1 66 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



founding its own organic notions with the hypos- 

 tatised notion of a thing-in-itself, sets a bound to 

 its own certainty by an a priori illusion which, 

 just because a priori, it can never dispel ; though 

 it learns by " criticism " to interpret the illusion 

 correctly. 



The justness of this analysis, so far as it goes, 

 is evident enough. We doubtless have here the 

 correct partial genealogy of the remarkable notion 

 Thing-in-itself — in so far, that is, as this notion 

 forms the basis of the common-sense dualism of 

 mind and matter — and the exact genesis of all 

 "critical" agnosticism. There is missing from the 

 analysis, however, the very important fact, that the 

 cooperation of the other a priori elements — Space 

 and Time — with those actually mentioned, is what 

 imparts to the "material-substance" interpretation 

 of this notion its specific character and its chief 

 plausibility. The infinity of Space and of Time, 

 in contrast to the finitude of every sense-presenta- 

 tion, joined with our tendency to ignore the strictly 

 supersensible elements in consciousness — the cate- 

 gories in their purity, and the pure Ideas — and 

 to take our leisure in the familiar region where 

 Time and Space render all things plain, makes it 

 easy for us to suppose there is "abundant room" 

 for "existence wholly out of consciousness" and, 

 as the saying is, "independent" of it. This blun- 



