THE ALLEGED SCEPTICISM OF KANT. 173 
And now observe that exactly the same thing is reproduced 
in what we call modern philosophy. Starting from Bacon 
onwards, we have a series of systems which, in whatever 
fashion, attempt to decide what matter is, shed are the 
qualities of matter; a great series of natural and physical 
philosophers, who, sometimes dogmatically, and sometimes 
sceptically, resolve the insistent questions always pressing 
upon the human spirit. And then come men like Berkeley 
and Hume in England, and Kant in Germany, who propose 
a different question. The English philosophers, in their way, 
started the same kind of speculation which the philosopher 
of Kénigsberg attempted to answer, but neither Hume nor 
Berkeley realised the importance of the standpoint they were 
inaugurating, nor did they see quite clearly the nature of the 
problem whose solution they desired. It was Kant who first 
laid it down in his “ Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysic,” 
that what we must first determine is the conditions and 
limitations under which knowledge is possible at all. And 
this is why his own analogy with the work of the reformer of 
astronomy is absolutely correct. In carlier times the assump- 
tion was that the earth lay at rest in the centre of the uni- 
verse, and that the sun and the stars were the satellites, the 
appanages, of the abode of man. Suddenly the point of view 
is changed; the earth is not at rest, but is revolving round 
the central sun. If we desire to eet to the centre “of our 
universe, we shall find it in that object in relation to which 
every satellite is at once attracted and repelled, held in 
its elliptical course by centripetal and centrifugal forces. 
A similar revolution occurs in philosophy. We change 
the point of view. Instead of attempting to determine 
the characteristics of the kosmos, we start with the con- 
ditions of our own human knowledge. We erect, as it 
were, our observatories not in the world, but within our- 
selves—under the assurance that it is human thought which 
is the measure of the universe, not the universe which is the 
explanation and parent of thought.’ Such, at least, is the 
standpoint of Kant; the antithesis, as you will observe, of 
the scientific attitude, representing a revolution which may 
or may not be of ultimate value, but at all events possessing 
a peculiar significance and importance of its own, and giving, 
once for all, a basis for such logic and such ethics as can be 
held to correspond with the powers of the human, or, perhaps, 
even the divine, spirit. 
How does a man who imaugurated a revolution of 
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