KANT. 227 



Kantianism, tlicn, is not exactly cither idealism or scepticism. What 

 wc can say is that Ivaat yielded many points j he did their work very 

 well for them. His doctrine is eminently a rationalism with a tendency 

 to idealism and a risk of scepticism, through the idea of universal sub- 

 jectivity. But the idea of universal subjectivity is not of itself necessa- 

 rily exclusive. Universal subjectivity could be true in the sense that 

 everything is subjective, that is, that everything is thought of, even the 

 aljsolutely unknown, under the general form of the possible ; but from 

 the fact that in that sense everything is subjective, it would by no meana 

 follow that the subjective was everything; for in the subjective we fmd 

 the objective, for example, the unconsciousness of the origin of experi- 

 ence \ this is a point that Kant received as his starting point. In no 

 place does he appear to suppose that experience, that is to say, the first 

 movement of the sensibility, can be an act that exists of itself, the prim- 

 itive act of a spontaniety which is its own proper principle — we do not 

 perceive that which makes us to perceive. Thence he inferred that the 

 pre-eminence of the subjective over the objective arises from the exper- 

 imental and logical belief, that there is immediate consciousness of the 

 one and not of the other, and that we necessarily proceed from the one 

 to get to the other, since w^e are the one and not the other. The sub- 

 jective me is itself something, consequently it exists objectively and the 

 subjective is an objective. There is consciousness of an absolute real- 

 ity ; for the consciousness is not nothing. 



If universal subjectivity were an absolute, exclusive principle in sci- 

 ence, there would result two consequences. 



The first would be, the impossibility of error. Error is not an illu- 

 sion, or at least it is not an avoidable and recognisable illusion. But, if 

 the representations of the me are nothing but tlie actual application of 

 the necessary laws of thought, they are just as they are in themselves ; 

 they should not be submitted to any possible control. I'he objective 

 being to the reason as if it were not at all, cognitions could not be traced 

 back to it, and experience would be uninstructive. Error would then 

 be only in the subjective; but evidently it is not in those laws and in 

 those forms which are by their very necessity invariable. Is it in the 

 given contingents of thought ? Rut the contingent is composed of the 

 brute matter of the intuitions, which is given fatally, and is not within 

 tiie province of the reason. Not being in the necessary, nor in the con- 

 tingent, error should then be in the union, in the apj)lication of the ne- 

 cessary to the contingent, of the pure thought to experimenlal data; but 

 how, according to what rule, after what type are we to judge of the va- 

 lidity, of the regularity of Uiut apj>lRation ' That which eomco from 



