THE TEST OF TRUTH 



After Hume, by drawing out the Lockian 

 doctrine to its extreme corollaries, had enunci- 

 ated a set of conclusions which deny all that the 

 doctrine of relativity explicitly denies, but which 

 differ from the doctrine of relativity in ignoring 

 what the latter implicitly asserts, the Leibnitz- 

 ian theorem was again taken up by Kant, who 

 made it his own by his manner of illustrating it, 

 and whose arguments on this topic still carry 

 conviction to the minds of many able metaphy- 

 sicians'. The immense importance of Kant's 

 views makes it desirable for us to give them 

 some farther consideration than is implied in 

 merely stating them. 



In the first place, it must be borne in mind 

 that Kant maintained, no less stoutly, and per- 

 haps no less consistently, than Hume, the doc- 

 trine of the relativity of all knowledge. As Mr. 

 Lewes truly observes, " the great outcome of 

 the ' Kritik ' was a demonstration of the vanity 

 of ontological speculation." Kant would have 

 repudiated Schelling and Hegel, as he did in fact 

 openly repudiate the claims of Fichte to be con- 

 sidered his legitimate successor and expounder. 

 It was Kant who first showed that every hy- 

 pothesis which we can frame respecting the 

 Absolute, the Infinite, the First Cause, or the 

 ultimate essences of things, must inevitably com- 

 mit us to alternative impossibilities of thought. 

 It was Kant also who showed psychologically, 



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