in.] INTELLECT AND MATERIALITY 205 



leads. Such is the governing idea of the Kantian criticism. 

 It has inspired Kant with a peremptory refutation of 

 "empiricist" theories of knowledge. It is, in our opinion, 

 definitive in what it denies. But, in what it affirms, does 

 it give us the solution of the problem? 



With Kant, space is given as a ready-made form of 

 our perceptive faculty — a veritable deus ex machina, of 

 which we see neither how it arises, nor why it is what 

 it is rather than anything else. " Things-in-themselves" 

 are also given, of which he claims that we can know noth- 

 ing: by what right, then, can he affirm their existence, 

 even as "problematic"? If the unknowable reality pro- 

 jects into our perceptive faculty a "sensuous manifold" 

 capable of fitting into it exactly, is it not, by that very 

 fact, in part known? And when we examine this exact 

 fitting, shall we not be led, in one point at least, to suppose 

 a pre-established harmony between things and our mind — 

 an idle hypothesis, which Kant was right in wishing to 

 avoid? At bottom, it is for not having distinguished 

 degrees in spatiality that he has had to take space ready- 

 made as given — whence the question how the "sensuous 

 manifold" is adapted to it. It is for the same reason 

 that he has supposed matter wholly developed into parts 

 absolutely external to one another; — whence antinomies, 

 of which we may plainly see that the thesis and antithesis 

 suppose the perfect coincidence of matter with geometrical 

 space, but which vanish the moment we cease to extend 

 to matter what is true only of pure space. Whence, 

 finally, the conclusion that there are three alternatives, 

 and three only, among which to choose a theory of know- 

 ledge: either the mind is determined by things, or things 

 are determined by the mind, or between mind and things 

 we must suppose a mysterious agreement. 



But the truth is that there is a fourth, which does not 



