OF REALITY. 441 



unifying and active principle — our Will — he conceived 

 to stand in a relation to the changing events of our 

 inner life like that of the Thing in itself to the changing 

 phenomena of that outer experience which we call the 

 external world, and which we have in common with other 

 intelligent beings, our fellow-men. In fact the Will, in 

 its self-restrained freedom, was as much the noumenal 

 ground of our own self, its intelligible character, as the 

 Thing in itself was the noumenal ground of external 

 things with their merely apparent reality. From this 

 point onward the real importance of Kant's philosophy 

 is to be found in the stress which he laid upon the self- 

 restraining freedom of the Will that brought with it its ^g. 

 own law, the " Categorical Imperative," the " Ought " of goricai im-' 

 our moral nature, the second and higher Keality which 

 he regarded with wonder and veneration.^ 



Before we proceed to see how the various suggestions 

 contained in Kant's doctrine were taken up by his suc- 

 cessors, it is important to point out again how much of 

 the novelty of Kant's teaching lay in that strange, yet 

 telling and impressive, terminology which he invented, 

 and through which he laid stress upon the different is. 



Importance 



aspects in which the Keal makes itself apparent to us. ofhister- 



'■ ^ '^ minology. 



It is possible and has since been variously attempted to 

 put Kant's ideas into the language of earlier philosophers, 

 employing the terms used by Aristotle in older, or by 

 Spinoza in more recent times, also to show how almost 

 every one of his single statements was anticipated by one 

 or the other of his predecessors. But this would not efface 

 the historical fact that Kant, through his original way of 



^ See the celebrated passage quoted supra, p. 29. 



