146 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



philosophy, he holds, is not a doctrine, but a method; 

 and philosophy itself, when precisely defined, is sim- 

 ply the critical determifiation of the limits of the main 

 tendencies in oiw faculty of consciousness. These ten- 

 dencies are two : the investigation of phenomena, 

 and speculation upon assumed realities beyond them. 

 Philosophy has thus two functions : the one negative, 

 resulting in the critical dissolution of all the syn- 

 thetical principles of cognition, and the stripping 

 them of all competence to the absolute, leaving 

 their outcome purely phenomenal ; the other posi- 

 tive, affirming the right and the uses of the free 

 exercise of the speculative bent, when taken no 

 longer as knowledge but only as poesy. 



The supports of this "Standpoint of the Ideal" 

 are sought in a critique of the Critique of Pure 

 Reason, or a sort of " new critique of reason," whose 

 ambition it is to bring to the needed consistent 

 fulfilment what Lange regards as the first principle 

 of Kant's undertaking. This principle is assumed 

 to be the rigid restriction of our knowledge to ex- 

 perience : we have a priori forms of cognition, but 

 they become futile when applied beyond phenomena. 

 That Kant himself regarded this as only the prin- 

 ciple of his tJicoretical view is, to be sure, unques- 

 tionable ; but his setting up the practical reason as 

 in itself absolute was, Lange maintains, a direct 

 violation of the principle, and was in fact rendered 



