[1] Even Hermann's 'Handbook of Prosody' begins with paragraphs of Kantian philosophy. In § 8 it is argued that a law of rhythm must be (1) objective, (a) formal, and (3) determined à priori. With these requirements and with the principles of Causality and Reciprocity which follow later, it were well to compare the treatment of the various measures, upon which those formal principles do not exercise the slightest influence.
[2] In Kant's own words (Criticism of the Power of Judgment, p. 427): 'Final Cause is merely a notion of our practical reason. It cannot be deduced from any data of experience as a theoretical criterion of nature, nor can it be applied to know nature. No employment of this notion is possible except solely for the practical reason, by moral laws. The final purpose of the Creation is that constitution of the world which harmonises with that to which alone we can give definite expression on universal principles, viz. the final purpose of our pure practical reason, and with that in so far as it means to be practical.'
[CHAPTER V.]
THIRD ATTITUDE OF THOUGHT TO OBJECTIVITY.
Immediate or Intuitive Knowledge.
61.] If we are to believe the Critical philosophy, thought is subjective, and its ultimate and invincible mode is abstract universality or formal identity. Thought is thus set in opposition to Truth, which is no abstraction, but concrete universality. In this highest mode of thought, which is entitled Reason, the Categories are left out of account.—The extreme theory on the opposite side holds thought to be an act of the particular only, and on that ground declares it incapable of apprehending the Truth. This is the Intuitional theory.
62.] According to this theory, thinking, a private and particular operation, has its whole scope and product in the Categories. But, these Categories, as arrested by the understanding, are limited vehicles of thought, forms of the conditioned, of the dependent and derivative. A thought limited to these modes has no sense of the Infinite and the True, and cannot bridge over the gulf that separates it from them. (This stricture refers to the proofs of God's existence.) These inadequate modes or categories are also spoken of as notions: and to get a notion of an object therefore can only mean, in this language, to grasp it under the form of being conditioned and derivative. Consequently, if the object in question be the True, the Infinite, the Unconditioned, we change it by our notions into a finite and conditioned; whereby, instead of apprehending the truth by thought, we have perverted it into untruth.