THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF SELF. 363 



santly renewed. lu many respects Kant's meaning is ob- 

 scure, but it will not be necessary for us to squeeze the 

 texts in order to make sure what it actually and historically 

 was. If we can define clearly two or three things which it 

 may possibly have been, that will help us just as miich to 

 clear our own ideas. 



On the whole, a defensible interpretation of Kant's 

 view would take somewhat the following shape. Like our- 

 selves he believes in a Reality outside the mind of which he 

 writes, but the critic who vouches for that reality does so 

 on grounds of faith, for it is not a verifiable phenomenal 

 thing. Neither is it manifold. The ' Manifold ' which the 

 intellectual functions combine is a mental manifold alto- 

 gether, which thus stands between the Ego of Appercej)- 

 tion and the outer Reality, but still stands inside the mind. 

 In the function of knowing there is a multijjlicity to be con- 

 nected, and Kant brings this multiplicity inside the mind. 

 The Reality becomes a mere empty locus, or unknowable, 

 the so-called Noumenon ; the manifold phenomenon is in 

 the mind. We, on the contrary, put the Multiplicity with 

 the Reality outside, and leave the mind simj)le. Both of us 

 deal with the same elements — thought and object — the only 

 question is in which of them the multijDlicity shall be 

 lodged. Wherever it is lodged it must be * synthetized ' 

 when it comes to be thought. And that particular way of 

 lodging it will be the better, which, in addition to describ- 

 ing the facts naturally, makes the * mystery of synthesis ' 

 least hard to understand. 



Well, Kant's way of describing the facts is mythological. 

 The notion of our thought being this sort of an elaborate 

 internal machine-shop stands condemned by all we said in 

 favor of its simplicity on pages 276 ff. Our Thought is not 

 composed of parts, however so composed its objects may 

 be. There is no originally chaotic manifold in it to be re- 

 duced to order. There is something almost shocking in the 

 notion of so chaste a function carrying this Kantian hurly- 

 burly in her womb. If we are to have a dualism of Thought 

 and Reality at all, the multi]ilicity should be lodged in the 

 latter and not in the former member of the couple of related 

 terms. The parts and their relations surely belong less to 

 the knower than to what is known. 



