54 TWO THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE 



But it is to-day almost unnecessary even to criti- 

 cise this Philosophy. 



From the first it was foredoomed to failure, and 

 had no prospect of succeeding where Plato equipped 

 with armour from the same forge had already 

 failed. 



Kantianism like Platonism failed because it still 

 left the sensible unaccounted for. Not only did it 

 fail to tell us whence came these sensations which, 

 however transitory and unreal, constantly saluted 

 our consciousness and largely constituted our Ex- 

 perience ; it failed also to show us how they could 

 be brought into relation with the faculty of Know- 

 ledge. 



Finding its elemental forms in the structure of the 

 organ of Knowledge, it failed to tell us how we ever 

 managed by means of these to get beyond our own 

 subjective states, or how we ever came to think that 

 there was a World outside of the individual con- 

 sciousness, by the categories of which, according to 

 them, our cognitions of such a World were called into 

 being. For if Reality were unknowable except by 

 and through the categories, then our Knowledge of 

 Reality was the creature of our own mental activity, 

 and we must still remain unable to understand why 

 we should suppose that we had got beyond ourselves. 



