xin HUMISM AND HUMANISM 247 



imposed on rationalistic philosophy ? Should we not 

 confess in our candid moments that it would be a relief 

 to get rid of the paradox, for example, that in the whole 

 universe there either is no agency or activity at all, or 

 that such agency resides solely in the whole to the 

 exclusion of its parts ? 



What again of the Kantian answer to Hume ? 

 What a giant paradox it is ! How strange that the slur 

 of subjectivity which Hume has cast upon our notion of 

 causation should be held to be removed by extending its 

 scope ! And all in vain, because after all the mind does 

 not create the world it makes, and remains dependent 

 on experience for the means to discriminate between a 

 casual and a causal, an objective and a subjective 

 sequence. Why then does it not find its material 

 refractory ? How does it know that it will not become 

 so in the future ? Perhaps it may. But if so, are we 

 not back in complete empiricism, and might not the 

 whole a priori machinery just as well be flung upon the 

 scrap-heap? It is, however, nowadays being pretty 

 widely recognized that Kant s answer to Hume is no real 

 answer at all ; but the reason why Kant could not 

 excogitate any real answer is capable of being elucidated. 

 It becomes, at any rate, much clearer when we perceive 

 that having missed the only real answer, viz. the volitional, 

 he had to have recourse to the paradox of ascribing to a 

 being who has been deprived of all agency, power and 

 initiative, the power of enacting rules a priori to which 

 the course of events must conform ! But is it not clearly 

 impossible to combine the Kantian assertion of the 

 reality of mental activity with an acceptance of the 

 Humian denial of all human activity? 



It would seem then that in this case, as in that of the 

 Humian psychology, Kantian Rationalism is unable to 

 shake off a humiliating dependence upon an insidious 

 doctrine which has managed to beguile it into positions 

 whence an effective rejoinder is no longer possible. It 

 would be interesting to trace out in detail the final fiasco 

 of rationalistic intellectualisms in their controversies with 



