70 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



edge, precisely because they are involved in every possible bit 

 of empirical knowledge. Their necessity lies in the indispensa- 

 bility of the function which they perform in experience. If it is 

 their universality which serves as the basis of all valid knowledge, 

 they themselves are reciprocally justified by the whole system 

 of experience. All this implies unmistakably an important limi- 

 tation upon the dogmatic conception of irreversible logical prior- 

 ity. This appears in the fact, that, as a consequence of the 

 Kantian treatment of the a priori as the form of thought, its 

 legitimate application must be restricted within the limits of 

 possible experience. That is to say, a priori principles are not 

 true in that they severally and independently correspond to 

 reality, else a limitation upon them would be unthinkable. A 

 type of truth thus emerges in the critical philosophy, which is 

 not conceived as a relation between the world of thoughts, on 

 the one hand, and a world of reality, on the other. This new 

 truth is a concept which, like any of the categories, is itself 

 applicable only within experience. Moreover, the truth of the 

 a priori principles is no longer a matter of conformity to objects, 

 either phenomenal or noumenal. Kant himself expresses this 

 in his suggestion, that, instead of assuming as had previously 

 been done, that our cognition must conform to objects, we make 

 the assumption, that objects must conform to our mode of cogni- 

 tion. On the other hand, if the objects of empirical experience 

 are determined only by conformity to the laws of our intelligence, 

 the a priori principles of experience become knowledge only by 

 application to those objects. The correspondence between con- 

 cept and object which thus results is, therefore, a secondary 

 matter, rather the consequence than the ground of the truth of 

 the a priori principles. What does at once determine and con- 

 stitute their truth is precisely the function they perform. Con- 

 sidered apart from this function, indeed, they are not true, for 

 they are not knowledge at all, but mere "cobwebs of the brain," 

 as Kant calls them. 



That Kant did not realize the full significance of the changes 



