FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTIONS AND METHODS 193 



is a totality of conditions: the one, for all possible syllogisms by 

 Subject and Predicate; the other, for all possible syllogisms from 

 Cause and Effect. Until it can be shown that the syllogisms of the 

 first sort and the syllogisms of the second are both conditioned by 

 the system of disjunctive syllogisms, so that the Idea alleged to be the 

 totality of conditions for this system becomes the conditioning prin- 

 ciple for both the others, there appears to be no ground for contrasting 

 the totality of conditions presented in it with those presented in the 

 others, as if it were the absolute Totality of all Conditions, while the 

 two others are only " relative totalities," - which would be as much 

 as to say they were only pseudo-totalities, both being conditioned 

 instead of being unconditioned. But there seems to be no evidence, 

 not even an indication, that disjunctive reasoning conditions cate- 

 gorical or conditional - - that it constitutes the w r hole kingdom, in 

 which the other two orders of reasoning form dependent provinces, 

 or that for final validation these must appeal to the disjunctive series 

 and the Idea that controls it. On the contrary, any such relation 

 seems disproved by the fact that the three types of syllogism apply 

 alike in all subject-matter, psychic or physical, subjective or object- 

 ive, concerning the Self or concerning the World, --yes, concerning 

 other Selves or even concerning God; whereas, if the relation were a 

 fact, it would require that only disjunctive reasoning can deal with the 

 Unconditioned, and that conditional must confine itself to cosmic 

 material, while categorical pertains only to the things of inner sense. 

 Such considerations cannot but shake our confidence in the inqui- 

 sition to which Kant has submitted the Ideas of Reason, both as 

 regards what they really mean and how they are to be correlated. 

 At all events, the analysis of logical procedure and connection on 

 which his account of them is based is full of the confusions and over- 

 sights that have now been pointed out, and justifies us in saying 

 that his case is not established. Hence we are not bound to follow- 

 when his three successors, or their later adherents, proceed in accept- 

 ance of his results, and advance into various forms of idealism, all of 

 the monistic type, as if the general relation between the three Ideas- 

 had been demonstrably settled by Kant in the monist sense, despite 

 his not knowing this, and that all we have to do is to disregard his 

 recorded protests, and render his results consistent, and our idealism 



A. / 



"absolute," by casting out from his doctrine the distinction between 

 the Theoretical and the Practical Reason, with the "primacy" of the 

 latter, through making an end of his assumed world of Dinge an sich, 

 or "things in themselves." This movement, I repeat, we are not 

 bound to follow: a rectification of view as to the meaning of the three 

 Ideas becomes possible as soon as we are freed from Kant's entangled 

 method of discovering and defining them; and when this rectification 

 is effected, we shall find that the question between monism and 



