COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



land and Germany things took a different course. 

 The Scepticism of Hume, as the most conspic- 

 uous consequence of Berkeley's profound anal- 

 ysis, produced a second crisis in philosophy, 

 and led Kant to re-examine the psychological 

 problem, in the hope of arriving at some posi- 

 tive result. We have already remarked upon 

 the inconsistency in Kant's final conclusions ; 

 demonstrating as he did, on the one hand, the 

 relativity of knowledge, yet on the other hand 

 maintaining that in necessary truths we possess 

 a kind of knowledge not ultimately referable to 

 the registration of experiences. We have now 

 to note how Hegel has based upon this doc- 

 trine of a priori knowledge an explicit and un- 

 compromising assertion of the validity of the 

 subjective method, which by reason of its very 

 outspokenness proclaims itself as the reductio 

 ad absurdum of metaphysics. 



Starting from the postulate that deductions 

 from a priori premises furnished by pure rea- 

 son have a higher validity than inductions from 

 premises supplied by sensible experience, Hegel 

 speedily arrives at an ingenious solution of the 

 antinomies which baffle the ordinary thinker 

 who seeks to frame hypotheses concerning ob- 

 jective reality. The customary rules of ratio- 

 cination, based upon a collation of the results 

 of sensible experience, are set aside with a high 

 hand. If it be declared that we can and do 

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