KANTS THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. 35 



the category of causation, to which the difficulty is 

 due, is not appHcable in the same way as to the 

 phenomenal causes of physical science. 



§ II. The Kantian Agnosticism, to which we 

 must next direct our attention, has proved as stimul- 

 ating to philosophers as the Spencerian has been 

 comforting to scientists, when afflicted with doubts 

 as to whether a rational interpretation of their first 

 principles was possible. And just as the discovery 

 of the Unknowable appeared to the one the crown- 

 ing achievement of human knowledge, so it has 

 seemed to the others a discovery most important to 

 knowledge that we could not know certain subjects. 

 Indeed, the whole of post- Kantian philosophy seems 

 to be occupied in persistent but futile attempts to 

 wriggle out of Kant's conclusions while accepting 

 their basis, or in expounding the meaning of an 

 argument so subtle that only a born metaphys- 

 ician could make his way unaided through its ob- 

 scurities. And as complete success, either in 

 establishing the Kantian case, or in making it wholly 

 intelligible to the world, would destroy the whole 

 occupation of philosophers, it Is perhaps fortunate 

 that they have not committed the happy despatch 

 by doing the only thing they supposed themselves 

 entitled to attempt. 



The difference between Spencerian and Kantian 

 Agnosticism may be roughly formulated as being, 

 that while the former declares knowledge impossible 

 because of its knowledge of the Unknowable, the 

 latter does so because of its knowledge of the im- 

 potencies of our knowledge. By Kant, the possib- 

 ility of metaphysics is denied, not because of the 

 infinite complexity of things, begetting an infinite 

 process of knowledge, but because of the faulty 



