MILL S THEORY OF OBJECTIVITY l8l 



may be, or perhaps the memory of certain past sensations. A 

 world of mere possibilities, however complexly interconnected, 

 would be a shadow. It is the givenness of the present or re 

 membered sensation that communicates substance, first to the 

 objects of present and past perception, and then to the whole 

 universe in which they have their place. The theory is very 

 similar to Kant s. &quot;For everything is actual that hangs to 

 gether with a sense-perception according to laws of the empiric 

 progress. They [the men in the moon] are real, if they stand in 

 an empirical connection with my actual consciousness, although 

 they are not on that account actual by themselves, i. e., apart 

 from this progress of experience.&quot; 1 



A second criticism frequently met with is one which seems to 

 start from an interpretation similar to the one just urged by us 

 in Mill s defense. Briefly stated, it is that Mill s admission of 

 possibilities of sensation as something over and above the sensa 

 tions themselves, logically commits him (although he fails to 

 recognize the fact) to what is substantially Kantianism that is, 

 to the assumption of an a priori form of thought. But this 

 criticism too seems, upon consideration, to be unjustified. There 

 is, indeed, a striking resemblance as we have illustrated above 

 between Mill s doctrine and that of Kant. But the differences 

 are equally striking; for the forms of connection which Mill con 

 siders are not a priori but a posteriori. In the first place, they 

 are not intuitively known and assured, as are Kant s a priori 

 princip es; but they are discovered empirically, and often, as in 

 the case of objectivity, only by careful and difficult psychological 

 analysis. Moreover, it can never be asserted that a given de 

 scription of any form of connection is adequate or final. It is 

 always open to correction and modification. In the second place, 

 not only must the ascertainment of existing forms of connection 

 be wholly empirical, but the forms themselves Mill conceives 

 to have arisen and to be modified in the course of experience. 

 In fact, it is only by tracing their psychological origin and de- 



^Criiique of Pure Reason; The Antinomy of Pure Reason, Section 6. 



