{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_47880/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_47880","id":"gutenberg_47880","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/47880","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804"],"text":"Produced by Al Haines.\n\n\n\n\n\n[Illustration: Immanuel Kant]\n\n\n\n\n                           *THE PHILOSOPHY OF\n                             IMMANUEL KANT*\n\n\n                         BY A. D. LINDSAY, M.A.\n\n              FELLOW AND TUTOR OF BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD\n\n\n\n                    LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK, LTD.\n                 35 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C., & EDINBURGH\n                     NEW YORK: DODGE PUBLISHING CO.\n\n\n\n\n                               *FOREWORD*\n\n\nThere is a story that Schopenhauer used to begin his lectures on Kant by\nsaying: \"Let no one _tell_ you what is contained in the _Critique of\nPure Reason_.\"  The writer of this little book hopes that no one will\nimagine that he has disregarded this warning.  There are no short-cuts\nto the understanding of a great philosopher, and the only way to\nappreciate the greatness of a philosophic system is to study the\nphilosopher's own writings.  All that the writer of a book like this can\nhope to do is to persuade others to undertake that study by interesting\nthem in the problems with which it deals, and by offering a few\nsuggestions which may help to an understanding of it.  I have said\nnothing about the numerous other works which Kant wrote. For the three\n_Critiques_ contain his system, and the understanding of that is\nall-important.\n\n\n\n\n                               *CONTENTS*\n\nCHAP.\n\nI. THE IDEA OF CRITICISM\n\nII. KANT'S STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM.  SYNTHETIC A PRIORI JUDGMENTS\n\nIII. KANT'S IDEALISM.  TIME AND SPACE\n\nIV. THE CATEGORIES AND THE PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING\n\nV. THE ANTINOMIES AND CRITICISM OF THE PROOFS OF THE EXISTENCE OF GOD\n\nVI. KANT'S MORAL THEORY\n\nVII. THE \"CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT\"\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\n\n\n\n                        *THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT*\n\n\n\n                              *CHAPTER I*\n\n                        *THE IDEA OF CRITICISM*\n\n\n\"It is a difficult matter,\" says Heine, \"to write the life history of\nImmanuel Kant, for he had neither life nor history.  He lived a\nmechanically ordered, abstract, old bachelor kind of existence in a\nquiet, retired alley in Koenigsberg, an old town in the north-east\ncorner of Germany.\"  The times he lived in were stirring enough. He was\nborn in 1724, and died in 1804.  He lived through the Seven Years' War\nthat first made Germany a nation, he followed with sympathy the United\nStates War of Independence, he saw the French Revolution and the\nbeginning of the career of Napoleon.  Yet in all his long life he never\nmoved out of the province in which he was born, and nothing was allowed\nto interrupt the steady course of his lecturing, studying, and writing.\n\"Getting up,\" continues Heine, \"drinking coffee, lecturing, eating,\ngoing for a walk, everything had its fixed time; and the neighbours knew\nthat it must be exactly half-past four when Immanuel Kant, in his gray\nfrock-coat, with his Spanish cane in his hand, stepped from his door and\nwalked towards the little lime-tree avenue, which is called after him\nthe Philosopher's Walk.\"  \"Strange contrast,\" reflects Heine, \"between\nthe man's outward life and his destructive, world-smashing thoughts.\"\nAs the political history of the eighteenth century came to an end when\nthe French Revolution spilled over the borders of France and drove\nNapoleon up and down Europe, breaking up the old political systems and\ninaugurating modern Europe, so its opposing currents of thought were\ngathered together in the mind of a weak-chested, half-invalid little man\nin Koenigsberg, and from their meeting a new era in philosophy began.\n\nThere are some philosophers to whom truth seems to come almost unsought,\nas an immediate authoritative vision.  Kant was not one of these.  His\ngreatest work, the _Critique of Pure Reason_, was conceived when he was\nforty-eight, and published in 1781, when he was fifty-seven.  It was the\noutcome of half a lifetime's patient study and thought.  Heine says of\nhim: \"He was the perfect type of the small shopkeeper.  Nature had meant\nhim to weigh coffee and sugar, but fate willed that he should weigh\nother things and put a God on his scales, and his weighing was exact.\"\nThe sneer is unjust, but there is something in the simile; for Kant's\nphilosophy was a kind of taking stock, a survey of the great movement of\nthought from the time when the Renaissance and the Reformation made\nthought free, an attempt to estimate the achievements of the new\nsciences, to deal with their conflicting claims and ideals and say what\nit all came to.  In Kant modern science, which began with Descartes and\nGalileo, first became conscious of itself.\n\nThis taking stock Kant called _Criticism_.  His great books are all\ncalled Critiques--the _Critique of Pure Reason_, the _Critique of\nPractical Reason_, the _Critique of Judgment_.  He called his philosophy\nthe Critical Philosophy or Critical Idealism.  Essential to an\nunderstanding of Kant is an understanding of what he meant by criticism,\nand why he opposes it to dogmatism and scepticism; for the necessity and\npossibility of such a criticism was his great philosophical discovery.\nWe have called Kant's work a survey of the achievements of the thought\nof his times, but it was very much more than that, and has a much more\nuniversal significance than could belong to any history of the thought\nof one epoch.  For these achievements of thought, though great, were\nconflicting and partial. They contrasted with failure and barrenness in\nother directions, and they seemed to be due to different methods.  This\nsuccess of thought in one direction and its failure in another, and this\nuncertainty about the true method of science, were problems which at\nonce presented themselves to an impartial observer, and Kant held that\nthey could be answered only by taking stock of actual attainments, and\nby criticism of the powers and range of human thought in general.\n\nThe problem that presented itself to him will be understood if we look\nfor a moment at the history of thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth\ncenturies. One thing that Kant noted in it was the steady and sure\nprogress of physics.  \"With the experiments of Galileo and Torricelli,\"\nhe says in the preface to the second edition of the first _Critique_, \"a\nnew light flashed on all students of nature.\"  The continued success of\nphysics meant the successful application of mathematics to the concrete\nworld, and along with it a remarkable development of mathematics itself.\nThis sudden success inspired men to feel that they had discovered a way\nof explaining the universe; they contrasted the fertility of their new\nmethods with the barrenness of scholastic speculation in morals and\ntheology; they felt confident that all that was wanted to the attainment\nof certain knowledge in all spheres of human interest was the extension\nof these methods.  If men would only set to work the right way, they\nwere sure that all difficulties would be overcome; and, by reflection\nupon their own success, they hoped to explain what the right way was.\n\nUnfortunately this was not easy, for the advance from pure mathematics\nto physics, from a study of the nature of pure mathematical conceptions\nto an inquiry into the laws of falling bodies, implied a change whose\nnature was not clear to the men who had themselves made the advance.  A\nconflict arose between those who thought more of the fact that\nknowledge, to be certain, must be capable of mathematical expression,\nand those who thought more of the basis of experiment and observation on\nwhich the new sciences depended, who remembered that these sciences\nbegan when Galileo, instead of thinking in the abstract how bodies ought\nto fall, dropped bodies of different weights from the top of the leaning\ntower of Pisa and observed what actually happened.  Descartes was the\ngreat representative of the first school.  He began by insisting on the\ndifference between mathematical truth which could be, as he said,\nclearly and distinctly conceived, and ordinary opinion about things\nwhich was full of guesswork and imagination.  Scientific knowledge was\npossible, he thought, only by apprehending the real or primary qualities\nof things which were mathematical, in contradistinction to their\nsecondary qualities--their colour, smell, &c.--which were less real.\nThence he came to think that the real world was mathematical in nature,\nlike a huge, intricate geometrical figure.  The elements of mere fact,\nin our present knowledge, its dependence on observation and experiment,\nhe thought of as temporary defects which the progress of science would\nremove. What we ordinarily call perception, indeed, in the sense of\nawareness of things in time and space, was described by Descartes'\nsuccessors as confused thinking.  Our knowledge of the world would, it\nwas hoped, become a vast mathematical system, all the detail and\ncomplexity of which would be rigorously deducible from a few central\ntruths.\n\nThis general way of thinking was called Rationalism. Kant ordinarily\ncalls it Dogmatism.  It was attacked by other scientists for its view of\nthe nature of space and time.  No one who reflects at all can fail to\ndistinguish a difference between the way in which we see the truth of a\ngeometrical proposition--that, _e.g._, the three angles of a triangle\nare equal to two right angles--and the way in which we judge that such\nand such a figure drawn on a board is a triangle, or make judgments\nabout the way in which things are actually arranged in space or succeed\nin time.  Judgments of the latter kind involve words like \"here\" and\n\"there,\" \"now\" and \"then,\" words which are all a kind of pointing.  It\nseems impossible from considering the nature of a triangle to deduce why\nany existing thing should be called triangular, and all statements about\nthe position of things in space and time seem to be derived not from a\nconsideration of the general nature of space and time, but from\nobservation.  Now the science which had made perhaps the most striking\nprogress in the time we are speaking of, physical astronomy, involved\nany number of statements about the position of bodies in space.  The\nRationalist school admitted this, but held that that was due to the fact\nthat science was not sufficiently thought out.  In time, they hoped, all\nstatements about position in space would disappear. To think of things\nin spatial order was to think confusedly.  Newton, on the other hand,\nheld that space could not be explained away, that astronomy implied an\nabsolute space in which things existed, that the spatial relations of\nthings could not be explained by the nature of the things themselves,\nbut only by a reference to absolute space in which they all were. This\nmeant that observation or perception was something of which you could\nnot hope and should not wish to get rid, and that an ideal of knowledge\nin which all applied mathematics should have been transmuted into pure\nmathematics was a vain one.  Astronomy implied both mere observation and\napprehension of necessary relations.  Here was a science which seemed to\nemploy both methods together.  Galileo, in fact could not have made his\ndiscovery without observation but men had observed bodies falling for\nages without discovering the laws of motion.  Further, the laws of\nmotion, once discovered, made men in some degree independent of\nobservation, made them able to say of actual concrete things not only\nwhat had happened, but what must happen.\n\nSuch difficulties as these arose from reflection on the aims and methods\nof the mathematical sciences, but there was much genuinely scientific\ninquiry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which showed no\nsigns of taking mathematical form; chemistry and biology, for example,\nwere still almost entirely empirical.  Furthermore, thinkers were not\nconcerned with science alone.  These centuries saw a great revival of\ninterest in speculation on human affairs, history, politics, morals and\ntheology.  England, which was the home of free discussion on questions\nof politics and morals, and where, more than in most other countries,\nthere was free discussion on theology, became also the home of\nempiricism.  The empirical movement, indeed, drew much of its impetus\nfrom a reaction against Hobbes, the only great English thinker who\nunhesitatingly applied the mechanical and deterministic assumptions of\nthe new sciences to morals and politics, and arrived by this\nuncompromising method at results so obviously repellent that no man of\nany sense could accept them, and so consistently presented that they\ncould not be refuted save by a refutation of the assumptions upon which\nthey were founded.  Such a refutation was, in fact, undertaken by Locke,\nthe first great representative of the empirical school.  He was\ninterested alike in the more obviously empirical sciences of chemistry\nand biology, and in politics.  He was not a very consistent or\nsystematic thinker, but he had other gifts perhaps as valuable.  He was\na man of great common sense and breadth of view, and was able thereby to\ntake a conspectus of the general situation in the various spheres of\ninquiry, to notice the obvious differences in our knowledge of\nmathematics, of chemical and biological fact, and of theology, and to\nsee that these constituted a problem.  We find in him the first\nstatement of the necessity of philosophical criticism. It is contained\nin his account of the origin of the _Essay concerning Human\nUnderstanding_.  \"Were it fit to trouble thee with the history of this\n_Essay_, I should tell thee that five or six friends, meeting at my\nchamber, and discoursing on a subject very remote from this\" (they were\ndiscussing the \"principles of morality and revealed religion\"), \"found\nthemselves quickly at a stand, by the difficulties that rose on every\nside.  After we had awhile puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer\na resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my\nthoughts that we took a wrong course; and that, before we set ourselves\nupon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own\nabilities, and see what _objects_ our understandings were, or were not,\nfitted to deal with.\"\n\nWe have here the same general starting point of inquiry as we shall\nafterwards find in Kant.  There are certain, obstinate puzzles which we\nmeet with in discussion which can only be solved by going back and\ninquiring into the nature of knowledge and the powers of our minds.\nUnfortunately, as Kant points out, Locke went the wrong way about his\ntask.  He describes it as \"a plain historical inquiry.\"  He thought that\nhe had only to look into his mind and see what was in it, as he might\nopen a door and look into a room.  The result is that he thinks of all\nknowledge as consisting simply in looking at what is present to the\nmind.  We can know, therefore, whatever can be present to the mind, and\nthe limitations of knowledge are discovered by asking what can be so\npresent to the mind.  The conclusions to which he comes as to different\nspheres of human inquiry are roughly these: We can have knowledge of\nmathematics because there we are concerned only with ideas present to\nthe mind, and with noting their agreement and disagreement.  We can have\nno knowledge of such questions as the immortality of the soul, or the\nnature of spirits, for they are beyond our observation.  As regards\nexisting things, we can have knowledge of them, in so far as they are\npresent to our minds, and no further.  The meaning of \"present to the\nmind\" was never clearly analysed by Locke; but he meant, for example,\nthat we can observe that an object which is yellow, and which we call\ngold, is also heavy, and can be dissolved by Aqua Regia, but we cannot\nsay why that is so, and we ought not, on Locke's principles, to have any\nground for supposing that these qualities will go on co-existing.\n\nThe element of truth in Locke's position is this. When we are examining\nconcrete things like pieces of gold or any chemical substance, we find\nin them a number of varying qualities whose connection we cannot\nunderstand.  We do not know why a metal of a certain specific gravity\nshould also be yellow; we can only note the fact.  Hence in chemistry\nour method must be quite different from the method of mathematics. In\nmathematics we start from the definition, and we can understand the\nconnection of the properties of a geometrical figure, and see that they\nall follow necessarily from the definition.  But in sciences like\nchemistry a definition does not take us any further; we can only find\nout the properties of a substance by observation and experiment.  Locke\nexplains this difference by saying that in the former case we are only\nconcerned with agreement among our own ideas, in the second place we are\nconcerned somehow with things outside us. This explanation will not\nstand.  It is not true that mathematics is simply analysis of an\narbitrary definition, as Locke seems to suggest.  It involves\nconstruction, or, as Kant calls it, synthesis.  It is a process of\ndiscovering new truths.  Secondly, our statements about concrete objects\nare not statements of qualities we see co-existing at the moment.  They\nare statements about all gold or all men; in other words, they are\nuniversal, and Locke found it impossible to explain the universality of\nsuch propositions--what we mean, _e.g._ when we talk about the nature of\ngold or of man, not of this gold or this man that I see before me.\nLastly, this distinction of mathematics and the empirical sciences by a\ndistinction of spheres does not allow, as we saw, for a science like\nastronomy, which builds on mathematics and yet applies to the concrete\nworld.\n\nThese difficulties were seen more clearly by Hume, at once the greatest\nand the most thorough-going of empiricists.  He cut the knot in regard\nto mathematics by asserting that geometry, just because it has clearly\nan application to the existing world, had no more certainty than any\nother empirical inquiry, while arithmetic and algebra, he agreed, were\ncertain, but confined their application to the sphere of our own ideas.\nBoth positions are almost obviously inconsistent with the facts.  In\nconsidering the nature of our judgments about concrete existences he\nraised a more profound problem.  All such judgments, as he said, imply\nthe principle of causation, or of what is called, in modern times, the\nprinciple of the uniformity of nature.  That principle we take with us\nin our investigation of the existing world.  Yet, as Hume saw, we do not\nobserve causes; we only observe succession and change.  We seem,\ntherefore, to put into the world we see a necessity and uniformity which\nthe observed facts do not warrant.  How is this to be explained?\n\nHume's answer is ingenious.  The principle of causation cannot be\nrationally justified, and the necessary connection we predicate of\nchanges in the outside world is not in the things; it is only a feeling\nin ourselves, and is the result of custom.  After seeing the same\nsuccession several times, we come somehow to feel differently about it,\nand that feeling of difference we express by saying that we have before\nus an instance not of simple succession, but of cause and effect.\n\nThis is not the place to discuss the difficulties of Hume's position; it\nis enough to notice how entirely passive it makes the mind, and how\nalien such an explanation is from the spirit of inquiry and discovery.\nIf cause is simply the effect of custom on the mind, then the facts\neither produce that effect or they do not.  In neither case is there\nanything to find out. But the scientist, in investigating causes,\nhowever strongly he may hold that he has to observe the facts, knows\nalso that he has a problem to solve, that he has to discover the right\nway to go about it, must adopt some principle in dealing with the facts.\nPure passivity will help him little.\n\nHume's account of causation, then, is really a denial of even empirical\nscience, and yet it helped to make clear an important truth; for,\nalthough we do not get the _principle_ of causation from experience, we\nhave to go to experience to discover causal laws.  We do not discover\ncausation by analysing a cause and seeing that it is such that, from its\nnature, it must produce a certain effect.  All knowledge of causation\ngoes back to observed succession, though all cases of observed and even\nrepeated succession are not cases of causation. Hume, therefore, was\nright in saying that where there could be no observed succession there\ncould be no knowledge of causation.\n\nBoth the rationalistic and the empirical explanations of science had\nfailed, the one because it could find no room for observation of facts,\nthe other because it could find no room for principles governing that\nobservation; and we shall see that Kant started with a consciousness of\nthis double failure.  He saw that Hume's criticism of causation raised\nproblems for which the rationalist had no answer, and yet that the\nposition reached by Hume was incompatible with the existence of science.\n\nThe same failure of both rationalism and empiricism had become evident\nin another sphere--that of morals and religion.  The relation of\nphilosophy to science is always twofold.  Philosophy is partly concerned\nwith analysing and reflecting on the methods of the different sciences,\npartly with seeking to adjust the rival and conflicting claims of the\ntwo great departments of man's life--science and religion.\n\nIt might seem, at first sight, as though in morals and religion\nrationalism were the only possible method to be approved by philosophy,\nfor, inasmuch as morals are concerned with what ought to be, not with\nwhat is, they cannot depend on observation, but must be deduced from\nsome principle above experience; nor are objects of religion, God and\nthe soul, objects of observation. No man can \"by searching find out\nGod.\"\n\nIt was natural, therefore, that both on the Continent and in England\nmorality and religion began by being rationalistic.  Descartes believed\nthat his mathematical method could be applied with success to\ndemonstrate the truths of religion, while Locke includes morality along\nwith mathematics among the a priori and certain sciences.  But the\nhistory of eighteenth century controversy showed that, in spite of\nrationalist methods, neither morality nor religion could attain that\ncertainty and general agreement which marked the mathematical sciences.\nSpinoza, applying the same method as Descartes, but with more\nconsistency, arrived at a conception of God which most of his\ncontemporaries regarded as \"horrid atheism,\" and the general result of\nrational theology is well described by one of Kant's correspondents when\nhe says that the more proofs of the existence of God he learnt, the more\nhis doubts increased.  In England the attempts made to found morality\nupon rationalist principles produced systems too barren to withstand the\nattack of empiricism fortified by the growing interest in history and\nanthropology.  The Deist movement, an attempt to free religion from the\nincrustations of faith and deduce it from pure reason, showed that a\nreligion founded on pure reason contained nothing worth believing.  In\nHume we have the final discrediting of reason in these spheres.  He\nshows ingeniously that \"the good Berkeley's\" argument for the existence\nof God could be turned round to disprove the existence of the soul, and\nhe concluded that religion was a sphere with which reason had no\nconcern.  In the sphere of morals the distinction between what ought to\nbe and what is, the distinction on which rationalistic morals are based,\nhad been discredited by a reduction of all conduct to Utilitarianism, a\nsearch for pleasure and a flight from pain mediated by sympathy.  The\nconsequences are described by Kant in his preface to the _Critique of\nPure Reason_: \"At present, after everything has been tried, so they say,\nand tried in vain, there reign in philosophy weariness and complete\nindifferentism, the mother of chaos and night in all sciences,\" though\nhe hopefully continues, \"but at the same time the source, or at least\nthe prelude, of their near reform and of a new light, after an\nill-applied study has rendered them dark, confused, and useless.\"\n\nThe earlier of the modern thinkers--Descartes among the rationalists,\nand Bacon among the empiricists--are full of hope.  They have confidence\nin the human spirit. But increased reflection seemed only to bring\ndistrust with it.  The history of rationalism in theology showed that,\nin such matters, reason could prove absolutely opposing positions.  Most\nmen were ready to accept Hume's dictum that any one who follows his\nreason must be a fool and take refuge in an indifferentism which accepts\nwhatever happens to be there.\n\nThe remedy for this state of affairs, Kant finds, is the critical\nmethod; for disbelief in reason is the reaction from overconfidence in\nit.  Men had thought that reason could prove everything.  Because these\nhopes had been frustrated, they now thought that it could prove nothing.\nPhilosophy, he was convinced, would oscillate between overweening\nconfidence and unwarranted distrust in itself until it had criticised\nhuman reason and discovered what it could do and what it could not.\nThis is the task he set before himself.  As the failure of eighteenth\ncentury philosophy, which had led to distrust of all philosophy, had\nbeen twofold--failure to give an intelligible explanation of the\nprocesses of scientific thought, and failure to find any standard by\nwhich to mediate between the conflicting claims of science and\nreligion--the task of the critical philosophy is twofold.  It attempts\nto explain and to justify the methods and assumptions of the sciences,\nand to find some solution of the conflict between theories of the world\nwhich seem to be based upon these methods and the assumptions and claims\nof morality and religion.\n\n\n\n\n                              *CHAPTER II*\n\n              *KANT'S STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM.  SYNTHETIC\n                          A PRIORI JUDGMENTS*\n\n\nIn the preface to the second edition of the _Critique of Pure Reason_\nKant finds the necessity of criticism in the contrast between certain\nrational sciences and metaphysics.  Mathematics and physics, he\nobserves, are obviously certain sciences.  They are not empirical, they\nmake steady progress, the results they have reached are secure and\nunanimously accepted, and have a certainty which no mere empirical\ninvestigation could attain.  Metaphysics, on the other hand, though as\nancient an inquiry, seems incapable of any settled results.  Its history\nis a record, not of steady progress, but of bewildering marches and\ncountermarches.  The confident conclusions of one philosopher are as\nconfidently denied by another, and the endless indecisive conflict\nproduces in the minds of most men the conviction that in philosophy one\ndoctrine is as good as another, and therefore none are worth very much.\nIn the sphere where reason might be expected to be most at home, reason\nis impotent; yet the achievements of reason in those other spheres of\nthe a priori sciences should preserve us from any general scepticism of\nthe powers of reason.  The task of criticism will be to examine the part\nplayed by reason in science, and to ask how far its failure in\nmetaphysics is due to mistakes in method, and how far to the different\nnature of the objects of the a priori sciences and of metaphysics. Kant\npoints out that it was some time before either mathematics or physics\nfollowed the secure path of a science.  The contrast between the\nhaphazard and empirical observations of the Babylonians or Egyptians and\nthe science of the Greeks was due to the discovery of a new method.  The\ndiscovery by Galileo and Torricelli of modern physics came about by a\nsimilar revolution in method.  The _Critique_, therefore, is to be a\ntreatise on method.  It will examine the method of reason in the\nsciences, and ask what conclusions can be drawn as to the proper method\nof metaphysics.\n\nIn the _Prolegomena_, a work in which he summarises the results of the\nfirst _Critique_, Kant describes the _Critique_ as an answer to three\nquestions: How is mathematics possible?  How is pure science of nature\nor physics possible? and, How is metaphysics possible? Something of the\nnature of his answer to the third, and for him the most important,\nquestion, may be gathered from the fact that he explains that the third\nquestion should not be put in the form, How is metaphysics as a science\npossible?  That question can only be answered by saying that it is not\npossible.  But it is still allowable and necessary to ask, How is\nmetaphysics possible as a natural disposition of the mind? For the main\nresult of his inquiries into the place of reason in the sciences is to\nshow that reason is successful in the sciences only because of the\npresence of certain conditions which are wanting in metaphysics. At\nfirst sight we might think it natural that the objects of metaphysics\nwhich Kant enumerates as God, Freedom, and Immortality should be\nunderstood by reason, and find it more difficult to explain how reason\nshould apply to the world of ordinary experience.  The knowledge of\neveryday things is thought of as empirical, a matter of observation;\nwhile we are inclined to think that, if there is rational knowledge, it\nis knowledge of something else, of the mere agreement or disagreement of\nideas (as Hume thought), or of the essences of things, known\nindependently and apart from perception, as Plato thought.  Kant argues\nthat the combination of a priori reasoning and empirical observation,\nwhich earlier thinkers had found so puzzling in the exact sciences,\nexhibits the only possible use of reason, that reason, divorced from and\nwith no reference to the world of experience, is barren, and that\nconsequently metaphysics, if that be taken to mean a rational knowledge\nof objects which are outside of our experience, does not exist.  We are\nleft with metaphysics as a natural disposition; for Kant holds that the\nquestions which metaphysics seeks to answer arise from the nature of\nreason and its relation to experience, though their answer is to be\nsought not in knowledge but in action.\n\nThis last point must be elucidated later.  In the meantime we must see\nhow this inquiry into the nature of reason crystalises itself into a\nseemingly abstract and trivial question: How are synthetic a priori\njudgments possible?  It is baffling at first to find an inquiry of the\nscope we have indicated suddenly take such a narrow form, but a little\nconsideration will show the importance of the question.  Knowledge may\nbe regarded as either analysis or synthesis, as a puzzling out or\nunravelling of what we somehow know already, or as a putting together of\nwhat had previously been known or observed separately.  The rationalist\nschool, whom we described in the last chapter, were inclined to regard\nall knowledge as analytical.  They thought of progress in knowledge as\nan advance from obscure to clear apprehension, and as a thinking out or\nmaking clear of something which had always been known somehow.\nMathematics, the typical form of knowledge for the rationalists, had\nbeen thought of as the analysis of what was implied or given in the\ndefinitions.  The conception of analytic a priori knowledge was thus\nfamiliar and simple.  On the other hand, the empiricists had thought of\nknowledge as primarily synthesis--or, as they called it, association--a\nconnecting together of ideas in their nature separate.  Knowledge of a\nthing was thought of as the observing together of several ideas.\nJudgments about objects were regarded as judgments about the\nco-existence of separate ideas, ideas which were not thought of as being\nbound by any logical necessity. We do not understand why a substance\nwith the specific gravity of gold should be yellow; we only observe the\nco-existence of certain qualities.  The judgment, then, gold is yellow,\nis synthetic; it is an assertion of the co-existence of separate\nqualities.  It is also empirical; it does not express a reasoned insight\ninto the necessary connection of gold and yellow.  It seems rather a\nrecord of observation.  Synthetic knowledge, then, was thought of as in\nits nature empirical and a posteriori.  Hume, who thought of all\nknowledge of the world in experience as synthetic, denied to such\nknowledge any necessity or certainty.\n\nHume, however, had noticed that the principle of causation, the judgment\nthat every event has a cause, is both a priori and synthetic.  It is\nnot, he held, derived from experience; rather it is a principle which\nguides our investigation of experience.  It is not got from analysis of\nthe notion of causation, nor is it simply concerned with the agreement\nor disagreement of our ideas.  It asserts the necessary connection of\ntwo perfectly separate existing things.  Hume himself, as we saw, tried\nto explain away these uncomfortable facts.  He was too wedded to his\nbelief that all knowledge was derived from passively received\nimpressions to face them rightly.  Kant, coming to the problem with\ndifferent prepossessions, with the belief that most knowledge was\nanalytic, was impressed with Hume's proof that the principle of\ncausation could not be derived from analysis.  The very basis of all\nscience of nature, then, contradicted the belief that knowledge was\nanalytical.  Kant was also, with Hume, convinced that the principle of\ncausation was not derived from experience, for he saw that experience\nassumed it.  At the same time, he was not prepared, like Hume, to\nexplain it away.  Further, he saw that the problem raised by the\nprinciple of causation was a wide one. For other judgments, he held, are\nboth synthetic and a priori, among them mathematical judgments.  As we\nshall see afterwards, Kant proved the impossibility of arriving at\nknowledge of God or the soul by mere analysis of concepts.  The\njudgments of metaphysics, about God or the soul, are also synthetic.\nBut the validity of the judgments of metaphysics is under dispute. If we\nexamine the synthetic a priori judgments of mathematics and of science\nwhose validity is certain, we may then discover whether such judgments\nin metaphysics can or can not have similar certainty.  We may thus see\nthat the problem of the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments is a\nrestatement in logical terms of the problem of the relation between the\na priori sciences and metaphysics.\n\nSomething more must be said of the importance of synthetic a priori\njudgments in Kant's account of knowledge.  Their existence, we have\nseen, exposes the shortcomings of both rationalism, which allowed only\nfor analytic a priori judgments, and empiricism, which allowed only of\nsynthetic a posteriori judgments.  Both these theories tended to regard\nknowledge as an analysis or description of what was present to the mind,\nand differed really only in their view of what was present. For, though\nthe empiricist thought of empirical knowledge as synthesis, the\nsynthesis was not ascribed to the mind, but to associating ideas; the\nmind only observed, and knowledge was merely the apprehension of objects\nby the senses.  We see what is before our eyes, and notice the\ndifferences and similarities in what is before us.  The rationalist\nconceived of thought as simply apprehending the nature of the real,\nfreed from the illusions of sense perception.  The mathematician has\nbefore his thought the nature of a triangle, and sees intellectually\nwhat that nature implies.  We may try to mediate between the two by\nsaying that while all knowing is observing, some is observing of objects\nof thought and some of objects of sense, the one being called\nunderstanding, the other perception.  In most scientific judgments,\nhowever, we are not simply observing objects either of thought or of\nsense.  Scientific judgments are more than descriptions of what is\npresent to the mind or to the senses; they are essentially\nanticipations.  They go beyond what is immediately given.  This is shown\nby the fact that it is the characteristic of a scientific proposition\nthat it can be verified.  If we understand it rightly, we see that it\nimplies that, under such-and-such conditions, such-and-such things will\nbe experienced.  Hence the importance of experiment to science.  A\nscientific proposition is, of course, grounded on observation of\nperceived fact and understanding of universal connection, but it is an\nassertion of something beyond that.\n\nIf, then, all scientific judgments are synthetic, and if both\nrationalism and empiricism failed to account for the manner in which\nsuch judgments go beyond what is immediately given to the mind, ought we\nnot to say that the real problem for Kant is to show not merely how\nsynthetic a priori judgments are possible, but how any synthetic\njudgments are possible?  This seems at first sight plausible, but the\nsuggestion must be rejected; for, when Kant asks how a judgment is\npossible, he is not asking how we come to make it, but how we know that\nit is valid.  Now, if we consider any empirical judgment about the facts\nof nature, we must recognise that Locke and Hume were right in denying\ncertainty to such judgments.  In all general statements about concrete\nfacts we to a certain extent go beyond our evidence.  Empirical\nscientific statements are not theoretically certain.  They may, of\ncourse, be certain enough for all practical purposes. They are\nreasonable expectations of what will happen, but reasonable expectation\nis a very different thing from the certainty of mathematical insight.\n\nNow Kant maintained that, while such empirical judgments are not\ncertain, they all imply the certainty of a number of general principles\non which they depend. These general principles are the synthetic a\npriori judgments with which he is especially concerned.  When we apply\nthe principles of trigonometry to an engineering problem, we know that\nour measurements are only approximate, and that the result also will\nonly be approximate; but the possibility of arriving at such approximate\nresults depends on the absolute truth of the trigonometrical principles,\nand on the assumption that they express not simply the agreement or\ndisagreement of ideas, but hold of the real.  When we apply the rules of\narithmetic to counting objects, there may be a certain arbitrariness in\ndeciding on our unit.  There is no such arbitrariness in the rule.  All\nscientific judgments of causation are only approximately certain, but\nthey all imply the certainty of the principle of causation, and are\nbased on the assumption that such a principle is of universal\napplication.  This and the other principles assumed in our empirical\njudgments are, then, the synthetic judgments with which Kant is\nconcerned.  Now, it is of the nature of our empirical knowledge that it\nis fragmentary and not uniform, that we are concerned with an indefinite\nnumber of things whose connections we do not wholly understand, and\nwhich we cannot therefore anticipate.  Yet we assume that all these\nobjects will obey the rules of arithmetic and geometry, and will all be\nsubject in their changes to the principle of causation.  On such\nassumptions all the sciences of applied mathematics depend.  How are\nthey justifiable?  That is Kant's question.\n\nKant, when he considers mathematics, is concerned with the assumptions\nof applied mathematics, of those sciences which, though mathematical,\nmake statements about existing objects, and in which the old distinction\nbetween understanding and perception which was based on the difference\nin the objects of these two faculties breaks down.  The sciences which\nKant is investigating imply that principles which are clearly not\nderived from mere observation are yet the basis on which we order and\narrange what we observe.  Now, if we held that the objects of\nmathematics were independent entities quite separate from the things we\nperceive, it would be impossible to explain how we might assume that the\nthings we perceive would be subject to the rules of mathematics.  If, on\nthe other hand, we held that in mathematics we were simply concerned\nwith the various objects of the senses, it would be impossible to\nexplain how mathematics can have a generality and necessity which no\nstatements can have which rest on observation of the various things we\nsee.  The existence of applied mathematics implies firstly that\nunderstanding and perception are distinct, and that neither of them can\nbe reduced to the other, for that would mean that we should have to give\nup either the element of observation and experiment or the element of\nnecessity and a priority, and secondly, that understanding and\nperception are combined, and must be combined for any advance in\nscience.\n\nNow, Kant finds his answer to the problem he has raised by concentrating\nhis attention on the fact that, while understanding and perception are\ndistinct, they are both present in all knowledge.  His argument is that\nwe are necessarily in a difficulty if we think of understanding and\nperception as having each its separate objects, and then try to explain\ntheir combination. If we begin with their combination, we may see that\nthe reference of principles of thought to objects of sense is not an\naccident, but that these principles of thought or of understanding, as\nKant calls them, are only concerned with objects of sense, and have no\nother meaning.  If we object, But how can principles of thought be\nuniversal if they are concerned with the many and varying objects of\nsense?  Kant's answer is that they are not concerned directly with these\nobjects, but with the conditions under which these objects can be\nunderstood.  They are therefore not statements about objects, but\nstatements of the conditions of possible experience. If we find out that\nall perceiving and thinking imply certain conditions, then we can affirm\nthe validity of principles based upon these conditions, so long as we do\nnot try to apply the principles beyond our perceiving.\n\nWe may put the point in another way by asking by what right the mind can\nprescribe to or anticipate experience.  Kant's answer is just in so far\nas we can determine the conditions under which alone objects can be\nknown.  If that can be done, we can say, These principles will hold of\nobjects in so far as they are known.  In the preface to the second\nedition of the _Critique of Pure Reason_ Kant reverts to the discoveries\nof Galileo and Torricelli, and points out that their success was due to\ntheir asking of nature the right question, and the right question was\nthat which reason could understand. \"When Galileo let balls of a\nparticular weight, which he had determined himself, roll down an\ninclined plane, or Torricelli made the air carry a weight, which he had\npreviously determined to be equal to that of a definite volume of water,\na new light flashed on all students of nature.  They comprehended that\nreason has insight into that only which she herself produces on her own\nplan, and that she must move forward with the principles of her\njudgments, according to fixed law, and compel nature to answer her\nquestions, but not let herself be led by nature, as it were in\nleading-strings. Otherwise accidental observations, made on no\npreviously fixed plan, will never converge towards a necessary law,\nwhich is the only thing that reason seeks or requires. Reason, holding\nin one hand its principles, according to which alone concordant\nphenomena can be admitted as laws of nature, and in the other the\nexperiment which it has devised according to those principles, must\napproach nature in order to be taught by it, but not in the character of\na pupil who agrees to everything the master likes, but as an appointed\njudge, who compels the witnesses to answer the questions which he\nhimself proposes.\"\n\nKant, here, is concerned with reason in its application to experience,\nand he makes it clear that there is much in all such inquiries which\ncannot be anticipated a priori.  \"Reason must approach nature in order\nto be taught by it.\"  The answer to the questions and experiments cannot\nbe known beforehand.  The empirical element in science cannot be\nexplained away. Reason dictates not the answer but the question, and so\nfar the form of the answer.  Reason, then, it is suggested, is concerned\nwith the principles or conditions, according to which we can understand\nthings. It is not a method of observing or analysing objects; rather it\nstates the methods and principles according to which objects must be\nobserved if they are to be understood.  The principles are not\nstatements about the nature of objects, but principles of the\npossibility of experience.  This new attitude to reason Kant describes\nas the Copernican change in philosophy.  It constitutes Kant's idealism.\nIts nature and importance we must examine in the next chapter.\n\n\n\n\n                             *CHAPTER III*\n\n                   *KANT'S IDEALISM.  TIME AND SPACE*\n\n\nThe great discovery which Kant considered he had made as to the nature\nof reason was that reason was not a method of observing objects as they\nreally exist, but was concerned directly only with our ways of\nunderstanding objects.  This discovery is the essence of Kant's\nidealism, and its main purport is expressed in the distinction Kant so\noften makes between things in themselves and phenomena.  This\ndistinction is used as the key to the solution of all his difficulties.\nBut the doctrine it implies is very easy to misunderstand, partly\nbecause idealism is generally used in a very different sense from that\nin which Kant uses it, partly because Kant's statement of the\ndistinction between things in themselves and phenomena depended on a\nview of knowledge which he was very much concerned to refute, but with\nwhich we are not now familiar.  If we are to understand Kant's\nphilosophy, we must know what he means by idealism, and wherein his\nidealism differs from that of his predecessors.\n\nThe word idealism is, naturally, contrasted with realism.  It suggests\nan assertion that something is not real, but only an idea.  If we know\nit to be combined with a distinction between things in themselves, and\nphenomena, or appearances, it seems to suggest that the objects of\nknowledge are somehow illusions, or only appearances in the mind, as\ncontrasted with real things. Something like this had been held by Kant's\npredecessors. For the fundamental principle of the idealism on which\nmost of Kant's predecessors had been agreed, and which is sometimes\ncalled Cartesian, and sometimes subjective idealism, is that the mind\nsomehow knows itself and its own actions and states, with more\ndirectness and certainty than it knows external objects.  The doctrine\nis commonly based upon a confused view of sense perception.\n\nSense perception is obviously possible only through processes in the\nsensory organs, and objects were thought of as producing impressions\nthrough the sensory organs in the brain, and the mind as then becoming\naware of them in the brain.  Hence, when Locke says that the mind only\nknows its own ideas, he tends to mean (though the facts are sometimes\ntoo much for him and he is nobly inconsistent) that the mind only knows\nobjects inside the brain.  The main objection to this doctrine, apart\nfrom the fact that it is based on a confusion, is that it makes it quite\ninexplicable how the notion of an outside world ever arises.  For if we\nknow, and must eternally know, only ideas inside our head, why should we\never imagine that there an outside world exists.  Yet if nothing\n_outside_ us were observed--if we knew of no process which went on\nbetween outside objects and the brain, the doctrine would have no basis\non which to rest.  There cannot be any meaning in saying something is\n\"only an idea,\" if we do not know what is real in the sense of its\nhaving an existence independent of our minds.\n\nLocke supposed that, although we knew only ideas, we could somehow refer\nfrom our ideas to an outside world.  For he thought that truth was\nconcerned with the agreement of our ideas with reality.  This form of\nthe doctrine, the commonest, is sometimes called Representationism.  For\nit thinks of the mind as concerned with representations, or pictures, or\nimages which it may compare with the real objects.  Its futility is\nobvious enough.  We can only compare a picture with the thing it\nrepresents, if we can know both.  If we can only know ideas, we can\nnever know that they are only ideas, and can never compare them with\nanything else.\n\nThis difficulty was seen by Berkeley, the most consistent of subjective\nidealists, and led him to deny the existence of outside objects, and\nhold that existence or reality meant being perceived and nothing more.\nBut if we take Berkeley's position, it becomes very difficult to say\nwhat we mean by judgments being true.  If things only exist as we think\nof them, or perceive them, or rather if they are only our thinking of or\nperceiving them, the question of the truth or falsity of our statements\nabout them cannot arise.\n\nThis idealism Kant is careful to refute, and he points out that there is\nno evidence for its fundamental proposition that we know our mind more\ndirectly than we know objects.  We are only conscious of ourselves in\nknowing something not ourselves.  We do not invent the notion of\nexternality or outsideness in space from an experience in which it\noriginally has no part. Externality is implied in our most simple\nexperience.  We begin with consciousness of outside things, and only\nbecome conscious of our own mental states or processes later.  But it is\nimportant to observe that, the truth or falsity of subjective idealism\nhas no bearing whatsoever on the question with which Kant was concerned.\nIf I ask how I can lay down rules about what I have not yet experienced,\nI am not in the least helped by being told that I only experience what\nis in my mind. For the question will equally arise, How do I know what\nis going to be in my mind?  The question idealism ordinarily discusses,\nas to whether the objects of our awareness are in our mind or outside,\nare in their nature mental and dependent on the mind or not, is entirely\nand absolutely irrelevant to Kant's purposes.\n\nBut it is a fact, and one that has got to be explained that in judgment\nwe go beyond what is present to our minds, and that, in so anticipating\nwhat we shall experience, we assume that certain principles hold of all\nthat has been or may be present. With that difficulty idealism, as\nordinarily understood, has nothing to do. Representationism tried to\ngive some account of this going beyond what is present to our minds by\nsuggesting that truth is a reference from ideas to reality; but, as we\nsaw, if we know only ideas, such a reference is impossible.  The\ndoctrines opposed to representationism, that only ideas exist, or that\nwe directly know real objects, allow the existence of nothing contrasted\nwith what we are apprehending to which a reference in judgment can be\nmade.  No one who is satisfied with any of these positions can have seen\nKant's problem.\n\nIf Kant then, is not a subjective idealist what does he mean by saying,\nas he constantly does, that we only know phenomena, and why should that\nlimitation of knowledge help him in any of his difficulties?  He means,\nin the first place, that all knowledge depends upon perception.  The\nfirst paragraph of the first part of the _Critique of Pure Reason_ makes\nthat clear. \"Whatever the process and the means may be by which\nknowledge reaches its objects, there is one that reaches them directly\nand forms the ultimate material of all thought, viz. perception.  This\nis possible only when the object is given, and the object can be given\nonly (to human beings, at least) through a certain affection of the\nmind.\"\n\nNow, although we perceive an objective reality, sense perception\nobviously gives a very imperfect knowledge of objects.  We see only some\nsides and aspects of things, and not others.  What we see depends on\nchanges in our position.  Further, we know that what we see is only a\nsmall part of the nature of anything. We think of reality as an\ninterconnected system, but we only perceive a very small part of it, and\nwhat we perceive depends upon the particular time and the particular\npart of space in which we live.  In our experience we are never really\ncontent simply with what we perceive; we perceive much too little for\nthat. We are always inferring from what we see to something beyond it.\nWhat is that something beyond, which, as we have seen, is implied in all\njudgment?  We might hold that it was the things as they really are as\ndistinguished from things as they appear, or phenomena, and that, when\nwe turned from perception to thought, we turned from illusion to\nreality.  Kant denied this. He held that, if you examine a scientific\njudgment about anything you perceive, such as that yellow thing is gold,\nyou will find that, if you know what the judgment means, you will be\nable to say: Then, under such-and-such conditions--if you weigh it, for\nexample--you will have such-and-such a perception.  The appeal is not\nfrom what you perceive to what you think, but from what you perceive now\nto what you will perceive under such-and-such conditions.  Such a\nreference indeed, implies thought and what is ordinarily called a\nconcept; but our knowledge of concepts used in science always means\nthat, if we know what is meant _e.g._ by calling anything gold, we know\nhow it will behave under such-and-such conditions.  The concept, in\nKant's words, is a function of unity in our representations.  The task\nof thought, then, is not to turn the mind away from what we perceive,\nbut to help us to transcend some of the limitations of our perceptions,\nor, to speak more accurately, to set somewhat further back the limits of\nour perception; for thought never entirely transcends these limits.  Our\nknowledge is always conditioned by the fact that we are finite minds\nliving in a particular place and at a particular time; but thought can\nextend the range of our perception in space and in time.\n\nThe limitations of our perception have, for Kant, a double aspect, which\ndetermines his division of the first part of the _Critique_ into two\nparts--the _AEsthetic_ and the _Analytic_.  In the first place, our\ndirect knowledge of space at any one time is always knowledge only of a\npart of space; our direct knowledge of time, whether in present\nconsciousness or in memory of our own experience, is knowledge of only a\npart of time; and the things in the space we directly perceive, or in\nthe time we experience, are what they are by their relation to space\noutside the space we see, and time beyond the time we experience, and\nthat limited space and time we treat, therefore, as parts of one\nall-embracing space and one all-embracing time, and in the conception of\nan indefinitely extended space and time we can think of the space in\nwhich all things exist, and the time in which all things occur, of which\nwe only see and experience a small part.  The science of astronomy\nobviously talks of space and time far beyond anything we could ever\nperceive, but we go beyond such direct perception in such simple\nexpressions as \"forty miles from here\" or \"three days hence.\"  And, when\nKant says that space and time are only phenomenal, he does not mean that\nthey are mental, but that we only know them through perception, and that\nwe get at absolute space and time not by going from what we perceive to\nwhat we think, but by thinking of what we perceive indefinitely\nextended.  All definite statements about space must come back in the end\nto \"so far from _here_,\" all about time to \"so long from _now_,\" and the\nfact that all our knowledge of space and time is got by adding to or\nextending in thought the space and time we directly perceive does,\naccording to Kant, solve some obstinate puzzles about the nature of\nspace and time.\n\nIn the second place, if we consider our knowledge of objects, we realise\nthat, as we said, at any one moment we only perceive them in part or\nfrom one position. What we directly perceive of them is fragmentary and\ndiscontinuous, one aspect seen now, and another aspect seen at another\ntime.  But we do not think of the things as existing in that\ndiscontinuous way; we think of them as having a nature of their own.\nThat does not contradict, but is something very much more than, what we\nperceive, and our knowledge of any object is got by piecing together the\naspects we directly perceive; but that piecing together, or synthesis,\nis not haphazard.  It is governed by rules--rules partly derived from\nthe nature of the particular thing we are concerned with, and partly\nmore general rules, which come from the relation of this work of piecing\ntogether to the framework of space and time by help of which it is done.\n\nKant's conception of knowledge, then, is something like this.  Each of\nus is in direct contact with reality, but we perceive directly only a\nsmall part of it, and, as our consciousness moves on in time, and as we\nchange our position in space, we are directly conscious of different\nsmall portions of reality.  A part of the whole is illumined by direct\nperception, but the whole stretches beyond that indefinitely in space\nand time.  In the part we directly perceive there is a temporal order\nand a spatial order.  Things are given to us arranged in space and\nordered in time, and these arrangements or orders in the space and time\nthat is directly given to us in perception have certain rules, and we\nthink of these principles of arrangement as extending indefinitely\nbeyond the space and time given to us in perception. When we make\njudgments about reality beyond our perception, we think of things as so\narranged in the space and time beyond our perception as we should see\nthem arranged were the range of our perception sufficiently wide.\nFurther, it is most important to remember that we do not remain in one\nplace and at one time and make guesses of what may happen in the\ndarkness beyond.  Though our perception at any one moment is limited, we\ncan connect what we see at one time with what we see at another.  We\ncan, by means of language and writing, use the perception of others to\nfill out our experience, until gradually our scientific judgments, our\nknowledge of what we should perceive under all sorts of possible\nexperience, seems to bulk much more largely than could our individual\nperceptions. But we are still, Kant would say, getting at our knowledge\nof what is beyond by piecing together what we and other people have\nperceived, and the whole is always much more than that.\n\nWhat, then, is meant by the contention that we can know things in\nthemselves which Kant is earnest to refute?  It might mean that we do in\nperception attain to a complete knowledge, but that would be obviously\nuntrue.  As Kant understood the claim, it meant rather something like\nthis: In thought we are obviously not limited by our perception.  We are\nalways assuming certain principles, such as the laws of space or the\nprinciple of causation, to hold of all reality, both what we do and what\nwe do not directly perceive.  May we not say, then, that these\nprinciples hold of all reality, and argue from that fact to what the\nnature of the whole must be?  If everything that we know is caused,\n_e.g._, may we not apply the principle of causation to all reality and\nsay that it must have a cause?\n\nWhen we come to consider the _Dialectic_, the second main division of\nthe first _Critique_, we shall notice Kant's detailed analysis of these\narguments, and how he points out that you can in this way get\ncontradictory results. In the meantime it must be observed that in these\narguments we start from principles applied to what we perceive and\nexpressing connections between the different things we perceive, and\nthen apply them beyond everything we do or could perceive.  That means\nthat we imagine that we can take these principles out of relation not\nonly to this or that detail of perception, but out of relation to any\nperception at all, and thus apprehend reality by thought independently\nof perception.\n\nKant's answer is that thought cannot directly apprehend the nature of\nthe whole, and these universal principles, such as the principle of\ncausation, are only principles by which we connect one perception with\nanother to amend the discontinuous and fragmentary nature of our\nperception; they are rules for the synthesis of what we perceive.  By so\nsynthesising our perceptions we come to a less imperfect knowledge of\nthe whole, but apart from perceptions the principles have no meaning at\nall.\n\nKant's idealism, _i.e._ his insistence that we know only phenomena, not\nthings in themselves, is relevant to his problem, because it implies the\ndenial of the view that thought has objects apprehended independently of\nperception, and because it insists that we can only know directly what\nwe perceive, or things as they appear to us, that in our process from\nperception to knowledge we start with what is present to our perception\nand end with what is or with what might be present to our perception,\nand that this process is possible by reason of our continued\nconsciousness in time.  The process, Kant holds, is governed by certain\nprinciples.  These depend upon the part played by space and time in all\nour perception, and the manner in which we employ space and time in\npiecing together our discontinuous perceptions.\n\nNow, obviously it is quite possible to hold this position without having\nthought out what is implied in being present to the mind in perception.\nThis is what Kant did.  He describes perception in different and\ninconsistent ways.  The reason for this inconsistency is that Kant is\nnot concerned with the nature of perception, but with the relation of\nwhat is immediately perceived to what is not but may be immediately\nperceived, and he therefore never worked out any consistent account of\nperception.  He sometimes talks of perception reaching objects directly,\nand refutes the view that we perceive only what is in our mind.  (This,\nindeed, is implied in his distinction of space and time as forms of\n_external_ and _internal_ sense respectively.)  But usually he takes the\nordinary idealist view that we do not perceive things, but affections\nproduced in us by things.  Owing to this inconsistency Kant constantly\nseems to be stating very much more than he has any right to.  This is\nespecially true in all that he says about knowledge being confined to\nphenomena and not extending to things in themselves.  When he talks of\nour knowing only phenomena, he sometimes seems to mean that we know\nobjects, things in themselves, only in part, in so far as they appear to\nus.  That would make the distinction between the phenomenon and the\nthing in itself a distinction between the same thing imperfectly and\nperfectly understood.  He sometimes, and this is his more usual view,\nseems to mean that we are aware of appearances, entities separate and\ndistinguishable from the objects which produce them in our minds.  But\nif we work out in any of Kant's arguments the point of his appeal to the\nfact that knowledge is only of phenomena, we shall find that in every\ncase the difference between a subjective idealist and a realist view of\nperception, of what \"being present to the mind\" means, is irrelevant,\nand that his argument holds on either theory.\n\nWe must now turn to Kant's account of space and time which is given in\nthe _AEsthetic_, the first part of the _Critique_.  He begins by showing\nthe impossibility of the two views of the nature of space and time which\nthen held the field, the views of Newton and Leibniz. Newton had thought\nof space and time as realities, things in themselves existing along with\nother things. But obviously we cannot think of space as a separate thing\nexisting by itself; for space without things would have no determination\nor possibility of determination, and would be to us just nothing,\nwhereas, as it is, it is something to us.  The same holds of time.  The\nNewtonian doctrine, Kant says, \"forces us to assume two eternal,\ninfinite, and self-subsisting non-realities, which are there, without\nany reality in them, only that they may comprehend all reality.\"  Just\nbecause things are in space and time, space and time are not themselves\nthings.  But if this makes us say that space and time are only relations\nbetween or qualities of things, we find ourselves in difficulties as\nobvious.  We do not come to apprehend space and time by comparing things\nand seeing that they have a common quality of being \"spatial\" or\n\"temporal,\" as we come to apprehend redness, _e.g._, by seeing red\nthings.  The perception of space and time is implied in each and every\nperception of things.  We cannot, therefore, derive them from our study\nof things; we must begin with them.  Further, Kant notices, as against\nLeibniz, that space and time are not ordinary concepts because they have\nno instances.  Different men are instances of man, but different spaces\nor times are only parts or determinations of the one space and the one\ntime.  As against the view, then, that would make space and time only\nrelations, derived from our comparison of things which are not temporal\nor spatial, Kant insists that space and time are a priori.  We cannot\nsee things without seeing them outside one another--_i.e._ in space--or\nexperience succession or change without experiencing it in time.  Space\nand time, then, have a certain independence of things in space and time.\nThe qualitative differences of things in space or events in time do not\naffect the nature of space and time, and we can and do study and discuss\nspatial and temporal relations quite independently of such differences.\n\nSpace and time, then, can be abstracted from things in space and time.\nYet, on the other hand, we cannot think that space and time exist\nindependently of things.  They do not exist in abstraction; for, though\nthe specific differences of things in space and time are irrelevant to\nthe nature of space and time, if there were no things, or if there were\nno differences, there could be no space and time as we know them. \"The\nempirical perception,\" says Kant, \"is not compounded of phenomena and\nspace, of the sensation and the empty perception.\"  Space and time,\ntherefore, Kant says, are not things in themselves.\n\nWhat, then, are they?  Kant's answer is that they are forms of our\nperception.  Space is the form of external perception, and time is the\nform of internal perception, and Kant holds that by this answer we can\nunderstand both how our knowledge of space and time may be a priori, how\nspatial and temporal distinctions may be abstracted from the differences\nof things, and how we may avoid the difficulties consequent on regarding\ntime and space as independent things.\n\nWhat, then, does Kant mean by _form_?  He seems to mean two things,\nwhich he does not clearly distinguish. The first meaning is best\ndescribed in his own words: \"In the phenomenon I call what corresponds\nto the sensation the matter of the phenomenon, and that which causes\nthat the manifold of the phenomenon is perceived as arranged in specific\nrelations I call the form of the phenomenon.\"  We are here face to face\nwith the ultimate difference of form and matter, or order and that which\nis ordered.  When Kant calls time and space the form of our perception\nhe is simply calling attention to the fact that in all that we perceive\nwe find this distinction.  It is something found, given, not made by us.\nBy the word \"form\" Kant does not mean anything specially subjective as\ncontrasted with matter or content, for he carefully distinguishes\nbetween space and time, and such qualities as colour, which get their\nnature in part, he thinks, from the specific nature of the sense organ.\nCompared with such qualities space and time are objective.  The phrase\n\"forms of our perception,\" then, does not really explain anything about\nspace and time; it only emphasises the fact that the distinction between\nspace and time and objects in them is found in what we perceive, and\nthat there is no meaning in discussing either side of the distinction as\nthough it were quite independent of what we perceive.\n\nBut form has also another meaning which justifies Kant in calling space\nand time _only_ forms of our perception, and hence subjective.  For,\nwhile these forms are _found_ in what we perceive, the distinctive part\nwhich they play in our knowledge is due to the fact that we use space\nand time as a framework by which to connect our scattered experiences.\nWe come to think of the space and time we perceive as parts of an\nabsolute space and an absolute time.  We perceive parts of space and\ntime, but absolute space and absolute time we do not perceive.  They are\nthe form we perceive imagined indefinitely extended.  We order the\nparticular parts of space and time which we do perceive in reference to\nabsolute space and time.  Yet absolute space and time are only known\nthrough the finite parts of space and time which we actually experience.\nHence absolute space and time are not perceived realities or perceived\norders, but ways in which we organise and arrange what we perceive.\nNow, the qualities of space and time which are hard to think of as the\nqualities of a thing that exists, _i.e._ their infinite divisibility and\ninfinite extension, are qualities of absolute space and time.  When we\nsay that space is infinitely divisible, we do not mean that any existing\nthing is made up of an infinite number of parts.  The divisibility of\nspace and the divisibility of matter are quite different.  An inch as a\nspatial determination is infinitely divisible, but the divisibility of\nthe actual stuff which any inch may measure is a matter of empirical\ninvestigation, and ought to admit of a definite answer.  That means\nthat, while we use determinations of space which we consider infinitely\ndivisible and infinitely extensible to measure things in space, we do\nnot consider that these determinations, fractions, or multiples of\ninches or centimetres, have anything to do with the constitution of the\nthing they measure.  It was not put together in fractions of inches.\nThus we must distinguish between space as the form of what we perceive,\nthe next-each-otherness of things, and the use we make of that form to\nconstruct by means of measurement order in all different perception.\nThe first is obviously the form only of what we perceive, and gives rise\nto no transcendental questions.  But the second, infinite space, though\nit seems to transcend our perception, has still only meaning in\nreference to perception, is only a way of ordering our perceptions.  The\nsame holds good of time.\n\nWe can see now what Kant means by saying that time and space are\nempirically real and transcendentally ideal.  Kant does not maintain\nthat space and time are illusions.  They are a constant element of what\nis given us in perception.  It is only when we try and go beyond our\nperceptions, and take space and time as things existing independently of\nwhat we perceive, thus trying to transcend the limits of possible\nperception, that we fall into illusion.  Space and time have meaning\nonly as elements in what we perceive, or in connecting what we perceive\nnow with what we may perceive.\n\n\n\n\n                              *CHAPTER IV*\n\n       *THE CATEGORIES AND THE PRINCIPLES OF PURE UNDERSTANDING*\n\n\nKant makes the distinction between perception and understanding depend\nupon the distinction between the receptivity and the spontaneity of the\nmind.  In the _AEsthetic_ he has been concerned with time and space as\nelements in what seems to be given to the mind.  Before we begin to ask\nthe questions of science, before we analyse, describe, or classify,\nbefore we have to think, we perceive.  Time and space are not got at by\nthinking or generalisation.  For before we can say anything about any\npart of our experience, it is _given_ us in a certain spatial and\ntemporal order.  If we open our eyes at any moment, we are, without any\nconscious effort of thought on our part, confronted with an elaborate\ncontent.  It seems simple to distinguish this receptive attitude of the\nmind in perception from its activity in thinking.\n\nThe distinction is not really so simple as it appears. For we all know\nthat what we perceive depends, at least to some extent, on the mind's\nactivity.  We are familiar with the reflection that men see what they\nwant to see or what they are looking for.  This is clearly shown in the\ncase of hearing by the difference in what we hear when we are listening\nto a language we understand and when we are listening to an unfamiliar\nlanguage, or in the common experience when, after failing to hear what\nsomeone has said, we think what it must have been, and then seem to\nrecall the sound, not as we heard it, but as we should have heard it if\nwe had heard it rightly.  Anyone who reflects on the process of fast\nreading will realise that we do not perceive or notice all the letters\non a page; we fill in from our imagination, as we discover when we read\nwords that are not on the page.  It is a very hard thing, giving up all\ninterpretation and inference, to describe faithfully just what is there\nto see.\n\nPassive perception, then, does not exist, and our thought affects our\nperception.  Yet, at the same time, the distinction between thought and\nperception, although not simple, is real.  For although our previous\nthought affects our perception and we see things already classified, see\nbooks, and tables, and chairs, not merely coloured surfaces, yet we can\ndistinguish between simple immediate perception and the process of\nthought which begins when we ask, What is that? _i.e._ when we begin to\nmake judgments.\n\nThe characteristic of thought, according to Kant, is synthesis, or\nputting together, and all synthesis is the work of the mind.  When we\nbegin to describe and classify the contents of our perception, we pick\nout separate qualities from the continuous whole we perceive, and group\nthem together.  This grouping is, of course, determined by the\nlikenesses and differences which we perceive everywhere, but we do not,\nin judging, confine ourselves to noticing likeness and difference.  For\nany content of our perception has some point of resemblance, and some of\ndifference with any other.  We are concerned with likenesses that go\nwith or are the signs of other likenesses.  On the basis of perceived\nlikeness we erect the notion of things and qualities of a certain kind.\nIn doing this we go beyond what we see, and unite and arrange the\ncontents of our perception through concepts.  That is what we are doing\nwhen we say that is a so-and-so.  For example, if I say that rock is\nlike a dog, I am simply expressing a likeness I perceive.  I do not\nimply that the rock is therefore alive or will bark; I am not going\nbeyond how the rock looks; but if I say that object is a dog, I assert\nthat all that is implied in being a dog will hold of that object, _i.e._\nthat it will have a certain appearance and behaviour, which is known.  I\ncan anticipate, therefore, how it will behave, look, and sound under\ncertain circumstances. All these phenomena, the appearance, the barking,\nand running, though I may perceive them at different times and places,\nare grouped together in the judgment, \"That is a dog.\"  This is what\nKant means by saying, \"Concepts depend on functions.  By function I mean\nthe unity of the act of arranging different representations under one\ncommon representation.\"  Concepts, therefore, always refer to\nperception, and it is by means of concepts that we are enabled to\nintroduce such order into what we perceive, that we can anticipate from\nwhat we perceive what we shall perceive. \"Perceptions without concepts\nare blind.\"  Without concepts what we perceive would not lead us in any\nway beyond what is immediately given.  \"Thoughts without contents are\nempty.\"  Concepts are nothing, and have no meaning apart from the\ncontents of perception which they unify.\n\nMost of these concepts are what is called empirical. We get at them by\nobserving likenesses and differences in what we perceive, and observing\nwhich are significant and important, and which are what we call\naccidental. Science, in its discovery of laws, is only carrying further\nthis process which is implied in all simple judgments. By observing\nlikenesses and differences, their uniformities and variations, and\ndiscovering those which are a key to the rest, we improve our concepts,\nand thereby have more knowledge of what we call natural laws, and can\nmore and more anticipate experience.  With these empirical concepts and\ntheir development Kant is not concerned.  But there are certain concepts\nof which Hume had observed that they are not obtained in the ordinary\nway from an examination of the contents of experience.  The two with\nwhich he chiefly concerned himself were substance and cause.  These\nconcepts seems to play an especially important part in the ordering and\narranging of the concepts of experience.  For the work of science, in\nmoving from a simple observation of likenesses and differences to a\nknowledge of empirical laws, depends upon certain assumptions or\nprinciples, like the principle of causation or the principle of the\nconservation of energy.  These principles imply concepts not derived,\nlike the others, from generalisation from experience; they are the\nsynthetic a priori judgments which, as we have seen, constituted a\nspecial problem for Kant.\n\nKant is first concerned to ask where these a priori concepts come from,\nand how many of them there are. This inquiry he calls the metaphysical\ndeduction of the categories.  Having answered that question, he then\ngoes on to ask by what right we assume these principles in our dealing\nwith experience.  This, the most important and difficult section of the\n_Critique_, he calls the transcendental deduction of the categories.\n\nMost concepts, as we saw, are empirical.  We take certain likenesses and\ndifferences we observe as the mark of a real unity in the things.  The\ndifferent natures of different things we do not fully know, but we\ndistinguish them by the different uniformities we observe, and in order\nto explain our experience we assume the unity underlying these perceived\nlikenesses.  Iron, dog, fire, are names for the natures of things which\nwe see manifested in our experience.  The concept, then, is got from\nwhat we perceive, though it stands for something more than we perceive.\nHow, then, can there be any concepts which are not got from the\nempirical differences of things we perceive?  Let us take such a concept\nas substance, and see whether we can discover where it comes from.\nLocke had been puzzled by discovering that he could not, in any object,\nfind anything which was its substantiality.  Calling anything a\nsubstance is not like saying that it is hard, or green, or heavy; we are\nnot concerned with specific differences in things, but we are not\ntherefore saying what is meaningless. There is something, namely\nsubstance, which we can distinguish from the hardness, or colour, or\nweight that we perceive.  That something we do not perceive; we assume\nit whenever we talk of a thing being hard, and green, and heavy.  A\nthing's substantiality is just the unity of its perceivable qualities.\nBut such a unity is implied in the concept of any object.  Substance,\nthen, is a name for one of the general principles implied in our\nassuming that what we perceive are real objects.\n\nKant generalises the result of this inquiry into particular concepts of\nthis kind.  He holds that a priori concepts or categories (_i.e._ the\nconcepts which we do not get from empirical differences of things) stand\nfor principles implied in thinking of things as objects or in judging.\nIf we want, therefore, to find out the number of the categories, we must\nask how many different kinds of unity are implied in judgment, or what\nare the conditions of judging any object.  Kant does not here help, but\nrather misleads us in this inquiry.  For he unfortunately thought that\nthe different kinds of judgment could be discovered without further ado\nby taking the list given in formal logic.  He therefore first makes a\nlist of categories, based on the logical forms of judgment, and then\ntries to show the connection between these categories and the principles\nwhich were, as he had discovered, assumed in the mathematical sciences.\n\nThe actual movement of his thought is, I think, different.  He asks if\nthere are any general conditions implied in all judgment.  His answer is\nthat all judgments, all statements, that is, which claim to be true,\nimply determination of time and space.  From that determination certain\nprinciples can be deduced.  If time and space are implied in all\njudging, then these principles will equally be implied, and will hold of\nall things which can be objects for us.\n\nIt will be easier to understand Kant's arguments if we invert the order\nof the _Critique_ and begin with examining the nature of the principles\nof the understanding or of one of them.\n\nThe categories which are of importance in Kant's argument are quantity,\nquality, substance, causation, and reciprocity, and necessity,\npossibility, and actuality. The last three are less important than the\nothers, and we shall not deal with them.\n\nTo the first five of these categories correspond the following\nprinciples:\n\n(1) Quantity.  \"All phenomena are, with reference to their perception,\nextensive quantities.\"\n\n(2) Quality.  \"In all phenomena the real, which is the object of a\nsensation, has intensive quantity, that is, a degree.\"\n\nThe last three are classed under a general heading of _Analogies of\nExperience_, whose principle is: \"Experience is possible only through\nthe representation of a necessary connection of perceptions.\"  They are\n\n(3) _The principle of the permanence of substance_.  \"In all changes of\nphenomena the substance is permanent, and its quantum is neither\nincreased nor diminished in nature.\"\n\n(4) _Principle of the succession of time, according to the Law of\nCausality_.  \"All changes take place according to the law of connection\nbetween cause and effect.\"\n\n(5) _Principle of co-existence, according to the law of reciprocity or\ncommunity_.  \"All substances, so far as they can be perceived as\nco-existent in space, are always affecting each other reciprocally.\"\n\nThese principles, Kant points out, are assumed in the sciences of\napplied mathematics.  The application of geometry to the world we\nexperience assumes that all phenomena are extensive quantities; physics\nassumes that quantitative expression can be given to the qualities of\nobjects other than their size, their weight, _e.g._, and all scientific\ndetermination of change assumes the three principles which Kant calls\nanalogies of experience: the permanence or conservation of amount in\nchanges, the necessary connection of things in time, and the reciprocal\ninterdependence of things which exist at the same time.  These\nprinciples are not proved by science; their validity is assumed in all\nscientific investigation. On what, then, does it rest?\n\nWe shall follow Kant's argument more easily if we take his account of\none of these principles--the principle of causation.  For what is said\nof that will hold, with necessary changes, of the others, and, as we\nhave noticed, it was Hume's criticism of causation which first led Kant\nto formulate the critical problem.  Hume had pointed out that we had\nnever such insight into causal connection as to be able, from mere\ninspection of a cause, to foretell the effect without any reference to\nexperience.  He declared, on the contrary, that there was no difference\nbetween observed succession and causation so far as concerned the\nobjects observed.  In each case we see first one thing and then another.\nThe difference, then, between mere succession and causal connection can\nonly be in us, in the way we come to feel about certain successions we\nobserve.  In technical language, the necessity of causation is\nsubjective.\n\nHow does Kant answer this position?  He begins, as is usual with him, by\ntaking the problem a little further back.  Causation is a connection we\npredicate between what we see at one time, and what we see at another.\nNow if we take into account only the fact that we see one thing at one\ntime and another thing at another, there is no difference between what\nwe see when we successively see two things which we judge to co-exist,\nand when we see two things one of which we judge to have succeeded the\nother in time.  Hume, therefore, proved too much.  His argument would\nshow that we have no grounds for distinguishing between apprehension of\nsuccession and succession in apprehending, but such a distinction is the\nbasis of our apprehension and understanding of change or movement.  If,\nthen, we examine how we distinguish between apprehension of succession\nand succession in apprehending, we may see on what the principle of\ncausation is based.\n\nAn instance will help to make this point clear. Suppose that I am\nsitting in a room, and look first at the door and then turn round and\nlook at the window. There are two successive acts of apprehending; the\ncontent of the first is the door, of the second, the window, but the\nsuccession, I say, is in my apprehending.  The door and the window have\nco-existed all the time. Suppose, again, that I look out of the window\nand see a cab in front of the house opposite, come back into the room,\nand then look out again and see the cab in front of a house further\ndown.  Here, again, are two successive acts of apprehending, the content\nof the first houses with cab in front of one house, of the second houses\nwith cab in front of another.  This time I say the houses have gone on\nco-existing, but the cab has moved.  The difference in what I see this\ntime is due not to me, but to the cab.  The succession is in the thing\napprehended.  If we just think of the contents apprehended, we have\nfirst A, then B, and say A and B co-exist in the first instance, and\nhave CD and CE, and say D and E have been successive in the other.  Why\nin the second case do we not say when we look out of the window the\nsecond time: Here is another row of houses, which, though they look\nexactly the same as the ones I saw last time, have got the cab in a\ndifferent place?  That is the land of thing one does say in a dream.\nWhy would it be inadmissible in waking life?\n\nLet us first ask how we ever come to make the distinction between change\nin the content of our perception, which is due to change in us, and\nchange in the things we perceive.  Look out of a window into a busy\nstreet.  As we look certain things remain the same, the houses opposite,\nthe lamp-posts, and so on, but other things change.  The permanence of\npart of the contents guarantees us that the change we perceive is not\ndue to us: if it were, these would change also.  Therefore it must be in\ncertain of the things.  Change is perceived against a background that is\npermanent and does not change.  But any such particular perception is,\nof course, very limited.  We do not see all the world at once, and we\nonly come to know a larger extent of reality by means of memory, which\nenables us to put together what we see at one time with what we see at\nanother. We have got to try and understand how it is that we make this\ndistinction, which is clear to us in small isolated bits of experience,\nhold of all experience.  Now if reality did not change, and we were\nconscious of our own movements, we could go from one point to another of\nreality and back again, and could be aware that the changes in our\nperception were all due, not to change in reality, but to us--were our\nhistory.  We should know that the different things we saw were\nco-existing all the time, and we should, in describing them, try to\ndescribe them, as in a map, as we should perceive them if we saw them\nall at once.  The succession would be subjective, the co-existence\nobjective.  If we perceived nothing but change, we should be incapable\nof distinguishing between our changes and the change outside us, for all\nsuccession in our experiencing would be experience of what was\nsuccessive, and there could be no distinction between psychology and\nscience.  Our experience of reality is not like either of these\nsuppositions, but like both of them combined.  Some succession of our\nexperiencing is experience of the co-existing, some experience of\nsuccession.\n\nReality stretches out beyond us in space, some of it changing and some\nof it permanent; we cannot tell simply from the difference in what we\nperceive whether the difference comes from change in us or change in the\nthing.  We can tell that only on the assumption that we are having\nfragmentary views of a whole that is continuous.  The only continuity we\nknow is the continuity of our own experience made possible by memory,\nand we try to interpret that experience in the light of the larger\ncontinuity of the world which our experience breaks up.  As we go from\none place to another, notice now this thing, now that, we can test\ninterpretations made on this assumption.  Wrong interpretations are\nthose which make our experience inconsistent.  If we thought that what\nhappened at one time had no relation with what happened at another, that\nanything might happen any time, our experience and our own life would be\nthe merest jumble.  Our experience attains consistency only as we learn\nmore and more to disentangle the differences in experience which come\nfrom our changes, from the changes and the variety which are part of the\nwhole connected system of reality, of which we see now one fragment,\nthen another.  The distinction between succession in our apprehending\nand apprehension of succession, which is the basis of all experience of\nchange, implies the recognition of change as not arbitrary but part of a\nconnected system of reality.  As Kant puts it in his formulation of the\nprinciple of the analogies of experience, \"Experience is only possible\nby means of the representation of a necessary connection of\nperceptions.\"\n\nBut if our perception of reality is fragmentary, how can we think of\nreality as other than fragmentary, how can we fill up the gaps?  Only by\nthinking of the whole as a connected system in space and time.  For it\nis the nature of space and time that they can be thought of\nindependently of the specific nature of the things in space and time,\nand that the space and time we perceive in any one experience must be\nthought of as parts of an all-embracing space and an all-embracing time.\nWe cannot follow the whole history of a change from A to B, we can only\nsay that, if our experience is to have any consistency, we must think\nthat the fact that we first saw A and then saw B implies in this case\nthat the change from A to B is part of the continuous system of change\nin time, that it is determined in time.  But to think of an event as\ndetermined in time is not to think of it as determined by time, for time\nin itself could not produce one thing more than another.  It is to think\nof it as determined by the nature of what precedes it in time.  We\ntherefore conclude that like causes have like effects; for, if anything\ncould cause anything, we should never know that change in what we\nobserved was due to change in us--in the position of our bodies,\n_e.g._--and the experience of objective change would be impossible.\n\nThe principle does not tell us of itself what causes what.  That can\nonly be discovered by empirical investigation.  That is necessary\nbecause we do not, as we seem to have assumed above, simply see one\nthing becoming another.  We see parts of all kinds of changes. Hence\nsuccession may be objective but not causal. Science has, by observation\nand experiment, to disentangle and isolate different changes, but it\ncould not do this without assuming the principle of causality.\n\nCausation, then, and the other assumptions of the physical sciences, are\nshown by Kant to be \"grounds of the possibility of experience.\"  We\ncannot deny them without denying elementary distinctions in our\nexperience, without which life would be a chaos, and which are assumed\nand justified every moment.  While Kant thus demonstrates the validity\nof such principles, he is also insistent on the limitations of their\napplication.  They are principles which give consistency to experience,\nbut must not be applied save in reference to what we experience.  They\napply, in his words, \"only to phenomena.\"  The purport of this\nlimitation can, again, be most easily seen by examining the principle of\ncausality.  By means of that principle we connect one event with\nanother, but the reality is not two different but connected events, but\na continuous process.  The continuous process escapes us, because our\nperception of it is fragmentary and discontinuous. Inasmuch as a\njudgment of causal connection asserts that the events we separately\nnotice are connected, it is true, but it is false if taken to imply that\nreality consists of a series of discontinuous events or stages which are\nyet connected.  Such an assumption would mean, in Kant's words, that\ncausation is applied not to phenomena (things as they appear to us), but\nto things in themselves (things considered apart from the manner in\nwhich they appear to us).  If we realise its falsehood, we can, he\nthinks, evade the contradictions which he examines in the _Dialectic_.\n\n\n\n\n                              *CHAPTER V*\n\n             *THE ANTINOMIES AND CRITICISM OF THE PROOFS OF\n                         THE EXISTENCE OF GOD*\n\n\nSo far we have been considering the positive side of Kant's argument,\nhis attempt to confirm the validity of the principles of science.  We\nmust now notice the negative side, his attempt to limit the application\nof these principles, and his denial of the possibility of knowledge in\ncertain spheres.\n\nWe saw that Kant in his _Prolegomena_ summed up the argument of the\nthree chief divisions of the _Critique_ as an answer to the questions:\nHow is mathematics possible?  How is pure science of nature possible?\nand, How is metaphysics possible?  He qualified the last question by\nadding \"as a natural disposition of the mind.\"  The argument of the\n_Dialectic_ is that metaphysics, in the sense of inquiry into objects\nwhich transcend the bounds of experience, is not possible as a science,\nbut that metaphysical questions arise naturally from the nature of human\nreason.  They cannot be answered.  All we can do is to see why we cannot\nanswer them.\n\nKant thought of knowledge as a process of extending the bounds of\nperception, of piecing together the fragmentary glimpses we get of the\nworld, stretching them out in spatial and temporal determinations that\ngo beyond what we have actually experienced, connecting and linking up\nthe events which we perceive discontinuously.  As science extends, the\nrange of our knowledge widens, but the process of extension never\nreaches its completion.  There are always more facts to be discovered\nand explained.  Science, therefore, can never rest content with its\nachievements, but must always demand that the investigation of\nconditions should be pushed further back and on.  From this sense of the\nincompleteness of all actual knowledge, and of all there is that might\nbe but is not known, arises what Kant calls an ideal of reason, a demand\nthat, in all investigation into the conditioned, we should go on till we\ncome to the totality of conditions.  This ideal he holds to be\nserviceable and necessary.  It has, however, a natural tendency to pass\nfrom an ideal to an idea, and in so doing it gives rise to the\ncontradictions with which the _Dialectic_ is concerned.  If all our\ninvestigation is governed by the thought that it must go on until it\nreaches completion, we naturally speculate on the fulfilment of that\nideal, and try to form an idea of that totality of conditions, of how we\nshould think the world if we knew it in its completeness.  Herein we\nhypostatize the ideal or make it an idea, and we fall into\ncontradiction; for we cannot really know the whole without knowing all\nits parts.  If we give up the slow and never-completed process of\nknowing one part after another, and try to jump to the idea of the\nwhole, we reach quite contrary results, as we apply to the conception of\nthe whole one or other of two assumptions implied in our investigation\nof the parts.\n\nKant sharply distinguishes between the principles of the pure\nunderstanding and the ideas of reason.  The former are implied in all\nour knowledge, and the fact that experience is not chaotic confirms them\nat every moment.  The second are ideals which guide knowledge, but are\nnever realised.  He calls them ideas of reason, because it is the\nspecial task of reason to lay down rules for the proper and complete\nworking of the understanding.  This task, he thinks, is exemplified in\nthe logical nature of the syllogism which brings into unity the\njudgments of the understanding.  As he used the forms of judgment as a\nguiding thread to discover a complete list of categories of the\nunderstanding, so he uses the forms of syllogism to discover a complete\nlist of the ideas of reason.  In both cases Kant's reference to logical\nforms is far-fetched.  Actually the list in the _Dialectic_ seems to be\ninfluenced by a number of considerations not always consistent.\n\nThere are three main divisions of the _Dialectic_.  (The first Kant\ncalls the paralogisms of rational psychology.)  All knowing and\nexperience imply the unity of the self which knows.  In actual\nexperience that unity is qualified by the nature of what it unites, but\nwe may try to think of it apart from and independent of this. This leads\nto an attempt to know the self by asking what must be its nature if it\nhas the unity implied in knowing, and to argue that the soul is a\nsubstance and simple, not affected by the changes in the matter which it\nknows and therefore immortal.\n\nThe second division arises from the fact that in knowledge we are\nconcerned with series--a series of addings together and a series of\ndivisions, as of parts of space and time; a series of things arising one\nfrom the other, as in causation; and a series of things in dependence\none upon the other.  The _ideas_ of reason come from the thought of\nthese series completed, and produce what Kant calls antinomies.  For if\nwe start with the thought that what we are trying to apprehend must be a\nwhole, we get one series of results; if with the thought that we can\nonly apprehend the whole by going from condition to condition\nindefinitely, we get another.  Kant distinguishes four antinomies, each\nwith thesis and antithesis.  The thesis of the first is, \"The world has\na beginning in time, and is limited also in regard to space\"; the\nantithesis, \"The world has no beginning and no limits in space, but is\ninfinite, in respect both to time and space.\"  The thesis of the second\nis, \"Every compound substance in the world consists of simple parts, and\nnothing exists anywhere but the simple or what is composed of it\"; the\nantithesis is the contrary of this.  The thesis of the third is,\n\"Causality, according to the laws of nature, is not the only causality\nfrom which all the phenomena of the world can be deduced.  In order to\naccount for these phenomena it is necessary also to admit another\ncausality, that of freedom\"; the antithesis, \"There is no freedom, but\neverything in the world takes place entirely according to the laws of\nnature.\"  The thesis of the fourth is, \"There exists an absolutely\nnecessary Being belonging to the world, either as a part or as a cause\nof it\"; the antithesis is a denial of this.\n\nThe problems of the third division of the _Dialectic_ arises from an\nattempt to think of a whole which shall include both the known world and\nthe mind that knows. This attempt, which Kant calls the ideal of pure\nreason, leads to proofs of the existence of God.\n\nAs the _Dialectic_ proceeds, it becomes clear that Kant has another list\nto hand.  He enumerates, as the three great objects of metaphysical\ninquiry, God, Freedom, and immortality, and in his discussion of the\nideas of reason he treats them principally as attempts to give definite\nand dogmatic answers to the problems suggested by these three topics.\n\nImmortality is the subject of what Kant calls the paralogisms of\nrational psychology.  He argues that all attempts to prove the\nimmortality of the soul by a priori arguments involve an argument of\nthis kind: they begin by noting that death is always dissolution of some\nkind, that, therefore, what is not made up of parts and cannot be\ndissolved, cannot die.  Then they urge that the soul is not made up of\nparts, and therefore cannot die.  The fallacy in this argument is that\nit treats the unity of the self as though it were an object of\nknowledge.  We can show that knowledge is only possible if the self has\na unity other than that of a spatial whole, but we cannot therefore\nargue that it must be exactly like a spatial whole, in the sense that\ndeath in it can only be brought about by dissolution, but unlike a\nspatial whole in that in it there is nothing to be dissolved.  The real\nnature of the unity of the self, Kant argues, cannot be known.  All we\ncan do is to reject a priori arguments either for or against its\nimmortality.\n\nFreedom is treated in the third antinomy of pure reason, and to that\nKant devotes most attention, but others of the antinomies are concerned\nwith the difficulties arising from the application of spatial and\ntemporal determinations to reality as a whole, and to the category of\nnecessity.  Kant makes a distinction between the first two and the\nsecond two antinomies.  It is the first two that express the inadequacy\nof temporal or spatial determination to reality as a whole.  All such\ndetermination implies measurement, and measurement is always a relation\nof part to part.  The antitheses of both antinomies express the\ninadequacy of any number to the expression of the nature of the whole,\nthe thesis the inadequacy of regarding reality as an aggregate or\naddition of any kind.  Each is strong in what it denies, and Kant's\nsolution is that both thesis and antithesis are false, because you\ncannot apply spatial or temporal determination to the world as a whole.\n\nIn contrast the solution of the other antinomies is that both thesis and\nantithesis are true, and that is possible because they are concerned\nwith different things.  The third antinomy arises from the difficulty of\napplying the category of causation to the world as a whole.  The\nassumption underlying the thesis is not, as is sometimes asserted,\nmerely that the notion of infinity in itself implies a contradiction,\nbut that a determinate result must have a determinate cause.  If we\nthink of what actually exists now as having been caused by what has\npreceded it, we must think of that which has had a determinate result\nbeing itself determinate. It is the familiar argument for a first cause.\nIn causation we seem to be relating one event to another event, and are\nreally only putting the question of origination further back.  Yet, if\nwe say that therefore we must suppose an absolute origination of change,\na beginning of the series, we have to answer the question, How is it\npossible to think of the originating number of the series?  For to think\nthat something can arise from nothing is to contradict the principle of\ncausation.\n\nKant's solution to this difficulty is important, for it had great\ninfluence upon his ethical theory.  The category of causation applies\nonly to phenomena.  If we think of things as phenomena we must recognise\nthat they are subject to the principle of causation; if we think of them\nas things in themselves, the category of causation does not apply to\nthem, and their action may be free.  The same action may therefore on\nits phenomenal side be determined, and on its nominal side, as the\naction of a thing in itself, be free. This may seem to be solving one\ncontradiction by propounding another, till we remember that in causation\nwe do not explain the relation of cause to effect.  The relation we\ndiscover is between one instance of cause and effect and another.  Like\ncauses have like effects. The principle applies, then, in so far as\nthings are like one another.  It applies to changes which are aggregates\nor complexes of simpler changes which are like other changes.  If and in\nso far as there are things which are more than aggregates of their\nelements, and are therefore unique, there are things to whose changes no\nlaws of cause and effect are adequate.  The point may be illustrated by\nthe way we think about character. If we think of a man's character as\nhis characteristics, his being this or that _kind_ of person, we must\nthink of his action as so far determined, but that does not prevent us\nfrom thinking of his individuality as something more than any sum or\ncombination of characteristics, as something essentially alive, which\nescapes all attempts to bind it by rules.  It is the difference in\nKant's words between man regarded \"from the point of view of\nanthropology,\" and man regarded as a responsible moral being.  We shall\nsee in the next chapter that this distinction is the basis of Kant's\nmoral theory. Here it must be noted that he does not claim that his\nsolution of the third antinomy proves the fact of freedom.  That, he\nheld, no merely intellectual argument could prove.  It only defends the\npossibility of freedom.\n\nThe third division of the _Dialectic_ is an examination of the proofs of\nthe existence of God.  When we study Kant's account of them, we find we\nare concerned not, as elsewhere in the _Dialectic_, with a conflict\nspringing from the nature of reason itself, but with the relation of\nthought and conduct.  Kant distinguishes three proofs of the existence\nof God--the ontological, the cosmological, and the\nphysico-theological--but he maintains that the last two really rest upon\nand imply the first.  The first, the ontological proof, is the argument\nthat the very conception of a perfect being implies existence.  It is\nthe only proof of moral importance, inasmuch as it attempts to argue a\npriori that a being of perfect morality must exist.  Kant's answer to it\nis that, to argue that we could not conceive a perfect being unless we\nconceived that being's existence, is to suppose that to conceive of a\nthing, and to conceive of the same thing existing, is to conceive of\ndifferent things. Existence, he says, adds nothing to the concept of an\nobject. Kant's objection to the ontological proof has been criticised.\nBut the proof either assumes that God is a being independent of and\nseparate from the rest of reality, and then, as Kant says, we may\nconceive God as existing, but our conception not being necessitated,\ncarries no necessity with it.  (If I conceive a hundred dollars to be in\nmy pocket, he says, I conceive them to be there; but that does not mean\nthe dollars are there.)  Or if we say that reality must be thought of as\nexisting, the answer is, Yes, but must reality necessarily be thought of\nas morally perfect?  It is this last assumption which alone makes the\nontological proof worth proving; for arguments about the existence or\nnon-existence of God are mere quarrels about words, except in so far as\nthey are concerned with moral issues.  But moral issues cannot be solved\nby a consideration of purely intellectual assumptions.  The nature of\nthe other two proofs of God's existence makes this clear. The second,\nthe cosmological, is the argument that if anything exists, something\nmust necessarily exist. Kant's answer is that this is sound so far as it\ngoes, but it does not prove that what necessarily exists is a morally\nperfect being.  The third, the physico-theological argument, is the\nfamiliar argument from design.  Kant treats this argument with much\ngreater respect than the other two, but insists that we must see how far\nit will carry us.  If we are going to infer the nature of God from the\nnature of the world as we see it, we must do so honestly.  But though we\nsee design in the world, we do not see perfection, and on the basis of\nthis argument we cannot ignore the imperfection and want of harmony\nwhich is as patent as the harmony and design.\n\nKant's analysis of these proofs seems negative.  Its real purport is to\ninsist that religion cannot be dissociated from moral experience, that\nthe knowledge of God, which is the concern of religion, is not got by\nintellectual speculation, but in the moral life.  When he said that he\nhad limited reason to make room for faith, he did not mean that men\ncould not prove the existence of God, but might believe in it if they\npleased.  He meant that God is implied and known above all in moral\naction.  His criticism of these classical proofs is thus the beginning\nof that revivified philosophy of religion whose chief representatives\nhave been Schleiermacher and Ritschl.\n\n\n\n\n                              *CHAPTER VI*\n\n                         *KANT'S MORAL THEORY*\n\n\nKant's moral theory is an integral part of his philosophical system.  If\nthe _Critique of Pure Reason_ argues the impotence of reason in the\nsphere of speculation, the _Critique of Practical Reason_ affirms its\nsovereignty in the sphere of practice.  The second _Critique_ is thus\nthe complement of the first.  Kant's treatment of moral problems being\nlargely the consequence of the conclusions of the first _Critique_, his\nmoral theory is thus mainly metaphysical.  The title of one of his works\non moral theory, _Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals_,\nbears this out.  There were, no doubt, other influences which had their\neffect on his conception of morality.  He tells us himself that he was\ninspired by the teaching of Rousseau on the dignity and worth of man.\nHe was undoubtedly repelled into a reaction against the sentimental\nschool of Shaftesbury, which in its German adherents insisted on the\nagreeable and gentlemanly nature of virtue with an almost sickly\nsentiment. This reaction accounts for the extreme emphasis laid by Kant\non the divorce between duty and any kind of inclination.  But his\ndoctrine as a whole can only be understood in the light of the\nconclusions of the first _Critique_.\n\nKant's conception of freedom or autonomy of the will is the key to his\nmoral theory.  \"On the hypothesis of freedom of the will,\" he says,\n\"morality together with its principle follows from it by mere analysis\nof the conception.\"  We saw in the last chapter that Kant regarded human\naction, when looked at from an anthropological point of view, as\nphenomenal, and therefore subject to the law of cause and effect.  If we\nthink of man as a creature of inclination, with likes and dislikes, we\nseem, in considering men's differences from one another in this respect,\nto be dealing with matters of fact over which men have no control.  We\nare born and grow up with different natures, with the result that one\nman likes one thing, another another; one man's temptations do not tempt\nanother, what one man finds easy another finds difficult.  We seem here\nto be in a world where causation rules.  If men act differently, it is\nbecause their external environment, acting upon their different natures,\ncalls out different responses.  So far, then, says Kant, as men act\naccording to inclination, do things because they like doing them, or\navoid them because they dislike them, their actions are what he calls\nheteronomous, governed by laws over which they have no control.  We\nassume, whenever we are trying to explain human actions, that they are\nthe result of the interaction of character and environment, and are not\nto be praised or blamed but understood.  _Tout comprendre est tout\npardonner_.\n\nBut when we consider our moral judgments we seem to be in a different\nworld, for there are some actions which we think we or others ought to\nhave done or ought not to have done, and this obligation has nothing to\ndo with our likes and dislikes.  If we look back upon a past action of\nour own, we may see why we did it, understand how the temptation to it\nappealed with peculiar strength to something in our nature, yet\nnevertheless we may say that we ought not to have done it, and with that\njudgment goes the conviction that we need not have done it.  The\nconception of \"what ought to be\" is on a different plane from the\nconception of \"what is,\" and assumes a different kind of causality.  It\nassumes that, when we are done with our analysis of character, of a\nman's likes and dislikes and the effect of circumstances upon them, we\ncan still assume that it is in his power to do what he ought and to\nabstain from doing what he ought not.  We praise the first and blame the\nsecond, whether in ourselves or others, just because we assume, over and\nabove inclination and disinclination, a possibility of acting or not\nacting as duty demands.\n\nThus Kant analyses the assumption of moral judgment. But it is still no\nmore than an assumption, and he has to ask how it can be reconciled with\nthe seemingly contradictory principle of causation.  The analysis of the\nthird antinomy in the first _Critique_, as we saw, prepared the way by\nmaintaining that the same action might be phenomenally determined, and\nfree as the action of a thing in itself, were there another form of\ncausality--free causality or self-determination.  For the existence of\nsuch another form of causality the first _Critique_ offered no evidence.\nKant's concern is to show that morality assumes it; for the claim of\nduty is that a man should not act as a creature of inclination, of likes\nand dislikes.  Duty claims to cut across all such empirical\nconsiderations.  The motive to do what duty demands must come from\nelsewhere.  It may then be found to be a claim that man should act not\nas a part of the physical world, but as a moral being.  For man, as well\nas an observer and understander of other men, is also a moral agent.  As\nsuch he stands in quite different relations to other men.  He treats\nthem and himself as moral agents, responsible for their actions. As a\nmember of the world of moral relations he acknowledges a system of\nrights and duties, he holds himself responsible to other men as they are\nresponsible to him, and all this has nothing to do with what a man wants\nor does not want to do, with how easy or how difficult he may find it to\nperform what duty demands.  In this he is assuming in himself and other\nmen a power of determining the will in accordance with the moral law.\nThat, just because it takes no account of likes and dislikes, cannot be\nderived from these or from considerations of circumstances or\nenvironment.  It must be deducible from the nature of man as a moral\nbeing.  In obeying the moral law, then, man will be obeying a law that\ncomes from himself.  His will will be self-legislative.  This power of\nacting in accordance with a law that comes from the nature of man as a\nrational, responsible being, and not as a member of the world of causes\nand effects, is moral freedom; it is the assumption of all moral\njudgment and action.  It cannot, Kant holds, be _explained_.  For all\nexplanation is the work of the understanding, and that can explain only\nphenomena.  It is enough that the first _Critique_ has shown that\nphenomenal causality is not inconsistent with the possibility of another\ncausality.  In the moral sphere we act and judge as if we were free.\nThe moral law and duty make claims upon us on the same assumption.\nMoral freedom, then, is the ground of the possibility of moral\nexperience.\n\nKant's account of duty is determined by the sharp separation which he\nmakes of man as moral agent and man regarded \"from the point of view of\nanthropology.\"  The commands of duty must be derived solely from the\nnature of man as a moral agent.  If they were the consequence of man's\nempirical nature or his surroundings, they would have no claim to\noverride his promptings of inclination or pleasure.  He describes these\ncommands as categorical, and the principle of morality as a categorical\nimperative.  The meaning of this phrase lies in its opposition to\nhypothetical.  Many commands and principles are, Kant says,\nhypothetical.  They assume that men desire certain ends, happiness or\nhealth or success, and the actions they advise are advised as means to\nsuch ends.  The law of morality is quite different from such prudential\nmaxims.  It does not say, \"If you want to be happy or to save your soul,\nthen act thus and thus.\"  Its commands are absolute, for they appeal to\nman simply as a rational being. They must therefore be derived solely\nfrom a consideration of man's rationality.  It is difficult at first\nsight to see how any commands can be deduced from a consideration so\nabstract.  How, we might say, can man's rationality be known and\nrecognised except in the content of what he does and thinks?\n\nKant seeks to derive his imperative from the contrast between acting as\na moral agent and following inclination.  Man regards himself as a moral\nagent, morally responsible for his conduct, and he regards others as\nmorally responsible, whatever his or their particular nature or\ncharacter may be.  That means that he must act as he thinks any one else\nwould be bound to act, and from this Kant deduces his formulation of the\ncategorical imperative: \"_Act only according to that maxim which you can\nat the same time will to be a universal law_.\"  Another formula\nindicates more clearly the relation of duty to a society of moral agents\nresponsible to one another: \"_Act so that you treat humanity, in your\nperson and in the person of every one else, always as an end as well as\na means, never merely as a means_.\"  It is only by following such\nimperatives that we can rise above the promptings of circumstance, for\nonly thus is the will self-legislative.  In obeying such an imperative\nour will is self-determined, for it is following a principle that is\nderived from man's nature as independent and transcendent of the world\nof phenomena.  Hence in moral action we are in contact with the reality\nof things more truly than in any understanding of phenomena.  The moral\nlaw has a dignity which no natural inclinations or likings can have, and\nthe good-will, the will which follows such a law, has a similar worth\nand dignity.  \"There is nothing in the world--nay, even beyond the\nworld--nothing conceivable, which can be regarded as good without\nqualification, saving alone a good will.\"\n\nSuch in outline is Kant's account of morality.  A discussion of some of\nthe difficulties which a consideration of it suggests may help to make\nits purport more clear.  Kant holds that the principles of right action\ncan be deduced directly from the imperative he has formulated, and need\ntake therefore no account of historical circumstance.  Now, it is easy\nto show that, when we do an action which we know to be wrong, we are\nmaking an exception in our own favour.  We cannot universalise the maxim\nof our own conduct.  When we do what we know to be wrong, we recognise\nwhat is right.  We say, \"This is how any one ought to act in these\ncircumstances, but I am not going to do it.\"  We must learn to look upon\nourselves as we should look upon and judge any other moral agent.  If,\nwhen taxed with wrongdoing, we reply, \"I wanted to do it,\" or \"That is\nthe kind of person I am,\" or \"That is the way I am made,\" we are\nabandoning the moral position, and the answer is, \"Whether you wanted it\nor not, you ought not to have done it,\" or, \"Well, you ought to become\ndifferent.\"  But this does not help us when, looking at actions from a\nmoral standpoint, it is difficult to say what ought to be done.  Kant\ntries to show that wrong action, if universalised, is always\ncontradictory. He takes the instance of telling a lie.  If that were\nuniversal no one would believe any one else, and there would be no point\nin telling a lie.  Lying is essentially parasitical.  But this does not\nhelp us in the familiar problem in casuistry, whether it is allowable to\ntell a lie to save life.  For here we have a conflict between two\nmaxims, both of which can be universalised.  We cannot regard such a\nsituation as simply involving a question of telling the truth or of\nsaving life.  We must consider the circumstances of the case.  This is\neven more evident if we apply Kant's rule to the question of whether\ncelibacy is ever justified.  If celibacy were universal, there would\nsoon be nobody to be celibate, but it does not therefore follow that\nsome people under certain circumstances ought not to be celibate. The\nquestion cannot be answered without reference to circumstances.  The\nmoral of this is that the categorical imperative does not enable us to\nact without individual moral judgment in individual cases.  Further, in\none of the instances which Kant gives he admits that there are certain\nways of action which might be universalised, but which he nevertheless\nholds to be wrong.  He instances the duty of being industrious.  A\nsociety could quite well be imagined in which every one was lazy, but he\nsays, \"It cannot be willed.\"  The ultimate appeal here is to what the\nmoral reason wills.  That means that we must admit that the moral reason\nor moral judgment has a content not derivable simply from the conception\nof the moral law; that there are certain kinds of life, certain kinds of\naction, which we judge to be good, and others which we judge to be bad.\nBut, if this is so, we must give up the sharp separation Kant makes\nbetween the moral law and nature, and allow that things in nature can\nhave a moral value. It may still be true that they only have moral value\nthrough their relation to a good will, and have no moral significance\napart from such a relation.\n\nThe difficulties created by Kant's sharp separation of the moral and the\nphenomenal worlds are equally apparent in his discussion of motives.  He\nconceives the individual as phenomenal, to be determined solely by\npleasure and pain.  The power of the moral law is manifest, therefore,\nwhen its commands run counter to inclination, and the motive of respect\nfor the moral law conquers inclination.  It is true to say that a man's\nlikes and dislikes in themselves are not to the point when we are asking\nwhat he ought to do, but Kant sometimes speaks as though there could be\nno moral value in an action which did not go against inclination.  This\nis perilously near that morbid theory of conscience which assumes that\nthe fact that an action would be very disagreeable to the agent is\nitself proof that the proposal to perform it is the voice of conscience.\nHere again we have to say that the fact that inclinations viewed merely\nas inclinations have no moral value, does not show that, relatively to\nthe good will, one may not be better than another.  There is nothing to\nbe proud of in the fact that we dislike doing our duty.\n\nThis sharp separation between the world of morality and science was\nsomewhat tempered in Kant's third _Critique_, which we shall examine in\nthe next chapter.\n\n\n\n\n                             *CHAPTER VII*\n\n         *THE \"CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT\"--AESTHETICS AND TELEOLOGY*\n\n\nThe _Critique of Judgment_ is at once the most interesting and the most\ndifficult of Kant's three _Critiques_.  It seems to cover a much wider\nground than either of the two earlier _Critiques_.  It concerns itself\nwith the relation of empirical investigation to the a priori principles\nof understanding discussed in the first _Critique_, with an attempt to\nbridge the gulf between the world of freedom and the world of nature as\ndescribed in the second _Critique_, with a discussion of the principles\nof aesthetics and of the conflict between the rival claims of the\nprinciples of mechanism and teleology, a conflict which, since the\ndiscoveries of Darwin and the increasing interest taken in biology, is\nbecoming every day more important.  On all these points Kant has much of\nimportance to say.  Modern theories of aesthetic are mainly based on an\nacceptance of the distinctions which he first laid down clearly.  Much\nmodern philosophy of a type which is little in sympathy with the\ndoctrines of the first _Critique_--Pragmatism, for example--is an\nelaboration of his account of the regulative principles which guide\nempirical investigation, while speculation on the rival methods of\nbiology has hardly advanced beyond the solution suggested by Kant. Yet\nthe very suggestiveness of this book makes it hard to understand.  It is\ndifficult to see the connection which Kant supposed to exist between\nthese very various problems.  The form of the book, like the form of the\nfirst _Critique_, is marked by subdivisions suggested by formal logic,\nwhich seem to have little or no connection with the subjects discussed\nunder them, so that the whole is a curious combination of formal system\nand discursive content.  Kant himself regarded this _Critique_ as the\ntriumphant vindication of his whole system, in that it brought together\nand reconciled subjects which he had previously distinguished too\nsharply.  Many later writers have thought rather that in it the\ninconsistencies which they believe to exist in Kant's thought come to a\nhead.\n\nWe have not space here to vindicate the _Critique of Judgment_ as \"the\ncrowning phase of the critical philosophy,\" as a recent writer has\ncalled it, or to examine singly Kant's treatment of the various subjects\nof interest with which it is concerned.  It is important, however, to\nfollow the connection which Kant supposed to exist between these\ndifferent subjects.  If we can understand that, we shall gain\nconsiderable insight into Kant's system as a whole.\n\nKant names the book the _Critique of Judgment_, or, more exactly, the\n_Critique of the Faculty of Judgment_. Judgment is distinguished from\nunderstanding, whose principles are more peculiarly the subject of the\nfirst _Critique_.  The understanding, according to Kant, is the faculty\nof rules.  Judgment is shown in the application of rules to individual\ninstances.  It is the element of individuality and spontaneity in all\nthinking, for which no rules can be discovered.  Judgment cannot be\ntaught, different men possess it in different degrees; it is akin to\ngenius.  When, then, Kant turns to examine the faculty of judgment, he\nis asking whether the mind, in dealing with individuals in all their\nvariety and difference, and in attempting to understand them, is guided\nby any general rules or principles.  The import of this question becomes\nclear in his relation of it to the familiar question of causation.  The\nprinciple of causation, as we have seen, is, according to Kant, an a\npriori principle of the understanding, and is assumed in all experience;\nbut it does not of itself enable us to determine in any particular case\nwhat causes what.  That is the task of empirical investigation, and\nneeds, as we know, the imagination and insight of the individual\ninvestigator; in Kantian language, it is the work of the faculty of\njudgment.  Besides the a priori principle of causation, therefore, we\nhave an indefinite number of empirical causal laws.  Kant asks whether\nthe scientist in investigating such laws, and more particularly in\nconsidering their relation to one another, is guided by any principles.\nHe finds that the scientist assumes that this indefinite variety is\ncapable of being reduced to some kind of unity, assumes that there is\ncontinuity in nature, that knowledge will not remain an aggregate of\ndisconnected rules.  Chemistry, for example, has discovered that the\noverwhelming variety of natural changes can be reduced to the action and\ninteraction of a small number of elements.  The chemist proposes to go\non and see whether the different elements may not themselves be seen to\nbe forms of one substance.\n\nThese assumptions are, according to Kant, quite different from the\nprinciples of the understanding.  For the latter are grounds of the\npossibility of experience. We cannot deny them without making experience\nunmeaning.  This cannot be said of the former.  It obviously cannot be\nessential to experience that the multiplicity of the laws of nature\nshould be reducible to unity, for such unity has never been discovered.\nExperience has been quite possible without it.  This distinction between\ntwo kinds of principles Kant expresses by calling those with which we\nare now concerned regulative.  The purpose they serve is the regulation\nand improvement of knowledge.  They do not, like the principles of the\nunderstanding, prescribe to nature.  We assume in them that nature is,\nin Kant's words, purposive to the understanding--that is, we first think\nout what order of nature would be intelligible, and then look to see\nwhether we cannot discover in nature such an order.  This assumption\ndoes not prove that there is any such order, but in science we act as if\nit were there to be found out.\n\nThis suggestion of Kant's has been elaborated in many modern writers on\nphilosophy, who have pointed out how much scientific method is governed\nby the notion of the most easily intelligible theory, and they have\nargued that science assumes, for the convenience of method, principles\nwhich it never completely proves. These principles are called sometimes\nmethodological assumptions, sometimes postulates.  The difference\nbetween such modern writers and Kant is that the former think that all a\npriori principles are of this nature, and that the principle of\ncausation, for example, is itself only a postulate.\n\nThe faculty of judgment, then, according to Kant, assumes for regulative\npurposes that nature is purposive to our understanding.  What does this\nlast phrase mean?  We are often concerned to know the relation of things\nto our purposes.  It has been pointed out that very many of our\nempirical concepts represent rather our practical interest in things\nthan our desire to understand them as they are.  Kant's phrase implies\nthat, apart from any such relation to particular purposes, there is a\nmore general purpose of mere intelligibility, which some objects\nobviously serve more than others.\n\nHere we pass to the consideration of art, for in our judgments of beauty\nKant holds that we similarly disregard the relation of the beautiful\nobject to any particular purpose, and seem to be concerned with general\npurposiveness.  The judgment of beauty is, for Kant, the supreme act of\nthe faculty of judgment.  It is reflection on an individual for its own\nsake, without attempting to fit it to our desires or see it as an\ninstance of our concepts or rules.  Kant therefore proceeds to examine\nour judgments of beauty, which show how reflection on individual objects\nmay display general rules, and then proceeds, in the last part of the\n_Critique_, to discuss the part played by the concept of purposiveness\nin our understanding of nature.\n\nIt would seem at first sight that Kant is not interested in art for its\nown sake, but for the light which it throws upon the nature of our\nintellectual faculties.  Nevertheless he is careful to insist on the\ndistinction between artistic and scientific judgments.  The judgment of\nbeauty, he insists, is free, is not determined by a concept.  We are not\nconcerned, in such judgments, with asking what an object is.  In so far\nas, in our appreciation of beauty, we bring in such considerations we\nare wrong.  He therefore rules out any theory that beauty is concerned\nwith faithful representation.  Beauty consists in the form of an object,\nand in nothing else.  The judgment of beauty, besides being free, is\nalso disinterested.  The relation of the beautiful object to our\npurposes is irrelevant to its beauty.  The judgment of beauty cannot,\ntherefore, be determined by rules of any kind.  It is always individual\nand immediate, and the immediate feeling of beauty counts for more than\nany rules or canons of taste.  Kant therefore vindicates art as\nindependent of either science or morality.  Yet, once we realise its\nindependence, the nature of art throws light upon both science and\nmorality; for the judgment of beauty, although free and not determined\nby concepts, claims universal validity.  We might put Kant's point in\nanother way by saying that art is significant, and yet is not\nsignificant of anything _in particular_.  Its meaning cannot be reduced\nto scientific statement nor abstracted from its form, and yet art has\nmeaning.  Kant finds the explanation of the fact that the judgment of\nbeauty is free, and yet claims universal validity, in the suggestion\nthat a beautiful object is one the contemplation of which arouses and\nenlivens the two faculties of the intelligence, the imagination and the\nunderstanding, in their proper proportion or harmony.  All knowledge\nneeds imagination, the power of seeing resemblances and differences in\nobjects, and understanding which by concepts gives unity and rules to\nthe imagination.  In science the imagination is subordinate to the\nunderstanding, for the aim of science is definiteness and precision.  In\nart the imagination is free, and yet art is not the mere seeing of\nresemblances and differences; it also has its unity.  It aims at the\nbest proportion of variety and unity.  This is independent of the\nvarying natures of individual persons, and therefore the judgment of\nbeauty can claim to be universally valid.\n\nBeautiful objects, then, are \"purposive to the understanding,\" inasmuch\nas their form stimulates in the most harmonious degree the two faculties\nof intelligence, and in art we find proof that there is a principle of\ngeneral intelligibility, which may guide the work of the scientist.  The\npurpose of the scientist is quite different from that of the artist, but\nif he is to reduce his facts to order and intelligibility he must be\nguided by a principle which is seen in its pure form in the artist.\n\nIn the second place, an understanding of the nature of art has\nsignificance for moral theory, because the judgment of beauty is\ndisinterested, and shows that pleasure may be independent of desire.  In\naesthetic pleasure we are not merely determined by our inclinations, for\nart is of all human activities free and creative. We enjoy art not\nbecause it serves any of our individual desires and purposes, it is\nenjoyed by something in us that is universal.  Art, then, contradicts\nthe position which Kant assumes in the second _Critique_, that we cannot\nfollow pleasure without being slaves of our phenomenal nature.  It is a\ndisinterested enjoyment, and is witness to the possibility of\ndisinterested pleasure in the good.  Further, Kant held that in one kind\nof aesthetic enjoyment, appreciation of the sublime, the contrast\nbetween our weakness and the vast extent and overwhelming powers of\nnature, calls forth in us a conviction accompanied by pleasure of the\nyet greater might of the moral law within us.  Art therefore may become\nthe symbol of morality, and the third _Critique_ does much to soften the\nrigour of the teaching of the second.\n\nIn the last part of the _Critique of Judgment_ Kant applies his doctrine\nof regulative principles to the understanding of nature.  The faculty of\njudgment, as we saw, is concerned with the attempt to give unity to the\ndetail of the natural world.  In this work it has two regulative\nprinciples, mechanism and teleology. Reality cannot be formed according\nto both these principles; for mechanism assumes that reality can be\nregarded as a pattern or complex of recurring or interchangeable parts\nwhose changes are necessitated, teleology that the world cannot be\nexplained without supposing purpose to be an operating agency in change.\nMechanism seeks to explain things as the necessary result of their\noriginal condition, teleology in the light of their highest development.\nThe two principles have therefore been held to be inconsistent.  The\nscientist, jealous for the validity of his discovery of mechanism,\ncombats the very notion of purposive agency.  The theologian thinks that\nto admit mechanism anywhere is to give up his whole position.\n\nKant's solution of this antinomy is that both mechanism and teleology\nare only regulative principles.  They tell us nothing of the ultimate\nnature of reality, except that we can explain much of it by regarding it\nas if it were a machine, and much by regarding it as if it were the\nfield of purposive agency.  Reality must be consistent with both these\nfacts, but more we cannot say. The moral is that we should continue to\ntreat them as regulative principles, and push each principle of\nexplanation as far as it will go.\n\nKant is here, as usual, the enemy alike of scientific and of theological\ndogmatism.  He will not allow any limit to be set to the work of\nscientific investigation, and yet will not allow a principle of\nscientific method to be converted from an explanation of perceived facts\ninto a theory of the universe.\n\nBesides mediating between the conflicting claims of mechanism and\nteleology, Kant also modifies the notion of teleology.  When we think of\nreality as purposive, we do not necessarily think of it as having a\ndefinite purpose, as being subordinate, for example, to the well-being\nof man.  The principle of purposiveness arises properly, he holds, from\nthe contemplation of living things, from the perception of the\ndifference between an organism and a machine.  An organism is purposive\nin the sense in which a work of art is.  In applying the principle we\nare trying to understand reality as though the relation of all the\ndifferent things in it were like the relation of the parts of an\norganism or a picture. But this principle, like the principle of\nmechanism, does not carry us further than the facts we have examined,\nfor an organism or a work of art can only be understood by study of the\nindividual relations of all its parts.  We can never know the universe\nas an organism, for we can never know all its parts.  We can understand\nand put together more and more of them, but we never come to the end.\n\nThe third _Critique_, then, enforces the lesson of the first, that\nknowledge is the work of individual finite minds, trying to understand\nelements in a whole that transcends the limits of their experience,\npushing back the spatial and temporal limits which confine each\nindividual, but never removing them altogether.  The critical philosophy\nteaches the impossibility of absolute knowledge, but it does so not by\nsuggesting general scepticism of all knowledge, but by enforcing the\nvalidity of scientific knowledge within its own limits.\n\n\n\n\n                             *BIBLIOGRAPHY*\n\n\n                             *TRANSLATIONS*\n\n\nThere are two accessible translations of the _Critique of Pure\nReason_--Meiklejohn (Bell & Co.) and Max Mueller (Macmillan).\n\nKant's ethical writings have been translated by Abbott (Longmans).\n\nThere is a translation of the _Critique of Pure Reason_ by Bernard\n(Macmillan), and of the first part of it, the _Critique of AEsthetic\nJudgment_, by Meredith (Clarendon Press).  This last book has\nintroductory essays and notes.\n\nThe student beginning the study of Kant will find _Watson's Selections\nfrom Kant_ (MacLehose & Sons) useful if he cannot read the _Critiques_\nin full.\n\n\n\n                             *COMMENTARIES*\n\n\nThe most useful small books on Kant are Adamson, _The Philosophy of\nKant_ (Blackwood), and Watson, _The Philosophy of Kant Explained_\n(MacLehose).  The best and most thorough work on Kant in English is\nCaird, _The Critical Philosophy of Kant_, 2 vols.  (MacLehose).\n\n\n\n                        PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN","title":"The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":23576}