through a ground which inclines without necessitating. Often the analysis cannot be carried sufficiently far to enable us thus to transform a judgment empirically given into one which is adequately grounded. None the less, in recognising it as true, we postulate that the predicate is related to the subject in this way. There are not for Leibniz two methods of establishing truth, sense-perception to reveal contingent fact, and general reasoning to establish necessary truth. A proposition can be accepted as true only in so far as we can at least postulate, through absence of contradiction and through sufficient reason, its analytic character. It must express some form of identity. The proposition, Caesar crossed the Rubicon, is given us as historical fact. The more complete our knowledge of Caesar and of his time, the further we can carry the analysis; and that analysis if completely executed would displace the merely factual validity of the judgment by insight into its metaphysical truth. Thus experience, with its assertions of the here and now about particulars inexhaustibly concrete, sets to rational science an inexhaustible task. We can proceed in our analysis indefinitely, pushing out the frontiers of thought further and further into the empirical realm. Only by the Divine Mind can the task be completed, and all things seen as ordered in complete obedience to the two principles of thought.

Leibniz, in propounding this view, develops a genuinely original conception of the relation holding between appearance and reality. Only monads, that is, spiritual beings, exist. Apart from the representative activity of the monads there are no such existences as space and time, as matter and motion. The mathematical and physical sciences, in their present forms, therefore, cannot be interpreted as revealing absolute existences. But, if ideally developed, they would emancipate themselves from mechanical and sensuous notions; and would consist of a body of truths, which, as thus perfected, would be discovered to constitute the very being of thought. Pure thought or reason consists in the apprehension of such truths. To discover and to prove them thought does not require to issue out beyond itself. It creates this conceptual world in the very act of apprehending it; and as this realm of truth thus expresses the necessary character of all thought, whether divine or human, it is universal and unchanging. Each mind apprehends the same eternal truth; but owing to imperfection each finite being apprehends it with some degree of obscurity and confusion, fragmentarily, in terms of sense, and so falls prey to the illusion that the self stands in mechanical relations to a spatial and temporal world of matter and motion.

Leibniz supports this doctrine by his theory of sense-experience as originating spontaneously from within the individual mind. Thereby he is only repeating that pure thought generates its whole content from within itself. Sense-experience, in its intrinsic nature, is nothing but pure thought. Such thought, owing to the inexhaustible wealth of its conceptual significance, so confuses the mind which thus generates it, that only by prolonged analysis can larger and larger portions of it be construed into the conceptual judgments which have all along constituted its sole content. And in the process, space, time, and motion lose all sensuous character, appearing in their true nature as orders of relation which can be adequately apprehended only in conceptual terms. They remain absolutely real as objects of thought, though as sensible existences they are reduced to the level of mere appearance. Such is the view of thought which is unfolded in Leibniz’s writings, in startling contrast to the naturalistic teaching of his Scotch antagonist.

As already indicated, Kant’s first-hand knowledge of Leibniz’s teaching was very limited. He was acquainted with it chiefly through the inadequate channel of Wolff’s somewhat commonplace exposition of its principles. But even from such a source he could derive what was most essential, namely, Leibniz’s view of thought as absolute in its powers and unlimited in its claims. How closely Wolff holds to the main tenet of Leibniz’s system appears from his definition of philosophy as “the science of possible things, so far as they are possible.” He thus retains, though without the deeper suggestiveness of Leibniz’s speculative insight, the view that thought precedes reality and legislates for it. By the possible is not meant the existentially or psychologically possible, but the conceptually necessary, that which, prior to all existence, has objective validity, sharing in the universal and necessary character of thought itself.

As Riehl has very justly pointed out,[1789] Wolff’s philosophy had, prior even to the period of Kant’s earliest writings, been displaced by empirical, psychological enquiries and by eclectic, popular philosophy. Owing to the prevailing lack of thoroughness in philosophical thinking, “Problemlosigkeit” characterised the whole period. The two exclusively alternative views of the function of thought stood alongside one another within each of the competing systems, quite unreconciled and in their mutual conflict absolutely destructive of all real consistency and thoroughness of thought. It was Kant who restored rationalism to its rightful place. He reinvigorated the flaccid tone of his day by adopting in his writings, both early and late, the strict method of rational science, and by insisting that the really crucial issues be boldly faced. In essentials Kant holds to Wolff’s definition of philosophy as “the science of possible things, so far as they are possible.” As I have just remarked, the possible is taken in an objective sense, and the definition consequently gives expression to the view of philosophy upon which Kant so frequently insists, as lying wholly in the sphere of pure a priori thought. Its function is to determine prior to specific experience what experience must be; and obviously that is only possible by means of an a priori, purely conceptual method. His Critique, as its title indicates, is a criticism of pure reason by pure reason. Nothing which escapes definition through pure a priori thinking can come within its sphere. The problem of the “possibility of experience” is the problem of discovering the conditions which necessarily determine experience to be what it is. Kant, of course, radically transforms the whole problem, in method of treatment as well as in results, when in defining the subject-matter of enquiry he substitutes experience for things absolutely existent. This modification is primarily due to the influence of Hume. But the constant occurrence in Kant’s philosophy of the term “possibility” marks his continued belief in the Idealist view of thought. Though pure thought never by itself amounts to knowledge—therein Kant departs from the extreme rationalist position—only through it is any knowledge, empirical or a priori, possible at all. Philosophy, in order to exist, must be a system of a priori rational principles. Nothing empirical or hypothetical can find any place in it.[1790] Yet at the same time it is the system of the a priori conditions only of experience, not of ultimate reality. Such is the twofold relation of agreement and difference in which Kant stands to his rationalist predecessors.

INDEX

[A], [B], [C], [D], [E], [F], [G], [H], [I], [J], [K], [L], [M], [N], [O], [P], [Q], [R], [S], [T], [U], [V], [W], [Z]

Absolute. See Unconditioned
Absolutist aspect of human consciousness, [xxx-xxxiii], [liii], [liv-lv], [lvi-lvii], [270-1], [274], [282], [285-7], [331] n., [423] n.
Actuality, [391] ff.
Adamson, R., [38], [311], [314]
Addison, [156]
Adickes, E., [xx-xxi], [76], [166], [200], [215] n., [233] n., [234], [304], [363], [376], [397], [406] n., [423], [439-40], [441], [464] n., [466], [479], [579] n., [601] n.
Affinity, objective, [224], [253-7], [266-7]
“Als ob” doctrine, [524], [553] ff.
Analogy, Kant’s use of the term, [356-8]
Analytic and synthetic judgment, [xxv] ff., [xxxv-xxxvi], [xxxviii], [28] ff., [37] ff., [59-60], [65];
existential judgment, [530-1];
distinction perhaps suggested by examination of ontological argument, [531].
See Judgment
Analytic and synthetic methods, [44] ff., [111], [117] n.
See Transcendental method
Analytic, distinguished from the Dialectic, [172-4], [438-42]
Anthropologie, Kant’s, [81] n., [100] n.
Antinomies, [lii], [liii], [432], [478] ff., [519-20]
Appearance, Kant’s views regarding, [xxxvii], [xlvi-xlvii], [liii-liv], [18-22], [83-5], [120-2], [147] ff., [205] ff., [215] ff., [279-284], [293] ff., [301] ff., [312] ff., [321] ff., [330-1], [372-3], [404] ff., [427] ff.;
criticism of Leibnizian view of, [143-6];
criticism of Locke’s view of, [146-7];
ideality of, [147] ff.;
outer and inner appearances reduce to relations, [147-8];
appearance and illusion, [148] ff.;
causal efficacy of appearances, [216], [217-18], [351], [373-4];
distinction between appearance and reality based not on categories of understanding but on Ideas of Reason, [liii-liv], [217-18], [326] n., [331], [390-1], [414-17], [426-31], [473-7], [511-12], [519-21], [541-2], [558-61]
Apperception, and memory, [251];
in what sense origina[l], [xxxiv], [xliii-xlv], [l-lii], [260-3], [461-2], [472-7];
transcendental unity of, [l-lii], [207] ff., [212], [250-3], [260-3], [270], [277-9], [322] ff., [455] ff., [473-7];
absent from the animal mind, [xlvii-l];
objective unity of, [270-1], [274], [282], [285-7];
and inner sense, [295-8], [321] ff., [512] n.
See Self
A priori, Kant’s views regarding the, [xxvi-xxviii], [xxxiii-xxxvi], [lii-lv], [1-2], [39-40], [42], [54] ff.;
problem of a priori synthetic judgment, [26] ff., [39-40], [43] ff.;
its validity merely de facto, [xxxv-xxxvi], [xliv], [30], [57], [118], [142], [185-6], [257-9], [291], [391-2], [393], [400-1], [411];
the faculties in which it originates, [xliii-xlv], [l-lii], [1-2], [50-1], [237-8], [263] ff., [391-2], [393], [398], [563-5];
semi-Critical view of the, [188-9], [232], [263-4].
See Understanding, Reason
Aquinas, [73]
Architectonic, [xxii], [100], [184], [332-6], [340-1], [342], [343], [345], [347], [390], [392], [394], [419] ff., [434], [437], [440], [439-40], [454], [463], [464], [474], [479-80], [496], [498], [542], [563], [579]
Aristotle, [xlv], [196], [198], [390]. See Logic
Arithmetic, [32], [40-1], [65-6], [128] ff., [337-8], [347], [566]
Association, and judgment, [xxxiv-xxxv], [xlviii-l];
and consciousness, [xli-xlii]; rests on objective affinity, [253-7], [266-7]
Attributive judgment, Kant’s exclusive emphasis upon, [37-8], [180-1], [197]
Augustine, St., [73], [110], [565]
Avenarius, [587] n.
Axioms, Kant’s view of, [50], [127], [348], [565-7]
Bacon, Francis, [4-5], [74]
Bain, A., [86] n.
Balfour, A. J., [314]
Baumgarten, [192-3], [441], [522]
Beantwortung der Frage: Was heisst Aufklärung? Kant’s, [15]
Beattie, James, [xxviii-xxix], xxxi n., [207], [582], [595], [600] n.
Beck, [80]
Belief, Kant’s view of, [lv] ff., [576-7]
Beloselsky, Fürst von, [xlix]
Bergson, [86], [142], [359-60] n., [587] n.
Berkeley, [xxxii], [xl], [xlvi], [112], [153-4], [155] ff., [272], [298] ff., [587-8], [592], [595], [596]
Borowski, [63], [156]
Bosanquet, B., [36], [181], [197]
Bradley, F. G., [36], [181], [197]
Bruno, Giordano, [74]
Bülffinger, [155]
Caird, E., [xx], [1] n., [23], [51], [102] n., [114], [117], [183], [194], [195], [262], [296], [314], [328], [340], [357] n., [359] n., [373], [378], [399], [462], [468]
Campanella, [74]
Canon, [72], [169-70], [174], [332-3], [438], [569] ff.
Cassirer, E., [132]
Categorical imperative, [xxxvi], [lvi-lviii], [571] ff.
Categories, distinction from generic concept, [178] ff.;
de facto nature of the, [xxxv-xxxvi], [xxxviii], [xliv], [30], [57], [185-6], [257-8], [291], [391-2], [398], [400-1], [411];
definition of the, [195-6], [198], [339-42], [404-5];
semi-Critical view of the, [188-9], [217-18], [232], [263-4];
merely logical forms, [xxxv-xxxvi], [xxxviii], [30] n., [32], [39], [108], [176] ff., [185-6], [191], [195-196], [257-8], [290-1], [325] ff., [339-40], [398], [404-5], [409-10], [413-14], [467];
valid only for appearances, [259-60];
and schemata, [195-6], [311], [333], [339-342], [467] n.;
metaphysical deduction of the, [183] ff., [192] ff., [287-8];
transcendental deduction of the, [234] ff., [287-8];
all categories involved in every act of consciousness, [xli-xlv], [liii-liv], [199-200], [356], [368], [370], [377], [387-91];
have wider scope than the forms of sense, [lv-lvi], [20], [25], [290-1], [331], [404] ff.;
restricted by time and space, [342], [357];
in relation to outer and inner experience, [311-12];
how far predicable of the ‘I think,’ [325] ff.;
how far applicable to sensations, desires, etc., xlvi n., [275-6], [279] ff., [312] ff., [384-5], [476];
proof of specific, [242-3], [252-3], [258-9], [287-8], [333], [343-4];
determinate and indeterminate application of the, [325] ff., [405] ff.;
may be intrinsically inapplicable to things in themselves, [290], [409-10], [413-14];
category of existence, [322], [415] n.;
category of totality and Idea of the unconditioned, [199-200], [433], [451], [480], [529];
mathematical and dynamica[l], [198], [345-7], [510-11].
See A priori, Understanding
Catharticon, [169], [174]
Causality, Kant influenced by Hume’s teaching regarding, [xxv] ff., [61-4], [364] ff., [593-600];
Kant’s treatment of the principle of, [363] ff.;
Kant’s subjectivist and phenomenalist views of, [216], [217-18], [318-21], [351], [373-4];
sensations, feelings, etc. subject to principle of, xlvi n., [275], [279-82], [312], [384-5];
category of, involved in consciousness of time, [liii-liv], [365] ff., [377] ff., [387];
and freedom, [492] ff.
See Hume
Clarke, [140], [539], [594]
Cohen, H., [51], [102] n., [195], [262], [340]
Coherence theory of truth, [xxxvi-xxxix], [36] ff., [173] n.;
criterion of truth bound up with the Ideas of Reason, [217-18], [326] n., [331], [390-1], [414-17], [426-31], [473-7], [511-12], [519-21], [541-2], [558-61]
Concept, Kant’s generic or class view of the, [99-100], [105-7], [118-19], [126], [132-3], [177-84], [338-9], [370-1], [377-84], [390-1];
intuition and conception, [38-42], [93-4], [105-9], [118-20], [126], [128-134], [165-6], [167-8], [194], [370], [390-1], [564-6];
construction of concepts, [41], [131-3], [338-9], [418] ff., [564-6];
concepts and images, [337-9];
Kant’s doctrine of the pure concept, [xxxix], [394-400], [418] ff.
See Understanding
Concerning the Advances, made, etc.
See Fortschritte
Consciousness, Kant’s views regarding, [xxxiv-xxxv], [xxxix-xlv], [xliii-xlvii], [l-lii];
and the animal mind, [xlvii-l];
may be a resultant, [xxxiv], [xliii-xlv], [l-lii], [261-3], [277-9], [327], [459-62], [473-7];
no immediate consciousness of mind’s own activities, [xliii-xlv], [l-lii], [263] ff., [273] ff., [293], [295] ff., [322] ff.;
consciousness of time Kant’s datum, [xxxiv], [120], [241] ff., [365] ff., [381] ff.;
absolutist aspect of, [xxx-xxxiii], [liii], [lvi-lvii], [270-1], [274], [282], [285-7], [331] n.
See Apperception, Judgment
Contingency, assertion of, [39] ff., [55], [286-9]
Continuity, Kant’s views regarding, [352-355], [488] ff., [509];
principle of, [380-1];
transcendental principle of, [551]
Copernicus, [18-19], [22-5]
Cosmological Argument, [531] ff.
Criterion of truth. See Coherence theory of truth
Criticism, Kant’s use of term, [1], [9], [13-14], [21];
Age of, [15]
Critique of Practical Reason, [lvi], [lvii], [lx], [77-8], [569] ff., [572]
Critique of Judgment, [lxi], [77], [83], [97-8], [191], [265], [537], [539], [561], [569] n., [574], [575] n., [576], [577] n.
Crusius, [xxviii], [xxxii], [47]
Curtius, E., [336]
Deduction of categories, distinction between subjective and objective, xliv n., [235] ff.;
subjective, [245] ff., [263] ff.; objective, [248] ff.;
metaphysica[l], [175] ff., [192] ff.;
stages in Kant’s development of metaphysica[l], [186] ff.
See Transcendental method of proof
Deduction of Ideas, metaphysica[l], [426], [433] ff., [450-4], [478-80], [522-3];
transcendenta[l], [426], [430], [436], [454], [552-4], [572] ff.
See Ideas of Reason
Definition, Kant’s view of, [564-5]
Deist, as contrasted with Theist, [541];
Kant’s deistic interpretation of the Ideas of Reason, [418], [436], [439-40], [454], [473-7], [520-1], [537], [542], [575].
See Idealist view of Reason.
Democritus, [354] n.
Demonstration, Kant’s view of, [566-7]
Descartes, [xxxi], [xxxix-xliii], [xlvi], [155], [157], [272-3], [279] ff., [298] ff., [354] n., [421], [449], [583-7], [589-90], [597]
Desires, Kant’s view of the, xlvi n., [276], [279-82], [312], [384-5]
Dewey, J., [36]
Dialectic, distinguished from the Analytic, [172-4], [438-42];
the problems of the, [425] ff.;
development of Kant’s views regarding the, [431] ff.
Dilucidatio Principiorum primorum, etc., Kant’s, [155], [299]
Discipline, [170], [174], [438],

[563] ff.
Dissertation, Kant’s Inaugura[l], [xx], [26], [40], [46], [81], [86], [87], [89] ff., [96], [99], [101], [117], [123], [128], [131], [135], [137], [140-1], [144-5], [147], [159-60], [163-5], [185], [186-9], [208], [260], [263], [299], [382], [419], [427], [432], [482], [486], [489] n., [548]
Divine Existence, in relation to space and time, [159-61];
and intuitive understanding, [160];
Idea of, [434-7];
how far can be concretely pictured, [536-7], [541-2], [556] ff.
See God
Dogmatism, as distinguished from Criticism, [9], [13-14], [21]
Dreams of a Visionseer, Kant’s, [155] n., [299]
Duns Scotus, [73-4]
Eberhard, Kant’s reply to, [90] ff., [143] n.
Ego, transcendenta[l]. See Apperception
Eleatics, the, [159]
Emotions, Kant’s view of the, xlvi n., [276], [279-82], [312], [384-5]
Empirica[l], relation to the a priori, [36] ff.;
problem of empirical knowledge, [39-40], [53];
empirical object intermediate between subjective representations and thing in itself, [206] ff., [223], [270] ff., [308] ff.
See Experience
Enquiry into the Clearness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morals, Kant’s, [15], [40], [563] ff.
Ens realissimum, [522] ff., [529-30], [532], [534], [541-2], [556]
Epicurus, [lix], [436], [499], [582]
Erdmann, B., [xx], xxviii n., [46], [142] n., [158], [161], [163], [200-1], [208] n., [294] n., [314], [373], [382] n., [412], [431-2], [471], [601] n.
Erhardt, F., [484] n., [494]
Error, See Appearance, Illusion
Euler, [162]
Existence, and the “I think,” [322] ff.;
judgment of, always synthetic, [527] ff.;
necessary existence, [533-7]
Experience, proof by reference to the possibility of, [xxxvi], [xxxvii-xxxviii], [45], [238-9], [241-3], [259-60], [344], [426], [430], [454], [552-4], [572] ff.;
meaning of term, [52]; problem of, [57-8];
as datum is equivalent to consciousness of time, [xxxiv], [120], [241] ff., [365] ff., [381] ff.
Exposition, Kant’s use of term, [109-10]
Faith, Kant’s view of, [lv-lvi], [lxi], [571] ff., [575-6]
Feeling, Kant’s use of term, [82-3];
Kant’s view of, xlvi n., [276], [279-82], [312], [384-5]
Fichte, [l]
Fischer, K., [46], [75], [113-14], [140], [601] n.
Form and matter, importance of distinction between, [xxxiii-xxxiv], [xxxvi], [85] ff.
Forms of the understanding. See Categories
Fortschritte, Welches sind die wirklichen, etc., Kant’s, li n., [59], [60], [84], [578] n., [580] n.
Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant’s, [lviii], [lix], [569], [572]
Fragmente aus dem Nachlasse, Kant’s, [lvii], [578]
Freedom of the will, problem of, [20-1], [435], [512] ff., [569-70];
and causality, [492] ff.;
transcendental and practical freedom, [497], [512-13], [517-18], [569-70], [573-4]
Galileo, [18], [583-4], [586]
Garve, [xix], [150]; Garve-Feder review, [158]
Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte, Kant’s, [117], [161-2]
Geometry, the fundamental mathematical science, [96] n.;
pure and applied, [111-12], [147], [349], [565-6];
Kant’s attitude to modern, [117] ff.
Geulincx, [596], [598]
God, ontological proof of existence of, [527] ff.;
cosmological proof, [531] ff.;
physico-theological proof, [538] ff.;
problem of God’s existence, [569] ff.;
how far an indispensable Idea of Reason, [439-40], [536-7], [541-2], [556] ff.
Green, T. H., l n., [23], [36]
Groos, K., xxviii n.
Hamann, [157], [539-40] n.;
describes Kant as “a Prussian Hume,” [305]
Hege[l], [xxxvii], [xlv], [l], [36], [190], [194], [274], [554] n.
Herbart, [86] n., [124]
Herz, Marcus, [xxii-xxiii], [xxix], [xlix], [6], [26], [28], [46], [51], [114] n., [138], [187], [189], [198], [206-7], [219-22], [432]
Hicks, G. Dawes, [415] n.
Hobbes, [593]
Höffding, H., [23]
Home, Henry, [1]
Homogeneity, transcendental principle of, [550-1]
Hume, date of first influence on Kant, [xx], [xxviii];
Kant’s relation to, [xxv-xxxiii], [xxxv], [xxxvii], [xlvi];
his view of consciousness, [xl-xliii];
anticipates Kant’s phenomenalism, [21-2];
maintains that experience cannot prove universality or necessity, [27], [57-8];
shows causal axiom to be synthetic, [30-1];
Hume’s problem a deepening of Kant’s earlier problem, [46];
Kant’s relation to, [61-4];
on the self, [207] n.;
his subjectivism, [272-3], [284], [300];
Kant “a Prussian Hume,” [305];
much of Hume’s teaching in regard to causality accepted by Kant, [364];
Kant’s reply to Hume, [369-71];
Hume’s philosophy the perfected expression of the empirical and sceptical position, [421];
influence on Kant, [432];
on existential judgment, [528];
influence on Kant of Hume’s Dialogues on Natural Religion, [539-540], [557], [567] n.;
influence on Kant, [583];
the philosophical teaching of, [588-601];
influence on Kant, [606]
Humility, [lvi], [lviii-lix], [554] n.
Hypotheses, and postulates, [xxxvii-xxxviii], [541], [543] ff., [571] ff.;
how far valid in metaphysics, [lxi], [9-12], [543] ff.
Hypothetical employment of Reason, [549-50]
Idealism, objective or Critica[l], [274];
Kant’s refutations of subjective idealism. [298] ff., [462-3];
transcendental idealism as key to solution of the antinomies, [503] ff.
See Phenomenalism and subjectivism
Ideal of Reason, [522] ff., [536-7], [541-2], [554] n., [556-61]
Idealist view of Reason, [xxxviii-xxxix], [xliv], [liii], [97-8], [102], [331-2], [390-1], [414-17], [426] ff., [433] ff., [447] ff., [473-7], [478] ff., [500-6], [511-12], [519-21], [547] ff., [552] ff., [558-61]
Ideality, of space and time, [76], [111], [116-17], [138], [147], [154], [308]
Ideas of Reason, Kant’s sceptical and Idealist views of the, [xxxviii-xxxix], [xliii], [xliv], [lii-lv], [lvi] ff., [330-1], [390-1], [414-17]. [426] ff., [433] ff., [446] ff., [473-7], [478] ff., [500-6], [511-12], [520-1], [547] ff., [558-61];
involved in consciousness of space and time, [liii-liv], [96-8], [102] n., [165-6], [390-1];
Kant’s deistic interpretation of the, [418], [436], [439-40], [454], [473-477], [520-1], [537], [575];
as limiting concepts, [408], [413-17], [426] ff.;
as regulative, [xxxviii-xxxix], [xliii], [liii], [473-7], [500] ff., [547] ff.;
and categories of relation, [451-2];
distinction between mathematical and dynamica[l], [510-11];
Kant’s criticism of Idea of unconditioned necessity, [527] ff., [533-7], [541-2];
metaphysical and practical validity of the Ideas, [570-6];
concluding comments on Kant’s views of the, [558-61];
condition distinction between appearance and reality, [liii-liv], [217-18], [326] n., [331], [391], [414-17], [426-31], [473-7], [511-12], [519-21], [541-2], [558-61].
See Deduction of Ideas
Illusion, and appearance, [148] ff.;
Berkeley regards objects of outer sense as, [157], [307-8];
inner experience not illusory, [323-4];
transcendenta[l], [13], [427-9], [437], [456] ff., [480], [552], [555]
Imagination, may be the common root of sensibility and understanding, [77], [225], [265];
productive, [224] ff., [264] ff., [337], [348], [375-6]
Immanent and transcendent metaphysics. See Metaphysics
Immortality, problem of, [569] ff.
Incongruous counterparts, [161] ff.
Infinitude, of space, [105] ff.;
of time, [124] ff.;
Kant’s view of, [483] ff.;
distinction between in infinitum and in indefinitum, [507] ff.
Inner Sense, xliii n., [148], [291] ff., [360], [464], [468-9];
and apperception, [321] ff.
Intuition, Kant’s doctrine of pure, [40] ff., [79-80], [118-20], [128] ff., [167-8], [468-9];
intuition and conception, [38-42], [93-98], [105-9], [118-20], [126], [128-34], [165-166], [167-8], [194], [390-1], [564-6];
formal intuition and form of intuition, [109], [114-16]
Intuitive understanding, Kant’s view of, [160], [291], [408] ff., [468] n. [542]
Jacobi, [300]
Jakob, xxviii n.
James, W., [86], [277-8], [459] n., [461] n.
Janitsch, [155], [156]
Jones, Sir Henry, [36]
Judgment, Kant’s doctrine of the, [xxxiv-xxxv], [xxxviii], [xli-xliv], [xlviii-l], [177] ff., [192] ff., [286] ff.;
the fundamental activity of the understanding, [xxxiv-xxxv], [xxxviii], [xli-xlii], [133], [181-2], [288], [332], [370];
a priori and empirica[l], [27-8];
analytic and synthetic, [xxv] ff., [28] ff., [37] ff., [59-60];
judgment 7 + 5 = [12], [65];
relational types ignored by Kant, [37] ff.;
Kant’s attributive view of, [37-38], [180-1], [197];
as assertion of contingency, [39] ff., [55], [286-9];
Kant’s distinction between judgments of perception and judgments of experience, [288-9];
existentia[l], [527-31]
Knowing and thinking, distinction between, [lv-lvi], [20], [25], [290-1], [331], [404] ff.
See Categories
Knowledge, the narrow meaning assigned to term by Kant, [lv-lvi], [lxi], [25]
Knützen, [161]
Lambert, [xx], [xxviii], [xxxii], [74], [138], [150], [193]
Lange, F., [23]
Lectures on Metaphysics, Kant’s, [261], [275] n., [299], [448-9], [475] n.
Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion Kant’s, [261]
Leibniz, Kant’s relation to, [xxx-xxxiii], [xxxv], [xxxvii], [xlvi], [l], [lvii];
his absolutist view of thought, [xxx-xxxii];
anticipates Kant’s phenomenalism, [21-2];
his rejection of empiricism, [27], [58];
his pre-established harmony, [28];
regards synthetic judgments as always empirica[l], [30];
his conceptual atomism, [38];
Kant probably influenced by the Nouveaux Essais of, [92], [186];
referred to by Kant, [112];
Kant’s relation to, [140-1];
Kant’s criticism of his interpretation of sensibility and appearance, [143-6];
his view of space, [161] ff.;
Kant influenced by the spiritualism of, [208-9], [243], [260-1], [263];
his subjectivism and doctrine of petites perceptions, [272-3], [298-9], [306];
his alternative views of the reality of the material world, [298-9];
continuing influence of his rationalism on Kant, [394-5], [398-9], [418] ff.;
his view of the possible as wider than the actua[l], [401-2];
antinomies formulated by Kant from the standpoint of the Leibnizian rationalism, [481] ff.;
Kant’s formulation of the ontological argument Leibnizian, [522] ff., [556];
contrast between Locke and, [146-7], [421], [582];
on mathematical method, [592];
the philosophical teaching of, [601-6];
on the nature of sense-experience, [604-5];
influence on Kant, [605-6]
Limiting concepts, Ideas as, [408], [413-17], [426] ff.
See Ideas of Reason
Locke, [xxxii], [xl], [xlvi], [15];
Kant’s criticism of his view of appearance, [146-7];
Kant’s restatement of his distinction between primary and secondary qualities, [120-2], [146], [149] ff., [306];
subjectivism of, [272], [306];
on inner sense, [148], [292-3];
contrast between Leibniz and, [146-7], [421], [582];
his use of term idea rejected by Kant, [449];
on primary and secondary qualities, [586] n.;
rationalism of, [591-2];
his proof of causal axiom, [594];
on the causal relation, [596], [598]
Logic, Kant’s contribution to the science of, [xxxvi-xxxix];

Kant’s view of the traditiona[l], [10], [21], [33-6], [100], [181], [183], [184-6], [259], [332];
the various kinds of, [167] ff.;
distinction between general and transcendenta[l], [xxxix], [170] ff., [176] ff., [178] n., [181], [183], [184-5], [194-5], [196], [335]
Logic, Kant’s, [1], [110], [170] ff., [180-1], [576] n., [577] n., [580] n., [581] n., [582]
Lose Blätter aus Kant’s Nachlass, [xx-xxi], [112] n., [202-3], [209], [211] n., [232-4], [261]
Lotze, [1] n., [36], [181]
Mach, E., [596]
Mairan, J. J. Dortous de, [496]
Malebranche, [xxxi], [xxxii], xliii n., [15], [28], [47];
Kant’s phenomenalism anticipated by, [21-2];
rationalism of, [590-1];
on the causal relation, [596-8]
Manifolds, of appearance, [84-5];
empirica[l], [267], [274] ff.;
pure a priori, [88-90], [92] ff., [95], [96-7], [134], [142] n., [148] n., [171], [194-5], [226], [228-9], [267], [269-70], [289], [337], [344], [375], [385] n.
Mathematics, methods of, [17-18];
judgments in, not all synthetic, [64];
principle of contradiction in mathematical reasoning, [60], [64-5], [344];
Kant’s intuitional view of, [40-1], [65-6];
distinction between mathematical and philosophical knowledge, [15], [563] ff.;
pure and applied, [68], [111-12], [114-15], [140], [166], [566];
use of schemata in, [337-9].
See Arithmetic, Geometry
Matter, Kant’s dynamical theory of, [354-5];
principle of conservation of, [361-2]
Meier, [441]
Mendelssohn, Moses, [xix], [xxxii], [6], [11], [58], [138] n., [139] n., [150], [153], [160-1], [458-9] n., [467], [470-1]
Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science, Kant’s, [56] n., [66], [97], [127-8], [164-5] n., [312] n., [354] n., [361] n., [380-1], [384] n., [491], [579] n.
Metaphysics, distinction between immanent and transcendent, [liv-lv], [15], [19], [22], [26-7], [33], [50], [52], [53], [55-6], [58-9], [66-70], [244-5], [257-8], [545], [580-1]; in disrepute, [8-9];
Kant professes to establish a quite fina[l], [10], [35], [543] ff.;
“Copernican hypothesis” and, [18] ff.;
as natural disposition, [12-13], [68] ff.;
as science, [68] ff.;
hypotheses not valid in, [543] ff.;
the problems of, [569-76], [579-81]
Method, the sceptica[l], [545-6];
mathematica[l], [563-7].
See Analytic and Synthetic Methods
Mill, J. S., [86], [364-5], [377], [596]
Mind, Kant’s use of term, [81]
Mistaken Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, Kant’s, [181-2]
Modality, [391] ff.
Monadologia physica, Kant’s, [354]
Moral attitude, the, [xxxvi], [xlv], [lv] ff., [515-16], [571] ff.
Moral belief, [lvi] ff., [577]
Moral law, consciousness of the, de facto, [xxxvi], [xlv], [572-3]
Motion, doctrine of, [127-9], [133];
Galileo’s revolutionary doctrine of, [583-4]
Müller, Max, [75]
Natural Science, pure, [66-8];
and immanent metaphysics, [70]. See Metaphysics
Nature, means “all that is,” [16]
Necessity, and universality, [56-7];
definition of, [391] ff.;
of thought and of existence, [402-3], [527], [533], [536];
limited being may exist by unconditioned, [527], [533], [536];
absolute necessity not purely logica[l], [528];
unconditioned, Idea of, [527] ff., [533-7], [541-2], [555], [558-61];
and contingency, concepts of, not applicable to things in themselves, [535];
relative, [541], [555], [571] ff.
Negative Quantity, Kant’s essay on, [381], [403] n.
New Doctrine of Motion and Rest, Kant’s, [354], [381] n.
Newton, his influence on Kant, [lv-lvi], [96] n., [140-2], [161] ff., [354] n.;
Kant modifies Newton’s cosmology, [539]
Noumenon, positive and negative conception of, [408] ff., [413].
See Appearance
Number, schema of, [347-8]. See Arithmetic
Object, Kant’s use of term, [79-81], [167] n., [174];
transcendenta[l], [203] ff.;
empirica[l], [206] ff., [223], [270] ff., [308] ff.
Objective, not the opposite of the subjective, [279] ff., [313-14];
validity of Ideas, [558-61]
Occasionalism, [465], [596-7], [598]
On the Radical Evil in Human Nature, Kant’s treatise, [lviii], [lix]
Ontological argument, [527] ff.
Opinion, Kant’s use of term, [543], [576-7]
Organon, [71-2], [169-70], [174]
Oswald, xxviii n.
Outer Sense, [147], [276], [293] ff., [360]
Paralogisms, [455] ff.;
nature of fallacy of the, [466], [470]
Paulsen, [46-7], [64], [373], [601] n.
Pearson, K., [596]
Perpetual Peace, Kant’s treatise on, lvii n.
Phenomenalism and subjectivism, [xxxix] ff., [xlv-xlvii], [82-4], [120-2], [136-8], [138-9], [140], [150-4], [155-9], [223], [227], [270] ff., [312] ff., [349-51], [357-8], [373-4], [407] n., [414-17]
Phenomenon, distinction between appearance and, [83].
See Appearance
Philosophy, causes of failure of, [59];
Kant reinterprets its function and aims, [lvi], [571-6], [577-8];
the domains of, [579-81];
Kant’s view of history of, [582]
Physico-theological argument, [538] ff.
Physics, method of, [17-18];
Kant’s views regarding, [354-5], [361-2], [379-81]
Pistorius, [305], [307-8], [323], [467]
Plato, [xlv], [47], [158], [301], [390], [436], [496], [582]
Pope, [156]
Possibility, Kant’s definition of, [391] ff.
Postulates. See Hypotheses
Practical employment of Reason, [lvi-lix], [569] ff.
Pragmatic belief, [lvi], [577]
Prant[l], [73]
Pre-established harmony, [28], [47], [114], [141-2], [267-8], [290], [465], [590]
Priestley, J., xxviii n., [11], [567] n.
Primary and secondary qualities, [82], [120-2], [146], [149] ff., [306]
Principles never self-evident, [xxvi-xxviii],
[xxxv-xxxviii], [36] ff., [53], [185-6], [340].
See A priori
Probabilities, inference from. See Hypotheses
Prolegomena to Every Future Metaphysics, Kant’s, [xxv], xxviii n., xxix n., [12], [13], [46], [47], [49], [59-60], [61-4], [65], [66-7], [68] ff., [80], [84], [91], [106], [109-11], [116], [121], [129], [146], [149], [152], [153], [155], [156], [158], [159], [161], [163], [165], [178-9], [184], [188], [234], [288-9], [299], [300-1], [305-8], [346], [361] n., [376-7]
Psychology, Kant’s views regarding, [xliii-xlvii], [50-1], [235] ff., [263] ff., [269-270], [311] n., [312] n., [384-5], [455] ff., [473-7], [580-1]
Pure, Kant’s use of term, [1-2], [54-6], [64]
Quality, and intensive magnitude, [352].
See Primary and secondary qualities
Rationalism, Kant’s type of, [xxxv-xxxvi], [257-8];
relation to the rationalism of Leibniz, [418] ff.
See A priori
Reason, meanings of the term, [liii-lv], [lvi], [2-3], [71], [426] ff., [520-1], [558-61];
ineradicably metaphysica[l], [liii-lv], [lvi], [8];
condition of free actions, [515-16];
as practica[l], [lvi] ff., [515-17];
as causing antinomy, [liii], [519] ff.;
hypothetical employment of, [549-50];
Ideal of, [556] ff.
See Idealist and sceptical views of Reason, Ideas of Reason
Rechtslehre, Kant’s, [190]
Reciprocity, category of, [197], [381] ff., [434-5], [439-40], [451-4]
Reflexionen Kants zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft, [xx], [xxiii], [xlix], [lv], [85], [86], [106], [127], [182], [188] ff., [196], [197], [198], [200-1], [202-3], [208], [231-2], [261], [334] n., [399], [433-40], [448-9], [543]
Regulative. See Ideas of Reason
Reicke, [xx]. See Lose Blätter
Reimarus, [193]
Representation, Kant’s use of term, [81], [104];
distinction between representation and its object, [135], [136-7], [272] ff., [308] ff., [317-18], [365].
See Phenomenalism and subjectivism
Representative perception, doctrine of, [xxxix-xliii], [xlvi], [272] ff., [298] ff., [585-8]
Rieh[l], A., xliv n., [46], [51], [88], [102] n., [195], [303-4], [317-18], [340-1], [342], [357-8], [372] n., [373], [601] n., [605]
Rousseau, [lvii], [lviii-lix], [436], [567] n., [578]
Rule, two kinds of, [372]
Russell, B., [491-2], [568] n.
Sceptical method, Kant’s, [481], [545-6]
Sceptical view of Reason, [481], [500-3], [511-12], [519-21], [528-9], [533-7], [541-2], [547] ff., [558-61]
Scepticism, [9], [13-15], [545-6], [567]
Schematism, [195-6], [265-7], [289], [311], [333], [334] ff., [467] n.;
and images, [337-9]
Schopenhauer, [75], [197], [315-16], [365-7], [377-9], [387-9], [407] n., [482-3] n., [493] n., [495] n.
Schulze, Johann, [129-31], [138], [198-9], [480] n.
Schütz, [153]
Segner, [66]
Self, Kant’s semi-Critica[l], spiritualist view of the, [l], [207-9], [212], [243], [260-3], [327-8], [473-7], [515];
may not be an ultimate form of existence, [l-lii], [260-3], [277-9], [327], [459-62], [473-7];
Idea of the, [439-40], [455-62], [471], [472-7], [554];
Kant’s view of nature and destiny of, [472-7].
See Apperception, Soul
Self-consciousness. See Apperception, Consciousness
Self-evidence, Kant’s rejection of, [xxvi-xxviii], [xxxv-xxxviii], [36], [53], [118], [142], [185-6], [563-4], [565-6].
See A priori
Sensation, Kant’s views of, [81-2], [84-8], [274-7], [349-52];
non-spatia[l], [85-8], [100-1], [105];
required for determining actuality, [391] ff.;
sensations, feelings, etc., subject to law of causality, xlvi n., [275], [279-82], [311-12], [313-14], [384-5]
Sensibility, may have a common root with understanding, [77];
definition of, [81], [167-8];
as a limitation, [116];
criticism of Leibniz’s view of, [143-6];
Kant’s view of, [274-7]
Seven Small Papers, Kant’s, [298]
Sidgwick, H., [314]
Sigsbee, R. A., [11]
Sigwart, [36], [181], [197]
Simultaneity. See Time
Sou[l], and body, Kant’s view of their relation, [275-6], [279-84], [312] ff., [384-5], [464-6], [467], [471], [476].

See Apperception, Self
Space, Kant’s views of, [xxxv-xxxvi], [lii], [85] ff., [188];
involves an Idea of Reason, [liii-liv], [96-8], [102] n., [165-6], [390-1];
metaphysical exposition of, [99] ff., [109-10], [112] ff., [134] ff.;
transcendental exposition of, [109] ff., [344-5];
not a property of things in themselves, [112] ff.;
is the form of outer sense, [114-16];
transcendental ideality of, [76], [116-17];
uniform for all human beings, [116-18], [120], [241-2], [257];
possibility of other spaces, [117] ff.;
criticism of Newtonian and Leibnizian views of, [140-2];
merely de facto character of, [57], [118], [142], [185-6], [257];
as Unding, [154];
in relation to Divine Existence, [159-61];
and incongruous counterparts, [161] ff.;
involved in consciousness of time, [309] ff., [384-6], [390-1];
ignored by Kant in doctrine of schematism, [341], [348], [360];
involves category of reciprocity, [liii-liv], [385-7], [390-1];
and antinomy, [480] ff.
See Geometry
Specification, transcendental principle of, [501-2]
Spencer, Herbert, [87], [584] n., [596]
Spinoza, [74], [273] n., [440], [587], [601-2]
Stadler, [197], [378-9], [389] n.
Stirling, J. Hutchison, [23], [75], [366] n., [377]
Stout, G. F., [87], [367] n., [387]
Subconscious, the, Kant’s view of, [263] ff., [273-4]
Subjectivism, in Kant’s doctrine of the transcendental object, [xxxix] ff., [xlv-xlvii], [206] ff., [217-18].
See Phenomenalism and subjectivism, Idealism
Substance and attribute, category of, [362-3]
Sulzer, xxviii n.
Summum Bonum, [575], [577]
Swedenborg, [155] n., [158] n., [299]
Swift, Benjamin, [74]
Synthetic, problem of knowledge a priori and, [xxv] ff., [xxxv-xxxvi], [xxxviii], [28] ff., [37] ff., [59] ff.;
knowledge from mere concepts, [64];
decomposing synthesis, [95];
ambiguities in Kant’s formulation of problem of a priori synthetic judgments, [43] ff.;
processes, [xliii-xlv], [l-lii], [245-8], [261-2], [263] ff., [277-8], [293], [295] ff., [322], [327] ff.
See Analytic and synthetic judgments, and methods
System of pure reason, [71-3], [579-80]
Teleological argument, [536-7], [538-42], [556-8]
Terrasson, Jean, [15]
Tetens, [82], [148], [294] n., [475]
Thales, [18]
Theist, as contrasted with deist, [541]
Things in themselves, Kant’s first use of phrase, [112] n.;
transcendental object equivalent to thing in itself, [204] ff.
See Appearance
Thinking, discursive and creative. See Understanding
Thomasius, [193]
Time, consciousness of, Kant’s datum, [xxxiv], [120], [241-2];
metaphysical exposition of, [123] ff.;
as infinite, [125];
transcendental exposition of, [126] ff., [344-5];
as form of inner sense, [134-5], [293] ff.; axioms of, [127];
not a determination of outer appearance, [134] ff.;
merely de facto character of, [xxxv-xxxvi], [lii], [142], [565-7];
simultaneity not a mode of, [135] ff., [356], [358-9];
and simultaneous apprehension, [135-6], [348], [358-9], [367-8], [371-2], [381-2];
and reality of inner changes, [138-40];
transcendental ideality of, [76], [138];
Kant’s view of, not a mere hypothesis, [147];
space involved in consciousness of, [134-6], [309] ff., [341], [347-8];
subjective and objective order of, [358] ff., [365] ff., [381] ff.;
time relations determined by the given, [34-5], [267-8], [367], [370], [371-2], [377];
does not itself change, [142], [359-60];
category of causality involved in consciousness of, [liii-liv], [365] ff., [377] ff., [387];
cannot be experienced in and by itself, [375-6];
category of reciprocity involved in consciousness of, [381-91];
Idea of Reason involved in consciousness of, [liii-liv], [96-8], [390-1];
infinitude and infinite divisibility of, [390-1], [481], [483] ff.
Totality. See Unconditioned
Transcendent. See Transcendental and Metaphysics
Transcendenta[l], meaning of term, [73-6], [116-17], [302]; illusion, [13], [427-9], [552], [555];
method of proof, [xxxv], [xxxvii-xxxviii], [45], [238-9], [241-3], [259-60], [344], [568], [572] ff.;
ideality of space and time, [76], [116-17], [138];
exposition of space and time, [109] ff., [126] ff., [344-5];
object, Kant’s doctrine of, xlvi n., [203], [204] ff., [322], [328], [371-3], [406-7], [412], [414], [415], [513-14], [518];
unity of apperception, Kant’s pre-Critical view of, [207] ff., [212];
unity of apperception, Kant’s doctrine of, [l-lii], [250-3], [260-3], [270], [277-9], [322] ff., [455] ff., [473-7];
psychology, [xliii-xlvii], [l-lii], [50-1], [235] ff., [253], [263] ff.; Idea[l], [522] ff.;
principles of Reason, [550-1];
illusion, [13], [427-9], [437], [456] ff., [480], [552], [555].
See Deduction of Categories and of Ideas
Transition from the Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science to Physics, Kant’s treatise, [275] n., [283] n., [482] n., [514] n.
Trendelenburg, [113-14], [140]
Truth. See Coherence theory of truth
Ueber das Organ der Seele, Kant’s, [81] n., [275] n.
Ueber eine Entdeckung, etc., Kant’s reply to Eberhard, [90] ff., [143] n.
Ueber Philosophie überhaupt, Kant’s, [83] n., 128
Ulrichs, [467], [471]
Unconditioned, Idea of the, its relation to category of totality, [199-200], [433-4], [451], [480], [529], [559-60];
our awareness of the conditioned presupposes the, [416-17], [429] ff.;
in connection with Kant’s view of the self, [473-7];
Kant’s criticism of the Idea of the, [498], [527] ff., [533-7], [541-2], [555], [558-61].
See Idealist and Sceptical views of Reason
Understanding, and Reason, [lii-lv], [2], [52];
defined, [81];
may have common root with sensibility, [77];
distinction between its discursive and its originative activities, [172], [176] ff., [182-3], [263] ff., [277-8], [334-5], [370], [377];
viewed by Kant as a unity, [174] ff., [185-6];
its primary function, [xxxiv-xxxv], [xxxviii], [xli-xlii], [93-94], [133], [181-2], [288-9], [332], [370], [377];
as intuitive, [160], [291], [408] ff., [468] n., [542].
See Concept
Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, Kant’s, [539]
Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze, Kant’s, [110] n., [131]
Vaihinger, Hans, [xx], [xxv], xxviii n., xliv n., [2], [13], [23], [43], [45] ff., [52], [53], [59], [60], [64], [65], [66], [81], [87], [104], [105], [109], [112], [113], [117], [127], [130], [139], [140], [143], [147], [148], [156], [161], [162], [202] ff., [261], [268-9], [298-9], [301], [314-315], [579] n., [601] n.
Value, problems of, [lvi], [lx-lxi]
Void, Kant’s doctrine of the, [354-5]
Voltaire, [xxxi], [436], [539]
Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume, Kant’s, [40], [86] n., [140], [162]
Watson, J., [1] n., [23] n., [75], [102] n., [117], [183], [195], [196], [198], [262], [328], [462], [468] n., [564]
Windelband, [46]
Wolff, [192-3], [272], [436], [440], [522], [579], [587], [601-6]
Zedlitz, Freiherr von, [6-7]

THE END

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Headings not in Kant’s Table of Contents are printed in italics.

[2] W. x. p. 323.

[3] W. x. p. 316.

[4] Cf. Kant’s letter to Lambert, September 2, 1770: W. x. p. 93.

[5] Embodied in his edition of the Kritik (1889).

[6] From letter to Marcus Herz, June 7, 1777: W. x. pp. 116-17.

[7] From letter to Marcus Herz, February 21, 1772: W. x. p. 127.

[8] Reflexionen ii. 5.

[9] These passages are by no means unambiguous, and are commented upon below, p. 61 ff.

[10] For justification of this interpretation of Hume I must refer the reader to my articles on “The Naturalism of Hume” in Mind, vol. xiv. N.S. pp. 149-73, 335-47.

[11] To this fact Kant himself draws attention: “But the perpetual hard fate of metaphysics would not allow Hume to be understood. We cannot without a certain sense of pain consider how utterly his opponents, Reid, Oswald, Beattie, and even Priestley, missed the point of the problem. For while they were ever assuming as conceded what he doubted, and demonstrating with eagerness and often with arrogance what he never thought of disputing, they so overlooked his inclination towards a better state of things, that everything remained undisturbed in its old condition.”—Prolegomena, p. 6; Mahaffy and Bernard’s trans. p. 5.

[12] Sulzer’s translation of Hume’s Essays (including the Enquiries) appeared in 1754-56.

[13] The word which Kant uses is Erinnerung (cf. below, p. xxix, n. 4). There are two main reasons for believing that Kant had not himself read the Treatise. He was imperfectly acquainted with the English language, and there was no existing German translation. (Jakob’s translation did not appear till 1790-91. On Kant’s knowledge of English, cf. Erdmann: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, Bd. i. (1888) pp. 62 ff., 216 ff.; and K. Groos: Kant-Studien, Bd. v. (1900) p. 177 ff.: and below, p. 156.) And, secondly, Kant’s statements reveal his entire ignorance of Hume’s view of mathematical science as given in the Treatise.

[14] Cf. Vaihinger, Commentary, i. p. 344 ff. Beattie does, indeed, refer to Hume’s view of mathematical science as given in the Treatise, but in so indirect and casual a manner that Kant could not possibly gather from the reference any notion of what that treatment was. Cf. Beattie’s Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth (sixth edition), pp. 138, 142, 269.

[15] These Hume had himself pointed out both in the Treatise and in the Enquiry; and because of them he rejects scepticism as a feasible philosophy of life. Kant’s statement above quoted that Hume’s critics (among whom Beattie is cited) “were ever assuming what Hume doubted, and demonstrating with eagerness and often with arrogance what he never thought of disputing,” undoubtedly refer in a quite especial degree to Beattie.

[16] Werke, x. p. 123 ff. It is dated February 21, 1772. Cf. below, pp. 219-20.

[17] In Prolegomena, p. 6 (above quoted, p. xxviii, n. 1), and p. 8 (trans. p. 6): “I should think Hume might fairly have laid as much claim to sound sense as Beattie, and besides to a critical understanding (such as the latter did not possess).”

[18] Cf. Prolegomena, p. 8: “I honestly confess that my recollection of David Hume’s teaching (die Erinnerung des David Hume) was the very thing which many years ago [Kant is writing in 1783] first interrupted my dogmatic slumber, and gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy quite a new direction.” Kant’s employment of the term Erinnerung may perhaps be interpreted in view of the indirect source of his knowledge of Hume’s main position. He would bring to his reading of Beattie’s quotations the memory of Hume’s other sceptical doctrines as expounded in the Enquiry.

[19] Kant, it should be noted, classifies philosophies as either dogmatic (= rationalistic) or sceptical. Empiricism he regards as a form of scepticism.

[20] Quoted by Beattie (op. cit., sixth edition, p. 295), who, however incapable of appreciating the force of Hume’s arguments, was at least awake to certain of their ultimate consequences.

[21] For a more detailed statement of Kant’s relation to his philosophical predecessors, cf. below, Appendix B, p. 583 ff.

[22] The term “recognition” is employed by Kant in its widest sense, as covering, for instance, recognition of the past as past, or of an object as being a certain kind of object.

[23] Consciousness of time, consciousness of objects in space, consciousness of self, are the three modes of experience which Kant seeks to analyse. They are found to be inseparable from one another and in their union to constitute a form of conscious experience that is equivalent to an act of judgment—i.e. to be a form of awareness that involves relational categories and universal concepts.

[24] As we have noted (above, pp. xxvi-xxvii), it was Hume’s insistence upon the synthetic, non-self-evident character of the causal axiom that awakened Kant from his dogmatic slumber. Cf. below, pp. 61 ff., 593 ff.

[25] Cf. below, pp. lvi ff., 571 ff.

[26] Cf. below, pp. 36-7.

[27] Cf. below, p. 543 ff.

[28] Cf. below, pp. liii-iv.

[29] Cf. below, pp. 45, 238-43.

[30] Cf. below, pp. 33-6, 181, 183-6.

[31] Cf. below, pp. 33-42, 394-5, 398.

[32] With the sole exception of Malebranche, who on this point anticipated Kant.

[33] This is the position that Kant endeavours to expound in the very unsatisfactory form of a doctrine of “inner sense.” Cf. below, pp. l-ii, 291 ff.

[34] This was Kant’s chief reason for omitting the so-called “subjective deduction of the categories” from the second edition. The teaching of the subjective deduction is, however, preserved in almost unmodified form throughout the Critique as a whole, and its “transcendental psychology” forms, as I shall try to show, an essential part of Kant’s central teaching. In this matter I find myself in agreement with Vaihinger, and in complete disagreement with Riehl and the majority of the neo-Kantians. The neo-Kantian attempt to treat epistemology in independence of all psychological considerations is bound to lead to very different conclusions from those which Kant himself reached. Cf. below, pp. 237 ff., 263-70.

[35] This subjectivism finds expression in Kant’s doctrine of the “transcendental object” which, as I shall try to prove, is a doctrine of early date and only semi-Critical. That doctrine is especially prominent in the section on the Antinomies. See below p. 204 ff.

[36] Cf. pp. 270 ff., 298 ff., 308-21, 373-4, 414-17.

[37] That this statement holds of feelings and desires, and therefore of all the emotions, as well as of our sense-contents, is emphasised by Kant in the Critique of Practical Reason. Cf. below, pp. 276, 279-80, 312, 384-5.

[38] The connection of this teaching with Kant’s theory of consciousness may be noted. If consciousness in all its forms, however primitive, is already awareness of meaning, its only possible task is to define, modify, reconstruct, and develop such meaning, never to obtain for bare contents or existences objective or other significance. Cf. above, pp. xli-ii, xliv.

[39] Reflexionen zur Anthropologie, 207.

[40] In sketch of a letter (summer 1792) to Fürst von Beloselsky (W. xi. p. 331).

[41] May 26, 1789 (W. xi. p. 52).

[42] That Kant has not developed a terminology really adequate to the statement of his meaning, is shown by a parenthesis which I have omitted from the above quotation.

[43] This interpretation of Kant appears in a very crude form in James’s references to Kant in his Principles of Psychology. It appears in a more subtle form in Lotze and Green. Caird and Watson, on the other hand, have carefully guarded themselves against this view of Kant’s teaching, and as I have maintained (pp. xliii-v), lie open to criticism only in so far as they tend to ignore those aspects of Kant’s teaching which cannot be stated in terms of logical implication.

[44] It may be objected that this is virtually what Kant is doing when he postulates synthetic activities as the source of the categories. Kant would probably have replied that he has not attempted to define these activities save to the extent that is absolutely demanded by the known character of their products, and that he is willing to admit that many different explanations of their nature are possible. They may be due to some kind of personal or spiritual agency, but also they may not. On the whole question of the legitimacy of Kant’s general method of procedure, cf. below, pp. 235-9, 263 ff., 273-4, 277 ff., 461-2, 473-7.

[45] Cf. Concerning the Advances made by Metaphysics since Leibniz and Wolff (Werke (Hartenstein), viii. 530-1): “I am conscious to myself of myself—this is a thought which contains a twofold I, the I as subject and the I as object. How it should be possible that I, the I that thinks, should be an object ... to myself, and so should be able to distinguish myself from myself, it is altogether beyond our powers to explain. It is, however, an undoubted fact ... and has as a consequence the complete distinguishing of us off from the whole animal kingdom, since we have no ground for ascribing to animals the power to say I to themselves.”

[46] Cf. above, p. xxxiv; below, pp. 250-3, 260-3, 285-6.

[47] Cf. A 651 = B 679: “The law of Reason, which requires us to seek for this unity, is a necessary law, as without it we should have no Reason at all, and without Reason no coherent employment of the understanding, and in the absence of this no sufficient criterion of empirical truth.” Cf. also below, pp. 390-1, 414-17, 429-31, 519-21, 558-61.

[48] Regarding a further complication, due to the fact that the Dialectic was written before the teaching of the Analytic was properly matured, cf. above, p. xxiv.

[49] Cf. below, pp. 331, 390-1, 414-17.

[50] Cf. below, pp. 22, 33, 56, 66 ff.

[51] Reflexionen (B. Erdmann’s edition) ii. 204.

[52] For an alternative and perhaps more adequate method of describing Kant’s general position, cf. below, p. 571 ff.

[53] Above, pp. xxxviii-ix, xlii, xliv.

[54] Cf. below, p. 577.

[55] Critique of Practical Reason, W. v. p. 32; Abbott’s trans. pp. 120-1.

[56] Op. cit. p. 86; Abbott’s trans. p. 180.

[57] Fragmente aus dem Nachlasse (Werke (Hartenstein), viii. p. 624). Cf. below, pp. 577-8. Kant claims for all men equality of political rights, and in his treatise on Perpetual Peace maintains that wars are not likely to cease until the republican form of government is universally adopted. He distinguishes, however, between republicanism and democracy. By the former he means a genuinely representative system; the latter he interprets as being the (in principle) unlimited despotism of majority rule. Kant accordingly contends that the smaller the staff of the executive, and the more effective the representation of minorities, the more complete will be the approximation to the ideal constitution. In other words, the less government we can get along with, the better.

[58] On the Radical Evil in Human Nature, W. vi. p. 20; Abbott’s trans. p. 326. “This opinion [that the world is constantly advancing from worse to better] is certainly not founded on experience if what is meant is moral good or evil (not civilisation), for the history of all times speaks too powerfully against it. Probably it is merely a good-natured hypothesis ... designed to encourage us in the unwearied cultivation of the germ of good that perhaps lies in us....”

[59] Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, W. iv. p. 407; Abbott’s trans. p. 24.

[60] Critique of Practical Reason, W. v. pp. 84-5; Abbott’s trans. pp. 178-9.

[61] Cf. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, W. iv. p. 463; Abbott’s trans. p. 84: “While we do not comprehend the practical unconditional necessity of the moral imperative, we yet comprehend its incomprehensibility, and this is all that can be fairly demanded of a philosophy which strives to carry its principles up to the very limit of human reason.”

[62] On the Radical Evil in Human Nature, W. vi. pp. 49-50; Abbott’s trans. pp. 357-8.

[63] Cf. Pringle-Pattison: The Idea of God in the Light of Recent Philosophy, p. 25 ff.

[64] Einleitung, i.

[65] Henry Home, Lord Kames, published his Elements of Criticism in 1762.

[66] W. ii. p. 311. In referring to his course in logic, Kant states that he will consider the training of the power of sound judgment in ordinary life, and adds that “in the Kritik der Vernunft the close kinship of subject-matter gives occasion for casting some glances upon the Kritik des Geschmacks, i.e. upon Aesthetics.” This passage serves to confirm the conjecture that the term Kritik was borrowed from the title of Home’s work.

[67] For Kant’s other uses of the term pure, cf. below, p. 55.

[68] Commentar zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft, i. pp. 117-20.

[69] For a definition, less exclusively titular, and more adequate to the actual scope of the Critique, cf. below, p. 56. Reason, when distinguished from understanding, I shall hereafter print with a capital letter, to mark the very special sense in which it is being employed.

[70] Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon (edited by J. M. Robertson, 1905), p. 247.

[71] For Zedlitz’s severe strictures (Dec. 1775) upon the teaching in Königsberg University, and his incidental appreciative reference to Kant, cf. Schubert’s edition of Kant’s Werke, xi. pt. ii. pp. 59-61.

[72] Cf. W. x. p. 207.

[73] Op. cit. pp. 212-13.

[74] Cf. op. cit. pp. 208-9.

[75] Op. cit. p. 219.

[76] A v.-vi.

[77] A v. n.

[78] Cf. above on title, pp. 2-3.

[79] Cf. below, pp. 543, 576-7.

[80] A vii.-viii.

[81] A xiv.

[82] Cf. below, pp. 543 ff.

[83] Cf. A 86 = B 118-19.

[84] Morgenstunden; Gesammelte Schriften, 1863 edition, ii. pp. 246, 288. Cf. below, pp. 160-1.

[85] Cited by R. A. Sigsbee, Philosophisches System Joseph Priestleys (1912), p. 33.

[86] A v. n.

[87] A viii.

[88] Prolegomena, Anhang, Trans. of Mahaffy and Bernard, p. 147.

[89] A 1.

[90] B 21. Cf. Prolegomena, § 60 ff., and below, pp. 427-9, 552.

[91] A 297-8 = B 353-5. Cf. below, pp. 427-9.

[92] A iii.

[93] i. p. 50.

[94] P. 9.

[95] This statement, as we shall find, calls for modification. Kant’s Critical position is more correctly described as phenomenalism than as subjectivism. Cf. above, pp. xlv-vii; below, p. 270 ff.

[96] A 769 = B 797.

[97] A 761 = B 789-90. Cf. Sections I.-III. in the Methodology.

[98] A iii.

[99] A v. n.

[100] A v. n.

[101] Cf. Kant’s Beantwortung der Frage: Was heist Aufklärung? 1784.

[102] A v.

[103] Cf. above, pp. 2-3.

[104] Cf. above, pp. xliv-v; below, pp. 19, 33, 56, 66 ff.

[105] A ix.

[106] A x.-xi.

[107] A xii.-xiii.

[108] A xv.

[109] A xv. Cf. below, pp. 66-7.

[110] B xiv.

[111] B ix.

[112] B xi.

[113] Cf. below, pp. 22-5.

[114] Cf. above, p. lvi; below, p. 571 ff.

[115] Dissertation, § 7.

[116] All these assertions call for later modification and restatement.

[117] B xxx.

[118] B xxxii.

[119] B xxxvii.

[120] B xxxviii.

[121] B vii.

[122] B viii.

[123] B xvi.

[124] Cf. above, pp. xxvi-vii; below, pp. 594-5.

[125] Cf. “Malebranche’s Theory of the Perception of Distance and Magnitude,” in British Journal of Psychology (1905), i. pp. 191-204.

[126] Cf. below, pp. 143 ff., 604.

[127] B xviii.-xix.

[128] Cf. below, pp. 33, 56, 66 ff.

[129] B xx.

[130] B xxii.

[131] B xvi.; B xxii. n.

[132] Watson’s The Philosophy of Kant Explained (p. 37) is the only work in which I have found correct and unambiguous indication of the true interpretation of Kant’s analogy.

[133] Prolegomena to Ethics, bk i. ch. i. § 11.

[134] Text-Book to Kant (1881), p. 29.

[135] History of Materialism, Eng. transl., ii. pp. 156, 158, 237.

[136] Geschichte der neueren Philosophie (1896), ii. p. 64.

[137] Hibbert Journal, October 1910, p. 49.

[138] De Revolutionibus, I. v.

[139] Ibid. I. x.

[140] B xxii. n.

[141] Cf. below, p. 543 ff.

[142] B xxvi. Cf. above, pp. lv-vi, 20; below, pp. 290-1, 331, 342, 404 ff.

[143] This restatement will continue up to p. 33. In pp. 33-43 I shall then give general comment on the Introduction as a whole. In p. 43 ff. I add the necessary detailed treatment of special points.

[144] Cf. below, p. 219 ff.

[145] Cf. above, p. xxv ff.; below, pp. 61 ff., 593 ff.

[146] This statement is first made in the Introduction to the second edition. It is really out of keeping with the argument of the Introduction in either edition. Cf. below, pp. 39-40, 57, 85, 168, 222, 245 ff. (especially pp. 278, 288).

[147] This is the argument of the Introduction to the second edition. In the first edition Kant assumes without question the existence of the a priori. He enquires only whether it is also valid in its metaphysical employment beyond the field of possible experience.

[148] The argument of the first edition, though briefer, is substantially the same.

[149] Quoted below, pp. 219-20.

[150] Cf. below, pp. 114, 290, 590.

[151] A 6 = B 10. I here follow the wording of the second edition.

[152] Kant’s view of the a priori differs from that of Leibniz in two respects. For Kant a priori concepts are merely logical functions, i.e. empty; and secondly, are always synthetic. Cf. above, pp. xxxiii-vi, 186, 195-6, 257-8, 290-1, 404 ff.

[153] Cf. above, pp. xxv-vii; below, pp. 61 ff., 593 ff.

[154] B 24.

[155] Cf. above, pp. xliv-xlv, 22; below, pp. 52-3, 55-6, 66 ff.

[156] Needless to say, this “Aristotelian” logic, in the traditional form in which alone Kant was acquainted with it, diverges very widely from Aristotle’s actual teaching.

[157] Cf. above, pp. xxxvi-ix; below, pp. 36, 181, 184-6.

[158] A vii.

[159] B xxiii-iv.

[160] Above, pp. xxv-vii, 26; below, p. 593 ff.

[161] Cf. above, p. xxxvi ff.

[162] Cf. above, pp. xxxvii-viii; below, pp. 238-42.

[163] Cf. below, pp. 176 ff., 181, 191, 257.

[164] A 6 = B 10.

[165] Leibniz’s interpretation of the judgment seems to result in an atomism which is the conceptual counterpart of his metaphysical monadism (cf. Adamson, Development of Modern Philosophy, i. p. 77 ff.; and my Studies in the Cartesian Philosophy, p. 160 ff.; also below, p. 603). Each concept is regarded as having exclusive jurisdiction, so to speak, over a content wholly internal to itself. The various concepts are like sovereign states with no mediating tribunals capable of prescribing to them their mutual dealings. Cf. below, pp. 394-400, 418 ff.

[166] A 9 = B 13.

[167] Erste Betrachtung, §§ 2, 3; dritte Betrachtung, § 1.

[168] Cf. below, p. 162.

[169] § 12, 15 C.

[170] Cf. B 15-16.

[171] Cf. below, p. 128 ff., on Kant’s views regarding arithmetical science.

[172] Cf. below, p. 117 ff., on Kant and modern geometry, and p. 128 ff., on Kant’s views regarding arithmetical science.

[173] Cf. below, pp. 131-3, 338-9, 418 ff.

[174] That certain parts of the Introduction were written at different dates is shown below, pp. 71-2. That other parts may be of similarly composite origin is always possible. There is, however, no sufficient evidence to establish this conclusion. Adickes’ attempt to do so (K. pp. 35-7 n.) is not convincing.

[175] Cf. above, pp. xxxiii ff., 1-2, 26 ff.

[176] i. pp. 317 and 450 ff.

[177] i. p. 412 ff.; cf. p. 388 ff.

[178] Cf. below, pp. 219-20.

[179] Cf. Vaihinger, i. p. 394. Cf. above, p. 28.

[180] Cf. Vaihinger, i. pp. 415-17.

[181] Paulsen objects that if synthetic a priori judgments are valid without explanation, they do not need it. For two reasons the objection does not hold. (a) Without this explanation it would be impossible to repel the pretensions of transcendent metaphysics (cf. A 209 = B 254-5; A 283 = B 285). (b) This solution of the theoretical problem has also, as above stated, its own intrinsic interest and value. Without such explanation the validity of these judgments might be granted, but could not be understood. (Cf. Prolegomena, §§ 4-5 and § 12 at the end. Cf. Vaihinger, i. p. 394.)

[182] Cf. Vaihinger, ii. p. 336. The argument of the Analytic, which is still more complicated, will be considered later.

[183] Cf. A 46-9 = B 64-6. The corresponding sections of the Prolegomena, Vaihinger contends, were developed from this first edition passage, and the transcendental exposition of space in the second edition from the argument of the Prolegomena.

[184] The synthetic method of argument is, as we shall see later, further extended in the Analytic by being connected with the problem of the validity of ordinary experience. But as the mathematical sciences are proved to have the same conditions as—neither more nor less than—the consciousness of time, this also allows of a corresponding extension of the analytic method. The mathematical sciences can be substituted for the de facto premiss by which these conditions are proved.

[185] Cf. above, p. 43.

[186] What follows should be read along with p. 235 ff. below, in which this distinction between the “subjective” and “objective” deductions is discussed in greater detail.

[187] A x-xi.

[188] This is a criticism to which Cohen, Caird, and Riehl lay themselves open.

[189] Cf. below, pp. 219-20.

[190] Cf. above, pp. 49-50.

[191] Cf. Vaihinger, i. p. 405. The existing sciences can, as Vaihinger says, be treated en bloc, whereas each of the principles of the new philosophy must be separately established.

[192] A 1.

[193] A 1-2.

[194] B 6 = A 2.

[195] A 2.

[196] Cf. above, pp. xxxv, 36 ff.; below, pp. 565-7.

[197] A 2.

[198] A 2.

[199] B 1.

[200] Cf. below, p. 55.

[201] B 1.

[202] Cf. below, p. 54.

[203] B 2-3.

[204] Cf. below, p. 55.

[205] B 1.

[206] B 1.

[207] B 1.

[208] Cf. below, p. 88 ff.

[209] Cf. below, p. 237 ff.

[210] B 1.

[211] Cf. below, pp. 55-6.

[212] B 2.

[213] Cf. above, p. 27 n.

[214] B 2.

[215] Cf. above, pp. 39 ff., 53; below, pp. 57-8, 222 ff., 241, 286-9.

[216] B 2-3.

[217] Cf. above, p. 53.

[218] A 9-10 = B 13.

[219] Cf. above, p. 39 ff., and below, pp. 286-9.

[220] P. 53; cf. also pp. 1-2.

[221] Cf. also above, pp. 2-3.

[222] B 3.

[223] Cf. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe, Hauptstück ii. Lehrs. 8, Zus. 2, in which elasticity and gravity are spoken of as the only universal properties of matter which can be apprehended a priori.

[224] B 3-4.

[225] Cf. above, p. 27 ff.

[226] B 4.

[227] Cf. above, pp. xxxiii-iv, 27, 599 ff.

[228] Cf. above, pp. xxxv-vi, 30; below, pp. 185-6, 257-9.

[229] Loc. cit.

[230] B 5.

[231] Cf. above, pp. xxx, 599 ff.

[232] Cf. above, pp. 39, 54.

[233] A 2 = B 6.

[234] B 7.

[235] Cf. Kritik der Urtheilskraft, § 91, W. v. p. 473. Fortschritte, Werke (Hartenstein), viii. pp. 572-3.

[236] Cf. above, pp. 22, 49-50, 52.

[237] Cf. Prolegomena, § 40; Fortschritte, pp. 577-8.

[238] i. p. 238.

[239] P. 579.

[240] A 712 ff. = B 740 ff.; cf. also Fortschritte, p. 522.

[241] A 4 = B 8; cf. below, p. 563 ff.

[242] A 4 = B 8.

[243] A 5 = B 9.

[244] Cf. B 18.

[245] Cf. above, p. 29.

[246] A 6 ff. = B 10 ff.

[247] Prolegomena, § 2, b, c; Eng. trans, pp. 15-16. On the connection of mathematical reasoning with the principle of contradiction, cf. below, pp. 64-5.

[248] P. 582; cf. Logik, § 37.

[249] ii. p. 257.

[250] Prolegomena, § 4.

[251] Cf. B 290.

[252] § 2, c.

[253] B 161.

[254] B 218.

[255] A 9 = B 13.

[256] Cf. above, pp. xxv ff., 26; below, p. 593 ff.; cf. Vaihinger, i. p. 340 ff.

[257] A 9 = B 13, B 11, B 19.

[258] In A 9 = B 13, B 11, B 19.

[259] Cf. Borowski’s Darstellung des Lebens und Charakters Im. Kants (Hoffmann’s edition, 1902), p. 252. The German translation of Hume’s Enquiry concerning the Human Understanding appeared in 1755, and Kant probably made his first acquaintance with Hume through it. Cf. above, p. xxviii; below, p. 156.

[260] Cf. below, Appendix B, p. 593 ff.

[261] A 9 = B 13.

[262] A 733 = B 761.

[263] A 737 = B 764.

[264] i. p. 291.

[265] B 14.

[266] B 14. Cf. above, pp. 59-60.

[267] i. p. 294.

[268] B 15.

[269] B 15. Cf. above, p. 41.

[270] Cf. Vaihinger, i. p. 296.

[271] A 164.

[272] A 164.

[273] In Prolegomena and in second edition.

[274] B 15.

[275] § 2 c.

[276] Cf. below, p. 128 ff.

[277] Cf. A 713 = B 741.

[278] A 140 = B 179. Cf. below, p. 337 ff.

[279] B 15.

[280] B 17.

[281] i. p. 304 ff.

[282] § 15.

[283] This latter Kant developed in his Metaphysische Anfangsgründe (1786).

[284] Cf. A 840 = B 869. “Nature” means, in the Kantian terminology, “all that is.”

[285] Cf. above, pp. xliv-v, 19, 22, 33, 52-3, 55-6.

[286] § 4.

[287] The propositions of pure natural science are not separately treated in § 4 of the Prolegomena, though the subsequent argument implies that this has been done. Vaihinger’s inference (i. p. 310) that a paragraph, present in Kant’s manuscript, has been dropped out in the process of printing the fourth section (the section which contains the paragraphs transposed from the end of § 2) seems unavoidable. The missing paragraph was very probably that which is here given in B 17.

[288] B 18.

[289] In § 4 (at end of paragraphs transposed from § 2).

[290] B 19.

[291] B 19.

[292] B 20.

[293] B 20.

[294] Cf. B 17.

[295] B 20.

[296] B 21.

[297] B 22.

[298] Vaihinger’s analysis (i. p. 371 ff.) is invaluable. I follow it throughout.

[299] When corrected as above, pp. 51-2, 66-7.

[300] Cf. above, p. 38 ff.

[301] By J. Erdmann (cited by Vaihinger, i. p. 371).

[302] By B. Erdmann, Kriticismus, p. 183.

[303] As above noted, pp. 66-7.

[304] Above, p. 66.

[305] A 11.

[306] A 11 = B 24.

[307] Cf. Dissertation, § 23: usus logicus—usus realis.

[308] Cf. above, p. 2.

[309] A 11 = B 24.

[310] i. p. 459 ff.

[311] Entwickelungsgeschichte der Kantischen Erkenntnistheorie, p. 113.

[312] Cf. A 795 = B 823. Cf. below, pp. 170, 174.

[313] Cf. A 796 = B 824.

[314] Cf. Vaihinger, i. pp. 461-2 for the very varied meanings in which Kant “capriciously” employs the terms Organon, Canon, Doctrine, and Discipline.

[315] A 11 = B 25.

[316] Erklärung in Beziehung auf Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre (1799), Werke (Hartenstein), viii. p. 600.

[317] B 25.

[318] Cf. A xv.

[319] Cf. B xxiv.

[320] A 11 = B 25.

[321] De vera religione, 72; De civitate Dei, viii. 6. Cited by Eisler, Wörterbuch, p. 1521.

[322] Cf. Prantl, Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande, iii. pp. 114, 244-5.

[323] Ethica (Vloten and Land), ii. prop. xl. schol. 1.

[324] Principles of Human Knowledge, cxviii. The above citations are from Eisler, loc. cit. pp. 1524-5. I have also myself come upon the term in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (Dent, 1897, p. 166): “And as to ‘ideas, entities, abstractions, and transcendentals,’ I could never drive the least conception into their heads.”

[325] Organon, i. 484, cited by Eucken in Geschichte der philosophischer Terminologie, p. 205.

[326] A 11 = B 25, A 56 = B 80.

[327] Cited by Vaihinger, i. p. 468.

[328] Cf. Text-Book to Kant, p. 13.

[329] Cf. Kant Explained, p. 89.

[330] Cf. below, p. 238.

[331] Cf. below, pp. 116-17, 302.

[332] Adickes has taken the liberty in his edition of the Critique of substituting in A 297 = B 354 transcendental for transcendent. The Berlin edition very rightly retains the original reading.

[333] B 27.

[334] A vi.

[335] A 14-15 = B 28. Cf. below, p. 570n.

[336] This alteration is not given in Max Müller’s translation.

[337] Cf. the corresponding alteration made in the second edition at end of note to A 21 = B 35.

[338] A 15 = B 29.

[339] Loc. cit.

[340] Loc. cit. Cf. A 835 = B 863.

[341] Cf. A 124, B 151-2, and below, pp. 225, 265.

[342] Cf. A 141 = B 180-1. Cf. Critique of Judgment, § 57: “Thus here [in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment], as also in the Critique of Practical Reason, the antinomies force us against our will to look beyond the sensible and to seek in the supersensible the point of union for all our a priori faculties; because no other expedient is left to make our Reason harmonious with itself.” Cf. also below, p. 473 ff., in comment on A 649 = B 677.

[343] A 16 = B 30.

[344] Introduction (W. v. p. 16). Cf. below, p. 438.

[345] Cf. also above, p. 25.

[346] Cf. A 51 = B 75.

[347] That thought finds in intuition its sole possible content is, of course, a conclusion first established in the Analytic. Kant is here defining his terms in the light of his later results.

[348] A 51 = B 75.

[349] Cf. Prolegomena, § 12, Remark ii. at the beginning.

[350] Cf. below, p. 88 ff.; B 146-7.

[351] Prolegomena, § 8 (Eng. trans. p. 33).

[352] Quoted by Vaihinger, ii. p. 4.

[353] Cf. Ueber das Organ der Seele (1796) and Anthropologie, § 22.

[354] § 3.

[355] A 27 = B 43, A 34 = B 51, A 42 = B 59, A 51 = B 75.

[356] Cf. B 72.

[357] In the second paragraph, A 20 = B 34.

[358] Dissertation, § 4.

[359] A 320 = B 376.

[360] Dissertation, § 4.

[361] A 50 = B 74.

[362] This view, as I shall endeavour to show, is only semi-Critical, and is profoundly modified by the more revolutionary conclusions to which Kant finally worked his way. Cf. below, p. 274 ff.

[363] In this he was anticipated by Tetens, Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur, Bd. i. (1777), Versuch X. v. Cf. below, p. 294.

[364] Critique of Judgment, § 3 (Eng. trans, p. 49). Kant was the first to adopt the threefold division of mental powers—“the faculty of knowledge, the feeling of pleasure and pain, and the faculty of desire.” This threefold division is first given in his Ueber Philosophie überhaupt (Hartenstein, vi. p. 379), which was written some time between 1780 and 1790, being originally designed as an Introduction to the Critique of Judgment.

[365] A 248 (occurs in a lengthy section omitted in B).

[366] This distinction between intuition and appearance practically coincides with that above noted between intuition and its object.

[367] For statement of the precise meaning in which these terms are here employed, cf. above, pp. xlv-vii; below, pp. 270 ff., 312 ff.

[368] This would harmonise with the view developed in A 166 (in its formulation of the principle of the Anticipations), A 374 ff., B 274 ff., A 723 = B 751.

[369] Cf. A 50 = B 74: “We may name sensation the matter of sensuous knowledge.” Similarly in A 42 = B 59; Prolegomena, § 11; Fortschritte, (Hartenstein, viii. p. 527).

[370] Cf. below, p. 274 ff.

[371] Cf. below, pp. 366-7, 370-2, 377.

[372] ii. p. 59.

[373] A 42 = B 60.

[374] Cf. Reflexionen, ii. note to 469; also note to 357.

[375] Cf. above, p. xxxiii ff.

[376] A 266 = B 322.

[377] In discussing a and b we may for the present identify form with space. The problem has special complications in reference to time.

[378] Cf. B 207.

[379] Herbart’s doctrine of space, Lotze’s local sign theory, also the empiricist theories of the Mills and Bain, all rest upon this same assumption. It was first effectively called in question by William James. Cf. Bergson: Les Données immédiates, pp. 70-71, Eng. trans. pp. 92-3: “The solution given by Kant does not seem to have been seriously disputed since his time: indeed, it has forced itself, sometimes without their knowledge, on the majority of those who have approached the problem anew, whether nativists or empiricists. Psychologists agree in assigning a Kantian origin to the nativistic explanation of Johann Müller; but Lotze’s hypothesis of local signs, Bain’s theory, and the more comprehensive explanation suggested by Wundt, may seem at first sight quite independent of the Transcendental Aesthetic. The authors of these theories seem indeed to have put aside the problem of the nature of space, in order to investigate simply by what process our sensations come to be situated in space and to be set, so to speak, alongside one another: but this very question shows that they regard sensations as inextensive, and make a radical distinction, just as Kant did, between the matter of representation and its form. The conclusion to be drawn from the theories of Lotze and Bain, and from Wundt’s attempt to reconcile them, is that the sensations by means of which we come to form the notion of space are themselves unextended and simply qualitative: extensity is supposed to result from their synthesis, as water from the combination of two gases. The empirical or genetic explanations have thus taken up the problem of space at the very point where Kant left it: Kant separated space from its contents: the empiricists ask how these contents, which are taken out of space by our thought, manage to get back again.” Bergson proceeds to argue that the analogy of chemical combination is quite inapplicable, and that some “unique act very like what Kant calls an a priori form” must still be appealed to. With the Kantian standpoint in this matter Bergson does not, of course, agree. He is merely pointing out what the consequences must be of this initial assumption of inextensive sensations.

[380] Cf. Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume, in its penultimate paragraph.

[381] Cf. Dissertation, last sentence of § 4, quoted below, p. 87.

[382] A 291 = B 347; A 429 = B 457.

[383] Reflexionen, ii. 334.

[384] ii. p. 73.

[385] Cf. Stout: Manual of Psychology (3rd edition), pp. 465-6. “We find that the definite apprehension of an order of coexistence, as such, arises and develops only in connection with that peculiar aspect of sense-experience which we have called extensity, and more especially the extensity of sight and touch. Two sounds or a sound and a smell may be presented as coexistent in the sense of being simultaneous; but taken by themselves apart from association with experiences of touch and sight, they are not apprehended as spatially juxtaposed or separated by a perceived spatial interval or as having perceived spatial direction and distance relatively to each other. Such relations can only be perceived or imagined, except perhaps in a very rudimentary way, when the external object is determined for us as an extensive whole by the extensity of the same presentation through which we apprehend it.”

[386] Principles of Psychology, § 399, cited by Vaihinger.

[387] § 4.

[388] Sich ordnen has here, in line with common German usage, the force of a passive verb.

[389] Riehl: Kriticismus (1876-1879) ii. Erster Theil, p. 104. As already noted, Kant tacitly admits this in regard to time relations of coexistence and sequence. He continues, however, to deny it in regard to space relations.

[390] Cf. below, pp. 101-2, 105.

[391] A 20 = B 34.

[392] A 20 = B 34.

[393] A 42 = B 60. Cf. Dissertation, § 12: [“Space and time, the objects of pure mathematics,] are not only formal principles of all intuition, but themselves original intuitions.”

[394] A 196 = B 241; A 293 = B 349.

[395] That is to say, in his published writings. It finds expression in one, and only one, of the Reflexionen (ii. 410: “Both space and time are nothing but combinations of sensuous impressions”).

[396] § 15, Coroll. at the end.

[397] Cf. § 12, quoted above, p. 89 n. 2.

[398] There also Kant teaches that the representation of space is gained from the space-endowed objects of experience.

[399] Cf. B 1.

[400] § 43.

[401] Ueber eine Entdeckung nach der alle neue Kritik der reinen Kritik durch eine ältere entbehrlich gemacht werden soll.

[402] Op. cit. W. viii. pp. 221-2.

[403] Loc. cit. p. 222.

[404] Especially those which he had offered in support of the contention that pure mathematical science is intuitive, not merely conceptual.

[405] Cf. below, p. 291 ff., on Kant’s reasons for developing his doctrine of inner sense.

[406] As no one passage can be regarded as quite decisively proving Kant’s belief in a pure manifold of intuition, the question can only be decided by a collation of all the relevant statements in the light of the general tendencies of Kant’s thinking.

[407] This at least would seem to be implied in the wording of his later positions; it is not explicitly avowed.

[408] Cf. A 76-7 = B 102.

[409] Cf. above, pp. xlii, 38-42; below, pp. 118-20, 128-34.

[410] The last statement may be more freely translated: “Only in this way can I get the intuition before me in visible form.” Cf. below, pp. 135-6, 347-8, 359.

[411] B 202-3.

[412] Cf. Reflexionen, ii. 393, 409, 465, 630, 649.

[413] This, indeed, is Kant’s reason for describing space as an Idea of reason. Cf. below, pp. 97-8.

[414] Geometry is for Kant the fundamental and chief mathematical science (cf. A 39 = B 56 and Dissertation, § 15 c). In this respect he is a disciple of Newton, not a follower of Leibniz. His neglect to take adequate account of arithmetic and algebra is due to this cause. Just as in speaking of the manifold of sense he almost invariably has sight alone in view, so in speaking of mathematical science he usually refers only to geometry and the kindred discipline of pure mechanics.

[415] A 76-7 = B 102. Cf. B 160-1 n.

[416] Cf. above, pp. 90, 92 ff.; below, pp. 171, 226-9, 267-70, 337.

[417] Cf. B 160.

[418] Metaphysical First Principles, W. iv. p. 559, cf. p. 481.

[419] Op. cit. p. 560.

[420] Critique of Judgment, §§ 26-7, Eng. trans. pp. 115-16 and 121.

[421] Cf. below, pp. 102 n., 165-6, 390-1.

[422] The title of this section, and the points raised in the opening paragraph, are commented upon below. Cf. pp. 110, 114-15, 134 ff. I pass at once to the first space argument.

[423] Added in second edition.

[424] This argument is an almost verbal repetition of the first argument on space in the Dissertation, § 15.

[425] Cf. below, pp. 106-7, 126, 132-3, 177-84, 338-9.

[426] Cf. above, p. 37 ff.; below, p. 178 ff.

[427] That is particularly obvious in Kant’s formulation of his problem in the Introduction. For that is the assumption which underlies his mode of distinguishing between analytic and synthetic judgments. Cf. above, p. 37.

[428] Cf. above, p. xxii.

[429] Cf. especially, pp. 184, 332-6, 419, 474, 479.

[430] I here use the more modern terms. Kant, in Anthropologie, § 14, distinguishes between them as Organenempfindungen and Vitalempfindungen.

[431] ii. p. 165.

[432] Cf. above, pp. 85-8.

[433] Cf. Dissertation, § 15 D: “Space is not anything objective and real. It is neither substance, nor accident, nor relation, but is subjective and ideal, proceeding by a fixed law from the nature of the mind, and being, as it were, a schema for co-ordinating, in the manner which it prescribes, all external sensations whatsoever.” And § 15, corollary at end: “Action of the mind co-ordinating its sensations in accordance with abiding laws.”

[434] Especially in view of the third and fourth arguments on space, and of Kant’s teaching in the transcendental exposition.

[435] E.g. Cohen, Riehl, Caird, Watson.

[436] Cf. Watson, The Philosophy of Kant explained, p. 83: “Kant, therefore, concludes from the logical priority of space that it is a priori.”

[437] Upon it Kant bases the assertion that space is an Idea of reason; cf. above, pp. 96-8, and below, pp. 165-6, 390-1.

[438] This second argument is not in the Dissertation.

[439] Cf. Vaihinger, ii. pp. 196-7. The corresponding argument on time, in the form in which it is given in the second edition, is, as we shall find, seriously misleading. It has caused Herbart and others to misinterpret the connection in which this corollary stands to the main thesis. Herbart’s interpretation is considered below, p. 124.

[440] Cf. Vaihinger, ii. p. 220.

[441] Reflexionen, ii. 403.

[442] “That in space there are no more than three dimensions, that between two points there can be but one straight line, that in a plane surface from a given point with a given straight line a circle is describable, cannot be inferred from any universal notion of space, but can only be discerned in space as in the concrete.” Cf. also Prolegomena, § 12.

[443] In the second edition, the third.

[444] For a different view cf. Vaihinger, ii. p. 233.

[445] Cf. above, pp. 99-100; below, pp. 126, 180-1, 184, 338-9.

[446] Cf. below, p. 180.

[447] Cf. above, p. xxxvi; below, pp. 176 ff., 191, 195-6, 257, 290-1, 404 ff., 413.

[448] This statement occurs in a parenthesis; it has already been dwelt upon in the fourth (third) argument.

[449] It has led Kant to substitute erörtern for betrachten in A 23 = B 38.

[450] Cf. Vaihinger, ii. p. 151.

[451] § 1 (Eng. trans, p. 13). Cf. above, p. 64.

[452] This is, no doubt, one reason why Kant employs, in reference to space, the unfortunate and confusing term concept (Begriff) in place of the wider term representation (Vorstellung). Cf. B 37, and above, p. 64.

[453] Cf. A 729 = B 757: “In place of the term definition I should prefer to employ the term exposition. For that is a more guarded expression, the claims of which the critic may allow as being in a certain degree valid even though he entertain doubts as to the completeness of the analysis.” Cf. Logic, §§ 99 ff., 105. Cf. also Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze, W. ii. pp. 183-4: “Augustine has said, ‘I know well what time is, but if any one asks me, I cannot tell.’”

[454] For explanation of the phrase “construction of concepts” cf. below, pp. 132-3.

[455] Cf. below, p. 117. ff.

[456] Cf. conclusion of fourth argument on space.

[457] A priori is here employed in its ambiguous double sense, as a priori in so far as it precedes experience (as a representation), and in so far as it is valid independently of experience (as a proposition). Cf. Vaihinger, ii. p. 268.

[458] Cf. below, p. 114 ff.

[459] Cf. below, pp. 115-16.

[460] Cf. Lose Blätter, i. p. 18: “This is a proof (Beweis) that space is a subjective condition. For its propositions are synthetic and through them objects can be known a priori. This would be impossible if space were not a subjective condition of the representation of these objects.” Cf. Reflexionen, ii. p. 396, in which this direct proof of the ideality of space is distinguished from the indirect proof by means of the antinomies.

[461] By “concepts” Kant seems to mean the five arguments, though as a matter of fact other conclusions and presuppositions are taken into account, and quite new points are raised.

[462] This, according to Vaihinger (ii. p. 287), is the first occurrence of the phrase Dinge an sich in Kant’s writings.

[463] Cf. Vaihinger’s analysis of this discussion, ii. pp. 290-313.

[464] ii. pp. 289-90.

[465] Cf. below, pp. 415 ff., 515 ff., 558 ff.

[466] In B 166 ff.

[467] This is likewise true of the references in the letter to Herz, 21st Feb. 1772. Cf. below, pp. 219-20.

[468] The Critical Philosophy of Kant, i. pp. 306-9.

[469] Cf. letter to Herz, W. x. p. 126. It is, Kant there says, the most absurd explanation which can be offered of the origin and validity of our knowledge, involving an illegitimate circulus in probando, and also throwing open the door to the wildest speculations. Cf. above, p. 28; below, pp. 141-2, 290, 590.

[470] Cf. B 167-8.

[471] That is, in the first edition. Cf. above, p. 85 ff.; and below, p. 116.

[472] Above, pp. 111-12.

[473] ii. p. 335.

[474] §§ 6-11.

[475] This identification of the two is especially clear in A 39 = B 56.

[476] A 27 = B 43.

[477] Cf. above, p. xxxv; below, pp. 117-20, 142, 185-6, 241-2, 257, 290-1.

[478] A 28 = B 44, cf. A 35 = B 52.

[479] Cf. Vaihinger, i. pp. 351-4; and above, p. 76; below, p. 302. Cf. Caird, The Critical Philosophy, i. pp. 298-9, 301; and Watson, Kant Explained, p. 91.

[480] Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte (1747), § 10.

[481] This important and far-reaching assertion we cannot at this point discuss. Kant’s reasoning is really circular in the bad sense. Kant may legitimately argue from the a priori character of space to the apodictic character of pure mathematical science; but when he proceeds similarly to infer the apodictic character of applied mathematics, he is constrained to make the further assumption that space is a fixed and absolutely uniform mode in which alone members of the human species can intuit objects. That, as we point out below (p. 120), is an assumption which Kant does not really succeed in proving. In any case the requirements of the strict synthetic method preclude him from arguing, as he does both in the Dissertation (§ 15) and in the third space argument of the first edition, that the a priori certitude of applied mathematics affords proof of the necessary uniformity of all space.

[482] § 15 D.

[483] Cf. above, p. 111.

[484] Cf. above, pp. 40-2, 93-4; below, pp. 131-3, 338-9, 418 ff.

[485] A 99-100.

[486] A 78 = B 104. Cf. A 159 = B 198, B 147.

[487] § 38, Eng. trans, p. 81.

[488] Cf. p. 241 ff.

[489] A 28-9. Cf. B 1; Prolegomena, § 13, Remark II. at the end: “Cinnabar excites the sensation of red in me.” Cf. above, pp. 80-8; below, pp. 146 ff., 274 ff.

[490] Kant continues the discussion of this general problem in A 45 ff. = B 62 ff.

[491] Kant himself again uses the confusing term conception.

[492] § 14, 1.

[493] Herbart, Werke, ii. 30. Quoted by Vaihinger, iii. p. 198.

[494] The third argument on time will be considered below in its connection with the transcendental exposition.

[495] The chief omission goes, as we shall see, to form the concluding argument on time.

[496] In the second edition, the third.

[497] In the second edition, the third.

[498] In the second edition, the fourth.

[499] Cf. Vaihinger, ii. pp. 380-1.

[500] Cf. second part of fourth (third) argument on space.

[501] Kant’s Logik, Einleitung, § 8, Eng. trans, p. 49.

[502] Cf. above, pp. 99-100.

[503] These axioms are: (1) time has only one dimension; (2) different times are not simultaneous but successive. In the fourth argument the synthetic character of these axioms is taken as further evidence of the intuitive nature of time. This passage also is really part of the transcendental exposition. That exposition has to account for the synthetic character of the axioms as well as for their apodictic character; and as a matter of fact the intuitive and consequent synthetic character of the a priori knowledge which arises from time is much more emphasised in the transcendental exposition than its apodictic nature.

[504] Cf. Reflexionen, ii. 374 ff.

[505] Vaihinger, ii. p. 387.

[506] Cf. A 41 = B 58: “Motion which combines both [space and time] presupposes something empirical.”

[507] W. iv. p. 471.

[508] Ueber Philosophie überhaupt (Hartenstein, vi. p. 395).

[509] § 12.

[510] Loc. cit.

[511] A 78 = B 104.

[512] A 142-3 = B 182. It should be observed that in Kant’s view schemata “exist nowhere but in thought” (A 141 = B 180). It may also be noted that time is taken as conditioning the schemata of all the categories.

[513] A 717 ff. = B 745 ff.

[514] § 10.

[515] Erläuterungen über des Herrn Professor Kant Critik der reinen Vernunft (Königsberg, 1784), p. 24. Johann Schulze (or Schultz) was professor of mathematics in Königsberg. He was also Hofprediger, and is frequently referred to as Pastor Schulze. Kant has eulogised him (W. x. p. 128) as “the best philosophical head that I am acquainted with in our part of the world.” In preparing the Erläuterungen, which is a paraphrase or simplified statement of the argument of the Critique, with appended comment, Schulze had the advantage of Kant’s advice in all difficulties. Kant also read his manuscript, and suggested a few modifications (op. cit. pp. 329, 343).

[516] Cf. Vaihinger, ii. pp. 388-9.

[517] Werke (Frauenstädt’s ed., 1873), i. p. 133.

[518] P. 129.

[519] W. x. p. 530. Italics not in Kant.

[520] Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze: Erste Betrachtung, §§ 2, 3; dritte Betrachtung, § 1; Dissertation, §§ 12, 15 C.

[521] P. 128.

[522] Dissertation, § 15 C.

[523] Cf. above, pp. 40-2, 118-20; below, pp. 338-9.

[524] Kant und die moderne Mathematik in Kant-Studien, xii. (1907) p. 34 n.

[525] Cf. A 713 ff. = B 741 ff.; A 4 = B 8; B 15-16; A 24; A 47-8 = B 64-5.

[526] Cf. below, pp. 337-8.

[527] Cf. above, pp. 112 n. 4.

[528] The content of the second Conclusion in regard to space.

[529] This expresses the matter a little more clearly than Kant himself does. The term representation is ambiguous. In the first paragraph it is made to cover the appearances as well as their representation.

[530] Cf. Dissertation, § 15 Coroll.: “Space properly concerns the intuition of the object; time the state, especially the representative state.”

[531] Cf. below, pp. 309 ff., 347-8, 359.

[532] Cf. Reflexionem, ii. 365 ff.

[533] § 14, 5 and note to 5.

[534] The opposite is, however, asserted in B 67.

[535] Cf. A 427-8 n. = B 456 n.

[536] A 99. Cf. A 162 = B 203: “I cannot represent to myself a line, however small, without drawing it in thought, i.e. generating from a point all its parts one after another.” Cf. pp. 94, 347-8.

[537] Cf. Lose Blätter, i. 54: “Without space time itself would not be represented as quantity (Grösse), and in general this conception would have no object.” Cf. Dissertation, § 14. 5.

[538] Cf. below, p. 365 ff.

[539] In the Dissertation time is treated before space.

[540] Cf. above, pp. xxxiv, 120; below, pp. 241-2, 365, 367-70, 390-1.

[541] Cf. Dissertation, § 15 C.

[542] Cf. below, pp. 272 ff., 294-5, 308 ff., 365 ff.

[543] A 23 = B 37.

[544] They correspond to the third paragraph dealing with space. Cf. above, p. 116.

[545] Cf. above, pp. 116-17.

[546] Cf. W. x. p. 102. Mendelssohn had also protested; cf. op. cit. x. p. 110.

[547] W. x. pp. 128-9. Italics not in Kant. Kant is entirely justified in protesting against the view that in denying things in themselves to be in time he is asserting that they remain eternally the same with themselves. To make a dancer preserve one and the same posture is not to take him out of time, but to bring home to him the reality of time in an extremely unpleasant manner. Duration is one of the modes of time.

[548] This is Kant’s reply to Mendelssohn’s objection (December 1770, W. x. p. 110): “Succession is at least a necessary condition of the representations of finite spirits. Now the finite spirits are not only subjects but also objects of representations, both for God and for our fellow-men. The succession must therefore be regarded as something objective.”

[549] Cf. A 277 = B 333: “It is not given to us to observe even our own mind with any intuition but that of our inner sense.”

[550] Quoted by Vaihinger, ii. p. 406.

[551] In the fourth Paralogism, A 366, and in the Refutation of Idealism, B 274.

[552] Cf. A 42 = B 59.

[553] Above, pp. 113-14.

[554] Cf. Vaihinger, ii. p. 114.

[555] The date of Kant’s Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume.

[556] Cf. below, p. 161 ff.

[557] Cf. Dissertation, § 15 D: “Those who defend the reality of space conceive it either as an absolute and immense receptacle of possible things—a view which appeals not only to the English [thinkers] but to most geometricians—or they contend that it is nothing but a relation holding between existing things, which must vanish when the things are removed, and which is thinkable only in actual things. This latter is the teaching of Leibniz and of most of our countrymen.” That the account of Leibniz’s teaching given in the paragraphs under consideration is not altogether accurate, need hardly be pointed out. Kant, following his usual method in the discussion of opposing systems, is stating what he regards as being the logical consequences of certain of Leibniz’s tenets, rather than his avowed positions.

[558] Cf. A 275-6 = B 331-2: “Leibniz conceived space as a certain order in the community of substances, and time as the dynamical sequence of their states. But that which both seem to possess as proper to themselves, in independence of things, he ascribed to the confused character of their concepts, asserting this confusion to be the reason why what is a mere form of dynamical relations has come to be regarded as a special intuition, self-subsistent and antecedent to the things themselves. Thus space and time were [for Leibniz] the intelligible form of the connection of things (substances and their states) in themselves.” Cf. also Prolegomena, § 13, Anm. i.

[559] Kant has stated that both views conflict with “the principles of experience.” But his criticisms are not altogether on that line. The statement strictly applies only to his criticism of the Leibnizian view. Cf. Dissertation, § 15 D: “That first inane invention of reason, assuming as it does the existence of true infinite relations in the absence of all interrelated entities, belongs to the realm of fable. But those who adopt the other view fall into a much worse error. For whereas the former place an obstacle in the way only of certain rational concepts, i.e. concepts that concern noumena, and which also in themselves are extremely obscure bearing upon questions as to the spiritual world, omnipresence, etc., the latter set themselves in direct antagonism to the phenomena themselves and to geometry, the most faithful interpreter of all phenomena. For—not to dwell upon the obvious circle in which they necessarily become involved in defining space—they cast geometry down from its position at the highest point of certitude, and throw it back into the class of those sciences the principles of which are empirical. For if all modifications of space are derived only through experience from external relations, geometrical axioms can have only comparative universality, like that acquired through induction, in other words, such as extends only as far as observation has gone. They cannot lay claim to any necessity save that of being in accordance with the established laws of nature, nor to any precision except of the artificial sort, resting upon assumptions. And as happens in matters empirical, the possibility is not excluded that a space endowed with other original modifications, and perhaps even a rectilineal figure enclosed by two lines, may sometime be discovered.” Cf. above, p. 114; below, p. 290.

[560] In B 155 n. Kant distinguishes between motion of an object in space, and motion as generation of a geometrical figure. The former alone involves experience; the latter is a pure act of the productive imagination, and belongs not only to geometry but also to transcendental philosophy. This note, as Erdmann has pointed out (Kriticismus, pp. 115, 168), was introduced by Kant into the second edition as a reply to a criticism of Schütz. The distinction as thus drawn is only tenable on the assumption of a pure manifold distinct from the manifold of sense.

[561] A 230 = B 283. Cf. above, pp. 57, 118; below, pp. 185-6, 257.

[562] A 41 = B 58.

[563] Cf. below, pp. 359-60.

[564] Les Données Immédiates, p. 75.

[565] ii. p. 446.

[566] §§ 4 and 27.

[567] Cf. Ueber eine Entdeckung, etc.: W. viii. p. 220.

[568] A 44 = B 61.

[569] A 277 = B 334. Cf. A 278-9 = B 335-6.

[570] When Kant says that the distinction is not logical (that of relative clearness and obscurity) but transcendental, the latter term is taken as practically equivalent to epistemological. It does not mean ‘relating to the a priori,’ but relating to transcendental philosophy, just as logical here means relating to logic. Cf. Vaihinger, ii. p. 452.

[571] Cf. A 270 ff. = B 326 ff.

[572] § 7 (I read autem for autor). Cf. below, p. 187.

[573] Cf. Prolegomena, § 13, Remark II.

[574] Cf. above, pp. 120-1.

[575] Cf. A 257 = B 313.

[576] A 46 = B 63. This is the first occurrence in the Critique of the phrase transcendental object. Transcendental is employed as synonymous with transcendent. Cf. below, p. 204 ff.

[577] Cf. above, pp. 120-2.

[578] A 271 = B 327.

[579] A 46-9 = B 63-6.

[580] A 48 = B 65-6. Vaihinger (ii. pp. 470-2) gives what appears to be a sufficient explanation of what Kant had in mind in its employment.

[581] A 46 = B 64. Cf. Dissertation, § 15 C. In the concluding sentence of the first edition’s Aesthetic, Kant for the first time uses the singular Ding an sich in place of the more usual Dinge an sich and also refers to it in problematic terms as what may underlie appearances.

[582] B 66-73.

[583] a does not contain anything not to be found elsewhere in the first edition. It is a restatement of A 265 ff. = B 321 ff., A 274 = B 330, A 277 ff. = B 333 ff., A 283-5 = B 339-41.

[584] An assertion, it may be noted, which conflicts with Kant’s view of it as a pure manifold.

[585] Kant was probably influenced by Tetens. Cp. below, p. 294.

[586] Cf. below, p. 291 ff. b together with B 152-8 is a more explicit statement of the doctrine of inner sense than Kant had given in the first edition.

[587] Vaihinger (ii. p. 486 ff.), who has done more than any other commentator to clear up the ambiguities of this passage, distinguishes only two views.

[588] A 38 = B 55.

[589] Cf. Prolegomena, W. iv. p. 376 n., Eng. trans. p. 149: “The reviewer often fights his own shadow. When I oppose the truth of experience to dreaming, he never suspects that I am only concerned with the somnium objective sumtum of Wolff’s philosophy, which is merely formal, and has nothing to do with the distinction of dreaming and waking, which indeed has no place in any transcendental philosophy.”

[590] Cf. below, p. 270 ff.

[591] B 69. For explanation of the references to time and self-consciousness, cf. below, pp. 308, 323.

[592] This view of illusion likewise appears in A 293 = B 349, A 377-8, A 396, and Prolegomena, § 13, III., at the beginning.

[593] Prolegomena, loc. cit.

[594] Cf. in the 1863 edition, Bd. ii. 267 ff. The examples of illusion employed by Mendelssohn are reflection in a mirror and the rainbow.

[595] W. x. p. 405.

[596] Schein is so used by Kant himself (W. x. p. 105) in a letter to Lambert in 1770.

[597] A 38.

[598] Cf. above, A 39 = B 57. This is, however, merely asserted by implication; it is not proved. As already noted, Kant does not really show that space and time, viewed as absolute realities, are “inconsistent with the principles of experience.” Nor does Kant here supply sufficient grounds for his description of space and time as Undinge. Kant, it must be observed, does not regard the conception of the actual infinite as in itself self-contradictory. Cf. below, p. 486.

[599] B 275.

[600] Cf. below, p. 298 ff., on Kant’s Refutations of Idealism. This is also the meaning in which Kant employs the term in his pre-Critical writings. Cf. Dilucidatio (1755), prop. xii. usus; Träume eines Geistersehers (1766), ii. 2, W. ii. p. 364. These citations are given by Janitsch (Kant’s Urtheile über Berkeley, 1879, p. 20), who also points out that the term is already used in this sense by Bülffinger as early as 1725, Dilucidationes philos. This is also the meaning in which the term is employed in B xxxiv. Cf. A 28 = B 44.

[601] Prolegomena; Anhang. W. iv. pp. 374-5.

[602] In his Kleine Aufsätze (3. Refutation of Problematic Idealism, Hartenstein, v. p. 502) Kant would seem very inconsistently to accuse Berkeley of maintaining a solipsistic position. “Berkeley denies the existence of all things save that of the being who asserts them.” This is probably, however, merely a careless formulation of the statement that thinking beings alone exist. Cf. Prolegomena, § 13, Anm. ii.

[603] Prolegomena, W. iv. p. 375; Eng. trans. p. 148.

[604] Borowski (Darstellung des Lebens und Charakters Immanuel Kant, in Hoffman’s ed. 1902, p. 248 ff.) gives a list of English writers with whom Kant was acquainted. They were, according to Janitsch (loc. cit. p. 35), accessible in translation. Cf. above, pp. xxviii n. 3, 63 n. 1.

[605] Cf. W. i. pp. 318, 322. When Kant cites Hume in the Prolegomena (Introduction), the reference is to the German translation.

[606] This was the first of Berkeley’s writings to appear in German. The translation was published in Leipzig in 1781.

[607] Cf. below, pp. 307-8. The opposite view has, however, been defended by Vaihinger: Philos. Monatshefte, 1883, p. 501 ff.

[608] Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding (sec. xii. pt. ii. at the end).

[609] Sixth edition, pp. 132, 214, 243 ff.

[610] A 38.

[611] A 377.

[612] A 377-8. Though Kant here distinguishes between perceptions and their “outer objects,” the latter are none the less identified with mental representations.

[613] Cf. below, p. 305 ff.

[614] Prolegomena, § 13, Remark III.; and Anhang (W. iv. p. 374).

[615] Kant’s description of Berkeley’s idealism as visionary and mystical is doubtless partly due to the old-time association of idealism in Kant’s mind with the spiritualistic teaching of Swedenborg (W. ii. p. 372). This association of ideas was further reinforced owing to his having classed Berkeley along with Plato.

[616] Prolegomena, Anhang, W. iv. p. 374; Eng. trans. p. 147.

[617] Cf. above, pp. 140-1.

[618] § 27. In translating Kant’s somewhat difficult Latin I have found helpful the English translation of the Dissertation by W. J. Eckoff (New York, 1894).

[619] Besides the internal evidence of the passage before us, we also have Kant’s own mention of Mendelssohn in this connection in notes (to A 43 and A 66) in his private copy of the first edition of the Critique. Cf. Erdmann’s Nachträge zu Kant’s Kritik, xx. and xxxii.; and above, p. 11.

[620] Cf. Morgenstunden, Bd. ii. of Gesammelte Schriften (1863), pp. 246, 288.

[621] Cf. above, p. 116.

[622] B 72.

[623] Upon this subject cf. Vaihinger’s exhaustive discussion in ii. p. 518 ff.

[624] Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte (1747).

[625] Op. cit. § 10. Cf. above, p. 117 ff.

[626] Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume.

[627] Euler, Réflexions sur l’espace et le temps (1748). Vaihinger (ii. p. 530) points out that Kant may also have been here influenced by certain passages in the controversy between Leibniz and Clarke.

[628] Loc. cit., at the end.

[629] In the Dorpater manuscript, quoted by Erdmann in his edition of the Prolegomena, p. xcvii n.

[630] § 15 C.

[631] So also in the Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science (1786), Erstes Hauptstück, Erklärung 2, Anmerkung 3.

[632] Cf. above, p. 105.

[633] A 289 = B 345.

[634] More exactly between the writing of the Metaphysical First Principles (in which as above noted the argument of the Prolegomena is endorsed) and 1787.

[635] Cf. A 260 ff. = B 316 ff. on the Amphiboly of Reflective Concepts.

[636] The Dissertation cites the argument only with this purpose in view. And yet it is only from the Dissertation standpoint that the wider argument of the Prolegomena can be legitimately propounded.

[637] Above, pp. 96-8, 102 n. 4; below, pp. 390-1.

[638] B 73.

[639] A 50 = B 74.

[640] Cf. below, p. 176 n. 1.

[641] K. p. 99 n.

[642] A 64 = B 89.

[643] The definition of intuition given in A 19 = B 33 also applies only to empirical intuition.

[644] For discussion of Kant’s view of sensation as the matter of sensuous intuition, cf. above, p. 80 ff.

[645] Second paragraph, A 51 = B 75.

[646] Object (Gegenstand) is here used in the strict sense and no longer as merely equivalent to content (Inhalt).

[647] Cf. above, p. 79 ff.

[648] P. 85.

[649] Third paragraph, A 52 = B 77.

[650] K. p. 100.

[651] Kant’s Logik: Einleitung, i. (Abbott’s trans. p. 4).

[652] Cf. A 796 = B 824; A 130 = B 169; also above, pp. 71-2.

[653] A 709 = B 737.

[654] Logik: Einleitung, i. (Eng. trans. p. 3).

[655] Cf. below, p. 194.

[656] Einleitung, i. (Eng. trans. p. 4).

[657] Cf. A 796 = B 824.

[658] Logik: Einleitung, i. (Eng. trans. p. 5).

[659] A 57 = B 81.

[660] Einleitung, vii. (Eng. trans. p. 40 ff.).

[661] Kant might have added that transcendental logic defines further conditions, those of possible experience, and that by implication it refers us to coherence as the ultimate test even of material truth.

[662] A 60-2 = B 84-6.

[663] Einleitung, ii. (Eng. trans. pp. 6-7).

[664] Cf. above, pp. 71-2, 170; below, pp. 438, 563.

[665] Cf. below, p. 425 ff.

[666] Kant employs Gegenstand and Object as synonymous terms.

[667] Cf. below, p. 426.

[668] A 64 = B 89.

[669] A 65 = B 90.

[670] The opening statement, A 67 = B 92, that hitherto understanding has been defined only negatively, is not correct, and would seem to prove that this section was written prior to the introduction to the Analytic, cf. above, p. 167.

[671] See above, pp. 170-1.

[672] A 79 = B 105. ‘Element’ translates the misleading term ‘Inhalt.’

[673] Kant’s definition of transcendental logic as differing from general logic in that it does not abstract from a priori content must not be taken as implying that the categories of understanding are contents, though of a priori nature. As we shall find, though that is Kant’s view of the forms of sense, it is by no means his view of the categories. They are, he repeatedly insists, merely functions, and are quite indeterminate in meaning save in so far as a content is yielded to them by sense. In A 76-7 = B 102, in distinguishing between the two logics, Kant is careful to make clear that the a priori content of transcendental logic consists exclusively of the a priori manifolds of sense.

[674] § 20, Eng. trans. p. 58.

[675] The view of the two as co-ordinate reappears in the Prolegomena (§ 20) in a section the general tendency of which runs directly counter to any such standpoint.

[676] A 78 = B 103.

[677] Cf. below, pp. 196, 204, 226.

[678] Einleitung, viii., Eng. trans. p. 48.

[679] Cf. above, pp. 37-8.

[680] The Mistaken Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures (1762). W. ii. p. 47, Eng. trans. p. 79.

[681] Cf. above, pp. 99-100, 106-7.

[682] W. ii. pp. 58-9, Eng. trans. pp. 92-3.

[683] Cf. Reflexionen, ii. 599.

[684] Below, pp. 185-6.

[685] The same indefiniteness of statement is discernible in Caird’s (i. p. 322 ff.) and Watson’s (Kant Explained, pp. 121-2) discussions of the principle supposed to be involved.

[686] Cf. A 80 = B 106.

[687] § 39.

[688] P. 176 ff.

[689] B 145-6. Cf. above, pp. xxxv-vi, xliv, 57, 142; below, pp. 257, 291.

[690] §§ 5-6.

[691] §§ 7-8. Cf. above, pp. 144-5.

[692] W. x. p. 126. Italics not in Kant.

[693] The relevant Reflexionen have been carefully discussed by Adickes (Kant’s Systematik, p. 21 ff.). In what follows I have made extensive use of his results, though not always arriving at quite the same conclusions.

[694] § 15, Coroll.

[695] In his later writings Kant recognises that the representations of space and time involve an Idea of Reason. Cf. above, pp. 97-8; below, pp. 390-1.

[696] § 39.

[697] Reflexionen, ii. 513, cf. 502, 525-7.

[698] Op. cit. ii. 513.

[699] Cf. op. cit. ii. 537.

[700] Cf. above, p. 90 ff.

[701] Only in one passage, Rechtslehre, i., Anhang 3, 2, cited by Adickes, op. cit. p. 13, does Kant so far depart from his own orthodoxy as to speak of the possibility of an a priori tetrachotomy. But he never wavers in the view that the completeness of a division cannot be guaranteed on empirical grounds.

[702] Introduction, § 9 n. Eng. trans. p. 41.

[703] §§ 4-6, 9.

[704] A 70-6 = B 95-101.

[705] Cf. Adickes, Kant’s Systematik, p. 36 ff.

[706] Cf. Adickes, op. cit. p. 89 ff.

[707] Organon, § 137. Cited by Adickes.

[708] i. p. 343 ff.

[709] Cf. below, p. 391 ff.

[710] A 76-79 = B 102-5.

[711] Cf. above, p. 171.

[712] A 55.

[713] Cf. also B 160.

[714] Kant’s Theorie der Erfahrung, 2nd ed. p. 257 ff.

[715] The Critical Philosophy of Kant, i. p. 327 ff.

[716] Philosophischer Kriticismus, 2nd ed. i. p. 484 ff.

[717] Kant explained, p. 124 ff.

[718] Cf. below, p. 198.

[719] P. 226.

[720] A 79 = B 105.

[721] Cf. above, p. 177 ff.

[722] A 79-80.

[723] Cf. above, p. 192.

[724] Cf. B 111.

[725] Cf. Adickes, Systematik, pp. 42-3.

[726] Kant Explained, p. 128.

[727] Cf. above, p. 37.

[728] Cf. Dissertation, §§ 16 to 28, and below, p. 381 ff.

[729] Cf. Reflexionen, ii. 795.

[730] B 111-13.

[731] World as Will and Idea, Werke (Frauenstädt), ii. p. 544; Eng. trans. ii. p. 61.

[732] Cf. Stadler, Grundsätze der reinen Erkenntnisstheorie(1876), p. 122. Cf. also below, pp. 387-9.

[733] Cf. below, p. 391 ff.

[734] A 81.

[735] Cf. Prolegomena, § 39.

[736] Cf. above, p. 186 ff.

[737] Kant Explained, p. 120.

[738] A 81.

[739] A 82.

[740] A 82.

[741] B 110.

[742] B 110-11.

[743] Cf. below, pp. 199-200.

[744] W. x. p. 344-5.

[745] Cf. below, p. 382 ff.

[746] Cf. below, pp. 433-4, 451, 480, 529, 559-60.

[747] B 114.

[748] Cf. 904-5.

[749] Cf. 907-10.

[750] Cf. B. Erdmann, Mittheilungen in Phil. Monatshefte, 1884, p. 80, and Adickes, Systematik, pp. 55-9.

[751] Reflexionen, ii. p. 252 n.

[752] “Die transcendentale Deduktion der Kategorien” in the Gedenkschrift für Rudolf Haym. Published separately in 1902.

[753] Readers who are not immediately interested in the analysis of the text or in the history of Kant’s earlier semi-Critical views may omit pp. 203-34, with exception of pp. 204-19, on Kant’s doctrine of the transcendental object, which should be read.

[754] The reader is recommended to mark off the passages in a copy of the Critique.

[755] Its first occurrence in the Critique is in the Aesthetic A 46 = B 63. It there signifies the thing in itself.

[756] A 104.

[757] A 109.

[758] A 109.

[759] A 104.

[760] Cf. above, p. 28; below, pp. 219-20.

[761] W. x. pp. 124-5.

[762] Cf. below, pp. 209-10.

[763] Hume’s view of the self is not developed in the Enquiry, and is not mentioned by Beattie.

[764] A 107.

[765] Cf. Reflexionen, ii. 952 (belonging, as Erdmann notes, to the earliest Critical period): “Appearances are representations whereby we are affected. The representation of our free self-activity (Selbsttätigkeit) does not involve affection, and accordingly is not appearance, but apperception.” Cf. below, p. 296.

[766] § 8. Cf. above, pp. l-ii; below, pp. 243, 260-3, 272-3, 327-8, 473-7, 515.

[767] A 107. It is significant that Kant in A 107 uses, in reference to apperception, the very unusual phrase, “unwandelbares Bewusstsein.”

[768] A 108.

[769] A 107.

[770] Reicke, Lose Blätter, p. 19. The bearing and date of this passage is discussed below, p. 233.

[771] Op. cit. p. 20.

[772] Op. cit. p. 22 (written on a letter dated May 20, 1775).

[773] This last statement cannot possibly be taken literally. In view of the manner in which the transcendental object is spoken of elsewhere in this section, and also in the Dialectic, we must regard it as standing for an independent existence, and the relation of representations to it as being, therefore, something else than simply the unity of consciousness.

[774] It may be observed that when Kant in A 107, quoted above, refers to “a priori concepts,” he adds in explanation, and within brackets, “space and time.”

[775] A 105-6.

[776] The actual nature of Kant’s teaching as to the origin and constitution of the notion of the transcendental object is largely masked by the fact that he places this proof of its validity so prominently in the foreground. The general nature of this proof is, of course, identical with that of his later positions.

[777] A 109.

[778] As in the Lose Blätter. Cf. below, p. 233.

[779] Cf. below, pp. 227, 233-4, 268-9.

[780] Cf. below, pp. 322-8; also pp. 260-3.

[781] As above noted (p. 204 n.) it also occurs in the Aesthetic (A 46 = B 63), as signifying the thing in itself.

[782] A 238 = B 298.

[783] Cf. below, p. 238.

[784] A 238 ff. = B 298 ff.

[785] A 250-1.

[786] Cf. below, p. 407 ff.

[787] A 253.

[788] A 191 = B 236.

[789] A 277-8 = B 333-4; A 288 = B 344.

[790] Cf. mundus phaenomenon in A 272 = B 328.

[791] It is so dated by Adickes (K. p. 272 n.), owing to a single reference to schemata in A 286 = B 342.

[792] A 358 and A 361 (cf. A 355); A 366; A 372 and A 379-80; A 390-1, A 393, and A 394.

[793] A 366.

[794] “Transcendental” here means “transcendent.” Cf. A 379.

[795] A 372; so also in A 613-14 = B 641-2.

[796] The passage in A 393 is given below, p. 464.

[797] A 494 = B 522. Cf. A 492 = B 521: “The true self (das eigentliche Selbst) as it exists in itself, i.e. the transcendental subject.”

[798] A 495 = B 523.

[799] A 496 = B 524.

[800] Loc. cit.

[801] Cf. also A 538 = B 566; A 540 = B 568; A 557 = B 585; A 564 = B 592; A 565-6 = B 593-4; A 613 = B 641-2.

[802] Above, p. 206.

[803] Cf. above, pp. liii-v; below, pp. 280, 331, 373-4, 390-1, 414-17, 429-31, 558-61.

[804] Viz. the first layer of the deduction of the first edition, the relevant sections in the chapter on phenomena and noumena (A 250 ff.), and the Paralogisms with the subsequent Reflection.

[805] Viz. the Note on Amphiboly, the chapter on the Antinomies, and the chapter on the Ideal.

[806] To the statement that the alterations in the second edition cease at the close of the chapter on the Paralogisms, there is only one single exception, namely, the very brief note appended to A 491 = B 519. This exception, however, supports our general thesis. It is of polemical origin, referring to the nature of the distinction between transcendental and subjective idealism, and was demanded by the new Refutation of Idealism which in the second edition he had attached to the Postulates.

[807] It follows immediately upon the passage quoted above, p. 206.

[808] W. x. pp. 125-6.

[809] A 89 = B 121. I adopt B. Erdmann’s reading of auf for als.

[810] A 88 = B 120.

[811] A 90.

[812] As we have already found (above, p. 27 n. 1), it had not been attained at the time when the Introduction to the first edition was written.

[813] A 95-96.

[814] A 97.

[815] A. 95; cf. A 96.

[816] A 111.

[817] Loc. cit.

[818] A 112.

[819] A 111.

[820] A 112-14.

[821] A 110-14.

[822] I. § 14 C Vaihinger regards as intermediate in date, but it is a comparatively unimportant paragraph, and may for the present be left out of account. Cf. below, pp. 225-6.

[823] A 118-19.

[824] A 124.

[825] Loc. cit.

[826] A 115.

[827] A 76-9 = B 102-4. Not yet commented upon.

[828] Cf. Vaihinger, loc. cit. p. 63.

[829] A 77 = B 102. Cf. above, pp. 96-7.

[830] Loc. cit.

[831] For explanation of the exact meaning in which these terms are employed and for discussion of the complicated issues involved, cf. below, p. 270 ff.

[832] Cf. A 118.

[833] A 102.

[834] A 99-100.

[835] A 102.

[836] A 100.

[837] A 101. Cf. below, p. 255.

[838] Pp. 238, 263 ff.

[839] Cf. above, p. 211.

[840] For Vaihinger’s own statement of it, cf. op. cit. pp. 79-98.

[841] Nos. 64-5, 117, 140-5.

[842] No. 146.

[843] Nos. 41, 81.

[844] No. 104.

[845] Cf. Nos. 964-5.

[846] No. 947.

[847] No. 948.

[848] No. 949.

[849] No. 952.

[850] This is Erdmann’s reading. Vaihinger substitutes allgemein for allein, but without reason given.

[851] No. 935. The translation is literal. Kant in the last sentence changes from singular to plural.

[852] No. 964.

[853] Cf. also Nos. 957, 961. The latter shows how Kant already connected the categories of relation with the logical functions of judgment.

[854] Reicke, Nos. 7, 8, 10-18 (pp. 16-26, 29-49).

[855] The chief relevant passages have been quoted above, p. 209.

[856] The letter is given in W. x. p. 173.

[857] Reicke, pp. 113-16.

[858] According to Adickes the Critique was “brought to completion” in the first half of 1780; in Vaihinger’s view, on the other hand, Kant was occupied with it from April to September. Cf. above, p. xx.

[859] In two respects, however, fragment B 12 anticipates the teaching of the fourth stage: (a) in suggesting (p. 114) the necessity of a pure synthesis of pure intuition, and (b) in equating (p. 115) synthesis of apprehension with synthesis of imagination.

[860] Pp. 231-3.

[861] Cf. below, pp. 268-9.

[862] In B 160 Kant states that the synthesis of apprehension is only empirical; and in B 152 we find the following emphatic sentence: “In so far as the faculty of imagination is spontaneously active I sometimes also name it [i.e. in addition to entitling it transcendental and figurative] productive, and thereby distinguish it from the reproductive imagination whose synthesis is subject only to empirical laws, i.e. those of association, and which therefore contributes nothing in explanation of the possibility of a priori knowledge. Hence it belongs, not to transcendental philosophy, but to psychology.” Cf. the directly counter statement in A 102: “The reproductive synthesis of the faculty of imagination must be counted among the transcendental actions of the mind.”

[863] Though, as we shall find, the deduction of the second edition is in certain respects more mature, it is in other respects less complete.

[864] A 314 = B 370.

[865] A x-xi. Cf. above, pp. 50-1.

[866] Cf. below, pp. 543 ff., 576-7.

[867] Whether it was the chief reason is decidedly open to question. The un-Critical character of its teaching as regards the function of empirical concepts and of the transcendental object, and the unsatisfactoriness of its doctrine of a threefold synthesis, would of themselves account for the omission. The passage in the chapter on phenomena and noumena (A 250 ff.) in which the doctrine of the transcendental object is again developed was likewise omitted in the second edition.

[868] Cf. below, pp. 238, 263 ff.

[869] Cf. also in Methodology, below, p. 543 ff.

[870] Cf. above, pp. xxxvi, xxxvii-viii, 36; below, pp. 241-3.

[871] Cf. below, p. 543 ff.

[872] A xi.

[873] A 100-1.

[874] Kant’s failure either to distinguish or to connect the two deductions in any really clear and consistent manner is a defect which is accentuated rather than diminished in the second edition. Though the sections devoted to the subjective enquiry are omitted, and the argument of the objective deduction is so recast as to increase the emphasis laid upon its more strictly logical aspects, the teaching of the subjective deduction is retained and influences the argument at every point. For the new deduction, no less than that of the first edition, rests throughout upon the initial assumption that though connection or synthesis can never be given, it is yet the generative source of all consciousness of order and relation.

[875] It appears most clearly in Kant’s proof of the category of causality in the second Analogy. Cf. below, p. 364 ff.

[876] Cf. below, pp. 252-3, 258, 287, 333, 343.

[877] Cf. above, p. 208 ff.

[878] Cf. above, pp. l-ii, 207-12; below, pp. 260-3, 272-3, 327-8, 473-7, 515.

[879] P. 239.

[880] A 99.

[881] A 102.

[882] A 103.

[883] Loc. cit.

[884] Loc. cit.

[885] A 100-1.

[886] A 106.

[887] A 101.

[888] Such statements are in direct conflict with his own repeated assertions in other passages that reproduction and recognition are always merely empirical. Cf. above, pp. 227-31, and below, pp. 264, 268-9.

[889] B 139-40.

[890] In the first edition the subjective and objective deductions shade into one another; and this question is raised in the section on synthesis of recognition (A 104), where, as above noted (p. 204 ff.), Kant’s argument is largely pre-Critical, empirical concepts exercising the functions which Kant later ascribed to the categories. But as we have already considered the resulting doctrine of the transcendental object both in its earlier and in its subsequent form, we may at once pass to the more mature teaching of the other sections.

[891] Cf. above, p. 204 ff.

[892] Memory is only one particular mode in which recognition presents itself in our experience; Kant’s purpose is to show that it is not more fundamental, nor more truly constitutive of apperception, than is recognition in any of its other manifestations. Indeed the central contention of the objective deduction is that it is through consciousness of objects, i.e. through consciousness of objective meanings, that self-consciousness comes to be actualised at all. Only in contrast with, and through relation to, an objective system is consciousness of inner experience, past or present, and therefore self-consciousness in its contingent empirical forms, possible to the mind. Cf. above, pp. li-ii; below, pp. 260-3.

[893] B 134.

[894] A 116.

[895] Cf. above, p. 242; below, pp. 258, 332-3.

[896] Cf. A 111.

[897] A 117 n.

[898] This transcendental psychology is considered below (p. 263 ff.), in its connection with the later stages of the subjective deduction. Cf. above, p. 238.

[899] A 113-14.

[900] Cf. above, p. 229.

[901] Cf. A 100-1.

[902] A 122-3.

[903] Cf. B 140-3; B 151-2; B 164-5 5 and below, p. 286.

[904] Here again the second edition text is more explicit than the first: “This peculiarity of our understanding, that it can produce a priori unity of apperception solely by means of the categories, and only by such and so many, is as little capable of further explanation as why we have just these and no other functions of judgment, or why space and time are the sole forms of our possible intuition.”—B 145-6. Cf. above, pp. xxxiii-vi, xliv, 57, 142, 186; below, pp. 291, 411.

[905] Cf. above, pp. 252-3.

[906] The second Analogy embodies the argument which is implied in, and necessary to, the establishment of the assertions dogmatically made in A 111-12.

[907] A 119.

[908] Cf. A 128. On this whole question cf. above, p. 242; below, pp. 287-8.

[909] Cf. A 113, 125-9.

[910] A 107, 111.

[911] The explanation given in the second edition (B 132) is artificial, and does not reveal Kant’s real reasons. It is also obscure owing to its employment of dynamical terms to denote the relation of apperception to self-consciousness.

[912] Cf. above, pp. 251-3.

[913] Cf. A 112, 113, 128.

[914] A 114.

[915] A 94, 115, 118. Cf. also end of note to B 134.

[916] Cf. above, pp. lii, 207-12, 243; below, pp. 327-8, 473-7, 515.

[917] This is shown, not only by Kant’s ethical writings, but also by his less formal utterances, especially in his Lectures on Metaphysics and on Religion, in his Reflexionen, and in his Lose Blätter.

[918] Cf. below, pp. 277-8.

[919] Cf. above, pp. l-lii; below, pp. 277 ff., 461-2, 473-7.

[920] In note to B 162 they are indeed identified.

[921] Kant’s vacillating attitude appears in the added phrase “of whose activity we are hardly ever conscious.” Cf. A 78: it is a “blind” power.

[922] Cf. above, p. 225; below, p. 337.

[923] A 138 = B 177.

[924] A 118.

[925] Cf. above, p. 253 ff.

[926] A 123.

[927] A 121-3.

[928] A 125-6.

[929] Above, pp. 74 ff., 238, 252.

[930] Cf. above, pp. 96-7.

[931] Cf. below, pp. 367, 371-2.

[932] Cf. above, pp. 211, 227, 233-4.

[933] In direct contradiction of his previous view of transcendental imagination as purely productive, it is now stated that it is reproductive. Cf. A 102.

[934] Cf. above, pp. 225 ff., 264.

[935] It must be remembered that this was also rendered necessary by the archaic character of their teaching in regard to the transcendental object and the function of empirical concepts.

[936] Cf. B 151-2. There is no mention, however, of objective affinity.

[937] B 160-1. Cf. above, pp. 226-9.

[938] In what follows I make use of an article, entitled “The Problem of Knowledge,” which I have contributed to the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods (1912), vol. ix. pp. 113-28.

[939] The same wide sense in which Kant employs “empirical idealism.”

[940] Cf. above, pp. xliii-v, 208; below, pp. 295-6, 298 ff. Hume and Spinoza are the only pre-Kantian thinkers of whose position the last statement is not strictly descriptive, but even they failed to escape its entangling influence.

[941] Cf. A 28-9; also Lectures on Metaphysics (Pölitz’s edition, 1821), p. 188 ff. In Kant’s posthumously published work, his Transition from the Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science to Physics, it is asserted in at least twenty-six distinct passages that sensations are due to the action of “the moving forces of matter” upon the sense-organs. Cf. below, p. 283 n. 2. In his Ueber das Organ der Seele (1796) (Hartenstein, vi. p. 457 ff.), Kant agrees with Sömmerring in holding that the soul has virtual, i.e. dynamical, though not local, presence in the fluid contained in the cavity of the brain.

[942] Cf. Critique of Practical Reason, Bk. i. ch. i. § iii.

[943] Cf. below, pp. 279 ff., 293-6, 312 ff., 321, 361 n. 3, 384-5, 464-5, 476.

[944] Cf. below, pp. 279-80, and pp. 293-4, on inner sense.

[945] i. p. 339: “Each pulse of cognitive consciousness, each Thought, dies away and is replaced by another.... Each later Thought, knowing and including thus the Thoughts which went before, is the final receptacle—and appropriating them is the final owner—of all that they contain and own. Each Thought is thus born an owner, and dies owned, transmitting whatever it realized as its Self to its own later proprietor. As Kant says [cf. below, pp. 461-2], it is as if elastic balls were to have not only motion but knowledge of it, and a first ball were to transmit both its motion and its consciousness to a second, which took both up into its consciousness and passed them to a third, until the last ball held all that the other balls had held, and realized it as its own.”

[946] I here use “objective” in its modern meaning: I am not concerned with the special meaning which Descartes himself attached to the terms objective and formaliter.

[947] Pp. 277-8.

[948] On this whole matter cf. above, p. xlv; below, pp. 312-21 on Kant’s Refutation of Idealism; pp. 373-4 on the Second Analogy; pp. 407 ff., 414 ff. on Phenomena and Noumena; p. 461 ff. on the Paralogisms; and p. 546. Cf. also A 277-8 = B 334.

[949] P. 267 ff.

[950] Though the posthumously published work of Kant’s old age, his Transition from the Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science to Physics, bears the marks of weakening powers, and is much too incomplete and obscure to allow of any very assured deductions from its teaching, it is none the less significant that it is largely occupied in attempting to define the relation in which the objective world of physical science stands to the sensible world of ordinary consciousness. As above noted (p. 275 n.), it is there asserted in at least twenty-six distinct passages that sensations are due to the action of “the moving forces of matter” upon the sense-organs. What is even more significant is the adoption and frequent occurrence (Altpreussische Monatsschrift (1882), pp. 236, 287, 289, 290, 292, 294, 295-6, 300, 308, 429, 436, 439) of the phrase “Erscheinung von der Erscheinung.” Kant would seem to mean by “Erscheinung vom ersten Range” (op. cit. p. 436) (i.e. appearance as such), the objective world as determined by physical science; and by “Erscheinung vom zweiten Range” (i.e. appearance of the appearance), this same objective world as known in terms of the sensations which material bodies generate by acting on the sense-organs. Kant adds that the former is known directly, and the latter indirectly—meaning, apparently, that the former is known through a priori forms native to the understanding, and the latter only in terms of sense-data which are mechanically conditioned (cf. loc. cit. pp. 286, 292, and 444 n. The terms latter and former on p. 300 have got transposed).

[951] Cf. below pp. 312-21, 373-4, 414 ff., 425 ff., 558 ff.

[952] B 129.

[953] B 161 n.

[954] B 130-1.

[955] B 131.

[956] B 131-4.

[957] B 131.

[958] Cf. B 138.

[959] B 135.

[960] B 136-40.

[961] B 140-2.

[962] B 143.

[963] §§ 21-27.

[964] Above, pp. 252-3, 258, 287.

[965] Prolegomena, § 18.

[966] Op. cit. § 20.

[967] Op. cit. §§ 18-19; Eng. trans. pp. 54-5.

[968] Cf. above, pp. 39-40, 286-7.

[969] Cf. below, p. 370.

[970] Op. cit. § 22. Cf. below, p. 311 n. 4.

[971] §§ 21-7.

[972] B 143.

[973] This leads on in the second paragraph of § 21 to further statements, already commented upon above, pp. 186, 257-8. Cf. also § 23.

[974] Cf. also § 24.

[975] Cf. above, pp. 90 ff., 171, 226-9, 267-70; below, p. 337.

[976] Cf. above, pp. 28, 47, 114, 141-2.

[977] Cf. § 21, second paragraph.

[978] Cf. above, pp. 160, 186, 257, and below, pp. 325-6, 330-1, 390-1, 404 ff.

[979] Cf. below, pp. 324, 329.

[980] Above, p. 148.

[981] Cf. above, pp. xliii-v, l-ii, 238, 261-2, 263 ff., 273 ff.; below, pp. 295 ff., 322 ff.

[982] Cf. B 67-8; A 33 = B 49.

[983] B 67.

[984] B xxxix n.

[985] Kant very probably arrived at this view of inner sense under the influence of Tetens who teaches a similar doctrine in his Philosophische Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwickelung. Cf. Bd. i.; Versuch i. 7, 8. The first volume of Tetens’ work was published in 1777 (re-issued by the Kantgesellschaft in 1913), and had been carefully read by Kant prior to the final preparation of the Critique. Cf. B. Erdmann, Kriticismus, p. 51.

[986] Cf. A. 128-9.

[987] As just noted, it is in the second edition that the above view of the content of inner sense is first definitely formulated.

[988] A 33 = B 49-50.

[989] A 34 = B 50.

[990] Cf. above, pp. 208-9, 251-2, 260-4; below, 311 n. 4. It may be observed that Caird (i. pp. 625-7) interprets inner sense as equivalent to inner reflection. This is one of the respects in which Caird’s Hegelian standpoint has led him to misrepresent even Kant’s most central doctrines.

[991] Cf. below, pp. 399-400, and A 277-8 = B 333-4.

[992] Above, p. 292.

[993] Cf. above, p. 155.

[994] Cf. Vaihinger in Strassburger Abhandlungen zur Philosophie (1884), p. 106 ff.

[995] Section III., Prop. XII Usus.

[996] Theil II. Hauptstück II. W. ii. p. 364.

[997] § 11.

[998] Pölitz’s edition (1821), pp. 100-2.

[999] W. iv. p. 373 ff.

[1000] It may be noted that in the Aesthetic (A 38 = B 55) Kant employs the term idealism, without descriptive epithet, in the same manner as in his pre-Critical writings, as signifying a position that must be rejected.

[1001] Cf. below, p. 301 ff.

[1002] Pp. 307-8.

[1003] Cf. A 368-9 and 372.

[1004] A 377: a passage which bears signs of being a later interpolation.

[1005] B 274.

[1006] A 368-9.

[1007] A 369.

[1008] A 28 = B 44. Cf. above, pp. 76, 116-17.

[1009] A 370.

[1010] Loc. cit.

[1011] A 372.

[1012] A 373: Weil indessen, etc.

[1013] Adickes regards them as later additions. To judge by their content (cf. above, pp. 204 ff., 215-16, on Kant’s doctrine of the transcendental object), they are more probably of quite early origin.

[1014] A 377-8.

[1015] Adickes argues that this paragraph is subsequent to the main body of the Analytic, but that is in keeping with the tendency which he seems to show of dating passages, which cannot belong to the “Brief Outline,” later rather than earlier.

[1016] A 375.

[1017] The remaining passages in the fourth Paralogism, together with the corresponding passages in B 274 ff., in Kant’s note to B xxxix, and in B 291-3, are separately dealt with below, pp. 308 ff., 322 ff., 462-3.

[1018] A 377.

[1019] Loc. cit.

[1020] E.g. Garve.

[1021] § 13, W. iv. pp. 288-9: Eng. trans. p. 42.

[1022] Loc. cit.

[1023] Op. cit. pp. 289-90: Eng. trans. pp. 43-4.

[1024] In Note II.

[1025] § 49, W. iv. 336: Eng. trans. p. 99.

[1026] Anhang, W. iv. p. 375 n.

[1027] W. iv. p. 374: Eng. trans. p. 147.

[1028] Cf. above, p. 155 ff.

[1029] W. iv. p. 375.

[1030] W. iv. p. 375: Eng. trans. p. 147-8.

[1031] Cf. above, p. 156.

[1032] As already noted above, p. 299, it is employed by Kant in his lectures on Metaphysics.

[1033] Kant’s phrase “in space outside me” is on Kant’s principles really pleonastic. Cf. Prolegomena, § 49; Eng. trans, p. 101: “the notion ‘outside me’ only signifies existence in space.” Cf. A 373.

[1034] Cf. text as altered by note to B xxxviii.

[1035] B xxxix.

[1036] B 291-2. The remaining points in B 274 ff. as well as in B xxxix n. are separately dealt with below, p. 322 ff.

[1037] The nearest approach to such teaching in the first edition is in A 33 = B 50. Cf. above, pp. 135-8.

[1038] Cf. below, pp. 333, 341, 360, 384-5.

[1039] Adamson (Development of Modern Philosophy, i. p. 241) takes the opposite view as to what is Kant’s intended teaching, but remarks upon its inconsistency with Kant’s own fundamental principles. “Now, in truth, Kant grievously endangers his own doctrine by insisting on the absence of a priori elements from our apprehension of the mental life; for it follows from that, if taken rigorously, that according to Kant sense and understanding are not so much sources which unite in producing knowledge, as, severally, sources of distinct kinds of apprehension. If we admit at all, in respect to inner sense, that there is some kind of apprehension without the work of understanding, then it has been acknowledged that sense is per se adequate to furnish a kind of apprehension.” As pointed out above (p. 296), by the same line of reasoning Kant is disabled from viewing inner consciousness as merely reflective. In other words it can neither be more immediate nor less sensuous than outer perception. Cf. below, pp. 361, n. 3, 384-5.

[1040] Above, pp. xlvi, 275-82; below, pp. 313-14, 384-5.

[1041] Above, pp. 276, 279-80; below, pp. 312, 384-5.

[1042] Cf. below, p. 361.

[1043] Cf. Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science (1786), W. iv. pp. 470-1. It should be observed, however, that the reasons which Kant gives in this treatise for denying that psychology can ever become more than a merely historical or descriptive discipline are not that the objects of inner sense fall outside the realm of mechanically determined existence. Kant makes no assertion that even distantly implies any such view. His reasons are—(1) that, as time has only one dimension, the main body of mathematical science is not applicable to the phenomena of inner sense and their laws; (2) that such phenomena are capable only of a merely ideal, not of an experimental, analysis; (3) that, as the objects of inner sense do not consist of parts outside each other, their parts are not substances, and may therefore be conceived as diminishing in intensity or passing out of existence without prejudice to the principle of the permanence of substance (op. cit. p. 542, quoted below, p. 361, n. 2); (4) that inner observation is limited to the individual’s own existence; (5) that the very act of introspection alters the state of the object observed.

[1044] A 370.

[1045] B 275. These two sentences are cited in this connection by Vaihinger: Strassburger Abhandlungen zur Philosophie (1884), p. 131.

[1046] Above, pp. xlv-vii, 279 ff.

[1047] Cf. also above, pp. 275-7.

[1048] § 13, Anmerkung II.

[1049] Kriticismus, p. 197 ff.

[1050] Mind (1879), iv. p. 408 ff.; (1880), v. p. 111.

[1051] A Defence of Philosophic Doubt (1879), p. 107 ff.; Mind (1878), iii. p. 481; iv. p. 115; vi. p. 260.

[1052] Op. cit. p. 128 ff.

[1053] Critical Philosophy, i. 632 ff.; Mind (1879), iv. pp. 112, 560-1; v. p. 115.

[1054] The Philosophy of Kant, p. 249 ff.

[1055] The one fundamental question to which Erdmann would seem to allow that Kant gives conflicting answers is as to whether or not categories can be transcendently employed. The assumption of a uniform teaching is especially obvious in Sidgwick’s comments; cf. Mind (1880), v. p. 113; Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant (1905), p. 28.

[1056] Cf. above, pp. 303-4.

[1057] A 491 = B 520.

[1058] A 225-6 = B 273.

[1059] A 495-6 = B 523-4.

[1060] Cf. below, p. 506.

[1061] Viz. A 225-6 = B 273.

[1062] B 277.

[1063] Above, p. 208 ff.

[1064] A 346 = B 404.

[1065] A 224-5 = B 272-3.

[1066] Cf. B 277.

[1067] Quoted by B. Erdmann: Kriticismus, p. 107.

[1068] B xxxix n., 67-8, 70, 157-8 with appended note, 276-8, 422 n., 427-9.

[1069] B 70, 157, 428.

[1070] B 157.

[1071] B 157 n. Regarding the un-Critical character of Kant’s language in this passage, and of the tendencies which inspire it, cf. below, p. 329.

[1072] B 157.

[1073] B 429.

[1074] Cf. B 277-8 and B 157.

[1075] B 278.

[1076] B 420 and B 422 n.

[1077] B 422 n.

[1078] Cf. above, pp. 204 ff., 404 ff.

[1079] Cf. above, p. 204 ff.

[1080] B 406.

[1081] B 422 n. Though both concepts are denoted by the same term, they may not—such is the implication—be for that reason identified.

[1082] B 429. Kant does not, however, even in the second edition, hold consistently to this position. In the sentence immediately preceding that just quoted he equates the transcendental self with the notion of “object in general.” “I represent myself to myself neither as I am nor as I appear to myself, but think myself only as I do any object in general from whose mode of intuition I abstract.”

[1083] The broader bearing of this view may be noted. If consistently developed, it must involve the assertion that noumenal reality is apprehended in terms of the Ideas of reason, for these are the only other concepts at the disposal of the mind. Cf. above, pp. liii-v, 217-18; below, pp. 331, 390-1, 414-17, 426 ff., 558-61.

[1084] A 402.

[1085] It is doubtful whether A 401-2 represents a genuinely Critical position. Several of its phrases seem reminiscent of Kant’s semi-Critical view of the nature of apperception. This is especially true of the assertion that self-consciousness is “itself unconditioned.”

[1086] A 346 = B 404. Cf. below, pp. 456, 461-2.

[1087] Cf. A 345.

[1088] That he does not really do so is clear from the context and also from the manner in which he restated this argument in the second edition (B 421-2).

[1089] A 401-2, B 421-2; below, pp. 461-2.

[1090] A 402; cf. B 407.

[1091] Cf. B 421-2.

[1092] Cf. above, pp. l-ii, 208-9, 260-3.

[1093] Cf. above, loc. cit.

[1094] Cf. B 157-8 and 157 n., B 278, B 428-9.

[1095] Above, pp. 295-6, 311 n. 4.

[1096] There is this difference between the category of existence and the categories of relation, namely, that it would seem to be impossible to distinguish between a determinate and an indeterminate application of it. Either we assert existence or we do not; there is no such third alternative as in the case of the categories of substance and causality. The category of substance, determinately used, signifies material existence in space and time; indeterminately applied it is the purely problematic and merely logical notion of something that is always a subject and never a predicate. The determinate category of causality is the conception of events conditioning one another in time; indeterminately employed it signifies only the quite indefinite notion of a ground or condition. Also, Kant’s explicit teaching (A 597 ff. = B 625 ff.) is that the notion of existence stands in an altogether different position from other predicates. It is not an attribute constitutive of the concept of the subject to which it is applied, but is simply the positing of the content of that concept as a whole. Nor, again, is it a relational form for the articulation of content. These would seem to be the reasons why no distinction is possible between a determinate and an indeterminate application of the notion of existence, and why, therefore, Kant, in defending the possible dual employment of it, has difficulty in holding consistently to the doctrines expounded in the Postulates. He is, by his own explicit teaching, interdicted from declaring that the notion of existence is both a category and not a category, or, in other words, that it may vary in meaning according as empirical or noumenal reality is referred to, and that only in the former case is it definite and precise. Yet such a view would, perhaps, better harmonise with certain other lines of thought which first obtain statement in the Dialectic. For though it is in the Dialectic that Kant expounds his grounds for holding that existence and content are separate and independent, it is there also that he first begins to realise the part which the Ideas of Reason are called upon to play in the drawing of the distinction between appearance and reality.

[1097] In the Fortschritte (Werke (Hartenstein), viii. p. 548 ff.) this final step is quite definitely taken. Cf. below, pp. 390-1, 414-17, 426 ff., 558-61. We have, as we shall find, to recognise a second fundamental conflict in Kant’s thinking, additional to that between subjectivism and phenomenalism. He alternates between what may be entitled the sceptical and the Idealist views of the function of Reason and of its relation to the understanding, or otherwise stated, between the regulative and the absolutist view of the nature of thought. But this conflict first gains explicit expression in the Dialectic.

[1098] For Kant’s use of the terms ‘canon’ and ‘dialectic’ cf. above, pp. 72, 77-8, 173-4, and below, p. 425 ff.

[1099] Above, pp. 181-2.

[1100] As we shall have occasion to observe below (p. 336), when Kant defines judgment as “the faculty of subsumption under rules,” he is really defining it in terms of the process of reasoning, and thus violating the principle which he is professedly following in dividing the Transcendental Logic into the Analytic of Concepts, the Analytic of Judgment, and the Dialectic of Reasoning.

[1101] A 132 = B 171.

[1102] Pp. 252-3, 258-9, 287-8.

[1103] The passages that have gone to constitute this chapter are probably quite late in date of writing. This would seem to be proved by the view taken of productive imagination, and also by the fact that in the Reflexionen there is no mention of schematism.

[1104] Cf. above, p. 176 ff.

[1105] Cf. A 137 = B 176. “The empirical concept of a plate is homogeneous with the pure geometrical concept of a circle, since the roundness which is thought in the former can be intuited in the latter.”

[1106] A 138 = B 177.

[1107] Above, p. 334.

[1108] Cf. E. Curtius, Das Schematismuskapitel in der Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Kantstudien, Bd. xix. p. 348 ff.).

[1109] Op. cit. § 58.

[1110] A 138 = B 177. Cf. above, pp. 96-7.

[1111] A 141 = B 180.

[1112] Cf. above, pp. 268-9.

[1113] Cf. above, pp. 133-4.

[1114] A 140 = B 179.

[1115] Loc. cit.

[1116] Cf. E. Curtius, op. cit. p. 356.

[1117] Kant’s other definition of the schema as “a rule for the determination of our intuition in accordance with a certain universal concept” (A 141 = B 180) is open to similar objections. When, however, Kant states that “schemata, and not images, underlie our pure sensuous concepts,” he seems to be inclining to the truer view that the schema is the concept.

[1118] Above, pp. 131-3.

[1119] Cf. Riehl, Philos. Krit. 2nd ed. i. pp. 488, 533. Cf. above, pp. 195-6, 198; below, pp. 404-5.

[1120] Critical Philosophy, i. bk. i. chap. v., especially pp. 437 and 440.

[1121] Theorie der Erfahrung, second edition, p. 384.

[1122] Op. cit. p. 532.

[1123] Cf. above, pp. 240-3.

[1124] For comment upon the definition of number, which Kant takes as being the schema of quantity, and upon the view of arithmetic which this definition may seem to imply, cf. above, p. 128 ff.

[1125] Cf. above, p. 192.

[1126] Cf. above, pp. 339-40, and below, pp. 357, 404 ff.

[1127] Cf. above, pp. 20, 25, 290-1; below, pp. 407, 412, 414-17.

[1128] E.g. Riehl, Philos. Krit. 2nd ed. i. pp. 535-6.

[1129] Above, pp. 258, 332-3.

[1130] A 148 = B 188.

[1131] A 156 = B 195.

[1132] A 157 = B 196.

[1133] A 24.

[1134] § 13, Anmerkung i.

[1135] B 40-1.

[1136] B 110.

[1137] A 160 = B 199-200.

[1138] Cf. above, pp. 288-9.

[1139] A 161-2 = B 201-2.

[1140] Cf. below, pp. 510-11.

[1141] A 178-9 = B 221.

[1142] Cf. above, pp. 94-5.

[1143] Cf. below, pp. 358-9, 367-8, 371-2, 381-2.

[1144] Above, p. 309 ff.

[1145] Cf. Adickes, K. p. 190 n.

[1146] Cf. above, p. 127 ff.

[1147] That is to say, in the first edition.

[1148] The phrase is followed, it may be observed, by a verb in the irregular.

[1149] A 143 = B 182.

[1150] Loc. cit. in the chapter on Schematism.

[1151] Loc. cit. Italics not in Kant.

[1152] Cf. A 175 = B 217. Cf. above, pp. 350-1.

[1153] B 217-18.

[1154] Cf. above, pp. 192, 341.

[1155] A 169-70 = B 211-12. For comment upon Kant’s view of the point as a limit, cf. below, p. 489 ff.

[1156] Though Kant maintains in A 171 = B 212-13 that owing to our dependence upon empirical data and our necessary ignorance of the nature of the causal relation we cannot similarly demonstrate the principle of the continuity of change, he has himself, in characteristically inconsistent fashion, given three such demonstrations. Cf. below, pp. 380-1.

[1157] Cf. Kant’s Monadologia physica (1756), and New Doctrine of Motion and Rest (1758). Kant’s final statement of this dynamical theory is given in his Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science (1786).

[1158] In this matter Kant regards himself as defending the Newtonian theory of an attractive gravitational force. The mechanistic view admits only one form of action, viz. transference of motion through impact and pressure. “From ... Democritus to Descartes, indeed up to our own day, the mechanistic method of explanation ... has, under the title of atomism or corpuscular philosophy, maintained its authority with but slight modification; and has continued to exercise its influence upon the principles of natural science. Its essential teaching consists in the assumption of the absolute impenetrability of primitive matter, in the absolute homogeneity of its constitution (difference of shape being the sole remaining difference), and in the absolutely indestructible coherence of matter in its fundamental corpuscles” (Metaphysical First Principles, W. vol. iv. p. 533; ii. Allgemeine Anmerkung, 4).

[1159] This is additional to its other correlative assumption of the absolute void. “The absolute void and the absolutely full are in the doctrine of nature very much what blind chance and blind fate are in metaphysical cosmology, namely, a barrier to the enquiring reason, which either causes its place to be taken by arbitrary fictions, or lays it to rest on the pillow of obscure qualities” (Metaphysical First Principles, W. vol. iv. p. 532 (I read forschende for herrschende)). “There are only two methods of procedure ...: the mechanistic, through combination of the absolutely full with the absolute void, or an opposite dynamical method, that of explaining all material differences through mere differences in the combination of the original forces of repulsion and attraction” (loc. cit.).

[1160] In the first edition Kant formulates this principle in the light of his extremely misleading distinction between mathematical and dynamical principles (cf. above, pp. 345-7): “All appearances, as regards their existence, are subject a priori to rules determining their relation to one another in one time.”

[1161] Cf. below, p. 358.

[1162] In A 182 = B 225 the stronger term change (Wechsel) is employed.

[1163] A 178-80 = B 221-3 (on the distinction between mathematical and dynamical principles) has been commented upon above, pp. 345-7.

[1164] Philos. Krit. 2nd ed. i. p. 545. Caird adopts a similar view, i. pp. 540, 580.

[1165] A 181 = B 224.

[1166] Cf. below, pp. 373-4.

[1167] That is to say, in the first edition.

[1168] Cf. above, pp. 332-3, 343-4.

[1169] Cf. above, p. 348; below, pp. 367-8, 371-2, 381-2.

[1170] Cf. above, pp. 94, 135-8, 309 ff., 347-8.

[1171] That is to say, in the first edition.

[1172] The new proof added in the second edition calls for no special comment. In all essentials it agrees with this second proof of the first edition. It differs only in such ways as are called for by the mode of formulating the principle in the second edition.

[1173] This statement, as Caird has pointed out (i. p. 541), is extremely questionable. “It may be objected that to say that ‘time itself does not change’ is like saying that passing away does not itself pass away. So far the endurance of time and the permanence of the changing might even seem to mean only that the moments of time never cease to pass away, and the changing never ceases to change. A perpetual flux would therefore sufficiently ‘represent’ all the permanence that is in time.” This is not, however, in itself a vital objection to Kant’s argument. For he is here stating more than his argument really requires. Events are dated in a single time, not in an unchanging time. Kant’s statement betrays the extent to which, as Bergson has very justly pointed out, Kant spatialises time, i.e. interprets it on the analogy of space. It is based on “the mixed idea of a measurable time, which is space in so far as it is homogeneity, and duration in so far as it is succession; that is to say, at bottom, the contradictory idea of succession in simultaneity” (Les Données immédiates, p. 173, Eng. trans. p. 228).

[1174] Cf. A 184 = B 227: “the proposition, that substance is permanent, is tautological.”

[1175] Cf. A 188 = B 231.

[1176] Above, p. 341.

[1177] Cf. above, p. 309 ff.

[1178] B. Erdmann’s edition of the Nachträge, lxxx. p. 32. Cited by Caird, i. pp. 541-2.

[1179] Op. cit. pp. 33-4.

[1180] That Kant does not mean to imply that the category of substance has no application to the contents of inner sense is made clear by a curious argument in the Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science (1786), W. iv. p. 542: “What in this proof essentially characterises substance, which is possible only in space and under spatial conditions, and therefore only as object of the outer senses, is that its quantity cannot be increased or diminished without substance coming into being or ceasing to be. For the quantity of an object which is possible only in space must consist of parts which are external to one another, and these, therefore, if they are real (something movable), must necessarily be substances. On the other hand, that which is viewed as object of inner sense can, as substance, have a quantity which does not consist of parts external to one another. Its parts are therefore not substances, and their coming into being and ceasing to be must not be regarded as creation or annihilation of a substance. Their increase or diminution is therefore possible without prejudice to the principle of the permanence of substance.” (Italics not in Kant.) Cf. also Prolegomena, § 49, and below, pp. 367, 377 n. 3.

[1181] A 187 = B 230.

[1182] K. p. 211 n.

[1183] C. A 205-7 = B 252.

[1184] Werke (Frauenstädt, 1873), i. p. 85 ff.

[1185] As evidence of this failure I may cite Schopenhauer’s comment upon A 371 and 372: “From these passages it is quite clear that for Kant the perception of outer things in space is antecedent to all application of the causal law, and that this law does not therefore enter into it as its element and condition: mere sensation amounts in Kant’s view to perception” (Werke, i. p. 81). Even when, as in the passages referred to, Kant is speaking in his most subjectivist vein, he gives no justification for any such assertion. Schopenhauer, notwithstanding his sincere admiration for Kant—“I owe what is best in my own system to the impression made upon me by the works of Kant, by the sacred writings of the Hindoos, and by Plato” (World as Will and Idea, Werke, ii. p. 493, Eng. trans. ii. p. 5)—is one of the most unreliable of Kant’s critics. His comments are extremely misleading, and largely for the reason that he was interested in Kant only as he could obtain from him confirmation of his own philosophical tenets. Several of these tenets he certainly derived directly from the Critique; but they are placed by him in so entirely different a setting that their essential meaning is greatly altered. We have already noted (above, p. 41) Schopenhauer’s exaggerated statement of Kant’s intuitive theory of mathematics. Kant’s subjectivism is similarly expounded in a one-sided and quite unrepresentative manner (cf. below, p. 407 n.). Hutchison Stirling’s criticisms of Kant in his Text Book to Kant are vitiated by a similar failure to recognise the completely un-Critical character of the occasional passages in which Kant admits a distinction between “judgments of perception” and “judgments of experience” (cf. above, pp. 288-9). Stirling (cf. below, p. 377) has amplified his criticism of Kant in Princeton Review (Jan. 1879, pp. 178-210), Fortnightly Review (July 1872), and in Mind (ix., 1884, p. 531, and x., 1885, p. 45).

[1186] Cf. above, pp. 240-2, 365, and below, p. 377.

[1187] Cf. Stout, Manual of Psychology, third edition, pp. 444-6: “Unless we assume from the outset that the primitive mind treats a perceived change which challenges its interest and attention, not as something self-existent in isolation, but as something conditioned by and conditioning other changes, it seems hopeless to attempt to show how this causal point of view could have arisen through any extension of knowledge in accordance with ascertained psychological laws and conditions.... There is good reason for denying that customary repetition is even required to furnish a first occasion or opportunity for the first emergence of the apprehension of causal relations. For, as we have already insisted, the process of learning by experience is from the first experimental.... Regularities are only found because they are sought. But it is in the seeking that the category of causal unity is primarily involved.” Cf. below, pp. 371-2.

[1188] A 193 = B 238.

[1189] A 191 = B 236.

[1190] By an “arbitrary” order Kant does not, of course, mean an order of succession that is not determined, but only one that is determined by subjectively conditioned direction of attention. Cf. below, p. 377.

[1191] Cf. A 199 = B 244, and above, pp. 133, 288-9; below, p. 377.

[1192] Cf. A 195-6 = B 240-1, and above, pp. 172, 176 ff., 182-3, 263 ff., 277-8.

[1193] A 736-7 = B 765. Italics of last sentence not in Kant.

[1194] A 189-94 = B 234-9: first to fourth paragraphs (first edition).

[1195] Cf. above, pp. 348, 358.

[1196] Cf. A 192-3 = B 238-9.

[1197] Cf. Riehl, Philosophischer Kriticismus (second edition), i. pp. 551-2. While recognising the above main point, Riehl seems to assert that empirical sequence determines the application of the causal concept. It would be truer, and more in accordance with the position which Kant is endeavouring to establish, to assert that appeal to constancy of sequence enables us to determine which antecedents of any given event are causal conditions. The principle of causality is already applied when the sequent experiences are apprehended as sequent events. This ambiguity, however, would seem to be due only to Riehl’s mode of expression. For, as he himself says (p. 551), the law of causality is a ground of experience, and cannot therefore be derived from it. Cf. above, pp. 267-8, 367.

[1198] Pp. 365-71, 377.

[1199] A 191 = B 236. Cf. above, pp. 216-18.

[1200] As pointed out above, this is really a secondary meaning which Kant reads into the term analogy; it is not the true explanation of his choice of the term.

[1201] Critical Philosophy of Kant, vol. i. pp. 540, 580.

[1202] Kant, p. 198: trans. by Creighton and Lefevre, p. 196.

[1203] Cf. above, pp. 270 ff., 313-21.

[1204] Kant, of course, recognises that we cannot make any such positive assertion; to do so would be to transcend the limits imposed by Critical principles. Cf. below, p. 382.

[1205] A 194-6 = B 239-41: fifth to seventh paragraphs (first edition).

[1206] A 196-9 = B 241-4: eighth to tenth paragraphs (first edition).

[1207] A 199-201 = B 244-6: eleventh to thirteenth paragraphs (first edition).

[1208] Cf. above, pp. 224 ff., 264 ff.; below, 377.

[1209] A 201-2 = B 246-7: fourteenth paragraph (first edition).

[1210] B 233-4: second paragraph (second edition).

[1211] B 233-4.

[1212] From A 202 = B 247 to the end.

[1213] Kant’s phenomenalist substitute for the Cartesian subjectivism (cf. above, pp. 270 ff., 312 ff.) enables him to develop this thesis in a consistent and thoroughgoing manner. The subjective is a subspecies within the class of what is determined by natural law; and the principle of causality is therefore applicable to subjective change in the same rigorous fashion as to the objectively sequent.

[1214] A 204 = B 249.

[1215] W. i. pp. 87-92.

[1216] Grundsätze der reinen Erkenntniss-Theorie, p. 151. Quoted and translated by Caird, i. p. 572. Caird sums up the matter in a sentence (p. 571): “Kant is showing, not that objective succession is always causal, but that the determination of a succession of perceptions as referring to a succession of states in an object, involves the principle of causality.”

[1217] Loc. cit.

[1218] The connected question how we can determine the ball and the cushion as objectively coexistent is the problem of the third Analogy.

[1219] III. Erklärung 1 and 2, Lehrsatz 1 (especially Anmerkung thereto). Cf. also II. Erklärung 1 and 5, and the last pages of the Allgemeine Anmerkung.

[1220] Pp. 351, 373-4. Cf. pp. 318-21.

[1221] A 170-1 = B 212-13, above, p. 353, n. 2.

[1222] A 208 = B 253-4.

[1223] Metaphysical First Principles, II. Lehrsatz 4, Anmerkung 2.

[1224] A 209-10 = B 255-6.

[1225] A 210 = B 256.

[1226] W. ii. p. 22.

[1227] W. ii. p. 168.

[1228] Loc. cit.

[1229] For lack of a more suitable English equivalent I have translated Gemeinschaft as “communion.” As Kant points out in A 213 = B 260, the German term is itself ambiguous, signifying commercium (i.e. dynamical interaction) as well as communio.

[1230] Cf. above, pp. 348, 358-9, 367-8, 371-2.

[1231] § 17 ff. Cf. Nachträge zu Kants Kritik, lxxxvi, with B. Erdmann’s comment, p. 35.

[1232] A 211-12 = B 258. Cf. A 211 = B 257.

[1233] A 211 = B 257.

[1234] A 211-13 = B 258-60: first three paragraphs (first edition).

[1235] A 213-14 = B 260-1: fourth paragraph (first edition).

[1236] A 214-15 = B 261-2: fifth paragraph (first edition).

[1237] Cf. above, pp. 189-90, 208 ff.

[1238] B 257-8: first paragraph (second edition).

[1239] Cf. B 291-3, partially quoted above, pp. 310-11. In the Metaphysical First Principles (III. Lehrsatz, 4) the principle that action and reaction are always equal is similarly limited to the outer relations of material bodies in space, and Kant adds that all change in bodies is motion. Cf. W. xi. p. 234; and above, p. 147.

[1240] Above pp. 311-12; below, pp. 473-7.

[1241] A 213 = B 260.

[1242] The inconsistency of Kant’s view of pure manifolds of time and space with the argument of the Analytic of Principles is too obvious to call for detailed comment.

[1243] Cf. B 257.

[1244] A 213-14 = B 260-1.

[1245] B 257.

[1246] Third edition, p. 438.

[1247] Stout does not himself offer it as complete.

[1248] World as Will and Idea, W. ii. pp. 544-5: Eng. trans. ii. pp. 61-3.

[1249] Cf. above, p. 197.

[1250] A 212-13 = B 259.

[1251] B 258.

[1252] Op. cit. pp. 545-6: Eng. trans. p. 63.

[1253] Op. cit. pp. 546-7: Eng. trans. pp. 63-5.

[1254] Cf. above, p. 379.

[1255] Cf. Stadler, Grundsätze, p. 124.

[1256] Op. cit. p. 546: Eng. trans. p. 63.

[1257] Cf. above, pp. 97-8, 102 n., 165-6; below, pp. 429 ff., 447 ff., 547 ff.

[1258] Cf. Adickes, K. p. 233 n.

[1259] A 222 = B 269. Cf. A 220 = B 268.

[1260] A 148 ff. = B 187 ff.

[1261] A 219 = B 266.

[1262] This, by Kant’s own account (A 232-4 = B 285-7), is what led him to adopt the title ‘postulates.’ A geometrical postulate does not add anything to the concept of its object but only defines the conditions of its production.

[1263] Cf. above, pp. 38-9; below, pp. 398-9, 418 ff.

[1264] Cf. A 220-3 = B 267-71.

[1265] A 223 = B 270.

[1266] Cf. A 220 = B 268.

[1267] A 223 = B 270-1.

[1268] K. p. 223 n.

[1269] A 224 = B 272.

[1270] Cf. above, pp. 288-9.

[1271] A 225 = B 272. Cf. above, pp. 394-6.

[1272] A 225 = B 273. Italics not in Kant.

[1273] The Critical Philosophy of Kant, i. p. 591.

[1274] Op. cit. p. 595.

[1275] A 226 = B 273-4.

[1276] A 226 ff. = B 279 ff.

[1277] A 218 = B 281.

[1278] A 232 = B 284.

[1279] A 231 = B 284.

[1280] Cf. above, p. 309 ff.

[1281] Kant’s argument in the note to B 290 is that of his early essay on Negative Quantity. Cf. below, pp. 527 ff., 533 ff., 536.

[1282] A 236 = B 295.

[1283] Cf. above, pp. xxxv-vi, xxxviii, 185-6, 191, 195-6, 257-8, 290-1, 325 ff., 339.

[1284] The mathematical illustrations which Kant proceeds to give (A 239 = B 299) are peculiarly crude and off-hand in manner of statement. Cf. per contra A 140 = B 179 for Kant’s real view of the distinction between image, schema, and concept.

[1285] Cf. above, pp. 195-6, 198, 339-42.

[1286] A 243 = B 301.

[1287] A 242 = B 302.

[1288] Cf. A 248 = B 305.

[1289] A 246-7 = B 303-4. A 247-8 = B 304-5 (beginning “Thought is the action,” etc.) is merely a repetition of the preceding argument, and probably represents a later intercalation.

[1290] Beginning “Appearances, so far as ...,” which was omitted in the second edition. It probably constitutes, as Adickes maintains (K. p. 254 n.), the original beginning of this chapter. The “as we have hitherto maintained” of its second paragraph, which obviously cannot apply to the pages which precede it in its present position, must refer to the argument of the Analytic.

[1291] A 249, 251.

[1292] Above, p. 204 ff.

[1293] In large part it represents the Critical position as understood by Schopenhauer, who never succeeded in acquiring any genuine understanding of Kant’s more mature teaching (cf. above, p. 366 n.). Schopenhauer is correct in maintaining that one chief ground of Kant’s belief in the existence of things in themselves lies in his initial assumption that they must be postulated in order to account for the given manifold. Schopenhauer is also justified in stating that Kant, though starting from the dualistic Cartesian standpoint, so far modified it as to conclude that the origin of this manifold must be “objective, since there is no ground for regarding it as subjective” (Parerga und Paralipomena, 1851 ed., p. 74 ff.). But for two reasons this is a very incomplete, and therefore extremely misleading, account of Kant’s final teaching. In the first place, Schopenhauer fails to take account of Kant’s implied distinction between the sensations of the special senses and the manifold of outer sense. When Kant recognises that the sensations of the special senses are empirically conditioned, he is constrained in consistency to distinguish between them and the manifold which constitutes the matter of all experiences (cf. above, p. 275 ff.). Things in themselves, in accounting for the latter, account also, but in quite indirect fashion, for the former. Though sensations are empirically conditioned, the entire natural world is noumenally grounded. Secondly, Kant’s subjectivism undergoes a similar transformation on its inner or mental side. The analysis of self-consciousness, which is given both in the Deductions and in the Paralogisms, indicates with sufficient clearness Kant’s recognition that the form of experience is as little self-explanatory as its content, and that it must not, without such proof as, owing to the limitations of our experience, we are debarred from giving, be regarded as more ultimate in nature. The realities which constitute and condition our mental processes are not apprehended in any more direct manner than the thing in itself. When, therefore, Schopenhauer asserts in the World as Will and Idea (Werke, Frauenstädt, ii. p. 494, Eng. trans, ii. p. 6) that Kant proves the world to be merely phenomenal by demonstrating that it is conditioned by the intellect, he is emphasising what is least characteristic in Kant’s teaching. Schopenhauer’s occasional identification of the intellect with the brain—the nearest approximation in his writings to what may be described as phenomenalism—itself suffices to show how entirely he is lacking in any firm grasp of Critical principles.

[1294] As we have noted (above, p. 204 ff.), the doctrine of the transcendental object was entirely eliminated from those main sections that were rewritten or substantially altered in the second edition, namely, the chapters on the Transcendental Deduction, on Phenomena and Noumena, and on the Paralogisms. That it remained in the section on Amphiboly, in the Second Analogy, and in the Antinomies is sufficiently explained by Kant’s unwillingness to make the very extensive alterations which such further rewriting would have involved.

[1295] A 251.

[1296] Not even, as Kant teaches in his doctrine of inner sense, in the inner world of apperception, cf. above, p. 295 ff.

[1297] Kant claims in the Dialectic that this process is also unavoidable, constituting what he calls “transcendental illusion.”

[1298] A 254-7 = B 310-12.

[1299] A 255 = B 310-11.

[1300] Cf. below, p. 412 ff.

[1301] A 256 = B 312. For A 257 = B 312 on the empirical manner of distinguishing between the sensuous and the intelligible, cf. above, pp. 143 ff., 149 ff.

[1302] Cf. above, pp. 143-4, 147, 214-15, 291 ff.

[1303] Kant here (A 286 = B 342) speaks of this concept of the noumenon as an object of non-sensuous intuition as being “merely negative.” This is apt to confuse the reader, as he usually comes to it after having read the passage introduced into the chapter on Phenomena and Noumena in the second edition, in which, as above noted (p. 409), Kant describes this meaning of the term as positive, in distinction from its more negative meaning as signifying a thing merely so far as it is not an object of our sense-intuition. Cf. below, p. 413.

[1304] Kant’s meaning here is not quite clear. He may mean either that the categories as such are inapplicable to things in themselves, or that, as this form of intuition is altogether different from our own, it will not help in giving meaning to the categories. What follows would seem to point to the former view.

[1305] A 286 = B 343.

[1306] A 287-8 = B 344.

[1307] A 288 = B 345.

[1308] A 288 = B 344. Kant allowed the section within which this passage occurs to remain, without the least modification, in the second edition.

[1309] Benno Erdmann’s explanation (Kriticismus, p. 194) of Kant’s omission of all references to the transcendental object, namely, because of their being likely to conduce to a mistaken idealistic interpretation of his teaching, we cannot accept. As already argued (above, p. 204 ff.), they represent a view which he had quite definitely and consciously outgrown.

[1310] B 306. Cf. above, pp. 290-1.

[1311] B 308. This, it may be noted, is in keeping with the passages above quoted from the section on Amphiboly.

[1312] A 255 = B 311.

[1313] Cf. above, p. 404 ff., especially pp. 409-10; also above, p. 331.

[1314] In order to form an adequate judgment upon Kant’s justification for distinguishing between appearance and reality the reader must bear in mind (1) the results obtained in the Transcendental Deduction (above, p. 270 ff.); (2) the discussions developed in the Paralogisms (below, p. 457 ff.); (3) the treatment of noumenal causality, that is of freedom, in the Third and Fourth Antinomies; (4) the many connected issues raised in the Ideal (below, pp. 534-7, 541-2), and in the Appendix to the Dialectic (below, p. 543 ff.). Professor Dawes Hicks is justified in maintaining in his book, die Begriffe Phänomenon und Noumenon in ihrem Verhältniss zu einander bei Kant (Leipzig, 1897, p. 167)—a work which unfortunately is not accessible to the English reader—that “the thing in itself is by no means a mere excrescence or addendum of the Kantian system, but forms a thoroughly necessary completion to the doctrine of appearances. At every turn in Kant’s thought the doctrine of the noumenon, in one form or another, plays an essential part.” Indeed it may be said that to state Kant’s reasons for asserting the existence of things in themselves, is to expound his philosophy as a whole. Upon this question there appears in Kant the same alternation of view as in regard to his other main tenets. On Kant’s discussion of the applicability of the category of existence to things in themselves, cf. above, p. 322 ff. Also, on Kant’s extension of the concepts possibility and actuality to noumena, cf. above, pp. 391 ff., 401-3.

[1315] ‘Ideal’ and ‘Idealist’ are printed with capitals, to mark the very special sense in which these terms are being used. As already noted (above, p. 3), the same remark applies to the term ‘Reason.’

[1316] Cf. above, pp. xli-ii, xliv, liii-v, 331.

[1317] A 260 ff. = B 316 ff.

[1318] Cf. above, pp. 38-9, 119, 131-3, 338-9, 394-400.

[1319] Above, p. xxx ff., and below, p. 601 ff.

[1320] Cf. A 267 = B 323.

[1321] Cf. Adickes’ Systematik, pp. 60, 70, 72, and 111-12.

[1322] A 270 = B 326.

[1323] Cf. A 264 = B 319, and A 266 = B 322.

[1324] Cf. below, pp. 563-5, 589 ff., 601 ff.

[1325] I have dwelt upon this at length in my Studies in the Cartesian Philosophy.

[1326] A 271 = B 327.

[1327] The un-Critical character of Kant’s doctrine of the pure concept has already been noted (above, pp. 418-19), and need not be further discussed.

[1328] A 272 = B 328.

[1329] A 273 = B 329.

[1330] This is Leibniz’s mode of stating the absolutist view of thought (cf. above, p. xxx ff.) to which, as we shall find, Kant gives much more adequate and incomparably deeper formulation in the Dialectic. Cf. pp. 430, 547 ff., 558 ff.

[1331] Adickes, K. p. 272 n., allows that the passage may be of earlier origin than the passages which precede and follow it.

[1332] Pp. 214-15.

[1333] As such it is commented on above, p. 410 ff.

[1334] Loc. cit.

[1335] A 290 = B 347.

[1336] Cf. above, p. 409 ff.

[1337] Kant’s commentators have frequently misrepresented this aspect of his teaching. Cf. below, pp. 498, 520-1, 527-37, 541-2, 543 ff., 555, 558-61.

[1338] A 490 = B 518.

[1339] Cf. above, pp. 416-17.

[1340] Those readers who are not already well acquainted with the argument of the Dialectic may be recommended to pass at once to p. 441. What here follows presupposes acquaintance with the nature and purposes of the main divisions of the Dialectic.

[1341] Introd. to Reflexionen, Bd. ii.

[1342] W. x. p. 123 ff. Cf. above, pp. 219-20.

[1343] Cf. Dissertation, § 27 n.

[1344] Op. cit. Cf. § 24 with § 27.

[1345] Op. cit. § 27.

[1346] Cf. ii. 567, 571, 584, 585.

[1347] Cf. ii. 1251 and 586.

[1348] Cf. below, pp. 458, 488 ff.

[1349] In Reflexionen ii. 573, 576, and 582 we find Kant in the very act of so doing. Compositio, co-ordinatio, and commercium are treated as synonymous terms.

[1350] The problem of freedom is first met with in Kant’s Lectures on Metaphysics (Pölitz, edition of 1821, pp. 89, 330), but is not there given as an antinomy, and is treated as falling within the field of theology. In Reflexion ii. 585, also, it is equated in terms of the category of ground and consequence, with the concept of Divine Existence, the “absolute or primum contingens (libertas).” Upon elimination of theology, and therefore of the cosmological argument, from the sphere of antinomy, Kant raised freedom to the rank of an independent problem.

[1351] A 462 = B 490.

[1352] Cf. below, pp. 498-9, 571 ff.

[1353] Cf. below, p. 454, with references in n. 1.

[1354] A 507 = B 535. Cf. below, pp. 481, 545-6.

[1355] Cf. ii. 93, 94, 95, 1233, 1247.

[1356] This is the view represented in Reflexionen ii. 94, 95.

[1357] Cf. Reflexionen ii. 124.

[1358] Cf. Reflexionen ii. 95.

[1359] Cf. below, p. 457.

[1360] Cf. ii. 86 ff.

[1361] Cf. Reflexionen ii. 114-15.

[1362] B 394 n. Immortality is here taken as representing the Idea of the soul as unconditioned substance.

[1363] Cf. below, p. 454, with further references in n. 1.

[1364] Systematik, pp. 115-16.

[1365] Above, p. 334.

[1366] This conclusion is supported by the evidence of the Reflexionen: they contain not a single reference to schematism.

[1367] A 293 = B 349.

[1368] Pp. 173-4.

[1369] Cf. A 61 = B 85.

[1370] Adickes, Systematik, p. 77 ff.

[1371] Cf. Kant’s caveat in A 293 = B 349 against identifying dialectic with the doctrine of probable reasoning.

[1372] Pp. 427-8.

[1373] A 298 = B 355.

[1374] Cf. above, p. 332.

[1375] Reicke, i. p. 105.

[1376] Op. cit. i. pp. 109-10.

[1377] A 301-2 = B 358.

[1378] A 303 = B 359.

[1379] A 305 = B 362.

[1380] The wording of the concluding sentence of the third paragraph (A 307 = B 363-4) is so condensed as to be misleading. “It [viz. the principle of causality] makes the unity of experience possible, and borrows nothing from the Reason. The latter, if it were not for this [its indirect] reference [through mediation of the understanding] to possible experience, could never [of itself], from mere concepts, have imposed a synthetic unity of that kind.”

[1381] A 310 = B 366.

[1382] Schein des Schliessens would seem to be here used in that sense.

[1383] Cf. above, p. 424.

[1384] Cf. also A 669 = B 697; A 680 = B 709.

[1385] Cf. Vaihinger, “Kant—ein Metaphysiker?” in Philosophische Abhandlungen (Sigwart Gedenkschrift), p. 144.

[1386] A 312 = B 368.

[1387] A 313 = B 370.

[1388] A 316-17 = B 373. The context of this passage is a defence of Plato’s Republic against the charge that it is Utopian, because unrealisable.

[1389] A 317-18 = B 374-5.

[1390] Reflexionen ii. 1240. Cf. Schopenhauer: World as Will and Idea (Werke, ii. p. 277: Eng. trans. i. p. 303): “The Idea is the unity that falls into multiplicity on account of the temporal and spatial form of our intuitive apprehension; the concept, on the contrary, is the unity reconstructed out of multiplicity by the abstraction of our reason; the latter may be defined as unitas post rem, the former as unitas ante rem.”

[1391] Lectures on Metaphysics (Pölitz, 1821), p. 79.

[1392] Reflexionen ii. 1243.

[1393] Lectures on Metaphysics, pp. 308-9.

[1394] Reflexionen ii. 1244.

[1395] Reflexionen ii. 1254.

[1396] Reflexionen ii. 1258.

[1397] Reflexionen ii. 1259.

[1398] Reflexionen ii. 1260.

[1399] A 320 = B 376-7.

[1400] A 321 = B 377.

[1401] A 323-4 = B 380-1. Cf. below, pp. 480, 529, 559-60.

[1402] Regarding the progressive series from the conditioned to its consequences, cf. A 336-7 = B 393-4, A 410-11 = B 437-8, A 511 = B 539.

[1403] A 333 = B 390.

[1404] Cf. above, pp. 418, 436, 439-40; below, pp. 473-7, 520-1, 537, 543 ff., 575.

[1405] Cf. A 335.

[1406] Cf. A 337-8 = B 394-6 and note appended to B 394.

[1407] A 336 = B 393.

[1408] Cf. A 671 = B 699; above, pp. 426, 430, 436; below, pp. 552-4, 572 ff.

[1409] On the difference between the ascending and the descending series, cf. A 331-2 = B 338 and A 410-11 = B 437-8.

[1410] The questions raised in the two introductory paragraphs (A 336-40 = B 396-8) as to the content of the Ideas, their problematic character, and their possibility as concepts, are first adequately discussed in later chapters. The three new terms here introduced, Paralogism, Antinomy, and Ideal, can also best be commented upon in their own special context.

[1411] A 341 = B 399.

[1412] Cf. below, pp. 466, 470.

[1413] A 347.

[1414] A 345-6 = B 403-4.

[1415] Cf. A 354-5.

[1416] Cf. above, p. 437.

[1417] A 348.

[1418] A 351.

[1419] A 363-4.

[1420] A 351.

[1421] K. 688 n.

[1422] A similar criticism holds true of the conception of identity employed in the third Paralogism, and arbitrarily equated with the categories of quantity.

[1423] Cf. A 355-6.

[1424] It is very forcibly developed in Mendelssohn’s “Phädon” (1767) (Gesammelte Schriften, 1843, ii. p. 151 ff.). This is a work with which Kant was familiar. Cf. below, p. 470.

[1425] This is the argument which William James has expounded in his characteristically picturesque style. “Take a sentence of a dozen words, and take twelve men and tell to each one word. Then stand the men in a row or jam them in a bunch, and let each think of his word as intently as he will; nowhere will there be a consciousness of the whole sentence” (Principles of Psychology, i. p. 160).

[1426] A 363 n. Cf. below, pp. 461-2.

[1427] A 356. Cf. Adickes, K. p. 688 n.

[1428] The argument is here in harmony with Kant’s definition of transcendental illusion.

[1429] A 358.

[1430] A 361.

[1431] A 364.

[1432] William James’s psychological description of self-consciousness is simply an extension of this illustration. Cf. Principles of Psychology, i. p. 339; quoted above, p. 278 n.

[1433] A 363 n.

[1434] A 362-3 and A 364. We must also, however, bear in mind that in this chapter Kant occasionally argues in ad hominem fashion from the point of view of the position criticised.

[1435] Cf. A 353-4.

[1436] Cf. Adickes, K. p. 695 n.

[1437] A 366.

[1438] P. 301 ff.

[1439] The note to A 344 has evidently got displaced; it must, as Adickes points out, belong to A 404.

[1440] Cf. above, pp. 320, 455.

[1441] A 371-2.

[1442] A 380-1.

[1443] Cf. A 383.

[1444] A 383.

[1445] A 383.

[1446] A 381.

[1447] The first four paragraphs are probably a later intercalation (Adickes, K. p. 708 n.), since they connect both with the introductory sections of the Dialectic and with the Introduction to the Critique. Also, the opening words of the fifth paragraph seem to refer us not to anything antecedent in this section, but directly to the concluding passages of the fourth Paralogism.

[1448] A 385.

[1449] A 393.

[1450] A 387.

[1451] Cf. above, pp. 215-16.

[1452] A 393-4.

[1453] A 394.

[1454] Pp. 326-7.

[1455] Pp. 327-8.

[1456] A 402. Cf. B 407.

[1457] K. p. 717 n.

[1458] Cf. below, p. 470.

[1459] B 406 ff.

[1460] Kriticismus, p. 227, cf. p. 106 ff.

[1461] A. H. Ulrichs, Institutiones logicae et metaphysicae (1785).

[1462] In his review of Kant’s Prolegomena in the Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek (1784).

[1463] Obviously by categories Kant here really means schemata. Cf. A 348, where Kant states that “pure categories ... have in themselves no objective meaning.... Apart from intuition they are merely functions of a judgment, without content.”

[1464] Above, pp. 404 ff., 413 ff.

[1465] B 408.

[1466] Critical Philosophy, ii. p. 34. So also in Watson’s Kant Explained, p. 244.

[1467] Caird (op. cit. p. 35) takes account of Kant’s conception of a possible intuitive understanding, but illegitimately assumes that by it he must mean a creative understanding.

[1468] Cf. above, p. 295 ff.

[1469] Cf. B 415 n. In B xxxix. n. (at the end), quoted above pp. 309-10, Kant is careful to point out that the representation of something permanent is by no means identical with permanent representation.

[1470] P. 463.

[1471] Namely, as Refutation of Idealism, B 274 ff. Cf. above, p. 308 ff.

[1472] Cf. above, pp. 457, 462-3.

[1473] A 402.

[1474] Cf. above, p. 466.

[1475] B 413-15.

[1476] Gesammelte Schriften, ii. p. 151 ff.

[1477] Op. cit. p. 121 ff.

[1478] Op. cit. pp. 128 ff., 168.

[1479] Op. cit. p. 125 ff.

[1480] Regarding the value of the hypotheses propounded by Kant in his note to B 415, cf. below, p. 543 ff.

[1481] P. 321 ff.

[1482] Cf. above, p. 467.

[1483] Pp. 473-7.

[1484] Kriticismus, p. 226.

[1485] B 424.

[1486] B 421.

[1487] B 424-5.

[1488] B 425-6. Cf. above, pp. lvi-lxi; below, p. 570 ff.

[1489] The only approach to such a reference is in B 426-7, noted above, p. 471.

[1490] A 672 = B 700. Cf. below, p. 554.

[1491] A 649 = B 677-8. Tetens in his Philosophische Versuche (1777) had devoted an entire chapter to this question. His term Grundkraft is that which Kant here employs. Cf. Philosophische Versuche, Bd. i., Elfter Versuch: “Concerning the fundamental power of the human soul.” Incidentally Tetens discusses Rousseau’s suggestion that this fundamental power consists in man’s capacity for perfecting himself. Cf. Kant’s Lectures on Metaphysics (Pölitz, 1821, p. 192 ff.).

[1492] A 682-4 = B 710-12. A 771-2 = B 799 in the Methodology is similarly ambiguous, though tending to the spiritualist mode of formulation.

[1493] Cf. above, pp. 275-6, 279 ff., 312 ff., 384-5, 464-5.

[1494] Cf. end of B xxxix. n., quoted above, pp. 309-10.

[1495] A 405 = B 432.

[1496] A 408 = B 435.

[1497] Cf. A 414 = B 441, where it is stated that there is no transcendental Idea of the substantial.

[1498] Cf. above, p. 434 ff.

[1499] A 419 = B 447.

[1500] A 420 = B 447.

[1501] A very curious sentence in Kant’s letter to Schulze (W. x. pp. 344-5, quoted above, p. 199) seems to be traceable to this source.

[1502] Cf. below, pp. 529, 559-60, and above, pp. 199-200, 433-4, 451. For A 410-11 = B 439-40 on the difference between the ascending and descending series, cf. A 331-2 = B 387-8 and A 336-7 = B 393-4.

[1503] A 420 = B 448.

[1504] Cf. per contra A 486 = B 514.

[1505] The limitation of Kant’s discussion to space, time, and causality is, of course, due to his acceptance of the current view that the concepts of infinity and continuity are derived from our intuitions of space and time. As we have already noted in discussing his intuitional theory of mathematical reasoning (above, pp. 40-1, 117 ff., 128 ff.), he fails to extend to mathematical concepts his own “transcendental” view of the categories, namely, as conditioning the possibility of intuitional experience. Such concepts as order, plurality, whole and part, continuity, infinity, are prior to time and space in the logical order of thought; and to be adequately treated must be considered in their widest application.

[1506] Cf. A 507 = B 535, and above, p. 431 ff.; below, pp. 501, 545-6.

[1507] Cf. Kant’s posthumously published Transition from the Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science to Physics (Altpreussische Monatsschrift, 1882), pp. 279-80: “If we take in regard to space, not its definition, but only an a priori proposition, e.g. that space is a whole which must be thought only as part of a still greater whole, it is clear ... that it is an irrational magnitude, measurable indeed, but in its comparison with unity transcending all number.” “If space is something objectively existent, it is a magnitude which can exist only as part of another given magnitude.”

[1508] Cf. Schopenhauer, World as Will and Idea (Werke, Frauenstädt, ii. pp. 585-6; Eng. trans, ii. pp. 107-8). “I find and assert that the whole antinomy is a mere delusion, a sham fight. Only the assertions of the antitheses really rest upon the forms of our faculty of knowledge, i.e. if we express it objectively, on the necessary, a priori certain, most universal laws of nature. Their proofs alone are therefore drawn from objective grounds. On the other hand, the assertions and proofs of the theses have no other than a subjective ground, rest solely on the weakness of the reasoning individual; for his imagination becomes tired with an endless regression, and therefore he puts an end to it by arbitrary assumptions, which he tries to smooth over as well as he can; and his judgment, moreover, is in this case paralysed by early and deeply imprinted prejudices. On this account the proof of the thesis in all the four conflicts is throughout a mere sophism, while that of the antithesis is a necessary inference of the reason from the laws of the world as idea known to us a priori. It is, moreover, only with great pains and skill that Kant is able to sustain the thesis, and make it appear to attack its opponent, which is endowed with native power.... I shall show that the proofs which Kant adduces of the individual theses are sophisms, while those of the antitheses are quite fairly and correctly drawn from objective grounds.”

[1509] Cf. F. Erhardt’s Kritik der Kantischen Antinomienlehre (1888), a brief but excellent analysis of this section of the Critique.

[1510] § 1 n.

[1511] Cf. A 431-2 = B 460-1: “...the concept [of the infinite] is not the concept of a maximum; by it we think only its relation to any assignable unit, in respect to which it is greater than all number.”

[1512] Cf. Kant’s statement in the Observation to this antithesis, A 431-3 = B 459-61.

[1513] Kant regarded the point as a limit, i.e. as a boundary (Dissertation, § 14, 4; § 15, C: “The simple in space is not a part but a limit”; A 169-70 = B 211); whereas certain modern mathematicians take the point as one of the undefined elements. When the point is regarded in this latter manner, space may perhaps be satisfactorily defined as a set of points. In arguing for the antithesis, and in the passages just cited, Kant also assumes that, in the case of space, the properties of the class are determined by the properties of its elements. This questionable assumption is involved in his assertion that space can consist only of spaces.

[1514] A 438 = B 466.

[1515] A 439-41 = B 467-9.

[1516] A 441 = B 469.

[1517] Developed in the Dissertation (1770).

[1518] Zweites Hauptstück, Lehrsatz 4, Anmerkung 1. Cf. also Anmerkung 2.

[1519] Principles of Mathematics, i. p. 460.

[1520] Cf. above, p. 481 n. 2.

[1521] P. 489 n.

[1522] Cf. Schopenhauer, World as Will and Idea (Werke, Frauenstädt, ii. p. 590; Eng. trans. ii. pp. 111-12). “The argument for the third thesis is a very fine sophism, and is really Kant’s pretended principle of pure reason itself entirely unadulterated and unchanged. It tries to prove the finiteness of the series of causes by saying that, in order to be sufficient, a cause must contain the complete sum of the conditions from which the succeeding state, the effect, proceeds. For the completeness of the determinations present together in the state which is the cause, the argument now substitutes the completeness of the series of causes by which that state itself was brought to actuality; and because completeness presupposes the condition of being rounded off or closed in, and this again presupposes finiteness, the argument infers from this a first cause, closing the series and therefore unconditioned. But the juggling is obvious. In order to conceive the state A as the sufficient cause of the state B, I assume that it contains the sum of the necessary determinations from the coexistence of which the state B inevitably follows. Now by this my demand upon it as a sufficient cause is entirely satisfied, and has no direct connection with the question how the state A itself came to be; this rather belongs to an entirely different consideration, in which I regard the said state A no more as cause, but as itself an effect; in which case another state again must be related to it, just as it was related to B. The assumption of the finiteness of the series of causes and effects, and accordingly of a first beginning, appears nowhere in this as necessary, any more than the presentness of the present moment requires us to assume a beginning of time itself.”

[1523] Op. cit. p. 24.

[1524] For comment upon Kant’s defence of his procedure cf. below, p. 496.

[1525] Cf. Kant’s Observation on the thesis.

[1526] A 451 = B 479.

[1527] Cf. also A 451 = B 479.

[1528] Cf. Schopenhauer, op. cit. p. 591; Eng. trans. p. 113. “The fourth conflict is ... really tautological with the third; and the proof of the thesis is also essentially the same as that of the preceding one. Kant’s assertion that every conditioned presupposes a complete series of conditions, and therefore a series which ends with an unconditioned, is a petitio principii which must simply be denied. Everything conditioned presupposes nothing but its condition; that this is again conditioned raises a new consideration which is not directly contained in the first.”

[1529] Above, p. 494.

[1530] A 459 = B 487.

[1531] Jean Jacques Dortous de Mairan (1678-1771), physicist and mathematician. In 1740 he succeeded Fontenelle as perpetual Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences.

[1532] Cf. above, pp. 435, 495 n. 4.

[1533] A 448-50 = B 476-8.

[1534] Cf. above, p. 427 ff.; below, pp. 520-1, 527-37, 541 ff.

[1535] A 462 = B 490.

[1536] Cf. above, pp. 434 ff., 479.

[1537] A 476 = B 504.

[1538] A 484 = B 512.

[1539] Ibid.

[1540] A 483 = B 511.

[1541] A 485 = B 513.

[1542] Cf. above, p. 481; below, pp. 545-6.

[1543] Kant is here playing on the double meaning of the German “sinnleeres”—“empty of sense” and “non-sense.”

[1544] A 489 = B 517.

[1545] A 490 = B 518.

[1546] Above, p. 426 ff.

[1547] A 490 = B 518.

[1548] Cf. above p. 204 ff.

[1549] A 494 = B 522-3.

[1550] A 495 = B 523.

[1551] Cf. A 494 = B 522-3: “...we can say of the transcendental object that it is given in itself prior to all experience.”

[1552] A 496 = B 524.

[1553] A 491 = B 519.

[1554] Pp. 306-7.

[1555] A 497 = B 525.

[1556] A 501-2 = B 529-30.

[1557] A 506 = B 534.

[1558] Cf. end of passage: “There can be no lack of conditions that are given through this regress.”

[1559] Cf. below, pp. 507-8.

[1560] Cf. below, pp. 507-9.

[1561] K. p. 414 n. The two last paragraphs of Section VII., which correct its argument, that of the Transcendental Aesthetic, are probably later additions.

[1562] A 508 = B 536.

[1563] Loc. cit.

[1564] As to the distinction between the ascending and the descending series, cf. above, pp. 453 n., 484.

[1565] Cf. A 522 = B 549-50.

[1566] A 514 = B 542.

[1567] Above, p. 506.

[1568] Cf. A 522 = B 550.

[1569] A 515 = B 543.

[1570] A 519-20 = B 547-8.

[1571] When Kant adds (A 521 = B 549), “and therefore absolutely also,” he inconsistently reverts to the position ambiguously suggested in A 499 = B 527. Cf. above, p. 506.

[1572] A 523-6 = B 551-4.

[1573] The assertion of infinite divisibility is not applicable, Kant states (A 526-7 = B 554-5), to bodies as organised, but only to bodies as mere occupants of space. Organisation involves distinction of parts, and therefore discreteness. How far organisation can go in organised bodies, experience alone can show us.

[1574] P. 508.

[1575] A 528 = B 556.

[1576] Cf. above, pp. 345-7.

[1577] A 535-6 = B 563-4.

[1578] Cf. A 537 = B 564-5; also A 546 = B 574-5, in which Kant asserts that man knows himself not only through the senses but “also through pure apperception, and indeed in actions and inner determinations which cannot be reckoned as impressions of the senses.” Such statements would seem to show that, at the time of writing, Kant had not yet developed his doctrine of inner sense.

[1579] A 532 = B 560.

[1580] A 536-7 = B 564-5.

[1581] A 533 = B 561.

[1582] A 536 = B 564.

[1583] A 538 = B 566.

[1584] Cf. Kant’s Uebergang von der metaph. Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft zur Physik (Altpreussische Monatsschrift (1882), pp. 272-3).

[1585] A 549 = B 577. Italics not in Kant.

[1586] In A 540 = B 568 a different and less satisfactory view finds expression.

[1587] A 542 = B 570.

[1588] A 544 = B 572.

[1589] A 546-7 = B 574-5.

[1590] A 548 = B 576.

[1591] A 552 = B 580.

[1592] A 553 = B 581.

[1593] A 557 = B 585.

[1594] A 553-4 = B 581-2.

[1595] Cf. A 537-41 = B 565-9 and A 544 = B 572.

[1596] Cf. A 566 = B 594.

[1597] Cf. above, p. 204 ff.

[1598] A 559 = B 587.

[1599] A 561 = B 589.

[1600] A 565 = B 593.

[1601] A 567 = B 593.

[1602] For Kant’s comparison of his Ideas with those of Plato, cf. above, pp. 447-9.

[1603] §§ 803 ff. in 5th edition (Halle, 1763).

[1604] A 578 = B 606.

[1605] A 580 = B 608.

[1606] Cf. above, p. 418 ff.

[1607] A 272-4 = B 328-30.

[1608] Cf. Kant’s distinction between distributive and collective unity in A 582-3 = B 610 with A 644 = B 672.

[1609] A 583 = B 611.

[1610] A 603 = B 631.

[1611] A 603-4 = B 631-2.

[1612] Cf. below, pp. 533, 536.

[1613] A 592 = B 620.

[1614] A 593 = B 621.

[1615] Cf. A 4-5 = B 8-9; A 735-8 = B 763-6.

[1616] Cf. above, pp. 427-8, and references there given.

[1617] Cf. above, p. 424.

[1618] Cf. above, p. 392 ff.

[1619] K. p. 475 n.

[1620] A 603 = B 631.

[1621] Cf. above, p. 527. The concluding paragraphs A 613-14 = B 641-2 can best be treated later in another connection. Cf. below, p. 536.

[1622] A 614 = B 642.

[1623] A 613 = B 641.

[1624] A 616 = B 644.

[1625] A 619-20 = B 647-8.

[1626] Cf. below, pp. 541-2, 552 ff.

[1627] A 620 = B 648.

[1628] A 624 = B 652.

[1629] Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755).

[1630] Critique of Judgment, §§ 64, 65.

[1631] Hamann completed his translation of Hume’s Dialogues on Natural Religion on August 7, 1780 (cf. Hamann’s Werke, vi. 154 ff.): and Kant, notwithstanding his being occupied in finishing the Critique, read through the manuscript. It is highly likely that this first perusal of Hume’s Dialogues not only confirmed Kant in his negative attitude towards natural theology, but also enabled him to define more clearly than he otherwise would have done, the negative consequences of his own Critical principles. The chapter on the Ideal, as we have already observed (above, pp. 434-5, 527-9, 531), was probably one of the last parts of the Critique to be brought into final form. It does not seem possible, however, to establish in any specific manner the exact influence which Hume’s Dialogues may thus have exercised upon the argument of this portion of the Critique. When Schreiter’s translation of the Dialogues appeared in 1781, Hamann, not unwilling to escape the notoriety of seeming to father so sceptical a work, withdrew his own translation.

[1632] This is the main point of Hume’s argument in Section XI. of his Enquiry concerning the Human Understanding.

[1633] A 631 = B 659.

[1634] A 641 = B 669.

[1635] Cf. above, p. 407 ff., and below, p. 552 ff.

[1636] Cf. above, p. 454, with further references in n. 1.

[1637] Cf. above, pp. 536-7.

[1638] A 642 = B 670.

[1639] A 769-82 = B 797-810.

[1640] A xiv, B xxiii-iv, and Reflexionen ii. 1451: “In metaphysics there can be no such thing as uncertainty.” Cf. above, pp. 10, 35.

[1641] A 770-1 = B 798-9.

[1642] A 772 = B 800.

[1643] A 775 = B 803.

[1644] Cf. A 781-2 = B 809-10.

[1645] Cf. above, pp. 481, 501.

[1646] A 777-8 = B 805-6.

[1647] A 782 = B 810.

[1648] Cf. above, pp. 97-8, 102, 390-1, 426 ff., 447 ff.

[1649] A 651 = B 679.

[1650] Loc. cit.

[1651] A 653 = B 681.

[1652] Dissertation, § 30.

[1653] The extremely un-Critical reason which Kant here (A 647 = B 675) gives for its necessarily remaining hypothetical is the “impossibility of knowing all possible consequences.” This use of the term hypothetical is also confusing in view of Kant’s criticism of the hypothetical employment of Reason in A 769 ff. = B 797 ff.

[1654] A 647 = B 675.

[1655] Loc. cit. and A 649 = B 677.

[1656] A 648 = B 676.

[1657] A 652 = B 680.

[1658] A 660-1 = B 688-9.

[1659] A 656 = B 684.

[1660] A 656 = B 684.

[1661] A 658 = B 686.

[1662] A 660 = B 688.

[1663] The opening paragraphs of the section, A 642-5 = B 670-3, may be of the same date as the concluding paragraphs.

[1664] Cf. per contra A 669-70 = B 697-8.

[1665] A 666 = B 694.

[1666] A 669 = B 697.

[1667] Cf. above, pp. 446-7.

[1668] Cf. A 681 = B 709.

[1669] Cf. per contra A 663-4 = B 691-2.

[1670] A 670 = B 698.

[1671] I may here guard against misunderstanding. Though the Ideas of Reason condition the experience which they regulate, this must not be taken as nullifying Kant’s fundamental distinction between the regulative and the constitutive. Even when he is developing his less sceptical view, he adopts, in metaphysics as in ethics, a position which is radically distinct from that of Hegel. Though the moral ideal represents reality of the highest order, it transcends all possible realisation of itself in human life. Though it conditions all our morality, it at the same time condemns it. The Christian virtue of humility defines the only attitude proper to the human soul. In an exactly similar manner, the fact that the Ideas of Reason have to be regarded as conditioning the possibility of sense-experience need not prevent us from also recognising that they likewise make possible our consciousness of its limitations.

[1672] Cf. above, pp. 473-7.

[1673] A 679 = B 707.

[1674] A 678 = B 706.

[1675] A 674 = B 702. Cf. A 678-9 = B 706-7.

[1676] A 680 = B 708.

[1677] As above noted (pp. 499 ff.), when we find Kant thus insisting upon the completely soluble character of all problems of pure Reason, the sceptical, subjectivist tendency is dominant.

[1678] A 669 = B 697.

[1679] Cf. above, pp. 536-7, 541-2.

[1680] A 686-7 = B 714-15.

[1681] A 693 = B 721.

[1682] A 699-700 = B 727-8.

[1683] A 701 = B 729.

[1684] Nearly all the important points raised in the Methodology, and several of its chief sections, I have commented upon in their connection with the earlier parts of the Critique. Also, the Methodology is extremely diffuse. For these reasons I have found it advisable to give such additional comment as seems necessary in the form of this Appendix.

[1685] On Kant’s use of the terms ‘discipline’ and ‘canon,’ cf. above, pp. 71-2, 170, 174, 438.

[1686] Cf. above, p. 438.

[1687] A 4-5 = B 8-9.

[1688] Untersuchung: Zweite Betrachtung, W. ii. p. 283.

[1689] Kant here disavows the position of the Untersuchung in which (Erste Betrachtung, § 4) he had asserted that mathematics deals with quantity and philosophy with qualities.

[1690] For comment upon this distinction, cf. above, pp. 131-3, 338-9.

[1691] Untersuchung: Erste Betrachtung, § 2.

[1692] A 728 = B 756.

[1693] Untersuchung: Zweite Betrachtung, W. ii. p. 283.

[1694] Untersuchung: Erste Betrachtung, § 1, W. ii. p. 276: “Mathematics proceeds to all its definitions by a synthetic procedure, philosophy by an analytic procedure.”

[1695] In the Untersuchung Kant’s statements are more cautious, and also more adequate. Cf. Erste Betrachtung, § 3, W. ii. p. 279: “In mathematics there are only a few but in philosophy there are innumerable irresolvable concepts....”

[1696] A 731 n. = B 759 n.

[1697] The phrases which Kant employs (A 732-3 = B 760-1) are: “unmittelbargewiss,” “evident,” “augenscheinlich.” Cf. above, pp. xxxv-vi, 36 ff., 53.

[1698] Cf. above, pp. 118, 142, 185-6.

[1699] Cf. above, p. 117 ff.

[1700] Cf. above, pp. 38-42, 93-4, 118-20, 133.

[1701] Cf. above, pp. 111-12, 114-15.

[1702] Cf. above, p. 131 ff.

[1703] A 737 = B 765.

[1704] Cf. above, pp. 36 ff., 117 ff., 128 ff., 565-6.

[1705] A 743-4 = B 771-2.

[1706] A 753 = B 781. In A 745 = B 773 Kant’s mention of Hume can hardly refer to Hume’s Dialogues (cf. above, pp. 539-40 n.). Kant probably has in mind Section XI. of the Enquiry. The important discussion of Hume’s position in A 760 ff. = B 788 ff. has been commented upon above, p. 61 ff. With Priestley’s teaching (A 745-6 = B 773-4) Kant probably became acquainted through some indirect source. The first of Priestley’s philosophical writings to appear in German was his History of the Corruptions of Christianity. The translation was published in 1782. In A 747-8 = B 775-6 Kant quite obviously has Rousseau in mind.

[1707] Section III., on The Discipline of Pure Reason in Regard to Hypotheses, has been commented on above, pp. 543-6.

[1708] A 782 = B 810.

[1709] Even in mathematics the indirect method is not always available. Cf. Russell, Principles of Mathematics, i. p. 15.

[1710] A 794 = B 822.

[1711] Cf. above, p. 563 n. 2.

[1712] A 797 = B 825.

[1713] Cf. Critique of Judgment, W. v. p. 473; Bernard’s trans. p. 411: “God, freedom, and immortality are the problems at the solution of which all the preparations of Metaphysics aim, as their ultimate and unique purpose.”

[1714] A 800-1 = B 829.

[1715] The statement in A 801 = B 829 that morals is a subject foreign to transcendental philosophy is in line with that of A 14-15 = B 28, and conflicts with the position later adopted in the Critique of Practical Reason. Cf. above, p. 77.

[1716] A 803 = B 831-2.

[1717] Cf. below, pp. 571-5.

[1718] A 804 = B 832.

[1719] Cf. above, p. lvi.

[1720] These statements are subject to modification, if the distinction (not clearly recognised by Kant, but really essential to his position) between immanent and transcendent metaphysics is insisted upon. Cf. above, pp. liv-v, 22, 56, 66-70.

[1721] Cf. above, p. 541.

[1722] W. v. pp. 47-8; Abbott’s trans. (3rd edition) p. 136.

[1723] Cf. Critique of Practical Reason, W. v. pp. 31-7; Abbott’s trans. p. 120.

[1724] Cf. Critique of Practical Reason, W. v. p. 43; Abbott’s trans. p. 132: “The moral law, although it gives no view, yet gives us a fact absolutely inexplicable from any data of the sensible world, or from the whole compass of our theoretical use of reason, a fact which points to a pure world of the understanding, nay, even defines it positively, and enables us to know something of it, namely, a law.”

[1725] Cf. Critique of Practical Reason, in note to Preface.

[1726] Op. cit., Preface, at the beginning, Abbott’s trans. pp. 87-8. Cf. also the concluding pages of Book I., W. v. pp. 103-6, Abbott, pp. 197-200.

[1727] Critique of Judgment, W. v. p. 468; Bernard’s trans. p. 406.

[1728] Op. cit. p. 474; Bernard’s trans. p. 413.

[1729] A 815 = B 843.

[1730] Cf. Critique of Practical Reason, W. v. pp. 143-4 n.; Abbott’s trans. p. 242: “It is a duty to realise the Summum Bonum to the utmost of our power, therefore it must be possible, consequently it is unavoidable for every rational being in the world to assume what is necessary for its objective possibility. The assumption is as necessary as the moral law, in connexion with which alone it is valid.”

[1731] Cf. Critique of Practical Reason, W. v. p. 142 ff.; Abbott’s trans. p. 240 ff.; Critique of Judgment, W. v. pp. 469-70; Bernard’s trans. pp. 406-8.

[1732] Critique of Judgment, W. v. pp. 369-72; Bernard’s trans. pp. 407-10. Cf. note in same section: “It is a trust in the promise of the moral law; not, however, such as is contained in it, but such as I put into it, and that on morally adequate grounds.”

[1733] A 819 = B 847.

[1734] A 820 = B 848.

[1735] The distinction is less harshly drawn in Kant’s Logic, Einleitung, ix. (Hartenstein), viii. p. 73; Eng. trans, p. 63: “Conviction is opposed to persuasion. Persuasion is an assent from inadequate reasons, in respect to which we do not know whether they are only subjective or are also objective. Persuasion often precedes conviction.”

[1736] Cf. above, pp. 10, 543. Cf. Fortschritte; Werke (Hartenstein), viii. p. 561.

[1737] Cf. Logic, loc. cit. Cf. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, W. iv. pp. 416-17: Abbott’s trans. pp. 33-34.

[1738] Regarding Kant’s distinction in A 827 = B 855 between Ideas and hypotheses cf. above, p. 543 ff. Cf. also Critique of Judgment, W. v. pp. 392 ff., 461 ff.; Bernard’s trans. pp. 302 ff., 395 ff.

[1739] A 829 = B 857.

[1740] Cf. Kant’s Preface to the Critique of Practical Reason, W. v. p. 8 n.; Abbott’s trans. p. 93 n. “A reviewer who wanted to find some fault with this work—[the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals]—has hit the truth better, perhaps, than he thought, when he says that no new principle of morality is set forth in it, but only a new formula. But who would think of introducing a new principle of all morality, and making himself as it were the first inventor of it, just as if all the world before him were ignorant what duty was, or had been in thorough-going error? But whoever knows of what importance to a mathematician a formula is, which defines accurately what is to be done to work out a problem, will not think that a formula is insignificant and useless which does the same for all duty in general.” Cf. Fortschritte, Werke (Hartenstein), viii. p. 563.

[1741] Fragmente aus dem Nachlasse, Werke (Hartenstein), viii. p. 624, already quoted above, p. lvii. Cf. also op. cit. p. 630.

[1742] Cf. Critique of Practical Reason, Conclusion, W. v. pp. 161-2; Abbott’s trans. p. 260.

[1743] A 832 = B 860.

[1744] K. p. 633 n. Cf. above, p. xxii.

[1745] Cf. Adickes, K. p. 635 n., and Vaihinger, i. p. 306. In this table Critique is distinguished from the System of pure Reason (cf. above, pp. 71-2). The transcendental philosophy of pure Reason of this table corresponds to the Analytic of the Critique, and to “pure natural science” in the absolute sense (cf. above, pp. 66-7). The rational physics of this table corresponds to the Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science.

[1746] When Kant in A 840 = B 868 takes philosophy as including empirical knowledge he contradicts the spirit, though not the letter of his own preceding statements. In his Introduction to Logic (Hartenstein, viii. p. 22, Abbott’s trans. p. 12) the empirical is identified with the historical.

[1747] Fortschritte, Werke (Hartenstein), viii. p. 554.

[1748] Op. cit. p. 520.

[1749] I.e. between the conception of philosophy as Schulbegriff and as Weltbegriff (conceptus cosmicus). He explains in a note to A 839 = B 868 that he employs these latter terms as indicating that philosophy in the traditional or humanistic sense is concerned with “that which must necessarily interest every one.” I have translated Weltbegriff as ‘universal concept.’ By conceptus cosmicus Kant means ‘concept shared by the whole world,’ or ‘common to all mankind.’

[1750] Cf. Kant’s Logic, Introduction, § iii.: Abbott’s trans. pp. 14-15: “In this scholastic signification of the word, philosophy aims only at skill; in reference to the higher concept common to all mankind, on the contrary, it aims at utility. In the former aspect, therefore, it is a doctrine of skill; in the latter a doctrine of wisdom; it is the lawgiver of reason; and hence the philosopher is not a master of the art of reason, but a lawgiver. The master of the art of reason, or as Socrates calls him, the philodoxus, strives merely for speculative knowledge, without concerning himself how much this knowledge contributes to the ultimate end of human reason: he gives rules for the use of reason for all kinds of ends. The practical philosopher, the teacher of wisdom by doctrine and example, is the true philosopher. For philosophy is the Ideal of a perfect wisdom, which shows us the ultimate ends of all human reason.”

[1751] A 839 = B 867.

[1752] A 851 = B 879.

[1753] A 850 = B 878.

[1754] A 848-9 = B 876-7. Cf. above, pp. 237, 311 n., 312 n., 384-5, 473-7, 554.

[1755] A 852 = B 880.

[1756] Cf. A 313 ff. = B 370 ff., above, pp. 498-9.

[1757] Cf. above, pp. xxviii-xxix.

[1758] Einleitung, § iv.: Abbott’s trans, pp. 17-23.

[1759] Supplementary to pp. xxv-xxxiii. Throughout I shall make use of my Studies in the Cartesian Philosophy, and may refer the reader to them for further justification of the positions adopted.

[1760] For recognition of this distinction, cf. Herbert Spencer, Principles of Psychology, vol. i., 3rd ed., pp. 620-3.

[1761] Cf. Studies in the Cartesian Philosophy, pp. 80-2, 106-7.

[1762] This distinction is due to Galileo, though the terms “primary” and “secondary” were first employed by Locke.

[1763] I have dealt with Avenarius’ criticism in “Avenarius’ Philosophy of Pure Experience” (Mind, vol. xv. N.S., pp. 13-31, 149-160); with Bergson’s criticism in “Subjectivism and Realism in Modern Philosophy” (Philosophical Review, vol. xvii. pp. 138-148); and with the general issue as a whole in “The Problem of Knowledge” (Journal of Philosophy, vol. ix. pp. 113-128).

[1764] On Descartes’ failure to distinguish between the mathematical and the dynamical aspects of motion, cf. above, p. 584.

[1765] Essay concerning Human Understanding, IV. vi. 16.

[1766] Op. cit. IV. xii. 7.

[1767] Op. cit. IV. vi. 11.

[1768] Cf. above, pp. 27-8.

[1769] Though the concept of substance is also discussed by Hume, his treatment of it is quite perfunctory.

[1770] Cf. above, pp. xxv ff., 61 ff.

[1771] Treatise on Human Nature (Green and Grose), i. p. 380.

[1772] Op. cit. p. 383.

[1773] Loc. cit.

[1774] For justification of the phrase “synthetic reason,” I must refer to my articles in Mind, vol. xiv. N.S. pp. 149-73, 335-47, on “The Naturalism of Hume.”

[1775] Treatise (Green and Grose), i. pp. 474-5.

[1776] Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (Green and Grose), p. 40.

[1777] Treatise, p. 471.

[1778] Enquiry (Green and Grose), pp. 25-6.

[1779] Éclaircissement sur chap. iii. pt. ii. liv. vi. de la Recherche: tome iv. (1712) p. 381.

[1780] Enquiry, p. 57.

[1781] Enquiry, p. 32.

[1782] This is the objection upon which Beattie chiefly insists.

[1783] Op. cit. pp. 33-4.

[1784] Cf. above, pp. 39 ff., 54, 222 ff., 241, 286-9.

[1785] How far Hume’s criticism of empiricism really influenced Kant in his appreciation of this deeper problem, it seems impossible to decide. Very probably Kant proceeded to it by independent development of his own standpoint, after the initial impulse received on the more strictly logical issue.

[1786] The assertion, by Kuno Fischer and Paulsen, of an empirical period in Kant’s development, has been challenged by Adickes, B. Erdmann, Riehl, and Vaihinger.

[1787] Cf. B. Erdmann’s Kriticismus, p. 147; Critique of Judgment, W. v. p. 391 (Bernard’s trans, p. 301).

[1788] Above, pp. xxx-iii.

[1789] Philosophischer Kriticismus, 2nd ed. p. 209.

[1790] Cf. above, pp. lv-vi, lxi, 543 ff.

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
The transcenedntal doctrine=> The transcendental doctrine {pg 77}
non-commital=> non-committal {pg 122}
widersinnisches=> Widersinnisches {pg 444}
Erkenntniss=> Erkenntnis {pg 449}
themelves=> themselves {pg 505}
which contain the the material=> which contain the material {pg 523}
it as valid=> it is valid {pg 575}

---