214 DOGMATISM AND EVOLUTION 



How these facts were interpreted by Kant need not now con- 

 cern us, except to note that in that interpretation the possibility 

 of an evolutionary explanation of them was definitely excluded. 

 Herein Kant remained a rationalist. Thought, for him, must 

 operate with concepts, to which the laws of contradiction and of 

 the excluded middle applied absolutely and without reservation. 

 That, measured by such a standard, the fundamental categories 

 of the understanding should be false that the unity of experience 

 which they mediated should be imperfect was not for him a real 

 possibility. His problem did not include it. Thus the scepti- 

 cism which he refuted was one which left the analytical judgment 

 unquestioned. It was only the fact of synthesis that suggested 

 doubt, and this only in so far as universality was claimed for it. 

 The very enterprise with which the Transcendental Analytic sets 

 out the formation of a definitive and complete list of categories, 

 as if that were a thinkable performance is sufficient to indicate 

 his attitude in the matter. And the completeness of the list 

 in which the metaphysical deduction issues is an important 

 premise in the later argument. It is upon this that the indis- 

 pensability, and hence the unquestionable validity, of the cate- 

 gories depends. These and no others must perform the function 

 which they perform because there are no others. 



In place of this persistent dogmatism, we would rather observe 

 that when a succession of concepts appears, each of which has 

 arisen as a modification of the preceding complex, a certain 

 relative stability belongs to the earlier members. Not as if 

 temporal priority gave a logical priority in the ordinary sense of 

 the term ; for the later does not come as a mere accretion to the 

 earlier, but as a modification of it which goes to the formation 

 of a more complex unity. But the earlier has nevertheless this 

 preference: that, as the further revision of the complex becomes 

 necessary, this takes place, as far as possible, in the later elements ; 

 and only such portion of the correction as cannot be made here 

 is passed back farther and farther, until the disturbing conditions 

 are satisfied. This, indeed, appears to be a general characteristic 



