BO COSMIC PEILOSOrnT. [pt. i. 



experience, and by the very constitution of our minds This 

 element of necessity and universality is the element which 

 the mind furnishes in the duplex act of cognition. 



This theorem contains two assertions, the one implicit, 

 the other explicit. It asserts implicitly that the subjective 

 element in cognition can be isolated from the objective 

 element, at least so far as to be independently defined. It 

 asserts explicitly that absolute uniformity of experience is 

 inadequate to produce in us the belief in the necessity of any 

 given relation among phenomena. "With reference to the 

 first of these assertions, I shall be content with citing the 

 excellent remarks of Mr. Lewes : — 



"There was an initial misconception in Kant's attempt 

 to isolate the elements of an indissoluble act. It was one 

 thing to assume that there are necessarily two coefficients 

 in the function ; another thing to assume that these could 

 be isolated and studied apart. It was one thing to say, 

 Here is an organism with its inherited structure, and apti- 

 tudes dependent on that structure, which must be consi- 

 dered as necessarily determining the forms in which it will 

 be affected by external agencies, so that all experience will be 

 a compound of subjective and objective conditions ; another 

 thing to say, Here is the pure d priori element in every ex- 

 perience, the form which the mind impresses on the matter 

 given externally. The first was an almost inevitable con- 

 clusion ; the second was a fiction. Psychology, if it can show 

 us anything, can show the absolute impossibility of our dis- 

 criminating the objective from the subjective elements. In 

 the first place, the attempt would only be possible on the 

 ground that we could, at any time and in any way, disengage 

 Thought from its content ; separate in Feeling the object as 

 it is out of all relation to Sensibility, or the subject as pure 

 subject. If we could do this in one instance, we should have 

 a basis for the investigation. The chemist who has learned 

 to detect the existence of an acid by its reactions in one casa 



