THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 7 1 



he had wrought in the logic of rationalism, or make consistent 

 use of his own new conceptions, we shall attempt to make clear 

 as we proceed. Here we need only call attention to the fact, that 

 he insists upon preserving the traditional rationalistic idea of 

 truth alongside of the revolutionary one, though only as a rubric 

 beneath which all is blank an ideal unattainable by human in 

 telligence. Knowledge of the thing-in-itself, if such knowledge 

 there were, could alone exemplify this truth. Here alone could 

 be found an object absolutely independent of the ideas which 

 refer to it, and to which, as their eternal standard, they must 

 if they are to be true submissively conform. And, on the other 

 hand, it is evident, that only in truth of the representative type 

 could the thing-in-itself be revealed to us. For this is an object 

 which lies outside of human experience, and hence can be present 

 to it only by representatives. No such relation as obtains be 

 tween the phenomenal object and its idea can obtain here. But 

 the impossibility of any representation is equally evident. Any 

 ascertainable resemblance is out of the question. And one cannot 

 postulate an identity of any of the relations between ideas and 

 those which make up the structure of the thing-in-itself; for all 

 the former are limited in their legitimate application to the phe 

 nomenal world, while the thing-in-itself may be structureless. 

 For the same reason a theory of secondary qualities is ruled out, 

 even the conceptions of unity and multiplicity having no war 

 ranted application beyond experience. Thus the thing-in-itself 

 remains unknowable, and the traditional conception of truth is 

 without exemplification. 



When we pass on to consider the conception of reality in Kant, 

 we are at first struck by the apparent fact, that the new concep 

 tion of truth which he has introduced has not had any effect 

 here at all. To be sure, just as he distinguishes between two 

 possible orders of knowledge (one of which we lack), so he dis 

 tinguishes between two kinds of reality, the reality of the thing- 

 in-itself and that of the phenomenon. The former is the self- 



