CHAPTER I 



THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY 



After the successful carrying-out of a revolution, our wonder 

 may be less excited by the greatness than by the limitedness of 

 the changes that have been effected. Looking beneath the al- 

 tered surface of things, we find a scarcely modified substratum, 

 which bears witness to an unbroken historical continuity. Very 

 notably is this the case with the more important revolutions in 

 philosophical thought. It is notorious, for example, that the 

 founders of modern philosophy, with all their contempt of scholas- 

 ticism, were never able to free themselves from its most character- 

 istic concepts nay, never awoke to their bondage to them. Very 

 similar is the relation which the critical philosophy bears to its 

 forerunners, rationalism and empiricism. The 'Copernican hy- 

 pothesis' of Kant, despite its magnificent daring, meant no such 

 absolute shift of the center of vision as its author supposed. On 

 the contrary, nothing is more apparent to the reflective student 

 than the far-reaching identity of the fundamental logical con- 

 ceptions of Kantian and pre-Kantian thought. Indeed, it may 

 safely be asserted, that there is not a single one of the doctrines 

 which we have pointed out as characteristic of the old dogmatism, 

 that is not to- be found, either openly expressed or implicitly 

 accepted, in the writings of Kant. And yet is it none the less 

 true, that in the critical philosophy a transformation of the 

 traditional logic is involved. 



So far as it is possible to regard this transformation as due to a 

 single revolutionary idea, it may be described as having its source 

 in a new conception of the nature of truth and validity. As 

 conceived by rationalism, the warrant for the truth of any propo- 

 sition could be exhibited only by deducing it from some more 

 general proposition, whose truth in turn must be attested by 



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