May 25, 1882] 



NATURE 



77 



thought, which was always subject and never object in 

 knowledge, of which it was wrong to predicate existence, 

 because it was above the categories of existence in that 

 only as its object could things be said to be. For Kant, 

 such an intellectual activity was something very different 

 from that "unknowable" of which so much has been 

 written. Of the "unknowable" it may be said, that 

 although it exists, is a cause and so forth, it can never be 

 intelligible to a finite mind, but it is none the less the 

 object as distinguished from the subject of thought. 



Kant's (as the time went) great knowledge of physical 

 science no doubt contributed to cause him to revolt 

 keenly against Hume's apotheosis of the individual self. 

 He had anticipated, and to a surprising degree grasped, 

 the modern conception of evolution. He had worked out, 

 independently of Laplace, the mechanical theory of the 

 solar system, and had enunciated the hypothesis of de- 

 velopment in the organised world. For him there was 

 no possibility of supernatural interference, and Man 

 was but the last link in a gradually evolved chain of life. 

 He could not assent to conclusions which assigned to an 

 individual consciousness — itself but a point in the bound- 

 less immensity of space and time — the position of being 

 the foundation of the whole phenomenal universe, and 

 which regarded knowledge as a fiction. He saw clearly 

 enough that the problem was not an ordinary scientific pro- 

 blem of relations within experience, but the problem as to 

 the constitution of experience itself. In science (as indeed 

 in metaphysics) we are always concerning ourselves with 

 some conceivable object of knowledge, and we assume that 

 there is no question about the conditions of that experience 

 in which that object is actually or conceivably included 

 as a part. But Kant's problem was that of knowledge 

 itself, with the relations of space,- time, causality, &c, 

 which enter into its constitution, and which, as the condi- 

 tions of the possibility of objects of knowledge could 

 bear themselves, are implied in such objects. His 

 method was that which is the general method of inductive 

 reasoning, to apply an hypothesis to certain data, and to 

 modify it, as appeared necessary from the result of the 

 test of adequacy to the explanation of these data. His 

 findings were in outline these : Berkeley and Hume 

 showed that things cannot create thought, or exist other- 

 wise or in any other sense than for thought. Therefore 

 thought must create things. But we find an inexhaustible 

 material in nature which cannot be understood as the pro- 

 duct of thought — the matter of perception as distinguished 

 from the formal relations which are found to be exclusively 

 the work of thought in knowledge ; this formless matter 

 Kant declares to become the object of knowledge — that is 

 to attain reality — in so far as it is brought under two 

 pure a priori forms, which belong exclusively to mind, 

 space, and time. But in the constitution of the real 

 there is something more implied, for space and time, 

 tuken by themselves, are merely the formal possibilities of 

 spatial and temporal arrangement. Kant now shows 

 that the matter of perception— the raw material of sensa- 

 tion of which all we can say is that it is wholly meaning- 

 less and without reality, excepting as thought makes it 

 otherwise— is determined in the two pure forms of per- 

 ception in the fundamental relations which he terms 

 "categories," and which include not only quantity, 

 quality, substance, cause and effect, &c, but every other 



relation of experience. The main difficulty in under- 

 standing Kant arises from the tendency to forget that the 

 process of creation, which has just been in outline indi- 

 cated, is not a process taking place in space and time. 

 It is a process of pure thought which can never be made 

 the object of knowledge, because, as has been already 

 stated, knowledge with its distinction between subject and 

 object implies, these very spatial, temporal, and other 

 relations which are themselves logical elements in the 

 process. Such thought can never be the property of an 

 individual organism, completely dependent on what sur- 

 rounds and has been before it. The finite self cannot be 

 taken to explain the process through which, like the rest 

 of existence, it is created. In making itself its own object 

 thought is presented as an individual, limited like other 

 individuals and conditions, within the field of experience. 

 We only grasp Kant's meaning when we realise that by 

 the thought which he finds to be creative of the objective 

 universe, he does not mean the mind of an individual, 

 but an intellectual activity which cannot itself become an 

 object of knowledge, because in it and by it is created 

 the very distinction between subject and object. Thought 

 in this sense is pre-supposed by and is logically prior to 

 all existence. Since it can operate in its construction 

 of the unformed manifold of sensation into reality, 

 in the forms ot space and time, reality is limited in it-, 

 possibilities to what can be represented as existent in 

 space and time ; and from this it follows that knowledge 

 is limited by imagination. But though our reasoning is 

 thus only valid in so far as it is confined to actual 01 

 possible experience, thought has still, according to Kant, 

 a power of extending itself by means of the categt 

 alone beyond these limits, a procedure which leads to 

 inevitable contradictions when an attempt is made to 

 apply conclusions reached in this way to experience. It 

 is just here that Kant's teaching becomes of interest to 

 science, for these contradictions are the very ultimate 

 difficulties of science, about which so much has been said 

 of late. Kant discusses them at great length, and reference- 

 may be here made, by way of illustration, to his solution 

 of the difficulty in the conception of the atom. In acl 

 experience we cannot meet with, or in possible experti 

 imagine an atom that is not of finite dimensions. Ytt 

 reasoning without reference to experience leads us to tin- 

 inevitable conclusion, that whatever is of finite dimen 

 sions is further divisible ad infinitum. We predict' 

 the atom simultaneously that it is, and is not of finite 

 dimensions. But in the first case we mean a conceiv. 

 object of perception in space ; in the second, an un- 

 realisable conception of thought from which no 1 

 inference can be drawn as to reality. The two sorts oi 

 knowledge are wholly distinct, and hence their apparently 

 contradictory results are not real contradictions. The 

 difficulty arises not from mistaken scientific reasonm_. 

 but from the intrinsic nature of knowledge itself. 



Between the representations of the relations of matter 

 in space and time and the figments of abstract A priori 

 reasoning, Kant goes on to show that there is an internn - 

 diate operation of thought, which, while it does more 

 than create mere figments, yet does not create the real, 

 although it modifies it. Its results are exemplified in 

 those aspects under which the world is presented ;i = 

 beautiful or the reverse, and as organised. Organisation 



