IMMANUEL KANT 71 



soul is a non-material entity situated during 

 life within a material body in a material 

 world, or else adopt the mechanistic theory 

 that there is no soul, but only a series of 

 'states of consciousness' lighted up some 

 how or other within a material brain, we 

 cannot escape Hume's destructive criticism. 

 This criticism destroys utterly the assumption 

 of a universe of self-existent things. 



But the appearance of knowledge of our 

 universe and all that it contains does certainly 

 exist and must be accounted for. The task of 

 accounting for it was taken up by Immanuel 

 Kant, who carried us far beyond Hume. 



Kant did not satisfy himself with Hume's 

 account of the data of consciousness as a 

 stream of isolated impressions or sensations, 

 cohering or associating themselves with one 

 another in a manner of which we can give 

 no ultimate account. He proceeded to ex 

 amine carefully the nature of sensation or 

 perception. One thing which he found was 

 that sensations never do exist in isolation from 

 one another, but that each carries with it a 

 reference to other sensations. A sensation, 

 if it is distinguishable at all, is here and now. 



