APPENDIX A 385 



(school of Spencer) and (2) of Pantheistic Idealism (Hegel 

 and his later followers, English and American) . The basis 

 for this critique is secured by reaffirming Kant's doctrine 

 of a pnori knowledge, and proving it afresh in face of the 

 modern attempt to explain it away by acquired association, 

 natural selection, and heredity. It results that the individ- 

 ual mind, being thus a system of the very conditions pre- 

 requisite to an evolving process, cannot be the product of 

 such process, whether this be regarded as the effect of the 

 omnipresent " energy " of an " Unknowable " or as the 

 expression of the omnipresent " meaning " of an " Inclusive 

 Self-consciousness." On the contrary, it is now seen to be 

 itself at the basis and origin of things, a member of the 

 world of self-causes. 



In the course of Essay II, this critique of Monistic Ideal- 

 ism is carried out with greater fulness, especially in exposing 

 the fallacy of the frequent claim that modern science trends 

 resistlessly to this type of monism. 



In Essay III, idealism of the thoroughly plural and indi- 

 vidual type — Personal Idealism — is reached, as the result 

 of the dialectical self-dissolution of pessimism (Schopen- 

 hauer, Hartmann), materialism (Duhring), and agnosticism 

 (Lange). In this self-supplanting of Lange's view, the Kan- 

 tian restriction of knowledge to the field of phejiojnena gets at 

 length dissolved. The basis for moral autonomy is defini- 

 tively established by this self-sublation of scepticism passing 

 to its extreme ; the freedom of the rational individual is 

 assured in this settlement of the noumenal reality of his 

 knowledge. The transcendent metaphysics of the essays, 

 in opposition to the merely transcendental prevalent since 

 Kant, is thus rested upon critical foundations, and Critical 

 Idealism attains its proper fulfilment. 



In Essay IV, we discover the essentially creative character 

 of Art, the field par excellence of the triumphs of non-divine 

 intelligences, and thus come, as if by a new and unexpected 



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