THE TEST OF TRUTH 



to a knowledge of the objective reality in itself, 

 Kant turns around and tells us that we may 

 after all acquire a knowledge of the subjective 

 reality in itself! Though we can never deter- 

 mine what the environment furnishes in the 

 duplex act of cognition, we can none the less 

 determine exactly what the mind furnishes. By 

 this wonderful inconsistency Kant opened the 

 way for the later German idealism. Through 

 this inlet entered Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, 

 with their swarm of mediaeval conceptions, to 

 perturb the onward course of philosophy. Kant 

 might in vain protest. It was in vain that " he 

 showed that the subjective a priori nature of 

 these truths was peremptory proof of their ob- 

 jective falsehood ; that they could not be truths 

 of things, precisely because they were purely 

 subjective conditions of thought.'' Once granted 

 that the subject could of itself possess truth in- 

 dependent of experience, independent of inter- 

 course with the objective environment, the in- 

 ference was inevitable that the subject might 

 impose its necessities upon the object, that the 

 possibilities of thought might be rendered co- 

 extensive with the possibilities of things. Thus 

 Kant, after laboriously barring out ontology at 

 the main entrance, carelessly let it slip in at 

 the back door. Thus, by admitting the possi- 

 bility of arriving at truth otherwise than through 

 experience, did he render nugatory his elabo- 



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