l6o ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



know by means of it things as they arc.^ This is 

 but another way of saying that we are forbidden to 

 assume it is anything more than a pecuharity of 

 man. It is in effect represented as simply a limita- 

 tion belonging to humanity. Whether its forms are 

 those of possible other intelligences, of intelligence 

 as such, we are told we can never know ; and for 

 the reason that we are shut in by the "limiting 

 notion " of the thing-in-itself. This agnostic prin- 

 ciple, now, Lange will carry out with unflinching 

 comprehensiveness : it is extended to include even 

 the fundamental distinction between our phenome- 

 nal world of experience and the noumenal Reality. 



This aim of Lange comes from a genuine insight 

 into the requirements of system. Not only is it 

 true in general that a principle, to be such, must 

 work in its sphere with unqualified universality, but, 

 in this particular case, omitting from the compass 

 of phenomenalism the contrast between conscious- 

 ness and things would be fatal to the claims of 

 phenomenalism as a principle. If the notion of the 

 thing-in-itself be more than phenomenal, then there 

 is a thing-in-itself, and in cognising the contrast in 



^ It deserves special notice, in passing, that this confusion of Kant's 

 Ding an sich, or \hmg-in-iisclf (something existing " on its own 

 hook," underivecl from other beings, independent of any one ego), with 

 things as they are, is a very prevalent misconception of Kant. It is 

 at the bottom not only of Neo-Kantianism, but of much other mis- 

 interpretation of him. 



