discussion of "philosophical relations", as did Kant himself. If 

 Kant was, in this sense, a rationalist, then was Hume likewise a 

 rationalist. It is seldom possible to fit men into the artificial 

 classes which have been devised. Such classifications show only 

 general tendencies, and sometimes not even those. But it is the 

 Kantian doctrine of knowledge and its limitations with which we 

 are here especially concerned, and to that attention must now be 

 directed. 



It is Kant's contention that we know only phenomena, and, in 

 the dialectic, especially, he argues repeatedly against the extension 

 of human knowledge beyond the limits of (sense) -experience. 

 "The critique of the pure understanding does not therefore allow 

 us to create a new sphere of objects beyond those which can come 

 before it as phenomena." 1 But man, so Kant saw, is not content 

 with such knowledge; 'there are also in his consciousness certain 

 necessary concepts of reason to which the senses can supply no 

 corresponding object. These concepts must be distinguished from 

 those of the understanding, and Kant chooses to designate them 

 by the Platonic word, Idea. Such Ideas "are not mere fancies, 

 but supplied to us by the very nature of reason, and refer by 

 necessity to the whole use of the understanding". 2 They are classi- 

 fied by Kant under the heads of Ideas of the soul, the world, and 

 God. The significance which these Ideas have is of the utmost 

 importance. They have a most admirable and indispensably 

 necessary regulative function to perform, for they serve as a canon 

 or rule to the understanding for its extended and consistent use. 

 Of themselves these Ideas of Reason can never give rise to decep- 

 tion or illusion, 3 it is only when man, who is most prone to such 

 an error, misemploys them making them constitutive rather than 

 regulative, it is then, as Kant says, when they are thus "misunder- 

 stood and mistaken for constitutive principles of transcendent 

 knowledge, they produce, by a brilliant but deceptive illusion, some 

 kind of persuasion and imaginary knowledge, but, at the same 

 time, constant contradictions and disputes." 4 There are then 

 within consciousness, within experience as we would say to-day, 



1 Op. Cit. P. 235. 



2 Op. Cit. P. 266. 



1 Op. Cit. Cf. P. 537. 

 4 Op. Cit. P. 562. 



114 



