226 GERMAN PHn.O?OPHV. 



thought considered in the sensibility, the understanding, and the reason. 

 5. The certainty of a free will, absolute certainty, as there is there no- 

 thing external, or properly objective, and consequently an objective cer- 

 tainty is there an absolute certainty. 6. The absolute authority of the 

 law of duty for the same reasons, 7. The practical verity of all tlie 

 principles which are as the conditions or necessary consequences of the 

 practical reason, that is to say, which are as the logical complement of 

 the unity of the free will and of the moral law in the reason of a true 

 me, (d'un meme moi). 



The truths thus brought out arc not all; Kant did not regard all hu- 

 man knowledge as a fiction. Not only is it real in itself, not only is it 

 necessary in one pait of its totality, not only is it certain in all that 

 which it contains as necessary to the practical reason, but it is moreover 

 a subjective reality. Is subjective reality conformed to objective reality ? 

 In other words, is it truth ? This is neither demonstrable nor neces- 

 sary. Reason cannot demonstrate itself, and the necessity relates to the 

 leason. It cannot be said that our cognitions are illusions ; but they 

 may he illusions. The faith of reason in cognition or in itself exists in 

 fact, but not of right. Tliat which is ordinarily called human reason is 

 a logic of appearances. 



Kantianism then lacks absolute faith in reason \ this, according to 

 my view, is a gap and an inconsequence in the criticism. 



A gap — for a critical analysis carried further forward, more vigorous 

 and more complete would have established in the subjective the objec- 

 tive itself, or, to speak more correctly, the absolute in the relative. Rea- 

 son is conformed to truth, or it is not reason ; cognition gives the truth, 

 or it knows nothing. It is in fact an a priori law of thought and the 

 most universal of all, not that things are thought as they are thought, 

 but that they are thought as they are. The analysis of Kant has not 

 been that exact revieto which Descartes recommended, and which should 

 sufFer no fact to escape unobserved. 



An inconsequence. For the cognition of oneself, which is there 

 given as true, is an absolute cognition. That which we know of our- 

 selves is as we know it. Tlie criticism of the pure reason has estab- 

 lished this. Inasmuch as the subjective cxi.sts, the reason, which 

 knows it, knows tlie truth in so far as it knows this truth. But the dis- 

 tinction of the subjective supposes the objective. In fact an objective 

 reality of some sort was not denied by Kant, he admits it, he even de- 

 monstrates it in part. But to know this is to know objectively. If 

 then Kant denied the legitimacy of objective knowledge, he contra- 

 dicted himself The truth is, he did not deny, but limited it. 



