(3) He allows that we cannot make the Extension of a body the measure of the Quantity of Matter, because, he says, we do not know if "the compressing force" is such as to produce "the closest compression." That is, he assumes a compressing force, assumes a "closest compression," assumes a peculiar (and very improbable) atomic hypothesis; and all this, to supply a reason why we are not to believe the first simple principle of Mechanics and Chemistry.
(4) He speaks of "a series of apparent fluids (as Light or its vehicle, the Calorific, the Electro-galvanic, and Magnetic agents) which we can neither denude of their character of substance, nor clothe with the attribute of weight."
To which my reply is, that precisely because I cannot "clothe" these agents with the attribute of Weight, I do "denude them of the character of Substance." They are not substances, but agencies. These Imponderable Agents are not properly called "Imponderable Fluids." This I conceive that I have proved; and the proof is not shaken by denying the conclusion without showing any defect in the reasoning.
(5) Finally, my critic speaks about "a logical canon," and about "a criterion of truth, subjectively necessary and objectively certain;" which matters I shall not waste the reader's time by discussing.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Influence of German Systems of Philosophy in Britain.
The philosophy of Kant, as I have already said, involved a definite doctrine on the subject of the Fundamental Antithesis, and a correction of some of the errors of Locke and his successors. It was not however at first favourably received among British philosophers, and those who accepted it were judged somewhat capriciously and captiously. I will say a word on these points[307].
1. (Stewart)—Dugald Stewart, in his Dissertation on the Progress of the Moral Sciences, repeatedly mentions Kant's speculations, and always unfavourably. In Note I to Part I. of the Dissertation he says, "In our own times, Kant and his followers seem to have thought that they had thrown a strong light on the nature of space and also of time, when they introduced the word form (form of the intellect) as a common term applicable to both. Is not this to revert to the scholastic folly of verbal generalization?" And in Part II. he gives a long and laborious criticism of a portion of Kant's speculations; of which the spirit may be collected from his describing them as resulting in "the metaphysical conundrum, that the human mind (considered as a noumenon and not as a phenomenon) neither exists in space nor time." And after mentioning Meiners and Herder along with Kant, he adds, "I am ashamed to say that in Great Britain the only one of these names which has been much talked of is Kant." And again in Note EE, he translates some portion of the German philosopher, adding, that to the expressions so employed he can attach no meaning.
Stewart, in his criticism of Kant's doctrines, remarks that, in asserting that the human mind possesses, in its own ideas, an element of necessary and universal truth, not derived from experience, Kant had been anticipated by Price, by Cudworth, and even by Plato; to whose Theætetus both Price and Cudworth refer, as containing views similar to their own. And undoubtedly this doctrine of ideas, as indispensable sources of necessary truths, was promulgated and supported by weighty arguments in the Theætetus; and has ever since been held by many philosophers, in opposition to the contrary doctrine, also extensively held, that all truth is derived from experience. But, in pointing out this circumstance as diminishing the importance of Kant's speculations, Stewart did not sufficiently consider that doctrines, fundamentally the same, may discharge a very different office at different periods of the history of philosophy. Plato's Dialogues did not destroy, nor even diminish, the value of Cudworth's "Immutable Morality." Notwithstanding Cudworth's publications, Price's doctrines came out a little afterwards with the air and with the effect of novelties. Cudworth's assertion of ideas did not prevent the rise of Hume's skepticism; and it was Hume's skepticism which gave occasion to Kant's new assertion of necessary and universal truth, and to his examination into the grounds of the possibility and reality of such truth. To maintain such doctrine after the appearance of intermediate speculations, and with reference to them, was very different from maintaining it before; and this is the merit which Kant's admirers claim for him. Nor can it be denied that his writings produced an immense effect upon the mode of treating such questions in Germany; and have had, even in this country, an influence far beyond what Mr. Stewart would have deemed their due.
2. (Mr. G. H. Lewes.)—But as injustice has thus been done to Kant by confounding his case with that of his predecessors of like opinions, so on the other hand, injustice has also been done, both to him and those who have followed him in the assertion of ideas, by confounding their case with his. This injustice seems to me to be committed by a writer on the History of Philosophy, who has given an account of the successive schools of philosophy up to our own time;—has assigned to Kant an important and prominent place in the recent history of metaphysics;—but has still maintained that Kant's philosophy, and indeed every philosophy, is and must be a failure. In order to prove this thesis, the author naturally has to examine Kant's doctrines and the reasons assigned for them, and to point out what he conceives to be the fallacy of these arguments. This accordingly he professes to do; but as soon as he has entered upon the argument, he substitutes, as his opponent, for the philosopher of Königsberg, a writer of our own time and country, who does not profess himself a Kantian, who has been repeatedly accused, with whatever justice, of misrepresenting what he has borrowed from Kant, and whose main views are, in the opinion of the writer himself, very different from Kant's. Mr. Lewes[308], in the chapter entitled "Examination of Kant's Fundamental Principles," after a preliminary statement of the points he intends to consider, says "Now to the question. As Kant confessedly was led to his own system by the speculations of Hume," and so on; and forthwith he introduces the name of Dr. Whewell as the writer whose views he has to criticize, without stating how he connects him with Kant, and goes on arguing against him for a dozen pages to the end of the Chapter.