OF REALITY. 



437 



ing. One of these terms was " the Thing in itself," 

 another was " the Categorical Imperative." These two 

 terms fix, as it were, Kant's position with regard to 

 the two main problems of reality, his answers to the 

 two questions, What is Eeal? and What js the truly 

 Eeal? 



To begin with the first, with " the Thing in itself." 10. 



The "Thing 



When Kant analysed our knowledge of things which mitseif." 

 we call real, he not only, with Locke, discarded as 

 apparent and purely subjective the secondary qualities, 

 dependent upon the nature of our senses, but he also 

 discarded the primary qualities, the space which things 

 occupy and the time during which events happen, as 

 arising out of the form of our perceiving intellect. 

 Depriving thus what seemed to be external realities, 

 the phenomena of nature, both of their secondary and 

 their primary qualities, treated as mere appearance, there 

 remained over only an indefinable something by which 

 real things were distinguished from purely subjective 

 images. This something we can, according to Kant, 

 only conceive by thought, we cannot perceive it. It 

 was a ISToumenon in distinction from the Phenomenon; 

 the former he termed " the Thing in itself," or " Things 

 in themselves," in opposition to the Thing or Things as 

 they appear. 1 This is equivalent to saying that ex- 



1 A concise and lucid history of 

 the influence of the conception of 

 the ' Thing in itself ' and its cog- 

 nate but not synonymous designa- 

 tions as the Noumenon, the trans- 

 cendental object or the x of the 

 Kantian philosophy, is to be found 

 in Windelband's ' History of Phil- 

 osophy ' ( 41) frequently referred 



to already. Jacobi's pertinent re- 

 marks, made so early as 1787 

 ('Werke,' vol. ii. p. 304), "that 

 without this assumption he was un- 

 able to enter the system, and with 

 it unable to remain inside of it," 

 indicates the difficulty of thinking 

 of something of which we know 

 nothing. Accordingly the Kantian 



