KANT

by
A. D. L I N D S A Y
Master of Balliol College, Oxford

GREENWOOD PRESS, PUBLISHERS

WESTPORT, CONNECTICUT
Originally published in 1934
by Ernest Benn, Ltd., London

First Greenwood Reprinting 1970

Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 76-109970

SBN 8371-4433-6

Printed in the United States of America

 CONTENTS
CHAP. TAGE

I. K A N T ' S L I F E i

II. K A N T ' S PRE-CRITICAL WRITINGS AND H I S R E L A -

TION TO H I S PREDECESSORS . . . 14

III. T H E CRITIQUE OF P U R E R E A S O N —
(i) Its Style and Method . . . . 37
(2) The Prefaces 43
(3) The Introduction . . . . . 57
(4) The E s t h e t i c 66
(5) The Metaphysical Deduction, or the Dis-
covery of the Categories . • • 79
I (6) The Transcendental Deduction . . 87
{7) The Analytic of Principles . . . 121
(8) The Dialectic . . . . .136

IV. KANT'S ETHICS—

(i) Ethical Theory 162
(2) " Religion Within the Bounds of Reason
Alone" 203

V. T H E CRITIQUE OF J U D G E M E N T —
(i) The Place of the Third Critique in the
Critical Philosophy . . . . 215 ^
(2) The Critique of E s t h e t i c Judgement . 236
(3) The Critique o'f Teleological Judgement . 255
(4) The Upshot of the Critical System . . 271

VI. T H E INFLUENCE OF K A N T ' S PHILOSOPHY . 289

INDEX . . . . . . . •^oy
\7
 REFERENCES
" THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON " (FIRST EDITION) A

" THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON " (SECOND EDITION) B

" THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON " C. of Pr. R.

" THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT " . . . C. of J.

" FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF THE METAPHYSIC OF

MORALS " . F. P.

" METAPHYSIC OF MORALS " . . . . M. of M.

" RELIGION WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF REASON ALONE " R

"BERLIN EDITION OF KANT'S GESAMMELTE

SCHRIFTEN " B. E.

vu
 PREFACE
I HAVE in part of this book fulfilled an obligation of long
standing : the obligation to publish lectures which I
gave as Shaw Fellow of the University of Edinburgh
nearly thirty years ago. These lectures were on Kant's
Critique of Judgement, and have formed the basis of
the fifth chapter. The third chapter, that occupied with
the Critique of Pure Reason, is the outcome of many years'
lecturing, and it would be impossible to mention all the
works which have helped me in my study of Kant during
these years. I should, however, wish to mention with
especial gratitude Alois Riehl's Geschichte des Kriticismus
and Professor Kemp Smith's Commentary on Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason. That I have ventured to differ
in some respects from Professor Kemp Smith's interpre-
tation does not make me less sensible of all I owe to it.
To him and to Messrs. Macmillan I also owe acknowledge-
ment for leave to use his translation in my quotations
from the Critique of Pure Reason, and to Mr. Justice
Meredith and the Delegates of the Oxford University
Press I owe a similar acknowledgement with regard to my
quotations from the Critique of Judgement. I ought to
note that in these latter I have Mr. Justice Meredith's
leave to translate Zweckmässigkeit by " purposiveness "
rather than by " finality."
In writing this book I owe much to the editor of this
series, Professor Stocks, to Mr. C. G. Stone, to Professor
H. J. Paton, and to my colleague Mr. C. R. Morris. Mr.
Morris has given me invaluable help also in the correc-
tion of the proofs. All that I have to say of Kant's life
is derived from Karl Vorländer's great work, Immanuel
Kant, Der Mann und Das Werk. My debt to Professor
ix
X PREFACE
Clement Webb in the section on Kant's philosophy of
religion will be obvious.
Above all, I should like to acknowledge my debt to
Kants Leben und Lehre, the work of Professor Ernst
Cassirer, one of the greatest of Kantian scholars, whom
we have now the honour of welcoming as a teacher in this
University.
A. D. LINDSAY.
BALLIOL COLLEGE,
OXFORD.
 I

KANT'S LIFE

IMMANUEL KANT was born at Königsberg on the 22nd of

April 1724. His father, Johann Georg Kant, was a saddler
who had come to Königsberg from Memel. Kant's own
account of his grandfather was that he was a Scotsman,
one of the many Scots who emigrated to the Baltic
provinces and Sweden in the end of the seventeenth
century. It is pleasant for a Scotsman to fancy that some
of the characteristics which distinguish Kant from other
German philosophers—his caution, his lifelong dislike of
what he called Schwärmerei, and his dry humour—may
have come from his Scots ancestry. But even if such
fancies were not usually rather idle, recent investigation
has cast considerable doubt on Kant's story of his Scots
ancestry, and his German biographers are at one in
thinking Kant's personality typical of East Prussia. .The
important thing about his origin is that he came of poor,
respectable people, who were brought up and lived in a
tradition of piety, with a strong sense of independence
and a respect for education. Their independence and
their piety were as typical of East Prussia as of Scotland
in those days. Kant's mother was of South German
stock—her father had come from Nürnberg—and there is
a savour of sweetness and gentle piety in all we know of
her. She died when Kant was fourteen, but the impression
she made on her son never left him. " I shall never forget
my mother," he said when he was sixty. " She planted
and nourished the first seeds of good in me ; she opened
my heart to the influences of nature ; she awakened and
widened my ideas, and her teachings have had an enduring,
healing influence on my life."
A 1
X PREFACE
Clement Webb in the section on Kant's philosophy of
religion will be obvious.
Above all, I should like to acknowledge my debt to
Kants Leben und Lehre, the work of Professor Ernst
Cassirer, one of the greatest of Kantian scholars, whom
we have now the honour of welcoming as a teacher in this
University.
A. D. LINDSAY.
BALLIOL COLLEGE,
OXFORD.
 I

KANT'S LIFE

IMMANUEL KANT was born at Königsberg on the 22nd of

April 1724. His father, Johann Georg Kant, was a saddler
who had come to Königsberg from Memel. Kant's own
account of his grandfather was that he was a Scotsman,
one of the many Scots who emigrated to the Baltic
provinces and Sweden in the end of the seventeenth
century. It is pleasant for a Scotsman to fancy that some
of the characteristics which distinguish Kant from other
German philosophers—his caution, his lifelong dislike of
what he called Schwärmerei, and his dry humour—may
have come from his Scots ancestry. But even if such
fancies were not usually rather idle, recent investigation
has cast considerable doubt on Kant's story of his Scots
ancestry, and his German biographers are at one in
thinking Kant's personality typical of East Prussia. The
important thing about his origin is that he came of poor,
respectable people, who were brought up and lived in a
tradition of piety, with a strong sense of independence
and a respect for education. Their independence and
their piety were as typical of East Prussia as of Scotland
in those days. Kant's mother was of South German
stock—her father had come from Nürnberg—and there is
a savour of sweetness and gentle piety in all we know of
her. She died when Kant was fourteen, but the impression
she made on her son never left him. " I shall never forget
my mother," he said when he was sixty. " She planted
and nourished the first seeds of good in me ; she opened
my heart to the influences of nature ; she awakened and
widened my ideas, and her teachings have had an enduring,
healing influence on my life."
A 1
2 KANT
Nine children were born to the parents, but only five
outlived them : Immanuel (the fourth child of the family),
a sister older than himself, and a brother and two sisters
younger.
Kant's parents were Pietists—religion was an essential
part of their everyday life—and they sent him at the age
of eight to a school, the Collegium Fridericianum, organized
on Pietistic principles. In the school what had once been
a living religion had been turned into a dead mechanism,
and Kant got frpm his school-days a dislike of regulated
piety as active as his admiration of the simple piety of his
parents.) " People may say of Pietism what they will," he
"said in old age. " Those in whom it was sincere were
worthy of honour. They possessed the highest thing that
man can have—-the quiet, the content, the inner peace,
which no suffering can disturb. No need, no persecution
could disturb them : no quarreller could move them to
anger or hate. In a word, even the mere onlooker must
against his will have been compelled to respect them. I
remember a dispute which broke out between the harness-
makers and the saddlers, in which my father suffered
pretty severely. But, nevertheless, my parents behaved in
this dispute in such a spirit of reconciliation and love to
their opponents that, though I was only a child at the
time, the memory of it has never left me." But of his
school-days he always spoke with dislike, and he could
never put up with the exercises of religion. He learned at
school to read and write Latin well, and to appreciate
Latin literature, particularly the Satirists, but little else—
only a smattering of Greek, for example.
In 1740 Kant matriculated at the University of Königs-
berg, where he spent the next six years. He seems to
have got some financial assistance from an uncle, but
largely to have supported himself—mainly by coaching
more well-to-do fellow-students, and to some slight extent,
as we learn with some surprise, by his regular winnings at
billiards and cards, in both of which he excelled. It is
interesting to know that he kept up his billiards in later
 KANT'S LIFE 3
life, but that he gave up cards because he could not stand
the slowness and deliberateness with which his partners
played.
German universities were, in the middle of the eighteenth
century, much more elementary institutions than they are
now. Even some forty years later, when Kant was a
professor, an edict of Frederick the Great enjoined on the
professors of Königsberg, with the exception of Kant, that
their lectures were not to be other than a commentary on
a textbook. Königsberg was one of the most undistin-
guished of the German universities, and, with one ex-
ception, its professors were undistinguished men. The
exception was the " extraordinary " Professor of Logic
and Metaphysics, Martin Knutzen. He was a Wolffian, but
also a man of considerable scientific attainments. He
lectured in higher mathematics, physics, and astronoriryT
äs well as in philosophy, and was a great reader. He lent
Kant Newton, and gave him the run of his library. It
was from him (and through his help) that Kant got his
interest in natural science, and that he showed himself in
his first work, written in 1746, abreast of the latest
scientific literature.
But perhapsfthe most noticeable fact about Kant's
university career was that he went his own way at the
university. The Government, which looked on the
university merely as a training ground for the professions,
had laid down that every student must enroll himself as
a member of one of the higher faculties of theology, law,
and medicine. But Kant ignored the order, and attended
lectures in all faculties as his interests led him. His last
two years at the university must have been largely years
of private research1! He had made up his mind that
whatever the difficulties he was going to devote himself to
learning. As he says in the Preface to his student treatise,
" I have already set before myself the path which I will
tread. I am going on my course, and nothing shall stop me
from persisting in it."
When Kant had finished his university career as a
4 KANT
student, there was as yetreopening forhimas a university
teacher. He turned to the one means by which poor
students like himself could earn a living—becoming a
family tutor in'the house of one or other of the squirearchy
of East Prussia. His father died in 1746. His younger
brother was taken into the house of his uncle, and his
sisters were married or out in service. There was nothing
to keep him in Königsberg, and he spent the next eight
years as house tutor in three different posts in East
Prussia. We hear very little of him in these years. The
post of family tuxor was regarded as a servile and thankless
job. But Kant won the esteem of the families with whom
he lived, and he laid in these years the foundations of his
encyclopaedic knowledge.
Kant returned to Königsberg in 1755, received the
equivalent of what would now be a Doctorate for a
dissertation on a scientific subject—De Igne—and pub-
lished, on the occasion of his being given permission to set
up as a Privatdozent, a Latin dissertation : A New
Explanation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Know-
ledge. He had already in the year before published two
dissertations which made his name widely known in
Germany, one on the retardation of the earth's motion
around its axis, and the other A Physical Discussion of
the Question Whether the Earth is Growing Old. These
studies led to the publication of a larger work, which
appeared in 1755 : General Natural History and Theory
of the Heavens.
Kant's lectures were unusually well attended from the
beginning, and his writings soon made him the most
distinguished man at the University of Königsberg. Yet
he remained without promotion, a Privatdozent from 1755
to 1770. That meant for him in those fifteen years a life
of great poverty and an immense amount of work. He
lectured in logic, metaphysics, ethics, mathematics,
physics, and anthropology—never less than sixteen hours
a week, and sometimes as many as twenty-eight hours. He
had hopes in 1756 of succeeding Martin Knutzen, but
 KANT'S LIFE 5
owing to the poverty of the Prussian Government at first,
and the Russian occupation of East Prussia later, his
teacher's post was not filled up. In 1764 he was offered,
but refused, the Professorship of Poetry at Königsberg.
In 1765 he was made Assistant Librarian at the University.
In 1769 he was offered, but refused, a Professorship at
Erlangen ; and in 1770 he refused a similar request to go to
Jena. Finally, in 1770, when he was forty-seven years
old, he was made Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at
Königsberg—the post which he held till his death in 1804.
A life uneventful enough in external happenings. The
events that mattered in Kant's life were the influences
which affected his thought—his early introduction to
Newton, already described : his first reading of Rousseau
in 1762 : Hume " waking him from his dogmatic slum-
bers " some time in the 'sixties : his rediscovery of Leibniz
in the late 'sixties : above all, the great revolution in his
thought which made him formulate the problem of the
Critique, and spend the twelve years from 1769 to 1781
in thinking out the first Critique, and devote his whole '
energies to working out the results of his discovery,
producing in the wonderful ten years, from 1781 to 1790,
the Critique of Pure Reason, the Prolegomena to any
Future Metaphysic, the second edition of the Critique of
Pure Reason, the Fundamental Principles of the Meta-
physic of Morals, the Metaphysical First Principles of
Natural Science, the Critique of Practical Reason, and the
Critique of Judgement.
He was a man who, for all his poverty and the obscurity
of his position up to 1770, had felt all the influences of the
eighteenth century. He was brought up in its Pietism :
he learned its rationalism at the university : he had a
remarkable mastery over its science : he knew and was
to some extent the inspiration of the forerunners of the
German romantic movement: he was, like Voltaire,
profoundly moved by the great Lisbon earthquake of
1755. Rousseau made him a Radical, prepared to be an
enthusiastic admirer of the American Revolution, and
6 KANT
even in old age a steady defender of the French. Rousseau
also made him an educational reformer of considerable
practical zeal.
He was an omnivorous reader, with all-round interests
and an insatiable appetite for facts. He was also something
of a figure in Königsberg society. It is surprising, in view
of the traditional account of Kant as the pedantic student,
by whose appearance on the street the citizens of Königs-
berg set their watches, to learn that one of his friends in
1764 expressed, the fear that Kant's social distractions
might keep him from doing the philosophical work of
which he was capable. He had friends among both the
Russian and the Prussian garrisons, and in the country
houses round Königsberg, but his greatest friends were
merchants in Königsberg. He clearly had social talents of
a high order.
Fait from 1770 on Kant was a man with a mission
'—the problem of the Critique of Pure Reason possessed
him, and he dedicated his life to the working out
of all that it proved to involve. To this he devoted
all his energies :/4ie refused a pressing invitation from
the Prussian Minister of Education, von Zedlitz, to
go to Halle : he husbanded his strength with the utmost
care, and gradually became the austere, rather pedantic
old bachelor of the traditional picture. But if we are
to realize what went to the making of the Critiques,
we have to think not of Kant as he was known when he
had 1 done his work and had become famous, but of the
younger Kant, whom Vorländer has called " der galante
Magister."
Something also should be said of Kant as a lecturer.
His hearers thought Kant the man and the lecturer a much
greater man than Kant the author of the Critique of Pure
Reason—not to say far more intelligible. His lectures, as has
been noticed, were extraordinarily popular. The fashion-
able world of the place and time went to hear Kant lecture
on anthropology as some years ago the fashionable world
went to hear Bergson. These lectures on anthropology
 KANT'S LIFE 7
were an invention of Kant's, intended, he says, to guard
students against the habit of theorizing without facts.
How mistaken is the ordinary view of Kant as a thinker,
entirely occupied with the a priori and the abstract and
never doing justice to the empirical fact, these sentences in
the programme for his lectures of 1765-6 should prove :—
" As I recognized at the very beginning of my career as
a teacher that it was a great disadvantage to the studies of
young men that they learnt to reason before they possessed
sufficient historical knowledge to make them understand
the part played by experience, I therefore resolved to make
the history of the present condition of the earth, or
geography understood in the widest sense, into an agreeable
and easy description which should prepare them for a
practical use of their reason, and serve to inspire in them
the delight of enlarging their knowledge in matters of this
kind."
These elementary lectures then were meant to prepare
the way for the strictly philosophical studies. The
lectures on these subjects were, of course, less elementary
and less popular. They took the then usual form of a
commentary on an orthodox textbook ; and if anyone will
now read Baumgarten's textbook on metaphysics, he will
wonder how anything so repulsively formal could be made
into an attractive lecture. But from all accounts Kant sat
very loose to his textbook. " He did not follow closely the
compendium which he used as the basis of his lectures.
The abundance of his knowledge led him often into
digressions from his main subject, digressions which were
always very interesting. When he noticed that he had
digressed too far, he would break off with an ' and so on,'
and come back to the main subject. His lectures were
spiced with wit and humour, with quotations and references
to interesting writers, and sometimes with stories, which
were always to the point. He disliked it when his pupils
took notes. It disturbed him when he noticed that
important points were neglected and unimportant ones
carefully written down." This last sentence will, I am
8 KANT
sure, dispel in the mind of anyone who is himself a lecturer
any lingering doubt he may have as to Kant's being
human ! " H e was always warning his students against
mere repetition. ' You will not learn from me philosophy,
but how to philosophize—not thoughts to repeat, but how
to think. Think for yourselves, inquire for yourselves, stand
on your own feet,' were expressions he was always using."
Small wonder, when these were his principles and
practice, that Kant was esteemed by all who heard him to
be a great teacher ! This notice of Kant's lectures may be
concluded with Herder's famous account of him. " I have
enjoyed the happiness of knowing a philosopher who was
my teacher. He had in the prime of his life the gay
sprightliness of a young man, and* this he kept, I believe,
till his grey old age. His open brow, built for thought, was
the seat of undisturbed contentment and joy : there
flowed from his lips a discourse that was rich in thought.
Jest and wit and humour were always at his command,
and his lecture was both instructive and the most fascina-
ting entertainment. With the same zest with which he
examined Leibniz, Wolff, Baumgarten, Crusius, and Hume,
or expounded the science of the physicists, Kepler or
Newton, he took, up the writings of Rousseau which were
then appearing, Emile and Helotse, and every discovery in
natural science with which he made acquaintance, gave an
appreciation of them, and came back always to an original
knowledge of nature and of the moral worth of man. The
history of man, of peoples, and of nature, science, mathe-
matics, and experience were the sources from which he
made his lectures and discourses live. Nothing worth
knowing was indifferent to him. No cabal, no sect, no
prejudice, no foolish respect of great names had the
smallest power over him compared with the discovery and
the explanation of truth. By his own example and by a
pleasant compulsion he made us think for ourselves :
despotism was alien to his nature. This man,. whom I
name with the greatest thankfulness and reverence, is:
Immanuel Kant."
 KANT'S LIFE 9
The record of Kant's life, after he was appointed
professor, is, as has been said, little but a record of his
publications. Once he had conceived his Critical task, he
bent all his efforts to the accomplishment of it. His health
was never good, and the consciousness of all he had to do
made him gradually adopt a more and more ordered
regime. He was called at quarter to five, had his " happiest
hour of the day " between five and six, drinking tea, smok-
ing his daily pipe of tobacco, and thinking over his work
for the day. From six to seven he prepared his lectures ;
he lectured from seven to nine or seven to ten, and then
wrote till half-past eleven. His one meal was at twelve—
a hearty meal to which he always invited three or four
friends. The meal was kept going with lively conversation
till four, and sometimes later. Kant was a great conver-
sationalist, and a celebrated story-teller. After dinner
came his regular walk, and then reading till ten o'clock,
when he went to bed.
For all this studied devotion to his work, he kept up his
interest in the outside world. He was an eager reader of
newspapers and was always anxious to discuss political
events with his friends. His political theory, as we shall
see, was a theoretical republicanism combined with a firm
conviction that it could never be right to disobey the law,
and in his own life he combined the most radical sym-
pathies with a scrupulous obedience to the commands of -
the Prussian Government. He was a warm sympathizer
with the American Revolution, and, what was more
unusual, a warm and persistent sympathizer with the
French Revolution, even in its later stages.
He did come once in conflict with the Government.
Frederick the Great had steadily supported the " Auf-
klärung," but on his death in 1786 a reaction came with the
succession of Frederick William the Second to the throne.
In 1788, in the place of Kant's friend and supporter, von
Zedlitz, to whom the Critique of Pure Reason had been
dedicated, a certain Wöllner, known only for the rigidity
of his Lutheran orthodoxy, was appointed Minister of
A I
10 KANT
Justice. He began by publishing an edict against the
dangerous rationalism of the " Aufklärung," accompanied
by a warning that the existing toleration would only last
if every one concerned with religious teaching conducted
themselves with scrupulous caution. This edict produced
little effect, and was followed in the end of the year by the
establishment of a censorship. In these earlier stages the
reaction left Kant and Kantianism alone. A certain
section of orthodox opinion considered that .Kant's philo-
sophy—" removing knowledge to make room for faith "—
strengthened father than undermined orthodox belief.
The outbreak and alarming progress of the French Revolu-
tion, however, changed the situation, and made every kind
of rationalism suspect. In 1791 an Immediate-Examina-
tion-Commission was set up, and was reported to have
advised the King to forbid Kant to publish anything
further. Kant took the opportunity to make his position
clear by publishing an article entitled, On the Failure of
all Philosophical Attempts at a Theodicy, in which he
remarked that " Job for all his piety would certainly have
suffered at the hands of every synod, inquisition, or
supervising council there had ever been, with, of course,
one exception." In the autumn of 1791 the Censorship
Commission was strengthened and given more extensive
powers. In 1792 Kant published as a separate article what
was afterwards to be the first part of his Religion Within
the Bounds of Reason Alone. It was entitled, On the
Radical Evil in Human Nature. It was published in the
Berlin Monthly, which had been removed to Jena to escape
the operations of the censorship ; but Kant, nevertheless,
submitted it to the Censor. He passed it on the ground
that, like Kant's other writings, it was not intended for
and could not be appreciated by all readers, but only by
thoughtful scholars, capable of inquiring into the* truth
and of appreciating distinctions.
The second part of the same work, On the Conflict
of the Good Principle with the Evil, was three months
later submitted to the censorship, but this time permission
 KANT'S LIFE ii

to publish was refused, on the ground that its contents

" attacked biblical theology."
Kant then completed the whole work, and submitted it
for the approval of the theological faculty of Königsberg
and the philosophical faculty of Jena. These having been
obtained, he published it in the spring of 1793. Rumours
of the King's intention to deal with Kant increased, and in
October 1794 a royal order of cabinet was published :
" Our highest person has for some time seen with great
displeasure how your philosophy is misused to misrepresent
and depreciate many of the chief and fundamental
principles of Holy Scripture and of Christianity, how you
yourself have done this in your book, Religion Within the
Bounds of Reason Alone, and in other, smaller treatises.
We hoped better of you, as you must be aware what little
responsibility you have shown of your duty as a teacher
of the young, and how regardless you have been of our
sovereign purposes, with which you are perfectly well
acquainted. We demand of you the most conscientious
fulfilment of your duties, and inform you that on pain of
our highest displeasure you commit no offences of this
kind in the future, but rather so use all your thought and
talents that our sovereign intention be more and more
realized. If, on the contrary, you persevere in your
behaviour, you have infallibly to expect disagreeable
consequences."
Kant replied, defending his doctrine from the accusations
.brought against it, and saying of himself : " For myself,
as I have always and earnestly commended to other
professors of religion a conscientious sincerity in not
pretending to or recommending to others as articles of
faith anything that they are not certain for themselves, so
I have in composing my writings always pictured the
sincere conscience as a judge standing at my side to keep
far from me not only soul-corrupting error but every
careless expression which might give offence. And now,
in my seventy-first year, when I cannot help remembering
that it may well be that I shall shortly have to give
12 KANT
account for all this before a Judge of the world who knows
what is in men's hearts, I can candidly say that the
responsibility I have for my teaching I realize with the
fullest conscientiousness," and then concluded with a
promise:
" As for the second point, that I am not in the future to
let myself be guilty of any of the perversion or depreciation
of Christianity of which I am accused : I think that the
safest way to avoid the least reproach on that head is, as
Your Majesty's most loyal subject, solemnly to declare
that I will abst'ain in lectures or in writing from all public
discourses on religion, whether natural or revealed."
He did not consent to repudiate anything he had written
or to promise to write in a different way, but he held that
he was bound to abstain from expressing his views, if the
King should so command him. He had already in a letter
some months previously said to a correspondent : " I f
new laws order me to do what is not against my principles,
I will precisely obey them. I will obey, even if they forbid
me to make known my principles as I have done in the
past." A memorandum written at the time sums up his
position as follows : " To recant or deny one's convictions
is contemptible, but to be silent in a case like the present
is the duty of a subject; and though all that one says
must be true, it is not necessarily one's duty to say in
public all that is true."
He did not think himself bound by this promise after
Frederick William was dead, and in 1798 he published
a treatise on The Conflict of the Faculties in which he
discussed at length the principles he considered to be at
stake in a dispute between free inquiry and orthodoxy.
Religion Within the Bounds of Reason Alone was Kant's
last great original work. His tractate on Everlasting
Peace, published in 1795, is original, a remarkable antici-
pation of the principles on which the League of Nations
depends, but it is only a tractate. The much more,
considerable Metaphysic of Morals (1797) is full of interest,
both as to Kant's ethical and his political views, but it

it
 KANT'S LIFE 13
contains nothing that is not the working out of the
fundamental principles of his Ethics as published in 1785.
He was indeed, in the last years of his life, engaged on a
great work which was " to round off his critical system,"
but it was never finished. He gave his last course of
lectures in the summer of 1796. He announced lectures
for the next three semesters, but with the warning
" modo per valetudinem seniumque liceat," and he was not
ever well enough to deliver them.
He had by dint of care and conscientiousness enabled a
naturally rather weak constitution to bear the immense
intellectual effort of the years which produced the Critical
system. After 1796 his health gradually declined till his
death on 12th February 1804, at the age of nearly eighty.
 II

KANT'S PRE-CRITICAL WRITINGS AND HIS

RELATION TO HIS PREDECESSORS

KANT himself regarded his Critical philosophy as the

result of a resolution in his thought. The well-known
reference to " the remembrance of Hume waking him from
his dogmatic slumbers " is evidence oi how, after 1770, he
regarded his earlier writings. They are not then to be
looked on as part of the philosophy of Kant. But they
show us the various steps by which Kant came from the
philosophical position of his student days to the Critical
problem, and they also, more particularly, show the
various contemporary influences which were of most
importance in his thought.
We are accustomed—and with justice—to think of
modern philosophy up to Kant as being divided into two
schools, usually described as the Continental Rationalists
1
and the English empiricists, each a school of three great
names-—Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz among the
rationalists, and Locke, Berkeley, and Hume among the
empiricists. And as Rationalism culminated in Leibniz
and Empiricism in Hume, we think of Kant as the philo-
sopher who made a new start by a synthesis of Leibniz
_and Hume.
That is no doubt a rough truth, but, like most rough
truths, misleading, and for two reasons.
In the first place, Kant was influenced not by what his
predecessors wrote, but by what he had read of them, or
by what had got into the thought of the time with which
he was acquainted. That means, on the one hand, that for
Kant the Continental tradition hardly included Spinoza
(who, until interest in him was revived by Jacobi and the
14
 KANT'S PRE-CRITICAL WRITINGS 15
German romantics, was only a horrid example), and
included, at least up till 1765, a very inadequate Leibniz.
Leibniz as we know him was not known in the eighteenth
century at all. His criticism of Locke in the New Essays
on the Human Understanding was only published in
1765, and the first at all adequate edition of his works
appeared in 1768. The Leibniz whom Kant knew before
that date was the Leibniz of the Monadology and the
Theodicy, a Leibniz easily smoothed down by Wolff. On
the other hand, Kant's knowledge of the English empiri-
cists was very imperfect. He did not read English, and
their works were not all translated. He clearly knew and
was influenced by and admired Locke, although he always
differed from him. He seems to have had only a second-
hand acquaintance with Berkeley. He knew him as the
subjective idealist, "the good Berkeley," but not as the
forerunner of Hume. He apparently knew Hume's
Inquiry, but not his Treatise. He got the notion of
Criticism from Locke, though he rejected Locke's form of
it, and he got from both Locke and Hume, but especially
from Hume, a challenge to dogmatism and to all meta-
physics, which had a profound effect upon his thought.
But there is no evidence that he ever grasped what has
beert called the psychological atomism of the English
empiricists, or realized the difficulty into which Hume's
thoroughgoing atomism had got Hume's own position. It
will be argued later that if we look at Kant as though he
were trying to solve the problems of the Hume we know,
we shall certainly misunderstand Kant's position.
In the second place, the opposition which Kant set
himself to reconcile, the opponents to both of whom in his
earlier years (and indeed always) he was trying to do
justice, were not Leibniz and Locke, but Leibniz and
Newton. Kant, as we have seen, knew and studied Newton
from his student days. His first writings, as we shall see,
were a working out of Newtonian principles, and he very
soon became conscious of an inconsistency between these
principles and the philosophy of Leibniz. As he came to
 i6 KANT
know more of Leibniz this opposition only took a sharper
form. This difference between Leibniz and Newton was
not a difference between one philosopher and another
(although in the eighteenth century the distinction between
philosophy and science with which we are familiar had not
been clearly drawn—it was indeed owing to Kant's work
that it was drawn), it was a difference between two inter-
pretations of the methods and presuppositions of the new
sciences, and also a contrast between the presuppositions
of the new sciences and of metaphysics. For Kant the
results of English Empiricism as embodied in Hume could
never be more than a challenging paradox. For they were
inconsistent, not only with metaphysics as it then existed,
but with the mathematical principles of the sciences. But
the more he came to understand the presuppositions ot
Newton's work, the more did he feel the conflict between
these and the presuppositions not simply of the Wolffian
metaphysics, or of any kind of metaphysics at all, but their
conflict with the principles underlying morals and religion.
^Thus the great problem of modern philosophy—how
to reconcile the thoroughgoing mechanical view of the
world implied in the new sciences with human freedom or
with the reality of any kind of moral purpose—was raised
in Kant's mind with peculiar forceA Philosophy since
Descartes had been trying to do two things—to understand
the principles and method underlying the new sciences
whose remarkable success had already won them much of
that prestige they have enjoyed ever since ; and to dis-
cover how these principles and this method applied to the
/understanding of man's nature and purposes. Kant was
i far too serious a moralist to have accepted the reduction of
morals to a natural science in the manner propounded by
Hume and worked out afterwards by the utilitarians. But
he had no need to consider Hume's success in reducing
morality to a natural science, because Hume had only
reached that result by a clearly inadequate and impossible
analysis of science. He is, therefore, always concerned
with Hume's scientific scepticism, and not with his ethical
 KANT'S PRE-CRITICAL WRITINGS 17
theory. But the Continental rationalism had reached, in
the Wolffian philosophy he had learned as a student—the
reigning philosophy throughout Germany—a reconciliation
between the new sciences and the principles of morality
and religion. Newton taught Kant the shallowness and
inadequacy of that reconciliation on the scientific side :
his own nature and Rousseau taught him its insufficiency
on the moral side. The more successful he was, therefore,
in his appreciation of the principles and methods of the
new sciences, the firmer the grasp which Rousseau gave
him of the fundamental principles of morals, the more
inadequate did that reconciliation appear. Or, to put it
in another way,/the more successful he was in answering
the first question with which modern philosophy was
concerned, the more difficult and far-reaching did he make
the second. He was more in earnest both about the
principles of natural science and about the authenticity
of moral obligation than any of his predecessors.
The history of Kant's thought up to 1770, when the
Critical problem was first stated, is then a history of his
growing sense of the inadequacy of the Wolffian recon-
ciliation between science and morality, and his growing
sense of the imperative necessity of such a reconciliation.
It will be well, then, to begin with some account of the
Wolffian reconciliation, and the best way to do that will
be to give some account of the orthodox textbook which
Kant always used in his lectures—Baumgarten's Meta-
•physica.
Baumgarten defines metaphysics as the science of the
first principles of human knowledge, and divides it into
ontology, cosmology, psychology, and natural theology. -
Ontology is the science of the more general predicates
of being, and these are universal internal predicates,
universal disjunctive predicates, and relative predicates.
The first universal internal predicate is the jxgsible,
which on analysis produces the laws of contradiction, of
excluded middle, and of identity. The second is connexion,
which yields the principle of sufficient reason, ana tKe
i8 KANT
principle that every possible is both reason and reasoned,
or both ground and consequent.
The third universal internal predicate is being. " Every
being is possible, has a sufficient reason, and a consequent.
All determinations of being are either essentials or attri-
butes, or modes or relations." The modes of being are not
determined by its essence, and, therefore, the existence of
any being which has modes is not determined by its
,essence. Baumgarten, therefore, while professing to derive
the principle of sufficient reason from the principle of
contradiction, really distinguishes between those universal
properties which he thinks are necessary as deducible
from essence and those which are not so deducible but are
only compossible. This distinction between essence and
modes runs through all Baumgarten's account of nature
and mind inasmuch as it applies to all beings except to
God. It corresponds roughly to the distinction between
internal determinations and external. But though
Baumgarten uses it for all it is worth, he never faces its
fundamental character. For he persists in holding that
though modes and existence, and what we may generally
call " matter of factness," are not necessary and not
deducible from essence, and while he therefore finds rooms
not only for free will and spontaneity, but for the con-
tingent and the miraculous, yet he makes no real distinc-
tion between the way in which we know this matter of
factness and the way in which we know what is necessary :
he makes nothing of the distinction between perception and
understanding. The principle of sufficient reason is
conceived with such an amplitude of vagueness that it can
cover the most matter-of-fact and contingent circumstances
and yet be derivable from the principle of contradiction.
But if it were really so derivable, then all intelligibility
would be of the same kind, and the distinction between the
necessary and the contingent would only be a distinction
in our knowledge. But this would imply a distinction
between truth and reality which we are not allowed.
The sixth internal general predicate of being (the fourth
 KANT'S PRE-CRITICAL WRITINGS 19
and fifth being unity and order) is truth. " Metaphysical
truth is the order of many in one." " Every being is
transcendentally true." " The truth of every being is
clearly knowable, therefore every being is objectively
certain." The last of these predicates is evidence of a still
more fundamental ambiguity. It is " the perfect," and it
is thus defined : " I f many taken together constitute the
sufficient reason of one, and they agree, this agreement is
perfection," and from this is further concluded : " the
essentials of every being agree in its essence and attributes.
Therefore, every being is transcendentally perfect. Good
is that which implies perfection. Therefore, every being
is transcendentally good."
We find later, when we come to the disjunctive predi-
cates of being—" necessary and contingent," " changeable
and unchangeable," " real and negative," " singular and
universal," " total and partial "—that the contingent
implies imperfection, and negation : that negation, being
the opposite of reality, is evil, and that every finite sub-
stance, being so far contingent, is also evil. Goodness and
badness thus are defined as metaphysical qualities—they
mean presence or absence of reality or absence or presence
of negation : and yet at other times they are used to mean
what is ordinarily meant by good or bad. The distinction!
between the principle of contradiction and that of sufficient 1
reason is sometimes used as the distinction between logical j
and moral necessity : that which is according to the I
principle of sufficient reason is what must be if the universe
is to be as perfect as it could be, in the moral sense of the
word perfect.
The hypothetical possibility of miracles is proved in a
much later section by the following argument. " Suppose
in the most perfect world a natural event—as natural
about to follow according to the order of nature and
compossible with other things. Suppose under the same
circumstances a supernatural event, as such about to
happen against all the order of nature, compossible with
other things but better than the natural." Then according
20 KANT
to " the law of the best in the world " the supernatural
will follow. That is an argument which holds that the
order of nature as discoverable by science must yield to the
goodness of God. Yet at other times this goodness or
perfection is nothing more than reality. This is not all.
For the principle of sufficient reason has to account, not
only for purposive activity, but for the working of the
laws of the natural sciences as contrasted with mathe-
matics. Temporal and spatial determinations are never
for a Leibnizian internal determinations : they are modes,
and therefore metaphysically contingent and pertaining
to existence. The principle implicit in them is, therefore,
the principle of sufficient reason.
These difficulties come to a -head in Baumgarten's
account of cause. " Existence is a mode of a contingent
and hence of a finite being. Hence it is not sufficiently
determined by the essence of a contingent and finite being,
and therefore not by its attributes. Therefore, in the
internal determinations of a contingent and finite being
there is not a sufficient reason for its existence. But a
sufficient reason is necessary for the existence of a con-
tingent and finite being. Therefore, a finite and contingent
being cannot exist unless as caused by something outside
itself. Therefore, existence does not inhere in it by its
own force ; hence an alien force posited without a finite
and contingent being is the sufficient reason of existence
inhering in a finite and contingent being. Therefore, a
substance posited without it acts on it by producing
existence in it. Hence every real contingent and finite
being is an effect and has an efficient cause."
Causes are then classified as " the useful and other kinds
of causes," and other kinds of causes include impulsive,
final, material, and formal causes.
It is obvious enough how Baumgarten's account of the
necessity of the causal principle is open to Hume's objection
that most proofs of such a principle beg the question.
What is perhaps more significant is that all these causes
are external relations, are supposed to be distinct, and yet
 KANT'S PRE-CRITICAL WRITINGS 21
no clear explanation is given of their distinction. As
befits one who believes in the best of all possible worlds,
Baumgarten tries to have the best of all worlds. He recog-
nizes that there is a difference between logical necessity,
moral necessity, and physical necessity ; he sees that the
world must be such that these principles are somehow
reconcilable : but the reconciliation is effected by blurring
the edges of all the distinctions, so that they pass insensibly
into one another and justice is done to no one of them. In
such a system logic and science, morality and religion, are
given an apparent reconciliation without real scope being
given to the demands of science or of morality or religion.
Not much need be said about the remaining parts of the
Metaphysica. General cosmology is defined as " the science 1
of the general predicates of the world—either empirical, as j
derived more from experience, or rational, as derived from '
the notion of the world. It is rightly referred to meta-;
physics as containing the first principles of psychology,
theology, physics, teleology, and practical philosophy.
Cosmology teaches the notion, the parts, and the perfection
of the world."
But this distinction between empirical and rational
cosmology is not reflected in any clear distinction of
method. The doctrine of monads is expounded, partly as
an account of the logical meaning of substance, partly as
an account of the elementary principles of physics, though
the original argument which led to the doctrine of pre-
established harmony was that, as the monads " have no
windows " and can have no direct relations to one another,
a miraculous pre-established harmony must be postulated
to account for what happens; yet that doctrine is declared
not to be inconsistent with the influence of substances on
one another, nor with the action of body on spirit or of
spirit on body.
As we have seen, the natural order of nature and the
supernatural are reconciled by the notion of the necessary
perfection of the world. " The number of supernatural
miracles in the most perfect of worlds is the same as the
22 KANT
number of possible things which cannot equally well be
brought about naturally and according to the order of
nature, neither more nor less."
Psychology, the science of the general principles of the
soul, is also divided into an empirical and a rational part,
but it is here also difficult to see what distinguishes
empirical from rational psychology. The sections on the
immortality of the human soul and on the state of the soul
after death are no doubt with reason in the non-empirical
part, but it is a surprise to find a section on the souls of
animals there also.
The last part, natural theology, is much the longest of
the four. " Natural theology is the knowledge of God in
so far as it can be attained without faith." It begins with
a statement of the ontological proof. God is defined as
the most perfect being, and that is defined as " that in
whom there is the greatest agreement in number and
greatness as there can be agreement in number and
greatness in any being." Therefore, the most perfect
being is the most real being, and as " existence is a reality
compossible with essence and other realities, the most
perfect being has existence." Yet " God is outside the
world, and the world is not an essential nor the essence
nor an attribute nor a mode nor a modification nor an
accident of God." " The theology of Spinoza is an error,"
and clearly to be avoided at all costs.
The proof of the existence of God is the central point in
knowledge, and is altogether certain. " If God were not
actual, the principle of contradiction, the first principle
both of the form and the matter in all our demonstrations,
would be false. Therefore, though many sciences could be
completely demonstrated without the use of any theological
premises, they would not be, nor would they or their
objects be even possible, if God were not actual."
Baumgarten then proceeds to expound at length " the
mind of God," his will, creation, and its end, the providence
of God, the divine decrees and the nature of revelation—
all an astonishing example of " how far ben " with the
 KANT'S PRE-CRITICAL WRITINGS 23
Almighty man can get " without faith " and by reason
alone, and an edifying proof of the consonance of the
unaided operations of reason with orthodox eighteenth-
century Lutheranism.
Such was the philosophy in which Kant was brought up,
which he went on admiring for its systematic character.
More strangely still, he went on using Baumgarten as the
foundation of his teaching. Its virtue, of course, is its
well-meaning comprehensiveness, its holding on to the
principles which have to be reconciled. Its weakness is its
fundamental shallowness and ambiguity. Anyone who
was as much in earnest with either science or morality as
was Kant was bound to be dissatisfied with its account of
both and its reconciliation between them.
Kant's first works were, with one exception, concerned
with scientific problems. While still a student, he pub-
lished an attempt to reconcile the conflict between the
Leibnizians and Newton on the nature of force, under the
title of Thoughts on the True Conservation of Living
Forces. Of the two theses written in connexion with his
doctorate, one was scientific, the other metaphysical. He
wrote on the retardation of the earth's rotation and on the
question of the age of the earth, on the theory of the winds
and on the relativity of motion, and in the Monadologia
Physica he treated a question which wa^ as vexed then as
it is now—the nature of the atom. But his most important
work of this period was The General Natural History and
Theory of the Heavens, published in 1755. It is best known
from the fact that in it Kant proposed the nebular hypo-
thesis afterwards rediscovered by Laplace. But for our
purposes the most important thing about this cosmogony
of Kant's is the spirit that inspires it. He used Newton's
principles to push back, or rather to sweep away,
the limits which Newton had left, where scientific hypo-
thesis stopped and the hypothesis of special creation
took its place. He enunciated then clearly the principle
which he expounds at length in the Dialectic of the
Critique of Pure Reason—that scientific discovery can
 24 KANT
recognize no limits within its own sphere. " The Empiri-
cist will never allow, therefore, that any epoch of nature is
to be taken as the absolutely first, or that any limit of
his insight into the extent of nature is to be regarded as
the widest possible. Nor does he permit any transition
from the objects of nature—which he can analyse through
observation and mathematics, and synthetically determine
in intuitions (the extended)—to those which neither sense
nor imagination can ever represent in concreto (the simple).
Nor will he admit the legitimacy of assuming in nature
itself any power that operates independently of the laws
of nature (freedom), and so of encroaching upon-the
business of the understanding, which is that of investi-
gating, according to necessary rules, the origin of appear-
ances. And lastly, he will not grant that a cause ought ever
to be sought outside nature in an original being." l
For it is to be noticed about all this early work of Kant's
that he was not even in this strictly a scientist. He had
not the mathematical equipment nor the necessary means
of observation and experiment, though he had a great deal
of what goes to make a great scientist. He displays in
, these works a remarkable power of synthesizing facts and
! seeing what they come to—of grasping underlying ten-
dencies and principles—which all went to make him the
first man who really understood the principles and methods
of the new sciences.
From 1756 to 1762 Kant published nothing. In 1762
appeared The Only Possible Proof of the Existence of God,
a work which he describes as " the result of long reflexion,"
and The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures,
described by him as the work of a few hours. The explana-
tion of this interval is not hard to conjecture. The earlier
works on scientific subjects, certainly the greatest of them,
The Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, had been
the work of his years as a family tutor. For the first few
years after he returned to Königsberg, the time in which he
was not actually teaching must have been almost entirely
1
A 469; B 497.
 KANT'S PRE-CRITICAL WRITINGS 25
occupied with preparation for his numerous and varied
courses of lectures, and it would take about five or six
years before he got his head above water.
His mind must have been occupied in these years with
the problems discussed in The Only Possible Proof of the
Existence of God, for it is Kant's answer to the question
raised by the Lisbon earthquake. It was that which turned
him from questions of scientific method to the questioning
of the optimism of the Wolffian philosophy. The treatise
is largely an attack on false teleology—on the notion that
the world exists for the good of man. It is a criticism of all
attempts to prove the existence of God by the obvious
incursions of a special providence or the obvious care of
the universe for human purposes. It rejects alike Des-
cartes' ontological proof and the argument from design.
The only possible proof of God's existence must be some-
thing which assures us of reality, is enforced by our
scientific knowledge, and is yet proof against such shocks
as that which set Kant questioning. Kant finds his proof
in the existence of universal law and in the necessary
dependence of science and mathematical calculation upon
reality. The positive part of the treatise did not satisfy
Kant for long, but the negative part, the rejection of the
ontological proof and of the argument from design,
remained fundamental for him.
When the Only Possible Proof was finished, Kant was
given an opportunity to work out the further implications
of his understanding of the principles and method of the
natural sciences, and to develop his already aroused
interest in method and in metaphysical problems. In 1763
the Berlin Academy of Sciences offered a prize for an essay
on the question, " Are the metaphysical sciences capable
of the same evidence as are the mathematical ? " or, to
state the problem in full, " The question is—whether meta-
physical truths in general, and especially the first principles
of natural theology and of morals, are capable of just the
same certain demonstration as are the truths of geometry :
and, if they-are not so capable, what is the peculiar nature
26 KANT
of their certainty, what kind of degree of certainty can be
arrived a t : and whether this degree is sufficient for full
conviction." Kant's treatise, under the title of Enquiry
into the Certainty of the Principles of Natural Theology
and Morals, was published in the Proceedings of the
Academy in 1764. It did not obtain the prize, which was
awarded to a treatise by Moses Mendelssohn, but it was
highly commended.
Kant sets himself to answer the question of the Academy
by asking it in a rather different way—not " Are the
methods of metaphysics like those of geometry ? " but
" Are they more alike, or rather ought they to be, more
alike, the methods of geometry or the methods of
physics ? " The change in the form of the question is
significant. The fruits of Kant's concern with scientific
questions have been a knowledge that physics, although it
uses mathematics, is essentially different from it, and the
difference consists in its relation to experience. Kant's
argument in sum is that metaphysics had in the past made
the mistake of thinking that it ought to be like mathe-
matics. But the certainty of mathematics comes from the
mind's construction, from its independence of the im-
pressions of experience. The figures with which geometry
deals arise in and with the act of construction. That is why
geometry rightly, begins with definitions. But the physics
which began with definitions and attempted to grasp the
real essences of force and matter and movement, and
deduce consequences from such conceptions, had made no
progress. The physics of the past century, whose success
all were admiring, had begun with definite quantitative
measurements of phenomena. It started with the com-
plicated but measured facts, and asked whether they could
be brought under a single complex of functions. Jput in
metaphysics we have to do with a reality which we ao not
construct; we cannot begin with definitions : we must
begin with experience. We shall, therefore, profit most if
we study the method of physics\ And so Kant says, in *
language very like that of the preface to the second edition
 KANT'S PRE-CRITICAL WRITINGS 27
of the Critique of Pure Reason, " The question before us
is of such a kind that, were it satisfactorily solved, the
higher philosophy would thereby acquire a definite
structure. When we are certain of the method according
to which the highest possible certainty can be obtained in
this kind of knowledge, and the nature of our conviction
of it is understood, then, instead of the eternal shiftings of
opinion and schools, an unchangeable rule of doctrine will
unite thinkers in their labours : just as Newton's method in
natural science turned the unstable nature of physical
hypotheses into a certain method according to experience
and geometry." That is Kant's ideal for metaphysics—
an ideal to which he held throughout. Metaphysics must
alter its character if it is " to tread the sure path of a
science." But at this stage he hardly gets beyond the
ideal. " Metaphysics is beyond doubt the most difficult of
human inquiries ; but no one has yet really written a
metaphysic."
Of one thing he is sure, that the existing method of
metaphysics is hopeless, and he reinforced this general
conclusion in two particular treatises, On the False Subtlefy
of the Four Syllogistic Figures, and On the Conception" of
Negative Quantity in Natural Knowledge, in both of which
he contrasted the principles of syllogistic logic with the
methods, by which knowledge was obtained in the physical
sciences. He is already also concerned about the question
of causality, and convinced that our knowledge of that
relation cannot be the same as our knowledge of ground
and consequent. Hume is beginning to work in him.
If Kant by 1762 (for that was the date at which most of.
the prize essay was written) has got the length of saying,
" Let us examine by what revolution Newton made
physics into a science, and see whether metaphysics may
profit by his example," he has got very near to stating the
Critical problem. But it took some years more before that
problem assumed the form which produced the Critical
philosophy. There are two stages yet to come—the first
a negative stage marked by the publication in 1766 of
28 KANT
Dreams of a Ghost-seer illustrated by Dreams of a Meta-
physician, the second the stage of the Dissertation of 1770,
when Kant seems to himself to have found a distinction
which will make metaphysics in the old sense possible, and
yet allow it to follow a new and more fruitful method.
The Dreams of a Ghost-seer is a curious book. It was
published anonymously, though there was never any
secret of the authorship. But no one at the time could
make out what Kant was after. The book seemed such an
unexpected sequel to his prize essay. Its general upshot
may be shortly described. Kant had had the curiosity to
buy and study Swedenborg's Arcana Ccelestia. He came
to the conclusion that the facts described in it were not
founded on any principles of evidence, and that its sys-
tematic reasoning had no foundation in experimental
reality. That to his mind disposed of Swedenborg. But
he then asked himself, " In what respect are the systems
of metaphysics any better than these despised extrava-
gances ? " and came to the conclusion that metaphysics,
as it then existed, for all its superiority of tone, had as little
foundation in reality as the system of Swedenborg. This
work of Kant's is ordinarily regarded as evidence of how
far Kant went in agreement with Hume, and there is little
doubt that he was influenced by Hume in writing the
book. But from its main position Kant never departed,
though in his next work he seems to raise again the
possibility of something like metaphysics in the old sense.
Kant committed himself in the Dreams of a Ghost-seer
once for all to what the Germans call a Diesseitigkeits-
lehre, or a denial of knowledge of what transcends
experience. That does not mean that he was ever an
Empiricist in the narrower sense of that word. ' He never
doubted that experience contains a priori elements, or
that there were involved in experience principles which
pointed beyond experience. But he held that all our
knowledge, even of moral principles and of what ought to
be, starts with what is implicit in our actual experience.
Kant, as we shall see, held that morality implied the
 KANT'S PRE-CRITICAL WRITINGS 29
reality of the transcendental, of God and of immortality,
but he did not hold that we know the existence of God or
the immortality of the soul and thence deduce what we
ought to do—as though from a direct knowledge of the
transcendent we could conclude something about our
duties in this world. He held rather that we began with
our knowledge of our duty and its nature, and found
that to imply transcendent realities which we could not
directly know.
Kant's next work, however, On the Form and Principles
of the Sensible and of the Intelligible World, was a sequel to
The Dreams of a Ghost-seer as unexpected as that had been
to the prize essay of 1763. This treatise, with which he
inaugurated his Professorship, seems in what it has to say
of the intelligible world to show a revived belief in meta-
physics. There can be little doubt that Cassirer is right in
attributing this change, at least in emphasis, to Kant's
study of Leibniz. As has been noticed at the beginning
of this chapter, Leibniz' New Essays on the Human
Understanding was first published in 1765, more than
fifty years after they were written, and Duten's edition of
Leibniz, containing among other things the correspondence
between Clarke and Leibniz, was published in 1768. We
know that Kant studied these works as soon as they
appeared, and then for the first time got an understanding
of the real Leibniz. From Leibniz' criticism of Locke
iti the New Essays, Kant got a new conception of the
nature of the intelligible. The intelligible is known in the
mind's awareness of its own activity. It is there and nof
in sensible experience that we apprehend the nature of such
concepts as necessity, substance, unity, cause, which the
English Empiricists have found such difficulty in discover-
ing in experience. From Leibniz also Kant derived the
distinction between knowledge of things in themselves,
which is given in pure intellectual concepts and knowledge
of phenomena, and the conception that space and time are
concerned with phenomena not with things in themselves.
But while the Dissertation is grounded on the belief
30 KANT
that Leibniz was right in his controversy with Locke, its
original contribution was the outcome of Kant's judgement
on the issue between Leibniz and Newton, which had been
especially the subject of the Clarke-Leibniz correspondence.
There Kant thought that no clear decision between one
$ide or the other was possible. He was convinced on the
One hand that Leibniz' conception of space and time was
inconsistent with the certainty of mathematics, that
Newton was right in his statement of how the mathe-
matician must conceive space and time. On the other hand,
he agreed with'Leibniz against Newton on the impossible
consequences which followed from supposing space and
time to be properties of things in themselves. Mathematics
had to be vindicated against the metaphysics of Leibniz,
and metaphysics to be made independent of mathematics.
Kant was prepared with Leibniz to hold that space and
time were phenomenal as long as that did not involve, as it
had with Leibniz, that they were confused representations.
His solution of the dilemma is a distinction among a priori
principles. Space and time are a priori, but they are also
sensible. They are to be distinguished as forms of intuition
from purely intellectual concepts. There are, therefore,
two kinds of pure knowledge : the one is knowledge of the
relations of the intelligible world; its purely intellectual
concepts reveal the nature of things : the other is know-
ledge of the principles by which we order the sensible.
This account of space and time as forms of intuition
recurs in the Critique of Pure Reason Jn the ^Esthetic
where we shall discuss it. What is important to notice
in the meantime is that Kant thought in the Dissertation
that he had solved the conflict between metaphysics and
mathematics in a characteristic way, by separating the
spheres of application of the principles of the two inquiries,
and that he seemed to have saved the validity of Leib-
nizian metaphysics by taking mathematics with space and
time out of its range, confining metaphysics to the appre-
hension of intellectual relations implied in the mind's
activity.
 KANT'S PRE-CRITICAL WRITINGS 31
This solution of difficulties has obviously been bought
at a price. A distinction between knowledge of things as
they are and knowledge of things as they appear is under-
standable if considered as a contrast between an immediate
and an indirect knowledge of the same things. But Kant's
doctrine, that time and space are forms of sensibility and
not properties of things in themselves, seems to have saved
the exactness of mathematical knowledge at the expense'
of its objectivity \ If what Kant has called the intellectual
concepts give us knowledge of things as they are, our
knowledge of space and time must be knowledge of some-
thing subjective or unreal, But, as the mathematician
Lambert objected, even if, as idealists had maintained,
space is thought to be unreal, time cannot possibly be so
regarded, for the self is certainly in time. Kant answered
that objection in the Critique, but he could not answer it
as long as he held to the position of the Dissertation that it
is in our consciousness of the mind's activity that we come
to know things as they really are. Lambert's criticism,
therefore, made him review not his account of what he had
called sensible principles, space and time, but his account
of intellectual principles.
His new reading of Leibniz had enabled him to see where
a priori concepts like substance and cause could come from.
We apprehend them, as has been said, in being conscious
of the mind's activity. But that leaves unsolved the
question of how the principles discoverable in the mind's
activity can apply to objects—a problem which Leibniz
had rather indicated than solved in his doctrine of pre-
established harmony. This consideration it was which led
Kant to what he always calls the Critical problem, and his
approach to it can best be seen in his letters to his friend
and former pupil, Marcus Herz. In a letter, written in
June 1771, after excusing himself for not having answered
letters about the Dissertation which he had had from
Herz and Mendelssohn and Lambert, he says: " The fact
that I have completely failed to convince men of such
insight is a proof that my theories are defective—certainly
32 KANT
in clearness of demonstration ; possibly the defect is more
serious. Now long experience has taught me that in the
matters which are before me insight cannot be forced :
over-pressure only makes matters worse. A good long time
is necessary, in which each concept can be regarded in all
possible relations and in the widest possible connexions,
with intervals between each examination of i t ; and while
this is going on the spirit of scepticism must be awake and
try whether what has been thought out will stand against
the keenest doubt. This is how I have been employing the
time in a way which may have incurred the danger of a
reproach of impoliteness. The real cause of my delay was
my respect for the judgements of both these scholars. You
know how important it is, not only in knowledge in general
but in men's highest purposes to have a certain and clear
insight into the distinction between that which rests upon
the subjective principles of the human faculties of the soul,
whether the faculty of sensibility or of understanding and
that which applies directly to objects. If one can avoid
the demand for a perfect system, it will be found that
the inquiries made in following this general principle in
the widest application verify one another. I am, there-
fore, now busy on a work which, under the title of The
Bounds of Sensibility and Reason, will work out some-
what elaborately the relations of the basic principles
and laws determined before experience of the world
of the senses to the subjects involved in the theory of
taste, metaphysics, and moral theory. I have worked
through all the material this last winter, have considered
all the points that have occurred to me .in their mutual
relations, but have only just now got clear about the
plan."
This is the first mention of what is to become the
Critique of Pure Reason. It will be noticed that the plan
proposes for a single work what it took all three Critiques
to achieve. The next letter to Herz is longer and more
important. It is dated 21st February 1772.
" When you complain of my entirely failing to answer
 KANT'S PRE-CRITICAL WRITINGS 33
your letters, I cannot deny the justice of your complaint;
but when you draw unpleasant inferences from this fact,
I wish I could remind you of your own knowledge of my
way of thinking. But, instead of excusing myself, I shall
give you a short account of how I have been busy with my
thoughts, and so in busy hours have put off writing. After
you left Königsberg, in the intervals between business and
the recreations which are so necessary to me, I reflected
again on the plan of the considerations which we had
discussed, to see their connexions with philosophy in
general and the rest of knowledge and to grasp their extent
and limitations. I had already gone a good way in
distinguishing between the sensible and the intellectual in
moral theory and in the fundamental principles following
therefrom. I had also some time ago sketched, in a manner
with which I was fairly satisfied, the principles of feeling
and taste and the faculty of reflective judgement with
their effects, the agreeable, the good, and the beautiful,
and so could now make the plan for a work which should
have some such title as The Bounds of Sensibility and
Reason- I intended it to have two parts, one theoretical,
the other practical. The first was to be in two sections :
(1) Phenomenology in general; (2) Metaphysics, considered
only in its general nature and method. The second part
also had two sections : (1) General principles of feeling,
taste, and the desires of the senses; (2) The first principles of
morality. When I thought through the theoretical part in
its whole compass and in the mutual relations of all its
parts, I remarked that something essential was still
lacking—something which I in my long metaphysical
inquiries had, like others, left unregarded, which, in fact,
was the key to all the mysteries of a metaphysic which had
so far not understood itself. This was the problem. I
asked myself, what is the ground on which rests the
relation between that in us which is called a presentation
and the object. If the presentation contains only the
manner in which the subject is affected by the object, then
one can easily understand that it corresponds to the
B
34 KANT
object as an effect corresponds to its cause, and how this
determination of our mind can represent something, i.e.
have an object. That is—passive or sensible presentations
have an understandable relation to objects, and on these
lines the principles which are derived from the nature of
our soul have an understandable validity applied to all
things in so far as they are to be objects of the senses. In
the same way, if what in us is called presentation were
active in regard to the object, that is, if the object itself
were brought into being because of the presentation—as
we suppose that the knowledge which God has is the
original of things : there again the conformity of those
presentations with objects is understandable. In short,
the possibility at least is understandable either of an
archetypal intellect—where things depend upon the
intuition of the intellect—or of an ectypal intellect, which
gets the data for its logical activities from the sensible
intuition of things. But our understanding is through its
presentations not the cause of the object (except in
morality where good purposes are), nor is the object the
cause of the understanding's presentations—not in a real
sense. The pure concepts of the understanding conse-
quently cannot be abstracted from the impressions of the
senses nor express the passive receptivity of presentations
through the senses, but must have their sources in the
nature of the soul, but not in the nature of the soul either
so far as it is affected by the object or in so far as it produces
the object. In the Dissertation I had contented myself
with a merely negative account of the nature of intel-
lectual presentations, in saying that they are not modifi-
cations of the mind by the object. But I passed over in
silence the question as to how a presentation which
referred to an object was possible without its being in any
way affected by the object. I had said : sensible presen-
tations represent things as they appear, intellectual
presentations represent things as they are. But, then, how
were these things to be given to us if not in the manner in
which they affect us ; and if such intellectual presentations
 KANT'S PRE-CRITICAL WRITINGS 35
depend upon our own inner activity, whence comes the
agreement which they claim to have with objects, which
objects are yet not produced by these presentations ; and
how do the axioms of pure reason about objects agree with
these objects, if this agreement can get no help from
experience ? In mathematics this can be explained : the
objects are for us quantities, and can be represented as
quantities only because we produce the presentation of
them by taking one a number of times. Therefore, the
concepts of quantity make themselves, and these principles
can be made out a priori. But in relations of quality how
can my understanding form entirely a priori of itself
concepts of things with which things have necessarily got
to agree ; how can it set forth real principles about the
possibility of objects with which experience must agree
truly, which principles are yet independent of experience ?
This is the question behind which there lies a mystery
about our faculty of understanding, as to how it gets this
agreement with things in themselves.
" Plato assumed a previous spiritual intuition of divinity
as the original source of the pure concepts and principles
of the understanding : Malebranche a still existing ever-
active intuition of this original being. Various moralists
have assumed the same in regard to the primary moral
laws. Crusius supposed there were certain implanted rules
of judging and concepts which God had planted in the
soul, of such a nature as to harmonize with things. Of
which systems the former might be called an influxus
hyperfhysicus, the latter an intellectual pre-established
harmony. But the deus ex machina is the worst hypothesis
which could be chosen when we are determining the origin
and validity of our acts of knowledge. Not only does it
involve inquiries in a circle, but it offers every opportunity
for ingenious or foolish nonsense.
"While I was thus looking for the sources of intellectual
knowledge without which the nature and bounds of meta-
physics cannot be determined, I managed to divide this
scientific inquiry into essentially different sections, and
36 KANT
tried to reduce transcendental philosophy, i.e. all the
concepts of quite pure reason, to a definite number of
categories. But I did not follow Aristotle, who put the
categories as he found them in his ten predicables one after
another, with no principle of arrangement. I tried to show
how they divided themselves in classes according to a few
principles of the understanding. Without now explaining
at length the whole course of the inquiry up to its reaching
the purpose set before it, I can say that I have achieved
the substance of my intention and am now in a position to
offer a Critique of Pure Reason, which deals with the nature
of theoretical as well as of practical knowledge, so far as it
is purely intellectual. The first part contains the sources,
method, and bounds of metaphysics ; the second part will
work out the pure principles of morality, and the first part
should be published within three months."
In the second of these letters the main problems of the
Critique of Pure Reason are already stated, and Kant was, as
the letter shows, at the time confident that the statement of
his results would not take him long. But the complexity
of the problem grew as he grappled with its solution. In
1772 it was to take him a few months. In the end of 1773
he is still engaged on it, but it is to appear after next
Easter. In 1776 he has worked out what are to be the
divisions of the first Critique, but is conscious that he has
still much work to do before he can publish. Part of his
Easter programme, a Critique of practical principles and of
taste, has been in the meantime abandoned and is going to
be the subject of two separate works, the Critique of
Practical Reason and the Critique of Judgement. Finally, in
1780, he took alarm over this long delay, thought that if
he did not get his ideas written out at once he might never
do so, and wrote out the Critique of Pure Reason in, as he
tells us, about four or five months. It was published in
1781.
 Ill

THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON

(i) ITS STYLE AND METHOD

THE Critique of Pure Reason is one of the most illuminating

books in the world when one understands it/ but it is also
peculiarly baffling to understand. GoethTsaid that to read
the Critique was like stepping into a brightly lighted room;
but that is not the impression it gives the ordinary reader,
nor are most readers willing to acknowledge that they are
bewildered through an excess of light. Ever since it has
been published it has been commented on, and the process
of commenting on it has produced differing schools of
interpretation. Kantian interpretation is in very much the
position in which Kant describes metaphysics to be. It has
certainly not reached " the sure path of a science," and as
one dogmatic interpretation of what Kant meant is
opposed by another, the place of both is taken by a
scepticism which says that the book is so muddled and
confused that it is not worth understanding. It is of
course true that different generations interpret great men
differently, as they come to view their work with different
needs and different prepossessions, but there are certain
features of the Critique which are responsible for a good
deal of this difficulty in finding out what Kant meant. It
owes some of its difficulties to the time and the manner in
which it was thought out and written, and some to the
general characteristics of Kant's way of thinking.
The Critique was published in 1781, when Kant was
fifty-seven years old. He had been working at it for eleven
years—since 1770, when he was forty-six. In those eleven
years he published practically nothing. He regarded the
38 KANT
Critique as a complete break with his former thought. So
it was : no one now pays any attention to the pre-Critical
works of Kant, except to trace in them the tendencies in
Kant's thought which prepared the way for the Critique.
They are only of historical importance. Kant himself
regarded them as of no importance. On the other hand, in
those years which produced the Critique he was concerned
with the problems with which not only the Critique of
Pure Reason, but the Critique of Practical Reason and the
Critique of Judgement are concerned. It was only as the
complications of the first part of his work became more
evident that he confined himself to the logical problems
with which the first Critique is now concerned, and
resolved to discuss the moral and aesthetic problems in
separate works. But he regarded all the work he did from
the Critique onwards—i.e. from 1781 to, say, 1793, the date
of his last great original work {Religion Within the Bounds
of Reason Alone)—as forming a unity.
If we look at the dates of publication in these years, we
see what years of continuous and rapid publication they
were:
1781. Critique of Pure Reason.
1783. Prolegomena to any Future Metaphyic.
1785. Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of
Morals.
1786. Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science.
1787. Critique of Pure Reason (second edition).
1788. Critique of Practical Reason.
1790. Critique of Judgement.
1793. Religion Within the Bounds of Reason Alone.
This late development of Kant's genius is one of the
most remarkable things about him, distinguishing him
from most other philosophers. Berkeley and Hume wrote
their most important works in the early twenties. Des-
cartes was about thirty when he wrote the Discourse.
When Kant published the Dissertation in 1770, he had been
teaching philosophy as a Privatdozent in Königsberg for
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 39
fifteen years. He had lectured continuously throughout
that time on logic and metaphysics, and he had published
some dozen treatises, which had won him the reputation of
being one of the most important of German philosophical
writers at the time.
The Critique o/_P«r^_^ww„jpifflstitiitßdr^a£airdiiig to
Kant,L ä revoI^ionJn_philosophical thought. It claimed
to show that the whole methTöcFöFpTülös^öpTiizing" wliich was
acclffied atlfre^tinTe" WaY
Breik^away from what Kant called dosmadcjt^tepTrysicsT"
But it was also a revolution in his own, thought—aJuraak-
away from the assumptions he had accepted and the.
methods he "had" pursued through fifteen years' teaching.
Yet during all the years in which the Critique was being
thought out, he was going on lecturing mainly on the old
lines, expounding the old metaphysics.
The inevitable result of this situation was that Kant
took a long time to see just how far his new discoveries
were taking him : that he went on using old language, or
language in old senses, which was inconsistent with his new
thought: that this revolution is never complete—always
going a little further but always muddled up with old
assumptions and old language. No one nowadays can
possibly accept all that Kant says, because if he agrees
with the main thing Kant has to say—if he understands
the main principles of his teaching—he cannot put it in
Kant's way, or accept some of the presuppositions which
Kant carries into his thinking without really making them
alive. The Kantian student is forced to say sooner or later
that, whatever Kant may have said in this or that place,
this is what he really meant—or to dismiss certain elements
in Kant's teaching as pre-critical. The only way of under-
standing Kant is to make up your mind what the main
thing he has to say is (and that in the circumstances has in
it an element of judgement, involving as it does apprecia-
tion of the general tendencies of the work), and to make
that the key to the interpretation of the details.
Secondly, the circumstances in which the Critique was
40 KANT
written aggravated this situation. It was thought over
for eleven years. As we have seen, Kant originally thought
he could publish the Critique in a year or two. Year after
year passed, and he was still not satisfied with his work,
but he began to be alarmed at this continued delay, and
felt that he must get the Critique done at all costs. He
then wrote it out—or rather put it together—in four or
five months. What that necessarily meant was not that,
having thought and pondered for eleven years, he sat down
and composed, as well as wrote it all out, from the begin-
ning. He must have written an average of about five pages
a day at a time when he was lecturing about fifteen hours
a week. He used (as he was bound to do) material gradually
collected as he worked on his problem for those years. The
Critique, although it was written in so short a time, em-
bodies different stages which Kant's thought had reached
during twelve years.
Kantian commentators have devoted much ingenuity
to mapping the various stages in Kant's development of
his Critical philosophy, and to distinguishing the different
strata of thought represented in various parts of the
Critique. That there is something in this Kantian higher
criticism is clear. Kant, as he worked, wrote down
differing attempts to solve his problem. He had a quite
deliberate way of working by trying out all kinds of
suggestions. As he came to write the Critique he would be
sure to embody much of the writing he had done in his
years of preparation, and often this would be expressed
in a way in which he would not have expressed it at a
later date. Nevertheless, this type of criticism has been
overdone. Arguments which are confidently assigned to
an early stage of Kant's critical thought, and supposed to
have been afterwards abandoned, have a way of turning up
in his later works when the explanation put forward for
their presence in the first Critique is no longer valid.
But, in any case, the peculiar circumstances of the
composition of the Critique are not the only or a sufficient
explanation of its apparent inconsistencies. They do not
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 41
explain, for example, the curious presence of alternative
arguments in some parts of the Critique. Any detailed
commentary will distinguish in certain parts of the
Critique, particularly in the ^Esthetic, the Deduction
and the discussion on causation, alternative arguments—
sometimes as many as five or six for the same position.
They are sometimes not consistent with one another, and
their existence side by side is not explained by the circum-
stances of the composition of the Critique. We are inclined
to say of any one of these arguments : " If it is sound, it
should be enough. Why should Kant put in the others ?
If it is not sound, why should it be there ? " That these
different arguments had occurred to him at different times,
and were written on some of the sheets before him, is no
explanation why Kant should not in the final composition
choose the argument which then seemed to him best, and
have done with it.
The explanation of the peculiar characteristics of the
Critique is, then, to be found elsewhere, and it is not far to
seek if we remember what Kant meant by saying that
philosophy with him was criticism; and if we recall the
account of his manner of lecturing, and remember that
he had been lecturing from fifteen to thirty hours a week
for about twenty-five years, when he came to write the
Critique, and was lecturing all the time that it was being
written.
Kant's contemporaries found his lectures extremely
intelligible, and the Critique very difficult, and he says
himself that he deliberately wrote the Critique in as
systematic a manner as possible. In the second edition he
explains that the method of the Critique was modelled on
that of Wolff. " In the execution of the plan prescribed by
the Critique, that is, in the future system of metaphysics,
we have, therefore, to follow the strict method of the
celebrated Wolff, the greatest of all the dogmatic philoso-
phers. He was the first to show by example (and by his
example he awakened that spirit of thoroughness which is
not extinct in Germany) how the secure progress of a
B I
42 KANT
science is to be attained only through orderly establish-
ment of principles, clear determination of concepts,
insistence upon strictness of proof, and avoidance of
venturesome, non-conscientious steps in our inferences."1
Kant, in his lectures, as we have seen, used Baumgarten
as a textbook, and could then no doubt leave that arid
work to supply the system and thoroughness while he
devoted himself to making his class understand. The class
who listened to Kant and, we may surmise, did not pay
too much attention to Baumgarten, avoided the powder
and got only the jam. But the Critique had to do what his
lecturing and Baumgarten had done together. He had to
introduce into his writing the element which in his lecturing
had been supplied by a textbook. Hence he could not
write as he had lectured.
Further, and this is the important point, Kant, for all
that he says, could not possibly follow the method of
Wolff or Baumgarten. For he could not, as he had pointed
out long before in the Prize Essay, begin with definitions
and deduce his doctrine rigidly from them. For him,
philosophy was criticism, i.e. the mind's reflexion on its
ownroperaUoriS—HrarTmowledgeT of a priori concepts is
knowledge of our own activities in thinking. He is, there-
fore, dealing with what can only be understood by those
who have gone through the same process of reflexion as
the author, vln philosophy, as Kant understands it, we are
becoming aware of and reflecting on what we are doing
when we think and act and make judgements about the
beautiful. A great deal of the exposition of the Critique
must, then, be devoted to making his readers perform the
process of reflexion necessary to the apprehension of what
Kant is talking about. Kant, as we saw, used to tell his
class that he tried to teach them " not philosophy but to
philosophize." Like any good teacher, he tried that in all
sorts of ways. The advice of an old to a young lecturer,
" Say nothing and say it nine times," is a paradoxical way
of stating this need for trying various ways to make
1
B xxxvi.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 43
one's hearers perform the mental operation necessary if
they are to apprehend what is being talked about. This
surely is the explanation of the alternative arguments. It
is as though Kant were saying : " If that will not make you
see it, perhaps this will."
But if the alternative arguments and the different ways
of expressing, say, the relation between the thing in itself
and appearances, which are such a puzzle to Kant's
commentators, correspond to Kant's method in lecturing,
what corresponds to the systematic textbook ? Kant
clearly attached enormous importance to the need of
finding a principle of completeness and system in his
philosophical criticism. His solution is that if we will
really reflect on the operations of the mind in thinking,
we shall see that reason is a unity, that it is by
its very nature systematic, and that once we apprehend
the nature of rational activity, it will display itself as a
complete system. Kant spared no pains to find a principle
from which a full list of his categories and a complete
division of the functions of reason could be discovered, and
he thought he had found a clue to his problem in the
results of the traditional logic. From formal logic used,
as he says, as a guiding thread, he derived a plan which
governs not only the first but all three Critiques. He
attached enormous importance to what is called his
architectonic, and is never tired of congratulating himself
on its final and systematic nature. The consistency with
which he holds on to this general scheme is as remarkable
as his inconsistency in detail. Such is probably the
explanation of that curious combination of consistency as
a whole and inconsistency in detail which readers of the
Critique are apt to find very baffling.

(2) THE PREFACES

The Prefaces, especially the Preface to the Second

Edition, give what may be called the plot of the Critique
of Pure Reason, as the Introduction gives the Table of
44 KANT
Contents. Kant was one of the most systematic of thinkers.
Though he is often inconsistent in details, he has always a
firm grasp of the general thesis, a thesis which is continued
in the Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of
Judgement. The reader, if he is to avoid being lost in the
details of Kant's arguments, will do well to get from the
prefaces a clear understanding of the outline of the plot.
The plot, as the prefaces present it, may be described as
follows : Human reason is for ever puzzled by problems
which it cannot avoid (they are forced on it by its own
nature), but which it cannot solve—because their solution
lies beyond the limits of our experience. The possibility
of metaphysics is the central subject of the Critique. Men
are bound, Kant holds, to ask questions about the ultimate
nature of reality, of God, Freedom, and the Immortality of
the Soul. Such questions are prompted by our moral
nature, but the reaching out after the infinite and what is
beyond the limits of our experience is implicit, Kant holds,
in all our knowledge—even the most ordinary.) Meta-
physical questions are the most important which can
exercise the mind. Metaphysics, nevertheless, for all the
labour which men have spent on it, compares most
unfavourably, in respect of its success, with the natural
sciences. It has not, in Kant's words, attained the sure
path of a science. The sciences go from strength to
strength : their methods are agreed on : their results are
generally accepted. Metaphysics finds no such agreement.
It has constantly to retrace its steps. What one meta-
physician confidently affirms, another as confidently
denies, till men in despair take refuge in general scepticism.
This is the contrast with which the Critique starts, and
from which its problem arises. Let us examine, Kant says,
the method by which the sciences have become such.
For the inquiries we now call sciences were not always
scientific. They became so at quite definite times and for
quite definite reasons. If we can discover the conditions of
scientific knowledge, we may then ask how these conditions
can be applied to metaphysics. But it is obvious that the
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 45
success of the sciences is the success of reason. For Kant
has never any belief in mere empiricism making a science.
Mere empirical groping around becomes a science when a
priori or rational principles are applied to a subject. The
failure of metaphysics and the success of the sciences is a
contrast between the failure of reason where it would
appear most naturally to be at home, and its success in
what seems at first sight a field alien to it. This examina-
tion of the secret of the success of the sciences and the
failure of metaphysics is an examination—or, to use
Kant's word, a criticism or critique—of pure reason.
•^This is the outline of Kant's programme, and the
prefaces give us also an outline of the answer. It will be
found that reason is successful in the sciences because it
is there applied to experience, where objects, in Kant's
phrase, " conform to the mind," because the sciences deal
with things as they appear and within the limits of
intuition. These conditions do not apply to metaphysics,
which necessarily seeks to go beyond these limits. But
though reason can give no knowledge in the field of meta-
physics, its questions remain. If they find no answer
from dogmatic metaphysics or from science, the practical
reas^iji^orajitjproyides something which serves instead
of an answer. J
Such is the outline of the plot. Before we go on to
examine the " table of contents," there are certain things
in the outline which need discussion—the idea of Criticism ;
Kant's brief but important account in the Second Edition
Preface of the manner in which mathematics and physics
became sciences ; what he means by " objects conforming
to the mind," the relation of the doctrine implied in
this phrase to idealism, and the new meaning given to
metaphysics.
~Tt has been maintained that philosophers who, like
Kant, set themselves up to criticize human knowledge or
to define and set forth its limitations, are guilty of a fatal
fallacy at the outset. For how can knowledge be criticized
but by knowledge, or what can demarcate the bounds of
46 KANT
reason but reason ? Criticism implies a standard of which
that which is criticized falls short. One cannot criticize
knowledge without getting outside and beyond it, and that
is impossible. Any kind of scepticism or criticism is
condemned from the outset, for the scepticism cannot be
sceptical of itself and the criticism cannot be critical of
itself, and they are each of them knowledge.
But the answer to such " high priori" methods of
dealing with the idea of Criticism is that Kant, like Locke
before him, starts with a distinction within knowledge.
Some inquiries are scientific, and some, for all their efforts,
are not. That is just a fact, and it is obviously a fact
worth looking into.
In the second place it is to be noted that the distinctive
character of a science for Kant is not its certainty or
infallibility, but its steady progress and the agreement
among those working at it as to the methods of science.
Earlier thinkers—Plato especially—had made a rather
similar distinction between knowledge and opinion, but
had based the distinction on the certainty and infallibility
of knowledge as contrasted with the fallibility of opinion,
and the basis of that contrast had been taken to consist
in the different nature of the objects with which the two
inquiries were concerned. Knowledge was of " things
which cannot be otherwise," opinion of " things which can
be otherwise." But Kant's instances of inquiries which are
treading the sure path of a science include logic, which is
concerned with the pure forms of thought, mathematics,
which is a priori and yet applies to the sensible world,
and physics, which although it is based on a priori
principles is yet an empirical science, uses the method of
experiment, and gets results which, because founded on
observation, have not the clear-cut certainty of mathe-
matics. Kant thinks that all sciences use and are based
upon a priori principles, but that their claim to be sciences
rests on the ^steady progress in the understanding of nature
which the application of these principles brings about.
The remarkable characteristic of modern science which
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON
chiefly aroused Kant's attention, was that in it the use of a
priori principles and observation and experiment went
hand in hand. MoJeriTaHrohomy EadTjeeh made possible
both by the development of mathematics and by the
improvement of the telescope. Science had come into
being, not by men turning to study the kind of objects of
which true knowledge is possible, but by studying by a
revolutionized method the same objects which before they
had only " groped around."
We may, therefore, when faced with the problem of why
metaphysics which oughtjo be a science yet obstinately is
not, do well to see how other inquiries became scientific,
and then ask whether the same revolution is possible to
metaphysics.
This then Kant proceeds to do, and his account of the
secret of scientific method as revealed in the origin of
mathematics and of physics alike is of fundamental
importance for the understanding of the Critique. Mathe-
matics had been a rudimentary empirical inquiry among
the Egyptians ; the Greeks made it a science. Physics had
become a science in the seventeenth century. What had
happened to make the change possible ? This is how Kant
describes it:—

" A new light flashed upon the mind of the first man
(be he Thales or some other) who demonstrated the
properties of the isosceles triangle. The true method, so
he found, was not to inspect what he discerned either in
the figure or in the bare concept of it, and from this, as it
were, to read off its properties, but to bring out what was
necessarily implied in the concepts that he had himself
formed a priori, and had put into the figure in the con-
struction by which .he had presented it to himself. If he
is to know anything with a priori certainty he must not
ascribe to the figure anything save what necessarily follows
from what he has himself set into it in accordance with
his concept.
48 KANT
" When Galileo caused balls, the weights of which he
had himself previously determined, to roll down an inclined
plane : when Toricelli made the air carry a weight, which
he had calculated beforehand, to be equal to that of a
definite volume of water . . . a light broke upon all
students of nature. ^They learned that reason has insight
into that only which it produces after a plan of its own, and
that it must not allow itself to be kept, as it were, in
nature's leading-strings, but must itself show the way with
principles of judgement based on fixed laws, constraining
nature to give answer to questions of reason's own deter-
mining. . . .^Reason, holding in one hand its principles,
according to which alone concordant appearances can be
admitted as equivalent to laws, and in the other hand the
experiment which it has devised in accordance with these
principles, must approach nature in order to be taught by
it. It must not, however, do so in the character of a pupil
'wto l i s ^ n s j o ^ ^ say,

answer questions which^ej^sjmnself formulated. Even

pTIylacs^ therefore, owes the beneficent revolution in its
point of view entirely to the happy thought, that while
reason must seek in nature, not fictitiously ascribe to it,
whatever as not being knowable through reason's own
resources has to be learnt, if learnt at all, only from nature,
it must adopt as its guide, in so seeking, that which it has
itself put into nature." 1

Something of what Kant is after is plain enough. We

can never attain knowledge without asking the right
questions, and the Tightness of the question depends as
much on us as on the things. Mere apprehension of facts
never made a science. Facts have to be made intelligible,
and the conditions. oLlhejr JilteUig^^ mind.
"Teacher and scholar," "judge and witness," are, of
course, but similes : but the judge learns more of his
witness than the scholar of his teacher, because the judge's
1
B xi-xiv.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 49
mind is prepared, and he has got his questions ready. And
he learns more in spite of the fact that his questions limit
and condition the witness's replies. He may miss some-
thing important which the witness has to tell him, because
he has not asked the right question, but without his
theory, which dictates his question and limits the answer,
there would be no understanding of the facts at all. This
is the truth which Kant is going to express later in the
sentence: "Concepts without intuitions are empty, in-
tuitions without concepts are blind." Again—and this is
perhaps for Kant's teaching the more important point—
the question is no good without the answer, but the form
of the question dictates the form of the answer ; only if the
witness submits to the conditions prescribed by the judge's
questions will knowledge result. / And yet it would be
unwarranted to argue that because knowledge so results,
the form of the answer comes from the answerer—or to
conclude anything about the answerer from that form.'/.
It may be objected to all this that the simile is being
pushed too far. Facts and things cannot answer. What
can possibly correspond in science to the answering of a
witness ? Are not facts just there to be apprehended and
understood or not ? But this is precisely what Kant
denies. He does think that/knowledge is always a joint
product, of the form prescribed by the mind and the matter
supplied by the objects that without this joint process-
there can be no knowledge whatever, and that, therefore,
there is a sense in which we must think of the mind and its
objects as being as independent of and indispensable to one
another as are judge and witness,/and yet in such a
relation that the objects have to submit to the conditions
prescribed by the mindA What that can mean we shall
have to consider, but this is what Kant now goes on to say.
He proposes to apply to metaphysics the analogy he has
conceived when examining the nature of the sciences.
" Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge
must conform to objects But all attempts to extend our
knowledge of objects by establishing something in regard
 50 KANT
to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this
assumption, ended in failure. We must, therefore, make
trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks
of metaphysics if we suppose that objects must conform
to our knowledge."*
But how can objects conform to the mind ? At any rate,
says Kant, the experience in which alone objects can be
known may conform to the mind. For experience, like
the results of cross-examination, is a joint product.
This new way of conceiving the possibility of a priori
knowledge Kant compares to the revolution brought about
in astronomy by Copernicus. The comparison has often
been derided. Copernicus found man on this earth the
supposed centre of the universe. His " revolution"
destroyed for ever that anthropocentric view. But Kant,
in supposing that, Instead of the mind conforming to
objects, objects conform to the mind, is going in precisely
the opposite direction and making man's mind the centre
of the universe of knowledge. This criticism involves, as
we shall see, a misunderstanding of Kant, but it also
involves, as Professor Kemp Smith has shown, a misunder-
standing of Copernicus. What Copernicus had done was
to suggest that certain changes in the apparent positions
of the heavenly bodies were to be explained not by changes
in these bodies but by changes in the position of the
observer brought about by the rotation of the earth. The
source of the true explanation of some of what we see is
in an understanding of what is happening to ourselves.
Kant is to show that the explanation of certain elements
in our knqwledgeJs to be found in ourselves—in what the
mind contributes—and Kant thinks that an understanding
of this is the only way to confirm the objectivity of our
knowledge. As Kant says : " We should then be proceed-
ing precisely on the lines of Copernicus' primary hypothesis.
Failing of satisfactory progress in explaining the move-
ments of the heavenly bodies on the supposition that they
all revolved round the spectator, he tried whether he might
1
B xvi.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 51
not have better success if he made the spectator to revolve
and the stars to remain at rest." 1
The parallel with Copernicus is thus a true one, but"
nevertheless " objects conforming to the mind" is a
startling expression, easily rnisunderstood. Kant did not
help matters by calling his system " transcendental
idealism." ^ o r in spite of all his asseverations that
transcendental idealism meant empirical realism, the
adjective " transcendental," whicTTwäilHtendeoT to make
the noun less misleading, only made it more so); for it has
suggested that Kant's is an idealism of a more than usually
thoroughgoing kind. It will be well, therefore, before we
go further, to say something about what Kant conceived
to be his relation to idealism. For it is quite certain that
when some of the first readers of the Critique described
Kant as an idealist, in the then accepted sense of the term,
he was both surprised and annoyed at the misunder-
standing. It is also true that in spite of all he said the
misunderstanding has persisted.
But before we take leave of Copernicus, let us remember
that the Copernican revolution started as an explanation
of apparent changes in the positions of the heavenly bodies.
Apparent changes are observed and recorded. They are,
indeed, all we can observe and "record". But what kind of
things are they ? The answer surely is, no kind of (kings ;
the Copernican explanation of them is that they are due
to changes in things—changes in our position and changes
in the positions of the stars and the planets. Do not let us,
therefore, begin by assuming that what Kant calls objects
are any kind of things either, although they are what we
observe—are, in fact, in the strict sense of the word,
objects.
In the letter to Herz of 1772, already quoted (p. 34),
where Kant is first shown conscious of the problem raised
by his learning from Hume that the principle of causation
was both necessary to experience and not obtained by
analysis, Kant says that he could understand the necessity
1
B xvi.
52 KANT
of knowledge if knowledge were either archetypal or
ectypal: if what we know were produced entirely by the
mind or entirely by objects. Kant's early difficulties had
taught him that neither of these alternatives was possible.
The new sciences, he had convinced himself, relied on
observation, and could not do without it. Knowledge
could not be regarded as either the mind's coming to
apprehend and reason from its own innate principles, or
as the mind's unaided self-development./The attempts of
Descartes and Leibniz to explain the sciences on those lines
had, he considered, hopelessly broken down. The English
empiricists had chosen the "j^ctypal " alternative. For
them the guarantee of the validity of knowledge was the
mind's passive reception of the impressions stamped upon
it by external things. But Hume had shown by his
account of causation as at once an essential and (on such
a theory of knowledge) an inexplicable principle that
that " way of ideas " would not explain the facts. Both
those alternatives had led in different ways to idealism,
to what Kant calls the problematic idealism of Descartes
and the dogmatic idealism of Berkeley.
. For the archetypal alternative assumes that knowledge
is really the mmdTs knowledge of the principles within
itself, and it can only get beyond itself to an external
world by miraculous interventions. The existence of the
external world* is but an unsupported conjecture. The
empiricists had begun by supposing the independent reality
of external things producing impressions on the mind.
But as they supposed that the physical effects of external
things got somehow changed into mental " impressions "
or " images," which had in some curious way to get out of
physical space " into " the mind, they thought of knowing
as the mind's regarding its own ideas or images. It was
easy then for Berkeley to kick away the ladder by which
this position had been reached and deny the existence of
the external things altogether.
<f These two forms of idealism, Kant thought, sprang from
a common root of error, namely, the assumption that the
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 53
mind knew itself better than, or before, it knew external
objects., He is going to argue that we never come to know
ourselves except over against what is not ourselves, and
vice versa. If he calls our knowledge of the external world
phenomenal, he calls our knowledge of ourselves the same.
He never doubted the real existence of ourselves, and he as
little doubted the real existence of other things. He
thought indeed that the independence and the relatedness
of mind and things was the presupposition of all objective
knowledge. His " refutation of idealism," which some have
thought inconsistent with his position, was for him
fundamental. He thought indeed that it was only from
this position that idealism could be refuted.
But, if this is all true, why was Kant ever thought to be
an idealist, and what is the meaning of " objects conform-
ing to the mind " ? Does he not continually solve the
problems with which he is confronted by saying that we
make the mistake of supposing that we have to do in
knowledge with things in themselves, whereas we have
only to do with appearances in the mind ? Is not that
Locke over again, only wanting another Berkeley to make
it a thoroughgoing, consistent, and impossible idealism ?
Kant started, as Locke started, with the common-sense
assumption that here on the one side is our mind, and there
on the other side are external things, and that knowledge
of external things arises in the mind. " There can be no
doubt," runs the first sentence of the Introduction, " that
all our knowledge begins with experience. For how should
our faculty of knowledge be awakened into action did not
objects affecting our senses partly of themselves produce
representations, partly arouse -the activity of our under-
standing to compare these representations, and, by combin-
ing or separating them, wake up the raw materials of the
sensible impressions into that knowledge of objects which
is entitled experience ? " x
That is the position with which Kant starts, and with
that position broadly he ends. He never substantially
1
B 1.
54 KANT
departed from it. But that position, when held by Locke,
had shown itself curiously unstable. How did Kant
contrive to give it greater stability ?
The answer is in the first place that Kant, unlike Locke,
and in spite of occasional phrases which will not bear
thinking out, never committed himself to that theory of
perception which supposes that the mind is aware only of
images or ideas—separate mental entities produced in the
mind by things. He does not attempt to describe percep-
tion or intuition in terms of anything else. His most usual
expression is not that we know only phenomena, not
things, but that w£^ow_thjn^_as^they appear and not as
they aje^in themselyes. We know things as they look and
sound, etc., and how they look and sound, etc., depends
partly on us. We can never get away from the general
fact of looking, though we can get away, and do in all
objective thinking get away, from the particular varia-
tions introduced into how things look from particular
variations in us. To ask what things are in themselves
is, in his view, to ask either what we should appre-
hend if we could apprehend them by thought alone
without intuition, or how things would look if they
didn't look.
In the second place, Locke prepared the way for Berkeley
by making objectivity consist in the agreement between
our ideas and objects, as though we were aware only of
ideas in our minds, and yet attained truth in a comparison
between these ideas and the things which produced thern.
But as ex hypothesi we cannot apprehend the things that
produced them, this position is an absurd one ; the things
are otiose, and Berkeley's demolition of them was inevit-
able. Descartes had begun the confusion by describing
truth as the property of that which we clearly and
distinctly conceive. But if truth be regarded thus, as
inhering in or belonging to something distinct, then when
we are asking whether what we apprehend is true, we are
really asking whether it is real or an illusion, and we shall
concern ourselves, as is done in the endless disputes
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 55
between idealism and realism, about the nature of that
which we apprehend, whether it is an image or a reality—
something dependent on us or independent of us. And if,
like Berkeley, we begin by holding that all we can appre-
hend is something dependent on mind, then we are bound
to go on to say that all that is real must be dependent on
mind. But this is to misconceive the nature of truth.
That is true which, when we apprehend it, tells us about
something else than that which we apprehend. That is
what Locke was after when he talked of the agreement
between ideas and things. But if ideas be ex hypothesi
that which we apprehend, the agreement between them
and things cannot be apprehended.
Kant takes up a position to which all such disputes are
irrelevant by seeing that truth is concerned not with the
relation between what we apprehend and something on
the other side of the apprehensible, nor with the quality of
that which is apprehended, but with the relation of what
we apprehend at one time to what we apprehend at
another—or, as he puts itjM;he relation between present and
possible experience. This is the secret of his stress on the
synthetic rather thaa the analytic nature of judgement
His predecessors had made analysis the typical act of
knowledge, as though we were presented at first with a
confused whole which thought then analysed either into
self-evident propositions or into simple ideas passively
received and therefore bearing on them the authentic
mark of the thing which impressed them. For Kant
knowledge is always of what is in experience, and ex-
perience is always in time, and as we come to know more
and more of the world that is presented to us, we are never
presented with it all at once, buJLat any moment we look
back to the past and forward to the future. We arejneyer
presented with a whole, but come nearer seeing things as
a whole by connecting what we see now with what we have
seen and what we are to see. There is no knowing which
does not take place in time—and none, therefore, which is
not connecting what we apprehend now with what we have
56 KANT
apprehended or are to apprehend. Connecting in time is
the typical act of knowledge, and, therefore, all knowledge
involves^ synthesis.
Hume had seen something of this when he made associa-
tion play such an important part in knowledge. But
he denied the distinction between such more or less
mechanical association as we allude to when we use such
phrases as " a curious association of ideas," and the
association or synthesis which we make when we are
judging what we believe to be true. Kantmakes this
distinction a fundamental one. There is, according to
him, an association which is only subjective, and an
association which is objective. Both are governed by
rules. But the rules governing the first are empirical,
those governing the second a priori. There are certain
principles which we must observe if our synthesis or
association is to be true. Kant proposes to give a list of
such principles and then explain their validity. The
paradoxical part of what he has to say is that our synthesis
will be objective—not subjective—conforming to the facts,
not our mere personal suggestion—enabling us to predict
what we shall actually see, if it conforms to principles
which are not discovered in experience but imposed by us.
This doctrine will be considered later. ^Vhat is important
for our understanding of Kant's relatioirto idealism is that
because in all this process of synthesis—of connecting what
we see at one time with what we see at another—we do not
in the distinction between subjective and objective go
outside or beyond the sphere of what we experience, of
how things look and sound, etc.; the status of these looks
and sounds does not arise, the ordinary controversies about
idealism and realism are irrelevant, and Kant does not
make the mistake which made Locke's statement of the
common-sense position unstable.,
Kant, indeed, in the Opus Postumum, definitely says
that " In the transcendental philosophy it does not matter
whether I regard sense representations from an idealist or
a realist standpoint, because we are only concerned with
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 57
the relation of objects to one another, not with then-
relation to the subject."
When, therefore, Kant talks of objects conforming to
the mind, he is not making any assertion about the nature or
behaviour of things, except in so far as is involved in saying
that both the mind and things contribute to knowledge.
His idealism is not metaphysical doctrine, as most idealism
is. In fact, one of the main results of Kant's inquiry into
the nature of the sciences—an inquiry which was started
to see what conditions metaphysics would have to fulfil
if it was " to tread the sure path of a science "—is that
metaphysics cannot fulfil these conditions, and cannot,
therefore, become a science—not, at any rate, metaphysics
in the ordinary sense. What sort of metaphysics Kant
thinks ought to take its place we shall see later.

/''''-'• (3) THE INTRODUCTION

The conception of synthesis which we have seen to be
fundamental in Kant's conception of the nature of know-
ledge dominates the Introduction. There the far-reaching
problem propounded in the Prefaces is set forth in its
logical aspect—how judgements may be both a priori and
synthetic- Kant in the very statement of his problem is
criticizing both his rationalist and his empirical prede-
cessors. His so-called pre-Critical writings had been largely
taken up with the impossibility of getting truth in meta-
physics—of proving the existence of God, for example—
by analysis of conceptions. He had come to think that all
metaphysical judgements of any importance were syn-
thetic, in the sense that the predicate was not got by
analysis of the subject, bjut by somehow going out of or
beyond the subject and coming to connect it with what it
had not hitherto been seen to be connected with^ The
belief in the power of analysis had been the result of
reflexion on mathematical processes. The certain assur-
ance in that field of new knowledge, apparently got by
analysis, made analytical reasoning appear the true type
58 KANT
of all a priori knowledge. Kant, however, insists that
mathematical discovery is not a mere matter of analysis.
It always involves a synthetical element: even the result
of a simple sum is not got by analysis, but by counting or
some kind of construction. He challenges, therefore, the
rationalist assumption that a priori judgements are
necessarily analytic. The empiricists, on the other hand,
had seen in synthesis mere association—mere seeing or
thinking together. When Hume discovered that the
principle of causality was synthetic, i.e. was not got by
mere analysis of the conception of an event, and had also
seen that it was a priori, in the sense that it was pre-
supposed in most of our ordinary experience, he had
refused to call it a judgement, and had reduced it to the
rank of an instinctive and irrational feeling. The empiri-
cists, therefore, took for granted that all judgements were
synthetic:and a posteriori, i.e. depending upon gwöepiic>Ji\
of asgociated qualities—strictly speaking, nothing but
simpIe~p6rception. Kant has made the discovery that
there are judgements which are both a priori and synthetic,
and that they are the presupposition of science. For he
takes for granted that there cannot be science as con-
trasted with mere empirical examination without univer-
sality and necessity, and that universality and necessity
are the qualities only of what is a priori. If we are to ask
what are the conditions which have made science possible,
„we have only to ask how a priori synthetic judgements are
possible in the sphere with which the science in question is
concerned.
T£ant notes three characteristic types of synthetic a
priori judgements—the judgements of pure mathematics,
the judgements such as that every event has a cause or
that " in all changes of the physical world the quantity of
matter remains the same," and the judgements of meta-
physics. His inquiry into the possibility, which for Kant
means the conditions of the occurrence and the validity
of such judgements, can, therefore be described by him as
an attempt to answer the questions : How is pure mathe-
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 59
matics possible ? How is pure science of nature possible ?
And lastly, How is metaphysics possible ? As, however, he
does not think that metaphysics in the ordinary sense is
possible, the last question divides itself into two. How is
metaphysics possible as a natural inclination ? That is,
How do these questions arise, the attempt to answer which
is the concern of ordinary metaphysics ? Secondly, when
we have shown that metaphysics as an attempt to answer
these questions is a mistake, there remains the question,
How is metaphysics possible as a science ? Can we
remould metaphysics and make it, instead of a delusion, a
really scientific inquiry ?
Kant makes a connexion between these several questions
and the various divisions of the Critique. The ^Esthetic is
supposed to be an answer to the question about the
possibility of mathematics ; the Analytic to explain the
possibility of what he calls pure science of nature ; and the
Dialectic to be concerned with metaphysics. There are,
however, as we shall see, difficulties in this correspondence.

Such is in outline the thesis of the Introduction. It

seems at first sight straightforward, but there are in it
certain difficulties which deserve discussion, as they are of
great importance throughout the Critique.
When Kant is explaining the necessity of examining the
nature and conditions of a priori synthetic judgements, he
takes for granted that there are analytic a priori and
synthetic a posteriori judgements. These have been
already discovered and expounded by others. He is
simply calling attention to a new variety of judgement
hitherto unnoticed. Our difficulty nowadays is not to
admit that there are synthetic judgements, but that there
are any analytic judgements, and to admit that there is no
difficulty in the synthetic a posteriori as he describes it.
There are no really satisfactory instances of analytic
judgements. They all seem on examination to be state-
ments about the meaning of words. They are not so much
explications of a concept as statements of what we mean
 6o KANT
by a term. And, on the other hand, although Kant says
that there is no difficulty about a posteriori synthetic judge-
ments because experience is the tertium quid which makes
the synthesis possible, this is a very general statement
which is really inconsistent with his own later account of
judgement in the Analytic. Hume, by emphasizing only
the synthetic nature of judgement, had made out judge-
ment and the association of ideas to be one and the same
thing—which obviously will not do. An association of
ideas is just not a judgement. When we say "that
rock is like the Duke of Wellington," we do not mean
that it is the Duke of Wellington; but that it re-
minds us of him; but if association and judgement were
the same, there could be no difference between the
two statements. The empirical judgement as Locke and
his successors had described it is no judgement at all.
QKant is going to show in the Deduction of the Categories
that all judgements are informed by a necessary principle ;
that all judgements, therefore, require what he calls
I deduction—>an explanation of how a universal and
*- necessary principle can combine with the data of observa-
tion. That means that he is going to show that his
statement in the Introduction, that empirical a posteriori
judgements find their unity of connexion in experience, )
needs, to say the least of it, amplification.) It implies also
that he is mistaken in supposing, as he seems to do in the
Introduction, that empirical judgements give no real
universality. Kant is really concerned with the fact that
analytic judgements as the rationalists described them
give no increase in knowledge, and synthetic a posteriori
judgements as the empiricists described them give no
universality, while he has discovered certain judgements,
the synthetic a priori, which give both. It is very charac-
teristic of Kant's method of tackling problems that he
takes the problem as it arises, in the existence of certain
judgements which obviously will not fit into either of the
accepted types, and accepts for the meantime the tradi-
tional view about those types. ^What is going to happen is
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 61
that the new type of judgement is going to turn out to be
the pattern of all judging. \
This way of Kant's of tackling things piecemeal has
certain disadvantageous consequences which are especially
apparent in the Introduction and the ^Esthetic. He is
trying in the Introduction to define his problem, and he
practically does so by assuming that the distinctions
between analytic and synthetic, a priori and a posteriori,
are obvious and need little elucidation. The one new
point he has to make is that he proposes a new combina-
tion : to analytic a priori and synthetic a posteriori he
proposes to add synthetic a priori. He takes for granted
the notion of a priori thought implied in the rationalist
yiew of analytic knowledge, and the notion of synthesis
implied in the empiricists' description of empirical judge-
ments, and puts them together. But this means that he
gives a very confusing account of both, and especially of
what he means by a priori. The rationalists had made a
distinction between reason and intuition, and supposed
that rational thinking was something which went on
unaided by and independent of intuition. There the
mind alone, by exercise of its own peculiar powers, appre-
hended reality. Kant talks often of things as noumena,
objects apprehended by reason, because the position from
which he started pre-supposed that it was the nature of
reason to apprehend reality. Realities—things in them-
selves—and objects apprehended by reason thus meant the
same. Such exercise of reason being entirely separate from
and independent of intuition was described as a priori
—as though before any intuitive experience the mind
could and did apprehend reality unaided. The temporal
suggestion in the phrase a priori is unfortunate; it gave
rise to all the difficulties in the conception of innate ideas,
which Locke trenchantly criticized at the beginning of the
Essay. The doctrine implied not the priority but the inde-
pendence of rational knowledge. Such knowledge needed
nothing and got nothing from intuition.
Now Kant gives up the sharp separation of a priori or
62 KANT
rational and a posteriori or empirical knowledge. The
first words of the first paragraph of the Introduction are :
" There can be no doubt that all our knowledge begins with
experience." That is against the doctrine of innate ideas.
The first words of the second paragraph criticize the
empiricists: " But though all our knowledge begins with
experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of
experience." In all experience there is an a priori element.
But he goes on to describe our knowledge as a compound.
" For it may well be that even our empirical knowledge
is made up of what we receive through impressions and
of what our own faculty of knowledge (sensible impressions
serving merely as the occasion) supplies from itself. If our
faculty of knowledge makes any such addition, it may be
that we are not in a position to distinguish it from the raw
material, until with long practice of attention we have
become skilled in separating it."^
The implication is that though these two elements are
conjoined, each exists as it were in its own right, and they
could be separated ; and that suggestion is confirmed when
Kant goes on to say that it is worth inquiring whether there
is knowledge independent of experience and even of all
impressions of the senses ; and says that he will mean by
a priori knowledge such as is absolutely independent of all
experience ; distinguishes a specially pure a priori know-
ledge in which absolutely nothing empirical is mixed;
and actually, inconsistently with all he is going on to say,
he makes the proposition that every change has a^ cause a
proposition "which is a priori but not pure, because change
is a concept which can only be got from experience."
Pure a priori knowledge, on this showing, is knowledge
got outside or independent of the world of change : know-
ledge of what Plato called things which are in themselves
always the same. The mind, it is assumed, can somehow
get away from the temporal process and apprehend the
changeless. Kant, when he talks of pure a priori knowledge
in the Introduction, is clearly thinking of mathematics,
* B I and 2.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 63
and particularly of pure geometry. He takes over without
criticism the traditional conception of mathematics.
Mathematics and metaphysics are both concerned with a ;
timeless world. The third type of a priori judgements
which are the basis of the natural sciences, of which the
principle of causality is the most prominent, seem to be
of a slightly inferior brand of a priori.
But when we come to the Analytic we find that judge-
ments of this thinLiype become for Kant the typical
instances of the a priori, and that other judgements,
including the mathematical, are judged in the light of
these : that Kant has then to give up the notion of
experience being a compound of two elements, each of
which can exist separately apart from the combination.
A priori then comes to mean not that which is absolutely
separate from and independent of all experience, but that
which is independent of any particular experience. "V
One aspect of experience is that the world is füll of a
number of things and that we never exhaust its infinite
Variety. This we can never entirely master, and because
we cannot, our knowledge has to wait for it to be given.
But along with this element of variety, or changing
qualities, there is a constant element—what Kant calls the
form as opposed to the matter of experience. We can see
certain relations within that form to be entirely inde-
pendent of their matter, so that they will hold whatever
the variations of the content filling them. This is what
Kant is thinking of when he says that the distinctive mark
of the a priori is its strict universality : the a priori is N
something that holds at all times and all places. Because /
mathematics is a priori in this sense, we assume that its
propositions hold in the stars as much as on this earth.
It is with the a priori in this sense that Kant is going to be
concerned. The Critique is to examine its extent and the
conditions and justification of its validity.
The other far-reaching ambiguity in the Introduction
comes from Kant's taking over at the beginning the
empiricists' account of synthesis as he had taken over the
64 KANT
rationalists' account of the a priori. CThe conception of
synthesis is dominant with Kant, as we saw, because he
holds that knowledge is always a process in time f\that it
is never therefore a process where we begin with every-
thing given to us and have only to take it to pieces, to dis-
entangle or dissect the whole before us. Wh^tjs. giyejDL tQ-
us. JooksJjacJkJx) .the.pasLand- forward-to 4heiuture, and
can only bejindfitstood in^thaJighjL of „what is beyond
itseJtfJ_|ja,jjrier„isJkn,9Kfc..thexefore,, we have.to connect
what we are aware, of,iiow,,with.,what.we have been or are
to Be aware of. There is no knowledge without imagina-
tion] But the empiricists had gone much further in their
reduction of knowledge to association. For they had been
influenced by the desire to find ultimate simple units of
association or composition, misled by scientific analogies.
They thought of that which was synthesized as simple
ideas or impressions—mental atoms—what modern writers
call sensa—contents with no internal diversity or variety.
For their way of thinking all relations were external. There
was and could be nothing in the units of synthesis them-
selves—in the impressions or ideas—which could determine
their relations. Their synthesis was pure synthesis with no
analysis about it. Analysis could only be of what had
already been synthesized. For the units of mental
synthesis being atoms were unanalysable. It was this
"mental atomism which led to Hume's famous statement
in the appendix to the Treatise, where he lays down two
propositions which he can " neither render consistent nor
renounce "—" that all our distinct perceptions are distinct
existences, and that the mind never perceives any real
connexion among distinct existences."
Now this account of experience is clearly as misleading
in the one direction as the rationalists' account was in the
other. We do not start with everything given us, having
only to analyse. But neither do we start with isolated
atoms. What we are given—what we are aware of—is not
a whole in the sense of being complete, but it is a whole in
the sense of having some compass—some extent in space,
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 65
some duration in time, some internal variety and structure;
it is something, that is, which can be and is analysed. When
we connect our present with our past or future, we do not
connect our whole present but some elements in ft, and we
connect it not with our whole past but with some elements in
it. There is always analysis combined with synthesis. There
are always relations within the given as well as relations
between the given and what is not given.
It is almost certain for other reasons that Kant had not
read Hume's Treatise. He certainly shows no signs of
having ever appreciated Hume's difficulty. In none of his
accounts of either Locke or Hume does he seem to have
grasped the atomism in- them. He has no sympathy with
their desire to get to the ultimately unanalysable datum.
He quite definitely parts company with Hume in his
account of space and time. They are, as we shall see when
examining the ^Esthetic, given as wholes. He even
neglects unduly in the ^Esthetic the element of synthesis
involved in the apprehension of time and space. Similarly
the given is for him always a manifold : time involves
the comprehension of the simultaneous as well as of
the successive : duration as~well as succession is an
aspect of time. Intuition—anschauung—as compared to a
supposed mere receptivity of impressions—is always of a
manifold. And we shall see when we come to the Critique
of Judgement what importance he attached to the appre-
hension of empirical form and structure in the given. „,
Judgement, then, for Kant, as the Deduction shows,
involves analysis as well as synthesis. But Kant never
makes this point clearly. In the first Critique, at any rate,
he concentrates all his attention on synthesis, and if we
come to Kant with Hume's difficulties in our mind, as they
were not in Kant's, we might suppose that Kant thought
that Hume's difficulties about the synthesis of atomic
impressions were got over by ascribing a principle of
synthesis to the mind, as though all relations were imposed
by the mind upon objects.
There is some justification for Kant's procedure. In
c
66 KANT
this Critique he is concerned with a priori synthesis, and he ^
does think that that is imposed by the mind upon objects.
He takes empirical synthesis for granted. When he does
come to examine it in the Critique of Judgement, these
ambiguities disappear. But he would have saved his
readers a great deal of misunderstanding, and himself some
inconsistencies, if he had begun in the Introduction, not
by setting up a new kind of judgement—the synthetic a
priori—over against the analytic a priori and the synthetic
a posteriori, but by giving a revised account, based on his
later analysis of the judgement, of the combination of these
diverse elements in all judging.

(4) THE ^ESTHETIC

At the end of the Introduction Kant explains that the

division of the first main section of the Critique into what
he calls the Esthetic and the Analytic is based upon the
fact that there are two sources of human knowledge, which
may spring from a common root unknown to us, namely,
sensibility and understanding, through the first of which
objects are given to us, and through the second of which
they are thought.
Kant thus takes over from the empiricists the view of
the passivity of the mind in sensation. Sensation is
the given, understanding the spontaneous element of
knowledge. ; He holds that there is no knowledge without
these two elements—one is useless without the other—but
their functions in knowledge are quite different, and it is
vital that they should not be confused.
This distinction between the passive and the spontaneous
element—between what is given and what is constructed,
intuition and thinking, sensibility and understanding—
runs all through Kant's thought. It has been criticized
as pre-Critical, but the Kantian system would go to pieces
without it.
At the same time, the particular way in which the
distinction is conceived by Kant is considerably altered in
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 67
the course of the Critique, and much of the presentation of
the distinction in the ^Esthetic is pre-Critical. /*""
What Kant appears to do in the ^Esthetic is, as we have
already suggested, to take the account of the under-
standing as constructive and spontaneous from the
rationalists, and the account of sensation as passive from
the empiricists, and say that both are necessary to know-
ledge^—adding this very important and significant doctrine,
that space and time are not the products of the under-
standing but part of the passively received or given, but
an a priori element in that given and to be distinguished
from the a posteriori element represented by sensations.
We shall discuss some of the difficulties of Kant's
exposition later. Meantime it is important to remember
that Kant is putting space and time on the side of the
given. When we start thinking or judging or in any way
using the understanding, there are space and time given to
begin with. A great deal of misunderstanding of Kant
would be impossible if this were remembered.
Kant begins the ^Esthetic by stating this distinction at
some length :

" In whatever manner and by whatever means a mode of

knowledge may relate to objects, intuition is that through
which it is in immediate relation to them, and from which
all thought gains its material. But intuition takes place
only in so far as the object is given us. This again is only
possible, to man at least, in so far as the mind is affected
in a certain way. The capacity (receptivity) for receiving
representations through the mode in which we are affected
by objects, is entitled sensibility. Objects are given to us
by means of sensibility and it alone yields us intuitions ;
they are thought through the understanding, and from
the understanding arise concepts. But all thought must,
directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate
ultimately to intuitions, and therefore with us, to
sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given
to us.
68 KANT
" The effect of an object upon the faculty of representa-
tion, so far as we are affected by it, is sensation. That
intuition, which is in relation to the object through
sensation, is entitled empirical. The undetermined object
of an empirical intuition is entitled appearance.
" That in the appearance which corresponds to sensation
I term its matter; but that which so determines the
manifold of appearance that it allows of being ordered in
certain relations, I term the form of appearance."1

The " given " for Kant is all appearance ; it is all the
result of the effect of things on the sense organs : it is
neither the real things as they are in themselves, nor is it
the work of the mind ; it comes from the interaction of the
mind and external things. It is all, therefore, what Kant
calls empirically real. There it is; we do not make it for
ourselves ; when we begin to think we find it there. And
it is given both with an infinite variety of sense qualities
and with a certain form or structure. This form or
structure can be considered independently of the sensations
which are ordered in it. That is what we mean by the
distinction of form and matter. But the form is always
what Kant calls transcendentally ideal; that is, if we do
not remember that it is the form of the way things look—
a form of intuition—and treat it as though it existed in its
own right, we shall find ourselves involved in difficulties
at once. We shall be asking how things would look if they
didn't look, or be supposing that we could come to a know-
ledge of their nature without looking at them.
Kant sums up his teaching in his " general remarks on
the Transcendental ^Esthetic " in the following words :

" What we have meant to say is that all our intuition

is nothing but the representation of appearance ; that the
things which we intuit are not in themselves what we
intuit them as being, nor their relations so constituted in
themselves as they appear to us, and that if the subject,
1
A ig, 20 ; B 33, 34.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 69
or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in
general, be run over, the whole constitution and all the
relations of objects in space and time, nay, space and time
themselves, would vanish. As appearances, they cannot
exist in themselves, but only in us. What, objecls j n a y b e
in themselves, and apart from all thirreceptivity~of our"
sensibility, remains completely unknown to us ? We know
nothing but our mode of perceiving them—a mode which
is peculiar to us, and not necessarily shared in by every
being, though, certainly, by every human being. With
this alone have we any concern. Space and time are its
pure forms and sensation in general its matter. The
former alone can we know a priori, that is, prior to all
actual perception : and such knowledge is, therefore,
called pure intuition. The latter is that in our knowledge
which leads to its being called a posteriori knowledge, that
is, empirical intuition. The former inhere in our sensibility
with absolute necessity, no matter of what kind our sensa-
tions may be; the latter can exist in var5dng modes."^

Kant's account of space and time in the Esthetic is

largely determined by his sense of the inadequacy of two
previous views which at that time disputed the field : the
view of Leibniz, only recently made known in any kind of
completeness by the publication of the New Essays on
Human Understanding ; and the views of Newton and the
Newtonians. The opposition between the Leibnizian
view of space and time and the scientific view had been
clearly set forth by the great German mathematician,
Euler.2

" The metaphysician divides the world, in order to

render it intelligible, into ultimate simple parts. The
mathematician must insist that the divisibility of matter
or of space is infinite, and that, therefore, an indivisible
simple can never be reached. The metaphysician reduces
* A 42 ; B 59-60.
* Quoted by Cassirer, Kant'.s Leben und Lehre, p . 111.
70 KANT
reality to a sum of independent point-like substances
which, in their composition, produce the appearance or
rather the illusion of extension ; the mathematician on the
other hand knows that, thanks to the continuity of space
and time, it is possible to go only from a more complex
spatial or temporal relation to a less complex relation, but
that it is never possible to make extension out of points—
the extended out of the unextended. Further, according
to the teachings of metaphysics, pure space and pure time
are in themselves nothing, but are both thought of only
as determinations, as accidents of bodies and their move-
ments which alone are real; on the other hand, the
mathematician and the physicist, while they do not
concern themselves to determine the kind of reality which
pertains to time and space, must insist that some sort of
reality is to be attributed to them, and that extension and
duration (even when abstracted from the extended and the
enduring) possess an independent reality. Without that
assumption it is impossible to give a clear and determinate
sense to the laws of motion—e.g. the law of persistence in
motion cannot be stated unambiguously and precisely
unless pure (or, as Newton called it, absolute) space is
distinguished from all that it contains, and is recognized
as an independent whole in relation to which the rest or
motion of a material system can be spoken of."

That is the case of the scientist—or at least the New-

tonian physicist—against Leibniz. Kant was quite clear
that the Leibnizian view of space made physics impossible.
He did, of course, take the finality of Newtonian physics
for granted, and we might be tempted to maintain that
the general theory of relativity has entirely altered the
position. That is too large a question to discuss here.
But Kant's real quarrel with Leibniz was that the
applied mathematical sciences take time and space in
some sense as given and assumed before determination
of objects in space can begin and (that is not really
touched by the theory of relativity)
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 71
On the other hand, Kant considered that if the New-
tonians' claims for the independent reality of time and
space, as distinguished from bodies in time and space,
were admitted, impossible consequences followed for
metaphysics. If we accept the view of the absolute
reality of time and space, we must assume two eternal and
infinite independent not-things " which are there, without
anything real being there, only in order to contain what is
real." The Newtonian view of reality implied in the
assumption of absolute time and space is not really
intelligible. Kant was also concerned, as we shall see
later, with the antinomies which were involved in the
doctrine of the absolute reality of time and space.
This, then, is the dilemma. Mathematics and physics
assume that you take space and time for granted in the
determination of objects and that, therefore, you cannot
begin with objects and their determinations, and from them
go to spatial and temporal determinations. But if this '•
independence of space and time from the varying character-/v,
istics of objects in space and time is granted—and to grant
it seems implied in the validity of mathematics and
physics—and if we, therefore, give space and time an
independent reality, impossible metaphysical difficulties
arise.
This consideration of the impossibility of the two
existing views leads Kant to his own conclusion. Space is
nothing but the form of all appearances of the external
sense, i.e. the subjective condition of sensibility under
which alone external intuition is possible. What does
Kant mean by;" the form of intuition "? --No really satis-
factory answer can be given in the ^Esthetic. For there
Kant can only say what he means there by declaring
that space and time are empirically real but transcen-
dentally ideal. But he means by that not simply that we
are aware of space and time in ourselves (as forms of our
sensibility, whatever that may mean), but that they are
necessarily implied in objective judgement. But it is not
till the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories that
72 KANT
Kant explains what is implied in objective judgement.
When he does that, he gives a quite new account of
sensibility and imagination, really inconsistent with the
form given in the ^Esthetic to the distinction between
intuition and understanding. So long as we are simply
dealing with the ^Esthetic, we cannot give a satisfactory
account of space and time on Kant's lines. All we can see
is the main lines of the position he was trying to hold on to.
We can elucidate the ^Esthetic by seeing what he does not
mean, and perhaps also by noticing certain definite
mistakes which he fell into because of his sharp separation
between the ^Esthetic and the Analytic.
" The merely formal ideality of the objects of external
sense," says Kant in one of his reflexions, " is proved in
the Transcendental ^Esthetic : their material ideality—the
notion that there is no external object corresponding to
them—is thereby rebutted."
Kant thinks that space and time are forms of our
experience of objects. There is a serious ambiguity to be
noticed later in his treatment of time, but this may for the
moment be disregarded. He sometimes seems to talk as
though the whole of space and time with spatial and
temporal determinations were purely mental—as though
the mind found in itself the elaborate structure of empty
spatial and temporal determinations—prior to and quite
independently of any experience of specific sensations—
and then fitted non-temporal and non-spatial sensations
into this framework. That was certainly not Kant's final
view. " To every given spatial determination," he says in
tha Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, " there
must be a ground in the object which is itself unknown." 1
Similarly he says in the observations to the first Anti-
nomy : " things, as appearances, determine space, that is,
of all its possible predicates of magnitude and relation
they determine this or that particular one to belong to the
real."2
That some such view was what he was after is also shown
1 2
B. E. iv. p. 507, 1. 27. A 432; B 460.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON
by his answer to an objection raised by the mathematician
Lambert to his account of time. Lambert had said : " You
cannot say that time is unreal; making it a form of the
mind does not make it unreal, for, after all,the mind and its
changes are real." Kant's answer is that the fact that this
objection is made against his account of time and not
against his account of space shows that his position has
been misunderstood. It has been assumed that when he
says that space is a form of sensibility, he means that •
it is real within the mind but not otherwise, and,
therefore, that its externality, which is its essence,
is an illusion. In other words, to make space mental;
would be to make it unreal, but to make time mental
is not to make time unreal. Kant's answer is that space
and time are equally real—the real appearing in the
form of intuition, but equally unreal when regarded as
existing apart from such intuitions. The mind's own
experience of time implies absolute time in the Newtonian
sense just as much as does our experience of external
change; but in both cases, if we take this assumption as
implying the independent existence of an absolute thing,
or, as Kant says, a " not-thing " called time, we get into
impossible difficulties.
Kant does, however, in the Esthetic, say certain things
about space and time which are clearly indefensible, and
furthermore inconsistent with the part he assigns to our
intuition of space and time in the later parts of the
Critique. —
The first is his attempt to distinguish between space
and time by making one the form of outer and the
other the form of inner sense. " By means of outer
sense, a property of our mind," the second section
of the Esthetic begins, " we represent to ourselves
objects as outside us and all without exception in
space. In space their shape, magnitude, and relation
to one another are determined, or determinable. Inner
sense, by means of which the mind intuits itself or its
inner state, yields indeed no intuition of the soul itself
CI
74 KANT
as an object ; but there is, nevertheless, a determinate
form (namely, time) in which alone the intuition of inner
states is possible, and everything which belongs to inner
determinations is, therefore, represented in relations of
time. Time cannot be outwardly intuited, any more, than
space can be intuited as something in us." 1
This attempt to distinguish time and space by attribu-
ting the one to inner and the other to outer sense
involves a confusion—the confusion at the root of sub-
jective idealism. For inner and outer are spatial terms. It
looks as though Kant had started with the Cartesian-
Lockeian view that we are immediately aware of our own
states, and then exempted space from this view, continuing
the view as applied to time. He saw that if you accept
the idealist view of intuition the intuition of externality is
impossible; but he seems here to think that the intuition
of time is perfectly explicable on an idealist theory. But
that if taken strictly would imply that we only intuit time
" within " us—or rather (as " within us " means nothing)
that our intuitions of time and space are entirely distinct;
and that what is ordered in time cannot be ordered in
space, and vice versa. That is, of course, absurd, and
Kant denies it at once in his account of change.

" The concept of alteration, and with it the concept of

motion, as alteration of place, is possible only through and
in the representation of time.
" If this representation were not an a priori (inner)
intuition, no concept, no matter what it might be, could
render comprehensible the possibility of an alteration, that
is, of the combination of contradictorily opposed predicates
in one and the same object, for instance, the being and the
not-being of one and the same thing in one and the same
place." 2

And in the next paragraph he says that " time is the

formal condition a priori of all appearances," as though
1
A 22, 23 ; B 37. » A 32 ; B 48.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 75
space were included in time; and he only manages to
preserve a distinction between space and time by saying
in the next sentence that our intuition of external pheno-
mena is mediate, our ^intuition of time immediate. That
seems like Locke's muddle at its worst, as if we perceive
ourselves and our " inner " temporal modifications, and
somehow infer from these to external, i.e. spatial, pheno-
mena. But Kant has said that time and space are both
forms of intuition and both immediate. Intuition is
defined in the first sentence of the jEsthetic as " that by
which knowledge relates itself immediately to objects."
If Kant meant this, in the Second Edition he disen-
tangled himself almost completely from the confusion
involved, and recognized that time and space imply one
another : (that our experience of ourselves is only got over
against a temporal and spatial experience which is not
ourselves.X His final view is that the given is an intuition
of time and space—succession and simultaneity—out of
which in becoming aware of objects we become aware of
ourselves over against objects. The intuition of time and
the determination of time come from our intuition of change
and our distinction between objective change and change
in ourselves. " Inner " and " outer " are words which do
not elucidate the distinction of time and space, but the
distinction of time and space—or of duration and extensity
—is not one which can be stated in terms of anything
else. We can, of course, deny the implication of this dis-
tinction that space and time are originally separate forms
of intuition which we combine in experience; rather
they are distinguished in our original intuition of change,
and the distinction—as the theory of relativity suggests—
is, when given the absoluteness which Newtonian physics
gave to it, one source of the antinomies and contradictions
which Kant discusses in the Dialectic.
Kant's doctrine of the inner sense had, however,
certain consequences from which he never disentangled
himself. Behind the confusion of inner and outer
is a recognition of the distinction between what may
76 KANT
be called private and public experience, the recogni-
tion that self-consciousness and thinking involve not only
the awareness of changes of which others may be aware,
but some sort of awareness or consciousness which is
peculiar and private to each individual. Recent writers
have expressed the distinction by saying that we are
aware of external objects, and are not aware of but "enjoy "
this awareness as well as our desires and feelings. Our
experience of the life of the self is somehow something
quite different from our experience of the world which is
common to all of us, and yet—and here is the great
difficulty—we and all other selves are part of the common
world. We cannot draw a line round ourselves and say that
that is the boundary between inner and outer experience,
because intuition crosses that boundary and makes it
unreal; but we have to recognize that there is a sense in
which we know ourselves as others know or may know us,
and also a sense in which we know ourselves as others
cannot know us. Professor Alexander's term " enjoy-
ment " is meant to express this difference. However we
express it, it is clearly of great importance.
But Kant began by expressing this distinction in a quite
impossible way—by connecting it with the distinction of
inner and outer, and making that the distinction between
time and space ; with the result that when that form of the
distinction breaks down, the distinction disappears alto-
gether, and it is assumed that, in so far as we can have
knowledge of ourselves, we know ourselves exactly as we
know external objects ; and this, as we shall see, has a
far-reaching effect on Kant's treatment of the antinomy of
free will and determinism.

The second great difficulty of the ^Esthetic as it stands

comes from Kant's identification of the distinction between
intuition and understanding with the distinction between
passivity and spontaneity. He sees that all thinking takes
spatial and temporal order for granted. He, therefore,
puts space and time on the side of the given, as though
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON
we started with an apprehension of empty space and
empty time. Kant is quite rightly maintaining against
Hume's confusion of a succession of ideas with an idea of
succession that apprehension of space and time is always
an apprehension of a whole with parts in it. The manifold
in space, says Kant, depends on limitation. Spaces are
parts of space : space is not the addition or sum of some-
thing"not spatial. The same holds of time.
But that cannot justify Kant in describing space as
" represented as an infinite given magnitude "—a repre-
sentation of an infinite is impossible. Kant is always
insisting that finitude is one of the characteristics which
distinguish intuition and the given from the understand-
ing; and, when Kant gives his mind to the conception
of infinity, he always connects it with the spontaneity of
the understanding. Infinite space and time cannot be
intuited or conceived apart from such activity.
Kant, indeed, even in the ^Esthetic, sees this :

" That which, as representation, can be antecedent to

any and every act of thinking anything, is intuition ; and
if it contains nothing but relations, it is the form of
intuition. Since this form does not represent anything save
in so far as something is posited in the mind, it can be
nothing but the1 mode in which the mind is affected through
its own activity (namely, through this positing of its
representation), and so is affected by itself; in other
words, it is nothing but an inner sense in respect of the
form of that sense." 1

/That is obscure enough, but it shows that Kant's

identification of what is given for thinking with what is
passively received is breaking down at once. He will not
be able subsequently to represent anything as " merely
given," but will have to allow, indeed to insist, that the
activity of the mind pervades all knowledge, both sensi-
bility and understanding. , The distinction between
1
B 67, 6S.
 78 KANT
intuition and understanding, if it is to persist, will have
to be a distinction between different kinds of mental
activity.
There is this further difficulty in the ^Esthetic, that, as
we saw, Kant makes the ^Esthetic the answer to the
problem of how synthetic a priori judgements are possible
in mathematics, and his account of space and time is
based on the assumptions of geometry, i.e. of geometrical
thinking. But if there are special assumptions of geo-
metrical thinking, and if Kant is going to give an entirely
new account of the nature of thinking in the Analytic,
then this account of space and time in the ^Esthetic is
bound to be inadequate. It will in fact turn out that
Kant holds not only that both intuition and understanding
involve activity, but that all thinking involves determina-
tion in space and time, and that, therefore, the position of
the ^Esthetic, that space and time are altogether on the
side of the given, belonging to intuition and not to under-
standing, breaks down.
A partial explanation of these confusions is that Kant
took over most of his account of space and time from the
Dissertation of 1770, written before he had been faced
with Hume's difficulty about causation and, therefore,
about synthetic a priori judgement in general; and that
he only gradually realized the full consequences of his new
view of judgement.
The elements of the ^Esthetic which no later criticism
affects are Kant's insistence against Leibniz that space and
time, with the possibility of spatial and temporal deter-
mination, are assumed before thinking can begin—not
determinations we arrive at by thinking about something
not given as spatial or temporal and his argument that,
since they are thus involved in perceptual experience, we
cafirfot "say anything about their nature or the nature of
anything corresponding to them outside of that experience
and that that experience involves the two elements of
form and matter. We must allow that, however convincing
Kant's arguments are against Leibniz, that time and space
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON Q
are not concepts and, therefore, not the product of the
understanding but elements of intuition ; nevertheless the
distinction between intuition and understanding, as Kant
presents it in the ^Esthetic, is not only full of difficulties in
itself, but is one which has no room for space and time as
they are assumed by the mathematician.
This failure to describe satisfactorily the given element
in knowledge before considering the spontaneous and active
part suggests that the two elements cannot be separated
as sharply as Kant suggests, and we must reconsider the
distinction when we have considered Kant's account of
the part played by the understanding in knowledge—the
Transcendental Analytic.

(5) THE METAPHYSICAL DEDUCTION, OR THE

DISCOVERY OF THE CATEGORIES

Kant begins the second part of his transcendental

doctrine of elements—which he calls Transcendental Logic
and divides into the Analytic and the Dialectic—by
an emphatic restatement of the distinction between and
the complementary nature of intuition and understanding.
The distinction is still based on the passivity of sensibility.
" If the receptivity of our mind, its power of receiving
impressions, in so far as it is in any wise affected, is to be
entitled sensibility, then the mind's power of producing
representations from itself, the spontaneity of knowledge,
should be called the understanding." 1 This would imply
that all imagination is understanding, a position from
which Kant later quite definitely departs, and so far the
passage is, as Professor Kemp Smith says, pre-Critical. But
in its insistence on there being a fundamental distinction
between intuition and understanding, and on these both
in their distinctness being necessary to knowledge, the
passage represents what is a position from which Kant
never departed. The passage indeed represents an advance
on the position of the ^Esthetic, in so far as it emphazises
' A 51; B75.
go KANT
the fact that neither of these two faculties can produce
knowledge without the other.

" Without sensibility no object would be given to us,

without Tinderstanding no object would be thought.
Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without
concepts are blind. It is, therefore, just as necessary to
make our concepts sensible, that is, to add the object to
them in intuition, as to make our intuitions intelligible,
that is, to bring them under concepts. These two powers
or capacities cannot interchange their functions. The
understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think
nothing. Only through their union can knowledge arise.}
But that is no reason for confounding the contribution of
either with that of the other; rather is it a strong reason
for carefully separating and distinguishing the one from
the other. We therefore distinguish the science of the rules
of sensibility in general, that is, .(Esthetic, from the science
of the rules of the understanding in general, that is,
logic"!

But Kant is not concerned with logic as it has so far

been understood—a science of " the absolutely necessary
rules of thought, without which there can be no employ-
ment whatsoever of the understanding, which therefore
treats of understanding without any regard to difference
in the objects to which the understanding may be
directed."^ He is concerned with something he calls
transcendental logic. He defines " transcendental" by
saying that the term is not to be applied to all a priori know-
ledge, but only to that knowledge by which we know that
and how specific representations—intuitions or concepts
—can be employed or are possible purely a priori. It is the
knowledge of the possibility or of the employment of the
a priori. Transcendental Logic, then, will be concerned
with concepts, not with intuitions ; as concepts they must
be principles of the activities of pure thought, not empirical
> A 51-52 ; B 75-76. • A 52 ; B 76.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 81
concepts, and as the concepts with which transcendental
logic is concerned they must have " a n a priori application
to objects." We may sum this up by saying that transcen-
dental logic is concerned with the a priori conceptual
principles of objectivity.
This transcendental logic will have a positive and a
negative aspect. The positive will show what those
principles are, and how in union with the sensibility they
help to produce knowledge of objects; the negative will
show the contradictions which arise when attempts are
made to get knowledge out of these principles if they are
taken by themselves without reference to their application
in experience. The first he calls Analytic, the second
Dialectic.
Kant's distinction of the two logics is confusing. He
seems to have thought that what he calls general logic
examines the operations of pure thought quite irrespec-
tively of any reference to objects at all. General logic is to
be distinguished from applied logic—the study of thought
in its application to this or that branch of knowledge.
Kant regards it as wider in application than transcendental
logic. But Kant's account of it assumes that we can
examine the principles of pure thought in entire abstraction
from any reference to objects at all, that that had been
done by Aristotle once for all, and that logic was a com-
pleted science. But if logic is to be distinguished from
psychology as Kant insists, it examines not the operations
of the mind in general, but those operations in so far as
they are related to or lead to knowledge of objects ; and
that seems to involve an examination of the principles of
objectivity or transcendental logic. What is quite certain
is that Kant himself refuted his view that logic was a
completed science by his own revolutionary discoveries
in it. " Modem " as distinguished from Aristotelean logic
takes its start from Kant's treatment of concept and judge-
ment in his transcendental logic; But Kant's view of the
priority, independence, and completeness of the traditional
general logic had, as we shall see, some curious results.
82 KANT
Transcendental logic has to concern itself with the a
priori concepts which make knowledge possible. What
are they, and how is a list of them to be discovered ?
Kant begins by insisting that no list is of any use unless it
is complete ; no list will be complete which does not issue
out of a single principle.

" Transcendental philosophy, in seeking for its concepts,

has the advantage and also the duty of proceeding accord-
ing to a single principle. For these concepts spring, pure
and unmixed, out of the understanding which is an
absolute unity; and must, therefore, be connected with
each other according to one concept or idea." 1

They are to come from the general nature of under-

standing. What, then, is understanding ? Understanding
is not intuition. It is knowing through concepts. Concepts
are_principles of judging. This is one of Kant's most
important discoveries. " Whereas all intuitions, as
sensible, rest on affections, concepts rest on functions. By
' function ' I mean the unity of the act of bringing different
representations under one common representation. Con-
cepts are based on the spontaneity of thought, sensible
intuitions on the receptivity of impressions. Now the
only use the understanding can make of these concepts
is to judge by means of them. Since no representation,
save when it is an intuition, is in immediate relation to an
object, no concept is ever related to an object immediately
but to some other representation of it—be that representa-
tion an intuition or itself a concept."2

We can see now the importance of Kant's making time

and space forms of intuition. He gets rid of that distinction
which had obscured the earlier logic—of individuals
perceived by sense and universals apprehended by mind.
For Kant the concept is not an object we apprehend at all.
He is thus again enabled to take up a middle position
1
A 67 ; B 92. * A 68 ; B 93.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 83
between the rationalists and the empiricists. The former
had thought of a priori concepts as objects apprehended
by the mind—entities of which the mind is aware in
thought as it is awar,e of things by sight. The difficulties
of that position are discussed without being overcome in
the Parmenides of Plato. Locke begins the Essay with an
attack on i t ; Berkeley was attacking the same doctrine
in another form when he attacked Locke's doctrine of
abstract ideas. Locke had got into difficulties over the
nature of general terms. He had asked himself the
question: When we use a general name, what are we
thinking of or what does the general name signify as the
proper name signifies the individual ?—and his answer was
" the abstract idea." Berkeley's criticism is that if you
try to think of such an abstract idea as an apprehended or
represented entity, you find it to be an impossibility. His
constructive suggestion is that the general term has no
constant significance, but stands indifferently for any of
the particulars included under it. This will in itself not do,
because it leaves unexplained how particulars are included
under it. It is obvious that they can only be included
under it because of their nature, because they are—in the
old language—instances of the universal. Berkeley suggests
that the link between the instances is likeness. You think,
that is, apprehend or remember, this colour, for instance,
or any like it. Hume, taking up the same general position,
that you can observe ideas or impressions to be alike but
cannot observe the identity of a concept, but recognizing
that you can use a general term intelligibly without
remembering or imagining an indefinite number of parti-
culars, says that what the general term stands for is the
particular ideas plus the habit of so surveying them.
" Yellow " means this colour plus the fact that I have seen
and expect to see others like it.
If this were all there is to be said, association of ideas
and judgement would be the same, and they would both
be statements not about ideas but about the mind's habits
of association. Kant's analysis of judgement is based not
84 KANT
simply on a distinction between intuition and judging,
but more fundamentally on a distinction between imagina-
tion—including in the term memory—and judging.
Judging is synthesis, or association governed by a rule.
" Concepts rest on functions, and function is the unity of
the act of bringing different representations under one
common representation." Empirical concepts rest on
observation—on perception of likeness and temporal and
spatial order and structure. There could be no concepts
if ideas and impressions had the atomistic character
which Hume ascribed to them. But a structure or form
or likeness is not itself a concept—it becomes a concept
only when embodied into a rule by which we order our
apprehension and relation of particulars. Concepts,
therefore, depend on the spontaneity of thought. The
understanding can make no other use of them than to
judge by them. This characteristic activity of the mind
in ordering and giving unity to its synthesis is implied in
all concepts, and their nature cannot be understood apart
from it.
But if this is so, we can now understand how there may
be a priori concepts. /For if this activity of the mind which
is judging should have different forms, there would then
be different kinds of unity which the mind imposed on its
synthesis of representations, and these would be the
a priori conceptsA Kant's merging of concepts in judge-
ment, his conception of judging as the operation of a rule,
implies that there is an a priori element in all judging.
That will be found, therefore, alike in empirical and in a
priori judgements. But as general logic has long ago made
out an established list of the forms of judging considered
without any reference to the objects judged, that list will
reveal the differences in the nature of judging as such, or
the differences of the kinds of unity discoverable in the
mind's activity, and we have found our clue to the list of
categories. Kant then gives a list of judgements as
classified by the traditional logic, and goes on to give the
corresponding categories. His procedure obviously rests
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 85
on the finality of the traditional logic. His view of the
finality of the traditional logic rests on its abstractness—
on the view that the traditional logic managed to classify
forms of judgement with no reference whatever to the
material or content of judgement. That supposes that the
traditional logic was examining the activities of pure
thought, and that we can so examine the activities of pure
thought without reference even to objects in general.
Only if that is true can the distinction between general
logic and transcendental logic—that is the examination of
the principles of objectivity—be maintained. But this is to
misunderstand the purposes and aims of the traditional
logic, based as it was on the conception of a class.
In any case there is a curious confusion in Kant as to
the real derivation of his list of a priori categories. The
structure of the Critique implies the complete sufficiency
of the clue given by formal logic. This discovery of the
categories is followed by the deduction of the categories.
That is, of course, essential. For Kant's account of the
nature of the a priori categories, that they are the mind's
rules imposed on its synthesis, at once raises the problem
I—how can the mind by imposing its rules on its synthesis
or association transform that synthesis from subjective
imagination toi objective judgement 1) But the transcen-
dental deduction of the categories turns out not to be, in
either edition, a deduction of categories. The separate
categories are hardly mentioned. It is a deduction of the
principle of judging ; the assumption is that that is all
that is required. The classification given by general logic
will do the rest.
But when the deduction is over, we find that the
categories, in order to have any application to objects,
have to go through a process entitled schematization, as
the result of which they emerge as a priori principles of the
understanding; and though there is still some just traceable
correspondence between the traditional logic and the final
list, it becomes increasingly evident that the real clue to
the classification is to be found elsewhere, in the different
86 KANT
possible forms of ordering in space and time on which the
possibility of objective determination or judging, depends.

There are, then, two views in Kant about the source of

the classification of categories. The first, expressed in the
structure of the Critique, is that the characteristic activity
of the understanding has as activity its own forms, that
these have been discovered by general logic, and that the
categories will correspond to them. As the possibility
of a priori categories depends entirely on the reality and
differentiation of the mind's activity, this classification will
be complete and final. This clearly breaks down in
practice.
The second view which is worked out in the Analytic of
Principles is that all judgement is giving unity to synthesis,
and that there is one and only one principle of all synthetic
judgements. " The highest principle of all synthetic judge-
ments is, therefore, this : every object stands under the
necessary conditions of the synthetic unity of the mani-
fold of intuition in a possible experience."1 The differ-
entiation of concepts is the differentiation of that in the
content, i.e. in intuition, which is used for the purposes of
the rule. There can be a priori principles because there is
a priori content, and for no other reason. Judging is
determining in time and space, but time and space are
given a priori in intuition. The possibilities of temporal
and spatial determination as such can be seen exhaustively
from an examination of what they involve.
This second view gives a much more intelligible account
of what Kant is doing in the Analytic, and what he
conceives the principles of objectivity to be ; but it is
not easy to reconcile with his claim to have produced a
complete list of a priori synthetic judgements. For it
becomes clear that Kant's principles of the pure under-
standing are the principles of the physical sciences ; and if
they are a complete list of a priori synthetic principles,
then the physical sciences are the only form of knowledge.
1
A 158 ; B 197.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 87
That indeed is a view which Kant sometimes seems to take.
"An inquiry contains so much of genuine science as it
contains of mathematics," he says in the Metaphysical
Principles of Natural Science.1 But even if we accepted
the consequence of this view, that moral judgements and
aesthetic judgements are not knowledge, we should still
have to reckon with history. Kant himself, in the two
later Critiques, is concerned with a priori principles which
are not included in and not derivable from this would-be
complete list of the first Critique.
That Kant's discovery of a priori principles does not
strictly follow the guiding thread of logic will be seen if we
consider the details of his lists of judgements, categories,
and principles. In the list of judgements he inserts two,
the singular and the limitative judgements, which were not
admitted by formal logic. When we come to the principles
we find that, corresponding to the three judgements of
quantity and the three corresponding categories, there is
only one principle, and that principle corresponds to the
judgement which Kant has inserted. The same is true of
the principle of quality. Finally, the three categories of
relation only if they are given a meaning quite other than
they had been given in the traditional logic correspond to
the three types of relational judgement.

(6) THE TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION

Kant, in the second edition of the Critique, rewrote

almost entirely the transcendental deduction of the
categories. The preface to the first edition suggests that
even after the first edition was finished he was not entirely
satisfied with the deduction. It had cost him a great deal
of trouble, and he seems to have been conscious that it was
not easy reading. In writing the second edition he did not
think that he had changed his views. On the contrary, he
says : " In the propositions themselves and their proofs,
and also in the form and completeness of the plan, I have
1
Op. cii., Preface:
88 KANT
found nothing to alter", x but he refers to " the many
misunderstandings into which even acute thinkers have
fallen in passing judgement upon my book," and says that
he hopes he has made " improvements which should help
in removing the obscurity of the deduction of the concepts
of understanding."
We may, therefore, take it that Kant meant the second
edition version of the Deduction to be the authoritative
statement of his views, and I shall deal with it in my
exposition. There is this further advantage in dealing
with the second edition. Later criticism, building on the
circumstances under which the first Critique was composed,
has resolved the first edition Deduction into strata which
are supposed to reflect different stages of Kant's struggle
with what he always regarded as the central problem of the
Critique. As I have said, I think that this process of
resolution has been overdone ; but as the peculiar circum-
stances of composition which are held to justify it did not
recur when the second edition was written, we can avoid
such questions by confining ourselves to that edition.
Kant begins by saying that the first essential to the
understanding of the Deduction is to understand the
problem of which it offers a solution. " The reader must,
therefore, be convinced of the unavoidable necessity of
such a transcendental deduction before he has taken a
single step in the field of pure reason." 2
He puts the problem by way of a contrast between the
comparative ease of the problem faced in the ^Esthetic
and the difficulty of the Deduction. The solution of the
^Esthetic, he thinks, had been comparatively simple. Once
we realize that space and time are a priori forms of
intuition, i.e. once by reflecting on the nature of intuition
we see that it involves time and space, we can be sure that
when we in geometry discover the laws of spatial relations,
these will apply to objects in so far as they appear in space.
Space is involved in our geometrical thinking and in our
intuition of objects. We get over the difficulty as to how
1
Bxxxvii. * A 88; B 121.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 89
our geometrical thinking can apply to objects, when we
realize that it does not apply to things in themselves but
only to things as they appear. For space being necessarily
involved in geometrical thinking and in intuition, it is like
an in-and-out entry on both sides of the balance sheet, or
like the scale of a map which is involved both in reading
the map and in checking our readings on the ground.
If the categories are to be valid, there must be the same
sort of relation between our judgements which imply the
categories—our judgements which imply causation, for
example—and our intuitions. If we think in terms of the
categories, we must intuit in terms of the categories. Only
in that case will it be possible toregard the categories
as, so to speak, an in-and-out entry—something which,
because it is implied both in the thinking which anticipates
experience and in the intuition which checks that anticipa-
tion, does not affect and is not affected by the differences of
the independent real. We may illustrate the lines of the
solution Kant is seeking by reminding ourselves that we
can make calculations about size in terms of feet and
inches. So long as we are going to measure in feet and
inches, we choose the scale; but we can make objective
judgements by means of our scale so long as we read them
off in intuition qn the same scale. Our use of inches rather
than centimetres does not involve any judgements about
the nature of things. The inches or the centimetres, so
long as they are used both in the calculation and in the
measurement, are an in-and-out entry. But if, e.g., we
make deductions about the history of the world from the
number of inches found in- measurements of the Great
Pyramid of Gizeh, we are, among other strange assump-
tions, assuming that the Great Pyramid was built by
people using the scale of inches.
This is the sort of solution Kant's theory demands. It
is his answer to the difficulty which he put in his letter to
Herz, when he said that our intellect is neither archetypal
nor ectypal.
But when he comes to the deduction of the categories,
go KANT
it appears at first sight as though this solution were ruled
out. For though we intuit in space and time, we do not
intuit in terms of the categories. Kant puts this difficulty
in a way which shows how Hume's problem about causa-
tion had led to his own problem. There seems to be a
difference between the conditions of sensibility and the
conditions of understanding.

" The categories of the understanding, on the other

hand, do not represent the conditions under which objects
are given in intuition. Objects may, therefore, appear to
us without their being under the necessity of being related
to the functions of understanding; and understanding
need not, therefore, contain their a priori conditions.
Thus a difficulty such as we did not meet with in the field
of sensibility is here presented, namely, how subjective
conditions of thought can have objective validity, that is, can
furnish conditions of the possibility of all knowledge of
objects. For appearances can certainly be given in
intuition independently of functions of the understanding.
Let us take, for instance, the concept of cause, which
signifies a special kind of synthesis, whereby upon some-
thing, A, there is posited something quite different, B,
according to a rule. It is not manifest a priori why
appearances should contain anything of this kind (experi-
ences cannot be cited in its proof, for what has to be estab-
lished is the objective validity of a concept which is
a priori) : and it is therefore doubtful whether such a
concept be not perhaps altogether empty, and have no
object anywhere among appearances." 1

That is Hume's problem. We are aware of succession

but not aware of causation, and we add to our experience
of succession the conception of causation. With what
right ? asks Hume, and answers, " obviously with none."
We can perhaps help ourselves to understand the
argument of the Deduction if we anticipate and remind
1
A 89, 90 ; B 122.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON
ourselves how Kant answers this specific problem when he
discusses causation in the Second Analogy. His answer to
Hume is that if you accept Hume's statement of the
problem—and that means Kant's own statement of the
problem here—there is no answer. But Hume's statement
of the problem is ambiguous. It pretends that we start
with the bare consciousness of succession, and then asks
how we can add to that the concept of necessary connexion.
But Hume has really assumed that we have the conscious-
ness of objective succession. That implies, Kant argues,
that we have already distinguished between subjective and
objective succession, between succession in our appre-
hending and apprehension of a succession, and the principle
of objectivity implicit in this experience of succession
is the principle of causation.
This implies that Kant will have to alter his statement
of the problem ; but it is important to see that Kant does
not have entirely to alter that statement, and that he must
at least retain the distinction between intuition and under-
standing. He indeed recurs to that distinction in the
course of the argument of the Deduction.
The implication throughout is that space and time have
been deduced in the ^Esthetic by our reflecting on our
perceptual experience and concluding that that experience
could not be what it is without those recognized forms we
call space and time. We are, however, not yet in a
position to do that in regard to concepts. We just do not
find them pervasive of experience as we find space and
time. That we do not is indeed obvious from our distinc-
tion between subjective and' objective. Some synthesis is
governed by the concepts of the understanding, but some,
surely, is not. Kant, for example, is going to say in the
Critique of Judgement that in the experience of the beautiful
the imagination is not governed by a concept.
What Kant suggests in the section called "Transition to
a Transcendental Deduction of the Categories," a section
common to the Deduction of both editions, is that we
should ask whether
92 KANT
" A priori concepts do not also serve as antecedent
conditions under which alone anything can be, if not
intuited, yet thought as object in general. In that case
all empirical knowledge of objects would necessarily
conform to such concepts, because only as thus presup-
posing them is anything possible as object of experience."
" All experience does indeed contain, in addition to the
intuition of the senses through which something is given,
a concept of an object as being thereby given, that is to
say, as appearing. Concepts of objects in general thus
underlie all empirical knowledge as its a priori conditions.
The objective validity of the categories as a priori
concepts rests, therefore, on the fact that, so far as the
form of thought is concerned, through them alone does
experience become possible."1

Experience, that is, has necessarily objectivity in it, for

unless we can distinguish between subjective and objective,
no experience in any intelligible sense of the word is
possible at all. The implications of objectivity, then, are
as much involved in experience as space and time. This
then, is the conception of experience which is to determine
the Deduction. " Experience " does not simply mean the
given : it means the given with the distinction of object
and subject already in it.
This means that where we apply our thinking, say in
terms of causation, to what we intuit, the intuited we apply
it to is not simply the passively received spatial and
temporal representations described in the ^Esthetic ; it is
an intuited to which we have already done something in
order to achieve the distinction between subjective and
objective, and to which we must have already done some-
thing if our intuition is to be an intuition of objects.
We do not test our scientific theories by our imagination
or our dreams, but by observation of objective fact,
but, though this test is sometimes described as an appeal
to " brute fact," we cannot distinguish between brute fact
1
A 93 ; B 125-126.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 93
and illusion without applying to our observation the
principles which distinguish between subjective and
objective, and therefore we have had to use the categories
before we can get " facts" by which to check our
theories.
But if the categories are-already implied in our intuition
of objects, since they are functions of the mind's activity
in judging, does this not involve that the simple distinction
made in the Esthetic between the spontaneity of the
understanding and the passivity of intuition has broken
down ? Does that not involve that in all our experience
we are judging, and experience is the product of the mind's
activity ?
The simple distinction of the ^Esthetic has indeed
broken down, but some distinction between understanding
and intuition remains vital for Kant. If it were given up
altogether, then our understanding would be what he calls
archetypal. There are interpretations of Kant which
practically take this view, reducing the given to a mere
indeterminate chaos of impressions which is, as it were,
moulded at will by the understanding. The fact that we
are obviously not aware of this in our conscious experience
is got over by the supposition that the process of reducing
the chaos of impressions to the comparative orderliness of
what we intuit is performed by an unconscious process.
^But Kant is careful to say that what the understanding
has done is to introduce into the manifold as given in space
and time the distinction of subjective and objective"—that
and no moreN He never goes back on the fundamental
views of space and time as involved in the given which he
sets forth in the ^Esthetic. He never calls in understanding
to explain why we have a picture or field of vision before
us. The whole account of the beautiful in the Critique of
Judgement would be unmeaning if he did.
Further, he is careful in several passages of the Deduction
to insist that the understanding is not entirely constructive
of its object, but implies a given. " An understanding in
which through self-consciousness all the manifold would
94 KANT
eo ipso be given, would be intuitive ; our understanding
can only think, and for intuition must look to the senses."1
" The manifold to be intuited must be given prior to the
synthesis of the understanding and independently of it. . . .
Were I to think an understanding which is itself intuitive
(as, for example, a divine understanding which should not
represent to itself given objects, but through whose
representation the objects should themselves be given or
produced), the categories would have no meaning what-
soever in respect of such a mode of knowledge. They are
merely rules for an understanding whose whole power
consists in thought, that is, in the act whereby it brings
the synthesis of a manifold, given to it from elsewhere in
intuition, to the unity of apperception."2
That is the peculiar work of the understanding—to
bring the manifold of intuition to the unity of apperception ;
and that, as we shall see, is for Kant the same as trans-
forming mere intuition into experience of an object. What
has been added there to the given material presented in
intuition has been that which makes the distinction
between subject and object possible.
The contrast Kant makes in the passages quoted above
between our understanding and what he calls an intuitive
understanding, is used by him to bring out the separation
and disparateness between the understanding and intuition,
It is this disparateness in range, and the fact that under-
standing does not make the intuition to which its categories
apply, that creates the problem. For it means that we have
to think what we have not yet experienced. It is this
confident anticipation of intuition by thought which is the
puzzle. If we could see all the universe at once and
apprehend it in all its detail in a unified consciousness, the
difficulty would not arise.
But this separation between the understanding and
intuition has two aspects, and if we are to understand
Kant's problem and his solution these must be dis-
tinguished. In the first place, though our separate
1
B 135- « B 145.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 95
representations, the content of separate acts of attending,
are not atomic sensa, though they have in them always a
certain structure and diversity, yet they are each of them
fragmentary and none of them is self-explanatory. Any
judging always involves connecting what we are aware of
at this moment with what we have been aware of or are
about to be aware of. The meaning and significance of
any representation points beyond itself. So ordinary and
constant is this reference beyond the immediate given
that we can only with some difficulty distinguish between
what we see and what we imagine. We fill out the actual
content of our awareness at any given moment by means
of the imagination, and it is through the work of the
imagination that our actual intuitions are for us always
intuitions of a world beyond them.
It is through the understanding working on the imagina-
tion that that world beyond them is an objective world,
and not a world of fancy.
Hume had already noticed the part played by our
imagination in making our changing, discontinuous
impressions into the picture of an enduring world of
objects. But he had understood the work of the imagina-
tion in such a way as to make no distinction between the
work of the imagination in judging and what is ordinarily
called association of ideas. The fundamental part of
Kant's argument in the second edition of the Deduction is
his insistence on the distinction between judging and mere
association, and his doctrine of the relation between the
transcendental imagination and the understanding which
is involved in that distinction.
But, secondly, Kant retains the distinction between the
spontaneity of the understanding and the given and passive
nature of intuition. The mind in thinking controls,
arranges and combines; but it does not control and
combine what is presented to it—it controls its own acts
of attending and imagining. It does not move about
presentations in space. Thinking is a process in time :
it is not a process in space. It is because that is so, that,
96 KANT
as we shall see, the schematism of the categories is con-
cerned with the principles of determination in time, though
it implies the intuition of space. This distinction is
expounded in Kant's doctrine of the inner sense.
I shall take the second distinction first, in so far as it is
possible to treat the two separately, partly because it has
been more generally misunderstood. Kant said almost
nothing about it in the first edition. From a passage which
he inserted in the second edition at the end of the Principles
of the Pure Understanding, it looks as though he had not
realized when writing the first edition how entirely his
account of the mind's activity in thinking, as there given,
seemed to destroy his distinction between the activity of
the understanding and the given nature of intuition.

" What determines inner sense," says Kant, " is the

understanding and its original power of combining the
manifold of intuition, that is, of bringing it under an
apperception upon which the possibility of understanding
itself rests. Now the understanding in us men is not itself
a faculty of intuitions, and cannot, even if intuitions be
given in sensibility, take them up into itself in such a
manner as to combine them as the manifold of its own
intuition. Its synthesis, therefore, if the synthesis be
viewed by itself alone, is nothing but the unity of the act,
by which, as an act, it is conscious to itself, even without
the aid of sensibility, but through which it is yet able to
determine the sensibility. The understanding, that is to
say, in respect of the manifold which may be given to it in
accordance with the form of sensible intuition, is able to
determine sensibility inwardly. Thus the understanding,
under the title of a transcendental synthesis of imagination,
performs the act upon the passive subject, whose faculty
it is, and we are therefore justified in saying that inner
sense is affected thereby. Apperception and its synthetic
unity is indeed very far from being identical with inner
sense. The former, as the source of all combination,
applies to the manifold of intuitions in general, and in the
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 97
guise of the categories, prior to all sensible intuitions, to
objects in general. Inner sense, on the other hand, contains
the mere form of intuition, but without combination of the
manifold in it, and therefore so far contains no determinate
intuition, which is possible through the consciousness of
the determination of the manifold by the transcendental
act of imagination (synthetic influence of the understanding
upon inner sense), which I have entitled figurative
synthesis.
" This we can always perceive in ourselves. We cannot
think a line without drawing it in thought, or a circle
without describing it. We cannot represent the three
dimensions of space save by setting three lines at right
angles to one another from the same point. Even time
itself we cannot represent, save in so far as we attend, in
the drawing of a straight line (which has to serve as the
outer figurative representation of time), merely to the act
of the synthesis of the manifold whereby we successively
determine inner sense, and in so doing attend to the
succession of the determination in inner sense. Motion, as
an act of the subject (not as a determination of an object)
and, therefore, the synthesis of the manifold in space, first
produces the concept of succession, if we abstract from
this manifold and attend solely to the act through which
we determine the inner sense according to its form. The
understanding does not, therefore, find in inner sense such
a combination of the manifold, but produces it, in that it
affects that sense."1

And Kant adds in a note :

" I do not see why so much difficulty should be found

in admitting that our inner sense is affected by ourselves.
Such affection finds exemplification in each and every act
of attention. In every act of attention the understanding
determines inner sense in accordance with the combination
which it thinks, to that inner intuition which corresponds
1
B 153-5.
D
98 KANT
to the manifold in the synthesis of the understanding.
How much the mind is usually thereby affected every one
will be able to perceive in himself." *

We have to notice how in this process of determining

the inner sense—as in determining our acts of attention,
for example—consciousness of time and of space are both
involved. We control our attending—that is what Kant
calls controlling the inner sense—but we are attending to
things in space meanwhile. So in Kant's account above of
how we come to the concept of succession, we initiate a
motion (motion as an act of the subject), but attend, not to
the spatial synthesis but " solely to the act through which
we determine the inner sense." It is perhaps even more
significant that, according to Kant, we can know time—
i.e. not merely be aware of but know as determined—only
by drawing a straight line.
We may illustrate what Kant means by the under-
standing determining the inner sense, if we consider the
simple instance of counting the number of books in a
book-shelf. It is, as we shall see, an unduly simplified
instance, concerning as it does an act of knowing a whole
where the whole is given all at once in intuition, for Kant
is mainly concerned with judgements where the range of
our understanding goes beyond our intuition. But the
instance will show what he means by connecting or com-
bining, and by the understanding determining the inner
sense. We cannot know how many books there are
without counting; to count them we need successive
acts of attention, these successive acts have to be
synthesized, and the synthesis has to be governed by a
concept and by the intuition of the whole. Without the
intuition of the whole book-shelf we should never know
where to stop. Our counting would be like " counting up
to a hundred." Without the category of quantity which is
expressed in number, our successive acts of attention
would have no unity and would give no knowledge of the
^157.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON
number of the books. I can only know that I have come
to know the number of the books, because I know that I
have done my counting rightly : that I have given to my
successive acts of counting the kind of unity required by
the general notion of unity forming a sum, controlled by
the empirical apperception of the seen whole set over
against my acts of counting. Let the unity of my synthesis,
expressed in the sum " twelve books," go, and my separate
acts of counting would become discrete separate acts. In
Kant's words, " I should have a self as many coloured and
various as I have representations of which I am conscious."
Separate acts of noticing separate books would neither
give a sin gle operation of adding nor a number known. The
rule of counting governing the association produces a unity
in the temporal process of counting and a spatial unity of
that which is counted.
For one last thing about this simple process of counting
books remains to be noticed. It implies not only the
recognized unity in the process of counting governed by
the category of quantity and the intuited unity of the
book-shelf: it implies also the distinction between me who
count and that which is there to be counted : and that
distinction has to be maintained through the whole process
by the assumption that certain changes in what we are
aware of as we vary our attention are due to the variations
in our attending, and certain other changes are due to
variations in the independent things we are counting and
the units with which they are counted. That involves the
categories of substance and causation and reciprocity.
If we scrutinize carefully what is happening even in a
simple process of this kind, we can see it is all governed by
a standard of unity or consistency, in which the two
elements distinguished—the counting self and the counted
books—have each their proper place. Both what Kant
calls the inner sense and the external sense are united in
one unity of consciousness.
" The synthetic unity of consciousness," Kant concludes,
" is, therefore, an objective condition of all knowledge. It
100 KANT
is not merely a condition that I myself require in knowing
an object, but is a condition under which any intuition
must stand in order to become an object for me. For other-
wise, in the absence of this synthesis, the manifold would
not be united in one consciousness."1

This unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the

successive acts of consciousness is, in Kant's phrase,
transcendental; it is a condition of the possibility of
experience, because without principles of unity governing
my acts of synthesis there would be no distinction of
subject and object, and no self-consciousness and no
objectivity.
The special restricted instance of determination we have
been taking so far is a process where we get unity in a time
process over against a spatial unity, and so achieve a
determined spatial unity. But this instance is an artificial
simplification. It is an instance of what Kant called
empirical apperception. But in knowing we are going
through a process of time whose empirical unity is very
slight; we are knowing a world which stretches beyond
the range of our perception in space and time. I shall only
know that world if I can give to all my experience the same
kind of unity which I give to my empirical consciousness of
the books and my acts of counting them in the restricted
instance. But I cannot give unity to my consciousness as
a whole by adding together the little bits of unity I may
get in empirical consciousness. My empirical consciousness
must be governed by a principle. Unless all my experienc-
ing is thought of as a process in one time, and as a process
in which I come to know objective unity in time and space,
that unity cannot be achieved. The general features of the
simpler process must remain, my spontaneity, i.e. the
controllable succession of my acts of awareness or imagina-
tion, what Kant calls the inner sense, and the principle,
controlling that succession and an intuited unity over
against it. Without this principle of the understanding
1
B 138.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 101

controlling the imagination there would be no knowledge ;

nor again would there be knowledge unless that activity
could go on over against an intuited or intuitable unity.
The a priori form of the given—space and time—is as
essential as the a priori principle of connecting.

" But since there lies in us a certain form of a priori

sensible intuition, which depends on the receptivity of the
faculty of representation (sensibility), the understanding,
as spontaneity, is able to determine inner sense through
the manifold of given representations, in accordance with
the synthetic unity of apperception, and so to think
synthetic unity of the apperception of the manifold of a
priori sensible intuition—that being the condition under
which all objects of our human intuition must necessarily
stand." *
" When, for instance, by apperception of the manifold
of a house I make the empirical intuition of it into a
perception, the necessary unity of space and of outer
sensible intuition in general lies at the basis of my appre-
hension, and I draw as it were the outline of the house in
conformity with this synthetic unity of the manifold in
space. But if I abstract from the form of space, this same
synthetic unity has its seat in the understanding, and is the
category of the synthesis of the homogeneous in an
intuition in general, that is, the category of quantity. To
this category, therefore, the synthesis of apprehension, that
is to say, the perception, must completely conform."2

In other words, in order to perceive properly a house,

I have " as it were to draw it ", to copy it in my imagina-
tion and acts of attention. Their order has to be governed
by the apperception of the whole. But the whole is
intuited by us as a whole in intuition, i.e. through the
intuition of space and the conditions of our sensibility.
When Kant says that we draw, as it were, the house, he
does not mean that as we attend to each successive part of
1 2
B 150.. B 162.
102 KANT
the house the house gradually looms before us. " As it
were drawing " is " a s it were copying "—making the
successive acts of awareness conform to the unity of
apperception. But the given whole comes to be perceived
as a given determined whole through these acts of noticing
so far as they are connected by an intellectual principle—
the category of quantity. So in the same way my percep-
tion of change depends on the assumption that the two
states I successively notice are in the given related in time,
not brought into relations of time by my successively
noticing them; just as my successive acts of noticing the
parts of the house presuppose that the parts of the house
are in the given related in space. If I am to know anything
as objective, it must have a discoverable unity. Only if
there is a discoverable unity can there be anything to
govern my acts of association; only if there is a
principle governing that association or synthesis can there
be any difference between mere association and judging;
only if there is such a distinction can there be any
difference between subjective and objective; and only if
there is such a distinction is experience possible. There-
fore, it is a principle of objective experience that objects
should conform to the principles which make objective
judgement possible ; for without that condition they could
not be known, and without knowing objects I could not be
aware of myself.
For judgement, according to Kant (§ 19), differs from
subjective association by its being association governed
by the principle of the objective unity of apperception.

" I do not here assert that these representations neces-

sarily belong to one another in the empirical intuition " (i.e.
that I cannot help seeing them together) "but that they
belong to one another in virtue of the necessary unity of
apperception in the synthesis of intuitions, that is,
according to the principles of objective determination of
all representations, in so far as knowledge can be acquired
by means of these representations—principles which are all
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 103
derived from the fundamental principle of the transcen-
dental unity of apperception."1

This process of judging involves, the moment we go

beyond the restricted instance of empirical apperception,
the use of the imagination—not what Kant calls the
reproductive imagination, but what he calls the transcen-
dental imagination. Because time and space are homo-
geneous, we can imagine time and space as indefinitely
extended; and these give principles of unity to which all
our reproductive imagination must conform if it is to give
us knowledge of a connected world. Without empirical
imagination—memory of the past and anticipation of the
future, i.e. memory of past intuitions and anticipation of
future intuitions—no real knowledge is possible. But
imagination alone is not enough. For all knowledge
implies a connexion in what we intuit, which is other than
the empirical connexion of our intuition. It always
implies that there is more than what is actually present to
us. But the past intuitions we remember and the future
intuitions we anticipate have to be thought of as connected
in the objective unity of an all-pervading and transcen-
dental apperception. We cannot get an actual apper-
ception of that whole, but we can think of space and time
as wholes, of which our actual apperceptions are but parts.
Time and space, therefore, become for Kant the key to the
Transcendental Deduction.

" In the representations of space and time we have a

priori forms of outer and inner sensible intuition ; and to
these the synthesis of the apprehension of the manifold of
appearance must always conform, because in no other way
can the synthesis take place at all. But space and time
are represented a priori not merely as forms of sensible
intuition, but as themselves intuitions which contain a
manifold of their own and therefore are represented
with the determination of the unity of this manifold.
1
B 142.
104 KANT
Thus unity of the synthesis of the manifold, without or
within us, and consequently also a combination to which
everything which is to be represented in space or in time
must conform, is given a priori as the condition of the
synthesis of all apprehension—not indeed in, but with these
intuitions. This synthetic unity can be no other than the
unity of the combination of the manifold of a given
intuition in general in an original consciousness, in accord-
ance with the categories, in so far as the combination is
applied to our sensible intuition. All synthesis, therefore,
even that which renders perception possible, is subject to
the categories ; and since experience is knowledge by
means of connected perceptions, the categories are condi-
tions of the possibility of experience, and are therefore
valid a priori for all objects of experience."1

It follows from this that the categories are applicable

only to what we experience. For as the standard of the
objective apprehension and determination of an intuited
whole was the achieved unity of apperception, so the
standard of knowing and of true judging in general is that
of an ideal unity of apperception in general. The distinc-
tion between subjective and objective is a distinction
within experience. A representation is not objective
because of its intrinsic nature, but because of the necessity
of its connexion. That is objective which we must think
—not because we recognize its intrinsic necessity, but
because it is essential to the unity of that which we
experience. Coming to know, then, is not a process of
getting behind the way things look, but of coming to know
fully and systematically how they would look under all
possible circumstances. As Kant says in the Dialectic:

" Thus we can say that the real things of past time are
given in the transcendental object of experience; but they
are objects for me, and real in past time only in so far as
I represent to myself (either by the light of history or by
1
B 160-1.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 105
the guiding clues of causes and effects), that a regressive
series of possible perceptions in accordance with empirical
laws, in a word, that the course of the world conducts us
to a past time series as condition of this present time—a
series which, however, can be represented as actual not
in itself but only in the connexion of a possible experience.
Accordingly, all events which have taken place in the
immense periods that have preceded my own existence
mean really nothing but the possibility of extending the
chain of experience from the present perception back to
the conditions which determine that perception in respect
of time. If, therefore, I represent to myself all existing
objects of the senses in all time and all places, I do not
set these in space and time prior to experience. Their
representation is nothing but the thought of a possible
experience in its absolute completeness."1

In the empirical apperception our counting is governed

by a whole which we see all at once, though we may notice
its several parts successively. In knowledge in general,
in connecting our present with our past and future ex-
perience, we are governed by the conception of a whole;
but we come to know that whole from the centre outwards,
not from the circumference inwards, the centre being our
own consciousness, the a priori framework of space and
time being the means by which we achieve what consis-
tency we do. Knowledge always involves both connect-
ing and the matter of intuition. That matter cannot be
anticipated. The a priority only concerns the quite
general principles of determination.

" Pure understanding is not, however, in a position,

through mere categories, to prescribe to appearances any
a priori laws other than those which are involved in a
nature in general, that is, in the conformity to law of all
appearances in space and time. Special laws, as concerning
those appearances which are empirically determined,
1
A 4 9 5 ; B 523-4.
D I
io6 KANT
cannot in their specific nature be derived from the cate-
gories, although they are one and all subject to them. To
obtain any knowledge whatsoever of these special laws, we
must resort to experience, but it is the a priori laws that
alone can instruct us in regard to experience in general,
and as to what it is that can be known as an object of
experience."1

This means that the Deduction has shown that certain

general a priori principles of connexion are implied in any
knowledge of objects ; that as the distinction between
subjectivity and objectivity is implied in any experience,
the possibility of the application of these principles is
already implied also. But the application of the principle
•—the judgement, for example, that B is caused by A—
involves empirical intuition. This point may perhaps be
made clearer by returning to Hume's difficulty. Supposing
it is said in answer to Hume that the a priori principles have
been already assumed in order that we should ever have
the experience of succession, it might still be replied: "We
do achieve an experience of mere succession. That, after
the categories have done their work in the distinction
between subjective and objective, is what we have got.
How can the categories be again applied to turning that
apprehension of mere though objective succession into an
apprehension of necessary relation ? " The answer is that
our apprehension of objective succession is always frag-
mentary and discontinuous; but that as we have fixed
A and B as successive events over against our succession
in apprehending, we have assumed that the relation
between A and B is based on objective determinations, and
has its ground in the object and not in our changes, so we
must assume that the further determinations discoverable
between A and B, and the further determinations of A and
B themselves and their relations to other discoverable
objective events, will be determinable as objective. The
application in detail of the a priori principles is only doing
1
B 165.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 107
more thoroughly what is already done to some extent in
the most rudimentary experience in which the subjective
and the objective is involved: it is making our intui-
tion of objects, not of a different kind, but more
detailed and determined. It is in principle exactly what
we are doing when by successive acts of attention we count,
and, therefore, intuit in a more accurate and determined
way, the number of books in a book-shelf which we see all
the time.
We are now in a position to understand the relation
between thinking and intuition which emerges from the
Deduction. The old distinction is to this extent given up,
that we do not consciously start with a mere given.
Thinking and intuition go hand-in-hand all the time.
Before any kind of reflexion can begin, there has been
mental activity determined by the principles of objectivity.
But even the most rudimentary experience is always the
result of thought operating on the given, and the difference
between thinking and the given persists at higher stages.
What we intuit is always in ordinary experience deter-
mined to some extent already by thought, because it has
always some interpretation and meaning in it; but the
distinction does not disappear in spite of the interaction
of thinking and intuition. At any stage the two are dis-
tinguishable. We can think or judge or we can look. The
looking goes on within the framework, so to speak, of
previous thinking; and the thinking depends upon intuiting.
Both, as Kant said, are necessary to knowledge, but in
spite of their mutual influence on one another they remain
distinct; and Kant in the psychological section of his
Anthropology, published near the end of the century,
remained as convinced of the distinction, and of the
mistake of Leibniz in making the difference one of degree
and not of kind, as he was when he began the Critique.
But the distinction can no longer be simply stated, as it
is in the ^Esthetic and even in the Analytic, as the distinc-
tion between spontaneity and passivity. For the imagi-
nation, as Kant says in the Deduction, seems to contradict
 io8 KANT
that division. The spontaneity and activity of mind is
necessary to perceiving as well as to thinking. The
characteristic mark of the understanding is that it governs
the activity of the imagination by rules or concepts.
^Esthetic perception, as Kant explains in the third Critique,
involves the activity of the imagination ; it may even
involve concepts ; but it is not governed by concepts, but
by the imagination.
In this account of the teaching of the Deduction, and of
Kant's maintenance of the distinction between thinking
and intuition, I have departed considerably from the
account given by Professor Kemp Smith, and it may per-
haps be well to explain where the difference between the
two views lies.
_=5There are two main views possible of the Deduction,
based on different interpretations of Kant's conception
of the work done by what he calls " the blind faculty
of imagination " and of his account of intuition. Both
have in common the doctrine that in perceiving anything.
as an object, the assumptions on which the categories are
based have already been operative in the work of the
imagination. But the first view, which I have been
expounding, holds that this is not inconsistent with the
retention of the distinction between the given and the
connected, between intuition and thinking; the second
holds that it is.
Without the understanding, on the first view, our
intuition would give us a picture, i.e. an intuitable field of
vision, but not an object; on the second view the under-
standing is necessary even to produce a picture—without
it there is only indiscriminate chaos. In support of the
former view, it may be noted that Kant, in a psychological
fragment, illustrates the difference between the sensibility
and the understanding by saying that " there can be
clearness in intuition even when there is absolutely no
concept, e.g. when one has no names for the manifold in a
building and yet distinguishes all its details satisfactorily."1
1
B. E. xv, p. 84, fr. 220.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 109
According to the first view the intuition of the given,
strictly given, is always the intuition of a manifold in
space and time, with, therefore, individual spatial and
temporal relations intuited in that manifold. That is very
far from being a chaos. What it lacks is the distinction
between subjective and objective. No distinction is made
between those variations in the given which are due to
changes initiated in the subject and those which are due to
the object. This last, distinction alone, Kant maintains,
is produced by the mind's constructive activity.
This doctrine of Kant's is so novel that it is seldom
understood. For we normally tend to suppose that a
presentation, sensum or idea, whatever we call that
which is presented to sense, is either mental or physical,
subjective or objective; and as we choose between these
alternatives we call ourselves idealists or realists, as
though the metaphysical status of the presentation were
given, whatever else might be. Kant's view is that the
distinction between subject and object cannot be arrived
at without the activity of the mind. If the mind had
only one single representation given to it, it could not
make out whether that representation was mental or
physical, subjective or objective ; it could not indeed split
that single representation into an " ing " and an " ed," an
apprehending mind and an apprehended content. We
realize the self in its activity. The activity of the self as
contrasted with the activity of what is apprehended is in
its turn the object of apprehension, inasmuch as we are
aware that the order and unity of the acts of our appre-
hending—from each of which the apprehended content is
inseparable—is other than the order and unity which
belongs to the apprehended. The same apprehended
contents form two series, the one being the history of the
apprehending mind, and the other the apprehended object.
When Hume reduces the mind to the series of its im-
pressions and ideas, and also reduces objects to a series of
impressions and ideas, he does not seem to realize that
from his point of view there can be only one series of
no KANT
impressions, which he makes do duty for the mind and for
things in turn. We can only escape from this dilemma by
recognizing that from the one series of " impressions and
ideas " which we actually experience, we construct by the
use of our understanding a series which is governed by the
unity of our mind and a series governed by the unity of
the objective world, and that is done, and can only be
done, by thinking. This implies that we can distinguish
between subjective and objective only in so far as we can
recognize our order and unity of apprehending as being
other than the order and unity of what is apprehended.
If we ask in detail how we make this distinction, we mostly
do it unconsciously. But though the process is mostly un-
conscious, we realize it when we make mistakes, and we
can, so to speak, catch ourselves at it if we try. As Kant
explains in the second edition, the making of this dis-
tinction implies consciousness of the permanent in space
over against our consciousness of the time process. If the
given were a mere chaos, the process of thinking which
produces the distinction of subjective and objective would
be impossible. This interpretation of Kant indeed stands
or falls on the assumption that the relation between think-
ing and observation, which is commonplace in scientific
thinking, is only an elaborate and explicit form of what
goes on at a more rudimentary stage in establishing the
distinction between subjective and objective.
According to the second view, the given is the isolated
impression or sense datum; all apprehension of the
manifold is successive, and therefore all apprehension of
the manifold as we consciously experience it is already
ordered synthesis. The given is then never experienced as
such. We cannot be aware of a manifold as a manifold
except in virtue of the mind's synthesis of those isolated
elements. Therefore, this synthesis must be operative
before consciousness. It indeed makes consciousness
possible. All mental activity of any kind then is synthesis
working on a priori principles and is, therefore, judgement.
Judgement is the unit of thought and of all mental activity.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON
Yet in judging the individual mind is constrained by a
transcendent necessity—the general demand to produce a
unified experience.
We shall perhaps be in a better position to judge
between these two different interpretations when we have
examined in more detail Kant's account of the inner
sense. For there is no doubt that much of the difficulty of
Kant's deduction, even in the second edition, comes from
the ambiguity of that account. For, as we saw in discussing
the ^Esthetic, the distinction between inner and outer sense
is founded on a confusion, and yet Kant is trying to
express by it a real distinction.
In § 24 of the second edition of the Deduction, in a
passage most of which has already been quoted Kant
discusses his position that our knowledge of ourselves is
as phenomenal as our knowledge of objects. This is the
doctrine that the inner sense " represents to consciousness
even our own selves only as we appear to ourselves, not
as we are in ourselves. For we intuit ourselves only
as we are inwardly affected."1

" What determines inner sense is the understanding and

its original power of combining the manifold of intuition,
that is, of bringing it under an apperception, upon which
the possibility of understanding itself rests. Now the
understanding in us men is not itself a faculty of intuitions,
and cannot, even if intuitions be given in sensibility, take
them up into itself in such manner as to combine them as
the manifold of its own intuition. Its synthesis, therefore,
if the synthesis be viewed by itself alone, is nothing but the
unity of the act, of which as an act it is conscious to itself,
even without the aid of sensibility, but through which it
is yet able to determine the sensibility inwardly. The
understanding, that is to say, in respect of the manifold
which may be given to it in accordance with the form of
sensible intuition is able to determine sensibility in-
wardly."2
l 2
Bi52. Bi53.
112 KANT
Let us note the implications of this passage for Kant's
account of knowledge. The inner sense is here all along
contrasted with the outer sense ; its specific form is time,
its characteristic activity the imagination. It is controlled
by the understanding. There is no thinking and knowledge
without this controlling, but the imagination which is
controlled is not what is known. A line or a figure is known
by movement. It is our consciousness of our determination
of the inner sense in time which makes us know the figure
which does not itself contain succession.

" Even time itself we cannot represent, save in so far as

we attend, in the drawing of a straight line (which has to
serve as the outer figurative representation of time),
merely to the act of the synthesis of the manifold whereby
we successively determine inner sense, and in so doing
attend to the succession of this determination in inner
sense. Motion as an act of the subject (not as the deter-
mination of an object) and, therefore, the synthesis of the
manifold in space, first produces the concept of succession
—if we abstract from this manifold and attend solely to
the act through which we determine the inner sense accord-
ing to its form."1

Kant adds in a note :

" Motion of an object in space does not belong to a pure

science, and consequently not to geometry. For the fact
that something is movable cannot be known a priori, but
only through experience. Motion, however, considered as
the describing of a space, is a pure act of the successive
synthesis of the manifold in outer intuition in general by
means of the productive imagination, and belongs not only
to geometry but also to transcendental philosophy."2

This doctrine of Kant's is obviously fundamental. By

means of it he thinks he maintains the activity of mind—
1
B 154. 2 B 156.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON
the prescription of the a priori laws to experience—without
prejudice to the discoverability and givenness of the
objects of experience. This is what the distinction of inner
and outer sense is now used to emphasize. Yet if all
imagination is inner sense, the inner sense is not confined
to time, but must involve consciousness of space. Drawing
lines and describing circles are temporal, but also spatial.
What Kant is really enunciating here is the all-important
doctrine that we can only know by acting. But the term
inner sense is most misleading. " Inner " is a spatial
word ; " sense " implies that we are aware of our own
activities in the same way as we are aware of outside
objects. Yet Kant in this passage insists on what is clearly
his mature view, that knowledge always involves both time
and space, both what he calls inner and outer experience.
Further—and this is another puzzle—in inner sense
we get knowledge of ourselves. Our inner sense is
as much our transcendental subject appearing as the
external sense is the appearance of things in themselves.
Kant, therefore, puts the phenomenal subject, the appear-
ance of the noumenal self, over against the phenomenal
world, the appearance of noumena. But there are diffi-
culties in this. Clearly we are not aware of our acting or
apprehending in the same way as we are aware of external
objects. The internal sense and the external sense are not
both senses in the same sense. Yet if we make our aware-
ness of our awareness different in kind from that awareness,
and call it enjoyment—saying that in every act of appre-
hension there is an " ing " which is enjoyed over against
an " ed " of which we are aware—that does not solve our
difficulties. For if we are concerned only with apprehend-
ing, the difference and variety will all be on the " ed "
side, and the " ing " will be a transparent abstraction with
no meaning. Kant's insistence on the activity of the mind
will help us a little. We experience our own activity,
whether in knowing or in what we ordinarily call acting,
in a real sense, though in a sense other than that in which
we experience external objects. It is no doubt important
114 KANT
to remember—what is often forgotten—that knowing is
action, involving desires, purposes, and duties, as much as
non-cognitive forms of action. Let us say, then, if we will,
that in modern language the inner sense is our enjoyment
of our own activity.
That gets us some way, but not far enough. For this
particular activity is connected inextricably with what we
are aware of in that activity, and what we are aware of is
the objects of the external sense. What does emerge in
the Transcendental Deduction is that there are two orders
of the objects of the external sense : the order in which we
become aware of, remember, or imagine them, and the
order in which we think them to be objectively connected.
The first order, that of subjective succession, is in our
power ; we can alter or change it as we think fit. When
we are knowing, we are determining that subjective order
in accordance with the principles of the pure understanding,
and so reaching or coming to the knowledge of an objective
order.
But though knowledge implies action, thinking and
making are not the same thing. We make something
when we think, but not the object of our thinking.
The mind prescribes laws to objects, no doubt, but
only the quite general laws; for the detail of the
empirical law we have to go to the facts. Kant con-
sidered knowledge a joint product of an a priori element
contributed by the mind, and an a posteriori con-
tributed by objects. It is, therefore, not possible for him
to say either that knowledge makes its object or that
the object makes the knowledge of it. Thinking is for
him a process by which we do arrive at knowledge, but a
process also in which we may go wrong. The basis of his
phenomenalism is intuition. We can have no knowledge
apart from intuition with its matter and form; and the
complementary truth to that is that we can have no
knowledge of anything except what we can intuit. Because
we go from what we perceive to what we perceive, the
subjective conditions of intuition are an in-and-out entry,
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 115
which does not affect the objectivity obtained by an
interpretation of the differences of what is conveyed
through the same form.
When Kant comes in the Deduction to consider think-
ing, his problem is more difficult. For in thinking we are
concerned with spontaneity and activity of the mind. If
the mind is spontaneous in thinking, thinking is a process
which is, so to speak, loose from its object. It may, there-
fore, go right or wrong. The puzzle is that the existence
of a priori principles implies that in regard to these error
is not possible. You may be wrong in saying that this
event has this particular cause, but you cannot go wrong
in saying that it must have some cause. That is what the
universality and the necessity of the a priori involves. The
easiest way out of the difficulty is, of course, to deny the a
priori, and to say that thinking is a process of trial and error,
hit or miss. Kant did take that view with regard to what
he called the regulative principles of judgement. He did
think that the conception of mechanical causation, for
example, was what Pragmatists would call a postulate.
The scientist will push it as far as it will go, but must be
prepared to find that it will not go all the way. But he
always thought that all this experimentation and verifica-
tion assumed a priori principles which, because they were
a priori, were not capable of verification. It is these that
need a deduction. That deduction must be in principle
the same as the deduction of the ^Esthetic ; it must show
that the a priori principles of thinking are an in-and-out
entry. But since the special difficulty of the deduction of the
categories comes from the spontaneous activity of thought,
we must get clear about the nature of this activity. What
does it affect ? The understanding, Kant says, controls
the inner, not the outer, sense. The inner sense includes
the imagination. The suggestion is that having two senses,
inner and outer, we control or determine one in order to
get determined knowledge, i.e. a determined unified
perception of the other.
But if this means that the inner sense is peculiarly
n6 KANT
within us, that will not do. There is something peculiarly
" internal" about it, namely, the consciousness of our
own activity. That is private. Only we ourselves can
be conscious of the purposes and intuitions which direct
that activity. But the activity is not necessarily or
ordinarily private. We can watch a person attending to
this rather than that. Think of the description of Sherlock
Holmes following Watson's thoughts. The distinction of
inner and outer as Kant gives it will not do. For
this controlled determining of the inner sense, which is
thinking, includes the control of movement; and it looks
as if the movement might be either movement in the
imagination or actual movement. We know the house by,
as it were, drawing it, or by actually drawing it. The
distinguishing mark of the movement which is involved in
thinking is that it is movement over which we have control,
and whose unity as a process in time we appreciate as we
give the process its unity. That is why Kant says in
the note quoted above, that " motion considered as the
describing of a space," as contrasted with the intuited
motion of an object in space, " belongs not only to geometry
but to transcendental philosophy." Let us then ask
ourselves over what we have control. What can we vary
over against something which we do not vary? We have
control over our acts of attending, and over our imagina-
tion and our bodily movements, and over our manipulation
of symbols. We can distinguish between what is subjective
and what is objective in our experience just because we
have control over our bodily movements. By varying
our bodily movements we can vary the content of our intui-
tions, and can then distinguish what in that content is due
to that variation and what is not so due, but must be
ascribed to the object. Without the possibility of that
distinction, which involves the appreciated unity of our
action over against an intuited manifold, there would be no
objectivity. But the apprehension of the given is always
a time process over against a spatial intuition; and
therefore the laws of thinking, if not, strictly speaking, the
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 117
laws of things, are the laws of the apprehension of things
as objective. And so we get our in-and-out entry. For
there to be experience, there must be the distinction of
subject and object; for there to be the distinction of
subject and object, there must be the controlled process of
determining our activities in time over against an aware-
ness of determination in space. Hence the general
principles of determination in time, a process involving
also the determinate apprehension of space, are necessarily
implied in all experience.

This account of the Deduction does more justice than

the other to the main points Kant is concerned to maintain
in the second edition Deduction—the contrast between
thinking and an intuitive understanding, between think-
ing and perceiving, between thinking and association,
between the inner and the outer sense. But it cannot be
put forward as an account of what he did say. For if we
accept it we must say that the concept of freedom, or at
least of self-determination, and with it the independence of
the activity of the self from the phenomenal determination
of nature, is as essential to any account of knowing as it
is argued by Kant in the second Critique to be to any
account of acting. Indeed, if as the Deduction un-
doubtedly maintains thinking is a conscious activity,
that might seem necessarily to follow. But Kant certainly
does not draw that conclusion, and this interpretation
can only be defended if we may hold that neither in
the first nor in the second Critique did he entirely
disentangle himself from the erroneous implications of the
terms inner and outer sense. This implies that no mere
interpretation of what he says will give a defensible
doctrine. Whatever interpretation we adopt, we have to
say of it, This is the line of argument in Kant which, if
consistently worked out, as it was not consistently worked
out by Kant, will give the most fruitful results.
Other interpretations of Kant seem to me to arise from
the ambiguity of his conception of the inner sense. For if
u8 KANT
we start with the distinction between inner and outer
sense, as denned in the ^Esthetic, we are in a position very
little removed from that of Locke. The doctrine of external
sense has made a breach in that position, but has not de-
stroyed it. Kant is still at this stage talking as though we
were principally aware of our own representations, i.e. of
something specifically mental. The position assumes that
we are aware of ourselves as we are not aware of external
objects. Representations, or what in modern language
are called sensa, are thought of as purely mental existences;
they are entities, having an existence in a separate sphere,
the world of mind. The mind in its endeavour to achieve
a unified and consistent experience assigns to some of them
objectivity. We can indeed say that unless they exhibit
a certain regularity and display what Kant calls objective
affinity, such consistency as experience demands would
not be possible. But the whole position is really not much
removed from Berkeley. For all the contents of appre-
hension—whether of memory, perception, or imagination—
are put on the same level. They are all mental entities,
and the distinction between subjective and objective might
be put as the distinction between thinking our own
thoughts and thinking the thoughts of a universal con-
sciousness. That would leave the main doctrine of
Berkeley untouched—that we can know ideas only, and
that ideas are mental entities. This position leads
almost inevitably to the repudiation of things in them-
selves by Kant's successors and to a metaphysic based
on an epistemological idealism. It is roughly Schopen-
hauer's interpretation of Kant. This view is obviously
much more clear-cut than Kant's doctrine even in the
first edition. It ignores his distinction between inner and
outer sense, his peculiar emphasis on time in the chapter
on Schematism, his repeated emphasis on the distinction
between thinking and intuition, and the special place
he gives to imagination even in the first edition. It is
clear even there that if this doctrine can be got out of
Kant, it is not what he was trying to say. Rather it is
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 119
the victory of the Lockeian presuppositions with which he
started over what he is trying to say. It is indeed matter
of historical fact that Kant repudiated this interpretation
with indignation, and made the changes in the second
edition largely to correct this particular misunderstanding.
With this subjectivist view of Kant's teaching may be
contrasted what Professor Kemp Smith calls Kant's
phenomenalism. The doctrine of the inner sense, according
to the second edition, is connected with the refutation of
idealism. The essence of idealism which Kant is concerned
to refute is its assumption that knowledge of the self is
prior to knowledge of objects. But the Deduction of the
second edition has shown that knowledge of self and know-
ledge of objects are correlative : that we come to be aware
of the unity and order in our knowing over against the
unity and order of what is known. These two centres of
unity arise in consequence of the work of the transcen-
dental faculty of imagination on an undifferentiated
vague chaos : the one is the phenomenal self, the other
phenomenal nature. And because the reality of each
of these lies in its connectedness, the merely given,
being in itself not connected, shrinks almost to nothing.
The phenomenal self is not anything sensed, but
"enjoyed" action. Phenomenal nature is its correlate,
the unity made. Thinking as action has triumphed
over the given. The mark of the phenomenal self and
of phenomenal nature alike is connectedness and relation.
The difficulty of this view is to keep the two phenomenals
apart. That, to do justice to this interpretation of Kant
as an interpretation, is clearly a difficulty of Kant's. Each
world has indeed its own transcendental ground—the
noumenal self on the one hand, things in themselves on the
other. And so far as the subject is concerned, Kant insists
that though we know the self as phenomenal, we know that
though not what the transcendental self is : and the reality
of that transcendental self, left open as a possibility but
not revealed by knowledge, is experienced in action and its
freedom realized in moral obligation. But Kant assumes
120 KANT
that the self as known, the phenomenal self, is, as pheno-
menal, determined—and as determined it is part of pheno-
menal nature. For clearly our actions affect nature and
are affected by it. When we think then of this phenomenal
self we must think of it as part of one phenomenal
world, not of two phenomenal worlds. This is, in fact,
Kant's settled attitude to the problem of free-will and
determinism, that the self is noumenally free but pheno-
menally determined; and it is phenomenally determined,
not as a world by itself but as part of nature, by external
stimulus acting on a given bodily disposition. Yet if that
is really the upshot of the first Critique, and we really are
committed by it to one phenomenal world, the reality of
the noumenal self becomes as shadowy as that of the thing
in itself, and we are in principle committed to behaviourism,
or at least to epiphenomenalism.
What has happened here is clear enough. Kant's
confused distinction of inner and outer experience has led
to the breakdown of the distinction between subject and
object, which he is at all costs determined to preserve—
which is, indeed, the basis of all his phenomenalism,
and therefore the basis of all this interconnectedness
and determinedness which is threatening to engulf the
self.
The fundamental difficulty of this view is that it makes
nonsense of Kant's distinction between understanding and
intuition. Its plausibility depends on the assumption that
Kant was trying to answer the special problem arising from
Hume's sensational atomism. But Kant's account of space
and time in the ^Esthetic is already entirely inconsistent
with Hume's atomism. Once we give up the notion that
Kant accepted Hume's psychology, the main argument for
this interpretation seems to me to disappear.
In the meantime we may revert to the sentence in which
we summed up the results of the Deduction of the second
edition—that the general principles of determination in
time, a process necessarily involving determined appre-
hension of space, are necessarily involved in all experience.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 121
For that will be found to be the key to the next section of
the Critique, the Analytic of Principles.

(7) THE ANALYTIC OF PRINCIPLES

The Deduction of the Categories has turned out to be,

as we have seen, not a deduction of the different categories
but of the general principle of judgement, or of what Kant
calls the synthetic unity of apperception. The general
result of Kant's account of the understanding has indeed
been to show that categories or a priori concepts have
their reality only in judgement. The metaphysical
deduction, searching as it did for a single principle from
which all the categories might be deduced, found it in
the general nature of judgement and in the fact that
general logic had already discovered the different forms of
judgement. But the new account of the nature of judge-
ment which Kant has given in the Transcendental Deduc-
tion has cast some discredit on the sufficiency of the
distinctions of traditional logic ; and though Kant does not
now say anything about the insufficiency of general logic,
he acts as though he had become aware of it, and attacks
anew the problem of the differentiation of the pure form of
judgement in a section which he calls the Schematism of
the Pure Concepts of the Understanding. He expounds in
rather more detail his general doctrine that a concept is
never an image, a something apprehended either by the
senses or by the intellect, but a rule in judging. At the
basis of all empirical concepts there are, no doubt, empirical
perceptions or representations. If we had not seen
individual dogs we should not have the concept of a dog.
But empirical representations only make concepts when a
rule in judging is made out of them—when what we have
seen is made into a rule by which we determine whether
this or that is a dog. The same, in Kant's view, holds of
a priori concepts. They are based on a priori intuitions,
but they become concepts when an a priori rule of judging
is made out of them.
122 KANT
The Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the Under-
standing is described by Kant as concerned with the
problem of how the categories are applied to experience,
but it is also, and indeed principally, an account of how the
concepts, as a priori principles of judging, get reality or
objective determination.
What can there be in common between an a priori
concept and intuition ? With this question Kant
approaches the problem of the schematism. Causation,
for example, as Hume had pointed out, cannot be observed
in experience. Kant's answer is that, as the Deduction has
shown, all judging is determination in time of the inner
sense, and all experience also involves determination in
time. The general principles of determining in time will
both be involved in judging and be applicable to perceived
experience; and if there are different modes of temporal
determination, these, and not the list given by general
logic, will give the varieties of the act of judging as such,
and, therefore, the list of what Kant calls the principles of
pure understanding.
Quantity has meaning because we can count; and counting
is producing " unity in the synthesis of the manifold of a
homogeneous perception in general, a unity due to my genera-
ting time itself in the apprehension of the perception."
Quality has meaning because we recognize differences
which, while they have a certain regularity and order, are
not quantitative differences but differences of degree, or
what Kant calls intensive quantity—the degree to which
time is filled.
The categories of relation are, when schematized, the
various ways in which we think an objective order in time;
substance that which endures through time; cause and
effect objective sequence in time; and reciprocity mutual
and determined co-existence in time.
The categories of modality are not quite the same as the
others, but Kant uses them to explain (mainly in criticism
of Leibniz) the meanings which on Critical principles we
must give to possibility, actuality, and necessity.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON
With this preliminary explanation of the manner in
which the categories find significance in the various forms
of judgement, Kant goes on to give a list of what he calls
the principles of the pure understanding. He explains
them to be the actual rules which govern the application
of the categories. If we are to draw all the consequences
of the doctrine that a concept is really a rule in judging,
they are the categories displayed in their true nature as
the fundamental principles or rules which make objective
judgement possible. They are all consequences of what
Kant calls the highest principle of all synthetic judge-
ments : every object stands under the necessary conditions
of synthetic unity of the manifold of intuition in a possible
experience. They are, indeed, the various principles which
govern the unity of that synthesis.

Kant sums up what he has to say of Schematism in

these words :

" It is evident, therefore, that what the schematism of

understanding effects by means of the transcendental
synthesis of the imagination is simply the unity of all the
manifold of intuition in inner sense, and so indirectly the
unity of apperception which as a function corresponds to
the receptivity of inner sense."1

These principles are also Kant's answer to the question,

How is physics possible ? In them Kant is giving a
deduction of the fundamental a priori assumptions upon
which physics, as he conceived it, rests. For the upshot
of his argument is that physical science is merely the
elaboration and explication of principles which are implied
in the most elementary experience in which subject and
object are distinguished.
Thinking is a mental activity, and therefore always a
temporal process. But in thinking, as contrasted with mere
imagining, or with counting when we, for example, count
i A 145 ; B 185.
 K A N T
124
up to a hundred instead of counting how many of anything
there are, we transfer the time to the object; we are
concerned with objective number, objective duration,
succession, and co-existence, not with the number of our
acts or with the duration, succession, and co-existence of
our representations. Eut this process implies not only
consciousness of time, but also consciousness of space. In
the first edition Kant seems to have taken this last point so
much for granted that he says nothing about it, with the
result that he is often supposed in this section to teach an
entirely different doctrine of the relation of time and space
from that which he has stated in the ^Esthetic. When he
says that all our experience is successive, he is taken to
have meant that it is only successive, and that we can
have no intuition of a manifold except successively. If we
start with this assumption, we have to suppose Kant to
be trying to show how, out of an experience which is only
temporal, we produce the distinction of subjective and
objective, and generate, so to speak, the conception of
space. Then we should rightly regard Kant in this section
as engaged in an impossible task.
This misconception Kant corrected in the second edition
—partly in a passage he described as the Refutation of
Idealism, to which we shall recur, and partly in a passage
at the very end of the section, where he describes the
complementary part played in this process of objective
thinking by the consciousness of space. It may be well
to begin, therefore, with two passages which give Kant's
account of the respective parts played by consciousness
of time and consciousness of space.

" All increase in empirical knowledge and every advance

in perception, no matter what the objects may be,
whether appearances or pure intuitions, is nothing but an
extension of the determination of inner sense, that is, an
advance in time. This advance in time determines every-
thing, and is not in itself determined by anything further.
That is to say, its parts are given only in time and only
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 125
through the synthesis of time : they are not given ante-
cedently to the synthesis. For this reason every transition
in perception to something which follows in time is a
determination of time through the generation of this
perception, and since time is always and in all its parts a
magnitude, is likewise the generation of a perception
through all degrees of which no one is the smallest, from
zero up to its determinate degree. This reveals the
possibility of knowing a priori a law of alterations, in
respect of their form. We are merely anticipating our own
apprehension, the formal conditions of which, since it
dwells in us prior to all appearance that is given, must
certainly be capable of being known a priori." 1

That is the one side of the matter. Our experience is a

continuous process in time, and that process with its
infinite power of divisibility is the same in imagination and
in apprehension. But, on the other hand, it is always
also a consciousness of the simultaneous or of space.

" In order to understand the possibility of things in

conformity with the categories and so to demonstrate the
objective reality of the latter, we need, not merely in-
tuitions, but intuitions that are in all cases outer intuitions.
When, for instance, we take the pure concepts of relation,
we find, firstly, that in order to obtain something per-
manent in intuition corresponding to the concept of
substance, and so to demonstrate the objective reality of
this concept, we require an intuition in space (of matter).
For space alone is determined as permanent, while time,
and, therefore, everything that is in inner sense, is in
constant flux. Secondly, in order to exhibit alteration as
the intuition corresponding to the concept of causality, we
must take as our example motion, that is, alteration in
space. Only in this way can we obtain the intuition of
alterations, the possibility of which can never be compre-
hended through any pure understanding. . . . The in-
1
A 210 ; B 255.
126 KANT
tuition required is the intuition of a movement of a point
in space. The presence of the point in different locations
(as a sequence of opposite determinations) is alone what
yields to us an intuition of alteration. . . . Similarly, it can
easily be shown that the possibility of things as quantities,
and, therefore, the objective reality of quantity, can be
exhibited only in outer intuition." 1

We start, then, with consciousness of time and of space,

and with our power of imagination and synthesis, the
spontaneous activity of the mind. We know, as a matter
of fact, that we have somehow got out of that the
distinction between subjective and objective, between
merely imagining and judging. The explicit and elaborated
judgements of physical science only do more systematically
what we must have already done to some degree in order
to get any distinction between subjective and objective
at all. That is Kant's case for the use of a priori
principles in science. They are implied, not in any experi-
ence, but in any experience of objects, i.e. wherever
we have made the distinction between subjective and
objective.
This doctrine can be seen most clearly in his account of
causation. For it was Hume's criticism of causation which
originally led Kant in this direction. What, then, is Kant's
answer to Hume ? Its main outlines have been already
noted in the last section. Hume asks how we can add to
our experience of succession the notion of necessary
determination. Kant's answer is that we can only get the
experience of objective succession if we have presupposed
the principle of necessary determination. For we could not
distinguish between mere succession in our apprehension
and apprehension of succession without the principle of
causation.

" Experience itself—in other words, empirical knowledge

of appearances—is thus possible only in so far as we subject
1
B 291-293.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 127
the succession of appearances, and, therefore, all alteration,
to the law of causality : and, as likewise follows, the
appearances, as objects of experience, are themselves
possible only in conformity with this law." 1

Kant explains his meaning by contrasting our successive

apprehension of a house with our successive apprehension
of a boat going downstream. In each experience our
representations are successive : we are aware, first of one
side of the house, then of another ; first of the boat in one
position in the stream, then of it in another. But we
assume without more ado, in the first case that we are
successively apprehending what simultaneously exists, and
in the second case that we are apprehending what is
actually successive. In the second case we " put the time
into the object." We do this in most cases so naturally
and instinctively that it seems strange to say that we are
employing the principle of causality in the process. But
this is what Kant maintains.

" We have to show in the case under consideration that

we never, even in experience, ascribe succession (that is,
the happening of some event which previously did not
exist) to the object, and so distinguish it from subjective
sequence in our apprehension, except when there is an
underlying rule which compels us to observe this order of
perceptions rather than any other : nay, that this com-
pulsion is really what first makes possible the represen-
tation of a succession in the object." 2

This might be taken to imply that only when we know

that A is the cause of B, can we know that B follows A.
That would be absurd. It would not meet Hume's point
that we are certainly aware of B following A before we
know what causes B. Kant only says that " a represen-
tation can acquire its determinate position in the relation
of time only in so far as something is presupposed in the
1 2
B 234. A 196-7 ; B 241-2.
128 KANT
preceding state upon which it follows invariably, that is, in
accordance with a rule." x Because we conclude something
objectively succeeds, we must assume that it is determined.
Kant does not analyse this process of determining sequence
in any detail. But if we remember the passage quoted
above about the movement of a point in space, and if we
consider what happens when we are in any doubt as to
whether an apprehended succession is objective or not, we
can see the force of what he says. We ordinarily assume
that a succession is objective because we assume that we
have not brought it about. If in apprehending the different
parts of the house we were not aware of the movements of
our bodies, we should think the house was turning round.
We can say, " this succession is not due to me ", because
we are already working on rules of what is due to our
action. But if we ever supposed that just anything could
cause anything else, we could never make the distinction
between subjective and objective sequence; that distinc-
tion is a distinction between the apparent changes caused
by ourselves and those which, not being caused by our-
selves, we assume to be caused by some tiling else. The
process always implies, as Kant insists in the second
edition, intuition of the manifold in space : for it always
implies the intuition of something moving over against
something which is not moving. This is the answer to
the criticism sometimes made that Kant's doctrine
implies that the whole of the present is determined by
the whole of the past. Because the process of dis-
entangling successive apprehension from apprehension of
succession begins with the intuition of something moving
against what does not move, causation is always concerned
with the cause of the particular change, not of the whole
present state of the universe. Inquiry begins always with
an actually perceived change, and that is always only a
partial change.
If we left the matter there, we should be reduced to what
is sometimes called a " streaky view of causation," as
1
A 198; B 244.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 129
though the world were made up of a lot of quite inde-
pendent chains of causation. Kant meets this difficulty by
insisting that the general category of relation includes,
besides causation, substance (or the principle that in all
changes there is something which does not diminish or
increase) and reciprocity (or the principle that co-existence
is equally determined with succession). The three taken
together are involved in the objective determination of
change, and when elaborated and systematized make up
the first principles of physics. In the Metaphysical First
Principles of the Natural Sciences, published in 1786, Kant
attempted this elaboration in what he described as a
dynamical, as opposed to the prevalent mechanical, system
of physics.
This identification of the principles of objectivity with
the principles of physics has certain difficulties. Kant
himself made a distinction between the first two principles
—the Axioms of Intuition and the Anticipations of
Perception—the principles of quantity and quality on the
one hand and the Analogies of Experience and the
Postulates of Empirical Thought, or the principles
of relation and morality on the other. He called the
first two mathematical and the categories of relation
dynamical. In another passage he called the first
two constitutive and the others regulative. For the
first two, he affirms, are concerned only with the formal
aspects of quantity and quality, and judgements implied
in them can be elaborated, as they are in mathematics,
independently of their application to experience. But
the categories of relation are concerned with the
existence of objects and presuppose the perception of
different specific changes, which cannot be anticipated.
Kant was in agreement with Hume that we never under-
stand how one thing causes another. We can by experi-
ment come to the conclusion that B must have been caused
by A, and, having established that, we must assume that
all B's will be caused by A's. The specific laws of causation
cannot be deduced from the general principle, but must be
E
130 KANT
discovered by experience. In the Critique of Judgement
Kant explains that while we assume that it is possible to
reduce the manifold diversity of causal laws to a small
number of general principles, there is no necessity that this
should be possible. Our assumption that it is possible is
only a regulative assumption, what Pragmatism would call
a postulate. He then goes on to say that in thus attempt-
ing to make a system of these empirical laws the general
a priori principle of causation takes the two forms of
mechanical and teleological causation—each of which
must be applied as far as it will go.
This assumes that physics and natural science are not the
same, though in the first Critique Kant seems to assume that
they are, and it suggests the question whether the elabora-
tion which physics gives to the principles of objectivity in-
volved in any experience is the only possible elaboration.
Kant had been occupied for a long time with the
principle of causation, and had not given anything like the
same attention to substance and reciprocity ; and he does
not say whether as causation has different empirical rules
which are irresolvably different because empirical, so
substance and reciprocity have similar empirical appli-
cations. He seems rather to assume that their use in
physics is'their only possible use, and because of this he denies
their application to the self. For he is rightly clear that the
principles of substance and reciprocity as actualized in
physics imply space. But while he may be right in main-
taining, as he does in the Metaphysical First Principles of the
Natural Sciences, that psychology is not a science in the
sense in which he is there using the word " science," he
does admit that introspection is possible, i.e. that we can
make objective judgements about ourselves. If these
judgements are objective, they must imply the categories,
and categories in some way schematized. In the same
work Kant says that an inquiry is scientific in so far as it is
mathematical, and that he sees no prospect of chemistry
becoming a science in that sense. But here again we
have something which, though perhaps not a science
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON
in one sense of the term, is certainly objective and, as
objective, must imply the categories, though it will not
imply the principles of pure understanding as they are
made-by Kant to be the first principles of physics. Kant
recognized the distinction between the historical sciences
and physics, but his own preoccupation with physics made
him neglect the discussion of the principles implied in
history. This, as, we shall see later, got him into un-
necessary difficulties when he came to discuss the relations
between causality and freedom, difficulties which he only
partially got over in the Critique of Judgement. Bergson's
criticism of Kant, or at any rate of the first two Critiques
is very apt.

" If you read the Critique of Pure Reason carefully, you

will see that Kant has criticized, not reason in general, but
a reason fashioned to the habits and the necessities of
Cartesian mechanism and Newtonian physics. If there is
only one science of nature, and Kant never seems to doubt
this, if all phenomena and all objects are strung out along
one single plan to produce an experience, single, con-
tinuous, and entirely on the surface (and this is the never
varying hypothesis of the Critique of Pure Reason), then
there is only one kind of causality in the world. All
phenomenal causality implies rigorous determination, and
liberty must be sought outside experience. But if there is
not one science, but several sciences of nature, if there is
not one scientific determinism, but several scientific
determinisms of unequal rigour, then we must distinguish
between different planes of experience ; experience is not
simply on the surface, but also extends in depth ; finally it
is possible, by insensible transitions, without any sudden
shock, without quitting the realm of facts, to go from
physical necessity to moral liberty." 1

The Postulates of Empirical Thought are not really, as

1
" Le Parallelisme Psycho-Physique et la M6taphysique Positive,"
Bulletin de la Sociite Franfaise de Bhilosophie, May, 1901, p. 63.
132 KANT
we have said, on a level with the other principles. Kant
uses the logical distinction of modality in judgements to
expound the relation between possibility, actuality, and
necessity involved in the critical principles. Knowledge
has been shown to involve a union of two different elements
—formal conditions prescribed by the mind's activity and
material conditions supplied by sensation. The formal
conditions are the criterion of possibility: " that which
agrees with the formal conditions of experience, that is,
with the formal conditions of intuition and of thought, is
possible." But thought in itself—and this we shall see later
is for Kant a point of great importance^—can never prove
existence. " Reality is bound up with sensation, the
matter of experience." It is that which is experienced or
which might be experienced. This might seem to involve
the doctrine that the reality of things is just their being
experienced, that the mind makes nature, but to take this
subjectivist view is to miss the lesson of the Deduction,
that experience always involves the distinction between
subjective and objective, and that something to be experi-
enced is as necessary to that distinction as the experiencing
mind. Kant, in the second edition, tried to avoid this
misinterpretation of his doctrine by inserting at the
end of the Postulates a section called the Refutation
of Idealism. He criticizes idealism on the ground that
it assumes that knowledge of the mind is prior to
knowledge of objects. Once we begin, as Descartes did,
with a mind conscious of its own existence, and then
ask how, having attained that consciousness without a
knowledge of external objects, we can get outside of it, we
can find no answer. We are shut up either to what Kant
calls the problematic idealism of Descartes or to the
dogmatic idealism of Berkeley. We must either just admit
that the existence of external matter cannot be proved, or
say with the dogmatic idealist that mind and its states are
the only reality. But this, as we have seen, is to ignore the
fact that we only come to know the mind's activity over
against what is not its activity, that the elements of
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 133
spontaneity and of the given are both involved in experi-
ence, and that the consciousness of space is as fundamental
and primary as the consciousness of time.

Kant has now answered his second main question—

How is pure science of nature possible ?—and is ready to
deal with his last twofold question about the possibility of
metaphysics. But before he leaves the Analytic for the
Dialectic he sums up the results he has so far reached in a
section entitled " The Ground of the Distinction of all
Objects in General into Phenomena and Noumena."

" We have seen that everything which the understanding

derives from itself is, though not borrowed from experience,
at the disposal of the understanding solely for use in ex-
perience. The principles of pure understanding, whether
constitutive a priori, like the mathematical principles, or
merely regulative, like the dynamical, contain nothing but
what may be called the pure schema of possible experience.
For experience obtains its unity only from the synthetic
unity which the understanding originally and of itself
confers upon the synthesis of imagination in its relation to
apperception : and the appearances, as data for a possible
knowledge, must already stand a priori in relation to and
in agreement with that synthetic unity. But although
these rules of understanding are not only true a priori,
but are indeed the source of all truth (that is, of
the agreement of our knowledge with objects), inas-
much as they contain in themselves the ground of the
possibility of experience viewed as the sum of all know-
ledge wherein objects can be given to us, we are not
satisfied with the exposition merely of that which is
true, but likewise demand that account be taken of that
which we desire to know." 1

" The pure concepts of the understanding can never admit

1
A 236, 237 ; B 295, 296.
134 KANT
of transcendental but always only of empirical employment,
and the principles of pure understanding can apply only
to objects of the senses under the universal conditions
of a possible experience, never to things in general with-
out regard to the mode in which we are able to intuit
them." 1

Accordingly the Transcendental Analytic leads to this

important conclusion, that the most the understanding can
achieve a priori is to anticipate the form of a possible
experience in general, and since that which is not appear-
ance cannot be an object of experience, the understanding
can never transcend those limits of sensibility within
which alone objects can be given to us.

" Its principles are merely rules for the exposition of

appearances, and the proud name of an Ontology that
presumptuously claims to supply, in systematic doctrinal
form, synthetic a priori knowledge of things in general (for
instance, the principle of causality) must,' therefore, give
place to the modest title of a mere Analytic of pure
understanding." 2

This might be taken, and has indeed been taken, to imply

that the distinction between phenomena and things in
themselves has thus been rendered unmeaning, and that
there can be no sense in any reference beyond experience
at all.

" When we say that the senses represent objects as

they appear and the understanding objects as they are, the
latter statement is to be taken, not in the transcendental,
but in the merely empirical meaning of the terms, namely
as meaning that the objects must be represented as
objects of experience, that is as appearances in thorough-
going interconnexion with one another, and not as they
may be apart from their relation to possible experience
1 2
A 246 ; B 303. A 247 ; B 303.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 135
(and consequently to any senses), as objects of the pure
understanding." 1

Kant does, in fact, hold that if by noumenon we mean

what the word suggests, an object apprehended by thought
alone as distinguished from the senses, there are no
noumena. The Critical philosophy has destroyed the old
distinction between the world apprehended by sense and
the world apprehended by thought. But there is still
meaning, Kant insists, in the distinction between pheno-
mena and things in themselves, or in saying that we only
know things as they appear, if there is meaning in saying
that to know things only as they appear limits our know-
ledge. But there is meaning in that if and in so far as we
can and do raise questions which are intelligible questions,
but which, nevertheless, experience cannot answer. And
this Kant maintains to be the case. He is going to explain
in the Dialectic the first sentence of the Preface to the First
Edition—" Human reason has this peculiar fate, that in
one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions
which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it
is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its
powers, it is also not able to answer."2
The account of knowledge which Kant has given in the
Analytic has shown something of what he means by this.
For all our knowledge implies, as we have seen, a transcen-
dental unity, the thought or conception of which is the
principle of all our judging—which, however, is never
completely apprehended ; and the notion of a whole which
we never reach is operative in'all our scientific knowledge.
The conception of the limited nature of our knowledge is
got, therefore, not by a contrast between knowledge of
what we experience and some other kind of knowledge, but
from an analysis of that knowledge of experience itself.
To explain and investigate this aspect of reason, in which
it shows itself as a demand which knowledge cannot fulfil,
is the purpose of the Dialectic.
1 2
A 258 ; B 313, 314. A vii.
136 KANT

(8) THE DIALECTIC

In the Dialectic, as we saw in the Introduction, Kant is
to answer the question, How is metaphysics possible ?
as the earlier parts of the Critique have answered the
questions, How is pure mathematics possible ? and, How
is pure natural science possible ? But while Kant assumes
the possibility of mathematics and of pure natural science,
however much he thinks that possibility calls for a
deduction, he cannot make the same assumption about
metaphysics. He can, and does, assume what he calls
" metaphysics as natural disposition " ; but he holds and is
going to argue that the metaphysical doctrines to which
that disposition leads are all illusion. He is going to argue
that metaphysics, in the sense in which it has ordinarily
been understood, is not possible : that we can have no
knowledge of what is beyond experience, of the objects with
which metaphysics has been concerned. When that is
realized, but not before, we can then see how there can be
a scientific metaphysics, if we are content that criticism
shall take the place of metaphysics.
The Dialectic has, in accordance with this programme, a
negative and a positive aspect, as it is concerned to rebut
the pretensions of what Kant calls dogmatic metaphysics,
and as it is concerned to show the part played in our
knowledge by reason.
There is in the Dialectic a certain shifting of the balance
of emphasis between these two aspects, and with that
shifting a certain differentiation in the meaning Kant
attaches to reason. Kant has, in the earlier part of the
Critique, used the word reason for the faculty of a priori
knowledge in general. The whole work, the analysis and
deduction of the a priori faculty in mathematics and
natural science as well as in metaphysics, is the Critique of
Pure Reason, as though one and the same faculty were
concerned throughout, and as though the purpose of the
Critique were to justify its use in mathematics and science,
and to refute its application to metaphysics. That is
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 137
indeed the moral explicitly drawn in the deduction of the
categories. The categories are justified on the condition
that they apply to experience, and thereby are debarred
from application beyond it. We know from Kant's
correspondence that he was at an early stage in his Critical
thought occupied with what he calls the antinomies. For
the contradictions which he found between the assumptions
of Newtonian physics and the philosophy of Leibniz,
Critical idealism seemed to offer a simple solution. These
contradictions'arise from our not understanding the limits
of human knowledge, and supposing that the categories which
serve us well enough in the unravelling of our experience
can be extended beypnd it. If both parties would hold to
the motto from Persius which Kant quotes in the Preface
to the First Edition—"Tecum habita, et noris quam sit tibi
curta supellex "—all these difficulties would be avoided.
This is what we might expect the Dialectic to contain,
and it does contain it, but a great deal more beside. And
the more that it contains is connected with a new and
special sense which Kant there gives to reason. He
distinguishes it as a special faculty different from under-
standing. " All our knowhadgestarts with the senses-
proceeds frorrTthence to understandjpgr-aiuLends with
reason, JjeyoiMl^sthidrth^^
in us for_elaborating i^joaätt^rjdJn^tion ai^bnrigmg
rTrmfWjjT^Jrigtiecit. nm'ty pf thought" 1 '^Understanding
may be regarded^ as_ajfaculty which secures the~ungy
of appearances^ by meamTT>i~Tu1es7 and re^on^aj^th^
faulty "which secureTTffiTm^
standin^.under„pJjacjples.,'2. ^a^ojnJs_j : kajdescribegl^s
thejacultv-whichjs concerpeiLwith " the unconditioned "
o r " the absolute." Kant's conception of it is perhaps most
truly brought out if we say that it is concerned with " the
infinite."
Kant's distinction between the understanding andreason
carries with it the consequence that the principles of reason,
have notTthe objectivity of the categories of the under-/
. rÄi98";""B*355.:" " " » A 302; B 359.
EI
138 KANT
standing : they are, as he puts it, regulative and not
constitutive ; they are not principles of the possibility of
experience in the same sense as are the principles of the
understanding. If we consider any judgement which
claims to be true, and therefore assumes the distinction
between subjective and objective, it can be shown to make
that distinction in accordance with the principles of the
pure understanding. But at the same time any such
ordinary empirical judgement is always in Kant's word
conditioned. It takes a certain situation for granted ; it
operates within an assumed framework ; it starts with
what is taken as a given whole or a definite unit. No doubt
that given whole or assumed framework, which is now the
basis of our measurement or determination, has been itself
got by previous determination and judgement. But at any
given moment we are taking for granted the unity we have
so far achieved. Yet at the same time these principles of
unity, which as differentiated are the schematized cate-
gories, are based on a unity which transcends the empirical
unity of our consciousness; and we are always, in the search
after truth and intelligibility, having to go beyond any
particular framework or unity or condition which we use
for determination. We cannot measure by infinite space,
but any system of co-ordinates by which we do measure
assumes infinite space ; we cannot determine events by
time, but by preceding events, yet preceding events must
be thought of, all of them as a series in infinite time. Thus,
while we use the empirical unity we have achieved to
determine this or that individual happening, we are always
extending the range and scope of the unity of our
consciousness in the light of the transcendental unity
implied in the notion of truth or objectivity. Kant has
no doubt urged in the Deduction that objectivity implies
the transcendental unity of apperception, and therefore,
by implication, that the ideal of such an unity is " a
condition of the possibility of experience " ; but it is the
unity as an ideal, and not as realized, which is the condition
of the possibility of experience.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 139
In the new meaning Kant gives to reason in the Dialectic
he concentrates on this ideal aspect of all thinking. Of the
two sides in all judgement—tfhat it is a definite determina-
tion in a specific situation according to a rule, and that
such determination is distinguished, as judgement, from
association or fancy by implying a transcendent ideal of
unity—the former is now distinguished as particularly the
work of understanding, and the second is assigned to
reason. Reason, Kant says, is concerned with ideas in the
Platonic sense of that word, and that always means an
ideal, something which ought to be.
Kant in the Analytic made judgement the special work
of the understanding. He now assigns inference to reason.
As he found in the forms of judgement given in formal logic
his guiding thread to the discovery of a complete list of
the categories of the understanding, so he makes formal
logic's classification of syllogisms his guiding thread to a
complete list of the ideas of reason. As that classification
of syllogisms is even less exhaustive of the forms of
inference than is the traditional classification of judge-
ments of the forms of judgement, the logical guiding thread
is even more misleading in the Dialectic than it was in the
Analytic. But there is this of relevance in Kant's correlation
of reason and inference./ For as inference takes judgements
for granted and brings them together, so reason takes the
work of the understanding for granted, and tries to give it
greater unity and system.)
If reason stands for the ideal of unity in our knowledge,
that ideal, Kant says, may take three forms, corresponding
to which are the three main-parts of the Dialectic. We
have seen that all thinking implies the unity of our
consciousness, a transcendental unity never realized in
the empirical consciousness. (This ideal unity of the self is
an idea of reason, and if we hypostatize our ideal and make
it the basis and not the goal of knowledge, we get what
Kant calls the Paralogisms or false reasonings of rational
psychology J Similarly, on the side of the objective, our
judgements imply a system in which objects have their
140 KANT
determined place. The thought of such a comprehensive
and all-inclusive system governs our judging. If we
hypostatize this ideal, we get what Kant calls t.he.sAntj.-
jaegaies-pf Pure Reason, which are all concerned with the
difficulty of a complete system of determination in space
and time. J
Uniting both these ideals is the ideal of a complete unity
of experience, including in itself both subject and object,
the completed whole of existence. [This is the ideal of pure
reason par excellence, the idea of God/ Or, to put the
whole matter perhaps more simply, in thinking we are
trying to adjust our limited experience, as Spinoza would
say, sub specie cetemitatis, to set things in the order in which
we should set them were we in a completely unified
consciousness aware at once of all reality. So the ideals,
firstly, of this completely unified consciousness over
against, secondly, all reality seen by it, and, thirdly, the
union of both unified consciousness and unified world in
that complete experience, produce the three ideas of
reason.

Such is the general programme of the Dialectic. But it is

not in reality so systematic as Kant would have it be. In
the second edition he added a note which shows the
source of a good deal of the arguments he discusses.

" Metaphysics has as the proper object of its inquiries

three ideas only: God, freedom, and immortality—so
related that the second concept when combined with the
first, should lead to the third as a necessary conclusion.
Any other matters with which this science may deal serve
merely as a means of arriving at these ideas and of esta-
blishing their reality. It does not need the ideas for the
purposes of natural science, but in order to pass beyond
nature. Insight into this would render theology and
morals, and, through the union of these two, likewise
religion, and therewith the highest ends of our existence,
entirely and exclusively dependent on the faculty of
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 141
speculative reason. In a systematic representation of the
ideas, the order cited, the synthetic, would be the most
suitable ; but in the investigation which must necessarily
precede it, the analytic or reverse order is better adapted
to the purpose of completing our great project, as enabling
us to start from what is immediately given us in experience
—advancing from the doctrine of the soul to the doctrine
of the world, and thence to the knowledge of God."1

" Rendering theology, morals, and religion entirely

dependent on the faculty of speculative reason "—that was
in Kant's eyes the real crime of dogmatic metaphysics.
He is concerned to. vindicate the independence both of
science and morality ; he is convinced that the inde-
pendence of morality is as much menaced by metaphysical
arguments whose object is to support the assumptions of
morals and religion as by those which are directed against
them. But this means that, in the Dialectic, Kant is
examining not only the speculative reason in conflict with
itself, but a conflict between the assumptions of morality
and of science; and shows that this latter conflict has as
much to do as the former with the list of the ideas of
reason he considers as his logical guiding thread. The
relation between what Kant calls the speculative and the
practical reason is not really satisfactorily discussed in
the Dialectic, and there is a certain amount of confusion
in consequence.
Not very much requires to be said about the first main
division of the Dialectic, Kant's criticism of rational
psychology. He had himself insisted that all thinking
involves the identity of the thinking subject. Rational
psychology starts with this identity and argues that the
self as subject of thinking is a simple substance, unchanged
by and independent of bodily processes, and therefore not
subject, like the body, to dissolution. But, Kant argues,
substance has no meaning except in reference to intuition,
and we cannot ascribe to the self any other unity than we
1
B 395.
 142 KANT
recognize it to have in our experience. An empirical
psychology is perfectly possible because the self can be
known as it is experienced. But if we distinguish, as we
must, the transcendental unity of apperception as some-
thing having a unity beyond the imperfect empirical unity,
that subject cannot be known. It is not an object of
thought. We cannot talk of the self as a substance without
making it an object, that is, without knowing it in
experience.

" Rational psychology owes its origin simply to mis-

understanding. The unity of consciousness, which under-
lies the categories, is here mistaken for an intuition of the
subject as object, and the category of substance is then
applied to it. But this unity is only unity in thought, by
which alone no object is given, and to which, therefore, the
category of substance, which always supposes a given
intuition, cannot be applied. Consequently this subject
cannot be known." 1

This negative conclusion, as always in the Dialectic, cuts

two ways. It rebuts impartially the dogmatic assertions
of the spiritualist and of the materialist; and it leaves
room for the assumptions of the practical reason about the
nature of the soul.

" Nothing is lost, as regards the right, nay, the

necessity, of postulating a future life in accordance with
the principles of the practical employment of reason,
which is closely bound up with its speculative employment.
For the merely speculative proof has never been able to
exercise any influence upon the ordinary reason of man. It
so stands upon the point of a hair that even the schools
preserve it from falling only so long as they keep it
unceasingly spinning round like a top ; even in their own
eyes it yields no abiding foundation upon which anything
can be built. The proofs which are serviceable to the
1
B 422.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 143
world at large also preserve their entire value undiminished,
and indeed, upon the surrender of these dogmatic pre-
tensions, gain in clearness and in natural force. For
reason is there located in its own peculiar sphere, namely,
the order of ends, which is also at the same time an order of
nature ; and since it is in itself not only a theoretical but
also a practical faculty, and as such is not bound down to
practical conditions, it is justified in extending the order
of ends, and therewith our own existence, beyond the
limits of experience and of life."1

Yet at the same_ time this moral proof is not theoretical

knowledge.

" We must renounce the hope of comprehending, from

the merely theoretical knowledge of ourselves, the necessary
continuance of our existence."2

This passage admirably illustrates Kant's attitude to

dogmatic metaphysics when used as a support of moral
or religious principles. He argues that its proofs are
invalid, but that their disappearance is no loss, for they have
never convinced anyone. The real arguments for immor-
tality, or for any hopes of that which we cannot meet in
experience, are moral. This is Kant's denial of knowledge
in order to make room for faith.
The Antinomies of Pure Reason are introduced in a
passage which seems characteristic of Kant's earlier outlook
on the problems of the Dialectic—as though there were not,
strictly speaking, any ideas of pure reason. The antinomies
arise from reason's demand for the unconditioned being
applied to the operations of the understanding. " Reason
does not really generate any concept. The most it can do
is to free a concept of understanding from the unavoidable
limitations of possible experience, and so to endeavour to
extend it beyond the limits of the empirical, though still
indeed in terms of its relation to the empirical."3 This
1 3
B 424. » B 426. A 408; B 435.
144 KANT
demand of reason can apply, says Kant, only where the
synthesis of the understanding constitutes a series of
conditions subordinated to one another as conditions to a
given conditioned. " Absolute totality is demanded by
reason only in so far as the ascending series of conditions
relates to a given conditioned."1 When to such synthesis
the demand for the unconditioned is applied, an antinomy
results. For the unconditioned may be got in two ways :
by extending the series to infinity at the expense of not
having the definite starting-point, or by supposing an
absolute and not a conditioned starting-point at the
expense of taking it out of the series.
Kant finds four " cosmological ideas " resulting from the
mn ii- — ~ - ~ ~ — - ..-.—.••—••.-. — — - ~ m .,«.flM«l.».AJ^^i.-:-^-^. - . •— • - n r l , . , f m(K n v m , a t m mm |J p pimiiili Ill mi IIII Willi • • • ! 11

are :
" (i) Absolute completeness of the composition of the
given whole of all appearances.
(2) Absolute completeness in the division of a given
whole in the field of appearance.
(3) Absolute completeness in the origination of an
appearance.
(4) Absolute completeness as regards dependence of
Existence of the changeable in the field of appearance."2

They give rise to the following pairs of contradictory

propositions, where the thesis and antithesis are, Kant
argues, equally demonstrable.
(1) (a) Thesis : the world has a beginning in time, and
is also limited as regards space.
(b) Antithesis : the world has no beginning and no
limits in space ; it is infinite as regards both
time and space.
(2) (a) Thesis : every composite substance in the world
is made up of simple parts, and nothing exists
save the simple or what is composed of the
simple.
1
A 409 ; B 436. « A 415 ; B 443.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 145
(b) Antithesis? no composite thing in the world is
made up of simple parts, and there nowhere
exists in the world anything simple.
(3) (a) Thesis : Causality in accordance with laws of
nature is not the only causality from which
the appearances of the world can one and all
be derived. To explain these appearances it
is necessary to assume that there is also
another causality, that of freedom.
(b) Antithesis : there is no freedom ; everything in
the world takes place solely in accordance with
laws of nature.
(4) (a) Thesis :. there belongs to the world, either as its
part or as its cause, a being that is absolutely
necessary.
(b) Antithesis : an absolutely necessary being no-
where exists in the world, nor does it exist
outside the world as its cause.
The proof of the theses is^ j2ased,flq.ib^UMKtssibility of
the antitheseSjj.s_thejpro£f of the antitheses is based on the
mpossiblETy of the theses. It is often said that the
arguments for the theses depend upon the notion that the
conception of infinity involves a contradiction. But this
Kant explicitly denies. Not all infinite series involve a
contradiction, but only those which are, as Kant says,
regressive. Really the contradiction arises from the
attempt to apply the notion of infinity to the work of the
understanding. If we agree with Kant that knowledge
implies both universality and individuality, both a rule and
a definite starting-point, then the theses are insisting on
the need for a definite starting-point, and the antitheses on
complete universality. This comes out in an interesting
note which Kant, in the second edition, appended to the
argument for the second part of the thesis of the First
Antinomy, that the world is limited in space.
" An indeterminate quantum can be intuited as a whole
when it is such that though enclosed within limits we do
146 KANT
not require to construct its totality through measurement,
that is, through the successive synthesis of its parts. For
the limits, in cutting off anything further, themselves
determine its completeness."1

Such an intuition of wholeness is implied in all definite

spatial determination, and therefore in all knowledge of
existence in space, and a complete determination of
existence must have the same definite unity as its founda-
tion. That is the case for the thesis. The case for the
antithesis is clear enough. For all temporal and spatial
determinations imply the possibility of going beyond what
is given. As Kant puts the matter :

" Since this unity of reason involves a synthesis accord-

ing to rules, it must conform to the understanding : and
yet as demanding absolute unity of synthesis it must at the
same time harmonize with reason. But the conditions of
this unity are such that when it is adequate to reason it is
too great for the understanding, and when suited to the
understanding too small for reason." 2

Before he considers the solution of these antinomies

Kant has a section entitled " The Interest of Reason in
these Conflicts," which brings out how Kant felt himself
concerned with both sides of the conflict.

" We find on the side of dogmatism, that is, of the

thesis :
" First, a certain practical interest in which every right-
thinking man, if he has understanding of what truly
concerns him, heartily shares. That the world has a
beginning, that every thinking self is of simple and
therefore indestructible nature, that it is free in its
voluntary actions and raised above the compulsion of
nature, and finally that all order in the things constituting
the world is due to a primordial being, from which every-
1
B 456. * A 422 ; B 450.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 147
thing derives its unity and purposive causations—these
are so many foundation-stones of morals and religion.
The antithesis robs us of all these supports, or at least
appears to do so." 1

The thesis has also a speculative interest, in that it seems

to present a world more completely intelligible.
On the other hand, " in compensation, empiricism," the
side of the antitheses,

" yields advantages to the speculative interest of reason,

which are very attractive and far surpass those which
dogmatic teaching bearing on the ideas of reason can offer.
According to the principle of empiricism, the understanding
is always on its own proper ground, namely, the field of
genuinely possible experiences, investigating their laws,
and by means of these laws affording indefinite extension
to the sure and comprehensible knowledge which it
supplies. Here every object, both in itself and in its
relations, can and ought to be represented in intuition, or
at least in concepts for which the corresponding images
can be clearly and distinctly provided in given similar
intuitions. There is no necessity to leave the chain of the
natural order and to resort to ideas, the objects of which
are not known, because, as mere thought entities, they can
never be given. Indeed the understanding is not permitted
to leave its proper business, and under the pretence of
having brought it to completion to pass over into the
sphere of reason and of transcendent concepts—a sphere in
which it is no longer necessary for it to observe and
investigate in accordance with the laws of nature, but only
to think and to invent, in the assurance that it cannot be
refuted by the facts of nature, not being bound by the
evidence which they yield, but presuming to pass them by
or even so subordinate them to a higher authority, namely,
that of pure reason.
" The empiricist will never allow, therefore, that any
1
A 466 ; B 494.
14« KANT
epoch of nature is to be taken as the absolutely first, or
that any limit of his insight into the extent of nature is to
be regarded as the widest possible. Nor does he permit
any transition from the objects of nature—which he can
analyse through observation and mathematics, and syn-
thetically determine in intuition (the extended)—to those
which neither sense nor imagination can ever represent
in concreto (the simple). Nor will he admit the legitimacy
of assuming in nature herself any power that operates
independently of the laws of nature (freedom), and so of
encroaching upon the business of the understanding, which
is that of investigating, according to necessary rules, the
origin of appearances. And, lastly, he will not grant that
a cause ought even to be sought outside nature in an
original being. We know nothing but nature, since it alone
can present objects to us and instruct us in regard to their
laws." 1

Such is the conflict which the antinomies present. Its

solution, Kant affirms, is the doctrine of Transcendental or
Critical idealism. Were objects things in themselves, then
one or other of the contradictory propositions would have
to be true. Critical idealism rescues us from this dilemma
by affirming in the first place, in regard to the first two
antinomies, that inasmuch as space and time are forms of
our intuition, pertaining to things as they appear and not
to things as they are, the categories of space and time do
not apply to an object thought of as going beyond
experience ; and in the second place, in regard to the third
and fourth antinomies, that both thesis and antithesis may
be true if the one refers to things in themselves and the
other to things as they appear.
The application of this doctrine to the first two anti-
nomies is not hard to understand.

" Since no maximum of the series of conditions in a

sensible world, regarded as a thing in itself, is given through
1
A 468- 7 0 ; B 496-8.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 149
the cosmological principle of totality, but can only be
•set as a task that calls for regress in the series of conditions,
the principle of pure reason has to be amended in these
terms ; and it thus preserves its validity, not indeed as the
axiom that we think the totality as actually in the object,
but as a problem for the understanding, and therefore for
the subject, leaving it to undertake and to carry on, in
accordance with the completeness prescribed by the idea,
the regress in the series of conditions of any given
conditioned."1

We must think then of space and time as infinitely

extensible and infinitely divisible, but not as infinitely ex-
tended or divided things. For they are both phenomenal,
constituted by the relation between mind and reality which
Kant calls appearance and our extending or dividing
them is part of this their phenomenal nature.
But when we come to consider the third and fourth Anti-
nomies, the satisfactoriness of the solution provided by
Critical idealism depends on the meaning we give to the
distinction between appearances and things in themselves.
Kant states his doctrine thus, in a passage of which I
have already quoted part in a previous chapter :

" The faculty of sensible intuition is strictly only a

receptivity, or capacity of being affected in a certain
manner with representations, the relation of which to one
another is a pure intuition of space and of time (mere forms
of our sensibility), and which in so far as they are connected
in this manner in space and time, and are determinable
according to laws of the unity of experience, are entitled
objects. The non-sensible cause of these representations is
completely unknown to us, and cannot, therefore, be
intuited by us as object. For such an object would have
to be represented as neither in space nor in time (those
being merely conditions of sensible representation), and
apart from such conditions we cannot think any intuition.
»A 5 0 8 ; B 5 3 6 .
i5o KANT
We may, however, entitle the purely intelligible cause of
appearances in general the transcendental object, but-
merely in order to have something corresponding to
sensibility viewed as a receptivity. To this transcendental
object we can ascribe the whole extent and causation of
our possible perceptions, and can say that it is given in
itselfprior to all experience. But the_ appearances, while
c^forrmng to it. amJiQi-^äK&aJjLtliemselyes. 5ut_only~in
this experience, being mere representatron^wMdi__as
perceptions can mark ouLareal object only in so far as the
perception connects with all others according to_lhe rules
of the unity of experience. Thus we can say that the real
trmi^s~5rpast~time are given in the transcendental object
of experience : but they are objects for me, and real only
in so far as I represent to myself (either by the light of
history or by the guiding clues of causes and effects) that a
regressive series of possible perceptions in accordance with
empirical laws, in a word, that the course of the world
conducts us to a past-time series as condition of the present
time—a series, however, which can be represented as actual,
not in itself but only in the connexion of possible experi-
ence. Accordingly, all events which have taken place in
the immense periods that have preceded my own existence r
really mean nothing but the possibility of extending the
chain of experience from the present perception back to,
the conditions which determine this perception in respect/
to time." 1 /—J

Critical idealism, thereiore. implies that we can only

know things in terms of perceiving them ; that perception
Is a"~jc)int result fTEatwe can never get behind that joint
result to apprehend the independent nature of the factors
which produce it ; but that we can distinguish variations
in the joint result as due to one or other of the two factors,
ourselves or things ; and that we do this by the principle
of causation or necessary determination in time. Our
distinction of variations as subjective or objective is based
1
A 494-495; B 522-523.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 151
throughout on the principle that their explanation is to be
found in what preceded them.
It follows from this that the principle of causation can
have no exception in experience; that once we admitted
an appearance which was not determined one way or the
other in time, our distinction of subjective and objective
would be gone, and that, therefore, this at least in the
antithesis is true : " Everything in this world takes place
in accordance with the laws of nature." But it follows also
that causation conceived of as necessary determination in
time is not a complete account of what happens. For it is
not concerned with the appearance as the result of that
which is not appearance, but only with the relation of one
appearance to another. There are, therefore, two senses
in which we can talk of causation, and, therefore, this at
least in the thesis is true : " Causality in accordance with
laws of nature is not the only causality from which the
appearances of the world can one and all be derived. To
explain these appearances it is necessary to assume that
there is also another causality."

" Is it a truly disjunctive proposition," says Kant," to say

that every effect in the world must arise either from nature
or from freedom: or must we not rather say that in one and
the same event, in different relations, both can be found?
That all events in the sensible world stand in thorough-
going connexion in accordance with unchangeable laws of
nature is an established principle of the Transcendental
Analytic, and allows of no exception. The question,
therefore, can only be whether freedom is completely
excluded by this inviolable rule, or whether an effect,
notwithstanding its being thus determined in accordance
with nature, may not at the same time be grounded in
freedom. The common but fallacious presupposition of
this absolute reality of appearances here manifests its
injurious influence to the confounding of reason. For if
appearances are things in themselves, freedom cannot be
upheld. Nature will then be the complete and sufficient
 152 KANT
determining cause of every event. The condition of the
event will be such as can be found only in the series of
appearances : both it and its effect will be necessary in
accordance with the law of nature. If, on the other hand,
appearances are not taken for more than they actually are ;
if they are viewed not as things in themselves but merely
as representations, connected according to empirical laws,
they must themselves have grounds which are not
appearances. The effects of such an intelligible cause
appear and accordingly can be determined through other
appearances, but its causality is not so determined. While
the effects are to be found in the series of empirical condi-
tions, the intelligible cause, together with its causality, is
outside the series. Thus the effect may be regarded as free
in respect of its intelligible cause, and at the same time in
respect of appearances as resulting from them according
to the necessity of nature. . . .
* Whatever in an object of the senses is not itself
appearance, I entitle intelligible\ If, therefore, that which
in the sensible world must be regarded as appearance has
in itself a faculty which is not an object of sensible intuition,
but through which it can be the cause of appearances, the
causality of this being can be regarded from two points of
view. Regarded as the causality of a thing in itself, it is
intelligible in its action ; regarded as the causality of an
appearance in the world of sense, it is sensible in its effects.
We should, therefore, have to form both an empirical and
an intellectual concept of the faculty of such a subject, and
to regard both as referring to one and the same effect. This
twofold manner of conceiving the faculty possessed by an
object of the senses does not contradict any of the concepts
which we have to form of appearances and of a possible
experience. For since they are not things in themselves,
they must rest upon a transcendental object which deter-
mines them as mere representations : and consequently
there is nothing to prevent us from ascribing to this
transcendental object, besides the quality in terms of
which it appears, a causality which is not appearance,
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 153
although its effect is to be met with in appearance. Every
efficient cause must have a character, that is, a law of its
causality, without which it would hot be a cause. On the
above supposition we should, therefore, in a subject
belonging to the sensible world have, first, an empirical
character, whereby its actions, as appearances, stand in
thoroughgoing connexion with other appearances, in
accordance with unvarying laws of nature. And since
these actions can be derived from the other appearances,
they constitute together with them a single series in the
order of nature. Secondly, we should have to allow the
subject an intelligible character, by which it is indeed the
cause of those same actions in their quality as appearances,
but which does not itself stand under any conditions of
sensibility, and is not itself appearance. We can entitle
the former the character of the thing in the field of
appearance, and the latter its character as thing in
itself. . . .
" In its empirical character, therefore, this subject, as
appearance, would have to conform to all the laws of
causal determination. . . . In its intelligible character
(though we can only have a general concept of that
character) this same subject must be considered to be free
from all influence of sensibility and from all determination
through appearances.''1

Such is Kant's solution of the antinomy between

causality and freedom. He imagines that by his separation
of the two spheres of the intelligible and the sensible he
can preserve the claims -of both science and morality
unimpaired. He is prepared to say that if we regard man
scientifically, as he says, from the point of view of anthro-
pology, we must hold that had we sufficient knowledge we
could predict all his actions, and that yet when we regard
him morally, we may say that he ought not to have done
certain things, and that " ought " must imply " need not."
The difficulty is that if the notion of moral responsibility
1
A 536-40 ; B 564-8.
154 KANT
is to be real, the intelligible sphere must affect the sensible.
Kant is entirely prepared that it should, and yet to maintain
that the thoroughgoing determination of natural law is not
thereby affected.
There are those who find this solution satisfactory. But
if it assumes that man's actions viewed phenomenally are
in principle entirely predictable, it is hard to see how there
can be any real meaning in moral freedom. Kant is bound
to say that all action is subject to the law of causation
because all actions can be part of a phenomenal world, and
everything phenomenal must be determinable. However
free my action may appear to be, someone else observing
it must be able to say : " That change I observe is not a
change in me the observer, but in that which (in this case
him whom) I am observing," and that distinction must
always be governed by a rule. There must be a reason why
the observer says this is due to A's action, not to his own
observing; and he can only say that because it exhibits a
character, some kind of universality.
We can, therefore, at once rule out absolutely undeter-
mined action. But we have not thereby ruled out a
universality which admits of variety, nor implied a
character which can in all its details be predicted or
necessitated. Indeed, if we consider more carefully the
principles on which subjective apprehending and the object
apprehended are distinguished, we realize that conscious-
ness of my own purposes and activity as not part of the
objective, phenomenally determined, world enters into the
distinction. We shall see when we come to the Critique
of Judgement, that Kant there distinguishes between the
general nature of determination which is implied in the
causal principle and the different kinds of determination
which are compatible with it and are discovered and
distinguished empirically, and that he takes for granted
that we can recognize purposive or teleological as well as
mechanical causation. He is thereby able to reach a
solution of this antinomy which is more satisfactory than
that given in the first Critique.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 155
The third and concluding portion of the Dialectic—The
Ideal of Pure Reason—is divided into two parts. The first
is a criticism of proofs of the existence of God ; the second
is an appendix entitled " The Regulative Employment
of the Ideas of Pure Reason." In the former part Kant
argues that reason produces a conception of its ideal, an
individual possessing all fullness of reality and perfection,
but can find no means of establishing the existence of such
an ideal: in the second he shows how the reason is actually
operative in setting up regulative ideals for the understand-
ing in the task science sets before itself.
That the relation between these two conceptions of the
task of reason is not more clearly conceived by Kant is
due to the persistence in his thought of the view that reason
can and does work in entire independence of sensible
experience. When he is working out this line of thought
he is ready to follow Baumgarten in his conception of the
nature of God as an Ens realissimum—a conception in
which fullness of reality and moral perfection are assumed
to be the same. There can, he holds, be no intellectual
proof of the existence of God so conceived. But if we find,
as Kant thinks we do find, that morality can give us
assurance of the existence of God ; for the nature of the
God so assured we can rely on the conception furnished by
speculative reason.

" Thus, while for the merely speculative employment of

reason the supreme being remains a mere ideal, it is yet
an ideal without a flaw, a concept which completes and
crowns the whole of human knowledge. Its objective
reality cannot indeed be proved, but also cannot be dis-
proved, by merely speculative reason. If, then, there
should be a moral theology that can make good this
deficiency, transcendental theology, which before was
problematical only, will prove itself indispensable in
determining the concept of this supreme being and in
constantly testing reason, which is so often deceived by
sensibility, and which is frequently out of harmony with
156 KANT
its own ideas. Necessity, infinity, unity, existence outside
the world (and not as world-soul), eternity as free from the
conditions of time, omnipresence as free from conditions
of space, omnipotence, etc., are purely transcendental
predicates, and for this rea?on the purified concepts of
them, which every theology finds so indispensable, are
only to be obtained from transcendental theology."1

But when we turn to the appendix we find that reason

is described as giving to science " the principles of homo-
geneity, specification, and continuity of forms." The ideal
which thinking on those lines would produce would be
what might be called a conception of the universe com-
pletely intelligible for science, not a being which anyone
would be inclined to worship.
Kant seems to waver between two ideas of reason. The
one would seem to imply that there are two species of
reason, the speculative and the practical; the function of
the first being to elaborate the concept of the uncondi-
tioned, of the second to issue imperatives. The other view
seems to involve that reason strictly conceived, i.e. reason
as contrasted with the understanding, is always practical.
According to the second view, the same practical reason
which issues categorical imperatives in conduct prescribes
to and commands the understanding.
We have seen that Kant has already found the reality
of concepts to consist, not in that which is apprehended, but
in an apprehending and uniting activity, in the principles
or rules. The categories are " functions of unity ", the
principles of the pure understanding have their origin not
in any apprehended content alone, nor alone in pure
mental activity working on nothing, but in the systema-
tically unifying activity of the mind applied to the appre-
hended a priori forms of space and time. Kant is going,
in the second Critique, to describe reason as self-legislation,
as the source of laws ; and that is his fundamental concep-
tion of its nature. But there must be a situation to which
1
A 641-2 ; B 669-70.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON
these laws are to apply before the laws themselves can
come into being. If this conception of reason is to be
maintained; reason is always practical. We are apt to
forget that knowledge is an activity, and that, therefore,
it is practical and for its attainment needs ideals as much
as any other kind of activity.
The question, then, with which this last section of the
Dialectic is concerned, is : What is the objectivity implied
in ideals ? How far does the fact that the mind is
governed, and rightly governed, by ideals imply that these
ideals are based on reality, that reality is such that the
ideals are capable of fulfilment ? The difference between
the section on the proofs of the existence of God and the
Appendix'will then be that the first is concerned with the
ideals of conduct in general and the second with the more
restricted ideals of knowledge, and we shall have to
abandon the implication of the first part that there is an
ideal of reason as such.
The main point in Kant's criticism of the proofs of the
existence of God is that all such so-called proofs are
eventually dependent on one of them, the ontological
proof, and if we consider what is involved in this we can
see the mistaken character of the criticism which has been
passed on this part of the Critique by many of Kant's
successors, from Hegel downwards. These refutations of
the proofs of the existence of God, it is urged, are based on
Kant's subjectivism ; only a false divorce between know-
ledge and reality could argue that reason gives us no clue
to the nature of reality. We are, in knowing, coming to
know something of the nature of reality, and the oneness
of reality is, after all, implied in the possibility of knowledge,
even of knowledge of the way things appear. But that
Kant's criticisms of the proofs of the existence of God are
not based on subjectivism is clear from the striking
difference in the way in which he treats the first two
proofs, the ontological and the cosmological, and the way
in which he treats the argument from design, which he calls
his physico-theological proof. He does not say that the
158 KANT
design and order we discover in the world are only appear-
ance and subjective. That argument never enters his head.

" This world presents to us so immeasurable a stage of

variety, order, purposiveness, and beauty, as displayed
alike in its infinite extent and in the unlimited divisibility
of its parts, that even with such knowledge, as our weak
understanding can acquire of it, we are brought face to
face with so many marvels immeasurably great, that all
speech loses its force, all numbers their power to measure,
our thoughts themselves all definition, and that our
judgement of the world resolves itself with an amazement
which is speechless, and only the more eloquent upon that
account." 1

Kant's objection to the argument from design is not that

the facts upon which it relies are not facts, but that it goes
beyond them ; that it argues that this design and beauty
could only be caused by an external agent, and that, it
ascribes to that agent, not power corresponding to the
design and order actually visible in the world, but much
more. " Since we cannot, as regards causality, dispense
with an ultimate and supreme being, what is there to
prevent us ascribing to it a degree of perfection that sets
it above everything else that is possible ? " 2 But that
involves the identification of ultimate reality and perfection
which is the nerve of the ontological proof. We may argue
" to the existence of a cause proportional to the order and
purposiveness everywhere observable throughout the
world," but that is not to demonstrate that " the things in
the world would not of themselves be capable of such order
and harmony, in accordance with universal laws, if they
were not in their substance the product of supreme wisdom."3
Similarly the cosmological proof starts with existence as
we know it, conditioned and dependent on other existence,
and transforms an argument that the whole of reality
cannot be so conditioned into an argument that this
1 2 a
A 622 ; B 650. A 623 ; B 651. A 627 ; B 655.
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 159
conditioned world which we know must be dependent upon
an unconditioned necessary being j it then argues that a
being which is necessary and unconditioned must exist in
its own right, and therefore there must be a being whose
nature is such that it involves its own existence. This is
obviously the ontological proof again.
The ontological proof, then, is for Kant the real stone of
stumbling, and if we consider what is really at issue in
these arguments we can see that this must be so. Baum-
garten's Ens realissimum, which Kant takes over as the
basis of the ontological argument, involves a confounding
of the notions of reality and perfection, in a way which
robs both conceptions of their real meaning. The real issue
in all proofs of the existence of God is whether there is in
reality, apart from us, anything answering to our moral
ideals and aspirations. If by God we mean nothing more
than all reality, of course we can prove the existence of
God. What we want to know is not whether reality is
real or that what exists exists, but whether the fundamental
nature of the world with which we are confronted is seen
in its nature as discovered by science or in the ideals which
guide our conduct—in the starry heavens above or in the
moral law within. But if what ought to be is as such
different from what is, then it is impossible to argue from
a conceived perfection to its existence. This is Kant's
answer to the ontological proof. If we can ask whether a
conceived ideal exists or is realized, the very question
involves that what we conceive is conceived apart from its
existence, and, therefore,, that we cannot argue that
existence is part of its nature as conceived.
If we try to evade this objection by arguing that while,
of course, wishes are no guarantee as to facts, it is implied
in the nature of a pure ideal that it is capable of realization,
and that, therefore, the world is not indifferent or alien to
it, Kant is ready to accept an argument of that sort. But
that is what he calls moral, not speculative, theology. If
we begin with considering the nature of morality, we can
assure ourselves that there are necessary ideals imposed upon
 i6o KANT
us by reason, which are not merely the outcome of our
inclinations or tastes. It is indeed the supreme function,
of reason to impose such ideals upon us, and to
act in the light of such ideals is to assume that they
are realizable. But that, Kant argues, is not first to
know that God exists and then to act because of that
knowledge, but to begin with the ideals and to postulate
their reality.
Kant sums up his position in the matter by what has
been called the doctrine of "-as if," in a passage which
looks back to the whole of the Dialectic :

" In conformity with these ideas as principles we shall—

first, in psychology, under the guidance of inner experi-
ence, connect all the appearances, all the actions and
receptivity of our mind, as if the mind were a simple
substance which persists with personal identity (in this life
at least), while its states, to which those of the body belong
only as outer conditions, are in continual change. Secondly,
in cosmology, we must follow up the conditions of both
inner and outer natural appearances, in an inquiry which
is never to be regarded as allowing of completion, just as if
the series of appearances were in itself endless, without any
first or supreme member. We need not, in so doing, deny
that outside all appearances there are purely intelligible
grounds of the appearances : but as we have no knowledge
of them whatsoever, we must never attempt to make use
of them in our explanations of nature. Thirdly, and
finally, in the domain of theology, we must view everything
that can belong to the context of possible experience as if
this experience formed an absolute but, at the same time,
completely dependent and sensibly conditioned unity, and
yet also, at the same time, as if the sum of all appearance
(the sensible world itself) had a single, highest, and all-
sufficient ground beyond itself, namely, a self-subsistent,
original creative reason. For it is in the light of this idea
of a creative reason that we so guide the empirical employ-
ment of our reason as to secure its greatest possible
 THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 161
extension—that is, by viewing all objects as if they drew
their origin from such an archetype." 1

This is the way in which Kant has " found it necessary

to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith."2 But
it is becoming clear that such faith is not " that faculty
by which we believe what we otherwise know to be untrue,"
but is becoming identified with reason itself, viewed as a
practical creative activity. But Kant's final view of the
nature of reason, as of metaphysics, can only be made clear
after we have examined his account of its formation in
conduct and in art, that is, after we have considered the
Critique of Practical Reason and the Critique of Judgement.
1
A 672 ; B 701. * B xxx.
 IV

KANT'S ETHICS

(i) ETHICAL THEORY

W E saw in the last chapter that the original plan of

the Critique of Pure Reason included an inquiry into
the principles of ethics. This part of the programme
of Criticism, for which room was not found in the
first Critique, was executed in two works, the one,
the Critique of Practical Reason, published in 1788,
and a smaller preliminary work, entitled Fundamental
Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals, published in
1785. These works being part of the Critical programme,
are concerned only with the a priori element in ethics.
Additional light is thrown on Kant's views on ethics both
in the Metaphysic of Morals, a work divided into two
parts—Metaphysical First Principles of Jurisprudence, and
Metaphysical First Principles of Ethics—and published in
1797, and the Anthropology, published in 1798, as well as
in his Religion Within the Bounds of Reason Alone, published
in 1793. Before anything is said about the doctrine as
expounded in the two first-mentioned works, it may be
useful to make some preliminary observations on Kant's
attitude to moral questions.
In Chapter II I traced the influences which went to form
Kant's philosophy, and mentioned the fact of Rousseau's
influence on Kant's appreciation of moral problems. It is
worth while to say something in greater detail about that
influence. Kant's appreciation of and reverence for
Rousseau is one of the most remarkable things about him.
No two eighteenth-century characters at first sight seem
more unlike than the careful, meticulous, respectable
162
 KANT'S ETHICS 163
philosopher of Königsberg and the brilliant, wayward
Frenchman. Kant was perhaps alone of his contemporaries
in the importance he attached to Rousseau as a philosopher.
He appreciated with others his charm, and the beauty of
his style. " I have to go on reading Rousseau," he said,
" until the beauty of his style no longer gets in my way, and
I can apply my mind to him." " The first impression
which a reader, who reads from other motives than
idleness and a desire to pass the time, gets from the
writings of J. J. Rousseau, is that he possessed a combina-
tion of uncommon sharp-sightedness, a noble ardour of
genius, and a soul full of feeling in as high a degree as
perhaps any other writer of any age or people."1 The
second impression Kant notes, is the paradoxical and
strangle nature of his views. But the final impression which
Rousseau made on Kant was his greatness as a philosopher.
He couples his name with that of Newton. " Newton saw
for the first time order and regularity combined with
simplicity, where before him disorder and scattered
diversity were discoverable, and since then the comets
move in geometrical paths; Rousseau discovered for the
••first .time, under the diversity of the forms assumed by
humanity, the deeply hidden nature of man and the
hidden law according to which anticipation is verified by
observation."2
This coupling of Rousseau with Newton is of great
significance. For much speculation in moral questions in
the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was inspired
by a desire to put our insight into man and society on a
scientific basis after the manner of Newton. But such
speculation merely proposed to apply the principles and
methods of the physical sciences to conduct. Utilitarian-
ism was the most outstanding of such theories. Kant,
from first to last, thinks of the moral world as having its
own laws and principles, very different from those of the
world of natural science. Not that Kant thought that man
1
8
Kant's Werke. Hartenstein, vol. viii. p. 628.
Op. cü., p. 630.
i64 KANT
was not a part of the natural world, or that there was no
such science as anthropology. But he made, as we shah
see, a distinction between the world of phenomenal fact and
the world of duty or what ought to be, and his moral
theory is an account of how man belongs to both those
worlds. If the key to the understanding of the phenomenal
world has been found by Newton, the key to the other,
Kant thought, had been found by Rousseau. For Rousseau
was the first to establish the essential connexion between
duty and freedom. That is the special doctrine which
Kant found in Rousseau and made his own. Before
Rousseau, it was taken for granted that law and freedom
were opposed. Rousseau, starting with the principle of
moral freedom, deduces law; and there is a close connexion
between Rousseau's distinction of the general and the
particular will and Kant's distinction of the autonomous
and heteronomous self.
There is another remark also that Kant makes about
Rousseau which is enlightening. He says that he had
been apt to take great pride in his character of learned
man, and almost to regard himself because of his intellectual
attainments as a superior person. " Rousseau put me
right; this blinded prejudice disappeared. I learned to
honour men, and I should regard myself as much more
useless than a common labourer if I did not believe that
my work could accomplish something of worth to all in
restoring the rights of humanity." 1 Kant says he learnt
from Rousseau the dignity of the ordinary man. Kant's
moral philosophy is dominated by a belief in what may Jae
described as the simple goodness of the ordinary man. He
is prepared to stand or fall by the view that what matters
in conduct is attainable by every one, that right conduct is
not the privilege of the superior person or of education and
learning. A typical instance of how this attitude affects
his moral philosophy is found in a note to the Preface of
the second Critique. '' A reviewer who wanted to find some
fault with this work has put the truth better, perhaps, than
1
Op. cit., p . 624.
 KANT'S ETHICS 165
he thought, when he says that no new principle of morahty
is set forth in it, but only a new formula. But who would
think of introducing a new principle of all morality, and
making himself as it were the first discoverer of it, just as
if all the world before him were ignorant what duty was or
had been in thoroughgoing error ? " It is sometimes
supposed to be the business of the moral philosopher to
discover a criterion of right conduct, a principle which, if
put into the hands of those who can use it, will enable them
to tell, as they could not have done without it, what is
right and what is wrong. Kant's own doctrines are often
criticized as though they were intended to exhibit such a
principle, and failed. But nothing was further from
Kant's mind than to set forth any such principle or to
supersede the dictates of the moral judgement. The
business of moral, philosophy is to make clear to merTöie"
principles upon which they do act, not to tell them jdiat
they ought to do. This they can find out by_u§iQg..-tlifiir
reason for themselves, and only so.j
That does not mean that moral philosophy is useless,
any rnore than aesthetics is useless because it does not and
cannot say what things are beautiful, but only makes clear
to men what they are doing when they judge things to be
beautiful. But it means that for Kant moral philosophy
and aesthetics take moral judgements and aesthetic judge-
ments for granted. Not that we must assume ordinary
moral or aesthetic judgements to be necessarily right.
Thfey are often wrong ; but the way to put them right is to
do better wl;iat is done in moral judging or in aesthetic
judging, not to do something else, such as reflecting
philosophically upon the nature of such judging, however
important that something else may be. For there are
persons of profound moral insight and true moral judge-
inent who are very poor hands at philosophical reflexion.
They may have a highly developed practical reason
without much speculative power. Kant had the great
advantage of honouring a father and mother whom he knew
to be simpler, less clever, and less well educated than him-
 i66 KANT
self, but whom he would never have dreamt of supposing
to be, therefore, less good. And if he is to hold on to the
superior goodness of the unlettered saint, he must maintain
the reality and the independence of the practical reason.
That means that he is going to have nothing to do with
theories of moral action which regard it as an intellectual
understanding of what ought to be done set in motion by
some kind of irrational urge. Practical reason for Kant is
not reason plus practice, but the rational working of the
will itself.
Kant begins the Fundamental Principles of the Meta-
physic of Morals by insisting on the importance of the
distinction between the empirical and the rational part of
ethics. He is to be concerned in this work, and in the
Critique of Practical Reason, with the a priori or rational
part. But we shall not understand what he has to say
about this, any more than we can understand what he says
about the a priori elements of physics, unless we remember
that the rational element has to be supplemented by the
empirical. It will be remembered that Kant gave his
course of lectures on anthropology in order to ensure that
before his pupils considered the a priori elements in science
or conduct, they had been well confronted with the
empirical facts. But, as in the first Critique, so in the
Fundamental Principles and the second Critique, Kant is
so much occupied with establishing the reality and examin-
ing the validity of the a priori element, that his readers
sometimes imagine that he thought that there was nothing
else but the a priori element to be considered. He was
concerned with the a priori element and its place in science
and conduct; that was his particular business. But he
never considered that the empirical element in science and
conduct was not important. " It might deserve to be
considered," he says in the preface to the Fundamental
Principles, " whether pure philosophy in all its parts does
not require a man specially devoted to it, and whether it
would not be better for the whole business of science if
those who, to please the tastes of the public, are wont to
 KANT'S ETHICS 167
blend the rational and empirical elements together, mixed
in all sorts of proportions unknown to themselves, and who
call themselves independent thinkers, giving the name of
-minute philosophers to those who apply themselves to the
rational part only—if those, I say, were warned not to
carry on two employments together which differ widely in
the treatment they demand, for each of which perhaps a
talent is required, and the combination of which in one
person only produces bunglers. But I only ask here
whether the nature of science does not require that we
should always carefully separate the empirical from the
rational part, and prefix to physics proper (or empirical
physics) a metaphysic of nature, and to practical anthro-
pology a metaphysic of morals, which mast be carefully
cleared of everything empirical, so that we may know how
much can be accomplished by pure reason in both cases,
and from what sources it draws this, its a priori teaching,
and that whether the latter inquiry is conducted by all
moralists (whose name is legion), or only by some who feel
a calling thereto.
" As my concern here is with moral philosophy, I limit
the questions suggested to this : Whether it is not of the
utmost necessity to construct a pure moral philosophy,
perfectly cleared of everything which is only empirical and
which belongs to anthropology? For that such a philosophy
must be possible is evident from the common idea of duty
and of the moral laws. Every one must admit that if a
law is to have moral force, i.e. to be the basis of an
obligation, it must carry with it absolute necessity ; that,
for example, the precept, " Thou shalt not lie," is not valid
for man alone, as if other rational beings had no need to
observe i t ; and so with all the other moral laws properly
so called ; that therefore the basis of obligation must not
be sought in the nature of man, or in the circumstances
in the world in which he is placed, but a^priori simply in
the conception of pure reason ; and although any other
precept which is founded bri principles of mere experience
may be in certain respects universal, yet in so far as it rests
i68 KANT
even in the least degree on an empirical basis, perhaps only
as to a motive, such a precept, while it may be a practical
rule, can never be called a moral law.
• " Thus not only are moral laws with their principles
essentially distinguished from every other kind of practical
knowledge in which there is anything empirical, but all
moral philosophy rests wholly on its pure part. When
applied to man, it does not borrow the least thing from the
knowledge of man himself (anthropology), but gives laws
a priori to him as a Tational being. No doubt these laws
require judgement sharpened by experience-; in order on
the one hand to distinguish in what cases they are
applicable, and on the other to procure for them access
to the will of man and effectual influence on his con-
duct ; since man is acted on by so many inclinations
that, though capable of the idea of a pure practical
reason, he is not so easily able to make it effective in
concreto in his life."^
" Every one must admit, indeed ! " perhaps the reader
may exclaim. " Does not Kant begin by assuming one of
the most debated questions in moral theory ? "
But we shall find that Kant begins by showing that the
ordinary moral judgement assumes the existence of an
a priori element in morality. Just as in the first Critique
Kant takes for granted the distinction between a judge-
ment which claims to be true and a mere association of
ideas, and shows that such a distinction would be impossible
without the a priori, so he is going here to assume the
fundamental distinction between obligation and inclina-
tion, between saying " I ought to do so-and-so " and
saying " I want to do so-and-so," and is going to argue
that such a distinction would be impossible without the
a priori. Similarly the discovery of the a priori in the
third Critique starts with the assumption of the distinction
between the beautiful and the agreeable.
These distinctions every one must admit. Ingenious
theorists may try to explain them away, but they must
1 F. P., p. 389.
 KANT'S ETHICS 169
begin by admitting that obligation and inclination do not
mean the same thing.
The first section of the Fundamental Principles then
starts with an analysis of what Kant calls " the common
rational knowledge of morality." It sets out what we
assume in our ordinary moral judgements and moral
distinctions, in-order by reflexion to gain what Kant calls
a philosophical knowledge of morality. The heading to
this section, " Transition from the Common Rational
Knowledge of Morality to the Philosophical", is important.
For the contents of this section are often regarded as Kant's
main contribution to ethics. But the heading shows that
he is setting down what he thinks every one must admit
when he reflects on the nature of moral judgements. He
would himself have regarded this section as a mere
preliminary to the really important thing he has to say
when, at the end of the second section, he comes to the- •
conclusion that " the autonomy of the will is the supieme
p^ncipk of Jmor^ityT^ ''TTOQung'cä]^^ be con-
ceived in the world, or even out of it," the first section of
the Fundamental Principles begins, " which can be called
good without qualification, except a good will."^ The
fundamental proposition from which Kant starts is that
goodness has to do with willing; that if^olhgr.ihings are
called good, it is in relation to the will that they are
good. Good is directly an attribute of will and in-
directly of that which is willed. There is no object or
state or condition which, apart from will, can properly be
called good.
This has sometimes been taken to involve a subjective
viewofjgoodness, as though an action became gö6drecirase
we wUed it. Barnothing is furthef from Kant's thought
than to defend such a doctrine. He is concerned to
maintain that as the principle of objectivity in knowledge
is in the way we think, so the principle of objectivity in
conduct or in goodness is in the way we will. But to say
that, therefore, all willed actions are good, is as absurd as
1 F. P., p. 393.
FI
170 KANT
it would be to maintain that if truth is properly a quality
of judgement, then all judgements must be true.
'• The nature of the good will reveals itself in contrast
with incUnation or desires. Not that desires or inclinations
are necessarily bad; but they only get a moral character in
telation to will, and therefore the distinctive character oi
thfi..^ood will shine,^j)ut most clearly when ,i|i§^ggnj|i
gjojsJfctjivith fEfi3fisiJ'§§,ÄÄc " W e wiU take
the notion of duty, which includes that of a good will,
although implying certain subjective restrictions and
hindrances. These, however, far from concealing it or
rendering it unrecognizable, rather bring it out by con-
trast, and make it shine forth so much the brighter."^
The good will thus will be seen in an action done from duty^
But if there are nc/objects oTstates which are in themselves
of absolute :worth. then " an action done from duty derives
its "moral worth, not J^'mn Jhe^jpurpjo^e which- is.._tcLjje
ajttained by it, but from Ae maxim by which it is deter-
i|MQed, anid tEerefbre does not depend on the realization
of the object of the^action, but taerely on the principle oj
HpUiion Sy which the action has taken place, without regard
to^^jQl^feöLöf dSsifci It is clear from what precedes that
the purposes which we may have in view in our actions, or
their effects regarded as ends and springs of the will,
cannot give to actions any unconditional or moral worth.
In what, then, can their worth He, if it is not to consist in
the will and in reference to its expected effect ? It cannot
be anywhere but in the principle of the will without regard
to the ends which can be attained by the action. For the
will stands between its a priori principle, which is formal,
and its a posteriori springs which is niateriä|, as between
two roads, and as it must be determined by something, it
follows that it must be determined by the formal principle
of vohtioiLwhen an actionisdone^from,duty, in wjiich case
every material principle has been withdrawn from it."^
" SfflE^' then, " is the necessity ol acting from respect
for & law."^^ " The pre-eminent good which we call moral
1 F . P., p. 397. » F . P., p. 399-400.
 KANT'S ETHICS 171
Jaw consists in nothing but the conception of law in itself,
which certainly is only possible in a, rational being, in so
far as this conception and not the expected effect deter-
nvines the \ ^ . " ^
' "'\But what sort of law can that be, the conception of
whidi «iüSt deterinine the will, even without paying any
regard to the effect expected from it, in order that this will
may be called good absolutely and without qualification ?
As I have deprived this will of every impulse which could
arise in it from obedience to any law, there remains nothing
but the universal conformity of its actions to law in general,
which alone is to serve the wül as a principle, i.e. I am
never to act otherwise than so that I could also will that
my maxim should become a universallaw."^
So* fafare~we taken by~IKe~anaiysis of " the common
reason of man." The next section is entitled " Transition
from Popular Moral Philosophy to the Metaphysic of
Morals." | | is concerned to examine more closely the
i^^KMöh between inclination and duty, and to see what
consequences can be drawn from it. For the special
character of human will is that it finds itself with all kinds
of inclinations and interests and desires, that these cer-
tainly have their part in determining our will, and that in
duty we find a claim that we should act quite without
reference to such existing desires and interests. This con-
flict between the pure principle of volition and the desires
produces the motive of obligation which is characteristic
o-f.duj]^_^ajid the ngti^_of_jin.,iirjipaaiJxe.i^
gwi|lj A holy will entirely inspired by reason would be a
stranger to obligation, as would be a merely animal will.
Obligation and the imperative arise from the presence in us
of both determining principles of action. " A perfectly
good will would be equally subject to objective laws (viz.
laws of good), but could nofbe conceived as obliged thereby
to act lawfully, because of itself from its subjective con-
stitution it can only be determined by the conception of
good. Therefore, no imperatives hold for the Divine will,
> F. p., p. 401. = F. P., p. 402.
172 KANT
or in general for a holy will; ^o^gÄLis_hßre-^at-ef-pla£e,
because the volition is .already of itself necessarily in unison
with the law. Therefore imperaliyesLare only formulse to
express the relatiori~orobjective laws of all volition toT:lie
subjective impefiectlon of the will of This or that r^Honal
being, e.g'. the human will. "^
As ill the first Critique Kant is concerned to distinguish
judgement which may be true or false from association
which is neither, so here he is concerned with will which
may be good or bad as distinguished from mere inclination
which is neither. Willing is distinguished^ from desiring_bY
being governed bjTirpnnciple or reason. TCh£_desireOT
inclination is accepte3~ör rejected from some^jmse other
than TtselE It is this which distinguishes the-will as
rational from desire. But this rational action of the will
may at one and the same time determine desire or inclina-
tion, and yet be itself subordinated to an inclination. When
this happens we are acting under what Kant calls a hypo-
thetical imperative. If you want to achieve a certain
result, you must pursue a certain course, or take certain
measures ; the determining factor then is " the wanting to
achieve a certain result," and if the rriain fact that you
want it is taken as a sufficient reason for the action, it has
no moral value. Reason is here made subordinate to desire.i
Now Kant is clear, and surely rightly, that the reason foif
an action being right can never be that you happen to wanii
to do it or that it wül produce a result which you happen
to want. A man is not acting on principle if his principles
is that of a mair I once heard say : " What I say is7*Tp
hell with every one else! I'm going to enjoy life in my
own way." For if you make a principle of not acting^.on
principle, you will succeed in not acting on principle, and'
your actions wiU be determined by what you happen to
desire. Therefore, although in any decision of the will
reason is involved, it may be employed in the very different
ways of a servant or a master. We may give the name
reasonable to prudential or sensible actions, whose ultimate
> F. P., p. 414.
 KANT'S ETHICS 173
reason is itself an unscrutinized or irrational desire—any
action the final determining explanation of which is
expressed-in such terms as : " That is what I happen to
want," or " that is the way I am made." Actions may be
rationally designed to achieve results which themselves are
set to the will bj' casual desires. Or the result itself may be
approved as rational; and when we say that, we must mean
that there is such a thing as a choice which is rational, not
as leading to anything else, but just as having the character
of being rational
But rational has often been taken to mean only that
which gives a reason for something else; from which it
would follow that practical reason would be concerned with
means to ends, and there would be no sense in talking of
a rational end. If that were so, Hume would be right in
saying that "reason is and ought only to be the slave of
the passions." Kant's view maintains that rationality is
an absolute character of some willing.
What is perhaps most characteristic of Kant's account
of action is that he refuses to make the category of means
and^ends a full account of moral action. That is the point
of The distinction he makes between the categorical im-
perative, which he thinks implied in all moral actions, and
what he calls hypotheticsd imperatives.
Very many writers on moral questions have assumed
that rational choice as contrasted with merely impulsive
action always means, " I do this to achieve that," and have
made the difference between moral and immoral or non-
moral action to consist in the intrinsic superiority of the
" that." " I refrain from eating now in order that I may
enjoy my dinner better " is only prudential action. " I do
something now in order to gain a reward in Heaven," is
on such a theory moral action. Rewards in Heaven are
moral ends; enjoyed dinners on earth are not. "The
business of moral philosophy on this view is to find
an end sufficiently superior to be described- as the end
of all our actions. There will on this view be no
sense in saying that we ought to desire such an end, for
174 KANT
" ought " will only mean we ought to be rational rather
than irrational; and being rational will always mean taking
the right means to the end. Such theories, therefore, have
to show that there is a supreme end which we are always
seeking. This view assumes what Kant calls an " asser-
torial imperative," which says not, " / / you want so-
and-so, then do this," but, " Since you want to be
happy, then do this." Moral conduct, then, is defended
on some such lines as those suggested in :

" Solid joys and lasting treasure

None but Zion's children know."

Kan^eje^ts^ll^views of a supreme end, or summum

bonum, if that be regarded as what determines action. He
indeed points out that happiness is far too vague a con-
ception to be of any use as an end in this sense. As we
shall see, he thinks that there is a rational end for human
action, but he insists that such an end is the consequence
of the moral law, and must not, therefore, be regarded as
the determining principle of action.

" The notion of happiness is so indefinite that although

every man wishes to attain it, yet he never can say defi-
nitely and consistently what it is that he really wishes and
wills. The reason of this is that all the elements which
belongJ;o ^
i.e. they must be borrowed from experience, and neverthe-
less the idea of happiness requires an absolute whole, a
maximum ofwelfare in my present and all future circum-
stances." 1
The determining principle of goodness is in the will, and
therefore 5i the will's rationality. The truly rational will
commands categorically; for its rationality, not its reason-
ableness as a means to something else, but its intrinsic
rationality is what determines it as good.
1
F. p., p. 418.
 KANT'S ETHICS 175
We have, therefore, Kant says, to inquire into the
possibility of a categorical imperative, and " we_>yillJirst
inquire whether the mere conception of a categorical
imperative "iriay 'nor perhaps supp^^^ us also wiffi^'t^^
formula of it, containing the proposition which alone can
be a categorical imperative; for even if we know the tenor
of such an absolute command, yet how it is possible will
require further special and laborious study, which we
postpone to the last section." ^
But as we have seen already, the formula of the cate-
gorical imperative can only be derived from " the principles
of its volition," i.e. its rationality. The inost obvious mark
of the rationality of the principle of^^EjEi^is its univer-
sality rärid Kant at this stage of his thought identifies the
two. " There remains nothing but the general statement
that the maxim should conform to a universal law, and it
is this conformity alone that the imperative properly
represents as necessary. There is, therefore, but__one
Categorical imperative, namely tlas^i__Act oniy,.on^Jhai
thäxim wnsrebyjhou canst at the same time will that it
should become a universal law."^ T^s_isjhe first formula-
tion of the categorical imperative. But as this formula has
been reached by seeing that the principle of the will itself
is the only thing which has absolute worth, or, in Kant's
words, that " rational nature is an end in itself," we may
express what isTeaHyThe säine^föimülärtri"äsfecond way:
" So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person
or in that of any other, in every case as an end as well,
and never as means only." ^
" This principle, that humanity and generally every
rational nature is ari end in itself (which is the supreme
limiting "condition of every man's freedom of action) is
not borrowed from experience, firstly, because it is univer-
sal, applying as it does to all rational beings whatever, and
experience is not capable of determining anything about
them ; secondly, because it does not present Jiurrtanity as
an end to men (subjectively), that is as an object which
' F. p., p. 420. « F. p., p. 421. ' F. p., p. 429.
176 KANT
men do of themselves actually adopt as an end, but as an
objective end, which must as a law constitute the supreme
limiting condition of all our subjective ends, let them be
what they will; it must therefore spring from pure reason.
In fact, the objective principle.of all practical legislation
lies (according to the first principle) in the rule and its form
of universality which makes it capable of being a law (say,
for example, a law of nature) ; but the subjective principle
is in the end; now by the second principle the subject of
all ends is each rational being, inasmuch as it is an end in
itself. Hence follows the third practical principle of the
will, which is the ultimate condition of its harmony with
the universal practical reason, viz. : the idea of the will of
every rational being as a universally legislative will. On this
principle all maxims are rejected which are inconsistent
with the will being itself universal legislator. Thus the
will is not subject simply to the law, but so subject that
it must be regarded as itself giving the law, and on this
ground only, subject to the law (of which it can regard
itself as the author)." 1
Though,„the..second formulation of the categorical
imperative is based on the conception of an end, while the
first is based on the conception of law, this does not mean
that Kant reverts to the use of the category of means and
end. For humanity as an end is not something we start
by wanting, to the attainment of which all our actions are
but means. It is, as Kant afterwards says, an end which is
itself a duty. The two first formulations of the categorical
imperative are supplementary rather than inconsistent.
The nature of the rational will is not adequately expressed
in the obedience to law as such-, nor in the pursuit of an
end. It has in itself both elements, and the third-formu-
lation—the conception of ji will which imposes ends on
it^elfTs~|E~ä|tempt to combine them both.
The mutual implication of these three formulations
of the categorical imperative is not as simple as Kant
apparently supposes it to be. Kant is using the word
1
F . P., pp. 430-1.
 KANT'S ETHICS 177
" universal" in two senses. He J[.nds in willing a
distinction betw~een~wlrät~~he ca.lls a purpose of reason
and a purpose prescribed by inclination. The purpose of
reason is a universal purpose. That is the first meaning
of the word. But he also considers it a characteristic of
rational willing that we regard ourselves as responsible to
others, as others are responsible to us. Such willing is
universal because it is willed as universally applicable.
That is the second meaning.
On either meaning moral action for Kant is acting on a
principle which the agent sets himself. _If he is really doing
that, his action is moral; if the principle be set riöFBytEe
man's rational will, but by his desires or interests, then the
wiiris perverted and what Kant calls heteronomous.
", Looking back now on all previous attempts to discover
the principles of morality, we need not wonder why they
all failed. It was seen that man was bound to laws by
duty, but it was not observed that the laws to which he is
Subject are only those of his own giving, though at the same
time they are universal, and that he is only bound to act in
conformity with his own will; a will, however, which is
designed by nature to give universal laws. For.\vhen one
has conceived man only as subject to a law (no matter
what), then this law required some interest, either by way
of attention or constraint, since it does not originate as a
law from his own will, but this will was according to a law
obliged by something else to act in a certain way. Now by
this necessary consequence all the labour spent in-finding
a supreme principle of duty was irrevocably lost. For men
never elicited duty, but only a necessity for acting from a
certain interest. Whether this interest was private or
otherwise, in any case the imperative must be conditional,
and could not by any means be capable of being a moral
command. I will therefore_call this the principle of the
Autonomy of the will, in contrast with every other which
I accordingly reckon as Heteronomy."^
"KaritTias one further point to make before he goes on to
» F. p . , pp. 432-3.
178 KANT
consider in the last section how this principle of autonomy is
possible. From the three formulations put together, Kant
derives jret a fourth and final one : " A rational being must
always regard himself as giving laws either as member or as
sovereign in a kingdom of ends which is rendered possible
by the freedom of the,will-"1
" The conception of every rational being as one which
must consider itself as giving in all the maxims of its will
universal laws, so as to judge itself and its actions from
this point of view—this conception leads to another which
depends upon it and is very fruitful, namely, that of a
kingdom of ends. By a kingdom I understand the union of
different rational beings in a system by common laws.
Now since it is by laws that ends are determined as regards
their universal validity, hence if we abstract from the
personal differences of rational beings and likewise from
all the content of their private ends, we shall be able to
conceive all ends combined in a systematic whole (including
both rational beings as ends in themselves and also the
special ends which each may propose to himself), that is
to say, we can conceive a kingdom of ends, which on the
preceding principles is possible.2 . . . A world of rational
beings is possible as a kingdom of ends, and this by virtue
of the legislation proper to all persons as members. There-
fore every rational being must so act as if he were by his
maxim in every case a legislating member in the universal
kingdom of ends." 3
Thus Kant completes his account of what must neces-
sarily be the content of a categorical imperative, or what
must be the principle of morality, if morality is possible.
Before we consider how in the rest of the Fundamental
Principles Kant proceeds to the deduction of this principle,
let us consider the principle itself, and some criticisms
which have been made of it.
Notice the characteristically Kantian paradox which
dominates this account of morality. It begins with what
seems to be the most rigorous legalistic moral theory,
2 3
i F . P., p. 434- F. P.. P- 433- F- P-. P- 43«.
 KANT'S ETHICS 179
Morality demands absolute subordination of all inclinations
and interests to a law that takes no account of them. The
individual with his tastes and capacities and inclinations is
nothing; the law as such is all. And then we find that the
reason why we are bound by this law, the only possible reason
why we can be bound by it, is that we ourselves lay it down.
" The laws to which he is subject are only those of his own
giving." There is a sense in which Kant's doctrine can be
translated to mean that the good is what we will, if the
opposition between willing and wanting is pushed to its full
extent, and if it be allowed that most so-called willing is a
mixture of pure willing and wanting. And yet Kant
retains and indeed insists on the motive of obligation. For
he insists on the contrast within us between this legislating,
principle-determining will and our wants and desires; which
contrast involves a further much more difficult distinction
between Wille and Willkühr, i.e. between our pure will and
our choice. For Kant always insists that the rational will
is for us an ideal, or rather is combined in us with inclina-
tions and desires which are inconsistent with it. We must
never suppose that we have a holy will, although, as he says
later, the holy will is an ideal to which we must more and
more approximate.
I have called this paradox, beginning with the subor-
dination of the self to the law, and ending with the.
subordination of the law to the self, characteristically
Kantian because, after all, it is only the application to
action of the principle of objectivity which Kant has
already expounded in regard to knowledge. No one ever
had a greater sense of what may be called the objectivity
of scientific fact, than Kant. That is abundantly clear in
his pre-Critical writings. Yet his teaching is that the
principle of objectivity is within us ; and there is a sense
in which Kant's doctrine of truth may be described as
implying that that is true which is thought, if the opposi-
tion between thinking and association is pushed to its full
extent and it is allowed that most so-called thinking is a
mixture of pure thinking and association, and if we admit a
i8o KANT
contrast between the self of pure self-consciousness and the
empirical self. In both knowledge and conduct we are
aware of a law to which we must subordinate our activity
if we would achieve our purpose ; in both we can see on
reflexion that this law which restrains our ordinary activity
is the law of our own reason, and we find that by following
this law of our own reason we come to know and to act in
accordance with the necessities of a reality beyond ourselves.
There is, however, this great difference between the
activity of reason in the theoretical sphere and its
activity in the practical sphere. As Kant himself notices,
reason in the speculative sphere presupposes the a priori
intuitions of time and space. Its principles, as we saw
in the last chapter, are the result of the application of
reason to the conditions of time and space. Without
such an a priori element in the given, reason could
produce no constructive principles. In the sphere of
the practical reason there is nothing corresponding to
time and space. Are we to suppose, then, that the
rules of practical reason are produced by the sole action
of reason alone without any reference to the given at all ?
If we are to take Kant at his word, we are apparently to
make this assumption. The practical reason is concerned
with what ought to be. It need therefore borrow nothing
from what is. Speculative reason could not be archetypal,
but practical reason can. It is constructing its own
archetypes of actions in the actual world.
Kant seems to think that reason, using the principle of
contradiction or of universality only, can produce principles
of conduct. He does, indeed, give examples where we can
show that wrong action would involve a contradiction, if
universalized, as in his favourite example of telling a lie.
If every one told lies or broke promises, there would be no
belief or trust and, therefore, no point in telling lies or
breaking promises. But, as Hegel pointed out, the argu-
ment is based on the assumption that there should be
truth-telling and mutual trust. " The mere detailed
Kantian statement, the suitability of an act to be presented
 KANT'S ETHICS 181

as a universal rule, implies indeed the more concrete notion

of a condition, but really contains no other principle than
absence of contradiction or formal identity. The rule that
there should be no private property contains of itself no
contradiction, nor does the proposition that this or that
particular nation or family should not exist or that no one
should live at all. Only if it is really fixed and assumed
that private property and human life should exist and be
respected, is it a contradiction to commit theft br murder.
There can be no contradiction except of something that
exists, or of a content which is assumed to be a fixed
principle. Only such a content can an act agree with or
contradict. But duty which must be willed only as such,
and not for the sake of a content, is a formal identity
excluding all content and specific character." 1
There is justice in this criticism, but it is not a complete
account of the matter. For Kant sometimes goes beyond
the principle of contradiction. Of the four examples which
Kant gives to show how his principle works, three are
intended to show that to will what is wrong involves a
contradiction in the will. But one example is different.
" A third finds in himself a talent which with the help of
some culture might make him a useful man in many
respects. But he finds himself in comfortable circum-
stances, and prefers to indulge in pleasure rather than to
take pains in enlarging and improving his happy natural
capabilities. He asks, however, whether his maxim of
neglect of his natural gifts, besides agreeing with his
inclination to indulgence, agrees also with what is called
duty. He sees then that a system of nature could indeed
subsist with such a universal law, although men (like the
South Sea Islanders) should let their talents rust, and
resolve to devote their lives merely to idleness, amusement,
and propagation of their species—in a word, to enjoyment ;
but he cannot possibly will that this should be a universal
law of nature, or be implanted in us as such by a natural
instinct. For, as a rational being, he necessarily wills that
1
Hegel, Philosophy of Right, § 135, note.
182 KANT
the faculties be developed, since they serve him and have
been given him for all sorts of possible purposes."1
The implications of this are far reaching. It implies that
the rational in willing is not what is elicited by applying
a rational test, like that of general consistency or univer-
sality, to the will, but by asking what the will wills when
willing rationally, it being assumed that it is willing
rationally when it wills under the principle of universal
obligation or as a member of a kingdom of ends. To put
this more correctly, we may when we are willing be
determined in the last resort by what we want, making
that the principle of our action. Then our will is what
Kant calls heteronomous and morally wrong. Or we may
be determined by the fact that we regard ourselves as
answerable to others ; that we are members of a moral
community with moral obligations to one another. There
are certain actions which are quite obviously inconsistent
with such an attitude. Such are actions where we make
ourselves an exception to moral rules which we in general
uphold. Kant's examples of telling lies or making promises
which we have no intention of keeping fall under this class.
But there are other actions, the argument for whose Tight-
ness is just that they are what we will when we recognize
our moral obligations. The ultimate determining principle
of our will must be either a want or inclination, prescribed
to us by our particular nature and environment, or reason
itself. This implies that there is a purpose of reason, or
that the moral reason is creative or, as Kant says, construc-
tive. But it does not imply that the creative moral reason
works in a vacuum or produces a priori rules independently
of any circumstances, only that it is the determining
principle when applied to a concrete situation.
If we were to be allowed to develop the implications of
this passage and to ignore the other passages where Kant
clearly falls into the mistakes of which Hegel accuses him,
we might ascribe to Kant a moral theory which was not
unduly formal. We could save Kant from the accusation
i F . P., p. 423.
 KANT'S ETHICS i%
of having consistently maintained a view which is obviously
nonsensical by arguing that he inconsistently maintained a
reasonable view. If we had only the Fundamental Principles
and the Critique of Practical Reason to go by, we should
have to choose between these two alternatives. Fortu-
nately such speculation is unnecessary, inasmuch as Kant
has defined much more clearly his account of the a priori
in conduct in his Metaphysic of Morals, published in 1797.
That work represents probably a certain development of
Kant's thought. It was written after the Critique of
Judgement, which, as we shall see, was intended to deal
with some of the difficulties raised by the Fundamental
Principles and the Critique of Practidal Reason. But it
shows how Kant worked out the possibilities, revealed but
not developed, in his earlier works.
In the Metaphysic of Morals, the difference which I have
noticed between the principles which are based on the
principle of contradiction and those which are based on
what the rational will wills is elaborated as the basis of the
distinction between the doctrine of right {Rechtslehre), and
the, doctrine of virtue (Tugendslehre). " Right is concerned
with law, which can be external." " The laws of obligation
for which an external law-giving is possible are external laws.
Those among them, the obligation to which can be known
a priori through the reason without external law making, are
external but natural laws." 1 They are to be distinguished
from positive law. Hence the first section of the Meta-
physic of Morals is a treatise on natural law—an elaboration
of a code of laws which are assumed to be independent
of historical circumstance and discoverable by reason
alone. All are deducible from the principle of reciprocal
freedom. " Law (Recht) is the sum of the conditions under
which the will of one can be united with the will of another
according to a general law of freedom," and its general
principle is, " Every action is right, which enables or
whose maxim enables the freedom of will of every indi-
vidual to consist with everyone's freedom according to a
1
M: of M., B. E., vi. p. 224.
184 KANT
general law." *• The purpose of law is freedom. Its action
consists, according to Kant, in words which were afterwards
borrowed by Bosanquet, in " hindering hindrances " 2 to
freedom.
This principle of reciprocal freedom is far reaching. It is
an a priori principle, as it is founded on the absolute worth
of the human personality. It has, as an a priori principle,
had a profound effect on the elaboration of law. But it is
not a principle from which can be developed a system of
natural law or natural rights without any reference to the
purposes pursued by those whose freedom is safeguarded by
rights. That this abstraction can be made is assumed both
by Rousseau, with whom the theory originated, and by
Kant; but in practice Kant's system of natural law implies
historical assumptions and conditions as much as any
other. He seems to have thought that a system must be
altogether a priori, or altogether empirical; the alternative
view of an a priori principle informing empirical conditions
hardly seems to have occurred to him.
The defects of Kant's philosophy of law can be seen
most easily in his section on public rights. His a priori
principles lead him to say that government depends upon
consent. "The members of such a society (Societas civilis),
that is, a State, when united for the purposes of law, are
citizens, and their juristic attributes, inseparable from their
nature as citizens, are :
" (i) Legal freedom : that a man render obedience to
no other law than that to which he has given his consent.
" (2) Civic equality : that a man recognize in the people
no superior save on the understanding that he has the
moral power to bind that superior by legal obligation as
truly as the superior can bind him.
" (3) Civic independence : that a man owe his existence
and maintenance not to the arbitrary will of any other
person, but to his own rights and powers as a member of
the community.
1
M. of M., B. E., vi. p. 230.
2
M. of M„ B. E., vi. p. 231.
 KANT'S ETHICS 185
" (4) Civic personality : that a man in question of right
be represented by no one but himself." x
But these a priori democratic principles are rendered of
very little effect by the other direction in which Kant's a
priori principle of regard for law leads him. The extent to
which any State falls short öf these democratic principles
is of no consequence to the moral obligation on all citizens
of any State to observe the law. " The origin of the
supreme power is, for the people which is under it, in
practice unexplorable. The subject is not to begin
reasoning about its origin, as though one could begin to
doubt whether one owed obedience to it. For since the
people, in order to judge with right behind them over the
sovereign power, must already be thought of as limited
under a universal law-giving will, it cannot and must not
judge otherwise than as the present sovereign wills. . . ." 2
" A law which is so holy that 'it is a trespass even to cast
doubt on it in practice, or to suspend its operations for
only a moment, is represented as though it came not from
man, but from some supreme and perfect law-giver; and
that is the meaning of the text,' all authority is from God.'
This must not be taken to imply an historical origin of
the civic constitution. It expresses an idea, as a practical
principle of reason, that the existing law-giving power must
be obeyed, be its origin what it may. From this follows the
proposition : the ruler in the state ha.s towards his subjects
rights, but no legal duties. Further, if the organ of the
Governor, the regent, acts against the laws, e.g. in impo-
sitions, impressment, and such actions against the principle
of equality in the division of State burdens, the subject has
in virtue of such unrighteousness right to make complaints,
but no right of resistance." 3
" The ground of the duty of the people to endure even the
almost unendurable measure of sovereign power, is this :
that its resistance to the supreme legislative power can
1
M . of M., B. E., vi. p. 314.
2
M. of M., B. E., vi. p. 318.
8
M. of M., B. E., vi. p. 319.
 i86 KANT
never be anything but contrary to law, and must be
thought of as destroying the whole legal constitution." In
a long note Kant goes so far as to say that the judicial
condemnation of a monarch by his subjects, such as the
trial and execution of Charles the First, is a crime of a far
deeper dye than the assassination of a monarch. It
elevates into a principle the entire reversal of the proper
relations between a sovereign and his people. " It is like
a sin, which is eternal, and can never be expiated, like those
sins which cannot be forgiven either in this world or the
next." 1
For Kant the absoluteness of law as such entirely over-
rides any question of the Tightness of this or that law, and
he arrives at a position which is in this respect like that of
Hobbes. The result is that the democratic principles
enunciated in the earlier part of this discussion on public
law come to be entirely nugatory except in so far as the
sovereign may be inspired by them. But a system of
natural law has little meaning except as something to
which an appeal can sometimes be made against positive
law. Legal absolutism, as Kant expounds it, is an im-
possible position, for enacted and written law and human
law-givers have sometimes to be disregarded in the name
of the principles of law itself. It is perfectly true that the
individual has no private right of resistance. The authority
of law is superior to his individual wants and desires. As
T. H. Green says, we can only resist the State in the name
of the State, because our resistance will make the State
more adequately express its peculiar and characteristic
purpose. We can put this, as Green does, by saying that
there can be no right of resistance except when that right
is a duty. But we must maintain that the principle of
universality which is the essence of law does not find its
perfect expression in the mere fact that all the citizens of
the State are subject to law. That is an expression, but
not the essence, of the universality of law. So far from
being the essence, this external universality is inevitably
1
M. of M., B. E., vi. p. 321.
 KANT'S ETHICS 187
an inadequate expression of universality, as Aristotle ex-
plains in his distinction between legal justice and equity.
No doubt it is dangerous to say that there are occasions
when we may be justified in disobeying the law. We have
such a power' of sophisticating ourselves, that we can
easily make up our minds that we are acting at the behest
of a higher law, when we are only justifying our selfishness.
It is not easy to recognize the absoluteness of a principle
while refusing to recognize the absoluteness of its ex-
pressions. But all this means that we resist the State at
our peril. It does not mean that we ought not sometimes
to act at our peril.
What is true of the pretended absoluteness of State law
is also true of the pretended absoluteness of moral laws.
The Kantian rule of universality is a rough-and-ready test
of true universality. Moral rules are valid against our
individual selfishness or inclinations. But situations may
arise where the literal following of a moral rule is a violation
of the universal principle of which the rule is an imperfect
expression. Kant wrote a small treatise On the Supposed
Right to tell a Lie, where he tried to maintain that there
can be no possible exceptions to our duty to tell the truth.
But his assumption in the discussion of such problems is
always that those who disagree with him are maintaining
that there may be a right to disregard a moral rule in our
own interests. He never really faces the contention that
it is sometimes our duty to disregard a moral rule. No
doubt this again is dangerous teaching. The freedom of
the Gospel really makes far more rigorous demands upon
us than the external rigour of the Mosaic law, and we may
easily cheat ourselves and denounce the rigidity of the
moral rule when we are really preparing to acquiesce in a
lower standard of conduct. These are important practical
considerations. They are so important that we might be
tempted to say, like the Grand Inquisitor of Ivan's story
in The Brothers Karamazov, that freedom is such a dan-
gerous thing, and there are so few people who can be
trusted with it, that we had all better stick to the
i88 KANT
absoluteness of an external moral authority. Others
might take that course, but not Kant, not a philoso-
pher who makes autonomy his supreme principle in moral
philosophy.
Kant's political philosophy, and especially his account of
natural law, makes it clear then, that he did hold that
moral commands and prohibitions were derivable from the
mere notion of law as such, and that this position involved
him in the formalism of which he is so often accused.
But the other part of the metaphysic of morals, the
doctrine of virtue, makes it equally clear that this is not the
whole of his teaching, but that equally fundamental in his
view is another way of regarding the universality of moral
conduct and the nature of practical reason. Kant seems
to have held on to these two views of the nature of practical
reason, and never to have found a satisfactory relation
between them.
" The doctrine of right (Rechtslehre)," says Kant, " was
only concerned with the formal condition of external
freedom."x " It leaves to every man's free will what
purpose he will set himself for his action. Its maxim is
determined a priori: that the freedom of the actor should
be consistent according to a universal law with the freedom
of every other man." 2 " Ethics, on the other hand, pro-
vides matter of action, an object of free will, a purpose of
pure reason, which is at the same time represented as an
objectively necessary purpose—for man a duty. For since
the inclinations of sense lead men to purposes as material
for choice which may conflict with duty, so the legislative
reason can retain its influence only by a moral purpose set
over against those; and this must, therefore, be given a
priori, independently of inclinations."3
The doctrine of virtue (Tugendslehre) is dominated
by the conception of an a priori purpose of reason,
a purpose which is in itself a duty, as the doctrine of
1
M. of M., B . E., vi. p . 380.
* M. of M., B. E., vi. p. 382.
3
M. of M., B. E., vi. p . 382.
 KANT'S ETHICS 189
right is dominated by the conception of a priori law.
" There must be an a priori purpose and a categorical
imperative corresponding to it. For since there are free
actions, there must also be purposes, to which, as object,
these are directed. And among these purposes there must
be some, which are at the same time, i.e. in the very con-
ception of them, duties. Were there none such, then as no
action can be without a purpose, all purposes for the
practical reason would only be means to other purposes,
and a categorical imperative would be impossible." *
There must, then, be ends willed by reason as such. Kant
is here generalizing what was implied in the instance which
discussed the question of a man's duty to develop his
talents. The purposes which are willed by reason as such
and are therefore duties are " our own perfection and the
happiness of others." Reason, he holds, wills the develop-
ment and the perfecting of our own nature—our bodily
powers, our intelligence and our moral will. For as the
good will is essentially the rational will, the rational will
must will its own activity, and all that leads to the
perfecting of such activity.
When Kant proceeds to discuss these " duties of virtue,"
he says some things about them which are of great
importance for an understanding of his whole conception
of conduct.
Ethics, he holds, unlike the doctrine of right, gives laws
not for our actions but for the maxims of our actions. He
means by this that it prescribes the principles on which we
are to act, but leaves the application of these principles and
the resolution of conflict between them to our moral
judgement in individual situations. It follows from this
that " ethical duties are of wide, as legal duties are of
narrow, obligation." The former are what are sometimes
called duties of imperfect obligation. The adjective
" imperfect " is however misleading. The obligation is
not less ; it is only less clearly defined. How far we are
in any circumstances to be generous, for example, or to
» M. of M., B. E., vi. p. 385.
igo KANT
pursue our neighbour's happiness, is matter for our moral
judgement.
Yet those virtues are duties. " All duties involve the
idea of necessitation through the law. Ethical duties
involve a necessitation which only an inner legislation can
give : legal duties a necessitation which can be given also
by external legislation. In both there is the notion of
compulsion."1 " Virtue is the strength of a man's maxims
in following his duty. All strength is known by the hin-
drances which it can overcome ; with virtue these are the
natural inclinations, which can come in conflict with the
moral prescription; and since it is man himself who puts
these hindrances in the way of his maxims, virtue is not
only compulsion of oneself (for that might mean only our
natural inclination compelling the others), but a compulsion
according to a principle of inner freedom."2
As Kant had said in the Fundamental Principles, there
is no categorical imperative, and therefore no duty for a
holy will. The notion of duty arises from the conflict
within us, from the opposition of our rational will by our
desires. But while Kant still maintains that we can never
have a holy will, that is not because we cannot come to do
with pleasure what we once did only from the compulsion
of duty, but because " virtue is always in progress; it is
an ideal which is unrealizable but not unapproachable ; if
it is not going forward, it is inevitably going back." Reason,
as we have learnt from the first Critique, is the faculty of
the infinite, and its demands can never be realized.
Yet though this is so, it does not follow, as it has been
supposed to follow from certain expressions in the Funda-
mental Principles, that if we take pleasure in an action,
that shows that we are not doing our duty. There is,
Kant holds, a genuine moral pleasure, and moral action in
which we do not take such pleasure is so far imperfect.
We must do our duty by others, whether we love them or
not; but if we do our duty by them, that will make us love
1
M. of M., B. E., vi. p. 394.
* M. of M., B . E., vi. p. 405.
 KANT'S ETHICS 191
them and take pleasure in our good actions towards them.
Kant holds with the child in Mrs. Ewing's story, who said
" Does first and feels afterwards," but he would have
insisted on the importance of the second part of that
maxim as well as on the importance of the first part.
From this second part of the Metaphysic of Morals, then,
we get a very different notion of moral conduct and the
part played in it by reason from that which seems to be
given in much of the Fundamental Principles and in the
first part of the Metaphysic itself.
The opposition and conflict between the practical reason
and the natural inclinations is common to all Kant's moral
teaching. But in some of his teaching that conflict is
conceived as one between law as such and inclinations.
From this it follows that the categorical imperative is
founded on the mere form of the law. It is supposed that
the formal character of law, its universality, can itself,
with no reference to any content of law or purpose to be
achieved by it, produce definite and valid rules of action.
To the validity of these rules, just because they are
supposed to be deducible from the concept of law as such,
there can be no exceptions. Nor can anyone take pleasure
in acting in accordance with them. Respect is the only
way in which we can regard the law. Pleasure is the sign
of our following our inclinations, and therefore of our
action being heteronomous and unmoral.
The objections which can be raised to this formal and
niggardly doctrine are too well known to need to be
repeated. A certain Dr. Collenbusch once-wrote a letter to
Kant, in which he said : " Dr. Kant's morality is a
morality quite pure from all love, and this makes me ask,
' What is the difference T^eiween the morality of the devil
and the morality of Dr. Kant ? ' " When we read certain
parts of Kant's ethical writings, we can feel a certain
sympathy with Dr. Collenbusch.
But the second part of the Metaphysic gives a different
view of reason. Reason has its own purpose, and sets for
itself its own end. There are such things as purposes in
192 KANT
themselves reasonable; there is such a thing as rational
willing. Reason may and does express itself in laws, but
they are the laws which come not from ratiocination but
from the legislation of reason when following the purposes
it sets itself. We have here something like the Aristotelian
view of vovs, which displays itself both in the apprehension
of the end and of the first principles from which ratio-
cination proceeds, and also in the appreciation of the
individual situation. This is only to take seriously the
view that there is such a thing as the practical reason, a
reason which displays itself in willing, and in willing alone,
and is operative in the individual moral judgement as well
as in moral legislation.
How, then, did Kant conceive the relation between
" legal duties " and " duties of virtue," or between legality
and purpose ? To that no clear answer can be given. In
the Metaphysic he seems to give the priority to purpose.
" Were there no such duties" (he is talking of " duties of
virtue ") "there would be no duties at all, certainly no
external duties." 1 This is to suppose that the good, the
purpose which is itself a duty, is prior to the right. The
bare principle of law, that the freedom of man in action
must be consistent according to general laws with the
freedom of every other man, gets content and application
once it is recognized that men as rational beings have
purposes of their own. But at other times he seems to take
literally the implication of the adjectives in the distinction
between duties of perfect and of imperfect obligation, and
to hold that, when there is a conflict between duties of
these different kinds, those of imperfect must yield to those
of perfect obligation. This same preference of legality to
purpose is involved in the denial of the right of the citizens
under any circumstances to disobey or to resist the law.
But that the preference of rational purpose to legality,
of the rationality of the pure will to the rationality of mere
universality, is more fundamental to Kant's thought will
be apparent if we go back to the Fundamental Principles
1
M. of M., B. E., vi. p. 417.
 KANT'S ETHICS 193
and see how Kant deduces his categorical imperative from
the principle of autonomy.
The principle implied in right conduct has been found
to be the principle of willing universally. The distinction
between moral and immoral conduct is not that the one is
willed and the other not, but that in immoral conduct the
universalizing principle of the will is subordinated to a
particular purpose dictated by our phenomenal nature.
In moral conduct the universality of the will has to be the
determining principle. This is to say that the principle of
moral willing is freedom. Not that man is not free in
immoral willing, but that then he is using his freedom only
to subject himself to accidental and arbitrary circumstance.
In moral willing his freedom is the determining principle of
his action. But it can only be this if freedom is something
more than merely negative, more than a mere indifference.
It must have its own distinctive principles ; it must, as
Kant says, be legislative. Freedom for Kant, then, is the
same as autonomy : the will giving itself its own laws and
determining principles. " If the will seeks the law which
is to determine it anywhere else than in the fitness of its
maxims to be universal laws of its own dictation, that is,
if it goes out of itself and seeks this law in the character
of any of its objects, there always results heteronomy.
The will in that case does not give itself the law, but the
law is given by the object through its relation to the
will. This relation, whether it rests on inclination or on
conceptions of reason, only admits of hypothetical impera-
tives : I ought to do something because I wish for
something else. On the contrary, the moral, and there-
fore categorical, imperative says: I ought to do so-and-
so, even though I should not wish for anything else."1
Freedom, then, for Kant is not a freedom of indifference :
it is not indeterminism. For man is only undetermined by
circumstances because and in so far as he is determined by
the moral law. On the other hand, the moral law is binding
upon man because it is his own law; it is what he wills in
» F. P., p. 441.
G
 194 KANT
so far as he is a personality. " Freedom," says Kant in the
third section of the Fundamental Principles, " must be
presupposed as a property of the will of all rational
beings." *
This does not mean that, before we can recognize the
authority of the moral law, we must first prove that man is
free. " There is," says Kant, " a sort of circle here from
which it seems impossible to escape. In the order of
efficient causes we assume ourselves free so that in the
order of ends we may conceive ourselves as subject to
moral laws; and we afterwards conceive ourselves as
subject to these laws because we have attributed to our-
selves freedom of will; for freedom and self-legislation of
will are both autonomy, and, therefore, are reciprocal
conceptions, and for this very reason one must not be used
to explain the other or give the reason of it, but at most,
only for logical purposes, to reduce apparently different
notions of the same object to one single concept."2
Kant's answer to this apparent contradiction is that
" freedom is the ratio essendi of the moral law, while the
moral law is the ratio cognoscendi of freedom. For had not
the moral law been previously distinctly thought in our
reason, we should never consider ourselves justified in
assuming such a thing as freedom, although it be not
contradictory. But were there no freedom it would be
impossible to trace the moral law in ourselves at all." 3
What that comes to is this. When we reflect upon the
nature of moral judgements, we see that they involve a
sharp distinction between what we ought to do and what
we want to do. This does not mean that we may not at
times want to do what we ought to do ; but that in
considering what we ought to do, we find that that is
determined by principles to which our wants and likings
are irrelevant. That means that if we consider ourselves,
as Kant says, from the point of view of anthropology, as
particular persons with particular characters, inclined to this
i F . P., p . 447. * F . P., p. 450.
3
C. of Pr. R., Preface, Note, p . 4.
 KANT'S ETHICS 195
and averse from that, our inclinations being determined by
the play upon our particular characters of the surrounding
world of nature—from such a point of view moral impera-
tives cannot arise. Moral commands and obligations are
completely outside this determined natural order. Yet
such moral obligations are recognized. Moral judgements
imply that, however we may have been determined to act
by the circumstances of the natural order, there are
principles which are just not deducible from the circum-
stances of the natural world; and that even when we do
not act from such principles, we recognize their obligation
upon us, and we recognize that we might have acted in
ways not determined by the natural order. If we persist,
and say that if we understood the natural order better
we should see that, when we suppose ourselves to have
acted under the idea of duty, we really have acted accord-
ing to our inclinations as determined by the interaction of
our inherited character and the physical world, Kant's
answer is that this possibility must be admitted in the case
of any particular action ; but that this is no explanation
of the idea of duty itself, of the recognition of obligation to
principles which are not deducible from the natural order.
The distinction between what we ought to do and what we
want to do is in principle irreducible. That is what Kant
means by saying that the moral law is the ratio cognoscendi
of freedom. We are, he says, beings that cannot act except
under the idea of freedom. For moral action and moral
responsibility have no meaning if the distinction between
obligation and inclination is abandoned. That distinction
involves the distinction between a categorical and a
hypothetical imperative, between (to take them in the
reverse order) an action, the determining principle of which
is our desire for some object, and an action which we
regard as universally obligatory on others as on ourselves.
Such a universal principle can only be determined by
reason. Moral action, as we have seen, implies that there
are principles of action determined by the rational will; it
thus implies the spontaneity, the creative constructive
196 KANT
character of reason. Man is a creature of two worlds, the
intelligible world of reason, of which he is aware in his
recognition of his obligation to act according to its
principles, and the world of nature, where as a physical
creature he is conscious of inclinations and desires pre-
scribed to him by his physical nature and by the effect
upon it of the surrounding physical world. As free, he is
undetermined by the natural order just because, as a moral
being, he is determined by and subject to the laws of the
moral order; and the laws of the moral order are the
legislation of his rational will. " For I delight in the law
of God after the inward man ; but I see another law in my
members, warring against the law of my mind and bringing
me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but
with the flesh the law of sin." Kant's distinction and St.
Paul's are in essence the same, though what St. Paul calls
the law of God is for Kant the law of self-legislative reason.
This distinction between the intelligible world and the
natural world as revealed by science has been already
discussed, Kant reminds us, in the first Critique. For it is
the same distinction as that between things in themselves
and things as they appear, or between noumena and
phenomena ; and the difficulty of this dualism is resolved
when we remember that we only know things as they
appear, and that that necessarily implies the distinction
between things as they appear and things as they are.
" We must admit and assume behind the appearance
something else which is not an appearance, namely, the
things in themselves." So we must admit behind our
phenomenal existence our real existence, or our noumenal
self. The first Critique had shown that our knowledge of
the phenomenal world implies a noumenal world. The
speculative reason can give us no knowledge of things in
themselves, for knowledge implies intuition, and intuition
is always of space and time. The practical reason cannot
give us knowledge of our real self, but it does make it
actual for us in moral activity. It makes us experience the
 KANT'S ETHICS 197
actuality of what for the speculative reason was only a
possibility.
We can now understand what Kant meant when he said
that he had found it " necessary to deny knowledge in
order to make room for faith." For Kant faith is not
irrational or insufficiently grounded opinion. It is as much
the product of reason as is knowledge, but it is reason in
action as contrasted with knowledge. Reason dictates the
moral law, and dictates that we should act as if we were
free. In moral action we assume or act as if we were free.
We act as if we were concerned with purposes transcending
our finite existence, as though we said :

" What's time ? Leave now for dogs and apes !

Man has for ever."

We act as if our actions did not concern ourselves alone

but were the concern of the nature of things, that is, as if
there were a God.
Kant has in the first Critique rebutted all attempts to
prove the freedom of the will, the immortality of the soul,
or the existence of God. But in the second Critique he
shows that these are postulates of the practical reason,
implications of the way in which our reason calls on us to
act. He dismisses what is called natural theology to
substitute for it practical theology.
This position is easily misunderstood. Kant holds that
we do not and cannot begin with knowledge of, or theoret-
ical belief in, such metaphysical truths and then act in
accordance with them. The practical reason has primacy
over the theoretical. We begin with the consciousness of
the moral law and of our obligation; that is the unshakeable
fact evident to all. A man may be a conscious atheist, and
yet recognize the moral law. Kant would say of him that
in his atheism he denied the implications of his own moral
consciousness, and that if he reflected rightly on that moral
consciousness he would realize that he was affirming
practically what he denied theoretically. So, on the other
 ig8 KANT
hand, we may all by our practical wrongdoing act as if
there were no God in the world, however we may piously
affirm that there is. Yet this faith is not just an
unnecessary rationalization of our action (in the modern
bad sense of the word rationalization). Moral action
would be unmeaning if we were not free, if moral purposes
did not transcend our finite existence, if they were not the
concern of the nature of things; if, in short, the intelligible
world, as implied by the practical reason, were not a
reality.
The distinctive character of Kant's position in the
matter is that we can affirm the reality of something whose
nature we cannot understand. But that is the distinctive
character of his conception of reason. For reason, as we
have seen in the Dialectic of the first Critique, is the
faculty of the unconditioned. All our judgements and
our actions, because they imply truth and goodness, imply
in their ordinary everyday working an infinite which
transcends experience, and yet gives to experience all the
meaning it has for us. The simple distinction between a
statement which claims to be true and a mere association
of ideas, and equally the distinction between judging an
action to be right or wrong and judging an action to be
according to inclination, leads back to the reality of an
intelligible world, which yet cannot be directly known. Its
reality is witnessed to in the order of nature and in the
moral will.
Kant has given eloquent expression to this doctrine in a
passage at the end of the Critique of Practical Reason :
" Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing
admiration and awe, the offener and the more steadily we
reflect on them : the starry heavens above and the moral law
within. I have not to search for them and conjecture them
as though they were veiled in darkness or were in the
transcendent region beyond my horizon. I see them before
me and connect them directly with the consciousness of
my existence. The former begins from the place I occupy
in the outer world ; it enlarges the connexion in which I
 KANT'S ETHICS 199
stand in that world to an unbounded range with worlds
upon worlds and systems upon systems, with limitless
times of their periodic motion, its beginning and con-
tinuance. The second begins from my invisible self, my
personality. It sets me in a world which has true infinity,
but is discoverable only by the understanding. The
former connexion was only accidental, but with this world
I know myself to be in universal and necessary connexion,
and through it with all these visible worlds also. In the
former case, the view of these galaxies of worlds annihilates
my importance as a part of the animal creation, which,
after it has been for a short time provided with vital power,
it knows not how, must again give back the matter of
which it was formed to the planet it inhabits, and that a
mere speck in the universe. But when I consider again,
my worth as an intelligent being is raised to infinity
through my personality. For then the moral law reveals
to me a life independent of rny animal nature and of all
the world of the senses, so far at least as follows from the
fact that my being is designed to follow this law, which is
not limited by the conditions and limits of this life but
reaches to infinity."1
This distinction between the two worlds of autonomy
and of heteronomy, of will and of nature, is fundamental
to any philosopher who is in earnest, as Kant is, with
the reality of the moral law and of moral struggle. No
one who takes wrongdoing as seriously as Kant can
escape dualism. How man can be a member of these two
worlds, how freedom and the categorical imperative are
possible we cannot understand. But " while we do not
comprehend the practical unconditional necessity of the
moral imperative, we yet comprehend its incompre-
hensibility."2 If we had what Kant calls a holy will, if we
were mere intelligences, then our natures would be trans-
parent to thought. If we were only what physical science
reveals, our nature again would be comprehensible. But
1
C. of Pr. R., pp. 161-2.
2
F . P., p. 463.
200 KANT
both these solutions are impossible. We are bound by a
rational will, and yet we are members of the sensible world,
with our desires and interests determined by that member-
ship. This dualism is inescapable if we are to be true to
the facts. Kant, as we saw, was far too much in earnest
with moral problems to accept the smooth harmonies of
the system to which Wolff had reduced Leibniz. His
separation between the laws and principles governing the
moral world, the principles of freedom, and the laws
governing the natural world, is perhaps his greatest
contribution to the understanding of moral questions, for
all the metaphysical difficulties it may seem to involve.
But for all this there are certain obvious difficulties in
his account of the distinction between the world of freedom
and the world of nature, at least as it is described at this
stage of his thought. As we shall see, he became aware of
those difficulties, and tried in the Critique of Judgement to
find some way of mediation between the two worlds. As
those are described in the Critique of Practical Reason, the
two worlds are so different that it is hard to see how there
can be any relation at all between them, or how man can
possibly belong to both.
The issue comes up most sharply when we consider the
practical possibility of freedom. If moral responsibility is
to be real, we must, Kant holds, when looking back on a
wrong action, know that we might have done otherwise.
If the intelligible world with its moral principle really
impinges on the world we know, there must be actions
which are only to be explained by the intrusion of the free
will and are not to be explained by the order of nature.
But Kant has shown in the first Critique that there can be
no exception to the law of causation, and up to the time of
his writing the second Critique he seems to have assumed
that phenomenal causation is all of one kind.
" The necessity of events in time, according to the
physical law of causality, may be called the mechanism of
nature, although we do not mean by this that things which
are subject to it must be really material machines. We
 KANT'S ETHICS 201

look here only to the necessity of the connexion of events

in a time series as it is developed according to the physical
law, whether the subject in which the development takes
place is called automaton materiale, because the mechanical
being is moved by matter, or with Leibniz spirituale,
because it is moved by ideas."1 He goes on to say a little
later, " It may, therefore, be admitted that if it were
possible to have so profound an insight into a man's mental
character, as shown by internal as well as by external
actions, as to know all its motives, even the smallest, and
likewise all the external occasions that can influence them,
we could calculate a man's conduct for the future with as
great certainty as a lunar or solar eclipse." Kant goes on
at once to say that " nevertheless we may maintain that
the man is free." His solution is to distinguish between
the time series which is necessitated, and the moral world
which is timeless. " When the law of our intelligible
existence (the moral law) is in question, reason recognizes
no distinction of time, and only asks whether the event
belongs to me, as my act, and then always morally
connects the same feeling with it, whether it has happened
just now or long ago. For in reference to the supersensible
consciousness of its existence (i.e. freedom), the life of sense
is but a single phenomenon which, inasmuch as it contains
merely manifestations of the mental disposition with
regard to the moral law (i.e. of the character), must be
judged, not according to the necessity that belongs to it as
phenomenon, but according to the absolute spontaneity of
freedom. If we were capable of another glance, namely, an
intellectual intuition of the same subject (which indeed is
not granted to us, and instead of it we have only the
rational concept), then we should perceive that this whole
chain of appearances in regard to all that concerns the
moral laws depends on the spontaneity of the subject as a
thing in itself, of the determination of which no physical
explanation can be given." 2
1
c. of Pr. R., p. 97.
2
C. of Pr. R., p. 99.
GI
202 KANT
But this will not do. For from the moral point of view
our life is not one single phenomenon, but a series of
trj^rnphs and defeats, of autonomous and heteronomous
actions, of actions where the moral will realizes itself and
actions where it is defeated. We can and must explain
our own actions and the actions by other people in these
terms. Moral conduct must have a temporal character,
must have its decisive moments.
We may put this difficulty in another way by examining
Kant's equation of the difference between autonomous and
heteronomous action with the distinction between things
in themselves and appearances. For that latter distinction
implies that autonomous action is the reality and heter-
onomous only the appearance. But if that is so, the
difference between autonomous and heteronomous action
is only a difference of point of view. All actions, if we
had complete scientific understanding, would be seen to be
heteronomous, determined by the interaction of a man's
inherited character and external circumstances; and,
therefore, all actions would be immoral. Equally all
actions, if we had an intuitive understanding, and could
know things in themselves, would be seen to be autonomous,
to be the working of the rational will; and therefore all
actions would be moral. The distinction between making
the will the determining principle of action and allowing
the determining principle to be some object of the senses
cannot possibly be only a distinction between points of
view. If the rational will is the real self, why does it not
always operate ? What is fundamentally the same
criticism may be put in another way. Moral responsi-
bility is as real for bad actions as for good actions. From
this it would follow that freedom is the choice of a
self which may either follow the dictates of the rational
will or follow the prompting of its inclinations. But
the self which chooses between these two alternatives
appears to be left out between the rational will,
which is the real self, on the one hand, and the
empirical self, which is determined by inclinations, on the
 KANT'S ETHICS 203
other. Kant's rational will and his mechanically deter-
mined world of sensibility are alike abstractions. We may
remind ourselves that the other difficulties in Kant's moral
theory, at least in his statement of it before the Critique of
Judgement was written, are due to this same abstract
separation of the rational will and the inclinations. So
long as it is maintained the rational will is in a
vacuum, issuing absolute moral laws with no regard
to circumstances, while it is assumed that pleasure in our
actions is always the sign that our inclinations and not our
rational will are determining us, and that our actions have
no moral value. I tried to show that there were signs even
in the earlier works that this was not Kant's real view, and
that in his later Metafthysic of Morals he says some things
very different. But what he is trying to say cannot really
be squared with the distinction between the two worlds
of intelligible and sensible reality, as he presents that
distinction in the Critique of Practical Reason. How far he
succeeded in getting over these difficulties, which he himself
came to recognize, we shall see when we consider the
Critique of Judgement. Meantime, we must consider the
light thrown on his ethical theory by his treatise on religion.

(2) RELIGION W I T H I N THE BOUNDS OF REASON

ALONE

Kant's philosophy of religion is, of course, not strictly a

part of his ethical theory. Its value and interest may
obviously be considered as a contribution to the philosophy
of religion. There are many who have a high regard for
Kant's ethical theory who would maintain that he had an
inadequate conception of the nature of religion. Never-
thele-S57~RamVT5luTö!^^
connected with his ethical theory that it may be better to
consider it here. For there are some points in his theory
of conduct which are brought out most clearly in his
treatment of religion.
Religion Within the Bounds of Reason Alone accepts, as
204 KANT
the title implies, the well-known distinction between
natural and revealed religion. But while Baumgarten
describes natural religion as what we may know about
God without faith, Kant'sjdistinclioiiis between theJaith
in God which man may acquire from within, frontal! that
isZ^ydyjed_jn_,j:uxning from,evil iQ..^oqd and seeking to
imitate the moral ideal revealed to him by his own reason
o!TT3ie~örIe~Ti"ärfd, and the faith which rests jrpjon an
histol^TrfiYelation.on thejj.ther. An historical revelation
needs for its continuance a learned class to sift the true
from the false and to hand down the true tradition. But
" i t is proper, it is rational to assume that not only ' Avise
after the flesh,' learned men or men capable of rationalizing
should be called to this illumination of their true salvation :
the whole human race is to be capable of this faith.
' The foolish things of the world', even the ignorant and
the most limited in conceptual power, must have some
pretensions to such a doctrine and such an inner convic-
tion." 1 " Now," he goes on, after explaining that an
historical religion needs learning, " there is a practical
knowledge, which though it is based entirely on reason and
needs no historical learning, yet lies as near to every one,
even the simplest, as though it were written in letters on
his heart. It is a law which has only to be named, and
every one at once understands what it is they are asked to
consider. It brings with it in every man's consciousness
unconditional obligation. This is the moral law. What is
still more, either this knowledge leads by itself to faith in
God, or at least it determines the conception of God as a
moral law-giver, and so it leads to a pure religious faith
which every man finds not only conceivable but worthy of
the highest honour. It does this so naturally that if the
attempt is made, it will be found in the case of every man,
though he has been taught nothing about it, that it can
be elicited from him by questioning,"2
Kant's religion, then, like his ethics, is to be religion for
the common man ; and it can be that just because and in
1
R., B. E., vi. p. 181. « R., B. E., vi. p . 181.
 KANT'S ETHICS 205
so far as it is the direct outcome of the moral consciousness.
Revealed religion serves only to make more vivid and
present to the mind what is already implicit in the moral
consciousness. An historical example of a man in whose
life the good principle completely triumphed over the evil
can and does make us more vividly realize the possibility
and the conditions of that victory; but the power of the
life of Christ upon us depends on our possessing in our
moral consciousness the ideal and the claim which that life
presents to us. There is, then, for Kant only one real
religion, though there may be many presentments of it;
and the purpose of an historical revealed religion, and of
what Kant calls Church faith, is gradually to make it
possible for men to do without revelation and live by pure
religion alone.
The relation between morality and religion is stated by
Kant in the preface to the first edition of Religion Within
the Bounds of Reason Alone as follows :
" Morality, so far as it is based upon the conception of
man as a free being and, therefore, as a being who binds
himself through his reason to an unconditioned law, needs
neither the idea of a being over him in order to know his
duty, nor of a motive other than that furnished by the
law itself, in order to do it. . . . Morality, therefore, in no
way needs religion for its support (neither objectively as
concerns what is to be willed, nor subjectively as concerns
capacity to will it), but by means of the pure practical
reason it is sufficient to itself."1
That is Kant's first position, and he stoutly repudiates
any attempt to make morality dependent upon or sub-
sequent to religion. The distinguishing mark of all false
religion is that it makes something not in itself moral—
church observance or creed or acceptance of authority—
of value in itself, as though such things and not a good life
could be acceptable to God. That is to make an end of
what ought only to be a means.
But once this first point is granted, then Kant can go on :
1
R., B. E., vi. p. 3.
206 KANT
" Although morality needs for its own behalf no repre-
sentation of a purpose which must go before the deter-
mination of the will, yet it may well be the case that it has
a necessary relation to such a purpose, viewed not as the
ground but as the necessary consequence of the maxims
which are assumed in consonance with the moral law. No
determination of will can take place in man without some
relation to purpose, as no determination of will can be
without effect. The representation of that effect, although
it is not the determining ground of our willing and, there-
fore, not a purpose which precedes it, yet must be taken
into account as a consequence of the will being determined
by law to a purpose (finis in consequentiam veniens).
Without that willing can find no satisfaction, if it thinks
of no determined object, objective or subjective, which it
has or should have in the action before it—an object set
forth to show how, but not to what, it has to work. Willing,
therefore, for morality needs no purpose in order to act
rightly. The law which contains in principle the formal
condition of the use of freedom is enough. But from
morality there follows a purpose. For it cannot possibly
be indifferent to reason how the question is answered :
What is, then, to come out of our right acting ? Nor is
it indifferent to that towards which we direct all our doing
and not doing. This may not be entirely in our power, but
we can at least see that our actions are consistent with it.
This ideal which contains united in itself the formal con-
dition of all the purposes which we ought to have (duty), as
well as all that is conditioned by all these purposes which we
have (the blessedness which follows upon the observance of
them), is only the idea of an object. It is the idea of the
highest good in the world. For its possibility we must
assume a higher, moral, most holy and almighty Being who
can alone unite both elements which the idea contains.
But this idea is on the practical side not empty. It helps
our natural requirements to think of a final purpose to all
our doing and not-doing which can be justified by reason.
Without it our moral decisions would be hindered. But
 KANT'S ETHICS 207
the best of it is that this idea proceeds from morality, and
is not its basis. It is a purpose which cannot be made such
without moral principles. Therefore, it cannot be in-
different to morality whether it does or does not conceive
a final purpose of all things. Its conception does not
increase the number of our duties, but gives them a special
point of relation in the uniting of all purposes. Only thus
can objective practical reality be given to the union of the
purposiveness of freedom with the purposiveness of
nature." 1
We may try to translate this into simpler terms. As we
have already seen, the fundamental moral distinction for
Kant is that between an action in which the ultimate
determining principle of our will is a want or inclination,
prescribed to us by our particular nature or environment,
and an action where that ultimate principle is reason itself.
This does not mean that we are not to will particular
purposes in particular situations. Of course, our willing is
continually directed in the light of a particular situation
to bring about this particular result rather than that. But
the decisive question is whether we will this rather than
that because it is prescribed by a universal principle of
reason as applied to this situation, or because we want this
rather than that. If the final principle of our action is that
we want this particular result, then, according to Kant, our
will is not moral. The representation of the consequences
of our action ought never, therefore, to be the determining
principle of our action. This applies just as much, as we
have seen, to the representation of exalted as of trifling
purposes. If we start with wanting something, regard the
fact of that want as an all-sufficient reason for action, and
use our reason only to realize our want, then our action is
heteronomous, and of no moral value. In moral action the
determining principle must be the practical reason itself.
But at the same time it is obvious that we cannot will
without expecting, and indeed willing, the consequences of
our action. If we were convinced that the world was
1
R., B. E., vi. pp. 4-5.
3o8 KANT
entirely alien to our purposes, so that none of our actions
could come to any fruition, we should know that our
actions would be futile ; and we cannot will what we know
to be futile, although we are bound to will even if we
have no guarantee of the success of our action. A will
which really ignored consequences would be a will which
willed nothing. And in a world in which our moral pur-
poses were known to be incapable of fulfilment, it would
not be enough for us to say, " Let us at least do our duty."
For although our first business is to do our duty, it cannot
be our duty to will what has no consequences, for that is
not willing. We continually are called upon to do our duty
and leave the consequences to faith. But then for that
faith must be possible.
The principle implied in Kant's position is seen if we
consider what is involved in willing as a member of a
kingdom of ends. Moral action is action along with and
having respect to other people. We are ordinarily in our
actions willing something to which others are to contribute.
The realization of what our will is is therefore normally not
entirely in our power. We do our part in a co-operative
enterprise, trusting that others will do theirs. We must be
able to will that the maxim of our action should be a law for
others as well as for ourselves. A simple duty like truth-
speaking or the keeping of promises implies that we will
that others beside ourselves should speak the truth and be
honest. If we knew that no one else could speak the truth or
keep a promise, the whole situation would be altered. Yet,
on the other hand, if we refused to speak the truth or keep
our promises unless we got a guarantee that every one else
would do the same, we should not be following the moral
law. We are to do our part, trusting that others will do
the same. We must do this, for we are, if acting morally,
willing that the maxim of our action should be a universal
law. This implies that we must for right action have faith
in something that is not within our power, and yet that we
must not demand that that faith should become knowledge.
The nerve of this position may be seen most clearly if
 KANT'S ETHICS 209
we compare it with that of Hobbes. " He that would be
modest and tractable, and perform all he promises in such
time and place as no other man should do so, should but
procure his own ruin, which is against all the laws of
nature. But he that, having surety that other men shall
regard the laws of nature, doth not do so himself, en-
deavoureth not peace but war." 1 If you are guaranteed
the kingdom of heaven as the result of your actions, you
are called on to act as a member of i t ; if not, not. From
which follows Hobbes' position that the setting up of a
guarantor in the person of the sovereign must precede all
morality. This is to make the result willed in action its
determining ground. Kant is right in thinking such a
position immoral. " For if ye love them which love you,
what reward have ye ? Do not even the publicans the
same ? " We are not to make bargains in obeying the
moral law. We are to give, "asking nothing again." And
yet at the same time such a " bestowing virtue," as
Nietzsche called it, implies necessarily trust and faith in
the consequences of our actions. The faith is the outcome
of the action, not its determining ground; but it is not an
accidental outcome. The action implies faith.
Notice what a revolutionary conception of the relation
between reason and faith this position involves. Instead
of the two being separate as though we were first rational
and then faith gave us something more, faith is for
Kant part and parcel of rational willing. True faith is,
therefore, for Kant, always rational faith. It is the faith
implied in rational will.
These considerations will enable us to answer what might
seem to be the most obvious argument against Kant's
theology. We might agree that, of course, our actions have
purposes and take effect in the world without us, but
maintain that those purposes are limited. However badly
we may think of the world, however much we may consider
it to be quite indifferent to our exalted ideals, yet we might
hold this impersonal universe accidentally allows some
1
Hobbes' Leviathan, c. xv.
2IO KANT
scanty opportunities for the fruition of good actions. We
may make some men's lives for a short time happier, we may
at least, by being kind and merciful and upright, shed some
faint light in the darkness that surrounds us. If we give
up faith in God, there are still purposes the accomplishment
of which is within our powers, and to those we should
confine ourselves. The fallacy of the Kantian theology, it
might be argued, is not that it demands that will should take
its willed effect in the real world, but in its assumption of
one final all-embracing purpose of all our actions. Kant's
answer to such objections would be that the moral law
assumes the infinity of the good will; that we must will
that .the principle of our action should be a universal law
of nature ; that we will as members of a kingdom of ends.
This implies that we must in our willing be seeking to bring
about something the full accomplishment of which is
beyond our power. If it be asked in objection, how can
we be made responsible for what is not in our power—and
does not Kant himself say : " I ought, therefore I can " ?
—the answer is that we are responsible for doing our duty,
that is, for playing our part in the accomplishment of a
universal purpose. That is within our power ; the
accomplishment is not. That is obviously true of any
co-operative social action, and Kant holds it to be true of
all moral action. The universality of the purpose of moral
action follows in Kant's opinion from the very nature of
the moral law. The universality of the moral law is
inconsistent with the view that the universe is indifferent
to our moral ideals. That is why Kant can say that if we
act as reason demands, we act as if there were a God.
But the as if is an attempt to translate into intellectual
terms the simpler conception of trust or faith, and the
translation weakens its force. Faith for Kant is not
primarily faith " that," but faith " in," and such a faith
is always primarily shown in action.
After this very general statement in the Introduction of
the relation between morality and religion, it is perhaps
strange to find that the first section of Religion Within the
 KANT'S ETHICS 211
Bounds of Reason Alone is concerned with the " radical
evil in human nature." But because for Kant religion is
essentially practical, it is primarily concerned, not like
Nicene theology, with the being and attributes of God,
but with the dealings of God with 4fae individual soul, with
justification and sanctification. The only rational purpose
which can be conceived for the world is the moral perfection
of men, and the way in which that purpose can be attained
can only be understood when we face the nature of the
problem by realizing the power of evil. " It is a character-
istic of Christian morality," says Kant, " to distinguish the
morally good from the morally evil, not as heaven and earth,
but as heaven and hell are distinguished."1 And in this,
he asserts, Christianity is philosophically correct. For the
real problem of conduct arises from the fact that man
makes evil the principle of his willing. Inclinations in
themselves are neither good nor bad. As goodness consists
in the self-legislation of the will, the rational principle
itself determining the will, so evil can only be in the will,
and can consist only in the will deliberately subordinating
itself to inclination. There are passages in Kant's ethical
work which.lend themselves to the interpretation that
Kant thought that the good will alone is free, and that
evil consists in the will being inactive and allowing the
inclinations to work by themselves. This is taken to imply
that we are not responsible for our bad actions. Now
there is a sense in which the good will alone is free, if by
a free action is meant one which is not determined by
inclination. But the characteristic of a bad action which
makes it a bad action, and not merely reflex behaviour, is
that the will deliberately puts itself under the control of
the inclinations. To do that is for Kant to take evil up
into the wilf itself. There are, then, in willing two abso-
lutely opposed principles; and goodness is primarily a
matter of a change of principle, or of what religion calls
conversion. Man finds in himself these two radically
opposed principles of conduct; he finds his will in bondage
1
R „ B. E., vi. p. 60. Note.
212 KANT
to the evil principle, and yet he acknowledges the authority
of the moral law over his will.
How, then, is the good principle to overcome the evil ?
That is the vital question for morality as for religion. Man,
conscious of the power of evil in his own will, despairs of
the victory of the good. He needs a conviction that he can
make a new start, and a conviction that that new start will
really be a beginning of another kind of life, in which he can
persevere. In theological language, he needs the conviction
of justification and the promise of sanctification. Refor-
mation theology, and especially the evangelical pietism in
which Kant had been brought up, had insisted that man's
weak and divided nature was helpless without the operation
of the Grace of God.
Now Kant offers no explanation of the presence within
the will of these two opposing principles ; he insists, indeed,
that this is, like free will itself, a mystery whose incompre-
hensibility alone we can comprehend. Equally he professes
no explanation of how the good principle may obtain
victory over the bad. Of that reason alone can give no
account. But as a moralist he is insistent that though we
need the Grace of God to overcome, the only way in which
we may hope for it is to seek to deserve it. We are not to
read the doctrine of justification by faith, as it has some-
times been read, as though we could do nothing till we were
given a mysterious conviction of forgiveness, or as though
the assurance that God would work in us might be taken
as an excuse for our making no efforts of ourselves. To
believe that is to fall into the fatal heresy of all false
religion. Kant takes from the theology in which he had
been reared the doctrine of conversion. We need an entire
change of principle. He can give his own sense to the
seemingly extravagant doctrine that good works before
conversion are of no avail. " The appetites or inclinations,
which in themselves are neither good nor bad, are opposed
to principles in general; hence any noble principle of
morality has a certain disciplinary value in controlling
them ; but mere discipline may only bring about a seeming
 KANT'S ETHICS 213
peace, and not overcome the true enemy, namely, the
perverted will. Unless virtue contend against that enemy,
all virtues are, if not, as a Father of the Church said,
sflendida vitia, at least splendid poverty, mere tinsel, as
it were, the outside appearance of something fine, but
possessed of no intrinsic moral value." 1 But conversion is
our turning to a new principle of action. Such a " change of
life " is absolutely necessary, and it is also in a sense suffi-
cient. For it implies in principle the victory of the good.
That the change will be lasting, that it will show itself in all
the details of our lives, cannot be proved. We shall have
set-backs and failures. But the change itself is so decisive
and far reaching that it carries with it a faith and assurance
that being so fundamental it must persevere. That we
ourselves have to turn from the evil principle of action to
the good does not mean that we can do without the Grace
of God, but it does mean that we have done what is
essential to deserve it.
From this conception of the change of principle implied in
conversion to true morality there follows Kant's distinction
between Church and State. Because we must, if we follow
the rational will, will as members of a. kingdom of ends,
we are committed to membership of a community of
individuals seeking to bring about the dictates of reason
or the kingdom of God on earth. Such a community
cannot be a compulsory association, for in the true sense
of morality compulsory morality is a contradiction in
terms. The State, therefore, which is necessarily a com-
pulsory organization, must be quite distinct from this
" ethical society," of which every good man is a citizen.
As the will to good is necessarily universal, there can only
be one such society, the universal Church invisible. This
Church universal is only an idea, but, like other ideas of
reason, it is necessarily implied in our action. Actual
Churches are full of human imperfection ; they tend to be
untrue to the conception of the freedom of the children of
God, and to forget that the service of God is a free moral
1
R., B. E., vi. p. 58. Note.
214 KANT
service ; they too often make religion consist in statutory
observances of one kind or another, and act as if they
were a state. But they are true members of a Church
universal, in so far as they use all their powers to make
their members devote themselves to that service of God
which is perfect freedom.
So Kant completes his account of what is implicit in the
doctrine that the autonomy of the will is the chief principle
of morality. If we commit ourselves to the governance of
the rational will within us, we commit ourselves to a
principle and a purpose transcending our individual selves,
to something, therefore, which, though within us, is also
beyond us. We are thereby, if we whole-heartedly accept
this principle of action, trusting in something other than
ourselves, and taking part in a universal purpose, in the
furtherance of which we, with all other rational beings, in
so far as they are true to their real nature, are necessarily
united.
 V

THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT

(i) THE PLACE OF THE THIRD CRITIQUE IN THE

CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY

WHETHER the Critique of Judgement should be regarded as

part of the original scheme of the Kantian Criticism is not
clear. It will be remembered that Kant, in his letter of
June 1771 to Marcus Herz, where he first talks of the work
which was to become the Critique of Pure Reason, says
that he has been concerned with what is " involved in the
theory of taste, metaphysics, and moral theory." That
seems to look forward to the third, the first, and the
second Critiques. In his next letter to Herz, dated 21st
February 1772, he mentions that he has " sketched in a
manner with which I was fairly satisfied the principles of
feeling and taste and the faculty of the reflective judgement
with their effects, the agreeable, the beautiful, and the
good, and so could now make a plan for a work which
should have some such title as The Bounds of Sensibility
and Reason." That work was to have two parts, and the
second part had two sections : (1) General Principles of
Feeling, Taste, and the Desires of the Senses; (2) The
First Principles of Morality.
There we have aesthetics ranked with metaphysics and
moral theory as part of the general Critical programme.
We have also taste connected with feehng, and, what is
more significant, with the faculty of reflective judgement.
On the other hand, Kant would not, after 1781, have
connected the good, as he does in the sentence quoted
above, with the agreeable and the beautiful, nor would he
215
2l6 KANT
have talked of the general principles of the desires of the
senses.
In this second letter to Herz he goes on to say that in
the consideration of the programme just quoted he has
omitted a fundamental problem. That problem is the real
problem of the first Critique; and when he has finished
expounding it in this letter, the projected work on The
Bounds of Sensibility and Reason has become a projected
" Critique of Pure Reason, which contains the nature of
theoretical as well as of practical knowledge, so far as it
is purely intellectual. The first part contains the sources,
method, and limits of metaphysic ; the second part will
work out the pure principles of morality." In the con-
sideration of the Critical problem the theory of taste and
of the reflective judgement has apparently disappeared,
and the programme now looks forward only to the first
and second Critiques. Kant seems to have made up his
mind that there were no a priori principles concerned in
aesthetics. Indeed, he definitely says this in a note in the
first Critique on the meaning of the word aesthetic. That
note, however, was significantly altered in the second
edition. " The Germans are the only people who currently
make use of the word ' aesthetic ' in order to signify what
others call the critique of taste. This usage originated in
the abortive attempt made by Baumgarten, that admirable
analytic thinker, to bring the critical treatment of the
beautiful under rational principles, and so to raise its rules
to the rank of a science. But such endeavours are fruitless.
The said rules or criteria are, as regards their chief sources,
merely empirical, and consequently can never serve as
determinate a priori laws by which our judgement of taste
must be directed. On the contrary, our judgement is the
proper test of the correctness of the rules. For this reason
it is advisable either to give up using the name in this sense
of critique of taste, and to reserve it for that doctrine of
sensibility which is true science—thus approximating to
the language and sense of the ancients, in their far-famed
division of knowledge into alaO^ra KOX vorjrd—or else to
 T H E CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 217
share the name with speculative philosophy, employing it
partly in the transcendental and partly in the psychological
sense." 2
The words I have italicized are additions of the second
edition. If they are omitted, the rest is evidence that Kant,
when he wrote the first edition of the first Critique, had
given up the notion that aesthetics in the sense of a critique
of taste had any concern with Transcendental Philosophy.
When they are added, a second change in Kant's view
appears. He still regarded Baumgarten's ^Esthetic as mis-
taken. He still held that in aesthetics " our judgement is the
proper test of the correctness of the rules." But he seems
now to hold that there is some sense in which speculative
philosophy has to do with a critique of taste. The second
edition of the first Critique appeared in June 1787, the
second Critique at the end of the same year, and in Decem-
ber Kant wrote a letter to Reinhold, in which he told him
he was sending him a copy of the second Critique. In the
same letter he announces the plan of the Critique of
Judgement in significant words.
" Without being guilty of conceit, I can assure you that
the longer I proceed on my way, the less concern I have
that any contradiction or alliance of opponents against it
will appear—and that is not an unusual thing to expect—
which could do my system any real harm. This is an inner
conviction that grows on me. For as I proceed to other
undertakings, not only do I find the system always con-
sistent with itself, but I find this also. If ever I cannot
rightly make out the method of inquiry into some object,
I have only to look back to the general sketch of the
elements of knowledge and of the powers of mind pertain-
ing to them which my system involves, and I make dis-
coveries of which I had no inkling. For example, I am
now busy with the Critique of Taste, and in this occupation
I have discovered a new kind of a priori principles other
than any I had known before. The faculties of mind are
three : the faculty of knowledge, the feeling of pleasure and
i B 36.
2i8 KANT
pain, and the faculty of desire. For the first of those I have
discovered a priori principles in the Critique of Pure
[theoretic) Reason : for the third in the Critique of Practical
Reason. I looked for a priori principles for the second, and
at one time thought it impossible to find them. But the
systematic connexion which the division of these faculties
had allowed me to discover in the human mind, which it will
be sufficient employment for the rest of my days to admire,
and, when possible, to explain, this systematic connexion
has brought me to the position that I now recognize three
parts of philosophy, each of which has its a priori prin-
ciples, and can with assurance determine the range of the
knowledge possible in such a way. The three are theoretical
philosophy, teleology, and practical philosophy. The
second of these I have certainly found the poorest in a
priori principles of determination. I hope to have this in
manuscript, though not ready for the printer, by Easter."
Kant, as usual, was over sanguine. In March 1788 he
says that in spite of his unaccustomed duties as Rector of
the University, he hopes " to finish his Critique of Taste
by Michaelmas, and so complete his critical work." In
May 1789, in a third letter to Reinhold, he says that his
Critique of Judgement, of which the Critique of Taste
is a part, will be published at Michaelmas. The work
eventually appeared in 1790. The correspondence shows
that its scope was enlarged. The Critique of Teleological
Judgement is certainly later than the Critique of Msthetic
Judgement. In the process of reflecting on the " new kind
of a priori principles implied in taste," Kant was led to
see that these principles are the specific principles of what
he called the reflective judgement, exemplified in their
purity in art, but applied in the teleological judgement
to nature. It was this discovery which gave this Critique
its place in the Critical system as a whole.
This history has had an unfortunate effect on the form
of the work, which is a curious mixture of systematic
thinking and discursiveness. In the preface Kant states
the logical problem with which the Critique is concerned.
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT
The constitutive a priori principles of knowledge, whose
validity the first Critique has established, are the work of
the understanding ; the constitutive a priori practical
principles with which the second Critique has been con-
cerned, are the principles of reason. " But now comes
Judgement, which in the order of our cognitive faculties
forms a middle term between understanding and reason.
Has it also got independent a priori principles ? If so, are
they constitutive, or are they merely regulative, thus
indicating no special realm ? And do they give the rule
a priori to the feeling of pleasure and displeasure, as the
middle term between the faculties of cognition and desire,
just as understanding prescribes laws a priori for the former
and reason for the latter ? This is the topic to which the
present Critique of Judgement is devoted." 1
Kant wrote two introductions to this Critique. The one,
which he discarded as being too difficult, has the suggestive
title, On Philosophy in General, a title which would suit as
well the introduction in the Critique as published. Both
introductions contain a systematic account of the whole
Critical philosophy, a statement of the relations of the two
worlds of nature and of freedom, the two capabilities of
knowledge and desire, the two faculties of understanding
and reason; and they suggest that a bridge is to be made
between nature and freedom by art, between knowledge and
desire by feeling, between understanding and reason by the
faculty of judgement, between law and obligation by the
concept of purposiveness or finality. Now Kant puts
forward the faculty of judgement as concerned with feeling,
with art, and with purposiveness or finality, and he promises
to show how an analysis of aesthetic judgement will solve
the difficulties involved in the contrasts just stated. He
adds that the application of the general a priori principles
of judgement to our knowledge of nature has an interest
of its own, and will be treated in what should be regarded
as an appendix, the Critique of Teleological Judgement.
But after this magnificently systematic introduction
i C. of J., p. 168.
220 KANT
the character of the work changes. The form is still
systematic, but it is the systematic framework of the first
Critique, with Analytic, Dialectic, Methodology, and all
the rest of it, applied to material for which it is not suited.
For Kant largely works out the principles of aesthetic
for their own sake. Much of his material had been
already worked up without any reference to the general
principles of the Critical philosophy, and the relation of
much of the discussion to the general problem stated in the
introduction is not very obvious. This does not mean that
the Critique of Msthetic Judgement is not important. It has
had a very great influence on modern theories of ^Esthetics.
The Critique of Teleological Judgement is also in itself of
great interest. It destroyed the bid-fashioned teleology
which stood in the way of any scientific treatment of
biological problems, and is still of importance and value.
The exposition of Kant's philosophy of religion which is
to be found at the end of the whole work is also illuminating.
The separate value of these discussions can be grasped at
once, but their interrelation is apt to be lost; and it is clear
that it was primarily to their interrelations that Kant
attached such great importance.
The key to this interrelation is Kant's new conception
of the reflective judgement, and to the examination of that
we must turn. The difficulty of the subject is that Kant
seems to base his demarcation of the separate spheres of
knowledge, art, and conduct, and therefore his whole
division of philosophy, on an abstract logical division,
which will not bear the weight he puts upon it. It seems
as though some of the difficulties he has already got into
in his sharp separation between nature and freedom are
connected with his too sharp distinction between under-
standing and reason. Yet in the third Critique, which is
to overcome these difficulties, the paradoxical course is
taken of insisting on a third distinctive faculty, that of
judgement.
" Concepts of nature contain the ground of all theoretical
cognition a priori, and rest, as we saw, upon the legislative
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT
authority of understanding. The concept of freedom con-
tains the ground of all sensuously unconditioned practical
precepts a priori, and rests upon that of reason. Both
faculties, therefore, besides their application in point of
logical form to principles of whatever origin, have in
addition their own peculiar jurisdiction in the matter of
their content; and so, there being no further a priori
jurisdiction above them, the division of philosophy into
theoretical and practical is justified.
"But there is still further in the family of our higher
cognitive faculties a middle term between understanding
and reason. This is judgement, of which we may reasonably
presume by analogy that it may likewise contain, if not a
special authority to prescribe laws, still a principle peculiar
to itself upon which laws are sought, although one merely
subjective a priori. This principle, even if it has no field of
objects appropriate to it as its realm, may still have some
territory or other with a certain character, for which just
this very principle alone may be valid.
"But, in addition to the above consideration, there is yet)
(to judge by analogy) a further ground upon which
judgement may be brought into line with another arrange-
ment of our powers of representation, and one that appears
to be of even greater importance than that of its kinship
with the family of cognitive faculties. For all the faculties
of the soul, or capacities, are reducible to three, which do
not admit of any further derivation from a common
ground : the faculty of knowledge, the feeling of pleasure or
displeasure, and the faculty of desire. For the faculty of
cognition understanding alone is legislative, if (as must be
the case when it is considered on its own account free of
confusion with the faculty of desire) this faculty, as that
of theoretical cognition, is referred to nature, in respect of
which alone (as phenomenon) it is possible for us to
prescribe laws by means of a priori concepts of nature,
which are properly pure concepts of understanding. For
the faculty of desire, as a higher faculty operating under
the concept of freedom, only reason (in which alone this
222 KANT
concept has a place) prescribes laws a priori. Now between
the faculties of knowledge and desire stands the feeling of
pleasure, just as judgement is intermediate between
understanding and reason. Hence we may, provisionally
at least, assume that judgement likewise contains an a
priori principle of its own, and that, since pleasure or
displeasure is necessarily combined with the faculty of
desire (be it antecedent to its principle, as with the lower
desires, or, as with the higher, only supervening upon its
determination by the moral law), it will effect a transition
from the faculty of pure knowledge, i.e. from the realm of
concepts of nature, to that of the concept of freedom, just
as in its logical employment it makes possible the transition
from understanding to reason."1
How can all this, it may well be asked, depend upon a
distinction of judgement from the understanding on the
one hand and from reason on the other ? Kant has in the
first Critique shown that judgement is the characteristic
and essential act of thought. Does not all this imply a
new conception of it, and is he not here putting a great
weight on a logical distinction which had hitherto escaped
him ?
Kant's conception of judgement as elaborated in the
third Critique is new. As reason, in the sense of the
faculty of the. a priori, is originally in the first Critique
identified with the understanding, and then in the Dialectic
is found to be distinguished into understanding on the
one hand and reason in its special sense on the other,
so now this a priori faculty suffers a third division,
and the faculty of judgement appears between under-
standing and reason. Kant has already said something
about the faculty of judgement in the first Critique
in the introduction to the Schematism of the Categories.
" If understanding in general is to be viewed as the faculty
of rules, judgement will be the faculty of subsuming under
rules, that is, of distinguishing whether something does or
does not stand under a given rule (casus datce legis).
1
C. of J., pp. 176-7.
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT
General logic contains, and can contain, no rules for
judgement. For since general logic abstracts from all
content of knowledge, the sole task that remains to it is to
give an analytical exposition of the form of knowledge as
expressed in concepts, in judgements, and in inferences,
and so to give formal rules for all employment of under-
standing. If it sought to give general instructions how
we are to subsume under these rules, that is, to distinguish
whether something does or does not come under them,
that could only be by means of another rule. This in
turn, for the very reason that it is a rule, again demands
guidance from judgement. And thus it appears that,
though understanding is capable of being instructed, and
of being equipped with rules, judgement is a peculiar talent
which can be practised only and cannot be taught. It is
the specific quality of so-called mother-wit, and its lack
no school can make good. For although an abundance of
rules borrowed from the insight of others may indeed be
preferred to, and, as it were, grafted upon, a limited
understanding, the power of rightly employing them must
be left to the learner himself ; and in the absence of such
a natural gift no rule that may be prescribed to him for
this purpose can ensure against misuse." x
Kant goes on in this passage of the first Critique to say
that transcendental logic is different from general logic in
that " its peculiar task is the advising and securing of
judgement, by means of determinate rules, in the use of
the pure understanding. Transcendental philosophy has
the peculiarity that besides the rule (or rather the universal
condition of rules) which is given in the pure concept of
understanding, it can also specify a priori the instance to
which the rule is to be applied." 2 How this is done is
described by Kant in his account of the principles of pure
understanding.
So much, then, for judgement in the first Critique, a
faculty for which there are no rules, and one would say,
therefore, a faculty with no a priori principles—rather a
1 2
A 133 ; B 172. A 135 ; B 174.
224 KANT
natural aptitude, or as we should say, common sense.
How, then, does it appear in the third Critique as marking
out for itself a division of the a priori ?
" By a reconsideration of the logical nature of judge-
ment," is the answer, in which Kant distinguishes two
kinds of judgement, reflective and determinant. " Judge-
ment in general is the faculty of thinking the particular as
contained under the universal. If the universal (the rule,
principle or law) is given, then the judgement which
subsumes the particular under it is determinant. This is
so even where such a judgement is transcendental, and,
as such, provides the conditions a priori in conformity with
which alone subsumption under that universal can be
effected. If, however, only the particular is given, and the
universal has to be found for it, then the judgement is
simply reflective." 1
The distinction between determinant and reflective
judgement corresponds to the distinction between deduc-
tion and induction, and its formulation marks a further
stage in Kant's logical progress. In the first Critique he
did indeed see that concepts got their reality only in
judgement, being " functions of unity in judgement." But
he still wrote then as if concepts were somehow formed
independently of the activity of judgement, waiting on
judgement only for their application. He has explained in
the Schematism of the Categories how the a priori forms
of judgement find their application in forms of temporal
determination. The general conditions of objectivity
supply a priori principles to which all judging has to
conform, in the application of which judgement is applying
fixed principles. All thinking is and must be done accord-
ing to the categories, but Kant has already observed in the
first Critique that the mere application of the principles of
pure understanding takes one a very little way towards the
relation of the multiplicity of the given in an intelligible
system. " Pure understanding is not, however, in a position,
through mere categories, to prescribe to appearances any
1
c . of j . , p. 179.
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 225
a priori laws other than those which are involved in a nature
in general, that is, in the conformity to law of all appear-
ances in space and time. Special laws, as concerning those
appearances which are empirically determined, cannot in
their specific character be derived from the categories,
although they are one and all subject to them." 1
What we have to recognize is that the empirical universal
is not just met with in the given ; it implies a power of
universalizing in the mind, and this is the work of what
Kant calls the reflective judgement. Its work is seen in
the simplest act of generalization; its distinctive character is
best seen in the generalizations of scientific genius. While
we must all think in accordance with the categories,
science depends for its success on the power of the scientific
genius to conceive universals, hypotheses, analogies,
and principles, when ordinary men see nothing but a
welter of facts.
Kant is no doubt mistaken in so far as he makes a sharp
distinction between the determinant and the reflective
judgement, just as it is wrong to make a sharp distinction
between deduction and induction. But he is clearly right
in drawing attention to the inductive element in judgement;
and he is asking a question of great importance when he
asks whether there are any a priori principles implied in
the use of this reflective judgement.
Scientific generalizationJs..a rational activity. It cannot
be fegardeöTäTdeduced from a certain number of estab-
lished principles. It produces its generalities and systems
by regarding the facts, and then creating or eliciting the
system. Yet though it is inspired by the facts, these cannot
be its only source of inspiration. Were it so, science would
be merely the fundamental a priori principles plus observa-
tion. This independent rational activity of scientific
generalization must have its own principles.
One word remains to be said about the reflective judge-
ment. We have seen in the first Critique the all-important
part which Kant makes imagination play in thinking. But
1
B 165.
H
226 KANT
if imagination is involved in the determinant judgements
discussed in the first Critique, how much more obviously is it
not involved in the reflective judgement ? If in the deter-
minant judgement the imagination is controlled by the
understanding, may we not say that in the reflective the
imagination takes the lead ? We may now look at Kant's
statement of the general problem in the fifth section of the
Introduction.
" Looking at the grounds of the possibility of an
experience, the first thing, of course, that meets us is
something necessary—namely, the universal laws apart
from which nature in general (as an object of sense) cannot
be thought. These rest upon the categories, applied to the
formal conditions of all intuition possible for us, so far as
it is also given a priori. Under these laws judgement is
determinant; for it has nothing else to do than to subsume
under given laws. For instance, understanding says : All
change has its cause (universal law of nature) ; trans-
cendental judgement has nothing further to do than to
furnish a priori the condition of subsumption under the
concept of understanding placed before it: this we get in
the succession of the determinations of one and the same
thing. Now for nature in general, as an object of possible
experience, that law is cognized as absolutely necessary.
But besides this formal time-condition, the objects of
empirical cognition are determined, or, so far as we can
judge, determinable, in divers ways, so that specifically
different natures, over and above what they have in
common as things of nature in general, are further capable
of being caused in an infinite variety of ways ; and each
of these modes must, on the concept of cause in general,
have its rule, which is a law, and, consequently, imports
necessity : although according to the constitution and
limits of our faculties of cognition we may entirely fail to
see this necessity. Accordingly, in respect of nature's
merely empirical laws, we must think in nature a possi-
bility of an endless multiplicity of empirical laws, which
yet are contingent so far as our insight goes, i.e. cannot
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 227
be cognized as a priori. In respect of these we estimate
the unity of nature according to empirical laws, and the
possibility of the unity of experience, as a system according
to empirical laws, to be contingent. But now such a
unity is one which must be necessarily presupposed and
assumed, as otherwise we should not have a thorough-
going connexion of empirical cognition in a whole of
experience. For the universal laws oi nature, while
providing certainly for such a connexion among things
generically, as things of nature in general, do not do so
for them specifically as such particular things of nature.
Hence judgement is competent for its own guidance to
adopt it as an a priori principle, that what is for human
insight contingent in the particular (empirical) laws of
nature contains nevertheless unity of law in the synthesis
of its manifold in an intrinsically possible experience—
unfathomable, though still thinkable, as such unity may,
no doubt, be for us. Consequently, as the unity of law in
a synthesis, which is cognized by us in obedience to a
necessary aim (a need of understanding), though recog-
nized at the same time as contingent, is represented as a
purposiveness of objects (here of nature), so judgement,
which, in respect of things under possible (yet to be dis-
covered) empirical laws, is merely reflective, must regard
nature in respect of the latter according to a principle of
purposiveness for our cognitive faculty, which then finds
expression in the above maxims of judgement. Now this
transcendental concept of a purposiveness of nature is a
concept neither of nature, nor of freedom, since it attributes
nothing at all to the object, i.e. to nature, but only
represents the unique mode in which we must proceed in
our reflexion upon the objects of nature with a view to
getting a thoroughly interconnected whole of experience,
and so is a subjective principle, i.e. maxim, of judgement.
For this reason, too, just as if it were a lucky chance
that favoured us, we are rejoiced (properly speaking,
relieved of a want) where we meet with such systematic
unity under merely empirical laws : although we must
228 KANT
necessarily assume the presence of such a unity apart
from any ability on our part to apprehend or prove its
existence." x
For Kant the reflective judgement, then, is distinguished
from the determinant, in that it starts with particulars and
multiplicity, and asks what kind of principle of unity can
make them into a system. It must act on principle, for
without principles there can be no unity. It cannot get
the principles from objects, because it is confronted with
multiplicity, and empiricism can never give unity to
multiplicity. It cannot impose principles upon nature, for
the right to impose or prescribe principles is limited by the
rule that such prescribing principles can only be such as
are necessary to make the distinction between subjective
and objective. These are the principles of the pure under-
standing, and when their work is done and their force
exhausted, there remains all the particularity of empirical
rules and instances which, so far as the principles of pure
understanding are concerned, are contingent. " The
reflective judgement cannot prescribe to nature, for
reflexion on the laws of nature adjusts itself to nature,
and not nature to the conditions according to which
we strive to obtain a concept of it." 2 What the
reflective judgement can do is to prescribe a principle to
itself. It can assume that nature is purposive to our
understanding, and is such that the more intelligible our
principles are, the more we shall understand nature.
This is a regulative principle. We must acf^ on it, but we
have no guarantee that nature is made for us to understand
i t ; we are to act like that, and see what happens. Success
in following this a priori principle, just because it is not
guaranteed, produces pleasure. Here, then, we have
pleasure connected with a priori principles.
We have here another aspect of Kant's view of the
relation of mind to objects. The principles of intelligibility
are supplied by the mind. Only the mind, Kant always
maintains, can produce a priori principles, principles of
» c. of J., pp. 183, 184. 2 c. of j . , p. 180.
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 229
its own activity. But it uses these principles to see what
success it can get with them, i.e. to see how far nature will
respond to such principles. Kant always objects to any
dogmatic theory of pre-established harmony : but here he
is saying that we must conduct our investigations as if
nature were purposive to our understanding, i.e. as if there
were a harmony. The phrase which Kant uses, Zweck-
mässig, translated ' purposive,' had in the philosophical
language of the time a more general meaning. Zweckmässig
denotes the character of a harmonious whole, denotes,
indeed, very much what Leibniz meant by harmony. We
assume, Kant holds, that nature is such that we can come
to understand it as a systematic, harmonious whole, as
though it had been made for us to understand it. But that
is a postulate, a regulative rule for our own judgement,
a rule of whose success we have no guarantee, and whose
actual success is always, therefore, a source of excitement
and pleasure, of never-ending surprise.
But that is only part of what he has to say. Acting
on this postulate we regulate our scientific thinking,
our attempt to reduce the mere multiplicity of the
world to a harmonious whole, by our a priori principles.
These are the principles by which the reflective judge-
ment is guided in its dealing with particulars. In
Über Philosophie überhäuft, Kant gives us an illus-
tration of this, the division of genus and species. " The
reflective judgement which seeks concepts even for em-
pirical presentations, must for this purpose assume that
nature in her boundless multiplicity has yet hit upon such
a division of herself into genus and species as to make it
possible for our faculty of judgement to reach clear insight in
the comparison of the forms of nature, and to get empirical
concepts and a connexion of them wijrh one another by
mounting to more general, though still empirical, con-
cepts." 1
The concepts, be it noted, are empirical, but the principles
on which they are formed are a priori. For any scientific
1
Hartenstein, vi. p . 382. Note.
230 KANT
theory has to be intelligible. But the characteristic of in-
telligibility comes from the mind's activity. This involves a
development in the notion of intelligibility. " Intelligible "
means more than "not contradictory ": more also than " in
accordance with the constitutive a priori principles of the
understanding;" it means such a combination of unity and
multiplicity as the mind can apprehend, and communicate.
The concepts are empirical. They have to fit the facts.
" Reflexion on the laws of nature adjusts itself to nature,
and not nature to the conditions according to which we
strive to obtain a concept of it." Nevertheless the mind's
dealing with empirical facts is never mere apprehension.
Great scientific discoveries always involve the work of the
imagination. They are first generalizations, theories which
will unite under a single principle a wide range of empirical
fact. Both the creative activity of the mind and the facts
have to co-operate, and Kant's point is that the reflective
judgement must first be inspired by the principle of the
mind's harmonious working if it is successfully to do its
work in making the scattered manifold facts into a har-
monious theory. How this principle is operative in
scientific thinking may be illustrated by the way in which
a physicist will sometimes say that the theory of relativity
is superior to other theories because it is " simpler " or
" a more beautiful generalization," or has brought together
into one theories which before were separate. The test of
the theory is not that it fits the facts. For, after all, there
is no such thing as the facts. As Kant says, we are con-
fronted with the boundless multiplicity of nature. The test
is rather the greater success with which a theory will unite
intelligibly a large number of facts. What " intelligibly "
means can be appreciated, but it can hardly be further
described. We use words like " harmonious," " coherent,"
" systematic." We are in these trying to describe a
characteristic of the mind's creative activity, which we
recognize in individual cases but which has no determinant
rules. The reflective judgement is always dealing with
particular empirical rules and instances, and making out of
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 231
them a whole into which their empirical character enters,
and to which that character contributes : and the reflective
judgement in making that whole is guided by its apprecia-
tion of what is intelligible.
Kant here remains true to the principle which he laid
down in the preface to the first Critique, that " reason has
insight into that only which it produces after a plan of its
own." The development of the third Critique is that Kant
now sees that reason, besides prescribing the fixed principles
of the understanding, without which objectivity is not
possible, deals with the empirical again according to its
own principles, in such a way that the mind both " adjusts
itself to nature " and yet regulates its activity by its own
ideal of intelligibility. Here, as elsewhere, Kant is saying
that if the mind is to apprehend the world outside it, the
mind must be at its best. The secret of objectivity is that
the mind should govern its operations, not by casual associa-
tion, but by the principles of its own unity. To understand
nature the mind must discipline itself by reason, and also,
we are now going to learn, enliven its powers by art.
For we can now understand what is at first sight
perplexing in the structure of the Critique of Judgement.
We might expect, after this discussion in the Intro-
duction, that the Critique was going to concern itself
with an examination of scientific procedure. Kant, in
the Critique of Teleological Judgement—the second part
of the whole Critique of Judgement—sa}^, e.g. that both
mechanism and teleology are regulative principles used by
the reflective judgement in trying to reduce the manifold
of causal laws to a system. That seems to be a natural
working out of the problem posed in the Introduction.
But the Critique of Teleological Judgement is, he says, an
Appendix. The real Critique of the reflective judgement is
the Critique of Msihetic Judgement. We have seen that
Kant began by writing a Critique of Taste. It is that
which turned into a Critique of Judgement, because Kant
realized the importance of art or of the judgement of the
beautiful in a critical appreciation of knowledge.
232 KANT
But what can art or the beautiful possibly have to do
with such logical problems as we have been discussing ?
The answer is that Kant has got to show that there are
principles implied in the mind's activity being intelligible.
The imaginative powers of the mind may act in all sorts of
ways. They may be strictly controlled by definite con-
cepts ; they may be completely incoherent and irregular.
But they may also work just intelligibly, so that others can
easily follow and understand their working. A Bach fugue
is not determined by its law, nor is it incoherent and
irregular ; it is supremely intelligible. So we mean some-
thing when we talk of nature as being " purposive for our
understanding," without meaning that it is such that it is
deducible in detail from some a priori principle. We know
what the activity of our mind is like when it is at its most
intelligible, and we assume in science that the more
intelligibly we think, the more we shall understand nature
as it is. We are to see to it that our thinking should have
its most characteristic nature, and then see whether nature
will conform to it. How are we to isolate the mind's
contribution to this joint process and show that intelligi-
bility as such has a positive character—that, besides the
determinant and abstract principles of the pure under-
standing, there is a positive characteristic of intelligibility
seen in the way in which the mind handles individual
situations and problems ? Kant's answer is that there are
certain judgements which call for universal assent, i.e.
they are not just accidental and particular like the judge-
ment that we find this or that agreeable; yet they do not
base that claim of universality on description of a common
object (they are not meant to be objective as are ordinary
empirical judgements, such as " this is a book," or " that
table is four feet broad "), nor on the fitness of the object
for a definite purpose or ideal. They are not judgements
that this is good for this or that purpose, or that it is
morally good. They are not determined by any objective
concept. They are not based on a reason or principle
which can be stated independently of them, so that they
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 233
should be determinant judgements. They are essentially
individual, based on the mind's direct and immediate
reflexion on objects. Their universality then, as it is based
on nothing objective, must be pure subjective universality,
sheer intelligibility as such. These judgements are the
judgements of the beautiful. Kant puts the ground of this
claim to universality in different ways. They are con-
cerned simply with the form of an object, not with what
kind of thing it is or ought to be. Beautiful objects when
we reflect on them enliven the cognitive powers, in that
they stimulate the understanding and the imagination to
their most harmonious working. They are the expression
of communicable form. They are evidence of a communis
sensus among mankind.
And what can this assumption of communicable form
mean but that there is a form which is as such intelligible ?
" If pleasure is connected with the mere apprehension
of the form of an object of intuition, apart from any
reference it may have to a concept for the purpose of a
definite cognition, this does not make the representation
referable to the object but solely to the subject. In such a
case the pleasure can express nothing but the conformity
of the object to the cognitive faculties brought into play in
the reflective judgement, and so far as they are in play, and
hence merely a subjective formal purposiveness of the
object. For that apprehension of forms in the imagination
can never take place without the reflective judgement, even
when it has no intention of so doing, comparing them at
least with its faculty of referring intuitions to concepts.
If now, in this comparison, imagination, as the faculty of
intuitions a priori, is undesignedly brought into accord with
understanding (as the faculty of concepts) by means of a
given representation, and a feeling of pleasure is thereby
aroused, then the object must be regarded as purposive for
the reflective judgement. A judgement of this kind is an
aesthetic judgement upon the purposiveness of the object,
which does not depend upon any present concept of the ob-
ject and does not provide one. When the form of an object
HI
234 KANT
(as opposed to the matter of its representation or sensation)
is, in the mere act of reflecting upon it, without regard to
any concept to be obtained from it, estimated on the
ground of a pleasure in the representation of such an
object, then this pleasure is judged to be combined with
the representation of it necessarily, i.e. not merely for the
subject apprehending this form, but for all in general who
pass judgement. The object is then called beautiful: and
the faculty of judging by means of such a pleasure (and so
also with universal validity) is called taste." 1
Kant does not himself use the phrase, but what all his
teaching comes to is that the beautiful is the mere intelli-
gible, or the intelligible as such. That is the upshot of his
analysis of the aesthetic judgement.
So far we have been discussing the logical importance
of the reflective judgement. But Kant, as we have seen,
holds that the reflective judgement mediates between the
understanding and the reason, or between the two worlds
of nature and of freedom. vIiow does this come about ?
In the first place, by a new understanding of the nature of
pleasure. Kant in his earlier ethical writings represented
pleasure as the passive effect on the mind of its stimulation
by objects. Our feelings of pleasure^are then the mark pf
our animal_or_phenomenal^..nature^qi: our being part of the
me^KIn^llv^^ the
bejMtihiHs J^ej;xpj;essicA.fifjQU the
free spontane^ojis^clivity-oLthe-Jj^
in^us~b"y reflexion upon jpjbjects. Here at least is the
mind in its freecTom, affected by objects in a way which is
not incomp^IbTe~^ffi""tHä"t~freedom. Here is something
between the sharp alternations of action from respect for
the moral law and heteronomous action determined by
accidental pleasure.
In the second place, the_jeflective judgement in con-
sidering empirical rules of causation—i.e. rules formed
by the mind when considering objects, and therefore at
least partly dependent on the nature of the outside world—
1
C. of J., p p . 189-90.
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 235
discovers different kinds of causation. All that the cate-
gory of cause requires is that there should be determination
in time, which we can recognize as having a distinctive char-
acter. The Third Antinomy and the Critique of Practical
Reason assumed that there were only two kinds of causa-
tion, the causation of the noumenal will acting under the
law of reason and the mechanically determined causation
of physics. The reflective judgement finds it can make
a systematic whole of experience only by assuming a
connexion between particulars which is neither the one
nor the other of these. The universal of art is intelligible
and rational, and yet free, the creation of the free play of
the mind's powers. The whole problem of the nature of
freedom is altered when we consider artistic activity.
In the third place, the aesthetic judgement may not only
express an enlivening of the understanding and the imag-
ination ; it may also involve the activity of the reason.
" Susceptibility to pleasure arising from reflexion on the
forms of things (whether of nature or of art) betokens,
however, not only a purposiveness on the part of objects in
their relation to the reflective judgement in the subject, in
accordance with the concept of nature, but also, commonly,
a purposiveness on the part of the subject, answering to the
concept of freedom, in respect of the form, or even form-
lessness, of objects. The result is that the aesthetic judge-
ment refers not merely as a judgement of taste, to the
beautiful, but also, as springing from a higher intellectual
feeling, to the sublime."1 The creative will which is the
source of moral freedom can express itself in art, and in
the sublime can express even its transcendent nature, and
so art can become the symbol of morality.
Perhaps the most marked characteristic of Kant's
aesthetics is that he insists on maintaining the distinctive-
ness of the beautiful from both the true and the good, or
the independence of the artistic activity from either
knowledge or morality. In all, of course, the mind is
involved with its faculties of understanding, judgement,
' C . of J., p. 192
236 KANT
and reason, and therefore there is action in knowing, and
knowing in acting, and art in both. But though under-
standing and reason are involved in both knowing and
acting, they are in a different relation in the two spheres,
and so art may be and is concerned with the intelligible,
and yet be neither knowing nor acting. Art is not a hand-
maid of either, but nevertheless we understand better the
functions of reason and understanding in the service of
morality and of knowledge when we experience their free
functioning in art. I quoted earlier a remark of Bergson's
that Kant's attitude to some of his problems would have
been very different if he had not identified science with
physics, if he had considered more the biological sciences.
The third Critique would seem to offer what Bergson
desires of Kant in the Critique of Teleological Judgement
and the consideration of biological problems there But
actually Kant found the key to the difficulties Bergson
notices, and indeed to the study of biology generally in the
consideration of the nature of art and the aesthetic
judgement.

(2) THE CRITIQUE OF ^ESTHETIC JUDGEMENT

Robert Bridges, in his Testament of Beauty, speaks

slightingly of philosophers' theories of a r t :
" How in its naked self
Reason were powerless showeth when philosophers
will treat of Art, the which they are full ready to do,
having good intuition that their master-key
may lie therein : but since they must lack vision of Art
(for elsewhile they had been artists, not philosophers)
they miss the way."
If this criticism of a philosophical treatment of art were
true, it would hold, if of anyone, of Kant. He certainly
" lacked vision of Art," and there is no doubt that the
poverty of his artistic experience has made him sometimes
miss the way. The remarkable thing is how far he got.
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 237
Vorländer, in a careful examination of all the evidence,
has shown that even in out-of-the-way Königsberg Kant
was not without opportunities of artistic appreciation.
There are one or two good collections of pictures there.
There was good chamber music to be heard, and occasional
operas, including the Magic Flute, were performed in the
theatre. But Kant's earliest biographer says : " H e never
seemed to pay much regard to paintings or engravings,
even the best. I have never noticed that he ever looked
specially at any of the universally admired collections
which there were in people's houses or in galleries, or that
he ever showed any special appreciation for the work of
the artist. The engraving of J. J. Rousseau in his sitting-
room was the only picture in his house." He had rather
more appreciation of music, but not much. He makes the
extraordinary remark in the Critique of Msihttic Judge-
ment, that one of the disadvantages of music is that you
cannot help hearing it, comparing it in that respect to the
perfumed handkerchief ! " Music has a certain lack of
urbanity about it. For, owing chiefly to the character of its
instruments, it scatters its influence abroad to an uncalled-
for extent (through the neighbourhood), and thus, as it
were, becomes obtrusive and deprives others outside the
musical circle of their freedom. The case is almost on a
par with the practice of regaling ourself with a perfume
that exhales its odours far and wide." Kant adds a bitter
note on those who have recommended the singing of hymns
at family prayers, " for they compel their neighbours either
to join in the singing or else abandon their meditations." 1
He had some real feeling for poetry. He admired
Milton, but he really preferred Pope and the satirists. He
liked Latin poetry more than Greek, and didactic poets
more than lyric. Persius, Ovid, Phaedrus, and Terence
were his favourites. He admired Frederick the Great's
poetry, and had no use for that of Goethe and Schiller !
How could a philosopher so equipped undertake an
aesthetic ? How could he—as is more remarkable—write
' C of J., p . 330.
238 KANT
an aesthetic which won the heartfelt admiration of Goethe
and Schiller ? -VThe explanation is that though Kant had
almost no appreciation of art, and though his remarks on
the arts in the Critique of Judgement are puerile, he had
nevertheless " a vision of beauty." He had a remarkable
appreciation of the beauty of nature. In his artistic
judgements he was pedantically early eighteenth century :
in his appreciation of nature he was a romantic. He loved
the sea ; he admired the wild and desolate aspects of
nature which the poets he admired thought only horrid.
His vivid visual imagination even made him kindle with
enthusiasm over descriptions of mountain scenery. And
between his appreciation of " correct" poetry and
romantic nature, he had enough " vision of beauty " at
least to understand in a remarkable way that appreciation
of beauty was an independent activity, not to be confused,
in spite of all his personal predilection for didactic poetry,
with knowledge or morality. The peculiarity of his
aesthetic experience has to this extent affected his aesthetic
in that he is much better in the appreciation of nature than
of art; and more especially in that he makes a sharper
division between the beautiful and the sublime, than he
could have done if he had any appreciation of romantic
poetry. The particular development he made of the
familiar contemporary distinction of the beautiful and the
sublime is one of the most interesting things in the Critique
of JEsthetic Judgement, but the sharpness of the distinction
as he draws it is one of its chief difficulties. The general
plan of the work would suggest that the beautiful and the
sublime are two species of what may in a wider sense be
called the beautiful. That is implied when Kant dis-
tinguishes the judgement of the beautiful from that of the
agreeable on the one hand and that of the good on the
other. But his distinction between the analytic of the
beautiful and the analytic of the sublime, and some of the
things he says about the sublime, almost imply that the
judgements of beauty and of sublimity have no relation
to one another.
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 239
We can, however, begin with the general problem
presented to Kant by the aesthetic judgement. When we
call anything beautiful, we intend, he holds, something
quite different from saying that it is agreeable, or that we
happen to like it. There is an element of universality
about the judgement of beauty which there is not about
the judgement of the agreeable. It has sometimes been
said that Kant too easily takes for granted the universality
of the aesthetic judgement. He should, it is argued, have
begun by proving that aesthetic judgements are universally
valid. But Kant no more assumes that judgements of
beauty are universally valid than he assumes that judge-
ments of fact are always true. He assumes in the first
Critique that judgements of fact claim to be true ; that we
do not mean the same thing when we say that A and B are
both instances of Y, as when we say we associate A and B
together in our minds. That judgements of fact claim to
be true is enough to distinguish judgement and association
of ideas. Similarly, he starts in the Critique of Msthetic
Judgement with the assumption that we mean something
different when we say that a thing is beautiful from what
we mean when we say that we happen to like it ; and that
something different implies some kind of a claim to
universality which the judgement of the agreeable does
not make. The fact that we may make mistakes as to
what is beautiful, or that our insight in judging the beauti-
ful can be trained, does not affect the significance of the
claim all such judgements make.
Kant begins his analysis by saying that the judgement
of taste is not a cognitive judgement, and its determining
ground cannot be other than subjective. " The represen-
tation is referred wholly to the subject, and what is more
to its feeling of life—under the name of the feeling of
pleasure or displeasure—and this forms the basis of a
quite separate faculty of discriminating and estimating,
that contributes nothing to knowledge."1 Further, " the
delight which determines the judgement of taste is in-
1
C. of J., p. 204.
240 KANT
dependent of all interest." We are not in reflecting on the
beauty of an object concerned with its existence, nor
with the question whether I like to have such objects,
or think they ought or ought not to exist. Both the
agreeable and the good involve an interest; the judgement
of beauty is disinterested. From this proceeds the first
definition of the beautiful. " Taste is the faculty of
estimating an object or a mode of representation by means
of a delight or aversion apart from any interest. The object
of such a delight is called beautiful."1 Secondly, " the
beautiful is that which, apart from all concepts, is
represented as the object of a universal delight." Just
because the judgement of taste is disinterested, it cannot
rest on " any inclination of the subject." " The subject
must regard it as resting on what he may also presuppose
in every other person, and, therefore, he must believe that
he has reason for demanding a similar delight from every
one. Accordingly, we shall speak of the beautiful as if
beauty was a quality of the object, and the judgement
logical (forming a cognition of the object by concepts of
it) ; although it is only aesthetic and contains merely a
reference of the representation of the object to the subject ;
because it still bears the resemblance to the logical judge-
ment that it may be presupposed to be valid for all men."
The judgement of the beautiful differs in this from that
of the agreeable, which makes no such implication of
universality, and that of the good, which implies a concept
or rule. This is the remarkable character of the judgement
of the beautiful. It starts with the individual object. It
does not judge it beautiful for anything or because of
anything. No reasons can be given for an object being
beautiful. The judgement is entirely individual. " If
anyone does not think a building, view, or person beautiful,
then he refuses, so far as his inmost conviction goes, to
allow approval to be wrung from him by a hundred
voices all lauding it to the skies."2 . . . " If anyone
reads me his poem, or brings me to a play, which, all said
1 2
C. of J., p. 211. C. of J., p. 284.
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 241
and done, fails to commend itself to my taste, then let him
adduce Batteux or Lessing, or still older and more famous
critics of taste, with all the host of rules laid down by them,
as a proof of the beauty of his poem ; let certain passages
particularly displeasing to me accord completely with the
rules of beauty (as set out by these critics and universally
recognized) : I stop my ears : I do not want to have any
reasons or any argument about the matter. I take my
stand on the ground that my judgement is to be one of
taste, and not one of understanding or reason."1
And yet in spite of this the judgement claims univer-
sality, claims not that every one else will agree, but that
every one ought to agree. " We want to look at the object
with our own eyes, just as if our delight depended on
sensation. And yet, if upon so doing, we call the object
beautiful, we believe ourselves to be speaking with a
universal voice."2 " The judgement of taste does not
postulate the agreement of every one (for it is only com-
petent for a logically universal judgement to do this, in
that it is able to bring forward reasons) : it only imputes
this agreement to every one. The universal voice is,
therefore, only an idea. It may be a matter of un-
certainty whether a person who thinks he is laying down
a judgement of taste is, in fact, judging in conformity
with that idea; but that this idea is what is contemplated
in his judgement, is proclaimed by his use of the expression
' beauty.' For himself he can be certain on this point
from his mere consciousness of the separation of every-
thing belonging to the agreeable and the good from the
delight remaining to*him."3
This will imply that we make mistakes about what is
beautiful because we take note in our judgement of
considerations which are irrelevant, and perhaps Kant
would have made a better case for the universality of the
aesthetic judgement if he had more realized how extremely
difficult it often is " t o separate everything belonging to
1 2
c. of j . , p. 284. c. of J., p. 216.
• c . of J., p. 216.
 242 KANT
the agreeable and the good." The problem of how this
" subjective universality " is possible, is advanced in a
section where Kant considers " the relative priority in a
judgement of taste of the feeling of pleasure and the
estimating of the object," and asserts that if we began
with an immediate sensation of pleasure, our judgement of
the beautiful could not possibly have any universality.
The pleasure must be the result of reflexion : " it is the
universal capacity for being communicated incident to the
mental state in the given representation which, as the
subjective condition of the judgement of taste, must be
fundamental."1 " The cognitive powers brought into play
by this representation are here engaged in a free play, since
no definite concept restricts them to a particular rule of
cognition. Hence the mental state in this representation
must be one of a feeling of the free play of the powers of
representation for a cognition in general. Now a represen-
tation, whereby an object is given, involves, in order that
it may become a source of cognition at all, imagination for
bringing together the manifold of intuition, and under-
standing for the unity of a concept uniting the represen-
tations. This state of free flay of the cognitive faculties
attending a representation by which an object is given
must admit of universal communication : because cog-
nition, as a definition of the object with which given
representations (in any subject whatever) are to accord, is
the one and only representation which is valid for every
one." 2
But if this pleasure, as we have seen, is disinterested
and is not bound by a concept, it cannot be concerned with
what the object is, nor with the immediate character of the
sensations involved in its apprehension. For these latter
are not communicable. The only thing which can be
communicable is form. The pleasure in the beautiful,
therefore, can only be concerned with the apprehension of
form. " The determining ground," says Kant, " of a pure
judgement of taste is simple purposiveness of form." The
1
c. of J., p. 217. * c. of j . , p. 217.
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 243
beautiful object is one the apprehension of which involves
an activity felt to have universality. But if the agreeable
and the good and what sort of a thing the object is are
irrelevant to that feeling, the only thing left is the kind
of activity which the apprehension of the object's form
involves. This implies that we have a universal sense of
form. This is what Kant calls " the idea of a common
sense." " Cognitions and judgements must, together with
the attendant belief in them, admit of being universally
communicated ; for otherwise a correspondence with the
object would not be due to them. But if cognitions are to
admit of communication, then our mental state, i.e. the
way the cognitive powers are attuned for cognition
generally, and, in fact, the relative proportion suitable for
a representation (by which an object is given to us) from
which cognition is the result, must also admit of being
universally communicated, as without this, which is the
subjective condition of the act of knowing, knowledge, as
an effect, would not arise. And this is always what
actually happens when a given object, through the inter-
vention of sense, sets the imagination at work in arranging
the manifold, and the imagination, in turn, the under-
standing, in giving to this arrangement the unity of
concepts. But this disposition of the cognitive powers has
a relative proportion differing with the diversity of the
objects that are given. However, there must be one in
which this internal ratio, suitable for quickening one faculty
by the other, is best adapted for both mental powers in
respect of cognition of given objects generally; and this
disposition can only be determined through feeling and
not by concepts."1
This is only to say that there is such a character as
intelligibility ; that we mean something when we say that
such and such an author has or has not the gift of saying
intelligibly what he has to say; that we can indeed talk of
style. What Kant has to say about beauty and its
connexion with knowledge depends on his conception of
1
c. of J., p. 238.
 244 KANT
the part played by imagination in both. The perception of
beauty is not, as we have seen, mere awareness or passive
apprehension. It involves reflexion, a certain play or
activity of the mental faculties. The same is true of
knowledge. This does not mean that the mind " makes "
the perceived object out of a chaos of sensations. For
Kant, perception and knowledge are never the same.
Knowledge involves a concept; and a concept, Kant has
told us, is a function of unity among representations. It
involves comparison of what we see now with what we
have seen elsewhere, and that involves the reproductive
imagination. Hitherto Kant has been anxious to dis-
tinguish between association and judgement. Judgement,
as we have seen, is association governed by a rule. What
he has now to say, is that there is also a distinction between
the casual or purely empirical play of the imagination and
the use of the imagination in our apprehension of beauty.
The poet and the scientist both use their imagination in a
way which is quite different from that of the casual
imagination in day-dreaming, or what is called free
association. But the poet's use of the imagination, while
creative and intelligible and through and through directive,
is not controlled by a definite rule. It is significant without
being significant of anything definite. It has what Kant
calls " a conformity to law without a law," or " purposive-
ness without a purpose." It is free and yet has order.
" It is only the subjective harmonizing of the imagination
and the understanding without a corresponding objective
harmony—which latter would mean that the represen-
tation was referred to a definite concept of the object—
that can consist with the free conformity to law by the
understanding (which has also been called purposiveness
without a purpose) and with the specific character of a
judgement of taste." 1 " The subjective condition of all
judgements is the judging faculty itself, or judgement.
Employed in respect of a representation whereby an
object is given, this requires the harmonious accordance
1
C. of J., p. 241.
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT
of two powers of representation. These are the imagination
(for the intuition and the arrangement of the manifold of
intuition) and the understanding (for the concept as a
representation of the unity of this arrangement). Now,
since no concept of the object underlies the judgement here,
it can consist only in the subsumption of the imagination
itself (in the case of a representation whereby an object is
given) under the conditions enabling the understanding in
general to advance from the intuition to concepts. That is
to say, since the freedom of the imagination consists
precisely in the fact that it schematizes without a concept,
the judgement of taste must be founded upon a mere
sensation of the mutually quickening activity of the
imagination in its freedom, and of the understanding with
its conformity to law."1
The beautiful, then, is that which calls forth a harmony
of the cognitive powers. But the aesthetic criticism of
the day was also occupied with an experience in which
disharmony was involved and the distinction between the
beautiful and the sublime rested on the existence of this
disturbing kind of aesthetic experience. " The feeling of
the sublime is a pleasure that only arises indirectly, being
brought about by the feeling of a momentary check to the
vital forces followed at once by a discharge all the more
powerful, and so it is an emotion that seems to be no sport,
but dead earnest in the affairs of the imagination. Hence
charms are repugnant to i t ; and since the mind is not
simply attracted by the object, but is also alternately
repelled thereby, the delight in the sublime does not so
much involve positive pleasure as admiration or respect,
i.e. merits the name of a negative pleasure."2
Our pleasure in the beautiful in nature depends at least
partly on the fact that we find in nature objects fitted to
our understanding, as though our postulate that nature
must be so were finding in the existence of beautiful
objects an unexpected confirmation. But our pleasure in
the sublime is quite different. " Whereas natural beauty
1 a
C of J., p. 287. c . of j . , p. 245 y
246 KANT
(such as is self-subsisting) conveys a purposiveness in its
form, making the object appear, as it were, preadapted to
our power of judgement, so that it thus forms of itself an
object of our delight; that which excites the feeling of the
sublime may appear, indeed, in point of form to contravene
the ends of our power of judgement, to be ill adapted to
our faculty of presentation, and to be, as it were, an
outrage on the imagination, and yet it is judged all the
more sublime on that account."1
The judgement of the sublime cannot, then, have the
same foundation for its universality as the judgement of
the beautiful; and yet Kant holds that equally with that
judgement it is distinguished by its universality from the
judgement of the agreeable. Kant tries, therefore, to
ascribe to it a universality even more subjective. Objects
may be called beautiful because we may claim that other
people should have the same feelings in contemplating
them as we have; but objects may not, he thinks, be
properly called sublime. " All that we can say is that the
object lends itself to the presentation of a sublimity
discoverable in the mind. For the sublime, in the strict
sense of the word, cannot be contained in any sensuous
form, but rather concerns ideas of reason, which, although
no adequate presentation of them is possible, may be
excited and called into the mind by that very inadequacy
itself which does admit of sensuous presentation. Thus
the broad ocean agitated by storms cannot be called sub-
lime. Its aspect is horrible, and one must have stored
one's mind in advance with a rich store of ideas, if such an
intuition is to raise it to the pitch of a feeling which is in
itself sublime—sublime because the mind has been incited
to abandon sensibility, and employ itself upon ideas
involving higher purposiveness."2 There are two points in
this which Kant does not distinguish. He holds that the
feeling for the sublime involves a certain degree of moral
cultivation, and is not and cannot be so universal as the
feeling for formal beauty. The claim of the judgement of
»C. of J., p. 245. * c. of j . , p. 245.
 T H E CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 247
the sublime to universality is more ideal than the claim of
the judgement of formal beauty. When we say an object
is beautiful, we claim that others would agree if they would
abstract entirely from considerations of interest or good-
ness and adopt the aesthetic attitude properly. But we
can assume agreement about the sublime only from those
who have cultivated their moral feelings.
Kant seems to go further and say that the judgement
of the sublime has even less to do with the object than the
judgement of the beautiful. The object is only the occasion
for the feeling of sublimity. But if the form of the object
is relevant at all, the judgement of the sublime is on all
fours with the judgement of the beautiful. We do not
mean, when we call anything sublime, to say that we have
a capacity for feelings of sublimity, and this spectacle
happens in our case to touch off that capacity. We
surely expect others to regard it as sublime, as we expect
others to regard as beautiful what we call beautiful. The
real reason for Kant's insistence on the greater subjectivity
of the sublime is probably that he was more alarmed at
the conclusions about the world which might be drawn
from the feeling of sublimity. If men argued from the
feeling of beauty that nature was really purposive for our
understanding, that is an error of no great consequence.
After all, we have to postulate that it is so purposive.
But if we argue that nature really is sublime, we shall be
trying to find God in nature, and not in the moral law, in
the earthquake and the fire, and not in the still small
voice ; and that, for Kant, is a most mischievous error.
When, however, that makes him write as though the mere
lack of form made anything sublime, he is surely mistaken,
and his own analysis of the experience of sublimity does
not bear him out. The sublime is much nearer the
beautiful than he will allow.
" The sublime," says Kant, " is that, the mere capacity
of thinking which evidences a faculty of mind transcending
every standard of sense." The sublime, he thinks, may
occur in two forms, " the mathematically and the dynami-
248 KANT
catty sublime." The mathematically sublime is the
aesthetic representation of infinity. " Nature is sublime in
such of its phenomena as in their intuition convey the idea
of their infinity. But this can only occur through the
inadequacy of even the greatest effort of our imagination
in the estimation of the magnitude of an object."1 " When
the size of a natural object is such that the imagination
spends its whole faculty of comprehension upon it in vain,
it must carry our concept of nature to a supersensible
substitute- (underlying both nature and our faculty of
thought), which is great beyond every standard of sense."2
The failure of imagination calls up the absolute standard
supplied by the idea of reason. " The feeling of the sublime
is therefore at once a feeling of displeasure, arising from
the inadequacy of imagination in the aesthetic estimation
of magnitude to attain to its estimation by reason, and a
simultaneously awakened pleasure, arising from the fact
that this very judgement of the inadequacy of the greatest
faculty of sense is in accord with ideas of reason, so far as the
effort to attain to these is for us a law." 3 " Just as in the
estimate of the beautiful imagination and understanding by
their concert generate subjective purposiveness of the
mental faculties, so imagination and reason do so here by
their conflict—that is to say, they induce a feeling of our
possessing a pure and self-sufficient reason, or a faculty for
the estimation of magnitude, whose pre-eminence can only
be made intuitively evident by the inadequacy of that
faculty which in the presentation of magnitude of objects
of sense is itself unbounded." i
The feeling of the sublime comes from the fact that the
mind is set in motion in the endeavour to grasp the sublime
object, and the imagination is both active and conscious
that for all its efforts it cannot grasp the object, but in
being compelled to try more it becomes conscious of the
illimitable demands of reason. But clearly the object
must be such as to set off the imagination—it must, that is,
1
C. of J., p . 250. s C. of J., p . 255.
« C. of J., p . 257. * C. of J., p. 258.
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT
have something of the nature of the beautiful in it. The
same holds of the dynamically sublime. The feeling of the
dynamically sublime comes from the contemplation of the
might of nature. " The irresistibility of the might" of
nature forces upon us the recognition of our physical
helplessness as beings of nature, but at the same time
reveals a faculty of estimating ourselves as independent of
nature, and discovers a pre-eminence above nature that is
the foundation of a self-preservation of quite another kind
from that which may be assailed and brought into danger
by external nature." 1
The contemplation of the sublime awakens in us the
activity of reason, and makes us conscious of the illimitable
demands which reason involves—one might almost say,
which reason is. From this Kant derives what is perhaps
the most interesting part of his aesthetics, the relation of
the aesthetic judgement and of art to the ideas of reason.
" The sublime," he says, " may be described in this way :
It is an object of nature, the representation of which
determines the mind to make the very incomprehensibility of
nature a source of the presentation of ideas.
" In a literal sense, and according to their logical import,
ideas cannot be presented. But if we enlarge our empirical
faculty of representation (mathematical or dynamical)
with a view to the intuition of nature, reason inevitably
steps forward, as the faculty concerned with the inde-
pendence of the absolute totahty, and calls forth the effort
of the mind, unavailing though it be, to make the represen-
tation of sense adequate to this totality. This effort, and
the feeling of the unattainability of the idea by means of
imagination, in itself lets us see that the mind is intended
for the employment of the imagination in the interests of
the mind's supersensible province. It compels us subjec-
tively to think nature itself in its totality as a presentation
of something supersensible, without our being able to make
such a presentation objective."2 " This idea of the super-
sensible, which no doubt v/e cannot further determine—so
1
c. of J., p. 261. * c. of j . , p. 268.
 250 KANT
that we cannot cognize nature as its presentation, but only
think it as such—is awakened in us by an object, the
aesthetic estimation of which strains the imagination to its
utmost, whether in respect of its extension (mathematical),
or of its might over the mind (dynamical) 'n " For though
the imagination, no doubt, finds nothing beyond the
sensible world on which it can lay hold, still this thrusting
aside of the sensible barriers gives it a feeling of being
unbounded ; and that removal is thus a presentation of
the infinite." 2
I said earlier that Kant's distinction of the beautiful and
the sublime was too absolute. The opposition which he
sometimes ascribes to the two, reflects the contrast in his
own aesthetic experience to which I referred at the begin-
ning of this section. The experience of the sublime is an
experience of beauty. The imagination is working in accord-
ance with law, and yet without a law. The difference is
one of emphasis. In the sublime the emphasis is on the
freedom, creativeness, and infinity of the mind's activity ;
in the beautiful it is rather upon its harmony. Kant
makes the beautiful that which calls out the harmonious
working of the imagination and the understanding, the
sublime that which calls out the harmonious working of the
imagination and the reason. But the distinction between
the understanding and the reason, although real and
important, is not as clear cut or rigid as Kant sometimes
assumes. On his own showing in the Preface to the first
Critique the specific problems of reason arise from the
work of cognition, which is the special problem of the
understanding. However true it may be that the under-
standing in knowledge is always working with definite
concepts and within a framework of time and space, its
working always assumes the infinity of that framework
and the relativity of those concepts. The understanding
is working inside what Plato called 'hypotheses', but its
working assumes a whole of experience to which those
hypotheses are not adequate. If the understanding did not
1 2
c. of j . , p. 268. c . of j , p. 268.
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 251
recognize the demand for the unconditional which Kant
thinks it the special function of reason to make, it would
not do its own work properly. This does not mean that
the distinction between working within assumptions and
the demand for the unconditioned is not an important one.
It is; but it has not the clear-cut nature which Kant some-
times gives to it, as though the understanding and the
reason were two completely distinct faculties. 1 So in
aesthetics Kant's distinction between the beautiful and the
sublime is a real distinction. We may call it that between
the correctness and the profundity of art. Examples are
perhaps easier. We all recognize that some works of art
may be just as good as they could be, may have an artistic
perfection in which we can find no flaw, and yet that they
are slight or have a narrow range, compared to others in
which we can perhaps recognize many defects, which have,
nevertheless, a greatness which the former kind are
without. Some distinction of this kind is suggested, for
example, in any comparison between Jane Austen and
Walter Scott.1 Jane Austen is a far more perfect artist
than Scott. Of that there can hardly be any question.
Yet she seems to achieve that perfection by a very definite
limitation of her interests and scope, as she herself
recognized in the oft-quoted remark about " her little
piece of ivory." Scott is full of defects. He is far more
uneven than Jane Austen. But he has a range and depth
to which Jane Austen does not pretend. It looks as
though there were some connexion between definite
limitation and aesthetic correctness which corresponds to
Kant's view that the beautiful is concerned with the
harmony of the imagination and the understanding, the
sublime with the harmony of the imagination and the
reason.
When Kant comes to the discussion of genius, he seems
to have left the distinction between the beautiful and the
sublime behind. What he has to say there will certainly
1
The example was given me by Professor Alexander, though he is
not responsible for the use I make of it.
252 KANT
apply to both. Kant's remarks about the division of the
arts and his discussion on the qualities of the different arts
are hardly worth notice ; but the section in the Critique on
Art is redeemed by what Kant says about genius. " Fine
arts must necessarily be regarded as arts of genius."
" Genius : (i) is a talent for producing that for which no
definite rule can be given: and not an aptitude in the way
of cleverness for what can be learned according to some
rule; and consequently originality must be its primary
property. (2) Since there may also be original nonsense,
the products of genius must at the same time be models,
i.e. be exemplary; and, consequently, though not them-
selves derived from imitation, they must serve that
purpose for others, i.e. as a standard or rule of estimating.
(3) It cannot indicate scientifically how it brings about its
product, but rather gives the rule as nature. Hence, where
an author owes a product to his genius, he does not himself
know how the ideas for it have entered his headfnor has he
it in his power to invent the like at pleasure or methodi-
cally, and communicate the same to others in such
precepts as would put them in a position to produce similar
products. (4) Nature prescribes the rule through genius
not to science but to art, and this also only so far as it is
to be fine art." 1
That which is most essential for genius is " soul " (Geist).
" The principle is nothing else than the faculty of present-
ing (esthetic ideas. But by an aesthetic idea I mean that
representation of the imagination which induces much
thought, yet without the possibility of any thought
whatever, i.e. concept, being adequate to it, and which
language, consequently, can never get quite on level terms
with or render completely intelligible." 2 " If we attach to
a concept a representation of the imagination belonging to
its presentation, but inducing solely in its own account
such a wealth of thought as would never admit of com-
prehension in a definite concept, and as a consequence
giving authentically an unbounded expansion to the
1
C. of J., pp. 307-8. « C. of J., p. 314.
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 253
concept itself, then the imagination here displays a
creative activity, and it puts the faculty of intellectual
ideas (reason) into motion." 1
" Genius displays itself, not so much in the working out
of the projected end in the presentation of a definite
concept, as in the portrayal or expression of cesthetic
ideas containing a wealth of material for effecting that
intention. Consequently the imagination is represented by
it in its freedom from all guidance of rules, but with a guide
for the presentation of the given concept. Lastly, the un-
sought and undesigned subjective purposiveness in the free
harmonizing of the imagination with the understanding's
conformity to law presupposes a proportion and accord
between these faculties such as cannot be brought about
by any observance of rules, whether of science or mechani-
cal imitation, but can only be produced by the nature of the
individual." 2
" Genius is the exemplary originality of the natural
endowments in an individual in the free employment of his
cognitive faculties."3
Genius is " exemplary originality." What is fundament-
ally the same paradox runs through all Kant's aesthetics.
The universality of beauty is " universal subjectivity ",
involves " purposiveness without a purpose or finality
without an end " and " conformity to law without a law."
The characteristic of art and of aesthetic experience for
Kant is that it is free. It is not tied down to definite
meanings or to definite purposes. It is, therefore, not
knowledge, and cannot be knowledge. It is not morality.
Kant, as I said before, is as anxious to vindicate the in-
dependence of art and of aesthetic experience as he was
to vindicate the mutual independence of the worlds of
moral freedom and scientific knowledge. Yet an examina-
tion of this third independent sphere of mental activity
throws a new light on the relation of all three spheres ; for
it throws a new light on the nature of the rational. The
mind in art can be free and yet be rational. The beautiful
2
' C . of J., p . 315. C. of J., p . 317. » C. of J., p . 318.
254 KANT
does nothing but enliven the powers of the mind ; but
enlivening does not mean merely exciting. It means
discovering the right or best or most harmonious mental
activity, an activity which claims universality, and yet
has to be immediately recognized in individual instances.
Kant is never tired of insisting that the universality of the
aesthetic judgement cannot be checked by anything but
itself. It may give rise to rules, but it is not derived from
rules. It finds support in, but is independent of, the
agreement of others. All this implies that we can imme-
diately recognize the rationality of our own activities, and
we recognize that rationality in an activity which we also
recognize to be free, and which is concrete and individual.
The main difficulty of Kant's ethics was that he made the
individual a member of two worlds, each of which was a
world of rigid rules with no room in either of them for the
individual or for any real kind of spontaneity. For ;with
all his insistence on the spontaneity of the practical reason,
all that practical reason seemed to produce was rigid
abstract rules. The Critique of Judgement does nothing to
blunt the contrast between good and bad action; for the
contrast between the beautiful and the agreeable is the
contrast between pleasure in the mind's freedom and
pleasure in the mind's casual associations. / Kant is right
in insisting that the beautiful is the symbol of the good,
because it is pleasure in the rational working of the mind.
But Kant's earlier ethical writings imply that rational
activity displays itself in abstract rules, and that any
consideration of the individual instance, like any considera-
tion of pleasure, meant a yielding to heteronomy and to
irrationality of the will. But if rationality or intelligibility
as such displays itself in the experience of beauty and in
artistic production, we can see how the will may be
determined only by the principle of its own activity, so
that its determining principle may be the mere form of law,
without that involving the rigid following of this or that
moral law. It is significant to find Kant saying in this
Critique that " general precepts learned at the feet either
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 255
of priests or philosophers, or even drawn from one's own
resources, are never so efficacious as an example of virtue
or holiness, which, historically portrayed, does not dispense
with the autonomy of virtue drawn from the spontaneous
and original idea of morality (a priori) or convert this into
a mechanical process by imitation." 1 ._--
I noticed earlier in this chapter that Kant's doctrine
that the autonomy of the will is the supreme principle of
morality implied that there is such a thing as rational
willing, which is not the same as willing that which is by
an intellectual activity seen to be rational. In Kant's
ethics this idea struggles, not always successfully, with the
notion that the moral law is discovered simply by applying
to moral problems the logical principle of non-contra-
diction. Kant's analysis of the reflective judgement as
operative in the perception of the beautiful shows that
there may be a rationality of the will which is as lar
removed from legalism as it is from slavery to casual
inclination.
The other outstanding difficulty in Kant's theory before
the Critique of Judgement is, of course, his sharp contrast
between the world of freedom and the world of nature,
making it impossible to understand how an action could be
free, i.e. be such that it might have been done otherwise,
and yet part of the mechanically determined world. How
the principles of the reflective judgement as revealed by
the analysis of its operation in aesthetic experience help
towards a solution of this difficulty will be seen in an
examination of the last part of the Critique of Judgement—
the Critique of Teleological Judgement.

(3) THE CRITIQUE OF TELEOLOGICAL JUDGEMENT

Kant has three purposes in view in writing the Critique

of Teleological Judgement: firstly, a criticism of the now
old-fashioned teleology which used the notion that all
things are made for man's benefit as a key to scientific
1 C. of J., p . 283.
256 KANT
explanation; secondly, a restoration and elaboration of his
doctrine that the moral law alone gives us any ground for
supposing there to be a real purpose in the world ; and,
thirdly, an examination of the way in which we may
legitimately use the concept of purposiveness or finality in
strictly scientific explanation.
Kant has no use for what he calls relative purposiveness
or finality, that is, the doctrine that the presence of certain
objects in nature is to be explained by their utility for other
things in nature or for man. The most ordinary form of
this doctrine is, of course, that crude teleology which holds
that all things are designed for man's use—the teleology
which can be perplexed about the existence of vermin and
other undesirable objects. Kant objects to this doctrine
that it assumes that the end which things are found to
serve is the actual end of nature. " But this is a matter
which can never be decided by any mere study of nature." 1
Moreover, men can certainly use for their purposes things
which existed before they were so used. Hence the fact
that things serve man's purposes is no reason for supposing
that they were designed to do so. The real objection to
such crude teleology is that, in treating all life except
human life merely as means, it disregards the individuality
which is the mark of all life. But the concept of purposive-
ness is needed in scientific explanation to explain the
peculiarities of living beings, if it is needed at all. Any
teleology which regards life as merely means makes no
distinction between living and non-living. It is, as Bergson
says, only mechanism backwards. This ordinary teleology,
then, is both unwarranted by our knowledge and useless as
a means of scientific explanation. The concept of final
cause, therefore, must be modified before it is applied to
nature.
Kant's moral teleology we have already considered.
It is enough to remind ourselves here that he maintains
that if man can be treated as a real end of nature, that
can only be in virtue of his rational will and in virtue
1
C . of J., p. 369.
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 257
of man's place in the moral world of freedom. That we
can reahze in practice ; but we can have no understanding
of how that moral world is related to the world of nature,
and our understanding of moral law gives us no insight into
the detail of nature, and can, therefore, never serve as
a help in scientific explanation. The Critique of Msthetic
Judgement has helped to break down the apparent
opposition between the worlds of freedom and of nature ;
but it has done nothing to warrant a naturalistic explana-
tion of moral facts or a moral explanation of natural facts.
The independence of both ethics and science is not to be
impaired.
We are, then, Kant holds, to have nothing to do with
any kind of teleological realism in science. There is
nevertheless a real and necessary use of teleological
principles in natural science, if they are regarded as
principles of the reflective, and not of the determinant,
judgement. Kant recurs to the point he has made in the
Introduction to the Critique of Judgement. " But in
respect of the particular laws with which we become
acquainted through experience alone, there is such a wide
scope for diversity and heterogeneity that judgement
must be a principle to itself, even for the mere purpose of
searching for a law and tracking one out in the phenomena
of nature. For it needs such a principle as a guiding
thread, if it is even to hope for a consistent body of
empirical knowledge based on a thoroughgoing uniformity
of nature, that is, a unity of nature in its empirical laws.
Now from the fact of the contingent unity of particular
laws it may come to pass that judgement acts in its
reflexion upon two maxims, one of which it receives a
priori from mere understanding, but the other of which is
prompted by particular experiences that bring reason
into play to institute an estimate of corporeal nature
and its laws according to a particular principle."1 Kant
means by the principle "received a priori from mere
understanding " the principle of mechanism. Why he
1 c. of J., P . 386.
1
258 KANT
calls it that will be discussed later. Here I wish to notice
that the other principle of the reflective judgement,
which is the teleological principle, is " prompted by
particular experiences." Kant means by this that we are
forced to think of a teleological explanation of nature when
we try to understand living things. But when we do that,
we are at once compelled to recognize that if this principle
is to be of any use in explaining living things, it will not be
the ordinary concept of purposiveness.
We cannot, Kapt has already explained, use what he has
called the concept of relative purposiveness. But neither
can we regard the living thing as a technical product.; " In
such a natural product as this, every part is thought as
owing its presence to the agency of all the remaining parts,
and also as existing for the sake of the others, and of the
whole, that is, as an instrument or organ. But this is not
enough—for it might be an instrument of art, and thus
have no more than its general possibility referred to an end.
On the contrary, the part must be an organ producing the
other parts—each consequently reproducing the others.
One wheel in a watch does not produce the other, and still
less does one watch produce other watches by utilizing or
organizing foreign material: hence it does not of itself
replace parts of which it has been deprived, nor, if these
are absent in the original construction, does it make good
the deficiency of the rest, nor does it, so to speak, repair
its own casual disorders. But these are all things which
we are justified in expecting from organized nature. An
organized being is, therefore, not a mere machine. For a
machine has solely motive power, whereas an organized
being possesses inherent formative power, and such, more-
over, as it can impart to material devoid of it—material
which it organizes. This, therefore, is a self-propagating
formative power, which cannot be explained by the
capacity of movement alone, that is to say, by mechanism."1
Kant defines an organism as follows: "An organized
natural product is one in which every part is reciprocally
1
C. of J., p. 374.
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 259
means and ends." We have an analogy for that in our own
activity. For the category of means and end is strictly
inapplicable to moral conduct and certainly to artistic
production. In the relation of part and whole in a work
of art we seem to have the nearest analogy to a natural
organized product. But works of art do not produce
themselves, and we are not warranted in ascribing an
artistic consciousness to organisms. We must say, there-
fore, " that intrinsic natural perfection, as possessed by
things that are only possible as physical ends, and that are
therefore called organisms, is unthinkable and inexplicable
on any analogy to any known physical or natural agency,
not even excepting—since we ourselves are part of nature
in the widest sense—the suggestion of any strictly apt
analogy to human art.
" The concept of a thing as intrinsically a physical end
is, therefore, not a constitutive conception either of
understanding or of reason, but yet it may be used by
reflective judgement as a regulative conception for guiding
our investigation of objects of this kind by a remote
analogy with our own causality according to ends generally,
and as a basis of reflexion upon their supreme source." 1
These organisms, Kant is confident, cannot be explained
merely by mechanical principles. " It is quite certain that
we can never get a sufficient knowledge of organized beings
and their inner possibility, much less get an explanation
of them, by looking merely to mechanical principles of
nature. Indeed, so certain is it, that we may confidently
assert that it is absurd for men even to hope to entertain
any thought of so doing or to hope that maybe another
Newton may some day arise to make intelligible to us even
the genesis of but a blade of grass from natural laws that
no design has ordered." 2
It might be thought that Kant is presuming too much,
that if he had known of the discoveries of " another
Newton " whose name was Darwin, he would not have
taken his stand upon this supposed impossibility. We
1
C. of J., p. 375. * C. of J., p. 400.
2Ö0 KANT
have by this time seen so many instances of well-inten-
tioned persons playing the part of King Canute to the
advances of mechanical science, that we are disposed
to regard such pronouncements with some contempt.
But this criticism both misunderstands the line Kant is
taking up on the principle of mechanism, and the grounds
on which he bases this and other statements of the
necessary insufficiency of merely mechanical explanation.
One of Kant's most fundamental principles, set forth in the
section of the-Critjque of Pure Reason called " The Interest
of Reason in these Conflicts," is that scientific investigation
is to be unfettered, and that there are to be no enclaves
where the writ of science does not run. He does not hold
in this Critique that we can warn off science from seeking a
mechanical explanation of organisms. He is only con-
cerned to say that such an explanation will be insufficient,
and will need supplementation by another principle.
Mechanism and teleology are both regulative principles of
the general law of causation, and each is to be pushed as
far as it will go. That Darwinism has not refuted him is
clear from the following passage.
" It is praiseworthy to employ a comparative anatomy
and go through the vast creation of organized beings in
order to see if there is not discoverable in it some trace of
a system and indeed of a system following a genetic
principle. For otherwise we should be obliged to content
ourselves with the mere critical principle—which tells us
nothing that gives any insight into the production of such
beings—and to abandon in despair all claim to insight into
nature in this field. When we consider the agreement of
so many genera of animals in a certain common schema,
which apparently underlies not only the structure of their
bones, but also the disposition of their remaining parts,
and when we find here the wonderful simplicity of the
original plan, which has been able to produce such an
immense variety of species by the shortening of one
member and the lengthening of another, by the involution
of this part and the evolution of that, there gleams upon
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 261
the mind a ray of hope, however faint, that the principle
of the mechanism of nature, apart from which there can
be no natural science at all, may yet enable us to arrive at
some explanation in the case of organic life. This analogy
of forms, which in all their differences seem to be produced
in accordance with a common type, strengthens the
suspicion that they have an actual kinship due to descent
from a common parent. This we might trace in the
gradual approximation of one animal species to another,
from that in which the principle of ends seems best
authenticated, namely, from man, back to the polyp, and
from this back even to mosses and lichens, and finally to
the lowest perceivable stage of nature. Here we come to
crude matter; and from this, and the forces which it
exerts in accordance with mechanical laws (laws resembling
those by which it acts in the formation of crystals), seems
to be developed the whole technic of nature which, in the
case of organized beings, is so incomprehensible to us
that we feel obliged to imagine a different principle for its
explanation."1
The insufficiency of mechanical explanation follows, not
from the apparently stubborn character of some facts like
the existence of organisms, but from the nature of causal
explanation itself. That principle, as we have seen, is
described by Kant in the first Critique as a regulative
principle. For cause implies the synthesis of the hetero-
geneous. All we can anticipate depends, as Kant has
shown, on the place in our experience of the homogeneous
forms of time and space. We can by aid of the imagination
anticipate ordering in time and space, but in causation,
although we are concerned to establish objective determi-
nation in time, that determination depends upon the
nature of that which is determined. Things occur when
they do in time and space because of their specific
characters. Of course, if things or phenomena were
entirely heterogeneous, had no affinity with one another,
experience would remain a chaos. They must display
1
C. of J., p. 418.
2Ö2 KANT
character and recognizable rules. But if phenomena were
entirely homogeneous, there would be no change either.
We never know change except by perceiving something
changing over against what is not changing. We can
never in our apprehension of causation do without percep-
tion, and perception implies qualitative as well as quanti-
tative differences. But the principle of mechanism
concerns itself exclusively with the quantitative aspect of
change. This principle is, as Kant says, " received a priori
from the understanding." The understanding states that
all objective determination in time involves a rule.
" Everything that happens, that is, that begins to be,
presupposes something upon which it follows according to
a rule." The principle of mechanism takes that rule as
mere uniformity of repetitions of abstract identity. As
our analysis of what we perceive resolves what at first
sight seems a single change into a complex of many smaller
changes, so, when under the guidance of mechanism, we
concentrate on the identity in the rule and omit the variety
in the instances, the qualitative differences in what we
experience seem to be reduced to quantitative differences,
to order variations of infinitely simple constantly recurring
identities. Hence the idea of mechanism, according to
which with sufficient knowledge the future would be entirely
predictable because the present would be entirely mathe-
matical. But if that were to happen, the necessity for
perception would disappear, and the principle of causation
would become entirely constitutive, not, as Kant main-
tains it to be, partly regulative. But this would be
impossible, for we can anticipate only the homogeneous;
and if there is nothing but the homogeneous there can be
no change. Causation implies affinity and likeness, but
not identity. It implies, therefore, rules with instances,
but varying instances. But the principle of mechanism
carried to its logical conclusion as it is by Descartes,
reduces everything to undifferentiated matter which is
equivalent to extension, and undifferentiated motion, and
these are both, what Kant called absolute time and
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 263
absolute space, " not-things "—undinge. Causation de-
pends on the perception of individual changes, and that
cannot exist without qualitative differences. That implies,
as Kant insists in this Critique, that in the actual empirical
facts " there is always something accidental to the under-
standing." The rule cannot contain the individual. The
individual is not deducible from the rule any more than
the particular rule is deducible from the general law of
causation. But mechanism, if regarded as a complete
explanation of phenomena, would eliminate the individual.
Because all individuals have character and universality,
quantitative analysis can apply to them, but only in so
far as it recognizes the existence in them of something
irreducible by quantitative analysis.
The faculty of the reflective judgement seeks the rule,
as judgement about causation must do, from the reflexion
on individual instances. It has got to start with finding
universality in the individual. And, therefore, the
principle of mechanism which ignores and cannot deal with
individuality cannot be a sufficient principle for the
reflective judgement. Mechanism must be supplemented
by the principle of purposiveness. Neither is sufficient
in itself. Both are, in Kant's phrase, regulative. We are
to push each of them as far as they will go. We may
be confident that reality is such that somehow both
mechanism and purposiveness are reconcilable. " It is an
open question whether in the unknown inner basis of
nature itself the physico-mechanical and the final nexus
present in the same things may not cohere in a single
principle, it being only our reason that is not in a position
to unite them in such a principle, so that our judgement,
consequently, remains reflective, not determinant." 1
The principle of mechanism has, then, to be supple-
mented by the principle of purposiveness. This latter
principle is suggested, as we have seen, by the study of
certain peculiar objects in the natural world, namely,
organisms. Kant has explained that when we attribute
1
C. of J.( p. 388.
264 KANT
purposiveness to organisms, we only do so by analogy. We
have no right to think of them as deliberately designed.
They are quite different from artistic products. Their
essential characteristic lies in the relation in them of parts
and whole. " An organized natural product is one in which
every part is reciprocally ends and means." But that also
involves that the organism is not just the sum of its parts.
The idea of the whole is essential to the understanding of
the parts and their functions. The whole is a definite deter-
mining reality. " What we require, therefore, in the case
of a body which in its intrinsic nature and inner possibility
has to be estimated as a physical end, is as follows : Its
parts must in their collective unity reciprocally reproduce
one another alike as to form and combination, and thus
by their own causality produce a whole, the conception of
which commonly—in a being possessing the causality
according to conceptions that is adequate for such a
product—could in time be the cause of the whole according
to a principle, so that, consequently, the nexus of efficient
causes might be no less estimated as an operation brought
about by final causes."1
But only if we so think of the whole as having a deter-
mining function in the nature of the parts, while the parts
have a determining function in the nature of the whole,
can we take individuality seriously. Otherwise, as we have
seen, it is accidental, and the abstract rule or identity is
the only reality. For the whole, according to mechanism, is
only the sum of the parts, and the parts in turn, so far as
they have any structure, are only sums of still smaller
parts, and so on ad infinitum. But such a conception is
really, as we have seen, unintelligible. If individuality
is real, the individual must have a real determining part
to play;« and yet that part must be consistent with the
individual itself being a real part of a real and larger whole,
and so on—till we think of the principle of wholeness
as playing a part in all nature. Thus the principle of
purposiveness is first forced upon us by the nature
1
c. of j . , p. 373.
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 265
of organisms. These have just got to be taken as indi-
viduals, as what Bergson called " wholes partially enclosed
by nature." We cannot just divide them up as we cut dead
wood. Unless we recognize their real boundaries, we just
cannot get on with them at all. Yet they are not isolated
individuals j their boundaries are crossed in all sorts of
ways, and we have to recognize that as they are wholes
of parts, so they are in turn parts of a larger whole. It
does not, of course, follow that the larger whole of which
they are parts is itself an organism. To assume that would
be to make the conception of organism a determinant
conception. But it does follow from what has been said
about mechanism, that the kind of relation between parts
and whole implied in mechanism would not explain that
larger whole. It must be a real whole and, therefore,
have something of the same sort of relation between
whole and parts as is found in an organism. Therefore,
the reflective judgement, in working out all the detail of
causal change which it finds in the world, and trying to
find some sort of unity and system in experience, is bound
to use this principle of purposiveness as well as the
principle of mechanism.
In considering the upshot of Kant's Critique of Teleological
Judgement, it has to be remembered that all this Critique
is an appendix. The real examination of the principle
of reflective judgement has been done in the examination
of the vEsthetic Judgement. Judgements of beauty have
been found to imply that there is such a thing as mere
intelligibility, and that we can be guided by it in our work
of systematizing our experience. As the first paragraph of
the Critique of Teleological Judgement says : " We do not
need to look beyond the critical explanation of the possi-
bility of knowledge to find ample reason for assuming a sub-
jective purposiveness on the part of nature in its particular
laws. This is a purposiveness relative to comprehensi-
bility—man's power of judgement being such as it is—and
to the possibility of uniting particular experiences into a
connected system of nature. In this system, then, we may
11
266 KANT
further anticipate the possible existence of some among
the many products of nature that, as if put there with
quite a special regard for our judgement, are of a form
particularly adapted to that faculty. Forms of this kind
are those which by their combination of unity and
heterogeneity serve, as it were, to strengthen and entertain
the mental powers that enter into play in the exercise of
the faculty of judgement, and to' them the name of
beautiful forms is accordingly given." 1
It has been urged in criticism of Kant's attitude in this
Critique that his results are too subjective. He has shown
that we have an a priori appreciation of comprehensibility.
It is agreed that what he has really done in this Critique
is to show that the principle of mechanism and the
principle of purposiveness as ordinarily understood are
alike unintelligible, and that the conception of change can
only be properly understood through the principle of
organism. We have already noticed that Kant gets into
difficulties in both the first two Critiques by his conceiving
of reason too abstractly. What he is really doing in the
Critique of Judgement is to begin to escape from the
conception of the abstract to that of the concrete universal.
Kant is quite right, it is said, to criticize mechanism and
purposiveness. They are abstract and unintelligible. Why
did he not realize that his criticism of metaphysics in the
Dialectic of the first Critique was a critique of bad meta-
physics, not of metaphysics as such ? The assumption of
the intelligibility of the real is the presupposition of all
thinking; and if we can discover, as Kant supposes, the
character of intelligibility, are we not truly capable of
discovering a priori the nature of the real ? Kant refused
to see this, and consequently has left his system unfinished.
This is the view of all those interpreters of Kant who
think Kant ought to have been a Hegelian. " The secret
of Hegel," says Hutchison Stirling, " may be indicated at
shortest thus : As Aristotle—with considerable assistance
from Plato—made explicit the abstract universal that was
1
c. of J., p. 359.
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 267
implicit in Socrates, so Hegel—with less considerable
assistance from Fichte and Schelling—made explicit the
concrete universal that was implicit in Kant." From
mechanism to organism is the passage made in the Critique
of Teleological Judgement. What is that but the passage
from the abstract to the concrete universal ? What but
Kant's persistent subjectivity prevented Kant from
discovering " the secret of Hegel " ?
Kant's answer to this is that that would be all very well
if we had an intuitive understanding. He has said some-
thing about such a conception in the first Critique, and he
returns to it in the Critique of Teleological Judgement in
a passage which throws much light on his fundamental
attitude in this matter. " We are also able to form a
notion of an understanding which, not being discursive
like ours, but intuitive, moves from the synthetic universal,
or intuition of a whole as a whole, to the particular—that
is to say, from the whole to the parts. To render possible
a definite form of the whole a contingency in the synthesis
of the parts is not implied by such an understanding or its
representation of the whole. But that is what our under-
standing requires. It must advance from the parts on
universally conceived principles to different possible forms,
to be subsumed thereunder as consequences. Its structure
is such that we can only regard a real whole in nature as
the effect of the concurrent dynamical forces of the parts.
How, then, may we avoid having to represent the possi-
bility of the whole as dependent upon the parts in a manner
conformable to our discursive understanding ? May we
follow what the standard of the intuitive or archetypal
understanding prescribes, and represent the possibility of
the parts as both in their form and in their synthesis
dependent upon the whole ? The very peculiarity of our
understanding in question prevents this being done in
such a way that the whole contains the source of the
possibility of the nexus of the parts. This would be self-
contradictory in knowledge of the discursive type. But
the representation of a whole may contain the source of
268 KANT
the possibility of the form of that whole, and of the nexus
of the parts which that form involves. This is our only road.
But now the whole would in that case be an effect or
product, the representation of which is looked on as a
cause of its possibility." 1
To this it may be objected that Kant's criticisms of
the discursive understanding are perfectly sound; that
what he himself has shown is that intelligibility involves
the harmonious union of understanding arid intuition;
and that however true it may be that the understanding
and intuition are each in themselves abstract, concepts
without intuition being empty and intuitions without
concepts being blind, they can be and are united. Is not
the judgement of the beautiful the judgement of an
intuitive understanding ? Does not our appreciation of a
work of art involve just that apprehension of a whole
determining and making intelligible its parts which, he
ays, an intuitive understanding would give if we had one ?
In short, is not all this subjectivity on Kant's part due to
a distinction between the understanding and intuition
which belongs to a pre-Critical stage of his thought ? Once
this stumbling-block is removed, all these limitations, of
Kant's surely disappear.
Such arguments have been regarded by many critics as
convincing, but they are really foolish. For they suppose
that in the unity of understanding and intuition we can get
the advantages of both and the defects of neither. The
intuition is concrete, but it is limited ; the understanding
can transcend the spatial and temporal limitations of
intuition, but it is abstract. The very nature of an
organic whole, as Kant defines it, presupposes that we can
only know the whole through the parts and the parts
through the whole, and, therefore, presupposes that we
can take in in one synthesis parts and whole. We can do
that when we are confronted with wholes of a limited
range. We can do it when we hear music, for example.
We can indeed by practice extend the range of such
1
C. of J., p. 407.
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 269
intellectual apprehension—as we progress, e.g., from being
able to hear as one a simple folk tune to the grasp of,
say, Beethoven's Sonata, Opus n o . But the limits remain.
We are finite beings; our powers of experience are
limited, as is our grasp of space and time; and nothing
can alter this. In the union of understanding and intuition
we can have knowledge; but it is not a priori knowledge,
and the principles that guide our reflective judgement
cannot possibly be determinant, i.e. we cannot possibly
get the details out of the principle without intuitions. If
we use principles of understanding alone we can predict
of all experience, not just of our experience, but such
prediction is necessarily abstract and schematic. When we
use the reflective judgement to make our concrete experi-
ence more systematic, we begin with the individual. We
are guided by the a priori principle of intelligibility, and
we get knowledge when by the help of such a principle we
make our experience inteUigible. But we are still limited
by the limitations of our experience. That experience is
not merely passive. Our judgements on it are guided by
an a priori principle, which transforms our disconnected
casual experience into something very different. But the
a priori principle guides our judgement on individual
experience, and is never a substitute for it. Kant's
doctrine of subjectivity is always a doctrine of the sub-
jectivity of the a priori. For all his preoccupation with
the a priori, he is always concerned to defend the irreduci-
bility of the empirical element in our knowledge. He
criticized the argument from design in the first Critique,
not by saying that we do not actually perceive design in
nature or by saying that " nature " is only our con-
struction, but -by saying that we cannot from discovering
design in nature ignore the lack of design which we^ilso
find and jump by an a priori argument to an omnipotent
designer. So here he maintains, not that we cannot by
help of the teleological principle know nature, but that we
must not go beyond our empirical evidence.
We can perhaps best appreciate Kant's position if we
270 KANT
compare it with the position reached by Hegel as a result
of giving up Kant's limitations. Hegel's doctrine of the
concrete universal is based on Kant's conception of
organism, but it supposes that we can regard all reality as
a concrete universal. So perhaps we may; but then we
cannot know reality as a whole without knowing its
individual constituents. Hence arises the assumption that
we can know reality as a whole already existing, as though
philosophy could somehow transcend time and regard the
process of reality as already complete. Hegel no doubt
supplies the corrective to this when he insists that every
philosopher is the child of his time, and that philosophy
can only understand the process that is completed. But
he seems sometimes, especially in the Philosophy of Nature,
to suppose that we can really transcend the temporal
process, and to maintain that philosophy, because it has
not the abstract character of scientific thinking, can
attain a knowledge of reality without the aid of empirical
science. He has not Kant's firm respect for the empirical.
Kant has shown in the Critique of Judgement that the
beautiful is the type of comprehensibility. If we take a
musical composition, then, as an instance of a concrete
universal, we may assert that it is in principle intelligible
through and through in all its details. All the notes must
have some individual character of their own. Otherwise
there would be no composition. But they are what they
are because of the nature of the whole. The whole is
constituted by and yet determines its parts. The only way
to know the whole is to hear it. There is no other way.
We recognize in it rule and law or form. By the study of
musical form we can hear it and understand it better. But
to analyse the form is not to understand it unless we also
hear it. Yet we can know the composition better when we
have studied the abstract form. Such study enables
us to understand the lines along which the composition
could develop; but we could never deduce the composition
from an understanding of musical form, however elaborate
such an understanding was. The study of form is like the
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 271
work of the understanding in knowledge of nature. To
secure knowledge in the proper sense of the word we need
intuition—the apprehension of the individual concrete
structure.
On Kant's view—and surely it is the true one—we are,
in trying to apprehend reality, in the position of listeners
while the musical composition is being played. It matters
not how much we insist that the composition is intelligible.
If intelligibility involves experience, the limits of our
experience set limits to the extent to which we can under-
stand the intelligible. The notes we are hearing now get
their character partly from those that precede. The more
we learn about those, the more we can understand the
present. The present in turn is helping to shape the
character of the whole composition. But the nature of the
whole we cannot know. Who are we to anticipate the
creation of the master musician ? But our appreciation
of what has gone before, and of what we are now hearing,
enables us to anticipate something of what is to come, and
makes us more ready to understand it when it does come.
But more than that we cannot do. For the playing is not
yet ended.

(4) THE UPSHOT OF THE CRITICAL SYSTEM

Let us now look back at the account of the three

Critiques which has occupied the last three chapters and
see what it comes to.
Kant began, as we saw, by distinguishing scientific
enquiry from a mere collection of empirical observations
on the one hand and from metaphysics with its antinomies
on the other. He takes for granted the triumphant
progress of the physical sciences. Their validity he never
doubts, nor calls in question their success. He so much
takes them for granted that they are to be the standard of
other enquiries. Discredited metaphysics is set over
against triumphant science and told to find out how its
younger brother has managed to do so much better than
272 KANT
itself. We are to ask how the sciences became scientific.
When we have thoroughly understood that, we may go
on to ask how or whether metaphysics and ethics can
follow their example.
Though Kant mentions other enquiries which he
regards as scientific, such as logic and mathematics, when
he talks about science he has ordinarily in mind what are
called the natural sciences, and in particular physics. As
early as the Berlin Prize Essay of 1764 Kant had rejected
the notion that metaphysics could be modelle/1 on mathe-
matics for the notion that it should consider the example
of the natural sciences. In logic and in mathematics
Kant considered that the mind was concerned with its
own activities and its own constructions. It was the
natural sciences which had succeeded in making scientific
our understanding of what is independent of ourselves,
and were therefore the true model for metaphysics.
The means by which the natural sciences had become
scientific was their successful use of the a priori. Kant
takes for granted that all enquiries become scientific in
so far as they are informed by a priori principles. There-
fore an examination of the scientific becomes an examina-
tion or a critique of the a priori and its function in know-
ledge. But whereas the other scientific enquiries, logic
and mathematics, consist of a priori propositions and
have the mark of intuitive certainty, the characteristic of
the natural sciences, which made Kant talk of their
" sure path," is not their intuitive certainty but their
steady progress. They had, for rather more than a
hundred years when Kant wrote, gone on bringing more
and more facts under their sway; and since Kant's time
they have gone on in the same way. The mark of their
sway is successful prediction, their being able to say of a
wider and wider range of experience that under such and
such circumstances such and such will be observed. In
Kant's words, they " prescribe to experience."
Scientific knowledge so regarded is always in process
and always involves time. It is not a completer or more
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 273
intelligible apprehension of what has been already in
some sense presented to the mind. It is never merely
apprehension. It is concerned always with the meaning
of what we can apprehend, with what that tells us of the
past or of the future, of something other than, though
of the same nature, as itself. It is a looking behind and
before. It can of its very nature never be complete or
rounded off. It can never have, that is, what Kant
regarded as the characteristic of logic as a science. It has
always new worlds to conquer. It continually enlarges,
not the depth, but the range of our understanding of the
world in which we are living, pushing back the limits
within which our position in a definite time and space
confines us, but never getting beyond limits altogether.
Its standard is not its own self-completeness but its own
self-improvement. As it improves it enables the mind
to relate more and more what is observed at any time
and place to what is observable at any other. It comes
to see the world as more and more interconnected, so
that what we apprehend at any one time and place will
tell us what is to be seen at any other. This implies of
course that there actually is a thoroughgoing intercon-
nectedness and mutual relevance of existence. We
manage to predict and anticipate from our tiny grasp of
reality by means of system and rule. Though that system
may be at least in part our own construction, if there
were not some answering interconnectedness in things,
we could make no way with it Nevertheless we never
apprehend the world as a system: for its infinity eludes
us.
As scientific thinking progresses, our own little span of
consciousness changes its character. It becomes less and
less a succession of independent separate apprehensions
with little or no relation to one another, and more and
more an ordered unity It brings to bear more sig-
nificance on each new apprehension as we progress in
time or move in space, because we have systematized all
we have experienced in the past. It is our systematizing
274 KANT
what we bear along with us that makes the difference.
Present experience tells us more and more of possible
experience, because our present experience has at its
command more and more in our past that is relevant to the
situation in the present.
We may contrast this view of science with that sug-
gested in Plato's famous simile of the line. Science there
is represented as taking us away frem the world of be-
coming and decay to the apprehension of timeless realities.
But for Kant scientific knowledge is only of phenomena.
The abstract processes of mathematics which* for Plato
were the first stages of the apprehension of another world are
for Kant not in themselves knowledge, but only an instru-
ment by means of which we guide and extend observation
and the anticipation of observation. Science for Kant
does not take us deeper into things or lead us through
experience to another world of realities. It only im-
mensely widens and makes more discriminating our
ordinary experience, which is always a mixture of'direct
observation and inference.
It is important to realize how revolutionary and funda-
mental is this Kantian conception of the nature of know-
ledge. Kant equates knowledge with science. But the
conception of science, as taken from the natural sciences,
implies that being scientific is a matter of degree, as when
he says, " Every particular natural discipline contains in
it only so much of genuine science as it contains of mathe-
matics." 1 For the ideal of science is that it should be
complete and systematic. That is an ideal which is never
attained. Yet any knowledge must have some system
in it. This implies an abandonment of the Platonic dis-
tinction between opinion and knowledge, with its im-
plications of an infallible and a fallible state or activity
of mind on the one hand, and knowable and opinable
objects on the other. For Kant any enquiry—that is an
enquiry into any aspect of reality—may become scientific.
Whether it becomes scientific or not depends on us; on our
1
Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science, Preface.
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 275
exercising the right kind of activity upon it. At the same
time scientific activity is never infallible. It always claims
to be true, but it is not an apprehension of anything,
though it involves apprehension. It is an activity of the
imagination which may go wrong. Whether or how far we
attain knowledge does not depend upon the status of our
object, but upon our activity in regard to the object being
rightly or wrongly guided. In place of the contrast between
opinion and knowledge, Kant is concerned with the contrast
between disconnected observation and systematic science.
Once we have attained the standpoint of systematic
science, what would have been without that standpoint
disconnected observations take their place in the system
and become significant of other possible observations.
One of the most revolutionary, though perhaps least
remarked, features of this view of knowledge is the part
which it assigns to the imagination. If a mark of science
is its power of accurate prediction, it must always be
imagining the future. A scientific hypothesis is not an
apprehension but an imaginary schema. Verification is
a process of checking the predicted or the imagined by
perception. The creative, constructive powers of the
mind, of which Kant says so much, are powers of the
imagination. Hume in his doctrine of the association of
ideas was perhaps the first to see the vital importance of
imagination in knowledge, but he never satisfactorily
distinguished between the use of the imagination in
knowledge and its other uses. What Kant has done is
to distinguish first between imaginative thinking and
unregulated association, and later between imaginative
thinking and imaginative art. Thinking for Kant involves
imagination, ,but not all imagination is thinking. To be-
come thinking, and to be used in the service of knowledge,
it has to be governed by certain rules, the rules of the
understanding. For Kant it is the understanding which
gives rules to the imagination in its task of connecting
and anticipating experience.
The natural sciences are, as the name suggests, con-
276 KANT
cerned with the knowledge of nature, something which
in its manifold and various complexity is for us there
to be discovered. And yet the paradox of the situation
is that the method of empirical observation, of patiently
observing the facts as we meet them, takes us such a
little way, the facts being so infinite and our powers of
observation so limited. The empirical enquiries have
become scientific by informing their observation with a
priori thinking. As we have seen, the extent to which
what we observe will tell us of other things, not yet but
to be observed, depends on the mind, and on the activity
we bring to bear on our observations. It is our thinking
which is going to make the observed facts significant of
other facts and going to give science its powers of pre-
diction and anticipation. We can perhaps see at once
how organizing our own mind and its methods of imagina-
tion will help us to bring to bear upon our present ex-
perience what is relevant to it in our past experience, as
though thinking were making a card index of our memory.
But why should our organizing our memory of what we
have observed tell us anything about what we have not
observed ? The answer to that question, as Hume had
already pointed out, is that scientific thinking implies
more than organizing our memory—Hume had assumed
that this was done by the laws of association of ideas—
it implies also that certain principles of connexion (the
most obvious of which is the law of causation) will hold
of all that we experience—all we are going to experience, as
well as all we have experienced. But Hume had both
made the principle of causation indispensable for our
knowledge of the external world and denied that we could
show that it was in any way valid. Kant, as we saw,
recognized that there were other principles besides causa-
tion implied in our knowledge of the external world. He
saw that he had. to find a list of the principles implied in
objective judgement, and found them by considering the
nature of objective judgement, by considering, that is,
what distinguishes the workings of the imagination when
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 277
claiming to predict truly and its workings when making
no such claim. Then he asked himself how these principles
are valid, which he found to be the same thing as asking
how they are really principles of objectivity. His answer
is that these principles are not to apply to things directly
but to our perception of things, and that raises the
question whether there are any principles implied in
objective perception. The answer to that question is a
double one. The first point is that we observe in all our
intuition an element of form—time and space—and can
see that relations in that form are independent of the
other elements of what we perceive. Time and space
being homogeneous, we can extend them indefinitely in
imagination, and imagine one time and one space as a
framework into which all our experiences are to be fitted.
A priori thinking or imagining in terms of time and space
will apply to what we perceive, because what we perceive
has an-a priori form. That is the importance of Kant's
discovery of 1770, that time and space are a priori forms
of intuition, that is^. of receptivity or of what is given.
Time and space are nevertheless transcendentally ideal,
because in the reference from the imagined to the per-
ceived we never move out of the sphere of experience.
Kant takes for granted that intuition is a complex
process, contributed to by both the mind and nature, and
that there is no way of getting behind that connexion
so far as its general conditions are concerned. Time and
space are forms implied in that interconnexion of mind
and the external world which is perception.
But this answer is not enough. Time and space are
implied in all imagining, not only in that which is or
claims to be objective thinking, and therefore they cannot
be in themselves principles of objectivity.
The second part of the answer which is given in the
Transcendental Deduction is this. There is such a thing
as objective perception or perception of an object. Just
as there is imagination which involves objectivity and
imagination which does not, so there is perception which
278 KANT
claims to be perception of an object and perception which
does not. Consider the story of the drunk man who said,
" You think I saw a rat run across the floor, but I didn't."
When we ask how there can be perception of an object,
the answer is that such perception, unlike intuition
strictly and properly so called, is not mere receptivity.
In order to be aware of perceiving an object, our mind has
already had to be active. It has had to distinguish in
the content of its perception between those-variations
which are du,e to the perceiving self and those which are
due to the object. When we ask how that is done, how
we distinguish, e.g., between succession in our apprehend-
ing and an apprehension of objective succession, we" find
that we do it by assuming the validity of principles such as
causation. But these are the principles which have been
found to distinguish judgement which claims to be true
from mere imagination or association of ideas. If we are
to distinguish things as they appear to us from our
activity in apprehending and interrelating them, we must
assume that they have a systematic interconnectedness in
time and space. Without that the perception of an
object as distinguished from the perception of a content
which is in itself neither objective nor subjective would
be impossible. Therefore the distinction between objective
and subjective can acquire any meaning only on the
assumption that these principles can inform things as
they appear to us, as space and time inform them.
For unless we can apply the principles of objectivity to
what we perceive, we cannot get this distinction at all.
Therefore we can work out our scientific hypotheses on
the basis of the validity of the principle of causation and
the other principles of the pure understanding and be
confident that the same principles will apply to the
observation which checks the scientific hypotheses, because
unless they do we cannot get the experience of objectivity.
The paradox is that while we begin by asking how the
activity of the mind can prescribe to, or be confident
that it will be confirmed by, " brute fact," the answer
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT
is that if you really want " brute fact " to check your
anticipation, you have to apply to your perception or
intuition the same principles of objectivity as you apply
to your imagination when you want to think truly.
This is Kant's ' empirical realism and transcendental
idealism.' It is empirical realism because all cognitive
operations, even those of the most elaborate type, start
from and come back to the experience of perceiving an
object. Though Kant never thinks of " perceiving an
object" as a state of transparent apprehension in the
manner of some modern realists, neither does he think
of it as a process of the mind creating what it likes out
of an undifferentiated chaos. It is a process of disen-
tangling according to rules the contribution made to the
content of what we perceive by the thing on the one
hand and by ourselves on the other. This process of
course involves an activity of the mind but it is a process
rendered possible only by attending also to what is
actually apprehended. What we apprehend becomes
immensely more significant owing to our thinking, and
we often have to make an effort to distinguish what we
apprehend and what we imaginatively infer; but our
thinking can never start without apprehending and must
always come back to it. This empirical realism, this
dependence upon what we actually observe to be there
and not produced by us, is also transcendental idealism.
We cannot give up our piecemeal empirical contact with
the real in these objective perceptions and rely only on
the principles which give those perceptions objectivity
and significance to give us, independently of perception, a
knowledge of universal characteristics of the real. If we do
that, we shall fall into contradictions. The principles are
rules by which the mind can get objective knowledge
under conditions. But if we forget the conditions and
forget that we have proved the validity of these rules
which govern our imagination in thinking only by
showing that thinking is concerned with anticipations
of objective perception, where the rules also apply;
280 KANT
if we give up the fundamental condition of starting
from and ending with the empirical perception of an
object, our principles will give us no knowledge.
If Kant had left off there, he would have been what
might be called a pure phenomenalist. Knowledge on
such a view never gets beyond appearances but only
enables us to anticipate other appearances. To have
scientific knowledge on this view is like having a map. It
does not enable us to see anything we could not some-
how have seen without it. But it enables us to go our
way about more' expeditiously because it enables us to
anticipate what we shall see under all sorts of conditions.
But deeper insight into the nature of things it does not
give. The result of the criticism of Reason, the a priori
element in knowledge, is to establish it as the servant of
empirical observation.
But this is not by any means the whole of the story.
It is not even the whole of the story in so far as the
description of the natural sciences is concerned. If the
a priori element is to be the servant of empirical observa-
tion, what inspires empirical observation ? We might
hold—and some phenomenalists do hold—that empirical
observation is inspired by our ordinary wants and desires,
and that science is only an elaborate application of Hume's
statement that "reason is and ought only to be the
slave of the passions ". Kant holds that if that were so,
modern science as we know it would not exist. Science
exists because it is the creation of reason, of a will to a
complete and systematic understanding of the world for
its own sake. Without that never-ceasing demand to
clear up remaining difficulties, to investigate the unknown,
to press back the existing limits of our knowledge, the
sciences would never have come into being at all. Reason
thus appears in a new form. Within the general sphere
of the a priori, which Kant has so far understood by reason,
appears a new distinction, that between understanding
and reason. The principles which determine objectivity,
whose application is confined to phenomena, are called
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 281
the principles of the understanding. Reason, as dis-
tinguished from the understanding, is the author of the
ideal of completeness, without which science and indeed
the conception of truth itself would not exist. This
ideal of reason shows itself partly in demanding from the
activities of the understanding a completeness and an
absolute character which they cannot produce. Hence
arise the antinomies. But it also shows itself in what
Kant calls the regulative use of the ideals of pure reason.
We are in science continually inspired by an ideal of
intelligibility and this ideal is the creation of reason.
If we will only remember that knowledge is an activity,
and remind ourselves that the nature of an activity
depends upon the purpose and will that inspire it, then
we shall see at once the decisive difference which there
is between knowledge as a finding out what for other
practical reasons you want to know and knowledge which
is inspired by its own purposes. Science implies that
there is a purpose of reason, something universal and
compelling, whose reality is unescapeable.
But this ideal of reason is only one. example of the
supremacy of reason on the practical side, and its implica-
tions are worked out in Kant's ethics. Kant held that
ethics could only tread the sure path of a science by not
copying the natural sciences. It is indeed possible to
have a natural science of man's behaviour, treating him
as one among other things in, the interconnected world of
the natural sciences. Kant calls such a science " anthro-
pology ". But such a science is incapable of explaining the
nature of obligation, the distinction between what is and
what ought to be, between right and wrong, good and bad.
It can analyse the effects of willing in the world, but it
cannot understand willing itself. Because it cannot do
that, it cannot understand conduct. We can only do that
by reflecting on the nature of moral choice. Then we see
all that our sense of obligation and of moral conflict
implies, the bindingness upon us of a moral law which
cannot be explained by our circumstances—which is
282 KANT
indeed reason, not our individual reasoning, but uni-
versal reason speaking within us. From the consideration
of the simplest, most everyday action we can realize the
fact of obligation, the decisiveness of the contrast be-
tween duty and inclination, the irrelevance of the deter-
ministic world of science to our willing, and the difference
between it and the legislative freedom and spontaneity
of reason. If scientific thinking only extends the range
of our observation and never gives us a deeper under-
standing of the nature and significance of things, in moral
activity on the other hand we are confronted with the
law of the universe. " The moral law infinitely elevates
my worth as an intelligence by my personality, in "which
the moral law reveals to me a life independent of animality
and even of the whole sensible world."1 We know only
the surface of things, but in our action we are in contact
with their inner reality. If Kant in iSie first Critique seems
to have left only a modest place for reason in knowledge,
he gives an exalted place to reason in conduct.
If we may imagine Kant writing a parallel to Plato's
simile of the cave, it would be something like this :

It is as though we were travelling through a country

in a dim light, able to see directly only a very little as we
went. But, as we go, we make more and more effective
a lamp which we carry. The light which our lamp pro-
duces is curious. As we improve it, it does indeed
enable us to see directly a little more than we saw before.
But what chiefly happens is that the things which, before
we improved our lamp, we saw dimly and separately, begin
to reflect more and more. While we can still see directly
only a few yards in front of us, yet as we turn our lamp
on to one object after another in that narrow circle we
walk in, these objects become mirrors and reflect things
outside that circle which we cannot directly see. The
light, does not act on all objects alike. They do not
become one undifferentiated mirror in which1 what is
1
C. of Pr. R., p . 313.
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 283
outside our small circle of light is reflected. We have to
focus our light differently to make different objects reflect,
and they reflect different things in the as yet dark realm
of possible experience. We find out how to do this cor-
rectly because we can check the reflexions in the mirrors
by moving, carrying our small circle of light with us and
bringing that to bear on the objects of which we have
seen the reflexion. When the direct light confirms the
reflexions, we know that we have focussed the lamp
properly for that kind of object. When it does not, we
know that we have focussed our lamps wrongly and call
our theories false. Of course in doing all this we are
learning not only how to focus our lamp but something
about the objects on which we direct it. For that some
will give one reflexion and others another, when we turn
the lamp with the same focus upon them, is a fact about
the objects, not about the lamp. But what they reflect
is all that the use of our lamp will tell us.
As we progress in the use of the lamp, we see more and
more that the country is far too vast for us to see it as a
whole in any reflexions we can get from the most skilful
focussing of the lamp. And yet, if we are to know where
to direct our steps, we have got to know the lie of the
land. The objects we can see in the lamplight suggest
paths in this or that direction, but the suggestions are
contradictory or confusing, and if we follow them we
get no further. But if we open the lamp, we find within
it a compass pointing in one direction, and we know that
if we follow that we shall go as we should go if it were
broad daylight and we saw the whole country. The com-
pass does not show us any more of the country. The light
reflected by our lamp from objects tells us nothing as to
how we are to go. The direction given by the compass
and the information given by the lamp have no relation
to one another.

The second Critique leaves off with this account of the

two worlds in which man finds himself—the world of
284 KANT
determined phenomena and the world of autonomous will,
worlds which seem to have no relation to one another. But
there cannot really be two worlds. The contrast is between
the world as known and the world as experienced in action,
the assumption being that the world as it is known is not
the world as it really is. This implies a radical distinction
between knowing and acting, which, if pressed, involves
almost as many difficulties as the view that there are two
separate worlds of phenomena and things in themselves.
It can be maintained that we never act with perfect
knowledge but always in faith; and that there is always a
difference between the world as we assume it to be in our
action and the world as we know it; and that however far
our knowledge may advance our action always goes
beyond it. This view would enable us to maintain the
distinction between phenomena and things in themselves,
if we regard things in themselves as things as we should
know them were our knowledge perfect, it being in the
nature of knowledge that there cannot be perfect know-
ledge of an infinite world. The thing in itself is thus in
Kant's words a merely limiting concept.1 This must imply
that we can and do come to know reality more and more
as it is. It is not compatible with the view which some
passages in the first Critique seem to imply, that there
is a difference in kind between the objects of knowledge
and the real. As we have seen, Kant tried in the third
Critique to get over the difficulties created by the too
sharp contrast between knowledge and action set forth
in the first two Critiques. He could not possibly give up
the empirical element in scientific knowledge, nor the
view that we are confronted with an infinity of reality
which we cannot possibly anticipate in thought. He
must leave therefore entirely untouched his doctrine that
the categories can prescribe to experience only because
they prescribe no more than the form of the question we
put to reality and therefore the form of the answer. If we
are to advance in our knowledge of reality, it can only
»A 255 B 3 1 1 .
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 285
be in the universally significant nature of some of the
empirical contents of our knowledge. Kant therefore
turns to the principles which guide our comprehension
and systematization of our empirical knowledge. Reason,
as we have seen, sets an ideal before knowledge as it sets
an ideal before conduct. That ideal is never fully and
completely realized any more than are any of the ideals
of conduct prescribed by reason. But nature of herself
in the beautiful shows objects already fitted to the mind.
So the ideal of intelligibility and significance which reason
produces, if it is used as a regulative ideal, may and
does find itself, as knowledge increases, more and more
fulfilled. In the notion of the regulative use of reason
first put forward in the Critique of Pure Reason and
elaborated as an account of the reflective judgement in
the Critique of Judgement, Kant treats science as equally
with conduct depending on faith. Reason sets before us
an ideal of intelligibility which can never be completely
attained. But if we guide our investigations by that ideal
we can and do progress in the understanding of reality.
What then of metaphysics ? Is there any place left
for it ? Kant's answer is that metaphysics must turn
itself into criticism. The business of philosophy is to
understand the different parts played by reason in the
separate spheres of knowledge, of conduct, and of art.
But to suppose that metaphysics can by such reflexion
obtain a systematic understanding of reality is a mistake.
Reason is in Kant's eyes essentially systematic, and we
can by philosophical reflexion see how its activity is one
and yet divides itself into these three spheres or three
characteristic activities. But to see that is not to see
reality as a system. For reason in each of its separate
activities is infinite and has an infinite task. Kant's real
objection to dogmatic metaphysics is that it must neces-
sarily circumscribe, by seeking to contain, what ought to
be the independent activities of science, of conduct and of
art. That these activities come from a unity and that they
are all somehow concerned with one reality, and that they
286 KANT
therefore may illumine one another—all this Kant might
admit; but not that they should lose their living independ-
ence in an all-embracing system. Kant at any rate did not
see how metaphysics in any other sense than criticism could
exist without so fettering these independent activities.
If Kant confines metaphysics to a criticism of reason
in the wide sense of the a priori element in mental activity,
it is curious that, for all he has to say as to the limits of
reason in its various fields, he leaves us wjth such an
ambiguous account of the nature of reason itself. He
seems to have begun with a view of reason as a com-
pletely a priori activity, forming its concepts in complete
isolation from experience. His account of the Meta-
physical Deduction of the Categories assumes that reason,
being a perfect unity, will exhibit in itself a complete
and sufficient list of a priori concepts. These are sup-
posed to be arrived at by pure logic. The problem for
Kant at this stage is to explain their applicability to the
world of experience. But when we come to the principles
of the pure understanding, it appears that the connexion
between the categories and the principles is not as com-
pelling as it is supposed to be and that the list of principles
is derived from a consideration of what is involved in
ordering experience in time and space. The differentiation
of the forms of synthesis is partly dependent upon the
nature of what is to be synthesized. In the Analytic,
reason appears to be identified with the understanding.
But in the Dialectic the two are distinguished. Yet in
part of the Dialectic—the Antinomies—it seems to be
implied that reason as distinguished from the under-
standing is only a drive towards the unconditioned, the
forms of the unconditioned being produced by the different
categories of the understanding. Yet again elsewhere
in the Dialectic we are confronted with ideas of reason—
God, Freedom and Immortality—which are quite distinct
from anything suggested by the categories. When we
come to Kant's account of the proofs of the existence of
God, we find him assuming in his account of the ens
 THE CRITIQUE OF JUDGEMENT 287
realissimum that reason will give us unaided a complete
and final account of the nature of God; it is only the
fact of God's existence which it cannot settle. Then in
the Appendix to the same section of the Dialectic we find
reason producing the ideas which are to guide our scientific
discovery. Again, when we come to Kant's account of
ethics, he seems to suppose that reason produces the
moral law entirely of itself with no reference to experience.
This is Kant's prevailing though not his consistent view.
It alternates with the view that reason informs experience
as its determining principle. But how persistent the
first view is can be seen in his statement in Religion Within
the Bounds of Reason Alone that the moral ideal in its com-
pleteness could always be presented to each man by his
reason alone. To read the Gospels is, according to Kant,
only to learn that a man did once live according to that
ideal; it does not teach us more about the moral ideal
itself. There are in Kant's conception of reason in ethics
two elements, which are distinguished more clearly in his
late work, The Metaphysics of Morals, but are at least
implicit in the Fundamental Principles—reason as law and
reason as purpose. Reason as purpose sets ideals of conduct
before men'; reason as law is concerned with the actions
which such purposes necessarily imply. But the same
fundamental distinction is apparent in the first Critique.
Kant began by thinking of reason äs essentially insight
into necessity. That implies the identification of reason
with the understanding. But in the Dialectic reason, as
that faculty which is concerned with ideals, is distin-
guished, as we have seen, from the understanding both
in conduct and in thought.
In the Critique of Judgement a role which was assigned
to reason in the Appendix to the first Critique is now
given to judgement, and reason is assigned definitely to
the faculty of desire. Yet the account of genius and of
the function of art.in expressing ideas of reason at least
suggests that art is an activity of the reason.
The ambiguity in Kant's account of reason is matched
 288 KANT
by and not unconnected with the ambiguity in his account
of the imagination. We have noticed that a distinctive
feature of his account of knowledge is the central part it
gives to the imagination. In the details of his argument,
as in the deduction of the first Critique, for example,
Kant has much to say about the work of imagination
and its a priori activities. In the third Critique the
nature of the intelligible displays itself in an ideal harmony
of the imagination and the understanding. Yet in Kant's
plot, so to speak, the imagination is never given that
central part am'ong the other activities of the mind which
it would seem to deserve. The explanation of this is
of course that Kant got his plot or his architectonic from
formal logic and that he started with it. The importance
of the imagination only appeared when the Transcendental
Deduction was being worked out, and Kant never seems
to have realized the revolutionary effects which his teach-
ing was bound to have upon logic. The consequence is
that, because Kant in the beginning of the first Critique
distinguishes the understanding as the activity of the
mind from intuition as the receptive element, it has
sometimes been supposed that Kant identified the imagina-
tion and the understanding—a source of much misunder-
standing of the Transcendental Deduction. The direction
in which Kant's thought was moving is seen in the Critique
of Judgement, where he identifies the powers of the mind
with the understanding and the imagination—where the
beautiful is universal because it arouses these two powers
in their proper harmony. We should get a very different
view of reason from that with which Kant begins if he
had really taken seriously what that implies: that in
the a priori activity of mind there are always the two
elements typified by the understanding and t'lie imagina-
tion—the elements of law and of spontaneity—and if he
had considered their relation to one another, not by
relegating them to different spheres, but by seeing that
the conflict between necessity and freedom had somehow
to be reconciled within reason itself.
 VI

THE INFLUENCE OF KANT'S PHILOSOPHY

To write an adequate account of the influence of Kant

would be to write the history of post-Kantian philosophy.
In him, as truly perhaps as in Descartes, philosophy made
a new beginning. There was no side of the subject in which
his influence did not work a revolution. Even those later
philosophers, who most disagreed with him, had to take
him into account; and most of those who came after him
were influenced by one or other aspect of his teaching.
But an adequate treatment of such a theme is not possible
in a single chapter at the end of a book on Kant. All that
can be attempted is to trace in broad outline the very
different ways in which his thought affected his successors.
Kant himself was, in the first Critique, curiously confident
of the completeness of his system. It is clear that he did
not realize how much the Critical system developed in his
own hands. That it did develop we have already seen
in considering the Critique of Judgement. We have
also seen in the end of last chapter that on his own
showing the unity of reason, of which he made so much,
did not guarantee the completeness and finality of his
list of a priori concepts, as he declared it ought to do.
Kant's last, and unfinished, work, known as the Opus
Postumum, shows that in his last years he was endeavour-
ing, under the pressure of criticism from some of his
disciples, to restate that most contentious, of his doctrines,
the relation between phenomena and things in themselves.
Kant's experimental method of writing makes it very rash
to draw conclusions from an unfinished work, even as regards
the direction in which his thought was tending. There is
an exaggerated a priorism in the Opus Postumum which
K 28,9
290 KANT
seems to show Kant going back from the development
foreshadowed in the Critique of Judgement. But whether,
before he had felt satisfied with the Opus Postumum, he
would have recognized that the attempt to make so much
more of the content of knowledge a priori is as impossible
as it seems to most readers of the Opus Postumum, we
simply cannot tell. What is evident in the Opus Postumum
is that Kant in his last years held on to the main positions
reached in the Critiques, and was nevertheless ready to make
yet another attempt to reconcile them more satisfactorily.
Such an attitude is characteristic of all Kant's thought.
There were certain positions he took for granted: the
validity of the natural sciences, their somehow dealing
with a world independent of the mind, their being never-
theless themselves dependent upon the creative con-
structive powers of the mind. These are the things he
takes for granted about the sciences. On the other hand,
he was equally clear that ethics was not a natural science,
that it implied what he calls a law of freedom, and that no
scientific account of the facts could explain moral obliga-
tion. Kant, as we have seen, was equally determined to
defend the integrity of moral experience and the integrity
of science. But that is only possible, he was convinced» by
some doctrine of the limitations of the insight of science
into the nature of reality. Unless he could maintain that
the fact that a principle was valid in science did not show
that it held of the real, he could have found no way of
reconciling the determinism of science with the freedom of
morality. The distinction " transcendentally ideal and
empirically real," or the distinction in some form or other
of phenomena and things in themselves, was vi+al to him.
But he was quite capable of holding on to the necessity of
that distinction without making it in itself intelligible, as
he was capable of proposing various ways of explaining it.
>The consequence was that Kant's system proved far
more unstable than he had supposed. For even if it be
regarded as in substance sound, as in the previous chapters
I have tried to show it to be, there are various difficulties
 THE INFLUENCE OF KANT'S PHILOSOPHY 291
in it which needed clearing up. It was always possible
to suggest a way of clearing up any one of these
difficulties at the cost of giving up one or other of the
positions which Kant would have insisted on holding on to.
Those who/came after him, trying to clear up the difficulties
he had left, and not having his firm determination to
hold on to each of the different fundamentals of his
system, developed Kantianism along different lines into
something very un-Kantian.
Kant's account of the method of the natural sciences,
at least, of physics, has on the whole met with general
acceptance—as it was bound to do. It was obviously
open to someone to deny the sharp distinction which Kant
draws between constitutive and regulative principles, and
to maintain that all scientific principles are regulative
or experimental. That is what Pragmatism has done.
But the account of scientific method given by Pragmatism
is based on Kant's analysis. It was also obvious that
the example given by Kant in the Critique of Judgement,
in distinguishing between the principles applicable to
physics and those applicable to biology, would be
followed up. I have already quoted with approval a
remark of Bergson's that Kant's system, as he expounded
it, depended on an identification of science with physics,
and was bound to be profoundly affected when the
biological sciences were taken into consideration. Perhaps
Kant's greatest defect was his non-appreciation of history.
The century which followed his death was the century
when history came into its own, and the distinctive nature
of the historical sciences was bound to lead to develop-
ments in Kant's account of knowledge. But those develop-
ments may all be described as variations on a theme of
Kant's. Dilthey, for example, in his description of the
Geisteswissenschaften, or in all his various attempts to
write a Critique of history, is certainly a Kantian.
With the general acceptance of Kant's account of
scientific method is bound up his doctrine of the limitations
of scientific knowledge. But it is possible to accept the
20,2 KANT
view that scientific knowledge is essentially inadequate or
abstract, and yet to maintain that there is a different kind
of knowledge, metaphysics, which does give us an insight
into the nature of reality as a whole. Kant, it might be
maintained, was quite right in criticizing the metaphysics
of his predecessors. He was quite right in holding that
metaphysics should not follow the method of mathematics.
But he never sufficiently considered whether the moral of
his own critical work did not imply that there was a method
which metaphysics might follow. What Kant did, it has
been argued, was to start with a pre-Critical assumption
of the relation between mind and the independent world,
which he did not review in the light of the conclusions of
the Critical system. If he had seriously attacked that
pre-Critical assumption, he could no longer have denied the
possibility of metaphysical knowledge. His own method
of asking what are the implications of the fact of know-
ledge or the principles of the possibility of experience
cannot only tell us as he seems to suppose about the
nature of the mind. It must imply something about the
relations of the mind to reality, and, therefore, something
about the nature of reality. It was along these lines
that Kantianism was developed by the German idealists,
sometimes called the German Romantic philosophers,
Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. The movement started in
Kant's lifetime on the lines suggested in a famous passage
in a work of Jacobi's : " I must confess that this circum-
stance (viz. that objects make impressions on the senses)
has been a stone of stumbling to me in my study of the
Kantian philosophy, so that time and again I har/e been
compelled to retrace my steps and to restart the Critique
of Pure Reason ever anew, since I was always finding
myself bewildered, in that without this presupposition J
could not make entry into the system, and that with this
presupposition I could not remain in it."
The general moral of Kant's treatment of objectivity
is that we distinguish between the subjective and the
objective by principles of our thinking. Is it not incon-
 THE INFLUENCE OF KANT'S PHILOSOPHY 293
sistent with that to accept a distinction between the form
and the matter of knowledge, ascribing the form to the
mind and the matter to independent objects ? For the
matter of knowledge is sensation, and sensation is notori-
ously the most subjective element in knowledge. The
moral drawn from this is that we should treat Kant as
Berkeley treated Locke, and deny the impossible assump-
tion of unknowable things-in-themselves. Of course, we
must do justice to the element of " otherness " or " given-
ness " in knowledge; but we can best do that by recognizing
and understanding the place of this element within know-
ledge itself. Fichte worked out this idea along the lines
suggested by the Kantian ethics. Kant had held that in
moral activity we realize, as we do not in science, the
ultimate nature of the real, but had denied to such activity
the nature of knowledge. But it can be argued that such
a denial depends wholly on the assumption that scientific
knowledge is the only kind of knowledge we have got.
Scientific knowledge, it may be freely admitted, implies a
dualism of subject and object; for it presupposes the
knowing and active mind over against its object, and the
subject can never really be the object of knowledge. But
we may in philosophical reflexion on the nature of know-
ledge and on the assumptions of conduct rise above th':^
dualism, and see reality as an activity which includes botii
subject and object. For surely to reflect that in moral
conduct we are as nowhere else in contact with the nature
of the real is a reflexion about the nature of the real.
Schelling, in developing the same general idea that
scientific knowledge was abstract and quantitative, anc:
that the business of philosophy was to rise above this
abstraction and consider reality as a whole, took another
road obviously suggested by Kant. As we have seen, the
analysis of art in the Critique of Judgement suggests that
in art the opposition between the abstract universal and
the mere particular is broken down, as is the distinction
between understanding and intuition, Kant had always
said that we might know reality, and not only phenomena,
294 KANT
had we an intuitive understanding. But is not that
exactly what art is, and are we not, therefore, to look for
the truth about reality not to science but to poetry ?
How this development from Kant was taken up by
Coleridge and affected the Romantic movement in
England is, of course, an old story.
Hegel, however, was the philosopher who made much
the most significant development of Kantian thought in
this direction. There are still many who think that Hegel
is Kant being consistent with himself, or at least making
explicit what was implicit in Kant's main doctrines.
Hegel, says Hutchison Stirling, in words I have already
quoted, with assistance from Fichte and Schelling, made
explicit the concrete universal that was implicit in Kant.
Hegel, that is, began his development from Kant with
logic. Kant's system had really involved a new logic,
because it involved a new conception of the nature of
knowledge; and the drawbacks of Kant's system, it was
argued, came from his imposing the distinctions of the old
logic on the living nature of the new. The distinction
between the understanding and intuition which is the mark
of Kant's dualism is the result of an abstract static concep-
tion of the nature of universal concepts. Once accept the
logical principle which is really implied in Kant, that
judgement—the act, and not the concept—is the unit of
thought, then we shall see that thought is a process,
implying within itself differences which are always being
overcome. The reconciliations so much needed in the
Kantian system are obtained in process or development.
The element of abstraction or distinction of which Kant
had made so much is a necessary element in all knowing,
but it is an element to be overcome. Natural science, with
which Kant had been most concerned, is the affair of the
discursive or abstract understanding, and what Kant says
about it is correct. It is not, just because of the abstrac-
tions which it makes in order to cover a wide range of
experience, adequate to the nature of reality. But then
neither is scientific thought intelligible in itself. A more
 THE INFLUENCE OF KANT'S PHILOSOPHY 295
correct view of the nature of thought will show us that in
the first place the contrasts which Kant thought to be due
to the two different sources of knowledge, the mind and
the independent world, are contrasts which necessarily
arise within the nature of thought itself, if thought is to
be thought. And ia the second place, that as they arise
within the nature of thought itself, so are they in the same
way reconciled. If now we remember that the transcen-
dental unity of consciousness is, as Kant has shown, the
first presupposition of knowledge, we may argue that that
implies the intelligibility of the real. Abstract thinking,
such as scientific thinking is, has necessarily for its object
something short of the real, but if we hold to the Kantian
principle that we achieve objectivity, not by going beyond
ourselves, but by thinking our best, then, when our tljinking
becomes really concrete, we shall apprehend concrete
reality. Thought at its best will tell us what intelligibility
really involves, and tell us, therefore, what is the general
nature of the real. For the rational is the real, and the
real is the rational.
No one can^'deny fhat Hegel supplied one jgreat defect
in Kant's system, which has been already noticed. Because
ofTSlnsisten5e_onjthej;eajityjinjd^
ha:3^^^^^preciation of the mstorical and of development,
which no_one,.lmdiad-before him. Hegel's Philosophy of
Lä^jisjm,imingD.ae^advaii^
and the abstractions of Kantian ethics are really overcome
i n T H e ^ ^ T ^ T " "n-'«^" l,.-,-. •... K- ""\i'-'fi iCk :>.., 'o-p' ^
/^-"""BSTthough there are elements in the thought of these
three philosophers, and especially in the thought of Hegel,
which are a real advance on Kantianism, and yet a
natural development from it, Kant would certainly have
thought that they had overcome his dualism at a price not
worth paying—the price of encroaching on the independence
of science. Natural philosophy is the weakest part of
Hegel's work. Its faults come from the over-emphasis on
unity, from the supposition that everything must be
capable of deduction from a single principle. Kant held
296 KANT
on to there being something irretrievably empirical about
science. Once that is granted, as was argued in the
discussion on the Critique of Teleological Judgement] then
the distinction between understanding and intuition can
never be really overcome. Thejuuf^fyf j^pgfili^nig]]! is
achieved by jhe.jJaaiMi£aiment--of'-eRe-e^-the-imtdam^ntal
•thinjBj^hicljuKaJi±.took--foF"granted.
The next development in German philosophy was
thought of by its author as a return to Kant. Schopen-
hauer was in bitter opposition to Hegel, but he conceived
that his own philosophy was the proper development from
Kant. He accepted the contrast in Kant between science
which is knowledge but only of phenomena, and action
which is in contact with the real but does not know it.
This opposition which the idealists sought to overcome
Schopenhauer exaggerated. He gave to Kant's theory of
knowledge the most subjective interpretation possible, and
made the Kantian will, which is not knowledge, into a blind
unconscious will, which is the real nature of the universe.
That is how he, in the contrast between the world as idea
and the world as will, accepted and developed the Kantian
distinction between phenomena and things in themselves.
All these systems are metaphysics in the sense in which
Kant denied the possibility of metaphysics. Another
obviously possible development of Kant is to accept the
phenomenalism of the Critique of Pure Reason and
abandon the metaphysical implications of the Critique of
Practical Reason. That will mean accepting ^he general
Kantian view that science is not able to tell us anything
about the nature of reality; abandoning Kant's conception
that science nevertheless forces us to ask questions about
the real which science cannot answer, and proceeding to
make the best of science as a knowledge of phenomena.
This will, of course, involve giving up the distinctive
Kantian ethics. Such a view will tend to equate ethics
with what Kant called anthropology. If we add to this a
recognition of the importance of historical development,
we get Comte and Positivism.
 THE INFLUENCE OF KANT'S PHILOSOPHY 297
In Germany, after the influence of Hegel had begun to
grow less, there arose in the 'seventies of last century a
widespread philosophical movement which took as its
motto, " Back to Kant." It produced a great school of
students of Kant, of whom perhaps Vaihinger and Adickes
are the best known. This intensive study culminated in
the formation of the Kantgesellschaft, and the publication
of the review Kantstudien, and finally in the publication, not
yet completed, of a classical edition by the Berlin Academy
of all Kant's writings—his letters, and his innumerable notes
and jottings, as well as the works published in his life-
time. But this " return to Kant " has not been merely
antiquarian. It has produced a genuine development of
Kantian philosophy, seeking to deal on Kantian lines with
the new problems created by the prodigious growth of the
natural sciences since Kant's time. Wilhelm Dilthey is,
perhaps, its most typical representative. He accepted
Kant's attitude to metaphysics and his view of the
phenomenal nature of knowledge. He accepted also his
insistence that ethics is not a natural science in the sense
that physics is. But while maintaining the distinction
between the natural sciences and the sciences of the spirit,
he endeavoured to do for the latter what Kant had done
for the former, and to write a critique of history. That
involved him in one interesting divergence from Kant.
Kant had maintained that our knowledge of the self was
of the same nature as our knowledge of the outside world,
with the implication that if psychology were ever to become
a science it would be a quantitative science after the
manner of physics. Dilthey's criticism of history involved
the view that our knowledge of the self is fundamentally
of a different character from our knowledge of the physical
world. How fruitful a line of inquiry this may become has
already been shown in the ' Gestalt' school of psychologists
and in the work of Husserl.
The history of Kant's influence in England has been in
some ways curious. The first notable impress of Kant on
English thought we have noticed already. It came through
KI
298 KANT
Coleridge, and from Coleridge to Wordsworth. It was the
English Romantic poets who first turned against the then
reigning school of English empiricism and associationism.
But it was also through Coleridge that John Stuart Mill
was brought into connexion with Kant and German
philosophy. The particular manner, therefore, in which
Coleridge conceived Kant was of considerable historical
importance.
Coleridge gives a detailed estimate of Kant in the
Biograf hia Literaria.
" The writings of the illustrious sage of Königsberg, the
founder of the Critical Philosophy, more than any other
work, at once invigorated and disciplined my under-
standing. The originality, the depth, and the compression
of the thoughts ; the novelty and subtlety, yet solidity and
importance of the distinctions ; the adamantine chain of
the logic ; and I will venture to add (paradox as it will
appear to those who have taken their notion of Immanuel
Kant from reviewers and Frenchmen), the clearness and
evidence of the Critique of Pure Reason, of the Judgement,
of the Metaphysical Elements of Natural Philosophy, and
of his Religion Within the Bounds of Pure Reason, took
possession of me as with a giant's hand. After fifteen
years' familiarity with them, I still read those and all his
other productions with undiminished delight and increasing
admiration. The few passages that remained obscure to
me, after due efforts of thought (as the chapter on original
apperception), and the apparent contradictions which
occur, I soon found were hints and insinuations referring
either to ideas, which Kant either did not think it prudent
to avow, or which he considered as consistently left behind
in a pure analysis, not of human nature in toto but of the
speculative interest alone. Here therefore he was con-
strained to commence at the point of reflexion, or natural
consciousness ; while in his moral system he was permitted
to assume a higher ground (the autonomy of the will) as
a postulate deducible from the unconditional command,
or (in the technical language of his school) the categorical
 THE INFLUENCE OF KANT'S PHILOSOPHY 299
imperative of the conscience. He had been in imminent
danger of persecution during the reign of the late King of
Prussia, that strange compound of lawless debauchery and
priest-ridden superstition : and it is probable that he had
little inclination, in his old age, to act over again the
fortunes and hair-bre'adth escapes of Wolf. The expulsion
of the first among Kant's disciples, who attempted to
complete his system, from the University of Jena, with the
confiscation and prohibition of the obnoxious work by the
joint efforts of the Courts of Saxony and Hanover, supplied
experimental proof that the venerable old man's caution
was not groundless. In spite therefore of his own
declarations, I could never believe that it was possible for
him to have meant no more by his Noumenon, or Thing-in-
itself, than his mere words express; or that in his own
conception he confined the whole plastic power to the form
of the intellect, leaving for the external cause, for the
materiale of our sensations, a matter without form, which
is doubtless inconceivable." l
It should be further noted that a page or two later
Coleridge says : " I n Schelling's Natur •— Philosophie,
and the System des Transcendentalen Idealismus, I first
found a general coincidence with much that I had toiled
out for myself."
Coleridge did, of course, get a great deal from Kant.
The celebrated lines :
" O lady ! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does nature live,"
have an obvious relation to " Reason has insight only into
that which it produces after a plan of its own." But it is
equally obvious that .-he radically misunderstood Kant.
How absurd are his grounds for attributing an esoteric
meaning to Kant's remarks can be seen by considering the
chronology. Kant only came into conflict with the
Government, and could only have been in any danger of
doing so after the death of Frederick the Great—that is,
1
Op. Cit„ Chapter lx.
3oo KANT
after he had written all his important works except the
last of those to which Coleridge refers.
Coleridge's whole bent of mind was very unlike that of
Kant. There is no doubt an element in Kant's thought
which might be described as romantic, but there is almost
more unmistakably an empirical, scientific, cautious
element, which Coleridge completely ignored. No one
would suppose from reading Coleridge's account of Kant
that Kant ever denied the possibility of metaphysics.
Further, the consequence of using Kant as a stick with
which to beat the utilitarian dogs was that all Kant's
very real affiliations with Locke and Hume were dis-
regarded. In this way, the scientists in England, instead
of appreciating Kant, were very effectively warned off
him.
An amusing illustration of the perverted view of Kant
produced by Coleridge's championship of him will be
found in the attack on Coleridge by Peacock in Melincourt,
which was published in 1818. In a note to the chapter in
which this occurs, Peacock says : " The reader who is
desirous of elucidating the mysteries of the words and
phrases marked in italics in this chapter may consult the
German works of Professor Kant, or Professor Born's
Latin translation of them, or M. Villar's Philosophie de
Kant, ou Principes Fondamentaux de la Philosophie Trans-
cendental, or the first article of the second number of the
Edinburgh Review, etc." Coleridge is introduced«as " the
poeticopolitical, rhapsodicoprosaical, deisidaemoniaco-
paradoxographical, pseudolatreiological, transcendental
meteorosophist, Moley Mystic, Esquire of Cimmerian
Lodge. This gentleman's Christian name, according to
his own account, was improperly spelt with an " e," and
was, in truth, nothing more nor less than :
' That Moly
Which Hermes erst to wise Ulysses gave,'
and which was, in the mind of Homer, a pure anticipated
cognition of the system of Kantian metaphysics, or grand
 THE INFLUENCE OF KANT'S PHILOSOPHY 301
transcendental science of the luminous obscure ; for it had
a dark root, which was mystery ; and a whiteflower,which
was abstract truth: it was called Moly by the gods, who
then Ttept it to themselves ; and was difficult to be dug up
by mortal man, having, in fact, lain perdu in subterranean
darkness till the immortal Kant dug for it under the stone
of doubt, and produced it to the astonished world as the
root of human science." 1
" Cimmerian Lodge " is, of course, unfair to Coleridge,
but the caricature can be recognized. The mystic's Kant,
however, has no recognizable relation to Kant at all. If
there was one thing which Kant hated it was what he
called Schwärmerei, and Coleridge was certainly a Schwärmer,
if a very great one. Kant's whole temper of mind was really
nearer that of the caricaturist than of the caricatured.
But it was Coleridge's Kant that influenced John Stuart
Mill and formed his opinion of German philosophy. Mill
says in his Autobiography, writing of the year 1829, that
the influence of European thought came to him " from the
writings of Coleridge, which I had begun to read with
interest even before the change in my opinions ; from, the
Coleridgians with whom I was in personal intercourse;
from what I had read of Goethe, from Carlyle's early
articles in the Edinburgh and Frazer Reviews." He had
first-hand acquaintance with the French philosophical
writers of the eighteenth century, but only second-hand
acquaintance with German philosophy, and he makes no dis-
tinction, or hardly any, between Kant and his successors.
It was not till well on in the century that Kant began
to be systematically studied in England.
Comte, writing to Mill in 1843, remarks : " All that I
hear of German philosophy from the best informed people
rather discourages me from the project I had told you
of that I would make a serious attempt to acquire some
special knowledge of it in order to grasp its points of
contact with my own philosophy " ; and he asks Mill to
advise him on the matter. Mill replied that he thought
1
Op. Cit., Chapter xxxi., " Cimmerian Lodge."
302 KANT
German philosophy had done some good, but was on the
whole a reactionary force, and says: " I have no right to
give you a very decided opinion on German philosophy,
having never read Kant or Hegel or any other of the chiefs
of that school, which I only know by its English and French
interpreters. This philosophy has been useful to me. It
has corrected what was too analytical in my mind,
nourished as that was by Bentham and the French philoso-
phers of the eighteenth century. Add to that its criticism
of the negative school, and especially a real, though very
incomplete, sense of historical laws and of the correlation
of different states of men and of society." He dissuades
Comte from wasting his time over German philosophy,
though he applauds his intention of learning German, for
that will enable him to read Goethe.
It was not till the second half of the century that
there was much scholarly study of Kant in England, and
then it came as part of the influence of Hegel. The
beginning of the English version of what is sometimes
called absolute idealism was the publication in 1865 of
Hutchison Stirling's The Secret of Hegel. He followed that
up in 1881 by a Textbook on Kant. Green and Caird were
Hegelians rather than Kantians, but both great students
of Kant, Caird especially. Both looked in Kant for an
answer to the reigning associationist philosophy of their
time, and stressed in Kant those elements furthest removed
from the empirical.
Kant was, therefore, in English academic philosophy,
seen, at first at least, through Hegel. His philosophy was
presented by those who saw in Hegel the true development
of Kantianism. Further, English idealism was greatly
influenced by Berkeley, and has always tended to regard
Kant's teaching as an elaboration of Berkeley, or at least
as involving the same fundamental basis. This appears
when it is suggested as it was by Green and Caird that
if only Berkeley had said " Esse est intelligi," instead of
" Esse est percipi," he would have anticipated Kant.
Also, the English idealism of the nineteenth century was
 THE INFLUENCE OF KANT'S PHILOSOPHY 303
in the first instance a criticism of English empiricism.
That empiricism had derived from Hume a doctrine
that the original data of knowledge were atomic sense
data. The idealists tended to regard the Kantian
doctrine of the synthetic activity of the mind as an
answer to the problem presented by Hume's atomism;
and to suppose, therefore, that Kant thought that the given
element in knowledge is a mere chaos of unrelated sense
data, and that everything else was contributed by the
mind. It is easy to see how this interpretation lends itself
to a view that Kant was in principle a subjective idealist
like Berkeley. The consequence of this has been that it
has almost been taken for granted that if we give up
epistemological idealism we must suppose that the
philosophy of Kant, as well as that of Berkeley, was built
upon a fundamental error.
That this interpretation of Kant is mistaken, and that
to the main purport of what Kant has to say the dispute
between epistemological idealism and realism is irrelevant,
it has been the aim of this volume to show. This is
not to say that the subjectivist interpretations of Kant
have not some foundation. He stands for the doctrine
that the active mind of man so partakes in his knowing,
as well as in his other activities, that his knowing can
never be described as pure passionless contemplation,
but bears the marks of his activity upon it. The primacy
of the practical reason is Kant's most essential doctrine.
He will have nothing to do with reality except in terms of
our action upon it. He gives up dogmatic metaphysics, not
really because his principles enable him to say nothing
about the nature of the real (they enable him to say a
great deal about it), but because they do not enable him
to answer the questions in which he is really interested.
He identifies metaphysics with the knowledge of the
immortality of the soul, the freedom of the will, and the
existence of God, three questions which are dictated by his
practical or moral interests. He wants to know in order
that he may act better, not to act in order that he may
304 KANT
know better. For him the aim of life and, therefore, of
philosophy, is action and not contemplation.
This does not mean that Kant has ever found favour
with the Pragmatists, or is ever likely to do so. For he
believed intensely in the creative powers of reason in the
separate spheres of science, of morality, and of art. He
denied knowledge to make room for faith in his system as
a whole, but also to make room for reason in these distinct
spheres. His system as a whole is practical because his
logic, his ethical theory, and his aesthetics are rationalistic.
This is the explanation of the remarkable way in which
parts of his system have been admired and followed by
those who would reject his most essential doctrine. Mr.
C. R. Morris has shown in a recent book how Kant's
analysis of modern scientific method has inspired modern
idealistic logic, especially as represented by F. H.
Bradley. Professor Alexander, whose main philosophical
position is largely based on an attempt to reverse Kant's
" Copernican revolution," has called Kant the greatest
mind in aesthetics, and talks of the magnificent conception
of a kingdom of ends ; and Croce, whose metaphysical
temper is far removed from that of Kant's, speaks with
warm admiration of Kant's ethical theory. Many more
witnesses might be quoted to the same effect.
VWhile, therefore, Kant must always influence profoundly
those who take seriously either science or morality or art,
he is not the philosopher for those who regard knowledge or
contemplation as the end of action. They will have little
concern with the problems which cost Kant so ,much
labour, and they will concern themselves with questions
which he would not have thought worth answering. When
men give up the practical world in despair, or at least think
it no field for the exercise of reason, and regard philoso-
phical contemplation as a refuge from the struggle with a
disillusioning world, äs men have so often done, and will
no doubt continue to do, they will have no use for Kant.
Kant's problems came from his profound faith in men's
activities, in the progress of science, and the reality of
 THE INFLUENCE OF KANT'S PHILOSOPHY 305
moral freedom. He saw the two activities he most
believed in apparently at war with one another, and his
/tireless concern to preserve the independence and integrity
of both constitutes and pervades his system. So long as
men share his faith and his concern, his philosophy is
bound to be of influence.
--* ' ,. "1
 INDEX
A PRIORI, elements in experience,
28 ; distinction among a priori
principles, 30. ; three character-
istic types of a priori judge-
ments, 58, 63 ; temporal sug-
gestion unfortunate, 61 ; its
distinctive mark, 58, 63 ; know-
ledge, 62 ; its later meaning,
63 ; concepts, 8 0 - 1 , 84, 121,
2 8 9 ; those concepts under-
lying empirical knowledge, 92 ;
element in all judging, 84, 269 ;
categories, 85 ; space and time
given, 86, 101, 1 1 7 ; motion
outside range of, 112 ; laws
prescribed to experience, 113 ;
principles universal and neces-
sary, 115 ; law of alterations,
125 ; element in science and
conduct emphasized b y Kant,
166-8 ; purpose of reason, 188 ;
principles of aesthetic judge-
ment, 219 ; pleasure connected
with a priori principles, 228-9 ;
their successful use in t h e
sciences, 272 ; a priorism ex-
aggerated in Opus Postumum,
289
Absolute, the, 137
Action, see Conduct
Actuality, 122, 132
Adickes, 297
.(Esthetic, 80, 216. (And see A r t ;
Beautiful; and Kant—Works
—Critique of Judgement.)
Alexander, Prof., cited, 304
Alteration, 74, 125, 226, 262
American Revolution, 9
Anthropology, 6, 166, 281, 296
Antinomies, 75, 76, 137, 140,
143 ff., 281
Appearance, 68, 151
Apperception, unity of, 96, 123,
138, 148 ; empirical, 100, 105 ;
a time process over against a
spatial intuition, 116
Aristotle, 187, 192, 266
Art, universal of, 235 ; as symbol
of morality, 235 ; comparison
Art—continued
of works of, 251 ; freedom its
characteristic, 253 ; an activity
of the reason, 287 ; synthesis
effected in, 293
" As if," doctrine of, 160-1, 210
Atheism, 107
Atomism, 64-5, 120, 303
Attention, acts of, 97
Aufklärung, 9-10
Autonomy, see under Will
BAUMGARTEN, 7, 155, 159, 204,
216-17 ; t n e Metaphysica 17-
23
Beauties of nature, 238, 245-6
Beautiful, t h e : nature of, 234 ;
definition of, 240 ; distinguished
from the agreeable, 168, 238,
239-40, 242 ; from the true
and the good, 235 ; from the
sublime, 238, 250-1 ; judge-
ments of, 216, 2 3 3 ; elicits
harmony of cognitive powers,
245 ; symbol of the good, 254 ;
universal, 288
Behaviourism, 120
Bentham, 302
Bergson, 131, 236, 256, 291
Berkeley, 14, 38, 52-5, 83, 118,
132, 293, 302, 303 ; K a n t ' s
attitude to, 15
Biology, 236, 291
Bradley, F . H., 304
Bridges, Robert, 236
CAIRD, 302
Cassirer, 29, 69
Categories: Metaphysical Deduc-
tion of, 79-87, 286; their
schematization, 85, 224 ; Kant's
two views of their classification,
8 6 - 7 ; lists of, 87 ; Transcen-
dental Deduction of, 87-8, 9 1 ,
95. I O 3 . XI4> 2 " 8 ; implied in
intuition, 9 3 ; their applica-
3o8 INDEX
Categories—continued
bility, 94, 104, 122-3, J 37 ; a ' l
synthesis subject to, 104 ; of
modality, 122, 132 ; of relation,
122, 129 ; functions of unity,
156 ; all thinking done accord-
ing to, 224-5 I means and end,
259 ; their limitations, 284
Causation: Baumgarten's account
of, 20 ; Hume's problem of, 90,
106, 276 ; Kant's account of,
24, 91, 126-9 ; conception of,
as a postulate, 115 ; not ob-
servable in experience, 122';
the intuition corresponding to
concept of, 125 ; its concern
with the particular, 128 ; never
understood, 129 ; contradictory
propositions regarding, 145, 151;
freedom in relation to, 152-4 ;
purposive, 154 ; different kinds
°f< 2 35 ; regulative principles
of, 260, 262 ; its implications,
262
Cause: efficient, 153 ; final, 256
Change, see Alteration
Chemistry, 130-1
Church and State, 213-14
Coleridge, 294, 298-301
Collenbusch, Dr., quoted, 191
Comte, 296, 301-2
Concepts: nature of, 121, 123, 224,
244 ; relativity of concepts of
understanding, 82, 250; de-
pendent on spontaneity of
thought, 84 ; a priori, 80-1, 84,
121, 2 8 9 ; not generated by
reason, 143
Conduct: difference between moral
and immoral, 193 ; assump-
tion in moral, 197; its co-
operative character, 208, 210 ;
reason in, 282 ; Kant's su-
preme interest in, 303-4
Connectedness, see Relation
Contradiction, principle of, 17-19,
22, 180
Contradictory propositions, pairs
of, 144 ff.
Copernicus, 50-1
Cosmogony, 23
Cosmology, 22, 158-60
Counting, 98-9, 105, 122
Criticism, philosophy described
as, 41-2
Croce, 304
Crusius, 35
DARWIN, 259
Definitions, 26
Descartes, 14, 25, 38, 54, 131, 132,
262, 289
Determinism and freedom prob-
lem, 151-2, 290. (And see
Freedom)
Dilthey, Wilhelm, 291, 297
Dualism, 106, 199-200, 293 ;
Pauline account of, 196
Duty, essential connexion be-
tween freedom and, 164 ; con-
flict between inclination and,
171, 190, 194-5, 207, 282 ;
result of action in accordance
with, 180 ; as a formal identity,
181 ; right of resistance to law
conceived as, 186-7 ; ethical,
contrasted with legal, 189-90.
(And see Obligation)
EMPIRICAL, the, in science, 270,
296
Empiricism, principle of, 147-8 ;
its culmination in Hume, 14 ;
English, 303 ; Kant's attitude
to, 15-16, 23-4 ; his assump-
tions from empiricists, 66, 67 ;
empirical realism, 68, 279, 290 ;
empiricists' difficulties with ex-
perience, 29 ; their ectypal
theory, 52 ; their account of
judgements, 58, 6 0 ; their
atomism, 63-5
Ends, Kant's kingdom of, 178,
208, 210, 213, 304
Enjoyment of our own activity,
113-14
Epiphenomenalism, 120
Eternity, 156
E t h i c s : Kant's view of, 164-5,
290 ; empirical and rational
part of, distinguished, 166-7,
188 ; scope of, 189 ; law of
freedom implied in, 290 ; not
a natural science, 281, 290, 297
Euler, 69
Evil, 211
Experience: physics and, 2 6 ;
metaphysics and, 26 ; a priori
elements in, 28, 62, 106;
empiricists' difficulties with,
29 ; a joint product, 50 ; be-
ginning of knowledge, 53, 62 ;
relation between present and
possible, 55 ; in time, 55, 120 ;
successive, 124 ; the matter of.
 INDEX
Experience—continued
132 ; form and matter of, dis-
tinguished, 63, 68 ; Hume's
account of, 64 ; private and
public, 76 ; objectivity neces-
sarily in, 92, 104, 1 1 7 ; condi-
tion of the' possibility of, 104,
138 ; K a n t ' s prescription of a
priori laws to, 113 ; how the
pategories are applied to, 122,
137 ; causation not observable
in, 122; analogies of, 129;
different plans in, 131 ; its
unity, how obtained, 133 ;
questions unanswerable by, 135 ;
limitations of, 2 6 9 ; science
prescribing to, 272 ; system-
atizing of, 274 ; informed by
reason, 287
FAITH : knowledge denied to make-
room for, 161, 197, 3 0 4 ; in-
duced by the moral law, 204 ;
" church faith," 205 ; shown
in action, 209-10, 284 ; doc-
trine of justification by, 212 ;
science equally with conduct
dependent on, 285
Fichte, 267, 292-3
Form, 242-3, 246, 270, 284
Frederick the Great, 9, 299
Frederick William I I , 9, 11-12
F r e e d o m : concept of, 117 ; con-
tradictory propositions regard-
ing, 145 ; problem of causality
in relation to, 131, 151-4 ;
its conflict with necessity, 288,
290 ; its compatibility with
categorical imperative incom-
prehensible, 199 ; one of three
ideas proper t o metaphysics,
140 ; denied b y the empiricist,
148 ; Rousseau's deduction
from, of law, 164 ; principle of
reciprocal, 183-4, *88, l92 '• its
dangers, 187 ; principle of inner,
190; identification of, with
autonomy, 193-4 '• u s e s 0 1 . i n
moral and in immoral Conduct,
193, 211 ; its relation to the
moral law, 194-5 '• problem of,
in relation to art, 235 ; world
of, contrasted with world of
nature, 255 ; law of, implied in
ethics, 290. {And see under
Will)
French Revolution, 9
309
G E N I U S , 251 ff.
Geometry, 25-6, 47, 63, 88, 112,
116
God: idea of, 140 ; Kant's early
views as to existence of, 25 ;
his physico-theological proof,
1 5 7 ; contradictory propositions
regarding, 145-7 '< Baum-
garten's account of, 22, 1 5 5 ;
existence of, unprovable by
speculative reason, 155, 287 ;
the real issue in all proofs of
existence of, 159 / assumption
of, 206 ; doctrine of grace of,
212-13
Goethe, 37, 237-8, 302
Goodness, 19, 164-5, 169-70
Government, 184 ff.
Green, T. H., 302 ; cited, 186
H A P P I N E S S , 174
Hegel, 157,' 266-7, 2 7 ° . 2 9 2 '•
quoted, 181 ; his development
of Kantian thought, 294-6
Herz, Marcus, Kant's letters to,
31-6, 89, 215
Hobbes, 186, 209
H u m a n personality an end in
itself, 175-6, 184, 199, 263
Hume, 38 ; his influence on Kant,
5, 14, 15, 27, 28, 3 0 0 ; his
atomism, 15, 64, 84, 120, 303 ;
his account of judgement, 60 ;
the Treatise, 64-5 ; his con-
fusion as to space and time,
77 ; his view of general terms,
83 ; his problem of causation,
52, 58, 90, 106, 126, 129, 276 ;
K a n t ' s answer to, 127 ; his
attitude to imagination, 95,
275 ; his confusion over series
of impressions, 109-10 ; his
account of reason, 173, 280
Husserl, 297
IDEALISM—of Descartes, 52 ; of
Berkeley, 52, 5 3 ; of Locke,
53,; Kant's refutation of, 51,
53 ff., 119, 124, 132; tran-
scendental, 68, 148-50, 279,
290 ; subjective, 74 ; absolute,
302 ; epistemological, 303
I d e a s : doctrine of innate, 61-2 ;
Platonic, 139 ; cosmological,
144 ; association of, distin-
guished from judgement, 95,
239, 244, 278 ; «sthetic, 252-3
3io
Imagination: its p a r t in know-
ledge, 64, 244, 2 8 8 ; in per-
ception of beauty, 91, 244, 288 ;
distinction between j udging a nd,
84 ; work of, in intuitions, 95 ;
transcendental synthesis of, 9 6 -
97. I O 3 . I 2 3 . x 33'. reproductive,
103 ; governed by rules or con-
cepts, 108; included in inner
sense, 112, 1 1 5 ; t h e produc-
tive, 112 ; its important part
in thinking, 225-6 ; in scientific
discoveries, 230, 2 7 5 ; appre-
hension of forms in, 233 ;
conflict of, with reason, 248-9 ;
its relation to the beautiful and
the sublime distinguished, 250 ;
in genius, 253 ; its relation to
the understanding, 275, 288 ;
organization of, 2 7 6 ; Kant's
ambiguous account of, 288
Immortality, 140, 143, 303
Imperative: categorical, 173, 175-
176, 178,189; Kant's deduction
of, 1 9 3 ; hypothetical, 172,
2
73. *93 I assertorial, 174
Individual, the, 263. (And see
Human)
Individuality, 256
Inference, 139
Infinity: representation of, im-
possible, 77 ; reason concerned
with, 137 ; assumptions as to,
138; regressive series, 145,
148-9 ; a transcendental predi-
cate, 156 ; its implications in
judgements and actions, 198
Inner sense, Kant's doctrine of,
96 ff., 11 iff,.; his confusion
between inner and outer ex-
perience, 73-4, 117, 120; our
enjoyment of our own activity,
113-14 ; includes imagination,
115 ; controlled by understand-
ing, 115
Intelligibility 29, 230-3, 243,
265-6, 268, 285, 295
Introspection, 130
Intuition: space and time as forms
of, 30, 86, 109, 277 ; concepts
complementary to, 49, 8 0 ;
distinguished from reason, 61 ;
always of a manifold, 65, 109 ;
source of, 6 7 ; understanding
distinguished from, 67, 72, 76,
77, 79. 91, 93. 94- 288, 294, 296 ;
distinction between thinking
INDEX
Intuition—continued
and, a t every stage, 107 ff.,
118 ; appearances given in,
independently of functions of
the understanding, 90 ; idealist
view of, 74 ; relation between
judgements and, 89 ; imagina-
tion's p a r t in, 95 ; clearness in,
without a concept, 108 ; basis
of K a n t ' s phenomenalism, 114 ;
subjective conditions of, 114-
15 ; axioms of, 129 ; no mean-
ing in substance except in
reference to, 141 ; only a
receptivity, 149; union of,
with understanding, 268-9
JACOBI, 14, 292
J u d g e m e n t : nature of, 9 5 ; analy-
sis and synthesis involved in,
55. °5 ; principles of, 82 ; a
priori element in, 84, 2 2 4 ;
relation between intuitions and,
8 9 ; association of ideas dis-
tinguished from, 95, 239, 244,
278 ; as the unit of thought,
n o , 294 ; concept a rule in,
121, 1 2 3 ; possible to make,
about ourselves, 130; the
special work of t h e u n d e r -
standing, 139 ; implications of,
139-40 ; its part in regard t o
moral laws, 168 ; aesthetic
j u d g e m e n t : a priori principles
of, 2 1 9 ; a middle term be-
tween understanding and reason,
221-2 ; its unteachability, 223 ;
its nature, 233 ; in relation to
the sublime, 235, 2 3 8 ; not
cognitive, 239 ; its universality,
239 ff. ; disinterested, 240 ; in-
dividual, 240-1 ; use of im-
agination in, 244 ff.; its rela-
tion to the ideas of reason,
249-51 ; moral judgement : its
relation to ethics, 189 ; prac-
tical reason operative in, 192 ;
its nature, 194-5 .' reflective
and determinant judgement,
224-5, 228, 234, 257, 263 ;
inductive element in, 225
KANT, I m m a n u e l : his birth,
family and upbringing, 1-2 ;
at Königsberg University, 2-3 ;
tutor in E . Prussia, 4 ; his
 INDEX
Kant—continued
Doctorate at Königsberg, 4 ;
his lectures, 4, 6-8, 25, 39,
41-2 ; " not philosophy, but
how to philosophize," 8, 4 2 ;
last course (1796), 13 ; assistant
librarian (1765), 5 ; Professor
of Logic and Metaphysics (1770),
5 ; publications (1781-1790), 5,
38 ; influences on, 14-15 ; social
distractions, 6 ; opportunities
of artistic appreciation, 237;
his daily regime, 9 ; ill-health,
9, 13 ; his death (1804), 13
Estimates of, 5, 300 ; Vor-
länder's, 6 ; Herder's, 8 ; his
social gifts, 6 ; a reader, 6, 9;
a conversationalist, 9 ; his
political theory, 9 ; his piece-
meal methods, 61 ; his problem
of reconciliation (philosophies
of Leibniz and Newton), 15-16 ;
efforts at reconciliation of science
and morality, 17; his great
contribution to understanding
of moral questions, 200; his
imagination, 238; romanti-
cism, 238 ; vision of beauty,
238 ; his paradoxes, 253; his
non-appreciation of history, 291;
inconsistencies involved in. his
philosophy, 2 9 0 - 2 ; develop-
ment of his system, 289 ; his
system unfinished, 2 6 6 ; his
attitude to English scientists,
300; influence of his philo-
sophy, 289 ff.
Works of;
Anthropology (1798), 107,
162
Conception of Negative
Quantity in NaturalKnow-
ledge. On the, 27
Conflict of the Faculties', The
(1798), 12
Conflict of the Good Prin-
ciple with the Evil, On the,
10
Critique of Judgement
(1790), 5. 9 i . 93. 130.
131, 154, 168, 287, 289,
291 ; growth of the idea
of, 215-18 ; two Intro-
ductions, 219, 226, 257 ;
Critique of Esthetic
Judgement, 236-55, 257;
Appendix : The Critique
3"
Kant—continued
of Teleological Judge-
ment, 219, 231, 255 ff.,
265, 296; its effort to
reconcile dualism, 200,
288, 293 ; its place in the
critical philosophy, 215,
218
Critique of Practical Reason
(1787), 5,156,162,166 ff.,
2I
7» 235 ; contradiction
in, 200—3
Critique of Pure Reason
(1781), 5 ; first mention
of its plan, 32, 36 ; its
composition, 37, 40, 88 ;
its writing, 36, 40 ; its
style and method, 37-
4 3 ; its difficulties, 41,
43 ; its alternative argu-
ments, 41-3 ; pre-Critical
elements in, 67, 79 ; the
Prefaces, 43, 57, 87, 137,
231, 250 ; Introduction,
5 7 - 6 6 ; its ambiguities,
61-6 ; the ^Esthetic, 6 6 -
79; its inconsistency
with T r a n s c e n d e n t a l
Deduction, 71-2 ; Meta-
physical Deduction of
the Categories, 79-87,
286 (and see Categories) :
Transcendental Deduc-
tion, 87-8, 91, 95, 103,
114, 288; Prof. Kemp
Smith's view examined,
108, i i o - n ; Analytic
of Principles, 86, 121-35,
286; lists of judgements,
8 7 ; of principles, 8 7 ^
Second Analogy, 91=; thtf
Dialectic, 104, 136 ff.,
155 ff., 286-7 ; Appen-
dix, 287; the Antino-
mies, 235, 286 ; doctrine
of " as if," 160-1 ; its
account of Reason, 190,
198; the Interest of
Reason in these Con-
flicts, 260 ; second edi-
tion (17S7), 5. 26, 41, 43,
75, i n , 117, 119, 124»
128, 140, 145 ; reasons
for changes in this edi-
tion, 87, 1 rg ; note on
meaning of " aesthetic "
quoted, 216
312 INDEX
Kant—continued
Dreams of a Ghost-seer . . .
(1766), 28
Early dissertations, 4;
Berlin Prize Essay, 272
Enquiry into the Certainty
of the Principles of Natural
Theology and Morals,
(1764), 26
Everlasting Peace, 12
Failure of all Philosophical
Attempts at a Theodicy,
On the, 10
False Subtlety of the Four
Syllogistic Figures, The,
24, 27
Form and Principles of the
Sensible and of the In-
telligible World, Disserta-
tion on the (1770), 28, 29,
78
Fundamental Principles of
the Metaphysic of Morals
(1785), 5. 162, 166 ff.,
190-4, 287
General Natural History . . .
(1755). 4- 23
Metaphysic of Morals (1797),
12-13, l 6 z » 287 ; first
part, 183-8 ; second part,
188 ff. ; difference in
their teaching, 191-2
Metaphysical First Prin-
ciples of the Natural
Sciences (1786), 5, 72, 87,
129, 130
Monadologia Physica, 23
Only Possible Proof of the
Existence of God, The
(1762), 24, 25
Opus Postumum, 56, 289-
290
Prolegomena to any Future
Metaphysic, 5
Religion within the Bounds
of Reason Alone (1793),
1 0 - i r , 162, 203 ff., 287
Supposed Right to tell a Lie,
On the, 187
Thoughts on the True Con-
servation of Living Forces,
..23
Über Philosophie überhaupt,
229
Knowledge: two kinds of pure,
30 ; archetypal and ectypal, 34,
52 ; contrast between opinion
Knowledge—continued
and, 46, 274-5 : compound,
nature of, 49, 62, 66, 105, 132,
138, 145, 293 ; a priori, 50, 62 ;
a priori concepts underlying
empirical, 92 ; beginning in
experience, 53, 62 ; perception
distinguished from, 244 ; al-
ways in time, 55, 56, 64 ; time
and space involved in, 113 ;
synthesis involved in, 56, 105,
145 ; none without imagina-
tion, 64, 244, 288 ; all, per-
vaded b y activity of the mind,
77 ; of ourselves, 96, 111-13 ;
an objective condition of, 99 ;
possible only by acting, 113 ;
contrast between acting and,
284 ; limited nature of, 135,
284, 291 ; part played in, b y
reason, 136 ; denial of, to make
room for faith, 161, 197, 304 ;
aesthetic judgement contributes
nothing to, 239 ; equated with
science, 274 ; development in
Kant's account of, 291
Knutzen, Martin, 3
Königsberg University, 2-3
LAMBERT, 31, 73
Laplace, 23
Law, external: its purpose, 183-4 '<
K a n t ' s respect for, 9, 12, 185-6,
192
Law, moral and universal: dis-
tinguished from practical rules,
168 ; categorical imperative in
conformity with, 175 ; self-
imposed, 177-80, 193 ; a general
law of freedom, 183, 290 ; ex-
ternal law an inadequate ex-
pression of, 186-7 ; nature of,
204 ; the will's concern with,
210, 282 ; produced by reason,
287
Law, natural, distinguished from
positive law, 183
Laws, empirical, 226-8, 257
League of Nations, principle of, in
K a n t ' s work, 12
Leibniz, 14, 52, 200, 201, 229 ;
New Essays on the Human
Understanding, 15, 29, 69 ; im-
perfectly known in eighteenth
century, 15 ; his account of
space and time, 69-70 ; issue
between Newton and, 15, 30 ;
 INDEX
Leibniz—continued
Kant's rediscovery of, 5 ; his
influence on Kant, 29 ff. ;
K a n t ' s answer to, 78, 107
Liberty, see Freedom
Lisbon earthquake (1755), 5, 25
Locke, 14, 61, 83, 118, 293, 3 0 0 ;
his fundamental position, 53 ;
Kant's attitude to, 15 ; K a n t
contrasted with, 54-6
Logic, Kant's stages in, 81, 224
Logic, " g e n e r a l " or formal:
Kant's use of, 43, 139, 288 ;
his divergences from, 87 ; its
completeness, 46, 81, 84-6,
273 ; its concern, 46, 272 ;
distinguished from transcend-
ental logic, 81 ; insufficiency
of its distinctions, 121 ; a
priori concepts supplied by, 286
Logic, transcendental, involved
in Kant's system, 79 ff., 294 ;
its concern, 80-2, 85 ; distin-
guished from aesthetic, 8 0 ;
from general logic, 85, 223
MALEBRANCHE, 35
Mathematics: distinguished from
physics, 26 ; from metaphysics,
3°. 35. 69-71, 292 ; as a science,
46-7 ; the analytical and syn-
thetic in, 57-8 ; its universal-
ity. 63 ; its concern, 272 ; its
processes a guide to observa-
tion, 274 ; the mathematically
sublime, 247-50
Means and end, 264
Mechanism, principle of, 260-5 :
of nature, 200
Memory, 84
Metaphysics : its three ideas, 140 ;
content of, for Kant, 303 ; his
rebuttal of dogmatic, 136, 141-
143, 285, 292
Mill, J. S., 298, 301
Miracles, 19-21
Monads, 21
Moral action, see Conduct
Moral choice, nature o £ 281-2
Moral law, see Law, moral
Moral philosophy, clear of the
empirical, 167-8 ; transition
from, to the Metaphysic of
Morals, 171 ; Kant's 'view of,
165 ; autonomy his supreme
principle in, 188, 193
Moral pleasure, 190
313
Moral purpose, 34, 188
Morality: the transcendental im-
plied in, 28-9 ; its conflict with
science, 16, 141 ; efforts to re-
concile, with science, 16-17 ;
practical reason in, 45 ; in-
dependent of the speculative
reason, 140-1, 164-5 ; rational
knowledge of, distinguished
from philosophical, 169; au-
tonomy of the will the supreme
principle of, 169, 178, 255 ;
metaphysic of, 171 ; its relation
to religion, 2 0 5 - 6 ; art as a
symbol of, 235
Motion, 97, 112, 116, 125, 126, 128
Music, 237, 268, 270-1
N A T U R E : argument from design
in, 25, 157-8, 269 ; all happen-
ings in accordance with laws of,
145, 151 ; beauties of, 238,
2 4 5 - 6 ; concept of'final cause
applied to, 256 ; unity of, in its
empirical laws, 257 ; purposive-
ness of, 227-9, 233, 265
Necessity, 122, 132, 156. (And
see Determinism, Freedom and
Obligation)
Newton, 3, 5, 259 ; his account
of space and time, 69, 71 ;
issue between Leibniz and, 15,
30 ; Kent's attitude to, 15, 16,
23-4; Kant's comparison of
Rousseau with, 163
Noumena, 135
OBJECTIVITY, principle of, 118,
157. 179
Obligation: distinguished from in-
clination, 168-9, 171. 194-5.
207 ; perfect and imperfect,
189, 190, 192 ; inexplicable by
science, 281, 290. (And see
Duty)
Ontology, 17, 134; ontological
proof of God's existence, 25,
157-9
Organism, 258-9, 264-5
Paintings, Kant's lack of apprecia-
tion of, 237
Paralogisms, 139
Passivity and spontaneity, dis-
tinction between, 76, 79
Peacock, 300
Perception, anticipations of, 129
314 INDEX
Perfection, transcendental, 19-20
Phenomena, relation between
things in themselves and, 289-90
Phenomenalism, 119-20, 280, 296
Physics: distinguished from mathe-
matics, 26 ; as a science, 46,
48 ; first principles of, 123, 129,
131, 291 ; Kant's identification
of science with, 130, 236, 272
Plato, 35, 46, 83, 139, 266, 274 ;
Kant's possible version of t h e
cave simile, 282
Pleasure: connected with a priori
m
principles, 228-9; tne
apprehension of forms, 2 3 3 ;
nature of, 234, 239 ; its position
in aesthetic judgements, 2 4 2 ;
negative form of, 245-6 ; moral,
190
Poetry, 237, 238, 294
Positivism, 296
Possibility, 122, 132
Postulates, 129, 130
Pragmatism, 115, 130, 291
Principles: constitutive, 129, 133,
138, 291 ; regulative, 129, 133,
138, 228-9, 291
Process, reality and nature of, 295
Psychology, 22, 139, 141-2, 297
Purposiveness, 227-9, 233, 242,
246, 263, 265
QUALITY and quantity, categories
of, 122
Questions, unanswerable, 135
RATIONAL : meanings of the term,
173 ; nature of, 253-4 ; identi-
fied with the real, 295 ; rational
nature an end in itself, 175-6,
184. (And see Reason)
Rationalism, 10, 14, 58, 67
Rationalization, 198
Reality: nature of, 132; confused
with perfection, 158-9 ; of the
intelligible world, 198-9 ; pro-
gress in understanding of, 285 ;
subject and object included in,
293; identified with the
rational, 295
Reason, Kant's differentiation in
meaning of, 136-7, 139, 156,
188, 222, 286-9
Reason, practical: K a n t ' s mean-
ing of, 166; its primacy over
the theoretical, 107, 3 0 3 ; its
Reason—continued
principles, 137-8 ; understand-
ing distinguished from, 137,
156, 286, 287; its concerns,
137. 139, 143. 18°. J 9 6 ; its
ideals, 139-40, 281, 285 ; faculty
of the infinite, 139, 1 9 0 ; re-
lation between the specula-
tive reason and, 141 ff.; re-
sults of its application to syn-
thesis, 144; two conceptions
of its task, 155 ; self-legislation,
156 ; faith identified with, 161 ;
purposes willed by, 172, 189 ;
its activities, 192, 285 ; crea-
tive, 182 ; middle term between
understanding and, 221-2 ; its
relation to aesthetic judgement,
235-6. 249-51 ; conflict of
imagination with, 2 4 8 - 9 ; its
rigid rules, 254 ; as law and as
purpose, 287 ; moral law pro-
duced by, 282, 2 8 7 ; experi-
ence informed by, 2 8 7 ; its
unity, 139-40, 289
Reason, speculative, Baumgarten's
principle of sufficient, 1 7 - 2 0 ;
systematic, 43 ; its relation t o
science, 45, 156 ; a priori exer-
cise of, 61 ; distinguished from
intuition, 61 ; relation between
the practical reason and, 141 ff. ;
assigned to the faculty of desire,
287 ; Hume's view of, 173
Reciprocity, 129, 130
Reinhold, Kant's letter? to,
quoted, 217-18
Relation, 119, 122, 129, 134
Relativity, theory of, 70, 75
Religion: K a n t ' s attitude to, 2,
203 ff. ; his philosophy of, 220 ;
Newtonian principles in con-
flict with, 16 ; independent of
speculative reason, 140; dis-
tinguishing mark of false, 205,
212 ; conversion, 211-13
Right, doctrine of, 183-8
Rights, public, 184-6
Romantic movement *— in Ger-
many, 5, 15, 292; in England,'
294, 298
Rousseau, 5, 17, 184, 237 ; his
influence on Kant, 162-4
SCHELLING, 267, 292-3
Schematism of the Pure Concepts
of t h e Understanding, 118,
 INDEX
Schematism—continued
121-3, 134 ; schematization of
the categories, 85, 224 ; with-
out a concept, 245
Schiller, 237-8
Schopenhauer, 118, 296
Sciences, historical, 131, 291
Sciences, physical, K a n t ' s interest
in, 3, 2 9 0 ; his attitude to,
290, 294 ; principles and
methods underlying, 16-17, 24>
8 6 ; their conflict with morality,
16-17, I 4 I '• metaphysics not
yet " on the sure p a t h of," 27,
44-5. 57 ; a s model for meta-
physics, 59, 272, 281 ; based on
a priori principles, 4 6 ; dis-
tinctive character of, 46;
methods of, 47-8, 291 ; the
presupposition of, 58 ; nature
of judgements of, 126 ; Kant's
identification of, with physics,
130, 236, 272 ; reason in rela-
tion to, 156, 281 ; generaliza-
tions of genius in, 225, 2 3 0 ;
importance in, of imagination,
2
75 J legitimate use in, of con-
cept of purposiveness, 256 fi. ;
investigations of, t o be un-
fettered, 260 ; their successful
progress, 271 ; their" concerns,
272-3 ; their ideal, 274 ; motive
in, 2 8 0 ; dependent on faith,
285 ; their empiricism, 296
Self: as subject of thinking, 141-2:
distinction of autonomous, and
heteronomous, 164, 2 0 7 ; the
noumenal, 196 ; character of
knowledge of, 297
Sensa, 64, 118
Sense, see Inner sense
Sensibility, 67
Space, involved in geometrical
thinking, 88-9 ; thinking not a
process in, 95.; inner sense
concerned with, 113 ; deter-
mined as permanent, 1 2 5 ;
movement of a point in, 126,
128 ; intuition of wholeness in
its determination, 146
Space and t i m e : a priori, b u t also
sensible, 30-1, 8 6 ; given as
wholes, 65, 67, 9 3 ; Kant's
opposition to H u m e regarding,
65,120 ; to Leibniz and Newton,
69 ff. ; forms of intuition, 6 9 /
82, 86, 103 ; pervasive of ex-
315
Space and time—continued
perience, 91, 117 ; conscious-
ness of, involved in determin-
ing inner sense, 98 ; the key to
the Transcendental Deduction,
103 ; intuition always a mani-
fold in, 109; involved in
knowledge, 113 ; misconcep-
tion regarding Kant's account
of, 124 ; consciousness of, fun-
damental and primary, 133 ;
assumptions as to infinity of,
138, 149 ; infinitely extensible,
149, 277 ; anticipation of order-
ing in, 261
Spinoza, 14, 140
Subject and object distinguished,
99-100, 106, 109, 126, 278, 292
Subjectivity, Kant's doctrine of,
269
Sublime, the, 235, 238, 245 ff.
Substance, 129, 130, 141, 142
Succession, concept of, 97-8, 114
Supernatural, the, 19-21
Supersensible, the, 249-50
Swedenborg, 28
Synthesis: Kant's stress on, 55 ff.,
6 4 ; empiricists' account of,
63 ; a priori, 66 ; judging as,
84 ; nature of, in apperception,
96, i n ; figurative, 9 7 ; syn-
thetic unity of consciousness,
99-100; need for principle
governing, 102 ; subject to the
categories, 104; operative be-
fore consciousness, n o ; tran-
scendental, of the imagination,
I2
3 , 133 ; results of application
of reason to, 144 ; differentia-
tion of the forms of, 286
TASTE, 234. (And see ^Esthetic
and Art)
Teleology, 256 ff.
Theology, 22, 140-1, 155, 156, 159
Thinker, 141
Thinking: distinguished from ob-
servation, 107, n o ; not identi-
cal with making, 114; Kant's
problem with, 115-17; Pos-
tulates of Empirical, 129 ; ex-
istence not provable by, 132 ;
imagination in, 2 2 5 - 6 ; con-
trasts necessarily arising in, 295
T i m e : thinking a process in, 55,
95 ; aspects of, 65 ; manner of
knowing, 97-8,112 ; the specific
3i6 INDEX
Time—continued
form of the inner sense, 112 ;
in constant flux, 125 ; causa-
tion a necessary determination
in, 151 ; necessity of events in,
200-1 ; moral world outside
sphere of, 201. {And see Space
and Time)
Transcendental logic, see Logic
Transcendental object, 150, 152
Transcendental philosophy, 223
Truth, nature of, 55
UNCONDITIONED, the, 137, 144
Understanding, definition of, 82,
137 ; appearances given in in-
tuition independently of, 90 ;
distinction between intuition
and, 91, 93, 94, 96 ; spontaneity
of, distinguished from given in-
tuition, 93, 95, 288, 294, 296 ;
determines inner sense, 9 6 -
98, 111-12, 1 1 5 ; characteristic
mark of, 108 ; Schematism of
the Pure Concepts of the, 121-3,
134; principles of t h e pure,
123, 133, 134, 228, 280-1, 286;
origin of these principles, 156 ;
limits to its achievements a
priori, 134; reason differenti-
ated from, 137, 286, 2 8 7 ;
reason in command of, 156;
judgement the special work of,
139 ; always in its own proper
ground, 147 ; middle term be-
tween reason and, 221-2; en-
livening of, by aesthetic judge-
ment, 235 ; its part in aesthetic
Understanding—continued
judgement, 250-1 ; its work-
ing in knowledge, 250 ; dis-
cursive, 267-8 ; an intuitive,
needed for knowledge of reality,
268-9, 293-4 '• 'ts relation to
the imagination, 275, 288
U n i t y : empirical and transcend-
ental, 138-9, 156; of nature,
227 ; principles necessary to,
228
Universality, 233, 239 ff.
Utilitarians, 300
VAIHINGER, 297
Virtue, 183, 188-90. (And see
Goodness)
von Zedlitz, 6, 9
Vorländer, 237
W I L L : its freedom, 120, 146, 178 ;
its autonomy the supreme prin-
ciple of morality, 169, 178, 255 ;
itself universal legislator, 176-7,
!93 ) goodness concerned with,
169-70 ; no duty for a holy,
171, 190; distinguished from
desire, 172 ; reason involved
in every decision of, 172;
heteronomous, 164, 177, 182,
207 ; willing of the futile not
possible, 208 ; rational willing,
208, 255 ; evil can be only in,
211 ; in bondage to evil prin-
ciple, 211-12
Wolff, 13, 17, 25, 41, 200
Wöllner, 9
Wordsworth, 298