LATER GERMAN PHILOSOPHY l6l 



question, in putting the judgment Their are things- 

 in-themsehes, we put a judgment of absolute validity, 

 and see by the light of intelligence as such — with 

 the eye common to all possible intelligences. This 

 would force upon the agnostic the further perilous 

 question. By which of our merely subjective 

 categories, then, do we manage this astonishing 

 achievement ? The admission of this one noume- 

 nal judgment would open the entire agnostic 

 mechanism of the a priori to the inroad of absolute 

 knowing. So, by some means, this judgment must 

 be reduced to a mere conjecture. It will not do to 

 dissipate it wholly, for then another absolute judg- 

 ment would arise in its place, namely. There are no 

 things-in-themselves. But the validity of this would 

 put an end to phenomenalism conclusively. If there 

 are no things-in-themselves, then our cognition, call 

 it "subjective" as long as we may, is the cognition 

 of all there really is, by all the minds there are ; 

 the objects that we represent to ourselves in our 

 normal activity are then the only objects, and our 

 intelligence becomes itself the universal because the 

 only intelligence. 



Hence it is with the instinct of self-preservation 

 that Lange draws the mentioned distinction back 

 within the sphere of merely human consciousness. 

 Even this distinction itself he will have us refrain 

 from using as if referring to anything absolute. We 



M 



