iv.] THE KANTIAN CRITICISM 359 



no relationship. The agreement between the two was due 

 to the fact that intellect imposed its form on matter. So 

 that not only was it necessary to posit the intellectual 

 form of knowledge as a kind of absolute and give up the 

 quest of its genesis, but the very matter of this knowledge 

 seemed too ground down by the intellect for us to be able 

 to hope to get it back in its original purity. It was not 

 the "thing-in-itself," it was only the refraction of it through 

 our atmosphere. 



If now we inquire why Kant did not believe that the 

 matter of our knowledge extends beyond its form, this is 

 what we find. The criticism of our knowledge of nature 

 that was instituted by Kant consisted in ascertaining what 

 our mind must be and what Nature must be if the claims 

 of our science are justified; but of these claims themselves 

 Kant has not made the criticism. I mean that he took for 

 granted the idea of a science that is one, capable of bind- 

 ing with the same force all the parts of what is given, and 

 of co-ordinating them into a system presenting on all sides 

 an equal solidity. He did not consider, in his Critique 

 of Pure Reason, that science became less and less objective, 

 more and more symbolical, to the extent that it went 

 from the physical to the vital, from the vital to the psychical. 

 Experience does not move, to his view, in two different 

 and perhaps opposite ways, the one conformable to the 

 direction of the intellect, the other contrary to it. There 

 is, for him, only one experience, and the intellect covers 

 its whole ground. This is what Kant expresses by saying 

 that all our intuitions are sensuous, or, in other words, 

 infra-intellectual. And this would have to be admitted, 

 indeed, if our science presented in all its parts an equal 

 objectivity. But suppose, on the contrary, that science 

 is less and less objective, more and more symbolical, as it 

 goes from the physical to the psychical, passing through 



