[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.