THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 83 



content of what is thus arranged. They organize the product 

 of the understanding, just as the categories organize the product 

 of sense-perception. That is, they are pure form separated from 

 all content, relations absolutely external to what they relate. 



In the beginning of our discussion of the critical philosophy, 

 we found that the application of a priori forms of thought to 

 content is impossible of explanation. Since the a priori form is a 

 relationship which does not determine in any degree the terms 

 to be related, there is no rational ground for its application to 

 these terms, and the use of the forms becomes wholly arbitrary. 

 From this it follows that if the ideas of reason are not constitutive 

 of experience they cease to be even regulative. 



The inherent rationalism of the ideas of reason comes out 

 most plainly in Kant s conception of symbolic anthropomorphism. 

 The objects to which these ideas refer, viz., a supreme being, 

 an intelligible world, and an immaterial being, are objects which 

 can never be realized in any experience. Reason is utterly in 

 capable of knowing them. They must remain mere illusions. 

 Yet even as illusions reason is forced to assume them in order 

 to bring unity within experience. The reconciliation of the de 

 mand which reason feels for going beyond experience, with its 

 inability to do so, is found by Kant to lie in the limitation of our 

 judgment concerning these noumenal objects strictly to the re 

 lation which they bear to the world as we know it, without 

 ascribing to them the possession of any qualities in themselves. 

 Thus we may, and even must, regard the organic world as if 

 the work of a supreme will and understanding; but in so judging 

 the world we do not in the least assert anything concerning the 

 nature of the supreme being. Knowledge of the relation of God to 

 the world constitutes in no degree a knowledge of God. As Kant 

 himself expresses it, we have in the comparison of God s relation 

 to the world to an artisan s relation to his production, an exam 

 ple, not of an imperfect similarity between terms, but of a perfect 

 similarity of relationship between terms which in themselves are 

 utterly disparate. 1 Surely this is outdoing rationalism itself. 



Prolegomena, 58. 



