348 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



38. 

 Acceptance 

 of extant 

 body of 

 scientific 

 knowledge. 



part of it also his theory of knowledge, may thus 

 be regarded as a focus in which the different lines of 

 earlier thought, both ancient and modern, were collected 

 and brought into mutual contact, and from which they 

 emanated with altered shades and colours. And still 

 more has the general tenor of his thought, his critical 

 attitude, as shown in an earlier chapter, been almost uni- 

 versally adopted in the course of the nineteenth century, 

 and more so towards the end than in the beginning of 

 the period. Kant is, therefore, a representative thinker. 

 His philosophy looks backward and forward and all 

 around, and consciously or unconsciously mirrors the 

 thought of his own and the subsequent age : that of 

 his own country as well as that of the neighbouring 

 nations. To show this, we need only take up the two 

 aspects which I mentioned above. Consider, first, the 

 emphasis which Kant laid upon the existence of a body 

 of certain and assured knowledge contained in the 

 mathematical and mechanical sciences. Here he not 

 only inherited the predilection for mathematical treat- 

 ment characteristic of French philosophers as well as of 

 Spinoza and Leibniz, but he also assimilated the spirit 



to an individual consciousness 

 is given as an ' object ' must be 

 contained in an ori<(inal hyper- 

 individual consciousness which is 

 accordingly authoritative, so far as 

 empirical knowledge is concerned. 

 In the place of ' things in them- 

 selves ' he put Kant's ' conscious- 

 ness in general.' In this way he 

 explained the apriority of mental 

 forms and categories, so that what is 

 given in the manifold of sensation 

 remained also for him the unsolved 

 residue of the Kantian problem" 

 ( Windelband, ' Geschichte der Philo- 



sophic,' p. 485). Prof. Windel- 

 band shows also how near he comes 

 in some respects to Berkelej^'s 

 Idealism. " It cannot be denied 

 that between the standpoint of 

 Beck and that of Berkeley the 

 dividing lines are difficult to draw. 

 But neither Kant nor Fichte occu- 

 pied Berkeley's position. Kant 

 did not, inasmuch as he stuck to 

 the reality of things in themselves ; 

 neither did Fichte, inasmuch as he 

 was far removed from the spirit- 

 ualistic ground of the English 

 thinker." 



