COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



rate demonstration of the relativity of know- 

 ledge.^ 



This will appear still more evident as we pro- 

 ceed to examine the second portion of Kant's 

 theorem, — the assertion that uniformity of ex- 

 perience, however long continued, can never 

 afford us a sufficient guaranty of necessary truth. 

 The argument here is at first sight a plausible 

 one. Any particular experience can only tell us 

 that a phenomenon, or a relation between phe- 

 nomena, is thus and thus ; not that it must be 

 thus and thus. And any number of experiences 

 can only tell us that certain phenomena have 

 hitherto always occurred in certain relations ; 

 not that they must always and forever occur in 

 the same relations. Or, as Dr. Brown phrases 

 it, " Experience teaches us the past only, not 



^ "The truth is,** says Mr. Lewes in his new work just 

 now appearing, ** Kant tried to hold contradictory positions. 

 The whole drift of his polemic against the ontologists was to 

 show that knowledge was limited, relative, and could not ex- 

 tend beyond the sphere of possible experience ; but while 

 thus cutting the ground from under the ontologists, he was 

 also anxious to cut the ground from the sensationaHsts and 

 sceptics, and therefore tried to prove that the Mind brought 

 with it an a priori ftmd of knowledge.*' — Problems of Life 

 and Mind, vol. i. p. 453. In the present chapter I quote by 

 preference from Mr. Lewes, because it seems to me that he 

 has illustrated both the strength and the weakness of Kant's 

 position (and thus, virtually, of all modern metaphysics) more 

 thoroughly and more clearly than any other critic. 



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