440 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



intellectual nature, he as strongly insisted upon the 

 reality of at least a portion of our perceptions viz., 

 those which were not merely subjective creations or 

 illusions, but which were supported by some underlying 

 ground or substance. This was evident through the fact 

 that, not only our own subject or person, but likewise 

 other persons around us, participated in the same experi- 

 ence. An agreement with other observing and thinking 

 beings would not be possible without some common point 

 of reference. Kant also employed the intellectual cate- 

 gories of substance and cause unjustifiably as his critics 

 maintained to define more clearly the relation of the 

 Noumenon or Thing in itself to the phenomenal world. 

 But probably the greatest interest which, in his mind, 

 attached to this purely noumenal and intelligible, 1 but 

 not perceptible, entity was the importance that this 

 distinction acquired when applied to our own personal 

 self. Here, in the region of our inner experience, he 

 found a similar dualism, a similar contrast, between 

 what he called the phenomenal and the real self. In 

 opposition to the phenomena which constitute our chang- 

 ing experience, the fleeting moments of our inner life, he 

 detected a unifying principle, a regulative agency. This 

 was Keason itself, which was intellectually a regulative, 

 practically an active principle, and the very essence of this 



1 In the Kantian vocabulary, fol- 

 lowing earlier usage, the word 

 "Intelligible" had a different 

 meaning from that which it has 

 acquired in the English language. 

 Intelligible means with Kant that 

 which we can think about but not 

 see or perceive by our senses. It 

 is the noumenon as distinguished 

 from the phenomenon ; it has 



therefore quite a different mean- 

 ing, in fact an opposite meaning, 

 to the word as used in current 

 English, where it signifies that 

 which we can understand. The 

 difference is clearly marked in 

 the title of one of Kant's earlier 

 Treatises : ' De mundi sensibilis et 

 intelligibilis forma ac principiis ' 

 (1770). 



