5^ AGNOSTiaSM. 



and Fe^I. And Will and Feeling are other than 

 Thought, and Thought does not fully represent 

 them. It is true that if we desire to assert our 

 existence, we must assert it in terms of thought, 

 i.e., as Cogito ergo simi, but then we assert it only 

 against a doubt, and a doubt so futile does not 

 require to be refuted. As long, ^therefore, as we 

 content ourselves with our inner consciousness, i.e., 

 the feeling of our existence, we have committed 

 nothing which thought can lay hold of. And when 

 it does lay hold of our expressed conviction of our 

 existence, and attempts to show It is invalid, it only 

 does so to cover itself with confusion. 



Kant's attack on the reality of the Self may be 

 refuted out of his own mouth. 



He admits^ (i) that our thought can think the 

 Self only in the position of a subject, i.e., that the 

 ** I " can never be the predicate of any statement ; 

 (2) that our thought Is discursive, i.e., all Its state- 

 ments are predicates. Hence (3) the Self, cannot 

 be a (mere) conception. Thereupon he argues, that 

 because the conception of the Self is empty, the Self 

 Is no reality. This argument not merely Involves 

 the direct contradiction of denying and asserting, 

 almost in the same breath, that the Self was a con- 

 ception, but actually argues from the defect of a 

 defective conception to a defect In Its subject. 

 First he shows conclusively that If the Self is real, 

 our thought can never do justice to It, then he 

 argues, that because our thought cannot do justice 

 to It, the Self Is not real. If It could be validly 

 asserted that the Self was a conception at all. It 

 must surely be admitted that, so far from being 

 empty, It is the fullest of all conceptions, with a 



^ Prolegomena, p. 116 (Reclam), Mahaffy's trans, p. 47. 



