76 



NATURE 



[May 25, if 



KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 

 Imwauuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. In Com- 

 memoration of the Centenary of its First Publication. 

 Translated into English by F. Max Miiller. With an 

 Historical Introduction by Ludwig Noire". Two Vols. 

 (London : Maemillan and Co., 1881.) 



THE records of science and philosophy during the 

 past few years have been especially fertile in indi- 

 cations of a desire to place the relations of these two 

 departments of inquiry upon a better footing than that of 

 their former history. The desire has its source not in a 

 spirit of concession but in a consciousness of necessity. 

 A deeper criticism of conceptions with which in scientific 

 investigation it is not possible to dispense, has brought 

 several of its chief apostles face to face with fundamental 

 obscurities and even contradictions which seem to cast 

 doubt upon the validity of these conceptions. On the 

 other hand philosophy has of late been coming into ex- 

 tensive contact with results obtained by scientific methods j 

 and has been compelled either to modify its position, or 

 go to the wall. The result is that attention has been 

 increasingly directed to that critical examination of the 

 nature of human knowledge, which claims on its negative 

 side to have finally destroyed the old metaphysics and 

 assigned definite limits to investigation, on its positive 

 side to have exhibited these limits as arising out of the 

 ultimate constitution of mind. The translation, just pub- 

 lished, of the " Kritik der reinen Vernunft," is one of the 

 latest contributions to the literature of this subject. The 

 cry of "Back to Kant" which has of late years been 

 heard so frequently in this country and abroad, has been 

 responded to by Prof. Max Miiller with two well-appointed 

 volumes. Of these the first contains the translator's 

 preface, an "Historical Introduction" by Prof. Noire", 

 and a translation of those passages of the second edition 

 of the " Kritik," which differ from the corresponding 

 pa -sages in the first. The second volume consists of the 

 translation of the first edition. The merits of the intro- 

 ductions and translations will be best estimated after the 

 consideration — as far as the compass of a review will 

 allow — of Kant's position. 



To understand the critical philosophy, it is essential to 

 realise that its problem and subject-matter are entirely 

 different from any thing that is or can be dealt with by 

 ■-cience in the ordinary acceptation of the term, and in 

 particular from the investigations of physiological or 

 other psychology. Science deals with what it is customary 

 1:1 our aspect to call mind, and in another cerebral 



1 tion, and inquires into the relations of this to the 



surrounding environment. It seeks to lay bare the 



mechanism of perception and ideation, and to exhibit the 



dependence of mental upon cerebral functions. 



And of late years it has pretty well justified its title to the 



e occupation of the field as against the old intro- 

 spective psychology. Mind and its environment are alike 



cts of and given in what may be indifferently 

 spoken of as knowledge, consciousness, or experience. 

 That is to say, they presuppose knowledge (to use the 

 appellation which is perhaps least encumbered with 

 question-begging associations) as that through which, like 

 everything else, they exist, and in which the meaning of 

 existence is to be found. The old Berkeleian reduction 



of esse to percipi is matter of common knowledge, and the 

 leaders of scientific thought show a very proper disposition 

 to treat it as a truism. For the statement that the uni- 

 verse in ultimate analysis is reducible to a succession ot 

 states or groups of states of consciousness, amounts to no 

 more than the statement that the universe exists, and 

 may be dismissed as outside the region of scientific ques- 

 tions in exactly the same sense as is this assumption. 

 But if the step from Berkeley to Hume be taken, and 

 existence regarded as the " impressions and ideas" of a 

 particular individual, whose consciousness itself exists only 

 so far as it is the object of knowledge, there ensue logical 

 consequences of the gravest description. The inquirer is 

 then confronted with the conclusion that the universe in 

 so far as real is nothing more than an arbitrary sequence 

 of phases of his own mind, as to which there is not the re- 

 motest reason for believing that the uniformity of the past 

 will be resembled in the events of the future. Scientific 

 and indeed all propositions, particular as well as general, 

 become a delusion and self-consciousness an unintelligible 

 deception. Since Hume's "Treatise" was published, it 

 has been characteristic of his would-be interpreters, until 

 within the last few years, to misunderstand him, of scien- 

 tific men to ignore him, and of that succession of distin- 

 guished writers who have sought to apply the canons of 

 scientific method to the problems of philosophy, in a 

 somewhat perplexing fashion to do both. Of late the 

 significance of Hume's teaching has been better under- 

 stood. Men have come to see that if reality consists in 

 ultimate analysis of a succession of sensations which, 

 existing only in so far as they are felt, cannot be connected 

 excepting by a purely subjective process, they must accept 

 the logical consequences that not only is the belief in a 

 uniform constitution of nature no longer tenable, but that 

 the subjective semblance of such a belief is as incapable of 

 being accounted for as the fact itself. This was the 

 teaching of Kant, and those who seek its detailed 

 justification and the proof that Hume did more than 

 show the unreliability of general propositions, will do 

 well to turn to the pages of the late Mr. Green and 

 of Mr. Arthur Balfour. It is characteristic of Kant, 

 that although he grasped the serious and self-destructive 

 character of Hume's conclusion as to the impossibility 

 of knowledge much more fully than its originator, he yet 

 speaks of it as though it were of importance, only because 

 it detracted from the supposed necessary truth of mathe- 

 matical and causal relations. He has accordingly misled 

 the majority of his critics into the unfortunate idea, that 

 in denying the necessity of these relations, they have 

 displaced the foundation of the critical system. The 

 problem stood thus. It was clear that existence had no 

 meaning except the being perceived by an actually or 

 possibly percipient consciousness ; and the only known 

 form of such a consciousness was the individual self. 

 But to say that existence meant the being a mode of the 

 consciousness of the individual self, involved the contra- 

 diction of facts by the implicit denial of the possibility 

 of even a semblance of knowledge. There was only one 

 alternative : to recognise that the self in which the mean- 

 ing of existence was to be sought was not the finite self 

 disclosed in experience — an apparent point in a boundless 

 expanse, from which it was distinguished only by the fact 

 of its being always " here and now," but constructive 



