as, or instead of, that of time? To this question Kant's argument 

 can hardly supply any answer, and yet he assumes time to be the 

 only means of uniting sensibility and understanding. 



This union of sensibility and understanding, obtained as Kant 

 thought by means of the pure form of sensibility, time, constituted 

 for him knowledge. "The understanding cannot see, the senses 

 cannot think. By their union only can knowledge be produced." 1 

 Because of this Standpoint there arose that distinction between 

 phenomena and noumena which Kant has emphasized to such a 

 great degree. But Kant was not the first to draw such a dis- 

 tinction. It will be remembered that in the brief space devoted 

 above to David Hume his discussion of the problem of "continued 

 existence" was emphasized as of great importance. Of such a 

 continued existence we have no knowledge whatsoever, declared 

 Hume, but our belief in an independent and continued existence 

 it is impossible, he claims, ever to eradicate. In almost the same 

 words the philosopher of Konigsberg sets bounds to knowledge. 

 All knowledge is confined to phenomena. It can never apply to 

 things by themselves. In thus limiting knowledge, Kant made 

 room, he claimed, for belief. 



It is important to note, before passing to a consideration of 

 this view of the limits of knowledge, that between the conclusions 

 of Hume and those of Kant there is very little real opposition. 

 That there was a fundamental difference between rationalism and 

 Hume is manifest. The rationalists claimed to have sure and 

 certain knowledge of those things of which Hume considered it 

 necessary to deny knowledge. Kant, in his criticism, "removed" 

 the knowledge of rational cosmology, psychology and theology, 

 and, in showing the con tradictori ness of giving a sense content to 

 the Ideas, corroborated the very position which Hume had held. 

 If Kant held to a phenomenal world of which there was knowledge 

 and to a noumenal world of which there could l>e none, so Hume, 

 with as much definiteness, though with less elaboration, laid empha- 

 sis upon a similar distinction. If Hume was a sceptic, then was 

 Kant likewise a sceptic. In like manner, it might be pointed out 

 that Hume, an empiricist as history has classed him, laid almost 

 as much emphasis upon reasoning processes in, for example, his 



1 Op. Cit. P. 41. 



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