438 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



istence is the only thing we know about the reality 

 of things, and that all detailed information which we 

 possess about them is mere appearance, originating in 

 the nature of our senses and the forms of our intellect. 

 It has frequently been observed that this way of 

 stating the problem of reality involves a latent con- 

 tradiction, inasmuch as of a thing regarding which 

 we know absolutely nothing, we cannot even maintain 

 its existence. The same objection has been raised in 

 more recent times against the statement of Herbert 

 Spencer, who, in a more direct way than Kant before 

 him, asserts the existence of the Unknowable, and 

 places this at the entrance of his philosophy .^ 



the body of thought," or it rises to 

 that highest object of contempla- 

 tion on which the closing pages 

 of Schopenhauer's first great work 

 contain an eloquent rhapsodj'. A 

 third investigation belongs to more 

 recent times, and is not yet con- 

 cluded. It would have to show 

 how, psychologically, the perplex- 

 ity has arisen out of the three 

 notions of Self, which we involun- 

 tarily form in early life and which 

 are continually intermingled and 

 superposed in all our reflective and 

 practical mental operations : the 

 Self as one among many other 

 Selves, its equals ; the Self as 

 pictured to us through the mem- 

 orj^ of past experience ; and the 

 Self as the sensations and feelings 

 of the present moment. Begin- 

 nings of this psychological analysis 

 are to be found in Renouvier's 

 ' Essais de Critique Generale. ' See 

 also papers by Josiah Royce in 

 ' Philosophical Review ' (Sept. 1894, 

 Sept. and Nov. 1895). 



1 We may get out of this diflj- 

 culty, which applies as much to 

 Kant's as to Spencer's UnknowaV)le, 

 by looking upon it as a limiting 



position was unstable and, as Win- 

 delband has shown, led to two 

 separate developments : the first, 

 that indicated by Jacobi as un- 

 avoidable and necessary, was to 

 throw this conception of an un- 

 knowable Thing in itself overboard 

 and resort to pure Idealism, as 

 was done in various ways by 

 Fichte and his successors, who all 

 took great pains to show how 

 Kant's position was untenable. 

 The second was to endow the 

 empty idea of a Thing in itself, 

 the X of the Kantian philosophy, 

 with a definite meaning, whilst 

 maintaining in substance the Kant- 

 ian argument. The way to accom- 

 plish this had been indicated already 

 by Fichte as well as by another 

 philosopher of the Kantian school, 

 Fr. Bouterwek (1766 - 1828), and 

 was, without appreciation of either, 

 consistently followed up by Scho- 

 penhauer. Thus the pure idea of 

 reality either lapses into nothing- 

 ness, the Unreal, or it acquires a 

 higher meaning as the truly Real. 

 It either degenerates, as Windel- 

 band says, " into a quasi-rudiment- 

 ary organ without any function in 



